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: 31 October - 6 November, 2022

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Some news reports say that productivity has dropped horrible in work from home
• Peer-reviewed papers use fake data and Photoshopped images
• Half of emTwitter is out of work
• The price of crypto mining computers falls greatly
• Twitter founder admits that layoffs are his fault as he hired too many people

Monday 31 October 2022

This is Halloween in the US.

I missed this one over the weekend: Jerry Lee Lewis died at 87.

Strong rumors about the next update to Apple's laptop computers early in 2023.

The BBC reports on US military cyber units and their work around the world. These are undeclared or semi-declared or something-or-other wars.

New order of business at emTwitter is to verify users on Twitter Blue and raise the price to $20 per month.

This must be important as it is all over the Internet: NASA captures a photo of the sun smiling.

Ooooops, it seems those electric-powered bicycles have a problem with exploding and burning batteries.

More ooooooops, it seems that thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers use fake data and Photoshop'ped images.

Criticism, unsubscribing, and other angst that comes with writing.

This piece is a big encouragement for writers to learning about copyright and those legal things.

And more information on legal stuff and forming a business.

Information on writing a book with another person. Rule One: everyone gets an equal share of what little money there will be regardless of "how much work" anyone did.

Part-time extra jobs for writers that don't involve any writing, but will give you good ideas on things to write (hence, these things are part of writing. ooops, as a writer, anything and everything is a part of writing).

Gonzo journalism and how to practice it.

Some tips on writing copy for the web.

Tuesday 1 November 2022

Users of machine learning are leaning on proven techniques: (1) get something work, (2) get it to work better. Google researchers figure out how to improve performance by re-running their model on results of their model.

Cloud computing suffers when the economy suffers. It seems that it is not the miracle technology that some said it was.

Big layoffs coming at emTwitter. This begs the question, "Did Twitter have far too many employees who weren't doing much?"

Let's play soccer (sort of) with robots.

When you understand what Apple did, you wonder why it took so long. They have improved their natural language processing by using the dictionary definition of words. Well duh! This goes back to combining symbolic techniques with all this supervised learning.

Software tools are greatly improving at writing text and helping people write articles etc.

We encounter yet another way to lie to customers. Companies are putting fake images and fake biographies of staff on their websites to make their companies look bigger and better.

Adobe updates their Photoshop series of software.

John Deere (yes, those guys who make the green tractors) is emerging as a world leader in robotics and autonomous vehicles.

This is a clever stunt: take photos from the 1800s and bring them to life, add color, and a little motion.

I like this piece on telling the boss what is really happening at work. Good bosses want to know; bad bosses don't want to know. This is an easy test to tell if you are working for the right person.

This is still early in research, but we have brain implants that turn thoughts into text. Just maybe...we can hope something comes of this.

The Washington Post reports that all this work-from-home working is far less productive. I recently posted on the definition of work and such.

A long review of Amazon's third-generation Fire TV Cube.

How our Dept of Homeland Security has become one of our government's chief censorship organizations. And of course I wonder why some citizens believe they are special and can police the thoughts of other citizens.

And we have yet another alternative free speech social media site that is popular. It is called Rumble.

Gartner predicts that spending on cloud computing will rise 20% in 2023.

Eric Schmidt urges the Pentagon to buy software from companies that he partially owns. It looks wrong, but it is probably the right thing to do.

Wednesday 2 November 2022

Yet another effort to build yet another browser that makes everything ok.

Looking back on computer programming in the early 1990s. Some people are remembering with honesty while others just thing everything was better then.

Is the demise of Meta incorrect? This piece argues that Meta is fine and that the stock price is falling based on myth.

One person's efforts to build a computer voting machine that you cannot hack.

Hurray! Google Lens is finally on the google.com home page. We can take a photo of a whats-ya-ma-call-it and google will tell us what it is.

Not having enough work to do, our Dept of Treasury will investigate the Musk-buys-Twitter deal.

How to use software (AI in this case) to violate copyright. This is a clear violation of the law. It is easy to do, but most crimes are easy to commit.

This is cool. Not sure if it has a practical use, but cool. Audio-Technica brings back its Sound Burger portable LP player.

I like this site. It creates a name and a logo for a business idea that you have described.

Amazon Prime increases its music offerings.

Where the money is: purveyors of ransomware are hitting US banks to the tune of a billion $$$ last year.

Meta claims that its audio compression software makes music files 1/10th the size of the standard mp3 files.

Thursday 3 November 2022

One person creates a roadmap that leads to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

A call for the move from structured and object-oriented programming to functional programming.

Meta shows its new finger-tracking software that greatly improves communication between those who use Americal Sign Language (ASL) and those who don't.

This look at a piece of software called Rewind. It captures everything you do on your computer during the day and allows you to rewind to any moment to help you remember something. One key of this product is that everything is done on your personal computer. Nothing is kept in the cloud. This helps, doesn't guarantee but helps, with privacy.

This is the website for Rewind. It has promise.

I'll just quote, "This is a step by step guide on how to become a DevOps engineer, with links to relevant learning resources."

Vietnam has become the destination for industry and other business leaving China. The several-hundred-years war continues.

Got $4K? Sony has a new giant camera with an AI processor to chase around the things you aren't quick enough to chase.

Now the Generative Adversarial Network algorithm is creating head-to-toe phony people.

At least someone agrees with me. Stop saying "AI." Engineers are using algorithms to create "art."

More COVID in China; more factories closing. The west learned that China was not a reliable business partner.

Microsoft was key in building China's AI capabilities, but new export restrictions are changing all that.

It appears that Qualcomm will continue to build the RF part of the iPhones for a few years more.

Stronger rumors that Must will cut half the jobs at emTwitter. Mr. Musk could be correct about all this in that perhaps this is why the old Twitter was not profitable.

emTwitter cancels its annual developer conference just a couple weeks before it was scheduled.

Friday 4 November 2022

Playstation VR2 won't be here in time for Christmas. It's coming in late February.

Meanwhile in China, censorship lives on as the Communist Party knocks all Uyghur web sites off line.

Google releases Code as Policies: a tool that makes programming robots much easier.

SpaceX continues to advance in building its Raptor engines. They are now averaging an engine a day.

Google releases Wordcraft: a prototype writing tool that can help creative writers craft new stories.

AMD shows its two newest graphics processors, the the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT. About $900.

Patreon finally, finally releases it video-hosting system.

Elon Musk is telling the remaining employees at emTwitter to cut the fat and start running the business as a business.

oooops, US Federal, state, and local employees are using old mobile devices that have huge security holes.

OpenAI releases the DALL-E API. Developers can now put the model into their products. Let the games begin.

Google begins work on a super-duper language model that includes 1,000 languages.

Here is a rare report that shows a firm grasp of the obvious: neural networks don't work like the human brain.

Saturday 5 November 2022

If you can program in C++, there are supposed to be jobs everywhere.

Apple is also cutting the fat. Hiring almost stopped, budgets cut, do more with less.

"Scientists" learn that hitting clouds with electricity produces rain. Let's be careful with this.

Much of the Internet runs on undersea cables that come up from the depths at entry points. This is dangerous.

Fear and loathing among former Twitter employees. This is business. This is Bidenflation and Bidenomics and such. Great cries are coming from some about misinformation running rampant now. Most of those cries come from folks who peddle misinformation for a living.

This looks like fun. It is a 155-night cruise from San Diego to England.

Boeing continues to stumble with its Starliner spacecraft. All this shows how remarkable the successes at SpaceX are.

Sunday 6 November 2022

More and more trafficking in technology regulations from the US regulators.

This is clever: drop an image into the square and this software generates music to accompany it.

Good news: today's kids are smart enough to work around restrictions. Of course this is bad news for those who set restrictions. The lesson is the same as always: trust.

ooops, real professional journalists at NBC have to retract a story as nothing but bologna (that is what we used to call misinformation).

College professor designs a nuclear reactor that fits in a walk-in closet and safely powers 1,000 homes. Perhaps something will come of this.

Misguided efforts to shift world geography. There is a scientific basis for the world's time zones. If you don't like shifting the clocks twice a year, let's stay with Standard Time.

The founder of Twitter admits that he hired too many people. Hence, the layoffs are pretty much justified by any business metric.

Starlink Internet terminals are going offline in Ukraine as no one is paying the bills. Should Elon Musk fund a war or is that the responsibility of nations?

"The Merge" has crashed the price of crypto mining computers. There are thousands of machines out there selling inexpensively. Time for bargain hunters to flourish.