Yes - we used to have human elevator operators and telephone operators that would manually connect your calls. We now have automated check-out lines in stores and toll booths. In the future, we will have automated taxis and, yes, even some automated health care. Automated healthcare will enable better healthcare coverage with the same number of healthcare workers (or the same level of coverage with fewer workers). There can be good things or bad things about it - the way we do it will absolutely matter. We just need to think through how best to obtain the good without much of the bad ... rather than assuming it wont ever happen.

Probably not. The increase in demand is a result of the social-distancing and the hoarding. This is not a steady state. The demand for many things will return to normal (or below) once people figure out what they are using and what is still available. For example - you don't use that much more toilet paper when you are at home ... but you buy more if you don't know when it will be available again.

Amazon has adopted automation in a very big and increasing way. Just because it has not automated everything yet, doesn't mean that complete automation isn't possible. We already know automated delivery is in the works. Amazon, Uber and Google are all working on the details of autonomous navigation ... and the ultimate result will absolutely impact future drivers (pun intended).

because machines don't buy tickets to fly on planes and vacation on cruise ships.

It has more to do with the vulnerabilities of the human traveler and the human guest (and less to do with the workers). The demand for these services has simply gone down while people try to avoid spreading the virus.

The way this is worded is distracting because (so far as I understand) HbA1c doesn't fluctuate anywhere near as quickly as blood glucose and insulin.

I don't want to read too much into this word, but it could be read to suggest existing Pixel phones wont get this feature.

It is the second time I've seen Estonia mentioned this morning. Sounds like they are trying some really interesting things in government. Curious to see how it all goes.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/e-estonia-what-is-all-the-fuss-about/

Not sure how accurate this characterization is, but it does seem that Intuit has been lobbying to keep things less than straightforward for taxpayers for some time. Unfortunate. https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-these-taxprep-companies-lobby-hard-to-keep-tax-day-a-torture-for-you-20150414-column.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TurboTax (see controversies)

Not always a "bad guy" story. Let's say a brilliant but poor woman dreams up a wildly effective design for a rocket engine after years of research. She wisely patents it and tries to get the attention of someone in the space industry. Until she finds a partner (which generally means negotiating a mutually acceptable price for the fruits of her labor), she is a "troll."

Many of the links from the Pages RSS feed are valid according to the server.

Does this organization have any formal relationship to outline.com? I just discovered them both (actually discovered hypothes.is through outline) and wasn't sure.

In a perfect world, the author would sell you a license to the book and you'd just read it on whatever platform suited you. For now, the leading ebook providers are not making this easy so I end up with some titles (and associated annotations) on one platform and other titles on another, which is far more complicated than it needs to be.

https://www.ics.uci.edu/~gmark/Home_page/Publications_files/CHI%202018%20Workplace%20Distractions.pdf

Yes it is. One downside, however, is that the system does not provide very good integration with other smart devices/services. This seems to be a trend in Google services of late. IFTTT, for example is not available at all for Nest Secure as today.