Iyaz Akhtar is on to talk about the new PlayStation Vue Internet TV service. Should you cancel cable?

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Show Notes

Today’s guests: Iyaz Akhtar, Senior Associate Editor at CNET

Headlines: 

TechCrunch reports Microsoft’s Executive VP of Operating Systems told the audience at WinHEC in Shenzen, China that Windows 10 will launch this summer in 190 countries and 111 languages. HE also said Windows 10 will be a free upgrade fro all Windows 7 users regardless of whether the user can prove their copy is legitimate or not. Kind of an amnesty program for Windows pirates tech. AND Microsoft will give select Xiaomi Mi 4 users the chance to test Windows 10 on their phones. Yes their android-based MI phones.

CNET reports on the launch of Sony’s Play Station Vue Internet TV service in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia today, starting at $50 a month after a 7 day free trial. Subscribers can watch 60 channels from CBS, NBCm Fox, Discovery, Scripps, Turner and Viacom, with AMC coming soon. $10 extra adds regional sports channels and another $10 adds 26 various other channels. The service provides 3 day on demand access to many shows programming and allows a cloud DVR to store recordings for up to 28 days. Streams can be viewed on the PS3 and PS4. Support for iPads and other devices is coming soon.

Tim Cook talked with Fast company in a wide ranging interview that touched on Steve Jobs legacy and comparisons of Apple with Microsoft. Cook said he thinks Apple is more willing than Microsoft to walk away from legacy technology that holds it back. He also unsurprisingly said the Apple Watch will be the first smartwatch that matters. Doubtless that is true. To Tim Cook.

Engadget has a story on HTC’s new “Uh Oh Protection” program that will replace your broken “One M9” smart phone once for free. HTC will replace your phone for free within the 1st year of ownership if you break the screen, damage the phone, or move carriers. If you happen to take care of the phone for the 1st year you’ll be rewarded with a $100 discount on the purchase of a new One phone in the future.

The Verge reports Google X’s Astro Teller spoke at SXSW telling the audience that Google’s research lab is opening up about their projects more often and earlier. He mentioned that the Google Glass Explorer program was an attempt to do this but it was marketed too much and too often implied it was a finished project. He also talked about how baloons for Project Loon were built to fail fast so they wouldn’t accidentally drift into illegal airspace, stories about self-driving cars avoiding ducks, and how the team was disappointed when a drone delivery prototype didn’t crash in windy conditions.

CNET reports that a German court in Frankfurt has given a preliminary ruling that could ban UberPop. This means UberPop’s carpooling service would not be allowed to run in Germany and could face a fine of 250,000 Euros ($266,000). The case against UberPop was brought to court by Taxi Deutschland which argued that UberPop is illegal because drivers do not have to have the proper licenses to drive people around. Since the ruling is preliminary UberPop can still operate until a final verdict is rendered in 3 to 4 weeks. Uber Taxi and Uber Black services in Germany are unaffected.

 

News From You:

lookatthemonkeys notes The Verge reports French police visited Ubers Paris office as part of an investigation into UberPop, seizing email, documents and smartphones. And to complete the hat trick, starfuryzeta noted the Gizmodo story that Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and almost 30 others have been charged in South Korea with operating illegal taxi services. Police there seized 432 itens as evidence including handsets.

ancrod2 found the Popular Science writeup of Grant Campany, director for the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder Xprize, speaking at SXSW about how close we are to having a real working tricorder. The prize will go to companies that can develop a home device to tracks vital signs and diagnoses up to 15 health conditions. 10 finalists were recently announced.The next round comes with 480 testing sessions in June at the University of California San Diego. The winners of the competition will be announced in January 2016, on Star Trek’s 50-year anniversary.

Guyfromtrinidad sent us this story from Engadget reporting on the fate of 43 year old Nigel Wilson in England who flew his drone over 6 football stadiums as well as Westminster and the Queen Victoria Memorial. Wilson has been charged with contravening the CAA’s Air Navigation Order 2009, which among other things forbids flying a drone near an event hosting more than 1,000 people. Wilson was summoned to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on April 16th.

 

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.cnet.com/news/sony-launches-playstation-vue-as-bigger-pricier-internet-tv/

http://www.cnet.com/news/playstation-vue-vs-sling-tv-streaming-live-tv-compared/

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1R6zswJ0O0Q9RMldnsHAC6VrQjJTOaUYVzWT7MOt6_L4/pubhtml

http://www.theverge.com/a/online-tv-stream-price-guide

 

Pick of the day: RiffTrax

My pick is something a little different, RiffTrax!

If you are unfamiliar, rifftrax.com features some of the cast of Mystery Science Theater. The group records funny commentary tracks for major films, B-Movies and shorts.

Commentaries for major films are offered as .MP3 Downloads that you’ll then need to sync up with a copy of the film yourself. But if that sounds like too much work, they also offer a great selection of smaller films that you can download pre-synced and DRM free!

Some of my personal favorites are Viva Knievel, The Guy From Harlem, Kingdom of the Spiders (Staring William Shatner!) and Cool as Ice!

Check them out!

Rob (@blamrob on twitter)

(And no, I don’t work for Rifftrax or stand anything to gain by recommending them) :)Messages

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Warren Owen writes us with an idea.

Nintendo has dropped quarter after quarter, year after year, for half a decade. With roughly $6B in sales, yet only $29M in profit, Nintendo has a market cap of $16.8B.

Maybe now is the time. Time for what? Well What if another company just came in and bought Nintendo. Say a company with $173B in sales, $37B in profit, and $8.5B CASH ON HAND. What would happen to the “great mobile wars” if Apple bought Nintendo, and had everyones favorite characters only available on iOS? What if you could play these games, and then “AirPlay” them to your HDTV through your AppleTV (voiceover – now featuring HBO Now). What would that look like in every home across the planet? And, keep DeNA in the mix, to continue the development of new games with our old favorite heroes.
This would seem to be the perfect move for Apple.

Sorry this was long and dramatic.
What are your thoughts?

@WOnet on all the social things

BOL REUNION!

Just announced: The Buzz Out Loud 10 Year reunion on March 29th at 12:30 pacific /3:30 p eastern and 7:30p GMT! It’s free! Tom, Molly, Veronica, Jason and many other special guests! Tickets for the event at the Hak 5 warehouse are available at http://bit.ly/BOLreunion but if you want to attend online you don’t need even need a ticket. The event will stream live on Alpha Geek Radio and on YouTube with more details forthcoming.

Buzztown’s Back!

PODCAST AWARDS

Also Podcast Awards! Remember yesterday, and the day before, when we told you how you could vote for your favorite podcast in the Podcast Awards? Well guess what, you can vote again today! For example, you could vote for DTNS in the technology category, but you can also support Night Attack in the “Mature” and “Video” categories. Also you can vote for The Instance, Film Sack and our good friends at The Morning Stream and Night Attack. I guess you could also vote for Serial. But only once. Vote once a day at http://www.podcastawards.com/ until March 24th.

Thursday’s guest: Justin Robert Young

 

Patrick Beja talks with us about Nintendo’s tentative move to mobile phones and tablets and the mysterious NX console platform that’s coming.

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: Patrick Beja, DTNS contributor and host of the Pixels podcast, Le Rendez-vous Tech and The Phileas Club

Headlines: 

It’s that time again. Apple Television Rumor time! This one comes from the Wall Street Journal. Apple will supposedly launch a TV service with around 25 channels for around $30-$40 dollars a month. It would include ABC CBS and Fox channels but not NBC because of a dispute with Comcast. However 9to5 Mac has a source that says NBC wants to launch apps on Apple TV, Fire TV and Xbox in the second half of this year. The new NBC app would require a cable subscription in order to us.

 

Engadget reports that Google has started reviewing some apps before they are available for download in the Google Play Store.
The policy, which has been in effect for a few month, uses a mix of algorithms and human intervention.  Google also launched a rating system for Android apps that will label which games are appropriate for various age groups.

Nintendo announced in a press conference that it will partner with mobile game publisher DeNA to make original mobile games using Nintendo characters and worlds. Along with the new games, this autumn Nintendo will launch a cross-platform membership service for mobile devices, PC and Nintendo devices. One of those devices will someday be a new game console referred to as NX. Nintendo called it an “entirely new concept” but we won’t hear any details on that until next year. Ars Technica has one of the best stories rounding up the details.

Engadget reports Microsoft announced Windows 10 will support logins by fingerprint, facial recognition and iris scan.  Of course the device it’s running on has to have the right sensor—- but a framework called Hello will make sure the login experience is consistent across different manufacturers.  For devices without sensors, a feature called Passport lets you enter a password and device-specific PIN.  All the biometric data and the PIN will be stored on the machine.

Engadget notes Sling TV launched today on Xbox One. You can pin Sling TV to your Home screen, control the app with Kinect for Xbox One and Snap with other activities so you can play games and watch Sling TV at the same time. Existing Xbox One owners can try out the service free for a month (up from the usual 7 day trial). If you don’t have an Xbox One you can get 3 months free if you purchase an Xbox One before March 22 2015 from a Microsoft retail outlet or online store.

PC World reports Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang revealed details about the GeForce Titan X at the GPU Technology Conference.
The card has 3072 CUDA cores, 12 GB of RAM and costs $1,000.
Huang claimed the single-precision floating point performance is 7 TFLOPS but only 200 GFLOPs in double-precision. The one benchmark revealed was neural net analysis.  Titan X can process the data in 1.5 days compared to 5 days for the Titan Black.

ReCode reports NVidia also announced a self-driving car platform called Drive PX that will go on sale in May for $10,000. This is the platform teased at CES, powered by two Tegra X1 chips and supposedly 3,000 times faster than DARPA’s DAVE platform. The platform also can be trained and Huang said it gets smarter with every OTA update. NVidia hopes to expand its partnerships with Tesla, Audi and BMW. He’ll probably get his wish with Tesla since Elon Musk joined him on stage to talk about security with self-driving cars.

ReCode reports Facebook has launched the ability to send payments through Facebook Messenger at no cost.  Once you’ve tied your debit card to your Facebook account, you can click a dollar sign icon to open a payment screen in messenger.  If someone sends you money and you don’t have a debit card attached, Facebook will hold the money for you until you get it set up.  No payment can be sent without a PIN or thumbprint scan.  The rollout will start in selected US cities and progress internationally later.

3D printing start-up, Carbon3D, has developed a new 3-D printing process that works fast enough to be used for production instead of just protyping reports Re/Code. The process is called CLIP or Continuous Liquid Interface Production. CLIP involves using light and oxygen to grow objects from a pool of resin instead of building the object layer by layer. Carbon3D says CLIP is 25-100 times faster than traditional 3-D writing and can work with a wider array of materials. Carbon3D debuted the technology Monday at the TED conference in Vancouver and said they are turning it inot a shipping product but did not state price.

News From You:

tahras submitted the Verge article that Microsoft marketing chief Chris Capossel told folks at the Microsoft Convergence event that Microsoft is researching a new name for the Project Spartan browser that will come in Windows 10. Testing shows that whatever the name is, it is perceived better if it has the name Microsoft at the beginning. A version of Internet Explorer will also ship with Windows 10 but it will be the last of its name.

KAPT_Kipper wants you to know that you can now pause videos on your Google Chromecast with your TV remote. As long as it is infrared and has a play/pause button.  TechCrunch reports that Chromecast uses the HDMI-CEC protocol for the function.  So if starting a cast turns your TV on, then this should work for you.  The functionality doesn’t work in every app yet but works in many.

tninja3000 sent us the GeekWire report that Microsoft will let third party retailers Amazon, Best Buy and Target sell the Microsoft Band wearable starting today. The fitness and health tracker already available in Microsoft stores costs $199.99 in the US and offers notifications and lightweight apps, and integration with Android, iOS and Windows Phone. The Microsoft Band will also launch April 15th in the UK,for £169.99.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://recode.net/2015/03/17/why-nintendo-making-mobile-games-is-such-a-big-deal/

http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/17/nintendo-partners-with-dena-to-brings-its-games-and-ip-to-smartphones/

http://www.cnet.com/news/mario-set-for-smartphones-as-nintendo-forges-new-mobile-deal/#ftag=CAD590a51e

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/03/nintendo-partners-with-dena-to-develop-mobile-phone-games/

http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/17/nintendo-nx-console/?ncid=rss_truncated

 

Pick of the day: streamingnation.com.au

G’day Tom, Jenny and Pals

Travis from Melbourne, Australia here – with a website that might be useful to other Aussies, especially over the next few weeks. It’s streamingnation.com.au, covering news about the local options for streaming video.

There’s two Netflix-ish services who’ve recently launched, being Presto and Stan, but the elephant in the room is Netflix itself (coming next week, baby!)

Streaming Nation also has lists of newly added shows and films, and has recommendations, which I’m keeping for those nights when my wife just can’t make up her mind

Keep up the awesome work.

Trav.

Messages

I am a cablevision internet subscriber. I don’t have a cable box, only a TiVo . If I subscribed to HBONOW through cablevision, how would I watch? Through apple TV with cable login? Would I have to get a box? If this is the case, why bother? Discounts? Otherwise apple TV would be more convenient, right? Thanks from one of your bosses, Bob

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Comcast in North Georgia cable modem users here. We have a 300 GB limit…. and if you cross the magic threshold, they just start charging you some flat rate for each additional 10 or 50 GB or something (I have NOT done this), so now they just make more money from bandwidth hogs.

Woo hoo. No more bandwidth caps. Just what I asked for, sort of.

whistl

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We asked for legal uses of P2P after the story that Windows 10 updates will be distributed peer to peer. Mink sent us a link to a makeuseof post from August 2013 that mentioned Archive.org, government data sets, BitTorrent Sync, and BitTorrent bundles. Branden from Winterless Salt Lake serves up 6.6 TB of apps and patches via P2P for the 40,000 computers in his school district. And William downloaded the entire BitCoin blockchain shaving a day off the time to get his bitcoin node up and running.

And Mink added the interesting question of “whether “mobile” (slower & less reliable networks with more data caps and using inherently smaller storage devices) will make torrents more or less attractive to users. “

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Hey guys!

A few months back I sent in an audio recording which you played where I discussed the opportunities that are created by GoPro’s new product with builtin wifi/internet service (hopefully). Meerkat would be crazy not to reach out to them for reasons I am sure you can understand. I shot Meerkats support a brief email as well since they are a fun little startup. They could do great things together.

Thanks!
Joe

BOL REUNION!

Just announced: The Buzz Out Loud 10 Year reunion on March 29th at 12:30 pacific /3:30 p eastern and 7:30p GMT! It’s free! Tom, Molly, Veronica, Jason and many other special guests! Tickets for the event at the Hak 5 warehouse are available at http://bit.ly/BOLreunion but if you want to attend online you don’t need even need a ticket. The event will stream live on Alpha Geek Radio and on YouTube with more details forthcoming.

Buzztown’s Back!

PODCAST AWARDS

Also Podcast Awards! Remember yesterday, and the day before, when we told you how you could vote for your favorite podcast in the Podcast Awards? Well guess what, you can vote again today! For example, you could vote for DTNS in the technology category, but you can also support Night Attack in the “Mature” and “Video” categories. Also you can vote for The Instance, Film Sack and our good friends at The Morning Stream and Night Attack. I guess you could also vote for Serial. But only once. Vote once a day at http://www.podcastawards.com/ until March 24th.

Wednesday’s guest: Iyaz Akhtar

 

Nicole Lee joins us to talk about Meerkat. Has it brought back SXSW’s app magic? Can it survive?

MP3

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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: Nicole Lee of Engadget.com

Headlines: 

The Verge reports Facebook updated its community standards page Sunday night to clarify what the policies are. They haven’t actually changed the policy. Among the clarifications Facebook says they want people to use the name they go by regularly, not necessarily their legal name. Hate speech is allowed for satire or commentary. Nudity is still not allowed but more strictly defined and exceptions made for artwork.

TechCrunch notes numbers of government requests for Facebook data were also released. Requests decreased in the US and UK while increasing in India, Turkey and Russia. The US still requests the most while India is number 2. The total number worldwide rose from 34,946 in the first half of the year, to 35,051 between July and December 2014.

The Verge reports Microsoft launched Office 2016 preview. Microsoft improved search, storage footprint, and email delivery performance, as well as image insertion in Word and Excel 2016. Not all the new features for Office 2016 are in the rpeview yet. Microsoft also launched a test version of Skype for Business, with the ability to integrate with Office apps. The final version of Skype for Business will be available in April, with the final Office 2016 coming later this year. Interested? sign up at Microsoft Connect website at connect.microsoft.com.

Reuters reports BlackBerry will launch high security tablet aimed at governments and enterprise in cooperation with IBM and Samsung. The SecuTABLET is based on the Galaxy Tab S 10.5 and works with BlackBerry’s SecuSuite for voice and data encryption. The device is undergoing certification by the German Federal Office for Information Security for secure rating. According to the Wall St Journal, the tablet will be available this summer at a price of $2,380

TechCrunch notes Elon Musk tweeted yesterday that a Tesla press conference will take place Thursday at 9 AM and “end range anxiety… via OTA software update. Affects entire Model S Fleet.”

TechCrunch has covered a new report by the Pew Research Center found 30% of US citizens surveyed have taken steps to shield or hide their information from the US government. TechCrunch notes 52% of those surveyed said they were “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” by government surveillance programs, but 46% said they were “not very concerned” or “not at all concerned.” The survey found that 87% of adults have heard at least something about government surveillance programs and 57% said it is unacceptable for the government to monitor the communications of US citizens, but a majority said spying elsewhere is OK. Most often peopleo change privacy settings on social media, avoiding apps entirely and using social media less. Well… is that about government interference or drunk selfies?

Engadget reports on the launch of free public Internet service at a Havana cultural center. Popular artist Kcho got approval from the state telecom Etecsa to open up his WiFi router at the cultural center. The connection is 2 Mbps but doesn’t caust a centavo.

Variety reports HBO Now will be offered by Cablevision to its broadband-only subscribers. In other words if you get your Internet fro Cablevision, you won’t also have to sign up for TV if you want HBO. Cablevision said it will provide pricing and other details about how HBO Now will be made available to broadband subs in the coming weeks.

News From You:

Rpattony posted the TorrentFreak article highlighting another of the many nuggets found in the recent US Open Internet order. “Nothing in this part prohibits reasonable efforts by a provider of broadband Internet access service to address copyright infringement or other unlawful activity.” It is apparently OK for the ISP to determine what is illegal and what is infringement.

Starfuryzeta sent us this story from the Verge reporting on Yahoo’s new Password-free email login. The new approach dubbed “on demand” passwords sends Yahoo email users a time sensitive code through an app or cellphone text message. No more need to remember a password. Every time you login you’ll be sent a new code. Just don’t lose the phone tied to the account. The new password features is available now and can be enabled from the security section of your account information page.

KAPT_Kipper found the Yahoo Tumbler post announcing the release of source code for Yahoo’s new end-to-end encryption browser extension for Yahoo Mail. The encryption interface is described as intuitive, however, it will have to be activated each time you want it and info like recipient, subject line and time will remain unencrypted. Yahoo used the Google end to end extension in the project. Yahoo released the source code to GitHub and plans to have end to end encryption available for all users by the end of the year.

Eziwireless sent us this Engadget report on Windows 10’s unique update feature. The Verge noticed that a leaked version of Windows 10 lets you grab updates from other PCs whether they’re local or online.This peer-to-peer network patching would accelerate the updating process as well as limiting bandwidth usage on metered internet connections.

Philman 132 submitted the Boing Bong BBS post about GNU Terry Pratchett. When implemented on Apache or Nginx, web-servers transmit a special “X-Clacks-Overhead” header reading “GNU Terry Pratchett.” Pratchett’s book Going Postal described a system called The Clacks where workers who died in the line of duty could have their name transmitted in the system’s signaling layer, because (“A man is not dead while his name is still spoken”

 

Discussion Section Links:  Twitter & Meerkat

blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/03/16/after-twitter-snub-meerkat-aims-to-push-out-new-features/?mod=rss_Technology

www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/16/meerkat-twitter-block-ben-rubin-social-graph

techcrunch.com/2015/03/16/meerkatroullette-is-chatroulette-for-meerkat-because-meerkat

meerkatroulette.com

techcrunch.com/2015/03/14/bird-vs-mammal

www.fastcompany.com/3043716/sxsw/twitter-only-gave-meerkat-2-hours-notice-before-cutting-access-to-the-social-graph

Pick of the Day: 

Christopher Ragsdale writes: In listening to this discussion on episode 2448 I was reminded of an interview I had heard recently with author Douglass Rushkoff about his book “Present Shock”. Not trying to sell books here. I think you and Jennie might be interested in the info in this book:

rushkoff.com/present-shock

Messages

Every time y’all talk about how bandwidth caps on home Internet access is a thing of the past, my left eye twitches in a peculiar manner. Y’see, I have Comcast as my ISP. The highest tier home service available in my area (Charleston, SC). And we have a 300GB per month cap. Did I mention that this cap only went into place about a year and a half ago? Surprisingly (or not?), not very long after the cap went into place, Comcast had the infamous share holder call in which the CEO stated flatly that Comcast has no plans to implement bandwidth caps.

Cheers,
-Sam

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Buzz Out Loud REUNION!

Join the Buzz Out Loud 10 Year reunion on March 29th at 12:30 pacific /3:30 p eastern and 7:30p GMT! It’s free! Tom, Molly, Veronica, Jason and many other special guests! Tickets for the event at the Hak 5 warehouse are available at http://bit.ly/BOLreunion but if you want to attend online you don’t need even need a ticket. The event will stream live on Alpha Geek Radio and on YouTube with more details forthcoming.

Buzztown’s Back!

PODCAST AWARDS

Also Podcast Awards! Remember yesterday, and the day before, when we told you how you could vote for your favorite podcast in the Podcast Awards? Well guess what, you can vote again today! For example, you could vote for DTNS in the technology category, but you can also support Night Attack in the “Mature” and “Video” categories. Also you can vote for The Instance, Film Sack and our good friends at The Morning Stream and Night Attack. I guess you could also vote for Serial. But only once. Vote once a day at http://www.podcastawards.com/ until March 24th.

Tuesday’s guest: Patrick Beja!