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: June 8-14, 2015

Summary of this week:

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

Monday June 8, 2015

Apple's WWDC is this week.

The CEO of Sony Music says we will see Apple Music at WWDC.

Apple has 43% of the US smartphone market.

A look back at the first year of Apple's Swift programming language.

Thoughts on managing developers; you don't manage people, you lead them. You manage things.

More information on the big OPM data hack. I guess they got my data. It is a good thing that no one will ever have Health Care dot Gov (not).

Image understanding takes another step forward with this site that identifies bird species.

Tim Cook makes more pledges for diversity at Apple, i.e, more women in STEM. It is time to stop all this talking and do something.

Seth Godin proposes a different king of political debate in our presidential campaigning.

Is the future of Android as bleak as these former Google executives hint?

Facebook Lite appears for the rest of the world that has poor Internet connections.

We now have a World Video Game Hall of Fame with Pong, Pac-Man, Tetris, Super Mario Bros, Doom, and World of Warcraft.

Will Seoul replace Silicon Valley as the source for mobiel apps?

A new tech brain drain: Indian immigrants are leaving America and going back to India.

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Tuesday June 9, 2015

Apple's WWDC big event was yesterday. Now we have Apple Music for $10 a month.

OS X 10.11 is El Capitan with split screen and other features that will help you if you have a big screen.

Apple's iOS 9 is coming with more intelligent assistant features. We are coming closer to the concept of the computer as assistant.

Here is a good summary of iOS 9.

Apple announces News: plain and simple, it is a news aggregator with the Apple flair.

Apple also stresses personal privacy at WWDC.

The entire event in 90 seconds.

Coming this Fall, sub-$200 Windows 10 laptops.

Most consumers have simply conceded that their data is harvested. Back in the old days, if you subscribed to a magazine, you received lots of junk mail. That was simply accepted by consumers of that day.

How changes in getting from here to there are changing cities. You need a road, but not a car or a parking space.

Elon Musk obtains permits to build a five-mile test track for hyperloop.

Lebron James starts his own media company: Uninterupted.

Chinese Alibaba is spending big money to move into the cloud computing market in the US.

Facebook considered launching its own Internet-providing satellite, but cancelled its plans–too costly.

Why and how one person defaulted on his college loans and calls for massive change in the system.

Apple made its programming language, Swift, open source. I was watching the event live online, and this announcement brought the loudest and longest applause from the audience.

Apple consolidates its developer program: $99 brings everything for every OS.

The Syrian Electronic Army hacks the US Army's web site.

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Wednesday June 10, 2015

Larry Page of Google is rated the top CEO of 2015 via Glassdoor employee reviews.

One group's top ten from WWDC.

Our Justice Department has decided that our NSA can continue to listen to our phone calls to protect our lives. No, I didn't make this up.

US surveillance is costing US tech companies tens of billion$.

GoPro plans a cloud offering similar to YouTube—something that "just works."

In the continuing change of the definition of success, Facebook Messenger hits 1billion Android downloads.

A look at the job market—everyone wants analytic skills, i.e., the ability to put 2 and 2 together.

Here come the Apple cars as they try to build their own Street View.

Mercedes-Benz announces its home battery system.

Samsung shows some transparent and mirror OLED displays. Must-see photos.

There is an 8K video on YouTube, but none of us can see it in full resolution.

I like this from O'Reilly: The 11 deadly sins of product development.

Blendle and micropayments hit it big with German newspapers.

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Thursday June 11, 2015

Google spins off Sidewalk labs: a company that will develop products to help people live in cities.

An excellent article on how self-driving trucks will smash the US economy. Jobs? What jobs?

Apple News: "when tech giants deliver the news, they decide what news is." Watch out world.

Microsoft will manufacture its big Surface Hub in the US.

Even if you are a Nobel Prize winner, you are not immune to backlash from telling jokes.

The iPhone 7 will have a 1080 camera.

Reddit has a new anti-harrassment policy, and that thankfully closes some sub-Reddits.

Leica has a new, great camera, for only $4,000.

Wearable technology: why is it that people continue to forget the hearing aid?

Amazon is helping fund a large solar farm in Virginia's Delmarva peninsula.

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Friday June 12, 2015

Facebook Messenger has 700million users—100million added in only the last three months.

Uber is exploding in China—the US is no longer its top marketplace.

The empires partner: Facebook and Microsoft bring Oculus VR to Xbox One.

Single-board computer hackers love the Raspberry Pi and The BeagleBone.

A Federal Court refuses to halt the FCC's net neutrality rules. Here come the taxes.

ooops, the OPM hack was worse than originally announced. No doubt someone got my records.

SourceForge is out; GitHub is in. So says several sources.

Next month, Twitter direct messages no longer have 140-character limit.

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Saturday June 13, 2015

IBM Supervessel: a cloud-based education service that combines tradistional processors with Xilinx FPGAs.

Flipboard beat Apple to a news app by five years, but that probably won't matter.

Virgin America airlines will put Android-powered screens in seat backs for passenger entertainment.

A French court gives Google 15 days to expand the right to be forgotten worldwide. Interesting, and dangerous, how national courts claim the authority to tell companies what to do outside their own borders.

And yet more embarrassing details about the OPM hack. It seems like the three stoogest are running the government, but that is probably not fair to Moe, Larry, and Curly.

Here is a no-duh moment in security: it doesn't matter that you use VPN in an open WiFi hotspot.

Parrot shows 13 new little drones including a boat and several hopping drones.

NASA, in its never-ending mission to do things other than its mission, is working with drones and cell phones. Your tax dollars at waste.

Every marketing challenge from Seth Godin.

Always late, our government will investigate its own H-1B visa program.

More goverment stupidity: systems in schools in Michigan are controlled by a Commodore Amiga. Replacement cost: $2million.

IBM successfully moves Watson technology into more, varied industries.

And now we have a new hashtag: #transracial.

The DARPA robotics challenge: basically they are puppets. Well stated.

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Sunday June 14, 2015

Here comes the 1099 economy where we are all part-time and probably low-wage workers. And the Affordable Care Act is one of the big enablers of all this.

The headline says it all: Welcome to net neutrality, whatever that means.

Wikipedia moves to HTTPS so that your searches are a little more private.

Our State Department can't seem to issue visas and Passports from our embassies. Technical error, not hacking. So this time we go with stupidity over maliciousness.

A detailed look at how Chinese spies hacked into US companies.

Vietnam jumps a technology generation as Internet use rises quickly due to smartphones.

Seth Godin on writing the unexpected.

More tips on creating the time to write.

How one starving writer found clients on Facebook.

Sometimes a writer just can't force themself to sit at the keyboard.

"Freelance writing is a hyper-competitive industry where you are fighting against thousands of writers for the same jobs. Sheer writing skills count for nothing," Well said.

Twitter tips for writers.

Some thoughts on work-life integration (not balance).

Five basic principles of writing that almost always work. I guess that is why they are basic principles.

Thoughts on becoming the BEST writer.

Good, practical tips on creating a home office. Please remember that the purpose is to have a place to work, not to build a home office.

Yet another good use of journal writing: one writer learned to write novels from journal writing.

Every writer's responsibility: tell the truth. Good practice.

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