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: 16-22 March, 2020

Summary of this week:

• Coronavirus continues
• Wikipedia has become the most-trusted source for medical information
• NASA already has slipped schedule in its moon project
• Microsoft reaches 1Billion devices running Windows 10
• Apple updates its MacBook Air, Mac Mini, and iPads
• Apple and Microsoft hardware now are almost identical
• Italy: 99% of those dying were already ill
• Code.org promises more online learning
• Microsoft updates its video game software

Monday 16 March 2020

Wikipedia, long panned as not a real source of information, is now probably the best source for learning about coronavirus.

Real news that isn't news: Amazon Prime can't keep up with the panic demand.

More real news that isn't news: NASA says its moon project is behind schedule.

Amazon is trying to sell its technology for cashier-less stores. Others are not buying.

Now that we are all locked in our homes, the Internet services are failing. Microsoft's Teams software fails under the load in Europe.

Steam hit a record for concurrent users overs the weekend.

Everyone wants to "flatten the curve." Simple, redraw the graph with a different scale on the vertical axis. Goes to show how relative everything is.

Elon Musk is one of the few well-known tech persons to say the cononavirus is hyperbole.

ArsTechnica has been a work-from-home company for 22 years. They are running a series of stories for the rest of us.

Tuesday 17 March 2020

npm, home of the JavaScript world, has joined GitHub, home of just about everything else.

Amazon is hiring for warehouse and delivery. They claim 100,000 new jobs to deliver everything to everyone's homes.

Microsoft Research, the Allen Institute for AI, and the White House release a umpteen-thousand document corpus for researchers to use to find something that will help someone with you-know-what.

"declares no gatherings of people" type that into Google. I got 58million hits. Everyone one is government in the US seems to think they can prohibit gatherings of persons. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Yet again, the price of Bitcoin has collapsed. Those who spend money "mining" are being swept away.

The big boys—Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube et al.—pledge to stop misinformation about you-know-what. Take care in what you promise.

Seth Godin has good comments on all these online things we are doing this week and how to do them better.

"experts at the World Health Organization" Is that an oxymoron? Rich people telling everyone else how to live.

In technical news—there is some of that these days—Marvell shows a 96-core processor aimed at data centers.

Wednesday 18 March 2020

It appears that it is okay to write apocalypse stories about coronavirus, but writing "it isn't so bad" stories gets you booted from society.

Researchers show that Facebook simply cannot find and censor content that some of us think should be censored. When did Facebook assume this responsibility?

Study shows that Microsoft's Edge browser sends privacy busting information back to Microsoft and others.

We live in an age where we photograph all of our planet constantly and process all that on our new computers.

LG is bringing its 48" gaming monitor to market in June. That is the smallest televisor they are releasing this year.

This story must be important because it is #1 on all the news sites: Facebook wrongly blocks real stories about coronavirus. Again, how did Facebook obtain the job of judging all content in the world?

And now we are seeing calls for governments to bail out industries that are hit hard by all this government-induced whatever we want to call it.

Thursday 19 March 2020

Apple updates the Mac Mini with twice the speed and storage.

Apple will finally give us folder sharing in the iCloud real soon now.

Last, Apple updates the Macbook Air. Again, twice the storage and twice the processing power. Why is there an "air" a "pro" and a regular?

Someone at an Amazon warehouse in New York has you-know-what. This causes all sorts of angst and what ifs.

Basic tips on recording your lecture or whatever for use while everyone is hunkering down at home.

Everyone now and then you see something that reminds you of the processing power advances. The PlayStation 5 will have a TeraFLOP processor.

Elon Musk remains on the side of "this isn't as bad as people are making it." Of course that talk banishes you from polite society while "end of the world" proclamations are okay.

In Hollywood (still open), "Sonic the Hedgehog" becomes the biggest money maker for video game movies.

A Falcon rocket from SpaceX had engine troubles, but still put 60 more Starlink satellites in orbit. It missed the landing on a barge at sea. They are having recent troubles with rocket recovery and reuse.

Friday 20 March 2020

Reddit, long hailed as the newspaper of the Internet ... for better or worse, has one of the more respected coronavirus boards on the net.

Some business is booming. Microsoft Teams has added a few million daily active users due to folks working from home due to panic about you-know-what.

Slack has a similar boom in business.

Real soon now... Microsoft is changing its DirectX 12 video gaming technology family. The most recent release is more technical than commercial as it seeks to unify a set of divergent technologies. They are cleaning the garage.

Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook have lost a combined $1.3 in value in the past month. It is "all on paper" and it will "all come back." It is unfortunate, that during the time it takes to come back some persons will lose their jobs and their homes. Those who can afford to "wait it out" ... well, they can afford it.

No one is attending college classes in person, at this time. A college professor wonders about cheating for online tests. Colleges should be WONDERING ABOUT THE VALUE OF TESTS...PERIOD

Apple's new iPad and super smart keyboard makes it all look like Microsoft's hardware. The trouble with the offerings from M&A are they are too expensive.

And now we have a toilet paper usage calculator. And our grandparents were worried about what?

Facebook is rolling out their new design of the desktop version.

Once again, George Will provides some perspective on human health. He will be blasted as a denier and banished from polite company.

Code.org, among others more famous, is offering lots of online education while schools are closed. I find it fascinating to see the lessons learned from this current experiment.

Firefox removes support for good old FTP. Everything must by SFTP now.

Saturday 21 March 2020

One person's experience with one day of the new MacBook Air. The review gives high grades to the upgrade. The keyboard is noticeably better.

This year's PWN2OWN hacking contest ends. Hackers broke into all the operating systems we've ever known and other systems as well. It is a simple matter of numbers of persons working on security and numbers of hackers.

February 2020 was a bad month for the sales of smartphones.

Amazon has become an "essential resource" for the USA. One good thing coming out of all this is that people are learning something about the "supply chain."

The governor of New York, like a lot of elected officials in the US, think he can order suspension of the US Constitution. Interesting.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Sunday 22 March 2020

Microsoft's Satya Nadella's family situation puts them, especially his adult son, at risk. His is a real situation. I am afraid most of the rest of what is happening isn't necessary.

Apple is finding (the hard part) and donating medical supplies by the millions. Good on Apple.

Amazon wants to hire (temporarily) laid-off restaurant and bar workers to work the warehouses.

A new one for me: 'Process mining' is the use of AI and data analytics to assess and optimize business processes, like invoice processing or dealing with customer service queries.

Great carton of one probable lesson learned from all this.

Everyone working from home, and most of it is not secure. Let the conspiracy theories fly.

Example home poor Internet security while working from home. Lawyers are warned about all the devices in their homes. Turn them off while having conversations with clients.

"...if you're spending hours in online meetings from home instead of hours in real-world meetings...you've just taken the worst part of office life, and brought it home, and made it even worse..."—Linus Torvalds

International information war is accompanying the coronavirus. The idea is to make the other guy suffer more than you suffer. That is why it is called warfare.

Yet another good post on the good habit of writing in a journal.

I love this post on writing a book in one draft. It isn't exactly one draft, but far closer than most. I identify with this as it is the closest description of what I do that I have ever found.

A new one for me: the gratitude journal.

Try to ignore the title of this post. I love the tips provided on how to edit and improve something I have written. Does the writing hold together or lose its way?

Writing does become easier. I guess that is true for me as well.

How one writer wrote everyday for 50 days, then 100 days, then just everyday and lost count. I guess I am in that group. I have lost count.

One writer uses Evernote and loves it.

A description of the slip box method of taking notes created by the late German sociologist Niklas Luhmann.

Writing complex fiction and the word processor on computers. I think the writer here misses the point, badly.

Write the next word. Press the next key on the keyboard. Drag that pen or pencil just a little farther on the paper or the chalk board or in the dirt. The next thing.