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: December 26, 2016 - 1 January, 2017
Summary of this week:
- Travel and holidays continue, slow news
- Carrie Fisher dies at 60
- One day later, Debbie Reynolds dies at 84
- Microsoft $4K PC selling well
- Critical thinking skills are the new railroad tracks of communities
Monday
- Tuesday
- Wednesday
- Thursday
- Friday
- Saturday
- Sunday
Monday December 26, 2016
Travel continues as do the holidays, so little Internet viewing today. And most motels have the worst WiFi in the world.
The latest revision of Google's search engine is noticeably removing fake news sites.
Reminder: Google makes a lot of products and services. This post is a good reminder of them.
Pop singer George Michael dies at 53.
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Tuesday December 27, 2016
The world is still spinning slowly as this is sort of a second Christmas holiday week.
Victims of August's Louisiana floods—the fortunate are just moving into
$110K, substandard modular housing units. The ineffeciency and
incompetance of FEMA is...well, it's FEMA.
After all these years, Wikipedia is still largely written by white males.
This is all voluntary. Are the white males acting in a way that pushes
women away? Perhaps women just don't want to write on Wikipedia.
Canon Tokki Corp.—never heard of it? They make the world's OLED displays.
A look inside the world's fact checker, Snopes.
Just to show it still can happen, these $billion companies didn't exist five years ago.
Apple finally opens a little and publishes an AI research paper.
Economic recovery? Jobs lost to overseas-sourcing and reality.
Programming trends from the past year.
One guy builds his own Hackintosh.
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Wednesday December 28, 2016
ASUS shows a new $499 Chromebook. Too expensive for what should be simple.
South Korean court fines American Qualcomm $850million.
The ultimate silliness? Restaurant uses iPads as plates.
HandBrake, in beta for 13 years, releases version 1.0.
Carrie Fisher dies at 60. For some reason, she never coped with being born rich and famous.
Here we go down this path...police request Echo recordings from Amazon in a murder investigation. Amazon has now made a home bugging device for the state.
Apple sells twice as many smartphones during the holidays as Samsung.
Lenovo updates the ThinkPad lineup of portable computers.
Our
President is about to announce how the US will (not so) secretly attack
Russia in retribution for Russia costing his party the presidency. No, this is not fake news, and that is a horrible statement about our current President.
Mining companies are already using self-driving vehicles that work 24 hours a day. Jobs? People? What?
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Thursday December 29, 2016
Tomorrow, December 30th, is Amazon Digital Day. Sale Sale Sale
Fake it till you make it: the unethical Silicon Valley practices that are decades old.
Bill Gates practically invented this. People would call him and ask,
"Do you have software that does such and such?" Gates didn't have it,
but liked the idea. He would tell them, "Sure, but I can't meet you for
two weeks." That was a lie. He would spend the next two weeks building
the software.
Our FDA releases guildelines for securing medical devices. Everyone yawns.
Ford shows its latest improved test vehicle for autonomous operation.
ooops, Facebook is selling ad space, but buyers aren't happy with tiny ads that aren't seen.
Apple proclaims thier wireless ear buds a runaway success.
Debbie Reynolds dies at 84—one day after her daughter died.
Good idea: Microsoft may add a Game Mode to Windows 10 to improve gaming fun.
Our President declares two National Monuments. They may be quickly un-declared.
Perhaps Mr. Obama will never learn that doing things the easy way are
easily un-done. Things worth the effort are worth the effort.
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Friday December 30, 2016
This video shows a Tesla predicting an auto accident and braking early to avoid it.
In the realm of goofy ideas...Amazon considers using blimps as airborne warehouses.
Microsoft has sold twice as many of its Surface Studio $4K PCs than expected. 30,000 is a small number in this market.
Our President hacks back by expelling 35 Russian diplomats.
It will take one day for the Russians to expel 35 American diplomats.
All the lives of all these families will be turned upside down for
nothing. Must be great to be so powerful as to ruin the lives of
innocent persons (not).
The Russians in the UK tweet a cute lame duck photo to Obama. Supposed "adults" on both sides acting like, well, you know.
Clever video of "2016: The Movie." Yes, it is a horror flick (not real folks).
How did Facebook know that about me? It bought the information from someone else.
Google installed free WiFi in 100 railway stations in India this year. They try for another 100 next year.
From the Internet's society page...Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and Serena Williams are getting married.
The story of how the Chinese government built iPhone city. They got all the jobs.
Our FBI-DHS release a technical report on Russian hacking. Technologist yawn as it is basic security stuff.
Let's grumble about climate change for a bit...
Wisonsin's government site now reports a theory as a theory, not a fact, and some people are going beserk.
Scott Adams enters the debate. And some people are going beserk. I know what it means to measure something. I haven't seen good measurement practice on this topic.
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Saturday December 31, 2016
More details on the FBI-DHS non-reporting report of Russian election tampering. No details, no proof.
Russian malware found on Vermont utility laptop. No one in Vermont fired for poor practices.
Don't let your kids plays with those home chat bot machines.
The major goofs from Silicon Valley in 2016.
Unintended consequences: self-driving cars will reduce auto deaths and reduce the supply of organs for transplant.
Critical thinking skills—the new railroad tracks that will divide us. Try to get your kids on the right side.
In the ultimate criticism of Obama, Putin ignores Obama's sanctions and does nothing. Ignore a self-annointed savior. There is nothing worse you can do to them.
Foxconn replaces Chinese workers with robots. Anxiety coming to China, and that is bad for everyone else.
The utility of the C Programming Language—a lower-level, high-level language.
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Sunday January 1, 2017
A minute under the deadline, all New York City subway stations have WiFi.
The simplest things: a laptop cooling stand made of two forks.
"Watership Down" author Richard Adams dies at 96.
So much for all these new fake news filters. They don't seem to work.
In France, a new law permits workers to ignore work-related email during off hours without retribution by employers.
The North Korean government builds an Android tablet. Of course it watches the user.
This post from PositiveWriter lists good posts on positive writing. Really, this is a good list.
Tools for travelling freelancers.
Forget the New Year's Resolution stuff, these are good ideas for writers.
Some tips on keeping those good inspirations from a writing retreat once you return home to the real world.
Should you go to school to be a writer? Of course. The choice of which type and which one is the tough one.
If you want a journalism job, get into one of those famous schools so
you meet the kids of the famous journalists. You'll learn nothing, but
will get a job nontheless.
Gifts for writers? Time will be a good one.
Writing habits.
Write one short story every week. I have done this. It is great fun
and helped my writing ability. One famous writer, I forget his name,
recommended this with, "You can't write 52 bad stories in a row."
Finding story ideas. They are all about us.
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