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: 1-7 March, 2021

Summary of this week:

• Microsoft advances its Cloud PC
• Apple re-re-opens its US retail stores
• Our reaction to the virus proves deadly for dementia sufferers
• Microsoft holds its Ignite conference and advances Teams
• Dr. Seuss books pulled from the shelves

Monday 1 March 2021

It's a Monday. Not much happening today.

Something completely different: send in an old photo. The software enhances it and then makes a video.

The story of how Reddit is influential and probably the most undervalued company on the Internet.

Operations Engineers, the creation of DevOps, and #hugops.

Our President provides moral support to Amazon workers in Alabama who want a union. Odd that he would do this as Amazon Corp in Silicon Valley is one of his biggest supporters.

Boston Dynamic is selling is Digidog to law enforcement for $74K each.

Tuesday 2 March 2021

Strong rumors that Microsoft is nearing release of "Cloud PC." This will be a new Desktop-as-a-Service or Something-or-other-as-a-service. Have a Windows 10 PC in the cloud.

Deaths from dementia and Alzheimers rose in the year of the virus. Predictable and predicted. This is something that we chose to do by staying home. We chose to do this to our neighbors. We cannot deny that.

Working from home tries to transition from something we did for a while to maybe permanent. There are major real estate and tax implications.

The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence has released a report two years in the making. Major reform$ recommended.

Apple re-re-opens all its US retail stores. Personal experience: they aren't the same. Customer service has dropped without a corresponding drop in prices.

Trying to gain more of the remote workplace market, Google adds features to its Workspace service.

Yet another financial report from Zoom gives more evidence how good the year of the virus was to some of us.

Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos' rocket company) suffers yet another setback.

Meanwhile, Rocket Lab has progressed in a less-ambitious fashion towards larger satellite launches.

Evidence that China has hacked India's utility system and turns off the power when it wants to make a point. Somehow, this blatant act of war goes unnoticed by the rest of the world.

Wednesday 3 March 2021

DeepMind puts an AI system into production at Moorefield's Eye Hospital. This is some type of first for an AI system in the field of medicine.

Take the processor from the 1998 iMac G3, 23 years later it lands on Mars.

Microsoft is having its Ignite event this week, so we have some news from there.

Microsoft shows its Mesh concept. Mix Teams with augmented and virtual reality and play a while.

Microsoft shows a speaker (hardware not person) that works with Teams to transcribe everything and even translated languages. Coming real soon now.

Here now, Microsoft launches Azure Percept. It is Microsoft's way of making edge computing and AI much simpler to do with Azure.

Ouch! Intel loses a patent lawsuit and must pay $2.18Billion (with a B).

Here in the Commonwealth of Virginia we have a new Consumer Data Protection Act. This is supposed to be good for us residents in some way or another.

Thursday 4 March 2021

I learn that Dr. Seuss books are racist. They are being pulled from "the shelves." That makes them them hottest selling books on Amazon. Could this be a really clever plot to boost sales?

Our FBI tells us that there were no firearms involved at the event at the US Capitol on 6 January.

Another SpaceX Starship test. This time it lands. Then it explodes a few moments later.

The year of the virus was good for Snowflake (a cloud data storage company that provides the back stuff for all this stay-at-home stuff).

Strong rumors about the next generation of the Nintendo Switch.

Our US Navy is caught making too many copies of software. Pay $500million.

A little behind, but still in the game. AMD shows a new graphics card to compete with Nvidia's new graphics card.

Friday 5 March 2021

News Flash (not): weird stuff gets more attention than normal stuff.

Microsoft announces new features for the Edge browser.

Qualcomm announces an effort to improve sound quality on wireless devices.

In China, someone is buying older integrated circuit making machinery. They cannot buy news technology, so they are going with the old stuff to get by.

Too much spare time? A programmer has a Minecraft server running on his camera. The realm of the possible.

Honda has the world's first Level 3 self-driving car. It only costs $100,000 and there are only 100 of 'em.

Saturday 6 March 2021

When a big company raises its minimum wage, little outfits in the same area have to do so as well. I hope they didn't spend a lot of money to reach this obvious conclusion.

Coursera (online learning) had a good time in the year of the virus. They still lost over a million $$$ a week.

Our Pentagon's cloud computing contract with Microsoft is still in court. It is time to pay the lawyers, restructure, and actually do some work.

Students are taking tests from home. Schools are paying big $$$ for proctoring software. Students beat the proctoring easily. Students are learning, maybe not what teachers intended, but they are learning.

A CDC study concludes that the CDC is right. Hmmmm, am I the only one who thinks...never mind.

Sunday 7 March 2021

Some recent history of the ups and downs of design at Amazon. It isn't Apple, but it never really tried to be like Apple.

International trends in the oft-misunderstood field of artificial intelligence.

Techniques for working your way through those tired old cliches and writing what you mean.

Keep writing. Don't believe these common misstatements.

Here are some ideas for moving out of a rut with your writing or just about anything else. Do something different. Anything will do.

One writer's perspective on writing for free in order to obtain a job. Take care with this.

One person's experience in trying to work from home with just an Android tablet. It did work for this person.

Isolation in the year of the virus. Writers can overcome this.

Some thoughts on writing short fiction.