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: 8-14 May, 2017

Summary of this week:

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

Monday May 8, 2017

It is Monday. Always a slow news morning on the Inernet.

Censorship is booming in China.

It seems that Microsoft will show a new Surface computer at an event in China.

Facebook decides it need to teach users in the UK how to spot fake news.

The U.S. Air Force's robotic X-37B space plane returned to earth this weekend after two years circling.

Know some of these programming lanauges and always have a job. Not really. How did Pascal make the list?

Over at Elite Daily, the most important event in the world recently was the MTV movie something-or-other awards. Election in France? What?

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Tuesday May 9, 2017

Qualcomm continues to evolve the performance of the Snapdragon line for mobile users.

Think retail is dying in America? Go to China where it is all online shopping.

An Austrian court tells Facebook what to do, not just in Austria, but worldwide. The new extraterritoriality.

Fuchsia: Google's new OS for smartphones that is not based on Linux, but is all new.

Amazon's new Echo is coming. Screen, phone, camera, kitchen sink—we approach the true home computing appliance.

Nvidia partners with dozens of companies that make security cameras for cities. The AI will tell us what is happening.

Invoke: Microsoft Cortana powers yet another smart speaker home appliance.

Amazon has 70% of the world's smart speaker market. Is there such a market? When did that happen?

Our government officials spend $900K of our money to hack one iPhone.

A good attitude at work may not be so good for us. Perhaps it is okay to have a range of emotion during the day.

Elections, candidates, and engineers. I wrote a short story on that several years ago.

A comedian rants; a government website crashes.

Spray paint turns any surface into a touch pad for computer interface.

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Wednesday May 10, 2017

The big news from Washington is that FBI Director Comey has been removed for violating Dept of Justice rules.

Apple becomes the first US company to be worth over $800billion. And at one time they were bankrupt and Bill Gates help keep them afloat.

Apple buys Beddit, who makes sleep-monitoring devices.

Nvidia has a better-than-expected financial quarter due to more GPUs in cloud data centers.

Mark Zuckerburg has become a phone pal with the President.

Amazon officially introduces the Echo Show—a smart speaker with a screen. This is the new home phone.

Amazon drops the required purchase level for free shipping to $25 in its battle with WalMart.

Silicon Valley isn't following the money on this one: $500billion spent yearly on Medicaid.

Our Army may let IT persons skip boot camp. Proceed with caution.

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Thursday May 11, 2017

Windows 10 reaches a mark: 500million machines are running it.

HP is building its own Cortana-powered smart speaker. Let's all join in the fun.

Perhaps I am a bit too tired to be serious this morning; I love this challenge of glamour photo vs real life.

Tesla is now taking orders for solar roof shingles. This is still a stunt as it will never pay for itself.

Snap has 166million users, but is losing money faster than ever. How do these places stay open?

Microsoft releases Azure IoT Edge. Funny name, but the goal is to move computing closer to the sensor with less reliance on connection to the cloud.

Microsoft Presentation Translator: it translates PowerPoint slides on the go.

Our FCC asks for feedback; bots flood the site with fake comments, or some claim.

Amazon, Walmart, and others battle to keep each other from seeing their prices posted on their websites. Of course you can see the prices, but these guys use bots to keep the other guy's bots from reading the prices in real-time, all the time.

Our government to ban personal laptop computers on flights from Europe. I guess our govt has the power to tell airlines what to do all the time?

And is this entire idea just a little bit or a large bit stupid?

Nvidia shows the TeslaV100. The numbers are staggering on this GPU built for high-performance computing—5,120 CUDA cores.

The influence of a single self-driving car on phantom traffic jams is surprisingly large. In other words, "Gosh, people are lousy drivers."

The smart home gets some common sense; a single sensor is all that is needed.

Us ordinary folks can now buy cameras that allow us to update Google's Street View.

Paris Hilton created the post-modern self portrait. At least we have someone to blame.

Toyota officially selects Nvidia as its partner in self-driving cars.

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Friday May 12, 2017

Microsoft introduces Windows Story Remix: yet another, "We'll take your photos and stuff and make a movie for you." Our best minds working on cartoons instead of problems whose solutions would do us some good. Sigh.

Microsoft Fluent Design: changing the look and feel of Windows.

Microsoft promises lots of popular apps will be on the Windows store real soon now, including several Linux distributions that will run in virtual mode.

Apple and Amazon are cooperating on entertainment and will be on each other's platforms.

HP laptops have a keystroke logger in them. On purpose? Accident? A mistake?

The Google-Uber IP lawsuit is now going to a criminal investigation of Uber.

Some good comes of the Apple Watch: it can detect atrial fibrillation and aid doctors and patients.

New Presidential executive order requires our government to follow our government's framework for cybersecurity.

Amazon allocates 47K sq feet of space in its Seattle headquarters for the homeless. Good for Amazon.

Teenagers use #1 Snapchat #2 Amazon (?).

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Saturday May 13, 2017

A closer look at Microsoft's Fluent Design System. It does appear much more pleasing to my eye.

Apple awards Corning $200million in advanced manufacturing fund to make glass in the US.

Has Microsoft made a comeback and is ready to beat Apple and the others?

With the latest Trump Exec Order comes up of updating outdated government IT systems. I suppose there are wishes, but I'm not sure about hope.

After two decades, MP3 is fading. Its replacement is AAC (Advanced Audio Coding).

Google rules the classroom today. Has learning benefited?

The Amazon meeting: no presentation, reading instead.

The silliness of the CEO wearing sneakers while making a billion-dollar presentation.

Magic—change old malls into neat new shiney things. Who pays for it?

Someone unleashes a ransomware program on most of the world.

An accidental hero stops the ransomware.

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Sunday May 14, 2017

Snap loses $2Billion, its stock price falls, and people are shocked that one links to the other. Maybe one day Uber will be profitable. For now, it loses money at a rate that is hard to imagine. Still, Uber is hot. Everyone wants to be Uber. Perhaps my little mind can't comprehend how these things work.

Strong rumors of a new iPad Pro. Note in the article that they expect five to six million units. That is in a falling market. Five to six million units! The definition of success keeps changing.

Sometimes, sometimes, writing is great therapy. Try it. You have a conversation with the blank piece of paper. There. You said it. Now that you have THAT off your chest, you move on.

Time blocking and getting things done as a freelancer. It works.

The freelance writer or anything and the coffee shop. I love them.

Editing the short story. I like the one about reading out loud to someone else.

Writing tips from Hemingway.

The myth of the starving artist. Few practicing artists are poor. Lots of not-quite practicing artists mope along.

Sometimes feedback from readers is best ignored.

Improving the LinkedIn profile to get more writing clients.

Little, practical tips to help the writer move through the day and do more writing.

More on fear in writing and the writing business.

The fear of success (yes, it exists) manifests itself in many ways.

While there are good guidelines out there, there aren't any rules out there.

Searching for a way to have that best-selling book.
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