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: October 28-November 3, 2013

Summary of this week:


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

Monday October 28, 2013

The quiety, steady work in Artificial Intelligence of Douglas Hofstadter.

The Nexus 5 is coming on 1 November - at least the announcement.

Livescribe now has a pen that moves your paper notes (written on special paper) to an iOS device. When will we have devices that move notes written on napkins?

Using captchas for security? Try something else as software now defeats captchas.

38% of kids under 2 use mobile devices. I guess this depends on the definition of "use." My granddaughter loves to look at photographs of family, so I run through the photos on my iPhone with her. We first did this fun activity when she was 18 months old. Does that qualify as use?

A writer asks a hacker to hack him - the hacker does so easily. Security by obscurity is what protects the vaste majority of us.

At least one Congressman thinks HealthCare dot Gov is not secure.

More rumors and guesses about that great big barge in SF Bay.

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Tuesday October 29, 2013

About 20% of Americans read their news on Facebook. The Washington Post and New York Times? Forget them.

Why Hadoop rules the big data world.

A look at the 2013 iMac computer - much better inside at the same price. Ain't this a great industry?

Excellent - the big difference between walking on the moon and opening a health care website is whether Congress leaves the details to the experts.

Sales of Nokia smartphones in the US are on the rise.

Google nears the production of its smartwatch.

Google Glass 2 is near, and you will be able to use it with your prescription glasses.

Apple' quarterly financial report is in, and Apple had a good quarter. The numbers are amazing for what used to be a little computer company in the valley.

Apple has over 90% of the education tablet market. The only other such occurrence I can recall is the calculator education dominance of Texas Instruments. Now, since education in the US is operated by the government, will this protect Apple from government investigations and anti-trust charges and tax-evasion charges?

The Zuckerberg Files - tracking everything that the Facebook guy says to trap him in his own words.

Wonderful - a "selfie" photo from 1900.

Are you web literate? Mozilla creates a web literacy standard. Interesting effort.

Intel's Next Unit of Computing (NUC) now with its latest processors. Excellent.

This story is all over the Internet, so it must be important. A look at Motorola's modular smartphone.

Kentucky's health care website works, but enrollment numbers show it a failure.

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Wednesday October 30, 2013

The Internet connection at the Community Canteen is slow today.

Ashton Kutcher has some kind of a job at Lenovo.

And now there is a Google barge floating in the waters of Portland, Maine.  Speculation abounds.

Tests show that the iPad Air far outperforms earlier models. This is a great market - better products at the same prices.

Here is the Engadget review of the iPad Air.

Even more technical lessons from the fiasco that is HealthCare dot Gov. That will be the subject of seminars and courses for years. The education value of the mess may make up for the waste of taxpayers' money.

Government agencies don't like it when citizens poke fun at them. Please consult the U.S. Constitution, Amendment 1.

Tom Wheeler has been confirmed as the new head of the FCC.

Millions of health insurance policies are being cancelled. This violates the President's oft-stated promise that this wouldn't happen. Of course, the fine print of the law said this would happen, but 2000 pages of fine print is a lot of ink. Note, this story is from the Washington Post, so even the left media acknowledges the mess.

A California Google Glass wearer is ticketed for "Driving with Monitor visible to Driver."

Google Docs and Apps is falling behind Microsoft and others in cloud applications for collaboration.

Lots of information on programming for the Android platform.

Utah State University builds an electric bus that recharges itself wirelessly. Yes, it is a stunt, but one day...

Barnes and Noble has a new nook for $119. They keep trying to keep up with Amazon and everyone else.

The growing expoits of car hackers.

This story is all over the Internet, so it must be important. Steve Jobs' childhood home is named a "Historic Resource" whatever that is.

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Thursday October 31, 2013

Today is Halloween in the U.S. Trick or treat and all those adults-only costume parties.

Notes on the industry that is free products for reviews. Yes, this has occurred for decades, but now that it is on Amazon it is supposed to be some big NPR story.

More Snowden-leaked documents show that the NSA has tapped Google and Yahoo. Please note, Snowden did not create these documents; these are not stories he is telling. NSA employees created these breifing documents to explain to their managers what they were doing.

Apple spent $4.5billion on R&D in 2013. That is an increase of about 30% year over year.

Mercedes combines a navigation system with Google Glass, but don't use it in California or you will be ticketed (see yesterday).

Google Plus tries to move into the photo sharing, editing, and such market.

Android KitKat will focus more on wearable computers and TV. Who thought "kitkat" was a good name for an operating system?

Yahoo is firing 500 under-performing employees. I trust they really know who is performing and who isn't.

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Friday November 1, 2013

Now we are told that Google's barge in SF Bay is to be a retail store.

All the tech companies are supporting the proposed USA Freedom Act.

Top tech companies are providing expert volunteers to help fix HealthCare dot Gov. Still, adding people to a late project makes it later.

Best Buy is cutting the price of MacBooks this weekend.

The iPad Air is difficult to repair. Who cares about repairing an iPad?

Facebook's problem: to many older people use it, so the kids don't like it anymore. Success breeds failure.

Facebook has a new Artificial Intelligence unit and is working on speech recognition.

The FAA sort of approves the use of electronics during takeoffs and landings. There are a lot of steps the airlines must take before they can allow this. As usual with government, the detailed regulations often kill the policy announcement,

A sensing, adaptive cruise control would greatly reduce traffic jams. The algorithms are ready and tested, but will the regulators allow it?

Every year the number of self-published works with Zombie in the title doubles. Wow. I don't get it, but I am in the club.

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Saturday November 2, 2013

The Cycloramic app for the iPhone. It spins the iPhone and takes a 360 video without anyone touching the phone.

As predicted, the first autonomous vehicles are trucks inside a strip mine. Some truck drivers lose their jobs.

This is all illegal, but no one was hurt: a man sets a new coast-to-coast driving time record.

No surprise here: the two founders of Google are smart researchers, but cannot write maintainable code.

Mac users have flocked to OS X 10.9 at a record pace. I have moved my two computers to it. Of course, FREE makes a big difference in these things.

Google closes iGoogle. It wasn't as popular as Reader, but some will miss it.

The primary interface of Android 4.4 KitKat is Google search.

WalMart has cut the price of the iPad Air. Everyone else promises to match the price. This is a great industry for consumers.

Delta and Jet Blue have already met FAA regulations and now allow electronics to be on during takeoff and landing.

The Intel Galileo little board computer will go on sale this month for $70.

Tablets are no longer new. Buyers of the new models already own an older model. What is happening with all the old tablets?

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Sunday November 3, 2013

And this morning we switched back to Standard time. Congress has decreed that standard means less than half the time while a special time is more than half the time. That is typical of Congressmena and other illiterates.

Interesting that Americans basically live on two time zones. We could ditch the four time zones and the daylight savings time idea.

Some leaked staff notes reveal that on October 1, six people bought health insurance on HealthCare dot Gov. At that rate, the world will end on Tuesday.

Expect an 8" Nexus tablet from Google real soon now.

Five online places to look for new ideas for blogs and stories and such.

Ways that a journal can help a writer.

Mistakes we writers make with our blogs.

As a writer, don't worry - just write and write and write.

Writing a novel can be difficult, and if I have ever understated something, that is it.

There is more to life than Microsoft Word. I always liked vim - the ASCII editor.

Maybe content mills are dying - good news!

Lessons learned for freelance writers.

Are you ready to write a novel? Why not? Sit down and write one. The exercise will do you good.

Five ideas that could boost a freelance writing career.

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