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.

Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page
Email me at d.phillips@computer.org

This week: 31 July-6 August, 2017

Summary of this week:

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


Monday July 31, 2017

The Russian government outlaws VPN and increases surveillance of its subjects.

And the Russians PNG a large number of US diplomats. Details unknown at this time. So, maybe it wouldn't have been such a bad idea to have people in the White House have close personal relationships with Russians connected to their central government.

Get elected to office. Now you must friend everyone in the world on social media. Freedom of Speech?

Government messes don't only occur in the US. The Swedes have their day in the dumps.

AMD pushes back into the market for high-end graphics cards.

After decades of assured growth, the televisor in the American home is stalling.

Study smashes the myth of a digitally native generation. They don't use computing any better than the rest of us.

Domestic outsourcing, a.k.a., sub-contracting, flourishes in the US as companies realize it may be smarter to hire American.

Interesting thoughts on the attention economy and the first attention President.

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page


Tuesday August 1, 2017

Someone sends some phishing email to the White House (yes, that place) and succeeds.

Just to show that govt isn't the only one duped, HBO is hacked and Game of Thrones episodes leaked. And this just shows that it is summer time and there is no real news out there. I realize GoT is the most important thing in the world. Someone in show business figured out that summer was dead, so put your biggest show on in the summer and rule the world for three months.

Placating in the face of bad behavior: Silicon Valley is not the only place it happens. And that is a shame.

The Tesla 3 is a $50,000 car (not $35,000). Tesla is all about status toys for rich people.

Microsoft finally releases a feature in Word that reads text aloud.

Things are coming together to attach an Nvidia GPU to your laptop via USB C.

Google researches energy storage via latent heat using salt and antifreeze. An old technique, but will it scale?

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page


Wednesday August 2, 2017

Apple has a good financial quarter with record value and a new iPhone coming. The $Trillion company is near.

The sales of the Apple Watch are up 50% over last year. Not bad for a failed product.

Even the sales of iPads was up this quarter—first time in two years.

Not all is great $$$ in tech as Snap, everyone's darling, continues to flop financially.

Internet use: more women than men in the US and half the young users are in China and India.

Nvidia helps Remedy create facial animations for games etc. that take a leap in reality and time to create.

Microsoft announces eye control for Windows. This is a great leap for the disabled. This is what smart scientists and engineers should be doing instead of allowing Lyft riders to go through Taco Bell drive-ins.

Facebook is supposedly working on a video chat hardware device sort of like what we already have.

Google Classroom hits 1Billion submitted assignments in first three years and has a major upgrade.

Dell shows a bunch of updated PCs and its Canvas—a large touch screen for input.

The obvious becomes reality as hackers demonstrate how to eavesdrop using today's smart speaker gadgets.

Long suspected, now proven—H-1B visas are a way for companies to replace Americans with low-wage foreign workers.

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page


Thursday August 3, 2017

Tableau Software reported better-than-expected results in the second quarter. Which means the expecters were wrong, but in the comfortable direction.

Facebook may learn 2 things about censorsing bad people: (1) it is still censorship (2) bad is subjective.

ooops, State of Tennessee sold off an old voting machine, but it still held info of 650,000 citizens.

Another ooops, the HBO hack obtained more inside nuggets than originally thought.

What has happened with how we recruit and train law enforcement officers in America? Another Baltimore example of, "You did what?"

Tesla has shipped 47,000 cars this year, but the success may destroy the company.

It appears that young Americans have discovered the television antenna and broadcasts via RF.

Mark Zuckerburg continues his Im-not-running-for-president presidential campaign.

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page


Friday August 4, 2017

GoPro isn't profitable yet, but had a better-than-expected financial quarter.

Advances in augmenting reality with projected signs and other information.

Facebook's 24-hour-only Stories rolls out slowly on the desktop.

A look at Patreon: a place where creative persons can connect with fans as subscribers and maybe earn some money.

A story all over the Internet: our DoJ arrested the guy who stopped the WannaCry virus, took place at DefCon.

This is a big deal: Americans have stopped moving to where the jobs are. Unemployment and disability payments.

Save planet earth: get rid of dogs and cats. "Truth" is stranger than fiction.

Linked is doing something so that mentors can pair with those wanting mentors. It is FREE, but someone will pay someone.

I like this one: Send by Mozilla. Put a file in the cloud. Get the link. A friend downloads it. The file is deleted from the cloud.

It is a living for one person: hack games, get stuff, sell it to other games.

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks

Go to Dwayne's Home Page

Saturday August 5, 2017

At last, the next Apple Watch will have phone technology. Dick Tracy, we are here.

Don't connect it to the Internet. How many times do we have to say this? A fish tank sinks a casino.

This is always the fake-news counter example to limiting immigration—the successful immigrant. It appears that our State Dept struggles to predict the future accomplishments of immigration applicants.

Three Billion views and counting, the world's most watched video (for now) Despacito.

Game of Thrones hacked and leaked, watch the next episode early. This is the most important thing in the world, right? No it isn't, but that's just my opinion. Every else seems to think it is.

State of the art of laptop computers for summer 2017.

The original cast of Karate Kid returns for a comedy series on YouTube. YouTube outbid all the other Internet producers.

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page


Sunday August 6, 2017

Websites I have never seen that have millions of users each month.

An engineer writes about the diversity of ideas, and folks on the Internet prove that we have a ways to go to reach adulthood. Adults can say things, can hear things can think things. We prevent children from doing some of those things for their safety. Once adults, however, those rules don't apply. The essay is here.

A Google VP replies. We are inclusive, but we only include what we want to include. Sort of doesn't make any sense, but that is life here on planet earth.

Smartphones and the emotional well being of teenagers. Some research here, so pause to think. Still, I have met a lot of persons who went through their teens without smartphones and seem to have poor emotional health. What did they do wrong? What smartphone did Cain use before murdering Abel?

A look at Dell's latest 15" laptop with edge-to-edge display. Bigger display in a smaller package. Cool stuff.

Age and writing: you are too young, you are too old, you just shouldn't write. Oh well. Write anyways.

Day by day, year by year, life changes each of us and we change life. Writing? It will change as well for us.

Good tips on spotting scam artists who prey on writers. Be careful when you "audition" for someone. Can they use your audition work to make money for themselves. I once graded papers as an audition. I am almost certain that the writers of the papers paid them for my grading. That was a well-known company run be a rich, celebrity CEO.

Working through criticism: essential for writers and pretty important for all of us.

How one writer uses a journal to plan major changes in her life.

Tools for writers: yes, some of these things actually help.

Evernote.

Scrivener.

And here is a post on using Scriviener index cards to storyboard a story.

Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks
Go to Dwayne's Home Page