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: 27 June - 3 July, 2022

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• NOAA gets two new supercomputers for weather prediction
• Google has a new Public Sector Division
• Google will now auto-delete visits to abortion clinics
• Microsoft running short of Azure cloud computing servers due to supply chain issues

Monday 27 June 2022

Early Apple rumors point to many new products in the next 12 months.

It appears that the governors of China are using new surveillance tech to predict future actions and arrest people early.

Benchmark test show that the new low-end MacBook Pro is slower than the older model.

For the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia defaults on foreign debt. It appears that sanctions blocked the movement of money.

"There's no free lunch," has always been a basic lesson in economics. Now we seek to erase that by making lunch free to everyone all the time. Someone also said something like, "eventually you run out of other people's money."

And now we hear the promise of the solar-powered cars. Let us see if they are practical in the next two years.

The movie "Blade Runner" is 40 years old. I saw it in a special movie theater in San Jose, Ca. It was different. Time treated it well as it is now revered while scorned 40 years ago.

MaqQuest dot com still operates and has 17million users.

Sometimes we let the "rules of writing" become actual rules instead of guides. Tell a good story.

Thoughts on writing better headlines.

More thoughts on blocking writer's block.

The idea of writing one sentence that summarizes your novel. Then you write the novel.

A consideration of software that helps format your writing for a book. LaTeX has worked for decades. There are newer products available.

Tuesday 28 June 2022

Someone asked about improving their technical writing. I am surprised by the number and length of responses.

Strong predictions that Apple will have a VR/AR headset in January 2023.

Meanwhile in America: fear and loathing as speculation is rampant about how governments will track us everywhere due to SCOTUS ruling on abortion.

Google expands the availability of its Earth Engine to all businesses and governments. Prior to this, it was available only to a few researchers.

This work is early, but is promising: a paralyzed man feeds himself with robotic arms and a brain connection. This is the type of work that leading technologists should be doing.

Meanwhile in China, Xi Jinping, a.k.a., current dictator, claims that consulting the whole population of his subjects is superior to western democracies.

Someone corrects a small rounding error and concludes that fossils are a million years older than previously thought. Ain't "science" fun?

Some economists predict that inflation will continue despite the assurance of our current administration led by our current President.

IBM settles its age discrimination case out of court. I hope the injured old folks received more than just compensation.

This article shows results of pretty good testing of all Apple processors that gives relative performance of them.

Wednesday 29 June 2022

How companies are using pattern recognition software to improve the efficiency of their data centers.

Researchers at MIT claim to be able to improve the performance of any robotic system.

Google creates a new division for working with government and education providers at all levels. They call it Google Public Sector.

Our NOAA spends half-a-billion $$$ for two new supercomputers to help predict our weather.

Sony announces a new line of video game gear called InZone.

ARM announces its new line of processor designs that will be in smartphones next year.

Our NASA launches a small satellite bound for the moon. The launch site was in New Zealand. I guess this makes some sense.

Folks are using deepfake videos during remote job interviews. Are you looking at the real person or someone else's face?

Mozilla has released Firefox version 102.

It appears that TSMC will have more sales than Intel this quarter.

A company named MNT continues it efforts at open-source hardware portable computers.

This is the site for MNT Research.

The governors of Russia are fining non-Russian tech companies for not storing data in Russia.

Thursday 30 June 2022

Kyligence shows a new data analytics platform for big data.

It appears that you can't make Pepsi (or sell it online) without artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Databricks releases its Data Lake framework to open source and the Linux Foundation.

Intel researchers claim advances in silicon photonics.

Predictable and predicted: in China, proximity trackers started during the virus reaction are being used by governors to keep subjects from protesting.

Real news that isn't news: AI researchers warn the public that AI marketers tend to exaggerate about what AI can do.

TEX Samsung claims to be manufacturing 3nm chips. If true, this puts them ahead of everyone else (for a little while).

Let's just quote the story, "Major League Baseball will 'likely' introduce an Automated Strike Zone System starting in 2024..." Either do that or ban those strike zone boxes they show on TV.

We reach the 20th anniversary of the TSA and airport security theatre. Can we disband it now?

The recent Supreme Court decision on abortion now causes some to reconsider the idea of national electronic health records. This is yet another case of when "we" are in power some things are okay, but when "they" are in power, those things are evil. The definitions of we and they and this and that and okay and evil frequently change.

On the opposite side of advancing manufacturing is that of retiring manufacturing that is old but still quite profitable. It happens all the time.

Someone is spending money on facilities that remove carbon dioxide from the air. We can now capture that produced by a couple hundred thousand cars, which is about ... nothing. And we all exhale carbon dioxide with every breath, so I am perplexed by all the hooo-hah.

Friday 1 July 2022

Some basics of managing work and requests for more work. Ask four simple questions. Caution: many will be upset to be asked.

Apple announces rewards for those who help its community of users in their support forums.

Mojo Lens passes another engineering milestone in developing a AR-equipped contact lense. Their CEO has put it in his eyes.

In an attempt to reduce the sharing of private medical information, our current President wants our Dept of Justice to share medical information with our Dept of Health and Human Services. It appears that more sharing equals less sharing. Perhaps I don't understand any of this.

Meanwhile in China, the governors tightened regulation on tech. Tech lays off people. Governors say they will lessen regulation, but tech continues layoffs.

Now that the pandemic is over, Zoom tries to understand where to focus its products.

Raspberry Pi releases its $6 Pico W. It is a microcontroller with WiFi.

SpaceX is now authorized to provide Starlink satellite Internet access to moving vehicles.

The governors of China push harder to create an operating system for desktop computers so the Chinese will stop using Microsoft Windows and Apple MacOS.

Someone is starting to grasp the reality that abortion is deeply personal and critical to people. Big tech companies have facilities all over America. Feelings differ all over America. Just because a company was founded in one spot does not mean that folks in the one spot rule and decree.

China's new college graduates face 18% unemployment.

Our Supreme Court ends this session ruling that our EPA cannot do whatever it wants under the Clean Air Act. If Congress wants the EPA to run power generation in America, it needs to pass a law saying so.

Saturday 2 July 2022

What's hot: sales of AR/VR headsets with Meta (Facebook) way out in front of everyone.

What's not: Microsoft Azure cloud services are running short of servers due to supply chain issues. All these companies are kicking themselves because five years ago they did not invest in manufacturing. If they had, they would be ruling the tech world.

Here's the headline: Google will start auto-deleting abortion clinic visits from user location history subtext: Google can delete any type of specific history if it wishes. subtext #2: Google knows when everyone goes to the doctor (or anyplace else for that matter).

Simple market research (buy something at Best Buy) shows that the GPU shortage is over. Gamers rejoice. (much of this is due to the collapse in value of BitCoin et al)

It appears that the CD is making a comeback for the distribution of music.

First our baseball announced computers to call balls and strikes. Now FIFA announces computers to call offsides at this year's World Cup.

This isn't rocket science: inflation means folks buy less and are unhappy. This means the ruling party loses many elections.

Sunday 3 July 2022

In California, where the governors have not liked gun ownership for decades, the state conveniently has a data breach of gun owner private information.

TCL releases a $200 smartphone. While performance is low, the value may be the best available.

Slowly but surely, fireworks shows are being replaced by thousands of lighted and dancing drones.

We learn that Tesla is getting too many parts from China. And Tesla learns that China is an unreliable business partner.

The Russian army may not learn fast, but it learns. They have figured out how to defeat Ukrainian drones.

Rumors that our former President will be indicted by our current President. Such would be bad for all of us.

An AI model correctly predicts crime trends a week in advance. Of course, lots of people could and have done this, too.

The Software Freedom Conservancy advocates programmers move away from GitHub citing how the commercial Microsoft division violates the principles of free and open-source software.

Pine64 announces a coming single-board computer based on RISC-V processors.

Meanwhile in California, the legislators are now experts in the care, feeding, and behavior of teenagers.

Hacking for hire: hackers are hired to grab documents related to pending lawsuits to sway outcomes.