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 8-14, 2016

Summary of this week:

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

Monday February 8, 2016

Ethiopia: where the Internet is given to only a few subjects and used as a hammer by the government.

The US Olympic Committee is urging caution by athletes going to Brazil due to the Zika virus. Just stay home.

The Denver Broncos win a fumble-dominated Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl set a new Internet video streaming record.

This didn't happen without a few technical difficulties from CBS.

Apple's new offices in Ireland are staffed by telecommuters.

Twitter has closed 125,000 terrorist-related accounts. I'm not sure how they decide what is what. See, e.g. the Ethiopia story.

Big changes are taking place at Github.

Now the details hit hard: drag and drop is not computer programming. There are reasons why few people major in computer science (chemisty, calculus, and physics are a few).

NASA is incapable of putting a person in orbit, but we can make a cool Mars VR game! Your tax dollars at waste.

Facebook's Free Basics violates net neutrality and is banned in India.

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Tuesday February 9, 2016

Who'da thunk it? On the iPhone, run Facebook via Safari instead of the app and save battery life.

Run the Google security check and be awarded 2GigaBytes more storage. 

Robot room-service deliveries are sort of here in America.

My mother was wrong, money does grow on trees. Our President asks our Congress for $1.8billion in emergency money to do something about Zika.

All this "fitness" data from computers worn on our wrist is worthless. Doctors don't accept it, and we don't change our lifestyles.

It appears that the whole Chipotle food problem was sick employees handling customers' food.

I haven't heard this anywhere else, but I agree with it: the Super Bowl has lost its punch.

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Wednesday February 10, 2016

Hackers are offering European Apple employees money for their logins and passwords. If you can't hack them, bribe them.

Apple appears to building its own content delivery network to move music and video.

Amazon appears to be building its own delivery services to bypass FedEx and UPS.

Something good is US education, and it is happening outside public school classrooms. The US is experiencing a rush in advanced math education OUTSIDE public school classrooms. My grandson, 7 years old, is involved in a math club outside of school. Math in school is irrelevant.

Gmail now warns us when our email travels unsecurely.

There is a lot of money in free, open-source software, but not all FOSS companies are making money.

The Cybersecurity National Action Plan: only $19billion to secure just about everything.

Facebook is experimenting with millimeter wave mesh networks.

It seems that the US Intelligence Community just can't wait for the Internet of Things so they can watch people.

Intel updates the microcode of its processors to stop a lot of overclocking.

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Thursday February 11, 2016

Yet again, someone proclaims Moore's law is dead, i.e., no more advancements. We shall see.

Google stops accepting Flash display ads.

Our government regulators declare that the AI driver in driverless cars is legally a driver. Unintended consequences to come.

Twitter will be ten years old next month, but will it reach eleven?

The 9/11 attacks as told by al Qaeda insiders.

LibreOffice 5.1 is released.

How to harvest energy from trees swaying in the breeze. Just another transform of physical to electrical energy.

HBO Now has 800K subscribers—about half of expectations.

The BBC introduces its seven new hosts for Top Gear.

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Friday February 12, 2016

It seems the open-source community accepts software written by women more often than what men write.

In real life, standard touch typist type no faster than the hunt and peck typists.

Google may release a standalone VR headset this year.

NASA can't put a person in space, but can make really cool posters. Your tax dollars at waste.

Samsung won't make the processor for the iPhone 7; TSMC will do it.

We finally see Einstein's gravitational waves.

Boeing has build a unique fuel cell energy generation and storage system .

Through the magic of browsers and emulators, 1,500 Windows 3.1 apps run again.

Hey buddy, want to buy a Netflix account? 25 cents!

The eye-movement-tracking user interface is coming of age. 

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Saturday February 13, 2016

Is this is the ultimate in docking stations or just another try for Apple to catch up.

Strong rumors: iPhone 5se and iPad Air 3 coming in one month.

Apple to open a tech center in Hyderabad, India this summer.

Qualcomm introduces the Snapdragon Wear 2100 Internet of Things System on a Chip (IoT SoC).

Autodesk shifts to subscription pricing. This is one of the older software companies having shipped AutoCAD and the like since the early 1980s.

How is this for a failure? Apple has 2/3s of the world's smartwatch market in 2015.

Apple Music has 11million users; the iCloud has 782million users.

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Sunday February 14, 2016

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Found Dead at 79. Now the nomination and (dis)approval wars begin.

No kids, Facebook wasn't the first online application that allowed people to stay in touch.

DARPA is about to show its 130-foot autonomous submarine.

It was a bad financial week for many technology companies.

Another example of how archaeologists are using satellites and LIDAR to find ancient structures.

AT&T's CEO says spend five hours a week online learning, or else...

A little drone flies itself through a warehouse at 20m/s or 45mph. Amazing.

A quick look at Alphabet's moon-shot projects. The best to me is the wind energy generator that uses far less materials to build.

Hertz rent-a-car replaces its qualified Americans with H-1B visa holders. I guess this is more of our wonderful economic recovery (not).

The market for writing for trade magazines.

It is never too late to "start" writing. Living is the "gathering information" part of writing.

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