Monthly Archives: March 2018

Automation, Emerging Technology

#Uber suspends self driving car testing

After a fatal crash with a pedestrian, Uber has suspended road testing of its self driving cars in Arizona, Ontario, Pennsylvania and California. In the latter case, Uber is not even renewing its state permit to conduct on the road tests. Some think this suggests safe, general purpose, self driving cars may not be coming as soon as many were expecting.

Source: Uber suspending testing of self-driving cars in California – Axios

Smart Phones

Verizon to give 4G cellular priority to public safety communications

Verizon’s public safety private core will be generally available on March 29. Public safety customers get preemption and mobile broadband priority service at no additional charge.

Source: Verizon unveils public safety private core | About Verizon

Phone users designated as “public safety” will receive priority and will pre-empt other users for data including smartphones, tablets, video surveillance, and mobile data applications.

Crime/Corruption, Security, Social media, Spying

Should you delete your #Facebook account? Yes, if you can #DeleteFacebook

I’ve written a detailed of explanation of the enormous quantity of data that Facebook is accumulating on each of us, and some of the shocking methods they use to spy on us. That explanation is available at my Learn2C (programming) web site.

At its core, Facebook is a global surveillance and propaganda platform and nothing more.

They are using every possible method to track our online activities, our mobile device activities (location, phone and text message data, web access), our offline activities (yes, they know when you bought something at a retail store having nothing to do with Facebook) and how they harvest our Group memberships, Page Likes and Post Likes to develop elaborate models for each of us – to describe our behavior, our interest and activities, our physical and mental health, our “hot issues” and more. It is truly frightening what Facebook is doing.

For those reasons I no longer believe it is save for anyone to use Facebook. If you do not understand what the problem is with Facebook , you need to read my essay.

A follow up post will discuss ways to minimize Facebook’s surveillance if you are not able to delete your account at this time.

Business, Crime/Corruption, Economy, Management, Policy/Government

80% of VC money goes to just 3 states

A whopping 80 percent of all venture capital investment goes to just three states. That has to change. – Recode

VCs discriminate against women: Just 2.19% of total VC money went to female-founded startups in 2016.

VCs discrimate against anyone over age 30 and especially over age 40

Meanwhile, Facebook spies on everyone and uses that data to propagandize us with messaging designed to control our minds.

The tech industry is looking pretty damned awful right now.