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: November 2-8, 2015

Summary of this week:

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

Monday November 2, 2015

The Kansas City Royals win the World Series.

How residents of an island built their own Internet service.

There are now five million articles in the English language Wikipedia.

Jeremy Clarkson, formerly of Top Gear, is now doing commercials for Amazon.

Learn to program and learn to program JavaScript. It's just syntax.

AI software judges the progress of students and allows them to move at their own pace. Yet another education innovation that probably won't scale beyond a lab.

It is Monday. The world of Internet news is slow again.

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Tuesday November 3, 2015

If you want to buy a PC with Windows 7, you have just less than a year to do it.

Something has happened to middle-aged whites in America as their death rate has jumped up. The stories don't seem to include discussion of the bad economy.

Lawrence Lessig is forced to end his presidential campaign. And they call it the "democratic" party?

Google denies stories that it will phase out the Chrome OS and only use Android.

Amazon opens a real, brick-and-mortar bookstore. I hope it has chairs and tables and such like a real bookstore should.

The International Space Station is 15 years old, and if things go well at NASA, America will be able to send people there by the end of the decade.

Microsoft reduces the amount of storage given on OneDrive. Has the price of disk storage gone up or something?

After scathing articles about its workplace, Amazon increases its maternity leave.

In San Francisco, if you don't like a business, you storm their offices. Is SF still part of America?

In October, over 200,000 people from the Mediterranean invaded Europe.

Analysis reveals that the new iPhones are so good because they have the world's most powerful mobile processor.

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Wednesday November 4, 2015

Neuropolitics: reading the expressions of the electorate. I wrote a short story on this a while back.

The gig economy: our government has no idea its size. Like the unemployment rate, the numbers are broken.

A look inside Google's research on having the computer write replies to incoming email.

Here is a practical advance and use of augmented reality. The best uses are maintenance activities that require two hands like repairing a car or a human body.

The British government has stopped bribing people to use solar energy. This is seen as a crime by some (who happen to profit from solar energy).

For the first time since 1949, presidents of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China meet.

Fedora 23 is released.

Coming to London in 2016, sidewalk-based delivery of goods.

Firefox 42 is released.

GoPro is sued as some of its cameras look like cameras made by other companies. How different can a camera appear?

A star Instagram model quits it all and reveals the crass commercial side of it.

San Francisco voters reject restrictions on Airbnb.

The Ranking Digital Rights project ranks companies on how they treat the information of customers. Google wins the first release.

Time to rant: a study shows a high correlation between autism and STEM work. This "austism scale" junk has gone too far. As I have heard some people say, "if you can sit still and read a book for more than ten minutes, you appear on the autism scale." Such stories of autism and the ability to concentrate are insulting to people with family members who are autistic and who are lucky to get a job collecting trash. Calling everyone autistic takes away needed resources from those who struggle to function at any basic level in society. Stop it already.

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Thursday November 5, 2015

Apple continues to build massive office buildings in Silicon Valley. Apple doesn't have that many employees. Could they be delving into real estate as a side business?

It is estimated that Apple has shipped 7million watches. Not bad for a computer company.

95%—the percent of bad things that slipped by TSA inspectors at airports in this year's tests. Why do we pay them to irritate us?

Nvidia updates its offerings in the digital signage market.

#youshouldneverdothis Jetmen fly alongside an airliner. You run the risk of killing everyone on the plane.

Facebook now has 1.55BILLION users. That is billion with a B.

Someone finally gets it: robots will replace 1/3 of jobs in the next 20 years. And then what will we do?

Data center demands is driving real estate buys in Norther Virginia—my neighborhood.

A law proposed in the UK will require ISPs to store your browsing history for a year. That is a lot of data. Is that bill sponsored by the storage media lobby?

Microsoft teams with Red Hat to offer Linux on the Azure cloud.

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Friday November 6, 2015

No Internet viewing this morning as I had breakfast with some fine gentlemen.

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Saturday November 7, 2015

Facebook, which sells nothing and produces nothing, is now valued at $300billion.

Forget the polls, Google new tells us the mood of America. Google is part of the new news media. And the old news media hates it.

Job hunting hacks. I tried most of these. None of them overcome the bias against older, expert employees. That's right—most employers are afraid to hire a "subject matter expert."

Google buys Fly Labs and their video-editing applications. Look for these to appear real soon now on YouTube.

An in-home aquaponics system will allow you to grow enough vegetables for one meal a month. Wow. Good intentions, but just a stunt.

The first C++ (C with classes) compiler is 30 years old.

Tests show that we shouldn't buy cheap, off-brand USB-C cables. They could damage your computer.

The vast majority of programmers are not engineers. Someone please remember that—especially recruiters.

The tech gender gap and efforts to close it. Please keep in mind that discriminating to end discriminating is fraught with peril.

After years of secret negotiation, the TPP becomes transparent, and people hate it.

This tethered drone can stay aloft indefinetly. This makes it excellent as a communications relay.

One tech writer's experience with installing solar panels on his roof.

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Sunday November 8, 2015

After seven years of thought, our President rejects the Keystone pipeline like everyone knew he would.

This $1million crowd-funded company collapses. The robot dragonfly wouldn't fly.

The Internet has destroyed Black Friday. I think that is good news, but that's just me.

A visit to the Amazon brick-and-mortar bookstore.

Lies  writers tell ourselves.

Some tips on editing what you wrote. Editing your own writing is quite difficult. Avoid it if you can.

Experiences of writing through Contently—not a content mill, but a place for writers to connect with real companies that actually pay.

Thoughts on writing for TV: first, watch a lot of TV.

Some destructive aspects of anxiety, addiction, and the writer's life.

Low-paying avenues for writers. Low pay is better than no pay; eating is better than not.

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