DTNS 2202 – Mo Money Mo-torola

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comWil 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!

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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

FEATURED REVIEW: The Martian by Andy Weir

Welcome to our Featured Reviews! In this series, we’ll be highlighting book reviews by the S&L audience. If you want to submit a review, please check out the guidelines here! -Veronica

Review by Dara Heaps

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The Martian starts with our protagonist, Mark Watney (a smart Andy Dwyer from Parks and Recreation to me) getting struck by shrapnel from a communication satellite as he and his crew mates evac on Mars, leaving Watney behind. This premise could be very dry with all of the technical details about oxygenators and CO2 scrubbers and water reclaimers but author Andy Weir  makes it interesting. Watney has such a great voice and he’s very funny, pulling the reader into the story and immediately making Watney sympathetic. 

Lucky for Watney, he is a botanist and mechanical engineer, making him well-suited to survive alone on another planet. He’s able to fix problems that arise (make water from rocket fuel, build things out of spare parts, repair his home) and grow some food from Earth soil mixed with Martian soil (yay potatoes! Boo human manure. Smelly business). To keep things interesting, (Mark is alone. Things would get boring if things didn’t go wrong) bad things sometimes happen. It’s fun to see how Mark figures out how to solve these problems with his limited resources.

The book also follows NASA personnel on Earth as they make plans to rescue Mark. We also spend some time with Mark’s crew mates aboard the Hermes. These characters aren’t as fleshed out as Watney is but that’s alright. After all, this is Mark’s story. The NASA folks have interesting interactions and plenty of disagreements about the right course of action. I enjoyed the Earth parts as much as Mark’s parts.

Not only is the plot to The Martian gripping but the writing is great as well. It’s descriptive but not overly technical without sacrificing the emotion. The research that went into this book shows. Everything that happens seems totally plausible. The technology is basically modern day with perhaps a few advanced pieces of hardware but nothing that’s space magic. I’m kind of floored that this is Weir’s first novel. It completely blew me away. Maybe in a few years, this will be turned into a movie. Gravity meets Moon!

Current Geek 11: Facebook on your Face

On Current Geek, we get into Office on your iPad, new 3d food is ready for you to eat, cartoon themes are back in, bionic atheletes unite, TMNT is back in theaters soon, 4DX movies are coming, Threes and 2048 are things to talk about, Facebook buys Oculus Rift, Oculus hacked, drones are in the news again, HTC One is happening, comments will die according to Fourcast, why people like us, and MORE!

DTNS 2201 – Dr. Zuckhattan

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comAndrew 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

DTNS 2200 – Excel-ing on the iPad

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comPeter 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