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: 10-16 December, 2018

Summary of this week:

• YouTube's biggest watchers are watching others play video games
• 10,000 Verizon employees exit their jobs
• Google Lens comes to the iPhone for the rest of us
• Sundar Pichai goes to Congress
• Apple to create 15,000 jobs in Austin
• Intel creates a new generation of integrated GPUs
• Federal Judge declares Obamacare unconstitutional

Monday 10 December 2018

Coming sooner than we need, the 48MegaPixel cameras in our smartphones.

And now we have "punch hole" or "hole screen" designs for smartphones. We have to have a place to put the face-facing camera.

The new world: 200Million of us watch gaming on YouTube every day. That is a large number.

We have reached the age of the conversational voice assistant. Much of human speech is redundant communication. It has always been this way. This is a relatively easy catch for technology.

Academic excellence or "get straight As." I did this in high school and almost did it in college. Then you are hired to a job and everything changes. Change with the change and "get straight As" there as well.

Tuesday 11 December 2018

The video game Doom is 25 years old. It was the only video game that I played for a little while. They just never interested me.

Voyager 2 keeps "flying" away from us after 40 years.

The Microsoft Teams app is growing in the workplace at a rapid rate and has already passed Slack.

Instagram adds simple voice messages.

10,000 Verizon employees have "accepted" an early departure program, i.e, they no longer have jobs.

Google's Len is finally coming to the plain old Google app on my iPhone.

This 20-something created his own "job" or income. He wanders about all day online and people give him money—sometimes $4,000 a month. Nice job I guess. Is this the extension of The Long Tail? Get enough friends who will give you $1 a month?

The uncertainty of Brexit and the alternatives are hampering some sectors of the British economy. It is the uncertainty.

Google's CEO goes to Congress to talk US Defense contracts and sales to China and how the two should not meet.

News Flash (not): our smartphones report our location. Someone sells that information to someone else.

News Flash (not): starting a business? You will work really hard and the business will fail. Most who hit it, hit it small.

Wednesday 12 December 2018

Everyone is pointing fingers at China for hacking hundreds of millions of Marriott customers.

Social media edges past the newspaper as the source for news in America.

Evelyn Berezin dies at 93. She built the world's first practical word processor in the 1970s.

News Flash (not): Once a government agency copies digital media, they keep it forever one way or another despite regulations to the contrary.

Sundar Pichai goes to Congress. Many are disappointed in Congress—well duh, what is new? Then there are the questions about political bias in search results. Pichai says the algorithms are complex and no one person can make Donald Trump appear at the word idiot. Of course he is being "less than honest" with that reply. If you know the algorithm, you can affect the results one way or another, and that is being done by persons who know the algorithm.

Along with cutting 10,000 jobs, Verizon cuts the value of AOL-Yahoo by $4.6Billion (with a B). AOL and Yahoo used to be...well, you know, really big and rich.

A Canadian judge grants $7.5Million bail for the Huawei executive arrested last week. Now let's see if she buys a 747 and flies home.

Personal loans are growing and will continue to grow. Good news in the short term if you need the money.

Mozilla releases Firefox 64.0.

Thursday 13 December 2018

The Los Angeles city council has basically clobbered Airbnb out of existence wit new regulations.

Amazon is booed for working with government.

People in Arizona are attacking the Waymo-Google self-driving cars. Google is booed for working on its own.

From the above two posts, it is obvious that the big rich tech folks have become America's bad guys.

Chinese researchers are warned that if they come to the US, they are to bring burner PC and phones because the US customs will sieze, copy, or both.

FreeBSD 12 has been released.

Creating ever new ways to redistribute wealth or something, California considers a text tax to provide money to the lesser affluent to buy $1,000 phones.

The Arctic has its second warmest year ever. That means that the warming trend has peaked and we are now in a cooling trend. Right?

Friday 14 December 2018

Intel shows a new generation of integrated graphics processors which will be a big boost to gamers and other high-end graphics users. Coming in 2019.

Some advances in solar power with transparent panels. Let's see when this is practical.

Virgin Galactic flies to 82km. Is that outer space? Is that in orbit?

Forget the great Amazon office hunt. Apple will create 15,000 jobs in Austin, Texas. Just like that. No hoopla or con jobs.

News Flash (not, two flashes, two nots): Some people don't want Amazon to come to New York. Amazon hires opinion makers to change those opinions.

Nvidia and RED partner to bring 8K capture and editing to anyone who has about $10,000, and that means "to a lot of people."

Starbucks signs a deal with UberEats for delivery from 3,500 stores in the US.

Facebook is moving into the pay TV streaming business as it tries to sign deals with HBO and others.

BitCoin, spam, bomb threats, hysteria: a bad mixture happening this week.

It is that time of year. We look back at the calendar year to find the big events and trends.

Fandom, Curse Media, Gamepedia, Twitch: don't recognize these names? Learn them. These are BIG MONEY players in the online game industry, and it is BIG MONEY.

News Flash (not): With just a little effort, you can fool the facial recognition on smartphones and other things.

Saturday 15 December 2018

A Federal Judge rules the entire Obama-care law unconstitutional. Congress simply can't require people to buy something Appeals coming.

A group calling itself Basis was building a stable crypto-currency, i.e., one that actually worked. Their lawyers found too many legal hurdles, so the whole thing is gone.

oooops, a Facebook blunder made private photos of 6.8Million users open to everyone.

These are not images of real people. A computer created them from nothing. Yes, that is frightening is used the wrong way.

The government of China hacks into US Navy contractors and copies military secrets. And everyone denied the Bloomberg story about Chinese efforts to put spyware into circuit boards. Odd.

Huawei and the rise of Chinese post-industrial power and the fall of the silicon curtain.

Following money? Go to Mindgeek. Go cautiously as what you see may surprise you.

Continuing with the lists of the this and that for 2018, I like this one. Biggest tech lies, uh, er, mis-statements, of the year.

Are you a freelance consultant (and I love the photo of the person working in the coffee shop)? How to prepare a little better for a recession. Good advice.

Tech toys for kids and grandparents who love to play with kids' toys with their grandkids.

Microsoft made a Windows 95 sweater as a joke. I want one! So do a few hundred thousand others. This could be a trend.

Ghosting your employer, i.e., simply leaving by not telling anyone anything, just stop showing up for work.

Sunday 16 December 2018

Looking at the rapid growth of Facebook's Graph Query Language GraphQL.

The reckless path to safer driving. Self-driving cars can be fascinating, but they are a short-term and often short-sighted approach to driving safety and reducing traffic.

The current President's FCC had a different idea of net neutrality than the prior President's FCC. The change in the occupant of the White House, however, has produced little change in how ISPs behave. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Intel and ESL partner to boost both of their holdings in the booming e-sports market.

News Flash (not): some work should be done by one person working alone. Some work should be done by a group of persons working together. Please do not confuse the two.

SpaceX has launched 20 rockets into space this year. That sets some sort of record. In spite of Elon Musk's theatrics, they have some pretty good rocket scientists working there.

The concept of internal mobility and how to develop employees through varied experiences. It isn't a new concept, but it has been lessening in use lately.

Look at this: 11 public libraries that hold our history. America's Library of Congress didn't make the list—that is how important the places listed are to all of us.

And look at this: a great article on some little-known but powerful tools for writers.

The concept of the relentless writer. This concept may inspire some writers. If it inspires you, use it. If not, move on.

  I love this piece about using scars to tell a story. This works well in non-fiction as well as fiction. Our big failures in real life teach many lessons.

The creative routine is also lauded in this piece.

I like this piece about the manual labor of writing and how to work through it all: "Routines separate amateurs from professionals"

This piece works on the idea that not ALL writing is worthwhile.

The use of document templates. If they save time, use them. Please remember, they are for saving time. It is easy to spend lots of time creating perfect templates that you never use.

Suspense in the memoir. But it was supposed to be true? It is true, and there is suspense in true life.

For those who suffer bouts of writer's block, this is a pretty good piece with an infographic and all.