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: 16-22 January, 2023

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Samsung shows new 200MegaPixel image sensor
• Microsoft promises ChatGPT in Azure services
• White-collar job cuts at Amazon and Microsoft
• Apple has updated laptops and Mac mini

Monday 16 January 2023

Excellent post considering using a fact checker to check the output of generative software. Who is checking ChatGPT? Probably no one.

This post considers the challenges and promise of moving machine learning to real-time applications.

Here is someone who has a rare grasp of the obvious: ChatGPT et al will soon be like Excel and PowerPoint. Simple tools to be used for complex jobs.

Taiwan remains the source of the worlds integrated circuits as its exports continue to grow. This is bad news for the Communist Party of China and their invasion dreams.

Fretting about software destroying democracy. One thing this editorial has correct is the speed at which software can generate text. ChatGPT's greatest power is that it saves a person the time and effort of typing.

Details of how Apple is moving its manufacturing out of China as China is simply unreliable.

Amazon has a sale on its Fire tablets. These are the best value in computing.

This may change everything (maybe not): it is electroluminescent quantum dot technology or "nanoLED."

The digital nomad visa, how it differs from a tourist visa, and which countries now offer them.

Make money writing a book? It is about marketing, not writing.

Medium moves into the Mastodon area with an instance for shorter-form writing.

Thoughts on a great cup of coffee.

"Let it be easy." This is another take on "Don't try too hard." Sometimes we simply get in our own way instead of simply doing something.

Thoughts on the concept of "We cannot write what we do not know."

Tuesday 17 January 2023

I like this report from Microsoft that summarizes a number of papers from them this past year concerning responsible building and use of AI.

iRobot ran several years of testing of Roomba with a front-facing cameras. Homeowners agreed to the test. Now they say they did not agree to what happened.

Considering the capabilities of ChatGPT and what that means.

How one successful company moved away from cloud computing, saved lots of money, and is thriving.

Interesting article showing the history of the browser and the underlying technologies.

Google now has a couple hundred thousand employees. Its structure makes it slow. Is it on the way down?

This is a good report on how the last ten years have brought us to where we are in machine learning.

Microsoft announces that it will add ChatGPT to its Azure cloud services real soon now.

Samsung's new 200MegaPixel image sensor will be in its new S23 Ultra phone. That's a lotta' dots.

Microsoft reinforces its announcements about ChatGPT being in all its Office products.

Some history of Apple and China. Apple is now trying to back out of the relationship as China is an unreliable business partner.

Strong rumors that Apple will announce new MacBook computers today.

Meanwhile in Amsterdam, folks are hot rodding their electric bicycles to the grimace of old guys.

Meanwhile in China, the population dropped in 2022 for the first time since the early 1960s in one of Mao's campaigns. The economy in China grew, but only slightly. The end of the Mao dynasty? The Heavenly Mandate changes.

Wednesday 18 January 2023

The concept of using GPT-3 and other models as a journal.

The fake job offer.

I have yet to see an article on how writing teachers can use ChatGPT as teachers. Perhaps the teachers are already using it, but don't want anyone to know.

A group of tweets showing how to use Google Sheets and machine learning.

I guess we can call this south-of-the-border-sourcing. US companies are hiring remote programmers from Latin America. The time zone is right.

A look at version 8 of the YOLO ("You Only Look Once") AI computer vision system (open source).

Apple has new MacBook Pro computers with M2 processors and 14" and 16" screens. All the other specs are more impressive as well.

This post has more information on the new M2 processors.

Apple also updated its line of Mac mini computers with the newer M2 processors.

oooops. CNET was letting software write some articles for publication. Then someone noticed some silly mistakes and...

Microsoft will cut 5% of its workforce (11,000 jobs).

News about Apple and headsets. The easier product (mixed-reality headset) is on schedule. The more difficult, lightweight, AR set is being delayed.

If you have a lot of money (like FTX did), spread it all over Congress. A third of our representatives there took some and now have to do their jobs regardless.

Amazon cuts 6% of its corporate workforce (18,000 jobs).

Thursday 19 January 2023

I like this essay on knowing when to quit.

A new gadget for the kitchen dehydrates and grinds leftover food. These grounds eventually become chicken feed. Lots of problems here, but let's see what happens.

Some folks are concerned about this one...software generates a voice that doesn't exist. You mean no one's voice really sounds like that?

emTwitter lowers the price of its Blue subscription.

Strong rumors that Apple will use an iPad to make a smart home control device.

Following the money, it appears that Web3 has collapsed before it even began.

Wikipedia changes the layout of its pages a little. I saw this yesterday while using it. I didn't realize it was "the first new design in a decade."

Boston Dynamics has a new must-see video of its robot hopping around and moving and tossing things. Amazing stuff.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are using WiFi as a radar to detect people moving about in other rooms. The basic concept is sound. The new techniques bring impressive results.

Those carbon offsets people are buying from the rainforest appear to do nothing at all. Oh well, it sounded good when we started.

Medical studies show that 70% of those new drugs advertised on TV really don't do anything better than the medicines that have been in use for decades.

Friday 20 January 2023

Former OpenAI employees create another chat system called Claude.

Here is a GitHub repository containing design patterns.

The CEO of OpenAI tries to calm the hyperventilating over the release of GPT-4. And, by the way, GPT-4 has never been announced.

"Unfortunately we do not have the information you need at this time." That answer isn't good enough any longer.

The concept of building autonomous robots that can be punished and will understand punishment.

Nvidia starts a newer, higher-performing (and more expensive) streaming video service.

Angst continues in the use of software in writing research papers. Folly. This shows how some otherwise smart folks seem to stumble at times.

Chainalysis report shows that folks are paying ransom demands less often. This just isn't as lucrative as it was.

A new term for me: "passion economy." This is sort of like entertainment. People pay you when you entertain them.

ooops, PayPal is hacked and information on 35,000 users is stolen.

Our FAA claims that no one hacked them last week. It was just the usual bumbling and stumbling that caused the horrible day. Don't attribute to meanness what can be explained by stupidity.

Meanwhile at our Department of State, it is worthy of the Secretary of State's time to tell folks to use a different font in memos.

The sound of computer fans and forced air systems needed to cool the computers is deafening. I know. I wear hearing aids because of too many years in computer rooms.

Saturday 21 January 2023

This is a detailed technical explanation of graphics processors and other processors used in the computation-heavy field of machine learning.

Here is a two-hour video explaining how to build a pre-trained generative transformer. I uses the original paper on "attention" as the foundation.

Here is one professor's story about moving from the R language to the Julia language and how times change and programming languages and challenges change.

This GitHub repository contains a "book" on tuning machine learning models. Good information. And this shows how folks are using one tool (GitHub) for a completely different application than it was invented. GitHub is version control for programmers. Many are using it as a self-publishing platform. Good idea.

I love this post. A 20-year software engineer shares insights. Change "software engineer" to "just about anything." This is great.

Time passes and we go through another cycle. Silicon Valley is not what it was. I saw these same stories in the 1980s, the 2000s, and now the 2020s. Next.

Here is a complete course in neural networks. Start with a "DO LOOP" (FORTAN) or a "for loop" (C) or whatever and build up from there. I did that 30 years ago as there were no tools to use way back then. At least I wasn't scratching on cave walls.

This is a prime example of hacktivism and it is our world today. Big tech companies are not acting in some places around the world. Their employees, in their spare time and with their unique skills, are acting.

We note that the Dollar Store is the fastest growing grocery story in America. Yes, "grocery store." They provide food to far flung rural areas. That is a good thing.

Upon further review, some publications have been using software to write news stories for a while now. Upon further review, writers have been using computers and software to speed writing for several generations now.

Amazon will spend $35Billion in Virginia to build data centers. Tax breaks to one of the richest companies in the world? Sometimes we wonder.

Winnebago shows a prototype of an all-electric RV based on a Ford van. Recharge out in the wilderness?

Got $5,500? Get this Nikon camera. It is great. Then again, that cellphone camera will do for the rest of us.

Sunday 22 January 2023

This weekend's new moon will be closer to earth than it has been in a thousand years.

Apple released the Lisa computer 40 years ago this weekend. It looked like a Mac in many ways, but it was really slow. I saw a few in offices. People were excited, but disappointed.

This is a good post on how to use ChatGPT in writing courses. Let's not pretend about technology. Let's use it wisely.

This GitHub repository hosts tools used for open-source analysis. It is from the noted open-source investigation team at Bellingcat.

Bellingcat shows their new tool for open source research: Octosuite is an advanced GitHub framework written in Python that uses GitHub's Public API to make the process of investigating accounts and repositories on the platform more efficient.

chess.com puts a cat named Mittens up on the site, and everyone wants to play against the machine.

When the overall economy (bidenomics) falls, folks lose their jobs through no fault of their own.

The current cycle of up and down for podcasts is down...way down.

Real news that isn't news: most government programs are based on whim and guessing. That is why most don't work.

How real artists spot "art" created by software.

Folks are finding more and more old classified documents at our current President's home. I have to wonder if Mr. Carter, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Obama are having folks search their homes and shredding anything they find.

Newer processors from Intel and AMD require more electrical power. Most older data centers don't have that capacity.

California state officials (who are those folks?) are sure that their power grid can charge all those millions of electric cars that are coming. Folly.