Dan Jones

Microsoft is reportedly investing in Cyanogen, the Android modding company that’s seeking to “take Android away from Google.” Many remember Cyanogen as the former Android modding community that worked to create and maintain CyanogenMod, a popular ROM for rooted Android users. The core team became an official company in 2013, working at the time to simply make it easier to get CyanogenMod onto different device. Now, the company has a different mission.

Cyanogen is upset that Google has exerted a bit more control over Android, by doing things such as requiring manufacturers to feature Google apps on devices. Cyanogen wants Android to go back to its original open-source roots that didn’t have such requirements. CyanogenMod does that, and it’s being powered by an employed team at Cyanogen and a volunteer community of 9,000 developers, all working to create and spread a truly open-source version of Android.

While it’s unusual, Cyanogen’s goal helps explain why Microsoft would invest in the company. Windows Phone (or Windows 10 on phones) has spent the last few years struggling to gain market share. Consequently, Microsoft has shifted much of its mobile focus to getting its software and services onto other platforms. Microsoft realizes that Cyanogen has huge potential to grow, and thus wants to encourage that, in order to further the spread of its software. Growth in Cyanogen would also likely spark losses in usage of Android, which Microsoft likely wouldn’t be upset about.

Neither company has commented on the matter.

Fact #1: For many of us, it’s very cold outside right now. Fact #2: Headphones with cords suck.

The Bluetooth Audio Beanie solves both of those problems since it allows you to take calls, listen to music and stay warm. You can even control your playlists with controls that are built in to the hat.

And the best part? We have the beanie on sale for $34.99 (40% off). Plus you can save an additional 10% on everything in our Nerd Approved Deals store through February 5th using the code “NA10OFF”.

Features include:

• Built-in speakers & microphone for easy one touch music listening and call answering
• Seamless smartphone Bluetooth connectivity
• Easy-to-use controls for skipping songs, answering calls, and adjusting volume
• 60-hour standby time with 6 hours of continuous music/call playback
• One-size-fits-all & conveniently washable
• 33-ft Bluetooth range

See the Bluetooth Beanie in action after the break…

Bluetooth Audio Beanie ($59 $34.99)

While you’re at it, don’t forget to head on over to our giveaway section and enter to win an Xbox One, Beats headphones, and Apple watch and more!

Google Now is a tool that many of us rely on every day to display traffic info, help us keep track of flights, learn about sports scores and more. And thanks to a new feature, it looks like we’re going to start relying on it even more.

Google has announced that third-party apps can now display Google Now cards. There are currently 40 different apps that can display cards, including major apps like Pandora, Shazam, Lyft, Waze, and eBay. The apps can display info like music recommendations, your auction end times, traffic alerts, and even the ability to remotely start your vehicle.

Google says that these new third-party cards will roll out to users over the coming weeks and that more cards will be added in the future. There are already a number of awesome apps and cards that are launching with this third-party Google Now integration, and it’ll be interesting to see how developers use the feature going forward.

Last year was terrible for measles in the United States: there were 644 cases — the highest annual caseload in two decades. Granola-crunching Californians, wealthy Oregonians and Jenny McCarthy anti-vaccine acolytes have taken much of the blame for this spike. The Washington Post even pointed to Orange County — the location of the current Disneyland outbreak — as "Ground Zero in our current epidemic of anti-vaccine hysteria."

But that's wrong. The real story behind the 2014 outbreak isn't on the West Coast. It's in Ohio Amish country, where a missionary returning from the Philippines turned an otherwise unremarkable year for this virus into one of the worst in recent history.

That's where Jacqueline Fletcher, the public health nursing director for Ohio's Knox County, got a terrible call from a pay phone last April.

A member of the local Amish community was on the line. There was a potential measles outbreak in the town, the woman said, and the public health department should know.

Fletcher's first thought was, "Oh, shit." For a health worker, this was a nightmare scenario. She couldn't just call the woman back or ring up other potential victims; they didn't have phone numbers. This Amish community, like others in the United States, eschews the conveniences of modern technology.

"We don't have any internet or computer. We don't have a car," Ivan Miller, an Amish furniture store owner in the community struck by measles, explained. "It's not that we feel a car is wrong. It's our choice because we feel if we had a car, it would bring us to a lot more temptations in the world."

At the time, this Amish population was generally against vaccination. This, however, wasn't a matter of religious principle but one of health concerns.

In the 1990s, Miller explained, two Ohio kids allegedly got sick after they took the MMR shot, which protects against measles, mumps, and rubella. Rumors about vaccine safety spread through the Amish community like a virus. "That put a scare in us and we quit," Miller says. This made it incredibly easy for measles — the most contagious virus known to man — to move through this cluster of unvaccinated individuals.

Fletcher had been with the Knox health department for 29 years. And she'd never seen anything like what she found in some of the Amish households she visited, trying to get a sense of the outbreak's size — and stop its spread. "There was a household that had six adolescent teenage children with measles, all sitting in the dark," she says. They were covered in the spotty rash that's characteristic of the virus, miserable and sick. It was a scene for the last century.

The outbreak that Fletcher spent months working to contain ultimately infected 382 Amish Ohioans by the time it was declared over in August of last year. Nobody died, but nine wound up in the hospital with more serious symptoms.

"We had never seen a case of measles before this," Fletcher says. "I just remember a man from the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] saying to me, 'You have got to get ahead of this.'"

Unvaccinated travelers drive measles outbreaks

Last summer, a team of researchers got together to try and understand an alarming trend: why had so many measles cases popped up recently?

In 2000, the federal government declared that the United States had eliminated the disease: enough people were immunized that outbreaks were uncommon, and deaths from measles were scarcely heard of.

But in the first half of 2014 alone, there were 288 cases. And nearly all of them, the CDC researchers wrote in findings published last June, stemmed from Americans traveling abroad and returning with the disease.

"Of the 288 cases, 280 (97 percent) were associated with importations from at least 18 countries," they wrote. Many of these travelers were coming back from the Philippines, which has been dealing with a massive outbreak since fall 2013.

"What we've seen — since the epidemic of measles was interrupted in 2000 — is that we are continually getting measles coming in from overseas," says Jane Seward, deputy director of the viral diseases division at the CDC. "More often than not, it's US residents who go overseas for a trip — to say, Europe, where they don't think they need to be vaccinated. They bring measles back."

"A perfect storm" in Ohio

In the Ohio case, "patient zero" had traveled to the Philippines on a missionary trip. (In case you were wondering, he took a plane. Miller explained, "Some Amish fly. Some don't.") At the time, the Philippines happened to be facing a massive measles outbreak, with tens of thousands of cases.

When he returned to Ohio, and fell ill, a doctor misdiagnosed him with Dengue fever, so he continued to pass his disease along to friends and neighbors, many of whom had refused the vaccine out of those concerns over adverse effects.

Fletcher describes it as a "perfect storm:" an unimmunized traveler going to a place with an outbreak and bringing an infectious disease back to an unprotected community.

Measles is one of the most contagious viruses ever discovered. In most cases, it's not deadly, but it's almost always debilitating, bringing on a weeks-long fever, rash, and painful, watery eyes. Up to forty percent of people experience serious complications, such as pneumonia and encephalitis (or swelling of the brain). One or two children in 1,000 die.

The most remarkable thing about the virus, however, is that it's incredibly indestructible. A person with measles can cough in a room, leave, and — if you were unvaccinated — hours later, you can catch the virus from the droplets in the air that they left behind. No other virus can do that. It also lives on surfaces for hours, finding new hosts in the unimmunized.

"Measles is very contagious, so once [the Ohio missionary] felt better, he went to church, and the church was in somebody's house," Fletcher says. "The majority of those first cases, we linked back to him. They had all attended church in that house."

"There was a household with six adolescent teenagers with measles, all sitting in the dark."

Then, there were obstacles specific to tracing a disease through an Amish community. Trying to reach everyone who might have been exposed to the disease and get them into quarantine so they couldn't spread the infection further required a level of gumshoeing nearly reminiscent of searching out Ebola victims in rural West Africa.

"Because the Amish don't have phones, we had to go out to their homes," she says. "We're a small health department in a rural area. It was a lot of work."

Fletcher and her team patiently went door to door, collecting specimens, educating people about vaccines, making sure the vulnerable — pregnant women and small babies too young to get vaccinated — were safe from harm. CDC officials even flew in to support the effort.

An Amish man travels to the Philippines...

The actual story of the 2014 outbreak complicates the narrative that has developed in the wake of the new outbreak of measles at Disneyland in early 2015: that a growing number of parents, led by Jenny McCarthy, have begun to opt their kids out of vaccinations, letting the disease spread easily.

Federal data shows no drop off in vaccination rates over the past decade

In fact, it's only about two percent of the population that refuses vaccines outright. All 50 states have had school immunization requirements since the early 1980s, though some now allow medical and philosophical exemptions. Even so, there hasn't been a drop off in vaccination rates in the past decade, the National Immunization Survey shows. Coverage for the MMR vaccine stands at 92 percent.

It's not actually a rising anti-vaxx tide or naturopathic, private school mothers driving a return of vaccine-preventable disease here. It's not even low-income folks who wind up getting sick, and it's especially not undocumented migrants bringing in viruses, the CDC's Seward says: "The people getting measles are those that travel abroad, come back, and live in a community among people who weren't vaccinated."

Some years, we get 40 "importations." Last year, there were about 65. "This is more than normal," she added, "and it reflects travel patterns and where measles is active globally."

The travelers spark outbreaks when they hit geographic clusters of unvaccinated people, like the one in Ohio. These infectious disease powder kegs exist all across the US, waiting to be sparked. Their low rates of vaccine coverage are hidden in the statistics about national averages, and they are by no means guided by a singular ideology. They may be the hesitant Amish of Ohio, vaccine-opposing Christian Scientists, or simply worried parents who delay immunizing their kids.

Last year, the Amish outbreak in the United States mirrored an uptick in Canadian cases. A population of Christian Dutch Reformers in British Columbia, which had refused vaccines out of concerns over safety, drove an outbreak of more than 400 measles cases. According to the World Health Organization, there were only 512 cases in Canada in total last year.

Miller, the Ohio furniture-store owner, says the measles episode in Knox changed his mind about the MMR vaccine. His wife got a bad case, and so did his son-in-law. "On their worst days, we were wondering if they're going to make it," he says.

"We all took the vaccine after that. I had one shot, and I still took the other one and we had all our kids vaccinated, too. After people saw how sick people got, they changed their minds."

The Nexus 6 officially went on sale at the tail end of 2014, but getting one from either the Google Play store or Motorola hasn’t always been all that easy for everyone. And if the price seems a bit steep, T-Mobile has an interesting offer.

T-Mobile has the Midnight Blue Nexus 6 available in both the 32GB and 64GB variants, and the best part is that there’s a $48 discount attached to them, too, as long as you’re able to put in a quick code. T-Mobile will apply the discount to the phone after putting in the code NEXUS6DEAL. Normally the 32GB Nexus 6 costs $649.92, while the 64GB option runs $699.84, so the $48 discount will at least whittle that tag down just a bit.

T-Mobile also explicitly notes that while the 32GB option will ship immediately after you decide to buy it, the 64GB option is shipping in 7 to 10 business days.

Have you already picked up a Nexus 6, or do you plan on taking advantage of this deal?

YouTube announced that it now defaults to the HTML5 player for both YouTube.com and YouTube embeds. "YouTube uses HTML5 <video> by default in Chrome, IE 11, Safari 8 and in beta versions of Firefox."

Browsers now support features like Adaptive Bitrate streaming and Encrypted Media Extensions, so YouTube can reduce buffering and add content protection without using plugins. The VP9 codec "gives you higher quality video resolution with an average bandwidth reduction of 35 percent", WebRTC provides broadcasting tools, while fullscreen APIs add a feature that used to require plugins, keyboard shortcuts or other browser options.

"Given the progress we've made with HTML5 <video>, we're now defaulting to the HTML5 player on the web. We're also deprecating the "old style" of Flash <object> embeds and our Flash API. We encourage all embedders to use the <iframe> API, which can intelligently use whichever technology the client supports," informs YouTube.

I’ve been a fan of “Spongebob” since the first episode premiered after the Kid’s Choice Awards in 1999. I was just a brat at the time, and I certainly wasn’t old enough to be a fan conspirer.

But even in those early days of the sponge, I knew something was up with Mr. Krabs and his daughter, Pearl. We all knew there was something the show’s writers were keeping from us.

Besides his entire license of course. No, I’m talking about something else entirely.

A crab being the father of a whale? I know Spongebob isn’t known for being scientifically responsible, but even that is just too much silliness for a franchise.

Fans like me have always had our own conclusions about the whole “Pearl” thing. Some say she’s simply adopted, while others accept the nonsense that Mr. Krabs actually had a wife who gave birth to a whale.

But I think the truth behind Pearl’s legacy has already been subtlety explained to us over the course of the show. There are a lot of hints and clues, and I’m confident we can get to the bottom of this.

It’s about to get real, guys.

Before we go further, let’s set the record straight on who Mr. Krabs is. The best way to characterize him is to explain his obsession with money. We all know he’s frankly a greedy guy.

One thing I’ve always picked up on about Krabs’s role in the Spongebob universe is the strangeness behind his occupation. He’s never shown himself to be a lover of food, but he chooses to own and operate a fast food restaurant.

Not a franchise. Just one, single restaurant.

That’s all well and common, but have you wondered why a guy with so much money (and lust for money) would choose food service as his principal moneymaker?

The secret is actually (somewhat) explained in the trailer for The Spongebob Squarepants Movie: Sponge out of Water, which is due to release in just a couple of weeks.

In the trailer, the secret Krabby Patty formula is stolen by a human pirate from the surface, who is thankfully played by Antonio Banderas.

When this happens, Mr. Krabs explains that without the formula (and Krabby Patties), the citizens of Bikini Bottom will descend into apocalyptic chaos.

We see this happen instantaneously in hilarious fashion, but it had me wondering why these fish are so obsessed with Krabby Patties. Then it hit me.

Something about Krabby Patties makes fish crave and desire it more than anything.

We’ve seen this play out dozens of times on the show. Even Squidward, the sea’s biggest hipster, became an addict of these things with just a morsel of a bite.

He even fantasizes about marrying a Krabby Patty and having children with it…

There’s evidence of this even in the very beginning of the show. The anchovies from the pilot episode resort to violence when no one is able to make them Krabby Patties. Mr. Krabs doesn’t even want to hire Spongebob at first because whoever he brings on has to protect the formula at all costs.

This must be because the formula does something to make people absolutely need it.

The only other explanation, which isn’t as likely, is that the formula is nothing special. Just a ruse to make people believe Krabby Patties are special.

Either way, Mr. Krabs purposefully created the formula to create a restaurant that people have to visit every day for fear of losing their minds. Seems like the perfect plan, right? It’s definitely classic Krabs.

And the trailer for the movie hints that the formula comes from a magic book that lets you “rewrite history.” Krabs could’ve developed the formula to give him an addicting burger recipe.

So yeah. Classic, greedy Krabs.

Still, one thing doesn’t add up if you’re claiming that Eugene Krabs only cares about money. There’s one thing that seems to transcend this greed, and that’s love.

When Mr. Krabs falls for Mrs. Puff, he spends money recklessly to impress her. I remember watching this episode and realizing I had never seen Eugene so infatuated with something other than cash (or the making of it).

Even when it comes to Pearl. Do we really think Krabs would pay and sacrifice to raise a child out of his own volition?

Now, let’s think logically, here. If Mr. Krabs adopted Pearl, then he would be taking on an expense. Unless he loved Pearl already (for some reason), this doesn’t make sense within what we know about this guy—er—crab.

And what of Mrs. Krabs? The show never references her, but a book mentions that she is Pearl’s mother. At one point, Mr. Krabs clearly states that “Pearl takes after her mother.”

I don’t think that’s the full story. I think that’s what Mr. Krabs tells Pearl (and by default, everyone else). But I don’t think he was ever actually married.

After all, marrying someone would require sharing your money with someone forever, and we’ve already seen that Krabs is incapable of that (hence his relationship with Mrs. Puff never going anywhere).

I’m not the only one who believes this. Here’s an illustrated theory from GAF Comics that is titled “Mystery Solved.”

Now THIS is a theory I can get behind. Because it actually fits within the context of Eugene Krabs as a character. You know why?

Another thing we know plainly about Krabs is that he’s terrified of hooks. When Spongebob and Patrick play with fishing hooks, he becomes obsessed with stopping them.

This is because he knows all too well the dangers of the surface. This even explains why Krabs wants to be a cyborg-looking thing in Spongebob: Sponge Out of Water. This is the sort of power that makes him feel powerful on the surface because he’s impervious to hooks and other human dangers.

Remember how sensitive he was when he lost his shell in the episode with his Navy buddies? Why else do you think he wants a metal shell for a superpower?

And I think part of that fear and respect for hooks comes from a soft spot you wouldn’t expect: saving his adopted daughter from the perils of the surface.

That’s why he takes her in, even though it would mean he has to make financial sacrifices for her. He couldn’t save her mother, but he’ll do whatever he can to save this young whale.

After all, why do you think he named her Pearl? Because it’s an homage to the saying, Mother of Pearl. The very saying he said during that episode with the hooks.

“Mother of Pearl! Fire on the poop deck!”

Another thing to consider is: where do pearls come from?

From clams, of course. And what is the sign for the Krusty Krab? A clamshell. Mr. Krabs cherishes “pearls” because they’re worth a lot of money, but to him, his daughter Pearl is priceless.

There’s even an episode where Mr. Krabs celebrates his millionth dollar by going to hunt clams for their pearls. Clearly, the sign for the Krusty Krab is the equivalent of a trophy head on his wall.

Mr. Krabs is a complicated guy, to be certain. He’s not perfect, and his greed for money is the source of a LOT of problems Bikini Bottom has faced over the years.

But you have to admit that the one thing he truly loves is what makes him a redeemable character. Pearl, and the mother of Pearl.

That just leaves me with one last question, then. Are you feeling it now, Spongebob fans?

Thanks for reading! If you like reading the strange things I write about, be sure to subscribe to this blog by clicking “follow” on the sidebar. Or just follow me on Twitter for updates: @JonNegroni. 

At church on Sunday the teacher asked the class why we thought Isaiah used the term “mountain of the Lord” to describe the temple. A few people in class had some half-baked ideas, but not one of them mentioned the possibility that Isaiah had already seen the future and was therefore aware of the 1993 film about the Salt Lake Temple called Mountain Of The Lord, and was obviously just making a pop culture reference to that movie.

Here’s a few good reasons not to vaccinate your child.

Grandma recalls those blessed and happy days before Facebook.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Smithsonian Institution is working to establish its first international museum outpost in London as that city redevelops its Olympic park.

Smithsonian officials announced Tuesday that London’s mayor and developers have secured $50 million in private contributions to build the facility.

Smithsonian board chairman John McCarter says this is a chance to tell America’s story and show the global reach of the world’s largest museum and research complex.

If the deal is finalized, the Smithsonian would join the Victoria and Albert Museum, University College London, University of the Arts London and a theater as partners in the new “Olympicopolis” cultural center. It would be situated near London’s 2012 Olympic Stadium, swimming facility and a popular shopping mall.

The post Smithsonian working to finalize deal for new site in London appeared first on WTOP.

Are you familiar with Winter-een-mas? It’s a gamer’s holiday that was started by Tim Buckley in the Ctrl+Alt+Del comic strip and it takes place over the course of seven days between January 25th and 31st. Each day is devoted to a specific genre:

• January 25th: Adventure games, symbolized by a man dressed as Indiana Jones.
• January 26th: First Person Shooter (FPS) games, with a 21 year-old sleep deprived gamer as its symbol.
• January 27th: Fighting games, represented by a martial artist with too many blows to the head
• January 28th: Real-time Strategy (RTS) games, whose emblem is a large bearded man with a pocket protector inside another pocket protector.
• January 29th: Racing games, shown as a racer with old-fashioned racing helmet and racing goggles holding a detached steering wheel.
• January 30th: Role Playing Games (RPGs), depicted as an elf-like woman holding floating dice above her left hand.
• January 31st: Sports games, with a round, middle-aged man wearing a #10 jersey and holding a beer bottle in each hand as its emblem.

We don’t need much of an excuse to celebrate around here, so for the rest of the week we will feature a Winter-een-mas-themed shirt from our merch store, leading up to a giveaway over the weekend. Since today is the 27th, the shirt is all about fighting games.

You can grab the shirt “Street Kombat” here. Head on over to our merch store for even more awesomely nerdy shirts.

And stay tuned the rest of the week for more Winter-een-mas shirts and our giveaway!

An enjoyable list from Arika Okrent; alongside the usual suspects like Ostalgie (nostalgia for the old way of life in East Germany) and Weltschmerz (you probably know what Weltschmerz is), there are such piquant entries as Kevinismus (“a strange propensity to give their kids wholly un-German, American-sounding names like Justin, Mandy, Dennis, Cindy, and Kevin”) and Ichschmerz (“like Weltschmerz, but it is dissatisfaction with the self rather than the world”). A few others:

3. KREISLAUFZUSAMMENBRUCH

Kreislaufzusammenbruch, or “circulatory collapse,” sounds deathly serious, but it’s used quite commonly in Germany to mean something like “feeling woozy” or “I don’t think I can come into work today.”

4. HÖRSTURZ

Hörsturz refers to a sudden loss of hearing, which in Germany is apparently frequently caused by stress. Strangely, while every German knows at least 5 people who have had a bout of Hörsturz, it is practically unheard of anywhere else.

7. PUTZFIMMEL

Putzen means “to clean” and Fimmel is a mania or obsession. Putzfimmel is an obsession with cleaning. It is not unheard of outside of Germany, but elsewhere it is less culturally embedded and less fun to say.

I expect my Germanophone readers to tell me some of them are invented, others exaggerated, and yet others misinterpreted, but it gave me a chuckle on a day spent reading about the Holocaust and worrying about the weather, so I thought I’d pass it on.

Speaking of the weather, I don’t know if there’s a word Schneeweh, but we’re promised at least a couple of feet of snow in the next two days and power lines may come down, so if I don’t post, you’ll know what’s happening. Please join me in hoping no trees fall near our house!

LDS.org is releasing new features in early February, the first in a series of updates to make the website more personalized, current and easy

The Nexus 6 was originally set to feature a fingerprint sensor nestled in the dimple on the back of the device. The news comes as the result of an interview with Dennis Woodside, former CEO of Motorola. What was the reason for the decision that left the production model without a fingerprint sensor? Apple. If not for the technology giant, the Nexus 6 would have a fingerprint sensor.

In 2012, Apple purchased Authentec, a supplier of mobile fingerprint recognition scanners. Authentec was considered the best company in the category, and Motorola had previously utilized Authentec technology in the Motorola Atrix 4G. Without Authentec, “the second best supplier was the only one available to everyone else in the industry and they weren’t there yet.”

As such, Motorola made the decision to leave out the fingerprint sensor altogether. The move, although disappointing to some, was likely the wisest option. Fingerprint sensors that aren’t top-notch lead to an experience that’s more frustrating than helpful. Look at devices like the Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One max for confirmation of that. When trying to create a device that offers the best experience, as the Nexus 6 aims for, you can’t include a feature that’s half-baked.

Facebook has been hard at work developing apps that branch off of the massive social network. The latest arrival is Facebook Lite, a newly-launched app that’s aimed at low-end Android phones and poor network connections. The app is minuscule, coming in at just 252KB in size, making it ideal for entry-level Android phones with severely limited storage. It also uses lots of compression and optimization to allow it to still function on slow or weak coverage, such as 2G networks. And for those using older devices, Facebook Lite features support all the way back to Android 2.2.

While similar to Snaptu, Facebook’s app for feature phones, Facebook Lite provides a better UI, push notifications and camera support, allowing low-end smartphone users to have a leg up on those with feature phones. The app is currently test launching in Asia and Africa, with support in Bangladesh, Nepal, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. This test launch is a precursor to a possible wider rollout.

The markets that Facebook Lite is testing in are carefully targeted. The developing nations that were chosen are rapidly growing in terms of smartphone users, with the majority using extremely low-end Android phones. The standard Facebook app encounters a lot of trouble when running on such poor devices and networks, creating a need for an alternative such as Facebook Lite. Play Store reviews are overwhelmingly positive, even though it was only launched over the weekend, indicating that the app was necessary and is performing admirably.

Artist's Note: 

I won't lie, the punch got me. It doesn't help that I'm ditching Windows for Mac OSX.

Writer's Note:

To be fair, I'm pretty sure Mac OSX is also made from poop water.

Cold children may be left unsupervised.