Dan Patterson and Jill Duffy join the show and we talk about the latest Dropbox hack (not hack) and where the line of security responsibility is between you and your services.

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 headlines 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, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guests:  Dan Patterson, tech journalist and Jill Duffy, writer and software analyst at PC Mag.com 

Dan and Jill are also the hosts of the upcoming podcast The Signal – check out their site!

http://www.thesignalpodcast.com/

Headlines

TechCrunch noted that Dropbox confirmed 400 account credentials posted to pastebin were in fact for Dropbox accounts. Security chief Anton Mityagin dropbox was not hacked, these were users who had the same password at dropbox as other services. Most of the credentials had already been caught and deactivated and the rest have now been reset so none of the posted credentials are valid. Several hundred more credentials were posted later but Dropbox says those are not associated with Dropbox accounts.

The Next Web reports that Google’s same day delivery service is no longer free. It also got a name change. Google Shopping Express is now just Google Express and brings groceries and other purchases from various stores to your door at a convenient time. The service now costs $4.99 per order, though you can subscribe for $95 a year or $10 monthly, and get first dibs on delivery windows. Memberships can be shared with people in your house. Google also added new retailers, including Barnes&Noble and Nine West shoes and expanded from San Fracnisco, LA and New York to include Chicago, Boston, and Washington, DC.

PC Mag reports August SmartLocks will be coming to Apple store shelves this week for $249.99. The smart lock works in single cylinder deadbolts and lets you create virtual keys on smartphones. Keys can be given to friends through the app and even revoked when necessary. Physical keys work too.

Skype has a new mobile messaging service call Qik. Yeah remember they bought Qik then ignored Qik then shut down Qik. Well now the name is back. Users can share video clips up to 42 seconds which disappear after two weeks, but the sender can delete the video any time. There’s a also Qik Flix which are 5-second clips available on the Android and iPhone apps and coming to Windows phone “in the coming months.” Blocking other users is available for Android and Windows phone but NOT the iPhone App.

The Washington Post reports that the FCC is considering Aereo’s request to be classified as a ‘multi-channel video provider‘ — like a cable or satellite company — subject to all the rules and regulations. This means Aereo could start negotiating with the broadcast networks for ‘retransmission fees.’ Right now no Internet video providers are classified as MPVDs and are basically ignored by the networks. If Aereo gets classified as an MPVD it would have to pay more for content, but the networks would have to let them.

PC Mag reports iSight Partners announced a zero-day Windows vulnerability today that it says Russian attackers are using against US, European and Ukrainian government agencies, NATO, telecom companies and an unnamed US academic organization. The attacks are attributed to a group nicknamed “Sandworm Team” because of their frequent references to the book Dune. Security experts have been tracking the five-year-old group, referred to as “Quedach” by F-Secure, since late 2013.

Android police report on leaked Google ads featuring little Android characters with the slogan “Be Together, Not The Same.” It includes an animated version of the the Nexus 6 running Android L. The video comes with a link to a page on the Android site that isn’t yet live, but probably will be after the Nexus 6 is announced, which Forbes speculates may be as early as tomorrow.

News From You

AllanAv submitted the TechDirt story about a comment on the US FCC’s open Internet guidelines filed by VPN company Golden Frog. The company describes evidence that a wireless broadband provider actively blocked STRTTLS encryption, preventing a user from encrypting SMTP email traffic. Golden Frog described the provider as modifying messages in transit in one case from 250-STRATTTLS to 250-XXXXXXXA causing encryption not to be started.

tm204 passed along the Science Daily report that researchers at Nanyang Technological University have developed a battery that can be recharged to 70% capacity in 2 minutes and have a more than 20-year lifespan. NTU Singapore’s scientists replaced the graphite used for the anode (negative pole) in lithium-ion batteries with a new gel material made from titanium dioxide. Yeah the same stuff in your sunscreen. The nanostructure of titanium dixoxide helps speed up chemical reactions.

AllanAv posted the Wired story about the launch of Kickstarter funding for Anonabox. The $45 open-source router directs all data through Tor, hiding the user’s IP address. The box is tiny enough for two to fit in a pack of cigarettes. While not the first Tor in a box, the hope is that it strikes the best balance of cost, setup, size and security. The project is open source but has not been audited yet for security.

And finally, Bishma submitted the TechCrunch story that Dorian Nakamoto is suing Newsweek for writing an article claiming that he was the creator of Bitcoin. Nakamoto denied creating the crypto currency, and says he was “targeted and victimized by a reckless news organization.” Nakamoto has created a web page asking for donations to his legal case. And yes, in case you were wondering, you can donate by check, money order, credit card and yes, Bitcoin.

Discussion Links:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/14/dropbox-pastebin/?ncid=rss

https://blog.dropbox.com/2014/10/dropbox-wasnt-hacked/

http://blog.snapchat.com/post/99998266095/third-party-applications-and-the-snapchat-api

http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/13/6958745/is-snapchats-api-too-easy-to-hack

Pick of the Day: Splashtop via Ken Shabby

On Monday’s show you discussed attaching pc’s to televisions and the problems controlling them with wireless mice/keyboards. My pick, Splashtop, is a free remote desktop app that makes controlling your computer with your mobile device easy. Splashtop consists of an app you install on your tablet and a streamer program you install on your mac or pc. Some features are:

You can control your old XP pc using new touch gestures on your tablet. No more trying to use a mouse while in a Lazy Boy. No more having the giant wireless keyboard laying around the living room.

If your mobile device doesn’t run Flash, you can still view Flash web pages by running them on your pc and streaming them to your mobile device.

Splashtop allows you to mute the sound on the pc and listen via your mobile device. This way you can plug in head phones watch without annoying anyone else in the room. It works like the Roku 3 remote with head phone jack.

Not sure how well it would work on a phone, unless you have really small fingers. It might be hard to control your computer on a smaller screen. Works fine on my Nexus 7 and would probably work even better on a 10 inch tablet.

Tomorrow’s guest: Andrew Zarian of the GFQ Network

Iyaz Akhtar is here for our first show from NYC. We’ll talk about whether a PC really belongs in every living room.

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 headlines 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, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guest:  Iyaz Akhtar, senior associate editor, cnet.com

Headlines

You know about the Snappening right? SnapSaved is a third party service that apparently got attacked and some snapchat images were stolen. Ars Technica reports that a spokesperson for SnapSaved says the database storing user info about the images was not breached, so no identities can be attached to the images. They say 500 MB of images were accessed. A freelance security researcher contacted Ars and offered to sell 12.9 GB of images and 320 user names though the two aren’t correlated. The usernames have been posted on Pastebin.

Recode reports that Apple will launch the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus in 36 more countries, including China and India by the end of this month. Apple is on track to have their latest smartphones available in 115 countries by the end of the year, which the company says is its fastest global rollout ever.

On Friday, Standard & Poors downgraded Finland’s sovereign debt from AAA to AA+. Sanctions against Russia and an ageing population are mostly to blame but the decline of its two biggest industries, paper and and cell phones certainly doesn’t help. The Verge reports Finland Prime Minister Alexander Stubb told CNBC Monday, “One could say that the iPhone killed Nokia and the iPad killed the Finnish paper industry, but we’ll make a comeback.” You hear that Tim Cook. They’re Finished because of you. No not Finish well they are Finish but —— never mind.

The BBC reports Samsung claims it has found a way to make WiFi data travel at 4.6Gbps and operate in the 60 GHz band. Samsung researchers limited interferece and improved the antenna to allow signals to travel farther without getting lost. Samsung said it plans to include the technology in TVs, medical devices, phones and smart home appliances.

TechCrunch has an update on Facebook’s internet.org initiative which is working to bring free mobile internet to 4.4 billion offline people . One part of the plan involves working with mobile carriers to improve their networks. In a recent trial in Indonesia (the 4th biggest country for Facebook usage) internet.org says Facebook and Ericsson were able to help speed up Indonesian mobile network XL Axiata by 70%. Mark Zuckerberg was in Jakarta today meeting president-elect. Joko Widodo

News From You

KAPT_Kipper would like you to know that Netflix is now charging a premium to access 4k streaming. The ‘Platinum’ streaming plan requires 25mbps download speed and costs $11.99 a month–that’s compared to the company’s HD streaming plan at $8.99 a month. The premium plan also allows four separate users stream video at once on one account, compared to two on the typical HD subscription. Current 4K streamers will be grandfathered in to their current plan.

MacBytes pointed out The Verge article that Google is testing a new service that connects people searching for health condition information with doctors over video chat. A Reddit user posted a screenshot of the service online and Google confirmed the test to Engadget. Google has a service called Helpouts, a marketplace where “experts” can charge to give lessons and advice over video chat. The screenshot seemed to indicate charging could be a part of this new health service.

metalfreak pointed out the Slashdot posting about devs for Chrome OS dropping support for ext2/3/4 file system on external drives and SD card due to low usage. Since this is the main file system for Linux, that community is not pleased.

Discussion Links: 

http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/13/6969671/living-room-pc

http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/wireless-touch-keyboard-k400r?crid=26

Pick of the Day:  Soundboard for iPad via Tom

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/soundboard-ipad/

Tomorrow’s guest: Dan Patterson, tech journalist and Jill Duffy, writer and software analyst at PC Mag.com 

Jony Ive accuses imitators of laziness and theft. Lamarr Wilson joins the show to talk about Ive’s reaction and decide which one of us he’s talking about. It certainly isn’t Len Peralta who is neither lazy nor thieving but will work hard to illustrate the show with original artprov!

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 headlines 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, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

The Verge reports 13 GB of private snapchats are circulating through 4Chan. The leak is being called ‘The Snappening.’ Snapchat has confirmed that the leak came from a third-party app that users installed to save snaps that would otherwise be deleted. The identity fo the app in question is not yet known. Snapchat pointed out that use of any such app violates its terms of service precisely because it weakens security.

Cnet reports that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella went to a conference about women in computing and was asked what advice he’d offer women who were unsure how to ask their boss for a raise. His answer: “It’s not really about asking for the raise but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along,” adding “I think might be one of the additional superpowers that quite frankly women who don’t ask for raises have.” This answer did NOT go over well with women everywhere, and Nadella said, CTRL+Z! CTRL+Z! Actually what he eventually actually said was that his response was ‘inarticulate’ and that the tech industry must close gender pay gap, and sent a letter to all of Microsoft saying “I answered that question completely wrong.”

Engadget reports Tesla finally unveiled the D yesterday. It’s a model S with all-wheel drive and autopilot and a dual motor that can go from 0-60 in 3.2 seconds. I get why they said ‘the D’ now. Because it’s the P85D of course. GigaOm reports the autopilot can read speed limit signs, recognise animals an dobjects and follow lanes through curves. The base model will run $120,000 list but come down below 6 figures with electric vehicle subsidies.

GigaOm reports Google released a European transparency report Thursday that indicates on a country-by-country basis how many requests it has received under right to be forgotten rules, and how many it has honored. The two biggest sources of requests were Germany and France who got their way just over half the time. Top domains for de-lisiting were Facebook, ProfileEngine.com, YouTube and Badoo. The report details the reasons for requests along with whether they were honored or not but does not identify the requestors.

Reuters reports Cisco and TCL Corp will create an $80 million joint venture to invest in commercial cloud services. TCL, a will pay $64 million for an 80% share while Cisco will drop $16 million for the other 20%. The new company will build data centers in China, and set up cloud-based video communication and collaborative office systems for Chinese small- and medium-sized enterprises and industry users.

Reuters reports Microchip Technology CEO Steve Sanghi’s warning is being taken seriously by the markets. Thursday Sanghi warned of a broad downturn in the semiconductor market. Several U.S. semiconductor makers with global operations have recently worried that industries like autos and network equipment, are reducing demand for chips.

The Verge reports that Norway has new banknotes with pixelated drawings of the sea on them. Norges Bank selected the blocky and abstract work of Snøhetta for the back of its notes, with traditional drawings on the front. The Verge notes that the money is designed in an “unashamedly modern style that the designers intentionally built around pixels in the belief that they are “our time’s visual language.” 8-bit MONEY!

News From You

TheLazyOne passes along a Washington Post report via Yahoo News that Head of Google Fiber Milo Medin said paying for the right to transmit television programs is the biggest impediment to the further spread of Google Fiber. Medin claimed that Google was paying double what Comcast and Time Warner pay in some markets. Who gets the licensing money? TV studios who pay to create the programs, and are not excited about seeing their business model disrupted by a bunch of nasty cordkillers.

diggsalot submitted the Business Insider story that San Francisco Quarterback Colin Kaepernick has been fined $10,000 for wearing Beats headphones in a press conference. They were pink Beats by Dre models. The NFL has an exclusive licensing agreement with Bose. Dr. Dre was in no way quoted as saying “Oops, I dropped $10,000 by your locker on accident but I’m too busy to go back and pick it up Colin.”

BUT WAIT. Spsheridan points out Apple may have the last laugh or at least a laugh of some kind. MacRumors reports a reliable source tells it that Apple will remove all Bose products from its retail stores starting early next week. — In good Bose v. Beats news, the two companies agreed to settle their patent dispute out of court. Presumably with a game of American Football.

Finally, tm204 brings us the tale of a comedy club in Barcelona that has a new business model. No more will they rely on the classic ‘two-drink minimum’, no, this comedy club is asking customers to pay, BY THE LAUGH. The Teatreneu club has installed tablets on the back of each seat equipped with facial recognition software that can detect when you laugh. The going rate is 0.30 Euros ($0.38) per laugh, up to a maximum of 24 Euros ($30.45). “I was just holding back a sneeze!” said everybody.

Discussion Section Links: Jony Ive on all the steals

http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/9/6954467/jony-ive-companies-that-copy-apples-style-are-stealing

http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/09/apples-jony-ive-is-not-flattered-by-xiaomi/

http://www.businessinsider.com/jony-ive-vanity-fair-summit-interview-2014-10?op=1

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/10/jony-ive-lessons-from-steve-jobs

http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secrets-to-apples-future

http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-accused-of-ripping-off-famous-swiss-clock-design/

http://www.cnet.com/news/jonathan-ive-steve-jobs-stole-my-ideas/

Meetup in New York next week!

I’ll be doing the show from New York City next week with lots of great New York guests live and in person! I’ll also be hosting a meetup on Wednesday October 15th, at 7pm. The location is Peter McManus Cafe, which is a very old bar in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.

Hey all,

As you may have heard, I’m doing my shows from New York next week and I’ll be having a meetup on Wednesday Oct. 15. You may have heard me say a different date. That was wrong. Apologies for that. Here’s the true details!

WEDNESDAY October 15th, at 7pm – 9 PM.

The location is Peter McManus Cafe, which is a very old bar in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.

152 7th Ave
New York, NY 10011
b/t 19th St & 20th St in Chelsea

Scott Johnson is on the show and we’ll talk about why the PC market is not as doomed like everybody says. It’s doomed in a different way.

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 headlines 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, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guest:  Scott Johnson, co-host of The Morning Stream, The Instance, Current Geek and more! Chief Frogpantser.

Headlines

Yesterday we had an Apple invitation, today we have the reemergence of people familiar with the matter. Gigaom passes along the news that The Wall Street Journal’s sources say Apple had wanted to supersize the iPad with a 12.9 inch display this December, but those plans have now been pushed back so Apple’s suppliers can cope with demand for the iPhone 6 Plus. So yes. The iPad Apple never announced is now said by anonymous people not to be happening because reasons.

PC Mag reports that Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel said ads are coming. Speaking at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit, Spiegel said ads would show up in the Snapchat stories feature, between shared photos and videos. Spiegel said ads won’t be too disruptive to users, and at this point the ads would not be targeted. This would be Snapchat’s first source of revenue.

Yesterday Carl Icahn told Tim Cook on Twitter he was going to send an open letter he believed Tim would find interesting. Today Icahn’s letter says he believes Apple is undervalued and therefore should accelerate its stock buyback program. That would turn some of Apple’s cash into some of Carl Icahn’s cash. Interesting!

Ars Technica reports Microsoft wants to reassure you its serious about hardware so its safe to buy a Surface. A new package bundles a Surface Pro 3, docking station and Type Cover keyboard for a savings of $150. There’s also a 3-year warranty option that covers accidental damage and speeds up hardware replacement. Microsoft also announced Surface Pro 3 is now Energy Star compliant and it will provide more info on driver and firmware updates.

Reuters reports Google will ask the US Supreme Court to rule on whether APIs can be copyrighted. Oracle is suing Google for incorporating parts of 37 Java APIs in Android. It’s not a patent lawsuit. It’s a copyright one. A San Francisco federal judge familiar with coding ruled Oracle could not claim copyright protection of parts of Java. A US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington overturned the decision. The case is not only about direct copying. The main issue is whether Google is guilty of infringement for writing its own different code to carry out exactly the same function or specification of any methods used in the Java API.

Sony announced its Xperia Z3 smartphone will launch in the United State on Verizon Wireless in slightly updated form as the Xperia Z3v. The new version will still have a 5.2-inch display, a Snapdragon 801 processor, and the ability to stream PlayStation 4 games within your home. But it will have soft plastic sides, instead of rounded metal, and the battery will be larger and use Qi wireless charging. The phone will be available October 23rd for $199.99, and only in black and white. Verizon will also begin offering Sony’s SmartWatch 3 later this month.

What will we get if everybody has gigabit Internet? PC World reports Pew Research Center asked more than 1400 experts that question. The most common theme in the answers was that it would change basic human interactions. Online interactons would feel more real including vivid telepresence and holograms some of which will disrupt the education models we use now. Wearable health monitoring could become more widely accepted.

Skype today announced Skype 7 for OSX today and a preview version for Windows. The Next Web reports that the latest desktop version of the app resembles the mobile version with a stronger focus on text chat and improved inline photo support. This version will also make it easier to text and share images while on a video chat, and include icons for file sharing that display the file type.

The Verge reports that Lenovo announced the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro, which is 17% thinner and 15% lighter than the Yoga 2 Pro. The 3 features a watchband hinge to improve ‘flipping’ and is powered by Intel’s Core M-70 processor,with up to 8GB of Ram and 256 GB of flash storage. Battery life is advertised at 9 hours. The Yoga 3 Pro will cost $1,349 at Lenovo’s online store and Best Buy and come in three colors, silver orange and gold. Lenovo ALSO announced the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro with a built-in projector, which lets you beam 16:9 high res images (including movies) directly to a wall or screen. It has a recommended retail price of $499.

News From You

tm204 pointed out Imgur announced Project GIFV. GIFs uploaded to Imgur will be converted on the fly to MP4 video format. The conversion reduces file size, improves quality but still looks and behaves like an animated GIF.For instance a 50 MB animated GIF becomes 3.4 MB after conversion. Imgur plans to submit an accompanying specification for GIFV to relevant standards organizations before the end of the year.

ancrod2 didn’t want us to miss that Belkin explained why its routers stopped working earlier this week. Belkin told Techrunch that a cloud service associated with router operations caused a false denial of service. It took Belkin about 15 hours to fix the issue. Belkin did not specify what service it was.

Discussion Links: PC Life!

https://gigaom.com/2014/10/09/pcs-are-making-a-comeback-in-europe-and-the-u-s-analysts-say/

http://www.electronista.com/articles/14/10/08/market.still.slumping.overall.but.name.brands.see.growth.in.third.quarter/

https://gigaom.com/2013/11/07/think-the-pc-market-is-generally-scary-these-days-wait-until-you-see-the-uks-figures/

https://gigaom.com/2014/07/07/despite-slowing-growth-tablet-sales-expected-to-overtake-pcs-next-year/

http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/10/08/surging-mac-sales-put-apple-among-top-five-global-pc-vendors-for-first-time-idc-says

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2869019

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25187214

Pick of the Day:  Telegram Instant Messaging via Dean aka ​DRAiNO

Telegram is a very lightweight instant messenger app that not only supports copy and pasting images and uploading of documents, but it is very secure (since it uses the MTProto protocol) and it simply requires only a mobile phone number and a unique code given to you via SMS for each device you set it up on. What’s even more awesome is that it integrates with your contacts on mobile platforms.

It is available for almost every phone/tablet platform (iOS/Android/Windows) as well as a very stable (yet unofficial) desktop application.

Tomorrow’s guest: Lamarr Wilson, 

Justin Robert Young is on the show and we’ll talk about Facebook’s alleged anonymity app, and Apple’s invite for the Oct. 16 announcement. How much parsing does it really need?

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 headlines 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, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guest: Justin Robert Young, co-host of Night Attack.tv

Headlines:

Tech Crunch reports that Apple sent out an invitation to an event on October 16th at Apple’s Town Hall theater in Cupertino, California. The invitation features a rainbow outline of the top of the Apple logo and the words “It’s been way too long.” Possible devices and software that COULD be announced on that date? Perhaps, a thinner iPad Air. Maybe a a retina display desktop iMac. Possibly the public version of OS X Yosemite. Or, maybe it’s just a barbecue.

JuRY: You know what I dislike, Tom? Cramming. You know when somebody unauthorized charges on your cell phone bill. Reuters reports that AT&T has agreed to pay $105 million to settle allegations of such things. The US Federal Trade Commission has been investigating consumer complaints about charges for ring tones, horoscopes, love tips and other things they never asked for. $25 million goes to penalties and fees and $80 million to consumer refunds. So if you were wrongly billed for a love tip that showed up as a generic “usage charge” you deserve a little something back. Besides love.

Bloomberg reports Symantec is considering breaking itself into two companies, which is all the rage these days. One of the resultant companies would sell security software the other data storage. Symantec bought storage company Veritas in 2005 and has been fighting off pressure to break up ever since. A split Symantec would be ripe for acquisition according to wall street analysts who may or may not have been salivating.

TechCrunch reports Facebook’s Josh Miller took to Twitter to respond to a NYTimes report that he’s leading a team working on an anonymous forum app. Miller acknowledge he’s working on soemthing but assured it’s not just a ripoff of Secret or IRC. Miller wrote “Identity isn’t a product goal. Focus should be on what human desire you want to enable, not anonymity as the focal point.” and “Can encourage positive use cases through product design.” In other words he wants to make a Secret type app without the damaging gossip aspect? Godspeed Josh Miller.

Google recently improved its sitelink subsection in search results for some websites. Now some search-related websites, like Vimeo, now get their own little search box just for their site. Torrentfreak points out that The Pirate Bay is one of these sites. Google has been under pressure to remove sites like The Pirate Bay. So expect that to become the next bone of contention with the MPAA. Oddly Bing doesn’t get it’s own search box in its sitelink section.

Apple Insider reports on a recent survey that show US teenagers still think iPhones and iPads are ‘pretty tope’ (that’s a tight+dope=cool) but are not yet OMFG about the Apple Watch. The survey conducted by Piper Jaffrey polled 7,200 teens; Only 16 percent of those surveyed said they would drop some cheddar on an Apple Watch. That’s down from 17% this past spring. However the survey also revealed that 67 percent owned an iPhone and 73 percent said they planned to buy one as their next phone. No reports on whether the pollsters asked teenagers if they had ever seen a real watch in the wild.

Investor Carl Icahn took to Twitter today to write “”Tmrw we’ll be sending an open letter to @tim_cook. Believe it will be interesting” Yes Mr. Icahn, requets for Apple to give more cash to its stockholders is always very intersting… to the stockholders.

HTC unveils the Desire Eye

http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/8/6945967/htc-desire-eye-selfie-phone-announcement

News From You:

Attention aspiring coders! KAPT_Kipper submittted the Engadget report that GitHub has launched a new Student Developer Pack that gives students free access to fifteen tools for writing code, including Stripe, the Unreal Engine and a GitHub micro account with five private repositories. It’s available to students 13 and up who are enrolled in a degree or diploma granting course of study, and who can verify their students status. You can find it at education.github.com/pack

sleep-d-prived passes along a must-read Wired write-up about two men who discovered a bug in in a popular video poker game, won hundreds of thousands of dollars in Las Vegas and Pennsylania, overused the hack, were arrested and charged in federal court for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and even after the charges were dropped are still being hounded by the IRS for back taxes on the seized winnings. Oh, and it also destroyed their friendship. So maybe just go see a show and have a nice steak, eh?

metalfreak noted the Wired story that security researchers Adam Caudill and Brandon Wilson released a software patch for USB drives that demonstrates one method of addressing the vulnerability known as BadUSB. The patch disables boot mode preventing firmware updates for USB 3.0 firmware distributed by Phison. In addition Caudill suggests painting the inside walls of the drive with epoxy to prevent pin-shorting. Phison is the kind of controller BadUSB was demonstrated on at Black Hat by Karsten Nohl which was replicated by Caudill and Wilson.

Discussion Links: Invitesies

http://9to5mac.com/2014/10/08/its-been-way-too-long-apple-sends-out-invites-for-thursday-october-16th-ipad-mac-event/#more-345803

http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/21/4852132/history-of-apple-event-invitations-and-hints

https://plus.google.com/103207773865797007066/posts/Ctu4NVQqKN6 

Pick of the Day:  Ghostery via Loren Lang

Ghostery is a web privacy tool that is available as a browser add-on (for most major browsers, anyway) and an iOS app. It blocks all sorts of trackers, beacons and cookies from over 1900 sources and you can choose to allow or disallow any or all of them with individual granularity as well as whitelisting sites to allow everything from them. You can also choose to allow an item once and then automatically go back to blocking it which is extremely useful when blocking something breaks a site in some way.

Tomorrow’s guest:  Scott Johnson, co-host of The Morning Stream