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 April, 2025

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Pope Francis dies at 88
• More updates to all the AI systems

Monday 21 April 2025

This is new to me, but could prove quite useful as a writer.

Fascinating to me: computer vision.

Quoting the headline, "$8 billion of US climate tech projects have been canceled so far in 2025" Times change.

Quoting, "A Minecraft Movie is also the latest sign that Hollywood has finally cracked the formula for translating video games into successful films." This little movie is now a cult classic and has burst the cinema. Hollywood dramas? What?

This is what we should be doing with all this technology: turning brainwaves into speech for those who have lost the ability to speak.

And here is more of what we should be doing with all this technology. These help blind folks feel the action in sports.

I like this piece. AI as normal technology. These chattering bots have changed things since ChatGPT fell from the sky in late 2022. The word processor changed things. The laser printer plus word processor yielded desktop publishing. WOW! That was a big change. That is normal technology. Today's commercial AI products are the same. Big change, but nothing that will create or destroy the universe.

Here is another thoughtful piece on the current commercial "AI" systems. Let's all settle down, take a breath, and move forward like adults. We don't agree on any definitions. I guess this goes back to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. If we don't know where we are going, any destination will do (or something like that).

Pope Francis has died at age 88.

Someone has Llama 2 model running on a DOS machine. Someone has a lot of time on their hands. Someone is pretty darn smart.

Finally, someone takes a candid look at the college entrance essay and all its ... well, all its ridiculous and obvious problems.

Some folks who self-identify as neurodivergent hate the return to the office movement. Sigh. I guess for some folks there is something to this. Sigh.

The idea of trust your instinct in writing and reviewing.

Thoughts for fiction writers on writing non-fiction.

Short of ideas? Look at the news. Extend it five years into the future. Wild guesses, but a new world in which to write stories.

"We've adopted the mindset of Too Busy To Learn."---Seth Godin

Yet more changes in self publishing. I have not experienced difficulties.

Thoughts on everything you might do before publishing a non-fiction book. It's more marketing today.

This subtitle summarizes this piece: How to stay grounded in the face of heroic individualism. Just say "no." Often say "no" to yourself. Pick one thing and do that for a while. Repeat the experiment.

Tuesday 22 April 2025

International students are having their student visas revoked --- some by mistake. This is all bad. If nothing else, it shows how poorly the Federal government keeps records and how poorly Federal employees conduct investigations. Hire good, smart people. Rather, the Federal government needs to start hiring good, smart people.

A review of Microsoft's recent re-release of Recall. MS is doing better, not there yet, but much closer.

Meanwhile at Columbia University, a couple of students take the "cheat at everything" tool into a company called Cluely with million$$$ of venture capital funds.

This article from Wired discusses buying refurbished goods. They don't sell the article as saving money but somehow saving the environment. I didn't read the entire article, but I sure climate change and COVID are in their, too.

Commentary on the Google search anti-trust case. Lawyers at our Dept of Justice seem to know how to run businesses. Funny, none of them have ever run a successful business.

It appears that global sales of alcoholic beverages peaked in 2016 and is fallen since. Global sales of wine, for example, peaked way back in 1979. I find this to be good news as alcohol, once necessary for medical purposes but no longer the case, merely kills brain cells.

Another instance of a government agency creating firewalls to hide incompetence. Nothing new here.

Evidence that many scientific journals are becoming no more than pulp novels. "Follow the science" takes on a new meaning.

Quoting, "Western Digital announced that it has created a large-scale hard disk drive recycling program." I find this to be good and long overdue.

Times change: Microsoft introduces strict performance rules for employees. Up or out or something like that.

Saying goodbye to Skype and how it influenced folks in the rest of world.

It appears that much of the AI training and AI faking is occurring in Africa.

Wednesday 23 April 2025

Real news that isn't news: European regulators fine successful American companies hundreds of million$$$. These are not officially tariffs, but the cost of American companies doing business in Europe.

Some folks at MIT make the case for keeping AM radio. I agree.

Survey says: parents worry about how social media affects their teens. Teens just blow it off. It's a big nothing.

Everybody wants to buy GPUs. The managers at Amazon worked harder and smarter and found a way to buy what they needed. This has plagued the Federal employment sector for decades---the inability to work harder and smarter. Times change. Perhaps something good will come of all this DOGE etc. stuff.

Wars and rumors of wars (tariffs) cause a quick upturn in worldwide PC shipments.

Jeff Bezos' Washington Post partners with OpenAI to make its reporting easier to find. OpenAI has such agreements with a couple dozen news sources already. Let's hope Mr. Bezos push the Post into more news reporting and less editorial.

Instagram launches a video-editing app called Edits.

Big job cuts coming to Intel. They will cut 20% of the staff.

This is real news that is about 50 years late: AI outperforms many people in chemistry and medicine. This was true of the basic Expert Systems of the 1980s. Fear of legal action kept those systems in labs. Folks don't seem to fear the "computer is down" like we used to.

A two-person company called Nari Labs releases a text-to-speech app called Dia. What fascinates me is that the two guys claim zero funding. They used open-source software and no-cost research hardware from Google to do all the work. This is all based on what Google's NotebookLM did last year with its podcast feature. Amazing stuff: we have so many smart folks with access to inexpensive technology that we can do amazing things. Come on US Federal workers. Get it in gear! Come on US Federal and state regulators. Get out of the way.

I highly recommend reading Mike Solana's piece on building things in America. Yes, Disney et al. made mistakes in what they did, but they built. Such building is prevented in America by well-meaning Americans. Let's do something again.

Elon Musk will shift from DOGE to Tesla next week.

I learn about Coast FIRE retirement strategy. This is supposed to be new, but it is an old, old idea.

Meanwhile in Canada, a national election is coming and AI-written "books" are flooding Amazon.

Walmart switches from zip codes to a new mapping system to speed up its deliveries.

Quoting, "Offices nationwide are ditching harsh fluorescent lighting in favor of advanced systems designed to improve cognitive function and entice remote workers back to physical workplaces." I like this idea.

Thursday 24 April 2025

Big tech pours money into trees in Brazil. This gives them carbon credits. What foolishness!

Someone has a firm grasp on economic reality and the candor to say what is happening as European regulators fine American companies because they can.

More executive orders from our current President. These involve AI in education (among other things).

Per a Microsoft study, Frontier Firms push the boundaries and use digital workers, I guess that means software instead of humans. The goal is more productivity per dollar spent. Federal workers, please take note. Stop regulating yourselves out of jobs.

Microsoft announces 365 Copilot Wave 2 Spring release. More AI to do work. This sounds just like "low code no code" from three years ago.

It appears that Cluely's product (cheat on everything) is nothing more than a prototype from the lab. This is the bane of AI systems today. A grad student did a project and someone in marketing pushed the prototype out to consumers without any engineering. Perhaps this works sometimes.

Adobe updates its image generators.

Apple, trying to convince folks that it hasn't fallen behind in AI, releases research papers and demos.

Quoting, "Nvidia Corp. today announced the general availability of NeMo microservices, a set of tools designed to assist developers get artificial intelligence agents up faster by tapping into AI inference and information systems at scale."

Where the money is: online scams of $16.6Billion (with a B) last year per FBI report.

The Meta and Ray-Ban smart glasses now do live translations.

Google gets serious with return to the office mandates.

It appears that we all have microplastics in our arteries. Those with more than average have strokes.

Friday 25 April 2025

Uber and Volkswagon partner to have a fleet of self-driving taxis using VW's electric van.

The Apple Watch is now ten years old.

Motorola shows three new Razr smartphones.

American regulators are easing regulations on driverless cars. Good. Cut the red tape (does anyone use that expression any more?).

Alphabet reports a good financial quarter. They are printing money. Let's see if the regulators break up and doom this successful company that creates jobs.

A big boost for Alphabet is rising ad revenue on YouTube.

Ziff Davis publishing sues OpenAI for using its content without permission.

The managers at Intel are trying to whip into shape the organization. One move requires people to come to the office four days a week. We are reeling from COVID hangover in white-collar jobs.

Apple is succeeding in its move from manufacturing in China to India. With the Wuhan virus, China proved that it is an unreliable business partner.

OpenAI is catching up with demand and moves its deep research tool to more users.

Want to buy a Nintendo Switch 2? Good luck.

Will this work in America? This is a $20,000 plain jane electric pickup truck. This is like the VolksWagen or people's car or the Model T Ford. Basic vehicle at an affordable price. I hope it works.

I like this approach to critics: who? what? did someone say something? I'm working, let's go forward.

This is another report on what is happening at Intel. Come on folks. Focus on what we are supposed to do and let's do that. This is the same message being hurled at Federal employees by our current President. Of course politics gets in the way, but come on folks, focus on the job at hand.

Software costs move from per-seat licenses to per-use.

Let's have AI rewrite all that old COBOL code. Proceed with caution.

Young men are not going to college. Women are the majority on campus now. One way to look at this is, college campuses are where the girls are.

Further proof that garbage in results in garbage out. Come on folks, let's test these things.

Oops! Did I say something about testing? Come on folks.

Microsoft makes it easier to use PyTorch on Arm-based machines.

Saturday 26 April 2025

Microsoft puts Recall out for all Copilot + PCs. Far more important is the release of AI tools that are much better at finding files on the PC system.

It appears that Microsoft is struggling to attract users to Copilot while ChatGPT is rolling further ahead in the market.

OpenAI pushes more deep research tools to non-paying users.

Meanwhile in China, the governors show they aren't completely stupid as they have no tariffs on imports of really important semiconductors.

AI capabilities come to the space station thanks to HPE, Nvidia, Meta, and Booz Allen Hamilton.

Legal stuff as the Wikimedia Foundation is accused of activities that would remove its tax-exempt status.

The business of International Business Machines is improving with AI offerings.

Even judges are supposed to obey the law.

I suppose this solves a needful problem, but... a self-propelled zipper.

More news on the Slate Auto plain jane pickup truck. Maybe this will be available next year.

Just quoting the headline, "GPU prices are out of control again: Nvidia and AMD GPUs: so much for MSRP!"

Not all is rosy in the AI business as Intel struggles to sell its AI chips.

Us 60-something Americans are returning to jobs that pay something but not much.

The prices for elite colleges are simply out of control. Get real folks.

Sunday 27 April 2025

When the lawyers collide with the engineers, ouch. Google's Chrome browser (the judge says have another company run it) is too tightly coupled and dependent to pull away from the rest of Google. Does anyone still use the concept of loosely coupled and independent modules? We should.

One of OpenAI's latest models will attempt to geolocate the objects in an image. Here is a test. I have used it with pretty good results.

Before the ink was dry on Prompt Engineering 101 textbooks, the job was overcome by technology.

Meanwhile in the far east (where most of the folks on earth live), India falls behind China in "tech innovation" (whatever that is).

Someone in our current President's administration has a firm grasp on the obvious as European regulators continue to extract $$$ from succse$$ful American companies.

DOGE readies for round 2.0 of reducing the Federal workforce. Act fast, break things, learn, repeat. DOGE is about to repeat. This time there will be fewer lawsuits (sorry lawyers). This is not new. The message to Federal agency heads is simple: focus on the mission and only keep the folks who are essential to that.

Someone in the US Army got the message (see above). Focus.

And more on Slate Auto and their low-cost, simple electric pickup truck.

TSMC continues to shrink and looks to a 1.4nm technology in a couple of years.