ISO 50. Focal Length: 90mm. Aperture: f 8.0. Shutter Speed: 24 seconds. Made with Lecia SL2 I went to the Marine Headlands this weekend. It was supposed to be foggy. In other words, my kind of cond… | Continue reading
So, what do I think of Apple’s Time Flies event today? For starters, I appreciate this more egalitarian approach to Apple events, where everyone gets to watch the live stream at the same time regar… | Continue reading
After over six months of being quarantined indoors, I should by now be quite used to staying indoors. And I am. We humans can adapt to changes very fast. As someone who was in perpetual motion and … | Continue reading
What remains are the things that cannot be relegated to machines and algorithms, copied from others, or reduced to formulas, directions, and recipes: the artist remains—the singular human individua… | Continue reading
As someone who has witnessed the meteoric rise of CNET and its role in technology media from the very beginning, I was shocked to learn that they are being sold for $500 million to Red Ventures, a … | Continue reading
TikTok wouldn’t be selling its US operations to Microsoft. “We look forward to seeing how the service evolves in these important areas,” Microsoft said in a tersely worded bl… | Continue reading
“A wise God shrouds the future in obscure darkness.” Horace San Francisco this morning has been under dense fog advisory, and rightfully so. The ash and smoke from the wildfires overwhe… | Continue reading
When Amazon announced the addition to its board of directors of General Keith Alexander, the controversial former chief of the National Security Agency, the condemnation came thick and fast. A… | Continue reading
Someone was complaining on Twitter about Apple’s iPhone being unable to comprehend the color of the sky. Neither does my Leica SL. It is all too surreal. The colors that one normally associat… | Continue reading
Photo by Tomas Yates on Unsplash The Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, known for occasionally partaking in ice cream from Dairy Queen, is going in for a Snowflake scoop. Snowflake is … | Continue reading
The weather in San Francisco is pretty much the same throughout most of the year. It usually only varies by about ten degrees. The cold means wearing a sweater in the morning with a jacket. A warm … | Continue reading
Never have those who are invisible been more visible in our society, and while they have always merited more gratitude than they have been given, never have we owed them quite as much as we do this… | Continue reading
Somewhere in the Grand Tetons. Photo by Om Are newsletters the new blogs — or is it that blogs are newsletters? I can’t tell. For me, however, the blog is my homestead. A homestead is an isol… | Continue reading
As someone who often laments about the falling standards and the rise of outrage journalism, it is only fair for me to take a moment and acknowledge that good journalism is hard. It is painstakingl… | Continue reading
I don’t have much to say today. I am feeling decidedly low energy and tired. One of those days, when you just want to simply catch up on email and reading. And that is precisely what I have b… | Continue reading
“I wish I had gotten into the environmental work earlier because I think that’s a citizen’s fundamental responsibility. The channeling of creative arts in that direction has been … | Continue reading
In August 1995, only 30% of American homes had a computer. Less than 10% had internet access. I had not become a disciple of broadband. I didn’t even know what broadband! Like everyone el… | Continue reading
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash I woke up thinking, what is news good for? No, I was not being snarky. It was just a question: what is the purpose of news. After two and a half decades in … | Continue reading
The Verge had Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp, on their podcast. He was talking up his anti-trust talk against Google. The article that accompanied the podcast didn’t mention anything about ho… | Continue reading
I am enjoying this forthcoming track, The Sound of Someone Leaving (with Aaron Martin) by Phil Tomsett, a UK-based musician who is known for his organic sounding, lush and layered soundscapes. “Absence is powerful. When someone isn’t there anymore, the empty space is charged with … | Continue reading
"What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise, there are only two dimensions. Otherwise, you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be." ― Margaret Atwood, The Han … | Continue reading
As you know, I have been following the emergence of new behaviors during the pandemic very closely, especially online commerce. So for frequent readers, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the pandemic has been an accelerant for e-commerce. There were already early ind … | Continue reading
It is not that often I wake up in a funk. Today, I have come down with a case of megrims. I think it has a lot to do with the wildfires in Northern California, and the damage they are causing to humans and other ecosystems. San Francisco (and surrounding areas) have the fifth-wor … | Continue reading
A country that doesn’t hesitate to drop $700 billion on its war machine now finds itself quibbling over $10 billion to run a very essential service. Of course, a lot of this talk about shrinking the United States Postal Service has nothing to do with its budgetary shortfalls. It … | Continue reading
I have been an Apple customer for about two decades. I have owned most of their notebooks and loved even their most quirky machines. I loved the Cube. I adored the table lamp style iMac. I love the Powerbook Duo. The first MacBook was all I could think about when in the intensive … | Continue reading
Analysis of cellphone data by X-Mode and Tectonix during four days (Friday to Monday) in mid-July shows that many of the roughly 26,000 devices identified on the Las Vegas Strip showed up in every state on the mainland except Maine in those same four days. This spread reminds me … | Continue reading
It has been 50 years this month since Alvin and Heidi Toffler published their book, Future Shock. The Tofflers have since passed on to the next plane. However, they have left behind a work, that is amazingly prescient, especially when seen in the context of the current pandemic a … | Continue reading
A few days after the pandemic shutdown began in San Francisco, I noticed seagulls were spending more time in the communal pool in our building complex. Devoid of people, it wasn’t surprising to see gulls take up residence in the pool. After a few days, it became clear that it was … | Continue reading
How China is trying to dominate the digital currency market: While we are busy fighting the battle over TikTok, China is making moves to dominate the currency markets of the future. This is a must-read story. (Also: Triangle Entanglement — As the U.S. and China drift apart, Taiwa … | Continue reading
COVID-19 pandemic is the second deadliest pandemic in America, based on the numbers collated by Marshall Auerback. As of today, the US facility rate stands at 0.051 percent. 1918 influenza pandemic: 50 million deaths globally. World population: 1.8 billion, or 2.7 percent. US fat … | Continue reading
Uber and Lyft, in response to a California court ruling that all drivers must be reclassified as employees with benefits, are threatening to quit doing business in the state. Putting the news, and the legal posturing of Uber and Lyft aside, the judgment and its possible impact on … | Continue reading
Microsoft's new hybrid Android OS based dual-screen phone, Surface Duo doesn't really move the idea of mobile phones forward. | Continue reading
"Our daily lives are so mundane, we get taken over by what is immediately in front of us, and we don't see beyond that." - Benedict Cumberbatch It has been 164 days since the self-imposed isolation started. Maybe it is time for me to stop counting. In 180 days, I thought that we, … | Continue reading
I traveled to Utah for Thanksgiving 2019. For a few minutes, I got a chance to experience a real snowstorm. And just like that, it was over. I made a handful of photos. Here is one of them. | Continue reading
First Huawei, then TikTok and last week, WeChat: we are navigating stormy seas when it comes to the US-China relationship. It all seems very arcane to an average person. After all, it is easy to find a replacement for TikTok. We don’t use Huawei and WeChat as ordinary Americans. … | Continue reading
Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash Has the Internet become better at mediating change? It’s a good question, and the exploration of the topic by Jane Hu for The New Yorker is even better. This should… | Continue reading
When I look back upon my journey as a photographer, it can easily be summed up by the words of Jonathan Swift. “Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.” The journey has been… | Continue reading
Long before the pandemic made in-person coffee conversations a nostalgic memory, I was chatting with a friend about the increased frequency with which large technology companies copied their rivals… | Continue reading
I didn’t have the luxury to study the fine arts in college. I didn’t go to journalism school. So all my writing skills were acquired by osmosis and practice. I would voraciously read bo… | Continue reading
The Information this morning reported that Headspin, a network performance software provider, restated its revenues — down from $100 million annual recurring revenue to $15 million ARR after … | Continue reading
It might not be perfect, but Apple’s HomePod smart speaker has its uses, especially if you live within Apple’s ecosystem. I use it to add items to my to-do lists, quick calculation… | Continue reading
I recently came across an interview with an American icon and legendary photographer, Ansel Adams. A British TV journalist was interviewing him. When asked if his famous photograph, Moonrise over H… | Continue reading
The marriage of Microsoft and TikTok seems so bizarre that I couldn’t help but be reminded of another such bizarre Union – late actress Anna Nicole Smith and her billionaire octogenarian husb… | Continue reading
Earlier this month, I pointed out that the pandemic, and being locked indoors is turning us to social media in large numbers. And now that Facebook, Snap, and Twitter have reported their numbers, i… | Continue reading
Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash Given that I have been writing three decades, including eighteen-plus years a blogger, I am hardly surprised that I am repeatedly asked: how should I write? And … | Continue reading
In a few hours, the chief executives of four major technology companies — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are going to be hauled up in front of our politicians. I am surprised to see Micr… | Continue reading
A view from Burano, Italy. Made with Leica SL We could all use a little more silence in our lives. We need to learn to live with the harsh reality that we aren’t that important. No one pays a… | Continue reading