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 23-March 1, 2015

Summary of this week:

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

Monday February 23, 2015

Apple shows a new ad about making movies with Martin Scorsese narrating.

Apple is spending $2billion on new data centers in Ireland and Denmark.

In today's America, if you are suspicious and play with flight simulators, you are put in a Federal database for 30 years. If that makes sense, you should read the US Constitution and similar archaic ideas.

This picture of a frozen America is everywhere. Actually, 1/4 of the CONUS has snow on the ground.

The documentary about Edward Snowden won an Academy Award last night.

The next kernel version of Linux will be 4.0 vice 3.20.

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Tuesday February 24, 2015

I love this story: Waffle House is partnering with Roadie for shared package delivery. Waffle House has over 1,700 diners.

Is our FCC about to create the Obamanet? Will you need a permit to create a website? Perhaps. More here.

The FCC's Internet regulation plan is 322 pages long and is still hidden from the public.

It seems that film photography is making a sort of comeback fueled by those under 30.

The Mayo Clinic's "bionic eye" implant allows a blind man to see again.

Apple is hiring battery experts from Samsung. More electric car rumors?

This story kills me. Twitter will change the appearance of its home page this year. Good for them. The VP of Engineering is involved. The VP of Engineering??? What is there to engineer??? This is the appearance of a web page. Big deal. There is no engineering involved.

We may have seriously underestimated the danger in the use of alcohol.

Google launches YouTube Kids. I have grandchildren.

Apple acquires Camel Audio—maker of instrument plug-ins for GarageBand.

Big brother is watching: our searches for health-related information are being copied and sent to companies.

There is no better illustration of failed government spending than the Appalachian Regional Commission. Fifty years of money have shown miniscule progress in the region.

Microsoft correctly predicted the major Oscar winners this year.

Intel moves into 10nm manufacturing.

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Wednesday February 25, 2015

JP Morgan Chase has provisioned over a million Apple Pay wallets. I'm not sure what those financial terms mean, but Apple Pay is suceeding in the market.

HP has a bad quarterly report.

Apple has to pay $532million in a patent-infringement case in Texas. Hmm, a Texas court tells a California company to pay a Texas company all that money. I suppose that was predictable.

Google has changed its policy on porn for Blogger dot com.

Reddit also changes its policy on porn.

This story is odd on many fronts: Pebble raises $5million in 5 hours on Kickstarter for a watch. Their goal was $1million, and they acheived that in 17 minutes.

Advertisers: Google 4million, Facebook 2million, Twitter 0.06million.

Our President vetoes a bill authorizing the Keystone pipeline. Expect more vetoes in the coming months as polarization continues.

In a surprise, young people prefer books on paper over eBooks.

Firmware is more vulnerable to hacking than plain old software. Simple reason: firmware is still done by hardware engineers.

Microsoft will remove Google and Facebook chat features from Outlook.

Hillary Clinton endorses the unseen 322-page FCC plan for Obamanet. How do you endorse unseen plans?

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Thursday February 26, 2015

Apple is moving in to the fashion watch industry with large ads in Vogue.

Here comes "net neutrality" from the FCC, but no one seems sure what that means. I'm at a loss as people I respect love the FCC's declaration. There are other people I respect who are shrugging their shoulders at what the secret 300+ pages of regulations contain and what this means for the Obamanet.

Here is a better-than-average post recommending net neutrality. It, however, doesn't have any insight into the secret book of regulations either.

Google proposes a new giant headquarters in Mountain View, Ca. The "town" is not so happy. Beware the big corporate headquarters as that is often the first step into the death of a good company.

I hate this title, but love the post about how most start-ups seem lame at first.

YouTube, for all its fame, has no fortune as it still doesn't make any profit.

A closer look inside Google's project to bring Internet to the world via high-flying balloons.

Financial analysts say that Tesla is grossly over valued and its stock, and company, will collapse.

Google's Android for Work is now here.

Apple is rapidly loosing market share in the tablet world.

It is unfortunate, but many of us are correct in predicting that tech is making jobs disappear like never before.

Our NSA is hurting our tech industry. What were they thinking?

It seems that the world has re-discovered the utility of neural networks. I wrote articles on them decades ago.

Google has created software that can beat most basic video games. The world Pong champion?

Lenovo.com has been hacked. Good thing this will never happen to Health Care dot Gov (not).

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Friday February 27, 2015

For most people, the smartphone works better at tracking fitness than all those wrist things.

Our FCC votes for something—some call it net neutrality some call it Obamanet. The details are still hidden. Lawsuits and legislation will follow for years.

The FCC is already telling states and cities what they can do regarding broadband.

Apple announces a big event on March 9th. Everyone expects the watch to be the centerpiece.

PhotoMath comes to Android.

Google changes its mind on porn on Blogger.

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Saturday February 28, 2015

Actor Leondard Nimoy dies at 83. He was Star Trek's Mr. Spock.

A look at Western Digital's personal cloud offerings for the more-demanding user.

Silicon Valley's bus drivers vote to join the Teamsters Union. The tech companies blew this one as they sat around paying low wages and ignoring the plight of those who brought their "employees" to work and home everyday. Take care of those who enable your success. They are people, too.

Just to show that sometimes the Internet allows the entire world to waste time debating nothing…the world argues over what color a dress is.

Uber was hacked and revealed data for 50,000 drivers. Of course nothing like this will ever happen to the government health care site.

Commercial drones (RC aircraft) are far ahead of regulators. Hmmm, sounds like the Internet and the FCC.

KFC starts using edible, cookie-flavored coffee cups in the UK.

The Empire Strikes Back: Swiss watch makers delve into the smartwatch market.

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Sunday March 1, 2015

Tim Cook paraphrases Ben Franklin on terrorism and privacy.

The world is safe: Harrison Ford will be in the Blade Runner sequel.

"I see you," is what we crave.—Seth Godin

Why one person "needed" 64GB of memory on her iPhone.

Now that tech is cool, beware the takeover by the popular boys and girls and the aversion to risk and individuality.

Huawei leaks pictures of their handsome Android watch.

Everyone starts at zero and new writers are needed. We didn't know we needed Rowling.

As a writer, imitate until you don't.

Writing tips from Dr. Seuss.

Yet another method of fighting writer's block, if it exists for you.

This is a short, simple post with three excellent ideas that will improve my writing.

Writing time? "You frankly make time to do what you want to do."

Efforts for self-published authors to get into libraries.

How one person went from a regular job to full-time freelance writing. There is a lot of work and a lot of luck involved.

The Pomodoro technique: I've used it for decades and didn't know it had such a fancy name.

Notes on creating picture eBooks for kids and Amazon's Kindle program for such.

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