What are the largest companies in the world?   Nine of the top ten are from the USA.  We have long been the greatest. Note that #5 shows Google in parentheses next to Alphabet, and #7 has Facebook as part of Meta.  What happened? Google, as you know reinvented the way the world accesses information.   Why restructure? Without much warning in 2015, Google renamed itself Alphabet. This allowed the parent, Alphabet, to expand into domains outside of internet search and advertising. Google now runs a lesser risk of antitrust violations. You might get confused by GOOG and GOOGL, stock ticker symbols of Alphabet.  I won't try to explain it, but  you can click here for details . 52-year old  Sundar Pichai ( originally, Pichai Sundararajan ) is the CEO of Alphabet,  while founders Larry Page ( 52 ) and Sergey Brin ( 53 ) no longer are involved in daily operations.  Sundar's compensation last year was $10.72 million. Note that Alphabet is the 5th...

In August  Time  magazine had an issue on the Metaverse.  As they will not allow you to read the article, I'll try to crystalize the essence as simply as possible, supplementing as necessary. What is the multiverse? A hypothetical iteration of the internet as a single, universal and immersive virtual world facilitated by the use of virtual and augmented reality. Or a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connections. Every few decades, there is a platform shift :   I started teaching computer courses when there were mainframes.  That was in 1972, half a century ago. Then came PCs and the internet. Now mobile and cloud computing. The internet today is worldwide with 40,000 networks, millions of applications, over 100 million servers, almost a billion websites and tens of billions devices. While everything is theoretically interconnected, just think, whoever controls the system, runs the world. That is one way of describing the metaverse, explaining ...

  I looked closer at the   Worldometer  and   Our World in Data   for COVID-19 this morning, and can make several observations: The World is approaching 300 million cases and 5.5 million deaths, a mortality rate just under 2% and 0.75 deaths/1000.  On the last number, picture a thousand people.  Less than one death. The USA has 56 million cases and will soon reach one million deaths, a mortality rate of 1.5% and 2.5 deaths/thousand.  For a thousand people, 2.5 deaths.  In a two-year period ( to be about equal to the time frame of these COVID-19 deaths ), there would be 3.6 cancer deaths in the U.S. Japan has 1.7 million cases, 18,393 deaths, mortality rate of 1% and 0.15 deaths/capita. Denmark has a tests/capita rate of 18.5, with #2 Austria at 13.7, and the UK at 5.9.  The U.S. has a tests/capita of 2.4. Fully vaccinated % ( not including booster ) UAE  91% Portugal 90% Singapore  87% Cuba  85% China  84% Japan ...