Jason Hiner is on the show today, we’ll chat a bit about Heartbleed, Windows XP and dig into whether 3D printing belongs in the home or the factory.

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

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

Show Notes

Today’s guest:  Jason Hiner, editor-in-chief of Tech Republic

Headlines

As we discussed yesterday, the Heartbleed vulnerability affects around 18% of SSL 1.01 servers that implemented TLS-Heartbeat. SysAdmins have been scrambling to patch their systems and issue new security certificates. The simple advice is to wait for confirmation of a fix from vulnerable websites before logging in. If you don’t want to wait, GRC’s Steve Gibson recommends using ssllabs.com to check if a site’s server has had their SSL version upgraded to 1.01g and the security certificate was reissued AFTER the update. Matthew Green has an excellent discussion at cryptographicengineering.com of the code error itself, if you’re interested in how the bug happened in the first place.

Reuters reports that 70% of the market in China still uses Windows XP, which received it’s last security patch yesterday. Microsoft has partnered with Lenovo and Tencent to provide continuing support. Tencent will provide permanent XP support free of charge with two 24-hour hotlines. tm204 posted a Netcraft survey to our subreddit showing 6,000 websites still running on Windopws XP including 14 hosted by US governments. If that sounds bad, it’s nothing compared to the 500,000 or so websites hosted on Windows 2000 which stopped being supported in July 2010. There are even 50,000 sites running Windows NT4 which ended support December 31, 2004.

The Verge passed along Amazon’s claim to have tripled its streams over the past year, making its instant video site the third largest behind Netflix and YouTube, passing up Hulu, according to numbers from video-delivery firm Qwilt.

The Economic Times reports Facebook now has more than 100 million active users in India, the second country in which the social network has reached that milestone. The first was its home country of the US. 84 million of that 100 access the site from their mobile devices. Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico round out the top 5 countries for Facebook, in that order.

News From You: 

Google would like all you XP users out there to have a new PC. MikePKennedy posted the Android Central story about Google taking $100 off Chromebooks when purchased through the Chromebooks for Business program. If you’re really attached to Windows apps, Google is offering $200 off Chromebooks for Business with VMWare’s DaaS virtualization suite, and 25% off Citrix XenApp Platinum Edition.

tekkyn00b posted a different Android Central story. This one is about Comcast considering their own mobile phone service, using WiFi as the main delivery, with cellular data leased as a backup. Sound familiar? Google was rumored to be meeting with Verizon about the same sort of plan. The Information reported the story originally with sources saying Comcast would like to create a nationwide network, though implementation is still far off.

habichuelcondulce submitted the Reuters report that Intel will shut its assembly and test operation in Costa Rica, eliminating 1,500 jobs. Intel spokesman Chuck Malloy said Intel will move assembly and testing from its site in Heredia, Costa Rica to existing sites in China, Malaysia and Vietnam, over the next 6 months. Intel’s R&D efforts will continue in Costa Rica, employing some 1,000 people. Intel announced in January it would reduce its worldwide workforce by 107,000 this year.

Draconos passed along the Verge report about Sesame Street launching its own streaming video service. Sesame Go is browser-based but US-only and works on Mac, Windows and mobile devices. For $4 a month or $30 a year, you can watch hundreds of Sesame Street episodes as well as the animated series Pinky Dinky Doo.

tm204 posted the ScienceDaily report about a study published in Materials Today describing computer logic units built using slime molds. The work by Andrew Adamatzky of the University of West England, and Theresa Schubert of Bauhaus University, exploited the interconnected tubes of slime molds to process information. To make the tubes work the way they wanted to, they fed tubes oat flakes where they wanted to grow them and salted areas where they didn’t want tubes. Using dyes with magnetic nanoparticles and tiny fluorescent beads, allowed them to use the slime mold network as a biological “lab-on-a-chip” device. “The slime mold based gates are non-electronic, simple and inexpensive,” according tot he study.

Discussion Section Links: 3-D Printing’s Missing Link

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-missing-link-in-3d-printing-user-friendly-software/

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/m3d/the-micro-the-first-truly-consumer-3d-printer 

Pick of the Day:  SSL Labs

Thursday’s guest: YOU!

Michael Wolf is on the show helping me deal with the post Heartbleed vulnerability trauma we all are feeling today. Plus he’s got some good news for folks in the wearables industry. As a bonus Steve Gibson helps us understand what we should do about Heartbleed.

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Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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

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

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

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

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

Show Notes

The entire Internet has been reporting on the Heartbleed vulnerability in SSL/TLS today. Heartbleed is a bug in the OpenSSL cryptographic library version 1.01 that as been in
wild since 14 March 2012. The bug would allow an attacker to recover up to 64 kilobytes of memory from the server or client computer, repeatedly. OpenSSL has issued a patch which is OpenSSL 1.01g. The nasty part of the bug is it could not only allow an attacker to get things like passwords in memory if they’re lucky, but also recover primary and secondary SSL keys, which means the bad guys could impersonate the good guys and you’d never be able to tell. Many sites do not use OpenSSL and are unaffected. Apple, Google and Microsoft appear to be unaffected, along with the major e-banking services. Before you log into a sensitive service check filippo.io/Heartbleed/ to see if the site has updated to SSL 1.01g, although beware some false negatives have been reported. But if it says it’s updated it is. Then you should also check to make sure any previously vulnerable site has updated its ssl certificate which you can do at https://sslcheck.globalsign.com/ or do several of these tests at https://www.ssllabs.com/

The Verge reports Twitter profile pages are showing up with a fundamental redesign. The Twitter blog announced the change Tuesday morning saying the changes will be rolled out to select users first then globally over the next few weeks. Main changes include user and friend photos in a tile layout on the lower left, size adjustment to posts based on how popular they are and the ability to pin a tweet to the top of the page.

If you plunked down for a 4K TV, you finally have something to watch. CNET reports Netflix confirmed it has begun streaming 4K versions of its original series House of Cards as well as a few nature documentaries. Not working on your 4K TV? That’s because it has to be a TV with the built-in H.265/HEVC codec, which is pretty much on TVs shipping now. Sorry. Oh unless you have the Samsung UNF9000 which is upgradable.

XP says goodbye, and 8.1 update says hello. OK XP users, this is it. The final four security updates for Windows XP and Office 2003 for Windows XP were released today. Download. Install. Enjoy. You’re on your own now. Godspeed. On the other end of the scale, Windows 8.1 Update aka 8.1 (1) or the new 8.1 or whatever arrived today.

Recode reports Comcast made their 180-page case for why the government should allow them to merge with Time Warner Cable and grab 30% of the US cable market. There’s a lot in those pages about video competition, citing Apple, Microsoft, even Facebook as big competitors to little ol’ Comcast. They don’t point out so clearly that those services all have to run over pipes which would become dominated by Comcast. They also didn’t mention they beat Monsanto in the Consumerist’s Worst Company in America poll. This is only the beginning of the review. Tomorrow, a Senate panel will examine the deal. Justice Department officials are starting to evaluate any competitive threats and the FCC plans to focus on whether it’s in the public interest.

Like Microsoft Office on your iPAd? Thank Steve Ballmer. During a Reddit Ask Me Anything session, the Office for iPad and Mac team revealed “the decision to ship Office for iPad was made before Satya Nadella became CEO.

I bet Stephen Elop is relieved. China’s regulators have approved the acquisition of Nokia’s handset division by Microsoft, taking away the last significant hurdle to the deal being completed. With US and EU approval already complete, Nokia feels confident the deal can still close in April.

Draconos posted the story from Gizmodo about scientists at the University of Louisville’s Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center, fitting four wheel-chair-bound men with an array of electrodes in the lumbosacral region of the spinal cord. The implant restores what in healthy people would be the resting potential of the spinal cord, the baseline electrical activity that keeps the cord alert. All four patients can move their legs and toes, and some can even lift up to 100 kilograms with their legs. The research is published in Brain.

metalfreak pointed out the PC World story that the European Court of Justice ruled Tuesday that laws requiring communications providers to retain metadata are invalid because they seriously interfere with fundamental privacy rights. The current EU Data Retention Directive requires telecommunications and Internet providers to retain traffic and location data as well as related data necessary to identify the subscriber or user. The court acknowledge the value of the data in fighting crime but identified several ways in which the law exceeded the limits of proportionality. IN toher words it went farther than it needed to. The CJEU’s ruling is binding for national courts who have to dispose of cases in accordance with the Court’s decision.

And tsukiri posted the NBC News story about the US Navy planning sea trials for an electromagnetic railgun that can fire a low-cost, 10-kg projectile at seven times the speed of sound. Yeah rail guns. Like in your video game, except real. In related news the Navy says it’s making final adjustments on a new prototype of a Laser Weapons System — dubbed LaWS — that will be deployed into the real world in late summer. So yeah. Electromagnetic railguns and lasers. At sea.

 Discussion Links: Heartbleed Heartburn

http://heartbleed.com/

http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/720951

https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-450-notes.pdf

http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/04/critical-crypto-bug-in-openssl-opens-two-thirds-of-the-web-to-eavesdropping/

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/04/heartbleed-bug-exposes-passwords-web-site-encryption-keys/

http://www.zdnet.com/heartbleed-serious-openssl-zero-day-vulnerability-revealed-7000028166/

https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20140407.txt

http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/8/5594266/how-heartbleed-broke-the-internet

http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/04/critical-crypto-bug-exposes-yahoo-mail-passwords-russian-roulette-style/

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/04/08/half-a-million-widely-trusted-websites-vulnerable-to-heartbleed-bug.html
http://ssllabs.com/

Wearables: 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelwolf/2014/04/03/heres-whats-wrong-with-the-guardian-article-on-wearables/

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/01/wearables-consumers-abandoning-devices-galaxy-gear

Pick of the Day: Lastpass.com

Because of this blog post. 

Tomorrow’s Guest: Special 9am DTNS with Jason Hiner, editor in chief of Tech Republic

Iyaz Akhtar is on the show today. We’ll discuss some pretty cool flexible tech that could let you scan things by laying it on your screen. Also, we get the scoop on Android TV from The Verge’s Sean Hollister.

MP3

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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

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

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

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

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

Show Notes

Today’s guest:  Iyaz Akhtar of CNET & GFQNetwork

Headlines

GigaOm reports Android lock screen app Cover said Monday it was joining Twitter. The app that launched in invite-only beta in October, replaces the Android lock screen with one that suggests apps based on location. The current Cover app will remain in the Google Play store for now, but the development team will be working on things for Twitter.

Geek.com has the story of Seagate’s 6TB hard drive, matching Western Digital in capacity, but without needing to fill the drive with helium. The Seagate Enterprise Capacity hard drive is available in 2, 4, 5, and now 6TB capacities with a 128MB cache and spin speed of 7,200rpm. No pricing or word on consumer models were made available.

GigaOm reports two new chips from Qualcomm were announced Monday. The Snapdragon 808 and 810 support 64-bit computing, support LTE-Advanced wireless speeds up to 300 Mbps and dual-stream 82.11ac WiFi. The 810 also gets 4K video support. Apple has 64-bit support in its A7, and Intel has a 64-bit Android Kernel, but Android does not have an official 64-bit version yet. Google I/O is coming up end of June though. The new Qualcomm chips will become available in commercial devices in the first 6 months of 2015.

Microsoft introduced a new version of Skype for broadcasters Monday morning, called Skype TX. The “studio-grade” version has high-quality audio and video without unnecessary features like call notifications and ads. Skype TX comes with HD-SDI video output and input, balanced audio output and input, auto aspect ration conversion, support for multiple, simultaneous calls, operator previews, and more. Media organizations can sign up at media.skype.com/skype-tx but no other details on pricing or shipping were announced.

The Verge reports M3D launched a Kickstarter today to bring a new consumer 3D printer called Micro. The Micro accepts PLA and ABS plastics as well the company’s own Micro filament spools. The company also claims it has made much more intuitive software. M3D hopes to have assembly line production rolling between August and September for delivery starting in March next year. The printer costs only $249 but you’ll have to back at $899 if you want one from the first batch. The $50,000 was reached in minutes and in the first day, M3D has raised almost a half a million.

News From You:

Our top vote-getter on the subreddit was submitted by KAPT_Kipper. The TechCrunch story relates the protest that took place against Kevin Rose outside his apartment in San Francisco. Rose, the co-founder of Digg and Revision3, works for Google Ventures now. Protestors targeted Rose because he is a venture capitalist and because of controversial things he said on the show DiggNation in the past. The group demands Google give $3 billion to an anarchist organization to create autonomous, anti-capitalist, and anti-racist communities throughout the bay area and northern California.

Draconos posted the Ars Technica article that the US Supreme Court has declined to rule on the constitutionality of the NSA’s bulk telephone metadata surveillance program. Activist Larry Klayman had appealed directly from the US Distric Court decision in December, skipping over the US Appeals Court, which has been done before. That means the case would have to go through the appeals court, which also means it would likely not be resolved before the US Patriot Act expires on June 1, 2015.

tekkyn00b submitted the 9to5 Mac story on a demonstration at Microsoft’s ThinkNext Conference of a device that charges batteries compact enough for smartphones in 30 seconds. StoreDot claims the commercial version of the charger will only cost about twice as much as today’s chargers but production isn’t expected until 2016.

gowlkick sent us the CNET story on HTC’s earnings. It’s not a good report. Between January and March 2014 HTC’s total revenue fell by more than twenty percent over the previous quarter with a loss of $62 million. However, sales didn’t fall for the first time in 28 months AND KGI INvestment projects a 50% rise in Q2 sales due to the popularity of the HTC One M8 and HTC Desire 816.

cincyhuffster posted the Verge article about the Amazon Dash, a 6-inch long plastic stick that lets customers of the Amazon Fresh grocery delivery service, add items to their shopping list either by voice command or scanning an item itself. Shoppers then have those items already queued up the next time they need to place an order.

And pnthrldy posted the OMG Chrome story that the London Borough Council for Barking and Dagenham is replacing 2,000 of its Windows desktops with Samsung Series 3s running Chrome OS. The council expects to save £400,000. About half that is from licensing costs and the other half to power efficiency.

Discussion Section Links: Android TV and flexible tech

http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/5/5584604/this-is-android-tv

http://gigaom.com/2014/04/07/how-thin-flexible-electronics-will-revolutionize-everything-from-user-interfaces-to-packaging/

Pick of the Day: Roboform.com

Tuesday’s guest: Michael Wolf, Forbes contributer and host of the Next Market Podcast