Apple's biggest supplier of parts is now China instead of Taiwan. This is fascinating as Tim Cook frowns on some of the US's state and local governments that are not so friendly to LGBT et al while China has a simple lock-em-up and they disappear policy.

Love those Amazon deliveries? Serious injury rates at Amazon warehouses is double the average.

The year of the virus spurred a tech migration of talent out of the super-expensive Bay Area. It seems that Austin, Texas received more than its share of the talent.

SpaceX hurries along the conversion of oil rigs into spaceports.

Mozilla releases Firefox 89.

Return to the office building? Many are saying, "No thanks." The benefits of no commute have been experienced by too many for too long to go back to normal.

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Thursday 3 June 2021

AWS releases a mapping service that developers can put in apps. This is a direct competitor to long-time offerings from Google Maps.

An in-depth review of Nvidia's newest high-end graphics processor. They need some brevity in the names: GeForce RTX 3080 Ti.

Coming June 24th, Microsoft to discuss details of its next generation of Windows. Will they call it Windows NG?

Facebook announces a new Researcher API, which will allow researchers to again analyze Facebook data. This will be here real soon now.

Now we have flipped from "you can't say that" to "they can't ban that." Odd that it took so long for some to realize what we were doing.

Tim Cook tells Apple employees to return to the office building three days a week starting in September.

Huawei moves away from Android with its own mobile OS.

Amazon tells its warehouse workers that they are "industrial athletes."

This must be important as it is all over the Internet: NASA announces to missions to Venus. This will happen NOT real soon now.

Facebook had its F8 developer conference. Here is one summary of the keynote address from Zuckerburg.

And here we go again... someone in China eats a diseased bird and the disease jumps to humans.

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Friday 4 June 2021

It appears that the markets for smartphones and broadband access have not quite saturated in the US. Those are still growing.

Ever bigger and more expensive, a group in China builds a language model with 1.75Trillion (with a Tr) parameters. That beats Google's old record of 1.6Trillion.

Coming real soon now from Walmart are its own Android TV streaming stick. We know this as Walmart put these on their website before formally announcing them.

Our Supreme Court rules that our government prosecutors have been applying the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act too much.

Our prior President quits his blog. No one is reading his thoughts any longer. In one instance, this is embarrassing to private-citizen Trump in that no one cares about him (at the moment). In another instance, it shows the power of Twitter and Facebook and that their arbitrary bans are significant and do actually inhibit free speech. We have yet to resolve these questions.

The managers at Facebook decide to censor everyone "equally." Somehow greater censorship is supposed to reassure some of us.

Microsoft promises end-to-end encryption for Teams meetings real soon now.

Coming real soon now in Norton 360 antivirus is the ability to crypto mine for Ethereum. This will provide greater security for users.

Ford teases (via some excellent ads) a new smaller truck that will use the name of an old car, the Maverick.

United Airlines orders the yet-to-be-built supersonic airliner that "booms" quietly. Travel in half the time (triple the price?).

Our President sends a billion $$$ to tribal lands for broadband access. See this old essay from two Presidents back about the folly of such large value$$$.

Microsoft teams with Hart InterCivic Inc. to allow easy tracking of votes by voters.

7-11 is installing electric vehicle charging stations. They will make $$$ by having customers park in front of their stores. It is now time to stop spending taxpayers' money on these things.

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Saturday 5 June 2021

Here is an excellent article on how Sweden faired in the year of the virus. No masks, no social (physical) distancing, no lockdowns, no boom in unemployment, etc. Fascinating graph of mortality rates per "flu year" instead of calendar year (much better "year" to use). The flu year of 2020-2021 was worse than the norm, but equals that of 2014-2015 and is LESS THAN ALL YEARS prior to 2014. Hmmm, a higher rate of death in 2000 than during the "pandemic." Fascinating.

The governors of Nigeria ban Twitter. Censorship lives on. This is one reason why Americans should smile every time we read the Bill of Rights.

This story is much ado about something, but not that much. Amazon hires retired government employees. All govt contractors do that. Sometimes it helps gain govt contracts, often it doesn't.

"The teams behind the Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge browsers have banded together to improve extensions, the add-ons you can download to customize the software."

Someone has a firm grasp on the obvious. The CEO of Snowflake says that diversity is important, but he must hire persons based on their merit. Otherwise, the company and its customers lose. This is sure to infuriate many. To this, I reply, "Start your own company. Hire based on your own criteria."

IBM signs a five-year, $300million contract with the UK to work on AI and quantum computing.

Apple employees express displeasure with the "come back the office" note from Tim Cook.

One of the reasons I like to read Seth Godin's blog is he has a firm grasp of the obvious. That is too rare today. Seth Godin writes about the "benefit of the doubt" and how we use it to hurt others and ourselves.

Note: In Starbucks, it is cold in the general area as the air conditioning must be set to about 65 degrees. In the bathroom, the little heater turns on to raise the bathroom temperature to around 75 degrees. Perhaps no one working in the establishment notices this. Perhaps as employees, not owners, they don't much care.

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Sunday 6 June 2021

From the beginning of open-source software, those who maintained the code were not paid. This continues and seems to surprise some.

Facebook acqui-hires a company called Unit 2 Games. This gives Facebook a quick push into the market of virtual reality.

We are now building memorials to those who died with COVID-19 present. We are an odd lot. We name the virus after a year, not a place. We attribute no responsibility to the persons in the place where it began. We use faulty evidence to say, "This person died of the disease." We forget the millions who annually die of heart disease. Woe is us.

Leaders of the G7 guarantee that successful tech companies will building research centers etc. in countries other than the G7. Raise taxes in your own country. Push companies elsewhere. This benefits your own country in some manner that I do not understand.

Apple's big-big-event of the year WWDC starts tomorrow. Rumors abound.

Strong rumors that Apple will show new portable computers including one with a 16" screen.

GitHub has some sort of graduating class and ceremony.

Thoughts on the idea that an iPad can be a desktop computer (it can drive a large, desktop monitor).

Memories and memoirs.

A new phrase, "brain strain."

One writer swings over to the idea of planning (didn't say outline) a novel instead of just writing some.

"Good enough." When is something we write good enough?

For those who think of quitting writing---four questions. Then there are those of us who cannot quit writing for any reason.

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