DTNS 2155 – Follow the path of the Beam

Daily Tech News Show / January 23rd, 2014

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comJason Hiner joins the show to talk about Lenovo buying the last of IBM’s PC business and where 3D printing meets the Internet of things. Also don’t text while walking.

MP3

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

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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

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

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

Show Notes

Apple to release two new iPhones in 2014: The Wall Street Journal reports Apple plans to release two new iPhones this year. Shocker, we know. Each of the two would have a bigger display than the iPhone 5S, estimated to be 4.5 inches and 5 inches respectively. Both phones would have the same aluminum design as the %S, meaning no plastic phone like the 5C. The smaller is allegedly in production while the bigger is in preliminary development.

Lenovo agrees to buy IBM server unit for $2.3 billion in cash and stock:  Ars Technica reports Lenovo agreed to buy IBM’s x86-based server unit for $2.3 billion in cash and stock. IBM will keep it’s high-end server and mainframe unit but all its x86-based businesses are now gone. IDC reported in August that IBM held the top spot in server market share, and about 3/4 of that was IBM’s x86 unit. That means Lenovo will quickly reach parity with Dell and likely come close to HP in the server market.

News From You:

clemro passed along a Phys.org story about a Virginia Tech research team that developed a battery that runs on sugar, maltodextrin to be exact, with an energy density an order of magnitude greater than other sugar-based batteries. A sugar-based battery would be cheaper, refillable, and biodegradable.  Sweet!

dmmacs passes along an iO9 retelling of an LA Times story, about a man named Mike Seay. Seay’s daughter died in a car accident last year. He recently received an absolutely awful piece of junk mail from Office Max, addressed to “Mike Seay, Daughter Killed in Car Crash.” Office Max told the LA Times the letter is a result of a mailing list rented through a third-party provider” and offered its apologies to Seay. OfficeMax is investigating why the information was aggregated in that way.

Tahras pointed us to Cory Doctorow’s post on Boing Boing about library audiobooks going DRM-free. Overdrive, which is a main supplier of digital material for libraries has announced it’s retiring its DRM’ed Windows media format for audiobooks and replacing it with unrestricted MP3s.

More links from the show:

Walking while texting is dangerous. Science says so: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/personal/2014/01/22/texting-walking-hazards/4647357/

TIVO says they’re ‘not out of the hardware business’, despite layoffs:  http://mashable.com/2014/01/23/tivo-hardware-not-dead/

9to5 Mac reports a new Apple TV set-top box is well into testing and could be introduced in the first half of this year. 

http://9to5mac.com/2014/01/23/new-apple-tv-set-top-box-likely-coming-soon-appgame-store-possible/

Neiman Marcus announced 1.1 million customer credit and debit cards may have been compromised by malicious software

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/01/23/neiman-marcus-11-million-cards/4796647/

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board said that the statute upon which the NSA’s phone record collection program was based “does not provide an adequate basis to support this program.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/independent-review-board-says-nsa-phone-data-program-is-illegal-and-should-end/2014/01/22/4cebd470-83dd-11e3-bbe5-6a2a3141e3a9_story.html

Long days and pleasant nights, DTNS’ers!

4 Responses to “DTNS 2155 – Follow the path of the Beam”