Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Author: fish1964

  • Possibly the Best Tweet Ever

  • Without Comment

  • Data Plans Without Net Neutrality

    Now that the US doesn’t have Net Neutrality someone forwarded a post on data plan options in Portugal, which doesn’t have Net Neutrality (not clear how that could be in the EU, post says there are loopholes).

    Really into messaging? Then pay €4.99 ($5.86 or £4.43) a month and get more data for apps like WhatsApp, Skype, and FaceTime. Prefer social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Messenger, and so on? That’ll be another €4.99 a month.

    Video apps like Netflix and YouTube are available as another add-on, while music (Spotify, SoundCloud, Google Play Music, etc.) is another, as is email and cloud (Gmail, Yahoo Mail, iCloud, etc.).

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    ISPs just like cable companies. Yeah,  that’s an improvement…

  • Yelling Upstairs

    Seth Godin has a short smart blog post every single day.  That by itself is impressive. Despite living in a single floor apartment, today’s post hit home with me:

    When you’re cooking breakfast and the school bus is coming in just a few minutes, it’s tempting (and apparently efficient) to yell up the stairs. If a recalcitrant teenager is hesitating before heading off to school (I know, sometimes it happens), go ahead and yell.

    Good luck with that.

    The alternative is to turn off the stove and walk up the stairs. Catch your breath, then have a quiet conversation.

    Not efficient, but effective.

    This is an almost universal metaphor. We keep finding ways to rationalize various versions of yelling upstairs instead of doing the difficult work of engaging instead.

  • Facebook is Creepy

    If that wasn’t obvious already, this article drives the point home.

    Behind the Facebook profile you’ve built for yourself is another one, a shadow profile, built from the inboxes and smartphones of other Facebook users.

  • Kiss the Good Times Goodbye

    The author of this very good article on autonomous vehicles is a former head of Product Development at General Motors, hence the title. I might have renamed the article, “Kiss senseless road deaths goodbye”.

    Key paragraph for me:

    The tipping point will come when 20 to 30 percent of vehicles are fully autonomous. Countries will look at the accident statistics and figure out that human drivers are causing 99.9 percent of the accidents.

    Of course, there will be a transition period. Everyone will have five years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap or trade it on a module.

    h/t to Om Malik’s new link blog.

  • Steve’s Bike Shop

    If you don’t understand this tweet, Google it…

    I’m thinking NBA players will demand to be hired as contractors very soon…

  • A Terrorist Attack in Real America

    Bret Stephens, the NY Times token conservative has a very good article about yesterday’s attack in NYC.

    Few of us may go to church or own a gun, and hardly any of us voted for the president. But we are good friends to our neighbors, look out for their children and feel nothing but gratitude for the people who protect us. And we choose to live in a place that we know is a target for fanatics because fanatics will always target the things we prize most: openness, diversity, sky-high ambition and the belief that we are more than simply our racial or religious identities.

    Something unreal, as people say, happened in my neighborhood on Tuesday. But we stayed real, and trick-or-treating proceeded on schedule.

  • It Just Works

    Typed on my awesome Dell XPS…

  • Fidget This

    In zero gravity, courtesy of NASA…