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: 17-23 April, 2017

Summary of this week:

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

Monday April 17, 2017

The struggles of Uber in India. Uber is the most popular red-ink company in the history of the world. One day they may break even if they don't bankrupt all the world's venture investors first.

Facebook's Instant Articles appears to be failing as the New York Times and others manage to survive on their own.

Speaking of Facebook, if you haven't noticed, Mark Zuckerburg is running for President.

The Empire Strikes Back: the hotel industry lobby fights Airbnb and others.

Google, Apple, or Microsoft: who will win the next battle of the operating system and the inexpensive computing appliance?

How social media sites that remove pornography remove pornography. It happens in a room full of low-paid people in India.

At least one (D) Congressman from Silicon Valley seems to get it.

Excellent video about those food-delivery robots rolling around a few neighborhoods.

In 2004, not a single vehicle finished a self-driving, DARPA test course. Look where we are a decade later.

Income tax forms are due today in the US where we the people do all the work for the government for free.

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Tuesday April 18, 2017

Considering generative adversarial networks and how Google is using them in its AI research.

A look at Facebook's AI Research center in an old building in New York City.

The number of H-1B visa applications dropped slightly (to 199,000, 85,000 are granted). This is supposed to signal a change?

Steve Ballmer slowly, quietly created USAfacts: where does all the tax money go?

The high-powered, gaming laptop falls under $1,000.

How to connect the latest Nvidia graphics card to your Apple laptop. It cost$, but it works well.

In polarized America, several things unite us. One is a dislike for Comcast.

After 20 years, the Intel Developer Forum is going away.

Facebook continues its developer conference as F8 is this week.

Facebook's hardware group, a.k.a., Building 8 is to unveil something at F8 this week.

Getting older. The original Apple I garage build team and the first HomeBrew club members.

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Wednesday April 19, 2017

Our President signs executive order making H-1B visa recipients more expensive. Does little else, though.

Strong rumors for the tenth anniversary of the iPhone. Many models this year.

Google Earth shows up with a new appearance and features.

Apple now gives away all its major apps that it used to sell. This is a quiet, but major change.

Docker releases LinuxKit for developing distributions.

Google releases the Cloud Speech API so developers can put voice recognition in 80 languages in apps.

Why do billionaires wear t-shirts and blue jeans?

The list of Facebook announcements from Zuckerburg on day one of F8.

Zuckerburg's vision of augmented reality everywhere for everything. This is just a basic extension of computer I/O.

IBM's revenues have fallen 20 quarters in a row. Its new business ideas, however, are gaining money.

Facebook makes its deep learning system Caffe2 open source.

Facebook updates its Workplace app.

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Thursday April 20, 2017

Google's Verily begins a 10,000-person, 4-year, $100million health study.

Nintendo will have a mini Super Nintendeo Entertainment System for Christmas this year. Small nostalgia.

Facebook actually really releases their 360-degree video camera for virtual reality developers.

Nothing new here: the big company steals the idea of the new, small company and squishes them in the market.

The Silicon Valley elites continue to show that they don't like the current President.

Google, who lives off ads, plans an ad blocker for the Chrome browser.

"There is no industry, no economy, no market. Only people. And people, people can take action if they care."—Seth Godin

Qualcomm has a good financial quarter.

World domination: Facebook has four of the world's top five downloaded apps.

Lawsuit alleges that Bose tracks what we hear and reports it to companies.

Apple wants to try to use only recycled, not mined, materials. They have no idea how to do it. Good intentions.

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Friday April 21, 2017

Facebook claims that its brain-sensing technology is farther along that most people believe.

Elon Musk creates a new company for brain-computer interface research.

Google Home can know differentiate the voices of persons and allow for individual accounts.

Apple releases Live Photos JavaScript API.

Bridgestone has a new line of air-free bicycle tires—never fix a flat again.

Intel releases a new, very fast SSD technology.

This must be important as it is everywhere today: Juicero offers a full rebate on its $400 juicer thing.

Another important story today is that our current President missed his 90-day deadline for a cyber policy. It wasn't a big deal that our prior President missed the Gitmo-closure deadline by 8 years.

The X-Files will be back for another short, special season. I think they have invented something here. A "television series" that isn't a television series, but a recurring set of limited content now and then that people like and is profitable. The stars, who want to do other creative things, will have plenty of time to do so as they only make 5-10 episodes per year.

It appears that those Gen-Y youngsters stay in their jobs LONGER than their Gen-X predecessors.

A test in India shows that 95% of its engineering graduates can't write a computer program. I wonder what the test would show in America. I wonder what someone with a brain would show about the test.

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Saturday April 22, 2017

Late this year we will have mobile Windows 10 machines using Qualcomm processors.

The Guardian withdraws from social media instant news sites. Seems too much fake news there.

Lilium is a German company that has built a personal jet plane, all electric, vertical takeoff and landing. It works.

Got $1,999? Get Dell's new 27" super duper resolution monitor.

VW's concept vehicle shows that it understands the future of self-driving vehicles. Others play catch up.

Waymo's (Google) suit against Uber increases with more accusations and evidence.

All new Mercedes-Benz cars can connect to Amazon Echo and Google Home. The rich have more toys.

NASA shows its plan to go to Mars (not land on it). They are trying to build a space launch vehicle that will do what we did in 1966.

An Apple data center in Denmark will take heat from computers and send it to homes. Why has this taken so long?

Scientific research and fraud. And people wonder why people wonder about climate change research.

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Sunday April 23, 2017

The H-1B visa program and how well-know, successful American companies used it to lay off Americans.

Supposedly, Britain goes without coal power for the first time in 135 years.

China resupplies its space station with automated vehicle. The next people on the moon: Chinese. The first people on Mars: not NASA folks.

Fascinating: scientists march for facts. The fact is, they are marching because they didn't vote for our current President. If they were marching for facts, they would have screamed about this week's story regarding fraud in peer-reviewed research papers. Hence, their facts are fake news. Again, fascinating.

To countless teenagers who had the wrong teacher in high school, it means, "a boring collection of right answers, categorized by topic."---Seth Godin

Science isn't something to believe or not believe. It's something to do.–Seth Godin

System76 is moving towards building their own hardware for their Linux systems.

How can I make this work anyhow? How can I move past all the reasons or excuses for not doing this?

No time to write? or is it no desire to work hard? Good question.

For those who have writer's block (whatever that is), here are some tips.

Basic tips for writing better. If you are a novelist, skip this. If you HAVE TO write a few things each day, read this.

How freelance writers can use LinkedIn to find jobs here and there.

Myths and non-myths about book editors and publishers.

This guy wrote 20 novels in five years and made money and learned a few things along the way.

Write faster for writers who seem to write slow. The author of this post discusses how incredibly slow he writes. That is not me, but this all seems to help him.

One freelance writer's expeiences actually making money.

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