Russell Atkinson's Blog

The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip by Stephen Witt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jensen Huang is a remarkable man. He is no doubt a very capable engineer, but his success has come more from his competitive drive and uncompromising work ethic. He both inspires and intimidates his followers. In that sense he is much like Steve Jobs, but Huang is smarter technically and shrewder in a business sense. He was always a big advocate of parallel computing. The current success of Nvidia, though, is partly luck. It began primarily as a graphics video card manufacturer relying mostly on PC gamers. It struggled along with that small consumer customer base until the killer app – AI – came along and found that the graphics cards were ideally suited for it. Huang was slow to see the match for what it was and much of the company’s success was due to the skill of some very smart people who were recruited by Huang for their brilliance and loyalty to parallel computing. They in turn were drawn to Nvidia because of Huang’s reputation as a parallel computing pioneer and because he had the hardware and openness to try new things. Nvidia is now the world’s most valuable company.

The book tells this story and tries to give the reader a sense of the technology, but is really a biography. There is a brief thumbnail description of a neural net and parallel computing, but barely mentions other aspects of artificial intelligence like Large Language Models (LLM), deep learning, or random forest computing. If you read this hoping to gain an understanding of how AI works, you will be disappointed. It seems many, maybe all, scientists and AI programmers don’t really understand how it works. The writing is professional, reportorial in style, but becomes rather repetitive largely because so many stories of the people who are drawn to Nvidia are so similar. If nothing else, I gained an appreciation for how complex and specialized the technology is and I learned that the huge energy draw AI causes is for the training, not as much its subsequent use. It’s not a page turner, but I enjoyed the book.

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The Doorman by Chris Pavone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Chicky Diaz is the senior doorman at the most famous co-op/apartment building in New York City. He’s a loyal employee and all-around well-meaning soul who has come upon hard times. In the building are some fabulously rich residents including Emily, a drop-dead gorgeous raven-haired beauty married to Griffin, a despicable CEO of an arms manufacturer. Also in the building is Julian, a gallerist who makes a living selling ugly but valuable art to rich people like Emily and Griffin. Their lives intertwine throughout this novel. Some gangsters join the mix. The pace is good, the writing better, and the suspense builds. The author shreds Griffin and his MAGA brethren mercilessly, so if that’s your politics you won’t like this one, but that’s really a sidelight. There’s enough real action at the end to qualify it as a thriller, I suppose, but barely. It’s more about wealth inequality and the plight of the downtrodden.

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The Last Ferry Out by Andrea Bartz
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This bait and switch is awful. It’s described as a twisty thriller and was on my library’s Mystery and Thriller list. There is no mystery and it’s not thrilling. It’s pretty much just a lesbian love story. Eszter (small pretty blonde) dies on a remote Mexican Island, and her fiancee Abby (tall muscular with a fade) goes there to find out what happened. Abby is paranoid and overreacts, misinterprets everything, and suspects everyone. Most of the book is spent talking about how beautiful Abby thinks Eszter was and their courtship and relationships with their parents and how much Eszter loved her muscles and height. I have no beef with lesbian love stories, I just don’t want to read one, especially when I’m expecting a mystery. It’s not even well-written and the title is misleading. I forced myself to finish it since I had nothing else handy – I’d read the last of my book club selections and all my holds at the library were taking forever to come in. One finally did. I’m going there now.

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Right turn only but No right turn.

I think the Right turn only sign is for cars exiting the driveway and No right turns one for people wanting to enter. They’re at slightly different angles. I was probably making an illegal right turn into the parking lot as I got this photo. What adds to the confusion is the fact the driveway has a solid white line in the middle, suggesting that it is OK to turn in there. There is no Exit Only marking. That white line you see is the limit line for cars exiting but doesn’t extend all the way across, also suggesting the other lane is for entering cars.

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New songs added as of October 26, 2025:

9 to 5 – Dolly PartonAin’t No Grave – Jackie DeShannonBaby You’re No Good – Linda RonstadtFolsom Prison Blues – Brandi CarlileFrankie and Albert – Jackie DeShannonRockin’ Boogie – Jesse FullerThat’ll Be the Day – Linda RonstadtTrouble in Mind – Jackie DeShannon

Songs I’m retiring from 1 or more playlists for now (but may be keeping in others)

Aunt Hagars Blues – Sammy Price
Backwater blues – Albert Ammons
Boogie Woogie Stomp – Carl Sonny Leyland
Hollywood Pastime – Larry Clinton
Just Strollin’ – Bob Crosby
Longhair’s Blues – Ethan Leinwand
Mirandy – Eubie Blake
Music Hall Stomp – Carl Sonny Leyland
Railroad Bill – Etta Baker
The 31 Blues – Ethan LeinwandFall in California – Jill SuttieGo where I send thee – Golden Gate QuartetSentimental Gentleman from Georgia – Meredith Axelrod

The last three are vocals; the rest of the retiring ones are instrumentals, mostly piano solos in the blues/boogie woogie genre. Everything I’ve added is a vocal. You may notice I’ve added a couple of covers of old 1960’s songs. The originals were great, but I’ve been listening to them for about over 50 years so it’s time to mix in some great versions by others.

 

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The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This science fiction classic is full of wit, satire and a surprising prescience about AI. Written in 1966, you’d think it was about ChatGPT, Claude, or xAI. Set on the Moon in the future, Mannie, the only competent computer tech strikes up a friendship with “Mike” his name for the supercomputer that runs the entire lunar complex. The humans there (“loonies”) are virtual vassals controlled by Earth masters (The Authority), and a lunar warden. They mine ice and grow food in tunnels with unlimited solar energy available. But Mannie, Mike, a rabble rouser called the Professor, and Wyoming (Wyoh, the luscious babe in the group) conspire to revolt against the Authority. I admit I started skipping fairly early as it got to be a bit over the top, but I enjoyed what I read. At least the ending was satisfying.

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For you regular readers of my blog – both of you – you probably know that I am past president of the American Cryptogram Association (ACA) and have always been fascinated with codes and ciphers. As you may also know, there is a famous (among cipher fans, anyway) sculpture in the courtyard of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) called Kryptos.

As you can see, it has letters carved into it. There are four panels, each enciphered in some manner by the sculptor. Three of those were deciphered years ago, but the fourth remained unsolved. A few days ago two men discovered that last text, although they did not actually decipher it. They found the original passage by following clues the sculptor left (both intentional and unintentional) that led them to the Smithsonian Institution where the sculptor had done research for the project. So the sculpture text has been broken, but the final cipher method has not been solved.

I decided to check out the What3Words information about that location for fun as I do from time to time. Here are some relevant cites:

Central.Intelligence.Agency is located in a muddy field in West Helena, Arkansas, clearly a ploy by our country’s spymasters to divert foreign adversaries.

data.live.shower is the actual location of the Kryptos sculpture, but when you enter those words intro W3W, it says they are in the vicinity of Brookmont, MD, not only the wrong city, but the wrong state. Yet another CIA disinformation ploy? Well, Brookmont is right across the Potomac River from the CIA compound, closer than central Langley.

The only W3W location in the immediate vicinity of Kryptos that hints at its true nature is rare.zebra.code, which sounds like a code in itself.

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Overboard by Sara Paretsky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Although this is my first Warshawski novel, it’s the 21st in the series. The central character is a female private eye in Chicago (V.I. or Vic). The plot involves some bad guys who have stashed the elderly mother of one of them in a cruel “memory care unit” in order to force her to sign a deed turning over her house to her useless crooked son. The house is a decrepit mansion in a prime location for development. But the woman wants her granddaughter to have the house. That girl becomes imprisoned, but escapes and V.I. finds her and takes her under her wing. The teen nephew of a bad guy also ends up needing her help. Add in violent, corrupt cops, a legal problem going on with the local Jewish synagogue and you have the basic idea. Vic is a former public defender and is thus on the “woke” side of things. She wears a mask (this takes place in 2022, the height of the pandemic) while the bad guys don’t. They swear, steal, and the corrupt cop beats up people especially anyone who is woke. Vic takes ridiculously dangerous risks for the girl and the boy and the synagogue, all without pay. The plot depends heavily on the weak ploy of Vic being able to call on a series of friends and contacts (a reporter, a good cop, etc.) to get or do almost anything that needs doing or getting. It jumps the shark at the paper clip scene, but I’ll leave it at that.

I listened to the audiobook. There were some odd choices made. For starters, the title has nothing to do with the plot. There is no boat or anyone going overboard. Secondly, the voice actor is 65 years old and sounds like it, maybe even older, while Vic is much younger, maybe 50 at most. It sounds odd with an old woman talking in the first person describing her rock climbing, swimming underwater while being shot at, running regularly, winning physical fights with large men. The actress is good, just too old. Thirdly, there’s some kind of superdrone in the plot that can do almost anything including read your thoughts if it flies over you. I can’t recommend the book, but it passed the time.

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Malibu Burning by Lee Goldberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Every novel needs conflict, or so I’ve been told. Here we have opposing forces: Walker and Sharpe, two arson investigators, on one side, and Danny Cole, a convicted con man (though with a heroic streak) on the other. When Danny gets out of prison he plans a major heist against the backdrop of a fire of his own making. The plot is as implausible as it sounds, but it moves along nicely with engaging dialog between Walker and Sharpe who have just been thrown together and are getting to know each other. In the ethos of this book, every rich person is evil and deserves to have his/her house and fortune burn down. At least that’s Danny’s view. There’s some good detective work and plenty of exciting crime plotting and firefighting scenes. The author seems to have done a lot of research, at least enough to seem knowledgeable to me. Four stars is a stretch, but it’s a fun read if your hopes aren’t set too high.

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I just read that a bunch of authors got a $1.5 billion settlement from Anthropic, the company that makes the AI chatbot Claude among other AI tools. Anthropic pirated a bunch of novels and used them to train their AI. After a court ruled it to be a copyright violation (the copying, not the training use) the company settled. I looked up my name in the database of authors used for the training and was disappointed to find my name wasn’t on it. I decided to ask Claude to write a short story in my style (the style of the Cliff Knowles Mysteries). Claude replied that it wasn’t familiar with that author but would use typical crime fiction elements. Here’s what it produced:

The Vanishing Witness

Detective Sarah Chen stood in the empty apartment, her breath visible in the cold air. The heat had been off for at least three days, maybe four. On the kitchen counter, a half-drunk cup of coffee sat next to an open laptop, its battery long dead.

“No signs of struggle,” Officer Martinez said from the doorway. “Looks like she just stepped out.”

Sarah didn’t respond. She was studying the coffee cup, the laptop, the jacket still hanging on the back of the chair. Emily Rodriguez hadn’t just stepped out. Emily Rodriguez had been scheduled to testify against Vincent Calabrese in forty-eight hours. And now Emily Rodriguez was gone.

The Calabrese case had consumed six months of Sarah’s life. Money laundering, racketeering, conspiracythe charges read like a greatest hits of organized crime. But it all hinged on Emily, a bookkeeper who’d kept meticulous records and finally found the courage to come forward.

Sarah walked to the window. Three stories up, fire escape access. She tested the windowunlocked. Her stomach tightened.

“Pull the security footage from the building,” she told Martinez. “Every camera, every angle. I want to know everyone who came and went in the last week.”

“You think someone grabbed her?”

“I think Emily was smart enough to keep her windows locked.” Sarah turned from the window, scanning the room again. Something wasn’t right. The apartment was too neat, too staged. No one lived this carefully.

Her phone buzzed. It was her partner, Detective Mike Warren: Found something. Meet me at Emily’s office.

Twenty minutes later, Sarah stood in the reception area of Meridian Financial, where Emily had worked before becoming a star witness. Mike emerged from a back office, holding an evidence bag.

“Security guard found this taped under her desk drawer,” Mike said, handing her the bag. Inside was a flash drive and a handwritten note.

Sarah read aloud: “If you’re reading this, I’m either dead or I ran. The evidence on this drive is everything, but it’s not what you think. VC isn’t the one I’m afraid of. ER”

Mike raised an eyebrow. “Not Vincent Calabrese? Then who?”

Sarah’s mind raced through the case files, the witness interviews, the evidence chain. If not Calabrese, then someone close to the investigation. Someone with access. Someone who knew Emily’s every move because they were supposed to be protecting her.

“We need to get this to tech immediately,” Sarah said. “And Mike? Don’t tell anyone about it. Not the DA, not the task force. No one.”

“You think it’s one of ours?”

Sarah looked at her partner, someone she’d trusted for five years. In this moment, she realized she couldn’t be certain of anyone.

“I think Emily Rodriguez was smart enough to know the difference between running from a mobster and running from someone who’s supposed to keep her safe,” Sarah said. “And I think we have forty-eight hours to figure out which one it was before this entire case falls apart.”

Mike nodded slowly. “Or before Emily winds up in the harbor.”

Sarah gripped the evidence bag tighter. The laptop, the unlocked window, the too-perfect apartmentit was all misdirection. Emily had planned this. But the question wasn’t whether she’d run.

The question was what she’d discovered that made running her only option.

And Sarah had a sinking feeling that when she found out, she wouldn’t like the answer.

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