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 1-7, 2014

Summary of this week:

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

Monday December 1 2014

Do mean people tend to fail? I'm not sure, but I have met many successful people who were nice to be around.

Black Friday become cyber Friday: Amazon had its busiest day ever with 64 items per second sold.

Google Glass isn't dead with details of next year's model being announced.

Netflix shows the most expensive "TV" show ever made next month with "Marco Polo."

The Sony hack continues with unshown movies appearing on torrent sites.

The "robots" that move merchandise around the Amazon warehouses. Can you spell unemployment?

Concussion lawsuits are not hitting high schools.

Get ready for the storm on this one: the missing Ohio State football player was found dead of a suicide. He suffered terrible mental and physical pains from concussions.

Fire Fly space systems and their quest to make low-earth orbit affordable.

The crime of unpaid internships. Who ever thought this was a good idea?

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Tuesday December 2, 2014

A look at $500 laptop computer in late 2014.

Google has overtaken Apple in American schools by selling slightly more Chromebooks than Apple sold iPads.

Our President wants to buy 50,000 body-worn cameras for our police forces. This brings with it the problem that if a Police officer's camera is not working properly, the Police officer is assumed guilty of something. Cameras are a band aid for a cancer patient. They do no address the fundamental problem of a separation of government employees from all other citizens.

AutoDesk makes its software (AutoCAD) free to schools, students, teachers.

After several decades, Microsoft drops clipart from its Office products. Go to Bing and find a good image.

Firefox 34 is here with Yahoo as its default search engine.

The rate of adoption of Android 5.0 is slow.

More information on the Kiva robots in Amazon warehouses.

Unintended consequences: selfie technology and cosmetic surgery.

Linux Mint 17.1 is released.

The continued growth of the part-time, no-benefits economy, a.k.a., sharing economy. It seems that all the sharing is going in one direction—the individual shares with the company and the company doesn't share much back.

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Wednesday December 3, 2014

A visual guide to NoSQL systems.

Knightscope, the company that makes the robotic security guards for Microsoft, is expanding in the valley. Can anyone spell unemployment?

This shows the difficulty of "earning a living" as an Uber or Lyft driver. Earning a living was never the goal. Sharing resources to limit the resource deprivation of the environment was the goal.

Loup is another ride-sharing service trying to make it in San Francisco. It is basically a private shuttle bus.

More evidence that Google isn't dropping Glass, but moving forward with new designs.

A look back at the 1980s and the prime era of the great American Mall.

50% of marriages end in divorce: the great American MYTH.

The problems Americans have with giving to charity. Most of the giving is giving to self.

Google donates $1million to NYC project to bring broaband to the city's poor.

The speech system used by Stephen Hawking is now much improved and free and open source.

Is it possible to create a Wikipedia for news?  This attempt is called Infobitt.

Pointing your solar panels west is better (for utility companies).

A new CEO at Mozilla means that Firefox is probably coming to iOS.

Sad facts: (1) battery technology is not advancing, and (2) the improvements we see in battery performance are actually software efforts that reduce the need for power in devices.

Gmail now lets us edit Office docs.

Learning the science behind firearms noise suppressors, known incorrectly as "silencers."

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Thursday December 4, 2014

Amazon intends to keep trying to market its Fire smartphone.

When in doubt of the government, spend money lobbying$!

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was to give every kid an iPad. The program is dead and the FBI is sifting through the ashes.

Put down that smartphone or tablet and hug your family.

Instructive: how browsers bid and win and show you just the right (or wrong) ad in milliseconds.

Italian eyewear giant Luxottica is teaming with Intel to make some type of wearable computer.

Satya Nadella commits to increasing workforce diversity at Microsoft. An influx of different people may one day bring new ideas, but that may take longer than Microsoft can afford.

Fallout from the Sony hack continues with salaries of 30,000 Deloitte employees published. And I sure am glad that nothing like this will ever happen with Health Care dot Gov (not).

The government of North Korea officially denies involvement in the Sony hack.

Google introduces reCAPTCHA so we don't have to try to read those captcha things.

Which programming language earns you the most money? No one seems to know, but Python is high on most lists.

This is the pinnacle of western civilization: PSY’s Gangnam Style views has overflowed the 32-bit integer counter.

The iPhone 6 has helped Apple recapture some of the world's smartphone market.

It would be wonderful if someone could do this: use discarded laptop batteries to power lights in poor countries.

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Friday December 5, 2014

No viewing today as I had breakfast with some fine gentlemen and then went to the doctor's office.

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Saturday December 6, 2014

Your best work requires a good environment: they never worked for the government.

As the huge Gen Y group starts to have children, Google expedites plans for products for children.

State-of-the-practice for $1,000 laptop computers for December 2014.

The G.fast DSL standard is now official. Don't expect it to hit your home anytime soon though.

High schools are dropping the computing science programs. Not good new for America.

Apple is running coding workshops to help prepare for this year's Hour of Code.

NASA puts a capsule into outer space. Within the decade NASA will be able to put a person into orbit. Wait, did we do that 50 years ago?

Programming languages to learn at the beginning.

Americans aren't paid time-and-a-half anymore because Congress and the White House doesn't want us to get this.

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Sunday December 7, 2014

I guess I will see many stories like this during the next month: Top 20 stories of 2014.

The fallout from the Sony hack continues. This was done by some deviously evil persons.

Internet freedom is dwindling worldwide.

The latest ego booster for big, rich, tech companies and their founders: create your own programming language.

The UK's porn filter is blocking obviously non-porn sites. Well-meaning censorship is still censorship. "We see this as proof that censorship infrastructure – no matter for which reasons it was set up, and no matter which country you are in – will always be abused for political reasons."

Perhaps naive, but this is a great holiday To Do list.

Comments on racial diversity in Silicon Valley tech companies. One big factor is that it is the Santa Clara Valley. Northern California has  been white, asian, and hispanic for a few centuries.

A long list of MS Word keyboard shortcuts. Writers should learn things that help them write faster with less effort.

Some of the fun and worth of writing short stories.

"Steven Pressfield told me that a writer becomes a writer 'when he says he is.'"

Writing and persuasion.

How one freelance writer learned how to make a living after eight years of starving while doing what he loved.

Tips to help the writer edit their own writing.

Good gifts for the writer you know. The best gift of all is to read what that writer writes.

Writing what you know versus writing what excites you.

As a freelance worker, you can still take time off without killing your business.

Ways to make your writing business, and remember that it is a business, bigger.

Several unusual writer jobs.

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