DTNS 2249 – Buffer Battles

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comAllison Sheridan Sheridan is on the show and we’ll talk about Netflix’s error message spat with Verizon and Google’s new end-to-end email encryption scheme.

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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

Today’s guests: Allison SheridanAllison Sheridan, host of NosillaCast at podfeet.com

Headlines:

Our top story on the subreddit was submitted by davidpolanco today. The New York Time reports   Google released source code Tuesday for a Chrome extension called “End to End” that would provide OpenPGP encryption for messages within a browser. In other words, end to end encryption for Gmail users. Google wants developers to look for security vulnerabilities before the extension is released for wide use. Google will pay for any bugs found through its Vulnerability Reward program. Google already encrypts Web traffic to its Gmail product but that only works if the recipients provider also encrypts. Google released a report showing that 40-50 percent of email did not end up encrypted at the other end. Comcast was one of the worst with only 1% of its email ending up encrypted. Comcast told the Wall Street Journal its working on an encryption program for its customers that it hopes to roll out within weeks. 

Ars Technica reports that Microsoft has announced dozens of social and media apps will come to the XBox One as part of the next update. Among the apps announced for US users are HBO Go, Twitter, several cable TV network apps. All of these apps will be available without an Xbox Live paid account, as will existing apps like Netflix. Microsoft did not announce when the update will arrive but the company will have their E3 announcement in just 5 days. 

The BBC reports authorities in the Central African Republic have banned the use of SMS text messaging in the country as an emergency measure. Demonstrations have been taking place in the capital, Bangui, and a mass text campaign called for a general strike. Mobile phone users in CAR now get a message in French saying “SMS not allowed”. A government source told AFP the suspension might only last a few days.

The Washington Post reports The US Secret Service posted a work order Monday for software that can detect sarcasm in social media. The order also wants the software to synthesize large sets of data and present it visually. And it must be compatible with IE8. So if you think you can identify influencers in real time on a heat map and detect when posts are being sarcastic, and root out false positives, just submit your proposal by tomorrow, June 9 at 5 PM. I’m sure that’s plenty of time.

The Next Web reports LinkedIn revamped its premium accounts so paying members can choose a custom background, larger photo, and expanded header. Premium users also get keyword suggestions and receive emphasis in search. Paying members also get a full 90-day list of who viewed their profile and how they rank against first-degree connections. A new premium starter package including the new features will cost $10 a month.

The waterproof Sony Smartband is finally coming to secondary markets like the US and UK for $99 and £80 respectively. The band counts steps and tracks sleep activity but also notes weather and vibrates for incoming text messages and phone calls. Sony released the band in Europe earlier this year for 99 Euros.

News From You

KAPT_Kipper submitted the Verge story that Vox Media designer Yuri Victor noted a new error message on Netflix last night when the service hit a bandwidth snag. It read, “The Verizon network is crowded right now.” Netflix’s Jonathan Friedland confirmed that the company is testing the phrasing for its messages. Verizon responded that the message deliberately misleads customers.  

spsheridan posted a Reuters story about China’s People’s Daily stating on its blog that companies such as Yahoo, Cisco, Microsoft and Facebook should be punished as pawns of the US Government. The post referred to the companies involvement in the PRISM spying program leaked by Edward Snowden and published June 6 last year. The English-language China Daily echoed the sentiments. 

dwsoulsby submitted the TechRadar story about Intel’s goal to make computing wire free by 2016. Intel’s SVP of Computing Kirk Skaugen said it would do so using an upcoming CPU reference design codenamed Skylake – which will succeed Broadwell – that uses the company’s WiGig tech (rather than cables) to carry and display data signals. WiGig can send data at 7Gbps over short distances, making it candidate to replace HDMI, USB, DisplayPort and other short distance wires. Skaugen also said the company is looking at integrating wireless charging.

TheLinuxNinja pointed out the Wires article about a program created by Berlin artist Julian Oliver called Glasshole.sh. It detects any Google Glass device attempting to connect to a WiFi network by MAC Address. It then ses the program Aircrack-NG to impersonate the network and send a “deauthorization” command, cutting the headset’s Wi-Fi connection. Oliver has only tested the device on his own studio’s network. 

Discussion Section Links: 

http://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-takes-aim-at-verizon-over-slow-data-speeds/#ftag=CAD590a51e

http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/4/5780006/verizon-slams-netflix-pr-stunt-that-told-users-their-isps-were

http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/shifting-blame

http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/

http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/usa

https://twitter.com/yurivictor/status/473978204852453376

https://twitter.com/jsf33/status/473992321394954241

http://gigaom.com/2014/06/04/isp-to-netflix-please-come-to-hong-kong/

http://reg.hkbn.net/WwwCMS/upload/pdf/en/140604%20Letter%20to%20Netflix%20Signed%20Scanned%20Copy.pdf

Pick of the day:   Air Droid via Kevin Kipp

After hearing you talking about device management and wireless file transfers coming soon to Apple’s ecosystem (WWDC 2014), I thought I’d suggest AirDroid as a pick of the day. It allows you to send and receive SMS via your phone, manage contacts, clipboard content, files, media and apps, locate your phone, stream video from your phone’s camera(s) or stream the screen of your device all through a web interface.

As long as your phone (can be wireless via wifi) is on the same network as your computer (connection here can be wired or wireless), they can link up making this great for using it anywhere. You just pull up the easy to remember URL (web.airdroid.com), scan a QR code on the screen, and you’re connected.

It’s great at home, the office, or even at a friend’s computer for quick direct file transfers.

Schedule for live streams of Phoenix ComicCon via Alpha Geek Radio available here:  http://bit.ly/AGRPhoenix

Thursday’s Guest: Veronica Belmont, of the internet

Today in Tech History – June 4, 2014

20140404-073853.jpgIn 1903 – In one of the earliest examples of white hat hacking, Nevil Maskelyne interrupted a demonstration of the Marconi radio communications system at the Royal Institution, London. Before Marconi’s message from Poldhu, Cornwall could arrive, Maskelyne hijacked the signal sending the word “rast” repeatedly and then the phrases, “There was a young fellow of Italy, who diddled the public quite prettily.”

In 1977 – JVC introduced the open standard for the VHS videocassette in North America at a press conference before the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago.

In 2010 – Falcon 9 Flight 1 launched the maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, setting a new benchmark for non-governmental space flight. The rocket put a dummy payload into orbit as a test.

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Subscribe to the podcast. Like Tech History? Get Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.

DTNS 2248 – Ride Llama Mountain

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comLamarr Wilson is back and we’ll talk about hot new hardware coming out of Computex. An Intel Core processor with full Windows in a tablet thinner than an iPad Air? 4K Laptop? Check. A 5-way laptop/tablet/phone running Android and Windows? Not kidding.

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

Today’s guests: Lamarr Wilson, host of Mashable’s YouTube Weekly and Socially Awkward

Headlines:

You want new hardware? Intel’s trying to catch your eye at Computex. PC World reports Intel showed off the new Core M line of processors that draws less than 10 watts of power making possible a 7.2-mm thick tablet with 8 hours of battery life. The tablet is Intel’s “Llama Mountain” reference design, that manufacturers can you use as a jumping off point for their own tablets. Still a thin Windows 8.1 Pro tablet that has 8 hours of battery life and docks with a light keyboard to become a laptop looks appealing to some folks. Asus has already said they’ll ship Transformer Hybrids with the chip later this year.

The Next Web reports on the rollout of Instagram version 6 to iOS and Android devices. Now when you select a filter on your photo you’ll see a wrench icon to give you access to a suite of editing tools. Among the new features are color adjustment, sharpen and the ability to adjust filter strength. 

Glass Almanac are among the folks reporting on Google’s announcement of Diane von Furstenberg-designed Google Glass. DVF|Made for Glass includes five new frames and eight new shades to convert you from GLASS-hole to GLASS-sionista! The collection will be available June 23 for Glass Explorers. 

Kickstarter has gone anarchist and ended all rules! Well not quite. GigaOM tempers things with facts, but DOES report that the new rules make it more attractive for hardware makers who had been turning to Indiegogo and the like and their less restrictive policies. One major change is a new feature called “Launch Now” for qualifying projects to skip the wait for a community manager’s approval. About 60% of projects qualify right now and Kickstarter expects that to rise. The new simplified rules simply state the project must create something to be shared, be honest, and not raise money for charity, offer financial incentives or involve prohibited items.

The Next Web reports Motorola announced Moto Stream, an accessory that can make any speaker a wireless Bluetooth speaker. Up to five connected devices can drop tracks into the speaker as long as they’re within 300 feet. It’s available today for $50 at Motorola.com.

Reuters reports Facebook acquired Finnish company Pryte which provides a service allowing phone users without data plans to purchase data in small quantities meant to gain access to specific apps like Facebook itself. 

Mashable reports Turkey’s telecommunications authority lifted a ban on YouTube Tuesday four days after the Constitutional Court ruled that the ban violated Turks’ free speech rights. YouTube was blocked for a total of 67 days.

GigaOm reports on the launch of a robotics research partnership between the European Commission and 180 private companies, called SPARC which will invest €2.8 billion. The European Commission believes SPARC will lead to the creation of over 240,000 European jobs and hopefully a lot of really friendly European robots.

Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet reports that her sources say Microsoft’s Tiled Interface version of Microsoft Office, meant for tablets, won’t arrive until Spring 2015 now, meaning Office for Android will arrive first, sometime before the end of 2014.

News From You

KAPT_Kipper sent in the CNET story about how John Oliver brought down the FCC. Sort of. Oliver spent 13 minutes on his show “Last Week Tonight” delivering an insightful description of Net Neutrality, capping it off by calling for all the trollish commenters of the Internet to “focus your indiscriminate rage in a useful direction” at fcc.gov/comments . Yesterday the FCC’s comment system buckled yesterday afternoon under the pressure of that rage suddenly being focused on one point. It seems to have recovered— for now.

metalfreak posted the Ars Technica article about the release of a 64-bit version of Chrome announced on the Chromium blog. Google claims the new version brings 25% performance improvement in graphics and multimedia. Google also claims improvement in security and stability. 64-bit Chrome is currently available for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 in the developer and canary channels. 

And Splendor78 pointed out the Washington Post article about Suzi Levine becoming the first US Ambassador to take the oath over a Kindle e-reader displaying the US Constitution. This continues a trend. New Jersey firefighters were sworn in on an iPad edition of the Bible in February. 

Discussion Section Links: Hardware Delight!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/sharifsakr/2014/06/03/computex-2014-roundup/

http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/02/asus-gx500/?ncid=rss_truncated

http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/02/asus-steam-machines/?ncid=rss_truncated

http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/03/intel-llama-mountain-prototype/?ncid=rss_truncated

http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/02/intel-bets-on-surface-pro-3-like-2-in-1-devices/

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/intel-shows-off-fanless-broadwell-tablet-thinner-than-the-ipad-air/

http://9to5google.com/2014/06/02/asus-announces-transformer-book-v-androidwindows-3-in-1-new-fonepad-memo-tablets/

Pick of the day:  Audible.com via Brian in Houston

Audible is my pick of the day. I started with a book called The Moon is a Harsh Mistress a few years ago when I heard it mentioned on a podcast by Tom. I have discovered a ton of great content including the Dresden Files series and several biographies that are made so much better when read by the author. My library now includes hundreds of books and with the cost per book being less than $10 when you do the highest tier membership it’s a great deal.

Thanks Tom for introducing me to Audible, it has made the daily commute, workouts at the gym, and walking the dogs daily much more enjoyable.

Schedule for live streams of Phoenix ComicCon via Alpha Geek Radio available here:  http://bit.ly/AGRPhoenix

Wednesday’s Guest: Allison SheridanAllison Sheridan, host of NosillaCast at podfeet.com

Today in Tech History – June 3, 2014

20140404-073853.jpgIn 1889 – The first long-distance transmission of electricity took place, sending power from a hydroelectric generator at Willamette Falls 14 miles to 55 street lights at 4th and Main in Portland, Oregon.

In 1948 – Ed Brown Jr., a former Navy pilot, opened a fly-in movie theater near Wall Township, New Jersey. You could also drive in. The theater had space for 500 cars and 25 small planes could land in a nearby airfield and taxi over to the theater.

In 1965 – Gemini 4 launched on the first multi-day space mission by a NASA crew. Crew-member Ed White performed the first US spacewalk.

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Subscribe to the podcast. Like Tech History? Get Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.

Cordkillers Ep. 22 – Burnt Fields Policy

Justin.TV kills its archive, Why YouTube is still the most popular video source on the Web, and whether DVDs or streaming video are better you. Plus, Tom reviews the Tablo. 

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CordKillers: Ep. 22 – Burnt Fields Policy
Recorded: June 2, 2014 
Guest: Jeff Cannata

Intro Video 

Primary Target

  • Live streaming site Justin.tv removing all archived videos in a week 
  • Justin.TV deleting all archived video starting next week. You have until June 8 to save your videos.
    – More than half of the archived live broadcasts it has have no more than one view. The “vast majority” have fewer than ten total views. After looking at the data, the company decided that “it’s quite clear … viewers come to Justin.tv because they want to consume content and interact with their communities in real-time.” 

Secondary Target

Signal Intelligence

  • Streaming video is better for the environment than DVDs—barely
  • Research paper published at IOP Science
    – Emissions and energy consumption higher altogether for DVDs over streaming, barely
    – DISCS: Transportation of discs, DVD players, Televisions
    – STREAMING: storage servers, transmission equipment, set-top box and TV
    – DVDs rented by mail actually more efficient than streaming.
    – Streaming just above DVDs bought through mail, slightly above sriving to a store and buying, and much better than driving to a store and renting

Gear Up

  • Tom’s take on Tablo
  • Simple.TV’s streaming DVR now sends shows to your Chromecast
  • Tablo
    – Very slow in tuning and finding channels
    – No DVR controls yet
    – Great accessibility and better guide interface than most
    – Really good channel pickup compared to TiVo (in same location)
    – Two tuners For $230….. Not sure. You can get a more powerful 4-tuner TiVo ROAMIO for $170 these days.

Under surveillance

Front Lines

2014 Summer Movie Draft
draft.diamondclub.tv

  1. DTNS: $417,196,751
  2. TMS: $332,104,409
  3. Amtrekker: $195,289,770
  4. /Film: $192,735,902
  5. GodsMoneybags: $154,077,657
  6. Night Attack: $29,350,839

On Screen

Dispatches from the Front

My 89 year old father has been paying $280/month for his and my 69 year old mother’s Comcast account (he’s been paying this amount for about 5 years) – I was recently able to get his bill lowered by about $100/month by adding Comcast Voice to his plan as well as getting them on a “loyalty plan” (they’ve been with Comcast since the late 80’s). Even though the discount will only last for 2 years, my father is ecstatic that his bill has gone down.
 

Matthew

 

I am, and have been a Cordkillers supporter from the beginning and before that a supporter of Frame Rate. I love the show and I am very happy that as time has progressed the video quality has improved.
I am wondering if you could bring out some merchandise to help us promote the show i.e. T-shirts, hats,…etc

 

Thomas

 

 

Hey Guys,
Some spoilerin’ suggestions in no order
Silicon Valley
Venture Brothers (season one is on Netflix)
Black Mirror (good luck)
Brasseye (YouTube)
NATHAN BARLEY is on YouTube and you MUST WATCH it! or RE:watch it
if you watch anything, Nathan Barley, all the episodes should be on YouTube
re watch After Hours or King of Comedy

ok, more later,
spoilerin’ suggesterin’

Richard

 

 

Links

www.patreon.com/cordkillers
Dog House Systems Cordkiller box