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: 9-15 September, 2024

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine (perhaps one day I can drop that line)
• The Israel-Gaza conflict continues (also hoping to drop that line one day)
• James Earl Jones dies at 93
• Apple shows new $1,000 iPhones
• Hurricane Francine hits Louisiana
• SpaceX is succeeding on its commercial space flight
• And the commercial flight concluded with a safe return of all to earth

Monday 9 September 2024

Small groups of parents nationwide are requesting "tech opt out" so their kids learn without blue screens. It is a small group so far, but growing.

Meanwhile in London, there is a boom is rented electric bicycles. Just like the laptop computer story above, how far is too far?

The second international conference to limit the use of AI in war is underway. If you are losing a war, you are going to die. Human survival instinct takes over.

One rendering of the history of the Moleskine.

Real news that isn't news: cyber security researchers show that it is easy to inject phony people into our TSA's security databases.

Elon Musk gives yet another timeline for spaceships to Mars. Two years from now, unmanned with manned flights in four years.

A writer discusses working with AI companies so that their software can replace writers.

Research shows that the number of AI-written research papers is growing quickly.

Other research shows that AI won't replace many jobs.

A professor tests students on learning. The result is basic: Working hard and struggling is actually an important way of learning. When you're given an answer, you're not struggling and you're not learning. No duh.

Writing a book with another person as co-author can be quite rewarding or maybe not.

"what is creative intuition for writers?" I have no idea.

The importance of dialogue.

The content of this piece is much better than its standard title. Good ideas for finding freelance clients.

Tuesday 10 September 2024

Meanwhile in Pakistan, government firewalls are hurting Internet speeds and the tech industry in general.

Meanwhile in the Philippines, they have three-wheel electric vehicles that people love. Governments, however, are not so keen on them, but the people are speaking and riding.

James Earl Jones dies at 93. The voice of Darth Vader.

Apple shows some new iPhones. These are thousand-dollar gadgets to carry in your pocket. Telephones attached to super cameras.

Meanwhile in Europe, a European court rules that a successful American company must pay billion$ to European regulators.

Apple adds some hearing aid features to the AirPod Pro 2. This is a step in the right direction. Apple should just make hearing aid and sell them for $200. The AirPods are too bulky to be used as serious hearing aids.

AMD attempts to unify its GPU architecture to better take on Nvidia's CUDA system. Nice idea, but they are so far behind it is unlikely to matter.

Clone someone's voice and then pay them for jobs they don't perform. Well, someone will be paid.

SpaceX puts four civilians into orbit on an ambitious trip that shows how billionaires can spend money. Perhaps some good will come from this.

Wednesday 11 September 2024

Meanwhile in Australia or thereabouts, Facebook admits it scraped everyone's data in supervised learning methods. Thus we illustrate a fundamental problem with all this: we are still at garbage in-garbage out. You must have an expert examine all the data used to "learn" the system. Otherwise, you get garbage out of the system.

And in America, someone claims to count all the trillions of megabytes (is there an adjective for that?) of wireless data we use.

Upon further review, the wonderful model used by HyperWrite isn't so wonderful.

Meanwhile at Google, Sergey Brin says he is in the office working on AI everyday as it is quite exciting the progress they are making.

This is of great interest to firearms enthusiasts: Ruger now has a carbine style firearm chambered in both 45 and 10mm. Get 'em before they are outlawed.

Some deeper thoughts on libraries, lending, copyright, and court rulings. Recent rulings may clobber lending libraries.

This story is supposed to be about Bitcoin mining and data centers in rural areas. It is, however, mostly about corrupt local politicians.

Regulators gotta' regulate: our National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is telling car makers how to redesign big trucks and SUVs.

Sony announces the PS5 Pro gaming machine. It's yet another super computer disguised as a ... uh super computer to play games.

Life is tough if your name is difficult to spell. Well, there are many things more important.

Regulators gotta' regulate: folks demand Congress pass laws requiring Surgeon General warning labels on social media apps. We must protect ourselves from Facebook et al.

The future of data centers include small nuclear reactors to power them. Good idea. Cut out all those high-voltage power lines running for miles to the data center. The data center is self contained.

Thursday 12 September 2024

Hurricane Francine hits Louisiana.

OCD, don't joke about it or other brain problems. Those jokes are jokes and they aren't funny.

Our Federal government now has the policies and procedures to attempt to hire AI experts. Mission accomplished. Everything is grand. The ink is dry. Nothing has happened.

In the UK, regulators designate data centers as Critical National Infrastructure. This gives regulators far more power over what happens in a data center.

And someone in Europe has the sense to say that regulating too much kills innovation in the computing world. Computing is not the same as building roads or canning tuna.

And yet here we have more regulators investigating more on Google.

Google starts linking search results into the Internet Archive.

I'll just quote the headline, "SpaceX's Tiny Rival Soars 1,300%. Now Comes the Satellite Launch" This is about the company called AST SpaceMobile.

That commercial spaceflight by SpaceX is rolling along.

Walmart has had a good year with the stock price rising. This means three Waltons are about to hit $100Billion each.

All is not well in video gaming as GameStop's stock value fell on bad sales.

Confirmation that Ford et al are using our vehicles as intelligence collection systems for commerce. Where are you? When? What did you say?

How one Ukrainian is unofficially the expert at defeating drones.

Friday 13 September 2024

Our Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized the latest AirPods to be hearing aids. The FDA describes Apple's solution as "the first over-the-counter hearing aid software device." Now cut the price and make them much smaller.

Microsoft cuts hundreds more xBox-related jobs. Gaming is taking a big hit.

OpenAI, trying to be the Microsoft Word of AI or something, releases yet another improvement to whatever it is they release.

Meanwhile in Australia, someone proposes a law that requires companies from preventing misinformation, i.e., prevent anyone from making a mistake. If a mistake is found, they would fine the company 5% of its global revenue and thereby fund the nation of Australia for the next thousand years.

It appears that OpenAI is hauling in a couple hundred million $$$ each month on subscriptions to its ChatGPT.

It appears that Mark Zuckerberg is going through some sort of midlife crisis.

Ah clever, and it works: using eye-tracking systems to tell what keys people are pressing and learn their passwords. Yet another argument against these strong passwords that require people to stare at the keyboard.

Gosh, I should be honored, right? Meta has used everything I put online in the last 17 years to train its AI. Perhaps, given that, you shouldn't trust anything Meta's AI tells you.

SpaceX now claims the first commercial space walk. Their new-fangled space suits worked.

Yikes! Disk drives that are supposed to still be good are failing and losing data that was supposed to be safe.

News flash (not): unhappy workers cost money. Well, I hope they didn't spend a lot of money on that study.

Saturday 14 September 2024

Someone discovers that AI is best used in a product we already use. It is just more software that does something useful. Well, no duh!

In hindsight, we of course find some former CrowdStrike employees who correctly predicted disaster and whose warning were not heeded. This is always the case.

Our Equal Employment Opportunity Commission finds that women in tech jobs is at the same level as it was 20 years ago. Is that a lack of progress or lots of hype 20 years ago?

Our Dept of State is once again seeing Russians in its soup (old expression for old people).

Meanwhile in Brazil, regulators extract their pound of flesh from successful American companies by force.

Once again, those who seek to outsmart US government regulators are found to be outsmarting US government regulators. The answer? Fire failed regulators? No. The answer is give them more power.

Waymo and Uber add several new cities to their driverless taxi services. And why don't taxi companies add driverless taxis? Government regulations.

Coming real soon now from United Airlines will be SpaceX Starlink satellite WiFi that will give no-cost (does that mean hidden cost?) WiFi to passengers.

This is where real America lives: auto parts stores and dollar stores. And those are showing impending bad, bad news.

So-called experts claim that Federal government agencies are supposed to be inefficient. While profit is not a motive, waste is prevalent and should be reduced. And current Federal workers know how to cut waste. Just let them do it.

Speaking of waste in our government agencies, our IRS again delays software fixes and allows billions$$$ to go down the drain. This is not a profit motive, it is simple incompetence.

And more government waste as we have two astronauts stuck on the space station because of incompetence at NASA-Boeing.

And even more government waste at NASA. Again, Trump and Musk and many others want to find and remove incompetence in government agencies. Such efforts have been in place for decades. The status quo, however, has been able to fend off these.

Sunday 15 September 2024

Our Dept of Justice is going to court against TikTok. The evidence against TikTok is classified, so TikTok does not know the accusations against them. I don't like TikTok, but this is wrong on the part of our Dept of Justice.

Meanwhile in India, several international smartphone companies are accused of selling their products the wrong way. Huh?

Disney and DirectTV agree on something so that college football games on ESPN will now be available.

Our Dept of State claims that Russia's government is doing whatever it needs to do to supply its troops. I suppose there is something illegal happening here, but giving your young men and woman supplies in a time of war is somewhat admirable.

Should you call your new software "Strawberry" or "4o, 4o1?" Do you let people who have a clue name your products?

Our FAA does a lot of work so that Elon Musk can launch rockets. That is because, at some time, Congress and the President decided that the FAA would do a lot of work when someone wanted to launch a rocket. Musk didn't create the system. He is upset at how poorly the system works. It is time for a new system.

It appears that everything worked right on that commercial space flight just completed by SpaceX.

Google worked in vain on a robot for years. Boston Dynamics' machines do flips, but that doesn't help anyone do anything practical. Help an invalid out of bed? Sorry. Cannot do, but look at the cute music videos...NOT.