What economic growth feels like in the Inland Empire. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
If you are living in California more than, oh, say 15 miles from the ocean, you likely wonder why the statistics saying the economy is going fantabulously well don’t seem to fit with what you see while looking around or what you hear after talking to people.
Two articles explaining why you might be feeling that disconnect, why something just seems off.
First, business activity including employment in the Inland Empire area of Southern California is only now, in early 2017, returning to the level when the recession started.
Second, it isn’t just your imagination that lots and lots of younger people are still living at home when it seems like they should be out on their own. We are talking people who have graduated and are employed.
Amazing new services and products arising from the technology revolution are a delight every day. We are all benefiting from astounding stuff. Tons of entertainment options on the ‘net. Astounding capabilities for our smartphones.
The downside is companies that can’t keep up are getting swept away. The people and space involved in old stuff can be reused in new services. That is creative destruction.
5/31/17 – Fortune – RadioShack’s Tweets Offer a Bleak Look Into the Retailer’s Demise– Over Memorial Day weekend, RadioShack had a liquidation sale at over 1,000 of its retail stores. After closing those locations, there will only by 70 corporate owned stores and 500 dealer owned stores left.
Sales dropped from a peak of $6.3B in 1996 to only $3.5B last year, due to the company not being able to counter the shift to on-line sales.
Consider the missed opportunities, from a comment by Stephen Green at Instapundit:
There is a lot of massive disruption from the technology revolution. That is going to continue. What are the threats in your industry and what opportunities might open up?
Consider the turmoil in these industries:
Lots of people are cutting their cable connection.
Phone lines too – over half of US homes don’t have a landline.
Creative destruction: Video rental stores and chain bookstores as illustrations of how fast entire industries can be taken out.
Nomination for next industry ready for disruption: Malls? Local real estate agents?
An accelerating number of folks are dumping cable and getting all their entertainment directly from the net. Seems like a person could get whatever entertainment desired from Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, specialized sports services, and dedicated on-line channels.
Recovered Falcon 9 booster after NORL-76 mission. Credit Flickr. Courtesy of SpaceX.
There is a non-stop stream of amazing news from the open frontier of space:
SpaceX recovers Falcon 9 after launching spy sat
Another good launch of sat into geosyn orbit by India
ULA joint venture agreement expires
China starts test of cabin for lunar living
Falcon 9 booster about to land after NORL-76 mission. Credit Flickr. Courtesy of SpaceX.
5/1/17 – Space.com – SpaceX Launches US Spy Satellite on Secret Mission, Nails Rocket Landing– SpaceX successfully put a classified satellite from National Reconnaissance Office into orbit. As a massive fringe benefit, they also recovered the first stage back at the launch site. This is their fourth successful recovery on land.
The photograph from the launch is incredible. In particular, there is a great view of the first stage separation, flip, and boostback burn.
Sometimes technology can be a bit scary. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Just like technology is constantly being used in ever more exciting ways, technology is also being used in ever more scary ways. A few articles illustrating the downside:
Hotel hacked by ransomware, locking guests in rooms
Police surveillance cameras hacked with ransomware
Software to help plagiarists evade plagiarism detection software
Cloning voice patterns to create voice recordings
Insurance companies using social media for background checks
1/28 – The Local, in Austria – Hotel ransomed by hackers as guests locked in rooms – A 4-star hotel got hit hard by cyber crooks, who locked the key-based door system. Every door in the place was locked Guests could neither get into a room or leave.
Hotel paid a ransom in bitcoins of 1,500 Euros, or about US$1,608.
This was the third hit at the hotel. They successfully defended against a fourth attack.
Oh, the hotel has a plan to prevent future attacks…
SpaceX SES 10, recovery of Falcon 9 booster. Credit Flickr. Courtesy of SpaceX.
The number of private sector players involved in space exploration and the progress underway is astounding. Here are a few recent articles catching my attention:
Space remains the final frontier. And it will be private sector entrepreneurs, not government bureaucrats, who will take us there.
Article gives a summary of the private sector companies, funded by filthy rich guys who choose to pour their wealth into space exploration, that have expanded our reach into space. According to the article, these companies have done more than NASA has in the last several decades.
Atlas V lifts Cygnus supply ship to ISS. Credit: United Launch Alliance. Used with permission.
It is astounding to ponder the news from the wide open frontier of space. I’m continually amazed by what is happening.
3/7/17 – Space News- NASA seeks information on commercial Mars payload service– NASA issued a Request For Information asking for plans to provide cargo runs to Mars. They are looking for outline of plans in terms of payload mass and weight, nature of vehicle, and timing for start of operations. The RFI indicates 2020 as a start date.
Two companies are described in the article as likely players in Mars cargo runs.
SpaceX would use their new lander Red Dragon as testbed for cargo vehicle. Launch was scheduled for 2018 but has slipped to 2020.
Mars One also has plans for a lander, as an intermediate step for crewed travel. First launch was planned from 2018 but that is now looking like 2022.
3/14 – Behind the Black – SpaceX wins another Air Force launch contract– Ticket price to launch a GPS satellite is $96.5M, up by $14M from the last launch by SpaceX for USAF. Post speculates SpaceX is trying to improve their margin by undercutting ULA less this time around.
SpaceX SES-10. Credit Flickr. Courtesy of SpaceX for placing photos in public domain.
The competition to be a commercially competitive space launch provider gets far more serious with SpaceX successfully launching a reused Falcon 9 booster to get SES-10 into a geosync orbit.
On the same day as SpaceX made such tremendous progress, two competitors dropped further behind.
Competition speeds up
SpaceX SES-10. Credit Flickr. Courtesy of SpaceX.
I was so fortunate as to check my Twitter feed as SpaceX began its live coverage of the launch. It was such a joy to watch the successful launch and an even bigger thrill to see Main Engine Cutoff, which meant the reused booster did its job.
Several intriguing articles on military forces using technology:
ISIS using larger drones with larger payloads
Marine Corps wants to experiment with giving an entire battalion suppressors for all their weapons
Pakistan developing second strike capability by putting nuke loaded cruise missiles on diesel subs
Lots of jobs in the US military will be replaced by robots
2/21 – Washington Post – Use of weaponized drones by ISIS spurs terrorism fears– In Iraq, Islamic State is working with drones above the quadcopter size. With wingspans of about 6 feet, the drone can carry a mortar round at about three pounds instead of a hand grenade.
IS has posted videos of multiple uses of the drones to drop explosives. The frequency of offensive use of the drones is high enough that Iraqi troops must scan the scansky for drones and take cover when one is spotted.
Captured documents indicate IS is doing research to develop new drones and modify off-the-shelf versions.
This is a significant step up from my previous discussion of ISIS’ drone usage. On January 30, I mentioned:
Purpose of system is so European users won’t be vulnerable to accuracy degrades by the US, Russian, or Chinese GPS constellations, should any of those players wish to do so.
There will be 24 satellites in the system when fully deployed, plus a few extra for spares. Currently 18 are in orbit. One is close to complete failure for some other reason.
Now there is a problem with failing clocks.
Each satellite has four atomic clocks, two rubidium and two hydrogen maser. Those give accuracy to within one second per three million years. That level of accuracy is needed to get the most precise location data.
Nine of the hyper accurate clocks have failed in orbit. One sat has 2 failures. That means 8 sats have lost one or more clocks.
Does the graph remind you of the newspaper and music industry? Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Several articles provide an in-depth view of the disruption taking place in several industries due to the IT revolution.
Hollywood is ripe for the same creative destruction we’ve seen in music, newspapers, and publishing.
New York Times is shrinking their physical space and staff size
Prime time TV still having a rough time
The question to ponder in the back of your mind is what are you going to do when this wave of disruption overturns your industry?
January 2017 – Vanity Fair – Why Hollywood As We Know It is Already Over– Looking for a good article on how technology is going to do to Hollywood what IT has already done to music and publishing? If so, this is what you’ve been looking for.
Check out the article to help understand the massive change surrounding us.
Disruption of music industry
First, music and newspapers. The author saw his first indication the music industry would collapse when he started downloading music. Instead of driving to a store somewhere and spending $20 to get one song he wanted, he could spend a buck and get the song immediately.
Author says the music industry has shrunk by half in the last decade. Remember that is after the first round of disruption hit.
Disruption of newspapers
Next were the newspapers. For a long time, the web part of the New York Times was physically separate from the headquarters. “Banished” is the word the author used. At the same time, startups like Instapundit (yeah Professor Reynolds!) and DailyKos were figuring out how to blog. Then WordPress and Tumblr allowed anyone on the planet to start blogging, and doing so for free.
Author says a lot of people didn’t want to wander over to a newsstand and buy a whole newspaper or magazine when instead they could read the single article they wanted, online, for free.
To illustrate the concept, I’ve never bought a copy of Vanity Fair and doubt I ever will. I certainly didn’t drive over to Barnes & Noble to buy the current edition so I could read this article. A blogger I read (see above!) mentioned it and I clicked over.
Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com before they merged into Adobe Stock.
Drone technology marches forward, regardless of whether you or I think it is a good idea. A few recent article:
Incorporating drones into a home security system.
LA Sheriff starts to use drones
US Navy experimenting with swarms of drone ships
ISIS using off-the-shelf quadcopters to drop small bombs.
1/3 – Engadget.com – Your next home security system could deploy patrol drones – A company has developed a security system with a learning algorithm which ‘learns’ the normal routine at your home. When something happens outside the range of normal, the system can deploy drones to put several cameras on the situation.
Is that robot telling other robots what parts to pull in an Amazon warehouse? Or is it searching databases to develop your profile before picking which call center operator to connect you to? Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Here are a few recent reports of astounding things IT and AI can do:
Amazon warehouses are so heavily automated it only takes about sixty seconds of human labor to pull, pack, and ship your order.
Call centers can construct a profile of you while the phone is ringing.
In our society, where if there isn’t video to illustrate and prove a story, the story didn’t happen, it is getting easier to fabricate video.
