The Tech Slant - Page 2

Tightening the Tether on Tasteless Tech

*As economies have moved forward, more and more complex arrangements, instruments, and machines have come into existence. For example, the reason we can make music earbuds so small now is because of rare earth magnets, made of praseodymium, which is mined in the U.S., China, Russia, Australia, and India. Many of the resources needed to produce the inventions of our modern society are linked around the world. As I have stated on numerous occasions, we have been in a global economy since the East India Company of 1600.

Big Tech - Global Economy
Image Credit: The Economist

There have been several game-changers in economics, mostly two Industrial Revolutions, the revolution of the late 19th century when machines became essential to make other machines, and the more recent tech boom. Let’s review some of the industries that tech has affected.

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Facebook’s Fickle Finger of Fate

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*Some years ago, there was a comedy show that had as a part of its weekly bits, the “Flying fickle Finger of Fate” award, which went to people in the news who accomplished “dubious achievements.” From The Wall Street Journal, Friday July 27, 2018: “Facebook shares fell 19% to $176.26, erasing about $119.1 billion in market value, after the Menlo Park Calif., company warned late Wednesday about slowing growth. Facebook’s loss in market value Thursday is larger than 457 of the 500 companies in the S&P 500. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg alone lost almost $16 billion in the value of his stock holdings.”

But Mark Zuckerberg is a genius.

Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg poses a question during the CEO Summit.

Perhaps Zuckerberg will have to skip the Wadyu steak Friday night, and just have the regular filet mignon. Keep Reading

Big Data & Big Business = Big Bucks

Big Data

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NICE GUYS FINISH LAST

I’m not in opposition to “big” things. I am, however, fearful of “big” things going bad. Hedge funds losing billions of dollars (Knight Capital) and having the stones to ask for their money back. Brian Hunter of Aramanth losing $6 billion. Big moves can lead to big mistakes. Torch Tower, one of the tallest buildings in the world, where catching fire on a regular basis is the norm. The Titanic, which was the biggest ocean liner in the world, within a short period of time, became the biggest ocean liner at the bottom of the Atlantic.

Make no mistake about it; we are in the era of Big Data. Data collected on every click you make, every time you press a key on your keyboard.  Insight, pattern recognition and projection, all aspects of human intelligence, are being performed by machines that may or may not be making the best of judgments.

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Sunny Balwani – Pecunious, Punctilious, and Prosecuted

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Theranos Sunny Balwani

*Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani was the president and Chief Operating Officer (CEO) of a company named Theranos for seven years. The founder of Theranos was Elizabeth Holmes, whose life goal was to be a Silicon Valley billionaire. The unfolding of the story is rather sad, a story whose path was not unlike the fictional character Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good” theme. Theranos’s business concept was a great idea, and should a company such as one like Theranos actually work, it would change a lot of how we view medicine, but the concept and reality never actualized.
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The Cryptocurrency Conspiracy Continues

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Cryptocurrency

*As it was once said, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”  Bitcoin has been joined by 1,450 digital coin offerings. I have never been happy with the term “coin” since we associate coins with metal objects we can hold in our hands, except for maybe the island of Yap that has stone coins.

I think they attempt to assuage people by using the term “coin” so that the chumps who invest in them really think that there is, somewhere, something that they can put in their pocket and stroll down to the local drug store and by a soda.

Bitcoin closed Friday May 18, 2018 at $8,487.61, in case you’re interested. Tulips were once very valuable, too (look that up in your history books).

Let me say I have no animosity for those who invest in Bitcoin. If you make a fortune, good for you, and make sure and thank the Winklevoss twins, who dreamed up Facebook and any other moneymaking investment that might have a sketchy, hard to nail down origin.

I think they slept through their ethics classes at Harvard; the only thing they learned was “once you have it, no one really cares how you got it” which was certainly true of I.G. Farben along with the International Bank of Settlements during the 1940s, or Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.

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Audi A8 – Valiant in Valencia

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Audi A8

Taking the Audi A8 out for a prance in Spain

*When the Audi A8 last rebooted, people were hardly in an uproar over the changes. No, Audi plays it safe with their big limo, a flagship that necessarily must embody all the aspirations implicit in the marque’s “russian dolls” approach to carmaking.

The car is especially handsome under Valencia’s ochre, wintertime sun— even the tourists are straining for a look at the handsome car as it cruise the wide boulevard near L’Oceanogràfic, a stunning oceanarium situated in the east of the city of Valencia, Spain, where different marine habitats are represented. Designed by the architect Félix Candela and the structural engineers Alberto Domingo and Carlos Lázaro, the structure echoes the curving grace of the A8, casting an impressionistic reflection on my press car’s highly reflective hood in the afternoon light.

AUdi A8 in Valencia
PHOTO CREDIT: SHARPMAGAZINEME.COM

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Just Login to our System

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Login to our system

*“Just login to our system.”  A very common demand these days.  You can’t get a mortgage or buy a toy or receive medical care without creating an account and logging in.  It sounds reasonable, but is it?

Entering your life’s data into any system is risky, as we are repeatedly reminded by the steady stream of news reports about hackings that assurances about the safety and security of your data are mere rhetoric, no matter the company or organization.  Demanding that you to login to a system assumes that you are willing to take a huge leap of faith, and trust that:

  • the system is well-built and supported,
  • the people administering the system are highly skilled, and that
  • state-of-the-art security measures (ineffective as they may be) are in place and the people administering them are highly skilled.

This is like asking you to jump off a cliff based on a stranger’s assurances that “it’ll be OK”.
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Software’s Sorry Sycophants

Software Sycophants Header

*I’m so fascinated by all of the new colloquialisms, and l especially the “early adopter.”  As far as new, at least in America, we love new stuff, and old stuff is left to collectors. By the way, the prices of antiques are going down sharply. It seems the new young people have little interest in old stuff, the prized antiques of yesteryear. That antique table and chair might be better on the auction block real soon, as I do not see young people praising old stuff.

You might be able to get money from things like old baseball cards and comic books, but as America’s national pastime loses followers, (baseball is losing audience and the major league is deliberating how to change the game to attract more followers)  and fewer and fewer young people read printed material of any kind, I would bet that even your prized baseball cards and comic books are going to lose value soon. Keep Reading

How Monopolistic Capitalism in Tech Can Use Decentralization to Their Advantage

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Monopolistic Header

*First things first, I am not here to neither reprimand nor endorse monopolistic or competitive capitalism, but rather to use first principles thinking as a systematic approach on how some relentless monopolistic markets use decentralized tactics to inevitably excel past expectations compared to markets in perfect competition. This type of thinking is highly encouraged by Aristotle (philosophical works), Descartes (Cartesian Doubt), and Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla, Solar City, The Boring Company).

We’ll analyze the mammoths, Microsoft and Google, and use reasoning to find out which of these companies are going to survive and which will fail due to lacking any type of decentralized organizational structure.

“With first principles, you boil things down to the most fundamental truths … and then reason up from there.”

– Elon Musk

Elon Musk

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Technology, Digital Analytics, and the new Monopoly

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Digital Media

As time and technology march on, occupations, professions, and major market players adapt or fade away. I can recall as a freshman in college being told that newspapers had already had their heyday decades ago.

News isn’t going away, but paper is being replaced by screens the size of your hand and much, much larger, with speed (but not really depth) that travels around the world in split seconds.

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New Skyscrapers Fueling Arctic Meltdown

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Skyscrapers and Arctic

* 2017 set a record for the most skyscrapers built in a single year – 144. 2018 is predicted to eclipse it by reaching 160 superstructures. Happy dance. Not.

The fossil fuel energy necessary to produce the concrete and steel in each of those 144 edifices, located in 69 cities (many of which sit empty in China), is cooking our planet alive.

China Concrete Usage
China Used More Concrete in 3 Years than America Used in the 20th Century

In 2018, the Arctic had its warmest winter on record at least 10º(F) above normal. The Arctic is missing 62,000 square miles of ice below last year’s record low.

Minus the ice, the latent heat from the Arctic Ocean transfers immense amounts of energy into the troposphere. It supercharges the polar jet stream which now meanders 10, 20 and even 30º southward, off course. This wayward polar jet stream has unleashed deadly and wild weather around the globe, including recent snowfalls in London and Rome. Keep Reading

The Story of Calendars

Calendars

Remember the days when we used to source things in nature as a way to track time? Of course not. Or maybe you were a scout when you were still in grade school.

Today even the little ones want access to technology. But the fact still remains that days begin with the rising sun and end with it setting. The bright moon and stars light the sky in remote areas today.

Now imagine primitive man in the tropics. When the moon is full and big, it rises around sunset. Human curiosity and pursuit for logic must have led to counting days between the occurrences of these simultaneous events. That interval is still referred to as a lunar month.

Using this month, primitive man must have counted the lunar month interval between other annual natural events like spring or winter to get a lunar year.

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Software Abuse – At the Hands of Tech Giants

Digital

Children that grow up in abusive households assume that everyone gets slapped around when they make a mistake or spill their milk. When it’s all you know, you believe it’s normal. It never occurs to them that their parents are being mean – just loving them in a way that hurts. Like software companies treat us.

Software abuse is rampant and pervasive. It is being perpetrated by every software company – the bigger the company, the more severe the abuse. If you are thinking, “I use software, and I don’t feel abused”; exactly. You are that kid being slapped around, and you think it’s normal.

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7 Technology Trends That Will Dominate 2018

Technology 2018

Regardless of whether you’re a diehard tech fanatic after the latest devices, or a laid-back “average” consumer, you can’t help but look forward to the technology developments and trends that lie ahead. After a year with surprisingly high sales for smart speakers and virtual reality, and the debut of several new phones and tablets, we look ahead at what lies in store for the industry in 2018.

These general tech trends have the capacity to change how we live and interact with each other.

So what will the biggest tech trends of 2018 be, and how will our lives change, accordingly?

  • AI permeation
  • Digital centralization
  • 5G preparation
  • Data overload
  • White collar automation
  • Seamless conversation
  • UI overhauls

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Auto – What’s Hot in 2018

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Mercedes AMG GT 4-door

DUBAI  — Things move quickly in 2018, and the auto industry is no different. From bold design concepts to innovative features that enhance aesthetics, performance, and the overall driving experience, automakers continue to unveil their best with each passing year.

This gallery showcases such brands as Alpine, Aston Martin, Bentley, and more. Go ahead and feast your eyes on the best of 2018.

Here’s a look at what’s hot in auto for 2018 – courtesy of our friends at wheel.thecontenthub.com

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