House

Vinyl accounts for less than 1 percent of overall music sales, but it's been making a bit of a comeback: sales almost doubled between 2007 and 2008 and grew another 33 percent in 2009, according to Nielsen. That's only 2.5 million records out of a total of more than 370 million albums sold in all formats, but record companies don't see many growing business areas, so they're suddenly jumping aboard.

New vinyl hasn't been this abundant since the mid-1980s--you can even find it in Best Buy and Wal-Mart. I give particular props to independent … Read more

Sen. Joseph Lieberman on Tuesday defended his proposal to grant the president far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of or shut down portions of the Internet.

It's vital that the president can "say to an electric company or to say to Verizon, in the national interest, 'There's an attack about to come, and I hereby order you to put a patch on this, or put your network down on this part, or stop accepting any incoming from country A,'" said Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut who caucuses with Democrats.

Lieberman's bill, introduced last week, could … Read more

A new U.S. Senate bill would grant the president far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of or even shut down portions of the Internet.

The legislation announced Thursday says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines, or software firms that the government selects "shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed" by the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined.

That emergency authority would allow the federal government to "preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people," Joe Lieberman, the primary sponsor of the … Read more

We start low this week with a sad story about Foxconn and more specifically, Foxconn's employees. We achieve a disposition that's definitely humorous, but respectful. I hope.

Dong laments Apple's ascension over Microsoft to the top of the tech-company hill and Google ditches Windows. Bad week for the Redmond, Wash.-based company and lovers of it. Dong, in particular.

Keeping with the "big three" theme, Google shows some speed tests of Chrome; and Opera did a little testing of their own.

Finally, Blizzard finally introduced a mobile auction house for World of Warcraft. And we … Read more

For the next five days, 100 college engineering students from universities across North America will be making last-minute preparations on their eco cars before the vehicles are judged.

This is the end of the second year of the EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge, hosted at the General Motors Desert Proving Ground in Yuma, Ariz. EcoCAR is a three-year competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and GM that challenges each team to re-engineer a GM-donated vehicle using a range of alternative technologies and integrating them together to make their own unique architecture.

"The students spent two years designing … Read more

This program moves beyond napkin sketching to communicating ideas in 3D. SketchUp takes what may traditionally be seen as a complicated task and adds an intuitiveness many design programs fail to achieve. On first impression, this sketch-based 3D-modeling program may look as if it has sacrificed function for simplicity, but that's not the case. Despite the extremely user-friendly interface, SketchUp offers a suite of powerful 3D drawing tools that lets you experiment and play with new designs.

All actions are carried out using two button bars, one that runs down the left side and another that sits along the … Read more

As a U.S. senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama pledged (PDF) to "strengthen privacy protections for the digital age."

But after 16 months as president, Obama has failed to appoint anyone to a privacy oversight body charged with ensuring Americans' civil liberties are not violated.

Rep. Jane Harman, the California Democrat who heads the Homeland Security committee, on Thursday called on the administration "to appoint the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which is mandated by the 2004 intelligence reform law, and which has not been filled."

The 2007 law expanding the board's responsibilities … Read more

Politicians and at least one liberal interest group, alarmed at the possibility that the Federal Communications Commission may leave broadband providers unregulated, are redoubling their efforts to push for sweeping Internet rules.

On Wednesday, two senior Democratic politicians sent a letter (PDF) to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski saying that imposing Net neutrality regulations on broadband providers such as AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon is "essential." And Free Press, the liberal lobby group that's led the fight to hand the FCC more Internet regulatory authority, hastily convened a conference call to warn that President Obama's Net … Read more

Phrases are coined left and right on today's show, from our plans to unbumble the Internet to the chat-room created phrase "gestApple," to describe the behavior of everybody's favorite door-busting-down, Ellen-berating iPhone-maker. Plus, "three-day-old tuna." It's a fun one. Also, six things you need to know about Facebook Connections (it violates your privacy six ways to Sunday) and the ensuing storm of tablet competition.

Six Things You Need to Know About Facebook Connections http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/05/things-you-need-know-about-facebook … Read more