Real tech stories. Really shaky analysis.
I appreciate you taking time between what should be your fifth and sixth viewings of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles this holiday weekend to read the Weekly Tech Views. If, for some strange, sad reason you are not familiar with perhaps the funniest movie ever filmed(1), then stop reading this, find a copy or fire up Amazon Prime Video (or, if you have to buy it at the expense of, say, supporting a Kickstarter, I won’t argue with that choice), and acquaint yourself with Neal Page and Del Griffith for 92 minutes of hilarity.
See you in 93 minutes.
For the week of November 21 – 25, 2016…
Hey, A Forfeit Is A Win
Google has changed its Popular Times feature so that rather than indicating how busy a bar or restaurant usually is throughout the day, it will estimate how long the line is at the moment. This will certainly prove a useful adjustment around here, because when our flag football team gets a win, it’s not uncommon for the victory celebration to result in the combination of our team and fans(2) monopolizing three full four-person tables at Applebees.
(Prime Members Only)
ABX Air, which contracts to fly packages for Amazon, saw 250 employees go on strike just ahead of the busy holiday season. Should the strike not be resolved quickly, Amazon will shift some of the load to UPS and FedEx, but even if your order can’t be accommodated there, there is still a good chance it will arrive on time if the package fits in the trunk of Sheila from Accounts Payable’s ’07 Honda Accord and you live reasonably near her in-laws’ place in Omaha where she’ll be visiting this weekend.
Fakebook! Has Anybody Used That Yet? Let’s Say I’m First
Facebook is taking steps to fight the rampant appearance of fake news on the site, including a mechanism to make it easier to report misinformation, which will definitely be helpful when, a half hour later, they need to start developing a mechanism to report fake reporting of fake news on the site.
Count Your Blessings
Apple confirmed that some iPhone 6S phones are shutting down when the battery drops between 60 and 50%. Those with affected devices can get a free replacement battery by visiting betterthanstartingafire.com.
Only One Of These Two Have Experience Completing Drives
Nutonomy, developer of self-driving vehicle software, will make Boston its second test location, following three months in a 2.5-square-mile area of Singapore. The Boston test will take place in a lightly-traveled industrial park and without passengers.
Thank God. I mean, I’m sure Nutonomy’s technology is capable and all, but dealing with real Boston driving three months into testing would be like rounding up 11 people who have never heard of American football, letting them toss the ball around for ten minutes, then making them face the Cleveland Brow–sorry, hometown bias. I obviously meant an NFL-caliber team.
Go Drehcufdlfsv!
The United Kingdom’s first college of cyber education will be located at Bletchley Park, the site where Alan Turing’s team broke Germany’s enigma code during World War II. The students admitted beginning in 2018 will be expected to adhere to a strict code of conduct consisting of a single rule: when told there will be a quiz in any class, nobody, under penalty of expulsion, will respond with “Is it a Turing test?”
Half Of It Was Just To Avoid Talking Politics With Uncle Roy
Online shoppers in the U.S. spent $1.15 billion between midnight and 5pm Eastern on Thanksgiving. Wow. That is a lot of money. It means if someone felt like they had worked really hard all year and deserved to reward himself with both an Xbox One and PS4, that would only be 5/100,000 of 1% of that total. Which, when you think about, is practically nothing. Not even worth discussing with someone unreasonably upset by it, right?
Bet It’ll Have At Least 16 GB Of RAM
Japan is hoping to build the world’s fastest supercomputer, budgeting $173 million for the project. $173 million for a computer. Seriously, if that guy we were talking about earlier spent another couple hundred on games for those consoles, still not even a drop in the bucket, right?
(1) Movie and film allegedly mean the same thing, yet you can’t say “the funniest film ever movied.” At least not without proofreaders giving you a bunch of grief.
(2) “Fans” pretty much consists of our left tackle Tim’s wife Becky, who doesn’t like football or sitting in the cold or, frankly, the rest of us on the team, but she’s determined to be wherever Tim goes because she liked even less the look on his face last week when he read about the hacked AdultFriendFinder site.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s Weekly Tech Views, despite my sabotaging myself by telling you to watch Planes, Trains, and Automobiles first. Why would I want to follow that? Also, I was probably a little hasty telling you to buy that rather than back a Kickstarter.
If you sensibly ignored that bit of advice, then let me submit the Tech, Please! Kickstarter for your evaluation at bit.ly/techplease. Over 500 stories recapping the year in tech, without a bunch of accuracy getting in the way of your enjoyment. Plus, getting an ebook, paperback, or having your name in a story as a substitute for some weasely spokesperson supports this very blog. What a deal!
Mike Range
@MovieLeagueMike
Weekly Tech Views: The Tech, No Logic Blog by Mike Range is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Xiaomi doesn’t need phones, GoDaddy reportedly buying Host Europe, and Japan builds a supercomputer.
Google shakes up its Cast names, Bletchley Park becomes a security college and Reddit CEO edits comments about himself.
Facebook tests post blocking for China, Dorsey suspends himself from Twitter accidentally, Appearing owns all the smartphone profits.
Facebook Internet drone crashes, Google can now tell you how long the line for brunch is, ATMs hacked to spit out cash.
Symantec to buy Lifelock, Oracle to buy Dyn and Facebook to hire 500 Brits.
