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 March, 2021

Summary of this week:

• Microsoft hits a bonanza in the COVD relief bill
• Intel releases its 11th generation processors for the desktop
• Google's Chrome browser now generates captions
• Microsoft's Presenter Coach is now coaching us on PowerPoint presentations

Monday 15 March 2021

Facebook tries to help folks find a vaccine location. I've looked all over Facebook and cannot find this new feature.

SpaceX launches 60 more Starlink satellites. The booster flies for the ninth time and lands again.

20 years after the Agile Manifesto in software development. Hyperbole and counter-hyperbole.

Let's build a Doomsday Vault on the moon. We cannot afford to build one and if we have a Doomsday, no one will be able to reach it.

Seagate shows plans for having 120 TeraByte disk drives in ten years. If history shows the future, they will reach that goal sooner.

Tuesday 16 March 2021

Our COVID relief bill has $600Million for cybersecurity (go figure). Microsoft will get 1/4th of that.

AMD's latest processors for cloud data centers has arrived. It maintains a performance lead over Intel processors.

Due to a global chip shortage, coming GM trucks won't have fuel-saving processors on board.

The year of the virus was pretty good to the wearable computer market as sales rose 28.4%.

Zoom Escaper: a piece of software that causes problems with your Zoom link (crying babies is one) so you can drop out of a boring meeting and not feel bad.

Sony's newest TV are now shipping. They have "cognitive processors" that make the picture look even better. These models costs in the thousand$$$.

Wednesday 17 March 2021

A reminder that some old writings would be banned in today's post-post-modern world. I am greatly concerned that the Holy Bible, the Torah, and the Quran will be banned as well as those who quote from them.

Intel's 11th generation processors for desktop computers are here. Intel continues to stumble, but hangs in. The market will decide.

GoPro updates its software that runs on smartphones and controls their action cameras. The new software is called Quik.

Researchers find that a Chinese group is try to steal secrets about 5G technology from non-Chinese companies worldwide.

Great new video of a SpaceX Starship test flight. They don't give a good picture of the scale of the ship. Amazing controls technology.

If we measure significance in the number of persons affected, this is SIGNIFICANT. The Wikimedia Foundation creates Wikimedia Enterprise. It is a bu$$ine$$ deal. Will the volunteers continue to work for free?/a>

Old plants found at the bottom of Greenland's mile-deep ice. Hmmm, we used to have forrests where we know have ice. Climate change flooding the planet? That theory is doubtful in light of the facts.

This story must be important as it is all over the Internet. We believe the water on Mars is under its crust. Tell me when we are making coffee with Martian water.

Thursday 18 March 2021

We have yet another moron shooting lots of people and bringing shouts of Asian hate or something. We have to blame someone or something for this other than the person doing it. Motivation? Morons neither need nor have motivation.

Available today in Google's Chrom browser is a Live Caption feature. It works. Love it.

Amazon Care is coming to folks outside of Amazon real soon now. This follows Amazon's usual pattern of using software internally and then selling it to everyone else.

Bug bounties are being extended to AI systems to find bias and other bugs. Good idea.

Looking at the near future of AI from a largely economic viewpoint. The writer is concerned with how the coming wealth will be distributed. This will break a lot of systems.

Also available now is Microsoft's Presenter Coach. It coaches us on our PowerPoint presentations. Of course coaching is subjective.

The Wintel and Mac ads go round and round. It is entertaining on some days.

AMD releases a new GPU for PC gamers. Priced at $479, its performance fits in nicely with offerings from Nvidia.

Qualcomm completes its acqui-hire of Nuvia. Now it can build ARM processors and take one Apple's new silicon.

Friday 19 March 2021

Nvidia doubles the price of its GeForce Now cloud game streaming service.

Google releases ThreadIt: a new app that lets users create short video messages.

The National Football League has a new deal to show its games. $100Billion over 11 years. Amazon is in on it at about $1Billion per year.

The year of the virus was good for cybercrime. Our FBI reports that it rose $700Million to $4.2Billion.

"Alienware and Cherry have worked together to cram what both companies are calling the 'first true' mechanical keyboard into a gaming laptop."

Barnes and Noble still exists. The Nook reader still exists. A new model is coming real soon now to be made by Lenovo.

Google says it will spend $7Billion in constructing office buildings and data centers this year.

This story must be important as it is all over the Internet: Facebook is working on a wrist-worn device that allows a person to control objects via thoughts. Forget the science fiction. It is actually another attempt at a decades old concept that has worked before.

Looking at the numbers of the airline bailouts in the year of the virus. $300,000. That is what we gave for each job "saved." That shows how much waste there is when our government does something.

Saturday 20 March 2021

Worldwide free speech and various forms of free speech: SafeChat has become a home to Trump loyalists and Chinese dissidents. Both hate communism which, by the way, is still US official policy.

In China, the governors ban the use of Tesla vehcile by state employees citing national security concerns.

The year of the virus was good for Google, Facebook, and Amazon as the three now collect more than half of advertising dollars in the US.

Sci-Hub is a Russian website that provides 85million research papers. Do the Russians collect data on the users? Pushing back the barriers of ignorance or something.

After a decade of the same old thing, Twitter is quickly expanding into other forms of communication.

Intel's new anti-Mac ads show Macs built by Intel that look better than Macs built by Apple. Around we go.

I love this post from Seth Godin on ten reasons to write a book. Just do it, put it out, and move on.

CNN's ratings dropped by half when Trump left office. They won't admit it, but Donald Trump made a lot of people a lot of money and gave them a lot of fame. So they drove him from office. We are a strange lot.

Our CDC now says that 3 feet is okay, 6 feet is not needed in schools when masked. Of course there too many other caveats to read so that no one will read them and our CDC can always justify itself. They have a common problem in that they are not lying but cannot seem to tell all the truth.

Sunday 21 March 2021

Apple doesn't include chargers with their iPhones. That violates something or other in Brazil, and Apple is paying a $2million fine.

$2million? Who cares? We are spending $86million on motel rooms for immigrants who are legal or illegal or something.

ooooops, Victoria University of Wellington deletes all the files from its desktop computers. It was an accident, so it was okay, huh?

This is a good article. Those involved explain why it is so difficult to work on government IT systems. Cannot list the reasons in a sentence or two. Basic reason: years of bad practice built bad systems.

This little vehicle is the top-selling electric car in the world. Can't buy it in the US as regulations prohibit such.

Some "considerations" before starting to write that book. These are about organization. That is important. It isn't creative, but it is important.

Exploring what is fragile in the story you are writing. When something might break at any moment, the reader is in suspence and continues reading.

A survey of writers reveals who most are making a little money.

I love this post from Seth Godin on ten reasons to write a book. Just do it, put it out, and move on.

Notes on a "success" mindset for writers. Sigh. I guess this work for some folks.

Oh, so you're a writer, huh? Stereotypes that often fit...unless they don't.

This post has it right: Track the freelance actions you can control. Book sales and all that stuff are outside our control. There is little we can do about them.