Tech News Today 183

Tech News Today Episode 183

Tech News Today 183: A Show Without Merritt

Twitter kicks UberMedia where it hurts, Senators dump the Internet kill switch, Driving a car with your thoughts, and more.

Hosts

• Jason Howell
  • JasonHowell.net
• Darren Kitchen
  • hak5.org
• Iyaz Akhtar
  • PCmag.com
• Nilay Patel
  • engadget.com

Top Stories

• Twitter suspends UberTwitter and Twidroyd for 'violating' its policies (updated with statement)
• WAR: Twitter Just Blocked Bill Gross's UberMedia

• FTC, DoJ in "preliminary" investigation of Apple subscriptions
• Spooked Publishers State Their Demands To Tablet Platforms
• US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission have begun preliminary investigations into Apple's new iOS subscription plan, according to Wall Street Journal.-- European regulators "carefully monitoring the situation". Publishers meeting in London said say they want the platforms to end censorship, work with them transparently, give them direct customer relationships and offer fairer business terms.
• Could Apple lose an antitrust case?

• Intel’s Otellini Named to Obama Jobs Council
• Picture from last night's Presidential dinner: no hoodie for Zuckerberg!

Discussion Stories

• Google, Best Buy, and Sony ally against Big Cable

Google, Best Buy, Mitsubishi, Sony, TiVo, Nagravision, SageTV form "AllVid Tech Company Alliance". "Sony/Google are asking the Commission to ignore copyright, patent, trademark, contract privity, licensing, and other legal rights and limitations that have been thoroughly documented," the NCTA warned the FCC last week.

• Senators Dump Internet ‘Kill Switch’ for Cyber-Attack Response The president can’t use emergency measures to order an Internet shutdown to combat cyber attacks, according to revised legislation introduced yesterday by three senators. Permits owners of major computer systems deemed as critical infrastructure, and therefore subject to Homeland Security Department regulations, to appeal their status in federal court.

• Apple gearing up for major product launch as early as next week - sources
• Apple television in the works, Apple job listing hints
• NYT: Apple considering a cheaper iPhone, but not a smaller one right now

• Apple patents reveal plans for iPad smart bezel and longer-life batteries

News Fuse

• House Republicans took the first of their promised actions to block the FCC's Net Neutrality guidelines today. House lawmakers approved an amendment to a wider spending bill that stated that no funds included in the bill could be used by the FCC to implement the network neutrality regulations. The vote is the only way the Republican- controlled House could prevent the policy from taking effect.

• Since Nokia just hopped in bed with Microsoft, members of Nokia's app development program will be receiving some new hardware. Developers will get the Symbian-powered E7 as well as a Windows Phone 7 Nokia device as soon as that becomes available. The real question is will developers continue to make apps for a lame duck OS when Windows Phone is Nokia's future.

• Microsoft backpettles on its ban of free and open source apps for its Windows Phone Marketplace. As of yesterday several open source licensed apps returned with clarification from a Microsoft spokeperson; BSD, MIT, Apache 2.0 MS-PL and similar licenses are supported. No word yet on GNU licenses like the GPL, unless there is significant developer and customer push-back.

• Chevrolet just launched MyLink which allows its cars to access smartphone apps. So if you've got an Android, BlackBerry, or iOS device, you can now control certain applications using the car's MyLink interface instead of fumbling with your phone. While the concept is cool, a voice control demo did not do too well, plus the MyLink is limited to only two apps right now. MyLink will be introduced in the 2012 Volt and the Equinox.

• It turns out there is a big reason to stick to an AT&T iPhone over a Verizon one - speed! Speed tests show that AT&T's download speeds are a little less than 1.8Mbps compared to Verizon's 848 Kbps. Upload speeds were also faster for AT&T. So you get to pick - a fast unreliable connection or a slow reliable one. Good luck.

• In Facebook, you're free to tell the world about your relationship status like if you married, in a relationship or maybe it's just complex. Facebook has just rolled out more options that are gay-friendly. If you're in a "domestic partnership" or a "civil union" - now you can tell everyone.

• A while back it looked like Yahoo was going to kill the social bookmarking tool Delicious, which had many Delicious users freaked out. What would happen to their bookmarks? Well, Google has a brand new tool so you can import your preexisting Delicious bookmarks right into Google Bookmarks. It's apparently a very simple process, so now you can backup all those bookmarks (if you trust Google).

• The Indian government wanted to be able to monitor all activity that takes place via BlackBerry devices, however RIM was unable to provide data that moved over connections like VPNs. Now, India is making a push to get that unattainable data from network operators. If the network operators can't get the data, they have 2 options: 1: stop their operations in general or 2: drop the BlackBerry. This could be trouble for RIM.

Kickers and Weird Science

• A car you can drive with your thoughts

Calendar

• Lenovo to Launch LePad Tablet Worldwide in June
• 1GBps LTE-Advanced specs coming second half of 2011 - commercial application to follow within 2 years
• Samsung Epic 4G officially signed up for Froyo starting February 21st
• Comcast launches its own 24/7 Xfinity 3D channel Sunday, crosses 1 million 3D VOD views
• RadioShack offers Atrix 4G for $150 on launch day, undercutting AT&T?
• Radiohead album released early TODAY, not tomorrow

Voicemail

• Bill from MA: Watson's reaction time

Originally Watson buzzed in electronically, but Jeopardy! requested that it physically press a button, as the human contestants would. Even with a robotic "finger" pressing the buzzer, Watson remained faster than its human competitors. Jennings noted, "If you're trying to win on the show, the buzzer is all," and that Watson "can knock out a microsecond-precise buzz every single time with little or no variation. Human reflexes can't compete with computer circuits in this regard." Also, Watson could avoid the time-penalty for accidentally buzzing in too early, because it was electronically notified when to buzz, whereas the human contestants had to anticipate the right moment.] ...also Watson was not online. He had to rely on his own database.

Email

"Tom, Becky, Sarah, and crew,

On the subject of anti-lasers in ep. 182 you guys seem to have overlooked the most useful upshot of this development... SHIELDS! That's right we're nearly there!

Love the show!

Thanks,

Jon Davis"

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Production Information

• Edited by: Jason
• Notes:

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