Todd Whitehead joins us to talk about the madness of eBay’s password management post-hack and get a little more perspective on who might love the Surface 3.
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Show Notes
Today’s guest: Todd Whitehead of Alpha Geek Radio
Headlines
GigaOm reports Facebook announced a series of measures Thursday to protect user’s privacy. A “Privacy checkup” will show up for users over the next several days explaining who sees the information they post. Facebook also is changing the default setting for new users from public to “friends only.”
Everybody’s imitating Oculus. Hell, Zenimax even claims Oculus is imitating Oculus and is filing in court to prove it. But were you expecting Samsung to get in this race? Engadget reports its sources say Samsung is developing a virtual reality headset for mobile with OLED displays and will unveil it later this year. Samsung apparently wants to beat Facebook’s Oculus Rift and Sony’s Project Morpheus to the virtual punch. Developer versions of Samsung’s rig are powered by the Note 3 and Galaxy S5.
Also on the mobile game beat, VentureBeat reports TangiblePlay is unveiling an iPad accessory called Osmo. The iPad sits in a vertical stand with a mirror attached in front of the camera. This lets the iPad recognise small objects placed in front of it. The idea is to let kids plat games that make us of physical tabletop objects as well as the software on the tablet. Examples include games that use word tiles, puzzle pieces, or involve drawing on paper. Tangible Play hopes to raise $50,000 through crowdfunding on its website to get manufacturing started.
GigaOm reports Google weighed in on the paid peering, net neutrality topic Wednesday claiming that it’s Google Fiber service doesn’t charge for peering and doesn’t use “fast lanes” to prioritize traffic. Google invites content providers and CDNs to colocate in GFiber facilities. Google says that improves customer experience and saves the company money.
The Next Web reports CodeAcademy has translated its coding courses into French, Spanish and Portuguese. The company has also partnered with several initiatives, including Ideas Box which helps people in refugee camps learn new skills, Tiger Leap, an Estonian program attempting to teach every K-12 student how to code, and government initiatives in France, Brazil, Argentina and the UK. Coincidentally all major rugby or soccer powers. CodeAcademy also announced it plans to open its first international office in London.
PCMag reports HP has put it’s 7-inch HP 7 Plus quad-core tablet on sale in the US for $100. The tablet runs Andoird 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, has a 1024×600 display, a Cortex A7 processor, 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of storage. It also comes with 25GB of lifetime storage from Box.
HP announced it’s Quarterly earnings with $X.XX billion in revenue and earnings per share of $X.X Analysts expected $27.4 billion in sales and $0.88 per share. Analysts expected a slowdown in enterprise but a firming up of PC sales.
News From You
the_corley submitted the top story on the DTNS subreddit. Ars Technica reported on 27-year-old Nicholas Paul Knight pleading guilty Tuesday to charges of conspiracy in Federal Court. Knight is former Navy and was SysAdmin on the USS Harry S. Truman’s nuclear reactors department. He lde a team of attackers trying to gain unauthorized access to Navy databases. Knight himself attacked the Navy’s Smart Move website to gain 220,000 service members SSN birthdates, addresses and other personal data. Knight faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
ShaunDMcGee pointed us to the Engadget story that Apple says it has fixed a sever bug causing some former iMessage users who had switched to Android, to lose text messages. Apple says there is a remaining problem with the messaging platform it is still addressing. People moving off of iPhone are advised to manually disable iMessage before powering down for the last time.
KAPT_Kipper put up the Geekwire story that US Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has killed the patent reform bill, which received bipartisan support in the House “because there is not sufficient support behind any comprehensive deal.” ” Internet Infrastructure Coalition Co-Founder Christian Dawson urged the Senate to take up the bill again. While Intellectual Ventures Chief Policy Counsel Russ Merbet said “the proposed legislation would have had severe consequences on legitimate patent holders.” So now you can guess who contributed more money to Leahy’s campaign funds.
the_corley also sent in an RD Mag story about a report appearing in the Chemistry of Materials journal by Umit B. Demirci and colleagues describing a practical way to store hydrogen as a solid. Storage and transportation of hydrogen has been a main impediment to the development of hydrogen fuel cells as an energy source. The researchers developed a novel crystal phase of a material containing lithium, boron and hydrogen, that can release the hydrogen by heating.
Discussion Section Links: EBay breach
http://www.troyhunt.com/2014/05/the-ebay-breach-answers-to-questions.html
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/22/us-ebay-connecticut-idUKBREA4L0WV20140522
http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-change-your-ebay-password/
http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/account/create-password.html
Pick of the day: PopChar via Jeff the Graphic Designer
My pick of the day is PopChar (as in ‘character) a little Mac typography utility that helps me quickly insert those little arrows, dingbats, and symbols and so on, onto my web and print designs. It’s Mac only — and while it’s not free (it costs 30 Euros – about 40 dollars), it saves me a s*&^_load of time every day. Been using it for years and it’s rock solid.
Friday’s guests: Darren Kitchen and Len Peralta!