There is a big concern that American companies cannot protect your data in the cloud from the American government. Tech Sovereignty is all about being in total control of your technology and data.

Kodak invented the digital camera, but its leadership feared it would cannibalize its film business so it killed it. The company would be in a different place if it had accepted the innovation, refined the digital camera and produced a product.

Nextcloud is a popular open source content collaboration platform. It is a great cloud solution and it does allow for file storage, collaboration, editing of documents, and many other tasks. And being based in Europe, it does not have that American taint if that really matters.

There already exists an open source solution NextCloud. It has a ton of features and is being used by many companies, organizations, and governments. It is a collaboration platform and it hails from Germany.

Here is a subscription free article from the BBC.

Netscape was founded in April 1994 and the initial browser release was November 1994. I was infatuated with Web at that point in time. It captured my imagination. All the information that was and could be available, especially the weather data for me. Mosaic and Netscape help me navigate the Web. They were 100 times better than gopher. The World Wide Web was better than sliced bread. :-)

The American bottling companies have gotten together to with this new recycling effort to recycle their bottles. They say that their plastic footprint has declined, the amount of recycled plastics in the bottles have increased to 13%, and the majority of the bottles now include recycled plastic. They still have a long way to go.

It is amusing to see the fingers being pointed back and forth with not much talk about AI. I believe that human nature has a strong tendency toward violent behavior. We are not as good as we like to think we are. If anything is to be blamed, it is us. We are the source of the problem. (Oh, I do not think you can blame the Christian Faith, since its founder, Jesus, told his followers to "love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44).) And since AI is a human creation, I believe it will not solve our violent behavior problem, instead it will likely reflect our nature.

This points out a serious concern. People can (and have) develop a strong emotional dependence with these chatbots, and I believe that is why these companies are rushing this AI technology out so quickly and are ignoring safety concerns. They learned from social media that it can be addictive and they want to capture the market so they can be the dominant company raking in the dollars. These companies are not looking at the ethical considerations. They are looking only at the potential financial windfall. They need to be held accountable for the consequences of these AI programs. Here is an interesting presentation, “The A.I. Dilemma”, by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin.

Surveillance is normal In China and the government is working to increase surveillance of its citizens. Here is an article showing that throughout China the government is expanding surveillance.

Microgrids would help protect the bases from an attack on the US power grid or an extreme weather event. With solar panels, the military base can become an island of power, able to better help those without power. It is a good idea to make the bases more resilient.

Fat fingers and I made this to be "Funny" and not "Informative" like I wanted. This will kill the funny.

As the oceans warm, they their ability to hold gases lessen. Warm water can hold less CO2 than cold water. That is another positive feedback that worsens the warming climate.

I believe it is what they have. The need was there (in 2005) and there was no banks, no internet, or other financial structures around, but people had cell phones. M-Pesa met a need with the limited resources available. Still today it is the best they can do. A "PIN secured" SMS does not sound very secure for "banking" but it works and it has allowed the very poor to improve their lives.

The abstract and the scientific article (Honing in on bioluminescent milky seas from space) is available here.