The head of our Defense Innovation Unit resigns. This is a little-known group in the DoD that is supposed to move things along quickly. It is little known as it really doesn't do much in the way of innovation or anything else.

Meanwhile on the YouTube, the folks there are "improving" the quality of videos without telling the creators. Well, if they can sharpen the focus of the camera, that is probably a good thing. Probably but not certainly.

Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia, a local company releases a LLM optimized for local speech and values.

And in Germany, workers are disappearing with age. DHL pushes machinery and automation to replace the workers who are no longer present.

Twin brothers chase UFOs and mystery drones the old-fashioned way: outfit an old RV with home-made equipment and go do to. No analysis paralysis and budget wrangling in government bureaucracies. Just go do it.

A new study from Stanford reported by Wired shows (wait for this, it is (not) amazing): new tools have changed the way people work the same old jobs. Gosh. Did they spend much money on that one? And these are supposed to be really smart folks.

Back in the 1990s, there was a new ban on royalties for members of Congress and all Federal employees. What happened?

A new book from some experts argues that work from anywhere and hybrid arrangements just don't work. I would agree. There are some people who can work from anywhere for a company and do a great job. Those people, however, are a small minority of perhaps 10%. The solution? As always, think. Try some people. If it doesn't work, don't do it. If it is difficult to have different rules for different people, they problem is not with the workers. The problem is with the people trying to manage the work.

GNU/Linux (some folks still mistakenly call it just Linux) is now 34 years old by some reckoning.

.....
Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Wednesday 27 August 2025

Meanwhile in India, they have moved into an industry they would rather not be in: recycling e-waste.

And now we have "deadbots." These are AI avatars of deceased persons. Awful thought to some; blessing to others. As long as people are able to choose and are not forced.

Meanwhile in Malaysia, a local chip designer shows their first edge processor design.

I guess this is still called a loss leader. Give away product to gain customers.

And in China, a new chip designer sees profits rise 44x, not 44% but 44x.

More news coming out of the protests at Microsoft headquarters. Contracts with North Korea are okay, but with Israel are bad. Odd logic for logical employees of a technology company.

Speaking of companies doing business with, hmm, uh, well, questionable foreign partners, here is Intel which is now partly owned by the American taxpayer.

MongoDB reports a good financial quarter.

The new weather prediction system from Google's DeepMind seems to be doing quite well.

Apple's F1 movie with Brad Pitt continues to rake in the money passing $600million.

Western civilization is jarred and jolted: Taylor Swift is officially engaged to Travis Kelce.

.....
Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Thursday 28 August 2025

Our Dept of State promoted a few people who no longer work there. They had reduction-in-force notices last month and you-are-promoted notices this month. Someone said it "defies logic." Of course it does. That is the dysfunction of the Federal agencies. It also shows there are a few more Dept of State employees who should lose their jobs. You can't make up this stuff folks.

A new study confirms that it is helpful to speak English in the workplace and not some silly jargon that is nothing but lazy. All hands meeting to synergize and touch base and align. Stupid.

Microservices and the monolith application. Back and forth the pendulum swings. It seems that it swung too far to too many microservices and the overhead of the infrastructure drowned the benefits of the Parna Information Hiding Principle. Oh well. Back the other way.

Nvidia continues to simply print money as gaming revenue for the financial quarter rises 49%.

More on Nvidia's booming financial reports.

Talk to your TV. You can with a Samsung equipped with Microsoft's Copilot.

Meanwhile in South Korea, alone elderly are talking to a companionship doll powered by ChatGPT.

Snowflake reports a good financial quarter.

It appears that the Chinese are attacking telecommunications infrastructure in over 80 countries.

I think this is the first time I've posted a link from Rolling Stone. The headline is, "Elon Musk Appears to Be Completely Addicted to Anime Gooner AI Slop" Perhaps the last time as well.

Anthropic reports vibe hacking and other misuses of its AI systems.

This product is news to me. It records, transcribes, and summarizes conversations and meetings and such.

Geoffrey Hinton, recipient of both the Nobel Prize and the Turing Award, has a grim outlook for warfare given the automation in weapons.

Meanwhile in Kansas City, H and R Block closed their offices on the afternoon of the Swift/Kelce engagement announcement.

Cracker Barrel reverses course and goes back to former logo. Good.

Perhaps we will have a ban on ghost jobs. Enforcement will be problematic.

Google cuts human managers by a third.

Cyber attacks hit the government of the state of Nevada.

Well, our Dept of Defense has been relying on software written by a Russian...and all that.

Tests convert plastic trash into fuel. How about we just not make plastic trash?

.....
Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Friday 29 August 2025

This has something to do with time travel, right? Anyway, old folks are using new AI to make new videos of people in the 1980s telling people in 2025 how bad the world will be in 2025. Or something like that.

The company that makes license plate readers and geo-tagging wants to partner with the company that makes dashboard cameras so they can ... I guess take over the world by knowing where every automobile on the planet is at all times.

This piece about data governance (boring) has a great title.

Nvidia claims that small language models (SLM) are the key to Agentic AI. I feel SLMs are the key to everything.

First and foremost, this is a travest, horrible, horrible. This person talked to AI a lot then murdered someone then committed suicide. AI the villain? Probably not. This person is the villain.

Marvell Technology, a lesser-known semiconductor producer, reports a big financial quarter.

Autodesk, born back when I was a young adult in 1982, reports a good financial quarter.

Another big company reports a data leak mess with the data of millions of people exposed. These things happen daily, and folks still think they can run their business and government on the Internet without any problems. Sigh.

Microsoft shows yet another AI model. The difference here is these perform quickly and show some thought in making a system that actual people can actually use.

Regulators of foreign governments routinely extract hundred$ of million$ from US companies. Those aren't called tariffs.

Google to pour $9Billion more into Virginia. These things used to be big big news. Now we yawn.

This is strange. It is probably legal and definitely making money for those involved. Folks are using AI to fake images of the Nazi concentration camps and putting them on Facebook. That attracts eyes and sells ads. Again, strange.

The science community, hoping that a real one exists, moves from Twitter to Bluesky.

More advanced weapons going to Ukraine. Will these things be used effectively? Will they be sold on the black market? I want the Ukrainians to expel the Russians and there to be peace. Still, with everything that is happened, the war continues.

Typepad is a blogging service that began in 2003. It is now closing. End of an era? Perhaps, not.

Amtrak brings faster trains. The total travel time, however, is longer. Sigh. Competency?

Taco Bell puts AI in the drive-thru to take orders. Taco Bell doesn't consider what the American teenager considers to be fun. A thousand cups of water please. Gosh.

.....
Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Saturday 30 August 2025

AI brings a loss of jobs. The numbers are not huge, but over 10% which means they are real numbers.

Meanwhile in China, the governors vow to prevent "excess competition." Perhaps something was lost in translation.

Nvidia receives a "significant amount of our revenue from a limited number of customers." In the last quarter, two customers were 39% of all revenue. Hmmm. Something about all your eggs in one basket.

This is a good report on the current marketplace of AI. ChatGPT is the leader while Google's Gemini is growing. A good report.

The likenesses of celebrities are being used at Meta for some kind of chattering bot things. Note, there are some laws about being public figures and that allows others to mention you at profit without paying you.

Our FCC regulates and extracts money from traditional broadcasters who use the airwaves. Those traditional broadcasters want the FCC to do the same with those who broadcast over the wires, i.e., the Internet. Fair markets or something like that.

More about Taco Bell, AI drive thru, and teenagers having the type of fun that teenagers often have. At our local high school, new speed cameras are out on the roads. I am waiting for the fun to begin. I will be disappointed in our teenage community if fun doesn't happen.

Meanwhile in California, they are about to have a union of gig workers. Gig workers take care with what you do here.

Fear and loathing as companies seek to buy AI talent.

It appears that it is possible and practical to build even laptop computers where parts can be swapped.

Meanwhile at Georgia Tech, they are raising money the old-fashioned way with corporate sponsors. Yes, the legal terms are different and that will boil the blood of some older researchers, but the money is green.

.....
Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Sunday 31 August 2025

Meanwhile in China, the push in AI is towards practical application of current techniques. In Silicon Valley, it is research towards general AI or something you see in the movies.

This long piece from the New Yorker delves into how we will entertain ourselves in the future with AI. Bye bye to Hollywood and Broadway. A fantasy.

Meanwhile in Turkmenistan, how can you make money? Turn the entire Internet into a paywall or something.

To go along with this, we have the algorithm movie from Netflix. Dump enough data into a computer and out pops a movie. Some claim this is what the Hallmark Channel does. Some claim this is what Hollywood did in the days when the big studios dominated. Something different this time? I say, no.

Someone concludes that harsh climates hit the human body harder than mild climates. I hope they didn't spend a lot money on that one.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands, beavers disappeared 200 years ago. They have been brought back and they are acting like beavers and messing up everything. Couldn't leave well enough alone.

Also in the Netherlands, they are having a festival by of and for people with red hair.

More back and forth on AI and jobs. Okay, here is my take: new tools can eliminate jobs. That's what new tools enable. Nothing new. To eliminate jobs, folks need to jump into the new tools, work harder and smarter, and produce more. That take initiative and energy. My guess is that about 1% of folks on the job have that initiative and energy. About 49% of folks on the job will use a new AI tool to do something they don't want to do, but still take the same amount of time to do the job because they are hiding from their boss. The other 50% will just sort of keep doing what they've always done until someone bothers them.

For those who like to watch documentaries on programming languages...

Meanwhile on America's college campuses, students learn (they are learning) that they can disrupt all the old folks by calling the police and falsely reporting active shooters.

Oh wait, some groups claims they are calling the police.

Johanna Rothman on useful work as opposed to that other stuff.

This story is making the rounds on the Internet...Tesla is involved in a crash lawsuit. Tesla said, "We don't have any data." A hacker found the data in the car. Put this down next to the one that says, "If it is on the Internet, others can and will see it." If it was on a computer, it is still there. Folks can read data from disk drives dug up from garbage dumps. They can read old data. This includes the TSA nude body scanners whereby they claim the data is never stored.

Pushing the idea of buying an iPad Pro. The processors Apple is putting in these things are amazing. If I could just run a Unix terminal in one and write AI models. Perhaps that is possible.

.....
Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page