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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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!

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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

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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

Scott Johnson joins Tom to talk with Dr. Lixia Zhang from UCLA about Named Data Networking (NDN) and how it could possibly solve many Internet problems, like security and net neutrality concerns.

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: Scott Johnson and Lixia Zhang

Headlines: 

The Electronic Privacy Information Center honored Apple CEO Tim Cook at an event Monday. Cook gave a speech and a half. TechCrunch reports Cook said Apple rejects the idea that “customers should have to make tradeoffs between privacy and security,” saying morality demands it. He took a swipe at companies that are “gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it,” saying “We think that’s wrong” But saved his strongest rhetoric for the US government saying “weakening encryption, or taking it away, harms good people that are using it for the right reasons. And ultimately, I believe it has a chilling effect on our First Amendment rights and undermines our country’s founding principles.” He even quoted Abraham Lincoln saying “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

Venturebeat reports that Skype has fixed a flaw that crashed Skype when you received the characters “http://:” In fact once you GOT that message Skype crashed any time you tried to sign in. The bug appeared on Windows, Android and iOS, but apparently not Skype for Mac or for the Windows tiled interface. In less than 24 hours though Skype fixed the bug so make sure to head to skype.com/download or your mobile phone’s app store and update to the latest version.

TechCrunch reports Cisco and IBM have both acquired OpenStack companies. OpenStack is an open source project that enables users to create their own cloud services, often used in what is called the private cloud. Cisco announced it has purchased private cloud company Piston Cloud Computing. IBM has acquired private cloud service provider Blue Box.

ReCode reports Apple’s Beats has voluntarily recalled the Beats Pill XL speakers after 8 reports of overheating. Beats has sold more than 200,000 of the speakers since November 2013. The speakers can be identified by a lowercase b on the speaker grill and the words beats pill XL on the handle. Apple urges owners to go to apple.com/support/beats-pillxl-recall/ for details on how to return the speakers and get $325.

PCMag.com reports that AMD announced its 6th generation Processors codenamed Carizzo in A8, A10, and FX-Series models. The A8 and A10 APUs feature 10 compute cores (four CPU cores plus six GPU cores) and the FX-Series APUs feature a total of 12 compute cores (four CPU and four GPU).The chip’s use Heterogeneous System Architecture (or HSA) design shares workloads and system memory between the CPU and GPU rather than have the CPU direct everything. The A8 and A10 processors get R6 graphics, and the FX-Series R7. When paired with a discrete graphics card the R6 or R7 APUs will work in conjunction with the discrete GPU to boost graphics performance. Look for laptops with A-Series APUs this month.

News From You:

metalfreak sent us this story from Ars Technica. At long last Microsoft is bringing SSH aka Secure Shell to Windows and PowerShell. Until now Windows lacked any native SSH client/server, however the Windows PowerShell Team has announced that Microsoft will work with and contribute to OpenSSH, the standard for SSH implantation in Unix, to add that functionality to Windows. This will let Unix/Linux and Windows machines securely access each other. The Linux-Windows war is over.

starfuryzeta submitted the Engadget article that the US State of Virginia has marked 70 miles of highway in the northern part of the state as the “Virginia Automated Corridors.” This allows companies who have received approval for their cars to do public road testing of self-driving cars. Nokia’s HERE mapping division will develop 3D maps for the test roads.

doorsrio submitted the TechCrunch report that augmented reality device Magic Leap has launched a development platform. Chief Creative Officer Graeme Devine announced it on stage at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech Digital conference. A developer’s section of the website has been launched where folks can sign up for the SDK, which is coming soon. CEO Rony Abovitz also said the company is out of the R&D phase and transitioning to a real product. Oh and they had author Neal Stephenson on stage to help convince you this is the real world arrival of the Metaverse.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-internet-of-names

http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~lixia/

http://named-data.net/

http://www.networkworld.com/article/2602109/lan-wan/ucla-cisco-more-join-forces-to-replace-tcpip.html

Pick of the Day:

Devulu, genius from the west:

Here is another one for you, and today it’s a Chrome extension.

If you’re like me and use Google chrome with many extensions – each for a different purpose – and want to manage them easily, then SimpleExtManager is here to the rescue.

Features include:
– basic function to enable/disable, access options and uninstall extensions via popup
– customize the popup
– ability to create extension groups
– enable/disable extension groups via popup and right-click menu

Nothing much, but sure saves a lot of time, and is way better than the Chrome extensions page.

Messages: 

mikem.exe+yt writes in:

Hey Tom. Finally getting around to episode 2497 (Run, Spotify, Run) where you had a conversation with Lamarr Wislon about how YouTube would rather you watch videos from their recommended list instead of subscribing to a creator and binge-watching all of their uploads in order.

They make it pretty difficult to binge-watch a single creator. I find myself manually adding videos to the Watch Later list, then moving them from there into a new playlist, then playing that playlist.

Well, after enough of that every day (I watch a lot of youtube), I decided to write a little script that does all that for me. You can specify a user and it will automatically add any new videos as they’re released to the end of the associated playlist in your account.

If there’s anyone in your audience who would benefit from this, have them send me an email and I’ll get them set up. mikem.exe+yt at gmail.com

David says Hello from hot and rainy Florida: 

The New Broadwell cpus are an interesting shift for Intel. They are for most part uninteresting for workstations and high end gaming. The CPU performance is lower than the current Haswell CPUs because they run at a lower clock speed. For other users they are very important because they offer very good graphics performance and much better OpenCL performance than the Haswell CPUs.
As more of programs make use of OpenCL I expect to see more computing power shifting to the GPU and OpenCL from your traditional CPU. Of course when Silverlake comes out and we get a die shrink the clock speed should come up.

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Thursday’s guest:  Justin Robert Young