Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Accuweather

7 Comments

Don’t use their app.

Still installing stuff on my new phone, but very carefully. I just started installing a voice recorder, but it insisted on having access to my pictures, the Internet, my location. Why? Nope.

[Update a few minutes later]

This seems sort of related: A statistics professor was banned from Google. It is looking more and more like the old libertarian argument that we have less to concern with private companies than government is getting a little threadbare when it comes to concentrations of power like this.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Trump Versus Bezos

20 Comments

Why does Trump hate him so much? Because, as Virginia Postrel points out, Bezos is the anti-Trump:

Trump, who likes his staff to have the right “look,” would never cast a wiry guy who doesn’t hide his lack of hair as a big-time businessman. How can someone only five-foot-nine intimidate people into submission? In Trumpworld, intimidation, not value-creation, is what business is all about.

Bezos also has a sense of humor, often at his own expense, and a famously raucous laugh. Trump is humorless. He certainly doesn’t laugh at himself.

Bezos speaks clearly and has amazing message discipline even by the standards of successful CEOs — something that struck me when I first interviewed him way back in 1996. Trump: not so much.

Trump grew up rich, went to private schools, and had an undistinguished college career. Bezos grew up middle-class, went to public schools, and knocked the top out of Princeton, graduating with highest honors and Phi Beta Kappa in electrical engineering and computer science. One had a rich father; the other has brains.

Ouch.

Business, Technology and Society

Upgrading My Phone

9 Comments

I’ve sworn that I’ll give up my mechanical keyboard when they take it from my cold, dead hands, but my Droid 4 is on its last legs, with an OS that’s becoming incompatible with too many apps. I’ve given up hope of continuing to have one, and am shopping for a new (used) phone. I’m not a power user, and can’t see spending $500+ on the latest and greatest, but I would like to get an older high-end machine. I was looking at the Moto G4+, but when I asked Verizon if the network supports it, they said no (which surprised me). They have a web page that says “Bring your own device,” but in order to check compatibility, you have to enter the device ID, which is kind of hard when one doesn’t actually have a device.

Anyway, I had a chat session with someone else at Verizon, who finally came up with a list of compatible devices for the past few years. I don’t know why it should be this hard, though.

Business, Culinary, General Science, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

The Lancet

7 Comments

…has reviewed Nina Teichholz’s book:

Many readers will be incensed by this book. If you think saturated fats and cholesterol are bad for you, you’ll be incensed. If you think the fat story is exaggerated, you’ll be incensed. If you trust in the objectivity of science to inform health policy, you’ll be incensed. Stories of shocking scientific corruption and culpability by government agencies are all to be found in Nina Teicholz’s bestseller The Big Fat Surprise. This is a disquieting book about scientific incompetence, evangelical ambition, and ruthless silencing of dissent that has shaped our lives for decades.

Good for her.