“The Colbert Report” | Tue. Apr. 23, 2013
Interview with Eric Schmidt: Google’s executive chairman discusses his book, “The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business.”
This Day’s History You Should Know | Apr. 21
Apr. 21, 753 BC: Romulus and Remus founded Rome, this according to the calculations by Roman scholar Varro Reatinus. (wiki)
Apr. 21, 1506 - The Lisbon Massacre: Alternatively known as the Lisbon Pogrom, or the 1506 Easter Slaughter, occurs when a crowd of Catholics, as well as foreign sailors anchored in the Tagus, persecuted, torture, kill, and burn at the stake hundreds of people who accused of being Jewish and, thus, guilty of deicide and heresy. This incident took place thirty years before the establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal and nine years after the Jews were forced to convert to Roman Catholicism in 1497, during the reign of King Manuel I. (wiki)
Apr. 21, 1509: Henry VIII becomes King of England, following the death of his father Henry VII.
Apr. 21, 1847: Lewis Keseberg, the final member of the Donner Party still stranded in the mountains, is escorted to safety by a fourth rescue party. Later accounts hold that Keseberg was discovered “seated, like a ghoul, in the midst of dead bodies, with his face and hands smeared with blood, and a kettle of human flesh boiling over the fire.” (rotten)
Apr. 21, 1918: The Red Baron, Germany’s Baron Manfred von Richthofen, is killed when his biplane is shot down during WWI. He is credited for 80 kills. (rotten)
Apr. 21, 1930: 320 inmates are left to burn alive during a fire in the Ohio State Penitentiary. Locked into their cells, the men could not escape the smoke and flames. (rotten)
Apr. 21, 1933: Nazi Germany outlaws shechita, the Jewish butchering ritual for kosher meat preparation. Things only get worse from here. (rotten)
Apr. 21, 1934: The “Surgeon’s Photograph”, the most famous photo allegedly showing the Loch Ness Monster, is published in the Daily Mail (in 1999, it is revealed to be a hoax). (wiki)
Apr. 21, 1989 - Tiananmen Square Protests: In Beijing, around 100,000 students gather in Tiananmen Square to commemorate Chinese reform leader Hu Yaobang. (wiki)
Apr. 21, 1992: Convicted murderer Robert Alton Harris consumes two large pizzas, a bucket of fried chicken, and some ice cream on the eve of his execution. Later, before the gas chamber is activated, Harris propounds: “You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everyone dances with the grim reaper.”
Apr. 21, 2004 - Iraq Occupation and Insurgency: Three car bombs explode outside police stations in Basra, killing 68 people and wounding over 100 more. Iraqi officials blame suicide bombers for the terrorism. 23 of the casualties are school children. A fourth car bomb explodes in Zubeir, south of Basra, killing three and wounding four. British soldiers assisting the wounded are pelted with stones, injuring four, two seriously. (BBC)(The New York Times)
Apr. 21, 2004: A grand jury indicts Michael Jackson on charges of child molestation. (Fox)
Apr. 21, 2005: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) fires two members suspected of passing on U.S. secrets to Israel. (BBC)
Apr. 21, 2005 - Same-sex marriage: The parliament of Spain gives initial approval to legalized same-sex marriages and adoption by homosexual couples. (Berria)(EITB)(Reuters)
Apr. 21, 2009: The World Digital Library launches at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris, France. (Google News)
Apr. 21, 2011 - Rise of the drones: U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says NATO will begin using armed predator drones to combat Muammar Gaddafi’s forces during the 2011 Libyan civil war. (The New York Times)
Apr. 21, 2011: U.S. Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) sends Apple chief executive Steve Jobs a letter asking him to explain the purpose of a file embedded on iPhones and iPads that keeps a detailed log of the devices’ location. (The Los Angeles Times)
Alexis Ohanian calls Google to talk CISPA
Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian calls Google and asks to speak to CEO Larry Page about CISPA and privacy. With “amusing” (I’d say sad) results.
Finding a Replacement for Google Reader
by Amit Agarwal (@labnol) | pub. March 13, 2013 | labnol.org
Google Reader is shutting down and we have around four months to move our existing RSS subscriptions to another feed reader. What are some of the good alternatives to Google Reader?
Google has a history of shutting down products that aren’t earning them revenue. These include Picnic (the image editor), Notebook (the clipping tool), Listen (the podcast client), Google Desktop (the offline search software), Google Apps (the free edition), Google SMS channels, iGoogle (personalized Google start page) and now Google Reader (the web-based RSS newsreader).
Google is a “for profit” company and therefore they would like to avoid spending time and resources on projects that aren’t adding to the bottom line. This makes perfect sense and the positive side of such announcements is that when the big fish leaves the pond, it makes room for the smaller ones to grow, innovate and thrive.
(Source: lindsayzoladz, via flavorpill)
Mystery Google Device Appears in Small-Town Iowa
By Cade Metz | Sep. 10, 2012 | WIRED
Photos of the mystery computing device appeared on the web in late February. Taken with a smartphone, they were a bit washed out and a little blurry in places, but you could easily read the name printed on the long, thin piece of hardware. “Pluto Switch,” the label said.
The images were posted by two men who said the device had unexpectedly turned up at a branch office in the tiny farmland town of Shelby, Iowa — population: 641 — and they were hoping someone could tell them what it was…Clearly, these two men were familiar with the ins and outs of computer networking, and clearly, this was a networking switch, a way of shuttling data between machines. But they’d never heard of the Pluto Switch, and it was littered with networking ports they’d never seen before. “Any ideas?” they asked.
