January 6th - What I found this week

Welcome back to reality everyone. Yup it's January again, time for New Years resolutions and thinking about the year to come. These are the links that I found over the last little while that I think needed a little more attention and thought:

How do I feel about this? It's Mr. Cook's money. Do what you like, but since he is a CEO of Apple, this does create a political question. Is it OK for paying for access to a politician? In a word No, but since this is the real world and Mr. Cook wants to get things done. With Trump threatening tariffs that will affected everything he needs to keep an open dialogue to power. In the calculation, a million bucks ain't that much in the grand scheme of Mr. Cook's economic reality. Play the game with the rules that are in place, only way to play at the current time. Even though I am not OK with it and think it further creates the separation of Government from the masses. He has to play it this way.

https://www.axios.com/2025/01/03/tim-cook-apple-donate-1-million-trump-inauguration

This is insane, we now have an internet appliance that fits in a backpack and can get you connected almost anywhere on the planet for about $600 bucks the first month and $189 every month after that. When you consider that some of the connection costs for terrestrial networks are approaching that amount, (I pay about $100 a month). Mind you it's a lot faster on a terrestrial, but it's fast enough to work remotely for sure. 

https://www.starlink.com/specifications?spec=5

CES 2025 begins with the weird and awesome! Just thought these were cool.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/26/24329562/lg-lamp-indoor-garden

https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/5/24332998/roborock-saros-z70-robot-vacuum-omnigrip-arm

That's it for this week!