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: 28 October-3 November, 2019

Summary of this week:

• The Washington Nationals win the World Series
• Google buys Fitbit for $2.1Billion
• AT&T continues to lose DirecTV subscribers
• Google has a good financial quarter
• Amazon makes grocery delivery free for Prime members
• GrubHub is in big financial trouble
• AMD is doing well financially

Monday 28 October 2019

Researchers at Facebook claim to have improved de-identification software that causes failures in facial-recognition systems.

How China is gradually adding Internet service to rural areas. Hey, whatever happened to that $8Billion our prior president allocated to rural broadband in America?

Tuesday 29 October 2019

Waymo (Alphabet (Google)) has been running a few rider-only taxis around Phoenix for a few weeks.

Alphabet has a good financial quarter.

An era passes as Google stops indexing flash content. I attended a conference years ago where flash was announced as the next great thing. It had its day.

Netflix may let us watch movies at 1.5 speed. Just not enough time to watch everything.

The government of China pours $29Billion into chip production.

Coming real soon now from DJI is the Mavic Mini drone. It is just small enough to avoid FAA regulation.

I guess this is something we needed: AirPods with noise cancellation from Apple.

Microsoft reports that Russian hackers are targeting international sports organizations ahead of the 2020 Olympics. How does Microsoft involved in this?

And now we have experts stating that Microsoft won the big DoD cloud computing contract on merit.

Amazon makes grocery delivery free for Prime members.

AT&T is losing a million DirecTV subscribers every week.

Wednesday 30 October 2019

Sony's PS4 has become the second biggest selling game console of all time.

Microsoft and one of its game companies is building games to help those with mental illness.

A review of Microsoft's Surface Laptop version 3. A good laptop computer as Microsoft gets a grip on how to make hardware.

GrubHub is falling apart. A bad financial quarter leads to losing 35% of its value in one day.

AMD has a good financial quarter.

Residents of California are pushing a ballot measure that would allow Uber et al drivers to remain as contractors. This opposes the recent law from the elected representatives.

We are moving our kids from "watching TV," as we used to do and call it, to "watching videos" on YouTube and a thousand other places.

Someone finally saw the loophole in Facebook's ad and censorship policies. Run for political office and you can run all the false ads you want.

When did HBO become the upstart competitor to Netflix? Wasn't it the other way around?

Thursday 31 October 2019

The Washington Nationals won the World Series last night. Long known as the "Natinals" because they once wore uniforms with that infamous typo on the jersey, they overcame more bungling and were aid by some bungling in the Houston dugout. This is a nice thing for a rejuvenated District of Columbia (some disdain it as gentrification). Misgivings as Washington didn't deserve a team after failing to support two franchises. Still, it is nice. Now if we could only straighten out the rest of the District, but some things require too much political will.

Google increases its machine learning offerings by extending TensorFlow. The article is all product gobbledygook and doesn't explain anything.

Apple has a good financial quarter.

Samsung has a big drop in profits this quarter. They are still profitable, but not as much.

Our Department of Interior will stop using "non-essential" drones from China. Why did they ever start such a practice?

Twitter stops all political advertising. Interesting that they will turn away money. This will be challenged in court along the lines of advertising is free speech.

A look at the voting machine industry in America. We lost our way on this one as we blindly went from electro-mechanical to computer.

The rich get richer as tech billionaires almost all gained several billion$ last year.

Uber competitor Lyft is doing better financially. It isn't profitable, but is losing less.

If you count headphones as "wearables," Apple's wearables is bringing in as much money as its computers.

Estimators of sea level rise claim they mis-estimated and now say that it is all worse than they thought. Of course admitting estimation errors also means that they could be wrong about all of it.

Nvidia announces advances in new graphics cards for gaming.

MIT researchers have found a way for self-driving vehicles to see around corners the way humans do by noticing shadows.

In the camera technology race, Apple's iPhone passes Google's Pixel phone. When did cameras become more important than talking to other people on the phone?

Friday 1 November 2019

 The American Civil Liberties Union is suing our Dept of Justice and associated agencies regarding the use of cameras in public places and facial recognition technology. The all concerns search without a warrant and cause.

The Defense Innovation Board (a special committee to remove committees and other barriers in the DoD) releases recommendations for  ethical use of artificial intelligence.

 Human trafficking, i.e., slavery, in domestic workers in Kuwait and how US social media companies are participating.

It is November 1, so Apple TV+ is on the air or on the net or something.

Cultural fit and "Googleyness" in Google's hiring. Companies are falling through thin ice when they emphasize if a person will "fit in."

Drone versus drone warfare is here. Send out the robots while the persons sit back in relative safety. Science fiction worlds are here.

More evidence and suggestions for connecting sleep and dementia.

Google buys Fitbit for $2.1Billion (that's with a B).

Intel looks beyond the CPU marketplace and into services and such where the real money is.

Saturday 2 November 2019

The governors of California have set a world-leading goal in climate change changing, and they are due to miss it by about, oh, let's see, 100 years. Form, not function or something like that.

"To me, it goes back to, if anything, Microsoft staying out of politics and staying focused on what the customer’s needs are."—Satya Nadella on Microsoft winning the $10Billion Pentagon cloud computing contract.

Russia's governors implement what is basically a nation-wide intranet. This provides 98.6% control of all communication in that country. There is always, however, cracks in the wall for determined persons.

There is some hope that Google's acquisition of Fitbit will change the way we view and use these smart watches.

We built a drone landing strip in Niger and are now ready to use it to fight terrorism.

The steering council of the Python programming language announced a more formal, scheduled 12-month release cycle.

Microsoft replaces MSDN and TechNet with, what else, Microsoft Q&A.

Gaggle is a company that sells surveillance products to our local school districts. The technology watches the kids all the time. I guess this is a case of security over privacy or fear of just about everything.

George Will delves into the boredom and significance of demographics and world politics. China, Russia, and most of western Europe are fading away. Here comes India and the United States.

....

Sunday 3 November 2019

Johanna Rothman on "mandatory fun" at work. Gosh, folks still push these silly ideas.

The surveillance state thrives in China with emotion recognition systems deployed. See my short story on this topic written a few years ago.

Here is one for the marketing folks: Microsoft has a new logo for the Edge browser. It runs away from the old Internet Explorer "E" and towards some sort of wave or swirl or something.

A ride in a driverless taxi in Arizona. It is still a test, but Waymo is making progress.

Grievous vexation over banning or fact checking or feeling less angst about political ads. Truth is, there are too many of them for technology to check them and it costs too much for people to check them.

Some growth in the global smartphone market. We haven't yet reached the saturation point.

Microsoft  joins the OpenJDK community and will contribute, at no charge$$$, to the Java world.

The Germans don't like those giant energy-generating windmills. They are an eyesore, just like the oil derricks and pumps of generations past.

Intel releases new processors for laptop computers that don't need as much processing power and don't consume as much electrical power.

"Mark Zuckerberg should pay a price for what he is doing to our democracy."—Hillary Clinton. She could have been the first woman President of the United States. She couldn't get herself our of her way. It appears that she still can't.

For those writing a novel this month, try to enjoy it.

How Eugene Schwartz worked three hours a day, five days a week and produced and earned a comfortable living. Set the timer for 33.33 minutes and sit.

Forget the usual title of this post, it is excellent. Actual ideas on how to better edit what you have written.

Got a degree in English? Like to write? Looking for a job? Here are some sources. The Internet has exploded the written word.

Tips to write that novel in November. I did this once. It consumed about 90 minutes each day to write about 1,800 words.

The boring story. You know it when you are writing it. Go ahead and finish it. They practice will do you good. Then do a better one next time.

Notes on architecture and environment for writing. The noisy coffee shop (I'm in one as I type this) works well for some of us. Use what works.

Need some writing prompts? Well, Halloween is tomorrow or something. Any memories?