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: 19-25 July, 2021
It's Monday. A slow news day.
More rumors keep coming: the display of the next iPhone will be on all the time.
Researchers built 8 bits of RAM from a pneumatic system. No "hard" chips, just air.
Simply seeking power. Crypto currency miners worldwide are heading to the US for our readily available electricity.
The year of the virus continues to shake up everything. Tech workers left Silicon Valley for Lake Tahoe. Housing prices zoomed up. Locals can't afford anything. No workers for the summer tourist season. Tourism bust. Housing boom and then a tourism bust.
....Uber is greatly expanding its grocery delivery service due to a partnership with Albertsons.
It appears that Facebook doesn't know as much as Facebook knows about how Facebook actually works. There are the procedures we write and the procedures we follow. Often the two are different.
Our President backtracks on his criticism of Facebook.
Nvidia and Best Buy promise to have the RTX-30 series on the store shelves today.
Nvidia demonstrates its RTX graphics running on a machine use an ARM processor.
It is that time of year and here is an article on buying a laptop computer for college students.
OpenAI closes its robotics research unit.
.....NASA has four working spacesuits in inventory.They have repeatedly bungled making new ones for over 40 years.
The Milwaukee Bucks win the NBA title. This is the first in 50 years for them. They were the survivors of the injuries that plagued all the other top teams. The injuries were caused by the NBA players and front office mismanaging the calendar.
It appears that China hacked us pipelines about ten years ago.
Google releases Chrome version 92.
The prolonged year of the virus continues to be good for Netflix.
HBO partners with Snap to allow Snapchat members to view content together.
Google releases a new tool to help prevent hacking in the cloud. Cloud Armor's Adaptive Protection
DuckDuckGo now has an email system that promises greater privacy. me@duck.com only for mobile.
A study from the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) states that over its lifetime, an electric vehicle is cleaner than a gas-powered one. We have to question the source, but then we question the source of everything these days.
Mobileeye (owned by Intel) begins testing autonomous vehicles on the streets of New York City.
.....Ford and Lyft announce that self-driving rides will be in Miami later this year.
Zoom Apps are now here for everyone as Zoom looks for a business after the year of the virus is behind us. When the virus will be behind us is anyone's guess. Some regulators are seeking a lifetime jobs program in it.
Amazon opens the Alexa to more developers and apps.
Our FCC sits on $3.2Billion in broadband emergency funds. Few persons, however, are using this and those who are are locally connected to someone in politics. It is unfortunate that this is the typical big government program. Grand ideas with poor execution and lots of waste.
This story claims that a quarter of us have no money saved for a natural disaster. The writers ignore the fact that the Federal government is their emergency savings plan. We are happy to let our elected representatives create lines on spreadsheets and call it money.
I Australia, a large carbon-capture project has failed to meet its goals. I hope a large sum of public money was not expended.
.....The prolonged year of the virus continues to be very good for Twitter.
The Motorola G100 smartphone is now available in America.
People continue to pour money into new AI companies.
Facebook starts to discuss its "faith partnerships" and the appearance of prayer on its site.
PlasticARM: a 32-bit ARM processor built on a soft and flexible substrate. This is an advancement in wearable computers that could benefit the elderly and disabled.
Warnings of virus disaster coming out of the Tokyo Olympics. I guess everyone has time to head for the hills before the newly infected athletes return home.
Zuckerburg aims Facebook at the metaverse.
It appears that large parts of the Internet "went down" yesterday.
MITRE updates its list of top 25 worst software bugs.
Mercedes aims to have nothing but electric vehicles by 2030. Lithium mining? We thought drilling for oil was a mess.
Our CIA is working hard to find the explanation of the Havana Syndrome. I guess that agency has solved all other intel problems and has time on its hands.
Bad news for using machine learning models as researchers find a way to hide malware inside the models. It has always been easier to do bad than to do good.
The prolonged year of the virus has been very good for Snapchat.
.....Amazon is investigating life at for in AWS. It is about time. I interviewed with AWS and walked away with a bad taste in my mouth. The ethics weren't appealing. Others I know had similar experiences.
Strong rumors that Apple is working on a newer, better, and more expensive display.
Oculus has a new API that allows programmers to incorporate more virtual and mixed reality.
A test drive behind the wheel of Mercedes' level 3 autonomous Drive Pilot.
In China, its 9 AM to 9 PM six days a week. They call it 996.
Always looking for a new way to tax something, Congress considers a tax on space tourism.
I don't like this. It is bad for all of us. More evidence of some FBI personnel pushing persons into plots to do this and that. Then the FBI steps in and arrests everyone. The FBI creates a crime conspiracy and then arrests the persons it recruited. Not good for any of us.
Google extends its Lens image search tool to Chrome browser.
.....Several folks in our Congress want to give tax credits for purchasing electric-powered bicycles. Justifications range about the environment, economy, accessibility, etc. If you want to give away money to your friends in the bike industry, just do it and stop with the grand reasoning trying to make yourself look noble. Why not give tax credits for shoes because shoes encourage people to walk instead of drive.
We are seeing more instances of persons using machine learning to mimic dead people.
Thoughts on data brokers, data harvesting, folks following other folks, and some sense of privacy.
70%: that is how much the big tech companies have grown in value during the prolonged year of the virus. These are established companies, not new companies where such growth happens. This is unprecedented. At times you wonder about this.
Thoughts on creating a collection of your short stories.
It is 2021: is a blog worth the time?
A long list of places that pay for writing.
.....