Lamarr Wilson is on the show to talk about the new Amazon Fire TV. Why did Lamarr cancel his order already? Plus, an avalanche of Microsoft announcements from BUILD.

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Show Notes

Today’s guest:  Lamarr Wilson, Vlogger/Comedian of Tech Culture & Entertainment. He also host shows on Mashable.

Headlines

Amazon’s Peter Larsen announced the Amazon Fire TV in a press conference in New York Wednesday morning. The .7” think CD-case-sized box is another video streamer but packs in a quad-core processor, dedicated GPU, 2GB of RAM and dual-band WiFi with Mimi. The remote control connects by Bluetooth and takes voice commands. IN addition to the usual apps like Netflix and Hulu, the device also plays games from major publishers, albeit games that play well on the underlying Android-based operating system. Amazon also announced a game controller for the Fire TV that costs $39.99 and comes with 1000 Amazon Coins and a free game from Amazon. The FireTV box itself sells for $99 and is available to order int he US, shipping today.

Get ready for three hours of Microsoft announcements? Don’t fret, we compressed them into a few minutes. But still. There’s a lot of them. Let’s start with Windows Phone 8.1. It sports a new action center, new lock screen experiences, a new way to set the background on start screen, and the big hit, MS personal assistant software, Cortana. The voice-activated assistant replaces the phone OS’s search function. It also shows you a notebook with what it knows about you. 8.1 also supports enterprise level VPN, new MDM capabilities and S/MIME encrypted email. Oh and a nifty WiFi Sense feature that joins known hotspots faster and a nifty keyboard typing function called ‘shape writing” that’s similar to Swype on Android. 8.1 will roll out to current customers of WP8 in the next few months. Brand new phones will have it as soon as late April, or early May.

A couple of those new phones were announced by Nokia’s soon to be Microsoft’s Stephen Elop. The Lumia 930 will have a 5-inch full HD display, integrated wireless charging, a 20 MP PureView sensor with Optical Image Stabilization and Zeiss optics and 4 microphones for audio capture in video. Lumia 930 sales start in June overseas for around $599. Elop also announced the Lumia 630 and 635 with a 4-inch display, five colors with shells. The 630 comes with 3G dual SIM capabilities while the 635 has LTE. Both phones come with a low-powere Sensorcore processor that can track movement for things like fitness tracking. Sales start next month in Asia. The U.S. will see them in July. The phones will run about $159 for the single SIM 630; $10 more for dual SIM. $189 for the Lumia 635.

Finally, Microsoft gave us a peek at the future, including the holy grail of universal apps. Universal Windows apps makes the Windows runtime available for phones for common code, providing a consistent user experience across devices including the Xbox. IN addition DirectX 12 will be the shared platform for Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox. Universal Windows Apps will run in their own Window on the Desktop, new for Modern apps. No more jarring experience between Desktop and Metro/Modern. And Microsoft is getting more open. Windows Library for javascript is going cross-platform and open source. And Windows for IoT will be free as will Windows for phones and tablets with screens less than 9 inches. Oh and next update will bring the Start menu back, with new added live tiles alongside a more familiar looking list.

And now for some not-Microsoft news! Samsung launched a service called “Samsung Smart Home” in the US and Korea Wednesday. An Android app is now available that will give users the ability to manage compatible devices from Samsung and other manufacturers. In the US the system is compatible at launch with the “Samsung Smart French Door Refrigerator” and the “Samsung Smart Front Loading Washing Machine.” An app is in the works for the Gear 2 and 2014 Samsung Smart TVs as well.

Reuters reports Turkey’s constitutional court ruled the telecom authority’s block on Twitter violates freedom of expression and individual rights. The court sent its verdict to the TIB but a previous ruling also supposedly ordered the block lifted and it has not been lifted yet. blocked access to Twitter on March 21 after several audio tapes were posted allegedly showing evidence of corruption.

News From You:

cosmicvibes submitted the blog post from Canonical’s Jane Silber announcing the shutdown of Ubuntu One cloud file storage services. The post says Ubuntu could not compete with services offering 25-50GB of free storage. The Ubuntu One file services will not be included in the upcoming Ubuntu 14.04 LTS release. The current services will be unavailable from 1 June 2014; user content will remain available for download until 31 July, at which time it will be deleted. Customers with annual subscriptions will have the unused portion refunded.

KAPT_Kipper posted the Engadget story that BlackBerry has chosen not renew T-Mobile’s license to sell BlackBerry products, after the deal expires April 25th. BlackBerry CEO John Chen said the two companies’ strategies are “not complementary.” T-Mobile ran a promotion enticing BlackBerry owners to switch to an iPhone.

tekkyn00b sent us the article from The Verge about the USB Implementers Forum releasing images of the new reversible USB cable standard expected to be finalized in July. The USB Type C cable will not be compatible with current USB ports. It’s smaller and symmetrical, meaning you can’t put it in upside-down. The new standard is intended to replace both regular and micro-USB. It will support USB 3.1 and speeds of 10Gbps.

melchizedek74 pointed out the Verge article about an FCC Spokesperson telling the National Journal, “Peering and interconnection are not under consideration in the Open Internet proceeding.” Although the agency is monitoring the situation and considering some new rules to regulat arrangements between companies like Comcast and Netflix. So totally off the table in net neutrality talks. But maybe they’ll regulate it anyway? You’re confusing us FCC!

And KAPT_Kipper, he gets a twofer today, sent in the link to the Ars Technica article about Google taking its WiFi sniffing case to the US Supreme Court. Back in 2010 Google’s Street View cars were using MAC addresses of WiFi connections to help pin down locations better. Lots of services including your phone do this. Google got caught sniffing in some packets from open WiFi connections that were not necessary for the location info, including pieces of email data etc. Google says that was an accident. In 2012, the FCC fined Google $25,000 for stonewalling its investigation and a US Federal Appeals Court concluded the collection violated the Wiretap Act. Google has appealed the devision and has now asked the US Supreme Court to review it.

Discussion Section Links:  Fire!

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1915168&highlight=

Pick of the Day:  Duolingo

“Il parle sans savoir et sans comprendre”* Or, according to the addictive language-learning app Duolingo, “He is talking without knowing and without understanding.” This free app can teach you to say that in six languages – Spanish, French, German, Italian, English and Portuguese. The app was crowned Apple’s App of the Year in 2013 and it’s worth every free penny. Unlike Spanish 101, you don’t have to get up for class at 8am, you don’t have to remember to answer to your “Spanish name,” and best of all, it’s actually FUN. If languages really aren’t your forte, at the very least, it’s a source of unintentional giggles when asking you to translate phrases, like “Erwachsenen haben diese Traume,”* or, “No normal adults have these dreams.” (H/T to the wtfduolingo tumblr for finding the app’s sometimes awkward awesomeness.)

Thursday’s Guest:  Veronica Belmont!

Natali Morris joins the show and we get to the bottom of all this April Fool’s Day nonsense. Also it’s Gmail’s legit 10th birthday.

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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 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

Today’s guest:  Natali Morris, CNBC Contributor and cofounder of ReadQuick

Headlines

Today is April 1st. April Fools’ day which the Internet first made amazing and then risked ruining. How did the Internet do this year? Google Japan gave us a robot hand you can use to type. Google+ introduce auto awesome photobomb which inserted David Hasselhoff into your pictures. Richard Branson played along with Nest for flights, giving Virgin airline passengers climate control. YouTube decided to stop producing the memes and let people do it this year. And SwiftKey for physical keyboards, Roku Watch, Samsung, Toshiba, AND HTcC’s smart gloves, CERN changing to comic sans as the official typeface, Sphero’s selfiebot, iFixit bought by Apple, AND the inevitable raft of awesome, possibly soon to be real fake products from ThinkGeek.

April 1st is also Gmail’s birthday. Harry McCracken has an excellent piece on Technologizer about the origins of Gmail and why it was launched on April Fool’s day. It mostly had to do with Sergey Brin’s sense of humor. Happy birthday Gmail! You did better than the email system I was using ten years before you, called PINE.

And now news. Ish. Reuters reports Apple suppliers will begin producing displays for the next iPhone in May, which would be about right on schedule for a fall release of the phone. Reuters source says Japan Display, Sharp and LG Display have all been tapped to make screens. The screens being produce in May are supposedly 4.7-inches, a big jump up from the current 4-inch screens in the iPhone 5S. Apparently a 5.5-inch screen is in the works but hit a snag and won’t be produced until later this year.

Engadget reports its sources say Google is testing a new camera app for Android with a background-blurring effect for portrait shots and improved panorama and Photo Sphere modes. Also photo framing gets a tweak so that what you see in the viewfinder is what you get in the picture. Nothing creeping in at the edges. And support for third-party filters is also supposedly on the way. The improvements would come in a standalone app so Android device owners wouldn’t have to wait for a carrier update to their OS.

Now actual news from not anonymous sources. TechCrunch reports that Pavel Durov, founder of Russian social network Vkontakte, announced he has resigned as the company’s Acting Director General. Durov said said it became “increasingly difficult” to run the social network after ownership changes put pressure on the company’s freedom of speech ethic. Durov has become increasingly outspoken about mass surveillance and freedom of speech in Russia. He sold his remaining stake in the company in January. Mail.ru owns 52% of Vkontakte.

CNET’s Jeff Bakalar reports select Xbox Live members will get invites to early access to a few new features for the Xbox One. Among the features are the ability to set DVR recordings and watch recordings from a tablet or smartphone. Also coming is “Rent Once, Play Anywhere” which lets you stop playback of a rented video on one device, say your Xbox and pick up where you left off on another, like a Windows Phone.

News From You:

fja submitted the BBC story on OKCupid dissuading its visitors from using Firefox, in protest over CEO Brendan Eich’s previous support of antigay marriage law in California. Visitors to OK Cupid’s site who use Firefox receive a screen asking them to use another browser, with an explanation of why. However a link does allow Firefox users to continue on to the main site. Mozilla told the BBC it has not been contacted by OKCupid and said “Mozilla supports equality for all, including marriage equality for LGBT couples.”

LifeDownloaded passed along the Verge story that HP has settled a class action lawsuit that alleged the company misled investors. The plaintiff’s claimed HP publicly said it would flood the market with WebOS powered devices after acquiring Palm in 2010, but that privately the company never actually planned any such thing. HP will pay $57 million as part of the mediated settlement.

And KAPT_Kipper posted the GigaOm story that Google+ users can now see a stat telling them their total views adding up profile, post and photo views since October 2012. The number will show up on the profile page. Number-hungry companies desperate to show some kind of reach on their brand pages are calling this addition ‘analytics.’

Discussion Section Links:  

http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/01/homestar-runner-springs-back-from-the-dead-releases-new-stuff-for-the-first-time-in-four-years/

http://time.com/43263/gmail-10th-anniversary/

Pick of the Day:  f.lux

Wednesday’s Guest: The Internet’s own Lamarr Wilson!

Wil Harris joins us to chat about the patent wars heating up, CBS’s Les Moonves threatening to take his channel and go off air, and more!

MP3

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 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

Today’s guest:  Wil Harris, Wil Harris, co-founder ChannelFlip

Headlines

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is starting to put his own stamp on the company’s executive team. TechCrunch reports Nadella announces Monday morning that Scott Guthrie is now the executive vice president of Cloud and Enterprise, filling Nadella’s old role. Phil Spencer will now run a team that combines Xbox and Xbox Live with Microsoft Studios and reports to Terry Myerson who runs operating systems. And when the Nokia acquisition is finally complete, Stephen Elop will become executive vice president of the Devices group.

Reuters reports that researchers found another vulnerability insecurity company RSA’s random number generator. Reports in December indicated the NSA paid RSA $10 million and that the NSA had implemented a back door into RSA’s Dual Elliptic Curve random number generator. Now professors from Johns Hopkins, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Illinois and elsewhere have discovered that an extension called “Extended Random” could be exploited as a vulnerability. Extended Random was touted as a way to boost randomness but makes predicting secure numbers easier according to the researchers. RSA continues to maintain it has not intentionally weakened any of its products.

The Washington Post reported jury selection began Monday in the latest court battle between Apple and Samsung. Apple accuses Samsung of infringing five patents on newer devices, including tap-from-search that makes things like phone numbers into links as well as slide to unlock. In a counterclaim, Samsung says Apple infringes its wireless technology system that speeds up sending and receiving data on iPhones and iPads.

Reuters reports the European Parliament will vote on the Net Neutrality recommendations at noon on Thursday. The current proposal, put forward by Socialist and Green party MEPs, says: “(Specialised) services shall only be offered if the network capacity is sufficient to provide them in addition to Internet access services and they are not to the detriment of the availability or quality of Internet access services.” The proposals need approval by the EU’s 28 governments before they can become law. Only the Netherlands and Slovenia have net neutrality legislation already in place.

The Next Web reports on data from the Kantar Worldpanel ComTech Report showing good news for the budget phone folks. Motorola went from virtually nothing to 6% of the UK market in six months, on the strength of the MotoG which launched in November. Similar surges came for Wiko in France which has 8.3 percent share, and Xiaomi in China with 18.5 percent. Android remains the top OS in Europe at 68.9 percent with Apple at 19 percent and Windows Phone with 9.7 percent. In the US, Android is the most popular platform at 55% and LG is the US fastest growing manufacturer at 8% marketshare on the strength of the G2.

News From You:

spsheridan pointed out the Ars Technica article about the US Supreme Court hearing oral arguments today in the case of Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank. Four patents at issue describe software that performs trusted financial exchanges. Nobody, except maybe Alice Corp. expects the Supreme Court to rule the patents are valid. The importance of the case revolves around the reasoning the court gives. The Court could rule that software itself doesn’t qualify for patent protection. Companies that favor software patents, like Microsoft, Adobe and IBM, have filed briefs recommending the court invalidate the Alice patents very narrowly without impacting software patents in general. Other companies like LinkedIn, Twitter, Yelp, Newegg, Netflix and Rackspace have filed a brief asking the court to make it much harder to get software patents. Unsurprisingly the justices’ line of questioning today indicated they are likely to invalidate the Alice patents but eliminate the legal basis of software patents altogether.

KAPT_Kipper submitted the TechCrunch article explaining that Dropbox complies with copyright takedown notices by turning files submitted to them into hashes and then comparing the hashes to dropbox folder contents. If the hashes match then sharing is disabled for that file, though otherwise it’s treated normally.

metalfreak posted an OpenSource.com story that the US Department of Labor is requiring the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license on all content created with the grant funds in their Ready to Work Partnership grant program. The program is meant to help long-term unemployed workers get employment in industries, like tech, where H-1B visas are used. In other words anything made by the 20-30 recipients of a share of the $150 million of government money will have to be openly licensed.

nickgiulioni pointed out this Gizmodo article about Samung’s $700 4K monitor now up for pre-order. The 28-inch UD590 has a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels.two HDMI 1.4 ports, displayport, and audio out. Looks like Amazon already sold out of their stock of them.

Galcyon sent in the Verge article about Google getting a jump on April Fool’s day. Maybe the schedule for this one was left up to Australians. Google has a video up advertising an augmented reality Pokemon game tied in to Google Maps. If you zoom into certain areas around the world on Google Maps today, you’ll see where the creatures are meant to appear. Yay April Fools day where news goes to die!

Discussion Section Links:  

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/03/yahoo-may-poach-popular-youtubers-and-start-its-own-video-site/

http://recode.net/2014/03/28/ready-for-marissas-closeup-yahoo-is-considering-creating-its-own-youtube-and-poaching-youtube-stars/

Pick of the Day:  Amazon Glacier

Tuesday’s Guest:  Natali Morris, CNBC contributor

Andrew Mayne joins the show and we discuss Facebook’s plan to cover the world with Internet-bearing solar-powered drones and lasers. What could go wrong? Also, Len Peralta will attempt to illustrate this mess. You will not want to miss this.

MP3

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 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

Today’s guest:  Andrew Mayne and Len Peralta

Headlines

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a blog post announcing a new effort in conjunction with Internet.org to have Facebook’s Connectivity Lab work on a project to provide Internet connectivity worldwide from the air. Sparsely populated areas could be covered by satellites, both geosynchronous and low earth orbit varieties. Suburban areas could gain coverage from solar-powered automatic drones that can fly for months at a time. Facebook has acquired the 5-member company Ascenta who have worked on the Breitling Orbiter and Zephyr drone. They also employ former engineers from NASA as part of the effort. Oh and lasers. They connect all the satellites to each other with lasers. No sharks were reported to be involved.

Facebook also picked up a future employee once the acquisition of Oculus VR is done. TechCrunch reports Michael Abrash will leave his gig heading up VR at Valve to become Oculus’s Chief Scientist. Abrash said in his blog post that Facebok brings the resources and long-term commitment VR needs to solve the hard problems. You likely that today you used something Abrash coded since he has written for everything from Quake to Windows.

BlackBerry announced earnings Friday and Reuters reports that losses were smaller than feared. It was still a 64 percent drop in revenue. In an investor call, CEO John Chen gave a few hints on upcoming hardware. The Foxconn-made Z3 will come to Indonesia first in April, then the rest of the world. The Q20 with physical keyboard will be ready for Q1 2015. And the BlakcBerry 7 OS-powered Blackberry Bold will get another production run.

Remember I mentioned the Wall Street Journal said its sources claimed Amazon was going to roll out a free ad-supported video streaming service. Well the Verge passed that along too as well as a flat denial from Amazon. In an email to Variety an Amazon spokeswoman Sally Fouts said “we have no plans to offer a free streaming-media service.” So you’re saying there’s…no chance. Got it.

The Ethernet Alliance issued a press release announcing the formation of the IEEEp802.3bs Task Force. Yep. dot three bs. I know. Hopefully they won’t live up to that name and WILL successfully develop the standard for 400 Gigabit Ethernet, because that’s their job. They won’t go alone however, as they have the support of the Ethernet Alliance 400Gb/s Subcommittee. Maybe IEEE can take a little naming convention lesson after all this is over. The inaugural meeting of the IEEE P802.3bs Task Force will take place the week of May 12, 2014 in Norfolk, Va. as part of the IEEE Joint Interim Meeting.

GigaOm reports Tesla Motors has started adding a triple-layer metal shield, made of titanium and aluminum, to the underbodies of its cars. The shield is meant to protect the battery from impacts from below. All cars made after March 6th will have the shield, cars made before March 6th can be retrofitted free of charge. Elon Musk posted to Medium to make the announcement and put up some rather nifty animated GIFs of underbody impacts.

The Next Web reports a group of Dutch users have made a parody of Google Maps, called Google Naps which lets users mark and describe a particularly restful places to catch a few Zs. The group posted a detailed explanation of how the site was a joke and please don’t sue us Google. You know. For lawyers.

TechCrunch reports Microsoft General Counsel and EVP – Legal & Corporate Affairs Brad Smith posted some more information about Microsoft’s conundrum when it needs to investigate email accounts that it also hosts as part of outlook.com’s service. Previously Microsoft explained it couldn’t get a warrant for these since it already had the right to look but that it would be super extra careful and almost never do it. Well they’ve changed their mind. Microsoft says they’ll now never do that. And will refer any potential similar situations directly to law enforcement. They’re even working with the Center for Democracy and Technology and The Electronic Frontier Foundation on future privacy issues. OK.

News From You

Draconos sent us the Ars Technica article about DARPA’s new program called Collaborative Operations in Denied Environments , yes CODE for short, which wants to make autonomous cooperative swarms of drones that share sensor data but still respond to the commands of a single human. Cooperative groups could be more flexible in heavily defended airspace while still giving a commander the ability to control all the units from a single console.

KAPT_Kipper posted the GeekWire article that Microsoft has confirmed they will bring Office to Android devices too. John Case, a Microsoft Office corporate vice president for marketing told GeekWire “Let me tell you conclusively: Yes, we are also building Android native applications for tablets for Word, Excel and PowerPoint.” They haven’t picked a date for release but they are committed to it.

And Berke80 who I believe is in Turkey pointed out the EFF post that says in addition to blocks on Twitter and now YouTube, Turkish ISPs appear to be blocking the Tor Project’s website. Tor is a way of obfuscating connection information and can get around IP address blocks among other things. The EFF is providing links to mirros of the Tor Project site where users can still get the Tor Browser bundle.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/facebook-to-provide-internet-connectivity-from-solar-powered-planes/

http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/27/facebook-joins-google-in-the-hunt-for-the-future/

http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1287644/facebook-buys-uk-based-drone-company-ascenta-beam-internet-sky

http://internet.org/press/announcing-the-connectivity-lab-at-facebook

https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101322049893211?stream_ref=10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxX6r-xDgG4&feature=youtu.be

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2014/02/facebook-plans-conquer-world-slew-low-end-handsets/

Pick of the Day:  G.I. Joe Coffee Company

Tonx is great, but the G.I Joe Coffee Company is awesome for an entirely different reason. They are all fair trade, good quality coffee, but 20% of all proceeds go to support disabled veterans. I know you get tons of picks, but I figured I had to throw one in the mix since it is a cause near and dear to my heart (retired Army and 90% disabled myself). With Respect,  Scott Napier

Monday’s Guest:  Wil Harris

Peter Wells joins us to chat about Microsoft office for iPad and the experience of back-to-back phone launch events from Samsung and HTC in Sydney.

MP3

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 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

Today’s guest:  Peter Wells from Reckoner, Australia

Headlines

Microsoft’s Satya Nadella led a live presentation in San Francisco of Office for iPad. Versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint and upgraded version of OneNote hit the iOS app store after the presentation. Written natively for iOS, the apps mimic their desktop conuterparts in many ways, and are a significant improvement over the office for iPhone apps. Documents can only be accessed locally from OneDrive or SharePoint though. The apps are free for viewing docs, but you’ll need a paid Office 365 account if you want to edit. Office 365 Home Premium subscriptions cost $99 a year, but a $70 Personal program is coming this spring.

Hot on the heels of Twitter’s court victory in Turkey, The Next Web noticed WebRazzi’s report that YouTube is now blocked in Turkey through all ISPs. The Turkish telecoms authority TIB confirmed to Reuters that it has taken “administrative measure” against YouTube. Google declined requests from the Turkish government to remove a YouTube video that accuses the government of corruption.

ReCode reports Amazon has sent out invites to reporters from Peter Larsen, that say “Please Join Us for an update on our Video business.” The event is scheduled for next Wednesday, April 2, at 11 AM Eastern time in New York City. The invite features a couch and some popcorn, so it’s either the long-rumored Amazon set-top box, or a lecture about snacking.

The Next Web passes along Twitter’s announcement of photo tagging and multiple photos for its Android and iOS twitter apps. Users can tag up to 10 people in a photo, and tags won’t count against your character limit. This comes along with new privacy options about who can tag you. The other feature lets you share up to four photos in a collage s part of one post. Twitter also announced it’s partnering with Billboard magazine for a real-time chart of the most popular music on Twitter.

The Wall Street Journal reports Intel will indeed sink an investment into Cloudera. Intel and Cloudera have competed in selling versions of the big-data analysis software Hadoop. Intel will discontinue its Hadoop product and put its muscle behind Cloudera’s. Cloudera in return will work to make its Hadoop product work particularly well on Intel chips.

Peter pointed us to this Verge article about Google Play Music allowing songs to be uploaded through the browser. The feature is now available in the labs section of Play Music. You can also select a number of folders to monitor and upload whenever new songs are added. You can download through the browser, so it all means you should never have to touch Music Manager again.

Pocket-lint reports Samsung is getting into the burgeoning smart lightbulb race. The Samsung Smart Bulb uses Bluetooth, not WiFi like others, to connect to your smartphone or tablet. You can access up to 64 bulbs to turn them on or off and dim them. The bulbs are supposed to last 10 years.

News From You

spsheridan posted the Verge story that US President Barack Obama did indeed announce his proposal to reform the NSA’s collection of telephone metadata as expected. The NSA would no longer collect data, but submit requests to phone companies for individual phone numbers after getting approval for the request from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. While the President works with Congress to pass new legislation, the current system will continue for 90 days. Alternative proposals already exist in Congress and Verizon has responded requesting that phone companies not be required to keep records longer than normally needed for business purposes.

DorkOfNerk submitted the Ars Technica story about two Google Play apps that mine Litecoin and DogeCoin while running without alerting users of the apps to that fact. A researcher from Trend Micro’s Veo Zhang posted about the behavior in the apps Songs and Prized. Prized has disappeared from the app store. Google told Ars Technica they would not comment on the post.

And mattblackcube sent in the Verge article that surgeons at UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh are ready to test a technique that puts patients in a state of “suspended animation,” giving surgeons enough time to operate on injuries that would otherwise be fatal.  All you need to do is drain the patient’s blood really fast and replace it with a saline solution inducing a state similar to hyopthermia that reduces a cells need for oxygen. The process will be tested on ten patients in cardiac arrest who do not respond to attempts to restart the heart. Surgeons will have about two-four hours to repair injuries before blood must be returned and the heart restarted.

Discussion Section Links:  Office for iPad

http://gigaom.com/2014/03/27/office-for-ipad-available-today/

http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/27/5553364/microsoft-office-for-ipad-features

http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/27/office-for-ipad-review/?ncid=rss_truncated

Pick of the Day:  http://everytimezone.com/

Friday’s Guests:  Andrew Mayne and Len Peralta

Andy Ihnatko joins to settle once and for all whether we will someday live in Facebook’s evil Ready Player One-like universe or Facebook’s evil Snow Crash-like universe. Because they bought Oculus.

MP3

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 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

Today’s guest:  Andy Ihnatko, technology columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times

Headlines

All of the Internet, but I saw it first on TechCrunch, reported yesterday that Facebook announced plans to buy Oculus Vr, the makers of the Rift virtual reality headset for $400 million in cash, 23.1 million Facebook stock shares and a $300 million earnout, for a grand total current valuation of around $2 billion also expressed as two Instagrams or 1/10 of a WhatsApp. The Internet is pleased, outraged, confused but mostly outraged. That is also known as being the Internet. As if speaking on behalf of the Internet, Markus Persson, aka Notch of Minecraft posted on Twitter that he had canceled his deal with Oculus because “Facebook creeps me out.” Also Facebook denies the New York Times report that it plans to redesign the Rift and brand it with a Facebook logo.

Hurriyet Daily News out of Turkey reports the Turkish government will abide by an Ankara court ruling staying the decision to block Twitter in the country. Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç told reporters the government may not like the decision but they will carry it out, although they may take up to 30 days to do so. The court stated in its ruling that the ban of the entire website was contrary to the Turkish Constitution and the European Convention of Human Rights, as it restricted the freedom of expression and communication.

ZDNet reports Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies voted in favor of the Marco Civil da Internet which has provisions for net neutrality, privacy rights and protection for ISPs against liability for offensive content published by their customers. A controversial provision to require data on Brazilians to be stored in Brazil was dropped before passage. The bill will need to clear the Senate before it is sanctioned by president Dilma Rousseff.

Engadget reports ZTE just launched the Nubia X6 handset/tablet with 6.44-inch 1080p screen. It also carries a snapdrgon 7801 chip, 3GB of RAM, up to 128GB of storage and a 4,250 mAh battery. Both front and back cameras are 13-megapixels. It’s up for pre-order in China at $HK 5,010. (US$640).

News From You

LifeDownloaded submitted the TechCrunch story on CandyCrush maker King’s initial public offering of stock. King sold the shares at $22.50 each raising $326 million on a valuation of $7 billion. The stock began trading at $20.50 a share Wednesday morning dropped to $19.58 midafternoon and ended the day at [$19.25]

habichuelcondulce pointed us to the SB Nation Lookit story about the folks at the dogecoin subreddit raising $55,000 to sponsor Josh Wise’s N0.98 car in NASCAR races. Hopefuly the car will get wrapped in Shiba Inu meme-ness in time for the Aaron’s 499 at Talledega May 4. A design competition has begun to determine the look of the logo on the car.

MikePKennedy posted the story from Engadget that NASA has stitched together more than 2 million infrared pictures taken in the past decade by the Spitzer Space telescope to create the clearest infrared panorama of our galaxy ever made. The photos from the Galactic Legacy Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire (GLIMPSE360) show 3 percent of the sky but more than half of all stars in the Milky Way. You can pan through the photo online, or if you have loads of free hard drive space, download the full resolution raw images.

LifeDownloaded submitted the TechCrunch story on CandyCrush maker King’s initial public offering of stock. King sold the shares at $22.50 each raising $326 million on a valuation of $7 billion. The stock began trading at $20.50 a share Wednesday morning dropped to $19.58 midafternoon and ended the day at [$19.31]

Discussion Section Links:  Pick of the Day:  Fock-u-lus Rift?

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/03/welcome-to-the-vr-social-what-to-expect-from-oculus-in-the-facebook-era/

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/03/minecraft-dev-halts-talks-with-oculus-following-facebook-acquisition/

http://www.cnet.com/news/zuckerberg-facebook-only-spends-big-on-rare-companies/#ftag=CAD590a51e

http://recode.net/2014/03/25/under-facebook-oculus-will-still-focus-on-games-for-now/

http://www.cnet.com/news/what-does-the-facebook-oculus-deal-mean-for-kickstarter/#ftag=CAD590a51e

http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/25/5547946/welcome-to-planet-facebook

http://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-oculus-deal-a-downpayment-on-gaming-and-everything-beyond/#ftag=CAD590a51e

Thursday’s Guest:  Peter Wells

Stephen Shankland joins the show to talk about the HTC One M8 and the new CEO of Mozilla. Can Firefox rule mobile?

MP3

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 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

Today’s guest: Stephen Shankland, senior writer, CNET News

Headlines

HTC announced the new HTC One today AKA the M8, in Gunmetal Greay, Glacial Silver or ugly, I mean Amber Gold. Many gadget reviewers have admitted to crushes on the all-metal design. Among the features are two rear-facing cameras to allow changing focus on photos after they’re taken. You can also answer a call just by picking up the device and holding it to your head. The Android 4.4 KitKat phone runs HTC’s Sense 6 on a Snapdragon 801 processor, with 2 GB of RAM with either 16 or 32 GB of onboard storage. The 2600 mAh battery should be good for up to 20 hours of 3G talk time, though the phone is LTE. A $50 Dot View case from HTC allows you to see notifications like 8Bit graphics through the cases cover. AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Rogers, Bell and Telus in North America have it for pre-order now, it’s coming to more North American outlets in early April and Australia, UK, Taiwan and France by the end of the month. Price runs $649 unlocked, $699 for the Google Play edition without Sense and from $199 to $249 with a contract.

The New York Times reports US President Barack Obama will propose bills to the US Congress to eliminate the NSA’s in-house phone call data storage and create a new surveillance court to handle phone data requests. The new court would review requests for phone data directly from the phone companies, that go no more than two hops from a phone number of interests. The bill would not address overseas surveillance programs.

Google made waves in enterprise cloud service announcing a 32 percent across the board price cut.  SVP Urs Hölzle told attendees at Google Cloud Platform Live that the company will also offer sustained-use discounts without pre-payment. Amazon is holding its own cloud event tomorrow so expect Amazon Reserved Instances to possibly get a price adjustment themselves.

MacStories reports developer Olga Osadcha noted Apple is testing a related search suggestion feature for its App Store which started rolling out today for iPhone users on iOS7. The suggestions show up as a scrollable menu bar with similar or related searches.

ExtremeTech reports Nvidia’s Jen-Hsun Huang made a handful of announcements at the GPU Technology Conference. Nvidia and IBM have partnered up on NVLink which connects GPUs and CPUs at a claimed 12-15x over the current implemntation of PCI-Express. Nvidia also talked up the successor to Maxwell, code-named Pascal coming with new features in 2016. And Nvidia announced a dual-GPU Titan card called Titan Z with up to 8TFLOPS of theoretical FLOPS performance. The dual GK110 card will run companies $3,000.

News From You

beatmaster80 submitted the Business Insider story on the IRS decision to classify Bitcoins as property not currency. That means every time you spend BitCoins you have to report it the way you would selling something like stock or a house. Put another way, buy something with bitcoins, pay capital gains tax. The good news is the US Treasury Department should now begin developing formal regulations, so this guidance may not be the final word.

ancientbearwizard submitted the Ars Technica story on Microsoft donating the source code for MS_DOS 1.1 and 2.0 and Word for Windows 1.1a to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. The museum also holds source code for Adobe Photoshop 1.0 and Apple II DOS. The source is now freely downloadable by anyone.

KAPT_Kipper gave us the TechCrunch story on Google signing up Italian company Luxottica to design and build Google Glass. Luxottica makes the Ray-Ban, Oakley, Miu Miu, Armani, and other brands of eyewear. Google cited Luxottica’s experience selling eyewear to the public as a key factor in the deal. This can easily be read as a sign Google’s getting closer to making a Google Glass product available to the general public.

cincyhuffster sent in the Engadget story about new lighter weight airbags for mortorcycles. The Ducati Multistrada D-Air has sensors attached to the bike’s electronic system that monitor the vehicle’s acceleration, breaking and orientation. In the event of a crash, it can send a signal over WiFi to your jacket, so that the internal airbags will deploy before you hit the ground. The produce is scheduled to launch in Europe in May.

Discussion Section Links:  HTC One M8

http://www.cnet.com/news/htc-one-m8-to-arrive-in-google-play-edition/

http://www.cnet.com/news/htc-announces-htc-one-m8/

http://www.cnet.com/products/htc-one-m8/

http://www.cnet.com/news/the-inside-story-of-the-htc-one-m8/

http://androidcommunity.com/htc-one-m8-dot-view-case-hands-on-20140325/ 

http://www.cnet.com/news/brendan-eich-mo zillas-alpha-nerd-takes-over-as-ceo-q-a/

Pick of the Day: Boxcryptor

I came across this great piece of software for encrypting your documents in cloud storage accounts called Boxcryptor
They have a free and paid for accounts that allow you to…….wait for it…..encrypt your files…..
You can use it with OneDrive, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive etc…. It uses AES-256 bit encryption, you can use it on Mac or PC. It’s just a great way to keep you stuff secure. I found this program looking for something to put on added security with my tax returns in the cloud.

As always a huge fan of all your podcasts and keep it up!

Chris Denny

Wednesday’s Guest: Andy Ihnatko, technology columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times

Justin Robert Young is on the show and we’ll talk about Comcast and Apple’s plans for an Internet TV service. Do they violate net neutrality? We ask Ars Technica’s Jon Brodkin what he thinks.

MP3

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 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

Today’s guests: Justin Robert Young of  Nightattack.tv and Jon Brodkin, senior IT reporter for Ars Technica

Headlines

Comcapple? Ars Technica reports on the Wall Street Journal story that Apple and Comcast are negotiating video service. Sources say the video would be delivered to Comcast customers separately from Internet traffic, to avoid net neutrality violations. Comcast must abide by the FCC’s guidelines until 2018 as part of the NBC acquisition. The service would be viewed on Apple-made hardware. The negotiations involve who controls customer data, how much is charged for the service, and how the profits are split. WSJ’s sources say the two sides are not close to a deal.

And after all, you’re my Photowall: TechCrunch reports Google launched an app called Photowall for Android and iOS, that sends photos from a mobile device to a TV using Chromecast. Stop yawning because I haven’t told you it includes photo editing that allows you to make snarky notes and draw mustaches on people. Multiple participants can take part and even add photos from a Web-based interface if they don’t have the app. You can also make a YouTube video montage of the creation. Ok, you can yawn now if you want.

Nokia does not expect to close handset business sale this month:  Reuters reports Nokia does not expect to close on the sale of its handset business to Microsoft this month, and no hopes to close in April. Google and Microsoft have asked Chinese regulators to ensure the deal doesn’t lead to higher patent licensing. Right now Nokia has to pay to license patents for the handset division, as well as charge for its patents. Once the handset business is Microsoft’s problem, Nokia might choose to jack up patent license fees since it no longer risks retaliation. Future revenue from patents is expected to make up as much as half of Nokia’s market capitalization.

Some ATM companies considering Linux to replace Windows XP: As we near the end of support for Windows XP on April 8, ComputerWorld reports some companies are considering migrating their ATMs to use Linux. Windows XP currently powers nearly 95% of the world’s ATMs. Microsoft has offered extended support to some, but not all, companies. Many are upgrading to Windows 7, though often that requires hardware upgrades as well. If you’re laughing about Windows XP, remember the previous dominant operating system of ATMs was IBM’s OS/2.

It was like a SmartBulb going off over my head! TechWeek Europe reports LG announced a smart light bulb controlled from a mobile app. The LG SmartBulb app runs on Android 4.3 and iO6 and later versions of both OSs. The app lets you turn on and off, put the bulb on a timer and more. The Android app can have the bulb flash to the beat of music. LG claims at 5 hours of usae a day the bulb should last 10 years. It costs 35,000 won ($30) and is only available in Korea.

News From You:

Draconos and Lythander both submitted reports from the New York Times and Der Spiegel that the US NSA infiltrated servers at the headquarters of Huawei. Reuters reports Hong Lei, spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry said, “We demand that the United States makes a clear explanation and stop such acts.” Huawei has been accused by US lawmakers of connections with the Chinese military and of spying on US interests.

HobbitfromPA sent in the Engadget story that Google Now’s preemptive search and assistance has arrived for all users of the Chrome browser. Cards will show up in the system tray or notification area of your operating system. Users get access to voice search, reminders for events and flights, and location-based info like commute times. Although the location may often come from your phone not your PC. If you’re signed into Chrome and don’t see it, hang in there, Google says it will roll out slowly to all over the next several weeks.

tekkyn00b pointed out the TechCrunch story that security company Palo Alto Networks bough Cyvera, a security company from Israel. The $200 million deal is expected to close in the second half of 2014. Cyvers touts an approach to combatting zero-day vulnerabilities, providing real-time prevention that slows down malware long enough to identify and eliminate it. Palo Alto Networks makes firewall-like hardware and software that protects against all kinds of Web malware, including botnets. Together they’re murder— on malware.

Speaking of zero-day vulnerabilities,

Today’s guests: Justin Robert Young of  Nightattack.tv and Jon Brodkin, senior IT reporter for Ars Technica

Headlines

Apple and Comcast talking? Ars Technica reports on the Wall Street Journal story that Apple and Comcast are negotiating video service. Sources say the video would be delivered to Comcast customers separately from Internet traffic, to avoid net neutrality violations. Comcast must abide by the FCC’s guidelines until 2018 as part of the NBC acquisition. The service would be viewed on Apple-made hardware. The negotiations involve who controls customer data, how much is charged for the service, and how the profits are split. WSJ’s sources say the two sides are not close to a deal.

And after all, you’re my Photowall: TechCrunch reports Google launched an app called Photowall for Android and iOS, that sends photos from a mobile device to a TV using Chromecast. Stop yawning because I haven’t told you it includes photo editing that allows you to make snarky notes and draw mustaches on people. Multiple participants can take part and even add photos from a Web-based interface if they don’t have the app. You can also make a YouTube video montage of the creation. Ok, you can yawn now if you want.

Nokia does not expect to close handset business sale this month:  Reuters reports Nokia does not expect to close on the sale of its handset business to Microsoft this month, and no hopes to close in April. Google and Microsoft have asked Chinese regulators to ensure the deal doesn’t lead to higher patent licensing. Right now Nokia has to pay to license patents for the handset division, as well as charge for its patents. Once the handset business is Microsoft’s problem, Nokia might choose to jack up patent license fees since it no longer risks retaliation. Future revenue from patents is expected to make up as much as half of Nokia’s market capitalization.

Some ATM companies considering Linux to replace Windows XP: As we near the end of support for Windows XP on April 8, ComputerWorld reports some companies are considering migrating their ATMs to use Linux. Windows XP currently powers nearly 95% of the world’s ATMs. Microsoft has offered extended support to some, but not all, companies. Many are upgrading to Windows 7, though often that requires hardware upgrades as well. If you’re laughing about Windows XP, remember the previous dominant operating system of ATMs was IBM’s OS/2.

It was like a SmartBulb going off over my head! TechWeek Europe reports LG announced a smart light bulb controlled from a mobile app. The LG SmartBulb app runs on Android 4.3 and iO6 and later versions of both OSs. The app lets you turn on and off, put the bulb on a timer and more. The Android app can have the bulb flash to the beat of music. LG claims at 5 hours of usae a day the bulb should last 10 years. It costs 35,000 won ($30) and is only available in Korea.

News From You:

Draconos and Lythander both submitted reports from the New York Times and Der Spiegel that the US NSA infiltrated servers at the headquarters of Huawei. Reuters reports Hong Lei, spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry said, “We demand that the United States makes a clear explanation and stop such acts.” Huawei has been accused by US lawmakers of connections with the Chinese military and of spying on US interests.

HobbitfromPA sent in the Engadget story that Google Now’s preemptive search and assistance has arrived for all users of the Chrome browser. Cards will show up in the system tray or notification area of your operating system. Users get access to voice search, reminders for events and flights, and location-based info like commute times. Although the location may often come from your phone not your PC. If you’re signed into Chrome and don’t see it, hang in there, Google says it will roll out slowly to all over the next several weeks.

tekkyn00b pointed out the TechCrunch story that security company Palo Alto Networks bough Cyvera, a security company from Israel. The $200 million deal is expected to close in the second half of 2014. Cyvers touts an approach to combatting zero-day vulnerabilities, providing real-time prevention that slows down malware long enough to identify and eliminate it. Palo Alto Networks makes firewall-like hardware and software that protects against all kinds of Web malware, including botnets. Together they’re murder— on malware.

Speaking of zero-day vulnerabilities, Darren Kitchen alerted us to the fact that a new zero-day vulnerability in Outlook allows remote code execution just by viewing rich text email in Outlook while using Word 2010 as the viewer. Microsoft suggests delpoying a fix that disables the ability to open RTF content in Microsoft Word from Outlook as well as reading all email in plain text format.

And motang posted the Mozilla announcement that co-founder and current Chief Technology Officer Brendan Eich was appointed to the role of Chief Executive Officer of Mozilla. He was the guy who invented javascript back in 1995 when he was at Netscape. So he’s got chops. He brings along Li Gong, who’s been built up Firefox OS, as Mozilla’s new COO. Co-founder Mitchell Baker remains Mozilla Executive Chairwoman. Interim CEO Jay Miller will stay on through the transition then leave for a solo career as a saxophonist. Or possibly something more technology related. It’s impossible to tell for sure from the press release.

Discussion Section Links:  Comcapple?

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/03/apple-wants-its-own-path-on-comcast-network-for-video-service-wsj-says/

http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/23/apple-comcast-streaming-tv/

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/03/att-promises-to-lower-your-internet-bill-if-fcc-kills-net-neutrality/
http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment/view?id=6017609040

Pick of the Day: Rescue Time  

Your conversation about distraction motivated me to write in about one of the most useful anti-distraction tools I use: Rescue Time.

I’ve been working from home as a web developer for the majority of the past 10 years. When you don’t have a boss breathing down your neck, managing distractions becomes pretty important to getting any work done.

Rescue Time is a desktop app (with a web component) that does two main things.

1. Tracks all of your website and desktop app usage, then gives you daily productivity reports with fancy graphs and charts. The app comes with good presets for common productive and distracting websites/apps. But you’re also able to redefine these. On top of this, you can configure reporting goals (like “limit distractions to 1.25hrs per day”) to give yourself some positive feedback when you’re doing well.

2. It allows you to set a “Get Focused” time. During this time it the app will block all distracting websites (unfortunately, it’s not technically possible to block desktop apps). They haven’t made the block impossible to bypass, but I find that the Rescue Time wall is often enough motivation get my ass back in gear. This feature works well with something like The Pomodoro Technique.

BTW. Thanks for letting the listeners fund the show to keep it ad free and gratz on the $10k.

Ryan Neudorf

Tuesday’s Guest:  Stephen Shankland, cnet.com

alerted us to the fact that a new zero-day vulnerability in Outlook allows remote code execution just by viewing rich text email in Outlook while using Word 2010 as the viewer. Microsoft suggests delpoying a fix that disables the ability to open RTF content in Microsoft Word from Outlook as well as reading all email in plain text format.

And motang posted the Mozilla announcement that co-founder and current Chief Technology Officer Brendan Eich was appointed to the role of Chief Executive Officer of Mozilla. He was the guy who invented javascript back in 1995 when he was at Netscape. So he’s got chops. He brings along Li Gong, who’s been built up Firefox OS, as Mozilla’s new COO. Co-founder Mitchell Baker remains Mozilla Executive Chairwoman. Interim CEO Jay Miller will stay on through the transition then leave for a solo career as a saxophonist. Or possibly something more technology related. It’s impossible to tell for sure from the press release.

Discussion Section Links: 

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/03/apple-wants-its-own-path-on-comcast-network-for-video-service-wsj-says/

http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/23/apple-comcast-streaming-tv/

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/03/att-promises-to-lower-your-internet-bill-if-fcc-kills-net-neutrality/
http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment/view?id=6017609040

Pick of the Day: Rescue Time  

Your conversation about distraction motivated me to write in about one of the most useful anti-distraction tools I use: Rescue Time.

I’ve been working from home as a web developer for the majority of the past 10 years. When you don’t have a boss breathing down your neck, managing distractions becomes pretty important to getting any work done.

Rescue Time is a desktop app (with a web component) that does two main things.

1. Tracks all of your website and desktop app usage, then gives you daily productivity reports with fancy graphs and charts. The app comes with good presets for common productive and distracting websites/apps. But you’re also able to redefine these. On top of this, you can configure reporting goals (like “limit distractions to 1.25hrs per day”) to give yourself some positive feedback when you’re doing well.

2. It allows you to set a “Get Focused” time. During this time it the app will block all distracting websites (unfortunately, it’s not technically possible to block desktop apps). They haven’t made the block impossible to bypass, but I find that the Rescue Time wall is often enough motivation get my ass back in gear. This feature works well with something like The Pomodoro Technique.

BTW. Thanks for letting the listeners fund the show to keep it ad free and gratz on the $10k.

Ryan Neudorf

Tuesday’s Guest:  Stephen Shankland, cnet.com

Darren Kitchen on and we talk about how Microsoft did defending their right to spy on their own customer’s email accounts. He was a French blogger. Also Len Peralta is here to illustrate the show!

MP3

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 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

Today’s guests: Darren Kitchen of hak5.org and Len Peralta of the arts.

Headlines

PC World reports Microsoft Deputy General Counsel John Frank posted an explanation of the steps Microsoft took before investigating the Hotmail account of a French blogger in order to build a case against Alex Kibkalo who was arrested Wednesday and accused of stealing trade secrets and leaking Windows code. Frank stated Microsoft has the legal right to look into its own services, but only did so in a very limited way and only after determining the search would have qualified for a court order. Microsoft claims it could not get a court order to search itself since the court would see no need to issue it.

Berke80 has been keeping us informed on the ground as the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has ordered a DNS block on Twitter in order to stop the spread of recordings meant to implicate the Prime Minister on corruption charges. Twitter seems like it may have removed verification from the Prime Ministers account. The Verge reports Turkish citizens are accessing Twitter by posting through SMS, or using alternate DNS like Google’s Public DNS. A picture of the Google DNS Inumber, 8.8.8.8 spraypainted on a wall is making the rounds.

VentureBeat reports Vicarious, an AI company just closed a round of funding that included investments from Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, as well as actor Ashton Kutcher. The company is attempting to replicate the human neocortex in order to develop an AI that thinks like humans do. Right now the company is working on getting its AI to recognize objects shapes and textures.

Reed Hastings posted to the Netflix blog arguing that net neutrality rules should be expanded to govern peering, the practice of large networks exchanging traffic, to essentially make the Internet work. Hastings did not say how he would like interconnection agreements regulated. Netflix recently agreed to a paid peering arrangement with Comcast. The call for regulation is seen as grandstanding by some in the industry, as Netflix could have chosen to continue to deliver data through CDNs and transit providers. But they don’t want to do that, because Netflix saves money when ISPs use its Open Connect program, as Cablevision does. On the other hand, ISPs like Verizon and Comcast, with competing products, don’t want to invite Netflix servers into their last mile. Thus the arguing. The upshot of all this, is large companies are posturing about net neutrality in order to help their business save money, and you, the consumer are probably not the priority on either side of this debate.

Speaking of net neutrality and whether it should be extended to interconnection and peering. Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOm reports Harold Feld, SVP at Public Knowledge suggests actual transit providers like Level 3 and Cogent and ISPs who want to merge, like say TWC and Comcast, should provide data to the FCC that could actually be analyzed to understand what the problem actually is, rather than just reacting to vague assertions with vague regulation.

Politico reports Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and other big tech executives will meet Friday with US President Barack Obama to discuss issues of privacy, technology and intelligence. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was reportedly invited but could not make it. Zuckerberg recently posted he felt it would take a very long time for true reform and called on the US government to be much more transparent. President Obama is expected to announce the future of the phone metadata program soon.

Ars Technica reports that Version 0.9.0 of the Bitcoin Core software (previously known as Bitcoin-QT) includes 5 changes meant to make transaction malleability much more difficult to exploit. Transaction malleability uses confusion between transaction ids and actual verification of transactions to cover up theft. Mt. Gox blamed trannsaction malleability for its losses.

News From You:

Speaking of Mt. Gox, HobbitfromPA pointed us to the CNET article that Mt. Gox annoucned Thursday it found 199,999.99 of its missing bitcoins on March 7th in an unused wallet it had lying around. So the number of missing bitcoins has dropped from 850,000 to 650,000.

habichuelacondulce posted a Motherboard article saying US NSA General Counsel Rajesh De, testifying in front of the Civil Liberties Oversight Board, affirmed that collection of data under Section 702 was done with the full knowledge and assistance of the companies from which information was obtained. In an interview with The Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman, De reiterated “all communications content and associated metadata harvested by the NSA under a 2008 surveillance law occurred with the knowledge of the companies.” referring to PRISM and upstream collection.

the_corley passed along the Wall Street Journal article reporting a source says the White House is testing phones from Samsung and LG for internal use. Previously only BlackBerry phones were allowed due to security concerns. White House Communications Agency, a military unit in charge of President Barack Obama’s communications acknowlegde it is piloting and using a variety of mobile devices.

Discussion Section Links: 

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2014/03/20/strengthening-our-policies-for-investigations.aspx

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/03/20/court-docs-microsoft-searched-through-bloggers-e-mail-to-track-down-alleged-leaker/

Pick of the Day:  Ninite.com

Hola DTNS crew! Tom, I’ve followed you since BoL and am ecstatic about the success of DTNS. For a pick, I would like to recommend

Ninite is a service that allows you to grab an auto-installer for many commonly used Windows applications such as Chrome, .NET, MSE, Dropbox, the list goes on and on. Not only will it download the most recent version of the programs selected from the companies, but automates the process to decline any crap-ware offers (sorry Ask Toolbar).

As an IT Professional that has to deal with an environment where images can’t be used for reworks due to a plethora of hardware, Ninite has been a huge time saver.

Joel from The U.P.

Monday’s Guest: Justin Robert Young! 

Farhad Manjoo to explain why ONE monitor is actually better than TWO. Don’t agree? You better listen. Plus we reveal our very first Twitter posts.

MP3

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 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

Farhad Manjoo, State of the Art columnist for The New York Times

Headlines

Hack This! GigaOm reports Facebook introduced its own programming language called ‘Hack’ meant to make it easier for developers to write code quickly. Hack is open source, so anyone can use it and combines elements of static languages like C with more dynamic approaches like PHP. Static languages catch errors faster, but dynamic languages allow rapid development. Hack supposedly is the best of both worlds.

Galaxy S5 pre-orders begin tomorrow: The Next Web reports AT&T will start taking orders for Samsung’s new Galaxy S5 phone and Gear watches tomorrow online and in stores. The S5 sells for $200 on a 2-year contract, $650 contract-free, shipping in early April. The Gear 2 watch sell for $299 and the Gear 2 Neo and Gear Fit for $199. All of them are set to ship in early April.

Thank you FirstTech: The St. Paul Pioneer-Press’s Julio Ojeda-Zapata reports the sad news that FirstTech in Uptown Minneapolis will close its doors March 29th. FirstTech was the first retail outlet for Apple computers in the late 1970s when the store was known as Team Electronics. The store celebrated its 35th anniversary in 2012 but could not compete with national vendors and the Apple Store itself.

Computerworld founder dies: PC World reports more sad news. IDG announced Thursday that its founder and chairman Patrick J. McGovern died March 19th at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, California. MCGovern founded International Data Corporation in 1964, now a subsidiary of IDG. Three years later McGovern launched Computerworld.

GigaOm reports OpenGarden, makers of mesh networking apps for Windows, OS X and Android, now has an iOS app called FireChat. The messaging app connects people who are nearby, by taking advantage of Apple’s multi-peer connectivity framework that allows devices to connect or Bluetooth or Wifi without using the Internet. Great for subways…if you want to chat with people.

ReCode reports Tribune company has a new app for iOS and Android called Newsbeat that reads you news items from a news feed. You can customize in advance or the app will learn your tastes as you fast forward or skip stories. The app also personalizes things liek weather and traffic based on location. The app is available now and ad-supported.

News From You

mayesa submitted the TechCrunch article noting Google has announced it will always us an encrypted HTTPS connection whenever a user checks email or sends mail through Gmail. Messages will also remain encrypted inside Google’s datacenter network as well. The NSA has reportedly been tapping cables between foreign datacenters of US companies.

habichuelacondulce pointed us to the CNET article about Twitters new FirstTweet feature. In celebration of its 8th birthday tomorrow, Twitter has a tool at first-tweets.com that lets you see yours or anyones very first tweet. April 17, 2008 Farhad, you let us know it was national high five day!. — Jan.7, 2007 I was “Sitting at the CNET booth at CES”

tekkyn00b sent us the Verge article about ex-Microsoft employee Alex Kibkalo being arrested and accused of stealing trade secrets and leaking confidential beta copies of Windows 8 to an unnamed French technology blogger. MS identified the leaker after the blogger contacted another MS employee by email. Kibkalo works in Mictosoft’s Lebanon office. Computerworld reports Wzor.net, a frequent source of leaked copies of Windows went offline Thursday after the arrest and the Twitter account has also disappeared.

tm204 pointed us to the PC World article about HP’s plans to start making 3D printers. CEO Meg Whitman, speaking to shareholders said the two big problems with 3D printers are speed and quality, particularly the surface of the substrate. Whitman said the company has solved these problems with 3D printers and will make a big announcement about them in June.

 Discussion Section Links:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/technology/personaltech/surviving-and-thriving-in-a-one-monitor-world.html?_r=0

https://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/monitors/en/dual_monitors_boost_productivity_whitepaper.pdf

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/technology/personaltech/15basics.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324339204578173252223022388?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424127887324339204578173252223022388.html

http://lifehacker.com/do-distractions-help-you-work-better-1178468917

Pick of the Day:  Backblaze

Hey Tom-

Since you are accepting PotD suggestions, I wanted to throw my hat in the ring. I highly recommend that everyone keep an off-site backup of some kind, and I have done a lot of homework and recommend Backblaze very highly.

There are lots of ways to keep an off-site backup (Mozy, Carbonite, Crashplan, Transporter…even Dropbox or the recently discounted Google Drive). But for me, Backblaze is the best balance of cost, security, and ease of use.

I pay $5/month for unlimited backups, and I definitely get my money’s worth. I have an external Drobo holding over 100,000 photos and videos, plus the usual cadre of music and documents and whatnot. It is currently 2.1TB of stuff, and Backblaze never bats an eye.

In a nutshell:
– $5/month unlimited
– Data is heavily encrypted on your machine before transmission and storage
– Incremental backups (roll back as far as a month if a file gets deleted or damaged)
– Lightweight, install-and-forget client for Mac and Windows
– Backs up the whole computer by default (you don’t have to pick folders or keep your stuff somewhere specific)
– Free Internet restores (from anywhere) as zip files, or get mailed a USB drive or hard disk for a fee

Thanks for keeping up the good work…Drew (audio listener since BoL)

Friday’s Guests: Darren Kitchen & Len Peralta!