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: 3-9 June, 2019

Summary of this week:

• Apple has its WWDC big event
• Lots of software updates and a new Mac Pro
• Amazon opens the first of its real stores in the UK
• Tetris is 35 years old
• Our Federal government decides which agency will chase which successful company

Monday 3 June 2019

Government-operated school systems across the US are quickly implementing, i.e., spending taxpayer money, surveillance systems to watch the social media activities of students, teachers, parents, and generally lots of folks. What could possible go wrong?

A trend: become fabulously wealthy by working with or selling to Facebook. Then, once the money is in your pocket, criticize Facebook and call for its dismemberment.

Technical difficulties: the system is down. Google suffers a major outage Sunday.

NBC begins a streaming news service.

Amazon opens the first of ten actually real stores in the UK today.

Tetris is now 35 years old. Like VisiCalc for the Apple II, Tetris made the Game Boy something to have. And the Game Boy led to other handheld devices which is where we are today with all the smartphones and touchscreens.

The history of the Universal Serial Bus (USB). ICWGs (Interface Control Working Groups) rejoiced as did the rest of us.

Tuesday 4 June 2019

The keynote for Apple's WWDC was yesterday. There are many stories on the Internet about it—here is one summary.

Of interest to me is the new Mac Pro—the Apple computer that runs like a super computer.

More details about the Mac Pro. Impressive, but they aren't giving it away $$$.

Insights into Microsoft's purchase of Github and its efforts to bring developers back to Windows from the Linux and Mac world.

Coming soon to the Mac: bash is out zsh is in.

Our Federal bureaucracy attacks Apple, Google, and Amazon. This is what we do worst: punish those who have succeeded (too much in the opinion of some). We had IBM in court for a generation. We were going to break Microsoft, but Google beat us to that. These companies have better lawyers than the Dept of Justice et al. We will waste our money chasing after some altruistic gold ring that doesn't exist. "They are greedy," we say. So what does that make us when we try to take what they have?

And Apple makes a more-than-slide nudge at Facebook on privacy and profit.

Intel shows the new NUC Compute Element. Yet another really small system upon which to build OEM devices (another single-board computer successor).

Wednesday 5 June 2019

Microsoft has closed kiosks and "specialty stores," but keeps opening larger stores in the US and internationally.

Fussing over who should be censored on YouTube. The situation never changes: the fuss is over who decides who we are and who they are.

Hertz rent-a-car starts its own $1,000 per month car subscription service.

Apple wants us to pay $999 for a stand for its new monitor. Someone at Apple needs to be fired for this one. Reaction is as expected.

Here come the airless tires by 2024.

Mark Zuckerburg runs a company that he started. People who gave him money to run the company now want him to not run the company.

There is lots of talk about Apple and Privacy-As-A-Service.

Our FBI has access to 640Million photographs of faces from driver's licenses and such. That was once a large number. It no longer is.

The flying V is coming to commercial air travel—maybe someday. It promises a 20% savings in fuel use.

Microsoft talks about a "modern operating system." And I thought we were in the post-modern age.

Thursday 6 2019

Amazon shows its latest delivery drone capable of carrying five pounds.

And Amazon shows a smarter, conversant Alexa.

The help us spend more money, Amazon introduces StyleSnap. Photograph an article of clothing, and StyleSnap finds similar ones you can buy.

We cross another threshold as we spend more time staring at our small phone screens than our large television screens.

ooops, it appears that in an attempt to secure a voting system, a company opened holes in it.

Apple computer design: cheese graters and trash cans.

YouTube steps up its censorship...and people applaud?

19million patient records stolen from LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics. Who was it that promoted these national electronic health records?

Microsoft and Oracle stop competing and link their cloud networks physically and logically.

Boston Dynamics will release a commercial quadrupedal robot named Spot real soon now.

Proceed with caution: a pumping heart patch made of stem cells can attach to a heart and keep it beating.

For those of us who drink coffee (and especially those whose livelihoods depends on it), drinking 25 cups a day is okay. Take care with number 26.

Friday 7 June 2019

Saturday 8 June 2019

Do you trust Walmart employees to come into your house and put groceries in your refrigerator?

Our Federal Trade Commission went to Silicon Valley asking for anti-trust complaints.

Good luck with that as Google et al don't fit well into the old anti-trust laws. Google gives me services at no cost. How is that a monopoly?

Companies that buy companies. It is our world today. Does this form monopolies?

Delivery drones will get all the news coverage. Amazon's real robotics breakthroughs go unseen on warehouse floors.

Aha, censorship bites back. Some WWII history, and other history, is hateful. Hence, it is being removed from sight.

If a political campaign wants cyber-security, which they should, they must pay full price for them. That is the law, and some see that as a bad law. Others see it as preventing political favors that will bring payback later.

Facebook will launch its own cryptocurrency real soon now.

Interesting but incorrect headline about Facebook and soul searching and attributing to some thing what a few persons might be doing.

No on thought it possible (actually, a few of us did...), but someone made a big-budget comic book hero movie that is lousy and losing money.

This is the ultimate swimming pool for people with lots of time and money.

I don't like this one: Make Media—publisher of Make magazine and producer of the Maker Faire around the US—is ceasing operations. They haven't been able to make any money.

Microsoft joins a few others and pulls its archive of face images from the Internet. They were to be used to train facial-recognition systems.

The buying continues as Google buys a data analytics company for $2.6Billion.

Those new-fangled drones are ruining a generations old hobby of model aircraft.

How much do we want for our personal information? Many of us sell it for a donut.

Electric cars are quiet. New laws require noise makers on them. Have any of these new law makers ever heard of a horn?

Apple continues to be derided and the butt of jokes for its $999 monitor stand.

Sunday 9 June 2019

A little closer look at Amazon's rolling "robots" that will make package deliveries to our homes real soon now.

Much is being made about Apple's sign-on service and how it will be much better than "sign in with Google/Facebook." We shall see.

New techniques for editing video of a person talking. Must see. Only believe half of what you see and nothing of what you hear.

Some specific tips on "remove needless words."

How one writer, who has done this for 20 years, goes about writing novels. Microsoft Excel—of all things—is a key tool.

This writer debates with himself about the value of the outline.

Seagate releases 16TeraByte disk drives for the network.

Some thoughts on writer's block and something called "agency."

Grammar and otherwise taught in college and what actually works.

The first page of a memoir.