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: 10-16 November, 2025

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• The Israel-Gaza peace seems to be holding
• US Senate takes first step to end the shutdown
• The Shutdown ends
• US Treasury stops making pennies
• Blue Origin, far behind SpaceX, does land a New Glenn rocket for reuse

Monday 10 November 2025

Meanwhile in Europe, perhaps some of the regulators have learned they regulated too much.

Still in Europe, folks discover that the all-electric buses they bought from China can be turned off whenever the Communist Party of China wants.

And in general, perhaps it is not AI that is cutting jobs. It's just business. Spend a lot here, cut there.

Part of this piece discusses businesses trying to use AI. Gosh. Come on folks. Tip #1: use proven practices. Tip #2: don't believe the marketers. Tip #3: Don't be stupid.

Meanwhile in Silicon Valley, they have etiquette classes for the clods who are trying to start companies and raise money and act like they know how to put on a tie and tuck their shirt in their pants.

Meanwhile at the University of Utah, someone finds a 50-year-old magnetic tape that may contain the lost Unix V4. They have yet to attempt reading the tape, but are optimistic.

I'll quote, "The nonprofit Dust-to-Digital Foundation is making thousands of historic songs accessible to the public for free through a new partnership with the University of California, Santa Barbara. "

AI and writers: AI still cannot compete.

I don't like this idea: borrowing money as a writer. Get a job. Hate it? Push yourself to write more. Get a job. Don't borrow money.

Thoughts on audio-visual technology, AI, goggles, and all such things.

The prologue to a story. What is it? Should there even be one?

"It could be that your keyboard has all the letters needed to allow you to type the book you have inside you...The solution isn't coming. The solution is already here."---Seth Godin

In the tech world, the ability to think and act like a decent human being are becoming essential. Hire good and smart people. Good means they have ethics, won't cheat others, won't steal from anyone, and won't lie to anyone. Smart means they can learn and do things. That is the combination.

Thoughts on having your writing appear in an anthology.

Tuesday 11 November 2025

Our US Senate votes something or other that foreshadows the end of the government shutdown this week.

Real news that isn't news: a German court agrees with a German music-rights group and against a big American tech company.

I rarely link to Vogue, but here goes. This is a $150 fashion accessory that will hold an iPhone and a few other things that fashionable women carry.

This isn't nearly as exciting as the Vogue story, but is of upmost importance to keeping much of the free world free. Therefore, it is the most important story to come along in the decade.

I don't understand how all this works, but these are really big $$$ numbers.

And more really big $$$ numbers showing that all this AI stuff is not yet profitable.

Meta boasts a suite of AI models that can perform speech recognition on 1,600 different human spoken languages.

I guess I don't understand the difference between these organizations: "the European Commission is exploring ways to force EU member states to phase out Chinese telecom equipment makers Huawei and ZTE from their networks"

Microsoft is far behind OpenAI in the number of people using its AI product (Copilot vs. ChatGPT). So, hire more marketers.

Some lawyers discover that many lawyers are just making up stuff in court.

TSMC reports that October sales were up 16.9%. This would mean parties at most places, but the growth is less than it has been, so everyone is worried. Go figure.

It appears we have, "a growing wave of Gen Zers who are fleeing white-collar life in favor of working for the homes and estates of the ultrarich." One note, the people in the articile are highly educated (medical school etc.).

Datacenters in Santa Clara, California (home of Nvidia) sit idle as they have no electricity hookup.

Money, money, money...the folks at Wikipedia want AI companies to pay for reading the free-to-read encyclopedia.

Remember that unbelievable city the Saudis were building. Well, it is truly unbelievable.

Meanwhile in the UK, why teach kids thinking logically and building things (basic computer science) when we can teach them to cheat on their essays by using ChatGPT et al.?

Wednesday 12 November 2025

Our House of Representatives is to vote today to end the government shutdown.

Meanwhile in the UK, possibly letting white hat testers test AI system to see if they will generate CSAM (child sexual abuse materials). This is a no brainer. They must allow the good guys to test.

And still in the UK, they want to pass laws requiring companies to not allow break ins for cyber systems. No duh law. Impossible to abide by.

Meanwhile in Australia, it appears that the Communist Party of China has been hacking the infrastructure.

Google adds more AI stuff to their Pixel phones.

Meta's Threads adds more podcasting capabilities.

Google introduces Private AI Compute.

We now have an Iconic Voice Marketplace. If you have an Iconic voice, I guess you can license it.

More AI-based image editing from Google. Of course you have to called it AI or it won't sell. Many of these things are much older techniques that require far less in the way of compute power.

Microsoft to build a superintelligence team will build a frontier-grade research capability for AI.

Meanwhile in Portugal, Microsoft to build a $10Billion datacenter.

Samsung has a new USB 1TeraByte drive that fits snug against you laptop so you never have to unplug it. Two notes, (1) clever packaging and (2) a TeraByte in this tiny thing. Wow.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, they are about to deploy a drone wall. My question again is, "If the Ukrainians are so smart and clever and innovative and all that, why can't they win?"

I don't understand how big finance works, but it seems that there may not be enough money in the world to pay for all these datacenters.

Enquiring minds want to know, what is the iPad Pro? I think that question came from some TV show or something.

Microsoft releases Visual Studio 2026. This is the first big release in four years.

Thursday 13 November 2025

Our Federal government shutdown is semi-officially over.

As long as countries have blockaded one another, peple have been running blockades on way or another.

And speaking of bypassing blocks, FanDuel finds a way to bypass laws prohibiting sports gambling in some states.

A detailed analysis of Microsoft's economic strategy in AI. It all comes down to being profitable.

Microsoft shows what they call an AI super factory in Atlanta.

A look at the Cybathlon which happens every four years and explores advances in the human-brain interface.

Waymo takes to the freeways in a few cities.

Anthropic throws more tens of billion$$$ at AI and datacenters in the US.

There seems to be excitement today in the Steam Machine gaming world. I don't delve there often, so this is kind of fuzzy to me.

In an effort to curb AI use in college exams, they are bringing back handwritten tests. Read the question, write the answer by hand. Good luck to those trying to decipher the scribbling, but I think this is a good idea.

For now at least, the US Treasury will no longer mint pennies. My guess is they will come back.

Meanwhile in China, the governors declared that we would all build and drive electric cars. Well, this has turned out the way most governor-declared things turn out...badly.

Meanwhile at colleges, incoming freshmen are ill-prepared academically the past five years. Now, let's see, what happened five years ago? Hmm, oh yeah, the PAN(dem)IC.

An AI song hits number one on the country charts.

No live demos! In Russia, a humanoid AI walking robot falls down on stage.

Friday 14 November 2025

I recommend this article. The author has a grasp of what the current chattering bots software is doing and why we stand back and marvel.

Big tech companies made promises about net-zero carbon stuff something or other. Then they entered the braggawatt race to see who could build the biggest datacenters the fastest. Now what? Reality hits. This is more of a public relations management task than a technology management task.

The GAIN AI Act: it says US companies can buy the first and most of the best processors from Nvidia. All American big tech likes this idea except Nvidia.

Mozilla plans to add an AI window to the Firefox browser. Gotta keep up with the Googles.

One indication of where we are in technology: OpenAI has a minor update to GPT and the press can't stop talking about it.

We attempt to judge the "political evenhandedness" of AI systems. I am surprised that "evenhandedness" is a real word that spells correctly. As per the political part, well, good luck putting an objective score on a subjective matter.

Netflix has a video game strategy. What happened to just mailing DVDs back and forth?

Anthropic admits that the Communist Party of China used its tools to hack other nations.

Meanwhile in Europe, Europol dismantles a thousand servers to stop information thieves.

LinkedIn improves its people searching features.

Blue Origin has a New Glenn rocket land after launch. They are far behind SpaceX, but making strides towards the new norm.

The experts now claim that what we knew about the landscape (trees, forests, plains, meadows) was all wrong. We now know that grasslands were here a jillion years ago or at least 500 years ago. Well, what do ya' know about that! Rewriting science once again.

Saturday 15 November 2025

Someone tell me what is happening in America. Yesterday, I had a turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee and at restaurant---$18. Then I had a hot dog with no drink at a restaurant---$8. Other than eating at the wrong restaurants, what is happening? Is this yet another unintended consequence to COVID?

Wishing this tariff change will bring down prices.

An actual expert in Artificial Intelligence speaks about LLMs and stuff that aren't artificial intelligence. Someone has a grasp on the obvious.

Tim Cook is now 65 (I'm 67 on Wednesday). He may retire. Being the CEO of Apple is a pretty busy job. He has done it well. If he retires, he isn't going to sit on the couch and watch I Love Lucy reruns.

It appears that not everyone wants a datacenter.

See my piece on the topic. There are good reasons not to sign the first offer, but great reasons to sign a good offer.

This upsets me greatly. I use the em dash (if confused, look it up on Wikipedia). Someone has decided that my writing is AI-generated and phony. When is knowledge and correct use signs of being phony? This is disgusting.

Braggawatts: Google to toss $40Billion into datacenters in Texas.

Meta is requiring its employees to use new tools. Let's shift to our Federal government and our fellow citizens who work for our Federal government. They are often prohibited from using new tools. Really folks. PROHIBITED from using new tools. Can you imagine being told you cannot use a battery-powered leaf blower or drill or weed eater or lawn mover or car???? And some Federal employees wonder why DOGE wanted to cut their jobs.

Sometimes someone states the obvious to the great angst of others.

Well, something to try this year: the PieCaken or some such silly name. Stack three pies and call it a cake.

Are you hiring North Koreans without knowing it?

Scientists confirm that the inside of the moon is made up of the stuff at the inside of the moon. Some type of iron ball. I trust they didn't spend much taxpayers' money on this, but...

Fifteen years ago 90% of Americans had cable TV. That has dropped to 50%.

Sunday 16 November 2025

Google is "helping" law enforcement arrest criminals, and this is called evil. When did arresting criminals become evil? If a law is unjust, work to change it. Meanwhile, law enforcement persons are enforcing the law, hence the name.

Excellent article to read about a tragic event. Over three years ago, the Russians captured the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. The Russians have since leveled battle-damaged buildings, started construction of new buildings, and is listing them for sale to Russians to come and occupy the city.

Another no duh moment for businesses trying to do AI. Long quote: The companies who are thriving in the AI era are doing much more than building models. They're building systems. They're aggregating data, governance and workflows into AI ready infrastructure that delivers at scale. If you're stuck in pilot purgatory, this is your roadmap out. This is for adult as most business operations is.

It appears there was a "tech community" in Gaza before Hama invaded Israel and all the rest happened.

Meanwhile in China, the governors want all those electric cars to become a battery network. They have sufficient control over their subjects to make it happen.

The Wall Street Journal looks at the dollars and often the lack of sense in all these new datacenter projects.

Computers and software are going to replace middle managers. Marketers of computers and software have been saying that since the 1960s. One more time with feeling.

I thought we were to run out of oil in 1980. Hmm. Experts wrong again.

Solar panel power is booming in little spots in Africa. Of course. In America, where we have power lines and roads etc., solar is a silly stunt. In isolated and disconnected parts of the planet a little solar panel and a car battery works well.

This is a nightmare for those folks tasked with keeping the company's data in the company. Employees are not moving company files over traditional means. They are copying data from an on-screen display, pasting it into a chattering bot, and asking for help. The company that owns the chattering bot now has a copy of the company's data. What happened?

According to those who rank programming language use, C# is almost surpassing Java.

I like this from Microsoft. A feature that prevents screen capture in a Teams meeting. This prevents taking a picture of THAT PERSON in their home in less-than-flattering clothing.