If you’re in Atlanta, get thee to DragonCon this weekend! Once you’re there make sure to be in room 203 of the Hilton at 5:30 PM (Eastern) on Friday night August 29th. Why?
BECAUSE that’s when the live performance of the FSL Tonight Championship coverage happens. You will not want to miss it. BE THERE!
Time: Fri Aug. 29, 05:30 pm Location: 203 – Hilton (Length: 1 Hour)
(Panelists: Tom Merritt, Justin Robert Young)
Molly Wood is back and ready to talk Hyperlapse’s in app-maker’s judgements along with why we’re scared to talk on the Internet.
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 and scottierowland on the subreddit
Show Notes
Today’s guest: Molly Wood, columnist and deputy technology editor at The New York Times. s
Headlines
Instagram released a new app called Hyperlapse that lets you record up to 45 minutes of video and then choose a rate to speed it up with options as fast as 12x. The video can be saved to the camera roll and you can do whatever you want with it There are buttons that will launch the Instagram or Facebook apps for easy sharing if you have those, but they’re not required.
ZDNet reports that Google is acquiring Zync, whose main product is Zync Render, a cloud-based rendering and storage platform for both 2D and 3D applications. Zync Render has been used on a number of Hollywood films, including Looper, Star Trek: Into Darkness and Transformers: Dark of the Moon. No word yet on how much Google paid. The service will be moved to Google’s Cloud Platform.
Vice president of Amazon games, Mike Frazzini talked with Fortune about Amazon’s newest $970-million all-cash acquisition Twitch. He said, “First and foremost, we want Twitch to just keep going.” I’m sure they do. Meanwhile Forbes’ Ryan Mac heard from a source that antitrust fears played a part in the deal going to Amazon instead of Google. Google allegedly wanted a breakup fee in case the acquisition was not approved because it already owns YouTube.
GigaOm passes along details about a US NSA tool called ICREACH, revealed by the Intercept Monday. ICREACH apperss to be a search tool used to share data with 23 US government agencies as well as foreign intelligence agencies in Canada, the UK, New Zealand and Australia. The data shared included emails, phone calls, faxes, internet chats, and text messages, as well as location information collected from cellphones.
BitTorrent’s Dropbox competitor Sync got a little more Dropbox-like today according to GigaOm. BitTorrent sync can now make Web links for shared files and folders expanding it beyond simple folder synchronization. Previously users had to exchange cryptographic keys or QR codes to share links to files. The new Web links automatically expire after three days although you can set them to expire faster.
According to Ars Technica, Microsoft is under investigation by Chinese regulatory authorities for bundling its Internet Explorer browser and Windows Media Player app with its operating system. If you sense that all this has happened before, you might be remembering similar complaints from the European Union and South Korea which led to the creation of separate software packs for each country. Microsoft says it will fully comply with the investigation.
News From You
Kelleyb alerted us to the Ars Technica report that California Governor Jerry Brown has signed a law requiring all smartphones in the state come with a kill-switch. While I had hoped the law meant all phones would be required to go into kill mode to defend you when attacked, it actually means as of July 1, 2015 all smartphones sold in California will have to have a remote wipe feature. The kill switch and new civil penalties of $500 to $2500 for stealing phones are hoped to reduce phone theft.
tm204 shares the Ars Technica report that Microsoft has reduced the prices of the Surface 2 Windows RT tablet by $100. The least expensive 32 GB unit now costs $349, the 64GB unit costs $449, and the 64GB model with LTE version costs $579. With the price cut, the 32GB 1920×1080 Microsoft Surface is now less expensive than most other tablets, with the exception of the non-Retina iPad mini. The discounts are available through Microsoft’s physical and online stores, as well as through some other retailers such as Amazon.
ancrod2 pointed out the SlashGear writeup about RoboBrain, a project led by robotics researcher Ashutosh Saxena, to organize information from the Internet to make it easier for robots to learn. RoboBrain would be a cloud based storage system integrating 100,000 data sources and various types of supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms The idea is to give robots access to a remote system that provides a more complex understanding of the world. In other words the individual robot’s NET would be in the cloud or rather— SKY.
Discussion Links:
http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/08/26/social-media-and-the-spiral-of-silence/#fn-11806-1
Plug of the Day: The Sword and Laser Anthology collects 20 amazing stories from new writers in the Sword and Laser book club audience. 10 SciFi and 10 fantasy stories with an introduction by Patrick Rothfuss. Get a copy at swordandlaser.com/store http://swordandlaser.com/store/
Pick of the Day: Go Contact Sync Mod via Rolando- from the Paraguay, the heart of South America
I’ve using Outlook since the 90s–a critical component of my workflow was an easy wireless way to sync desktop and phone for contacts and calendar. The magic was accomplished then by Nokia Suite through bluetooth. When modern smartphones became a thing, a new component (“the cloud”) was needed in the mix. So I used Google Calendar Sync and a little great desktop app called Go Contact Sync Mod to have Outlook-Cloud-Phone two-way wireless sync nirvana: my contacts, appointments and notes were available to me in my desktop, phone or cloud in perfect harmony. But the Microsoft-Google fight has gotten in the way of my sync heaven, first by stopping support for Exchange ActiveSync and then Google Calendar Sync. Luckily, the wonderful guys of Go Contact Sync Mod came to the rescue by updating their app and providing 2-way sync (Outlook-Google) for Calendar, Contacts, Notes. Best of all, it’s free and opensource. Finally, my workflow equilibrium has been restored.
Wednesday’s guest: Dan Patterson, technology journalist
In 1938 – A New York radio station first used the Philips-Miller system of tape recording on a radio broadcast.
In 1984 – Miss Manners confronted her first computer issue. The columnist responded to a reader’s concern about typing personal correspondence on a personal computer.
In 1996 – Netscape Communications Corp. announced it had partnered with several other big companies to create a software company called Navio Corp. Navio was meant to create an operating system to compete with Windows.
Subscribe to the podcast. Like Tech History? Get Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
What makes comfort food, patriotic fast food, the premiere of Peter Capaldi as Doctor Who.
Download the episode at this link.
Anthony Carboni joins us to talk about Amazon buying Twitch and Facebook fighting Clickbait.
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 and scottierowland on the subreddit
Show Notes
Today’s guest: Anthony Carboni, co-host of We Have Concerns
Patreon link: http://www.patreon.com/wehaveconcerns
Headlines
Facebook announced today it’s altering its news feed algorithm to combat clickbait. Facebook’s algorithms will note when a high number of people click on a link and then come right back to Facebook. They’ll also note if links receive low numbers of comments and likes. Those are signs of clickbait and the Facebook algorithm will not hesitate to demote such links. After enough people have been suckered into clicking to prove its clickbait.
Ars Technica spent the morning collecting all the news outlets whose sources SWORE this time Twitch was really getting bought. By Amazon this time. We know they said it was Google earlier this summer TWICE, but this time the source familiar with the situation were absolutely briefed on the matter. The price is still reportedly around $1 billion. An announcement came at 1 PM in a blog post from Twitch CEO Emmett Shear confirming the deal. He wrote they chose Amazon because they “believe in our community, they share our values and long-term vision, and they want to help us get there faster.” Twitch will remain an independent company owned by Amazon.
According to Engadget, Tivo is releasing a limited edition Roamio OTA DVR where the OTA stands for over the air. The device will cost $49.99 along with a 15 dollar a month subscription for TIVO’s channel guide. Just like the $150 more expensive Roamio that has cablecard slots the OTA has 500 GB of storage, four tuners and can use the separate TiVo Stream device to stream live and pre-recorded videos on other devices. It just doesn’t have cablecard slots. Apparently cable card slots are worth $150.
Reuters passes along a report from Xinhua that China plans to release another operating system of its own by October. The first version would be for desktops, which China has done before with its own distro of Linux, but later would come OS’s for mobile devices. There’s also talk of an app store. Ni Guangnan head of an official OS development alliance established in March, hopes domestically developed software could replace desktop OSs witin two years and mobile OSs within 3-5 years.
The BBC reports on denial of service attacks carried out against most of the popular game networks like Playstation Network, Xbox Live, BattleNet and more. At the same time, John Smedley. president of Sony Online Entertainment had his plane diverted to Phoenix after a bomb threat. No one was hurt. Multiple groups have claimed responsibility for the attacks. The US FBI is investigating.
News From You
spsheridan posted a Geek.com article about for NC State University undergrads developing nail polish that can detect drugs. Ankesh Madan, Stephen Gray, Tasso Von Windheim, and Tyler Confrey-Maloney have developed a polish they call “Undercover Colors.” The polish contains chemicals that react to Rohypnol and GHB and change colors in its presence.
AcidBeaver85 passes along a Venture Beat story that Coin has changed its mind about double-charging long-waiting backers. Coin first announced that the finished product would be delayed until Spring 2015 and that backers who already paid would have to pay again if they participated in a beta. That didn’t go over so well. Coin now says backer that pre-order customers who opt into the Beta program will still receive the non-beta final product without further charge. The Coin beta program is expected to roll out in the fourth quarter.
MacBytes flags us to the The Verge article about LG’s plan to announce at circular smart watch next week. The LG G Watch R — presumably R stands for Round, will comes with a button on the side, unlike LG’s original square smart watch. The round watch will also have a digital step counter, distance meter and compass. The video also seemed to tease that the display would be a perfect circle, without the black bar at the bottom of the Moto 360 teased at Google I/O.
MikePkennedy pointed out the Next Web story that Mozilla will launch a Firefox OS phone in India this week. The CloudFX, developed by Intex Technologies has a 3.5-inch display, 1GHz processor, 2-megapixel rear-facing camera, dual SIM Bluetooth and WiFi. Hindi and Tamil are supported out of the box. Customers can order it from Sanpdeal.com for less than 2000 Rs which is about $33 US.
Discussion Links:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/25/6066295/amazon-reportedly-buying-twitch-for-over-1-billion
http://recode.net/2014/08/25/amazon-will-buy-twitch-for-more-than-1-billion/
http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/25/6066509/why-it-makes-sense-for-amazon-to-buy-twitch
http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/25/facebook-vs-clickbait/?ncid=rss
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/08/news-feed-fyi-click-baiting/
Plug of the Day:
Plug of the day: Daily Tech News Show Shirt with Mustafa from thepolarcat.com’s logo now available in white, black and Ash. Look in the podcasts section.
Pick of the Day: Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is a CCG (collectible card game a la Magic: The Gathering) from Blizzard Entertainment featuring characters from the WoW universe. As someone who never played WoW, on it’s face, it didn’t sound that interesting, but, as someone who played a little Magic back in the day, the second I loaded this onto my iPad, I was hooked. You can play your friends or random people in friendly matches, ranked matches or an arena mode where you draft a deck and then play it on the spot. The game is packed with excellent graphics, animations and music; ever-expanding content; and a vast and active community. The game is free to play with in-app purchases (totally not required) and is available for PC, Mac and iPad with Windows 8 and Android tablet support to come in the near future. Too much fun not to pass along.
Tuesday’s guest: Molly Wood
In 1609 – Galileo Galilei craftily beat a Dutch telescope maker to an appointment with the Doge of Venice. Galileo impressed the Doge and received a lifetime appointment and a doubled salary. Later that autumn, Galileo pointed his telescope to the Moon, and trouble began.
In 1981 – Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Saturn. Eight years later on the same day in 1989, Voyager 2 would make its closest approach to Neptune.
In 1991 – 21-year-old Finnish student Linus Torvalds wrote a newsgroup post about a free operating system he was working on. He said it was “just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu.” His OS would eventually be called Linux.
Subscribe to the podcast. Like Tech History? Get Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
Want to understand why HBO won’t go Internet only and Comcast will? We have a camel and fig metaphor for you.
CordKillers: Ep. My mother is part camel
Recorded: August 24, 2014
Guests: Jeff Cannata, Anthony Carboni
Intro Video
Primary Target
Signal Intelligence
Gear Up
Under surveillance
Front Lines 2014
On Our Radar
On Screen
Dispatches from the Front
Hey Brian and Tom
i have been catching up on the show and was watching episode 32 “cord apathetics” when i heard Brian say something that finally made me disagree with him, as i usually see things from both host points of view. when Brian said we need to get rid of the over the air signals i was taken aback by this. my 86 year old grandmother wants to cut the comcast cord and only have phone service (she needs it for lifealert as much like r.l. stine she lives alone) and she told me that she only wants to get the local (35 miles away) Lansing stations. to make a long story short i am searching for an outdoor antenna as all the indoor ones can not penetrate the walls of her living room and she also refuses to get internet.
Thanks love the show
Greg
Brian and Tom,
Just thought I’d mention something for the guy who was disappointed with the lack of content he wanted to watch on Netflix. Canistream.it is a great website that has a mobile web version and even mobile phone apps. It allows you to search for pretty much any TV show or movie and it will tell you what services it is available on for streaming or renting or digital purchase or even DVD rental/purchase. I use it all the time and it’s great for those us trying to cut the cord!
Chris
Hey Tom & Brian,
Love the show, yada yada yada. Regarding the Movie Draft at Box Office Draft.com. What, who or where is the source for the movie listings for the next draft ? When would it be coming out ? And will the spreadsheet template be available to copy and paste into the league I would like to create ? Need some nitty and gritty on this, as I would like our family who it spread out over much of the country to join in on the fun.
Thanks,
Dave
Links
In 1456 – According to a handwritten note by illustrator Heinrich Cremer, the final binding of the Gutenberg Bible took place.
In 1995 – Microsoft released Windows 95. During development it was referred to as Windows 4.0 or by the internal codename “Chicago.”
In 2001 – WebKit received its first commit of code from Apple. The Safari browser appeared two years later and WebKit was open sourced in 2005.
Subscribe to the podcast. Like Tech History? Get Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
In 1852 – The first time signals were transmitted by telegraph from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.
In 1966 – Lunar Orbiter 1 took the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.
In 1993 – Nintendo agreed to use Silicon Graphics Inc. technology in a video game player it was developing.
In 2012 – Microsoft unveiled a new logo for the first time in 25 years, opting for simple squares of color and block type with an overlapping ‘f’ and ‘t’.
In 2013 – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced he would retire within the next 12 months.
Subscribe to the podcast. Like Tech History? Get Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
