A toxic and deadly week in landscape reads. We learn how, remarkably, tourist poop is flown by helicopter out of national parks, how Silicon Valley exports toxic waste all over the country, how poison lurks in our old televisions, and how the land can just fall away in the form of Washington’s deadly mudslide.
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I don’t know if it’s the The Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony or the slow twisting motion of the quadcopter’s descent, but I really love this first scene from Viktor Mirzoyan’s aerial video over a beige Washington D.C.
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Ultra-high-speed fiber-to-the-home from Gigabit Squared isn’t scheduled to light up Seattle until 2014, but the outfit’s just revealed what it aims to charge for its blisteringly-fast internet service. Folks who are content with the bare minimum can pay a $350 installation fee and net 5Mbps up and 1Mbps down at no charge for 60 months, and just $10 each month afterwards. With a one-year contract, residents of The Emerald City can avoid the setup charge and score 100Mbps down and 100Mbps up for a $45 monthly bill. If pure speed is your prime directive, 1Gbps up and down will be available for $80 per month, and with no cash put towards installation. Aching to hook up to the web at those eye-watering speeds? You’ll have to live in Seattle’s West Campus District, First Hill, Capitol Hill or Central Area neighborhoods, as they’ll be the first connected to Gigabit Squared’s pipes. There’s no sign-up process just yet, but it’s scheduled to go live next month.
[Image credit: Eli Duke, Flickr]
Filed under: Internet
You’d be forgiven for thinking that this was a beatuifully textured piece of modern art—but you’d be wrong. It is in fact a view of the rolling hills of farmland in the northwest United States, pictured by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s Kompsat-2 satellite. More »
Sprint was clearly up to something good when we noticed LTE in parts of San Francisco. It turns out that this was just the tip of the iceberg — the carrier has since confirmed that it’s also flicking the switch in New York City, parts of New York state, Washington DC, and Florida cities that include Jacksonville, Miami and Tampa. The faster access is going live on a site-by-site basis in given areas rather than all at once, which bears out what we’re hearing from readers and a Sprint spokesperson we reached for comment: LTE appears to be available in pockets in at least New York City and San Francisco. Sprint won’t have a formal news release until it believes the coverage is complete, but we suspect most customers will be too busy testing the speed of their long-underused EVO 4G LTE or iPhone 5 to notice.
[Thanks, Derek and Revie]
Update: The full Sprint statement is after the break.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Sprint
Source: The Verge
If you like the idea of the Boxee TV, you’ll be glad to hear that Boxee is handing units out like so much Halloween candy… as long as you live in the right areas, that is. Those who’ve signed up for product notifications and live in the cloud DVR coverage areas of Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington, DC can get a free Boxee TV just by filling out a survey. They’ll even have the privilege of getting their units ahead of everyone else. Boxee hasn’t said if any new sign-ups will qualify, though it can’t hurt to try the source link and potentially get a welcome treat.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Boxee hands out free Boxee TVs to its most eager cloud DVR fans originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Oct 2012 11:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Microsoft’s desire to avoid a fine combined with a power company’s strict electricity usage rules resulted in the software giant deliberately wasting millions of watts of power, according to the New York Times. Redmond’s Quincy data center, which houses Bing, Hotmail and other cloud-based servers, had an agreement in place with a Washington state utility containing clauses which imposed penalties for under-consumption of electricity. A $210,000 fine was levied last year, since the facility was well below its power-use target, which prompted Microsoft to deliberately burn $70,000 worth of electricity in three days “in a commercially unproductive manner” to avoid it, according to its own documents. The utility board capitulated and reduced the amend to $60k, but the messy situation seems a far cry from Redmond’s pledge to become carbon neutral by this summer.
[Image credit: New York Times]
Microsoft deliberately wasted energy at data center to avoid fine, says NY Times originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Sep 2012 10:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Get ready, Seattle, we’re coming for you! You asked for it and you’ve got it — we’ll be in the Emerald City in October, hosting a meetup as part of the annual Seattle Interactive Conference (SIC), the self-described “intersection of technology, creativity and emerging trends.” Whether or not you’re a show attendee, you can join us on October 29th, for an evening of Engadget-led events, including conversations with tech luminaries, product demos, giveaways and lots, lots more.
We’ll be revealing more information about the festivities in the very near future. In the meantime, if you’re interested in sponsoring the event, drop us a line at sponsors [at] engadget [dot] com, and for more information on SIC, check out the source link below.
Filed under: Announcements
Engadget’s next reader meetup happens in Seattle on October 29th! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Aug 2012 15:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Political lobbying is often a mixed bag at best. Still, there’s a cautious amount of optimism surrounding the Internet Association, a soon-to-start lobbying group that plans to advocate for an “open, innovative and free” internet among US politicians. The unsurprising (if well-intentioned) aim is to prevent another SOPA or PIPA with more formal opposition than even the Internet Defense League can manage. Who’ll be pulling the strings is nebulous — officially, the Association will only say that former Congressional staff director Michael Beckerman is at the helm until a formal September 19th launch. That internet openness must extend to some very leaky representatives, however, as the National Journal, AFP and Reuters all claim that Amazon, eBay, Facebook and Google are charter members. None of them are talking on the record; we certainly wouldn’t be shocked if the roster is real, knowing how much Google and other partners have fought takedown laws that would bypass much of the normal legal system. We’re hoping that whatever manifests a genuinely rational counterbalance to media and telecom influences that often aren’t very interested in protecting internet-only business models or due process.
Filed under: Internet
Internet Association to lobby Washington, may tout Amazon, Facebook, Google among its ranks originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jul 2012 11:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink AFP, National Journal, Reuters | The Internet Association | Email this | Comments
Washington state has commissioned a Facebook app to provide another avenue for its residents to register to vote. Officials will soon post the software, developed by local company Microsoft, on the Secretary of State’s page and allow users to like it in order to spread the word. Once it’s ready, residents looking at using it will need to allow Facebook access to their personal info and provide a driver’s license number or state ID number, which the social network will use to put them on the voter rolls — but it would have no access to government databases, according to an election director. The state’s current online system already saves up to $2 per voter registration, so on top of getting more out to vote, the new effort should keep even more dollars in the coffers.
Filed under: Software
Washington to become first US state to enroll voters through Facebook originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Jul 2012 05:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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