Covered this week; Apple assembles the biggest heart study in history… Penny Marshall dies at 75… Getting even with robo-callers… The sad aftermath of Tim Bergling’s departure from this mortal coil… Americans earning over $200k are flocking to these neighborhoods… Uber has no choice other than to restart testing of self-driving cars… Regarding our cyber-security, it’s just a matter of time…
December 17, 2018
I’ve never worn a watch… so I don’t have an Apple Watch… but I gotta say, every article I read that resembles this one has me thinking more and more about getting one. Imagine if a relatively low-priced piece of tech kept you from having a stroke… food for thought.
Apple partnered with Stanford University to launch the Apple Heart Study, an investigation to determine how accurately the Apple Watch could detect these irregular heartbeats, which can be a warning sign of an oncoming stroke. The company sent recruitment emails to Apple Watch users and made signing up for the study easy — simply download an app and wear the Watch. No one could have foreseen the staggering response.
December 18, 2018
Another presence of my youth… anyone in their late-40’s on up will remember Laverne & Shirley and Penny Marshall… with her Dad Gary Marshall and second husband Rob Reiner there’s some real Hollywood lineage going on within that family. Sadly, Miss Marshall succumbed to complications from diabetes, she was 75.
Penny Marshall, the nasal-voiced co-star of the slapstick sitcom “Laverne & Shirley” and later the chronically self-deprecating director of hit films like “Big” and “A League of Their Own,” died on Monday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 75.
December 19, 2018
These assholes… jamming up my incoming calls all day long… nobody will have everyone that could possibly call them in their contacts… so what to do about that call where you can’t tell who it may be from?
Despite Do Not Call lists, the shrieking of obscenities and other defenses, rogue calls have only been growing. YouMail Inc., a provider of voice mail and call-blocking services, estimates that robocalls in the U.S. increased to 5.1 billion in November from 2.8 billion in December 2017. That’s nearly 16 calls last month for every single person in the country.
December 20, 2018
The suicide of Tim Bergling, aka Avicii, was a sad turn for music fans. Having died without a will his estate now reverts to his parents… I’m sure it doesn’t cover their loss.
Bergling was very charitable during his professional success. In 2011, he founded House For Hunger, eventually donating $1 million via ticket sales to Feeding America. He also gave €1 million to Swedish charity Radiohjalpen and $60,000 to the FEED Foundation. He worked closely with (RED) in their cause to raise awareness for, fight the spread of, and increase the care options for those living with HIV and AIDS.
December 21, 2018
Articles like this one from Bloomberg are always entertaining… where they’re able to visualize data into a form that makes it understandable. The neighborhood pictured at the top of this post, what’s left of the Cabrini-Green housing projects on Chicago’s near north side, used to be one of the most dangerous places in the city… now, it’s where the rich are moving, a stunning turn of events…
The chasm between rich and poor hasn’t been this wide since data collection began in the 1960s. Workers experience starkly different versions of America depending on which city or neighborhood they live in. One way to measure the economic fortunes of a place is by the concentration of households earning $200,000 or more, the highest threshold in the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
December 22, 2018
Oh man… self-driving car talk again? I agree… perhaps someday I’ll see some data that will convince me otherwise… but in the meantime, cars that drive themselves is maybe the ‘technological advancement’ I’ve been least interested in over my entire life… but Uber’s in a pickle, so they really don’t have a choice.
Uber’s ramp-up of testing will likely be a slow one. The company says it will begin by limiting its vehicles to on a one-mile stretch of road in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during daylight hours on weekdays. The cars’ speed won’t exceed more than 25 miles per hour, and there will be two employees assigned to each test drive. These self-imposed restrictions are part of Uber’s attempt to earn back trust from the public and local governments by showing that it can responsibly test its technology on public roads.
December 23, 2018
The outward anxieties I contemplate on a daily basis culminate in the idea of an attack on our digital infrastructure… a place where I bet very few of us really have any idea the depths of our vulnerability or how entwined our daily lives are with it functioning as intended.
The criminals who break into the web sites of banks or chainstores and steal personal data or money are not the scariest people out there, he told me. The hackers we really ought to be worrying about are the ones trying to take entire countries offline. People who are trying to take down the internet, switch the lights off, cut the water supply, disable railways, or blow up factories.
Editor’s Note; I’ll be taking the next couple weeks off to decompress and enjoy the holidays… see you back right here the week of 1/7…
