Brian Brushwood joins us to chat with Peter Bright about whether Verizon has started degrading Netflix traffic after they won their recent court victory over Net Neutrality. Also Sony ditches their PC business so it’s time to reassess how dead PC’s are.
Note: The video stream (which is in beta mind you) experienced a catastrophic streaming failure. We’re hoping it pops up out of YouTube at some point and we’ll put what survives up here. In the meantime here is a post-show hangout nee encore. – Tom
Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) of a video that’s just a still image with the audio from Archive.org.
Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit
Show Notes
Sony to dump PC business
Recode reports Sony announced it will sell its VAIO PC business to investment fund Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) by the end of March. In the meantime Sony says it “will cease planning, design, and development of PC products,” and the Spring 2014 line launch will be its last. VAIO owners will still get support from either Sony or JIP. Sony will also make its TV division into a subsidiary and focus on high-end 4K models. All of this means about 5,000 jobs will be cut. Engadget reports Sony is also shutting down its digital bookstore in the US and Canada, transferring customers to Kobo starting in late March. Sony did have some good news, announcing a profitable 3rd quarter with $23 billion in revenue, up 24% over the same time last year on the strength of the PS4. However in a revised full-year forecast, Sony expects to lose $1.1 billion.
Verizon could be throttling Netflix and Amazon, but no actual evidence so far
News From You:
webitube posted on the subreddit a GigaOm article about an attack on an electrical substation near San Jose California. The Wall Street Journal reports snipers fired on the substation for almost 20 minutes, knocking out 17 transformers, as well as cutting nearby telephone cables. The damage took a month to repair. The attackers and their motives are still unknown.
habichuelcondulce and jaymz668 and Jose Gomez by email all sent us various links to the story of Dennis Aabo Sørensen who live science reports lost his hand as a result of a fireworks accident but now has a prosthetic hand that has a sense of touch. Electrodes embedded in Sørensen’s arm communicate with touch sensors in the prosthetic to deliver impulses to his remaining nerves. He can tell different objects by feel, according to a study detailed in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Silvestro Micera, a neural engineer at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in Switzerland, led the team that developed the hand.
mcfads23, who also happens to be our producer Jennie, submitted this psfk article on the subreddit, about Changefolio,at changefol.io a platform that makes it easy donate money to charities. The service connects with a user’s bank, then lets the user pick a charity. From then on, purchases can be rounded up or small percentages of purchases can be taken and automatically donated as micro-transactions. So for example you can have the service take 2% of your grocery bill every time you shop and donate it to a food bank. And of course their are graphs and achievements and the ability to post to Facebook and Twitter.
Amber Mac joins the show to talk about YouTube’s boss, Susan Wojcicki. Can she do for YT what she did for AdSense on Google Search? Also a way to revolutionize academic publishing with BitTorrent. MP3
Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.
Google and EU reach agreement to settle antitrust investigation Bloomberg reports Google and the EU’s Competition Commissioner, Joaquin Alumnia have reached an agreement to settle a three-year-old antitrust investigation. Google made a five-year pledge to grant three links to rival services next to any specialized searches of Google’s own, such as Google Shopping. Competitors will pay at least 3 euro cents to bid for a spot with images in a shaded box on some of Google’s search pages. The deal will become legally binding sometime in the next few months after the Commission formally rejects complaints against Google. The EU is still informally investigating Google’s use of Android.
The Daily Snowden: British Intelligence agency has conducted cover action against Anonymous Ars Technica reports NBC News published new documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealing the British intelligence agency, GCHQ, conducted covert action against the activist collective that often identifies as Anonymous. Among other things, GCHQ infiltrated IRC chat for Operation Payback, which targeted payment providers after they stopped donations to WikiLeaks from being processed. GCHQ employed a covert informant and conducted social engineering, DoS attacks and deployed malware. GCHQ crippled the operation, unmasked some members and led to the arrest of Edward Pearson aka Gzero.
DARPA creates an Open Catalog InformationWeek reports the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, aka DARPA, most famous for bringing the world the Internet, has created an Open Catalog at darpa.mil/OpenCatalog/. The site includes software toolkits and peer-reviewed publications from XDATA, a big data initiative. The software projects listed on the site include visualization, analytics, and infrastructure and link to code repositories.
News From You
isting posted this TechCrunch article about NewEgg getting into the free shipping biz. Similar to Amazon Prime, NewEgg has launched a program called Premiere. For $50 a year, Premiere subscribers get free 3-day shipping and discounts for 2-day and 1-day delivery. You also get restocking fees waived on returns which also get their shipping paid for, as well as special customer service and special deals. Customers can try Premiere free for 30 days.
pete_C and Amber both pointed us to a WSJ article about US electronics retailer Radio Shack closing around 500 stores in the coming months. Radio Shack has roughly 4,300 stores. The Journal did not know which stores would be closed. Radio Shack had received some praise for a Super Bowl ad promising to bring the store out of the 1980s.
Justin Young and Paul Thurrott join us to chat about a new camera pill you can swallow and a new Microsoft CEO that investors seem willing to– Microsoft has a new CEO Satya Nadella, and we’ll talk about it.
KAPT_Kipper posted a CBC News story about the PillCam, an ingestible pill camera used to screen for colon cancer, being approved for use in the United States. Patients who have experienced an incomplete colonoscopy can now swallow the pill to complete it. The capsule has two miniature color video cameras, a battery and a light source, and transmits images for about 10 hours. Potentially to TwiTCH. Or a Hangout. Actually no the data is transferred to a computer to be compiled and then viewed later by a doctor. The PillCam is commercially available in Canada, Japan, Europe, Latin America, Australia and parts of Asia and Africa. And yes you smartypants a capsule camera for the small intestine HAS been around since 2001, WE KNOW.
Windows 8.1 is now 4th most popular Windows OS TechCrunch passes along some Netmarketshare data from January showing that Windows 8.1 has passed up Vista to become, as of January, the 4th most popular edition of Windows at 3.95% to Vista’s 3.3%. The most popular Windows is XP with 29.3% an actual rise over December’s 28.98%. Meanwhile the first update to Windows 8.1 known as Update 1 leaked over the weekend showing interface changes making it easier to use a keyboard and mouse, and the ability to pin Metro apps to the desktop. Update 1 is expected to be released as early as March 11.
News From You
DrewCPU, mranthropology and a whole bunch of other folks are excited about this Next Web report that Google has opened up the ChromeCast to all developers. The SDK for Android, iOS, the Web and Chrome. Developers can incorporate the code into existing apps without having to rewrite. Developers can get the new SDK at developers.google.com/cast/ and sample apps at GitHub. Users of ChromeCast should expect to see many more apps with ChromeCast capability in the coming months.
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:
Brian Brushwood joins us to chat with Peter Bright about whether Verizon has started degrading Netflix traffic after they won their recent court victory over Net Neutrality. Also Sony ditches their PC business so it’s time to reassess how dead PC’s are.
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