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: 10-16 May, 2021

Summary of this week:

• CPU shipments are highest in 25 years
• FCC approves $7B fund for wifi, schools, libraries, etc.
• Bose gets FDA approval for hearing aids needing no doctor visit
• We have a gas buying panic in the US
• Intel has a breakthrough in quantum computing
• CDC Director has no grasp of English
• CDC reverses guidelines on masks, creates two classes of Americans
• China lands its unmanned vehicle on Mars

Monday 10 May 2021

It is Monday. As usual, it is a slow news day.

The rich hang on to their riches as the big tech cities in the US maintained their tech jobs.

Our benevolent (or is it malevolent) Dr. Fauci tells us to wear masks every year. It must be a big ego boost to say things on TV and then everyone does them.

Yet another study claims that lots of olive oil and little meat keeps dementia away. The numbers seem suspect.

PimEyes is a search engine that finds your face on the Internet. I tried it, and it works quite well.

Remote learning leads to remote testing which leads to software trying to catch cheaters. Software, as is well known, often has errors and the innocent are crushed in cheating "scandals."

Tuesday 11 May 2021

Our FCC approves a $7Billion (with a B) fund to buy laptops and WiFi for schools and libraries. What happened to the $8Billion our prior, prior President was going to spend on rural broadband? Do you realize how few persons in government can competently spend a billion dollars?

A county-by-county map of who has some high-speed broadband and who doesn't.

Our DHS is gathering intel on Americans (for the public good, of course). Fourth Amendement?

Two years after contract award for Microsoft, our Dept of Defense is still in court with Amazon. What is Plan B?

This must be important since it is all over the Internet: the price of Dogecoin dropped while Elon Musk was on Saturday Night Live. (how much pop cult silliness is in that statement?)

We have now approved a vaccine for 12 year olds. Unless we just changed our mind again, 12 years didn't or don't need a vaccine.

This is what happens when you work with China's rulers: someone learns that your parts suppliers are using slave labor.

The computer CPU market is bigger than it has been in 25 years. Intel and AMD are swapping 1% gains and losses in different slices of the market.

Wednesday 12 May 2021

The cycle continues. What was once beyond the reach of most in computing has become reachable and usable, so the specialist (data scientists in this case) disappear.

Here come new low-priced ($800) gaming laptops powered by new Nvidia RTX 3050 GPUs. Per above, the price to enter a market drops.

Intel updates its processors for laptops.

120 retired flag officers sign a letter questioning the 2020 election results and our current President's mental health.

Report says that everyone who could have done anything meaningful in the early days of the Wuhan virus failed in their jobs.

Dell is quick to update its laptop computers with Intel's newest 11th generation processors.

America's biggest chip buyers form a lobbying group to push for more taxpayers' dollars to fund American chip makers.

China's governors have employed "an army" of folks to post to social media all day and create public opinion.

This IS news: a European court rules in favor of an American company regarding taxes to be paid in Europe.

BIG NEWS: Our FDA approves hearing aid from Bose. No doctor visit required. $850. That is 1/2 to 1/3 the price of similar hearing aids today.

Where the money is: Vizio makes as much money in ads and data as it does selling televisions.

Our current President approves the first commercial offshore wind farm.

The population of China continues to grow, but at the lowest rate in decades.

We still have entire countries with zero vaccinations. And they are not experiencing massive deaths.

Sometimes you just get out of the way and let the trees grow on their own.

Thursday 13 May 2021

Our CDC Director mumbles and stumbles with her words explaining wearing masks post-vaccine. Everyone knows that a vaccine prevents illness. If this current chemical does not do that, don't call it a vaccine. You are breeding distrust by misusing words. "You can be vaccinated, feel fine, and still carry the virus." A year ago, I could be not vaccinated, feel fine, and still carry the virus. So, the vaccine did what for me? Again, misusing words, stumbling and bumbling in press conferences, issuing confusing statements...not a good thing for public health. And then there are the constant calls to "follow the science." Please show me the results of the mask effectiveness studies. Real studies, not something done over a weekend.

We drove from Northern Virginia into Mississippi yesterday. Folks on the phone wanted to know about the gas crisis. What crisis? Gas stations along our route on the Interstate were normal. Folks were friendly and happy.

The Colonial Pipeline began operating again yesterday evening. Panic over, maybe.

Not to worry about being hacked as our President signs an Executive Order stating such.

Amazon updates its Echo line of products with better cameras, speakers, microphones and such to make the Zoomer Teams world a better place.

Intel claims a small breakthrough in quantum computing.

Researchers at Intel enhance photorealism enhancements (their title) in Grand Theft Auto V.

Early benchmark tests show big processing improvements in the new iPad Pro models with the M1 processor.

Stronger rumors of colors coming to the next Apple laptop computers.

Lest we think that the US is the only place plagued by hackers disrupting life, in Australia a researcher reports hundreds of problems in government systems.

Wacky ideas abound. Perhaps something will come from some of them. In this entry, we have a scheme to make lanes of our highways into wireless charging areas for electric vehicles to charge them while travelling at 70mph.

Friday 14 May 2021

We have 8 members of the New York Yankees testing positive for the virus. And they have all been vaccinated. Perhaps we will stop calling this a vaccine. Words matter.

One day after the CDC was severely criticized for mask guidance, the CDC changed all mask guidance.

Headline says it, "Top researchers are calling for a real investigation into the origin of covid-19" Beware of where such investigations take us. War reparations? Opium wars round III?

We hear rumors that the pipeline folks paid a few million $$$ in early ransom, but not enough.

SpaceX and Google Cloud sign a deal for Internet access and connections.

War looms in Israel. The west will tell Israel to absorb the missiles and don't strike back.

Amazon to hire 75,000 more warehouse workers.

System76 releases a new product line with a keyboard that lets you customize just about everything via open-source resources.

Saturday 15 May 2021

The folks at Google are proposing a major change in search techniques to one based on natural language understanding models.

Solar panel installations are growing fast in Australia.

A review of the Starlink system shows that it just isn't ready yet to deliver on promises.

Always the entrepreneur, Donald Trump has Internet outlets bidding to be the next location of his social media posts.

San Francisco is just one example of a place where the tech companies are trying to lease their empty office space.

China lands an unmanned vehicle on Mars.

Memes about the CDC and guidelines and some return to what is now history. Now we have to come up with a new excuse for not recognizing someone we once knew.

Disney+ hits 103million subscribes in 17 (virus boosted) months.

Sunday 16 May 2021

"For the most part, what happens in novels doesn't happen to real people." No, but stories of fancy are fun.

What do you write? Okay, now is the chance. What do you say? What are your goals?

Ideas on the "scene tracker" or "scene map." Keep track of where you are in writing a story. I use a blank piece of paper and a pencil.

What you should use as your "author photo." I didn't know I needed one.

Writing that first book. My advice is the write something all the way start to finish and self-publish it. The product need not be good. You have been through it once and learned the mechanics. Now write a good book.

Professional eSports is a demanding job. Stars are semi-retiring young and moving to Twitch and YouTube.

Here is a fascinating story about making comments that bring argument and having them removed from the Internet because they bring argument. The article states things that 45% of Americans disagree with strongly. Those statements, however, are in favor by those in the mainstream media, so they are not banned. Fascinating in that speech is determined by those who control the means of mass speech and profit most by mass speech. We are an interesting lot.

Stronger rumors of all the capabilities Apple will announce at its coming WWDC event.

The prolonged year of the virus shortened our 24-hour economy. We aren't sure if it will return soon.

Two examples of amplifying to fringe as a disinformation campaign to "hurt" the West. One is the Israeli-Gaza conflict. The other concerns vaccines and the dangers of vaccines.

The prolonged year of the virus has helped a set of aches and pains from the early home computer days re-emerge.

Researchers inch us towards the injectable medical device. The promise is great as are the dangers.