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: 2-8 January, 2023

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• The holidays and the cold snap overshadow the above
• Nvidia shows its new RTX 40 series of graphics processors
• Intel shows it 13th-Generation processors for laptops
• CES is this week, so more new products announced

Monday 2 January 2023

A look at the C4 model for documenting software designs.

What type of crypto currency regulations will our Congress pass this year? Easy. Congress will address problems from three years ago. The problems that occur this year will be addressed in 2026.

If you have ten minutes, thumb through this article that lists many of the failed products and companies from tech in the last ten years. Good stuff. We aren't as smart as some of us think they are.

A simple example of how living in an area with a lower cost of living can change a family's financial standing.

At least one person agrees with me that the "end of programming" is yet another failed prediction.

Meta, the company we used to know and love as Facebook, is against the labor policies in China, but all its hardware is made in China.

Colleges in the Washington, D.C. rejoice as Congress has funded lots of education for Federal government employees. Night classes abound!

The old, old concept of rule-based reasoning for "artificial intelligence." It still works and has much less computational load than recent machine learning approaches.

Writing a book is easy. Since few people actually do it, maybe it isn't "easy." There is some sort of organizational skills needed. There is some sort of persistence needed. Some stubbornness is needed. The list continues.

Make a movie from your story. The means of production (cameras, editing software, etc.) are no longer really, really expensive. Actors could be expensive.

I like this post on "things needed for writing success." The advice is practical and usable. Of course, you need to understand what "success" means to you. That is probably the most difficult part.

The above thoughts continue on forming a strategic vision.

The above posts sort of group together in a hash tag like "I wrote a book. See." That is quite important to many people. It is within reach. You don't need to spend thousand$ on a "vanity press."

Transcription jobs still exist. Listen to an audio recording and type the words. It seems like this would go away since MS Word and other things take dictation now, but I guess not.

Tuesday 3 January 2023

The long weekend makes this Tuesday into a low-news Monday.

Looking at some of the lesser-known pieces of software that uses machine learning to write essays and do school work.

One person goes into the woods and spends three years building a cabin alone.

Barnes and Noble is making a comeback in brick-and-mortar book stores. Good.

China moves into the virtual celebrity world. They behave. This goes back to the 1960s when Don Kirshner tired of real actors become rock stars and misbehaving. Kirshner then created cartoon rock bands that had hit records, but the cartoon characters behaved.

Wednesday 4 January 2023

We are starting to see the product announcements from this week's CES.

This is a long essay about why we shouldn't and won't go to Mars. It makes sense.

A look back at a computer manual from the 1980s (we used to have computer manuals come with computers) that was worth reading.

Coming is a book about keyboards.

Here is a GitHub repository that allows you to run 100B+ language models at home.

Thoughts on indexing and searching Mastodon servers.

All this work-from-home is nice if you no longer commute. There are affects on other people. Are you willing to "sacrifice" your time for the good of others?

Interesting to see if anyone will use this tactic: Shopify cancels all recurring meetings that have more than two persons on the invite list.

Nvidia announces that their RTX 40 series of graphics processors has models that will run in laptop computers. Much more processing power. They promise your laptop won't burst into flames.

Nvidia and Foxconn partner to build processors for autonomous vehicles.

Dell shows new monitors including a 6K model that has deeper blacks.

Intel shows its 13th-generation processors for laptops. One model has 24 CPU cores.

Alienware joins a trend and moves to 16" and 18" laptop gaming machines.

Strong rumors that Microsoft will greatly improve its Bing search engine using OpenAI's ChatGPT technology.

Thursday 5 January 2023

New job title: Prompt Engineer. This is the person that asks the question of those AI tools that write answers.

TCL shows its new TV models for 2023. It is now the world's largest maker of Google TVs. Roku is still there as well.

TCL shows more low-price Android phones and an 8" tablet.

Roku announces that it will have TV with its label on them this year.

Asus shows a laptop with a 3D display that requires no funny glasses. Does anyone want this?

Pushing back the frontiers of ignorance (not): New York City Dept of Education bans access to ChatGPT.

Qualcomm announces its Snapdragon Ride Flex System-on-Chip (SoC). It will control the car cockpit as well as assist in driving.

AMD shows its newest series of processors for mobile devices: Ryzen Mobile 7000.

Dell announces its plan to stop using parts from China by 2024.

Remember this name: Afeela. It is the electric car brand created by Sony and Honda.

MSI shows its new gaming laptops that use 13th-gen Intel Core series processors with GeForce RTX 40 series laptop graphics. They also improve how they handle all the heat generated by those chips.

Friday 6 January 2023

The International Conference on Machine Learning has decided to prohibit papers written by software. You have to write your own paper. Software can help edit (that has been the case for several decades).

Lenovo shows a new laptop computer that allows attaching accessories to a pin connector.

Must-see video: Lenovo shows the Yoga Book 9i. It is a tablet that has two screens. You connect a keyboard and you have a dual-screen laptop. Nice.

I'll just quote, "Qualcomm has announced that its new processors and modems will allow phones to communicate with the Iridium satellite network."

Our FTC proposes banning non-compete job agreements. Not sure where they were given this authority or if they can enforce it.

Using technology to evict renters and re-classify units to raise the rent.

Saturday 7 January 2023

I'll just quote this one, "Changing my feminine first name to a masculine nickname on my resume gave me way more responses per application." If it works, do it.

This is a Vim editor in a browser window. I can think of a few uses of such.

Mercedes-Benz announces that it will build 2,500 DC fast chargers at more than 400 sites around the US by 2027. The date gives them plenty of time to change their plans.

This is a fun list of big financial gains made by pretty small groups of persons.

Strong rumors that Apple will not have an iPhone SE in 2024. I guess this is some type of landmark where we hunger for news of a product that won't exist.

Pandemic prosperity continues for Roku with 70million accounts and subscribers still climbing.

Amazon Prime carried Thursday Night Football this year. Due to obvious reasons, the audience fell 41%, but it was a much younger crowd. And they need better announcers for the games as well.

This is a big deal for those of us who have been in computing for a couple of generations: IBM shifts away from patents and will no longer lead the world in such.

Fascinating story about America. Southwest Airlines bungled their software updates and stranded customers. A family drove 2,700 miles across the US in a rent-a-car. There are only a few places in the world where you can do this.

Our FDA approves a new treatment for early Alzheimer's disease. It doesn't help many folks and it has high risks for bad effects. I guess we shrug and say, "Why not?"

A college student at Princeton claims to have a program that detects ChatGPT-written essays. The detector is called GPTZero. The site has been overwhelmed by testers.

Sunday 8 January 2023

Strong rumors that Microsoft is working on putting chat AI into Word, email, and the like. It isn't easy, but it could change many things.

130,000 persons a day jumped to Mastodon. Now they are leaving. Their friends aren't there. Their friends are still on Twitter and Facebook.

"Nothing much changes until someone cares enough to build an alternative."---Seth Godin

Got a spare 737? Turn it into a villa and rent it for $7,000 a night.

The first official release of Vanilla OS is here.

TIOBE releases its final list of which programming languages are used the most. Python leads with C, and C++ right behind. The C languages are supposed to be dead and on their way out. Many programmers have not received that memo.

"...OpenAI's GPT-3 program can identify clues from spontaneous speech that are 80% accurate in predicting the early stages of dementia." No treatment is offered, but just early detection. That may help families understand what is happening and plan ahead.

A new theory states that little dots and dashes on cave drawings recorded mating and births of animals. They are not just little dots and dashes.