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: 22-28 December, 2025

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Christmas is this week
• More Epstein files followed by more fussing

Monday 22 December 2025

Where money is going: companies that build tech for law enforcement.

All these datacenters may have the names of big tech attached to them. There are, however, many small and new companies involved. So if there is an AI bust, there will be many new companies standing to do what comes next.

If we have more surveillance, our schools will be safer. Well, maybe not.

Perhaps we are over thinking this thing about how we interact with chattering bots. Folks, it isn't a real person. It's just software that runs 24 hours a day and doesn't get tired like a person would. That is why the company hired the software, so they wouldn't have to pay a person and provide a bathroom.

Good grief. The polygraph is in the news again. There are reasons why polygraph results are not admissible in court.

This year, the Hour of Code is replaced by the Hour of AI. I hope we continue with both, not one or the other. How about the Hour of Thinking?

Software that writes software. In one form or another, this has been with us a long time. Recently, it is "really good." Vibe coding and what I call hobby programming. Does it help professionals? Well, not maybe sort of.

There has been some success at reading that Unix tape from 1974.

I like this: the The Association for Computing Machinery will make its digital library open access. Come on IEEE. Let's do the same.

The CEO of Uber believes that since AI is making engineers more productive, hire more, not fewer engineers. The problem is that companies and governments don't have the imagination to see new work to be done. They only see what work is present now. If the work doesn't grow and people are more productive, hire fewer people. Imagination grows. The status quo (brain dead managers) shrinks.

The de minimis deal means that China is dumping its cheap stuff into Europe.

Tuesday 23 December 2025

Sigh. I have to put this here for some reason. A government employee is asked about their intern program for engineers and scientists: Part of what makes this program so special is the experiential opportunity that the interns have in working hand in hand with our Department of NAME-WITHHELD managers on mission critical research. Two horrible things wrong here: (1) the person said this gobblydegook and (2) the person thinks this is a great thing to say. And people wonder why Elon Musk quit in frustration.

Meanwhile in China, in an unusual step towards public safety, never a big concern in a country run by the communist party, the governors delay a push towards self-driving vehicles.

Meanwhile in Singapore, nothing like good old fashioned smuggling to make money in the 21st century.

Some shuffling of chairs inside Nvidia.

Everyone wants to buy WBD. If WBD were so great, why is it for sale?

Is software and all this compute power generating new things or simply finding things? It is generally simply finding things. All that compute power is useful, but let's try to curb the enthusiasm a bit.

And now we have the slop boom. What started with a little security camera catching rabbits bouncing on a backyard trampoline has become an entertainment industry. The stuff is entertaining and fun. AND NEVER UNDERESTIMATE WHAT SOME PEOPLE CONSIDER TO BE FUN.

The Department of Government Efficiency is still alive and working. Recent personal insight confirms this.

In the world of Linux distributions, variety may be the spice of life but all these different user interfaces are not helping adoption of Linux.

All off-shore wind projects have been halted by the US Government. The reason? Well, it seems that our Dept of Defense studied something and concluded these are a national security risk. How? The answer is Top Secret. So, just trust us. Just a wild guess, but these things create holes in radar defense systems and advances in drones are sufficient to allow major and devastating attacks.

More national defense news: our FCC bans imported drones.

I'll just quote this: Microsoft plans to eliminate all C and C++ code across its major codebases by 2030, replacing it with Rust using AI-assisted, large-scale refactoring. I trust they have planned to test everything thoroughly.

Wednesday 24 December 2025

A leap forward in space launch in India. Oh, and if you can do a space launch like this and you have nuclear weapons... well, you know.

A growing business: stealing crypto currency.

You would think that the folks in our Dept of Defense were smarter than this...depending on batteries from China.

Crypto miners are retooling for AI. And the business is good $$$.

This story has twists and turns. The base of it is our current President doesn't like foreign governments extracting money from successful American companies per their petty regulations.

Meanwhile in China, your chattering bot better answer correctly to a quiz to operate. And the correct answers for the quiz are determined by the Communist Party.

Quoting the headline: The Trump administration plans to replace the lottery system for H-1B visas with a weighted system prioritizing higher-paid individuals. Back when I was a child, we scratched on cave walls with rocks, I was taught that in immigration you allow high-skilled and productive people to enter your country. Perhaps there was some truth to that.

Every time there is a release of "Epstein files," there is a release of criticism. Folks will only be happy when the person they despise becomes more despicable from those releases. Some men and women behaved badly. They are not to be admired. Prosecution in the law is one thing. Persecution from jealousy is something else.

And we want more: Asus has a new 5K gaming monitor. Nvidia's latest GPU can't show all the pixels fast enough.

We are still settling after the great PAN(dem)IC. Remote work? Only if you are in high demand. Everyone else is in the office.

The dictionary and the encyclopedia are gone the way of the dinosaur. Oh yeah? Wait until the lights go out and the Internet withers.

I'll quote this: Irish competitor Diarmuid Early, dubbed the Lebron James of Excel spreadsheets, has won the 2025 Microsoft Excel World Championship in Las Vegas, dethroning three-time champion Andrew Ngai. Well, I guess there are worse things to do with time and talent.

Meanwhile in Uzbekistan, they have the world's largest network of license plate scanners.

Thursday 25 December 2025

It is Christmas Day 2025. Per history, I point to the words of noted preacher of the 1800s Charles Spurgeon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Spurgeon) and his thought on Christmas: We have no superstitious regard for times and seasons. Certainly we do not believe in the present ecclesiastical arrangement called Christmas. First, because we do not believe in the mass at all, but abhor it, whether it be sung in Latin or in English; and secondly, because we find no Scriptural warrant whatever for observing any day as the birthday of the Savior; and consequently, its observance is a superstition, because not of divine authority. (end quote) This was a theme of Protestants in the 1800s in America as well as England.

Wired looks at the Apple Developer Academy in Detroit. A lot of money went into this place. Some have benefited, and I guess that's about as best as can be expected. Give away a ton of money and something good is bound to happen. Efficient? Hardly.

Big tech uses some tricks of the trade to move the billion$ in debt for building datacenters.

I guess it is time for these year-in-review stories. This one examines how Hollywood jumped into AI this year. Critics abound. Good results are scarce.

Some poll of Russians indicates that Russians believe the war in Ukraine will end in 2026. That will be good. That will also be an opportunity for America and Western Europe to do what should have been done 30 years ago: welcome Russia into the west. Come on, let's stop this Russia-against-the-world stuff.

An AI slop video that went viral claimed there was a coup in France. There are worse things to do with time and technology, but not many.

The Epstein Files. Perhaps in years, someone will look back on this and just shake their heads. There is supposed to be a million pages of stuff. Who keeps records like that? And then there are the redactions, those blacked out lines of text and photographs. It appears that many are trivial to remove so you can read the text. Really? Who "redacts" with such stupidity? And who decided to use the word "redact?" How about "edit?"

Our Navy has been running nuclear reactors for decades. Datacenters need power. Uh, need we go on with this?

The argument for putting what you create on physical media that you hold in your hand and put on your bookshelf. Streaming? Forget it.

Friday 26 December 2025

Fascinating take on well-know Bible passages. Understand the context or attempt to instead of just reading the words in our current usage.

Real news that isn't news: the rich get richer. No one is cheating here. The rich invest in growth stocks. And those growth stocks can go to zero in a hurry. It is a risk.

More real news that isn't news (commonly known as "no duh"): If you let software write software and you don't test it, you may have problems.

Where the money is going: AI companies and founders. It appears that we have 50 new billionaire$ who created AI companies.

Wired looks at HP's ZBook workstation-class laptop. They aren't impressed.

It is possible to reverse the decline of a franchise. See, for example, Starbucks.

Meanwhile in China, a couple of cases where the subjects take to society media to criticize the rulers (this is uncommon).

People cheer the death of the woman who ran the one-child-per-family policy.

Criticism of the party over diplomatic moves with Japan.

This fuss comes back around. Memory prices are rising due to increased demand for datacenters. Why do I need 64GB of RAM on a PC (we used to live with 64KB)? Software bloat or laziness is the answer. Let's get fit, huh?

Saturday 27 December 2025

The week of Christmas comes to an end. For some, there is one more week off for New Year's Day. Others of us will return to the office on Monday. This is a slow news week.

Doom and gloom predicted for the economy as the AI crashes (maybe).

Meanwhile in India, the IT industry isn't waiting for those chattering bots to take their jobs. They are moving quickly into areas needed by the bots.

The value of Palantir is up 3,000% in the last three years.

I have to learn what a hackquisition is. It is somewhat related to the acquihire of a few years ago. Anyways, this is about Nvidia and its $20Billion deal with Groq.

Our ICE has increased its spending on tech to $300million. That is a pretty big jump for a Federal group.

Meanwhile in China, sales of iPhones is up over 100%.

Meanwhile in California, folks are cheering the idea of a one-time (never trust that phrase) 5% wealth tax on billionaire$. It is a long way from becoming law, but some billionaire$ are already packing their bags.

Sunday 28 December 2025

No Internet viewing today.