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: 22-28 August, 2022

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• A guy named "Mudge" is now the key to the Elon Musk purchase (or not) of Twitter
• Biden cancels $10,000 in student loan debt (inflation rolls on)
• Government-funded research is to be openly available to all (who fund government)
• More news about how the experts were all wrong about Russia and Ukraine

Monday 22 August 2022

A review of reading and translating text using an iPhone. This is an everyday thing now; it is still remarkable.

One person's experience with using ChromeOS Flex to change a ten-year-old Mac laptop into a ChromeBook.

This is just what American needs: a Big Mac with two pieces of fried chicken instead of two all-beef patties.

Measuring everything about employees' activities while working is not working. There is so much data, but no one can make any sense of it.

We have a first for a commercial flight using an electric-powered airplane. It is a beginning.

Whoooosh. Ford to cut 3,000 jobs mostly in the US, Canda, and India.

This is something different: the thirty book challenge. What if you could only keep 30 books? Which 30?

Notes on writing for businesses.

Let's just quote from this one, "Instead, creativity is found when you, the creative, focus small."

Retreats for digital nomads. If you are a digital nomad, isn't that a 365-day-a-year retreat?

I am an award-winning author. In sixth grade, I was awarded the best writer in class award for Mr. Evans' class.

Grinding out the work sometimes separates the professionals from the hobbyists. There is nothing wrong with hobbies. They are great. Sometimes better than professions.

Tuesday 23 August 2022

More evidence that the greatly popular TikTok is just one great big surveillance tool for the Communist Party of China.

And the big winner is the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory with a new contract from our Dept of Defense that could pay $10Billion (with a B).

Dark Data is data that is collected but never analyzed. This is bigger than the data that is analyzed. This has existed for decades. I knew of it in 1980.

Thoughts on applying artificial intelligence (AI) to information technology (IT). Hey, let's call it AI2IT wow. IT is often mundane work, so there are plenty of applications of AI.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have developed an aircraft piloting system that can fly through crowded air space. Old saying, "There ain't nothin' bigger than the sky, and their ain't no reason for two airplanes to be in the same place."

A new wearable health monitor uses AI to perform health analytics on person.

Intel shows new chip packaging by stacking them, not an easy trick, can bring leaps in performance at low prices. This will be a boon to consumer and will help Intel quite a bit as well.

Massive growth is over for Zoom as we come out of the hysteria of COVID, but business is still pretty good.

And now we have Pretty Good Phone Privacy PGPP.

Dr. Fauci is retiring at the end of the year. For 38 years, he was the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Anyone who has been around the Federal government knows that if you head a Federal "institute" for that long, it is a dud job that no one wants and no one gives any credence. He loved the attention of medical crises, so he declared things medical crises (in my opinion). He was wrong about the pandemic more times than we can count. I hope that at 81, he has a happy retirement.

A mild, mild, mild for of electroshock therapy seems to improve memory in older folks who are losing their memory.

Researchers at the University of Maryland took money from China's Communist Party and developed systems to help them watch their subjects.

MIT researchers develop a system that can detect Parkinson's disease much earlier by watching a person breathe.

Wednesday 24 August 2022

Interesting, this makes C a build-once run-anywhere language, like Java, except it doesn't need an interpreter or virtual machine.

Last week Apple told employees, "Come back to the office three days a week." This week, employees replay, "We don't think so."

Who cares about Non-fungible tokens (NFTs)? Those in the fashion industry are making big bucks from this.

And now we have voice control of video games.

How someone nicknamed "Mudge" is in the middle of a $100Billion corporate buy or sell or go to jail kerfuffle.

Apple shuffles around its release schedule of iOS and iPadOS.

Microsoft and Amazon will probably cancel their plans for data centers in Ireland as there simply is not enough electrical power capacity there.

Online exams are usually preceded by "use your webcam to show us your room so we know you don't have the answers posted on the walls." A judge rules this unconstitutional.

Acer adds another Chromebook. This one has recycle posted all over its chasis and shipping container.

I like this piece by Seth Godin about associations of little players in markets (this includes writers).

How Russians are working around European travel bans. There are ways and they are being used, often.

Google Research has some magic in removing noise from images. Must see photos and videos.

Thursday 25 August 2022

More cool photos from NASA, the space agency that can't make a suit for astronauts to wear.

The New York Times has a famous paywall to prohibit the reading of news. They use these AI techniques.

A good case for the idea that startup companies that are all remote work from the beginning have a big advantage in the search for talent.

Advice for new companies on how to convince people to come to work for you.

JPEG is a "lossy" compression scheme in that it is an approximation to the actual image. Studies show that facial recognition is not as good on these "lossy" images.

According to Gartner, only have of AI effort go into real use. In the 1980s and 1990s, called this the software crisis. I don't hear anyone calling this the AI crisis. Most still think we are in a boom era of AI.

Here comes the concept of the data lakehouse.

We add another cultural acronym, the NIMCEL or Niche Internet Micro CELebrity.

I'll just quote this. It is too good to otherwise edit, "Ohio's largest-ever economic development project comes with a big employment challenge: how to find 7,000 construction workers in an already booming building environment when there's also a national shortage of people working in the trades." Oh how government knows how to solve problems (NOT).

Nvidia has a mixed financial quarter. Business is generally good, but a drop in game playing after the pandemic holiday slows everything else.

Pandemic prosperity continues for Snowflake.

Meanwhile in New York, legislators want to drive your car for you by computer so you won't drive your car.

Meanwhile in California, regulator have killed car sales so people will go out of state to buy a car that actually works.

Our President declares a national emergency which gives him the authority to cancel $10,000 on student debts for those making $124,000 a year. College celebrate as they can now raise prices.

And we are returning to the psychedelics in low dose for medical and therapeutic treatment. We did this 150 years ago. I wish we have learned some things since.

Meanwhile, Chattanooga, Tennessee continues to lead the nation with the fastest Internet speeds.

South Korea has the world's lowest birth rate, and it continues to fall.

Friday 26 August 2022

Stronger rumors about Apple's 7 September big event: iPhones, ear buds, and the like. Computers?

If you maintain an active open-source software project that people use, perhaps there are folks who will give you money to keep going.

Tips on how to talk to very senior people who are very busy.

Some news from Tesla regarding its homemade super computer called Dojo.

Google's Pixel smartphone is growing in market share, but only has 2% of it. You have to start somewhere.

News on the Ray AI Runtime (AIR). As machine learning use increases, some folks are advancing tools that make it easier to use tools.

Splunk has a better-than-expected financial quarter, but its stock price falls. I don't understand these things.

This is a pretty good post (better than most) about why AI isn't solving all our problems.

Interviewing with the well-known tech companies. A few years ago I spent an entire day at an Amazon building talking with people. I kept wondering why I was there as we weren't talking about the job I was told I was interviewing. Finally, the person who lied to me on the phone explained that, well, he had lied to me on the phone, but that was okay because they really needed people to do some dirty jobs for them. It didn't go well and they didn't offer me a job.

The practice and rapid growth of Emotional AI. Much of it is not ethical.

Researchers find a way to detect deep fakes in real time by concentrating on depth information. Don't look at the eyes (like people generally do). Instead, look at the edges of the face or head. That is where the depth changes rapidly and the fake is detected.

HP rolls out some new computers for those working from home.

Meta announces a new VR headset coming in October.

LG announces two new WOW! monitors. One has a 45" screen that curves around you. The other checks your eye level and adjusts its height and tilt to match.

DuckDuckGo releases its privacy email addresses and services to anyone who wants one. me@duck.com

NASA prepares the Space Launch System for a really big launch to take things beyond the moon.

In some sort of "official" announcement, we learn that the GPU shortage is over and now we have a surplus.

T-Mobile is working with SpaceX to give cell phones connectivity in remote areas.

THIS IS A BIG ONE: Starting 2026, any research publication that receives Federal funding must be openly accessible.

Saturday 27 August 2022

Meanwhile in Germany, there are the world's first hydrogen-powered passenger trains.

SpaceX puts its Starship Super Heavy booster prototype, Booster 7, on the launch pad.

Some basic differences from doing research at a university and working at a for-profit company.

Little by little, Google is granting access to its AI Test Kitchen. That is a machine learning app that helps people access Google's AI research.

People worked from home for a year. They liked it. They want to keep doing it. Let's take care that a relatively short experiment leads to bad decisions.

A "robot dog" uses deep reinforcement learning to adapt itself to walk in rough terrain in 20 minutes. This is from the Cal Berkeley.

Strong rumors that Apple will be mass producing new MacBook Pro models of its portable computers. Performance. Price?

...and something for us old folks: Blackpick is the hottest entertainment group in the world today. They do something called "K-Pop." I don't know, but the linked video shows a lot of young ladies doing extreme calisthenics and burning lots of calories.

Some thoughts on the members of Generation Z (1997-2012) from an unlikely source: Computerworld. If find their findings laughable.

Learned a few things by reading this article on "ghost guns" and such. I think it is legal to build a firearm that fires for personal use, not for sale.

The governors of New York City admit their ineptitude by failing to collect half-a-billion-dollars in parking fines.

Mark Zuckerburg says that being CEO of Meta is quite painful. He can resign that position any time he wishes.

Gartner reports that spending on computing will continue to rise but at a rate much lower than in the reaction to the virus.

More reaction from makers of electric vehicle which no longer qualify for Federal subsidies. The recent big spend from our current Congress and President practically eliminated all subsidies.

Sunday 28 August 2022

Meanwhile in Ukraine, a war for survival is in progress, but there are those who plan IT modernization. I don't understand the situation there. I would like to have journalist practice actual journalism and inform me, but that isn't happening. How can the country be fighting for survival, yet many there are doing their usual jobs and fighting mere inconvenience?

More about Twitter, Elon Musk, the Mudge leaks, and how the real journalists embarrass themselves once more.

Dell completely stops all operations in Russia. Putin has done this to Russia and his subjects. The experts were wrong again as the situation in Russia is not a bleak as predicted. Recover (it will come one day) will be much faster than the experts predict.

This is different: a display monitor that you can bend. This allows users to have a flat display AND a curved display.

Google is now providing tools to developers to make it easier for applications to connect to other devices and extend services.

More cellphone and satellite communications companies seem ready to bring telephone coverage to "dead zones."

Here is another story of how the economic experts were all wrong about the result of war on the Russian economy.

Quit your job. Go back six months later. Earn 25% more doing the same old thing. It has worked for many.