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 June, 2020

Summary of this week:

• IBM withdraws from work on facial recognition technology
• Well, maybe not
• Amazon denies its facial recognition technology to law enforcement for a year
• France and Germany to create an EU cloud service
• Big big rumors about Apple announcing the shift to its own processors
• Just Eat buys GrubHub
• Sony releases the Playstation 5
• Internet Archive closes its National Emergency Library

Monday 8 June 2020

And Facebook—whose celebrity CEO has seen a similar growth in wealth—deletes 200 accounts over the weekend. They hate hate groups which makes them...well, good guys.

Bye bye cubicles; hello individual sealed pods. Welcome to the post-pandemic world. I doubt these will appear as it will cost too much money to do all this.

Take care when buying tech from Chinese companies who tout tools to help with public health.

Yet another possible treatment for diseases of the brain: using light and sound at 40 cycles-per-second. The pressure wave may crunch the plaque in the brain. Hoping this does some good some day.

Also booming during the year of the pandemic are sales of bicycles with electric motors.

If you have donated anything to police or law enforcement organizations, are you now tainted? Does helping the 98.6% associate you with the few "rotten apples?"

Tuesday 9 June 2020

In a major change, IBM officially declares that it will no longer work on general purpose facial recognition technologies.

MIT researchers advance memristor technology.

Some members of Congress are writing a bill that will correct all ills in law enforcement in the US.

Angst and copyright on Twitch.

More efforts by persons who hate "hate speech" to ban all hateful things—excepting themselves of course as their hatred is correct.

After some adjustments to help it withstand higher winds, the Golden Gate Bridge now "sings" in such winds.

Wednesday 10 June 2020

Fear and loathing, and some optimism, about Apple moving from Intel to their own processors in 2021.

The famous big-tech companies are doing quite well in the year of the virus with Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft hitting all-time highs in the stock market.

It appears that Intel—and that translates to most of us—has some big security holes in computers running its processors—and that translates to most of us.

PimEyes appears to be a Polish version of Clearview AI except any of us can use this site. They make money by selling Premium access.

Must-see video: Google shows a noise-cancelling feature of Google Meet. It removes barking dogs, mumbling kids, potato chip bag wrinkles and such while your voice still comes through clearly.

Panasonic joins the market of allowing us to use their good cameras in our ZoomTeams meetings.

I like this one: the transparent face mask. It will be a great help to the hearing impaired and provide the rest of us with a clue as to what other people are saying and feeling.

Thursday 11 June 2020

How US companies, many working on government contracts, are hiring Chinese talent. This is all legal.

Google releases its first beta version of Android 11.

Regulators in California declare Uber and Lyft drivers to be employees. If this holds, that ends those companies in California. Oh wait, the year of the pandemic ended those companies everywhere.

Amazon puts the use of its facial recognition technology by law enforcement for a year.

Elon Musk declares that Tesla is ready to manufacture its big trucks.

Just Eat has just bought GrubHub.

Perhaps IBM won't stop working on facial recognition technologies after all.

Starbucks is shifting from "come in, sit, drink coffee and visit" to "walk through, grab your coffee, and keep moving." I guess that I'm just too old for that.

Let's all vote via the Internet this year. Well, there are a few problems with that. And the Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans know about them.

Poking holes in the concept of microservices.

The gap between doing some cool experiments in machine learning to using the results on the job.

Friday 12 June 2020

Apple provides details of this year's online-only WWDC for June 22-26.

Adobe has a good financial quarter, but not as good as some financial experts predicted. Hmmm, sounds like those predictors were wrong and should be replaced.

And here is the Playstation 5 from Sony.

Headline says it all, "Twitter deletes over 170,000 accounts linked to the Chinese government."

Here comes the COVID-19 surcharge. News Flash (not): prices on just about everything will rise as businesses try to recover from the panic shutdown. There was a cost associated with all that.

Where the money is: health information and sometimes mis-information.

System76 is now offering AMD processors in its Linux laptops.

The Internet Archive or "Wayback machine" is facing more lawsuits from publishers.

Microsoft jumps on the bandwagon of those declaring that they will not let law enforcement use their facial recognition technology. Can I hop a ride on that wagon? I won't let law enforcement use my facial recognition technology (do I have any?).

Saturday 13 June 2020

Facebook ran an "contest" to find algorithms that detect deep fakes. The best entry wasn't too good. Facebook states that deep fakes isn't much of a problem.

Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO, is attempting to give away $1Billion—effectively. Oh, that last word makes it more difficult. He concludes that it isn't as difficult as most (who have $1Billion to give away) claim. And there are plenty of folks who shout that other people should give away their money.

The governors of China plan to spend $1.4Trillion (with a T) on technology in the near future. Where do they get all that money? Simple, they claim everything in their realm.

It appears that Elon Musk's Boring Company has customers in a queue for tunnels in Las Vegas.

The governors of San Francisco move towards have non-law enforcement persons respond to calls that are not related to law enforcement. What did WE do to OURSELVES so that it is news that WE use common sense?

FreeBSD creates a code of conduct. It reads like the things some of us were told in kindergarten. I suppose some of us weren't told these things. That is a pity.

A recent study shows...Americans 20-35 are having sexual intercourse much less than prior to the year 2000.

Real news that isn't news: local law enforcement in America are using software that identifies individuals in crowds.

Sunday 14 June 2020

Anonymous Camera: this is a new app that turns your face and body into blurs in real time in video. Hide in plain sight.

SpaceX launches a few dozen more of its Starlink satellites. The 5:21 a.m. launch put on quite a show.

An annual survey on what programming languages programmers use and when and how and why they use them. And a few other questions asked of programmers.

A new simulation performed at Cambridge (UK not MA) shows that face masks are key to stopping the spread of a virus that spreads via water drops that go out and in via the areas covered by a face mask. I hope they didn't spend a lot of money on that one.

Intel releases information on its coming Lakefield processors.

The switch to Solid State Drives in the latest game consoles from Microsoft and Sony and how that brings a significant change.

It appears that some sort of 80/20 rule applies to this year's virus. 20% of those infected do 80% of the spreading. The rest of the infected never pass the virus to anyone. The problem is we cannot identify these "super spreaders."

Rumors about how Apple will transition to its own processors. Perhaps a laptop will be the first computer with the new processors.

Thoughts on writing under a pen name.

A simple, small exercise that means much more than it seems: write a thank you note to someone.

The exercise of exercise, in this case walking, that helps the mind.