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: August 22-28, 2016

Summary of this week:

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

Monday August 22, 2016

How Lyft rewrote all their software using Apple's programming language Swift.

The CEO of Slack believes that Slack is the secret to working six to eight hours a day productively.

Apple didn't trust the government to hold its secret keys. Good choice. See, e.g., the NSA hack.

Meanwhile, in the Soviet Un...uh, er, I mean Russia—the annual "no hot water in summer" drill.

It seems the leaked NSA cyber tools are great examples of poorly written software.

Our government has now started giving loans to attend a few coding boot camps.

When the news media jumps in bed with tech companies and then complains about it. Journalism?

How Microsoft stumbled, got up, and learned how to make a good, small, portable computer.

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Tuesday August 23, 2016

Our FBI "finds" 14,900 more Hillary Clinton emails. That woman wrote a lot of emails.

NASA "finds" the STEREO-B solar probe after misplacing it for two years.

Instagram reaches 1Billion downloads from the Google Play Store. The definition of success has changed.

A look at Google's Allo chat that promises some privacy and the chats go away.

Microsoft and Lenovo partner and will load Office and such on Lenovo Android devices.

Nvidia releases details on the main processor for its Drive PX2 in-car supercomputer.

Apple continues to move into the health care industry with another acqui-hire.

Google releases Android Nougat—the next release of Android. Why don't companies just number these things?

Gawker closes. Legal fees from misbehaviour killed it.

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Wednesday August 24, 2016

A large earthquake in Italy kills several dozen people.

Google is making a big push into virtual reality programming.

The New York Times' Moscow bureau was sort of hacked this month. They think they are safe, but often that is an illusion.

Lifestage: a Facebook chat app that you can use only if you are in high school, or something like that.

Our FBI authorizes citizens to break our laws some 5,000 times a year. Collateral damage? Well, you know.

Whatever “intrusive interstitials” are, Google will block them on mobile search. I guess this is good?

In Baltimore, big brother is watching you from 8,000 feet. The police state lives on.

How to install Linux on an old Apple computer.

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Thursday August 25, 2016

Happy Birthday Linux: 25 years old today.

NuTonomy starts a driverless taxi service in Singapore T O D A Y.

Microsoft reveals details of its Holographic Processing Unit (HPU). Stodgy old Microsoft is advancing.

Apple may becoming a stodgy, bloated, uninventive bureaucracy under Tim Cook.

Amazon creates the Kindle Reading Fund aiming to spread Kindles and such worldwide. Teach a kid to read. The rest seems to work its self out. Well, not that simple. It does matter what a kid reads.

Facebook and the new, newer, newest media outlets that have sprouted this past year. This stuff used to be on at the checkout counter in the National Enquirer. Now it is all over the Internet. It is more clever, but it is the same thing.

Twitter goes along with Olympic foolishness and deletes accounts of those who post GIFs.

HP Inc. still tries to sell PCs and such and still loses money.

Apple is working on its own video sharing and editing app for iOS.

The death toll in Italy rises to 247 from the earthquake.

France bans a women's swimsuit that covers the entire body except for the face, hands, and feet. Yes, Muslim women wear it, but so do skin cancer patients.

A look at the many, little-known acquihires of Apple.

The EC wants $19Billion from Apple in "taxes." Strangely enough, America's government is defending Apple.

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Friday August 26, 2016

Scientific papers tainted with Microsoft Excel errors. No, these are human errors—misusing tools.

The University of Chicago tells everyone, "We have free speech here." This is America in the 21st century where it is news when someone says they will abide by the Bill of Rights.

Our National Parks are 100 years old today.

DigitalGlobe, Amazon, Nvidia, and the CIA team to train software to recognize objects in overhead imagery. I worked on this problem in the mid-1980s. Others have worked on it since. There have been successes along the way, and the new work is seeking to improve on resolution and results of predecessors.

Uber lost $1.2Billion in the first half of 2016 alone. Why does everyone want to be Uber?

Malware aimed at iPhones is now much more sophisticated and involves government actors.

Fentanyl, synthetic opioids, and the epidemic of pain killer deaths in the US.

Intel launched a new line of solid state disks for home PC and laptop users.

Google Fiber isn't working as well as hoped, and Alphabet is cutting it by half.

Apple has more labor problems at suppliers in China.

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Saturday August 27, 2016

MIT researchers find a simple and inexpensive way to boil water. The applications are obvious and significant.

HP and 3M put a privacy screen on portable computers—it is permanent and works with an On/Off switch.

Apple is heading towards Intel processors for the iPhone by 2018. This would be huge for Intel.

Even Google execs don't know what "decisions" their driverless cars will make. It's call simulation and testing.

The perqs of working at Google. These people don't know they are in the dreaded 1%.

Facebook dumps people writing trending topics and replaces them with bots.

Amazon finds a way to cut employee pay by 25% and make it sound like a good thing for all.

Our government wants to electronically limit the upper speeds of trucks, etc. Has anyone in government heard of gravity?

Our President finds yet another way to write immigration law without Congress. This President, having spent about a weekend in a legislative body, still doesn't understand how the Constitution created our government.

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Sunday August 28, 2016

Our Affordable Care Act has flopped with less than half the signups as predicted and necessary. We did the experiment; we know the results. Next.

John Ellenby dies at 75. His company, Grid Systems, created the clamshell laptop computer in 1982.

Research shows that when employers don't know they gender of applicants, they hire more women. I am guessing the same is true when employers don't know the age of applicants.

How to avoid hating what you once loved.

One writer's "ten required personality traits." Of course we know successful writers who have none of these.

Sometimes writing become difficult because we forget to do the fundamentals.

A technique most writers don't know they don't have or need: negotiation.

The advantages to the read and the writer of writing in plain language.

The collage technique of capturing a novel or story before you write with words.

This is an excellent post for writers about how to find good story ideas instead of settling for bad ones.

Good books on writing. Take care with these as you read and read and read and don't have time to write.

Some good tips to help you write. I like the one about moving away from your desk to think, then going back to the desk to write.

Engineers don't get Engineer's Block, so do writers get Writer's Block? Perhaps not.

More tips on beating writer's block. I guess some people have this and need these. They look like good writing tips for almost every one almost all the time.

An interview with a successful short story writer.
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