Summary of this week:

• Our arbitrary calendar states that we are in a new year this week
• Facebook's censorship is biased (not news)
• The CES is coming, some folks announce new stuff early
• Google succeeds with Chrome
• Google succeeds with its Home Gadget
• Nintendo succeeds with the Switch game console

Monday January 1, 2018

Not much news today. Most of the Internet is telling the Internet what the Internet did in the last 365 days.

The Chinese government outlaws the manufacture of 553 car models because...well because they can. It is a Communist country lest we forget.

A new world record of sorts for LG: an 88-inch 8K OLED display. I want one, but my living room is too small.

The Russians and Chinese are rejoicing as legal marijuana smoking spreads across the USA. There is no better way to gain in the marketplace than to have your competitors show up for work stoned.

Forget the silly title, this is a good post about job performance and how your supervisor shows appreciation. Note, this is true for mature, good supervisors. The rest of the supervisors? Well, when you find yourself with one of those, move to another job as fast as you can.

Ticket sales at movie theaters continue to fall. There are lots of technical reasons behind this, and the folks that make movies cite them. The real reason? They are making lousy movies.

Some thoughts on "swatting" that should be considered, especially by law enforcement organizations. Most are ignorant of the entire concept and when they are fooled, terrible things happen.

Not to be out-censored by China and Iran, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo shuts down Internet and cell phone communications for its subjects.

.....

Tuesday January 2, 2018

News Flash (not): Facebook's anti-bias censorship program is biased. Who would have thought such could happen? Lots of people did, and their prediction came true.

Meanwhile, in Germany, a new law puts big fines on Facebook et al if they don't censor speech quickly enough.

In the UK, Facebook and Twitter (American companies) are grilled and threatened by the government for not providing the evidence to support the already drawn conclusion about the Russians.

Where do you find 50million images to analyze demographics, possessions, and voting patterns? Why, Google Street View.

And now we have "raw water." And yes, it is making people sick sick sick.  Animals usually poop in raw water, folks. Take note.

This is of great interest to those of us interested in copyright and the public domain. The US is near the end of a drought brought on by silliness in Congress during the Clinton Administration.

..... Email me at d.phillips@computer.org 

Wednesday January 3, 2018

A look at the lives of the super-rich, and assumed to be super powerful, men in today's world. Sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll for the billionaire set. Would some of these boys just grow up?

Arbitrarily large  numbers: Amazon shipped 5Billion items last year with Prime.

Congress grows up—a little, let's not get carried away—and discusses non-computer, secure voting, a.k.a., paper ballots that people count.

A design flaw in a family of Intel processors is causing major software work to keep systems a little more secure.

A dead-body video goes right past all the fancy software filters. The problem is that social media providers don't want to $spend $$$ on humans who look at everything before it is posted. That cut$ profit$.

Good news for the new year. The Linux Journal is revived as enthusiasts provide funding.

..... Email me at d.phillips@computer.org 
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Thursday January 4, 2018

Lenovo announces updates. More processing power, thinner machines, all goodness.

And Dell updates its mainline XP 13 machines.

Silicon Valley, at least some of the folks who live there, can't take a joke or don't realize how much of a joke they are.

Two-day shipping means more warehouses, more demand, higher prices. Funny how economics works.

The government of China is building a $2.1Billion AI research park. This is easy to do when you take all the money you want from your subjects.

It appears there is a brain drain at NSA. Predictable and predicted. In government, the people who do things are not promoted. The people who supervise and sit in meetings all day are.

Meltdown: the name for the CPU flaw in Intel and everyone else's hardware that will bring OS updates everywhere. Apple's 10.13.2 update broke my iMac.

Apple makes its developer program FREE for non-profits, schools, and government (why government?)

..... Email me at d.phillips@computer.org 

Friday January 5, 2018

..... Email me at d.phillips@computer.org 

Saturday January 6, 2018

There is some sense of sanity in our White House as persons will no longer be allowed to use personally owned cellphones.

GoPro lays off a couple hundred persons in its drone division.

Chrome has risen to dominate the browser market like Microsoft once did. While Google repeat Microsoft's mistakes?

Thoughts on the probability and potential loss of undersea cables that carry Internet traffic.

Google sold 6Million Home speakers in the last three months. 6Million is a lot of anything. The definition of success has changed.

Must have for the living room: LG has a little 4K projector that makes a wall into a 150" screen.

And all of America's most successful tech companies are suing our government about the FCC and which definition of "net neutrality" we use.

Video game consoles passe? The  Nintendo Switch broke all the records. They sold 5Million units in the US since March.

Lenovo pushes the state-of-the-practice with its newer portable computers. Note the 27-hour battery life. I wouldn't expect that in practice, but practical use is going past 12 hours.

..... Email me at d.phillips@computer.org 

Sunday January 7, 2018

"The field guide aims to provide a high level introduction to the R ecosystem. Designed for those approaching the language for the first time, managers, ops staff, and anyone that just needs to get up to speed with the R ecosystem quickly." The Field Guide to the R Ecosystem. And then there is Tidyverse. THIS IS A PRETTY GOOD PLACE TO STUDY ALL THIS.

Acer shows its new gaming PC with 18 cores and liquid cooling and all other sorts of sheer power for fun.

Acer also ups it Chromebook line with thinner, lighter machines with longer battery life, still at $250.

The folks at LG keep pushing display technology. Here is a 65" display that rolls up like a newspaper (remember newspapers?).

Google is making an unprecedented big presence at CES this week.

Google and Amazon battle it out with their little gadgets we talk to and look like speakers and do seemingly intelligent things.

The not-so-cool kids of Silicon Valley have a new game: stealing bicycles from the Google campus.

The #richkidsoftehran, the hypocrisy of the Islamic Republic and a theocracy, and the sort-of-but-not-really revolution happening in Iran. What a mess. Hatred fueled by extravagance of one tenth of one percent.

"There’s never a lack of inspiration or creativity. Ever. There is, however, a lack of seeing, a lack of listening and a lack of recognizing."

One writer starts a 7-day writing challenge: writer 1,000 words a day for a week and that may start a writing habit that continues through the year.

Thoughts on being a location-independent writer. Live abroad or in the US in a cheaper-cost-of-living area.

The concept of the Minimum Daily Requirement for writing.

Several good tips for memoir writing.

A list of lists of places that pay $$$ money for writing.

Sometimes you don't throw away that piece of writing. You put away that piece of writing and come back later.

..... Email me at d.phillips@computer.org