Rambling -- August 23, 2025

Locator: 48945ARCHIVES.

Wow, I'm in a good mood.

The Intel story is fascinating. 

I think the Intel-government stake is the most mis-read investment story of the year. The New York Times has a good piece on this story today. Hope springs eternal. I have no dog in this fight. I will have nothing to do with Intel with regard to personal investing. See disclaimer for the blog. But I will certainly follow the story closely. Working with ChatGPT the fog is beginning to clear. Once I have the scaffolding in place, the rest gets easier. Much more to write -- more to come, but not tonight.

Charlie Crockett: the Lana Del Rey of traditional country / western music.

Investing. Lots of stuff -- in terms of lessons learned -- to pass down to the grandchildren. I've never been happier with regard to my portfolio.

Books: this past year, I finally got back to reading. Still not as much I would like but more organized. 

Bat Cave: major changes. 

Hot summer: lots of swimming, and due to the heat, less time in the Bat Cave, but now we're starting to see the weather turn. I will start to spend more time in the Bat Cave.

Road trip: first week in September. 

Politics: I doubt we will ever see another president like Trump in my lifetime. Doesn't waste time. Has a rogue gallery for his cabinet. And they're learning. Among his twenty or thirty lieutenants, there are tier 1 lieutenants, tier 2 lieutenants, etc. 

• Tier 1: Scott Bessent, Marco Rubio, Doug Burgum, Karoline Leavitt, Howard Lutnik, Pam Bondi, Tom Homan, Susie Wiles, Kevin Hassett. 
• first among equals: Doug Burgum
  
• Tier 2: RFK, Jr.
• Not ready for prime time: Pete Hegseth, JD Vance (?).
• Jury is still out: Chris Wright, Tulsi Gabbard, Kristi Noem.
• Wall flowers: most of the rest.
  

Visas: truck drivers. Rubio getting a lot of kudos for acting fast. In fact, it was an easy decision to make, once he was presented with the facts. Never let an opportunity go to waste.

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Paddle Boarding In Norway

Our older daughter arrived in Bergen, Norway, this past week, where she will enjoy a ten-day paddle-boarding experience in the fjords around Bergen, west coast, southern Norway. Upon her arrival, meeting a troll to bring her good luck:

Final Race Of The Regular Season -- Daytona -- Ryan Blaney Wins -- Huge Help From Cole Custer -- An Epic Finish -- August 23, 2025

Locator: 48944NASCAR.

With thirteen laps to go, Logano in the lead at Daytona -- last race in the "Regular Season" before we get to the playoffs and championship.

Lead changing between Logano and Jones.

Joey Logano spins out with thirteen laps to go. Old tires; spun out on his own; not touched by anyone.

I don't think Jones "hit"/ touched Logano.

So, Jones back in the lead at the re-start.

Yellow with eleven laps to go.

Radio: "I never touched him." -- Jones. Crew chief: confirmed on television. No touch / no hit. Logano simply got loose.

Jones (43), Haley (7), Larson (5), Preece (60), Buescher (17), Elliott (9), Gibbs (54), Bell (20), Byron (24), A. Dillon (3). 

Re-start with nine laps to go.

Haley, Jones, Preece, Larson.

Jones, Haley, Preece, Larson.

Most are on the "bubble."

Six laps to go.

Eric Jones pushed to the back. No help.

Preece, Haley, Larson, Buescher, Elliott.

Five laps to go.

No one has gone three-wide yet.

Four laps to go. Under ten miles to go.

60 -- 7 -- 17.

Now or never.

60 -- 

Three wide now. Preece pushed back; no one to help.

Haley, Buescher, Larson.

Two laps to go; three wide.

Haley lone lead ,but Custer coming up.

Cole Custer now at the front.

Final lap.

Cole Custer - Ryan Blaney.

Ryan Blaney wins.

They spin coming across the line but Blaney took it.

The key: the big push and going three-wide. At three / two laps to go.

Intel: Where Are We? August 23, 2025

Locator: 48943INTEL.

Intel is now "functionally" two divisions: 

• design
• manufacturing

Intel has been formally structured into separate design and manufacturing divisions, reflecting its "IDM 2.0" strategy launched in 2021. This move fundamentally changed the company's operating model from a traditional Integrated Device Manufacturer (IDM) to an "internal foundry" model. 

 Name the top 20 chip design companies (quick! Which big tech company is not mentioned):

The top chip design companies include NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom, and MediaTek, which are all leaders in their respective markets (relative monopolies), with NVIDIA currently dominating AI chips.

Other major players and emerging companies in this space include Samsung, Texas Instruments, ARM, Marvell, Realtek, Novatek, and Cirrus Logic.

Additionally, large tech companies like AWS, Microsoft, and Alibaba are designing their own chips for their cloud platforms. META has also announced partnering with Qualcom to design their own in-house chips.

The UX hand-off (link here). 

Where does this leave Intel? I don't see a strategic plan; I don't see an "end-game" for Intel. 

Mileage Update -- 2012 Honda Civic -- August 23, 2025

Locator: 48942MILEAGE.

Purchased in November, 2011, Williston, North Dakota.

AI Spending Over Next Three Years -- Projections -- From Beth -- August 23, 2025

Locator: 48941AI.

Link here.

I would assume this is mostly CAPEX, and not maintenance or operating costs. 

Where will most of that CAPEX go?

• blades
• wiring
• cooling

920 + 484 = that's $1.5 trillion in one calendar / fiscal year.  For one "sub-sector" of a much larger sector. 

What percent of that will be "American"?

AWS Is The Official Cloud Provider For The PGA -- August 23, 2025

Locator: 48940AMAZON.

Rain could impact play today. 

Musical Interlude -- 69 Hits From '69 -- In Seven Minutes -- Opening Bars Only -- August 23, 2025

Locator: 48939MUSIC.

I've always considered 1969 the best year ever for music. I have a blog devoted to that elsewhere.

Link here.

Texas: Continues To Think Big -- August 23, 2025

Locator: 48938TX.

AliianceTexas: I've blogged about AllianceTexas many times on the blog. I spotted AllianceTexas before it was a thing. Now, another huge story coming out of AllianceTexas, just up the road from where we live, out near the Texas Motor Speedway and near one of the first Bucc-ee's locations.

Put a music venue out there -- a huge amphitheater with surrounding smaller stages -- that's the next big thing for AllianceTexas -- tea leaves. Think: the Empire Polo Club in Indio, which hosts the famous Coachella and Stagecoach festivals.

Indio, California, is a large, growing city in the Coachella Valley of Riverside County, known as the "City of Festivals" for hosting events like the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and the Stagecoach Music Festival. It is also known for its agricultural history, especially dates, and serves as a year-round city with a temperate winter climate and access to desert activities like golfing and exploring nearby mountains and parks.

AllianceTexas will be the geographical population center of the DFW metroplex in 2050 -- TxDOT. 

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The Book Page

I will finish this book today. And then will re-read it, taking notes. 

The Immortal Game: A History of Chess or How 32 Carved Pieces On A Board Illuminated Our Understanding of War, Art, Science, and the Human Brain; David Shenk, c. 2006. 

The last section is on chess and AI. Never expected that! Note the copyright date (2006).

From page 216:

In the nearer term, minimax logic quickly put computer chess programming in a serious bind.

By opening up chess to a nearly endless series of calculations, minimax made chess computing both possible and impossible.

The equations could be continually improved to make better and better chess decisions, but it simply took too long for computers to analyze all the possibilities.

Then, in 1956, American computer scientist and AI pioneer John McCarthy -- he had actually coined the term artificial intelligence one year earlier (fact-checked; true) -- came up with an ingenious revision of minimax called alpha-beta pruning that allowed  a computer to ignore certain leaves on a tree whose evalutaions wouldn't make a difference in the final result.

Like the minimzx concept, the idea wasn't based on any particular insight into chess, but was a simple matter of logic: certain leaf evaluations are irrelevant if other leaf values on that same branch have already taken that particular branch out of contention.

A computer instructed not to bother calculating such nonactinable leaves could accomplish its wok in much less time.

By the way, this was a crucial insight necessary for NSA when computing power was severely constrained. 

Shenk then goes on to explain how / why computers have a difficult time beating chess masters. The big difference: computers, at least up until now, use only logic. Chess masters use logic, but they can also use intuition. I do not know if  ... well, let's ask ChatGPT:

In Shenk's 2006 book on chess: Shenk explains how / why computers have a difficult time beating chess masters. The big difference: computers, at least up until now, use only logic. Chess masters use logic, but they can also use intuition. I do not know if current AI computer chess programming has made the leap to using INTUITION as well as logic when playing chess against chess grand masters. Thoughts?

I will post ChatGPT's reply elsewhere. But bottom line: computer chess programming now uses what appears to be "approximating intuition." Whether one calls it "intuition" or not is in the eyes of the beholder, and probably bordering on semantics. Computer programs now routinely make moves that humans would assume were being made by other humans using intuition, not logic.

But one word: that's where neural processing units come in. Where did I first hear about neural processing units? From an Apple presentation some years ago. This was from March 8, 2022.

Apple silicon:

• A15 and much, much more; 16-core neural engine.

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Also, Note "Scrabble" At That Same Link

"You're Fired" -- Hegseth Fires General Whose Agency Challenged Intel Assessment -- August 23, 2025

Locator: 48937DOD.

Corn Yields Setting Records -- Of Note: Minnesota And Indiana -- August 23, 2025

Locator: 48936CORN.

Trump Halts Orsted Wind Project Off Rhode Island -- Saturday, August 23, 2025

Locator: 48935WIND.

Payback is hell! Payback is delicious! Doug Burgum remembers very, very well how the Keystone XL pipeline was canceled even after all permits were obtained and construction had already begun. The Orsted "stop" is even more delicious: the project was almost complete. Sure, Judge Boasberg will step in but it will be tied up in court for a long time.

Tag: wind New England. Revolution Wind Project

This project has been mentioned several times on the blog. 

Links everywhere; here's one.

From the linked article:

Wow. Does this administration ever sleep?

See also this blog from just the other day, earlier this week.