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nickgerlich · 3 months

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The Last Time

As much as I am a futurist, I think it is also worthy of our time to look long into the rear view, to reflect on how far we have come, how much change has happened without our really having noticed, and how lives are different from the way they were.

And so I give to you my recurring essay on “The Last Time.” I don’t intend to be sad or morose, although that can certainly happen, such as when we recall the last time we saw a person, especially loved ones. No, I am more concerned in this exercise to reflect on the things, the artifacts, the services, of a society that we no longer utilize, but at the time of our “last time,” we just didn’t realize it.

Worse yet, the longer you live, the longer this list grows. It is inevitable as technology advances—and so do you—that your inventory of things and services no longer consumed gets a little longer each year.

Take, for example, the last time you used a travel agent to buy an airline ticket or book a rental car. Although I cannot pin down the date, I am going to estimate it was around 1997, when Travelocity was riding high. I didn’t think about the significance at the time, until I saw the son of the then-defunct travel agency working the front desk of an airline at the Amarillo airport. Geez, did I help put him out of a job?

It is much the same for hotel reservations, which I now do via a mobile app on my phone. I reserve, pay, and get a digital key so that I do not even have to interact with the front desk. I just go to my room.

My tech history is littered with products, many of which I still keep in a box or two “just in case,” including 5 1/4” floppy discs, 3 1/2” discs, ZIP discs, CD-ROMs, and so forth. I have every cable imaginable. And what about the office fax machine, a staple rendered obsolete in recent years? It has been a long time, and a few years ago, I learned it had been an even longer time when I went into the COB office to fax something. They laughed when I asked where the fax machine was. They told me to just scan and email it.

OK.

I could go on, and I will. Landline telephone? Payphone? Paper map atlas? I think it is still a good skill to know how to read a map, and not just rely on Google to bark out turn-by-turn directions, but it is pretty rare when I bring out that huge booklet. I used to buy a new atlas every year. I bet it has been eight years or more now.

Let’s look at some other tech items. Did you ever own a black-and-white television? My family had one up until the early-1970s, and the small portable I took off to university in 1977 was also B/W. But that’s the last I remember. And what about your phone? I suspect that most of you are so young that you have never owned anything but a smartphone, while I have recollections of several flip phones and their varietals, as well as a predecessor bag phone, which weighed about five pounds.

There are other things in our lives as well. For example, it may be the last drink you took, the last cigarette you smoked, the last meat you ate. Shedding old habits for new can be hard, and I bet those are the ones that stand out most in our memories, because they all involve things we put in our mouth.

Yesterday I had occasion to write a check. I looked through the registry, and noticed it had been more than two months since the previous, and three months before that one. For a person who used to write checks all the time, I have almost phased it out of my life. Now we Venmo, Zelle, and other methods that have become verbs, or just pay our bills electronically. Truth be known, that’s how I do most of my bill pays, but this one in particular added a fee for credit cards, so I went old school. The tax assessor can be like that.

For that matter, when was the last time you actually swiped a credit or debit card? We have replaced all that with chip readers or tap-and-pay, and now hand scanning at Whole Foods. Swiping is so 2010.

The crazy part of all this rear view remembering is that few among us ever knew what was happening. We were making implicit decisions, not explicit, and so it could not be known until later that we had just passed a turning point. Even when I eventually got rid of the typewriter my parents had gifted me for high school graduation, I did not realize I would never ever use one again.

I challenge you to consider your growing list of things for which the last time has already passed, and most likely completely under your radar. You have all lived long enough, even in your short lives, to have experienced the march of technological progress.

You just don’t realize it. Think on it, and share in the comments.

Dr “Last Dance” Gerlich

Audio Blog

#marketing #technology #progress #obsolete

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vfdarkness · 5 years

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A Voice From Darkness - Ep2 - Do Not Ask Questions

Below is a transcript for the second episode of our horror & dark fantasy audiodrama. You can listen to it on Apple, Google Play, wherever you normally listen to podcasts or here.

INTRO

Dark ambient drone.

RYDER

You are in your bedroom late at night. You hear your child call out for help. You rush down the hall only to find two versions of your child. You're unsure which is the true one - and which the imposter.

A beat.

RYDER

You need my help.

DARK AMBIENT DRONE CHANGES TO:

INTRO MUSIC

RYDER

This is A Voice From Darkness.

Intro music continues, but gradually fades out.

ACT I

RYDER

Hello, this is Dr. Malcolm Ryder, parapsychologist. As always, If you're experiencing anything supernatural, paranormal, unexplainable in anyway. Please call in. I'm here - to help.

A beat.

RYDER

While we wait for a call to come in, I have to say, it is a gorgeous evening in Chicago. On my way into the studio I got off the brownline two stops early and walked the rest of the way. Oh, and we have a call on the line. Let's patch them through. Hello caller, you're on the air. Tell us your name and the nature of the otherworldly situation you find yourself in.

All of Rachel's dialogue has the SFX of coming through a phone.

RACHEL

(frantic)

Rachel. Rachel. My name's Rachel. There's people in my car. There weren't any before, but then they - they appeared. What do I do - what - what...

RYDER

(interrupts)

What part of the country are you in?

RACHEL

They don't... they don't look human. Their faces... they're long. Pale. Their eyes. Oh my god, their eyes...

RYDER

(interrupts)

What part of the country are you in?

RACHEL

Wyoming. Why does that matter?

There's an unfriendly teeth chattering/clicking sound through the phone - followed by a gasp from Rachel.

RYDER

Listen to me carefully. Do not ask questions. Do not stop driving. Do not say another word unless answering a question from me.

A beat.

RYDER

In your car are the Unwelcome Riders. You're on I-80, correct?

No response.

RYDER

Rachel, you can answer my question.

RACHEL

Yes. Yes I am.

RYDER

And you went through the Green River Tunnel.

That's when they appeared in your car - as you exited the tunnel.

RACHEL

I went through a tunnel. I don't know the name of it.

RYDER

It's the Green River Tunnel. The Unwelcome Riders - they appear in traveler's vehicles. Mostly people who are alone.

RACHEL

I am alone. I was alone. I'm moving across the country - to Chicago. Your city. I got a job offer there. Will - will I make it?

There's a chattering sound through the phone.

RYDER

Do not ask questions. If you ask questions, they will... well, let's not talk about that. But yes, Rachel. If you listen to me, do as I say, you will make it to Chicago. It's a beautiful night tonight - you heard me say that earlier? It's going to be beautiful all week long. We'll get you here safe and you can see it for yourself.

RACHEL

I'd like that.

The chattering of The Unwelcome Riders continues.

RACHEL

They're all - they're all making noises.

RYDER

Yes, I can hear them. You're lucky. There're eight "families" of Unwelcome Riders - at least that we know of. The ones in your car - the Green River Tunnel Family - is one of the least likely to... to follow through with their ritual.

RACHEL

What's there-

RYDER

(interrupts)

Do. Not. Ask. Questions. Do not ask questions. Do not exit the road you're on - until I tell you to. If you do either of these things...

A beat.

RYDER

You're unlikely to make it to Chicago. Do you understand?

RACHEL

Yes. But... how do I...

She stops herself.

RACHEL

Tell me under what conditions they'll leave my car.

RYDER

A little over twenty miles from the Green River Tunnel is a tourist attraction called Little America. Have you seen signs? How far away are you?

RACHEL

I just past a sign, it's ten miles away.

RYDER

Good. Drive there. Park your car at the tourist stop. It doesn't matter if it's open or closed.

Rachel shudders.

RACHEL

One of them. One of the ones in the back is stroking my hair. What do I...

She stops herself from asking the question.

RACHEL

Tell me what to do to get it to stop.

RYDER

I - I don't know. I don't recall any of them exhibiting that behavior before.

Ryder pulls out a book and frantically flips through pages.

RYDER

Give me a minute. I have written accounts in front of me. All known incidents involving the Unwelcome Riders.

RACHEL

(crying)

My hair. My hair is falling out. When... when it touches me, it's like my hair and skin are dying.

RYDER

Give me a minute, Rachel. Let's go to Today in Odd America while I review my research.

TODAY IN ODD AMERICA

TIOA music plays.

RYDER

Today in Odd America we find ourselves in Delton, Nebraska. The year, 2010. Delton, like many rural Midwestern towns was dying. The young fled for bigger cities. Half the town was unemployed. The other half on disability. Or drug addicts. The community was in a state of despair.

A beat.

RYDER

Until a Stranger came to town.

A beat.

RYDER

Yes, you've heard those words on this show before - and they nearly always denote the arrival of The Traveling Salesman. And this story - the story of Delton, Nebraska - is the last known sighting of that dark dealmaker.

A beat.

RYDER

The people of Delton gathered in their town hall. They were told a man arrived who had jobs - jobs for everyone who wanted one. Well-paying jobs. The people of Delton liked this man. He stood before them in their hall - He was handsome, but not in the way of a Hollywood star. He wore a grey suit, but nothing too fancy. However he was missing his left ring finger. The people of Delton did not know that this was a tell-tale sign - a warning - that the man who stood before them was no man at all... but The Traveling Salesman. A monster if ever there was one.

A beat.

RYDER

The Traveling Salesman told Delton that he represented a company - that company's name, I do not know - but the company he told them - had made a wondrous technological breakthrough. One that would change the way Americans worked forever. And they wanted to start with the town of Delton. "How would you all like to work in your sleep?" The Traveling Salesman asked. "No fooling," he said. "With our technology, we can put you to work in your bed at night. Come work for us in your dreams, get paid, and have your waking hours all to yourself."

A beat.

RYDER

It sounded too good to be true. And of course it was.

A beat.

RYDER

Those who agreed to The Traveling Salesman's deal - most of the town I'm afraid to say - dreamed that night of a scarcely-lit concrete warehouse. Above, from the second story, they saw windows looking down on the warehouse floor. Frosted glass windows. From behind, could be seen the silhouette of a gigantic creature - with the abdomen and thorax of a spider. But impossibly long human arms. And its heads. Its heads in a shape like nothing the people of Delton had ever seen before. The dream-workers performed the same monotonous task all throughout the night - filling a black sand into cardboard boxes, sealing the boxes shut, and placing them on a conveyor belt. The boxes disappeared from the factory.

A beat.

RYDER

When the dream-workers awoke, they were exhausted. They experienced no rest from their sleep. And so, during the day, they'd attempt to sleep again. But they found themselves right back in the same concrete warehouse. Working another shift.

A beat.

RYDER

The Traveling Salesman had stayed in town to encourage others to accept his offer. Many of the dream-workers went to him, begged him to let them quit. They wanted their sleep back. No amount of money was worth what they'd bargained away. The Traveling Salesman told them - sorry, but he wasn't their boss. Their boss could be found in their dreams, behind the frosted glass of the second floor. If they desired to quit, they merely had to go tell the creature there they wished to.

A beat.

RYDER

None quit. Soon after, all the dream-workers of Delton died from exhaustion. The Traveling Salesman disappeared. As he always does. He has not been seen since. The town of Delton is no more. Where its buildings and streets once stood - there is now only black sand.

A beat.

RYDER

If you see a handsome man who wears a grey suit and offers you a deal too good to be true, remember to look at his left hand. Look at his ring finger. If it is missing, turn his deal down, and run from him. That is the only way to possibly survive The Traveling Salesman.

A beat.

RYDER

This has been Today in Odd America.

ACT II

RYDER

Rachel, are you still there?

RACHEL

Yes.

RYDER

I found a case - similar to yours - with the hair stroking. Normally, if one encounters the Green River Tunnel Family, they simply park their car at Little America and wait thirteen minutes. The Unwelcome Riders then disappear from the vehicle. In this case though...

A beat.

RYDER

I'm afraid you'll need to do a bit more.

RACHEL

Anything. Anything to get through this.

RYDER

How far are you from Little America?

RACHEL

I'm almost at the exit.

RYDER

Good. Go there. Park in one of the odd numbered spots in front of the hotel.

RACHEL

What if there aren't any-

(interrupted)

RYDER

We'll worry about that if it happens. But not before then.

We hear the car driving, the turn signal to indicate the car is taking the exit.

RYDER

Do you have something sharp on you? Something you could stab or cut with?

RACHEL

Do I need to stab or cut them?

Angry Chattering. Rachel screams.

RACHEL

The one behind me. It ripped out a chunk of my hair.

RYDER

You asked a question. They don't like questions. Do you have a knife or something sharp?

RACHEL

I think I have a box cutter in the glove box.

RYDER

When you park, you'll need it.

RACHEL

But one of them - one of them is sitting in front of it. How do I -

(stops herself)

I won't be able to get the box cutter without reaching across the... the Unwelcome Rider - the one in the front passenger seat.

RYDER

You'll have to reach across and open the glove box.

RACHEL

I'm parking. Parking in spot number three.

We hear the car slowing, breaking. The car shifted into park.

RYDER

Good. They'll like that number. Get your box cutter.

We hear Rachel's heavy breathing as she slowly reaches across the creature.

She opens the glove box. She moves things around inside.

And grabs the box cutter.

She slams the glove box shut again.

RACHEL

I have it. I have it. It didn't stop me from getting it or touch me or anything.

RYDER

Listen now - you need to open the box cutter - get the blade out. And you need to - you need to cut yourself. Across the palm of your hand. Make an X on the palm of your hand. So two cuts. Neither of them can be shallow. You must bleed.

RACHEL

I can't. I can't. You didn't tell me I'd have to do that.

RYDER

If you don't do that. If you don't follow the instructions I give you - you will disappear. The Unwelcome Riders will take you with them. Where to - I have no idea. Anyone who's been abducted by them - any of the families - has never returned. You must do this if you want to make it to Chicago.

Rachel winces.

RACHEL

I - I did it. I cut myself. There's a bloody X on my right hand. Is that it?

Angry chattering.

Rachel screams.

The chattering and scream fade away.

RYDER

Rachel? Rachel? Are you still there?

A beat.

RYDER

Rachel?

A beat.

RYDER

(underbreath)

You were so close. So close. Why did you ask another question? Why did you ask so many questions? You could have... you could have made it. You almost did.

A long pause.

RYDER

(exhausted)

That's all for this evening. Please - if you're having any problems that are... supernatural. Paranormal. Call-in next time. On A Voice From Darkness.

Outro Music.

#horror #darkfantasy #audiodrama #audio drama #audiofiction #audio fiction #podcast #avfd #thetravelingsalesman #nosleep #creepypasta

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sciencespies · 4 years

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The Decade's Biggest Technology Disappointments

https://sciencespies.com/news/the-decades-biggest-technology-disappointments/

The Decade's Biggest Technology Disappointments

Like most teen years, the past decade in technology started out someplace relatively innocent before growing moody, dark and disillusioned. In 2010, we were excited about new iPhones and finding old friends on Facebook, not fretting about our digital privacy or social media’s threat to democracy. Now we are wondering how to rein in the largest companies in the world and reckoning with wanting innovation to be both fast and responsible.

Over the past 10 years, new technology has changed how we communicate, date, work, get around and pass time. But for every hit, there have been high-profile disappointments and delays. That includes overpriced gadgets for making juice, face computers, promises of taking a vacation in space and companies claiming to be saving the world.

The failures served a purpose, acting as reality checks for the technology industry and the people who fund, regulate or consume its products. Tech companies spent the last decade first trying to grasp, then distance themselves from, their impact on society. Facebook’s famously decommissioned “move fast and break things” motto sounded plucky in 2010 and laughably misguided in 2019, when the company had, in fact, broken things.

It was a decade when billions of dollars were thrown at tech companies, and yet many of the promises those companies made never materialized, blew up in our faces or were indefinitely delayed. And while tech failures are nothing new, taken together they brought the innovation industrial complex closer to earth and made us all a bit more realistic – if less fun.

Like proper adults.

The benevolent, world-saving tech company

“Don’t be evil” read Google’s famous motto, which sat atop its code of conduct until 2018, when it was quietly demoted to the last line.

At the beginning of the decade, that is exactly how many of the largest tech companies and CEOs marketed themselves. Their products were not only going to make daily life easier or more enjoyable, but they also would make the entire world better – even if their business models depended on ads and your personal data.

“Facebook was not originally founded to be a company. We’ve always cared primarily about our social mission,” chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a 2012 letter, just before the company’s initial public offering. He outlined lofty visions going forward, including that Facebook would create a more “honest and transparent dialogue” about government through accountability.

Instead, the decade turned toward disinformation, and hate speech spread on social media. Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube were used to spread disinformation ahead of the 2016 U.S. election, while Google briefly worked on a search engine for China that would censor content. Companies profited off mountains of user data they collected but failed to protect, as major data breaches hit Equifax, Yahoo and others.

In response, workers are pushing back, growing into quiet armies attempting to redirect their companies toward social goals.

Face computers

Google co-founder Sergey Brin debuted Google Glass in 2012 by wearing a prototype of the smart glasses onstage. Its real PR outing came later that year when skydivers live-streamed their jump out of a blimp above San Francisco during a Google developer conference.

By showing information in front of the face instead of on a phone, Google said, the $1,500 Glass would allow people to interact more with the world around them. Instead, its legacy has been questions about our right to privacy from recording devices, the word “glasshole,” and at least one bar fight. The company stopped selling Glass to consumers in 2015 and shifted it to a workplace product, targeting everyone from factory workers to doctors.

Google was not alone. Microsoft made HoloLens, a technically ambitious piece of eyewear that looked like round steampunk goggles and used augmented reality. Facebook bought virtual-reality goggle maker Oculus for $2 billion and heavily invested in and promoted it as a gaming and entertainment device (and the future of social media). Magic Leap, another augmented reality headset promising immersive and mind-blowing entertainment, managed to raise $2.6 billion and only release one $2,295 developer product.

Eventually we may wear glasses that display useful information on top of the real world, outfitted with smart assistants that whisper in our ears. Google’s early attempt at a consumer face-wearable was not destined to be that device.

A more efficient way of eating

Juice. Colorful, thirst-quenching, packed with vitamins, on-demand juice. It seemed an unlikely thing for Silicon Valley to try to disrupt. But in the 2010s, entrepreneurs’ impatience with preparing and even consuming the calories necessary to survive led to a number of eating innovations.

One of the decade’s most memorable tech failures asked the question: What if you spent $699 for an elaborate machine that squeezed juice from proprietary bags of fruit and vegetable pulp for you? The answer, discovered by intrepid Bloomberg journalists in 2017, is that you could squeeze those packets with your hands instead of overpaying for a machine. That machine was Juicero, and it raised $120 million in funding before shutting down just five months later.

Other food innovations have fallen fall short of their revolutionary promises. Smart ovens became fire hazards; meal-kit delivery start-ups went under; robots tossed salads, mixed drinks and flipped burgers; and pod-based devices for random foods (cocktails, tortillas, cookies, yoghurt, jello shots) failed. And then there’s Soylent – a meal in drink form, designed to save time by cutting out “tasting good” and “chewing.” Soylent has managed to find a small but enthusiastic fan base, and even got into solids recently with a line of meal-replacement bars called Squared.

The decade’s real food change came from delivery apps that pay on-demand workers to bring meals made in actual kitchens to your door. Those companies are dealing with employee protests over low and confusing pay while trying to become profitable.

Non-Facebook social networks

Remember Path? Color? Yik Yak, Meerkat and Google Buzz? And iTunes Ping, Apple’s short-lived attempt at making its music hub social? Start-ups and the tech giants alike launched social products over the past decade, but few succeeded.

In 2010 there was Google Buzz, which was quickly replaced by Google+ in 2011. The service struggled to attract users and experienced privacy issues, such as a bug exposing more than 52 million people’s data. It was finally declared dead this year, though some of its best features live on in Google Photos.

Vine burned bright for too short a time before being closed in 2016 by Twitter, which had bought the company for a reported $30 million in 2012. (Speaking of Twitter, it hung on thanks in part to its popularity with politicians, celebrities and people who are mad online, though it is far smaller than Facebook. Snapchat and TikTok have also carved out niches.)

Facebook dominated at the start of the decade and continues to dominate at the end, in part by buying or blatantly copying any competitors along the way. It acquired Instagram and WhatsApp, integrating both more closely with the Facebook brand. Even with major scandals and fumbles, its global user base grew to more than 2 billion people.

A crowdfunding, DIY revolution

For a short time, it looked as though the next generation of gadgets would come from outside the usual Silicon Valley idea factories. They would be dreamed up by passionate hobbyists, prototyped on 3-D printers and funded by fans instead of venture capitalists (though still manufactured in Shenzhen, China). Despite some notable successes – Oculus, Peloton, Boosted Boards – it turns out getting an idea from your cocktail napkin to market is pretty tough.

Notable failures include the disappointing Coolest Cooler, which featured both Bluetooth and a blender and raised more than $13 million on Kickstarter in 2014. It failed to deliver products to a third of its backers; many that shipped didn’t work. Others never materialized, such as iBackPack, which was supposed to produce a WiFi hotspot. The people behind it raised more than $800,000 and were accused by the Federal Trade Commission of using those funds to buy bitcoin and pay off credit cards. Skarp Laser Razor, a razor with dubious hair-removal technology, managed to get more than $4 million in pledges from interested customers before Kickstarter suspended its campaign for violating policies on working prototypes.

(Kickstarter said the vast majority of its products make it to production and that it aims “to be quite clear about the fact that not all projects will go smoothly.”)

Consumer 3-D printers also failed to live up to the hype. We were supposed to have a printer in every home, spitting out replacement LEGOs and screws, art projects, and even food. The high cost of the devices and the skills needed to use them could not compete with overnight shipping.

Drones dropping deliveries

“Could it be, you know, four, five years? I think so. It will work, and it will happen, and it’s gonna be a lot of fun,” Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said.

The year was 2013, and Bezos was on “60 Minutes” to unveil the next big thing in package delivery: drones. He said that within that time frame, quadcopters would be able to drop packages from warehouses at customers’ doors within 30 minutes. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

In 2016, Amazon showed off its first commercial drone delivery in a rural area of the United Kingdom, a 13-minute delivery of an Amazon Fire TV streaming device and a bag of popcorn. Its latest drone iteration was on display earlier this year at MARS, its weird tech conference, again promising that drone deliveries were coming soon.

But as of the end of the decade, Amazon packages are still being delivered by humans. In fact, Amazon announced in 2018 that it was adding 20,000 delivery vans via third-party delivery partners to its ground fleet. Other companies, including Uber, UPS and Alphabet’s Wing, have also been testing drone deliveries, and it’s possible that we will have boxes from the sky onto porches in the next decade.

Vaping to fix smoking

It was supposed to be safer than smoking and a way to quit nicotine altogether. While vaping has indeed caught on, its biggest selling point has blown up in recent years. Eight deaths and more than 2,500 cases of lung-related illnesses have been linked to vaping in the United States.

Critics say fun-sounding flavors and colorful devices, most notably from the company Juul, have made vaping wildly popular with teenagers – one in four high schoolers vapes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Now the FDA and lawmakers are investigating vaping companies. But if we draw on experience from the cigarette industry, vaping is not likely to disappear anytime soon.

Amazon’s big phone play

Apple and Google have direct access to billions of people with their smartphone operating systems and hardware – 2.5 billion devices run Google’s Android operating system, and 900 million iPhones are in use.

One company noticeably absent from our pockets is Amazon, but not for lack of trying. After several years of stealth development, Amazon announced its Fire Phone in 2014. The smartphone did not look like much, started at $199, ran on a customized version of Android and was available only on AT&T. Amazon reported $83 million of unused inventory in late 2014, and it discontinued the Fire Phone a year after its introduction.

Now that Amazon is competing against those two companies for voice-assistant dominance, its lack of a smartphone is even more glaring. It has put Alexa in anything with a microphone, from cameras to headphones and, soon, eye glasses. (It is on smartphones, but you have to open the Alexa app first.) Meanwhile Apple’s Siri and Google’s Assistant are already in pockets, built into the core of the devices and listening for their next cue.

Tourists in space

It is no secret that big-name billionaires love space. Despite their passion, the three boldest aspiring space barons have made and missed deadlines for sending people into space this decade.

Richard Branson said Virgin Galactic would fly tourists into space by 2020, but its last test mission was two test pilots and a crew member at the start of last year. Bezos said at an Air Force Association conference in late 2018 that Blue Origin would send a test flight into the upper atmosphere with people on board this year, but the most recent test flight, on Dec. 11, contained no humans. In 2017, Elon Musk announced that SpaceX had taken deposits to fly two passengers around the moon in 2018. That flight did not take place. He has the whole next decade to hit a different goal, set in 2011: sending someone to Mars by 2031.

There are plenty of interested customers. Virgin Galactic has sold tickets to more than 700 people wanting to take a trip to space at $250,000 a seat.

If there is one thing on this list we would not want to rush just to meet a deadline, it is loading civilians into private rockets and hurling them into space.

#News

#12-2019 Science News #2019 Science News #Earth Environment #earth science #Environment and Nature #Nature Science #News Science Spies #Our Nature #planetary science #Science #Science News #Science Spies #Science Spies News #Space Physics & Nature #Space Science #News

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magzoso-tech · 4 years

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New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/the-decades-biggest-technology-disappointments/

The Decade's Biggest Technology Disappointments

Like proper adults.

The benevolent, world-saving tech company

“Don’t be evil” read Google’s famous motto, which sat atop its code of conduct until 2018, when it was quietly demoted to the last line.

In response, workers are pushing back, growing into quiet armies attempting to redirect their companies toward social goals.

Face computers

A more efficient way of eating

Non-Facebook social networks

A crowdfunding, DIY revolution

(Kickstarter said the vast majority of its products make it to production and that it aims “to be quite clear about the fact that not all projects will go smoothly.”)

Drones dropping deliveries

“Could it be, you know, four, five years? I think so. It will work, and it will happen, and it’s gonna be a lot of fun,” Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said.

Vaping to fix smoking

Amazon’s big phone play

Tourists in space

It is no secret that big-name billionaires love space. Despite their passion, the three boldest aspiring space barons have made and missed deadlines for sending people into space this decade.

There are plenty of interested customers. Virgin Galactic has sold tickets to more than 700 people wanting to take a trip to space at $250,000 a seat.

If there is one thing on this list we would not want to rush just to meet a deadline, it is loading civilians into private rockets and hurling them into space.

#Miscellaneous

0 notes

dylan38sanders · 5 years

Text

The Future of 5G at Events – Event Tech Podcast

5G is the next mobile leap in technology. It will reshape how we use our mobile devices and 5G at events is going to be a huge deal. Do you remember when we all had flip phones with green and black screens? If you downloaded anything (and there wasn’t much to download!) it would take forever. With great improvements in tech, we moved on to smartphones and 4g allowing us to be connected to pretty much anything we desired in the palm of our hands. And now comes the announcement of 5G at Mobile World Congress. So what does 5G have to do with events? More than you might imagine.

In today’s episode, Will Curran and Brandt Krueger have a very interesting conversation about mobile advancements and 5G at events. They will discuss how 5G could revolutionize the industry. Will and Brandt will also debate about the ways it will change WiFi at events, virtual attendance, and more. They will also discuss folding phones and their uses at events. If you are curious how 5G at events will change the game listen below! And if you want to make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe to Event Tech Podcast

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Short on Time? We discuss the highlights from the episode below!

A Brief History of Mobile Speeds

The Beginnings

In 1983 the cell phone was introduced to the public. The first generation of technology allowed for communication to be possible without any landline by using a cellular network. While it was an amazing leap the phones left a lot to be desired. They had a battery life of 30 minutes, were the size of a brick, and coverage was spotty at best.

The 2nd Generation

2G came out in the early 1990s. This technology allowed for text messaging, and clearer digitally encrypted conversations. You were also now able to download a picture but at these speeds, it took forever, WhistleOut reports “when 2G came out, the speed was about 9.6kbit/s. If you wanted to download a nice picture, it would take about 3 minutes.”

Beginnings of a Smart World

3G took the world by storm in 2003 with speeds up to 4 times faster than 2G. 2G paved the way for the smartphone era. People could now download photos, songs, and information instantly. In this episode, Will tells the story fondly of when 3G launched “I remember this was when I first bought the iPhone which was when it came out in 3G, which was a big jump up from .3 megabits per second to 7.2 megabits per second. Like, that is a humongous jump in terms of speed. And I remember for the first time I ever, this is when I knew the future was here, as I tune into it in a radio station while driving down the freeway, and was pulling music from the air. I mean, just like absolutely mind-blowing to me.”

4G Changes Everything

4G is the current standard in mobile and was launched in 2010 by Sprint. Speeds went from 7.2 megabits per second to about 150 megabits per second. This changed everything! 4G allowed gaming, video calls, the ability to download a song in seconds, video streaming, event apps and so much more.

The Future of Mobile

5G was announced at the Mobile World Congress in late February 2019. 5G promises dramatically faster connections, which are likely to replace your home internet. As with all past mobile advancements, 5G will also usher in new technologies. According to The Week “The dramatically faster connectivity they promise with 5G could unlock an array of technologies, from autonomous cars that share traffic data to immersive virtual reality games. It’s not just a phone technology: It could replace wired broadband in the home and allow for billions of other connected devices.” To say the least, this technology will be a game changer and revolutionize the world in more ways than we can currently comprehend.

What is the impact of 5G at Events?

Now that we’ve covered a brief history of mobile speed and technology, what will be the impact of 5G at events?

Impacts on Transportation

Brandt Krueger believes it could impact event transportation “some of the things that are being bandied around about what this 10 fold jump in speed is going to do for us is things like car to car communication. So, being able to very, very quickly- ’cause it’s the speed, right? It’s being able to get information from vehicle to vehicle very quickly as they’re driving down the road saying, “Whoa, there’s an accident up there, we’re all gonna need to slow down.” And then the things that are gonna more directly impact- So that could potentially impact the transportation side of things.”

Advancements in Video

Will Curran sees a place for advancement in video “with a huge increase in bandwidth when it comes to video content, too. Like 4K, you can do 4K pretty decently on a 4G connection, but now it’s you know, you’re gonna watch videos instantaneously on your phone all day long, and with everyone moving more towards video, I mean we’re just gonna see it where high-quality cameras on your phone plus 5G plus all this means that people are gonna scream for great quality video, now.”

Could Replace WiFi at Events

This technology is supposed to have speeds 10x as faster than 4G. This means 5G at events will likely replace WiFi at events, though not likely to happen anytime soon. There would need to be infrastructure in place to support 5G and these rollouts take time. There is also the questions of if venues will welcome 5G or try to avoid it as charging for WiFi brings in a great deal of revenue.

Enhances Virtual Experiences

Virtual Reality could also be on the rise.

Brandt Krueger excitedly explained “virtual and augmented reality is gonna be so fast, and such high quality that you’ll be able to stream it, almost instantly. So as we start to think about our virtual audiences, and not just being able to sit in front of a desktop and watch a little window into the live event world. Really being able to pop on a full VR rig and be there as part of the event. And really have that feeling in real time. I mean, God knows, we’re still struggling when it comes to our virtual audiences with the lag that comes between what people are saying in the room and trying to get audience response questions and things like that. We’re still at a solid 30 second lag on a lot of that stuff. And that can be just brutal if you’re trying to actually engage that audience.”

When Will These Changes Take Place?

While 5G will start rolling out this year it will take years before we truly see the full effects and changes of this tech. “Some experts don’t see strong 5G in the U.S. until 2023 — and say paying an extra $200 to $300 for a 5G-enabled phone will be wasted money until then.” The Week.

Brandt believes it will be years and years until we see the innovation fully roll out, “I’m really fascinated by what’s gonna come down. And it’s not gonna be you and I that are coming up with this stuff. It’ll be the next generation of coders and kids that are coming up and figuring out ways to take advantage of it. It’s always the ones that are the second generation when it comes to internet and technology. It’s gonna be the ones that are steeped in it, that are the ones that come up with something new and exciting. So, that’s what I’m looking forward to. And that’s gonna be 15 years down the road. It’s not gonna be now.”

This is because with 5G comes a new type of technology needed to use it. The transmitters will need to be placed closer together at a higher volume. The current infrastructure of mobile technology does not support it. So, in short, we don’t know when 5G at events will start rolling out, but the future looks promising. There is no doubt that 5G will revolutionize the events industry from streaming to transportation we can only imagine what the future holds.

Conclusion

While it’s unclear what the future holds for 5G at events, it looks bright. With advances in technology, we are sure to see even better events. What are you looking forward to most with 5G at events? Comment below and let us know.

Resources

Google News

Feedly

The Verge

Android Authority

Mobile World Congress

Pocket

Our Favorite Things from CES 2019 – Event Tech Podcast

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lauramalchowblog · 4 years

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Flipping the Stack: Can New Technology Drive Health Care’s Future?

By MATTHEW HOLT and INDU SUBAIYA

Indu & I have been talking about Flipping the Stack in health care for about 3 years. 2 years ago we wrote an article for a general hospital audience which appeared in the 2019 AHA SHSMD Futurescan magazine. I was talking about the changes in home monitoring that might come about due to COVID-19 and remembered this article. The one that got published went through a staid editing process. This is the original version that I wrote before which was rather more fun and hasn’t seen the light of day. Until now. Take a look and remember it is 2 years old–Matthew Holt

Over the past twenty-five years most businesses have been revolutionized by the easy availability of cloud and mobile-based computing systems. These technologies have placed power and access into the hands of employees and customers, which in turn has created huge shifts in how transactions get done. Now the companies with the highest market value are both the drivers of and beneficiaries of this transition, notably Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet (Google), as well as their international rivals like Samsung, Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba. Everyone uses their products every day, and the impact on our lives have been remarkable. Of course, this also impacts how businesses of all types are organized.

Underpinning this transformation has been a change from enterprise-specific software to generic cloud-based services—sometimes called SMAC (Social/Sensors/Mobile/Analytics/Cloud). Applications such as data storage, sales management, email and the hardware they ran on were put into enterprises during the 80s and 90s in the client-server era (dominated by Intel and Microsoft). These have now migrated to cloud-based, on-demand services.

Twenty years ago the web was still a curiosity for most organizations. But consumers flocked to these online services and in recent years businesses followed, using GSuite, AWS (Amazon Web Services), Salesforce, Slack and countless other services. Those technologies in turn enabled the growth of whole new types of businesses changing sectors like transportation (Uber), entertainment (Netflix), lodging (AirBnB) and more.

Figure 1. Growth in use of cloud data v s traditional data centers

What about the hospital?

Hospitals and health systems were late comers to the enterprise technology game, even to client-server. In the 2000’s and 2010’s, mostly in response to the HITECH Act, hospitals added electronic medical records to their other information systems. The majority of these were client-server based and enterprise-specific. Even if they are cloud-based, they tend to be hosted in the private cloud environment of the dominant vendors like Epic and Cerner. Of the major EMR vendors only Athenahealth had an explicit cloud-only strategy, and its influence has been largely limited to revenue cycle management on the outpatient side.

However, the hospital sector is likely to move towards the trend of using the cloud seen in other businesses.

Current technology vendors including Epic and Cerner are beginning to open their systems, and at least moving to private cloud, while another large vendor, Allscripts, has put most of its technology onto Microsoft’s public cloud (Azure). In addition, all the major EMR vendors have adopted the FHIR standard and SMART on FHIR protocols which make it much easier to move data between different applications and to give users a choice of tools, many of which are hosted on the cloud. These standards, as well as products from newer breeds of middleware brokers such as Redox and Sansoro, are allowing smaller companies to develop and sell workflow tools to providers, clinicians and patients.

FHIR (Fast Health Interoperability Resources) is a set of standardized frameworks built around the concept of standardized data elements and “resources” — modular components built using modern web programming languages. The resources define common data elements, so data can be easily moved form one system to another.

SMART on FHIR is a protocol that allows applications to be launched from within other applications (usually an EMR) so that a user (e.g. a clinician) can launch a new tool bringing the data from the EMR with them. One example we’ve shown at Health 2.0 is a pharmacist launching the Meducation app within the Cerner EMR. One hint of the business complexities SMART on FHIR might cause is that Meducation is owned by drug information company First Databank whose main rival is Multum—owned by Cerner.

How quickly is FHIR being adopted? In the SHSMD survey only 8% of hospital executives said their organizations were already using FHIR to make it easier for 3rd party applications to access their data, with 29% saying they were very likely to do so and 24% saying it’s mostly likely they would. Our guess is that these numbers understate FHIR’s impact. Bear in mind this standard is already being used by Apple to extract data for its health record from 90 top hospitals. In addition, all major EMR vendors and many major health systems are developing a series of partnerships, apps stores and innovation programs to allow those 3rd party application vendors easier access to users (clinicians, patients, administrators). And many hospitals (including Mount Sinai, Providence St Joseph and more) are of course contributing to the explosion in apps and services by encouraging their internal teams to create them.

Figure 2: The break up of tech platforms

It is early days for this transformation. Most clinical organizations are still using a single vendor, but over time the three main layers of tech functionality—data storage, transactions and user interface are starting to break apart, allowing different players and different technologies to be plugged into various parts of the enterprise. For example, there’s been dramatic growth in third-party telemedicine services like Vidyo or Aviza integrating with the EMR. Similarly a new class of tools are using APIs to plug into the EMR, like Gauss Surgical which tracks blood loss in the OR using an iPad. In addition, there’s now a layer of separate companies providing data exchange and another providing data analytics in the cloud. In other words the tech stack is itself decentralizing and breaking up.

There’s considerable debate within the health tech community as to the near-term evolution of the hospital tech environment. Most hospitals have spent huge amounts on EMR installations in recent years which would tend to argue against many of them performing a “rip and replace” on their incumbent vendors. But while the transaction layer inside the current EMR (e.g. for orders and clinical documentation) would look to be well embedded in the system, new types of interface, storage and data analytics are increasingly being trialed.

The advent of FHIR, APIs and distributed storage certainly portends a future of decentralized data and decentralized services. That has big implications for organizations like health systems that are trying to combine physical and contractual controls over their data and services.

As advancements in technology continue to revolutionize health care, leaders in the field are preparing for the next wave of change and how it will impact hospitals and health systems and the communities they serve.

At the forefront are AI), VR, AR and blockchain – all built on the expanding capabilities of cloud computing and driven by the burgeoning Internet of Things.

Blockchain

Blockchain is a distributed database technology in which every transaction is recorded on every node in a network, and therefore very hard to hack or alter. Blockchain also does more than just record transactions. It allows the embedding of “Smart Contracts” within the blockchain which enables permissions, allows and points access to data and performs transactions – all automatically. Closely related is the concept of “identity by consensus” which enables the authorization of identity from data gathered from multiple sources of information.

It is extremely early days in blockchain. There are one or two industry groups forming in health care (such as the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Consortium and Hashed Health). In a recent survey 75% of health care executives say their understanding of blockchain is “excellent,” while 39% say it’s in their top 5 priorities. In the Deloitte survey 11% of health care executives reported deploying blockchain somewhere in their enterprise, the SHSMD survey of hospital executives for this publication had a much more stringent question. When asked if “their organization would change most of its data storage and transactions tools to blockchain or other distributed computing technologies”, 6% said it was already happening, while another 24% said it was very likely.

The only thing being hyped more than blockchain is Artificial intelligence (AI). Virtually anyone who can run an Excel macro now claims to have an AI product, and at the other end of the spectrum techno-optimists are looking to merge their brains with machines and achieve the singularity. But at its core AI is enabling very quick computation of vast amounts of data looking for patterns, and making suggestions about them (i.e. in Radiology, symptom assessment) and in some cases acting on those patterns (self-driving cars, robotic surgery). Perhaps the most promising area for AI is in computations that are just far too complex for humans, such as identifying the factors behind cancer or managing and matching complex drug regimens with genomic and phenotypes.

Examples of just a few companies using AI for complex tasks in health care

Prognos –Use lab, medical and claims data to predict patient disease onset

SurveyorHealth—Personalizes complex drug regimens to lower risk and improve outcomes

Babylon Health—Chatbot front end, takes symptoms and delivers diagnoses

While the worlds of gaming and entertainment are already being changed by VR and AR, it’s a little harder to see where these fit in in health. So far, VR is being experimented with in pain management and mental health. AR seems to be finding its niche in remotely recording and supporting patient physician visits andoverlaying X-ray images on patients to aid in clinical precision.

Augmented Reality superimposes a computer-generated image or data over a view into the real world using a device that a user can see through such as Microsoft Hololens or Google glass

Virtual Reality places the user in a completely artificial world using a system of headsets, (such as Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive) controllers and gloves. (end of box)

But the biggest part of the AI, AR, and VR revolution is likely to come with the combination of these trends with the underlying technologies of sensors, analytics and on-demand computing. The early stages of this is playing out in kitchens and living rooms across the world filled with kids demanding that Alexa play some annoying teeny bop song while their parents desperately try to tell it to shut up. But voice-controlled and automatically-controlled systems will soon both be responding to human instructions and predicting them. Already some companies like Aiva are putting Alexa in hospital rooms to replace nurse call systems, which enable two way communication. Soon more and more of this will be automated, and the sensors will not only be taking instruction but also be passively tracking patient activity in the hospital and in the home, and automatically responding.

The role of the Tech Giants

It has escaped few observers’ attention that the companies with the most advanced technology in AI, voice recognition, sensors and cloud computing are the same ones which have benefitted from the SMAC revolution. Concurrently the health tech press has been abuzz with articles reading the tea leaves about what Amazon, Apple and Alphabet/Google will do in health care.

For this publication the SHSMD survey asked hospital executives if a major technology company, such as Google, Amazon, or Apple, would emerge as a significant developer of health care services that competes directly with their organization’s services. 9% said this was already happening (again that might be a surprise to the tech giants) but another 38% said it was very likely.

No one (probably including the tech giants themselves) has a really clear view of what they are doing and what adding services and applications to their massive technology reach among consumers could do. But clearly any of these companies has the balance sheet enabling them to do anything they like in health care. In addition, other major players such as CVS (which is currently buying Aetna), Walmart (rumored to be buying Humana), and United HealthGroup (which has bought several large physician groups) are not sitting still. It seems that all of them are angling in on the chronically ill consumer in the home. This is of course a patient population and location with which traditional health care systems have struggled.

Sleuthing the tech giants’ health care moves

Apple seems focused on sensors. Looking at its acquisitions, hiring and patent applications, the best guess is that Apple is focusing on tracking bodily functions related to diabetes, heart disease, sleep and using the Apple Watch as a core device. It’s also created an integration of EMRs from over 90 hospitals which can bring data into its app store, and is creating its own medical clinics.

Amazon is clearly getting into hospitals supplies, and recently bought PillPack, a pharmacy specializing in home delivery for those on multiple medications. In addition, it also has the biggest cloud service in AWS and its Alexa currently dominates the smart speaker market which is already in 20% of homes. That suggests that it’s targeting the chronically ill at home.

Alphabet also has its cloud service (Google Cloud) which has 30+ health tech companies on its app store while it has placed many bets in its Verily unit on genomics & personalized medicine. In addition it has a $500m joint venture with Sanofi called Onduo working on diabetes care, and it just bought 10% of Oscar Health, a new style insurance company.

Inverting the stack

There are several obvious scenarios in which new market entrants can change health care but the one in which they take a major role we call “Tech inverting the stack”

Figure 3: The Traditional Care Delivery Stack

Traditionally care delivery from clinicians was (and is) the basis for health care—the office visit, the hospital admission. Then services were added (think phone support from nurses). Finally, technology was deployed to track and bill for it. Facilities and organizations were designed around the processes and staff required to carry this out.

Imagine this triple layer being inverted. Starting with technology, the sensors, trackers, AI systems and processes are soon going to be in place monitoring, measuring and suggesting next steps to both providers and patients. In general, this will move health care from being an event driven system to becoming a consistent process. Theoretically “normal’ patient behavior and activity will not need any response, whereas exceptions and problems will require intervention from a combination of human and machine services. Finally, care delivery – the clinical interventions that make up health care are we know it today – will become an added extra to the top of the health care stack. In fact almost any clinical intervention could be thought of as a failure of the system, or at least a correction to “auto-pilot” mode.

Figure 4. Tech Inverts the Stack

What might this inverted stack look like? You can imagine a combination of at home delivery of medication and more (Pillpack), combined with internet of things sensors (Apple) plus technology-based services companies monitoring chronically ill patients (Livongo) or connecting them to online doctors (Doctors on Demand) or even supplying them the full hospital experience (Medically Home). In this scenario, the tech platform is the underlying system, with services and professionals on top. There’s no real reason to think it can’t be done, and there’s no reason to suppose that if it is done it won’t radically reduce doctor visits and hospital admissions, and improve patient care.

Conclusion & Implications

As with any analysis of technology promising “disruption”, the careful reader needs to ask themselves one primary question. Is this change real? Or is this just another PowerPoint from a futurist that will be brushed off by the “mother of all adaptive systems”?

The technology trends we have described are already in motion. The question is, how big their impact will be in health care? And how long will it take? Here are a few suggestions for hospitals executives to help them understand the transition and assess the rate of change.

Get familiar with the technologies. You won’t understand VR by reading this piece. You might if you play a video game with your kids on their new Oculus headset.

Follow the pilots in your organization and other organizations using these new tools. They’re happening everywhere (we promise!). Talk to the end users, talk to the patients, ask for real data on cost and impact.

Spend time with health tech startups at conferences, volunteer as a mentor at an incubators, got to health tech meetups, seek them out online. Get to know the young cutting edge techie doctors in your AMC hiding out in their labs. They’ll be pushing the boundaries of what can be done. They may not seem realistic now but you’ll get a sense of the possible

Pay attention to both leading edge payers (like Oscar Health, or any employer who uses Grand Rounds) and CMS. The more payment for value becomes real, the more likely it is that real changes in how chronically ill patients are monitored and managed will take effect.

If you read this piece and you googled most of the company names other than Google, then hopefully it’s been helpful. If you didn’t need to, then your organization is probably putting the right environment in place to adapt to these technologies.

Matthew Holt is Founder of THCB & Co-Founder, Health 2.0. Indu Subaiya is co-founder, Health 2.0 & CEO of Catalyst @ Health 2.0

The post Flipping the Stack: Can New Technology Drive Health Care’s Future? appeared first on The Health Care Blog.

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kristinsimmons · 4 years

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Flipping the Stack: Can New Technology Drive Health Care’s Future?

By MATTHEW HOLT and INDU SUBAIYA

Figure 1. Growth in use of cloud data v s traditional data centers

What about the hospital?

However, the hospital sector is likely to move towards the trend of using the cloud seen in other businesses.

Figure 2: The break up of tech platforms

At the forefront are AI), VR, AR and blockchain – all built on the expanding capabilities of cloud computing and driven by the burgeoning Internet of Things.

Blockchain

Examples of just a few companies using AI for complex tasks in health care

Prognos –Use lab, medical and claims data to predict patient disease onset

SurveyorHealth—Personalizes complex drug regimens to lower risk and improve outcomes

Babylon Health—Chatbot front end, takes symptoms and delivers diagnoses

Augmented Reality superimposes a computer-generated image or data over a view into the real world using a device that a user can see through such as Microsoft Hololens or Google glass

Virtual Reality places the user in a completely artificial world using a system of headsets, (such as Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive) controllers and gloves. (end of box)

The role of the Tech Giants

Sleuthing the tech giants’ health care moves

Inverting the stack

There are several obvious scenarios in which new market entrants can change health care but the one in which they take a major role we call “Tech inverting the stack”

Figure 3: The Traditional Care Delivery Stack

Figure 4. Tech Inverts the Stack

Conclusion & Implications

Get familiar with the technologies. You won’t understand VR by reading this piece. You might if you play a video game with your kids on their new Oculus headset.

Matthew Holt is Founder of THCB & Co-Founder, Health 2.0. Indu Subaiya is co-founder, Health 2.0 & CEO of Catalyst @ Health 2.0

The post Flipping the Stack: Can New Technology Drive Health Care’s Future? appeared first on The Health Care Blog.

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eatmoresoylentgreen · 4 years

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Analyzing the Patterns in Trump’s Falsehoods About Coronavirus

For months, the president has downplayed the severity of the pandemic, overstated the impact of his policies and potential treatments, blamed others and tried to rewrite the history of his response.

By Linda Qiu

March 27, 2020

Hours after the United States became the nation with the largest number of reported coronavirus cases on Thursday, President Trump appeared on Fox News and expressed doubt about shortages of medical supplies, boasted about the country’s testing capacity, and criticized his predecessor’s response to an earlier outbreak of a different disease.

“I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators,” he said, alluding to a request by Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York. The president made the statement in spite of government reports predicting shortages in a severe pandemic — and he reversed course on Friday morning, calling for urgent steps to produce more ventilators.

Speaking on Fox on Thursday, Mr. Trump suggested wrongly that because of his early travel restrictions on China, “a lot of the people decided to go to Italy instead” — though Italy had issued a more wide-ranging ban on travel from China and done so earlier than the United States. And at a White House briefing on Friday, he wrongly said he was the “first one” to impose restrictions on China. North Korea, for one, imposed restrictions 10 days before the United States.

He misleadingly claimed again on Friday that “we’ve tested now more than anybody.” In terms of raw numbers, the United States has tested more people for the coronavirus than Italy and South Korea but still lags behind in tests per capita.

And he continued to falsely claim that the Obama administration “acted very, very late” during the H1N1 epidemic in 2009 and 2010.

These falsehoods, like dozens of others from the president since January, demonstrate some core tenets of how Mr. Trump has tried to spin his response to the coronavirus epidemic to his advantage. Here’s an overview.

Playing down the severity of the pandemic

When the first case of the virus was reported in the United States in January, Mr. Trump dismissed it as “one person coming in from China.” He said the situation was “under control” and “it’s going to be just fine” — despite a top official from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention telling the public to “expect more cases.”

No matter how much the count of cases has grown, Mr. Trump has characterized it as low.

“We have very little problem in this country” with five cases, he said in late January.

He maintained the same dismissive tone on March 5, as the number of cases had grown by a factor of 25. “Only 129 cases,” he wrote on Twitter.

A day later, he falsely claimed that this was “lower than just about” any other country. (A number of developed countries like Australia, Britain and Canada as well as populous India had fewer reported cases at that point.)

By March 12, when the tally had again increased tenfold to over 1,200, the president argued that too was “very few cases” compared to other countries.

He has also misleadingly suggested numerous times that the coronavirus is no worse than the flu, saying on Friday, “You call it germ, you can call it a flu. You can call it a virus. You can call it many different names. I’m not sure anybody knows what it is.”

The mortality rate for coronavirus, however, is 10 times that of the flu and no vaccine or cure exists yet for the coronavirus.

In conflating the flu and the coronavirus, Mr. Trump repeatedly emphasized the annual number of deaths from the flu, and occasionally inflated his estimates. When he first made the comparison in February, he talked of flu deaths from “25,000 to 69,000.” In March, he cited a figure “as high as 100,000” in 1990.

The actual figure for the 1990 flu season was 33,000, and in the past decade, the flu has killed an estimated 12,000 to 61,000 thousand people each flu season in the United States. That’s so far higher than the death count for the virus in the United States, but below projections from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which estimated that deaths from Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, could range from 200,000 to 1.7 million. As of Friday evening, more than 1,200 deaths in the United States have been linked to the coronavirus.

On the flip side, Mr. Trump inflated the mortality and infection rates of other deadly diseases as if to emphasize that the coronavirus pales in comparison. “The level of death with Ebola,” according to Mr. Trump, “was a virtual 100 percent.” (The average fatality rate is around 50 percent.) During the 1918 flu pandemic, “you had a 50/50 chance or very close of dying,” he said on Tuesday. (Estimates for the fatality rate for the 1918 flu are far below that.)

This week, as cities and states began locking down, stock markets tumbled and jobless claims hit record levels, Mr. Trump again played down the impact of the pandemic and said, with no evidence and contrary to available research, that a recession would be deadlier than the coronavirus.

Overstating potential treatments and policies

The president has also dispensed a steady stream of optimism when discussing countermeasures against the virus.

From later February to early March, Mr. Trump repeatedly promised that a vaccine would be available “relatively soon” despite being told by public health officials and pharmaceutical executives that the process would take 12 to 18 months. Later, he promoted treatments that were still unproven against the virus, and suggested that they were “approved” and available though they were not.

Outside of medical interventions, Mr. Trump has exaggerated his own policies and the contributions of the private sector in fighting the outbreak. For example, he imprecisely described a website developed by a company affiliated with Google, wrongly said that insurers were covering the cost of treatment for Covid-19 when they only agreed to waive co-payments for testing, and prematurely declared that automakers were making ventilators “right now.”

Often, he has touted his complete “shut down” or “closing” of the United States to visitors from affected countries (in some cases leading to confusion and chaos). But the restrictions he has imposed on travel from China, Iran and 26 countries in Europe do not amount to a ban or closure of the borders. Those restrictions do not apply to American citizens, permanent residents, their immediate families, or flight crews.

Not only were these restrictions total and absolute in Mr. Trump’s telling, they were also imposed on China “against the advice of a lot of professionals, and we turned out to be right.” His health and human services secretary, however, has previously said that the restrictions were imposed on the recommendations of career health officials. The Times has also reported that Mr. Trump was skeptical before deciding to back the restrictions at the urging of some aides.

Blaming others

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent test kits to states in February, some of which were flawed and produced inconclusive readings. Problems continued to grow as scientists and state officials warned about restrictions on who could be tested and the availability of tests overall. Facing criticism over testing and medical supplies, Mr. Trump instead shifted responsibility to a variety of others.

It was the Obama administration that “made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing,” he said on March 4. This was a misleading reference to draft guidance issued in 2014 on regulating laboratory-developed tests, one that was never finalized or enforceable. A law enacted in 2004 created the process and requirements for receiving authorization to use unapproved testing products in health emergencies.

The test distributed by the World Health Organization was never offered to the United States and was “a bad test,” according to Mr. Trump. It’s true that the United States typically designs and manufactures its own diagnostics, but there is no evidence that the W.H.O. test was unreliable.

As for the shortage of ventilators cited by Mr. Cuomo, Mr. Trump has misleadingly said that the governor declined to address the issue in 2015 when he “had the chance to buy, in 2015, 16,000 ventilators at a very low price and he turned it down.”

A 2015 report establishing New York’s guidelines on ventilator allocation estimated that, in the event of a pandemic on the scale of the 1918 flu, the state would “likely have a shortfall of 15,783 ventilators during peak demand.” But the report did not actually recommend increasing the stockpile and noted that purchasing more was not a cure-all solution as there would not be enough trained health care workers to operate them.

Rewriting history

Since the severity of the pandemic became apparent, the president has defended his earlier claims through false statements and revisionism.

He has denied saying things he said. Pressed on Tuesday about his pronouncements in March that testing was “perfect,” Mr. Trump said he had been simply referring to the conversation he had in July with the president of Ukraine that ultimately led to the House impeaching him. In fact, he had said “the tests are all perfect” like the phone call.

He has compared his government’s response to the current coronavirus pandemic (“one of the best”) favorably to the Obama administration’s response to the H1N1 epidemic of 2009 to 2010 (“a full scale disaster”). In doing so, Mr. Trump has falsely claimed that former President Barack Obama did not declare the epidemic an emergency until thousands had died (a public health emergency was declared days before the first reported death in the United States) and falsely said the previous administration “didn’t do testing” (they did).

At times, Mr. Trump has marveled at the scale of the pandemic, arguing that “nobody would ever believe a thing like that’s possible” and that it “snuck up on us.”

There have been a number of warnings about both a generic worldwide pandemic and the coronavirus specifically. A 2019 government report said that “the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large scale outbreak of a contagious disease.” A simulation conducted last year by the Department of Health and Human Services modeled an outbreak of a rapidly spreading virus. And top government officials began sounding the alarms about the coronavirus in early January.

Despite his history of false and misleading remarks, Mr. Trump has also asserted, “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”

Answers to Your Frequently Asked Questions

Updated March 24, 2020

How does coronavirus spread?

It seems to spread very easily from person to person, especially in homes, hospitals and other confined spaces. The pathogen can be carried on tiny respiratory droplets that fall as they are coughed or sneezed out. It may also be transmitted when we touch a contaminated surface and then touch our face.

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barrenharold021-blog · 4 years

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What should be the emotional bond between children and robots?

When I brought the robot home from the Apple Store, I knew I was inviting a new kind of strangeness into our lives. My wife worried about giving our 4-year-old son a(nother) digital thing, a “smart” thing. I worried that he wouldn’t know what to make of it. Or that his little sister would break it. Or that I’d be jealous. Because I have always wanted a robot.

This one was Cozmo, a $179 gadget produced by Anki, which has taken more than $200 million from venture capitalists to bring “artificial intelligence and robotics to our everyday lives.” The company was founded by Carnegie Mellon graduates in 2010, one of many businesses spawned by the university’s robotics program. In downtown San Francisco, Anki employs nearly 200 people making toy robots governed by artificial intelligence.

The robot was the last present my son opened for his fourth birthday. He and I giddily pulled it out of the box and he waited patiently as the toy charged, staring at it. Cozmo is rectangular and about four inches long, with treads like a miniature tank’s; a tiny lifting arm for picking up and playing with the “power cube” blocks that are bundled with the product; and a small, low-resolution screen for a face. In an MIT Media Lab study conducted on smart devices and toys, a pair of kid participants deemed Cozmo “a bob-cat with eyes,” an apt, if dadaist, description. Do Robotic Pool Cleaners Really Work https://www.robotsden.com/do-robotic-pool-cleaners-really-work

Stefania Druga and Randi Williams, the researchers behind the study, want to know how children perceive smart robots, and, eventually, to study how those bots affect kids’ cognitive development. So far, they’ve discovered that little children (ages 3 and 4) aren’t sure whether the robots are smarter than they are, but that slightly older children (ages 6 to 10) believe the robots to have superior intelligence. Druga and Williams were inspired by the research of the legendary Sherry Turkle, who wrote a highly influential 1984 book called The Second Self. She argued that computers, as objects that exist somewhere between the animate and the inanimate, force humans to reexamine their own minds. Small children, she found, were fascinated by the question of whether computerized toys were alive, dead, or something else.

Finished charging, Cozmo came rolling out of its base station with some little bleeps. It blinked up at us with its lively eyes. Cute. We taught it to say our names and recognize our faces. Then we played a game of Quick Tap. I set one power cube in front of the robot and another in front of my son. At irregular intervals, the cubes light up with color patterns. If the colors on the two cubes match, you try to press on yours before the robot presses on its own.

Cozmo lifted its arm over the cube. My son’s little fingers dangled over his. The cubes flashed all blue. My son saw the lights and his hand twitched, but he waited for the robot’s arm to smack down first. The robot won and chuckled to itself. I tried a few rounds of the game, winning each time. Cozmo began to jitter and make minor-key noises that conveyed anger and frustration. “Don’t beat him!” my son yelled. “You’re making him sad.” We played several more rounds, letting the robot win, and it vamped back and forth across the floor. arduino robot arm source code https://www.robotsden.com/7-arduino-robotic-arm-project-ideas-tutorial-plus-source-code

It was bath time. We sat Cozmo on a ledge by the sink. The robot gamely rolled around, pushed up to the edge, and then pulled back, looking frightened. I watched with concern, hoping it wouldn’t drive itself off. Which, a few minutes later, it did, landing softly in the hand I’d extended half a second earlier. I was relieved, and unable to disentangle the financial and emotional components of the feeling. “He’s like your sister,” I said, another intrepid being who has not learned the limits of her physical abilities.

Cozmo’s creators think of it not as a bot but as a character, like you’d encounter in a movie. “Our motivation at the start was: What would it take to bring a Pixar character to life?,” Boris Sofman, Anki’s CEO, told me. They wanted “to make him understand his environment and relationships.”

Previous generations of seemingly smart toys usually relied on clever tricks. Remember Furbies, the ’90s sensation? They seemed to learn from their owners, because they gradually spoke more English, but in fact they’d simply been programmed to use more words as time went on. Humans, nonetheless, had the pleasant illusion of being the instructor. remote control car with night vision https://www.robotsden.com/best-remote-control-car-with-night-vision

Cozmo does something more than that—is something more than that, though still less than the living thing that my son seems to think it is. Cozmo can sense the world through a camera, and the images it captures get fed to an affiliated smartphone or tablet, which processes the data into a simple model of the world in which the robot finds itself. Are there people around? Are there power cubes to play with? Is it near an edge of a table? It does a simple version of what any autonomous robot must do, from a self-driving car to the pack robots that Boston Dynamics developed for the military.

As you play, software inside Cozmo determines the robot’s state: It can get excited, scared, nervous, happy, sad, frustrated. Sofman calls this software the toy’s “emotion engine”; it links the sensory technology to the robot’s behavior. Anki has hired animators from Pixar and DreamWorks to design some 1,200 little movements for the robot to make. Their animation software is hooked up directly to sample robots: The animators create new ways to show that Cozmo is, say, frustrated, and play them back through its body to see how people interpret the robot’s actions. The goal is to choreograph movements and expressions that will induce genuine emotions in the toy’s owner.

In the latest version of the software, Cozmo must be fed, repaired, and played with, not unlike the Tamagotchis of yore. But unlike those simple gizmos, which merely beeped or flashed simple expressions on a tiny screen, Cozmo can use the full breadth of its animated repertoire to summon particular feelings in its owner, and to foster emotional bonds. The idea is to create “a deeper and deeper emotional connection,” Sofman said. “And if you neglect him, you feel the pain of that.”

When he told me this, I felt a flash of not-quite-anger. It seemed almost cruel to design a robot that could play on a young kid’s emotions. And I had never considered that, in the coming human–robot conflagration, robots might take over simply by expertly manipulating us into letting them win.

Turkle has more-pointed concerns. She finds the notion of children empathizing with robots troublesome and quite possibly dangerous. Kids need connections to real people in order to mature emotionally. “Pretend empathy does not do the job,” she told me. If relationships with smart toys crowd out those with friends or family, even partially, we might see “children growing up without the equipment for empathic connection. You can’t learn it from a machine.”

My son and I sat on the porch playing with the robot. He shouted commands: “Say hello to my sister, Cozmo!” When I had Cozmo say his sister’s name by typing it into the app on my phone, he was delighted, but I also feared that I’d been sucked into a deception that the bot was even more capable than it actually was. toy robot that blows smoke https://www.robotsden.com/toy-robot-that-blows-smoke-gifts-to-delight-your-inquisitive-kid

Cozmo’s personality masks all that the robot still can’t do, Sofman told me. It can’t hear you. It can recognize only a few objects—basically power cubes, pets, and humans. And it’s completely dependent on the smartphone’s processing power to do anything. Shut your phone off, and Cozmo shuts down too. But “people become more forgiving of limitations if you have the right emotional cues,” Sofman said.

Humans don’t need much help to believe in a machine’s capabilities. Waymo, the company that emerged from Google’s self-driving-car project, has come to the position that there should be no intermediate steps between a car you drive yourself and a fully autonomous vehicle, because as soon as humans believe that a car (or a robot) has the slightest autonomy, they overestimate its capabilities. In early testing, a Google employee even climbed halfway into the back seat while the experimental software was driving on the highway. After watching enough video of how people in the driver’s seat behaved while the car was driving, the Google team set its sights on pure autonomy. Humans could not be trusted, because they were too trusting.

On the porch, my son discovered a new favorite game with Cozmo. Again and again, he turned the robot on its back so that it could not use its treads. The little robot flipped itself over in different ways and with varying levels of success, and my son laughed and laughed at its attempts. Whatever protective impulse he’d felt had dissipated in the physical comedy of robotic struggle.

Then, as he is wont to do, my son abruptly decided that he was done and that the robot needed to sleep on its charger in his room. As it turned out, what he really wanted was to watch TV, and my parental anxiety immediately attached to one of the other nightmares of our age. (Perhaps the whims of a toddler are not so easy to predict and manipulate.)

As I snuggled Cozmo into its charger, it was strange to think that the siblings and cousins and descendants of this little robot would one day, maybe quite soon, be everywhere. Self-driving cars, warehouse bots, autonomous drones—sensing, perceiving, reacting robots will be part of my son’s world. I feel about them as my parents did about computers: It will be necessary to understand these machines to comprehend the world. So now we have our first robot.

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dangkynhanhieusanphamcom · 5 years

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How to Make Your Smartphone Last Longer

When you buy a new smartphone, how long do you expect it to last? Two years? Maybe three? Despite the sometimes sky-high sticker prices, we tend to replace our smartphones more frequently than any of our other expensive electronic devices. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Around the time early smartphones from Apple and Google started to hit shelves in the late 2000s, the traditional model for buying a phone from your carrier worked like this: You would sign up for a two-year contract and in exchange you’d get a free (or very cheap) phone whose cost was built into the price of your monthly payment. Once your two years were up, carriers would lure you back with an “upgrade” that renewed your contract, gave you a new phone and maybe even took the old phone off your hands.

This worked fine for old flip phones, and especially cheaper phones that might not last very long. However, this model came with an unintended side effect. It trained users to expect upgrades every two years.

That proved costly to carriers that couldn’t eat the cost of increasingly expensive smartphones. So, they switched to a new model. Around the mid-2010s, carriers started decoupling phone prices from service contracts. Under the new model, you’d pay a set price for your service and a separate monthly price for your phone.

Suddenly, it became clear how expensive smartphones really were.

After that transition, phone buyers started to upgrade less often. According to a study by HYLA Mobile, the average trade-in device in 2016 was 2.38 years old. By 2018, that number increased to 2.77. For iPhones, which have gotten rather expensive in recent years, it climbed even higher to 2.92 years old. In other words, since phone prices became more transparent, people have started keeping them longer.

And yet, three years is still a comparatively short life for such an expensive gadget. A $700 laptop might last three to five years, while a $1,000-plus laptop could last several more. So, why don’t phones last that long?

Part of the reason may be because it’s harder to repair your phone. Many laptops have removable batteries. If the battery won’t hold a charge, you can just buy a replacement. Most smartphones, on the other hand, have built-in batteries that are difficult to replace or repair.

This problem gained publicity in 2018 when users discovered that Apple was slowing down phones as their batteries got older to prevent them from accidentally shutting down. A simple battery replacement would keep a phone working smoothly and extend its life, but many users didn’t know that. Once the intentional slowdown was revealed, Apple temporarily dropped the price of its battery-replacement program. The result was so popular that it caused a decline in demand for newer iPhone models. It turns out if you can spend $30 to speed up and give new life to your old iPhone, you’re less likely to spend $1,000 on a new one.

According to Kay-Kay Clapp, the director of communications and advocacy at iFixit, a site that encourages people to repair their own electronics (and publishes guides to help them), Apple’s “Batterygate” was a turning point for consumers. “It’s now mainstream knowledge that a simple battery swap can extend your phone’s life — this was huge!” Ms. Clapp said. “It was the first time Apple admitted that the battery inside your iPhone is a consumable, and not the iPhone itself.”

Simple repairs will add years of life to your phone

Depending on what phone you have, you may be able to repair it on your own. iFixit breaks down the most popular phones and gives them a repairability score. “On average, most smartphones have become less repairable over the past few years,” Ms. Clapp said.

Whether you repair a phone yourself or take it to a service center, there are a few common parts that can make your phone last longer.

Replacing your phone’s battery will get you more mileage than any other repair. “Most manufacturers’ batteries last about two years before serious degradation,” Ms. Clapp said. “Think of it like tires. Even if you don’t run over a kitchen knife on the highway, you’re going to have to replace them. They’re consumable.”

If you’ve held onto a phone for a couple of years, it may not hold a charge the way it used to. As Apple’s “Batterygate” controversy revealed, this can also lead to your phone slowing down or shutting off randomly. The more you charge and deplete batteries, the more they degrade.

“An iPhone retains up to 80 percent of its original capacity after 500 complete cycles,” Ms. Clapp said. “So if you charge your phone every night, and drain it during the day, that’s a complete cycle. So you’re basically looking at 80 percent of your new battery a year and a half to two years in.” Replacing the battery gives you another 500 cycles or so, which can extend the life of your phone another couple of years. Apple will replace an out-of-warranty battery for $50 to $70, which is considerably less than the cost of replacing your phone.

The screen is another repairable feature. Even if you use a case, dropping your phone can crack or shatter the screen. The screen is usually one of the most expensive components, so even if you do the repair yourself, it can still be costly (but still cheaper than buying a new phone).

Screen repair kits come with everything you need to fix a cracked display, including the screen and the digitizer — the part that detects where you tap your finger — and most include the tools you’ll need for the replacement. Most popular phones have many kits you can buy online. In some cases, you may be able to replace just the glass, which can be a lot cheaper.

Depending on the model, Apple charges as much as $330 for a screen replacement if you don’t have AppleCare+, the company’s extended service plan. Some Android phone repairs can be similarly expensive. You can save a lot of money if you fix the screen yourself, but the process can be difficult. The good news is that as long as you don’t break it again, your screen and glass should work far longer than any phone manufacturer will support your phone.

There are also minor things you can do to keep your phone working. “Always, always clean your charging port out with some fine tweezers or a port cleaning tool before going through the trouble to swap the port itself — it can save so much hassle!” Ms. Clapp said.

You can also save a phone that got wet as long as you don’t try to turn it on. “While rice doesn’t cut it,” she said, “pros can help you out with an ultrasonic bath that can save your phone.”

It’s O.K. to D.I.Y. or get someone else to do it

Smartphones are tightly engineered to fit as many components into as little space as possible. This often leads manufacturers to prioritize saving space over easy access for repairs. “If consumers had easy access to parts (and the confidence or knowledge to do the repair), I think a typical flagship smartphone could easily have a life span of four to five years,” Ms. Clapp said. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.

If you want to repair your phone, you have three main options. The first and potentially cheapest is to do the repair yourself. Sites like iFixit have detailed guides that walk you through every step of opening most phones for common repairs. You may need special tools like suction cups, plastic picks or specialty screwdriver bits (like Apple’s notorious pentalobe screw). Some phones are more difficult to open than others, so be sure to research your phone model before you buy tools or parts.

The most expensive but safest option is to get a repair directly from the manufacturer or an authorized service center. Apple, Google, Samsung and most other manufacturers will replace your battery, screen and other parts for a fee. For iPhones, you can head to any Apple store, while Samsung partners with a company called uBreakiFix that has nearly 500 locations across the country. Using an officially authorized repair center guarantees that your phone’s manufacturer won’t deny you service if you need a repair or help from them in the future.

Unauthorized repairs, done by a computer shop or even a friend, can save you money, but manufacturers often try to penalize you if you go that route. Some manufacturers include controversial “warranty seal” stickers that they use to claim the warranty as void if they’ve been broken or removed. The Federal Trade Commission reminded companies in 2018 that this practice is illegal. Similarly, in 2017, leaked documents revealed that Apple would refuse service for any issue if it found a third-party battery while performing a repair. The company recently reversed this policy, but will still refuse repairs if it finds other third-party components, like logic boards or microphones.

A software update in 2018 for the iPhone also had the unintended side effect of “bricking” devices (meaning, rendered nonfunctional) that were using aftermarket replacement screens. This was probably a bug on Apple’s part rather than a malicious change. However, it highlights a potential risk when you go third party. Many argue that it doesn’t have to be this way, but for now it is.

The post How to Make Your Smartphone Last Longer appeared first on NEWS - EVENTS - LEGAL.

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waynebomberger · 5 years

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The Future of 5G at Events – Event Tech Podcast

Click here for the full audio transcription.

Short on Time? We discuss the highlights from the episode below!

A Brief History of Mobile Speeds

The Beginnings

The 2nd Generation

Beginnings of a Smart World

4G Changes Everything

The Future of Mobile

What is the impact of 5G at Events?

Now that we’ve covered a brief history of mobile speed and technology, what will be the impact of 5G at events?

Impacts on Transportation

Advancements in Video

Could Replace WiFi at Events

Enhances Virtual Experiences

Virtual Reality could also be on the rise.

When Will These Changes Take Place?

Conclusion

Resources

Google News

Feedly

The Verge

Android Authority

Mobile World Congress

Pocket

Our Favorite Things from CES 2019 – Event Tech Podcast

hbspt.cta.load(430132, 'd9fe7e93-b235-439e-b0e4-b647f4c1349f', {});

from Endless Events https://ift.tt/2TTn3QX

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coldstarlightharmony-blog · 7 years

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Ars staff thinks about three years of tablets post-iPad. "I could live without it, however I'd rather not."

It's difficult to trust that the iPad and the several tablets that landed afterward have been around for just three years. On April 3, 2010, Apple discharged the first iPad to general society, commencing a hurricane of advancement in a space that was already known just for specialty, exploratory, and absolute odd items. One could in any case contend that the iPad—and different tablets like it—are implied for a specialty group of onlookers, yet plainly tablets as we probably am aware them today have inspired an emotional response with the masses. Macintosh alone has sold 100 million iPads as of October 2012.

It feels like present day tablets have been around a considerable measure longer, yet three years is as yet nothing to sniffle at. Reflecting upon the most recent three years of tablet lunacy, the Ars staff and supporters started to share stories about how our iPads or different tablets have changed how we associate with our gadgets and the Internet. A large portion of us were substantial tablet doubters when the iPad was first reported, and a few of regardless us are. So to pay tribute to the three-year commemoration of the iPad, we chose to impart some of our encounters to you on how our lives have changed—or how they haven't, depending the case.

Tablets have earned a place in our lives

Nate Anderson, Deputy Editor:

I was certainly a tablet cynic—I can utilize my portable workstation to do anything a tablet can do! What a waste to get an additional gadget! However, I in the long run grabbed an iPad in any case and learned four lessons. To begin with, the utility of innovation isn't just about final products yet about the way toward getting them. My three-year-old can scarcely utilize a mouse, a great deal less open a tablet and dispatch programs—however she has no issue swiping her way through the open screen, flipping through screens of applications, propelling her instructive amusements, playing them, stopping them, propelling different diversions, and closing off the gadget when wrapped up. Of course, a number of similar projects could keep running on the portable workstation too, yet all things considered, they would stay difficult to reach to her for two or three a more years. My children are tablet control clients who as of now comprehend ideas like code updates ("Dad, check whether there are any new levels out for Cut the Rope!") and crashes ("This program is broken. Will attempt another").

Second, the energy of tablets surpassed my desires. Tablets taken a gander at first like OK utilization gadgets for books, music, and video—and without a doubt they were frequently portrayed in those terms. In any case, even the imprecision of a touch interface was soon put to use for more inventive closures. While few creation applications on tablets can coordinate genius devices on PCs, they can in any event toss open imaginative potential outcomes to a great many novices—and for only a couple bucks an application. When I watch a five-year-old and her companion make their own princess toon, finish with hand-drawn foundations, liveliness, music, and account voiceover—all with no help—I recollect every one of the things I needed to attempt when I was child (claymation stop-movement activity of goliath creatures!) and wonder about exactly how intense inventive instruments now are.

Third, many individuals really incline toward secured figuring situations. My folks have both gotten iPads in their retirement and utilize them continually, notwithstanding shooting video and sending it to relatives. This not even once happened while doing as such required utilizing a camera, connecting that camera to the PC, transferring film, compacting it, and messaging it out. Furthermore, they are to a great extent free of stresses over malware or the entanglements of the Windows desktop. For individuals who to a great extent require utilization applications and a Web program, the security points of interest and effortlessness of tablets are components, not bugs.Finally, I discover utilizing the tablet an additionally alleviating knowledge. This is probably not going to be a general feeling, however as somebody who spends my whole day at a PC utilizing a mouse-and-console, my hands welcome an opportunity to accomplish something else and my back respects an opportunity to lean back on the sofa. Be that as it may, there's a mental part, as well. Airing out my tablet at night presents me with windows holding schedules, open program tabs for in-advance stories, texts, email, and book ventures. To put it plainly, I have an inclination that I've quite recently come back to the workplace. Utilizing a tablet feels, however irrationally, such as being at home.

Eric Bangeman, Managing Editor:

Portable workstation disregard. That is the most ideal approach to portray how the iPad has changed my figuring propensities since its presentation three years prior. Before the iPad, my MacBook was a universally handy gadget, utilized everywhere throughout the house for a wide range of errands. Since I acquired my first iPad, my MacBook is currently a solitary reason machine, utilized just for work. In the event that I was perched on the love seat, I'd have my tablet with me possibly a fourth of the time. Presently, I have my iPad 100 percent of the time.

Notwithstanding dislodging my tablet, the iPad has additionally been pursuing paper out of my home. I purchase and read books on the iPad. I'm an eager magazine peruser, and as Sports Illustrated, The Economist, Rugby World, and The Atlantic have turned out with full-included advanced releases, I've given my print memberships a chance to slip by. I'm additionally significantly more joyful perusing The New York Times by means of its iOS application than controlling huge bits of paper. What's more, the applications leave more space in the reusing container for things like exhaust lager jars and wine bottles.

Has it changed my life? No, it's only a tablet. In any case, it has made substance utilization significantly more helpful for me. Sitting in front of the TV with my iPad, I can answer pestering inquiries like which period of 30 Rock David Schwimmer showed up in, and after that peruse Facebook amid a business break. It's additionally an approach to take minimal mental get-aways: I can daydream for a couple of minutes and play a thoughtless iOS diversion or peruse the 730-page clever pictures string in the Lounge.

I could live without it, yet I would rather not.

Sean Gallagher, IT Editor:

My house is currently a three iPad family unit: Me, the technologist/early adopter/intermittent programmer; my better half, the administrator and mediavore; and my 18-year-old child, the performer and recording engineer. My little girl, the 12-year old, utilizes a second-hand Samsung Galaxy Tab for messaging and amusements.

The Galaxy Tab gets utilized more than all the iPads consolidated. That may say more in regards to the client than the gadgets, however it additionally needs to do with frame consider.

As an early adopter (well, not very early—I sat tight for the iPad 2), I attempted to push the limits of what the iPad could do. I regularly utilized it rather than a note pad for particularly scratch pad like things, graciousness of a Bluetooth console. Utilizing Mail, the iWork applications, Skype, and two or three different applications, it was my versatile office. Its size was more agreeable to use on a plane with the Belkin console and folio than my maturing Toshiba Satellite. Yet, since I've gotten the MacBook Air, I utilize it significantly less for those things, and I utilize my iPhone more as a result of its size. Presently my iPad is a greater amount of a tablet and a Netflix stage than work station. I've considered giving it down to my little girl since it invests more energy in a drawer than anyplace else.

My significant other uses her iPad to peruse e-galleys—early peruser e-releases of up and coming books. It has diminished the messiness of books around the house. Her library framework has begun to attempt to inspire administrators to utilize the iPad as a kind of perspective apparatus, enabling them to meander the floor and help benefactors discover the books they need. That exertion still has a few wrinkles in it, since the iPads just have entry to general society Wi-Fi and in this way a similar list framework as supporters utilize. (Tragically, it's one that can't reveal to them the flow status of a book and the PCs on their work areas.)

My 18-year old uses the iPad and GarageBand to do harsh creations of melodies, to toy with thoughts, and as an individual practice amp for electric guitar. The iPad has turned into a staple of live stable, with applications that enable a specialist to modify board levels remotely from anyplace inside a scene. He likewise utilizes it for online networking and to check his email. In any case, his needs surpass the iPad's grip; he would rather haul the iMac I passed on to him around on the grounds that it runs ProTools.

My little girl is the most tablet-centered of every one of us. She takes her Galaxy Tab to class, gathers video for reports, plays diversions, watches recordings, and utilizations a program called Text + to send companions SMS messages. Her school utilizes Google Apps, so she works together on Google Drive docs for her ventures. The Galaxy Tab is her steady buddy, to a great extent since she doesn't have a cell phone or a devoted PC like whatever is left of us—and in light of the fact that the Galaxy Tab is more convenient than the iPad.

Florence Ion, Reviews Editor:

The iPad first appeared when I was working at an Apple-driven production, yet in those days I was extraordinarily wary. I had quite recently put resources into a MacBook Pro and was somewhat maddened at the possibility that I needed to switch up my way of life to oblige this new… thing. Presently tablets are as pervasive as cell phones, and in spite of the fact that it's not important to have one, it's positively feels fundamental. I now have three in my family unit: a third-era iPad, a 32GB Nexus 7, and a Microsoft Surface with Windows RT. One is dependably inside arm's compass, yet it's normally the iPad that I get when I'm in the state of mind to devour content.

I began my vocation in the realm of print and keep on being a tremendous evangelist of the medium. Yet, as innovation advances, I've understood that I need to change the way I expend it, as well. Up until now, just the iPad has possessed the capacity to convey the sort of magazine experience I'd expect in this new "advanced age." New issues are conveyed to me by means of Newsstand, and I can without much of a stretch flip through pages, tap on intuitive substance, and explore to the sites offering the items I'm keen on.

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sb129 · 7 years

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Why Palm in 20XX?

I’ve gotten this question several times over the years so let me explain.

And you can skip to the last two paragraphs if you want the “too long; didn’t read” edition

First off, I have been using Handhelds, PDAs and “smartphones”, since about 1999. I am only 25 as of Jan 2017, Generation Y [Not neccesarily a Millenial]. Many would be quick to say that I am no different from Generation Z or other Millenials in that I have grown up surrounded by technology and the Internet. I disagree with that sentiment on a couple grounds. Firstly, although I grew up in and around technology and networking, I never was beholden to it. Unlike most Millenials I spent most of my time playing outside, watching some TV and doing chores.

What does this have to do with my mobile OS of choice? Well keep in mind that I used a handheld just like it should since i had a lack of a full desktop PC or money to buy things like video games. I used my Palm IIIe for everything. I had simple games, a scientific calculator, a tiny drawing app for notes, to do lists, a calendar, alarms and I knew I could get more if I managed my available space on my PDA (it had 2mb of RAM and that’s it)

Take someone born after the year 2000, by the time they were 10 (as I was in 2002) all they knew was iPhones, Android, WebOS and maybe Blackberry. Any who are born after 2010 will only know much more powerful items by the time they are 10.

Back to my 2 mb of RAM, I learned very early on to conserve digital space, anyone why used old 80′s computers might tell you something similar. Programs only took up KiloBytes back then. These days Facebook takes up to 150 Megabytes of space. Well anyhow, I later got an upgraded PDA, it was a Handspring Visor Deluxe, it had 4 times as much space plus it added an extra slot for extra hardware. (kind of like the LG G5) I was rollin with 8mb of space plus if I had the funds.

Jump forwards to 8th grade. The year is 2006, every kid has an MP3 player and a flip phone of some sort. Kids with less only had CD players, a brick phone or nothing. I was 1 of the few who had a PDA in school. I had the games, the specialized calculators to help me in math class, the schedule digitized and most of the things phone do these days. Video player, MP3 player, pictures, games, emulators you name it. I, technologically, was the envy of many. That kind of power and ability in the palm of your hand was just not accessible as it is today.

The school year is 2007-2008, as a sophomore in HS I was seeing the beginnings of the modern era. All had phones, there wasn’t a single person that was without a cell signal. Still pre “smartphone” Some phones are Moto Razr influenced, some are MP3-centric like the LG Chocolate, some were born for text and IM with full physical keyboards. I had the LG VX9400, a candybar style phone with a flip-up display meant for Verizon’s mobile TV streaming service. Before that was a Motorola V710. There were some with Treos for the nice keyboard, some with Windows Mobile and some with blackberry for the same reason. A full keyboard was pretty in if you did a lot of text messaging.

Even in 2008, seeing an iPhone was just non existent on many high school campuses, especially the small town one I went to. The original iPhone was not too good though, not to a high schooler. Camera was no different to any other flip phone, there was no dedicated IM application, no apps for it all in fact, just the original core apps were all you got. People forget that the App Store did not exist in the first iPhone OS. All it was to me was a cool new touch screen technology, good web browser and iTunes syncing. And that was quite enough for a businessman and the Apple fanatic but really that was it.

My first impressions of Both iPhone OS (soon to be renamed to iOS) and Android was that they looked pretty modern compared to Windows Mobile and Palm but Hilariously enough, Palm and Windows Mobile had all the Apps. So I stayed. I already had certain tendencies ingrained in me; First, I always did my web surfing at home on a real computer even though my phone, my Palm, my PSP and even NDS was technically up to the task of a simple look up on information. Second, I was used to converting movies to highly specific formats for the PSP (Thanks for that Sony btw) so getting video on my Palm was nothing to me and still isn’t. Third, I plain had already bought software for it, kids these days don’t know what expensive means for mobile software. Fourth, there were plenty of games that I liked that ended up never coming over to the major OSs of today, plus I like real buttons to play games. 5th and lastly, this might sound strange to quite a lot of people, but screen real estate is just plain better on Palm and Windows Mobile because of and not in spite of their resistive screen. I’ll make a separate post about that soon.

Here we are, the year 2017. How can it possibly be any good in 2017 some ask. Well, what would I normally need to do on a smartphone? Maybe edit some documents, look at some pictures, watch a movie or two, listen to some music whist driving and maybe play some games. On occasion I may just look at the Night Sky Pro app I got a while ago. I might need to know the tip for a bill, or slip the bill. I might need to access a good calculator. I know I’ll have a doodling application no matter what. I’ll also have some small tweaks to Android like PowerLine, a different app launcher and mess with the color scheming. I also like to set the screen forcibly to landscape sometimes if I need to get to the homescreen for something while watching a video. I’ll need the Bible on Sundays and a note app for that. Got my calendar synced with Google so it’s on my computer. I might use Opera to check something because I like Opera, it’s fast and small. Oh yes, I do need a to do list every so often.

So, Pretty good list of features, tweaks, general use apps and services that my Palm LifeDrive is perfectly able to accomplish. Too bad Palm never made a TX style smartphone because that would be my daily driver. Oh well, this has turned into quite the wall of text

#Palm_OS #pda #vintage computing

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kristinsimmons · 4 years

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Flipping the Stack: Can New Technology Drive Health Care’s Future?

By MATTHEW HOLT and INDU SUBAIYA

Figure 1. Growth in use of cloud data v s traditional data centers

What about the hospital?

However, the hospital sector is likely to move towards the trend of using the cloud seen in other businesses.

Figure 2: The break up of tech platforms

At the forefront are AI), VR, AR and blockchain – all built on the expanding capabilities of cloud computing and driven by the burgeoning Internet of Things.

Blockchain

Examples of just a few companies using AI for complex tasks in health care

Prognos –Use lab, medical and claims data to predict patient disease onset

SurveyorHealth—Personalizes complex drug regimens to lower risk and improve outcomes

Babylon Health—Chatbot front end, takes symptoms and delivers diagnoses

Augmented Reality superimposes a computer-generated image or data over a view into the real world using a device that a user can see through such as Microsoft Hololens or Google glass

Virtual Reality places the user in a completely artificial world using a system of headsets, (such as Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive) controllers and gloves. (end of box)

The role of the Tech Giants

Sleuthing the tech giants’ health care moves

Inverting the stack

There are several obvious scenarios in which new market entrants can change health care but the one in which they take a major role we call “Tech inverting the stack”

Figure 3: The Traditional Care Delivery Stack

Figure 4. Tech Inverts the Stack

Conclusion & Implications

Get familiar with the technologies. You won’t understand VR by reading this piece. You might if you play a video game with your kids on their new Oculus headset.

Matthew Holt is Founder of THCB & Co-Founder, Health 2.0. Indu Subaiya is co-founder, Health 2.0 & CEO of Catalyst @ Health 2.0

The post Flipping the Stack: Can New Technology Drive Health Care’s Future? appeared first on The Health Care Blog.

Flipping the Stack: Can New Technology Drive Health Care’s Future? published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/

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