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: 21-27 October, 2024

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Israel-Gaza conflict continues and continues to spread
• Fernando Valenzuela dies at 63
• LA Times endorses no one for President
• Washington Post endorses no one for President
• The Dodgers win the National League Penant
• THe Yankees win the American League Penant

Monday 21 October 2024

The news media is abuzz about something to do with Elon Musk, giving away a million$ a day, something or other. Slow news day I guess.

VP Harris is out in Silicon Valley trying to put distance between President Biden and herself. Good luck with that one.

IBM, already with $2Billion in AI business, updates its Granite large language models (LLMs).

I thoughts these numbers would be higher, but researchers predict 5,700 data centers worldwide by the end of the year. I guess there are different ways to count data centers.

Putting personality into these chattering bots.

Drone vs drone aerial combat is here.

Here is NASA's new suit to wear on the moon. Supposedly they hired fashion designers to help them. I don't see any improvement.

It appears that a lot of folks never asked for AI to help them with anything and are quite annoyed at the AI tools simply getting in the way.

Meanwhile in Europe, people buy low-price Chinese electric Vehicles (prohibited in the US). As a result, European carmakers are making lower-priced cars. Meanwhile in America, the competition is outlawed, so we are left with high-priced cars.

Human-capable AI is quite a ways away. Be careful of puppets that look real people.

The basic idea of a do=it-yourself Masters of Fine Arts. Teach yourself, with help from thousands of helpful folks on the Internet.

Some tips on a productive home office. I go to Stephen King's advice: has a room with a door you can close. Otherwise, remember that the objective is to work not to build an office. Focus on the work, not the construction, layout, design, and decorating of the place.

The Bad Idea Method for creating story ideas and stories.

Tuesday 22 October 2024

If ya can't beat 'em (in business) then beat 'em up (physically).

The Internet Archive went down. It was back up. Now, it's back down again.

Nvidia has a new model architecture called Normalized Transformer (nGPT). It could divide training time by a factor of 20, e.g., five hours vs 100 hours.

Per recent analysis, all jobs are becoming tech jobs...well, sort of.

Qualcomm shows the new Snapdragon 8 Elite processor for smartphones. 3nm process and all that.

And AMD shows its first next-generation X3D desktop processors for desktop computers.

On the software side, Microsoft shows new autonomous AI agents that will do all sorts of things for people. So either folks will work 20 hours a week now or someone will lose their job.

Meanwhile in Norfolk, Virginia, the governors install a network of "automated license plate readers (ALPRs)." Now everyone in the city is being followed by police all the time everywhere. Lawsuits are in place already as this violates protections of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution.

Chick-fil-A jumps into the entertainment business.

Our Dept of Defense is trying to pull in computer tech talent via a Reserves Officer program. Wait to see if big tech will send in people so they can see business opportunities. Then there will be lawsuits about non-disclosure agreements etc.

Here come the health features of Apple's AirPods. They will be over-the-counter hearing aids among other things. The trouble is, they are big, ugly, many employers won't let you wear them in the office. The idea the "people will just have to get used to seeing them" is folly.

Ford updates the Mustang Mach-E. A travesty to the memory of the muscle car. This is silly.

Our Dept of Homeland Security has 500 security cameras along the border with Mexico. A third of them don't work.

Donald Trump worked a shift at McDonald's. What ensued was predictable and predicted.

Woes at Intel and Boeing. The problems are self inflicted.

NASA and Boeing continue to flounder with the Starliner boat anchor and money sink. Gosh.

Wednesday 23 October 2024

Fernando Valenzuela dies at 63. The spring of 1981, it was great to be a Dodgers fan. The great American story as a small-town boy makes it in the big city and across the country.

Arm and Qualcomm are heading to court.

Meta is experimenting with facial recognition to detect fraud and scams. Yes, it should work.

Qualcomm and Alphabet partner to bring voice commands to driving cars. Mercedes is also in on the deal to a lesser extent.

This app, called Act-One, uses video input from real actors to put better facial expressions in to cartoons. Take care here folks. One actor's expression can be used a million times.

This oen is a bit difficult for me to follow, but Microsoft and OpenAI are putting $10million into a program that has news organizations running experiments with generative AI and local news coverage.

Meanwhile in Hollywood, despite settling an actors' strike over AI, some are still fuming about how the big tech companies are copying what actors do and using it without pay or permission.

And in Texas, Texas Instruments continues to lose money, but is on plan to eventually return to profitability.

Antrhopic continues to work towards an AI system that interacts with a PC via keyboard, mouse, etc. and does useful things. Quite useful, but not AI, this automation would enable those folks who want to be far more productive to do so.

There is software today that will remove just about anything from a "photo" and insert just about anything. Are photos real or fantasy? Can you examine the bits and bytes and tell the difference?

There appears to be Lithium in the ground in Arkansas. Is it usable? Can anyone extract it?

Simple numbers here: those companies who hire more AI talent are outperforming the rest. Higher salaries are worth it. Caution to the government where salaries are not linked to ability but seniority.

For an example of government and backwards technology, see Britain's National Health Service. So far, America has avoided such a calamity in health care.

First time in 80 years, our FAA designates a new type of aircraft: the electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle.

Thursday 24 October 2024

Tesla's cybertruck has lots of problems with #1 being it is ugly. Sales, however, are quite high showing that, once again, there is no accounting for public taste.

Yet another new AI system for text-to-video generation. It has an open-source model that anyone can download. You cannot, however, run the thing locally without having an Nvidia-powered super-duper computer.

Our Dept of Justice "warns" Elon Musk that what he is doing "may violate" Federal law. Huh? Warning? May? Something is illegal or it isn't. If the law is a maybe and needs warnings, then the Dept of Justice becomes a political weapon with no interest in Justice.

Electronic shelf labels bring all sorts of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. And gosh, it will be so easy to fix prices for this group or that group of people.

The candidates for President are using TikTok to advertise. So much for block that Chinese system.

Microsoft, someone our national cyber security wing, says that foreign influence on the election is in full swing.

In an unusual reversal, a European court says a successful company doesn't have to pay European governments a billion$.

Apple updates its operating systems and brings more Apple Intelligence. I like Apple's approach to generative AI in that the images etc. generated are comics and such. They cannot be used as deepfakes and the like.

Stronger rumors about Apple's coming hardware updates.

Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt... NPR whines about another term for Donald Trump. In some ways, the legacy media does need to be herded a bit more. Their problems are their own creation. Far too much editorial presented as news.

Industry groups don't like the click-to-cancel rule just announced. No news here, just the marketplace not liking government regulation.

The NASA/Boeing Starliner program has been a disaster from the start with the American taxpayer paying for most of it. Congressional hearings about fraud, waste, and abuse at NASA?

Raspberry Pi continues to grow its line of computers with add-on cards from other makers. They are still keeping the cost down under a couple hundred dollars, but inching upwards all the time.

Meanwhile in Hollywood, prices continue to rise while quality continues to drop.

Meanwhile in the Linux world, Russian programmers are being delisted and their work deleted. No one trusts anyone on the other side. Just our side is good and their side is bad.

Friday 25 October 2024

There was a time when it was a good thing to have American business persons with close contacts to foreign and often hostile leaders. That allowed a diplomatic back door when needed. Now, we think the worst of everything.

Research shows that people are not watching the podcast appearances of the candidates for president. Just aren't interested in the bologna. And, I am sad to write, the great majority of it is just bologna. Apologies to those who make bologna sandwich meat.

Real news that isn't news: in Ireland, regulators fine a successful American company several hundred million$ because the can fine a successful American company several hundred million$.

Meanwhile in America, the rights to social media accounts is now important in marriage divorce hearings. Folks earn their living on these things.

The President issues yet another memorandum on AI for the Federal Government.

The current administration in the White House has pushed hard for the benefit of Intel. Was that right? Will any of it work?

Apple will not have a big event this month. Strong rumors indicate many product announcements next week.

Meta announces smaller AI models that will run on more (not all, but more) devices. A step in the right direction.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, the LA Times is not endorsing a candidate for President (meaning it is not endorsing VP Harris). Staff is resigning in protest. Let them try to find another newspaper job these days.

Coming real soon now from OpenAI is their next big model. They call it Orion.

MIT's Media Lab has a new application called Little Language Models that helps kids (10-12) learn how to make their own language models and a few other things about these chattering bots.

Meanwhile in San Francisco, the light-rail system still uses 5 1/4-inch floppy disks. It will cost several hundred million$ to replace that system. This is called Technical Debt.

Mercedes sees their sales of EV drop a third. People just aren't buying electric cars.

Our current President continues to try to reduce the cost of college by pouring money into colleges and loan companies. Those practices have been shown to always increase prices.

Saturday 26 October 2024

More on Meta and their smaller AI models that are supposed to run on smartphones.

This article contains a demo of Anthropic's "Computer Use" agent. The demo claims all sorts of wonder. The example, however, could have been done with other existing tools. We shall see.

Folks at OpenAI say that claims of a new tool called Orion are all false.

Following the lead of the LA Times, the Washington Post will not endorse either candidate for President.

Real news that shouldn't surprise any adults, hackers from the Communist Party of China are trying to eavesdrop on telephone conversations of both major campaigns for President.

Note: I try to write the phrase "candidates for President" instead of "Presidential candidates." I find neither major party to have a candidate worthy of the adjective "Presidential." Woe is us. We are an odd lot.

Oops, OpenAI has a transcription tool. Simple idea, record the audio, do a speech-to-text conversion, right? Well, OpenAI's Whisper "It is prone to making up chunks of text or even entire sentences." Well, that just won't do.

A company called Science Corporation has a retinal implant that greatly improves the vision of people who cannot see much. This is what we should be doing with all this technology.

Speaking of medical technologies, Apple is quietly testing an app to help people monitor what they eat and how that affects their health.

A look at Mike Solana of Pirate Wires. Sometimes people should speak candidly to start conversations. We need more conversations. There, a candid statement that might start conversations.

A longer-term study into Universal Basic Income shows that the programs really don't do much. The result is, "a moderate reduction in labor supply without other substantial productive benefits."

Sunday 27 October 2024

If I had five minutes with Donald Trump, I would talk about repentance. If I had five minutes with Kamala Harris, I would talk about humility.

A couple of stories about TSMC --- the most important company in the world.

TSMC stops some shipments after it discovers its products in Chinese AI processors.

And then a thought piece about how free trade has been curtailed. If folks would simply behave, we could have free trade. We just cannot seem to do that.

And even more restrictions on free trade, "The vise-tight grip that China wields over the mining and refining of rare minerals, crucial ingredients of today's most advanced technologies, is about to become even stronger."

Showing its ignorance of reality, our Patent and Trade Office won't let historians study old video games properly.

Strong rumors that Google is attempting to build a software assistant that will do useful things in a browser. Call it AI or whatever, these assistants have existed in different forms for many years.