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: 30 September - 6 October, 2024

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Israel-Gaza conflict continues and continues to expand
• US Presidential campaign drags on with one more month to go
• Pete Rose dies at 83
• Israel invades Lebanon
• Iran shoots at Israel
• More damage report from Hurricane Helene in the Carolinas and Tennessee

Monday 30 September 2024

Meanwhile in California, the Governor vetoes the AI Safety Bill as it is not restrictive enough. Need more regulations. Okay?

But California's Governor did sign a bill into law about protect brain data. Not sure what that means, but move to California to keep what is in your brain in your brain.

The governors of China didn't like people wasting their time with video games. This view has changed since a game company in China has an international hit with $$$ flowing into China (and the Party's war chest).

Government money in China, South Korea, and Taiwan flows into chip-building equipment.

The Chairman of Netflix endorsed Kamala Harris. Cancellations tripled immediately. I guess this means something or indicates something in the Presidential election.

Sony and Raspberry Pi release an AI Camera. Sony built the $70 camera that has the processing power on it so that the Raspberry Pi processor board doesn't have to do much work.

More return-to-the-office battles.

Some kind of survey shows that 2/3s of tech workers are interested in joining a labor union. They haven't bee educated on what a labor union would do to their job.

I like this piece, excellent thoughts on reading before writing.

More thoughts on reading the great stories from centuries past. I recommend the Holy Bible. Good stuff on every page.

I love this sentence, "A little thinking before you start writing can make a huge difference in how easy that story is to write." Thinking? Yes, thinking.

Mulling the concepts of tourist and pilgrim as a writer visits an area for background material.

Tuesday 1 October 2024

Peter Rose dies at 83.

The Playstation network goes down affecting millions of game players. Oh, wait, that isn't as important as the flooding in the Carolinas fro the hurricane.

Liquid AI boasts Liquid Foundation Models (LFMs). These are not based on the transformer concept, are smaller (not small), and perform as well as much larger systems.

Google's NotebookLM has an audio feature that will create a podcast. This reviewers thinks it works pretty well.

State and local governments across America buy data systems to run everything. Many of these systems simply don't work as advertised. Taxpayers' money wasted and just plain wrong inforation in public records.

Meanwhile in California, the governors don't seem to have much to do as the Governor signed 17 AI bills in the past month.

Dockworkers on the east coast and gulf coast go on strike. And the national elections are in one month.

Israel has sent its army into Lebanon. The Gaza conflict continues to spread.

DirecTV is buying Dish Network. The industry shrinks and consolidates.

There is a shift on way in America where bonuses and performance pay are taking the place of salaries. Good and bad here.

The governors in California attempt to ban legacy admissions in private colleges. Public colleges they can do this. The private colleges will merely be shamed instead of fined.

Wednesday 2 October 2024

Strong rumors of a smaller and less-expensive iPhone next year.

Microsoft adds more capabilities to Copilot on Windows 11. Vision will analyze what's on the screen and describe it in audio.

Got $149.99? For 2024, Microsoft will sell a one-time standalone never-to-be-updated version of the Office suite.

Meanwhile in the Philippines, you would think countries that were making a money grab on successful American companies would be more subtle about it. Then again, why not just stand at the digital border with your back pocket open?

Surprise! Nvidia releases a family of open-source AI models under the name NVLM 1.0. They promise better better and better.

Big shot movement among the AI companies. This buy was a fellow at Google, then a co-founder at OpenAI, and now at Anthropic. This is the golden age of being a big shot in AI.

The smartphones today are just platforms for digital cameras that combine an array of crummy lenses with supercomputer processing to make up for the crummy lenses.

Google updates the line of official Chromebooks. They continue to move further from the concept of the Chromebook, i.e., a window to the Internet.

Here is the story of the Raspberry Pi: the greatest education project in the history of such.

More reports of Russian gangs and Russian government agencies. I don't approve of what these private Russians are doing, but face it, they are being patriotic and once again demonstrating that patriotism is not always a good thing. It is often misdirected.

Researchers at Google's DeepMind are building AI tool to help researchers. This is a positive feedback loop that could bring upward spirals in technology advances.

Iran joins the Israel-Gaza-Lebanon-whoever-else conflict. And the current administration in the US is exempt from foreign policy failures.

Notes on the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, or ARIA, or Britains hopes of spending money to achieve something. But look at the Raspberry Pi for how to do something.

Microsoft is rolling out a big Windows 11 update.

Executives at Microsoft promise "we won't have a return-to-the-office mandate," unless they do.

Microsoft Paint used to be a tool for kids. Now they are putting Photoshop AI stuff in it.

Thursday 3 October 2024

I like the premise of this essay: recession proof college and government towns may be decimated by AI. Of course the elimination of the middle manager has been promised by the IT industry for 60 years or more.

Meanwhile in Vietnam, the factories moved there, but there is a shortage of workers.

This study shows that combining AI systems produces results that are worst than the weakest of the systems.

More news on how IT companies mistakenly hired North Korean soldiers. This report focuses on the crypto industry.

Greasing the skids for new factories during an election year. Why did it take four years to do this?

The Russians found ways to put American-made processors in the missiles. None of this was supposed to happen, huh?

Someone found a way to put facial recognition tech into the Meta Ray Ban glasses. Again, this wasn't supposed to happen. This is a classic hack in the good old sense. Such a feature is a great help for many people who need to know who they are looking at.

Amazon updates the hardware on its Fire HD tablets. This continues to be the best value in computing.

Accenture signs a big contract with Nvidia. Accenture will train 30,000 of its employees on Nvidia's AI technologies in a big AI push.

World Wide Web Foundation closes.

OpenAI just got $6.6Billion (with a B) to build a new AI model. That's a lot of money. There are only a couple of organizations in the world that can spend that much money.

Amazon told everyone to return to the office. The rest of the tech world isn't following.

Spruce Pine, North Carolina supplies high-purity quartz essential for semiconductor production. Hurricane Helene flooded it completely. The Federal government should make it a top priority to restore mining there. FEMA? Are you kidding?

Meanwhile in America, job hopping slows.

Friday 4 October 2024

Google updates Lens so that we can now search with a video. What is that thing in the corner of the video? Voice as well.

And Google releases Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B. Smaller and faster and just as good.

Not all these AI startups have happy endings.

Our Dept of Justice takes down a hundred or so Russian sites operating in America.

OpenAI has a new interface to its ChatGPT. They call it Canvas and it is supposed to make writing and coding projects easier.

The east coast dock workers strikes ends already. Quite short. 62% pay raise!

You like those big lithium batteries. This truck full of batteries caught fire. It burned itself out two days later. No one could do anything but watch.

Jensen Huang on starting a company. Basically, ignorance is bliss. If anyone knew how hard they had to work, they wouldn't do it.

Maybe this is a good idea: write a document called, "How to work with me" and give it to co-workers. In the old days, you would be fired immediately. How dare you tell us how to adjust to you. You adjust to us.

Not sure what you want to do in life? Leave all responsibilities at home and go on a cruise. Oh well, again, in the old days this wouldn't work.

Mozilla releases Firefox 131.

Saturday 5 October 2024

Google is emphasizing AI in the market in India...the world's most populous country.

The Cyber Crimes Center of our Department of Homeland Security tells us that it is doing a great job.

Great headline: This Will Be Your New Favorite Podcast. The Hosts Aren't Human.

Burned by past involvement with politicians, Meta and Mr. Zuckerburg attempt neutrality. Such is rare in America, so newcomers slip often.

Facebook attempts to avoid growing old with its audience. So far, they have failed.

More new AI models to do gee whiz new things: Meta has one that makes movies and audio.

And even more new AI models: Apple has one for 3D modelling or something 3D-ish.

Meanwhile in Taiwan, they make the world's computer chips. They are also short of electric power capacity.

I like this summary of the state-of-the-practice in augmented reality glasses.

I like to use Facebook to keep up with family and friends. Facebook, however, strays further away from that.

Hurricane Helene is much like Hurricane Camille of 1969. While it hit the US coast hard, the real carnage occurred up the east coast in the hills and valleys and rivers. Camille killed hundreds in Virginia. The death toll from Helene is not yet known.

It appears that there is some infighting in the WordPress world. I hope they don't ruin it for the rest of us.

Here come the 60 TeraByte drives. This stuff was supposed to go away 20 years ago.

Meanwhile in America, our rate of obesity peaked in 2020 and is now falling. Why? Better chemicals as we now have shots that make us lose weight. We've always had such, but it wasn't as much fun as it is now.

Another casualty of Hurricane Helena is a plant that makes IV fluid.

Sunday 6 October 2024

Some folks are advertising their cars as "full self driving." Well, they aren't, but some folks believe the ads and are using these vehicles as robot-driven taxis. The results are predictable and predicted.

FOXCONN has a record-breaking financial quarter.

Google slips below 50% of the ad market on searching.

Blue Origin plans to launch an unmanned crew capsule this week in a big test.

Cameras, cameras everywhere. They capture information for which they were not intended, sort of. And then someone sells that information, and then...

I've never understood the great need to keep your refrigerator running when the power is out. So what if some frozen food spoils. Did you place yourself in a position where your life depended on frozen food? Why did you do that? And is keeping your frozen food the greatest need in your community for backup power? Perhaps there are better uses for that power. Again, just my lack of understanding.

Meanwhile in China, China Telecom boasts a trillion-parameter (with a tr) LLM created using only domestic processors. Persistence and patience pay off more times than not.

The Free Software Foundation is now 39 years old.