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: February 27 - March 5, 2023

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Mobile World Congress is this week
• Scott Adams said something, Dilbert is booted from ofended newspapers
• Amazon pauses construction of offices HQ2 in Virginia

Monday 27 February 2023

The Mobile World Conference (MWC) is this week. Expect many new things announced.

Looking at the task of prompting AI systems.

And more considerations about the ethic of early release of Bing, Bard, ChatGPT, etc. The users are (mostly without knowing it) testing and improving the products for rich companies for free.

The Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) at its Mobile World Congress (MWC) releases Open Gateway: open-source software for mobile communications development.

Nokia shows a new logo.

This could change everything. Lenovo shows its rollable-screen technology on a laptop computer. Must-see video.

And now we have the concept of the Bare Minimum Monday. It is a simple way to set priorities on tasks and such.

A new study shows that the top open source contributors were all companies.

Data from the Webb Telescope continues to show that most theories about the universe are wrong. The experts were wrong again. Note: sensing these things and trying to understand them is difficult and fraught with error.

Becoming a copy editor and earning money with writing skills.

Find those independent bookstores and convince them to try selling your books.

For those who are not outgoing socially, and that describes most writers, you can find a writing community that works for you.

The physical place you go to write. This author would go to a fancy library to escape a garage apartment.

Thoughts on getting a writing business going.

The concept of the beta readers who read your drafts and tell you things.

How one writer earns a living writing at home. Several tricks, but "Write of don't eat" is one of the more effective. Take it seriously. Write hard.

Tuesday 28 February 2023

The hottest business in Silicon Valley today is buying and selling used office furniture. Layoffs plus building closures plus everything else means office furniture sitting idle.

MIT has a new online course that teaches how to use the basic tools available (and often unused) to programmers.

SpaceX shows version 2 of its Starlink satellite. Smaller and more capable, here we go.

A peek inside Apple's Exploratory Design Group. This is the Skunk Works of Apple and the industry.

Meta releases a Large Language Model (LLM) called LLaMA-13B. It is one tenth the size of ChatGPT and can run on basic, inexpensive hardware (one GPU).

And it appears that we all feel like we are 20% younger than we are.

Someone reminds our current President that big companies have more money that the Federal government and hire better lawyers, too.

AnandTech does their usual excellent job of reviewing the new AMD Ryzen 9 graphics processors built for gaming.

Strong rumors that Apple is back at it to update the less-expensive iPhone SE.

Elon Musk may be forming a group that will build something like ChatGPT that won't be so politically correct. (do people still say "politically correct?")

ChatGPT, Bing, etc. often give odd results. That stems from the odd questions that folks ask. Garbage in, garbage out. Little has changed in the 7 or 8 decades of computing.

The shipment of graphics processors for PCs is down just as the shipment of PCs is down. This is a market correction after the panic buying response to the virus.

We now have the technology in aircraft for 20-hour commercial flights. Economy class seats? I suppose you could survive the trip.

Fascinating article on the physics of light and the art of shadows. Art shows that we use a model of physics in our minds that is pretty darn simple, not realistic.

Wednesday 1 March 2023

MIT researchers have a new augmented reality headset that can find hidden objects as long as the hidden object has an RFID tag and is hidden behind something that does not block the RF signal.

Some lessons learned from companies that are using Large Language Models and putting their applications on top of them. The lessons are basic ones about engineering projects.

Xiaomi shows their prototype of augmented reality glasses. They wirelessly connect to a smartphone and provide a display of the phone's apps out in space in front of you.

Forty years of AI history (sort of) concluding that, "Hey, we have faster and cheaper computers. Let's take advantage of that.

Some research pointing to the use of documentation to improve computer-generated source code for programs.

HP has a mixed financial quarter, but the outlook is rosy.

Qualcomm and Thales have a certified Integrated SIM or "iSIM."

Dell updates its line of XPS personal computers. New processors and such. No new shiny things.

Google updates its Chrome browser to use less power on Apple MacBook computers.

It's later than we thing: Ford is applying for a patent on a system whereby "their" car will drive itself back to an impound lot if we miss a payment.

Meanwhile in Utah, too many folks using too much water and drying the Great Salt Lake.

Remember all those ten$ of billion$ of $$$$ in the CHIPS act to revitalize manufacturing in the US? Well, if you want any of it, you have to implement political programs first.

Meanwhile across the globe, central governments have turned off the Internet to their subjects more often in 2022 than ever before.

Intel releases software that will help build software for quantum computers. The quantum computers don't exist, but one day...

Nvidia releases their video super resolution to a much wider audience. It upgrades videos in real time in a few browsers.

Jack Dorsey, the founder and former owner of Twitter, releases BlueSky. It is his alternative to emTwitter.

Thursday 2 March 2023

Meanwhile in Belarus (an ally of Mr. Putin and known as "the last dictatorship in Europe") tech talent is being driven out of the country. Smart people protest too much and too well.

Much of the big machine learning work is done via webscale datasets. This paper shows how easy it is to manipulate all this data and provide the wrong impression for the mimicry we see in ChatGPT etc.

Here is an international study presenting a history of the pretrained foundation models used today.

In many industries, software is rigorously certified before it is released. This has not been the case in the vast majority of AI-related work.

There is evidence that the head and hand motions used in virtual reality are like fingerprints that identify users who think they are anonymous.

If you are a Microsoft Windows Insider (some kind of beta tester), you can now make and receive phone calls from Windows with an iPhone.

I suppose this will never change. One person programs a system all by their lonesome. No one else understands how the system functions. This is called "warmware."

While on the subject of "lonesome," it appears that feeling lonely affects the brain in ways that desires more isolation.

Here is a good tutorial on DevOps and tools and the like.

One billionare's efforts to build a line of low-earth-orbit space stations. Remember the name Jed McCaleb and the company called Vast.

OpenAI introduces an API that'll allow any business to build ChatGPT tech into their apps, etc.

Microsoft introduces Kosmos-1. It is a new machine learning model that works with images much like ChatGPT does with text.

Here is Microsoft's research paper on Kosmos-1.

A look back at the Alto computer developed at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Fifty years later, we still use computers and phones that mimic this computer.

Early rumors of Windows 12.

In addition to buying new delivery vehicles, our Postal Service is buying 9,250 electric vans from Ford as well as charging stations etc. I hope we don't look back on this and shake our heads in disbelief.

It appears that software engineers prefer working remotely.

Friday 3 March 2023

It appears that Argentina has become a desired destination for a host of pregnant Russian women.

And now we have the concept of a man-made energy island to collect and transmit electrical power from offshore assets.

Meta sort of shows everyone its plans for hardware for the next few years. Perhaps the folks at Meta will wise up and stop wasting resources on the metaverse folly.

Where are the tech jobs? Everywhere. Don't look for a tech job in a tech company. Look for one at WalMart, CVS, Mutual of Omaha, Eddie Bauer, et al.

Label this as, "Oh, so that's why it's like that!" This XKCD cartoon struck me as significant.

Interesting demonstration of using ChatGPT to pull JSON data from PDF documents. Fascinating for me.

I'll just quote this, "Research from Raj Chetty at Harvard on 5 different social factors found that shorter commute times were found to be the strongest predictor of upward mobility."

I like this article on the tools and capabilities a data scientist needs to succeed with data science.

HewlettPackard Enterprise has a good financial quarter. This is not the part of HP that sells home computers, but rather focuses on cloud computing and high-performance computing like is used in all this AI. The pandemic is over, well, sort of. Organizations bought too many laptop computers as everyone was told to stay away from the office building. It isn't yet time to replace all those, so the market is way down for those goods. What is still rolling is the infrastructure to allows people to come in and out of the office. What is also rolling and increasing is the high-performance computing needed to build AI software (ChatGPT, Bing, etc.). In a year or so, organizations will replace those old laptops from 2020. Also, in a year or so, new companies formed by laid-off tech workers will be hiring and will need to buy laptops and such. The high interest rates and inflation of the current Administration will dampen what would otherwise be a boom.

Ford Motor Company forms a wholly owned subsidiary called Latitude AI to focus on hands-free and eyes-free driving.

Civil rights groups fight the ban on TikTok. Of course they do. The principle is correct: people should be able to share all their information with the Communist Party of China. Not beneficial, but permissible.

"There's a lot to be said for honesty and directness. But concealment can be a generous tool if it helps everyone get to where they need to go."---Seth Godin

This is long overdue: the big Linux distribution companies consider building a Linux app store to make it much easier to download and install software. Please, go faster.

We have seen a big drop in the number of people majoring in English and History in the past couple of decades.

We currently have an epidemic of obesity world wide (not just in the US). People tell me I am "skinny." In truth, I am 15 to 20 pounds overweight.

Saturday 4 March 2023

Tips on interviewing for a design position. In here somewhere are some technology basics.

Thoughts on improving human performance by adding body parts. Sometimes a third hand would be helpful. This is not replace lost hands, but adding more hands. This could really be a big boost to disabled and elderly folks.

Here is a long article on the "build" step of programming with emphasis on JavaScript programming and tools.

Candid thoughts about how life can soon get rough for project managers. "Zero interest rates are over." That is a good way of expressing our reality.

We slowly approach the era of a humanoid robot, i.e., one that has two legs, two arms, one head, etc. It is quite difficult to build one of these and have it do anything useful.

It appears that Microsoft can change its Bing search from serious to downright silly.

Meanwhile in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Amazon is pausing construction of its office buildings. No one wants to commute to the location. Work from home!

And Amazon is closing eight of its convenience stores in Seattle. Just another expensive toy they can no longer afford.

Intel changes direction regarding its graphics processors built for data centers.

Ring (those doorbells with cameras and such) is now requiring a few bucks each month for its services.

Federal regulators, who have never built anything in their lives, have no hesitation in telling chip makers how to run their businesses.

NASA tells us that its DART test at redirecting asteroids was a success. Of course NASA is the only one with the data, so the rest of us can neither confirm nor deny the results.

Sunday 5 March 2023

Our current President increases the trade war with China by blacklisting yet another group of Chinese companies that American companies had been using as partners.

The Russians have found ways to circumvent the technology blockade imposed by the West.

Here is an analysis of the most-cited papers on AI for the past three years.

Airline flights of 16 hours and more are now possible. The airlines now have big, luxury seating areas for those with big wallets.

My alma mater, Louisiana State University, is home to the nation's highest valued $$$ female athlete. $he recently po$ted about using ChatGPT for homework. The old folks prote$t.

Code dot org is ten years old. The world hasn't worked exactly as planned (see, e.g., thousands of tech layoffs), but this has been a big-time lobbyist. Sometimes that isn't good.

The government of the people is struggling to respond to requests for information from us.

An analysis of tools that detect text written by software instead of by persons... well these things really don't work well.

This research is early and limited, but maybe little robots can help some children stay focused on learning.

How the new software that generates text and such will multiply productivity in some office workers. This new software saves time pecking the keyboard, i.e., typing.

Thoughts on Elon Musk's thoughts on Woke AI and the sort.