Archive for 2020

DECOUPLING: Huawei closing enterprise hardware division in the UK. “ Huawei has been on the US ‘non-entity’ list since last year, a status that prevents US companies from doing business with it without a licence. This effective blacklisting has limited Huawei’s access to key US technologies such as the Android operating system, with Samsung recently revealing it would end sales of smartphone components to Huawei.”

Even if Huawei weren’t a Communist front corporation, it is certainly a vampire corporation that gained its strength by sucking Nortel dry via corporate espionage.

I’D RATHER NOT HAVE CCP-APPROVED ALGOS ON MY PHONE: Inside TikTok’s killer algorithm. “TikTok concedes that its ability to nail users’ preferences so effectively means that its algorithm can produce ‘filter bubbles,’ reinforcing users’ existing preferences rather than showing them more varied content, widening their horizons, or offering them opposing viewpoints.“

On second thought, there doesn’t appear to be anything all that special about TikTok’s algo, which seems to operate just like any other social media algo.

19 YEARS AGO TODAY, WE SAID “NEVER FORGET,” BUT WE MOSTLY HAVE. Maybe that’s okay, in a way. As hardly anyone has noticed, Trump’s mideast peace deals have pulled the teeth of Islamic terror — without funding from the Saudis and the other rich Arab states, these “grassroots” terror movements miraculously disappear, just as the “people-based” communist revolutions vanished as soon as the Soviet Union went belly-up and quit funding them. And also, with fracking, there’s not as much Arab money lying around to begin with.

No one who was alive and aware that day will forget it, but my law students are already mostly young enough not to really remember it.

But look at it this way: The Bush presidency was basically all about reacting to 9/11. The Obama presidency was mostly about reacting to the Bush presidency’s reaction to 9/11. Trump’s presidency has been about putting the United States in a position where things like that won’t happen. I’ll take it.

SOMETHING I WROTE IN 2002: American Dunkirk.

People at Ground Zero, the Manhattan Waterfront, nearby New Jersey, Staten Island and Brooklyn waterfronts, and crews on the numerous vessels repeatedly used the phrases “just amazing,” “everyone cooperated, and “just doing what it took” to describe maritime community responses. Individuals stepped up and took charge of specific functions, and captains and crews from other companies took their direction. . . . Private maritime operators kept their vessels onsite and available until Friday, Day Four, when federal authorities took over.

“Day Four, when federal authorities took over.”

CARING: Dems Block GOP Covid Aid Package. Hey, you can’t expect them to help Americans when there’s a GOP president and an election just weeks away.

LAUNCHED OVER THE PHILIPPINE SEA: An F/A-18F Super Hornet launches from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. Photo taken Sept. 6, 2020.