Molly Wood and Peter Wells join to talk abotut he great Chinese website blackout, T-Mobile USA becoming a bank, and more.
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Show Notes
Chinese websites unvailable for at least an hour due to DNS error: The Wall Street Journal reports about two thirds of Chinese websites were unavailable for at least an hour on Tuesday because of a Domain Name System error. Domain names were redirecting to a US company called Dynamic Internet Technology which provides services to circumvent Internet blocks. The site went down quickly under the massive amount of Chinese traffic directed to it. Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told Reuters it showed China is a victim of hacking. However the China Network Informations Center wrote on its Weibo account that the outage was caused by a glitch.
Federal Judge weighs in on Apple Samsung infringment: Foss Patents reports Judge Lucy Koh gritted her teeth and presided over Apple and Samung in court. Again. The federal judge for the Northern District of California entered a summary judgement order finding Samsung infringed an Apple patent on autocomplete and declared a Samsung patent on multimedia synchronization invalid. Judge Koh also denied other summary judgement requests by Apple and an entire related motion from Samsung meaning a Federal Jury will have to weigh in. The multi-patent trial is scheduled to begin March 31, 2014.
News From You:
Webitube submitted the Business Insider take on T-Mobile USA launching Mobile Money, a banking service in partnership with Bancor. Users of T-Mobile phones can get a prepaid Visa card usable at ATMs. The service also allows for direct deposit, bill paying and the ability to scan checks with a phone’s camera for deposit. T-Mobile says it’s meant to build loyalty not generate revenue so the fees will be low or absent for most functions.
Richardya pointed out the TorrentFreak story about a Federal Judge in Washington ruling that a complaint from “Elf-Man” movie studio is insufficient because the only evidence they provided was an IP address. Washington District Judge Robert Lasnik wrote “[The movie studio] has actually alleged no more than that the named defendants purchased Internet access and failed to ensure that others did not use that access to download copyrighted material.” The defendant’s motion to dismiss was granted because the movie studio failed to state a claim for direct copyright infringement.
And pete_C passed along a Forbes article about a team of former Google and defense industry entrepreneurs creating a startup called Shape Security. Their product, a box called ShapeShifter, obfuscates code and replaces variables every time a page is loaded without affecting the way the website operates. The idea is to make it more difficult for automated tools to crack passwords or scrape content from sites. Of course, hackers will find a way around shifting code, and Shape Security is trying to guess what those will be and plan defenses against them too.
More links from the show:
Verizon publishes first transparency report
http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/22/5334482/verizon-publishes-first-transparency-report
Netflix reported its 4th quarter earnings of 79 cents per share on revenues of $1.175 billion
http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/22/netflix-4q-2013/
VMWare to buy mobile security company AirWatch for $1.54 billion
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/01/22/vmware-acquisition-idINL3N0KW3X120140122
Slashdot editor-in-chief Rob Malda, unveils Trove, a crowd-powered app for Web, iPhone and iPad
Backblaze, an online backup company, has opened up its testing results for hard drives:
http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/
Facebook begins testing ads in third-party mobile apps
Thank you for todays episode! Feels like coming home!!!
I was interested with the discussion around T Mobile and the Visa tie in. In the UK O2 last year launched O2 wallet which was a similar system and its just been axed after less than 9 months. I had signed up for the service but could never actually get it to work.
http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/disciplines/mobile/news/o2-to-close-wallet/4009070.article