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: 22-28 March, 2021

Summary of this week:

• Microsoft to buy Discord for $10Billion (with a B)
• HP updating its laptops with 17" 4K displays
• Intel invests $20Billion in Arizona factories
• Microsoft, Google, et al work on browser compatibility
• A big cargo ship is stuck in the Suez Canal

Monday 22 March 2021

It's Monday...nothing much happening.

We are approaching the point where we have more vaccine doses than people needing them. That is a normal state.

Software is the new electricity. It is simply there and companies use it to change their market.

Reason to be vaccinated or fake a card: Krispy Kreme will give you a free donut each day this year when you show your card.

Our current President restores the official climate change website created by two Presidents ago and removed by one President ago. Round and round, back and forth.

California governors are making Austin, Texas the next Silicon Valley.

This story must be important as it is all over the Internet: our former President will create a new social media site.

Tuesday 23 March 2021

Microsoft will begin bringing people back to work at its Redmond HQ next week.

I'll just quote this Wall Street Journal article, "Several members of President Biden's White House staff have ties to companies with major stakes in the administration's positions on cybersecurity, antitrust and other policy areas, new federal disclosures show."

Meanwhile, the part of our President is "bombard" the tech companies with antitrust actions.

Zoom releases an SDK to help developers put its video service inside other software.

Samsung is pushing the concept of the foldable smartphone. It may be to early for this, but we shall see.

Xbox Live is now called Xbox Network.

Got some time? Build the 2,354-piece Lego set of the Space Shuttle and Hubble telescope.

The next Nintendo Switch may use Nividia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS).

HP is updating its portable computers with a 17" 4K display.

Lasers and the like are bringing more storage to spinning hard disk drives. How about 60TeraBytes in a small package?

This story is everywhere: Microsoft may buy Discord for $10Billion. Discord does voice and video chat associated with gaming.

Gen Z workers feel their careers have been stunted by the year of the virus and working from home. They are missing on the growth that happens in office conversations. I feel for them. They are losing.

Wednesday 24 March 2021

Mozilla has released Firefox 87.

Stirrings at Medium after a move to form a union failed by one vote. "Journalists" are free to go.

Purple Fox: the next great malware is coming.

Compat2021: That is what Microsoft, Google, and others are calling an effort to increase compatibility among browsers.

Facebook announces that its F8 Conference will be one-day, online only, and on June 2nd.

Coming real soon now from Qualcomm: a game console that looks a lot like a Nintendo Switch.

Amazon tells its drivers to sign a consent form as they install cameras in delivery trucks.

The year of the virus continues as Adobe posts big financial numbers for its cloud computing services.

It appears that a lot of Americans want social media companies to censor a lot of other Americans. We vs. They continues.

In a good move for America, Intel invests $20Billion in chip factories in Arizona.

The year of the virus: 80million Americans lost jobs while Billionaires gained 44% in wealth. WE did this to our neighbors in how WE decided to react to the virus.

As the year of the virus drags on, there has been a shift in CEOs as more and more companies will bring folks back into the office building.

Apple updates its office suite of applications Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.

Thursday 25 March 2021

More information about Medium. The definition of success has changed. $35million annual revenue is not enough for some.

Facebook claims victory over fake Chinese personas whose mission was to hunt Uyghurs living out of China.

Speaking of western China and such. H&M made a few comments about how cotton is farmed out there. The Chinese governors react as you would predict by bouncing H&M.

A study of the vaccine registration sites of all 50 states.

GNOME 40 is released.

Moving into the future, researchers send tiny robots into animals to deliver medicine. This is the future of health care as tiny machines will swim and crawl inside and perform nano surgery to stop illness when it is tiny. This will work in dental care and eye care as well.

Apple's OS X was released 20 years ago. Unix came to the desktop.

Friday 26 March 2021

Urine bottles become the subject of the day at Amazon. It seems that rushed workers use them. The company denies that. The rushed workers show photos. On we go.

AWS releases Lookout for Metrics to general use. The service helps business monitor everything so they can improve somethings.

Once again, the chief executives of Facebook, Google and Twitter appeared before Congress to be asked questions they didn't want to be asked. This is all odd as the party that is asking these questions is also hiring these same people to help the Federal government.

Lobbying by the same big tech companies reaches another new high.

Samsung releases a new, better, and faster version of computer memory.

Just for the record: this week a giant container-carrying ship became stuck in the Suez Canal. The blockage is costing unimaginable amounts of money and all that.

Saturday 27 March 2021

Our President bashes lawmakers in Georgia, the state that put him into the White House. We are an odd lot.

Update: VW's electric microbus will come to the US in 2023 (not 2022).

Fear and loathing in business and politics as Amazon and US Senators tweet back and forth. I understand Amazon, but an elected representative should have better ways to spend time and public money.

More return-to-the-office news.

Deciphering a 50-year-old cipher from the Zodiac Killer. Interesting, but it doesn't reveal the killer's identity. Just drivel from a moron.

Richard Stallman returns to the Free Software Foundation. Red Hat removes its funding in protest.

Qualcomm updates its Snapdragon processor line as it moves to 5nm processes.

Sunday 28 March 2021

One of those higher-tech concept masks shown at last year's CES will be produced. Late? Maybe not.

Predictions of the coming wealth generated by AI and how the government could redistribute that money. We shall see.

The Russians put on a military show at the North Pole.

After 25 years, someone finds a previously unknown Easter Egg in Windows 95.

Books about writing for writers.

Here are some pretty good ideas on finding work as a freelance writer after you have been laid off.

Lessons learned from reading classic books. Books with rotten characters tend to sell. We like that.

I like this, "Mom writers are wired to succeed at writing (and querying) because we can multitask like no other."

Do you see others "succeeding" in ways you want to "succeed?" Some ideas to not hurt yourself in these situations.

Thoughts on writing fiction from events that actually happened. I find this great fun.

I've seen these before, but a good reminder every year: Heinlein's Rules of Writing

Tips about what to put on our LinkedIn sites.