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: February 9-15, 2015
Summary of this week:
- Google Maps is ten years old
- Audio engineer Joseph Grado dies at 90
- Qualcomm pays $1billion to government of China
- NBC suspends Brian Williams six months no pay
- Rumors continue about Apple working on its own car
Monday
- Tuesday
- Wednesday
- Thursday
- Friday
- Saturday
- Sunday
Monday February 9, 2015
Apple's Swift programming language is rapidly getting users.
The real differences in Apple's new Photo application is "free" online storage of photos.
Colleges are banning watches during exams. The exam givers can't tell which watches are smart.
Google Maps is ten years old. Here is some of its history.
Chipotle's Twitter account was hacked in a most ugly way.
Google Fiber has been in Kansas City for a couple of years now, and the lessons learned are ugly.
The great digital divide divides more and more: rich techies are now homeschooling their kids.
This nighttime satellite photo shows the travesty that is North Korea and the Kim Dynasty.
Joseph Grado dies at age 90. He started a company that helped bring music into people's homes.
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Tuesday February 10, 2015
The day of the rear-view mirror in cars may soon pass. Here come cameras, radars, and computers.
Money flows to big data projects; results don't return. Its the people, not the technology.
Qualcomm will pay the government of China a $1billion fine.
Microsoft and Samsung have settled their patent fighting.
Tales of Apple, Tesla, employees jumping companies, and possible auto tech from Apple.
The State of Arkansas requires all schools to offer computer science (they only have 6 qualified teachers in the state).
We are now blaming 1st grade teachers for the gender gap in tech. I don't recall Miss Campbell pushing girls away from the multiplication tables.
"And
if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you
are not going to like it. That’s how I operate." — Taylor Swift. I love it.
Neil Armstrong's widow finds a bad full of things that went to the moon and back.
That moon landing stuff was back in history when NASA was still a
functional vice dysfunctional organization. It was a long time ago.
Given some tech applied to shoes, can people run 45mph? This
is a clever thing for able-bodied people. Now, let's find a way to
apply it to disabled persons so that they can move about as desired.
Must see this clever twist on a drone built for search and rescue. This is what we should be doing with technology.
The anti-tech movement in San Francisco succeeded; now it is dead. Success often leads to dissolution. You win, so there is no longer any need for you to exist and battle.
Facebook's Internet.org project moves into India.
Finally, our government admits that the 1977 McGovern Report on the benefit of a low-fat diet was based on voodoo science and should have never been published let alone followed.
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Wednesday February 11, 2015
A MacBook Air survives a 1,000-foot drop test. Do not attempt this at home.
Apple sets some sort of world record with a value of over $700billion.
Brian Williams is suspended from NBC News for six months.
Jon Stewart is leaving The Daily Show after 16 years. Stewart is far more trusted than Williams for obvious reasons.
Apple will build a 1,300-acre solar farm in California—very expensive real estate for solar panels.
A researcher publishes 10million username/password combinations while it is still barely legal. The combinations allow researchers to learn what is easier to hack and what users should be doing to protect themselves.
Google offers more disk space to anyone who performs a security check.
Microsoft offers 100GigaByte of OneDrive space if you join the Bing Rewards program.
The equivalent of the no-call list on the phone; we now have do-fly-zones for drones.
Unless you are a creative producer, a.k.a., writer or programmer, your only home computer will be a smartphone.
For the first time ever, Android system sales declined.
Udi Manber has left Google to join the National Institutes of Health.
Like those low gas prices, these 5,000+ laid off Haliburton employees have a different view.
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Thursday February 12, 2015
SpaceX vertically landed a rocket in the ocean. They didn't try to land on their barge as the seas were too rough.
The Apple-is-building-a-car rumors continue.
Maybe smart TVs aren't such a good idea. In additiont to listening to what you say, Samsung smartTVs are inserting extra commercials into what you watch.
Fascinating study on
the redundancy and lack of content in computer programming. 95% of Java
code is unrelated to functional content. The same goes for human natural speech.
Dell extends its ProSupport Plus to laptops and tablets.
720,000 Android Wear devices shipped in 2014. That is a large number for me, but not for the Andoird world.
Bonded servitude is a common practice outside the US. Apple bans it from its overseas factories.
Everyone wants to see video everywhere. Hence, Nvidia's business is booming.
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Friday February 13, 2015
Microsoft is trying to stop being IBM and return to being Microsoft.
Researchers are learning to see through solid objects with simple light vice harmful x-rays.
Dell releases several smaller, less-expensive laptops aimed at the education market.
Our NASA can't put a man in space, but they can spend $$$ on a really cool poster for the next ISS crew. Our tax dollars at waste.
Facebook allows you to assign a legacy contact—someone who will handle your account after you die.
People are poor at predicting the future. Here are 7 silly but real examples.
Germany's economy is booming, and some people say austerity is a bad thing.
Tesla is promising some sort of revolutionary battery for the home.
Yahoo reorganized a lot of people out of jobs this week.
Several
top tech CEOs are declining President Obama's invitation to a cyber
summit. They first want government to stop spying on them.
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at
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Saturday February 14, 2015
Our President admits a strained relationship with Silicon Valley; a little candor, finally.
The rumors continue about Apple working on its own car.
Apple makes its online iWork in the iCloud free to everyone. This is a Google Docs competitior now.
OneNote for Windows is now free for everyone without any restrictions.
More on Tesla's battery for the home and why it is a much better idea than their expensive cars.
Just to show who is in charge, hackers hack whitehouse.gov on the day of the Presidents cyber conference.
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Sunday February 15, 2015
The revolving door of politics: Apple agrees to Obama's cyber conference and the government will accept Apple Pay for many federal transactions. Apple is learning how to play the big game.
California approves the Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger…as long as Yes there are detailed regulations.
The National Association for the Deaf sues Harvard and MIT as they don't have closed caption on MOOC classes.
The "Pale Blue Dot" photo is 25 years old.
Oxford researchers have a light communications system that pushes data at 100GigaBitsPerSecond.
It seems those wearable computers that track your exercise are neither accurate nor reliable.
These are "robots" roaming hospital hallways. They deliver stuff to rooms—extremely boring work, but elimintating human jobs.
This story broke the news to many writers that writing doesn't pay for the vast majority of writers. You need financial help.
"Writers" don't often talk about money. Most writers don't earn any. I am one who earns maybe $200 a year writing fiction.
If you are about to ask someone to read your writing, tell them exactly what you want from them as feedback.
If you are a writer, stop doing these things.
A big endorsement of a book on writing novels.
Facts and fantasies of earning money while travelling. Travel writing doesn't pay.
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