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: December June 16-22, 2014

Summary of this week:

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

Monday June 16, 2014

Yet another problem with Feedly.com this morning. I don't know if it is Feedly's problem or the Community Canteen's filters that are at fault.

BitCoin is shattered as someone is providing most of the compute power, and that violates the entire decentralized theme.

Edward Snowden is visiting the world via telepresence.

At least someone is looking past the myth of the brogrammers and at real technologists.

The government is coming to rescue us. The DoT wants to regulate use of GPS and iPhone maps and all that stuff in cars.

The Amazon smartphone? Just a big window to peer at everything Amazon sells.

Applying smart design to hospitals.

Here are a couple of drones that follow you and record video of you doing your whatever. Here is one. Here is another one.

Casey Kasem dies at 82. He was the voice we heard much more often than we realized.

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Tuesday June 17, 2014

Apple settles out of court on the eBook price fixing case.

Amazon allows Wired Magazine inside one of its shipping warehouses.

Nuance, a world leader in speech recognition technology, is looking for a buyer.

A look at Google's Project Loon (the Internet broadcasting balloons) after a year of trials.

The $220 Motorola smartphone is now available in 4G LTE.

Wikipedia now requires you to disclose if you are being paid to edit pages.

This guy earns $4million a year reviewing video games on YouTube. I went into the wrong profession.

This is one of those recent studies that no one need to do: creative people love working in a mobile world.

The French national football team claims that someone was using a drone to spy on their practices. Is Bill Belichick down there?

A look at Chromebook apps that work offline.

Everyone needs (not) a Faraday cage robe or whatever you call this thing.

Coming in about three years: no more drilling and filling for tooth cavities.

A solid state disk endurance test. All the SSDs perform better than advertised.

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Wednesday June 18, 2014

More people are subscribing to Adobe's Creative Cloud than anticipated.

Here come the body monitors: $150 gets you a device that shows your rate of breathing.

After Google released embarassing workforce numbers, Yahoo claims much better diversity.

A look at NASA's ESNet that brings 91 GigaBitsPerSecond across the US. No, we can't use it.

Dean Kamen's water purifier for the rest of the world.

Amazon is to announce its smartphone today.

Udacity and AT&T are trying a NanoDegree: $200 a month provides enough education to get an entry-level programmer's job. College isn't working anymore for many Americans as it simply costs far too much for the benefit gained. Maybe the NanoDegree will work, maybe it won't. At least someone is trying to find something that will work.

Here are the college degrees that have the worst return on investment.

iBeacons and the like are working in stores. Perhaps we will soon tire of the bother, but for now people like them.

More discussion on the H-1B visa and its affect on American workers.

Nest returns its smoke detector to the market.

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Thursday June 19, 2014

Amazon introduces its Fire smartphone.  It costs more than an iPhone.

The Amazon Fire comes with free, unlimited photo storage in the cloud. Let's see if others follow the lead and eliminate or cut the cost of cloud storage.

Amazon tries a new user interface with 4 cameras facing the user to detect changes in orientation.

Facebook had a worldwide outage of service this morning.

iPhone rumors: the next model with have weather sensors built into it.

This is an odd court case. A Canadian court orders Google to block some websites from its search. How can one nation's court order a company to alter its operations in other countries?

The Verge reviews the state of the practice in Chromebooks.

Adobe introduces Ink and Slide: drawing tools for the iPad. Interesting concept, let's see if it works.

With all the Ed Snowden news, it is easy to forget that Julian Assange of Wikileaks has been living in the London Ecuadorian embassy for two years.

T-Mobile announces a program to test drive an iPhone for a week.

A look at how Netflix is the only congestion problem on the Internet.

Apple adds a new, lower-priced iMac to its computer lineup.

Thoughts on gender and race hiring in STEM. It is a complex issue. There is a constant search for the bad guys, but we might not have any or we might have everyone in that role.

The Germans find spyware manufactured into some Chinese-produced smartphones.

Code Spaces, a services that stores your code safely in the cloud, was attacked, crashed, and lost everything. There is nothing like keeping a copy of your stuff on a floppy disk or whatever device we use these days.

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Friday June 20, 2014

I had breakfast with some fine gentlemen.

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Saturday June 21, 2014

Mozilla is building one of those little gadgets you attach to your televisor (appletv, chromecast, amazon-whatever-they-call-it).

Even the Wall Street Journal has rumors about the iWatch from Apple—several models coming.

Google puts $50million into educating women in computing. Good. Could they also put money into educating men in computing? Reversing discrimination by discriminating is fraught with peril.

Maybe, just maybe, the wage fixing case in Silicon Valley isn't over, yet.

Computerworld almost reaches 50 years in print, but goes digitial only.

Samsung is making yet another smartwatch. The key to these multiple attempts is, are they learning anything?

Excellent use of Legos to organize keys and cables.

Build a photobooth for special events based on a Raspberry Pi.

Google makes the Web Starter Kit available. It helps developers write software that is portable across platforms. Again, Google's business is making it easier for everyone to go to the Internet. Google makes money when people go to the Internet. This starter kit helps developers make it easier for everyone to go to the Internet.

Google's Nest buys Dropcam and its home video monitor technologies.

Startup lessons from the founder of Code Academy.

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Sunday June 22, 2014

A look at the mountain of regulations that make taxicabs unable to compete with Uber (or anything else).

A new government plan to spend Billion$ on school and library WiFi. Will we have a repeat of $20K routers for little libraries?

Caution about buying the Amazon Fire phone. What will they do with all that data and how will they protect it?

The job of college professor has become a low-paying, part-time one with no benefits.

Yog’s Law (coined by Jim McDonald a very long time ago), which is basically “Money Always Flows to the Writer.”

"Truth is, no one will care if you stop writing."

On making and using journals.

Thoughts on the online portfolio.

"If you’re just starting out and you want to become a better, the best way to practice writing deliberately is by finishing short, small pieces."

The art of writing simply.

Looking for story ideas? Look at the hoaxes all over the Internet (and in the Washington Post).

Some thoughts on writing a BIG story.

The art involved in making some journals.

Notes on the more famous journals of recent history.

The 25/50/25 rule for attempting to make money as a writer.

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