Tech News Today 176

Tech News Today Episode 176

Tech News Today 176: Sony Sunk Its Own Battleship

Verizon's own antennagate, Sony may need to sue itself, HP kills "Palm", and more.

Hosts

• Tom Merritt (@acedtect)
  • TomMerritt.com
• Sarah Lane (@sarahlane)
  • sarahlane.com
• Jason Howell
  • JasonHowell.net
• Darren Kitchen
  • hak5.org

Top Stories

• Today’s HP webOS Event
  • HP Touchpad
  • 9.7 inch 1024×768 display, 1.3 mp webcam, 16 or 32 GB storage
  • Touchpad includes numbers and letters on the same screen
  • beats audio by Dr. Dre for WebOS audio system, lots of talk in announcement about stepping up the audio experience
  • Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs says newest Dual Core 1.2 GZ snapdragon processor enable “all day battery life.”
  • come with a case that doubles as a stand and a keyboard
  • WiFi version avail this summer, 3G version to follow
  • HP Veer: webOS phone, QWERTY keyboard, 2.6"" touch display, 5 mp cam, 8GB storage, Snapdragon 7230/800 MZ, mobile hotspot, available early Spring

• Pre 3: portrait slider, largest QWERTY keyboard in the line-up. 3.6 480×800 screen. HD video, 8GB or 16GB, available summer
  • RIP Palm
  • Time inks deal with HP to bring magazine subscriptions to the TouchPad
  • Sure Enough, HP’s webOS Is Headed to PCs

• Report: iPad 2 in Production

• Sony Marketing Man Tweets PS3 Master Key
  • Twitter user tricks Sony into posting "secret" PS3 code

Discussion Stories

• Verizon iPhone and the Death Grip Myth
  • Verizon iPhone 4 antenna problems persist (video)

• Cheap Games a Risk To the Industry, Says Nintendo President
  • Nintendo 3DS launch games unveiled

• MPAA sues Hotfile for "staggering" copyright infringement

• Bing up, Google down in latest search rankings

News Fuse

• Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has obtained a restraining order against Pradeep Manukonda, who's reportedly been attempting to contact him using threatening language. Manukonda must stay 300 yards away from Zuckerberg, his sister, and his girlfriend. Mr Manukonda has said to have shown up at several Facebook offices and Mr Zuckerberg's home to ask for money. Police issued a verbal warning to Mr Manukonda in late January, but he had repeatedly attempted to contact Mr Zuckerberg through messages sent both on Facebook and by post. Privacy's a tough one, huh Zuck?

• Nokia ended development its first new MeeGo OS smartphone before launch. The MeeGo platform was created early last year from the merger of Nokia and Intel's Linux-based platforms Maemo and Moblin, and seen as the potential "great smart hope" against iOS and Android. If this news brings a tear to your eye, don't fret- analysts said Nokia could still show the next MeeGo device, even if it's not finished, later this week at its investor day on Friday, or news conference on Sunday.

• Microsoft wants you to stay worm-free, and that's why their latest round of patches includes an optional update that will shut off the "autorun" capability for users of older Windows operating systems. Autorun is designed as a convenience feature to automatically launch programs on removable media, but it's also been abused by malware that forces code onto victim's computers, such as the Stuxnet and Conficker worms. This allows older versions of Windows to behave more like Windows 7, where if you connect a USB stick, autorun (and its cousin autoplay) are no longer options.

• The 11th beta of Firefox 4 is here and includes a "Do Not Track" setting, taking it a big step beyond cookie-based opt-out services for those who don't want their online behavior tracked. The browser's preferences dialog has a new checkbox users can toggle to control whether the opt-out header is transmitted to servers. The setting's disabled by default but not a big challenge to enable. However, until advertisers agree to recognize and honor the new Do Not Track setting, toggling it on won't really help users yet, though the ad guys have supported of opt-out users in the past, so it looks like Mozilla paves the way on a new standard through gentle encouragement.

• The FTC appointed anti-DRM advocate Ed Felten as its first Chief Technologist, and now net neutrality expert Tim Wu is the FTC's senior advisor. Wu won't just be dealing with net neutrality - Chairman Jon Leibowitz says that he will be "working on issues at the nexus of consumer protection, competition, law and technology." Wu starts the job on Feb 14th and takes leave from Columbia Law to do so. But he'll have to dial back his outspokenness a bit - he recently tweeted "no more policy tweets" starting next week.

• Verizon Wireless says it will offer improved voice quality on phone calls using it's new 4G LTE network next year. Brian Higgins, executive director for ecosystems said the quality would be considered ""high definition"". This would allow the carrier to support simultaneous voice and data services, something it's GSM rival AT&T has been touting for years. Verizon plans to demo the technology on an LG Revolution android handset next week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

• News that the PlayBook would initially available only on Sprint got a few folks miffed about being locked to a single carrier. Skattertech.com has uncovered a mysterious page that previously allowed people to join an early-access program for a PlayBook on Verizon. A marketing agency that works for both RIM and Verizon owns the site, so it's arguably legit.. or maybe just a "perfect world scenario" an optimistic marketer put together on a slow press release day.

• Florida Security expert Kelley Langford has pointed out something even more ominous than the Starbucks Trenta sized coffee- simple screengrab from an unsupervised handset can enable a barcode thief to gorge themselves on free coffee using your account. The Starbucks app payment system relies on reading a bar code from the iPhone's screen, identifying the customer and debiting their account. But the barcode doesn't change. So leaving your handset on the table could allow anyone nearby to make an instant copy of your details and even mail them straight to themselves right from the phone. Try to take really quick bathroom breaks, and password-protecting your phone can't hurt either.

Kickers and Weird Science

• Local TV News + Twitter’s Talking Heads = NBC’s “The 20″

Calendar

• Microsoft said today that it had sent the first service pack for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 to original equipment manufacturers. the update goes to consumers through Windows Update on February 22.
• Flash Player 10.2 is out, allows full screen video on two screens simultaneously
• Verizon iPhone 4 now available to order / reserve for in-store pickup
• Verizon iPhone goes on sale tomorrow (Thursday 2/10) and Sarah and Tom are crazy enough to get up and cover it live for you(sales predicted to top 1 million in the first week)
• AT&T rolling out unlimited calling to any mobile number Feb. 10
• Friday 2/11 Nokia Capital Markets - where Stephen Elop CEO is expected to announce contact with an alien race (the rumours are starting to get silly now)
• YouView has confirmed that its set-top box won't now ship until early 2012. The YouView box combines a free-to-air digital receiver with an internet connection, allowing on-demand viewing. It'll also run web widgets and feature the inevitable App Store.

Voicemail

n/a

Email

"I'm in accounting and I help with the mail here at Bluehost. We get DMCA takedowns all the time and I usually don't see many of them or pay much attention. I did see a Subpoena on behalf of Sony. So apparently jailbreak.zip was hosted at least for a while on a Bluehost server. They are asking for every IP of every person who downloaded jailbreak.zip or accessed anything else at the site (I don't remember the site name off hand). Now we just have a paralegal on staff and we most likely won't fight anything - however unless the customer set it up to do so we don't keep the server logs more than like a week or something so we may not even have anything to send.

That's not my department though so I won't know what happens from here.

Anon"

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Production Information

• Edited by: Jeff
• Notes:

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