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: 23–29 November, 2020

Summary of this week:

• Thanksgiving day this week in the US
• Better-than-expected financial quarter for HP
• IBM cuts 10,000 jobs in Europe
• We have Windows virtualized on an Apple with M1 processor

Monday 23 November 2020

President Donald Trump made Twitter really famous. Twitter has to act like it didn't like it. The same goes for many journalists. Trump made them stars. They have to act like he didn't.

Some history of version control systems that worked across networks and how that aided the open-source software movement to grow. Funny how "control" allowed community to grow.

A theory about the theories about the coronavirus from China.

Bill Gates predicts that the vaccines will work by February and end the year of the virus. He advocates locking in for the winter.

A prediction that computer vision will be the next big thing in software. Everyone will be doing it as we will take images of things and let the computer do all the work.

Tuesday 24 November 2020

It appears that the year of the virus was a poor one for smartphone sales.

Intel quietly closes Intel Studios—a big AR/VR project.

When you leave big social media to go to small social media, you say goodbye on big social media. Some find this puzzling.

Is this story from 2020 or 1880? Amazon hires Pinkerton detectives to bust up union organizers.

It seems that the year of the virus and "flatten the curve" (remember that phrase?) has flattened the American movie theater.

The year of the virus means that Oxford cannot find a single "word of the year." We each can choose our favorite.

In other news from them, Oxford has a virus vaccine that appears to be practical, i.e., usable and inexpensive. Odd how we can call it the "Oxford vaccine" but can't call the virus the "Wuhan virus."

The General Image Manipulation Program or GIMP is now 25 years old. Quite useful.

The year of the virus must soon be ending as Comcast is returning its data restrictions.

Wednesday 25 November 2020

The years of the Trump administration (daily berated by the New York Times and Washington Post) have been very good financially to the New York Times and Washington Post. Now these and others, whom Mr. Trump either made rich, famous, or both, have to scream how Mr. Trump was an awful person.

HP has a better-than-expected financial quarter as the year of the virus brought growth in home computing hardware sales.

A new term for me: Dark Stores that sell groceries but online only and for delivery. No browsing the produce aisles.

For those keeping track, Elon Musk is now richer than Bill Gates. They are both worth over $120Billion (with a B). If someone confiscated all their wealth and distributed it to every American, we would all not be able to buy an iPhone.

Google claims to have 400 games being readied for Stadia.

A possible future for Linux on the new Apple Silicon. In the past, Apple hasn't revealed the kind of information needed to have Linux running well.

Nice website that shows if a piece of software is ready to run on Apple Silicon.

Thursday 26 November 2020

Real news that isn't news: A European government demands special tax money from successful American companies.

More news that isn't news: spend a long time in space in confined quarters with little gravity, and your body reacts poorly.

IBM cuts 10,000 jobs in Europe.

AWS had a big outage in North America. These things are not supposed to happen.

This is big news: Apple may move much of the factories from China to Vietnam. While Americans may shrug, this is a major shift in those two countries who have a long and heated rivalry.

In nearby Baltimore, the school system is hacked and held for ransom.

Amazon cuts the price of its tablet computers. These are already the best value in computing.

One users very positive experience with the new Mac Mini with Apple Silicon.

We have the One-Seventy Rule of Farming: 1% of the farms operate 70% of the farmland.

Friday 27 November 2020

The week continues to be a quiet one. The experts tell everyone to stay home. Families gather anyways.

Amazon, owned by the richest person alive, is giving workers a bonus. A whole $300. Wow! (not).

ooooops, medical records of 16million Brazilian COVID patients leaked online. Got those contact tracing apps up to full speed.

This story must be important as it is all over the Internet: Amazon warehouse workers will walk off the job on November 27th ("Black Friday" in the US).

Saturday 28 November 2020

Samsung has a 98" TV on sale. The regular price is $100,000, but for a short time it is half off. Rush to Walmart right now!

The year of the virus has been very good to Amazon. They have hired lots of folks. The warehouse and delivery jobs aren't great jobs, but they are paychecks.

The reaction of India's governors to the year of the virus has plunged them into a recession.

Researchers find a large body of fresh water under the ocean floor off the coast of Hawaii.

Someone has too much time on their hands. A programmer has Windows up and running on a Mac using Apple Silicon.

Sunday 29 November 2020

"Experts have warned since the beginning of the pandemic, and the unexpected national experiment in online learning, that remote schooling would take a serious academic toll on children." I am happy to hear that the "experts" figured this out.

"The best lesson of high school might be that everyone has a noise in their heads, everyone feels uncomfortable and everyone would appreciate a little kindness and respect."—Seth Godin

A grad students uses a $50 Raspberry Pi and his brains to hack into a $50,000 Tesla. It's a matter of numbers. There are a few smart folks at Tesla working on security while there are 10,000 smart folks out there toying with Tesla's security.

Some evidence that the new Apple M1 processor performs quite well on machine learning and other highly parallel tasks.

The continuing saga of the monolith in the Utah desert. Here today, gone today.

An in-depth look at the Apple M1 processor.

Bad habits that keep the writer from writing (writing is one of them, but take care with that as writing is writing).

The idea of recursive or spiral writing. As you write, you learn. Now, loop back and edit the earlier writing.

Thoughts on obtaining referrals for writers.

Got an idea? Start. Got a plan? Start. Want to write? Start. Want to play the guitar? Start. You get the picture.