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DTNS 2528 – My Face Is My Passport, Authorize Me!

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comDan Patterson joins the show to try to explain why you might not get Windows 10 on launch day and how tech is either destroying or saving journalism.

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Show Notes

Today’s guests: Dan Patterson

Headlines:

Microsoft gave more details on the rollout of Windows 10 in a blog post from Terry Myerson today. The short version? Not everybody will get it on July 29. OEM partners get it “soon” to start imaging for new devices. “Soon after” retailers will get it for customer support. July 29 Windows Insiders get it. THEN people who “reserved” an update will get it in waves “scaling up after July 29.” If you reserved it Microsoft will push a notification when you’re ready or will provide details if your system has issues that might prevent the upgrade. Businesess will get it on July 29 and Volume License customers will get it August 1. See? easy.

Engadget reports SEOBook’s Aaron Wall noticed some Google search ads showing up in a small number of queries on Yahoo. The New York Times confirmed the arrangement is a “small test.” Yahoo still has a partnership with Microsoft but it is no longer exclusive and the partnership can be terminated in October. Yahoo and Google walked away from a partnership in 2008 after opposition by the US Department of Justice’s antitrust division.

CNN Money reports that Mastercard will experiment to pay with your face. 500 customers will be able to us the Mastercard phone app, to confirm a purchase with either a fingerprint OR stare at a phone’s camera and blink once. The blink is meant to prevent someone using a still image of you. Mastercard has partnered with most major smartphone companies including Apple, Google, Blackberry and Samsung and is working on deals w/ the banks that issue the credit cards.

Rhino Security Labs founder Benjamin Caudill has developed a hardware proxy that lets users IP address appear to be up to 2.5 miles away according to Motherboard. The ProxyHam is a Raspberry Pi, Wi-Fi Card and 3 Wi-Fi antennas stuffed into a cardboard box. One Antenna connects to a public Wi-Fi network and the other two antennas transmit and receive to the user. The idea is to plug it in a hidden corner of a library or coffee shop, somewhere with public WiFi. That way of the user’s IP address is located, they won’t be nearby if someone shows up to find them.

TechCrunch reports Xiaomi announced it has sold 34.7 million smartphones in the first half of 2015, up 33% over last year. That’s a nice jump, but not on pace to hit the 100 million smartphones CEO and co-founder Lei Jun estimated the company would sell in 2015. Xiaomi begins selling phones in Brazil July 7. Xiaomi sold 61 million phones in 2014.

According to multiple sources talking to The Verge, Facebook has held talks with Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group about “getting into music”, but they haven’t decided exactly how yet. Discussions are still in the early stages.

ZDNet reports that HP has filed regulatory paperwork with the US SEC regarding plans to spilt the company into two entities by the end of 2015. As expected, HP Inc will sell PCs and printers, while HP Enterprise will focus on commercial Technology with HP CEO Meg Whitman as its head.

Engadget reports the United Arab Emirates National Innovation Committee, WinSun Global and a few other companies plan to use a 20-foot 3D printer to make the parts for an entire office building including the furniture . WinSun Global has already printed a six-story apartment building in China. The project will use Special Reinforced Concrete (SRC), Fiber Reinforced Plastic (FRP), and Glass Fiber Reinforced Gypsum (GRG) and be ready in a few weeks.

News From You: 

KAPT_kipper submitted the Mashable report that Apple’s new iCloud Music Library syncing isn’t working properly for some users. Tracks are moving onto the wrong albums, album art becomes incorrect and some artists get listed multiple times. And of course all errors get replicated across all devices plugged into the service. Apple has also turned off home sharing for phones and tablets in the new version of iOS.

KennedyStyle submitted the DSL Reports post about Chicago’s new 9% cloud taxes. One is the extension of an amusement tax to electronically delivered amusements like Netflix and Spotify. The other covers “nonpossessory computer leases” or cloud computing. The city requires providers of these kinds of services to begin collecting the tax starting September 1.

gowlkick shared this real life crime thriller from Ars Technica. Carl Mark Force, the head of a Baltimore-based DEA team that investigated the Silk Road drug trafficking website, has pled guilty to extortion, money laundering, and obstruction of justice. Force took payments from Slik Road’s Roiss Ulbricht that he didn’t tell his superiors about and diverted the bitcoins into his personal accounts. He also confiscated money from a customer of his own company and contracted with 20th Century Fox for a movie without supervisory approval. Force has agreed to pay about $500,000 (£320,000) in restitution with $150,000 of that already been paid. Sentencing will take place in October.

starfuryzeta sent us the news that André Borschberg — the pilot flying the Solar Impulse 2 aircraft around the world –has broken the world record for the longest solo flight. Steve Fossett set the previous 76-hour record in 2006 while circumnavigating the globe in the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer. Borschberg had been aloft for more than 4 days without fuel since taking off from Nagoya, Japan and still had almost 40 hours to go before he’s due to reach Kalaeloa, Hawaii. The trip around the world began in Dubai March 9.

Discussion Section: 

https://medium.com/the-news/quick-thoughts-about-the-news-1dc0968c169e

Pick of the day:

HotBranch in sunny, jazz-festy Montreal writes:

Listening to DTNS 2527 and the discussion about the state of modern radio and the lack of locally-produced and curated music reminded me of Bill Fitzhugh’s book, Radio Activity, where a classic rock DJ unwittingly becomes an amateur investigator.

In addition to being a fun, witty whodunnit, there is a cornucopia of incredibly well-researched musical references. Finding a print copy will require hunting through used book stores and yard sales, but the Kindle version is available at Amazon

Fitzhugh is one of my favorite authors, because he regularly weaves musical references and absurdist humor into a solid and entertaining story.

Messages:

Mat Aspinall – Nickelbacker in Having-a-mini-heatwave York, England writes:

Following your discussion of Beats 1 I thought I’d give it a try during my morning train commute. I was delighted to find that as we went through a tunnel and I lost all phone service, the music continued seamlessly. It seems the songs pre-buffer so that if you loose your data connection, so long as you pick it back up before the song ends, the station is uninterrupted.

The station isn’t really for me but I have to admit this is a really cool thing that BBC radio stations I normally listen to can’t do….I tested the iPlayer radio app and found its better at this than I remember, but always cuts out briefly when rejoining the live stream.

The real difference is that Beats 1 picks up the stream seamlessly, where as with my usual iPlayer app I notice the reconnection. The length of time the stream continues without a data connection is also pretty good.

Interestingly you can loose your data connection whilst the presenter on Beats 1 is talking and you’ll still get a seamless experience, so I guess the station isn’t as ‘live’ as they keep saying.

So Beats is still winning on the ‘seamless experience when travelling through patchy phone coverage’ front, but not enough so that I’ll keep listening to it.

 

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