Summary of this week:

• Mobile World Congress is this week, so lots of product announcements coming
• Apple confirms that Google is behind the iCloud storage
• Apple opens its own health care only for its own employees
• YouTube censors users, then restores them
• Best Buy to close 250 mobile-phone stores
• Github "survives" massive DDoS attack
• Dropbox and Google partner

Monday February 26, 2018

Mobile World Congress is this week, so lots of product announcements coming.

Huawei goes against the trends and introduces a high-end Android tablet.

And Huawei enters the market for luxury, thin portable computers.

High tech versus time-proven devices such as pencil and paper.

Qualcomm demonstrates the speeds of the coming 5G world. How about 3,000 MBPS instead of 50?

Lenovo shows three new Chromebooks built for schools and teenagers. 30-inch drop test.

And yes, we have the Samsung Galaxy S9.

Tuesday February 27, 2018

Strong rumors that Apple will release three new iPhones later this year.

These rumors are true: Apple has been using Google's cloud infrastructure to provide iCloud storage.

Apple joins the growing number of plutocrat companies with its own medical facilities for its own people. Look for these plutocrats to declare independence from nationalities sometime in the next generation.

Hmm, when the Obama campaign used computing and telecommunication technologies, it was genius. When the Trump campaign broke new ground with social media, it was all evil and we were all duped. Fascinating. And, our former President chastises the tech companies that allowed our current President to succeed. Hmmm, no former President did this when Obama succeeded. A pattern here??? (of course there is).

The California DMV has opened the roads for driver-less car testing. A little late, but perhaps not too late.

Wednesday February 28, 2018

Asus updates its ZenPhone. Of course it is a copy of the iPhone. Copies sell.

A "downside" of Uber/Lyft is that people are forgoing mass transit and putting more cars on the road. "Downside" is, of course, a subjective term.

And people are using Uber/Lyft to reach the emergency room instead of calling an ambulance. Yikes.

Digital phenotyping: searching for clues of mental and physical health by patterns of behavior on digital devices. I am sure this works. I suspect there is much room for misuse.

Amazon buys Ring and moves into the smart doorbell market.

Palantir and a secretive part of the New Orleans Police Department partnered in predictive policing without most of the city government knowing.

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

Thursday March 1, 2018

Google opens a new site devoted to machine learning, artificial intelligence, tools, and education. The site itself is here.

Google brings its Slack competitor, Hangouts Chat, out of beta.

And Microsoft is improving its Slack competitor—Teams.

Best Buy is closing all 250 of its mobile-phone stores.

Facebook releases their own job posting feature. They want to appeal to those who don't have professional resumes on LinkedIn.

News Flash (not): AI won't make you unemployed. It will, however, make you learn skills that you probably won't be able to learn in order to get a job.

More news on the unbelievably bad Bro Culture at Google. Again, pity any fool who treats my granddaughter in such a manner. I will meet them in a way they will never forget and always regret.

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

Friday March 2, 2018

Why is everyone so anxious to admit that the Russians have superior knowledge of computer security? I mean, really, the Russians break into everyone's systems and everyone seems to take it as a matter of pride to admit that the Russians whipped them.

And maybe our President was right about this deep nation stuff with haters hiding in the Federal workforce. Time for reform and tightening of the old rules about politics and civil servants?

Recent research agrees with the Old Testament—the race (this one to money) is not always won by the swiftest.

Github was hit with a massive distributed denial of service attack.

People are buying used smartphones from each other instead of new ones from Apple and Samsung.

Our President is delving into the bully pulpit and social meddling by meeting with video game producers regarding violence.

Fascinating story here with many angles. One is that free information allows extensive studies, better than the really expensive studies that governments undertake.

Rumors are that Amazon, and everyone else, is taking the next logical step with gadgets we talk to and making a real-time language translator.

Facebook reverses course and will keep one News Feed. The other option actually did the opposite of the intended.

The sales of the traditional desktop computer continue to fall.

Microsoft releases Soundscape: a free app to help the visually impaired navigate. This is what we should be doing with all this technology.

Dropbox and Google partner to bring use of the G Suite to Dropbox storage.

Uber Health: a new service that allows your doctor to get you a ride to your appointment. Finally, something useful and good.

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

Saturday March 3, 2018

Camera company RED teams with Sharp to make an 8K 70-inch display. This is a prototype. No price yet. Something for the (really big and prosperous) home.

Arizona now allows self-driving car tests with no human safety driver on board.

Google creates a tool that lets us change the background in our videos for YouTube. Really? Neat, but really? Couldn't they work on a real problem that actually helps people?

Out in western China, AI and other technology helps the government predictively police the subjects and re-educate them.

MIT studies driving for Uber, Lyft, et al...You make $3 an hour at best. It is a bad job. It always has been a bad job. The companies con people into doing it.

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

Sunday March 4, 2018

Bill Gates on the dangers of cryptocurrencies. Money laundering, illegal drugs, etc. seem to come along with them.

It appears that Google Fiber didn't fulfill its promise. Deployment was too slow, and now we have 5G wireless real soon now. This is the bane of the high-tech designers. They learn (over and over again too slowly) that to manufacture and install on a large scale involves a workforce that is alien to them. The installers just don't work like the engineers and programmers who have big bonuses and stock options coming.

FIFA steps into the 1970s and approves video assistant referees.

Strong rumors that Apple will lower the price of the MacBook Air this spring. Just in time for a technology refresh at my house. My battery is on its last legs.

In the US, the old use Facebook while the young use SnapChat and Instagram.

This post considers all the iPhone we can currently purchase. Gosh the prices are rising.

A ranking of the best 50 computer science universities in the world. Of course I couldn't afford to attend any of the US schools.

Consider this story in this light: a company declares that they will not support civil liberties—something in the Bill of Rights that limits the power of government over citizens. Everyone is born with this right, and our government cannot infringe on that natural-born right. A company, however, seeks to punish a group that stands for that right. Hmmm.

Bad sentences that ruin an otherwise good story

And just about the opposite, great initial and final lines.

Of course the setting of a story moves the story in different ways. Still, when boy meets girl...you know what happens.

Promote your novels by speaking about them to crowds.

Tips on writing faster. It is a sprint. Prepare (rest), sprint, repeat.

This is a good post about the number of words typically found in different types of writing these days.

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