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: 3-9 March, 2025

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Apple updates Mac Studio and MacBook Air with M4 and M3 Ultra processors
• More DOGE hyperbole from all sides
• Here in America, we lose sleep and begin Daylight Savings Time
• We also continue the tireless debate about this practice

Monday 3 March 2025

The Mobile World Congress (MWC) is this week. Expect lots of new product announcements.

We have a new market in international smuggling: Nvidia processors.

And more running around trade embargoes and the like.

Here are several new laptops from Lenovo. They made a concept machine with solar panels.

Our current President names several crypto currencies to be part of the US crypto reserve.

Meanwhile in California, webcams are feeding computers 24/7 in an attempt to detect wildfires early.

Booz Allen Hamilton generates 98% of its revenue from U.S. government contracts. Oops. This could be a disaster in a time of cutting government spending. Are you working contracts that do nothing?

This article shows that some folks still don't understand what is happing in the Federal government. Government jobs were cut. Those cut regulated the roll out of autonomous taxis. These folks' jobs depended on them telling Americans that they couldn't do things. Eliminate the regulations and there is no need for the jobs.

We often judge a book by its cover, title, place in the store etc. Write clues.

Interesting piece on ... well, it reminds me of the writings of George Orwell. What are we doing here?

Connecting parts of a story with the words, "Because of that."

When information in a memoir is too much information.

Here is an article on the semi-colon. Yes.

For those of use reading through paper files from folks long gone, there is a different between holding the paper in your hands and looking at a PDF scan.

Writers want to write and earn some money. We fall for scams. This past week I did a "test" with Data Annotations dot Tech. I hope it was a real test and not work for free for them. I don't know the answer.

I disagree with parts of this piece. No one is banning books. Write and publish all you wish. Some folks are, however, considering not using taxpayer money to put books at the fingertips of 12 year olds.

Tuesday 4 March 2025

Meanwhile in entertainment, people are NOT watching the Academy Awards.

Meanwhile at CBS and 60 Minutes, they are still fighting for something against Donald Trump. This is a losing proposition with $$$ being the big loss.

Meanwhile in Colombia, disgusting ne'er-do-wells are using all the social media apps to kidnap and enslave teenage girls.

Strong rumors that this week Apple will release an updated MacBook Air with an M4 processor.

It appears that Nvidia and Broadcom are testing Intel's manufacturing for possible deals.

Meanwhile in China, two companies team so you can launch a drone from the roof of your vehicle. I suppose this solves someone's problem.

Testing ChatGPT-4.5.

TSMC's CEO meets with our President and announces another $100Billion (with a B) investment in the US.

Microsoft's Kinect was a motion sensing game controller. It has been off the market for years. But we lots of folks who love to tinker and repurpose things. Ghost hunters are among them.

NOAA's government employees say that if they lose their jobs all America will be devastated. I doubt that, but it will be easy to blame on flooded house on you know who.

Management experts review Mr. Musk and DOGE's actions. Of course they are wrecking everything and making mistakes. Those being wrecked, however, are not asking about what they have done for years that has brought this on them.

Now that all the hulabaloo is over, Mr. Zelensky says he is ready to sign the minerals deal with the US.

Researchers show that people are using AI tools to write correspondence.

Here is the original research paper.

I'll just quote, "U.S. publishers are increasingly abandoning paperback editions of nonfiction books."

Wednesday 5 March 2025

Quoting, "U.S. General Services Administration has taken the first steps in a Government-wide initiative to eliminate non-essential consulting contracts." The key word is ESSENTIAL. Agencies can describe why a contract is essential to its mission.

Microsoft has a new tool for the medical profession. Quoting, "Dragon Copilot is designed to streamline administrative tasks and enhance patient care within various healthcare settings as part of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare."

Meanwhile in Nigeria, costs for American cloud services have skyrocketed due to currency depreciation. As a result, the are creating local alternatives. Good for them!

Our current President asks Congress to end the CHIPS Act from our prior President. Good intentions, but slow slow slow implementation made it nothing more than an attempt to buy votes in critical states in my opinion.

I'll just quote: The L.A. Times adds AI-generated counterpoints to its opinion pieces and guess what, there are problems Once again, a complete failure to use systems engineering brings predictable (bad) results.

The Verge reviews AMD's latest GPUs.

Meanwhile in India, folks are buying and selling guns on WhatsApp. It is a small market, but has some quite concerned.

Our prior President had a $42Billion fund for rural broadband. Our current President has the executors of that fund changing the priorities and regulations.

Apple updates some of its computers and processors for computers.

I'll just quote, "Apple launches new Mac Studios with M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips"

And another quote, "Apple announces MacBook Air with M4 chip and a price cut"

Apple updates its M3 processor with something called the M3 Ultra. In some ways, it outperforms the M4 processor.

Strong rumors that OpenAI will have new ChatGPT plans running at up to $20,000 a month for "PhD level" something or other.

Thursday 6 March 2025

Stronger rumors of a foldable iPhone next year at $2,000. At what price do people just say no?

Our Dept of Defense has a program called Thunderforge which will use AI agents for U.S. military planning and operations.

Some details on the upgraded MacBook Air. For some folks, being able to drive more and more external monitors is a big deal.

Hyundai is teaming with Avride to develop fully driverless cars for autonomous ridehailing. They hope to have 100 vehicles this year. This is a big deal to people who cannot drive themselves...a big deal.

AI search was supposed to show searchers all the businesses that would fulfill their searches. The opposite has occurred.

Google provides an option in its search for complex, multi-part questions.

Meanwhile in Utah, it is the first state with a law that requires age verification for app stores online. In most states, minors cannot enter some stores. This is the same desire, but let's see if the implementation succeeds.

I'll just quote, "Anthropic has quietly removed from its website several voluntary commitments the company made in conjunction with the Biden administration in 2023 to promote safe and trustworthy AI."

Long quote: In a policy paper published Wednesday, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, and Center for AI Safety Director Dan Hendrycks said that the U.S. should not pursue a Manhattan Project-style push to develop AI systems with superhuman intelligence, also known as AGI.

Here is their policy paper.

Import tariffs and the like: a group of tech CEOs will meet our current President at his residence next week.

Firefox 136 is released.

TCL moves up in class and surpasses LG as the world's #2 maker of premium TVs.

Friday 7 March 2025

Today, Blake Dodge has a short editorial over at Pirate Wires Daily. He concludes with, "By all means, thin the herd. But pay the rest what they're worth." This addresses a fundamental problem, one that probably will not be addressed, in Federal employment. Instead of using the concept of "fewer, better people," our Federal agencies hire the lowest common denominator. Not only do these folks perform poorly, they hold down and drive away those high performers who should be promoted and paid. Perhaps. Wishing for better.

I'll quote: US President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing both a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a Digital Asset Stockpile.

A closer look at TSMC's $165Billion (with a B) investment in America. Good for America. Not so good for Taiwan and the prospects of holding off an invasion.

McDonald's pushes tech out to is restaurants. The idea is to improve equipment maintenance and order accuracy. If you cannot pay for better employees, install computers to help them perform better. Of course there are many problems to come.

Real news that isn't news: in Brazil, a local court tells a successful American business how to run its business.

Here is an example feeding the fear, uncertainty, and doubt about AI. No, no one is as stupid as the headline claims. Well, I think they aren't that stupid. Let's wait and see.

I'll just quote the headline since I cannot read the article: Larry Page Has a New AI Startup

Broadcom reports a good financial quarter.

Strong rumors about Apple updating its modem processor.

DuckDuckGo updates its search engine with more AI. It will, however, allow users to specify how much AI is involved.

More exaggerated hyperbole about DOGE.

SpaceX has another spectacular failure on a Starship launch. Almost everything SpaceX does is spectacular in one way or another.

Meanwhile in the MacOS world, ChatGPT can directly edit software programs.

Meanwhile in the halls of Congress, Google is being brought in to discuss what the Biden administration told them about censorship and blocking the right or wrong YouTube videos etc. It won't look good on the folks who worked closely with our prior President.

And more from Congress, we have calls for Americans to remove the TPLink equipment from their homes.

Saturday 8 March 2025

Meanwhile in the rest of the world, 2G cellphone service still exists and will for years to come.

We have a different President now. The Dept of Justice is thinking about how to punish Google as part of the anti-trust case.

More anti-trust murmurings with these involving Amazon.

I find this odd. Companies are asking for help as they claim that Mr. Musk is forcing them to buy ads on X. What is this? The mafia or something?

Our current President holds the first Crypto Summit at the White House.

Strong rumors that Microsoft is developing its own AI systems and will one day use them instead of systems from OpenAI.

Meanwhile at the CIA, there is an encrypted message in a sculpture. Folks have tried for 35 years to decipher the message. This is part of the "nice to have" things at government agencies where money is spent for no mission-critical reason. "Oh, but it's art," say some. Well, then pay for it out of your own bank account and don't spend a penny of public funds on it.

So much for AI. An AI system at Reddit is labeling all mentioned of "Luigi" as possible violence. I checked and Luigi is a character in several hundred video games that are not violent. The new Ai is supposed to understand context and be better than this.

AMD announced that its latest Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D CPUs will be available next week. These are rated the best CPUs for gaming and content creation.

We have some confirmation that Gene Hackman and his wife both died of illness and not any foul play. It is still unusual that no one knew they had died for days.

Meanwhile on the moon, the lunar lander from Intuitive Machines fell onto its side shortly after touching down near the moon's south pole. This isn't easy folks.

Study shows that graduate students who have more resources do better. I hope they didn't spend much money on this study.

Meanwhile in Europe, EU regulators reminds US members of Congress that they have not picked on successful US companies any more than the Biden Administration did. Regulators everywhere gotta' regulate.

A new method called "chain of draft" enables large language models (LLMs) to solve problems with minimal words.

Here is the research paper on Chain of Draft.

Sunday 9 March 2025

And last night we lost an hour of sleep as we sprung forward our clocks to Daylight Savings Time. Only members of Congress and other illiterates would call the fewer period "Standard" and the standard period "Daylight Savings."

Meanwhile in Missouri, a Federal judge rules that the rulers of China owe Missouri $24Billion (with a B) for concealing information about COVID. I am not sure what to make of this theater as no one is going to pay anyone a penny. What was the use of all this taxpayer money being spent on a useless lawsuit?

Meanwhile in Japan, they have a shortage of people (where did they go wrong?). Hence, robots "serve" people at restaurants and homes and all that Jetson stuff.

Researchers show what we assumed for years: computer devices made in China allow the rulers of China to easily break into homes and businesses and all that. I am awaiting the left in America to scream about privacy. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

Guess what? No one watches your YouTube videos. Like most things, 1% of the videos claim 99% of the attention. The rest may be viewed by your mother, but that is all. This may come as a shock to those folks whose birth certificates claim them to be adults whose behavior indicates otherwise.

It appears that America is losing its butterflies. Perhaps we had an over abundance of them for a while, not sure.

I'll just quote this: Google has introduced a Debian Linux terminal app for Android in its ongoing effort to transform Android into a versatile desktop OS.