Andrew Davidson

NY Times: Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Either this is a lot harder than it sounds, or some one needs a better copy editor!

In an article in the NY Times of May 5, 2016, “Europe to Remove 500-Euro Bill, the ‘Bin Laden’ Bank Note Criminals Love,” Jack Ewing discusses the recent decision by the European Central Bank to discontinue the 500-euro bank note. Apparently it had been a favorite of money launderers and other nefarious characters.

In the article, he reports:

The €500 note is also more compact and convenient for evading the gaze of authorities. The equivalent of $1 million, in that high euro note, weighs about five pounds and fits in a small bag, according to a Harvard University study this year.

Did it really take a research study, at Harvard no less, to calculate the weight of 2000 pieces of paper (if my long division is right) ?

Of course, if you look at the study summary, you’ll find that it was about the rationale for eliminating high denomination bank notes, not their actual weight.

Which leads me to wonder what happened to The Gray Lady‘s copy editing in this piece?

image: Apple, Inc.

In an article in Fast Company, writer Mark Sullivan presents an excellent analysis of what a new Apple Watch might look like:
“Apple Watch 2: How The World’s Best Smartwatch Might Make Its Great Leap Forward.”

He discusses many exciting possible new features, such as a faster processor, untethered network connections (without a paired iPhone), its own GPS, a better battery, encryption for all kinds of key data, a thinner case, etc.

All of these improvements are about Apple trying to reach its design goal for a smart watch, the holy grail: to replace “the three things you don’t leave home without—your phone, your wallet, and your keys.”

Terrific. I use and like many of the features on my Apple Watch. But most of them fall in the category of just saving me the trouble of pulling my phone out of my pocket. Reading text messages, checking my schedule, getting directions, even answering the phone in a pinch.

However, for me, the Apple Watch fails at the most important function it is supposed to provide, the eponymous one—telling me the time.

As a watch, it sucks. Because it has to put the screen to sleep whenever possible to conserve   battery life, I can’t simply glance at my wrist to see what time it is.

I have to adopt all kinds of exaggerated wrist motions in order to wake it up so I can check the time. Surely this is now a recognizably ridiculous gesture in the wild, the lifting, twisting wrist that looks like the beginning of a mangled Klingon salute.

If this watch were really smart, it should know when I’m looking at it and wake up without me having to move my wrist!

So, until they make it work better as a basic watch, I’m ready to throw it in the back of my sock drawer and go back to my reliable, always on, dumb old wrist watch. At least with that one, I can tell what time it is at a glance.

Photo illustration by Jim DeMaria/The New York Times and photo by Ben Margot/Associated Press.

In a recent NY Times article, “Nest Thermostat Glitch Leaves Users in the Cold,” Nick Bilton writes about a recent bug in a ‘smart’ home thermostat that left many (millions?) of customers’ homes very cold on a winter night.

He goes on to explain that this sort of issue “points to a larger problem with so-called smart devices that we are inviting into our lives: Small glitches can cause huge problems.”

He’s right, of course: software will always have bugs, and bugs may have serious consequences.

While there are very serious and nasty potential consequences from faulty software in the connected home (just imagine if your home is hacked the way your credit card can be), what really worries me is the smart car, especially the autonomous, driverless ones being developed and tested now.

Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York Times

Buggy thermostats are one thing. But a buggy or hacked driverless car is quite another thing! Especially one with me in it. John Markoff writes, also in the NY Times, of some of the current issues with autonomous cars: “For Now, Self-Driving Cars Still Need Humans.”

You won’t catch me in one of those any time soon. I know too much about software!