Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Broadcasters file Aereo appeal, warn of 'havoc' and 'massive disruption' to TV industry - paidContent

  • Fox and other broadcasters are asking a New York appeals court to reconsider its decision to give a green light to Aereo, a controversial start-up that uses tiny antennas to retransmit over-the-air TV to mobile devices for $8 a month.
  • In the past, other companies have retransmitted TV signals over the internet but broadcasters quickly smashed them for copyright infringement. Aereo, however, has survived two major court challenges thanks to its technology which assigns a mini-antenna (see pic below ) to each subscriber;
  • On a broader level, the legal manœuvreing is part of a great game between Aereo and the broadcasters over the future of TV that could end up at the Supreme Court. In the coming battle, the broadcasters are pinning their hopes on a recent California court case, which shut down an Aereo clone and rejected the theory that a private antenna means a transmission is not “public” under copyright law – a theory accepted by two out three judges on the Second Circuit court.

• Start-Up Lets Users Track Who Tracks Them - NYTimes.com

  • A start-up based in Palo Alto, Calif., Disconnect, which helps you track who is tracking you online, this week released its latest tool to help safeguard your browsing history. Its new browser extension works on Chrome and Firefox browsers and is meant to block an invisible network of around 2,000 separate tracking companies

• Netflix plans its move from Microsoft Silverlight to HTML5 video | The Verge

  • The solution is HTML5 video, but that relatively young technology requires further development to meet the needs — and DRM requirements — of a service like Netflix. According to the blog post, Netflix has been collaborating on three W3C initiatives that together will provide the required functionality for streaming video services. Dubbed the "HTML5 Premium Video Extensions," they include an extension that will allow the company to handle its delivery streams via JavaScript, another that will allow DRM encryption (perhaps the biggest obstacle for HTML5 video's broad adoption), and a cryptography extension that will allow Netflix to make sure any communication between its JavaScript code and servers remains secure.

• Card Readers Will Lead Mobile Payments - Business Insider

  • the mass adoption of smartphones and tablets has set the stage for a move away from fixed-point, card-based transactions and toward those completed on mobile. The old dream of the "digital wallet" is coming true in a very particular mobile-led fashion
  • attachable credit card readers and their companion mobile apps would become the most widely adopted mobile payment technologies. The main rival technology is called Near-field Communications (NFC)

• How 'Made in the USA' is Making a Comeback | TIME.com

  • step back and you’ll see a bright spot, perhaps the best economic news the U.S. has witnessed since the rise of Silicon Valley: Made in the USA is making a comeback. Climbing out of the recession, the U.S. has seen its manufacturing growth outpace that of other advanced nations,
  • U.S. factories increasingly have access to cheap energy thanks to oil and gas from the shale boom
  • “The offshoring boom,” Ashworth wrote in a recent report, “does appear to have largely run its course.
  • Many new manufacturing jobs require at least a two-year tech degree to complement artisan skills such as welding or milling. The bar will only get higher:

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.