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: 21-27 March, 2022

Summary of this week:

• The war in Ukraine continues
• Nvidia holds its GPU Technology Conference and announces more improvements in everything
• Volkswagon tries to build lounges at electric vehicle charging stations
• Exxon Mobil experiments with gas flares and crypto mining

Monday 21 March 2022

The world can't seem to get enough graphics processors fro Nvidia. The price of one goes down only because the next one is here and we pay high prices for it.

Google Translate helps doctors speak to patients. Great stuff, but sometimes the results aren't quite right.

A review of the western-supplied, hand held anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons used in Ukraine. There are ways to keep these weapons from destroying tanks and aircraft, but for some unknown reason the Russians are not doing what everyone knows you should do. The Russian military seems unable to get out of its way. An offensive requires doing something. A defensive war (the Ukrainian side) merely requires disrupting something. That is much easier.

Our President will travel to Poland this week to be on the edge of a war. I trust that the advisors know what they are doing.

Ubuntu Linux updates its logo. I trust they didn't spend much money on this.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought use of cloud computing and open-source software on all sides. This precedent may be very regrettable.

Some thoughts on building a "brand" as a writer.

And what are you gonna' call that website?

One writer's list of writing tools. Of course at the top of the list is Scrivener. Perhaps I should try that.

Advice from famous writers. I repeat two: (1) Close the door and (2) always carry a notepad.

Several dozen steps to create a freelance writing business.

And excellent ideas for freelance workers of all types on how to sustain a business.

Tuesday 22 March 2022

Strong rumors that a new MacBook Air is coming in September 2022. This is a delay by Apple or perhaps simply a bad prediction by predictors.

Nothing for something. Apple's new display has 64GB of memory and uses only 2GB of it. Consumers pay for the rest and get nothing in return.

Our Dept of Justice doesn't like it when company employees seek guidance from legal counsel. Someone has read the law and knows how to use it, well.

According to some measures, Toronto is now the third largest tech hub in North America.

Russians are downloading all of Wikipedia. They anticipate its ban or something.

Some people want to preserve old, old video games. They are struggling to find a legal way to do it.

A commentary on the sad state of American colleges. Self-inflicted wounds and damages done by government officials who all meant well, but didn't think it through.

Wednesday 23 March 2022

We now have an "automation engineer." Pardon, but this is called Industrial Engineering. It is also called "doing what works."

Apple has a second major outage in two days.

Zoom has a new feature where you are an avatar instead of you at a meeting. My grandchildren would have a lot of fun with this. Business? Oh, why not?

Nvidia is holding its GPU Technology Conference (GRC) this week, so expect announcements and reviews.

Nvidia announces that its Ampere GPU architecture is out and replaced by the Hopper GPU architecture.

Nvidia shows a new CPU super chip. The numbers keep growing as someone will quickly find computations that can use this power.

Thursday 24 March 2022

And we have the new Nvidia Jetson AGX Orin developer kit. Use it to build edge computing concepts as well as robotics.

And we also have the new Nvidia AI platform. They have upgraded all the software related to AI systems.

Where the money is: Internet crime is lucrative in the US and climbing faster than anything. It has its own pandemic prosperity.

Coming this summer: the Phone 1 from a company called Nothing. They promise to strip away all the fluff plaguing smart phones. Will they deliver what they promise? Will anyone buy it?

Investigators conclude that the mastermind of the Lapsu$ hacking group is a 16 year old boy from the UK. Hack-tivists are the real threat to nations and multinational corporations.

Strong rumors about what type of computers Apple will sell in 2023.

Our NASA finds some money lying about and decides to hire a second company to build a second lunar lander.

Friday 25 March 2022

War prosperity in India and China as cheap Russian oil flows their way.

We learn that it is one thing to declare tough stuff against rich Russians while another thing to do any thing.

Mozilla announces several paid levels to their Mozilla Development Network (MDN).

Dell upgrades its XPS 15 and 17 laptops with the newer 12th-generation Intel processors.

In a political and budget tussle, our US Postal Service will not buy 10,000 (not 5,000) electric mail delivery vehicles.

Volkswagon's Electrify America tries to build stations that are areas to lounge about while your car batteries charge. There are many possibilities for these places. Most involve spending more money on things you don't need.

Speculation about Android tablets surpassing laptop computers in sales and use.

A Windows code fan finds a previously lost Easter Egg hidden in Windows 1.0 for 37 years.

Meanwhile in Europe where a war among nations doesn't seem to occupy politicians sufficiently, the EU passes major new regulations to limit successful US computing companies.

Saturday 26 March 2022

When American companies seek markets in other countries bribes are expected and usually delivered. It is a "tip" in the eyes of many cultures.

Exxon Mobil is experimenting with using gas flares to power crypto mining. This has been done before on small scales.

Remember Google Fiber? Well, 12 workers at what is left of it have joined a union. This is a first for Google and Alphabet.

Coming from Google (maybe) is a Nest Hub with a detachable tablet. I guess this would solve some problem.

Nvidia has developed something they call Neural Radiance Field or NeRF in which you feed the system photographs and it creates a 3D model. The problem I find here is that you feed it a dozen or more photos. If I had that many photos, I would already have a 3D model in my mind.

"...why don't organizations hire for attitude and train for expertise?"---Seth Godin

oooops, our CDC admits to a software error that was attributing deaths to COVID.

And a bigger oooops, 3D mammograms are returning false positives 50% of the time.

Sunday 27 March 2022

Here is a better description of Nvidia's Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) technology and its application to game building and simulations.

Our President shows why no one should allow him in front of a live microphone. Gosh, this is bad for many people.

I think Elon Musk makes some sense with his "gerontocracy" comments.

I like this article. It is about the joy of activity. Let's have more joy in running, walking, sitting, reading, writing, and just about everything. Joy as the only goal.

If you have a lot of time on your hands ... remove the display from your laptop computer and wirelessly connect to some handy display. There is some merit here, but not much.

A group of volunteers is hard at work making a version of Linux run on Apple's latest processors. I hope this is a good use of time from talented persons.

Another link for the Linux and Apple silicon story.

It appears that while some tech brains left California for lower cost of living and remote work, it was not a large trend. All words are subjective in this story.

Are we witnessing the death of the movie?

Some computing history and the creation of the GIF.