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: 13-19 April, 2026

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Sam Altman's home has been attacked twice
• Limited Internet viewing week as I was travelling

Monday 13 April 2026

Big news of the day: Anthropic integrates with MS Office with (the name is different in the different articles I read) xxx Anthropic for Office. The big one is Claude Anthropic for Word. This may push out Copilot, but you have to pay extra for Anthropic's tools.

OpenAI to open a research hub office in London.

Meanwhile in the American workplace, AI is slowly being adopted. Quite slowly.

And across America, there is a movement to outlaw datacenters. Sigh. Leadership?

Supply and demand: the cost of renting a computer from a datacenter is rising fast. Don't build datacenters? Computing cost become too high. Inflation. Loss of jobs. Recession.

Sam Altman needs to move or something. It appears someone drove by and fired a gun at his home. This follows an attack earlier in the week.

Examining the implications of Claude Mythos. Quoting: If your defense relies on humans being faster than AI, you are in a losing battle.

Stronger rumors that Apple is working on smart glasses.

Many of us grew up with The Phone, i.e., the Western Electric 500.

Research shows that using the smartphone all the time adds ten years of mental decline. The research is a bit shaky, but he, why not cause a fuss?

This might be something quite good. Quoting: Researchers at SUNY Binghamton built a robotic guide dog that holds back-and-forth navigation conversations with visually impaired handlers using AI language technology.

The movie theater business finally recovers from the great PAN(dem)IC.

Tuesday 14 April 2026

Stronger rumors about Apple's smart glasses that will be available real soon now.

Blue Origin claims to have a machine that pulls the oxygen out of moon dust. Let me know when we have a moon base and we breathe the cracked oxygen.

Meta is taking the slow path to capable AI models.

What problems are worth solving? The one where the solution last a long time. Hence, writing an essay for middle school isn't a worthwhile problem. It is easy, but not worthwhile.

We have Claude Mania. It doesn't have the ring of Wrestle mania, but I guess it will do for now.

Meanwhile in Iran, censorship soars to new heights or lows or something as they enter 45 days of Internet blackout. That is some sort of world record.

No one ever said that OpenAI's economic agenda had to make sense. Why does a for-proft company have an economic agenda?

Interesting how Anthropic's leaders bypassed European regulators. Interesting how Anthropic's leaders are trying to bypass the US Federal government. You sort of get the impression that these tech billionaires want to bypass the entire concept of the nation state.

I am waiting for the SNL routine where someone says, "Datacenters? We don't need no stinkin' datacenters."

Computer inflation continues. It is unusual in this industry to pay more for the same thing.

Rumors and stock prices. How much of this is true? The stock prices are facts. The rumors are, well, rumors.

Stanford releases its annual AI Index Report. We have not hit any plateau.

In an effort to block AI, sites are also blocking the Internet Archive. Lots of us don't like the latter.

Thoughts on the gap in the opinion people hold on AI. If you used an AI system six months ago and didn't like it. Come back and try again. The capabilities are changing quickly. Week to week sometimes.

In development, a wearable air bag for cyclist. This will work. Can it work for elderly people who tend to fall when standing or walking. That would be a great thing.

The pendulum swings the other way. Government employees complain about receiving messages on religion. How many complained about other messages in the past and were fired?

THe Sam Altman attacks highlight a quiet story: booming more that datacenters and AI is the personal security industry.

The Linux kernel 7.0 has been released.

Wednesday 15 April 2026

In a bit of a milestone, Meta is about to pass Google in ad revenue.

Amazon has built an antenna that mounts on airliners to receive broadband from low-earth satellites. It promises a much faster installation than the SpaceX model.

Meanwhile in China, someone has built a humanoid robot that sprints almost as fast as the fastest human ever did. I guess there is an application for this? Maybe not, but the technology might be useful somewhere.

This seems obvious, but I guess it hasn't been. If you want AI to build a website with a better appearance, show it picture of what a better appearance is.

Quoting the headline: The AI Revolution in Math Has Arrived

News flash (not): software teams know neither what they cost or the value of what they produce. I find this to be true of almost all endeavors. A freelance writer doesn't know what he costs or the value of what he produces. He cannot calculate what he earns per hour or any units of value and time.

Another piece on economics of AI and software. The market is currently betting that AI's economic value is accruing to hardware first, while software lags behind.

Every now and then, a judge will spend time studying a case and issuing a judgement, and no one knows who is the ne'er-do-well.

Amazon buys satellite company Globalstar. Apple chooses the resulting Amazon to for the satellite service for iPhones.

Global smartphone market slips a little in the first quarter of 2026.

There is a company called BusPatrol. Install its camera on the side of a school bus. Photograph cars that pass the school bus when all those Stop signs are deployed. Send the people traffic tickets. These systems are on 35,000 school buses in 24 states. The business is booming. Yet another way to increase revenue while not really increasing safety. It's a buck.

Is there a ban on Anthropic's systems in the Federal government? You wouldn't know it.

The governors in Maine have banned big datacenters. This is the type of thing they do in Maine as they like things the way they are. Good for those folks. It is their choice.

Trying to keep up with the neighbors, OpenAI releases a GPT model tuned to cybersecurity.

Quoting the headline: Google launches Skills, repeatable AI prompts that Chrome users can run with a keyboard shortcut; users can set up their own Skills or choose from 50+ presets

Microsoft updates its text-to-image system and claims big capability jumps.

Deepfake nudes of girls in school. The neer-do-wells just can't stop themselves. That is a great shame.

Thursday 16 April 2026

OpenAI, following the lead of Anthropic, will only share its latest cybersecurity technology with a few trusted companies. This type of thing occurred back when folks had new encryption techniques. That all fell apart as bits tend to leak. I foresee leaks of these new models etc.

Anthropic has done major redesigns for Claude Code that runs on a Mac.

Big job cuts coming to Snap.

Meanwhile here in Virginia in datacenter alley, support for datacenters plummets. Just the same old story generated by the media.

And across America, our teens say they use TikTok et al. for entertainment.

I never new that a US Energy Information Administration existed until now.

Google launches a Gemini Mac app. As a years-long Mac user, I didn't know we didn't have one.

No wonder Mercor didn't make it. They had too many internal problems.

Somehow, there are still dozens of nudify apps on Apple and Google stores.

India produces 1.5M+ computer science graduates annually. Uh, and what are they gonna' do now? Still, an educated population is a great advantage. Computer science majors know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff.

Voice actors are protesting. They are in trouble of seeing their livelihoods vanish.

TSMC reports yet another big, big financial quarter.

Apple boasts big numbers in using recycled materials.

Google negotiates with our Dept of War for using its systems.

Friday 17 April 2026

No Internet viewing today

Saturday 18 April 2026

No Internet viewing today

Sunday 19 April 2026

No Internet viewing today