DTNS 2157 – What Google’s DeepMind plans

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comRaj Deut joins us to chat about Google’s AI ambitions, and check in on the PS4 Xbox One console wars a few months later.

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Show Notes

Google acquires AI company called “DeepMind”

Reuters reports Google acquired a UK company called “DeepMind” that works in artificial intelligence. According to the DeepMind website, the company wants to combine the “best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms.” DeepMind was founded a neuroscientist and child prodigy in chess Demis Hassabis along with Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman.

Apple Reports Flat Earnings during Holiday Season  Apple announced it’s Q1 earnings for the period ending Dec. 31 with $57.59  billion in revenue and earnings per share of $14.50.  Analysts expected $58.1 billion and $14.36.  

Federal prosecutors file criminal complaint against underground bitcoin exchange:

Ars Technica reports US Federal Prosecutors filed a criminal complaint in US Federal Court in Manhattan against two people charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. The two operated a company which sold bit coins for use on the now defunct Silk Road website. According to the complaint, Robert M. Faiella, 52, of Cape Coral, Florida, operated an underground Bitcoin exchange on Silk Road from 2011 to 2013 along with Charlie Shrem, 24, of New York City. Shrem is Vice President and acting CEO of BitInstant and Vice Chairman of the BitCoin Foundation.

News From You:

clemro posted a GigaOm story about Google and Samsung reaching patent peace. The two companies signed a 10-year cross-licensing deal for patents related to a broad range of technologies. Samsung also settled a court case by reaching a cross-licensing deal with Ericsson that will cost Samsung $650 million.

AllanAV posted a BitcoinBoard story about TigerDirect processing $500,000 worth of BitCoins in the first three days it began accepting the currency. More than 2500 orders were reportedly placed using BitCoin

And spsheridan passed along a BGR report highlighting a Russian blogger, Eldar Murtazin who claimed Google plans to discontinue the Nexus line of mobile devices in 2015 in favor of Google Play branded devices. Google has launched Play editions of the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S 4 among others, but those devices, while running stock Android are still updated by the carrier. Nexus devices get updates directly from Google, and therefore are the first devices to get updates.

More links from the show:

Microsoft to rename its SkyDrive cloud storage product to OneDrive

Two Aloft hotels will begin using Bluetooth proximity keys to allow guests to unlock their hotel rooms from their cell phone

TechCrunch reports Market research from Kantar Worldpanel shows Android continues to be the most popular smartphone platform with 69.5% of sales across 12 key markets worldwide.

DTNS 2156 – Take that outages!

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comMichael Wolf Joins to chat about Gmail’s assault on a Fresno man, the 30-year-old Mac, and the untold story of Nest.

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A special thanks to all our Patreon supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Gmail, G+, Hangout outage Google’s Gmail had a complete outage earlier today starting just after 2 PM Eastern time and finally getting a green light on Google’s Apps Status Board at just around 3:30 PM Eastern. The problem seemed to affect Google+ and 8 other apps according to the status board. It comes along with a very strange email bug. SearchEngineLand noted Also Google’s ESite Reliability Engineering team sat down for an AMA right as the outage happened, which was convenient for people wanting to know what was going on. Monday that a Gmail link in search was pre-filling a user’s name in the compose window when clicked. Yesterday, David S. Peck of Fresno, California began receiving thousands of blank emails. TechCrunch reports when you search Gmail on Google, and click the email sub link, a compose window comes up with Mr. Peck’s email pre-filled. Peck is a Business Marketing professional with experience in banking.

Qualcomm acquires HP’s old Palm patents: USA Today reports that Mobile chipmaker Qualcomm has acquired about 2,400 patents from Hewlett-Packard that were once owned by Palm. No word on how much Qualcomm paid or what their intentions are. LG bought WEbOS from HP last year. That means there’s very little left of Palm at HP.

News From You:

guyfromtrinidad pointed out an Engadget story about the Korea’s Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning, introducing new guidelines that guarantee a user’s right to uninstall software preinstalled on phones, aka Bloatware. Certain apps are exempt from the requirement such as WiFi, Settings and App Stores. The rules go into effect in April.

KAPT_Kipper spotted this Mashable story about developer Steven Hickson bypassing Snapchat’s new security feature which was meant to protect the service from bots. The new feature requires a user to spot the SnapChat logo when signing up. Hickson says he wrote a program to identify the logo automatically. It took him about 30 minutes to write it and he made it available on GitHub.

habichuelacondulce submitted this Time story about UK TV show Top Gear pitting a Mercedes driven by The Stig against a Google StreetView car in a race. The Streetview car claims it wasn’t racing at all but just mapping the track. Sure Streetview.

And stephenater sent us this Wired article about the first Internet.org hackathon. Developers were asked to test their apps on a simulated Indonesian and Nigerian networks running at 2G speeds. Internet.org is the consortium established last year by Facebook, Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson, Opera, Qualcomm, and MediaTek to bring the Internet to the two thirds of the planet that isn’t already online. Developers from Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, AccuWeather, Huffington Post, and even nonprofit Water.org learned how to make their apps work for the majority of the world’s citizens.

More links from the show: 

CNET reports Samsung made money last quarter, but made less money than the quarter before for the first time since 2011:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57617714-94/samsung-q4-operating-profit-misses-analyst-expectations/

EP&T reports IHS has released numbers showing Apple spent the most on semiconductors last year at $30.3 billion while Samsung drafted along right behind them at $22.2 billion:

http://www.ept.ca/news/apple-samsung-lord-over-oem-field-once-again/1002875822/?&er=NA

Facebook makes some predictions about the researchers at Princeton who made some predictions about Facebook:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57617715-93/facebook-pokes-holes-in-princeton-research-with-parody/

Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet very kindly ended our weeks with a Windows rumor. Looks like March 11th is shaping up to be the Windows 8.1 release date according to Mary Jo’s sources:

http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-windows-8-1-update-1-rumored-release-target-is-march-11-7000025559/

DTNS 2155 – Follow the path of the Beam

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comJason Hiner joins the show to talk about Lenovo buying the last of IBM’s PC business and where 3D printing meets the Internet of things. Also don’t text while walking.

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Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Apple to release two new iPhones in 2014: The Wall Street Journal reports Apple plans to release two new iPhones this year. Shocker, we know. Each of the two would have a bigger display than the iPhone 5S, estimated to be 4.5 inches and 5 inches respectively. Both phones would have the same aluminum design as the %S, meaning no plastic phone like the 5C. The smaller is allegedly in production while the bigger is in preliminary development.

Lenovo agrees to buy IBM server unit for $2.3 billion in cash and stock:  Ars Technica reports Lenovo agreed to buy IBM’s x86-based server unit for $2.3 billion in cash and stock. IBM will keep it’s high-end server and mainframe unit but all its x86-based businesses are now gone. IDC reported in August that IBM held the top spot in server market share, and about 3/4 of that was IBM’s x86 unit. That means Lenovo will quickly reach parity with Dell and likely come close to HP in the server market.

News From You:

clemro passed along a Phys.org story about a Virginia Tech research team that developed a battery that runs on sugar, maltodextrin to be exact, with an energy density an order of magnitude greater than other sugar-based batteries. A sugar-based battery would be cheaper, refillable, and biodegradable.  Sweet!

dmmacs passes along an iO9 retelling of an LA Times story, about a man named Mike Seay. Seay’s daughter died in a car accident last year. He recently received an absolutely awful piece of junk mail from Office Max, addressed to “Mike Seay, Daughter Killed in Car Crash.” Office Max told the LA Times the letter is a result of a mailing list rented through a third-party provider” and offered its apologies to Seay. OfficeMax is investigating why the information was aggregated in that way.

Tahras pointed us to Cory Doctorow’s post on Boing Boing about library audiobooks going DRM-free. Overdrive, which is a main supplier of digital material for libraries has announced it’s retiring its DRM’ed Windows media format for audiobooks and replacing it with unrestricted MP3s.

More links from the show:

Walking while texting is dangerous. Science says so: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/personal/2014/01/22/texting-walking-hazards/4647357/

TIVO says they’re ‘not out of the hardware business’, despite layoffs:  http://mashable.com/2014/01/23/tivo-hardware-not-dead/

9to5 Mac reports a new Apple TV set-top box is well into testing and could be introduced in the first half of this year. 

http://9to5mac.com/2014/01/23/new-apple-tv-set-top-box-likely-coming-soon-appgame-store-possible/

Neiman Marcus announced 1.1 million customer credit and debit cards may have been compromised by malicious software

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/01/23/neiman-marcus-11-million-cards/4796647/

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board said that the statute upon which the NSA’s phone record collection program was based “does not provide an adequate basis to support this program.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/independent-review-board-says-nsa-phone-data-program-is-illegal-and-should-end/2014/01/22/4cebd470-83dd-11e3-bbe5-6a2a3141e3a9_story.html

Long days and pleasant nights, DTNS’ers!

DTNS 2154 – The YASMS Chasm

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comMolly Wood and Peter Wells join to talk abotut he great Chinese website blackout, T-Mobile USA becoming a bank, and more.

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Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Autopilot S3E12 – Kolchak The Night Stalker

Join Scott and Tom as they break down this week’s pilot: Kolchak: The Night Stalker!

Kolchak: The Night Stalker is an American television series that aired on ABC during the 1974–1975 season. It featured a fictional Chicago newspaper reporter—Carl Kolchak, played by Darren McGavin—who investigated mysterious crimes with unlikely causes, particularly those that law enforcement authorities would not follow up. These often involved the supernatural or even science fiction, including fantastic creatures.

Thanks for coming to Borderlands!

My dog didn't RSVP...

My dog didn’t RSVP…

We had a fantastic time at the meet-up at Borderlands Books in San Francisco! Luke Pebler read his Anthology story, The Same International Orange, in front of the live audience, and we had a fantastic live song from Sky Corbelli! You can listen to it below. It’s about the Dresden Files! 

We all had a blast, and we hope to do more meet-ups in the future (and not just in San Francisco). Thanks again for coming!

DTNS 2153 – The Beats goes On

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comVeronica Belmont joins to chat about Beats Audio, 3D Printing and the sale of Intel’s OnCue.

MP3

Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

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Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Verizon to acquire Intel’s media division:

Ars Technica reports Verizon will acquire Intel’s media division including the OnCue TV service. Verizon gets the intellectual property, products and employees in the deal. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam plans to incorporate OnCue into Verizon’s FiOS TV service. The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of this quarter. The news came along with Verizon’s 4th quarter earnings report. Verizon posted a net income of $7.9 billion, or $1.76 a share, a nice jump over last year when the company lost $1.9 billion, or $1.48 a share. The company also added 1.6 million contract subscribers, despite price competition from T-Mobile USA.

 

 

Launch Day for Beats: CNET reports Jimmy Iovine’s Beats launched their new music service today on iOS and Android, with a Windows Phone version coming this Friday. There’s also a limited Web version for desktop. The service features staff-curated playlists as well as playlists curated from partners like music magazines. Users can select a ‘Just for You’ playlist based on their preferences, Highlighted lists created by Beats staff, The Sentence, which is a playlist created by filling in words mad-lib style, or just browse through genres and activities. The service has a 7 day free trial and then costs $10 a month, although longer trial periods and family plans are available for AT&T users.

News From You:

Dustin Schmidt on Google+ points us to a Bloomberg BusinessWeek story highlighting the fact that when Windows XP support ends on April 8, a lot of ATMs will be running an unsupported OS.

Habichuelacondulce submitted this BuzzFeed article reporting that people have raised 26 million dogecoins, about $33,000 worth, in support of the Jamaican Bobsleigh team. The team qualified for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia but needed $40,000 to pay for equipment and travel.Since that time Jamaica’s Olympic committee has announced it will pay for travel costs.

Webitube submitted this Washington Post story that the recently passed US budget will make about half of taxpayer-funded research available to the public. Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education agencies with research budgets of $100 million or more must give online access to their funded research within 12 months of publication in a peer-reviewed journal, making it openly accessible.

More links from the show:

Apple likely to announce record sales:

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2014/01/19/apple-iphone-q1-2014/

Man pulled out of theater for wearing Google glass

http://www.chron.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Man-Interrogated-By-FBI-For-Wearing-Prescription-5162212.php

RSA refusniks set up TrustyCon

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/trustycon-security-counter-convention-planned-for-rsa-refusniks/

 

Cordkillers: Ep. 3 – We got them HBO Go Passwords here

We chat with Plex developer Tobias Hieta about why HBO doesn’t care if you share passwords, and Netflix is flying high to quality.

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Download video

Cordkillers Episode #3 We got them HBO Go Passwords here
Recorded: January 20 2014
Guest: 
Tobias Hieta, Plex Developer

Intro Video

Primary Target

Secondary Target

Signals Intelligence

Gear Up

Under surveillance

Front Lines

On our radar

On Screen

Dispatches from the front

  •  Cricket Australia started offering streaming of the entire cricket season this yr for 19.99 – for Aussie IP addresses

    @strumpet101

 

  • I was just listening to Spoiler Time 2, and wanted to throw my thoughts into whatever mix there is.

    With ad-supported television, it is not the viewer’s responsibility to ensure that the ad is seen, or effective. If we decide that the viewer has an obligation to the show/network/advertiser who is ‘paying’ for the show then we have a whole host of problems to deal with about viewers who mute the ads, change the channel (to another show that they’re not ‘paying’ for) or otherwise somehow dilute the ad’s effectiveness.

    I feel like in our consumer-focused economy we’ve been lulled into thinking that ‘watching an ad’ or paying for cable/netflix is the same as buying a good at the store. Services are not tangible items, and there’s a lot of ambiguity as to what you gain when you pay for a service. When you pay for Netflix, you’re not paying to watch a show. You’re paying to access the system. It’s even worse with cable (which is why we’ve all eschewed it, right?)

    With region-locked media, we’re equating ‘where you are’ with ‘should you be able to watch’. This is a really poor model, because it assumes consumption generally. From tvlicensing.co.uk:

    “You need a valid TV Licence if you use TV receiving equipment to watch or record television programmes as they’re being shown on TV.”

    Excellent! I don’t ever consume BBC programming when it’s being shown on TV, I’m exempt!

    This of course, doesn’t make sense. (I’m also fortunate in that I’m watching programs, rather than programmes, another exemption!) Likewise, the person in the UK who tunes in (yay for anachronism) a few times a year to watch a live special is paying the same fee as a person watching every night.

    While a lot of this comes across as ethical/moral justification, the counterbalance is that the people making these rules (both in ad-supported as well as pay-for TV) have left a large gap – and one that I suggest is there such that they do not wrap themselves up in legal red tape. Laws are things that function as double-edged swords for content providers. The Aereo stuff being a prime example.

    There are a LOT of layers between a studio getting paid to make a show, and the cost to a viewer to see that show.

    So – I’ve written a lot, and edited a lot. If any of it doesn’t make sense, let me know and I’ll deny it completely 🙂

    Thanks for a great show (One which, I will add some amount of irony, I am happy to pay for)

    Aaron

 

  • First, Sherlock and if it’s a gray area to watch it via Hola or whatever ‘VPN’ tech du jour.

    My academic response would be, “As a security professional, I can easily say that you are using a technology intended to provide privacy, encryption and non repudiation as a form of obfuscation to circumvent security controls (in this case Region control of BBC Intellectual Property). As with any cat and mouse game, security tools are invented for specific purposes but will be used in a way never intended by the creator. And not to get to Jurassic Park Goldbloom on you, but just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Clearly its a gray area……

    Now to talk out of the other side of my mouth… I did the EXACT same thing. The internet was not designed or created with International boundaries in mind. The BBC has to know that the lines drawn on paper by whatever her or his majesty ordered them to be don’t translate into a world without arbitrary walls built on the blood of past generations.

    Second issue, I feel better….. and worse….

    http://www.tvovermind.com/hbo/hbo-doesnt-care-youre-sharing-hbo-go-password-227861

    http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattlynley/hbos-ceo-doesnt-care-that-you-are-sharing-your-hbo-password

    So basically this guy’s marketing strategy is the same as a Philadelphia crack dealer, “Give them the first 8ball for free to get them hooked. “

    J Snyder

 

 

  • It’s good to see you continue to help those of us who want to cut the cord!

    Let me start with the back story to my current cord cutting results. We have been Time Warner Cable customers for almost 10 years now but about 2 years ago, I called to cancel our subscription because we were interested in switching to DISH. At the time, we had digital cable with DVR. The customer service rep sold me on upgrading to a whole-home system with 3 extra boxes at the same price we were paying at the time, around $150 or so per month. Since then, costs slowly rose while we found ourselves streaming more and more content from Netflix and Hulu Plus and various content providing websites. We decided it was time to cut the cord so I called TWC to do so. When I explained that I wanted to cancel our TV subscription but keep our internet service, the customer service rep immediately put me on hold to talk to his supervisor. In less than a minute, he was back on the phone and offered me basic cable while allowing us to keep all of our current equipment (3 cable boxes plus DVR) at a cost reduction of $1.25 from what we would have paid for internet service BY ITSELF! So they are paying us $1.25 to watch basic cable on their free equipment. We lost the whole home setup so the remote boxes don’t read from the DVR and we can no longer use the TWC app on our iPads but I have an AverMedia device hooked up to one box and a Slingbox Solo on the way to hook up to the DVR for my wife. We are now saving around $115 per month which after less than a month paid for both the AverMedia and Slingbox devices together. The only program that we can’t watch with the basic subscription is The Walking Dead but guess what? They feed it to us through the on-demand service that we still get! So, we really lost none of the programs we were watching with cost savings that will put almost $1400 back in our pockets this year!

    Yeah, cord killers! Thank you for keeping us informed and encouraging those that are interested in cutting the cord!

    Your faithful listener,
    Glenn