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: 6-12 December, 2021

Summary of this week:

• Return to the office? No one knows when
• Tornadoes hit Kentucky and nearby states
• Elon Musk is names Time Magazine's Person of the Year
• IBM and Samsung have new techniques for making semiconductors
• The Internet Association closes
• Reddit quietly goes to IPO
• The world reels from an outbreak of Omicron variant of the Wuhan virus

Monday 6 December 2021

This story must be important as it is all over the Internet: Chris Wallace moves from Fox to CNN.

Our Dr. Fauci now acts like America's grandfather by telling parents what to do with their 6 year old children.

Tornadoes tore through Kentucky and nearby states this past weekend.

When will people return to the office? Most companies finally admit that they don't know. And some are honest enough to admit that they never really needed that office building anyway.

More thoughts on the joy of writing. Just write folks, just write.

The writing community. It is a blessing to have other writers who will talk to you and read what you have written.

Look at software called "The Hemingway Editor." It simply flags the use of passive voice and other things that Hemingway avoided. A good tool for some writers on some occasions.

Using a lack of information to create a little tension in the reader, enough to keep reading, not too much that closes the book.

Know a writer? Boost their confidence this gift-giving season.

Thoughts on stories written by other writers and how reading them (and just about everything else) helps the writer.

Symbolism in stories. I guess I'm not clever enough to put symbols for things in my stories. I just tell the story that comes to me.

Tuesday 7 December 2021

We are moving towards practical augmented and assisted reality. Oppo shows their coming AirGlass product.

Intel shows some long-term plans for processors and manufacturing.

Facebook exec explains what anyone with any sense and any sense of history knows: Facebook didn't invent gossip and lying.

Our President orders Federal agencies to move services online.

LG shows something different in TVs: completely wireless, mobile, roll around, operates on WiFi and batteries.

Mental health is being cited often as a reason for not returning to work. I don't feel like going to work. I'd rather stay home.

We now have a shortage of fertilizer. Hence, manure (even from humans) is more desired.

Time Magazine's person of the year is Elon Musk.

Journalism moves to streaming services. The death of journalism has been greatly exaggerated. It is just different now.

Wednesday 8 December 2021

Oppo shows its first folding smartphone.

Oppo also claims to have built a camera processor for smartphones that will change everything.

Stretchery publishes its state of technology 2021.

The latest big malware in the world is Log4Shell in Log4j. Not to worry, our Federal government has ordered itself to protect itself.

The Internet Association closes its doors.

At Google, be vaccinated or lose your job. I suppose we now learn if the vaccination requirement is seen as mean or prudent or both.

I like this post from Seth Godin. Love the quote, "If the current world crisis would abate, then I'd be able to concentrate."

Here comes Web3. We will realize it after it is here.

It seems that rocket scientists and brain surgeons are like the rest of us. I guess we'll have to lose those old sayings.

Thursday 9 December 2021

Our Dept of Homeland Security starts a bug hunter program. As with most government programs, nice idea, but the rewards are so small as to be embarrassing.

OpenAI releases new features to make using its GPT-3 model easier and easier (pay for u$e).

Let's pause a moment to reflect on the success of Reddit, the newspaper of the Internet. 100,000 groups, 50Million daily users. Not anywhere near the angst of other social media sites.

Apple closes a few more stores in response to you know what (virus).

"Matter" is the name given to a smart home standard. Maybe this one will work.

Zoom joins the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT). This is one of several interconnected industry groups.

IBM, Intel, Samsung, et al are talking about Vertical Transport Field Effect Transistors (VTFET). More computing power in less space.

Maybe it was a good idea, scanning for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The public relations was a disaster. Apple removes all mention of this effort. It is, for now, gone.

Apple officially says that the return to office date is To Be Determined, i.e., we don't have any idea.

Yet more remote sensing increases belief that there is significant amounts of water on Mars. Wake me when we are making coffee on Mars with native water.

Ride the train coast to coast in the Eastern Hemisphere. Lisbon to Singapore in 21 days.

Friday 10 December 2021

Our Govt Accountability Office rules that our NSA made big mistakes in evaluating proposals for its cloud computing contract. Back to the drawing board. Wasted Million$.

Where the money is: there is a lot of it in cryptocurrencies, so thieves are rampant there.

Apple releases Swift Playgrounds 4. We can now develop iOS apps on the iPad. No need for a desktop machine.

Uber will attempt driverless food deliveries in California next year (which is two weeks away).

A look at the surveillance-for-hire industry. Meta, of course, is the defender of everyone and bans some of these from Facebook.

Here comes Web3, or maybe not.

The Consumer Electronics Show is coming. Companies are previewing products for it now.

Rivian is an electric vehicle company that has no cars on the road, yet. Still, they spend $5Billion on a second plant in Georgia.

How to get school called off: make a phoney bomb threat. TikTok users catch on to this old tactic.

The wait list is over, now you can play Nvidia's GeForce Now RTX-3080 GPU for games on the Internet. I have no doubt that someone has a way to mine cryptocurrency instead of playing a game.

Everyone is bashing Amazon because people died when a tornado hit a warehouse. That is a tragedy. Amazon is blameless. No one is bashing the candle factory company where more people died. The reason? The candle company is not as successful as Amazon. When a tornado hits your building, there is nothing you can do. Sure, there are "tornado proof" shelters you can build, and you can close operations every time there are dark clouds. You can stop all deliveries every time it is raining. No one want that.

And now we are told that the FDA-approved Johnson and Johnson vaccine is...not so good.

Demographics and India. India will pass China with the world's largest population in five years.

Saturday 11 December 2021

Not much Internet viewing this morning.

Seized assets, hidden money, and law enforcement purchases. Plenty of room for misbehaving.

Where the money is: eight mobile games brought in $1Billion (with a B) each during 2021.

This story must be important as it is all over the Internet: YouTube TV and Disney don't agree on something. YouTube loses a bunch of Disney programs.

Sunday 12 December 2021

The world is reeling from the omicron variant of the Wuhan virus.

Nvidia releases the GeForce RTX 2050 laptop GPU. The name is old, the product is new.

Meanwhile in China (where people still disappear and censorship thrives), a few persons continue editing Wikipedia at their peril.

Speaking of censorship, it also lives on in Russia. The Russians, however, take the money of American companies as punishment.

Does AI "understand" human language. We can't seem to find a test.

The mobile RV lifestyle. It fits (sort of) for some persons. Not the middle class as stated herein.