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: 25-31 March, 2019

Summary of this week:

• Apple has a big event and moves back into content
• Hackers hack Asus and have Asus distribute their malware
• McDonald's buys a "shopping experience" company
• Can NASA put a person on the moon in five years?
• European Parliament changes the Copyright world
• India successfully tests an anti-satellite missile

Monday 25 March 2019

Tuesday 26 March 2019

Apple had its big event yesterday announcing streaming services. Apple moves back into the content market. Plenty of coverage of the event. Here is one summary.

In less-flashy Apple news...iOS 12.2 is released with support for some of the new services.

McDonald's acqui-hires Dynamic Yield: a company specializing in giving online consumers a more personal experience, i.e., "how did they know I shopped at fill-in-the-blank last week?"

Uber buys its Middle East rival Careem for $3.1Billion. Who is giving Uber all this money? Uber does nothing but lose large amounts of money daily.

The Apple credit card: status symbols have a new bar to reach.

NBC shoots the Tonight Show with a cell phone camera. Of course it was a stunt, but a good example at how the price of production has fallen to the floor.

YouTube takes a small step back from high-cost production of entertainment.

Western civilization takes a leap forward (well, maybe not): we can now order pizza from the control screen in our car.

Well, this is a clever hack. Break into a company's server so that when they push out regular updates, your malware is pushed out as well. The company is doing your work for you. Evil knows no limits.

Wednesday 27 March 2019

Our Vice President challenges NASA to put people on the moon in five years. The technology is out there. NASA? Not sure about how they are organized and managed.

The European Parliament approves their Copyright Directive. This updates everything for the Internet age. Unintended consequences? Of course. We wait and shudder.

Google brings accelerated mobile pages or AMP to gmail. The email experience is to be transformed into active pages and some such promise. We shall see.

Apple and Qualcomm continue to battle in court over patents and such. Why don't the two merge so the consumer would win. Of course the patent attorneys and judges wouldn't have nearly as much to do (or as much money).

Renting an Airbnb? Be sure to look for the hidden cameras and put a sock on them.

The CEO of Google will meet the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Read that line a few more times to let it absorb. The subject is Google's work with China. Nations? What nations? Google is one of the companies that falls outside of nations—at least it thinks it is, and it may be. Welcome to the science fiction turned fact world where corporations tells what we used to call "nations" what to do.

Palantir wins the $800Million DCGS-A contract at the Pentagon. This is a first big win for a non-traditional Defense contractor.

Huawei tries something new for telephone conversations. The speaker is turned off; the screen vibrates. You hear the other person. Others in the room don't hear the other person.

The European Parliament has decided to end Daylight Savings Time. Instead, countries can decide their own geographic location by declaring what time the sun rises and sets. These are educated persons?

UPS is actually making money with drone delivery. Of course it is only on one medical campus, limited routes, closed airspace, and all those constraints, but it is a start.

Thursday 28 March 2019

The problems with the Apple portable computer keyboard continues.

In the state of Washington, Microsoft is urging the legislature to raise taxes on itself and Amazon to pay into an education fund. Of course they could just donate the money.

Former IBM employees bring another lawsuit alleging age discrimination.

Facebook lauds more of its censorship.

Our Census Bureau asks the big social media companies to help with the 2020 census. I think its a good idea to ask rather than regulate. Let's see what happens.

Our FTC fines several "robocalling" companies million$$$.

Intel's latest chips will power an Aurora super-duper-computer to be built by the US Department of Energy, Intel, and Cray. The performance of the machine will be off the scale. "But," as we used to ask, "can it run Windows 7?"

Need to connect Gigabit Ethernet to your laptop? Here are the USB adapters.

Not only did the CEO of Google meet with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but the President sat in. People were smiling afterwards, and that is probably a good thing for all of us.

Government officials in Rockland County New York declare a public emergency over a measles outbreak and ban anyone who is not vaccinated from public spaces. Here come the lawyers.

Friday 29 March 2019

Our Department of Housing and Urban Development has charged Facebook with violating the Fair Housing Act based on their ads. Facebook? Housing? Over-regulating to grab a few million$$$ in fines?

And HUD is investigating Google and Twitter for housing discrimination. Again, go after suce$$ful companies and milk them for million$$$.

Icelandic low-cost airline Wow Air just plain quit. It stopped operating and left everyone standing around at the airport trying to find a way home.

A machine is autonomously picking apples in New Zealand. Hence, a robot is doing this. They claim no human jobs will be lost, but that defies logic.

Step back and note that the Apple and Google "app" stores have changed how software is bought and sold worldwide.

The Russians know how to stamp out fake news. They are now ordering VPNs to ban "those sites." In a place like Russia, the government decides who "we" and "they" are.

Here come income sharing agreements. This programming school will pay the student $2,000 a month while taking a five-month course. If the student gets a job, 15% of salary for two years goes back. It is a loan shark program. Very high interest rates.

Saturday 30 March 2019

No Internet viewing today (second day this week this happens).

Sunday 31 March 2019

"No points for busy. Points for successful prioritization. Points for efficiency and productivity. Points for doing work that matters."—Seth Godin.

Apple cancels their wireless charging mat called AirPower. I don't understand all this wireless charging as there are still plenty of wires in the system.

Oh, by the way, when India blasted a satellite out of the sky this week, they created thousand of little pieces of space junk that may damage everyone else's satellites.

Facebook "mistakenly" deletes Mark Zuckerburg's history.

The rich, even when they bumble and stumble, get richer. See, e.g., the former founder of that fraudulent company Theranos.

Lyft goes public. Everyone buys it. Like Uber, Lyft is a terribly unprofitable company. Lyft lost $2Million a week in 2018.

It must be a slow month for news as the Washington Post rolls out a repeat of the "burnout crisis" story.

Boston Dynamics releases yet another video of a machine doing interesting actions. These are canned demonstrations in highly constrained situations. Still, it is a vision of a possible future.

Now that our cars are our rolling computers—tracking everywhere we are—we need to remember to erase the computer when we discard the car.

Mark Zuckerburg asks the world police to start policing the Internet. One thing is missing: there is no "world police."

"'It could help with search and rescue' is engineer-speak for 'we just realized we need a justification for our cool robot'" Funny? Yes. And I have heard engineers say this with a straight face and being serious about it.

The concept of a vacation for a freelance worker. Possible? Yes. Probable? No.

I like this simple piece of writing advice: ask three questions before writing the story.

Mankind continues to reinvent the wheel. Of course a writing community is important. All human relations are important. See, e.g., Adam and Eve and proceed from there.

A few quick grammar reminders.

Some nice ideas on marketing in the day when email has supposedly died.