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.
In the UK, regulators create a sandbox to test new AI.
I'll just quote the headline, "This is how Microsoft is combining Windows and Xbox for handheld PCs" This seems to be a big deal for some.
Researchers at Apple show how AI systems today simply flop.
This is what happens when you issue an internal memo to the entire world. The context is lost and folks "misunderstand" (the proclaimer's words).
Is this a telephone or a really thin camera with a computer and a phone attached? Imaging in 1980 someone says, "We have a telephoto lense for your telephone."
Here is a "no duh" story: artists received $1,500 a month free cash so they could spend their time doing their art. They liked the program and wished it would continue. Well? Gosh.
"AI is a scam." There is much to that claim. The AI systems we have today write research papers. Well, that is just plain mimicry. When did mimicry become intelligence? It hasn't.
Some colleges are giving students AI tools.
Yet another "no duh" story: planting trees is a good thing.
The concept of a blueprint for a book.
I recommend reading this little piece from Seth Godin. "And yes, people are still making stuff up." And somehow, people have lost the ability to ... well, act like adults.
The Hierarchy of Editorial Concerns.
Complicating stories with complications. This isn't simple and straightforward.
....Apple held the keynote address for WWDC 2025 on Monday. Here is one summary of the day. All the operating systems are now on version 26.
Here are a few Apple announcements that caught my attention for one reason or another.
Quoting, "ChatGPT image generation is now available directly in Image Playground"
Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Waymo cars are being set on fire. There is perhaps nothing as stupid as setting fire to an electric car full of Lithium-Ion batteries. Few people in the US can extinguish one of those fires. Toxic fumes burn until all the batteries are gone. Stupid. Absolutely stupid.
One person's personal desktop. No mention of the price tag.
Disney buys part of Hulu in a deal that involves a lot of money and will shift around the entertainment industry in America. Though not worth as much as Apple et al., Disney owns a large portion of what we call entertainment.
Meanwhile at Meta, Mr. Zuckerberg is personally hiring a super team to build super intelligence.
OpenAI is hauling in the money. Not sure that it is profitable yet, but the money flow is growing.
Amazon to spend $20Billion in Pennsylvania for datacenters and such.
Meanwhile in China, the rulers turn off chatbots during college entrance exam season. Say would you will about AI and college and the like, but note how the rulers of China can turn off select parts of the Internet from its subjects. Censorship is alive and well in China.
.....Snap declares that it will try again and make a smaller pair of augmented reality glasses next year.
OpenAI has yet another new model. This one is called o3-pro. There are many stories about it today.
GitLab reports a good financial quarter.
Nintendo released the Switch 2 system to record-breaking sales.
There is a big push to increase Nvidia's American manufacturing capability.
Mr. Musk regrets some of his tweets about Mr. Trump and seeks to half-heartedly apologize.
Apple brings its Journal app to the Mac and iPad.
Logitech has a new iPad case with a better wireless keyboard.
Code dot org updates it curriculum with more Python and AI.
.....The Browser Company shows a new browser for the Mac with all sorts of AI built in everywhere.
Meanwhile over at Wikipedia, angst continues over the use of AI and writing.
Nvidia announces a major move into Europe with an "industrial AI cloud."
Here is a tip for adults: take care with what you see on the Internet. AI slop is now everywhere. So I revert to what I was told as a teenage, "Don't believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see."
Databricks that annual revenue is on track to grow 50% over last year.
TSMC opens a lab at the University of Tokyo.
Fairness in AI and other software tools. Who is likely to commit fraud? If someone takes a software-produced answer without further checks, well that is just plain stupid. And AI cannot fix just plain stupid.
Federalism versus states' rights rears it head over AI regulation. The Federal government has claimed more and more authority given the ability regulate interstate commerce given by the Constitution. Federal courts have backed all this expansion. Well, we are reaping what we have sowed.
This man admits to living in the US illegally for 20 years. He and he US citizen wife move to Mexico. Sigh. The man admits to being an international criminal. Sure, he is a good guy. He works hard and runs his own business. Sigh. Couldn't he find a way to become legal in 20 years?
The world's largest digital camera connects to a telescope in Chile.
Apple creates a new container system to run on macOS. Bye bye Docker.
US airlines are selling records of who flies where and when etc. to the US government.
.....Google has another weather-predicting model. An obvious use for AI.
Mattel teams with OpenAI to make, what else?, AI-infused toys.
There appears to have been a big outage with cloud services yesterday.
Crusoe to build a US datacenter with $400million of AMD processors.
Actors and video game companies agree to be nice to one another.
Meanwhile in this year's LA riots, looters loot the Apple Tower Theatre store. Looters loot, that is what the name implies. Once again, this isn't about policy. It is simply about theft.
Meta buys into Scale AI for $14Billion (with a B).
Freedom of speech and available, no-cost communications enable warnings of law enforcement raids. The man versus the machine or simply crooks cheating the system. Whichever...it is reality.
Meanwhile in Ukraine, shoot down a Russian drone any which way you can and receive a $2,400 bounty.
Back to the 1980s as Israel raids and bombs Iran's nuclear facilities (it was Iraq in the 80s).
Horrific airline crash in India.
Meanwhile in Japan, the population continues to decline. This is alarming. What happened there?
.....Some AI experts from big tech are joining a new innovation unit in the Army reserves.
Amazon tries to move into the healthcare market.
Oracle has a good financial week.
Famous American libraries that have scanned their buildings full of books are now sharing those digital files with AI companies. Better to train on actual scholarship and literature than teenage Facebook posts.
Waymo pulls some of its cars off the streets. For some reason, rioters decided that the best way to change foreign policy was to burn Waymo cars. No one ever gave rioters much credit for brain power and reasoning.
The Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) publishes its first UEC 1.0 specification.
Testing at Google, a search results in a podcast about the topic. Well, it might be useful.
Google adds automatic summary of PDFs when they are loaded.
USMC deploys to Los Angeles. I don't like seeing Federal troops on American streets. And I don't like "peaceful protestors" destroying public property. Stop that.
Oops, we don't have enough power cables.
.....Brian Wilson died this past week. He was the genius behind The Beach Boys. He thought in five-part harmony or something more. The studio musicians who worked with him are on record as calling him a genius. And they were true professionals. Wilson had many mental problems in his life, but he worked through them. He lived to be 82, which is a great surprise. He suffered from dementia the last few years of his life. I know well what that is like. Still, a genius. Good Vibrations Brian.
One clever way to work around import-export restrictions. Chinese engineers carry all their data to a country where there are Nvidia super processors. Run the programs in that place. Carry the results back home. Suitcases full of disk drives.
Researchers at Oxford test LLMs and their ability to diagnose illnesses. Weird results.
Amazon says it will build a $13Billion datacenter in Australia.
It appears that some of these LLMs spit out large pieces of copyrighted materials word for word. This triggers some legal issues among those folks with stake$ in the game.
Anthropic's Claude now has research capabilities like Google and OpenAI (and, no doubt, others).
I've been asking for this for years or joking about it one way or another. A computer occupying only two dimensions (absolutely flat). Well this one is supposed to be only one atom thick.
.....