Patrick Norton is on the show today. We’ll talk how Google’s driverless car could impact Uber and whether Microsoft’s real-time Skype language translation is the Universal Translator.

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:  Patrick Norton of Tekzilla

Headlines

It’s official: Apple is buying Beats Electronics for $3 billion. Mashable & Gigaom. Part of the deal will be Beats Music,which launched as a Spotify competitor earlier this year. It will be announced, you guessed it, at the Code Conference.  Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine will join Apple. Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, told the NYT “These guys are really unique,” Mr. Cook said. “It’s like finding the precise grain of sand on the beach. They’re rare and very hard to find.”

CNET reports from the Code Conference by Recode that Sergey Brin of Google unveiled a prototype two-seater driverless car without a steering wheel. The cars built-in sensors and software are the only control system. The project has only been tested at low speeds of 25 mph or less but has experienced no crashes. 

More people said things at the Code conference including Kleiner Perkins investor Mary Meeker with her annual trends report. One trend is the slowing of people joining the Internet to less then 10% per year but the fast growth of mobile usage, as mobile data is up 81%. Meeker also asserted that “fans trump audiences” meaning that a fan base that shares, comments, and creates content around a show is much more valuable to advertisers than a large audience number.    :- )

Recode reports Microsoft’s VP of Skype Gurdeep Singh Pall demonstrated Skype Translate on stage at the Code conference yesterday afternoon. The feature uses speech recognition, text to speech and machine translation to offer real-time translation on a live Skype call. Pall demonstrated it translating from English to German and back in a conversation with a German employee. Pall said the feature should launch in beta later this year with a limited number of languages for the Windows version of Skype.

ZDNet reports Apple has acknowledged the attack, largely targeting Australian users, that has locked some people out of their iOS devices. Apple noted “Cloud was not compromised during this incident. Impacted users should change their Apple ID password as soon as possible.” Users from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the US report being hit by the attack.

Oh you thought we were done with news about people talking at the Code Conference? Not quite. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich wore a smart shirt during his talk. The shirt measured heart rate and other vital signs and was made in conjunction with AiQ. The battery-powered shirt shold be available this summer. Krzanich also showed off Jimmy, a white robot that can walk, talk and dance. Intel has plans for a cosnumer robot-making kit that could sell for $1600. Krzanich admitted Intel missed the tablet trend, and while they haven’t given up on tablets they’re focused on not missing the next big market.

Mashable passes along that the WSJ reports Facebook asked the European Commission to review its acquisition of WhatsApp in order to prevent future legal challenges in European countries. Facebook was not required to get European approval, but may have decided it was just easier than fighting country by country later.

GigaOm reports Samsung announced plans to create an open platform for developing sensors and services to track personal health in real time. The initiative will start with a modular wristband reference design called Simband that tracks heart rate and blood pressure, but could expand into other devices. Samsung also announced a $50 million digital health challenge to encourage development of better sensors and algorithms for health care. Oddly Samsung didn’t cover federal approvals and told GigaOm it is not seeking FDA approval.

TechCrunch reports on a new $199  3-D printer called the MOD-t designed by Frog Design and backed by Idealab. The low entry level price gets you a minimum layer height of .02 mm and the ability to print using the starch-based plastic, PLA. The printer is small and the printing plate moves under the stationary head reducing some complexity though printing slowly. Backers of the Indiegogo for the printer can get the model even cheaper for $149.

Looks Like Mark Zuckerberg can skip a court date. BuzzFeed passes along that the Iranian Student’s News Agency has removed the story from yesterday stating a court in Fars had required Facebook’s Director or his attorney to appear in court. ISNA has published a statement by the Fars province prosecutor’s office denying the report. Al Monitor reports the chief prosecutor of Shiraz also told the official Islamic Republic News Agency that the reports were false.

News From You

Our top story on the subreddit was submitted by KAPT_Kipper. Valve announced it will not be releasing its own version of the Steam Machine and Steam controller until 2015. Valve’s Eric Hope said the company got a “ton of useful feedback” on the controller and want to get it right. The delay will not impact the release of SteamOS and has no affect on third-party steam machines not made by Valve.

MikePKennedy submitted the Verge article that Amazon has confirmed it is buying less inventory from Hachette Publisher and no longer taking preorders for Hachette books as part of a dispute over ebook prices. Amazon even suggested customers might want to consider Amazon competitors for buying Hachette books. Amazon also suggested that it and Hachette create a pool of funds to disburse to Hachette authors who are being affected by the slowdown in Hachette sales. Hachette declined the offer at least until after Amazon and Hachette come to an agreement.

Discussion Section Links: 

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/27/5756166/microsofts-skype-translator-will-translate-voice-calls-on-the-fly

http://recode.net/2014/05/27/microsofts-skype-star-trek-language-translator-takes-on-tower-of-babel/

http://blogs.technet.com/b/next/archive/2012/11/08/microsoft-research-shows-a-promising-new-breakthrough-in-speech-translation-technology.aspx#.U4TdctwSdTL 

Pick of the day:   Bossjock Studio via Dave Brodbeck

I have been using Bossjock Studio for IOS for about a year now. It is a really nice podcasting app that allows you to mix in music and such as well as export files as mp3 or AACs to various platforms. You can email the files, transfer them to your computer and ftp them to many places. It is a great mobile podcasting platform and I use it a lot with my son for his podcast, the Jonathan Files.

Thursday’s guest: Don Reisinger, cnet.com  

Shannon Morse is on the show to talk about the new LG G3 and Apple and Google’s assault on the smart home space.

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: Shannon Morse of hak5.org

Headlines

LG announced its new G3 smartphone so no more leaks, just facts. The Android 4.4.2 Kit Kat phone has a 5.5-inch 2560×1440 display with 538 ppi. The 13.1 mpxl rear camera features laser autofocus and optical image stabilization. LG really pitched simplification with features like squeeze to take selfie, an adaptive keyboard that improves accuracy over time, and knock to unlock which uses a pattern of taps as your unlock code. Inside is a Snapdragon 801 2.5GHz Quadcore, 2 or 3 GB of RAM and 16 or 32 GB storage. LG will start selling the G3 in South Korea Wednesday with additional regions to follow. Pricing varies by market.

The Verge notes The Information reports its sources say Google’s Nest Division has considered acquiring Dropcam as part of a larger decision to move into Home Automation. Nest makes a Thermostat and a smoke alarm called Protect. Dropcam makes a connected camera with a cloud DVR service and smart sensors that can detect things like open doors. This follows on the report yesterday from The Financial Times that Apple may announce its own smart home platform at WWDC next week.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports Intel signed an agreement with China’s FGuzhou Rockchip Electronics Co. to jointly offer a quad-core processor and integrated modem called Sofia in the first half of 2015. Rockchip will market the processor to Chinese customers. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. will make the chip until the end of 2015 when it will shift into Intel plants. Getting a seller of chips based on ARM to make Intel mobile chips is an important step in Intel’s plan to get more competitive in the mobile chip space.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports  that an attacker in Australia has used the Find My iPhone feature to lock users out of their own iPhones, iPads and Macs. Those with lock codes could regain access. Others received requests for payments of 50 to 100 dollars in order to regain access to their devices.

CNET reports the China Academy of Cyberspace issued a new report called “America’s Global Surveillance Record” accusing the US of targeting Chinese leaders, Chinese companies, scientific research institutes, and ordinary citizens with cybersurveillance. In addition Bloomberg reports Government agencies in China are asking banks to replace IBM servers with machines from local companies as part of a test program.

Reuters reports a court in the southern Iranian province of Fars has opened a case against Facebook-owned Whats App and Instagram after receiving complaints of privacy violations. The court ordered the director of Facebook or his official attorney to defend himself in court and pay for possible losses.

Engadget reports Hector Xavier Monsegur aka Sabu of LulzSec has been sentenced to time served by a US Federal Court, letting him walk free. Prosectors said Monsegur was a very “productive cooperator” providing information that helped the FBI take down LulzSec and stop a string of cyberattacks.

Ars Technica reports the US FCC chief of staff Ruth Milkman spoke today at a Progressive Policy Institute event titled “Should the FCC Serve as Internet Traffic Cop?”. Milkman said the agency does not know the answer to whether peering, transit, and other interconnection issues need further regulation or can be handled in the marketplace. The FCC is seeking comment on whether the scope of its current net neutrality rulemaking discussions should include these issues.

News From You

Our top story on the subreddit came from metalfreak who posted the IT World story that a bug in an e-voting application halted the release of European federal and regional election results in Belgium. Some older voting machines got different results for preferential votes depending on the way they counted them. That should not happen. A fix to the problem was developed halfway through the night and voting resumed. The machines in question are PCs with two serial ports, a parallel port, 1 megabyte of RAM and a 3.5-inch disk drive used to load the voting software from a bootable DOS disk.

spsheridan submitted the Ars Technica story by Cyrus Farivar about his experience requesting his travel records from the US Customs And Border Protection agency under a Freedom of Information Act request. He received 72 pages of information, much of it redacted to protect the subject’s privacy, even though he was both the requester and the subject. Most of the records showed when he had left or re-enetered the country as well as whether he was subject to inspection. One entry noted him as a journalist. Farivar had been interested in receiving a Passenger Name Record which often times record IP addresses used to book travel. He did not receive that record although he asked for it directly in his original request.

Discussion Section Links: 

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/26/5753026/google-and-nest-considering-home-security

http://mashable.com/2014/05/27/google-nest-dropcam-smart-home/

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/6/5685516/dropcam-learns-to-track-humans-but-wont-replace-your-security-system-yet

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/26/5751816/apple-developing-home-automation-features-for-iphone-report

https://shop.smartthings.com/#/

Pick of the day:   Calibre E Book manager via Jeremiah McCoy

Jeremiah writes, “I am a big consumer of ebooks, like a lot of people today, but I often get better deals on books in different stores. You can buy books from places other than the Kindle store, after all. Not to mention free versions of ebooks put online by the author, or the Gutenberg Project, and in different formats. Also, as much as Amazon would like to say different, there are a bunch different ereaders available out there. There are a lot of things to work out, if you decide to go outside just one store experience. I have found Calibre to be super useful in those problems. It is an ebook management software. It can track your library of files, convert them to different formats, and manage which device you have loaded them on. It can even edit your ebooks. It is great software for ebooks in general.”

Wednesday’s guest:  Patrick Norton of Tekzilla

It’s the Memorial Day holiday in the US today, so just a headlines show. But good news for Apple lovers and Gauntlet fans!

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

In 1844 – Samuel Morse sent the message “What hath God wrought” from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the United States Capitol to the Mount Clair train depot in Baltimore, Maryland. It was the first public demonstration of the telegraph.

In 1935 – General Electric Co. sold the first spectrophotometer. It could detect two million different shades of color and make a permanent record chart of the results.

In 1961 – Wes Clark began working on the Laboratory Instrument Computer (LINC), at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. It was one of the earliest examples of a user-friendly machine that you could communicate with while it operated. It’s credited with setting the standard for personal computer design.

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

Darren Kitchen is with us to talk Google’s Project Tango Tablet and the state of Drones in the world. They can deliver pizza in India! Also Len Peralta will illustrate the show!

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: Darren Kitchen of hak5.org and Len Peralta of the arts

Headlines

The Next Web passes along info from the paywalled WSJ report that Google is working on a tablet that incorporates the 3D sensors from Project Tango. The 7-inch tablet has two back cameras along with infrared sensors. The last time we heard about Project Tango was in February when Goolge revealed a smartphone with the sensors could purportedly map surroundings in 3D. Google is allegedly prepping 4,000 Tango Tablets ahead of Google I/O which kicks off June 25.

The Wall Street Journal also reports, via Marketwatch that Samsung plans to unveil a smartwatch that works as a stand-alone phone within the next few months. It will also do normal smart watch-y things like take photos, send email and measure your heart rate.

Engadget reports Microsoft general counsel and executive VP Brad Smith recently revealed that the software giant successfully challenged an FBI National Security Letter that tried to seek basic information from one of its enterprise customers. The letter would have prevented Microsoft from telling the customer about the request. By the way, the FBI did receive the information they sought by lawfully requesting it from the customer in question directly.

Engadget reports that BBM Protected was shown at the Blackberry Experience event in Washington. The new service creates a random encryption key for each message sent on BBM, making data thieves jobs quite a bit tougher. BBM Protected will be available in an enterprise suite available for corporate-controlled Blackberrys starting in June. The feature will extend to consumer phones running BlackBerry Balance in the autumn and then on to Android and iOS users afterwards in early winter at the latest.

The Verge reports Twitter is complying with a Pakistani government request to block blasphemous or unethical content. The blocked material includes illustrations of the Prophet Muhammad, tweets from anti-Islam bloggers, and photographs of burning Qurans. Twitter has previously blocked neo-Nazi content in Germany and accounts deemed unlawful by the Turkish government.

PC Mag reports on a thermal imaging system developed by Metaio for use in Augmented Reality headsets. The Thermal Touch prototype attaches infrared and standard cameras to a tablet, which then tracks the heat signature left behind when you touch a surface. The tech can turn any surface into a touch screen letting users to “click” on merchandise on a magazine page, play a virtual game on an empty table, and more. The tech will be on display in Santa Clara, California at Augmented World Expo May 27-29.

News From You

dwsoulsby submitted the Engadget article about SpaceX owner Elon Musk posting a series of tweets implying United Launch Alliance was awarded an exclusive Air Force deal for 36 rocket launches because Roger Correll, the official in charge of the deal, was promised a job. Correll recently took a position with one of ULA’s suppliers, Aerojet Rocketdyne. Musk says SpaceX turned Correll down for a job. SpaceX is suing the Air Force over the contract. 

terapinrex pointed out The Next Web’s article about Lifelock pulling its Wallet app from Google, Amazon and Apple app stores. Lifelock CEO and Chairman Todd Davis wrote that certain aspects of the app may not be fully compliant with payment card industry standards. The next time users open the app their information will be deleted. Switching the phone to airplane mode before openign the app will give a user the chance back up important information before it gets deleted. 

Discussion Section Links: 

http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/23/google-said-to-be-working-on-a-tablet-with-project-tango-3d-vision-powers/

http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/20/google-launches-project-tango/
https://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/

http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/22/researchers-plug-googles-project-tango-into-a-drone-to-let-it-fly-itself-around-a-room/

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/congress-thinks-the-faa-is-not-well-positioned-to-regulate-drones

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-27537120

http://austin.twcnews.com/content/news/299372/wimberley-man-sues-faa-over-drone-policy

http://www.suasnews.com/2014/05/29305/washington-archdiocese-takes-to-the-heavens-with-a-drone/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2014/05/19/amazons-drone-team-is-hiring-look-at-these-nifty-job-ads/

Pick of the day:   

Monday is a headlines show.  Tuesday’s guest is: Shannon Morse of hak5.org 

Todd Whitehead joins us to talk about the madness of eBay’s password management post-hack and get a little more perspective on who might love the Surface 3.

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 guest:   Todd Whitehead of Alpha Geek Radio

Headlines

GigaOm reports Facebook announced a series of measures Thursday to protect user’s privacy. A “Privacy checkup” will show up for users over the next several days explaining who sees the information they post. Facebook also is changing the default setting for new users from public to “friends only.”

Everybody’s imitating Oculus. Hell, Zenimax even claims Oculus is imitating Oculus and is filing in court to prove it. But were you expecting Samsung to get in this race? Engadget reports its sources say Samsung is developing a virtual reality headset for mobile with OLED displays and will unveil it later this year. Samsung apparently wants to beat Facebook’s Oculus Rift and Sony’s Project Morpheus to the virtual punch. Developer versions of Samsung’s rig are powered by the Note 3 and Galaxy S5.

Also on the mobile game beat, VentureBeat reports TangiblePlay is unveiling an iPad accessory called Osmo. The iPad sits in a vertical stand with a mirror attached in front of the camera. This lets the iPad recognise small objects placed in front of it. The idea is to let kids plat games that make us of physical tabletop objects as well as the software on the tablet. Examples include games that use word tiles, puzzle pieces, or involve drawing on paper. Tangible Play hopes to raise $50,000 through crowdfunding on its website to get manufacturing started.

GigaOm reports Google weighed in on the paid peering, net neutrality topic Wednesday claiming that it’s Google Fiber service doesn’t charge for peering and doesn’t use “fast lanes” to prioritize traffic. Google invites content providers and CDNs to colocate in GFiber facilities. Google says that improves customer experience and saves the company money.

The Next Web reports CodeAcademy has translated its coding courses into French, Spanish and Portuguese. The company has also partnered with several initiatives, including Ideas Box which helps people in refugee camps learn new skills, Tiger Leap, an Estonian program attempting to teach every K-12 student how to code, and government initiatives in France, Brazil, Argentina and the UK. Coincidentally all major rugby or soccer powers. CodeAcademy also announced it plans to open its first international office in London.

PCMag reports HP has put it’s 7-inch HP 7 Plus quad-core tablet on sale in the US for $100. The tablet runs Andoird 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, has a 1024×600 display, a Cortex A7 processor, 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of storage. It also comes with 25GB of lifetime storage from Box. 

HP announced it’s Quarterly earnings with $X.XX billion in revenue and earnings per share of $X.X Analysts expected $27.4 billion in sales and $0.88 per share. Analysts expected a slowdown in enterprise but a firming up of PC sales.

News From You

 the_corley submitted the top story on the DTNS subreddit. Ars Technica reported on 27-year-old Nicholas Paul Knight pleading guilty Tuesday to charges of conspiracy in Federal Court. Knight is former Navy and was SysAdmin on the USS Harry S. Truman’s nuclear reactors department. He lde a team of attackers trying to gain unauthorized access to Navy databases. Knight himself attacked the Navy’s Smart Move website to gain 220,000 service members SSN birthdates, addresses and other personal data. Knight faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

ShaunDMcGee pointed us to the Engadget story that Apple says it has fixed a sever bug causing some former iMessage users who had switched to Android, to lose text messages. Apple says there is a remaining problem with the messaging platform it is still addressing. People moving off of iPhone are advised to manually disable iMessage before powering down for the last time. 

KAPT_Kipper put up the Geekwire story that US Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has killed the patent reform bill, which received bipartisan support in the House “because there is not sufficient support behind any comprehensive deal.” ” Internet Infrastructure Coalition Co-Founder Christian Dawson urged the Senate to take up the bill again. While Intellectual Ventures Chief Policy Counsel Russ Merbet said “the proposed legislation would have had severe consequences on legitimate patent holders.” So now you can guess who contributed more money to Leahy’s campaign funds.

the_corley also sent in an RD Mag story about a report appearing in the Chemistry of Materials journal by Umit B. Demirci and colleagues describing a practical way to store hydrogen as a solid. Storage and transportation of hydrogen has been a main impediment to the development of hydrogen fuel cells as an energy source. The researchers developed a novel crystal phase of a material containing lithium, boron and hydrogen, that can release the hydrogen by heating.

Discussion Section Links: EBay breach

http://www.troyhunt.com/2014/05/the-ebay-breach-answers-to-questions.html

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/22/us-ebay-connecticut-idUKBREA4L0WV20140522

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet-security/10848947/eBay-buckling-under-password-pressure.html

http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-change-your-ebay-password/

http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/05/after-the-breach-ebays-flawed-password-reset-leaves-much-to-be-desired/

http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/account/create-password.html

Pick of the day:   PopChar via Jeff the Graphic Designer

My pick of the day is PopChar (as in ‘character) a little Mac typography utility that helps me quickly insert those little arrows, dingbats, and symbols and so on, onto my web and print designs. It’s Mac only — and while it’s not free (it costs 30 Euros – about 40 dollars), it saves me a s*&^_load of time every day. Been using it for years and it’s rock solid. 

Friday’s guests: Darren Kitchen and Len Peralta!