Phil Plait - Don’t Be A Dick from JREF on Vimeo.

So our good friends at Hulu have finally released their HuluPlus subscription service, allowing you to stream current and back catalogue episodes of some of your favorite shows, for what seems to be a fairly reasonable price of $9.99 a month. You can stream via internet enabled Samsung TVs and Bluray players, Apple’s mobile arsenal, and supposedly the Xbox 360. Sounds good right?

Nah, there’s still the ads.

That any subscription service in today’s day and age should force the user to sit through advertisements is pretty much a boneheaded move. Contrast this with a similar program, Netflix, which is also nine bucks a month, but gives you NO ADS, plus a single DVD out at once. And honestly, has better shows - Torchwood, Dr Who, Dirty Jobs, not to mention movies like Yojimbo and the rest of the Criterion Collection.

Well, it’s a bit late notice since we started this a few weeks ago, but my good friend Aanarav Sareen and I are doing a funky-fresh digital media podcast, covering all sorts of interesting (and sometimes arcane) topics in the digital media field. We’ve been featured by both Apple and Microsoft and crack out a few of these a week.

You can check out all the episodes at Digital Media Podcast, or just click on these links:

Well now, AT&T just announced what Gizmodo is (rightfully) calling “the death of unlimited mobile bandwidth” — no more unlimited plans at all, and the replacement plans, well, they pretty much suck.

And tethering? Don’t get me started. Now AT&T has decided that they will charge you an extra $20 a month for tethering. FOR THE SAME DATA. There isn’t any extra bandwidth allocation, you use the same 2 GB / month data as if you had the DataPro plan ALL BY ITSELF.

This, my friends, is what we call a “ripoff”, speaking technically of course.

The kicker is all the PR crap about unlimited data on the iPhone and iPad, which were core selling points a mere few weeks ago - never worry about your contacts, your online data, etc - all in the trash heap now.

How can you not but love this?  I’d almost want to be invaded by early 80’s arcade characters… well, not quite, but this is some seriously good animation here.  Almost makes me want to give it all up and go into film again… nah, not really.

But i do still love me some Pac Man!

In one of my favorite scenes in Star Wars (not calling it “A New Hope” that’s revisionist garbage), the ever-plucky and courageous Princess Leia and the evil imperial governor Grand Moff Tarkin have one of my favorite exchanges in all those movies (yes, cheeseball but I still love it):

Governor Tarkin: Princess Leia, before your execution, you will join me at a ceremony that will make this battle station operational. No star system will dare oppose the Emperor now.

Princess Leia: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

Now substitute Steve Jobs for Tarkin, and you’ll get a good idea of what is going on at Apple today.  Notice I didn’t say Jobs was the Emperor; that would be his ego.

New Trentemøller video - “Sycamore Feeling” from upcoming album “The Great Wide Yonder.” This new full-length album hits the shops on June 7th, and will come out via his
own In My Room imprint. Ten new tracks of rich and organic goodness, with final recording done on analog tape and vintage studio equipment.  As much as I hate the whole “analog is waaaaaaaarmer” thing, gotta say in this case it does show.

Well, the lovely Hutaree “Christian” Militia up in Michigan, the guys taken down by the FBI/ATF joint terrorism task force over the weekend (for plotting to kill police, among other things), seem to have drawn the eye of Anonymous, and have been quite throughly raided by /b/tards.

It’s not pretty (and not linking to it so don’t ask.)

But entertaining at least, if you can avoid your eyes being burned out by hentai and gay porn, not to mention a billion animated gifs and actual pics of these camo-wearing characters. They probably should have updated their forum software, at least once.  And maybe not allowed anyone to post before registration.

I did get a good laugh out of one of the forum’s changed descriptions:

Post any intel relating to local threats to the Hutaree such as government operations against us or Ed’s constant playing of Dancing Queen (something wrong with that boy).

Gotta side with Anon on this one.

A funny, yet poignant talk by Jane McGonigal, on gaming and how it can impact global issues in a positive way.  Favorite quote (mangled by me): “If we want to solve hungers like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, obesity — I believe that we need to aspire to play games online for at least 21 billion hours a week, by the end of the next decade.”