S&L Podcast – #204 – Annihilation is Not the End

Shows/ Sword and Laser / February 4th, 2015

Veronica REALLY wanted to make the title of this episode “Tom Merritt is a sexist pig.” But Tom doesn’t need that kind of grief. And besides he has promised to read even more female SciFi/Fantasy authors going forward. But if you want to hear Veronica giggle at the notion– as well as defend our book pick, Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, and wax eloquent about the need for varied perspectives in literature– then fire up this episode!

Download link here!

WHAT ARE WE DRINKING?    
Tom: Boddington’s Pub Ale    
Veronica: Some kind of white wine    
    
QUICK BURNS
    
Nominate Your Favorite Works And People For The 2015 Hugo Awards
    
Nokomis.FL noted “George RR Martin’s The Winds of Winter: no plans for publication in 2015 ” Trike wasn’t sure this was really news and Robert wrote: “given that ‘Winds of Winter’ won’t be published in 2015, it’s almost certain that the TV show will finish before the books are published. “
    
Michele and Dara: 
 “J. Michael Straczynski Will Adapt Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars for Spike TV“”  
    
Dara: More books into tv series! Endemol studios has acquired the rights to Lauren Beuke’s Broken Monsters    
    
“Ben:  After their popular special issues and Kickstarter campaign last year Women destroy Science Fiction (and fantasy and horror too) – Lightspeed are doing a similar thing with Queers Destroy…. Which can be backed on Kickstarter at the moment.
    
Robyn:  I’m late to the game (and apologies if this has been mentioned before), but I just realised that The Guardian is doing a monthly round-up of SFF – January’s is here. Fun way to find out about new books.    
    
Also take a look at John DeNardo’s SF Signal’s 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy and Horror Books to Look Forward to in 2015 (Part 2)    
    
BARE YOUR SWORD
    
Louie: Who are your top 5 most read authors?    
    
Tom:        

1-Philip K. Dick        30
2-William Shakespeare        18
3-Stephen King        14
4-Evelyn Waugh        11
4-Douglas Adams        11
4-Neal Stephenson        11
7-Hunter S. Thompson        10
8-Frank Herbert        9
8-Douglas Coupland        9
    
Veronica:
1-Charlaine Harris        14
2- Laurie R. King        13
2-Robin Hobb        13
4-Tad Williams        12
4-Jim Butcher        12
6-Orson Scott Card        9
7-Jacqueline Carey        7
7-Gail Carriger        7
7-Kevin Hearne        7
7-J.K. Rowling        7″    
    
A Rant about a Particular Aspect of eBooks    

BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION    
    
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer     
Jeff VanderMeer – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia    
Annihilation review – ‘You’ll find yourself afraid to turn the page’ | Books | The Guardian    
Finally, a novel about weird science that’s genuinely weird     

ADDENDUMS    
    
Support our show on Patreon    
    
You can also support the show by buying books through our links! Find links to the books we talk about and some of our favorites at swordandlaser.com/picks    
    

Annihilation: A Novel (The Southern Reach Trilogy)

By Jeff VanderMeer

DTNS 2421 – Mesh Around

Daily Tech News Show / February 3rd, 2015

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comPatrick Beja joins to explore the brewing war between Google and Uber. Is it Apple and Google all over again?

MP3

Using a Screen Reader? click here

Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

A special thanks to all our Patreon supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel 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

Today’s guest: Patrick Beja, DTNS contributor and independent podcaster at Frenchspin.com

Headlines

Ars Technica collects various reports that broke yesterday evening about Uber and Google fighting over self-driving cars. Bloomberg’s sources say Google chief legal officer David Drummond, who is on Uber’s board, showed screenshots to Uber of a Google ridesharing app. WSJ says that’s just an internal test app for Google employees. Meanwhile TechCrunch reports Uber is teaming up with Carnegie Mellon University researchers to build the “Uber Advanced Technologies Center” in Pittsburgh to research its own self-driving cars.

Ars Technica reports on Eero unveiling their mesh networking routers that promise easy setup, constant security updates and easy coverage of large homes. The routers are not extenders or repeaters, but create a mesh network. Each Eero router has a pair of dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios.  The boxes run a custom firmware stack built on DD-WRT. A cloud-based app allows for users to easily add new routers but also send links in text messages to friends for easy connection to the WiFi network.  Eero is available for preorder today at $125 for one unit or $299 for three. That’s 40% off the eventual retail price when the unit arrives this summer.

Samsung sent out invites to Galaxy Unpacked 2015 on March 1 in Barcelona, during Mobile World Congress. TechCrunch’s picture of the invite shows the side view of a bent metallic device, possibly a fork or maybe a Galaxy S6 with a curved body. We can’t be sure. GigaOm notes that korea’s DDaily suggests Samsung may partner up with LoopPay for automatic payments used in conjunction with a fingerprint sensor.

The Next Web reports that Twitter will begin syndicating promoted tweets outside of Twitter.  The company will bring its promoted tweets to Flipboard and Yahoo Japan with the same design as regular tweets.  In 2014, Twitter had 185 billion tweet impressions off its own site.

TechCrunch passes along a report from Avast on Android malware that displays ads disguised as warning messages when user unlock their device. The malware is estimated to have been downloaded int he millions. Avast has analyzed three apps, Durak card game, an IQ Test and a history app that were infected. The malware waits for several days and at least one reboot before activating.

Engadget reports on Razer’s new Blade gaming laptop for 2015.
The new Blade has a 14-inch 3200 x 1800 touch display, GeForce 970M GPU, 16GB of RAM and a max of 512 GB of solid state storage. Starting price is $2,199 although you can opt for 1080p screen for $200 less.

PC Mag looks at the 2016 roadmap for ARM processor designs unveiled Tuesday. The 64-bit Cortex-A72 which successds the A15 and A57 as the BIG in ARMS Big.little scheme– includes the new CoreLink CCI-500 interconnect and upgraded graphics processing headlined by the Mali-T880 GPU. ARM chief marketing officer Ian Drew expects the next generation of chips to get about 3.5 times the performance of what you get today as well as advanced native voice support, render pictures into 3D print jobs, improved VR and better linkage to Internet of Things device. It will use 75% less energy than the A15. Mobile chip makers that have already licensed the Cortex-A72 include HiSilicon, MediaTek, and Rockchip. More technical info coming in April.

CNET reports the China Internet Network Information Center says the country added 31 million Internet users for a total of 649 million.  Mobile Internet users rose 57 million to 557 million.  That’s good news for Lenovo’s Motorola brand. The company reported sales up 118 percent in the last quarter. And that’s without China which Motorola is now returning to.  Motorola announced Monday on Weibo that it had seen 1 million reservations for the Moto X in China. Lenovo is also expected to announce a new smartphone brand in 2015 for China that will be sold directly to consumers online.

Console game maker OUYA confirmed this morning that Alibaba is getting the OIYA game library on its YunOS platform. YunOS is Alibaba’s version of Android in China. For the moment, OUYA’s game service will be limited to Alibaba’s Tmall set-top box, and will not appear in phones. OUYA did not say anything about the yesterday’s Wall Street Journal report that Alibaba is investing $10 million into OUYA.

 

 

News From You: 

Kaeltian, tm204, and starfuryzeta all wanted us to know about reports that retail electronics store RadioShack is in talks to sell up to half of its 4,000 stores and close the rest as part of an expected plan to file for bankruptcy. Bloomberg’s sources say Sprint, Brookstone and Amazon are all interested in the chain. Sources say Sprint might co-brand stores and keep the Radio Shack name alive.The New York Stock Exchange said Monday it would suspend trading of the stock immediately.

And finally, philo1927 sent us the GigaOm post that the Wall Street Journal has sources with knowledge about Tom Wheeler’s plans for February 5th.

According to the Journal, Wheeler plans to call for Title II reclassification of Internet in the US.

Under this reclassification, could prohibit ISPS from blocking, slowing down or speeding up specific websites in exchange for payment.

The reclassification would apply to mobile broadband, and would place peering arrangements under Title II.

Discussion Section Links:  Uber Google and Eero

http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/02/uber-and-google-reportedly-go-to-war-over-self-driving-taxis/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-02/exclusive-google-and-uber-are-going-to-war-over-taxis?hootPostID=86b6175a61f6b983b08a1c1055694458

http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/02/uber-opening-robotics-research-facility-in-pittsburgh-to-build-self-driving-cars/

http://blog.uber.com/carnegie-mellon

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/02/02/uber-chases-google-in-self-driving-cars/

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/eero-takes-a-crack-at-pushing-mesh-wi-fi-through-your-whole-house/

Pick of the Day: Tubes via Rusty in Virginia

Hey Tom,

I recommend Andrew Blum’s book “Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet.” His tour-guide approach to explaining the Internet’s infrastructure and is unique and fascinating. It’s much better than any of my CS textbooks. I’m reminded of this book whenever you explain peering and interconnects on DTNS or Cord Killers.

I think this pick is especially timely given the ongoing debate about net neutrality and the FCC’s upcoming vote at the end of February.

http://andrewblum.net/

cheers,
Rusty in Virginia

Also, Patrick likes this! https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse

Tomorrow’s guest:  Allison Sheridan

Today in Tech History – Feb. 3, 2015

Today in Tech History / February 3rd, 2015

20140404-073853.jpgIn 1879 – Joseph Wilson Swan demonstrated the first practically usable incandescent filament electric light bulb to 700 people at the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne.

In 1966 – The Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft landed safely on the moon in the Ocean of Storms. It was the first lunar soft landing and first transmission of photographic data from the Moon to Earth.

In 2011 – The Number Resource Organization announced that the free pool of available IPv4 addresses was fully depleted. The IANA allocated the last of the blocks equally between the five Regional Internet Registries.

In 2014 – Facebook launched its ‘Paper’ app for iOS int he US. Paper provided a more magazine like format for viewing Facebook content.

MP3

Subscribe to the podcast. Like Tech History? Get the illustrated Year in Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.

Cordkillers 56 – The Vue Looks Good from Here

Cordkillers / February 3rd, 2015

Playstation Vue is from Mars and Sling TV is from Venus. Plus how much is 1 billion Chromecast Sessions really?

Download video

Download audio

CordKillers: Ep. 56 – The Vue Looks Good from Here
Recorded: February 2. 2015
Guest: Roberto Villegas

Intro Video 

Breaking News

Primary Target

  • A sneak peek at Sony’s PlayStation Vue internet TV service
    – WAY more channels, CBS, Turner, Scripps, NBC, Fox, Discovery, Viacom
    – Looks like they’re missing ABC/Disney
    – Gallery view as seen at CES but also Guide view on side (like new TiVO default)
    – 3-day catchup, record to cloud DVR for 28 days
    – Add any show to ‘my shows’
    – No price yet!
  • CHANNELS: “Spike, CBS, NBC, Fox, My9, Telemundo, American Heroes, Animal Planet, BET, BET Gospel, Big Ten network, Bravo, CBS Plus, Centric, Chiller, Cloo, CMT Pure Country, CNBC, CNBC World, Comedy Central, Cooking Channel, Cozi TV, Destination America, Discovery Channel, Discovery Family, Discovery Life, DIY, E!, Esquire, Exits, Food Network, Fox College Sports (3), Fox Sports 1,2,3, FX, FXM, FXX, Golf Channel, HGTV, Investigation Discovery, LOGO, Movies TV, MSNBC, MTV (Hits, Jam, 2, U), Nat Geo, all the Nickelodeons, OWN, Oxygen, Palladia, Science, Sprout, SYFY, Teen Nick, Travel, TV Land, Universal, USA, Velocity, VH1, Vh1 Classic, Soul, YES Network.

Signal Intelligence

Gear Up

  • Google’s Chromecast has been used for more than one billion casts 
    – Google’s Chief Business officer Omid Kordestani updated investors on one metric during the company’s Q4 call Thursday
    – One billion cast sessions on Chromecast
    – In October said 650 Million
    – In July 400 million
    – Google defines a “cast session” as a user pressing the cast button within an Android, iOS or web app. In other words: Streaming multiple YouTube videos to your TV one after another counts as just one session.

Front Lines

  • Netflix Prices $1.5 Billion in Debt to Fund Content, Other Initiatives
    –Netflix will raise $1 billion in debt for content acquisition and other purposes. Mostly they’re doing it because the interest rates are so low so they want to have low interest debt to cover the next few years of cash needs. However the company says they expect to launch 320 hours of original content in 2015 three times the amount of 2014.
  • NBC’s Super Bowl Live Stream Was Hugely Popular. It Was Also Terrible.
    –NBC live streamed 11 hours of Super Bowl and Super Bowl-related content online yesterday in the US. Apparently it reached a peak of 1.3 million simultaneous streams. Maybe that explains the lag. Also different commercials in the live stream which means the usual online repetition. Verizon mobile didn’t have as many complaints about its stream.
  • Sling TV strikes deal with Univision for its online TV service
    –SlingTV struck an agreement to carry Univision networks on the SlkingTV service. That includes Univision, UniMás, Univision Deportes, Galavisión, El Rey Network, Bandamax, De Película, De Película Clásico, Telehit, Tlnovelas and FOROtv. My guess? Spanish Language package available soon!
  • Adam Sandler’s first Netflix-exclusive movie has its cast
    –Ridiculous 6 will be one of Adam Sandler’s Netflix productions. Sandler will star as a man who was adopted as an orphan by a Native American tribe. Twilight’s Taylor Lautner, Rob Schneider and Terry Crews will play his adoptive siblings, while Nick Nolte has been cast as Sandler’s father. Rounding out the ensemble is Whitney Cummings, Jon Lovitz, Danny Trejo and Chris Parnell.
  • ESPN Takes Another Step Outside the Bundle, Starts Selling Streaming Cricket World Cup Subscriptions
    –ESPN will sell live and on-demand access to the 6-week Cricket World Cup for $100. The play starts Feb. 13. U.S. cricket fans can sign up Feb. 3 for a subscription at ESPNcricket2015.com, and then access streams on the Web; ESPN says it will have iOS and Android apps available by Feb. 11. Dish and Time Warner will also sell the package as PPV. 
  • Singtel, Sony And Warner’s New Video Streaming Service Beats Netflix To Asia
    –Asian Telecom company Singtel is partnering with Sony Pictures and Warner Brothers to launch a streaming video service in Asia. HOOQ will have Hollywood movies and US TV shows along with content from India, China, Thailand, The Phillipines, Indonesia, Korea and Japan. It will go online by end of March in Indonesia, Philippines, India and Thailand And then expand from there. 

Under Surveillance

2014 Winter Movie Draft
draft.diamondclub.tv

  1. Brett: $656,368,044
  2. Scott: $448,300,000
  3. Brian: $447,548,781
  4. Tom: $373,548,333
  5. Justin: $299,216,240
  6. John: $248,624,089

Dispatches from the Front

Hi Tom & Brian,

From this fans perspective I would say split the feed.

Thanks keep up the good work

Sean

 

 

I’m firmly in the doesn’t matter to me camp so long as you let us know about it. I use BeyondPod for my podcatcher and have a smart playlist that I can control what order things play in so I always get them in aired order.

Amber

 

 

I vote to split the spoilerin’ time episodes to their own podcast. In addition to the reasons Brian mentioned on the show, the main podcast is much more time sensitive, so need to keep those in my stream. I can always go back and listen to spoilerin’ time when I finally watch the shows you are spoiling.

Love the show, cutting the cord as soon as my Sling TV invite arrives!

Matt, Atlanta, GA (aka future site of Google Fiber! )

P.s. finally became your boss today, just signed up on Patreon

 

 

Hey guys as always thanks for the great weekly entertainment, was just listening to this weeks episode and Brian was doing his thing ranting about lack of bandwidth when in the sky and wondering why he can’t do any form of streaming video.

I am kind of an authority on this as I worked for Northwest Airlines subsequently Delta Airlines for 8 years and one of my job functions was to work with the aircraft engineers to install/maintain the In Flight Entertainment systems. I now work for a Major retailer and help consult on GoGo installs for the fleet of aircraft they operate.

The TV service is in fact satellite tv provided by Dish Network. That is how you are getting live tv.

The inflight wifi on the other change is provided by Aircell (Parent company to GoGo). Aircell was originally developed to provide in flight phone calls, remember the phones on the back of the head rests that you swiped a credit card to make in flight phone calls? Yea that is Aircell. When that didn’t take off (pun intended) they re-branded and changed their name and services to GoGo inflight wifi.

GoGo is an Air to Ground connection. GoGo has their own CDMA 3G towers that covers coast to coast of the lower 48 and parts of southern Canada. These towers and antennas are pointed to the sky which provides the wireless data connectivity to the aircrafts.

Each tower has very limited bandwidth, most of them are fed by a single T1, some maybe 3 T1’s. Then on top of that the actual bandwidth provided to each aircraft is also limited, at most 3mbps to a single aircraft.

3mbps that is then shared between all the users on the plane, so say you have 50 users all on a plane trying to use the inflight wifi, and sharing that single 3mpbs pipe so then you’ll start to understand why they proxy the connection and prevent steaming services.

Right now GoGo is in the process of upgrading their infrastructure to support CDMA EVDO Rev B and provide dual modems as a retrofit to aircraft, this could then provide up to 9mbps to an aircraft however you are still limited by the limited/shared backbone infrastructure that GoGo has to each tower.

So what I’m trying to say to Brian is that yes you’d think we’d be able to have 100mbps or even a gigabit connection while in the sky (wishful thinking) GoGo isn’t artificially keeping it slow and preventing users from doing youtube and Netflix while using the inflight wifi. How would you feel if you paid to use the service and one user was hogging all the available bandwidth because he was streaming a movie and you couldn’t even get a web page to load?

Anyways thought I could share some inside details about how inflight wifi works.

Josh S

 

 

Hey team!

Freakin’ love this show, and I’m proud to be a Patron! Thanks for all your hard work.

Thought I’d throw out a hiccup I’ve discovered with my FireTV Stick. When I plug in into my television, I lose all of my OTA signal. When I unplug the stick from the TV, the signal comes back. My antenna is mounted outside the house and connected using the home’s existing cable.

Could be wi-fi interference. Could be the age of my TV (2008). Just curious if anyone else had this issue, or just posting as a possible solution for other cordkillers.

My AppleTV (2nd gen) hasn’t given me any issues.

Mitch
 

 

Hello Tom & Brian.
On the previous episode you guys talking a bit about Plex. Listen, Plex is fantastic, not just great but excellent. Tom brought a good point and it was that his DRM purchased content wouldn’t play.
The reason Plex is so popular is in part yes because you can have all your ripped own content (home videos, DVD/BR ripped movies/tvshows, etc,). The other reason Plex is so popular is because it provides an easy and convenient way to stream and access all your *pirated* content.
I know you guys do not support piracy, but let’s not close our eyes to it. Obviously the reason Plex is so widely loved is because a large portion of its users pirate content and use Plex as their media server. I’m not saying that’s all they do, they probably have home movies, ripped content, etc., but let’s also not pretend that the reason Plex has become so popular is any other than the massive love of its piracy-loving users.

Keep up the great show.

Franklin.

 

Links

patreon.com/cordkillers
Dog House Systems Cordkiller box

DTNS 2420 – Who Watches the Watches?

Daily Tech News Show / February 2nd, 2015

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comChristian Cantrell is on the show to talk about Pebble’s claim to revolutionize the smart watch and be less focused on apps. What would that mean?

MP3

Using a Screen Reader? click here

Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

A special thanks to all our Patreon supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel 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

Today’s guest: Christian Cantrell, sci-fi author & tech writer

http://www.livingdigitally.net/  

http://darkmatter.fm

Headlines

A new Raspberry Pi is here! Still $35 but packed with more power. Ars Technica reports the Raspberry Pi 2 looks close to the Model B+ but has 4 USB ports, more GPIO pins, and a microSD slot instead of a regular one. The 2 also runs a 900 MHzquad-core (drool)ARMv7. That means you can run Ubuntu Core and even Windows 10 if you don’t want Raspbian. Microsoft will offer Windows 10 free to Raspberry Pi owners. The 2 is the new Model B. The $20 Model A+ remains available.  

Everquest has broken free of Sony as the company announced it has sold it’s Sony Online Entertainment games division to investment management firm Columbus Nova. The Next Web reports the division has been renamed Daybreak Game Company. The company will continue to produce MMORPGS like Everquest and H1Z1 while embracing the multiplatform world.

The Verge interviewed Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky who said Pebble shipped its 1 millionth watch on December 31st. And as Android Wear grows and Apple Watch arrives, Migicovsky says Pebble has “found a new framework to use as an interaction model on the watch.” He said apps will no longer be the main focus on the platform, saying “it doesn’t look like what is on your smartphone.”

Intel doesn’t want to get left out of the Internet of Things market the way it missed mobile at first. So it’s buying its way in. Reuters reports Intel has agreed to buy German chip maker Lantiq for an undisclosed sum. In addition to chips for networked devices, Lantiq also produces chips for networking connections, mobile broadband and WiFi. The deal is still subject to regulatory approvals and although the terms of sale have not been disclosed price estimates are around $280 million.

The Washington Post reports the US FCC will consider a draft decision this week to intervene against state laws in Tennessee and North Carolina that puts legal limits on Internet service operated by cities. The decision is expected to say that laws limiting municipal Internet prices or geography inhibit timely and reasonable deployment of high-speed Internet under section 706 of the Communications Act. The draft decision will be followed by a vote on Feb. 26, the same day as an expected vote on Open Internet Guidelines.

Reuters reports Japan message app company Line is launching online grocery delivery in Thailand, Line’s second biggest market after Japan. Line’s service will be offering products such as water, coffee and instant noodles at up to 50 percent discounts and free delivery for Thai shoppers. The service will compete against similar services from Tesco Lotus, CP Fresh Mart and Tops Supermarket.

In a story from the-next-web The Pirate Bay is back up, after being taking down Dec 9 during a raid on a Swedish data center by local police. The site is back on its original domain with a Phoenix image. The first new torrent added contained an image of a phoenix titled “Like a Phoenix, it rises from the ashes”. While the site is up features like RSS feeds are still down.

TechCrunch reports that Google’s share of the US search market, excluding mobile, dipped below 75% for the first time since July 2008. If mobile is included, Google’s share rises to 78%. Yahoo become the number 2 search engine in the US, increasing its share of the search market to more than 28% of all searches, compared to less than 10% in November 2014. This surge is due mostly to Yahoo becoming the default search engine in Firefox, which also helped.

Gigaom reports that IDC shows tablet sales were down by 3.2% tduring the holiday quarter compared to last year. This was the first time IDC showed year over year decline for worldwide tablet shipments since the market’s inception in 2010, only shipping 76 million tablets in Q4. The rest of the years increases balnced the bad Q4 out with Tablet sales for the entire year increasing by 4.4% over 2013 with 229.6 million units shipped. Apple continues to lead the tablet market with a 28.1% share, followed by Samsung, then Lenovo, ASUS and Amazon. Although only Lenovo managed to grow year over year.

 

 

 

 

News From You: 

MacBytes sent us the Reuters report that IBM is bringing back annual performance bonuses for its CEO and other top executives, despite 11 straight quarters of lower revenue, 7% drop in 2014 profits and 11% decrease in stock performance. CEO Virginia Rometty will get a $3.6 million annual incentive payout for 2014, on top of a base salary of 1.5 million, which increases to 1.6 million in 2015. She is also slated to received a $5 million award for 2015 and a long-term stock grant worth 13.3 million payable in 2018. She must have met her personal deliverables or Q targets or OKRs or some such thing. IBM did not deliver bonuses in 2013 at the request of executives.

metalfreak submitted the Liliputing.com report that Dell will offer Ubuntu installed on its new XPS 13 and Precision M3800 laptops. The linux option will cut the starting price of the M3800 by a $100 to $1533 . Machines will ship with Ubuntu release 14.04 installed. Unfortunately that means there will be no out of box support for the laptop’s Thunderbolt port although that may be addressed with 14.04.2 maintenance release. If you need something even smaller and cheaper the latest revision to the XPS 13 ultrabook will come in at $1189.

Discussion Section Links:  One Million Pebbles

http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/2/7947799/pebble-1-million-smartwatches-sold-new-hardware-coming

http://developer.getpebble.com/blog/2015/01/22/cloudpebble-pebble-emulator/

http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/02/apple-watch-retail-plans/?ncid=rss

http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/2/7950257/apple-watch-apps-google-uber-foursquare

Pick of the Day: Windscape via Tom Sidla

One of my favorite Apps is Windscape. It’s another weather App, yes, but not like any other I’ve seen. It gathers wind speed data and temps from around the globe and simulates the info with little moving dots. Very cool looking. You can zoom in and out around the globe and see typhoons, storms, polar vortexes, who’s hot and who’s not (literally). It’s $.99, so if you like science and weather, definitely check it out.

Tom Sidla, Pipe Dream Plumbing, Inc.

Tomorrow’s guest: Patrick Beja

Today in Tech History – Feb. 2, 2015

Today in Tech History / February 2nd, 2015

20140404-073853.jpgIn 1046 – English monks recorded “no man then alive could remember so severe a winter as this was.” Their analog weather blog entry recorded the beginning of the Little Ice Age.

In 1931 – Friedrich Schmiedl launched the first rocket mail (V-7, Experimental Rocket 7) with 102 pieces of mail between Schöckl and St. Radegund, Austria.

In 1935 – Detective Leonarde Keeler, co-inventor of the Keeler polygraph, tried out the lie detector on two suspected criminals in Portage, Wisconsin. Both suspects were convicted of assault.

MP3

Subscribe to the podcast. Like Tech History? Get the illustrated Year in Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.

A love letter to Borderlands Books, but not a goodbye

Shows/ Sword and Laser / February 1st, 2015

This is a post by Veronica Belmont, reprinted from the Sword and Laser website

The first time I saw Borderlands was a month or so after I had moved to San Francisco in 2004. I remember walking down Valencia Street and ogling all the stores I could not yet afford to shop in (moving to an expensive city with no job straight out of college will do that to a girl). I was probably with one of the gals I had moved out with, who couldn’t comprehend my excitement at finding a store completely devoted to science fiction and fantasy. 

It was perfect. It was as though it had sprung fully-formed from within the deepest reaches of my nerdy brain. Rows and rows of books. All my favorite authors, and many more that I didn’t even know I loved yet. Dark wood. That delicious book smell. A small, completely hairless cat named Ripley.

Here I am nervously getting my book signed by Robin Hobb at Borderlands

Here I am nervously getting my book signed by Robin Hobb at Borderlands

Throughout the years I came as much as I could, though I never became the regular I wanted to be. I wanted it to be my Cheers. That place I could go where everyone would know my name and ask me how I liked the most recent Tad Williams or Robin Hobb. In fact, I met Robin there during a book signing, and it was the most nervous I had ever been speaking with another human being in memory. She was wonderful, of course.

But I didn’t go enough. Even now, after S&L has been meeting there monthly for our book club, and even after I’ve been back many, countless times for signings or just to browse the latest releases, I don’t know if they’d even know me or know how much that store has meant.

Borderlands is closing. This physical lynchpin of my obsession for SFF is going away, and I don’t know if we can save it. San Francisco is expensive enough as it is, but a recent minimum wage increase (which I voted for…) is their real undoing. Not to mention the on-going stress of being a small, niche bookstore in a town obsessed with the digital. There’s going to be a meeting next month at the store to discuss options, and I definitely plan on being there.

Mostly, I just needed to write this to vent. I’m sad, and I’m angry, and I regret not doing more. Alan and Jude have worked so hard to keep this beautiful store open for so many years, and so many wonderful authors have come through its doors. 

Thank you, Borderlands, for being that place for us. But we’re not ready to say goodbye just yet!

Sword & Laser meet-up and anthology reading January 2014

Sword & Laser meet-up and anthology reading January 2014

Today in Tech History – Feb. 1, 2015

Today in Tech History / February 1st, 2015

20140404-073853.jpgIn 1951 -TV viewers witnessed the live detonation of an atomic bomb blast, as KTLA in Los Angeles broadcast the explosion of a nuclear device dropped on Frenchman Flats, Nevada.

In 1972 – Hewlett-Packard introduced the first scientific handheld calculator, the famous HP-35 for $395. It was the first handheld calculator to perform logarithmic and trigonometric functions with one keystroke.

In 1985 – Shortly after its founding the November before, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute kicked off operations.

MP3

Subscribe to the podcast. Like Tech History? Get the illustrated Year in Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.

DTNS 2417 After Show – Robert Heron talks more TV

Daily Tech News Show / January 31st, 2015

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comAfter Wednesday’s show Robert Heron, Jennie and Tom kept talking about TVs and more. The conversation was captured on the YouTube video but we thought it was good enough to give the audio listeners a version as well. Happy bonus weekend content.

MP3

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

A special thanks to all our Patreon supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel 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

Today in Tech History – Jan. 31, 2015

Today in Tech History / January 31st, 2015

20140404-073853.jpgIn 1958 – The United States successfully entered the space age with the successful launch of the Explorer I satellite. Data from the satellite confirmed the existence of the Van Allen radiation belt circling the Earth.

In 1961 – The U.S. launched a four-year-old male chimpanzee named Ham on a Mercury-Redstone 2 rocket into suborbital flight to test the capabilities of the Mercury capsule.

In 1971 – Astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell lifted off on the Apollo 14 mission to the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon.

In 2013 – The Consumer Electronics Association announced it was awarding the Dish Hopper co-winner of Best of CES and would begin searching for a new awards partner. CBS had forced CNET editors not to award Dish a prize due to ongoing litigation between the two companies.

MP3

Subscribe to the podcast. Like Tech History? Get the illustrated Year in Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.