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.


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This week: 9-15 May, 2022

Summary of this week:


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


Monday 9 May 2022

It takes time to recharge an electric vehicle. It also takes power. To recharge "quickly" requires power that is not available in the average home. This is a hug problem with the vehicles. They are not practical for thousand-mile trips.

American government regulators are trailing behind successful American tech companies. The reasons are simple (compensation). And perhaps this is a good thing that government is always trailing behind---at least it is a good thing that the regulators are. Perhaps it is a bad thing when the defenders trail so far behind.

Predictions that the pandemic prosperity will end soon and bring job losses to the tech world.

Speaking of jobs, the virtual assistant field is growing quickly. Work from anywhere and assist others.

Clean energy? Some are calling for more hydroelectric (dams) generation. It works.

Coupons are here for online training. Of course, many people buy these and never use them.

Know your audience! This is a basic. It cannot be ignored in any form of communication.

What comes first, the title or the story? Yes. They both do.

The concept of retirement for the freelance worker. Members of some professions never retire.

How one person made lots of money and kept a one-person business.

A post from a blogger who has put "something" out there seven days a week for ten years. I have done twice a week for, wait I lose track. I do this every day and then there are two more that I do twice a week. And then...

Some tips for managing multiple clients as a freelancer. We are all freelancing. Almost all of us have several clients. These are pretty good tips for personal project management.

Some general tips for improving as a writer. Note, improving as a writer does not equal writing better. I like these tips. Try them all and keep what works.

How C.S. Lewis wrote (he saw pictures and described them aloud), and how that can translate into the tips from this blog post.

Journal writing is one of a very few practices that I recommend for EVERYONE. Here is a post extolling now as the time to begin.

Please read and heed: "The barriers to getting a book published have never been lower, and the consequence of this reality---that anyone can publish a book---is that predatory bad actors come out of the woodwork, and would-be authors must be on guard."

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Tuesday 10 May 2022

One example of China's virus benefiting China. The pandemic forced Apple to stop sending American engineers into China and hire Chinese engineers instead.

We live in the podcast era. Ad revenues up and climbing. The goal is no longer to have your five-minute-a-day segment be syndicated nationwide. Create your own Internet network and broadcast to the world. Bigger audience brings ads and even bigger audience brings more ads and more money.

Rumors about what we will see at Google I/O 2022 on Wednesday.

Asus has an idea about what to do with all that space on laptop computers: provide a second screen. This time it works pretty well.

This larger laptop from Asus tilts the keyboard to a better angle for typing.

Here is something to gain a little attention in the coffee shop.

This story must be important as it is all over the Internet: Lincoln College closes. One reason is that a ransomware attack hurt its fund raising.

Due to drought and other things, the water level in Lake Meade as fallen to record lows. And, to no surprise, lots of things of becoming visible on the new shoreline.

Sometimes we have a little common sense in Congress as some members want to allow highly educated and industrious foreigners into the US to stay, work, and produce. This is the way it was a some point in time. Why must a new law be passed to do this again?

State-of-the-art in spinning disk drives now pushes storage to 22TeraBytes and 26TeraBytes.

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Wednesday 11 May 2022

This "jumping robot" or machine can launch itself up 30 meters, and that is triple the old record. Fun stuff, but there are real applications for this.

A look at Nvidia's H100 processor built for AI.

Pandemic prosperity continues for GlobalFoundries as Apple et al did not invest in their own factories five years ago.

Intel shows new Alder Lake mobile CPUs with new HX series chips. Lots of marketing jargon for new processors aimed at high-end gaming on portable computers.

Tales of how Federal law enforcement agencies are working around laws. This is unfortunate for all of us.

Google and Meta are installing undersea cables to bring high-speed connections to Africa. These investments also give Google and Meta the opportunity to take advantage of African nations and peoples. Let's hope it works out well.

After 20 years on the market, Apple discontinues the iPod. It changed the world by putting "content" in a pocket package. It stored and played music. Entertainment when and where we wanted.

It appears that we will spend $40Billion on aid to Ukraine. I hope at least half of the money goes to Ukraine. Still, spending this much without cutting anything out of the budget is not good for the long term. Someone will make a lot of profit on this. Putin has given them money.

Microsoft is about to open an Inclusive Tech Lab at its campus in Washington.

Lenovo updates its Legion line of gaming laptops.

Fear and loathing at Google for the people who build the Google Cloud Platform.

Meanwhile in Pulaski, Virginia, here come a couple hundred homes that are "3D printed."

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Thursday 12 May 2022

I like this thought on technology and value for the organization. "Don't start your Data Strategy with Data. Start your data strategy by understanding how your organization produces and measures value creation. This provides the guidelines for determining where and how to apply data and analytics to optimize and/or accelerate the organization's value creation capabilities." I have seen too many cases where a technology or buzzword was thought to be "the answer." Difficult person-to-person work was avoided at all cost (and there was a lot of cost that could have been avoided.)

We've now decided that "computing at the edge" is everything. Intel provides tools for such hype. The edge has always been there. Now, however, we have low-cost and low-power computing to put at the edge.

Intel shows its latest graphics processing units built for the data center.

Qualcomm attempts to expand beyond the wireless marketplace and go into robotics and other "edge" applications.

Google I/O is underway. Here is one summary of the announcements from the Keynote.

Meanwhile is San Franciso, police note that driverless cars are roving surveillance systems that record everything all the time.

The concept of ambient computing and how Google and others are working towards it.

Tech stocks fall and oil prices rise. For the time being, Saudi Aramco passes Apple as the world's most valued company.

Google brings simulated lighting and other effects to Google Meet so we will all look better during those meetings.

We discover large amounts of Helium-3. It is a fuel for fusion and abundant clean energy. We didn't know it was here on earth. Doom and gloom go to optimism. Once again, we learn something about our home that we didn't know.

Nvidia releases its Linux GPU drivers as open source.

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Friday 13 May 2022

This story must be important as it is all over the Internet. Apple will use a USB-C connector on iPhones starting in 2023.

I like this little blog post. It shows how many folks are attempting to use AI/ML to solve problems for which simple solutions already exist.

Google and Samsung announce Health Connect. It is software that eases the connection among various health and fitness software.

A Federal judge rules in favor of Google against our Dept of Justice regarding Google employees "hiding" by CC'ing lawyers on all emails.

Governors across the US are realizing the value of facial recognition technology in slowing crime. Yes, it can be abused as all tech can be abused. Recall that the Boston Marathon killers would never have been caught without facial recognition systems.

Per above, technology does not abuse people. Abusive people abuse people. Sorry, we cannot blame the machine.

HP updates its ZBook Studio laptop. It has more powerful GPUs and other computing power that is rare in a computer than weighs less than four pounds.

A look at the Lenovo Yoga 9i.

Pandemic prosperity continues for Disney with 8million new Disney+ subscribers.

A call for cellphones that last five years. I am a bit puzzled as I use my cellphones that long without any problems.

Virgin Orbit is acquiring two new Boeing 747s (it has one now) for air launching satellites.

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Saturday 14 May 2022

Pandemic prosperity continues for Arm.

Again we have stories about "conservative" parents, a.k.a., citizens who who voice their opinion about how their taxes are spent. No one is banning the publishing of books. That is a book publisher's decision. These are members of the public discussing how public funds are spent to stock the shelves of publicly funded libraries.

Why is Apple going to USB-C for the iPhone? Because European regulators are requiring it. What the market, a.k.a., all the people didn't want, the regulators forced.

Chipmaking prices to rise 20%. Those chips go in everything and everywhere. More inflation. And still, no one is talking war reparations from China by causing all this with their virus.

Thoughts on how the iPod brought content to our pockets. That led to the value of a smartphone. That led to the demise of the iPod.

We go forward to the 1980s when the lawyers prevented artificial intelligence from helping us do our jobs.

A look at the state-of-the-practice of tablet computers in the spring of 2022.

Three months ago, the experts would have scoffed at this story. Yet another example of how experts are usually wrong. See, e.g., COVID-19.

An experiment shows that algae can produce electricity. In this experiment, the algae powered a microprocessor. Scaling up may be possible.

This probably means nothing, but a UK court ruled that baldness is related to a "protected characteristic of sex." Hence, using the term is a form of sexual harassment.

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Sunday 15 May 2022

One family's experience with Alexa Together. It is a service and system from Amazon with the goal of letting the elderly live in their homes longer.

Memories of the iPod. At work, I pioneered the use of an iPod to hold video documentation of the systems we built. The users loved the idea. The managers scoffed at it as they were "old" and didn't see the need or desire for any of that. As with most pioneering efforts in my career, it came to nothing.

A new monitor from HP has features to aid with (what else?) these ZoomerTeams meetings we all have.

Meanwhile in Texas, court battle continue regarding being moderated and banned from social media. The liberal media portrays Texans as backwards red necks. In reality, they are on the leading edge of the coming political debate about free speech and the public place. Has social media become so successful as to now be part of the public square? Banning pornography and repulsive content is one thing. Banning political speech is another.

There is a trend in forming unions. Are people doing it to organize and improve their working conditions? Are the younger people doing it simply to find a place to belong? Institutions where people used to "belong" have failed.

One observation from Ukraine: the complete ignorance of news reporters to what happens in a war. Have any of these persons ever read a history book? Do any of these publications have editors?

We inch closer to being able to run Python code in a browser. This would change cloud computing for the better or worse.

Those who work in open-source software have always worked remotely. The past two years have been ones where they looked out the window and saw cars still in driveways in the middle of the day.

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