Jessica Naziri is on the show today. We’ll debunk the big Russian hack a bit and talk about her experience visiting the tech scene in Israel.
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Show Notes
Bloomberg reports ten Apple products, including iPads and MacBooks have been omitted from a Chinese government procurement list distributed in July. The models had been included on the June list. Products not on the procurement list cannot be purchased with government money.
The Verge reports Apple and Samsung issued a joint statement Tuesday announcing the companies have “agreed to drop all litigation between the two companies outside the United States.” The two US cases are the biggest with Apple winning the first with more than $1 billion in damages and a split decision in the second heavily in Apple’s favor with Samsung owing $119.6 million and Apple owing $158,400.
Now that the folks at Lyft have made us feel *mostly* comfortable with the idea of riding in a stranger’s car because that car is wearing a pink mustache, The Next Web reports Lyft is adding more strangers to the equation. Lyft Line allows up to three solo passengers who share a common route to ride together. The company claims Line rides could be sixty percent cheaper. Yesterday Uber announced a ride-sharing experience called UberPool, so the arms race between the two companies remains in balance til at least tomorrow.
The Next Web reports that Foursquare has officially relaunched its mobile app with a renewed focus on location-based recommendations. The company introduced a new tagging system called “tastes’ which gather initial input from the user and then use that data to suggest nearby establishments that fit your preferences. For those still smarting from the loss of their Foursquare mayoralties, the new app introduces the concept of experts–every time a user adds a tip, and every time that tip is saved or shared by another user, they gain expertise.
The BBC reports Wikipedia has begin naming links that have been removed from European versions of search engines under the right-to-be-forgotten rules there. Wikipedia pages no longer indexed include a photograph of a musician, Tom Carstairs, holding a guitar, Dozens of Dutch-language pages that mention Guido den Broeder, a chess player from the Netherlands, An English-language page about Gerry Hutch, a Dublin-born businessman nicknamed “the Monk” who was jailed in the 1980s, as well as several-Italian pages. Wikimedia also issued its first transparency report about takedown requests. One involved a selfie taken by a macaque.
News From You:
biocow pointed out the Engadget story that Softbank has given up its efforts to buy T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom and merge it with Sprint. Regulatory approval proved to be too unlikely for CEO Masayoshi Son’s taste. Subsequently Sprint announced Sprint CEO Dan Hesse will step down August 11 and Marcelo Claure, the chief of wireless distributor Brightstar, will take over. Dish Network Chairman Charlie ERgen told analysts on an earnings call that now that Sprint is out of the picture, “T-Mobile is something that we would have an interest in.”
spsheridan pointed out the Verge article that pokes some holes in the report that Russian hackers had stolen email and passwords for 1.2 billion accounts covering 420,000 websites. Among the reasons for skepticism is that Hold Security, which revealed the hack, is charging a $120-a-year subscription to check if your name and password are on the list. The technique to acquire the database involved buying names on the black market as well as SQL-injection attacks, which mostly affect small sites. Finally Russell Brandom points out the attackers responsible have been using their vast bounty to do Twitter spamming rather than something more lucrative.
duxbak99 submitted the Ars Technica story that researchers from FOX-IT and FireEye recovered private encryption keys to ransomware CryptoLocker and have created a website at http://www.decryptcryptolocker.com/ that allows victims to unlock their computers without paying the $300 or so ransom. Victims must upload one of the files encrypted by CryptoLocker along with the e-mail address where they want the secret key delivered. KAPT_Kipper and magoojc also submitted links about this story.
spsheridan pointed out the Planetary Society article about the arrival of European Space Agency probe Rosetta arriving at comet 67P/Chryumov-Gerasimenko becoming the first spacecraft to maneuver alongside a speeding body. The comet is traveling at 55,000km per hour. The craft will study 67P from alongside and then in November, the Philae lander will put down on the comet’s surface to carry out closeup experiments.
Discussion Section Links:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101804286
http://www.wamda.com/2014/08/palestine-s-only-startup-accelerator-announces-its-latest-round
Pick of the Day from Willie X. Gluck : My pick is Clipjump, a clipboard manager for Windows that has changed the way that I work (for the better!). It’s easy and intuitive to use in that it uses the usual copy and paste shortcut keys. Now I can copy multiple items that I will need to paste, switch, and paste them sequentially without the need to switch back-and-forth between applications. It also has a feature that will strip the formatting, allowing me to replace PureText, which was a great but single purpose app. I also like that you get a preview of what you’re going to paste. The developer also introduced plug-ins that do stuff like change case. There are also a bunch of other cool features.
Plug of the day: Like tech history? I’ve teamed up with Scott Johnson to put out monthly looks at what happened in history this month. For 99 cents you get what happened on each day of the month that helped make the tech we sue today, plus illustrations from Scott Johnson. Check them out for 99 cents each at tommerrittbooks.com or just search Amazon.
Calendar item of the Day: The super awesome FAQ for DefCon: http://www.defcon.org/html/links/dc-faq/dc-faq.html
Tomorrow’s Guest: Fraser Cain