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: 27 May - 2 June, 2024

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• The Israel-Gaza conflict continues
• Bill Walton dies of cancer at 71
• Former President Trump convicted by a New York City court

Monday 27 May 2024

Today was a travel day with no Internet viewing.

I love this phrase: passionate persistence. Yes. Do that.

The fairy tale of the story teller and the trees who witnessed it all. Good stuff.

"Is your story big enough to tell?" It is big enough for someone else. There is a someone else out there who needs to here your story as your story relates to their story and they are no longer alone.

The writing retreat with just a few other persons is often the best.

How to "get in the mood to write." Some of us have the problem that if we don't write this thing right now we will not be in the mood to be a normal person.

Here are a few suggestions for writing services you can offer to make $10,000 a month (that's a lot) while keeping your current job. If you can make $120,000 a year part time, quit you current job.

Four things to help a writer "grow." I am not sure what it means to grow as a writer, but some folks feel the compulsion to do so.

Tuesday 28 May 2024

The silly saga continues with Google trying to find and fix answers like, "use glue to hold cheese to the pizza."

An in-depth piece on the new M4 processor from Apple.

In the new Copilot+ PCs, Microsoft will have an automatic Super Resolution for gaming.

Once again we approach "the hottest on record." Of course, we have only been keeping records for less than 0.00000001% of history, so all data is suspect at this point.

Microsoft will remove good old WordPad from the next update to Windows 11.

Here's a new one: using vans full of batteries as mobile charging stations.

Stretching the limits of statistical believability, 1 in 9 American kids have ADHD. Is there something wrong with the water in America? What are the numbers for the rest of the world? What is happening?

The Washington Post is going to teach us how to recognize political lies during this election year. Big boasts from a paper that lied its way to a Pulitzer by publishing fiction as news.

Much is being made about funds sets aside by the rulers of China to boost semiconductor manufacturing. Everything in China is funded by their Communist Party. There is nothing new or news here.

The Wall Street Journal gives a "practical test" comparison of LLMs. Note, however, that judging the answers is largely subjective.

Meanwhile on Wall Street, research shows that these chatterbots are pretty good at predicting stock prices, etc. No news here. Forty years ago I wrote a 100-line FORTRAN program that did the same using basic numerical methods.

All this AI needs new datacenters and power. This has brought a surge in the value of utilities and construction companies. The basic stuff of old industry is driving the new industry.

Wednesday 29 May 2024

Meanwhile on the beaches of New York City (I didn't know that such a place), drones will fly up and down the beaches and, if necessary, drop a flotation device to anyone in trouble in the water. What'll they think of next?

Here is the next generation of Chromebook Plus machines. More power and power and power. What's a Chrombook supposed to be, anyways?

This writer runs data analytics on the messages she and a boyfriend exchanged during the year of their relationship.

Fear and loathing at OpenAI. A "culture of lies" and such.

It appears that these AI chattering bots are flooind into media and entertainment industries.

Strong rumors that Apple will talk about its AI efforts called Project Greymatter and how they will bring convenience to just about everything. Washing the dishes and the laundry?

This story must be important as it is all over the Internet: Elon Musk raises $6Billion to improve AI products.

The promise and some reality of AI agents. This is software that automates tasks in clever and useful ways.

This is an odd result of a survey: about a third of people think a person checks the output of these chattering bots before users see them. No, it's the software.

PwC (big four accounting firm) is the largest customer of ChatGPT Enterprise.

YouTube releases videos games to everyone - free.

The Internet Archive is hit with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

Thursday 30 May 2024

There appears to have been a major "leak" of internal Google documents that reveal all the (former) secrets of their search algorithm.

Herds of lawyers are gathering to sue plastic companies over Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). These are the "forever chemicals."

Here is a better tool to help find people missing in "the back country." It is a mobile cellphone tower (old tech) that can find cellphones that are out in the woods beyond regular cellphone reach.

More kiss-and-tell from former OpenAI board members. Yes, they had plenty of good reason to remove Sam Altman. Then all the fans came out in support of Altman, and he was returned.

Arm releases its latest designs for CPU and GPU for smartphones.

Where the money is: FBI announces an $8Billion eight-year IT contract that spreads the money among 95 companies. Can it get any more complicated?

This is one of the more practical uses of AI: designing the layout of furniture in a restaurant.

And one use that is fraught with peril: AI can predict student success in school. School teachers and parents can as well, but hey, let's spend money on computers intead.

You know that new Windows Recall software that requires a super-duper NPU to run? Well, it appears that it can run on plain old hardware just fine. All this Copilot+ PC stuff is just marketing to sell new computers.

Think your job is tuff? Try running cybersecurity at a universtiry. The user base takes high risks all the time and won't tolerate much control of anything.

Opera integrtes Google's Gemini AI into its Aria browser.

MIT researchers show that as LLMs become larger, the different LLMs become much closer to one another. They are converging on vanilla ice cream. Vanilla ice cream is pretty good stuff.

A new study shows that despite the hype, people don't use generative AI everyday. They do use it, but now and then, probably in bunches. Do the job, use the tool, and move on to the next job and the next tool.

Western governments claim to have busted a big botnet ring that was ransoming websites worldwide.

Experiences of a group of experts who have built LLM applications in the past year.

If you can't fight in a trade war, change your name and incorporate in the other country. That is how Chinese companies are working around US trade barriers.

Mistral releases an AI model for programming.

Our Army awards a $480million contract with Palantir for computer vision work, i.e., identify friend or foe from imagery from anything that is above the earth from hand-size drones to satellites.

The "electroceutical" showed much promise. Stop putting chemicals into a person's body and instead apply electric shock in tiny amounts at just the right place. It is more difficult than first hoped.

Friday 31 May 2024

Starlink launched its first satellites five years ago. They have launched 6,500 to date. They own commercial space.

Our reaction to COVID-19 created a myopia epidemic among kids. Once again, the experts were wrong about how to react. They usually are. Read history.

I like this piece on software complexity (I wish I had written it). Enough humor mixed with harsh reality.

A Chinese company has a hybrid gas-EV car that can go 1,200 miles on a full tank of gas and a full electric charge. Price? $13,800. No, we won't see this car in the US. We are too regulated for such.

Stronger rumors about Apple and AI and protecting privacy while processing AI information in cloud datacenters.

This story must be important as it is all over the Internet. Google has a new smartwatch built just for kids (their parents).

Meanwhile in Denver, a big budget cut to the police department prompts said group to introduce drone to help watch the city.

Will the shrinkage stop? TSMC is on track to have 2nm chips in 2025.

Fear, uncertainty, and more fear as OpenAI continues to sign contracts with "news media" to train its LLMs. Now the chattering bots will read just like the newspapers for better or worse.

And we have more tools to allow more people to create their own assistants. This could be a good thing in the "right hands."

Perplexity launches a new app called Pages that makes it much easier to put the results of their AI-based search into reports.

When did free speech and advertising become "influence operations?"

More studies on "fake news." It seems that community organizers talk a lot. Seems we once elected a person president whose claim to fame was being a community organizer. I guess if you organize differently from me you are an "influence operator." We are an odd lot.

Let's try to remind one another of Orwell's essay on politics and the English language.

The story of how malware turned 600,000 routers into nothing but heaters.

I'll just quote this opening line, "OpenAI has announced ChatGPT Edu. This will be a specialized version of its AI platform designed specifically for universities."

And for historical note, Donald Trump was convicted by a New York City court for incorrectly reporting business expenses. This is a felony. No news on when the district attorney will spend an equal amount of resources investigating former President Bill Clinton and his wife on the business activities at their charitable foundation or former President Obama or ... of wait, this is a long list. We have not elected sterling persons to the office of President in several generations. I guess we now have proof of our folly.

Saturday 1 June 2024

Different companies are trying to make a pair of glasses with augmented reality. So far, no one has hit on this. It seems like it would be simple, but the technology needed to display information isn't here, yet.

Speculations on the future of AI. One good point in this piece is that most of us have been using AI-improved software for years. No one noticed and it wasn't a hot buzzword.

"... real competitive advantage comes from combining LLMs with private data." Absolutely right. I keep waiting for Apple or Google or OpenAI to allow me to do this on all the dosuments I have on my home system.

Something to tell your grandchildren: how TikTok videos led you to leave China and hike half of South and Central America to reach the US. It goes to show us all that there are wonderful aspects of the US that people seek.

In writing and in programming, DRY (don't repeat yourself) is a mainstay. This piece, however, provides another side of DRY, "Applying DRY principles too rigidly leads to premature abstractions that make future changes more complex than necessary."

Good thoughts on the idea of incorporating play at work. "Play helps children develop problem-solving skills, creativity, social skills, and a deeper understanding of the world around them."

I would love to try this computer. No display---just aumented reality glasses that provide several virtual monitors.

Dell's earnings reports show slow AI adoption.

In contrast, McKinsey report says AI adoption is big, big, and big.

Meanwhile in Taiwan, celebrity CEOs gather for Computex to talk about AI and other things celebrities talk about.

Venture capitalists come to Washington D.C. trying to convince lawmakers to ease up on AI regulations so that small and new companies have a chance. Good intentions, but good luck with this as the companies that have already "made it" are pushing more $$$ at lawmakers to entrench themselves at the top.

Facebook tries to bring back younger people to its site. They are showing more things that are not part of friends and such. Oh well, I don't like it, but it's a free service.

Google attempts to adjust its AI overviews to avoid silly answers given to silly questions. It is almost impossible to predict the folly of others.

Someone has convinced Gen Z that the good times are over and their lives will be bleak. Who did that? Who decided that? What are they teaching in the publicly funded schools?

The war in Ukraine is a meat grinder with estimates of 1,200 Russian deaths per day for the last month.

Sunday 2 June 2024

Let's turn a one-in-a-million story into what people should expect: TikTok marketing turns a self-published book into a million seller. Does this newspaper have editors?

The Trump campaign joins the Biden campaign on TikTok. Both Presidents worked to ban TikTok. Hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Once again, NASA's Starliner rocket to send people into space fails to launch.

Government regulators decide to use taxpayers' money to clobber private industry.

THIS IS A SIGNIFICANT STORY: algorithms in software determine where a company's ads appear online. Hence, Geico is the #1 advertiser on a Russian propaganda news site. Huh? People create the algorithms and write the software. Someone goofed. A lot of folks goofed. We are wallowing in the mire.

Let's all drive electric vehicles! Let's all go to work in copper mines.

Meanwhile in London, police are using facial recognition tech everywhere. They don't have a Bill of Rights there. Choose.

China lands an unmanned vehicle on the moon. The next flag to fly on the moon will herald the greatness of the Communist Party of China. Way to go, NASA.

Here is the second part of O'Reilly's story on building systems with LLMs.

Research shows that long before dementia becomes apparent that people fall behind on paying their bills. The money is there, the mind forgets to pay the bills.