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: 1-7 February, 2021

Summary of this week:

• Democrats and marijuana
• IBM out of the blockchain business
• Google out of the game-making business
• Jeff Bezos steps away from Amazon CEO job
• Amazon puts cameras in delivery trucks
• Sales up for PCs with 4G and 5G
• School attendance down

Monday 1 February 2021

We want the 80-somethings to be vaccinated, but we put all vaccination registrations online out of reach of the 80-somethings.

The year of the virus was good for the use of doorbells with cameras being tied to the police. That network grew by 100% in the year of our unrest.

Politics, regulations, and electric cars: Tesla is profitable only because it sells "regulatory credits" to other automakers. Play the system for all its worth.

Tuesday 2 February 2021

A billion people live in Africa. There are very few data centers on the continent. The race is on.

IBM backs out of the blockchain business.

Google backs out of the game-making business and closes its two major production studios.

Apple releases the first iOS 14.5 developer beta.

A billion$ is a lot of money. SpaceX is about to receive that much in tax payers' dollars from rural broadband service.

Google will pay a couple million$ to 5,500 persons cheated on pay and hiring.

MediaTek has a major upgrade to its 5G modem.

How the world changes—sometimes not for the good. The Democratic party becomes the party of marijuana.

Wednesday 3 February 2021

Amazon shows images four future office buildings in Virginia. One is a 350-tall helix with an outdoor, spiral walkway.

The year of the virus was good for Amazon's cloud services with 28% more money flowing in.

It is official with the quarterly report in—the year of the virus was very good to Amazon.

Google's cloud business is growing. It is still losing money, but that is a sign of heavy investment. One day the sun will shine or something like that.

Electronic Arts will bring back a college football game. Cheer for LSU or your school. Players likenesses, however, will not be part of the games. Hence, generic quarterback will through to generic receiver and be tackled by generic defender.

Strong rumors that Apple will partner with South Korea's Kia Motors to build electric cars.

Our FTC fines Amazon $61.7million for failure to pay Flex drivers as promised. They money—what's left of it after the lawyers take their large slice—will be distributed to drivers.

SpaceX has another successful test launch of the Starship with another spectacular fireball of a "landing." The landings are not yet ready for testing.

I like Seth Godin's thoughts on egomania vs. ego. It is the "good pride" and "bad pride" discussion that has continued for a few dozen centuries.

Our Dr. Fauci literally doubles down and recommends we wear two masks. Interesting that I saw this after seeing the post on egomania.

The sorry state of the webcam. Small lenses combined with little to know dedicated hardware means we get what we pay for.

Thursday 4 February 2021

Spotify joins the list of tech companies that grew during the year of the virus.

Sony sold 4.5million PlayStation 5 units in 2020. Many are disappointed that it wasn't more. The definition of success has changed.

The year of the virus has been good for the sales of PCs. For the first time in three years, Intel gained back some market share from AMD.

Qualcomm as a good quarter, but not as good as expected. That disappointment drove down the stock value. The "expectors" were not fired. Everyone else did well but them.

IBM makes advances in the practical application of quantum computing.

The treatment of the Uigher people in western China. No comments needed.

YouTube is bringing Google over a $1billion a month in ad dollars.

Google's undersea Atlantic cable is now operational.

GM cuts assembly at four plants due to shortage of integrated circuits. The pandemic shutdowns of suppliers here and there add up.

Cooking the numbers. India officially has 11million COVID cases. Others estimates are 300million cases. All this hoo-hah about the US have the most cases and deaths from the virus is nonsense. Yet, some of our politicians constantly beat the citizenry about the head and shoulders for our lackadaisical behavior.

Friday 5 February 2021

Strong rumors about Apple's "mixed-reality" headset coming with all sorts of gizmos and a $3,000 price tag. Perhaps some good will come from showing everyone else a good concept.

Amazon is moving its warehouse workers to 10-hour graveyard shifts. Workers can take it or quit their jobs. Greater efficiency and faster delivery are the reasons. Many cannot work the hours, not because of the length but because of the time of day.

Google adds software to its pixel phone cameras so that we can measure our heart and breathing rates.

The year of the virus was good to Pinterest.

In Australia—where Google is in a legal battle with the governors—Google spends a billion$ on a news service that pays news sources.

Twitter partners with Google Cloud to increase analysis of its data.

Online courses: is the teacher still alive? Sometimes not. Aside from asking questions and holding conversations, still learning from someone who has died holds appeal for some of us regarding some teachers.

I like Seth Godin's short essay on trust and how folks use the Internet. Early 1970s online interaction, "Because each of these groups were high-trust communities, it was easy to conclude that the people they’d be engaging online would be too." The online interaction of this century, "When a site decides to get big fast, they usually do it by creating a very easy way to join, and they create few barriers to a drive-by anonymous experience. And when they make a profit from this behavior, they do it more. In fact, they amplify it." And to the future, "Until there’s a correlation between what’s popular or profitable and what’s useful, we’re all going to be paying the price." Solutions? Start your own little invitee-only discussion forum that is not hosted by the big and famous tech companies. Jerry Weinberg's "SHAPE Forum" was one I used for a decade. People who knew one another and understood the language of that group discussed complex matters of importance. Disagreements were common as were suggestions and solutions.

A new company—Metalenz—has a new technology—optical metasurfaces—that may completely change cameras in our mobile devices.

Saturday 6 February 2021

Look out Mars, here we come. Vehicles from the US, China, and the UAE will arrive at and attempt to land on Mars in the next month.

Denmark will build an island 50 miles off its coast to generate power from the wind. Ten GigaWatts are promised.

The Governor of Nevada proposes economic innovation zones wherein companies would govern themselves. In essence, they would create their own little countries.

Army researchers create a quantum receiver that enables a 0-20GHz spectrum analyzer capable of demodulating all signals in the range. If this becomes practical, it will revolutionize many fields of technology.

The year of the virus was good for the sales of PC that had 4G and 5G, a.k.a., cell phones, built in. I am surprised it has taken this long for that market to mature.

As I sit in the parking lot in my little van...see this concept from Nissan for the "office pod," which would be a truly mobile office for ... well, we'll think of some use for this.

The year of the virus was bad for school attendance with total numbers down several percent. Parents have simply surrendered to conditions and are waiting for some normalcy. We await the long-term affects.

Sunday 7 February 2021

QAnon, level of education, and bias in reporting. More-educated people more likely to "fall for" QAnon theories. Or is it that more-education people have seen evidence of the theories and have a better understanding of the possible in technology and behavior of other persons.

The NFL has offered all its stadium sites as COVID vaccination sites. I didn't realize that real estate was the limiting factor in the vaccination program.

Sigh. I am saddened that someone has to tell others not to do this. Don't people realize? I guess not. Please don't post photos of your vaccination card. All sorts of wrong can occur as a result.

The governors of Myanmar have closed the Internet to better subdue their subjects.

The US Supreme Court rules that California's restrictions on religious freedom violate the first amendment. Well, duh.

Point of view: did the prior President "damage" the Federal government or "reform" it?

A study of facial-recognition studies. Scientific inquiry turned over to the marketing department. Are we surprised at the results?

One writer's path to earning a living a a writer. Some tips: Write to spec, Hit my deadlines, Turn in near-perfect copy.

How two writers write novels together.

Some thoughts on hopes, fears, and writing novels.

Things writers tell ourselves that make us feel bad. There is something to this idea of wanting to feel bad.

A collection of tips for content marketing.