DTNS 2173 – Candy Crushin’ It

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comLamarr Wilson joins as we ponder the wonders of an IPO based on Candy Crush, and watch our audience debate a la carte cable TV.

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Show Notes

New details on Samsung’s high-end smart phone: Bloomberg reports Samsung’s forthcoming high-end smartphone will have a 5.2-inch screen with improved resolution.  Marketing will focus on improved security, an upgraded camera and integration with wearable devices. It also may be sold for less than the Samsung Galaxy S4. The phone is expected to be released at the same time as an update Galaxy Gear smart watch. Samsung has an event scheduled for Monday 2/24.

New Snowden docs show debates in NSA about treatment of WikiLeaks: Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher of The Intercept revealed details from documents leaked by Edward Snowden, showing debates in the NSA about how to treat organizations like WikiLeaks and The Pirate Bay as well as general Internet users. The debates centered on when it was required to filter out data on US users, when monitoring visitors to a site like Wikileaks. One document argued Wikileaks particularly should be dubbed a “malicious foreign actor” so that no filtering would be required. ON a side note, The Verge reports AT&T issued their first transparency report, indicating the company received 301,816 total requests for phone records and subscriber information in 2013.

 News From You

AllanAv called our attention to this Verge article about BitCoin ATMs coming to Seattle and Austin this month. Robocoin will install similar machines to the one it set up at Waves coffee in Vancouver last year. Robocoin also plans to bring its machines to Asia in a few weeks. The Vancouver ATM processed more than $900,000 in transactions in its first month.

Maurice emailed us a Daily Mail story about an organization called the Media Development Investment Fund that wants to create wifi access beamed from hundreds of cubesat satellites launched into orbit by 2015. The company calls the project the Outernet. Each satellite would receive data from a network of ground stations and use UDP to send data to users. The folks at Lightsquared will likely be very interested to see if this is allowed.

gigitrix posted this GameSpot article about the weekend craze of up to 7,000 people at a time playing a game of Pokemon on Twitch. An emulator allowed viewers to input text commands like A, B, Start and Select in chat which controlled the game. As of yesterday the game had four badges under its belt, and more than 80,000 people watching. You can watch and play at:  http://www.twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon

KAPT_Kipper pointed us to the Verge article about Gabe Newell’s blog post where he explains why Valve’s Anti-Cheat software was looking at users DNS data. What VAC does look for is DNS that matches the DRM used by cheat software. Details on matching DNS entries are sent, checked again and if matched to known cheat software, the client is marked for a future ban.

and pete_c submitted the Ars Technica article about hackers taking advantage of a known critical vulnerability in Asus routers to place text files on drives connected to the routers. Asus reportedly patched the vulnerability late last week. Readers are advised to lock down their routers by installing any available firmware updates, changing any default passwords, and ensuring that remote administration, Cloud, and FTP options are set to off if they’re not needed.

More links from the show

AT&T files first transparency report

Candy Crush maker King files for IPO

Irrational Games, creator of BioShock Infinite  to close

NVidia reveals new power-efficient GPU architecture

Microsoft makes Skype and Lync more compatible

One Response to “DTNS 2173 – Candy Crushin’ It”

  1. Hi Tom

    I don’t want to drag this a la carte discussion on forever, but TV is such a dear thing to all of us :). I’ve been working for a couple of service providers, as well as supplying solutions to service providers world wide. The common issue with a la carte isn’t really the willingness from the service provider/TV operator to offer complete a la carte channel line up, but it is the content rights that is holding them back. There is a huge demand in the public to offer such a flexibility, and the first service provider/TV operator on the market with an offer will gain a massive new share of customers.

    The content owners on the other hand is scared that they will loose income if they are taken out of the basic offering. Offering their channel in the basic package will give them a predictable income, but living the life as an a la carte channel is very risky. So content owners doesn’t want to take the risk and usually demand a much higher price for the a la carte option, or even refuse to offer any content under such a scheme.

    Another issue, apart from the content rights, is the marketing cost for the a la carte offering. Selling individual channels will result in marketing those channels individually. This cost will most likely be put on the content owners, and not the service provider/TV operator. This will again make it even harder for nice channels to survive long enough to become popular.

    Thanks for great show!

    Magnus from Norway