Darren Kitchen on and we talk about how Microsoft did defending their right to spy on their own customer’s email accounts. He was a French blogger. Also Len Peralta is here to illustrate the show!

MP3

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 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 and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guests: Darren Kitchen of hak5.org and Len Peralta of the arts.

Headlines

PC World reports Microsoft Deputy General Counsel John Frank posted an explanation of the steps Microsoft took before investigating the Hotmail account of a French blogger in order to build a case against Alex Kibkalo who was arrested Wednesday and accused of stealing trade secrets and leaking Windows code. Frank stated Microsoft has the legal right to look into its own services, but only did so in a very limited way and only after determining the search would have qualified for a court order. Microsoft claims it could not get a court order to search itself since the court would see no need to issue it.

Berke80 has been keeping us informed on the ground as the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has ordered a DNS block on Twitter in order to stop the spread of recordings meant to implicate the Prime Minister on corruption charges. Twitter seems like it may have removed verification from the Prime Ministers account. The Verge reports Turkish citizens are accessing Twitter by posting through SMS, or using alternate DNS like Google’s Public DNS. A picture of the Google DNS Inumber, 8.8.8.8 spraypainted on a wall is making the rounds.

VentureBeat reports Vicarious, an AI company just closed a round of funding that included investments from Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, as well as actor Ashton Kutcher. The company is attempting to replicate the human neocortex in order to develop an AI that thinks like humans do. Right now the company is working on getting its AI to recognize objects shapes and textures.

Reed Hastings posted to the Netflix blog arguing that net neutrality rules should be expanded to govern peering, the practice of large networks exchanging traffic, to essentially make the Internet work. Hastings did not say how he would like interconnection agreements regulated. Netflix recently agreed to a paid peering arrangement with Comcast. The call for regulation is seen as grandstanding by some in the industry, as Netflix could have chosen to continue to deliver data through CDNs and transit providers. But they don’t want to do that, because Netflix saves money when ISPs use its Open Connect program, as Cablevision does. On the other hand, ISPs like Verizon and Comcast, with competing products, don’t want to invite Netflix servers into their last mile. Thus the arguing. The upshot of all this, is large companies are posturing about net neutrality in order to help their business save money, and you, the consumer are probably not the priority on either side of this debate.

Speaking of net neutrality and whether it should be extended to interconnection and peering. Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOm reports Harold Feld, SVP at Public Knowledge suggests actual transit providers like Level 3 and Cogent and ISPs who want to merge, like say TWC and Comcast, should provide data to the FCC that could actually be analyzed to understand what the problem actually is, rather than just reacting to vague assertions with vague regulation.

Politico reports Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and other big tech executives will meet Friday with US President Barack Obama to discuss issues of privacy, technology and intelligence. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was reportedly invited but could not make it. Zuckerberg recently posted he felt it would take a very long time for true reform and called on the US government to be much more transparent. President Obama is expected to announce the future of the phone metadata program soon.

Ars Technica reports that Version 0.9.0 of the Bitcoin Core software (previously known as Bitcoin-QT) includes 5 changes meant to make transaction malleability much more difficult to exploit. Transaction malleability uses confusion between transaction ids and actual verification of transactions to cover up theft. Mt. Gox blamed trannsaction malleability for its losses.

News From You:

Speaking of Mt. Gox, HobbitfromPA pointed us to the CNET article that Mt. Gox annoucned Thursday it found 199,999.99 of its missing bitcoins on March 7th in an unused wallet it had lying around. So the number of missing bitcoins has dropped from 850,000 to 650,000.

habichuelacondulce posted a Motherboard article saying US NSA General Counsel Rajesh De, testifying in front of the Civil Liberties Oversight Board, affirmed that collection of data under Section 702 was done with the full knowledge and assistance of the companies from which information was obtained. In an interview with The Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman, De reiterated “all communications content and associated metadata harvested by the NSA under a 2008 surveillance law occurred with the knowledge of the companies.” referring to PRISM and upstream collection.

the_corley passed along the Wall Street Journal article reporting a source says the White House is testing phones from Samsung and LG for internal use. Previously only BlackBerry phones were allowed due to security concerns. White House Communications Agency, a military unit in charge of President Barack Obama’s communications acknowlegde it is piloting and using a variety of mobile devices.

Discussion Section Links: 

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2014/03/20/strengthening-our-policies-for-investigations.aspx

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/03/20/court-docs-microsoft-searched-through-bloggers-e-mail-to-track-down-alleged-leaker/

Pick of the Day:  Ninite.com

Hola DTNS crew! Tom, I’ve followed you since BoL and am ecstatic about the success of DTNS. For a pick, I would like to recommend

Ninite is a service that allows you to grab an auto-installer for many commonly used Windows applications such as Chrome, .NET, MSE, Dropbox, the list goes on and on. Not only will it download the most recent version of the programs selected from the companies, but automates the process to decline any crap-ware offers (sorry Ask Toolbar).

As an IT Professional that has to deal with an environment where images can’t be used for reworks due to a plethora of hardware, Ninite has been a huge time saver.

Joel from The U.P.

Monday’s Guest: Justin Robert Young! 

Farhad Manjoo to explain why ONE monitor is actually better than TWO. Don’t agree? You better listen. Plus we reveal our very first Twitter posts.

MP3

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 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 and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Farhad Manjoo, State of the Art columnist for The New York Times

Headlines

Hack This! GigaOm reports Facebook introduced its own programming language called ‘Hack’ meant to make it easier for developers to write code quickly. Hack is open source, so anyone can use it and combines elements of static languages like C with more dynamic approaches like PHP. Static languages catch errors faster, but dynamic languages allow rapid development. Hack supposedly is the best of both worlds.

Galaxy S5 pre-orders begin tomorrow: The Next Web reports AT&T will start taking orders for Samsung’s new Galaxy S5 phone and Gear watches tomorrow online and in stores. The S5 sells for $200 on a 2-year contract, $650 contract-free, shipping in early April. The Gear 2 watch sell for $299 and the Gear 2 Neo and Gear Fit for $199. All of them are set to ship in early April.

Thank you FirstTech: The St. Paul Pioneer-Press’s Julio Ojeda-Zapata reports the sad news that FirstTech in Uptown Minneapolis will close its doors March 29th. FirstTech was the first retail outlet for Apple computers in the late 1970s when the store was known as Team Electronics. The store celebrated its 35th anniversary in 2012 but could not compete with national vendors and the Apple Store itself.

Computerworld founder dies: PC World reports more sad news. IDG announced Thursday that its founder and chairman Patrick J. McGovern died March 19th at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, California. MCGovern founded International Data Corporation in 1964, now a subsidiary of IDG. Three years later McGovern launched Computerworld.

GigaOm reports OpenGarden, makers of mesh networking apps for Windows, OS X and Android, now has an iOS app called FireChat. The messaging app connects people who are nearby, by taking advantage of Apple’s multi-peer connectivity framework that allows devices to connect or Bluetooth or Wifi without using the Internet. Great for subways…if you want to chat with people.

ReCode reports Tribune company has a new app for iOS and Android called Newsbeat that reads you news items from a news feed. You can customize in advance or the app will learn your tastes as you fast forward or skip stories. The app also personalizes things liek weather and traffic based on location. The app is available now and ad-supported.

News From You

mayesa submitted the TechCrunch article noting Google has announced it will always us an encrypted HTTPS connection whenever a user checks email or sends mail through Gmail. Messages will also remain encrypted inside Google’s datacenter network as well. The NSA has reportedly been tapping cables between foreign datacenters of US companies.

habichuelacondulce pointed us to the CNET article about Twitters new FirstTweet feature. In celebration of its 8th birthday tomorrow, Twitter has a tool at first-tweets.com that lets you see yours or anyones very first tweet. April 17, 2008 Farhad, you let us know it was national high five day!. — Jan.7, 2007 I was “Sitting at the CNET booth at CES”

tekkyn00b sent us the Verge article about ex-Microsoft employee Alex Kibkalo being arrested and accused of stealing trade secrets and leaking confidential beta copies of Windows 8 to an unnamed French technology blogger. MS identified the leaker after the blogger contacted another MS employee by email. Kibkalo works in Mictosoft’s Lebanon office. Computerworld reports Wzor.net, a frequent source of leaked copies of Windows went offline Thursday after the arrest and the Twitter account has also disappeared.

tm204 pointed us to the PC World article about HP’s plans to start making 3D printers. CEO Meg Whitman, speaking to shareholders said the two big problems with 3D printers are speed and quality, particularly the surface of the substrate. Whitman said the company has solved these problems with 3D printers and will make a big announcement about them in June.

 Discussion Section Links:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/technology/personaltech/surviving-and-thriving-in-a-one-monitor-world.html?_r=0

https://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/monitors/en/dual_monitors_boost_productivity_whitepaper.pdf

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/technology/personaltech/15basics.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324339204578173252223022388?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424127887324339204578173252223022388.html

http://lifehacker.com/do-distractions-help-you-work-better-1178468917

Pick of the Day:  Backblaze

Hey Tom-

Since you are accepting PotD suggestions, I wanted to throw my hat in the ring. I highly recommend that everyone keep an off-site backup of some kind, and I have done a lot of homework and recommend Backblaze very highly.

There are lots of ways to keep an off-site backup (Mozy, Carbonite, Crashplan, Transporter…even Dropbox or the recently discounted Google Drive). But for me, Backblaze is the best balance of cost, security, and ease of use.

I pay $5/month for unlimited backups, and I definitely get my money’s worth. I have an external Drobo holding over 100,000 photos and videos, plus the usual cadre of music and documents and whatnot. It is currently 2.1TB of stuff, and Backblaze never bats an eye.

In a nutshell:
– $5/month unlimited
– Data is heavily encrypted on your machine before transmission and storage
– Incremental backups (roll back as far as a month if a file gets deleted or damaged)
– Lightweight, install-and-forget client for Mac and Windows
– Backs up the whole computer by default (you don’t have to pick folders or keep your stuff somewhere specific)
– Free Internet restores (from anywhere) as zip files, or get mailed a USB drive or hard disk for a fee

Thanks for keeping up the good work…Drew (audio listener since BoL)

Friday’s Guests: Darren Kitchen & Len Peralta!

Nicole Spag is on the show to talk Sony and Oculus’s VR headset announcements AND whether that iPad is safe for your baby.

MP3

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 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 and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guest:  Nicole Spagnuolo 

Headlines:

Project Morpheus: The Verge reports Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida announced the company’s Virtual Reality headset during a panel at the Game Developer’s Conference called “Driving the Future of Innovation.” Project Morpheus is a prototype headset, similar to the Oculus Rift, that currently works with a PS4 by HDMI and USB connection, though the company would like to make it wireless. It uses 1080p LCD screens and has a 90-degree field of view. The PlayStation and Camera and PlayStation Move integrate with the headset which tracks position 100 times per second. An SDK is on its way, but Yoshida told the Verge that the product would not be out for consumers this year.

Ars Technica reports the Oculus team had a little announcement of its own today. The Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 or DK2 bumps the pixel count to 960×1080 per eye, reduces image persistence to 2-3 ms, meaning smoother images,adds an on-device USB port for accessories, and an external CMOS sensor to assist in position tracking. DK2 will be $350 at launch and you can pre-order today at www.oculusvr.com/order, with the first batch expected to ship in July.

Engadget reports that Oppo unveiled the Find 7 phone in Beijing and yes it can take 50-megapixel photos, if you have a use for such capability. Although before you get too pixel crazy it’s just a 13-megapixel sensor using software tricks to boost the count. It can also record 4K video. The 5.5-inch Android-based Color OS phone will sell for The $499 for Find 7a or Lite in China, with 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, or for $599 Find 7 with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage,and a quad HD (2,560 x 1,440) display. The Find7a should arrive mid-April and the Find 7 follows in May or June.

Flappy Bird to fly again?

GigaOM reports GE and Quirky are teaming up on an Air Conditioning unit that learns your preferences over time and can cool your room perfectly without any input from you. The unit will work with the Wink app which you’re probably already using for your connected egg carton, right? The 8,000 BTU WiFi -enabled unit will be out in May for $300.

Remember how Huawei was bucking the trend and going to put out a dual-boot Android and Windows Phone? Well they got to ‘em. TechCrunch passes along the FierceWireless report that Huawei has changed its mind and will not release a dual-OS handset, though it still plans to release a Windows Phone in 2014. Asustek recently backed off from a dual-boot phone of their own after reportedly getting pressured by Google and Microsoft.

News From You

 AllanAV submitted the Ars Technica article indicating Cogent isn’t the only Internet transit provider upset with ISP’s demanding paid interconnections. Level 3’s general counsel for regulatory policy Michael Mooney, posted to their blog complaining that ISP’s are using their near-monopolies over the last mile in the US, to strongarm providers into paying. The ISP’s say the ratio is out of whack because much more traffic comes into their netowrk than out. Level 3 points out that’s becuase end users do more downloaading than ulpoading, and proposes bit miles, the distance traffic is carried, rather than the direction, should be the basis for interconenction agreements. Level 3 also argues that FCC network neutrality regulation should cover peering agreements as well.

Speaking of regulation, Draconos sent in the Engadget story reporting attorneys general in Florida, Indiana and a few other states are working with the US Department of Justice to determine if the proposed merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable would violate antitrust laws. This gives the DoJ a few more resources, though it isn’t unusual for states to join in antitrust investigations.

cincyhuffster submitted the Pandora blog post announcing price increases for new subscribers. Existing subscribers will continue to pay the 1009 rate of $3.99 a month. New subscribers will have to pony up an extra buck at $4.99 a month, starting in May. Annual subscribers, who were paying $46 a year will be moved to the monthly $3.99 plan when their next year is up.

ChaseLaursen posted the Globe and Mail story celebrating the arrival of the Google ChromeCast in Canada for $39. The Chromecast also launched Wednesday in ten European countries — Germany, Denmark, France, Spain, Finland, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden and Britain. App compatibility varies by country. Canada for instance gets YouTube and Netflix. Britain gets the BBC and in France, you can use it with FranceTV Pluzz and SFR TV.

Discussion Section Links:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/03/sony-reveals-virtual-reality-headset-plans-at-gdc-panel/

http://www.today.com/moms/surprise-doc-says-ipads-may-be-ok-babies-2D79361986

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/16/290110766/parenting-in-the-age-of-apps-is-that-ipad-help-or-harm?utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=npr&utm_campaign=nprnews&utm_content=03162014

http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1840251&resultClick=3

Pick of the Day:  Nite Ize Gear Ties

Whats Up!

Something that I use on a daily basis to keep my cables organized are Nite Ize Gear Ties. Granted, they are glorified twist ties, but they’re super durable and useful. I use one to keep the usb with my external, one for my macbook charge cable, and one for my headphones. When they’re not holding cables, they make great stands for phones/tablets.

Thanks for the great Show!

Tuesday’s  Guest:  Farhad Manjoo, of the New York Times