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Tom DeLonge Shows Up in Wikileaks

Tom DeLonge
Jason Tate

Emails from Tom DeLonge show up in the latest round of published documents from Wikileaks. This email is between Tom DeLonge and John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, are about exactly what you would expect:

Tom DeLonge here, The one who interviewed you for that special documentary not to long ago.

Things are moving with the project. The Novels, Films and NonFiction works are blooming and finishing. Just had a preliminary meeting with Spielberg’s Chief Operating Officer at DreamWorks. More meetings are now on the books-

I would like to bring two very “important” people out to meet you in DC. I think you will find them very interesting, as they were principal leadership relating to our sensitive topic. Both were in charge of most fragile divisions, as it relates to Classified Science and DOD topics. Other words, these are A-Level officials. Worth our time, and as well the investment to bring all the way out to you. I just need 2 hours from you. Just looking to have a casual, and private conversation in person.

Oh, and for the record: Hillary does want more transparency on aliens.

BitTorrent Shutting Down Streaming Service

Jason Tate

Janko Roettgers, writing at Variety, on BitTorrent shutting down its streaming service:

BitTorrent has fired its two co-CEOs Robert Delamar and Jeremy Johnson and laid of an unknown number of staffers, Variety has learned from multiple sources. BitTorrent CFO Dipak Joshi has stepped in as interim CEO.

The company is also closing its Los Angeles-based production studio and shuttering its BitTorrent Now video streaming efforts. This comes just months after BitTorrent announced a renewed focus on media under the leadership of Delamar and Johnson.

Inside Apple’s Lightning Audio Adapter

Apple
Jason Tate

Jeff Suovanen, writing at iFixIt, tears down Apple’s new headphone dongle:

The takeaway seems to be that in some areas, the sound quality does measure a bit worse from the adapter than we might be accustomed to. For instance, when playing an uncompressed 16-bit audio file on the iPhone 6s, the dynamic range dropped from 99.1 dB at the headphone jack to 97.3 dB at the adapter. Though keep in mind, this slightly lower measurement is still higher than the theoretical maximum you get from a compact disc (which is 96 dB). So, is it a difference you are likely to notice? If you sit in a quiet room with a really, really good pair of headphones … and you’re a canine, the answer is: maybe.

Those x-ray photographs are pretty incredible.

Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ Musical Coming to HBO

Green Day
Jason Tate

Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day talked with NME about turning their American Idiot musical into an HBO movie:

“That’s the plan right now, yeah,” said Armstrong. “We’ve got a green light from HBO, and the script is currently going through a couple of rewrites here and there, so I’m not sure when exactly we’re going to start shooting, but it’s definitely all systems go at the moment.”

Mystery Daft Punk Website?

Jason Tate

A mysterious website, Alive2017, has appeared online. If you zoom in on the “I” it looks like a countdown to October 27, 2016. Speculation online is that this is related to Daft Punk:

Users on Reddit and tumblr have decoded a treasure-trove of hidden hints. The landing page is a simple black screen with “ALIVE” written in white text, but zoom in, and a countdown counter appears. Along the “I.” It ends on Oct. 27, 2016, a date labeled as “Wake Date” in the site’s metadata. There are also coordinates listed in the story-like code, corresponding to cities Paris, Los Angeles, London, New York, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Ibiza, and Indio.

Currently there’s no reason to believe it’s real, but … maybe?

It’s Been 15 Years Since the ‘Scrubs’ Pilot Aired

Scrubs
Jason Tate

Scrubs went on the air on October 2nd, 2001, so it’s now been 15 years since the pilot. MoviePilot looks at what the cast has been doing since the show left us in 2010:

Now fifteen years since the first episode aired, the cast and the world look very different. iPods are smaller, Britney traded in her snake for a show in Vegas and Blink 182 are apparently still going, but inspiring infinitely less hoodie-wearing devotees. With such a colossal amount of change taking place over the past decade and a half, it’s high time we caught up with the cast of our most beloved medical dramady to discover what they’ve been up to since Scrubs flatlined back in 2010.

Sidebar: Based on the size of the crowds at Blink’s current tour, I think they’re doing just fine.

Magic: The Gathering is the True Soul of Rock & Roll

Magic the Gathering
Jason Tate

Bear vs Shark were really into Magic: The Gathering:

For almost a decade, I was in Bear vs. Shark, a cold fusion of Loggins and Messina and Jem and the Holograms. We were like if Pantera was really into Michael Haneke — or a one-man band that was actually six druids from the future. We toured a lot and then we broke up — haunted Michigan and parts of New York, played steel drums in the desert. Our Constrobot deconstructed and we became lawyers, teachers, bounty hunters. Some made death masks for pets, others false teeth. One of us has a pushup academy.

Yahoo Secretly Scanned Customer Emails for U.S. Intelligence

Technology
Jason Tate

Joseph Menn, writing at Reuters:

Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers’ incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company complied with a classified U.S. government directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, said two former employees and a third person apprised of the events.