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: 7–13 December, 2020

Summary of this week:

• The saga of the Monoliths continues
• Chuck Yeager dies at 97
• Charley Pride dies at 86
• Nvidia has breakthrough in training GANs
• Apple announces over-the-ear headphones
• Hyundai purchases Boston Dynamics
• Companies join to form the Modern Computing Alliance

Monday 7 December 2020

Experts agree that the push to online learning in the year of the virus didn't work well. There are small spots of excellence, but generally, nope. And they agree that it increased the divide between the haves and have nots.

In Russia, you never know what you  might find in old buildings. These "explorers" found 1970s era Soviet computers.

The Monoliths keep appears, disappearing, reappearing, and all that.

Once again, someone predicts that next year will be the year that Linux computers appear on desktops at work. Will we go back to work next year?

Tuesday 8 December 2020

If they don't like you, pretend you are someone else. Xiaomi in India rebrands itself as an Indian company.

Uber backs out of the self-driving car research business as it sells that unit.

Our Food and Drug Administration awards Palantir a contract for data analysis.

Our FCC awards Starlink (Spacex) $885million in subsidies as part of yet another rural broadband program.

Headline says it all, "Airbnb launches nonprofit to provide stays for essential workers and refugees"

Nvidia develops a new way to train generative adversarial networks (GANs) using 1/10th to 1/20th the training data.

Chuck Yeager dies at 97.

This story is repeated in many places today: Florida state police, with guns drawn, raid home of a COVID-19 whistleblower. She had built a dashboard for the state (her employer), but refused to put fake data into it. She quit and was working on her own from home.

Ikea stops creating its catalog after 70 years.

Wednesday 9 December 2020

Coming from Apple next week, the AirPods Max. Over-the-ear and noise-canceling headphones for $549.

Our Senate approves an appointee to the FCC.

FireEye, a US company with state-of-the-art cyber defense tools, was itself hacked.

This is the kind of work we should be doing in tech: Google shows Look to Speak. If you cannot speak and cannot type messages with your hands, you can select phrases by moving where you are looking.

Just about everyone is filing antitrust lawsuits against Facebook today.

This story appears to be a big deal: Elon Musk moves from California to Texas. Less regulation. Simple business decision.

More documents from China where they are jailing Uihgers for simply being under age 40.

Thursday 10 December 2020

As expected, everyone files antitrust lawsuits against Facebook. Facebook's managers bought companies. Each purchase was a business risk, but most succeeded. I suppose they succeeded too much.

Facebook responds in their blog calling the lawsuits "revisionist history" of purchases made in 2012 and 2014. They have a point. If they violated laws eight years ago, what took so long?

The news Playstation and XBox systems are selling well in the year of the virus.

DoorDash goes public and its value rises 85% on opening day. The year of the virus has been good to them.

Headline says it all: Hyundai purchases Boston Dynamics for $921M, makers of Spot dog robot.

Got a lot of money and a great big wall? Get this new 110" TV from Samsung.

Friday 11 December 2020

Boeing progresses in flight tests of its unmanned refueling aircraft.

Now we have the Modern Computing Alliance. All the big players and an assortment of smaller players are in it. Not sure what it will do other than "tackle complex problems in computing."

As a leading indicator on the back-to-the-office (non)movement, Apple won't call in most of its employees until June 2021.

Amazon wants to train 29million people in the next five years to work on cloud technologies. As the story says, "Montana to Nigeria." Please remember that the more trained people there are, the lower the salaries for each person.

"Cyberpunk 2077" has had 8million copies pre-ordered. The definition of success has changed.

Analysts on Wall Street evaluated the purchases that caused Facebook to be charged with antitrust practices EIGHT YEARS AGO. The charges have little basis.

Some return to a normal world: Harrison Ford is coming back to be in a fifth "Indiana Jones" movie!

Saturday 12 December 2020

oooops, can you imagine that some people will lie to gain sympathy and money. Many "Black-owned restaurants" aren't.

Disney+ reveals everything that will be on Disney+. It is a lot.

Norman Abramson dies at 88. He helped create the ALOHAnet. That was one of the first wireless networks that combined satellite and terrestrial RF with wired networking. It used to be in all the textbooks on computing and communications.

Our FDA has authorized the use of a vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech. Let the logistics begin.

In praise of jotting an idea for later use and possible brilliance.

In Virginia, we now have a curfew which is mostly for show. We tend to be lackadaisical in our behavior after midnight. (I spelled lackadaisical correctly...I looked it up)

Oracle is moving from Silicon Valley to Texas. Less regulation.

Elon Musk reveals the problem with corporate America: too many MBAs.

Sunday 13 December 2020

Charley Pride dies at 86.

Headline says it all: Kids are sick of Zoom too

Lots of broohaha regarding Jill Biden's Ed.D. and carrying the title "Dr." I have a PhD in engineering. Some people call me Dr. Phillips, but in most of my career I was called other things that shall not be repeated.

So far this is research on mice, but if it would work on us folks this drug would restore brain and other functions to the elderly. This would truly be amazing.

The Zodiac Killer 340 code is broken after 51 years. No details that would tell us who the Zodiac Killer was, just musings of a deranged person.

A thought about all this censorship (blocking and removing) of phrases related to "stealing the election" and such. If this "stolen" talk was mere foolish jibberings of fools, it seems you would want to let the fools make bigger fools of themselves via telling all the world their foolish thoughts. The actions of the self-appointed-censors tend to show fear on their part. Just a thought.

Microsoft brings x64 emulation to Arm processors.

Some writers share their advice on income. If you want to earn a living as a freelance writer, you must spend most of your time marketing, not writing.

Common obstacles to being a freelance writer. Folks, if you want to work for a living you have to work.