Scott Johnson joins Tom to talk with Dr. Lixia Zhang from UCLA about Named Data Networking (NDN) and how it could possibly solve many Internet problems, like security and net neutrality concerns.

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Show Notes

Today’s guests: Scott Johnson and Lixia Zhang

Headlines: 

The Electronic Privacy Information Center honored Apple CEO Tim Cook at an event Monday. Cook gave a speech and a half. TechCrunch reports Cook said Apple rejects the idea that “customers should have to make tradeoffs between privacy and security,” saying morality demands it. He took a swipe at companies that are “gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it,” saying “We think that’s wrong” But saved his strongest rhetoric for the US government saying “weakening encryption, or taking it away, harms good people that are using it for the right reasons. And ultimately, I believe it has a chilling effect on our First Amendment rights and undermines our country’s founding principles.” He even quoted Abraham Lincoln saying “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

Venturebeat reports that Skype has fixed a flaw that crashed Skype when you received the characters “http://:” In fact once you GOT that message Skype crashed any time you tried to sign in. The bug appeared on Windows, Android and iOS, but apparently not Skype for Mac or for the Windows tiled interface. In less than 24 hours though Skype fixed the bug so make sure to head to skype.com/download or your mobile phone’s app store and update to the latest version.

TechCrunch reports Cisco and IBM have both acquired OpenStack companies. OpenStack is an open source project that enables users to create their own cloud services, often used in what is called the private cloud. Cisco announced it has purchased private cloud company Piston Cloud Computing. IBM has acquired private cloud service provider Blue Box.

ReCode reports Apple’s Beats has voluntarily recalled the Beats Pill XL speakers after 8 reports of overheating. Beats has sold more than 200,000 of the speakers since November 2013. The speakers can be identified by a lowercase b on the speaker grill and the words beats pill XL on the handle. Apple urges owners to go to apple.com/support/beats-pillxl-recall/ for details on how to return the speakers and get $325.

PCMag.com reports that AMD announced its 6th generation Processors codenamed Carizzo in A8, A10, and FX-Series models. The A8 and A10 APUs feature 10 compute cores (four CPU cores plus six GPU cores) and the FX-Series APUs feature a total of 12 compute cores (four CPU and four GPU).The chip’s use Heterogeneous System Architecture (or HSA) design shares workloads and system memory between the CPU and GPU rather than have the CPU direct everything. The A8 and A10 processors get R6 graphics, and the FX-Series R7. When paired with a discrete graphics card the R6 or R7 APUs will work in conjunction with the discrete GPU to boost graphics performance. Look for laptops with A-Series APUs this month.

News From You:

metalfreak sent us this story from Ars Technica. At long last Microsoft is bringing SSH aka Secure Shell to Windows and PowerShell. Until now Windows lacked any native SSH client/server, however the Windows PowerShell Team has announced that Microsoft will work with and contribute to OpenSSH, the standard for SSH implantation in Unix, to add that functionality to Windows. This will let Unix/Linux and Windows machines securely access each other. The Linux-Windows war is over.

starfuryzeta submitted the Engadget article that the US State of Virginia has marked 70 miles of highway in the northern part of the state as the “Virginia Automated Corridors.” This allows companies who have received approval for their cars to do public road testing of self-driving cars. Nokia’s HERE mapping division will develop 3D maps for the test roads.

doorsrio submitted the TechCrunch report that augmented reality device Magic Leap has launched a development platform. Chief Creative Officer Graeme Devine announced it on stage at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech Digital conference. A developer’s section of the website has been launched where folks can sign up for the SDK, which is coming soon. CEO Rony Abovitz also said the company is out of the R&D phase and transitioning to a real product. Oh and they had author Neal Stephenson on stage to help convince you this is the real world arrival of the Metaverse.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-internet-of-names

http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~lixia/

http://named-data.net/

http://www.networkworld.com/article/2602109/lan-wan/ucla-cisco-more-join-forces-to-replace-tcpip.html

Pick of the Day:

Devulu, genius from the west:

Here is another one for you, and today it’s a Chrome extension.

If you’re like me and use Google chrome with many extensions – each for a different purpose – and want to manage them easily, then SimpleExtManager is here to the rescue.

Features include:
– basic function to enable/disable, access options and uninstall extensions via popup
– customize the popup
– ability to create extension groups
– enable/disable extension groups via popup and right-click menu

Nothing much, but sure saves a lot of time, and is way better than the Chrome extensions page.

Messages: 

mikem.exe+yt writes in:

Hey Tom. Finally getting around to episode 2497 (Run, Spotify, Run) where you had a conversation with Lamarr Wislon about how YouTube would rather you watch videos from their recommended list instead of subscribing to a creator and binge-watching all of their uploads in order.

They make it pretty difficult to binge-watch a single creator. I find myself manually adding videos to the Watch Later list, then moving them from there into a new playlist, then playing that playlist.

Well, after enough of that every day (I watch a lot of youtube), I decided to write a little script that does all that for me. You can specify a user and it will automatically add any new videos as they’re released to the end of the associated playlist in your account.

If there’s anyone in your audience who would benefit from this, have them send me an email and I’ll get them set up. mikem.exe+yt at gmail.com

David says Hello from hot and rainy Florida: 

The New Broadwell cpus are an interesting shift for Intel. They are for most part uninteresting for workstations and high end gaming. The CPU performance is lower than the current Haswell CPUs because they run at a lower clock speed. For other users they are very important because they offer very good graphics performance and much better OpenCL performance than the Haswell CPUs.
As more of programs make use of OpenCL I expect to see more computing power shifting to the GPU and OpenCL from your traditional CPU. Of course when Silverlake comes out and we get a die shrink the clock speed should come up.

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Thursday’s guest:  Justin Robert Young

Veronica Belmont is on and we’ll talk about Google and Facebook’s new tools to protect your privacy and how Millennials get their political news from Facebook. Is this going to make the echo chamber worse?

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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: Veronica Belmont

Headlines: 

Tery Myerson wrote on the Windows blog today that Windows 10 will become available as a free upgrade to existing Windows 7 and Windows 8 users starting July 29. The upgrade is only for PCs and tablets with no announcement for phones or other platforms. Myerson asks users to reserve the free Windows 10 upgrade now by looking for a Windows icon in the system tray and following the prompts. VentureBeat reports to see the reservation icon you must have installed Windows update KB3035583.

The Verge reports Google launched a new privacy and security site at myaccount.google.com. It has tools that walk you through checking your settings including what information is shared with which Google services, what permissions apps have, and what devices you’ve authorized to access your account. It also links off to and consolidates other services like downloading copies of your data and designating a trustee to handle your account.

The Next Web reports Facebook announced the ability to list an OpenPGP key on your Facebook profile. This sllows Facebook to sign notification emails with its own key and send them securely. Key management is only available for the desktop, though Facebook hopes to add mobile support int he future.

Eurogamer reports that Lego has launched a Minecraft-style game called Lego Worlds developed by TT Games and available from Steam Early Access for $14.99. The game will feature familiar lego game elements as well as procedurally-generated worlds, “discoveries and unlocks”, ridable creatures, vehicles and a day/night cycle. The main differences from Minecraft appear to be a focus on creativity rather than survival, and the ability to change vast chunks of the terrain at will.

It’s Computex time which means Asus announced more ZenPad tablets than we could possibly tell you about here. Anandtech does a good job of boiling down the announcement, breaking down the ZenPad 8 and the ZenPad S8. The 8 has LTE, a 1280 x 800 screen and a1.2GHZ Silvermont Atom processor. The S8 has a 2.33 GHz Silvermont Atom processor, a 2048 x 1536 screen and a USB Type C connector. It also suports a 1024 pressure level stylus Thery also have interchangable back plates one of which has a built in battery and another with 6 speakers that can deliver 5.1 DTS surround sound. From your tablet cover. Asus also announced a phone called Selfie with front and rear 13-megapixel cameras and the Zen Watch 2 which has a power button that looks like Apple’s ‘digital crown’ in 49-mm or 45-mm versions. None of these products have price or release dates yet.

Reuters reports BlackBerry and Ryan Seacrest-backed Typo have settled their dispute over Typo’s Blackberry-like keyboard case for phones and tablets. The settlement is that Typo won’t sell the cases for phones anymore but they can sell them for devices with screens larger than 7.9-inches.

Nvidia has unleashed its latest flagship GPU the GTX 980 Ti according to the Verge. The GTX 980 Ti sports 22 SM units, 2,816 Stream Processing Units, 6GB of VRAM with a clock frequency of 1000Mhz and texture filtering rate of 176 gigatexels per sec. The card achieved 4K performance well over 30fps on Battlefield 4 and Shadow of Mordor with max settings. The GPU is future-proofed with support for DirectX 12 and Nvidia’s new Virtual Reality API, GameWorks VR. The GTX 980 Ti will retail for $649.99. (A bit cheaper than the $1,000 Titan X)

TechCrunch is reporting that GoPro has announced the Hero+LCD. The camera targets YouTubers with an LCD touchscreen, 1080p 60fps recording, and WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. The Hero+LCD will release June 7th for $299.

Reuters reports Intel has agreed to buy FPGA chip maker Altera for $16.7 billion. Intel will be able to bundle its chips with Altera’s programable chips which are often used to do things like speed up Web searches.

TechCrunch passes along that a  Wall Street Journal’s source says Apple will reveal its new streaming music service next week at WWDC and it will cost $10 a month for unlimited listening. It will not have an ad-supported tier though there may be some free tracks available. New channels will come to iTunes radio too hosted by Dr. Dre and other talented recruited from places like BBC1.

News From You:

habichuelacondulce submitted the Guardian writeup of the fact that the US Patriot Act section 215 dealing with bulk surveillance was allowed to expire Sunday night meaning such data collection must be stopped int he US for the time being. The USA Freedom Act is expected to be revived and passed later this week to allow a more limited form of data collection to be allowed. The Freedom Act does not allow the NSA to collect records in bulk and includes rules on transparency.

tm204 flagged the CBC writeup about the woman who dropped off an original Apple computer for recycling at Milpitas’ California’s “Clean Bay Area.” She said she cleaned out her garage after her husband died and didn’t want a receipt and did not leave a name. Only 200 of the first Apple’s were made. Clean Bay Area sold the computer to a private collection for $200,000 and is seeking the woman to split the money with her.

KAPT_Kipper submitted the Engadget report that passes along info from Nikkei that Nintendo’s forthcoming NX console could use Android as the operating system. Nintendo has said it will not discuss NX until 2016.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/1/8699719/pew-survey-politics-news-source-facebook-millenials

http://www.journalism.org/2015/06/01/millennials-political-news/

 

Pick of the Day:

Randy writes:

Since telling you what the weather is like seems like the thing to do, it’s humid here in Michigan! I have another YouTube channel that I’d like to suggest as a pick The Ben Heck Show is great for makers and maker-curious (like myself) to learn and get ideas. I’ve always described it as “The New Yankee Workshop for geeks”. I started watching around the time he made automatic light-sensing glasses that will flip his sunglasses down. More recently, he made a portable Dreamcast, made a DIY PIC32 dev board, and did a tabletop CNC tutorial. He’s been doing this for 4 years, so there’s a ton of back-catalogue to watch as well as a new episode every week.

Thank you for all you do and keep up the great work!

Messages: 

Drew writes in:

On Friday’s show, the subject of using VPNs to fool geofencing restrictions came up again, and Darren mentioned his dream of living in a world where so many people use VPNs that there’s really no telling where anyone is physically located, because the IP addresses are all obfuscated.

This made me think of an analogy with area codes, now that we all have cell phones. Not all that long ago, it was very practical to reverse-lookup a caller’s area code and be very confident in their physical location. With the prevalence of cell phones, and the ability to keep your phone number when you move or change carriers, and synchronized address books that keep any of us from knowing more than a handful of numbers….area codes mean very little these days.

I think that Randall Munroe summed it up most succinctly:

https://xkcd.com/1129/

As always, love the show…

Allan P. wrote about Google’s Project Jaquard:

In the early 1800s, Joseph Jacquard basically invented punched cards as a way of programming a machine. He designed a loom which could automatically and repeatably produce very complex patterns in fabric. The pattern was stored on a loop of cards; at each “clock cycle” of the weaving process, the machine would lift (or not lift) colored threads based on the pattern of holes in the next card in the chain.

Jacquard inspired both Babbage and (much later) Hollerith. I think Jacquard is the perfect name for a Google project which combines technology and woven cloth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom

In a slightly belated reaction to the Tesla Powerwall Alex wrote:

I used to design and oversee production of diesel tanks, systems support and enclosures for large commercial generators (think about the size of a truck trailer when enclosed and a 18 cylinder engine with several thousand gallons of diesel underneath it).
One of the big consumers of these systems was data centers. Facebook, Google, NSA, etc would buy these by the dozens and have grids of them around their data centers. If there was a brownout or blackout, these generators would kick on and keep the data centers at least partially operational until the grid came back up.
If Elon can prove the concept of these batteries, develop the technology further, and scale it, this could be a huge market for them. Currently a tank (empty) and enclosure with support systems could run around half of a million dollars and the generator could run twice that.

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Tuesday’s guest: Patrick Beja

Darren Kitchen is on the show and we’ll talk about Professor Kim Heung-Kwang’s interview with the BBC claiming 6,000 North Korean hackers have the power to destroy whole cities. Plus Len Peralta rejoices over the Cavs success. And illustrates the show.

MP3

Using a Screen Reader? click here

Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) available 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: Darren Kitchen and Len Peralta

Headlines: 

Apple posted its recommended workaround for the iPhone Messages bug according to the Verge. The support document directs iPhone users to reply to the malicious message. Apple is working on a fix, The bug is also affecting iOS users of Twitter and Snapchat who have notifications on for those services. With Twitter it crashes the phone but causes no lasting damage. With snapchat it makes the chat history with the sender inaccessible.

PC World reports on Google’s announcement that Levi’s is the first partner for its smart fabric called Project Jacquard. The experiment weaves electronics into cloth to create the equivalent of touch screen controls. Demos at Google I/O showed fabric that could manipulate a 3D image on a display, change the songs on a phone and control lights. Think of it like a mouse in your pants…. wait….

Reuters reports Path sold some of its apps to South Korea’s Daum Kakao. If you’re making the remark “who uses Path anymore?” you are giving yourself away as not Indonesian. INSTANT DATA MINING. IN any case the makers’ of Kakao Talk didn’t get all of Path. Just the social network and the Path Messenger. Path Places, which enables connections between customers and business like restaurants, stays with Path, though it has been disbaled for the time being. Path has also been developing non-Path branded apps like GIF creation app Kong.

A Washington Post reports cites a new report from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights that says digital security is essential freedom of expression and warns weakening encryption in some countries could undermine that freedom worldwide. The report was written by special rapporteur David Kaye, Director of the International Justice Clinic at UC-Irvine. . Kaye wrote governments “should avoid all measures that weaken the security that individuals may enjoy online, such as backdoors, weak encryption standards and key escrows.” because it results in weaker security for everyone.

Tech Crunch reports that Apple acquired augmented reality startup Metaio on May 22nd. The company launched back in 2003 as an offshoot of a project at Volkswagen. 9 to 5 Mac’s Mark Gurman, who has good sources, believes Apple is working on an augmented reality feature for its Maps app, and of course there’s that VR headset that Apple patented earlier this year.

The Verge reports the welcome news that you can finally use GIF’s on Facebook! Mostly. If you drop a link to a GIF which has already been uploaded elsewhere on the Internet, the GIF will appear. Upoloading a GIF directly to Facebook doesn’t seem to work just yet.

Engadget reports that Google is broadening out its Google Sign-In feature with Smart Lock for Passwords. In a Google Developers blog post Smart Lock for Passwords is described as a “frictionless” method for users to sign-in to apps on Android and sites in Chrome. Smart Lock works a bit like a password locker. Once a user saves a password to Smart Lock, they can skip entering their credentials on all of their authenticated Chrome and Android devices. For instance, Netflix is a partner meaning once you add Netflix to Smart Lock say on a laptop, you wouldn’t have to go through the painful process of signing in again on an Android TV.

News From You:

KAPT_Kipper sent this TorrentFreak story that Hola VPN sells users Bandwidth to others through a service called Luminati. An 8chan message board operator, Fredrick Brennan claims that Luminati was used to attack his website. Hola says it has suspended the user that misued its service and it would cooperate with any law enforcement activity related to the attacks. Hola’s FAQ makes it clear that it uses bandwidth from Hola users’ computers when they are sitting idle and the company defines idle as meaning a device is connected to electric power (not on battery), no mouse or keyboard activity is detected, and the device is connected to the local network or Wifi (not on cellular)). Any users who don’t want this to happen can buy Hola for $5 per month.

kyro5976 sent us the Cult of Mac report that more than half of the the founding artists in Jay-Z’s Tidal music streaming service may have to pull their music from site after Jay-Z failed to reach a music licensing agreement with Sony. Among the artists affected: Taylor Swift’s man Calvin Harris Alicia Keys, Daft Punk, Usher, and uh, Beyonce. Jay-Z was apparently hoping a deal with Sprint was going to cover the cost of Sony’s licensing terms, but apparently Sprint has decided that they are not in a “financial investment” situation.

Discussion Section Links:  

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32925495

http://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-countries-that-could-lose-internet-easily-2014-12

http://www.businessinsider.com/internet-outages-reported-in-north-korea-2014-12

http://bgp.he.net/AS131279#_asinfo

Pick of the Day:

Joel the Yooper DTNS Nickle-backer:

For a long time I have drooled from afar the world of home automation as the solutions were either too expensive or too complex for the whole family. The I saw this on the shelf for only $24 bucks. LINK Starter Pack by GE. It comes with a WINK based hub and 2 60-watt equivalent dimmable LED bulbs. I’ve found it to be a great way to test out this new tech trend without getting too invested. And if I do decide to go further, there’s a bunch of compatible products.

I don’t know the price elsewhere but it’s listed as a “special buy” on Home Depot’s site. Whatever that means.

Keep up the great work.

PS: I promise I don’t work for Home Depot.

Messages: 

Toby Atticus Fraley:

Just a quick tip, the Kickstarter succeeded!! Pittsburgh International Airport is getting a Robot Repair shop, opening this September. This is the first time a public art installation for the airport has been crowdsourced! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tobyfraley/robot-repair-shop

Co-Executive Producer Damien from Gloomy-outside-my-hospital-window-Maitland, Australia:

Hello Tom, Jenny and <insert contributor here>

When I heard about testing of Google Tone I immediately cringed at the thought of security implications.

You (Tom) made an offhand comment about malware bridging the air gap and moved on.
I’m astounded that no one else seems to have made any other comments about the potential risks associated with a technology designed to bypass one of the most fundamental security concepts. That a stand alone, unconnected computer is unhackable.

I realize that it is an optional extension and the user has to click to confirm, but we know how easy it is to convince people to click on links that they shouldn’t.

Thanks for all your work on the show

Dave from too-damn-sunny-and-not-enough-rainy Los Angeles:

As an avid phone photographer and videographer (also known as “Dad”), I was very excited to hear that Google’s new Photos app is going to support unlimited photos AND videos! … When I went to turn on the new feature on my account, the options for storage were “High Quality (unlimited storage) – great quality at reduced file size” (my emphasis) and “Original – Full resolution that counts against your quota.”

My deduction from these descriptions is that the “unlimited storage” will still be compressing your files to be smaller, meaning Photos isn’t necessarily suitable for our primary backup, but it would still be a great way to have our entire library of family photos available in the cloud. Can you confirm that this is how the unlimited storage will work?

And Ted who’s Lumia 1020 supports RAW photo backups did a little more research:

I went directly to Flickr and Google. Neither one supports RAW at this time. Limits per unit upload:
Google: photo 75MB, Video 10GB
Flickr: photo 200MB, Video 1GB

Dwayne here from somewhere in the desert which I can not wait to leave.

You said you have never seen the sharing of photos with a link. Microsoft has been doing this for years and I love it. MSFT have some good features here like giving the sender rights to allow the receiver to just view, download or edit, time span that they have access and it is built in to outlook and OneDrive. This way you can email the link to anyone without any restrictions. Also the receiver does not need to be logged into anything. Love the show!

Sent from my Windows Phone

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Monday’s guest: Veronica Belmont