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: 28 September–4 October, 2020

Summary of this week:

• Roku updates its streaming player
• Dell updates XPS 13 line with Intel 11th gen processors
• Lenovo releases a foldable tablet/laptop
• Google has a big event with new phones and Chromecast
• Microsoft updates it Surface line of hardware
• HP updates its line of laptops

Monday 28 September 2020

NASA has yet another delay. This one is its mission to Saturn's moon Titan.

Speculating about the future of Microsoft. As its Azure cloud computing business grows, so does its ties to Linux while Windows is fading.

Some regulators in San Francisco want to require people to work from home three days a week. Those regulators don't work in restaurants and retail, but they claim to know what is best for everyone.

Lenovo takes a big step into the market of selling laptops and other computers with Linux installed and certified.

In other Linux news...EdX has now enrolled one million persons in its "Introduction to Linux" course.

Tuesday 29 September 2020

Dell updates its XPS 13 line of laptop computers with Intel 11th generation processors. In this day, nobody gets fired for buying a Dell.

Samsung releases a new rugged tablet that you can use while wearing gloves.

Love this headline: "Scientists find evidence of multiple underground lakes on Mars" Scientists aren't on Mars, so how could they... Never mind, just let me know when we are making coffee with Mars' water.

The Gateway laptops and tablets are now here (from Acer) and on the Walmart website for sale.

This could be the understatement of the century, "This pandemic has shone a glaring light on a lot of inequalities."

We have supposedly passed a milestone with 1million coronavirus deaths worldwide. Yet there is no outrage against China and Wuhan in particular. This all seems odd to me.

Wednesday 30 September 2020

The injuries at Amazon warehouses are rising.

In the year of the virus, college enrollment has fallen. This is especially true for the poor. All this stay-at-home to protect the rich has driven the poor deeper into poverty.

Uber spent $2.5Billion in vain to build a self-driving car. All the while, they were losing money on everything else.

Lenovo releases a foldable tablet/laptop computer.

Thursday 1 October 2020

GitHub launched a code-scanning tool.

Google had a small but big event and announced new products.

Google releases the Pixel 4a smartphone with 5G capability at $499.

Google replaces Google Home with the Nest Audio speaker at $99.

Google updates the Chromecast at $49.

Palantir has its initial public offering with its value up 31% on the first day of trading.

Employers are realizing that people are "zoom-ed out." Really, when can we stop this nonsense and admit that this was really a bad idea and an over reaction?

"Greenland's ice is starting to melt faster than at any time in the past 12,000 years," Which means that 12,000 years ago we had the same melting as we do today...hmmm...everything turned out okay.

Tech companies have spent tens of million$$$ telling kids to take computer science courses (more CS persons means lower salaries for companies). Kids aren't listening. Adults are confused.

Friday 2 October 2020

Microsoft introduces the Surface Laptop Go. It is smaller, lighter, less powerful and less expensive although still priced at $549.

Microsoft updates the Surface Pro X.

A poll of North American software developers shows that everyone is managing 100x more software than ten years ago.

HP updates is line of portable computers.

How to disinfect a stadium in less time—load up a bunch of drones and turn 'em loose to spray down the whole thing.

19,816 Amazon employees tested positive for the Wuhan virus. This is supposed to be a story about how awful Amazon is towards its employees. Note, however the numbers. 1% of persons working in close contact of other persons caught the virus. ONE PERCENT. Death rate of those 1%? Not announced, probably less than 1%. Hence, people working in close contact during the year of the virus: 1% coughed and 0.01% died. And we collapsed the economy because of this. Please, someone explain to me how this works as I fail to understand.

Meanwhile, back at the source of the virus, 550million people are traveling around China to celebrate the Communist takeover of the world's most populated nation.

Saturday 3 October 2020

Using machine learning tools to help fight wildfires out west.

Success leading to failure...perhaps...Nvidia is trying to releases its new 3070 GPU without having backorders and other such problems due to demand being much higher than supply.

Ubuntu Linux 20.10 is now available (should be as we are now in the 10th month of 2020).

Sunday 4 October 2020

Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS) for spacecraft. A summary. There are two players: VxWorks and RTEMS.

Cineworld and Regal Cinemas close. About 5,500 jobs lost permanently. Yes folks, staying home all these months cost other persons their livelihoods, forever.

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) will support Linux applications that require graphical interfaces. Coming real soon now.

A list of some of the more famous publications on medium dot com.

One writer's way of finding good-paying jobs: look for old help-wanted listings. The ones that are six months old are a little stale, but those companies probably still need writers.

The fundamental question: Do you love writing so much that you cannot NOT write?

I am not sure what the topic of this post is, but I read it start to finish and enjoyed the experience.

Find the heart of a character or place or...fill in the blank...the most important thing about that person is ...