Brian Brushwood joins us to chat with Peter Bright about whether Verizon has started degrading Netflix traffic after they won their recent court victory over Net Neutrality. Also Sony ditches their PC business so it’s time to reassess how dead PC’s are.
Note: The video stream (which is in beta mind you) experienced a catastrophic streaming failure. We’re hoping it pops up out of YouTube at some point and we’ll put what survives up here. In the meantime here is a post-show hangout nee encore. – Tom
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Show Notes
Sony to dump PC business
Recode reports Sony announced it will sell its VAIO PC business to investment fund Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) by the end of March. In the meantime Sony says it “will cease planning, design, and development of PC products,” and the Spring 2014 line launch will be its last. VAIO owners will still get support from either Sony or JIP. Sony will also make its TV division into a subsidiary and focus on high-end 4K models. All of this means about 5,000 jobs will be cut. Engadget reports Sony is also shutting down its digital bookstore in the US and Canada, transferring customers to Kobo starting in late March. Sony did have some good news, announcing a profitable 3rd quarter with $23 billion in revenue, up 24% over the same time last year on the strength of the PS4. However in a revised full-year forecast, Sony expects to lose $1.1 billion.
Verizon could be throttling Netflix and Amazon, but no actual evidence so far
News From You:
webitube posted on the subreddit a GigaOm article about an attack on an electrical substation near San Jose California. The Wall Street Journal reports snipers fired on the substation for almost 20 minutes, knocking out 17 transformers, as well as cutting nearby telephone cables. The damage took a month to repair. The attackers and their motives are still unknown.
habichuelcondulce and jaymz668 and Jose Gomez by email all sent us various links to the story of Dennis Aabo Sørensen who live science reports lost his hand as a result of a fireworks accident but now has a prosthetic hand that has a sense of touch. Electrodes embedded in Sørensen’s arm communicate with touch sensors in the prosthetic to deliver impulses to his remaining nerves. He can tell different objects by feel, according to a study detailed in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Silvestro Micera, a neural engineer at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in Switzerland, led the team that developed the hand.
mcfads23, who also happens to be our producer Jennie, submitted this psfk article on the subreddit, about Changefolio,at changefol.io a platform that makes it easy donate money to charities. The service connects with a user’s bank, then lets the user pick a charity. From then on, purchases can be rounded up or small percentages of purchases can be taken and automatically donated as micro-transactions. So for example you can have the service take 2% of your grocery bill every time you shop and donate it to a food bank. And of course their are graphs and achievements and the ability to post to Facebook and Twitter.