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: 27 May-2 June, 2019

Summary of this week:

• Computex is this week
• Memorial Day in the US
• Intel has shows better CPUs
• Nvidia shrinks better GPUs for laptop use
• Uber loses $11Million a day

Monday 27 May 2019

Today is Memorial Day in the US.

It's official: gaming disorder is a disorder...so says real doctors. The World Health Organization is real doctors...right?

Copyright holders and copyright laws seem to be ruining all the fun on YouTube.

"Rare earth" materials mined in China could be mined in many other places. A Chinese ban in a trade war would trigger a new "gold rush" in several other countries. Short-term pain for Apple; long-term gain for miners.

High-performance computing? It's all about playing games. Intel announces its new processor runs at 5GHz for all eight cores. Unprecedented.

Nvidia shrinks more GPUs for use in laptop computers. Mobile supercomputers or is it just to play games on the go?

Here are a couple dozen persons who didn't finish college, but founded companies and hit it big. Of course there are a few million dozen persons who didn't finish college and ... well ... tat didn't finish so well.

A "gaming" chair for real office work. Seems to be an excellent choice.

Tuesday 28 May 2019

Intel announces it next-generation processors. The trend continues. Soon we will have portable computers as thin as a piece of paper. Well, maybe not "soon."

Alienware follows the thinner trend with redesigns of its gaming laptops. These were redesigned less than a year ago.

Nvidia announces its first chips and systems to process "AI at the edge." Nvidia is a little behind in this area, but will be even with the leaders soon.

Asus may have reinvented the portable computer with a second screen just above the keyboard. Must see. Will we want this?

The Chinese are ahead of everyone in putting autonomous delivery vans on the streets. The Chinese have far less stringent safety requirements.

The "dark forest" theory of the Internet. Clever name that sends chills.

The Chinese government increases its surveillance of its subjects as the Tiananmen Square anniversary nears.

HP shows a new VR backpack. Games Games Games

Strong rumors about Apple's WWDC. iOS apps that run on the Mac computer. One development environment for everything. Windows 8 was supposed to do that—it didn't. We do have Android apps on Chrome, but we shall see.

Wednesday 29 May 2019

Someone tries to teach political campaigns about cyber security. The state of that world is infantile.

Analysis shows...the cryptocurrency exchange market is mostly fake with 86% of transactions phoney. The bubble is bursting.

Looks like the Asus concept of two screens on a laptop computer is unique for one day. Intel shows a concept gaming laptop with the same two screens. The wow factor is off the charts.

And HP has a dual-screen laptop. How did I miss that one?

Google's Chrome browser grew from a nice little experiment to a monopolist something or other that is bad.

I didn't know the iPod still existed as everyone has a smartphone. Anyways, Apple ups the power of the iPod yet again and keeps the price at about $200.

MacKenzie Bezos pledges to give away half of her money in her lifetime. These are nice pledges, and most persons signing them do give away a lot of money. The complexities of accounting etc. mean that "half" is a fuzzy number.

The life of a contract worker in a major corporation. They are definitely second-class persons on the job.

New Zealand attempts a visa program that invites interesting people with interesting ideas. Simple: come here is you can show that we will be better with you than without you.

China is drowning itself in plastic.

Thursday 30 May 2019

And HP announces a laptop with a 24-hour battery life.

Intel promotes the laptop of the future that will use, of course, Intel products.

Predictable and predicted: in schools where teachers are carrying guns there are no accidents. In schools where such is not permitted, shootings by bad guys are rising (doubling). For the most part, teachers care and are careful adults. And perhaps...communities that trust people have trustworthy people and those folks don't murder one another. Communities without problems allow adults to be adults. Funny how all that works.

In favor of putting all the iPhone apps on the Mac computer.

iRobot releases a new line of Roomba house cleaners. For about $2,000 they "work together" and clean better. Perhaps, one day.

At Google, it is low-paid human intelligence instead of the artificial variety that is making magic work.

Google maps is adding speed limits and speed cameras. This is only on the mobile editions.

esports continues to grow with new buildings constructed just to house these events.

The "splinternet:" a new name for an old practice: censorship and controlling your subjects. Folks, let's appreciate the Bill of Rights (all of it) and full citizenship.

Uber is getting rid of its "bad customers." Sometimes you "have to right to refuse service."

ooops, it appears that turning off nuclear power is a bad thing for the environment.

Friday 31 May 2019

Dell has a mixed financial quarter, but a lot better than Uber's.

US colleges, who two generations ago screamed about investments in South Africa, are happily investing $$$ in the Chinese surveillance state.

In Britain, folks watch the BBC. There are no competitors for Netflix and Amazon video services, so the California companies are making Billion$$$ there.

There is a small but real 5G network now in the UK, and the data speeds are as advertised.

Schools in New York are the first in the US to turn on facial recognition. Anything in the name of public safety.

Tech toy kits for the summer. I like the one that basically is a set of big screws so you can make things out of cardboard.

SoFi will pay $400Million for the naming rights to LA's new football stadium. Advertising dollars make the world go round.

Dell greatly expands it line of laptop computers that come with factory-installed Linux.

Research shows that eating highly processed foods is related to shorter lives. Go to the store, buy uncanned, unfrozen food, take it home and apply heat. Spices make it taste better.

Coming from PBS: Computer Science Roadtrip.

Saturday 1 June 2019

Google has made the mistake of succeeding...too much. Our DoJ is investigating anti-trust violations.

Wikipedia gets into a fuss with The North Face. It appears that the clothing maker put photos of its products all through the encyclopedia. This was all legal, but Wikipedia says it violates some terms of use.

Unemployed? Don't mind mindless work to teach computers how to think? Now we have the "AI gig economy."

NASA picks the first three companies to carry cargo to the moon. Let's see if any of this works or happens on schedule.

A really big ooops...2.3Billion—the number of files and personal information on persons to be exposed online. That covers about half the population of the planet.

Thoughts on Apple computers and the Mac Pro machine. Go back to a basic box that allows users to cram more processors and memory into it on their own. Yes, some people want to have half a GigaByte of RAM. If they have the money, let them.

In an effort to reduce in the influx of tourist dollar$ (what else could it be?), Our State Dept now requires visitors to list all their social media accounts. What could possible go wrong?

It appears that iTunes will disappear from MacOS next week.

Some scientists tell us that Godzilla is impossible. The same sort of scientists still tell us that bumble bees cannot fly.

Sunday 2 June 2019

Apple has a billion users of its products. That is a large number and brings with it a large amount of cash every year.

Google puts augmented reality into its search.

We now have 5Billion persons on the planet with mobile phones—4billion of those are smartphones. Now what do we do? And where is the video of bigfoot?

Apple's big event is this week. Here are final predictions of what we may see.

Collaboration on writing. It can be tricky, but there are some basic guidelines that help.

This is gold for a freelance writer. Actual agencies that actually connect good writers with well-paid assignments.

A look at how to really use LibreOffice and be an effective writer.

Stories are in the newspapers (or whatever it is you read) daily. Use the great ideas and write write write.