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: 27 July-2 August, 2020

Summary of this week:

• Apple has a $129 Thunderbolt 3 cable
• Four big tech CEOs "appear before" Congress this week
• And they all grow richer as their stock values rise
• India is a tech hacking hub of talent
• Qualcomm unveils Quick Charge 5
• GPT-3 cost $15million to build, that is nothing
• CES 2021 will be online only
• Microsoft 365 is pulling in $20Billion a year (with a B)
• and some genius in government learns that face masks defeat facial recognition

Monday 27 July 2020

Let us remember that the coming national election is operated locally—often by groups with scant resources and poor practices.

Apple now sells a $129 cable to connect devices. To understand the price, it is (1) two meters long, (2) braided, and (3) delivers 40GigaBitsPerSecond data rate.

Researchers have a photon-based (light) processing unit that can perform calculation several orders of magnitude faster than current electron-based (electricity) systems. We shall see if this becomes practical.

Boosted beyond its importance by students, Python remains the most-used programming language (per this study).

Strong rumors that Apple will release a new iMac this week. No Apple Silicon and no new case.

Tuesday 28 July 2020

India has tech talent. Hacking requires tech talent. One and one equals a hub of hacking the other world.

Qualcomm unveils Quick Charge 5. It is a battery charging system that safely applies more voltage and current to charge a phone in 15 minutes or give it 50% charge in 5 minutes.

Another hypocrisy-filled week in Washington as House Democrats are to grill tech CEOs who favor that same party in politics. What will they argue? How much to give in campaign contributions this year?

Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Facebook come to Capitol Hill this week. They have more money than the US government. Interesting times.

Intel releases another 10-core processor.

A person found his way into source code repositories of 50 companies—many are rich and famous. They code is now up on GitHub for all to see and learn. It is unfortunate that some will use the access to hack companies for illicit gain.

The Inside Job: those working at Twitter faked help desk tickets to gain access to the accounts of the celebrities.

A detailed study on typing latency, i.e., how long it takes for software to show they key you just pressed.

Headline says it all in this strange tale: "The Cold War Bunker That Became Home to a Dark-Web Empire"

Solar power works in places where they have no power lines and diesel fuel is expensive. See these opium grows in Afghanistan as economic proof. Oooops, maybe this is a bad example.

Wednesday 29 July 2020

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2021 will be online only. No week in Vegas.

It appears that Rite Aid has been using facial recognition technology in hundreds of US stores for several years. Big Brother or sommon sense? They were protecting their employees from criminals or they were just being nosy?

Microsoft 365 (MS Office by subscription) is now a $20Billion-a-year (with a B) business.

AMD has a big financial quarter. This company is booming.

A look at Imint—a company in Sweden whose AI software boosts the video-producing capabilities of Chinese smartphones.

US big tech companies pay H-1B visa holders pretty well. Those hired by the same companies on the secondary market, however, are not paid well. Those are low-cost employees, and those are the ones who cut American jobs.

News Flash (not): wearing a mask hides your face from facial recognition systems. Well, that's why they used to tell everyone to unhood and take off your hate and remove your large sunglasses and...

Jeff Bezos' ex-wife—whose fortune has grown from $36 to $60 Billion in the last year—has donated over a billion$ to charities.

GPT-3 is turning heads everywhere. It cost about $15million to make. That amount is nothing to big tech companies. Whoooosh.

Thursday 30 July 2020

Today is the 37th anniversary of my marriage to Miss Karen B.

The big tech CEOs "appeared" before a House committee. Everyone managed to chastise them for their success. No one advocated for replacing them with representatives of the Communist Party of China.

Said representatives of said party have hacked the Vatican's computer networks.

Samsung has a good financial quarter with $6.8Billion in profits.

PayPal has, in some respects, its best quarter ever and adds 21million new active accounts.

Gotta' have a hobby: a programmer turns Mac OS 8 into an app you can run on MacOS and Windows and Linux.

Finding subtle connections among works of art (and just about everything else).

Friday 31 July 2020

Some quarterly financial reports.

Amazon has a good financial quarter.

Apple has yet another record financial quarter.

Facebook has more users than ever.

Google has amazing growth in their cloud business.

Electronic Arts (video gaming) has a big financial quarter.

Some members of Congress are beginning to understand the new economy.

Amazon obtains permission to launch 3,200 satellites to bring data from everyone on the planet back to Amazon to buy stuff.

Saturday 1 August 2020

I've seen movies where protestors stood for the American Flag and the anthem. Those were the movies where the communists invaded America people in occupied areas were shot for love of America. Oh, well, not a movie.

Are AI researchers chasing trophies instead of practical applications? Probably.

"White supremacist David Duke has been permanently banned from Twitter for violating the platform's rules on hate speech"...David Duke is still alive? Someone is still listening to him?

We all watched SpaceX put persons into orbit. Now comes the bigger test—return home safely.

A couple of teenagers are accused of masterminding the great Twitter hack of 2020. Perhaps they are geniuses who need a worthwhile challenge. Perhaps Twitter just bungled everything.

This story must be important as it is all over the Internet: our President will ban TikTok from the US.

In the year of the virus, stay-at-home and still-get-paid tech workers are exiting the high home prices and going places like Nevada.

Everyone staying home and watching TV? Well, Comcast lost 477,000 customers in three months alone.

We reach a milestone as a computer company passes an energy company in total value. Can't run computers without energy.

The rate of dementia is actually falling, but not as fast a life spans are growing. There are basic lifestyle practices that appear to influence the malady. Cut alcohol, smoking, head injuries. Get hearing aids and education. Get and stay at the right weight.

Sunday 2 August 2020

Facial recognition and entry to large public gatherings. It appears on the horizon.

The novelty and danger of text (sentences, paragraphs, articles, Tweets) generated by software (AI).

Here comes the ghost kitchen. Don't have a small-chain restaurant in your town yet? Its first appearance will be by delivery only from a ghost kitchen.

The right to knew history wins over the right to be forgotten in a German court.

Yet another survey of programming language popularity puts Python in tie for second with Java. JavaScript is firmly #1.

And now we have the "Hustle Economy." Skiddish bureaucrats killed not only millions of jobs during the year of the virus, but also entire lines of business.

Home design: now we have to have an office designed into the home. Goes back to those 1950s TV shows where the dad had a formal office and library in the home.

In the year of the virus, the book business remains strong.

Here are some good ideas for finding paying writing jobs. Find places that tried creating content, but stopped. They need helpers.

Some practical tips for rewriting fiction.

"Obviously it (a secret) has to fit the story you are telling, but if it is a feature or you can make it one without affecting the integrity of the story, be sure to point it out when you're writing your logline and your query letters."

Good tips for fixing your writing at the sentence level. If you can write a sentence, you can write a paragraph, and then write a page, a chapter, a book.

When attempting to write (or do just about anything by yourself) for a living, pay yourself first. You are, after all, the entire business.

Techniques for learning to write while you are reading.