Closing the Barn Door

I'm having trouble getting motivated to write this week, so I'm going to be lazy and jump on the anti-Facebook bandwagon.  I know that I said it was being over covered last week, but the new stories about The Zuck potentially doing some insider trading and how they have been scraping Android data from phones for years has got some creative juices stirring.

And now there's the newspaper ads that Zuckerberg took out.  You can read what you want into the ads as words like 'limit' and 'stopped apps like this from getting so much information' leave wiggle room for FB to provide some information to 'apps like this' and maybe more to other apps that aren't quite so like that.

All this begs the question of whether you should #deletefacebook.  The surface answer is easy: yes.  But there are consequences to everything, so lets look a bit closer.

Fifth Domain Electricity

There's been more than a few news articles this past week about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica and how user data was used to (maybe (almost certainly)) swing the 2016 election.  Enough coverage that I'm not going to talk about it here.  Suffice to say that anything you put on social media can and will be used in ways that you may not intend.  Including rambling blog posts.

Instead, I want to discuss another item that is not getting as much traction, but may be much more serious.  It's this opinion piece from The Hill that warns of Russia's ability to attack our infrastructure through the internet.  It sounds like something from a spy thriller and would be easy to dismiss if they had not already done it once.

Go Go Gadget Mobile!

A couple of months ago, my ten year old car decided to stop firing on one of its cylinders.  As that killed a quarter of its power, that made it a significant decision on its part.

As I believe in squeezing out as much as I can out of large capital investments, I dutifully took it in to the mechanic who changed the plugs, the wires and the coil.  None of which shut down the baleful red Check Engine Light on the dash.  This failure was beyond the quick fixes.  A quick comparison between the engine overhaul estimate and the Kelly Blue Book value of the vehicle put me in the market of a new (to me) car.

And, if I'm going to do that, then I might as well go electric.  With an updated electronics package.  And a bamboo interior with recycled fabric and LED lights that use light frequencies guaranteed to not hurt the eyes of roadside wildlife.

Mom, Dad: Please Stop Fighting

On Friday last week, Business Insider posted an article that stated Amazon will stop selling Nest products including thermostats and home security products.  Nest, which is owned by Alphabet (Google), was apparently expecting the call.

This is the latest in a long standing retail feud between the two Internet giants:

• Amazon would not sell the Chromecast for a long time ostensibly because it did not play back Amazon Prime Video in a way that Amazon liked.
• Google pulled YouTube from Amazon's line of Fire products, but then relented when Amazon agreed to start selling the Chromecast... though they still aren't showing up on Amazon three months later.
• Amazon does not stock the Google Home product that directly competes with its Echo line of smart speakers.

On the surface, it appears that Amazon is being the antagonist and using its e-tail power to try and curtail the Big-G.  Dig a little deeper and it is clear that both are holding their own share of the blame-bag.