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: 29 April - 5 May, 2024

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Israel-Gaza conflict continues
• And those wacky college kids are protesting all over the place about this
• Most big tech companies report good financial quarters
• Apple reports a slow quarter but its stock price rises
• Github announces yet another AI-enhanced toolset

Monday 29 April 2024

OpenAI partners with The Financial Times. Content will be available for training and articles will be summarized.

Mr. Musk goes to China and gets approval for full self-driving mode. That is a big deal as it provides full access to all road maps in the country.

Two stories here: (1) the smartphone market sees an opportunity to jump in with a slowing of iPhone purchases and (2) Apple jumping to its M4 processor with the iPad being the first to use it and its AI capabilities.

The AI Safety Summit is coming and no one is attending this year (the second year). The excitement is already gone. No more headlines and photos and nice motels.

Claims that Meta has put AI into all its systems and it isn't working. I haven't noticed any changes.

It is possible to write faster. For one thing, learn to type faster. Also, try dictation software. Simple ideas that work.

Ideas for blog posts. "But, these are not blog posts???" Does not matter. Write and hit the publish button.

Start a writing career (whatever that is). Anyways, here are some tips to writing more and more often.

TEXT

The concept of our lineage or history as writers. Go way back in time and remember where we were.

Using true stories from our lives as fiction. Yes, some people who know us will be mad as, "I never did that!"

Ten areas where a person could start a business in 2024. Of course it is a lot of very hard work with no guarantee of success.

Seth Godin echoes what other sources have reported on books and sales. The great majority of books written sell a dozen copies at best. Concluding, "Write a book because you can and because it might make a difference. But don't listen to your publisher's suggestions simply to sell more copies. You probably won't." My take is, write a book to collect your thoughts in one place. It is a good reference for later. And at some point another person can grab a copy to learn something about me. The book is sort of a thick business card or LinkedIn profile.

Finding writing jobs. I guess they are out there somewhere.

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters---VIRGINIA WOOLF

Attending college has become a 25-hour-per week endeavor. Perhaps for some, in grad school in the 1980s, I spent easily ten hours per day seven days a week on classes, study, and projects.

Here is a study from 2010 showing the decline in study hours.

Here is a study from 2022 showing how students demand professors make classes easier. Whatever happened to, "Yes this is difficult. We are exercising your brain so you will be stronger."

Perhaps all these stuff about how easy college is comes from the bachelor of arts programs. I don't see data on engineering schools. The one article shows that math and science classes rank highest for the "too hard" courses.

Tuesday 30 April 2024

Our OPM issues a few guidelines to check a few boxes required by the President's executive order on AI. No details given as of yet. Somehow our Federal government is going to hire 100 AI experts this summer. Going rates on the open market for such persons are between $500K and $1M. Government employees are paid considerable less.

What will these AI things do next? Turn a 2D image into a 3D object. I suppose this fills a need for someone somewhere.

Google lays of its US-based Python team (ten persons) and opens the office in Munich to replace it.

The iPhone was a wonder. Well, it isn't any longer. Apple seeks something special.

Rumors are that ByteDance is not going to divest TikTok to a US company. Death before dishonor or something.

GitHub announces Copilot Workspace. AI somehow powers the agents in Copilot so that all sorts of magic happens in software development.

Meanwhile in America, survey says (78%) that social media companies have too much political power. Social media is the new media. Randolf Hearst has been replaced by YouTube et al.

Our FCC fines AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. Nobody really cares why these companies have to pay fines as they are known for poor customer service and seem to deserve some sort of punishment.

Tech journalism is falling into the same hole as journalism in general. Poor quality work means investors are going elsewhere.

Microsoft sends a couple billion$$$ into Indonesia related to AI hardware and training.

It seems that Apple has hired a few dozen AI experts away from Google. Talent wars in Silicon Valley ust like the good old days.

Samsung has a really, really good financial quarter. Operating profit (whatever that is) is up 933%. That is a large number.

Meanwhile in Russia, censorship lives on as the governors replace Wikipedia with something more to their liking.

Meanwhile in Africa, grad schools aren't teaching AI enough for AI companies.

Meanwhile in India, the political campaigns are spending big on tech and AI-generated content.

Wednesday 1 May 2024

Real news that isn't news: why commute for hours a day in heavy traffic if you don't have to? Return to the office runs into reality in the Federal workplace.

Pure folly: hire 500 AI experts into Federal employment this year. Just lower the definition of "expert" low enough and you can accomplish this.

Meanwhile in the Chinese space program, they are about to launch a round-trip unmanned vehicle that will land on the far side of the moon, collect samples, and return them to earth.

A lot of technical jargon and product names in this piece, but one of the points is above all that: if you build things that people happily use, all those tools don't matter. It is the people and the techniques that matter.

Some folks, I'm one of them, think the Internet Archive is a treasure. Others think it is a copyright thief. Legal judges are attempting to decide. That's not good news for folks like me.

Read the friendly manual: Intel reminds motherboard makers to read the specs on its latest processors so that the processors will work properly.

Got bad news? Tell it to GPT-4. It seems to respond better to bad news than most persons.

Ready or not, here it comes: weaponized AI or AI that creates cyber security attacks.

And Amazon reports a good financial quarter. Who hasn't?

AMD's datacenter profits are up 80%.

Meanwhile in some parts of America, state governments are basically outlawing new datacenters.

Walmart closes its health centers. They aren't profitable.

Google fired employees for non-peaceful protests and disrupting offices. The lawyers have arrived.

How does Russia keep the Ukraine war going? Parts suppliers route parts around the world the other way through China into the back door.

The layoffs continue at Tesla. Will the electric vehicle go the way of the 3D TV? Maybe EVs will work in 20 years.

Our government is selling ehe Cheyenne super-duper-computer. Installed in 2017, the GSA price is $28,000. Of course you have to come get it and haul it off. Lots of work involved, but the Russians would love to have some of the parts.

If orders at Starbucks are in indication of the US economy, things are slowing quickly showing great worry.

And wind-generated power in the US dropped last year. Why? Calm winds. If the wind doesn't blow, well, you get the picture.

Thursday 2 May 2024

Strong rumors about Apple updating the Safari browser with all sorts of AI.

Out of now where comes gpt2-chatbot. Amazing performance. But who did it? How did it appear? This is something AI researchers and producers fear and welcome: a breakthrough that no one was expecting. Or is it just something new that was a surprise but not worth the time of day?

Study delves into how AI can be persuasive. These answers are coming from a computer. These answers have to be right, right?

Mindtrip: It's like ChatGPT except that you only ask it questions about travel. It works pretty well.

People are learning the writing syle of ChatGPT. For example, this post has a list of words that are disproportionately used by ChatGPT.

Where the money is. OpenAI and Microsoft are succeeding, too much. Hence, sue them. They must have done something wrong to you to succeed so much.

A look at tech journalism, the good old home page, and The Verge (which I review everyday).

Google lobbies hard for immigration reform so that the talent will come to them from all over the world. Life would be easier for Google's managers.

Atlassian, maker of Jira, shows "Rovo." It is a easier-to-use search tool for data stored in Jira et al.

Gotta blame college riots on someone. Let's blam Sidechat. Anonymous chat is what fueled all these conversations and protests.

Intel, with billion$ of taxpayers' money, is trying to build Ohio One---a really big factory in Ohio.

For once, it appears that Congress has more wisdom than industry as a law requiring AM radios remain in cars is about to pass.

It is only for one month, but Windows 10 gained market share while Windows 11 dropped.

Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code is now 60 years old.

Friday 3 May 2024

Walmart is about to release yet another Google TV (Chromecast) streaming device.

Google is in court with our Dept of Justice. Someone on the government side is leaking all sorts of information from Google's files. One bit is that Microsoft partnered with OpenAI to keep up with Google.

For a moment, let's consider the relatively short history of "brainwashing." Time is up. That's it.

The defense technologies in the aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. It is all about weapons in the air and knocking down the opposition's weapons in the air while your weapons in the air make it to targets.

This has always been the case, but I guess it worse now: if you earn a lot, it is harder to find another job.

Microsoft partners with a company to move into the market of humanoid robots. Why anyone wants to build these things is a mystery to me.

Finally bringing AI models to smartphones, which are the ultimate edge computing devices.

Google makes it much easier to chat with Gemini from the Chrome browser address bar.

Apple has a down financial quarter. That is news. Still quite profitable, but lower profits for a change.

Meanwhile in American sports, Roku is close to a deal with MLB for Sunday Morning Baseball programming.

More American sports, the NBA is about to sign huge money deals with Amazon and Disney. I don't see the appeal as the NBA's product isn't that good. Then again, my local team is the Washington Wizards.

A company called Hubble Network is communicating with a satellite via Bluetooth. Yes, short-range communication system bluetooth.

Saturday 4 May 2024

Go to SpaceX's website and book your flight into space. Tourism comes. Got money? Get a trip.

I like this piece. It is a dose of reality to many folks who need such. And don't believe everything you read in LinkedIn.

Strong rumors that OpenAI will announce its own search page to compete with Google. Announcement to come next week.

The first music video created by generative AI is here. Something snappy with a good beat. Otherwise, boring.

Is the future of swarming robots a bunch of snails? Why not?

Rumors of generative AI coming from Apple that will be much better than everyone else's. Apple's processor have AI engines built into them. The potential for local AI processor is quite high and years ahead of the AI PC movement.

Nurses protest the use of "half cooked" AI in hospitals. I side with the nurses on this one.

I'll quote this one, good for Apple and good for us: "the Apple Watch's atrial fibrillation (AFib) history feature has been approved by the FDA to join the FDA's Medical Device Development Tools (MDDT) program."

Bidenomics interest rates are tough on those trying to buy their first home. A recent conversation with old guys like me recall 15% and up rates on 30-year mortgages.

Is a cartoon "synthetically generated content?"

Meanwhile at Google, employees confirm that all these DoJ antitrust trials are just something that involve celebrities in government and business. Working folk just continue to do their jobs.

Rumors about what Apple will show at its big event next Tuesday.

Comments on the new AI-generated music video. If this is the future, many folks will not have jobs.

Here's a new (maybe paying) job: let someone create a digital twin of you. The digital twin works 24 hours a day doing opinion polls, talking to robo-callers, and even doing a few useful things.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, WOW! Diplomatic service members write Foreign Ministry announcements, but the announcements are read by an AI-generated person. This would actually save a lot of time and money and cut jobs.

Praise for the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. Other new AI gadgets are just junk in comparison.

Sunday 5 May 2024

Our President presents Medal of Freedom awards to 19 persons. While some are deserving, many are just political stunts so that political friends can claim something.

Take a crash college course to learn about Taylor Swift so you can converse with your kids.

How many browser tabs do you have open? How about seven-thousand-four-hundred?

A few of our Senators want to reign in the use of facial recognition technology by our TSA.

The "dead internet theory" is moving from theory towards fact. More and more of what is on the Internet is generated by bots that query bots and respond to bots.

The Japanese open an observatory in the mountains of Chile at 18,500 feet. Yes, that is a record.

Real news that isn't news: NASA has more problems and more delays in its return-to-the-moon goal.

BOOM! A film festival for AI-generated films goes from 300 entries last year to 3,000 this year. Once again, the cost of making a movie has dropped opening film making to millions more creative people.

This article shows a firm grasp on reality. AI has brought new tools to computer programmers. Therefore, college teachers need to change what they teach and how they teach it.

Helmet cams for babies are being used to attempt to learn something about learning. The body-worn camera is nice, but greatly flawed. To be effective, these cameras need to follow eye movements, not body movements.

Meanwhile in China, workers are leaving their jobs at big companies.

And here come the AI-piloted military aircraft. Our Air Force promises 1,000 of them in four years. There is the potential of bringing outdated aircraft out of mothballs and sending them into combat in swarms to overwhelm opponents.

There is some utility in using one of these chattering bots to practice conversations ahead of time.

On the other hand, some teens are becoming "addicted" to conversations with the chattering bots. Perhaps folks need to learn what "addiction" means before using the word.