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 25-31, 2016

Summary of this week:

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

Monday July 25, 2016

Our Justice Department and Apple are back at it again with unlocking iPhones.

WikiLeaks-leaked emails show that the fix was in for Clinton during the Democratic primaries.

Hillary Clinton's expected response to leaked emails: deny everything, make counter-accusations.

It is official: Verizon buys Yahoo at a little less than $5billion.

Yahoo was once valued at $125billion. I guess those estimators were really, really wrong.

A basic tutorial on face recognition using machine learning.

Linux kernel 4.7 is released.

ooops, Nintendo really doesn't make the Pokemon Go game—value drops.

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Tuesday July 26, 2016

Yet another "study" on how to tell if someone is lying. Focus on the eyes.

The liberal media focuses on the Russian hacking instead of the Democratic fixing.

Hooray for WalMart—reducing waste by selling produce that has cosmetic defects.

McDonald's has changed its menu, and sales and profits are up significantly.

Something is terribly wrong with how we are training our police officers.

Amazon's recent Prime Day illustrates the exponential growth in computers in data centers in the world.

The nation of Estonia moves its data backup to the UK in case of Russian hacking.

More information on coworking in restaurants. For the past eight years I have done this.

The growing "side hustle" trend—get a second job as insurance and enlightenment.

Google Maps gets a new look on mobile platforms.

Silly passwords show how easy it was to hack the DNC email system. All this from the guys who brought us the US Digital Service and other fixes to Federal government IT systems.

Amazon launches Prime service in India.

I don't like this as I see it as terrible for America. Our FBI winks when a presidential candidate reveals national security secrets in email, but when possible a foreign government hacks emails of a US political party (same party of that candidate), our FBI is all over it. Has a political party gained control of the FBI?

Amazon tests drones in the UK, not the US due to US regulators.

The DNC apologizes to Bernie Sanders for rigging elections. Only one person resigns.

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Wednesday July 27, 2016

Nvidia releases two more, new GPU cards. More bang, less buck, great industry to be in.

Apple has a down financial quarter, but is still hauling in a billion $$$ a week.

The age of micro-entertainment programming: Apple buys the carpool karaoke "show."

Our National Transportation Safety Board says that the deadly Tesla was speeding with auto pilot on.

Our Olympics Committee says that if you aren't a sponsor, you can't tweet about you know what.

Xiaomi's first laptop: a MacBook Air clone under $600. Imitation and flattery  and intellectual property.

Hackers find a way to bypass HTTPS, ooops.

Google launches an Emergency Location Service for Android phones.

Twitter's financial quarter is not so good.

Coming real soon now, Microsoft Word will offer style suggestions like an editor.

Beware of BlueTooth as most keyboards etc. don't use encryption and are easily copied.

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Thursday July 28, 2016

SpaceX unmanned mission to Mars: $300million. A bargain at that price. NASA would spend 10x.

Intel ups the power and price on its compute sticks with a $380 model.

Apple has now sold one billion iPhones. That is a large number.

Qualcomm pays $19.5million in gender discrimination settlement.

Tech companies lobby Congress to create more, cheaper engineers and programmers. They want the taxpayers to train their workforce for them.

Must see video shows how different camera lenses "add pounds" to a person in photographs.

Amazon teams with Kickstarter to have a special place to order Kickstarter products.

Facebook has a record-setting financial quarter.

GoPro's financial outlook isn't so good.

C is the world's top programming language this year edging out Java.

I still don't understand how smart, educated people take what Trump says literally. He exagerates to make a point.

What's a week without a TSA story? Researchers duplicate all the TSA master keys for luggage. It wasn't difficult.

Microsoft Pix: take better images on your iPhone than with the iPhone camera app. Preprocessing is the key.

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Friday July 29, 2016

Dark patterns: tricking users into doing things they don't want to do are all over the Web.

We have few data, but it appears that space travel is bad for our health—too much radiation.

Computer keyboards, cursive, and penmanship. Later in life I took a penmanship course and improved.

Watch this brick-laying machine and mourn for the coming unemployed.

Amazon has a good financial quarter beating all expectations.

Google has a good financial quarter—the money continues to roll in.

The layoffs continue at Microsoft—thousands of jobs.

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Saturday July 30, 2016

Today marks the 33rd anniversary of my marriage to Karen Ann Bundy. Marrying her was the smartest thing I ever did.

"If you believed what he believes, you'd do precisely what he's doing."—Seth Godin

Schneier's thoughts on the Russians, the DNC email, democracy, and what all.

Various industry Internet-of-Things groups are working together.

Hillary Clinton's campaign organization has been hacked. It appears that some people don't understand celebrity and the need for security.

Amazon is hiring rapidly—growing too fast?

Our IRS claims that Facebook owes $3-$5billion in back taxes. Think of the government waste that could fund.

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Sunday July 31, 2016

The engineers at Volkswagon may soon have a repair for their diesel engines. The lawyers in Germany and America? Never mind.

Some thoughts and cautions about "backing up to the cloud." You don't have a copy. Someone else does. Are they trustworthy?

In case you haven't noticed, this move to chips in credit cards in the US has flopped.

Talent and writing. I've always considered grit and the drive to keep going to be a talent that some people have and others do not.

All writers aren't crazy regardless of how we feel at times.

Some thoughts about writing with a co-author or two.

How reduced schedules spur some writers to write more, better, and faster.

"Done and not perfect" Excellent writing advice.

Want to go to a writing retreat? Good. Do it yourself. Just do it all by yourself.

A good suggestion about when and how to make that To Do list. Make it only one hour before you start.

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