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: 1-7 December, 2025

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• DOGE is not dead, yet
• Datacenters drive up the price of parts for basic laptop computers.

Monday 1 December 2025

What happens when a plane crashes in a non-US airline and agencies from different nations attempt to cooperate in the investigation.

The Chinese tech companies have moved into a posh neighborhood in Mexico City.

About 20% of all papers submitted to the International Conference on Learning Representations were completely generated by generative AI. Well, I guess that means something.

Perhaps OpenAI did not take advantage of their early lead in these chattering bot. Google's Gemini continues to grow its user base. OpenAI doesn't have other things to offer. Pay Google $20 a month for more Gemini and you also receive lots of other things from Google. OpenAI just gives you more OpenAI.

Here is another take on the OpenAI story: three years ago, no one used anything this research company researched. Today, they have 800million daily active users. That is a big number.

Speaking of getting more from Google, this analysis shows their TPU line is gaining on Nvidia.

Meanwhile in the State of New York, they have a new law about requiring companies to reveal that they use algorithms to price goods. Goofs. Companies have always done this.

Datacenters and water pollution. Ah, someone is getting a grip on reality. My father-in-law worked in the petro-chemical industry in Louisiana. They pulled muddy water from the Mississippi River, used it, and before they could dump it back in the muddy river, they had to clean, clean, and clean it. Datacenters have no such requirement. They should.

Tis the season to buy a discounted gaming laptop.

Honda is quietly working its way into the industry of re-usable space-launch vehicles.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, the drone war continues. Everyone is giving the combatants all these accolades about how they are using the new stuff. The combatants, however, are sitting there just sitting there with no movement on the battlefield. Hmm. Perhaps they are both infatuated with their own technical toys?

Perhaps we have been greatly underestimating the amount of people using Linux on their desktops. I agree with this idea. I have had many job interviews where engineers looked at me and asked, "You know how to us Microsoft Office?" They didn't. They used Linux all day and a few open office products or Google Docs etc.

Meanwhile in Australia, they are about to begin the world's largest experiment with teenagers. Good luck with that.

Tuesday 2 December 2025

Nvidia shows an AI model for autonomous driving research.

More about Google's advantages in AI. Google has a company behind it. This is like in the early 1980s when everyone started a new company to build a new PC for the home. Many disappeared because they had great ideas, but no company. Kaypro, however, had an electronics company established with a factory and empoyees experienced in building things. Kaypro survived while Osbourne vanished.

Code Red at OpenAI. Good grief, people still talk like that?

I recommend this long piece about how Americans, with no real basis in fact, tend to despise generative AI, i.e., those chattering bots.

Got $2,500? Get a tri-fold phone. Really? I guess this fills a need.

And we have Amazon Now. Deliveries of essentials in 30 minutes.

Got a college? Open a department in AI. Let students major in AI. Grant degrees in AI. A fad. I hope these kids are able to get jobs in ten years.

Quoting, "ElevenLabs' computer voices are so convincing they could fool your mother. "

Consulting companies are not raising the salaries of entry-level hires. They are not sure there is a place for entry-level hires.

MIT and Financial Times write about the state of AI. This piece is about jobs.

Microsoft brings back its holiday ugly sweaters.

Real news that isn't news: Flock uses low-paid, overseas workers to review and label images.

An opposite piece: data labeling is out. Complex data labeling is in.

"wow, we don't know how to engineer anymore" That quote comes from a story about Intel. I have to say the same thing about many of the efforts I've seen in the last ten years. Just an old man grumbling, or maybe not.

I like the title of this piece about colleges self-lobotomizing. See above story about building anything that works. Think people. Thinking must be taught.

Wednesday 3 December 2025

Well, even the pros make big mistakes. Seems that someone delivered the wrong file.

Build replicas of websites so AI can practice on them. Never thought of that one. There is business out there in the most unlikely places.

Meanwhile in half of America, we have to upload some sort of proof of age. Good luck with all that. It is some friction.

Got copper? You got money.

Those self-driving cars, at least the ones from Waymo, drive safer than you know who.

Meanwhile at Anthropic, they are eating their own dogfood and liking it.

Amazon launches AWS AI Factories.

Quoting the headline, "Amazon debuts three frontier agents: Kiro autonomous agent, AWS Security Agent, and AWS DevOps Agent, each focused on a different aspect of software development "

I like this one. It won't solve the world's problems, but it may help some people. Rich people give money to children at birth. The money grows. Again, in 18 years, the child won't be able to buy a home, but the child will have something. Come on rich folks, join in. Like Dolly Parton gives books to children.

Meanwhile in South Korea, a few ne'er-do-wells hacked 120,000 home cameras and did what ne'er-do-wells do.

Meanwhile at the Silicon Valley White House or some such place, we have Mr. David Sacks. He is either the best or worst person on earth. The mainstream media has yet to decide for the rest of us.

The reports that DOGE is dead seem to be premature. As one person noted, "They are embedded like ticks." Good. Let's do some good.

Ahh, once again, someone is eliminating the meeting. This occurs every few years until someone discovers that without talking to another person you don't know what they are doing. Sometimes you need to know what another person is doing. Just enough, but not too much. And there we have the tension.

Quoting, "The goal is to elect a handful of independent candidates to the House of Representatives in 2026, using AI to identify districts where independents could succeed and uncover diamond in the rough candidates. " Okay, let's do it.

Some research shows tattoo ink damages the lymph nodes and the immune system. Okay, show studies that show how tattooed persons die younger and from more immune-deficit situations.

Thursday 4 December 2025

Folks, go see a doctor. I know its a pain, but don't treat these chattering bots as if they were doctors.

Thoughts on the state of AI as we currently practice it. Machine learning is not all of AI. It never has been and never will be. Predicting the next word is clever and cleverly deceptive. Let's not fall in love with it.

Meanwhile in Europe, regulators gotta regulate and Meta is a successful American company that can be squeezed for money.

Good grief. Now we are to have AI systems confess. Hallucinating wasn't enough. Can we describe these software algorithms with more adjectives we use on humans? Silliness.

Nvidia's latest AI servers have 10x processing power over the last generation. I don't doubt the claims. How did we ever survive with the last generation?

Snowflake and Anthropic announce a partnership.

Snowflake reports a good financial quarter.

A couple of Federal contractors have been indicted for deleting databases and other such malfeasance.

I'll just quote the headline, "Google launches Workspace Studio, a no-code tool to create, design, manage, and share AI agents, for users on Business and Enterprise Workspace plans"

More vetting for H-1B visa applicants. Well, for years, the vetting has not existed.

OpenAI's non-profit group hands out $40million in grants to non-profits.

Well, put them in higher orbits. Space telescopes can't see space because there are too many other satellites in the way. Duh.

Water consumption at AI datacenters isn't nearly as much as most people report it to be.

Melinda French Gates chastises other billionaires for not giving away more money. She has a point.

Friday 5 December 2025

The SCRUM is dead. Long live Work In Progress and Flow.

ChatGPT is now three years old.

The crackdown on H-1B visas has Indian talent going to other countries.

AI companies in China turn to Kenya to label data.

Quoting the headline: AWS unveils its 192-core Graviton5 processor, with an up to 25% performance boost over Graviton4. There was a time when folks really tested and benchmarked all these things. The performance and niche claims are so goofy (yes, goofy) today that any actual testing, by those who know what a test is, doesn't exist.

Meanwhile in Japan, they are trying to build datacenters like everyone else. In Japan, however, they don't have the physical people to do the work.

I don't understand all there is to know about this story. One thing though, little old Netflix (DVDs by mail) is a huge player in the entertainment business. Somehow, they went from nothing to super power.

Let us sing the praises of Microsoft's Excel. With 500million paid users, and who knows how many other millions who find a way to use it at no cost, it is the app the we don't like but cannot find a way to live without it. I suppose MS Word is even more despised yet used.

Researchers and experimenters find yet another way to have these chattering bots do things they are not supposed to do. We used to call these hidden features "easter eggs" and giggle about them. Now, I don't know what we think.

And it seems we can't get enough of these chattering bots.

HPE reports a pretty good financial quarter.

I wear hearing aids. They improve my hearing. They could be much better. It appears that Fortell has solved some of the problems with the best hearing aids.

Amazon is the biggest customer of the US Postal Service. It is about to drop the USPS and go its own way. Look for postal rates to climb significantly.

North Phoenix has a new Chinatown. Well, its called TSMC Village, and they aren't railroad and laundry workers, they are building the TSMC factories. Immigration has a new face for a new world.

Saturday 6 December 2025

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, the schools issues iPads et al. to all the kids K-12. And the schools require all the kids to stare at the screens so many hours a day. And, uh, well, uh, doctors and the like are telling people that staring at screens is bad for kids, and uh, well, uh, er, we seem to have a problem here.

It appears the Microsoft may move to Broadcom for help in designing its own processors.

This is worth the time. They studied 100Trillion tokens and use of LLMs worldwide. One conclusion: This study offers an empirical view of how large language models are becoming embedded in the world's computational infrastructure. They are now integral to workflows, applications, and agentic systems, transforming how information is generated, mediated, and consumed.

Meanwhile in America, a judge tells Google how it must operate its search. Let's pause a moment here for thought. Well, let's not think too much because this makes no sense. Google practically reinvented search algorithms. The judge? Well, he's a judge.

All these datacenters are using up all the compute parts. Demand is outpacing supply. Hence, the price of a basic laptop computer will rise.

Real news that isn't news: European regulators fine successful American company over $100million because they can.

Western civilization is safe: 1977 versions of Star Wars will be shown in theaters real soon now.

Rent a Gulfstream G700 for your next flights across the Atlantic or Pacific. Just $250,000. Well, if you have to ask how much it costs, you cannot afford it.

If you "buy" something, do you own it or are you just renting it? Garage door openers are the subject of this story.

Apple's QuickTime audio and video player is now 34 years old.

Computer visions systems were to read x-rays and replace radiologists. The opposite happened. Hmm.

We now have a black fabric that is blacker than any prior black. As odd as it may sound, this may lead to invisibility.

Sunday 7 December 2025

It is Sunday. Not much happening in the world today.

My wife and I walked around Fair Oaks Mall yesterday. Christmas shopping? Not there.

Meanwhile in Inda, where they are digitalizing life, whatever that means, the ne'er-do-wells find digital scams.

Meanwhile on Reddit, AI slop is making slop of everything. Block it. Good grief.

Using AI to point out AI in videos and such. And maybe this is just all a transition into a new culture where the influencers disappear. The influencers had a good run. Move on.

"Geoffrey Hinton said just because AI is replacing some programming task doesn't mean a CS degree isn't valuable." Someone has a grasp on reality.

3D printing materials near the battlefield. A good idea. There are, of course, risks.

Meanwhile in Russia, the Cossacks are back and training the children for warfare. There is much to comment on this.