Jonathan Strickland pops by to talk about Lenovo buying Motorola from Google, the man who lost his $50,000 Twitter account, and how the Air Force’s secret weather controlling array might get shut down. Or maybe it’s an ionosphere observation platform. SURE it is, secret government.

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Show Notes

Thanks to our guest Jonathan Strickland of fwthinking.com

Lenovo to buy Motorola Mobility from Google for close to $3 billion:  How it went down live on DTNS: Reuters natural gas and oil reporter Ernest Scheyeder, posted on Twitter that Lenovo is near to a deal to buy Motorola’s cell phone divisions from Google for close to $3 billion. China Daily reported the same deal although they report a figure of $2 billion. TechCrunch has also confirmed the report from its own sources and Lenovo later held a conference call to discuss the deal.

Twitter unveils new features to tailor search, and Dataminr for News: Twitter posted a tweet today revealing new features to its search allowing you to filter your results by video, news, people you follow and more. Also, Engadget reports Twitter announced Dataminr for News, a tool in partnership with the company Dataminr that alerts journalists of breaking news, along with details on the origin and sources of the news. The Verge reports CNN has used Dataminr tools to produce at least two stories a day.

The US Air Force plans to pull the plug on HAARP: That would be the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) facility in Gakona, 15 miles northeast of Glennallen, Alaska. A “cosmic plasma laboratory without walls,” with implications not only for the military but also for basic science and communications, HAARP researches the ionosphere-where solar radiation meets atmosphere.

News From You: 

The GoodDoc posted this story to our subreddit from the Guardian reporting that UK Ministers are looking to save tens of millions of pounds a year by switching to OpenOffice and Google Docs to replace Microsoft Office. The change would be effected by switching to ODF as the standard document format in government.

Kylde, the self-titled janitor of our subreddit (and he does keep the place sparklingly free of spam) posted an Ars Technica link about AMD announcing plans to build ARM-based server CPU’s. An 8-core ARM System-on-a-Chip should begin sampling in March. Codenamed “Seattle,” the processors will be branded Opteron A-series and built on a 28nm process.

jaymz668 sent us the story of Naoki Hiroshima, creator of Cocoyon and a developer for Echofon, who lost his Twitter account @N. Attackers were able to get the last four digits of his credit card from a Paypal customer support agent, then use that and a guess at two more digits to convince a GoDaddy customer support agent to give them control of Hiroshima’s domain names. That gave them access to his email addresses as well. Hiroshimma noticed and changed his Twitter email in time, but then gave in and transferred the twitter handle in order to get his domain names back. Hiroshima says he had been offered US$50,000 at one time for the Twitter handle.

More links from the show:

Flipboard wants to be even more like a magazine

 Nintendo President Satoru Iwata will take a 50-percent pay cut for five months, starting in February. Two directors, including Shigeru Miyamoto will take similar 30-percent cuts and seven member’s of the board will take 20-percent cuts.

Samsung will convert 60 Carphone Warehouse retail stores into Samsung stores in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Masayoshi Son, CEO of Sprint parent SoftBank, and Sprint CEO Dan Hesse recently met with officials from the US Justice Department to discuss Sprint’s potential acquisition of T-Mobile USA.

Two members of Norway’s parliament have nominated Edward Snowden for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. 

Facebook earnings released

Nate Lanxon joins us to talk about the Dutch ruling against blocking The Pirate Bay as well as his road test with a 4K monitor and a Mac Pro.

MP3

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

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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

Google Glass Explorer allows user to put Glass hardware in prescription lenses: The Verge reports Google’s Glass Explorer edition, which features the ability to remove the Glass hardware and use with prescription lenses. Now Google has released four different frames designed specifically to work with Glass and accommodate corrective lenses. If you were lucky enough to be allowed to pay $1500 for Google Glass then you can now have the right to fork over an extra $225 for the frames in the “Titanium Collection” because titanium. BUT VSP, a large healthcare provider, it would cover a portion of the cost for its members and help train optometrists.

Dutch court overturns ruling requiring ISP’s to block The Pirate Bay: Wired UK reports The Dutch Court of Appeals in the Hague has overturned a ruling requiring ISPs Ziggo and XS4ALL to block The Pirate Bay. The Court found that case law from the European Court of Justice holds an ISP should not be forced to take measures that are ineffective. The decision referred to two studies from the Institute for Information Law that showed no lasting effect of the block on piracy levels. The Anti-piracy group Brein which brought the case has been ordered to pay €326,000 in legal fees.

AT&T releases Q4 earnings report:  AT&T seems to have survived the T-Mobile Uncarrier onslaught nicely.  The telco posted Q4 profit of $6.9 billion on revenue of $33.2 billion and earnings per share of 53 cents beating analysts expectations of 50 cents a share and revenue of 33.1 billion.

Google launches Chrome apps for Android and IOS The Next Web reports Google today launched Chrome apps for Android and iOS. The development framework means an app can be coded ion HTML, CSS and JavaScript, then wrapped in a shell that enables them to be distributed in the Google Play or Apple App stores. This builds on the Chrome app store launched in September for Windows, Mac, and of course, ChromeOS. Also Google made their virtual lego tool, “Build with Chrome” available to everyone who has a Chrome browser.

Rovio, maker of Angry Birds, forced to state it does not share data with government spy agencies:  CNET reports Rovio, maker of the Angry Birds game, has been forced to state it “does not share data, collaborate, or collude with any government spy agencies.” According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the NSA was collecting data from “leaky” ad networks in popular games like Angry Birds. Rovio did away it would re-evaluate its relationship with third-party networks that might be used for spying purposes.

News From You:

galadiel passed along a Verge story about new voluntary guidelines for movie trailers released by the National Association of Theatre Owners. The guidelines ask that trailers run no more than two minutes, about 30 seconds shorter than usual. The guidelines also recommend against prompting viewers to go to a website or type a code in their mobile device. Presumably that spurs people to pull out the phones they were just asked to turn off.

webitube pointed us to a Kotaku report that Nintendo would start making mini-games for phones. The post was based on a report from Japan’s Nikkei referring to Satoru Iwata’s willingness to use the mobile platform. Not so fast. Nintendo told Engadget, “There are no plans to offer mini-games on smartphone devices,” and Nikkei was just referring to Nintendo’s willingness to make use of smart devices to promote products. Ah. Lost in Translation.

And KAPT_Kipper submitted a Boing Boing article pointing to a screenshot posted on Twitter by TheBakeryLDN, of what a company sees when you log into their service using Facebook. The control panel not only offers up the usual address, email, gender type fields but also activities, political views, photos, and all those other quirky profile fields. And just to top it off, the company also gets access to your friends Facebook data too. Yay for sharing!

More links from the show:

Yahoo releases Q4 earnings

The internet is getting faster

Charlie Shrem resigns as vice chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation. 

Raj Deut joins us to chat about Google’s AI ambitions, and check in on the PS4 Xbox One console wars a few months later.

MP3

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Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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

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.

Michael Wolf Joins to chat about Gmail’s assault on a Fresno man, the 30-year-old Mac, and the untold story of Nest.

MP3

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

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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/

Jason 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.

MP3

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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!

Molly Wood and Peter Wells join to talk abotut he great Chinese website blackout, T-Mobile USA becoming a bank, and more.

MP3

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

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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