Category Archives: Web Article Review

smart home gadgets

This article from MIT says this year’s CES (Consumer Electronics…what? anyway it’s the big annual consumer electronics expo in Las Vegas) was all about voice-controlled home gadgets. I’m excited about certain things. I like the idea of a video doorbell and smoke detectors that can text me if they sense something while I am not home, for example.

The main concern people seem to have is privacy. While that concerns me a little, I am more concerned about repair and replacement of all this stuff as it wears out. There are a lot of little things broken in my house right now. I know how to fix some of them. I know who to call on others, although it can be a royal pain to get them to actually show up, diagnose the problem, and then follow up until it fixed. My “home warranty”, which is really just a contract with a network of independent repair people, helps a little to get them to be responsive and follow up, but dealing with them is still a pain. While I am fixing things, other things are going to break. Things like keyholes and doorbells last at least 20 years with minor repairs, and traditional dumb appliances last 10 or so years with minor repairs. It is better to just accept that things break at a certain rate and deal with it than to get frustrated, although they do seem to have a tendency to break all at once when I have other challenges going on in my family and work life. I know there is absolutely nothing special about me and everyone deals with the same issues, except the super rich who can just pay someone else to worry about it.

Now, when we add all the smart technology to the dumb things in our home, they are still going to have most of the same dumb problems they have always had, requiring occasional minor repairs and replacement after 10-20 years. But the added technology is going to need some combination of physical repairs and tech support frequently, and it will probably need to be replaced every 2 or 3 years like any other electronic device. Except now it will be 100 little things breaking and needing replacement in your house. Probably, you will need some kind of service contract for someone to come check and fix things at least monthly.

Harry Reid believes in UFOs

The truth is out there. Or at least, a lot of pilots have seen some weird things and militaries around the world have serious UFO research programs, according to this 2017 New York Times article. Here are just a few eye-popping quotes:

“I had talked to John Glenn a number of years before,” Mr. Reid said, referring to the astronaut and former senator from Ohio, who died in 2016. Mr. Glenn, Mr. Reid said, had told him he thought that the federal government should be looking seriously into U.F.O.s, and should be talking to military service members, particularly pilots, who had reported seeing aircraft they could not identify or explain…

By 2009, Mr. Reid decided that the program had made such extraordinary discoveries that he argued for heightened security to protect it. “Much progress has been made with the identification of several highly sensitive, unconventional aerospace-related findings,” Mr. Reid said in a letter to William Lynn III, a deputy defense secretary at the time, requesting that it be designated a “restricted special access program” limited to a few listed officials.

A 2009 Pentagon briefing summary of the program prepared by its director at the time asserted that “what was considered science fiction is now science fact,” and that the United States was incapable of defending itself against some of the technologies discovered. Mr. Reid’s request for the special designation was denied.

monarchs

Monarch butterflies are not doing well, according to USA Today.

The number of monarch butterflies turning up at California’s overwintering sites has dropped by about 86 percent compared with only a year ago, according to the Xerces Society, which organizes a yearly count of the iconic creatures.

That’s bad news for a species whose numbers have already declined an estimated 97 percent since the 1980s.

So plant some milkweed. I started and planted a few seeds of butterfly milkweed in my small urban garden about 3 growing seasons ago, and they are just now starting to get a bit aggressive. I’m not sure how the neighbors feel, but it’s fine with me. I have in fact seen a few monarchs out there.

Obama’s favorite books of 2018

In a Facebook post, Barrack Obama claims to have read 29 books this year. That’s impressive, even if there is some skimming involved. I guess the dude is basically retired and he probably also has some help with childcare. Good for him. No word on whether Donald Trump reread his copy of the collected speeches of Adolf Hitler even once this year.

the Nipah virus

One of the public services I provide is to bring you new diseases to worry about. Just in case Ebola is not horrifying enough (and with apologies to anyone who has been personally touched by it), there is concern about a new disease originating from human-wildlife contact as tropical forests are encroached on, in this case in Bangladesh.


Nipah virus encephalitis is one of eight diseases that the World Health Organization (WHO) has identified as epidemic threats in need of prioritization. The list includes Ebola, SARS, Zika, and an as-yet unknown affliction referred to as “Disease X.” All eight have been prioritized because of their inherent epidemic potential, and also the fact that there are currently insufficient measures in place to prevent them…

Because bats typically live in large colonies and roost in close proximity to one another, microbes are easily passed among members of the group. While virus numbers are typically kept in check by each bat’s immune system, when an animal is stressed, its defenses can become compromised. Much as a cold might make us cough and sneeze, a bat’s weakened immune system can cause the animal to shed viruses into its surroundings through saliva, urine, and feces…

The symptoms of the disease are now well documented, although they vary considerably from patient to patient and strain to strain. While some infected humans are completely asymptomatic, most initially develop symptoms including fever, headaches, vomiting, and sore throat. Some develop acute respiratory infections in the early stages of the disease; others never do. After a few days to a couple of weeks, many patients start to exhibit more serious signs of encephalitis—dizziness, drowsiness, altered consciousness, and other neurological changes. Within another day or two, the disease often progresses to coma, then death.

Asimov’s predictions for 2019

In 1984, Isaac Asimov made a series of predictions about the year 2019.

  • Assumption: No nuclear wars will occur before 2019, which would render all the predictions below moot.
  • Verdict: So far, so good!
  • Prediction: Industry will become increasingly automated, and computers will “penetrate the home”.
  • Verdict: Check!
  • Prediction: Automation will cause some jobs to disappear while others will appear, with a net gain overall. ” The jobs that will appear will, inevitably, involve the design, the manufacture, the installation, the maintenance and repair of computers and robots, and an understanding of whole new industries that these “intelligent” machines will make possible. “
  • Verdict: Some jobs are disappearing and others appearing almost exactly as he predicted, but the jury is still out on the net gain.
  • Prediction: “Schools will undoubtedly still exist, but a good schoolteacher can do no better than to inspire curiosity which an interested student can then satisfy at home at the console of his computer outlet. There will be an opportunity finally for every youngster, and indeed, every person, to learn what he or she wants to learn. in his or her own time, at his or her own speed, in his or her own way. Education will become fun because it will bubble up from within and not be forced in from without.
  • Verdict: This is almost certainly as it should be, but the education system has been slow to adapt.
  • Prediction: “it may well be that the nations will be getting along well enough to allow the planet to live under the faint semblance of a world government by co-operation, even though no one may admit its existence.”
  • Verdict: Again, this is as it should be but not as it is. There are episodes of cooperation, but at the moment this seems to be rowing upstream against a strong current of nationalism and isolationism.
  • Prediction: “more and more human beings will find themselves living a life rich in leisure. This does not mean leisure to do nothing, but leisure to do something one wants to do; to be free to engage in scientific research. in literature and the arts, to pursue out-of-the-way interests and fascinating hobbies of all kinds.”
  • Verdict: This may be true for some, but certainly not for the majority. It could happen if we chose to share the wealth more and/or to live more simply. But again, this is not the direction things are going.
  • Prediction: an international space station
  • Verdict: Check
  • Prediction: moon mining and orbital factories
  • Verdict: This still seems pretty far away, although there are advances in new types of rockets and satellites that could be baby steps in this direction.

more lists from 2018 – science, technology, risks

Here are a couple more lists from 2018.

“5 biggest scientific breakthroughs” from The Week:

  • cloning monkeys
  • new evidence for (past?) microbial life on Mars
  • ability to walk restored to paraplegics
  • gene therapy successes to treat muscular dystrophy (so far, in dogs)
  • witnessing the birth of a new planet

From Bill Gates:

  • “we are also going to be focusing more on improving the quality of life… For example, software will be able to notice when you’re feeling down, connect you with your friends, give you personalized tips for sleeping and eating better, and help you use your time more efficiently.”
  • research breakthroughs on Alzheimer’s disease
  • some setbacks on polio eradication, but also promising new vaccination approaches
  • He is a skeptic on battery storage for solar and wind power, and a proponent of nuclear, where he is concerned the U.S. has lost its leadership position. “TerraPower, the company I started 10 years ago, uses an approach called a traveling wave reactor that is safe, prevents proliferation, and produces very little waste.”
  • He’s afraid of a big epidemic. Well, who isn’t if they’ve been paying attention?
  • breakthroughs and ethical concerns in gene editing
  • balance between privacy and innovation
  • technology in education

best books of 2018 (Project Syndicate)

Project Syndicate is one of my favorite sources of commentary on economics and geopolitics. In this post, their contributors each name some of their favorite books of 2018, which, perhaps not surprisingly, mostly cover economics and geopolitics. I would love to read almost everything on this list, but I’ll mention 10 just for brevity.

AI and socialism

AI and algorithms are being used to target social services more precisely in Denmark. This article finds the level of data being collected on individuals insidious. I think it could be in the wrong hands, but this sort of thing seems to work in the Scandinavian countries where people actually trust their governments and neighbors. In the U.S., we tend to take paranoia to extremes, for example refusing to have a national ID card when it could solve some of our voter registration issues.

The municipality of Gladsaxe in Copenhagen, for example, has quietly been experimenting with a system that would use algorithms to identify children at risk of abuse, allowing authorities to target the flagged families for early intervention that could ultimately result in forced removals.

The children would be targeted based on specially designed algorithms tasked with crunching the information already gathered by the Danish government and linked to the personal identification number that is assigned to all Danes at birth. This information includes health records, employment information, and much more.

From the Danish government’s perspective, the child-welfare algorithm proposal is merely an extension of the systems it already has in place to detect social fraud and abuse. Benefits and entitlements covering millions of Danes have long been handled by a centralized agency (Udbetaling Danmark), and based on the vast amounts of personal data gathered and processed by this agency, algorithms create so-called puzzlement lists identifying suspicious patterns that may suggest fraud or abuse. These lists can then be acted on by the “control units” operated by many municipalities to investigate those suspected of receiving benefits to which they are not entitled. The data may include information on spouses and children, as well as information from financial institutions.