Member Claims Anonymous "Might Well Be the Most Powerful Organization On Earth"
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Mick Darling's posterousAll my blogging in one spot. (mostly)Filed under: readerMember Claims Anonymous "Might Well Be the Most Powerful Organization On Earth"
wasimkadak writes in with an interview with Anonymous member "Commander X" in which he talks about how the hacktivists are the most powerful group on the planet. "Christopher Doyon, a.k.a. Commander X, sits atop a hillside in an undisclosed location in Canada, watching a reporter and photographer make their way along a narrow path to join him, away from the prying eyes of law enforcement. It's been a few weeks of encrypted emails back and forth, working out the security protocol to follow for interviewing Doyon, one of the brains behind Anonymous, now a fugitive from the FBI. Doyon, who readily admits taking part in some of the highest-profile hacktivist attacks on websites last year — from Tunisia to Orlando, Sony to PayPal — was arrested in September for a comparatively minor assault on the county website of Santa Cruz, Calif., where he was living, in retaliation for the town forcibly removing a homeless encampment on the courthouse steps. The 'virtual sit-in' lasted half an hour. For that, Doyon is facing 15 years in jail."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. Time Warner Cable's CEO doesn't know what AirPlay is, hates set-top boxes Time Warner Cable's CEO doesn't know what AirPlay is, hates set-top boxes originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 May 2012 15:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink 9to5Mac | The New York Times | Email this | Comments
from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/14/time-warner-cable-ceo-glenn-britt-airplay/
The Singularity hits Venture Capital (Wilson/Kauffman Redux)I mean, really, who still wants to be a venture capitalist ? It’s from a fast moving job to have for new HBS grads with flat abs and trophy girlfriends (or vice versa) to labour of love for guys or gals who are willing to commit 15-20 years of their lives and preferably a big percentage of their current and future wealth without knowing whether they will ever make money. Shocker! For all we know VC’s might start to feel and act more like entrepreneurs by the time we are done with all of this. Now that would be something. Let’s recap an exciting week (and build on the real time rant I wrote post the Kauffman report). Last week, we first got a new “bombshell” Kauffman report calling LP’s out as being co-dependents for the terrible performance of VC, fundamentally complicit of the mess we are in (read Felix Salmon or watch Deirdre Bolton with Harold Bradley, Kauffman’s CIO). And then we have Fred Wilson telling us that should venture capital die, there’s always be blogging. I mean, come on, even Freddie ? The man on top of the networked world, the oracle of Silicon Alley, the Meme of Union Square ? That’s like Obi One’s light sabre turning to red. Whatever is happening to the Force? I an now expecting Chris Dixon to say he is turning to Venture Capital, and then I will be officially confused. In any event, the Jedis have finally come home to roost: it’s hard to see, barring irrational behavior (a big if, admittedly), how our world is not going to go through accelerated shrink and turmoil in the coming years. I am seeing both a threat and an opportunity. If you think about it in simple terms, VC’s are trying to reconcile two seemingly contradictory objectives.
They want to back great “world changing” entrepreneurs who will build “awesome” companies. They also (rationally) want to cut their losses in companies that are not working out and focus all of their energy on the ones that have the potential to deliver big. They want to love entrepreneurs, but they may have to fire them one day. Each partner needs to overcome his or her own aversion to loss and have the courage to let go of companies that are not on the right track, support their partners whose startups are taking off, and redirect the precious investment reserves that they had allocated to their own babies in doing so. Venture partnerships need to collectively find winners and drive as much cash at reasonable valuations as they can into these stars. It takes a special balance of passion, determination, respect, empathy, suspension of disbelief and pragmatism to do this well and consistently. It also takes partnerships that work together as one and have the intellectual honesty to recognize what’s working and not working to pull this off. It’s hard. It’s much harder to do it well and for a long time. Limited Partner allocations into venture capital are driven by classic portfolio diversification theory, driving fixed allocations into the venture asset class regardless of whether this money could be put to work in the best funds. As far as I can see, there was limited collective thinking amongst LP’s in terms of making sure that the startup market did not end up flooded with money. In the process, so many competing VC groups got funded that no one ended up making much money (smart people destroying each other’s returns). Fear of missing out leads to over-allocation. I heard this called the Mexican Debt Problem : if you hire Mexican debt specialists, you will end up with Mexican debt on your books, no matter the quality of that asset class. What the Kauffman report does is fire a deafening shot across the bows of LP’s telling them : you are complicit in perpetuating this cycle of underperformance. You have also allowed perverse conditions to flourish, under which management fees ensure that VC’s accrue significant wealth regardless of the outcome. This is a meaningful message, and I am sure LP’s are sitting up and taking note. I am taking a few data points from a whitepaper written by Sante Ventures which I found very interesting.
Disruptive forces at work VC’s love to talk about disruption, and now it is their turn to be disrupted. The primary driver of changes are:
Radical transparency ultimately applies to all actors in the marketplace, but marketplace disruptions like these do not make the opportunity go away: it modifies how the game is played. Part of what Kauffman tells us is “mother and apple pie” when it comes to running a venture firm. But combined with all the other elements discussed you have something that looks like a serious discontinuity in the venture model. The world is awash with too much money chasing too few great opportunities. The LP’s are shutting their wallets. The markets are getting transparent and disintermediated. And you tell me you see opportunity in this? As they say in Texas, hell yeah! Entrepreneurs in my world still want:
If the classic shape of a seed has been thrown out of the window, so be it. If entrepreneurs come in seeking cash on the explicit understanding that they are putting together a diverse syndicate to help them run a series of experiments called “a company” with no notion of probability of success, that’s cool by me. If crowd-funding platforms help them access top flight investors at speed, all the better. Where am I going with this ? I don’t know the outcome of the “great seed experiment” any better than the next man. But frankly it’s hard for me to see how all of this does not afford opportunities to fund better entrepreneurs faster. Because that, fundamentally, is all that we do: enable the best entrepreneurs that we can find to build the best companies that they can build. As with any solid disruption, all we have to do is find a way to harness it. More on that later Want to reinvent TV? Don’t forget the TV
That’s not what the future of the TV will look like at all, if we can believe the folks at NDS. The Israel-based TV services provider, which Cisco acquired for $5 billion in March, has been exploring what the actual TV set will look like five years from now. Company executives came to San Francisco this week to showcase some of their research, and the results are pretty intriguing. To sum it up briefly, NDS was showcasing a big matrix of six bezel-less flat screen TVs that were combined to form a huge, almost overwhelming TV wall. NDS CTO Nick Thexton then went on to demonstrate big displays like these can be broken up, showing a video of varying sizes somewhere in the middle, with personalized and content-relevant widgets off to the side. And once you get some cinematic 4k content, you might even want to use the whole screen. Check out Christina Bonnington’s story over at Wired.com for more details about the demo, which was neat. But what I found fascinating was the points that Thexton and NDS Chief Marketing Officer Nigel Smith raised about the future of TV. The real question, Smith told me, is, If you have a TV the size of a wall, how are you going to interact with it? The future of TV will be modular![]() NDS uses a PC with multiple video outputs to power its six-display TV wall. Soon, this could be done by small mesh networking-capable modules. We have all gotten used to the fact that TVs are getting bigger and bigger every year, and the NDS demo of a TV screen that would fill your entire living room wall seems to fit quite well into that narrative. However, Thexton was very vocal about this not being a question of size. “We are not advocating just big TVs,” he told me while standing in front of the giant NDS demo screen. Instead, Thexton thinks that TVs may become modular and actually consist of much smaller displays that can be combined to fit the room. Think of 6-inch to 8-inch bezel-less squares that you can buy individually and then mount to the wall next to one another, gradually growing the size of your display to fit your needs. These displays would automatically work together, making sure your Saturday night movie runs on all of them at once. NDS is currently using a PC with multiple video outputs to run its six-screen demo, but Thexton told me the company is developing a small module to connect to each screen separately and then mesh network these to coordinate the complete video output. Mesh networking devices like these could also come in handy if you wanted to include another TV on a second wall, for example to run a news feed or an in-home video stream while you’re interacting with other media on the main screen. The future of TV will be ambientOne of the main points of the NDS demo was that huge displays don’t always equal huge videos. Instead of watching your morning news in theater mode, you’re going to watch clips with a much smaller size and use the rest of the screen for other information. In fact, sometimes you might not be watching TV at all but will still find it useful to leave the large screen wall on. For example, it could display cover art for the music you are listening to while giving you access to your calendar reminders, a wall-sized clock and your Twitter feed. Home automation and security-camera footage are also applications that could be useful to run all day, or fade in and out as needed. But with that big ambient screen also comes a unique new challenge: You really don’t want to turn it off. Anyone with a big TV screen is already aware that the device can look like a big, black annoying hole in the middle of your living room when not in use. Now multiply this by three, four or even six and you end up with a whole lot of ugly dark screen estate. Leaving your big TV wall running all day, though, will cost you a fortune in electricity. The solution will be e-ink-like display technologies that allow you to keep a visual wallpaper or even some widgets up and running without burning a hole in your wallet. The future of TV will need new interaction modelsNDS ran its demo off an iPad, allowing me to change the immersion level — and display size — of a video with simple sliders. That was good enough for a demonstration, but it still seemed somewhat complex for everyday use. Thexton told me that the company had evaluated Kinect-like gesture control as well as Siri-like voice control but eventually abandoned both because they seemed to require too much effort and were too prone to errors. In the end, he said, people didn’t want to control their TV in a Minority Report-like fashion but with something that felt more natural. “We don’t want people to feel weird in their living room,” he said. But is the tablet the be-all and end-all? Thexton didn’t think so, and he reminded me that controlling a TV traditionally can be boiled down to just a few core indicators. Give someone a remote control with a D-Pad, and they can pretty much navigate through any cable guide or online video app. So if only four to six buttons are needed, how about replacing these with interactions that can be accomplished without any remote control at all? The key might just be to treat the TV like a pet, said Thexton, and develop a kind of interactive language both you and your TV understand. In other words: Don’t be trained to use a remote; train it to do the things you want. Define TV’s future without its constraintsA TV that consists of many little displays working together, a TV that’s always on, a TV the size of your living room wall and a TV that obeys you like a well-trained dog: That’s a lot to swallow, especially if you’ve thought of the next wave of apps as innovation in the TV space. However, it may be time to think bigger, and leave some of the assumptions of what TV is — and what TV sets are — behind. “TV has to start defining a future for itself,” Thexton told me. And that future may not fit into a 60- or 70-inch bezel. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro: Game of Thrones is the Most-Pirated Television Show of 2012According to Forbes, HBO’s Game of Thrones Season 2 is going to be the most pirated show this year. Not exactly a title any show wants. “With its popularity swelling and no easy way for viewers without cable to watch, HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones is inspiring massive levels of piracy, according to numbers from the BitTorrent-tracking and analysis firm Big Champagne,” writes Forbes. “By the firm’s rough estimate, the second season of the show has been downloaded more than 25 million times from public torrent trackers since it began in early April, and its piracy hit a new peak following April 30th’s episode, with more than 2.5 million downloads in a day.” John Robinson, a senior media analyst for Big Champagne, says it’s too early to tell, but the popularity rankings on the download site Pirate Bay mean Game Of Thrones is a favorite. “The fact that it’s consistently at the top of the Pirate Bay’s top one hundred TV show chart seems like an in-your-face leading indicator of the huge volume at which this is being shared,” he said. Last year, piracy of Game of Thrones came in second only to Showtime’s Dexter, but this year they consistently have the lead. Forbes makes sure to note the sites it looked at aren’t the only illegal download spots, and many are tougher to track. “While Game of Thrones filesharing rates are probably driven in part by its appeal to the young, geeky male demographic that’s most prone to using torrent sites, HBO hasn’t helped the problem by making the show tough to watch online for the young and cable-less,” writes Forbes. “The show isn’t available through Hulu or Netflix, iTunes offers only Season 1, and using HBO’s own streaming site HBO Go requires a cable subscription.” “This is absolutely a reaction to the show’s not being available elsewhere online,” said Robinson. “It’s a very tricky game trying to create this kind of scarcity.” Would it be nice if HBO came up with a legal online viewing option for its network’s properties? Something you didn’t actually have to have cable for but could pay to watch elsewhere? Yes. Should we be blaming HBO for people stealing its content? No. People pirating is just that. People making the decision not to wait for the show to come to DVD or pay for the privilege to have it in their home. We’ve heard a lot of people have been dropping cable in favor of services such as Hulu, but just because you choose not to access what’s available to you doesn’t make stealing ok. It’s interesting to hear the types of reasoning people have for this type of behavior too. Forbes pointed to a Game of Thrones reddit thread where users who have pirated the show, discussed why they did it. A good number of people said they never would have gotten into the show if they hadn’t pirated it first, but actually wound up purchasing the DVD after the fact. There’s also some who just want the episode available digitally on their computers but still pay for HBO and buy the discs, and international users who have different issues altogether. I think one of the biggest issues with piracy of this kind is people want the content immediately. Yes, they could simply wait for the DVD to be released, but they don’t because they want it while everyone else is watching it. If they can’t get it instantly by legal means, they’ll get it instantly by illegal means. It honestly makes me concerned for a show like Game of Thrones, because its survival depends on HBO subscriptions. What are your thoughts? [via Blastr] More About: game of thrones, hbo, piracy Dish Network Announces Prime Time TV With No Ads
Hugh Pickens writes "Forbes reports that Dish Network has announced a new feature called called Auto Hop for its satellite TV subscribers that will let you automatically skip all commercials for prime time television from the four major broadcast networks — when you watch programs the day after they are first aired. 'Viewers love to skip commercials,' says Vivek Khemka, vice president of DISH Product Management. 'With the Auto Hop capability of the Hopper, watching your favorite shows commercial-free is easier than ever before.' Craig Moffett says it's going to be hard for Dish to maintain good relationships with its programming affiliates when they start offering a feature intended to cut out the bulk of the affiliates' revenues. Whether the auto-skip feature can withstand legal challenge remains to be seen. 'Given the already long list of industry-unfriendly features promoted by Dish, one wonders if Auto Hop will be the final straw that provokes legal action from the broadcast networks,' says Moffett. 'We suspect Auto Hop probably uses some sort of bookmarking insertion based on automated recognition of commercial inserts (called "fingerprinting'"), which if true could certainly be argued to be a manipulation of the content stream by the distributor.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot. Instacorder Is a No-Frills App For Emailing Yourself Voice Memos [Ios Downloads]
iOS: Instacorder is a dead-simple app that will instantly email voice memos to yourself for reviewing and organizing on your computer. More »
Arduino mechs learn RobotC, plot assimilation with Lego MindstormsArduino boards have smoothed the creation of lots of eccentric thingamajigs, but robotics and controllers are still not for the faint of heart. Luckily, RoboMatter is coming to the rescue of would-be roboticists with a public beta version of its C-based RobotC language for Arduino. Joining Lego Mindstorm and other bots, Arduino will get RobotC's straightforward sensor and motor controls, along with a debugger and sample program library, while still keeping its native Wiring language. So, if you want to be a Kickstarter magnate , or just out-weird everyone else, rolling your own droid is now a bit easier. Arduino mechs learn RobotC, plot assimilation with Lego Mindstorms originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 May 2012 03:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | RobotC | Email this | Comments
from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/12/RobotC-Public-Beta-on-Arduino/
DoNotDisturb Adds a One-Tap Notification Silencer to iPhones [Jailbreak]
iOS (Jailbroken): You don't always need notifications on. Whether you need to get some work done or you don't like the fact your iPhone beeps and vibrates when you're on the phone, DoNotDisturb is a simple tweak for jailbroken iPhones that adds a single button that blocks all notifications. More »
6 Ways MIT’s Media Lab Envisions the Opera of the Future
Throughout the course of the past year, one group, “Opera of the Future,” also known as “Hyperinstruments,” has been examining how musical composition, performance and instrumentation can lead to new forms of expression, learning and health. From CogNotes’ cognitive learning platform to the building blocks that make up SoundStrand, here’s a look at six of the projects aimed at changing the way we connect to music. Dance Remixer – The goal is simple: “Dance to whatever you want.” The Dance Remixer is a program that takes any piece of music, from country to Norah Jones’ “Don’t Know Why,” and turns it into something people can dance to. Hoping to personalize the way people interact with music, the Dance Remixer gives users the ability to modify songs’ function and emotional content. Here’s “Don’t Know Why” mixed with some latin flavor. CogNotes — CogNotes can be summed up as “Alzheimer’s Disease assessment embedded in the creative act of music composition.” Together, with partners the Lincoln Park Performing Arts School and the Yamaha Corporation, a group of seniors are going through a multi-month composition workshop that’s outfitted with cognitive measures that are sensitive to the earliest transition to Alzheimer’s Disease. Drum Top — Drum Top’s goal is to transform everyday objects into percussive musical instruments, “encouraging people to to rediscover their surroundings through musical interactions with the objects around them.” To see Drum Top in action, watch the video below. Remote Theatrical Immersion: Extending “Sleep No More” — In London-based theater group Punchdrunk’s NYC show, “Sleep No More,” asked audience members to explore and interact with the environment and create their own narrative pathways. Working in collaboration with Punchdrunk, the Media Lab is developing an online world that complements the real-life experience, by allowing online participants to partner with live audience members, so they can explore the show together. Personal Opera — Personal Opera gives everyone the opportunity to create musical masterpieces. The team’s currently working on developing an environment to allow for the incorporation of personal stories, images and “both original and well-loved music and sounds.” To see some of the technology in action, check out this video of Tod Machover’s new opera Death and the Powers, which had its U.S. premiere in Boston and Chicago last spring. Machover is the head of the Media Lab’s Opera of the Future. SoundStrand — This music composition toy is comprised of a set of building blocks, each containing a musical motif. The blocks can be connected to create a musical theme, or manipulated with three degrees of freedom. See the blocks in use below. Photo Courtesy of Personal Opera from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/05/13/6-ways-mits-media-lab-envisions-the-opera-of-t... |
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