February 21st 2014 - The WAN Show Document

[LinusTech]

 

Better than Bieber - segment

Venezuela

Ukraine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/sports/olympics/ukrainian-skier-and-coach-withdraw-to-protest-kiev-violence.html?_r=0

- Skier and Coach both withdraw from Olympics

- Show of solidarity with protesters who are locked in a violent conflict with their government in the capital city of Kiev.

- Other Ukrainian athletes have left the games early but after their events were over

- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26289318?r=1

- The health ministry said 77 people had been killed since Tuesday, and another 577 were injured. But activists suggested the death toll was likely to be much higher.

- Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and opposition protesters have agreed to an early presidential poll before the end of the year.

< News Items >

OMGAWD Valve is spying on you with VAC! Nope. GabeN for life

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/116628-vac-now-reads-all-the-domains-you-have-visited/#entry1557567

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1y70ej/valve_vac_and_trust/

- Was only active for 13 days, after which it became useless as it was circumvented and pulled

- Claims that it may have been a social engineering attack

- 1) Do we send your browsing history to Valve? No.

2) Do we care what porn sites you visit? Oh, dear god, no. My brain just melted.

3) Is Valve using its market success to go evil? I don't think so, but you have to make the call if we are trustworthy. We try really hard to earn and keep your trust.

- VAC checked for the presence of these cheats.

- If they were detected VAC then checked to see which cheat DRM server was being contacted.

- If found, then hashes of the matching DNS entries were sent to the VAC servers.

- Less than one tenth of one percent of clients triggered the second check. 570 cheaters are being banned as a result.

- Cheat developers have a problem in getting cheaters to actually pay them

- They started creating DRM and anti-cheat code for their cheats.

-These cheats phone home to a DRM server that confirms that a cheater has actually paid to use the cheat. Which makes them detectable

Bitcoin ATMs coming to the states… maybe

http://t.co/7BTFyTTLfi

- Robocoin, based in Las Vegas opened the first Bitcoin ATM last year in Vancouver

- Could withdraw money in USD or deposit into their bitcoin account in USD

- Robocoin wants to install machines in Seattle and Austin by the end of February.

- Like most ATMs, this one will also charge a small transaction fee.

- Said last year that it would install Bitcoin ATMs in New York and Los Angeles, but so far hasn’t.

- Problem = machines need to comply with money transfer laws that require purchasers to verify their identity. In Vancouver, the ATM has a biometric scanner.

Facebook Acquires WhatsApp

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/118213-facebook%E2%80%99s-whatsapp-acquisition-leaves-snapchat-hanging/#entry1576579

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/118230-facebook-buys-whatsapp/

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-is-buying-whatsapp-2014-2

- $19 billion dollar acquisition, effectively paid $43 per user.

- Much higher than google's acquisition of youtube which was £1.65 billion.

- Whatsapp’s biggest user base is in India and boasts 400 million active members.

- Acquisition is more for the high engaged users base rather than revenue.

- Whatsapp says nothing will change. Perhaps the $1 per year charge may go away, given that facebook says its not a big priority to expand subscription.

- Speculation behind why facebook wants whatsapp: 1) Facebook wants photos 2) Facebook is becoming a social media conglomerate. 3)Facebook lives in fear of being disrupted in mobile 4) Facebook needs to expand its Europe and emerging markets presence. 5) Facebook must buy its way into “ephemeral” and/or “dark social” communications.

Amazon Prime increased membership fee

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/117958-amazon-plans-to-increase-membership-fee/

- Amazon may increase its US Amazon Prime membership fee by up to $40 from $79/yr

- In October, Amazon raised the threshold for free shipping for non-Prime customers from items costing $25 to $35 while also plugging its Prime program.

- "Shipping costs have gone up a lot, fuel costs have gone up a lot”  - CFO Tom Szkutak

- It would be the first change in the 9-year history of the program.

- Prime benefits - Prime Instant Video, Prime Lending Library, Free 2 day or regular shipping

I CALLED IT!

Apple and Tesla to come together?

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/118219-apple-and-tesla-sitting-in-a-tree-first-comes-marriage/

- Apple could be in preliminary talks to buy electric automobile manufacturer Tesla.

- With nearly $160 billion in cash, money probably wouldn’t be the primary hurdle Apple won’t clear.

- Tesla has released two cars so far — the Roadster and the Model S — and its crossover model, called the Model X, which will start shipping towards the end of this year.

- Teslas stock is up nearly 500 percent from a year ago and investors couldn’t be happier.

- "I would put zero chance of a merger," Misek said on "Squawk on the Street." "But I would put a lot of chance on collaboration. ... [Job's] departure has left a big gaping hole even now with all the talent they have at Apple, so they would certainly look to collaborations and Musk (Tesla’s CEO) certainly fits that bill."

- The two companies could team up on a "giga factory" to develop lithium-ion batteries, which Apple would use in its devices and Tesla its vehicles, he said.

BitTorrent live mobile app

http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/15/5414430/bittorrent-live-mobile-app-launching-2014

- In March 2013, Bittorrent released the BitTorrent Live protocol as a closed Beta experiment to reduce bandwidth, cost and infrastructure needed for streaming.

- You'll soon be able to stream live video with your smartphone using a type of BitTorrent.

- Instead of relying on a single company's servers BitTorrent Live has a broadcaster send their video to a handful of viewers who then watch the video while sending it out to even more viewers.

- It's only been on the desktop for now, but BitTorrent says that a mobile app is in the works for later this year

- BitTorrent Live itself still remains in beta, though BitTorrent says that it's matured over the past year.

- The app too will launch in an unfinished state — an alpha, BitTorrent says

- Last year: when there weren't enough viewers, videos would start slowly or wouldn't play at all. At the moment, it appears to have worked past some of those kinks and is performing much better, at least on officially featured streams.

- Its good for companies that want an inexpensive way to stream content and gain money from doing it.

Watching movies on the Oculus

http://nofilmschool.com/2014/02/watch-movies-future-first-film-oculus-rift-interactive-trailer/

- Short documentary"Zero Point" is a project by Condition One, and is actually about the Oculus Rift device.

- Condition One's earlier projects let iPad users "move" through footage with a 180-degree field of vision, a more limited version of what the Rift allows.

- Interactive trailer: http://www.conditionone.com/zeropoint/HTML/c1-trailer.html

- There are plenty of movie experiences that could benefit from this kind of immersion, including lots of non-fiction content and sports.

- With fiction films, we use cuts to create new shots in editing and direct the attention of the audience, but with something that lets you look around a space, the viewer can essentially create their own experience by choosing where they want to look at any time.

Oculus suspends DK1 Sales

http://vrfocus.com/archives/527/oculus-suspend-sales-rift-developer-kit-next-version-incoming/

- Oculus suspends rift sales. NB: new version coming is speculation

- Oculus Community Manager confirmed as much, explaining that some components used in the headset are no longer in production

- They intend to sell the remaining inventory of development kits until they have run out in each region.

- Sales will then be suspended “until we are able to deliver news orders”.

- Doesn’t mention of a new version of the kit, but it does come soon after the company teased its “vision for future development hardware”.

- Could it be that the company is simply clearing stock to make way for the next development kit?

http://www.gamefront.com/oculus-vr-files-trademark-for-riftcon/

- Filed trademark for “RiftCon” - a virtual convention??

Google Project Tango

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe10ExwzCqk

- Google Project Tango

OFFICIAL SOURCE: http://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/

- The goal of Project Tango is to give mobile devices a human-scale understanding of space and motion.

- our team has been working with universities, research labs, and industrial partners spanning nine countries around the world

- customized hardware and software designed to track the full 3D motion of the device, while simultaneously creating a map of the environment.

- APIs to provide position, orientation, and depth data to apps written in Java, C/C++, as well as the Unity Game Engine.

Irrational Games to close

http://www.irrationalgames.com/

- Studio founded 17 years ago

- “my passion has turned to making a different kind of game than we’ve done before. To meet the challenge ahead, I need to refocus my energy on a smaller team with a flatter structure and a more direct relationship with gamers. In many ways, it will be a return to how we started: a small team making games for the core gaming audience. “

- “I am winding down Irrational Games as you know it. I’ll be starting a smaller, more entrepreneurial endeavor at Take-Two.”

- “To make narrative-driven games for the core gamer that are highly replayable. To foster the most direct relationship with our fans possible, we will focus exclusively on content delivered digitally.”

- I’m handing the reins of our creation, the BioShock universe, to 2K

- If we’re lucky, we’ll build something half as memorable as BioShock.

GTX 750 Ti

Let’s all Try it and report next week

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/med-tech/this-app-trains-you-to-see-farther-16506910

[PillowSmoke]

[bradscoolio]

@LinusTech where's the eye/brain conditioning and training thingymabob?

[Yasri]

On the amazon prime subject let me give you my two cents as someone who has it.

Free Book a Month:

1. Very small selection of popular titles, your better off seeing if your library has a collection of digital books.
2. You can only use if you got a kindle e-ink/fire. Does not work with the computer app, and I think it does not work on phones or tablets, unless it is the fire

I got a kindle touch and use the library for a bulk of my books. I check a book out on the library site, it redirects me to amazon who sends the book to me thru wifi.

Free two day Shipping.
In the US amazon has free shipping on orders of $35 or more(was $25 not to long ago). It is five to seven day shipping but if you can wait, it might be worth doing. For me the wait on shipping this way was amazon dragging their feet to give the order to the USPS. Once the USPS gets it I get the package within two days in 80%+ of cases.

Prime Video
For the past several months I have been trying prime, netfix and hulu. For current season stuff, hulu is the only option. For most major networks, you can watch shows the next day. For back catalog stuff, I have found netflix to be the best of the three. But this is for stuff I watch. I recommend checking out stuff you want to watch on canistream.it to see which service has what you want. Amazon video does let you get current season stuff but that is piecemeal and does not require prime.

[fishy]

@LinusTech where's the eye/brain conditioning and training thingymabob?

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/med-tech/this-app-trains-you-to-see-farther-16506910

 

and their website: http://ultimeyesvision.com/index.php

 

 

P.S.

the link in youtube video redirects me to the old wan doc file thread from last week

[Lachrymal]

It's not that hard to read my name. It's a real word..... 

 

Also, I am choosing not to use Prime because I don't in fact order or buy anything that often. Like you said it's a numbers thing. but hey I'll see if I can exploit the 30-day trial a bit. 

[Legion]

Wanshow doc link in the video is for last weeks document might want to fix it.

[PortentousLad]

get gopher on the show! @ GophersVids

[bigdave8504]

 

Better than Bieber - segment

Venezuela

Ukraine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/sports/olympics/ukrainian-skier-and-coach-withdraw-to-protest-kiev-violence.html?_r=0

- Skier and Coach both withdraw from Olympics

- Show of solidarity with protesters who are locked in a violent conflict with their government in the capital city of Kiev.

- Other Ukrainian athletes have left the games early but after their events were over

- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26289318?r=1

- The health ministry said 77 people had been killed since Tuesday, and another 577 were injured. But activists suggested the death toll was likely to be much higher.

- Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and opposition protesters have agreed to an early presidential poll before the end of the year.

< News Items >

OMGAWD Valve is spying on you with VAC! Nope. GabeN for life

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/116628-vac-now-reads-all-the-domains-you-have-visited/#entry1557567

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1y70ej/valve_vac_and_trust/

- Was only active for 13 days, after which it became useless as it was circumvented and pulled

- Claims that it may have been a social engineering attack

- 1) Do we send your browsing history to Valve? No.

2) Do we care what porn sites you visit? Oh, dear god, no. My brain just melted.

3) Is Valve using its market success to go evil? I don't think so, but you have to make the call if we are trustworthy. We try really hard to earn and keep your trust.

- VAC checked for the presence of these cheats.

- If they were detected VAC then checked to see which cheat DRM server was being contacted.

- If found, then hashes of the matching DNS entries were sent to the VAC servers.

- Less than one tenth of one percent of clients triggered the second check. 570 cheaters are being banned as a result.

- Cheat developers have a problem in getting cheaters to actually pay them

- They started creating DRM and anti-cheat code for their cheats.

-These cheats phone home to a DRM server that confirms that a cheater has actually paid to use the cheat. Which makes them detectable

Bitcoin ATMs coming to the states… maybe

http://t.co/7BTFyTTLfi

- Robocoin, based in Las Vegas opened the first Bitcoin ATM last year in Vancouver

- Could withdraw money in USD or deposit into their bitcoin account in USD

- Robocoin wants to install machines in Seattle and Austin by the end of February.

- Like most ATMs, this one will also charge a small transaction fee.

- Said last year that it would install Bitcoin ATMs in New York and Los Angeles, but so far hasn’t.

- Problem = machines need to comply with money transfer laws that require purchasers to verify their identity. In Vancouver, the ATM has a biometric scanner.

Facebook Acquires WhatsApp

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/118213-facebook%E2%80%99s-whatsapp-acquisition-leaves-snapchat-hanging/#entry1576579

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/118230-facebook-buys-whatsapp/

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-is-buying-whatsapp-2014-2

- $19 billion dollar acquisition, effectively paid $43 per user.

- Much higher than google's acquisition of youtube which was £1.65 billion.

- Whatsapp’s biggest user base is in India and boasts 400 million active members.

- Acquisition is more for the high engaged users base rather than revenue.

- Whatsapp says nothing will change. Perhaps the $1 per year charge may go away, given that facebook says its not a big priority to expand subscription.

- Speculation behind why facebook wants whatsapp: 1) Facebook wants photos 2) Facebook is becoming a social media conglomerate. 3)Facebook lives in fear of being disrupted in mobile 4) Facebook needs to expand its Europe and emerging markets presence. 5) Facebook must buy its way into “ephemeral” and/or “dark social” communications.

Amazon Prime increased membership fee

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/117958-amazon-plans-to-increase-membership-fee/

- Amazon may increase its US Amazon Prime membership fee by up to $40 from $79/yr

- In October, Amazon raised the threshold for free shipping for non-Prime customers from items costing $25 to $35 while also plugging its Prime program.

- "Shipping costs have gone up a lot, fuel costs have gone up a lot”  - CFO Tom Szkutak

- It would be the first change in the 9-year history of the program.

- Prime benefits - Prime Instant Video, Prime Lending Library, Free 2 day or regular shipping

I CALLED IT!

Apple and Tesla to come together?

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/118219-apple-and-tesla-sitting-in-a-tree-first-comes-marriage/

- Apple could be in preliminary talks to buy electric automobile manufacturer Tesla.

- With nearly $160 billion in cash, money probably wouldn’t be the primary hurdle Apple won’t clear.

- Tesla has released two cars so far — the Roadster and the Model S — and its crossover model, called the Model X, which will start shipping towards the end of this year.

- Teslas stock is up nearly 500 percent from a year ago and investors couldn’t be happier.

- "I would put zero chance of a merger," Misek said on "Squawk on the Street." "But I would put a lot of chance on collaboration. ... [Job's] departure has left a big gaping hole even now with all the talent they have at Apple, so they would certainly look to collaborations and Musk (Tesla’s CEO) certainly fits that bill."

- The two companies could team up on a "giga factory" to develop lithium-ion batteries, which Apple would use in its devices and Tesla its vehicles, he said.

BitTorrent live mobile app

http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/15/5414430/bittorrent-live-mobile-app-launching-2014

- In March 2013, Bittorrent released the BitTorrent Live protocol as a closed Beta experiment to reduce bandwidth, cost and infrastructure needed for streaming.

- You'll soon be able to stream live video with your smartphone using a type of BitTorrent.

- Instead of relying on a single company's servers BitTorrent Live has a broadcaster send their video to a handful of viewers who then watch the video while sending it out to even more viewers.

- It's only been on the desktop for now, but BitTorrent says that a mobile app is in the works for later this year

- BitTorrent Live itself still remains in beta, though BitTorrent says that it's matured over the past year.

- The app too will launch in an unfinished state — an alpha, BitTorrent says

- Last year: when there weren't enough viewers, videos would start slowly or wouldn't play at all. At the moment, it appears to have worked past some of those kinks and is performing much better, at least on officially featured streams.

- Its good for companies that want an inexpensive way to stream content and gain money from doing it.

Watching movies on the Oculus

http://nofilmschool.com/2014/02/watch-movies-future-first-film-oculus-rift-interactive-trailer/

- Short documentary"Zero Point" is a project by Condition One, and is actually about the Oculus Rift device.

- Condition One's earlier projects let iPad users "move" through footage with a 180-degree field of vision, a more limited version of what the Rift allows.

- Interactive trailer: http://www.conditionone.com/zeropoint/HTML/c1-trailer.html

- There are plenty of movie experiences that could benefit from this kind of immersion, including lots of non-fiction content and sports.

- With fiction films, we use cuts to create new shots in editing and direct the attention of the audience, but with something that lets you look around a space, the viewer can essentially create their own experience by choosing where they want to look at any time.

Oculus suspends DK1 Sales

http://vrfocus.com/archives/527/oculus-suspend-sales-rift-developer-kit-next-version-incoming/

- Oculus suspends rift sales. NB: new version coming is speculation

- Oculus Community Manager confirmed as much, explaining that some components used in the headset are no longer in production

- They intend to sell the remaining inventory of development kits until they have run out in each region.

- Sales will then be suspended “until we are able to deliver news orders”.

- Doesn’t mention of a new version of the kit, but it does come soon after the company teased its “vision for future development hardware”.

- Could it be that the company is simply clearing stock to make way for the next development kit?

http://www.gamefront.com/oculus-vr-files-trademark-for-riftcon/

- Filed trademark for “RiftCon” - a virtual convention??

Google Project Tango

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe10ExwzCqk

- Google Project Tango

OFFICIAL SOURCE: http://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/

- The goal of Project Tango is to give mobile devices a human-scale understanding of space and motion.

- our team has been working with universities, research labs, and industrial partners spanning nine countries around the world

- customized hardware and software designed to track the full 3D motion of the device, while simultaneously creating a map of the environment.

- APIs to provide position, orientation, and depth data to apps written in Java, C/C++, as well as the Unity Game Engine.

Irrational Games to close

http://www.irrationalgames.com/

- Studio founded 17 years ago

- “my passion has turned to making a different kind of game than we’ve done before. To meet the challenge ahead, I need to refocus my energy on a smaller team with a flatter structure and a more direct relationship with gamers. In many ways, it will be a return to how we started: a small team making games for the core gaming audience. “

- “I am winding down Irrational Games as you know it. I’ll be starting a smaller, more entrepreneurial endeavor at Take-Two.”

- “To make narrative-driven games for the core gamer that are highly replayable. To foster the most direct relationship with our fans possible, we will focus exclusively on content delivered digitally.”

- I’m handing the reins of our creation, the BioShock universe, to 2K

- If we’re lucky, we’ll build something half as memorable as BioShock.

GTX 750 Ti

Let’s all Try it and report next week

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/med-tech/this-app-trains-you-to-see-farther-16506910

[CornOnJacob]

I've never seen a stormtrooper facepalm before

[Dysthymia]

(Almost) literally anything could be featured in a segment called "Better Than Bieber", to the point that the segment could be renamed "This Exists". As such I think the segment serves no purpose except to eradicate another haven on the interwebs where we can pretend he doesn't exist. 

[Dr_Orpington]

iCars? The future was in 2013.

[EmoPolarbear]

(Almost) literally anything could be featured in a segment called "Better Than Bieber", to the point that the segment could be renamed "This Exists". As such I think the segment serves no purpose except to eradicate another haven on the interwebs where we can pretend he doesn't exist. 

 

I agree, while I hate on Beiber as much as anyone else, the best way to ignore his existence is to not even think about him. Naming a segment after him does the exact opposite of that.