Anthony Carboni joins us to talk about Amazon buying Twitch and Facebook fighting Clickbait.

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Show Notes

Today’s guest: Anthony Carboni, co-host of We Have Concerns

Patreon link: http://www.patreon.com/wehaveconcerns

Headlines

Facebook announced today it’s altering its news feed algorithm to combat clickbait. Facebook’s algorithms will note when a high number of people click on a link and then come right back to Facebook. They’ll also note if links receive low numbers of comments and likes. Those are signs of clickbait and the Facebook algorithm will not hesitate to demote such links. After enough people have been suckered into clicking to prove its clickbait. 

Ars Technica spent the morning collecting all the news outlets whose sources SWORE this time Twitch was really getting bought. By Amazon this time. We know they said it was Google earlier this summer TWICE, but this time the source familiar with the situation were absolutely briefed on the matter. The price is still reportedly around $1 billion. An announcement came at 1 PM in a blog post from Twitch CEO Emmett Shear confirming the deal. He wrote they chose Amazon because they “believe in our community, they share our values and long-term vision, and they want to help us get there faster.” Twitch will remain an independent company owned by Amazon.

According to Engadget, Tivo is releasing a limited edition Roamio OTA DVR where the OTA stands for over the air. The device will cost $49.99 along with a 15 dollar a month subscription for TIVO’s channel guide. Just like the $150 more expensive Roamio that has cablecard slots the OTA has 500 GB of storage, four tuners and can use the separate TiVo Stream device to stream live and pre-recorded videos on other devices. It just doesn’t have cablecard slots. Apparently cable card slots are worth $150.

Reuters passes along a report from Xinhua that China plans to release another operating system of its own by October. The first version would be for desktops, which China has done before with its own distro of Linux, but later would come OS’s for mobile devices. There’s also talk of an app store. Ni Guangnan head of an official OS development alliance established in March, hopes domestically developed software could replace desktop OSs witin two years and mobile OSs within 3-5 years.

The BBC reports on denial of service attacks carried out against most of the popular game networks like Playstation Network, Xbox Live, BattleNet and more. At the same time, John Smedley. president of Sony Online Entertainment had his plane diverted to Phoenix after a bomb threat. No one was hurt. Multiple groups have claimed responsibility for the attacks. The US FBI is investigating.

News From You

spsheridan posted a Geek.com article about for NC State University undergrads developing nail polish that can detect drugs. Ankesh Madan, Stephen Gray, Tasso Von Windheim, and Tyler Confrey-Maloney have developed a polish they call “Undercover Colors.” The polish contains chemicals that react to Rohypnol and GHB and change colors in its presence.

AcidBeaver85 passes along a Venture Beat story that Coin has changed its mind about double-charging long-waiting backers. Coin first announced that the finished product would be delayed until Spring 2015 and that backers who already paid would have to pay again if they participated in a beta. That didn’t go over so well. Coin now says backer that pre-order customers who opt into the Beta program will still receive the non-beta final product without further charge. The Coin beta program is expected to roll out in the fourth quarter.

MacBytes flags us to the The Verge article about LG’s plan to announce at circular smart watch next week. The LG G Watch R — presumably R stands for Round, will comes with a button on the side, unlike LG’s original square smart watch. The round watch will also have a digital step counter, distance meter and compass. The video also seemed to tease that the display would be a perfect circle, without the black bar at the bottom of the Moto 360 teased at Google I/O.

MikePkennedy pointed out the Next Web story that Mozilla will launch a Firefox OS phone in India this week. The CloudFX, developed by Intex Technologies has a 3.5-inch display, 1GHz processor, 2-megapixel rear-facing camera, dual SIM Bluetooth and WiFi. Hindi and Tamil are supported out of the box. Customers can order it from Sanpdeal.com for less than 2000 Rs which is about $33 US. 

Discussion Links: 

http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/25/6066295/amazon-reportedly-buying-twitch-for-over-1-billion

http://recode.net/2014/08/25/amazon-will-buy-twitch-for-more-than-1-billion/

http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/25/6066509/why-it-makes-sense-for-amazon-to-buy-twitch

http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/25/facebook-vs-clickbait/?ncid=rss

http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/08/news-feed-fyi-click-baiting/

Plug of the Day:

Plug of the day: Daily Tech News Show Shirt with Mustafa from thepolarcat.com’s logo now available in white, black and Ash. Look in the podcasts section.         

Pick of the Day: Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is a CCG (collectible card game a la Magic: The Gathering) from Blizzard Entertainment featuring characters from the WoW universe. As someone who never played WoW, on it’s face, it didn’t sound that interesting, but, as someone who played a little Magic back in the day, the second I loaded this onto my iPad, I was hooked. You can play your friends or random people in friendly matches, ranked matches or an arena mode where you draft a deck and then play it on the spot. The game is packed with excellent graphics, animations and music; ever-expanding content; and a vast and active community. The game is free to play with in-app purchases (totally not required) and is available for PC, Mac and iPad with Windows 8 and Android tablet support to come in the near future. Too much fun not to pass along.

Tuesday’s guest: Molly Wood

Darren Kitchen is on the show and we’ll talk about the hack of Secret that means your secrets can never fully be Secret. Also how to hack traffic lights. Plus Len Peralta is here to illustrate the show!

MP3

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Peter Wells is on the show and we’ll talk about Soundcloud’s new advertising-supported rev share plan for artists. Is Soundcloud becoming TOO YouTube-like?

MP3

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

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guest: Peter Wells, of Reckoner, Australia

Headlines

The Verge has been chatting with sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans who say September 30th is tentatively when a press announcement of the next version of Windows is scheduled. The OS, codenamed Threshold is expected to come out as a technical preview sometime in September or October. What is guessed by many to end up being called Windows 9, will have a new mini start menu, get rid of the charms bar, and have a few other UI tweaks. We might even get a version of the Cortana virtual assistant. It’s possible we’ll get detail son the unification of Windows RT and Windows Phone as well. 

Reuters, citing subscription tech news site The Information, reports that EBay told potential candidates for the job of Paypal CEO about a possible spinoff of Paypal. Whether that would mean part or all of Paypal would be spun off, we don’t know. Ebay recently resisted demands by activist shareholder Carl Icahn to separate PayPal from its parent company.

Engadget reports Comcast will officially launch its TV service over the Internet on several college campuses this year, including Bridgewater College, Drexel University, Emerson College, Lasell College and the University of Delaware. The service comes included with room and board and can only be used on campus, although among the 80 channels are ESPN and HBO which can be accessed off campus through the WatchESPN and HBO Go apps. Comcast hopes to add other universities soon. A company called Philo provides similar service to Harvard, Stanford and Yale. 

GigaOm reports the class action lawsuit put forth by Max Schrems Europe v Facebook campaign is going forward in Austria. The Vienna Regional Court gave Facebook Ireland four weeks to respond to the claimants’ accusations of widespread breaches of data protection law.

According to CNET, Google Chrome is now available for Cubans to download at google.co.cu. Google executives reportedly visited Cuba in June to push for greater Internet access. US sanctions make it difficult for US businesses to do anything in Cuba and Google hinted as much in their G+ post about the launch but hope to figure out how to make more tools available in sanctioned countries. This will surely be highly anticipated by the five percent of Cubans that US NGO Freedom House estimates have regular access to the Internet in Cuba.

The New York Times reports Soundcloud will begin to incorporate advertising in its audio streaming service, starting with Red Bull, Jaguar and Comedy Central. The revenue will mostly go to artists and labels. A new program called On Soundcloud Premier will let select organizations and indie artists join a revenue sharing plan. Big publishers like BMG all the way own to indies like rapper GoldLink are part of the first group in the Premier program. Soundcloud said they also plan to provide a subscription service that would allow listeners to pay to make the ads go away.

The Next Web reports iBeacon-based company Estimote is promoting something they call “nearables” as opposed to wearables. Estimote stickers have integrated accelerometer and temperature sensors and can work with more than just iBeacon. A developer kit is being unveiled today with 10 Estimote Stickers for $99. 

News From You

tm204 submitted the MIT News post about a paper describing how to take discarded car batteries and recycles materials from them into longer-lasting solar panels. The panels use a compound called perovskite which requires lead. Rather than produce the lead from raw ore, the researchers can take the lead from one car battery and make enough solar panels to power 30 households. The paper will appear in in Energy and Environemental Science by professors Angela M. Belcher and Paula T. Hammond, graduate student Po-Yen Chen, and three others.

bmbuffalo posted the imgur gallery showing how a fully fucntional 1 Kilobyte hard drive was made by a user called smelly string in Minecraft. A second, larger unit created by The0JJ can store 4KB of data. The devices use Redstone to power pistons that represent binary values by pushing a solid or clear block in front of the redstone signal. Solid blocks are used as ones and clear blocks as zeroes.

funkaround sends along a Wired.com article with the depressing news that Apple’s iMesssage is being taken over by spammers, specifically those hawking fake luxury goods. According to one security analyst, iMessage is a “spammers dream” because it spans the entire Apple ecosystem and Apple scripts can churn out masses of messages. You can report spam to Apple in a tedious process involving taking screenshots or just turn off iMessage until Apple gets the hint.

tekkyn00b pointed out the Android Central article that T-Mobile is heating up the US mobile wars offering a free year of unlimited LTE service if a customer can get someone to switch from Sprint, Verizon or AT&T to T-Mobile. That means the referrer and the new customer both get the free year. Sprint for its part has offered an unlimited talk, text and data plan for $60 a month. 

Discussion Links: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/business/media/popular-and-free-soundcloud-is-now-ready-for-ads.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/business/media/popular-and-free-soundcloud-is-now-ready-for-ads.html

http://blog.soundcloud.com/2014/08/21/introducing-on-soundcloud/

http://thisisadynasty.tumblr.com/post/87945465547/brb-deleting-soundcloud

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2014/08/21/soundcloud-introduces-ads-first-time-brings-revenue-sharing-creators/

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/21/soundcloud-ads-musicians-major-labels

Plug of the Day:

Like tech history? I’ve teamed up with Scott Johnson to put out monthly looks at what happened in history this month. For 99 cents you get what happened on each day of the month that helped make the tech we sue today, plus illustrations from Scott Johnson. The latest book covering things that happened in September, JUST hit the store today! Check it out for 99 cents each at tommerrittbooks.com or just search Amazon.

Pick of the Day: You Need A Budget via Mike Reed

I would like to suggestion YNAB (You Need a Budget) as a pick. This is a great piece of software, and set of basic rules to assist you in managing your finances. Their software is not cheap at $60, but it is very much worth it. There is a Windows and Mac version for the desktop, and iOS, Android, and Kindle Fire for mobile. The killer feature is Dropbox synchronization. I can be at the grocery store, make my purchase and as I walk out of the store, input the transaction into my mobile device. It immediately updates through Dropbox to any other client, and shows me what the budget for that category was, and what it is now. The company is extremely supportive with numerous live classes to learn the process and software, and a great and helpful online community. I recommend this software to people who need help, and people who don’t. It is a great way to stay on top of your finances, and set great goals for the future.

Friday’s Guest: Darren Kitchen of hak5.org and Len Peralta of all the arts!

Jeff Cannata is on the show. We’ll talk about Twitter’s new policy of removing photos of dead family members and how it ran right into free speech issues with the videos of reporter James Foley’s death.

MP3

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

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes