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: 9-15 December, 2019

Summary of this week:

• Microsoft and Amazon fuss publicly about the DoD contract
• Apple sues former engineer for starting his own company
• Apple Mac Pro is now available for purchase
• Intel announces an indoor LiDAR system for $349
• Ring cameras are being hacked everywhere
• AI research $$$ at an all-time high
• The trade war with China lessens
• And that pushes Apple's worth to yet another all-time high

Monday 9 December 2019

Tuesday 10 December 2019

ooops, 750,000 birth and death certificates are left exposed online.

If we include headphones as "wearables," that market has exploded this year.

The rich continue to get richer. The coastal cities, most on Pacific, are gaining all the big money jobs.

A consequence of celebrity CEOs and celebrity politicians...squables over public funds (billion$).

Apple sort of returns to the Consumer Electronics Show after 28 years.

Coming real soon now from Gmail...attach an email instead of forwarding it.

Microsoft speaks out about Amazon's challenge to the DoD cloud contract. These public comments by both sides convince me that it is over and Microsoft is the winner. If it was a serious challenge, no one would jeopardize their case like this.

Another semi-fasting diet that appears to work: limit eating to a 10-hour window during the day, e.g., 8AM to 6PM.

Maybe someone has found gene therapy that reverses aging. We won't see it in America due to regulators. Fly to Columbia, pay $1million, and take your chances.

More college-educated factory workers. Is the work more sophisticated or are these college folks under employed and willing to take the jobs?

Who can forget the ice bucket challenge? Who remembers that it was about ALS? Pete Frates dies at 34.

Wednesday 11 December 2019

Google releases version 79 of the Chrome browser.

Non-disclosure and non-compete agreements...Apple's former processor designer starts his own company and is sued by Apple.

How much does Facebook pay its employees? How much is it worth in bribes to have an account restored? Simple math, and the managers at Facebook are learning simple math.

Microsoft finally has software that runs on Linux. The first is their Teams app (Slack competitor).

American tech and security experts help foreign governments with tech and security. Sometimes the side effects are not desirable.

For some reason, Intel releases details on who at the company is paid what. This is a tech company. White and Asian men are seniors and are paid more than everyone else. I suppose someone will find this surprising and significant.

Researchers at Rice University and Amazon claim a breakthrough in processing deep learning systems. Same results in one tenth the time and one third the memory.

Good news from Greenland: the ice is receding leaving farmland that hasn't been available for centuries. Funny how you can change the direction of a story.

Thursday 12 December 2019

We reach some sort of a milestone as a fully electric airplane makes a first commercial flight.

YouTube ventures into intent censorship by banning malicious insults. (Beware who retains the power to choose the adjectives.)

An in-depth look at the cooling system of the new Mac Pro.

How time flies: Angry Birds is ten years old.

Twitter is working on tools that would allow individuals to create their own private social networks.

Take care when buying a kids version of a smartwatch for you children. They are easily hacked and turn into tracking devices.

George Laurer—who helped invent the bar code—dies at 94.

Chronic pain: opioids had bad affects that doctors didn't tell people. The alternatives are also not as good as early adopters claimed.

3D printed homes in Mexico. They are small, much less expensive, and a good alternative. Can we avoid making this into yet another kind of slum?

NASA finds yet more ice on Mars. Call me when they are making coffee on Mars with Martian water.

Intel announces a LiDAR "camera" for indoor use at $349. All the software is included. This could be the start of something big.

Friday 13 December 2019

Twitter revives its polices of "Hey, this is tweeted by a candidate for elected office."

Oracle has a less-than-expected financial quarter. So, instead of punishing the expert-ors, Oracle stockholders are punished with falling value.

In the never-ending battle to make telephones into cameras, Apple acqui-hires a UK company to improve the color of the iPhone.

Our President agrees to recede on the trade wars with China. Lobbying by Silicon Valley leaders who understand reality is helping.

Federal regulators want to run Facebook and make all the business decisions. We have been here before. See, for example, IBM and Microsoft. The only way out of the problem is to diminish your business.

In what is a trivial task, researchers fool facial recognition systems with masks.

Larry Page, Silicon Valley gazillionare, is quietly funding flu vaccines for those who cannot afford them.

Real news that isn't news: just a few of us are buying the $1,000 smartphones.

Samsung has already sold a million of those folding smartphones. The definition of success has changed.

Where the money is: research in artificial intelligence and machine learning is at an all-time high. We've seen this before; enjoy the boom while it lasts.

Saturday 14 December 2019

Another success-causing-failure may be Roku which has built a thriving business ahead of the streaming content wars. Will the content providers (Apple, Amazon, et al) run them over?

Google releases very large numbers on Street View and Google Earth. They have practically photographed everyone people live.

The governors of India turn off the Internet in a couple of states that are the homes of 32million persons.

A Facebook employee was keeping disk drives containing payroll information in his car. Yes, we know what happened next. Someone stole the car.

The size of our telvisors increases while their prices drop. We're gonna need a bigger living room.

People used to nail discouraging papers on posts for all the see. Then we dropped papers from airplanes. Now we send text messages to smartphones. Nothing new here.

New techniques will save banks tens of billion$$$. Who will keep the savings?

The China trade war eases a bit, and Apple moves to yet another all-time high in value. Who is creating foreign policy—nations or corporations?

The government of the city of New Orleans is hacked and turns off all its systems.

A call to ban emotion-recognition technology. Of course we'll have to figure out how to ban emotion-faking technology as well. Most of have no clue what others are thinking let alone what they are feeling.

Sunday 15 December 2019

The Mac Pro is now available with prices going up to $53,000.

LG updates its thin laptop that has a 17" screen.

A story about convicts learning tech skills in prison and then finding jobs.

Another transport company learns that delivering food and goods is easier and more profitable than delivering persons.

Raspberry Pi sells 30million units. This is the most successful education project in the history of history. These guys should receive a Nobel Peace Prize.

A few more small trials of Universal Basic Income. The sample size is too small for any conclusions.

At the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, the leaders in machine learning talk about its limitations. Beware the bubble that may burst soon.

Considering the prices of the new Mac Pro. It is not a consumer product. It is for companies that do special work. The cost of the hardware pays for itself in saved salaries. If you don't need it, you don't need it.

Yet another post on "balancing" time and priorities and all that and trying to write. Sometime you let the flower bed grow with weeds. Sometimes you spend the night with a sick relative and don't accomplish anything difficult the next day.

Four not-so-simple steps to becoming a writer. We can reduce this to one step—write (a verb).

How one writer went from $800 to $5,000 per month.

Writing a novel and then attempting to write a sales pitch for it.

Consider for a few moments, the essay. Then go write a bunch of them to your heart's delight.

Is self-publishing a quick way to publish or a case where the writer wants to control everything?

Fear, failing, and writing. They seem to go together often. Of course that depends on how you define fear and failing and writing.