science/tech
Science and Technology
I hope Tivo can make this work. Still best UI for live TV
LinkHow did Apple do in 2013?
LinkWhy I switched to iOS: HTC’s awful Android Update Explainer
HTC One: same as the day you bought it. forever.
I left HTC (my G2 was an HTC phone that never updated) because they were fond of using “That is too complicated for you to understand silly user” excuse not to update their android devices. From John Gruber:.
This giant convoluted clusterfuck is their excuse for the fact that most HTC One devices — the ones people buy from carriers — still don’t have access to Android 4.4.
You know who goes through these steps? Every wireless hardware maker ever. This is an example of a company using tech mumbo jumbo to get most people to accept their subpar service and delivery.
My friend bought a Motorola Android phone a year (pre Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobile division) after I bought my HTC made G2 (as in Google Phone 2) which I was being told would be updated at some point and never was. I was jarred by the Android features that he had available due to having a newer version. Let alone security patches or feature upgrades that may have been rolled out with the new OS. I’d been had and I didn’t want to be had again.
So I switched. My iPad 1G stopped updating a little bit ago, but it was my iPad 1G! I don’t use it anymore. My G2 was my phone. I used it every day and HTC was happy to sell me something with the promise of updates that never happened. Never again. The iPhone 5 I have updates all the time. I’ve got the latest operating system.
And I don’t want to hear “it’s just HTC”. Every Android maker has models that don’t sell where this type of dissembling delay makes perfect sense for their bottom line and the consumer gets screwed. No thanks.
“Obama kicks off Computer Science Education Week” – Venture Beat
LinkTime Lapse of Earth from the ISS (4K) – YouTube
VideoWatch: The World Outside My Window – Time Lapse of Earth from the ISS (4K) – YouTube below (courtesy Vice)
Grace Hopper on “Late Night with David Letterman”
VideoGoogle has dedicated a doodle to her 107th birthday:
Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper designed the MARK series of computers at Harvard University. The MARK series of computers began with the Mark I in 1944. Imagine a giant roomful of noisy, clicking metal parts, 55 feet long and 8 feet high. The 5-ton device contained almost 760,000 separate pieces. Used by the US Navy for gunnery and ballistic calculations, the Mark I was in operation until 1959.
The computer, controlled by pre-punched paper tape, could carry out addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and reference to previous results. It had special subroutines for logarithms and trigonometric functions and used 23 decimal place numbers. Data was stored and counted mechanically using 3000 decimal storage wheels, 1400 rotary dial switches, and 500 miles of wire. Its electromagnetic relays classified the machine as a relay computer. All output was displayed on an electric typewriter. By today’s standards, the Mark I was slow, requiring 3-5 seconds for a multiplication operation.
via Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper – Inventors of the Mark I Computer.
She also was responsible for development of COBOL and more importantly all programming languages that humans could read that could be translated to computer readable assembly language:
She is probably most celebrated for her pioneering work in the development of COBOL, one of the first programming languages that could work independently of a particular machine, but we should perhaps thank her most for her popularisation of the word ‘debugging’ – dating from an anecdote when an actual moth was found in a computer she was working on, and that was slowing down its processes.
It really was a revolution: coding using plain english.
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper was interviewed by David Letterman about her groundbreaking work…
Letterman: “How did you know so much about computers then?”
Rear Adm. Hopper: “I didn’t. It was the first one.”
Watch the interview to see computer technology explained in plain english.
Amazon drone fleet? What’s the worst that could happen?
LinkGender diversity still an issue in tech
LinkFCC to lift phone ban? Not long ’til “tired of these muther f*cking loud talkers on these muther f*cking planes”
LinkGizmodo: “WordPress Strikes Back Against DMCA Censorship Trolls”
Linkit came from space (research): check out NASA Spinoff
LinkOld Stuff: Mixtapes Explained
VideoI forgot how personal mixtapes were.
props to Devour original here
Bonus content: some history on the even harder to compile beat tapes
dump trucks that drive themselves
LinkExperian credit bureau Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service
“I have the Experian credit reports!” – Clarence Beeks to Hieu Minh Ngo
Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service:
“The issue in my mind was the fact that this went on for almost a year after Experian did their due diligence and purchased” Court Ventures, Martin said. “Why didn’t they question cash wires coming in every month? Experian portrays themselves as the databreach experts, and they sell identity theft protection services. How this could go on without them detecting it I don’t know. Our agreement with them was that our information was to be used for fraud prevention and ID verification, and was only to be sold to licensed and credentialed U.S. businesses, not to someone overseas.”
[…]“Firms of all sorts are using consumer data in ways that may not just be contrary to consumers’ expectation, but could also be harmful to their interests,” Ramirez said. “This problem is perhaps seen most acutely with data brokers — companies that collect and aggregate consumer information from a wide array of sources to create detailed profiles of individuals. Their success depends on having more and better data than their rivals. The concern is that their mega-databases may contain highly sensitive information. The risk of improper disclosure of sensitive information is heightened because consumers know nothing about these companies and their practices are invisible to consumers.”
If you rent an apartment, apply for a mortgage, apply for a credit card, Experian is one of the big three that gets your data. Then they sold it to anyone with the money. Who else bought this data?
all too real
Link
ignoring gender diversity issues makes us a lot like this guy
Many of us male techies feel we can honestly deny gender is an issue in our professional world in but then stuff like this f*ckery reported by Valleywag happens:
TechCrunch Disrupt 2013 startup conference: an app called Titstare, presented by two grinning Australian dudes, exactly as tasteless as it sounds.
The stunt—which the Sydney duo claims was just a “joke”—was done before to an audience who paid for the opportunity to watch what was essentially a shitty routine pulled from the boys’ cabin at sleepaway camp. Some in attendance actually laughed and cheered, so I suppose part of the crowd thought they got their money’s worth.
There’s more.
If you’d like to feel worse today, here’s another “demo” from the same “hackathon” “presentation,” which is basically a guy pretending to jerk off before a crowd that included a 9-year-old girl.
TechCrunch is owned by AOL. AOL owns a lot of brands including HuffPo, Moviefone and MapQuest. This conference series is not a small deal. It’s international. Somehow, in San Francisco, California in 2013 organizers for this huge conference series hosted by a premier brand of an international tech company believes that these bits were amusing and appropriate. They even publicized the bits before someone complained:
TechCrunch proceeded to tweet a link to Titstare from its official Disrupt account, but decided that was perhaps unwise, and deleted it, settling for this instead.
This is a symptom of the problem of not having gender diversity in tech.
If NSA has encryption keys, have vendors violated terms of service?
LinkNew Yahoo! logo is Gordon Gartrell Shirt of Logos
Denise, I want an iconic logo like Apple, Coca-Cola or Google!
The logo they got
someone was paid for this logo
Link
NFL contractually bound to crappy Surface Tablets
This is better than Microsoft Surface Tablet
Microsoft’s partnership with the NFL also makes the Surface the official tablet of the league, and Microsoft hopes that teams will start to use the devices on the sidelines during games. We saw a brief demo of a Surface app called X2 that’s designed to allow team staff to more easily track concussions
Something tells me we’re going to be seeing a lot of devices that look a lot like iPads on the sidelines but so obfuscated that you can’t quite make them out. Sure, they’re Surfaces!
The Bengals on Hard Knocks & many other teams already use iPads. 14 Teams as of last fall. Players phone of choice is iPhone something and I’m sure that 2nd is prob. some super big Samsung Android phone.
If a surface tablet is really being used to track concussions, then these players brains are screwed. I’m serious.
Another note: I had the unfortunate experience of using Windows 8 on a laptop. Quite literally one of the most frustrating counterintuitive messes ever. I never want a Windows 8 machine. Ever.