And by the way, Mr. Joe Biden looks endearing and clever in those AI-generated photos and videos. Why don't more politicians do those things in real life?

It seems that computer generated special effects are being overwhelmed by computer generated special effects. The latter being of the AI variety.

120 KiloWatts per rack: that is the power that 72 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs are pulling. Yes, you can put a cake or pizza or frying pan full of bacon on the top of the rack and cook.

Meanwhile in our Dept of Justice, government employees plot how Google should run its company. Act fast before the next person becomes President.

Angst about a Coca Cola Christmas commercial being AI generated.

Apple is trying to buy its way into the Indonesian market for smartphones by increasing its investments there 10x up to $100million.

Meanwhile in China, the big tech there is using 7nm technology in its latest designs. That technology is behind the times for new designs.

America's news influencers on social media are gaining, no, ruling news and posting of news. See my post on Society Media.

Meanwhile in the Baltic Sea, two undersea cables go dark prompting fears of Russian military action. These undersea cables connect the world and keep the Internet running.

Meanwhile in America, despite advances in AI and robotics, we have 30% more warehouse workers.

Car makers and software engineers work together on Automotive Grade Linux.

Our Dept of Defense releases the Fiscal Year 2024 Consolidated Annual Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. Nothing much to see. As usual, lots of money spent to maintain the status quo.

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Wednesday 20 November 2024

I think by now that American tech companies would know better than work with the Chinese governors. Tech supplied by US firms is being used to surveil and censor Chinese subjects.

Our National Science Foundation considers using one of these chattering bots to avail citizens of data they should already have. Why is it that public agencies don't make public data available to the public as a daily task?

Finally, Mac users have a keyboard and mouse built for gaming.

More research and poking these LLMs show yet more surprising results if you keep poking. Yet another failure of systems engineering these systems. They should do what they are supposed to do and no more. Lacking systems engineering, the systems do this, that, and who knows what else.

China boosts its domestic production of semiconductors. This is what happens in an embargo. The embargoed country improves itself. Satisfied now?

Here is another prime target for DOGE. Our TSA has not addressed cybersecurity concerns posed several years ago. Just can't seem to get around to it.

Our U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission's (USCC) (whatever that is) stresses the need for a super-big government project to build artificial general intelligence (SGI). Let the money flow.

Microsoft shows the Azure Boost DPU. This is Microsoft's first data processing unit it has built itself for datacenters.

Microsoft builds what is a chrome box device for Microsoft's Windows 365 service. They call it the Windows 365 Link, and it costs $349.

I'll quote, "Meta is creating a new product unit to develop AI tools for the 200 million businesses that use its apps."

Publicly available data allows just about anyone to learn the locations of sensitive government facilities. And government officials know this and just ignore it. Another prime target for DOGE.

Bose buys high-end audio brand McIntosh.

Microsoft Teams adds real-time, voice-to-voice translation for nine languages.

SpaceX has another Starship launch. They didn't catch the booster with a tower, but everything else is working.

And now we have the Exurbs. These are suburbs that are 60 miles or more away from the big city. The COVID panic and remote work has enabled these. For better or worse.

Linux kernel 6.12 is released.

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Thursday 21 November 2024

A little study shows, "Doctors who were given ChatGPT-4 along with conventional resources did only slightly better than doctors who did not have access to the bot."

Meanwhile in China, the birthrate continues to fall. They will lose 51million in population in the next decade. They can't reverse the results of now-discarded Communist one-child-per-family rule.

For this week at least, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has the super-est super-duper computer in the world.

Coming soon near you, a Minecraft theme park.

Microsoft releases Flight Simulator 2024. It has a digital twin of the entire earth and other such wonderfulness.

Google Scholar is 20 years old. These new-fangled AI search engines may overrun it.

Google responds to the nonsense that the lawyers at our Dept of Justice wants to do with Google. The outgoing administration wants to push these things through before January 20, 2025. Court delays will stop all this.

Twitch continues to dominate streaming hours for content.

Meanwhile at Nvidia, they are printing money there as the $$$ flow in. An older and established company, their quarterly revenue almost doubled. Amazing.

Our next President vows to kill the PRESS Act. That protect journalists' records from investigations. I'm a journalist, right? I journal and publish daily. Right?

The Allen AI Institute releases OpenScholar. It is for scientific research. I tried it. Pretty darn good.

OpenAI: marketing in the form of "free education."

A necessary small growth of government is contemplated by Mr. Trump as the government needs to pay attention to crypto currency and the blockchain.

More CHIPS Act money being spent by our outgoing President. This money goes to the states of New York and Vermont. Two states, coincidentally, carried by the outgoing President's party in the recent election.

I'll just quote, "Comcast is splitting from its NBCUniversal television arm."

At 50 years old, Microsoft keeps rolling. Agile and smart management has kept the company from growing old and stale.

I love this headline: The AI Reporter That Took My Old Job Just Got Fired

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Friday 22 November 2024

The drone is the machine gun of the 21st century. The large machine gun mowed down troops in WWI a hundred years ago. Now it is the drones.

Worldwide, thousands and thousands of auto workers are losing jobs. Companies believed the hyperbole coming out of government offices concerning electric vehicles.

Dell overcharged US government customers for computers. Everyone settles for $2.3million.

A view of Mars from NASA. Looks like west Texas.

NASA is planning cargo deliveries to the moon. The timeline, however, is ten years into the future which means it is folly.

The economy has caught up with our current President. Jobs are not plentiful. People are stuck.

Someone has a firm grasp on the obvious: current wonderful AI chattering bots still just do nothing more than predict the next word.

Z-Library and other online resources have a basic appeal: you have no money, so you look for information that costs no money.

Now, AI Pimping is an industry. Use software to paste a face on someone else's body, generate your own spokesperson who looks good, and influence the market.

Here is an older story on the practice. This isn't a new technology, but a new use of it that is running wild and making big $$$ for some ne'er-do-wells.

Brave attempts to combine basic Internet searching with a chattering bot that answers questions of the search results. A little twist on basic things.

Hearst Magazines, which owns several dozen major US magazines, announces layoffs. They are simply too fat and inefficient.

WhatsApp adds voice-to-text ability on messages.

Considering how otter.ai is trying to create meeting transcriptions. Again, this is voice-to-text which is not groundbreaking. Makes me wonder why this is news and why everyone isn't doing it now.

Considering options on what the government should do to Google to break its monopoly. First, they need to reconsider the monopoly label. This is folly. See, for example, IBM and Microsoft. The market takes care of these things. The Dept of Justice doesn't, but that's not as gratifying to the egos of some government employees.

Various government bodies in the US want tech companies to verify the ages of users online. The only way to do so would be to invade everyone's privacy, ask personal questions, and give the government that information. I think there is something in the Bill of Rights that sort of blocks such practices. Someone please educate me.

The notion of a Declaration of War hasn't caught up with cybersecurity. Microsoft's President wants Mr. Trump to push a bit harder on the issue.

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Saturday 23 November 2024

There should be some play and fun in computing IMHO.

Now I think this is funny, "In a stunning misstep, OpenAI engineers accidentally erased critical evidence gathered by The New York Times and other major newspapers in their lawsuit over AI training data," There should be a law against making mistakes. Well, sort of.

Making batteries for electric vehicles is a tough business. Investors poured in billion$ (with a B) and lost it all.

The DOGE boys find $500Billion (with a B) of unauthorized spending real fast. Basically, someone is breaking the law by spending unauthorized money. That is a felony of sorts, but, you know, what's a few hundred Billion$ among friends?

Meanwhile in Los Angeles' Community Colleges, there is a new basic income program that gives $1,000 a month to students in health-related fields. What could possibly go wrong? How about (1) jumping from UCLA to community college to get the money, (2) expanding the list of courses that quality as health-related (like engineering and science courses since they can be applied to health tech), and gosh, I thought of those abuses in only the time it took to type the words. I guess we could find a few hundred more.

News flash (not): many post-graduate degrees are not worth the money. They are, however, worth more money and sometimes that is enough.

MIT extends free tuition and such to lower-income families. Places like MIT have such huge endowments they could educate folks at no cost.

Ooops, Microsoft CoPilot was letting users read other users' emails and such. Once again, a failure of systems engineering. Systems should do enough to meet requirements AND NO MORE.

China, a place with plenty of human hands, moves up the world rankings in robot density.

Mozilla, an outside observer, is one of the first to tell our Dept of Justice that their Google breakup recommendations have unintended but horrible outcomes.

Big money in big tech: Nvidia has three big customers that buy a third of its products. Each of these customers bought $10Billion (with a B) in Nvidia products Jan through Oct of this year alone.

OnlyFans pays women to appear in porn videos. Then it becomes complicated and ugly and illegal. Consenting adults often fall into traps set by ne'er-do-wells.

Should America have a US Cyber Force (like the Army, Navy, USAF, USSF)? Streamline or another bureaucratic stovepipe that hurts more than helps?

Nvidia's Jensen Huang goes to Hong Kong for an honorary degree and to promote more US-China cooperation on AI. By the way, such cooperation would mean more sales of Nvidia's products.

Meanwhile in Texas, a court orders a South Korean company to pay a Texas company $118Million in a patent dispute. Real news that isn't news.

Meanwhile in New York, a judge orders Sirius XM to pay damages to folks who found it too difficult to cancel services. Folks want a light switch, until we don't.

After months of difficulties, Microsoft slowly brings its Recall to some Windows 11 Copilot Plus PC (what a name) users. This is a good idea. Command the computer to repeat all those mouse movements, clicks, typings, etc. from yesterday. The angst is about who keeps records of all those things I do on my computer. And is it my computer or is Microsoft just letting me use the machine?

Taxation without representation? The Universal Service Fund spends $8Billion (with a B) a year for Internet etc. services for public schools, libraries, et al. The money comes from big telecommunications companies. The FCC pulls the money from the companies. The companies pass the cost along to consumers. Hence, consumers are taxed to fund this program, but that tax did not go through Congress and the President like taxes are supposed to do (see US Constitution).

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Sunday 24 November 2024

Hey America, we pay someone to be the Director of Climate Diversification at the US International Development Finance Corporation. How 'bout that? We can have so much fun with all this. This isn't a personal attack on a person. It is shedding light on how some people think all Americans should spend their money. Here's an idea. If some folks think this is a worthwhile job, let them contribute money to a fund that pays for this job. The rest of us don't have to give a penny to it.

Cyberia: the world's first Internet Cafe. Well, probably not, but it's a good story.

I'll just quote, "A team of undergraduate students from the University of Southern California's Rocket Propulsion Lab set multiple amateur spaceflight records with their rocket" Good for them.

Slowly charging an electric vehicle overnight is far more economical than a quick charge at the grocery store or Interstate rest stop. Folks, the electric cars aren't practical yet.

New trend in America: if your candidate, party, or both are not elected, switch your social media accounts to something else. Same thing happened four years ago.

Meanwhile in China, there are now esports hotels. Come for the weekend, have good hardware, and play video games with other people. It is a hotel, so I have to wonder if any other indoor sports occur.

Better sensors and better computing are advancing archeology and other sciences. In Peru, they double the number of Nazca Lines found and recorded. We didn't know something so obvious about this planet. Yet, we know the temperature of the planet to a tenth of a degree 10,000 years ago.

Considering Apple's iMac. This is a great all-in-one desktop computer. The trouble is, just grab a laptop and run around with it.

I guess we need one more thing to argue: is it okay to sing along with a Disney musical in a movie theater?

We have more fraud in academic research. And folks wonder why folks wondered about COVID-19.

Return to the office. We don't have a chair for you, but return to office anyway. I was in a job once where they told us that. We were assigned to a building that had no empty chairs. We went to the bathroom often.

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