Patrick Beja is on today and we’ll talk about Valve’s decision to close the mod workshop for Skyrim. Did the community overreact or was Valve insensitive?

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Show Notes

Today’s guests: Patrick Beja

Headlines: 

The Verge has reports on LG’s official announcement of the G4 phone. It’s most distinguishing feature is the option for a new leather phone back that comes in a variety of colors. LG says it takes 3 months to make each leather back and uses materials and processes similar to those used for making luxury handbags Phone will launch on all major US carriers the end of May or early June. No pricing yet.

Venture Beat reports that Dropbox is rolling out a new feature that allows users to add comments directly to files stored on Dropbox. The feature is free for every level of Dropbox user, and works for anyone who has a link to the file. The new feature is accessible through the Web and is coming to mobile “soon.”

Krebsonsecurity.com reports that Sendgrid said attackers compromised an employee’s account, which was then used to steal the usernames, email addresses and (hashed) passwords of customer and employee accounts. Sendgrid manages email service like shipping notifications and friend requests and the like for companies like Pinterest, Spotify, Uber and Coinbase. Sendgrid suggests customers change their passwords use multi-factor authentication. Sendgrid says it’s working to add more authentication methods for its two-factor security, and to expedite the release of special “API keys” that will allow customers to use keys instead of passwords for sending email through its systems.

The official Google Search Blog announced new Google Now cards on Android today.  Google added 70 new partners, including Zipcar, Spotify, TuneIn, ABC News, Eat 24, Runkeeper Jawbone, Open Table and more. Users should update to the latest version fo the Google app in order to see the new cards.

The BBC reports Google has reached an agreement with several European news publishers to cooperate on a Digital News Initiative. As part of the plan, Google will contribute €150m to an innovation fund. Google will also work on ways to boost publishers’ revenues, train journalists in digital skills and fund research in news consumption and crowd sourcing. Google set up a similar fund with French Publishers in 2013.

More data trickled out from Apple after announcing earnings yesterday. Reuters reports that last quarter, Apple sold more iPhones in China than in the United States for the first time. iPhone sales rose 71% to $16.8 billion in China thanks in part to the new year shopping season.

The BBC reports on Yahoo Labs development of a system called Bodyprint that uses the phone’s touchscreen to recognize a body part, like an ear, and unlock the phone. The idea is to provide biometric authentication cheaper than a fingerprint sensor. Initial trial have been conducted with 12 participants. The system had 99.5% accuracy identifying users and 99.8% accuracy when scanning ears.

Financial intelligence firm Selerity published Twitter’s earnings before the market closed today causing Twitter stocks to cease trading. Selerity says the numbers came from Twitter’s investors site. Twitter earned 7 cents a share agains expectations of 4 cents a share but with revenue of $436 million missing expectations of 456.8 million. Monthly Active Users were up 18% year-over-year.

And TechCrunch reports Cablevision has reached an agreement to sell Hulu to it’s Optimum Online Internet subscribers. No word on what the price would be or what benefit consumers would get from buying Hulu through Cablevision rather than directly from Hulu.

News From You:

AtomicSpaceGun sent us the news that Amazon will now rent you a goat to mow your lawn. If you live in a city where a goat provider is available just look in the lawn care section of Amazon’s Home Services. Goats are an eco-friendly way to keep your lawn trimmed, and much quieter than a lawnmower at 7am on a Sunday morning.
The goats will also throw in free fertilizer, which they will deposit on your lawn in pellet form.

KAPT_Kipper sent in the PC Gamer version of the story of the rise and fall of Valve’s paid mod marketplace for Skyrim. Last Thursday Valve announced that modders could choose to sell mods int he Steam Workshop for Skyrim and keep 25% of whatever price they chose. The modding community reacted negatively and even downvoted Valve’s Gabe Newell’s attempts to explain the new system on Reddit. Yesterday Valve removed the paymetn feature from the Skyrim workshop. Alden wrote in the official Steam Workshop blog post: “it’s clear we didn’t understand exactly what we were doing.”

Discussion Section Links:  

http://gizmodo.com/the-internet-just-killed-an-app-store-for-video-game-wo-1700562308?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_twitter&utm_source=gizmodo_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

http://kotaku.com/even-gabe-newell-gets-downvoted-on-reddit-1700491663

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/04/24/valves-paid-skyrim-mods-are-a-legal-ethical-and-creative-disaster/

http://steamed.kotaku.com/skyrim-modder-considers-quitting-after-steam-controvers-1700077114

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/04/28/steam-kills-paid-mods-for-skyrim-after-user-backlash/

http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218

https://www.change.org/p/valve-remove-the-paid-content-of-the-steam-workshop

http://steamed.kotaku.com/steams-most-popular-skyrim-mod-is-a-protest-against-pai-1700486550

Pick of the day:

Jack from often-sunny Colorado (with occasional bouts of crazy, extreme weather), my Pick of the Day:

Crash Course Intellectual Property — a new mini-series in the Crash Course family of YouTube videos created by the Green brothers (John and Hank).

Episode 1 covered the basics of IP, while future episodes will focus on copyright, patents, and trademarks. This looks to be another satisfying offering in the Crash Course genre.

Thanks for listening, and keep up the great tech news work!

Messages: 

Jim writes: 

Tom, Jenny, et. al.

For the last five years I’ve been on the team that is writing the software to control the primary and secondary power systems for a new business jet, including sending the power system CAS messages to the cockpit controller. After listening to Friday’s episode I thought ‘knowing everything there is to know about the power system, is there anything I can do from the cabin of the jet to turn on a CAS message in the cockpit?’ The answer is no, everything I would need, would require me having access to the cockpit or the electrical bay.
Though the communication back bone of this jet is AFDX (Ethernet for Airplanes) all of the wires are hard wired between the boxes and the ports are all known to the software so that the communication controllers reject anything that is not sent from the proper place.

P.S. Here is my short description of what the CAS part of EICAS is:

CAS is just a listing of short descriptions of what is happening to the plane. There are four type of them:
Flashing Red – things you really need to react to now, example: ‘BATTERY PWR ONLY’ would tell you, you have lost all three generators and only have 60 minutes of power to land.
Flashing Yellow – things you need to worry about that you may be able to fix, example: ‘L BATT FAIL’ either the left battery is stuck connected to the bus when you don’t want it to be, or not connected to the bus and you want it to be.

Solid Yellow or Blue (depending on system) – things that happened that you need to let your maintenance people know about. Example: ‘ELEC SYS FAULT’ (which means something is wrong with the electrical system), when you land, hand the keys to the maintenance staff.

White – Things that you need to know about. Example: ‘L BATT OFF’, you have not pushed the button to connect the Left battery to the power bus.

EICAS the list of text in the middle bottom of the picture:
Dave (AKA BuckeyeFitzy, the Legal Geek segment producer for Current Geek):

Hi Tom,

On the upcoming Google offer to buy up patents to try and keep them out of the hands of patent trolls. Having worked in the patent law business for nearly a decade, I appreciate any efforts made to enact smart reforms where Congress fails to take action.

However, as a realist … what Google does with these purchased patents likely comes down to a game of “follow the money.” There may be some altruistic powers that be at Google about this issue, but others will want to make sure the bottom line is protected, meaning the high amount of investment and dollars made in procuring these patents must result in at least the same amount of income later.

Thus, Rich’s desire for a true Creative Commons setup for patents may be impossible, but in a best-case scenario, Google could balance their ledgers on this project by offering relatively cheap licenses to many parties to help advance innovation efforts overall. In a worst-case scenario, Google becomes the biggest of the patent trolls, or just sells the rights to other assertion entities down the road. But in either outcome, Google will inevitably make the money back, and that’s what you need to watch to see how this project plays out long term, and whether it benefits society and the patent system at large.

=====

Wednesday’s guest:  Ron Richards

 

Richard Stroffolino joins the show to talk about Google’s new patent marketplace. Should you sell all your patents to Google? do you want Google to own all the patents?

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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: Rich Stroffolino 

Headlines: 

Google announced a Patent Purchase Promotion today in an effort to supposedly remove friction from the patent market and apparently try to keep patents out of the hands of trolls. Anyone who has a US patent can list their patent for sale between May 8th and May 22. After the close of the market Google will let sellers know if they’re interested by June 26th, finish up the details by July 22 and pay out by late August. Patent sellers set the sale price and get a license back tot heir patent.

TechCrunch reports Facebook added a free video calling feature that works over cellular or wifi– inside Messenger for iOS and Android today. Messenger will adjust quality based on your connection. However you can’t make calls to desktop users and you can only call one person at a time. Video calling in Messenger is availablein 18 countries today with other regions to be added in the coming months.

According to data gathered by Slice Intelligences‘ consumer panel app, 376,000 of the 1.7 million Apple Watches ordered were delivered to U.S. consumers this weekend. A remaining 547,000 watches are expected to ship between April 27 and June 11; leaving 639,000 people waiting for word ofon when their watches will ship. The data was gathered based on a survey of more than 2 million online shoppers.

TechCrunch reports that Instagram has added three new image filters called Lark, Reyes, and Juno. Instagram plans to release new filters at a faster rate. But, smiley face kitty cat rainbow, that’s not the most exciting part! Instagram also added support for emoji in hashtags, which means you can now click on hashtag little poop guy and see what other fine images have been tagged with that emoji.

Apple Pay is now supported by Discover Financial Services the last of the four major credit and debit card issuers in the United States according to the LA Times. Of course not every bank supports Apple Pay yet but the number of cards supported is certainly growing.

Following up on the forum post from last week where the makers the SeaNav claimed their app had been kicked out of the iOS app store for mentioning Pebble, Apple confirmed to Wired that it was a mistake. The SeaNav update will be accepted, as will any other apps rejected in similar circumstances. The company does not plan to reject apps that support the Pebble watch.

PC World clarified a statement Nokia made over the weekend. Responding to reports that Nokia would manufacture smartphones in China, Nokia said “These reports are false, and include comments incorrectly attributed to a Nokia Networks executive. Nokia reiterates it currently has no plans to manufacture or sell consumer handsets.” However the ReCode report we mentioned claimed Nokia would design and license handsets not manufacture and sell them. In any case Nokia still can’t do any of this until 2016 thanks to its agreements with Microsoft.

Reuters reports Judge Theodore Essex of the International Trade Commission in the US ruled Microsoft’s phones infringe two wireless cellular patents owned by patent licensor InterDigital Incorporated. The decision must be reviewed by a full commission before an import ban can be enacted.

Apple didn’t top its record profit of last quarter, but they did just fine. Today they posted earnings of $13.6 billion on $58 billion in revenue, above both what it forecast and what investors were expecting. For the three months ending in March, Apple sold 61.2 million iPhones, 12.6 million iPads, and 4.5 million Macs. All told, its gross margin for everything was 40.8 percent, which came in well above the 38.5 and 39.5 percent Apple expected. Apple’s next quarter will be the first to include sales of the Apple Watch, but don’t expect the company to reveal any numbers. The watch, along with sales of the iPod, Apple TV, and Beats accessories are all lumped into a catch-all category called “other products.”

News From You:

KAPT_Kipper sent us the Ars Technica report that there was a brief moment in time back in 2011 when an 87-year old Pauline McKee from Illinois thought she won 41,797,550.16 dollars on a slot machine called Miss Kitty. The Isle Hotel Casino in Waterloo, Iowa declined to pay the money claiming it was a computer glitch. Ms. McKee sued, but the Iowa Supreme Court sided with the casino. The user-agreement on the touch screen slot machine, said the maximum payout was $10,000 and “bonus” awards were not allowed. The court ruled Pauline McKee was owed one dollar and 85 cents.

Bad news for people in search of rare flair on Reddit’s The Button game. Bishma posted that “The Button” ran into technical difficulties Sat morning with the Cassandra server that tracked button clicks. During that time many people including The Button’s creator got extremely rare flairs. Although the issue was resolved there was a point in time when the button reached zero allegedly revealing a spoiler. As of Sunday, red flair is more common and often looked down upon. Some Button enthusiats have decided to try to choose their favorite color rather than go for the lowest time count. Others have targeted getting a time of 42 as their new goal.The Button however is still active and posts are centering around quotes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/27/google-launches-a-marketplace-to-buy-patents-from-interested-sellers/?ncid=rss#.7yzb2u:Ysp0

http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2015/04/announcing-patent-purchase-promotion.html

http://www.google.com/patents/licensing/

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/27/google-to-disarm-trolls-by-buying-patents-before-they-become-weapons/

Pick of the day:

Andy from increasingly spring like CT:

Hi Tom,

Pick of the day for you – Mountek smartphone mounts.

If you’re like me and are always disappointed with in car Nav systems, and still have a car radio with a CD slot, the sit in woe no more! Mountek makes a great smart device mount that clips in to the CD slot and uses a very thin magnet on your device to attach to a magnetic pad on the mount. For me, this was a fantastic solution to my broken GPS unit in my car and allows me to use Waze or Google or whatever on device GPS app I like without chasing the phone as it slips and falls all around my dash console. Problem solved! Instead of $600 to repair the cars’s GPS, I spent $30 for the Mountek Snap+ and I couldn’t be happier. It holds my iPhone 6 or my iPad Air easily, and keeps them in line of sight so that I can see maps and directions without looks down and taking my eyes off the road. Safe and convenient! www.mountek.com – really great stuff.

Great show Tom, you and the crew are my conduit to the Tech Zeitgeist. Without DTNS I’d be lost, uninformed and Beja-less, a truly unhappy state.

Thanks!

Messages: 

Co-executive producer of the show Mike’s father and brother have owned an automotive repair shop for 30 years. He worries that If the auto industry is successful in their DMCA petition, it could put them and others like them out of business. He sent a quote from autoblog.com.

“Hypothetically, the EFF says, the likes of General Motors, Honda and Ford could supply ECU codes only to repair companies they contract with – or steer that business entirely to authorized dealerships. Car owners’ power to choose where they want their car repaired could be diminished.”

BUT Chris (mrforgetful on Patreon) works in IT for a motor manufacturer and gets involved in building the software systems that enable technicians to update the software in vehicles. He says: 

“Right to Repair legislation is coming into force in the US in 2017 that requires automotive manufacturers to make available the tools necessary to update vehicle software. Similar legislation has been in Europe for about 6 years (I am from the UK).
..
Although he adds: Carrying out home-made modifications to the software is out-of-scope (you must apply the software from the manufacturer).

Which leads us to Alan who pointed out:

“diesel nerds” are aware that most modern diesel engines are sold with a number of different levels of output. Naturally, the more powerful versions are more expensive than the lower output versions. There is normally no physical difference between these engines, it’s all software governed.

By now I’m sure you can see where this is going – there’s a whole industry dedicated to re-flashing vehicle ECUs to “liberate” those extra horsepower for significantly less cost than buying “The fancier model”. This will be what John Deere and GM are really trying to crack down on as they move towards greater physical commonality in their model ranges.

Randall pointed out:

“I’m not sure that your aware, but Linux is use by many major car manufacturers. There is even an automotive grade Linux project that many of them contribute to. https://www.automotivelinux.org/about/members”

Daryl Sensenig writes:

I’m an amateur vehicle hobbyist, and I enjoyed your discussion of John DeeRM. You mentioned Linux for cars. There is just such a thing. You can find a popular supplier here: http://bankspower.com. The way some vendors make it legal us by replacing the entire computer hardware.

Harry The Airline Pilot commented on the story about Chris Roberts’ tweet on a United Boeing 737-800. Harry writes:

” I have been an Airline Pilot for 36 years for many airlines, and most recently I flew a Boeing 737-800 for 10,000 hours at United Airlines. There are many inaccuracies in all the commentaries about this story. First off, he concedes that his research only pertains to the most modern airplanes – the Boeing 787, Airbus A350, and Airbus A380. This is a very small part of the current airline fleet. None of his research applies to the B-737-800 because it has no internal network. This plane is old school – it was developed in 1967. The latest versions being built today are essentially the same as back in 1967. Only new avionics and some structural and engine changes. For example he talks about taking over the fuel balancing systems. There is NO such system on the 737. It is done by looking at the fuel quantities in the tanks and manually turning pumps off and on – old school. The passenger entertainment systems on these aircraft are just after market bolt on. The only connection to the aircraft systems is the power source – literally an on-off switch in the cockpit. Also, there is no way to turn on the passenger oxygen system on the aircraft electrically. The only control, is to drop the oxygen masks. No oxygen will flow until the mask is physically pulled down. Then a chemical oxygen canister will start a reaction to produce oxygen for that row of seats for about 12 minutes.

So basically, when he says “Find myself on a 737/800, lets see Box-IFE-ICE-SATCOM, ? Shall we start playing with EICAS messages? “PASS OXYGEN ON” Anyone ? :)”, it is total bull. As far as the freedom of speech argument for defending this tweet, see how far that will get you if you joke about having a bomb next to a TSA person at security.”

=====

Tuesday’s guest:  Patrick Beja

 

Darren Kitchen and David Spark join the show to talk about what’s on people’s mind after the RSA Security Conference. Which things should you legitimately be afraid of?

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: Darren Kitchen and David Spark

Headlines: 

Italian eyewear company Luxottica is working on a second version of Google Glass, according to The Wall Street Journal via Venturebeat. CEO Massimo VIan told his shareholders: “In Google, there are some second thoughts on how to interpret version 3 [of the eyewear]. What you saw was version 1. We’re now working on version 2, which is in preparation.” Luxottica owns 80% of the world’s major eyewear brands, including Ray-Ban and Oakley.

TechCrunch reports that iFixit is tearing apart the 38mm Apple Watch Sport and 42mm Apple Watch steel for your edification. Processor upgrades for the Apple Watch look unlikely. It took 20 steps to get to the Watch’s processor some of which involved ripping out soldering and the S1 chip itself was encased in a block of resin. The battery took 11 steps to remove. Apple has confirmed the Watch’s battery, which has a 3 year lifespan, will be replaceable.

Steam Workshop will now let modders sell mods according to PC Mag.com. Users can now buy game mods for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Creators set their own price and get 25% of sales. Mods include things like new textures, maps, character skins, soundscapes, and quests.
Engadget reports the Swiss Post will conduct a pilot program for drone package delivery this summer. The program will use quadcopters developed by Matternet which can carry anything up to 2.2 pounds for over 12 miles on a single charge. The test will deliver small things like medicine or documents. Matternet has used its quadcopters to deliver medicine in Haiti.

Honda has an idea for an alternative to Elon Musk’s hyper loop in a report from ZDNet. Friend of the show Jason Hiner wrote up an interview with Frank Paluch, who runs research and development for Honda Americas. Paluch spoke at 2015 SAE World Congress and suggested a dedicated lane on California’s 5 Freeway for highly automated, connected vehicles that would use swarm technology to travel at speeds up to 180mph. While the Hyperloop could travel LA to San farncisco in an hour the HOnda system would take 2. However you wouldn’t have to drive to the Hyperloop station, just take your car the whole way. Go check out Jason’s article for much more about the idea.

News From You:

HobbitfromPA noted the early rumors that Comcast was planning to drop its proposed merger with Time Warner Cable. This morning Ars Technica was among the outlets reporting a statement that in fact Comcast has moved on and will no longer pursue the merger. Fortune reported that the Wall Street Journal barely let the merger grow cold before it reported its sources say Charter is already “laying the groundwork” for a bid to acquire Time Warner Cable. It’s nice to be wanted eh TWC?

jmbburg26 noticed one of the reports of additions to Google Maps for Rawalpindi, Pakistan. One alteration showed the Android robot logo appearing to throw water on an Apple logo. Another alteration wrote a criticism of Google’s review policy in the greenery representing a park. Google’s Mara Harris told the Washington Post, “We’re sorry for this inappropriate user-created content.” Both alterations have been removed.

lagerdalek pointed out that Microsoft will bring solitaire back as a default game in Windows 10. No word on Minesweeper or Reversi.

IrishTechGuy posted the SiliconRepublic article that ISP Eircom has signed a contract with Huawei to construct Gigabyte fiber for 66 communities in Ireland by 2016 serving 1.6 million homes. Eircom hopes to start taking orders by the end of August.

KAPT_kipper posted the CBC story that researchers from Sweden, the US and Canada reported in the journal Current Biology that they have sequenced almost the complete library of DNA from a well-preserved wooly mammoth. Yes such information can inform scientists about mammoth evolution, how they differ from modern elephants and why they went extinct. But what about cloning Mammoths for eccentric millionaire’s Mammoth parks? Canadian researcher Hendrik Poinar said it is a “much more real possibility.”

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.channelnomics.com/channelnomics-us/news/2404869/controversial-security-tweet-sees-airline-turn-away-rsa-speaker

http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/u-s-secretary-of-homeland-security-encryption-danegrous/

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536986/google-and-facebook-execs-question-government-desire-for-encryption-backdoors/?utm_campaign=socialsync&utm_medium=social-post&utm_source=twitter

http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/01/more-researchers-join-rsa-conference-boycott-to-protest-10-million-nsa-deal/

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/12/report-nsa-paid-rsa-to-make-flawed-crypto-algorithm-the-default/

http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/24/8484179/defense-department-ashton-carter-silicon-valley-pentagon

Pick of the day:

WScottis1 in ChatrealmMessages:

Hey Tom, Jennie, Roger, Patrick, Justin, Darren, Scott, Veronica, and guest(s),
(I think I got everybody)

I wanted to let people know about two web tools that I came across the other day trying to make my website mobile with the Google Search Mobilegeddon. The first one I wanted to recommend is mobiletest.me. This is a website that allows you to test how your website looks like on multiple smartphones even if you don’t own them, it does it virtually on the website. It even allows you to “rotate” the phone.

The second one is detectmobilebrowsers.com which provides an easy way to check to see if a user is trying to load your website on a phone. It’s very easy to implement, you just have to upload the script to your website file manager, edit the file to change the default website to the URL of your mobile site, and then put one script line into your code of the original page. Love the show! Keep up the amazing work you’re doing!

Thanks!

Messages: 

Rob wrote on the DTNS blog:

On the show, you talked about the poor cellular coverage in Montana. It’s really mind boggling how many areas in the good ol’ USA still have poor coverage, including where I live in Hanover, NH (only Verizon works and with mostly 1-2 bars.) We are just back from hiking for a week in the Czech Republic where we used a 3rd party foreign roaming SIM Card and had 5 bars of T-mobile coverage even on empty hiking trails between extremely small towns and if you play around with their coverage map, you’ll see that they have 21-150Mbps data speeds pretty much blanketing the whole country. How did America get left so far behind in the mobile revolution?

Brian writes:

“As an MVNO ting also provides service from both Sprint and T-Mobile (although they can’t explicitly state that T-Mobile is their GSM partner). The unique thing about Fi is the ability to seamlessly handoff between not only wifi and CDMA a la Republic Wireless but to also do it between CDMA and GSM networks. Kind of makes me wonder how it works with sim cards and phone numbers (probably something to do with Google Voice since they make a point in saying that you can use your number on your computer).”

Jeff writes:

Talking about Spotify and other services, one that I don’t hear a lot about, but I use almost exclusively is grooveshark.com. I believe it works in the sense that someone uploads their music and that becomes available to anyone to listen to it. So, I don’t think that grooveshark.com themselves are providing the music, but that doesn’t mean that the popular songs or others aren’t on there. The selection is pretty vast and there’s some neat features they are doing as well. One feature is that Individuals can create radio stations, basically becoming dj’s. There is a downside and that is the consistency of the music. It’s uploaded by individuals and there can be a lot of duplicates and some of those duplicates are of a lower quality.

Tad writes:

The issue with the major auto manufactures trying to apply the DMCA to their vehicles is getting seriously over-hyped. I saw an article with the headline, “GM, Ford, and Others want to make working on your car illegal”. The article went on to say that in effect you don’t own your car, you are just a user. This pure fear mongering. The DMCA applies to the code in the various control computers in the vehicle- nothing more. The physical parts of the car, including the control modules the code is in, are yours to do with as you please. Again, the DMCA applies to bits, not car parts.

=====

Monday’s guest:  Rich Stroffolino