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: 14-20 January, 2018

Summary of this week:

• Microsoft and Walgreens partner in home healthcare
• Foldable smartphones are in the news
• As is a self-lacing Nike shoe
• Identical twins show that DNA stuff is just a bunch of stuff
• Microsoft finally kills Windows phone operating system

Monday 14 January 2018

Here come the "smart,", a.k.a., surveillance cars. Of course no one at name-your-favorite-tech-company will be watching what happens inside your car. It will all be "secure" and "private" (subjective terms)

Travel internationally? Here is a review of power plug adapters.

A good review of the laptop computers introduced last week at CES. Better displays, more processing power, same prices. I wish they would reduce the prices.

Samsung shifts focus to the Indian market with lower-prices but high-performance smartphones. Apple...are you listening?

A case for more H-1B visas. Immigrants spur the economy, but at what price? There are costs.

Must see video: "real-time photoshop-ing" makes anyone look much younger better etc. in video via Nvidia GPUs.

I like this piece on whether PTSD is a real thing or something westerners have created. I agree that there is a difference between "justified misery and clinical depression."

Tuesday 15 January 2018

Wednesday 16 January 2018

Thursday 17 January 2018

Netflix continues to add million$ of subscriber$ and now claims 10% of the US TV market.

Free video games created $87Billion in wealth last year. FREE GAMES!

Friday 18 January 2018

Facebook and others are having a ten-year challenge. Play if you wish, but realize the value you are giving Facebook and others.

Atlassian—the folks who made Jira—have a really big financial quarter.

A regular person actually uses the new Nike self-lacing or lace-tightening or whatever computer-aided thing their new shoe is.

The rich and famous Instagram users are hacked for ransom. Hire a crook to catch a crook is an old adage, and that is what these folks are doing.

The big dollar$ Amazon investors want AWS to stop selling its facial-recognition technology to government agencies. I guess if someone trustworthy were in the government the situation might be different? 

The Data Brokers: they trade data for profit. The aren't regulated at this time. Tim Cook wants them to be regulated. Let's see, the prior story was about giving less power to government. This story is about giving more power to government. I suppose we can't decide what it is we want.

Saturday 19 January 2018

oooops, this study by identical twins sort of proves that those commercial DNA research places are selling snake oil. This will come as shocking news to some.

Teenagers don't use Facebook. The folks at Facebook—none of whom are teens—are trying to create a new platform to attract them. Does the phrase "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" mean anything?

Engadget takes a deep look at the new Alienware m15 gaming laptop. I'd take one of these for the graphics card and ability to program it like a supercomputer.

Amazon tries to improve human safety around its "robots" that run around in its warehouses. This device signals the robot that "Hey, a person is here, STOP!" It's a start.

Verify (Alphabet(Google)) receives FDA approval for its electrocardiogram feature on its smartwatch.

Relativity Space, which 3D prints LARGE metal parts for rockets, will be using Cape Canaveral.

Our Federal Trade Commission is trying to decide how much to fine one of our successful companies. The culprit this time is Facebook—an easy villain this year. That seems to be the American way: let companies succeed, but if they succeed a lot, take from them.

Scouting high schools to find the next great engineers. Of course there are massive problems with this concept. Most of us can't recognize good performers when they are sitting next to us.

Microsoft is finally dropping support for the ill-fated Windows phone. Back in ought-seven, senior executives where I worked declared that the Windows phone would rule the world and we all needed to be experts at it. So much for their judgement. And, oh, by they way, these same senior executives used their (un)proved judgement to decide who the great engineers were and who should go away (see prior post on figuring out this stuff for high schoolers).

This is an excellent example of how a distributed or everyone-works-from-home company functions.

Sunday 20 January 2018

Flying around with a jetpack. Amazing stuff. The same old energy problems exist: how to carry enough fuel in a small space so that practical flights are possible.

For now at least, Apple is selling the iPhone SE again. It is in the refurbished area of the Apple store at only $249.

Money is pouring into cybersecurity companies. Is anyone becoming any more secure?

A Japanese hotel shows that hotel-robot technology isn't ready yet. The robots increased the workload of persons and upset the customers.

Google Maps is expanding the display of speed limits and speed traps. Not in my area, at least not this morning.

Facebook, Google, et al are pouring money into journalism to "help it out." Of course this means that the journalists are no longer independent of these companies, and so on.

Strong rumors that Microsoft is building the "Netflix for games"...a game streaming service so that we can play any game from any location on any device.

The government of Venezuela has blocked Wikipedia from its subjects. Censorship is alive and well in the 21st century.

An early Facebook investor blames Facebook for being Facebook and wants unprecedented regulation to cure it all.

More about writers reading and reading. Good practice.

A good survey of the money earned by freelance writers. It isn't much and it takes a while to build up to not much.

One writer's system for reading books and sometimes not finishing a book that is started.

One writer's experience in stepping away from the "long novel" to write other things and go back later. It worked for this one writer in this one instance. No guarantees.

More adjectives that we can let stop us from writing, but still, yes, the path to "success" as a writer is rarely straight or what we thought it would be.

The benefits of a good author's website. Yes, these still exist.

The habit of Tiny Habits. This is a good piece on the topic. For example, the writing habit: write two sentences or twenty words a day. Read this to learn how to make it work.

The practice and importance of "putting it in writing."

Google is bring a redesigned interface and all to Google drive and Docs etc. real soon now.

Google teams with WordPress to create something that will make it easier for low-budget local "newspapers" to have newspapers online.

A lesson in how to "setup" characters in fiction. I strongly recommend against doing the exercise described in the piece as I find it unethical and lying.

Writing without being paid...get used to it. Such can be beneficial if we make it so.