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: 6-12 July, 2026

Summary of this week:

• The Russians are still in Ukraine
• Robot surgery takes a giant leap forward
• Apple sues OpenAI
• More new AI systems
• The World Cup continues in North America

Monday 6 July 2026

We are coming out of another unusual three-day weekend where Friday was the holiday. This happened on Juneteenth as well. It tilts the technology news and the Internet viewing.

During a Sunday afternoon in the dog days of summer, our President calls FIFA and suggests they not suspend an American star in the World Cup. Things happen. And people wonder why people wonder about international bodies like FIFA, the IoC, and the United Nations. Of course favors changed hands.

Quoting the headline: A draft report from the US Treasury Department is set to warn about the risks of the AI market, likening some key aspects to the dotcom crash in the early 2000s

Nvidia hits a bump and delays a rack-sized product.

Now we have someone using AI systems to do an end-to-end theft and ransom. Well, the ne'er-do-wells find a way.

The folks who are building robots are trying to ensure they don't lose their balance and fall on us.

A different view of datacenters: Datacenters are no longer just buildings --- they are strategic infrastructure. They are the factories that switched to building bombers and rifles during WWII. We don't seem to like that there are some boyish and immature billionaires who show up next to the datacenters. Perhaps those folks could have some actual adults stand next to the buildings.

Per Chainalysis (and always pay attention to what Chainalysis says): addresses linked to Iran, Russia, North Korea, and other US-sanctioned entities received $100B+ in crypto last year, almost 8x the amount in 2024

I like this one. Who will teach me how to use AI? Government employees look to the taxpayers to fund everything. Private business? Just do it.

The batteries in electric vehicles weren't supposed to last past 100,000 miles. Oops. They are lasting much longer. Good for consumers. Bad for producers. And, once again, the expert were wrong.

Continuing with the experts being wrong, they were wrong about job losses due to AI.

A 21st-century version of The Monkey Wrench Gang takes to fixing Flock cameras.

The thesis statement. It is still necessary. Quoting: A thesis statement is a single sentence (or sometimes two) that clearly states the main idea of your essay, research paper, or article.

Writing a novel does not mean writing page 1, then page 2, and so on. It can begin by writing the end first.

I love this title: Your Creative Team Wants You to Stop Formatting and Just Write the Darn Book. YES! Someone, maybe you, will format the thing later.

Here is a good question: How do you write about the most painful experiences of your life without being overwhelmed by them? 

Not just for writers, for everyone: How to Spot Scam Email Addresses

Excellent question: Why am I doing this thing?

I've never realized this until now, but I have never had a pet in any of my writing.

Here is a counter to the idea of "show, don't tell." Of course there are better ways than to write mechanically.

Just write one sentence and then you can quit for the day. It is a start, and often the start leads to something. It is a reachable goal. That means something.

Tuesday 7 July 2026

Quoting: Chipmaker Nvidia is expanding its support for fast-growing AI startups by introducing a partnership program that leverages its network of AI cloud service providers to offer these firms access to critical computing infrastructure,

And now we have the Superforecasters. (Amazing that spell check says that word is okay.) People have used data and algorithms to predict the stock market accurately for decades.

If all you know how to do is turn an algorithm into code in a language, yes, AI is coming for your job. If you have done that job for a few months, you should know which algorithm to choose. After that job, you should know ... and on it goes. People are finally realizing that that the coding part is about 10% of software engineering. Too bad all those recruiters who laughed at me ... well, never mind.

Stay calm and carry on. Wordpress is still the most-used content management system in the world by a huge margin.

Quoting: An agent will do something that, if a human did it, you'd immediately fire them.

What's hot in the market right now? Chinese AI models with use up 11% year over year.

In a different market, sales of Chinese smartphones fell 13%.

Every article I read about running an AI system locally mentions Alibaba's Qwen models. Popularity, however, does not always bring money.

I do not like the way some people toss about the word "addiction." Their casual misuse hurts those who have addictions and need treatment.

Established companies loan money and resources to new companies hoping the new will catch fire and the established companies can profit from it. Nothing new here.

I have written this before: hardware is the new software. Samsung, a hardware maker, is rolling in the money. This is amazing for an established company to see these types of gains.

X dot ai becomes SpaceXAI. I like the logo.

Quoting the headline: Microsoft's Xbox unit plans to cut 3,200 jobs over the next year, including 1,600 on Monday

More information on more layoffs at Microsoft. How can a company be so successful yet layoff several thousand people?

Broadcom and Apple extend their partnership.

This one makes no sense to me. An AI company signs a 20-year lease. 20 years? Who thinks they will still be in business in 20 years? I don't understand how these things work.

Wednesday 8 July 2026

Here is a thoughtful piece on the AI market and the second derivative. What is the rate of the rate of change?

Strong rumors that the coming foldable iPhone folds around a price tag of $2,400. For a telephone?

Someone just discovered robots and what they can do. Good grief, robots have been in factories for 50 years and more.

Meanwhile in Egypt, they have a massive irrigation project. It may not work perfectly, but they can still build things in Egypt.

And now we aspire to be a 100x Agentic Engineer.

It seems that tokens are not equal measures of performance. It seems that equal measures of performance are equal measures of performance.

Meanwhile in France, regulators figure out a way to make a successful American company pay some people in France.

Meanwhile in China, investigators claim that Claude Code is phoning home, i.e., sending information collected to remote servers. Claude is a big CIA spy system, so says the Chinese.

Hitting back from America, Congressional committees want to keep US companies from using Chinese systems.

Effective Altruism may make a comeback. Folks, Americans are a generous people. We have always given to one another. The problem is that some of us want some others of us to give more and only give to what some of us deem to be the right places.

The battle of the datacenter rages on. It is CPU vs. GPU. It is the age-old contest of which architecture. There is the trade-off between Complex Instruction Set Computer (CISC) and Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC). And on it goes.

Now that some well-intentioned but under-skilled government employees at our Dept of Commerce approve, OpenAI says it will launch GPT-5.6 Sol, along with Terra and Luna, publicly on Thursday.

Samsung to hold a big event on July 22nd in London.

Anthropic to move 1,000 employees into New York City. Bad choice. Where will those people live? Perhaps this is all an attempt to fend off local politicians.

Microsoft tries to save money by running its own models in Copilot.

American company Forterra, has 100 Lancer vehicles on the battlefield in Ukraine. These are unmanned ground vehicles (UV) based on Polaris ATVs. They are gas powered and can carry much more than the electric-powered competitors. Move men and materiel.

Look at this vehicle. It is practical. It will never be on the American road as we have too many regulations. When will we learn that the regulators are killing the American spirit and stopping us from building anything?

Thursday 9 July 2026

We have launched a nuclear-powered satellite. Well, sort of.

Tesla's yet-to-be-delivered cyber cab will have, so they say, a full self-driving capability. This is coming real soon now. This was all promised ten years ago.

Meanwhile in the tech workforce, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Here we go again.

In the best-of-times camp, it is learning how to use the new tools to do new things in the same amount of time.

Quoting: Starting July 7, 2026, every new car sold in the European Union must include a driver monitoring camera aimed at your face. Glance at your phone, your kids in the back seat, or the radio for too long, and the car will flash a warning light and sound an alert. When did this happen? Who created this? What?

Big tech has over-built and over-spent. Pretty much all the folks who have looked at this have reached the same conclusion. There is a great fear of being left behind, so I will build a bigger datacenter. As this piece asks, "Who will blink first?"

Grok of xAI is the bargain basement of AI models. Compared to AI in 2010, it is amazing. Let's get a grip on reality.

Let's have a voluntary government approval before releasing technology. Folks, the US Federal government has the authority to grab a new technology, proclaim it Top Secret, and keep it out of the hands of uncleared persons. Consider that a few minutes, and no one likes that idea.

More economic multipliers from the datacenter boom. This is jobs. Someone make transformers. Someone makes the parts. Someone ships everything. Jobs.

Meta is to build a datacenter in Alberta, Canada. Jobs, jobs, and more jobs.

Of course college students use AI to do their take-home tests. Of course they score poorly on in-class tests. This is real news but not news.

The use of AI in the office continues to grow. So those college students using AI on their tests are preparing themselves for the workplace. Or something like that.

Meanwhile in China, okay, you can buy some Nvidia processors since our own manufacturers are a bit behind on their orders.

And at Nvidia, how do you lose $1Trillion (with a Tr)? It's all on paper or in a spreadsheet or something.

Apple and Broadcom agree to make more integrated circuits in America. The numbers are in the tens of billions (with a b).

Samsung hops over Nvidia to become the most profitable company in the world.

Friday 10 July 2026

Meta releases new AI systems and attempts to keep up with the folks across the street with much lower price$.

Pausing to consider the success of the one-year-old superintelligence team at Meta. Silly name, but they are doing something right.

Meanwhile in Europe, investment in startup companies jumps 66%.

OpenAI exits the browser business. It's desktop app will be the browser.

And more AI systems from OpenAI.

Meanwhile at Netflix, the word "worried" enters the room.

Does anyone read books any more? Of course people do. The media, however, sounds alarms.

Meanwhile at x.ai, or is it SpaceXAI?, more on the release of Grok 4.5 and its efficiency or lower-price.

By some accounting or other, Blue Origin is valued at $130Billion (with a B).

Per these systems that spawn systems, at least one person has a grasp on reality. Quoting: engineers need to own the outer loop - the accountability for these systems.

Simply quoting the headline: Hysteria Grips San Francisco's Housing Market as A.I. Wealth Pours In

More on human responsibility, being human, and being help accountable. Quoting: I'm asking you to own it, to own the solution of a problem from end to end. From we have a problem to we don't have to think about it again.

Thoughts on reclaiming land, i.e., draining swamps so the disease disappears and farmland appears. We stopped doing this in the US 50 years ago. Time to start anew.

Single-payer health care, i.e., the government runs everything, runs itself into the ground. It can be fine for the well known and treatable cases. It, however, doesn't create new treatments for currently untreatable cases.

Saturday 11 July 2026

THIS ONE IS IMPORTANT. Surgeons tele-operate a robot to perform surgery on a pig. So it's just a pig. The robot costs $15,000 and weighs 60 pounds. Made in China. In America, the robotic surgeries are done with million-dollar machines that are bigger than operating rooms. We've have to stop the regulations and innovate and build.

Optimize for space and run powerful AI on an iPhone. Of course it is feasible.

The ne'er-do-wells finds ways to use the newest tools to do what they do.

Studies show that the longer the piece in social media, the higher the odds are that AI wrote the piece. LinkedIn seems to be the more prevalent victim or location or something. Of course this all depends on the AI detectors working properly.

It seems that our current President is a big friend to Intel. Intel created the American computer revolution. Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce were the Henry Ford of the late 20th century. America sort of owes them something. That is just the opinion of an old engineer who remembers Silicon Valley where I first visited wide-eyed in 1980.

I like this essay from the people at Thinking Machines. Good use and shaping of the current AI systems.

And here we go: Apple sues OpenAI for stealing trade secrets by hiring Apple's employees (who didn't do a brain erase as they walked out the door).

Our Federal government loosens the controls of what AI processors can be sent to the UAE.

Big tech goes into debt to build datacenters.

OpenAI gives us ChatGPT Work. I think that's what they call it. What a mess. So this does what software does. And it is software. I think. Anyways, the chattering bots don't want to just chatter. They want to be the platform. The one place you spend your day.

Sunday 12 July 2026

Who woulda' thunk it? Everyone. Factories are short of workers. Not the factories that allow workers to choose their shifts and jobs.

Irrelevant? Not. Google hits all-time high search volume during World Cup.

The Russians hack into door bell cameras ... on NATO military bases. Oops. Put it on the Internet and someone will hack into it.

Meanwhile in China, they claim that a rocket booster landed safely for reuse.

And what could possibly go wrong with license plate reading cameras, and software, and data entry, and law enforcement. Predictable and predicted.

THe Electronic Freedom Foundation is now 36 years old.

Let's hire third-world medical professionals to telework in the USA. Those third-world countries? Do they need medical professionals, too? Perhaps we can work out something.

It seems old folks like entertainment. They know it is entertainment. So what if AI created it. They know it isn't true. That is what entertainment is. Duh.

Meanwhile in the UK, facial recognition systems in shops alert law enforcement that a ne'er-do-well is in the shop. They don't have a Bill of Rights in the UK. Read it. Learn it.

A thoughtful piece on the pricing of tokens and using AI systems.

Quoting: US software development job postings have grown by almost 15% since the launch of Claude Code in late February, 2025. Hmm. There must be something to this. Of course there is.

The concept of playing in childhood. It is largely lost in today's supervised culture. The mainstream had no base in reality when they put the pictures of kids on milk cartons. Someone should be punished for that mishap.