Over there, being able to disappear from a search engine (eventually) is now a right: Europe’s highest court said on Tuesday that people had the right to influence what the world could learn about them through online searches, a ruling that rejected long-established notions about the free flow of information on the Internet. A search […]
Tech
Posted inTech
XOXO Founder Andy Baio is Bringing Back Upcoming.org
If you’ve heard Andy Baio‘s name, it’s likely because he’s a co-founder of Portland’s high-profile art-and-tech festival XOXO. But Baio’s incredibly well-regarded in the tech world—he was CTO at Kickstarter, and he founded the community-curated events site Upcoming.org back in 2003. Baio sold Upcoming to Yahoo in 2005; Yahoo didn’t do much with it, and […]
Posted inBusey!
Gary Busey Gets WEIRD for Amazon Fire TV
Yesterday I informed you about the new Amazon Fire TV streaming box, which may not be the answer to all your television woes, but is a definite improvement over similar devices such Apple TV, Roku, and Chromecast… AND doubles as a KARAOKE MACHINE!!! (I really need to let go of that.) Anyway, who better to […]
Posted inTech
A Quick Tour of Amazon’s New “Fire TV”
Gizmodo has a pretty thorough article today on the new Amazon Fire TV streaming box—which retails for $100 and might finally replace your love for getting neck cricks while watching TV on your laptop. It apparently fixes all the problems with Apple TV, Chromecast, and Roku—terrible search systems, slow gaming, etc—and presents it all in […]
Posted inMedia
Robots Write the News Now—and I Couldn’t Be Happier
The LA Times is one of the media organizatins leading the pack when it comes to making their own employees superfluous—because now they’re using robots to write their breaking news stories. From the BBC: The Los Angeles Times was the first newspaper to publish a story about an earthquake on Monday – thanks to a […]
Posted inMovies & TV
How Warner Bros. Screwed Over Veronica Mars‘ Backers
VERONICA MARS Is Veronica’s dog Backup in the movie? SO HELP ME GOD BACKUP BETTER BE IN THE MOVIE How did Warner Bros. screw over the people who made the Veronica Mars movie happen? One word: Ultraviolet. I was one of those people who giddily donated to the Veronica Mars Kickstarter on its first day, […]
Posted inPortland
Everything You Need to Know About Google Fiber
GOOGLE FIBER Pictured above: You! Using Google Fiber! Or maybe it’s Johnny Mnemonic. Your call. Portland might get Google Fiber, which would be a pretty big deal—but amidst all the talk of blisteringly fast internet speeds, there are a lot of questions. How much would it cost? What would Google get out of it? Why […]
Posted inTech
The Coffee Pod People Are Getting Creepier
Keurig, those coffee-pod people, have somehow created a market full of people who are willing to pay $60 for a pound of coffee. But that’s not enough for Keurig: Now they’re working on some sort of a digital rights management scheme involving coffee makers that would only use Keurig-branded coffee pods. Karl Bode at Techdirt […]
Posted inTech
Government Trying to Spy on Citizens Annoyed Because People Are Masturbating on Camera All the Time
The Guardian‘s latest scoop is at once horrifying and kind of funny. Britain’s surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal. GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program […]
Posted inTech
Watch this Extended Trailer for HBO’s Silicon Valley
First of all it’s got the hilarious T.J. Miller (read our interview with him in the upcoming ish of the Merc). Secondly it was created by the wildly talented Mike Judge (Office Space, King of the Hill, Beavis and Butthead… shall I continue?). Thirdly, it also co-stars Martin Starr who you fell madly in love […]
Posted inTech
Fifteen Years Left Before Machines Outsmart You
Says this guy: By 2029, computers will be able to understand our language, learn from experience and outsmart even the most intelligent humans, according to Google’s director of engineering Ray Kurzweil. He also calls this idea “not radical anymore.”
Posted inNews
Portland Makes Google Fiber Shortlist!!!
google It’s by no means a done deal, but the mayors of several neighboring cities joined Mayor Charlie Hales in city hall today for a majorly hopeful announcement: Portland is one of nine metro areas (including 34 cities) in the running for a whiplash-fast Google Fiber broadband network. Getting Google Fiber has been a city […]