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Meet Aereo: The online streaming start-up that will change the way you watch TV
- What is it?
Aereo is “live TV, wherever you are, whenever you want.” It lets you watch broadcast channels live on a browser on an iPhone or iPad or on TV-connected devices like Apple TV and Roku. You can also record shows à la DVR and save them to watch later. - And this is legal?
Yes, at least according to a federal appeals court ruling earlier this month. But networks aren’t happy. On Tuesday, News Corp. threatened to pull Fox off the airwaves and move it to cable if Aereo prevails in court, claiming that the start-up is threatening the network’s ability to sell advertising. - Where is it available?
For now, just metropolitan New York. But Aereo says they plan on expanding to big cities nationwide. - Is it free?
Photo: Facebook.com/Aereo
- What is it?
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“Pew pew pew.” Lasers: “This is the future of warfare. And it’s so, so cool.”
The Navy unveiled a solid-state laser cannon that can disable or destroy surveillance drones and small, rapidly moving gunships. In this video, it shoots down a drone. Watch.
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The Justice Department indicted Reuters social media editor Matthew Keys on Thursday for allegedly conspiring with the hacktivist collective Anonymous to deface the website of The Los Angeles Times and other Tribune Co. newspapers. According to the indictment (read it here), Keys, using the handle AESCracked, gave Anonymous hackers access to Tribune servers. Keys had recently been fired from Tribune-owned TV station KTXL FOX 40 and still had valid login credentials — so he allegedly unleashed Anonymous, urging the group to “go f**k some s**t up.”
They did, kind of. The above headline ran on LATimes.com for roughly a half hour on Dec. 14, 2010
“Keys is being charged under the general federal conspiracy statute and under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the same act under which Aaron Swartz was charged,” says Justin Peters at Slate. Swartz, the co-founder of Reddit, committed suicide in January before he was to face charges for allegedly downloading millions of files illegally from MIT computers. He, like Keys, was threatened with jail time, of up to 35 years. And the similarities don’t end there. The vagueness of the CFAA — passed in 1984, to nab “sophisticated, malicious hackers” targeting the only entities networked at the time: Banks, universities, and the federal government — allows prosecutors to push for “outrageously severe” punishments like this, for whatever reasons. In this case, “just like with the Swartz case, the feds are going to use the threat of a huge maximum sentence to intimidate Keys into accepting a plea bargain.”
Peters goes on:
“The DOJ doesn’t want to lock Keys up for 25 years, but they’ll be more than happy to pretend they do in order to get the outcome they really want — likely for Keys to spend no more than a few months in jail and provide information about members of Anonymous…. The government wants Anonymous pretty badly, but I’m not sure what their actual game is here. Do they think Keys will roll over and lead them to other Anonymous members in exchange for a reduced sentence? Are they trying to make an example out of Keys so that other people will think twice before cooperating with Anonymous? Or are they simply being disproportionate and unreasonable out of habit? Apparently, they didn’t take away any lessons from the Aaron Swartz case.”
25 years for “providing login information that resulted in a joke headline which lasted 30 minutes” is “enormously steep, given the alleged crime,” says Sam Biddle at Gizmodo.
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Facebook announced big changes to the platform Thursday, including a splashy visual overhaul that puts photos front and center. As we’ve all come to learn, anytime Mark Zuckerberg and Co. change anything, tons of people will hate it. Others will love it. -
Where did the Russian meteorite come from? Most likely from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Poring over crowd-sourced footage, researchers Jorge Zuluaga and Ignacio Ferrin from the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia, were able to use “simple trigonometry to calculate the height, speed, and position of the rock as it fell to Earth,” says BBC News. More importantly, the duo was able to find out where Russia’s most famous meteorite was likely born.
Using astronomy software developed by the U.S. Naval Observatory, Zuluaga and Ferrin gathered enough data to trace the meteorite’s origins in outer space. The information included the meteorite’s relative angle to the horizon, the shadows it cast, and video timestamps of the rock’s screaming descent.
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A piglet known as Chris P. Bacon examines his new wheelchair on the office floor of veterinarian and owner Len Lucero in Clermont, Fla. The little animal’s hind legs are deformed and Lucero had fashioned a wheelchair out of K’nex toys to help it walk. Chris outgrew the wheelchair, and will soon grow into his new, sturdier model. (PHOTO: REUTERS/Scott Audette)
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Since the 1980s, a hole in the ozone layer has loomed over Antarctica for three months of every year. During these months, the concentration of the ozone decreases, and harmful ultraviolet light, which causes sunburn and skin cancer, seeps through to the Earth’s surface. Environmentalists have long looked to the ozone hole as evidence of man’s negative impact on the atmosphere, but recent findings may ease their minds: Measurements indicate the hole in the ozone layer is the smallest it has been in 10 years, and could be completely gone within a few decades.
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Which one of these drinks is more processed?
The Coca-Cola Company spent $114 million in recent years expanding its juice bottling plant in Auburndale, Fla., and developing a high-tech process for homogenizing juice, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. The operation includes use of satellite imagery, a 1.2-mile juice pipeline, and a complex “Black Book” algorithm which helps juice-makers manage weather patterns, predict crop yields, and measure acidity and sweetness of the crop — all to achieve absolute consistency from batch to batch.
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We won’t try to tell you that hi-Fun gloves ($70) aren’t “pointless and completely laughable.” But it’s still hard to resist a Bluetooth-enabled glove that hides a microphone in its pinkie finger and a speaker in its thumb so that the wearer needs only to make the “call me” sign to carry on a phone chat.
You must have your smartphone nearby, but you can receive a call or redial a number by merely touching the back of the glove. “If you have cold hands and you hate headsets and you’re cool with looking like a total crazy person, here you go.”
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In what is being called a “fundamental leap forward in our understanding of how brains work,” Japanese researchers have successfully caught on film a thought being formed in the brain. And while the brain in this study belongs to a zebrafish, not a human, the footage is captivating, and sheds light on how researchers could use a similar technique to see how our brains work.
To observe the zebrafish brain’s neurons in real time, researchers used a fluorescent probe that makes neurons light up when they’re active. What was the zebrafish thinking about? Something we humans obsess about all the time: Food. Researchers showed the fish a squirming piece of prey, and watched as the fish’s brain perceived it and considered consuming it. “In other words, you’re seeing what the fish thinks when it sees its lunch,” explains Jamie Condliffe at Gizmodo. In the video, parts of the fish’s brain light up like lightning in a storm before the light ripples through the neurons. It is, for lack of a better phrase, so cool.
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5 rules for taking #selfies on Instagram (if you must)
First, let’s define what a selfie is. Just so we’re clear:
1. It’s a picture with your face in it.
2. You took the photo yourself. Another human being was not involved.
3. It is shared on the internet — Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or whatever.Now, the rules:
- Selfies are off-limits for anyone over 21*
Are you allowed to legally consume alcohol in the United States of America? If so, you are too old to go fishing for compliments with a self-portrait. Leave the selfies for Snapchatting teens who can use the word “ratchet” in a sentence without Googling “ratchet” and “urban dictionary” at the same time.
*Exceptions: Fashion bloggers, models, and anyone else who makes a living off of their appearance is exempt from this rule. So is anyone 21 or over who’s using the selfie to communicate something new to friends. New haircut: Great! New glasses? Snap away! GoofyMovember mustache? By all means, share. Same old you? Put the camera down. - The following words and phrases are banned from selfie captions:
“Bored”
“Studying”
“Ready for bed”“Good morning!”
“Hitting the gym”
“#GQ” (LOL)
“Work hard, play hard”
Essentially, ask yourself, “What would Kim Kardashian do?” Then do the opposite.
- Selfies are off-limits for anyone over 21*
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Yesterday, Google Maps released a crowdsourced view of North Korea, which before was just white space.
The big grey blob you see here? That’s Hwasong Gulag, a 212-square mile concentration camp. It houses 10,000 people, and reportedly, no one has ever escaped.
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“It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment it happened — but at some point, Twitter became a dark place…
…Once everyone was on Twitter, everyone’s problems were on Twitter. The early adopters might have been tech-utopians, but the succeeding waves were angry cynics and partisan cranks who used the technology to make the world even louder and worse than it was before Twitter.
Twitter has become like high school, where the mean kids say something hurtful to boost their self esteem and to see if others will laugh and join in. Aside from trolling for victims after some tragedy, Twitter isn’t used for reporting much anymore. But it is used for snark.
The medium is dangerous and tempting. When Abraham Lincoln was mad, he would famously write people scathing letters. He would then file them in his desk drawer, never to be sent. Abe was lucky he didn’t have Twitter…”
