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: 13-19 March, 2023

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• About 13 months into this war, and we are back at the start
• The Ukrainians are losing the war of attrition
• Regulators in Washington D.C. bail out the rich folks who had money in the Silicon Valley Bank
• OpenAI releases GPT-4
• Microsoft shows its Copilots for Office 365

Monday 13 March 2023

Daylight Savings Time clicked in again this weekend. An annual event is the hand wringing or why we still do this.

Americans are NOT going to college. Who will fill the degree-required jobs? Competent people. Hiring folks will drop the requirements for college degrees.

The Zig programming language is progressing. Look for a real release in 2025. This is supposed to replace the C programming language for portable, reliable systems-level programming.

Regulators in Washington D.C. bail out the folks who had money in the Silicon Valley Bank. The American taxpayer is giving money to many rich persons and companies. Take from the average and give to the rich.

A developer runs a large language model on a laptop computer. Someone first made it work; someone else optimized it. This is the usual and a proven path.

More explanation about Silicon Valley Bank and all the things that supposedly smart people did that were stupid.

Here is the March 2023 TIOBE index of programming languages. The Go language re-enters the top 10 for the first time in six years.

Stack Overflow surveys real practitioners about technologies. Good chart. Good material.

Back to a basic of active versus passive voice. Use the former much more than the latter.

You write a book because you simply enjoy writing a book. Do you give it away or charge money?

Three good and practical tips on revising and editing. This is a good post.

One writer creates her own week-long writing retreat.

Tips on persuasive writing.

There is a difference (in the minds of some) between a book editor and a book coach.

Thoughts on the concept of the daily word count and how that is the inspiration (or desperation) needed by some writers.

This writer writes about "reading chairs." I guess I didn't realize that such a thing existed.

Stuck for ideas on what to write. Goodness. This post gives 31 places to look for ideas. Just 31? How about 3100?

Tuesday 14 March 2023

Here comes the Elon Musk company town in Texas for Boring and SpaceX families. Cut salaries, give them housing, etc.

The on-again off-again back-to-the-office movement seems to be off again.

Another way to run a large language model on a basic laptop computer.

Yet another way to run a large language model on an Apple laptop computer.

Get this, Meta is working on a decentralized social app. I guess that is like Masotdon or something.

How Microsoft built a super-duper computer so that OpenAI could build its large language model.

WordPress dot com makes it easier for blogs based on its software to join the "Fediverse" of Mastodon.

GitLab suffers big finance problems.

Meanwhile in California, the courts keep ruling on whether or not Uber drivers are contractors or employees.

I've heard this story before (in the 1980s) about how AI will change everything... or maybe not.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, the war of attrition is being lost. The losses are high on both sides, but the Russian's population dwarfs the Ukraine's. The Ukraine needs a low-cost quick strike that ends this, and soon.

GitHub is quickly moving to two-factor authentication. They are making it more difficult to use what was an easy-to-use service.

We have found the universal villain of our age: the algorithm.

Wednesday 15 March 2023

Early leaks about GPT-4 include text to video capability.

Warnings of releasing AI systems with their unintended consequences. Basic principles: test systems and control them.

It seems that the good photos of the moon from Samsung's phone camera were a bit too good.

Pfizer has received FDA approval for a nasal spray to treat migraine headaches.

And more about running a large language model on small computers (even a Raspberry Pi and and smartphone).

OpenAI releases GPT-4. This page on Techmeme lists several dozen sources for information.

This links to OpenAI's own words about GPT-4.

Microsoft claims that its new Bing search runs on GPT-4.

Google announces a bunch of generative features coming to Docs, Sheets, Gmail, et al ... coming real soon now.

Amazon shows some of the hardware for its Project Kuiper satellite Internet service. They claim better performance at a lower price than SpaceX's Starlink. This too is coming real soon now.

In more serious areas of endeavors, Google announced a new open source program called Open Health Stack for developers to build health-related apps.

A list of US stadiums using facial recognition technology. On the list is nearby FedEx Field where visiting NFL teams play while the Washington Commanders watch -;).

Here we go again and again and again... billion$$$ for rural program$. Let the waste begin. This time it is electric vehicle chargers.

Thursday 16 March 2023

Former OpenAI employees started a company called Antrhopic. They have released their own product called Claude. Given its founders, Claude is probably better than ChatGPT.

Google opened an API for its large-language model PaLM.

Mr. Zuckerburg claims that new engineers who hired on to work in person are performing better than those who hired to work remotely. This is probably true. The cause is poor leadership, but no one admits that.

Now we are getting somewhere with something worthwhile: it is early, but there was a demonstration of a tiny robot swimming inside a person's body to aid in surgery.

Looking around the rest of the world, the last 12 months have been bad for the tech industry there as well as in the US.

Looking at Visual ChatGPT. Taking cues from images as well as text.

GPT-4 is one day old and already we have apps using it.

LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft which owns OpenAI (ChatGPT), adds generative ability. The company is today introducing AI-powered writing suggestions, which will initially be offered to people to spruce up their LinkedIn profiles, and to recruiters writing job descriptions.

Meanwhile at Microsoft, they are "rationing" access to GPUs needed to run OpenAI's systems.

SpaceX renames and improves Starlink RV. It is now Starlink Roam. Still costly.

And we have some criticism of OpenAI and GPT-4. OpenAI is not being as open about how they trained the model as in the past.

Where the money is: scamming people on the Internet is a growing business and business is good. Our FBI estimates $10.3Billion (with a B) lost by Americans last year.

A company called Zipline shows its drone delivery system. A larger drone lowers a tethered smaller drown to set packages in just the right place.

Which laser printer to buy? This reviewer says, "Just buy the Brother. Everyone else has."

Meanwhile in the UK, they want older workers to keep working. Hence, tax breaks that are far too costly.

Friday 17 March 2023

Sometimes success leads to failure. Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant were ahead in chat bot stuff, but sat on success and lost to ChatGPT.

Showing a great benefit to education via large language models, Duolingo is using GPT-4 to improve teaching.

This is a pretty good essay explaining GPT-4 and how it is "better" than its predecessors.

If you like to read internal notes on how systems are built and changed, you'll love this. It describes how Wikipedia made its first major change in 15 years.

After many years of trying and failing, NASA shows new spacesuits that astronauts will wear in 2025 or sometime after that.

Meanwhile in South Korea, Samsung shows plans to build the world's largest chip-building factory.

This story has been all over the Internet this past week, so it must be important: Microsoft has laid off its ethics team in the AI area.

Jason Kottke has been blogging on his own site for 25 years. That is old. My online writings go back to 2007.

The founder of TSMC talks about chip globalization and trade embargos. He notes that Taiwan is not on America's friendly list.

Microsoft announces that Copilots are coming to Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Word real soon now. Powered by ChatGPT, these will write emails, summarize meetings, and generally save folks a lot of typing the words they would have typed anyways. A new skill set will be required. Some will adapt, others will complain. Watch the YouTube videos about this. Quite impressive and it will be a big timesaver.

Here is an article on Business Chat coming real soon now. These things look amazing. Let's see when they arrive.

Microsoft's YouTube Channel has several videos demonstrating these new feature. Quite impressive.

VW shows an all-electric vehicle priced at just under $30,000. The range is about 250 miles. This is supposed to be something everyone can afford.

Saturday 18 March 2023

Tag this with #it's about time: a data center pumps its heat to a local public swimming pool. Well, why haven't we been doing such for years.

Despite displeasure from employees, Amazon stays firm on "come back to the office."

Excellent essay, a must read for project managers: task bloating and spending most of the time doing nothing.

Now we have "cerebral valley" out in the San Francisco area.

ChatGPT is online for everyone. Microsoft is putting it into good old MS Word. The natural language processing teams at companies are ... why aren't you as good?

Mozilla creates a "Responsible AI" challenge with large prize money.

Micron wants to build a chip-making plant at Syracuse, New York. No one lives there. Labor shortage. The weather isn't nice year round.

Meta has started its paid verification program for Facebook and Instagram. $12/month verifies you are you and I am I or something.

Silicon Valley free market boosters have found a friend in Congress' anti-free market boosters. China is the common enemy.

China's TikTok is sending all the lobbyists it can find to Washington D.C.

Meanwhile in Venezuela, the government is using deepfake videos to discredit the usual suspects. A UK company is supplying the tech that is so easy to use, even a malevolent bureaucracy can do it.

Meanwhile in America, YouTube lifts its suspension of former President Donald Trump. This is America?

More thoughts on Microsoft's Copilot introduced yesterday. This is the biggest change to office software since a word processor started wrapping lines abound without the typist hitting the carriage return.

Per Microsoft Copilot, Seth Godin tells us that the gap between impossible and normal is small and shrinking.

Meanwhile back in real America, pandemic benefits for buying food are ending. Tax refunds are smaller. Some Americans won't buy as many groceries.

Sunday 19 March 2023

Good quote here, "the masses experimenting with ChatGPT-3 showed us was that people gravitate to and get excited by tools they encounter that will save them time and make them more efficient." Other folks are debating the theory of ethics.

Part one of a three-part series on education and the use of the new AI.

The Khan Academy is encouraging use of ChatGPT. They have their own "guardrails."

Here's a good quote regarding GPT-4, "While GPT3.5 resembled the intelligence of a sixth-grader, GPT4 sounds more like a smart 10th-grader."

GPT-4 has been integrated with an app that assists blind people with understanding what is in front of them. This is what we should be doing with technology.

Here we have a winged flying robot that lands on a perch like a bird. This is quite a technical marvel. Perhaps one day it will be useful. Maybe there is application for people who are disabled and cannot walk well.

Expert librarians defend the Internet Archive as one of the world's great libraries.

A review of freewiting---a practice to get you going.

Here is a collection of a dozen things to do that can help a person become (more of) a writer.

Trying to find something similar to spring cleaning your mind to freshen a perspective on writing.

The concept of the joy of writing. There are different things to do and consider to make it more fun.

Thoughts on how journalists became novelists.

Writing about "home," whatever that means to the writer at the time the pen touches the paper (or the fingers touch the keyboard).

Excellent essay on why we read and why we teach even though we don't remember the great majority of it, now and then a sentence, a verse, a prayer stays with us.