The UpStream

There comes a time in every person's life when they no longer get to enjoy one of their favorite past times. Sometimes it's because of life changing up circumstances, other times it's because of innovation. This one surely falls into the latter as the joy and amazing feeling of popping Bubble Wrap is going away, thanks to hands of those at the Sealed Air Corp.

Bubble Wrap, which is a name of a product and not a type of product mind you, has been sold by the Sealed Air Corp since 1960 as a way of cheaply and effectively protecting items during shipping. Since then, billions have basked in the glory of popping every air bubble on the strip of plastic sent in their boxes along with their product. For some, the product was just a bonus to getting to be able to pop another sheet of Bubble Wrap.

Now, the company is launching a new iteration of their famous packing supply. Sucking the fun out of our lives, the new product, called iBubble Wrap, will not pop when pressed on. Sealed Air Corp. is looking to benefit and target online businesses who not only use the stuff but also want to save money and space. iBubble Wrap takes up one fiftieth of the space of traditional Bubble Wrap and no longer comes pre-inflated in single bubbles.

Instead, the protective packing material will be inflated when it reaches the retailer, who will then place it into shipping boxes. iBubble Wrap has columns that are connected and distribute air where needed and as you inflate it. One truckload of the new product has the same amount of packing material as 47 trucks that would have shipped the original Bubble Wrap. I guess it makes sense when you look at it that way.

Still, it feels like my bubble of fun that lives within my heart is being ripped out only to not be popped, but stepped on. It now makes sense why babies cry when they enter this world.

Last year, the last and final co-founder of The Pirate Bay was arrested in Thailand and transported back to Sweden to face criminal charges. The four were also being tried for criminal charges in Belgium, which is where our story takes us today. Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström have all been acquitted of criminal copyright infringement and electronic communications.

Now, it's important to note the context of the trial. The charged were brought up based around the allegations that the four were still involved with the site from September 2011 to November 2013. The problem is that the four have denied such allegations, saying that they've cut ties with TPB ever since they sold it to Reservella in 2006.

During the trial, the prosecution attempted to connect the four founders to the website at any point during the two years in question. Unfortunately, it didn't really pan out and the court found that the group were not at all tied to the since the sale.

This is a small victory for them, as there are a handful of other countries that are waiting for the founders to stand trial in their borders. The quartet will have to face different charges in each country and can still face serious jail time if found guilty in those countries.

Lizard Squad was at it again this week. The group responsible for Xbox server takedowns during Christmas and the PlayStation Network outage in November decided to take aim at Daybreak studios, developers behind the hit games Planetside and H1Z1.

Last year, Lizard Squad had targeted a plane that had CEO of Daybreak John Smedley on board. The person behind the bomb threat, Julius Kivimaki, was simply sentenced to two years of a Finnish version of probation. Kivimaki also led a group that had the CEO "swatted" and had 50 fake credit applications submitted in his name. The group even went as far as to file false tax returns under his name.

Lizard Squad has kept Daybreak in their sights, and has now attacked the H1Z1 servers. This had led to Smedley going public to say he is going to "go after" the group and the persons involved and make sure they are punished as harshly as possible. The H1Z1 servers were pretty much unplayable all week and it continued through the weekend, to the point where Daybreak has to post about the DDoS attacks in order to make gamers aware of what's been going on.

We are experiencing issues again which may result in lag, disconnects, or inability to access games, forums, or websites. The team is aware.

Planetside 2 has practically been unreachable since Thursday as well. Lizard Squad's Twitter account has pinned a tweet to its timeline that simply read, "H1Z1 #offline #lizardsquad." The studio's website and most recent zombie survival title are slowly coming back online, but the experience is very sluggish for a good portion of its community.

We've talked about this before and the general consensus by most people is that this type of bored hacker is the worst thing for any community, especially when there's no point behind the attack or no "justice" being served of any type. Hopefully more of the infamous squad gets taken down before this holiday season.

We have discussed many times that appointment television is likely coming to an end. With services like Netflix and Hulu, the idea of waiting for a specific time to watch a television show or movie is becoming more and more ridiculous to many. If you're like me, though, there is a problem with streaming services: it takes way too long to get going. Once you launch the website or application it seems like quite a chore to find content you're interested in.

That has certainly been one of the benefits of traditional television for as long as it has existed. As soon as you turn it on, there is content going, whether it is something you want to watch or not. At least it comes back to where you left it, meaning it is likely there is something interesting to watch. Why can't streaming media be more like traditional television in that way?

The creators of a new streaming service, Pluto TV, seem to have the same problem as I have, as their service is designed to solve exactly this problem. Like a cable box, when you launch the app or website, content from your last channel begins playing immediately. Below the content is a channel listing, whose interface is based on one of the best cable box experiences ever. You can scroll through channels with timed listings for programming.

The content is broken into categories such as sports, entertainment, comedy, kids, news, tech, etc. Currently all of the content comes from publicly available streams like Funny or Die, FailArmy, Bloomberg, TBS and more. The service is currently free and ad-supported, though ads are infrequent at best. In the time I have spent watching content on the site, the only ads I really encountered were for the platform itself. Some content, however, does have traditional provider ads.

For example, the Seinfeld channel, which appears to be TBS-powered, runs ads for TBS itself. Personally I am a big fan of standup comedy, so I have been watching the standup channel, and have seen almost no advertisements. It is certainly an interesting platform with a lot of potential. I would like to see them partner with someone like Hulu or NBC and offer their content in a different, more curated scenario.

Last week, Reddit fired a popular employee Victoria Taylor. Taylor was responsible for the ultra popular Ask Me Anything section of the site and, as a result, the AMA subreddit was made private until the dust settled and the company figured out what to do next. The problem was, the decision was not handled well, and the team scrambled. The Reddit community, for better or worse, is an interesting one, and in solidarity with their former colleague privatized many other subreddits.

As a result, a battle began between the moderators and the staff of the company. That battle was over their treatment and the tools provided to do their job. The community expectedly sided with the moderators, and an online petition was born. The main thrust of the complaint was for the interim CEO, Ellen Pao, to step down. While the petition had been around for a while, it gained major momentum with this firing.

After several public apologies from Pao and hundreds of thousands of signatures on the petition, the company and Pao have decided that she should step down. To replace her, founder and original CEO Steve Huffman will return to the position and work alongside Alexis Ohanian, who will assume the new title "cofounder." Huffman is assuming the CEO position on a permanent basis, as opposed to Pao who was filling the spot while the board searched for a permanent replacement.

In addition to the announcement, the company also showed its dismay over the way Ellen Pao was treated over the past week or so. In grand Reddit tradition, a rational conversation degraded into racial slurs and death threats.

As a closing note, it was sickening to see some of the things redditors wrote about Ellen. (1) The reduction in compassion that happens when we're all behind computer screens is not good for the world. People are still people even if there is Internet between you.

If the reddit community cannot learn to balance authenticity and compassion, it may be a great website but it will never be a truly great community. Steve's great challenge as CEO (2) will be continuing the work Ellen started to drive this forward.

(1) Disagreements are fine. Death threats are not, are not covered under free speech, and will continue to get offending users banned.

Ellen asked me to point out that the sweeping majority of redditors didn't do this, and many were incredibly supportive. Although the incredible power of the Internet is the amplification of voices, unfortunately sometimes those voices are hateful.

It would certainly be nice if we lived in a world where a simple statement of disappointment could change actions, but unfortunately that is not how the Internet works. As stated, behind a monitor, many people become bullies. It will be nice for Pao, however, to not have to deal with this type of treatment anymore.

In the early 2000s, there was the promise of a new console called the Infinium Phantom. The company promised PC performance in the living room, a concept revived recently by Valve. The console was designed to stream games over the web, another concept that has been revived in recent years. Unfortunately, streaming games has not worked well in today's infrastructure, so there was little chance it would have worked a decade ago.

The company showed off demos for several years at tradeshows, and made huge promises that seemed impossible to fulfill. As time passed, I began researching the company and found that its address was only about an hour from me. Needless to say, a friend and I took a trip to see the office, only to find out it was a storefront in a shopping center with only a desk and a phone - not even a chair.

At that point, it was clear that the company was not going to be successful, despite having over $73 million to have spent on nothing. A keyboard & mouse lapboard was produced, but never sold because it was a disaster. Shortly after my little trip, the company collapsed and faced SEC charges for stock fraud. What seemingly never happened, however, was the development of an actual console.

After last week's revelation of an original Nintendo/Sony Play Station prototype still existing, a Florida resident recalled his encounter a few years ago with a Phantom prototype. Someone brought the prototype into a local computer shop and the technician took photos after getting the device "working." The prototype was reportedly a disaster - missing components and using an adjusted motherboard.

The photos were submitted to Ars Technica by the user, but Ars has not been able to confirm any of the information. The images do, however, match the aesthetics of the actual demo devices, and the prototype showing up in Florida does match with the last known whereabouts of the company. The idea that one of these prototypes was liberated from the collapsing company and making its way into the hands of a collector is a realistic possibility. Either way, it is interesting to think that there was a time when the company actually planned to release a product.