Tim Heaton's Blog
August 14, 2020
On Dueling
I wholly advocate dueling pistols for defending ones honor and mandatory for elected officials to reveal any. – Trick Albright
August 11, 2020
INKARRI, The latest book in the Cassiel Series of Thrillers, available on Amazon now.
Read about the new book staring Trick, Darius and the rest of the Casseil Society from Holly Springs, Mississippi here on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B086SHF63X/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i4
On Style
Rule Number One: It costs money to look good.
Rule Number Two: Money won’t buy taste.
That’s all the rules there are.
August 7, 2020
An Englishman’s View of the South
The South is an authentic American Culture — possibly the last there will ever be. -Trick Albright
July 26, 2020
Definitions THEN and NOW
THEN
rac·ist
/ˈrāsəst/
noun
a person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another.
NOW
rac·ist
/ˈrāsəst/
noun
an American Caucasian who the left dislikes.
July 24, 2020
July 23, 2020
July 20, 2020
Trick’s Maxims
Trick’s Southern Maxims
Whores are whores the world over, and politicians are no different.
Southerners get a free pass on cocktails. Yankees simply don’t understand the hospitality of getting loopy amongst friends in one’s home.
May 24, 2020
Tech Opportunities for the Rural South in the Virus Era
Often in history, a seismic event is the catalyst for the inevitable. I experienced this firsthand on Wall Street after 9/11. Before then, most trading was done over the phone. Electronic trading was available, but it not widely used. After the voice-traded infrastructure was destroyed by the attack, traders were forced to use electronic platforms. This led to an explosion of trading volume and the decline of financial institutions that failed to adapt.
Michael Hendrix, partner, Ideo: “The virus seems like an accelerator for digital change that was already underway . . . the surprise has been to see the resistance to this digital change suddenly evaporate. What organizations resisted for a decade is now core to survival and innovation. It is exciting, because this digital mindset will persist, and it is highly unlikely companies will try to return to what worked prior to the pandemic.” [1]
The COVID-19 lockdown will be a turning point for how people work and learn just as in 9/11. We are learning new skills and adapting to the challenges.
The Post-COVID-19 World of Work
Working Remote Becomes Commonplace
Just as 9/11 gave banks no other option but to trade electronically, the pandemic forced companies to accept work from home.
Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare: “People are accessing more educational resources online for their kids; finding unconventional ways to connect with coworkers, friends, and family; and employers are being more flexible in how they respond to employee needs through more dynamic, cloud-based technology. I think we’ll see these shifts last well beyond the immediate fallout of the COVID-19 outbreak.”
Remote Hiring of Temporary Technical Talent Accelerates
Before COVID-19, if you joined a video conference, you were thought of as a ‘slacker’ rather than a ‘participant.’ Today, tools like Zoom and Skype bridged the gap “corporate” to “consumer.”
Eva Chen, CEO at Trend Micro, “The COVID-19 experience will build our courage to adopt new patterns to fix antiquated processes… Organizations will ditch the notion of having a big office and revert to a small-town model of working in cluster offices… Company “headquarters” will be located in the cloud, shifting how we protect enterprise data in the virtual cloud and how we secure data from more diverse endpoints.”
Surprisingly, we have all become more tolerant of kids and pets’ video-bombing’ meetings. The Supreme Court Justices being treated to a toilet flush in the background is a recent example. Our work culture becomes more flexible with the everyday challenges we faced and opened us up to more meaningful connections with coworkers.
Steve Case, co-founder AOL, CEO of Revolution: “We believe the COVID-19 pandemic will encourage people—entrepreneurs, investors, and employees—to consider opportunities outside of the coastal tech hubs. People who have been considering a move, to tap into the sector expertise (healthcare, food, and agriculture, etc.) that exists in many parts of the country, or for a lifestyle change, or to be near family and friends, may choose this moment to relocate, accelerating a talent boomerang, and helping emerging start-up cities rise. On top of that, the increased willingness to accept remote working as a viable arrangement following this prolonged work-from-home period will further propel this trend.”
Vivek Ravisankar, CEO of HackerRank: “Remote hiring of technical talent will become the norm, accelerated by the normalization of remote work.”
Online Education Expands
Educators are relying on Zoom, Slack, and Skype to teach, and it’s falling short in replicating the classroom experience. The truth is that it was never meant to be a substitute. No tool or platform can replicate labs and classrooms. Technology’s role is to create new experiences altogether, and I expect a boom in technology to do just that. Nothing spurs innovation like obstacles.
Simon Allen, CEO of McGraw-Hill: “The change we see right now in education is not likely to revert back to “normal” in the fall. Although teachers will always be integral to the education process, there will need to be continued flexibility and agility when it comes to things like the delivery of content, testing, and grading. I expect that we will see an increase in blended learning environments that include learning in both the physical classroom setting and online.”
Sal Khan, founder, and CEO of educational nonprofit Khan Academy: The need for online access and devices in every home is now so dire that it may finally mobilize society to treat internet connectivity as a must-have rather than a nice-to-have. We’re already seeing governments, school districts, philanthropists, and corporations step up to close the digital divide. If this continues to happen, we could get to a state of nearly universal online access at home.
Greater Supply Chain Flexibility
Countries and regions will emerge from rolling lockdowns at different paces, leading to “corridors of travel” between low-risk areas: Australia and New Zealand as an example. Note that Mississippi has a low population density and high heat/humidity, which lower the risk of COVID-19 infection.
Ed Barriball, partner, McKinsey: “Once we emerge from the current crisis, we expect businesses and governments to focus on better quantifying the risks faced and incorporating potential losses into business cases. The current way of building products in centralized factories with low-cost labor halfway around the world simply can’t weather storms of uncertainty. Moving forward, factories and supply chains will require, and businesses will mandate, much more resilient manufacturing through nearshoring, full automation, and software-based management.”
How Did Silicon Valley, CA, and Austin, TX, became tech centers?
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley began in the 40s as a result of Frederick Terman, the dean of the Stanford engineering school, who encouraged faculty to start their own companies. This led to the invention of the transistor. When Russia’s Sputnik launched the Space Race, the US government founded NASA, and the only company able to build electronics for the space capsule was Fairchild Semiconductor in San Jose.
Austin
The city’s technology industry began in the late 50s with the Austin Area Economic Development Foundation, which sought to attract electrical and scientific equipment manufacturing. Tracor, a major defense electronics contractor, came in 1962. In 1977, the University of Texas set up its IC2 Institute to create regional economic development through technological innovation. A decade later, IC2 launched the Austin Technology Incubator. Austin also hosts the South by Southwest festival, which attracts technology start-ups.
The key features that made Silicon Valley and Austin Tech Centers:
· US Department of Defense contracts
· Early adoption of disruptive technologies
· Local government initiatives to attract technology companies
· University faculty encouraged to build tech companies
Mississippi’s Hidden Advantages.
Diversity[2]
Mississippi is 59% white, 52% femaleCalifornia is 72% White. 50% femaleTexas is 79% White. 50% female
Education[3]
A college degree is often not required for technology. [4]
Mississippians with a High School degree: 84%California: 83%Texas: 83%
Certifications for in-demand technologies are highly valued and at far less cost[5].
Mean Commute Time[6]
Mississippi 24.6 minutesCalifornia 29.3 minutesTexas 26.4 minutes
English is predominant[7]
English is spoken in 96% of Mississippi homesCalifornia 56%Texas is 64%.
All of the top programming languages use English words at its base.[8] India often gets credit for the largest English-speaking country, but only 226,000 speak it as a first language.[9]
Quality of Life[10]
Mississippi 6thCalifornia 50thTexas 46th
Heat and Humidity
I don’t need to prove to y’all that Mississippi is hot and humid. Our sweltering climate hurts the coronavirus even more than humans. Higher temperatures melt the coronavirus’s outer lipid layer, similar to how butter melts if left out of the fridge.Humidity catches virus-containing droplets from breath out, which causes these droplets to fall to the ground instead of reaching another human.UV light from Mississippi’s long summer kills viruses.
Upcoming Technologies for Mississippi
Autonomous vehicles
In October 2019, MSU’s Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems received a grant from the US Army to autonomous research vehicles, which will need broadband data. Delta farms have been using autonomous vehicles for ten years.
Quantum computing
The future has arrived. In February, an Italian cell phone computer used quantum computing to optimize mobile traffic 10X faster than conventional methods. For remote workers, quantum technology will enable communications of all types to be ‘unhackable.’
Low orbit broadband
Only 68% of Mississippi households have broadband internet, verses 85% for California, and 79% for Texas. [11] An alternative solution to laying expensive fiber cable is ‘Starlink,’ a low earth orbit satellite internet service from Elon Musk[12]. Beta testing is scheduled for September. [13] The company claims latency of 25ms, similar to current fiber broadband. Low earth technology is different from current satellite providers in that Instead of connecting to one satellite thousands of miles above Earth, Starlink uses a dish that connects to hundreds of low orbit satellites. Shorter distance = faster speeds. As of April, SpaceX has launched 422 satellites. Subscription cost is projected to be around $80/mo, so getting Mississippi to 100% access (the missing 32%) would cost $338 Million/yr. I bet Elon Musk would be interested in making a deal.
Buzz Kill: Broadband is not a ticket to guaranteed economic growth
Unfortunately, economic growth from internet access is not as easy as ‘if you build it, the dollars will come.’ People would need a mobile device, and a way to turn broadband access into a paycheck. Also, Mississippi cannot compete with offshore programmers who are willing to work for a couple of dollars an hour.
The Buzz is back: Businesses that leverage Mississippi’s strengths
The good news is that many technical jobs cannot be offshored due to security concerns. One of Mississippi’s strengths is English, not to mention Southern courtesy and manners. Here a shortlist of business ideas:
Data Cleaning and record-matchingDocumentation, Code review, Data Dictionaries and Data CataloguesInformation securityLow cost, online college degrees
What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comments section, or reach out to me at tim.h.heaton@gmail.com.
Sources
https://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/04/23/dont-need-go-college-anymore-programmer/
Elon Musk: SpaceX’s internet service will go live in around six months
https://www.wired.com/story/coding-is-for-everyoneas-long-as-you-speak-english/
Which Countries Have the Most English Speakers?
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-news-best-states-quality-of-life-ranked-2018-2#1-north-dakota-50
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/09/business/spacex-starlink-antenna-user-terminal-scn/index.html
Elon Musk: SpaceX’s internet service will go live in around six months
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90486053/all-the-things-covid-19-will-change-forever-according-to-30-top-experts
[4] https://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/04/23/dont-need-go-college-anymore-programmer/
[5] https://www.globalknowledge.com/us-en/resources/resource-library/articles/top-paying-certifications/?creative=271222288465&keyword=&matchtype=b&network=g&device=c&gclid=CjwKCAjw4871BRAjEiwAbxXi2x9Zl4ARSoGgkrORf6JnDFHxTzeOSlAhLBnOwkQBKcuSlcd6zLOzpBoC7P8QAvD_BwE
[8] https://medium.com/@jennymandl/why-are-all-programming-languages-in-english-12b1312bada4
[9] https://cudoo.com/blog/which-countries-have-the-most-english-speakers/
[10] https://www.businessinsider.com/us-news-best-states-quality-of-life-ranked-2018-2#1-north-dakota-50
[12] https://www.starlink.com/
[13] https://telecomstechnews.com/news/2020/apr/24/elon-musk-spacex-internet-service-live-six-months/
Photo Credits
https://pixabay.com/users/raffaelffranco-6553778/
https://pixabay.com/users/Kevinsphotos-3037209/
https://pixabay.com/users/LeeRosario-4585232/
https://pixabay.com/users/WikiImages-1897/
