Amazon
Prices And Algorithms: It’s A Game Of Cat And Mouse, And You’re Always The Mouse
You probably have the idea that you can use the power of the Internet to compare prices and find deals. Savvy travelers look for advice about the best time to buy airline tickets for a trip – on a Tuesday, about 90 days before the trip, right? You compare several hotel chains when you’re looking for a room. […] continued
Read morePixel 4 And Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
Google has two new phones, the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL. They’re quite nice. If you had one, you’d like it. They might not tempt iPhone users to leave the Apple world, but anyone with an Android phone should consider a Pixel 4, now available through all the carriers. […] continued
Read moreAmazon, Apple, And Ambience
Part 1: Ambient Computing – Buzzwords That Are Changing Your World
Part 2: Google Wants To Surround You With Invisible Assistants
Google, Amazon, and Apple are the only companies capable of surrounding us with connected networks of devices and services. Google hopes to become ubiquitous by extending Google Assistant everywhere. […] continued
Read moreGoogle Wants To Surround You With Invisible Assistants
Part 1: Ambient Computing – Buzzwords That Are Changing Your World
You don’t notice an automatic door when it opens.
Google, Amazon, and Apple want to make it so natural to interact with their devices that you don’t even notice that you’re doing it. We’ll be surrounded by devices. The more there are, the less we’ll notice them. […] continued
Read moreAmbient Computing: Buzzwords That Are Changing Your World
(Sonoma County fires: we have evacuated to a safe place and our house is not threatened. All of our thoughts and best wishes go out to those in danger or suffering losses.)
Hey Google . . .
- What time is my flight today?
- How long will it take to drive to Oakland Airport?
Chilling Tales Of Lost Passwords
Here’s a scary story about the government’s preparations for the 2020 census and how it was exposed to “potentially catastrophic risk” when it lost some passwords.
Costs for the census have soared in the last few decades. After the 2010 census, the Census Bureau decided to embrace technology in 2020 to make the count more accurate and keep costs down. […] continued
Read moreAmazon And The Infinite Mall
Amazon has become an infinitely large mall full of small shops. More than half of the stuff sold on Amazon worldwide in 2017 came from third-party sellers. More than 2,500,000 small and medium-sized businesses sell through Amazon Marketplace.
Amazon was founded in 1994 as a large and well-stocked bookstore, something like Barnes & Noble but with a much larger book selection on the virtual shelves. […] continued
Read morePrivacy And Trust Part 5: What Can We Do?
A series of articles about privacy and trust in the era of tech overlords.
• Part 1: Data about you is being gathered by the big tech companies (as well as many other companies) in startling ways. Their ability to analyze that data and predict your behavior is more like magic than technology – and it has the potential to change the world, for better or worse. […] continued
Read morePrivacy And Trust Part 3: What Do They Know And How Do They Know It?
A series of articles about privacy and trust in the era of tech overlords.
• Part 1: Data about you is being gathered by the big tech companies (as well as many other companies) in startling ways. Their ability to analyze that data and predict your behavior is more like magic than technology – and it has the potential to change the world, for better or worse. […] continued
Read morePrivacy And Trust Part 2: No Escape!
A series of articles about privacy and trust in the era of tech overlords.
• Part 1: Data about you is being gathered by the big tech companies (as well as many other companies) in startling ways. Their ability to analyze that data and predict your behavior is more like magic than technology – and it has the potential to change the world, for better or worse. […] continued
Read moreBreaking News: February 18, 2019
I’m trying to get my thoughts in order for a couple of long articles about how to think about privacy in our world of surveillance by giant tech companies. That’s not quite ready yet. Now, now, don’t be disappointed, get a grip on yourself – it won’t be long before you have a chance to read four or five thousand words about things that I’m poorly qualified to talk about, and won’t that be fun? […] continued
Read moreIt’s Not Just Your Computer – Everything Is Too Hard To Use (And It’s Not Your Fault)
I wrote an article a few years ago about how difficult it is for non-tech people to manage the fiddly bits required to run a Windows computer. It’s one of the things that drove the transition from computers to phone and tablets.
An interesting thing is happening today. The explosion of devices, products and services is causing just as much confusion and frustration in the world of mobile devices. […] continued
Read moreBloomberg And Chinese Spies: The Strangest Technology Story Of The Year
The Chinese government has put secret spy chips on US government servers. They’re stealing secrets from Apple and Amazon. And the US government is engaged in a massive effort to prevent us from learning anything about it, for unknown reasons.
Maybe.
How about this: the US government is mounting a full-court disinformation campaign, spreading lies through multiple sources to discredit China and gain an advantage in trade wars – and taking down a huge media entity as collateral damage. […] continued
Read moreThe 2018 Bruceb News Year In Review
Remember when I wrote an article a year ago predicting that always-connected computers would be heavily promoted in 2018?
Yeah, about that: not even close. Nada. All the buzz died away when the first PCs in that category turned out to be underpowered and, well, pretty awful.
Okay, that prediction didn’t pan out. […] continued
Read morePut A Google Home Hub On Your Xmas List
The Google Home Hub is my favorite home assistant. Put it on your Xmas list, or sneak one under the tree for yourself. If your pictures are stored in Google Photos, then the Google Home Hub is worth the investment just because it is the best photo frame ever. But Google Home Hub stands out for everything else it does, too, so it’s highly recommended unless you are already so deep in the Amazon Echo ecosystem that it doesn’t make sense to switch. […] continued
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