This week, Comcast can’t keep itself out of the news. First, Comcast announces that it is bringing the fastest Interwebs in the country to Jacksonville (WOOT!) and other cities in Florida. Then, the FCC and the Justice Department rain on Comcast’s parade and lets it know they are not going to let it merge with Time Warner Cable. In other news, a paranoid dad flew a drone to school with his daughter, and two guys took the iPhone/Android fight way too far.
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THIS WEEK’S RUN DOWN
Comcast Gigabit Pro
People in Jacksonville and some other towns in Florida are going to be pretty excited next month. In a story Jessica Palombo contributed to Deemable.com, Comcast is bringing the fastest fiber optic Internet service in the country to a few cities in Florida, including our own fair town. The service, which is called Gigabit Pro, will actually have 2 Gbps download and upload speeds ? more than twice the speed of Google Fiber.
However, Comcast would not give a price for the new service. The next fastest service from Comcast is Extreme 505, which runs up to 505 Mbps up and down, and costs over $400 a month with taxes and fees.
Comcast Drops Its Bid to Merge With Time Warner Cable
Speaking of Comcast, earlier this week it was looking pretty looked bad for its merger with Time Warner Cable. According to Bloomberg, the Justice Department’s antitrust department was going to recommend blocking the merger. And, the FCC was not negotiating the terms of the deal with Comcast, which made it look even less likely that it was going to go through.
But now, ?people with knowledge of the matter? have told Bloomberg that Comcast is backing out of the merger. There was supposed to be a board meeting Thursday. And an official announcement will probably come Friday.
As the Verge pointed out in an editorial, throughout this whole process, Comcast has never answered this simple question: Why not compete?
Verizon to offer custom pay TV packages, let customers choose monthly programming bundles
And while we?re on the subject of Internet and TV providers, in move that is one small step closer to a la carte cable TV, Verizon recently announced that they are rolling out a new pay TV service that will let customers choose from channel bundles that they change monthly.
These Verizon FiOS ?Custom TV? packages will start at 65 dollars a month for broadband service, 36 fixed basic cable channels, and two genre-based channel packs that customers can swap or unsubscribe from after a month. You can also add packs for an extra 10 dollars. Verizon has seven of these packs to choose from, including sports and children?s programming.
Verizon says they are going after customers who want something in between giant, fully loaded cable packages and cheaper basic packages offered by their competitors.
After “Drone Dad” follows his daughter to school, DJI Phantom 2 grounded
Tennessee father Chris Early?s daughter decided she wanted to walk to the school bus by herself so he did what any tech-inclined father would do: he followed her with a drone.
The drone was a model known as a DJI Phantom 2 which has a high def video camera mounted on it. Early followed his daughter with the drone. A local news station caught wind of this and the story went nationwide. Chris Early has been called ?overprotective?, ?the world?s most embarrassing father? and ‘drone dad’. As a result of all the attention he says he has grounded the drone for now.
One World Trade Center Elevator Shows 515 Years Of New York City
The New York Times covered this story, but I wrote an article about it for Deemable.com.
While they haven?t developed time travel, the engineers and designers behind the elevators that takes guests to the observatory at the very top of One World Trade Center in New York City have come pretty close. When you board the elevators, you will see a panoramic view of New York City rising out of the underground in the 1500s all the way up through time to the 102nd floor today.
The elevator uses nine 75-inch screens to create the illusion that it is a glass-walled elevator traveling through time.
Along the way, you’ll see the arrival of the Europeans, the Revolution and the rise of the skyscrapers. Inevitably, as time travels through the late-1900s, one of the Twin Towers enters your sight and just as quickly fades away as the 2000s begin. It is a touching, beautiful memorial to the history of the site. You can see The New York Times video of the elevator on our website at Deemable.com
YouTube celebrates 10 year anniversary
This week marks the 10 year anniversary of the first video being uploaded to YouTube.
On April 23 2005, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim posted a 19 second clip of elephants at the zoo titled “Me at the zoo.” In it, Karim discusses the elephants’ “really, really, really long trunks” and, well, that’s all. Pretty tame compared to what you can find on YouTube today.
About a year after this video was posted, Google acquired YouTube for $1.6 billion.
According to reports, YouTube will mark the anniversary with a month-long celebration starting next week.
Skycure Hack Can Use Wifi To Disable iOS Devices
A research firm called Skycure reported that it has developed a hack based around a bug in iOS that could allow it to disable all nearby iOS devices using a wifi router. The wifi router has to be configured in a specific way. It will then cause any device connected to it to keep crashing and rebooting in an endless loop. It can be combined with another hack that forces iOS devices to connect to that network. Essentially the only way to escape the endless cycle of rebooting would be to get out of range of the router.
Skycure has not publicly released technical specifications for the bug it used to create the hack to give Apple time to patch it.
Argument Over Which Smartphone Is Better Turns Deadly
Police in Tulsa, OK apprehended a man staggering around a parking lot late at night cut up and covered in blood. The man reported to them that he had been in a fight with his roommate over which smartphone was better – the iPhone or the new Samsung Galaxy. iPhone versus Android fights can get heated, but most stop short of physical conflict. The man reported that he and his roommate had been drinking and wound up stabbing each other with broken beer bottles. Both were admitted to the hospital and are expected to make a full recovery. No word on whether either man was arrested or whether either had his mind changed about his preferred choice of phone.
How many tabs does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?
Redditor Peanut Butter Shudder suggested an answer to Ray’s question. Last week during Shower Thoughts, Ray said he didn’t know how many tabs he had ever opened in his life. Peanut Butter Shudder mentioned Tab for a Cause on our reddit page (reddit.com/r/deemable) Tab for a Cause apparently tracks how many tabs you open and it has a bit of slacktivism built into it. If you install the browser extension, you’ll raise money for charities simply by browsing the internet. Heck, why not?
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Photo credit: iPhone vs Android by nrkbeta.no is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0.