Dwayne
Phillips' Day Book
Items I
happen to view each day. Science, Technology, Management, Culture, and
Writing
This is my day book for this week. It is a log of things
I see on the Internet.
Go to Day Book Home
and pointer to previous weeks
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Email me at d.phillips@computer.org
This week: 25 November-1
December, 2019
Summary of this week:
- It is Thanksgiving week in the US
- Leaked Chinese documents show internment camps and surveillance state
- HPE has a bad financial quarter
- HP Inc has a good financial quarter
- Yet again, online shopping is breaking all records this year
Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday
- Thursday - Friday - Saturday
- Sunday
Monday 25 November 2019
Uber
has a major boo boo in London with uninsured drivers. Hence, it loses
its license to operate.
Internal
documents owned by the governors of China are leaked. This is a
Snowden-like find that details how the surveillance state operates and
how detention camps for the disliked are run.
Sir
Tim Berners-Lee writes the Contract for the Web which requires endorsing
governments, companies and individuals to make concrete commitments to
protect the web from abuse and ensure it benefits humanity.
Our
Army is investigating TikTok to determine if service members should use
this. In question is the security of data.
Xerox
tries to buy HP. HP rejects the offer. A hostile takeover is the next
step.
AMD
announces Threadripper (great name) processors with more and more cores.
....
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me at d.phillips@computer.org
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Tuesday 26 November 2019
The
"developing world" is still so. Hence, they don't have the luxury of
renewable clean energy. Coal still heats their homes.
HPE
falters in this last financial quarter.
In
California, and many other states, the Dept of Motor Vehicles "generates
revenue" by selling drivers' names, addresses, etc, to commercial
companies.
The
Seattle City Council raises the minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers
and raises the taxes on rides.
This
year's holiday ad (short, heart-touching movie) from Apple.
One
researcher finds a way to remove the haze in underwater video.
Seth
Godin on Thanksgiving: When in doubt, default to gratitude.
Boston
Dynamics has loaned one of its "robot dogs" to Massachusetts State
Police for evaluation on the bomb squad. Put a machine in harm's way
instead of a person.
Once
again, questions surface about the working conditions at Amazon
warehouses.
The
computing workforce is younger than the rest of the workforce. Not
surprising, but the gap appears to be growing.
You
think the climate is changing? Harken back to the year 536.
Here
comes 5G (?) to always-connected PCs in 2021.
Linux
5.4 is released.
Offloading
processing to the cloud, Amazon is bringing Alexa to smaller,
less-expensive Internet-of-Things devices. Yes, we may soon be able to
talk to our toasters.
.....
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me at d.phillips@computer.org
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Wednesday 27 November 2019
How
Texas Instruments won the education market. What is surprising is that
TI has not advanced their calculators. Also surprising is that schools
aren't using calculator emulators on the tablets they already own.
Zuckerburg
held thoughtful discussions about the future of tech this year. Those
with whom he met, however, seemed to be mirror images of himself.
Amazing how smart persons can act so stupid.
Facebook
buys one of the biggest players in the VR marketplace.
HP
Inc. had a better-than-expected financial quarter.
Alexa
now responds to emotion with emotion, well sort of.
Another
tech company backs away from criticism of the Communist Party of China.
A
clever Raspberry Pi built into a Pelican case for .... emergencies or
the just plain fun of building.
....
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me at d.phillips@computer.org
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Thursday 28 November 2019
Today is Thanksgiving Day in the US.
There
have been several stories this week that the man-made climate change has
gone past the point of no return. We are doomed. I guess we might as
well stop spending money on this now.
We
have already spent $50Billion in online shopping this November. We will
break all prior records. I guess the economy is pretty good even
though we are saddled with "the worst president in our history."
India's
Vikram lander made it to the moon, had a rough "landing," but its
scientific instruments are functioning and sending home data.
TikTok
apologizes for blocking anti-Chinese comments regarding their internment
or education camps.
A
South Korean crypto exchange admits to losing $49Million in crypto
currency. I suppose it is possible to lose something that only existed
in a computer network.
This
story has been floating around the Internet for a few days, so it must
be true. Cows wearing VR produce more milk.
A
Go champion retires citing AI as one of the reasons. You just can't beat
the machine any more.
Our
Justice Dept updates our drone policy with new regulations regarding
security and privacy.
American
tech companies deal with the governors in China in many ways. One day
they wake to learn what those governors do to their subjects.
If
you are willing to lie, it is easy to obtain your own .gov domain.
Am
I ripe for being replaced by AI? Three questions (three "yes" answers is
bad): Is my job fairly repetitive? Are there well-defined objectives to
evaluate my job? Is there a large amount of data accessible to train an
AI system?
....
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me at d.phillips@computer.org
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Friday 29 November 2019
Facebook
and Instagram had major outages on Thanksgiving Day.
Amazon
updates its ARM processors for its cloud servers.
Someone
creates a strain of E.coli to each carbon dioxide. I trust they know
what they are doing and will not release something that results in ...
well, science fiction writers have gone through this plot many times.
Holiday
shopping is already brisk enough to crash servers.
Learning
slowly: presidential candidates are still not using security features
available to protect emails.
Toshiba
has created a blood test that can detect 13 types of cancer.
Dell
reports that Intel is still behind on CPU shipments. Demand is up.
The economy continues to hum, not bad for the worst president in history.
Not
one to disappoint us, Apple boosts its AirPod manufacturing to two
million units per month.
Ubuntu
19.10 is here, and its appears to be fast.
In
Louisiana, the state government is slowing recovering from a malware
attack. It seems that backups and all that weren't performed as they
should have been.
....
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me at d.phillips@computer.org
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Saturday 30 November 2019
Scientist
use undersea fiber optic cables to detect tremors. Surprise. New fault
lines are found and undetected quakes are detected. We don't know as
much about our planet as we know. Climate folks, take notice.
A
short video showing how Facebook uses object detection and labeling on
videos to find and remove content.
AMD
now has better processors for the desktop than Intel. Two questions: (1)
Will they sell better than Intel's? (2) Does the desktop market matter
as everyone goes up to the cloud?
Meanwhile
in China, it is now illegal to publish fake news. "Fake" being
subjective and the governors decide. Hence, take care what you say
you mere subjects.
Using
BERT to label sentences as positive or negative.
In case you haven't noticed, we are in the midst of Black Friday, Cyber
Monday, and discounts on everything.
DoorDash
Kitchens: Kitchen space rented by all the places we know so they can do
delivery only foods.
....
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me at d.phillips@computer.org
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Sunday 1 December 2019
Each
day this week sets a new record for online sales.
Out
in western China, the governors are using AI to predict who, when, and
where "incidents" will occur so as to round up the usual suspects ahead
of time and re-learn them.
Analysis
of Russian propaganda campaigns shows that nothing is new. They use the
basic advertising techniques that have worked for centuries.
The
life expectancy in the US falls again. This is not a health care issue.
It comes from deaths in middle age caused by troubled lives and the
destructive thing we do when troubled.
A
baby Yoda (yes, that) is receiving twice the viewing as any Democratic
candidate for president. This is a lesson in communication. Take note if
you are in that business. See, e.g., Hallmark Christmas movies.
The
Pascal of the 21st century, the Python programming language has achieved
dominance in the data science field. Libraries built on libraries built
on libraries mean you type a few statements and viola...it happens.
Always
wanting to save us, psychiatrists invent Problematic Smartphone Usage as
a disorder to be treated by them for a small fee. Nice industry—you
create things that people have to pay you to explain.
A look at the shapes of
stories concept from Kurt Vonnegut. Graph the ups and downs of the
characters on a timeline. Simple concpet really, but interesting.
This
could be useful: the collage method (collAge, not collEge). Make a
collage out of whatever you want. Collage your book or story or article
or post or ... The exercise helps some writers generate and organize
ideas. Try it. If it works, use it.
More
time. Give yourself the time to write first, other stuff comes later.
Helping
writers manage their time. We all have the same amount. Energy? Maybe
not.
Some
lessons on Copyright. Please pay attention.
....
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me at d.phillips@computer.org
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