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: 30 January-5 February, 2017

Summary of this week:

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

Monday January 30, 2017

I started a new job the week. My schedule will be completely different. I don't know how it will affect my Internet viewing and commentary. We shall see.

In our nation's capitol, the network of cameras is dead. Bad security led to takeover by hackers.

The fake Muslim immigration ban news continues. There is no ban on Muslim immigration. Sorry to break the news.

Software clashes: how anti-virus software breaks browsers and lessens security.

Several tech companies band to try to bring security to the Internet of Things.

Hackers lock hotel guests in their rooms. Internet of Things security? Are you kidding?

President Trump succeeds again in waking Americans to care about their country.

I like Scott Adams' piece on Trump, opening offers, and negotiating to the middle. Mr. Adams has a firm grasp of reality.

Office 365 subscriptions bring Microsoft $500million a year. And this is a failure(?).

A new world: posh dining replaces Oval Office meetings.

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Tuesday January 31, 2017

The screams regarding the Muslim immigration ban continue. I am surprised that so many educated persons have not read the actual executive order. I am also a little surprised at the ignorance of American history.

Google employees hurt Google to protest President's immigration order. Rational?

DropBox releases Smart Sync. Now we can open files stored in the cloud, not locally.

Starbucks launches a beta test of voice ordering from the smartphone. Isn't there something better to do with this technology?

Of more substance, persons in the White House are drafting orders regarding H-1B visas—hire Americans first.

Elon Musk talks with Donald Trump frequently. Now, this upsets some Silicon Valley plutocrats. If, however, they want to deliver a message to the President, guess who they will call.

Twitter seems to be broken this morning...

Want to use Oracle on AWS? You have to pay a lot more than using it on Oracle's cloud services.

Here comes WalMart: two-day, free shipping with no membership dues.

Instagram eats into SnapChat's business with their own stories feature.

Love this quote, please consider it: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu”

Barack Obama seems to have forgotten who was President the past eight years. He had a great opportunity to bring change; he failed miserably. Move on, sir.

Windows 10 Cloud: Microsoft is working on something to compete with Chromebooks. It may never happen, but Microsoft has the time and money to develop it slowly as they did with their own hardware PCs.

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Wednesday February 1, 2017

Short time this morning for Internet viewing.

Apple iPhone sales rebound, and Apple has a good financial quarter.

Apple TV has a bad quarter. There are so many ways to put content on your televisor. Apple's doesn't stand out.

Apple jumps over Samsung as world's largest phone seller.

Facebook is building its own TV app to watch longer videos.

Researchers believe they can communicate with completely paralyzed people via brain waves. Proceed with caution.

The global economy: a Congressman in California writes a memo, the value of a company in India collapses.

No surprise here, the new chairman of the FCC will eliminate a lot of regulations. History has shown that fewer regulations combined with cheap energy pumps up an economy.

Facebook keeps tweeking its algorithms to promote authentic news. Good look with that. No bias involved (not).

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Thursday February 2, 2017

Amazon to spend over $1billion to build an air cargo hub outside of Cincinnati. Here come jobs.

Facebook has a good financial quarter with $3.5billion in profits.

The state of New York sues Charter and Time Warner Cable for slower-than-advertised broadband.

Apple is building its own co-processors to take some of the load of the Intel CPU in its portable computers.

Reddit closes down the /r/altright group. They will find another home.

There seems to be a great reluctance to consider the Apple Watch a success.

GitLab (not GitHub) has a colossal failure to save files.

Unofficial video of Boston Dynamics' Handle robot: it has wheels and arms. Oh my.

Waymo—Google/Alphabet's self-driving car—has become much better at self driving.

AT&T to start 5G service in two cities this year: 400MegaBitsPerSecond service.

There are now over 10,000 packages available for the R programming language.

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Friday February 3, 2017

No Internet viewing today as I had breakfast with some fine gentlemen.

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Saturday February 4, 2017

Facebook releases its image searching AI for general users.

Snap has its IPO—it has 150million daily active users. The definition of success has changed.

Amazon added 110,000 employees this year; overall has 341,000 employees. The new IBM. When I was a senior in college in the prior century, IBM boasted 400,000 employees.

Tennessee may extend high school two years by offering free community college.

A look at Ikea's refugee shelters: build in four hours, last three years in bad weather, have their own solar power.

GoPro: great product, but can't make a penny in the marketplace.

Japan's shrinking population. They need a shift in culture, not government subsidies.

It appears that Chelsea Clinton is running for President.

GitLab (not GitHub) says it found all the lost data on an obscure server that shouldn't have been saving data.

Microsoft releases the Git Virtual File System (GVFS).

Mozilla shifts its focus to Internet Of Things and lays off fifty persons.

Got $1,300? Get this 37.5" curved display from Acer. Wonderful stuff.

In Ohio, deaths from opioids has passed those from car accidents. Who was President these last eight years? What did he do?

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Sunday February 5, 2017

Microsoft now has a luxury keyboard with curves and cushions and all that.

A US Judge overrules another US Judge: Google must give our government emails stored in other countries. They call this extra-territoriality. See, e.g., China and the Opium Wars of the 1800s.

Palit crams the newer Nvidia graphics processors into circuit boards that will fit in Mini-ITX PCs. Put these next to the air conditioner.

A US Judge decides to let 60,000 refugees into the US right now, real quick. I pray this man knows what he is doing and that none of the 60,000 are sneaking in to blow up a bridge or a public gathering. It would be awful to be this man and have to live with something like that. The Washington Post has an editorial this morning written by a person who "vetted" refugee visa applicants. Of course she doesn't have sufficient evidence to know that everyone will be okay. There is 98.6% judgement on these cases. And non-fake-news tells us that some terrorists are pretty good at tricking those who interview them.

Good tips for using public WiFi hotspots. Not all are created equal.

A nice hacker has just sent security tutorials to 150,000 printers that were left open for the taking.

Apple offers a bundle of image- and video-editing software for education.

A list of applications that can help freelance writers.

The person who most benefits from your writing might be you.—Seth Godin

Writer envy and finding a path through and around it.

Writing and failure. Much of the reaction to "failure" is in how we define ourselves and failure.

Some benefits to becoming more disciplined with your time as a writer.

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