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: 28 July - 3 August 2025

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Off again and back in the news again is the Israel-Gaza conflict
• New features for ChatGPT and NotebookLM, useful
• Microsoft hits the $4Trillion value

Monday 28 July 2025

Note about the Israel-Gaza conflict. There is a crisis there as people are starving. Yet Hamas or someone doesn't want to release hostages and end the starvation. It is the attitude that some people really aren't people. They are just stuff to be sacrificed to make some point. This is horrible.

Do you have trouble relating to other people in social environments? A real-time chattering bot to the rescue. This is Cyrano de Bergerac in tech.

Forget that poster vision board. Use AI to make a video of the life you want. Well, I suppose this is a tech solution to a problem some people have.

The English Premier League, the NFL of Europe and more, signs deals with Adobe and Microsoft for AI and such to sell to fans. Rolling in the $$$.

Quoting the Washington Post (well, it is a Monday), "The buzz around AI is reenergizing San Francisco, one of the slowest U.S. cities to recover from the pandemic."

Meanwhile in the UK, age verification is turned on. Simple little things easily defeat it.

Back-to-school shopping guide. Converse All-Star shoes? Huh?

The Russian economy is now one great big military industry. Can they ever switch back to some peace time economy?

After all the hyperventilating, the US and Europe have a nice trade tariff deal. Negotiations.

Maybe movie theaters have recovered from the PAN(dem)IC.

A basic idea in fiction: tell the reader where the characters are and when they are. This is a good idea, unless of course, you want to surprise the reader and make them think, "Oh, what happened? That's a surprise!"

I like this post: techniques for developing ideas.

About to write a novel? "How do you know which activities and approaches will make the best use of your time as you pursue your goal to write a novel readers will enjoy?"

Want to write as part of a team? Read this piece.

Purple prose: Writing so ornate, flowery, or dramatic that it calls attention to itself and gets in the way of the story.

Tuesday 29 July 2025

Yet another AI company claims it won a medal at the math olympics. I guess I didn't compete or such.

The smartphone market is basically saturated in the US. It isn't static like the old landline system where people would buy a telephone and use it 20 years. But with smartphones, we are holding onto the devices 5 or more years now. Population growth, more than anything else, drives up the sales.

Microsoft releases Copilot mode for its Edge browser. It is free for a limited time. Try it while you can.

Meanwhile in China, everyone in college (EVERYONE) is using AI tools all the time. Go, go, and go. This fits the Chinese culture and thought of what westerners would call "copying."

EssilorLuxottica, which makes and sells the world's sunglasses including RayBan, reports a good financial quarter.

Nvidia makes (asks TSMC to make) several hundred thousand more advanced processor to sell to China.

Meanwhile in the UK, more news about the folly of verifying age online. Predictable and predicted.

Musings on the Perl programming language. I used to like it as a higher-level language for systems. It became the duct tape of the Internet. Then they delved into object-oriented Perl and its syntax became an awful mess.

And musings about these chattering bots that have no context to what they produce.

Quoting, "Flights across Russia have been grounded after a cyberattack hit the country's largest airline, Aeroflot"

The government of Norway has a lot of money in the bank. Have the citizens become fat, dumb, and happy? Possibly.

Tesla signs a $16.5Billion (with a B) deal with Samsung for semiconductors.

A few ways to reduce dementia. Try to stay all-around healthy by being active physically and mentally. Nothing new here, but some reinforcement to the advice.

Wednesday 30 July 2025

On this day in 1983, Miss Karen Bundy married me.

Meanwhile in Italy, regulators gotta' regulate, especially when the target is an American company with lots of money.

Meanwhile in Russia, if you are embargoed, you develop your own goods and services. Predictable and predicted.

Google to sign EU's AI Code of Practice.

I don't understand this. Charging a fee based on a patent's value? This is a tax on invention. What?

Fear and loathing in the office as everyone is looking over their shoulder for the layoff person. Threatened by AI and efficiency and productivity...well, good grief.

Google releases more AI capabilities to everyone at the typical Google charge: $0.

AI poaching: why is my electric bill so high?

AI poaching: Apple loses another researcher to Meta.

AI poaching: no one at Thinking Machines Lab moved over to Meta.

AI poaching: Mr. Zuckerburg lost faith in the AI division at Meta. So he turned everything upside down.

No duh on this one. Create a little unit that has its own rules and can innovate unencumbered. Done many times before at many places.

ChatGPT has a new study mode for students and other learners.

Meanwhile in America, not many of us adults are using AI. I guess I am ahead of my time or just plain lazier than most folks.

Meta wants job candidates to use AI during interviews. Show me how you can use tools. I was once asked in a job interview as a EE PhD, "Can you type?" Tools and using tools.

Meanwhile in America in the 2020s, we have a new kind of anti-hero who is smart and from Lincoln, Nebraska.

Apple to open a Manufacturing Academy in Detroit. Good.

Video overview comes to Google's NotebookLM.

There is a trend to stop calling researchers in companies "researchers."

Our current President wants a new baby boom in America. I'm for it.

Linx kernel 6.16 is released.

Thursday 31 July 2025

Meanwhile in Wyoming, datacenters will soon consume more electricity than people. What about the TV series filmed out there?

The Sig Sauer P320 has a reputation for firing without pulling the trigger. Firearms experts disagree with that statement. Some, however, are fiddling around with the handgun enough to make it fire in unusual circumstances.

Fear and loathing at "Tea," not the drink but a women's dating safety app (not sure what that is). Anyways, in the past two weeks this story appears all over the Internet, so it must be important.

The new Tesla Diner in Los Angeles is quite impressive. It isn't if you live in an apartment next door.

Our Government Accountability Office finds use of generative AI is growing rapidly in our Federal agencies. I doubt the findings as most agencies fudge the numbers to obtain more money.

Meanwhile in Vietnam, US trade restrictions on China mean big orders for semiconductors made in Vietnam.

Someone fed millions of publicly-available panoramas from Google Street View of New York City into a computer program that transcribes text within the images. The result teaches someone something about New York City. Someone has a lot of time on their hands.

Quoting, "Weapons-tech firm Anduril has launched a charm offensive within UK government, winning supporters and big contracts"

Meanwhile in the EU, xAI pledges to sign part of the AI Code, but not all of it. Can you do that?

In a double reversal of fortune or something, Chinese administrators now fear that Nvidia processors will "phone home" and tell the American spy agencies what is up.

Give us more datacenters that consume all the electricity so we can use brute force methods in search of applications from AI research. Well, it sounded good when we started. And the special processors for AI consume far more power than the old fashioned plain jane CPUs.

Speaking of power-hungry datacenters, OpenAI to build one in Norway.

Google's DeepMind makes a big advance in combining various datasets to build the most detailed maps of our planet.

Microsoft joins Nvidia with a market value topping $4Trillion (with a Tr). And yet they have the enigma of layoffs. Hmm.

The Microsoft boost comes after reporting a better-than-expected financial quarter.

And Microsoft will invest about $30Billion in stuff, not in salaries for people. Buying stuff does provide jobs for other people, but not Microsoft's own employees.

Robinhood reports a good financial quarter.

"Act your age" takes on a new meaning as Google brings machine learning based estimates to a user's age. Gosh. How old do I seem. Well, I have written things that referred back to the 1980s, so that is probably a tip off. A 13-year-old, however, can write about the 1980s to be verified as over 18. No end to this.

Mr. Zuckerburg predicts the time when we have actually useful augmented reality glasses. I've been waiting for 40 years on this one.

Reports of our Intelligence Community lobbying to allow the HPE-Juniper network technology merger to combat Chinese national efforts.

Friday 1 August 2025

Google moves into the high end of these chattering bots with a $250-per-month model and service.

Meanwhile in China, the food delivery giants bow to the regulation of the Communist Party.

Nintendo, riding on the sales of the Switch 2, reports a huge financial quarter.

Neuralink will try a brain implant in the UK for the first time.

Apple claims to be investing heavily into AI work.

More Apple news, they claim to have sold 3Billion (with a B) iPhones since 2007.

Apple reports yet another good financial quarter.

The New York Times discovers that companies are paying REALLY BIG salaries for AI talent.

Russian hackers exploit American embassies. Those Russians know how to spot easy prey.

Meanwhile in the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority, what a clever name for a group of regulators whose job is to extract money from successful American companies, finds that Microsoft is ripe for the picking of million$.

TEXT

GPT-5 is in sight. Microsoft, lest we not forget a heavy investor in OpenAI, is ready to put that model into its Copilot.

An academic researcher says that AI is showing how broken the education system is. People have been saying this for many years. AI quickly blitzing through homework assignments makes that obvious.

Microsoft is making $2Billion a week IN PROFITS. Yet, the Chief Financial Officer says it's time for employees to "be intense." Well, I guess there is a point here. I'm not sure what it is, but sometimes it's okay to pat the employees on the back and say, "Nice job, folks."

A microphone works when sound waves cause a membrane to vibrate. Researchers, this is just in the lab at this time, have a technique to point a laser at a piece of paper etc. and catch it vibrating. Thus, a visual microphone.

The self-hosted cloud works and is a lot of work. This engineer, who spent all the time doing foolish things so the rest of us won't do foolish things (Jerry Pournelle used to write that), wants co-operatives et al. to do clouds that are completely encrypted instead of Google et al.

Saturday 2 August 2025

Well this is politics. Our current President imposes trade tariffs and then excludes $100Billion in imports from tariffs. Negotiation. Negotiation. And the public doesn't have the information of what is really happening as the legacy journalists don't do their jobs.

Microsoft is slowing on its datacenter construction. Perhaps everyone over built.

The EU has a voluntary AI Code of Practice. All the American companies signed it. None of the Chinese companies signed it. Get a clue here folks.

Roblox, it hosts video games, saw a 41% year-over-year increase in users.

Tim Cook gathers all of Apple together (well, sort of) to talk about AI.

Even with the slowdown, big tech is spending big money ($344Billion with a B) this year on datacenters etc.

A jury finds Tesla liable for a deadly accident that occurred way back in 2019. $243Million at stake. I am surprised to see this story all over the Internet. (1) Justice moves much too slowly. (2) This will be appealed and if any money goes to those filing suit, it will be a tiny percentage of the figure given.

This is a story of a meat packing plant in Nebraska. Half of their employees were illegally in the US working. This is all complicated folks. Years ago, one of my cousins was convicted of a felony for giving rides to jobs for workers. It was all done innocently and not in violation of the law. Still, to make an example, he was convicted.

Does anyone remember Windows 11 SE (Student Edition or Security Edition or something.) It's five years old and won't see its sixth birthday.

Meanwhile in Belgium, a court orders the blocking of Internet Archive Open Library and a bunch of other "shadow libraries."

Trust and the human condition dealing with truth, lies, good news, and bad news. Gosh.

The IRS Direct File program is gone. Government will no longer compete with private companies in this area. Good and bad news. The real issue is the complexity of the tax code and the time required for individuals to do the work of government employees in calculating and reporting income and taxes already paid and the whole thing.

Sunday 3 August 2025

Meanwhile at Apple, Tim Cook has been CEO longer than Steve Jobs was.

It appears we have a loneliness epidemic in the US and that all these chattering bots came along at the right time.

The story of Panlantir and its recent success in government contracts. The numbers look good. The customer, however, has a history of troubles. The commercial market is much more lucrative.

Meanwhile in China, the governors there have a starkly different vision for AI in the world.

It seems "The Epstein Files," whatever those are, dominate the news for yet another week. Here is a prediction: one day someone will confirm that a bunch of rich people misbehaved badly and trounced on a bunch of poor people. I guess that is news that isn't new as that is history repeating itself from the last few thousand years. The actions are despicable (not just like the funny cartoon movie but truly despicable). We will learn that many famous people were part of this despicable affair. Again, news that isn't new. Punishment? I doubt it. Rich, famous, powerful people are rarely punished like everyone else. Again, news that isn't new. What to do? Love the people you meet each day. I cannot right all the wrongs in this world. The despicable people will meet God one day and God will settle it. And my words are insufficient.

Some folks want to "break up" Apple and Google. In the 1960s, folks wanted to break up IBM. A generation later, folks wanted to break up Microsoft. I guess it is Apple's and Google's turn. Destroy companies and remove jobs. That's a good thing? If someone was a crook, send that person to jail. Leave everyone else alone.

DINKs (Double Income, No Kids) still rule the world economically. Of course they have more money than those with children. Talk to the in 30 years and see how its going. Talk to them in 40 years and 50 years. Yikes.

News flash (not): These salaries that AI researchers are getting are unprecedented---literally unprecedented.

This story ties to the above one as Los Alamos National Lab, referred to in the earlier link, is pushing Ai for science research.

Waste in government. The folks at NASA had a very valuable artifact from the space program and sold it for $21K. The buyer well resell it for 10x. Waste.

Showing once again that no publicity is bad publicity, the Tea dating app whatever-it-is has a surge is popularity.

Ah, the promise of the machine watching the machine. Again, news that isn't new as this has existed for centuries. Marketing folks are pushing AI as something unprecedented.

Face scanning as a biometric. Sigh. Easy to fool.