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

MP3

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

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

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

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

Headlines:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

News From You

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

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

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

Discussion Section Links: Hardware Delight!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iyaz Akhtar joins the show to talk about the hot new phone at the developers conference this week. Tizen! Oh and yes we will also talk about the 1 million announcements from Apple’s WWDC.

MP3

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

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guests: Iyaz Akhtar, senior associate editor, CNET.com and host of many podcasts on the GFQ Network

Headlines:

That new hardware we’ve been waiting for has finally been announced by the world’s leading smartphone maker at its developer conference! Samsung launched the world’s first smartphone powered by the Tizen operating system!! The Samsung Z. Samsung also uses Tizen in its Galaxy Gear 2 smatwatch and released a developers kit for Tizen-based TVs. The Z goes on sale in Russia sometime between July and September.

The BBC reports The United States has charged a Russian man named Evgeniy Bogachev of being involved in a cybercrime attack affecting more than 1 million computers. Authorities have seized control of a botnet used to steal personal and financial data, though they believe its operators may regain control in about two weeks. Bogachev is said to go under the names lucky12345 and slavik, and is thought to have last resided in Anapa, Russia. Charges filed in a court in Pittsburgh include conspiracy, wire, bank and computer fraud, and money laundering.

Apple announced new features for its main operating systems, OS X and iOS, at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. The next version of OS X will be called Yosemite and include a new design similar to iOS7 plus several new features including adding online search to spotlight, airdop compatibility with iOS devices and the ability to answer phone calls and send and receive non-iOS text messages from the desktop. iOS8 will get many new features including support for replacement keyboards, platforms for health info called HealthKit, and home automation called HomeKit and a new programming language called Swift. Siri gets shazam integration as well as an always on mode that can be activated by saying, “Hey Siri.” And iCloud Drive now is integrated into finder, works across devices, and gets a price cut to 99 cents a month for 20 GB and $4 a month for 200 GB. OS X Yosemite is available to developers at WWDC today, will go into open beta in the summer and come to all for free in the Fall. iOS8 is available to developers at WWDC today and will come to all in the fall. 

You Start Menu fans may have to wait a bit longer for its triumphant return. ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley says a change in plans may delay the menu from returning in Windows 8.1 Update 2, expected to arrive in August. Looks liek the Menu will wait until the release of Threshold expected in April 2015. Microsoft’s Terry Myerson showed off the new start menu at the Build conference in April, but did not promise when it would arrive.

News From You

AllanAV posted the Ars Technica story about a patent troll being ordered to pay court costs, the first case of fee shifting since the Supreme Court mandated such fees be paid in exceptional cases.  A Santa Barbara startup called “FindTheBest” spent $200,000 defending itself in a case brought by Lumen View which demanded a$50,000 licensing fee. The judge found that LumenView was trying to extract a nuisance settlement. US District Judge Denise Cote wrote, “The question of whether this case is exceptional is not close, and fee shifting in this case will serve as an instrument of justice.”

tm204 posted the 9to5Google story that Asus announced a slate of new Android tablets at Computex including a lineup for the MeMO Pad Series, a next-gen FonePad and a tablet/laptop/smartphone hybrid Transformer Book V that runs Windows and Android. That last one has 12.5-inch display with a up to a TB of storage. Asus says it’s, “the world’s first five-mode, three-in-one covered laptop that features a Windows and Android laptop and tablet as well as an Android smartphone.” No price or release dates on nay of the new products.

KAPT_Kipper sent in the GigaOm story indicating that sources told the Wall Street Journal and Space News that Google intends to spend around $1 billion to launch 180 small satellites into space in order to provide global Internet service. Greg Wyler of O3b networks has apparently joined Google and started a company called L5 or WorldVu. That company supposedly has access to the Ku-band spectrum abandoned by SkyBridge. What the service would be and how much it would cost is unknown.

metalfreak noted the GreatFire.org version of a story also reported by Reuters that Google services are being disrupted in China. GreatFire reports the blocks started four days ago and now extend to all Google services. Greatfire also suggests IP addresses that can be used to evade the block. This week marks the 25th anniversary of events in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. 

Plug of the day: Today’s plug is for a terrific weekly podcast called 8-Bit Life, in which host Roberto Villegas talks in depth with an eclectic mix of guests from the online universe. This week Roberto’s guest is someone you may have heard me mention on this show once or twice; our own producer Jennie Josephson, who has something to say about how this whole show got its start.

Discussion Section Links: WWDC Day One

http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/22/os-x-beta-seed-program/

http://www.apple.com/osx/preview/

Pick of the day:  Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman, via Russell Manthy:

Had a book recommendation that might be of interest to the listeners. Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman. This a compilation of six lectures on the basics of physics by one of this century’s most brilliant minds. The lectures were given to the freshman class at Cal Tech in the early sixties and were designed to give a general overview of the principles of physics including basics concepts, relation of physics to other sciences, the theory of gravitation and quantum behavior. These are elementary lectures (no math required) and give a tremendous insight into the basics in Feynman’s colorful and humorous style using simple explanations and interesting anecdotes and metaphors. Although these are older they cover things that have not really changed in the intervening years. The Audible version of the book is actual recordings of the lectures; it is great to hear them as presented by Feynman himself.”

Tuesday’s Guest:  Lamarr Wilson, host of Mashable’s YouTube Weekly and Socially Awkward

Molly Wood is on the show along with Justin Robert Young and we’ll talk about what we expect to happen at Apple’s WWDC and what we WISH would happen. Also thoughts on Ballmer buying the Clippers, and a little update on TrueCrypt. And Len Peralta is here to draw it all! You can’t miss this one.

MP3

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guests: Molly Wood, columnist for The New York Times, Justin Robert Young, co-host of Night Attack and Weird Things podcasts, & Len Peralta of the arts!

Headlines:

Engadget reports more details on the unannounced Samsung virtual reality headset. Engadget’s sources now say the headset is a collaboration between Samsung and Oculus VR. Oculus handles the software giving Samsung early access to the mobile dev kit while Samsung does the hardware and gives Oculus early access to next-gen OLED screens.

As ordered by the EU, Google has implemented a solution for removing URLs from its index for Europeans that wish to be forgotten, as is their right. Just attach a copy of a valid photo ID, name, email, country whose law applies, and a list of every URL to be removed. Then explain why the link is “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, excessive in relation to the purpose,” and you’re soon forgotten!

Ars Technica reports Google will close its Fort Worth, TX factory which makes Moto X smartphones. Mark Randall, Motorola’s senior vice president for supply chain and operations, told the Wall Street Journal that poor sales of the Moto X prevented the company from achieving economies of scale and also blamed labor and shipping costs. Motorola is in the process of being sold to Lenovo by Google. That deal should close later this year.

Steve Gibson continues to follow the TrueCrypt story at GRC.com and has a page collecting all the developments as they happen. Among the significant events, the Open Crypto Audit Project will proceed with phase II of its security audit of the whole-disk encryption software, despite the developers abandoning the project. Phase II will analyze the entire way encryption is implemented in TrueCrypt. Also Steven Barnhart posted on Twitter that he received emails from a TrueCrypt developer indicating there is no longer interest from the developers, there was not government pressure, and feels a fork of the code would be harmful. Those emails have been submitted to Ars Technica for vetting.

The Next Web reports WeChat has added an option to the Chinese version of its app, allowing verified official accounts to set up e-commerce stores in the app. WeChat’s Chinese app, is expected to rake in $1.1 billion in revenue this year on in-game purchases, flash sales and other transactions it operates itself. WeChat owner TenCent would like to create a place where users can talk, play games and shop without leaving the app. 

It looks like your writing an 2 billion dollar offer sheet to buy an NBA franchise, would you like help? Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer mercifully ended a nine month hiatus as a public figure, resurfacing to buy the Los Angeles Clippers from Shelly Sterling, wife of embattled racist Donald Sterling. The sale is pending a Tuesday vote by NBA owners, who have plenty of reason to “get on their feet” with excitement, the 2 billion dollar tag represents the most an NBA team has ever sold for. Despite previous attempts to move a franchise to Seattle, Ballmer has indicated he plans to keep Blake Griffin setting blue screens of death for Chris Paul in LA. Hat tip to Kylde who submitted this one on the subreddit.

News From You

metalfreak posted today’s top vote getter on the subreddit. US House Representative Bob Latta of Ohio introduced a bill late Wednesday that would block the FCC from reclassifying broadband as a common carrier service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act. The FCC does not prefer to take that route but is investigating it as an option as part of its notice for proposed rulemaking regarding the open Internet. Block Communications, Buckeye Cablevision, the National Telecommunicatiosn Cooperative, American Cable Association, AT&T, the NCTA and Time Warner Cable are 7 of Latta’s top 5 donors in the current campaign finance cycle.

KAPT_Kipper submitted the BuzzFeed reports that Amazon will add a streaming music service to its Amazon Prime membership sometime this summer in either June or July. The service would restrict its contents to music more than six months old. Because BuzzFeed can’t help its listicle ways, it cited Five Music Industry Sources who told it about the forthcoming service. 

And Shaun_McGee posted the Ars Technica story about Elon Musk unveiling the Dragon V2 space capsule last night at SpaceX Headquarters in Hawthorne, California. The capsule is designed to carry up to seven crew members to the International Space Station. The capsule is reusable and supposedly able to land “with the precision of a helicopter.” Musk hopes to be ready to transport crew by 2016. NASA has a deadline of 2017.

Plug of the day: The Tinker’s Packs is an online store that sells books and other cool stuff for the charity Worldbuilders. Worldbuilders started in 2008 on Pat’s blog to raise money for Heifer International. Heifer doesn’t just hand out bags of rice, Heifer gives a family a goat and teaches them how to take care of it. Then that family has a continual source of milk for their children. They can sell the extra milk to make money. When the goat has babies, they give those babies to other members of their community, sharing the gift.

Discussion Section Links: What to Expect at WWDC on Monday

http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/30/what-to-expect-at-wwdc-2014/?ncid=rss_truncated

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/05/what-to-expect-from-apples-wwdc-keynote-on-monday/

http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/30/what-to-expect-at-apples-wwdc-2014/?ncid=rss

http://www.wired.com/2014/05/apple-wwdc-preview/

http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/30/apple-streams-wwdc-platform-state-of-the-union-design-awards-to-developers-for-the-first-time/?ncid=rss

Pick of the day:  Tom picks Booking.com

Monday’s Guest: Iyaz Akhtar, of CNET.com and The Guys From Queens Network. 

 

Steve Gibson is on the show to talk about the strange disappearance of TrueCrypt and what your best options might be for whole disk encryption.

MP3

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

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes
Today’s guests:  Steve Gibson, of Gibson Research Corporation and Security Now!

Headlines

Apple, Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue and Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine took the stage together at the Code Conference last night in the wake of the announcement that Apple has agreed to purchase Beats Electronics and Beats Music. Cue said, “Music is dying in the way that we’ve known it,” referring to declining digital sales in the face of rising streaming services. Iovine thinks the music business is “desperately insecure” and Silicon Valley is “slightly over-confident.” Cue thinks Iovine and Dr. Dre are the men for the job. While Beats hardware is nice Cue made it clear that the deal is “about music.” Apple expects the deal to close after regulatory approval sometime in September. Cue also stoked excitement for Monday’s WWDC keynote saying, “we’ve got the best product pipeline that I’ve seen in my 25.”

BloombergBusinessWeek reports that Laszlo Block, Google’s SVP for people operations posted to Google’s blog about the company’s diversity statistics. 30 percent of Google workers are women and 39 percent are racial or ethnic minorities. The majority of nonwhite Google employees are of Asian descent. This puts Google close to the middle among tech companies that disclose these sorts of statistics. More companies are feeling pressure to reveal diversity statistics. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has said that Facebook plans to reveal theirs eventually.

GigaOm reports on YouTube expanding its video quality report to include regions in the United States. The report, previously released in Canada, gives stats on the streaming quality of YouTube on your ISP and compares it to other ISPs in your region. 

The Verge has a story on a report from security consulting group iSight Partners that claims a phony news agency called NewsOnAir has been building ties with senior US military and diplomatic officials as well as US and Israeli defense contractors. The group would make social network connections and use fake names over services like Twitter, Facebook, WordPress and LinkedIn. The aim of the site was to present fake login pages to steal credentials. The group’s central domain was registered in Tehran. 

BBC reports Turkey’s Constitutional Court has ruled a block on YouTube violated freedom of expression laws and have ordered ISPs in Turkey to lift the block. Lower courts have previously ordered the block lifted but the government did not respond, claiming offending material still existed on YouTube.

BBC also reports London’s transport authority has announced it does not believe Uber’s car service breaks laws by using an app to determine charges.The authority referred the matter to the High Court to issue a binding ruling on the matter. The Taxi Drivers claim the app is equivalent to a meter which private drivers are not allowed to use. The drivers plan a demonstration for June 11.

News From You

Our top story on the SubReddit today was submitted by Nova461. Developers of TrueCrypt are redirecting traffic from their website to a sourceforge page claiming the software may have security vulnerabilities and due to the end of support for Windows XP, they will no longer develop TrueCrypt. The developers posted instructions for using alternative disk encryption on Windows and OSX.

Kylde submitted the Ars Technica story that a group at Brigham Young University has created an app for Google Glass to help the deaf to view an ASL interpreter in dark situations, like a planetarium, without bothering other attendees. The project is called Signglasses. The full results of the group’s research will be published in June at the Interaction Design and Children conference.

KAPT_Kipper passed along the Ars story about researchers at Japanese Telecom NTT publishing a paper that includes a description of a working 115-bit optical Random Access Memory device made of photonic crystals. The crystals can store light in a high-energy state and emit it after a high-energy pulse, thus optical bits. Granted they’ve only achieved 105 optical bits so far. That can be increqased, the bad news is the energy usage. 28-bit memory takes about 150 micro-watts to store which will be hell on your battery life. But if that can be figured out fiber optic singals wouldn’t have to be converted to electronic ones to be useful. Fiber to your RAM!

And SkyJedi & HarryLeeSmith let us know that Ars Technica reports that the Linux Foundations’ Core Infrastructure Initiative, which was formed in response to Heartbleed, has raised enough to fund a security audit of OpenSSL’s code base as well salaries for two full-time developers. OpenSSH and Network Time Protocol will also receive support for developers and infrastructure.

Discussion Section Links: 

http://steve.grc.com/2014/05/28/whither-truecrypt/

http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/05/truecrypt-is-not-secure-official-sourceforge-page-abruptly-warns/

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/05/true-goodbye-using-truecrypt-is-not-secure/

http://steve.grc.com/2014/05/29/an-imagined-letter-from-the-truecrypt-developers/

https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green

http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/29/truecrypt_analysis/

https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/replace_truecrypt/

 

Pick of the day:  Lastpass via Alex in drizzly Nottinghamshire, UK

I know you’ve mentioned it on the show before, but it’s not on the picks page (yet), so I thought I’d mention a recent feature that’s been introduced to LastPass that meant that I finally purchased the premium version – and has turned out to be the best £8 / $12 (annual) I’ve spent on an app. (Of course, the best general $1 per month I spend is being a patron for DTNS!)

The killer feature for me is password completion in android apps, including Chrome for website logins. I recently got a Nexus 7 and setting it up with all my apps took no time at all because I first installed the LastPass app which filled in all my logins as I went. The mobile app used to have its own browser so I had to choose between password completion or the functionality of Chrome – but now I can have both.

It’s only on Android for now it seems and it works by pretending to be an accessibility aid – popping up on screen when a prompt is detected which works well about 95% of the time.

Friday’s Guests: Molly Wood and Justin Robert Young!