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: 12-18 August, 2024

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Israel-Gaza conflict continues, and spreads
• Google holds an event and shows new phones
• Dept of Justice ponders how it can run Google better than Google can run Google

Monday 12 August 2024

A little late and not necessary: state laws curbing cellphone use at schools. This is a local situation, not a state situation.

LinkedIn is becoming just another Facebook. That is too bad.

We're from the United Nations and we're here to help. The UN is passing a cybercrime resolution that has good intentions, but the results may be not so good.

Blockading China's tech industry has led to internally developing its own industry. This was predictable and predicted.

More good advice from Seth Godin: If it doesn't ship, it doesn't count. The work is to establish a standard and then meet it. To ship it when it's good enough (which we get to define in advance). Don't ship junk, but ship.

People are using AI software as companions and counselors. Well, there are worse things a person can do with software.

Meanwhile in California, government is so big that the right-hand department is working against the left-hand department. As regulations seek to kill AI work in the state, the governor is working with Nvidia to train everyone on AI.

After several years of neglect, Mozilla tries to bring back Firefox.

Tuesday 13 August 2024

For writers: time management and setting goals. If you want to earn a living as a writer, either (1) be extremely lucky or (2) learn how to run a business.

Advice for writing a story: the title doesn't make any sense, but the advice does.

Google's rivals are telling our Dept of Justice how to punish Google after the monopoly trial.

A look at DSPy and how to use LLMs in a clever manner.

Nvidia et al need new ways to cool their data centers. Liquid cooling itself has many options.

Folks are using AI to look up facts. Folks aren't using Wikipedia as much. What do we have in the long run?

Reddit is red hot: between August 2023 and April 2024, its number of users tripled.

A funny thing happened on the way to manufacturing integrated circuits in the US: there is no one to hire.

Meanwhile, those looking for jobs are using AI to write their resumes.

Meanwhile at the EV charging stations across America, the availability and use of such has been grossly over estimated by faulty systems. The systems are so broken that they have been reporting that they are fine.

AMD is slowly increasing its market share for processors in data centers and laptop computers. Intel, however, still dominates the market.

Meanwhile at college, "Federal COVID relief funds have dried up, operational costs are rising, and fewer high school graduates are pursuing college degrees."

We keep hearing reports of water on Mars. Wake me when we are making coffee with Martian water.

It seems that corporate America is becoming serious about not letting folks use their old college email address to get discounts. And then there is using other folks' Hulu et al accounts. Gone as well.

Wednesday 14 August 2024

I am thankful to see that someone cancelled this stupid idea of cooling the earth by putting shiny particles to block the sun.

Harris is leading in the polls; Americans fear a recession. Coincidence?

There is hope for a cure for arthritis.

Also on the future medical front, a possible way to regenerate knee cartilage. Would this end the knee replacements?

SpaceX announces a manned polar orbit mission. This would be a first.

In politics, candidate Kamala Harris is following the Biden lead: don't talk to anyone (interview). Keep your mouth shut except for statements written, analyzed, revised, analyzed, etc.

Government employees at our Dept of Justice, who have never run a business of any type any where, feel empowered to tell Google how to run its business.

Let the games begin: Using one photo and free software, someone can impersonate your appearance in a video chat.

A federal appeals court has ruled that geofence warrants are unconstitutional. Background: Geofence warrants, also known as reverse search warrants, allow police to draw a shape on a map, such as over a crime scene, and demand that Google (or any other company that collects user locations) search its entire banks of location data for any phone or device that was in that area at a specific point in time.

This is bad for national security as a Chinese company is granted permission to test self-driving taxis around Silicon Valley. These things will gather detailed maps of everything including where people live.

Market research shows that 14% of personally used computers in the last quarter are "AI capable." Lots of subjective terms in that sentence.

Google held an event yesterday to announce new Pixel phones. Here is one summary of all the announcements.

The great majority of Excel spreadsheets have errors. No surprise. Putting formulas in a spreadsheet is a type of programming. Programming is done by persons. Persons make mistakes. Hence, no surprises here.

DEF CON attendees hack into all sorts of voting machines and find all sorts of ways to rig an election. Again, no surprise here. I have written before about how to make voting systems that use computers. It is quite simple. Others have written about just using paper ballots and counting them by hand. Quite simple and effective.

New research shows that LLMs are not an existential threat to mankind. I hope they didn't spend a lot of money to reach that conclusion.

Thursday 15 August 2024

"Future coding" means adding code today so that adding code tomorrow will be easier. We used to call this "adding hooks" so that we could hang future things easily. Such foresight is good, until it is bad.

This is a good argument about "don't do that hard stuff." Just let it be for now.

I like the way this person does a blog. Clean, simple, not the hard stuff. All ASCII.

Here are three new laws of robotics from someone who has been building them all this century.

Here is the near future: build a data center and a nuclear power plant next door to fuel it.

Apple is working on a tabletop robotic arm gadget. What it would do that is useful is not known yet.

The up-and-down PC market is up again as Lenovo has a good financial quarter.

Doctors use speech-generating software to restore a voice to an ALS patient. This is the type of thing we should be doing with all this technology.

It appears that an Iranian group did in fact hack into the Trump campaign.

We have more data centers; we need more data center technicians. Hence, salaries are up for those technicians. Good.

Working from home instead of going into the office. It is still haunting CEOs. If things aren't going well, it is easy to blame those who stay home.

Meanwhile at the Pentagon, they realize they have to do things differently. At the great major of cubicles, however, it is the same old thing.

A person connects 444 video game consoles to one TV. Well, there are worse things to do with you time.

Friday 16 August 2024

People are making a big deal of an AI system that was modifying itself. This is simply a poorly built system whose builders didn't use the fundamentals of systems engineering. Garbage in, garbage out...still holds.

More news on how the regulators in California are about to drive all AI research from the state.

Nintendo concentrated on entertainment content, these are after all GAMES. They let others fight over technology. Nintendo was correct.

One practitioner's advice on building reliable software. Keep it as simple as you can.

More CHIPS Act billion$ being dolled out in an election year.

Primate Labs, maker of software that test the performance of processors, releases Geekbench ML to test NLU performance.

TikTok files in court that our Dept of Justice hasn't a clue about what and how it does what it does.

New research on aging claims to find a couple of steps where health falls dramatically. The sample size of the study, however, basically nullifies any findings.

Let's waste a few more billion$$$ on climate change research. Well, the money is going back into the US economy.

Candidate Harris to propose Federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries. Sigh, this experiment has already been performed and shown to raise the price of good across the board.

Another one from candidate Harris: $25K to some home buyers for a down payment. Putting money into a market raises prices in that market. Good grief, surely someone at Berkeley knows that.

Climate change activists hack four German airports and make everyone mad at them. What are they doing?

Meanwhile at our IRS, they have lots of very old computers (expensive to maintain) and are not replacing them anytime soon.

Saturday 17 August 2024

Here is a different business strategy: borrow everything, built super fast. If people use your product, hire lawyers to clean up the mess. If no one uses your product, no one will sue you.

Let's try an unmanned flight to Mars at 1/10th the cost.

AST SpaceMobile is teaming with cell phone service providers to make smartphones using satellites a reality. They are succeed so far.

Google is again changing its search and how its AI systems play in that. If you want Google to find your site, you must allow Google to train AI on your site's data.

A person is suing big tech companies for scraping their content without their written permission. Gee, maybe I could get in on this.

Meanwhile in California, yet another state law attempting to regulate companies is ruled unconstitutional. This type of thing produced candidate Harris, so let's not be surprised by what her administration proposes.

This must be an important story as it is all over the Internet. It is something about break dancing at the Olympics. It's nice to see more folks having a chance at a gold medal, I guess. Still, I guess I don't get it.

Meet the young offspring of the richest people on Earth. Yes, do.

Candidate Harris promises to build 4 million new housing units. When did the Federal government become a construction and lending company?

Where there is money, there is something worth cheating for. Sorry. The American Mathematics Competition is the latest victim.

An good idea whose time has still not come: vehicles that communicate with one another would alleviate traffic problems and greatly reduce accidents,

Get ready for this one folks: a former insider tells us all about the government's secret UFO program.

Sunday 18 August 2024

A look at Palmer Luckey. He is an American who has succeeded in business, but hasn't become a businessman.

Even Nancy Pelosi disagrees with the AI Safety Bill meandering its way through the California legislature.

Meanwhile in South Korea, educators want to give all the kids tablets with AI software. Parents don't like the idea.

Meanwhile at Walmart, they are greatly reducing the areas in which they are experimenting with drone delivery of goods.

And now we have the extended-range electric vehicle or EREV. It comes with a gas-powered generator built in to recharge you when your batteries die and leave you stranded.

Paul Allen's estate is now up for auction. It contains many items key in the history of the personal computer revolution.

A good essay on thinking and recommending that we think more.

Western Digital ups the amount of storage available on memory cards. How about eight TeraBytes on a tiny memory card? Store the entire Internet on a gadget so small you are guaranteed to lose it.