Gongol.com Archives: November 2012
Brian Gongol


November 23, 2012

Weather and Disasters Fog causes 100-car wreck on Thanksgiving in Texas
Crashes like these just reinforce the case for bringing self-piloted cars to the market as soon as possible. People are prone to over-estimate their own capacities to drive safely under bad conditions, like fog. We need machines to override our overconfidence.

Computers and the Internet Number of Windows 8 applications grows past 20,000
They're not all available everywhere, but many are, and the vast majority are free

Agriculture Milk prices could get rocky around January 1st
On a related note, Iowa farmers brought in half a billion dollars in payments for corn and soybean crop losses to this summer's drought

Broadcasting The best way to stay in business is to look for ways to put yourself out of business
Incentives fall on the side of innovation. In other words, there is a great deal of money to be made from disrupting the status quo. So if a company intends to stay in business for the long term, it needs to anticipate that disruptive innovations will come along, and that it's better to be the innovator than the victim of that innovation.

Iowa A lake of fire in north-central Iowa
Eagle Lake is completely dry due to drought, so it's expected that a grass fire there will keep the lakebed (which is a peat bog) smoldering for weeks.

Business and Finance Hostess bankruptcy judge says he has "serious questions as to the logic behind the decision" for the unions to go on strike
Most of the brands will end up being sold to other companies, but that doesn't mean the jobs will transfer there

Science and Technology Researchers discover that an island doesn't exist
It's shown up on maps for a long time, but Sandy Island in the Coral Sea apparently doesn't exist at all

Computers and the Internet A mostly predictable list of popular technology gifts for 2012
Microsoft Surface, Amazon Kindle, Apple iPad Mini, and the Samsung Galaxy S-III. Nothing really revelatory.

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