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: 25–31 January, 2021

Summary of this week:

• SpaceX puts 143 satellites into orbit
• Microsoft and AMD have good financial quarters
• Intel re-enters the GPU market
• Apple breaks all the financial records

Monday 25 January 2021

Caution from Apple about the magnets in the iPhone 12 and medical implants like pacemakers.

SpaceX puts 143 satellites into orbit in one shot. Many were the tiny cubesats, but this breaks a bunch of records for things. One is the amount of space junk spewed at one time.

There is a real brain drain from California to other parts of the country where the cost of living is lower and it is still possible to build a place to live.

The proposal for local currencies. You can't spend the money on Amazon; you have to spend it locally to build a local economy. I am confident, however, that folks will find a way.

Google pledges million$ for vaccine education. I guess they will teach folks some things, but not other things. Such is "education."

Tuesday 26 January 2021

The big browser makers set up a new site to augment the documentation of Web APIs.

Instagram adds a dashboard for holders of professional accounts.

Suprise! Houston homeowners are surprised to see Verizon 5G boxes in the front lawn—actually in the "right of way" owned by the county, but it sure looks like its your front lawn.

AMC movie theaters avoids bankruptcy again. Our reaction in the year of the virus has killed several markets and all their jobs.

The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software (TUCOWS) closes its download site after 28 years.

The stock price of GameStop continues to bounce up and down as investors are playing some sort of game with one another.

Strong rumors that the next Apple Watch will be able to do blood sugar measurements.

Wednesday 27 January 2021

AMD has a good financial quarter as well.

Intel inches its way back into the GPU market. The offerings aren't for gaming, yet, but are for general graphics.

Firefox 85 is released.

Sony announces a $2,500 smartphone. It is really a movie-making communications relay instead of a phone. It has 5G speed and an HDMI input.

Something to feed movies into that Sony phone is the new Sony A1 camera with a 50MegaPixel sensor and lots of other impressive numbers for $6,500.

Twitter opens its archive to researchers at no cost.

Thursday 28 January 2021

Apple's PROFIT, i.e., P R O F I T is $2.2Billion a week or $313Million a day.

Market saturation? What is that? Apple shipped 90million iPhones in three months. That's a million a day. That's a large number.

Walmart is converting some of its stores to "fulfillment centers" with an emphasis on packing groceries for online orders. More automation is coming to reduce cost (and jobs).

Apple continues to move manufacturing outside China. Lesson learned from the Wuhan virus.

Tesla updates its Model S and claims a 520-mile range.

The 14-day, luxury-hotel virus quarantine in Singapore. Of course it works in a city state. Of course it wouldn't work in America. America doesn't have enough servants.

When you have open marketplaces, people show up and participate. The same is true for elections.

Golden Rule of "Making It:" Those who have already "made it" are quick to propose regulations that make it more difficult for others to do the same. Mr. Gates wants to change the rules of society. Whether by plan or accident, well, see above rule.

Perhaps here in Virginia we will see the cicadas for the first time since 2004. Will COVID restrictions cancel this?

Friday 29 January 2021

The year of the virus has been very good to Epic Games. Registered users are up 50% while daily active users are us 192%.

Caution here folks: Xiaomi claims a charger that will charge you phone from several meters away and even through objects.

More fear and loathing in stock trading markets.

Automakers are short of electronic parts. Cars are not yet in short supply—like toilet paper—but companies have to question their reluctance to stockpile parts.

Tests show the power efficiency of Apple Silicon.

Saturday 30 January 2021

The year of the virus was a bad one for smartphone sales in China as they fell 11%.

Smartphone sales also slumped in India in 2020 with a 4% drop.

A closer look at the ASUS ZenBook Duo—a laptop with a second screen that seems to actually work.

Our reaction to COVID is increasingly hurting those who don't hear well.

Nvidia expands the range of computer that can run its GeForce Now game streaming.

This could be interesting—our President wants a review of integrity in science in government.

The year of the virus was extremely good for the Chromebook with demand growing 300%. That is a large number%.

Sunday 31 January 2021

In the year of the virus we have tended to forgot all science and history. A coming vaccine is good 2/3s of the time and much much easier to use. Annual flu vaccines are good 1/2 the time and have always been good enough. The current 2-dose vaccines that require extreme refrigeration are 90+% effective, which historically has been rejected as not necessary.

Yet another big government software project flops. This time $44million spent by the CDC for the Vaccine Administration Management System.

Mozilla releases their annual Health of the Internet report.

San Jose, Ca. used to be a nice place to live. Now, housing costs are simply too high and folks are leaving for Texas.

I must confess confusion about how everything will be okay once the vaccinations spread. We have flu vaccines every year, yet people have the flu with all its consequences every year. Per first entry above, folks seem to have forgotten all history this year.

One writer's tips on finishing a large project on a self-made deadline.

Arousing curiosity in novels and everything else we write.

Read John le Carré and George Orwell to improve our writing. A pretty darn good idea.

Many conferences for writers are going online only in 2021. Most of these cost $$$.