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: 2-8 October, 2017

Summary of this week:

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

Monday October 2, 2017

Facebook will give Congress, but not us, 3,000 Russian ads. And why can't we laugh along, too?

The US, us, does a big denial-of-service attack on North Korea. Relatively cheap, simple, affective .

Where are the drones that could be helping Puerto Rico and Florida and Texas and? Good question. Government follies.

"Once you're doing it, you have a chance to do it better."—Seth Godin This is the essence of all that is Agile.

Mark I'm-not-running-for-president Zuckerburg now enters the apology phase of his non-campaign campaign.

Satya Nadella's thoughts on trading privacy for security. Usually a bad trade for adults to make.

Amazon is trying to make Alexa the next big operating system.

This story is all over the Internet, so it must be important. The FBI doesn't have to reveal which company broke into an iPhone for them.

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Tuesday October 3, 2017

Some nut in Las Vegas pours bullets into a crowd of 20,000 people and kills over 50 of them. The news media, evern 24 hours later, provides little if no information on what happened and how it happened. So rumors and fake news spread and the news media rails against rumors and fake news that it spreads.

Roku updates the devices that attach to our TVs.

Facebook shows its Russian ads and vows to do something so that losing candidates won't feel cheated.

Facebook brings Messenger Lite to America on Android.

Those dastardly Russians identified "American voters susceptible to propaganda." Glad no one else has ever done that (not).

General Motors announces that it intends to only build electric cars some time after now.

Google ends the First Click Free policy that let us run around paywalls for news.

Ring announces products that compete with Nest in the home for half the price.

Tesla has major production problems on the model 3 car—only making 16% of its goal.

Apple wins and Samsung wins on every iPhone X sold as Samsung supplies the parts.

Our Navy, tired of ships colliding, returns to basic seamanship rules.

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Wednesday October 4, 2017

At least one person understands the bias danger in pattern recognition or AI.

At long last, we may stop using the social security number as the national unique identifier.

Google has a new cloud database called Cloud Firestore.

The European Union fines American Amazon $300million. The reason doesn't matter. It's a money grab.

Here we go again. This time it's microdosing of LSD. Open the mind. Free the spirit. Kill off something necessary.

The Las Vegas shooting illustrates that Google and Facebook let anyone say anything. This is evil? Censor with care.

Waymo (of Google of Alphabet) wants to have driverless cars on the road this  fall.

Long-term health study shows eat breakfast; eat a big breakfast.

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Thursday October 5, 2017

Google has a big event. Here is a review of all the stuff.

Self-driving taxis are driving the private streets of a California retirement community, right now.

But most Americans don't want to ride in or near a self-driving car.

Google touts large millions of gadgets and answers provided. All over the place in our homes.

And maybe Google and Amazon sitting on the kitchen counter listening to us all the time is a bad idea.

Google introduces their Pixel 2 smartphones.

Google introduces the PixelBook tablet and laptop and chromebook and integrated with all their other gadgets.

Out FCC is sending $77million (a small number) to Puerto Rico to help rebuild communications. Let's hope some of them money is spent on its intended purpose.

HP updates its stylish Spectre 13 portable computer with changes inside and out.

This could be Google's biggest or quickest to the dumpster product: the Clips "camera." Read the article. Put it down. Walk away, It learns what is interesting and takes photos without you.

The EU is upset because Ireland isn't collecting enough taxes. Ireland likes jobs and companies that bring jobs.

Lack of sleep causes inefficient work which causes more time on work and less for sleep which goes back to the start of this.

SanDisk releases a line of rugged SDs for Automotive and Industrial applications.

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Friday October 6, 2017

There are still 4million persons in the US watching Netflix DVDs. It works; don't fix it.

Elon Musk to the rescue. Of course solar and batteries work in isolated areas—for a while.

Slashdot is 20 years old today. Yes, 20 years of technology reporting on the Internet is a long time.

Recollections of the creator.

The IBM ThinkPad is 25 years old today. Lenovo releases a retro-look anniversary edition.

Here come electric-powered passenger aircraft.

Facebook announced it is building a $1Billion data center in Virginia.

Google Compute Engine: rent a cloud computer that has 96 CPU cores and 624 GB of memory. Some problems require it.

Facebook's Workplace now has chat and screen sharing to compete with Microsoft.

Amazon is testing its own delivery service to compete with FedEx and UPS.

A look at the simple, proven techniques Russian influencers used on Facebook. Nothing illegal here folks. Simple advertising practices.

The Wall Street Journal analysis the economic affect of camera sensors that perform their own processing.

YouTube changes its search algorithm after Las Vegas shooting. They push down the crazy stories. Of course all this will break when one day we have a crazy story, like a President having sex with an intern in the Oval Office, that the software will label as fake or crazy and push away and then we'll have to reconsider all this fake news and censorship and everything.

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Saturday October 7, 2017

It is Saturday, and the news is slight today.

AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) is turning off on 15 December after 20 years on the air.

A look back at how the FCC forced AIM to interoperate and how maybe we should do the same with Facebook.

Starbucks beats off the robots. "People no longer go to stores for products; they go for people." Listening McDonalds?

Click on a link, read a little, move on. Bad? Well, write that first paragraph better.

Elon Musk proposes solar power for Puerto Rico. This is an obvious and not creative solution to an isolated place.

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Sunday October 8, 2017

Silicon Valley's intermittent fasting diet. People tend to dehydrate when they fast.

Atherton, California where the tech executives live in luxury. Why not? They can afford it.

Google will attempt to restore communications across Puerto Rico with its balloons. This is an old and good idea. Why did the FCC wait so long? The use of drones or balloons to restore cell phone service is an old technology. Companies have proposed this to governement, our FCC, for decades.

GM says Tesla is lying about what it can do for self-driving cars.

I find this disturbing. Adults using child-safe software to limit their digital world use. These are adults who can't turn off the TV and go to bed on time.

It appears that the Trump campaign was smart enough to use low-cost Facebook ads. 

Writing fiction about people does affect how we see actual people.

Lonely and bored and lonely and lonely working at home by yourself? Some tips.

Seasons for writing? For some of us, it doesn't come everyday, but in great sprints at special times.

Creating a place and atmosphere for writing. Or as Stephen King writes (paraphrased), "You need a room with a door you can close."

Reading to write better. Notice. Notice. Notice.

Some of the good and bad of being a freelance writer.

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