Items I happen to view each day. Science, Technology, Management, Culture, and Writing

    This is my day book for this week. It is a log of things I see on the Internet.

This week: 18-24 November, 2024

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• The Israel-Gaza fighting continues
• The news machine goes into a post-election lull
• xxx
• xxx

Monday 18 November 2024

It is now easier to be admitted to college. Declining birth rates have taken away the customers. College built too much and hired too many admin persons. Now colleges are clamoring for students. How about lowering the prices? $$$

Meanwhile on Wall Street. investors are accepting the AI hyperbole and and ready to pour a Trillion$ (with a Tr) into data centers and all that. Maybe in 20 years we can turn empty datacenters into shopping malls.

Some of Nvidia's latest processors are creating more heat than advertised creating problems in datacenters.

Good old YouTube has become the home of America's most-watched podcasts.

Some thoughts on innovative workplaces. Most places are the same old thing.

24 best places to retire. This list is nuts. Washington D.C., New York City, San Francisco: nice places to visit but VERY EXPENSIVE $$$.

AI brings a laundry=sorting robot. Hmmm.

Here is a quote that pretty much summarizes NASA: NASA has squandered $27 billion on the SLS moon rocket --- $6 billion over budget and 5 years late. And Mr. Musk is seeking places to cut wasteful government spending.

Thoughts on finding and gaining benefit from beta readers.

I find this to be good advice. We all have lots of troubles and quirks. Sometimes we write about characters that are just plain basic.

Self publishing? Here is a list of common errors in formatting the manuscript.

Thoughts and good points on writing a synopsis of a novel. I like this post.

Examples of boring writing and methods of changing those things.

For many of us, there is great benefit in finishing something that we started. Others find the joy in starting and then just going to something else without ever finishing.

Tuesday 19 November 2024

The governors and regulators of Europe are faced with the facts: US companies dominate. It isn't a "level playing field." And then the biggest problem is Europe is run by "governors and regulators."

Our current President, still in office, is pushing AI into intelligence and military use.

And by the way, Mr. Joe Biden looks endearing and clever in those AI-generated photos and videos. Why don't more politicians do those things in real life?

It seems that computer generated special effects are being overwhelmed by computer generated special effects. The latter being of the AI variety.

120 KiloWatts per rack: that is the power that 72 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs are pulling. Yes, you can put a cake or pizza or frying pan full of bacon on the top of the rack and cook.

Meanwhile in our Dept of Justice, government employees plot how Google should run its company. Act fast before the next person becomes President.

Angst about a Coca Cola Christmas commercial being AI generated.

Apple is trying to buy its way into the Indonesian market for smartphones by increasing its investments there 10x up to $100million.

Meanwhile in China, the big tech there is using 7nm technology in its latest designs. That technology is behind the times for new designs.

America's news influencers on social media are gaining, no, ruling news and posting of news. See my post on Society Media.

Meanwhile in the Baltic Sea, two undersea cables go dark prompting fears of Russian military action. These undersea cables connect the world and keep the Internet running.

Meanwhile in America, despite advances in AI and robotics, we have 30% more warehouse workers.

Car makers and software engineers work together on Automotive Grade Linux.

Our Dept of Defense releases the Fiscal Year 2024 Consolidated Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. Nothing much to see. As usual, lots of money spent to maintain the status quo.

Wednesday 20 November 2024

I think by now that American tech companies would know better than work with the Chinese governors. Tech supplied by US firms is being used to surveil and censor Chinese subjects.

Our National Science Foundation considers using one of these chattering bots to avail citizens of data they should already have. Why is it that public agencies don't make public data available to the public as a daily task?

Finally, Mac users have a keyboard and mouse built for gaming.

More research and poking these LLMs show yet more surprising results if you keep poking. Yet another failure of systems engineering these systems. They should do what they are supposed to do and no more. Lacking systems engineering, the systems do this, that, and who knows what else.

China boosts its domestic production of semiconductors. This is what happens in an embargo. The embargoed country improves itself. Satisfied now?

Here is another prime target for DOGE. Our TSA has not addressed cybersecurity concerns posed several years ago. Just can't seem to get around to it.

Our U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission's (USCC) (whatever that is) stresses the need for a super-big government project to build artificial general intelligence (SGI). Let the money flow.

Microsoft shows the Azure Boost DPU. This is Microsoft's first data processing unit it has built itself for datacenters.

Microsoft builds what is a chrome box device for Microsoft's Windows 365 service. They call it the Windows 365 Link, and it costs $349.

I'll quote, "Meta is creating a new product unit to develop AI tools for the 200 million businesses that use its apps."

Publicly available data allows just about anyone to learn the locations of sensitive government facilities. And government officials know this and just ignore it. Another prime target for DOGE.

Bose buys high-end audio brand McIntosh.

Microsoft Teams adds real-time, voice-to-voice translation for nine languages.

SpaceX has another Starship launch. They didn't catch the booster with a tower, but everything else is working.

And now we have the Exurbs. These are suburbs that are 60 miles or more away from the big city. The COVID panic and remote work has enabled these. For better or worse.

Linux kernel 6.12 is released.

Thursday 21 November 2024

A little study shows, "Doctors who were given ChatGPT-4 along with conventional resources did only slightly better than doctors who did not have access to the bot."

Meanwhile in China, the birthrate continues to fall. They will lose 51million in population in the next decade. They can't reverse the results of now-discarded Communist one-child-per-family rule.

For this week at least, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has the super-est super-duper computer in the world.

Coming soon near you, a Minecraft theme park.

Microsoft releases Flight Simulator 2024. It has a digital twin of the entire earth and other such wonderfulness.

Google Scholar is 20 years old. These new-fangled AI search engines may overrun it.

Google responds to the nonsense that the lawyers at our Dept of Justice wants to do with Google. The outgoing administration wants to push these things through before January 20, 2025. Court delays will stop all this.

Twitch continues to dominate streaming hours for content.

Meanwhile at Nvidia, they are printing money there as the $$$ flow in. An older and established company, their quarterly revenue almost doubled. Amazing.

Our next President vows to kill the PRESS Act. That protect journalists' records from investigations. I'm a journalist, right? I journal and publish daily. Right?

The Allen AI Institute releases OpenScholar. It is for scientific research. I tried it. Pretty darn good.

OpenAI: marketing in the form of "free education."

A necessary small growth of government is contemplated by Mr. Trump as the government needs to pay attention to crypto currency and the blockchain.

More CHIPS Act money being spent by our outgoing President. This money goes to the states of New York and Vermont. Two states, coincidentally, carried by the outgoing President's party in the recent election.

I'll just quote, "Comcast is splitting from its NBCUniversal television arm."

At 50 years old, Microsoft keeps rolling. Agile and smart management has kept the company from growing old and stale.

I love this headline: The AI Reporter That Took My Old Job Just Got Fired

Friday 22 November 2024

Saturday 23 November 2024

Sunday 24 November 2024