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: 1-7 October, 2018

Summary of this week:

• US market saturates on Internet, social media, and mobile devices
• Microsoft updates the hardware of their portable computers
• Amazon raises its minimum wages to $15/hour
• Microsoft embraces Android
• Cloudera and Hortonworks merge
• Chinese government planted surveillance chips in motherboards used worldwide

Monday 1 October 2018

LinkNYC—the city's WiFi kiosks—now has 5Million users.

The US market for Internet, social media, and mobile devices has reached the saturation point. Growth now comes from lower-wealth, foreign markets. Can Apple do what Coca-Cola did?

We have the first case of a crime suspect being told to open their phone with their face. The suspect did so.

Our Federal government is suing the government of California for reaching beyond its authority in regulating communications. Net neutrality is the topic, so lots of folks are cheering for the California.

For the love of the game...amateurs keep 30-year-old Silicon Graphics (SGI) machines running.

Google goes to Washington: after not attending a Senate hearing, they will attend a House hearing.

System76 takes a few initial steps to releasing an open-source computer. We can order this month. Delivery is yet to be announced.

California has a new law requiring at least one female on company boards. This will be overturned as unconstitutional as it dicriminates based on gender.

Tuesday 2 October 2018

Google adds more information for commuters on its Maps app for mobiles.

HP goes in a different direction with its new 2-in-1 portable computer. The obvious change is they covered it in leather. The not-so-obvious change is they reduced the computing space inside and replace it with a bigger battery—18 hours of life is claimed.

Apple pushes out more course material for elementary school teachers with "Everyone Can Create."

Every vigilant, California's Governor signs a law protecting its residents from its residents in Silicon Valley and their telephone bot creations.

Japanese robot installs sheet rock or dry wall. The jobs are going away.

The Saudis cancel the world's largest solar power plant. Doing something isn't as easy as saying it.

Google hides an adventure game inside its search engine. Easter Egg.

Another coding bootcamp is exposed as pretty much a fraud.

Google launches Project Stream letting us play video games in the Chrome browser.

Wednesday 3 October 2018

Microsoft had their event yesterday and showed new portable computers. They seem too expensive, almost the price of a phone.

Waymo will start a driverless taxi service in Phoenix—this year. Let's see how this goes.

Amazon claims it will increase the minimum pay to $15/hour for several hundred thousand workers. Will there be loopholes? Will this actually happen?

More than 9million broken links on Wikipedia now point to the Internet archive.

Hot-selling product: Facebook logins for $3. Stolen good always sell well.

Our government is hiding license plate readers in speed limit, speed indicating signs so they know where we are and how fast we are driving. And what will we do with this data about us?

Toys R Us may come back. The bankruptcy may be cancelled or some such moves. We are likely to see the brand again.

Thursday 4 October 2018

The WiFi Alliance renames all the 802.11xyz to simpler-to-remember and, we hope, simple-to-use standards.

News Flash (not): All this broohaha about the Russians manipulating social media means one thing: the social media companies are making money in record numbers.

BitTorrent makes a comeback caused by all the exclusive programming content available today.

California's Net Neutrality law has become a gold mine—for lawyers on all sides.

Now we learn of the loopholes in the Amazon pay raises. No, it wasn't as good as it first sounded.

The great Presidential Alert Test was yesterday. Many of us got loud noises but no text messages. I guess the test worked in that it showed that the system had flaws.

Microsoft makes a big move towards Android.

Cloudera and Hortonworks—big players in big data and Hadoop—are merging into a $5Billion company.

News Flash (not): Amazon wants us to buy its own brands of products instead of the other guys'.

Verizon is cutting its workforce by at least 25% with buyouts and "transferring" people to India outsourcing companies.

Iron Ox and robotic farming. There is great promise here of farming with far fewer chemicals and greater output. We shall see the results of the experiment.

Friday 5 October 2018

Someone finally admits the obvious: large-scale use of power-generating wind turbines will alter the environment.

Someone admits another obvious one: the government of China puts surveillance chips on boards built in China to spy on US companies and government agencies and others in all other nations.

Apple and Amazon deny this story and state that they have not been infiltrated by such.

More indictments from the US Dept of Justice for employees of the Russian government. No one will be arrested, tried, or go to jail as they folks are in Russia.

Our Congress has passed a bill that authorizes our government to shoot down out private drones without warrant or otherwise involving judges. We must protect we from we, or something like that.

A Facebook executive is a long-time personal friend of the man who will probably be on the Supreme Court next week. This appears to be tragic news at Facebook.

It seems that Apple has made some of its newest computers repair proof by anyone other than Apple.

Seth Godin has an excellent post on customer service. Learn from your customers. They are a tremendous resource.

Nokia has a new $349 smartphone. We used to think that was expensive. Now we think it is a great bargain. What happened to we?

Sans Forgetica: a new font that is difficult to read, but once we read something we are more likely to remember it because of some reason or other having to do with effort and memory.

YouTube TV has new features to keep us from watching old-fashioned TV.

Saturday 6 October 2018

Always protecting us from us, the government of California bans default passwords on stuff.

Who said we needed this? Research in France build a finger (yes, it looks like a finger) to tap us when our phone needs some attention.

I am looking forward to this: our FDA approves a Bose hearing aid that we can buy, customize, and use without a doctor's visit. Competition is needed in this market. Hearing aids cost around $3,000 the old way. What will Bose bring us for $$$.

More talk about Bloomberg's story of Chinese supply chain interdiction. The story is probably true, but famous tech companies don't want to admit they were breached.

YouTube has become the home for entertainment of small, small children. Billions watch some of the programs.

Microsoft postpones a Windows 10 release after beta tester learn that it was deleting files.

Title says it all: The First Rule of Microsoft Excel -- Don't Tell Anyone You're Good at It

Ingenious, practical, inexpensive: a disaster kit that allows minimal yet sufficient connection to the Internet in disaster areas.

Lots of folks praise diversity as long as you are diverse in the same way they are diverse. It appears that diversity in political views is not accepted at Facebook.

It seems that hundreds of persons a year die worldwide trying to take photos of themselves doing something dangerous. There are awards for these things, Darwin Awards.

I love this one: Chromebook Data Science. Take courses in data science at low or no cost. You won't need a powerful computer. Hence, the "Chromebook" in the title. Here is the home page.

Sunday 7 October 2018

This story is all over the Internet: Amazon is raising its minimum wage for workers to $15/hour. Now let's sit back and wait for the loopholes and hear about those who don't qualify for it. The loopholes came a couple days later. Amazon removed monthly bonuses and other perqs to pay for the raise. Most persons are no better off than before.

Contradicting earlier news reports, Apple computers are still repairable by others than Apple.

Strong rumors about this week's big event from Google. Too bad they have forgotten the concept behind the Chromebook. Too many features, price too high.

"Changing a mind is different than having an argument. Persuasion takes patience, skill and insight, not force."—Seth Godin

The concept of the inner-space satellite hovering at 100,000 feet dangled from a balloon. Of course it can work. 

"That happens to a lot of creatives. Many never recover from the wounds of their childhood." Sad yet true.

Story ideas from headlines. Notice, notice, notice. Note, note, note. Observe everything. Have a pencil and paper always at hand.

Another pretty good post, this one about obstacles to writing a book. Again, writing is writing. Publishing and all that are other things—they are not writing.

This is a pretty good post on the fear of writing. More accurately, it is about the fear of criticism of our writing. Let's try to remember what "writing" is. It is put the words to paper or the screen. Asking others to read our writing is a different thing.

Writing a memoir, even a short one, on a hurtful subject can be quite helpful.

Writing as resistance. I find it interesting, yet understandable, that so many writers and other artists lament daily that we are suffering under the rule of the worst leader in the history of the world. Everything that happens is awful, unjust, and simply disgusting. Some are able to use the disgust of the world situation to write. Others are not. Some even are understanding that other persons felt the same way during President fill-in-the-blank's terms in office.

This technique has worked quite well for many writers for many years: pretend to be someone else and write their story.

Writing and novel and writing an outline. It is often helpful to write the outline after writing the first draft.