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: 5-11 June, 2023

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• We still await the big spring counteroffensive
• Apple big event announces the Vision Pro
• TSA expands use of facial recognition at airports
• Wildfires in Canada bring haze to US east coast
• Microsoft moves researchers from China to Canada
• Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, dies in prison at 81

Monday 5 June 2023

Let's see what Apple says this afternoon.

TSMC arrives in Arizona. They bring their Taiwanese culture for work and all that comes with it.

Here is "The Frost," a short film created by software. Folks in Hollywood are worried about this junk replacing them?

"It's too slow," says one critic of the Google search that is augmented with a little touch of AI.

Oh woe is us. Renters cannot help our planet by upgrading appliances and such.

System 76, they build their own computers that run their own Linux, always disables low-level "features" on Intel processirs.

AWS struggles to keep all its documentation in sync on several platforms. Solution? Close all but one platform.

The pan(dem)ic ended. PC sales crashed. ZoomerTeams meeting did too. Gloom until ChatGPT and the wonder of it all.

Some tools for writers that don't cost anything.

Trying to understand what it is that is driving you when you are writing about something else.

Good quote, "So the walkway from this information is if you read negative opinions about book sales, it is not the market. It is a matter that the author is not reaching those who are most likely to buy the books."

A short discussion of endnotes and footnotes and changing times and styles.

The lifestyle blog. There is money in this.

We now have enough AI chatter tools to have AI tools just for writers and enough of them to make Top-Five lists.

Thoughts on the predictable ending. If you often write unexpected endings, a predictable ending would be unexpected.

Tuesday 6 June 2023

Reports indicate that about 4,000 persons lost jobs due to AI. Well, they actually lost jobs because some person felt these persons were not needed on the payroll.

Oh those Ring doorbell cameras. (1) Ring employees watch what they shouldn't. (2) Hackers break in and watch what they shouldn't. We are entertained by us.

The more things change, the more people stay the same. We still take credit where it is not due and folks believe us. See, e.g., the past few Presidents of the United States.

The world's most popular online learning course is Harvard University's CS50. The introductory course will now have AI helping grade assignments for the more than 40,000 online students.

We are taking human stomach cells and having them control diabetes in mice. This may prove useful one day for humans. It also seems quite risky.

ChatGPT learns to play Minecraft and does quite well.

Details leak on Google's new processor for the Pixel 8 smartphone.

Apple had their big announcements yesterday at WWDC. Here is one of many summaries of the event. No new iMac like I wanted. A $3,000+ AR goggle thing.

More information on the MacBook Air with the 15" screen.

While not updating the iMac, Apple updated the much more expensive Studio and Pro non-laptop computers.

And technical specs of the Vision Pro headset.

Wednesday 7 June 2023

Google releases a nine-course sequence on generative AI. There is no $$$ cost. There is, of course, a high cost in time.

Apple executives seem to agree with me. "If you want AI to succeed, stop calling it AI."

The Apple goggles "Vision Pro" seem to be receiving praise from the reviewers. At $3,500, they ought to do something.

Big predictions for the Internet economy in India in the next ten years. Now the world's most populous country, it i s where the future is. Bye bye communist China.

A look at less expensive laptop computers for 2023.

Like podcasts? Want to learn more about AI? Here is the list.

Perfectly good disk drives are being destroyed instead of used. Paranoia and fear of the ridiculous is driving this.

More tech layoffs. Reddit cuts 5% of its workforce or about 90 jobs.

With the pan(dem)ic fears fading, Americans return to the airports and are greeted by TSA facial recognition systems.

Thursday 8 June 2023

In the news this week, wildfires in Canada put a haze on the eastern US.

More praise for Apple's Vision Pro.

On Microsoft's Azure Government is a generative AI service called Azure OpenAI Service. Of course it uses the OpenAI ChatGPT models etc.

Where there's money, there is soon a regulator with open hands to grab more that its share of the money.

To combat the dust and smoke of the Canadian fires, build a box fan filter. Simple and there are a dozen easier variations.

Sam Altman, our most recent celebrity CEO, has been hamming it up in Washington D.C.

Google claims improvements in its Bard in the areas of math and programming.

More "Big Brother" looking over your shoulder as companies give it a try with new AI tools.

Apple's new features on its Macs make it easier to play Windows games on Macs. This is big deal for some folks I know.

Everyone step back and take a breath. Not everyone is using these new AI chattering things. Actually, less than 20% are.

Friday 9 June 2023

Never accused of being ahead of the times or even just ten years behind the times, some of our Senators again introduce the Platform Accountability and Transparency Act (PATA) to examine social media companies.

The American auto makers are finally agreeing to a charging port standard for electric vehicles.

My brother died of complications from COPD. I guess that makes me biased against Delta airlines in this story about them almost killing a passenger with COPD. Someone just didn't check their oxygen tanks that they are supposed to have on board all planes.

Our government indicts a former president. This is a horrible precedent. When will the Dept of Justice investigate all former presidents and their libraries and charitable foundations and then indict them on the mistakes they will find?

It appears that being in zero gravity for "long periods" affects the human brain physically. We don't know if it hurts memory or other performance.

Logitech juggles its brands around with the "Blue" line of microphones now only called Logitech.

Google's DeepMind created software that created a slew of sorting algorithms. One of the new algorithms set a record for performance.

And we now have software that can detect, with 99% accuracy, scientific papers that were written by software. This is an advancement of some type.

The managers at Google push harder to make everyone else at Google commute back to the office building. This is to be expected. The managers are people who rose up the ladder in a world of people being in the office. Now that they are at the top of the ladder, they want the familiar environment in which they excelled to return.

Saturday 10 June 2023

Real Estate: the pandemic allowed folks to flee the high cost of San Francisco. AI startups are pulling them back to the big city.

Exploring the how and why of tokenizers.

Trying to take a leap to the year 2030 and what kind of GPT we will have then.

Sex and money: nude deepfakes used to blackmail people are here and the use is growing fast.

This is a reasonable wait-and-see attitude about all this new AI. Calm down. Run some experiments. Learn a little, but don't dive into some course thinking it is now or never.

Meta plans to put AI into everything. Just don't call it "AI." Call it better services.

Microsoft is moving some of its best researchers from China to Canada. The governors of China have become notorious business partners.

At the Khan Lab School in California, there are experiments with software teaching kids instead of actual people teaching kids. Good one-on-one teaching is a fine goal. Let's not trample anyone along the way.

Meanwhile in California, Mercedes-Benz is granted permission to sell Level 3 (hands-off and eyes-off) self driving tech in its vehicles.

Meanwhile in Hollywood, fear and loathing in the streaming TV business as someone is making money, but no one seems to know who that is.

Meanwhile in Russia, Acer computers are still being sold in Russia. Embargo? Just go around about way through the back door.

Meanwhile in America, factories are sprouting up everywhere.

Meanwhile in the smoke of the Canadian fires, solar power output drops by half. Oh, wait, no one told you that the sunshine must hit the collectors?

Sunday 11 June 2023

Text-to-image AI imitates our world. Some of us don't like our world, so some of us don't like the imitation of it. And some label And some go as far as labeling white-shirt-thin-black-tie nerds as "biased."

Some researchers, with not much to do with their time, have learned that these AI chatterers repeat the same jokes repeatedly over and over.

The "adults" at schools are stilling debating AI. Everyone else is already using it. There is some value to proceeding slowly...some.

A chattering AI creates an entire church service. Yes, this was possible six months ago. These things can create an entire wedding, funeral, and presidential inaugural to name a few others.

Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, dies in prison at 81.

The pan(dem)ic showed that people could work from home. Well, mostly work from home. Now we don't want to commute back to the office.

Now they've done it: a driverless car just ran over a pet dog in San Francisco.