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: 24-30 December, 2018

Summary of this week:

• It is the week of Christmas, so expect little news

Monday 24 December 2018

Congress passes the OPEN Data act for government. Now let's see how quickly data is classified or called "sensitive" to be exempt from the law.

At least a few people understand what AI means. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is far, far away.

SpaceX appears to be building a test vehicle for demonstrations of the technology needed to go to Mars. Again, those who know about such things question why anyone wants to go to Mars.

Facebook was going to add a feature to encourage civil political discourse. I thought that is what Facebook already was???

Nvidia wants people to play high-end video games (on Nvidia hardware). They now have a list of recommended routers that help move data the last 50 feet.

Germany will conduct a basic income experiment with 250 persons in 2019. Of course the sample size is too small and the time period is too short for big lessons. Perhaps they can learn a few things.

How one person, with some help, put Zimbabwe on Street View.

A wish list for the iPad. Many of us want to go to the tablet full time, but the tablet isn't there. How about a pure Linux tablet?

Tuesday 25 December 2018

It it Christmas Day.

Good article on the collapse of the value of Bitcoin this year and how a few smarter people have stayed away from it.

A look at the clever software Google has put in its phones this year. They aren't breaking ground here as these are old ideas, but no one else put them in their phones, so Google did.

This "Bad Lip Reading" video has been making the rounds on the Internet. It spoofs Apple product announcements.

Predictions on how software and robotics will be running our homes in 20 years. This will happen for the plutocrats, but i doubt those living in subsidized housing will see much of it.

Version 4.20 of the Linux kernel has been released for Christmas.

Here is a list of the most-viewed, no cost, online courses. Tech topics lead the list as well as a few general "how to learn" and "how to live" courses.

Amazon Prime: a good example of how success leads to failure.

Wednesday 26 December 2018

More detail on how lovers or small bookstores are using Instagram to keep those places thriving.

The government of India wants social media and other large Internet players to remove anything they declare and remove it right now. In fact, they want these companies to have tools that predict what they want to remove and remove it before they say remove it.

Some hot tubs can be controlled remotely via the Internet. News Flash (not): some hot tubs have been hacked and are controlled remotely by other persons via the Internet.

Amazon has learned to play the industry-government revolving door game of lobbying, political influence, "advising", manipulating, and generally taking a big slice of taxpayers' money.

Thursday 27 December 2018

Amazon breaks all their records for online Christmas shopping in all formats. The biggest gain was in people buying stuff via talking to Alexa.

Patreon—free speech—bans some persons. The predicted protests ensue. Free speech isn't always convenient.

The government of India is regulating Amazon et al about what they can sell.

The Internet is the home of computers and software. Most of what passes through the Internet is not actually persons talking but software impersonating persons talking.

The plight of street-food vendors in the tech age.

International bans? Who cares? The Japanese are about to go whaling again.

Friday 28 December 2018

Universal Basic Income failed all the tests this year. The proponents rejoice in that "we just didn't test it enough for it to work. More data!"

Apple and Foxconn will be assembling iPhones in India this next year.

Epic Games—Fortnite—made $3Billion in profit this year.

Bottled water, at least those in the plastic bottles, is in a big mess it created. Who thought that was a good idea?

Silicon Valley is doing great things for education, well, at least they claim that. Others aren't so sure. Silicon Valley is not America. No 20-mile long strip of land is. Education is 98.6% local with local needs.

Saturday 29 December 2018

Another smash-hit movie that I can't see. "Bird Box" on Netflix has been seen by 45million persons.

The Facebook moderation rules have been "leaked." Of course it is 1,400 pages of jibberish. Summary: it is all the judgement of the reader and that is where the political bias enters as guess who Facebook hires?

Mark Zuckerburg proudly proclaims how well he and Facebook handled all the challenges of the year. See my essay on Facebook and its celebrity "leaders."

The Chinese launch their own satellite navigation system, and ahead of schedule. Why duplicate the established system? Easy answer: they can destroy the established system during a war. Perhaps I worry a bit too much about these things.

North Korean defectors in South Korea have all their identity information stolen by North Korean hackers.

Dell returns to public ownership after several years back in private ownership.

Seth Godin calls for "the stupid filter" in technical gadgets. He should also call for it in human-only organizations. Simply ask, "Are you sure?"

Calling 911? Sorry, CenturyLink had a datacenter outage (I thought that cloud stuff was all redundancy redundantly redundant?).

Apache releases NetBeans 10.0.

Sunday 30 December 2018

This is the week between Christmas and the New Year. Hence, we have all the -est of the year articles.

AnandTech has one on CPUs and one on GPUs.

A look back at 1998. Of course the predictions were wrong and the top stories led to pretty much nothing. That is the usual with the news. The experts flop year after year, yet they remain experts.

Bangladesh is about to have an election. So what does the government do? Shut down high-speed mobile access to free speech and information.

Alphabet tests drone delivery of little things in a tiny part of Australia. Of course it's a stunt, but something may come of it one day.

This new year, Samsung's new televisors will allow us to use a keyboard and mouse and go to the Internet. We can do our cloud computing and edit documents and spreadsheets and work from the couch. Won't that be fun?

Tesla is expanding its network of charging stations in the US. Other persons are blocking the charging stations. Hint: some persons don't like it when others drive $100,000 cars and use parking spaces.

Hackers have stopped the printing presses of major newspapers. Why are those printing presses connected to the Internet? See my 3-year-old essay on the topic.

A look at the huge drop in the price of crypto-mining hardware. Buy this hardware (low prices) and use it for something else.

The Cost Of Living Adjustment for Federal workers in 2019 is ZERO. Thank you Congress for not doing your jobs and having a budget ready for Presidential approval. Yes, we can argue about who didn't do what and all the details. Back to basics: Congress sends a budget to the President for approval. A little-known document known as the US Constitution states it clearly.

Thoughts on an editorial calendar. Pretty good ideas. I should do more of this.

Plotting and planning, or is it the other way around(?), a story. Several approaches.

And yet another approach to writing a book. Think on these things. Something will hit with you.