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: 3-9 February, 2020

Summary of this week:

• Democrats fail to count people at the Iowa caucus
• The US President is acquitted of impeachment charges
• 97% of major international airports fail cybersecurity test
• Nvidia's GeForce Now game streaming is on
• Google grows jobs in Canada
• Amazon grows jobs in Bellevue
• Coronavirus highlights the surveillance ability of China's governors

Monday 3 February 2020

Uber is now a protector of us all as it suspends 240 accounts in Mexico to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

The brother of Jeff Bezos' girlfriend is suing Mr. Bezos. As the world turns in the lives of the rich and famous.

For the cost conscious: Walmart sells at $199 laptop. It runs Linux software faster than Windows 10 software most of the time.

Tuesday 4 February 2020

We need a scapegoat, and here is one. This company, sort of part of the Democratic party, built the app that didn't work in Iowa.

The Democratic Party has formed a counter disinformation team. Is that a double negative? Never mind. More tech jobs.

Someone tests airport cybersecurity worldwide. Only three of the top 100 international airports passed the basic tests.

Twitter suspends a "large number" of fake accounts. These were being used to hack the telephone numbers of legitimate users. When did we depend on Twitter for personal safety?

$80billion: that's the amount Google has paid to Play Store developers for their apps.

Alphabet (Google) has a mixed financial quarter. I would take all the shares they would give me.

How do you trick the world into thinking there is a traffic jam? Load a little red wagon full of smartphones and walk slowly. Funny how simple some of this stuff is.

Jeff Bezos boosts city government in Washington D.C. as he paid $16,000 in parking tickets while sprucing up his house there.

YouTube—that funny little web site where we put baby videos—is a $15billion-a-year business.

Climate change models are now predicting much higher temperatures. It is almost as if the models have been programmed to give estimates that are too high or something. Modeling such is difficult and fraught with errors.

The Chinese are making big strides in building their own processors. An 8-core x86 model will be available real soon now.

Intel shifts its direction in building processors tailored to machine learning. They bought several companies and appears to have picked which one is best to continue funding.

Wednesday 5 February 2020

Well, no one ever said writing software was easy. Some people seem to do it well while others, not so well.

Streaming video games: Nvidia's GeForce Now is actually here for $5 a month.

Several of the bigger tech companies are passing on this year's Mobile World Congress in Spain due to worries of world travel in the era of the coronavirus.

Big business in Kenya: doing the homework assignments of students (even college students) in the developed world.

The semiconductor industry had a bad, bad 2019.

Google's Chrome browser version 80 is here.

Dan Houser cofounded Rockstar Games and produced blockbuster $$$ games  including Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne, Red Dead Redemption. He is leaving the company.

Thursday 6 February 2020

Another group of European regulators is investigating another successful American company. Fine$$$ coming.

Lists of the most-used and most-want-to-learn programming languages. Programmers want to learn Go—a little-used language today. The C language is #2 in the most-used list.

The CIA opens its cloud computing to more bidders. It looks like the future will not be dominated by Amazon.

The role of the ethicist at tech companies. Someone needs to say, "Yes, we can do that, but NO we won't do that."

The Apple Watch was doubted for years. Now Apple sells more watches than the entire Swiss watch industry. You won't, however, see Rolex disappear from Wimbledon anytime soon.

LinkedIn founder and CEO Jeff Weiner is stepping from the CEO job.

Extreme daily commutes into Silicon Valley's jobs.

Google releases a tool that detects fake and modified images.

Some hope in the treatment of cancers as 1,000 scientists build the most-detailed yet image of cancer.

Friday 7 February 2020

Amazon to grow from 2,000 to 15,000 employees in Bellevue, WA.

Uber releases its quarterly numbers. $1.1Billion lost in 13 weeks. That's about $12million a day.

Google to grow its workforce in Canada from 1,500 to 5,000.

More advances in the making of medicine using AI techniques.

The Chinese doctor who tried to warn everyone of the coronavirus has died from it.

In China, the governors are requiring the subjects to wear face masks but also requiring them to look at the surveillance cameras and...gosh it's complicated to rule all those people.

Google and Facebook request permission to turn on their undersea cable to Taiwan and the Philippines, but not to Hong Kong and mainland China.

eSports teams in Texas high schools grows an order of magnitude this year.

Advances in chemistry and physics are leading us to 3.5" disk drives that hold 80TeraBytes.

Must see video of how a film from 1896 Paris can appear in 4K clarity.

With Nvidia's GeForce Now gaming up and running, Mac users can now play Windows-only games. There, don't you feel better today?

And this story is all over the Internet, so it must be important: Netflix will let us disable the auto playing of trailers and previews. I guess I didn't realize the magnitude of this problem.

Saturday 8 February 2020

A look at AMD's 64-core processor as AMD is taking the top spot in high-performance processors away from Intel.

"he five biggest U.S. stocks — Apple, Microsoft, Google’s parent company, Amazon and Facebook — have grown so explosively that they account for nearly 18% of the S&P 500 index by market value, when they make up just 1% of its population."

The governors of China show how well they watch their subjects. Western tech companies provided most of the ability to do so.

People are writing software that predict crimes and other things. Some people want the "algorithms" regulated. What they should want are conversations with the other people.

The side effects of the coronavirus are demonstrating the rise in influence of China. Predictable and predicted.

Clearview AI scapes billions of photos of persons from the Internet. This has been harshly criticized. But, the data is also used to rescue victims of human trafficking. Life is rarely simple. Who will watch whom to ensure good is done, but no evil?

23 years ago, Apple and Next (anyone remember Next?) merged or something and Apple started its growth to a trillion dollars.

Someone is not telling the whole truth: Bernie Sander criticizes big tech, but receives more donations from big tech than anyone.

Someone finally gets it as Luxembourg will have free public transportation to reduce traffic congestion.

Sunday 9 February 2020

Wonderful. I database of old book illustrations. These used to be the standard. Where did we lose this?

An insider's view of what went wrong with the persons creating software for the ill-fated Iowa caucus. Be careful when talking to tech persons who work on political campaigns. What you hear may bring severe illness.

An excellent article on salaries in the tech industries. One point: after 15 years on the job, you are sunk. Of course that is illegal in most countries, but companies are not sued.

Efforts to generate electricity from water.

Some persons have sued Facebook for a 2018 hack. Last time I checked, I pay $0 to use Facebook. How can I sue them? I guess there is a way. I admit ignorance to many of these things.

Where the money is: cryptocurrency scams hauled in $4Billion (with a B) last year.

Coronavirus, the flu, comparisons, politics, panic, and such.

Stronger rumors that Apple will have a $399 iPhone this year. Right direction, but $199 would be far more reasonable and possible.

News Flash (not): the current US President doesn't communicate the way prior Presidents did. This still comes as a shock to some. I am shocked that adults haven't yet grasped this concept.

Deep Fake videos are appearing on TikTok. What took so long?

Want a faster, more-efficient Linux? "Clear Linux" from Intel has beat Ubuntu and Fedora on a $199 laptop.

Generating electricity at night as heat moves from the earth into the heavens. Solar cells work in the sunlight. This technique works the other 12 hours of the day.

How long does it take to write a book? My formula: 40 words/minute (not fast), 2,400 words per hour, 2 hours per day (not hard) makes 4,800 words per day. A 65,000 word novel (standard these days) means 13 1/2 days. So let's go slow and make it three weeks. Two hours a day and a novel every month. Next question.

Writers and others who sit in an office: stand and walk once every hour. An hour of exercise after eight hours of sitting doesn't help. Get up and move at least every hour.

There are discouraging times in writing and attempting to have writing published. These are normal. I guess misery does love company or something. Persevere. This is normal.

I want to write that great novel, but haven't the .... whatever. Other things to write instead.

This person's journal concentrates on their experiences of the day.

Write 10,000 words (or any large number of words) each week. This is a variation of what Weinberg called "The Fieldstone Method," and other writers called it other things. Constantly take notes on life. Writing becomes much easier.

Someone read 25 posts on writing and summarized 10 points on writing. This is actually pretty good stuff.

Yet another post on yet another benefit of writing in a journal---one of the few practices I recommend to everyone.

The benefit of writing FAST (or quickly if you want to be correct). It goes back to not editing while drafting. One thing at a time. Do it.