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: 15-21 September, 2025

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Alphabet becomes the fourth company with $3Trillion value
• Robert Redford dies at 89
• Meta holds Connect 2025
• Google puts more AI into Chrome browser
• Pay $100,000 for an H-1B visa?

Monday 15 September 2025

Meanwhile in China where monopoly is the rule, see, e.g., the Communist Party of China, someone declares that Nvidia violated monopoly rules.

Pre-fill in LLM and how Nvidia's Rubin CPX makes it fo faster.

OpenAI's detailed research discusses how people use ChatGPT.

Taking a long-term look at the economics of AI and who will make the money.

I'll just quote, "The Nano Banana image editing model has been a hit for Google, a nd presumably the reason that Gemini for iPhone is the top free app in the US App Store." I'll have to try this Nano Banana thing.

Quote this one, too, "Penske Media Corporation, the publisher of Rolling Stone and The Hollywood Reporter, has become the first major American media company to sue Google over its AI summaries. "

Apple claims some sort of memory safety in iOS.

Researchers claim advances in space travel engines that would cut the travel time to Mars in half.

Social media has saturated and its own weight is crushing it. So claims this long piece.

Meanwhile in India, entry level hiring drops 70% in the big IT service firms.

After 21 years, this writer's blog closes.

Some ideas on connecting with an old draft of something and finishing it.

Thoughts on putting scents or the sense of smell into writing.

More on how to write stories that won't be confused with AI slop.

New ideas? "In other words, if Jews can read the same book every year for millennia, then perhaps I don't actually need to reinvent the wheel"

Some counterpoints to most writing advice.

Tuesday 16 September 2025

Meanwhile in California, it seems that the different regulators fight with one another over things that don't exist in other states. Then they come to wonderful political compromises and continue to regulate things that no one in other states worries about.

Are you violating a copyright when you preserve old recordings? When the copyright period is so long that the recording media falls to dust... you have a problem.

More fussing about how Google displays search results.

OpenAI provides yet another update it GPT-5. I love it, or is it I hate it, I can't decide, when these guys show that the software is "thinking" instead of "processing."

Stronger rumors that OpenAI is working on software for humanoid robots.

The four horsemen of the decade: Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, and Alphabet (Google) are all valued at $3Trillion (with a Tr).

Qualcomm updates its mobile chipset.

Meanwhile in China, Nvidia made a processor just for China that had lesser performance and would satisfy US export controls. No one wants to buy it.

When there is a big class-action lawsuit and a gazillion $$$ is awarded, each person receives about a nickel. (Do we still have nickels?) The lawyer team takes a third of the award and splits it about three ways.

Jared Kushner encourages recent college grads to take a job in government for two years. Learn everything you can and move on. Probably good advice given the current market. My addition, learn, keep your mouth shut, take copious notes. Use them.

Those folks in Bentonville, Arkansas continue to be a leader in AI. Their advantage is they have real stuff that produces real data that they use wisely.

A new term for me: bossware. It is software that helps the boss monitor the workers. It seems to be popular in the UK.

Microsoft adds more Copilot features to its basic office apps.

Why get a legal search warrant from a judge when you can just buy the information?

Despite wishes otherwise, the USB-A connector won't go away. Bring back RS-232! So say just a few of us old folks.

Wednesday 17 September 2025

Robert Redford dies at 89.

Third-world countries, does anyone still call them that?, join the club of everyone who builds a datacenter and then discovers that those buildings need electricity.

Quoting the headline, "DOJ Deletes Study Showing Domestic Terrorists Are Most Often Right Wing" I have seen such studies before. The trouble is that "right wing" and "terrorist" are subjective terms.

Strong rumors that next year Apple will have a laptop computer with a touch screen display.

Well, this Chinese chattering bot settles it: don't act right, act like a person.

Anthropic refuses to let US law enforcement use its systems for surveillance. Does it do the same in other countries?

Meanwhile in China, the Communist Party doesn't put tariffs on Nvidia processors. I merely bans purchasing them.

Meanwhile in the UK, all this new tech AI stuff is being used for further surveillance.

Meanwhile in the Philippines, no hypocrisy as the governors love those addicted to gambling as long as they pay their taxes.

Mr. Trump visits the UK and brings American big tech and $31Billion (with a B) in investments. It's nice to have Mr. Trump visit.

From Google, a search bar app for Windows that does what the Spotlight bar does on Apple's computers. That would be a welcome addition.

We are still going round and round about who is going to own TikTok in America.

A side note from this story is that good old America On Line is still worth over a Billion $$$.

YouTube releases new tools for podcasters that automates many time-consuming tasks. Good stuff. AI, speech-to-text, and text understanding are the basis for this.

Good luck with this one as American companies sue a Chinese company for stealing it intellectual property.

Microsoft adds automation to its automation. Silly as this sounds, this is what folks in science and industry do all the time. The next generation loops through this generation and automates it. The generation after ... and so on.

Thursday 18 September 2025

Huawei shows it can build systems for datacenters to compete with Nvidia.

Meanwhile in India, more people use the image editing capabilities of Gemini, i.e., nano banana, than anywhere else in the world. This makes Gemini the #1 downloaded app in that country. Funny how some side note projects accidentally make a product or a company.

Meanwhile in China---home of the monopoly on political power, the governors drop an anti-trust case against Google.

Our FTC wins a court case against Amazon.

Meanwhile in America, half of adults don't have a good impression of AI and everything we call AI.

Meta makes yet another step in their effort to make smart glasses or a real augmented reality tool.

Meta is holding their annual Connect event this week. Here is one summary of the announcements.

We just had the 2025 International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals. OpenAI took first place with Google Gemini second. Then came the humans.

Here is a medical AI system trained on lots of data. Perhaps this can predict illnesses and do something good for us.

Amazon pledges to raise pay for their blue collar workers. Something about $30/hour. Side note: adjunct college professors, who teach American universities today, make about that much.

Scale AI signs a $100million contract with our DoD/CDAO.

I have to chuckle at this story. I have seen people locked inside a Tesla because they couldn't find the button to open the door from the inside.

Just what I want to see (NOT)---ads displayed on my refrigerator door.

It appears that Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about the Charlie Kirk murder and the network cancelled the show for now. I don't understand how people running a TV show like that wouldn't see the trouble coming and avoid it. Jimmy Kimmel is fine financially. The same is not true for the dozens of others who just lost their jobs.

Friday 19 September 2025

No Internet viewing today. I was ill in the early morning.

Saturday 20 September 2025

This story will be everywhere: Nvidia and Intel partner. $5Billion (with a B) and integrated graphics and CPUs for datacenters and so on.

The folks who take polls are struggling as no one wants to bother with them. My question is always, "How much do you pay for me to spend time talking with you?" The answer is always, "Nothing." Thank you, goodbye.

Yet another study shows that all this switching among standard and daylight times hurts people.

I'll quote the headline, which is almost not believable, "China's DeepSeek says its hit AI model cost just $294,000 to train" That is 1% or less the cost of most LLM training. This company from China has been quite secretive. At times I wonder if there are real people behind it or just made up stuff.

Never do live demos. Something Dr. Harlowe drilled into us in grad school.

Google puts more Gemini AI into the Chrome browser. Online use help becomes better. That is basically what these things are.

It is nice to have Mr. Trump to visit when he brings his friends from American tech: Nvidia to invest $2Billion in the UK.

The myth of the teenager in his grandmother's basement hacking the world isn't a myth. It is true.

Some notes on OpenAI using servers in the cloud ... rentals. The numbers are amazing in the hundred$ of billion$.

More number$ that are amazing how big they are: Meta renting computers from Oracle for $20Billion (with a B).

President Trump floats the idea of charging $100,000 for each H-1B visa. Current price is $0. $100,000 for each of 100,000 H-1B visas (round numbers) means ... I think that is 10,000 Billion or some large number. Gosh Congress could waste all that in a day.

As we continue with large numbers... this piece gives the numbers of Americans that use TikTok and the like every month. Most of America is doing this stuff. Where did we get all the free time?

Remember Foxconn building a factory in Wisconsin? What a waste of taxpayers' money that was. Anyways, Microsoft moves into the empty building a chocks it full of AI processors.

Sunday 21 September 2025

I just read a newsletter with the title, "Is AI Good Enough to Lay Off Your Engineers?" Paraphrasing someone from the last century, "If you lay off your engineers, who will buy your products?"

Some details on the idea of the $100,000 H-1B visa.

Google touts its Google Cloud as small but growing, especially with new AI companies.

Meanwhile in Mexico, build a datacenter ... also build a generator building and bring the diesel.

Amazon's logistics network is so large and efficient that Walmart is shipping packages through Amazon (not FedEx or UPS).

Meanwhile in Europe, the EU is working to bar American companies from the new financial data sharing system. That has something to do with eliminating the middle man and letting companies sell directly to consumers. I am not a finance guy, so I don't understand all I know about this one.

Even stronger rumors about Apple selling a lower-price laptop computer this year. The new computer would use an Axx processor built for the iPhone and iPad instead of an Mx processor built for laptop and desktop computers. The new machine would cost $700 instead of $1200. Let us see. It would certainly have the power to run Google Docs (college students use that) and who TikTok videos.

Ah, to be young, have nothing, and work all the time trying to build something. Notice how "tech" allows people to build something that is nothing but ideas saved as patterns of ferrous material on a piece of metal. There is no factory with big iron and electric power and railroad lines. The "means of production," as some not-so-great economic thinkers of the early 20th century stated it, is just your brain and a really cheap computer.

At age 81, working part-time in a retail store, it keeps you young or something.

How about drone pilots taking prisoners or war instead of killing everyone? Has anyone thought of that?

Some well-constructed thoughts about AI economic bubbles and, I hope not, economic crashes coming to a datacenter near you.

Microsoft seeks to add useful information to our meetings by putting more Copilot into Teams. Perhaps something good will come of this.

Meanwhile in China, there are 200million persons, a large number, working in factories who have not been permitted the right permits by the permit issuers. This all makes the Chinese economy...shall we say "shaky."

We have more indications that AI is able to replace half of white-collar workers in the next five years. I doubt this as most white-collar workplaces are so poorly managed that the managers won't realize they can replace half their employees and also replace themselves. And government intervention? Are you kidding? The government is still thinking about trying to hire companies that will teach government employees how to put the first letter of the alphabet next to the ninth letter of the alphabet and have something with sort of a little meaning.