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: 8-14 July, 2024

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• The Israel-Gaza conflict continues
• Despite rumblings in his own party, Mr. Biden remains in the campaign for re-election
• AT&T was hacked and someone grabbed copies of everyone's phone records
• A failed attempt to assassinate Donald Trump

Monday 8 July 2024

Jeff Bezos moved from Washington to Florida and saved $1Billion (with a B) in state capital gains taxes. Provide a choice, people will choose. Are you happy Washingtonians?

Someone is running Linux on Google Drive. There are worse things to do with your time.

More angst at Boeing. The company turned itself into a finance company that forgot how to build airplanes. If you want to do more things, do so, but don't forget what you used to do. Especially if people can die when you stop paying attention.

I guess this is significant: the head of Russia's space agency proclaims that America did indeed land people on the moon in 1969 and several times afterwards and return them safely to earth.

The Roman Catholic church will canonize a teen who died at 15 after breaking ground in using the Internet to spread the faith.

A look at the low price and high value products from CMF.

Real news that isn't news: some people do their giving while they're living so they are knowing where it is going.

Our current President now becomes "spray tan Joe." Candidates try to be someone they aren't so they can gain votes from people who are fooled by chicanery.

Oops. It seems that the batteries in electric vehicles are proven to be really really bad pollutants. As if we didn't know this already.

Thoughts on timeless fiction. Read the Bible for non-fiction that illustrates these ideas.

In publishing, the 21st century bears little resemblance to the 20th. One of the new plagues is scams committed against writers.

Some historical notes on writing, earning money, printing, copyrights, etc. The system we have today is relatively in infancy.

Write fast or writer well? The more you write, the faster you will write well or something like that.

Are you writing a story that has never been written before? Yes. Is it similar to others? Yes. That's the way it goes.

Tuesday 9 July 2024

Thoughts on why we haven't cured cancer yet.

Google's DeepMind researchers claim a far-more-efficient technique for training AI models.

Thoughts on "one pizza" sized teams in software development. They are trying to beat the law of adding late people to a project makes it later. How do you add more people, which should add more product, without slowing everyone?

This may prove to be one of those things that changes everything. These are batteries based on sodium, not lithium. Sodium is common and doesn't pollute. It may work.

Here is a description of the Aurora super-duper computer with 10,624 compute nodes.

Chinese car companies are testing their self-driving cars in America. They have run a few million miles on our roads collecting day every mile. This is invaluable military information that we are giving the Communist Party of China.

Microsoft's Notepad, a simple text editor, now has spellchecker and autocorrect. It was 41 years in the making. Well, no one fussed much.

Microsoft is pushing this Copilot+ AI PC idea. So far, very few people are buying. The potential productivity increase is great. But, some time after now never seems to arrive.

The hurricane-proof house: it's quite possible and quite simple.

From Seth Godin today, "Adding value isn't easy...We need to look for the hard parts, not avoid them."

This Goldman Sachs research report argues that AI isn't a good value. It is expensive and the return is not worth it.

And now we have the largest password leak in history with 10Billion (with a B) passwords given in a single text file.

HP tried to sell printers that were always connected to the Internet. People didn't buy them. Experiment concluded.

Thoughts on tools that help computer programmers. But many of the tools help us forget details. It is the age-old debate.

Wednesday 10 July 2024

I note that our current President remains committed to a second term. The Washington Post, among others, is his biggest cheerleader. All the headlines about Democrats abandoning him and saying he is not physically able are setups. The team was down five runs in the bottom of the ninth, but they are gritty and try really hard and beat insurmountable odds with determination. Oh, the headlines coming in November!

How regulators in Europe are doing nothing on the Internet but ruining everything for everyone.

I remember how virtual reality and the metaverse were going to take over the world. I also remember 3D TV and Betamax. Some things just don't happen as predicted.

Thoughts on robotics and how we haven't seen the advances as we have in other areas.

Stubborn: are you obstinate or determined. There is a good and a bad type of stubbornness.

Outdoor data centers in rural areas, noise, and poor health. They all seem to go together.

Researchers have found a way to pump data through existing fiber optic cables at four times the speed.

The Europeans don't want to be tied to SpaceX. Their hopes rest on a new Ariane 6 rocket about to have its first test launch.

These chattering bots AI things are cool, but plain old Google search grows with ChatGPT shrinks. So says the marketplace.

Amazon claims that it uses 100% green energy. Others dispute the claim.

Sticking with energy, Google stops buying carbon offsets and claims that it is still working towards a 2030 goal.

If you rent someone else's home, don't be surprised if they have hidden cameras. Airbnb is trying for privacy, but just hasn't reached it.

Here is a look at algorithmic trading. The computers, running software that people wrote, make all the trades. The people who wrote the software make mistakes. Yikes! Multiply a mistake a million times a second.

I love this piece. Instead of "AI" say "mathy math." That is actually more accurate.

Thursday 11 July 2024

This story sort of makes a heroine out of a lady who never saved for a rainy day. I guess we are all supposed to admire folks who look to everyone else to take care of them. Huh? Perhaps this is all too complicated for me.

And now we have "coffee badging." Show up at the office and stay just long enough to meet a requirement. Then go home as soon as you can.

A rich person just paid for medical school for a generation. That's the way to do it. Don't lobby Congress, pay for what you think is good.

Version 128 of Firefox is released.

And now we have "moral ambition." It is shifting your ambition away from money and toward finding solutions for the world's most pressing problems.

Given all our tech, it is easy to try something new. ChatGPT is a great example. Most who tried it a few times never touched it again.

How to hack into an airliner's WiFi system and use it at no cost.

Robotaxis actually work in some cities. Will the regulators let them in?

Censorship is alive and well in China as OpenAI censors itself from Chinese subjects.

Apple and Google work together to make it easier to move photos from one place to the other.

I'll quote this headline, I find this good news, "France's Bioptimus Releases AI Model for Disease Diagnosis"

SpaceX avails its StarLink MiniDish to everyone in the US. We no longer need a residential subscription first. It isn't cheap. $599 to buy in and $150 per month.

Meanwhile in China, for better or worse, they are adopting these chattering bots more than the rest of the world.

The NBA, whose product isn't that good these days, expands its television coverage to other networks. The big one is Amazon Prime which allows worldwide viewing.

Friday 12 July 2024

It seems that our current President held a press conference last night that was keenly watched by people who keenly watch such things. The debate was about how much mental decline the President has. Are we kidding? The candidate for President of a major party is doubted as to whether is brain works. The other major party has to answer questions about if their candidate will kill democracy as we know it. Really? This is the choice in front of America. Really? How did we arrive at this point?

People wonder why people wonder about the truth in this or that source of information. Wikipedia is not immune to biased manipulation.

Here comes the iPhone 16 with Apple Intelligence. Apple expects to sell millions of them.

I guess some humans have been trying to build a "truth machine" for hundreds of years. The machine would have all the answers. The Holy Bible does a good job of that, but various groups of people have acted in ways that discredit it.

"Big tech jobs are not what they were." Well, what were they? Oh, work five years and retire on the huge stock option. Fairy tales.

I'll quote the headline, "How to Interview and Hire ML/AI Engineers" This has some pretty good ideas, but fails the basic tests. Simple talk about what you are doing. Does the person have some job skills? Does the person have a work ethic?

NeuraLink had some success with its first brain implant volunteer. The next volunteers are ready.

Samsung launches its first wearable computer in the form of a ring on your finger.

Meanwhile in India, we have real news that isn't news as regulators seek to extract money from a successful American company. I wonder if it were to be better that successful American companies simply provide governments with a billion $$$ entry fee.

Meanwhile in Europe, regulators are seeking to extract a pile of money from X (Twitter).

Arm attempts to move into graphics upscaling technology. The before and after image shown in this article looks pretty bland.

Where the money is: hackers are paid $25million ransom by CDK.

Google's DeepMind claims advances in reasoning by robots due to the use of other AI tools.

Saturday 13 July 2024

Researchers uncover yet another way that researchers are committing fraud in reporting their research. And some people wonder why some people wonder are "science" and calls to "follow the science."

Talk of our Dept of Defense using new tech from new companies is just talk.

The end of another era as Redbox shuts its doors.

TSMC is now worth a trillion $$$ (with a tr).

Amazon recently claimed 100% of its power from green energy. Employees, uh, er, says its more like 22%. A small rounding error.

The cat is now out of the bag. A youngster builds a model rocket that can land vertically like SpaceX. Anyone can do it. See the YouTube video linked in the article.

"Early to bed and early to rise..." perhaps Ben Franklin was wrong as a study shows night owls to be sharper mentally during the day.

Why don't people follow my advice and solve their problems? Plenty of reasons.

Apple cannot sell any Vision Pro headsets. The VR AR headsets are dead. Just like the 3D TV.

How long do you have to work here to be fully vested? Companies are chanfing policies.

Elon Musk predicts a million people living on Mars in 20 years. Sigh. Really? Is he serious or is this just marketing to get investors?

The Saudis are hosting the eSports World Cup this year. The Saudis now have a deal with the International Olympic Committee to host the eSports Olympics next year. Not sure how much money the Saudis put in the pockets of committee members.

Meanwhile in China, they are buying up older machinery to make semiconductors. This is yet another way around tech embargoes.

Research shows that AI helps the less-creative among us while having no value for the more-creative of us. Perhaps AI can define these terms.

A New Mexico judges dismisses the case against Alec Baldwin as the prosecutors bumble and fumble evidence. The entire shooting was tragic and stupid. Gun owners would not do such stupid things with firearms and ammunition.

Big news rolling out slowly this week is that someone hacked into AT&T and grabbed a copy of everyone's phone records.

Sunday 14 July 2024

There was an attempted assassination of Donald Trump. The bullet literally nicked his ear. This is not unusual when the other side says a person will have Seal Team 6 kill political opponents and end democracy and so on and on.

Many "conspiracy theories" emerge about the attempted Trump assassination. If the theory disagrees with my thoughts, it is a conspiracy theory. If it agrees with my thought, it is insightful.

Various people are calling for firings at the Secret Service for incompetence. The reaction to the shooting was immediate as the assassin was dead in seconds. If they could locate and kill the assassin that quickly, how did they know where he was? Okay, wild speculation. Mr. Trump needs to go on TV today and say, "Don't anyone shoot back." Crazy events in crazy times.

Somebody is finally catching up with reality, a few years late. Anyways, big tech took the supervised learning approach to pattern analysis, i.e., spend a gazillion $$$ and see what happens. Universities, and governments, cannot do that. University researchers attempt to stay relevant via smart mathematics with much less computing power and $$$. Government? Just forget about that.

And now we have an emulator to run on the iPhone. We can run Windows and Linux software (sort of).

It's 2024, and here we are. No meta-world whatever. We still look funny looking down at our screen and not at the camera in our ZoomerTeams meetings. What (didn't) happened?

Therapist Ruth Westheimer, Dr. Ruth, dies at 96.

After seven years of successes, SpaceX has a Falcon 9 rocket fail.

Angst as NSA finds a 1982 Grace Hopper talk, but won't look for a machine that can play the old tapes. Someone should be fired.