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: 23-29 March, 2026

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• US-Israel still at war with Iran
• The war with Iran is not progressing to plan
• And everything is AI is still the news

Monday 23 March 2026

This is one of the best explanations of AI Agents I have read. It goes back to what we called the Event Folder over 30 years ago. Pretty good.

Amazon Web Services is 20 years old. AWS sort of invented cloud computing which led to the AI datacenter which led to hatred of the AI datacenter which led to something or other.

Rumors that Amazon will pay attention to rural areas in its deliveries.

I dispute the claim that AI has changed the profession of programming, but the labs are trying to make a market with everyone.

This is Apple's 50th year. They are having worldwide roving celebrations or something. It is all about making the most profit from a single event repeated N times.

William Shatner, actor and human icon or something, is now 95 years old and still acting like William Shatner.

Breaking into the world of writing retreat teacher.

Two quotes and an after thought. (1) If you want to write more, you have to spend more time writing. (2) I'll never finish the book if I don't finish the book. Folks, if you want to write, WRITE! If you want to finish what you write, reach the last page and ship it. Don't go back to edit it one more thime. Ship it and move on.

Another good thought that people don't seem to realize: AI won't buy any of my books. We need to talk to people because people buy books.

Tuesday 24 March 2026

Meanwhile in China, we have claims of the world's best server Arm processor or something. Go back to 1980 and the thought the someone in China would be able to do this was not even thought.

Someone at Nvidia decided that in addition to making money selling hardware, they would make money selling money. It is quite profitable.

The ne'er-do-wells always seem to have no lack of inventiveness in just doing rotten stuff.

Our Dept of State now has a Bureau of Emerging Threats. I wish them well in doing something worthwhile with the taxpayers' money.

Quoting the headline: Microsoft hires a group of AI researchers from the Allen Institute for AI

Someone has written software that will do something on my computer. Uh, this is new? Nope, 70 years old perhaps, not new. When will the popular media actually read what they write?

Tie together Iran, a war, COVID, supply chains, and a large pile of money. Something perhaps will happen here.

Apple announces WWDC 2026 for June 8 - 12

And now we have the concept of the Virtual Power Plant (VPP). Put some batteries in your house. Store energy and sell it to a datacenter. Somehow, this takes the off-peak power capacity and uses it later.

Our FCC has just banned the import of consumer computer routers. The importers can ask for exemptions. This is seen as a national security risk. Sigh.

Our current President is against offshore wind farms. Hence, we are paying a French company a billion$ to break a couple of contracts.

Breathalyzers are put in cars as a punishment for drunk driving. And now the ne'er-do-wells have hacked the system resulting in, well nothing good.

Wednesday 25 March 2026

Showing some humility and marketing at the same time, Mr. Zuckerburg is building an AI system to help him be a CEO.

Meanwhile in Texas, Elon Musk has a couple of this companies build a chip factory.

Some suggestions for using the current slate of AI system to assist engineers.

Quoting simple facts: We form thoughts at 1,000 to 3,000 words per minute. We speak at 150 and type at 60 to 90. That gap is the central friction of human communication. And nearly every major shift in computing history has been an attempt to close it.

Snowflake just confirmed targeted workforce reductions (400 persons) in their technical writing and documentation teams. The current AI systems are made for text extruding. Sorry if that is what you do for a living.

Patents expire. Here come the generic GLP-1 shots.

I recommend reading this piece. It has candid comments are knowledge work and all that and how AI can do this drudgery. Quoting: AI can follow instructions. The ability to follow instructions over and over, doing the same thing in a very uncreative way, is better than what is done in most companies most of the time.

A writer fondly remembers WordPerfect. I used it for years. After I had worn out WordStar.

A little history of the Markdown file format and why some people love it.

Of course we have to call everything AI, but at least these folks are doing something useful for safety and preventing disasters.

It seems the AI movement is nothing but another low-code, no-code practice. Sorry to say, but really folks, look at it.

Per this piece, if you want to buy a PC this year you have to spend the amount that used to buy a mainframe. How is it that Apple brought a less-expensive PC to marker last month?

It appears that the MacBook Neo was a stroke of genius. Okay Dell, what's your answer?

And Apple plans a boost in performance that still keeps the price of an iPad lower.

Meanwhile in China, the Communist Party shows everyone that it still rules every aspect of the lives of its subjects.

While in America, we have a case of individual liberty and freedom of speech. Our prior President wanted agencies of our Federal government to pressure social media sites into blocking speech. Our current President pushes to the side of free speech.

Sometimes it takes a while to return to sanity. See, e.g., the 3D television revolution that started and fell off a cliff. Such is the fate of everyone wearing giant headsets.

Meanwhile in Europe, regulators gotta regulate as the Meta and Ray-Ban glasses run into a morass of bureaucrats.

This is sort of a non story. Anduril and Palantir are in on the Golden Dome project. So are 2,000 other companies.

Arm claims big improvements that boost their performance far ahead of Intel systems.

The governors of Baltimore sue xAI for something or other. The or other is called money. If the money is there for the picking, go to court and pick it.

Those building datacenters seem to have plenty of customers.

Thursday 26 March 2026

Whether for efficiency or just waste, our Army is using AI tokens 8x more during this Iran conflict. What's the answer? Spend $2Billion and build more datacenters. There are a few problems with military datacenters. They are big, above ground, and easy to destroy.

Folks chat about the founding of Apple Computers. Yes, it used to be called that. I first saw an Apple computer at an odd bookstore near LSU in early 1980. What would anyone do with that. It was before VisiCalc and BASIC.

Meta loses in court. Predictors predict many more bigger dollar loses to come.

Why smuggle drugs when you can smuggle Nvidia processors?

Quoting: San Francisco became a laboratory for police surveillance

More quoting: Meta confirms laying off staff on Wednesday; a source says Meta laid off about 700 employees in its Reality Labs unit

Meanwhile in Congress, let's kill jobs for the lower-paid people in America in the name of uh, er, uh, something or other.

Quoting: President Trump names Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Jensen Huang, and others to the Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Good, let's bring competence to Washington D.C.

In many respects, yes, the current phase of AI is a Ponzi scheme. There is nothing behind the curtain except promises of something real soon now.

Meanwhile at NASA, we aren't going to build a space station that circles the moon. We are going to build a base on the moon. And so on and so on from NASA.

Hacktivists are wiping computers that sit in Iran. Don't feat the nation state or the missiles. Fear the hacktivists. They are teens in basements with free meals from their grandmother and nothing but time and limitless energy.

Friday 27 March 2026

Let's backup a little. OpenAI removes its Sora text-to-video system.

Let a computer program change file permissions without human review? If you test well enough, go for it. People have done this experiment for decades long before calling it AI.

More commentary on the idea that was the metaverse.

More on social media companies losing in court.

I love the title of this piece: Nobody Is Coming to Save Your Career

Meta wants to fact check items and all that. I was an early Facebook user. Posts were delayed while someone checked them. Facebook soon had too many users to check posts. They simply opened the gates. Why are people surprised at the results?

Anthropic has an early win in court in its battle with our Dept of Defense.

David Sacks has donated over a year of his time to America's government. Time to leave.

Google makes it easier to bring information from other AI systems to Gemini. It is now easier to switch to Google.

Apple discontinues the Mac Pro computer series. Everything they make now is a supercomputer, so having a super-duper Mac no longer made sense. There comes a point where a home computer doesn't need to be more powerful. The Neo machine has proven this. Other machines from other companies have proven this.

Meta throws in more billion$ into datacenters in El Paso. $1.5 becomes $10billion.

Government regulators (never accused of foresight or long-term thinking or thinking of any kind) find a way to eliminate call center jobs and turn them over to chattering bots.

Wikipedia bans AI-written content. Of course now they will have to find a way to detect AI-written content.

Saturday 28 March 2026

NASA continues to work where it excels... PowerPoint engineering.

There is some saying about the devil is in the details or such. Someone looks at AI and ooops, the devil is in the details.

We have new tools. New tools change how we work. Here we are with these chattering bots and some folks still want to see a reassuring face. Adapt.

It is a good time to be an engineer at Apple. Tell your boss that OpenAI called you and you receive a big bonus to stay.

People are betting on the meaning of adjectives written by others. I guess we have come a long way. Up or down? I am not sure, but I am leaning towards down.

Money is flowing into Austin, Texas.

Anthropic won in court in California. Now it must come to Washington D.C. and a different court.

Politics and funded research. They are tied more than most folks like to admit.

Meta and Ray Ban to introduce smart glasses for prescription eyewear. This could be a big help to those whose eyesight is dangerously bad.

Anthropic is travelling the path where success leads to failure.

The current administration creates a White House app. Unfiltered news straight from the source.

Microsoft walks into an Abilene, Texas datacenter after Oracle and OpenAI walked out.

Meta agrees to fund power plants in Louisiana to compensate for its big datacenter.

People who are super rich are buying super yachts. Waste? There are many people who are paid salaries to build these things. Jobs. Prosperity from rich people spending their money. Do you want to help people? Create a business. Create a market. Make lots of money and employ lots of people.

Research shows that the Windows operating system crashes much more often than the Unix operating system, a.k.a., MacOs. Real news that isn't news.

AI systems are increasingly scheming and misbehaving. Yet another stupid story. Someone wrote software and didn't test it adequately. Good grief. Scheming? Good grief.

Sunday 29 March 2026

Study shows... these chattering bots are leading people towards moderate not extreme views and expertise not hearsay or urban myths. We shall see what becomes of this. We are in the Chaos phase of change.

And another study shows that the chattering bots agree with us when we chat with them. No surprise. It is all based on probability based on what we have done in the past. Hence, they are mirrors. Proceed with caution.

One suggest to remove fears of AI is to change the Federal income tax structure so that another 125million Americans will not be making enough to pay anything. There is a concept of representation without taxation meaning that if you don't pay into the Federal system, you are not allowed to vote in Federal elections. Few support such, but it is a thought.

Anthropic is steadily increasing the number of people who are paying to use its AI systems.

It appears that when playing chess, AI systems pushed the game to one extreme. Humans have adjusted to the tactic and are rebounding in their play. The game is complex with many (an exaggerated understatement) possible moves. How people play to win has changed over the ages and continues to change.

Apple creates Apple Business Mail and pushes into the enterprise IT area.

One company's experience in AI-first engineering: The cost of experimentation collapsed. An idea could go from whiteboard to a working prototype in a day

People left OpenAI and created Anthropic. Why? The usual story. Big egos with big philosophies and visions of the future far down the road diverged. And who says any of the participants could envision a distant future with any clarity? It didn't matter. They all believed they were all geniuses and they all disagreed. Perhaps something will come of this.