Patrick Beja is on the show and we’ll talk about protest letters regarding encryption back doors and zero-rating, an app store for your 10-year-old car and the most annoying innovations in tech.

MP3

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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: Patrick Beja

Headlines: 

The Washington Post reports 164 tech companies organizations and security researchers sent a letter to US President Obama asking him to reject any proposed law that would “deliberately weaken the security of their products.” US FBI Director James B. Comey is among several US government officials pushing companies to allow government to have access to all encrypted data. The letter is signed by three of the five members of a presidential review group appointed to assess policy in the wake of the Snowden leaks.

The BBC reports 67 digital rights groups from around the world signed a letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stating concerns about the Internet.org initiative. The letter says the project threatens freedom of expression, privacy and the principle of net neutrality. Internet.org lets users access participating services without incurring data charges. It does not currently support https, ssl or TLS. Internet.og is currently available in Zambia, India, Colombia, Guatemala, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malawi.

TechCrunch has the tech specs on Apple’s just updated MacBook Pro iMac. The 15” Retina MacBook Pro now comes with a new force touch trackpad, improved PCIe-based flash drive with 2.5x the performance, one more hour of battery life, and a new Radeon R9 M370X discrete GPU option. Prices start at $1999 for a 16GB, 2.2GHz quad-core Core i7, and 256GB of storage. The iMac 5K Retina now comes with a 3.3 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor and Radeon R9 M290 graphics card. And Apple is now selling a lightning dock for your iPhone 6 and 6 plus for $40. This one should last through a few more models since the base is open.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple shelved plans for a 4K television, according to people familiar with the matter. The reason? The features — including a camera that would allow users to make video calls — were not compelling enough to impress executives. However, according to Reuters, prominent investor Carl Icahn says Apple will still introduce a TV, and a car. And he wants Apple to buy back more stock. And he wants a pony. The pony part is unconfirmed.

ZDNet reports that Microsoft has released public previews of Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Android phones today. The new Office app previews require KitKat 4.4.x or higher and devices with 1 GB of RAM or more.You’ll also need to join the Office Android Preview group. “Become a tester” on Google Play by visiting the Word,Excel and PowerPoint apps. Wait for Google Play to replicate permissions, then click above mentioned links and follow the download links to install apps from the Google Play Store. Finally join Microsoft’s Google+ community for support, feedback and queries. But that’s all!

Tech Crunch reports that Google is adding tweets to its search results. Use the word Twitter in your search request or just search for a term and see if people are saying anything about it on Twitter.
Results will show up for English-language mobile users today on browsers and Android and iOS Google apps. Google is working on adding it to the desktop and other languages.

Automatic is launching an app store and SDK for its on-board diagnostic— or OBD plug— according to CNET. First-generation Automatic dongles are compatible with the new App Gallery but not the new SDK. The new dev platform includes a streaming SDK that only works with second-generation Automatic hardware. The new hardware is able to send raw, real-time performance data to select third-party apps over Bluetooth. The streaming SDK is in currently in private beta. The second-generation Automatic adapter will retail for $99.95 same as the first-gen.

News From You:

This was our top vote-getter on the subreddit today. johnsie776 posted the Ars Technica report that the state of North Carolina has sued the US Federal Communications Commission. The FCC pre-empted state law to help the City of Winston expand its municipal broadband network. The state claims that the FCC unlawfully inserted itself between the State and the State’s political subdivisions. The case is now in the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Tennessee is also suing the FCC in the Sixth Circuit regarding municipal broadband in Chatannooga.

jaymz668 sent the KitGuru post noting a Chrome and Android engineer said in a Reddit AMA session late last week— that developers are working on improving Chrome’s resource usage on mobile as well as memory leaks on the desktop. Here’s hoping.

habichuelcondulce pointed out the PC World article that the Center for Digital Democracy and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood filed an update to their U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint against The YouTube Kids app. The update adds a video of allegedly harmful content to the complaint originally filed in April. The groups also added the complaint that Google is deceiving parents about the effectiveness of the screening process. Google said it is working to make the videos in YouTube Kids as family friendly as possible.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.studyweb.com/hated-internet-innovations/

https://twitter.com/anocelot/status/600710282890125312

https://twitter.com/kjblank80/status/600710710172196865

https://twitter.com/sjh_canada/status/600713825353125888

https://twitter.com/bloreboy/status/600714102944698368

https://twitter.com/airwhale/status/600718740527968258

https://twitter.com/reject69187/status/600731252015046657

Pick of the Day:

Daryl Sensenig (in lovely Lancaster County, Pennsylvania):

My pick is Bing Maps. I know that nearly everyone uses Google Maps, but I feel that Bing is much better in several ways:

1. In my experience, the routing is better and the travel time estimates are more accurate.
2. Their satellite view (bird’s eye view) is actually photos from airplanes and not satellites. So, it is much more detailed than Google Maps in many areas.
3. I prefer the interface over the new Google Maps

That said, there are a few drawbacks:

1. Their street view doesn’t have quite as good coverage
2. Business search isn’t quite as strong.

Messages: 

Alex writes in:

Long time listener to the show. Since the United In-Flight systems “hack” keeps popping up in the news, I figure I should clarify some points. My company created and maintains the In-flight Entertainment (IFE) system for United. The IFE server receives one-way communication from the planes avionics, such as altitude and heading. Those values are saved as a variable and used to trigger automated functions, such as retracting overhead monitors when descending for landing. In my test lab, I have to manipulate those variables to test the systems operations during various flight scenarios, since I’m not on a real aircraft. Those are the variables that the security researcher saw. Modifying them in flight will have no effect on other systems. You can trick the IFE system to show that we are flying to Hawaii on the passenger map display, but plane’s auto-pilot won’t change. Also on the real aircraft, the avionics systems will periodically refresh any modified data with real data. It just that the polling rate is really slow to avoid flooding these underpowered systems.

Reports also say that he tampered with his seat box casing and got access to the internal diagnostic port to achieve this hack. Also, reports say that he obtained the admin password which how he was able to jump firewall from the seat subnet to the server subnet.

TL;DR if you have physical access to a client machine and the admin password, you can get access to the servers. But you can’t change anything beyond the server. Only what the server perceives to be real data, but the data will be refreshed periodically anyways.

Sean wrote:

“On Fridays show Darren talked about car trains. He was using some sarcasm, but had a point. Everytime I hear about self driving cars I get frustrated. I live where we have snow and other forms of weather. This never seems to be addressed by companies developing self driving technology.”

Rolando – Your fan from Paraguay, the heart of South America writes:

As our communication becomes increasingly more digital, I think we need a symbol for ironic comments, pics, etc. to have the same immediate recognizable unmistakable effect as other symbols have for their own meaning [for instance, no one doubts the meaning of the ‘bird’ (pardon my French)].
This has been tried before, but the proposed symbol for irony didn’t catch on.
So, when I heard you talking with @veronica in her official appearance (great add!) about emojis, I thought that I’d ask you, to ask to your bright and passionate audience, to create and establish a universal Irony emoji.
Wouldn’t it be great? It’ll be a great legacy! #NotBeingIronicHere
Congrats on your newest milestone and keep it up!

=====

Wednesday’s guest:  Scott Johnson & Lamarr Wilson

 

Veronica Belmont and Roger Chang fill in for Tom and take your questions on the Apple Watch!

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

en route!

Veronica Belmont and Roger Chang fill in for Tom and take your questions on the Apple Watch!

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: Veronica Belmont and Roger Chang

Headlines: 

The NY Times is reporting that Apple has acquired a bay area based GPS Start Up Coherent Navigation.  Coherent Navigation works on high-precision navigation systems and creating commercial navigation services based on partnerships with companies like Boeing and Iridium. It is unclear exactly how Apple will use the company’s services or technology. The terms of Apple’s acquisition of Coherent Navigation were not disclosed with the company stating in email “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.” But self-driving cars… I mean, right?

Reuters reports that a US appeals court reversed part of a $930 million dollar verdict that Apple won in 2012 against Samsung.
The US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC ruled today that Apple’s claim of “trade-dress dilution” — the way a product is packaged or presented, could not be protected because it was related to the functioning of the phone and would have granted Apple a monopoly on the features forever. However the court did uphold the patent infringement violations. The appeals court ordered that the original court in San Jose reconsider the $382 million dollar part of the ruling.

TechCrunch reports that LG’s G4 smartphone is rolling out for sale worldwide “over the next month. “The phone is already on sale in Korea, and will show up next in Hong Kong, followed by Turkey, Russia and Singapore. After that” most of Europe, North America, the Middle East, Africa, South and Central– oh you know what? Just the rest of the world. In case you forgot, the G4’s screen uses “quantum display” tech, which promises better color reproduction, there’s a redesigned camera which now sports a larger sensor — a 16-megapixel rear camera and eight-megapixel front camera — and a 64-bit hexacore CPU Snapdragon 808 processor to power the show. The G4 includes a hand-crafted leather back, and subtle curve for improved feel in the hand. The price will vary worldwide, but early reports suggest it will retail for around $600 without a contract, or near $200 as part of a U.S. carrier deal.

Fusion has a great article about the challenges that US federal election regulators are facing with presidential candidates who are using Snapchat to communicate with voters. The main selling point of Snapchat is disappearing messages. So if someone wanted to break some federal election rules via Snapchat, how would anyone at the FEC know? A spokesperson for the FEC told Fusion that the commission has “internet regulations but they don’t specifically cover apps.”

GCHQ staff, intelligence officer and police in the UK have been given immunity for hacking into computers, laptops and mobile phones under new laws that were never fully debated in parliament according to The Guardian.  Rewriting of a key clause of the Computer Misuse Act exempts law enforcement officials from the prohibition on breaking into other people’s laptops, databases, mobile phones or digital systems. It came into force in May. Addressing the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which deals with complaints about the intelligence services and surveillance, lawyers for Privacy International said they had only been informed of the alteration earlier this week. Last May, Privacy International, along with seven internet and communications service providers, filed complaints with the IPT challenging GCHQ’s hacking activities. The full complaint is due to be heard in the autumn.

President Obama finally claimed his own twitter account. Re/code reports that the new verified account is @POTUS run by President Obama. According to the first tweet from the account Obama will actually be the one tweeting from the account. The more familiar @BarackObama account is run by members of his staff. The account added more than 280000 followers in its first hour.

CNET reports that Google teamed up with the University of Washington to create more than 10,000 time lapse-videos showing the evolution of some of the world’s landmarks, using 86 million photos gathered from publicly available photo sharing services like Flickr. An automated process finds similar images and then researchers arranged them in chronological order and then used a process called “geometric stabilization” to create the same perspective from varying images.

CNET is reporting that the FBI has applied for a search warrant on Chris Roberts. The security expert who tweeted about allegedly commandeering a United Airlines plane’s systems. The warrant application claims Roberts “exploited/gained accèss to the in-flight entertainment system and he overwrote code on the airplane’s Thrust Management Computer and commanded the system to issue a climb command. Roberts has admitted to Wired that he infiltrated the plane’s in-flight networks around 15 times solely for observation. Roberts hasn’t been charged with a crime.

 

News From You:

the_big_endian sent us this story from the Verge about Microsoft backtracking on its promise on free updates to Windows 10 for people running pirated Windows. The confusion has revolved around Microsoft’s offer to give free Windows 10 updates to people running Windows 7 and 8.1. Now, we’re finally getting a full clarification: there’s no free upgrade at all. Pirates just have to pay. Microsoft says that it’s planning to run some “very attractive Windows 10 upgrade offers” that will allow people with pirated copies to move to an official version. Specific details of that haven’t been announced yet, but that likely won’t come until we actually hear about when Windows 10 will arrive. For now, it’s still targeted for this summer.

jmbburg26 sent us The Verge report about a sea turtle who was struck by a boat propeller while swimming in its natural habitat in Turkey. The accident shattered the animal’s upper and lower jaw, which meant the turtle couldn’t eat on its own. So a group at Pamukkale (Pah-MOO-kal-AY) University teamed up with BTech, a Turkish biotechnology company specializing in 3D-printed prosthetics, and printed a medical-grade titanium turtle jaw. So far the turtle has not yet rejected the jaw, but it has a ways to go before it can be released back into the wild.

motang sent us the third Verge article which reports that Google will begging to test “buy buttons” that live inside ads above the normal search results. The sponsored results will take you to a special purchasing page that’s still hosted by Google where you can pick the product and how soon you want to get it — all without leaving Google. Users can store their credit cards. The tests will be mobile only will only run on a small percentage of search traffic. The new ads should show in “the coming weeks.”

Discussion Section Links:  

http://recode.net/2015/05/12/a-month-with-the-apple-watch-does-it-pass-the-test-of-time/

http://9to5mac.com/2015/05/18/apple-readies-first-significant-apple-watch-updates-tvkit-sdk-for-apple-tv/

 

Pick of the Day:

Christian writes:

Matt from Thirsty California:

I wanted to respond to Friday’s discussion on self driving cars and provide a recommended read on the subject of computer automation.

Darren touched on the problems of degraded response time and automation bias which are just a few of the issues that come with computer automation. These weren’t given much talk time on the show, but if listeners wanted to learn more about these sort of issues and the pros and cons of computer automation I would recommend the book The Glass Cage (Automation and us) by Nicholas Carr.

The book does a great job of talking about the rise of automation, focusing a lot on the human element of the equation, and goes beyond the technology to discuss what appears to be happening to us because of it. I found it fascinating and would recommend it to anyone who wants to take a deeper look into the impact that things like self driving cars have on everyone’s daily lives.

 

Messages: 

Mike, from the sunny and dusty Pilbara (Pilbara : pill-bar-rah) region of Western Australia wrote in about our self-driving car discussion on Friday:

As a 26 year veteran of the Australian transport industry I have mixed feelings about self driving vehicles. It isn’t that I’m afraid I will be replaced by a machine, it’s that there are a huge amount of human and environmental factors that technology will have difficulty coping with.

In show 2494 Roger suggested an automated car may continue in an endless loop on a freeway until the human occupant re-asserted manual control and moved it out of the traffic stream. My immediate thought was “what if the driver had a heart attack or was rendered unconscious by illness or had a stroke?”. Sure, they would be safer in a self driving car because it wouldn’t leave the road and crash but no one would be aware of the need for medical assistance or an undertaker – the vehicle would continue on its merry way without some kind of dead-mans switch or Apple watch like health monitoring device linked to the vehicle.

Also, trucks would have to undergo radical redesign to enable monitoring of every system, moving part and point-of-failure that an experienced truck driver looks for subconsciously while driving down the road. I’m talking about flat tyres/blowouts, loads shifting, wheel bearing failures, air lines for braking systems rupturing or becoming uncoupled, unforeseen structural failures of equipment such as suspension/spare tyre or equipment racks and how about damaged or fatigued fuel lines. These are all actual things I have had to deal with and quite often the only indication of the problem has been a smell, a barely heard but definitely “wrong” noise that shouldn’t be there or, in one instance, a faint vibration felt through the seat of my pants ( I kid you not! ). After many millions of kilometres and untold thousands of hours behind the wheel my ability to detect problems in my vehicle has been honed to an almost sixth sense.

On average I drive 10,500km every fortnight and would welcome an autopilot to take care of the less difficult and boring stretches of road but, until I know it can watch over all 55.5 metres and 118 tonne of my triple roadtrain, I will just have to keep doing it myself.

=====

Tuesday’s guest:  Tom Merritt is Back with Patrick Beja

 

 

 

 

Veronica Belmont and Roger Chang fill in for Tom and take your questions on the Apple Watch!

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: Veronica Belmont and Roger Chang

Headlines: 

The NY Times is reporting that Apple has acquired a bay area based GPS Start Up Coherent Navigation.  Coherent Navigation works on high-precision navigation systems and creating commercial navigation services based on partnerships with companies like Boeing and Iridium. It is unclear exactly how Apple will use the company’s services or technology. The terms of Apple’s acquisition of Coherent Navigation were not disclosed with the company stating in email “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.” But self-driving cars… I mean, right?

Reuters reports that a US appeals court reversed part of a $930 million dollar verdict that Apple won in 2012 against Samsung.
The US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC ruled today that Apple’s claim of “trade-dress dilution” — the way a product is packaged or presented, could not be protected because it was related to the functioning of the phone and would have granted Apple a monopoly on the features forever. However the court did uphold the patent infringement violations. The appeals court ordered that the original court in San Jose reconsider the $382 million dollar part of the ruling.

TechCrunch reports that LG’s G4 smartphone is rolling out for sale worldwide “over the next month. “The phone is already on sale in Korea, and will show up next in Hong Kong, followed by Turkey, Russia and Singapore. After that” most of Europe, North America, the Middle East, Africa, South and Central– oh you know what? Just the rest of the world. In case you forgot, the G4’s screen uses “quantum display” tech, which promises better color reproduction, there’s a redesigned camera which now sports a larger sensor — a 16-megapixel rear camera and eight-megapixel front camera — and a 64-bit hexacore CPU Snapdragon 808 processor to power the show. The G4 includes a hand-crafted leather back, and subtle curve for improved feel in the hand. The price will vary worldwide, but early reports suggest it will retail for around $600 without a contract, or near $200 as part of a U.S. carrier deal.

Fusion has a great article about the challenges that US federal election regulators are facing with presidential candidates who are using Snapchat to communicate with voters. The main selling point of Snapchat is disappearing messages. So if someone wanted to break some federal election rules via Snapchat, how would anyone at the FEC know? A spokesperson for the FEC told Fusion that the commission has “internet regulations but they don’t specifically cover apps.”

GCHQ staff, intelligence officer and police in the UK have been given immunity for hacking into computers, laptops and mobile phones under new laws that were never fully debated in parliament according to The Guardian.  Rewriting of a key clause of the Computer Misuse Act exempts law enforcement officials from the prohibition on breaking into other people’s laptops, databases, mobile phones or digital systems. It came into force in May. Addressing the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which deals with complaints about the intelligence services and surveillance, lawyers for Privacy International said they had only been informed of the alteration earlier this week. Last May, Privacy International, along with seven internet and communications service providers, filed complaints with the IPT challenging GCHQ’s hacking activities. The full complaint is due to be heard in the autumn.

President Obama finally claimed his own twitter account. Re/code reports that the new verified account is @POTUS run by President Obama. According to the first tweet from the account Obama will actually be the one tweeting from the account. The more familiar @BarackObama account is run by members of his staff. The account added more than 280000 followers in its first hour.

CNET reports that Google teamed up with the University of Washington to create more than 10,000 time lapse-videos showing the evolution of some of the world’s landmarks, using 86 million photos gathered from publicly available photo sharing services like Flickr. An automated process finds similar images and then researchers arranged them in chronological order and then used a process called “geometric stabilization” to create the same perspective from varying images.

CNET is reporting that the FBI has applied for a search warrant on Chris Roberts. The security expert who tweeted about allegedly commandeering a United Airlines plane’s systems. The warrant application claims Roberts “exploited/gained accèss to the in-flight entertainment system and he overwrote code on the airplane’s Thrust Management Computer and commanded the system to issue a climb command. Roberts has admitted to Wired that he infiltrated the plane’s in-flight networks around 15 times solely for observation. Roberts hasn’t been charged with a crime.

 

News From You:

the_big_endian sent us this story from the Verge about Microsoft backtracking on its promise on free updates to Windows 10 for people running pirated Windows. The confusion has revolved around Microsoft’s offer to give free Windows 10 updates to people running Windows 7 and 8.1. Now, we’re finally getting a full clarification: there’s no free upgrade at all. Pirates just have to pay. Microsoft says that it’s planning to run some “very attractive Windows 10 upgrade offers” that will allow people with pirated copies to move to an official version. Specific details of that haven’t been announced yet, but that likely won’t come until we actually hear about when Windows 10 will arrive. For now, it’s still targeted for this summer.

jmbburg26 sent us The Verge report about a sea turtle who was struck by a boat propeller while swimming in its natural habitat in Turkey. The accident shattered the animal’s upper and lower jaw, which meant the turtle couldn’t eat on its own. So a group at Pamukkale (Pah-MOO-kal-AY) University teamed up with BTech, a Turkish biotechnology company specializing in 3D-printed prosthetics, and printed a medical-grade titanium turtle jaw. So far the turtle has not yet rejected the jaw, but it has a ways to go before it can be released back into the wild.

motang sent us the third Verge article which reports that Google will begging to test “buy buttons” that live inside ads above the normal search results. The sponsored results will take you to a special purchasing page that’s still hosted by Google where you can pick the product and how soon you want to get it — all without leaving Google. Users can store their credit cards. The tests will be mobile only will only run on a small percentage of search traffic. The new ads should show in “the coming weeks.”

Discussion Section Links:  

http://recode.net/2015/05/12/a-month-with-the-apple-watch-does-it-pass-the-test-of-time/

http://9to5mac.com/2015/05/18/apple-readies-first-significant-apple-watch-updates-tvkit-sdk-for-apple-tv/

 

Pick of the Day:

Christian writes:

Matt from Thirsty California:

I wanted to respond to Friday’s discussion on self driving cars and provide a recommended read on the subject of computer automation.

Darren touched on the problems of degraded response time and automation bias which are just a few of the issues that come with computer automation. These weren’t given much talk time on the show, but if listeners wanted to learn more about these sort of issues and the pros and cons of computer automation I would recommend the book The Glass Cage (Automation and us) by Nicholas Carr.

The book does a great job of talking about the rise of automation, focusing a lot on the human element of the equation, and goes beyond the technology to discuss what appears to be happening to us because of it. I found it fascinating and would recommend it to anyone who wants to take a deeper look into the impact that things like self driving cars have on everyone’s daily lives.

 

Messages: 

Mike, from the sunny and dusty Pilbara (Pilbara : pill-bar-rah) region of Western Australia wrote in about our self-driving car discussion on Friday:

As a 26 year veteran of the Australian transport industry I have mixed feelings about self driving vehicles. It isn’t that I’m afraid I will be replaced by a machine, it’s that there are a huge amount of human and environmental factors that technology will have difficulty coping with.

In show 2494 Roger suggested an automated car may continue in an endless loop on a freeway until the human occupant re-asserted manual control and moved it out of the traffic stream. My immediate thought was “what if the driver had a heart attack or was rendered unconscious by illness or had a stroke?”. Sure, they would be safer in a self driving car because it wouldn’t leave the road and crash but no one would be aware of the need for medical assistance or an undertaker – the vehicle would continue on its merry way without some kind of dead-mans switch or Apple watch like health monitoring device linked to the vehicle.

Also, trucks would have to undergo radical redesign to enable monitoring of every system, moving part and point-of-failure that an experienced truck driver looks for subconsciously while driving down the road. I’m talking about flat tyres/blowouts, loads shifting, wheel bearing failures, air lines for braking systems rupturing or becoming uncoupled, unforeseen structural failures of equipment such as suspension/spare tyre or equipment racks and how about damaged or fatigued fuel lines. These are all actual things I have had to deal with and quite often the only indication of the problem has been a smell, a barely heard but definitely “wrong” noise that shouldn’t be there or, in one instance, a faint vibration felt through the seat of my pants ( I kid you not! ). After many millions of kilometres and untold thousands of hours behind the wheel my ability to detect problems in my vehicle has been honed to an almost sixth sense.

On average I drive 10,500km every fortnight and would welcome an autopilot to take care of the less difficult and boring stretches of road but, until I know it can watch over all 55.5 metres and 118 tonne of my triple roadtrain, I will just have to keep doing it myself.

=====

Tuesday’s guest:  Tom Merritt is Back with Patrick Beja

 

 

 

 

Jennie Josephson and Roger Chang host the Producer’s Choice edition of Daily Tech News Show with regular Friday team Darren Kitchen and Len Peralta. Self-driving cars! Rampaging Cows! Spin Doctors! It’s gonna be a Friday, all right.

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: Darren Kitchen, Jennie Josephson, Len Peralta and Roger Chang

Headlines: 

TechCrunch reports that Google announced that it will begin testing autonomous vehicles on public roads in Mountain View this summer. The self-piloted vehicles will be limited to a maximum speed of 25 miles/hour, and each will include a safety driver, who can take over at any point. Google said its fleet has logged nearly a million miles of cumulative driving within its test facilities which Google says is equal to 75 years of human driving experience. Much more on this to come in the discussion section, but right now everyone gets one word: Roger? Darren?

UNITED AIRLINES ANNOUNCED this week that it’s launching a bug bounty program inviting researchers to report bugs in its websites, apps and online portals. It’s believed to be the first bounty program offered by an airline. Wired reports that United’s program specifically excludes “bugs on onboard Wi-Fi, entertainment systems or avionics” and United notes that “[a]ny testing on aircraft or aircraft systems such as inflight entertainment or inflight Wi-Fi” could result in a criminal investigation. Researchers who report vulnerabilities in the airline’s web sites or apps will be rewarded in mileage points. The awards range from 50,000 points for cross-site scripting bugs to 1 million for high-severity vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to conduct remote-code execution on a United system.

According to The Wall Street Journal, activist investor Carl Icahn has invested $100 million in ride-sharing startup Lyft. The money is an extension of a round of funding Lyft announced in March that values the three-year-old company at $2.5 billion. In an interview, Mr. Icahn said putting money into San Francisco-based Lyft is a good deal when compared to larger rival Uber Technologies valued at $41 billion. Jonathan Christodoro, one of Icahn’s managing directors, will be added to Lyft’s board of directors. Uber has expanded to more than 250 cities internationally. To date, Lyft operates in 65 cities, only in the United States. So, Carl Icahn is bargain hunting.

The Next Web has a story from the Financial Times  reporting that “an executive at a European carrier confirmed that it and several of its peers are planning to start blocking adverts this year” and will be available as an “opt-in service” however they are also considering applying the technology across their entire mobile networks. According to the report’s anonymous sources, the carriers have installed software from Israeli ad-blocking firm Shine in their data centers to block advertising in Web pages and apps, but not social networks. The plan – which would be devastating to companies reliant on advertising – is not limited to a single European network. Its apparent aim is to break Google’s hold on advertising.Windows 10 Mobile’s latest build “10080” adds some important updates according to TechCrunch. The biggest is the first look of the Windows Store for mobile which will allow MS to deliver universal Office apps plus music, movies, and TV shows. Other features include an Xbox app, a music app, a new camera app and a video app.

KrebsOnSecurity reports a cache of data apparently stolen from spyware service MSpy has appeared on a TOR website. The data includes account information but also 4 million events including photos, calendar data, corporate email threads, and more. MSpy promotes itself as a way to monitor family members and boasts over a million users (or jealous lovers). When syrupticiously installed on iOS or Android, it collects messages from SMS, Skype, WhatsApp and Snapchat along with every keystoke typed.

Oculus has revealed the recommended specifications for PC rigs powering the Oculus Rift headset according to Tech Crunch. Recommended: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater, Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater, and 8GB+ RAM. Required: Windows 7 SP1 or newer, 2x USB 3.0 ports, and HDMI 1.3 video output supporting a 297MHz clock via a direct output architecture. In their blog post, Oculus’ Chef Architect Atman Binstock says GPU performance is highly important, since you’re basically running two, 2160×1200 displays at 90Hz simultaneously, which takes around three times the GPU power of your average full HD, 1080p rendering. Dropped frames are also fine on traditional desktop monitors, for the most part, while missing frames in VR results in considerable discomfort. Binstock also notes that Oculus still wants to develop for Mac and Linux, but that at this stage, they “don’t have a timeline.”

IGN reports that Harmonix, maker of the upcoming Rock Band 4 revealed the first six songs in the new game, only one of which I really know, can you guess which one?

Avenged Sevenfold – “Hail to the King”
Fleetwood Mac – “You Make Loving Fun”
Jack White – “Lazaretto”
The Killers – “Somebody Told Me”
Spin Doctors – “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong”
The Who – “The Seeker”

Spin Doctors! Hey 90’s, Great to have you back! Rock Band 4 is coming some time this fall, and Harmonix just did a live demo a little while back so check out that video which we’ll link to in the show notes

Polygon reports that Blizzard’s Diablo 3 has been overrun by cows in honor of the third anniversary of the game. Battle.net will only say that “Rumors allege” that townships throughout Khanduras are being overrun by bipedal, bardiche-bearing bovine, and then strenuously denies any knowledge of their existence. The event is homage to The Secret Cow Level in Diablo 2 and will continue until dusk on May 21st.

Engadget reports that Hulu will pick up the Mindy Project, starting with a 26-episode fourth season. The show, named for star Mindy Kaling, already streams on the TV subscription service as one of several Fox series available there, so the news isn’t too surprising.  There’s no word on a premiere date just yet, but when it arrives, it’ll be one of the many Hulu original series that you really mean to watch but just haven’t yet. Cancelled broadcast shows are getting revived online regularly these days, as Yahoo nabbed Community and Netflix is no stranger to picking up discarded series. All this magic and STILL NO QUANTUM LEAP. Strive to put right what once went wrong, Hulu!

News From You:

habichuelacondulce sent us this warning about mobile payments and passwords. Starbucks app users are getting their bank accounts drained by password-guessing thieves according to Gizmodo. People with Starbucks rewards can link the coffee-payment app to their bank accounts, credit cards, or PayPal accounts. Scammers buy gift cards then sell them illegally. Consumer journalist Bob Sullivan said Starbucks mobile payments fraud are a big deal with the company processing $2 billion in mobile transactions last year. Starbucks has acknowledged that this scam is happening but says it hasn’t been hacked, and that its hacked customers likely used bad passwords.

anotherjmartin submitted the ArsTechnica article with the amazing headline:

Humanity weeps as Candy Crush Saga comes preinstalled with Windows 10. Microsoft announced that King’s addictive game will be the Minesweeper of Windows 10, and will include cross-play options for iOS and Android devices. No word if there’s an opt-out for those who want to use the new Windows operating system to actually work.

thelouisguy sent us a TorrentFreak article about angry YouTube man Benajmin Ligeri, who has filed a lawsuit at the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island which lists Google, Viacom, Lionsgate and another YouTuber as defendants, Ligeri bemoans a restrictive YouTube user contract and a system that unfairly handles copyright complaints. Ligeri says that he has uploaded content to YouTube under the name BetterStream for purposes including “criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and/or research,” but never in breach of copyright. Nevertheless, he claims to have fallen foul of YouTube’s automated anti-piracy systems when he uploaded what he claims is a parody of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo movie, only to have it removed by YouTube after another YouTube user filed a complaint.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/15/google-self-driving-cars-mountain-view/

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32691887

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/dash-cam-videos-remind-us-crazy-roads-will-self-driving-cars/

http://www.wired.com/2014/12/nokia-here-autonomous-car-maps/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2015/01/06/bmws-self-driving-car-parks-itself-and-picks-you-up-when-youre-ready-to-go/

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/28/google-self-driving-car-how-does-it-work

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/197262-its-2015-self-driving-cars-are-more-than-a-promise

 

Pick of the Day:

Christian writes:

Hey, guys. With all the recent wearable discussion, I thought I’d submit one of my favorite devices for a pick of the day: the new Garmin Fenix 3 fitness/smartwatch.

With Apple Watch, Android Wear, and Pebble Time getting most of the smartwatch attention, it’s easy to overlook the Fenix. But if you’re looking for a smartwatch that is a watch first, fitness tracker second, and a smart device last, this is it.

The best features of the Fenix 3 are:
– Always-on color display (highly visible in bright light).
– Built-in GPS (so you don’t need your phone to track runs).
– Both activity (steps, goals, etc.) and hardcore training features.
– Extensive outdoor and hiking features (compass, altimeter barometer, etc.).
– iOS and Android compatible.
– Smart notifications from your phone (customizable per app).
– Water-resistant to 100 meters.

I could go on and on about why I think, for many people, the Fenix 3 is the best smartwatch, but it basically reduces to this: it’s a watch first, activity/fitness device second, and an extension of your smartphone last. For me, that’s exactly the right priority.

David Wilke writes in:

Hello Tom, Jenny, & co-host from just south of lovely Cleveland….Columbus. A few months ago I lost my pebble watch. I’ve been holding out on a replacement decision pending the Pebble II & Apple watch release.

I was in the golf store the other day and all the golf GPS widgets and wearables caught my eye….but they were all geared toward golf. I asked if they had any wearable’s that do all fitness stuff plus notifications….They pulled out the Garmin Vivoactive which they had just got in, but was not yet on display.

Similar to the new Pebble it has a color e-ink display but the Vivoactive is touch screen….just swipe the display to bring up notifications, calendar, music player, weather, and activity. Additionally the Vivoactive has built in GPS and specific tracking apps for Run, Bike, & Walk both stationary/treadmill or outside. It also has a swimming tracking app as the watch is water resistant to 5 ATM’s (I think 50 feet or so). Oh…and yes it has a golf app that you upload your most frequent courses to the watch, and viola! you have your golf GPS.

It’s very lightweight and has a very similar look/feel to the original Pebble and they are slowly building out their app store so you can download different faces, etc….I’m bummed I lost my pebble but I’m pleasantly surprised with how Garmin is becoming competitive in the smart-watch space.

Messages: 

Paul Franz writes:

In the discussion on Thursday (May 14th, 2015), I think the comparison of Walmart to Amazon is off base. I think Walmart is missing their greatest strength and that is their stores being every where. What they should do is use the Best Buy model. That is to buy things that are in the local store and just have them ready for pickup. I find BestBuy’s service in this category to be awesome. No looking through the store for the items that you are looking for. The items are available within the same day. If Walmart had the same ability I would love it. It would save a lot of time that is normally wasted looking for items through out the store.

Josh Gardner, who wrote an email we read last week, wrote us again! He writes:

“Yesterday my email regarding the audio spec that will be used on Blu-ray was read on the show and I incorrectly stated that DTS had not yet announced their audio spec (Dolby has, it will be called Dolby Atmos as a quick reminder), apparently DTS DID announce a spec last week and I missed it, it will be called DTS:X, aside from the afore mentioned compressed audio (Dolby Digital) and uncompressed audio (DTS), DTS:X will NOT use discreet channels like Dolby Digital, instead, it will use an algorithm to extrapolate your particular speaker setup, supporting a limitless number of speakers in any shape and positioning.

The Blu-ray spec will support DTS:X and Dolby Digital Atmos.

=====

Monday’s guest:  Veronica Belmont & Roger Chang!

 

Justin Robert Young fills in for Tom, with guest Andrew Mayne. Walmart v Amazon is discussed.

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Show Notes

Today’s guests: Justin Robert Young fills in as host for Tom and Andrew Mayne joins!

Headlines: 

Apple’s Beats-based streaming music service will be renamed “Apple Music” and integrate deep social networking for artists, according to 9 to 5 mac. The service will allow artists to have pages so they can post samples, photos, video, concert information and content from other artists. iTunes users will have the ability to comment on and like posts from artists but won’t have user social network profiles like Ping. Apple Music will be introduced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference Kickoff keynote on Monday, June 8th.

Meanwhile Rdio has launched a new premium tier allowing listeners to stream music on-demand. Rdio Select costs $3.99 per month and offers unlimited streaming radio without ads. You can stream up to 25 on-demand tracks per day or store them for offline playback. Plus you can swap out tracks for alternatives but you’re still limited to 25 streams or downloads per day. The new tier is available for users in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa. Other countries will be added in the future.

Wal-Mart challenges Amazon with unlimited shipping service for $50 per year. The service promises 70,000 items at launch and 3 day shipping. According to a company spokesman the program will be invite only initially and will evolve with feedback from early customers. Will this be a legitimite comeptitor to Amazon Prime? We pick apart that and more in the discussion section a little later on.

VentureBeat is reporting that Google has announced six new apps for its $35 streaming media stick: CBS All Access, HGTV, FOX Now, FXNOW, Pluto TV, and Haystack. Pluto TV curates over 100 channels of news, music, sports, web, and TV shows while Haystack presents trending TV news. You can get the apps from chromecast.com/apps.

Windows 10 Mobile’s latest build “10080” adds some important updates according to TechCrunch. The biggest is the first look of the Windows Store for mobile which will allow MS to deliver universal Office apps plus music, movies, and TV shows. Other features include an Xbox app, a music app, a new camera app and a video app.

Polygon reports Konami’s big focus moving forward will be mobile, not AAA games, according to a translated interview with the company’s new CEO Hideki Hayakawa.

Excited for the Mario themed Candy Crush knock off? Or Zelda enhanced Clash of Clans? Well you can hold on to your Rupees because according to Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata the venerable video game titan won’t obsess over trends to avoid ‘imitating’ other games as they venture into the mobile space. He adds “I don’t think we can realize what we aspire to by simply imitating a past success formula.”

The New York Times reports that reddit announced an update to its site-wide policies today that explicitly prohibits harassment against users. As of today, users who view or experience harassment will be able to email reddit moderators who can remove content and ban offenders from the site. reddit defines harassment as “continued actions” that would make someone “conclude that Reddit is not a safe platform to express their ideas.” The company said the number one reason reddit users do not recommend their site to others is to avoid exposing friends to hate and offensive content.

So it turns out thieves can bypass Apple Watch passcode to pair a stolen watch with their own phone. The Verge has compiled a bunch of reporting from 9 to 5 mac and iDownloadblog and concluded that the Apple Watch incredibly easy to steal. Because it’s very easy to reset an Apple Watch if you forget the password–just hold the side button until the menu with three options (power off, power reserve, and lock device) apears, then force touch that screen to unlock a hidden option to erase all content and settings. The watch has to be connected to its charger to activate the erase function. Which is exactly what a thief would do the moment he or she stole your Apple Watch. Time for an Activation Lock update, perhaps?

Biz Tech Africa reports that Safaricom a Kenyan mobile network operator has announced the launch of “The Big Box” a set top device that allows subscribers to watch TV and share broadband connectivity. The device will connect to Safaricoms 3G and 4G network and offer subscribers access to several high def TV channels as well as on demand video content. The device also services as a Wi-Fi hotspot for up to ten users. Subscribers have the option of several plans based on their needs.

Re/code is reporting that Sharp secured a $1.9 billion dollar bailout. Under the deal, main lenders Mizuho Bank and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ will inject a combined 200 billion yen ($1.7 billion) in a debt-for-equity swap. In return for the funding, which will be used to repay debt and finance investments, Sharp will also sell its headquarters and said it might seek a partner for its TV business in North America and 5000 job cuts in its global workforce. Sharp posted an annual loss of 222 billion yen. This is Sharp’s 2nd bank led rescue in 3 years.

Engadget reports that Samsung Wallet will stop taking purchases on June 30th in anticipation of Samsung Pay, which is scheduled to arrive in September. Any reservations and tickets in Wallet will still be valid through partner apps, but coupons will not be available.

News From You:

Starfuryzeta wanted to make sure we saw that the US House of Representatives voted 338-88 for the US Freedom Act which rejects the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records. The vote heads to the Senate with support from the White House, intelligence agency leaders and the US federal appeals court. However, the Senate leadership wants to extend the existing language of the Patriot Act through 2020.

Spsheridan sent us the The Verge report that the Wolfram search tool can now identify any item in an uploaded picture. According to creator Stephen Wolfram, “It won’t always get it right, but most of the time I think it does remarkably well.” The Wolfram Language Image Identification Project was fed “a few tens of millions” of images to learn, including tricky images of a cat in a spacesuit, a sloth in a party hat, and Chewbacca. When given an image of Tom Merritt, the image identifier pronounced that he is a person.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/13/us-wal-mart-stores-shipping-idUSKBN0NY2NK20150513

http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/2014/10/15/walmart-ceo-outlines-growth-strategy-at-annual-meeting-for-the-investment-community

 

Pick of the Day:

Messages: 

Alex Hanna writes:

Howdy Justin, Andrew Jennie, Roger and crew (too numerous to mention),

I’ve got a pick for you, it’s a website that’s been around for a year or so but arguably has increased in usefulness over time.

https://haveibeenpwned.com/

It is a very simple site that does one VERY helpful thing, it scans through known data breaches for an email or username that you enter. Why is this helpful? As the saying goes, knowing is half the battle. If you see that your information has been compromised on a website, you can change your password or take other similar actions to re-secure your information.

The site also has some good info on large data breaches that have been in the news if you want the pants scarred off of you. I hope this helps people be more secure!

Yesterday Tom and Scott discussed the announcement of a new Ultra Blu-Ray format which supports 4k video. Joshua Gardner wrote in about that “unspecified audio format” they mentioned:

Just an FYI, the reason the audio format is unspecified is because there is an audio war going on. Dolby is fighting for Dolby Atmos which involves the traditional seven speaker setup plus a subwoofer but also adds two speakers into the ceiling for additional height. Dolby has stated this sound format is expandable to as many speakers as you wish, although, they have stated that most audio will be mastered to support a maximum of twelve speakers plus a subwoofer (discreet channels) requiring the receiver to create additional audio channels for anything over twelve channels.

DTS has yet to announce a sound format but should very soon.

One of the primary differences between DTS and Dolby Digital is DTS uses uncompressed audio (which consumes more disk space) vs Dolby Digital which sacrifices a fraction of audio quality and frequency response both on the upper and lower end to use about one quarter of the required space. It should be noted that most people do not have high enough end equipment to hear the difference.

=====

Friday’s guest: It’s Producers Choice with DTNS contributor Darren Kitchen and artist-in-residence Len Peralta

Scott Johnson joins the show to talk about Facebook’s attempt to host major news stories inside its mobile app. Is it trying to eat the Internet after all?

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Show Notes

Show Notes

Today’s guests: Scott Johnson

Headlines: 

Facebook announced a new tool called Instant Articles that it hopes will encourage publishers to host their articles on Facebook. The new product reduces the average load time of an article and incorporates interactive features like the ability to zoom in and explore high resolution images by tilting the phone, and the ability to like and comment on individual parts of an article in-line. Publishers can either sell ads themselves and keep all the money or let Facebook do it and share revenue. Tracking can be done through ComScore and other analytics tools. Facebook is working with nine launch partners for Instant Articles: The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild.

(more…)

Patrick Beja joins the show to discuss the ad tech Verizon is buying with AOL and what it plans to do with its content publications.

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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!

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Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guests: Patrick Beja

 

Headlines: 

Verizon announced today it has signed an agreement to buy AOL for $50 a share an estimated value of $4.4 billion AOL will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Verizon. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said AOL’s “advertising platform provides a key tool for us to develop future revenue streams.” AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, who will stay on as the subsidiary’s leader, said the combination “creates a unique and scaled mobile and OTT media platform for creators, consumers and advertisers.” The deal is expected to be completed this summer.

The Verge reports that Skype Translator is now available for anyone with a Windows 8 or Windows 10 PC to try.  The software can translate English, Spanish, Italian, and Mandarin in real time, converting the original language into either text or audio.

The Verge reports on a new drone called Lily that you can throw into the air and ignore as it films whatever you’re doing. You have to strap a small GPS tracker to your wrist and then Lily uses computer vision technology to recognize its owner. The tracking device also records audio that syncs to the video, shot in 1080p at 60 frames per second. It can also shoot 12-megapixel stills. Oh and its waterproof to IP67. What it doesn’t have is avoidance detection, so you should only use it in wide open spaces. The device goes on sale today for pre-order at $499, a discount from the planned $999 retail price.

ReCode reports Google’s Android One program for affordable smartphones added Turkey as its seventh country.  General Mobile will produce the devices starting around US$260. Android One devices are normally supposed to sell for around $100 but electronics in Turkey generally have higher prices.

Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company MediaTek is prepping the launch of a 10-core chip called Helio X20 according to Engadget. The chip is a 20nm “tri-cluster” design consisting of two 2.5GHz Cortex-A72 cores, four 2GHz Cortex-A53 cores and four 1.4GHz Cortex-A53 cores. While all ten cores can run simultaneously MediaTek General Manger of International Corporate Sales, Finbarr Moynihan said the chip’s software will pick the ideal cluster to use depending on power and processing needs. The first commercial device using the chip will arrive in consumer devices by the end of the year at the earliest.

ZDNet reports that Samsung has unveiled a new line of chips for Internet of Things devices, called the Artik. Artik One is the size of a ladybug with a 9-axis motion sensor, Bluetooth Low Energy support.
Artik Five is the size of a 25-cent coin with a video decoder and encoder. And Artik 10 comes with an HD encoder and decoder, 5.1 audio meant for home servers and personal clouds. Samsung also has established an open source-based developer platform and starter kit, which will become available immediately.

TechCrunch reports Aliyun, Alibaba’s cloud computing unit announced a joint-venture with Dubai’s Meraas, to create apps, cloud architecture and big data tools for clients. The venture will be located in Dubai and serve the wider region. According to IDC, spending on ICT products and services in the Middle East and Africa will exceed $270 billion in 2015.

News From You:

Spsheridan sent us this story from 9 to 5 Google that following a Reddit AMA on government surveillance, Google admitted that while Hangouts conversations are encrypted, it does not use end-to-end encryption. That means Google can tap into sessions when it receives a government court order to do so. Google’s Transparency Report reveals it has received 26 US government wiretap requests from the beginning of 2013 to the middle of last year. The company did not identify how many of these, if any, were for Hangouts.

Drtolbert submitted the Engadget story that Warner Music Group announced today it made more money in Q2 from streaming licenses than it did from digital downloads. Streaming revenue rose 33% while digital sales rose 7%.

Habichuelacondulce sent us the Gizmodo report that researchers at MIT have solved one of the great artistic condundrums of our time. Sort of. A group of scientists led by YiChang Shih have developed an algorithm that can extract and automatically remove reflections in an image, like when you take a shot of something through a window. The catch is that the window has to be double-paned or very thick. Gizmodo helpfully points out that in addition to Adobe Photoshop, the military might also benefit from the algorithm, to help robots look through windows and not get confused by their own reflection.

 

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/verizon-to-acquire-aol-300081541.html

http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/12/verizon-aol-4-4b/?ncid=rss

http://recode.net/2015/05/12/verizon-buys-aol-for-4-4-billion/

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/05/12/verizons-deal-to-buy-aol-will-make-life-uncomfortable-for-techcrunch-and-engadget/

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/05/verizon-buying-aol-for-4-4-billion-calls-it-a-digital-trailblazer/

http://adage.com/article/media/ad-tech-is-king-verizon-aol/298574/

http://fortune.com/2015/05/12/verizon-aol-content-advertising/

http://recode.net/2015/05/12/aol-in-talks-to-spin-off-huffpost-as-part-of-acquisition-deal/

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/verizon-sugarstring-us-surveillance-net-neutrality/

 

Pick of the Day:

Devulu writes:

I wanted to share the following website with your listeners.

https://www.whynopadlock.com/

When creating a HTTPS secure website one sometimes needs to troubleshoot why Chrome or Firefox do not display the lock icon usually associated with HTTPS.

The usual culprits are external elements which are being loaded over HTTP, so https://www.whynopadlock.com/ helps you check for those elements and fix them.

Messages: 

Alastair Mitchell from Edinburgh, Scotland:

Just wanted to contributed to the discussion on wearables from yesterday’s episode (2490).

The majority of wearables on the market just now are focussed on people losing weight but if you’re someone like myself who needs to gain weight they are quite unhelpful. Because my focus is to gaining weight I mostly do weight training at the gym rather than cardio which wearables right now can’t track well.

I played with a Fitbit for a month or two but that was purely for geek reasons and the information I got from it was interesting but not beneficial for myself.

A wearable which focuses on overall health rather than losing weight would be really interesting to me but I’m not sure how many others want such a device.
Great show, makes my bus to work much shorter.

Rich from Lovely Cleveland:

Your discussion on the issue of interpreting the info provided by wearables left out one player. Microsoft is making an interesting push to be the service that will work cross platform to cull and interpret all of your health data. They support their Health app and Band across all the major OSes, and seem more interested in people feeding the data in than forcing people to exclusively buy into their platform (although I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if you did). Their service is still nascent, so we’ll see if Microsoft lives up to their lofty goals, but I like what they are proposing better than the device lock-in that a lot of wearable makers seem to be forcing (although I guess by being cross-platform it makes it easier for MS to lock you into their service, but at least it feels like a bigger gilded cage).

Heather from Charleston, SC:

Your conversation with Veronica and Ron on Monday got me thinking about how I’ve benefited from fitness tracking. I recently started on a new medication, and one of the potential side effects is an increased resting heart rate. Since I have heart rate data for several months back, I was able to look at the new data, see a significant increase over average, and then have a conversation with my doctor on how to proceed. Without that trend, it would have been harder to determine if there was a meaningful change.

Russell writes:

On yesterday’s show you were discussing that 14% of Zappos staff took an exit package based on the new management approach. We look at statistics like that as a part of the analysis that we do for our work and wanted to offer some perspective on that number. According to Gallup’s ‘State of the American Workplace’ report from 2013 30% of the workforce is actively engaged and inspired at work, 52% are present but not fully engaged and 18% are actively disengaged and looking to make a change. The 14% at Zappos seen in this context might actually be a positive and given the factors associated with career path, etc. this number might actually be low. As always, there are many forces that impact things like this so this is just some conjecture based on some recent statistics.

Great to hear Veronica on her first ‘regular’ appearance last night.

Thanks for all that you do!

Bill Strait writes:

I just wanted to clarify a few points about the blockchain getting more buzz than bitcoin. The Bitcoin Blockchain is the world’s most secure public ledger. Why? Because it has the most hashing power of any distributed computer in the world. This hashing power isn’t coming from volunteers, it’s coming from bitcoin miners. Miners secure the network in exchange for bitcoin. If bitcoin becomes worthless, the miners go away. Without numerous geographically dispersed miners the blockchain is no longer secure. You cannot separate Bitcoin from it’s blockchain, but you can make other blockchains that compete with it for miners. If someone wants to put together a proposal for a Dollar Blockchain I’m all ears. For now, I’m going where the hash rate is.

=====

Wednesday’s guest:  Scott Johnson

 

Veronica Belmont and +Ron Richards are on to talk about the benefits and risks of tracking everything you do. Can all that data really be useful?

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Show Notes

Today’s guests: Ron Richards and Veronica Belmont

Headlines: 

Engadget reports Google has stopped accepting public contributions to their Map Maker service following a prank. Map Maker relies on “Google reviewers” and trusted users to moderate contributions. Since the prank, Google switched temporarily to manual checks from in-house teams but that led to a backlog of user submitted edits forcing Goggle to suspend new submissions entirely as of May 12th. Google says its temporary situation until it comes up with an improved moderation system,

The curated iOS app called NYT Now has dropped its $8 a month subscription fee and gone ad-supported. The app is targeted at younger readers and features selected stories from the New York Times as well as other sources around the Web. The newspaper’s main apps still carry a fee of $15-$35 a month.

TechCrunch reports Microsoft announced investments in three undersea cable projects. The New Cross Pacific Cable Network will connect China, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan with the US via Hillsboro, OR. A deal with Hibernia will offer faster connectivity between Canada, Ireland and the UK. The Hibernia Express Cable, launchign in September is the first new transatlantic cable in 12 years and will handle up to 10 Tbps per cable pair. And Microsoft is the first customer of AcquaComms upcoming AEConnect cable between Shirly, NY and the west coast of Ireland.

The Wall Street Journal notes that Nasdaq OMX Group is starting a pilot project to use a blockchain to verify transactions in its Nasdaq Private Market. The blockchain is the public ledger system used to verify Bitcoin transactions. Trading among pre-IPO companies in the private market currently, is often done by hand.

Next Thing Co. based in Oakland CA, is planning to build a $9 computer called Chip according to Fortune. The machine is built around a 1GHz ARM processor from Allwinner Technology in China, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage. It comes with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity to be save costs integrated video is a composite video port. However a VGA or HDMI adapter add-on is available for $10 and $15. The Chip is available from Next Thing’s Kickstarter which has raised close to a million dollars in 5 days. Well past its $50,000 goal.

CNET reports on a virtual reality theme park called The Void being built in Pleasant Grove, Utah, north of Provo. Starting sometime in 2016 visitors in groups of up to 10 can enter one of seven 60×60 foot rooms, put on VR headsets, and wander around a world that lets them feel real bark and metal under their fingertips, and interact with other players in realtime. Creator Ken Bretschneider designed the park and the headsets and hopes to work with outside gaming studios to create new experiences every three months.

TechCrunch reports IDC’s numbers show China’s smartphone market fell 4% year over year in Q1. It;s the first time smartphone shipments decreased in the country since 2006. IDC suggests excessive inventory might have been the cause. IDC still tracked 98.8 million shipments in China. Apple led the way with 14.7% market share followed by Xiaomi Huawei, Samsung and Lenovo in that order.

Ars Technica reports former Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi launched a Kickstarter Monday for a game called Bloodstained Ritual of the Night. Igarashi was the longest-running producer on the Castlevania series but left Konami last year. The game will be available as a digital download for backers who give $28 or more.

The Verge reports that the Orange Klif, a 3G phone running Firefox OS, is on sale this week for customers of the Orange network in Senegal and Madagascar. The phone costs around $40 US. This follows on the heels of Firefox OS phones shipping in South Africa earlier this year.

News From You:

habichuelacondulce sent us this Verge story on the FCC’s dismissal of a petition to delay the implementation of the Open Internet order submitted by a group consisting of AT&T, CenturyLink, USTelecom, and CTIA. This was the top vote getter on the subreddit today. The FCC stated that its classification of broadband Internet as a telecommunications service falls within its authority and consistent with Supreme Court precedent.

starfuryzeta shared the Huffington Post writeup of the AP report that a source says four of the fifty self driving cars in use in the state of the California have gotten into accidents since September. Three of the accidents happened to a Google Lexus SUV and the other to a car operated by Delphi Automotive. Both companies say the accidents were minor and the self-driving cars were not at fault. Two accidents happened while the cars were in self-driving mode.

michsineath submitted the Slate story about Zappos’s experiment with a management style called Holacracy. The organizational theory replaces titles and managers with a system of tactical and governance meetings. The project began in 2013 but in March CEO Tony Hsieh announced the system would apply to all employees and anyone who was dissatisfied with the decision would be offered severance. 210 employees, about 14% of the company, took the payout.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/05/09/the-revolution-will-be-digitized/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-07/rising-cyber-attacks-costing-health-system-6-billion-annually

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/04/04/tech-titans-latest-project-defy-death/

http://quantifiedself.com/

http://www.webcitation.org/66TEHdz4d

Pick of the Day:

Lisa Boban (Co-Executive Producer) – Whiting Indiana

I’ve been a subscriber to Rhapsody for over 10 years. I joined when they were literally the only legal game in town. My requirements were simple: a legal music service to keep my teenagers from stealing music.

But over the years their service has been an excellent resource for my musician husband who needs to be able to find specific tracks. Their back catalog is amazing, and the new stuff appears to be there. Their apps on both IOS and Android are great. And for $15 per month we can stream or download music for offline listening. Every time I look at another services, the available choices don’t come close to the functionality I get from Rhapsody.

I realize that Rhapsody has a bad reputation amongst the Technorati. But if you’re looking for a service, I think it deserves at least a look.

Messages: 

Someone who works for a cable company wrote in and pointed out that when a cable company gives its customers a $20 credit for being late to an appointment, it often charges the $20 to the technician.

The worker writes:

They are listed as WorkForce Not Utilized.

Its been told to us that anytime we run late to a job the company takes the $20 hit from the cable company. Thus, the cable company has eliminated any profit loss.

The only way for the charge to not be passed on to us to make sure our dispatcher is notified and has contacted the customer and noted that account 30mins or more before the end of the scheduled timeframe.

It’s Alan from Moncton New Brunswick, where winter just ended
Long time listener (since the first TNT), first time writer and future boss (I’m in the tell everyone I know category ATM )

Regarding self driving trucks,I’d like to give a ‘four cast’
I think that future ‘truck operators’ will be ‘driving’ multiply trucks (three would be a good number.)

I see one operator in charge of these trucks in convoy. Having the ‘unmanned’ trucks following the ‘manned’ truck.
If they run into any mechanical issue the operator could deal with it (tire issues, etc), making decisions on route and maintenance (fueling, etc)
I’d also see the operator being able to switch to any unmanned trucks controls from his seat, that way he could take over to direct it to specific spot for fueling or parking.

Would be perfect for long haul highway routes from terminal to terminal. It would be like a ‘land train’ if we have self driving truck, doing ‘follow the leader’ should be child’s play

Would solve multiple issues about manpower in that industry and getting loads where needed.

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Tuesday’s guest:  Patrick Beja

Justin Young joins the show to talk about the death of the free tier in streaming music services. Plus Len Peralta is in while his spaghetti cooks, to draw an awesome picture about the show.

MP3

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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: Justin Robert Young and Len Peralta

Headlines: 

Nokia may or may not WANT to sell its HERE mapping division but plenty of folks are interested in buying it. Reuters reports its sources say Daimler, BMW and Audi formed a consortium to submit an indicative bid for the division. The New York Times sources say Uber submitted a bid worth $3 billion. Book value for the HERE mapping division is about €2 billion.

Does web surfing make you hungry? You’re in luck. According to The Verge Google has integrated a “Place and order” option when you search for nearby restaurants. The option lets you choose from various services and complete the order on the services website. The first 6 delivery providers in the US are Seamless, Grubhub, Eat24, Delivery.com, BeyondMenu and MyPizza.com. Google hopes to add more providers in the future.

Reuters has revealed that Alibaba is in talks to buy 20% of Indian smartphone maker Micromax Informatics. The deal would help Alibaba expand into the world’s 3rd largest smartphone market. Alibaba, like many companies would like to get a foothold in the INdian market.

9 to 5 Google reports that starting today, Friday, owners of Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge can order the Gear VR Innovator Edition online for $199 via the Samsung store or BestBuy.com. The headset won’t be in Best Buy retail outlets until May 15th.

Fast Company writes up the new app called Thred from SimCity creator Will Wright. It’s a slideshow app. Or a storytelling app. Or a social network. Depending on who you ask. Wright called it an app for making “multi-image creations for anything from web comics, to logging your tropical vacation, to useful how-tos,” BAsically you take up to 30 images and choose to use any filters, borders or overlays. You can follow people favorite their threds and leave comments. You can also add links and location markers. Thred is available today on iOS in the US.

Nintendo notes that its first smartphone title will come out later this year with four more promised by March 2017. So five apps in two years. Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata says that’s not a small number because they intend to make every app a hit. He said “If we did not aim to achieve a significant result, it would be meaningless for us to do it at all.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that Russia and China have signed an agreement not to conduct cyber-attacks against each other as well as jointly counteract technology that may “destabilize the internal political and socio-economic atmosphere,” ”disturb public order” or “interfere with the internal affairs of the state.” The deal includes information sharing between law enforcement, exchange technologies and ensure security of information infrastructure.

Biztechafrica reports MTN Nigeria had made all Nigerian apps free until May 31 for its customers. The APPtitude campaign requires users to text the word APP to 131. App developers who want their app featured in the MTN portal should visit cp.nexva.com/r/mtn

News From You:

MANAGEMIKE submitted the top subreddit post from Ars Technica. This one gioes out to the chip lovers in the audience. Yesterday, at the AMD Financial Analyst Day CEO Lisa Su said the company will shift from being a bargain chip maker to focusing on high-performance. Among the announcements, Zen will be AMD’s sole CPU microarchitecture, launching at the high end first with a new series of FX chips. Al desktop CPU’s will use the new AM4 socket which introduces DDR4 support. That ends Project Skybridge. ARM-based OPteron A1100 serve chips will finally ship. And a new flagship GPU with high bandwidth memory will launch later this quarter.

Habichuelacondulce pointed out the Wall Street Journal article on CBS earnings, which dropped 195. But CEO Les Moonves always has something interesting to say. This time he mentioned the company will roll out an Internet-delivered version of the Showtime premium TV channel “in the coming months.”

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.cnet.com/news/spotifys-revenue-soars-but-growth-comes-at-a-cost-report-says/

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/08/us-spotify-results-idUSKBN0NT12120150508

http://www.cnet.com/news/taylor-swift-wont-let-the-players-play-on-spotify/

http://recode.net/2015/05/08/apples-new-music-service-will-push-paid-subscriptions-with-free-samples/

http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/4/8540935/apple-labels-spotify-streaming

http://www.forbes.com/sites/billrosenblatt/2015/03/21/new-riaa-revenue-figures-show-an-illusion-of-stability/

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/after-flat-year-for-music-industry-labels-look-to-streaming/article23956580/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/11535355/Digital-music-revenues-overtake-physical-sales-for-the-first-time.html

 

Pick of the Day:

Rich from Lovely Cleveland:

The pick of Tubes reminded me of an excellent book I think your audience would enjoy. Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software by Scott Rosenberg is a fantastic book that gives a really approachable glance into the world of software development. It covers Mitch Kapor’s attempt to create a dynamic calendar app called Chandler in the mid-2000s. As someone with no background in development or coding, it gave me some great perspective on what needs to go into creating the software I take for granted. Its kind of a layman’s The Mythical Man Month.

Messages: 

Alan writes:

Congestion-based data limits brings back the days of “free night time and weekend minutes” on cell phone service. Except the congestion time is probably the diametric opposite of phone service. And if more carriers start billing based on congestion in a big way, I think they will have to do something like time-based rates so that people can have some idea of whether or not their data use is counting against their cap. And like phone service, I expect it will be a temporary solution until more bandwidth is built out. My guess is that carriers were betting on living with the current system of caps during the wait, since it makes them more money, and the industry consensus seems to be that the time-based billing was confusing to customers.

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Monday’s guest:  Ron Richards and Veronica Belmont