Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit
Show Notes
Satya Nadella likely to be chosen as Microsoft’s next CEO Multiple sources including Recode, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal report Satya Nadella will be chosen to become Microsoft’s next CEO. Allegedly the Microsoft board will meet this weekend, likely during times not overlapping with the Super Bowl, to discuss the hiring. Also under consideration is Co-founder Bill Gates stepping aside as Chairman, though remaining on the board. Board Member and former Symantec CEO John Thompson has been leading the search for Steve Ballmer’s replacement, and is rumored to be in line to succeed Gates as Chairman.
clemro submitted a TorrentFreak article about Federal Judge Stephanie Rose ruling that downloading a torrent file and joining a swarm does not qualify as ‘acting in concert’ which lets Copyright holders group large numbers of defendants together in a case. To prove acting in concert requires among other things, showing the defendants were involved in the same series of transactions. Copyright holders argue that infringers used the same torrent file with an identical SHA-1 Hash. The judge deemed that too imprecise writing, “Any ‘pieces’ of the work copied or uploaded by any individual Doe may have gone to any other Doe, but may instead have gone to any of the potentially thousands of others who participated in a given swarm and are not in this case. This means only one defendant can be named in each case making it much more costly to proceed.
AllanAV points us to a Consumerist article about the Kansas State Legislature considering a bill to make it illegal for city governments to build municipal broadband networks. The bill states its aims as increasing competition and innovation. To that end the bill prohibits a municipality from providing video, telecom, or broadband or to spend any money on infrastructure to enable a private business to do the same. IN other words, Google Fiber in Kansas City would be against the law if it cam after this bill passed.
Dan Patterson Joins to discuss what Facebook’s new app ‘Paper’ means for Facebook and for journalism. Also why Prince has called off his war on the Internet.
So That Happened: More on the Lenovo / Google / Motorola deal Yes Lenovo did buy Motorola’s handset business from Google for $2.9 billion yesterday. Recode reports Lenovo plans to keep the Motorola brand name and engineering talent in Chicago and the San Francisco Bay area. No word on the Texas manufacturing plant that makes the Moto X. Ars Technica reports Google holds on to Motorola’s Advanced Technologies and Projects division which will be folded into the Android team. Google also keeps the patents. Those lovely warm valuable patents.
Jonathan Strickland pops by to talk about Lenovo buying Motorola from Google, the man who lost his $50,000 Twitter account, and how the Air Force’s secret weather controlling array might get shut down. Or maybe it’s an ionosphere observation platform. SURE it is, secret government. 😉
Lenovo to buy Motorola Mobility from Google for close to $3 billion: How it went down live on DTNS: Reuters natural gas and oil reporter Ernest Scheyeder, posted on Twitter that Lenovo is near to a deal to buy Motorola’s cell phone divisions from Google for close to $3 billion. China Daily reported the same deal although they report a figure of $2 billion. TechCrunch has also confirmed the report from its own sources and Lenovo later held a conference call to discuss the deal.
Twitter unveils new features to tailor search, and Dataminr for News: Twitter posted a tweet today revealing new features to its search allowing you to filter your results by video, news, people you follow and more. Also, Engadget reports Twitter announced Dataminr for News, a tool in partnership with the company Dataminr that alerts journalists of breaking news, along with details on the origin and sources of the news. The Verge reports CNN has used Dataminr tools to produce at least two stories a day.
The US Air Force plans to pull the plug on HAARP: That would be the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) facility in Gakona, 15 miles northeast of Glennallen, Alaska. A “cosmic plasma laboratory without walls,” with implications not only for the military but also for basic science and communications, HAARP researches the ionosphere-where solar radiation meets atmosphere.
Kylde, the self-titled janitor of our subreddit (and he does keep the place sparklingly free of spam) posted an Ars Technica link about AMD announcing plans to build ARM-based server CPU’s. An 8-core ARM System-on-a-Chip should begin sampling in March. Codenamed “Seattle,” the processors will be branded Opteron A-series and built on a 28nm process.
Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit
Show Notes
Google Glass Explorer allows user to put Glass hardware in prescription lenses: The Verge reports Google’s Glass Explorer edition, which features the ability to remove the Glass hardware and use with prescription lenses. Now Google has released four different frames designed specifically to work with Glass and accommodate corrective lenses. If you were lucky enough to be allowed to pay $1500 for Google Glass then you can now have the right to fork over an extra $225 for the frames in the “Titanium Collection” because titanium. BUT VSP, a large healthcare provider, it would cover a portion of the cost for its members and help train optometrists.
Dutch court overturns ruling requiring ISP’s to block The Pirate Bay: Wired UK reports The Dutch Court of Appeals in the Hague has overturned a ruling requiring ISPs Ziggo and XS4ALL to block The Pirate Bay. The Court found that case law from the European Court of Justice holds an ISP should not be forced to take measures that are ineffective. The decision referred to two studies from the Institute for Information Law that showed no lasting effect of the block on piracy levels. The Anti-piracy group Brein which brought the case has been ordered to pay €326,000 in legal fees.
Google launches Chrome apps for Android and IOS The Next Web reports Google today launched Chrome apps for Android and iOS. The development framework means an app can be coded ion HTML, CSS and JavaScript, then wrapped in a shell that enables them to be distributed in the Google Play or Apple App stores. This builds on the Chrome app store launched in September for Windows, Mac, and of course, ChromeOS. Also Google made their virtual lego tool, “Build with Chrome” available to everyone who has a Chrome browser.
galadiel passed along a Verge story about new voluntary guidelines for movie trailers released by the National Association of Theatre Owners. The guidelines ask that trailers run no more than two minutes, about 30 seconds shorter than usual. The guidelines also recommend against prompting viewers to go to a website or type a code in their mobile device. Presumably that spurs people to pull out the phones they were just asked to turn off.
webitube pointed us to a Kotaku report that Nintendo would start making mini-games for phones. The post was based on a report from Japan’s Nikkei referring to Satoru Iwata’s willingness to use the mobile platform. Not so fast. Nintendo told Engadget, “There are no plans to offer mini-games on smartphone devices,” and Nikkei was just referring to Nintendo’s willingness to make use of smart devices to promote products. Ah. Lost in Translation.
Full text of email from James regarding home automation
I originally sent this to you privately on G+, but realized it wasn’t really the proper place. So below is my rant on Home Automation, in response to Gill’s message on yesterday’s show. Enjoy!
In response to Gill’s question on yesterday’s DTNS, I have to say that anything to do with home automation pretty much just makes me shake my head. I have worked in industrial and commercial building automation for the last 13 years, and it’s crazy to me how help in this market is hellbent on re-creating a wheel that already rolls very well.
We have had a lot of robust competition from open standards in the commercial and industrial markets for the last 15 years. This turned what had been an incredibly proprietary and locked down industry on its ear. The systems from Tridium, which my company implements, have been at the forefront of this shift, and it’s given me the ability to build unified systems for customers that combine all kinds of different equipment from different vendors, even older legacy equipment that’s already in place.
There have been wireless systems in building automation since the early 1990s, although they most certainly have their flaws. However, robust and usable wireless systems built on open standards have really come into their own in the last 5 to 6 years. Zigbee is the most common, and I hear lots of home automation experts talk about it, However I wonder how many actually understand what it is and what it does. One of the reasons that Zigbee has emerged the way that it has, is because it has a standards body behind it that requires certification before manufacturers can implement the technology. This assures that all Zigbee devices will meet a minimum standard of interoperability. This is something you’re not going to be guaranteed with proprietary, or home-grown standards.
Of course, Zigbee is not the only game in town. There are several other wireless standards that have started to gain traction, such as EnOcean, which encompasses devices that harvest power from the world around them, and are not only completely wireless, but also battery-less. There’s also 6LoWPAN, which meets the 802.15.4 standard and brings IPv6 to discrete wireless devices. It hasn’t come to full fruition yet, but I believe the thought is that this standard could eventually blend discrete wireless devices into the traditional IT infrastructure without proprietary routers and systems in between. Tridium, who has already turned commercial building automation on its ear once, has backed this standard with their Sedona framework. It’s just now starting to gain traction after being launched five years ago, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it eventually takes off with their previous track record of success.
However, despite all the ground that has been plowed by the commercial market, it seems that the players in the home are ignoring it all and starting from scratch. The few truly successful home automation products, like Nest, are standalone and proprietary. And I’ve demoed several other nice and interesting products that would actually be useful if they could integrate to other devices and share information. I agree very much with your response to Gill. It’s a very bad idea for one company, one protocol, or one system to rule everything in the home. Especially if they’re delivering what most give right now- A simple window to get a handful of notifications, perform a few actions, and look at several points that are held together with only the loosest of connections between them. That’s all I see from most products right now.
We need systems in the home like the systems that I have available to me in commercial (scaled-down of course), that allow for plug-and-play implementation of devices across several protocols into one seamless system. I’m actually working with a new product right now that is somewhere between home and commercial, designed especially for small buildings that can’t afford to implement our traditional systems. I’ve been really surprised and impressed with how flexible it is, but how simple it is for what it’s able to do. It’s definitely not simple enough for the average home user to pick up and put in themselves, but I can see it getting there with a little help and development. If you want to check it out, it’s called Can2Go. It combines wired IO, Zigbee, and EnOcean into a single web-based system. There is no software and no licensing required. All development is done from a web-based interface inside the main device. And while it has a script-based programming language for integrating devices and performing tasks, there is a limited graphical programming capability that is much simpler and easier, and covers all the basic tasks.
Rest assured I’m not trying to sell anything. Just letting you know what’s out there from a commercial and industrial perspective. It gets frustrating sometimes reading articles and listening to podcasts talk about home automation, and what is happening there. It’s as if my industry doesn’t exist, and that’s a shame. If you look beyond the home, you’ll find some surprisingly robust systems that allow a user to monitor and run every system in a single building or across multiple buildings from a single web-based front end. And since the economic upheaval 5-6 years ago, there’s been a HUGE push into energy monitoring and usage reduction. We’ve helped several customers get a handle on their usage and lower both their carbon footprint, and their bills.
All of the major players in my field have been there and done that. It just baffles me that no one in the home market wants to take what we have developed in commercial and industrial and repackage it for the home. The scale is obviously very different, but the technology to blend devices across protocols has been around for 15-20 years. For the home market players to ignore that is both greedy and foolish.
Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit
Show Notes
Google acquires AI company called “DeepMind”
Reuters reports Google acquired a UK company called “DeepMind” that works in artificial intelligence. According to the DeepMind website, the company wants to combine the “best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms.” DeepMind was founded a neuroscientist and child prodigy in chess Demis Hassabis along with Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman.
Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit
Show Notes
Gmail, G+, Hangout outage Google’s Gmail had a complete outage earlier today starting just after 2 PM Eastern time and finally getting a green light on Google’s Apps Status Board at just around 3:30 PM Eastern. The problem seemed to affect Google+ and 8 other apps according to the status board. It comes along with a very strange email bug. SearchEngineLand noted Also Google’s ESite Reliability Engineering team sat down for an AMA right as the outage happened, which was convenient for people wanting to know what was going on. Monday that a Gmail link in search was pre-filling a user’s name in the compose window when clicked. Yesterday, David S. Peck of Fresno, California began receiving thousands of blank emails. TechCrunch reports when you search Gmail on Google, and click the email sub link, a compose window comes up with Mr. Peck’s email pre-filled. Peck is a Business Marketing professional with experience in banking.
And stephenater sent us this Wired article about the first Internet.org hackathon. Developers were asked to test their apps on a simulated Indonesian and Nigerian networks running at 2G speeds. Internet.org is the consortium established last year by Facebook, Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson, Opera, Qualcomm, and MediaTek to bring the Internet to the two thirds of the planet that isn’t already online. Developers from Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, AccuWeather, Huffington Post, and even nonprofit Water.org learned how to make their apps work for the majority of the world’s citizens.
More links from the show:
CNET reports Samsung made money last quarter, but made less money than the quarter before for the first time since 2011:
EP&T reports IHS has released numbers showing Apple spent the most on semiconductors last year at $30.3 billion while Samsung drafted along right behind them at $22.2 billion:
Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet very kindly ended our weeks with a Windows rumor. Looks like March 11th is shaping up to be the Windows 8.1 release date according to Mary Jo’s sources:
Jason Hiner joins the show to talk about Lenovo buying the last of IBM’s PC business and where 3D printing meets the Internet of things. Also don’t text while walking.
Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit
Show Notes
Apple to release two new iPhones in 2014: The Wall Street Journal reports Apple plans to release two new iPhones this year. Shocker, we know. Each of the two would have a bigger display than the iPhone 5S, estimated to be 4.5 inches and 5 inches respectively. Both phones would have the same aluminum design as the %S, meaning no plastic phone like the 5C. The smaller is allegedly in production while the bigger is in preliminary development.
Lenovo agrees to buy IBM server unit for $2.3 billion in cash and stock: Ars Technica reports Lenovo agreed to buy IBM’s x86-based server unit for $2.3 billion in cash and stock. IBM will keep it’s high-end server and mainframe unit but all its x86-based businesses are now gone. IDC reported in August that IBM held the top spot in server market share, and about 3/4 of that was IBM’s x86 unit. That means Lenovo will quickly reach parity with Dell and likely come close to HP in the server market.
News From You:
clemro passed along a Phys.org story about a Virginia Tech research team that developed a battery that runs on sugar, maltodextrin to be exact, with an energy density an order of magnitude greater than other sugar-based batteries. A sugar-based battery would be cheaper, refillable, and biodegradable. Sweet!
Tahras pointed us to Cory Doctorow’s post on Boing Boing about library audiobooks going DRM-free. Overdrive, which is a main supplier of digital material for libraries has announced it’s retiring its DRM’ed Windows media format for audiobooks and replacing it with unrestricted MP3s.
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board said that the statute upon which the NSA’s phone record collection program was based “does not provide an adequate basis to support this program.”
Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit
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.
Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit
Show Notes
Verizon to acquire Intel’s media division:
Ars Technica reports Verizon will acquire Intel’s media division including the OnCue TV service. Verizon gets the intellectual property, products and employees in the deal. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam plans to incorporate OnCue into Verizon’s FiOS TV service. The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of this quarter. The news came along with Verizon’s 4th quarter earnings report. Verizon posted a net income of $7.9 billion, or $1.76 a share, a nice jump over last year when the company lost $1.9 billion, or $1.48 a share. The company also added 1.6 million contract subscribers, despite price competition from T-Mobile USA.
Launch Day for Beats: CNET reports Jimmy Iovine’s Beats launched their new music service today on iOS and Android, with a Windows Phone version coming this Friday. There’s also a limited Web version for desktop. The service features staff-curated playlists as well as playlists curated from partners like music magazines. Users can select a ‘Just for You’ playlist based on their preferences, Highlighted lists created by Beats staff, The Sentence, which is a playlist created by filling in words mad-lib style, or just browse through genres and activities. The service has a 7 day free trial and then costs $10 a month, although longer trial periods and family plans are available for AT&T users.
loug28 sends in a Business Insider report about the first images of the mysterious web that connects all galaxies. (Wait. An energy field? That surrounds us and penetrates us? Binding the galaxy together? Where have I heard about this before?)
Ewen Rankin joins to chat about Microsoft’s next CEO, How Facebooks selfishness is helping everyone and its REAL purpose behind the new Paper app.
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