Today in Tech History – February 2, 2018

Today in Tech History logo1046 – English monks recorded “no man then alive could remember so severe a winter as this was.” Their analog weather blog entry recorded the beginning of the Little Ice Age.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/657

1931 – Friedrich Schmiedl launched the first rocket mail (V-7, Experimental Rocket 7) with 102 pieces of mail between Schöckl and St. Radegund, Austria.
http://www.astronautix.com/s/schmiedl.html

1935 – Detective Leonarde Keeler, co-inventor of the Keeler polygraph, tried out the lie detector on two suspected criminals in Portage, Wisconsin. Both suspects were convicted of assault.

http://www.wired.com/2012/02/0202polygraph-leads-conviction/

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

DTNS 3211 – Alphabet Has Problems with Numbers

Google and 3M have joined the Universal Stylus Initiative. Will this herald a new age of stylus interchangeability between hardware vendors? Plus eBay will end use of PayPal as a back-end payment system in 2020 and YouTube TV is now available on select Roku devices.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, and Justin Robert Young.

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A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you are willing to support the show or give as little as 5 cents 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 Anthony Lemos of Ritual Misery for the expanded show notes!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, Jack_Shid, KAPT_Kipper, and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes
To read the show notes in a separate page click here!

Daily Tech Headlines – February 1, 2018

DTH_CoverArt_1500x1500Mario Kart Tour in development, YouTube TV comes to Roku, Elon Musk sells out flamethrowers.

MP3

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

Follow us on Soundcloud.

A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you are willing to support the show or give as little as 5 cents a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the theme music.

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, Jack_Shid, KAPT_Kipper, and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes
To read the show notes in a separate page click here!

#316 – Why’d Ya Do It, Ernie?

We share our memories and thoughts on the passing of Ursula K. Leguin. We also talk about how silly it is to think anybody but George R. R. Martin truly knows the release date for Winds of Winter, and discover the true villain of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Today in Tech History – February 1, 2018

Today in Tech History logo1951 -TV viewers witnessed the live detonation of an atomic bomb blast, as KTLA in Los Angeles broadcast the explosion of a nuclear device dropped on Frenchman Flats, Nevada.
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/02/0201ktla-atomic-test/

1972 – Hewlett-Packard introduced the first scientific handheld calculator, the famous HP-35 for $395. It was the first handheld calculator to perform logarithmic and trigonometric functions with one keystroke.
http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/the_hp-35_calculator.html

1985 – Shortly after its founding the November before, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute kicked off operations.
http://www.seti.org/about-us

1997 – Dave Winer changed how he displayed ‘Scripting News’ so that it always showed the last ten days of posts. In other words, the way every blog does it now. Whether this makes it the ‘first blog’ or not, it was extremely influential and is definitely one of the oldest blogs out there, predating the term blog, of course.

http://scripting.com/stories/siteChanges.html

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

DTNS 3210 – Subscribed to Life

As boomers and millennials feel the pinch of rising healthcare, insurance and living costs is the future of retail sales and consumer consumption lay in subscription and rental services? Plus Nintendo’s Switch boosts the company’s bottom line by over a 177% and Google wants to tell you when your flight isn’t on time.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang and Scott Johnson.

MP3

Using a Screen Reader? Click here

Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

Follow us on Soundcloud.

A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you are willing to support the show or give as little as 5 cents 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 Anthony Lemos of Ritual Misery for the expanded show notes!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, Jack_Shid, KAPT_Kipper, and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes
To read the show notes in a separate page click here!

Daily Tech Headlines – January 31, 2018

DTH_CoverArt_1500x1500Fujifilm to take control of Xerox, Google Flights now predicts flight delays, send SMS using Alexa.

MP3

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

Follow us on Soundcloud.

A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you are willing to support the show or give as little as 5 cents a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the theme music.

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, Jack_Shid, KAPT_Kipper, and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes
To read the show notes in a separate page click here!

Today in Tech History – January 31, 2018

Today in Tech History logo1958 – The United States successfully entered the space age with the successful launch of the Explorer I satellite. Data from the satellite confirmed the existence of the Van Allen radiation belt circling the Earth.

http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/expinfo.html

1961 – The US launched a four-year-old male chimpanzee named Ham on a Mercury-Redstone 2 rocket into suborbital flight to test the capabilities of the Mercury capsule.

http://www.californiasciencecenter.org/Exhibits/AirAndSpace/HumansInSpace/MercuryRedstone2/MercuryRedstone2.php

1971 – Astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell lifted off on the Apollo 14 mission to the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon.

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_14/

2013 – The Consumer Electronics Association announced it was awarding the Dish Hopper co-winner of Best of CES and would begin searching for a new awards partner. CBS had forced CNET editors not to award Dish a prize due to ongoing litigation between the two companies.

https://gigaom.com/2013/01/31/ces-severs-ties-with-cbs-over-dish-hopper-coverage/

2015 – Troy Bradley of the US and Russian Leonid Tiukhtyaev landed the Two Eagles Balloon off the Baja coast near La Poza Grande, Mexico. They beat the world distance and duration record. They stayed aloft for 6 days, 16 hours and 37 minutes traveling 6,646 miles.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31073490

Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.

DTNS 3209 – Mine Your Own GPU Business

Spectre and Meltdown have put a dampener on processor performance. But what does it mean for folks looking to upgrade their hardware; should you upgrade today or wait a few months? Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway, and JP Morgan team up to provide affordable healthcare for their employees. And are high GPU prices due to crypto-currency mining?

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang and Ryan Shrout.

MP3

Using a Screen Reader? Click here

Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

Follow us on Soundcloud.

A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you are willing to support the show or give as little as 5 cents 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 Anthony Lemos of Ritual Misery for the expanded show notes!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, Jack_Shid, KAPT_Kipper, and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes
To read the show notes in a separate page click here!