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: 31 August-6 September, 2020

Summary of this week:

• Samsung has new production of 16Gbit telephone RAM
• Walmart+ is here to compete with Amazon Prime
• Google creates Kids Space for Android tablets
• Qualcomm releases Snapdragon 732G
• Lenovo creates new lines of Android tablets and Yoga 9 laptops
• Nvidia shows new GPUs in the 3000 line
• Intel announces 11th generation processors for laptops
• Qualcomm shows new Snapdragon for Windows PCs
• Pentagon continues with Microsoft on JEDI contract

Monday 31 August 2020

A look at the small but growing industry in autonomous ships.

Where the money is: $1billion a year in game logins are stolen.

Samsung starts products of 16 GigaBit mobile RAM chips. Smartphones will have more memory at lower prices.

Excellent short essay by Seth Godin on college and education and learning. "we’re discovering that a commitment to life-long learning is more important than a four-year sabbatical"

Some attempts at moving spiritual faith in to big business. The military, police, et al. have had chaplains for centuries. There is much room for misdeeds here, but some hope.

Tuesday 1 September 2020

Google announces Kids Space: a way to make Android tablets easier on parents wanting their kids to use an Android tablet for school this year.

Lenovo releases a line of Android tablets.

Lenovo introduces a new line of portable computers called the Yoga 9.

Qualcomm releases the Snapdragon 732G processors for gaming smartphones.

Perhaps the biggest winner in the year of the virus is Zoom as—no surprise here—they have a blockbuster financial quarter.

Move over Amazon Prime as we now have Walmart+. $98-a-year membership fee brings free, same-day delivery and all sorts of goodies.

Apple is making 75million 5G phones for sale later this year. What economic crisis in the year of the virus?

Wednesday 2 September 2020

Nvidia has a few announcements.

Nvidia surprises us with the RTX 3090 at $1,499. It will run 60 frames per second at 8K resolution. Gaming is big money.

Nvidia updates their GeForce RTX 2000 series with a 3000 series. The main entry is the RTX 3080 at $699. As expected, it has twice the ooomph as last year's model.

Nvidia also showed new streaming features under the umbrella name Nvidia Broadcast.

Microsoft releases technology to help detect deepfake videos.

It is actually really here now. ZTE sells a smartphone where the selfie camera sees through the display. There is no notch or other visible place for the lens.

Alienware ups the refresh rate from 240 to 360Hz on its top-of-the-line laptops.

Got $2,000? Get Samsung's new folding phone. Well, it has two screens, so might as well charge twice the price for it.

Very clever. Amazon drivers are making it look like they are close to the distribution center so they get the jobs. Hang a phone in a tree or set it under a bush.

Rumors of an Apple laptop with Apple Silicon coming this year. 12" screen, less than one kilogram, 15-hour battery life.

HP updates their Z line of laptop computers.

Thursday 3 September 2020

Xanadu (the company, not the place) announces a quantum cloud platform.

Qualcomm updates its Snapdragon processor is that made to run a Windows PC. Acer and HP promise new laptops coming real soon now.

Here is Acer's offering with the new Snapdragon.

Civilization is saved: The Mandalorian's second season on Disney starts October 30th.

Essay tests graded by software. Reverse engineer the software, give a list a keywords, score 100% on all tests. Education? Really?

Engineers at Purdue have a new coating that you put on paper and then put all sorts of electronic components on the coated paper. Cheap, flexible electronics.

Friday 4 September 2020

Qualcomm offers their version of adaptive noise cancellation. This is similar to Apple's products. And so why do hearing aids cost ten times as much as wireless earbuds when they do the same task?

Researchers are building a handheld game device that has no batteries. Simple solar cells and button pushes provide the power. It is a research project with the aim of learning how to do this better.

Big tech—whose workers are staying home—are making tools so that workers can go back to the office. There is a big market for this in government offices.

The eSports industry has stepped into politics by allowing governments to invest. Many of those governments are malevolent.

The governors of France are to spend $8.4Billion in two years on digital companies as part of a stimulus after the year of the virus.

TCL claims to have a new type of display technology that is better for the health of our eyes.

As a measure of how rich the big tech companies are...Facebook is paying about 400,000 users to be monitored during the election to see how Facebook is used. They have money to burn on useless projects involving hundreds of thousands of persons.

Using the year of the virus as a good excuse, Burger King is experimenting with "touchless" food factories (won't call them restaurants). These places will have fewer employees and will be less expensive to operate.

SpaceX continues to launch Starlink satellites. They now report users have 100MegaBitsPerSecond download speeds.

Lenovo tip toes into the market of selling laptops already loaded with Linux.

Our Dept of Justice is readying antitrust charges against Google. Here we go again. IBM. Microsoft. Now Google.

Saturday 5 September 2020

Much ado about Facebook's election campaign bans. Bottom line: free advertising on Facebook will cease. Incumbent candidates will cheer as they have more money for paid advertising. As usual, these things favor the incumbents.

Regulations are written by those who are in office. The regulations favor those who are in office. Who da' thunk it? (everyone)

Amazon adds 10,000 more jobs in Bellevue.

Researchers at Harvard have a fabric that can return to its programmed shape when water is applied.

Once again, we learn that the Floating Point Operations Per Second (flops) measure is almost useless when comparing similar processors. Run you software on the machine and see which goes faster. Boring but true.

Global median salaries based on computer programming languages. I guess I have to consider learning Scala.

Sunday 6 September 2020

Now we have "drone delays" to make baseball games even longer.

Object-oriented programming. Let's continue the argument. Did we go to it because it worked or did we go to things we wanted that were only available for certain programming languages. I embraced the object paradigm in 1983. I have been disappointed in the reality ever since.

This post is an excellent example of clear thinking through clear writing. (1) Write something. (2) Take is apart. (3) Learn something. Go back to step (1).

The idea of recording your dreams to find subjects for writing.

How one freelance writer went from practically nothing to earning $100,00 a year. Constantly push for better pay. Constantly market your skills. Grow.

I am surprised that people would ask such a question. No, you don't need a "degree in writing" to be a writer. What is a "degree in writing?"

One writer's lessons from writing a novel.

One writer's lessons from self-publishing.

This writer reminds us that the year of the virus is NOT the worst of times. There have been far worse.

Regardless of everything else—observe, observe, and observe.