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: 25 June-1 July, 2018

Summary of this week:

• California builds an online community college
• FDA approves a marijuana-based drug CBD
• Supreme Court upholds the "Trump travel ban"
• Apple and Samsung finally settle their 7-year lawsuit
• Amazon buys PillPack and leaps in the medical instrustry

Monday 25 June 2018

Machine learning: will it become as common as databases at work?

The government of California is trying to create an online community college for everyone in the state. I trust they have the money for this?

Tablets replace waiters. Tablet enable customers to bash waiters. Was this a good idea?

"A coordinated, committed group with a plan for continuous testing and improvement can run circles around a disorganized group of frightened dilettantes."—Seth Godin

Dangerous driving by Uber. Go back 20 years. How many of you rode in a taxi that cut corners? I rode in many of them. We didn't have a world wide communicator on us to report it.

Of course US companies sell surveillance software to governments that watch their subjects closely.

Volkswagon beats the Pikes Peak climb record with an all-electric race car.

Tuesday 26 June 2018

Amazon extends sale prices to Prime members at Whole Foods nationwide. Of course the prices at Whole Foods are still higher than just about anywhere else.

A more detailed reading here. The history of how Intel and AMD came to be where they are today and why it is so difficult to move into processors for mobile devices. The didn't call it "Wintel" for nothing.

The NSA and AT&T and spying.

Sobering thoughts about facial recognition software and its use in law enforcement. The promise is far ahead of the reality.

Tencent, the $500-billion Chinese internet giant, becomes a platinum member of the Linux Foundation.

The WiFi Alliance begins certifying products for the WPA3 security protocol.

The government of Venezuela continues to attempt to contain its subjects, now blocking Tor.

CBS will stream NFL games to mobiles this season. Of course you'll have to pay for it.

A look at Elon Musk's private school for a handful of SpaceX kids. We are back to the 1700s as this is how the wealthy educated their children for several hundred years.

Tim Cook speaks about immigration. Yes, there are immigrants working for Apple, but none hired on the Texas-Mexico border. A few words. Do you think you are really smart and can solve problems? If yes, help the world. Go to that border and solve the problems. Go ahead. Please. We need your brilliance. None of immigrants at Apple crossed the Rio Grande on foot. Hiring a Computer Science master's degree holder from a foreign country has nothing to do with supporting an illiterate family fleeing death from the hands of drug lords in Central America. Abosolutely nothing. Please, focus on the real issues and don't extrapolate from one thing to the next.

Let's not kid ourselves: robots of all types replace humans in the workforce. Some displaced persons may find other careers. Note "some" and "may." One person explains how he replaced jobs with a machine he built.

This story must be important as it is all over the Internet: Our FDA approves a marijuana-based drug.

The government of China bans HBO after a "comedian" jokes about a Party leader. Well, they don't have a Bill of Rights there, so what's the news here?

Wednesday 27 June 2018

Google adds the Explore tab to Maps. The program is more personal, and that can be good, and that can be bad.

Google announces Cloud Filestore: a fully managed network attached storage (NAS) service in the cloud.

Facebook was building very large drones that would circle and provide Internet access. Facebook WAS doing this—everything is cancelled. Everyone is laid off.

Qualcomm updates its lower-performance and lower-priced Snapdragon processors for lower-priced smartphones.

Microsoft claims to have improved its facial recognition software. This is all supervised learning. If you train on one race, it works on one race. If you train on several races...this isn't complicated. It does, however, cost more money to do better.

How Amazon hires executives away from Microsoft.

One reporter works as an Amazon Flex package delivery person for one day. Of course you don't make any money doing this. It is a part-time job that pays less than minimum wage. And Amazon's "employees" protest Amazon helping US Law Enforcement catch murdered, thugs, and thieves. Where is the protest over the mistreatment of Americans who want to earn some lunch money?

The US Supreme Court upholds the "Trump travel ban" as a lawful exercise of a law passed by both parties in both houses of Congress.

Qualcomm introduces a new line of processors for smartwatches—this line built of kids (parents).

Lifestyles of the rich and famous: look at this $100Million Silicon Valley home.

Google completely revises its advertising products.

A look at the $10Billion battle for the cloud computing contract for the Pentagon.

Burnout among tech workers is pretty high. This is a management problem. Perhaps company managers see an stream of eager employees coming along. Burn the ones you have now. A younger one will be here next here to churn code. Low unemployment plus cheap foreign labor ... the result is predictable and was predicted.

Firefox 61 is released.

Thursday 28 June 2018

Apple and Samsung finally settle their seven-year legal battle over who copied whom's smartphone.

YouTube is giving us all the picture-in-picture feature previously subscription only.

Foxconn will build a factory in Wisconsin, and taxpayers will give give and give to Foxconn.

Coming real soon now—sooner than expected—are SD cards that hold 128TeraBytes.

One of the reasons we can't have nice things...Google reminds its employees that its internal bulletin boards are for nice people who are nice to one another. Let's all behave so we can enjoy this. Huh? What is so difficult about this? 

The world of high-performance computing has slowly shifted in the last few years to one of Linux and the GPU.

All those clever space launches out of Florida are causing big headaches for the US airlines in the region.

Google ups its membership in The Linux Foundation. Google uses Linux on all its machines and wants more influence.

Friday 29 June 2018

This is a pretty good idea: Google spend the $3Billion (they do have this kind of money) and give every home in America a free smart speaker gadget. In one day they would leapfrog Amazon.

To jump start Apple on a new run...they need to build a car.

Amazon brings a Show Mode to its inexpensive Fire tablets. At last, a conduit to good content with little effort.

Disney advances the art of robots that look like movie stuntmen. Fly through the air and do things you wouldn't ask a person to do.

Science fiction writer Harlan Ellison dies at 84.

Americans believe by a large majority that the famous social media sites censor political views.

Kroger grocery stores will start using autonomous vehicles to deliver groceries to our homes. Convenience, yes. Jobs? Probably not.

Amazon jumps further into the medical industry by buying PillPack for $1Billion.

Saturday 30 June 2018

Comcast-Xfinity had a nation-wide outage on Friday due to a few cables that were accidentally cut. No doubt someone with a backhoe digging a ditch. We learn who has the real power—a high-school dropout on a tractor.

ooops, our NSA admits to collecting phone calls it wasn't supposed to...some sort of technical problem or other. No worry, they are deleting everything.

It appears that no one has been able to abide by the GDPR since no one can actually understand it.

They through million$ and tech and STEM and all the right stuff at public schools in San Francisco...and none of it worked. Sometimes the solution is much simpler and cheaper.

Linux Mint 19 is released.

Culture in China and the US and the result. Keep your head in the clouds and major in political science and your economy will suffer. See, e.g., the United States.

The concept of absorbing medicine through the skin via a band-aid is coming to reality.

Sunday 1 July 2018