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: 18-24 November, 2019

Summary of this week:

• The Public Interest Registry is now owned by a holding company
• Intel shows its first GPU for high-performance computing
• Apple to hold it first December event to show games and such
• The first Half-Life game in over 10 years (VR headset only)
• Cerebras Systems leaps ahead in supercomputing with the world's largest single chip
• Tesla shows its Cybertruck and ATV

Monday 18 November 2019

The Internet Society sells the Public Interest Registry (PIR) to a private equity company. The PIR sets the policies for the .org domain.

At a white-hat hacking contest in China Chrome, Edge, and Safari were all hacked. It is only a matter of time and effort.

The TikTok app has been downloaded 1.5Billion (with a B) times. The definition of success has changed.

UK's Labor Party wants to tax American tech companies to pay for high-speed Internet access for all its citizens. This is a great formula: have someone else pay for what you want.

The big bosses at Google are tired of the information leaking from its weekly "let's get together and chat" chats. They have cut them back to monthly or so.

 Wind farm blades are practically indestructible. That means that landfill operators cannot destroy them either and cannot put them in landfills.

A recent study shows that good science fiction is good for readers and bad science fiction is bad for readers. I trust that no one spent much money on said study.

Tuesday 19 November 2019

The Oculus Link for PC is now here. Connect up to a PC with a USB and VR to your heart's delight.

Yet another European government creates a tax on successful American companies.

Valve Software releases a VR game from the Half-Life series (the first in over ten years).

NASA signs several more commercial space lift companies to carry cargo to the moon in the next decade. We shall see.

Researchers at MIT attempt to teach autonomous vehicles how to deal with the rest of us lousy (sometimes selfish) human drivers.

Got $80,000? Get this super duper electric-powered motorcycle from South Africa.

Apple to hold a "surprise" event in a couple of weeks that appears to be about games and such.

Researching the Christmas wish list of the American teenager: they want AirPods.

A look at the numbers on the world's super-ist super-duper computers...all running Linux.

Where the money is: hacker hacks Cayman National Bank on the Isle of Man.

Intel shows its first discrete GPU: Ponte Vecchio. It will run high-performance computing in data centers.

China leads the world in orbital launches. The US is third with Russia at #2. What happened to the US space program?

Wednesday 20 November 2019

Patreon seems to have hit critical mass as its payouts to users and the number of users has taken off in the last year.

The governors in India claim a law permits them to monitor all communications. This is what happens in a place without a Bill of Rights that restrict governors from infringing on rights bestowed by the creator.

Fear and loathing inside Google. Employees protest layoffs of employees who protested. Company managers have to decide what they want.

Our National Transportation Safety Board finds persons were the fault in last years death of a pedestrian hit by an Uber test car.

Supercomputing takes a leap forward. Cerebras Systems shows their CS-1 chip—the world's largest single chip. 15KWatts of power are pulled by this chip, but the performance-per-cost value is far above anything else we have.

The layoffs at WeWork begin. The situation is so bad that those laid off first are happiest. Those left behind will work 12-hour days laying off colleagues only to be laid off when they finish. If you just quit, you lose benefits.

The embarrassing worship of comic book heroes by adults. At a time we are supposed to put away childish things.

Well, the technology is available, so...someone is doing it. Render 3D models and avatars from photograph so you can simulate sex with just about anyone.

Crazy. Law enforcement plants a GPS tracker on a suspect's car. Suspect finds and removes it. Suspect is charged with stealing police property.

Machine learning and satellite imagery are help us discover things on this planet. Even in places where we have been looking with all our technology for a hundred years. We know far less about our planet than we let on.

Tim Cook discusses the trade off of discarding privacy for technology "advances." Many existing algorithms need data to function. Is it right to simply take data?

Thursday 21 November 2019

Mr. Zuckerburg has a quiet dinner with Mr. Trump at the White House. Was anyone tweeting or posting during the conversation? At one time, it would have been astonishing for someone in industry who was this young to have such a meeting with our President. How times have changed.

When did it become a civil right to be able to repair things you buy?

Apple shows that it doesn't favor developers who poke around in beta code and tell the world what they find about next year's products.

AI and disrupting the job market. If a tool allows a person to do things faster, that tool is disrupting the job market because the person uses the tool instead of hiring another fella' to help him. See, e.g., the hammer and nail.

oooops, it appears that the Ring door bell camera network was run from an Amazon office in Ukraine. National security and all that come into question.

Nvidia releases new drivers for older GPUs that significantly boost performance.

System76 announces its plans to design and build its Linux laptop computers real soon now.

Apple begins building an office campus in Austin, Texas where 5,000 to 15,000 persons will work.

ASUS shows two mobile workstations with 17" screens.

Friday 22 November 2019

And now we have the Tesla Cybertruck at just under $40,000. Some will love it, while many others already joke about it.

And complimenting the Cybertruck is the ATV or whatever.

Alphabet X is experimenting with an "everyday robot" to help out in the office. I find it helpful to stand and walk and take out the trash by myself.

Google and contracts with our military. There was a time when American companies proudly worked to protect the lives of Americans in harm's way. Somewhere along the line we all went terrible wrong.

Google slowly moves it Smart Compose feature from Gmail to Google Docs.

The surveillance state grows in Russia with Russian software required on all gadgets that are made anywhere.

Saturday 23 November 2019

Two news items on downloading apps: (1) the 1/80 rule where 1% of suppliers have 80% of downloads (2) about 30Billion (with a B) downloads in the last three months. That is a large number.

The talent and celebrity wars continue in the gaming world as Facebook signs another star away from Twitch.

In America, we have free speech. Sometimes that is annoying. See, e.g., advertising everywhere about anything. We should rid the airwaves and Internet of the annoyance and just keep the good stuff. Hmm, sounds like less than free speech.

By year's end, it appears that Apple will have sold 60million AirPods in 2019. Really? I find them silly, but how can I argue with 60million people?

The state of Louisiana was hacked this week. Close friends there confirm that everything is down...all week. No ransom paid, and promises that services will return. Happy Holidays.

Sunday 24 November 2019

Alienware releases new PCs with new AMD processors and, of course, wild styling that gamers love.

Self-contained server systems that are cooled by liquids. Just plug in the the power cord and turn it on.

A couple of clicks and we buy something. It appears at the front door. What have we wrought?

Another example of people assuming that Hillary Clinton would be elected President. Facebook embedded employees in all campaigns to make it look balanced. One such person "helped' Trump win, but now regrets it and...well, we know the rest of the story.

Quick git commands. Git is the standard of practice today, so might as well learn it and be prepared to switch to the next thing when it comes along.

A comedic actor decries the shift from nation states to plutocratic rule. Perhaps someone will listen to him.

Which tech skills are valued? SQL tops the list, and I cannot understand that.

The bus ticket theory of genius: an obsessive interest in a particular topic.

It appears that some people still believe you need a journalism degree to be a writer. I'm not sure where that idea ever originated, but it certainly isn't true.

And younger adults are publishing their own books and doing other things to cut out "the middleman."

A guide to publishing your own book(s). There are some steps you want to do (obtain an ISBN), understand copyright.

Writing workshops: like just about anything else, if they are good, they are good. I had the privilege of attending excellent ones.

Writing for the KDnuggets site.