DTNS 2499 – Light the Way to Tortillas

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comJustin Young joins the show to talk about the latest reason why Apple TV rumors won’t be true, Uber’s autonomous car research and how LED lights in the grocery store can help you find the tortillas you like. Plus Len Peralta illustrates the show!

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Show Notes

Today’s Guest: Justin Robert Young and Len Peralta

Headlines

Happy Birthday Puck-Man!
Hey that Apple TV service that Apple never announced is coming? It got delayed again. Re/Code reports that according to “industry executives familiar with Apple’s plans” Apple wants to include live local TV programming. That’s a tall order. Even CBS and ABC can’t get the rights to stream local channels in their various apps. All this mean that all those rumors that Apple would announce the service at WWDC and launch it in the autumn are likely to be wrong.

There’s a new kind of car cruising the streets of Pittsburgh. Actually it’s a Ford, but the Pittsburgh Business Times took a photograph of a car which has the words “Uber Advanced Technologies Center” on the side, and a box of electronic components on the roof. The Verge reached out to Uber, which said the Ford is NOT a self-driving car, but rather “part of our early research regarding mapping, safety and autonomy systems.” As you may recall, Uber has set up a research center in a strategic partnership with Carnegie Mellon University. In less exciting news the Pirates have already lost six games in extra innings this year making thier record 18 and 22.

9to5 Mac which is actually really good about finding out things before Apple is ready to announce them, has rounded up everything it knows about iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 ahead of next month’s WWDC announcements. A lot of it you’ve heard before but the big takeaway is both OS updates will focus on quality which means a lot of reliability improvements, fewer bugs but also fewer splashy features. Although one feature called rootless, would restrict access to certain files even from Admin-level users as a measure to combat malware.

Ars Technica reports Australian Security researcher Troy Hunt reported Friday morning that data from subscribers to AdultFriendFinder.com is a available in 15 spreadsheets posted on site protected by Tor privacy. The data included 3.8 million addresses as well as age, zip code, sexual orientation and even things like whether the user was seeking an extramarital affair. The spreadsheets include data for current, former and even deleted accounts.
PC World reports Firefox will begin testing advertising tiles based on a user’s browsing history. The ads will be called Suggested Tiles and will appear on a user’s new tab page. Ad display selection happens inside the browser on the user’s machine and only a minimal amount of data leaves the browser. Yo can try it out by getting a build from Firefox’s beta channel next week. Nightly test builds have contained the feature since last summer.

TechCrunch reports Korea’s Yello Mobile, which has acquired 61 companies over the past year, just picked up Singapore-based Gushcloud. Gushcloud is an influencer marketing platform in Southeast ASia, which means it pays people to tweet and vlog and such about stuff. Yello says it plans to acquire 20 more marketing companies across Asia this year. An interesting note is that when Yello Mobile acquires a company it leaves the founders in charge and lets them continue to build the companies as if they were still independent.

TechCrunch reports that the world’s leading seller of virtual stickers — messaging app Line — is trying out a music service with some of its users in Thailand. Line Music is available for IOS and Android there and integrates into the chat app to share songs with friends and post to timelines. The music service costs the equivalent of $2 a month, though the first month is free.Line has a YouTube like TV service, a payments platform, an Uber like service in Japan and makes most of its money on in-app purchases for games.
PC World reports that Pebble will start shipping its latest smartwatch next Wednesday May 27th and finish manufacturing all orders by the end of May. According the project’s Kickstarter page by mid-June every contributor should be able to track their shipment. Next week, Pebble will introduce new Android and iOS mobile apple that only work with the Pebble Time models.

Oh and hey if you were wondering who it was that was trying to buy Salesforce— and why wouldn’t you be— CNBC reports it was Microsoft the whole time. Likely in a clever mask. People familiar with the situation said Microsoft offered as much as $55 billion. But Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said NOT ENOUGH and wanted as much as $70 billion.

News From You:

TVSTRavis submitted the top story on the subreddit today. A Consumerist article from a couple days ago reports that General Motors attorney Harry Lightsey told a public US Copyright Office hearing that software in GM cars is licensed to the owner of the car. This is similar to claims we discussed regarding John Deere tractors. The Office is expected to issue a ruling in July.

johnsie776 posted the Ars Technica story that researchers from Cambridge University found an estimated 500 million Android phones do not completely wipe data when users choose the factory reset option, even if full disk encryption is on. The researchers were able to recover login credentials, text messages, email and contacts from 21 phones running Android 2.3 to 4.3. The findings are published in the research paper, “ Security Analysis of Android Factory Resets.”

Discussion Links: 

http://www.engadget.com/2015/05/22/philips-led-vlc-navigation/?ncid=rss_truncated

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/philips-creates-store-shopping-assistant-with-leds-and-smart-

phonehttp://blog.bytelight.com/post/93503988148/place-2014-recap-finding-technologies-to-scale#.VV9yaFnBzGc

http://website-assets.bytelight.com/assets/how_it_works-1ee62918322ee289a0c7d315b2554cd0.jpg

http://www.bytelight.com/http://phys.org/wire-news/193743383/carrefours-led-supermarket-lighting-from-philips-helps-shoppers.html

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150504005274/en/Floor-Ceiling-Philips-Showcases-Latest-Connected-Lighting#.VV9x11nBzGc

http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2015/05/tone-experimental-chrome-extension-for.html

Pick of the Day: The Rufus Cuff

dash2justice was listening to Veronica wishing that the Apple Watch could work on it’s own without having to be tethered to her phone, and has an alternative to the Apple Watch. The Rufus Cuff is a smart watch that has a 3″ screen and can either be tethered to your phone or can run on it’s own because it runs full android Kit Kat (with support for future OS updates). So it can run on it’s own but will stand out. But think about all the cool wrist computers like oh, I don’t know, maybe THE PIPBOY.”

Engadget wrote: “It connects to your Android or iPhone via Bluetooth for mobile data, making calls and sending texts, but it’s running a full version of Google’s mobile OS and can hook on to WiFi if you’re in a cellular dead-zone”

Messages of the Day

I enjoyed the discussion you had with Allison yesterday about social media and other technology. The introduction of the telephone was compared to what is being said about the internet. I am 79 remember when many people didn’t have a phone. My mother would often send me to the neighbors to tell them someone had call our house for them. I remember the family sitting around to listen to the radio. In 1960 , my wife and I moved 2000+ miles from home. Long distant call were expensive and only used for emergencies. We had a stretch of five years without being able to visit family and friends. Now I have daughter who lives in the Seattle area, a granddaughter who lives in Colorado Springs with three of her own children. We Skype with them several times a week. I have been able to re-establish relationships with high school and college classmates with Facebook. Although I don’t understand why kids will text each other when standing next to one another, I prefer the technology we have available today.

Bill Burlingame
Huntsville, AL

Hi Tom, Jenny, et al,

On Wednesday Llamar was talking about his disappointment in ad block. I understand that it is tough as a creator to see a revenue source blocked by the user, but there has to be a reason they are choosing to do this. Advertisements on the web are annoying to me, and while I want the creators I love to get paid, I want them to get paid because I am enjoying content, not because I am annoyed. I run add block on my machine and would on my phone with no reservation because I support the content I want to support (like this show) of my own accord. Didn’t make me a free loading jerk.

Anthony from finally thawed Maine

Ted Dushane from lovingly academic Ann Arbor, Michigan.

I listened with interest to your discussion of the very bad practice of using security questions.

My wife and I have developed a workaround that I recommend for your audience:

Following are the rules for our system:

(1) make up a secret phrase which will apply to all answers. Call it:

OURPERSONALPHRASE

(2) examine each security question. For each one, determine the subject of the question, call it:

SUBJECT

(3) the answer to the question will then be:

OURPERSONALPHRASESUBJECT

(4) Almost all sites give you several optional questions, but in case they force one of them to have a date for the answer, my wife and I have chosen a date which we always use for that question. Obviously, it is not a date of any importance to us but one we determined using a random number generator. We have never found a site requiring more than one date among the answers.

Here are 2 examples, where the phrase chosen is “I love summer”

Security question: “What is your favorite touring car?”

Answer: Ilovesummercar (since “car” is the subject of the sentence)

Security question: “What is your wife’s first pet’s name?”

Answer: Ilovesummername

Monday: DTNS contributor Veronica Belmont!