Covered this week; How a Jeopardy clue is written… First human fatality caused by an autonomous vehicle in Tempe Arizona… The tide may be turning on Facebook… Netflix develops a signature font to bring down the cost of brand ownership… War, not scandal, will end Donald Trump… A granular explanation of autonomous vehicles… Six key moments from the #neveragain rallies…
March 19, 2018
There is an art to a Jeopardy! clue. Its answers-in-search-of-questions exude a certain tone and tenor that’s different from trivia offerings from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, HQ, The Weakest Link, or even a throwback like You Bet Your Life. But the writer’s room is also a factory, one that must churn out 61 clues per episode, which adds up to hundreds of thousands of clues aired during the show’s long run.
For the hardcore, here’s a link to the Jeopardy Archive.
March 20, 2018
An Uber self-driving car hit and killed a woman in Tempe, Ariz., a tragic milestone that could lead to a major setback in the otherwise feverish development of driverless transportation.
March 21, 2018
It’s looking like Facebook has really stepped in it this time… which catches me at an interesting junction where since the start of the year I’ve heavily curtailed my use of the social network… more because it began to feel like an activity of diminishing returns as opposed to having known any of this was going on… but was I really surprised by any of it? Not really as it always seemed unlikely a moron like Donald Trump could have been elected POTUS without some underlying nefariousness having gone down…
March 22, 2018
“With the global nature of Netflix’s business, font licensing can get quite expensive. Developing this typeface not only created an ownable and unique element for the brand’s aesthetic… it saves the company millions of dollars a year as foundries move towards impression-based licensing for their typefaces in many digital advertising spaces.”
March 23, 2018
“The two biggest threats to Trump’s political survival are recession and war. Trump cannot do much to prevent the former, nor can he do much to mitigate the political damage of it. But on the latter, he can do a lot. A war with Iran, something hawks seem to encourage these days, would destroy Trump’s presidency. That’s where the bad news for everyone comes in. Signs have been troubling.”
March 24, 2018
“Because both today’s and tomorrow’s vehicles offer dramatically varying degrees of automated driving, it became necessary to develop a classification system to describe the progression of these technologies, if only to use as shorthand for understanding their relative capabilities and limitations.”
March 25, 2018
It was the biggest gun control protest in a generation. Hundreds of rallies were staged across the US and beyond as marchers filled the streets calling for the implementation of tighter measures following the deadly mass shooting at a Florida school in February. That incident not only ignited the #NeverAgain movement, but also Saturday’s mass demonstrations, which took place under the banner of March For Our Lives and were led by a rally in Washington DC attended by some 200,000 demonstrators.
