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: 23-29 October, 2023

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• There is still war in Israel and Gaza
• Nvidia working on ARM CPUs for Windows in a few years
• Our current President believes he can encourage Americans to innovate
• The US House of Representatives elects a Speaker
• Harsh reality hits the EV market --- too expensive, not selling

Monday 23 October 2023

Apple to have an event this month and show a new iMac with M3 processor. My iMac didn't last long enough for this event as I had to buy an M1 model earlier this year.

Meanwhile in Japan, government regulators want to squeeze money out of a successful American company.

Sources claim that Apple wan't ready for all this chattering AI software. I think Apple will be fine.

The newspapers want money from OpenAI for using their content to help build the large language models. Trouble is, those models aren't profitable even with free content.

DropBox leads the way and returns office space to its landlord. The offices are not needed as folks work from anywhere.

A published writer complains about not receiving money from OpenAI et al. Those companies read his writing without paying him. And, by the way, they are not profiting from this as their models are losing money by the minute.

We live at a time where we can generate more text. But is the text any good? I think people have asked that question for a few thousand years. It isn't new.

The concept of writing concept that relates to the reader.

Freelancers of all types need to spend resources on improving---the term folks use these days is "upskilling."

Tuesday 24 October 2023

It appears that Nvidia is working on ARM chips to be processors in Windows computers. This would challenge Intel's position as the default CPU maker for Windows (remember "wintel?")

Experts warn about AI tools, "These are not toys. Increasing their capabilities before we understand how to make them safe is utterly reckless."

Sort of a new idea that I've been using for 15 years, POSSE: Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere. (Sometimes the P is also Post, and the E can be Elsewhere. The idea is the same either way.)

This claims to be the first "generative book." Not sure what it is or does.

Matter, a standard for connecting all the little devices in your home, moves to version 1.2.

Meanwhile in Japan, they have practical electric vehicles. They are small, do useful things, and are inexpensive ($13,000 car, $5,000 truck). Tesla and its $50,000 mid-range cars? Are you kidding?

Meanwhile at WalMart, a "missed-scan detection feature" is labeling shoppers as thieves. The Walton family is too smart to allow this to continue.

This story is all over the Internet, so it must be important: Biden administration designates 31 new tech hubs to encourage innovation. Government encouraging Americans to innovate? That is folly at its worst.

A sad reminder that often ne-er do wells take strong narcotics to give them the state of mind to dive into death.

If you don't want AI companies to use your text or images to train their models, it appears there are techniques to change a few bits here and there that foul up the works.

Meanwhile in Cleveland, the governors have decided to spend the money of other people to provide better broadband to its residents.

Wednesday 25 October 2023

A company proposes a system of AI based on open large language models.

There is some evidence that GPT-4 can guess the income level of a person from their posts on social media. Not a difficult trick.

Converting a company's documents into searchable stuff with AI. Despite claims to the contrary, this is not quick and easy. The world is ripe for an easy-to-use application that does this.

Here is a good tutorial on the concept of embeddings, i.e., an array of numbers that represents text or an image.

If one of those chattering AI things returns false information about you, can you sue for libel?

How Microsoft has been wrong but not too far wrong in its technology forecasts and adapting to changes.

It appears that Google has a new IP Protection feature that it will bring to the Chrome browser real soon now.

Google has a good financial quarter.

Governments all over America are suing Facebook for making its product so good that people want to use it. Can't make it up folks.

Microsoft has a good financial quarter.

Apple schedules an event for 30 October. It sure looks like new Mac computers.

Texas Instruments had a poor financial quarter.

Meanwhile in California, regulators suspend Cruise's self-driving texting and cab services.

Microsoft, OpenAI, Google and Anthropic hire an executive director for their Frontier Model Forum as they hope to watch over themselves in AI.

Thursday 26 October 2023

It appears that someone has found something horrible to do with those little rolling robots that deliver food on college campuses.

This is pretty good: Statistical concepts that every Data Scientist should know

Something to think about: invest in AI now or wait until later when the boom may hit.

More details on Qualcomm and their effort to build a RISC processor that will compete with Intel and AMD in the Windows PC world.

Meta (Zuckerburg Inc) reports a good financial quarter.

Who owns what content. A study shows that most sites that are mined for large language models do not state copyright and other ownership concepts.

For better or worse, Apple's coming Vision Pro and other VR headsets can sense facial and eye expressions. Detect and label mental health issues? For better or worse.

The reports of product collapse may have been exaggerated as Zuckerburg claims Threads to have about 100million active users.

The Communist Party of China bets that it has the money to replace the US market and keep its tech industries humming.

Coming Executive Order on the use of AI in the DoD.

Honda and GM cancel a contract to work on less expensive electric vehicles. Such are not feasible with American auto regulations.

Intel promises big performance boost in games with its newest hardware. The key is better software running in the background.

X (Twitter) now has audio and video calls between users.

Friday 27 October 2023

One person's personal learning and retention system.

Yet another neural network that outperforms ChatGPT.

Lots of layoffs among software developers in 2023. They big tech released them to low- and no-tech companies.

Fun stuff: some historical artifacts from the Internet over the decades.

Sometimes startups are successful, but not really, really successful.

"Building a global deployment platform is hard, here is why"

Allulose: write that down. It will be the next big thing in sugar substitues.

It is early with few cases to report, but in China gene therapy is giving hearing to children born without hearing.

"Content creators" are freelance entertainers who earn some money on social media outlets and such. A small percentage of them earn BIG BUCK$$$. The government, never on the leading edge, doesn't know how to regulate and tax them.

Leica releases a new $10,000 camera that has the Content Credential secure metadata system.

OpenAI annonces that it now has a team that studies catastrophic risks in AI.

Intel's financial quarter wasn't good, but was better than expected which provides optimism and a rising stock value.

Amazon Web Services had yet another good financial quarter.

Ford was to be an electric vehicle company. Consumers, however, won't pay the high prices. A pickup truck is not a luxury vehicle. Ford slows its move to EVs by billion$.

Stronger rumors about new computers from Apple to be announced on 30 October.

This is a lagging indicator: when people didn't go to the office, sales of deodorant fell. Now that people are returning to the office, deodorant sales are rising.

And more harsh reality in the electric vehicle business. They just don't work for the general auto buyer. They are still toys for the rich.

Saturday 28 October 2023

I suppose the race is on to put ARM and RISC in PCs as AMD and Nvidia are teaming to build such processors.

Complaints about "we hired data scientists but they don't know what we expect them to know." This is called trying to hire someone who already works for you.

The announcements of the death of Twitter were premature and exaggerated.

Now that we are out of the PAN(dem)IC, programmers are looking to change jobs.

If you are lucky enough to live in a Google Fiber city, you will soon see 20 Gigabit per second data rates.

Cloud computing costs: the network is the bottleneck. That is where the costs come.

Meanwhile in Phoenix, you can ride in an Uber that has no driver.

Some thoughts on Google's SGE (Search Generative Experience). I like it and use it more and more.

Microsoft's cloud business grew more than everyone else's last quarter. They credit their partnership with OpenAI.

Someone obtained a draft of the 30 October Executive Order on AI and such. Lots of government regulations. I guess they use Interstate Commerce as the excuse for assuming authority.

Companies pay people to hack products and find problems. At a recent conference, folks earned a total of $1million doing so in just a couple of days.

Mr. Musk has owned Twitter (now X) for a year. He hints at new products that will take on other social media companies.

It appears that the PAN(dem)IC created a boom in the freeze-dried food industry. Demand increased ten fold in some areas.

In case you think Google search is too powerful, it pays tens of billion$ a year to be available on other products. It pays its way.

Sunday 29 October 2023

Google invests $2Billion (with a B) in Anthropic to compete with ChatGPT from OpenAI. This is real money, folks.

Yet another way to eavesdrop of conversations using vibrations in smartphone sensors.

Yet another article on why Scrum and Agile and DevOps are failing.

The Washington Post chides X (Twitter) for not censoring users like it used to. Odd, a newspaper promoting censorship (of the wrong type of people).

Meanwhile in the UK, the governors are pushing for a chatbot to answer the public's questions about taxes and pensions and such.

It took seven years, but older former HP employees won an age-discrimination suit. The "winners" get about $15,000 each. The lawyers take away most of the money.

Coming right now to a store near you, those glass cooler doors will become computer screens and show ads.

Meanwhile in China, they have their own chip-making industry that supplies their companies with less-expensive chips. Now the Chinese companies under price American companies. Thank you Mr. Biden.

How to turn a Tesla into a camper and travel.