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: 23-29 December, 2019

Summary of this week:

• Christmas is this week—it is a slow news week
• Our DoD cautions about home DNA tests
• Netflix is probably the "company of the decade" with 4,000% gain in value

Monday 23 December 2019

The government in New York City uses many automated decision systems, i.e, computer programs written by some persons. The public, and most of the governors, don't know how they work or what they do.

NASA and Boeing can't hit space, but they can still take cool photos of the planet.

The latest Star Wars (remake) has a good weekend at the box o$$ice. The Cats movie is a disaster. Time for something new in science fiction movies.

Business failing? Market disappearing? Do the opposite of what you are doing.

Chuck Peddle died this week. He designed the 6502 8-bit microprocessor. That chip was the heart of the start of Apple, Atari, Nintendo, and Commodore among others.

Tuesday 24 December 2019

In our schools (here it comes) the adults love for the kids to have computers. The kids aren't learning anything.

Disney has a big financial year with 8 of the top 10 money making movies.

Boeing had a bad financial year and replaces its CEO. They just couldn't build a new 737 which is puzzling since that is what they do.

Forward to the past: board games are becoming more popular than ever. See how the computers in the classrooms don't work and maybe we are learning something.

Wednesday 25 December 2019

Here is a large number: Honda has built 400million motorcycles in the last 70 years (post WWII).

Jony Ive donates £100,000 to plant trees in the UK. Good on him. This is a good thing to do. Much better than all the political grandstanding that most celebrities do.

A detailed analysis of Intel's strategy in graphics processing and processors.

Use Twitter and an Android phone? A researcher matches 17million accounts to phone numbers via a security hole.

This must be important as it is all over the Internet. What is surprising is that some are surprised by it. College are tracking locations of students on campus via their cell phones. Actually, they are tracking the location of the cellphones. Hence, students can trick the system.

Western civilization is safe. Disney will sell a baby Yoda plush doll real soon now.

Seth Godin has a few notable words regarding peace, appreciation, and dignity.

Mike Bloomberg creates a tech company and pours billion$ into it to create ads everywhere and all that stuff associated with a political campaign.

A $3 business card that runs Linux. Good idea. The execution looks pretty good as well.

Thursday 26 December 2019

It is the day after Christmas. The big news websites are almost empty. All the news today is on the sites where folks contribute stories for no pay. Hmmm.

I must have been out of town the weekend that advertising saying silly things (redundant?) became an act of war.

Someone at our Dept of Defense has decided that these at-home DNA test kits are a security risk and advise our armed forces to avoid them.

Some hopes, dreams, and wishes about what Apple may do next year with the Mac computer.

And now we approach the end of the story as one media outlet claims that another media outlet is a threat to national security. If the right person in the right agency agrees, we shall have arrests and censorship of the type that spurred the American Revolution or something.

In London, electric buses will now employ noise makers to alert pedestrians of their approach.

Friday 27 December 2019

How persons came from nowhere to become something called a social media star in the last decade. We invented a new industry and new wealth from nothing. The marketplace can do wonderful things (and also not-so-wonderful things).

In the state of New York, it remains illegal to ride an electric bike or scooter. Living in the days before electricity.

Available for purchase real soon now, Teslasuit is putting a glove in its haptic VR outfit. Trying to make virtual presence more actual.

I guess we have some sort of double-oooops here. Tech sites praised the Ring doorbell-with-camera, but now they try to back away given the security problems.

Google claims a breakthrough in summarizing text via AI techniques.

Saturday 28 December 2019

No Internet viewing today.

Sunday 29 December 2019

In college (semi-pro) football, it appears that the teams from the south beat the teams from the mid-west once again. (To our credit or our shame)

All the experts predicted it, and once again all the experts were wrong. eBooks didn't take over the world. And they often cost more than the printed books.

Accidental wealth: with the country code top-level domain of ".tv" Tuvalu is predictably rolling in the money in our streaming world.

When Disney started making these side stories for Star Wars they ran the risk that these little side stories would be better than the big movie. They've achieved that. Rogue One was the best movie of the past ten years and The Mandalorian is better than all of them.

We can all breathe a sigh of relief as The Mandalorian will return for another season.

One look back at the technology products and services introduces in the past decade.

Hyperbola GNU/Linux renames itself to HyperbolaBSD. This is approved and recommended by the Free Software Foundation as a fork of OpenBSD. This is significant to a small crowd of Linux-tech enthusiasts.

Some thoughts on thinking about the next big writing or other project.

Looking for a resolution for the arbitrary calendar coming this week? Day by day, little by little, change.

Taking some Santa Claus cliches and trying to turn them into writing advice. Hey, it is a slow week online.

Seven laws (none natural as the title claims) of making more money with writing.