Darren Kitchen joins the show to talk about NBC’s Sochi hacking report among other things, and Len Peralta illustrates the stories.

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

Kill Switch legislation to be introduced in CA The LA Times reports California lawmakers led by State Senator Mark Leno plan to introduce legislation requiring devices like smartphones and tablets to be sold with a “kill switch” that would render them inoperable if stolen. Some devices, like the iPhone and the Galaxy S4, come with such features already. The carriers are lukewarm on legislating technology, but most are waiting to see the text of the bill before opposing or supporting it.

Facebook lets you Look Back at your Look Back video (and edit) TechCrunch reports Facebook has added an edit button to the “Look Back” videos it automatically created for most users in celebration of its tenth anniversary. The function lets you pick new photos and posts from a pre-populated list and no you can’t change the order. if you never got a video, then you also don’t get the edit feature.

Nokia and HTC bury the patent hatchet For all you people who complain that all we report is bad news, patent news, or both, here’s a ZDNet story for you. Nokia and HTC signed a patent and technology agreement that dismisses all patent litigation between the two companies. HTC pays a little money. The collaboration involves HTC’s LTE patent portfolio. Lawyers cash fat checks. Consumers get to buy phones. Everyone goes home happy.

NSA metadata program collects less data than you might think The Wall Street Journal has a new report, not from Edward Snowden leaks this time, that cites anonymous sources saying the NSA metadata program only collects data for 20 percent or less, because it doesn’t cover most cell phones. The Washington Post said even that smaller amount is still useful.

News From You

jaymz668 posted a story from the WSJ’s Corporate Intelligence blog, indicating that next year the US will joint the majority of the world in implementing a chip and pin system for credit cards and ditch the old signed receipts. Both MasterCard and Visa have set October 2015 as an important deadline in the switch. That’s the “liability shift” After that time liability for fraudulent transactions switches to the merchant unless they are using chip and pin.

MANAGEMIKE WHO’S ALWAYS SHOUTING HIS NAME submitted an Ars Technica story of one Ronaldo Boschulte who got a new modem form his ISP Comcast, which unbeknownst to him, doubles as a public WiFi router. Comcast started adding the modems by default in mid-2013. Comcast reassures customers that their broadband connection will be unaffected, but if they REALLY want to switch it off, they can, they just have to perform the arcane ritual of self-immolation known as calling Comcast customer support.

People in Russia may not care now, but SkyJedi does, and he submitted this coin desk post that bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox paused all withdrawals yesterday while they tracked down an issue encountered by some bitcoin withdrawals. Not only that but they promised an update Monday. At least that’s Monday Japan time. Users with bitcoin withdrawals stuck in limbo started to receive their coins back in their Mt. Gox wallets this morning.

More links from the show

Fazio Mechanical Services issued a statement Thursday saying it was the victim of a sophisticated cyber attack and is working with Target and the US Secret Service to investigate.

Amazon integrates image recognition into its iOS shopping app, no barcodes necessary

Apple buys back $14 billion of its own shares in the past two weeks for a total of $40 billion over the last 12 months

Russian officials rule that BitCoin is a money substitute and can not be used by individuals and legal entities

Brian Brushwood joins us to chat with Peter Bright about whether Verizon has started degrading Netflix traffic after they won their recent court victory over Net Neutrality. Also Sony ditches their PC business so it’s time to reassess how dead PC’s are.

MP3

Note: The video stream (which is in beta mind you) experienced a catastrophic streaming failure. We’re hoping it pops up out of YouTube at some point and we’ll put what survives up here. In the meantime here is a post-show hangout nee encore. – Tom

Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) of a video that’s just a still image with the audio 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

Sony to dump PC business
Recode reports Sony announced it will sell its VAIO PC business to investment fund Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) by the end of March. In the meantime Sony says it “will cease planning, design, and development of PC products,” and the Spring 2014 line launch will be its last. VAIO owners will still get support from either Sony or JIP. Sony will also make its TV division into a subsidiary and focus on high-end 4K models. All of this means about 5,000 jobs will be cut. Engadget reports Sony is also shutting down its digital bookstore in the US and Canada, transferring customers to Kobo starting in late March. Sony did have some good news, announcing a profitable 3rd quarter with $23 billion in revenue, up 24% over the same time last year on the strength of the PS4. However in a revised full-year forecast, Sony expects to lose $1.1 billion.

Verizon could be throttling Netflix and Amazon, but no actual evidence so far

News From You:

webitube posted on the subreddit a GigaOm article about an attack on an electrical substation near San Jose California. The Wall Street Journal reports snipers fired on the substation for almost 20 minutes, knocking out 17 transformers, as well as cutting nearby telephone cables. The damage took a month to repair. The attackers and their motives are still unknown.

habichuelcondulce and jaymz668 and Jose Gomez by email all sent us various links to the story of Dennis Aabo Sørensen who live science reports lost his hand as a result of a fireworks accident but now has a prosthetic hand that has a sense of touch. Electrodes embedded in Sørensen’s arm communicate with touch sensors in the prosthetic to deliver impulses to his remaining nerves. He can tell different objects by feel, according to a study detailed in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Silvestro Micera, a neural engineer at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in Switzerland, led the team that developed the hand.

mcfads23, who also happens to be our producer Jennie, submitted this psfk article on the subreddit, about Changefolio,at changefol.io a platform that makes it easy donate money to charities. The service connects with a user’s bank, then lets the user pick a charity. From then on, purchases can be rounded up or small percentages of purchases can be taken and automatically donated as micro-transactions. So for example you can have the service take 2% of your grocery bill every time you shop and donate it to a food bank. And of course their are graphs and achievements and the ability to post to Facebook and Twitter.

Amber Mac joins the show to talk about YouTube’s boss, Susan Wojcicki. Can she do for YT what she did for AdSense on Google Search? Also a way to revolutionize academic publishing with BitTorrent.
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

Wojcicki is new YouTube head: ReCode reports Susan Wojcicki, SVP of advertising for Google, is SVP of YouTube. Current YouTube head Salar Kamangar will apparently start work on his own projects, similar to the shift Andy Rubin made when he left Android. Wojcicki has recently been splitting her commerce-oriented duties with Sridhar Ramaswamy. She was the 16th employee at Google and housed the company in her garage for a time in 1998. Wojcicki has led the department responsible for AdWords and AdSense, the most profitable arm of Google.

Google and EU reach agreement to settle antitrust investigation Bloomberg reports Google and the EU’s Competition Commissioner, Joaquin Alumnia have reached an agreement to settle a three-year-old antitrust investigation. Google made a five-year pledge to grant three links to rival services next to any specialized searches of Google’s own, such as Google Shopping. Competitors will pay at least 3 euro cents to bid for a spot with images in a shaded box on some of Google’s search pages. The deal will become legally binding sometime in the next few months after the Commission formally rejects complaints against Google. The EU is still informally investigating Google’s use of Android.

The Daily Snowden: British Intelligence agency has conducted cover action against Anonymous  Ars Technica reports NBC News published new documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealing the British intelligence agency, GCHQ, conducted covert action against the activist collective that often identifies as Anonymous. Among other things, GCHQ infiltrated IRC chat for Operation Payback, which targeted payment providers after they stopped donations to WikiLeaks from being processed. GCHQ employed a covert informant and conducted social engineering, DoS attacks and deployed malware. GCHQ crippled the operation, unmasked some members and led to the arrest of Edward Pearson aka Gzero.

DARPA creates an Open Catalog InformationWeek reports the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, aka DARPA, most famous for bringing the world the Internet, has created an Open Catalog at darpa.mil/OpenCatalog/. The site includes software toolkits and peer-reviewed publications from XDATA, a big data initiative. The software projects listed on the site include visualization, analytics, and infrastructure and link to code repositories.

News From You

isting posted this TechCrunch article about NewEgg getting into the free shipping biz. Similar to Amazon Prime, NewEgg has launched a program called Premiere. For $50 a year, Premiere subscribers get free 3-day shipping and discounts for 2-day and 1-day delivery. You also get restocking fees waived on returns which also get their shipping paid for, as well as special customer service and special deals. Customers can try Premiere free for 30 days.

pete_C and Amber both pointed us to a WSJ article about US electronics retailer Radio Shack closing around 500 stores in the coming months. Radio Shack has roughly 4,300 stores. The Journal did not know which stores would be closed. Radio Shack had received some praise for a Super Bowl ad promising to bring the store out of the 1980s.

More links from the show

Samsung Reins In the Theatrics for Galaxy S5 – NYTimes

IPCom suing Apple for more than 2 billion – The Verge

Windows 8.1’s first update, called cleverly, Update 1, may not arrive until April after all – ZDNet

Xbox One owners are in for two updates not just one – Engadget

Twitter announces its first quarterly earnings – TechCrunch

Researchers use torrent site as free academic library – PSFK