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Month: January 2025

Silicon Valley Goes to Washington…Why?

Silicon Valley Goes to Washington…Why?

Photo by Andy Feliciotti on Unsplash

News stories have a way of quickly becoming yesterday’s news. Which for the most part they are, but what if there’s more to the story?

Ever wonder why the tech C suite has suddenly turned its attention to participating in the G qua Government suite (their  armies of lobbyists aside, of course) – and backed the current administration? We were curious, and there’s a reason why you need to look outside of the mainstream media for answers or connect dots that might be a bit obscured.

“The Shocking Reason Marc Andreessen Had to Endorse Donald Trump,” the Independent Sentinel reported – and not reported in the mainstream media. According to Andreessen, said the Sentinel, “The Biden Administration planned to control AI and only allow three companies to create it. The administration would crush all competing companies and classify the physics needed to run AI models. “AI is a technology, basically, that the government is gonna completely control. — Don’t fund AI startups,” Andreessen was warned. “That’s not something that we’re gonna allow to happen…We’re gonna control them, um, and we’re gonna dictate what they do.” Read More...

Exactly Who Was Behind that TikTok Ban?

Exactly Who Was Behind that TikTok Ban?

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Whether the TikTok ban was short-lived or not, time will tell. It’s back for now, which is good news for the said 170M Americans who depend on the platform for income.

So, with all of the egregious behavior we’ve seen on the part of platforms like Google/Alpha with its globally recognized monopolistic practices and Facebook, which has how many lawsuits against them,  it was TikTok that suddenly went dark?

If you’re wondering why Congress moved so quickly and decisively against TikTok, you need to look no further than to Mark Zuckerberg himself. Read More...

The Week the World Changed

The Week the World Changed

Image by Eduard Oertle from Pixabay

It was an odd week, between the devastating Los Angeles fires and Mark Zuckerberg burning the US government censorship apparatus to the ground. Or at least sent up a few smoke signals, and where there’s smoke…

We’re not going to get into the politics of the fire. There’s certainly enough on that out there. This is about tech. While it was reported that the reservoir and fire hydrants were empty, isn’t California the jewel in the crown of technology? And there is technology out there to combat water shortages and fires. Los Angeles is built on a desert. Before you put a major city in place, good idea to consider the water problem, which self-train civil engineer William Mulholland did back re Los Angeles in the day (think the movie Chinatown), but the city has since then greatly expanded and water shortages are not a rarity in Southern California. In Israel, which is also built on a desert, measures were put in place to ensure that water would get to where it was needed in order to support the population: How Israel’s Water Surplus Is TRANSFORMING the Middle East. It’s basic urban planning.

Cloud-seeding has brought rain to the otherwise parched Middle East, and while there is some debate about whether or not the science was responsible for the flooding in Dubai last year, well, that is the only incident of flooding/water manipulation in the desert, the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus aside, but that’s literally another story. Read More...

Out With the Old, In With the New

Out With the Old, In With the New

Image by Guido Reimann from Pixabay

Just when you thought you’d seen the last of those Best Of/Worst Of lists, the good news is – you have. We’re not going there, since you know how it goes: the more things change, the more they – just seem to get changed up a bit. At least in tech. We felt it might be interesting – and informative – to look at tech and trends gone by, and what they’ve given way to, which may well continue to be part of in this new year. Without further ado, here’s our list of out with the old and in with the new:

OLD                                                                                                             NEW 1. Standing Desk Chair                                                             Chairwear: A wearable exoskeleton chair 2. UAPs/UFOs                                                                            Drones 3. Dating apps                                                                             AI-generated love interest 4. Fentanyl                                                                                   Kava 5. Rachel Maddow                                                                      Joe Rogan 6. Depends                                                                                   $75 Leather Mosh Pit Diapers 7. Man cave                                                                                  Boy Apartment 8. Cougar                                                                                      HAGmaxing 9. Self-driving taxi                                                                      Airtaxi 10. C-Suite                                                                                   G-Suite: tech formally enters the administration 11. DEI                                                                                          H1B 12. Online shopping                                                                   AI Shopping Agents 13. GenX – the Latchkey Generation                                      GenZ – the Lockdown Generation 14. Identity politics                                                                    Digital IDs 15. Breast implants                                                                    Neural implants And a bonus! In his 1961 Farewell Address as he exited the Presidency, Dwight D Eisenhower warned the nation about the military-industrial complex: “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Speaking of the old and the new, this might come as news to you. He also warned us about the dangers of the tech-industrial complex: “We must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” Just a heads’ up as we boldly go into this new year, always and forever, onward and forward.