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.
It is still early, but Broadcom is looking to buy VMWare.
Some thoughts on the Go programming language.
Why write when things are "bad?" Because we write. That is what we do. There have been many pieces in the pandemic about how it was impossible to focus etc. Just do it folks. The sun still comes up in the morning. And if it doesn't, we will REALLY HAVE SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT.
Thoughts on writing speculative fiction. I thought all fiction was "speculative."
Some of the advantages of writing short stories. Try writing a few dozen. It may be fun.
....Pandemic prosperity continues for Zoom.
TikTok has a new subscription that will help creators make more money. Caution: TikTok has been called a "Chinese weapons system" by experts given the amount and type of information it collects and the recipient of that information.
Meta expands the amount of data that it is sharing with researchers.
Companies are making the office a place people want to go. They want people to return, so make it nicer. Let's see what happens. Insider information: US Federal offices are not doing any of this.
Tales of programming in Lisp. Some of us experienced the pain.
Unlimited paid time off has many benefits for the employer and not so many for the employee.
.....Microsoft partners with Qualcomm to bring AI processors to basic Windows.
Here is a little more information on the Microsoft-Qualcomm deal.
Google makes it easier for Chrome users to search on images instead of words.
Microsoft announces Power Pages. It is a system that makes building websites easier.
Microsoft claims to have 10million users of its Xbox Cloud Gaming.
And Microsoft announces Live Share. It is supposed to make it easier to work together on Teams.
Walmart expands its drone deliveries. You have to live within a mile of a special store.
We, the American public, have gone terribly wrong in how we hire and train law enforcement officers.
.....Risk and lack of reward. Snowflake is a tech company. Many of its employees forego salary and take stock as compensation. That risk pays well sometimes. At Snowflake, and many other tech companies, it is not paying at all the past few months. Too bad for them. And since their compensation dropped, so will their spending at the restaurant, motel, and many other places where employees are not paid much and really need all the income and tips they can get. It all connects. It all disconnects.
Amazon's CEO is paid $212Million a year. He has made the company at least ten times that with his work in cloud computing. Of course it sounds ridiculous to be paid that much. He does pay income tax like the rest of us.
Nvidia's financial and market boom continues. Someone this report makes it sound like bad news.
Apple boosts the pay of its hourly worker by 45%. Starting workers will receive $22 per hour.
Pandemic prosperity continues for Lenovo. That is a Chinese company. China was the origin of this whole mess.
Seems this should happen more often from manufacturer's. LG turns its TV into a computer monitor.
Boeing's Starliner capsule returns to earth. Boeing is far behind schedule, but progress is better than no progress. We need competitors in this market.
.....All this stay-at-home online schooling for kids in America during the pandemic wasn't secure as advertised. Problems were everywhere despite school board claims of safety. Yet another example of public officials lying to the public during the pandemic. This is bad for all of us.
Dell has another good financial quarter as it comes out of the PC-buying boom of the pandemic.
Zoomtowns, those places people to which tech-hub persons moved during the pandemic, are now struggling. The long-time residents have been priced out of the housing market.
Tesla plans a car-charging facility in Los Angeles. Remember the first Internet cafes in America? They lasted six month. Such will be these charging meccas.
Tim Cook donates $100,000 to his high school band. Good for him. More of this should happen.
.....Much of the news this week is bad. Many of the reactions to the events are worse than the events themselves. "We must pass laws that prevent bad events," is the cry. Simply find all the persons who would do bad things and remove them from the presence of the rest of us. That cry hasn't changed in 30 or 40 centuries. Guns, car, narcotics. Find a thing to blame and remove it. Sorry, and I am really sorry, but it isn't that simple.
The Russians are bringing old tanks out of storage to use in Ukraine. As I wrote when this all began, pray for Russian soldiers. They are being sent to their deaths. They don't know where they are going or what they are supposed to be doing there. They are kids. They are just like the kids in my neighborhood. They hold life and death in their hands and they don't know hold to hold them.
15,000 persons in the tech industry lost their jobs in May. Bidenflation is taking its toll.
Worldwide, people have invested in cryptocurrency thinking it was stable and safe. Countless people lost everything they had. Crypto currencies are not stable. They are volatile like all investments in companies that can be mismanaged and go broke.
Haven't ridden in Uber lately? It will cost a lot more now than it did. More Bidenflation.
.....Lowe's partners with Dell to try to stay ahead of the online retail crowd.
Google bans deepfake work in their Colab online development environment.
Researchers build radio-controlled robots that are 0.5 mm wide. See the video and watch one walk along the edge of a penny. One day we look forward to robots that will crawl and swim through our bodies to kill disease at the micro level.
Rich Russians have learned ways to hide their big yachts. It is easier than most thought.
This weekend is Memorial Day. It is not Armed Forces Day. It is not Veterans Day. We don't "celebrate" Memorial Day. We don't say, "Happy Memorial Day." It is somber. We remember those who are not with us today. They are not here because they died making is possible for us to be here. We mourn their absence.
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