Scott Johnson joins the show and we’ll have a good old fashioned talk about wearable fitness trackers, and why science says we don’t need ‘em!

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Show Notes

Today’s guest:  Scott Johnson, of the place with the pants on the frogs.

Headlines:

Ars Technica reports that some users of Samsung TVs say a Pepsi ad with no audio is being inserted into their movies every 20-30 minutes when using Plex or Foxtel TV apps. One redditor reported the ads went away if you disagreed with the Yahoo Privacy Notice in the TVs smart hub settings. Samsung has a partnership with Yahoo to serve pop-up ads. Samsun told Business Insider in January that the ads would be opt-in.

Reuters reports that stolen iPhones dropped 40% in San Francisco, 25% in New York and50% in London after Apple added a kill switch to the phones in September 2013. London Mayor Boris Johnson, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon and New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman have all called for laws mandating the kill switches. California passed such a law which has yet to go into effect.

Bloomberg Business reports that according to the usual suspects, I mean, the people with direct knowledge of the matter, Samsung plans to release two new versions of its Galaxy smartphone next month at Mobile World Congress. One of the phones will have a display that wraps around both edges. Similar to the Note Edge but on both sides. Both phones will use Samsung chips, have all metal bodies and have 5.1 inch screens.

The Verge passes along a report from “the Information” that Square is working on an Android tablet to replace the current iPad based Square Registers. The project is in its early stages and may not go through to production. In addition The Information also claims Google is testing out a new mobile payment system, called Plaso, that would let customers pay by confirming their name or initials at the register.

GigaOM reports Facebook has launched a collaborative threat detection framework called ThreatExchange. ThreatExchange is a hub where organizations can share data on attacks and malicious activity. Facebook’s graph-database correlates the data points together and figures out new relationships like malware targeting specific domains or IP addresses. The idea is to stop attacks before the occur. Current participants include Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, Yahoo, Bitly and Dropbox. ThreatExchange is available now in beta.

TechCrunch passes along details from a report by Ernst & Young that shows China, India, Russia and Mexico will have 2 billion broadband connections by 2016, twice that of more mature markets. Smartphone shipments will double in those countries between 2014 and 2018. China will have 500 million wireless broadband connections by 2016. India will have the youngest average age by 2020. Russia has the higest penetration rates for broadband services. And Mexico’s population has the highest per capita consumer spending of the four at $11,000 per person.

Reuters reports that China’s Potevio will begin selling YotaPhone 2 later this quarter. Its the first mass market distribution deal for YotaPhone. The Yota Phone has one screen for calls and apps and a second always-on display for notifications and e-reading.

Wired reports that US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, AKA the people who brought you Internet, have a project called Memex to index pages ignored by commercial search engines as well as sites on TOR network’s Hidden Services. The ones with .onion addresses that are only accessible through the TOR browser. They want to look for hidden relationships int he content that would be useful to law enforcement, military and private sector entities.

We previously mentioned BitTorrent’s partnership with Rapid Eye Studios to launch an original sci-fi show called Children of the Machine. Today BitTorrent announced a revised distribution plan. Children of the machine will launch in “late 2015″ as a free ad-supported video through BitTorrent Bundles. You can also pay $9.95 for no ads and bonus features. ALSO BitTorrent’s chief content officer and his team are moving from San Francisco to LA to work with the Rapid Eye team. The partners intend to launch shows with a 30-60 day exclusive window.

News From You: 

spsheridan sent us the ArsTechnica story announcing that all major wireless carriers in the US must start unlocking paid off phones today. The FCC and the carriers agreed in 2013 to unlock devices upon fulfillment of contract terms por payment of an early termination fee. Prepaid users can get their phones unlocked after a year of.

habichuelacondulce sent us the Reuters report that the UK will make it legal to test driverless cars on British roads next summer, as long as a person is present and able to take control of the car if necessary. The British Department for Transport is working on a ‘code of practise’ for driverless cars which will be published this spring.

Discussion Section Links: 

https://gigaom.com/2015/02/11/study-says-dont-buy-a-fitness-tracker-just-use-your-phone/

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2108876

http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2015/02/case/

http://qz.com/184639/fitness-trackers-are-no-good-at-counting-calories-and-other-lessons-learned-from-wearing-four-at-once/

https://gigaom.com/2014/12/08/insurance-provider-oscar-will-reward-you-if-you-hit-your-step-goal/

http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/11/android-wear-2014-shipments/?ncid=rss_truncated

Pick of the Day: 

I wanted to share this awesome PC building resource to all my fellow DTNS listeners who want to be able to build the best system for their budget.

http://logicalincrements.com

Logical Increments provides you a list of the best components at several price levels starting at destitute for $200, up to a monstrous system for $4000. Each tier will give you a choice of 3 for each component, the price, and a link where you can purchase it. All items in each tier are also designed to work best with other items in that tier. A great resource for anyone wanting to build their own system, especially a hardcore gaming machine.

Thanks and love the show!

Jamie in beautiful BC

I’d like to submit howtoreplaceyourpc.com as a listener pick. The site is meant for people who are not listeners of DTNS, who just use a computer, and occasionally they need to get a new one. The site covers Mac and Windows, desktops and tablets and phones. If someone comes asking what computer to buy, and they are not an immediate family member, this is where I send them. The site was made by one of the managers at a UK company providing home tech support.

The site does heavily push for Apple products, but does not focus on them exclusively, and Mr. Hutton does provide explanations for why he suggests what he does. Also, he does use Amazon referral links.

Thanks for the read, and insert generic closing message here.

~ A. Karl Kornel – karl@kornel.us

Wednesday’s guest:  Sarah Lane of Tech Crunch

Patrick Beja is with us today to talk about Google’s new health facts surfacing in search. Can Google claim to be unbiased while curating facts?

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

Show Notes

Brian Brushwood joins the show to talk about Samsung’s SmartTV that listens to everything you say and reports back to headquarters. Is that really what’s going on? is it worse than the Xbox or Amazon Echo?

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A special thanks to all our Patreon supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

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

Show Notes

Justin Young is on the show and the two of us will decide the true fate of Google Glass. Is it dead, for the enterprise, or poised to have its greatest moment yet? Plus Len Peralta is here to illustrate the show!

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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!

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

Check out Len’s amazing art for the week: “Would You Hit A Guy Wearing Glass?”

Headlines

The Verge reports the first Ubuntu phone will go on sale next week in online flash sales throughout Europe. The Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Editions is built by Spanish company BQ and will sell for €169.90. It’s a modest price for a modest phone. 4.5-inch display with 540 x 960 qHD resolution, a 1.3 GHz quad-core processor 8 GB of storage and no LTE. It does have dual micro-SIM. The OS uses cards instead of apps, delivering content by category. Services include Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Time Out, Yelp, and Cut the Rope with Spotify, SoundCloud, and Grooveshark also included through web APIs. Followers of @ubuntu and @bqreaders on Twitter will get first alert each time the phone becomes available.

Bloomberg reports a large number of people who work at Tesla, used to work at Apple. In fact 150 of the 6,000 or so Tesla employees have Apple on their resume. Musk says the two companies design philosophies are closely aligned and that Apple tries to recruit from Tesla as well. Execs and engineers from larger established tech company relocate to smaller Valley start up. Also, water is wet. Lebron James is good at basketball and Tom’s Beard is majestic. What else is new?

CNET reports an advisory group set up by Google recommends the company limit its “right-to-forgotten” search result removals to Europe, where it is the law. Google does not alter search results for its non-European domains, even though they can be accessed from within Europe.

TechCrunch reports Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In project has started a CS&E Chapter to help women in computer science and engineering find advice and support. The chapter is launching in partnership with Facebook, LinkedIn and the Anita Borg Institute.

TechCrunch reports that Uber is adding two new safety features to its app in India. An in-app panic button and journey and location sharing with up to five people will roll out to users beginning February 11. The features will come to the app worldwide at a later date.

BuzzFeed wrote up a profile of ride-hailing service Gett moving in on Uber’s turf in New York. Gett or Gettaxi is the second largest international ride-hailing company by revenue, after Uber. The two companies have squared off previously in Tel Aviv, Moscow and London. Gett rolled out fixed rate rides of $10 in Manhattan in September. Gett’s biggest advantage is coming into markets with legal approval. Almost the opposite tactic Uber takes.

News From You: 

starfuryzeta sent in The Guardian post reporting the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal declared Friday that regulations covering access by Britain’s GCHQ to emails and phone records intercepted by the US National Security Agency (NSA) breached Articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention on human rights. 8 relates to private and family life and 10 to freedom of expression. The court made the decision because the public was unaware of safeguards int he program. The GCHQ was pleased that the surveillance itself was found legal and only the details to be made public needed to change.

DocSneer posted the ProPublica article calling attention to the financial problems of Werner Koch, the coder maintaining Gnu Privacy Guard. After the publication of the article the Linux Foundation awarded a one-time grant of $60,000 and his donation page reached a funding goal of $137,000. Additionally Facebook and Stripe each pledged to donate $50,000 a year to the project.

And jaymz6689 posted the TechDirt article which, bear with me takes details from a Music Business Worldwide post about a report from Ernst &Young and French record label trade group SNEP. What did they all find? Of streaming revenue generated by platforms like Spotify, about 20.8% goes to the platform itself, 16.7% to taxes, 10% to songwriters, 6.8% to artists and the largest share, 45.6% goes to labels. If you take out taxes and the platform, payouts of royalties go 73.1% to labels.

Discussion Section Links: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/style/why-google-glass-broke.html

http://www.cio.com/article/2879048/google-glass/google-glass-is-alive-and-well-in-the-enterprise.html

Pick of the Day:  Lots of pics for Jody

Hey Tom – as a brand new co-executive producer, I felt compelled to offer up a couple of picks…

As someone who just started a new job, Charlie App has been a great tool for me to not only see how I may be connected to the new folks I meet but also a great way to remember people’s names.

Charlie App – charlieapp.com
Charlie combs through 100s of sources and automatically sends you a one-pager on everyone you’re going to meet with, before you see them.

Another great tool I recently found is Sidekick. Sidekick is a Google Chrome extension that when open will track when and where a person reads your email. Kinda creepy but also kinda cool.

Sidekick – app.getsidekick.com
Sidekick is a free service that gives you email superpowers with contact insights, email tracking, and email scheduling.

Keep doing your thing! Really enjoy DTNS.

Best, Jody

Monday’s guest: Brian Brushwood!

Todd Whitehead is on the show. We’ll talk about Twitter’s teacups and troll regrets along with the appearance of the annual Apple TV rumor.

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A special thanks to all our Patreon supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

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

Show Notes

Today’s guest:  Todd Whitehead, Alpha Geek Radio

Headlines

Remember the Swatch Watch? No? (damn kids) Well, it was a super popular casual watch from the 1980s — Swatch stands for Second Watch, if you were wondering. According to Bloomberg Business, the Swiss watch company plans to sell a smartwatch, or perhaps a Swartwatch. Swatch CEO Nick Hayek said in an interview that the device will use NFC, let consumers make mobile payments, and somehow won’t have to be charged, while still working with Windows and Android software. It may be available by April, around the same time as the Apple Watch.

The Verge obtained a message written by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo on an internal forum taking personal responsibility for Twitter’s harassment and abuse problems. After an employee asked what they could do to stop cyberbullying, Costolo wrote, “we suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years. It’s no secret and the rest of the world talk about it every day.” Costolo said “we’re going to start kicking these people off right and left and making sure that when they issue their ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them.”

You hear that? — That’s the sound of NDAs lifting. Last June at WWDC Apple announced the Photos app, the replacement for Aperture and iPhoto and previews abound on the Internet today. The Verge reports key highlights include icloud integration. When you take a pic on your iPhone it will automatically be uploaded to your iCloud drive. There’s also a new auto crop tool, a new zoom out view and new square book formats. Keep in mind, you won’t have the same level of granular control especially compared to Aperture’s pixel-peepers level of tweaking. So don’t delete Aperture or iPhoto for Photos app, just yet. Developers can download the beta version of OS X that includes Photos now.

Bloomberg reports Twitter has licensed direct access to its data— the so-called firehose— to Google. While Google can index and include Twitter posts in its search without paying, access to the firehose allows for posts to show up in search as soon as they’re posted. Engineers are working on the connection which should start having an effect sometime int he first half of this year.

Buried in a history of why Google Glass died, the New York Times reports a glimmer of hope for the product. According to people with knowledge of Tony Faddell’s plans, Ivy Ross’s team will be redesigning Glass from scratch and will not release it until it’s complete.

ReCode has this year’s winter tale of Apple creating a TV service. This year’s rumor takes the form of Apple in preliminary talks with TV programmers to create bundles of programming to be sold directly to consumers over the Web. With SlingTV and PlayStation Vue in beta and HBO and Verizon’s services expected later this year, this could be the year the Apple television service rumor comes true. But just don’t be too shocked if the autumn rumor about talks with Apple falling apart makes its usual appearance.

BT has confirmed it is acquiring UK mobile network service company “EE” from Orange and Deutsche Telekom for $19 billion dollars. The move will allow BT to sell its broadband, fixed telephony and pay-TV services to those EE customer who don’t already subscribe to BT’s offerings. EE has a subscriber base of 33 million in the UK and the largest 4G customer base in Europe.

The Verge reports Mattel and Google will hold a join event February 13th in New York, the day before Toy Fair 2015. The invite features a graphic reminiscent of the ViewMaster and reads “Mattel invites you to view what’s possible with exclusive announcement and product debut” followed by the Mattel and Google logos.

GigaOm reports Twitter earnings are out. $479.078 million in revenue beat expectations of 453.1 million and Earnings per share of 12 cents beat expectations of 6 cents. User growth was not as rosy. Monthly average users went from 284 million in Q3 to 288 million in Q4 which is a 20% jump over Q4 last year. Analysts are already grouchy about that slow growth.

News From You: 

HobbitfromPA sent us the story from NBC reporting that the FBI is investigating an attack on the IT systems of Anthem, one of the largest health insurance companies in the US. Anthem spokesperson, Kristin Binns said attackers, “obtained personal information relating to consumers and Anthem employees who are currently covered, or who have received coverage in the past”. The information accessed included names, birthdates, Social Security numbers, addresses, income data, employment information and email addresses. Anthem serves customers in 14 states.

starfuryzeta sent us The Next Web’s report that Under Armour, a company that makes workout clothes, has acquired personal training app Endomondo for $85 million and diet and exercise counter MyFitnessPal for $475 million. My Fitness pal has 80 million users and Endomondo has 20 million. Add that to the 120 million users of MapMyFitness, already owned by UnderArmour and that is a huge community of people who need just might need some exercise clothes.

Discussion Section Links: 

http://recode.net/2015/02/04/apple-is-talking-to-tv-programmers-about-its-own-web-tv-service/

http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/apple-in-talks-again-to-offer-tv-channels-report-1201424182/

http://allthingsd.com/20091102/apples-itunes-pitch-tv-for-30-a-month/

http://nypost.com/2012/03/01/apple-throws-weight-around-in-tv-negotiations/

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Unshockingly-Apples-Dream-of-TV-Disruption-Held-up-By-Cable-129924

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-12/apple-said-to-plan-new-set-top-box-amid-time-warner-cable-talks

Pick of the Day:  MapMyFitness.com via Jamie in beautiful BC

Another app pick I want to share with my fellow DTNS’ers. As 2015 just started and a lot of people are trying to stay on track with their new years resolutions, I wanted to make people aware of the Map My Fitness line of apps for iOS and Android, more specifically MapMyWalk. The free version of this app provides a wealth of features to help you both track your various workouts, as well as provide incremental audible updates as to your current pace and distance travelled. The GPS functionality will plot your walk/run on a map for you to save and use later, and you can save your favorite routes to use on a later date. It will also give you a weekly recap of how many workouts you did, total distance travelled, and total calories burned. It also works with many fitness trackers, as well as uploading data to Health Kit on iOS. Can’t say enough good things about this great free app for those wanting an easy way to live an active lifestyle.

Thanks as always! Jamie in beautiful BC

Update on Windscape

“Windscape software recommended and apparently that was bad timing. Thomas Sidla emailed the company that makes it Gaucho Software and got this reply: “”Last week, the National Weather Service changed something on their servers, so I’ve been scrambling to update my apps for the change.” The Update went live last night so it’s all working again.

Tomorrow’s guests: Justin Robert Young, Len Peralta!

Allison Sheridan joins the show and we bring on Molly Wood to help us dig into the US FCC’s proposal for Open Internet Rules. We’ll cut through the FUD and get to what you really need to be concerned with.

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A special thanks to all our Patreon supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

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

Show Notes

Today’s guest:  Allison Sheridan, host of the NosillaCast at podfeet.com & Molly Wood, columnist at The New York Times

Headlines

It looks like NCTA Chairman Michael Powell’s idea of World War III will come to pass tomorrow. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler wrote an opinion column for Wired indicating he will propose, “that the FCC use its Title II authority to implement and enforce open internet protections.” His proposal will ban paid prioritization, and the blocking and throttling of lawful content and services. He hopes to preserve motivation for investment by insuring “there will be no rate regulation, no tariffs, no last-mile unbundling.” For the first time the Open Internet rules would apply to wireless as well wireline providers.

9 to 5 mac has the sources that say Apple is working on an unnamed streaming music service that will use Beats’ music content and technologies. Users will be able to stream music from the searchable music catalog and add songs to their personal libraries, and store music either on a device or in the cloud. Apple will also integrate Beats Music’s Playlists, Activities, and Mixes features into the new service, letting users access human-curated playlists. 9 to 5 mac’s sources say Apple is considering $7.99 a month, and maybe launch at WWDC.

The Verge has a post about some evidence Apple may be testing cars equipped with camera rigs that look similar to Google StreetView cars. Claycord.com published photos of a such a car that San Francisco’s KPIX has confirmed is leased to Apple. A similar car was spotted in New York in September. The cars seem to be equipped with LIDAR, Light Detection and Ranging cameras used by Google and Nokia for their mapping efforts. The car also includes a wheel sensor used by Navteq to create street imagery for Bing. LIDAR is also used for self-driving cars.

TechCrunch reports Microsoft has paid at least $100 million for calendar app maker Sunrise. The company makes apps for iOS, Android, OSX and Web, that consolidates calendars from different providers. Users can access their consolidated calendar from other services like Google, iCloud and Exchange. TechCrunch has heard MS will keep Sunrise as a standalone product while borrowing some tech for Microsoft efforts.

Venture Beat reports that Microsoft has released downloadable previews of the “universal” Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps for Windows 10. Microsoft says the new apps are optimized for tablets or touch-enabled laptops and desktops and provide “a consistent way for independent software vendors and developers to extend and integrate with Office apps”. A phone version will arrive in the coming weeks. Downloads of the new Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps are available from the Windows Store Beta that ships with the latest Windows 10 build.

According to TechCrunch, The Cyberspace Administration of China is now requiring users of social media, website services and forums to register their actual names and ID starting March 1. Although similar actions have been taken in the past when microblog Weibo enforced real names in 2012 these changes are far more sweeping.

Want the latest version of Android Lollipop? Move to India! The Next Web reports Google updated its Android One website for India today indicating that Android One devices will soon receive the 5.1 update to Android Lollipop. That makes them the first devices int the world to get the update. Android One devices with 5.1 are also schedule to arrive in Indonesia later this month, with Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka expected to get them next.

Reuters reports 30-year-old Ross Ulbricht has been found guilty on Wednesday on seven counts including drug trafficking, and conspiracies to commit money laundering and computer hacking for orchestrating a scheme that enabled $200 million of anonymous online drug sales using bitcoin on the site Silk Road. Ulbricht is believed by many to be the Silk Road operator Dread Pirate Roberts.

 

 

 

 

 

News From You: 

tninja3000 sent us a Tech in Asia report that Alibaba’s online market place Taoboa partnered with Shanghai YTO Express for a three day test program starting today in which 450 customers will get a chance to have packages that weigh less than 340 grams delivered to their door by drone. The site offers a list of available products, which includes a ginger tea that helps to relieve menstrual cramps. Because that’s the kind of thing you want right. away.

starfuryzeta sent us this story from Engadget regarding “Canary Watch” a website created by a coalition of privacy advocacy groups including the EFF and NYU’s technology law and policy clinic. The “Canary Watch” website monitors sites and reports when “canary pages” — pages that state a site has received no national security letter requests for instance– have disappeared.

 

Discussion Section Links: Title II time

http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2005/10/5498-2/

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/fcc-chairman-wheeler-net-neutrality/

http://www.fcc.gov/document/chairman-wheeler-proposes-new-rules-protecting-open-internet

http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/4/7977963/fcc-net-neutrality-victory

http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/4/7977641/fcc-net-neutrality-war-with-your-isp-title-ii

http://www.attpublicpolicy.com/fcc/title-ii-closing-arguments/

https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneutrality/articles/20141211/05462229389/verizon-admits-to-investors-that-title-ii-wont-harm-broadband-investment-all.shtml

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/14/5716802/game-of-phones-how-verizon-is-playing-the-fcc-and-its-customers

http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/4/7978313/fcc-net-neutrality-title-ii-reactions

http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/4/7977633/fcc-will-apply-net-neutrality-to-mobile-for-the-first-time

http://www.cnet.com/news/net-fix-title-ii-the-two-words-that-terrify-the-broadband-industry/#ftag=CAD590a51e

http://www.cnet.com/news/why-fccs-wheeler-is-defying-the-greatest-lobbyists-in-the-world/#ftag=CAD590a51e

Pick of the Day:  Has Been coffee via 

http://www.hasbean.co.uk

Tomorrow’s guest:  Todd Whitehead of Alpha Geek Radio

Patrick Beja joins to explore the brewing war between Google and Uber. Is it Apple and Google all over again?

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Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

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A special thanks to all our Patreon supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

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

Show Notes

Today’s guest: Patrick Beja, DTNS contributor and independent podcaster at Frenchspin.com

Headlines

Ars Technica collects various reports that broke yesterday evening about Uber and Google fighting over self-driving cars. Bloomberg’s sources say Google chief legal officer David Drummond, who is on Uber’s board, showed screenshots to Uber of a Google ridesharing app. WSJ says that’s just an internal test app for Google employees. Meanwhile TechCrunch reports Uber is teaming up with Carnegie Mellon University researchers to build the “Uber Advanced Technologies Center” in Pittsburgh to research its own self-driving cars.

Ars Technica reports on Eero unveiling their mesh networking routers that promise easy setup, constant security updates and easy coverage of large homes. The routers are not extenders or repeaters, but create a mesh network. Each Eero router has a pair of dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios.  The boxes run a custom firmware stack built on DD-WRT. A cloud-based app allows for users to easily add new routers but also send links in text messages to friends for easy connection to the WiFi network.  Eero is available for preorder today at $125 for one unit or $299 for three. That’s 40% off the eventual retail price when the unit arrives this summer.

Samsung sent out invites to Galaxy Unpacked 2015 on March 1 in Barcelona, during Mobile World Congress. TechCrunch’s picture of the invite shows the side view of a bent metallic device, possibly a fork or maybe a Galaxy S6 with a curved body. We can’t be sure. GigaOm notes that korea’s DDaily suggests Samsung may partner up with LoopPay for automatic payments used in conjunction with a fingerprint sensor.

The Next Web reports that Twitter will begin syndicating promoted tweets outside of Twitter.  The company will bring its promoted tweets to Flipboard and Yahoo Japan with the same design as regular tweets.  In 2014, Twitter had 185 billion tweet impressions off its own site.

TechCrunch passes along a report from Avast on Android malware that displays ads disguised as warning messages when user unlock their device. The malware is estimated to have been downloaded int he millions. Avast has analyzed three apps, Durak card game, an IQ Test and a history app that were infected. The malware waits for several days and at least one reboot before activating.

Engadget reports on Razer’s new Blade gaming laptop for 2015.
The new Blade has a 14-inch 3200 x 1800 touch display, GeForce 970M GPU, 16GB of RAM and a max of 512 GB of solid state storage. Starting price is $2,199 although you can opt for 1080p screen for $200 less.

PC Mag looks at the 2016 roadmap for ARM processor designs unveiled Tuesday. The 64-bit Cortex-A72 which successds the A15 and A57 as the BIG in ARMS Big.little scheme– includes the new CoreLink CCI-500 interconnect and upgraded graphics processing headlined by the Mali-T880 GPU. ARM chief marketing officer Ian Drew expects the next generation of chips to get about 3.5 times the performance of what you get today as well as advanced native voice support, render pictures into 3D print jobs, improved VR and better linkage to Internet of Things device. It will use 75% less energy than the A15. Mobile chip makers that have already licensed the Cortex-A72 include HiSilicon, MediaTek, and Rockchip. More technical info coming in April.

CNET reports the China Internet Network Information Center says the country added 31 million Internet users for a total of 649 million.  Mobile Internet users rose 57 million to 557 million.  That’s good news for Lenovo’s Motorola brand. The company reported sales up 118 percent in the last quarter. And that’s without China which Motorola is now returning to.  Motorola announced Monday on Weibo that it had seen 1 million reservations for the Moto X in China. Lenovo is also expected to announce a new smartphone brand in 2015 for China that will be sold directly to consumers online.

Console game maker OUYA confirmed this morning that Alibaba is getting the OIYA game library on its YunOS platform. YunOS is Alibaba’s version of Android in China. For the moment, OUYA’s game service will be limited to Alibaba’s Tmall set-top box, and will not appear in phones. OUYA did not say anything about the yesterday’s Wall Street Journal report that Alibaba is investing $10 million into OUYA.

 

 

News From You: 

Kaeltian, tm204, and starfuryzeta all wanted us to know about reports that retail electronics store RadioShack is in talks to sell up to half of its 4,000 stores and close the rest as part of an expected plan to file for bankruptcy. Bloomberg’s sources say Sprint, Brookstone and Amazon are all interested in the chain. Sources say Sprint might co-brand stores and keep the Radio Shack name alive.The New York Stock Exchange said Monday it would suspend trading of the stock immediately.

And finally, philo1927 sent us the GigaOm post that the Wall Street Journal has sources with knowledge about Tom Wheeler’s plans for February 5th.

According to the Journal, Wheeler plans to call for Title II reclassification of Internet in the US.

Under this reclassification, could prohibit ISPS from blocking, slowing down or speeding up specific websites in exchange for payment.

The reclassification would apply to mobile broadband, and would place peering arrangements under Title II.

Discussion Section Links:  Uber Google and Eero

http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/02/uber-and-google-reportedly-go-to-war-over-self-driving-taxis/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-02/exclusive-google-and-uber-are-going-to-war-over-taxis?hootPostID=86b6175a61f6b983b08a1c1055694458

http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/02/uber-opening-robotics-research-facility-in-pittsburgh-to-build-self-driving-cars/

http://blog.uber.com/carnegie-mellon

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/02/02/uber-chases-google-in-self-driving-cars/

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/eero-takes-a-crack-at-pushing-mesh-wi-fi-through-your-whole-house/

Pick of the Day: Tubes via Rusty in Virginia

Hey Tom,

I recommend Andrew Blum’s book “Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet.” His tour-guide approach to explaining the Internet’s infrastructure and is unique and fascinating. It’s much better than any of my CS textbooks. I’m reminded of this book whenever you explain peering and interconnects on DTNS or Cord Killers.

I think this pick is especially timely given the ongoing debate about net neutrality and the FCC’s upcoming vote at the end of February.

http://andrewblum.net/

cheers,
Rusty in Virginia

Also, Patrick likes this! https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse

Tomorrow’s guest:  Allison Sheridan

Christian Cantrell is on the show to talk about Pebble’s claim to revolutionize the smart watch and be less focused on apps. What would that mean?

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Show Notes

Today’s guest: Christian Cantrell, sci-fi author & tech writer

http://www.livingdigitally.net/  

http://darkmatter.fm

Headlines

A new Raspberry Pi is here! Still $35 but packed with more power. Ars Technica reports the Raspberry Pi 2 looks close to the Model B+ but has 4 USB ports, more GPIO pins, and a microSD slot instead of a regular one. The 2 also runs a 900 MHzquad-core (drool)ARMv7. That means you can run Ubuntu Core and even Windows 10 if you don’t want Raspbian. Microsoft will offer Windows 10 free to Raspberry Pi owners. The 2 is the new Model B. The $20 Model A+ remains available.  

Everquest has broken free of Sony as the company announced it has sold it’s Sony Online Entertainment games division to investment management firm Columbus Nova. The Next Web reports the division has been renamed Daybreak Game Company. The company will continue to produce MMORPGS like Everquest and H1Z1 while embracing the multiplatform world.

The Verge interviewed Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky who said Pebble shipped its 1 millionth watch on December 31st. And as Android Wear grows and Apple Watch arrives, Migicovsky says Pebble has “found a new framework to use as an interaction model on the watch.” He said apps will no longer be the main focus on the platform, saying “it doesn’t look like what is on your smartphone.”

Intel doesn’t want to get left out of the Internet of Things market the way it missed mobile at first. So it’s buying its way in. Reuters reports Intel has agreed to buy German chip maker Lantiq for an undisclosed sum. In addition to chips for networked devices, Lantiq also produces chips for networking connections, mobile broadband and WiFi. The deal is still subject to regulatory approvals and although the terms of sale have not been disclosed price estimates are around $280 million.

The Washington Post reports the US FCC will consider a draft decision this week to intervene against state laws in Tennessee and North Carolina that puts legal limits on Internet service operated by cities. The decision is expected to say that laws limiting municipal Internet prices or geography inhibit timely and reasonable deployment of high-speed Internet under section 706 of the Communications Act. The draft decision will be followed by a vote on Feb. 26, the same day as an expected vote on Open Internet Guidelines.

Reuters reports Japan message app company Line is launching online grocery delivery in Thailand, Line’s second biggest market after Japan. Line’s service will be offering products such as water, coffee and instant noodles at up to 50 percent discounts and free delivery for Thai shoppers. The service will compete against similar services from Tesco Lotus, CP Fresh Mart and Tops Supermarket.

In a story from the-next-web The Pirate Bay is back up, after being taking down Dec 9 during a raid on a Swedish data center by local police. The site is back on its original domain with a Phoenix image. The first new torrent added contained an image of a phoenix titled “Like a Phoenix, it rises from the ashes”. While the site is up features like RSS feeds are still down.

TechCrunch reports that Google’s share of the US search market, excluding mobile, dipped below 75% for the first time since July 2008. If mobile is included, Google’s share rises to 78%. Yahoo become the number 2 search engine in the US, increasing its share of the search market to more than 28% of all searches, compared to less than 10% in November 2014. This surge is due mostly to Yahoo becoming the default search engine in Firefox, which also helped.

Gigaom reports that IDC shows tablet sales were down by 3.2% tduring the holiday quarter compared to last year. This was the first time IDC showed year over year decline for worldwide tablet shipments since the market’s inception in 2010, only shipping 76 million tablets in Q4. The rest of the years increases balnced the bad Q4 out with Tablet sales for the entire year increasing by 4.4% over 2013 with 229.6 million units shipped. Apple continues to lead the tablet market with a 28.1% share, followed by Samsung, then Lenovo, ASUS and Amazon. Although only Lenovo managed to grow year over year.

 

 

 

 

News From You: 

MacBytes sent us the Reuters report that IBM is bringing back annual performance bonuses for its CEO and other top executives, despite 11 straight quarters of lower revenue, 7% drop in 2014 profits and 11% decrease in stock performance. CEO Virginia Rometty will get a $3.6 million annual incentive payout for 2014, on top of a base salary of 1.5 million, which increases to 1.6 million in 2015. She is also slated to received a $5 million award for 2015 and a long-term stock grant worth 13.3 million payable in 2018. She must have met her personal deliverables or Q targets or OKRs or some such thing. IBM did not deliver bonuses in 2013 at the request of executives.

metalfreak submitted the Liliputing.com report that Dell will offer Ubuntu installed on its new XPS 13 and Precision M3800 laptops. The linux option will cut the starting price of the M3800 by a $100 to $1533 . Machines will ship with Ubuntu release 14.04 installed. Unfortunately that means there will be no out of box support for the laptop’s Thunderbolt port although that may be addressed with 14.04.2 maintenance release. If you need something even smaller and cheaper the latest revision to the XPS 13 ultrabook will come in at $1189.

Discussion Section Links:  One Million Pebbles

http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/2/7947799/pebble-1-million-smartwatches-sold-new-hardware-coming

http://developer.getpebble.com/blog/2015/01/22/cloudpebble-pebble-emulator/

http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/02/apple-watch-retail-plans/?ncid=rss

http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/2/7950257/apple-watch-apps-google-uber-foursquare

Pick of the Day: Windscape via Tom Sidla

One of my favorite Apps is Windscape. It’s another weather App, yes, but not like any other I’ve seen. It gathers wind speed data and temps from around the globe and simulates the info with little moving dots. Very cool looking. You can zoom in and out around the globe and see typhoons, storms, polar vortexes, who’s hot and who’s not (literally). It’s $.99, so if you like science and weather, definitely check it out.

Tom Sidla, Pipe Dream Plumbing, Inc.

Tomorrow’s guest: Patrick Beja

After Wednesday’s show Robert Heron, Jennie and Tom kept talking about TVs and more. The conversation was captured on the YouTube video but we thought it was good enough to give the audio listeners a version as well. Happy bonus weekend content.

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A special thanks to all our Patreon supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

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

Darren Kitchen is on the show and we’ll talk about transparency in light of Google’s new commitments to privacy and Reddit’s new transparency report. Plus Len Peralta tries to illustrate transparency. Will you be able to see what he draws?!?

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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 guest: Darren Kitchen of hak5.org and Len Peralta, artist!

Check out Len’s show art this week, it’s pretty hilariously awesome.

http://lenperaltastore.com/products/im-not-touching-you-print

Headlines

The NY Times reports Verizon announced Friday it will soon allow wireless users to completely opt out of its supercookie tracking program. Previously customers could opt out of the tracking being USED by anyone but the tracking still happened. This allowed clever third parties to figure out how to track users anyway. Expanding the optout to remove the number called a “UIDH” will be available “soon.”

CNET reports on a recent upgrade to China’s Internet filtering system to make it harder to circumvent with VPN and providing more scope to block unwanted material. A senior official confirmed that popular VPN Astrill has been disrupted.

Bloomberg reports AOL is firing 150 employees and closing TUAW and Joystiq, folding content from the sites into Engadget. Most of the job cuts come from the sales division. A source told Bloomberg AOL is automating its digital ad sales and simplifying its portfolio. TechCrunch reports Parentdish in the UK and MyDaily, also in the UK, are going to become a part of Huffington Post’s UK site. AOL reports Q4 earnings on Feb. 11. TUAW’s last day as TUAW is Feb. 2.

Rap artist Jay-Z has tabled a bid to purchased a Swedish company called Aspiro for $56 million US dollars. Aspiro runs the WiMP and Tidal music streamign services. CNET reports WiMP is popular in Scandinavia, Germany and Poland with 25 million songs, 75,000 music videos, and half a million subscribers. Tidal is a streaming service in the US and UK that focuses on high quality audio in the lossless FLAC format. Shake it off? Oh hell no. Jay-Z’s the new Sinatra, he can make it anywhere, yeah they love him everywhere.

Alameda is not just for nuclear wessels anymore. CNET reports that what seems to be a Tesla Model X was caught on camera, during testing at the former Alameda Naval Air Station near San Francisco. The video shows a car slightly more angular but similar to the Model X concept unveiled in 2012. The Model X is Telsa’s take on an all-electric SUV. The video was caught on an iPhone 5 and uploaded to YouTube.

Engadget reports that British Telecom, known as BT, says faster broadband is coming to the UK. BT has been testing G.fast a technology that uses a wider frequency band to increase performance on copper wire. Two pilot programs will begin this summer in Huntingdon (Cambridgeshire) and Gosforth (Newcastle) with speeds of a few hundred megabits per second which will be increased to 500 mbps over time to around 4,000 homes and businesses. Delivering those speeds to most of the UK, however will take about a decade.

Engadget reports starting today, Google Now will support cards with data from more than 40 third-party apps. For example apps like Pandora can push a card recommending a playlist or if you land at an airport a Lyft card might quote you a fare for a ride. The feature does not share data with the third-parties and works only on Android and only with selected apps.

The Verge reports Google is moving another program from research to regular old corporate division. Project Tango, the 3D-sensing and scanning technology is leaving the Advanced Technology and Projects group, aka ATAP, and into Google proper, though reporting to whom is not yet announced. Google said the same thing it did about Google Glass, namely it will keep iterating and building new devices and this is a step towards a final consumer product. But for some reason none of the headlines seeem to say Project Tango is dead. Hmm.

 

 

 

News From You: 

goofball_jones pointed out the VentureBeat article about Reddit’s first transparency report. Reddit revealed that it received 55 requests for user info in 2014, all from government agencies and all but 5 from the US. It provided some information in response to 32 of the requests. 218 requests were made to remove content and 68 of those requests were granted, all on copyright grounds. Last month Reddit had 3.2 million logged in users.

spsheridan submitted the Huffington Post article that Google has agreed to changes regarding user policy as the result of discussion with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office. The changes, which will apply to all Google users globally, will make its privacy policy easier to read and to find and give users more control over what information is shared. It will also do more to make employees, third parties, and users aware of privacy issues. While Google agreed to changes, ICO enforcement head Steve Eckersley said the investigation found no substantial damage and distress to consumers.

Discussion Section Links: Transparency

https://gigaom.com/2015/01/30/google-promises-better-privacy-information-to-settle-uk-case/

https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-blogs/2015/01/google-to-change-privacy-policy-after-ico-investigation/

http://www.zdnet.com/article/reddit-hands-over-user-data-in-over-half-of-government-requests/

https://www.redditstatic.com/transparency/2014.pdf

http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/28/dropbox-transparency-covers-non-us-requests/?

Pick of the Day: Off to be the Wizard via Big Jim

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1612184715/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1612184715&linkCode=as2&tag=subbrcom-20&linkId=4SXHRD34CRSYUQND\

Monday’s guest: Christian Cantrell