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: 16-22 June, 2025

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Israel and Iran are fighting via missile and drone attacks
• And America joins this air war

Monday 16 June 2025

This is what happens when you govern by executive order and regulatory agency. The next governor changes everything.

Next year is the 250th birthday of America. There will be some celebration. Donors are lining up to have their corporate sign on TV.

Give up a browser for a chatbot. How do you reach the chatbot? Oh, its own application.

This keyboard is priced at $3,6000 and it isn't gold plated or diamond encrusted. It just costs that much to make something of this quality.

AI now means Artificial Influencer. Yes, AI creates videos like influencers create videos.

Meanwhile in China, in a world needing fewer nuclear weapons, the Communist Party of China is building more.

Recent college graduates can't find a job. Go to government. They will hire you.

Someone grows up and learns that the grocery store is less expensive than the restaurant.

Big tech is turning against college. Produce. A 19-year-old can work very long hours and out produce a 29-year-old college educated married with children person. Oh well. Taking yet another history class in college doesn't help a producer much.

Do people want smart glasses. People may not, but people in specific occupations want augmented reality glasses. And if people go to those augmented people for service, they are happier with the service.

Of course universal return to office mandates are stupid. You would think the folks at Amazon knew better.

Now we have the Endof10 initiative in which Linux marketers are trying to pull users from the path of Windows 11 to Linux.

Here comes ai dot gov. It is supposed to be some type of AI accelerator to push government employees into AI.

Tuesday 17 June 2025

Our Dept of Defense awards a $200million contract to OpenAI for "OpenAI for Government." Let's see how this works.

Recent study shows that Americans turn to social media for news more than to traditional media. It is, as I have written before, society media. And folks turn away from written word to video.

Layoffs coming to Intel.

This year's Prime Day will be July 8 though 11. It is a four-day day ... or something like that.

The numbers are smaller than I expected, but the use of AI at work has doubled in the last two years.

This is a deep-thought piece (I highly recommend reading it) on innovation and discovery and how the current AI isn't going to change much of anything.

Life amid the datacenters of northern Virginia. Some datacenters are not good neighbors.

The ne'er-do-wells find yet another way to misbehave by embedding bad things in the Unsubscribe button.

Reports that our Navy has been changing acquisition the past couple of years to enable starup companies.

More vandalism in southern California as folks cut fiber optic lines. Easy target. Lots of costs. Lots of folks lose TV and Internet.

Wednesday 18 June 2025

According to regulators in California---folks who have never built anything in their lives---tell those who research, develop, and build that they just don't know anything about safety or anything else. Ah, the brilliant mind of the regulator.

More on the proposed ten-year ban on states regulating AI. I don't like the Feds overruling anything states do. The Interstate Commerce clause has gone too far. And I don't like 50 different sets of regulations, either.

While on the subject of local laws and regulations, the NAACP is suing one of Elon Musk's companies regarding the power sources for the big Memphis datacenter.

And more about local laws and regulations. Only the big, established companies have large enough staffs of lawyers to appear in all the individual courts.

The present and future of war with hacktivists groups participating. At one time, these were called mercenaries, but since these are teens in their grandparents' basement, we have to find another adjective.

The finances of these AI companies: see, e.g., xAI. When will profits arrive?

Remember WinTel (Microsoft and Intel)? Now we need a new word for Microsoft and AMD. I'll start with MicrosAMD. It is a start.

This is supposed to be some sort of first: according to Nielson (of Nielson rating fame), more streaming eyeballs than TV eyeballs for a full month.

The Pope takes on AI. We have yet seen how this will end and if the Pope has any influence in this area.

Three Chinese firms control more than 90% of mining rig market. To beat tariffs and other import restrictions, they are building factories in the U.S. Well, good. Americans work in these factories. Jobs.

How about a processor that burns 15,000 Watts? That is ten big blow dryers all at once. How do you keep the thing from burning down the house?

The folks at Amazon are far behind Nvidia in the AI processor marketplace, but doing pretty well for themselves.

Organizations run by states in the healthcare industry are caught selling residents' data to big tech.

Walmart recently bought Vizio (maker of TVs). Walmart intends to turn those smart TVs into shopping machines.

This research shows that vibe coding LLMs flop when given difficult programming problems.

Study shows that women don't understand AI as well as men. Given women don't have any innate intellectual shortcomings, I have to conclude this has something to do with yet another failure of the education system in America.

To protect itself from Israeli cyberattacks, the rulers of Iran simply turn off the incoming data lines.

Honda launched and landed a prototype reusable rocket as part of its plan to achieve suborbital spaceflight by 2029. Good for them. Let's spread the technology and make space travel more affordable and reliable.

This story must be important as it is all over the Internet. Some executive at Amazon says use of AI will reduce the number of jobs there.

In a world of digital stuff, I am happy to notice that Field Notes is doing quite well.

I always carry a Field Notes notebook when I travel.

What's in a name or an ad campaign? Folks complain about Microsoft's universal use of "Copilot." In this world, there are many more important things to concern ourselves.

The decline of the Firefox browser. I guess I am a die hard fan as I still use it.

Kim Jong Un sends fresh troops to Ukraine to replace those who have died.

And now we have the sneaker loafer shoe. Geriatric is one adjective. Call them slippers and be candid about it.

Thursday 19 June 2025

I like the comments of Harris Sockel in Pirate Wires concerning Wikipedia's failed attempt to use AI summaries of articles. People use ChatGPT more than Wikipedia. People are paying to use ChatGPT et al. instead of no-price Wikipedia. People have voted with their feet (eyes).

There seems to be much fuss about the idea that law enforcement agencies are arresting criminals. Perhaps there is more to this story than I understand.

And there is much fuss about law enforcement agencies in America cooperating with one another. Again, there must be more to this.

Quoting the headline, "How not to lose your job to AI"

When you don't know where you are going, any destination will do. Such is the goal of acheiving artificial general intelligence.

We are eyeballs are, YouTube shorts have 200Billion (with a B) daily views. This is a 186% increase in the last year.

Meanwhile at Microsoft, thousands of jobs to be cut real soon now.

Meanwhile at the big companies in America, jobs are disappearing.

Texas Instruments (good 'ol TI) announces plans to spend $60Billion on new manufacturing in the US.

Quoting, "Popular AI image generation service Midjourney has launched its first AI video generation model V1."

And at our Dept of State, interviews resume for student visas. On the agenda is, "Let's see your social media posts to learn if you have any I-hate-America stuff." This doesn't seem to be rocket science. If someone promises to burn American flags as soon as they set foot on the hallowed grounds of Harvard, uh, well, is that who we welcome?

Speaking of hallowed ground of premiere ($$$) US universities, at MIT researchers claim to have a way for LLMs to continuously learn.

And another MIT study shows that using ChatGPT reduces the amount of thinking a person does. That is the point. New tool, less work. Going from the manual typewriter to the word processor did the same. Civilization survived that one, too.

Want to know what happens at OpenAI? Read this online report.

SpaceX has a spectacular failure as a Starship explodes on the ground during a static test (not an intended launch). This goes to show how difficult all this is.

These crazy kids today... they want the office job to be like driving for Uber. You do it now and then when you feel like it. He managers. If you don't have something for people to do right now...find something. The kids aren't going to sit around and twiddle their thumbs.

Fear and loathing in Hollywood as what amounted to production quotas caused studios to make half-baked movies that flopped at the box office. If you want it real bad right now, you will get it real bad right now.

Friday 20 June 2025

OpenAI changes its pricing structure for ChatGPT for businesses. Now it has some sort of usage fees

How Mark Zuckerburg became a political conservative or was always a political conservative or something.

Times change, maybe. "The European Commission will opt not to impose immediate financial penalties on Apple and Meta."

The TikTok ban (remember that?) is extended again. I guess it will be extended again and again until someone figures out how to convince people it is okay.

The entire Internet financial system has changed. People search and read the AI summary. They do not click to read an original source. The original source does not have visitors and can no longer earn ad $$$ for all those visitor$.

Speaking of finance, someone bought the Los Angeles Lakers for $10Billion (yes, that a B). This resets the value of sports franchises. An NFL team is now going to cost $15Billion or $20Billion. The Washington Commanders just doubled in value.

The 20-something-year olds with degrees and jobs are still living with their parents. Why not? It is good for everyone. Why waste money on rent? I am serious. This is a good thing to do.

Our current President complains that we have too many non-working national holidays. He has a point. He is in a job where you work 365 days a year.

Amazon tells employees to relocate and come into the office or resign with no benefits.

Researchers at MIT find a way to refine crude oil using far less energy.

Someone record this prediction: if we don't cool down the planet by 2028, we are doomed.

Saturday 21 June 2025

Meanwhile in Canada, companies struggle to create a stable crypto currency.

The United Nations (remember them?) surveys the world and declares that China and poor countries trust AI more than others. Something about the culture.

Meanwhile in Houston, here come humanoid robots to a Foxconn factory.

Warfare in 2025: Israelis are asked to turn off their home webcams as the Iranians are spying on Israel using these cameras.

This is big news about big investment: the owner of SoftBank wants to spend a Trillion $$$ (with a Tr) to build a manufacturing center in Arizona. Of course he needs government to pitch in and unregulate and such.

Speaking of government helping business, lobbyist are trying to have Congress repeal a repeal of a tax benefit on deducting business and R&D expenses. This is another quiet but big deal for new companies and new tech and generally trying to create jobs.

Meta releases Oakley smart glasses. I guess the Ray-Bans were for old folks.

This is of interest to me and about three other people: semi-colon use drops 50% since 2000.

Meanwhile in Manhattan, enter the area in a car and pay $9 toll. This seems to be "working" for some people.

The ne'er-do-wells find yet another way to bother others.

Sunday 22 June 2025

There is much chatter online about Andrej Karpathy's talk on AI and programming saying that we are now in Software 3.0. One major point that he sort of lets slide is that we are now programming in English. That is one of the most difficult languages to learn. Few use it well.

Scraping into some of the higher-quality information we have on earth. And some see this as a bad thing.

And more scrounging for information. This time it is viewing what all the webcams and Ring doorbell cams are seeing.

In praise of the "expert generalist." This is a person who expertise is spanning fields and connecting significance. Sort of like synergy.

I like this. Scrappy: a tool to make it easier to make easier apps for family and friends---not the Enterprise.

America joins in the Israel-Iran air war.

There is a lot of deep thinking here. Emily Bender and the Stochastic Parrot. A stochastic parrot, she wrote, is a system for haphazardly stitching together sequences of linguistic forms it has observed in its vast training data, according to probabilistic information about how they combine, but without any reference to meaning. I like the term and understand what she and others are saying. Still, these stochastic parrots save a lot of time and typing.

The original stochastic parrot paper is here.

Meanwhile in China, more controls on the subjects by the rulers. Special note: this effort is about identity or "who are you?" Chinese culture on identity is vastly different from the west's culture.

A look at Adobe's Project Inidgo or how to use the super computer in the smartphone to merge photos into better photos.

Here is a blog post that goes into much greater detail. Amazing stuff! And I did a PhD in this stuff. The key has to do with the old phrase, "The camera you use is the one in your hand."

Studying the far reaches of space to learn something about the origin of the stars or something. I like science more than everyone. Still, this goes no where towards stopping WW III with nuclear weapons. It goes no where towards bashing in skulls in the streets. No where.

More new drugs to reduce weight. Again great stuff, but will it keep Iran and Israel from blowing up someone else?

Intel lays off employees and outsources their jobs.

Yet another wonder drug from stem cells. This one basically cures Type 1 diabetes. Still in trials.

And MIT researchers have a new drug for HIV. I have learned that a relative has immune system troubles, not HIV, but it is all about immunity. Something promising.