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: 22-28 April, 2019

Summary of this week:

• Silicon Valley education reform flops in Kansas
• Apples uses AWS to the tune of $30Million per month
• Backlash at Google walkout organizers
• Google is the first to receive FAA approval for drone deliveries
• Kohl's partners with Amazon for package returns
• Facebook rolls in the money, and will be fined for something
• Amazon knows lots about us via Alexa
• Censorship and calls for more censorship grows

Monday 22 April 2019

Morons kill hundreds of persons in Sri Lanka. The government responds by censoring social media. Too much "misinformation" and the threat of violence. It is a troubled place with few solutions.

The plutocrats of Silicon Valley know how to reform education. Parents in Kansas disagree.

Facial recognition technology identifies 7,000 visitors who overstayed their visas. These are not US citizens. Therefore, let us begin the arguments and hire the lawyers.

Someone hires you. Does that give them the legal authority to watch everything you do at work? Again, let the arguments begin.

Kotlin is the fastest growing programming language in the world. Java beware. Java programmers take a look.

ooops, it appears that a lot of that natural spring wonderful bottle water has lots of natural spring arsenic in it.

Tuesday 23 April 2019

Got $70,000? Get this Sony 98-inch 8K TV. I would have to enlarge my home for it to fit. But if you can afford the TV, you can afford...

Nvidia's newest graphics processors are here now and they will boost portable computer gaming speeds by 50% at a lower prices. Game on. And maybe even use the power to program other applications.

Apple is one of Amazon's AWS biggest customers spending about $30Millio each month.

The organizers of last year's Google walkout are being downgraded on the job. Speak your mind, be demoted. Google. Once the news hits big, Google executives will say something, maybe even do the right thing.

Microsoft drops the Sets feature of Windows 10 before it was released.

Same old story: if you can't beat the regulators, hire them. Facebook hires a key government legal regulator.

Intuit (TurboTax) scams American taxpayers and makes it almost impossible to file for free (as the law states). Perhaps when this story goes big, the executives will do the right thing.

Bravado or a real plan. Elon Musk says all Tesla cars are robo-taxis and can earn owners $30K a year and put Uber out of business.

Twitter has a good financial quarter, but is losing users rapidly.

Wednesday 24 April 2019

Researchers show how trivial it is to fool AI-powered visual-surveillance systems. It looks like a practical joke, but it is real.

Intel releases its next generation of processors. More processing power, less electrical power, lower price.

Google's Wing Aviation LLC has received FAA approval to operate drone deliveries in the US. This is a first.

Snap has a pretty good financial quarter as the market price goes up and down and down, but not as far down as expected.

Microsoft finally decides to leave MS Paint in Windows 10. Children and parents rejoice.

News Flash (not): Someone figures out that censorship probably hurts more than it helps. Give that person a Nobel Prize or something (satire).

Tesla now has several models of electric cars with a range of over 300 miles. That is impressive until you consider the price of these cars.

Details are revealed about the 2016 Apple versus FBI case of unlocking an iPhone. The US government doesn't look too good in retrospect. No surprise here.

Researchers in the UK build a "blimp" of sorts that uses variable-buoyancy propulsion. It can practically stay aloft forever. If this works, well, it may be awhile before we have cities in the skies, but we can dream.

Thursday 25 April 2019

Facebook has their checkbook out and is ready to pay $5Billion in privacy and other fines.

No need to feel sorry for Facebook. Facebook has 2.38Billion users. How do you even count them all? Facebook is the largest nation on earth.

Facebook admits that it doesn't spend enough money on its censors, so it often makes mistakes and censors the wrong persons.

Amazon admits that it can access our home addresses and lots of information about us via Alexa.

Perhaps Tesla will not take over the automobile world. It has a bad financial quarter with sales dropping.

The Samsung Galaxy View 2: it's a 17" portable TV (what is that?); it's a 17"tablet (that's big). No, it's both.

Acer releases a new gaming laptop in the thin variety. The GPU and processing power are amazing at this form factor.

Slack is moving towards what everyone else already does...email.

Once the evil empire that needed to be broken by the government, Microsoft now has a good image. We love Microsoft. Microsoft doesn't spy on us and share our information.

Want to control your subjects? Go to China. That government has the technology and experience.

Researchers claim to be able to translate thoughts into speech. Let the comedy and science fiction begin. Not, however, the benefits for stroke victims and other disabled persons.

Kids making money online...oooops, there are child labor laws and no one seems to know what to do with this new-found money and jobs.

What was once an essential telephone surveillance program, NSA now says it isn't worth the trouble.

Friday 26 April 2019

No Internet viewing today. Travel, jet lag, and general fatigue win.

Saturday 27 April 2019

Amazon has automated just about everything—including watching warehouse workers all the time and firing them. Ne'er a person appears. The machine fires you.

Walmart, a technology company in its own right, opens an  Intelligent Retail Lab, i.e., a store where they serve customers at a profit and also experiment with all types of automation.

Twitter, and all the rest of the automated censors, struggles with its algorithms. If you censor someone that "we all agree is bad," you start banning us, and we are okay. So what went wrong? Tune the model and the algorithm more.

A member of the US Congress personally asked Twitter to censor the President of the United States. We have started walking this pathway. I hope we know where we are going, but I doubt it.

Slack is about to go public funding. The required financial disclosures show that it isn't making any money, but losing million$.

While most companies want their services to appear at the top of Google searches, Intuit works to hide its free tax-filing services from everyone.

Comcast tells us that we are all using more and more bandwidth as we entertain ourselves more and more over the wires. Where is my old TV antenna?

The BBC has been streaming content since 2007—a true trailblazer. Now the commercial folks have caught and passed it and...

News Flash from the New York Times (not): it is tough being poor—even in today's digital world.

Google was once the anti-Microsoft and doing no evil. Now, Microsoft is a darling and Google is bashing its own employees who dare to disagree with the direction of the highly profitable business.

A couple of comments from Seth Godin today.

"‘Decide once’ is a magical productivity commitment."—Seth Godin

"But too often, the act of taking a shortcut or finding a short-term profit is confused with the actual long-term hard work of making things better."—Seth Godin

Once again, we buy into a story and repeat it. "Don't let the facts get in the way of my opinion." Facts tell us that one of the safest forms of employment is law enforcement. Buying into the myth justifies over reaction and bad things for all of us. Let us stop hurting ourselves.

China and the seven-seat automobile. The Chinese live with generations of the family. Even with a one-child policy, they need seven seats.

Looking for the best value in smartphones? Analysis shows OnePlus is the one to buy.

Sunday 28 April 2019

Why pay Apple or Samsung for a plain old $1,000 smartphone. Nubia has a gaming machine with an internal fan and much more power for less than $700.

Some adults discuss the near-term future of semi-autonomous vehicles, safety, and unintended consequences.

Our FCC approves SpaceX request to fly a few thousand Internet-beaming satellites at much lower orbits. We hope our FCC regulators know what they are doing.

Our FBI predicts Russian interference in the 2020 elections (well, no duh). The Russians have won. They don't have to do anything but bluff. They are draining the American budget causing Billion$ to be spent, and they are doing so with a dozen low-paid college dropouts.

The 10-80 Twitter Rule: 10% of us create 80% of the tweets. On the bright side, 90% of us like to read.

News Flash (not): many "free" apps make their money by selling our data to Google and Facebook. THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH, FOLKS.

Here's a proposal that I (currently at 150lbs) like: weight airline passengers and alter ticket prices based on weight. I know...few will agree with me on this one.

The government of China, experts at controlling its subjects, is destroying 1,000-year-old Muslim structures used by the Uyghurs. Perspective—these are a little older than Notre Dame of Paris.

Hey writers, make a few videos to promote yourself. Here are some tips.

As a writer, how often do you lift your head from the screen and gaze out at the world? Balance. No one knows how to do this correctly. We all struggle.

Some tips for writing a synopsis of your finally finished great, long work.

Writers...we are often our worst enemies who often simply keep us from writing. Here are our own bad habits and how to recognize (key) and break them.

15 tips for writers. The post is better than the title. This is pretty good advice.