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: 3-9 September, 2018

Summary of this week:

• Burt Reynolds dies at 82
• Labor Day in America
• College football begins
• The US Open tennis tournament is in full swing
• Tech news is at a low
• Facebook et al make more Congressional appearances
• Storm Gordon comes ashore in the Mississippi Gulf Coast
• Amazon buys 20,000 Mercedes vans
• Google releases Dataset Search
• The great Amazon HQ2 search scam

Monday 3 September 2018

Today is Labor Day in America. No one seems to know why we have this holiday.

And since it is a virtual Sunday, the news is really slow today—at least in the USA.

Silicon Valley has succeeded to much or in an ill-advised manner. Now the envious want a piece of it via new regulations hidden as "independent watchdog."

Microsoft ends its financing program for its (overly) expensive laptop hardware.

Telepresence robots provide some relief to the isolated.

Big tech companies—which benefit when there are more programmers available—want schools to teach programming so they will have more potential employees at lower salaries.

The Economist magazine has a firm grasp of the obvious regarding crytpocurrencies: they are not a medium of exchange but merely yet another item on which to speculate.

The governors in India are recalling the colonial times and don't like the role played in today's India by American companies.

Time passes quickly: the Chrome browser is now ten years old.

Tuesday 4 September 2018

It is Tuesday after a Monday holiday...still slow news.

Censorship is alive and well in China. Regulators have practically banned new video games.

Americans are finding ways around Facebook's censorship efforts. I am happy to report that Americans are good at censorship yet.

Ars Technica digs into Apple's sanctioned external GPU system. It just works and works well. Low total cost of ownership.

A short history of the calculator in the 1970s. I had several of these—still have them in a box somewhere. Reverse Polish Notation! Tiny magnetic card readers! Solve ten equations in ten unknowns.

Why do people do these things? The unpaid, volunteer moderators of Reddit speak out. No pay; high abuse.

More-expensive Chromebooks and less-expensive Microsoft hardware. Collision ahead. Hint: keep the price of Chromebooks below $200.

Microsoft boosts the offering of Office 365 Home version at the same price.

Wednesday 5 September 2018

Skype adds a RECORD button. Please, tell the other person you are recording.

Microsoft releases its newest look for Outlook to the general masses.

Theranos—once the darling of the press because of a number of side things—is dissolving. It was little more than snake oil in an app.

The government of China is raiding engineering talent from Taiwan in an effort to skip generations in integrated circuit building.

The government of Benin joins other African nations in taxing every byte subjects see on the Internet. Squash commerce before it starts. That's the ... uh, er, well someone thought it was a good idea.

Apple is selling 50,000+ watches a day. Not bad for a failed product. The definition of success has changed.

Those who cannot build seek to specialize in breaking.

What do employees want? A window where the sun shines.

Facebook et al appears before Congress today (SSCI). "We apologize." I'm not sure what they did wrong, but they are so sorry.

Google sent Congress a written statement after it was shunned because they weren't sending a big enough celebrity to answer questions with, "I'll get back to you on that."

He is a brilliant visionary but erratic. No, that isn't the President, it is Elon Musk.

News Flash (not): A Watchdog group (how can I get a job being a watchdog group?) shows that you can sneak onto Google et al faking your identity.

Thursday 6 September 2018

Amazon is buying 20,000 vans from Mercedes to build up a fleet of little delivery vehicles. You buy the vehicle and deliver for Amazon door to door.

Facebook and Twitter execs appear before Congress. They are ready to fight their own customer to keep them from expressing their own opinions, a.k.a., censorship. Odd world we have these days.

Our Attorney General recognizes the censorship, but since he is on the "wrong side," his concerns are labeled as right-wing conspiracy theories and all that. When anyone on any side tries to silence others, it is censorship. Sometimes "we" don't like to admit that we do it. It is much more comforting when "they" are doing the bad things and we are protesting.

Google launches Dataset Search for the more scholarly among us to find datasets that are available online but difficult to locate.

This is not a joke: Bernie Sanders introduces the Stop BEZOS Act to punish successful companies. He wants Amazon to pay for all the government assistance its low-paid employees receive.

This story has been all over the Internet for the past two days, so it must be important: Google Chrome wants to replace the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) with something that makes more sense. What? We don't know.

Google turned 20 years old this week.

Friday 7 September 2018

Our Dept of Justice has indicted a North Korean government employee for hacking. No one will be arrested. No one will go to trial or jail.

Walmart announces Spark Delivery; we order groceries online and Walmart delivers them to our homes.

October 9th: Google announces their big event and will probably show a new phone.

Apple launches a Law Enforcement Support Program. They will have a training program and a web portal for authenticated officers.

Once again—this time Twitter—someone changes the appearance of their website and calls that a design.

This is an interesting piece. It claims that programmers are the most valuable asset in the world. No calls for pay raises as such...so what's the point?

ooops, all those Probiotics may not be so helpful. They may actually be harmful. Oh well, snake oil in a different bottle for a different century.

Knowledge can bring temptation. "white hat" hackers hit banks.

Saturday 8 September 2018

Amazon pulls a scam on American cities. In the guise of searching for a HQ2 location, Amazon got city governments to tell them everything. Now Amazon has a big competitive advantage with the information. And taxpayers paid the cost. How clever.

October 2nd: Microsoft to have a big event. Expecters are expecting basic hardware refreshes with newer components.

DARPA to spend "up to" (key phrase) $2Billion over the next five years on artificial intelligence research.

Google launches Touring Bird: what to do where you are going. A competitor to lots of existing services like TripAdvisor.

"Useful education is inconvenient, but worth it."—Seth Godin

Want to attend UC Santa Cruz (not an expensive, prestigious place)? Good luck finding a place to sleep at night.

Perhaps celebrity CEOs will learn that investors have hard-earned money and won't invest in immature persons.

Want everyone else to envy you and your laptop? Get this Acer machine. 17" screen, gaming power, AND it is a convertible!

ooops, a best-selling Mac app has been copying our information and sending it to China.

I love this piece: I have a portable drawing table, stencil sets, special pens, etc. from the 1980s.

Sunday 9 September 2018

Once again, in the 21st century, we come upon the discussion of protective trade tariffs and building factories in America. We have been here before and perhaps will be here again.

ooops, yesterday everyone reported that Jack Ma was retiring. Today everyone is reporting that Jack Ma is not retiring.

The little electric scooters are popular. GRAVITY is constant. GRAVITY always wins. Hospital ER trips are rising. This is one of those things that was predictable and predicted.

Want continued security updates for Windows 7 after it is officially done? Microsoft is making them and is happy to sell some to you.

I love this post of tips for "beginning" writers. Seems to be speaking to everyone.

Should you write that book or not? Question and reasons on both sides of the answer. If you want to write a book, write a book. And don't expect anyone to buy it or like it or even read it. Do what you can control and don't worry about everyone else.

The concept of a season for writing. If this works for you, embrace it.

Six things one writer considers before writing a novel.

The Logline and how to use it to test ideas.

O'Reilly releases 130+ new online learning courses.

Tips on using Instagram as a writer to promote your work.

One writer's thoughts about the work of writing.

How long SHOULD it take to write a book? I find the question silly. The only answer I can find is, "depends on how fast you type."

Amazon hits $1Trillion in value.

Can't find what excites you? "Consider the stories that you rush to tell your loved ones at the end of the day, the section of Barnes & Noble you tend to loiter in..."