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.
The Russians are hurting in Ukraine. We can see a scenario where the Ukrainians drive the Russians out of the Crimean Peninsula. I think Mr. Putin will survive all that as he will point to all the physical evidence of American and NATO munitions and weapons and say to the Russian people, "See, I told you so. It has been us against the world all along." Such may sound silly here, but it plays into a generation-long narrative in Russia.
It appears that Russians spread rumors that fractured the US Women's march. In which we ask, is it the rumor spreaders at fault or a group of people that listen to rumors all the time and act on them without thought.
Puerto Rico goes dark as a hurricane knocks out all the power.
Thoughts on low-code and no-code options for software development.
A look at the "plus" model of Dell's staple XPS 13 laptop.
This piece has a few famous quotes about writing. Yes, they contain good advice.
Some memoirs are about "hard things." Here are some tips.
....Look at this graph: the median age of Congress is my age, uh, over 60.
I love this interview with the founder of Craigslist. Know when enough is enough.
Here is a long article on telling software to draw you a picture and it draws you a picture. As is usual, some people use this for good things and others not so good. And some have found uses that no one expected.
The technology used by law enforcement is now (sometimes) available to defend ourselves in court.
Our President tells us that the pandemic is over. Federal government policies seem to be lagging the pronouncement. And the mid-term elections are a few weeks away.
The Linux Kernel 6.1 will have portions written in the Rust programming language.
A surgeon is making people taller by lengthening their legs in a lengthy and painful procedure. Most patients are rich tech folks.
.....Here is a long piece of digital currency in Brazil. It appears that in lesser-developed countries, the digital currencies are quite useful.
This appears to be a good use of machine learning: detecting explosives in luggage.
A look at a Swedish car named Koenigsegg is a decade ahead of the industry.
If you are going to build living quarters, you might as well ask Hilton how to do it.
The all-knowing governors of China built a Silicon Valley and no one came.
Microsoft extends its app store to include 20,000 Android apps that can run on Windows 11.
Microsoft releases their big 2022 update to Windows 11.
The sales of wearable computers (mostly smart watches) is down in 2022.
Nvidia is having their annual GTC (GPU Technology Conference) this week. There are many announcements of new products and services.
Nvidia has a new processor called Drive Thor that will be powering self-driving vehicles in 2024.
.....What's in a word? "Supply chain" doesn't apply to software. The role of a person is much too large.
Here is a long essay on how money relates to open-source software.
LinkedIn donates its feature store software (Feathr) to the Linux Foundation.
Microsoft, to avoid stepping into censorship, has declared it won't label social media posts as false. Should we censor "blow hards" or just let them make fools of themselves?
Nvidia shows its updated RTX 6000 professional graphics card with 48GigaBytes of memory. These are super duper computers on a card that you slip into a basic personal computer. The world of computing has changed many times over.
Nvidia steps into the market of SaaS and IaaS with its Omniverse Cloud offerings. Forget the hype of the metaverse. Nvidia's service allows people to simulate factories and other large, complex operations to save billion$$$.
Amazon updates its Fire HD tablets. I think these are the best value in computing today.
Tough times for Meta, so it moves towards lean and mean.
Logitech shows its G Cloud Gaming Handheld that comes next month for $350.
OpenAI moved is speech recognition system called Whisper to open-source.
.....NASA cannot launch its Space Launch System rocket, but it can deliver cool photos of Neptune.
Framework has a Chromebook with parts that you can swap and upgrade.
It's official or something. The 9-to-5 office job is over. I know some persons who love going to the office everyday. They love leaving the place where they sleep and being somewhere else for a third of the day. The commute is a transition period with its own charms.
Google now has a less expensive model of its Chromecast.
Meanwhile in Congress, there are bills floating about to compensate news organizations when Google, Meta, et al point to their stories. The old-line newspapers and TV news media are wallowing in their own mire. They lost trust, and that was the end.
A look at the Amazon Fire 7 tablet. This is the best value in computing today.
There appears to be a link between bad dreams in middle age and dementia in later years.
Companies are experimenting with a four-day work week while maintaining five-day pay.
.....DeepMind has a new chatbot that talks more like just plain folks using various tools from Google and real humans. I think chatbots should be outlawed as they are a nuisance.
Google pushes new audio standards to compete with industry leader Dolby.
Google shows its next Pixel watch.
Fear and loathing over inflation, GPU prices, Moore's law, and Nvidia's latest processors.
How to hit a target 4.4 miles away with a rifle.
The Wall Street Journal delves into the concept of Zero Trust for cyber security. It is a pain for users who will be constantly logging in to every little thing they do. Of course it is more secure. Necessary? Opinions differ.
More long-term technology development. This is from Volkswagen and it is a travel pod. Get in. Push the button. And it takes you a couple hundred miles to your destination while you work or sleep or whatever. Great for elderly travelers. The same for children. The same for blind and otherwise disabled persons.
Bidenomics is crashing the economy (did I just invent a word?). Who cares about the stock market and stock values? If you are retiring or trying to retire, you do. Many retirement accounts are based on the stock market. If you had a million $$$ in your retirement account, well, now you have $800,000. Then strip another 8% for inflation, and you have $700,000. That's plenty if you life in a low-cost area of America. The bottom line is one-third of your retirement savings went away without you spending a penny. What happened?
Managers and the managed disagree greatly about the productivity of working from home. The gap shows that many of the managed feel that much of the work they did in the office was just stuff the managers made up to keep them busy. At home, they don't do the useless things. The managers have bruised egos in that they don't have the satisfaction of seeing people do stuff they make up. There is much ego here and little actual work.
.....This is an interesting discussion of demographics, jobs, and automation.
Google's cloud business adds data analysis and movement features.
A look at Quarto and other tools the make it easier to publish technical articles based on Jupyter Notebooks. This is quite good, exceptional.
Wonderful video on how the new Pinocchio movie was made using stop-action techniques.
I guess this is new to me. EarthCam shows webcams from around the world.
Google improves the encoding of audio and video. This means YouTube looks better and loads faster.
.....