Patrick Beja is on today and we’ll talk about the FTC suing AT&T over the word “unlimited,” YouTube considering ad-free subscriptions, and a company that wants to pay you $50 to film your neighborhood 24/7.
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Show Notes
Today’s guest: Patrick Beja, DTNS Grand High Inquisitor and host of Le Rendez-vous Tech
Headlines
The Verge reports that the US Federal Trade Commission is suing AT&T for throttling speeds of its unlimited mobile data customers. In a press release the FTC said AT&T has “misled million of its smartphone customers” by slowing down their data speeds after they’ve used up a certain amount of data in a month. According to the FTC, 3.5 million unique customers have had speeds slowed more than 25 million times. “The issue here is simple: ‘unlimited’ means unlimited,” said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. AT&T issued a strongly worded statement saying, “We have been completely transparent with customers since the very beginning.” and “The FTC’s allegations are baseless and have nothing to do with the substance of our network management program.”
The Verge reports Verizon’s latest Droid from Motorola was announced today. The Droid Turbo has 5.2-inch screen with quad HD, Snapdragon 805, 3 GB of RAM, 21-megapixel camera and a 3900 mAh battery. It’s similar to the Moto X but with better specs. It comes with a Turbo Charger than can add 8 hours of battery life on a 15 minute charge. Droid Turbo will launch with KitKat but get Lollipop after release. It arrives Oct. 30th for $200 on contract for 32GB and $250 for 64 GB.
BBC News reports that Google is working on technology to diagnose cancer and heart disease much earlier, using nano particles that can identify slight changes in a person’s biochemistry. The nano particles would enter a patient’s bloodstream in a pill, and communicate with a wrist-worn sensor. The Google X project is not meant to be a consumer device. The project lead, molecular biologist Dr Andrew Conrad, made clear that Google would invent the technology and license it to medical partners. It would not be comemrcialised or monetized directly by Google. So no adsense in your bloodstream.
ZDNet reports on a report from security firm FireEye called “APT28: A window into Russia’s cyberespionage operations?” The report describes an Advanced Persistent Threat focused on collecting intelligence from military, security and governmental organizations in eastern Europe. The report notes the malware involved were developed in a Russian-language environment and 96% was compiled during working hours 8AM- 6Pm Monday – Friday in Moscow’s timezone. FireEye believes APT28 is likely sponsored by Russia’s government but showed no direct links.
TechCrunch reports Tim Cook, speaking at the Wall Street Journal D technology conference, said Apple Pay activated one million credit cards in its first 72 hours. According to The Verge, when Cook was asked about retailers choosing not to support Apple Pay, he said, “In the long arc of time you’re only relevant as a merchant if your customers love you,” and called the CVS and Rite Aid incident “a skirmish.”
Be prepared to pour a little out for plasma TVs. LG says it will wind down its plasma TV business by the end of November and switch to LCD-based technology for its TVs. Samsung is the last major player manufacturing plasma TVs. This also confirms the “Tom Merritt buys TV tech that soon dies” principle as his lat two TVs were plasma and DLP.
TechCrunch reports the W3C published its recommendation of HTML5, the final version of the standard. Browsers already support most of HTML5’s features but the standard was still open for revision until now. Non-interoperable features, like support for DRM, have been moved to HTML 5.1.
The Wall Street Journal reports Facebook announced it’s Q3 earnigns of $3.2 billion in revenue with adjusted EPS of 43 cents. Analysts expected revenue of $3.1 billion and 40 cents a share. Daily active users was 864 million with mobile making up 703 million. Monthly active Users was 1.35 billion up 2.27% with mobile making up 1.12 billion up 4.67%. But what about the teeeens?
News From You
metalfreak posted the liliputing article about researchers at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology that have developed an LCD screen that can hold a static image for years without power. It uses an optically rewritable liquid crystal display (ORWLCD) that does not require an electric current to display an image.
habichuelcondulce sent in the Washington Post article about T-Mobile upgrading its network to make surveillance more difficult. The upgrade involves using A5/3 encryption on 2G GSM networks. Stronger encryption is already used on 3G and 4G service. An estimated 13 percent of cellular connections used 2G technology in 2013 in the US compared to 68.4% worldwide.
StarfleetMedical sent in the howtogeek.com post describing a package manager in Windows 10 called OneGet. The Linux-style package maagement system ships as part of PowerShell. It’s also available as part of the Windows Management Framework 5.0 Preview for Windows 8.1. Microsoft’s Garret Serack wrote about the new feature at Technet. Install-Package -Name VLC for instant would download and install VLC.
Discussion Links: Placemeter
Pick of the Day: MoveMouse via Allison Sheridan
This one might be too obscure but I bet you’ll still like it.
One of my blind listeners asked if there was a way to move the cursor on a Mac by a specific distance on screen. Slau said that sometimes there’s an unlabeled element on screen that he needs to click, and if someone else could tell him where it was relative to a labeled element AND he could move the cursor by precise increments, he could get to the unlabeled element.
So…Dorothy wrote him an application to do it! She’s packaged it up pretty nice, and I did a blog post on it so there’s a link for download.
Wednesday’s guest: Andrew Mayne
