Summary of this week:

• AWS announces new services for AR VR and Video
• Facebook claims to have suicide-detecting software
• AWS has its annual event this week with lots of announcements
• More celebrity men fall to complaints of sexual misconduct
• Google shows a $50 computer vision kit (Raspberry Pi)
• AWS releases Cloud9 collaboration in the cloud for programmers

Monday November 27, 2017

If you are playing Pokemon Go while driving, please have a navigator or a driver or don't do it. Accidents are happening. Predictable and predicted.

How Etsy survived workplace turmoil and slowly and successfully changed everything.

Of all things, Cartography makes a comeback as a profession in our post post post modern world.

Previously limited to some Android devices, Microsoft Office is now available on all Chromebooks. Microsoft still rules the office.

Robby the Robot is auctioned for $5.3Million. Not bad for a prop that stood next to Anne Francis.

Finally, Amazon will use the heat generated by a data center to keep persons warm in the winter. Why do such things take so long?

Even though it is a media darling, Tesla is a business disaster waiting to declare bankruptcy.

There is a big merger and buyout happening in the world of those glossy magazines you see at the grocery store checkout counter.

Amazon Web Services launches Sumerian to help build, VR, AR, and 3D modeling products.

And Amazon Web Services launches apps to help build videos.

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Tuesday November 28, 2017

Enter just a couple things about a person on a government web site and learn everything about them. Our tax dollars at waste.

Tumblr's founder and CEO resigns.

Restaurants and others are offering to pay low-wage workers daily.

Facebook claims to now have software that detects suicidal posts and call someone to prevent suicide. What could possibly go wrong here? A lot.

Moleskine extends its digital writing kit to Windows 10. The price is still too high to be practical.

Waymo (Alphabet (Google)) nows has 4Million miles on the road with driver-less cars.

Christmas, kids, 1980s, Nintendo—enough said. Watch the video.

Paid fast lanes coming to Comcast. Let's consider this...you get what you pay for...hmmm, something pretty American about this idea.

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Wednesday November 29, 2017

Cyber Monday set some sort of record. The economy appears to be strong despite us having "the worst President in the history of history." Perhaps he is the most misunderstood President in the history of history.

Coming soon to Windows 10: tabs on apps. This seems to be great news and could possibly save western civilization (exaggeration to highlight the folly).

"...the real interest of these internet giants is in using the regulatory process to cement their dominance in the internet economy.”—Ajit Pai For some reason, this statement of history seems to shock some people.

ooops macOS 10.13 has a big booboo that lets you log in as root without a password. Fix imminent.

Facebook is experimenting with facial recognition as a replacement for captcha. When will the breathalizer come online? (just kidding)

At this time, Uber is losing $100Million each week. What a business! And why is Uber such a darling to everyone? Please, someone explain.

AWS is having its big annual event this week re:invent 2017.

AWS announces "bare metal" instances in its Elastic Compute Cloud EC2. More control to the user.

The official HDMI 2.1 standard is released. The hardware will take years to appear.

Microsoft, older than Amazon Google and other kids, plans headquarters 2.0.

Nvidia releases an upgrade to their line of GPUs for portable computers.

"The average person 'works for two hours a day for Mark Zuckerberg' generating a data profile." Where is my paycheck, Mark?

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org

Thursday November 30, 2017

Another day and Matt Lauer and Garrison Keillor take the fall for sexual misconduct. 

The FDA approves the Apple Watch and a special band for EKG. Now it is a medical device. Now let's learn what's really bad about your watch being an approved medical device.

How to block GPS tracking with a potato chip bag.

People are still stealing our home computer CPU time.

Google updates its Lens app. This is remarkable when you consider that it interprets images and translates them.

Finally, someone with some brains looks to separate "social media" into "social" and "media." That is a tough one, but worth attempting.

AWS previews DeepLens: a video camera with machine learning, image recognition built in. $249, but can't get it until April 2018.

Rocket Lab prepares for another test flight. They are trying to launch small satellites at even smaller prices. Space belongs to the commercial providers.

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Friday December 1, 2017

Uber may become the next America On-Line. The early lead and darling, but eventually passed by the turtle called Lyft.

Government surveillance of its subjects is alive and well in China. All the big tech companies are servants of the government and give it all the data they have on the subjects.

Twitter Lite rolls out in 24 more countries. Smart marketing. Give people a product they can use.

Cloud9: AWS bought the company last year and now releases it as a service. It allows developers to collaborate or pair program in the AWS cloud.

Google AIY Vision Kit: $50 gets you an computer vision kit that pairs with a Raspberry Pi. I won't tell you what a computer vision "kit" used to cost in the 1980s.

Apple and Stanford work together to use the Watch as a AFib detector.

Microsoft's Edge browser is now available on iOS and Android.

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Saturday December 2, 2017

Eating your own dog food...Lyft requires corporate staff to drive half a day to see for themselves what their company does.

SpaceX uses its Falcon Heavy launch (sometime next year) for plenty of publicity stunts. The first launch is a test and demo, nothing real.

The re-invention of the camera and other lens with photolithography.

Brief but insightful analysis of AWS's Cloud9 offering and how the software and programming industry may change completely and soon.

Excellent self-assessment questions from Seth Godin.

"Healthcare is littered with heavy regulation, counter-intuitive payment incentives and deep-rooted politics." That about sums it up, yup.

Government Motors (remember, we bailed them out) promises to have fleets of self-driving cars on the road in 2019.

End of another era: Linux Journal is done, no more issues.

Supercomputer under your desk: MSI is now selling its latest machines in the US.

Toshiba releaeses 10TeraByte disk drives made especially for recording video surveillance feeds.

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Sunday December 3, 2017

Mozilla releases a high-quality, open-source, speech-to-text engine.

Spectacular software error in Russian booster rocket shoots satellites down to earth instead of up into orbit.

Stanford University's computer security problem reveals that administrators lied to grad students for a decade about financial aid. I feel the need to comment on life as a grad student, but don't want to write a book at this time. Sexual misconduct is in the news these days. That is basically persons picking on other persons because both feel an imbalance of "power." Such is grad school—the powerful mistreat the not-so-powerful.

The ZTE Axon M smartphone: it has two displays held together by a hinge. Bad news: it is large. Good new: it is large.

AWS announces a translation service for languages.

AWS also announces a speech-to-text Transcription service.

Dozens of tools for writers. Many of these are good. Remember the advice of Stephen King, something about needing a room with a door you can close.

" If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much."—Jim Rohn

Can you START writing after 50? Sure. Any age. Any time.

Using LinkedIn and non-fiction writing promotion.

It is that time of year for posts suggesting gifts for writers and everyone else, too. Here is one list.

Dozens of helpful places to turn as a blogger. And always turn back to putting your hands on the keyboard.

A lot of side benefits from writing in NaNoWriMo.

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