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: 2-8 February, 2026

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• More and more Epstein files
• SpaceX and xAI merge
• Now it's called OpenClaw (what is next?)
• Big cuts and layoffs at the Washington Post

Monday 2 February 2026

All these datacenters and such mean many paying jobs for people we don't associate with high tech.

Meanwhile in China, the governors want to lead in AI, but doing so means, uh, well, er, doing things they don't like.

For the first time in a generation, Taiwan passes China in an emerging-market index.

Meanwhile in Europe, they are trying to create a digital twin of planet earth with some hope of building better climate models.

While businesses are trying to push employees to use LLMs and be more productive, AI conferences are banning their use. Of course, productive is a subjective term.

One of the advantages Apple had going back to the days of the iPod was that it could obtain parts faster and better than everyone else. Now, the datacenters have the money and the advantage.

OpenAI rules the marketplace in AI, but Anthropic has a sizable share and is gaining.

Don't do live demonstrations.

The documentary about Melania has pulled in big money for a documentary and not much money compared to fiction movies. If you don't like you-know-who, you don't like the movie.

Takeout, carry out, delivery: we aren't eating meals inside restaurants. Just us old folks do that.

Now we are getting somewhere as researchers have programmable robots the size of a grain of salt. Let these swim around and find and fix disease in the body.

Some computer history: back in 1976 (I remember that year well), Bill Gates was mad because some people took his BASIC interpreter and were giving it away to everyone. No pay for Bill. He made up the losses with that DOS thing.

Meanwhile at Walmart, here come the EV charging stations. Fine, just don't put them right at the door to the store.

Catching up on some writing notes that I neglected.

Prepare for success. It isn't as easy as I thought it would be.

How to attribute part of the writing to AI. Oh? How about this? Type words in English. For a couple of recent pieces, I put, "I used AI in research for this piece. I wrote the entire piece, so don't blame AI for the bad writing."

While writing a memoir, the life you change the most is yours. That holds for just about everything you write.

I like this piece on a new year's resolution for a writer. How about resolving to keep being yourself and writing for the sake of writing?

The state of the practice in dictation software. Tired of typing or just want to tell a story? Dictate it.

Prompts for things to write in your journal or elsewhere.

Books that writers should read. Careful: if you are reading, you are not writing.

Spruce up your writing space. Careful: if you are sprucing (is that a real word?) you are not writing.

Reading with purpose. Careful: see above.

Writing fiction that brings about change in the world. Ah, now we are talking about actually writing.

Tuesday 3 February 2026

There are more and more and more Epstein files. I read one semi=serious editorial that suggested that this Epstein fellow simply emailed everyone all the time (had a staff of people to do it) and became a pest. So, did you receive an email from him? Nothing you can do about it if you did.

Meanwhile in Paris, local police raid the offices of a successful American company in an effort to ... well, eventually get money.

Nintendo reports a billion-dollar profit for the last financial quarter.

Elon Musk merges SpaceX and xAI.

Hoarding $12billion in precious minerals.

Palantir reports a big financial quarter.

Some of the tide is turning as Mozilla will allow folks to turn off AI in Firefox.

Meanwhile in California, Meta throws money at politicians. Don't care if you are red or blue as long as you like tech and AI.

Fear and loathing about AI being used by the current administration and the news media to alter and create news. This is an old practice. Nothing new, just newer tools used to make newer things. Old practice.

The prices of the Raspberry Pi products keep rising. Blame the datacenters and their buying of all the parts.

I'll just quote the headline: Researchers hacked Moltbook's database in under 3 minutes and accessed thousands of emails and private DMs

Let's bring back the iPod. I agree.

I like this term: AI washing. When you layoff 10% of your company, you don't say, "We the senior managers messed up." You say, "AI is more productive."

This is a story about Starbucks and automation. Stop a moment and notice the other story here. A person changed things at Chipotle and is changing things at Starbucks. Some people are better at their jobs than other people. And some people simply run down their companies from lack of expertise. Starbucks was a star company. The wrong people in the wrong positions ruined it. There is a difference in different people.

And speaking of "let's just do better," Finland will start turning the traffic lights green for emergency vehicles. Uh, why wasn't that already in place, everywhere?

Wednesday 4 February 2026

And now its OpenClaw and it just won't go away, yet.

Boom, pow, whoosh: AI agent social network Moltbook grew from 30K+ users on January 30 to 1.5M+ on February 2

The definition of a big deal has changed: this story is about hundreds of million$. If it isn't billion$, it just doesn't count.

Now this is a business deal that deserves a headline. It is about Oracle, banks, datacenters, and $56billion (with a B).

You can't make it up: Pinterest fires people who were keeping tracking of Pinterest firing people.

AMD sells AI processors to folks in China.

And Nvidia works its way through the regulations in the US government as it attempts to sell processors that were previously approved for export.

Use of Microsoft's Copilot falls as Google's Gemini rises.

Coming next year from Microsoft is the next Xbox with processors from AMD.

Some tech companies report big financial quarters.

SuperMicro has the biggest rise.

EA does well.

Take-Two does well.

AMD does well.

Microsoft et al. launch the Publisher Content Marketplace.

Quoting the headline: Apple brings agentic coding to Xcode 26.3, allowing developers to use Anthropic's Claude Agent and OpenAI's Codex, and integrates support for MCP

Quoting: PayPal Holdings Inc. said HP Inc. Chief Executive Officer Enrique Lores will take the top job from Alex Chriss, whose turnaround plan failed to meet targets.

Thursday 5 February 2026

Locally, the Washington Post had a big layoff. People are tired of a news source that constantly says, "The President is a fill-in-the-blank-with-something-horrible."

More on the cuts at the Washington Post. Hey, the profit margin in news is small. If you want a charity, so be it, but then you must listen to the views of the rich guy who funds the charity. If you want news that is news, you need to find a different path.

Yes, there are still jobs for computer programmers.

Meanwhile in India, local folks want to have their own AI industry.

Now we have rogue streaming box resellers. I remember the day of the gadgets that would get you free HBO. Long, long ago.

More on the story of stealing TV.

Quoting from the headline: HP, Dell, Acer, and Asus are considering sourcing memory chips from Chinese chipmakers

TSMC will produce 3nm chips in Japan.

New software and new tools help high-end Olympians (from rich countries) train.

And at Amazon MGM Studio, they want more and better software to enable making movies faster and less expensive. Let's go, go, go faster, faster, faster. And cut salaries.

Arm reports a big financial quarter.

Alphabet reports a good financial quarter.

Uber reports a good financial quarter.

Quoting: Microsoft integrates Claude and Codex AI coding agents directly into GitHub, GitHub Mobile, and Visual Studio Code

Alexa+ arrives from Amazon.

Real news that isn't news as NASA has another delay. Quoting: NASA has delayed the Artemis II launch to March of this year, after a wet dress-rehearsal uncovered a hydrogen leak.

Researchers claim that ultra-processed foods are engineered to be like cigarettes. They make you addicted to them. Hot dogs? Well, we shall see what becomes of this.

Friday 6 February 2026

No Internet viewing today.

Saturday 7 February 2026

It appears that our current President showed, and then withdrew, a video demeaning a prior President. I didn't see or hear of this as I was busy working yesterday.

A new smartphone for kids.

Out there is a low-paid person watching disgusting video so the AI can tell you that the video you may click on is disgusting. Watch disgusting video all day for a billion-dollar company for a dollar a day. It hurts your senses.

Hey China, wait in line to buy computer processors.

Right now, American big tech is spending, spending, and spending. Another way to say it is they are investing, investing, and investing in America. Yea.

For the first time, Uber is found liable for the acts of one of its gig drivers.

Roblox reports a big financial quarter.

So does Amazon.

So does Reddit.

Inside Anthropic (only 2,000 employees): ruthless efficiency from a mission-obsessed culture. Git er done, now. Look, decide, do, move on.

Anthropic says it found Opus 4.6 brings more focus to the most challenging parts of a task without being told to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just get the job done and let's stop philosophizing so much.

And OpenAI launches GPT-5.3-Codex, which it says runs 25% faster, enabling longer-running tasks, and quoting: is our first model that was instrumental in creating itself. Same comment as above. Let's just get the job done.

Listen to an hours-long conversation with Elon Musk.

Epstein had deep relationships with Silicon Valley. Did he really? Perhaps he was simply a hyperactive marketer that flooded places with email invites and such.

The business of hacking into governments and such is booming.

Nvidia has a delay in new GPUs for gaming. Simple explanation is resources are going towards datacenters instead.

This story from Wired accidentally exposes why Presidential elections are important: it isn't the President, it is the people who go to seats in regulatory agencies in Washington. Wired claims that a bunch of cranks are now on an autism panel. Others claimed the opposite about such regulatory panels with the prior President. It is in these panels full of non-elected persons that power is exercised.

Sunday 8 February 2026

It appears to be one of those years where all the money is invested instead of being enjoyed.

Meanwhile in China, crypto currencies are banned, well, sort of. No crypto mining, trading, and all that, well, sort of.

Corning is one of the big winners in the datacenter boom.

And there are more big winners involved in this datacenter thing.

More on the way they do things at Anthropic.

The NFL's Super Bowl is this evening. It is one of the world's biggest single-day sporting events. And let's attempt to count the money being wagered. Too bad. Lives are ruined on these things.

Deeper thoughts and examples of using the current AI systems to multiply productivity. These aren't little 5% increments. We are discussing 5x and 10x booms.

Meanwhile in the state of New York, the legislators declare they don't want jobs in their state. Well, there are plenty of other places that do.

Tax breaks etc. have ballooned the value of Amazon. Rich guy stuff, right? Wrong. Millions of Americans are invested in mutual funds. Those funds own Amazon. Millions of Americans just received money to spend in America.

Big tech (American) has over a Trillion dollars (how much money is that?) in orders for cloud computing (datacenter work) that it cannot deliver yet. That's like someone telling you they will pay you money next year for working next year. You are already hired and about to start receiving paychecks.

The sales of integrated circuits rose 25% last year. That is an amazing number for an established industry with a long history.

Work 12 hours a day 6 days a week. Horrible, right? Who decided that working 5 days a week was right and good and the thing to do? I don't advocate the 996 work schedule. I do question

Why do billionaire CEOs fly private jets? It's not economics, it's security and safety. It is not safe for 200 people to fly on a commercial plane with Elon Musk et al. on board.

I love this headline: The US Army's biggest AI bet isn't killer robots - it's paperwork. Well stated.