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 June, 2026

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• The World Cup continues in North America
• OpenAI delays its IPO
• Apple raises the prices of its hardware
• Tech stocks fall a bit
• Cooler heads prevail with AI and Washington D.C.

Monday 22 June 2026

Getty signs a deal with OpenAI. Then their stock value jumps 150%.

I like this article from The Atlantic on our Vice President and his work with AI, business, regulation, and jobs.

Meanwhile in China, the governors declare that no one will buy from a new and longer list of US companies.

Samsung buys into ChatGPT systems in its offices.

Meanwhile in Europe, individuals are using American AI systems. European AI companies are trying to have businesses use their AI systems. The Europeans are, once again, behind the learning curve on all this.

Meanwhile in Norway, they are building things. In this case, a long road tunnel under 1,000 feet of ocean. Gosh. Not me.

Meanwhile in America, we go to court where engineering and building things die. What is wrong with us?

By my reckoning, we are four months away from Ubuntu 16.10. Then we can talk to the system instead of typing all the time. Will saying, "el-ess" make sense?

Quoting: About 59% of TikTok videos served to a new account's For You feed are AI slop Just because we can pump content doesn't mean we should.

And in the UK, a tutor was doing a bit too much tutoring or something. I guess this type of work is illegal or something.

Here is one writer's take on what it means to prepare to write. Quote: I keep coming back to the fact that a lot of writers are spending enormous amounts of time building systems for producing content instead of living lives that inspire content naturally.

Email people you don't know. Introduce yourself. It only costs time. Quoting: Over the past year, I've sent countless emails to writers, developers, bloggers, artists, thinkers, and poetic web folks. Not all replied - and why should I expect them to? - but so many did.

Meanwhile in churches, pastors are using AI. It is a useful tool.

Some distractions come in the form of good news. Prepare for success.

Yes, you can write a novel in five days. Quoting: Writers in 2026 are for the most part lazy. Ouch.

There is another comment in the above piece about outlining for months can take the energy out of a piece of writing. Sit down and bang it out while the idea is still crazy. It will show.

I need to follow the above advice and look into the pulp writers of another era. They pumped words and stories at a pace that astounds today's writers.

Tuesday 23 June 2026

Critics say that Apple's design team has fallen apart. Given Apple's financial well being, I'd have to say that they don't miss it.

Tesla tries to move into Nvidia's space with modular datacenter modules for datacenters.

And now we have agent hooks. Hooks, loops, agentic agents, agents that are agents. I don't get it. I wish someone would explain it to me.

Artificial intelligence wasn't enough. Now we have superintelligence. One problem with the super class: You need a billion $$$ to build the model and that much again to run it. So, only half-a-dozen people on the planet can do that. So, they rule the world(?).

Big tech needs engineers with big egos. Except for the exceptions. There appear to be many exceptions.

Quoting the headline: Trump says he no longer views Anthropic as a national security threat after G7 meeting with CEO All it took was for folks to sit together and chat a while. We can get along. We need more sitting and chatting. Have a cup of coffee or tea and toss in a few Moon Pies or such.

A common Silicon Valley concept which is commonly incorrect (quoting): If a company has exceptional people, buying the company will transfer that excellence to the buyer. There is a funny thing about us folks. We have an experience; it happened in one place at one time with one combination of people. Recreating the experience is just about impossible. The people who had the experience don't understand why everyone else just doesn't get it. Everyone else doesn't understand those people who had the experience and wander around with such funny looks on their faces. Sometimes you just can't move the experience from person to person.

In the contest of who wrote the biggest check last week, China has a super duper computer that is now the super-est and duper-est computer in the world.

Meanwhile in Europe, the governors decide to put an import tax on cheap goods from everywhere else, a.k.a., Asia.

Now and then we have events that accelerate change here and there. The datacenters are one such event. The US power grid needs an upgrade. Cheap energy and less regulation boom the economy.

In the last year, Oracle cut 21,000 jobs --- a 13% cut.

Our FAA awards a company called Air Space Intelligence to develop AI-based software (what else?) to help control air traffic. The dollar value sounds big, but isn't. What is news is that this is not an experiment or prototype. It is a real thing.

Here is a new Linux computer to run games on the living room TV. I suppose this is big news for some people.

Elon Musk's SpaceX built a supercomputer Project Colossus datacenter near Memphis. Now, everyone wants to rent the computers inside. In the most recent deal, a company called Reflection AI is paying $150million a month. That rent is pretty high.

Key international intelligence agencies warn that AI system powerful enough to take down governments are only months away. Well, who would use those systems? The mafia? Oh, other governments? Let's see, so the bad guys will soon have weapons powerful enough to harm other countries. Has this ever happened in the history of the world? Let's see...oh, yes.

Wednesday 24 June 2026

Nvidia has a lab that they allow others to use to prepare for humanoid testing.

Instagram looks to hace content that is, uh, not so insta or something. Who knows? Maybe even 20-minute videos.

SpaceX is about to use a (previously kept) secret, net re-entry vehicle.

Great title. Well thought out piece. Quote: How to Win a Space War

Fear and loathing at Meta. For a company that has a cash cow like Facebook, it seems they would have a happier workplace.

Power, power everywhere, but not a ... hmm, how do you finish that? Electrons to flow? Not so good. Anyways, this is America. We have the power capacity, but it doesn't seem to be in the right places.

Meanwhile in South Korea, SK Hynix becomes South Korea's most valuable company surpassing Samsung. Call it genius or more likely luck. They moved to a different memory technology and the datacenter boom boomed and the rest is history.

Meanwhile in Hong Kong, Zhipu, a.k.a., Knowledge Atlas Technology Joint Stock Co., Ltd., is going to become rich as its stock value has risen 2,000% since January this year. How do you calculate a 2,000% gain?

160 years ago empires were made smuggling opium into China. Now billion$ are made smuggling Nvidia processors into China.

People at NSA are supposed to keep secrets, not tell everyone about classified testing of Anthropic's systems.

Cerebras reports a huge financial quarter with revenue up 94%. Still, this company is not profitable, yet.

Meta releases a new line of smart glasses. Some are for fashion and some for more tech.

What good is a blimp? A high-altitude platform system (HAPS) can sit above and be an Internet provider to disaster areas.

Someone figures out that your old cell phone has a powerful computer in it that can be used for many things. YES! FINALLY!

Some folks believe that electricians shouldn't soil themselves by working at a datacenter. Okay, fine. You pay them. You provide food, shelter, and clothing for their families.

Quoting: Canada has unveiled a national strategy to build up to 10 new nuclear reactors over the next 15 years Good for them. Do it. Build something.

Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger is in trouble at Wikipedia. He has gathered a group of volunteers who will edit pages and influence content and that is supposed to be against the rules.

Meanwhile in Europe, according to some measure, it is the fastest heating continent. Uh, I am not sure what that means. Will the take hydration breaks at Wimbledon?

And I cannot pass the chance to mention the hydration breaks at this year's World Cup. Two minutes of commercials in the middle of each half. Of course it is a money grab by FIFA. They will probably start doing this world-wide among football associations. Show commercials on TV. Get big buck$. Call it player safety.

Thursday 25 June 2026

Anthropic shows Claude Tag (I guess everything they do has to have the word Claude in it) that works with you on Slack.

Robot vs. robot in war. I think that have been several (dozen) science fiction stories written on this one with dozens of variations of each.

More thoughts on agent loops. I guess if this still exists in a week I shall learn something about it.

We invent ways to use computers and then find problems with out inventions. Get the bandaids until, wait, what are we patching now? Look at the article just to see the opening photograph. Love it.

Speaking of problems we invent for ourselves, let me describe this just a little more. The more words ... the, uh, er, where was I? Did you understand where I was going? I'm lost.

Ah, moving from engineer to managing the engineers. It's a different job. It has different work. It is a different job.

Quoting: Today, with AI, it's very easy to fall into the trap of producing more just because you can.

IBM claims to have a new chip technology that will allow innovation for the next ten years. Every now and then, people claim to have a "3D" way of making things. I would love to see a "2D" way to make things. That would be remarkable.

Arm makes big claims about its architecture and the future of datacenters.

Qualcomm is design chips for the Chinese market. They are less-than-best so they pass US export regulators.

Meanwhile in China, there is no way fighting the facts of demographics and a shrinking workforce. Well, there is the tried and true method of conquer and enslave. I wouldn't put that past the Communist Party.

Meta moves further from human reviews to software reviews of content. It may surprise folks, but at one time if you posted something to Facebook, it did not appear until people had looked at it and approved it.

Qualcomm has chip designers and ties to chip manufacturers. Why work just in communications when the money is in datacenter$?

Quoting: Micron reports Q3 revenue up 346% YoY. How do you even calculate that big a jump? Amazing.

More news about Qualcomm and processor$ for datacenter$.

No surprise here. Someone other than Dario Amodei attends the meetings with the White House. The meetings are more productive.

OpenAI and Broadcom develop an inference processor. This harkens back to Japan's Fifth Generation project and the notion of KIPS (Knowledge Inferences Per Second). The past comes back to the future. Nothing new, despite all the hyperventilating and such.

Friday 26 June 2026

Tesla et al. combine to build (one day real soon now) a distributed home battery system that will have tens of GigaWatts of capacity.

If we spend enough money, we can eliminate common respiratory infections. I doubt it, but it makes for a good story. There are worse things to do with a few hundred million $$$.

With these chattering bots, "Historically, software expected users to adapt themselves to the system. Language-native software asks the system to adapt itself to the user."

Quoting the headline: The CEO of AWS on why Amazon is hiring 11,000 interns and junior employees

More on Dario Amodei just not knowing how to talk to adults like an adult.

Someone agrees with me. Quoting: This is effectively programming in Markdown, using the world's slowest and least reliable interpreter, the LLM, running at 10,000x the cost and latency and with dramatically worse privacy and security.

This piece I wrote last month said the same thing.

Meanwhile in Australia, teens are still using social media after a ban takes affect. The age verification measures? Ha! Are you kidding?

Hints that SpaceX will have a cell phone system based on satellite phones.

OpenAI claims that pretty much all its employees are using its Codex to do something or other at work.

Meanwhile in California, the governors have a new tool to warn folks that AI is coming for their jobs or something. No doubt this is a statistics-based tool. No doubt the tool uses machine learning algorithms. What is an ML algorithm? If I say it is, it is.

Our Dept of War changes its doctrine on how it picks targets. Doctrine? Yeah, I think they call it that.

Meanwhile at OpenAI, they delay their IPO. This sort of causes a panic in tech stock prices.

Strong rumors that Apple will change its usual path of upgrading processors. A basic M6 processor will come this year, but no M6 plus max ultra (plumaxtra?). The extra goodies will come early in 2027 with the M7 line. What's in a name?

More rumors: the US proposes that the EU sign on to an AI partnership to help secure chip supply chains.

As expected, Apple raises prices on hardware. Folks don't like that. The MacBook Neo rises $100.

In a move to salve someone, OpenAI et al. form some job training group for those affected by AI.

Here comes the Slate pickup truck. It is electric-powered and costs $25,000. It has no frills and that means NO FRILLS. You have to roll the windows up and down.

Saturday 27 June 2026

The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company TSMC remains the most important company in the world. It is keeping the Communist Party of China from crossing the straits and invading Formosa.

Meanwhile in China, AI is replacing humans at work. This is concerning to some people there. Still, they are running out of people who can work due to a disastrous self-genocide policy of Mao et al.

Meanwhile at Apple, they don't want to raise prices of their hardware. They are lobbying our current President for the ability to buy cheaper parts made in China.

Now that Mr. Amodei is no longer in the room, folks at Anthropic say their systems are returning to the Federal workspace and others.

More news on that same story.

AWS raises its rent-a-GPU prices 20%.

Quoting the headline: Russian hackers were behind a 2025 ransomware attack on Jaguar Land Rover that used mind-blowing encryption and cost UK's economy an estimated $2.5B

OpenAI claims that its latest offering matches the performance of that from Anthropic.

Stronger rumors about the coming touch-screen MacBook Pros. I guess there is some utility in the touch screen. I am an old man and have always found the touch screen to be more nuisance than benefit.

I love the hyperbole in this headline: How US federal AI policy has gone from implausibly libertarian to increasingly draconian and opaque. Of course the writer proposes something reasonable (another subjective term) in the middle with some sort of independent (another subjective term) group of idenpendent people who are reasonable and reason.

Meanwhile in Italy, regulators do what regulators do as they try to extract money from a successful American company.

Sunday 28 June 2026

Senior people in the Trump administration convince OpenAI to releases new models first to limited groups then to wider ones. Someone calls this staggered release.

Quoting the headline: IBM claims world's first sub-1 nanometer chip technology

Elon Musk calls it Starmind. It is a constellation of orbiting datacenters. Well, let's see it happen.

Quoting: Software engineering is not disappearing. The market is changing what kinds of engineering it values.

A tale of AI woe and how we all will be stuck in the underclass as AI will eliminate all the other economic classes.

A natural extension of telepresence. Build a robot for the home. Have a human control it remotely from the other side of the planet. Do the work.

The headline says it all: New Study Shows That Tall Vehicle Hoods Cause Hundreds More Deaths Per Year. Be careful walking through the parking lot. The drivers of those big pickups and SUVs cannot see you.

Ford rehires 350 engineers. Using words from a prior AI era, they failed to capture the knowledge of these experienced engineers.

A side note on this article that applies to many. Are we in a AI race? What is the finish line? When and where will the race end? What is this concept?

Meanwhile in China, where censorship and regulation are the norm in a place run by Communists, there is a black market in accessing Claude and having tokens for such.

Finding the cyber security holes using AI tools. It is just another form of automation where you write in English.

More fuss about datacenters and politicians trying to become public representatives. A friend of mine wrote recently about all this. It is economics, and the chief economic concern in the USA is government spending far more than it has for a long period of time. Stop that nonsense and things become a bit more balanced.

The fear of missing out if pervasive in Silicon Valley. FOMO is something for teenagers. Silicon Valley refers to adults, I think. Come on adults, act like adults.

In America, we used to call this Vo Tech for vocational technology. It was welding school etc. that occurred after high school. In South Korea, they teach how to work in semiconductor manufacturing at special high schools.

Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale, has a firm grasp on the current slate of AI systems. They don't lie or hallucinate or such as they aren't people. They are simply probabilistic not deterministic and are trained on whatever is out there, not on facts. At least someone gets it.