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: 9-15 January, 2023

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• The 2016 interference campaign by the Russians influence no one (new study says)
• Our FAA blunders and crashes air travel for a day
• Our current President kept lots of classified documents at home as Vice President

Monday 9 January 2023

One teachers sees great opportunity in having software write essays for students.

One history of supervised learning and neural networks. Perhaps one day someone will get this right.

Robots for the home that are practical: the big tech companies are still working on these. Results are real soon now.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has spurred investment in drones, AI, and other technologies used for war. The Europeans had reject war technology for decades as kinetic war was considered gone.

Stronger rumors about what products Apple will release this year. The mixed reality headset should finally arrive.

The creator economy (those YouTube and TikTok "stars") is crashing in the current bad economy. Much like crypto currency, the hyperbole from the press just didn't carry through. They were cute if you had the xtra $10 per week to spend, but that money is gone.

Raspberry Pi introduces a new camera module for $25. It is simply a better camera.

A recent study shows that "Agriculture, logging and forestry have the highest levels of self-reported happiness..."

Thoughts on having an author brand.

Thoughts on the "premise."

Thoughts on the importance of antagonism or the force against the hero in fiction.

This is a wonderful essay on art and expression. Please read and the start drawing and writing. It's the thought, not the adherence to other person's technique.

The concept of doing things that bring positive results...no matter how small.

Places to search for freelance writing jobs in 2023.

Tuesday 10 January 2023

The football team associated with the University of Georgia clobbered the football team associated with Texas Christian University in a game with a big pile of money associated with it.

An argument against chat AI taking over the search market.

Measure indicating that disruptive publications have disappeared. One reason, why publish? Just do it and make a $Billion$.

Some thoughts on trends at this year's CES.

Microsoft shows VALL-E: software that can impersonate a person's voice with only three seconds of training data. Only believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.

An organizing expert points to AI (much better search) as the key to organizing our knowledge in the future. I see much merit in this concept.

Silicon Valley and the pizza making machine. Perhaps something will come of this, but it all seems to be rich folks playing games.

Work-from-anywhere digital nomads are arriving in Mexico. Businesses in Mexico are adapting to the tastes of these nomads.

The slight push for self-driving autos for rural use. A high percentage of those who live in rural America lack transportation.

It seems there is a group of writers called "Kindle novelists" who write a book a month. ChatGPT and others boosts productivity. Ethical? One of the biggest time consumers for a writer is typing on the keyboard. Tech that increases typing or dictation would make writing much faster.

Thoughts on the growing use of autonomous systems in warfare. They already exist and work (well). And these will come to law enforcement soon.

Better late than never: study shows that the Russian "interference" in the 2016 election had no influence at all. Oh well. It did influence US politics and allowed a lot of people to waste a lot of tax payers' money.

Our House of Representatives will be investigating possibly illegal links between the current administration and tech companies. Did the Dept of Justice tell Facebook who to censor? That is a dangerous question.

Apple is attempting to make its own RF chips and remove reliance on parts from Broadcom and Qualcomm.

Not a good start: Virgin Orbit failed to put a satellite in orbit from the first use of the UK's Spaceport Cornwell.

The iPhone and the smartphone industry began 16 years ago.

I love Seth Godin's post on the end of the high school essay and how technology should be changing learning and education. Good points to consider.

Our Consumer Product Safety Commission has decided that fast stoves should be banned and that they have the authority to ban them.

Wednesday 11 January 2023

Little Internet viewing today.

The January/February issues of IEEE's Software magazine introduces the concept of whether a task is essentially complex or accidentally complex. Many complex tasks are such by accident and those accidents can be removed.

The hype and reality of starting a tech business and making a billion $$$.

Today is a bad day to be at the airport. The FAA has a major systems failure. Too bad for citizens who bought plane tickets.

Thursday 12 January 2023

A tutorial on how to use ChatGPT as a writer.

The Harvard Business Review chimes in on how "managers" and "workers" have different views on working from home. Managers tend to disregard the commuting time. We all have to do it, right?

The concept of computer programming as theory building. Such a concept means that employee turnover is about the worst thing that can happen.

Microsoft introduces a lower-priced subscription to its Office products called 365 Basic at $1.99 a month.

Microsoft changes its paid time off policies with Discretionary Time Off. This is unlimited time off (in theory).

Rumors that Apple is finally after all these years going to put a touch screen on its computers.

The pandemic prosperity if over for the personal computer as sales drop the fourth quarter in a row.

Pandemic prosperity continues for TSMC with another good financial quarter.

A study shows the 12 college majors that are least likely to bring a job with a paycheck. I majored in engineering because it would bring a paycheck. I grew up in a manner in which a steady paycheck was aspirational.

It appears that our current President took a pile of classified documents with him when he left the office of Vice President. The press is not hyperventilating over this as they did with our former President.

Jeff Beck dies at 78. He played the guitar in the rock style in the 70s and 80s, and I was one of the people who bought his albums.

It appears that our Dept of Interior has little or no cyber security. The obvious is question is, "So what?" What information does this Dept have that is worth protecting?

It appears that yesterday's FAA fiasco was caused by a corrupted file. Sorry folks. No one meant any harm.

Friday 13 January 2023

Good title, good article. "What Happens When A CPU Starts"

CNET is and has been publishing articles written by software, not humans (but the humans created the software).

OpenAI gathered several big names in tech to discuss the misuse of ChatGPT etc. in misinformation and disinformation campaigns.

This links to a paper from OpenAI on the subject.

Recent use of computing and textual analysis by those in the humanities.

This is a post about a Python library that helps bring balance (or reduce bias) in learning models.

A common sense call to not fight software that writes essays. Use it instead. Just like the calculators (I was around when they arrived and caused a furor), use the technology instead of pretending it doesn't exist.

Intel releases a new processor for desktop PCs. It is the first such on the market that clocks at 6 GHz.

Microsoft is having trouble making the combat goggles it promised our Army. Technical problems have reduced orders until MS can get the things to work.

Everyone is fussing about Microsoft wanting to acquire Activision Blizzard. This is all about billion$ and the game industry.

This is fascinating! Nvidia has software that makes it look like your eyes are looking at the camera while they are looking at your notes. Much less distracting to the viewer.

As reported earlier, some of our government regulators want to ban gas stoves. As expected, some of us don't like the idea. It isn't the stove, its the principle.

We now have a 3D-printed two-story house. Ugly as can be, perhaps something will come of this.

Someone has decided that it is a good idea to store carbon dioxide underground. Remove something from the air and put it in the ground. That is progress?

We have claims that the death rate from cancer has dropped 33%. There are many logical holes in this claim.

Saturday 14 January 2023

Meanwhile in Seattle, Meta and Microsoft are vacating office buildings. A place for the homeless?

A personal note, several persons I know have seen relatives die this past week. I like this post about assessing people and considering trees. It may sound trite, but it also may bring comfort.

Meanwhile in California, it was dry, now it is raining (a lot). Goofy plans to capture water abound. Plans to move people away from these drought-stricken areas...not so much.

Tricks for finding hidden cameras with your smartphone.

This is supposed to be significant: a company confirms that they are capture CO2 and storing it in rocks. My guess is that one day this will be seen with the same laughter as old ads about liver pills and such.

The Sony Walkman lives on. They have this slick Android-based music players. There are places where personal phones are not allowed. Perhaps these devices are allowed?

ChatGPT software is writing abstracts to research papers so well that researchers can't spot them. The ChatGPT programmers succeeded. Other are jealous.

We now have an autopilot that can safely land an airplane. No one wants to ride in an airplane without a pilot. This, however, may be a good emergency backup.

Sunday 15 January 2023

Great headline, "It's winter, not doomsday" This current trouble (while certainly troublesome) will pass.

The Virunga National Park turns to crypto mining to fund everything.

Meanwhile in Finland, schools teach how to identify misinformation. See, for example, almost anything an elected representative in Washington D.C. says.

Meanwhile in England, some single-use plastics will be banned. This appears to be a good idea that should have been done many years ago.

Organizations are extending the job interview process to many, many interviews over and over and over again. I can atest to this. It is true, and that is quite unfortunate. There are some exceptions who hire quickly and layoff quickly if things aren't working the first couple of weeks on the job. Those exceptions are thriving.

How one person disconnected from the electric grid in Manhattan. Of course this is an experiment with sample size of one, and the person did things that consumed more energy instead of less energy.

Here is a piece of software that analyzes your ZoomerTeams meetings and provides instructions for improving.

It is clear that I am struggling to resume Internet viewing after the New Year. I had many disruptive events during the second half of December 2022. Just trying to resume or find a new norm.