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: 22-28 November, 2021

Summary of this week:

• Tech companies still thriving in the prolonged year of the virus
• Shopping bots are finding hard-to-find items for Christmas
• College learn that remote learning doesn't work for most
• Thanksgiving day in the US this week, quiet on the news
• Everyone pointing to sale prices on everyone else's site

Monday 22 November 2021

The aged and disabled can use surveillance tech in their homes so they can live in their homes. This isn't as devious as the Washington Post describes it. There are many alternatives.

And now we have the shopping bot: software that scours the Internet and buys those hard-to-find items.

Here comes the $8Trillion Metaverse. Now if we could just figure out what the Metaverse is.

Unable to hire persons, restaurants are turning to robotic servers. It is about supply, demand, wages, and desires.

Colleges are dropping remote learning. It simply doesn't work well for most students and most subjects.

It appears that Facebook pays groups to publish misinformation. It is simple: wild stories bring eyes which bring more ad money. So Facebook pays the creators of wild stories.

I like this article on improving our writing. Slow down. You're an adult now and no longer in high school. Let's move into the real world and do things that adults do in the real world. Read. Study. Write a lot.

Thoughts on writing about family.

And I like this somewhat pessimistic post on what it is like to finish a book and be greeted with a lot of nothing.

Good tips here on revising verbs about the senses.

One writer's journey. There is lots of wandering around. That is normal.

Notes from an old writer to a young writer. You write. You are a writer. Sales and all that other stuff don't matter. You are a writer.

Tuesday 23 November 2021

An original copy of the US Constitution was at auction. A decentralized autonomous organization bid $40Million and lost. Now it seems that all that money evaporated.

The governors of China banned crypto mining. All that expensive computing gear is spreading out to the rest of the world. Odd decision in China. I think they are entering the self-destructive phase of dictatorship.

Zoom has another great financial quarter. I suppose we are not ready to return to the office.

It appears that Microsoft and Qualcomm have a contract that limits Windows to run only on Q's ARM processors. That contract is about to expire. The wild west will open. Here come herds of companies and their lawyers.

Real news that isn't news: a European regulator fines successful American companies hundreds of million$$$.

I am trying to understand these disease numbers. We now have 93,000 COVID cases a day (this week's average). And we have 1% to 4% of America having the flu on any given day (see Gallup News https://news.gallup.com/poll/118045/flu-affects-americans-given-day.aspx). At 1%, that means about 3 million Americans have the flu and about 100,000 have COVID. The flu is 30 times more prevalent. I realize I am rounding off numbers here and taking the best case for the flu and the worst case for COVID. Did I calculate this incorrectly?

Wednesday 24 November 2021

Our reaction to the virus continues to pay off for tech companies.

HP has a good financial quarter.

Dell has a good financial quarter---better than expected.

Samsung will build a $7Billion semiconductor factory outside of Austin, Texas.

Apple moves away from Qualcomm and towards TSMC for 5G components.

The governors in Russia require US tech companies to have official offices in Russia if they intend to have users in Russia.

Using TikTok to boost sales and reading of books.

Thursday 25 November 2021

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the US.

For the ump-teenth time, we create a group to help identify unidentified flying objects.

Someone is running a holiday sale on something...pause to consider that we can now buy 128 GigaBytes of storage for less than a $20 bill. We live in amazing times.

$3Billion (with a B) to plant trees in cities. I suppose there are worse things we could do.

Friday 26 November 2021

Recycle all those electric car batteries? That is science fiction. Maybe something will happen, but for now we fill the landfills with them.

Afghanistan's sneaker net and hiding from the Taliban.

The best toaster we cannot buy was built by Sunbeam in 1948. My parents had a Sunbeam toaster that was better than anything sold today.

The pandemic and cybercrime on Nigerian college campuses.

If you wait on your computer to run a program, that costs money. If a new computer runs faster, that saves you money. Reddit bought all its engineers new M1-powered MacBook Pros to save them money.

Strong rumors of Apple having an AR headset this time next year.

Saturday 27 November 2021

Now we are getting somewhere with little flying drones. The Dronut has no exposed propellors. Fits in your hand and weights 1 pound.

I suppose it is simply that time of year. Much of the Internet is pointing to much of the Internet and the sale prices of computers and related gadgets.

"The option is to start small, as small as possible. Small enough to work, big enough to put you on the hook. Build something that works."---Seth Godin

And now we have the Omicron variant of the virus (this is a link to one of many stories online) Prediction: back to the office delayed three more months. Angst. Grievous vexation.

It appears that the supply chain problems at California ports is simply BAD MANAGEMENT.

Western civilization is safe: better video games coming to Linux real soon now. It seems to me that there are more important issues for all these smart people and high technology.

Flowrite is a not-yet-here product that uses GPT-3 (AI) to write emails for us given a couple of bullets.

Sunday 28 November 2021

In Germany, here come the toxic waste dumps. They want to go from half a million to 30 million electric vehicles in nine years.

Booster shots are judged at increasing protection some 24,000%. Really? Wow.

Amazon increases its ties with Red Hat and the Fedora Linux.

Angst in the Rust programming language world.