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: 4-10 August, 2025

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• The Israel-Gaza conflict...hard to tell if it stopped or is ongoing
• The Hamas one-invasion of Israel is still causing the deaths of the innocent, horrible travesty
• Welcome to brain rot summer (bunny rabbits on trampolines)
• OpenAI releases open-weight models for first time in five years
• OpenAI then releases GPT-5
• Big tech having a price was with Federal government with big discounts

Monday 4 August 2025

Submersible machines go to great depths of the sea and find living creatures. We don't seem to know as much as we think we know about our planet today. Still, other folks seem to know the temperature of the earth to within a tenth of a degree 10,000 years ago.

Meanwhile online, we have videos of bunny rabbits bouncing on trampolines. Are those videos of actual bunny rabbits and trampolines or fake AI? Oh, the vexing questions that an advanced civilization must answer. Really folks? Bunnies on trampolines? Spend time in this debate?

Some folks discover a way to disappear articles and websites from Google searches. The stuff is "still there," but Google and other search engines don't find it. Yes, this is a form of censorship.

Big tech and venture capital come to the Pentagon. Interesting shift. These people have already made their money. The Pentagon is not the customer it once was. Perhaps a sense of patriotism?

People are using these chattering bots to write obituaries. If the chatter box gets it right, good. It isn't easy to write those obituaries.

In the UK, they have all this age verification attempts. Is it protection of those needing protection or just bad old censorship?

Meanwhile in Taiwan, production is booming. The population is not. Hence, recruiting overseas talent.

Once again, do we want AI to act "right" or act like people? Trading bots manipulate the market for profit---just like people.

Apple ventures into AI with an "Answers" team. Perhaps a more limited and common sense approach to AI.

Concern that all these capital expenditures by big tech on datacenters could crash the economy.

This is a similar piece.

Computer vision and a camera on a drone find the body of a person in the Italian Alps. The person had been missing ten months. The tech found the body in one afternoon. Not a great rescue story, but it provides closure for the family. And it shows we can do good things with computer vision.

At 41 years old, the International Obfuscated C Code Contest is still going. I think the C Users Journal, for which I wrote several dozen articles, started the contest back in 1984.

Microsoft claims that 20million people have tried GitHub Copilot.

Blue Origin continues to hop people up into space. A total of 75 people have taken the short trip.

Writing "clean, one-draft fiction." Read the method. It makes sense. This is fiction, not calculus. Put the periods in the right places and such and you can have it.

I love this piece...especially the parts about fiction writing. It's a made-up story, folks. That is all. Some hunter coyote falls off a cliff and all he gets is a black eye. It's fiction. Of course that doesn't happen in real life. So what? Write, write, and write. Ship it. Move on to the next one.

If I could just write that first line, I would be flying along. Okay, skip the first line. Write the second page, instead and keep going. I also hate writing the first line.

Unmet needs in characters drive fiction. "Unmet needs are created because emotional wounds generate a FEAR of being hurt again (which can manifest in many ways)."

Tips on how to write about your family's history without being sued by your family or at least being uninvited to Christmas.

A writer, at age 61, decides to "put his head down and really start to write." Gosh, but he did it.

Dean Wesley Smith, a blog post a day for 13 years without missing a day. I do two (well, four) blog posts a week plus Internet viewing every day. One keystroke at a time. Then the next one, then the next one.

Promoting what you write. Do it. Promoting yourself as a writer, well, do that, too.

There is a lot of truth hidden in fictional writing. Folks want to find that. Like buried gold.

Tuesday 5 August 2025

We may be approaching the end of the outsourcing IT industry in India. Jobs aren't going away, but are being shifted to companies opening offices in India and hiring directly.

News flash (not): word-for-word transcriptions of conversations don't catch the emotion in the actual conversation.

Whether or not Delta Airlines meant it when someone said something about AI setting prices for each individual...the angst continues.

Broadcom releases a new networking chip that moves data farther, faster, and among more computers.

Google claims that its AI-based vulnerability research tool is finding flaws in widely used software systems.

Palantir reports a booming financial quarter.

Some of these chattering bots now say, "Time for a break."

OpenAI claims 700million weekly active users for ChatGPT.

This story IS A BIG DEAL. In Northern California, fun is gone. This is now Hard Tech. How did you do in Linear Algebra? Here comes Liberaltarian. Get back to work.

If you have $3,300, you can buy this laptop with a rollable screen that unrolls to a big screen. Hey, everyone at the coffee shop would notice.

Meanwhile out in the Pacific, a new era as Japan sells warships to Australia.

Here is a good summary of this summer, "Welcome to brain rot summer. AI slop has infected TikTok, Facebook, and X, and people can't tell that even a herd of bunnies jumping on a trampoline is AI generated. "

And let's discuss the bunny rabbits hopping on a trampoline. Funny stuff. Entertaining. It wasn't real. Guess what? Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny weren't real either, but they were funny and entertaining. The sequel to Happy Gilmore isn't real, but it is funny and entertaining. Funny and entertaining has never been real. Just enjoy it and then go back to real life.

AI and job layoffs: it isn't simple. Real life rarely is.

Do cloud computing companies bother to delete your data after you quit? Maybe. Maybe not. It's a lot of work.

Google agrees to dim the lights at its datacenters when the community needs to electric power. We shall see.

NASA flops again.

This is what we should be doing with all this technology. This man's body has failed him, but his brain still works. He can control computers with just his mind. Great stuff.

Wednesday 6 August 2025

From Nvidia, "No Backdoors. No Kill Switches. No Spyware."

Meanwhile in India, censorship or decency with X.

Meanwhile in China, talks about nationalizing the chip-making industry. Just take everyone's property from them.

And at Wikipedia, editors now have the authority to just delete "AI generated" articles.

AMD reports a big financial quarter.

For the first time in five years, OpenAI releases two open-weight models. One, the claim, can run on a PC.

Our General Services Administration puts AI tools from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic on a list of easier-to=buy tools for civilian Federal agencies.

An electric Chevy pickup truck went 1,000 miles on a single charge. And no one would ever drive 20 mph around in circles in real life. Just a stunt.

I like Seth Godin's comments on the Index and the Table of Contents. We are becoming all Index. Share a Table of Contents. Please.

Go get 'em kids. Work side jobs, make extra money, and retire (or do something) at 55. Let's see how it works.

Samsung wants five-days-a-week back in the office building. And you cannot "coffee badge" or clock in, drink a cup of coffe, and clock out.

I guess this is important to some people: Apple is replacing the icon of the disk drive.

Microsoft shows videos of Windows 2030 vision. Maybe this is where we are going. Few, however, accurately predict the future.

Follow the science, if you can find the ones that are not fraud.

Palantir pushes away from college degrees. Show us what you can do. We are here to make profit, not hang shingles on the wall.

I'll just quote, "The Government Accountability Office has issued reports criticizing the Department of Homeland Security, Environmental Protection Agency, and General Services Administration for failing to implement critical IT and cybersecurity recommendations." And people complain about government agencies firing employees.

Thursday 7 August 2025

This is an excellent use of all this technology: solar powered machine that pulls weeds all day and doesn't spray food with chemicals. We have to do things like this as we are poisoning our food supply with herbicides and pesticides.

Meanwhile in China, everyone wants to claim they know AI. They are all on online courses, many of which don't deliver anything.

There is something admirable about people returning to a ravaged homeland to help rebuild. This time it is Syria. Hoping these folks have what it takes to see it through and do good for themselves and others.

US diplomats tasks with lobbying against European Union's Digital Services Act. Just free speech limitations and more regulations on successful American companies.

Meanwhile back home, our Dept of Justice was hacked. Oops. Sorry if you were a confidential informant. The emphasis on WERE CONFIDENTIAL.

And speaking of leaking data that you promised was secure, OpenAI's connections to local data is leaking as well.

TSMC won't be paying import fees as it makes stuff in America.

Apple has recently lost a significant portion of its AI researchers. Hire me.

Someone at NIST is smarter than the average government employee.

Duolingo reports a big financial quarter.

Simple message from our current President: build in America or pay tariffs. Duh.

Apple complies and pushes $100Billion (with a B) towards domestic manufacturing.

We like someone to bring our dinner to our doorstep. DoorDash reports a good financial quarter.

Google pump$ money into education and shows a guided learning mode for Gemini.

OpenAI, smart move here, pushes into Federal agencies and only charges $1 per year.

More paid streaming services as Disney, Hulu, and ESPN start charging for something more than we get for free.

"How Palantir Won Over Washington" Careful here, the Federal government has not been a good and steady business partner.

This story is getting more news on the Internet than deserved: Guess what? OpenAI will update its GPT models to number 5.

Alcohol companies are appealing to a President, who does not drink alcohol, for relief of tariffs this drink season.

I just watched this movie a couple days ago. Whatever. Not impressed one way or the other.

Friday 8 August 2025

More homegrown ingenuity in Ukraine. This one uses basic parts to hear drones approaching and alert troops to shoot them down. Inexpensive and effective. Yes, some of America's defense contractors are top notch. There are many, however, who only deal in billion-dollar studies.

The big-box lumber yards are sharing their license plate reading camera feeds with local law enforcement. Cameras everywhere. Is this community sharing for everyone's protection or spying on everyone?

Sort of an anti-climatic announcement, but OpenAI releases GPT-5. It isn't available to me yet, but it is supposed to be.

Sometimes things just get all fouled up: OpenAI's big launch of GPT-5 shows charts that are all fouled up.

Someone tries out the new GPT-5. It hasn't rolled out to me, yet.

Must be nice to be an engineer at OpenAI with huge bonuses.

The prior big thing in computing was the cloud full of generic servers that were often made by non-server companies. The next big thing? Super-duper processors specially built of specialty builders. The last thing won't work for the next thing.

Meanwhile in Hong Kong, this special economic zone is booming with new companies. Hint to America: special economic zones.

$20 a month for a browser? It is smart, so...

Meanwhile in Texas, a new law allows cutting the power to datacenters in case of winter storm.

We are in a price war with big tech and Federal agencies. AWS jumps in with $1Billion in discounts. This follows OpenAI's $1-per-year price. Perhaps Mr. Trump knows how to make deals?

Mr. Trump and the CEO of Intel are spatting. Negotiating.

Stumbling and bumbling...the US Army isn't learning drones quickly.

Saturday 9 August 2025

The managers at Apple have stated they will invest $600Billion in America in five years. Uh, that's a big number over a small number. Is it even possible?

A few financial numbers to show how Nvidia is dominating business worldwide.

Jensen Huang meets Mr. Trump in person---export papers appear a couple of days later.

It appears that Google is pushing AI into Google Finance.

If you can't beat them, pay them. Apple to use GPT-5 in its next round of Apple Intelligence.

I guess we have invented a new problem for ourselves. Chat with a chattering bot a long time everyday and ... "a growing number of people who are having persuasive, delusional conversations with generative A.I. chatbots that have led to institutionalization, divorce and death."

Wikipedia and AI slop.

I like this story. Get out of the fast food job. Train for something that requires knowledge and skill and not a degree in AI-something-or-other. IRL.

Linux has reached up to the 6% level of desktop computer operating systems. Not a big number, but bigger.

Frequent nightmares equal earlier death.

Links between Intel's current CEO and China's semiconductor industry.

Friendly hackers easily hack into GPT-5.

oops, OpenAI lets users switch back to GPT-4o. That wasn't the plan.

Sunday 10 August 2025

The AI researchers have found that quantitative researchers (heavy math and statistics) on Wall Street are good AI researchers. Yes, they took linear algebra in college.

Let's try to link a few stories. Entry-level programmers jobs are gone (sort of). AI systems can write little chunks of code in what I call hobby programming and the pop press calls vibe coding. And then there are Federal, state, and local governments that cann't do the simplest things without someone writing some simple code to make file formats match and the like. Well, governments hire college and coding school grads for the first jobs for a couple of years. Simple things in government get done for a change. Recent grads gain experience and learn something more than simple programming. Citizens benefit. Programmers benefit. Let's do something like this.

The Hour of Code becomes the Hour of AI. Bad move.

I guess a decade was a good run for the coding bootcamps. What attendees learned can easily be done by AI vibe coding or hobby coding as I call it. Well, the AI can write the simple code and people can learn from it and progress beyond.

Veteran Affairs can't import medical records as the file formats don't match.

Meanwhile in China, humanoid robotics is all the rage in start-up companies. No one is selling anything useful, but they are trying.

And in America, energy companies on the fringe are finding customers in datacenters. Yes, if you can do earth-coupled heatpumps, you now have a customer.

Just to show that nothing has changed, someone steals a semi-trailer full of computers worth $15million.

If you put a couple of car batteries on the floor of the garage in thousands of homes, let them trickle charge in the day, and pull power from them in the evening, well, you have power. In California, someone finally shows that this idea works. It is long overdue.

Disgusting. "Sometimes you have to look at the trade for the greater good," said a moron who is on the school board. Good grief. And these people think they are adults. Well, they don't think.

Schools put Vape Detectors in bathrooms because there's no "vaping in the boys/girls room." Oh wait, those things have cameras and microphones and school districts are watching teenagers in the bathrooms. Low seething at this thought. Come on folks. And I don't want to hear any "greater good" talk.

Well, I suppose there are worse things you can do with your time and brains than design a spaceship for a 400-year trip.

AOL, yes it still exists, ends 34 years of dial-up connection to the Internet. I lived through all that in several vastly different positions. It was fun while it lasted. Using a motel room landline (remember those?) to connect to the Internet in the evening.

I'll just quote this, "Two members of Congress have launched a formal investigation into automatic license plate reader (ALPR) company Flock and demanded it turn over details of all searches of its national camera network concerning Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and abortions." Privacy. Fourth Amendment.