Gongol.com Archives: 2015 Weekly Archives
November 29, 2015
Show notes - Brian Gongol Show on WHO Radio - November 29, 2015
How to play the long game, Toyota-in-Nascar edition
By getting a foot in the door in a highly "American" sport and persisting in showing that their products are just as American as their Detroit competitors, Toyota made an investment in its brand equity with a real payoff
Southwest is turning St. Louis Lambert Field into something of a hub
With 39 destinations, it's not quite how things used to be when TWA served St. Louis as a hub (back then it had more than 100 destination cities), but it certainly serves to fill some of the excess capacity built up before TWA was acquired by American. TWA had 76% of the airport's travelers back before it was swallowed up.
Microsoft fixes big Dell security bug
JetBlue wants to train some pilots from scratch
Microsoft halts Windows 10 updates for a moment
November 28, 2015
Of course Donald Trump has no scruples about running as a third-party candidate
But he's really just "campaigning" as a vanity publicity stunt. It has to be viewed as a commercial endeavor, not a political one: He's getting endless free media coverage, which only serves to advance his interests as a marketer who vomits his name atop lots of gaudy real estate. He stands to lose very, very little, even by saying profoundly offensive things.
Our enemies are playing the long game on the Internet
ISIS/ISIL/QSIL/Daesh has a long view of its presence online as a tool of both recruitment and terror. Meanwhile, the United States seems to perpetually cutting back, mismanage, and under-fund its own tools of international public diplomacy, especially those under the Broadcasting Board of Governors. It's penny-wise pound-foolishness. International broadcasting costs us next to nothing, but unfortunately there's been a lot of displacement of conventional broadcasting methods (like shortwave radio) in favor of Internet services -- when they represent two different products for very different audience purposes and should have been treated as additive, not substitutional.
Bioengineering is starting to venture past some remarkable (and possibly irreversible) lines
Science proves Americans' smiles have grown over the last century
Sophisticated point-of-sale malware could exploit holiday shopping
November 27, 2015
IBM says smartphones dominated online shopping this Thanksgiving
Their analysis says smartphones were used for 46.7% of online shopping on Thanksgiving day
China's big industrial companies are making less money than a year ago
Total profits have fallen by almost 5% from last October -- and have decreased for five consecutive months
Domain registrar increases the price of a .uk domain
It's not by much, and the resulting cost still isn't high (about $6 a year), but it's rare to see prices like this increase rather than decrease
Punching through the Great Firewall of China
The browser plugin, called CacheBrowser, uses the "content delivery networks" so widely employed by many major websites to reconstruct the pages of sites whose URLs are blocked by Chinese censorship
Seth Meyers gives Donald Trump the skewering he deserves
(Video)
November 26, 2015
Candidates should be asked about their plans for cyberwarfare
It could be an enormously powerful tool for "asymmetric" warfare by groups much too small to threaten our national security with tanks and airplanes. We sorely need a national cyberdefense strategy with a clear identity.
"Suddenly, all Syrian refugees are viewed as potential terrorists -- just as IS had hoped."
The terrorists behind ISIS/ISIL/QSIL/Daesh are looking several steps ahead, and terrorist attacks serve to further their agenda. Dismissing them as the "JV squad" or thinking that they will collapse without a deliberate strategy on our part is just wishfulness.
Forecasting where the stock market will end 2017 is a lavishly silly exercise
Team backed by Jeff Bezos lands a reusable rocket
Is owning the tapes to some long-lost Beatles recordings the same as owning the intellectual property?
November 25, 2015
"Why you should have a messy desk"
Like many similar clickbait articles on the Internet, this one is profoundly silly and reductionist. It could be counterweighted easily by articles about "Why you should always start with a blank sheet of paper" or "Always go to a blank drawing board". What matters is figuring out quickly what works most effectively for your own method of thinking and then sticking to whatever enhances it.
When China's currency reconciles with reality, the results are going to hurt
A deep-down security issue has been found in Dell computers
When the company president goes AWOL
It comes as no surprise that prominent business managers are vanishing without explanation -- totalitarian regimes can be threatened by economic power as well as political power
New chipped credit cards are going to slow down holiday shopping
November 24, 2015
A candidate who threatens to sue a rival for damaging his brand name isn't a serious candidate
That's the behavior of a self-promoter
Terrorists aren't really going to mosques
Look into the eyes of displaced children
Wealthy Russians are planning to leave -- in huge numbers
What will the US labor force look like in 25 years?
November 23, 2015
"We lose the war against ISIS if we don't get serious about our presidential candidates"
Oil below $40 a barrel -- a real possibility
Mixed with good and bad, of course. Cheap gas feels good, to be sure. But it also undermines efforts to find more sustainable energy sources. We should use a portion of the energy bonanza to make a serious investment in the future.
Financial literacy is an essential form of literacy
Along with basic technological literacy and basic numeracy, these are just as important as being able to simply read in the conventional sense
Surprise! Apps for viewing porn are also data thieves.
DC police chief: If you can, shoot an active shooter