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: dd March-3 April, 2022

Summary of this week:

• The Russian army is still in Ukraine
• Apple sort of wins the Best Picture Oscar
• Ukraine defense forces are destroying Russian tanks with locally made drones
• Waymo extending driverless rides in San Franciso
• Brain drain of tech talent from Russia is accelerating
• This is some evidence that the Russians are withdrawing from positions in the northern sector of Ukraine

Monday 28 March 2022

Better late than never...Apple has been investing in chip manufacturing outside of China for several years. They were a bit late for the latest Chinese virus.

Computer software can generate images of human faces. Some folks are using these everywhere, and some other adults are panicking about this. Humans have been generating images of human faces for centuries. Let's all relax a bit.

"CODA" was awarded the Oscar for Best Picture last night. That is an Apple-owned property. The world changes.

This rumor must be important as it is all over the Internet: Apple to release a new iPad this autumn with an M2 processor.

Writing sites that one writer recommends to writers.

More quotes about writing. Let's pick one or two from this list. "You can make anything by writing."- C.S. Lewis "Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good."- William Faulkner

One blogger writes about building a community via a blog.

This is something that stops many writers: stop editing and ship it.

Thoughts on the bad practice of "infodumping" or interrupting the flow of a story to explain everything in the scene and...oh, where were we...

How one writer wrote one novel. 500 words a day (minimum) of drafting. Things fell together a little at a time. It worked in that case.

Good tips here on editing a short story.

The role of planning in finding time to write.

Is it still "fun" to write? Why not?

This piece explores the concept of simply writing something that is better than something that is blah blah blah.

Tuesday 29 March 2022

Shall we return to text-based web sites? I hope so. If you are reading this, you are part of it.

HP announces it will buy Poly (formerly Plantronics) as all this work-from-home and audio-video continues.

I like the post about journalism and what journalism is supposed to be. I rarely see instances of it today.

Here are some details of Samsung's new M8 monitor. At $700, it is less than half the price of Apple's latest monitor.

Now that the pandemic has subsided enough for high school students to take standardized tests, MIT resumes the use of the tests.

Intel claims that its newest i9 etc. is the world's fastest desktop processor at $739.

"Heroes use systems, they aren't held back by them."---Seth Godin

It appears that war and inflation are not good for commercial electronics sales as Apple is cutting production of several of its more popular products.

Wednesday 30 March 2022

Google releases version 100 of its Chrome browser.

A new scheme to steal data: impersonate the police and have fake search warrants.

Google adds more Markdown features to Docs.

Got $1,999? Today you can finally get Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GPUs. The world's fastest (until next year).

Forward to the past: we have a vending machine that vends fresh-made hamburgers.

Ukraine has their own, locally made drones that are destroying Russian tanks. The world's armies are short of low-altitude air defense systems.

A crypto hacker just stole $625Million. Not sure what a "crypto hacker" is, but it seems to be lucrative.

Among famous and big companies, here are the 25 with the best "culture."

I find some merit in this: college professors who teach writing are not putting grades on papers (A, B, S, D, F). Instead, they focus the students on the comments and improvement.

ooooops, in Chicago Public Schools...during the pandemic 40,000 Chromebooks and 9.600 iPads went "missing." It's only taxpayers' money.

Thursday 31 March 2022

Waymo, formerly a Google division, will be testing driverless rides in San Franciso as a beta test real soon now.

More autonomy for the good of us all (?): FedEx to test delivery drones that can carry 500 pounds of stuff.

Google is attempting to alter its searching to help people in crisis.

Google is reducing "racy results" for its searches.

Some of the effects of being in zero gravity for a long time. Long-term space travel will not work without gravity.

Intel's new GPUs will be here next month (which means next week). Intel calls it the "Arc" series.

It is only taxpayers' money, but now we have dedicated a website to the Wuhan virus.

Governments in the west are releasing what used to be unreleasable information on the Russia-Ukraine war. We trust they know what they are doing. The entire "invasion" may be a ruse to test western intel capabilities.

Regulators attempt to turn back time to the year 2000 and stop social media from being social media.

I'll just repeat the headline, "Former Yale Employee Admits She Stole $40 Million In Electronics From University" Simple---approve computer purchases under $10,000 at a time. Ship to resellers. Keep the money. Repeat daily.

Friday 1 April 2022

It is April Fool's Day so take care with what you see on the Internet.

One of the things that our Dept of Defense excels at is delaying and delaying and delaying itself.

Instead of going to court in the legal system, use an online dispute resolution system.

Apple releases a quick update to its major three operating systems.

Over the past 30 years, Russia was not good at keeping its brain power. Since invading Ukraine, the brain drain has hemorrhaged.

Intel acqui-hired Granulate to improve its workload optimization.

Google adds a "highly cited" label to its search results.

Coming real soon now from Google are video chats inside Docs document. Meet while editing.

Amazon is holding more union votes in Alabama.

Walgreens turns to automation systems to fill prescriptions. The system does in one hour what a staff of persons needs a day to do.

Boston Dynamics is now sell a machine (some call it a robot) that moves boxes in warehouses.

Our President's reaction to high gas prices: make more batteries. No, I don't understand it either.

Saturday 2 April 2022

Docker is now valued at $2.1Billion (with a B).

Microsoft acqui-hires minit and its business operations expertise.

The reaction to the Russian war in Ukraine is crippling the Russian economy. This, however, may be what Mr. Putin wants as it reinforces the Russian feeling that everyone is against them and the motherland.

A detailed look at Apple's new M1 Ultra processor.

Be careful what you wish: workers at a New York City Amazon warehouse vote to join a union.

Some healthy skepticism about how 5G technology is supposed to change everything.

Buy a car while you can afford one: new Federal standards up the average gas mileage of cars fro 28 mpg this year to 40 mpg in 2026.

The governors of the state of Washington have basically outlawed Uber and Lyft. Might as well take a traditional taxi as Uber and Lyft rides will probably cost more.

Sunday 3 April 2022

Today was an exceptionally slow day for Internet viewing---even for a Sunday

We have some early progress in building tiny robots that crawl through our bodies and detect and remove problems at early stages.

Hacktivism continues in the Russia-Ukraine ware with individuals simply calling people in Russia and telling them things about the war that their news channels will not report. Low-cost, widely available, international communications among individuals.

This is some sort of milestone as we have all mined 19 million BitCoins.

I didn't think this would happen, but the folks at Tesla figured out how to manufacture their high-tech automobiles.