Woz: No, Apple was not started in a garage - CNET

Woz: No, Apple was not started in a garage - CNET

'Cosmos' host Neil deGrasse Tyson's scope set on scientific literacy

"Well, I don't have to imagine what it is. There have been international tests to assess where our students are on various objective scales. And among industrialized nations we're consistently near the bottom of the list in every way that matters. That's just the fact. So the next question is: Does being so low on those lists come with consequences that matter...We've been very economically competitive even through several decades of these very low scores so maybe the scores are not the best indicator of what we are or what we will become in the future.

"However, some things are happening. I think we've lost our exploratory mojo. So, for example, my hat's off to the European Space Agency for landing a space probe on a comet. That is a space feat without precedent. But I grew up in an era when NASA was doing all of the space feats that had no precedent. So little signs like this are indicators that we are not on the frontier anymore. The Higgs boson, which received banner headlines in The New York Times, was discovered in Switzerland in a particle accelerator built by a European collaboration. And we would have discovered it back in the 1990s because we had a particle accelerator (partially built, then canceled by Congress)."

The only things that can stop the Chromebook are you and Google | News | TechRadar

" Home News by technology The only things that can stop the Chromebook are you and Google
The only things that can stop the Chromebook are you and Google
OPINION It's not the product, it's the perception

By Chris Phin  November 30th 2014

The only things that can stop the Chromebook are you and Google
The Chromebook are still waiting for the world to notice them
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Chromebook sales to surpass 5m units in 2014, says Gartner
Seven new Android apps are now compatible with Chrome OS
For a long time, Chromebooks seemed like they would fizzle, and for just the reasons you might expect. People called them under-powered, said they didn't run the software they depended on, and that there was just no compelling reason to buy one over a cheap Windows or Linux laptop. For a while, we got one Chromebook at a time, made by different manufacturers - not unlike how Google's Nexus brand is applied to smartphones and tablets made by a succession of manufacturers.
But little by little, the Chromebook has gained momentum and diversified, and now ABI Research forecasts that a little over four million Chromebooks will be sold this year (compared to 300m conventional laptops). Four against 300 doesn't sound like much, but this would probably be a doubling of Chromebook sales over the previous year - while conventional laptop sales are predicted to fall from 316m according to ABI.
For the most part, Chromebooks seem to be being bought by the education market, and they're doing great things there. When even one of the smartest and strongest advocates for the iPad in education, Fraser Speirs, records an episode of his podcast called The Case for Chromebooks, you should be thinking at least that there's potential here.
The question still gets asked, though: what will it take for the Chromebook to go mainstream? It's a question that assumes Google has to change the Chromebook to make it attractive to the mass market, and I think that's the wrong perspective. I think the market has to change.
It's not them, it's you

A Chromebook is already a good option for the mass market. For home users, it's simple, reliable, robust and likely not as susceptible to viruses as a Windows machine. If most of us actually stop to think about it, the majority of what we use a computer for these days can already be done in a browser window. That's in part because of how much time we spend on websites (such as Facebook and Twitter), and in part because web versions of apps such as Word are finally rich and responsive enough to be usable.
What's more, many of those jobs that we currently don't do in a browser could be done in a browser with minimal disruption if we wanted to. Besides, some interesting things are happening such as the streaming version of Photoshop which brings the full, complete power of Photoshop to a Chromebook while doing all the heavy lifting on a server somewhere. It's trickier in some businesses, but for others - especially sole traders and SMBs who might be well served by or even already be using Google Apps for Work - a Chromebook could be not just a usable trade-off but actually the best tool for the job.
Still, you might say, why should I buy a Chromebook to do these things when I can just install Chrome on my PC or Mac and not have the same compromises? Well, it's true you won't have the same compromises, but you will have compromises. The system is more complex and so liable to failure, it's a bigger target for malware. And of course there's price: for the most part, Chromebooks just are cheap."

EXPERTS NOT BUYING IT

"In his first public interview this week, Darren Wilson, the white police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., was asked whether he could have done anything differently that would have prevented the killing.

His answer, broadcast on Wednesday, to the question from George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, was unequivocal: “No.”

But even as a grand jury decided this week not to indict Officer Wilson, the shooting of the 18-year-old, Michael Brown, has continued to raise questions about whether the officer handled the brief and deadly confrontation correctly. It also has become part of a broader national debate over police tactics and potential racial bias in policing."

Toyota Mirai: The 300-mile zero-emission vehicle

Wal-mart gets 40 percent of its electricity from coal, and only 3 percent from renewables

Recommended read from Salon.com: Report: Wal-mart's clean energy boasts are little more than greenwashing

Kubrick’s indestructible influence: “Interstellar’’ joins the long tradition of borrowing from “2001’’ - Salon.com

"Every sci-fi movie since Kubrick's 1968 masterpiece has echoed the original in certain unavoidable ways"

Google Nexus 6 Review

Watch: Neil deGrasse Tyson Explaining the End of 'Interstellar | Indiewire

Watch: Neil deGrasse Tyson Explaining the End of 'Interstellar | Indiewire

Surface Pro 3 vs Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro - convertible battle - Load the Game

"Performance-wise, the Surface Pro 3 generally tops the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro according to most user reviews and benchmarks. The Surface line has been known to be extra-powerful, so we’re not surprised by that. You do have to pay the extra price, though. In case you need a high-end device with top-notch specs, the Surface Pro 3 should be your best bet. But if you want a powerful device that gives you all the mobility of a tablet, the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro would be the better choice. I personally love the watch hinge on the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro and would rather spend less on a fanless design with a pretty good performance, but that’s because I don’t use apps like Photoshop or video editing apps which need all the power the Surface Pro 3 can give."





Surface Pro 3 vs Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro - convertible battle - Load the Game

Can religion and science co-exist? | MSNBC

Can religion and science co-exist? | MSNBC

The New Yorker

“Interstellar” and “The Theory of Everything” Reviews

Neil DeGrasse Tyson Separates Fact From Fiction In 'Interstellar' : NPR

Tell Your Members of Congress to Oppose Internet Sales Tax Legislation in the Lame Duck | eBay Inc. Main Street

Bloomberg Businessweek: The Budget Mobile Era Arrives

"Call it the end of the beginning of the mobile revolution, an inevitable transition in which people start to give up on the grand (and expensive) experiment of tacking new gadgets onto their lives at regular intervals. We now know exactly where PCs are invaluable and where the usefulness of smartphones and tablets begins and ends. As a result, mobile prices are falling, and manufacturers are competing most fiercely at the bottom. “We are seeing the top of the market start to contract, with all the growth happening on the low end,” says Ryan Reith, program director of research firm IDC."

Chromebooks: Debunking the misconceptions | ZDNet

"Chrome has become a full platform, with extensions, system tools, and apps. Extensions are like the thousands of little utilities that have been around in the Windows and Mac worlds for years. They sit there ready to let the user do a particular task, no matter what application they might be using. They are easily invoked, performing a quick function. Once done, the user is back in the application."

Obama's net neutrality push cheers some, riles others

"President Obama's call for net neutrality could drive the Federal Communications Commission to regulate broadband service like a utility as a way to protect consumers' ability to access all content without a threat of connectivity being throttled."

Google's Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 Could Be Too Expensive (AAPL, GOOG, GOOGL,
SSNLF)

"Although previous Nexus devices didn't set sales records, they were fairly well-received -- the Nexus 7, in particular, fueled Asus' emergence as a top tablet vendor. Budget-minded consumers may have been attracted to the high-end hardware offered at an affordable price.
But it's hard to see these latest Nexuses as much of a bargain. Though both the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 are bigger and more powerful than their predecessors, they're also much more expensive.
Nexus has been synonymous with value
The last three Nexus devices -- the Nexus 4, Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 -- were defined as much by their low price tags as they were by their hardware. The Nexus 4, for example, retailed for just $299 despite offering what was, at the time, one of the fastest available mobile processors. In fact, in terms of hardware, the Nexus 4 was almost identical to Samsung's (NASDAQOTH: SSNLF  ) competing Galaxy S3, but it cost half as much."