Search Results for "september 24"

Molly Wood and Justin Young talk Apple Music launch and what companies do with your personal data when they get sold or go bankrupt. Hint: The privacy policy may no longer apply.

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If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here or giving 5 cents a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines 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, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guests: Justin Robert Young and Molly Wood

Headlines:

Ars Technica reports Apple released iOS 8.4 today fixing the text message bug that could crash the operating system if a certain string of characters was received. iBooks can now be used for audiobooks as well as a few other new features And of course an updated Music app includes Apple’s new $10 a month music service, the Connect social network, For You recommendation engine and Beats One radio station.

TechCrunch reports that Cisco is buying OpenDNS for $635M In Cash. OpenDNS brings Cisco traditional network edge protection. OpenDNS runs 24 data centers, and claims more than 2 percent of the world’s DNS traffic with 100 percent uptime. Cisco says it will continue to offer the free version of OpenDNS.

Fortune reports a US Second Circuit Court in New York upheld a 2013 verdict that Apple organized an illegal conspiracy with five book publishers to raise the price of ebooks. The publishers have all settled out of court. Apple agreed last year to pay $450 million to customers if it lost the appeal.

Engadget reports the European Parliament and European Commission have agreed on a plant to eliminate roaming fees within Europe. Roaming charges will be limited from April 2016 €0.20 per MB, €0.06 per SMS and €0.05 per minute then eliminated altogether on June 15, 2017. New rules for an Open Internet were also agreed upon. Starting April 30, 2016 ISPs will be banned from blocking and throttling online content and services, with one exception. “Specialised services of higher quality” can receive special treatment as long as it doesn’t affect the rest of the “open Internet.” Also, zero rating is ok.

ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley reports that Microsoft released Windows 10 Build 10158, with the “Edge” branding for the Project Spartan browser. The new app ID causes any favorites, cookies, history and Reading list items saved in Spartan to be lost if not backed up before the update. The new build also includes updates to Continuum, the Photos and Snipping Tool apps, and bug fixes for Surface 3 and Surface 3 Pro. Microsoft will also release a test build of the Windows 10 software development kit to Insiders including an emulator for Windows 10 mobile.

Reuters reports Thibaud Simphal, manager of Uber France, and Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, general manager for western Europe will stand trial in France on September 30. The Uber executives face charges of deceitful commercial practices, being complicit in illegal operation of a taxi service and keeping and using personal data without authorization. Uber is separately fighting an October 2014 law banning apps that put clients in touch with unregistered drivers.

Xiaomi announced that the Redmi 2 handset will be available in Brazil for 499 Brazilian Real ($160) according to The Next Web. Xiamoi has a deal with Foxconn to manufacture Redmi handsets in Brazil. The Redmi 2 features a 4.7-inch screen, dual-SIM supporting 2G, 3G and 4G, and an 8MP rear camera with an f2.2 aperture and is available in dark grey.

TechCrunch reports Amazon is launching physical good sales in Mexico at Amazon.com.mx. Amazon previously only sold ebooks in the country. It’s also launching online selling and Fullfillment services for Mexican business. This puts them in competition with MercadoLibre, Walmart and Inditex. Mexico’s e-commerce sector, which is growing at 34 percent annually.

News From You: 

spsheridan noted the ReCode report that Microsoft is selling it’s aerial, 3D and street-level map imaging operations to Uber. 100 employees will transfer to Uber as part of the deal as well a Boulder, Colorado data center and some license to intellectual property.

motang pointed out the Wall Street Journal article that AOL will take over sales of display, mobile and video ads on Microsoft properties in the U.S. and eight other markets. 1200 Microsoft employees will be offered jobs at AOL. Bing will now become the search engine for AOL properties for 10 years and Microsoft will continue to sell its own search ads.

Discussion Section: 

www.nytimes.com/2015/06/29/technology/when-a-company-goes-up-for-sale-in-many-cases-so-does-your-personal-data.html?_r=1

twitter.com/btaylor/status/613951532917108736

www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/newspubs/releases/2013/True_Beginnings_objection_to_sale.pdf

www.hulu.com/privacy

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/ftc-proposes-a-compromise-so-radioshack-can-sell-consumer-data/

www.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/business/bankruptcy-judge-approves-sale-of-radioshack-name-and-data.html

Pick of the day:

Jesse (a.k.a. hometownrival in the sub-Reddit / DTNS Contributor)
Indianapolis:

If you’re like me, you could with less junk paper mail in your mailbox. Enter PaperKarma for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. I simply snap a photo of any junk mail I’ve received and PaperKarma will contact the sender and have you removed from their distribution list. In my experience, 9/10 senders honored my requests within a matter a weeks; for those that don’t, PaperKarma recommends re-submitting any new mail items and they’ll contact the sender again.

The only downside is that the junk mail needs to be addressed to a specific person. Advertisements or other junk mail items that are labeled as “to the current resident,” or something similar (what PaperKarma refers to as being “carpet-bombed over an entire postal code or mail route”) can not be removed from a mailing list.

PaperKarma is free to download, and offers four free unsubscribes. After that, you’ll either need to share the app on Facebook to extend your free subscription for three months, or pay $9.99 for a one-year subscription.

Messages:

Scott Napier – Hagerstown, MD writes: 

Early in the headlines yesterday, Veronica mentioned that she thought our search habits have been formed so that if the top results are not what you want that you did something wrong. I would take issue with that, but maybe it is just me. For searches where I really know nothing about the topic (or product) I quite often scan at least three pages deep. This has come from me trying to ignore or avoid the auto filled (otherwise known as useless garbage) search results that so often fill up quite a lot of the first page and almost never provide anything useful. This applies even more as the searches become more obscure. Surely I am not the only one who does this… right?

Wednesday’s guest: Peter Wells and Scott Johnson! 

Justin Young is on the show to talk about the many ways to save online journalism and how robots are stealing our hearts.

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Using a Screen Reader? click here

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 headlines 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, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes
Today’s guests: Justin Robert Young

Headlines: 

Mark Gurman over at 9 to 5 Mac has some sources who say Apple’s plans for Apple Watch 2 include adding a video camera with FaceTime functionality, a new wireless system for greater iPhone independence and new ways to be more expensive (also known as premium options). Battery life on the other hand is expected to be the same as the current Apple Watch. Apple will likely release a full next gen Apple Watch next year, but the camera could be pushed to a future edition.

BuzzFeed’s Matt Honan got a sneak peek at a Twitter project called Lightning that is targeted to launch later this year. Project Lightning brings photos, videos and tweets together in an event-based curated view that’s embeddable across the Web. So anything from breaking news to sporting events to award shows can be viewed whether you’re logged in or not. If you are logged in, you can view them in a separate section or follow an event and see it blended into your regular timeline. Twitter expects to have 7-10 events running on any given day.

The Next Web reports BuzzFeed itself has a new news app of its own available for iOS today. BuzFeed News shows you the most important real news of the day (not listicles) plus breakdowns by topic. You can opt-in to push notifications to from major breaking news to more specific categories like politics. You can also opt-in to specific story alerts like the FIFA corruption investigation.

Fortune reports on Google News Lab’s three new crowd-sourced journalism projects. YouTube Newswire is getting the most headlines . It’s a video platform collaboration with Storyful that features verified YouTube videos that news outlets can use or embed. Another project called First Draft Coalition will train folks in verification and ethics. And The WITNESS Media Lab is a Google Partnership with non-profit WITNESS that trains non-journalists in reporting injustice and human rights violations worldwide.

Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and WebKit project engineers announced that they have teamed up to launch WebAssembly, a bytecode for the web according to Tech Crunch. The new format lets programmers compile code for the browser (currently focused on C/C++), where it is THEN executed inside the JavaScript engine withour having to parse the full code, speeding up execution. The hope is that WebAssembly will provide developers with a single compilation target for the web that will become a web standard that’s implemented in all browsers. The team also plans a script that will convert WebAssembly to asm.js so that it can run in any browser — and add support for more languages and new tools over time.

TechCrunch reports on the EFF’s fifth annual privacy report that rates online service provider’s commitment to transparency and privacy. The report rewards up to five stars in categories like best practices, data retention, government data demands, government data removal demands and pro-user public policy, specifically opposing backdoors in digital services. 21 of the 24 companies evaluated met this last criteria. Nine companies got five stars including Adobe, Apple, CREDO, Dropbox, Sonic, Wickr, Wikimedia, WordPress.com and Yahoo. AT&T and WhatsApp received 1 star.

News From You:

KAPT_Kipper sent us this Verge story that as of June 29th, Reddit will be serving all of its pages over SSL encryption. The site already supports connections over SSL but the new system will automatically direct all connections to the SSL-protected version of the site.

starfuryzeta alerted us to this Ars Technica story that Sprint has stopped throttling its heaviest data users, even when its network is congested, to avoid potential violations of the Federal Communications Commission’s new net neutrality rules. “For less than a year, Sprint used a network management practice that applied only at the level of individual congested cell sites, and only for as long as congestion existed… Upon review, and to ensure that our practices are consistent with the FCC’s net neutrality rules, we determined that the network management technique was not needed”

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33183360

http://gizmodo.com/you-can-now-buy-pepper-the-robot-that-reads-your-emoti-1712216532

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/technology/robotica-sony-aibo-robotic-dog-mortality.html?_r=0

http://gizmodo.com/sonys-robotic-dogs-are-dying-a-slow-and-heartbreaking-d-1712160637

https://www.aldebaran.com/en/a-robots/who-is-pepper

https://www.aldebaran.com/en/press/faq-about-pepper

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2649411/Meet-Pepper-worlds-robot-reads-emotions-Cute-droid-knows-youre-upset-cracks-jokes-offers-support.html

 

Pick of the Day:

In response to a question Tom got at the Seattle meetup, where a gentleman who wanted to know how his would wife access DVDs and Blu-rays he ripped on her iPhone 6? I don’t know if the have any Macs in the house, but here’s one answer from listener Sara in Sunny Seattle:

WALTR by Softorino

According to their website:
WALTR
Take the ‘SUCK’ Out of Copying Music & Video onto your iPhone/iPad.
Drag & Drop MKV, FLAC, MP3 to iOS for Native Playback without iTunes.

http://softorino.com/waltr

It’s an app for Macintosh. They say you can play any media in any format. Connect your iOS device to your Mac. Drag and drop the files, then open Videos or Music on iOS and play. Please watch the 1 minute video! It is much–how you say?–over the top?

Unfortunately, I don’t know the guy’s name or even which of your shows he listens to, but I suppose DTNS is as good a guess as any. (Or Cordkillers. Although maybe you should mention it on East Meets West just to be sure.)

Messages:

Alan writes:

“I think Scott’s idea of using VR for exploration makes sense, especially when you consider Google working with Viewmaster, as well as Expeditions for schools. Most of his examples were exploration as a person, but VR could also change the scale, so you explore inside a human body, or even a cell, which would be fascinating. Or conversely, you could navigate the universe between galaxies. And if you could smoothly scale between the two extremes, that would be even better.”

t2t2 clarifies on a recent legal ruling in Estonia regarding a news website’s culpability to contents posted on the comment section :

As the residential Estonian dropping in to provide some background on the case

Most importantly, the judgement of the European court of human rights is ONLY WHETHER OR NOT THE RULINGS BY THE ESTONIAN COURT FOLLOWED THE EUROPEAN LAWS ON HUMAN RIGHTS or to more pinpoint it, ONLY APPLIES TO ESTONIA, NOT THE REST OF EUROPE. [/bold][/caps]

We now have to consider Estonian laws:

The comments were deemed (by the courts in Estonia) unlawful & against freedom of speech under §45 of the constitution [1]:

§ 45. Everyone has the right to freely disseminate ideas, opinions, beliefs and other information by word, print, picture or other means. This right may be circumscribed by law to protect […] the rights and freedoms, health, honour and good name of others.

According to the courts the local equivalent of safe harbour laws (specifically in this case, Restricted liability upon provision of information storage service [2]) does not apply because [3 & 4]:
Portal owner in this case isn’t a “hosting provider”, as defined by law [2]:
§ 10. (1) 1) the provider does not have actual knowledge of the contents of the information and, as regards claims for the compensation of damage, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which the illegal activity or information is apparent
Portal owner has ability to remove comments according to the rules they’ve decided on.
The actual authors of the comments could not modify or delete their comments once
they were posted, only Delfi had the technical means to do this.
Delfi was also found to have financial interest in leaving up controversial (and possibly illegal) comments. Estonian new websites are littered with ads, and more comments -> more clicks -> more profit! Hence the monetary compensation.

Lastly, there’s also the local element. Estonian internet comments (especially on Delfi) are 100 times worse than what you can consider the worst of youtube comments (NO EXAGGERATION). It was so bad, that (as noted by the human rights court’s press release [4]):

in September 2005, the Estonian Minister of Justice had had to respond to public criticism and concern about incessant taunting on public websites in Estonia, Delfi having been named as a source of brutal and arrogant mockery. In his response the Minister of Justice noted that victims of insults could bring a suit against Delfi and claim damages.

Also the 20 comments are documented and translated at http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx?i=001-155105#_Toc422230309

And lastly to repeat, “this does not say anything about the laws of other countries, does not create an obligation for other countries to enact similar laws, and does in particular not create any obligations for website owners”

– t2t2 from the virtual e-estonia

Proto732:

Existing delivery trucks could be outfitted to support two drones. As a driver enters a dense delivery area/neighborhood he would send off his two drones to deliver smaller packages, and meet back up with him after 2 or 3 of his own deliveries have been completed. The truck could serve as a short range communications beacon/status monitor for the drones, as well as a recharging station.

Ron writes:

Fly the package to the (locked ) backyard…

Better yet, purchase a Bluetooth powered box that clips on your garage door opener button and the drone can open the garage, place the package inside & close the door, then return to meet up with the self driving UPS truck for a recharge before its next delivery.

Or put a “storage shed/box” in the back yard with a drone landing pad on the roof that opens for deliveries.

=====

Friday’s Guests: Darren Kitchen and Len Peralta

Scott Johnson and Raj Deut are on to talk about the Microsoft shakeup and oddly how it sheds light on the market for Virtual Reality headsets.

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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 headlines 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, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guests: Scott Johnson and Raj Deut

Headlines: 

Ars Technica reports Microsoft made it’s seemingly yearly executive reshuffle today, though ReCode’s Ina Fried thinks it has more to do with people than strategy. Former Nokia CEO and head of MS devices Stephen Elop leaves and devices gets rolled into the Windows group under Terry Myerson as the Windows and Devices Group. Kirikk Tatarinov leaves Business Services and Dynamics which gets folded into Cloud and Enterprise under Scott Guthrie. Eric Rudder is leaving and his education responsibilities will move under Qi Lu in Application and Services. All those folks leave today. Separately Chief Insights Officer MArk Penn will leave in September and take his insights to a Steve Ballmer backed digital marketing services company called Stagwell Group.

Reuters reports the California Labor Commission has determined Uber drivers should be treated as employees not contractors. The ruling was filed Tuesday stating Uber is “involved in every aspect of the operation” and awarding $4,000 to Barbara Ann Berwick, a driver who complained. Uber is appealing the award.

Nest made some new announcements according to The Next Web. The Cam, is a 1080p successor to dropcam with night vision, a tripod, and a speaker you can talk through for $199. Dropcam’s cloud recording is now called Nest Aware and you get 30 days of storage for your $10 a month. It’s available in US, UK, Canada, Germany, France and the Netherlands today and ships next week. The Nest Protect gets an update that’s better at detecting fires, the thing that it is supposed to do. You can also silence it remotely with an app. It’s coming next month for $99. Nest also announced Hone Safety Rewards which gives you a 5% brake on insurance premiums and a free Protectif you share your data with insurance companies Liberty Mutual and American Family.

Reuters reports the FCC has proposed a $100 million fine for AT&T over the way it informed unlimited users about speed throttling.  AT&T has 30 days to respond after which the commission will review the proposal and make a decision. The FCC says AT&T did not properly inform customers when reductions would happen and mow much speeds would drop. That violates transparency requirements passed in 2010.

The Verge reports Amazon is updating the Kindle Paperwhite today with a new 300 pixels per inch display. That’s twice as sharp as the last iteration and the equal to the $199 Kindle Voyage. The new Paperwhite will sell for $119. You can preorder today for shipping by the end of June.

Engadget reports Dropbox has announced a new way to request files from multiple people, called File Requests. One link sent to multiple people lets them all upload files to the same folder with a maximum capacity of 2GB. None of the senders need to have a dropbox account. Pro and Basic accounts get the feature today and Business users get it in a few weeks.

Intel acquired Canadian smart-eyewear maker Recon reports CNET. Recon’s Jet $700 glasses have a built-in display to show directions, activity statistics, smartphone connectivity for texts and notifications and camera for photos and videos. The Recon team will partner with Intel’s New Devices Group to develop new wearables technologies. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

AMD unveiled several three new GPUs under the Fury name, according the Ars Technica; The flagship $649 R9 Fury X, $549 R9 Fury, and R9 Nano. All three are based on the Fiji chip an update to the GCN architecture and will feature 4GB of on-package high bandwidth memory. The R9 Fury X is comparable to Nvidia’s GTX 980 Ti with 4096 stream processors, up to 1050 MHz core clock speed, 256 texture units, 64 Render Output Unit, 512 GB/s of memory bandwidth, a 67.2 GigaPixel per second fill rate and six-phase Voltage Regulator Module for overclockers. It also has a water cooled 120mm radiator. The R9 Fury will be an air-cooled version of the Fury X and the R9 Nano a low-power GPU based on the same Fiji processor. The Fury X launches June 24th, Fury on July 14th and Nano sometime this summer.

The Next Web reports researchers from Indiana, Georgia and Peking universities demonstrated a vulnerability they call “Xara” in the OS X keychain that would allow attackers to gather passwords. The group created a malicious app and got it accepted into the OS X app store. Because there is no way to verify which app owns a credential in keychain the app can get access to every password stored after it’s installed. Another attack spoofs URLs to steal private token, since OS x does not check which apps are allowed to use which URL schemes. The group notified Apple of the issue on OCtober 15th and Apple asked for 6 months to fix. The problem still exists in 10.10.3 and 10.10.4.

Good news drone fans. The Next Web reports that at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, senior FAA official Michael Whitaker said commercial drone regulations “will be in place within a year.” On top of that Amazon’s vice president of global public policy said “We’d like to begin delivering to our customers as soon as it’s approved. We will have it (the technology) in place by the time any regulations are ready.”

News From You:

andrewdaley sent us this story from Ars Technica about a new exploit in the customized version of the SwiftKey keyboard bundled with the Samsung Galaxy S6, S5, and other Galaxy models. When downloading updates, the Samsung devices don’t encrypt the executable file, making it possible for attackers to modify upstream traffic. The exploit was demonstrated Tuesday at the Blackhat security conference in London by Ryan Welton, a researcher with security firm NowSecure. SwiftKey said in a statement that its Google Play and iOS versions are not vulnerable. Samsung has apparently shipped a patch to wireless carriers but it’s unknown if it has been applied.

dvdmon sent in the TechDirt article that the European Court of Human Rights has decided in Delfi AS v. Estonia, that websites can be liable for user comments.  The Court found the original article published by Delfi was balanced, it ruled that since the site wanted comments and made money off those pageviews, it incurs liability for what the commenters wrote. The ruling also find that since Delfi could remove comments, its filter wasn’t good enough to catch all offending comments and some comments were anonymous, Delfi is liable. Europe has no equivalent to the US rules on safe harbor.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.wired.com/2015/06/sony-morpheus/

http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/17/8794907/oculus-rift-touch-virtual-reality-hands-on-e3-2015

http://www.dailytech.com/Microsoft+Plays+the+Field+Backs+Valves+VR+Push+Too/article37402.htm

http://readwrite.com/2015/06/15/microsoft-wants-to-own-virtual-reality-hololens-oculus

http://www.cnet.com/news/why-oculus-partnered-with-microsoft-for-its-rift-virtual-reality-headset/

https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+valve+vr&oq=microsoft+valve+vr&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60l2.3674j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=119&ie=UTF-8

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/06/microsoft-partners-with-valve-vr-and-oculus-shows-minecraft-for-hololens/

 

Pick of the Day:

Brian write:

I’d like to recommend Security Now! on TWiT’s network as a fantastic educational podcast with a large still-relevant backlog. It has all kinds of good info from how networking works to how operating systems work, along with current news and updates.

Messages:

Travis writes in:

On Monday’s show (Episode 2515) Veronica mentioned her frustrations about having to use multiple different Facebook apps for things like messenger, photos, etc. I feel very much the same way as Veronica and found that Facebook has an app called Paper, which has virtually all the main Facebook features such as News Feed, groups, and yes, even messenger in a flipboard-esque layout. Another nice perk, no ads (at least as of now).

=====

Thursday’s Guests: Justin Robert Young

Patrick Beja is on to talk about announcements from Sony and Nintendo. Was there nothing good at E3 this year?

MP3

Using a Screen Reader? click here

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

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here or giving 5 cents a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines 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, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guests: Patrick Beja

Headlines: 

CNET called Sony’s E3 press event a mix of nostalgia and exclusives. Halo creator Bungie announced a new expansion for Destiny coming in September. Sony has exclusive deals for early access to Square Enix’s next Hitman, called Hitman, Street Fighter V and Call of Duty: Black Ops. Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Syndicate will offer PlayStation only missions and the next Disney Infinity game will come with an exclusive Star Wars figure in a PlayStation-only bundle. Square Enix remake Final Fantasy VII as a timed exclusive for the ps4. Sega launched a kickstarter for Shenmue 3 which funded its first 2 million dollar goal in 9 hours. Sony introduced a first-person shooter called Rigs that’s exclusive for Sony’s Morpheus virtual reality headset. And Sony PlayStation Vue the TV service arrived in San Francisco and LA while Sony promised future al la carte channel purchasing options. OH and Last Guardian is coming in 2016. Yeah they opened with that bombshell.

Nintendo’s E3 digital announcement conference had a lot of new titles for 3DS and a lot fewer new titles for the Wii U.  Nintendo will release Amiibo for Bowser and Donkey Kong that will work in the Wii U version of Activision’s Skylanders Superchargers in September. The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes comes to the 3DS. A three-player cooperative take on the classic adventure franchise that has online play and arrives this fall. For 2016 the 3DS will also get Metroid Prime: Federation Force a multiplayer-focused online shooter set as a spin-off and Mario and Luigi: Paper Jam.
For Wii U owners this year there’s Super Mario Maker coming September 11th. Yoshi’s Woolly World October 16th. And later this year Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival, Mario Tennis:Ultra Smash, and Star Fox Zero. Nintendo also teased Fire Emblem: Fates and Xenoblade Chronicles the next installment in the popular JRPG.

Twitter is going the way of autoplay. The Next Web reports that video and GIF’s will now play automatically, but that the sound will be muted until you click on the video or turn the phone to landscape view. Users can opt out, and Twitter automatically disables the feature if it thinks you have low bandwidth. The change rolls out today to Twitter.com and Twitter for iOS. Android coming soon.

Computer World reports that a UK company called Intelligent Environment is promising to bring emoji-only passcodes to banks.
They claim emojis as a PIN will prevent hackers from identifying common and easily obtainable numerical passcodes, like a date of birth or a wedding anniversary. There are forty four available emojis which equals 3,498,308 unique combinations of non repeating emoji. No banks have signed on to the system yet.

TechCrunch reports Adobe’s Creative Cloud new milestone update was announced. The big addition is Adobe Stock a new stock photo and video service created after the acquisition of Fotolia. Photoshop and Lightroom get a dehaze filter. And Photoshop now has support for artboards as well a an HTML5-based design space that shows only the tools optimized for app design.

TechCrunch reports Box is now integrated in Microsoft Office Online. Box has already been available in Office 365. Box competitor dropbox integrated into office online in April.

The Verge reports Razer’s Open Source Virtual Reality platform will now support Android and position tracking. Position tracking, was a noted absence from OSVR’s initial release back in January. Hardware support within OSVR will eventually be added to allow Android phones to take the place of a dedicated VR display. In total, OSVR is now up to 144 supporters including the Unity and Unreal engines.

News From You:

KAPT_kipper submitted the Last Pass blog posted that attackers had penetrated the password manager’s network and accessed account email addresses, password reminders, server per user salts and authentication hashes. The passwords may still be difficult to crak as Last Pass uses 100,000 rounds of server-side PBKDF2-SHA256 in addition to client side rounds. And to be clear the database of stored passwords for OTHER accounts, the whole reason one would use Last Pass, was NOT accessed. LastPass has put in place email verification, suggest turning on multifactor authnetication if you haven’t already, and encourages all accounts to change their master password.

Starfuryzeta posted the article from Mashable that Google Maps can now warn you if a destination will be closed by the time you get there. Of course, the hours of operation have tobe correct and Google’s traffic estimator has to be accurate. But still, nice touch Maps.

TheRealFrankL sent us the New York Times report that the FBI is investigating whether employees of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team hacked into the internal networks of the Houston Astros to steal data on players. Investigators have uncovered evidence that Cardinals officials may have obtained internal discussions about trades, proprietary statistics and scouting reports. Astros GM Jeff Luhnow left the Cardinals in December 2011. The FBI believes the attackers used a list of passwords Mr. Luhnow had used while working for the Cardinals, to access the Astros network.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/16/super-mario-maker-will-let-you-build-your-own-mario-levels-this-september/?ncid=rss

http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/15/8773903/sony-e3-2015-playstation-games-list-summary

http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/16/sony-e3-reaction-video/?ncid=rss_truncated

http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/16/8789519/legend-of-zelda-triforce-heroes-e3-2015

http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/16/nintendo-shows-off-starfox-zero-for-wii-u-with-gamepad-aiming/?ncid=rss#.7yzb2u:LZCI

http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/16/8789563/nintendo-amiibo-skylanders-wii-u-e3-2015

http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/16/hyrule-warriors-new-metroid-nintendo-3ds/?ncid=rss_truncated

http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/15/ubisoft-e3-2015-roundup/?ncid=rss_truncated

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+PatrickBeja/posts/M5SnqhmA8B9

Pick of the Day:

Franz from -insert weather conditions here- Austria:

To play your existing PC games in full stereoscopic 3D, I recommend TriDef 3D.

The software acts as a middleware driver for games that use Direct3D 9,10 or 11. It offers extensive tweaking, works with all brand GPUs and many types of 3D technologies including color separation, and even VR headsets. There is a list of supported games on their website, but after testing all my other games, I found that a surprisingly large amount of them (>75%) did work – some even as old as 2003!

There are two downsides however:
One: At 40 USD, it’s expensive, but there is a free 2 week trial.
Two: the hardware requirements are steep, obviously, and also it takes a certain mindset to tolerate the necessary tinkering and potential frustration that come with the initial setup process
But once it runs, it’s great. So if 3D is your sort of thing, check it out.

Messages:

Alan writes:

I find it interesting that Microsoft is adding backwards compatibility to XBox One. If I remember correctly, they omitted it completely from Xbox 360. Sony got a little backlash for no backwards compatiblity in PS4, but they did start out with some backwards compatibility in PS3 before phasing it out. To me, this makes it seem like backwards compatibility is only a move to make when you’re behind in the market. That may not be the case, but it kind of looks that way. I still haven’t bought a current gen console, but I tend to favor Playstation. It seems to have more variety, since I’m not big on the most popular genres of shooters, sports, and racing. Nor fighting or zombies, so as you can see I’m really not a gamer.

Jonathan writes:

Catching up on my DTNS feed, I listened to episode 2513 where Allison and Todd talked about the FTC taking consumer protection action against Erik Chevalier for his 2013 Kickstarter campaign; a game entitled “The Doom That Came to Atlantic City”.

As an active member of the Columbus Area Boardgaming Society (CABS), I try to keep up with the boardgaming news. I wanted to note that in 2013, board game publisher Cryptozoic Entertainment, rescued the project and delivered the game in 2014 to the Kickstarter backers as was promised by Mr. Chevalier. Cryptozoic did this without receiving any money from the original campaign.

I felt they deserved a shout-out for that amazing gesture of good will toward the boardgaming community.

Relevant links:
Cryptozoic Entertainment 2013 press release – https://www.cryptozoic.com/articles/cryptozoic-saves-doom-came-atlantic-city-board-game

Dice Tower News coverage – http://www.dicetowernews.com/the-doom-that-came-to-atlantic-city/1220

Cryptozoic Entertainment 2014 game fulfillment page – http://www.cryptozoic.com/articles/doom-filled-dream-becomes-reality-42

Boardgame Geek listing – https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/124548/doom-came-atlantic-city

Columbus Area Boardgaming Society – http://www.cabsgamers.org/ 

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Wednesday’s Guests: Raj Deut & Scott Johnson!

Scott Johnson and Brian Ibbott discuss Spotify’s war chest, Samsung’s shiny new mirror, and the eternal magic of Flying Toasters. Tom Merritt is on assignment.

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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 headlines 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, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guests: Scott Johnson and Brian Ibbott

Headlines: 

One day after Apple announced a new music streaming service, Spotify closed a massive new round of funding. According to The Wall Street Journal, Spotify has raised $526 million from investors, and the company is now valued at $8.53 billion dollars.

Re/Code reports that Spotify also announced is has more than 20 million paying subscribers in addition to 55 million active users of the free version. That’s up from the 15 million paid subscribers and 60 million total active users the company reported back in January. We’ll be talking much more about this after the headlines.

Microsoft announced pricing today for the Surface Hub, its giant 4k multi-touch display designed to replace the whiteboard in your super sleek startup conference room. Engadget reports that the 84-inch version will cost $19,999 and go on sale in July. There will be a smaller, 55-inch version for $6,999. Both should ship in early September.

Samsung  unveiled a 55-inch mirrored OLED display, as well as a 55 inch transparent display. Ars Technica reports that Samsung anticipates the displays would be used as “digital signal” for retail. The mirror OLED panel has a more than 75 percent reflectance level, which Samsung says is “at least 50 percent higher” than mirror LCDs that are currently for sale. The transparent OLED display is more transparent, letting through 40 percent of the light versus the 10 percent transparency of today’s transparent LCDs. No price was announced. Both displays are paired with Intel’s RealSense 3-D camera technology, which means that someday soon, when you look into the mirror in the dressing room, the mirror will LOOK BACK. And it will not be pleased.

Kaspersky Lab’s has admitted to being hacked. Kaspersky Lab CEO and founder Eugene Kaspersky wrote, “We discovered an advanced attack on our own internal networks. It was complex, stealthy, it exploded several zero-day vulnerabilities, and we’re quite confident that there’s a nation state behind it.” The firm called this attack Duqu 2.0 — named after a specific series of malware called Duqu. Kaspersky explained this situation as a mix of both good and bad news but claims none of its services have been compromised.

According to The New York Times, the malware was used in a cyber-espionage campaign targeting hotels that hosted Iran nuclear negotiations.

The Washington Post reports that Elon Musk’s “other company” — Space X — has asked the US government for permission to test low orbit satellites that would beam internet service from space.  The plan calls for 4,000 small and cheap satellites that would beam high-speed internet signals all over the globe. If the tests go well, the full service could be up and running in about five years. Facebook recently scrapped similar plans, maybe because they don’t own their own rockets?

Facebook Messenger has topped 1 billion Android downloads, according to PCMag.com. Messenger’s David Marcus posted a photo displaying the Google Play Store’s 1 billion download badge with the image likes by colleagues Mark Zuckerberg and Tom Stocky. Facebook and Google are the only two companies with 1 billion-plus bragging rights: which according to TechCrunch includes,  Facebook and WhatsApp, as well as Gmail, YouTube, Google Search, and Google Maps.

PCWorld is reporting that Congress is worried that foreign government-owned SSL certificate authority could issue phony security certificates to harvest login details from social networks, corporate networks and email accounts. The US House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy and Commerce recently sent letters to Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla with questions about how the backbone of HTTPS security could be violated. In one example the Certificate authority Diginotar was hacked in 2011 and hundreds of fraudulent certificates were issues for Google, Skype and Yahoo. There are numerous government-owned CAs across the globe, including in China, France, Spain, and Turkey.

News From You:

Do you long for a simpler time? A time when toasters flew and you could revel in the simple joys of The Randomizer? Apparently you do, because this item submitted by natebob received a whopping 48 votes in the DTNS subreddit. Sensing your need for a return to innocence, Developer Brian Braun has thoughtfully recreated every original After Dark Screen Saver including the iconic flying Flying Toasters. The iconic screensaver images are on his Github page.
The After Dark screensaver software launched for the Apple Macintosh in 1989 and appeared on Windows computers in 1991.

djsekani shared this Ars Technica story covering Verizon’s apparent failure to make good on 22 years old promise to Pennsylvania to provide fiber Internet or “comparable technology” supporting at least 45 megabits to its service area in the state. So far more than 2 million homes have either slower DSL or wireless service out of 4.2 million in Verizon’s service area. The original agreement allowed Verizon to charge higher phone rates for higher speed broadband. Telecom analyst Bruce Kushnick wrote in the Huffington Post that officials relaxed the requirements over the years, giving up on the “45 megabits per second” minimum and allowing Verizon to meet the obligation with wireless instead of fiber or other wireline technology.

DTNS producer jollyroger would like you to know that RayNiro, one of the lawyers who pioneered the wave of contingent-fee patent litigation, says he’s ready to exit the business because quote “The stand-alone patent case is dead on arrival, and I don’t think we’re unique.” Ars Techina reports that patent litigation dropped by roughly 20 percent in 2014, and patent lawsuits by “non-practicing entities,” also known as patent trolls, dropped by nearly 25 percent.
Those trolls filed about 3,700 lawsuits in 2013, and 2,800 in 2014. With more judges awarding fees to defendants, patent trolling has taken on higher risk.

In one case Niro and his firm were ordered to pay fees in a patent suit he brought against HTC. The parties are still litigating over the amount, but HTC is seeking $4.1 million. The fee order was “a wake-up call,” Niro told Crain’s Chicago Business. “I can take it once, twice, but am I going to take it three or four times? No. Why should I?”

Discussion Section Links:  

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/06/10/spotify-raises-526-million-amid-battle-with-apple/

http://www.businessinsider.com/jimmy-iovine-apple-music-real-agenda-2015-6#ixzz3cgTPHXDY

http://recode.net/2015/06/10/spotify-has-20-million-paid-subscribers/

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2015/06/09/apple-music-will-stream-at-256kbps-below-the-industry-standard-320kbps/

http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/10/investing/pandora-apple-music-spotify/

http://9to5mac.com/2015/06/09/spotify-rdio-pandora-respond-apple-music/

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2485680,00.asp

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102743329

Pick of the Day:

Proud Co-Executive Producer gadgetchaser writes in to say:

” I’ve never sent in a pick before, but I’d like to suggest a Web service/app called Kifi (I pronounce it KeeFee, but it could also be Kai-Fye…I’m not sure what the creators call it).

It’s first and foremost a way to self curate the Web using a Chrome extension. You make Libraries for different interests and subjects and then save them in the browser. You can add tags and notes that are searchable though the web app or the extension.

There is a *gasp* social aspect to the service too, you can make your Libraries Public or Private. ..One of my favorite aspects of the Chrome extension is when I visit a new page, I get a little pop up in the corner showing me others who have added that site to a Library of their own.

I’ve tried a lot of “Pocket” type services over the years, but I’ve found that I’m actually using this one to “read it later”, likely due to the fact that I can organize things by more than just tags. I have a private library to go to and catch up and from there easily move it to a more permanent Public or Private Library if I want to keep it or just delete it and forget about it.

Messages: 

HotBranch in summery-ish Montreal writes:

“Catching up on my backed up episodes, the mention of Facebook Lite in episode 2508 caught my attention because I used it to replace the regular Facebook app (and Messenger) on one of my older phones and my pokey 2012 Nexus 7 tablet.

I believe I had seen news of the original release on AndroidPolice, who provided a link to download the APK for side-loading. The interface is not as polished, but it uses far fewer resources than the regular app, and the messenger app is integrated, producing further storage savings.

Ironically, I installed Facebook Lite on my Nexus 5 and found no improvement in the Zuckerburgian experience other than to have two notifications of comments or likes that arrived at different intervals. The Lite version usually delivered the notifications first.

All this to say that Facebook Lite is available to those willing to invest 30 seconds of searching and two minutes of downloading and side-loading.

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Thursday’s guest:  Allison Sheridan and Todd Whitehead

Darren Kitchen is on the show and we’ll talk about Professor Kim Heung-Kwang’s interview with the BBC claiming 6,000 North Korean hackers have the power to destroy whole cities. Plus Len Peralta rejoices over the Cavs success. And illustrates the show.

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Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines 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, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guests: Darren Kitchen and Len Peralta

Headlines: 

Apple posted its recommended workaround for the iPhone Messages bug according to the Verge. The support document directs iPhone users to reply to the malicious message. Apple is working on a fix, The bug is also affecting iOS users of Twitter and Snapchat who have notifications on for those services. With Twitter it crashes the phone but causes no lasting damage. With snapchat it makes the chat history with the sender inaccessible.

PC World reports on Google’s announcement that Levi’s is the first partner for its smart fabric called Project Jacquard. The experiment weaves electronics into cloth to create the equivalent of touch screen controls. Demos at Google I/O showed fabric that could manipulate a 3D image on a display, change the songs on a phone and control lights. Think of it like a mouse in your pants…. wait….

Reuters reports Path sold some of its apps to South Korea’s Daum Kakao. If you’re making the remark “who uses Path anymore?” you are giving yourself away as not Indonesian. INSTANT DATA MINING. IN any case the makers’ of Kakao Talk didn’t get all of Path. Just the social network and the Path Messenger. Path Places, which enables connections between customers and business like restaurants, stays with Path, though it has been disbaled for the time being. Path has also been developing non-Path branded apps like GIF creation app Kong.

A Washington Post reports cites a new report from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights that says digital security is essential freedom of expression and warns weakening encryption in some countries could undermine that freedom worldwide. The report was written by special rapporteur David Kaye, Director of the International Justice Clinic at UC-Irvine. . Kaye wrote governments “should avoid all measures that weaken the security that individuals may enjoy online, such as backdoors, weak encryption standards and key escrows.” because it results in weaker security for everyone.

Tech Crunch reports that Apple acquired augmented reality startup Metaio on May 22nd. The company launched back in 2003 as an offshoot of a project at Volkswagen. 9 to 5 Mac’s Mark Gurman, who has good sources, believes Apple is working on an augmented reality feature for its Maps app, and of course there’s that VR headset that Apple patented earlier this year.

The Verge reports the welcome news that you can finally use GIF’s on Facebook! Mostly. If you drop a link to a GIF which has already been uploaded elsewhere on the Internet, the GIF will appear. Upoloading a GIF directly to Facebook doesn’t seem to work just yet.

Engadget reports that Google is broadening out its Google Sign-In feature with Smart Lock for Passwords. In a Google Developers blog post Smart Lock for Passwords is described as a “frictionless” method for users to sign-in to apps on Android and sites in Chrome. Smart Lock works a bit like a password locker. Once a user saves a password to Smart Lock, they can skip entering their credentials on all of their authenticated Chrome and Android devices. For instance, Netflix is a partner meaning once you add Netflix to Smart Lock say on a laptop, you wouldn’t have to go through the painful process of signing in again on an Android TV.

News From You:

KAPT_Kipper sent this TorrentFreak story that Hola VPN sells users Bandwidth to others through a service called Luminati. An 8chan message board operator, Fredrick Brennan claims that Luminati was used to attack his website. Hola says it has suspended the user that misued its service and it would cooperate with any law enforcement activity related to the attacks. Hola’s FAQ makes it clear that it uses bandwidth from Hola users’ computers when they are sitting idle and the company defines idle as meaning a device is connected to electric power (not on battery), no mouse or keyboard activity is detected, and the device is connected to the local network or Wifi (not on cellular)). Any users who don’t want this to happen can buy Hola for $5 per month.

kyro5976 sent us the Cult of Mac report that more than half of the the founding artists in Jay-Z’s Tidal music streaming service may have to pull their music from site after Jay-Z failed to reach a music licensing agreement with Sony. Among the artists affected: Taylor Swift’s man Calvin Harris Alicia Keys, Daft Punk, Usher, and uh, Beyonce. Jay-Z was apparently hoping a deal with Sprint was going to cover the cost of Sony’s licensing terms, but apparently Sprint has decided that they are not in a “financial investment” situation.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32925495

http://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-countries-that-could-lose-internet-easily-2014-12

http://www.businessinsider.com/internet-outages-reported-in-north-korea-2014-12

http://bgp.he.net/AS131279#_asinfo

Pick of the Day:

Joel the Yooper DTNS Nickle-backer:

For a long time I have drooled from afar the world of home automation as the solutions were either too expensive or too complex for the whole family. The I saw this on the shelf for only $24 bucks. LINK Starter Pack by GE. It comes with a WINK based hub and 2 60-watt equivalent dimmable LED bulbs. I’ve found it to be a great way to test out this new tech trend without getting too invested. And if I do decide to go further, there’s a bunch of compatible products.

I don’t know the price elsewhere but it’s listed as a “special buy” on Home Depot’s site. Whatever that means.

Keep up the great work.

PS: I promise I don’t work for Home Depot.

Messages: 

Toby Atticus Fraley:

Just a quick tip, the Kickstarter succeeded!! Pittsburgh International Airport is getting a Robot Repair shop, opening this September. This is the first time a public art installation for the airport has been crowdsourced! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tobyfraley/robot-repair-shop

Co-Executive Producer Damien from Gloomy-outside-my-hospital-window-Maitland, Australia:

Hello Tom, Jenny and <insert contributor here>

When I heard about testing of Google Tone I immediately cringed at the thought of security implications.

You (Tom) made an offhand comment about malware bridging the air gap and moved on.
I’m astounded that no one else seems to have made any other comments about the potential risks associated with a technology designed to bypass one of the most fundamental security concepts. That a stand alone, unconnected computer is unhackable.

I realize that it is an optional extension and the user has to click to confirm, but we know how easy it is to convince people to click on links that they shouldn’t.

Thanks for all your work on the show

Dave from too-damn-sunny-and-not-enough-rainy Los Angeles:

As an avid phone photographer and videographer (also known as “Dad”), I was very excited to hear that Google’s new Photos app is going to support unlimited photos AND videos! … When I went to turn on the new feature on my account, the options for storage were “High Quality (unlimited storage) – great quality at reduced file size” (my emphasis) and “Original – Full resolution that counts against your quota.”

My deduction from these descriptions is that the “unlimited storage” will still be compressing your files to be smaller, meaning Photos isn’t necessarily suitable for our primary backup, but it would still be a great way to have our entire library of family photos available in the cloud. Can you confirm that this is how the unlimited storage will work?

And Ted who’s Lumia 1020 supports RAW photo backups did a little more research:

I went directly to Flickr and Google. Neither one supports RAW at this time. Limits per unit upload:
Google: photo 75MB, Video 10GB
Flickr: photo 200MB, Video 1GB

Dwayne here from somewhere in the desert which I can not wait to leave.

You said you have never seen the sharing of photos with a link. Microsoft has been doing this for years and I love it. MSFT have some good features here like giving the sender rights to allow the receiver to just view, download or edit, time span that they have access and it is built in to outlook and OneDrive. This way you can email the link to anyone without any restrictions. Also the receiver does not need to be logged into anything. Love the show!

Sent from my Windows Phone

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Monday’s guest: Veronica Belmont