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: 15-21 January, 2024

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Israel-Gaza conflict reaches day 100
• People get their hands on the Apple Vision Pro
• Silly studies of LLM etc.
• Trump easily wins Iowa caucus

Monday 15 January 2024

Today was a travel day with no Internet viewing.

Tuesday 16 January 2024

OpenAI declares how it will let users use its product in this election year. (1) Did IBM ever issue a decree "You cannot type lies on our typewriters?" (2) If OpenAI can limit what users can do, what else can OpenAI do to its users?

Some of our finest regulators (not) at US Customs has decided that Apple can import its Watches.

The global smartphone market slumped in 2023. Apple, however, became the biggest seller worldwide for the first time.

Build it and the customers will find ways to use it: John Deere will use Starlink's access to cell phones to help with tractor maintenance in rural and far flung areas.

We can now pay Microsoft $20 a month to use CoPilot Pro. Of course Pro is better than regular, I guess.

Apple moves over a 100 jobs from San Diego to Austin. Move or be unemployed.

Home robotics may be here for real this time.

We had an NFL playoff game shown only on Peacock. It set a record for streaming views.

There were six NFL playoff games this weekend. By the scores, it seems there were only seven NFL playoff teams playing.

A cold front passes through America, and EVs are frozen stuck.

A new study shows that blue light doesn't keep us awake. Once again, the experts were wrong. Same with COVID and climate and just about everything in the last thousand years.

Upon further review, it seems that self checkout at stores just hasn't delivered on the marketing hype. Experiment performed. Results noted. Act accordingly.

Internet news remains light for some reason.

Wednesday 17 January 2024

Given the next few notes, it appears that many researchers in the AI field have little understanding of what they are doing and what happens in the real world.

Autonomous trucking is more difficult than autonomous taxies. Of course it is. Greater mass, greater danger, more precautions. See comment above about the real world.

OpenAI is making changes to ChatGPT-4 due to lawsuits about copyrights.

This is some sort of a revelation to an "expert" but AI techniques are progressing faster than anticipated. Again, experts are usually, not sometimes but more than half the time, wrong.

About to buy an Apple Vision Pro? Don't depend on in and out of the store. There is a 25-minute sales pitch and instruction time. Gosh. This is from the company that once said, "We build computers for the rest of us."

More on "sleeper agents" in AI that, when activated, all of a sudden "go rogue." Gosh. Educated folks create and spread these terms.

We have a new technique of text compression using an old technique of image compression.

If you use an ad blocker on YouTube, YouTube will block lots of videos from you.

Tesla now has a robot that will fold clothes. It's a start.

In something worthwhile, researchers now have identified five different types of Alzheimer's disease. This finding help presribe different drugs for different types. The results of specific medication appear promising.

Where the money is: it's in healthcare. And that is where the hackers are attacking. This is all a result of the Obamacare era. That was not intended by Mr. Obama, but it is a result.

Those who hack search engines (Search Engine Optimized SEO) have succeeded in putting phony product reviews in front of consumers using the search engines.

Each new software product threatens intellectual property and the copyright system. See, for example, the simple copy-paste. AI is the current "threat."

Someone tries the Apple Vision Pro in real life. It is heavy, and most people cannot use it for more than 15 minutes.

In politics, former President Trump "wins" the Iowa caucus easily.

An NFL playoff game was only on Peacock---pay per view. The ratings were high. Expect more pay-per-view NFL games.

Thursday 18 January 2024

Obsession can lead to accomplishment. Sometimes the unintended costs are too high. See, for example, this story of a man and his Hi-Fi equipment.

Someone develops a software system that mimics handwriting. Just in time for people to stop writing anything via pencil and paper.

Someone observes that their washing machine was uploading several GigaBytes of data everyday. Like what?

A history of passwords. We don't like 'em but what are we gonna' do?

CEOs are looking for layoffs this year due to adoption of generative AI. Every new technology eliminates jobs.

It appears that when using data compression, the lower-case letters are compressed more than the upper-case letters.

Someone works through the steps to have ChatGPT et al write good software.

Ultrasound shows some promise in treating Alzheimer's.

And now our government is back to banning the import of some Apple Watches. I guess there is more to this story than I understand.

I have to hand it to the folks at Google: it is no longer "your fired" or "layoffs" or "job cuts." It is now "role eliminations."

Coming real soon now from Samsung, a smart Ring that monitors health and does all sorts of other gee-whiz things.

Coming real soon now from Amazon, Alexa Plus or some other name where we have to pay to say, "Alexa..."

Meanwhile in the semiconductor world, after a booming 2022, things returned to normal in 2023. Intel also regained the top spot for sales.

I'll just quote the headline "Alphabet's Wing unveils larger drones for heavier packages" Now five pounds, twelve miles, 65 miles per hour.

Samsung shows a new Galaxy phone for $1,299. Are you kidding? For a phone? I can use a phone in my pocket. I don't need a supercomputer in my pocket.

Someone starts a company that verifies the work of other companies to be "fair." This is great. We create an industry, call it unfair, then create companies that call it fair for a large fee. Give me money, and I will say, "You're OK."

Recent study shows that kids learn better on paper instead of on screens. Of course, we closed schools in the PAN(dem)IC knowing that kids would learn on screens. We, the experts, were wrong as usual.

Some members of Congress are berating NASA about letting China beat the US to the moon. It is about time.

Friday 19 January 2024

If you want to use AI to use your data, you first must get your data straight. Hmmm, garbage in, garbage out. I've heard that somewhere before.

Bellingcat, a leader in open-source information, shows how to use the Wayback Machine to work around new Google changes.

While much of the world is moving away from "agile" as its implementation failures are well known, our Federal government is still trying to adopt this 20-year-old practice.

More information on how Google search has changed and not for the better.

One thing that computing machines do well is compare large numbers of data samples. Consider fingerprints, the experts (once again) have been wrong about how unique they are.

How one person is running large language models on home computers.

We now have smaller space "tug boats" that move big satellites to higher orbits.

Once again, someone explains how computer benchmarks can be quite misleading. Test the hardware yourself when you can afford it. Otherwise, don't be surprised by surprises.

Meanwhile in Washington D.C., having little to do with their time, our Dept of Justice is about to take Apple to court.

Meanwhile in Europe, regulators decide to disallow one American company from buying another American company. I suppose this makes sense to some legal minds.

Microsoft makes its Reading Coach free to use.

Newspapers and magazines owned by billionaires are losing million$$$ each year. The owners can afford the losses. Will they continue these as charities?

Popular video podcasts are now inserting ads in the background generated by AI.

Meanwhile at the World Economic Forum, leaders (are they leaders, followers, or just fretters?) fret about AI and job losses and other areas of ignorance.

Saturday 20 January 2024

An Air Force Academy graduate wins the Miss America pageant.

Meanwhile at Meta, the 2023 year of efficiency saved the company after a couple years of the meta-verse folly.

Does working from home affect office productivity? No one is really sure as no one really measures office productivity. This is especially true in government office. Productivity in government offices? Are you kidding? It doesn't exist.

Google to pump a billion dollars into a London data center.

In the UK, they rewrite some computing history as they release more information on the Colossus computers used to break German codes in WWII. This puts Colossus ahead of ENIAC in computing history.

Greenland's ice sheets are melting faster than experts predicted. The villain here is everyone but the experts who were wrong.

I'll quote this, "Taking a daily multivitamin slows the rate of memory decline in older people, a study has shown." Basics. Simple basics of better health. One hope I had coming out of the pandemic was that people would turn towards better general health. So far, it has happened.

Side note on tech in 2024: we can carry a supercomputer with two TeraBytes of storage in our pocket.

Some thoughts on using the private mode of a browser.

Microsoft helps the US government by pointing to Russian hacking groups that are hurting government agencies and American companies.

At the same time, US government regulators are so anxious to prosecute Microsoft that different groups are fighting over who gets to hunt the supposed witches. Out tax dollars at waste.

Meanwhile at the Los Angeles Times, unions are about to strike before they are laid off.

Meanwhile at Sports Illustrated, everyone is being laid off in a dispute over payments from one management company to another. Neither company has anything to do with sports or magazines.

These troubles in the old newspapers and magazines are self inflicted. They failed to practice their profession professionally. Instead, they delved into the dark side of having a platform from which to throw sticks and stones. Too bad for the reading public.

Stability AI releases a smaller language model that it claims is better than others of its size. When did 1.6Billion (with a B) parameters become "small?"

Apple begins taking pre-orders on its Vision Pro.

Sunday 21 January 2024

Bill Gates and other really rich people think they should pay more taxes. Instead, how about using their wealth to do more good? For example, hire tutors to ensure that at-risk kids learn to read when they are in first grade? There are many other ways to spend money for benefit than giving it to the US Treasury to be wasted.

Japan lands a craft on the moon. America's moon craft incinerates in earth's atmosphere. NASA? Really?

Coming real soon now from Seagate are 30 TeraByte disk drives. Unlike NASA, these will actually arrive and actually work.

Thoughts on why all coffee shops in America, even the locally owned independent ones are all alike.

A thoughtful piece on how everything today (98.6%) is an app. The websites are gone. The big five rule everything.

The Apple Macintosh computer is 40 years old this week. It came out of the Apple Lisa computer which came out of designs from Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center.

Engadget reviews Nvidia's RTX 4070 Super graphics card. $599 brings more power than ever. They could lower the price by about half.

The Ford 150 pickup truck with all electric power has been rejected by the marketplace. Who wants one?

We think we have found a lot of water on Mars. Call me when we are making coffee with Martian water. Until then, keep speculating.

Excellent essay on machine learning. The writer cuts away all the hype. And, by the way, despite all the hype, generative models are not where the money is in the real world.

How to generate power from the wind: kites, not those great big towers with the great big propellers that are made of rare materials and do not degrade when burnt out.

Regulators gotta' regulate. Instead of talking about how to use AI for economic and other good for people, the folks at the World Economic Forum talk about how to regulate AI (grab money).

Artists now have access to a free tool that poisons their work so that AI cannot train on it.

Notes on early adoption of electric-powered trucks. Recharging isn't practical. Slide-in and slide-out battery packs might work.