Darren Kitchen is here to help us understand why it’s important to encrypt all the things. Justin Young discusses that and some last observations from Star Wars Celebration plus Patrick Beja drops in to talk about trying on the Apple Watch. Len Peralta may even illustrate all this.

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Show Notes

Today’s guests:  Darren Kitchen, Len Peralta, Patrick Beja and Justin Robert Young

Headlines: 

Engadget reports that Verizon will begin offering a new FIOS Custom TV package on Sunday. For $65, customers get broadband and a 35 channel base TV package plus two add-on channel packages. The packages are News & Info, Pop Culture, Entertainment, Kids, Lifestyle, Sports and SportsPlus. Additional packages beyond the first two cost $10 each, and subscribers can switch packages every 30 days, or even add phone service for a $75 total. So not quite al a carte. More like a la ca.

Microsoft plans to preview the updated Office suite for Windows 10 Phones at end of this month according to the Verge. The Office for Windows 10 phone preview will incorporate the same interface and features found on the iOS and Android versions including a thumb optimized UI. Office universal apps aren’t built into Windows 10, but will ship with phones later this year. MS will debut Office 2016 for Desktop — essenitally anything with a screen bigger than 10.1-inches– later this year with a UI designed to closely match the universal, iOS and Android versions.

The Next Web says Apple Pay will launch in Canada this Fall. According to a report in the WSJ Apple is in talks with Canada’s six largest banks in preparation for a possible November launch. While banks are open to Apple Pay, and currently in negotiations over fees, there are concerns over security issues that have popped up since its launch in the US.

The Verge reports that Mark Zuckerberg posted to Facebook defending the Inetrnet.org service. Several companies in India have pulled out of the service because they believe zero-rating mobile services is against net neutrality principles. Zuckerberg argued that Internet.org does not block or throttle services only exempt certain services from data charges. He also argues that having some Net access is better than none.

Reuters reports prosecutors in the Netherlands have launched a criminal investigation into Uber for providing taxi service in violation of a court order. A Dutch court banned UberPOP in December for not being properly licensed.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Information Technology report ranks Singapore number one in its Network Readiness Index, followed by Finland and Sweden. The index identifies a country’s capacity to leverage information and communication technology based on its usage, impact and political and business environment. Rwanda ranked number one in the world for government success in promoting ICT. Armenia is the number one most improved country since 2012.

 

News From You:

KAPT_Kipper and habicuelacondulce sent us The Verge report that Wikileaks has published the complete Sony Pictures Entertainment leaks in a searchable database. That’s 173,132 emails and 30,287 separate documents containing private legal opinions as well as sensitive conversations between executives. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said “This archive shows the inner workings of an influential multinational corporation. It is newsworthy and at the centre of a geo-political conflict. It belongs in the public domain.” Sony Pictures said, “We vehemently disagree with WikiLeaks’ assertion that this material belongs in the public domain and will continue to fight for the safety, security, and privacy of our company and its more than 6,000 employees.”

Habichuelacondulce posted the Verge story about Instagram’s new community guidelines. Essentially they get more specific about what is allowed. For instance instead of “be polite and respectful” there’s a longer section that is more specific such as “serious threats of harm to public and personal safely aren’t allowed.” Nudity is also generally forbidden unless it involves post-mastectomy scarring and women actively breastfeeding or pictures of paintings and scultptures. Essentially, Instagram, like many before it has succumbed to the “this is why we can’t have nice things” effect.

This Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of Moore’s law. On April 19 In 1965 – “Cramming more components onto integrated circuits” by Gordon Moore was published in Electronics. Moore projected that over the next ten years the number of components per chip would double every 12 months. By 1975 he turned out to be right, and the doubling became immortalized as “Moore’s law.”

 

Discussion Section Links:  

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150415/16181530668/netflix-moving-to-encrypted-streams-as-mozilla-moves-to-deprecate-unencrypted-web-pages-as-insecure.shtml

https://letsencrypt.org/

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/certificate-authority-encrypt-entire-web

 

Pick of the day:

Petere wrote:

I stumbled upon this at 3am this morning and can’t wait to get time to dig deep and get a feel for the depth of this new product.

https://api.slack.com/web
(The Slack Web API allows you to build applications that interact with Slack in more complex ways than the integrations we provide out of the box.)
and

https://polymer.slack.com/

i have been coding polymer for a while on a hobbyist level and recognize the Lego’n of html tags… makes web tech fun again..

this communication platform is something worth checking out

 

Messages:

Vijay writes in:

Hi Tom,

I have a comment about the story about Microsoft investing in Cyanogen to make it’s app ecosystem more popular on the Android platform. As you pointed out, Microsoft has nothing to lose. But Cyanogen has a lot to lose if they start bundling bloatware from Microsoft (even if it’s Nadella’s).

This announcement also explains some of the rhetoric that the new Cyanogen CEO, Kirk McMaster is indulging in by taking shots at Google accusing them of controlling Android too much. The Cyanogenmod community has not taken very kindly to this CEO’s antics and clearly sees him as profiteering from what has long been a very popular community-driven ROM. Everybody sees how flawed Kirk’s argument is – Cyanogen would not exist if Android did not allow forked out ROMs.

The casualty of these statements and also of forcing Microsoft bloatware on Cyanogen users would be that of losing a large user base. There’s no dearth of competitive Android ROMs (like OxygenOS, Paranoid Android, MIUI, SlimKat, etc) that we geeks will gladly flash as a replacement to Cyanogen if this CEO continues on this path. I’m already planning to flash Oxygen OS to replace CyanogenMod on my OnePlus One.

Sean in rainy Cleveland this week writes:

Tom and Darren,

When I travel I bring a chromecast and a HOOTOO portable router. When I get to my hotel room I through up a wifi network and can get through the hotel login page on one device through the router. I then turn on my VPN to keep my browsing private. I have to turn it off to chromecast though. With the Amazon fire TV allowing you to log into Web based credentials wifi networks, is my. Amazon password or hulu or netflix information potentially vulnerable to interception? Or am I missing something about how amazon passes information to the fire TV?

=====

Monday’s guests:  Rich Stroffolino

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nate Lanxon is on the show to talk about Microsoft’s secret strategy to dominate and what things we DON’T want in the cloud.

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 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:  Nate Lanxon 

Headlines: 

Business Insider reports Yahoo has renewed its search deal with Microsoft. Bing ads must show up against 51% of traffic now instead of the exclusive deal it had before meaning Yahoo can monetize 49% of its traffic in other ways if it likes. Microsoft is also taking over sales of all the BIng ads.

If you want to walk into an Apple store and buy an Apple Watch you will now have to wait until at least June. 9 to 5 mac shared an Apple memo from SVP of Retail and Online Sales Angela Ahrendts wjo wrote: “due to high global interest combined with our initial supply, we are only taking orders online right now. I’ll have more updates as we get closer to in-store availability, but we expect this to continue through the month of May.”

Tech Crunch reports that Jawbone has partnered with American Express to allow the new Jawbone UP4 fitness tracker to pay for things at NFC enabled card readers. The authorization token is stored on the band itself, and the credit card information can be deactivated if the band is stolen. The UP4 will cost $200 at launch — $20 more than the payments-less UP3 and launch “this summer”. Jawbone also introduced a new mid-range band called the UP 2 for $99 which replaces the UP24.

Good news Big Data fans. TechCrunch reports from the Hadoop summit in Brussels that Google launched the open beta of Cloud Dataflow and updated BigQuery. CloudDataflow can process data asboth streams and batches and automatically scales to the dev’s needs. BigQuery’s update lets users store data in Google’s European Data centers to keep it out of the US’s surveillance system and only in danger of the French one. It also adds row level permissions which will keep the marketing department from messing up your supply chain data when their pulling sales info.

The New York Times reports China’s Banking Regulatory Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology sent a letter to banks Monday that suspends rules that would have required tech companies to turn over source code. The rules will be reissued after a revision to take into account amendment suggestions.

Engadget reports the World Bank’s latest Global Financial Inclusion database states that 12% of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa have mobile wallets, making it the most advanced region for the etechnology. Kenya leads the way with 58%. BizTechAfrica notes M-PESA, one of the most popular payment systems, will launch the 2nd generation of its platform in Kenya next week bringing improved speed and efficiency. Meanwhile a Pew Research report notes cell phone ownership has reached about 90% in Nigeria and South Africa. Texting is still the most common activity on phones in the region followed by photos and video and mobile banking.

 

News From You:

Jaymz668 sent us this story from TechDirt. Netflix will be begin rolling out encryption via HTTPs over the coming year for all of its infrastructure including streams. Although previous trials impacted server capacity by 50% Netflix is now confident that it can implement HTTPs at a lower capacity cost. Tests start this quarter. And from the same story, Mozilla has proposed to deprecate unencrypted web pages – sites that use http: – in a move they hope will encourage web developers to move to HTTPs. As a carrot the browser will only implement new features on sites using HTTPs.

Starfuryzeta let us know about the Ars Technica story that Cynaogen is partnering with Microsoft to integrate Bing, Skype, OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook, and Microsoft Office into Cyanogen OS. MS has committed to creating native integrations of those apps as well.

 

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/16/8428259/yahoo-microsoft-search-partnership-renewal

http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/16/8427381/cyanogen-microsoft-partnership-apps-services-bundle

http://searchengineland.com/bing-reaches-20-percent-search-milestone-in-us-market-218574

 

Picks of the day:
Mistobox – Personalized Coffee Delivered
Blue Bottle at Home (formerly Tonx)

Messages

David from finally Spring has sprung St. Paul:
As dominant as Google is in Europe people can still choose to use another search engine. Why don’t these companies that are claiming they are affected by Google’s dominance use advertising to point people at other search sites or create partnerships with other search sites to help cover the cost of advertising in things like magazines and bill boards and their own web pages?

Ian in Sunny San Diego on government collection of metadata:
I think a possible solution would be: any government collecting data from its citizens should be required to open source that data. This has two positive effects to help ensure that only “appropriate” data is collected.

PARAPHRASING NOW
First, since the data will be public, we can see if any of it is dangerous to law-abiding citizens.

Second, faster detection of illegal activity since more eyes are on it.

=====

Friday’s guests:  Darren Kitchen & Len Peralta

 

Natali Morris joins the show to discuss the EU’s antitrust objections to Google and Patrick Beja drops back in to tell us why France wants to record all data from its ISPs.

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:  Natali Morris and Patrick Beja 

Headlines: 

EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager announced the issuance of a Statement of Objections to Google regarding the search engine’s placement of it’s own comparison shopping results. Google has 10 weeks to respond. If the objections are not resolved Google could face a fine of up to 10% of annual sales and possible requirements to change business practices. The EU also announced the beginning of an investigation into Android and Google’s practice of requiring bundles of software be included as well as accusations that Google tries to prevents forks of the open source operating system.

TechCrunch reports a new Tumblr mobile app has added several desktop features of the site to the app like creating secondary blogs or posting to submission blogs. There’s also a Tumblr Widget that you can add to your today screen to show what’s trending. And a iOS users can now cut and paste video links to make video posts just like their android cousins. Better post filtering options are among the other new features.

CNET reports Samsung told Reuters that demand for the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge is much higher than expected. The Korea Times reports a source says Samsung expects to ship 10 million S6s and S6 Edges in the first 26 days after launch.

Reuters reports that Chinese transportation robotics firm Ninebot has acquired Segway makers of a competing self-balancing scooter. The terms were not disclosed, but Sequoia Capital China and Xiaomi invested 80 million dollars in Ninebot to help fund the acquisition. Segway named Ninebot in a patent infringement complaint in September 2014. So remember kids, can’t beat ‘em? Buy ‘em.

PCWorld has just posted a review of Alcatel’s Onetouch Watch. Highlights include the, price: $150 – making it the cheapest smartwatch on the market, standard USB charging interface, 3 days of battery life at medium brightness, and works with iPhone and Android Smartphones. Misses include design and feel, small feature set, semi-useful notifications, and limited activity-tracking tools that do calories burned, miles walked, minutes active and hours slept.

The Verge reports that Twitter has unveiled a new homepage for people who aren’t signed in. Targeted at new users, it displays a curated collection of timelines showing off popular parts of Twitter, including pop artists, cute animals, space news, business news, actors and actresses, and tech news sites. Click on one and you’ll see a real-time conversation from those accounts. The new homepage also includes a prominent search bar that suggests queries for popular trends and hashtags, like #2016Election.

Tech Crunch reports that Tinder released an update today that integrates with Instagram. Users can scroll through the most recent 34 Instagram pictures from their potential matches to see what food they’ve been eating and how they rock a selfie. Users with private Instagram accounts, will have the option to grant Tinder access, which would make your Instagram public on Tinder only. Tinder now also supports common connections, letting users see degrees of separation and Facebook interests.

The Huffinton Post India is reporting India’s Cleartrip, NDTV, Newshunt and the Times Group announced that they are pulling out of Facebook’s internet.org initiative today, citing support for net neutrality as the reason. Internet.org provides access to services without counting against data usage costs. Many net neutrality supporters criticize such ‘zero-rating’ as creating an unbalanced playing field for startups.

 

News From You:

Ninja3000 gave us a heads up on Huawei’s new P8 smartphone announced at a London launch event. According to Android Central the P8 features a steel body, 64-bit 8-core Kirin 920 processor, 3GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, microSD slot for up to 128GB of additional storage, a 13-megapixel optical image stabilized camera,, 5.2” 1080p display and a 2600 mAh fixed internal battery. The P8 will ship with Huawei’s EMUI 3.1 software on Android Lollipop and come in black, gold, grey and champagne. It will launch in 30 countries costing 499 euros for the standard version or 599 euros for the P8 Max with 64 GB of storage in black or gold. An affordable version may come to the US this summer.

JohnEllsworth3 shared this ArsTechnica story about Chrome version 42 disabling old Java and Silverlight plug-ins. Those plug-ins use the 90s era Netscape Plugin API to extend browser functionality. Chrome 42 will be turn that API off by default. Users who need that functionality can re-enable the API setting. However, by September Google plans to permanently kill the plug-ins because they cause “hangs, crashes, security incidents and code complexity”. The company suggests developers who are reliant on the plug-ins should move to more open web standards. Chrome for Linux since version 35 and mobile browsers do not support the plug-ins either.

 

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.rudebaguette.com/2015/04/15/europes-1-hosting-provider-threatens-leave-latest-french-surveillance-law-passes/

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.numerama.com%2Fmagazine%2F32804-regardez-cazeneuve-dire-que-la-vie-privee-n-est-pas-une-liberte.html&edit-text=&act=url

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/15/us-google-eu-idUSKBN0N610E20150415

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/15/google-faces-antitrust-action-from-eu-competition-watchdog

http://googleblog.blogspot.be/2015/04/the-search-for-harm.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/11539630/QandA-Why-has-the-EU-slapped-Google-with-monopoly-charges.html

http://recode.net/2015/04/14/here-is-googles-internal-response-to-the-imminent-e-u-charges-memo/

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32315649

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/09/google-blocked-acers-rival-phone-to-prevent-android-fragmentation/

 

Pick of the day:

Tom from terrific Toronto writes in:

Hello Tom and Jennie:

With regards to DTNS 2462 and your conversation about Windows unveiling an accessibility dev centre. I would like to pick the weekly Assistive Technology Update podcast.

The latest episode #200, is a special look-back episode, but generally speaking each week they cover the key news in assistive technology, have app reviews, and have an in-depth interview. There are very detailed show notes that include links and a transcript of the interview.

I find it very useful to keep up to date on what’s going on with assistive technology!

http://www.eastersealstech.com/category/assistive-tech-update/
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/assistive-technology-update/id442159129?mt=2

Cheers,

Tom

Messages

Stacey Byerly from rainy Georgia :

Hi Tom
Love the show THANK YOU for a great show

I think Patrick has something there with people being scared to use their phones because of data caps being so low. I suggest apps to many of my friends and family members some of these people don’t know what a gigabyte is. Some don’t want to do anything on their phones because data caps scare them. That might be how the big networks keep traffic down.
I myself used a lot of data this month I’m one of the lucky ones that have an unlimited data plan with unlimited tethering for 60USD (picture attached) haven’t been throttled yet
Thanks
Stacey Byerly

Gaspare from once again rainy in Tampa Florida has a comment on the Reddit button.

“As you described it, it reminded me instantly of a social experiment called “the game.” Thought you might find it interesting, and btw… We all just lost the game…

Christian Cantrell said:

It reminded him of stock trading by employees with limited shares and he theorized: “the button experiment was created by a bored employee of a publicly traded company with no more stock to trade, and who wanted to share his or her pain with millions of fellow Redditors.”

Christian (still waiting to click)

Jason, from springtime Seattle which cannot decide between six more weeks of rain or apocalyptic levels of sunshine and clear skies.

Dear Tom, Jenny, and NotPatrick –

How is it that Monday’s news of the security fix in Mac OS X 10.10.3 wasn’t the lead story? Effectively, there’s a major privilege escalation bug in every version of OS X ever. Apple released a patch for 10.10 (Yosemite) and told every user of previous versions “look, the upgrade to Yosemite is fee, so we wont be patching earlier versions. You’re on your own.”

Users of applications that just don’t work with Yosemite are, of course, left swinging in the wind.

Can you imagine the crapstorm that would ensue if Microsoft fixed a major security release in Windows 10 and told users of Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 “hey, the upgrade is free, we won’t be patching your old version”.

Why the free pass for Apple?

Chris in Irvine wanted to comment on the teen being charged a felony for using the teacher’s password.

Turns out when Chris was in school he I created a visual basic application that was a clone of the software used to lock down the PCs. He writes: “The teacher would use a key combination to enter the application and unlock the PC after entering the password. My program intercepted this and displayed it’s own password entry box which would then log the password in a hidden file…. the password securing all of the school’s computers was “book”.. ” He got a three day suspension he continues ” I feel what I did was considerably worse and my punishment of a three day suspension should be more than sufficient in my eyes.

Sheala writes pointing out lots of schools have old tech, insufficient password policies and:

“Added to all that is the fact that the teachers computer is often the only one in he room. So it often gets used for a quick but of research by students. Or teachers will get students to help out. There are any number of activities that make it normal for a kid to be at a teachers computer. And so bad behavior is easily missed.

There are a lot of computer classes in my district taught by teachers that know the bare minimum. And they aren’t teaching information security.”

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Wednesday’s guest: Nate Lanxon