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: 17-23 April, 2023

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Netflix stops shipping DVDs in the mail, end of an era
• College enrollment continues to fall
• Ransomware attacks continue to rise
• SpaceX really big spaceship launches successfully and explotes spectacularly 4 minutes later
• Google stops constructions of a new campus in Silicon Valley

Monday 17 April 2023

The Russians are still in Ukraine. I believe one day I can stop leading this Internet log with that story. In America, we wore masks in grocery stores for about three years, then we stopped. The Russia-Ukraine war will end. NATO won't allow Russia to take Ukraine's territory. The Russian army will go home. Mr. Putin will pass away one day. The Russian people like Mr. Putin. People outside Russia don't understand that, but we don't live in Russia. If we did, we might understand his appeal.

One person uses a $300 laptop as a test. The power of the thing is far beyond what anyone had ten years ago. We, however, continue to bloat the software.

SpaceX will attempt an orbital flight of its Starship this morning.

Stronger rumors about what Apple will introduce this summer. I need a new iMac as my six-year-old model is struggling to run today's bloated software.

Google bows to peer pressure (yes it exists among nerds) and is working on an AI thing search thing.

I'll just quote the headline, "Sega to acquire Angry Birds maker Rovio for $776 million."

A company lays you off as a full-time employee and asks you to return as a contractor. If you want a paycheck, you do it.

This is a good post listing practical ways that ChatGPT can help a writer. Once way is checking punctuation. It works.

Thoughts on the wood of spring and writing. I guess this makes sense to some folks.

Common weaknesses in writing and common corrections.

"Is the desire to get published damaging?" Great question. One that writers should answer. Another is, "Is the desire to earn money as a writer damaging?" The list continues.

"You can jump start achievement momentum with one simple tweak: Give yourself credit."

A guide to expository writing or writing that exposes facts, figures, and the like.

Notes about notebooks. There is no end to this topic. We can buy great products in this line at any grocery store and at any dollar store.

Tuesday 18 April 2023

I agree with this assessment about "innovation." What most call innovation is actually just a little improvement on what you are already doing and you are late to the improvement anyways.

Upon further thought (we lack further thought), some educators now realize that the AI chatbots could improve learning.

A look at the new Bluesky social network. It is yet another attempt to return Twitter to goodness and away from badness.

First you show that a technique or technology works. Then you iterate with it to find the better solutions it can provide. Folks are now doing that with ChatGPT et al.

Telepresence advances to "robotic avatars." Remote controlled robots that work better than in the past.

One predictor predicts a big loss of white-collar jobs from chatbots and AI. Much bigger than someone else predicted. We shall see. I venture that many folks will keep their jobs simply because the bosses are compassionate and don't want to fire people.

Oooooops, experts give a prize to a photograph. It was a fake generated by software. Memories of Milli Vanilli and the lip-synced Grammy award.

Apple has record sales of products in India.

At ICE, employees use and abuse databases. Folks, if the information is in front of enough people, some are going to look and chuckle. Some will look and abuse. We are an odd lot.

SpaceX didn't launch yesterday. A jillion moving parts and one of them was stuck. Maybe later this week.

This story must be important as it is all over the Internet. Elon Musk and friends are building the TruthGPT.

Microsoft adds its first "smartness" to Windows 11. It remembers how you setup your windows and repeats it for you. Software has been doing that for decades. This isn't new.

In a limited distribution, DuckDuckGo's search adds a feature that summarizes Wikipedia articles to answer questions.

Wednesday 19 April 2023

Google's CEO warns of accelerating AI technologies. The future is coming faster and faster.

An opposite opinion comes from the CEO of OpenAI who basically says that current paths to AI have hit a brick wall. No more advances until we find a different path.

The concept of "alien artefacts" in software. It was work done by generations past who are no longer available. Hence, it is like things left behind by ancient aliens (if you like that TV show).

Our latest software allows us to imitate famous entertainers to no end. So why do we need famous entertainers?

Deep thoughts on human reproduction. We live longer now. Child-bearing years are not longer. What to do? Things that cause rich people to lose sleep.

Companies have been scraping Reddit for data to train AI models. Change: they must now pay Reddit $$$ to do so.

Way back (a year ago) when everyone was crypto mining, Intel built processors for that purpose. No longer.

Meta changes its Horizon Worlds from X to PG-13. No longer need to be over 18 to access.

Google to show its first foldable phone in June at about $2,000.

Microsoft partners with healthcare software company Epic Systems to offer GPT-4 advice to healthcare practitioners. Some applaud while some grimace.

The end of an era as Netflix will stop shipping movies in the US mail as DVDs.

And now we have a "robot" that looks like a box that will sit your dog while we are away.

Meanwhile in India, there is a college education boom, but many are given degrees that carry no actual skills.

Experts predict that Meta will layoff 4,000 more people this week. The year of efficiency is really really getting efficient.

It appears that Microsoft has quietly been developing their own AI processor.

File this one under "this would be really dangerous if anyone actually tries it." Someone thinks that dumping iron into the oceans will save the planet.

Absent from all the broohaha about GPT this and that is Apple. Makes one wonder what they are doing quietly.

Thursday 20 April 2023

ooooops, someone in Congress forgot to update a tax law. Companies cannot deduct research costs until Congress acts. Lots of businesses will go under and jobs will be lost.

With each passing day, smart folks are experimenting with the new chat tools and explaining to everyone how to use them. This is the same as the early days of just about everything from programming in C to using Microsoft Word.

Tesla has a new Model 3 with 400 miles of range. No one can buy it and it is expensive, but folks are still excited.

Experts explain large language models over a cup of coffee.

A good history of well-meaning but not-so-successful efforts to teach young people to program computers. Social change didn't follow a little training.

Fear and loathing at Google over the release of Bard chatting. Many insiders say it was rushed out the door too soon.

Atlassian launches Atlassian Intelligence to bring some sort of smarts to Jira and Confluence. This is only available on cloud-based services. Not for data centers yet.

Seagate shipped seven million disk drives to China in violation of export controls. That brought a $300Million fine.

Where the money is: March sees a record number of ransonware attacks. Don't put your business on the Internet if you are very successful. Thieves go to the money.

Meta owes $725Million to Facebook users in a class action lawsuit. If you file, you may get $1.98. The lawyers get a third of the $725Million.

A return to oral exams so that students don't "cheat" via the latest technology? Too many students to do this.

Work from home plus tech layoffs equals lots of empty office spaces. What to do?

It appears that the metaverse is going the way of the 3D TV.

Friday 21 April 2023

I'll quote, "Meta AI has built DINOv2, a new method for training high-performance computer vision models." This is a good paper and a good example of how a "paper" can include other media to convey information.

Another quote, "How Replit trains Large Language Models (LLMs) using Databricks, Hugging Face, and MosaicML "

This is an excellent essay on some of the absurdities we endure in the name of cloud computing.

Meanwhile at Amazon, stock values are not rising like in the past. Managers have tell employees, "Sorry, no $$$."

Everyone wants favorable reviews online. Lots of folks pay lots of other folks to write favorable reviews.

Here is an essay on autonomous agents. This is software that does the next thing and then asks, "What's the next next thing?" and does it and then and then and then.

Experts tend to agree that it is now practical to build radio telescopes on the far side of the moon. Excellent environment. Once built, it can be operated remotely so no one has to live there.

Speaking of dreams, here's one: building a tech hub just outside of Lagos, Nigeria. Some believe the tech talent is present as long as you can convince it to stay in Nigeria instead of elsewhere.

SpaceX had a launch yesterday. The biggest rocketship ever successfully cleared the launch pad. It exploded four minutes later. This was a successful test.

Apple, in a further effort to move into the healthcare industry, is preparing an app that tracks activities during your day.

Google reorganizes some of its research divisions into DeepMind.

Meanwhile in the video game industry, Atari acquires the right to over a hundred games produced in the 1980s and 1990s.

Saturday 22 April 2023

Our Dept of Veterans Affairs just canot get the electronic health records of veterans halfway right.

The governors of New York state proudly proclaim that their giant offshore windfarm will produce electricity this year. Big predictions follow. We shall see how much electricity is needed to heat cold homes.

Researchers claim that the 819-day Mayan year synchronizes with a 45-year planetary cycle. Whew! Glad we solved that one.

Google's BARD now generates source code for computer programmers.

This is a good discussion on Reddit about the "development" cycles in AI. They are short. There is no magic here. It's just the same word defined differently by different groups.

AI research has lept from universities to industry. What't a college professor to do if he or she wants to remain a college professor?

For those who like to communicate better, this is an excellent article on better ways to draw neural networks.

Not having enough to keep themselves occupied, folks in the White House are planning the sixth generation 6G of wireless communications.

The Linux Foundation forms the TLA+ Foundation to promote the adoption and development of the TLA+ programming language.

A wearable computer that may actually work. It clips to your shirt and can project onto surfaces so you can see things.

How to lose $12.6Billion in 24 hours. It's all on paper.

To have something different in an electric bike, here is a retro model. Very simple and clean. I like the concept. At my age, however, my back may not like this.

Google was going to build a big new campus in Silicon Valley. The project is paused for now. Bideneconomy etc.

Sunday 23 April 2023

Here is an illustration of how much ChatGPT can do for a system builder. Note, the builder must be able to express clearly what is desired. That is a rare ability.

This is a fun website. Scroll up through the atmosphere to space.

This sounds like a good idea. Save those GPTChat questions and answers and use similar ones to answer new questions instead of running all those computers.

It's good to see that someone has a graps on this AI thing: headline reads "There is no A.I."

As usual, folks think that AI will affect (someone else's) job, but not theirs.

And we learn that the great secrets leaker had been leaking documents many months earlier than discovered.

This is called "vendor lock in." In this case all text messages from your phone are held by the phone maker. You can't move them to another phone system. You are locked into that one maker.

QEMU, the open-source machine emulator, has a new release.

Censorship is alive and well in China. That makes open-source research on topics there a challenge.