But it wasn’t to IBM, it was to the people, employees, customers and software I’d worked on and with. In the Summer of 2008, the project I was working on at IBM was canceled. I was offered a new position … Continue reading I left IBM in 2008, last week I said goodbye.
@AARP magazine nails #blockchain #blockchaintechnology pic.twitter.com/vS1d755Czu — Mark Cathcart (@cathcam) October 28, 2018 I posted the above to twitter, but its not really a joke. #blockchain has become the emperor’s new clothes and to some degree, @AARP is right. The original article may be a little more aimed at humour than technical depth, but it’s not wrong. A few of my friends have already been cold called and offering blockchain backed securities and similar. We know that’s mostly just marketing BS, but they don’t know. So this is, whatever you think, a good way to get them thinking about it. … Continue reading What’s a #blockchain?
They figured out how do you tweak people’s vanities and their passions and their susceptibilities and their desires in order to keep them on the site. Source: The Central Question Behind Facebook: ‘What Does Mark Zuckerberg Believe In?’ : NPR If you have not heard it, the above NPR Fresh Air interview by Dave Davies with Evan Osnos, a New Yorker Staff writer is well worth the listen. Since that interview, we’ve had two more announcements of significance from Facebook. October 11th, the evil empire announced that they’d disabled some 66 accounts or what Facebook described as: dozens of accounts … Continue reading Your infrequent reminder, Facebook is evil
You’d think given the proliferation of voice activated home technology like Alexa, Siri, Google Voice Assistant, Cortana etc. we’d be on the home stretch for voice activation in cars, where distraction is a real life threatening problem. I don’t travel much now, I don’t drive more than 6k miles per year, which is a good thing based on today’s experience with Google. I’ll admit, I didn’t do any scientific research, I’ve no idea what other brands do, but I got stuck in traffic today heading into Boulder. I asked Google Assistant to read a web article from Vox. My Google … Continue reading Google and Voice
After this weeks hugely disappointing repeal of the net neutrality. The ACLU has their take on the repeal, here. I’m more concerned though with the claim that up to 2-million comments supporting the repeal were submitted to the FCC using fraudulent identities. I actually don’t don’t think it would have made any difference given what we know about the commission members who voted in favor of repeal. Still, I wanted to be sure my comment was actually the comment I submitted, and no one else had submitted a comment using my identity. You can check here. Simply add your name … Continue reading FCC and Net Neutrality – Fraud in your name?
ZDNet has a good summary of a few recent reports on automation, a subject I’ve covered here more than once. The more interesting survey report is from a Harris Poll for ZipRecruiter, an online employment marketplace. ZipRecruiter’s nationwide data shows 60% of job seekers believe fears around robots taking away jobs are overhyped while 2 in 5 employed job seekers (41%) believe their current job will be automated within their lifetime. This is more than likely because workers asked, don’t see the big picture. They don’t get involved with decisions and discussions about how to cut cost and risk from … Continue reading Fear of Automation
I’ve become more and more concerned about posting on facebook, and being part of a massive data collection and analysis machine Continue reading Goodbye the evil empire?
In tenuous link between my recent posts on automation, here and especially here, where back in November I discussed autonomous vehicles and their impact on employment. I also said: While many cities are salivating over the ability of self-driving, autonomous … Continue reading Giant fleet of small scheduling nightmares
Automation is everywhere, but most of us don’t notice it. Every product we buy, every service we use has been touched by automation, some more than others. Think about the products you buy about the grocery store? Come in a package? Packed by machine! Continue reading Creeping automation
In his acceptance speech, President elect Trump said, among other things: We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals. We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it. This from a man, who tweeted: The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012 I’ve no idea what to expect now from the Trump … Continue reading Dystopian Future it is then