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: January 18-24, 2016

Summary of this week:

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

Monday January 18, 2016

ISIS develops its own encrypted messaging app. It's about time as the technology for such is quite old and simple to use.

SpaceX failed again in an attempt to land its launch vehicle on a barge. Something simple as a failure in a landing leg to lock into place. The math and such, the really hard stuff, seemed to work.  This link has a video.

Sort of lost in the explosion on the barge is the fact that SpaceX sucessfully deployed a satellite.

Take an Uber helicopter. How much money can they lose on this one?

A new type of shock indicator, something very old, is here to show subtle cracks in material before the eye would see them.

Seth Godin has a good post on volunteers. Much of the good done in America is done by people who just do it.

Our President wants our kids to learn computer science. Can we start making a list of things we would like our current and future presidents to learn?

Oil prices hit a 12-year low. Good for buying gas, bad for world peace and stability.

There are somewhat credible reports of widespread match fixing in professional tennis.

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Tuesday January 19, 2016

A censored YouTube returns to Pakistan.

Apple is spending $80million not on an office, but on a visitor's center to an office. The death of a company is the expensive corporate headquarters.

Donald Trump, currently in the promising business, promises to make Apple make stuff in the US, not China.

OpenTrons: a $3,000 open source laboratory robot assistant.

Glenn Frey dies at 67.

Facebook starts the Initiative for Civil Courage Online in Europe to help slow hate speech online.

An estimated 5million jobs will be lost to digital assistants by 2020.

Women will be the big losers in this first round of job losses.

Despite all the speeches, tech companies are not hiring women and minorities.

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Wednesday January 20, 2016

Microsoft is donating $1billion in cloud services to non-profits and researchers with the aim of bringing the cloud to those who can't afford it.

This post is a really good example of ignorant job title and descriptions. A software engineer is not a programmer. A programmer is a programmer, and other such nonsense.

OpenFace: open-source software library for face recognition.

Apple is experimenting with Li-Fi.

The global, everything-linked-together economy is close to a collapse. It won't be fun.

Apple is trying to open retail stores in India.

Apple, Samsung and others are accused of exploiting child labor as someone finds a supplier to a subcontractor to a supplier to a subcontractor to a ... Please don't research who made your shirt.

Hackers now hack into the White House email system. Perhaps they could have hacked the Clinton home email server and saved her all this embarrassment.

Netflix has a good financial quarter with lots of new subscribers.

Intel Authenticate: Intel puts authentication technology into its newest processors for business.

Researches found a serious security error in Linux kernel in version 3.8 released in early 2013.

This is excellent home technology from Sony—the Ultra Short Throw Projector. Project on the wall or a desk of the floor with the project quite close to the "screen."

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Thursday January 21, 2016

In an unusual display of foresight, GM starts a car-sharing program.

Sheryl Sandberg discusses "like attacks"—actually a 2,000-year-old idea once proposed by a fellow from Nazareth.

The power of USB type C, but we haven't caught up to it yet.

The former CEO of Mozilla has produced a new browser (Brave) that blocks ads be default.

Uber launches UberEats—a food delivery service in select US cities.

People are worried about the economy here and everywhere else. We are all tied together now, and we haven't yet figured out how to keep the good of that situation while avoiding the bad.

The European stock exchanges had a terrible day Wednesday.

A lot of smart people are worried about how China's economy can bring down everyone else's.

Those people who claim to be able to measure these things say that 2015 was the hottest year ever for our little planet.

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Friday January 22, 2016

Apple makes more money in a quarter from the iPhone than Google has ever made from Android. So, where does Google make all the money it makes?

Let's not feel sorry for Google as it earned $22billion PROFIT from Android.

Google pays Apple $1billion a year to be the default search engine on iOS. That is a lot of money folks.

These Apple and Google $$$ figures are being revealed in court in a yet another lawsuit case over who has the money or something.

AnandTech takes an in-depth look at the iPad Pro.

Microsoft adds finger and pencil support to Office on the iPad.

I find this quite disturbing as "data analyst" is the hottest job going. Of course employers want persons with ten years experience even though the area isn't that old. If you have some brains and can connect the dots, you could be a data analyst. Too bad no one will hire you.

Here is the bad jobs outlook that I and some others have been stating and being called backwoods Ludites: the richest companies in the world today have 1/10th the employees that their like had in 1990.

The benefits of working for Apple as seen by its employees. Great job if you can get it.

IBM moves into the market of cloud video streaming.

British researchers are building an autonomous solar and wind powered research ship to cruise the Atlantic.

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Saturday January 23, 2016

Shovelling snow. We are having one of those things that hits here about every five years.

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Sunday Janurary 24, 2016

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos, flew and landed a rocket a second time in a few months. It isn't as capable a lifter as SpaceX, but it is working.

Ready for the Internet of Things? Ready for the whole world to see the inside of your house? There is a web site that shows all the web cameras people are using.

Would winning hackathons provide a real income?

Business class in a Boeing 787. Yes, it is nice.

Our government reports that our citizens have registered 300,000 drones with our FAA.

Tips for the author's blog.

Some of the benefits of going to a writing residency. Make such a thing for yourself in your home this weekend.

Tips for mainly non-fiction writing from a consultant friend of mine. Good words.

A dozen or so types of stories we can use as blog topics.

How writing short stories can lead you into a longer novel.

How the freelancer, a.k.a., the under-employed person, is changing work and business.

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