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

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

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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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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

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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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 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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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: 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.

=====

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

Using a Screen Reader? click here

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.

=====

Monday’s guest:  Ron Richards and Veronica Belmont

 

 

Tim Stevens joins the show and we’ll talk about Tesla. Is it overhyped? Are the cars exciting? And is that Powerwall battery really any good for anyone?

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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 guests: Tim Stevens

Headlines: 

The Next Web reports that Yahoo has overhauled its Flickr photo app for the web, mobile and desktop. New features include an intelligent search tool, improved coordination with its mobile apps, and a bulk uploader that allows the user to send as many as a half million photos into the cloud to take advantage of that free terabyte of photo storage.

The Globe and Mail reports Canada’s House of Commons passed Bill C-51, an antiterrorism act. If it passes the Senate and receives royal assent, the law would allow police to make preventive arrests, broaden the no-fly list, ease transfer of information on citizens between federal agencies as well as new surveillance abilities for intelligence agencies. The bill is expected to become law by June.

Ars Technica reports AT&T has changed its its LTE throttling policy for customers with unlimited data. Previously once a customer used more than 5GB in a month experienced reduced speeds for the remainder of the month. Jon Brodkin at Ars points out the policy deatiled on AT&T’s website has changed that to customers who use more than 5GB of data “may experience reduced speeds when using data services at times and in areas that are experiencing network congestion.” AT&T is facing a lawsuit from the US Federal Trade Commission.

Kantar Worldpanel has several reports out on the phone market. Phablets claimed 21% of US smartphone sales in Q1 tripling the marketshare form a year ago. The iPhone 6+ led the way with 44% of phablets sold. Overall in smartphones, Android gained 0.2 points to 58.1% of the US market. LG made the biggest jump going from 7.4% a year ago to 10.8%. In Europe’s big 5 markets, Android dropped 3.1 points but maintained its leading share at 68.4%. iOS grew 1.8 points to 20.3%. And in urban China Apple grew its lead from 179% to 26.1%.

Microsoft has backed up statements made its developer Jerry Nixon during the Ignite Conference this week. Nixon said “Right now we’re releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10.” A company spokesperson told the Verge that while it wasn’t speaking to future branding, Nixon’s comments “are reflective of the way Windows will be delivered as a service.”

News From You:

The top vote-getter in the subreddit today was submitted by phredd. Ars Technica reports that US FCC chairman Tom Wheeler went into the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) conference in Chicago and told his audience “more competition would be better,” and “History proves that absent competition, a predominant position in the market such as yours creates economic incentives to use that market power to protect your traditional business in a way that is ultimately harmful to consumers.” He also said: “Often people say to me, ‘I know you won’t do anything crazy, but what about those who follow you?’ My response is, I take you at your word to protect an open Internet, but what about those that follow you?’” According to the LA Times, Wheeler received “a frosty reception” at the gathering.

habichuelacondulce sent us the Business Insider report that after bumping its head against a brick for a few years Nintendo has earned some gold coins. The company reported its first annual operating profit since 2011, slightly ahead of analysts estimates. Profit of 24.8 billion yen ($207.6 million) beat the company’s forecast of 20 billion yen as well as the average estimate of 23.8 billion yen. Reduced costs offset the impact of slowing revenue growth. Nintendo forecasts operating profit of 50 billion yen for the year started April 1.

and BOL’s own gknee sent us the news from Wired that Nintendo has teamed up with Universal Parks & Resorts to build Nintendo-themed attractions in Universal’s parks, “creating spectacular, dedicated experiences based on Nintendo’s wildly popular games, characters and worlds.” So we’ll all be able to bump our heads against the bricks and have gold coins fall out. Of our pockets.

spsheridan submitted the Reuters story that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the Patriot Act did not authorize the National Security Agency to collect Americans’ calling records in bulk. Circuit Judge Gerard Lynch called the extent of the collection staggering and wrote that such expansive collection should “be preceded by substantial debate, and expressed in unmistakable language. There is no evidence of such a debate.” The court declined.” The court declined to halt the program as the relevant part of the Patriot Act, Section 215 expires on June 1st.

magoojc posted the Verge article noting Google’s I/O conference schedule made specific mention of Android M, the first official mention of the next version of Android. That session has since been removed from the schedule. Google’s I/O keynote led by Sundar Pichai kicks off May 28th at 12:30PM.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/05/tesla-already-has-38000-reservations-for-the-powerwall-but-use-case-is-narrow/

http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/05/tesla-model-3-to-be-shown-in-march-2016/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-06/tesla-s-new-battery-doesn-t-work-that-well-with-solar

Pick of the Day:

Sand Sailor Writes:

I really love your show, and noticed that you’ve been talking a lot about VR and AR hardware, but I haven’t heard you mention the DAQRI Smart helmet yet. This is a pretty awesome industrial product, and word on the street is they’re going to be starting BETA programs with some Fortune 100 companies very, very soon. I’d be interested to get your take on this and their industrial focus.

Messages: 

Matthew Martian writes:

Regarding these discussion of self driving trucks in show 2487.
I have been driving truck over the road for 5 years now podcast and audiobooks are what make the long drives enjoyable. In running this trucking company it has been almost impossible to find good drivers for more than 10 years. A majority of truck drivers are reaching or have surpassed retirement age and a looking to quit in the next few years. From this perspective self driving trucks cannot get here soon enough. I hope to see that laws will allow the automated systems to do the simple interstate and highway driving out side of the big cities. With that we can make trucking far more efficient since current laws do not let trucks drive for more than 11 hours without a 10 hour break. That is one reason why truckers work such odd hours. New semi tractors run $130,000-150,000 so if a self driving truck could be purchased for $220,000 or less that makes it a viable option even to us smaller trucking companies who cannot find drivers to hire for $100,000 a year.

Russell writes:

Thinking a bit about the self-driving trucks and it might open a whole new possibility for drivers turned ‘monitors’. The scenario of having a second income stream while on the truck working on any number of things from computer based work to small product assembly could change the characteristics of the job overall making it less sedentary and mundane. It could be a job that could be attractive to people who are working on startup type projects (app development, coding, etc.) or writers and artists. Probably a lot of other scenarios there as well but overall seems like a really good thing at a lot of levels.

Rich from Lovely Cleveland compares the coming VR wars to the game console wars where the perception was more important than the specs. He writes:

“I think we could see the same mentality shape up with the VR competition between the Vive and Oculus Rift, with the seemingly interminable lead time of the Rift working against it as being “delayed”, even though I don’t believe the actual consumer release date was ever moved back. Add in the good will that Valve still enjoys, and the initial narrative seems to favor the Vive right now (obviously if there is a huge price delta or dearth of games on the Vive this would change).

But Sony may have the ace in the hole with Project Morpheus in terms of price. Even if the headset is equal in price to its competitors, if Sony can put out a $600 bundle for the entire package (ps4 and headset), that’s probably the baseline price for a PC needed to power the Rift or Vive. Sony could benefit from the same enthusiasm that made the Wii successful (hopefully with more long term success). Of course long term it comes down to user experience and games, I think whoever can make for great group experiences will ultimately come out victorious.”

Martin writes:

On your conversation from yesterday about all of the VR headsets coming out and who would be the winner. The answer is simple Unity is the clear winner as well as the key to which headset will get good content. Currently creating a VR experience is changing out the first person camera in Unity to the SDK that you are looking to support. So as long as the makers of VR headsets make that experience easy for developer they will be supported, if the do not then it will be a lot harder to get good content in those platforms.

Mike Calvo Opinionated Ranter and #BlindCrossfitter writes:

“A great example of this are the stickers in FB Messenger, Line, Whatsapp, and others. A novice user doesn’t know the difference between a labeled Emoji and an unlabeled sticker or picture. This makes it rather challenging when a blind person and a sighted person are first meeting online and maybe flirting.

…for example, some of the FB stickers are labeled with alt tags for me to know what they are when sending them, but, for some strange reason, when a person sends me a sticker …I have no idea as to what it is because all my screenreader says is the word “sticker”

…it is important that the developer and graphics author communities understand that these platforms don’t just interpret these Emojis and stickers without the alt tag included by the content’s creator.

Just wanted to clarify to the listeners and suggest that if perhaps you are part of the dev teams of one of the above mentioned chat platforms, perhaps you can encourage the use of alt tags on all graphics but especially Emoji and stickers.”

Drill Sgt Jason Nicholson in already hot as hell Georgia writes:

On Tuesday you talked about portable EEG devices, and controlling tech with your thoughts. In fact you mentioned using you concentration to control the Jedi training ball. Well, it’s already a thing, or rather it was. Back in 2012 they released this gemhttp://www.hammacher.com/Product/Default.aspx?sku=76966 All the fun, none of the blaster scars. Batteries, helmet with blast shield, and Jedi master not included. Oh, and here’s the promo video.https://youtu.be/hbsCsIfyvXc

=====

Friday’s guest:  Darren Kitchen and Len Peralta

 

Patrick Beja joins us to talk about brain monitoring and how it fits into health, video games and maybe even the Internet of Things.

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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 guests: Patrick Beja

Headlines: 

The Washington Post reports Google says more of its search requests are done on mobile devices than PCs in Japan, the US and 8 other countries. The milestone was announced at a digital advertising conference Tuesday. Google wouldn’t put numbers to any of the claims. The company processes more than 100 billion search requests worldwide each month. Google also claimed its mobile ad prices have been steadily climbing and will continue to do so. Google’s average ad prices have been declining for the past three-and-half years.

An unnamed Apple employee told the New York Times that a redesign is coming for the Apple TV remote.  When the new Apple TV box debuts this summer the remote control will supposedly have a touch pad for scrolling, two physical buttons and be slightly thicker than the current version.

Apple launched an official “Made for Apple Watch” program for 3rd party accessory makers to create their own bands for Apple Watch according to 9 to 5 Mac. Apple is providing design guidelines and promises to make the attachment “lugs” available soon. The guidelines do not mention the hidden diagnostic port nor provide specs for developing charging accessories.

The BBC reports that Judges at the General Court of the European Union have ruled that the name ‘Skype’ is too similar to the name of broadcaster Sky. Therefore, Skype cannot be registered as a trademark in Europe. The judges wrote that Skype’s logo suggest a cloud and— I quote — “clouds are to be found ‘in the sky’ and thus may readily be associated with the word ‘sky’.” Microsoft will appeal the decision.

TechCrunch reports Berlin’s Delivery Hero takeout service is buying Turkey’s big delivery app Yemeksepeti, which is Turkish for “Food Cart.” Yemeksepeti process more than 3 million orders a month across Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Oman, Jordan and Greece. Delivery Hero processes 10 million orders a month across Europe and the Middle East.

The Verge reports GOG has put it’s Steam competitor— called GOG Galaxy— into open beta. GOG Galaxy includes features like auto-updates, in-game chat and achievements and all features are optional. The one feature GOG Galaxy lacks is DRM

The Verge has a lovely writeup about a Scottish filmmaker named Ryan McHenry who created the ‘Ryan Gosling won’t eat his cereal’ meme on Vine in early 2013. Sadly Ryan McHenry died yesterday, two years after being diagnosed with bone cancer. So Yesterday, Ryan Gosling uploaded a Vine video of himself pouring some cereal offers a cereal-filled spoon salute to McHenry and then finally eating that spoonful of ceral. A Just Giving page was set up in McHenry’s memoryto raise money for Sarcoma UK. https://www.justgiving.com/ryanmchenry/

News From You:

Sensorymultimedia posted a 5-day-old Washington Post Story about US Congressional Representative Ted Lieu called law enforcement’s request for a back door to all encryption “technologically stupid.” Rep. Blake Farenthold and Subcommittee Chair Will Hurd shared Lieu’s skepticism. Representative Lieu has a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford. Chairman Hurd has a computer science degree from Texas A&M. On the other side Daniel F Conley DA for Suffolk County in Massachusetts testified that companies like Apple are protecting “those who rape, defraud, assault, or even kill” with their encryption policies.
Motang sent us the Ars Technica report about the Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong, showing off his coding skills.  The Prime Minister posted on Facebook the source code for a program he wrote in C++ to solve Sudoku puzzles. Prime Minister Loong wrote “Hope you have fun playing with this. Please tell me if you find any bugs!”

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.wired.com/2015/05/internet-anything-brain-monitors-going-mainstream-despite-skepticism/

https://getversus.com/

http://www.choosemuse.com/how-does-it-work/

http://store.neurosky.com/collections/entertainment

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/11/wandering-mind-not-a-happy-mind/

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/cep/67/1/11/

Pick of the Day:

Petie writes in:

Hi Tom, Jennie, Len, and Secret Robert,

My pick of the day is http://rabb.it

It is a site for watching a streaming web content with a variety of users. You can go to the page and click “Chat Now”. It will activate your camera and mic (if you let it) and it will present you with a search box and shortcuts to popular streaming services like YouTube, Netflix, HBOGo, NBC, Hulu and Xfire. A user can log into their favorite streaming site, and then send the URL to all the friends that want to share watching the stream. Anyone plugging in that URL can join the session and watch the stream. There is a lock feature so once everyone is in the session you can keep out any URL-hacking randos that accidentally type in your URL.

If you chose to register you can get the same “room” every time you log in, and you can safely leave your netflix, youtube and other site logins for the next time you have a rabb.it session.

I used this last weekend to watch Django Unchained with my friend in Mexico, and it worked very well. The service dropped one time due to a crash, but the overall quality was great with that one exception. My friends in Maryland, Wisconsin and California used it for a Horror Movie night last month with great results as well.

The service is currently in beta, but if you want to “MST3K” movies with friends who are now in another city, state or country, check out rabb.it!

Thanks, and I really appreciate you guys doing DTNS! Have a GREAT weekend everyone!

Messages: 

Ted-san doesn’t see emojis as replacing conventional language, but instead coexisting with them. He says:

“Much like Japanese has Katakana, Hiragana and the pictographic Kanji. Thankfully, emoji are more universally comprehensible, allowing them to bridge many languages and cultures. :-)”

Søren wanted to point out how emojis from different providers appear differnt. He wrote:

On emojipedia.org you can read the definitions of the various emojis, and see how they are designed by Apple, Google, Microsoft and Twitter respectively. Especially the “Flushed face” is pretty different in the emotion it seems to be conveying on the different platforms.”

Scott from Houston:

Hey Tom and guest,
I had to add an anecdote about the rise in emoji use. My 6 year old’s Kindergarten teacher, who is a friend of the family, talked to my wife laughing because my son had drawn an emoji in his classroom writing assignment. When I asked my son he said that the sentence was sad and it needed a sad face emoji.
[[My son will borrow my wife’s phone occasionally and we let him send me text messages. It’s a great way for him to practice typing and spelling. He has become quite apt at incorporating emojis.]]

And Alan adds:

“The different chicken and toilet you saw illustrates another thing that Veronica was talking about: emojis are thought of as fun because they’re drawn cute, but they don’t have to be. As their usage develops, no doubt there will be many emoji fonts. Veronica also mentioned how emojis are a universal language. I wonder to what extent that will remain true once more abstraction layers are in place. It seems possible, even likely, that abstract uses of emojis will be regional or otherwise limited to specific communities.”

Frank wanted to point out for listeners that if you only use iOS and read mostly DC & Marvel comics the publisher-specific apps let you make in-app comic purchases and still sync to your Comixology library, so any DC or Marvel comics you buy through the publisher-specific iOS apps will still be available wherever else you use Comixology.

=====

Wednesday’s guest:  Jeff Cannata and Scott Johnson

 

Veronica Belmont joins the show to talk about the rising use of emojis. Does it signal the final demise of our civilization or is it the birth of a new universal language that will unite humanity in peace and prosperity? Or somewhere in between.

MP3

Using a Screen Reader? click here

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: Veronica Belmont

Headlines: 

The BBC reports on Facebook’s announcement that it will open its Internet.org program to all developers who meet certain criteria. Internet.org allows mobile users to access certain services without incurring data charges. Net neutrality advocates in INdia have accused the service of picking winners and losers. In response Internet.org will allow developers to join if the service is not data-intensive, can run on feature phones as well as smartphones, and encourages exploartion of the broader Internet.

Engadget reports that Microsoft Office 2016 is now available for free public preview. You don’t have to be a dev, or even an Office 365 subscriber to test out the newly redesigned universal apps or try out real-time co-authoring in Word, one-click forecasting in Excel, or access to OneDrive attachments in Outlook. Just go to products.office.com/office-2016-preview or look for the link in our show notes.

According to a post from 9 to 5 Mac the makers of Reserve Strap have confirmed plans to take advantage of a hidden 6 pin port on the Apple watch. The hidden port means the strap doesn’t have to use the indictuive charging, allowing quicker and higher capacity charging, improving durability and eliminating interference with the Apple Watch’s sensors. The port is covered and hidden inside of the slot where straps connect to the device. Reserve Strap will provide a tool to access it. You can preorder Reserve Strap for $249, but availability has not been determined.

BizTechAfrica reports Alcatel-Lucent and the Algerian government have signed an agreement to deploy 560 km of fiber-optic cable to link Oran, Algeria to Valencia, Spain. Upon completion in 2016 the cable will deliver an ultimate design capacity of 20 Tbps.

Mozilla has made its https plans official. VentureBeat reports Mozilla announced it intends to “start removing capabilities from the non-secure Web” specifically sites that don’t support https. Before you freak out keep in mind Firefox’s security lead Richard Barnes said “… we will have to monitor the degree of breakage and balance it with the security benefit. We’re also already considering softer limitations that can be placed on features when used by non-secure sites.”

Security Researcher Luigi Vigneri and his colleagues at the French graduate school and research center Eurecom have developed an app that checks what sites Android apps connect to according to the The MIT Technology Review. The team say 10% of apps they tested connected to more than 500 different URLs. 9 out 10 most frequently contacted ad related domains run by Google. They call their new app NoSuchApp or NSA and plan to make the app publicly available on Google Play in the near future.

Every 3 years the US copyright Office considers proposed exemptions to Section 1201 of the DMCA which makes it a felony to break “an effective means of access control.” Boing Boing reports this year a petitioner has requested an exemption for the right to use unapproved materials in 3D printers. 3D printer maker Startasys has asked the Office to deny the exemption claiming only one person wants to use unapproved materials in their 3D printers. Interetsed parties can reply at https://dmca.digitalrighttorepair.org/form

Android Police reports Google + announced Collections today, a new way to group your posts by topic. Or a way to curate your content by sets, if that helps. Or a way to Pinterest on Google. Each collection can be shared publicly, privately, or with a specific set of people. Once you create your first collection, your profile will display a new tab where other people can find and follow your collections. Android Police dug into the code and noted that collections can be suspended for violating terms of service, including hate speech, illegal content and copyright infringement.

TechCrunch got Facebook and Nokia to admit they’re partnering to provide Nokia Here maps to some Facebook users. Facebook confirmed its testing Nokia HERE maps in Android versions of standalone apps like Instagram and Messenger. TechCrunch also discovered HERE maps being used in Facebook’s mobile site. Facebook has been among the companies rumored to be interested in acquiring Nokia’s mapping division.

News From You:

jaymz668 pointed out the Verge article that multiple sources say the US Departent of Justice is looking into Apple’s business practices regarding music services. Allegedly Apple has encouraged major music labels to push Spotify and others to shut down their free streaming tiers. Apple has an antitrust monitor on its campus after it was found guilty in an ebook antitrust case last year. Apple is appealing that decision.

Motang brings us the Guardian story that Twitter has disabled the feature that allowed you to play classic DOS games from Archive.org embeded in a Twitter post. Twitter’s policy prohibits gaming inside Twitter Cards. No word on whether FUN in general is prohibited by Twitter policy :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

Indi_de_lis posted the Ars Technica article about a bug in Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner Jet. The US FAA issued a memo last week that Boeing reports that when the 787 has been powered continuously for 248 days all generator control units go into failsafe mode and lose AC power due to a software counter error. If all 4 units were powered on at the same time they could conceivably all lose power at the same time 248 days later. Boeing is developing a patch, meanwhile the workaround is to turn the generators off and then on again.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/post/117889701472/emojineering-part-1-machine-learning-for-emoji

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2483634,00.asp

http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/emoji-study-sex-lives-killing-language/

http://thenextweb.com/opinion/2015/05/04/emoji-the-new-language-of-the-internet-is-improving-the-way-we-communicate-online/

http://emojitracker.com/

http://unicode.org/versions/Unicode8.0.0/

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2482364,00.asp

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2483396,00.asp

http://www.emojidick.com/

 

Pick of the day:

Co-Executive Producer anotherJmartin:

Hello Tom, Jennie, and esteemed guest,

On DTNS #2473, Nate Lanxon talked about how he rips his music & syncs it with his mobile devices with iTunes. If you want to do this with your Android, I want to recommend the Google Music app. You can upload up to 50,000 songs to it for free, and you can either stream or download them to any device with the Google Music app. It’s great if you already have a collection of ripped music already and want to listen to it anywhere.

Messages: 

Dan from Marysville:

Last week on DTNS and later on CurrentGeek I heard you state that California doesn’t allow you to sell back excess power to the power company. I live in northern California and I have a solar home and I can tell you that I can indeed sell the excess back. Take a look at California’s Net Energy Metering Law

http://www.gosolarcalifornia.ca.gov/solar_basics/net_metering.php

Tim writes:

Listening to the latest DTNS while I draw buildings.

Another thing the Powerwall is an option for is a generator. I live on well and septic. When the power goes off we can’t flush the toilets. I think having a Powerwall in the garage is better than have a gas generator that I should to run once a month to make sure it always runs smoothly. Would be nice if the power went out that my electrical system just starts off the Powerwall, no hassles. You really appreciate the things you have once they are gone. Those on city water can always flush there toilets when the power goes out. We got woods for #1, not so much for #2!

Good to see the BOL reunion show!
Keep on keepin’ on and say Hello to Eileen, we do miss her too!

Adam wanted to comment on several statements around unlimited use of the Internet. He writes:

For example content for the World Cup or Masters tournaments must be blocked for the stability of the network but, there’s another side of this, the Top Talker. 90% of the time network congestion is driven by a few Top Talkers. They decide they need to fully replicate a database or backup during business hours and we have a capacity issue. We can often address our capacity issues by changing their behavior.

Chris with another goat report:

I’m a little behind on episodes due to work, but I have my own annual goat story. The city uses goats annually to clear the grass on the hillsides up here on hills in the East Bay. They simply erect a temporary electrified fence and then unload a few trailers worth of goats for a few days, and until they mow it all down. It is a very green approach, though the renewable remnants smell awful. They also tend to bleat allot and the billies feel compelled to ram each other for an unusual sound infusion on my corporate con calls.

=====

Tuesday’s guest:  Patrick Beja

 

Justin Young joins us with a timeline of the rise and fall of the Secret app and what it tells us about the inside the bubble mentality.

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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: Justin Robert Young

Headlines: 

Ars Technica reports Microsoft announced the release of two open source libraries called Windows Remote Arduino and Windows Virtual Shield for Arduino. The libraries let Arduinos connect to Windows 10 devices. The idea is to connect an Arduino controlled camera to the cloud or take advantage of the sensors in a Lumia phone. Microsoft also released a preview of Windows 10 IoT Core for the Raspberry Pi 2.

Engadget reports IBM, Apple and the Japan Post Group announced a project to deliver up to 5 million iPads to senior citizens in Japan. IBM has developed custom apps to help with medication reminders, groceries and such. Apple of course cites the benefits of default services like FaceTime and Messages.

The Next Web reports Uber has updated its SOS button in its app in India and is working with local authorities across the country to implement it. The service , which has been beta-tested in Kolkata, provides a button that connects the user to authorities by call while generating a text alert for police that contains location, rider info and driver info. The Delhi state government banned Uber after an alleged rape case last year.

The Verge reports that Amazon Instant Video for iOS now lets users stream video in HD. The Version 3 update also allows users to stream over their cellular data not just WiFi. However, those with data caps should be aware, streaming an hour of video at the “best” level will use 5.8 GB of data. Streaming “better” video will use 1.8 GB and “good” 1.6 GB.

IT World has a writeup of the recent Nigerian elections during which there were 58 election-related deaths. That’s lower than the previous election period of 2011, in which a thousand Nigerians died. The difference? Online services which kept people informed and provided an outlet for communication, as well as biometric card readers which helped minimize cheating.

9 to 5 Mac reports Apple added a clause to its App Store guidelines that says apps doing health-related human subject research must obtain the approval from an independent ethics review board. The guidelines previously recommended obtaining the review but now Apple may request proof. The guidelines apply to developers using the open source ResearchKit framework.adapted to other systems.

BizTech Africa reports the government of Malawi, the the United Nations Capital Development Fund’s Better Than Cash Alliance and the Mobile Money for the Poor Initiative have brought together digital payment companies to analyze and encourage the development of digital payments in the country. The program expects to raise the use of digital financial services from 3.%5 of active adults to 15% by 2019. Most people in Malawai use cash without banking services.

Jerry Chow, Manager of Experimental Quantum Computing at IBM Research told TechCrunch his team have achieved error correction for Quantum computing using two qubits that hold data and another two for checking errors. Quantum error correction is a significant hurdle since errors can be caused by common conditions in computers like heat, radiation, and material defects. Chow says the next important milestone is 13 or 17 qubits with encoded logic.

News From You:

The most popular story on the subreddit for most of the day, submitted by TheLazyOne, has been a Broadband Reports post of an LA Times report that 83-year-old AOL dial-up user Ron Dorff of Los Angeles was charged $24,298 by AT&T after his dial-up started using a long distance number. AT&T gave him the runaround until the LA Times called and now they’ve fixed the issue for him and are resolving the matter of the charges. The only news here is that someone uses AOL dial-up that much.

KAPT_Kipper sent us a CNET report that folks have discovered you can embed classic MS-DOS video games in your tweets, and play them right on twitter. Go to Archive.org’s Archive’s massive collections of classic games and software, emulated through JSMESS, copy the URL from the page of your favorite game and paste directly into your tweet. Soon you’ll be asking that age old question, Where in the World IS Carmen Sandiego? The tweet needs to be viewed from a desktop browser to play.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://medium.com/secret-den/sunset-bc18450478d5

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/technology/a-founder-of-secret-the-anonymous-social-app-shuts-it-down-as-use-declines.html?_r=0

https://twitter.com/ginatrapani/status/593510945726435328

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/14/anonymish-app-secret-has-raised-another-25m-adds-facebook-login-and-collections/

http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/05/the-temporary-backchannel/

http://startupbook.co/2014/02/07/rap-genius-founders-smoke-weed-during-job-interviews-and-other-silicon-valley-secrets/

http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/18/7413417/secret-is-re-launching-as-a-faster-anonymous-social-network-with-chat

http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/06/secret/

http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/27/secret-plans/

http://recode.net/2015/04/29/anonymous-messaging-startup-secret-is-shutting-down/

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCQQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpostsecret.com%2F&ei=TG1CVeSOE8WzoQSU34D4CA&usg=AFQjCNHlMCbFc_xaVM9KqOLBb-XKgZa74Q&sig2=R5F4jO_CY_4QjNQfKVXzAA

Pick of the day:

Mordechai Lightstone writes:

Hey Tom and DTNS guest,

I wanted to suggested a relatively low-tech but beloved pick for you.

The Blackwing 602 Pencil. A pencil with a literal cult following, the Blackwing was beloved by John Steinbeck, animator Chuck Jones [of Looney Tunes fame and Stephen Sondheim. It was discontinued back in 1998, but relaunched again by the Cal Cedar Pencil Company. Originals can still be found online, sold for upwards of $50 or more – and while current 12 pack of the cal Cedar “Palomino” 602s retail at $20, they’re are an amazing analog tool with a storied past and a beautiful design. If you have some money to order a pack, or a friend to give you one or two to play around with, they’re more than worth exploring in my opinion.

Messages: 

Jonathan – Unofficial (hope to be official) DTNS Facilities Manager – writes:

While listening to you and Patrick discuss goats on Tuesday’s show, I couldn’t help but share my experience.

I’m a facilities manager and two years ago, while managing Adobe’s campus in Lehi Utah, my team decided to “rent” a group of goats for chewing down some of the weeds prior to the winter season. It worked very well for the area they were fenced in to. At one point, they did get loose and ended up distracting most of the thousand employees in the building.

To further the technology perspective on this, we decided to purchase a go-pro camera which was immediately dubbed the “Goat Pro” camera. I even found a Go-Pro website for a “Livestock Camera mount”, but after calling the Go Pro corporate office to inquire and stumping them for a while, we all saw the April 1st reference in the URL and realized we’d been had. That being said, the footage, was still fun and we got to use it in a promo on our sustainability efforts.

Alan writes: 

I’m of two minds on the idea of being able to easily port Android apps to Windows. It seems to me that this only works if the app doesn’t use any of the Google services. (games, account management, contacts, etc…)

Writing your app to not use Google services limits its integration to Android (in the Google sense, not AOSP). On the other hand, an Android app that doesn’t use Google services should be able to run not only on Windows, but also Fire OS and other AOSP branches, including Cyanogen even if they stop supporting Google services.

I’m not sure if the downside of losing Google services is worth the upside of a larger potential market. My guess is that for Android app developers, probably not. For cross platform developers, maybe so.

Marlon”theguyfromtrinidad” here:

One aspect of the app development process that was left out of your conversation yesterday was maintenance. Its great that Microsoft wants Android and iOS developers to bring their apps over to windows but they will ultimately have to deal with the bugs, communicating with users and adding new features. For many developers the costs of going onto a new platform are often not worth it.

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Friday’s guest:  Darren Kitchen & Ken Peralta

 

Ron Richards is on the show today reacting to the Microsoft BUILD announcements, specifically Android apps running on Windows 10 phones.

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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 guests: Ron Richards

Headlines: 

BREAKING: Secret, the app that Silicon Valley insiders used to tell nasty things about each other to each other is shutting down. It’s survived by YikYak.

TechCrunch is reporting Windows 10 Microsoft Developers will be able to reuse code from the Web, Old desktop apps built in Win32 and .NET, Android apps built in Java and C++ and even iOS apps built in Objective C.  ArsTechnica is reporting that Microsoft released Visual Studio Code, a free editor for Windows OS and Linux with support for GIT. Final release expected this summer.

TechCrunch has revealed Microsoft announced the availability to developers of the release candidate for the full .NET framework for Windows AND a full preview for the .NET core runtime for Linux and OS X at aka.ms/netcore. According to The NextWeb  Microsoft’s next cross-platform integrations that allow developers to build apps that embed inside Microsoft Office. The example used was an Uber ride reminder created in Outlook on the desktop that pops up on an iPhone.

In even more Windows news TechCrunch says the new browser in Windows 10 will be called Microsoft Edge. The Verge revealed Microsoft demonstrated the Windows 10 feature called Continuum working on phones. The idea is to plug a phone into a mouse keyboard and full-sized monitor and universal apps will adapt tot he screen size to work like a desktop. And Engadget is reporting carrier billing is coming to all Windows 10 devices so you can buy something in the Windows Store and put it on your phone bill.

Finally Hololens is still damned impressive can help architects and anatomy teachers and make a real robot look even cooler with a virtual overlay and it’s all universal Windows Apps!. Is the face-mask designed by Alex Kipman too cool to care if its vaporware? (Yes I know MS promises it will come in the Windows 10 timeframe) Also Microsoft said AFTER the announcement that its working with Unity Technologies to bring HoloLens support to the Unity game engine.

The Verge reports Google has announced a new Chrome extension called Password Alert to defend against Phishing attacks. The extension compares a hashed version of your Google password to any string of characters you submit through a browser. If it finds a match— and you’re not on a real Google login page— it will redirect you to a warning page. The code is open source and could be adapted to other systems.

Instagram announced a new official account dcalled @music. Tech Crunch reports that this is the first time the company has created a dedicated account devoted to a single subject. TechCrunch also says the account will only have six posts per week but they’ve posted three times today so… who knows. Posts will be grouped by specific hashtags. for instance #LocallySourced will cover unsigned acts, and #15SecondLessons will include how to videos. Instagram created the account because it noticed that one quarter of the most popular accounts on the service were from musicians.

Richard Allan, Vice President Public Policy EMEA at Facebook wrote an opinion piece in the Financial Times warning that Europe risks strangling companies by forcing them to deal with national regulators in the eurozone according to the The Wall Street Journal. Allan wrote: ““Facebook’s costs would increase and people in Europe would notice new features arriving more slowly, or not at all.” Facebook is facing a wave of privacy probes from various EU national governments and has argued that it believes that they do not have jurisdiction over it because it is headquartered in Ireland and has passed EU audits.

The Verge reports that Samsung is once again in sole possession of the title of “world’s biggest smartphone shipper“. According to Strategy Analytics, Samsung shipped 83 million smartphones in Q1 of 2015 down from 89 million a year ago but still good enough to wrest first place away from a tie with Apple. This quarter Apple sold 61 million smartphone devices. Samsung’s growth comes from less profitable mid and low range devices. Lenovo-Motorola combine for third though also down from a year agao and Huawei took fourth.

The Verge reports that an error in American Airlines’ iPad app delayed a dozen flights yesterday. One chart in the American Airlines navigational database shares its name with another chart for Ronald Regan Washington National Airport. The iPad app that American Airlines uses became unresponsive because of the duplication. The problem won’t be fixed until an update is pushed out May 8th. Until then, pilots flying to Ronald Regan Washington National Airport will have to use paper charts or a PDF of the charts in a separate app. In 2012 American Airlines became the first airline to get FAA approval to use iPads in all stages of flight replacing 35 pounds of paper flight manuals and saving about 1.2 million a year on fuel.

News From You:

Starfuryzeta sent an IT World article about how Ham radio operators have been helping to fill communication gaps in Nepal after the earthquake on Saturday that killed at least 5,000 people. Ham operators in Nepal and India are working in shifts to help people try to get in touch with relatives and pass on information. Ham radio can work off solar power and low-voltage batteries too, which means the radios can continue to work long after smartphones and laptop batteries die. Operators in Nepal and India have been working in shifts to keep communications going with hams in other parts of the world like Turkey, Australia and New Zealand, often helping trace relatives and friends.

Habichuelacondulce sent us a Boing Boing post that a Forbes source says Tesla is contributing a car to be used by two researchers to demonstrate the reality and limits of remote car attacks at this year’s Defcon hacker convention. The talk is called Remote Exploitation of an Unaltered Passenger Vehicle and will be conducted by Charlie Miller Security engineer at Twitter Chris Valasek Director of Vehicle Security Research at IOActive. Tesla hasn’t commented officially on the talk and is not listed in the summary.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/29/microsoft-makes-it-easier-for-developers-to-bring-their-android-and-ios-apps-to-windows-10/?ncid=rss

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/04/29/microsoft-brings-android-ios-apps-to-windows-10/

Pick of the day:

Russell writes:

A while back this book was mentioned on the show and it sounded interesting so gave it a read (listen on Audible actually).

Tubes outlines the history, design, and implementation of the physical infrastructure that is the internet. It is a really great story about what the internet really is, as opposed to the world wide web; hard, complex infrastructure. The internet is in a lot of cases thought of by its use as opposed to what it actually is and this book explores the fascinating and complex web (no pun intended) of individuals, companies and municipal entities that have worked together to create the this massive and pervasive piece of infrastructure that we depend on. Blum meets a number of pretty interesting characters along the way and brings a human dimension to the story of the people who make the internet go; a somewhat different breed than the C-suite folks that you more find in the media more often. A great story for those curious about what the internet is and how it works.

Great content on DTNS as always! Looking forward to having Scott and Veronica as regulars!

Messages: 

Marlon made us a tutorial video:

Also I am very excited about the addition of these 3rd party apps being added to Google Now cards, because many of the cards are usually time and location sensitive so a spotify playlist card could appear around the time when I would usually be listening or a hotel reservation card from Hilton could show up as I walk into the hotel. Many of these cards are also pushed to my Android Wear watch giving me the information as I need it. But you have Ron Richards on the show he can tell you all about it. LOVE the SHOW
From a Boss in the Great White North:

In Episode 2481 you and Patrick were talking about the comment features coming to Dropbox. I wanted to Chime in with my two cents.

I’m a full time UX Designer and Part time teacher at a local college. This new feature will solve two big issues for me:

1. Sharing files with VERY non-technical clients that need to comment on the work we’ve done. This will allow us to send files and have them comment in the same system we’ve already trained them in.
2. Getting files from students. The course I teach (mobile web development) has the students creating files in all kinds of formats. So at the begging of a semester I set up a folder for each student and and shared drive for the class. I can then drop any file type I want in the appropriate folder and the students have access to it right away. The comment feature will make marking so much easier as I won’t have to open 6 different applications to add comments, just dropbox.

Big add for me.

Jason Hill from hot, summer-like Hachimantai City, Japan:

I’m a proud Patreon supporter. Your discussion of the steam mod communities on yesterday’s show reminded me of another Internet community that I was a part of way back in 2005. It was bought out by Yahoo and the community started to flee in droves all over the ‘net when they tinkered with site. Eventually just let it stagnate all together. The members of the community begged and pleaded, but their words fell on deaf ears. That place was flickr, and while it might still exist, and is still probably one of the best places for serious amateur and semi-pro photographers to highlight their work, there really isn’t much of community there anymore. It’s an empty husk of its former self. This is sad, because I learned most of my trade from the people there. If yahoo had actually responded to the feedback, I imagine flickr might still be a dominant player today. But that’s a what-if. The community can make or break you as a company, and I think Steam knows this. You can’t let a community hold you hostage, but you can’t ignore them either. There is a fine balance. Anyways, keep up the amazing work.

Joshua wrote:

To put the valve story into perspective, imagine Apple steps in, says to podcast creators, you can sell your podcasts and we will give podcasters 25% of the proceeds…

That puts the valve story into perspective. It’s both insulting to content creators and those of us paying knowing that Apple / Valve would be taking 75% of the proceeds with very little going to those making the content.

The part I think you guys missed is where we the people paying are not ok with content creators only receiving 25% of the proceeds.

It’s a record company disguised as a software company, valve should have first and foremost had a better price split.

Levi wrote on the blog:

I would have liked some additional info about the G4. It’s not simply a leather back on a G3. One of the big features that I’m looking forward to is the much improved camera, with lots of great stuff for photography enthusiasts, including a much faster lens (F1.8), manual controls, and a RAW format option. Theoretically the faster lens should make low-light photography MUCH better, and the manual settings will allow for longer exposures, again, making low-light images much better and less noisy.

Bishma from blissfully rainy Eugene, Oregon writes:

I just wanted to give my two cents on the G4 announcements from yesterday. Certainly the leather back made all the headlines because it was headline worthy. That said, I think the most important differentiator that the G4 has going for it is what didn’t change from the G3. The battery in the G4 is still user swappable unlike, I believe, all the other flagship phones announced this spring. This is the feature that will have me purchasing from LG next moth rather than Samsung or HTC next month.

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Thursday’s guest:  Justin Robert Young