WorldCAD Access

CAD in Russia: January 2023 Update

2300 by 2030 (All links to Russian news sources are run through Google Translate to present them in English.) With the isolation of Russia now a hard fact, the government is pushing hard to replace Western technology. I suppose it is an aspiration resurrected from the Soviet era, when communism ran all things centrally. On the CAD side of things, we learn from isiscad that the goal is “to develop about 2,300 import-substituting CAD and PLM engineering programs by 2030”-- a goal as laughable as “30 by 30” (30% of the world’s surface being protected by 2030) or “100% by... Read more →

Going old school camera

Yashica GS rangefinder I grew up in an era when the SLR was the true way to take photographs. Rangerfinders were sniffed upon. (SLR, single-lens reflex, cameras showed us the true view, directly through the camera lens -- hence the SL part. The R part came from the mirror, which allowed us to look through the lens, flipping up when we pressed the shutter button, exposing the film to the light. Rangerfinders, by contrast, mounted two viewfinders above the lens, so we saw an offset image. There were two viewfinders, so that as we rotated the focus ring, one moved... Read more →

PayPal is Replaceable

There is a wiser alternative PayPal was a brilliant idea, an way for people to send money to each other easily, and pay for things without giving online retailers our credit card information (and having hackers steal it from them). The convenience outweighed its high cost: just specify the amount to send to an email address! It was particularly useful for receiving payments internationally, such as for someone like me, as nearly all my clients are are outside of my home country of Canada. While PayPal costs nothing for buyers to use, sellers lose about 3.5% on every transaction, an... Read more →

Finding the Bottlenecks in Solidworks

Between one and multi cores Alin Vargatu of TriMech researched where the single-core bottlenecks in Solidworks are, and reported it in a Webinar at trimech.com/resources/upgrade-your-hardware-and-software-for-maximum-productivity (email required). While the purpose of the Webinar is to sell upgrades to Solidworks 2023 and new Dell hardware, it contains useful information. Let’s take a look at some of what he and Dell’s Scott Hamilton had to say at the “Upgrade Your Hardware and Software for Maximum Productivity in 2023” session. The poster benchmark reduces the time to open a large assembly from 8.75 minutes to 1.75 minutes -- 5x faster. The changes being... Read more →

Running Linux in Windows 10/11

The tyranny of Linux The promise of Linux is that it would free us from the tyranny of Microsoft and Apple and their operating system "tax." But then the two near-monopolists broke the narrative by making their OSes (mostly) free. Instead, Linux imposed a different kind of tyranny: choice. Here's a chart from 2016 of many kinds of Linux available back then; since then, choice has magnified. Choice I was a faith-filled follower, until I wasn't. After keeping up with Mint Linux upgrades and several others (hey, they're freee!) I finally realized that Linux would never be successful as a... Read more →

Rethinking Power Supplies

From one to many I began with personal computers back when they still were called "micro-computers" and cost $6,000 for a bottom-of-the-line model; triple that amount for 2022 dollars. The parallel cable alone cost $100 in 1983 dollars, required to connect my Victor 9000 desktop to the Epson MX-80 dot-matrix printer ($800). Parallel connector (left) and USB-A connector Living in North America meant that 110V-only computers weren't a problem. A good friend, moving to Israel for his higher education, had in 1985 bought a portable Compaq computer in anticipation of the move. Portable, as in "portable sewing machine size and... Read more →

Using a Used HP Elite X2

7x cheaper than new Computers come in standard form factors, such as big boxy desktops and wear-on-your wrist smart watches. One form factor that has been around since the 1990s was popularized in the late 1960s in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey -- the tablet. In the movie, however, tablets were faked by having a film projector under the desk “react” to the astronauts’ interactions. Tablets seemed to come of age in the 1990s with the unexpected success of the PalmPilot handheld organizer. But then the unexpected failure of Microsoft’s Windows for Pen Computing initiative, along with the failure... Read more →

December update: CAD inside Russia

Expanding inside, and outside I am getting the impression that the CAD industry inside Russia is resigned to accepting the new reality: the divorce from the Western world is not going to go away anytime soon. If we take a pariah from an earlier era as the template, after Germany imposed a six-year war on Europe, it went through a three-year de-Nazification program, followed by war crimes trials, followed by the rebuilding program funded by the USA. (In this case, rebuilding Germany was seen as the better approach than the post-WWI approach of keeping Germany financially in jail.) So, we... Read more →

Moving bookmarks, passwords between Operas

If you know how The Opera Web browser is one I've been using ever since the days when floppy diskettes were still considered the acceptable form of software distribution. Although, if you needed to use a Web browser, you'd have an Internet connection, and so you could download it. Opera used to be programmed in Norway, but now it has Chinese owners, which is annoying. Still, it remains the best Web browser around: it's based on the Chrome browser (as are most these days) and then adds all kinds of useful extras. (The founders of Opera subsequently developed their own,... Read more →

Movies Still Come on Discs: Bullet Train

from Sony Pictures I sometimes review movies I’ve seen on Netflix in 288 characters on Twitter, and so it’s a different experience having Sony Pictures send me a complimentary DVD of their recent movie ‘Bullet Train’ in the mail for review. As is common these days, the one DVD case included Blu-ray, standard, and digital versions of the movie. I couldn’t use our Blu-ray player, as my wife and her friends had taken over our movie room. Windows never supported Blu-ray (out of pique that Sony’s format won out over its own HD DVD format), and even dropped support for... Read more →

Getting PaintShop Pro 6 Compatible with Windows 10

XP, Pleez The About screen for PaintShop Pro v6 I've been using PaintShop Pro as my go-to raster editing software since version 4. Version 6 produced a mature program that does everything I need of it; I did get version 8, but it lost an important feature: the ability to resize an image without losing quality. So, v6 it is. Here's the thing: PaintShop Pro v6 came out in 2000. Yep, it's 22 years old. But being that old has for me three big advantages that no recent version can boast (it's now owned by Corel or whatever that company... Read more →

Beat inflation, buy reconditioned

Buying a computer for 7x less HP's X2 series of expensive tablet PCs It is completely normal for us to buy a house used, a car used. That's because they are mature products. A 15-year-old house or car is as good (and sometimes better) than a brand-new one. With inflation inching closer to 10% a year, and groceries up 25% in some cases, it pays to look for ways to save money. One way is to buy reconditioned electronics. Reconditioned is better than used, because reconditioned or renewed implies there is some guarantee that the device is in pretty good... Read more →

Outrage at repair shops

Oi! Get yer hands off my stuff! The Register reports on a study from University of Guelph researchers Jason Ceci, Jonah Stegman, and Hassan Khan on the privacy policies and practices of electronics repair shops. They sent a laptop to 18 repair sites, asking them to replace the battery. The three were checking on the kind of privacy customers could expect, given that a typical laptop contains personal information like letters, Web site histories, photographs, and passwords. Some findings of the firms, which the trio did not name: 17 out of 18 firms asked for login credentials 0 firms posted... Read more →

NYT puffs SBF, gets slammed

"It could be worse" The second biggest story in tech this week is SBF. It's second only to the breathless "did you hear what Musk did now?" updates from a digerati who fear the unleashing of free speech in their favorite playground. (In brief, Sam Bankman-Fried, 30, known as SBF and head of FTX, a firm wanting to make itself the largest crypto-exchange in the world, borrowed between $1 and $10 billion from customers, plunging FTX into bankruptcy after the illegal act was unveiled, sending the value of FTX and 120 associated firms from $32 billion to $0 billion. It... Read more →

Bricsys enters construction

The final frontier This week was the BricsCAD V23 launch event, during which new ceo Rahul Kejriwal announced his plan to go after the construction industry with his software, even though 80% has no interest in it. Listening to the several keynote addresses, Bricsys made it clear that it is definitely going after the construction market, as another CAD vendor, Autodesk, has. Bricsys displayed a slide showing that 95% of data in construction and engineering goes unused. Clearly, that needs to have a solution! The "why" behind the dis-use of reuse of data in construction was not explained by Bricsys,... Read more →

The Engines That Power CAD Software

Offering proprietary MCAD formats in a while Recording the conference for broadcast There are software companies who toil in the background, who are content to remain largely anonymous, and without whom our CAD/CAM/CAE industry would collapse. These firms quietly write programming toolkits, translators, kernels, and even complete programs. They seem quiet because they don’t need to market to the wider design audience -- just to CAD vendors. Programming toolkits (aka SDKs, software development kits) make it possible to read, display, edit, and write CAD objects. The most popular ones are for objects defined by Autodesk’s near-universal DWG format, along with... Read more →

Live from Vectorworks Design Day in Vancouver Canada

Deep underground in Robson Square Prepping the skating rink at Robson Square, with steps leading up to the Vancouver Art Gallery Keynote Address Dr Biplab Sarkar, ceo of the Vectorworks company, flew here to Vancouver Canada to give the keynote address at Robson Square. Vectorworks Canada is three years old, and copies the modol of Vectorworks Great Britain. He gave unusually detailed sales figures, such as selling approximately 20,000 new licenses a year. (I am interpolating off graphs). In Canada, the company has about 140,000 users, with Vectorworks Canada selling around 350 licenses a year and roughly $3 million annually,... Read more →

Ark vs Matidor

The clearcut is murky Law suits between companies accusing the other of stealing technology are not uncommon. I’ve been involved in a couple of them as an expert consultant, such as Intergraph suing HP over using CPUs containing technology that the courts had earlier found had been stolen by Intel; a refrigeration company suing a startup after an employee left with DWG files; and so on. In all cases, the offending party apologizes, or is found guilty and/or pays monetary compensation. Here’s a story that goes one step further: it asks whether industry recognition ought to be stripped from the... Read more →

Why Creo Is Unlikely To Be PTC’s Next Onshape

Melt the boat I've made the statement that I doubt PTC will be able to turn all of Creo into an Onshape-like online app, as executives have been telling financial analysts. PTC spent over half-a-billion dollars buying Onshape from venture capitalists who had funded the ex-Solidworks staff who programmed it, and a few short years ago promised an Onshape-like version of Creo in five to ten years. We’ll see. In recent conference calls, PTC execs stopped talking about Project Atlas. Autodesk has, after all, been plugging away at the problem for more than a decade, starting when it bought a... Read more →

Q&A from ODA Summit 2022

Live on the desktop The Open Design Alliance held its annual conference this year online again, and during it attendees asked questions, which I reproduce here. You can watch the replay of the event at youtube.com/watch?v=6P93f4IVZJA&t=3266s. A few days later, I interviewed ODA president Neil Peterson. Here are the two Q&As. - - - Q: Will we be able to join [two or more] IFC [industry foundation classes] models in order to have a [single] federated IFC model? A: Federated models are planned for later this year. Q: Does the Scan-To-BIM roadmap includes the generation of cloud points using photogrammetry?... Read more →

Twitteratti Dump On Horizon

Metaverse eats Facebook Facebook is spending ten billion dollars a year developing its VR environment. Now, it turns out, its own staff won't use it barely: “For many of us, we don’t spend that much time in Horizon and our dogfooding dashboards show this pretty clearly,” wrote Meta vp of Metaverse Vishal Shah. Here are some of the best reactions to the statement from the Twitterverse. - - - Alex Heath (@alexeheath): Meta's flagship metaverse app Horizon is too buggy and barely used by the employees building it, per leaked internal memos from last month I obtained. theverge.com/2022/10/6/23391895/meta-facebook-horizon-worlds-vr-social-network-too-buggy-leaked-memo Will Oremus... Read more →

October Update From Inside Russia

Slowly switching over Helicopter designed with T-Flex CAD from Top Systems Getting information about the current state of the CAD industry in Russia is somewhat delicate, as the Russian government jails those it thinks have been talking negatively about its war against Ukraine. My contacts there won't speak; when they do, only in positive generalities. I’ve gleaned additional bits of info this month from the isicad CAD news site, from business and politics daily Kommersant, and from an anonymous contact. Replacing Autodesk Following Autodesk closing its office in Russia, “licenses have not been updated or sold since the end of... Read more →

What Happens When You Get That Letter from Autodesk

EULA on the attack When it launched AutoCAD, Autodesk was lauded for the cheap price ($1,000), the ability to run on many different kinds of personal computers, and being customizable -- rare at a time when traditional CAD software could cost $100,000 a seat, ran on proprietary hardware, and could not be customized by users. Also, making copies of it was easy. So with version 2.5 in 1986, Autodesk began its decades-long (and unsuccessful) crackdown on copying by initially adding a hardware lock. The lockdown was a near-instant disaster, as (1) the hardware made it difficult to print drawings (due... Read more →

What it's like to use a $200 Chromebook

$150 cheaper than 11 years ago For the most part, the tech media ignores Chromebooks, given their obsession primarily for products whose names start with i or Mac. In contrast, I've been continually amazed by the high-end Chromebook I've been using for three years now, the Acer Spin 13 with its metal body and fast CPU. The icing on the cake for ChromeOS is its ability to run Android apps, which is a significant advantage Microsoft is trying to copy but makes less sense in the Windows environment. (I had bought the very first Chromebook by Samsung a decade ago,... Read more →

What's happening with Vectorworks 2023

Shipping in September Perhaps the biggest -- and saddest -- surprise from yesterday's interview with Vectorworks CEO Dr Biplab Sarkar is the news that the company is switching to selling only subscriptions to customers, as of January 2023, in English-speaking countries. If you have a permanent license, it'll keep working as long as your computer's operating systems supports it, either on Windows or MacOS. When I suggested that permanent licenses are an advantageous marketing tactic, Mr Sarkar agreed that Vectorworks also used to promote that, but that it is easier on their back office system to deal with just one... Read more →

Why Tech Companies Sell Complex Ideas

CAD isn't a cell phone, yet In his DeZign Stuff blog, Matt Lombard explains why we can't understand the marketing jargon of some CAD vendors (*koff*Dassault*koff*). The tl;dr explanation is that these companies aren't marketing to end-users but to upper management. Read his article here, please: https://dezignstuff.com/why-technology-companies-have-a-hard-time-selling-complex-ideas. It’s certainly always fascinating for me to watch the blank looks of Solidworks users at Solidworks World 3dexperience World as Dassault execs ask in vain for applause for their high-level pronouncements. If they were politicians, they might be tempted to ask for a better class of attendee. Mr Lombard mentions how terminals-attached-to-mainframes fell... Read more →

Twitteratti dunk on Zukerberg's interpretation of France

Non, non When Facebook-Meta yesterday expanded its metaverse with cartoon versions of France's Eiffel tower and Spain's Basílica de la Sagrada Família, people pounced. Here I collected some of the best tweets: @ordinarytings: Mark Zuckerberg launches Horizon Worlds in France and Spain with an eye-gougingly ugly VR selfie. Meta's metaverse ploy is surely dying in the dark. Steve Kovach (@stevekovach): This literally cost $10 billion. Michael Gartenberg (@gartenberg): There's a reason why people call Zuckerberg a two dimensional character. Robert Evans (@iwriteok): Tragic that every airline and tourist economy in the world is about to collapse now that Facebook has... Read more →

Dassault Explains Solidworks’ Q2 Drop in Sales

Not all China's fault Sales of Solidworks fell in Q2 of 2022, which is an unusual event for Dassault Systemes. Here to explain it is an executive from Dassault, who spoke during the company’s quarterly conference call with financial analysts. The text has been edited for clarity and brevity. - - - Q: Was the Q2 drop in new Solidworks CAD licenses due mostly due to China? A: Yes, you're right. But something [else] happened this year, as you may know we increased prices. It was aligned in some countries with the level of inflation. Many of our resellers anticipated... Read more →

How my Dell Inspiron is doing, 16 months later

Quirks and good stuff I'm pleased to report that for the most part, the Inspiron 7405 2n1 laptop I bought 16 months ago for $1,100 has been proving its worth. "Inspiron" is the third level of laptop, so not top-end. Dell's caste system is XPS at the top end, followed by Latitude, then Inspiron. "2n1" means it has the 360-degree hinge, so it can transform into a tablet. I got mine in the dark-brown color, which looks pretty nice and is pretty different from everyone else's. Basic specs are... 14" touch screen with narrow bezels 2.0HGz - 4.2GHz 8-core Radeon... Read more →

PTC Feels Good Leaving China

PTC ceo James Heppelmann explains how his company came to have a lowered profile in China. He was responding to a question during PTC's quarterly conference call with financial analysts. I’ve edited the text slightly for clarity. The original transcript can be read at Seeking Alpha: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4526704-ptc-inc-ptc-ceo-jim-heppelmann-on-q3-2022-results-earnings-call-transcript. - - - James Heppelmann: I think the key thing in China to know, if you don’t know this now, is it’s now 5% of our business. So we have very little exposure. It had previously been as high as 7% or 8%. But when President Trump was in the office, he went... Read more →

The Twitteratti snarks on Facebook's revenue decline

Even Walmart is down this quarter @devilslayer1802: This is the first time EVER Facebook has had a quarter year-on-year revenue decline. Anthony DeRosa / @anthony: Facebook parent Meta posted its biggest drop in daily users and its first decline in revenue as the company struggles to adjust to macroeconomic forces and growing competition from rival TikTok. @infographx: Gen Z is literally ditching all the other social apps, except TikTok. Chaotic Goode / @laurengoode: “Meta shares have lost about half their value since beginning of the year, underscoring investor concern about the health of the co's advertising business. That unit has... Read more →

The State of the Smartphone

Peaked and plateaued I was thinking the other day that I should get a spare smartphone, just in case mine gets crushed, disabled, or lost. I’d want to be back in business the same day. Looking around for a spare, I came to the realization that smartphones had peaked back in 2019. That year, CPU speed plateaued at just under 3GHz. Since then the emphasis has been on non-phone functions like cameras, software that processes photographs, and screens that fold. I got the idea for a modern spare from reading about the low launch price for the newest phone from... Read more →

Canada proves the folly of single-source tech

Rogers goes oopsie In July, the entire Rogers system collapsed for a day. Rogers in Canada forms an oligopoly in communications services, along with Telus and Bell -- landline telephone, cell phone, cable tv, Internet access, and commercial data flows. People who were signed up with Rogers could not phone 911 to access emergency services or get work done remotely or text their friends. The outage impacted the economy, as stores could process no debit card transactions and in some cases not process credit cards either. Some hospitals were reduced to contacting staff by announcements made through local AM radio... Read more →

Life of Pei

Encore Carl Pei is the antithesis of Steve Jobs. Both are/were brilliant at marketing, but whereas Jobs told his customers what they would get from Apple, Pei asked them, nicely. He did such a good job at guerrilla marketing that to this day there still are tech journalists who think of OnePlus as a plucky indie smartphone shop. It's not. OnePlus is a brand of Chinese giant BKK Electronics, which sells smartphones and other electronics under brand names like Oppo, Vivo, Realme, Imoo, and iQOO. Combined, it is the second largest seller of phones in the world, after Samsung. (As... Read more →

Achieving my three goals

Three out of three In my late teens or early 20s, I came up with three goals, as I looked ahead to my life post-university. Maybe it was because goals and such were trendy at the time, but after some reflection it came to me that my three goals were Become a millionaire (a.k.a. be independently wealthy) Own my own radio station Be the world's best-known transportation engineer Disparate yes, but reflecting my state in the late 1970s. At the time, I aimed to become a transportation engineer, and so was working my way through engineering at the University of... Read more →

Scanning Old Film Slides

Slide'n scan After I bought my own 35mm SLR camera in 1976 (a Minolta XE-7), I made the fortuitous discovery that our local major pharmacy chain sold 24-exposure slide film for just $3, processing included. That was so cheap that I went on a photography binge with my new camera, and to this day I have a filing cabinet box filled with plastic boxes holding 24 and 36 slides. How to digitize them? While my kids were still young, I paid them 10 cents a slide to run them through an Epson flatbed scanner. It could hold six at a... Read more →

Benchmarking the M1 vs Pentium

Slowing, slower There was a lot of hype generated by Apple's marketing department and echo'ed by the in-love-with-Apple tech media over its new in-house CPU, the M1. The specs were so amazing that excitement ran high over what subsequent CPUs would be able to do, M2, et al. To infinity and beyond, to quote a cartoon character. I was relieved to hear it would be amazing. The first Mac mini I bought was pretty good. (See figure at left.) It still had all the accouterments that Apple, in its need for every higher profits, stripped out of subsequent models: DVD... Read more →

Solving Eudora's June 2022 problem with GMail

Double authentication Google in June 2022 increased the security level needed to access its Gmail service, and as a result some Eudora email users can no longer access their accounts that run through Gmail, such as the Telus and Shaw ISPs in Canada. The error message may read similar to this one: ERR [AUTH] Username and password not accepted. The error message tells us that Eudora has a problem with authenticating who you are to Gmail, and that the username and password are unacceptable to Google. Google had been warning that this would be occurring, but it is not always... Read more →

I don't like Bluetooth earbuds but this Soundcore model I do like

Life A2 NC My ears are not suited to earbuds. The internal shape of them causes earbuds to slowly slide out. So I look for models with earwings to fit behind my ears' antitargus, which keeps earbuds in place. But this style of headphone is rare. I don't like Bluetooth headphones. The BT spec requires added compression to the music being wirelessly transmitted over the relatively slow data link. And it's always more annoying to connect a Bluetooth headphone than just plugging in a wired one, whether to the audio or USB-C connectors. Nevertheless, going wireless is convenient in some... Read more →

How to Decode Android WiFi Password QR Codes

Plain as day I was faced with the problem of my Windows laptop not connecting to a relative's WiFi. He had given me the password to my Android phone through QR code, and that worked. But when I typed in the password he gave me into my Windows laptop, the router refused to allow it. Andorid normally hides WiFi passwords with texts that reads "(unchanged)". I wondered if I could get the password from the QR code, translating the array of small squares into English. I could. Here's how. This method uses a second Android phone: On the Android phone... Read more →

Spatial's 3D Insider's Summit conference 2022

Live from Munich Alright, here we are in Munich, my first trip overseas in 2.5 years. For a decade or two, it was normal for me to commute to Europe and other fascinating places in the world several times a year. Heck, I timed my shopping trips in Europe to replenish those things that aren't available or are more expensive in North America. So, I am in Munich for the Dassault Systems Spatial conference, while most of the rest of the CAD media is in Detroit. Dassault Systemes (Spatial) and arch-rival Siemens planned conferences for the same day, coincidence, I... Read more →

Practical Help for Ukraine

Mission Without Borders Back in upFront.eZine issue #1,126, I wrote... "If you would like to donate to an agency that has already been helping people in Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania for decades now (“boots on the ground”), and which upFront.eZine supports annually, then I would like to suggest Mission Without Borders at mwbca.org/ukraine. We did. Donations are used to provide emergency aid and food packages for people in eastern Ukraine. (Tax receipts available for Canadian donors only.)" Late last week, Mission Without Borders provided this update on their activities in the area: Inside Ukraine: Our Mission Without Borders team in... Read more →

I found an international debit card

Killing the exchange rate The only benefit to the EU was its original function: a single currency for many countries. Never mind that my German relatives were disgusted by stores switching DM to Euros, leaving the numbers unchanged, meaning everything doubled in price, overnight. For us non-European travelers, having a single currency is so-o-o convenient. Unless, of course, we also went to England. Or to Switzerland. Or to Sweden... Over the years, I employed a variety of ways to pay for things with our Canadian dollars in Europe: American Express travelers cheques -- remember those? Withdrawing Euro cash from European... Read more →

Why we love not flying

It is Cancel culture, but in the real world With all my international travel over the decades, we actually got to the point we were planning shopping trips in Germany: "No point buying it here [in Canada], we'll get it next time we're in Germany." Then the WHO shut down the world, but after 2.5 years we are finally booked for Germany again. Quite frankly, as much as we love travelling overseas, we found not-flying a rather pleasant experience. But, as we have family in Europe, it was time to see them again. When it comes to flying across oceans,... Read more →

Update 3: The Impact of CAD Vendors Leaving Russia

Cold War II CAD vendors who are shutting down their businesses in Russia (that I know about, so far): Autodesk PTC Siemens Graphisoft Dassault Systemes Altair Nemetschek Group Hexagon AVEVA SAP As well, these twenty 3D manufacturing firms and publications: 3dprintingindustry.com/news/the-additive-manufacturing-industry-supports-the-security-and-foreign-policy-course-of-the-german-federal-government-european-union-and-nato-205472. For its part, Nemetschek Group is doing the following actions: Organizing visas for local employees Providing refugee housing Donation matching for the humanitarian crisis in the Ukraine Suspending new business in Russia Suspending existing business with sanctioned individuals and organizations for the time being Update 3 (Apr 27/22): We had indications that CAD vendors do not get a lot... Read more →

Apple dangles Facebook

Live by the ad, die by the ad Facebook was this week kneecapped for being a one-trick revenue pony in pretty much only selling ads based on skifing (local slang for taking things without permission) our personal details. Facebook's underwhelming financial report was due to Apple increasing privacy in its products, making Facebook less attractive to ad agencies. One estimate* is that 70% of the loss of ad revenue was due to Apple's hardening of privacy, which, over time, Apple will make more stringent. And so for Facebook, this will not be a one-time drop, which the stock market noted... Read more →

Best tweets on Zucker's recent disinvolvement

Cuomo blast radius (@benyt) As the head of CNN leaves the network following a sexual relationship scandal, Twitter voiced its opinion: "Breaking news from the Caligula News Network. CNN could completely solve their ratings problem by turning their studio cameras 180 degrees in the opposite direction." - @iowahawkblog "Over the last year, CNN has made more news than they have reported." - @KateHydeNY "Jeffery Toobin is the only person at CNN that keeps his hands to himself" - @Richard_Harambe "congratulations to jeff zucker for his new show on CNN+" - @SaysSimonson "CNN blames Russia for Zucker's illicit relationship" - @zerohedge... Read more →

Driver-less taxis isn't a problem needing solving

Dystopia through technology We used to have two young men riding the back of the garbage truck roaring down our street once a week. They threw off the lids, grabbed the cans, hurled the contents into the back of the truck, and back onto our driveways again -- in a smooth fluid motion that was a joy to watch. On special occasions, like Christmas or April Fools, they'd wear funny hats, and always give a cheery hello to onlookers. Sometime they'd stack the empty cans in artistic ways. Then the city went automatic. Garbage trucks are outfitted with claw-like devices... Read more →

Why people left the workforce

Rat race status: no longer normal One of the puzzles of our era is over the large numbers of people who didn't go back to work. As someone who was laid off (during a recession in 1984) and quit a regular job (to become self-employed in 1991), I find the puzzle fascinating. Of those not returning to the workforce following the Great Coronavirus Lockdown of 2020 Why did they not go back? What are they doing instead? - - - GCL'20 was a disrupter, an event in history so significant that it dramatically changed human behavior for good: what once... Read more →

When the replacement SSD won't boot

Time to panic! Over the years, I've switched all our computers and laptops to solid state drives (SSD), after discovering just how fast they are compared to regular hard disk drives (HDD). The process is simple, usually: 1. Use software or hardware to clone the content of the old drive to the new one. The cloning process makes an exact copy of everything, including the operating system. You pay for cloning software or get it free, such as Macrium Reflect Free. Cloning hardware is a device that holds two drives, and clones the content from one to the other; see... Read more →