Summary of this week:

• The Philadelphia Eagles win the Super Bowl
• Uber settles with Waymo on technology theft, pay$ hundred$ of million$
• Amazon takes the #2 spot in worldwide tablet shipments
• SpaceX successfully launches the Falcon Heavy, it is a step
• Intel releases yet another fix to Spectre
• Twitter finally turns a profit
• Nvidia rakes in the money on AI applications
• The New York Times is fabulously suce$$ful online

Monday February 5, 2018

The Philadelphia Eagles do what NFC East teams tend to do and beat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl.

Google Translate works for simple things, and a no cost to the user that is pretty good. Complex phrases still evade it.

LIDAR sensors find massive Mayan ruins in Guatemala.

All the data gathered by autonomous vehicles will tell law enforcement everything about auto accidents. And they may be able to get the data without warrant.

The Center for Humane Technology begins with former tech employees trying to break the addictive nature of today's tech.

Uber and Waymo finally go to court today. Who stole what technology secrets?

Alphabet is in talks with the Saudis to build data centers there.

Tuesday February 6, 2018

First-hand experience with Intel's prototype Vaunt smart glasses. In a revolutionary step, they look regular, not revolutionary.

Nvidia teams with Continental AG on self-driving automobile technology. It appears that the best and brightest are admitting they need help with this.

Several states have now told ISPs, "If you contract with the state, you must use our definition of net neutrality with everyone." Result will be ISPs NOT contracting with the state.

The one-person-carrying drone is almost here. Lands in your backyard, you step in, it takes you someplace. No human pilot. We shall see.

Now Facebook is in trouble with an election commission. The result will be that Facebook squelches all political endorsement and discussion. Just show photos of your grandkids in the future.

All the Super Bowl commercials.

While tablet purchases continue to decline, Amazon surprisingly passes Samsung as the world's number two seller. I bought an inexpensive Amazon tablet this week and an expensive Samsung one at Christmas.

The US stock market fives downwards in two days. Technology stocks fall with everyone else.

HP updates its high-end workstation line with newer processors.

..... Email me at d.phillips@computer.org 

Wednesday February 7, 2018

SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon Heavy rocket. They had some, but not all, of the booster engines land safely for reuse.

Google buys a million-square-foot office building in New York City.

ESPN has its own streaming service coming real soon now for $4.99 a month.

It appears that Russians simply conned various political campaigns in 2016. Of course we slam the con artists and not the gullible folks who would fall for anything. Such comes with wanting something a little bit too much.

Microsoft announces a new cloud storage deal for businesses where they can switch for free (for a while).

Story about those who are preserving old television sets for museums and collectors.

How they make Hasseblad cameras one at a time. I should have bought one way back when at a time when I had the money and nothing else to do.

How Facebook tried to groom and poll and tweak the public image of Zuckerburg. Folks, he's a rich kid who went to college with other rich kids, and they all became richer. Next question. 

The Game of Jedi is coming as two creative, and financially successful, teams merge for the next set of Star Wars pre-makes. That's Entertainment!

"We'd prefer to engage with a human, every time."—Seth Godin. Well said.

HP shows a new 4" cube computer that appears to be for the conference table or collaborative work spaces.

..... Email me at d.phillips@computer.org 
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Thursday February 8, 2018

The smart home: it senses everything and records everything. What could possibly go wrong?

LinkedIn, now owned by Microsoft, releases Resume Assistant that is integrated with Office 365.

Intel releases yet another fix for the Spectre problem.

Police in China are wearing glasses with cameras and facial recognition interfaces. The better to find and regulate the subjects.

Local governments are reconsidering their use of license plate readers and how they share the information with other law enforcement agencies. It appears that many local governments don't like our current President and now resent any connection with our Federal government.

John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, dies at 70.

Amazon starts the integration with Whole Foods with deliveries of groceries in a few places.

..... Email me at d.phillips@computer.org 

Friday February 9, 2018

Well, we've reached it, http becomes persona non grata of the Internet. What did we do wrong?

The stagnation of the Canadian tech sector. At one time the University of Waterloo dominated the computer science sector and produced all the top tools that top talent worldwide used.

The Broadcom purchase of Qualcomm continues to stumble along. It may never happen.

Nvidia has yet another good financial quarter as they rake in the money from selling GPUs for machine learning applications.

The government of India gets in on the European act of extracting money from American tech firms in the name of antitrust.

We still seem to be embarrassed to use Wikipedia. We wrote it; why are we chagrined?

It is good to learn that someone has a grasp on machine learning and what we today call artificial intelligence.

For the first time ever, Twitter made a profit for a financial quarter.

Don't look now, but one of the more successful Internet enterprises is ... The New York Times. Yes, there are dozens of simple ways to go around the paywall, but many people, surprising to me, are paying for the newspaper.

..... Email me at d.phillips@computer.org 

Saturday February 10, 2018

Intel flies a formation of 1200 drones at the Olympics opening ceremony. In ten years we won't have fireworks displays as the drone is the future.

Amazon is about to jump into competition with UPS and FedEx.

Misuse of government property in Russia—nuclear scientists use a supercomputer to mine crypto currency. Yikes, they got caught.

oooops, insider leaking. Apple loses critical source code as "low-level" employees carry the code out the front door.

Uber backs out of the Waymo lawsuit, pays a few hundred million$, and agree$ not to use the technology they stole.

We invent problems for ourselves. "Smart luggage" pieces have batteries, and our airlines can't deal with batteries, or so it seems.

Yet another retro classic keyboard for post-post-post-modern typewriters, a.k.a., computers ("what's a computer", asked the world's most annoying kid.) These things must be good as we keep buying them. Can I just have an old IBM keyboard?

..... Email me at d.phillips@computer.org  Go to Day Book Home and pointer to previous weeks

Sunday February 11, 2018

Apple sold more than 8million watches last quarter. That is more than the entire Swiss watch industry combined. The definition of success has changed.

Hiring the best vs hiring the diverse. All hiring decisions are subjective judgement. And if you think your organization hires well, consult professional sports and the results of the experts drafting the best.

A review of 11 income tax sites that are all "free."

Satellite imagery and limiting who can see the high-quality imagery.

Basic reminders for writers and all freelancers.

This is a good source of short story publishers. They are out there. They don't pay much, but they do pay more than selling one or two copies here and there. Take care with the rights that you sell. If someone reads your story and wants to produce a movie...

Taking various observations and creating stories from them. A few ideas here.

This is an excellent post on teaching writing and writing seminars and such. MUST READ.

The anxiety of being out of place and how that can spur writing.

The many facets of being in a writing community. You need to read the writing of others.

"breaking" writing "rules." Yes, rules have a reason and so does doing something else.

..... Email me at d.phillips@computer.org