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: 5-11 May, 2025

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• OpenAI not going to for-profit (at least this week)
• New PCs and Copilot features from Microsoft
• The bishops choose an American to be Pope
• Now we have "AI slop"
• India and Pakistan are practically but not officially at war

Monday 5 May 2025

What is an AI PC? Why have one?

Our current President's proposed budget cuts one-sixth from the budget of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. That is a small cut. Focus on the mission and everyone will be fine. Whine and complain and we have a bunch on whiners and complainers and no cybersecurity. It is time for leadership.

Doom and gloom predicted as immigration reform is scaring away AI talent. Message the message better. We welcome those who add; we don't need those who subtract.

A secure messaging app used in the Federal government turns out to be not so secure. Come on folks. Be smarter than all this.

Mr. Deepfakes is closing citing an unnamed storage supplier turned them off. Let's see, AWS? Google? What storage supplier?

Meanwhile in Cameron County Texas, Starbase is an official incorporated city. Small but growing population. This is similar to Rocket City in Russia.

Skype passes into the great big bit bucket to sit next to Lync, AOL Chat, et al.

What happened to NaNoWriMo? It was a dot-org or a charity. These things cost money. Someone has to give money for these to keep going. Weak management was the cause. It takes skill to keep the funds coming and all the servers serving. That is not easy...folks can do it, but it is not automatic. There are several alternatives emerging and are listed in the piece.

This is an in-depth piece on AI writing tools and AI tools that detect AI writing tools. What's next? AI tools that write in a way to avoid AI tools that detect AI tools... or something? Sigh. Folks write in unpredictable ways. There have been many tools that analyze writing (decades old) and say, "This piece is quite different from that piece!" So what? Who says a writer cannot change their style for one piece or another piece of writing?

Tips on writing dialogue.

One published writer is surprised by what happens over a long period of time with their books.

Quoting, "Engaging with authors whose books are similar to yours is a valuable opportunity for inspiration and collaboration." Not competition.

Take great care when a publisher wants the writer to help fund the publishing. General rule: all money flows in the direction of the writer. There are exceptions. Basic cost for copying or running the Xerox machine for internal use is one.

Some lesser-known AI tools that can help freelance writers with marketing and such.

Tuesday 6 May 2025

Nvidia releases a new transcription model (open source) that can "transcribe 60 minutes of audio in 1 second."

Palantir reports a good financial quarter. Again, someone decides the news isn't good enough (39% growth sounds pretty good to me).

For a mere $3Billion (with a B), OpenAI buys an AI-assisted coding company called WindSurf.

OpenAI is trying to reorganize or remake itself. It needs the approval of investors like Microsoft. MS put in almost $14Billion (with a B).

More news on OpenAI and its move and non-move from non-profit to for-profit. I guess this is all more complicated than I understand.

More big problems and big finance. The big datacenter folks want renewable energy. I think that means they want the tax breaks (bribes) that come with renewable energy.

Meanwhile at the Pentagon, the Secretary of Defense cuts 20% of the generals and admirals. Trim the fat and focus on the mission.

Oil prices hit a four-year low. Hmmm. Who is President?

Meanwhile in Britain, "A majority of Britons may now consider themselves neurodivergent, with conditions such as autism, dyslexia or ADHD..." I think this means that you can't discriminate against this majority because they act like a minority. Perhaps there is more to this than I understand. Folks, we all act differently. That is the divergent part of the term. I won't hire me to be at a booth at a conference because I don't have the personality for that. I guess I should sue myself for discriminatory hiring practices. Right? I think this is what they are saying.

It appears the UnitedHealth Group is certainly using AI in many ways.

Meanwhile in Georgia, Hyundai puts humanoid robots to work as part of a $21Billion investment.

The Open Document Format (look for .odf files) is now 20 years old. Microsoft, with its own XML format, still dominates the world.

Wednesday 7 May 2025

Hiring is now in an AI war. AI helps you find jobs. AI helps them detect AI-written resumes. AI masks AI-written resumes from AI-powered AI-written resumes. Have I run out of anti-this and anti-that. In military parlance, it is counter this and counter-counter that and ...

IBM's CEO says that HR jobs have been eliminated by AI. That leaves space for more technology employees.

And we also have AI agents and agentic AI and such. How about useful software that does useful things?

Amazon claims "fundamental leap forward in robotics" with a new system that feels what it is moving in a warehouse as well as seeing it. Okay, that still leaves hearing, tasting, and smelling.

Microsoft announces some new AI PCs and Copilot AI software features.

MS call the AI software a "new generation of Windows experiences."

MS has a smaller Surface Pro with a 12-inch screen.

And MS has a smaller Surface Laptop with a 13-inch screen.

Meanwhile in South Memphis, Tennessee, Elon Musk's xAI company is under seige regarding its use of generators to power its super-duper computer.

Advanced Micro Devices reports a good financial quarter.

Members of the Democratic Party in the US Senate propose a law that makes Donald Trump a criminal. You can't make this stuff up.

The Real ID requirements to fly is here. Expect chaos and further delays. The 9/11 terrorists won in that America reacted in panic and smashed ourselves into a wall of regulation.

Nvidia promises new GPU cards on 19 May. Well, sometimes you can't keep your promises...especially on the price.

These AI startups have hit billion-dollar valuations with 50 employees or fewer. This is known as eating your own dog food.

Recent college graduates are having a historically tough time finding jobs.

Quoting, "Fedora Linux is now officially available as a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) distribution."

Apple expands the availability of its use of satellite connectivity for iPhones.

Stratolaunch has twice now demonstrated hypersonic flight.

Thursday 8 May 2025

Quoting the headline, "Amazon to spend $4 billion on cloud infrastructure in Chile." Moving more operations overseas to serve that part of the world.

I highly recommend people read this article about going to college with the AI tools. Great quotes like, "everyone is cheating" and "Most assignments in college are not relevant. They're hackable by AI, and I just had no interest in doing them."

This is a good piece about using AI in programming and how programming and Computer Science should be taught in these changing times.

Netflix now has an AI-powered search tool.

Fear and loathing in Washington D.C. as DOGE plans to break down silos among the different agencies and create data sharing. Of course there are risks in efficiency. And of course breaking down silos unearths lots of things that have been hidden.

Arm reports a good financial quarter. And this is a case where it wasn't as good as some estimators estimated. The estimates were poor so the company was punished, not the estimators.

Our current President reverses export curbs on AI chips put in place by our prior President.

Google claims that search is still a growing business.

Big tech comes to Washington and asks for more permits to build more power generating capacity. And they want access to government data for training AI. Perhaps I don't understand the request, but government data was purchased by the public and the public should have access to it.

IBM surveys several thousand company CEOs. The CEOs are investing in AI out of fear of missing something, not good smart business sense.

New term for me---AI slop farmer. Use AI to flood the Internet. This guy admits to conning older women for $$$.

A new British company called Silence Speaks has created an app to translate text to British Sign Language and American Sign Language. This is all not quite ready, but it is a breakthrough in providing sign language to those who need it from those who don't know it.

Buy a visa into America for $5million. If you can pay the price, you probably have the means to be a productive citizen.

A few persons seem to grasp the obvious: graduate American colleges, have a visa to stay. Productive people are welcome. Is this a bad idea or something?

I struggle to understand the concept of warfare in this century. It seems that 99% of the population is supposed to go on living as if the country is not at war.

Perhaps there is a reason why some people function on only three hours of sleep a day.

Strong rumors that Google will actually pay to build nuclear power plants for their datacenters.

Friday 9 May 2025

The business of Palantir is rolling in money right now.

CloudFlare reports a good financial quarter.

Nintendo reports a bad financial quarter. I note this to show that all is not perfect in the tech world.

Times change. The big players in AI were asking for regulations to keep newcomers out of the industry. Now they are asking for less regulation.

Researchers at Alibaba report a new technique to train AI-based search engines. They call it ZeroSearch.

This is one of those stories where you ask, "Why haven't you been doing this all along?" Doctors are using a new system that takes notes for them so they can focus their attention on talking to patients with filling in forms in a distracted conversation. No duh.

Datacenters consume too much water. The solutions are quite simple and yet again fall under the "no duh" category.

Bill Gates announces that the Gates Foundation will close in 20 years. Good intentions. Lots of money spent. And folks dispute many of the things the foundation does and its results.

And Bill Gates has become an all-knowing expert on all things and criticizes Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk in what they are doing to cut government spending.

Meanwhile at Apple, the processor designers continue to design new things. It was a big leap when Apple first created that group so they could move away from the Intel processors. The gamble has worked.

The folks running Wikipedia are challenging privacy laws in Britain.

Alienware has two new lower-priced laptop computers. One still pushes up to $2,000, but they have Nvidia GPUs.

This story is more complicated than the headlines. Under the prior President, it appears that agencies had good intentions but moved money around in circles. That is sort of against the law.

And we have the first American-born Pope.

One more bad outcome of education all online from the great PAN(dem)IC...ghost students. "These ghost students are artificially intelligent agents or bots that pose as real students in order to steal millions of dollars of financial aid that could otherwise go to actual humans." We did know what we were doing, huh, right?

The Linux community drops support for the family of Intel 486 processors. Microsoft dropped the 486 20 years ago.

Quoting, "Facing deep staffing cuts, the IRS plans to lean heavily on AI to maintain tax collection efforts," Well, good luck with all that. Yes, AI can greatly increase the effectiveness of all the remaining employees. But that requires some initiative and effort, so good luck with that. As a taxpayer, I wish it works.

Saturday 10 May 2025

Over at Pirate Wires, Scott Jennings has a short piece on the Biden administration's ill-fated attempt to build a floating humanitarian aid pier in Gaza. Good intentions, but $230million, 60 service members injured with one dead, 20 days of operation (calculate the dollar and human cost per day), and what little aid that passed over it was mostly stolen. Sigh. That is the legacy of our prior President. Perhaps our current President can do better. I wish it so, but I have my doubts.

Here is a dangerous precedent: Google agrees to pay the state of Texas $1.4Billion (with a B) in a suit settlement. Hint to other states...go for it.

In a little Federal government news, our FDA appoints its first Chief AI Officer. These are big deals in Washington.

It appears that American gig companies like Uber are buying the like markets in the rest of the world. Once gain, the Europeans are left being owned by American companies.

Jony Ive regrets all the bad unintended consequences of the iPhone and the smartphone.

Lest we not forget, Google pays Apple $20Billion a year in the browser and search market.

Eating your own dog food: big AI companies are using AI to replace their own employees.

Must-see photo ad. National pride is a good thing in most cases.

A couple of side effects from our current President. One is the national pride noted in the above link. We made this product here for us. Good stuff. Another is the DOGE efforts in Washington seem to be sponsored by the American Bar Association as everything that is done employs lawyers to sue and counter sue and be in court all day.

Money talks...well, among AI researchers access to GPUs talk. Got money? Doesn't matter as the GPUs cannot be bought.

oops...Pearson (education) hit by cyberattack that leaked customer data.

AI slop dominates the Internet. AI search then finds AI slop instead of good old human-created creations.

You will not lose your job to AI, but will lose it to someone who uses it. I recommend 100% take advantage of AI, don't be that person.---Jensen Huang

But if you become known as an AI user, some will doubt your natural ability.

Prompt engineering: it was nice to know you for a weekend. Gone.

Uh, global climate change? Well, we don't know nothin' about the ocean floor.

As I sit in Starbucks doing all the Internet stuff, I read that more and more coffee shops are setting time limits on WiFi use.

Meta will add facial recognition to their Ray-Ban glasses. Of course they will. That will greatly increase the value of the glasses.

Meanwhile in Oregon, someone discovers a $1.5Trillion (with a Tr) deposit of Lithium. Goodbye Oregon.

Sunday 11 May 2025

This story has been bouncing around all week. The Energy Star program may be cancelled. If an appliance etc. is "energy efficient," it receives a little sticker. This "saves" consumers money. Not sure how, but anyways. Everyone seems to love the Energy Star. Well, if everyone loves it, everyone should privately fund it. This is not an essential function of government. It is a consumer choice. Perhaps I just don't understand these things.

Now we have a text-to-Lego system. Describe a Lego structure and this thing show how to build it with Legos. I guess there are less constructive things to do with your time.

Strong rumors that Apple will have smart glasses on the market in time for Christmas. It is a long time coming, but augmenting reality may be almost here.

Study shows...more concise answers from these chattering bots are more likely to be just plain wrong. Let them ramble on and somewhere in all that rambling are likely to be some things that are correct.

A look at the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center.

It appears that OpenAI is the choice for businesses wanting to use AI.

Here is a little "how to." How to use an iPad as a second monitor for an Apple computer.

How to tell if a job applicant is really a North Korean spy or something like that. The questions to ask are trivial.

Some efforts to resurrect the Pascal programming language. Python is the 21st century version of Pascal. We should have just stayed with Pascal.

The new cavalry: the motorcycle. Russian tanks fall prey to little drones. Motorcycle assaults are fast, light, small, and the drones haven't adapted to them, yet.

The American Pope wears an Apple watch.