We are excited for a new space opera from John Scalzi, not new but awesome Nebula Award winners, and we get teary-eyed over an A.I. as we wrap up Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora.
DTNS 2768 – electronic Sports Player Network (eSPN)
ELEAGUE goes live on Twitch and TBS Jenn Cutter is here to talk with Tom Merritt about why hot wings are the signal this is esports big time moment. Plus, Twitter loosens character counts and Toyota drops cash on Uber.
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Show Notes
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Today in Tech History – May 24, 2016
1844 – Samuel Morse sent the message “What hath God wrought” from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the United States Capitol to the Mount Clair train depot in Baltimore, Maryland. It was the first public demonstration of the telegraph.
1935 – General Electric Co. sold the first spectrophotometer. It could detect two million different shades of color and make a permanent record chart of the results.
1961 – Wes Clark began working on the Laboratory Instrument Computer (LINC), at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. It was one of the earliest examples of a user-friendly machine that you could communicate with while it operated. It’s credited with setting the standard for personal computer design.
Like Tech History? Get the illustrated Year in Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
Cordkillers 122 – 4K HoDoR (w/ Peter Wells)
Android TV gets loads of upgrades. Can BitTorrent revolutionize live streaming? And Netflix uses speed tests as a marketing tool.
DTNS 2767 – Beating the Self Driving Horse
We don’t trust self-driving cars but chances are we get them anyway. Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt discuss whether companies can convince US drivers to take their hands off the wheel.
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A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.
If you are willing to support the show or give as little as 5 cents a day on Patreon. Thank you!
Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!
Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!
Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit
Show Notes
To read the show notes in a separate page click here!
Today in Tech History – May 23, 2016
1825 – William Sturgeon exhibited the electromagnet in a practical form for the first time. The exhibition accompanied the reading of a paper, recorded in the Transactions of the Society of Arts for 1825 (Vol xliii, p.38).
1908 – John Bardeen was born. He grew up to win the Nobel Prize twice, once for inventing the transistor, and once for figuring out superconductivity.
1995 – Sun Microsystems Inc. announced the programming language Java and the accompanying Web browser HotJava at the SunWorld ’95 convention.
2002 – Netflix began selling its stock publicly on the NASDAQ. It rose from it’s initial price, unusual for the time when tech company stocks were generally in poor shape.
Like Tech History? Get the illustrated Year in Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
Today in Tech History – May 22, 2016
1973 – Bob Metcalfe of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center wrote a memo on an IBM selectric typewriter, outlining how to connect personal computers to a shared printer. Metcalfe says “If Ethernet was invented in any one memo, by any one person, or on any one day, this was it.”
1980 – Namco released an arcade game called Puck-Man. When it was released in the US in October the name was altered to Pac-Man.
1990 – Microsoft released Windows 3.0. It featured big improvements in interface and multitasking. It’s Control Panel feature caught the eye of Apple which sued, and lost.
Like Tech History? Get the illustrated Year in Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
DTNS 2766 – The Echo For The Rest Of The World
Apple Bricking iPads, The NBN Police Rids, and Google Prepares to Ship The Echo to the Rest of the world.
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<!–Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.–>
Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.
Follow us on Soundcloud.
A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.
If you are willing to support the show or give as little as 5 cents a day on Patreon. Thank you!
Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!
Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!
Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit
Show Notes
To read the show notes in a separate page click here!
Weekly Tech Views (The Tech – No Logic Blog) – May 21, 2016
Real tech stories. Really shaky analysis.
For the week of May 17-21, 2016…
Style For The Camera!
Google introduced Duo, a one-on-one video calling app. It includes a feature called Knock Knock which allows you to see the caller before you answer, an entertainment feature providing laughs you can only get by watching someone suddenly remember it’s a video call and frantically try to rub away whatever that is they feel at the edge of their left nostril.
Mmmmm, Dark Arts
Google is taking submissions for “N” names for the latest version of Android. Two near-certainties: First, 85% of the suggestions will be some variation of Boaty McBoatface. The guess here is a whole lot of Nerdy McNerdfaces. Second, failing a marketing partnership with Nutella or Nutter Butter, I think we can all agree that the obvious choice will be Necromancy. I mean Nougat. Nougat. Necromancy would just be weird. There’s nothing sweet about the black magic used to communicate with the dead. If that’s even what it means. I guess I saw it in a movie once. So yeah, Nougat.
We Said We’d Recognize It, Not Read It
Android Wear 2.0 will include handwriting recognition. Wait, they’re going to recognize my handwriting? On a watch face? Challenge accepted. During the week, I take notes on tech stories. Doing the Weekly Tech Views takes about three hours longer than it should because I can’t recognize my handwriting. When I sign the credit card display at the grocery store, the resultant squiggles could be interpreted as “Mike Range,” assuming you knew my name ahead of time and that my goal was to impart that information to the screen. Still, you could be forgiven for guessing “Nirk Puljz.” Or “a three-year-old’s drawing of an unraveled ball of yarn.” And that’s on a, what, six-inch screen? And Android Wear is going to read what I write on a watch? Good luck, Carnac.
Contact Your Doctor For Critical Vulnerabilities Lasting Over Four Hours
Google is making HTML5 the default in Chrome instead of Flash. Sites using Flash will cause a prompt to appear asking the user if they want to enable Flash. If the user answers “yes,” another popup appears–a three-page treatise on the possible side effects of running Flash, which is just a magazine ad in which “Flash” is substituted for “Cialis.”
I Even Get The First One Free
Amazon is expected to expand their selection of private label brands to include things like baby food, nuts, vitamins, coffee, tea and more, under brand names like Happy Belly and Wickedly Prime. I think I wait for the bus each morning with an Amazon executive, because he keeps trying to sell me vitamins that he insists are Wickedly Prime. He makes that finger quote gesture when he says “vitamins” and it might actually be “wicked primo” he says, but still, maybe I should give them a shot.
Try Not To Sweat, It Voids The Warranty
Samsung has acquired a patent for a small projector that can display user interface elements on your skin. Like Carnegie Mellon’s SkinTrack, it essentially turns your arm into a touch screen. It’s being marketed as The coward’s alternative to just getting a real touch screen imbedded in your arm already, you whiny little baby.
Maybe You’re Bitter About Being 4-22 Against Them
Uber’s Pittsburgh-based Advanced Technology Center is testing self-driving cars on the city’s streets. The autonomous vehicles use 22 camera lenses, lasers and other sensors to see as far as 100 meters in any direction, enhancing safety and, even more importantly, giving them every opportunity to find their way out of Pittsburgh.*
I Swear We Were In Ferris Wheel – Green – 6A!
Starbreeze and Acer are teaming up to make the StarVR headset, a high-end virtual reality device designed for places like amusement parks. They expect the most popular experience to be VR Amusement Park Parking Lot, where you can stand motionless and still cover the entire 300-acre main lot and locate your car without actually wandering aimlessly for an hour, herding three cranky kids, carrying the one that fell asleep, worrying that the fourth funnel cake had been a mistake, and cursing every other family that just had to show up here in another white minivan.
No, How Would I Know What Happened To Your SIM Card?
Facebook and Instagram were blocked in Vietnam during environmental protests, Iraq shut down the internet during student exams, and Uganda blocked social media access during the presidential oath of office. You’ll hear a lot of justifiably angry talk about depriving citizens of free speech and the heavy-handedness of government in these far-reaching actions that affect hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. Hypothetically, however, it wouldn’t be the same if someone unplugged their router for a while after losing a game tournament to his wife, right? I mean, if she was going to really make fun of him on Twitter?
* You know, as a Clevelander, these jokes were funnier when the Browns actually beat the Steelers once in a while.
In the Movie Draft, it’s been an eight-week climb for Team DTNS, but they’ve made it to the summit! Read all about it in the CRUMDUM.
Mike Range
@MovieLeagueMike
Weekly Tech Views (The Tech – No Logic Blog) by Mike Range is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Today in Tech History – May 21, 2016
1937 – North Pole-1 became the first scientific research station to operate on the drift ice of the Arctic Ocean. The Soviet Union established it about 20 km from the North Pole. It operated for 9 months, and travelled 2,850 kilometres.
1952 – IBM announced the Model 701, the first computer designed for scientific calculation. The 701 used electrostatic storage tube memory and kept information on magnetic tape. It sold much better than expected with 19 governments and large companies snapping them up.
2010 – The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), launched a solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS aboard an H-IIA rocket. The vessel would test out the performance of solar sails, and make a Venus flyby later in the year.
2013 – Microsoft announced their newest game console, the Xbox One at a press conference in Redmond, Washington.
Like Tech History? Get the illustrated Year in Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.