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: 14-20 December, 2020

Summary of this week:

• John le Carre' dies at 89
• Alexa now has real-time language translation
• More versions of software appear that run natively on Apple Silicon
• We are in "the holidays" and there is little news

Monday 14 December 2020

John le Carre' dies at 89.

Reddit buys Dubsmash, which is some sort of TikTol competitor.

For what it is worth, Google stretches the year of the virus until September 2021 when they plan to return to the office building.

Seth Godin on the relative ease of writing to the world these days. "When we remove [all the old blocks]it turns out that we write more often, and writing more often leads to writing better." YES! AMEN! Type the words. Get it out. Move on to the next one.

Google is having widespread outages of many of its services.

Must-see chart that shows what type of energy (coal, petroleum, etc.) we've used where and when since 1800. It changes with time and you can loop back to review. Great information display.

When college students return to college towns, disease deaths rise. College students aren't dying, but the older folks around them are. This virus that kills the elders more than the youngsters is the stuff of many science fiction stories of the past several hundred years.

Tuesday 15 December 2020

Observation: The reaction to COVID-19 accelerated the divide between the haves and have nots. Those deciding on the policy (the reaction) were in the haves. The haves used COVID as an excuse to push the have nots further away. Just an observation.

Amazon's Alexa now does live language translation. The reasons for learning another language are dwindling.

Zoox (Amazon) shows its four-seat Robotaxi—a driver-less vehicle to transport folks about the city.

The year of the virus has been good for sales of game consoles.

Some definitions regarding 5G that we will see this year. 5G, at this time, is mostly a commercial and not a reality.

Here we go...the COVID-19 vaccinations begin. Many groups are vying for the "we're most important so give us the first shots" title.

There seems to a some benefit (instead of embarrassment) in claiming that you were recently hacked by the Russians.

Wednesday 16 December 2020

AWS launches CloudShell, which sounds like the command line on a Linux-based computer. There must be more to it than that.

Along comes Microsoft with versions of Office 365 that are compiled just for the new Apple Silicon.

Mozilla releases Firefox 84 which is also compiled just for the new Apple Silicon.

The University of Texas drops the use of software that evaluated applicants for its PhD Computer Science program.  The software ... well, let's say it was a bad idea that got worse as it was developed and used.

"people who ... feel like they need to be opining on something because they're rich as hell and kind of useless." Yes, pretty much sums up much of what we see day to day. I made millions$ with a computer, so listen to my opinion on whatever it is we are mumbling about.

Many are rushing to buy the new Macs with Apple Silicon. This leaves a large supply of Macs with Intel processors at lower-than-ever prices.

And just in time, a Google acqui-hire of Neverware and its CloudReady software allows us to turn older computers into Chromebooks.

Thursday 17 December 2020

The Attorneys General of 30 states are suing Google for anti-competitive behavior. Seems that "anti-competitive" equals "cooperative." Perhaps someone is misusing the English language.

Google has a machine learning tool that attempts to provide a framework for working across the dozens of languages used in India. There are many countries that have similar situations.

The managers at Twitter—long known for their expertise in viruses, biology, and medicine—WAIT huh what?... anyways, next week they will start censoring words about COVID-19 that they don't like.

Speaking of censorship and the English language, we learn from the managers at Twitch that "virgin" is an insult.

And a little more censorship, this time from the governors of New York state: they passed and signed a bill banning the sale of the battle flag of the Confederate States of America.

A note on the inefficiency of government: in 15 years NASA has spent $23Billion on the Orion spacecraft, which has actually been in space one time.

Friday 18 December 2020

Predictable and predicted: The logistics of vaccinating several hundred million persons are pretty darn hard—everyone giving press conferences daily is neither necessary nor helpful.

Building systems to detect active shooters. While the number and rate of such incidents declines, the publicity behind them generates revenue for such companies.

Twitter moves its "Spaces" networking service into beta testing. It is basically a clubhouse where friends can talk.

Google built a version of Android for the Internet of Things. It went no where in the marketplace. Google turns it off.

A Financial Times' investigative report on MindGeek and the online porn industry.

Rubrik acqui-hires Igneous.

Microsoft blogs about SolarWinds and "nation actors," i.e., what we used to call nations, and cyber attacks. It appears that no one "declares war" anymore. You just raid, pillage, and plunder over the wires.

Some members of Congress think (I use that term loosely) they have authority over who companies hire and fire.

Wear a mask: once again we focus on fashion, not function. Most masks we are wearing are just for show as there is no science behind them. If you have a beard, you might as well not wear a mask as the beard renders them completely ineffective, but we are "following the (junk) science."

Google's DeepMind loses another $1billion this year. Keep the research going.

Better late than never: the World Health Organization is sending a team to Wuhan, China in January to investigate a virus.

Saturday 19 December 2020

Strong rumors that Microsoft is designing its own processors for servers and maybe for its own portable computers.

Rumors of shenanigans again, this time with Boeing and its Federal regulators.

I guess we could call this The Age of Shenanigans. All results are suspect. It is time for the Fair Witness program.

Sunday 20 December 2020

And college football moves the Rose Bowl from California to Texas.

Per usual, viruses change with time. A new variation of the virus is hitting London and Christmas is cancelled. Odd how government are telling persons how to observe their religion and no one is putting up much of a fuss.

Comparisons of processors for mobile phones shows Apple's are much better than Qualcomm's.

Comparing the top-of-the-line headphones: Apple is really nice, but almost twice the price as those from Sony, Bose, and others.

A new version of GNU Octave is released. This is the open-source cousin of MatLab.

Thoughts on how the Apple Silicon will be good for K through 12 education.

How a writer can talk to a normal person about writing. My wife recently remarked that she married a writer (me). She didn't know that on our wedding day, but discovered it over the years (somewhere along the ten-year mark).

I like this post on memoir. It discusses using tools from fiction writing to apply to memoir, and a lot more.

Staging a scene.

Thoughts on where to end a chapter and begin another.

A big list of 200+ places that pay for writing.