Patrick Beja talks with us about Connecticut’s ‘pole neutrality’ plan for gigabit fiber, and how John Oliver may have pointed the way towards explaining other tech and security topics.
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Show Notes
Today’s guests: Patrick Beja
Headlines:
Tech Crunch reports that HBO Now is available from Apple and Cablevision. The new service, announced back in March, provides access to HBO’s entire streaming content library, as well as new shows as they air for $14.99/month. If you sign up now you get one free month. Unlike HBO Go, the service doesn’t require a user to subscribe via their cable or satellite TV provider.
Business Insider has a screenshot of what appears to be a memo from Apple’s SVP of Retail and Online Sales that reads, “The days of waiting in line and crossing fingers for a product are over for our customers.” It asks employees to encourage customers to order the Apple Watch and new MacBook pro online. The source who leaked the memo says UK shoppers will ONLY be able to order the Watch online.
The Next Web brings us the news that Twitter is expanding the “Quote Tweet” button. Once the update rolls your way, the RT button will now embed the tweet instead of just quoting it as text, leaving you 116 characters with which to comment. The new Quote Tweet button is rolling out to iPhone and Web users now and Android users in the near future. And according to TNW, there are plans for Twitter’s API to support the updated feature.
TechCrunch reports Xiaomi is changing its ways in India.
The company will allow Amazon India and SnapDeal to sell Mi products online. Flipkart already does so. Physical stores from Airtel and The Mobile Store will carry Mi products as well.
The Telegraph reports that an Australian court ordered local ISPs to turn over details of thousands of customers who’s IP addresses are associated with Torrents of the film Dallas Buyers Club. The ISPs argued it would be “Economically pointless” for the producers to try recover the value of each copy of the movie valued at less than $10 Australian, and that a single sliver of the film was shared from each IP address meaning copyright infringement was minor.The judge disagreed and felt deterring piracy was important enough to issue the order but limited what the plaintiffs could do with the information. Peter Wells wrote us about this and pointed out that ” any letters sent to customers will need to be court approved – so no one gets a terrifying email.”
Susan Crawford has an interesting post on BackChannel describing how the US state of Connecticut plans to roll out gigabit fiber to its citizens. The key was requiring owners of poles to obey a Single Pole Administrator to open up pole access. Participating cities then proposed ways they could aid fiber rollout like expedited permitting and now are considering responses. The New England Cable Television Association claims Connecticut already has adequate capacity and the plan would cost taxpayers.
News From You:
The Corley sent us story from Rdmag.com thatStandford professor, Hongjie Dai and his colleagues have developed rechargeable aluminum batteries that use graphene foam for the cathode to make a safer alternative to lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries. The new aluminum battery prototype has shown “unprecedented charging times” of down to a minute and charge-discharge cycles of more than 7500 times. A lithium-ion battery lasts for around 1000 cycles. The capacity per weight is no betetr than lead acid which is significantly lower than lithium ion.
KAPT_Kipper shared an ArsTechnica story that newly elected board member of the Bitcoin Foundation, Oliver Janssens, declared the group effectively bankrupt in a blog post. He wrote: “Members have a right to know that the current board failed to tell them the truth, and that their way of running the organization resulted in it going bankrupt.” The non-profit’s 2013 tax filings showed it ended that year with more than $4.7 million in total assets. No 2014 financial details have been released.
GeekCitizen sent us this Engadget update. This Friday the Star Wars movies will be available as digital downloads through iTunes, Google Play, Xbox, Playstation, Vudu and others. Extras will include featurettes for each film and interviews with key contributors. The complete set is listed on Vudu for preorder at $90, and Google Play lists each movie for $20 each. And yeah, they’re the special editions.
Dmmacs sent the Android Central writeup of the news that Amazon finally supports Android tablets for Amazon Prime Instant Video in the UK. Amazon Prime came to tablets in the US last week. Users have to get the app from the Amazon App store which has to be installed by allowing non-Google Play store apps.
Discussion Section Links:
Pick of the day:
Mike from lovely (and very, very dry) Fremont, CA here.
For a very well done “parody” Twitter account, I suggest that everyone check out @SwiftOnSecurity. She hits all the major nerd buttons: Info Sec information that rivals HAK5 (a tall order) with a lot more snark; pithy warnings about the rise of the machines and their inevitable dominion over us clueless humans; and some great links. I look forward to her tweets every day.
Please keep up the great work and thanks.
Mike
Messages
Katie: I have probably missed the moment, but I wanted to share with you some thoughts about the Amazon Dash button. I am a Mom of three who has bought all my diapers through Amazon Subscribe and Save for years. I have tried several times to subscribe to other household items, but every time I find I am horrible at predicting how often I actually need to buy new stuff. I usually end up just canceling the subscription. With the Dash button I don’t have to figure it out – I can just push a button when I need more. If they can tie this in with some kind of discount/reward system like the subscription discounts I am all in.
Greg from the finally getting warmer Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois: “I am a Systems Analyst for a good size school district and have been following the Chrome on a stick development. With PCs doing the same, it is really going to help with keeping computers updated within schools. Now as long as we purchase decent monitors that include an HDMI port we can update computers more often.”
LWATCDR:
1. Signage. How many places use an HD tv as a sign today? With a built in PC you can update them over wifi.
2. Schools, office, government, kiosks all could use them in a managed environment.
3. A home PC. My monitor has a USB Hub on it. Plug the stick into the USB port on the monitor and the then plug in the monitor and you have an all in one PC that do a lot of basic tasks.
Rich from Lovely Cleveland: “I don’t think the idea of Apple putting a fanless Core M CPU and a couple of USB-C connectors in a tiny aluminum slab is completely outlandish, although …Apple loves a dramatic reveal of a refreshed product design, and they could follow in the iPod tradition and call it the Mac Nano. Just a thought.”
Frank in Indy is a program manager at an Ed Tech software company and they use accessibility testing firms all the time for their products. He writes: “Deque (“Deck-Q”) and (a href=”http://www.ssbbartgroup.com”> SSB Bart Group are 2 that I’m familiar with. They will test for color blindness, sight, and hearing impaired access and navigation for your website or application. There are also certifications available like those at http://www.section508.gov/, referred to as “section 508 compliance”.
Chris from surprisingly spring like Amesbury (a mile from Stonehenge) emails about the discussion on checking for accessibility:
For someone interested in this there are two sites I’d reccomend.
http://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/ gives a good list of easy, intermediate and hard changes that you can make to make your game or app accessible to a wider audience.”
And then he has a site he co-runs: “At ergohacks.com one of the things we do is take products and apply that checklist mentality to it. We do a conventional review then look at it from the perspective of someone with visual problem, hearing,control or mobility problems, ease of use and trigger warnings and whatever else will be relevent.
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Wednesday’s guest: Scott Johnson!
In 1953 – The major studios were inspired by the 1952 3D hit “Bwana Devil.” Columbia beat Warner Brothers’ “House of Wax” to the theatre, with a New York City premiere, making “Man in the Dark” the first 3D motion picture produced and released by a major studio. 