Technology: Absolutely Nothing About the Bakken -- Although I Mention It

1. As regular readers know, I haven't watched television in several weeks now. I discontinued my cable television in San Antonio, and haven't got around to getting "rabbit ears." It looks like I'm not the only one cutting the television cord: link at my favorite newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, to which I do subscribe, thank you very much.

The most intense debate in television today—whether the lure of Netflix and YouTube is causing viewers to disconnect their cable-TV service—is likely to intensify after new figures showed a slight decline in overall pay-TV subscribers in the second quarter.

Publicly traded cable, satellite and phone companies had a combined net loss of about 200,000 subscribers in the quarter, earnings reports showed, about 0.2% of the roughly 100 million pay-TV subscribers. Sanford C. Bernstein estimates the overall industry shed more than 400,000 subscribers during the period when results for closely held operators are included.

A sustained decline in the number of people subscribing to pay TV has ramifications for pay-TV operators and for TV channels, most of which share in the fees paid by subscribers. Big entertainment companies generate much of their profits from subscription fees paid to TV channels.

Out here in California, at our sometimes-pied-a-terre, my wife has never had cable, and she watches the Olympics on NBC and "rabbit ears" with aluminum foil at the tips. It seems to work well. She has two small 1970's-style televisions, and in one room, she gets three of four major Los Angeles channels, and in another room she gets the fourth station. Whatever works. She installed ATT's U-Verse last week, as a birthday present to me wen I am out here; it is incredibly inexpensive, and works incredibly well. It's a long, long story, perhaps for another day, but I cannot compliment ATT enough about tech support.

My younger daughter in Portland, OR, and her husband do not watch television; anything that resembles television is off the internet. And videos, I guess.

The granddaughters don't watch television; not entirely true; they sneak in some cartoons when we aren't looking.

Minyanville also had something to say about "cord-cutting."

2. This is really, really cool. Amazon.com has figured out how to combat porch-theft.

The Web giant has quietly installed large metal cabinets—or Amazon Lockers—in grocery, convenience and drugstore outlets that function like virtual doormen, accepting packages for customers for a later pickup. Amazon began putting lockers in Seattle, New York state and near Washington, D.C., about a year ago.

And the company is now ramping up the service. In the past few weeks, Amazon has opened its first lockers sites in the San Francisco Bay area.

In another life, more than 35 years ago, my significant other lived in a Boston brownstone and porch-theft was a fact-of-life. Thirty-five years later Amazon.com has ended that. There are several other story lines that could be developed, but I doubt if anyone coming here to read about the Bakken are interested. So, I will let the linked story do the talking.

3. Everywhere we take the granddaughters in southern California, I note the strangest phenomenon: folks carrying their naked iPads and using them as cameras. Today at the Long Beach Aquarium, two folks had their iPads out, taking photos of the fish.

4. I think the union, the CWA, called for a strike against ATT beginning yesterday or sometime earlier this week; it's over. Well, that was quick.