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: 10-16 August, 2020

Summary of this week:

• Amazon buying mall space for distribution centers
• Rumors of big Nvidia announcements on 31 August
• FCC allocates more space to 5G

Monday 10 August 2020

It appears that Amazon is buying empty store space at malls to use for distribution centers. These are pretty good locations in the middle of purchasing populations.

Toshiba exits the laptop computer business.

Huawei is running out of processor parts due to a US sanction. These trade wars have real results (for better or worse).

All this work from home could turn into work from anywhere. Countries far north and south are inviting US tech worker dollars.

Researchers discover how to turn carbon dioxide to ethanol and water. Proceed with caution.

Linux 5.8 is released.

The Free Software Foundation makes a cartoon video about the potential problems with proprietary education software being used by most schools in the US during the year of the virus.

Tuesday 11 August 2020

Our FCC is devoting more frequency bandwidth to 5G. They are moving what was allocated to military use to commercial use.

Frances Allen died on her 88th birthday. She was an IBM Fellow and recipient of the Turing Award. She did early work in optimizing compilers and parallel computing.

Strong rumors of an Nvidia event at the end of this month with new GPUs that blow the socks of last year's GPUs.

In the year of the virus, money continues to flow to the gaming industry.

Facebook employees are concerned that some Facebook users might influences this year's elections. Am I the only one who thinks this concern is round-about hypocritical in some way.

Bumble bees should not be able to fly and PDFs should not work. Oh well, Believe the terrain instead of the map.

If 71% of Mars' surface was covered with water (like our planet), it would look like this.

Wednesday 12 August 2020

Facebook removes 22million posts of hate speech in three months. Since software, not persons reading, did the selecting, there were probably several million "false positives" or removals of items by mistake.

Microsoft commits to releases Xbox Series X in November.

Xiaomi introduces a transparent television. I suppose someone will find a use for this.

Microsoft's fold-able Android phone—the Surface Duo—is coming September 10th at a mere $1,399.

Scribd acquires SlideShare and all its content.

The Russians claim to have a vaccine for this year's virus.

Thursday 13 August 2020

Lyft releases its financial report for the quarter. The year of the virus continues with no one going anywhere, yet.

Foxconn—who manufactures all the gadgets in our lives—says that China's day as the world's gadget factory is over. Too many serious diseases have started in China. It is not reliable.

Google's Lens now solves math problems.

Google starts ChromeOS.dev: a tool to help Android developers.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, et al. are working together for a "messy" election in November. Anti-trust? Election meddling? Hmmmm.

Uber and Lyft threaten to do what they governors in California want them to do—leave the state.

Seth Godin on the obvious but rarely acknowledge concept about rejection: it's not you, it's your idea.

Friday 14 August 2020

No Internet viewing today.

Saturday 15 August 2020

Intel shows future processor designs at its Architecture Day 2020.

Epic Games—maker of Fortnite—and Apple go to battle over...wait, let's see,... oh yes, MONEY.

The magic of enhancing old (1900-era) film using machine learning techniques. Must see.

This must see video is from1902 Germany of a suspended or "flying" train.

Google scrambles to adjust its offerings in the video meeting realm of the year of the virus. Duo and Messages go to Meet. Enough meaningless product names.

Researchers using machine learning techniques to create tennis matches that never occurred like Roger Federer playing against himself. There are easy-to-spot mistakes, but pretty good stuff.

Some persons are beta testing the SpaceX Starlink system. Speeds to date aren't great, but better than many rural users of DSL experience.

Sunday 16 August 2020

In the UK, fear and loathing in how students are assessed for their readiness to progress in life. It is possible to keep bright people from doing something worthwhile.

It appears that the Nike Vaporfly shoe does enable us to run faster. Runners under contract to other companies are wearing these and covering up the Nike logo.

Firefox had its day. It is now on the way out in the browser wars.

There is much more to writing than typing the words.

No one has made a law stating that you must the first part of something first. Nothing must be written in order. Write what is there and write that now.

The idea of writing about the thing that scares you the most. Many writers have used this idea and written great novels etc.

I just saw a post that pointed writers to this excellent resource: The Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL).