Brian Gongol
Google Maps adds a layer for real estate
A new layer allows one to see real estate listings mapped all over the United States. It's surprisingly comprehensive, and it'll be a great tool for homebuyers. It'll also be a great tool for criminals who want to know where they can find nice houses with nice stuff inside.
Intel sticks 48 separate processing cores on one chip
The NFL has no sense of humor
The league nixed a series of TV commericals showing Bears players alongside Blackhawks players. The NFL, not seeing the humor in Chicago's hometown cross-promotion, says that their players can't be seen promoting any other sports. Bad memories of Bo Jackson?
Big Ben on Twitter
Every hour, on the hour: BONG! BONG! BONG! (as many times as required to illustrate the time in London)
2009 was a 12-year low for Atlantic hurricanes
Rising water prices ahead for Omaha
If only we could make productivity growth perpetual
Labor productivity grew at an annualized rate of 8.1% in the 3rd quarter of this year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Fewer hours were worked, and lots more was done during those hours. If we could indefinitely keep up an 8% rate of increase in productivity, virtually all of today's economic problems and many of the pending ones (like the massive Federal debt and ongoing obligations like Medicare that wait like a time bomb) could be wiped away amid the productivity gains. Alas, the chances of that are quite slim.
Google confirms it's moving into the energy business
It's been obvious since at least November 2007 that Google was going to start shifting some of its cash into the energy business, since it's one of the company's main expenses (besides computers and people). Moreover, Google is undoubtedly reaching the stage where it can no longer expect to expand its gains in Internet businesses indefinitely. There's only so much advertising money to be milked from the Internet, and if the company is going to keep on growing, it's going to have to put some of that money to use in different industries. Energy production may simply be the first of those new industries.
DARPA plans to test social networking
They're offering a contest to see just how well-networked Americans are, using hidden balloons all over the country.
GM board chair fires CEO, hires himself
Things aren't looking good for General Motors in the long term. But to have the board kick out the sitting CEO and replace him with the sitting board chair doesn't really live up to expectations that a board should act as an independent body with the responsibility to review and supervise the work of management. When the interests of senior management and the board are too much alike (or, in this case, identical), the board really can't do its job as the representative body for the shareholders. And since the shareholders in GM are the American taxpayers, the situation really has gone sour. Related: Mitt Romney is undoubtedly planning another run for the White House in 2012. If he decides to run as the free-market business conservative that he should have been in 2008 instead of the guy who tried to win the favor of the social conservatives who weren't going to back him anyway because of his religion, then he might very well have a shot.
Britain's re-thinking rules for listing criminal details on websites
In part, the government there wants to expand the online publication of convictions -- but they seem quite unsure how to keep those records from staying up forever. Of course, it's obvious that once anything lands on the Internet and is picked up by a robot search (like what Google uses to search the Web), it's quite likely already been preserved for posterity -- no matter what the rules on expunging the official record may be.
Some criticisms of vertical farming
The idea that farms could be built inside urban skyscrapers -- like a huge stack of Aerogardens -- is simultaneously far-fetched and surprisingly close to becoming a reality. But there's also a case to be made for simply growing more food in urban and suburban gardens at a deep discount to the cost of building a skyscraper for tomatoes.
A rotating kitchen. But not around the expected axis.
(Video)
More than 40 programs on the chopping block at UNI
The state of Iowa has cut a lot of funding for the three Regents universities, and they're cutting programs as a means of handling that reduced funding. The universities may illustrate a case where across-the-board budget cuts are an especially bad idea. When the economy contracts or stagnates, people who go out of work often have greater need than they did before for additional education and training. Education spending ought to be counter-cyclical to the economy, at least to some degree -- delivering more opportunities for low-cost education when the rest of the economy turns sour, rather than less. It takes no special powers of observation to see that university-level education is a major contributor to national and economic well-being; if it weren't, then how could the Saudis possibly justify opening a university where the notorious religious police aren't allowed to roam and women permitted a degree of freedom? That doesn't mean universities should be operated with bulletproof budgets, but it does indicate that counter-cyclical spending on education may be worthwhile.
Some very good (security) reasons to stay out of Facebook applications
The problem with many of them is that they offer direct access to your personal information to the people and companies creating the apps. Facebook counts on people to give away their valuable personal information -- and they're getting what they've been hoping for. And what's unfortunate is that all of this is being figured out as the company makes decisions on the fly -- like killing off regional networks and changing the way that people have to establish their personal privacy settings. The cumulative effect is that people shouldn't trust anything for "privacy" online. The people in charge can be capricious, malicious, or just plain stupid -- but the people who pay the consequences are the users. And that's before we even consider the impact of what it means when people share too much about themselves online, even without provocation. It's important to have a private life that remains private.
When tech rumors spread faster than the truth
A poorly-documented complaint became a firestorm of rumors, all defended under the cover of "The company couldn't be reached for comment". But when people are inclined to spread juicy rumors anyway, and can do so with immediacy thanks to the Internet, at what point does sensibility kick in and start demanding that we get valid news from verifiable sources?
Dubai after the bubble
Fascinating photos from the New York Times. It was little over a year ago that people still insisted that there wasn't a bubble. There was. The lesson: Always suspect a bubble, and whenever you find one, assume it will burst.
GM CEO fired
And vice chair Bob Lutz says it was a badly-timed move. The US government still owns a majority of the company -- unless there have been other secret machinations taking place, itself an entirely possible situation -- and that makes every move of this sort a highly political situation. That tension needs to be ended quickly -- the whole concept of a state-owned GM is still pretty noxious.
Podcast: The hidden costs of corruption in Chicago
EPA nixes some of Iowa's proposed water-quality revisions
BlackRock now manages $3.2 trillion in assets
The firm just bought out Barclays Global Investors and now manages the equivalent of 22% of US GDP. For reference, the total household wealth in the United States is about $53.1 trillion after taking a big dive over the last two years. It's well-nigh impossible to figure out how BlackRock can manage that large a set of assets without delivering positively mediocre results -- before taking out what they charge for expenses. Warren Buffett has warned repeatedly that the biggest impediment to the growth rate of his company (Berkshire Hathaway) is its size. As it gets bigger, he finds that his universe of available great opportunities shrinks. And Berkshire has just $25.5 billion in assets by comparison. Imagine: If Buffett thinks his options are limited with $25.5 billion to invest (because the greatest opportunities are in businesses too small to land on his radar), then how can BlackRock possibly serve its investors with more than $3,200 billion? They can't. Period. They can only achieve mediocre returns in the aggregate, and extract a huge amount in fees along the way. That's not fair to investors who think they're getting real service.
We can't improve the economy by creating another housing bubble
Too much of the anticipation of economic "recovery" has hinged upon the notion that people buying homes will kick-start the construction market -- and by a parallel notion that the government can spend the economy into growth. Both assumptions are wrong.
How to run a news organization with no central office
Fong drops out of Iowa gubernatorial campaign
Christian Fong is an intelligent guy, but instead of promoting a vision based on economic freedom and social libertarianism, he went to the Iowa Family Policy Center and parroted an absolutist line on social conservatism which just didn't seem appropriate to his agenda, nor responsive to the state. And now that speeches once given in private now appear on YouTube, one's message has to be consistent.
Why families need to think about wealth across generations
People are living longer than ever, and a 100-year lifespan isn't an impossibility. 100-year business plans are in short supply, just like 100-year family plans. And that's unfortunate, because plans don't have to be adhered-to absolutely, but they do have to be formed. A 100-year plan (for a business or for a family) is like a flight plan: It identifies a starting point and a destination, but allows for course corrections and revisions along the way.
A few observations for anyone running for office
Podcast: Why I don't hate Bill Gates anymore
Clorox wants to take its factories chlorine-free
An "urban forest" for Chongqing
A Beijing-based architectural firm is proposing a 70-story building for Chongqing (the megacity almost nobody in America knows about), with organically-shaped (that is, irregular but smooth) floors, some of which would be open to the air and some of which will include plants and trees. The floors would be anchored to a central column, much like Marina City in Chicago, but the form is intended to look like a mountain in the middle of the city. It's interesting to see how today's movement is towards "organic" forms in the middle of urban mechanization -- a far cry from what happened in the Modernist era, when the whole idea was to develop skyscrapers and buildings with orthogonal lines and lots of concrete.
A checklist for computer passwords
Nobody ever expects to be suddenly incapacitated, but it can happen. And if you're not recording the passwords you use routinely so that your loved ones can have access to them in an emergency, then you're creating a lot of potential hardship for them if the unthinkable occurs.
Boston public radio is aiming to compete with commercial news and talk radio stations
Why should public radio be subsidized if it's going to compete with stations from the private sector? Isn't the point of public broadcasting to provide what the market "won't support"?
What makes the situation in Afghanistan a no-win game
The Washington Post closes its domestic news bureaus
It used to have bureaus in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Austin, Denver, and Miami. Now there are none. Which means its coverage from those cities will come from sources that everyone else is using. Which means the news carried by the Post will become even more commoditized than before. Which is exactly what a newspaper shouldn't be doing if it's trying to compete in the Internet age. A newspaper would be better off with nobody in the home office and every reporter and editor scattered to the four winds than to be centralized and surviving on the "life support" of wire services. Specialization and unique content, not commoditization, are what will keep newspapers afloat as institutions.
Pesticides in the water remain level with 10 years ago
Notes from the Brian Gongol Show on November 29, 2009