TECH ROUND-UP: TV IS IN TROUBLE, DIGG 2.0, SAMSUNG GETS THEIR WISH

Does anybody even watch TV anymore? I’m not trying to be funny, this is a serious question.

DIRECTV AND AEREO RUIN TV FOR EVERYBODY
I feel bad for people who still rely on cable television to get their entertainment fix. I don’t pity because I find the quality of content to be somewhat lacking in actual value, but because it is very outdated. The Internet has been scaring the pants off of cable for years now, and it just keeps getting meaner.

The latest scare comes from Aereo, a New York City-based start-up that captures broadcast signals and streams live television to users, all without paying the networks. Major broadcasters sued the company for infringing upon copyrights, although rightfully so. A couple of weeks ago, the start-up made headlines after a New York judge did not file an injunction that would have stopped service.

Now the company is looking to expand to all major metropolitan areas by 2013.

This also comes in the same week that DirecTV customers lost 17 Viacom channels such as Comedy Central and MTV after a dispute over fees caused the outage. While access has since been restored, many users were frustrated by the lack of Jersey Shore and Tosh.0 and had to resort to online streams.

Uh remember what I said earlier about quality? Maybe they’re not missing out on much. Carry on, Internet.

DIGG IS STARTING OVER FROM SCRATCH

Once again, we are the better Dig. Don’t get us confused.

The reign of Digg might be over, but they’re sure going to keep trying to stay afloat, with the new v1, which is set to be rolled out on August 1.

Betaworks, the company that bought up the Digg a few weeks back, announced on their blog that it plans to start building the website over from scratch, and have it ready in six weeks. The company wants to turn Digg back into the news hub of the Internet, hoping to decrease the size of the site, along with making it suitable for all platforms.

“The old Digg infrastructure was expensive and it afforded us little latitude to innovate and build at a fast clip,” the company said. “We are starting with a fresh code base — it’s modern, it’s fast and it’s shiny and new.”

Sure the new design might be nice, but would anybody actually care about it? Should we ask Reddit what they think?

Well then. Carry on Digg.

APPLE ORDERED TO ADMIT THEY WERE WRONG PUBLICLY
Samsung already gained gloating rights after a UK judge ruled that Samsung did not infringe upon Apple patents based on the fact that Samsung products weren’t nearly as “cool” as Apple’s.

As another kick in the balls to Apple, the company was ordered to put out announcements that confirmed that Samsung did not copy the iPad’s design.

One announcement should appear on Apple’s website for six months, while others should appear as adverts in newspapers and other publications. However, Apple has permission to appeal the judgment.

Maybe they should be focusing less on empty patent cases, and more on their iPhone 5 launch.

PORTAL 2 SPACE CORE LAUNCHED INTO SPACE?

SSSPPPAAAAACCCEEEEEE!

In the coolest instance of a video game trolling since ever, somebody in NASA got away with engraving the image of the Space Core from Portal 2 on the Japanese HTV-3 resupply craft, set to be launched on July 27 to the International Space Station.

“NASA in no way officially endorses secretly laser-engraving characters from Portal onto their spacecraft,” the Portal 2 blog writes. “Believe it or not, they don’t even officially endorse Portal 2, despite the fact that it’s a really excellent game.”

Despite the fact that this is one giant leap for gamer kind, I’m still going to be sitting here back on Earth waiting for NASA to actually shoot a personality core into space.

Then my life will be complete.