Tech News Today 130

Tech News Today Episode 130

Tech News Today 130: Not Safe For Miners

WikiLeaks roundup, Verizon takes its lumps, vibrating lollipops , and more.

Hosts

• Tom Merritt (@acedtect)
  • TomMerritt.com
• Jason Howell
  • JasonHowell.net
• Wil Harris
  • channelflip.com
• Mark Turpin
  • hypotheticalhelp.com

Top Stories

• Good summary of today's WikiLeaks news
• Wikileaks Twitter feed
• Amazon Denies Dropping WikiLeaks Because Of ‘Government Inquiry’
• Amazon: Wikileaks has no right to publish the leaks
• Wikileaks calls Amazon liars
• Wikileaks.org domain 'killed' - twice
• Lieberman Introduces Anti-WikiLeaks Legislation
• WikiLeaks' Assange to fight any extradition: lawyer

• Apple won't allow demos, trials, betas on Mac App Store

• Clear disses Verizon 4G data caps: why "count every megabyte"?
• Verizon LTE Can Use the Monthly Data Allotment In 32 Minutes
• Verizon's 4G Network May Not Be for the Faint of Heart

Discussion Stories

• Some Data-Miners Ready to Reveal What They Know

• Google buys New York office building
• Google Acquires Phonetic Arts To Make Robo-Voices Sound Human

• HTC responds to HD7 death grip reports, says some signal drop is 'inevitable'

• Viacom Says YouTube Ruling Will ‘Completely Destroy’ Copyright
  • Viacom Asks for a Do-Over on YouTube

News Fuse

• Level 3, who earlier this week accused Comcast of violating net neutrality, posted a FAQ today saying Comcast would like you to view this as a peering arrangement, but it just isn't so. Instead it's an interconnection agreement. That would make a difference, as interconnection is usually independent of traffic. Comcast for its part seems to object tot he increased number of conenctions requested by LEvel3. We'll have an in-depth discussion on this topic Sunday on This Week in Tech.

• Congress is getting busy regulating the sound level of TV commericals and credit card charging. A bill known as the "Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act" passed yesterday in the U.S. Senate. The law will make it illegal to use "misleading post-transaction advertisements" Meanwhile the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act is ready for the President to sign. Socialised advert volume!

• LimeWire is calling it quits. We mentioned yesterday they were shuttering their legal music cales site, today we learn they told AllThingsD that "The beginning of 2011 will mark the closing of LimeWire’s New York office and cessation of business by LimeWire."

• The X-37B, an unmanned U.S. Air Force space plane returned to Earth early this morning, officially making it the U.S.'s first unmanned vehicle to return from space and land on its own. Also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle 1, the X-37B is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of unmanned and reusable space vehicles for use in future missions.

• Larry Ellison's number 1 again. Oracle has retaken the current land speed record in database computing from IBM. The forthcoming SPARC T3-4 Supercluster has achieved a performance record of more than 30 million transactions per minute,beating a model of IBM’s Power 780 Server, which delivered more than 10 million transactions per minute.

• While Google's allegedly secretly getting ready to snatch up Groupon, Amazon.com has invested $175 million in Groupon rival LivingSocial. LivingSocial is the second largest player in the daily deals market, and is reportedly on track to report “well over” $500 million in revenue next year. Groupon’s revenue, by contrast, is expected to be three times that much in 2011.

• "In less than two months from launch, Samsung says it reached 1 million units sold of its Galaxy Tab tablet computer. Samsung doesn't say whether that's the number of actual devices delivered to end users, or the number of devices delivered to retailers. Still it's the first tablet to make any kind of headway against teh iPad."

• As EMI sues MP3Tunes.com it's come to light that apparently EMI uses cloud storage lockers itself. In legal briefings, it is claimed that l EMI is putting music on Rapidshare and directing people to download it in the hopes that it spreads 'virally.' EMI accuses MP3tunes of enabling piracy by linking to Rapidshare, but since EMI is using Rapidshare, this would seem to weaken their argument.

• Two people are being investigated by police in Germany after being accused of stealing songs from artists like Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake and Ke$ha. Media reports in the country have named the pair as 18 year old student Deniz A, known as DJ Stolen, and Christian M. They allegedly used a trojan to hack into the artists' computers and just wanted "to find cool music"

Kickers and Weird Science

• Augmented reality TagCandy creates a virtual taste explosion

Calendar

• Best Buy Mobile will offer free smartphones, mostly Android, every day in December

• Sources: Google-branded Chrome OS netbook to launch on December 7th

• Be a part of TNT this holiday season!

Email

"Hi, TNT. I just wrote a blog post called ""Think Twice Before Building a Business on YouTube"" which I think you might be interested in (especially after yesterday's discussion of Google's copyright changes):

http://www.livingdigitally.net/2010/12/think-twice-before-building-a-business-on-youtube.html

To summarize, we have a very successful watch review blog called Watch Report. In response to reader feedback, we started focusing more and more on video reviews using YouTube. And then one day, our account got terminated and all of our content (and followers, comments, page views, and YouTube ad revenue) were gone, and we can't get Google/YouTube to even explain why.

Anyone considering building a business on YouTube needs to understand the dangers of a system that has grown too big to take care of it's customers and partners.

Thanks, and keep up the great work.

Christian" http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/03/youtubes-community-police-blow-up-another-innocent-victim/

"Tom

In Episode 129 you discussed receiving text messages on a Verizon My-Fi. The messages can be retrieved using the VZAccess Manager. Verizon uses this to send me messages informing me when I pass the half way point and come close to my data allowance. The application also shows me the usage for the month each time I connect using the My-Fi like a USB modem. While most of my use of the My-Fi is as a hot spot, I connect using the manager on my notebook to check these notifications. I have received a notice from the manager of a firmware update for the device. Just thought you might want to know this.

Guy"

Sponsors

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Production Information

• Edited by: Jason
• Notes:

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