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: 25 April - 1 May, 2022

Summary of this week:

• The war in Ukraine continues
• Elon Musk is still buying or not buying Twitter - he buys it!
• Pandemic prosperity continues as quarterly financial reports arrive
• Little news in tech this week
• The stock market is falling and falling and falling
• Gas prices are staying above $4 a gallon

Monday 25 April 2022

Tales of the Defense Innovation Unit in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

The rise of Telegram as a free speech platform.

Meanwhile in Arlington, Virgina, the county gives Amazon approval to build its spiral office building.

Open-source intelligence and the companies that are showing everyone how to do it well.

Efforts to tap geothermal energy at the bottom of abandoned oil wells.

Here is a good post on writing for engineers and just about anyone who is tasked with writing in their job.

How one couple became digital nomads and travel all the time while working online.

It may seem odd, but there is often a fall into despair after a big project is finished.

Acknowledging your limitations is pretty much admitting who you are and being okay with that and writing with that.

Thoughts on creating a writing space. The space is more mental than physical. And as Stephen King wrote, you need a room with a door that you can close.

One person's idea of what blogging is supposed to be. There are many other opinions. Mine differs greatly from what is in this post.

"Frankenstein" still sells 40,000 copies a year. Many of us would like to sell 40,000 copies of anything one time.

One method of starting a copywriting business and earning money.

Thoughts on the stories in marketing.

The Pomodoro technique and getting things done when you just don't want to. Set a timer, work till the bell rings. Rest. Repeat.

Find a method that works for you and allows you to grab and keep your ideas. Years later, some of the work. The trouble is finding a method that works for you.

Here is a collection of posts on how to use LinkedIn as a writer or other freelancer.

It is possible to make yourself into a career writer (if that is what you really want). Go step by step, little by litte. Here are some steps.

Tuesday 26 April 2022

Rumors...the M2 chip from Apple is not here, but we already hear rumors of the M3 chip in a Mac in 2023.

This is one source of THE BIGGEST story of the day. Elon Musk actually buys all of Twitter.

The Brooklyn Public Library is offering digital library cards to anyone in America. This allows teens across the US to checkout eBooks that might not be in public libraries in their areas. Some are linking this to censorship, which is silly. No one is censoring writers and publishers. Some public libraries are choosing not so buy some books and loan them. That is not censorship. That is the local public deciding how to spend local public funds.

Netgear and AT&T are showing a new mobile hotspot that has all the 5G and high(er)-speed WiFi systems.

Meta is opening an actual store in Burlingame, California.

Wednesday 27 April 2022

Craig Martell is our Dept of Defense's first chief digital and artificial intelligence officer CDAO.

Here is a long annotated list of books on the blockchain.

Pandemic prosperity continues on and on and on as the money rolls in.

Google Cloud rolls in the money.

Microsoft rolls in the money.

The EU moves into Silicon Valley so they can sit next to the companies it now regulates.

Google opens its Media CDN to general availability. The services make is much easier for smaller groups to deliver media (video, etc.).

Thursday 28 April 2022

Bell Canada partners with Amazon Web Services on 5G access in Canada.

Arm evolves its line of processors with its new Cortex-M85 that is four times faster than the previous processor.

Pandemic prosperity continues as quarterly financial reports arrive.

Good times continue at Spotify even though its stock price falls to incorrect estimates of growth.

Good times at Samsung.

Good times at Qualcomm.

The number of persons using Facebook rises again. They had lost a few users last quarter. Growth returns.

Now on the market is Dell's new XPS 13 Plus ultraportable. Very stylish computer that is sure to draw attention in the coffee shop.

"It's never been easier to learn what we need to learn. And it's never been more urgent that we do so."---Seth Godin

Friday 29 April 2022

HPE uses a recent acquisition to move further into machine learning with the HPE Machine Learning Development System.

I like this simple graphic showing the inflation of tech company purchases. Lotsa' money changing hands.

The crypto currency market is having a bad year. Then again, so are all the other markets (except the pandemic prosperity tech companies).

With the pandemic over (is it?) and no need for more new laptop computers, shipments are down.

Intel's revenue is down 7% year over year. The results are better than expected.

Apple has another record financial quarter with profits of $2Billion a week.

Noom lays off a quarter of its weight-loss coaches.

Snap shows their "flying camera" they call Pixy. $229, sits in your hand, and flies 10 seconds to take a video of you.

The US, EU, and others (about 60 countries in all) announce the Declaration for the Future of the Internet. These things are great fun for politicians as they aren't laws and really don't mean anything.

Here is the actual declaration.

Coming in time for the next school year, Khan Academy will have a global high school. No charge.

This is early and the sample size is small, but we like shopping for cars online instead of talking with the car salesman in person.

Saturday 30 April 2022

This is just research at this time, but a new two-inch diamond wafer can store 25 exabytes, the equivalent of one billion Blu-Ray discs, of data.

Coming in about 18 months (which roughly equals never in this area of tech), Qualcomm will have an ARM processor for PC that rivals the performance of Apple Silicon.

This is silly. For all my friends in dairy farming Tangipahoa Parish, buy some of these masks to catch the burp of milk cows and save the planet (not).

Coming real soon now from Microsoft is a VPN built into the Edge browser.

The Saudis are dumping chemicals into the air as they try to make it rain. I hope they know what they are doing and I doubt it.

Google is building a huge office campus at Hyderabad, India.

Interesting photos from Mars from NASA's little helicopter that is flying about.

Sunday 1 May 2022

A look at higher-end video cameras in the range of $1,000 to $2,500. Necessary? Not for the great majority of us.

Strong rumors about the Google Pixel watch. I am guessing that it will show the time of day.

Bill Gates wants a global task force to watch for the next pandemic. The World Health Organization doesn't have the resources to do the job. Okay Mr. Gates, fund it. You have the money. Just do it. Stop talking.

Live on a houseboat. This can be practical. It isn't inexpensive, but it works.

Much of the cyber war between Russia and Ukraine will not turn the tide of the battle, but has great potential in harming the other side after the war concludes. Given the kinetic war is deadlier in the short term, people are not paying attention to the long-term.

Computational Fluid Dynamics benchmarks, which use an extreme amount of parallel processing, show that the new Apple silicon processors are extremely powerful in this area.

Musings on the state of the Linux operating system.

People at tech companies are slowly returning to the office building. Austin, Texas leads the way at almost 60%. SF, NY, and San Jose hover around 30%. Here in the Washington D.C. area, no one seems to know about our Federal workforce. It is slow to return as the commute times are near the worst in the country.

With a lot of work, you can change an old iMac into a super duper display.

This story must be important as it was all over the Internet this past week: 16 states are suing our USPS for buying gas-powered mail carrier vehicles.