Items I happen to view each day. Science, Technology, Management, Culture, and Writing

    This is my day book for this week. It is a log of things I see on the Internet.

This week: 19-25 March, 2018

Summary of this week:

• The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica mess continues
• How to turn off Facebook
• IBM has a new, tiny tiny tiny computer
• IBM fired all its old employees
• We have a 100TeraByte SSD
• Microsoft and DataBricks partner
• Nvidia and Microsoft have a breakthrough on ray tracing
• Dropbox has a big financial gain at its IPO

Monday 19 March 2018

Some research into early detection of dementia. The sensors and systems, however, are very intrusive at this stage.

Guess what? Facebook and others cut corners in staffing to make more money. They didn't watch users like they should have and, instead, depended on unproven software to do the work.

Facebook is now investigating itself to see if there was an insider helping Cambridge Analytica sway elections.

An inside-the-beltway story: GD wants to buy CSRA, but CACI may beat them to the line. No, this doesn't make much sense to people who live in RA (real America).

There is some movement of tech companies away from Silicon Valley and to the Midwest. There is talent, and a low cost of living, all across America.

Apple has its own no-longer-secret secret facility for making MicroLED displays.

Tuesday 20 March 2018

Something for the garage or the job site (a real job site): Makita now has a coffee maker than runs on the batteries for all its power tools.

IBM now has an x86 computer the size of a little piece of rock salt. This is really little and will cost 10 cents. It has 1990s power, which was good enough for computer vision (at least for my work in computer vision).

Now we have a solid state disk that holds 100TeraBytes in a 3.5" standard size. Not for the home. No price given.

Facebook's Transparency Paradox and Cambridge Analytica and academic researchers and "gosh, what will we do now?"

A woman in Arizona was hit and killed by a driver-less Uber car while in test. Early police investigation indicates the pedestrian was at fault and the accident was unavoidable by the car.

The trials and tribulations of Facebook and open groups and what happens when Facebook gets cheap and won't hire smart people to edit was is posted.

A review of an always-connected HP laptop with a Qualcomm processors and built-in LTE. As expected: the battery lasts all day, you are always connected, and the processor is slow. This is a niche computer that works great for some. Come on Apple, let's make one.

News Flash (not): a few gain more attention than everyone else combined. This is some form of the 80/20 rule, but is more like the 98/02 rule.

Wednesday 21 March 2018

What Facebook et al have on us and how to manipulate them. Good article.

Here is another good article on how to reduce what Facebook knows about you. Use Facebook for what you want and limit what Facebook can do to you.

And here is how to DELETE Facebook. It is a little more involved than I thought. Wow, there is a lot of stuff here.

Amazon is now the world's number two most valuable company behind Apple and ahead of Alphabet (Google).

On paper, Facebook has lost $50Billion in value in the last week.

Jigsaw (a Google company) has a way for us to create our own VPN on our own computer so as to provide us control over our anonymity.

Some history on how Facebook opened the gates on privacy. Well meaning data scientists experimented in good faith. Others walked in and played as well. Then, the wrong guy was elected President and this was all evil. If the right gal had used this to be elected it would have been hailed as groundbreaking genius. Sorry, my opinion on why everyone is fussing about an obvious use of data.

Nvidia and Microsoft combine newer technologies for a possible breakthrough in real-time ray tracing. Games, and other simulations, will become like reality and photographs.

Thursday 22 March 2018

The case that Facebook is a bad product. If they would not have gone into the news media business and been satisfied with friends showing photos of their kids...

Zuckerburg speaks. Gosh, he's sorry and this rich guy will spend million$ to fix the problems. They got a little (or a lot) greedy and grew too fast to foresee their own problems.

YouTube ventures farther into censorship.

This story is all over the Internet, so it must be important: Tempe Police release the video of the Uber car hitting a woman.

Study shows that the Apple Watch can monitor heart rates and detect abnormal heartbeat.

Here come the 4K computer monitors with the latest Nvidia technology. Game on,..Game on.

Friday 23 March 2018

Someone finally understands the usefulness of augmenting reality—this app uses the iPhone to help assemble IKEA furniture.

Someone hacked the computers of the City of Atlanta. No doubt that investigation will reveal infantile security practices there.

A review of Uber's self-driving car safety reveals that something is not right with this program.

The Water Abundance XPRIZE has five "winners." These are to continue developing a way to pull water out of air with no energy expended. Some of them are little more than solar and wind energy systems connected to old water condensers. This has turned into an energy competition, not a water competition.

The great Pacific garbage patch is growing. Keep those plastic bottles of water coming. Who decided that would be a good idea?

How IBM cut its workforce at the expense of older persons, and much of the work appears barely legal.

A look at Microsoft's partnership with DataBricks and the new Azure DataBricks service for big data, AI, and the cloud.

Hacker Guccifer 2.0 is identified supposedly as a GRU employee (Russian intelligence).

More shakeup in how we purchase and enjoy music. Digital downloads have collapsed to where CDs are outselling them.

Rumors about what Apple will show at its Education event next week.

DropBox goes public with its IPO.

News Flash (not): European governments want successful American tech companies to pay them more money.

Saturday 24 March 2018

tumblr (I frequent my account there) is notifying me if I interacted with one of 84 Russian-backed accounts that tried to influence me in the recent elections (which ones?). I hope I am on the list so I can see what it was that changed my vote (not).

UK law enforcement raids the offices of Cambridge Analytica.

Let's regain a sense of reality about politics and data science: plenty of losing campaigns hired Cambridge Analytica and other data science companies.

One person's analysis of the Uber accident in Tempe that killed a pedestrian. Uber looks bad, very bad. Bad technology, bad testing practices. And you always go back to, "Who gave them a license to test on the streets?" When government is involved, and it is involved here, it is always the government's fault. Someone in government allowed an unsafe test car on the streets.

Sort of lost in all this is that Uber is far, far behind Google's Waymo in self-driving car technology.

If it couldn't happen, it could: censorship is growing in China.

Dropbox had a big financial boom on its opening day IPO.

Seth Godin on AI and job replacement, "Our job now, isn't to do our job. It's to find new tasks, human tasks, faster than the computer takes the old ones away."

Everyone wants the Zuck to appear before Congress so he can apologize. We MUST have someone apologize each week for something. What is wrong with us?

In a show of...uh, er, something or other...Elon Musk deletes some Facebook pages.

Our government indicts nine Iranians for hacking into US research organizations.

I like this video or interactive map that shows when the first leaves appear on the trees in the US.

Take it up another level or two and we have this thoughtful piece on the art and philosophy of programming, computing, and such from the 1950s Information Utility and onwards.

Sunday 25 March 2018

The NBA may let us watch the 4th quarter of a game for 99 cents.

Tim Cook asks for well-crafted privacy regulations. And where will he find a government committee that can craft well?

Oracle releases Java 10.

Take care with this one. It is possible to write something that is insignificant in all outward views, but will change my life. Do I want to change my life?

Like lists? Here is a list of 176 things to write better.

This piece rambles a bit, but it discusses the idea of where we find ideas and how we connect ideas. Be open. Turn on my notic-er.

Places to go to write other than the coffee shop. Yes, it can be boring to sit at home and write. Beware: if you need just the right place to write, you might be creating a problem for yourself.

Story ideas? Retell the same story over and over again.

This works for writing and weight loss and just about everything that troubles me: talk back to the voices that prevent me from doing something.

Writing freelance can be lonely. Organizing a group of writers can help. It isn't easy, but if it works, it works well.

How one writer uses Scrivener to improve their craft.

Writing your book after you turn 50 (or 60 (or 70)).

Some writing tips from a freelance journalist (they still exist).

Published something online? Keep a copy of it on your own disk drives.

One way to avoid a deadline: don't promise anyone a piece of writing that you haven't already written. Get excited; write; sell what you have already written.

Stop whining and just write. Tough advice for some, a way of life for others.

One writer's use of the iPad Pro. I find this surprising, but encouraging. Perhaps...

One writer's move into freelancing: it helps (A LOT) to know people and have these connections all set.