You Must Construct Additional Pylons

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You Must Construct Additional Pylons
Number 2678
Broadcast Date FEBRUARY 1, 2016
Episode Length 42:08
Hosts Tom Merritt
Guests Veronica Belmont

This weekend was the first competition to build Hyperloop pods. Could we really travel by high-speed vacuum tube someday? Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt discuss.

Guest

Headlines

On Monday, Microsoft Research disclosed efforts to build a submersible data center called Project Natick. According to the NY Times a prototype capsule named Leona Philpot was submerged 1km off the Pacific coast of the US from August to November of 2015. The capsule contained 1 server rack and was filled with pressurized nitrogen for cooling. Microsoft estimates capsules can be built and deployed in 90 days. The project is still in research stage with no plans on a commercial product yet.
Samsung is pushing out ad-blocking support to its Internet mobile browser on phones running Android Marshmallow starting today. The support will be added to phones running Lollipop in months. The first helper app available was the free and open source Adblock Fast and an Android version of Crystal is also available.
US FBI Director James Coney and many others have expressed concern that law enforcement was “going dark” in large part due to encryption. A study funded by the Hewlett Foundation and published by Harvard convened by Matt Olsen (former director of the National Counterterrorism Center), Bruce Schneier and Jonathan Zittrain, found that this does not seem to be the case. They found widespread use of end-to-end encryption is unlikely to be adopted because it impedes business models. In addition fragmentation of software ecosystems impedes a standard being created that would encourage adoption. Internet of Things devices are opening numerous unencrypted channels. And metadata is unencrypted and likely to stay so.
Submitted by Inge_Aning
The Information’s Amir Efrati says his sources say Google intends to take over the design of Nexus hardware as well as software in the future. The idea would be to vertically integrate the hardware and software in a way similar to how Apple makes the iPhone.
PC World reports on a Reddit user called AlekseyP who has created a way to complain when his Comcast Internet speed drops down. Every hour a RaspBerry Pi runs a speed test. If the speed drops below 50 Mbps the Pi tweets about it from the account @A_Comcast_User. AlekseyP says he pays for 150 Mbps down and 10 up. Since the account was set up on October 30, it has posted 16 times. He posted the Python code he uses to Pastebin.
Submitted by KAPT_Kipper
Samsung announced its Galaxy Unpacked 2016 event at the mobile world congress in Barcelona will happen Feb 21st. The video teaser shows a man wearing a Gear VR headset leaning forward as if to grab something, TechCrunch speculates it could mean the next Samsung Galaxy S phone could add functionality like positional tracking to the Gear VR.
The United States and Europe did not agree to a new secure data transfer protocol by the January 31 deadline set by Europe’s privacy regulators. A previous agreement was ruled invalid by the European Court of Justice in October. Ars Technica reports European data authorities will publish their own views on data transfer Wednesday. The New York Times says the US and EU remain divided on how to protect European Citizen’s data from government surveillance among other issues.
The Verge points to a Politie.nl story that law enforcement in the Netherlands is partnering with a raptor training company named Guard from Above to intercept quadcopters and other UAS. A video from Politie shows an Eagle grabbing a quadcopter in mid-air using its incredibly sharp and strong talons.
TechInAsia reports that Canalys estimates Xiaomi maintained its title as the top smartphone brand in China, followed by Huawei and Apple. Canalys reported Xiaomi had 15.2% of the Chinese market, Huawei 14.7 % and Apple 12.5%. Vivo is expected to make a good showing in 2016 as well. And PC Mag reports US Mobile, which operates on T-Mobile network, is importing and selling phones from Xiaomi and Meizu. They are built for China though so cannot access US LTE service.
There is a port of Windows 95 to your browser! 19-year-old Andrea Fauls of Scotland used JavaScript and the emscripten emulator to get a fully functioning install of Windows 95 to run. In a browser. Try it at https://win95.ajf.me/
Submitted by lagerdalek
Alphabet reported revenue of $21.3 billion and earnings of $8.67 a share taking analysts expectations outside and stomping on them. That was $20.8 billion and $8.09 a share. That makes Alphabet the most valuable publicly traded company in the world at $558 billion.
Some more details from re/code Ad metrics: For the holiday quarter, paid clicks rose 31 percent annually but CPC dropped 13 year-on year. The prior quarter those figures were 23 and 11 percent, respectively.

Other sales: This is where we can see the health of Google’s other businesses besides ads, like Play, hardware sales and enterprise. It was $2.1 billion for the fourth quarter. It was $1.95 billion in the same quarter last year.

Discussion

Pick of the Day

I heard Veronica berating Patrick on his poor use of Doodle. I can very much relate to that. Every time a Doodle would show up in my inbox I would cringe and squirm. Just thinking of that web 1.0 interface irked me, that non-mobile optimized page, argh!! Someone save me!

Vyte.in came to the rescue. Seriously slick interface, mobile optimized, efficient emails, and, the killer feature: it's a French company. My favorite feature is that I can let other Vyte users see my calendar (free/busy) to make it even easier to propose slots. You can also vote for locations and have a conversation thread. Did I mention that it is also French?!
Submitted by Rico from "waffly" Brussels

Messages

Until fairly recently I worked for a top 10 US bank, and partly on ATMs.

The banks themselves program very little of the User Interface, the companies mentioned, NCR and Diebold, and a handful of others do most of it in layers. NCR, Diebold and Siemens provide the hardware and OS, then they and a few other companies provide the banking platform. The banks themselves generally only customize those things. When a BofA or Chase wants the cardless features the rest of the banks will get that feature a little while later built in, if they chose to use it is another thing. Usually that's driven by the interface work that they have to do to the mainframe.

BTW, if you see an ATM that is still a green screen terminal looking thing, the odds are VERY high that it's still running OS/2 Warp. Sigh....
Sent by Kevin in semi-sunny North Carolina


Tom / Jennie,

Amazon is calling themselves a transportation service provider... HOLY CRAP!

http://www.americanshipper.com/Main/ASD/Amazon_the_transportation_service_provider_62849.aspx

This is HUGE... this is a potential game changer.... their potentially leasing planes, their an NVOCC (which means they can legally buy and sell ocean slots with the carriers), they purchased all those trucks... OMG... seriously, this is a big ass deal...
Sent by BigJim


Hello,

Just got caught up on your episodes from last week and thought it was interesting that Boston is where Starry Internet was being tested. After thinking about it being choose over other cities like New York, San Francisco, Salt Lake City ,etc. I realized it must be because of the setup of the city. Unlike most cities there is no grid pattern to the streets it's like the wild West out there where it is hard to get line of site because of this. So if they are able to prove it works in a city designed like Boston they will be able to prove that it can work in better out together cities. If only I lived closer to Boston to try this out but it won't make it down here to Northern RI for a long time.

Thank you,
Sent by Adam Eastwood

YouTube

Links



Preceded by:
"Point. Shoot. Take cash." 		You Must Construct Additional Pylons
 Followed by:
"Landscape Mode, Baby!"
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