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: 15-21 November, 2021

Summary of this week:

• IBM has an advance in quantum computing
• CDC approves booster shots for all adults
• Rittenhouse found not guilty on all charges...self defense
• The race is on to build semiconductor factories
• The Intel microprocessor turns 50

Monday 15 November 2021

Troubling news that child sexual abuse material is spreading on the Internet.

IBM announces an advance in their quantum computing.

Schools in Minnesota cannot buy enough food for school lunches---yet another example of bad management.

Countering misinformation with digital literacy. Okay, here you go: don't believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.

Nvidia continues trying to buy ARM. Government regulators continue to delay it.

Here comes a pop-up restaurant that has few or no human workers. Less expensive and less jobs. They believe they can scale up to 1,000s of locations quickly.

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.

Tales of one freelance writer who moved (pushed) to a full-time job with a company.

Thoughts on becoming a writing tutor.

Wondering if what I am writing is good? The wondering tells me that I am wondering and not writing.

Tuesday 16 November 2021

The governors of China continue to squash crypto currency activities.

Google in investing AU$1Billion in a tech center in Australia.

A couple of studies on Twitter and the folks who use it.

Tobii, a company that builds eye-tracking tech, releases a system that allows iPads to be controlled with eye movement. This is what we should be doing in technology.

Honda makes advances with its autonomous work vehicle.

Finally, Amazon Prime users can download movies to our Apple portable computers to view later.

Wednesday 17 November 2021

When you ask social media to ban persons and delete their accounts, you often hurt law enforcement's efforts to prosecute them. We are an odd lot.

Perhaps their is hope that Hi Fidelity music will return. The younger generation is going back to real headphones with cords (ban the Blue Tooth).

Qualcomm intends to build processors for Windows PCs that can compete with Apple's processors.

Microsoft opens cloud data centers in Sweden. They vow to only use "green power."

Mozilla increases its offerings for its Firefox Relay email alias system.

Here is an analysis of social media stars across the spectrum. Being a hit in one place usually means you aren't a hit anywhere else. There is little intersection.

Always good at declaring schedules and then delaying them, NASA moves the next moon landing from 2024 to 2025...or is it 2026 or 2027 or...

This must be important as it it all over the Internet: the Brave browser now has a built-in crypto wallet.

This week was the 50th anniversary of the Intel 4004 microprocessor. The world changed. The engineers at Intelligent Electronics put an entire processor on one chip.

Thursday 18 November 2021

A quiet day out there.

This is becoming boring: Nvidia has yet another record financial quarter. Our reaction to the virus has boosted tech companies with unprecedented gains.

UPS will soon be making long-haul deliveries using Waymo's self-driving trucks.

Recent research shows (here we go again) that a few cups of coffee a day reduce the risk of stroke and dementia. A few is better than zero and better than 7 or 8.

This story must be important as it is all over the Internet: Apple now has self-service repair for its iPhones.

Friday 19 November 2021

OpenAI makes using GPT-3 much easier by eliminating a waiting list for access to the API.

It appears that Apple is back at it trying to make a self-driving car.

Apple goes back to the office building, sort of. Return set for 1 February with four weeks a year of work from home. The experiments begin.

Texas Instruments plans to spend $30Billion and build four chip making plants in Texas. If they had only done this five years ago.

I believe that the Amazon Fire tablets are the best value in computing. Their prices are now lower than ever.

Bill Gates moves into nuclear power and chooses Wyoming as the site for an experimental plant.

Saturday 20 November 2021

This is a new one from President Biden: all individual Federal contractors have a right of first refusal when a government contract changes from one company to another.

The DoD awards its big cloud computing contract to four companies: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google and Oracle. This is the replacement to the JEDI contract, which should have had multiple award winners years ago.

This analysis claims the US is short of 2million workers due to our former President. The immigration policies of the prior administration may have done this. Now we face a question: return to immigrant migrant labor or move those industries and tasks to automation? The automation route will create higher-technology jobs for those who build and maintain the automation and be good in the long term. The immigration route will maintain the status quo and be good in the short term. Can we survive the loss in the short term to achieve the good of the long term?

"Experiments" with Facebook accounts produce predictable and predicted results. Liking things brings more of those things. This comes as a surprise to some adults, and that surprises me (a little).

For the record, the young man who shot three persons in Kenosha, Wisconsin last year was found not guilty on all charges. It was all self defense. The evidence presented in trial was not published in the media the year before the trial. That confirms media bias, but no one seems to be telling that story today.

Oooops, your Tesla automobile is connected to something. When that link fails, you cannot unlock your car.

I like this one in several aspects: NZXT has an $800 gaming PC for the age of the graphics card shortage.

I like this XKCD comic.

How Netflix built a streaming service that would not break under anticipated loads.

We are now building semiconductor factories in the US. Cities are bidding for them. I hope they know what they are doing.

Some test results show that microdoses of psychedelics bring health benefits.

Our CDC approves virus booster shots for all adults. Prediction: boosters will be required before you can go into the office. I think you would have to bet $100 to win $1 on that prediction as it is almost certain.

Sunday 21 November 2021

The open approach that Twitter uses in AI research.

Peter Buck dies at 90. He is the last surviving co-founder of Subway, the sandwich place. There are now 44,000 franchises worldwide. It started in 1965 with $1,000.

Virus restrictions continue in Europe, and people are sick of it.

When will we stop calling these luxury ships "yachts?"

Crypto miners are migrating to Texas.

A survey of GitHub users shows that programmers like working remotely and don't plan to return to the office. Only 10% do plan to return.

More study and more study point to a Wuhan food market as the source of the virus. Perhaps one day we will awaken from our stupor and call this thing the "Wuhan virus." That is one way in which we can remove the charge that science and scientists can be bought with money.