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: 21–27 December, 2020

Summary of this week:

• The SolarWinds hack is big in the news
• Google's DeepMind claims another breakthrough
• COVID relief bill boosts checks from $600 to $2,000

Monday 21 December 2020

Folks out at Stanford—with a reputation of being pretty darn smart—were using an "algorithm" instead of plain common sense in deciding who was vaccinated. I guess this proves something about smarts and sense and something.

ZTE was able to put the selfie camera under the display of the smartphone. I doesn't work well. First try; let's try again.

In what is sure to be a continuing trend, Zoom says it will have a native application for the Apple Silicon this week.

A report on Google and Facebook and monopolies. This piece calls for criminal arrests of executives who decided to do what they did. Of course lawyers were involved in these decisions, right? Who knows. People misbehave.

In China, we have something from McDonald's that is a combination of sweet and spicy—spam and crushed cookies.

In the year of the virus, we stayed away from restaurants. Go back in the supply chain and find countless potatoes turned to waste. Oh, and the farmers lost just about everything.

Attempting to put some sense into the SolarWinds hack and such. Billion$ of US taxpayers' money went to cyber defense for naught. Oh well, good enough for government work.

Amazon continues its plans for low-earth satellites that will bring broadband to users, and it will work better than the system SpaceX is building.

I hope these guys know what they are doing with these RNA vaccines. The COVID vaccine is not like past vaccines where you were given a small does of the disease to build immunity.

Arguing about the best type of "education" to an IT career. Same old argument about liberal arts versus trade school.

Tuesday 22 December 2020

Christmas is this week. The news is slow.

We start to learn about all the other stuff in the COVID relief bill. $7Billion for broadband.

We start to learn about all the other stuff in the COVID relief bill. Several copyright and trademark laws.

When attorneys general file suit against you, there is only one thing to do: put your friends in positions of power in the Biden administration.

It appears that Apple's plans to build a car are back on. Wait until 2024.

Lockheed Martin acqui-hires Aerojet Rocketdyne.

The iPhone 12 leads the market in 5G smartphones.

Famous politicians are receiving the vaccine early on camera. Are they being brave or merely cutting line to save themselves? How did being elected to Congress or any office give you the power to decide?

The new SARS in the UK is "up to 70 percent more transmissible." What does that mean? How did anyone measure that? Is this just more hyperbole in the year of "follow the science?"

Wednesday 23 December 2020

Google Cloud Platform extends to Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Chile.

US Intelligence failures with China and cyber attacks.

Listen to a bass solo on YouTube. A computer is creating it, so there is no end to it.

Cyberpunk 2077 has experienced many problems. Market success is not one of them as 13million copies have been purchased. The definition of success has changed.

There is a new game out there called "Among Us." The company that created it has four employees. In the month of Novwember, 500Million persons played the game. The definition of success has changed.

Our Justice Dept has sued Walmart for its part in the opiod crisis. I have trouble understanding this one.

Thursday 24 December 2020

Google's DeepMind claims a breakthrough in reinforcement learning. If true, the cost of running YouTube will drop dramatically.

On this day with slow, slow news, this is a good video to watch from SpaceX. The Starship hit the ground wrong and blew up, but all the other maneuvering worked well.

The year of the virus has pushed us past yet another threshold: the video game industry is now bigger than sports and movies combined.

Conferences are trying to return to "in person" instead of "online only." Good luck with that. There are states and counties that will welcome conferences far earlier than others.

Contradictions on contradictions. Amazon expects union organizers everywhere in 2021. Odd because the union organizes will hurt Amazon. Union organizers are backed by Democrats who were back by Jeff Bezos and Amazon.

Nice video of the moon, Jupiter, Saturn, and the International Space Station.

It appears that the KFC (yes, the fried chicken place) game console was not a joke. The KFConsole is real.

So much for having computer software proctor exams taken at home during the year of the virus. The rate of false cheaters or something that is yet to be named was very high.

Friday 25 December 2020

It is Christmas Day.

This is the Christmas where the new movies are streaming instead of in theaters. I know, some theaters are open, but those are the exceptions.

Bitcoin hits an all-time high in value.

Must see video of what sure looks like that jetpack guy who has been sighted in the Los Angeles area.

Someone is tricking writers, publishers, agents, et al into sending yet-to-be-published book and short story manuscripts to the wrong person. There appears to be no monetary gain here. My guess is someone is gathering data for training machine learning systems.

The year of the virus continues to be good for the PC industry.

Saturday 26 December 2020

Long holiday weekend with little news.

MediaTek takes the lead in the market of selling chip sets for smartphones.

Not all breakthroughs in technology have been reported. Many were classified and were buried. The players never became rich or famous, but we owe them a debt of gratitude. They helped defeat the Soviets and gave us the freedoms we enjoy.

If you are an engineer or scientist, please consider such for your life. This is a story of an accomplished engineer who retired to a little, poor town and is teaching the least likely kids how to build robots and do things they would otherwise never do.

A different perspective on your Christmas presents.

Biden advisor: don't give $2,000 to individuals. Give more money to state and local governments. Says it all about priorities—government is smarter than persons.

This man retired at 33. It took six months to become accustomed to "doing nothing."

Sunday 27 December 2020

Singing the praises of the big-money tech companies and how they did everything right in the year of the virus. Some of this true, most of the actions were accidental.

Once again the experts were wrong: all that $8billion spent on ads for our recent election did almost nothing to move voters. This is yet another example of my primary headache with the reaction to the Wuhan virus. From what we call it (don't want to insult the place that spawned this catastrophe, you know how holding responsible persons responsible is so unpopular these days) to how we reacted (P A N I C). The "experts" are usually (not sometimes, not often, but usually and that means most of the time) wrong. Just read history. Experts are experts because they were right about yesterday, not today. And they were right in hindsight, not in today.

Yet another study on the relationship of some exercise to longevity.

The "Make a Living Writing" blog lists its top ten from 2020. Some provide good sources of jobs.

Another post recommending writing in an journal. This is one of a few practices that I recommend for everyone.   

The mythical writing room. Stephen King required a room that had a door that would close. Others of us seem to write where we are at the time.