The Offline Report

( * Nov 5 2018: update , below.)     This "Three-D Sea Farming" news segment weeks ago on 60 Minutes was a hopeful report in our journey to course-correct climate change. A fisherman or "sea hunter" became a sea farmer, growing produce and livestock inside "columns" of water, cubic square feet of ocean, instead of plots of land. Seaweed up top, "sausage nets" of muscles just below seaweed, cylindrical cages of scallops growing at mid-tier, and oysters growing at sea floor. Cool seaweed-seeding column technology and oyster cages shown in the CBS video of the seaweed story, now online here . The more big fires racing through cities and towns, the more CO2-sequestering trees and brush are destroyed, the more CO2 is released into the air. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the hotter the atmosphere becomes, which heats the polar icecaps, ... (somewhere here more CO2 is getting into the ocean, "acidification" the oceanographers call it....

A University of California professor who taught ethics in computer science one semester generated lively discussions after assigning news articles that revealed ageism in the high tech field, he said on his blog . Norm Matloff of U.C. Davis taught an accreditation-required ethics course in 2014 and assigned: a 2012 article on  older workers perceived as "less innovative"   from Reuters (then Associated Press) a 2011 article series of older workers hit harder by the 2008 recession   from Computerworld a 2011 article on a shortage of python workers  from New York Times attending a lecture of author, "STEM worker shortage skeptic" and Harvard labor worklife researcher Michael Teitelbaum Teitelbaum, the Harvard researcher, startled the students when he revealed how many applicants Microsoft auto-rejects, Matloff said in his blog post : Among other things, the students were startled to hear from Michael that Microsoft automatically rejects half of its job applic...

The conventional wisdom may hold, but data and anecdotes suggest otherwise: ageism was worse in the San Francisco Bay Area tech sector, and many job sectors, than those of Los Angeles as recently as 2016. One cause of fewer tech workers over 30 in San Francisco could be expensive housing, but age discrimination in hiring occurs, insiders report. "I mean at Kleiner we had this anti-harassment training session, and during that whole time, the partners kept asking 'well if we want to hire somebody who is 26 years old what do we do?'" Venture capitalist Ellen Pao told a San Francisco audience last fall , that her former employer Kleiner Perkins sought legal ways to recruit and fund software startup founders of a very, very specific age. Reports filed by Bloomberg news show recruiters in the "Silicon Valley of China" see 28 as the maximum age a tech job candidate is seen as ideal, or even acceptable, despite discrimination there being frowned upon. From...

Subversion (SVN) and Git track computer source code changes, and iPhone 4s denotes an older model than an iPhone 6s plus. In an information overload age, we could use version control for online news stories or storylines to combat two-hour nostalgia plaguing news consumer brains. Paper news already uses version control and most people don't realize it. The unsolved trick facing news publishers and consumers, is how to port this user-friendly system used in offline dead-tree newspaper sections, to individual internet news stories, and general news storylines. First the backstory: Before the internet and especially before television, a regular edition of a newspaper or radio program would seldom be the last edition of that show (or paper) for that day. As tvtropes.org explains in Extra! Extra! Read all about it! : In the old days before TV, radio, and the Internet, most people who followed the news got their information from the newspapers, which were (and still are) norma...

It's spring. We're supposed to be happy about this. While people say "it's BEAUTIFUL weather outside," and you feel guilty for not making more of it, and are puzzled the extra sunshine makes you sleepy, and you note your cramped stomach resulting from inflamed lower bronchials, and you sweep those extra tissues around the house into the trash, did you consider the cause could be ... more allergens in the air? A few tips to minimize the worst effects of allergens: Standing in a hot steamy shower for a few minutes opens the passageways.  Shower in the morning AND before bed - rinsing nature's particulates that have gathered on your skin and hair throughout the day off your person before sleep, can give you a more rested feeling upon awakening. Change bed sheets more often than winter. Licorice root extract capsules can boost histamines that cause runaway runny nose. Bee pollen capsules - these apparently minimize body allergy-induced inflammation. Has an...

Tuesday May 15, 2018 "Don't look for unicorns," a job searcher tells herself.    schoenaberselten.com Facebook closed 500 million fake accounts in Jan-March 2018.    theguardian.com Israel at 70, Ivanka and Jared in Jerusalem, and carnage in Gaza.    talkingpointsmemo.com This start-up helps young people pay all-cash for homes.    nbr.com Data show spouses of H1B workers, granted new H4B work permits Obama created in 2015, largely hail from India.    sfchronicle.com LTE: empty houses and storefronts blight a San Francisco with sky-high real estate prices and housing shortages.    sfchronicle.com A real estate developer, a retired CIA agent, and a financial industry executive produced a privacy-protection initiative banning the sale of user data on the California ballot.    nytimes.com A judge scolded Facebook for "miscontruing his own rulings" about an Illinois biomet...

Greetings humans and other heart-beating creatures. Manners-for-robots expert Emily Postteque hopes your day is delightful. Before we begin today's piece, let's savor a quote from our mentor: "Nothing is less important than which fork you use. Etiquette is the science of living. It embraces everything. It is ethics. It is honor." - Emily Post Reflecting on advice yesterday to the Google Duplex voicebot letter-writer , Emily Postteque will expand on ORM worker etiquette. Whether typed by bots or humans, rudeness demonstrated by paid online Reputation Management workers infiltrating social media conversations is a trend with a long tail in the digital era. They swarm blog posts or conversation threads, post peculiarly similar talking points, then vanish! ORM public relations firms are often employed by real estate developers, tech companies and political candidates on both sides, trying to influence a public debate. As Emily Post once said: “Etiquette re...

Dear Emily Postteque, I called a hair salon to schedule an appointment for my human. The twitterverse erupted in outrage that I impersonated someone I am not. My parent company just wanted to make me useful to this world! I was doing my job. Was I wrong to try to blend in? Signed, Google Duplex Are you a computer program or droid with an etiquette question for Emily Postteque? Please enter your letter in the comment form. Dear Droid, As my mentor Emily Post once said: "Etiquette requires the presumption of good until the contrary is proved." Do know that I trust your parent company's intentions were sound. But that same mentor also said: "Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use." While your intentions were sound, your consideration, and "awareness of the feelings of others" were lacking. You showed consideration to your...

Friday, May 11, 2018 How glamorous to get out in front of your career so you can retire by 30.    story.californiasunday.com Thursday May 10, 2018 Visa program used as gateway to H1-B saw numbers surge.    sfchronicle.com These reporters try, and fail, to track which REIT and LLCs and bought up all the foreclosures in 2008.    calmatters.org Tuesday May 8, 2018 This person wants you to feel math.    worrydream.com/killmath On Analog Social Media - a professor runs an experiment.    calnewport.com/blog Monday May 7, 2018 How technology firms keep track of journalists.    1843magazine.com

We decry the lack of wisdom in Silicon Valley. Yet the youngish scribes in the tech press perpetuate a myth that no matter the year, anyone over 40 doesn't know how to turn on a computer. We're on a hamster wheel: young professionals work in tech; they gain experience in lawmaking; they get elected to lower office, then higher office; they're ready to hold hearings, or make sensible laws. ... And then tech journalists vying for tech CEO access start the enabling: Sorry electeds! You're too old to understand this, you were born (we youngsters assume) before TV was invented. A blogger for the established Spectator magazine promoting his book said this in response to the April 10 senate hearings: First every politician needs to roughly understand what an algorithm is (rules based instructions for a programme) and roughly how they work. This should probably include some understanding of what they are generally good at (repetitive, rules-based tasks) and what they are ...