Number games like Threes and 2048 are sweeping the nation. Why? No idea. We’re too busy playing 2048.
Today in Tech History – Mar. 30, 2014
In 240 BC – Chinese astronomers observed a new broom-shaped “star” in the sky. It was the first confirmed sighting of Halley’s Comet.
In 1950 – Bell Telephone Laboratories announced the invention of a new kind of electric eye called the phototransistor. Dr. John Northrup Shive invented the transistor, which operated by light rather than electricity.
In 1951 – The Census UNIVAC System was accepted and subsequently devoted almost exclusively to tabulating results of the 1950 Census of Population and Housing. It was the first UNIVAC and was capable of completing 1,905 operations per second, which it stored on magnetic tape.
Subscribe to the podcast. Like Tech History? Get Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
It’s A Thing- s03e03 – Egg on top
What’s not better with an egg on top? We come up with a couple things. But honestly, it was difficult. This podcast contains trace amounts of yolk puns.
FEATURED REVIEW: The Martian by Andy Weir
Welcome to our Featured Reviews! In this series, we’ll be highlighting book reviews by the S&L audience. If you want to submit a review, please check out the guidelines here! -Veronica
The Martian starts with our protagonist, Mark Watney (a smart Andy Dwyer from Parks and Recreation to me) getting struck by shrapnel from a communication satellite as he and his crew mates evac on Mars, leaving Watney behind. This premise could be very dry with all of the technical details about oxygenators and CO2 scrubbers and water reclaimers but author Andy Weir makes it interesting. Watney has such a great voice and he’s very funny, pulling the reader into the story and immediately making Watney sympathetic.
Lucky for Watney, he is a botanist and mechanical engineer, making him well-suited to survive alone on another planet. He’s able to fix problems that arise (make water from rocket fuel, build things out of spare parts, repair his home) and grow some food from Earth soil mixed with Martian soil (yay potatoes! Boo human manure. Smelly business). To keep things interesting, (Mark is alone. Things would get boring if things didn’t go wrong) bad things sometimes happen. It’s fun to see how Mark figures out how to solve these problems with his limited resources.
The book also follows NASA personnel on Earth as they make plans to rescue Mark. We also spend some time with Mark’s crew mates aboard the Hermes. These characters aren’t as fleshed out as Watney is but that’s alright. After all, this is Mark’s story. The NASA folks have interesting interactions and plenty of disagreements about the right course of action. I enjoyed the Earth parts as much as Mark’s parts.
Not only is the plot to The Martian gripping but the writing is great as well. It’s descriptive but not overly technical without sacrificing the emotion. The research that went into this book shows. Everything that happens seems totally plausible. The technology is basically modern day with perhaps a few advanced pieces of hardware but nothing that’s space magic. I’m kind of floored that this is Weir’s first novel. It completely blew me away. Maybe in a few years, this will be turned into a movie. Gravity meets Moon!
It’s A Thing- s03e02 – Naps
Today in Tech History – Mar. 29, 2014
In 1941 – 80% of US AM radio frequencies were reassigned to new channels as part of the North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement.
In 1945 – German soldiers blew the launch tracks for the V-1 rocket site near Letelle, Netherlands, ending the rocket attacks.
In 1974 – NASA’s Mariner 10 became the first space probe to cross the orbit of Mercury about 704 km from the surface.
Subscribe to the podcast. Like Tech History? Get Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
It’s A Thing- s03e01 – Cleanses & Instacart
We’re back for another round and a tweak to the format. One episode, one thing, no waiting! Who’s on a cleanse? Everybody apparently! But man those containers are expensive!
DTNS 2201 – Dr. Zuckhattan
Andrew Mayne joins the show and we discuss Facebook’s plan to cover the world with Internet-bearing solar-powered drones and lasers. What could go wrong? Also, Len Peralta will attempt to illustrate this mess. You will not want to miss this.
Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.
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Show Notes
Today’s guest: Andrew Mayne and Len Peralta
Headlines
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a blog post announcing a new effort in conjunction with Internet.org to have Facebook’s Connectivity Lab work on a project to provide Internet connectivity worldwide from the air. Sparsely populated areas could be covered by satellites, both geosynchronous and low earth orbit varieties. Suburban areas could gain coverage from solar-powered automatic drones that can fly for months at a time. Facebook has acquired the 5-member company Ascenta who have worked on the Breitling Orbiter and Zephyr drone. They also employ former engineers from NASA as part of the effort. Oh and lasers. They connect all the satellites to each other with lasers. No sharks were reported to be involved.
Facebook also picked up a future employee once the acquisition of Oculus VR is done. TechCrunch reports Michael Abrash will leave his gig heading up VR at Valve to become Oculus’s Chief Scientist. Abrash said in his blog post that Facebok brings the resources and long-term commitment VR needs to solve the hard problems. You likely that today you used something Abrash coded since he has written for everything from Quake to Windows.
BlackBerry announced earnings Friday and Reuters reports that losses were smaller than feared. It was still a 64 percent drop in revenue. In an investor call, CEO John Chen gave a few hints on upcoming hardware. The Foxconn-made Z3 will come to Indonesia first in April, then the rest of the world. The Q20 with physical keyboard will be ready for Q1 2015. And the BlakcBerry 7 OS-powered Blackberry Bold will get another production run.
Remember I mentioned the Wall Street Journal said its sources claimed Amazon was going to roll out a free ad-supported video streaming service. Well the Verge passed that along too as well as a flat denial from Amazon. In an email to Variety an Amazon spokeswoman Sally Fouts said “we have no plans to offer a free streaming-media service.” So you’re saying there’s…no chance. Got it.
The Ethernet Alliance issued a press release announcing the formation of the IEEEp802.3bs Task Force. Yep. dot three bs. I know. Hopefully they won’t live up to that name and WILL successfully develop the standard for 400 Gigabit Ethernet, because that’s their job. They won’t go alone however, as they have the support of the Ethernet Alliance 400Gb/s Subcommittee. Maybe IEEE can take a little naming convention lesson after all this is over. The inaugural meeting of the IEEE P802.3bs Task Force will take place the week of May 12, 2014 in Norfolk, Va. as part of the IEEE Joint Interim Meeting.
GigaOm reports Tesla Motors has started adding a triple-layer metal shield, made of titanium and aluminum, to the underbodies of its cars. The shield is meant to protect the battery from impacts from below. All cars made after March 6th will have the shield, cars made before March 6th can be retrofitted free of charge. Elon Musk posted to Medium to make the announcement and put up some rather nifty animated GIFs of underbody impacts.
The Next Web reports a group of Dutch users have made a parody of Google Maps, called Google Naps which lets users mark and describe a particularly restful places to catch a few Zs. The group posted a detailed explanation of how the site was a joke and please don’t sue us Google. You know. For lawyers.
TechCrunch reports Microsoft General Counsel and EVP – Legal & Corporate Affairs Brad Smith posted some more information about Microsoft’s conundrum when it needs to investigate email accounts that it also hosts as part of outlook.com’s service. Previously Microsoft explained it couldn’t get a warrant for these since it already had the right to look but that it would be super extra careful and almost never do it. Well they’ve changed their mind. Microsoft says they’ll now never do that. And will refer any potential similar situations directly to law enforcement. They’re even working with the Center for Democracy and Technology and The Electronic Frontier Foundation on future privacy issues. OK.
News From You
Draconos sent us the Ars Technica article about DARPA’s new program called Collaborative Operations in Denied Environments , yes CODE for short, which wants to make autonomous cooperative swarms of drones that share sensor data but still respond to the commands of a single human. Cooperative groups could be more flexible in heavily defended airspace while still giving a commander the ability to control all the units from a single console.
KAPT_Kipper posted the GeekWire article that Microsoft has confirmed they will bring Office to Android devices too. John Case, a Microsoft Office corporate vice president for marketing told GeekWire “Let me tell you conclusively: Yes, we are also building Android native applications for tablets for Word, Excel and PowerPoint.” They haven’t picked a date for release but they are committed to it.
And Berke80 who I believe is in Turkey pointed out the EFF post that says in addition to blocks on Twitter and now YouTube, Turkish ISPs appear to be blocking the Tor Project’s website. Tor is a way of obfuscating connection information and can get around IP address blocks among other things. The EFF is providing links to mirros of the Tor Project site where users can still get the Tor Browser bundle.
Discussion Section Links:
http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/27/facebook-joins-google-in-the-hunt-for-the-future/
http://internet.org/press/announcing-the-connectivity-lab-at-facebook
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101322049893211?stream_ref=10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxX6r-xDgG4&feature=youtu.be
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2014/02/facebook-plans-conquer-world-slew-low-end-handsets/
Pick of the Day: G.I. Joe Coffee Company
Tonx is great, but the G.I Joe Coffee Company is awesome for an entirely different reason. They are all fair trade, good quality coffee, but 20% of all proceeds go to support disabled veterans. I know you get tons of picks, but I figured I had to throw one in the mix since it is a cause near and dear to my heart (retired Army and 90% disabled myself). With Respect, Scott Napier
Monday’s Guest: Wil Harris
Today in Tech History – Mar. 28, 2014
In 1905 – Cornelius Ehret of Rosemont, Pennsylvania received a patent for the “Art of Transmitting Intelligence.” It was the forerunner of the modern fax.
In 1935 – Robert Goddard launched the first rocket equipped with gyroscopic controls near Roswell, New Mexico. The rocket reached an altitude of 4,800 feet and flew 13,000 feet at a speed of 550 mph.
In 1979- A combination of equipment malfunction and human error caused a partial reactor meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania. While no injuries or deaths have been attributed to the accident, it changed US nuclear attitudes significantly.
Subscribe to the podcast. Like Tech History? Get Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
S&L Video: Author Spotlight – Alastair Reynolds
This week you’ll learn how Alastair Reynolds went from Cornwall to a doctorate in astronomy, to pushing ice across the vastness of space. How much do current scientific advances influence him? Does he feel a kinship with Mass Effect? What order should you read his darn books in? All these questions and more will be answered.
Download audio here.
Download video here.