Here are a couple of pieces on how some of the newer methods and tools are not all that great despite the hype. Sometimes, people say things are great because of peer pressure. Simple.

Agile methods seemed to have killed engineering. I have encountered many under-30 engineers who don't know any fundamentals. This is an over reaction by those who publish the books and magazines and hold conferences. If you could question those folks, I am sure they would saying something like, "I said you reduce time spent on engineering but not eliminate engineering."

And then there is Kubernetes and all those containers. Yes, they work, but is anything as good as this is hyped?

For the first time, it appears that solid-state batteries are almost practical.

It appears the cure of HIV is almost almost here. This is a cure, not just a treatment.

Employers think that AI will greatly boost the output of employees. Employees react with, "Huh? What?"

Higher prices mean fewer sales. No duh. McDonald's admits this. Now if our current President would also admit this...

Our current President doesn't like recent Supreme Court rulings that reduce the power of the Executive Branch of the Federal government. News flash (not): Our current President is the head of the Executive Branch of the Federal government. His opinion on the matter is a clear case of conflict of interest. Note: our current President is not the first to dislike court rulings that reduce the power of the Executive Branch of the Federal government.

Got $4,500 and can wait 18 months? Buy these "pants" that have an exoskeleton built in and walk up and down hills easier.

Meta updates its Segment Anything model to work in real time on video. In my opinion, this is far more important and useful than those models that ultimately waste our time in customer service calls.

Here is an example of bad use of AI: Instagram users can create a chattering bot to chat with followers. How about chatting person to person instead of software to person?

Qualcomm releases a new entry-level Snapdragon processors for mobile devices that will cost less than $100.

Apple releases a beta-test version of Apple Intelligence to registered developers.

Our National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) endorses open-source AI models. Oh, and also recommends Congress give them more money to watch these things for the rest of us as the rest of us just aren't adult enough.

LinkedIn et al are figuring out how to let users sell ads for their pages as long as LinkedIn receives a cut of the ad revenue. In the long term, this will be bad.

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Wednesday 31 July 2024

I guess this is an old term that is new to me: code monkeys. Programmers who don't think much. The experts predict AI will replace these folks. I doubt it. Middle managers derive great satisfaction from knowing that they supervise larger numbers of people. There is little satisfaction in supervising software that writes software. Of course that dysfunction is neither productive nor profitable, but there are plenty of organizations interested in neither.

Microsoft reports a big financial quarter.

Samsung reports a big financial quarter.

Things aren't so good at Intel as they plan to cut thousands of jobs.

Everyone was singing the praises of Meta's AI models, until it said that there was no Trump assassination attempt. oops.

Wear this $99 gadget around your neck and you will always have someone to talk to.

Pinterest has a big financial quarter.

The value of Nvidia stock continues to fall. Investors are now leery of all this AI hype.

Meta pays a $1.4Billion (with a B) legal settlement regarding facial recognition without permission in Texas.

This is a bit odd, but Apple tells us that they trained their AI models on processor from Google, not Nvidia.

Apple moves more of its iPhone manufacturing to India.

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Thursday 1 August 2024

Describing the source code of a program. Alas, it is not the number of words, but the quality. No duh.

A piece saying that the last 20 years of marketing were nice, but gone. It's a new world, again.

How one person runs a Software-as-a-Service company of one person. It makes a decent living at only a few hours a day.

SpaceX moves its re-entry vehicles back to the Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic.

YouTube seems to have the upper hand over ad blockers, for now.

It appears that Amazon has exceeded the limits of services it offers in AWS. The menu is just too big, confusing, and no longer profitable.

A report from San Francisco shows that Waymo's driverless cars are all over town taking everyone (not quite) everywhere.

I tend to agree with almost everything this guy says: make software simple again. Just because we have the technology to deliver updates hourly doesn't make that a good thing.

Synchron is a new company with a brain implant. Their first system allows a person to control an Apple Vision Pro with only their thoughts.

OpenAI has finally released its speech mode that sounds that really famous actress but isn't really her voice.

Meanwhile in the UK, do you let in Chinese students to boost your brain power in AI? Or does that invite ne'er-dow-wells from the Communist Party of China?

See, for example, the big trouble the Germans had with Chinese hacking. The fears are warranted.

Get ready to see Sony headphones on the sidelines of NFL games. Gone is Motorola.

Meta has a big financial quarter.

Arm has a big financial quarter, but not as big as predicted. As usual, the stock price falls and the badly performing predictors have no penalty.

Google updates its Gemma 2 family of language models. These smaller language models outperform larger language models. (SerLM and LerLM?)

Meanwhile in India, regulators are using new interpretations of laws to go for a money garb against its successful IT services companies. They want $3.9Billion (with a B) from Infosys.

Meanwhile here in America, we have an H-1B visa system to bring in talented immigrants to work here. Our Dept of Homeland Security and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services are botching this program and allowing middlemen to cheat by fooling our bureaucrats and making all the money.

Taco Bell is using these chattering bots to take our orders at the drive-thru. Gosh. Well, maybe this will work.

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Friday 2 August 2024

This article is bad news. Bad news for all of us. We can surely do better than this.

McDonald's has a new $5 meal. They are trying to reduce prices after a couple years of Bidenomics and inflation. Get ready for the Harris administration and price increases.

Meanwhile at the Olympics, groups of people really don't like France and really don't like the Olympics as cyber and physical attacks continue.

Meanwhile in scientific research and publishing results, we have a big mess.

Amazon Web Services has lost its way. Many developer tools are being turned off without notice.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, those who ran a one-year Guaranteed Basic Income study claim the program was an outstanding success. No independent assessments available.

Meta has a place called the Reality Labs. Those labs lost $4.5Billion (with a B) in only 13 weeks. I think that is $350million a week or $50million a day. How do you do that?

I really like this article with its ten big trends.

T-Mobile is buying fiber optic networks and moving into that marketplace.

AMD is moving into the AI processor marketplace.

Survey says: 80% of programmers dislike their jobs. I attribute this to unrealistic expectations taught in colleges.

TikTok wants AI and is paying OpenAI, through Microsoft, $20million a month.

Death Valley had a month hotter than any place on earth in the history of the earth. Well, at least in the 0.000001% of the time we've recorded temperatures.

The NFL wins its appeals in a $4.7Billion court ruling.

Nintendo reports a very bad financial quarter.

There was a big prisoner exchange involving the US, Russia, and several other countries. When the Russians want criminals freed by the US, the Russias arrest tourists and convict them of espionage. The US plays along with the silly game.

Keep a copy of your work. Don't depend on others to do so.

The size of these language models and the money needed to build them has gone past ridiculous.

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Saturday 3 August 2024

The Biden-Harris appointment and the Trump assassination attempt are behind us. Now we are stuck in this whatever you want to call it.

More details on the Intel layoffs. They are trying to cut $10Billion (with a B) in expenses. Non-essential work stops now. And why didn't non-essential work stop sooner?

Delta Airlines, and its customers, had a terrible time with Microsoft. Perhaps the should switch to Apple or Linux.

Linux is growing in its desktop use. It is only at about 4%, but growing.

Apple continues to roll on with $21.4Billion (with a B) profits in 13 weeks. That is about $200million a day profit.

Those two poor astronauts are still stuck at the space station due to problems with the NASA-Boeing Starliner.

We have more evidence that processed and ultra-processed foods are linked to dementia. I have a big family history of people with dementia. Some of them ate processed foods a lot, while others never did.

I think this is BIG NEWS: a "robotic" dentist actually works. The big benefit to the patient is the speed of the procedure.

Laid-off tech workers hate looking for jobs on LinkedIn, but have to do it. I agree. It is the place to find a job. It is also a horrible experience.

Very difficult times continue at Intel. Now is the time to buy its stock. Like Boeing, Intel drifted away from its technical heritage. It is time to drift back.

Our Dept of Justice is suing TikTok over child privacy violations. Perhaps something will come of this.

The cost of reverse engineering integrated circuits just fell from tens of thousands of dollars to $500. Oh what fun we will have now.

oops, personal data of 4.6million voters in Illinois was just leaked.

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Sunday 4 August 2024

It's official: OpenAI is a wholly owned competitor of Microsoft.

We have found yet another protein in the brains of persons who don't develop dementia. No clue yet how to boost this protein.

A Japanese company becomes the first to photograph some space junk orbiting the earth.

More folly in the training of these super-large language models.

ASCII remains king. An oft-used ASCII file is the Comma Separated Variable CSV file.

Big tech is spending big billion$$$ on infrastructure, concerte and steel and copper power lines and hardware.

Another era ends as Game Informer (owned by Game Stop), one of the last remaining gaming magazines, is shutting down after 33 years.

Big name colleges are now actively recruiting high school students from rural areas. GREAT! I graduated Loranger High School where we still have a flashing yellow light on the highway. 75 wonderful people in my graduating class.

The HoverAir X1 is a smaller and simpler "selfie" drone. Looks good.

That NASA-Boeing Starliner capsule may become a permanent part of the space station. SpaceX is working on a plan to bring the two astronauts home.

Real soon now is 3 September: Intel's next-generation Core Ultra laptop chips are coming then.

Once again a Federal court rules to lessen the power of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. In this case, it is the FCC. This is judges reading the US Constitution. As usual, proponents of the Executive Branch label this as rogue judges or something nefarious.

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