Pelle Eklund is on the show to chat about Spain charging to link to things on the Internet and NHL Refs getting sent off for Twittering.
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Show Notes
Today’s guest: Eklund of hockeybuzz.com
Headlines
GigaOm compiles reports from Reuters and the South China Morning Post that Microsoft offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu have been visited by authorities. The State Administration for Industry and Commerce is investigating the company. Chinese authorities banned government institutions from using Windows 8 in late May. Microsoft said Monday the company is “happy to answer the government’s questions.”
TechCrunch reports the European Commission has given Apple permission to acquire Beats Electronics. The approval was predicated partly on the fact that beats has a very small marketshare in Europe for both headphones and digital music. Apple still needs approval in the SU which it is expected to get. Then it can take on Bose which is suing Beats for patent infringement. And come on, you know Apple lawyers love a good patent infringement case, amiright?
Mozilla chair Mitchell Baker announced Monday that interim CEO Chris Beard has been appointed permanently as CEO of Mozilla Corporation. Beard joined Mozilla in 2004, left for Greylock Partners in July 2013 and re-joined Mozilla in April of this year when CEO Brendan Eich was removed in controversy over his support of Proposition 8 in California.
The Verge reports OKCupid co-founder Christian Rudder has admitted that his site experimented on users as well. In one of three described experiments, users were told they were good matches for people they were bad matches for in order to measure the change int he rate of correspondence. Being told you were a good or bad match did have an impact but did not fully offset the calculated compatibility. Users were informed after the fact that they were part of the experiment.
The Verge reports that most Hilton-owned hotels worldwide plan to allow customers to use a smartphone to unlock their rooms by the end of 2016. Hilton also plans to allow guests to check themselves in and choose their own room locations.
News From You
ayserk56 posted the Engadget story that researchers at Stanford have developed a new lithium battery that uses a nanoscopic carbon shield to allow for denser more efficient lithium use in a batteries anode, the part that discharges electrons. The result is a battery that lasts considerably longer, won’t decay quickly and remains relatively safe. They estimate the battery could get 2-3 times the life of current cell phone batteries.
spsheridan sent along the ReCode report that Apple is close to buying Swell, an app that plays podcasts and other talk shows in a Pandora style, that surfaced shows adapted to the listeners tastes. Swell will apparently be shut down this week.
metalfreak pointed out the OS News story that Trend Micro’s report that Android is populated with many fake apps, half of which are malware, turns out to be an exaggeration. Techrepublic and Android Police both uncovered that Trend Micro’s promotion of their report didn’t work very hard to make clear that the fake apps in question did not exist in the Google Play store but had to be side-loaded, meaning a user had to ignore and disable security warnings to make the apps work.
KAPT_Kipper posted the Verge article that Amazon appears to be going after Square. 9to5 Mac showed off internal documents from Staples indicating an “Amazon Card Reader” will arrive on store shelves August 12 for $9.95 right next to Square and Staples’ own payments dongle.
geewhipped submitted the Vice article detailing disclosures that reveal 3 US FISA Court Judges own Verizon stock, two purchasing it within the last year. That includes Judge James Zagel who signed off on a government request to renew ongoing metadata collection in June.
And Ek sent us a report from Scouting the Refs.com detailing the rise and fall of NHL official Tim Peel’s Twitter account. Turned out Mr. Peel was excited to reach out to fans and put a human face on Referees, but he hadn’t read the rules closely. The NHL-NHLOA Collective Bargaining Agreement forbids officials from having have social media accounts. His time on Twitter was brief but burned brightly. We will miss you @TimTpeel
Discussion Section:
https://medium.com/@JulioAlonso/the-story-of-spains-google-tax-5434d746df48
http://coalicionprointernet.com/?page_id=7#APOYOS
http://qz.com/241005/nobody-seems-quite-sure-how-spains-new-google-tax-will-work/
Pick of the Day: canistream.it
Our pick of the day comes from Julio M. Romero a fellow cordcutter: “I don’t know if you have already heard about this app/website/service is called canistream.it and is just that, a service that let’s you find out if that movie or show episode is available for streaming legally in different services iTunes, Amazon, play store, Netflix and some others. It even tells you prices so you can check which one is better for your wallet. The site is available as an app in the Apple & Android stores as well as the Windows Marketplace AND as a chrome extension. JMR
Tuesday’s guest: Scott Johnson
