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: 1-7 May, 2017

Summary of this week:

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

Monday May 1, 2017

ooops, a basic security hole is found in hundreds of Android apps.

Is there a shortage of programmers or do we chase people out of our industry?

Paper books make a comeback; eBooks take the loss.

Amazon's Alexa learns to speak more like a person and less like a machine.

Where do those deep learning researchers get all those photos? One scraped Tinder for 40,000 unsuspecting faces.

Bottled water: how the world has been scammed out of $100billion a year.

Run everything in the cloud...but I still need a keyboard and a display.

Linux kernel 4.11 has been released.

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Tuesday May 2, 2017

Need cash? Apple has $250Billion in the bank—90% outside the US (thank you US government NOT).

Politics at the FCC and how our previous President set the precident for our current President. Generally, Presidents have become lazy. See my blog on the topic of why we don't compromise any more.

How our judicial system uses software with hidden algorithm to decide punishment.

Microsoft has a big event today, and people are expecting education items including Windows Cloud. Will MS be able to compete with Google Chrome OS system? Will MS have something that is just too complicated?

Angie's List is bought and merged with Home Advisor.

LG has a 42" monitor with four inputs. You can display four different machines at one time.

SpaceX launches a satellite and the rocket booster lands on solid earth.

Elon Musk with some explanation of his goals with tunnels.

After nine years, Intel corrects a security flaw in its processors.

Apple closes the book on its white plastic laptop computers. I still have my iBook G4 on the shelf. It still works.

ooops, Facebook mistakenly reveals just how much information it has about users.

Hackintosh: the sincerest form of flattery, "Hey Apple, build a computer like this."

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Wednesday May 3, 2017

An Indian H-1B visa company says it now wants to hire Americans to work in America.

Panic about Apple? They only sold 50million iPhones in the last three months. Sounds like success. Once again the person doing the predicting failed at predicting. Apple didn't fail at selling iPhones.

The essence of an electric guitar is NOT the body. See these made from old oil cans.

Hypothetical question (the worst kind): which of the big four tech companies would you drop?

Microsoft introduces a $1,000 Surface Laptop. Cool computer.

HP and Acer jump into Windows 10 S with $300 computers.

Microsoft had a "Education" event yesterday. Windows 10 S (not Win Cloud) is secure because it won't let you run any apps that is not Microsoft approved. Dangerous bet.

This post tries to explain the appeal of Windows S for Education.

Sales of the Apple Watch have doubled in the last year. Sounds like a success, but...

The use of Apple Pay is booming worldwide.

More proof that if you take the easy way as President, the next President can undo what you do. Hard work is rewarded. Laziness, not so much.

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Thursday May 4, 2017

IBM is buying what is left of the cloud computing assets of Verizon.

Apple creates a $1Billion fund to drive advanced manufacturing jobs in the US.

Google congratulates itself on pushing Microsoft towards better education systems.

The trial of the century is about to begin: Google vs Uber over self-driving vehicle technology.

Facebook rakes in the cash in a great financial quarter and now has about 2Billion users.

Facebook adds 3,000 persons to monitor videos on Facebook.

No suprise here as the NSA continued to do what the law told it to stop doing. Government has inertia and mass. Changes don't occur because of the stroke of a pen.

Interns at all these companies earn more than the average full-time working American. Of course this is all bologna. The cost of living in some areas is more than double that in others, and those facts are not factored into the report.

Nvidia's self-driving vehicle technology shows what is in its focus.

Paperspace attempts to leapfrog everyone in cloud computing for data scientists with Nvidia GPUs.

Facebook's Express WiFi begins in India; they aim to create 20,000 hotspots in the next few months.

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Friday May 5, 2017

Apple's advanced manufacturing fund seems to be more about robots than human jobs.

SpaceX reveals some details about launching 4,400 Internet relaying satellites.

We cross a threshold as officially, more than half of American homes have no landline telephones.

How Google updates its maps with Street View vehicles and deep learning. The computer reads and inputs all the signage.

Selfies, AI, social media, and life insurance rates. Big brother insurance is watching us.

We have a new type of denier, job elimination denier.

The downside of success: the Google email worm spam affected 0.1% of users, still 1million accounts.

Cord cutting rises 400% in the last quarter. Cable TV? Is that something they used in the 20th century grandpa?

Hastening the cord cutting: YouTube announces new shows coming from established stars.

Clever or fiendish: how advertisers put ultrasonic sounds in Android apps to reveal what you owns and what ads to show you.

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Saturday May 6, 2017

Google drive now holds 2 Trillion files—a sufficiently large number.

Good jobs at the entry level: health care and analysts.

Here comes original entertainment from the new guys. Continue the cord cutting.

Facebook will have about two dozen "TV" shows this summer.

Amazon and Apple team up to bring new programs to Apple TV.

The Russians are hacking all the western political parties. It seems all the Western political parties should learn something about computer security.

The Russians hack the German political parties.

The Russians hack Emmanuel Macron emails.

The decision journal: how well did I decide? Keeping track helps fight hindsight bias.

Move over Fitbit: Apple is now the world's most-used wearable computer.

George Will does an excellent job of putting ordinary life in 2017 in perspective.

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Sunday May 7, 2017

A recent study shows...Federal employees feel their agencies are wide open for hacking and spying.

The story of the New York Times and how it stayed open via subscriptions and Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Irrelevant questions that Apple, and others, ask during interviews. Roll your eyes and smile. The best answer, "That's a great question. I love trick questions. See, the trick is you are trying to learn if I will waste time answering an irrelevant question or if I will see it for what it is and move on the something that matters."

Story of a world traveler. It seems that rent in California is more expensive that traveling the world.

"I don't know that much about cyber, but I do think that's the number one problem with mankind."—Warren Buffet

Debian/GNU Linux 8.8 is released.

I like this definition of a writing slump: when I spend more time talking about writing than actually writing.

Want to improve as a writer? Find good people who will provide good feedback.

The value of a deadline to a writer. Some cannot write without one (some can't write with one).

Some tips on negotiating your writing rates. Yes, you can negotiate.

When writing, check your work an extra time. Ship it. You must ship it, but check one last time.

Different ways to block all the distractions and accomplish the work.

The role of goals and what is in our own minds in writing success.

Writing for local markets. This is not as simple as, "I'm published nationally so of course you want me to write a few things for you."

Are you a writer or do you operate your own writing business?

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