Chromecast is a Smart TV for only $35

Well I ordered this device but I'm currently back-ordered from Amazon.

Chromecast is a small, two-inch dongle that can be plugged into the HDMI port on an high-definition television (HDTV) and stream YouTube and Netflix content directly to the set. Users can also mirror websites, images, and video displayed in their Chrome Web browsers onto the screen with a simple extension. The Chromecast has no dedicated remote control and is instead controlled by any number of Android, iOS, Mac, or PC devices on the same Wi-Fi network.

I think this device might really be a great addition to anyone that has a HDMI TV and might make Google dominate the living room from a strange direction.

This partnership scramble stands in stark contrast to the difficulty and very public frustration both Google and Apple had when finagling deals with content producers during their respective device launches. And while the companies originally had to sort out messy business like live broadcast integration and profit sharing to get their products off the ground, Chromecast eschews most of those headaches and just streams existing services outside the box, so to speak, while being controlled by other devices.

Yeah, Google just dodged the content battle and just let the various services add their own apps to the device. The services like Pandora and Netflix needs to worry about the content and Google just delivers it to the TV. I also like the idea of turning your phone or tablet into a channel changer and using Chromecast to show tabs from your browser. This might be the best $35 I have spent in a long time.

Starbucks Ranks up Wi-Fi at Stores with Help From Google

It seems that Starbucks Wi-Fi might be faster than ever before.

Starbucks said that Google, in conjunction with Level 3 Communications, will now be providing Wi-Fi service in Starbucks' U.S. locations that's up to 10 times faster than the current service powered by AT&T. 

The faster service will first appear in new Starbucks locations over the next month. Starbucks will then roll it out to its 7,000 other U.S. stores, starting with the busiest locations where Wi-Fi usage is highest. The company expects to complete the transition in about 18 months.

Do You Use the Internet? The NSA can Snoop Everything you Do on the Internet. XKeyscore Might Be Worse Than Email Snooping

Well it seems that the NSA can pretty much track everything you do on the Internet according to a new Snowden leak.

But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.

XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA's "widest reaching" system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet", including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.

Yup a simple query gets the NSA agent the contents of all your email, your Internet searches, and all the metadata as well. They can even look at your Facebook chats if they have your username. They also have a way of checking every IP address that goes to any website that the NSA wants to track. So if you go to Fox News or other "unacceptable" sites the NSA can track that. The IRS targeted conservatives so it isn't a stretch for the White House to reach out to the NSA to track the undesirables.

What is actually scarier then just querying email and web searches is if they change metadata or simply plant some email that makes you into a terrorist. I mean the NSA can just put an email in your Gmail box from Al-Quida or someone and suddenly you are a terrorist. There will be no way to clear your name because it will all be done without you even knowing it. A Facebook chat between you and your "terrorist handler" can be doctored in a few quick keystrokes. 


 

Bipartisanship at Last: Congress United over NSA Snooping

They didn't seem very interested until Snowden spilled the beans.

Last week's House vote of 217-205 defeating an attempt to dismantle the program was significant not only because of the narrowness of the victory for the Obama administration, but also because it created unusual political coalitions. Libertarian-leaning conservatives and liberal Democrats pressed for change against the Republican establishment and Congress' pro-security wing.

Backing the NSA program were 134 Republicans and 83 Democrats, including House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who typically does not vote, and Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. Rejecting the administration's last-minute pleas to spare the surveillance operation were 94 Republicans and 111 Democrats.

I guess those Congress-critters just love listening that voted to keep the program just love listening to your phone calls. I bet they are seriously looking forward to monitoring your credit card purchases, hotel records, and Internet searches as well.

Pope Changes Stance on Gays

I think Pope Francis might be one of the great Popes in history.

At first glance, Pope Francis’ statement on homosexuality, delivered today in an impromptu press conference aboard the papal plane, seemed to indicate a remarkable break with church tradition. “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis told journalists, as he flew from Rio de Janeiro to Rome. “The tendency [to homosexuality] is not the problem … They’re our brothers.”

Wow, that is reversing quite a bit of the churches teaching. However, the church still says that homosexual acts are sins and does not support gay marriage. That seems about right but it is interesting to see this Pope say that gays are their brothers and he does not judge them.

Gen-Y Are Scared of the Stock Market

I kind of understand their fear but these numbers are quite scary if they continue for several decades.

This isn’t hypothetical. In a recent MFS Survey, 40% of Gen Y agreed with the statement “I will never feel comfortable investing in the stock market.” Among Gen Y investors, 54% feel overwhelmed by available choices and 47% tended to put off investment decisions. 

Due to fear of risk, 30% said their primary investing objective is protecting principal and have allocated an average of 30% to cash, more than other age groups, and nearly equal to the 33% allocated to stocks. T. Rowe Price noted in 2010 that almost one in five self-directed participants age 25-35 had over 80% of plan assets in cash. 

1/5 have 80% in cash? I have a feeling that the other 20% of that money is either in a treasury bond or a money market fund that is making less than 1%. Hopefully, someone can tell some of these Gen-Yers that a Vanguard Total Stock market mutual fund or even a vanilla S&P500 Index Fund would be much better use of that money. 

It seems that Gen-Yers are trusting financial advisers and lean on them quite a bit. Hopefully, these advisers don't turn into the next Bernie Madoff's absconding with billions in Gen-Y money. Clueless investors trusting greedy financial wizards always end badly.  

The Conjuring: Movie Review: Must See

Well I saw The Conjuring last night and I have to say that it is one of the best horror movies I have seen in a long time. It had that oppressive feel that you can only get from a well paced and truly scary movie. I left the theater with a nice uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach and casting a wary eye toward the shadows expecting an orange-eyed crone to be looking back at me.

The movie is set in the 1971 with lots of bell bottoms, long sideburns, and ugly pant suits worn by the various characters. The movie is basically about a family with five daughters moving into an old house that they used all of their money to afford. In other words when things start to go wrong they have nowhere to turn. Of course things start to go wrong when the father played by Ron Livingston opens up a boarded up cellar. Of course this leads to various bumps in the night and unexplained bruises on the mom played by Lili Taylor.

As we go along things get worse and worse for the family. First one of the daughters has her leg yanked by an unseen force. They smell rotting meat and weird cold-spots as they try to live their every day lives. Then the youngest daughter starts sleepwalking and bangs her head lightly against a very old wardrobe. There is a nice circus-themed wind-up toy that has a mirror in it that when the music stops a ghost is sometimes seen. I loved the idea of ghosts in the mirror so I enjoyed this prop.

All of the creepiness builds up in a very nice way that I really enjoyed. Finally there is a scene where the family has had enough when all of their family photos are smashed and messed up. Then we have the reveal of the creature and it was very well done and scary. After that happens the family goes to the Warrens played by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson to help them escape the ghosts and demons.

The Warrens set up various 70s ghost-busters sort of equipment and they monitor the house and the various ghosts that are bothering the family. These scenes could have felt like the movie Poltergeist but it felt nice and fresh to me. Then we have a nice thrill ride of the ghosts revealing themselves and people getting thrown around rooms and such. It all culminates with a nice set-piece demonic possession scene that could have felt stale but was actually quite creepy.


Wilson and Farmiga does a great job of breathing life into the Warrens and you actually cheer for them to beat the evil ghosts. The family never felt annoying and you wanted to see them succeed in freeing themselves of the ghosts and demons that plagued them.

In fact I would love to see Wilson and Farmiga in a remake of Amityville Horror directed by the same guy as this movie (James Wan.) He actually did the Saw movies which I didn't much like but also helmed Insidious which was very good. That movie wasn't as good as The Conjuring (except for one set piece scare in a window that was awesome) but I enjoyed it for what it was. In any case I'm looking forward to whatever supernatural thrillers James Wan will be doing going forward.

Finally, my only gripe is that I'm still not sure about the title. I have no idea what they were Conjuring and what it had to do with the family or the Warrens. When I first saw the title I thought it might have had something to do with magic or summoning circles and that kind of thing. Instead it was a nice creepy demonic possession tale with ghosts thrown in for taste. Maybe they could have called it Hell House or Bethsheba (the name of the evil demonic ghost) and it might have been a little better title in my mind. In any case I enjoyed it and say that if you are a horror movie fan like I am it hit the spot exactly.

NSA Says they Can't Bulk Search Their Own Employee Email: Um, They Can but They Just Don't Want To

This has to be laughable if it was true.

But ask the NSA as part of a freedom of information request to do a seemingly simple search of its own employees' e-mail? The agency says it doesn't have the technology.

"There's no central method to search an e-mail at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately," NSA Freedom of Information Act officer Cindy Blacker told me last week. The system is "a little antiquated and archaic," she added.

I filed a request last week for e-mails between NSA employees and employees of the National Geographic Channel over a specific time period. The TV station had aired a friendly documentary on the NSA and I want to better understand the agency's public-relations efforts.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they want some reporter getting their hands on emails that go from the NSA to the National Geographic Channel in regards to a PR softball story. So the NSA has a poky old email system from the 1998 or something which makes them look incompetent. Sounds like a good way to dodge FOIA requests from nosy reporters and make them look like harmless and backward.

More Horrific Crimes out of Cleveland: The Perfect City for Serial Killers and Kidnappers?

It seems that when poverty, mistrust of the cops, and mentally deranged people meet we have this situation:

A registered sex offender was charged Monday with murder and kidnapping in the slayings of three women whose bodies were found in plastic trash bags in a run-down East Cleveland neighborhood. It is the third major case in four years of multiple killings or abductions to haunt the Rust Belt metropolis.

The other cases were of the guy that held 3 women captive for a decade and a different serial killer murdering 11 people over a several year span. In other words Cleveland is a perfect storm of desperate victims trapped in place due to poverty, a populace that does not watch out for one another, and what seems like a culture of not "snitching" to cops who don't seem to investigate disappearances with much gusto. In any case this is probably not the last horrific crime that Cleveland will see in the next decade.

Too Many Tentpoles: Summer of 2013 Littered with Bombs; Sielberg and Lucas Were Right

Well I have to agree with this article 100%.

The overcrowded summer of 2013 will likely be remembered more for its costly misfires — Sony’s “After Earth” and “White House Down,” Disney’s “The Lone Ranger,” Warner Bros./Legendary’s “Pacific Rim” and Universal’s new release “R.I.P.D.” — than for its predictable hits, which include “Iron Man 3,” “Man of Steel” and “Despicable Me 2.”

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas look awfully prescient with the predictions they made last month during a panel discussion at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

“There’s eventually going to be a big meltdown,” Spielberg forecast. “There’s going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen of these mega-budgeted movies go crashing into the ground, and that’s going to change the paradigm again.”

What the studios need to understand is that they can make a franchise-creating movie for less than $200 million if they tried. They have done it in the past and they will probably do it in the future. I'm pretty sure they could have made the Lone Ranger for the cost of Johnny Depp's salary and maybe $50 million more for Western sets and special effects. I mean the only real super-effects thing in Lone Ranger was in the last 30 minutes of the movie. 

In fact they could have cut out 30 minutes or more of the Lone Ranger and it would have still been as good in my opinion. All of the Tonto back-story could have been cut. Also most of the scenes where the Lone Ranger and Tonto were chasing the bad guys through the Arizona desert were redundant. They also could have cut the part with the very old Tonto telling the boy the story and it would have been fine. They just kept eating peanuts without cracking the shells and it just became annoying. In fact the entire General Custer-esque character played by Barry Pepper could have been cut as well. I mean the movie had 2 train chases One could have been shortened and it would have been fine by me. I mean you are there to watch Depp ham it up as Tonto and see Armie Hammer playing the strait-man so all the extraneous stuff could have been cut.

In any case I will probably not be seeing the rest of those tent-pole flops for any reason. I thought After Earth, which had Will Smith talking in some strange voice, just looked like Lost World with futuristic stuff and Jayden Smith in a raccoon suit. White House Down is just Olympus Has Fallen with different actors. Pacific Rim looked cool but I'm not sure why you need $200 million to tell a story about monsters fighting robots. Finally, RIPD just looked like Men in Black but with Supernatural Cops instead of Interstellar Cops. There is one scene where some creature smashes a car armed with a gattling gun that just belonged in a low budget Sci-Fi Channel shlock-fest. What is shocking though is 2015 might be flop-fest of Biblical proportions:

In 2015, between May and August, the studios will release just as many — if not more — high-profile sequels, reboots and tentpoles. It is expected to be one of the most pricey, loaded summers in decades, with the likes of Disney-Marvel’s “The Avengers” sequel, Fox’s “Independence Day 2,” Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean 5,” Sony’s “The Smurfs 3” and Paramount’s “Terminator.”

Okay, Avengers sounds good so I will see it site-unseen. I didn't like the first Independence Day (wait the aliens can be killed off with a computer virus?) so there is no way I'm watching a sequel. I haven't seen the last 2 Pirates so I won't be watching the 5th one. Smurfs is just awful and I'm not sure why they made a second one so no way I'm watching a third. And finally, the last Terminator was just so very bad so I will not be eager to see another one. I think 2015 will be the final meltdown that Lucas and Spielberg talked about.

The Conjuring the Box Office Winner: Hopefully It Will Usher In Summertime Scary Movies Like Japan

Well it seems that low budget horror movies are scoring big with movie goers this year.

The Conjuring's $41.9 million debut is a new record for an original R-rated horror movie ahead of last month's The Purge ($34.1 million). It's also the second-highest start ever for a supernatural horror movie ahead of Paranormal Activity 2 ($40.7 million). For distributor Warner Bros., it's also higher than Pacific Rim's opening last weekend, which is particularly noteworthy given Pacific Rim's price tag was nearly ten times as high as that of The Conjuring.

So in other words spend 1/10th of the amount of Pacific Rim and you still make the same amount of money with a good scary movie like The Conjuring. The Purge did a killing this summer as well. I hope this will mean that scary movies invading the summer "Blockbuster Season" will become a new thing. 

In Japan scary movies are the norm during the summer because people like to get a scare in order to beat the heat. That is not how it is in the US because most scary movies are pushed toward Halloween because that is our cultural norm. I can understand this bias but I'm hoping The Conjuring doing so well in the summer will be the start of something similar to what they have in Japan.

I can see Americans coming to a nice air-conditioned theater and instead of watching a misfire "tent-pole movie" like Pacific Rim instead watching a small budget scary film like The Conjuring. I mean getting a chill from a nice supernatural thriller is always welcome when Americans are baking all over the US. Plus, I would love to see Guillermo del Toro making a supernatural thriller (his movie "Mama" was outstanding) instead of a $200 million robots vs. monsters movie any day.

The best part about summer scary movies is that the studios can make 10 The Conjuring's for each Pacific Rim. So you can throw quite a few scary movies at the wall and maybe some real chillers will stick. I'm sure some will be misfires and boring The Ring knockoffs but hopefully we can get some iconic scary movies if we are lucky. I'm looking forward to seeing The Conjuring tomorrow and will write a movie review for sure.

Oy Ye! Oy Ye!, The Duchess of Cambridge Has Birthed a Son

The future Monarch of All Britannia has lept from the womb of the comely Duchess of Cambridge on this Day of Our Lord July 22, 2013.

It's a prince! On Monday, the world welcomed the newest addition to the royal family and the future heir to England's throne. Palace officials confirmed the arrival of His Royal Highness the Prince of Cambridge, born at St. Mary's Hospital at 4:24 PM BST, and weighing 8 lbs 6 oz.

I'm sure the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha would be interested in a royal marriage with the tiny future Monarch as a bulwark against Austrian aggression.

Comic-Con Not About Comics Anymore: It's Gone from Geek to Chic

I have always wanted to go to the "super bowl of comics" but I guess I should have done so 10 years ago because according to this Comic-Con sounds like ass.

For example, this year's schedule includes a preview of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, Psych, Vampire Diaries, American Dad, Community, How I Met Your Mother, The Blacklist and panels hosted by TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly. Though, perhaps the apex of Comic-Con pop culture invasion came in 2012 when Twilight and Glee, and their respective armies of Twihards and Gleeks, came to the event in full force.  

Yeah, I can't wait to stand in line to watch some ass-grab from NBC talk about The Blacklist or some other crappy TV show sponsored by TV Guide. I'm surprised Honey Boo-boo isn't somehow involved in this drek. What they need is a smaller comic-themed Convention that is held at a different time of year. Just invite comic-themed stuff (and sci-fi as well) to that convention so it is "yes" to Agents of SHIELD or Walking Dead but no to How I Met Your Mother or Glee.

The Early Results are In: The Department of Energy Says Fracking Does Not Contaminate Drinking Water

Matt Damon (and his Qatari backers) must be crying in their beers/non-alcoholic beverages about this turn of events.

A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site, the Department of Energy told The Associated Press. 

After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water, geologist Richard Hammack said.

It has only been a year but so far so good. There are other problems like poor well designs and finding out what to do with waste water that need to be addressed. It seems that the waste water problem might be solved because some companies will just recycle the water so that they can keep drilling with it. It actually saves money to recycle the water instead of trucking it out to injection wells and then paying more to have it put back into the earth.

The Government Backs up the Truck on Student Loans to the Tune of a 24.3% profit

Wow no wonder the government wanted to get in on the student loan business. They are making a killing on it.

To give you a better sense for how significant that disparity is and its implications for student borrowers, at the time of this writing, the difference between the 3-month and 10-year Treasuries was 2.44%, which increases to 4.49% for student loans after the 2.05% surcharge is added. The way the math works, that spread translates into a 24.3% present value profit — $24.30 for every $100 of undergraduate loans the government finances under this scenario if fully implemented today.

So for every $100 billion in student loans the government pockets a whopping $24.3 billion. That is strait up killing even mighty Apples 18% profit margin. In fact Google is barely beating that margin with 28% this past quarter. No wonder Obama is trying to get so many kids signed up for college. It is a huge money spinner for the government so keep that gravy train running. I mean there are $1 trillion in student loans outstanding so the money being raked in every year is astronomical.

Wait, What? We need only $900 Billion in the Next Decade to Balance the Budget?

It seems that the government is raking in the cashola and all of the fear-factor about the deficit does not seem to be coming to roost.

Our $600 billion of new savings mean the debt is already stabilized. Wait, what $600 billion of new savings? Well, that's how much less the Congressional Budget Office figures we will spend on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid over the next decade compared to what it figured back in February. And that's how the $1.5 trillion of additional savings the CBPP said we needed half a year ago turned into $900 billion now.

I'm sure someone can find either $90 billion a year in cuts or revenue or a mix of both to balance the budget going forward. I think tax reform by itself might be able to close that gap if GDP grows how I think it will in the next decade. Then you add the massive surplus that will be coming in from being a net exporter of oil and the next decade might be pretty sweet for the US. Then if you add immigration reform you can goose GDP growth even further.

House Judiciary Committee Makes Show of Stopping the Snooping Database

Well at least they are paying lip-service to protecting our privacy.

In a heated confrontation over domestic spying, members of Congress said Wednesday they never intended to allow the National Security Agency to build a database of every phone call in America. And they threatened to curtail the government's surveillance authority.

Top Obama administration officials countered that the once-secret program was legal and necessary to keep America safe. And they left open the possibility that they could build similar databases of people's credit card transactions, hotel records and Internet searches.

So they are trying to build other databases for credit card transactions, hotel records, and Internet searches as well? I guess a GPS location database lifted from your phone will be next. At least the Congress is looking at this stuff instead of being distracted and pretending like this isn't going on.

Trayvon Martin is Now a Gay Basher Fearing Rape? Rachel Jeantel just Keeps Making Things Worse

Well, I think Rachel Jeantel should quit while she is behind because every time she opens up about what happens it makes Trayvon Martin look worse and worse.

Asked whether there was any doubt in her mind as to whether Martin “absolutely believed” Zimmerman was “pursuing him” that evening in 2012, Jeantel replied in the affirmative. He was “freaked out” about it, she said, especially after she had suggested to the late teenager that Zimmerman “might be a rapist.”

She explained that because Martin was not a homosexual, he was troubled by the actions of Zimmerman: “For every boy or every man who’s not that kind of way,” she said, “seeing a grown man following them, would they be creeped out?” 

Jeantel continued: “You have to take it as a parent, when you tell your child, you see a grown person following you, run away, and all that. You going to tell your child stand there? If you tell your child stand there, then you’re going to see your child on the news for missing person.”

I was wondering why Trayvon ran for it instead of just confronting Zimmerman and this might be why. He also ran past his father's fiancee's home as well instead of stopping there to say "this is where I live I have a right to be here."

It also explains why Trayvon just hauled off and false-cracked Zimmerman as well. Trayvon thought he would be raped which is a fear that a 17 year old boy sometimes has when he is being followed by a 28 year old man who just came out of a truck in a strange neighborhood. This is even more of a fear when the man started chasing him. In any case it was a strait-up tragedy and Rachel Jeantel needs to stop giving interviews.

How Criminals Get Guns: Yeah it's Pretty Easy

It seems that all the hoops legal gun owners have to go through to get a gun really doesn't matter because all you have to do is jump on the Internet and buy what you want.

Their online search inquiries for buying AK-47s quickly turned up an ad from a gun seller that said prospective buyers should "call and ask for Nick." 

Torrez instructed van Zeller through the call, telling her to tell Nick she could offer him $750 in cash for the assault rifle. Nick agreed to meet her and Torrez right away at a nearby Taco Bell parking lot to do the sale. 

Yup $750 and they had a AK-47 all ready to do whatever with. That is why background checks and registering a weapon every 6 months is a waste of time. A criminal just goes on the Internet with $750 and he walks away with a gun with no questions asked.

Stupid Kid Tweets About Mass Shooting After Zimmerman Verdict

Well it seems that America was generally riot free after the verdict. However some 15 year old idiots still shot off their mouths.

The tweet that got a 15-year-old promptly pulled into a police station.

Last week a teen was freed from jail after being arrested for something offensive he wrote on Facebook. 

Over the weekend, another teen was arrested for something he wrote on Twitter. 

A 15-year-old Chicago high school sophomore with the twitter handle @Mark12394995 tweeted about the Zimmerman trial before a verdict had been reached.

“If Zimmmerman free imma shoot everybody in Zion causing a mass homicide, and ill get away wit it just like Zimmerman [all sic],” he wrote.

He should have been arrested for bad grammar and use of the words "wit" and "imma."