MythTV 0.25 Released, New HW Acceleration and Audio Standards Support
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Mick Darling's posterousAll my blogging in one spot. (mostly)MythTV 0.25 Released, New HW Acceleration and Audio Standards Support
unts writes "The highly configurable Linux PVR, MythTV, has reached the 0.25 release, over 500 days after the previous full release. New features include VAAPI support, E-AC3, TrueHD, and DTS-HD audio, the ability to control other home entertainment devices via HDMI CEC and additions to the API to allow HTTP live streaming. The release notes for 0.25 don't reflect the release status at the time of writing, but should contain most of the relevant changes. MythTV can be used as a backend (recorder) and frontend (viewer), but can also feed other frontends such as appropriate versions of XBMC. Hopefully the new HTTP streaming API will lead to even more ways to get your video fix."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. Comcast access to the HBO Go app on Xbox 360 is live
After a short delay, Comcast subscribers are now on the list of users able to access the HBO Go streaming app via their Xbox 360s. Although some HBO content was already included in the Xfinity TV app, it wasn't all there however a change in the policy was rumored and then eventually confirmed late last week. We're still left to ponder what exactly cause the hold up, and why there's still no hint of streaming access on Roku or Samsung. The news was tweeted earlier from the HBO Go official account, you can head there and check out another one of those promotional teasers, or just take your Comcast account credentials to your Xbox and get to streaming.
Comcast access to the HBO Go app on Xbox 360 is live originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Apr 2012 19:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | @HBOGO (Twitter) | Email this | Comments
from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/09/comcast-access-to-the-hbo-go-app-on-xbox-3...
Twitter open sources its MySQL secret sauceTwitter has shared numerous aspects of its infrastructure over the past few years, and its decision to open source its work on MySQL might be the social media platform’s most useful contribution yet. Sure, open source big data tools are valuable, but they’re not MySQL. Used by millions of web developers, MySQL is hugely popular; it’s the “M” in the LAMP stack that still underpins many web applications. But it has its problems, among them scalability and performance under the pressure of high transaction rates. This is part of the reason that NoSQL databases came into existence and continue to flourish. So, for anyone concerned with making MySQL scale, being able to see and build upon what a site like Twitter did with the code should be a big deal. It’s not like Twitter is alone in working on MySQL’s shortcoming or anything — companies such as Tokutek and ScaleBase are centered around this very premise, and Facebook has done some amazing things with the database — but Twitter’s willingness to open source its code is critical. No vendor licenses, no support contracts and no lock-in, just a tried and true MySQL fork from one of the world’ most successful web platforms.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
“The best LED cube build we’ve seen”
And the Hack a Day writers have seen a bunch of them. We’ve covered quite a few, ourselves, and I have to concur that this 8x8x8 RGB from Nick Schulze is the best looking, best designed, and (certainly) best documented LED cube build of the lot. Don’t miss the vid, embedded above, to show off what it can do, or the tutorial, linked below, to show off the thoughtfulness, thoroughness, and ingenuity that went into its design and construction. [via Hack a Day] The Funniest Instagram-Facebook TweetsFacebook just acquired Instagram and the best place to get that news was, of course, Twitter. A number of hilarious reactions emerged and I decided to share some from my timeline here. Have a good laugh!
RT @Pinboard: BREAKING NEWS: Pinboard acquires medium coffee at a $1.50 valuation. Believe this will have sitewide benefits; excited go ...
@ArpitNext
Arpit Kumar
Facebook: "We want to buy you. What price is cool with you?" Instagram: "You know what's cool?"
@andrekibbe
Andre Kibbe
RT @JennyJohnsonHi5: Instagram is now in a relationship and it's complicated.
@chr1sa
Chris Anderson
RT @beastoftraal: Instabook. Facegram. Instaface. Instacebook. Factagram. Facebooam. Instagrook. Inook. Facram. Faceram. Ink.
@clintonjeff
Clinton Jeff
RT @PabloVikasso: So does this mean my Facebook timeline is going to be full of images of locks, windows and other useless objects shot ...
@madmanweb
Madhu 'MadMan' Menon
RT @RyanJCormier: Wonder which pisses Instagram users off more: release of Android version or news of Facebook acquisition?
@tsuvik
Vikas SN
What to expect with the new Instagram/Facebook acquisition: http://t.co/iE1FsWZk
@Percival
Sean Percival
The above article - The Funniest Instagram-Facebook Tweets was published at Jeet Blog. Checking for Mac Flashback infestation? There's an app for thatOur post from Friday about how to check your Mac for a Flashback malware infection has been wildly popular so far. And with good reason, too, since a second security firm has now backed up the numbers indicating that more than half a million Macs have been infected. That's slightly more than 1 percent of all 45 million Macs in the world—still a relatively small number, but a worrisome one for Mac users, as the tally of infected machines continues to grow. But for those of us who are kept on electronic umbilical cords in order to help our family members with computer questions, asking them to open the Terminal and start typing in foreign commands can be daunting. That's why Ars reader and programmer Juan Leon put together a quick Flashback checker that can be run on its own to see whether the Mac in question is infected. The download is posted to github and can run on Mac OS X10.5 and above; Leon also posted the source code for those interested in checking it out. The downloadable app runs the same three Terminal commands that we outlined in our how-to last week—it either says "No signs of infection were found" or spits back further information if necessary. There is also a link to F-Secure's instructions for removal, but if you have less-technical family members whose Macs are infected, you'll likely need to step in and help before they have to start mucking with the Terminal. Read the comments on this post Customize OS X with This List of the Best Terminal Commands [Mac Tips]
For a lot of Mac users some of the best customization tips come in the form of simple Terminal commands, but keeping track of all of those can be a bit difficult. To help manage all these Terminal hacks GitHub user Mathias Bynens created a list of the 65 best Terminal commands. More »
Dataminr builds a Twitter-powered early warning system
Dataminr, a New York-based start-up that has been quietly building a global sensor network powered by Twitter, is introducing its technology to the public Monday, showing how its real-time engine can act as an early warning system for enterprise and government customers. Dataminr has signed a partnership with Twitter to access its firehose and is analyzing it in dozens of ways, helping surface breaking news, critical information or highlighting trends from emerging events. Dataminr combs through 340 million daily tweets on Twitter and its algorithms quickly seize on abnormal and actionable signals that can be analyzed and confirmed as a relevant event for a client. This could be anything from an assassination or general instability in certain countries to government sanctions, natural disasters or on-the-ground chatter about products or trends. Dataminr uses available Twitter metadata along with other contextual factors such as historical and concurrent data to create a mathematical signature for an event, ultimately deciding on the fly whether an event is valuable for decision-making purposes. For example, Dataminr’s clients were alerted 20 minutes ahead of mainstream news coverage of Osama Bin Laden’s death. Dataminr, which is built heavily on Hadoop and is hosted on Amazon’s EC2, processes 50 terabytes of data per month. The company works to make the data easy to use so clients can find what they’re looking for quickly, Dataminr CEO and founder Ted Bailey told me in an interview. He said previous technologies that tried to look at Internet data relied on things like sources and the authority of sources or keyword frequency. Dataminr is very focused on the now and deriving instant value from the flow of tweets online. Predicting the now “It’s not just that we capture early information, but also where the eyes of the world are pointing. That’s a valuable indicator of what’s happening in the world and where the world will focus in the future,” said Bailey. “We have event detection software that is able to pinpoint specific events going on in the world. Instead of predicting the future, we’re very much predicting the present and giving people better understanding of what’s happening right now. And that has enormous value.” One of the Dataminr’s key strengths is the way it can absorb and merge third-party information or a client’s proprietary data to help add more context and inform Dataminr’s work. That ensures that a customer can harvest unique insights that are geared toward their interests or bolstered by their own data.
Founded in 2009, Dataminr has signed up a number of big banks and hedge funds and has been making inroads with government clients. It’s now planning to roll out its services to a lot more customers in the second half of the year. The company closed a $7 million round of financing last fall from a number of angels and private investors from the tech and finance industries. A big fan in Twitter Twitter has been a big fan of the service and has talked up Dataminr at a couple of events — they got a mention from CEO Dick Costolo in October. Robert Weeks, a spokesman for Twitter, told me by email that Twitter sees a lot of value in what Dataminr is doing, helping the enterprise market be aware of and capitalize on moments that matter. It’s also an example of the kind of start-ups that Twitter likes to encourage, showing off the overall power of the Twitter fire hose in areas like finance and government. “Dataminr is a strong team building compelling products to help clients grow their businesses. Twitter is committed to working with partners like Dataminr who add value to the hundreds of millions of Tweets sent every day by finding the right signals for the right audiences,” said Weeks. There’s a growing opportunity in making sense of the flood of data flowing through services like Twitter. More and more, there are valuable insights that can be gleaned from real-time social data if it can be identified and confirmed as critical events for markets, industries and governments. Dataminr has got a good sense of how to leverage that data and make it useful to this growing customer base, who sees more insights emerging from the flood of social data. Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr user bettina n Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
PAX East Nerds v. Anime Boston Geeks: Who Rules?
In terms of the length of their bodies of work, Anime has the edge. PAX is in only it’s third year in Boston while Anime has been geeking in the Bean since 2003. PAX did recently sign a 10 year deal with the city, but I doubt we were going to see either event disappear anytime soon regardless. PAX East has the overwhelming advantage in size though with almost 70,000 attendees in 2011 compared to Anime Boston’s 19,000. In addition, PAX is expected to grow to over 100,000 attendees in the coming years. If this milestone is reached, it will become the biggest video gaming event in the world (At which point I will begin taking an annual vacation out of the city for that weekend). Anime has expanded every year it has operated but, unless Japanese cartoon fervor consumes America, it is unlikely to be as popular as the gamer fest. Anime is more of a celebration of weirdness while PAX is mostly a business expo so it’s difficult to compare the number of companies at each. That said, PAX had 150 of the biggest names in the gaming industry filling the Boston Convention Center’s exhibit hall for three full days. Anime overtook the Hynes Convention Center and Sheraton, but the grandeur of the wasn’t nearly the same. PAX is an absolute spectacle. When I attended on Saturday I was awed by what I saw. Mostly because I had no idea that people actually care so much about playable fantasy. The exhibits assembled by many of the bigger companies rivaled Broadway stage sets. I give the weird award to Anime. Each convention had events, challenges, promotions, speeches, gaming, and panels but Anime had a blood drive and masquerade ball. Yes, a blood drive. That kind of freakiness deserves an extra point in my book. At both events there were wild costumes all around, but it was in the Back Bay where I didn’t even feel comfortable making eye contact with the men and women behind the masks. To be honest, I felt like I was walking through 8 Mile. I just put my head down, tried not to walk into anyone, and hoped make it out alive. So, who wins as King of the Geeks? Based on the size and scope of its weirdness, PAX does. In terms of creepiness per capita, Anime Boston does. PAX pulls a huge crowd–from casual gamers interested in seeing new products to people who clearly split their personalities with video game characters. Anime’s army was hardcore and devoted to its creepiness. I don’t mean for that to sounds like a middle school “everybody wins” award, but it’s true. The events are hard to compare because of the difference in their motivations–business vs celebration. So, it appears that the land of the nerds was ruled by an oligarchy. [image via animeboston flickr] from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/04/08/pax-east-nerds-v-anime-boston-geeks-who-rules/Netflix wants to wield more influence in election seasonEarlier this week, Netflix filed a statement of organization with the federal government to form a political action committee, or a PAC, which will allow the company to raise and spend money on campaigns and causes in Washington, D.C. The web service registered its newly-founded committee as "Flixpac." According to the Center for Responsive Politics, "A PAC can give $5,000 to a candidate per election (primary, general or special) and up to $15,000 annually to a national political party. PACs may receive up to $5,000 each from individuals, other PACs, and party committees per year." Microsoft is an example of a tech company with heavy influence in the capitol, spending $1.3 million in contributions last year. Behind the scenes, Netflix has employed lobbyists since the mid-2000's, although it has only employed full-time lobbyists since the end of 2010. The recent years have seen an exponential growth in Netflix's cash flow to Congress, however. In 2009 the company spent $20,000 in lobby money, which grew to $130,000 in 2010, and by 2011 the company reported spending half a million dollars lobbying Congress. A lobbying registration form from November 2010 indicated Netflix's "current and anticipated" lobbying issues included "copyright, telecommunications, consumer protection, tax and the Internet." Donations from Flixpac will likely go to candidates who have strong feelings on those issues as well. Earlier this year, while congress battled over SOPA and PIPA, Netflix largely stayed out of the spotlight, and vacillated on its support of the acts until it took a publicly neutral stance. While Politico suggests the PAC formation is "another political tool with which to aggressively press a pro-intellectual property, anti-video piracy agenda," the company has historically been much more outspoken about federal issues like net neutrality and working around the Video Privacy Protection Act. Read the comments on this post from Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/04/netflix-wants-to-wield-more-i... |
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