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: 6-11 November, 2017

Summary of this week:

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

Monday November 6, 2017

Amazon is lowering the prices on some products from smaller vendors. Good for consumers in the short term, but...

ooops, Twitter gives Congress list of Russians, but mistakenly includes an American in it. Watch out for all this witch hunt stuff.

News Flash: the Trump family was involved in international business before it entered politics. This is supposed to be some sort of smoking gun that ties Russia to Trump. I think having a President with lots of personal ties to foreign leaders is a good thing. People tend to not start wars with their personal friends.

The use of social media as a news source is increasing. The good news is people are looking to multiple sites.

Seth Godin hits 7,000 posts on his blog. If you count each day on my page as a blog entry, I am over 9*365=3,300 posts.

Several US states are considering dumping this silly notion of changing clocks and calling the minority the standard.

The hole in the ozone layer is the smallest it has been in 30 years. I guess this means the climatologists are wrong about something or other.

The AP has a long story of how the Russians used simple techniques to hack into the DNC in 2016. Silly security.

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Tuesday November 7, 2017

Another guy walked into a church in Texas on Sunday and killed several dozen people. He had a history of mental illness and domestic violence. After leaving the building, a few citizens chased him down. The official law enforcers were late to arrive. I guess there are some messages here.

Broadcom makes the long-rumored offer to buy Qualcomm.

Competitors cooperate as Intel will ship a processor next year that has an AMD graphics engine inside.

News Flash: companies look for places that have lower taxes. And they find them. See, e.g., Apple.

Google releases Resonance Audio, a VR audio SDK.

Companies are monitoring their employees when they work from home and in the office. Employees agree to this.

Rumors: Disney to buy Fox. And they would own Marvel Comics movies and all that stuff that makes comic movie goers excited.

This story is accurate and about 35 years too late: Americans aren't going to engineering grad school. That is a problem.

Comcast Xfinity Internet service had a nationwide outage yesterday. I was fortunate to be at work in an office at the time.

Some nimrod put a bunch of bloody videos on YouTube for Kids. I guess some people don't have much to do.

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Wednesday November 8, 2017

Facebook runs another social experiment on its users. Will they ever learn not to toy with people?

Twitter rolls out the 280-character tweet. Let's see. I welcome it.

Amazon adds tools to their Simple Storage Service S3 to help with security.

Corephotonics sues Apple for patent infringement related to dual-camera technology. Israeli company files suit in California.

Apple Pay Cash is in beta test where we can send money to each other via iMessage.

Google Maps will display wait times for restaurants. Wow! That's a good problem to spend tech talent on (not).

Nvidia releases special-edition Star Wars graphics cards. Dazzle 'em with looks and lights and glowing stuff.

Waymo has been running cars around Arizona streets with no one on board. Level 4 driving.

The proposed tax reform is surfacing a lot of phoney income not being paid be employers. See grad student example.

Snap has a bad financial quarter.

Snap loses $40million on unsold Spectacles. 300,000 units still sitting in the warehouse. Give them away!

Some details about Intel's Management Engine processor and MINIX OS that run on a processor in their processors.

Some news from Apache OpenOffice. It lives on next to LibreOffice and that office suite from MS. Google Docs rules...

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Thursday November 9, 2017

It is possible to build inexpensive reflectors that direct your WiFi signals to where you want.

A look at the Made in China 2025 program where the Chinese government pushes to dominate world technology trade.

Forget the Russians. The Chinese government is spending real money on Facebook ads. Facebook gladly accepts the ca$h.

No surprises at Wikipedia; 1% of writers create 77% of content. Everyone else just reads. What could possibly go wrong?

Intel hires talent from AMD and will build its own special-purpose GPUs.

TripAdvisor will now tag motels where sexual assaults occurred. What could possibly go wrong?

Government to compete with private industry in Ft Collins, CO in broadband services. We know what could go wrong.

Apple extends it App Development with Swift education program to colleges outside the US. Great stuff, but let's not forget that more available programmers drives down wages.

Resume Assistant: Microsoft integrates Word with LinkedIn content to help persons write better resumes.

NASA stumbles again. The big Space Launch System has yet another one-year delay. We won't be able to put a person into space by the end of this decade. What happened to NASA?

Candid comments from the guy who ran Trump's digital campaign in 2016. Facebook et al were chasing money and offered lots of help for lots of $$$.

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Friday November 10, 2017

Community Boost: Facebook will teach the unemployed some type of "digital skills" for some reason. Learning stuff for which no one will pay you to do.

Nvidia has another record-breaking financial quarter. Everyone wants to do gaming and graphics and neural networks, and Nvidia has the hardware.

Google's project Loon balloons are delivering wireless service to Puerto Rico, but to only 3% of the population.

In the UK, Uber is legally ordered to treat drivers as employees. This effectively kills Uber's business there.

IBM sets a new record with a 50-qubit Quantum Computer.

"using Facebook is like junk food: you get instant gratification when you post for likes and comments. It’s quick and easy but has little substance."

Hollywood continues to accuse Hollywood of sexual misconduct. Millions of persons still flock to Hollywood. I guess there is some major message in all this.

An app that tells you if the McDonald's ice cream machine is broken. Another example of smart people wasting resources on stupid "problems."

Silicon Valley is still dominated by men, mostly white. Silicon Valley feels some need to show that it isn't as it is. You can only hire the people that colleges produce. Are the colleges discriminating or are the students deciding on their majors?

Some citizens who work for our government believe they should be able to read anything the rest of the citizens have. Let's just ban encruption and ciphers and such folly.

The Amazon Amendment allows Amazon to sell directly to US government employees spending taxpayers' money.

The future of mankind is assured: there will be yet another Star Wars trilogy.

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Saturday November 11, 2017

Alibaba (China) hauled in $18Billion in sales in 12 hours on this year's Singles Day.

Omni magazine is back in print.

HP has a bunch of Black Friday deals coming and already has several Black November deals online.

We discover an undersea volcano that is the real cause of melting ice near Antarctica. Such was predictable and predicted. CO2? are you kidding?

A new version of DOOM is out. Of course it has better graphics and everything else.

New Delhi reaches air pollution levels that few believed possible.

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Sunday November 12, 2017

The sugar daddies that are paying for college. No, this is not new. Tech and the Internet make it easier to connect and also bring more publicity, but this is an ages-old practice.

Robert Scoble comments on the Outrage Economy.

Some more examples of our President not filling government jobs that don't really need filling.

Bill Gates buys 25,000 acres in the Arizona desert and wants to build a smart city. Trouble is, there is no water.

The current administration is challenging H-1B visa applications instead of simply approving all of them.

Of course all these computerized voting systems can be hacked. Many of us have known this forever. Finally, someone is paying attention.

Doing NaNoWriMo and thinking of stopping half-way through? Some reasons to continue.

Some publishers who pay for personal essays.

Branding and marketing for the freelance writer.

Trying to recharge your interest in writing, or anything else? Sleep, Eat. Repeat. This recorded in the Bible and practiced for thousands of years, but too infrequently lately.

I love this note for would-be freelance writers: Everything you’re afraid of will happen.

Freelance writing in the real world and grammar rules in style texts. Write for your audience. Know and use your audience's rules.

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