by David Brooks | Apr 10, 2020 | Blog, Newsletter
For four years the Concord Monitor has published New Hampshire patents in its print pages as collected by Targeted News Service. However, the COVID constriction in advertising revenue has shrunk the paper and it doesn’t have the room any more. So from now on,...
by David Brooks | Apr 9, 2020 | Blog, Newsletter
Local advertising revenue, such as it was, has completely disappeared overnight due to COVID-19 and local newspapers are falling by the wayside as a result. The family-owned Concord Monitor, financial and spiritual home of Granite Geek, is not folding but our business...
by David Brooks | Apr 9, 2020 | Blog, Newsletter
(UPDATE: IBM wants to train more COBOL programmers.) Regular readers will remember my 2018 story about the state upgrading its tax system because they were still running COBOL. After it ran I heard from COBOL programmers as far away as Brazil who offered their...
by David Brooks | Apr 9, 2020 | Blog, Newsletter
NHPR reporter Sam Evans-Brown pointed out an interesting electric-power experiment going on in New England: By coincidence, our nuclear power plants have all been offline for a few days. (Some were undergoing refueling, which happens every spring when demand dips, and...
by David Brooks | Apr 8, 2020 | Blog, Newsletter
Apologies to William Shakespeare, but these days when we step outside most of us become miniature COVID Hamlets and start to soliloquize: “To mask or not to mask – that is the question.” It’s not that we’re poetic, it’s that we’re confused. Which is understandable...
by David Brooks | Apr 7, 2020 | Blog, Newsletter
(While reading this story, you might want to play this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2CWfSLyjx8) Here’s yet another surprising effect that COVID-19 has produced in everyday life: Stripping once inside the front door has become routine. As you’ve probably guessed,...