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: 31 February - 6 February, 2022

Summary of this week:

• The New York Times buys Wordle
• Sony buys Bungie (game maker)
• More financial reports illustrate more pandemic prosperity
• Facebook loses customers for the first time
• Congress revives the EARN IT Act

Monday 31 January 2022

Pandemic prosperity on steroids as the chip makers worldwide had their best year ever.

Here is something new for the expenditure of government money: audits and accountability.

It seems that over the past few days or weeks their has been a great "controversy" on Spotify as one person had a podcast on which he had guests that had views that were not mainstream. In reaction, famous artists pulled their art from Spotify. The world is upside down again. Artists were once the persons who's views were not mainstream. Now artists demand that everyone be in the mainstream.

A satellite from China pulled another satellite out of its orbit. Repair or destroy?

O'Reilly's learning platform reports on leading trends in technology: in 2021 it was cybersecurity, AI, Go, Rust, C++.

Using those new-fangled artificial intelligence tools to write.

One successful freelance writer's secret to success: don't work 25 hours a week. I have heard this from successful consultants before. It does seem to work.

Have a small (niche) market for your writing? Here are some marketing tips.

Want to self publish and earn some money? Here are some tips.

The concept of "synesthesia" and how it can play into writing.

Do we write what we know or write what we don't know so that we now know it?

One writer sees nine elements in a short story.

One writer's search for the place to write. I write while seated. That's about it. I have written in the car, in Starbucks, seated on a gym floor while my kids played, and so on. The objective is to write, not build a perfect place.

Tuesday 1 February 2022

Wordle is bought by the New York Times. So long playing a nice game for free.

Europe enjoys pandemic prosperity as well with smartphone sales up. So much for the idea that everyone already had a smartphone.

Meta stops its Express WiFi program that attempted to bring lower-cost Internet access to lower-income places.

Intel is making a comeback. Its newer processors for laptops (Alder Lake) are performing above expectations.

Sony, countering Microsoft, buys Bungie---the creator of Halo. The gaming wars are on.

Meta officially ends its attempt to have its own cryptocurrency.

The Great Resignation, "It's payback time."

Wednesday 2 February 2022

PANDEMIC PROSPERITY: we see financial gains of 30% and more for established companies. And this is an annual increase over 2020 which also saw such unprecedented gain$$$.

Pandemic prosperity for Google.

Pandemic prosperity for Google's parent Alphabet.

Pandemic prosperity for AMD.

The sales of tablets and Chromebooks is growing, just a few percentage points, but growing. The big pandemic school buying rush is over.

Here is a 20-minute video that goes in depth to discuss the newer Apple M1 processors.

And a little more pandemic prosperity: Google's Pixel phones had their best financial quarter ever.

Thursday 3 February 2022

SpaceX et al have a new version of Starlink that is supposed to work better.

DeepMind claims its software that writes software is on par with humans who write software.

It took a few decades to flip, but we have. Now Microsoft says Apple is evil and a monopoly. Some of us remember when Apple accused Microsoft of the same.

Here is another case of a lone person or small group hacking a nation state. Not sure if we call these folks mercenaries or what.

Finally, someone discusses the obvious with regard to the Havana Syndrome or illness at embassies.

NASA confirms that in 2030 they will guide the International Space Station to plunge into the Pacific Ocean.

Facebook peaks (for the moment). They loses users for the first time and the stock price falls 20%.

But Meta's revenue is way up again. Hint, the drop in stock price was emotional, not well-thought-out trading.

Pandemic prosperity for Qualcomm.

Tales about how Microsoft flopped in its HoloLens project and is now partnering with Samsung.

Apple's pandemic prosperity extends to India with big growth in iPhone sales.

A look at Dell's XPS machine with a 17" screen. It works, and we live in the age where nobody gets fired for buying a Dell.

Friday 4 February 2022

LogMein (log me in) rebrands itself as Go To.

Intel creates its Project Circuit Breaker to bring the crowd into hacking new products to find errors for Intel.

GameStop---those nice folks that sell games in the strip shopping centers---are introducing a marketplace for non-fungible tokens.

GitHub (since being owned by Micro$oft) is learning how to make money. They have a new Sponsors program that gives $sponsor$ access to things we mere mortals cannot see.

Pandemic prosperity for Amazon.

Now we have a Cyber Safety Review Board in our Dept of Homeland Security. Government grows and grows and ...

Amazon raises the price of Prime to $139 a year.

Coming next is PCIe 5. It means faster and faster computing devices for us all. What will we do with all the time we save?

Slackware (Linux) version 15 is released. The last release was in 2016.

AI-controlled traffic lights. Forget the hype, this is common sense and long overdue.

Saturday 5 February 2022

Notes on the current EARN IT Act moving through our Congress. Once again, good intentions and bad details.

More on the EARN IT Act from Bruce Schneier.

A fluff piece once again about the over abundance of "data" and how this is flooding those who seek to protect America.

More angst about Google and AI and ethics and all that. Most AI practitioners didn't take sociology in college. They aren't unethical. Those who misuse the systems that the practitioners build may be unethical.

Strong rumors about lower-priced phones and tablets coming from Apple real soon now.

Our Congress wants to pour several hundred Billion$$$ into American technology companies. This will make us more competitive with China. Free money. Free lunch. Everybody is happy. Right?

And now we have a "reputation management industry." Seems like these folks work by hook or crook to eliminate anything bad someone says about us.

Here is a long piece from the Atlantic about NFT (non-fungible token). Good reading.

America (us) is deploying troops to Europe to stop the Russians or something. This is exactly what Mr. Putin wants. Signs of agression. Now he can tell his subjects that he is standing up to Western aggression. Any truce makes him a hero in Russia.

Our Air Force has given a tiny contract to Clearview AI to evaluate AR glasses with facial recognition that may aid security guards. Of course they will.

Sunday 6 February 2022

Please look at these logos for Chrome. People are paid big money to make these slight changes. Good for them, but really?

Pandemic stimulus checks brought inflation, and inflation and clobbering all types of restaurants.

Google claims that there are 50million Chromebooks in American schools and announces a new repair program for them.

New word for me: Flutter. It is a software building tool started for Android that is now working for just about everything including Windows.

Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia...a programming school opens just for women. Good for them. Expand the workforce. Teach logic. Good for them.