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: 18-24 March, 2024

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Israel-Gaza conflict continues
• Nvidia announces the Blackwell line of high-end GPUs for AI
• Neuralink shows its first patient playing chess on a computer
• Kate Middleton has cancer
• BitCoin pricing pushes high-performance computers to other countries, beware

Monday 18 March 2024

Asus releases a new and smaller GPU card for all PCs.

Qualcomm shows a new Snapdragon processor that brings top performance to middle-tier smartphones.

xAI open sources parts of its Grok LLM.

Meanwhile in American high schools, some schools are returning to to paper newspapers instead of all on the phone.

It appears that there is no accepted certification in "crypto." As a result, there are lots of pretenders.

Speculating about future uses of SpaceX's Starship.

Some insight into the disaster that is recycling of plastics. It just doesn't happen.

One writer's eight steps to writing for a living $$$.

Another writer gives their take on the same topic.

It is easy to waste time and money on writers' workshops. That is a shame.

Here is a post that discusses the 10,000 hours it takes to become a proficient writer.

Categories of what fiction is intended to bring us: (1) Entertainment (2) Observation (3) Self-Examination (4) Empathy (5) Wisdom

I'll condense this post into just one quote, "Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work."

Want to read memoirs? Here's a list.

Tuesday 19 March 2024

Making the case that AI will not take everyone's jobs and rive down wages.

Meanwhile in China, a border town becomes a big city because of online shopping.

A list of everything associated with open-source LLMs.

I love this just for the title, "Stubborn Visionaries & Pigheaded Fools"

In praise of the SpaceX Starship.

Take a pill, kill ticks. I know folks who would take this.

Nvidia's Jensen Huang spoke at CES 2024. Many announcements of new hardware and software related to AI.

Nvidia has a new high-end series of GPUs called Blackwell.

Nvidia announces NIM, (quoting) a new software platform designed to streamline the deployment of custom and pre-trained AI models into production environments.

Nvidia announces Gr00t (those are zeros, not ohs). It is a foundation model that aims to put Nvidia into the humanoid robot market.

Stability AI announces Stable Video 3D (SV3D). This is an improved text-(or image)to-video system.

Some prompts and answers with ChatGPT shows that science researchers are using ChatGPT to write their research papers. Well, most of them use MS Word to write their research papers. So what?

When movie studios stop calling to be in movies, jump into video games as an actor.

An annual report shows that the video game industry is still trending upwards.

There are signs that the enthusiasm to build chip-making factories in the US is, well, it's not there anymore.

According to the New York Times, our Dept of Homeland Security is leading all Federal agencies in using AI.

The studies on Havana Syndrome continue. As with most studies, the conclusion is, "Fund us for more studies."

Our oceans continue to become warmer. We are setting records everyday. Wow, only a generation as capable as us could live through this. We are superior.

The governors of Indiana add computer science as a required subject for graduating high school. They have now dumbed-down CS in the state. This will not attract high-tech businesses or do anything other than allow those with little expertise in CS to get jobs in schools.

Wednesday 20 March 2024

More news on the Utopia that California billionaires plan to build. Good luck with all that.

Dell lets its employees work from home, but there are consequences for that choice. It appears that the managers at Dell are adults. Good.

One person relates the experience of using Apple's really expensive AR/VR for a month. It is an expensive tool that is clearly not for everyone.

Now that we have all this AI stuff, what will become of computer programmers. This essay offers a grasp of the obvious: different tools mean different work.

A new type of sail cuts fuel consumption on a cargo ship. This makes dollars and sense, so people will use it. Now if we can just keep some regulators out of the way, it will be used where it works and no where else.

And now we have a text-to-music chattering bot. Write me something snappy with a good beat.

Got $40Billion (with a B) in spare change? The Saudis do and they are going to invest it in AI.

The governors in Canada and the UAE are trying to lure new AI companies to relocate. Smart.

It is official, $8.5Billion taxpayers' dollars go to Intel to use in half-a-dozen states. It is an election year.

Meanwhile at Microsoft, they have new employees and a new organization called "Microsoft AI."

Coming this summer from OpenAI is GPT-5.

Segway brings a $1,000 smart robot lawn mower to the US. I pay my grandson $20 to mow my lawn. That's about ten years worth of mowing. But he goes away to college in three years. Maybe his little sister...

Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang wears leather jackets for his presentations. Of course there are those who track which one he wears when and who makes them and how much they cost and and and

I'll quote this line, "The economy is fantastic - unless you want a new job, a new home, or a new car."

More bad economic news: many of the jobs listed everywhere don't exist.

"Jensen Huang is the new Taylor Swift" Well, maybe not that, but the hype, glitz, and such are getting a bit much.

The European Space Agency (ESA) will hire the Falcon 9 from SpaceX to launch its navigation satellites.

Thursday 21 March 2024

MIT researchers have a new algorithm for computer vision that provides low-level details for the first time.

Here is an explanation of the new IRS Section 174 and what it does to the income taxes of new companies. This must have been pushed by established companies as it makes starting a new company much more difficult.

How to start a new company.

For the first time, scientists use AI to design antibodies from scratch. As always with medicine and biology, I hope they know what they are doing. We don't need any man-made plagues.

Meanwhile in America, our Dept of Justice will sue Apple who, no doubt, succeeded too much.

Neuralink has a video of its first implant patient playing chess with his brain sending signals to a computer. This is what we should be doing with all this technology.

YouTube is bringing out multiview for the iPhone. Now the little iPhone screen can divide into four pieces for even smaller videos. I guess this meets someone's needs.

Google Research publishes a paper on a new algorithm for forecasting floods. Outstanding. This is something we can use.

The "Dew Line" on the US-Mexico border works. That is unfortunate for many as the surveillance is driving people into more rugged and desolate areas where they die.

Our EPA now has a Water Sector Cybersecurity Task Force. Ne'er-do-wells are hacking water systems. Well-meaning but ignorant local government employees are foolishly allowing this.

A researcher asserts that our universe is twice as old as we thought it was.

"Impending doom" for people laid off in the tech industry this year. 50,000 jobs is a lot for a relatively small industry.

If you can't convince people to buy electric vehicles, increase regulations on gas vehicles to force them into EVs. And, by the way, this increases the cost of transportation for everyone.

GNOME 46 is released.

Friday 22 March 2024

Nvidia announces some sort of silly project to make a humanoid AI robot.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, we have reports of an autonomous drone flying on its own and defeating current Russian electronic counter measures. Get better counter measures.

I'll just quote the headline, "Developer squeezes entire GPT-2 AI model into a single Excel spreadsheet"

And now we have Text-to-3D as a Service (T23DaaS ??)

Someone is trying to create the biggest or longest or whatever-est Flip Book in history. Go to the link and draw a little.

Someone 3D prints the body of a Macintosh and puts a new computer inside.

Here is a list of everything Nvidia announced this week.

The DGX SuperPOD. It is Nvidia's latest super-duper AI computer. At least they are hiring some Hollywood folks to create the names. They are the new Taylor Swift.

Real news that isn't news: Our Dept of Justice is suing Apple. Analysis of the case shows that our Dept of Justice doesn't understand technology.

Researchers find a security hold in the Apple silicon M-series processors.

Researchers find a hack that allows anyone to open 3Million hotel rooms that have card keys. This affects 13,000 hotels in the US.

Reddit has its IPO, and its stock price rises 48% on the first day.

Microsoft updates its Surface Pro and Surface Laptop hardware, puts a Copilot key on the keyboard and calls them "AI PCs."

DoorDash and Alphabet's Wing are testing food delivery in Christiansburg, Virginia (that is in southwest or "real Virginia").

The number of people majoring in computer science in the US has grown and grown and grown. Good jobs (paychecks) are the lure. And, of course, this must be a problem.

Western civilization is now safe as Windows 11 Notepad gets spellcheck and autocorrect.

Real news that isn't news: we are creating electronic trash. We are not recycling electronic trash.

Saturday 23 March 2024

One study shows that China has more AI engineers than the US. There is the debate of quantity versus quality etc.

Here is another piece that shows how US companies are hiring all the AI talent in the world.

oooops, someone leaks the personal information of 73million of us AT&T customers.

All the fussing about Kate Middleton's photos etc. resolve to the fact that she has cancer. Once again, the "mainstream media" shows that it will do anything for a dollar.

Kate Middleton and "photographs." Only believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.

We sue Apple. We sued Microsoft in the 1990s and IBM in the 1960s. I expect the same results this time around.

Asus shows some small form factor PCs for gaming. They have Nvidia processors and high price tags.

Boom Supersonic is trying to return supersonic speeds to commercial air travel. They finally had a little test flight of a demo plane.

A growing number of Americans are not retiring. They work till death. The big reason is they are not financially able to stop working. The big reason is medical costs for cancer treatments.

Rewrite this silly headline. Of course a digital camera and software can detect breast cancer better than people dealing with fatigue and other trials in their own lives. This has been the case for at least four decades.

Further analysis of the Dept of Justice suit against Apple affirms early analysis: is the DoJ kidding?

Sunday 24 March 2024

More analysis on the DoJ's case against Apple. Hundred$ of million$ of taxpayer$' $$$ will be spent. The outcome will fade away to nothing.

Is broadband Internet access a civil right or a luxury service that some folks cannot afford? If you want this great-grandmother to have it, pay her bill for her.

Halving of the BitCoin value will drive miners AND THEIR HIGH-PERFORMANCE computers out of the US. Will other countries use this compute power for crypto mining or military and surveillance?

A new undersea cable system will boost broadband Internet availability among the islands of the Philipines. Jobs. What is the difference between this and taxpayers paying for Americans to have broadband Internet? Much. The story of the great-grandmother choosing between food and Internet begs the question of inflation of food prices under the current Federal administration. Also, the Philipines cable is a business investment, not a tax-and-spend program.

These glasses are too expensive, so this is a stunt so far but with great potential. Push a button and they switch back and forth between sunglasses and reading glasses.

Musing on the "Computer Science problem" facing universities. These centers of learning are trying to adapt themselves to the ever-adapting world about them.

It appears that folks who work in tech companies are hitting regulators with what regulators hate most: they are ignoring the regulators. The regulars simply lack the expertise to speak competently about the things they strive to regulate.

Looking back on how Reddit began.