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: April 25-May 1, 2016

Summary of this week:

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

Monday April 25, 2016

Trying to keep more of its talent, Google will have in its own in-house incubator.

Never acused of being forward thinking, our government just now starts cyber attacks on ISIS.

Probably coming soon for Google, the ability to run Android apps on Chromebooks.

The Solar Impulse finished its flight from Hawaii to California.

Apple gobbles up 40% of Silicon Valley's profits all by itself.

More evidence that (old) age discrimination is rampant in technology fields.

NASA, which can't put a person in orbit, is spending lots of time and money on new airplanes.

Goofy but useful uses of the Amazon Echo. One day we will laugh at the simple things that amazed us.

The Raspberry Pi gets a $25 camera upgrade.

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Tuesday April 26, 2016

Crowdsource something and we name a research ship Boaty McBoatface. Wisdom?

Facebook servers were breached for several months. They believe users are safe.

The battles continue regarding ad blocking and ad pushing and keeping track of who is doing what.

A good analysis of how driverless trucks will kill millions of jobs. And those unemployed drivers won't become programmers.

The Light L16 "camera" that we shouldn't call a camera. Instead, it is a system of light and other sensors.

Bill Gates is promoting a new nuclear fission technology.

I like this one: using Google Glass in Doctor-patient consultations. Give the doctor information in real time.

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Wednesday April 27, 2016

One person's experience with an expensive standing desk.

Quarterly report: Apple iPhone sales down—they only sold 51million phones in 13 weeks. Some failure (not).

Apple Music subscriptions continue to grow rapidly—now 13million.

YouTube now uses deep learning to recommend videos to us.

Volkswagon? Mitsubishi admits to cheating tests for 25 years. The only question is, "When will everyone else admit to their cheating?"

Cheating? Some cyclists are using bikes with hidden motors.

Apple and Facebook want Congress to fund computer science ed. They want other people to train a larger workforce so they can pay lower salaries.

The government of China censors Disney.

A look at Ubuntu MATE for the Raspberry Pi.

Intel announces its strategy for a company with 12,000 fewer employees.

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Thursday April 28, 2016

SpaceX intends to launch an unmanned Mars mission in two years.

Facebook spends over $1million/year to guard COO Sheryl Sandberg.

Facebook had a better-than-expected financial quarter, stock rises. The message is clear. Estimate low, over perform, get rich.

Facebook now has 1.6billion users (that is Billion with a B).

Comcast is raising its month data caps from 300 to 1000GigaBytes.

It seems that the Wikipedia community has devolved into what it never wanted to be.

Facebook is paying people to put good videos on the site. Everyone wants good video, so we now have a market for producers.

The CareKit apps have arrived via Apple.

Everyone is reporting this story of a dead person found at Apple headquarters. No details yet.

All the autonomous car makers, and there are dozens, are lobbying hard for less regulation.

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Friday April 29, 2016

From a white hat hacker—one way to create a good password that you can remember.

Why Chromebook users like them and haters hate them.

HP shows a $499 Chromebook. I think this price defeats the original purpose.

Snapchat—with 10billion video views a day—is beating Facebook where it hurts.

Flow: coming from Microsoft. It will connect all sorts of online services in all sorts of ways.

SCOTUS grants our FBI greater leeway in watching us.

LinkedIn has a good financial quarter with more users and ad revenue.

Amazon—boosted by AWS—had a best-ever financial quarter.

With all its new money, Amazon to boost video content to beat Netflix.

The Fathom Neural Compute Stick from Modvidius: this could be groundbreaking (or nothing).

Google employs former Motorola president to head a new hardware group.

The OpenAI Gym: come test your AI machine.

If driverless cars use radar and lasers to see, will they need headlights in the dark?

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Saturday April 30, 2016

Google has a large, quiet deal with UK's National Health Service whereby they get all the data. Start the mining and deep learning.

Intel makes major cuts in its Atom line, practically abandoning the mobile market.

Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn sells all his Apple stock. This must be important as it is all over the Internet.

US Steel claims that China has been hacking it and stealing all its secrets.

Best hack of the century goes to this guy who has Windows 95 running on his Apple Watch. Too much time on his hands.

Sony, using deep learning (what else), arranges Beethoven in different styles.

Microsoft's Word Flow keyboard is now on iOS apps.

Someone is buying a lot of smartwatches as the market grew over 200% last year.

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Sunday May 1, 2016

Apple started building its own x processors; Intel dropped out and cancelled its Atom line.

Seagate starts shipping its Helium-filled disk drives. Good AnandTech report.

Is there any future for the giant Hybrid Air Vehicle?

Some YouTube videos are better than others: Learn PERL online in an hour, no cost.

The story of ReGlue—refurbishing old computers and giving them to kids who can't afford one.

Reglue: Recycled Electronics and Gnu/Linux Used for Education. Reglue, in a nutshell, gives free Linux computers to under privileged children and their families.

Sci-Hub: academic paper Napster or just a bunch of theives?

How long will it take? Software estimation.

More aerial views of Apple's new headquarters. It looks like the Pentagon with rounded corners.

The perils of "networking" for writers.

Most of us writers consume much more than we create, and that is fine.

This is a surprisingly good post on moving past common writing problems.

This post lists good sources of information on creating money from writing. GOOD POST.

Sometimes I'm stuck. Not writer's block, just stuck. Basic on moving again.

Please realize that we don't have to write the beginning first and so on. We can write the part that has the most energy now, right now.

Need writing ideas? Take a walk. And bring a pencil and notecards with you.

To be a writer, write, write, write. It is a simple idea, but we often stand in our own way.

Write about places you have been. Some writers travel for research. Others explore their own neighborhoods.

The value of persistence, especially when it comes to trying to write for pay.

One mother of seven does everything. I don't recommend this for everyone to try.

Find that best time of the day to write, and then just write during that time.

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