Nvidia and Apple: Matters of the Heart

Nvidia's Santa Clara HQ (NY Post)

Homegrown $2.3 trillion-dollar tech giant Nvidia gives a much needed shot in the arm to the Bay Area economy.

Headline: Nvidia widens South Bay property holdings with $350 million-plus deal

Nvidia has bought several office and research buildings in Santa Clara in a deal that tops $350 million and greatly broadens the fast-expanding tech company’s holdings in Silicon Valley...

The sites Nvidia bought are adjacent to and near the tech company’s modern and futuristic-looking headquarters complex at 2788 San Tomas Expressway. The just-bought properties could be redeveloped with new office and research buildings, potentially totaling up to 2 million square feet, according to Santa Clara city planning records.

Unlike big-name companies (Tesla, Oracle, HP) that have moved their headquarters from California, Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook) have indicated that they are staying put by continuing to add people and real estate in the Bay Area, recent layoffs notwithstanding.

But Apple and Nvidia are special cases. When Apple built its $5 billion spaceship headquarters in Cupertino, it was an announcement to the world that it would always be based in Cupertino. Similarly, Nvidia bought, not rented, additional real estate, a signal that it, too, would not only be staying but expanding in Silicon Valley.

Cost-benefit analysis always produces the same result: expand anywhere outside of California because of California's high-cost housing, high taxes, and onerous regulation. Sometimes, after succeeding with a far-flung workforce, these companies move their headquarters away.

But Nvidia and Apple won't be moving away for the foreseeable future. Nvidia and Apple's founders got their start in the Bay Area, have a great deal of affection for their home towns, and most importantly controlled their companies. And who knows...the heart sometimes sees the future better than the head.

March Flooding (of the Switchboard)

From the Foster City Police Dept. Facebook page on March 29th:

The FCPD is aware of the large male turkey that has been wandering around Foster City. The turkey is a wild animal. We are asking the community to please refrain from calling the FCPD regarding the turkey.

We appreciate the diligence of our residents.

Thank you, the FCPD

My guess is that "please refrain from calling the FCPD" was the original last sentence, until the PR spokesperson added "We appreciate the diligence of our residents" to mellow the harsh.

There are still Bay Area communities that don't have floods, wildfires, homelessness and rampant crime, and I'm lucky to be living in one that inundates the police switchboard with reports about a loose turkey.

Not Your Dad's Episcopal Church

There are a lot of reasons why this is not your father's Episcopal church, but here's one that should not spark controversy: the new rector in Foster City snapped a selfie (right) and posted it on his Facebook page.

In his first sermon the rector promised to welcome, listen, try to understand, and visit with everyone. That's a huge commitment. (Your humble blogger has trouble putting a Zoom call on the calendar.)

I'm cautiously hopeful.

Depression and Dementia

(Image from sharpbrains.com)

As if life wasn't difficult enough for teens and young adults with depression, UCSF researchers say that this condition is highly correlated with dementia. [bold added]

Depression in young adulthood might increase risk for cognitive impairment in old age, a new UCSF study has found.

The study — which used predictive models to determine depressive symptoms over a lifetime — found that the chances of cognitive impairment were 73% higher for those estimated to have elevated depressive symptoms in early adulthood, and 43% higher for those estimated to have elevated depressive symptoms in later life.

The conclusions find a receptive audience because they play into our belief that brain disorders are related. However,....

1) There are a great many years between youth and old age. Youthful disease is not destiny.

2) Depression is better understood today than in the past. Therapy and changes in attitudes and behavior (gratitude, social interaction, self care, hobbies, and "cognitive restructuring") can help, and for severe cases medications are available.

3) By social interaction we mean the in-person kind, not social media, which can be mentally toxic to teenagers.

4) The UCSF study is based on "predictive models" that have not been verified by observation:

The study pulled data from 15,000 people in different age cohorts, ranging from 20-89 — divided into older, midlife and young adulthood — and used predictive methods to estimate the average trajectory of depressive symptoms. That trajectory is used to make a “best guess” of how older adults with dementia might have been in early adulthood.

While this methodology isn’t as good as studying someone over a lifetime,[ Dr. Willa] Brenowitz said, it’s the best researchers have now — and should spotlight the need to start observation for dementia risk factors earlier in life.

Predictive models are works-in-progress, as we have seen from much more elaborate climate, epidemiological, and econometric models that have made predictions that proved to be wildly inaccurate.

It's useful that the connection between depression and dementia is being explored. It's also true that the models can be wrong, and even, if true, there is time to take the steps that can break the connection.

Turn Off, (Don't) Tune In, Drop Out, and Live Longer

For the past five years I've achieved a measure of peace by not tuning in to television news, which--only a slight exaggeration--pushes outrage 24/7. (I also include late night comedy, which has substituted putdowns of half the country for lighthearted laughs about the human condition.)

Internet news is toxic in a different way. Researchers have established that popular sites like Tik Tok and Facebook quickly figure out the subjects and opinions that individual users like to read about and feed them more of the same. Anger is often the by-product.

Within our cocoons it's easy to become outraged at the injustices done to "our" side by the ignorant and evil people on the other.

Do yourself a favor. Use the off switch and add years to your life.

It Doesn't Read Your Mind.....Yet

(Images from Frontiers in Psychology)

Apple is pouring billions of dollars into developing medical applications for its devices. Although the emphasis continues to be on wearables, the iPhone is at the center of the push into mental health.

Apple Inc. is working on technology to help diagnose depression and cognitive decline, aiming for tools that could expand the scope of its burgeoning health portfolio...

Using an array of sensor data that includes mobility, physical activity, sleep patterns, typing behavior and more, researchers hope they can tease out digital signals associated with the target conditions so that algorithms can be created to detect them reliably....

The research projects are still at early stages, and may never lead to new device features...While prior academic studies have shown some evidence that people with certain mental-health conditions use their digital devices differently than others, it remains to be seen if reliable algorithms can be created to detect the conditions...

If they are successful, Apple and its partners could improve the detection of the conditions, which affect tens of millions of people world-wide. But the extent of user tracking that may be required could spark privacy concerns. To address them, Apple aims for algorithms that work on users’ devices and don’t send the data to Apple servers...

The pandemic drove an increase in mental-health-related complaints. The percentage of adults reporting anxiety or depression-related symptoms reached 41% in January, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly quadruple the early-2019 figure. Mild cognitive impairment, which can develop into dementia, affects around 5 million Americans over 60 years old, estimates the Alzheimer’s Association...

UCLA has said its research studying signs of stress, anxiety and depression began with a pilot phase last fall tracking Apple Watch and iPhone data from 150 people and will continue with a main phase tracking similar data for 3,000 people starting this year.

UCLA researchers will track data from the iPhone’s video camera, keyboard and audio sensors, and data from the watch related to movement, vital signs and sleep, according to the documents and people familiar with the study. The data that may be used includes analysis of participants’ facial expressions, how they speak, the pace and frequency of their walks, sleep patterns, and heart and respiration rates. They may also measure the speed of their typing, frequency of their typos and content of what they type, among other data points, according to the people familiar with the research and the documents...

Biogen and Apple said in January they are collaborating on a study to use the iPhone and Apple Watch to track cognitive function over time and identify mild cognitive impairment, a condition that can develop into Alzheimer’s. The two-year study aims to follow about 20,000 participants—half of them at high risk of cognitive impairment—and will use device data in a way similar to the UCLA mental-health research, according to the documents and people familiar with the matter. The work follows a 2019 feasibility study that showed that 31 adults with cognitive impairment exhibited different behavior on their Apple devices than healthy older adults.

Biogen is collaborating on the study because it hopes it can help Apple develop an iPhone feature to detect mild cognitive impairment early and encourage relevant users to seek care earlier, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company will compare the data against standard tests of brain health including traditional cognitive assessments and scans that track plaque buildup in the brain, according to the documents and the person familiar with the work.

Biogen’s drug Aduhelm, which costs about $56,000 a year, was approved earlier this year by the FDA for people with early-stage Alzheimer’s.

Diagnosing mental health conditions is difficult even for trained clinicians who are able to interact with patients in person. An iPhone algorithm that matches facial expressions, eye movements, etc. with depression or early-stage dementia can be beneficial. If a mental health app is able to screen millions of people quickly, and users are made aware that a positive reading is private, should be checked out and does not necessarily denote illness, that should lessen user concerns.

Note: it would be ironic if the same smartphone whose use triggers depression in teen-age girls is the device that warns that the user may be depressed.

Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show

“Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” the researchers said in a March 2020 slide presentation posted to Facebook’s internal message board, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves”....

“Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression,” said another slide. “This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

Among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the desire to kill themselves to Instagram, one presentation showed.

The Days of Our Youth

My high school class formed a Facebook group in preparation for the 50th reunion last summer, which, as might be expected, was cancelled. The organizational effort was not totally wasted, however, because now there was a message board that we used to catch up with each other, mourn classmates who had passed on, and wax nostalgic about high-school and earlier years (those who attended from kindergarten to 12th grade are members of the "13 Plus" club).

The orchestra was required to play "Pomp and Circumstance" every June, so I attended three graduations before it was our turn to march in.

The class ahead of ours chose as their song Try to Remember from the off-Broadway musical the Fantasticks. TTR is a sentimental number about reflecting back on a youth that is gone too quickly. Emotions were heartfelt; the war was raging, they were about to register for the draft, half the class was leaving the Islands, and many would never see each other again.

Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.

The original Fantasticks cast member who sang Try to Remember is Jerry Orbach (1935-2004), whom I only knew as an actor in the hit series Murder She Wrote and Law & Order. Here he is in 1982, 22 years after he introduced it on the stage.

Dying is Easy, Keeping Track of Passwords is Hard

Facebook image: they can track you everywhere

Death is getting more complicated. Not only do we have to make arrangements for our physical and financial assets; now we have to worry about the remnants of our digital lives.

WSJ tech editor Joanna Stern takes us through the steps of organizing our electronic estate:

1. Take inventory of your digital assets
2. Add a digital executor to your will
3. Add digital heirs to your accounts
4. Plan to pass on your passwords
5. Record your stories

After step 2, adding a "digital executor" (can be the same as the regular executor), the will should contain instructions to the executor to distribute the accounts to the digital heirs.

Some of the big tech companies provide specific tools. On Facebook, assign and add a legacy contact. When you die, Facebook will allow this person to take some actions on your account, including downloading a copy of what you’ve shared on Facebook, memorializing your profile so others know you’ve passed or, if you prefer, removing your account. On Google, assign an Inactive Account Manager, who can similarly download the data, including any pictures you may have on Google Photos.

Unfortunately, other tech giants don’t offer such features. Make sure your digital executor will receive access to your passwords and also has a way to get to your phone to receive those number and letter codes that some companies send when you log in. Without that, a company could require the executor to gain a court order. Here are links to the specific policies for companies you might have digital accounts with:

•Apple
•Microsoft
•Twitter
•Instagram
•Dropbox
•Yahoo
•LinkedIn
•Amazon (U.K. customers; U.S. link not working)

What to Do Before You Die: A Tech Checklist is humbling because I've done nothing except print out a list of all my accounts and passwords. Meanwhile the hard-core are making sure that their avatars are not interred with their bones: [bold added]

James Vlahos, co-founder of HereAfter.AI.... creates voicebots so loved ones can, via an Amazon Echo or Alexa phone app, actually talk to friends or family members after they die.

The company records interviews with people, then turns the audio into an interactive experience. Loved ones can ask the bot questions about your childhood, and it will play relevant chapters of the recording.

To me, the best part of this service—which starts at $95 for an hour of interviews—is that customers get, in addition to the voicebot, the original high-quality audio files. Of course, you and your family can record some yourselves with a good microphone and computer. The key for any interview is asking the right questions to capture the best stories.

“Use targeted questions that guide your loved ones to share the most specific, visceral and emotional things they can remember,” Mr. Vlahos said. “Don’t ask, ‘Tell me about your marriage.’ Ask, ‘Describe the very first time you saw the woman who would become your wife.’”

In the Superman movies Kal-el speaks to a ghostly image of his long-dead father Jor-el. The image responds intelligently to Kal'el's questions and often gives useful advice.

Here's a 21st century question: does anyone want to listen to posthumous advice from someone who presumed that his descendants wanted to take his advice seriously after he was gone?

Social Media: Avoid the Suck

(Gallup photo)

Given that social media are polarizing the American polity, what is the precise mechanism by which that happens?

The conventional wisdom is that we self-select into groups of similar thinkers. We share news and opinions with like-minded people---the "echo chamber" effect. But the conventional wisdom may be wrong: [bold added]

And new research suggests that one often-proposed solution—exposing users on the platforms to more content from the other side—might actually be making things worse, because of how social media amplifies extreme opinions...

when you repeatedly expose people on social media to viewpoints different than their own, it just makes them dig in their heels and reinforces their own viewpoint, rather than swaying them to the other side...

Because social media and Balkanized TV networks tend to highlight content with the biggest emotional punch—that is, they operate on the principle that if it’s outrageous, it’s contagious—when we’re exposed to a differing view, it often takes an extreme form, one that seems personally noxious.

Exposure to the extreme opposite of one's views has a powerful polarizing effect:

Mr. Sabin-Miller and Dr. Abrams, both mathematicians, call this effect “repulsion.” In addition to the “pull” of repeatedly seeing viewpoints that reinforce our own, inside of our online echo chambers, repulsion provides a “push” away from opposing viewpoints, they argue. Importantly, this repulsion appears to be a more powerful force, psychologically, than attraction to our own side of a debate.

Repulsion leads to disgust, then to anger, a witches' brew.

As for me, I now spend less than 15 minutes a day reading but very rarely contributing to Facebook or Twitter.

Similar to the reason that alcoholics don't enter bars, I don't watch Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC. They all have stories about how individuals have been mistreated by politicians or groups that the network is trying to portray negatively, I get angry and am sucked in.

Avoid the suck. Turn them off.

Puppets on a Screen

(Image from South Asia Times)

The documentaries that I find most fascinating are the ones that tell me something new on topics that (I thought) I was familiar with. Netflix' "/the social dilemma" is such a movie.

It describes how the Internet companies--Google and Facebook, primarily, but also Twitter, pinterest, Tiktok, LinkedIn, Snapchat, et. al.--watch everything that we read, write, upload, download, or view. They know the identities of our friends, families, and business associates and where we are at all times.

The companies use that data to show us ads that are likely to trigger a sale, but marketing efficiency is only a small part of the algorithms' power. The programs predict what we'll do next; a search that begins Climate change is.. will fill in "a hoax" if one is a conservative or "a threat to humanity" if one is a liberal.

The user is steered toward sites and news--even fake news and conspiracy theories--that the algorithm believes will keep the eyeballs fixated. By making it so easy to view materials that one agrees with leads to today's political polarization; it is the rare user who actively seeks alternative points of view.

The movie dives into the ways in which social media hooks the users--for example, continuous notifications about friends and celebrities, or beeping when someone likes their selfie--but is weak when it comes to suggestions about what to do about its pervasive influence. Some speakers call for much greater government regulation--just after a section on the danger of letting tech tools fall into the hands of governments. Parents wage a lonely battle trying to keep their children unplugged when all the other kids stay connected.

Your humble blogger doesn't have any solutions either. I'm just grateful that I grew up when high schools and colleges actively introduced students to different points of view. My education and career beginnings occurred long before the Internet but after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which, grossly simplified, said we must judge individuals for what they can do and not who they are. (Obviously there existed a large gap between the law and reality, but everyone knew what the aspiration was.)

15 minutes from the end, the movie runs a clip from Senator Jon Tester (D-Montana) at a 2019 Senate Commerce Committee hearing:

I am 62 years old, getting older every minute the more this conversation goes on, but I will tell you that I'm probably gonna be dead and gone, and I'll probably be thankful for it, when all this s*** comes to fruition. Because I think that this scares me to death.

I identify with Senator Tester more than anyone else in the documentary...and I'm sure that Facebook, Google, et. al. already knew that!

Below is the testimony from Tristan Harris, whose ideas are featured prominently in /the social dilemma, at the same hearing.

Biting the Hand That Supports Them Dept.

(Image from Adweek)

This is an unexpected move by Democrats with only a month to go before the November elections:

House Democrats to Call for Big Tech Breakups [bold added]

Democratic lawmakers are expected to call on Congress to blunt the power of big technology companies, possibly through forced separation of online platforms, as a House panel concludes its Big Tech probe.

The House Antitrust Subcommittee is nearing completion of a report wrapping up its 15-month investigation of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Facebook Inc. The report follows the committee’s collection of more than one million documents from the companies and competitors, as well as a July hearing with CEOs of the four tech giants.

Rep. David Cicilline (D., R.I.), who chairs the subcommittee, has indicated the panel is poised to recommend significant measures targeting Big Tech’s power, including requiring owners of huge technology platforms to separate those platforms from other businesses.

The largest tech companies (Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft) distribute their funds to Democrats and Republicans fairly evenly (Apple doesn't have a PAC). However, their employees contribute heavily--over 90%--to Democrats.

(BTW, you can bet your bottom dollar that, because donor data is public information, there's some workplace coercion--"Hey, Joe, how come you didn't donate to Biden? Are you a racist?" If you don't toe the line in Silicon Valley, you could be blacklisted for wrongthink like James Damore or Brendan Eich.)

There is a bona fide discussion to be held over the power Big Tech holds over our lives, but it's not at all clear that consumers are worse off, say, because Amazon gives us more selection and lower prices than brick-and-mortar stores, or that Facebook shows us ads that are likely to interest us as opposed to burying us in dreck like traditional TV.

IMHO, the Democrats have judged that Big Tech will support them no matter what and are throwing a bone to Progressives that believe: 1) Tech has made too many people extraordinarily wealthy--exacerbating inequality is bad, despite making every individual better off; and 2) concentrations of power other than government cannot be allowed.

“Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” - Anne Applebaum, on totalitarianism in 20th century Eastern Europe.

Who Benefits? Not Me

At the top of Sunday afternoon's Facebook page was an inquiry about whether I was registered to vote.

I didn't respond. What benefit was there to answering?

I don't want to be shunted to a political discussion board. Discussing politics on social media is a time sink. We are asked to justify our positions to strangers who don't know or care about us. Negative emotions get stirred up. And if you do happen to discuss politics with friends, you can only lose them.

I don't want my virtual mailbox filled with more ads for various candidates and propositions, or worse, pleas for money.

By the way I am registered. I'll do my civic duty and vote, in person, on November 3rd.

The Golden Apple is Out of Reach

EU antitrust enforcer Margrethe Vestager (Forbes)

The large-cap tech companies (Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook) all have attracted fierce scrutiny, but nowhere more so than in Europe. [Disclosure: a good chunk of my retirement portfolio is invested in these companies both directly and indirectly through funds and ETFs.] The authorities object to these companies creating legal structures that minimize taxes.

It has long become clear to this writer that the European Union tries to extract huge tax awards by getting courts to apply tax "principles" retroactively to these successful companies, despite their following the letter of the law. That is why it was gratifying to see Apple win a $14.8 billion tax case last week in European court: [bold added]

The case stems from a 2016 decision by the European Commission, the bloc’s top antitrust enforcer, which said that Ireland must recoup €13 billion in allegedly unpaid taxes between 2003 and 2014, money the commission said constituted an illegal subsidy under the bloc’s strict state-aid rules.

The General Court swept aside that reasoning, saying it annulled the decision because the commission had failed to meet the legal standards in showing that Apple was illegally given special treatment.

The 2016 decision against Apple was one of Ms. Vestager’s first big broadsides against tech companies in her role running the EU’s competition enforcement, earning her the nickname “tax lady” from President Trump. She later issued Google three fines totaling $9.4 billion, and launched formal antitrust probes into Amazon and Apple. She is now also responsible for tech regulation and is considering imposing a digital tax on tech giants...

A central issue in the Apple case was whether two Irish tax rulings granted to Apple in 1991 and 2007 gave a form of special treatment to the company, or whether they just reiterated an interpretation of Irish tax law as it was applied more generally.

Those rulings allowed two Irish-registered Apple units to attribute only a small sliver of some $130 billion in profit to Ireland in an 11-year period. The commission said all that revenue should be attributed to Ireland, but the Irish government and Apple say they split the profit reasonably, given that almost all of Apple’s intellectual property is developed in the U.S., not Ireland.

In Wednesday’s ruling, the General Court said that, despite the gaps in the contested tax rulings, the commission hadn’t proven the Irish government granted a special advantage to Apple that was unavailable to other companies in Ireland.

The European Union will now have to do the hard work of crafting new laws that will achieve their goals and not trying to re-interpret the past to try to solve present needs.

California: Marshes and Wildfowl Over the People

For decades environmentalists have regarded the Environmental Protection Agency as their bailiwick. Where the law was ambiguous, sympathetic EPA staffers, especially under Democrats, often gave environmentalists what they wanted through regulations, rulings, and interpretations.

President Trump has reversed some of these regulations and Executive Orders that he believes were not in keeping with the original laws passed by Congress. The latest skirmish is over the Clean Water Act: [bold added]

Andrew Wheeler (NPR photo)

At issue is the reach of the Clean Water Act and, more precisely, what waterways should be regulated. While for years it was unclear whether the nation’s small tributaries warranted protection by the federal government, President Barack Obama sought to remove the ambiguity by ordering the EPA in 2015 to safeguard all bodies of water that feed larger rivers and lakes.

Andrew Wheeler, the current EPA administrator, claimed the law amounted to government overreach that left landowners at the mercy of “distant unelected bureaucrats.”

The new rule maintains federal jurisdiction over navigable waters and their tributaries, Wheeler said, but removes ponds and sloughs unconnected to larger bodies of water from EPA jurisdiction.

The environmental groups, co-represented by the Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy law firm of Burlingame, claim the Trump administration’s decision to repeal the rule opens up thousands of miles of streams and wetlands throughout the country to development, including pipeline construction.

In the Bay Area that specifically re-opens the question of developing the Cargill salt ponds:

Homes on the Cargill site would be only a few
miles from Oracle and Facebook.

The salt ponds have been owned since 1978 by Cargill Inc., which withdrew a proposal to build 12,000 homes on the flats in 2012 in the face of intense community opposition. Environmental groups would like to see wetlands restored there.

“We’re not going to stand by while Cargill uses the Trump administration’s eagerness to gut our environmental laws for its own economic advantage,” said Megan Fluke, executive director of the Committee for Green Foothills. “The salt ponds are part of the bay. Development here would not only destroy restorable natural resources, it would put homes and businesses in the path of sea-level rise, on an earthquake liquefaction site and next to heavy industry.”

What the environmentalists are really thinking, but not saying, is that thousands of homes, including the entire cities of Foster City and Redwood Shores, don't meet their criteria and would never be approved today. If they really prioritized alleviating the housing shortage and eliminating carbon emissions from thousands of cars, they would welcome building where the jobs are. Judging by their actions and not their fine words about "climate change" and "inequality" they really don't.

President Trump may be impulsive, a bully, uncouth, obnoxious, and any number of other bad things. But he has exposed the progressive left as elitists who choose marshes and wildfowl over people. Hey, I don't mind; restricting the supply keeps my house price up.

Chillin'

A high school classmate posted a picture of himself in front of a work by his artist wife. He asked us to help him name the work. My response below.

"s-ENT-i-ENT" (Lord of the Rings nerdy reference).

Actually the photo of yourself Chillin' (hey, another possible title) is itself a work of art--art within art, if you will. Yes, the relief with its blue, brown, black, and white is a timeless evocation of winter, and if you were just gazing at the trees it wouldn't be adding much. But you're holding a smartphone, which places you in the 2010-2020 decade for anyone looking at this 100 years from now.

Also, you're ignoring the beauty of the art and staring at a tiny screen--a tableau of our time (hey, yet another title).

Well, enough of this---gotta get back to answering my texts.

I have to ask him who the photographer was. If it was his wife, wouldn't it be something if she created the wall art so he could be photographed in front of it. The photo was the intended work! OK, back to reality, he couldn't have married someone that smart....

They Will Never Forgive

In 2015 Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donated $75 million to the SF General Hospital's foundation. The hospital was renamed the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center.

Sasha Cuttler, a nurse at SF General, has protested the name change because of Facebook's past mishandling of user data and alleges that his managers have retaliated against him.

According to Cuttler, hospital managers pressured him to stop criticizing the addition of Zuckerberg’s name to the hospital. When he did not, supervisors retaliated against him by removing him from internal boards and denying him transfers and promotions, he alleges in the complaint. During this time, Cuttler also raised concerns about the hospital’s staffing and its reporting of data on patient falls.

For some, money directed at a worthy cause will never buy expiation from past sins, though these "sins" were not illegal and may not even be sins in the eyes of many others. From Sasha Cuttler's Facebook page:

Since the "Trumpocalypse" began I have helped SEIU to defend immigrants right to care, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. I have also led the effort to get the "Zuckerberg" off of San Francisco General Hospital.

Facebook employee contributions are made overwhelmingly to Democrats, but progressive true believers will never forgive the social media giant for its perhaps-unwitting contribution to the election of Donald Trump. The revolution eats its own.

Vallombrosa: Placid Amid the Noise and Haste

Despite having lived on the Peninsula for over 30 years, I had never been to the Vallombrosa Center in Menlo Park.

Vallombrosa ("shady glen") was built by E.W. Hopkins, the nephew of San Francisco railroad magnate Mark Hopkins, after the Civil War. Acquired by the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 1947, the ten-acre site serves as

an ideal location for groups seeking a quiet and serene setting, with its beautiful grounds, comfortable accommodations, and friendly, helpful staff. It is also a gathering place for friends and neighbors to rest, to worship, to learn and grow.

Before our meeting on Friday, I strolled the buildings and grounds. Given the premium on Peninsula land (Facebook paid $400 million for a 56-acre property on which it will build housing in Menlo Park---simple interpolation puts Vallombrosa's land value at $72 million), a place like this would not be constructed today.

Vallombrosa's unlikely existence is a reminder that not every organization needs to have "highest and best use" as its highest principle.

Protection

"Free" privacy & security comes at a price.

One technology contretemps largely escaped notice, but it's useful for highlighting the differing philosophies of two of the largest companies in the world.

The issue concerns Virtual Private Networks, which are a method of protecting internet privacy:

A virtual private network (VPN) is a technology that creates a safe and encrypted connection over a less secure network, such as the internet. VPN technology was developed as a way to allow remote users and branch offices to securely access corporate applications and other resources. To ensure safety, data travels through secure tunnels and VPN users must use authentication methods -- including passwords, tokens and other unique identification methods -- to gain access to the VPN.

Last year Facebook offered a free VPN app, Onavo Protect, to its users:

Onavo allows users to create a virtual private network that redirects internet traffic to a private server managed by Facebook. The app, which bills itself as a way to “keep you and your data safe,” also alerts users when they visit potentially malicious sites.

However, as with most "free" internet services there was a price: [bold added]

Facebook is able to collect and analyze Onavo users’ activity to get a picture of how people use their phones beyond Facebook’s apps.

Onavo Protect did not comply with Apple's new privacy guidelines, and Apple and Facebook mutually agreed to remove Onavo from the App Store. There has been some posturing back-and-forth but the bottom line is:

Apple’s decision widens the schism between the two tech giants over privacy and is a blow to Facebook, which has used data gathered through the app to track rivals and scope out new product categories.

Except for brief experimentation with Google's Android in 2010, I've always used Apple's iOS, iPhone, and iPad products, and I'm glad I did.

Don't Be Typecast

Michal Kosinski

Stanford Business School professor Michal Kosinski demonstrates how it was possible that the techniques used by Cambridge Analytica influenced Facebook users in the 2016 election.

In an older study the researchers figured out a user's personality traits (for example, introversion or extroversion) based on his Facebook likes:

Kosinski and his Cambridge colleague, David Stillwell, were able to correlate “likes” with other basic personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Armed with only 10 “likes,” they could evaluate a person’s traits more accurately than that person’s coworkers. With 70 “likes,” they could do better than a person’s close friends.

Armed with personality information, [bold added]

Kosinski and his colleagues — including Stillwell, Sandra Matz of Columbia Business School, and Gideon Nave of Wharton School of Business — confirm[ed]the next logical step: Ads are indeed more persuasive when they are tailored to those psychological traits....

In promoting a line of cosmetics, for example, they ran dueling ads aimed at introverts and extroverts. All told, the ads reached 3 million people.

The ad for extroverts featured a woman dancing and the slogan “Dance like no one’s watching (but they totally are).” By contrast, the ad for introverts featured a woman contemplating herself in a mirror and a quiet slogan: “Beauty doesn’t have to shout.”

Sure enough, people were 50% more likely to buy the cosmetics if they saw the ad aimed at their particular type.

While these studies show how the melding of big data, artificial intelligence, and social networking can influence mass behavior, now that the public has become aware of it, IMHO, they'll be less susceptible to manipulation.

For example, when I watch the Hallmark Channel the ads for Medicare supplemental insurance and long-term care insurance come as no surprise because Hallmark and its viewers know the demographic of its audience. When it comes to Facebook and other sites, we did not know the extent to which they were targeting messages to us based upon our web behavior.

This is all the more reason to get out of our silos and look at news and opinions that we don't agree with.

Whatever your opinions or tribe, don't be typecast, and don't be manipulated.

The Focus of Attention

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a form of mental illness.

From personal observation, however, I suspect that minor OCD afflicts a large part of our population; how many of us, I wonder, must have a cup of coffee before starting work, or must exercise before breakfast, or must tie that half-Windsor knot exactly right (that's dating me)?

One of my OCD's is about correct grammar, spelling and word usage. But how can that be, since this humble journal is rife with such errors?

Here's the point: once I become aware of the error in my own work I am compelled to fix it. If I see the error elsewhere, I become oblivious to the rest of the message. An example of the latter is the image that a friend posted on Facebook about supporting fire fighters. "Affected," not "effected," is the proper usage, and the mistake is all I can think about.

I blame my sixth-grade grammar teacher, Mrs. Helen Matthews. Because she taught me so well, I suffer today.

Related: in the Austin Powers comedies various characters are so obsessed with the mole above a person's lip that it becomes the complete focus of their attention.