Monday, March 30, 2020

Some Austin restaurants are quickly converting into grocers and finding creative ways to offload produce and other supplies.
I spent the weekend working on a sourdough starter, smoking a brisket and doing yard work.
Will The Coronavirus Save Big Tech?

2020 and the Death of Information Technology

IT — Information Technology — grew out of something we called MIS — Management Information Systems — but both meant a kid in a white shirt who brought you a new keyboard when yours broke. Well, the kid is now gone, sent home with everyone else, and that kid isn’t coming back… ever. IT is near death, fading by the day. But don’t blame COVID-19 because the death of IT was inevitable. This novel coronavirus just made it happen a little quicker…
Amazon has been replacing all of our keyboards for some time now, along with our mice and our failed cables, and even entire PCs. IT has been changing steadily from kids taking elevators up from the sub-basement to Amazon Prime trucks rolling-up to your mailbox. At the same time, our network providers have been working to limit their truck rolls entirely. Stop by the Comcast storefront to get your cable modem, because nobody is going to come to install it if you aren’t the first person living there to have cable…
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) extends both the network and a security model end-to-end over any network including 4G or 5G wireless. Some folks will run their applications in their end device, whether it is a PC, phone, tablet, whatever, and some will run their applications in the same cloud as SASE, in which case everything will be that much faster and more secure. That’s end end-game if there is one — everything in the cloud with your device strictly for input and output, painting screens compressed with HTML5. It’s the end of IT because your device will no longer contain anything so it can be simply replaced via Amazon if it is damaged or lost, with the IT kid in the white shirt becoming an Uber driver.
Since COVID-19 is trapping us in our homes it is forcing this transition to happen faster than it might have. But it was always going to happen.

IKEA Instructions for COVID-19

Sunday, March 15, 2020

I spent the weekend hiking and baking bread. I encourage you to stay away from screens as much as possible these days. Yes, there’s plenty to worry about, but there always has been. Wash your hands. Check in on loved ones. The world is still a beautiful place.

Italians in Lockdown and Lessons in Resiliency

What a great Twitter thread. Video after video

Italians in lockdown all over Italy are keeping each other company by singing, dancing and playing music from the balconies. A thread to celebrate the resilience of ordinary people.

Italians in lockdown all over Italy are keeping each other company by singing, dancing and playing music from the balconies. A thread to celebrate the resilience of ordinary people. This is Salerno: pic.twitter.com/3aOchqdEpn
— Leonardo Carella (@leonardocarella) March 13, 2020

Inside my 2011 Apple Macbook Air

AP Style Guide for Writing About Coronavirus

The Associated Press’s guidance for writing about coronavirus is a useful tool for journalists, technologists and other professional communicators.

COVID-19 is acceptable on first reference for the coronavirus disease that first appeared in late 2019.
Because COVID-19 is the name of the disease, not the virus, it is not accurate to write a new virus called COVID-19. Instead: A new virus caused a disease called COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/6fxGkgunXv
— APStylebook (@APStylebook) February 26, 2020