Tim Stevens joins the show and we’ll talk about Tesla. Is it overhyped? Are the cars exciting? And is that Powerwall battery really any good for anyone?

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Show Notes

Today’s guests: Tim Stevens

Headlines: 

The Next Web reports that Yahoo has overhauled its Flickr photo app for the web, mobile and desktop. New features include an intelligent search tool, improved coordination with its mobile apps, and a bulk uploader that allows the user to send as many as a half million photos into the cloud to take advantage of that free terabyte of photo storage.

The Globe and Mail reports Canada’s House of Commons passed Bill C-51, an antiterrorism act. If it passes the Senate and receives royal assent, the law would allow police to make preventive arrests, broaden the no-fly list, ease transfer of information on citizens between federal agencies as well as new surveillance abilities for intelligence agencies. The bill is expected to become law by June.

Ars Technica reports AT&T has changed its its LTE throttling policy for customers with unlimited data. Previously once a customer used more than 5GB in a month experienced reduced speeds for the remainder of the month. Jon Brodkin at Ars points out the policy deatiled on AT&T’s website has changed that to customers who use more than 5GB of data “may experience reduced speeds when using data services at times and in areas that are experiencing network congestion.” AT&T is facing a lawsuit from the US Federal Trade Commission.

Kantar Worldpanel has several reports out on the phone market. Phablets claimed 21% of US smartphone sales in Q1 tripling the marketshare form a year ago. The iPhone 6+ led the way with 44% of phablets sold. Overall in smartphones, Android gained 0.2 points to 58.1% of the US market. LG made the biggest jump going from 7.4% a year ago to 10.8%. In Europe’s big 5 markets, Android dropped 3.1 points but maintained its leading share at 68.4%. iOS grew 1.8 points to 20.3%. And in urban China Apple grew its lead from 179% to 26.1%.

Microsoft has backed up statements made its developer Jerry Nixon during the Ignite Conference this week. Nixon said “Right now we’re releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10.” A company spokesperson told the Verge that while it wasn’t speaking to future branding, Nixon’s comments “are reflective of the way Windows will be delivered as a service.”

News From You:

The top vote-getter in the subreddit today was submitted by phredd. Ars Technica reports that US FCC chairman Tom Wheeler went into the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) conference in Chicago and told his audience “more competition would be better,” and “History proves that absent competition, a predominant position in the market such as yours creates economic incentives to use that market power to protect your traditional business in a way that is ultimately harmful to consumers.” He also said: “Often people say to me, ‘I know you won’t do anything crazy, but what about those who follow you?’ My response is, I take you at your word to protect an open Internet, but what about those that follow you?’” According to the LA Times, Wheeler received “a frosty reception” at the gathering.

habichuelacondulce sent us the Business Insider report that after bumping its head against a brick for a few years Nintendo has earned some gold coins. The company reported its first annual operating profit since 2011, slightly ahead of analysts estimates. Profit of 24.8 billion yen ($207.6 million) beat the company’s forecast of 20 billion yen as well as the average estimate of 23.8 billion yen. Reduced costs offset the impact of slowing revenue growth. Nintendo forecasts operating profit of 50 billion yen for the year started April 1.

and BOL’s own gknee sent us the news from Wired that Nintendo has teamed up with Universal Parks & Resorts to build Nintendo-themed attractions in Universal’s parks, “creating spectacular, dedicated experiences based on Nintendo’s wildly popular games, characters and worlds.” So we’ll all be able to bump our heads against the bricks and have gold coins fall out. Of our pockets.

spsheridan submitted the Reuters story that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the Patriot Act did not authorize the National Security Agency to collect Americans’ calling records in bulk. Circuit Judge Gerard Lynch called the extent of the collection staggering and wrote that such expansive collection should “be preceded by substantial debate, and expressed in unmistakable language. There is no evidence of such a debate.” The court declined.” The court declined to halt the program as the relevant part of the Patriot Act, Section 215 expires on June 1st.

magoojc posted the Verge article noting Google’s I/O conference schedule made specific mention of Android M, the first official mention of the next version of Android. That session has since been removed from the schedule. Google’s I/O keynote led by Sundar Pichai kicks off May 28th at 12:30PM.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/05/tesla-already-has-38000-reservations-for-the-powerwall-but-use-case-is-narrow/

http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/05/tesla-model-3-to-be-shown-in-march-2016/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-06/tesla-s-new-battery-doesn-t-work-that-well-with-solar

Pick of the Day:

Sand Sailor Writes:

I really love your show, and noticed that you’ve been talking a lot about VR and AR hardware, but I haven’t heard you mention the DAQRI Smart helmet yet. This is a pretty awesome industrial product, and word on the street is they’re going to be starting BETA programs with some Fortune 100 companies very, very soon. I’d be interested to get your take on this and their industrial focus.

Messages: 

Matthew Martian writes:

Regarding these discussion of self driving trucks in show 2487.
I have been driving truck over the road for 5 years now podcast and audiobooks are what make the long drives enjoyable. In running this trucking company it has been almost impossible to find good drivers for more than 10 years. A majority of truck drivers are reaching or have surpassed retirement age and a looking to quit in the next few years. From this perspective self driving trucks cannot get here soon enough. I hope to see that laws will allow the automated systems to do the simple interstate and highway driving out side of the big cities. With that we can make trucking far more efficient since current laws do not let trucks drive for more than 11 hours without a 10 hour break. That is one reason why truckers work such odd hours. New semi tractors run $130,000-150,000 so if a self driving truck could be purchased for $220,000 or less that makes it a viable option even to us smaller trucking companies who cannot find drivers to hire for $100,000 a year.

Russell writes:

Thinking a bit about the self-driving trucks and it might open a whole new possibility for drivers turned ‘monitors’. The scenario of having a second income stream while on the truck working on any number of things from computer based work to small product assembly could change the characteristics of the job overall making it less sedentary and mundane. It could be a job that could be attractive to people who are working on startup type projects (app development, coding, etc.) or writers and artists. Probably a lot of other scenarios there as well but overall seems like a really good thing at a lot of levels.

Rich from Lovely Cleveland compares the coming VR wars to the game console wars where the perception was more important than the specs. He writes:

“I think we could see the same mentality shape up with the VR competition between the Vive and Oculus Rift, with the seemingly interminable lead time of the Rift working against it as being “delayed”, even though I don’t believe the actual consumer release date was ever moved back. Add in the good will that Valve still enjoys, and the initial narrative seems to favor the Vive right now (obviously if there is a huge price delta or dearth of games on the Vive this would change).

But Sony may have the ace in the hole with Project Morpheus in terms of price. Even if the headset is equal in price to its competitors, if Sony can put out a $600 bundle for the entire package (ps4 and headset), that’s probably the baseline price for a PC needed to power the Rift or Vive. Sony could benefit from the same enthusiasm that made the Wii successful (hopefully with more long term success). Of course long term it comes down to user experience and games, I think whoever can make for great group experiences will ultimately come out victorious.”

Martin writes:

On your conversation from yesterday about all of the VR headsets coming out and who would be the winner. The answer is simple Unity is the clear winner as well as the key to which headset will get good content. Currently creating a VR experience is changing out the first person camera in Unity to the SDK that you are looking to support. So as long as the makers of VR headsets make that experience easy for developer they will be supported, if the do not then it will be a lot harder to get good content in those platforms.

Mike Calvo Opinionated Ranter and #BlindCrossfitter writes:

“A great example of this are the stickers in FB Messenger, Line, Whatsapp, and others. A novice user doesn’t know the difference between a labeled Emoji and an unlabeled sticker or picture. This makes it rather challenging when a blind person and a sighted person are first meeting online and maybe flirting.

…for example, some of the FB stickers are labeled with alt tags for me to know what they are when sending them, but, for some strange reason, when a person sends me a sticker …I have no idea as to what it is because all my screenreader says is the word “sticker”

…it is important that the developer and graphics author communities understand that these platforms don’t just interpret these Emojis and stickers without the alt tag included by the content’s creator.

Just wanted to clarify to the listeners and suggest that if perhaps you are part of the dev teams of one of the above mentioned chat platforms, perhaps you can encourage the use of alt tags on all graphics but especially Emoji and stickers.”

Drill Sgt Jason Nicholson in already hot as hell Georgia writes:

On Tuesday you talked about portable EEG devices, and controlling tech with your thoughts. In fact you mentioned using you concentration to control the Jedi training ball. Well, it’s already a thing, or rather it was. Back in 2012 they released this gemhttp://www.hammacher.com/Product/Default.aspx?sku=76966 All the fun, none of the blaster scars. Batteries, helmet with blast shield, and Jedi master not included. Oh, and here’s the promo video.https://youtu.be/hbsCsIfyvXc

=====

Friday’s guest:  Darren Kitchen and Len Peralta

 

Patrick Beja joins us to talk about brain monitoring and how it fits into health, video games and maybe even the Internet of Things.

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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 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: Patrick Beja

Headlines: 

The Washington Post reports Google says more of its search requests are done on mobile devices than PCs in Japan, the US and 8 other countries. The milestone was announced at a digital advertising conference Tuesday. Google wouldn’t put numbers to any of the claims. The company processes more than 100 billion search requests worldwide each month. Google also claimed its mobile ad prices have been steadily climbing and will continue to do so. Google’s average ad prices have been declining for the past three-and-half years.

An unnamed Apple employee told the New York Times that a redesign is coming for the Apple TV remote.  When the new Apple TV box debuts this summer the remote control will supposedly have a touch pad for scrolling, two physical buttons and be slightly thicker than the current version.

Apple launched an official “Made for Apple Watch” program for 3rd party accessory makers to create their own bands for Apple Watch according to 9 to 5 Mac. Apple is providing design guidelines and promises to make the attachment “lugs” available soon. The guidelines do not mention the hidden diagnostic port nor provide specs for developing charging accessories.

The BBC reports that Judges at the General Court of the European Union have ruled that the name ‘Skype’ is too similar to the name of broadcaster Sky. Therefore, Skype cannot be registered as a trademark in Europe. The judges wrote that Skype’s logo suggest a cloud and— I quote — “clouds are to be found ‘in the sky’ and thus may readily be associated with the word ‘sky’.” Microsoft will appeal the decision.

TechCrunch reports Berlin’s Delivery Hero takeout service is buying Turkey’s big delivery app Yemeksepeti, which is Turkish for “Food Cart.” Yemeksepeti process more than 3 million orders a month across Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Oman, Jordan and Greece. Delivery Hero processes 10 million orders a month across Europe and the Middle East.

The Verge reports GOG has put it’s Steam competitor— called GOG Galaxy— into open beta. GOG Galaxy includes features like auto-updates, in-game chat and achievements and all features are optional. The one feature GOG Galaxy lacks is DRM

The Verge has a lovely writeup about a Scottish filmmaker named Ryan McHenry who created the ‘Ryan Gosling won’t eat his cereal’ meme on Vine in early 2013. Sadly Ryan McHenry died yesterday, two years after being diagnosed with bone cancer. So Yesterday, Ryan Gosling uploaded a Vine video of himself pouring some cereal offers a cereal-filled spoon salute to McHenry and then finally eating that spoonful of ceral. A Just Giving page was set up in McHenry’s memoryto raise money for Sarcoma UK. https://www.justgiving.com/ryanmchenry/

News From You:

Sensorymultimedia posted a 5-day-old Washington Post Story about US Congressional Representative Ted Lieu called law enforcement’s request for a back door to all encryption “technologically stupid.” Rep. Blake Farenthold and Subcommittee Chair Will Hurd shared Lieu’s skepticism. Representative Lieu has a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford. Chairman Hurd has a computer science degree from Texas A&M. On the other side Daniel F Conley DA for Suffolk County in Massachusetts testified that companies like Apple are protecting “those who rape, defraud, assault, or even kill” with their encryption policies.
Motang sent us the Ars Technica report about the Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong, showing off his coding skills.  The Prime Minister posted on Facebook the source code for a program he wrote in C++ to solve Sudoku puzzles. Prime Minister Loong wrote “Hope you have fun playing with this. Please tell me if you find any bugs!”

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.wired.com/2015/05/internet-anything-brain-monitors-going-mainstream-despite-skepticism/

https://getversus.com/

http://www.choosemuse.com/how-does-it-work/

http://store.neurosky.com/collections/entertainment

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/11/wandering-mind-not-a-happy-mind/

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/cep/67/1/11/

Pick of the Day:

Petie writes in:

Hi Tom, Jennie, Len, and Secret Robert,

My pick of the day is http://rabb.it

It is a site for watching a streaming web content with a variety of users. You can go to the page and click “Chat Now”. It will activate your camera and mic (if you let it) and it will present you with a search box and shortcuts to popular streaming services like YouTube, Netflix, HBOGo, NBC, Hulu and Xfire. A user can log into their favorite streaming site, and then send the URL to all the friends that want to share watching the stream. Anyone plugging in that URL can join the session and watch the stream. There is a lock feature so once everyone is in the session you can keep out any URL-hacking randos that accidentally type in your URL.

If you chose to register you can get the same “room” every time you log in, and you can safely leave your netflix, youtube and other site logins for the next time you have a rabb.it session.

I used this last weekend to watch Django Unchained with my friend in Mexico, and it worked very well. The service dropped one time due to a crash, but the overall quality was great with that one exception. My friends in Maryland, Wisconsin and California used it for a Horror Movie night last month with great results as well.

The service is currently in beta, but if you want to “MST3K” movies with friends who are now in another city, state or country, check out rabb.it!

Thanks, and I really appreciate you guys doing DTNS! Have a GREAT weekend everyone!

Messages: 

Ted-san doesn’t see emojis as replacing conventional language, but instead coexisting with them. He says:

“Much like Japanese has Katakana, Hiragana and the pictographic Kanji. Thankfully, emoji are more universally comprehensible, allowing them to bridge many languages and cultures. :-)”

Søren wanted to point out how emojis from different providers appear differnt. He wrote:

On emojipedia.org you can read the definitions of the various emojis, and see how they are designed by Apple, Google, Microsoft and Twitter respectively. Especially the “Flushed face” is pretty different in the emotion it seems to be conveying on the different platforms.”

Scott from Houston:

Hey Tom and guest,
I had to add an anecdote about the rise in emoji use. My 6 year old’s Kindergarten teacher, who is a friend of the family, talked to my wife laughing because my son had drawn an emoji in his classroom writing assignment. When I asked my son he said that the sentence was sad and it needed a sad face emoji.
[[My son will borrow my wife’s phone occasionally and we let him send me text messages. It’s a great way for him to practice typing and spelling. He has become quite apt at incorporating emojis.]]

And Alan adds:

“The different chicken and toilet you saw illustrates another thing that Veronica was talking about: emojis are thought of as fun because they’re drawn cute, but they don’t have to be. As their usage develops, no doubt there will be many emoji fonts. Veronica also mentioned how emojis are a universal language. I wonder to what extent that will remain true once more abstraction layers are in place. It seems possible, even likely, that abstract uses of emojis will be regional or otherwise limited to specific communities.”

Frank wanted to point out for listeners that if you only use iOS and read mostly DC & Marvel comics the publisher-specific apps let you make in-app comic purchases and still sync to your Comixology library, so any DC or Marvel comics you buy through the publisher-specific iOS apps will still be available wherever else you use Comixology.

=====

Wednesday’s guest:  Jeff Cannata and Scott Johnson

 

Justin Young joins us with a timeline of the rise and fall of the Secret app and what it tells us about the inside the bubble mentality.

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A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here or giving 5 cents 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: Justin Robert Young

Headlines: 

Ars Technica reports Microsoft announced the release of two open source libraries called Windows Remote Arduino and Windows Virtual Shield for Arduino. The libraries let Arduinos connect to Windows 10 devices. The idea is to connect an Arduino controlled camera to the cloud or take advantage of the sensors in a Lumia phone. Microsoft also released a preview of Windows 10 IoT Core for the Raspberry Pi 2.

Engadget reports IBM, Apple and the Japan Post Group announced a project to deliver up to 5 million iPads to senior citizens in Japan. IBM has developed custom apps to help with medication reminders, groceries and such. Apple of course cites the benefits of default services like FaceTime and Messages.

The Next Web reports Uber has updated its SOS button in its app in India and is working with local authorities across the country to implement it. The service , which has been beta-tested in Kolkata, provides a button that connects the user to authorities by call while generating a text alert for police that contains location, rider info and driver info. The Delhi state government banned Uber after an alleged rape case last year.

The Verge reports that Amazon Instant Video for iOS now lets users stream video in HD. The Version 3 update also allows users to stream over their cellular data not just WiFi. However, those with data caps should be aware, streaming an hour of video at the “best” level will use 5.8 GB of data. Streaming “better” video will use 1.8 GB and “good” 1.6 GB.

IT World has a writeup of the recent Nigerian elections during which there were 58 election-related deaths. That’s lower than the previous election period of 2011, in which a thousand Nigerians died. The difference? Online services which kept people informed and provided an outlet for communication, as well as biometric card readers which helped minimize cheating.

9 to 5 Mac reports Apple added a clause to its App Store guidelines that says apps doing health-related human subject research must obtain the approval from an independent ethics review board. The guidelines previously recommended obtaining the review but now Apple may request proof. The guidelines apply to developers using the open source ResearchKit framework.adapted to other systems.

BizTech Africa reports the government of Malawi, the the United Nations Capital Development Fund’s Better Than Cash Alliance and the Mobile Money for the Poor Initiative have brought together digital payment companies to analyze and encourage the development of digital payments in the country. The program expects to raise the use of digital financial services from 3.%5 of active adults to 15% by 2019. Most people in Malawai use cash without banking services.

Jerry Chow, Manager of Experimental Quantum Computing at IBM Research told TechCrunch his team have achieved error correction for Quantum computing using two qubits that hold data and another two for checking errors. Quantum error correction is a significant hurdle since errors can be caused by common conditions in computers like heat, radiation, and material defects. Chow says the next important milestone is 13 or 17 qubits with encoded logic.

News From You:

The most popular story on the subreddit for most of the day, submitted by TheLazyOne, has been a Broadband Reports post of an LA Times report that 83-year-old AOL dial-up user Ron Dorff of Los Angeles was charged $24,298 by AT&T after his dial-up started using a long distance number. AT&T gave him the runaround until the LA Times called and now they’ve fixed the issue for him and are resolving the matter of the charges. The only news here is that someone uses AOL dial-up that much.

KAPT_Kipper sent us a CNET report that folks have discovered you can embed classic MS-DOS video games in your tweets, and play them right on twitter. Go to Archive.org’s Archive’s massive collections of classic games and software, emulated through JSMESS, copy the URL from the page of your favorite game and paste directly into your tweet. Soon you’ll be asking that age old question, Where in the World IS Carmen Sandiego? The tweet needs to be viewed from a desktop browser to play.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://medium.com/secret-den/sunset-bc18450478d5

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/technology/a-founder-of-secret-the-anonymous-social-app-shuts-it-down-as-use-declines.html?_r=0

https://twitter.com/ginatrapani/status/593510945726435328

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/14/anonymish-app-secret-has-raised-another-25m-adds-facebook-login-and-collections/

http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/05/the-temporary-backchannel/

http://startupbook.co/2014/02/07/rap-genius-founders-smoke-weed-during-job-interviews-and-other-silicon-valley-secrets/

http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/18/7413417/secret-is-re-launching-as-a-faster-anonymous-social-network-with-chat

http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/06/secret/

http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/27/secret-plans/

http://recode.net/2015/04/29/anonymous-messaging-startup-secret-is-shutting-down/

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCQQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpostsecret.com%2F&ei=TG1CVeSOE8WzoQSU34D4CA&usg=AFQjCNHlMCbFc_xaVM9KqOLBb-XKgZa74Q&sig2=R5F4jO_CY_4QjNQfKVXzAA

Pick of the day:

Mordechai Lightstone writes:

Hey Tom and DTNS guest,

I wanted to suggested a relatively low-tech but beloved pick for you.

The Blackwing 602 Pencil. A pencil with a literal cult following, the Blackwing was beloved by John Steinbeck, animator Chuck Jones [of Looney Tunes fame and Stephen Sondheim. It was discontinued back in 1998, but relaunched again by the Cal Cedar Pencil Company. Originals can still be found online, sold for upwards of $50 or more – and while current 12 pack of the cal Cedar “Palomino” 602s retail at $20, they’re are an amazing analog tool with a storied past and a beautiful design. If you have some money to order a pack, or a friend to give you one or two to play around with, they’re more than worth exploring in my opinion.

Messages: 

Jonathan – Unofficial (hope to be official) DTNS Facilities Manager – writes:

While listening to you and Patrick discuss goats on Tuesday’s show, I couldn’t help but share my experience.

I’m a facilities manager and two years ago, while managing Adobe’s campus in Lehi Utah, my team decided to “rent” a group of goats for chewing down some of the weeds prior to the winter season. It worked very well for the area they were fenced in to. At one point, they did get loose and ended up distracting most of the thousand employees in the building.

To further the technology perspective on this, we decided to purchase a go-pro camera which was immediately dubbed the “Goat Pro” camera. I even found a Go-Pro website for a “Livestock Camera mount”, but after calling the Go Pro corporate office to inquire and stumping them for a while, we all saw the April 1st reference in the URL and realized we’d been had. That being said, the footage, was still fun and we got to use it in a promo on our sustainability efforts.

Alan writes: 

I’m of two minds on the idea of being able to easily port Android apps to Windows. It seems to me that this only works if the app doesn’t use any of the Google services. (games, account management, contacts, etc…)

Writing your app to not use Google services limits its integration to Android (in the Google sense, not AOSP). On the other hand, an Android app that doesn’t use Google services should be able to run not only on Windows, but also Fire OS and other AOSP branches, including Cyanogen even if they stop supporting Google services.

I’m not sure if the downside of losing Google services is worth the upside of a larger potential market. My guess is that for Android app developers, probably not. For cross platform developers, maybe so.

Marlon”theguyfromtrinidad” here:

One aspect of the app development process that was left out of your conversation yesterday was maintenance. Its great that Microsoft wants Android and iOS developers to bring their apps over to windows but they will ultimately have to deal with the bugs, communicating with users and adding new features. For many developers the costs of going onto a new platform are often not worth it.

=====

Friday’s guest:  Darren Kitchen & Ken Peralta

 

Ron Richards is on the show today reacting to the Microsoft BUILD announcements, specifically Android apps running on Windows 10 phones.

MP3

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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 guests: Ron Richards

Headlines: 

BREAKING: Secret, the app that Silicon Valley insiders used to tell nasty things about each other to each other is shutting down. It’s survived by YikYak.

TechCrunch is reporting Windows 10 Microsoft Developers will be able to reuse code from the Web, Old desktop apps built in Win32 and .NET, Android apps built in Java and C++ and even iOS apps built in Objective C.  ArsTechnica is reporting that Microsoft released Visual Studio Code, a free editor for Windows OS and Linux with support for GIT. Final release expected this summer.

TechCrunch has revealed Microsoft announced the availability to developers of the release candidate for the full .NET framework for Windows AND a full preview for the .NET core runtime for Linux and OS X at aka.ms/netcore. According to The NextWeb  Microsoft’s next cross-platform integrations that allow developers to build apps that embed inside Microsoft Office. The example used was an Uber ride reminder created in Outlook on the desktop that pops up on an iPhone.

In even more Windows news TechCrunch says the new browser in Windows 10 will be called Microsoft Edge. The Verge revealed Microsoft demonstrated the Windows 10 feature called Continuum working on phones. The idea is to plug a phone into a mouse keyboard and full-sized monitor and universal apps will adapt tot he screen size to work like a desktop. And Engadget is reporting carrier billing is coming to all Windows 10 devices so you can buy something in the Windows Store and put it on your phone bill.

Finally Hololens is still damned impressive can help architects and anatomy teachers and make a real robot look even cooler with a virtual overlay and it’s all universal Windows Apps!. Is the face-mask designed by Alex Kipman too cool to care if its vaporware? (Yes I know MS promises it will come in the Windows 10 timeframe) Also Microsoft said AFTER the announcement that its working with Unity Technologies to bring HoloLens support to the Unity game engine.

The Verge reports Google has announced a new Chrome extension called Password Alert to defend against Phishing attacks. The extension compares a hashed version of your Google password to any string of characters you submit through a browser. If it finds a match— and you’re not on a real Google login page— it will redirect you to a warning page. The code is open source and could be adapted to other systems.

Instagram announced a new official account dcalled @music. Tech Crunch reports that this is the first time the company has created a dedicated account devoted to a single subject. TechCrunch also says the account will only have six posts per week but they’ve posted three times today so… who knows. Posts will be grouped by specific hashtags. for instance #LocallySourced will cover unsigned acts, and #15SecondLessons will include how to videos. Instagram created the account because it noticed that one quarter of the most popular accounts on the service were from musicians.

Richard Allan, Vice President Public Policy EMEA at Facebook wrote an opinion piece in the Financial Times warning that Europe risks strangling companies by forcing them to deal with national regulators in the eurozone according to the The Wall Street Journal. Allan wrote: ““Facebook’s costs would increase and people in Europe would notice new features arriving more slowly, or not at all.” Facebook is facing a wave of privacy probes from various EU national governments and has argued that it believes that they do not have jurisdiction over it because it is headquartered in Ireland and has passed EU audits.

The Verge reports that Samsung is once again in sole possession of the title of “world’s biggest smartphone shipper“. According to Strategy Analytics, Samsung shipped 83 million smartphones in Q1 of 2015 down from 89 million a year ago but still good enough to wrest first place away from a tie with Apple. This quarter Apple sold 61 million smartphone devices. Samsung’s growth comes from less profitable mid and low range devices. Lenovo-Motorola combine for third though also down from a year agao and Huawei took fourth.

The Verge reports that an error in American Airlines’ iPad app delayed a dozen flights yesterday. One chart in the American Airlines navigational database shares its name with another chart for Ronald Regan Washington National Airport. The iPad app that American Airlines uses became unresponsive because of the duplication. The problem won’t be fixed until an update is pushed out May 8th. Until then, pilots flying to Ronald Regan Washington National Airport will have to use paper charts or a PDF of the charts in a separate app. In 2012 American Airlines became the first airline to get FAA approval to use iPads in all stages of flight replacing 35 pounds of paper flight manuals and saving about 1.2 million a year on fuel.

News From You:

Starfuryzeta sent an IT World article about how Ham radio operators have been helping to fill communication gaps in Nepal after the earthquake on Saturday that killed at least 5,000 people. Ham operators in Nepal and India are working in shifts to help people try to get in touch with relatives and pass on information. Ham radio can work off solar power and low-voltage batteries too, which means the radios can continue to work long after smartphones and laptop batteries die. Operators in Nepal and India have been working in shifts to keep communications going with hams in other parts of the world like Turkey, Australia and New Zealand, often helping trace relatives and friends.

Habichuelacondulce sent us a Boing Boing post that a Forbes source says Tesla is contributing a car to be used by two researchers to demonstrate the reality and limits of remote car attacks at this year’s Defcon hacker convention. The talk is called Remote Exploitation of an Unaltered Passenger Vehicle and will be conducted by Charlie Miller Security engineer at Twitter Chris Valasek Director of Vehicle Security Research at IOActive. Tesla hasn’t commented officially on the talk and is not listed in the summary.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/29/microsoft-makes-it-easier-for-developers-to-bring-their-android-and-ios-apps-to-windows-10/?ncid=rss

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/04/29/microsoft-brings-android-ios-apps-to-windows-10/

Pick of the day:

Russell writes:

A while back this book was mentioned on the show and it sounded interesting so gave it a read (listen on Audible actually).

Tubes outlines the history, design, and implementation of the physical infrastructure that is the internet. It is a really great story about what the internet really is, as opposed to the world wide web; hard, complex infrastructure. The internet is in a lot of cases thought of by its use as opposed to what it actually is and this book explores the fascinating and complex web (no pun intended) of individuals, companies and municipal entities that have worked together to create the this massive and pervasive piece of infrastructure that we depend on. Blum meets a number of pretty interesting characters along the way and brings a human dimension to the story of the people who make the internet go; a somewhat different breed than the C-suite folks that you more find in the media more often. A great story for those curious about what the internet is and how it works.

Great content on DTNS as always! Looking forward to having Scott and Veronica as regulars!

Messages: 

Marlon made us a tutorial video:

Also I am very excited about the addition of these 3rd party apps being added to Google Now cards, because many of the cards are usually time and location sensitive so a spotify playlist card could appear around the time when I would usually be listening or a hotel reservation card from Hilton could show up as I walk into the hotel. Many of these cards are also pushed to my Android Wear watch giving me the information as I need it. But you have Ron Richards on the show he can tell you all about it. LOVE the SHOW
From a Boss in the Great White North:

In Episode 2481 you and Patrick were talking about the comment features coming to Dropbox. I wanted to Chime in with my two cents.

I’m a full time UX Designer and Part time teacher at a local college. This new feature will solve two big issues for me:

1. Sharing files with VERY non-technical clients that need to comment on the work we’ve done. This will allow us to send files and have them comment in the same system we’ve already trained them in.
2. Getting files from students. The course I teach (mobile web development) has the students creating files in all kinds of formats. So at the begging of a semester I set up a folder for each student and and shared drive for the class. I can then drop any file type I want in the appropriate folder and the students have access to it right away. The comment feature will make marking so much easier as I won’t have to open 6 different applications to add comments, just dropbox.

Big add for me.

Jason Hill from hot, summer-like Hachimantai City, Japan:

I’m a proud Patreon supporter. Your discussion of the steam mod communities on yesterday’s show reminded me of another Internet community that I was a part of way back in 2005. It was bought out by Yahoo and the community started to flee in droves all over the ‘net when they tinkered with site. Eventually just let it stagnate all together. The members of the community begged and pleaded, but their words fell on deaf ears. That place was flickr, and while it might still exist, and is still probably one of the best places for serious amateur and semi-pro photographers to highlight their work, there really isn’t much of community there anymore. It’s an empty husk of its former self. This is sad, because I learned most of my trade from the people there. If yahoo had actually responded to the feedback, I imagine flickr might still be a dominant player today. But that’s a what-if. The community can make or break you as a company, and I think Steam knows this. You can’t let a community hold you hostage, but you can’t ignore them either. There is a fine balance. Anyways, keep up the amazing work.

Joshua wrote:

To put the valve story into perspective, imagine Apple steps in, says to podcast creators, you can sell your podcasts and we will give podcasters 25% of the proceeds…

That puts the valve story into perspective. It’s both insulting to content creators and those of us paying knowing that Apple / Valve would be taking 75% of the proceeds with very little going to those making the content.

The part I think you guys missed is where we the people paying are not ok with content creators only receiving 25% of the proceeds.

It’s a record company disguised as a software company, valve should have first and foremost had a better price split.

Levi wrote on the blog:

I would have liked some additional info about the G4. It’s not simply a leather back on a G3. One of the big features that I’m looking forward to is the much improved camera, with lots of great stuff for photography enthusiasts, including a much faster lens (F1.8), manual controls, and a RAW format option. Theoretically the faster lens should make low-light photography MUCH better, and the manual settings will allow for longer exposures, again, making low-light images much better and less noisy.

Bishma from blissfully rainy Eugene, Oregon writes:

I just wanted to give my two cents on the G4 announcements from yesterday. Certainly the leather back made all the headlines because it was headline worthy. That said, I think the most important differentiator that the G4 has going for it is what didn’t change from the G3. The battery in the G4 is still user swappable unlike, I believe, all the other flagship phones announced this spring. This is the feature that will have me purchasing from LG next moth rather than Samsung or HTC next month.

=====

Thursday’s guest:  Justin Robert Young

 

Darren Kitchen, Patrick Beja, Justin Young, Veronica Belmont and Scott Johnson assemble to chat about their favorite tech topics and celebrate the latest milestone about to be made possible by the DTNS Patrons.

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A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here or giving 5 cents 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

Patrick Beja is on today and we’ll talk about Valve’s decision to close the mod workshop for Skyrim. Did the community overreact or was Valve insensitive?

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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 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: Patrick Beja

Headlines: 

The Verge has reports on LG’s official announcement of the G4 phone. It’s most distinguishing feature is the option for a new leather phone back that comes in a variety of colors. LG says it takes 3 months to make each leather back and uses materials and processes similar to those used for making luxury handbags Phone will launch on all major US carriers the end of May or early June. No pricing yet.

Venture Beat reports that Dropbox is rolling out a new feature that allows users to add comments directly to files stored on Dropbox. The feature is free for every level of Dropbox user, and works for anyone who has a link to the file. The new feature is accessible through the Web and is coming to mobile “soon.”

Krebsonsecurity.com reports that Sendgrid said attackers compromised an employee’s account, which was then used to steal the usernames, email addresses and (hashed) passwords of customer and employee accounts. Sendgrid manages email service like shipping notifications and friend requests and the like for companies like Pinterest, Spotify, Uber and Coinbase. Sendgrid suggests customers change their passwords use multi-factor authentication. Sendgrid says it’s working to add more authentication methods for its two-factor security, and to expedite the release of special “API keys” that will allow customers to use keys instead of passwords for sending email through its systems.

The official Google Search Blog announced new Google Now cards on Android today.  Google added 70 new partners, including Zipcar, Spotify, TuneIn, ABC News, Eat 24, Runkeeper Jawbone, Open Table and more. Users should update to the latest version fo the Google app in order to see the new cards.

The BBC reports Google has reached an agreement with several European news publishers to cooperate on a Digital News Initiative. As part of the plan, Google will contribute €150m to an innovation fund. Google will also work on ways to boost publishers’ revenues, train journalists in digital skills and fund research in news consumption and crowd sourcing. Google set up a similar fund with French Publishers in 2013.

More data trickled out from Apple after announcing earnings yesterday. Reuters reports that last quarter, Apple sold more iPhones in China than in the United States for the first time. iPhone sales rose 71% to $16.8 billion in China thanks in part to the new year shopping season.

The BBC reports on Yahoo Labs development of a system called Bodyprint that uses the phone’s touchscreen to recognize a body part, like an ear, and unlock the phone. The idea is to provide biometric authentication cheaper than a fingerprint sensor. Initial trial have been conducted with 12 participants. The system had 99.5% accuracy identifying users and 99.8% accuracy when scanning ears.

Financial intelligence firm Selerity published Twitter’s earnings before the market closed today causing Twitter stocks to cease trading. Selerity says the numbers came from Twitter’s investors site. Twitter earned 7 cents a share agains expectations of 4 cents a share but with revenue of $436 million missing expectations of 456.8 million. Monthly Active Users were up 18% year-over-year.

And TechCrunch reports Cablevision has reached an agreement to sell Hulu to it’s Optimum Online Internet subscribers. No word on what the price would be or what benefit consumers would get from buying Hulu through Cablevision rather than directly from Hulu.

News From You:

AtomicSpaceGun sent us the news that Amazon will now rent you a goat to mow your lawn. If you live in a city where a goat provider is available just look in the lawn care section of Amazon’s Home Services. Goats are an eco-friendly way to keep your lawn trimmed, and much quieter than a lawnmower at 7am on a Sunday morning.
The goats will also throw in free fertilizer, which they will deposit on your lawn in pellet form.

KAPT_Kipper sent in the PC Gamer version of the story of the rise and fall of Valve’s paid mod marketplace for Skyrim. Last Thursday Valve announced that modders could choose to sell mods int he Steam Workshop for Skyrim and keep 25% of whatever price they chose. The modding community reacted negatively and even downvoted Valve’s Gabe Newell’s attempts to explain the new system on Reddit. Yesterday Valve removed the paymetn feature from the Skyrim workshop. Alden wrote in the official Steam Workshop blog post: “it’s clear we didn’t understand exactly what we were doing.”

Discussion Section Links:  

http://gizmodo.com/the-internet-just-killed-an-app-store-for-video-game-wo-1700562308?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_twitter&utm_source=gizmodo_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

http://kotaku.com/even-gabe-newell-gets-downvoted-on-reddit-1700491663

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/04/24/valves-paid-skyrim-mods-are-a-legal-ethical-and-creative-disaster/

http://steamed.kotaku.com/skyrim-modder-considers-quitting-after-steam-controvers-1700077114

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/04/28/steam-kills-paid-mods-for-skyrim-after-user-backlash/

http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/208632365253244218

https://www.change.org/p/valve-remove-the-paid-content-of-the-steam-workshop

http://steamed.kotaku.com/steams-most-popular-skyrim-mod-is-a-protest-against-pai-1700486550

Pick of the day:

Jack from often-sunny Colorado (with occasional bouts of crazy, extreme weather), my Pick of the Day:

Crash Course Intellectual Property — a new mini-series in the Crash Course family of YouTube videos created by the Green brothers (John and Hank).

Episode 1 covered the basics of IP, while future episodes will focus on copyright, patents, and trademarks. This looks to be another satisfying offering in the Crash Course genre.

Thanks for listening, and keep up the great tech news work!

Messages: 

Jim writes: 

Tom, Jenny, et. al.

For the last five years I’ve been on the team that is writing the software to control the primary and secondary power systems for a new business jet, including sending the power system CAS messages to the cockpit controller. After listening to Friday’s episode I thought ‘knowing everything there is to know about the power system, is there anything I can do from the cabin of the jet to turn on a CAS message in the cockpit?’ The answer is no, everything I would need, would require me having access to the cockpit or the electrical bay.
Though the communication back bone of this jet is AFDX (Ethernet for Airplanes) all of the wires are hard wired between the boxes and the ports are all known to the software so that the communication controllers reject anything that is not sent from the proper place.

P.S. Here is my short description of what the CAS part of EICAS is:

CAS is just a listing of short descriptions of what is happening to the plane. There are four type of them:
Flashing Red – things you really need to react to now, example: ‘BATTERY PWR ONLY’ would tell you, you have lost all three generators and only have 60 minutes of power to land.
Flashing Yellow – things you need to worry about that you may be able to fix, example: ‘L BATT FAIL’ either the left battery is stuck connected to the bus when you don’t want it to be, or not connected to the bus and you want it to be.

Solid Yellow or Blue (depending on system) – things that happened that you need to let your maintenance people know about. Example: ‘ELEC SYS FAULT’ (which means something is wrong with the electrical system), when you land, hand the keys to the maintenance staff.

White – Things that you need to know about. Example: ‘L BATT OFF’, you have not pushed the button to connect the Left battery to the power bus.

EICAS the list of text in the middle bottom of the picture:
Dave (AKA BuckeyeFitzy, the Legal Geek segment producer for Current Geek):

Hi Tom,

On the upcoming Google offer to buy up patents to try and keep them out of the hands of patent trolls. Having worked in the patent law business for nearly a decade, I appreciate any efforts made to enact smart reforms where Congress fails to take action.

However, as a realist … what Google does with these purchased patents likely comes down to a game of “follow the money.” There may be some altruistic powers that be at Google about this issue, but others will want to make sure the bottom line is protected, meaning the high amount of investment and dollars made in procuring these patents must result in at least the same amount of income later.

Thus, Rich’s desire for a true Creative Commons setup for patents may be impossible, but in a best-case scenario, Google could balance their ledgers on this project by offering relatively cheap licenses to many parties to help advance innovation efforts overall. In a worst-case scenario, Google becomes the biggest of the patent trolls, or just sells the rights to other assertion entities down the road. But in either outcome, Google will inevitably make the money back, and that’s what you need to watch to see how this project plays out long term, and whether it benefits society and the patent system at large.

=====

Wednesday’s guest:  Ron Richards

 

Richard Stroffolino joins the show to talk about Google’s new patent marketplace. Should you sell all your patents to Google? do you want Google to own all the patents?

MP3

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A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here or giving 5 cents 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: Rich Stroffolino 

Headlines: 

Google announced a Patent Purchase Promotion today in an effort to supposedly remove friction from the patent market and apparently try to keep patents out of the hands of trolls. Anyone who has a US patent can list their patent for sale between May 8th and May 22. After the close of the market Google will let sellers know if they’re interested by June 26th, finish up the details by July 22 and pay out by late August. Patent sellers set the sale price and get a license back tot heir patent.

TechCrunch reports Facebook added a free video calling feature that works over cellular or wifi– inside Messenger for iOS and Android today. Messenger will adjust quality based on your connection. However you can’t make calls to desktop users and you can only call one person at a time. Video calling in Messenger is availablein 18 countries today with other regions to be added in the coming months.

According to data gathered by Slice Intelligences‘ consumer panel app, 376,000 of the 1.7 million Apple Watches ordered were delivered to U.S. consumers this weekend. A remaining 547,000 watches are expected to ship between April 27 and June 11; leaving 639,000 people waiting for word ofon when their watches will ship. The data was gathered based on a survey of more than 2 million online shoppers.

TechCrunch reports that Instagram has added three new image filters called Lark, Reyes, and Juno. Instagram plans to release new filters at a faster rate. But, smiley face kitty cat rainbow, that’s not the most exciting part! Instagram also added support for emoji in hashtags, which means you can now click on hashtag little poop guy and see what other fine images have been tagged with that emoji.

Apple Pay is now supported by Discover Financial Services the last of the four major credit and debit card issuers in the United States according to the LA Times. Of course not every bank supports Apple Pay yet but the number of cards supported is certainly growing.

Following up on the forum post from last week where the makers the SeaNav claimed their app had been kicked out of the iOS app store for mentioning Pebble, Apple confirmed to Wired that it was a mistake. The SeaNav update will be accepted, as will any other apps rejected in similar circumstances. The company does not plan to reject apps that support the Pebble watch.

PC World clarified a statement Nokia made over the weekend. Responding to reports that Nokia would manufacture smartphones in China, Nokia said “These reports are false, and include comments incorrectly attributed to a Nokia Networks executive. Nokia reiterates it currently has no plans to manufacture or sell consumer handsets.” However the ReCode report we mentioned claimed Nokia would design and license handsets not manufacture and sell them. In any case Nokia still can’t do any of this until 2016 thanks to its agreements with Microsoft.

Reuters reports Judge Theodore Essex of the International Trade Commission in the US ruled Microsoft’s phones infringe two wireless cellular patents owned by patent licensor InterDigital Incorporated. The decision must be reviewed by a full commission before an import ban can be enacted.

Apple didn’t top its record profit of last quarter, but they did just fine. Today they posted earnings of $13.6 billion on $58 billion in revenue, above both what it forecast and what investors were expecting. For the three months ending in March, Apple sold 61.2 million iPhones, 12.6 million iPads, and 4.5 million Macs. All told, its gross margin for everything was 40.8 percent, which came in well above the 38.5 and 39.5 percent Apple expected. Apple’s next quarter will be the first to include sales of the Apple Watch, but don’t expect the company to reveal any numbers. The watch, along with sales of the iPod, Apple TV, and Beats accessories are all lumped into a catch-all category called “other products.”

News From You:

KAPT_Kipper sent us the Ars Technica report that there was a brief moment in time back in 2011 when an 87-year old Pauline McKee from Illinois thought she won 41,797,550.16 dollars on a slot machine called Miss Kitty. The Isle Hotel Casino in Waterloo, Iowa declined to pay the money claiming it was a computer glitch. Ms. McKee sued, but the Iowa Supreme Court sided with the casino. The user-agreement on the touch screen slot machine, said the maximum payout was $10,000 and “bonus” awards were not allowed. The court ruled Pauline McKee was owed one dollar and 85 cents.

Bad news for people in search of rare flair on Reddit’s The Button game. Bishma posted that “The Button” ran into technical difficulties Sat morning with the Cassandra server that tracked button clicks. During that time many people including The Button’s creator got extremely rare flairs. Although the issue was resolved there was a point in time when the button reached zero allegedly revealing a spoiler. As of Sunday, red flair is more common and often looked down upon. Some Button enthusiats have decided to try to choose their favorite color rather than go for the lowest time count. Others have targeted getting a time of 42 as their new goal.The Button however is still active and posts are centering around quotes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/27/google-launches-a-marketplace-to-buy-patents-from-interested-sellers/?ncid=rss#.7yzb2u:Ysp0

http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2015/04/announcing-patent-purchase-promotion.html

http://www.google.com/patents/licensing/

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/27/google-to-disarm-trolls-by-buying-patents-before-they-become-weapons/

Pick of the day:

Andy from increasingly spring like CT:

Hi Tom,

Pick of the day for you – Mountek smartphone mounts.

If you’re like me and are always disappointed with in car Nav systems, and still have a car radio with a CD slot, the sit in woe no more! Mountek makes a great smart device mount that clips in to the CD slot and uses a very thin magnet on your device to attach to a magnetic pad on the mount. For me, this was a fantastic solution to my broken GPS unit in my car and allows me to use Waze or Google or whatever on device GPS app I like without chasing the phone as it slips and falls all around my dash console. Problem solved! Instead of $600 to repair the cars’s GPS, I spent $30 for the Mountek Snap+ and I couldn’t be happier. It holds my iPhone 6 or my iPad Air easily, and keeps them in line of sight so that I can see maps and directions without looks down and taking my eyes off the road. Safe and convenient! www.mountek.com – really great stuff.

Great show Tom, you and the crew are my conduit to the Tech Zeitgeist. Without DTNS I’d be lost, uninformed and Beja-less, a truly unhappy state.

Thanks!

Messages: 

Co-executive producer of the show Mike’s father and brother have owned an automotive repair shop for 30 years. He worries that If the auto industry is successful in their DMCA petition, it could put them and others like them out of business. He sent a quote from autoblog.com.

“Hypothetically, the EFF says, the likes of General Motors, Honda and Ford could supply ECU codes only to repair companies they contract with – or steer that business entirely to authorized dealerships. Car owners’ power to choose where they want their car repaired could be diminished.”

BUT Chris (mrforgetful on Patreon) works in IT for a motor manufacturer and gets involved in building the software systems that enable technicians to update the software in vehicles. He says: 

“Right to Repair legislation is coming into force in the US in 2017 that requires automotive manufacturers to make available the tools necessary to update vehicle software. Similar legislation has been in Europe for about 6 years (I am from the UK).
..
Although he adds: Carrying out home-made modifications to the software is out-of-scope (you must apply the software from the manufacturer).

Which leads us to Alan who pointed out:

“diesel nerds” are aware that most modern diesel engines are sold with a number of different levels of output. Naturally, the more powerful versions are more expensive than the lower output versions. There is normally no physical difference between these engines, it’s all software governed.

By now I’m sure you can see where this is going – there’s a whole industry dedicated to re-flashing vehicle ECUs to “liberate” those extra horsepower for significantly less cost than buying “The fancier model”. This will be what John Deere and GM are really trying to crack down on as they move towards greater physical commonality in their model ranges.

Randall pointed out:

“I’m not sure that your aware, but Linux is use by many major car manufacturers. There is even an automotive grade Linux project that many of them contribute to. https://www.automotivelinux.org/about/members”

Daryl Sensenig writes:

I’m an amateur vehicle hobbyist, and I enjoyed your discussion of John DeeRM. You mentioned Linux for cars. There is just such a thing. You can find a popular supplier here: http://bankspower.com. The way some vendors make it legal us by replacing the entire computer hardware.

Harry The Airline Pilot commented on the story about Chris Roberts’ tweet on a United Boeing 737-800. Harry writes:

” I have been an Airline Pilot for 36 years for many airlines, and most recently I flew a Boeing 737-800 for 10,000 hours at United Airlines. There are many inaccuracies in all the commentaries about this story. First off, he concedes that his research only pertains to the most modern airplanes – the Boeing 787, Airbus A350, and Airbus A380. This is a very small part of the current airline fleet. None of his research applies to the B-737-800 because it has no internal network. This plane is old school – it was developed in 1967. The latest versions being built today are essentially the same as back in 1967. Only new avionics and some structural and engine changes. For example he talks about taking over the fuel balancing systems. There is NO such system on the 737. It is done by looking at the fuel quantities in the tanks and manually turning pumps off and on – old school. The passenger entertainment systems on these aircraft are just after market bolt on. The only connection to the aircraft systems is the power source – literally an on-off switch in the cockpit. Also, there is no way to turn on the passenger oxygen system on the aircraft electrically. The only control, is to drop the oxygen masks. No oxygen will flow until the mask is physically pulled down. Then a chemical oxygen canister will start a reaction to produce oxygen for that row of seats for about 12 minutes.

So basically, when he says “Find myself on a 737/800, lets see Box-IFE-ICE-SATCOM, ? Shall we start playing with EICAS messages? “PASS OXYGEN ON” Anyone ? :)”, it is total bull. As far as the freedom of speech argument for defending this tweet, see how far that will get you if you joke about having a bomb next to a TSA person at security.”

=====

Tuesday’s guest:  Patrick Beja

 

Darren Kitchen and David Spark join the show to talk about what’s on people’s mind after the RSA Security Conference. Which things should you legitimately be afraid of?

MP3

Using a Screen Reader? click here

Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

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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 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: Darren Kitchen and David Spark

Headlines: 

Italian eyewear company Luxottica is working on a second version of Google Glass, according to The Wall Street Journal via Venturebeat. CEO Massimo VIan told his shareholders: “In Google, there are some second thoughts on how to interpret version 3 [of the eyewear]. What you saw was version 1. We’re now working on version 2, which is in preparation.” Luxottica owns 80% of the world’s major eyewear brands, including Ray-Ban and Oakley.

TechCrunch reports that iFixit is tearing apart the 38mm Apple Watch Sport and 42mm Apple Watch steel for your edification. Processor upgrades for the Apple Watch look unlikely. It took 20 steps to get to the Watch’s processor some of which involved ripping out soldering and the S1 chip itself was encased in a block of resin. The battery took 11 steps to remove. Apple has confirmed the Watch’s battery, which has a 3 year lifespan, will be replaceable.

Steam Workshop will now let modders sell mods according to PC Mag.com. Users can now buy game mods for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Creators set their own price and get 25% of sales. Mods include things like new textures, maps, character skins, soundscapes, and quests.
Engadget reports the Swiss Post will conduct a pilot program for drone package delivery this summer. The program will use quadcopters developed by Matternet which can carry anything up to 2.2 pounds for over 12 miles on a single charge. The test will deliver small things like medicine or documents. Matternet has used its quadcopters to deliver medicine in Haiti.

Honda has an idea for an alternative to Elon Musk’s hyper loop in a report from ZDNet. Friend of the show Jason Hiner wrote up an interview with Frank Paluch, who runs research and development for Honda Americas. Paluch spoke at 2015 SAE World Congress and suggested a dedicated lane on California’s 5 Freeway for highly automated, connected vehicles that would use swarm technology to travel at speeds up to 180mph. While the Hyperloop could travel LA to San farncisco in an hour the HOnda system would take 2. However you wouldn’t have to drive to the Hyperloop station, just take your car the whole way. Go check out Jason’s article for much more about the idea.

News From You:

HobbitfromPA noted the early rumors that Comcast was planning to drop its proposed merger with Time Warner Cable. This morning Ars Technica was among the outlets reporting a statement that in fact Comcast has moved on and will no longer pursue the merger. Fortune reported that the Wall Street Journal barely let the merger grow cold before it reported its sources say Charter is already “laying the groundwork” for a bid to acquire Time Warner Cable. It’s nice to be wanted eh TWC?

jmbburg26 noticed one of the reports of additions to Google Maps for Rawalpindi, Pakistan. One alteration showed the Android robot logo appearing to throw water on an Apple logo. Another alteration wrote a criticism of Google’s review policy in the greenery representing a park. Google’s Mara Harris told the Washington Post, “We’re sorry for this inappropriate user-created content.” Both alterations have been removed.

lagerdalek pointed out that Microsoft will bring solitaire back as a default game in Windows 10. No word on Minesweeper or Reversi.

IrishTechGuy posted the SiliconRepublic article that ISP Eircom has signed a contract with Huawei to construct Gigabyte fiber for 66 communities in Ireland by 2016 serving 1.6 million homes. Eircom hopes to start taking orders by the end of August.

KAPT_kipper posted the CBC story that researchers from Sweden, the US and Canada reported in the journal Current Biology that they have sequenced almost the complete library of DNA from a well-preserved wooly mammoth. Yes such information can inform scientists about mammoth evolution, how they differ from modern elephants and why they went extinct. But what about cloning Mammoths for eccentric millionaire’s Mammoth parks? Canadian researcher Hendrik Poinar said it is a “much more real possibility.”

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.channelnomics.com/channelnomics-us/news/2404869/controversial-security-tweet-sees-airline-turn-away-rsa-speaker

http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/u-s-secretary-of-homeland-security-encryption-danegrous/

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536986/google-and-facebook-execs-question-government-desire-for-encryption-backdoors/?utm_campaign=socialsync&utm_medium=social-post&utm_source=twitter

http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/01/more-researchers-join-rsa-conference-boycott-to-protest-10-million-nsa-deal/

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/12/report-nsa-paid-rsa-to-make-flawed-crypto-algorithm-the-default/

http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/24/8484179/defense-department-ashton-carter-silicon-valley-pentagon

Pick of the day:

WScottis1 in ChatrealmMessages:

Hey Tom, Jennie, Roger, Patrick, Justin, Darren, Scott, Veronica, and guest(s),
(I think I got everybody)

I wanted to let people know about two web tools that I came across the other day trying to make my website mobile with the Google Search Mobilegeddon. The first one I wanted to recommend is mobiletest.me. This is a website that allows you to test how your website looks like on multiple smartphones even if you don’t own them, it does it virtually on the website. It even allows you to “rotate” the phone.

The second one is detectmobilebrowsers.com which provides an easy way to check to see if a user is trying to load your website on a phone. It’s very easy to implement, you just have to upload the script to your website file manager, edit the file to change the default website to the URL of your mobile site, and then put one script line into your code of the original page. Love the show! Keep up the amazing work you’re doing!

Thanks!

Messages: 

Rob wrote on the DTNS blog:

On the show, you talked about the poor cellular coverage in Montana. It’s really mind boggling how many areas in the good ol’ USA still have poor coverage, including where I live in Hanover, NH (only Verizon works and with mostly 1-2 bars.) We are just back from hiking for a week in the Czech Republic where we used a 3rd party foreign roaming SIM Card and had 5 bars of T-mobile coverage even on empty hiking trails between extremely small towns and if you play around with their coverage map, you’ll see that they have 21-150Mbps data speeds pretty much blanketing the whole country. How did America get left so far behind in the mobile revolution?

Brian writes:

“As an MVNO ting also provides service from both Sprint and T-Mobile (although they can’t explicitly state that T-Mobile is their GSM partner). The unique thing about Fi is the ability to seamlessly handoff between not only wifi and CDMA a la Republic Wireless but to also do it between CDMA and GSM networks. Kind of makes me wonder how it works with sim cards and phone numbers (probably something to do with Google Voice since they make a point in saying that you can use your number on your computer).”

Jeff writes:

Talking about Spotify and other services, one that I don’t hear a lot about, but I use almost exclusively is grooveshark.com. I believe it works in the sense that someone uploads their music and that becomes available to anyone to listen to it. So, I don’t think that grooveshark.com themselves are providing the music, but that doesn’t mean that the popular songs or others aren’t on there. The selection is pretty vast and there’s some neat features they are doing as well. One feature is that Individuals can create radio stations, basically becoming dj’s. There is a downside and that is the consistency of the music. It’s uploaded by individuals and there can be a lot of duplicates and some of those duplicates are of a lower quality.

Tad writes:

The issue with the major auto manufactures trying to apply the DMCA to their vehicles is getting seriously over-hyped. I saw an article with the headline, “GM, Ford, and Others want to make working on your car illegal”. The article went on to say that in effect you don’t own your car, you are just a user. This pure fear mongering. The DMCA applies to the code in the various control computers in the vehicle- nothing more. The physical parts of the car, including the control modules the code is in, are yours to do with as you please. Again, the DMCA applies to bits, not car parts.

=====

Monday’s guest:  Rich Stroffolino

 

Lamarr Wilson and Justin Young are on the show to talk about Facebook’s skyrocketing video usage. Are you turning to Facebook instead of YouTube?

MP3

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Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

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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 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:  Lamarr Wilson & Justin Robert Young

Headlines: 

TechCrunch reports that Xiaomi introduced its new Mi 4i smartphone at an event in New Delhi today. It has a 1080p display, Snapdragon 615 64-bit processor, two 4G SIM slots, 13-mpxl rear camera and a 3120 mAh battery. It runs Android Lollipop with the MiUI and will be available for 12,999 INR ($205) starting April 30 in India via flash sales.

Yes Apple Watches shipping notices are going out and Apple is highlighting apps for watches but according to The Verge if you want to walk into a Store and buy an Apple Watch you’re out of luck. Unless you live in Tokyo, London, Los Angeles, Berlin, Milan or Paris and don’t feel out of place in a high-end fashion shop. The shops themselves have limited quantities and apologies but the $10,000 Apple Watch Edition is on backorder.

Engadget tells us you can pre-order Samsung’s Gear VR headset for the Galaxy S6 this Friday April 24th from Best Buy in the US. No pricing was announced. Engadget guesses the headset might cost $200 similar to the original headset. It will be available for sale on Samsung’s and Best Buy’s online stores May 8 and retail outlets May 15.y.

Twitter just announced a feature called Highlights according to The Verge. After a user opts in they’ll get a push notification twice a day opening a view containing a selected tweets. The digest will have posts from popular accounts and conversations from people you follow, trending topics and events, tweets from people you’re closely tied to, and accounts your friends follow. You’ll have to opt in and use the official Twitter app. It’s coming to Android first..

Open Office, the free open source office suite, has just 16 people involved in development and 381 change sets over the last year compared to open source rival LibreOffice which has 268 developers and 22,134 change sets over the same period according to PC World. An Apache Foundation blog post from last week admitted that the project needs more developers, and invited “all the most relevant OpenOffice derivative products and their communities or vendors to join us in discussing further ideas for collaboration and improvements.” OpenOffice and LibreOffice are based on the same code. LibreOffice forkied after Oracle took over OpenOffice 5 years ago.

The Wall Street Journal reports the European Commission will unveil proposals on May 6th for a single digital market. The idea would be to harmonize rules about digital goods, capital, content and services across the 28 member states. Differences between contract law, VAT, parcel delivery, consumer protection and copyright laws are expected to be addressed. In particular geofencing within Europe was mentioned as something that should be abolished.

News From You:

Habichuelacondulce cited TechDirt’s repost that Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal sources indicate the Justice Department may block the proposed merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable in the US. The WSJ also says the FCC may recommend the merger be sent to an administrative judge for a hearing. Generally such a move causes companies to abandon mergers rather than deal with the long process. Meanwhile Bloomberg reports this afternoon that “people with knowledge of the matter” say Comcast plans to drop its proposed takeover of Time Warner Cable. A formal announcement may come as soon as Friday.

Geewhipped pointed us to a Pebble developer’s forum post claiming Applerejected an app called SeaNav on the basis that it mentioned support for the Pebble Watch. Apple’s rules forbid mentioning other mobile platforms in metadata. A few other developers claim their apps have been rejected for similar reasons. However, many other approved apps mention Pebble, including Pebble’s own app.

the_corley posted the a Variety report on a Deloitte survey that shows Internet-streamed video has passed live TV in the US. 53% of those surveyed stream TV shows on a monthly basis while 45% watch TV programs live. Among 14-25 year olds 72% said streaming video was one of the most valuable services, 58% said the same of pay TV. And nobody’s paying attention to what they watch since 90% of all surveyed multitask while watching TV. ce.

KAPT_kipper brought this Polygon post to our attention. Fantasy Grounds – creators of a virtual tabletop RPG application – is now offering licensed Dungeons & Dragons content from Wizards of the Coast through Steam. Players can recreate the 5th edition D&D tabletop experience including dice, 2D maps and more. The first set of products, including the D&D Complete Core Class Pack, D&D Complete Core Monster Pack, and The Lost Mine of Phandelver went on sale last week. Greg Tito, Wizard’s communications manager, confirmed that other campaigns, including Rise of Tiamat and the recently released Princes of the Apocalypse, are on the way for Fantasy Grounds.

Google 14 percent gain in net revenue to $13.91 billion missing expectations of 14.12 billion. EPS: $6.57 versus $6.63 expected
Cost per click, how much Google can charge for its ads, was down 7% year-over-year and the number of paid clicks was up 13%. Analysts had expected paid clicks to be up 15%.

Microsoft reported revenue of $21.7 billion and earnings per share of 61 cents. Both beat analyst expectations. Surface revenue was up 44% year over year. Windows OEM revenue fell 19% probably because last year XP support ended.

Amazon reported 22.&2 billion in revenue beating expected 22.39 billion and earnings per share of 12 cents about the same as the 13 cents expected. Most profits rose except in the International market which was down slightly.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://thenextweb.com/opinion/2015/04/23/facebook-video-is-on-course-to-steal-youtubes-video-sharing-crown/

http://fortune.com/2015/04/22/facebook-video-big-on-growth-little-on-details/

https://facebookmarketingpartners.com/anthology/

http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/facebook-lines-up-7-branded-content-video-partners-including-vice-disney-1201478229/

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/23/facebook-anthology/?ncid=rss

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/04/22/facebook-earnings-preview/26152073/

http://www.quora.com/How-does-YouTube-calculate-its-views

Pick of the day:

Haulik from Denmark:

I just heard you discussing MOBAs on the show and I thought I would just give a heads ups about Vain Glory, it’s a free to play MOBA for iOS (best on iPad IMO). I had never played MOBAs before, but running iOS on my iPad with is my daily driver it has won me over quickly. Even if you don’t like MOBAs it’s worth a look just to appreciate how far mobile gaming has come since the old Snake/Space invaders days.

Keep up the good work

Messages:

Peter writes:

Good morning Tom and crew,

I woke this morning to all the chatter surrounding Project FI from Google.

I was wondering if when your on the WiFi if that data used goes against your total used or if it was just what used on either T mobile or Sprint?

Currently I work for a company that does not provide free WiFi so i’m dependent on mobile for the majority of my day and that keeps me in the 10-16 GB a month range and according to what i have read that much data is not cost effective..

Nate writes in:

There is an interesting video by C.G.P. Grey with the above title about robots taking over jobs, it might add an interesting bit too the discussion

Humans Need Not Apply: https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU

Thanks for the shows

Tom –

Allison writes: 

In reference to your conversation about automating jobs with Jason and Lindsay, I wanted to tell you about what we observed in India.

We visited a jute factory where they take raw jute and through a series of machines turn it into gunny sacks. Our guide explained that the process could easily be automated and be done far cheaper, but it would put so many people out of work that instead the government subsidizes the factory.

I think it’s a good example of what happens when you don’t let progress happen.

John in quite pleasant Billings, MT

Hi Tom & Jennie

You mentioned an issue with Google Fi that hits close to home. Rather than rant about it maybe one of your listeners has an answer – how is it, in 2015, that there are only 2 national cellular providers in Montana? Is it really that bad of an investment? I’m certain that Verizon would still be my only option if it weren’t for AT&T buying their divested Altell assets a few years ago.

=====

Friday’s guest:  Darren Kitchen, Len Peralta, & David Spark

 

Jason Hiner and Lyndsey Gilpin are on the show and we’ll talk about Tesla batteries, Google new Phone Service and how you’ll need to get creative if you don’t want a robot to take your job.

MP3

Using a Screen Reader? click here

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 guests:  Jason Hiner and Lyndsey Gilpin from TechRepublic

Headlines: 

Google announced it’s wireless telephone service today for invitees with a Nexus 6, called Project Fi. TechCrunch reports the network promises to seamlessly switch customers between T-Mobile, Sprint and WiFi baed on whichever network is faster. The rate plan is similar to Ting. Subscribers pay $20 for unlimited talk and text and then $10 per gig of data. Customers pay only for what they use. You can request an invite at fi.google.com.

TechCrunch reports BlackBerry is buying WatchDox a startup in Israel that develops secure file sharing software. The plan is to add WatchDox software to BlackBerry’s Enterprise Mobility Management portfolio.  In addition to the software, BlackBerry may use the WatchDox team to build an R&D operation in Israel.

Facebook released Hello, an Android app dialer that lets you make free calls over Wi-Fi according to The Verge. Hello uses Facebook to ID callers and search for phone numbers, and you can send numbers straight to voicemail by choosing the numbers or using a list of commonly blocked numbers crowdsourced from other users. If you miss a call Hello will let you respond using Facebook Messenger. Facebook says it has no plans to make money from the app directly.

The Verge reports that Microsoft is updating its Band wearable to integrate bike-tracking apps Strava and MapMyRide. The new insights are visible on the Microsoft Health Web Dashboard and can now provide comparisons with an average of other users based on height and weight. It will also show users how well their body is restoring overnight during sleep. And it tracks fitness improvements over time and volume of oxygen used during an exercise so you know what time of day you tend to have your most effective workout. Microsoft Health app for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone will also be updated to support step-counting sensors present in many smartphones.

CNET has a preview of HP’s new back to school Laptops and Hybrids. The $499 Pavilion x360 fold-back hybrid’s 11-inch model has a fanless design with comes with Intel’s Core M, a 1,366×768 touchscreen panel. The $529 13-inch Pavilion x360 comes with Core i3 and i5 and an optional 1920 x 1080p display. The $679 15.6-inch Envy x360 comes in silver and red and uses Core i5 or Core i7 and discrete graphics from Nvidia. HP’s other Pavilion laptops come online May 13 and in stores June 21 in 14”, 15”, and 17” all with optical drives starting at $479. The Pavilion x360 is out in the US May 13. The Envy x360 on June 13 online and June 21 in stores.

An application form to receive a free developer edition of Valve’s HTC Vive virtual reality set has been posted. Go to steamcommunity.com/steamvr/signup and enter your company name, URL, team size, and a detailed description of your VR project and you might just get a headset shipped to you this spring or summer.

News From You:

Jaymz668 and starfuryzeta both pointed out the Engadget article that Tesla emailed investors to let them know that the April 30th announcement from the company will be a battery for the home and a very large utility-oriented battery. No details on how the battery would improve on existing home batteries most often used to store excess power from solar installations. That’s what April 30th is for I expect.

Starfuryzeta marked the BBC story for inclusion that reports Adblock won a judgement in a Hamburg Germany court against German news publishers Die Zeit and Handelsblatt. The publishers claimed Adblock was anticompetitive and threatened company revenues. The court ruled users have a right to use the plug-in.
The Publishers may appeal after the written decision is delivered.

Waffleophagus pointed out the BGR report noting Jay-Z and softbank backed music service Tidal is no longer in the top 700 apps on iPhone in the US. Pandora and Spotify are numbers 3 and 4 in the US. Spotify was not in the top 40 prior to March 31. Tidal has announced an upcoming service called Disovery which will allow independent artists to upload their music directly to the service.

KAPT_KIpper posted a Gizmodo story from the RSA conference about an iOS 8 vulnerability demonstrated by researchers from Skycure Monday. If a device connects to a compromised WiFi access point attackers can generate an SSL certificate that can cause apps and sometimes the whole phone to crash and endlessly reboot. Targets of the attack would have to move out of range to stop the cycle. iOS 8.3 mitigates the effects somewhat. Skycure previously reported the vulnerability to Apple.

 

Discussion Section Links:  

http://fortune.com/2015/04/22/robots-white-collar-ai/

http://www.futuretech.ox.ac.uk/future-employment-how-susceptible-are-jobs-computerisation-oms-working-paper-dr-carl-benedikt-frey-m

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/ai-is-destroying-more-jobs-than-it-creates-what-it-means-and-how-we-can-stop-it/

http://fortune.com/2015/02/25/5-jobs-that-robots-already-are-taking/

http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/creativity-vs-robots

http://www.nesta.org.uk/quiz/will-robot-take-my-job

http://www.cnet.com/news/robobarista-autonomously-makes-latte-taught-by-the-internet/?utm_content=buffer08cfe&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

 

Pick of the day:

jbhannah writes:

For my personal website and a few others that I run, I use a service called Cloudflare for DNS, as well as caching and HTTPS. It works like any other DNS provider, and has a very easy-to-use interface for managing your DNS records. It also provides various levels of caching of pages, scripts, and images on its CDN servers in different parts of the world, which improves your site’s load times and reduces server load, and can even run various optimizations on them to further reduce file sizes and load times. And, it lets you enable HTTPS for your sites, even if you don’t have your own SSL certificate, and without any server configuration—all you need to do is press a button; same with enabling IPv6 access to your site, even if your server doesn’t have IPv6. Best of all, while they do have additional, paid features available, all of what I mentioned and use is available with a free account (as long as you don’t mind sharing an SSL certificate with other sites; you can pay for your domain to have its own certificate). I highly recommend it: https://www.cloudflare.com/

Messages:

Ron Ladd wrote:

There are a number of sources for good high quality music and hdtracks.com is one of them.

Just be sure you know what you are buying and if it is worth what you pay. To quote from a site that has fantastic information on audio, “misinformation and superstition only serve charlatans. Xiph.org has a good article “24/192 music downloads …and why they make no sense” you can find it at
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
Just under the headline is a link to a video clip, “Digital Show and Tell” that is the best 24 minute digital audio vs analog audio explainer that is MUST WATCH for anyone interested in audio, you can find this clip at
http://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml

Ross writes in:

The problem with the twitter vs phone analogy from the conversation with Jenny and Patrick is this: Over the years, laws have been passed to prevent harassment and provide recourse to the victims of telephone harassment. Twitter does not have these protections. Add in the ease of the harasser recruiting aid with a simple hash tag and it gets ugly fast.

Rich from Lovely Cleveland had a good thought:

“Twitter is interested in free speech in so much that it makes them a relevant conduit of information, against which they can serve ads, and when free speech enters into them realm of heinous abuse or bullying, they have the financial interest to curb it so as not to dissuade users. …“free speech” is a charged phrase, and Twitter’s obligation to it is purely commercial (which in this case is leading to an outcome that appears to be morally satisfying).”

Peter added:

I would love to see Twitter accounts require identity verification. …And with this improved level of accountability, if you are getting harassed, go to the police! I would like to see arrests. And one of the first things the police/FBI do when you report death threats or harassment is to tell you not to publicize or draw attention to the fact you have been threatened. It makes the situation 1) harder to investigate 2) invites more trolls. And yet this is never what these people do.

Cody wrote in with the positive side of Twitter DMS:

He wanted to use an artist’s music in a game he was developing and had to go through the long dance of publicly at replying the person getting them to follow him back and THEN being able to DM. “This was somewhat frustrating considering the timed nature of my project, and although you could make the case that the artist should have had other ways to contact him, not being able to do so on Twitter unless we followed each other has a bit annoying.”

=====

Thursday’s guests:  Lamarr Wilson & Justin Robert Young