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: 31 July - 6 August, 2023

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Wars among modern countries were supposed to be quick, over and done
• More politics as usual in the US
• More advances in AI
• The dog days of summer
• The back and forth continues on room-temperature super conductors

Monday 31 July 2023

One version of how Meta built Threads in a relatively short amount of time. These stories are usually over dramatized, so read with some skepticism.

Who? Shenzhen-based Luxshare Precision Industry looks like the company to make the coming Apple Vision Pro.

Stronger rumors about the coming iPhones and such from Apple. We used to wait breathlessly and stand in long lines for these things.

Meanwhile in the UK, regulators are welcoming not shunning facial recognition to curb shoplifting and other crime.

Background music while writing? Background noise while writing?

Trying to find a freelance writing job? Have a basic portfolio online so that hiring managers can quickly see that you can write.

"find something you like and make it your own."

There are plenty of things to do during the day besides writing. Decide how you spend your day. Adjust according to your writing needs. Adjust your writing needs to your day.

Here is a twist on the query letter: start by talking about yourself. Then move on to the material.

Prepare a TED talk. Not invited to give one. No matter, prepare a TED talk.

Tuesday 1 August 2023

Reduced Internet viewing today.

The BBC launches its own Mastodon server.

There is a group called The Center for Countering Digital Hate. X or Twitter is suing them about censorship. "digital hate?"

Meta is building chatbots with different personas to engage users. I guess we will like more than others and start up some digital hate among them.

Meanwhile in China, they are greatly increasing the production of older semiconductors. They aren't state-of-the-art, but they are capable especially in such large numbers.

Strong rumors that Nintendo will have a next-generation game console next year.

Meanwhile in South Korea, they are cautiously moving away from China and towards America and Europe.

This must be the most important story in the world today as it is everywhere: Twitter removes its X sign in San Francisco. I guess those who govern the city and those who manage the company have nothing else to do today.

Dell, yes the home and office PC maker, is making rigs to run AI applications and models.

Strong rumors that Lenovo is working on a PC gaming system.

Wednesday 2 August 2023

Allow me to summarize the news for the summer of 2023: prosecutors of one political party bring countless indictments of a former president from another party. Congressmen of on political party hint at impeaching President from another party for many shady business deals involving his son. Oh, and the earth is boiling, but we --- the greatest generations in human history --- only we can withstand this abuse from mother nature.

Meanwhile in China, they now have the largest windmill in the history of everything. Dispose of its parts when it wears out? Are you kidding?

Meanwhile in privileged America, Amazon sets a record for one-day deliveries and same-day deliveries.

The Large Language Models are now so popular that we have an industry in breaking them.

News for Python programmers: maybe the Global Interpreter Lock will be removed to allow the language to take advantage of the hardware that is commonly available.

SpaceX practically destroyed their launch pad during the first Starship launch. New construction and massive use of water may improve things.

Meanwhile at Google, their Assistant gets an AI makeover.

Ever heard of ASML? It is a Dutch company that makes the machines that make the semiconductors. It make all of them. It practically has a worldwide monopoly.

This is the stuff of science fiction. We resurrect a thing dormant for eons. We unleash poison to which no one is immune.

Watching the Today Show (something I avoid) reveals "journalists" and "expert guests" lambasting Donal Trump. Trump has driven the news ratings for 6 or 7 years now. None of these journalists would have jobs if it weren't for Mr. Trump. There salaries are paid by feigning hatred for him. We are an odd lot.

Thursday 3 August 2023

Amazon's online health Clinic is now available all across America.

Extending the concept of the "first draft" to computer programming. For a few decades, this was called refactoring.

Some deep thoughts on writing and teaching writing in the age of AI and such.

A group that really knows the topic, issues an early draft on the situation of writing and AI. This is from the Modern Language Association of America and Conference on College Composition and Communication.

Is there really a shortage of the hardware used to build AI systems?

Someone claimed they had superconductors working at room temperature. Now the experiment has been repeated with the same results. Great hope in this area.

Meta shows some new hardware for AR/VR goggles.

PayPal has a good financial quarter, but not as good as predicted. PayPal's value drops. The predictor? No punishment for being wrong.

Amazon pushes harder into the grocery marketplace.

Meta releases some text-to-music software.

Software is detecting breast cancer quite well. Of course it can. Software has been doing this type of thing for decades.

Microsoft widely releases Teams Spatial Audio. People on a Teams call sound like they are in different positions.

Friday 4 August 2023

Google's new Search Generative Experience adds more video results. I just started using that today.

It is still early, but Researchers at City of Hope developed a targeted chemotherapy that appears to annihilate all solid tumors in preclinical research.

An argument for great ideas coming from lone thinkers. Social interaction tends to kill outlying ideas quickly.

HTML continues to evolve and add capabilities. It can do wonders now.

Here is a long piece on using large language models.

Leidos, they know the Federal government, teams with Microsoft, they know some AI, to push generative AI into the Federal space for (wait for it) gains in efficiency. We shall see.

Speaking of the Federal government and efficiency... Our current President wants to modify its use but the agencies are still trying to meet guidelines from the last president.

There are a few folks who understand that Garbage In, Garbage Out still holds.

This is a long piece on large language models. Lots of material in here for a long read.

This article explains what it would mean if this superconductor-at-room-temperature works. Amazing things.

100million persons signed up for Threads. 8million persons are using it.

Apple reports a mixed financial quarter. The profits are still amazingly high.

About the same financial results for Amazon. These companies continue to prosper and profit.

Nvidia has a breakthrough image generator that only requires 100KB (that's with a K) and 4 minutes to train.

Saturday 5 August 2023

This may be worth your time...un-optimize, "If you find, as I did during Covid, that most of your tasks make you miserable, maybe it is time for a change."

"IBM, HuggingFace and NASA have collaborated to build an open-source geospatial foundation model that will serve as the basis for a new class of climate and Earth science AIs... "

Ooooops, researchers hack into a Tesla to get all the costly features at no charge.

Raspberry Pi, the most successful education program in history, has been in short supply of its hardware. Now they are producing a million units a month. When started, they hoped to make 50,000 units total.

Sometimes these chattering AI things return wrong answers about people. Can the people sue somebody? Of course they can. These folks at the New York Times seem to have lost their way.

India is saturated with smartphones. Sales continue to decline there as everyone already owns one.

We live in an upside down world where socialist American Democrats are the big enemies of socialist Russians. What happened?

Jeff Bezos picks up $11Billion in value in a day.

Jeff Bezos picked up $11Billion in value in a day. Here near Washington D.C., a group of investors just bought the NFL franchise based in Washington. They paid $6Billion with some creative financing that took months to approve. Mr. Bezos was long rumored as a buyer of the team. In one day, he gained enough value to easily pay $10Billion for the team. We have a new breed of "rich" people in the world.

Qualcomm has a bad financial quarter.

ooooops, hospitals in several states had bad cybersecurity systems and are now trying in vain to stay operational.

At MIT, a few folks have an idea of making an energy storage device out of cement and carbon black. It could just sit there as a block of energy or be a home foundation. This research has a long way to go, but something may come of it.

Just to show that Google also has bad management ideas, they want employees to pay $99/night to stay in a company hotel so they won't have to commute. The employee pays the bill. Note: motels in the area cost double that, so this is a discount.

Sunday 6 August 2023

Bellingcat shows how to find locations based on photographs. Good open-source intelligence techniques.

I learn about the Barbie Me trend. Go to barbie.me and see a Barbie doll based on your face.

The URL ai.com now points to Elon Musk's x.ai. For weeks it pointed to OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Meanwhile at Purdue, we have HADAR (heat-assisted detection and ranging) which combines thermal physics, infrared imaging, and machine learning. It overcomes some of the problems with LIDAR and basic cameras. Perhaps we can see in the dark.

Meanwhile at White Castle---yes, that White Castle---they are bringing speech understanding to the drive through.

China's advances in AI and the war in Ukraine are putting the Federal government and Silicon Valley closer. Our government, however, continues to get in its own way with acquisition regulations.

It appears that the NFT experiment is over. No one wants to buy any of this stuff.

The residents of San Francisco don't like self-driving taxis. Will anyone else in any other city? Go to college towns.

I like this article. First, working from home is seen as an 8% raise in salary. I would guess much higher in some areas. Second, forcing folks back to the office loses talent for companies.

Bram Moolenaar dies at 62. He created and maintained the Vim editor. I wrote books with that editor.

Intel shows new graphics processors for portable computers.