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: July 18-24, 2016

Summary of this week:

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

Monday July 18, 2016

ARM is bought by SoftBank for $32billion (with a B).

An inside look at Local Motors and its Olli autonomous, people-moving vehicle.

SpaceX delivers to low-earth orbit and sticks a good landing on land.

Here are the H-1B visa positions of Trump and Clinton. Don't waste time reading as neither has a position.

Want to work better on Monday? Prepare on Sunday. Don't want to work better on Monday? Many people are with you.

Contrary to most news reports, the Baton Rouge police shooting was not an ambush. It appears there was a bad-guy vs bad-guy shooting ocurring a block away from police headquarters.

Facebook bumbles again with diversity hiring, blaming others, and being slammed by observers.

"painkiller abuse and overdose are significantly lower in states with medical marijuana laws" I'm  against making marijuana legal as I find thorough analysis leads to more harm than good. I am dead set against how doctors allow persons to abuse prescription painkillers. I don't find one to be the answer to the other.

Hillary Clinton, always eager to spend someone else's campaign money, hires a large team of engineers.

This is all over the Internet, so it must be important—young Han Solo will be played by Alden Ehrenreich.

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Tuesday July 19, 2016

Yet more research on how to plan the layout of an office. Yet more contradictions.

Uber has now made 2billion trips. I am confounded at how Uber drivers continue to drive for incredibly low pay and make the rich owner richer and richer. In the old day, there would have been labor strikes for such conditions.

Everyone is screaming how Melania Trump stole from Michelle Obama's convention speech as if Obama's was 100% original never before heard in the history of civilization.

Silicon Valley's problem with understanding the world's real problems is a big problem.

Our government is asking Google for more and more and more information about us.

No longer a secret: Google is secretly working on an augment reality headset.

Hope and Change? Gen Y is the first American generation to earn less than their immediate predecessor.

Netflix hits reality as higher prices bring fewer customers and the stock price falls.

Luxury first-class flight accommodations. Why all the emphasis on sleeping? They are missing the point.

Here is another TSA story—half the employees are guilty of misconduct. Oh well. Government.

Boeing chooses Microsoft as its cloud computing partner.

Our Department of Justice is violating the FOIA by using faulty technology and refusing to fix it.

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Wednesday July 20, 2016

Microsoft has a good financial quarter.

The Dollar Shave Club sells for $1 (billion).

Germany will require autonomous cars to have "black box" recorders. I find that redundant as they will be connected to the Internet and servers will be archiving all their data.

Free speech? Twitter ban conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

John Deere tells is customers that they don't own the tractors they buy. They have a right to operate, not fix.

Security researchers show how easy it is to hack large gatherings of people. The Republican Convention is this week's example.

We have more foreign students in US colleges than ever before. They pay higher fees, and colleges love that.

This required a study? Car sharing reduces car ownership. No duh.

When engineers meet lawyers, the lawyers win because the lawyer codify winning and losing. See  Google's attemp to "help" the healthcare industry.

Seagate announces a line of helium-based disk drives for consumers.

Google spends $450million in Europe to improve its image.

Mercedes' autonomous runs around Amsterdam (sort of). I'm disappointed by the design as they could have completely redesigned what a people transporter looks like and functions. All they did was remove the driver's seat.

Nintendo's "value" has doubled with Pokemon Go.

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Thursday July 21, 2016

Microsoft moves Skype from peer-to-peer to a central cloud design.

Google releases its Cloud Natural Language API.

Google's DeepMind cuts data center power use by 40%.

ISIS is recruiting heavily and successfully among the Muslim population in western China.

ooops, someone in our Navy installed lots of software seemingly without permission or license.

Facebook's Messenger becomes its fourth product to have 1billion users per month. The definition of success has changed.

Elon Musk has a not-so-secret secret plan that is the most important thing in the world today.

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Friday July 22, 2016

A prediction that the serverless architecture (self-contradictary) will change the universe.

Jeff Bezos is now the third richest person in the world.

Another secret business plan becomes not-so-secret as Apple delays its secret car until 2021.

Nvidia launches yet another new video card for $1,200. More power, less cost, better for the developer.

Surely we can do more with technology than beat games or play games or run around in circles and claim that we have done something praiseworthy.

Smartwatch shipments drop 32% year over year for the quarter.

Another example of tech nonsense—a "technical" system to deliver lunch.

Demand exceed supply for Microsoft's 84" touchscreen computer. Good news, until you realize that the estimators made a big mistake.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued our Government about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I wish them well in their pursuit of justice.

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Saturday July 23, 2016

Yet another popular article that assumes electric cars are better for the environment. No proof except repetition.

How many TeraBytes do we need? G-Drives now available up to 20TeraBytes.

Hillary Clinton tweets her VP pick. Note how she is avoiding email.

An in-depth testing regime recommends a solar, cellphone charger for $50. Anker.

Wikileaks grabs 1000s of DNC emails and shows how the party central worked against Bernie Sanders. Will this sour Sanders supports in Novermber?

 RNDMWRK finds co-work locations in restaurants, and fees include drinks etc.

Samsung brings 4TeraBytes of SSD storage to your desktop computer.

A look at the NoPlag plagiarism checking tool.

Most of the world is still offline. That is a big marketplace.

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Sunday July 24, 2016

It appears that Verizon will buy Yahoo for $5billion.

I guess this "desk" solves a problem for someone. Looks like another expensive toy for the rich.

Silicon Valley: it isn't what it used to be. I guess that's not a bad thing in some ways. Enough hedging. It has lost most of its patriotic persons and is now the home of the the "post-national" powers. I guess that is a nice way of saying really, really rich people who don't care about America and see our nation as a nuisance.

PS if you truly care, list your phone number/email address on the instructions. Not an unattended mailbox. You.* (*the single best way to improve just about any communication...) Your designs (and your instructions) will get better faster.—Seth Godin

7-11 (yes, that 7-11) makes its first drone delivery.

Understand the task of WRITING A BOOK by understanding one small step at a time.

Highlighting the similarities of being a writer to being an entire movie production organization.

The Masters of Fine Arts programs for writers. Yes, there is good here, but no it is not the answer for everyone. The list of successful writers without an MFA is much longer than the other list.

Actually writing something vs deciding to be a successful writer. One step at a time. Write something. Good, that is done. Now to the next piece of writing and marketing that. Good, that is done. Now we are ready to write and market successfully. One step at a time.

How writing fiction can improve your ability to write non-fiction.

This is an excellent post on how to improve our writing by spending time with smart people in various forms.

How to write sales copy for that book you have written.

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