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: 1-7 August, 2022

Summary of this week:

• Yes, the Russians are still in Ukraine with no end in sight
• MIT researchers have small, wearable ultrasound monitors
• Torvalds uses Apple M1 machine to develop and release Linux
• Congressional delegation visits Taiwan, CPC throws a fit
• Monkeypox is now a public health emergency in America
• Amazon is buying iRobot and all the data about everyone's homes

Monday 1 August 2022

Battling the Russian cyber war machine with Tor. Tor is simple and has been around for years. It still works.

Now that "they" are in charge, "we" are worried about national electronic health records. Back when "we" were in charge, such were good things to be desired.

Our Congress has passed along $52Billion taxpayers' dollars to chip makers. In other countries, the rulers have passed on much more. Does anyone win?

Actress Nichelle Nichols dies. She played Nyota Uhura on the original Star Trek TV show.

More portable power solutions. These use the lightweight but expensive lithium batteries. Just buy a car battery and an inverter.

More studies show that the Wuhan virus started in the unsanitary conditions of the Wuhan market. The Chinese had these problems for centuries. Their recent wealth and international travel now spreads these problems to the rest of us.

Hack-tivism continues around the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We don't know what else to call these volunteer cyber warriors.

Bill Gates says that he has been playing pickleball for 50 years. The recreation activity started in the Pacific northwest where Gates grew up.

Working folks are leaving California and Illinois. They see what is coming in economic default.

Some news: Linus Torvalds just released Linux 5.19. Big news: the development occurred on an Apple computer running the Apple M1 processor.

MIT engineers produce ultrasound imaging devices the size of postage stamps that can stick to the skin and operate for 48 hours.

Tuesday 2 August 2022

Meanwhile out in western China, they have artificial intelligence monitoring the power grid (among other things and people.) They claim the system can find power outages and reroute power in seconds.

We now have $52Billion to build factories. We now need expertise and to allow experts to stay in the US. I don't see the problem with allowing educated, working people to immigrate to the US. Perhaps they don't vote "right" or something.

It appears that the organ transplant system in the US is antiquated or just plain bad. Come on, we can do much much better.

Sales of Chromebooks collapsed in the post pandemic. Sales of tablets went back up. Side note, the sales of Chromebooks is still above the pre-pandemic era.

Microsoft has found greater efficiencies and has extended the life of its cloud computing resources by 50% (6 not 4 years). This means Billion$.

Some analysis of Facebook friends and economics. Poor kids with rich friends are more likely to move up out of poverty.

Amazon is running more of its own trucks and shipping more goods. This leads to more carbon emissions. This seems to surprise some who are otherwise adults.

This news is all over the Internet: Apple won't require masks in its offices.

The US claims to have killed Ayman al-Zawahri in a drone strike in Kabul. He was the leader of al-Qaida since the death of Bin Laden.

We see efforts to change the name of New Zealand to Aotearoa -- pronounced au-te-a-ro-uh

I am trying to unravel the logic behind this one. Companies need to hire a racially diverse workforce. Companies hire college graduates. Companies want the government to force government-run colleges to allow a racially diverse group to enter government run colleges. Another method would be for companies to run their own colleges and educate the person they want. I guess that costs too much money. It is better to ask the taxpayers to fix the companies' problems.

Wednesday 3 August 2022

Apple shows an AI system it calls GAUDI for rendering indoor scenes from text descriptions.

A company named Wave Swell Energy has built what it calls a "blowhole" system that generates electricity from the simple up and down motion of water on a coastline. A prototype has been operating for a year and producing more energy than expected. Some hope here. Hey California, put these up and down the coast to power water desalination plants and stop draining the Colorado River and other scarce western water.

Google's CEO declares that a company with as many employees as it has should be producing more. He is trying to do something others have not been able to do: grow while maintaining the ooomph of a small group of highly motivated persons.

This is smart and it works. In Taiwan, instead of parking your electric-powered scooter at a recharging station, you swap your dead battery for a recharged battery at a swap station. Stop, swap, go. Fast. I guess we cannot do this with cars.

Microsoft is experimenting with Hydrogen fuel cell systems to replace diesel generators at data centers.

If you expected some of that $52B, forget it if have any employees in China.

AMD reports a big big financial quarter.

It is back to work and stop playing those video games while you were supposed to be working from home.

A delegation from Congress visits Taiwan and sends the Communist Party of China into fits of rage.

International cooperation in space works until it doesn't work on earth.

The Raspberry Pi keeps rolling on with with new graphics libraries.

Some numbers on electric vehicles show that outside of California, its a lot of hype. Inside California, its a lot of hype, too.

oooops, it seems that those high-performance solid state disks burn much more carbon to make.

News to me, there is a big market in second-hand luxury watches (Rolex is the prime example). The collapse in crypto currency value has also collapsed the price of these watches.

And we hit the big bump in the road on electric vehicles: those charging stations are expensive and take months to have one installed.

Thursday 4 August 2022

There is a lot of noise this week about Apple having technology that will end the password. I am ont holding my breath.

Meta is testing a new live streaming service.

Thoughts on how communications technology has connected everyone to unprecedented levels. This will continue barring a major devastating war.

These ClearBuds promise a drastic reduction in room noise for ZoomerTeams meetings.

Some say that if we all don't get cyber security certifications (pay them money, please) the world will collapse.

Microsoft jumps into the cyber security marketplace.

After 57 years on broadcast TV, NBC is moving "Days of Our Lives" to Peacock (pay TV).

Winamp, a music-playing app on PCs, is still going.

Heavy machine learning and AI work is bring some companies back to owning their own hardware instead of using cloud computing.

The tale of how a merger among big big big companies caused a completed movie (Batgirl) to be put away for tax purposes.

One reason for "wealth inequality" in the US is that one group of people invested much better than another group. That is a free market. Everyone had the equal chance, some chose better. In this case, however, those who chose better are predominantly white. Hence, some claim that the system was rigged and people were cheated in some manner.

Friday 5 August 2022

One person's 14 other wonders of the world.

The data gathering machine known as Tesla. Car? Who cares? It is the data. Tesla owners are giving the company wealth with every turn of the tires.

General Motors has doubled the size of the map on which its cars can pretty much drive themselves.

Fear and loathing among engineers and scientists at tech companies. What once were assured jobs are now shaky.

Our FAA approves the first flying car. Of course it is small (two people) and expensive, but it flies.

Tesla continues work on solar-energy-producing roof tiles.

Where the money is: Chainalysis reports on over $2Billion (with a B) stolen already this year in only one type of theft.

Google improves how it shows the results of searches for exact phrases.

Our Congressional delegation to Taiwan is greeted by cyber attacks from Russia and China.

Intel to spend $5Billion and build a chip factory in Italy.

Attempting to work from home with no Internet service. There are a few things you can do, maybe.

Meanwhile in America, monkeypox is a public health emergency. Is COVID still one?

HBO and Discovery melt into each other and have to rename all their pay-for-play subscriptions.

Saturday 6 August 2022

South Korea (using a SpaceX rocket) launches an unmanned vehicle to the moon.

Apple succumbs to political and economic pressure from the Communist Party of China in how shipments across the Taiwan Strats are labeled.

This is a big deal: Amazon is buying iRobot and acquiring all the data collected by those Roomba vacuum cleaners.

Meanwhile in the UK, more facial images and recognition to be used regarding immigrants who have committed crimes. These are criminals, not just plain folks.

Strong rumors that manufacturing of the next iPhone will begin in India at the same time it does in China.

Meanwhile in California, the DMV accuses Tesla of (get ready for this) false advertising. Only in California can a standard practice be a crime.

Where the money is: gaming became far more prevalent during the pandemic. Hence, hacking gaming for money did as well.

In one of the more obvious rulings ever, schools cannot punish students for things they do that have nothing to do with schools. Why was this ever an issue?

I'll just quote this from an Internet researcher, "The internet is impermanent in a way that is difficult to quantify."

How to make $9.5Million: build a huge crypto currency mining facility. Turn it off during a heat wave. Sell the electric power back to the government.

Sunday 7 August 2022

Some considerations of data science (DS) and machine learning (ML). While ML has been around for decades, DS is relatively new and has yet to have an accepted definition.

Thoughts on cyber warfare. Like many things associated with the Russia-Ukraine war, the experts were all wrong on this.

Various parts of our government declare that they will work harder at doing what they have supposed to have been doing all along.

Dropbox has a better-than-expected financial report.

Some people take great pride in advancing chatbots (those computer voices that talk to us instead of a life person talking to us). I find it a great waste of technical resources.

This study is 20 years old and it estimates 300,000 deaths a year in the US due to obesity. COVID killed obese persons more than others. Please. Let's do better.

Dark Utilities, command and control, and ne'er-do-wells on the Internet.

Look, up in the sky, it's a far-off galaxy! No, it's a piece of sausage. Let's all back off the ooohhs and aaahhhs.

Wal Mart is a good measure of the general American economy. It doesn't look good at this time.

Russian satellites are stalking American satellites.

GNU had 19 software releases in July 2022.

Our airlines cannot seem to pull themselves out of the pandemic.

Baseball in America seems to create its own problems and then struggles with the problems that their solutions bring.