Dwayne Phillips ' Day Book

Items I happen to view each day. Science, Techonology, Management, Culture, and of course Writing

This is my day book for this week. I have modeled this after science fiction and computer writer Jerry Pournelle's view, or as he calls it, his Day Book. I encourage you to see Jerry Pournelle's site and subscribe to his services.

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This week: April 13-19, 2015

Summary of this week:

Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday

Monday April 13, 2015

No Internet viewing today.

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Tuesday April 14, 2015

Nothing really new here: to make it to Mars we will have to build on Mars from Martian materials.

Steve Jobs is gone, and so is his vision of computing. RF rules the day.

Getting money from venture capatilists mean that you are selling your company before it is worth anything. Duh.

H-1B visas: 85,000 available, 233,000 applications already. And then their are the unemployed Americans. And then there are the half-million unskilled illegal aliens every year.

Apple sold more watches in a day than the Android world sold in a year.

The Linux 4.0 kernel is released.

And coming in 4.1 kernel are many x86 assembly code cleanups.

Teach.org and Microsoft are encouraging minorities to become teachers. Once again, there are many problems in trying to end discriminating by discriminating.

It appears that the government of China has been hacking other Asian countries for at least ten years.

The USB-C cable on the new MacBook allows charging from external battery packs.

Foxconn's venture in Brazil has flopped. Corruption beats everything else once again.

Google competition: Time Warner Cable gives 6x speed boost with no price increase when Google announces it is coming to town.

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Wednesday April 15, 2015

Apple's WWDC will be June 8-12. And selfie sticks and monopods are banned. Wow.

In Arkansas, police supplied a lawyer with a disk drive containing legal documents AND lots of malware. Malintent or stupidity?

A SpaceX booster delivers a payload and then lands on a barge, but the landing was a bit too hard.

Nokia merges with Alcatel-Lucent. Maybe they'll call it NAL or ALN or LAN.

This story is all over the Internet, so it must be important: Apple buys a camera-tech company named LinX.

Civilization is safe: Guitar Hero is B A C K  B A B Y!

Dell has what is probably the best Linux laptop on the market.

Businesses are not replacing their computers, and that means Intel's sales are low.

We have another story of TSA abuse of citizens at airports. This one in Denver, and the details are disturbing.

"The personal health information of patients in the United States is not safe,"—enough said.

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Thursday April 16, 2015

Facebook may have the world's largest collection of facial recognition data, and it may be illegal.

It seems that the Chrome browswer is a big battery drain on the new Apple MacBook.

Advertising turns to the three-second, silent video.

Perhaps it is the tax-preparation lobby that keeps tax filing so complicated. Of course, Congress is taking the money and writing the laws.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise shows its new logo. Looks like a non-logo logo to me.

The EU officially accuses Google of antitrust violations. An American company in a European court: good luck with that.

Google responds, sort of.

The growing trend of micro startup acquisitions.

A guy landed his gyrocopter on the lawn of the US Capitol building. So much for security.

A good video of the SpaceX attempt to lands its booster on a barge.

Los Angeles school district seeks a refund from Apple over its free-iPad-to-everyone debacle.

Here is a No Duh report from our government: if you build your airliner WiFi net wrong, people can hack it.

The Commonwealth of Virginia has declared that the voting computers it used are easy to hack.

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Friday April 17, 2015

A government legal opinion on the government's use of the No-Fly List.

The hack that keeps on giving: WikiLeaks releases 30,000 more documents on Sony.

The interest in the new Star Wars trailer continues.

And now we have an operating system just for drones.

Moore's Law is 50 years old. People declare it dead daily, and again, and again.

More video of the SpaceX booster landing and explosion.

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Saturday April 18, 2015

The title says it all—Is This Meeting Necessary?

A look at the updated Dell 11 tablet.

A tutorial on home automation and the Internet of Things.

When considering pay vs performance, Tim Cook is the best CEO in the world. Of course  you have to ask the old question, is Apple's performance due to this manager or the work of the prior manager?

The X47B drone sets some records and retires.

Nothing to do this weekend? Build a Raspberry Pi laptop computer.

MakerBot laysoff 100 people (20% of its company).

CenturyLink files the 7th lawsuit against our FCC and its net neutrality rules.

I still don't know if Google still has the 20%-time rule.

Immigrant success stories in the tech world. When I was a boy, someone taught me that our immigration policies were to admit people to our country who had talent, skills, education and shun those who had none of these. I guess that was just one of those things they tell little kids in school to keep them quiet or something.

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Sunday April 19, 2015

Google's Quick UDP Internet Connection could speed the Internet.

Luxury bus service Leap is sued over violations of the Americans with disabilities act.

A judge rules against the FBI's "phoney cable guy" search scheme.

And our FBI overstated the scientific validity of its forensic analysis in court. People went to prison and were executed as a result. There is a lot of junk science out there, folks. A lot of junk science. Did I write that there is a lot of junk science out there? There is a lot of junk science out there.

Porsche teams with Apple for in-car systems.

Google continues to progress on its project Loon of balloons that deliver Internet service. One question the cynics like me have to ask is, how will the FCC find a way to regulate this for fun and taxation?

The present state-of-the-art in computing: a cell phone.

Google next change to its search engine will tilt towards mobile sites.

Transparency and office culture inside Google. If they actually do what this post says they do, good for them.

Put a Call To Action on your writer's website, a.k.a., "Hire ME!"

More tips on writing a memoir.

Content Marketing: something a little different that pays well for writers.

Some thoughts on journal writing—a practice I recommend to everyone.

Creating time for thinking. Writers, consultants, and freelancers must do this. This holds for the rest of us, too.

Promoting your books via Pinterest.

Some productivity tips for those who really don't like productivity tips.

Paper a wall in your home with rejection notices. The theory is that by the time the wall is covered, you will receive an acceptance.

A look at a pencil that is still made in America.

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