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: 11-17 February, 2019

Summary of this week:

• Amazon cancels the New York HQ2
• Amazon has $11Billion profit and no income tax
• License-plate-reading systems move to the private sector
• Here comes the American AI Initiative
• Here comes LinkedIn Live
• Apple to start a news subscription service
• Reddit positions itself to compete with the big boys
• Google to spend $13Billion in the US this year on real estate, buildings, etc.

Monday 11 February 2018

Note to those buying electric-powered cars: extra cold and extra hot days degrade battery life. The salesman probably didn't tell you that.

Pleasant 3-D maps generated from terrain maps.

Our Army moves to put a pocket-sized reconnaissance drone in every squad.

The license-plate-reading computer. The costs are low, and private groups are now using them. Download free software, connect that to a $20 webcam, and you have it. There are good uses, and abuse is just as easy.

An insider says that Facebook executives are like "Game of Thrones." Adults acting as if they were in a fantasy world playing kings, queens, mercenaries, et al. Seems to be an apt description.

How computers are increasing the advantages that older employees have over younger employees. Is anyone in HR listening?

On second thought...those who estimate these things admit that they overestimated the rise in sea level due to melting ice.

How do hackers get all the personal photos from the iPhones of celebrities? A little work and knowledge, and it isn't that difficult.

Tuesday 12 February 2018

Starting a new company that one day will be really, really big? Take care with your statement of values etc. at founding. One day employees will expect you to act like you mean it.

Our President begins the American AI Initiative. Such national initiatives usually mean nothing at best or fail miserably if people pay attention to them. See, e.g., the great Japanese Fifth Generation project of the 1980s.

Apple partners with our Dept of Veteran Affairs to bring health records to the iPhone and such.

Google releases an API for Google Docs. The goal is to allow programmers to automate common tasks such as invoicing.

Apple and Google are working with the government of Saudi Arabia. The embarrassing results are predictable and predicted.

LinkedIn launches LinkedIn Live. Much like Facebook Live and others, you can "broadcast" video live on your account.

iPhone users, like me, are spending $79 a year on apps. I guess that is where the similarity ends. I spent, uh, er, NOTHING on apps last year. I guess I'm below or above average or something.

Here are some memory techniques. There are many available. I have used the techniques in Buzan's books to pass a half dozen certification tests.

Based on some numbers and a little division and multiplication...Reddit users are worth much money.

Like in America, the iPhones in China cost too much, so people aren't buying them.

Being an Apple employee has benefits. Being a contractor working with Apple...not so much.

Wednesday 13 February 2018

Bill and Melinda Gates publish their annual open letter to the world. These two do much good, which is surprising given the potential for other. The biggest item in the letter is toilets. Sounds funny but consider it.

Speak of "simple' water-consuming devices, this company has a shower head that uses 65% less water.

Strong rumors that Apple will start a news subscription service to group a number of pay-walled news outlets.

Once again we are reminded that Google pays Apple a few Billion$$$ each year to use its search engine. That is bigger than Apple Music.

ooops, researcher finds big mistake in how Facebook searches for friends.

Activision has a big financial year, and lays off 8% of its employees.

News Flash (not): eating processed foods, versus whole foods, shortens your life.

NASA finds a new crater here on earth. Which leads me to wonder how NASA can devote all these resources to this kind of thing while NASA cannot put a person into earth orbit.

Our FAA now requires us to put the registration number of our drone on the outside of the drone. Too much reach for regulators? And some people wonder why some people wonder about the regulators.

Recall that great shovel-ready high-speed train from LA to SF? Well, if can recall it, you aren't in the California legislature. It is only a memory. What happened to the money that was $spent?

Of course we can build neural network simulations that diagnose illness better than humans. We could do this 35 years ago. The systems, however, are not perfect, and the lawyers walked in the room and...

Following after several other tech news outlets, TechCrunch now offers its best stories for a fee.

Thursday 14 February 2018

Facebook allows all of us to form little groups so we can chat among friends. Sometimes "US" don't like what "THEM" are discussing and "US" wants Facebook to disband "THEM."

Google will spend $13Billion on land, buildings, etc. in the US this year. And they won't run a scamazon campaign to bilk taxpayers.

Recommended reading: the New York Times has a long piece on the history of women in computing. Women once led the way. In large part because the jobs were not highly regarded.

Cisco has a better-than-expected financial quarter.

Strong rumors that Google will make a less-expensive smartphone this year. Consumers rejoice as we don't need all that stuff that Apple and Samsung are selling for $1,000 a phone.

Silicon Valley companies are stating a simple truth: "the details of our employees are none of your business." They won't give race statistics because that invites other companies to raid their workforce.

This isn't April 1st, so this must be real. Ford has a conveyor belt that moves to keep us in the middle.

Friday 15 February 2018

NASA wants to quickly put people on the moon. "Quickly" means nine years from now. Some of us have a different concept of quick.

Airbus is ending the production of the A380 super duper big airplane. Few were sold. This was predictable and predicted.

Alaska and satellite Internet service. It doesn't work well there, up to now.

JP Morgan announces a cryptocurrency. Maybe this will be a real one and maybe it will work.

Amid local protests, Amazon officially cancels its New York City HQ2. More on this story.

Nvidia: revenue down, earnings up, better-than-expected results and the stock price rises.

Recent study says...no link between teens playing violent video games and actual violence. Same conclusion as usual: usually new things leave us the way we were.

Researchers train a software system to write news stories. They don't want to release it. They fear it is too good.

Saturday 16 February 2018

Pushing the state-of-the-art in integrating existing technologies, this camera has object recognition, solar power, and wireless transceiving.

This is brilliant and sort of creepy. Must see photos. These aren't real photos of real people. It is all faked and generated by software.

Portable power to recharge devices as large as the MacBook Pro.

Goodbye broadcast television; hello Internet subscription services to our televisors. CBS hits its subscription goal two years early.

HSBC finds a practical financial use for blockchain technology.

There is endless commentary on how Amazon  made mistakes in New York forcing its withdrawal. My take is that NYCity residents didn't want white collar jobs in their neighborhood. "I'm already here. I don't want fancy new neighbors." Time will show the long-term gains and losses.

How to earn $11Billion and not pay taxes. Step 1: have $11Billion profit. Step 2: I can't figure out this step, but Amazon has.

Zillow has now moved into buying and selling and all that of homes.

News Flash (not): when a teacher believes the learners can learn, the learners learn more.

Perhaps this will be practical and practiced. A new drug has passed animal testing to restore brain function in the aged.

Samsung shows a new 10" tablet. Great features, but at $399 a bit pricey for a "mid-range" tablet.

Sunday 17 February 2018

A widely used predictive policing system has plenty of flaws. Gosh. No one in any of the police departments saw this one? The faults are obvious.

Machine learning and bad science. They often go together, and the frequency of these mistakes is rising. The repeatable experiment is still necessary.

1,100 schools are using software to scan the social media accounts of students. They want to find troubled students before major trouble occurs. This is an admirable desire. The methods, however, have problems with one of the major ones being the potential for abuse of the system.

Elon Musk has some "radical" ideas about cooling his Mars rocketship on re-entry. NASA says they are too complicated. NASA, however, doesn't have a good track record recently regarding anything.

Some of the technology and technique behinds how Facebook's Portal camera follows you around the room as you talk.

Out GAO recommends we have our own GDPR. In English, this means Congressional helpers want us to have an Internet privacy law. Good intentions, but someone has to write the words that make sense and not trouble. That has problems.

Local governments want Google et al to build anything in their town. Hence, they give huge tax breaks to wealthy companies. The companies often use front companies to hide their identity from the general public until after deals are signed. This is an old practice. That doesn't make it right, but it is not new.

Some thoughts on getting yourself to sit and write.

I love tilt-shift photograph. Here are excellent examples of the art.

Writing viral content on blogs. Be careful with this advice.

I like infographics. I like this one about reading habits around the world.

I love this piece on writing and how to go about it. Think and feel all the time. "Plan" a little, write a little (or a lot). IT IS ALL WRITING. Every bit of it.

If you are considering quitting your day job and writing full time, please consult this article for a reminder on basics of income.

One, quite successful, writer's essentials for a short story.

You can try to put too many characters, too many subplots, too many this and that, and too many words in your novel.

Create a writer's manifesto or something that you believe. When tired, read it, become untired.