YATS 89: Internet of Yore

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“The internet is almost older than we are.”

Welcome internet to this week’s episode of YATS. It’s Yet Another Tech Show with Mat Lee, Larry Press, Mike Rothman and myself. I am Ant Pruitt. We are tech evangelists that strive to bring you a tech podcast with informative, yet entertaining tech discussions. Be sure to follow our social connections by clicking on our names. We enjoy chatting with our followers on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Click that download button above and follow along with the next bit of show notes. And here we go…

The world wide web celebrated its 25th birthday. We’re grateful for the twinkle in the eye of Tim Berners-Lee got us to where we are today with cat videos, twerking memes and trolling with the best of them. The panel took a trip down memory lane and shared our first memories of the world wide web. What was your first memory with the web? Was it for fun or for work? Leave us a comment below.

Image Credit: Ant Pruitt

Image Credit: Ant Pruitt

In news that won’t affect Ant Pruitt, the NSA has been posing as Facebook and planting malware on computers. Seriously, NSA? We dig into this story as well as the discussion of Eric Snowden interview from SXSW. Also, we talk encryption. Snowden advised on using encryption. Do you encrypt? What are the ramifications of encrypting your traffic? Will this make you a target for snooping? Larry says we just need to get everybody to encrypt everything.

(Better) news for the Comcast Netflix subscribers. These consumers have reportedly seen better performance on the network now that Netflix has paid off Comcast. Shocking, right? We look at this and hope that a trend doesn’t start. We could very easily see the service providers that offer online content stepping in and charging the likes of Netflix or Amazon a surcharge. Comcast also decided to pull House Of Cards into its own library for offering to its subscribers. We discuss if this is legal and if Netflix will gain any royalty payments.

Image Credit: Ars Technica

Image Credit: Ars Technica

Data is so powerful. Mike shared an article that gets into the creepy use of intimacy creation between you and brands of the market. The key is how some of the tech is used to draw you in. Apparently, there’s a fine line between cute and creepy when looking at life-like animations on the big screen. As the article discusses, the movie Polar Express flopped because that line was crossed.

Image Credit: ReCode

Image Credit: ReCode

Lastly, Larry shares his blog post about new online course innovation from World Science University. He gave the interface a look over and was impressed with how it’s presented as well as the content offered. The key to online education is keeping you interested. Just reading about the theory of relativity may be as exciting as watching ice melt.

That’s going to do it for this week’s show. Thanks for listening and sharing our show with your friends and family in the social media world. Follow us by checking out our crew page. You’ll see all of our social connections there. Join the Google+ community to talk with us during the week. Thanks, everyone!

Check out the hangout video below. If you want to watch us live, check out YATS tv Wednesday nights.