Patrick Beja joins us to talk about brain monitoring and how it fits into health, video games and maybe even the Internet of Things.

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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: Patrick Beja

Headlines: 

The Washington Post reports Google says more of its search requests are done on mobile devices than PCs in Japan, the US and 8 other countries. The milestone was announced at a digital advertising conference Tuesday. Google wouldn’t put numbers to any of the claims. The company processes more than 100 billion search requests worldwide each month. Google also claimed its mobile ad prices have been steadily climbing and will continue to do so. Google’s average ad prices have been declining for the past three-and-half years.

An unnamed Apple employee told the New York Times that a redesign is coming for the Apple TV remote.  When the new Apple TV box debuts this summer the remote control will supposedly have a touch pad for scrolling, two physical buttons and be slightly thicker than the current version.

Apple launched an official “Made for Apple Watch” program for 3rd party accessory makers to create their own bands for Apple Watch according to 9 to 5 Mac. Apple is providing design guidelines and promises to make the attachment “lugs” available soon. The guidelines do not mention the hidden diagnostic port nor provide specs for developing charging accessories.

The BBC reports that Judges at the General Court of the European Union have ruled that the name ‘Skype’ is too similar to the name of broadcaster Sky. Therefore, Skype cannot be registered as a trademark in Europe. The judges wrote that Skype’s logo suggest a cloud and— I quote — “clouds are to be found ‘in the sky’ and thus may readily be associated with the word ‘sky’.” Microsoft will appeal the decision.

TechCrunch reports Berlin’s Delivery Hero takeout service is buying Turkey’s big delivery app Yemeksepeti, which is Turkish for “Food Cart.” Yemeksepeti process more than 3 million orders a month across Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Oman, Jordan and Greece. Delivery Hero processes 10 million orders a month across Europe and the Middle East.

The Verge reports GOG has put it’s Steam competitor— called GOG Galaxy— into open beta. GOG Galaxy includes features like auto-updates, in-game chat and achievements and all features are optional. The one feature GOG Galaxy lacks is DRM

The Verge has a lovely writeup about a Scottish filmmaker named Ryan McHenry who created the ‘Ryan Gosling won’t eat his cereal’ meme on Vine in early 2013. Sadly Ryan McHenry died yesterday, two years after being diagnosed with bone cancer. So Yesterday, Ryan Gosling uploaded a Vine video of himself pouring some cereal offers a cereal-filled spoon salute to McHenry and then finally eating that spoonful of ceral. A Just Giving page was set up in McHenry’s memoryto raise money for Sarcoma UK. https://www.justgiving.com/ryanmchenry/

News From You:

Sensorymultimedia posted a 5-day-old Washington Post Story about US Congressional Representative Ted Lieu called law enforcement’s request for a back door to all encryption “technologically stupid.” Rep. Blake Farenthold and Subcommittee Chair Will Hurd shared Lieu’s skepticism. Representative Lieu has a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford. Chairman Hurd has a computer science degree from Texas A&M. On the other side Daniel F Conley DA for Suffolk County in Massachusetts testified that companies like Apple are protecting “those who rape, defraud, assault, or even kill” with their encryption policies.
Motang sent us the Ars Technica report about the Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong, showing off his coding skills.  The Prime Minister posted on Facebook the source code for a program he wrote in C++ to solve Sudoku puzzles. Prime Minister Loong wrote “Hope you have fun playing with this. Please tell me if you find any bugs!”

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.wired.com/2015/05/internet-anything-brain-monitors-going-mainstream-despite-skepticism/

https://getversus.com/

http://www.choosemuse.com/how-does-it-work/

http://store.neurosky.com/collections/entertainment

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/11/wandering-mind-not-a-happy-mind/

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/cep/67/1/11/

Pick of the Day:

Petie writes in:

Hi Tom, Jennie, Len, and Secret Robert,

My pick of the day is http://rabb.it

It is a site for watching a streaming web content with a variety of users. You can go to the page and click “Chat Now”. It will activate your camera and mic (if you let it) and it will present you with a search box and shortcuts to popular streaming services like YouTube, Netflix, HBOGo, NBC, Hulu and Xfire. A user can log into their favorite streaming site, and then send the URL to all the friends that want to share watching the stream. Anyone plugging in that URL can join the session and watch the stream. There is a lock feature so once everyone is in the session you can keep out any URL-hacking randos that accidentally type in your URL.

If you chose to register you can get the same “room” every time you log in, and you can safely leave your netflix, youtube and other site logins for the next time you have a rabb.it session.

I used this last weekend to watch Django Unchained with my friend in Mexico, and it worked very well. The service dropped one time due to a crash, but the overall quality was great with that one exception. My friends in Maryland, Wisconsin and California used it for a Horror Movie night last month with great results as well.

The service is currently in beta, but if you want to “MST3K” movies with friends who are now in another city, state or country, check out rabb.it!

Thanks, and I really appreciate you guys doing DTNS! Have a GREAT weekend everyone!

Messages: 

Ted-san doesn’t see emojis as replacing conventional language, but instead coexisting with them. He says:

“Much like Japanese has Katakana, Hiragana and the pictographic Kanji. Thankfully, emoji are more universally comprehensible, allowing them to bridge many languages and cultures. :-)”

Søren wanted to point out how emojis from different providers appear differnt. He wrote:

On emojipedia.org you can read the definitions of the various emojis, and see how they are designed by Apple, Google, Microsoft and Twitter respectively. Especially the “Flushed face” is pretty different in the emotion it seems to be conveying on the different platforms.”

Scott from Houston:

Hey Tom and guest,
I had to add an anecdote about the rise in emoji use. My 6 year old’s Kindergarten teacher, who is a friend of the family, talked to my wife laughing because my son had drawn an emoji in his classroom writing assignment. When I asked my son he said that the sentence was sad and it needed a sad face emoji.
[[My son will borrow my wife’s phone occasionally and we let him send me text messages. It’s a great way for him to practice typing and spelling. He has become quite apt at incorporating emojis.]]

And Alan adds:

“The different chicken and toilet you saw illustrates another thing that Veronica was talking about: emojis are thought of as fun because they’re drawn cute, but they don’t have to be. As their usage develops, no doubt there will be many emoji fonts. Veronica also mentioned how emojis are a universal language. I wonder to what extent that will remain true once more abstraction layers are in place. It seems possible, even likely, that abstract uses of emojis will be regional or otherwise limited to specific communities.”

Frank wanted to point out for listeners that if you only use iOS and read mostly DC & Marvel comics the publisher-specific apps let you make in-app comic purchases and still sync to your Comixology library, so any DC or Marvel comics you buy through the publisher-specific iOS apps will still be available wherever else you use Comixology.

=====

Wednesday’s guest:  Jeff Cannata and Scott Johnson

 

Veronica Belmont joins the show to talk about the rising use of emojis. Does it signal the final demise of our civilization or is it the birth of a new universal language that will unite humanity in peace and prosperity? Or somewhere in between.

MP3

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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: Veronica Belmont

Headlines: 

The BBC reports on Facebook’s announcement that it will open its Internet.org program to all developers who meet certain criteria. Internet.org allows mobile users to access certain services without incurring data charges. Net neutrality advocates in INdia have accused the service of picking winners and losers. In response Internet.org will allow developers to join if the service is not data-intensive, can run on feature phones as well as smartphones, and encourages exploartion of the broader Internet.

Engadget reports that Microsoft Office 2016 is now available for free public preview. You don’t have to be a dev, or even an Office 365 subscriber to test out the newly redesigned universal apps or try out real-time co-authoring in Word, one-click forecasting in Excel, or access to OneDrive attachments in Outlook. Just go to products.office.com/office-2016-preview or look for the link in our show notes.

According to a post from 9 to 5 Mac the makers of Reserve Strap have confirmed plans to take advantage of a hidden 6 pin port on the Apple watch. The hidden port means the strap doesn’t have to use the indictuive charging, allowing quicker and higher capacity charging, improving durability and eliminating interference with the Apple Watch’s sensors. The port is covered and hidden inside of the slot where straps connect to the device. Reserve Strap will provide a tool to access it. You can preorder Reserve Strap for $249, but availability has not been determined.

BizTechAfrica reports Alcatel-Lucent and the Algerian government have signed an agreement to deploy 560 km of fiber-optic cable to link Oran, Algeria to Valencia, Spain. Upon completion in 2016 the cable will deliver an ultimate design capacity of 20 Tbps.

Mozilla has made its https plans official. VentureBeat reports Mozilla announced it intends to “start removing capabilities from the non-secure Web” specifically sites that don’t support https. Before you freak out keep in mind Firefox’s security lead Richard Barnes said “… we will have to monitor the degree of breakage and balance it with the security benefit. We’re also already considering softer limitations that can be placed on features when used by non-secure sites.”

Security Researcher Luigi Vigneri and his colleagues at the French graduate school and research center Eurecom have developed an app that checks what sites Android apps connect to according to the The MIT Technology Review. The team say 10% of apps they tested connected to more than 500 different URLs. 9 out 10 most frequently contacted ad related domains run by Google. They call their new app NoSuchApp or NSA and plan to make the app publicly available on Google Play in the near future.

Every 3 years the US copyright Office considers proposed exemptions to Section 1201 of the DMCA which makes it a felony to break “an effective means of access control.” Boing Boing reports this year a petitioner has requested an exemption for the right to use unapproved materials in 3D printers. 3D printer maker Startasys has asked the Office to deny the exemption claiming only one person wants to use unapproved materials in their 3D printers. Interetsed parties can reply at https://dmca.digitalrighttorepair.org/form

Android Police reports Google + announced Collections today, a new way to group your posts by topic. Or a way to curate your content by sets, if that helps. Or a way to Pinterest on Google. Each collection can be shared publicly, privately, or with a specific set of people. Once you create your first collection, your profile will display a new tab where other people can find and follow your collections. Android Police dug into the code and noted that collections can be suspended for violating terms of service, including hate speech, illegal content and copyright infringement.

TechCrunch got Facebook and Nokia to admit they’re partnering to provide Nokia Here maps to some Facebook users. Facebook confirmed its testing Nokia HERE maps in Android versions of standalone apps like Instagram and Messenger. TechCrunch also discovered HERE maps being used in Facebook’s mobile site. Facebook has been among the companies rumored to be interested in acquiring Nokia’s mapping division.

News From You:

jaymz668 pointed out the Verge article that multiple sources say the US Departent of Justice is looking into Apple’s business practices regarding music services. Allegedly Apple has encouraged major music labels to push Spotify and others to shut down their free streaming tiers. Apple has an antitrust monitor on its campus after it was found guilty in an ebook antitrust case last year. Apple is appealing that decision.

Motang brings us the Guardian story that Twitter has disabled the feature that allowed you to play classic DOS games from Archive.org embeded in a Twitter post. Twitter’s policy prohibits gaming inside Twitter Cards. No word on whether FUN in general is prohibited by Twitter policy :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

Indi_de_lis posted the Ars Technica article about a bug in Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner Jet. The US FAA issued a memo last week that Boeing reports that when the 787 has been powered continuously for 248 days all generator control units go into failsafe mode and lose AC power due to a software counter error. If all 4 units were powered on at the same time they could conceivably all lose power at the same time 248 days later. Boeing is developing a patch, meanwhile the workaround is to turn the generators off and then on again.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/post/117889701472/emojineering-part-1-machine-learning-for-emoji

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2483634,00.asp

http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/emoji-study-sex-lives-killing-language/

http://thenextweb.com/opinion/2015/05/04/emoji-the-new-language-of-the-internet-is-improving-the-way-we-communicate-online/

http://emojitracker.com/

http://unicode.org/versions/Unicode8.0.0/

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2482364,00.asp

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2483396,00.asp

http://www.emojidick.com/

 

Pick of the day:

Co-Executive Producer anotherJmartin:

Hello Tom, Jennie, and esteemed guest,

On DTNS #2473, Nate Lanxon talked about how he rips his music & syncs it with his mobile devices with iTunes. If you want to do this with your Android, I want to recommend the Google Music app. You can upload up to 50,000 songs to it for free, and you can either stream or download them to any device with the Google Music app. It’s great if you already have a collection of ripped music already and want to listen to it anywhere.

Messages: 

Dan from Marysville:

Last week on DTNS and later on CurrentGeek I heard you state that California doesn’t allow you to sell back excess power to the power company. I live in northern California and I have a solar home and I can tell you that I can indeed sell the excess back. Take a look at California’s Net Energy Metering Law

http://www.gosolarcalifornia.ca.gov/solar_basics/net_metering.php

Tim writes:

Listening to the latest DTNS while I draw buildings.

Another thing the Powerwall is an option for is a generator. I live on well and septic. When the power goes off we can’t flush the toilets. I think having a Powerwall in the garage is better than have a gas generator that I should to run once a month to make sure it always runs smoothly. Would be nice if the power went out that my electrical system just starts off the Powerwall, no hassles. You really appreciate the things you have once they are gone. Those on city water can always flush there toilets when the power goes out. We got woods for #1, not so much for #2!

Good to see the BOL reunion show!
Keep on keepin’ on and say Hello to Eileen, we do miss her too!

Adam wanted to comment on several statements around unlimited use of the Internet. He writes:

For example content for the World Cup or Masters tournaments must be blocked for the stability of the network but, there’s another side of this, the Top Talker. 90% of the time network congestion is driven by a few Top Talkers. They decide they need to fully replicate a database or backup during business hours and we have a capacity issue. We can often address our capacity issues by changing their behavior.

Chris with another goat report:

I’m a little behind on episodes due to work, but I have my own annual goat story. The city uses goats annually to clear the grass on the hillsides up here on hills in the East Bay. They simply erect a temporary electrified fence and then unload a few trailers worth of goats for a few days, and until they mow it all down. It is a very green approach, though the renewable remnants smell awful. They also tend to bleat allot and the billies feel compelled to ram each other for an unusual sound infusion on my corporate con calls.

=====

Tuesday’s guest:  Patrick Beja

 

Justin Young joins us with a timeline of the rise and fall of the Secret app and what it tells us about the inside the bubble mentality.

MP3

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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: Justin Robert Young

Headlines: 

Ars Technica reports Microsoft announced the release of two open source libraries called Windows Remote Arduino and Windows Virtual Shield for Arduino. The libraries let Arduinos connect to Windows 10 devices. The idea is to connect an Arduino controlled camera to the cloud or take advantage of the sensors in a Lumia phone. Microsoft also released a preview of Windows 10 IoT Core for the Raspberry Pi 2.

Engadget reports IBM, Apple and the Japan Post Group announced a project to deliver up to 5 million iPads to senior citizens in Japan. IBM has developed custom apps to help with medication reminders, groceries and such. Apple of course cites the benefits of default services like FaceTime and Messages.

The Next Web reports Uber has updated its SOS button in its app in India and is working with local authorities across the country to implement it. The service , which has been beta-tested in Kolkata, provides a button that connects the user to authorities by call while generating a text alert for police that contains location, rider info and driver info. The Delhi state government banned Uber after an alleged rape case last year.

The Verge reports that Amazon Instant Video for iOS now lets users stream video in HD. The Version 3 update also allows users to stream over their cellular data not just WiFi. However, those with data caps should be aware, streaming an hour of video at the “best” level will use 5.8 GB of data. Streaming “better” video will use 1.8 GB and “good” 1.6 GB.

IT World has a writeup of the recent Nigerian elections during which there were 58 election-related deaths. That’s lower than the previous election period of 2011, in which a thousand Nigerians died. The difference? Online services which kept people informed and provided an outlet for communication, as well as biometric card readers which helped minimize cheating.

9 to 5 Mac reports Apple added a clause to its App Store guidelines that says apps doing health-related human subject research must obtain the approval from an independent ethics review board. The guidelines previously recommended obtaining the review but now Apple may request proof. The guidelines apply to developers using the open source ResearchKit framework.adapted to other systems.

BizTech Africa reports the government of Malawi, the the United Nations Capital Development Fund’s Better Than Cash Alliance and the Mobile Money for the Poor Initiative have brought together digital payment companies to analyze and encourage the development of digital payments in the country. The program expects to raise the use of digital financial services from 3.%5 of active adults to 15% by 2019. Most people in Malawai use cash without banking services.

Jerry Chow, Manager of Experimental Quantum Computing at IBM Research told TechCrunch his team have achieved error correction for Quantum computing using two qubits that hold data and another two for checking errors. Quantum error correction is a significant hurdle since errors can be caused by common conditions in computers like heat, radiation, and material defects. Chow says the next important milestone is 13 or 17 qubits with encoded logic.

News From You:

The most popular story on the subreddit for most of the day, submitted by TheLazyOne, has been a Broadband Reports post of an LA Times report that 83-year-old AOL dial-up user Ron Dorff of Los Angeles was charged $24,298 by AT&T after his dial-up started using a long distance number. AT&T gave him the runaround until the LA Times called and now they’ve fixed the issue for him and are resolving the matter of the charges. The only news here is that someone uses AOL dial-up that much.

KAPT_Kipper sent us a CNET report that folks have discovered you can embed classic MS-DOS video games in your tweets, and play them right on twitter. Go to Archive.org’s Archive’s massive collections of classic games and software, emulated through JSMESS, copy the URL from the page of your favorite game and paste directly into your tweet. Soon you’ll be asking that age old question, Where in the World IS Carmen Sandiego? The tweet needs to be viewed from a desktop browser to play.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://medium.com/secret-den/sunset-bc18450478d5

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/technology/a-founder-of-secret-the-anonymous-social-app-shuts-it-down-as-use-declines.html?_r=0

https://twitter.com/ginatrapani/status/593510945726435328

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/14/anonymish-app-secret-has-raised-another-25m-adds-facebook-login-and-collections/

http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/05/the-temporary-backchannel/

http://startupbook.co/2014/02/07/rap-genius-founders-smoke-weed-during-job-interviews-and-other-silicon-valley-secrets/

http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/18/7413417/secret-is-re-launching-as-a-faster-anonymous-social-network-with-chat

http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/06/secret/

http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/27/secret-plans/

http://recode.net/2015/04/29/anonymous-messaging-startup-secret-is-shutting-down/

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCQQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpostsecret.com%2F&ei=TG1CVeSOE8WzoQSU34D4CA&usg=AFQjCNHlMCbFc_xaVM9KqOLBb-XKgZa74Q&sig2=R5F4jO_CY_4QjNQfKVXzAA

Pick of the day:

Mordechai Lightstone writes:

Hey Tom and DTNS guest,

I wanted to suggested a relatively low-tech but beloved pick for you.

The Blackwing 602 Pencil. A pencil with a literal cult following, the Blackwing was beloved by John Steinbeck, animator Chuck Jones [of Looney Tunes fame and Stephen Sondheim. It was discontinued back in 1998, but relaunched again by the Cal Cedar Pencil Company. Originals can still be found online, sold for upwards of $50 or more – and while current 12 pack of the cal Cedar “Palomino” 602s retail at $20, they’re are an amazing analog tool with a storied past and a beautiful design. If you have some money to order a pack, or a friend to give you one or two to play around with, they’re more than worth exploring in my opinion.

Messages: 

Jonathan – Unofficial (hope to be official) DTNS Facilities Manager – writes:

While listening to you and Patrick discuss goats on Tuesday’s show, I couldn’t help but share my experience.

I’m a facilities manager and two years ago, while managing Adobe’s campus in Lehi Utah, my team decided to “rent” a group of goats for chewing down some of the weeds prior to the winter season. It worked very well for the area they were fenced in to. At one point, they did get loose and ended up distracting most of the thousand employees in the building.

To further the technology perspective on this, we decided to purchase a go-pro camera which was immediately dubbed the “Goat Pro” camera. I even found a Go-Pro website for a “Livestock Camera mount”, but after calling the Go Pro corporate office to inquire and stumping them for a while, we all saw the April 1st reference in the URL and realized we’d been had. That being said, the footage, was still fun and we got to use it in a promo on our sustainability efforts.

Alan writes: 

I’m of two minds on the idea of being able to easily port Android apps to Windows. It seems to me that this only works if the app doesn’t use any of the Google services. (games, account management, contacts, etc…)

Writing your app to not use Google services limits its integration to Android (in the Google sense, not AOSP). On the other hand, an Android app that doesn’t use Google services should be able to run not only on Windows, but also Fire OS and other AOSP branches, including Cyanogen even if they stop supporting Google services.

I’m not sure if the downside of losing Google services is worth the upside of a larger potential market. My guess is that for Android app developers, probably not. For cross platform developers, maybe so.

Marlon”theguyfromtrinidad” here:

One aspect of the app development process that was left out of your conversation yesterday was maintenance. Its great that Microsoft wants Android and iOS developers to bring their apps over to windows but they will ultimately have to deal with the bugs, communicating with users and adding new features. For many developers the costs of going onto a new platform are often not worth it.

=====

Friday’s guest:  Darren Kitchen & Ken Peralta

 

Ron Richards is on the show today reacting to the Microsoft BUILD announcements, specifically Android apps running on Windows 10 phones.

MP3

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: Ron Richards

Headlines: 

BREAKING: Secret, the app that Silicon Valley insiders used to tell nasty things about each other to each other is shutting down. It’s survived by YikYak.

TechCrunch is reporting Windows 10 Microsoft Developers will be able to reuse code from the Web, Old desktop apps built in Win32 and .NET, Android apps built in Java and C++ and even iOS apps built in Objective C.  ArsTechnica is reporting that Microsoft released Visual Studio Code, a free editor for Windows OS and Linux with support for GIT. Final release expected this summer.

TechCrunch has revealed Microsoft announced the availability to developers of the release candidate for the full .NET framework for Windows AND a full preview for the .NET core runtime for Linux and OS X at aka.ms/netcore. According to The NextWeb  Microsoft’s next cross-platform integrations that allow developers to build apps that embed inside Microsoft Office. The example used was an Uber ride reminder created in Outlook on the desktop that pops up on an iPhone.

In even more Windows news TechCrunch says the new browser in Windows 10 will be called Microsoft Edge. The Verge revealed Microsoft demonstrated the Windows 10 feature called Continuum working on phones. The idea is to plug a phone into a mouse keyboard and full-sized monitor and universal apps will adapt tot he screen size to work like a desktop. And Engadget is reporting carrier billing is coming to all Windows 10 devices so you can buy something in the Windows Store and put it on your phone bill.

Finally Hololens is still damned impressive can help architects and anatomy teachers and make a real robot look even cooler with a virtual overlay and it’s all universal Windows Apps!. Is the face-mask designed by Alex Kipman too cool to care if its vaporware? (Yes I know MS promises it will come in the Windows 10 timeframe) Also Microsoft said AFTER the announcement that its working with Unity Technologies to bring HoloLens support to the Unity game engine.

The Verge reports Google has announced a new Chrome extension called Password Alert to defend against Phishing attacks. The extension compares a hashed version of your Google password to any string of characters you submit through a browser. If it finds a match— and you’re not on a real Google login page— it will redirect you to a warning page. The code is open source and could be adapted to other systems.

Instagram announced a new official account dcalled @music. Tech Crunch reports that this is the first time the company has created a dedicated account devoted to a single subject. TechCrunch also says the account will only have six posts per week but they’ve posted three times today so… who knows. Posts will be grouped by specific hashtags. for instance #LocallySourced will cover unsigned acts, and #15SecondLessons will include how to videos. Instagram created the account because it noticed that one quarter of the most popular accounts on the service were from musicians.

Richard Allan, Vice President Public Policy EMEA at Facebook wrote an opinion piece in the Financial Times warning that Europe risks strangling companies by forcing them to deal with national regulators in the eurozone according to the The Wall Street Journal. Allan wrote: ““Facebook’s costs would increase and people in Europe would notice new features arriving more slowly, or not at all.” Facebook is facing a wave of privacy probes from various EU national governments and has argued that it believes that they do not have jurisdiction over it because it is headquartered in Ireland and has passed EU audits.

The Verge reports that Samsung is once again in sole possession of the title of “world’s biggest smartphone shipper“. According to Strategy Analytics, Samsung shipped 83 million smartphones in Q1 of 2015 down from 89 million a year ago but still good enough to wrest first place away from a tie with Apple. This quarter Apple sold 61 million smartphone devices. Samsung’s growth comes from less profitable mid and low range devices. Lenovo-Motorola combine for third though also down from a year agao and Huawei took fourth.

The Verge reports that an error in American Airlines’ iPad app delayed a dozen flights yesterday. One chart in the American Airlines navigational database shares its name with another chart for Ronald Regan Washington National Airport. The iPad app that American Airlines uses became unresponsive because of the duplication. The problem won’t be fixed until an update is pushed out May 8th. Until then, pilots flying to Ronald Regan Washington National Airport will have to use paper charts or a PDF of the charts in a separate app. In 2012 American Airlines became the first airline to get FAA approval to use iPads in all stages of flight replacing 35 pounds of paper flight manuals and saving about 1.2 million a year on fuel.

News From You:

Starfuryzeta sent an IT World article about how Ham radio operators have been helping to fill communication gaps in Nepal after the earthquake on Saturday that killed at least 5,000 people. Ham operators in Nepal and India are working in shifts to help people try to get in touch with relatives and pass on information. Ham radio can work off solar power and low-voltage batteries too, which means the radios can continue to work long after smartphones and laptop batteries die. Operators in Nepal and India have been working in shifts to keep communications going with hams in other parts of the world like Turkey, Australia and New Zealand, often helping trace relatives and friends.

Habichuelacondulce sent us a Boing Boing post that a Forbes source says Tesla is contributing a car to be used by two researchers to demonstrate the reality and limits of remote car attacks at this year’s Defcon hacker convention. The talk is called Remote Exploitation of an Unaltered Passenger Vehicle and will be conducted by Charlie Miller Security engineer at Twitter Chris Valasek Director of Vehicle Security Research at IOActive. Tesla hasn’t commented officially on the talk and is not listed in the summary.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/29/microsoft-makes-it-easier-for-developers-to-bring-their-android-and-ios-apps-to-windows-10/?ncid=rss

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/04/29/microsoft-brings-android-ios-apps-to-windows-10/

Pick of the day:

Russell writes:

A while back this book was mentioned on the show and it sounded interesting so gave it a read (listen on Audible actually).

Tubes outlines the history, design, and implementation of the physical infrastructure that is the internet. It is a really great story about what the internet really is, as opposed to the world wide web; hard, complex infrastructure. The internet is in a lot of cases thought of by its use as opposed to what it actually is and this book explores the fascinating and complex web (no pun intended) of individuals, companies and municipal entities that have worked together to create the this massive and pervasive piece of infrastructure that we depend on. Blum meets a number of pretty interesting characters along the way and brings a human dimension to the story of the people who make the internet go; a somewhat different breed than the C-suite folks that you more find in the media more often. A great story for those curious about what the internet is and how it works.

Great content on DTNS as always! Looking forward to having Scott and Veronica as regulars!

Messages: 

Marlon made us a tutorial video:

Also I am very excited about the addition of these 3rd party apps being added to Google Now cards, because many of the cards are usually time and location sensitive so a spotify playlist card could appear around the time when I would usually be listening or a hotel reservation card from Hilton could show up as I walk into the hotel. Many of these cards are also pushed to my Android Wear watch giving me the information as I need it. But you have Ron Richards on the show he can tell you all about it. LOVE the SHOW
From a Boss in the Great White North:

In Episode 2481 you and Patrick were talking about the comment features coming to Dropbox. I wanted to Chime in with my two cents.

I’m a full time UX Designer and Part time teacher at a local college. This new feature will solve two big issues for me:

1. Sharing files with VERY non-technical clients that need to comment on the work we’ve done. This will allow us to send files and have them comment in the same system we’ve already trained them in.
2. Getting files from students. The course I teach (mobile web development) has the students creating files in all kinds of formats. So at the begging of a semester I set up a folder for each student and and shared drive for the class. I can then drop any file type I want in the appropriate folder and the students have access to it right away. The comment feature will make marking so much easier as I won’t have to open 6 different applications to add comments, just dropbox.

Big add for me.

Jason Hill from hot, summer-like Hachimantai City, Japan:

I’m a proud Patreon supporter. Your discussion of the steam mod communities on yesterday’s show reminded me of another Internet community that I was a part of way back in 2005. It was bought out by Yahoo and the community started to flee in droves all over the ‘net when they tinkered with site. Eventually just let it stagnate all together. The members of the community begged and pleaded, but their words fell on deaf ears. That place was flickr, and while it might still exist, and is still probably one of the best places for serious amateur and semi-pro photographers to highlight their work, there really isn’t much of community there anymore. It’s an empty husk of its former self. This is sad, because I learned most of my trade from the people there. If yahoo had actually responded to the feedback, I imagine flickr might still be a dominant player today. But that’s a what-if. The community can make or break you as a company, and I think Steam knows this. You can’t let a community hold you hostage, but you can’t ignore them either. There is a fine balance. Anyways, keep up the amazing work.

Joshua wrote:

To put the valve story into perspective, imagine Apple steps in, says to podcast creators, you can sell your podcasts and we will give podcasters 25% of the proceeds…

That puts the valve story into perspective. It’s both insulting to content creators and those of us paying knowing that Apple / Valve would be taking 75% of the proceeds with very little going to those making the content.

The part I think you guys missed is where we the people paying are not ok with content creators only receiving 25% of the proceeds.

It’s a record company disguised as a software company, valve should have first and foremost had a better price split.

Levi wrote on the blog:

I would have liked some additional info about the G4. It’s not simply a leather back on a G3. One of the big features that I’m looking forward to is the much improved camera, with lots of great stuff for photography enthusiasts, including a much faster lens (F1.8), manual controls, and a RAW format option. Theoretically the faster lens should make low-light photography MUCH better, and the manual settings will allow for longer exposures, again, making low-light images much better and less noisy.

Bishma from blissfully rainy Eugene, Oregon writes:

I just wanted to give my two cents on the G4 announcements from yesterday. Certainly the leather back made all the headlines because it was headline worthy. That said, I think the most important differentiator that the G4 has going for it is what didn’t change from the G3. The battery in the G4 is still user swappable unlike, I believe, all the other flagship phones announced this spring. This is the feature that will have me purchasing from LG next moth rather than Samsung or HTC next month.

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Thursday’s guest:  Justin Robert Young

 

Darren Kitchen, Patrick Beja, Justin Young, Veronica Belmont and Scott Johnson assemble to chat about their favorite tech topics and celebrate the latest milestone about to be made possible by the DTNS Patrons.

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

Patrick Beja is on today and we’ll talk about Valve’s decision to close the mod workshop for Skyrim. Did the community overreact or was Valve insensitive?

MP3

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: Patrick Beja

Headlines: 

The Verge has reports on LG’s official announcement of the G4 phone. It’s most distinguishing feature is the option for a new leather phone back that comes in a variety of colors. LG says it takes 3 months to make each leather back and uses materials and processes similar to those used for making luxury handbags Phone will launch on all major US carriers the end of May or early June. No pricing yet.

Venture Beat reports that Dropbox is rolling out a new feature that allows users to add comments directly to files stored on Dropbox. The feature is free for every level of Dropbox user, and works for anyone who has a link to the file. The new feature is accessible through the Web and is coming to mobile “soon.”

Krebsonsecurity.com reports that Sendgrid said attackers compromised an employee’s account, which was then used to steal the usernames, email addresses and (hashed) passwords of customer and employee accounts. Sendgrid manages email service like shipping notifications and friend requests and the like for companies like Pinterest, Spotify, Uber and Coinbase. Sendgrid suggests customers change their passwords use multi-factor authentication. Sendgrid says it’s working to add more authentication methods for its two-factor security, and to expedite the release of special “API keys” that will allow customers to use keys instead of passwords for sending email through its systems.

The official Google Search Blog announced new Google Now cards on Android today.  Google added 70 new partners, including Zipcar, Spotify, TuneIn, ABC News, Eat 24, Runkeeper Jawbone, Open Table and more. Users should update to the latest version fo the Google app in order to see the new cards.

The BBC reports Google has reached an agreement with several European news publishers to cooperate on a Digital News Initiative. As part of the plan, Google will contribute €150m to an innovation fund. Google will also work on ways to boost publishers’ revenues, train journalists in digital skills and fund research in news consumption and crowd sourcing. Google set up a similar fund with French Publishers in 2013.

More data trickled out from Apple after announcing earnings yesterday. Reuters reports that last quarter, Apple sold more iPhones in China than in the United States for the first time. iPhone sales rose 71% to $16.8 billion in China thanks in part to the new year shopping season.

The BBC reports on Yahoo Labs development of a system called Bodyprint that uses the phone’s touchscreen to recognize a body part, like an ear, and unlock the phone. The idea is to provide biometric authentication cheaper than a fingerprint sensor. Initial trial have been conducted with 12 participants. The system had 99.5% accuracy identifying users and 99.8% accuracy when scanning ears.

Financial intelligence firm Selerity published Twitter’s earnings before the market closed today causing Twitter stocks to cease trading. Selerity says the numbers came from Twitter’s investors site. Twitter earned 7 cents a share agains expectations of 4 cents a share but with revenue of $436 million missing expectations of 456.8 million. Monthly Active Users were up 18% year-over-year.

And TechCrunch reports Cablevision has reached an agreement to sell Hulu to it’s Optimum Online Internet subscribers. No word on what the price would be or what benefit consumers would get from buying Hulu through Cablevision rather than directly from Hulu.

News From You:

AtomicSpaceGun sent us the news that Amazon will now rent you a goat to mow your lawn. If you live in a city where a goat provider is available just look in the lawn care section of Amazon’s Home Services. Goats are an eco-friendly way to keep your lawn trimmed, and much quieter than a lawnmower at 7am on a Sunday morning.
The goats will also throw in free fertilizer, which they will deposit on your lawn in pellet form.

KAPT_Kipper sent in the PC Gamer version of the story of the rise and fall of Valve’s paid mod marketplace for Skyrim. Last Thursday Valve announced that modders could choose to sell mods int he Steam Workshop for Skyrim and keep 25% of whatever price they chose. The modding community reacted negatively and even downvoted Valve’s Gabe Newell’s attempts to explain the new system on Reddit. Yesterday Valve removed the paymetn feature from the Skyrim workshop. Alden wrote in the official Steam Workshop blog post: “it’s clear we didn’t understand exactly what we were doing.”

Discussion Section Links:  

http://gizmodo.com/the-internet-just-killed-an-app-store-for-video-game-wo-1700562308?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_twitter&utm_source=gizmodo_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

http://kotaku.com/even-gabe-newell-gets-downvoted-on-reddit-1700491663

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/04/24/valves-paid-skyrim-mods-are-a-legal-ethical-and-creative-disaster/

http://steamed.kotaku.com/skyrim-modder-considers-quitting-after-steam-controvers-1700077114

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/04/28/steam-kills-paid-mods-for-skyrim-after-user-backlash/

http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218

https://www.change.org/p/valve-remove-the-paid-content-of-the-steam-workshop

http://steamed.kotaku.com/steams-most-popular-skyrim-mod-is-a-protest-against-pai-1700486550

Pick of the day:

Jack from often-sunny Colorado (with occasional bouts of crazy, extreme weather), my Pick of the Day:

Crash Course Intellectual Property — a new mini-series in the Crash Course family of YouTube videos created by the Green brothers (John and Hank).

Episode 1 covered the basics of IP, while future episodes will focus on copyright, patents, and trademarks. This looks to be another satisfying offering in the Crash Course genre.

Thanks for listening, and keep up the great tech news work!

Messages: 

Jim writes: 

Tom, Jenny, et. al.

For the last five years I’ve been on the team that is writing the software to control the primary and secondary power systems for a new business jet, including sending the power system CAS messages to the cockpit controller. After listening to Friday’s episode I thought ‘knowing everything there is to know about the power system, is there anything I can do from the cabin of the jet to turn on a CAS message in the cockpit?’ The answer is no, everything I would need, would require me having access to the cockpit or the electrical bay.
Though the communication back bone of this jet is AFDX (Ethernet for Airplanes) all of the wires are hard wired between the boxes and the ports are all known to the software so that the communication controllers reject anything that is not sent from the proper place.

P.S. Here is my short description of what the CAS part of EICAS is:

CAS is just a listing of short descriptions of what is happening to the plane. There are four type of them:
Flashing Red – things you really need to react to now, example: ‘BATTERY PWR ONLY’ would tell you, you have lost all three generators and only have 60 minutes of power to land.
Flashing Yellow – things you need to worry about that you may be able to fix, example: ‘L BATT FAIL’ either the left battery is stuck connected to the bus when you don’t want it to be, or not connected to the bus and you want it to be.

Solid Yellow or Blue (depending on system) – things that happened that you need to let your maintenance people know about. Example: ‘ELEC SYS FAULT’ (which means something is wrong with the electrical system), when you land, hand the keys to the maintenance staff.

White – Things that you need to know about. Example: ‘L BATT OFF’, you have not pushed the button to connect the Left battery to the power bus.

EICAS the list of text in the middle bottom of the picture:
Dave (AKA BuckeyeFitzy, the Legal Geek segment producer for Current Geek):

Hi Tom,

On the upcoming Google offer to buy up patents to try and keep them out of the hands of patent trolls. Having worked in the patent law business for nearly a decade, I appreciate any efforts made to enact smart reforms where Congress fails to take action.

However, as a realist … what Google does with these purchased patents likely comes down to a game of “follow the money.” There may be some altruistic powers that be at Google about this issue, but others will want to make sure the bottom line is protected, meaning the high amount of investment and dollars made in procuring these patents must result in at least the same amount of income later.

Thus, Rich’s desire for a true Creative Commons setup for patents may be impossible, but in a best-case scenario, Google could balance their ledgers on this project by offering relatively cheap licenses to many parties to help advance innovation efforts overall. In a worst-case scenario, Google becomes the biggest of the patent trolls, or just sells the rights to other assertion entities down the road. But in either outcome, Google will inevitably make the money back, and that’s what you need to watch to see how this project plays out long term, and whether it benefits society and the patent system at large.

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Wednesday’s guest:  Ron Richards