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: 3-9 June, 2024

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• The Israel-Gaza conflict continues
• Nvidia passes Apple in market value
• Our Dept of Justice investigates Nvidia for antitrust violations
• We observe the 80th anniversary of D-Day
• More, more, and more "AI" systems

Monday 3 June 2024

The experts predicted that India's recent election was to be full of deepfake videos. The experts were wrong again.

And the experts, despite what is right in front of them, predict "minsinformation" during America's election. The experts will write the follow-up pieces proclaiming they were right.

When on the Internet, act like an adult, not a six-year-old (apologies to six-year-olds).

Rupert Murdoch, 93, married Elena Zhukova, 67, on Saturday at his California vineyard. Well, why wait?

News from Computex in Taiwan is already coming.

Nvidia, Asus, and AMD are bringing out CoPilot Plus PCs without Qualcomm processors. These are gaming machines that meet all the specs.

This seems to be a big deal: the College Board has approved Minecraft-based computer science courses for high school students.

Silliness from the Washington Post about America's power lines and fighting climate change. Spend more money!

This story must be important (really important) as it is all over the Internet: a Japanese billionaire had reserved a SpaceX trip around the moon, but cancels because of too many delays.

It seems that there wasn't any science to back up the "stay six feet apart" rule during the pandemic. It also turns out that Dr. Fauci doesn't know the basic language of science as he doesn't know the meaning of "empiric."

AMD announces new processors fort he Copilot+ PCs.

And AMD has new processors for desktop PCs, no doubt the Copilot+ kind.

And one more AMD announcement from Computex, their newest 3nm technology processors will be in datacenters the second half of 2024.

I like this technique for outlining (my word) a novel using a single piece of paper that you fold up into eight sections.

Thoughts on writing a novella, i.e., something between a short story and a novel.

Ray Bradbury once said, "Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row." I agree. This blog post has 52 short story ideas.

Don't sit and "mope." Instead, "go back to the world, which is where all characters originally come from." Great thought.

This post is about the mythical writer's block. I like this quote buried in here, "Writing well is difficult, but one can always write something." Yes, one can always write something.

Redundant phrases that are repetitive.

Great practical tips: How to put the customer first in your sentences.

Tuesday 4 June 2024

Sony Pictures plans to use AI for, what else, cut costs. That's business.

Zoom is attempting to move from those ZoomerTeams meetings to a complete AI platform that helps workers accomplish work. We shall see.

The angst about Scarlett Johansson's voice and OpenAI continues. Now researchers analyze recordings to no end to show 98%, which is not of course, 100%.

If you are to have a goal, it might as well be big: Arm wants have of the PC market. Instead of Wintel, will it be something like Winarm or Armwin or something?

Nvidia is making all sorts of announcements regarding AI and PCs and helping folks do their jobs. It is difficult to follow the buzzwords about the buzzwords.

Looking forward to the past and "agent systems." Ah, finally something useful coming out of pattern analysis and machine learning research.

And now there is Nvidia NIM: a tool that makes making tools so much easier.

Intel shows new processors for PCs. Intel is making leaps each year instead of small steps in an attempt to regain its position as the supplier of processors for the world.

And Intel shows its new datacenter AI processors. Everything is an AI processor now.

I guess this was inevitable: Raspberry Pi adds an AI processor for $70. At least its not "very expensive," but still is pushing what would be an inexpensive processor for learning.

Claims that China's Internet is disappearing. The number of websites is down, but stored for history somewhere. Will we miss the Communist Party of China on the Internet?

I'll quote the headline, "Microsoft is laying off hundreds in its Azure cloud business"

Qualcomm's CEO claims that their processors will be on all types of PCs, not just laptops.

This piece shows some promise with implanting electronics in the brain. Cut the nonsense about AI, this is something that returns mobility and communication to those whose bodies have failed.

Wednesday 5 June 2024

I love this post as it is similar to something I once did. I used the serial port on a CP/M machine to extract files. I then wrote a program to flip one bit of every byte to make the files readable.

We may have a viable alternative to total knee replacement. There are 800,000 replacements in America each year.

Let's use robotics to add an extra finger to a hand. Clever stunt, but the real value will be using something like this for people who have lost fingers.

Put on this headband and fall asleep. It is neurotechnology and not a drug. Still, do you want electromagnetic or sound pulses shot into your brain from a device you by at Walgreen's?

Microsoft lays off hundreds of persons from its Azure area.

Someone set a goal of tripling the world's renewable energy output by 2030. We won't make it.

If it still existed, Napster would be 25 years old this week. File sharing of music, what a day that was.

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft own the datacenter world. So? Datacenters are the essential infrastructure on which pretty much every other company in the world must run. Yes, these three companies own all the businesses in the world.

This story has been all over the Internet for several days as OpenAI's current and former employees warn about reckless pushing of AI-based technologies and the harm to the world etc.

And here is more on the story that includes researchers from other companies as well.

This is big business: Tesla will spend, oh, roughly $3Billion or $4Billion (with a B) on Nvidia processors this year. Super rich buying from other super rich.

More BIG business: the billionaire investors have different views on AI on whether to push it fast or pump the brakes a bit.

Cisco announces more AI-related services and yet another billion-dollar AI investment fund.

Meanwhile in Russia, the subjects love YouTube---the only US product or service still there. Mr. Putin doesn't like YouTube, but isn't stupid.

If you haven't played with ChatGPT since it was new, you may be surprised at some of its improvements.

Thursday 6 June 2024

I like this piece on personal productivity.

Here is an online book that discusses the next ten years in artificial intelligence research.

StackOverflow introduces a new service to help refine questions before posting them for everyone.

Elon Musk owns a bunch of companies that buy mountains of processors from Nvidia. Musk ships the processors among his companies when needed.

Hyperbole? We shall find out. Microsoft CTO says current AI can pass high school AP exams. Next generation will pass PhD qualifying exams.

Ashton Kutcher has seen OpenAI's next text-to-video system and thinks it will affect jobs or the lack of jobs in Hollywood.

Someone is running a beauty paeaant where all the entrants are AI-generated images of women. Huh? Well, why not?

American law enforcement groups (Fed, state, local) are using drones to respond to reports. Along the flight path, these drones monitor everything. Is that searching without a warrant? Privacy?

The Hubble Space Telescope continues to limp along. I am old enough to remember its first fiasco and how software changes allowed it to limp along right after it was launched.

It appears that MS Recall doesn't keep all its data locally. A hacker finds in-the-cloud storage of private data.

Rumors that Apple is (no longer) secretly developing robotic devices.

One more reminder that there is no free lunch: it appears that NBC is about to spend big $$$ to show NBA games. That money comes out of the pockets of regular TV shows. So fewer shows from NBC.

Nvidia has succeeded---too well. I guess our government now will do what our government does when an American company succeeds and makes America the center for technology worldwide---investigate and punish.

Nvidia passes Apple in market value and is now second only to Microsoft. All three hover around $3Trillion (with a Tr)<./a>

When the market is down, diversify. Crypto miners, their market is down but they own valuable GPUs, are renting their data centers and GPUs to AI companies.

Friday 7 June 2024

This Github repository promises LLMs without matrix multiplication. That means much faster on much less hardware.

Medical research claim a major breakthrough with bowel disease and related illnesses. This is supposed to change everything with many common illnesses.

This op ed claims that closed-source foundation models will wipe out open-source counterparts.

Meanwhile in China, they have a plan to dominate the world of electric vehicles. This would basically make large parts of China uninhabitable due to the carnage it will bring to their land.

Researchers in Australia claim a major breakthrough in the technology behind night vision lenses. They claim that a thin film across everyday eyeglasses brings night vision. This would be outstanding for those who cannot drive etc. after dark.

A case for not worrying about technical debt. Just let it be and move on.

SpaceX's latest test of the Starship keeps it on pace to do big things, like go to Mars(?).

The story behind 28,000 forensic foot soldiers at Bellingcat .

Meanwhile in Memphis, here comes the Gigafactory of Compute from xAI. Plenty of tax breaks are involved, but Memphis will lay claim to the biggest super duper computer in the world (for at least five minutes).

Meanwhile in China, they run Microsoft Windows everywhere all the time everyone. This gripes the Communist Party, and the Party seems helpless.

600,000 "artists" leave Instagram in one week over news that their content on that platform would be used to train AI systems.

I am intrigued by this story: Eric Schmidt created a company called White Stork to build AI-enabled drones for military use. He hired a dozen employees from Apple, SpaceX, Google, federal government agencies and the billionaire's own philanthropic organization, Schmidt Futures---top talent. They are testing in Ukraine.

Making surgery safer and better by recording everything in the operating room and using machine learning to sort through all the information.

About ten year behind schedule, the Boeing Starliner (note how NASA removed its name from this taxpayer-funded system) docked with the space station.

Saturday 8 June 2024

It appears that the climate change warriors are fighting over planting trees with some claiming it is a bad idea. Hmm, I wonder...

Rumors about the AI things Apple will show next week at WWDC.

Where our President has spread the CHIPS Act $$$. Aside from Texas, states that vote with the President's party get the $$$. I am curious if Austin, a Democratic city in a Republican state, is getting the Texas $$$.

Upon further review, Microsoft is turning off its Recall feature as a default. Users will have to choose to have MS record their every move.

Speaking of climate change, we continue to break records for the hottest months ever recorded. Gosh, if we weren't so superior to past generations, we would have all done something terrible by now. Only we could withstand such a thing. Aren't we a grand lot?

Meanwhile in California, legislators are propose an AI regulation bill that tech companies hate. The tech companies say they will move their AI divisions out of California to continue their work.

All those computers churning out "AI" burn electric power. Estimates are that total consumption will more than double by 2030 (only 4.5 years away).

It appears that I am not the only person left on earth who writes checks to withdraw money from my checking account. If there are no checks, is it still a checking account? Anyways, long live the check and checkbook and balancing such.

Researchers in Singapore create a battery that is only 0.2mm thick. It can fit inside a contact lens and be recharged by tears. Big application in medicine.

A new study shows that software projects using Agile methods are far more likely to fail. Of course this all hinges on what we label as requirements and specifications and how agile the agile practice is. Lots of subjectivity here. One finding that is a "no duh:" if you know where you are going, you are more likely to get there. Also, if you don't care where you are going, wherever you arrive is a success.

This piece encourages keeping a journal if you are a programmer. I encourage just about everyone doing just about anything to keep a journal.

Google and Microsoft's AI systems don't know who has been elected President of the United States this century. Oh, they forgot, like the current President forgot. We are all in a mess and we all need to work our way out of it. Short-term pain for long-term gain.

Some of the folks at Forbes tries some of these chattering bots and found them quoting their copyrighted articles word for word. Flattery or plagiarism?

Meanwhile in New York state, the legislators assume the role of expert technologists and psychologists. Great job if you can get it.

The New York Times tells us all about the fear and loathing inside the Washington Post.

Stronger rumors about what Apple will show next week at WWDC. Very detailed descriptions of how Apple will improve just about every app they have with some sort of "AI." Search and summarize. That would be helpful. The rest is sort of gimmicks.

Of course ne'er-do-wells use the same products that nice folks use. Real news, but not news.

Sunday 9 June 2024

Canonical releases a version of its Ubuntu Linux for edge devices. They call it Core 24.

In a world where everyone wants all types of GPUs for AI (and a few for gaming), Nvidia has 88% of the market. They have succeeded too much.

A landmark 2006 research paper on Alzheimer's has been retracted. It contained doctored images. Phony research. It is more prevalent than admitted.

Adoption of windmills in America is slowing and struggling.

Meanwhile in America, we are printing 20% fewer pages than before the PAN(dem)IC. Explanations are rampant as they are unreliable.

Ooops, poor cyber security at the New York Times exposes lots of data.

Twitter or X is dead: not so inside the Beltway of Washington D.C. where the adolescents masquerading as adults can't stop gossiping about politics.

Here is a way to make a little money that never occurred to me: rent your backyard as a private dog park, $10 an hour.

What programming languages do you use? Here is yet another recent survey that shows Rust is growing and growing in popularity.