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: June 26 - July 2, 2023

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• And Putin is still in Russia after some sort of armed revolt
• The ChatBots are flooding the Internet
• Canada makes tech immigration much easier
• Major ruling by Supreme Court says using race in college admissions is unconstitutional
• Another Supreme Court ruling says the student loan forgiveness program is also wrong

Monday 26 June 2023

That didn't take long: new software that detects papers written by ChatGPT 99% of the time.

This is a big disappointment to some, "GPT-4 is not one big >1T model but eight smaller ones cleverly put together. "

This is a form of not-so-deep fakes as software is creating quotes and attributing them to real people. They sound plausible.

Is this a growing AI bubble? Corporations are investing in AI to change how their businesses operate.

Researchers can build 3D models of things we see by studying the reflections in the human eye. I am not sure how to apply this to a real problem, but...

Researchers combine symbolic AI with machine learning to greatly improve computer vision. We need more of this approach.

A new technique better models how fluids flow around the human brain. Perhaps this can be applied to dementia and offer some hope.

Trade war? High-tech blockade? China has bought $1Billion worth of Nvidia GPUs this year.

What is next for Apple? First, get the Vision Pro to actually work. The M3 processor is later.

We have software that writes basic things for us. Political ads are basic things that don't need creative minds. But somehow, political ads shouldn't be written by software. Huh?

Our President has $40Billion (not sure where it came from, but...) for more broadband in America. States have till Christmas to submit their bribes, uh, er, applications. The rich will get richer because they have the lawyers to write the better applications.

Searchers find yet another lost city in the jungles of Mexico indicating yet another civilization that came and went.

Someone finally proposes the idea of swappable batteries for electric vehicles. Swap batteries in the same time it takes to "fill up your tank."

Tuesday 27 June 2023

Open-source software licenses are based on copyright law and were established mostly in the 1980s. Here is an argument that this system must all change.

Using AI to create images that aren't there, Midjourney unveiled version 5.2 of its AI-powered image synthesis model. Amazing stuff.

Elon Must shows a thousand changes to his really big rocket before its next launch. Let's hope it doesn't destroy the launch pad like last time.

Amazon reveals that it will have an AI model for everything.

How to make money with AI. Key: hire people who are smart, trained, and know how to use tools.

AWS creates a Generative AI Innovation Center that includes a team of strategists, data scientists, engineers and solutions architects who will work step-by-step with customers on new AI projects.

Researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have announced a framework that can perform image recognition and image generation. They call it the Masked Generative Encoder, or MAGE.

Let's venture into stardom or the lack thereof as is the case with Harry and Meghan.

Amazon has 750,000 little robots running around in its warehouses. They seem to work pretty well.

Amazon attempts to use local businesses to help them deliver packages.

I guess a person wrote this story as it is about how software is writing everything that appears on the Internet these days.

Meanwhile in the medical profession, doctors are happily using AI software to fill out forms and do simple but time-consuming reports.

Wednesday 28 June 2023

Thoughts on the personal travel blog.

A different use of AI tools: boosting your freelance writing resume.

Here are a few ideas for passive income streams. Sometimes these things actually work a little.

This piece contains good advice to fiction writers who want to use actual Trademarked products in stories.

What is an essay and how to write one.

A son digitizes decades of writing by his father and puts it on the Internet Archive.

Let's all calm ourselves and stop hyperventilating. No, not AI. Fossil fuels are still 82% of known energy resources.

Got a PC running Windows 3.1 from 1993? Here is an AI Chatter thing that will run on it.

DeepMind (owned by Google) claims that it is about to release a system that is better than ChatGPT.

Laughing all the way to the bank: all this AI-generated content on the Internet is sending money to Google.

Coming real soon now, Microsoft brings AI-generated text to LinkedIn posts.

I've always wanted a "supersmart personal assistant for work." I think I have. Anyways, OpenAI promises that as the next best thing.

Scouts in pro baseball are turning to computer vision systems to analyze how prospects play baseball and if they would reach the major leagues.

Everyone wants a data center in the United States. Land is available. Land available where energy is also available and data pipelines are as well is another thing.

Since the current restrictions are not keeping advanced computing hardware out of China, it is time for more?

The governors in Montanna banned TikTok. A grass roots movement sued. Well, uh, er, maybe the money came from TikTok.

Meanwhile in Silicon Valley, the drug culture returns. This time it is at the CEO level.

Thursday 29 June 2023

Meanwhile in Canada, the governors are making it much easier for technology talent to come and settle there.

There is still no silver bullet. "There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order of magnitude [tenfold] improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity."

Predictions of Artificial General Intelligence coming in ten years.

The ongoing Reddit blackout or strike or whatever it is continues to affect Google searches.

This is solid gold. It lists command line commands just for the Mac that do wonderful things.

Here is another such list of Mac command line tools.

Meanwhile at Microsoft, there are plans to move Windows operating system completely to the cloud. Let's see.

Both Databricks and Snowflake announce big new things related to AI and their data management systems.

It's about time as SAE International, formerly named the Society of Automotive Engineers, is about to adopt Tesla's charging station as a US industry standard.

Our President keeps saying "Iraq" when he means to say "Ukraine." Of course he knows what he is doing and he is simply tired and we can make lots of excuses and maybe one day we will elect good and smart people as representatives.

Meanwhile in the land of the rich and bored retired people (America), Pickleball is everywhere and so are expensive medical bills from injuries.

oooooops, our US Patent and Trade Office has been spilling the personal data of those who apply for patents. The problem has existed for years.

Friday 30 June 2023

It appears that Google has stopped its Project Iris AR goggles.

It appears that we have regressed in computing. Old computers start applications faster than new ones. One anecdote, my new Macs with M1 processors are noticeably faster than my older Macs.

NASA begins a 378-day lock in with four people to simulate Mars.

Here we go (maybe), Joby Aviation expects to be flying its electric vertical take off and landing craft next year for real.

No longer bound to the mouse and pointer on the screen, we move into spatial computing interfaces.

Our Supreme Court rules that using race to determine who goes to college is against our Constitution. Many cry foul at such an obvious conclusion.

Appearing in court has a way of making companies reveal financial information they usually don't. Microsoft's cloud services has less than half the business of Amazon's.

Our FTC is about to take Amazon to court over its marketplace. This is what happens in America when you succeed too much.

Self-driving cars have lots of cameras. Police want to see what happened when. Police are legally obtaining all that camera footage. Tesla and others have become surveillance arms of American law enforcement.

First world problems and solutions: some people cheat at video games. Video game makers use technology to foil cheaters. Lots and lots of money and technology thrown at nothing.

According to this person, Mac Server is gone. Just use MAMP instead.

The National Geographic magazine is quietly fading away. All staff writers are gone---laid off. Print editions are no longer sold on magazine stands.

If you are special enough, you can now use the AI CoPilot in Windows 11.

We will have to wait and see how the next court case on this one plays. In New Jersey, a court rules that police need a warrant to read your Facebook page even though anyone can read your Facebook page.

Saturday 1 June 2023

Marc Andreessen talks for 30 pages worth about AI and such.

GitLab shows its Code Suggestions. This competes with GitHub's CoPilot. These systems can "write" a lot of software segments. I don't think they can write entire systems.

Somebody is trying a different approach at nuclear fusion and limitless energy. Maybe something will come of this.

Virgin Galactic, yes they still exist, just flew some folks "into space." People bought tickets ten years ago at $250,000. Once they fly all those early passengers, they will see tickets for $450,000.

More fussing among Reddit and its moderators who blacked out communities. Push and shove.

Some history on Google Reader which was turned off ten years ago today. I used it and struggled for a while to find a replacement.

WMWare partners with several chipmakers to continue its push with confidential computing, i.e., encrypt data as it is being processed.

Apple and Nvidia are doing well, and that wealth is pushing the entire NASDAQ.

Our TSA continues to do what government agencies do: grow. More, more, more facial recognition this time.

Our FBI creates a database to help state and local law enforcement combat swatting (fake 911 calls that cause SWAT teams to break down your front door).

Computer programmers, a group known for trying harder, are using these Chatter Bots to write basic code.

The owners of Turner Classic Movies or TCM have been mismanaging it and have almost killed it. There is hope that it will continues. Now if my cable provider would just bring it back...

Our Supreme Court also rules that our President didn't have the authority to forgive Federal student loans.

Researchers use AI and design a central processing unit in five hours. The processor, which was built and runs software, is not comparable to processing power in 2023, but it is a first step.

This report shows that remote work is less productive. The way the analysis flows, however, is ... uh, er, doesn't make sense.

Sunday 2 June 2023

Meanwhile in America, our birthday is Tuesday. This gives us some sort of a five-day weekend this year. The news has slowed greatly.

The managers at Twitter have imposed limits on how many posts a day a users can read. 6,000 a day is a big number. They are struggling with other folks' software that "scrapes" the site and reads everything all the time.

A tale of bigger companies buying smaller companies and using them as they wish. It is all legal. Sometimes folks are saddened by the result, but that is the way of the world.

Bluesky claims that so many people are joining after leaving Twitter that they have to halt this until they catch up.

For years, people have volunteered to work the Ask Me Anything sessions on Reddit. Now they are saying, "No more."

The heavens declare the glory of God. After a few thousand years, we put a good camera in space and marvel at just a glimpse of the heavens.

For the hobbyists, System 76 is now selling cases and chassis.