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: 13-19 October, 2025

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• It appears that the Israel-Hamas deal worked by Trump is real
• More datacenters everywhere
• Apple releases new M5 processor in laptop and tablet machines

Monday 13 October 2025

Enough datacenters already as some communities decides they don't want them. I believe that is short sighted as even if the datacenter fails at computing, you have a large, new building you can use.

John Searle dies at 95. He wrote the concept of the Chinese Room test of AI back in 1980. While not familiar with that concept until recently, I agree with it.

Meanwhile in China, it appears the "young people" are using these chattering bots for therapy.

And now we have cobots or collaborative robots. Something new everyday or at least something old where someone feels better for mangling the English language and inventing a word.

Well, maybe the good old browser will become better. When will they bring back Netscape?

And episodic video is eating the world. The story never has an ending. See, for example, The Walking Dead and The Curse of Oak Island.

America is investing more in chip factories than China and Taiwan.

Meanwhile in Indonesia, they have the desire to make Hollywood-syle movies but don't have the money. Hence, use AI to make up the difference. Better tools.

Meanwhile in the UK, they have age gating or something to prove how old you are before accessing Internet sites.

Once again, AI meets the American teenager with the winner being obvious and the contest not even close.

I don't know how representative this is but I like it. Forego big debt for college. That a shorter and less-expensive route to learning enough to get a job. Save money. Remain debt free. Keep options open.

How do you survive as a freelance writer? Two quotes: (1) The biggest one is I'm married to somebody who has a steady job and health insurance. (2) I'm constantly pitching. I try to pitch somewhere every day, and I try to constantly try to find new outlets and connect with old outlets. Sometimes it's useful and sometimes I'm just annoying editors.

"Memoir or fiction: which should they write?" The answer, of course, is both.

Three reasons you should write the best book you possibly can. And this goes on with three good things. What is "the best book you possibly can?" I advise against the advice as too many writers take this and spend a lifetime try to "write the best." Write. Ship. Repeat weekly.

Tuesday 14 October 2025

Pirate Wires has a short essay from Blake Dodge on "The Deal Guy." Israel and Hamas not making a deal? Send in New York City real-estate deal makers. Get a deal. This is one of the reasons our current President is out current President.

Google to throw $9Billion (with a B) into datacenters in South Carolina. I guess someone needs to throw $10Billion into datacenters in North Carolina. More datacenters; more billion$. This is like England in the days of empire when the rich people built giant mansions and half the people in the country were maids and butlers and cooks for the other half of the people in the country. Half the country is paying for datacenters that the other half is building. Something has to break, right?

And OpenAI is looking to spend a trillion $$$, that a thousand of those billion$, to build it all so that everyone can use a product that didn't exist five years ago. Surely someone is thinking this through, huh?

Kids who use social media score lower on old tests. Well, of course they do. They are studying one thing while the adults insist on testing them on another thing. Either change the behavior or change the test or both. Surely there are some adults in this education business who can figure out basic systems.

Nvidia announces the Vera Rubin graphics processing units and overall architecture. This will enable GigaWatt AI datacenters and such. The folks running Nvidia are trying to continue make money. That's their jobs. The rest of us are not obligated to buy from them.

$800 worth of antennas and radios allow researchers to monitor what comes from communications satellites and hear everyone's phone calls and bank account numbers. Sigh.

Microsoft shows a text-to-image generator that it developed in house. That is a first for Microsoft.

Google adds more video-output capabilities to its NotebookLM system.

Regulators gotta regulate and there are lots of regulators in California. The Governor out there signs a bunch of new state laws adding regulation. Here is a link to one of them.

Anduril is making smart headwear and glasses for our army. This week is the annual meeting of the Association of the US Army. Many announcements there.

Got $4,000? Get this little compute box from Nvidia that runs AI locally. The compute power in this little box at the cost of a two-week paycheck for an entry-level engineer is simply... well you couldn't get this back in the day. Stop with all the datacenter use and buy one of these for every group in your company. And if you are in government, well, maybe that wouldn't work as it would require too much imagination and vision.

Need a short-term job? Amazon is about to hire 250,000 people to work warehouses for the Holiday Season.

This recent college graduate is doing some smart things financially, but still making mistakes. Month one salary goes to emergency fund. Months two through ten pay off the college loans. Now start high-yield savings and other investments. And, get a second job at Amazon (see above).

Workplaces in America are becoming more toxic. Either that or folks simply complain more.

Wednesday 15 October 2025

More Billion$ for more datacenters and AI super duper processors. This time it is Microsoft and $14Billion.

More European tech companies being bought by more Asian big tech companies.

Ah, but AI, like everything in the past, will create more jobs than it removes. They really hope that is true in India.

Amazon cutting office jobs. AI? or just plain efficiency?

The hands-on reviews of Nvidia's little super computer begin. Here is one. Also see Reddit's locallama group.

Apple moves more manufacturing from China to Vietnam.

Intel shows a new datacenter GPU they call Crescent Island. Sounds like New Orleans to me.

The day has arrived: no more Microsoft for that kitchen PC running Windows 10. Well, it was a good machine that served my wife and two oldest grandkids for years. It still works and will continue to do so.

Leave it to Walmart: now we can shop Walmart from inside ChatGPT.

And now we have the dead Internet. Hey, this stuff here was written by a person.

We are now in The Great Software Quality Collapse.

All this AI is "trained" on stuff that has been digitized and put on the Internet. And that leaves about 98.6% unused.

We have solved world hunger. We did it decades ago.

Thursday 16 October 2025

Windows 10 no longer supported. Folks replacing perfectly good home computers. The landfills are filling with older and perfectly good computers.

AI continues to move into the medical field. This is at least 40 years later than was possible. We had good systems that would have helped people in the 1980s.

Let's use facial recognition as a biometric to let people into their accounts. What could go wrong? Well, it seems that much could go wrong and has gone wrong.

TSMC reports a fabulous financial quarter with profits up 39% from last year. Last year was pretty darn good as well.

Microsoft and AWS moving more products out of China. China has proven to be an unreliable business partner.

Our current President is building a ballroom attached to the White House. Corporations are paying for it. I'm not much for ballrooms. I am in favor of private industry, and not personal taxes, paying for things.

Why all these datacenters? Well, now I can create ten seconds more video. Good tradeoff? Well, I could think of better uses of national resources, but that's just me.

This is something different: the smartphone has a camera that pops out of the body and can swivel in any direction.

The myth of the teenager who hacks into big companies is not a myth. It happens.

Real news that isn't news: the Communist Party of China routinely hacks into systems of other nations' governments.

And this isn't news either as Meta is building a datacenter in El Paso costing $1.5Billion. That's a pittance in today's world.

Now this is more like it: a $40Billion deal for datacenters.

Apple announces their new M5 processor which has a leap in performance over the M4 which had a leap... you get the picture. This is amazing stuff. The performance for the price is just boggling.

And the new M5 processor will be in the updated MacBook Pro. Why the laptop? Why not also in the desk top machine?

And for fans of the tablet format, the M5 processor will be in the updated iPad Pro.

Business advice attributed to Taylor Swift, "If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room" Make no mistake about this: Taylor Swift is pretty smart.

What is obese? I don't know, but I feel like I am surrounded by it.

Reports that factory technology in China is decades ahead of everyone else.

Some advances in treating Alzheimers' in mice. Perhaps some good will come of this.

Friday 17 October 2025

Meanwhile in America, we learn that there are some people of whom we cannot make "disrespectful" AI videos. Hmm. A nation of special people, not laws equally applied.

This is why everyone is building their own processors. Nvidia cannot meet the demand.

Wikipedia becomes a data storage place. People ask AI, including Google's Search, and read a small bit from Wikipedia without reading from the site. No news here, just confirmation of rumors.

Here is something about Copilot Actions and Windows 11 and all. I just can't keep up with these things.

Nintendo attempts to build 25million Switch 2 units by March of next year.

Maybe travel arrangements will be easier.

Meanwhile in Lousiana, Meta is about to get $30Billion in financing for its datacenter.

Flock, they know how to analyze video for law enforcement agencies, partners with Amazon Ring, they have doorbell cameras everywhere.

Rumors for Apple's laptop computers going into 2026 and 2027. They are still laptop computers. And what will people do with supercomputers they carry around?

Uber drivers can earn some extra money by labelling data while waiting for their next rider.

Antrhopic's Claude now connects to Microsoft 365 services. The processing is still in the cloud, so off go your local documents. They have to bring local processing to make this stuff useful.

Saturday 18 October 2025

Meanwhile in Cambodia, it seems that running scam centers is an industry supported by the governors.

TSMC's factory in Arizona is now producing processors.

Software that generates videos for us per our wishes: don't believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see. Pause. Think. I think we could all do more pausing and thinking.

A data storage company examines the failure rates of hard disk drives and notes that the devices are more reliable than they were ten years ago.

It appears that the hype about less-polluting hybrid vehicles was just that --- hype.

I like this adjective: underwhelming. So goes it with these new smartphones promoted because they are thinner.

More thoughts on Nvidia's new DGX Spark, the smallest AI supercomputer in the world.

Quoting the headline, "OpenAI builds AI for Science team to advance computational discovery"

Sunday 19 October 2025

Deciding stuff in the office. Our military seems to be doing this with the chattering bots.

And now we have "vibening" as in this quote, Welcome to the vibening, where a lot of white-collar work is being portrayed as just vibes.

Make up an electrical power company. Have a tech celebrity invest in you. You are worth millions even though all you have is a card table, some folding chairs, and a post office box at the local UPS store.

Making money by moving money: how Robinhood is prospering.

The "company store" returns. AI companies in San Francisco are renting apartment buildings and sub-leasing them to their employees. They cannot pay high enough salaries for their employees to find a place to live, so live in the company's barracks.

My wife and I went for a walk yesterday and came across a bunch of people holding signs. It seems that was part of the nationwide "No Kings" protest. Well, freedom to assemble and speak. Good. Misguided? Probably.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, the police force is tired of being hampered by "journalists." And so we go on here in America.

From employee to business owner: many TV personalities, they fashion themselves as journalists, start their own online outlets.

Meanwhile in Ireland, if you are an "artist" (not sure what that is any longer) you can get $1,500 a month from the government, a.k.a., the taxpayers for life. Well, as long as the taxpayers don't mind their money going to someone who does something called art, so be it.

Rumors that folks are turning their Windows 10 machines into Linux machines. I kind of doubt that.