How to Explain Net Neutrality to Your Relatives: A Thanksgiving Guide

Posted on February 4, 2015 by StevenTorresRamos

Thanksgiving is almost here, and that means turkey, mashed potatoes, and getting peppered with questions about tech-related news stories because hey, you read a bunch of blogs and you even know what a yik-yak is! It’s only a matter of time before they ask you “So what’s up with that thing on the internets?”

Lucky for all of us, the year of Bitcoin is over and you’re probably safe from having to explain the finer points of the the blockchain to Uncle Nigel, who seems waaay too interested about the part where you can use cryptocurrency to buy heinous porn on the darknet. No, this year there’s a good chance you’ll wind up describing “common carriers” and gingerly trying to explain how sometimes government regulation is the answer to your Tea Partier Aunt and her enthusiastically nodding second husband when they blindly ask you what this “net neutrality” thing is all about.

We’re here to help. Below you’ll find a list of potential questions, fleshed out with some background, tips, and a sample answer to help you wow the dinner table before navigating the discussion back to something more palatable like sportsball or political issues that people actually understand.  TO READ MORE FOLLOW LINK BELOW

via How to Explain Net Neutrality to Your Relatives: A Thanksgiving Guide.

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Read Roald Dahl’s Powerful Pro-Vaccination Letter (From 1988)

Posted on February 2, 2015 by StevenTorresRamos

8d0061950cd41337b2ef695c57500b1dRoald Dahl – author of such books as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and Matilda – lost his eldest daughter, Olivia, to measles in 1962. Twenty-six years later, he penned a cogent and gut-wrenching plea to parents, urging them have their children vaccinated against the disease.

In light of measles’ recent resurgence in the United States, Dahl’s take on the seriousness of the disease, the importance of immunization, and the inanity of refusing to vaccinate “out of obstinacy or ignorance or fear,” is as relevant today as it was when it appeared, in 1988, in a pamphlet published by the Sandwell Health Authority.

Read entire letter via link below

via Read Roald Dahl’s Powerful Pro-Vaccination Letter (From 1988).

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How USB charging works, or how to avoid blowing up your smartphone | ExtremeTech

Posted on January 28, 2015 by StevenTorresRamos

Amazing strides have been made in recent years towards standardized chargers and connectors for smartphones, tablets, MP3 players, and many other gadget species. In just five years — with the obvious exception of Apple’s iOS connector — Micro-USB has single-handedly destroyed the industry’s penchant for wildly customized and proprietary connectors. Today, you can charge your phone at your friend’s house, plug your Kindle into any computer, and download photos from a digital camera directly to your TV, all thanks to a standardized connector.

In its place, though, another problem has arisen: USB power. Not all USB chargers, connectors, and cables are born equal. You might’ve noticed that some wall chargers are stronger than others. Sometimes, one USB socket on a laptop is seemingly more powerful than the other. On some desktop PCs, even when they’re turned off, you can charge your smartphone via a USB socket.

Believe it or not, there’s a method in all this madness — but first we have to explain how USB power actually works. Continue reading →

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Apple Pay Is Coming to Thousands of Vending Machine and Parking Meters

Posted on January 27, 2015 by StevenTorresRamos

Apple Pay, and other mobile payment services like it, all share a similar vision of the future, one where people can leave their home with nothing but a smartphone and an ID (if that!), and still buy absolutely whatever they want. That dream’s a little closer to reality now that USA Technologies brings NFC payments to some 200,000 vending machines, parking meters, and laundry equipment, some of the last bastions of cash.

Not familiar with USA Technologies? They’re the hardware giant behind lots of those self-serve machines that make our lives so convenient, ones that traditionally gobble up physical currency—or more and more commonly, also take plastic. The company’s NFC-based declaration is a step in the right direction for those who want total freedom from paper, coins, and plastic; it will add Apple Pay support to 200,000 vending machines, kiosks, parking meters, laundry machines, and whathaveyou. This effort is bolstered by other businesses who are also creating mobile readers to help bring Apple Pay to restaurants, letting mobile payments by Apple, Google, and other companies like Softcard, really transform the way we pay.

This also isn’t the first instance of tap-to-pay vending machines. USA Technologies says they’ve been working on integrating cashless payments with NFC for near a decade. But according to Businessweek, in 2013 5 million vending machines in the U.S. still only used cash, requiring physical money for snack-sized Funions. So the real question will be if vending machines, which have been somewhat sluggish to introduce credit cards as a payment option, could just leap from that tech entirely onto mobile payments. Here’s to hoping. [TechCrunch]

via Apple Pay Is Coming to Thousands of Vending Machine and Parking Meters.

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Smart mattress cover can control the temperature and the coffeemaker

Posted on January 27, 2015 by StevenTorresRamos

For those who can’t commit to a $1,000 mattress (a lot of people, most likely) even if it is high-tech, this much cheaper smart mattress cover called Luna might be the better choice. It’s embedded with sensors to detect breathing and heart rate, accelerometers to track sleep patterns and microphones to hear your snoring. The cover then sends data to an Android or iOS app and adjusts temperatures accordingly, depending on your preference. Yep, it heats up or cools down to make you feel comfortable, and it can supposedly even maintain different temperatures on each side of the bed.

Even better, since it’s open source, you can make it work with the rest of a connected home, assuming you’ve been replacing your fixtures and furniture with their internet-connected counterparts. Luna can integrate with Nest, and you can also program it so that your smart door lock activates when you get into bed, or so that the coffeemaker starts brewing as soon as you wake up. It’s not exactly available just yet, but it’s now open for preorder for $179 a piece.

via Smart mattress cover can control the temperature and the coffeemaker.

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The wearable tool, the new Leatherman Tread – Leatherman Blog

Posted on January 22, 2015 by StevenTorresRamos

This summer, Leatherman Tool Group, Inc. will debut an industry first: a multi-tool that can be worn on the wrist. The Leatherman Tread is crafted of high strength, corrosion resistant 17-4 stainless steel links that include two to three functional tools each, making a total of 25 usable features like box wrenches and screwdrivers available at a moment’s notice.

“The idea originated on a trip to Disneyland with my family,” said President Ben Rivera. “I was stopped at the gate by security for carrying a knife, when what they had actually seen was my Skeletool. I was unwilling to give it up, so they made me take it all the way back to my hotel room. I knew there had to be another way to carry my tools with me that would be accepted by security.” When he returned from his trip, Rivera, who began his tenure at Leatherman Tool Group 24 years ago as an engineer, began by wearing a bike chain bracelet to see how it would feel. As his thoughts took shape, he brought his idea to the engineers at Leatherman who helped fast track his plans.

via The wearable tool, the new Leatherman Tread – Leatherman Blog.

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Project HoloLens: Our Exclusive Hands-On With Microsoft’s Holographic Goggles | WIRED

Posted on January 22, 2015 by StevenTorresRamos

It’s the end of October, when the days have already grown short in Redmond, Washington, and gray sheets of rain are just beginning to let up. In several months, Microsoft will unveil its most ambitious undertaking in years, a head-mounted holographic computer called Project HoloLens. But at this point, even most people at Microsoft have never heard of it. I walk through the large atrium of Microsoft’s Studio C to meet its chief inventor, Alex Kipman.

The headset is still a prototype being developed under the codename Project Baraboo, or sometimes just “B.” Kipman, with shoulder-length hair and severely cropped bangs, is a nervous inventor, shifting from one red Converse All-Star to the other. Nervous, because he’s been working on this pair of holographic goggles for five years. No, even longer. Seven years, if you go back to the idea he first pitched to Microsoft, which became Kinect. When the motion-sensing Xbox accessory was released, just in time for the 2010 holidays, it became the fastest-selling consumer gaming device of all time.

Kipman leads me into a briefing room with a drop-down screen, plush couches, and a corner bar stocked with wine and soda (we abstain). He sits beside me, then stands, paces a bit, then sits down again. His wind-up is long. He gives me an abbreviated history of computing, speaking in complete paragraphs, with bushy, expressive eyebrows and saucer eyes that expand as he talks. The next era of computing, he explains, won’t be about that original digital universe. “It’s about the analog universe,” he says. “And the analog universe has a fundamentally different rule set.”

Translation: you used to compute on a screen, entering commands on a keyboard. Cyberspace was somewhere else. Computers responded to programs that detailed explicit commands. In the very near future, you’ll compute in the physical world, using voice and gesture to summon data and layer it atop physical objects. Computer programs will be able to digest so much data that they’ll be able to handle far more complex and nuanced situations. Cyberspace will be all around you.

TO READ MORE BELOW CLICK BELOW LINK

via Project HoloLens: Our Exclusive Hands-On With Microsoft’s Holographic Goggles | WIRED.

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Obama’s Community-Broadband Plan: 4 Ways to Understand His State of the Union Pitch

Posted on January 20, 2015 by StevenTorresRamos

You’re going to hear words in tonight’s State of the Union address about “community broadband,” Internet connections built by cities or counties for their citizens.

After the State of the Union, if you stay tuned in to the news, you will then hear more than a few arguments against President Obama’s sales pitch. For example, you may hear that collective ownership of the means of watching cat videos is a taxpayer-funded boondoggle.

And, yes, at its worst, taxpayer-funded or municipal broadband can be just that. But it can also by a sane way for a community to respond to being left with only one broadband provider. Here are four things to realize about community broadband.

1. We Don’t Have Enough Broadband Choices Continue reading →

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Please don’t use these passwords. Sincerely, the Internet

Posted on January 20, 2015 by StevenTorresRamos

Think you’re protected from web attacks with your strong passwords? When hackers seize control of computers to create botnets, they can cause plenty of collateral damage, and their ticket in is often stupid-simple: terrible passwords. SplashData has just released its annual list of the worst of them, and things have changed depressingly little over last year. The most commonly hacked password is still “123456,” which edged out the perennial I-can’t-believe-people-still-use-this entry, “password.” Other top picks in the an alphanumeric hall of shame are “12345678,” “qwerty,” “monkey” and new this year, “batman.” According to security expert Mark Burnett, the top 25 passwords (below) represent an eye-popping 2.2 percent of passwords exposed. Continue reading →

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Paris as a Green and Sustainable Future City Is Even More Beautiful

Posted on January 19, 2015 by StevenTorresRamos

Paris is one of the world’s most beautiful cities, with its landmarks, parks and the cobbled roads of Montmarte the envy of the world. Architectural progress can sometimes meet opposition when a city’s iconic sights and historic look is challenged, but architects Vincent Callebaut’s vision of a green, sustainable Paris is so gorgeous, it makes the glorious French capital looking even more magical.

The 2050 Paris Smart City project was commissioned by Paris’s City Hall, as it looks at ways to reduce the capital’s greenhouse gas emissions by 75 per cent by 2050.

With input from engineering firm Setec Bâtiment, Vincent Callebaut envision great residential towers featuring photovoltaic and thermal shields, producing electricity and heating water. Rainwater would be collected for “reversible hydro-electrical” pumps too for generating power cleanly.

Other mad ideas include vertical parks with “algae bioreactors”, bamboo towers with vegetable gardens and bridges that seem inspired by jellyfish.

It’s a drastic overhaul of the city, and one that is unlikely to ever approach reality, at least in our lifetimes. But with the designs also supporting increased population numbers, such designs will increasingly have to be taken into consideration by future city planners. [Vincent Callebaut Architecture]

via Paris as a Green and Sustainable Future City Is Even More Beautiful.

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