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: 23-29 January, 2017

Summary of this week:

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

Monday January 23, 2017

How a supercomputer is beating humans at poker. Of course its a stunt. They will never win enough to recoup the build costs. People will stop playing it long before that happens.

Someone at Samsung is a master at communication. See this infographic on how their phone exploded.

More details on ASUS' entry into the inexpensive, single-board computer market: the Tinker.

"Growth comes from person-to-person communication, from the powerful standards of 'people like us'. And it comes from activating people who are ready to be activated."—Seth Godin.

ooops, Code.org erases the work of 16million students. Just a 32-bit over run glitch.

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Tuesday January 24, 2017

Uber drivers are sleeping in their cars to make ends meet. Scam: Uber was never supposed to be livable income for ride sharers, i.e., drivers.

The next FCC Chairman has a different view of "net neutrality" than the prior one. Let's see which view benefits consumers most.

Despite its woes, Samsung has big profits this year.

Concerned with privacy, the number of persons searching via DuckDuckGo leaps upwards.

The public libraries in St Louis are shut down by a ransomware attack.

Tech plutocrats are building secure hideouts. They fear backlash from people who lost their jobs due to tech.

Censorship lives on in China as the government outlaws virtual private networks.

More bytes in fewer square inches: ADATA shows a microSDXC memory card qirh 256GigaBytes.

ASUS releases a new ZenBook: 14" screen in a paper-thin package. Luxury and performance.

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Wednesday January 25, 2017

How the media mis-covers terrorism, and the affect that has. This is fake news, too. The New York Times slants the news. They are not alone in this, and the affect is that people don't trust them. And then everyone is surprised when Facebook carries fake news.

Some Federal agencies are struggling to realize that the policies of the current administration differ from those of the prior one.

Another first for Amazon: they receive an Oscar nomination for "Manchester by the Sea."

Apple opens Siri speech understanding to developers for the Apple Watch.

Firefox 51 is released.

Wine 2.0 is released:  run applications and games designed only for Microsoft Windows on Linux and OS X.

The world of fake news has boosted the sales of Orwell's "1984."

Amazon starts a STEM Toy Service: you pay $10/month, Amazon ships a toy THEY pick to you each month.

South Korea and China dominate the smartphone market in India.

Coming soon: Google AI tools that will run on the Raspberry Pi. Outstanding.

We are about to have robots that can build houses and such. Bye bye jobs. Hello unemployment.

D-Wave releases a new quantum computer with 2,000 qubits.

AppDynamics' IPO cancelled as it instead sells out to Cisco for $3.7billion.

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Thursday January 26, 2017

Planet Labs does an acqui-hire of Alphabet's satellite imagery business.

Semi-tough: Dell shows new 2-in-1 laptops and Chromebooks for schools featuring tougher, but not Mil-Std tough, cases.

Unintended uses: Facebook Live has become national commentary talk show. Show up nightly for 30 minutes and contemplate.

President Trump sits on the couch and tweets. When Obama tweeted, he was hip. Trump does the same and he is, well, not so popular.

Apple is about to join the Partnership on AI. Maybe they will share more knowledge.

Apple's APFS (Apple File System) is almost here and ready to replace 1998's HFS+ system.

Is it time for scientists and engineers to run for political office? Will the cool kids who went to law school allow it?

College courses cost unequal amounts to teach. Should the price charged be equal?

Google has trained a net to diagnose skin cancer, and it works as well as experienced persons. So what do we do now?

Apple's sales of computers fell 10% in 2016.

Slack is about to release a version of itself for big enterprises.

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Friday January 27, 2017

The world's hottest smartphone is about to have an upgrade. Rumors of the Google Pixel 2.

More evidence that folks a long time ago were pretty darn smart. Also shows how knowledge can be lost.

Microsoft and Intel reported their financial quarter. No big news with either.

A thoughtful piece about how Donald Trump has changed the agenda and the culture war. The discussion centers on different topics now.

Ford SmartLink adds more smarts to older Fords. GM? I'm waiting.

Google announces that they now have more than 3million business (not individuals) using their G Suite.

I love this cartoon about coffee and how I drink it right next to my computer.

A bigger, newer offshore wind farm has just been approved.

Microsoft's cloud business—Azure—doubled in the last year.

Intel's financial quarter report is mixed. They have better IoT and data center earnings.

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Saturday January 28, 2017

After intense criticism, Zuckerburg removes his lawsuit on landowners in Hawaii.

Mark Zuckerburg, who built Facebook on a lot of cheap, immigrant labor, criticizes Trump's immigration stance.

The Trump administration is questioning the $4billion price of replacing Air Force One.

$14,000 gets you a week at Singularity University to learn the future or something like that.

The KDE Slimbook: Linux distributors works with a hardware maker to ensure HW/SW compatibility.

Google tells all its employees to return to the US now, before they are barred from entry. Something is happening here. Someone is not telling the entire truth here. We shall see what happens.

Coming in 2018 from Seagate: a 16TeraByte disk drive in the usual 3.5" form factor.

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Sunday January 29, 2017

Donald Trump keeps his campaign promises, and the world hates it. Odd how this works.

Why are all the tech companies screaming about the Trump Muslim immigration ban? Why are all those companies having employees flying all over the world? Have they not heard about video teleconferencing and other tech means of communication? Perhaps, they have so many employees travelling worldwide because they employ so many foreign nationals at low wages. No one seems to be screaming about how Facebook pays low wages to foreign workers to avoid hiring Americans. That all seems odd to me, but what do I know?

Our Dept of Energy releases fake news claiming solar employs more people than oil and coal combined.

Apps you can use on your old-fashioned desktop PC.

Audio-video technology: don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.

The headline says it all: Forget flying cars — passenger drones are the future.

Sites that pay for writing, and sites that have closed.

I love this: where famous authors retreated to write. Many are specially built "huts." My favorite is JK Rowling's. She went to a coffee house. I sit now in such a coffee house.

The relationship of fiction to truth.

Some helpful tips on doing book research.

Thoughts on building an online writing portfolio.

Personal organization and productivity via the Bullet Journal method.

Writing 1,000 good words an hour is not out of reach for just about everyone.

"Writing faster is simply spending more time in the chair telling stories."

Possible distress from being a writer. It can be fun; it can be not-so fun.

Thoughts on being more productive while doing less.

Simple ways to improve the place where you sit and write. Remember, writing is the goal. Don't become a full-time interior decorator.

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