Brian Brushwood joins us to chat with Peter Bright about whether Verizon has started degrading Netflix traffic after they won their recent court victory over Net Neutrality. Also Sony ditches their PC business so it’s time to reassess how dead PC’s are.

MP3

Note: The video stream (which is in beta mind you) experienced a catastrophic streaming failure. We’re hoping it pops up out of YouTube at some point and we’ll put what survives up here. In the meantime here is a post-show hangout nee encore. – Tom

Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) of a video that’s just a still image with the audio 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

Sony to dump PC business
Recode reports Sony announced it will sell its VAIO PC business to investment fund Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) by the end of March. In the meantime Sony says it “will cease planning, design, and development of PC products,” and the Spring 2014 line launch will be its last. VAIO owners will still get support from either Sony or JIP. Sony will also make its TV division into a subsidiary and focus on high-end 4K models. All of this means about 5,000 jobs will be cut. Engadget reports Sony is also shutting down its digital bookstore in the US and Canada, transferring customers to Kobo starting in late March. Sony did have some good news, announcing a profitable 3rd quarter with $23 billion in revenue, up 24% over the same time last year on the strength of the PS4. However in a revised full-year forecast, Sony expects to lose $1.1 billion.

Verizon could be throttling Netflix and Amazon, but no actual evidence so far

News From You:

webitube posted on the subreddit a GigaOm article about an attack on an electrical substation near San Jose California. The Wall Street Journal reports snipers fired on the substation for almost 20 minutes, knocking out 17 transformers, as well as cutting nearby telephone cables. The damage took a month to repair. The attackers and their motives are still unknown.

habichuelcondulce and jaymz668 and Jose Gomez by email all sent us various links to the story of Dennis Aabo Sørensen who live science reports lost his hand as a result of a fireworks accident but now has a prosthetic hand that has a sense of touch. Electrodes embedded in Sørensen’s arm communicate with touch sensors in the prosthetic to deliver impulses to his remaining nerves. He can tell different objects by feel, according to a study detailed in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Silvestro Micera, a neural engineer at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in Switzerland, led the team that developed the hand.

mcfads23, who also happens to be our producer Jennie, submitted this psfk article on the subreddit, about Changefolio,at changefol.io a platform that makes it easy donate money to charities. The service connects with a user’s bank, then lets the user pick a charity. From then on, purchases can be rounded up or small percentages of purchases can be taken and automatically donated as micro-transactions. So for example you can have the service take 2% of your grocery bill every time you shop and donate it to a food bank. And of course their are graphs and achievements and the ability to post to Facebook and Twitter.

Amber Mac joins the show to talk about YouTube’s boss, Susan Wojcicki. Can she do for YT what she did for AdSense on Google Search? Also a way to revolutionize academic publishing with BitTorrent.
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

Wojcicki is new YouTube head: ReCode reports Susan Wojcicki, SVP of advertising for Google, is SVP of YouTube. Current YouTube head Salar Kamangar will apparently start work on his own projects, similar to the shift Andy Rubin made when he left Android. Wojcicki has recently been splitting her commerce-oriented duties with Sridhar Ramaswamy. She was the 16th employee at Google and housed the company in her garage for a time in 1998. Wojcicki has led the department responsible for AdWords and AdSense, the most profitable arm of Google.

Google and EU reach agreement to settle antitrust investigation Bloomberg reports Google and the EU’s Competition Commissioner, Joaquin Alumnia have reached an agreement to settle a three-year-old antitrust investigation. Google made a five-year pledge to grant three links to rival services next to any specialized searches of Google’s own, such as Google Shopping. Competitors will pay at least 3 euro cents to bid for a spot with images in a shaded box on some of Google’s search pages. The deal will become legally binding sometime in the next few months after the Commission formally rejects complaints against Google. The EU is still informally investigating Google’s use of Android.

The Daily Snowden: British Intelligence agency has conducted cover action against Anonymous  Ars Technica reports NBC News published new documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealing the British intelligence agency, GCHQ, conducted covert action against the activist collective that often identifies as Anonymous. Among other things, GCHQ infiltrated IRC chat for Operation Payback, which targeted payment providers after they stopped donations to WikiLeaks from being processed. GCHQ employed a covert informant and conducted social engineering, DoS attacks and deployed malware. GCHQ crippled the operation, unmasked some members and led to the arrest of Edward Pearson aka Gzero.

DARPA creates an Open Catalog InformationWeek reports the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, aka DARPA, most famous for bringing the world the Internet, has created an Open Catalog at darpa.mil/OpenCatalog/. The site includes software toolkits and peer-reviewed publications from XDATA, a big data initiative. The software projects listed on the site include visualization, analytics, and infrastructure and link to code repositories.

News From You

isting posted this TechCrunch article about NewEgg getting into the free shipping biz. Similar to Amazon Prime, NewEgg has launched a program called Premiere. For $50 a year, Premiere subscribers get free 3-day shipping and discounts for 2-day and 1-day delivery. You also get restocking fees waived on returns which also get their shipping paid for, as well as special customer service and special deals. Customers can try Premiere free for 30 days.

pete_C and Amber both pointed us to a WSJ article about US electronics retailer Radio Shack closing around 500 stores in the coming months. Radio Shack has roughly 4,300 stores. The Journal did not know which stores would be closed. Radio Shack had received some praise for a Super Bowl ad promising to bring the store out of the 1980s.

More links from the show

Samsung Reins In the Theatrics for Galaxy S5 – NYTimes

IPCom suing Apple for more than 2 billion – The Verge

Windows 8.1’s first update, called cleverly, Update 1, may not arrive until April after all – ZDNet

Xbox One owners are in for two updates not just one – Engadget

Twitter announces its first quarterly earnings – TechCrunch

Researchers use torrent site as free academic library – PSFK

Justin Young and Paul Thurrott join us to chat about a new camera pill you can swallow and a new Microsoft CEO that investors seem willing to– Microsoft has a new CEO Satya Nadella, and we’ll talk about it.

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

Microsoft announces Satya Nadella as CEO and member of the board: Microsoft announced it has appointed head of Cloud and Enterprise, Satya Nadella as CEO and member of the board of directors. Bill Gates steps down as Chairman to become the board’s Founder and Technology advisor, with a commitment to spend more time supporting Nadella in “shaping technology and product direction.” John Thompson, who was the lead independent director, and headed the search for a new CEO, takes over as Chairman. Thompson is CEO of Virtual Instruments. Outgoing CEO, Steve Ballmer, remains on the board.

Facebook Launches ‘A Look Back’: The Next Web reports as part of Facebook’s 10th anniversary, the social network has launched s feature called “A Look Back.” If you go to www.facebook.com/lookback you’ll find a personalized movie or photo collection of your biggest moments shared on the social network. Mine consisted entirely of events of the last year including one picture twice because it was so good. Your mileage may vary.

News From You

SkyJedi pointed us to Google Maps official G+ post about some Waze functionality finally shooing up in the iPS version of Google Maps. Starting with the latest update the iOS Google Maps navigation function will notify you of faster routes as traffic conditions change. Android received this function previously.

KAPT_Kipper posted a CBC News story about the PillCam, an ingestible pill camera used to screen for colon cancer, being approved for use in the United States. Patients who have experienced an incomplete colonoscopy can now swallow the pill to complete it. The capsule has two miniature color video cameras, a battery and a light source, and transmits images for about 10 hours. Potentially to TwiTCH. Or a Hangout. Actually no the data is transferred to a computer to be compiled and then viewed later by a doctor. The PillCam is commercially available in Canada, Japan, Europe, Latin America, Australia and parts of Asia and Africa. And yes you smartypants a capsule camera for the small intestine HAS been around since 2001, WE KNOW.

Finally habichuelacondulce submitted a Reuters story about yet another credit card data breach. The breach occurred at food and beverage outlets at 14 hotels, including some operated under the Westin, Renaissance and Radisson names as well as Marriott, Holiday Inn and Sheraton, between March 20 and December 16 last year. The data included names, credit car numbers, security codes and expiration dates.

More links from the show

TechCrunch reports the company ‘FiftyThree’ which already held the trademark for ‘Paper by FiftyThree’ filed for the trademark on the name ‘Paper’ January 30th, which just happens to be the day Facebook announced their new app called ‘Paper’ which FiftyThree is none too pleased with.

Microsoft announces a $15 million strategic investment in Foursquare as swell as a commercial licensing deal that lets Microsoft use FourSquare data.

Apple is allegedly working on a content delivery network or CDN. A CDN usually serves data for download or streaming like apps, images and I don’t know television shows.

Telefónica announces a partnership with popular Japanese messaging app Line

Want Internet access anywhere on the planet? Now you have choices. Engadget reports Iridium unveiled Iridium Go, a hotspot that lets five WiFi devices connect, send texts and calls over the satellite service.