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: August 15-21, 2016

Summary of this week:

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


Monday August 15, 2016

Google Fiber runs into the reality of physical cable and labor. They are trying other options.

Olympic winners: Adidas and Under Armour. Olympic loser: Nike.

Tourists are flocking to London and Airbnb.

Apple and the government of Ireland finally make peace and start building a data center.

"I want my mommmy!" The continuing cry for digital assistants.

The non-linear experience garph versus the resume. The world still expects the resume.

Security follies: our Social Security Administration and online accounts. Are these guys kidding? Apparently not.

42 US: yet another Silicon Valley education experiment. Perhaps one of these will work. Jobs? Someone is running these outfits and teaching the classes.

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Tuesday August 16, 2016

Nvidia launches a new series of GPUs for laptop computers.

Some return towards sanity as some car makers understand the needs of those who would be an electric car.

A drift away from sanity as July 2016 is the hottest month in the history of earth. We will all be toast by Christmas.

ooops, it seems that human error was the cause of the green pool at the Olympics.

Starwood, Marriott, Hyatt, and Intercontinental hotels hacked. Sorry, someone has your credit card now.

Researchers find a security hole in Android that leaves 1.4billion users at risk.

The flight from cable TV continues.

Hackers hack NSA hackers and steal copies of their tools.

Hackers release thousands of documents from George Soros. I find it odd that technology that could make the super-rich invulnerable has instead made them transparent when they didn't want to be transparent.

Google releases Duo today—its new communications app.

For future reference: this is the textbook for the Foundations of Data Science class at UC Berkeley.

Excellent piece on avoiding technical debt in software.

This is politics and policy and expect lots of this in the Clinton Administration: DNC creates Cybersecurity board that lacks actual expertise.

The rich are buying wool sneakers—most comfortable in the world. Let everyone else eat cake or something.

Russian hacking and the US elections: the goal is to cause doubt and mistrust. They are succeeding.

Aetna drops out of Obamacare. No problem as we'll just spill more green ink on paper and call it money.

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Wednesday August 17, 2016

The HP Omen X desktop: someone finally goes wild and puts a powerhouse gaming machine in a new package.

Tim Cook leads Apple to China in the post-nation economy and promises more investment and jobs there.

Intel introduces Joule—a small, single-board computer vision system for developers and DIY'ers.

Intel introduces Project Euclid—it has a RealSense camera, motion sensors, onboard communications capabilities, and a detachable battery.

Intel plus Microsoft: all future Windows 10 PCs able to support mixed reality applications. The next killer app?

"Function is never an excuse for a dysfunctional organization, because we get the organization we compromise for."—Seth Godin

Floods in Louisiana and wildfires in California cause evacuation of 82,000 people.

Hillary Clinton lied to Congress while under oath. Normal persons, well, they go to jail. Special persons, well, I guess we find out if this is a nation of laws or a banana republic where the ruling families are above all this stuff.

Cisco lays off 14,000 persons. Economic recovery?

The Joel test for data science teams. Mostly a test of IT support in an organization.

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Thursday August 18, 2016

Google updates its Classroom offering just before school starts.

"The Intel PSM4 silicon photonics module can deliver 100 gigabits per second across two kilometers..."

Amazon tries to polish its bad workplace image with full benefits for part-time employees. How about paying the persons full salary?

Uber to use self-driving cars in Pittsburgh this month, i.e. now. Human co-pilots will be behind the wheel.

Childhood's end: McDonald's replaces toys with fitness trackers in (no longer) happy meals.

This post claims that McDonald's has already stopped the fitness tracker in happy meal program.

Google diversifies its speech recognition trainers. Why not sooner? Simple. The technology wasn't good enough until now.

A Federal Judge rules that law enforcement needs a warrant to track a citizen's cell phone location 4th Amendment.

The world's largest aircraft takes flight. Will these lighter-than-air vehicles ever work?

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Friday August 19, 2016

Thoughts on Uber's move to self-driving cars and their Pittsburgh experiement.

Volvo is providing the vehicles for Uber's Pittsburgh experiment.

Uber is losing in court as a Judge tosses their $100million settlement with drivers.

Twitter has suspended a quarter million terrorist accounts in the last six months.

Facebook flops in its attempt to diversify its workforce. Rich, white Harvard kids hire...well, you know.

Recent Intel processors have support for faster interfaces. Here comes Thunderbolt.

86,500 persons in Louisiana, many of these are the head of the household, file for flood assistance.

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Saturday August 20, 2016

Not much Internet viewing today as I am travelling.

ooops The big Windows 10 anniversary update "broke" millions of webcam.

Oracle funds a non-profit group that will bang on Google to see what is happening there in the name of transparency.

NASA can't put a person in space, but can release lots of cool, old research papers. That's worth something, huh?

Chicago's predictive policing tool flops. It costs a lot and does nothing.

Harley-Davidson cheated on emissions tests just like Volkswagon. I expect to hear of many others as well.

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Sunday August 21, 2016

Google steps slowly into Indonesia. Everyone seems to have their eyes wide open to the coming good and bad.

Microsoft provides more tools to have Evernote users switch to MS OneNote.

The largely unreported success of Google Glass.

The online writer's portfolio. What to have, what to forget.

Fundamentals: how to start as a freelance writer.

Fundamentals: the book proposal. It means as much to the writer as it does to any potential publisher.

Being a writer is being a writer. How a person reacts to it is what matters. If I feel it is the most difficult activity in the world, well...

Peace and quiet and writing on the Amtrak writing residency.

The three-bucket system of writing. It helps some writers find distinct steps in what we lump together as "writing."

Write drunk, edit sober. Despite all the folklore and such, I advise strongly against this.

Goal. Motivation. Conflict. And you can finish that novel or whatever else you are trying to write.

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