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: 30 January - 5 February, 2023

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• More tech companies are suffering in the current economy
• Samsung has a big event
• Rumors that GPT-4 and Microsoft Bing are almost here
• ChatGPT sets a record with 100million users in only two months
• Apple claims 2 Billion active devices
• A new Bing appeared for a few moments
• A Chinese spy balloon floats across America (we shoot it down)

Monday 30 January 2023

So much for arms and technology export control as a Chinese weapons lab routinely buys Intel, Nvidia, et al processors.

Early rumors that a foldable iPad is coming in 2024.

The Bidenonomy has produced layoffs that hurt those the President most wants to help. Bad economic decisions have consequences and the poorest are always hit the hardest. It seems that there would be some advisors in the White House who knew the basic of how this works.

oooops, it appears that there are Federal laws on the books known as the Berman amendments that allow free flow of information internationally. Laws banning TikTok and Russian "interference" via Facebook and Twitter violate existing laws. What's a Congressman to do?

Some nostalgia and fun with old calculator emulators.

GitHub claims 100million active users.

And yet more writing exercises. There are so many, how can anyone not have something to write?

Simple: be brief, specific, and gorgeous.

Some tips for becoming a self-employed freelance writer. Don't quit your day job until your side income equals your day job two years in a row. Someone famous once used that rule.

Thoughts on becoming a book editor.

How basic goals---set and met everyday---can produce good results in the long term.

Thoughts on research to learn the background of a place before setting a story in that place.

Tuesday 31 January 2023

You Only Look Once or YOLO version 8 is released for video and image analytics.

All that "talk to the computer" like in Star Trek is probably a bad idea.

Some project strategy: prototype the part of the system with the greatest risk first. You can learn early to cancel a doomed project.

Samsung's profits dropped 69% this financial quarter. Still quite profitable, people are scared.

Here's another weak economic indicator: Sony cuts its Playstation production in half due to few orders.

Got tech skills and want money regardless? Cyber criminals are hiring and paying big salaries.

Facebook, Google, and Amazon are trying to generate internal excitement as the new kids on the block with startup spirit and all that stuff of youth. It is possible to do.

It appears that folks aren't buying the electric version of the Ford Mustang as Ford cuts the price by $5,900. In the old days, you could buy a Mustang for less than $5,900.

Once gain we have a case where law enforcement officers (persons WE hired and WE trained) kill a citizen. We don't know all the details; the video looks horrible, and we don't know all the details. We have all gone terrible wrong in how we hire and train law enforcement officials. We the citizens empower some of us to do things to we the citizens that we find horrid. We the citizens need to do better, all of us.

And we have a Linux distribution optimized for video games. It is called PikaOS.

Here is the home page for the PikaOS project.

Wednesday 1 February 2023

This GitHub repository has lessons going from basic Linear Algebra to advanced machine learning.

Every 20 or 30 years we hear about how airships will start hauling cargo. Perhaps this time????

NASA sends a probe to learn if an asteroid has enough minerals to be super lucrative. It will take six years for the probe to reach its target.

Thoughts on the design of tagging systems (hashtags, topics, and the "everything is miscellaneous" sort).

Thoughts on debugging errors or finding blind spots in searching for something. "I found it in the last place I looked," is a silly statement. Jerry Weinberg wrote on this topic often with tips that actually worked.

Some silly ideas to explore, but then again, what else ya' gonna' do tonight?

Not having anything else to do with their time, our National Telecommunications and Information Administration opines that Google and Apple are behaving badly.

And our National Labor Relations Board opines that Amazon is also behaving badly.

With big layoffs in the Biden economy comes teamblind dot com. It is like LinkedIn, but allows anonymous post of what really happens in some jobs.

A review of how generative adversarial networks came to pass and enables all this software that "creates" text, images, videos, music, etc.

Here are a few systems that can compete with ChatGPT doing whatever it is that ChatGPT does.

Going against an overall trend, AMD's revenue went up this past financial quarter.

If you fear artificial intelligence detecting us everywhere, read this article how silly little kids' tricks defeated an advanced research project.

Thursday 2 February 2023

Here is a GitHub repository for Marko, "A declarative, HTML-based language that makes building web apps fun."

Where oh where do you build a spaceport? How about Melness, Scotland.

ChatGPT was an accidental comercial success. The next AI products are not intended to be accidental. Big business goes for the AI pot of gold.

Someone is now attempting to apply gene editing and gene therapy to resurrect extinct species.

It's later than we think: the technology to read brainwaves is here. Well, sort of.

Samsung had a big event and announced new and updated products. Here is one summary of the day.

Microsoft now has a Premium version of its Teams product. It looks promising with software taking notes and summarizing the meetings.

Zuckerburg tells Meta employees that 2023 is the year of efficiency. That is a prediction, not a proclamation. Let's see.

ChatGPT sets a record for fastest acceptance by folks. It has 100million users in only two months. Let's see if success leads to success or to failure.

Tired of ChatGPT telling you it is too busy for you? $20 a month gets you into (what else would they call it but) ChatGPT+.

Chainalysis (the experts) reports that $3.8Billion in crypto currency was stolen in 2022. Crypto theft is a growing endeavor.

Strong rumors that GPT-4 is almost here and it will drive Microsoft's Bing search engine to new capabilities. Google? Who?

Vision applications struggle to identify "people of color." Some groups are generating synthetics images of such people. This too, however, brings problems.

A few companies are attempting to bring 3D printing into an industrial scale and age.

Friday 3 February 2023

This is an excellent essay on the state-of-the-art in AI and the hyperbole surrounding it. Note: the word "mad" in the title is akin to insanity, not anger.

A new young generation experiences what a bad economy means to their career aspirations and assumptions.

I find this to be an excellent explanation of passwords and the strength of passwords. What we are told "at work" is usually outdated and just plain wrong.

This GitHub repository contains materials for learning Kubernetes.

A little more information on Nvidia's Eye Contact technology.

Recent study shows that 20% of organizations that moved to the cloud are now moving their computing back to their own data centers.

Researchers at Stanford are building tools to detect writing that is written by software. I suppose there are less-important things to do with your time.

The stock price of Meta has bounced back up ever higher than before.

A look at Whisper: speech-to-text in 90 languages with never-before-seen accuracy. Aha, perhaps something useful.

Chainalysis cuts 5% of its workforce. That is mild for the crypto industry.

Financial quarter reports are in with most pointing downwards. The big companies are still quite profitable.

Here is Alphabet's report.

Here is Amazon's report.

Here is Qualcomm's report. It was worse than the others.

Here is Apple's report.

Apple claims to have more than 2Billion (with a B) active devices worldwide. Perhaps the Android system has more users. These numbers are unprecedented in human history.

This is a great headline, "Amazon's drones have reportedly delivered to fewer houses than there are words in this headline"

Saturday 4 February 2023

Meanwhile at Apple, cutting jobs is a last resort. Apple has been managing conservatively and doesn't see layoffs coming.

A few thoughts and a prediction on a crash in the value of AI companies.

Our Space Force is contracting to build little satellites that maneuver and track, i.e., hunt other satellites.

How one programmer created a one-person business maintaining open-source software and selling his services to companies.

Writing notes in your own words to help remember what you have read.

It appears that Parkinson's disease can be detected much earlier using simple voice recordings and complex analysis using pattern recognition.

A claim that 39% of the American workforce is freelance. I acknowledge that freelance has grown, but doubt that number.

Microsoft invested in OpenAI. As a reaction, Google invests in a company called Anthropic.

Meanwhile in Pakistan, regulators block Wikipedia for not removing "sacrilegious" content.

More news about how the lavish big tech companies are coming to face reality and austerity.

Analysis shows that Google changed its search a little in 2022 and shows fewer results from news outlets and more from just plain folks. News outlets have complained that Google was using their information too much. Well, Google is using it less. Everyone happy now? Oh, wait, the "professional journalists" aren't happy since folks are ready stuff from folks, not the professionals.

The last Boeing 747 was delivered this week. This analysis from Wired explains why. It is quite simple. The 747 changed the world. Then the world kept changing.

oooops, a new Bing user interface appeared recently for a little while and then disappeared. Rumors are it is the new interface running ChatGPT.

Sunday 5 February 2023

Must see video (well, sort of see it): putting that Nvidia software that makes the eyes look at the camera to use on real movie scenes.

Machine learning and pattern recognition put to a good use: detecting and identifying contaminants in biological and environmental samples.

McKinsey and Harvard researchers tout that AI could save the US $360Billion (with a B) in healthcare costs. One tenth of that would be nice, but not sure its realistic.

Meanwhile in Mexico, software is helping find traces of people who have been missing for decades.

This week we were entertained by a supposed Chinese spy balloon floating across North America. The good guys shot it down; something triumphs over something else.

Now we have counter-influencers who prefer the title of de-influencers. They tell us, "that product isn't as good as advertised." Where would we be without them?

There is something about this XKCD comic that makes a lot of sense in our world today.

Vinton Cerf receives has been awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor at age 79.

Once again we are reminded of the obvious: since software controls hardware, software can damage hardware.