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 28-April 3, 2016

Summary of this week:

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

Monday March 28, 2016

ooops, it seems that the iOS 9.3 update is causing lots of unwanted problems.

Will virtual reality change the real world or is this all the usual hype?

Debaters debate the adoption path for (semi)self-driving cars.

A look at the real difficulty of putting an assembly robot on the assembly line.

Samsung shows a heads-up display for motorcycles.

The flying operating room that accompanied our President to Cuba. Yes, the trip was enormously expensive, but its just taxpayers' money.

Microsoft has built a special version of Windows 10 for the government of China so that government can watch its subjects more closely with less effort.

Harvard builds an app to monitor the health of former football players.

The concept of the living pod that adds a "bedroom" to a home.

This may surprise some people, but "fruit" drinks are full of sugar.

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Tuesday March 29, 2016

After further review, the FBI gets the information from the iPhone without Apple's help. There are several things that upset me about all this. First, persons at the FBI wasted million$ of taxpayers' money. Second, persons at the FBI and the great Justice Department felt they were entitled to bully a company in courts operated by the Justice Department. This is bad all around for American citizens.

Apple's response to the FBI is simple and common sense: the FBI should have never gone to court.

Computerworld's annual salary survey: these 10 jobs had the biggest pay increases.

Not surprising: known surveillance reduces the amount of minority-opinion speech.

A hacker sends objectionable material to printers all over the US. If you have a printer on a network that connects to the Internet, someone can send anything they wish to the printer.

Immigration without assimilation is invasion: German Minister wants law requiring learning German and other things.

Never be surprised at what some people consider to be "fun." Microsoft learns from its Tay experiment.

The government of China slipped as its subjects were able to access Google for a few hours.

Git 2.8 is released.

Oracle wants $9.3Billion from Google for using Java in Android. That is Billion with a B.

A look at a real predictive policing tool. Of course it works and of course it is labelled as racists and all sorts of other bad things.

More history of the Hillary Clinton email scandal. If she weren't a member of the 1% or a special person, she would be in jail.

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Wednesday March 30, 2016

Elected representatives in North Carolina passed a law requiring males(females) to only use male(female) public bathrooms. Lots of famous people are protesting. I suppose I live an another century.

Linus Torvalds on the value of not knowing what you are doing.

The boring personality of Google's (super rich) CEO.

The MedStar Health Hospital network has been hacked. One of the unintended consequences of Obamacare is that the money is now in healthcare and we all know where thieves go.

ooops, CNBC, in an effort to educate, just tricked people into revealing and distributing their passwords.

A review of the state-of-the-practice in home Internet of Things.

After many months of problems, Amazon removes USB-C cables that are non-standard.

Floating cities by 2020? It would be fun, be looks to be too costly.

Apple partners with Major League Baseball to put iPads in dugouts. Rich people get free stuff.

Google introduces Fiber Phone that connects all your devices and your home phone.

The government of China pushes for less access to the Internet for its subjects.

Microsoft is pushing hard to have developers move back into the Windows space.

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Thursday March 31, 2016

Politicians worldwide have been caught taking bribes from the oil industry.

If you only read one piece on the Apple vs FBI story, read this one.

A long list of great Raspberry Pi projects.

It appears that Microsoft will partner with Canonical to have a Ubuntu-inside-Windows 10 something or other.

Look at this Linux distribution aimed at charitable organizations: Emmabuntüs.

Godin has an excellent post on the nocebo and how to reframe the situation.

HP realizes that the most often-worn wearable in the world is the ID badge.

Contrary to popular media reports and beliefs, young people are not leaving Facebook.

Great quote, great summary: Take away manufacturing and you’re left with...selfies.

A look at a plutocrat wedding. Given current trends, these people will soon rule the world.

Here come "conversations as a platform."

Researchers find 1,400 security holes in an automated medicine supply cabinet.

Government at its finest (not): our TSA's pre-check program has increased delays at the airport. Way to go guys. Keep wasting our money.

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Friday April 1, 2016

This is the first of April, so beware the April Fool's "jokes" all over the Internet.

Here is a list of the 25 richest countries. Hong Kong is a country?

Apple is 40 years old today.

The $35,000 Tesla 3 is announced. You can order one and wait a year or so.

Intel launches the new  Xeon Processor E5 v4 today.

This is some sort of a good moment for mankind as more people are now overweight than underweight.

It appears that Reddit is now receiving national security letters and giving user data to our government.

Our FCC approved expanding the Lifeline program to include discounts for broadband Internet service. Broadband as a public utility continues.

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Saturday April 2, 2016

When you pour money into a system, one thing that happens is the thieves come running to you. Hospitals get Obamacare money and computers; hackers attack. This is predictable and predicted.

Admission rates are falling a big-name colleges. Of course the admit rates are lower. With the Internet, a couple of clicks, some copy and paste, some upload, you've applied. It is easy to apply to a dozen schools in a one-hour session on the computer. Applications rise, number of seats remain the same, so admission rates fall. Is there something magic here?

The best standing desks. We now know that they aren't any better than sitting, but who cares about reality?

Sony creates a PlayStation division called Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Slack triples its paid users in one year—now 2.7million users.

George Will reminds us that baseball season is here.

Machine learning, a decades-old technique, is now the newest revolution in computing and society.

Red Hat makes its Enterprise Linux Developer Suite free to aid developers.

Someone else shows how to easily hijack law enforcement drones.

The financial news at Blackberry continues to be bad.

People have pre-ordered 200,000 Tesla 3 cars. How many will be built and sold is another matter.

"Google dorking" using the advanced search features. Why did someone give it another, stupid-er name?

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Sunday April 3, 2016

Must see. I highly recommend these new Apple videos about a young man with autism and how an iPad helps him speak. If you know someone with special needs, pass this along.

Blue Origin launches and lands the same rocket for a third time.

Save time with keyboard shortcuts. This is an excellent post.

Great reference for Mac users with all the keyboard shortcuts for MS Office.

The still young (hi)story of the Amazon Echo appliance.

With 200,000 cars ordered, Tesla may experience how success puts them out of business.

How to hack elections. It isn't that difficult.

How to waste a half million dollars and provide no WiFi access. American government at its average.

How to improve our writing: practice, practice hard, practice harder.

Writers: beware of creating your own "crutch" words.

"Write about the things you can’t forget, the things that keep you up at night." Then after you write about them, they won't keep you up at night any longer.

"The best way to not become a writer is to wish you were one." Amen.

Some tips for what to do when you have so many writing ideas. I don't think you can have T O O many ideas.

How one person became a full-time writer.

One writer's keys to starting the next story. What makes you mad?

"Just write what’s in your head and what’s in your heart and give the reader a reason to keep turning the pages,"

Someone has a Story Map tool for writers. I think some writers have done this on paper for centuries.

Tips on web writing. Yes, it seems it is a bit different from all the other forms.

One writer's keys to success for novel writing.

It seems the novel has collapsed to the story has collapsed to the "moment."

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