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: 10-16 March, 2025

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• And there is the possibility of a cease fire
• And we have tariffs here, there, and everywhere
• Google and OpenAI offer AI recommendations to US government
• No one agrees on what an AI agent is
• DOGE continues to cut government
• DOGE continues to fuel growth in Federal courts (lawsuits)

Monday 10 March 2025

In the two+ years since ChatGPT fell on us, everything and everyone is AI. Perhaps if I changed my name from Dwayne to DwAIne. Just a thought. And for old timers, companies don't want AI experience, they want experience in about 1% of AI.

Yes, ne'er-do-wells use freedom of speech and technology to spread hate and murder. This is real news that is not news.

I love this headline: Hugging Face's chief science officer worries AI is becoming yes-men on servers

Wikipedia's editors proclaim, "Woe is us," as they try to write about wars and rumors of wars.

Meanwhile in China, folks have a new system called Manus and they proclaim that it is a revolutionary AI agent capable of independent thought and action. There are many mistakes in the argument---too many to list here.

I like this from Seth Godin, "Hiring an AI to work for you and getting very good at producing value feels like the future for most programmers, creators, business development folks and marketers."

Meanwhile in Texas, deregulation has made Austin the robotaxi innovation capital. Way to go California regulators!

Meanwhile in Asia, we have the old-fashioned human trafficking groups holding some 300,000 duped people in what are basically slave-labor camps.

Using all the senses to help write. Touch, taste, smell, etc.

I love the title of this post: This Memoir Could Have Been an Email: Telling Your Story With Different Forms of Communication

Here is a focus on the main character in a work of fiction.

The idea of the flow state. Odd how dentists never get in the flow state. They just show up for work and do it.

Thoughts on characters and perspective. How do I know what a character thinks and feels?

Tuesday 11 March 2025

Global smartwatch sales fell in 2024 for the first time. Has the market saturated?

Leaders at Lego promise to make more moves into the video game market.

Estimates that China is far ahead of everyone in robotics for manufacturing. I recall that several decades ago Japan occupied a similar position and was to take over the world with such. That prediction was wrong.

A counter to the above is this piece about the greatly increased use of robotics at Amazon warehouses.

Stronger rumors about Meta building its own AI processors.

Journalists study eight AI search engines and find that the search engines give the wrong references 60% of the time when citing news stories.

US stock markets are falling as the "magnificent seven" tech companies all lose value.

An in-depth consideration of the new technology that will power spinning disk drives for the next ten years. Spinning disk drives were predicted to go away 20 years ago. Yet another prediction that was wrong.

Engadget reviews the updated Apple iPad Air. These things work and work well.

Some folks don't like Elon Musk and his work at DOGE. They are responding with violence at Tesla dealers. There is evidence that protestors are paid by rich folks who have disagreed with Musk for a long time.

And we have the case of Mahmoud Khalil. He is a student at Columbia University in the US with a Green Card visa. He was involved in anti-Israel protests. This is a deep case with much discussion. We shall see how it resolves.

Data centers are popping up everywhere. How many jobs do they create? People disagree on that one.

Wednesday 12 March 2025

oops, Microsoft finds that malware was downloaded from its GitHub and that bad-ware infected a million devices or some other large number.

Wikipedia does a bad job of showing what celebrities look like. The photos are often just plain hideous. Some photographs are trying to update them.

Meanwhile in New Zealand, a public health agency attempts in vain to run its $16Billion annual budget on a single Excel spreadsheet.

NASA cuts a bunch of policy positions. Policy is nive---well beloved by some policy wonks---but not critical to the mission.

Meanwhile in Estonia, new tech companies chase the war dollar by building drones.

Waymo expands its robotaxi service in Silicon Valley.

Now in the age of AI hype, Alexa and Siri et al. just aren't important any longer.

Meanwhile in the IC-making world, TSMC is trying to partner with just about everyone else to run the Intel foundries.

OpenAI pushes more into agent AI. I wish someone would explain what agent AI is. It is the new word you must use in all products and job listings.

Sam Altman claims OpenAi has a new model that writes short stories for us. Again, folks want models that clean the kitchen so folks can write short stories.

Google updates its Gemma models and claims they run well on less-powerful hardware.

MIT Technology Review tests the newest wonderful AI app from China called Manus. It performs about as well as an unpaid intern. I guess that is something.

Here is an in-depth review of the $8,000 version of Apple's Mac Studio (M3 Ultra). Yes, this is a super duper computer in a little package.

Meanwhile a little less expensive and for practical home cleaning, iRobot updates its entire line of Roomba vacuum cleaners.

Thursday 13 March 2025

No Internet viewing as this was a travel day with a sick wife.

Friday 14 March 2025

Big job loses in the computer programming industry in the last couple of years.

Here is OpenAI's 15-page of proposals to the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

OpenAI recommends less regulation on AI research and systems.

OpenAI also asks for relief from State regulations (50 sets of them) in exchange for cooperation with the Federal government, which would have one regulator if all goes well, but a myriad of regulators otherwise.

Quoting: OpenAI describes Chinese AI lab DeepSeek as state-subsidized and state-controlled, and recommends that the U.S. government consider banning models from the outfit and similar People's Republic of China (PRC)-supported operations.

Trying to catch up with Google, Apple plans to have a live translation of conversations on their airpods.

Like OpenAI above, here is Google's Response to the National Science Foundation's and Office of Science & Technology Policy's Request for Information on the Development of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Plan.

Google proposes weaker copyright protections in training as well as less export controls. They are a for-profit company. These proposals are in their favor. This is not news.

Nvidia continues its tradition of naming generations of GPUs after women scientists.

Microsoft launches CoPilot for Gaming. This is the ultimate in "cheat codes" where the gamer has a virtually live coach.

Oracle has emerged as the leader in the race to run the US version of TikTok.

Meanwhile in Europe, they completely missed the Internet (remember that?). Several generations later, they try to jump into AI and have at least a chance of competing with the US and China.

The crypto market has collapsed since the start of 2025.

Meanwhile in France, Meta is being sued by French publishers over training data. Meta stands a pretty good chance of losing in French courts.

I am surprised to read that the FTC under President Trump is moving ahead with an anti-trust investigation into Microsoft. Didn't this trust busting case end 30 years ago? Isn't it someone else's turn?

SnapChat brings AI-generated videos to its Lenses.

Quoting, "Google DeepMind is launching two new AI models designed to help robots perform a wider range of real-world tasks than ever before."

Saturday 15 March 2025

A look at the Apple Mac Studio featuring the M3 Ultra. High praises here for an AI workstation.

Meanwhile in China, the Communist Party leaders are optimistic given recent AI successes.

A former employee of Meta writes a kiss-and-tell book. The book is not yet available, but folks are already screaming which is only free publicity for a book that would otherwise be unnoticed and soon forgotten.

These movie directors are building a system to help others make movies using AI. I think this is smart. Stop ignoring and opposing new technology. Adopt it, use it, produce entertainment. Once films were in black and white and had no sound. New times; new technology.

Again, times change. Our new NIST eliminates AI safety and fairness from AI. Instead, reduce ideological bias. The current wave of AI (supervised learning) depends on people, and people are biased.

Oh my gosh: we have new media instead of the legacy media. The right wing is dominating the new while the left is left with the old.

With a new political party in control, big tech has to talk about what the prior President did with censorship and the definition of subjective terms.

Our FCC chairman wants to know if YouTube TV discriminates against faith-based programming.

Meanwhile in Russia and parts connected, they find yet another easy way around old sanctions for the war in Ukraine.

A new-energy think tank proclaims that power generated by solar and wind (combined) exceed that from coal in 2024 in the US. No mention how much power generated by coal was used to produce the machines of solar and wind energy.

Looking back at a look back at MS Windows 1.0. I used it to finish my dissertation. Bad times and bad memories, but I pushed through it.

Sunday 16 March 2025

Now we have meta hype (hyperbole about the hyperbole) about China's AI systems.

Google has figured out that some folks cheat during interviews conducted on ZoomerTeams meetings. They may even resort to "you come to our office for the interview in person." Oh my gosh, they want to sit across the table and stare into the eyes etc.

Where the money is: the big population. AI companies are trying their best to make AI systems that run on the average home PC. The market is huge and billion$$$ are available for the kitchen PC and $10 a month.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I would listed intently to Voice of America. Times change.

Thoughts on AI systems reading EVERYTHING on the Internet. Times change. Wikipedia hurt (really hurt) the market for non-fiction books that taught people how to do things. Now AI is hurting Wikipedia et al. Yes, Times change, and some of us don't like it.

What is an AI Agent? That depends on which marketing department tells you about their product.

Gen Z and rejection. Yes, the panic from COVID hurt a large group of Americans. Those in power (Fauci) were wrong and they weren't the ones hurt.

Quoting, "Germany's foreign intelligence service in 2020 put at 80%-90% the likelihood that the coronavirus behind the COVID-19 pandemic was accidentally released from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology" And the Communist Party of China remains silent. War reparations?

Intel has yet another new CEO.

Customers are spending less time in restaurants. This means more profit per unit of time.

US schools are using AI to monitor students when they are at home. Who thought this would be a good idea? Who gave permission?

There are charities that refurbish old PCs and give them to people who cannot afford to buy them. It hurts when Microsoft drops support for Windows 10. Surely they could make exceptions? Please. Microsoft has the money to afford this.

The rulers of China (CPC) find new censorship tools in AI.

I have seen this story in several places, so I tend to believe it. It is so stupid that it is almost unbelievable, but some folks... There is to be a climate summit in Brazil. To facilitate the attendees transportation, they felled thousands of acres of rainforest to build roads. Internal combustion engines did all the work and transportation. Surely climate change people are NOT this STUPID! Right? Wrong.