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It is no secret that the NSA is, or is at least capable of, tracking your every move. Many people also realize that advertisers have a lot more access to tracking you than you’d think (or like), but most people do not.

Your phone is constantly connected to cellular towers, scanning for WiFi, and in some cases searching for Bluetooth. To make wireless connections, a handshake of sorts has to take place. This handshake includes some indentifiers to tell the source who you are. This information isn’t your name or email address, but a MAC address is unique enough to pretty easily trace you as an individual.

Internet providers have no place prioritizing or discriminating against types of internet traffic. The providers have one goal: profits. This does not end well for customers.

Jean-Louis Gassée has shed a similar light, but from a different angle, as my post from December 10th in follow up to the discussion on the Pragmatic podcast. This whole Internet of Things (IoT) realm is in its infancy, there is so much progress to be made here. 

He asks the question:

If we can’t solve the “basket of remotes” problem, how can we expect a home full of “smart” objects? #ibmceschat

— Jean-Louis Gassée (@gassee) January 10, 2014

In this article by Mat Honan from Wired, he highlights a major problem with technology journalism today - people are bored with just about everything. These are just TVs, this is just another tablet, that iPhone is hardly any different from the last one… blah blah blah.

This year the CES coverage seemed to be more pessimistic than previous years. The latest iPhone release seemed to be received as more disappointing than previous years. The anti-Apple folks say that Apple has peaked and can’t keep up their momentum without Steve Jobs. The rest of the tech bloggers think that CES has lost its shine. These aren’t two separate things, there is one explanation - everyone has gotten used to insanely brilliant, beautiful, and incredible technology. Many believe it is bland and boring because we’re surrounded by it.

Overstock.com processed $124,000 in Bitcoin transactions in their first 24 hours accepting the currency. It is a small amount of money at first glance, but attempting to compete with the dollar as a currency is no simple task. Additionally, overstock.com isn’t exactly known as a tech-nerd user base.

This is another exciting step in the Bitcoin story. Really excited and curious to see how this plays out.

See also:

• Will a Civil War era law outlaw Bitcoin?
• The guy who became a millionaire off of Bitcoin and didn’t even know it.

Some interesting picks in here, definitely seems to capture the best products there. With that being said, I’m still not seeing anything that is standing out.

• Oculus Rift keeps making these kinds of lists, but it seems to be in a perpetual state of development.
• Sony Z1 Compact packs a top end punch into an iPhone-size device, a rarity for Android devices.
• There are a LOT of fitness trackers, I don’t see that changing any time soon.
• The Mother sensor system seems interesting. Not a grand slam, but a fresh take on smart home technology.

It is a somewhat cynical view. One could argue Google is attempting to make it as easy as possible for people to connect. To be clear: I disagree with this being opt-out instead of opt-in, I think Google is doing everything they possible can to make Google+ relevant, and I think they will cave to pressure on this and make it opt-in.

Marco has a strong closing statement:

You, the users, are just along for the ride. You’re just eyeballs. Body parts and ad-targeting data. Google doesn’t care about you at all. You’ve tolerated enough already that it’s pretty clear you’re not really going anywhere.

An excellent follow up piece (to his original post) on where Chromebooks fit into the tech world. Also read his link to Vance McAlister’s response, both are very insightful.

From Vance:

The true value in ChromeOS is what it DOESN’T have. Critics say “a Macbook or Windows laptop will give you the same Chrome browser, plus a lot more as well!”, but that misses the point entirely. Those laptops don’t come with the killer feature of ChromeOS: the LACK of a traditional OS.

There has been a lot of 4K news at CES, no surprise there. Computer monitors make sense and a 4K computer monitor should excite anyone who uses desktop monitors. 

TVs are a different story. When talking TVs, the important thing to remember is that you don’t sit nearly as close to them. When you sit farther back, even the most perfect human eye can only differentiate a certain level of detail. Read more here. Here’s the quick version; this diagram shows you the screen size versus viewing distance chart and shows at which range a given resolution is actually valuable.

On Yahoo Tech… David Pogue heading it up does give them a chance at making this work. It is still a bit of a comedy with how miserably Yahoo has failed in the tech industry as of late that they’re attempting to become a tech news source.

Omission of the “!” is, and always will be, intentional. Perhaps that’ll change if there is ever something exciting going on at Yahoo.