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: 19-25 February, 2024

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• This was enters its third year
• Israel-Gaza conflict continues
• Microsoft spends billion$ in Germany and Spain
• Groq shows AI processors that are much faster with LLMs than anything else
• Intuitive Machines successfully lands on the moon (tipped over sideways)

Monday 19 February 2024

Real news that isn't news: European regulators fine successful American company half-a-billion dollars $$$.

Our Dept of Commerce gives $1.5Billion to the state of New York. Here come those electoral votes in nine months.

How Ukraine's tech companies continued to operate during a war. Disperse to work.

An AI-powered tutor get much of the facts incorrect. Tutors should be easy to make as they only need training on small subject areas. Another failure of basic engineering and management.

There are some thoughts in here on the basic ASCII file. Keep data backwards and forwards compatible. I don't like SQL data bases. I cannot get to the content without the right app. Markdown files are great. HTML files are great.

The current occupants at the EPA are recognizing (in this election year) that all the regulated moved to electric vehicles are not working.

Gen Z goes tot he office, but no one told them how to dress. Yes, you have to tell men not to wear shorts to the office. You have to tell women not to...oh, I don't know.

Thoughts on the Writer Igniter Method. Use prompts and write and write and write some more.

This is a step-by-step method to build a personal brand on LinkedIn and make lots of money.

The idea of the unique writing style.

I'll just quote the headline, "Writing Rules That Beg to Be Broken." This is pretty good. He lists only four or five "rules."

Ideas on responsibilities the writer has to the readers.

Four things you may want to have at the start of a chapter or scene. Nothing amazing here, but I never thought about this.

Tuesday 20 February 2024

GitHub Copilot and accessibility.

Got young kids? Will they ever learn anything more than how to ask GPT a question?

Solar water heaters? Yes. They actually work in real life and can be done simply. And they could also cool your house in the hot summer.

Engineers in Japan are experimenting with making satellites out of wood.

Meanwhile in California, sales of electric cars dropped for the first time. Have they already hit saturation of the market of rich folks?

Microsoft is pouring billion$$$ into Germany for infrastructure.

Wyze, little webcams, is getting its files criss crossed as users see the feeds of other users.

Once again our FBI tells us that they have saved us by disrupting bad guys in the cyber world. I guess we believe this.

And Microsoft will spend $2.1Billion in Spain on infrastructure. This follows another report of spending $3Billion in Germany. It will all happen real soon now.

Meanwhile in San Francisco, a sign that the pandemic is over: tech is returning after going to other cities a couple of years ago.

Complaints about Google search pointing to top advertisers instead of pointing to experts in the field of interest. For example, Rolling Stone magazine knows nothing of pet-hair air filters, but Google points to them.

It takes about five minutes for Google engineers to hack into Sony's Playstation systems.

Return-to-the-office mandates are fighting against a little-mentioned factor: inflation in America has made commuting MUCH MORE expensive. Bidenomics.

Wednesday 21 February 2024

Meanwhile in our Federal government, we are starting to use AI to help predict the weather. Thirty years behind the times, but it's something.

Our Dept of Homeland Security looks to hire 50 AI experts this year. Good luck at the GS-15 salary. Just redefine "expert." And then try to keep these experts employed when they realize who are their supervisors.

As an example of the type of supervisors the AI experts will have, see how GSA is buying video conference systems made in, by, and for the Chinese government, a.k.a., the Communist Party of China.

I find a couple of no-duh articles. Are you kidding? People have to tell other people these things? This is all elementary problem solving. That seems to have disappeared.

Understand your problem before picking an AI tool to solve it. Sometimes picking a tool and attempting a solution will help understand the problem.

And guess what, people are not interchangeable. Each individual brings individual talents and foibles. Rats!

Worn out. The use of ChatGPT has dropped five of the last eight months.

It is more official now: Walmart is buying smart TV maker Vizio, just $2.3Billion.

Our Dept of Defense has hired Scale AI to test and evaluate large language models for military planning and decision-making.

Meanwhile in China, the chief spies for the Communist Party don't like all this free talk on the Internet as it exposes too much infrastructure that would be used by an invading army.

Groq (the name of a company) makes processors specifically for AI. Their machines are much, much faster at running these chattering bots than anything anyone else has.

IBM reports that hackers are simply using the real accounts of real people to slip into systems. No need to hack when someone gives you the keys to the front door.

Our President signs an Executive Order giving the Coast Guard authority for cyber security at ports and tossing in $20Billion as well. I guess this is more government by royal decree. Congress? Who is that? What do they do?

Thursday 22 February 2024

Meanwhile at our Dept of Defense, the Award Fees on Cost-Plus contracts are not working as intended. Lack of qualified managers leads to problems. This is not rocket science.

In 2011 (13 years ago) Congress passed a law requiring there to be an online database of government contracts. The database just went online this past week. Gosh.

Meanwhile in Finland, one of NATO's newest members that has an 800-mile-long border with Russia is opening 300 new shooting ranges as civilian defense of the nation become important.

Adobe jumps into the generative AI market with something that understands PDFs and answers questions.

Neuralink claims that its first human test subject can move a pointer around a computer screen via a brain link. If this works, it will be wonderful for many with physical disabilities.

Microsoft continues to work on datacenter hardware to lessen its reliance on Nvidia.

Meanwhile in America, good old YouTube dominates video streaming.

Meanwhile in Alabama, the state supreme court rules that frozen human embryos are persons. Destroying them is a wrongful death (homicide).

Researchers claim to be able to draw fingerprints from the sound of swiping.

Thoughts on the combinations of AI developments this month. These involve virtual reality, superfast custom AI processors, and text-to-video systems.

Stronger rumors that Apple is about to release a smart ring.

I find this to be wild. If you add, "Think twice before answering this question" to a prompt of a chattering bot, the likelihood of a good answer doubles.

I really like this paper. The research shows that "trick questions" (my words) trick models that understand text and scenes 70%, 80%, even 90% of the time. "There is a sucker born every minute."

Crowdstrike's annual report shows that cyber crime on cloud computing rises again.

Good for supply chains, and bad for the independence of the island of Formosa: Taiwan's chip builders are moving to Japan.

The war in Ukraine drags into its third year. America's military is learning from it. Sometimes you wonder if we allow it to continue so that we can continue to study European warfare in the 21st century.

Friday 23 February 2024

Yale goes back to standardized tests as part of admission.

Meanwhile at Google, the Gemini system is generating really bad images. The images are bad enough that Google pulls the feature so that it can work on it.

Framework sells modular laptop computers. It now has a really inexpensive model that uses old parts. Let's see if consumers go for a good-enough machine.

The money is pouring in at Nvidia as they report an incredibly good financial quarter.

Arm continues to progress with its line of designs for datacenter processors.

A group of noted AI researchers sign a pact asking for more laws that will be redundant with the unenforced laws already in place.

Layoffs at electric vehicle maker Rivian.

Google releases two more large language models called Gemma 2B and Gemma 7B.

A recent study links mortality with unemployment. Bored people simple die of boredom.

Meanwhile in China, they lag the west in AI technology and, once again, try to catch up by stealing and copying.

And also in China we have real news that isn't news: the CCP spies on foreigners as much as it does on its own residents.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, it appears that the Russians have regained the offensive. I believe that corruption in Ukraine has greatly reduced the effectiveness of all the advanced weaponry from the West.

Thoughts on using video as input to Gemini 1.5 Pro from Google.

How to run a background check on the company that is interested in hiring you.

NASA has been showing its age (in a bad way) since the last moon landing. This week, a company attempts to land an unmanned vehicle on the moon. If it fails, like the other company did a few months ago, NASA will once again be sitting on its thumbs hoping something good happens elsewhere and someone saves the US space program.

Intuitive Machines successfully lands an unmanned craft on the moon. First US vehicle there in 51 years. We are far behind other nations, but trying to catch up.

Meanwhile at Meta, there is a controversy in Instagram and Facebook about parents using their kids to make money. Pedophiles were big paying consumers.

Microsoft announces "Generative Erase" for its Photos app. Erase anything from any photo.

Social network company Bluesky opens to federation. "The move will allow anyone to run their own server that connects to Bluesky's network, so they can host their own data, their own account and make their own rules."

Tech unemployment is relatively high. Unemployed engineers are doing unpaid work as part of the interviews. Beware and refuse to work without pay.

Reddit files its initial public offering.

TSMC has put some chip manufacturing in Japan. This is due to much work by the Japanese.

Saturday 24 February 2024

A comparison of using R and tidyverse to using Python and pandas. R is the somewhat surprising winner.

SpaceX seeks approval for at least nine Starship launches this year. If the government allows, SpaceX can probably do this. That is an amazing accomplishment.

Tech billionaires move forward with their new planned Utopia city in California. Entry price is high, but if you have to ask the price you can't afford it.

Yet another text-to-image generator promising better performance than the previous text-to-image generators.

And all this generative AI enters the S curve of product adoption.

Meanwhile in the Utah desert, a pharmaceutical company lands a capsule from orbit. This is some type of first.

Meanwhile in the UK, it appears that working four days a week works. 100% output in 80% of the time at 100% pay.

The dream of Mercedes-Benz selling only electric vehicles in 2030 fades. Customers are not loving EVs as much as desired. Reality knocks down yet another good theory.

Google puts a "Help me write" AI experiment into its Chrome browser. It seems to work.

A bunch of rich and famous persons and companies are investing in Figure AI, a company that tries to make humanoid robots. Probably the most inefficient type of robotics.

Where the money is: a look at LockBit, a ransomware outfit. They hold lots of money in crypto currency.

Satellite photos of a Russian military cemetery show the mounting toll of the war in Ukraine.

Meanwhile at Dell, if you want to work from home, that is a "career-limiting choice." Is that an honest and candid statement or a threat to either come to the office or be laid off? Time may tell.

A recent study shows some correlation between air pollution near busy roads and dementia. This is another if and maybe and possibly thing. Too bad no one has any real conclusions on this yet.

The Intuitive Machines vehicle that landed on the moon landed tipped over sideways. Well, nobody's perfect. It's better than NASA could do. The last 100 meters seems to be the most difficult. All the Apollo missions that landed upright had a human pilot.

An M&M's vending machine was secretly taking photos of customers. Of course we must ask how many other such machines have cameras and microphones etc.

Big layoffs at Vice.

Sunday 25 February 2024

The governors in Japan pour more billion$ into TSMC factories in Japan. Good for Japan, bad for the island of Formosa.

More news about Taiwan as SpaceX is not providing US military communications there as its contract states it must.

Meanwhile at Reddit, they are going public. Users are wary.

And the private owners of Reddit admit in filings that the platform depends on several hundred million non-paid persons contributing all the content.

Economic reality in America: daycare costs of little children puts home ownership and other basics out of reach of families where both parents work. High interest rates drive the costs of everything up up and up.

Meanwhile in the state of New York, you will have to be certified to be a computer science teacher in high school. More government regulations reducing teaching and learning.

Automakers built "smart keys" for cars. Start your car remotely via a radio signal. All can be intercepted and overridden. They made it easier to steal a car and the numbers of stolen cars rises.

And now we learn that a million COVID-19 deaths in the US was a low number. Those, who would profit from higher numbers, claim higher numbers. Where there is money, there are people wanting to grab some of it.