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: March 14-20, 2016

Summary of this week:

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

Monday March 14, 2016

Some facts and history of Microsoft for a Monday morning.

A review of the Phantom 4 drone. These things are much more fun to fly and take much better video.

The utility of mining Twitter. In this case, Twitter gives an accurate picture of storm damage.

The Europeans launch a mission to Mars.

Must see video: Sony prototype projector makes a table a computer touchscreen.

Today is Pi Day 3/14 or 3.14.

Microsoft cuts 31.4% off some Dell laptops for just today—Pi Day.

The NCAA was spoofed as its basketball tournament bracket was leaked early.

Our FDA finally approves the Indego exoskeleton. Initial price $80,000.

Jimmy Wales laughs off companies that try to edit their own Wikipedia pages.

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Tuesday March 15, 2016

Top tech talent in the UK is leaving Google for a year-long entrepreneur program.

Drawings of one of the latest, to-be Google buildings in the valley. Opulence. Reminds me of French royalty just before, well, you know.

Facebook and Google are working on increased privacy in the shadow of the FBI-Apple mess.

The Europeans are retreating from the welcome-all-refugees. Stories from Germany and France.

Western Digital releases a low-cost hard disk for use with the Raspberry Pi.

DropBox has moved user files from Amazon storage to its own infrastructure.

The Anonymous hacktivist collective vows to dismantle the Trump campaign.

This is all over the Internet, so it must be important: HBO's John Oliver has the best explanation of Apple vs the FBI.

Adobe launches  Experience Design CC tool for user experience design.

Phonvert: a clever way to reuse old smartphones as IoT nodes (baby monitor camera, etc.).

It seems our virtual assistants (Siri, Cortana, et al) are not trained for crises. The one thing we really need.

Microsoft open sources AIX—an AI engine that uses the Minecraft game.

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Wednesday March 16, 2016

Google reports that 75% of server requests are now encrypted.

ooops, our government officials, both elected and not, realize that Apple-FBI discussion was a blunder.

"The Founders would be appalled" —Apple reply to our Justice Department.

The entire DC metro rail system is closed today. Too bad for you if you ride it to work. Another example of tax dollars at waste and those who waste tax dollars. Wait, however, next year W E will be in charge of tax dollars and we are smarter than T H E M. And the parade continues.

Comcast deploys DOCSIS 3.1 in Atlanta. This bring GigaBit capability. Whether or not you actually get that data rate is another question.

Google search adds campaign finance information for our presidential campaign nightmare.

The State of New York decides to protect its residents from themselves with all-digital prescriptions. Of course they will know what medicine we are prescribed by our, or is it their, doctors.

In London, pigeons are carrying air-quality sensors about town.

Persons are reporting that Windows 10 is installing itself without their consent. Microsoft claims that persons are consenting.

More on Apple and FBI. I think Apple should give the FBI a copy of the complete iOS source code—O N  P A P E R. Deliver it in a few tractor trailers.  Hillary Clinton can hand over paper, why not Apple?

Just disclosed: Trump campaign volunteers must sign a lifetime Non-Disclosure Agreement. Wow.

Here we go again: 2019 will bring another Indiana Jones movie. These films are profitable. We enjoy Harrison Ford and old-fashioned serials.

In a personal note, I was laid off from Intelligent Waves LLC this morning. Good folks at IW—several true American heroes. It was a pleasure to meet them.  I wish them well.

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Thursday March 17, 2016

Logitech introduces two new mechanical keyboards.

The clouds are getting mixed up. Apple's iCloud strikes a deal with Google for cloud hosting. It seems that Apple has been paying for disk space with Amazon and Microsoft for years.

The "charm" efforts of our President to sway public opinion against Apple. Let's see, Washington D.C. vs Apple in an ad campaign. Who will win this one?

 DJI's new Phantom 4 drone is given big display space in Apple retail stores.

A new NUC coming from Intel in May with much more processing power and a different form factor.

Segway's patent suit will block most "hoverboards" from the US.

Disruption, change, and how lots of us are falling down.

In local Virginia news, Microsoft will buid a big solar farm.

Razer shows its new GPU external box. $500 without a GPU card inside.

Another close look at the Raspberry Pi 3.

Seth Godin has a good post on showing your work in progress to others.

Rumors of Nvidia creating a new Linux distribution for gaming computers.

The UK economy is much like the US: the unemployment measure is broken as it give a false indication of prosperity.

A look at CALEA and why the FBI is lost when it comes to Apple. Our FBI may win as it is a government agency suing a private company in a government court. That, however, does not make a wrong a right.

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Friday March 18, 2016

Curtailed viewing today.

Our NSA gave our President a secure Blackberry, but refused to do so for our Dept of State. Let's see, this was all part of our Federal government and our goverment decided to help parts of our government, but not other parts of our government that we the public supported with out taxes. Why do we hate ourselves so much?

What do programmers like and dislike? See survey results.

A lot of talk about how the next iPhone will have the same edges and buttons as some previous one. Doesn't anyone has anythng to discuss?

Individual citizens at Apple may stage peaceful refusals to obey a court order. These protestors are also known as engineerings.

Dominoes Pizza will try delivery robots in New Zealand.

Africa dominates this list of the unhappiest countries in the world.

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Saturday March 19, 2016

A drone that can paint your house while it flies.

Microsoft extends its support for Windows 7 and 8 into 2018.

Never accused of being right on top of things, our FBI warns that car hacking and hijacking are real threats.

Sony is making a Playstation 4 with 4K graphics.

A court awards Hulk Hogan $115million in his suit against Gawker.

A backyard photographer captures a great image of the ISS.

Someone at Microsoft just lost their job as someone hired go-go dancers to appear at a MS party at a game developers conference.

Here comes more automation in fast food as rising minimum wages cut the number of human jobs.

All this Internet surveillance is reducing the amount of opposing views being expressed.

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Sunday March 20, 2016

Excellent post on the survey, census, and poll. They aren't what most of us think.

Yet another study and simulation shows the same result: self-driving car systems are far more efficient than what we have today.

Forward to the past: the Axidraw can write or draw anything at only $450.

Intel spins off a NUC with a Thunderbolt 3.0 port for external GPU devices: cutting-edge graphics in a small package.

A great place where writers post their thoughts about writing.

Warren Adler shares thoughts from his 50+ years writing novels.

Someone insults you, you become angry, you write. I works, or at least it has worked for me.

Writing and working with others to improve my writing.

How one writer learned to dictate books to her computer via Dragon.

Bits of advice on writing. I like this one, "Edit something you wrote 7 years ago."

One writer's tough lessons learned when going full-time freelance.

The Rule of Seven for writers with a few interesting tangents.

Some writer's lessons from the recent Digital Book World conference.

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