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 25-31, 2016

Summary of this week:

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

Monday January 25, 2016

No Internet viewing as I shovelled snow most of the day.

I also had lots of problems with Internet service.

A look at the latest Intel Compute stick. It has much-improved wireless connectivity.

Facebook opens a data center in Ireland powered by Open Compute Project technology.

Twitter has a major change in its executive staff.

The JaguarBoard—a $45, Intel Atom, single  board computer to compete with Raspberry Pi. 

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Tuesday January 26, 2016

Marvin Minsky dies at 88.

Thoughts on SpaceX, Blue Origin, and yes those guys at NASA who continue to waste our money.

AnandTech looks at the Google Pixel C.

Apple updates tvOS and integrates more photos and clouds and ties us all in a neat bundle.

Confused by TV set acronyms? Me too. This helps a little.

It appears that the Microsoft Surface units on NFL sidelines frequently fail.

The revival of the X-Files illustrates how much personal tech has changed since 2002.

Google gives $5million worth of Chromebooks to non-profits in Germany to assist refugees. Good for Google.

Recent hardware system offerings from Google and Microsoft show they aren't up to Apple's standards, yet.

Microsoft moved  its machine learning Computational Network Toolkit (CNTK) to Github.

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Wednesday January 27, 2016

Here is Marvin Minsky's course The Society of Mind.

Apple fell a little short of estimated iPhone shipments last quarter. Somehow selling 74million iPhones in three months is a failure.

iPad sales dropped 25% year over year last quarter.

All the other Apple products had big sales increases.

Apple claims 1billion active devices worldwide. That is a large number.

It appears that their is a problem inside the Safari browser.

Try to get a handle on this: Apple made $18.4billion profit in three months, and people are disappointed.

Tim Cook explains lower sales on world conditions. Finally, Apple comes back down to earth.

Our government and its ties to proprietary software that citizens must buy to petition its government.

ooops, someone lost some disk drives that contain personal health information on a million folks.

VMWare lays off 800 people as part of Dell acquisition.

Disney, H-1B visas, lawsuits, etc. Yes, it appears companies are cheating on the program and using it to replace qualified Americans.

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Thursday January 28, 2016

The Swedish government will expel 80,000 refugee immigrants this year. Where will they go? I'm not good at European geography, but...

Google has shipped 5million Cardboard VR viewers. And we thought it was a joke.

Facebook had a good financial quarter and its stock jumped. I suppose no one will punish the guy who was mistaken in his prediction of how well the company would do.

CEO Satya Nadella has changed the way Microsoft moves from research to product.

Microsoft extends online, collaborative editing for its Office Online systems to DropBox et al.

Strong rumors concerning the coming iPad Air 3.

Theranos, and those people who depend on lab results, are in bad shape.

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Friday January 29, 2016

Apple buys LearnSprout—an education technology company to boost its iOS education capabilities.

The F-35 has become the new C-17—an airplane full of poorly written software. For those not old enough to remember, the C-17 cargo plane was the poster child for the software crisis in its day.

Apple retains 81% of its retail sales staff. That is astronomical and is due to Angela Ahrendts.

HP seems to understand that a watch is a piece of jewelry, not a computer or timepiece.

Microsoft has a weak financial quarter, but is growing in the Cloud business and the Surface is doing well.

Small orders by Amazon Prime customers are killing Amazon. Amazon can't afford free delivery on these things.

Apple is working on long-distance, whatever that means, wireless charging for mobile devices.

Amazon has a good financial quarter, but not as well as predicted. So, once again, their stock falls but the predictors, those who got it wrong, are not punished.

Dice sells off Slashdot and SourceForge.

A detailed look at the Zika virus.

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Saturday January 30, 2016

Your tax dollars at waste: our goverment issues a patent to Xerox for online document sharing.

Donald Trump understands at least one thing: it's social media not old media.

Our government confirms that Hillary Clinton had Top Secret information at home on her email server. Don't look for any arrests or anything that would happen to mere mortals as Hillary is officially a special, exempt person. Oh, you didn't realize that such existed? How naive.

More qualified Americans being replaced by H-1B visa holders.

Our President wants $4billion to teach computer science in high school. Beware the details.

Keyboard shortcuts for Apple computer users. Know these and use them.

Google is working on a TV set-top box that may free us from Xfinity and others.

Google is testing drones that will provide broadband links.

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Sunday Janurary 31, 2016

The Hack Club idea. I like it. It will put kids into programming and computing at an earlier age.

The problem tech companies don't understand when making all this fit health wearable stuff: you must go through a doctor. That is the system, and you aren't clever enough to work around it.

How Facebook and others profit from US elections. It is all about selling our information.

The Chinese release great photos from the moon. The next persons to walk on the moon won't be Americans, and NASA is to blame for that.

The health benefits of drinking water, just plain water.

Has Apple become passe among the tech talent pool?

How one freelance writer is growing her income.

Good information here about writing with other people—pair writing or team writing.

A case for outlining when writing a novel.

Be sure to use photos that are legal to use. Here is a source of them.

I like this. It encourages writers to relax a bit and not try too hard. I find that to be excellent advice.

Sometimes you discard your outline and just keep writing.

If you want to earn a living writing, you have to work everyday, day after day. There is no coasting after a sprint.

Most of us don't have our personal editors to review our writing. Here are some tips for editing your own work.

For those hampered by distractions, here are some techniques to close the door on them.

For those hampered by writer's block, here are some techniques to break loose.

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