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: October 17-23, 2016

Summary of this week:

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

Monday October 17, 2016

If you can't beat cyberbullies, join them. Caution: you can't win a puking contest with a buzzard.

German government tells Tesla to stop using "auto pilot" claims.

The Silicon Valley plutocrats overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party. The party of the working man?

The hyperbole of the software container. This is not new, but the marketing success is.

Seth Godin has an excellent post on democracy and voting and ketchup.

Late night TV wins as schools start later each morning. It's not the kids, it's the parents.

Pepsi promises to gradually reduce the sugar in its drinks. Good. I've always wanted a less-sugar drink, but no artificial sweeteners.

The Microsoft workforce, with Satya Nadella in charge, is happier than Apple's.

Oklahoma State Univ has been declared national champions in football for 1945. There is actually a group of football experts that is going back in time and cleaning up history. I suppose there are less constructive ways to spend your time.

The trivial techniques the Russians used to hack the DNC. How many DNC staffers were fired? Oh, none.

The Windows 10 implementation of bash doesn't work well.

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Tuesday October 18, 2016

Google Flights now tries to predict when and how airline ticket prices will change.

Apple hires a Carnegie Mellon prof to be its head of AI research.

Amazon Web Services launches a new region in Ohio.

Orbital ATK returns to orbit with cargo for the ISS using Russian-made engines.

Qualcomm updates its line of Snapdragon processors.

IBM has a better-than-expected financial quarter with cloud computing bringing in the $$$.

Qualcomm announces the first 5G modem.

New scanning technologies have found lost rooms in the great pyramid. We don't know much about these giant structures that have sat right in front of us for centuries. Still, we know the temperature of the earth the year they pyramids were completed (not).

Rumors about Apple's next line of computers. They may kill off the one I'm using right now (again).

Netflix has a much-better-than-expected financial quarter; its stock rises 20%.

The contrary kids are going to bully the cool kids in the self-driving cars. Fun to come.

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Wednesday October 19, 2016

Half of us have our faces stored in law enforcement databases. What are we doing to ourselves?

How did we get here? Most Americans are feeling high levels of stress about our looming (un)presidential election.

Nvidia releases $100-range video cards for gamers on a budget.

Strong rumors that the next big Apple event will be October 27th. Apple will update the traditional computers.

The Google Pixel phone is out, the reviews are in, and the stock price is up.

Here is one of the glowing reviews.

NFL coaches are rejecting the Microsoft Surface tablets the league makes them use—undependable.

I am surprised at this: the Trump campaign is using insecure computer systems.

More news on the myth of multi-tasking for people.

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Thursday October 20, 2016

CNN tells us that they can read documents, but the rest of us can't. A nation of special persons, not laws.

Facebook expands ways for us to spend money while on Facebook.

All Tesla cars now in production have the hardware for future, full self-driving mode. Now all they have to do is learn how to manufacture arbitrarily large numbers of automobiles.

Microsoft claims human parity in its speech recognition system. Note, this is not 100% accurate but just as good as human error rates.

Google's G Suite adds new collaboration features include Slack integration.

It's official: Apple will have a big event next Thursday.

Yahoo wants transparency from our government regarding national security orders.

This (un)presidential election may have killed email for good.

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Friday October 21, 2016

Politicians, media, and schools have lied to us; the people of earth are better off now than ever.

Slack now has 4million daily active users with 1.25million paying. The definition of success has changed.

Microsoft's Surface sales are growing; Apple's iPad are slowing, but the iPad market still dwarfs the Surface market.

Microsoft has a good financial quarter.

Microsoft's Azure business doubled in the last year.

Garbage "news" is flourishing on Facebook pages. The sillier the news, the more it spreads. I guess someone believes these stories.

The Kodak Ektra; a new digital camera from Kodak. Maybe it will sell.

The Razer Blade Pro: a 17" screen gamer laptop that is much thinner and lighter than everything else and more-than-desktop power.

AT&T and Time Warner are discussing a merger.

Qualcomm is about to buy NXP Semiconductors in the biggest deal in semiconductor industry history.

IBM's studies show that the total cost of ownership of Macs is 1/3 that of a PC.

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Saturday October 22, 2016

Airbnb sues New York City. Can you have someone stay in your place and accept money for the favor? The answer is yes and the answer highlights the over-regulation of the motel industry.

The massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, and the death of the Internet.

Google lessens the privacy of users.

Yesterday we had one of the biggest Internet outages in history.

David Bunnel dies at 69. He started a host of magazines about home computing.

Microsoft's stock is at an all-time high; see CEO Satya Nadella. One person at the top can make a difference.

Considering privacy at work and productivity. I advocate two workspaces per person. One for group work, and another for individual work.

Who runs the Internet? WikiLeaks asks supporters to stop crashing it. Request heeded.

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Sunday October 23, 2016

BMW films returns with new Internet-only shorts of cars chases starring BMW cars.

Seagate puts 5TeraBytes of storage into the 2.5" disk drive form factor.

"The Google Pixel is the least frustrating Android phone ever."

Excellent post on better uses of MS Excel.

The growing trend of low-contrast, difficult-to-read text displays.

Short-term, social media campaigns for writers. Interesting.

Thinking about writing a novel this November?

Excellent tips on how to make infographics and how to use them as a writer to enhance the presentation of a portfolio.

Trying to write about life among the distractions of life.

Enthusiasm, energy, and creative writing.

Illness enters a writer's life; writing anyway.

How one non-writer normal person wrote a novel in six months.

Lessons one writer learned from crowdfuning a novel.

How one writer uses Evernote on all projects. It is a good tool and it may be of great use to you.

Some basics on writing a blog.

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