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: 24-30 May, 2021

Summary of this week:

• Microsoft Build 2021 is this week
• Microsoft and Qualcomm team to build a developer platform
• ARM releases new processors for PCs
• Acer release new hardware including Chromebook with 17" screen"

Monday 24 May 2021

It is Monday. The news is slow.

100s of researchers are working together worldwide in language understanding. They have good intentions, but let's see what happens.

Automation is here and accelerating. US production now matches pre-pandemic levels with 8.2million fewer jobs. Were we goofing off that much?

Payback for censorship. Palestinians find a way to hurt Facebook after alleged censorship.

"If you want to feel a certain way, begin by acting as if you do."---Seth Godin

Predictions of our reaction to a year of being online. "Offlining" could be the thing this summer. Watch for laptops and tablet gurgling at the bottom of swimming pools.

Between 1920 and 2020, human lifespan doubled. An amazing event.

The biggest advance in medicine in the last 100 years: oral rehydration therapy. The treatment is almost maddeningly simple: give people lots of boiled water to drink, supplemented with sugar and salts.

Tuesday 25 May 2021

Gene therapy restores some sigh to a blind man. We trust these folks know what they are doing.

100+ American counties and cities are buying surveillance systems from China (CCP). I doubt they know what they are doing.

Censorship lives on in Russia where they take it seriously. "Violaters will be prosecuted" as the old signs used to say.

Economic uncertainty coming out of the year of the virus spurs tech companies to merge and purchase one another in record numbers.

Microsoft Surface Duo + Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) app for Android = some type of portable gaming gadget we didn't have yesterday.

Retired Microsoft programmer asks Microsoft to release the code for MS-DOS. It was efficient software; it had to be.

Mounting evidence that COVID-19 was created in a lab in Wuhan. The Communist Party of China controls these things.

Qualcomm updates its processors for "always on" PCs and Chromebooks.

It appears that Apple is changing MacOs so that we won't be able to boot from external drives.

Lawmakers in Germany pass a law allowing self-driving vehicles to self-drive themselves on German roads in 2022.

Wednesday 26 May 2021

Microsoft Build 2021 is this week. Here is one summary of announcements so far.

New features are here in the MS Teams API so organizations can add their own capabilities.

And now we have The Green Software Foundation to help confront the world's carbon problems. I suppose I just don't understand our "carbon problem."

Coming real soon now... the next Windows 10 release will have support for Linux GUI apps in the Windows System for Linux.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella provided rumors that the next big release of Windows will be really big real soon now.

Microsoft and Qualcomm team to build a small, less-costly ARM development kit. No price information yet.

COVID research + AI research = big $$$ for researchers chasing big $$$.

ARM shows new processors aimed at PCs, not just smartphones.

Oracle now offers ARM processors in its cloud computing service.

Tesla drops radar and will rely only on "cameras." I trust "camera" means more than visible light as such would prohibit function during rain, fog, and dark.

The USB-C standard ups the power rating from 100 to 240Watts. Not sure when real hardware will appear.

Apple employees are now speaking about the company culture.

To boost cybersecurity, our DHS releases ... regulations. Up goes the price of everything.

I'll just quote this as the herds of lawyers gather, "The Biden administration announced today that it will open up parts of the Pacific coast to commercial-scale offshore renewable energy development for the first time."

Thursday 27 May 2021

The prolonged year of the virus brings us the "Study Web." Yes, the old Study Hall moved to the Internet.

Facebook sharpens its censorship to those who spread "disinformation."

ooops, Facebook treated the lab-made man-made virus story as disinformation, and now, well, not so much...

It is semi-official: Andy Jassy will become Amazon's CEO on 5 July.

It is official, Amazon is buying movie studio MGM for $8.45Billion.

Nvidia has a record financial quarter. Up 84% year over year. The year of the virus was very good for some.

Friday 28 May 2021

We see some very early experiments with nano bodies that are inhaled. The virus goes away.

Google announces a unified data management system. We want to store data here, there, everywhere, but have it appear to be in one place that is easy to use.

Microsoft shows Process Advisor. It is an attempt to extend its automation tools to "hyper automation."

Quarterly financial reports are arriving. The prolonged year of the virus has been good to many companies.

Lenovo has a good financial quarter and an unprecedented year.

HP has a record financial quarter with laptop and printer sales booming.

International auto makers bow to China's rules on gather data and storing it within reach of the CCP.

This one is a little difficult to believe, so I'll just quote it, "The AmaZen meditation booth is a small room where employees can watch company videos about mindfulness while a small fan moves the air around."

Acer shows a lot of new hardware including a Chromebook with a 17" screen.

Isolation, loneliness, and a little good from technology.

Angst at Google as 10,000 women file suit over pay disparity.

Well, why not? What else have they NOT done? The Chinese governors are having their hackers imitate UN investigators. They send emails to prominent Uyghurs that install malware on the Uyghurs' computers. This plants "call home" software that copies all the information on the computer back to the Chinese governors.

Saturday 29 May 2021

We enter Memorial Day weekend in the US. Memorial Day is not a happy event. We try to remember people who died at a young age.

Seems our prior President did something right by pushing China's Huawei out. There is now a place for US companies in the 5G market.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is still with us. Hundreds of GigaBytes? What happened?

This story is all over the Internet: in the UK, high energy consumption convinced the police that marijuana was being grown. It was a crypto currency mine instead.

Google promises that its Chrome browser will be much faster.

There is much talk lately of UFOs and such. One Canadian astronaut attempts to bring the conversation back to reality.

This is an excellent example of awful technical writing. How can an editor allow such nonsense? "Satellite measurements have underestimated this or that." Measurements don't estimate. Persons interpret measurements and estimate (usually badly).

Sunday 30 May 2021

Calls for American entertainers (athletes are entertainers) to stop bowing to pressure from China's governors. Money makes the world go round.

We now have lawsuits against hospitals requiring employees to be vaccinated. Side note: our FDA has not approved any of the vaccines that have been given to about 150million Americans.

We see the use of some basic machine learning techniques quickly employed by the Israelis in their recent conflict.

A farm in Australia is operated by robotic machines. Reports don't say how many humans are needed to keep the machines functioning.

Amazon decides that we should all share our wireless bandwidth with one another. Here comes the return to the wired homes.

One writer and "discovery writing" or discovering the story as you write it.

I like these posts that have quotes from famous writers with writing tips. Forget inspiration, go to work. Keep it simple. Write. Write. Write. Start. Finish.

Take a good story and tell it a different way. Not as easy as it might seem.