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: 8-14 April, 2024

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• And the Russians are steadily gaining the offensive again
• Israel-Gaza conflict continues
• We have a total solar eclipse pass through America
• Google announces many new AI features for its services
• Intel promises TOPS (trillion operations per second) on laptop processors
• OJ Simpson dies
• Iran attacks Israel with the air, the attack fails miserably

Monday 8 April 2024

Almost no Internet viewing as I was preoccupied with several other things.

This is a clever essay on social media from someone who is about 40.

Tips on writing historical fantasy.

This blogger has made a little money blogging, so here are the 18 tips.

Google has a "find me" feature for its Android phones now in the US and Canada.

Google employees use an internal message board. The company's senior employees are now censoring that message board due to comments about the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Microsoft has a new consumer AI division and a new London office for it.

Meanwhile in Kansas City, it is now illegal to fire a gun into the air at a celebration. Glad they took care of that one.

Here comes a movie about a possible fake movie in case a fake of the moon landing was needed. It wasn't but...

Tuesday 9 April 2024

The biggest thing in TV watching is the original idea in TV watching. I pay nothing. I watch commercials. The commercials pay the bills. Amazing. And yes, I leave the TV on in the background.

Microsoft continues to wish that Arm processors from Qualcomm will run Windows really well so that Microsoft's hardware can compete with Apple's.

Is the world's software held together by one little program that has been maintained by three volunteers? Perhaps that is an exaggeration, perhaps not.

The story of Stack Overflow and how it became THE PLACE for programmers to ask questions.

These folks are building hypersonic aircraft. New York to London in 90 minutes. And many other applications. It might even work this time.

Let's repopulate the oceans with coral. What could possibly go wrong?

And while we are speculating on really difficult problems, let's make the SpaceX launches weekly and do more with them.

Coming this summer from Tesla, a driverless taxi. Maybe it will work this time.

TSMC (Taiwan) receives $11.6Billion (with a B) in grants from US taxpayers. Good for Arizona, bad for Taiwan and preventing an armed conflict there.

The post PAN(dem)IC PC slump seems to have hit bottom and rebounded after a two-year slump.

Some teachers with initiative are using new tools. Some other folks don't like that.

The Federal government of Canada throws $1.8Billion into the AI industry there.

General Motors has put human drivers in its Cruise driverless cars. Well, back to the drawing board.

Wednesday 10 April 2024

An interview with a programmer who works for banks and uses COBOL the Common Business-Oriented Language.

Here is a C/CUDA library for training large language models locally and with great efficiency and speed.

How to learn faster. Mostly, find a job with the right environment.

Well this sounds like a bad idea: a group has done some "secret" experiments in seeding clouds to change climate. Lots of things could go badly wrong here.

Elon Musk is back to talking about trips to Mars and millions of tons of cargo to make the place self-sustaining.

Meanwhile in India, they have three-wheeled vehicle that serve as taxis. They are making and selling tens of thousands of these a year that are electric powered. Of course in America, we know better and regulate such things off the market.

Google is trying to design its own AI processors. Everyone is trying to have their own AI processors. I feel left out.

Google announces several big AI-based updates for Gmail and its other services.

Intel pushes its next generation of processors for laptop computers promising TOPS (trillion or tera operations per second). These will be the AI PCs that run models locally.

Google announces a Gemma family of models for more AI assistance.

The PAN(dem)IC showed Apple and others that China is not a reliable business partner. $14Billion in iPhone in India shows the major global shift. Trouble for China's rulers.

I'll just quote the headline, "OpenAI makes GPT-4 Turbo with Vision generally available through its API"

Making the case against TikTok and for booting it out of the US.

Thursday 11 April 2024

109 bits of advice. You could do worse than read this.

If you are building a system from three subsystems with each subsystem having a reliability of 0.9, you system has a reliability of 0.729. Sorry about that, but that is life.

Meanwhile in Miami, here comes Apple with a new office and a retail store.

A deeper look at Google's new Vids app. Will this replace the PowerPoint? Not in government offices.

More information on the Intel Gaudi processors. Intel intends to compete with Nvidia in data centers. There is the chance that Intel will make money here simply because Nvidia can't make as many chips as the market wants to buy.

Google pumps up its AI architecture Hypercomputer (what comes after "hyper" computer)?

Meta looks for the sweet spot in the market with smaller language models that perform well enough. Time for the fundamental researchers to step aside and let the engineers and MBAs build practical systems.

Of course the big tech companies building these AI models have violated copyright laws. How else would they use all that information?

Over the past 16 years, Americans have bought firearms in record numbers. The taxes paid are astounding. The jobs generated in everything from sheet metal to printing are also astounding.

Gosh darn...it seems that our IRS wasn't completely honest when it told folks how much this direct filing income tax system cost. Our IRS left out a few thing$$$.

Friday 12 April 2024

A Chinese company has a city electric car for under $10,000. No, we can't buy it in America. Are American auto makers paying attention?

Use the shell or command line interface. Use the History function.

Astranis builds small satellites and puts them up in geostationary orbit for Internet broadband service.

Google brings its image editing tools that use AI to non-paying customers.

Japan's Prime Minister visited Washington. Great photo op to announce a privately funded source of AI research money.

Out in the deserts of the middle east is the race to build data centers.

Instagram promises software that will detect and blur images of naked people.

The monthly is running out on the program to pay the Internet bills of Americans.

Hooray for our students! They have learned how to use the new tools to be more productive! I am not kidding. I think this is good.

OJ Simpson dies at 76. He was the first football player I noticed when I was a boy. Won the Heisman trophy and all that.

Once again, Mr. Zelenskyy says that if we don't give him more, Russia will conquer Ukraine and encroach on NATO.

Looking a classic and loved movies that flopped on initial release. Reruns on that little TV made them famous.

Strong rumors of Apple rushing its M4 processors for AI and boosting slumping sales.

Americans are alarmed at the books that someone is using taxpayers' money to buy and put in libraries funded by taxpayers' money.

Look up and we will probably see a machine taking photos of our homes and selling the photos to insurance companies.

Saturday 13 April 2024

Meanwhile in China, the trade war continues as the governors tell the companies to stop using chips made by American companies.

TikTok and virtual influencers. We have always had these. Remember Fred Flintstone in ads?

Meanwhile in America, our regulators allows foreign companies to do things while preventing American companies from doing the same. Competition?

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, is really pushing AI and what it can do for business and just plain folks.

A history of testing software as it is being built. Lots of buzzwords came and went. Let's just speak English.

All this AI craze is driving demand and prices for everything related to computing. Spinning hard disk drives, the experts told us those things are dinosaurs, rise in price.

This is an excellent piece on programmer productivity. 100 programmers tells "what takes so long."

After $100Billion in US money, munitions, and arms (including tanks), it appears that the Russians are advancing steadily in Ukraine. Recall all the US companies that pulled out of Russia? All for naught. We sympathize with the Ukrainians, but what happened to all that aid? What happened to the great spring offensive of 2023? NATO also poured money, munitions, and arms into Ukraine? Training, expertise, intelligence, etc. What happened to all of it? Blame the Republicans for putting the brakes on the flow of tens of billion$$$. Still, what happened to all that aid?

Want to travel to exotic places, meeting intersting beautiful people, and have lavish parties? Create an International Political Conference on AI Safety.

Huawei shows its first AI PC with Intel's latest processors.

Google researchers create a technique that expands the attention window of a LLM infinitely (or at least to an arbitrarily large number). This is a big deal. Let's see the real applications.

Microsoft finds yet another way to sell ads: put them in the Windows startup space.

Robert MacNeil dies at 93. Just the news. Whatever happened to just the news?

Real news that isn't news: tech companies that have "made it" in AI want regulation to keep out the companies that are trying to make it. The newcomers don't want regulation (until after they too have made it).

Sunday 14 April 2024

TSMC is probably the world's most important company. Its success is bringing tech talent from all the parts of Asia to Taiwan. Invasion buffers?

Must see video: this little robots are playing soccer. The one trained by AI works much better.

Iran attacks Israel with a large-scale drone fleet. The attack fizzles as almost all vehicles are knocked out of the sky.

Students are using AI tools to "write papers." Good for them. Use tools. Be productive. "Do your own work!" I understand the sentiment, but employers want to hire people who work in groups and use tools and go, go, go. Surely schools can figure out what to do here.

Harvard brings back the standardized test. Of course some groups of students do better while some do worse. That is life. Part of all this is finiding those who excel regardless.

Lest we forget, much of the current AI systems are augmented by persons. Many of the persons have low skills and certainly low pay.

An annual survey shows that CEOs of big companies have changed their mind and folks will not come to the office five days a week.

This is a story of bad behavior by teenage boys. But why is the school system involved? Unless this all happened on school grounds using school equipment, the school has nothing to do with it. It is a juvenile criminal justice matter. I guess I don't understand what some parents expect from the schools.