I was going to write a post discussing how the Comcast-TimeWarner deal that we all know is anticompetitive and monopolistic is likely to go through anyway, but there is so much to write about there’s no way I could make it a succinct post.

For example, there are countless articles stating why Congress should reject the deal (I agree), but they’re more idealistic than legal. Some are more pragmatic in explaining why it’s likely to – and even should – happen no matter what.

And then there is article after article after article talking about the effect it will have on Netflix. The VAST majority of opinions are against the deal, but it appears there is no practical legal grounds on which to reject it. Netflix, for its part, is already planning on raising prices, in part because of their increase in subscribers and demand for original content, but also because they believe that *their* prices will rise as a result.

As you all know, I personally am very against this merger in every possible way. Did no one learn anything from the AOL-Time-Warner merger from yesteryear? Luckily we use Cox, but I just discovered that I have a data cap on my Internet service! So me and the cable company soon are going to have a talk. Be careful out there.

If you want to see something really scary, look at the infographic below. It shows the impact of media consolidation. It’s a huge graphic, so you’ll want to save it, open it in an image viewer, and zoom way in. But be prepared for what it says.

If you’re not familiar with the Oculus Rift, let me provide some background. It’s a virtual-reality headset that is expected to be released as a consumer device sometime in the near or far future, we’re not sure which. Whenever it happens, though, it will be a big deal, because it considered the first time that legitimate, actually immersive virtual reality will be available to consumers. It received its initial funding of $2.4 million through a Kickstarter campaign back in 2012, and was recently purchased by Facebook for $2 BILLION, much to the chagrin of everyone, myself included, because we are now uncertain as to its future. What does Facebook want with it? They say they’ll leave it alone, but many are unconvinced.

It has so much promise that it lured legendary programmer John Carmack away from id, the company he founded and where he developed groundbreaking, landmark games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake, to work on the emerging technology.

Although I haven’t had the chance to test it myself, everything I have read about it is beyond impressive. Every single description of it from people who have tried it has been that it is a revolution in immersiveness. It is a set of screens that fit over each eye in an enclosed visor, which presents a stereoscopic 180-degree image to immerse you in the environment, and has fully implemented head tracking; that means if you turn your head to the right, the view shifts to the right.

But it has application beyond games. Very serious, useful, and wonderful application beyond games. Consider this story about Roberta Firstenberg. Roberta was fighting a losing battle with cancer, and was lamenting to her granddaughter, a game developer, that she missed the simple things like going outside.

This seems to be a common reaction to the Oculus Rift

That gave her granddaughter an idea: she wrote to Oculus, and asked if she could get a kit for her grandmother who was ill. They lovingly obliged, rushing her a developer’s kit with a demo of walking through Tuscany in Italy. It afforded her the closest thing to being there and walking around, just as it will give us the closest thing we’ll experience to walking in a spaceship or haunted house (profanity, be careful) or dungeon – or even getting your head chopped off in a guillotine simulator! She got a lot out of it as you can tell in her descriptions, and although she eventually lost her battle everyone believes the virtual reality experience really helped her to cope during that difficult time. I’ve embedded the video below, but i encourage you to read the full story.

I had to take a picture of damage for the insurance company, and learned my phone is either terrible at facial recognition, or it doesn’t have a very high opinion of my friends.

I found an interesting web site I was not previously familiar with. Called CodePen, it shows bits of web content, any of which you can  hover over to get a brief explanation of what you’ll be seeing, then click on and view the underlying HTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheet), and .js (JavaScript) if any, in their own window.

If you’ve ever wondered what goes in to creating some of the things you see on webpages, this is a really interesting site to look around and begin to become familiar with the way they are coded.

A good example to start with is Hyperspace, which you can view at this link. It has no JavaScript, although you see some in the right window, however it is in fact what is known as ‘commented out.’ Because it is contained within the ‘/*’ and ‘*/,’ it is considered explanatory and ignored by the browser. But you can see the other code that went in to it.

Another good example that does use JavaScript is ‘100,000 particles,’ the first link under the ‘popular‘ heading. It shows what’s capable with some actual coding powering the display of a web browser.

And I’m ok with that. As we should all know, you can’t kill cockroaches. They’re no water bear, but you can step on them, burn them, freeze them, you can drop a nuclear bomb DIRECTLY ON THEM and they just. won’t. die.

So what’s a good thing to do? Make them even *more* invulnerable! A team of international scientists has successfully implanted nanobots made from strands of DNA into the systems (remember those?) of cockroaches, and they have been folded in such a way that they can actually carry out logical operations; specifically, upon meeting a specific type of chemical compound, mainly protein, they can unfold and release medicine contained in their folds.

The articles I’ve read compare this to computing power but never explain it, and that bugs me. Get it? Bugs me?

Anyway, what it means is that these nanobots essentially carry out a single binary decision, for lack of a better word. If there are many of these nanobots carrying out these binary decisions, it’s a bunch of binary events taking place in conceptually the same way they happen in a digital device. If you get enough of them in an organism, you could compare it to an actual digital device’s computing power, and these scientists have done just that; they say soon they will be able to have the equivalent processing power in these nanobots to give the cockroach the equivalent of an 8-bit computer. That would include machines like the Commodore 64, Atari 800, and Nintendo NES.

Live video by Animal Planet L!ve

The process is remarkable, an incredible advancement in nanotechnology and medicine, and if it could be deployed in humans or other mammals, it could theoretically provide cell-specific methods of fighting diseases like cancer, which as of now are only targeted very broadly.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen cockroaches used in some amazing examples of biotechnology; earlier this year, scientists in Japan managed to equip cockroaches with a sensor that allowed them to be remotely controlled, and they could then be used – as the article states – to look for trapped survivors in places humans couldn’t go. They are also rugged and require no power or fuel, making them even more appealing in this regard.

Back to the nanobots, one thing to keep in mind is that mammals risk rejecting the foreign invaders though through our built-in autoimmune response, but surprisingly the scientists are very common that human tests could start in 2015. Exciting stuff!

You know that amazing new Samsung Galaxy S5 you just got? The phone that lets you act superior to all those Luddites still using an iPhone? The one that is at the forefront of smartphone design? Well I have some bad news; the fingerprint scanner has been hacked already.

It only took a few days, but the researchers used a trick employed by a hacking group who bypassed the iPhone’s fingerprint scanner last year, and posted a video on YouTube showing them making the breach. They hack involves a photo of a fingerprint and glue, and although they don’t say it outright, it’s actually very similar to the method for finding latent fingerprints on compromised or porous materials in criminal investigations. Additionally, contrary to what they imply, making the false fingerprint is non-trivial and not something the average low-level criminal would be doing. At least not yet.

By doing this, they were able to gain access not just to the phone, but to the apps included such as PayPal and make purchases and money transfers. The very dryly narrated (VERY dryly narrated) video explaining their process is below. Unfortunately, it really doesn’t tell you anything but it’s all they gave us.

You know how I always talk about our toasters becoming intelligent and telling us we eat too much toast? Well look what I found! That guy up there is a toaster that can, via an Ethernet connection, become depressed if it doesn’t get used enough, and jealous if it finds out other connected toasters are being used more! The future is today!

It turns out Garfield was way ahead of me this whole time, and I think we’ll all feel the same if it ever comes to this.

Remember our discussion of social networks? There isn’t much to say about this, except advise you to learn a valuable lesson from this teenager’s mistake: Don’t ever tweet a terroristic threat to an international airline, it will never have a happy ending.

She wasn’t arrested nor did the FBI get involved, she turned herself in when the whole world started commenting on the wisdom of such an ill-informed prank. To be fair, she’s a 14 year-old girl, and at that age very few people, regardless of gender, always make the best decisions.

I am so glad there was no public Internet when *I* was 14.

What to write about? There’s so much going on! For example, the Heartbleed Bug was used as an entry method to steal the data of 900 Canadian taxpayers.  On another note, the FBI intends to have a facial-recognition database with 52 million faces – likely to include yours – up and running by next year. The photos won’t only be of criminals, but of regular people with photos plucked from Facebook among other sources.

But I decided to mention briefly what could be a divisive post: the Navy launching what is by far the largest most advanced warship ever built, the $7 billion U.S.S. Zumwalt; The linked article is fascinating, with a full behind-the-scenes look at what the ship has to offer. A massive beast that appears as a fishing boat on radar, it has exceptionally advanced controls (all munitions are launched by computer), in fact most things – even shower pressure – are electronically controlled as opposed to manually as is often the case these days, and will be an appropriate complement for the almost-ready-for-testing railguns that shoot inexpensive projectiles at seven times the speed of sound using electricity only, require only one crew member to operate and do not require an explosive warhead, and laser-weapons for shooting down unmanned drones, both weapons that are going into field-test aboard the U.S.S. Ponce. 

U.S.S. Zumwalt

The computer systems on the Zumwalt are controlled primarily by IBM Blade servers, in enclosures that will protect them from the elements at sea, which is good since ALL sea elements are risks for electronics. Not only that, when the time comes for upgrade or in the case of a component failure, this makes the process of adding/replacing hardware much easier. It even has sensors that can pick up various wavelengths of light and analyze the images to determine if something under or above the water is a threat. That, by the way, will result in fewer crew needed to actively monitor the ship’s surroundings.

Although its engines use gas as part of its power, it is actually move through the water by electric propulsion, like a hybrid! It generates so much power so efficiently that there is enough leftover power to operate the railgun mentioned earlier.

This all results in more effective weaponry, more efficient engines, easier and faster data analysis, half the required crew of current warships, and a longer expected service life.

Also, tomorrow’s tax day! Get on it, people!

I couldn’t find a relevant image for this post, so here’s the last thing you’re likely to see before you die.

We all know there are some oddball sites out there, like omfgdogs.com. WHAT ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THAT SITE?

Anyway, I thought I’d present you with sites that are unusual, but at the same time useful. Ready? Here we go!

Wolfram Alpha

Although the guy who developed it is an arrogant ass, this site is absolutely incredible. Anything you want to know about can be researched here. It will provide information on any topic, answer any equation, tell you any detail, it’s knowledge is almost limitless. It is so skilled at providing an overwhelming amount of info on any topic you like that hours can be spent just discovering. Type in anything, and be amazed.

nickreboot.com

If you’re around my age, and even if you’re not, you may remember the good old Nickelodeon shows that used to be on. Rugrats, Hey Arnold, Ahhh! Real Monsters, Rocko’s Modern Life, and many others. Well, at NickReboot, you can watch them all streaming for free! Relive your childhood!

shelterpups.com

On this site, you can send them a picture of your dog and they’ll send you a plush version that looks just like it!

Pizzacodes.com

Don’t eat pizza! It’s bad for you. But if you must, this site lets you enter in your zip code and it will list all the pizza coupons that are available for pizza places in your area. It mainly returns Domino’s and Papa John’s coupons, but there are occasionally others as well.

Southparkstudios.com

You may remember in class we talked briefly about South Park, and its creators demanding control over all Internet rights to the show. Back in the ’90’s, the network scoffed and said ‘sure,’ never realizing what the Internet would become. Because of that control, you can watch all episodes ever created of South Park, online for free, but with advertising. They are in the process of rolling out a new site, so you can even test the beta if you’d like.

myfridgefood.com

Now here’s a site that was built for people just like me. On this site, you can check off the random food you may have laying around in your refrigerator or kitchen, and the site will present you with recipes that can be made from the ingredients you selected. So if you’re not sure what to do with a leek, applesauce, white onion, chocolate syrup, and peppered turkey, you will now!