In 1902 – Joe Horn and Frank Hardart opened the first US Automat at 818 Chestnut St. in Philadelphia. The waiterless restaurant charged a nickel for most dishes.

In 1931 – Robert Goddard received a patent for rocket-fueled aircraft design (US. No. 1,809,271). Sadly we do not have a lot of rocket-planes in operation.

In 1986 – The Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center opened to support the National Science Foundation’s NSFNET, which linked five supercomputer centers. NSFNET would eventually allow commercial uses and transition to the open Internet.

Like Tech History? Get the illustrated Year in Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.

Veronica Belmont and Justin Young join to break down the four big announcements from Apple’s WWDC about OS X, iOS, WatchOS and Apple Music.

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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!

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

Show Notes

Today’s Guests: Veronica Belmont and Justin Robert Young, DTNS contributors

Headlines

Because there’s nothing developers like more than sitting apparently, Apple took 2.5 hours to announce four things. here’s the shorter version if you missed it. OS X. will have an API for search and spotlight gets some natural language search capabilities. You can slide a tab left to pin it in Safari and now mute from the address bar. Windows Snap comes to OSX too. The Metal graphics API comes from iOS to OS X bumping out OpenGl and delivering 50% rendering improvements and reducing CPU usage 40%. So better performance and battery life. OS X El Capitan comes to public beta in july and as a free upgrade int he autumn.

iOS 9 introduces Proactive assistance so it can do things like put “now playing” on the screen when you plug in your headphones or automatically add calendar appointments based on emails you get. Search can deep link into apps. The notes appgets checklists, camera integration, drawings and more. Maps gets transit directions. And Newsstand is replaced by a news app that pulls in pretty pages from partners and regular pages from everyone else. The iPad adds shortcuts to the keyboard, the ability to use the keyboard as a trackpad, a new task switcher and a slideover panel for using two apps at once, a split view if you have an iPad Air 2 and picture in picture for video apps. Finally low-power mode can turn 1 hour left to three hours left on your battery, HomeKit added support for more devices, Carplay can support wireless connections in future cars and Swift 2 is going to go open source with a compiler and standard libraries for iOS, OS X, and Linux by the end of the year. It’s coming to Public Beta in July then as a free upgrade in fall to all previously supported iOS devices.

WatchOS 2’s big news was native apps and the ability to connect directly to WiFi. Devs get to access the mic, healthkit, homekit, accelerometer, taptic engine and sounds, digital crown and play audio and video. Devs can also customize the ‘complications;’ that get added to watch faces and there are some new watch faces to boot. You can also time travel by rotaing the digital crown and seeing what appointments and notifications are coming up. And transit maps and Wallet with its loyalty cards are coming to the watch as well as the ability to control HomeKit. Devs get access to a preview of the SDK next week. Watch OS 2 will be a free update in wide release this autumn.

Finally Apple Music will be Apple’s new subscription music service. It has a 24/7 radio station called Beats One manned by Zane Lowe, Ebro Darden, and Julie Adenuga. a social network called Connect that lets artists post music, photos, videos and messages which can crosspost to Facebook and Twitter. And of course for $9.99 a month you can get access to everything in the iTunes library as well as curated recommendations based on your tastes and exposure to new music you might like. Apple Music will launch in more than 100 countries June 30 with iOS 8.4 and a new iTunes. Apple TV and Android versions are coming this autumn. And a family subscription allows up to 6 accounts to share a subscription for $14.99 a month.

Well that’s all the Apple news from WWDC. Now with the wasting no time award comes Bloomberg with a new Apple rumor. According to its sources, Bloomberg says Apple is assembling a high-speed data network and upgrading how it builds data centers so be more competitive in the cloud. Basically it wants its own connections between its 4 data centers in California, Nevada, North Carolina and Oregon, to increase reliability and speed. Its building new data centers in Arizona, Ireland and Denmark as well. Seems likely given that new music service and a rumored TV service.

The Next Web reports that Skype’s automatic voice translation tool, which was part of a separate Translator app, will be integrated into the main Skype desktop app for Windows by the end of this summer. You can still try out Translator app until then. The app translate voice conversations between English, Spanish, Italian and Mandarin speakers, as well as over 50 written languages. No word on when the integration will roll out to other operating systems.

9 to 5 google reports that AT&T has officially unveiled the Samsung Galaxy S6 Active on its website. The phone runs 5.0.2 Lollipop, comes with a 5.1″ QHD Super AMOLED display and gets its ACTIVE name from an IP68 rating and certification to meet military standards for water and dust resistance, shock, vibration, extreme temperatures, humidity, and high altitude. It comes in Blue Camo, White Camo, or Gray and as expected has a 5.1″ QHD Super AMOLED display and 16MP rear and 5MP front-facing cameras. The S6 Active will be available June 12th from AT&T with $0 down and installments ranging from $23.17 to $34.75 a month depending on your plan.

Tech Crunch reports that a company called Menlo Security emerged from stealth today with $25 million in Series B Funding. Menlo has some buzz because it plans to fight malware by isolating every email and web page in a virtual container and then delivering a safe mirror image to your browser. The malware is therefore trapped in a virtual container which is ‘disposed of’. It doesn’t use special software or require modification at the browser level.

Boing Boing brings us the news that The Reddit experiment The Button has ended. The Button was launched April 1 and after 1 million, 8 thousand three hundred 16 presses, the timer reached zero (for real this time) without anyone pressing it. Rest in peace button.

News From You:

starfuryzeta sent us the Engadget report that South Korea plans to fight the outbreak of Middle East Respiratory System, known as MERS by tracking the cellphones of 2300 people under quarantine to make sure they don’t leave home and infect others. The country’s deputy prime minister called it an “unavoidable measure”.

thegraphics sent us a Tech Crunch report that Showtime’s standalone streaming service will launch on Roku and Playstation Vue in addition the previously announced iOS and Apple TV launch. The service will cost $10.99 per month and include both the East and West coast live Showtime feeds. As with its launch on Apple devices, Roku customers in July will be able to try the service for 30 days for free before committing to the monthly fee. PlayStation Vue subscribers can add it as an alacarte option.

Discussion Links: 

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/06/apple-music-is-the-next-chapter-in-music/

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150608006468/en/Introducing-Apple-Music-%E2%80%94-Ways-Love-Music.#.VXX1XFxVikp

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/06/apple-gives-developers-a-more-powerful-native-apple-watch-sdk/

http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/08/apple-homekit-wwdc-update/?ncid=rss_truncated

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2015/06/08/apple-announces-swift-2-will-be-open-sourced/

http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/8/8737639/apple-ipad-split-screen-multitasking-wwdc-2015

http://recode.net/2015/06/08/apples-ios-9-software-promises-a-smarter-siri-multitasking-on-ipad/

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2015/06/08/apple-announces-news-its-flipboard-competitor/

http://recode.net/2015/06/08/apple-pay-wants-to-be-your-wallet-so-it-added-loyalty-and-store-branded-cards/

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/06/apple-announces-ios-9/

http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/08/osx-el-capitan/?ncid=rss_truncated

Pick of the Day: VTC.com 

Jeff has a pick: Recently you mentioned safaribooks.com, which is a great site for learning.

I would like to add VTC.com which offers high end sys admin training videos. I have learned so much from this site and I don’t know of any other site that offers so much high end technical content like this and when you are done with a course you can print a certificate to turn into HR. They have reasonable pricing and multiuser accounts.

Check it out at http://www.vtc.com

Tomorrow: Tom is on assignment, but DTNS contributor Patrick Beja and CNET’s own Iyaz Akhtar are on the show!

Darren Kitchen joins the show to look back on two years of Edward Snowden leaks and whether it’s done good, bad or otherwise. Plus Darren’s encryption picks AND Len Peralta illustrates the show.

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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 headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

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

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

Show Notes

Today’s guests: Darren Kitchen and Len Peralta

Headlines: 

The Skype for Web beta is now available in the US and UK. New and existing users can sign in and connect to Skype without the Skype app by installing a plug-in for IE, Chrome, Safari or Firefox and going to Skype.com or web.skype.com. Skype will continue rolling out Skype for Web worldwide over the next few weeks.

USA Today reports that Google will begin to report incidents involving its driverless cars on a dedicated website with the human driver details redacted for privacy. In addition to reporting accidents, google.com/selfdrivingcar will give examples of how the cars adapt to everyday traffic situations, and take community feedback. After nearly six years of testing and 1.8 million miles driven, the Google fleet has been involved in 13 accidents, according to reports the company submitted to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Project leader Chris Urmson noted that all of the accidents were the fault of other drivers

Bloomberg reports that Apple is still negotiating with record labels over the revenue split from a music streaming service. Apple is expected to announce the service at its Worldwide Developers Conference this coming Monday. Music labels currently receive 55 percent of Spotify’s monthly $9.99 rate, and music publishers take 15 percent. The labels are allegedly asking Apple for 60%.

CNET reports that California based Microdia is showing off the Xtra Elite 512GB microSD card at Computex in Taipei. That’s right 512GB! The Micro SDXC card will use version 4.0 of the SDXC standard which means Ultra High Speed – II bus speeds of up to 300MB/s. This gargantuan yet tiny flash storage will cost $1000 and goes on sale in July.

VentureBeat reports that Google partnered with Adoble to make Flash more power efficient in Chrome. The Chrome beta will now automatically pause Flash content that isn’t “central to the webpage” while keeping central content playing without interruption. If Chrome beta pauses something you want to see you can resume playback by clicking on it. Google expects the feature to make its way into a stable release as early as September.

Earlier this week PayPal updated its user agreement with a clause that specifically allowed the company to send robocalls and promotional text messages to users even if the users had never shared their phone number with Paypal. This did not go over well. Today Tech Crunch reports that customers can “opt out of receiving auto-dialed or pre-recorded calls”, most likely because an angry customer and an advocacy group drafted a letter to the FCC, which takes a dim view of robocalls of any kind. It’s not clear yet just how Paypal will allow you to opt-out.

News From You:

habichuelacondulce submitted the Engadget article on an attack on the US Office of Personnel Management database containing 4 million records of current and former US federal employees. The Office is in charge of conducting background checks on federal employees. The US FBI is in charge of the investigation. The Office will issue notices from June 8th-19th offering credit monitoring and identity theft protection. The New York Times cites researchers who believe the attack may have been conducted by the same people who attacked insurance companies Anthem and Primera’s systems.

starfuryzeta chose the Ars Technica story that Administrator Charles Bolden said that NASA is looking into advanced propulsion technologies that could cut the 8-month journey to Mars in half. The technologies being studies range from solar-electric propulsion to nuclear rockets.

spsheridan picked the Wired story about a computer that developed a scientific theory with no human help. Scientists and Tufts University programmed a computer to develop theories when faced with a problem. Then biologists chose the 120-year-old problem of sliced-up flatworms’ ability to regenerate new organisms it he proper shape and proportion. The computer reverse engineered a solution which has been published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/opinion/edward-snowden-the-world-says-no-to-surveillance.html?ref=opinion

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/05/edward-snowden-claims-victory-on-surveillance-in-nyt-op-ed/

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/05/snowden-balance-power-shifted-people-defy-government-surveillance-nsa

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order

 

Pick of the Day:

Darren’s Picks for Data Security:

For Linux Full Disk encryption go with LUKS  — it’s built into modern distros.

For Windows Full Disk encryption go with Diskcryptor — it’s been vetted by the EFF

For volume encryption I recommend EncFS – it’s open source and cross platform. Here’s a video tutorial on how to use it with DropBox.

Messages: 

Joe writes:

Joe just bought an Amazon Echo and well… He writes ” She arrived 2 weeks ago and I must say, I’m in tech love! She is extremely responsive to my voice. … I most commonly ask her the time, weather, to set alarms, and play music playlists. I sometime ask her to tell me a joke or for other words of encouragement or empathy. She sounds really sincere. I especially like lying in bed and having her read me my tech news casts for the day.

The only thing I would have liked to see is the ability for her to recognize that I am speaking to her without having to call out her name before each command. It looks like Jibo can do this but he is nearly $700 more so I think I’ll stick with Alexa…well, at least until we have a fight and break up, but for now, she’s the one for me!

=====

Friday’s guest:  Darren Kitchen and Len Peralta

Justin Young joins to look over the rumored T-Mobile USA Dish merger. Verizon has OnCue. AT&T is probably about to get DirecTV. Find out why all these mobile carriers want TV solutions and T-Mo/Dish may be the best match of all. MP3 Using a Screen Reader? click here

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

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible. If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here or giving 5 cents a day on Patreon.

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

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

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

Show Notes Today’s guests: Justin Robert Young

Headlines:  The Wall Street Journal reports people familiar with the matter say Dish and T-Mobile USA are having high level talks about a merger. The two companies agree on the form a combined entity would take with Dish’s Charlie Ergen as Chairman and T-Mobile’s John Legere as CEO. The thing the two sides have not agreed about yet is money. Dish owns a lot of unused mobile spectrum and every self-respecting wireless carrier in the US dreams of marrying a video distributor someday. (Except for that jerk Verizon who went and just BOUGHT Oncue from Intel. Dirtbag.) Set the timer on your smartphone, people! Apple will begin selling some models of the Apple watch in retail stores beginning in two weeks, according to Tech Crunch. The watches will also go on sale in seven more countries on June 26th, including Italy, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan and (gasp) Switzerland- the very backyard of many fancy watchmakers. If you ordered an Apple Watch online in May, you should get it within two weeks, unless its the 42mm Space Black Stainless Steel model, which has been slowest to reach customers.

Venture Beat reports that Yahoo announced several product closures including Yahoo Pipes, GeoPlanet, PlaceSpotter and Yahoo Maps. Some Maps functionality used by Search and products like Flickr will be kept running. Several international media properties will close down too, including Yahoo Music in France and Canada and the entire Yahoo home page in the Philippines. Yahoo is also killing support for Yahoo Mail on some older iOS devices. and let me see we have a PRO tip from our producer Jennie: If you work on any of these teams, and your boss wants to meet you in a conference room, start grabbing Kind Bars from the kitchen.

Ars Technica reports that the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, NY has named 6 games to its new World Video Game Hall of Fame. Pong, Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, Doom, and World of Warcraft were chosen by an advisory committee of about two dozen journalists, scholars, and game historians. The goal was to choose games “that have enjoyed popularity over a sustained period and have exerted influence on the video game industry or on popular culture and society in general.” The inductees will be included in playable form at the museum’s eGameRevolution exhibit.

Facebook is rolling out a new Android app that’s designed to use less data and run faster for folks with spotty data connections according to Reuters. Facebook Lite uses less than 1/2 a megabyte of data and supports Facebook’s news feed, status updates, notifications and photos, but doesn’t support videos or advanced location services. Facebook Lite is available in select Asian countries and will soon be made available in parts of Latin America, Africa and Europe.

What do you do when you want to have a nice conversation between just you and 200 of your closest friends? You install Line’s new Android app Popcorn Buzz. As The Next Web tells it, it lets you use your Line Messaging account to send out a link through email, text or social network and any of your Line contacts can join and talk. It’s voice only for now but Line says it’s working on group video chat, interconnectivity with Line Groups and of course an iOS version.

BizTechAfrica reports Zimbabwe’s Dr. Lloyd Muzangwa and Tanzanian engineer George Kahabuka took home the mid-stage prize in the Standard Bank Water 4 Africa challenge for their MAJI 1200 water purification system. The mid-stage prize is given to a system ready for deployment. The MAJI1200 combines UV light with solar energy to make water purification available off the grid and with minimal maintenance. The team will use its $5,000 prize money to build and donate MAJI 1200 units to schools in rural Zimbabwe. A crowdfunding project has been set up at gofundme.com/ohyrac.

New data from IDC shows Xiaomi has risen to the world’s 2nd biggest seller of wearables just behind FitBit. TechCrunch reports that Xiaomi came in with 2.8 million shipments for Q1 2015 at 24.6% of the market ahead of Garmin’s 6.1 percent, Samsung’s 5.1 percent and Jawbone’s 4.4 percent. FitBit still leads the pack at 3.9 million shipments giving it 34.2% market. The data does not include Apple Watch which just started shipping in April.

The Verge reports that Nest will hold an event on Wednesday June 17th, which would be its first substantial smart home product announcement since Google bought Nest. Tech Crunch previously reported that Nest might be moving into audio, so um, stay tuned.

News From You: Griff72 submitted Yahoo Tech’s Rafe Needleman’s report that the updated Pebble app for Pebble Time is being delayed in Apple’s App Store. Pebble got approval on May 18 but found a minor bug which it fixed and resubmitted on May 22. The updated app has been in review since. The updated Android app is available in Google Play.

habichuelacondulce submitted this Engadget article noting a New York Times report that the US Justice Department issued two memos to the NSA in 2012 allowing the NSA to search US citizens International data traffic without a warrant in order to find foreign hackers or malware. The memos allowed tracking of IP addresses and cybersignatures that could be tied to foreign governments. The memos were obtained in documents provided by Edward Snowden. Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.cnet.com/news/dish-and-t-mobile-said-to-be-in-early-stage-merger-talks/

http://www.wsj.com/article_email/dish-network-in-merger-talks-with-t-mobile-us-1433383285-lMyQjAxMTI1MzA3NDEwMjQwWj

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/06/possible-disht-mobile-merger-could-be-trouble-for-att-and-verizon/

http://www.cnet.com/news/six-burning-questions-if-t-mobile-dish-network-actually-get-together/

http://fortune.com/2015/06/04/apple-streaming-video-adobe/

 

Pick of the Day: Tuesday on episode 2506 we talked about the Pinterest “buy” button, and Patrick Beja suggested that someone finding a recipe on Pinterest could use this button to add all the ingredients to a shopping list. Well Paul (aka HotBranch) enjoying Juneuary in Montreal, where Mother Nature is off her meds has a suggestion for an app that does just that!

Asparagus – My Recipes is available on Android and can pull down ingredient lists from web pages and categorize them for you. The paid version extends the abilities of the free version, including the ability to scale a recipe up or down. Now, when I find a recipe online that interest me, I share it to Asparagus and voila! It’s on my phone and tablet.’

Messages:  Joe writes: Joe just bought an Amazon Echo and well… He writes ” She arrived 2 weeks ago and I must say, I’m in tech love! She is extremely responsive to my voice. … I most commonly ask her the time, weather, to set alarms, and play music playlists. I sometime ask her to tell me a joke or for other words of encouragement or empathy. She sounds really sincere. I especially like lying in bed and having her read me my tech news casts for the day. The only thing I would have liked to see is the ability for her to recognize that I am speaking to her without having to call out her name before each command. It looks like Jibo can do this but he is nearly $700 more so I think I’ll stick with Alexa…well, at least until we have a fight and break up, but for now, she’s the one for me! =====

Friday’s guest:  Darren Kitchen and Len Peralta