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: 8-14 November, 2021

Summary of this week:

• Veterans Day in the US
• Nvidia has their GTC event
• Microsoft pushes harder to move into the education market
• Minecraft comes to the forefront in teaching computer programming
• Henry Kissinger (still alive) writes a book on AI
• Britney Spears' conservatorship ends
• Intel's plan to produce more chips in China killed by the White House

Monday 8 November 2021

It is Monday. A slow news day as usual. Several events this week with a big one being a conference and show fro Nvidia.

Intel's 12th generation Alder Lake processors compare favorably to Apple's new processors. What is lost here is that we are comparing Intel's latest processors to Apple processors. A generation ago, no one would have considered such a thing.

A look at this year's lineup of Lenovo portable computers.

98-year-old Henry Kissinger (yes, he is still alive) has written a book on the age of AI.

Yet another source tells us that the world' most popular programming language is...JavaScript.

Thoughts on explaining why a character in a story is doing what they are attempting to do.

What gets in the way when trying to write? How about, what do I invite in to my writing space that inteferes?

Some good, practical tips on freelance working from home.

Some tips on proofreading as a freelance job.

Tuesday 9 November 2021

Landing AI, an Andrew Ng company, raises $57million in funding.

TSMC, probably the most important company in the world, responded to a US Dept of Commerce request for information on supply chains. The hunt is on to find a scape goat.

AMD shows its predictions of the future regarding its data center processors.

Microsoft releases its latest versions of Visual Studio and .NET.

Samsung announces its latest memory chips for mobile devices.

Nvidia shows its new fist-sized AI processor. Six times more powerful than the 2018 version. No price yet, coming in 2022.

It's worth remembering that the next time someone doesn't act in a way you expect. It might be that they're having a little trouble on their own, trouble you might not even be aware of.---Seth Godin

SpaceX safely returns four persons from the space station to earth.

Alphabet is now valued at $2Trillion (with a Tr).

The SCO vs IBM Linux lawsuit ends after 20 years.

Wednesday 10 November 2021

Microsoft held an education-focused event yesterday and introduced Windows 11 SE (Student Edition) and a $249 student laptop.

Beware: if you give things to customers at no charge and the customers readily accept them, Congress will pass a law against such.

Facebook created an Oversight Board. The Board is making lots of recommendations. Facebook cannot keep up with the pace of change.

Our Treasury Dept appears to be buying its way around the Fourth Amendment.

Rolls Royce will be building a new generation of small nuclear reactors.

Thursday 11 November 2021

Veteran's Day in the US

Sony will produce fewer Playstations. The price will rise and add to inflation which will hurt a lot of folks. And this is a result of bad management at Sony and other places where they were not paying attention to the sources of parts.

Qualcomm shows the Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform. It will ease development of augmented reality software.

Apple announces Business Essentials. It is a service to help businesses with fewer than 500 employees manage Apple systems.

Just quote this, "As many as 40 million people across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand came online for the first time this year."

Microsoft and Meta partner and put Teams into Meta's Workplace (formerly Facebook Workplace).

Our Dept of Justice is suing Uber for disabilities violations or something. In old time, our government only sued highly profitable companies. Now we are suing companies that are famous but are not profitable.

Microsoft is emailing $100 gift cards to some folks.

SpaceX sends folks up to the space station. This is #5 for sending people into space.

We are not using AI to find people who disagree with us. We justify this by claiming "those folks" are wrong and we are right.

Disney+ now has 118.1Million subscribers. The year of the virus was very good to some of us.

"One thing that big ideas have in common is that they're almost impossible to give away."---Seth Godin

Three of four of use think Facebook is bad (for other folks while I, of course, know how to use it and it doesn't harm me).

Microsoft continues to push Minecraft as a computer programming education tool. Thinking logically is a key part of computer programming, and Minecraft does help kids with that. And Microsoft makes a lot of money in the process.

Friday 12 November 2021

SpaceX has a new dish for their Starink system.

The US' current administration signs the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace.

The Secure Equipment Act of 2021 becomes law. We will no longer buy equipment from companies that pose a national security threat. There is much subjectivity in all this.

No more Toshiba as it splits into three companies.

Movie Pass may come back. Our reaction to the virus smashed the cinema business and Movie Pass was one of the many casualties.

Once again a study shows that the earth will boil away real soon now. Theories abound. Model abound. Garbage in, garbage out.

Google adds 20,000 satellite images to its Earth Engine every day. Then it hands these images and software to thousands of groups to find insights.

Rumors and wishes for Apple's desktop computers in 2022.

Saturday 13 November 2021

The great resignation continues as September sets yet another record for folks leaving their jobs.

Binance performs crytp tranactions: $76Billion (with a B) each day.

The market for "robots" in manufacturin and goods processing jumped 37% this past year in America.

The Thames River through London has become undead. Further proof that God created a planet that can mend itself. The irreversible isn't.

Sunday 14 November 2021

The Taproot code upgrade to Bitcoin has been activated.

I guess I was absent the week we debated and concluded that technology companies would enforce medical theories.

This story is strange; I guess it is true. In Austria, the governors will impose lockdown on some persons because of their medical choices. Lest we forget, the governors of Austria once decided to become part of the Third Reich and that didn't end well. Those folks imposed lockdown on some persons because of their, well, we won't repeat that now. Strange that this would repeat itself.

Another strange story as our FAA claims that 5G expansion will endanger travel by air. All the while, there have been no safety incidents in other countries that have already done the same.

Breaking news from earlier this week: courts rule the end to the Britney Spears conservatorship.

A robot that will roam the sea bed for years. Basic idea that is decades old.

This story must be important as it is all over the Internet: Intel intended to expand chip production in China, but "the White House" nixed that idea.