Category: News and Views

How Time Warner Is Trying to Fend Off Netflix | Bloomberg

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

To fend off Netflix, Time Warner Inc. is taking a page from the streaming-video giant. And it’s turning to a 6-foot-8-inch former basketball player and war refugee to make it work.

Time Warner’s Turner division, home of CNN, TBS and TNT, is planning to tailor online delivery of its channels to individuals’ tastes, tracking preferences like Netflix does before suggesting what subscribers should watch. The company behind Time Warner’s effort is iStreamPlanet, in which it bought a majority stake two years ago for $148 million.

Read More

This 150-foot-tall ‘vending machine’ will serve you a Ferrari | CNN Money

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

A 15-story tower of Ferraris and Lamborghinis in glass boxes has become a quirky landmark in Singapore. And it all started with a visit to Toys R Us.

Struggling with a lack of space at his sports car showroom, Gary Hong was inspired by a vertical display of Matchbox cars while shopping at the toy store with his son.

Hong, 45, has turned his vision into a 148-foot tower housing some of the world’s most expensive cars.

“We decided to build something a bit different to solve the problem,” Hong, general manager at Autobahn Motors, told CNNMoney.

Read More

With version 2.0, Crate.io’s database tools put an emphasis on IoT | TechCrunch

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Crate.io, the winner of our Disrupt Europe 2014 Battlefield, is launching version 2.0 of its CrateDB database today. The tool, which is available in both an open source and enterprise version, started out as a general-purpose but highly scalable SQL database. Over time, though, the team found that many of its customers were using the service for managing their machine data and, unsurprisingly, decided to focus its efforts on better supporting those clients

Read More

WannaCry Ransomware Cyber-Attacks Slow But Fears Remain | BBC News

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

A computer malware that has spread across 150 countries appears to be slowing down, with few reports of fresh attacks in Asia and Europe on Monday.

However staff beginning the working week have been told to be careful.

The WannaCry ransomware started taking over users’ files on Friday, demanding $300 (£230) to restore access.

Hundreds of thousands of computers have been affected so far. Computer giant Microsoft said the attack should serve as a wake-up call.

Read More

Apple and Amazon: Rivals that are maybe starting to play nice | Mashable

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

When it comes to tech giants, Apple and Amazon have one of the better rivalries.

Both are trying to be the living-room platform of the future. Apple is doing that through Apple TV; Amazon is doing that through its Fire sticks and boxes. Neither wants to cede ground to the other, which has meant they haven’t been playing nice.

The result? No Amazon Prime Video app for Apple TV owners, and no Apple TVs available on Amazon.com. For now.

Read More

Boy Genius Boyan Slat’s Giant Ocean Cleanup Machine Is Real | Fast Company

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

When the oceanographer Charles Moore first discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch–an area of the ocean where currents concentrate the plastic we throw into the ocean–in 1997, he was shocked by its magnitude and persistence. “It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot,” he wrote later in Natural History magazine. “In the week it took to cross the subtropical high, no matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments.” In the years since the plastic buildup has only worsened. In a recent article in the New York Times, Moore reported that the Patch, through a process of accretion, now contains “solid areas you could walk on.”

Read More

Caffeine-infused bagel perks up Einstein Bros menu | Fast Casual

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Caffeine addicts have a new way to get their fix, thanks to the Espresso Buzz Bagel.

The bagel, infused with 32 milligrams of caffeine and 13 grams of protein, is now part of Einstein Bros. Bagels’ Boosted Bagels, according to a press release.

Two other bagels joining the lineup include the Cherry Chia Bagel, boasting 300 milligrams of omega-3 ALA and 12 grams of protein, and the Savory Parm Bagel, which has iron, B1, B2 and 12 grams of protein.

Read More

Apple’s Promise to Create More American Jobs: Trump Shouldn’t Buy It | Fortune.com

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Last week, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook announced the company would invest $1 billion in a U.S. “advanced manufacturing fund.”

As the CEO of a manufacturing company, even I have no idea what Cook means by an “advanced manufacturing fund,” and I don’t think Apple (AAPL, -0.82%) wants me or anyone else to know, which is why it makes for such good publicity. The company announced last week that its cash reserves hit $256.8 billion in the fiscal second quarter, then doesn’t give any other specifics, and saves those specifics, as Cook says, for a later date. Apple will keep beating the drum of how it’s “investing in America,” but won’t ever provide any specifics as to how the money is used other than to create more manufacturing jobs or how many American jobs it creates. And if it does, it will be harder to trace than an Iranian cash deal.

Read More

A Court Order to Terminate Hate Speech Tests Facebook | WIRED

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

FACEBOOK MAY WANT to see itself as a platform for others to share news, not a publisher that intervenes to filter what appears on the site. But the world keeps getting in the way.

The latest demand for Facebook to exercise something like editorial control comes from an Austrian court, which ruled yesterday that the company must take down posts identified as “hate speech” in a case brought by the country’s Green party over insults to its leader. “There’s a multitude of ways to enforce the court’s decision in case Facebook is not willing to fully comply,” says Alexander Nessler, an attorney at the firm representing Greens politician Eva Glawischnig in the case. “In the end, it’ll depend on Facebook’s actual reaction.”

Read More

Twitter Is Failing in Exactly the Ways It Predicted | Inc.com

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

You can learn a lot about a public company by reading its risk factors.

These are the portions of companies’ financial filings that require them to put on a show of honesty and humility. Risk factors are the challenges a company sees for itself, the threats it believes could sink it.

Twitter lists more than 40 risk factors in its most recent quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Many of them are obvious challenges that apply to any company (currency fluctuations could hurt, taxes might go up, God forbid a natural disaster destroy our headquarters, etc.). So far, it has navigated those successfully enough. It’s on the risk factors unique to Twitter it has foundered.

Here are a dozen areas where Twitter has foreseen risks — but still failed to avoid them.

Read More