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: 15–21 February, 2021

Summary of this week:

• Rush Limbaugh dies at 70
• Parler dot com returns to the Internet
• Amazon to open its first factory in India
• Bitcoin valued at $50,000
• Nvidia announces Crypto Mining Processors (CMP)
• Nvidia also cuts the crypto mining capabilities of its forthcoming GPUs

Monday 15 February 2021

It is President's Day in the US. We still have this holiday even though most post-modern historians disdain the great majority of US Presidents for one thing or another.

Headline says it all: Bill Gates: Rich nations should shift entirely to synthetic beef. Really? Untested. Science?

The politics of Silicon Valley. I haven't lived there, but I used to visit often on business. It is in California, so it is saddled with all the taxes and regulations. It is very entrepreneurial (freelance economics). It is very immigrant (freelance merit). It is very contradictory in many other respects as well.

Ah Facebook and its algorithms. It is quite simple: amplify the sensational to drive ad revenue. Their problem is they did this too much, i.e., they were too successful. They need to slow it down a bit, but the love of money and all that.

Microsoft shows its moves towards xCloud—playing XBox in the cloud.

Seth Godin calls it the "opportunity of the laggards." Others have shown that by multiplying percentages instead of averaging averages it is best to work on the weakest part of anything. My experiences agree with this concept.

The digital divide affects churches as well. The divide between rich and poor is amplified by our response in the year of the virus. Intriguing that those who decried the widening divide are the chief proponents of response that is furthering the divide.

Tuesday 16 February 2021

Today is the day after a three-day weekend in the US. Hence, it is another Monday with scant activity.

Parler is back online after a month after AWS removed them.

Jaguar commits to all-electric vehicles by 2025. Gone is the V-12 engine and all those sorts of things.

Real news that isn't new: It appears that the virus in Wuhan (is it ok to rearrange the words that way?) was widespread despite what the governors of China said.

Crypto currency money laundering mostly flows through a couple hundred places.

Wednesday 17 February 2021

The "new" Microsoft Office app is now available for the iPad series of tablets.

The year of the virus was good for the value of a Bitcoin. It is now valued at $50,000.

Folks are disappointed that Palantir sales are climbing at only 30%. The definition of success has changed.

Got $20? Buy a review for your product on Amazon. Get all the stars you want all the time.

Our President turns to friends and allies in Silicon Valley for "help" with vaccinations. Odd that a person whose career in Washington leads him to go outside Washington for expertise. Sort of an admission that Washington doesn't work. I thought that was the message of our prior President.

The year of the virus was good for long-distance romance scams. All that staying locked inside wasn't good for many people. I don't think we considered the outcomes of our reaction.

Thursday 18 February 2021

Rush Limbaugh dies at 70. He changed radio and a few other things.

The year of the virus was good for Baidu.

Continuing, the year of the virus was good for the gaming indu$try.

And more, the year of the virus was good for Twilio.

YouTube is discovering Russian and Chinese government propaganda channels—closed 3,000 of them in 2020.

The year of the virus helps Google release a few dozen new features for its education tools.

Waymo begins testing its driver-less taxi service in San Francisco.

2020 was the first year that the Chromebook outsold the Apple Mac. This growth in market share is hurting Windows computing more than Apple.

Nearby Maryland becomes the first state to tax online ads.

I learn that we are now in the "novel economy." Everything changed during the year of the virus and we don't know what to do, yet.

Friday 19 February 2021

In another story, Nvidia admits that it will limit the cryptomining capabilities of future GPUs. Gamers like that because their gaming GPUs won't be bought my miners.

Microsoft announces Office 2021—buy it one time, no subscription, no updates.

The year of the virus was good for Roku. Stay at home, watch something on our televisors.

Some members of Congress believe that government should not compete with private industry. In this case, the industry is broadband access.

Must see video: someone has a lot of time on their hands. They used AI to upgrade Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" in crisp UHD. WOW! Clarity!

NASA lands an unmanned vehicle on Mars. The first image is ... well its bad.

It didn't take long for Silicon Valley to gather herds of lawyers and sue the state of Maryland for its tax on their ads.

A tale of why Google's Loon project (balloon borne broadband) failed: Balloons cross national borders. National governments couldn't agree. The old "red tape" story again.

Saturday 20 February 2021

Fear and loathing at Google in their AI work.

Google fires the co-leader of their Ethical AI team over violations in email use or something.

Google concludes its inquiry into why it fired a prior lead of AI ethics. Nothing released to the public.

Big companies across the spectrum pledge to increase diversity at the top levels. And please, remember to do a good job at what you claim to do.

Emotion detection from facial expressions. I trust that someone is considering what they are doing.

In one sort of a landmark event, a variation of Linux is running on Mars today.

Angst over the Australian law requiring payment to sources when you link to them. If that is universal and enforced, I won't be able to do this little daily viewing of the Internet thing that I have been doing for about 12 years.

A new record in that more Americans are working more than one job. This is the new version of the old, "I have three part-time jobs."

Sunday 21 February 2021

Troubles with BlueGriffon and the updated MacOs Big Sur.