Netflix was unavailable yesterday for 11 hours due to a glitch in its scheduled weekly maintenance system, and it will cause users to wait an extra day or two for their rentals. The outage started yesterday at 7AM Pacific Time,…

Netflix was unavailable yesterday for 11 hours due to a glitch in its scheduled weekly maintenance system, and it will cause users to wait an extra day or two for their rentals.

The outage started yesterday at 7AM Pacific Time, when engineers noted that the weekly maintenance shutdown scheduled for the middle of the night had instead gone off in the early morning. By the time the site was up again at 6PM, Netflix had gained a few disgruntled customers. The outage caused its 52 distribution centers to go down as well (presumably, they didn’t have access to the customer logs), so DVDs scheduled to go out Monday won’t go out until today. As a result, the ranting began.

Many of the Netflix users, clearly experiencing movie-queuing withdrawal, used the outage as an opportunity to talk about the overall lack of open information on the site.

For example, many feel that Netflix isn’t upfront with them about broken DVD’s and waiting times for movies that are heavily in demand (I second this problem: I’ve been waiting for Season One of The Wire for 10 weeks now). When representatives weren’t answering questions immediately yesterday, it caused local newscasts to lead their segments with vague statements like ‘Netflix is experiencing problems due to their technology. We don’t know anything else.’

Basically, people want to know that something is being done to correct the issue of a service they pay for, and would like to know about maintenance sessions in advance (though that would not have mattered yesterday).

So far, there has been no detailed explanation about why the outage happened and why it took so long to come back up. Regularly scheduled maintenance of top websites like MySpace, Facebook, and Netflix usually don’t take more than a few hours.

This is something that the company has dealt with in the past. During an outage last year,
Netflix employees admitted going through a difficult time. That outage lasted almost 18 hours.

The workday flame-out also illustrated the jittery rollercoaster feeling and unpredictability of Wall Street at the moment. Instead of predictably going down because of the outage, Netflix stock went up 9%, up to an all-time high of $39.65, before going down a bit at the end of the day.

Some conspiracy-minded forum users posed the idea that the outage change went beyond the regular technical mishap. A few believe that by taking out the service for half the day, Netflix deliberately slowed down those super Netflix users who watch movies as soon as they get them, thus saving themselves some money on shipping.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

Mike Johnston of the great photography blog Luminous Landscape wants a new camera, and it does nearly nothing but take photos. He dubs this fantasy-cam the DMD (Decisive Moment Digital), and it is noteworthy as an antidote to the bell-and-whistle-fest…

Mike Johnston of the great photography blog Luminous Landscape wants a new camera, and it does almost nothing but take photos. He dubs this fantasy-cam the DMD (Decisive Moment Digital), and it is noteworthy as an antidote to the bell-and-whistle-fest that’s the modern digicam.

Johnston wants a simple tool, quiet, with no flash, a fixed wide angle lens, an optical viewfinder and DNG + JPEG only. In fact, it has nearly nothing not found on the easy, basic film cameras of old, other than being digital. And you know what? I want one.

So there you have it: a small, light, unobtrusive carry-around camera with great handling and world-class responsiveness, capable of being used in all manner of lighting conditions and yielding DSLR-quality results on the gallery wall. The 21st-century equivalent of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s stealthy street-shootin’ Leica.

The Leica comparison is an apt one. The M8 comes the closest to Mike’s dream camera, but cost as much as a small vehicle. There’s definitely a (probably large) niche for a product like this. Easy, stripped down, easy to use, fast and reliable. Sign me up. But enough talk. What would you like to see in the perfect camera?

‘DMD’: The Digital Camera I’d Like to Own [Luminous Landscape via Kottke]

Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Flickr

Via [wired.com]

Share This

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

X-48B Video Shows World’s Biggest RC Model Plane in Action [Skyray]

NASA has released the first video of the remote controlled X-48B Blended Wing Body 8.5-percent scale model. At 21-foot wingspan, it is the largest surviving RC model in the world, easily crushing the previous king. For sure, Skyray 48 is not your typical RC plane, but it’s the baddest, best-looking mother of them all. The video itself is cool if only to hear the pilot talking with the tower (and is it me or can you hear someone dying at the end?)

The 10-minute video documents the perfect flight of Skyray 48, the Boeing-NASA prototype of what could be the future of commercial aviation. Thanks to its design, designs derived from the X-48B will have less power consumption and less emissions, while increasing carrying capacity and speed compared with current cargo and passenger aircraft.

The plane took off last year from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base, in California, controlled from the ground by Boeing pilot Norm Howell. [NASA]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

The standard rule of Apple patents applies: Just because it’s on file, doesn’t mean they’re going to put it out. But I hope they do, America’s fat ass needs this. It’s an advanced fitness suite, like Nike + iPod cranked up to 1100. There’s hardware that keeps tabs on your heart rate and other vitals, a rewards tracker, and a component for syncing up groups. All of it’s connected by an iTunes-like app that tracks your current fitness level, goals, schedule and a whole mess of other stats—it’ll even make a workout for you—which it syncs to your iPod or iPhone to follow at the gym.

When you fire it up for the first time, it interviews you to get a sense of your health, even asking about your financial and social status (if they suck, you’re stressed, and that does impact health). Then it spits out a regiment, based on how unhealthy you are and how healthy you wanna get. Then you just follow the routine on your iPod at the gym, with the hardware sensors providing real-time feedback on how hard you’re getting your ass kicked.

Apple definitely has an interest in fitness gear, and with Nike branching out, this might just happen. Oh, and first person to make a horrible iBod pun gets banned. [AppleInsider]

Via [gizmodo]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

As the ultra-portable Computer putsch made its way into our digital beerhalls, the biggest players, HP and Dell, sat back and watched. Rumors have always flushed around the sewers of Dell fandom that one was on its way, but it’s…

As the ultra-portable Computer putsch made its way into our digital beerhalls, the biggest players, HP and Dell, sat back and watched. Rumors have always flushed around the sewers of Dell fandom that one was on its way, but it’s HP, with the Mini-Note 2133, that’s acted first.

With a rumored street date of April 7, the easy, sleek HP follows in the mold of less-radical second-gen ultramobiles, ditching the original “Origami” tablet form factor in favor a standard laptop-like clamshell design. Engadget, hearing the whispers, reports that it’ll be cheap, capable and Vista-equipped, with configurations running from $600 and up — all with proper hard drives and at least a Gig of RAM. You’ll even be able to ditch Fista in favor of Linux and pay only $550, making this look like a swell alternative to the Asus Eee Computer.

It’s all about hitting a sweet spot that no-one’s quite hit yet, located somewhere on the three scales of size, price and performance. The one they always seem to forget about with these things is battery life.

Naturally, this measure is missing from the leaked specs.

Pic Credit: Engadget

Via [wired.com]

Share This

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

Oh, caulk! Is there anything you can’t do? Not only do you allow us to plug up holes by squirting your oozing, white fluid-like substance all over the place, but you come in a long and amusing missile shape. And if you get too difficult to clean up after using, all we have to do is cut off a bit of the tip! How convenient. And now you even come with a free iPod nano if we buy 12 of you? C’mon! How can we not love caulk? [Found in Egersund Norway thanks to Erlend]

Via [gizmodo]

Share This

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

Hands-On With ATI’s HD USB TV Dongle
A while back, ATI sent in its USB TV Wonder 600, which looks like a large thumbdrive and has a coaxial connector at the far end, into which one plugs cable TV or an antenna.

A while back, ATI sent in its USB TV Wonder 600, which looks like a large thumbdrive and has a coaxial connector at the far end, into which one plugs cable TV or an antenna.

Included is PVR and time-shifting spftware, DVD playing and authoring apps, and a telescopic antenna. Doesn’t work with Macs. I finally got to figuring it out. Bearing in mind I’m about 6 months out of date here, here’s the first thoughts:

• The software was easy to set up and installation offered no bullshit. Yay! Thank the Lord for small mercies.

• Performance, recording and playback are very good. It grabs a nice HD picture with rabbit ears, assuming you’re in a city that gets over-the-air HD.

• The supplied remote control is slow to respond. It looks nice, but for whatever reason— IR functionality, the software, whatever—it’s not much cop. A memory-resident app lurks in the systray and keeps an eye out for use.

• It crashed after about an hour of use, but only once. This represents the first time in my life that television has crashed.

• The menus look well organized, but are hard to navigate. At any given location, many buttons on the remote control simply do nothing, even when it seems that they should.

• When turning it on, the TV display is by default shrunk into one corner, with a menu dominating the screen. The one thing I needed the remote control to do— actually give me a full screen image—couldn’t be accomplished with it.

• It’s best use is, therefore, as a way to watch TV on the go, on notebooks. Show off in the coffee shop, avoid having to read on the train, that sort of thing.

Product Page [ATI]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

Laptop battery supplies have dropped by as much as 40% due to a single fire at a Korean factory earlier this month. The factory, operated in Ochang by LG Chem, provided batteries for Dell, Asus and HP, all of whom…

Laptop battery supplies have dropped by as much as 40% due to a single fire at a Korean factory earlier this month. The factory, operated in Ochang by LG Chem, provided batteries for Dell, Asus and HP, all of whom are now kvetching about supply chains and price hikes.

This story is almost dripping with irony. After all the exploding battery stories we’ve heard in the last year, the idea of a battery factory going up in flames is almost too much. The only thing that could make it better would be the involvement of Sony.

Factory fire blamed for laptop battery shortage [Sydney Morning Herald]

Laptop vendors burned in battery plant blaze [The Register]

Via [wired.com]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

Brain Lamp is New Gizmodo Leader, Future Galactic Emperor [Lamps]

When I saw this come up in my RSS feeds, I thought it said Brian Lam, and so I got rather excited. I was, however, (as I so frequently am) wrong. This lamp is the brainchild of Alexander Lervik, who had an MR scan done in Stockholm of his own grey matter, before printing up the results on a 3-D printer. “Yes,” he says about his creation. “It is bright.” Oh, no one loves a smart arse, Lervik. [Lervik]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This

The headline says nearly everything. What it doesn’t tell you is that this incredible MAME case required just about every skill there is in order to build it: Furniture making (the box is scratch built from MDF), electronics, programming and,…

The headline says nearly everything. What it doesn’t tell you is that this incredible MAME case required just about every skill there is in order to build it: Furniture making (the box is scratch built from MDF), electronics, programming and, of course, Time Travel.

The one-man show behind the MAME TARDIS, Simon Jansen, is more geek than you’ll ever be (this is the guy who rendered the whole of Star Wars in ascii animation). Take a look at the extensive, painstakingly detailed how-to on his site, and be thankful Jansen didn’t build the arcade emulator into KITT (Jansen describes Knight Rider almost perfectly as: “The Hoff and his camp car”.

Building a MAME console inside a TARDIS [Asciimation via Retro Thing]

Via [wired.com]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Share This