Tech News Today 201

Tech News Today Episode 201

Tech News Today 201: The Neutrality Knight

Paywalls up, New York Times, Is Android really faster than IOS? What we really should worry about regarding Japan, and more.

Hosts

• Tom Merritt (@acedtect)
  • TomMerritt.com
• Sarah Lane (@sarahlane)
  • SarahLane.com
• Jason Howell
  • JasonHowell.net
• Patrick Beja
  • frenchspin.com

Topics

• New York Times Paywall Launches Today In Canada; Globally March 28
• Apple Gets Its First Big Publisher: New York Times Subscriptions Will Be Sold Through iTunes
  • Subscriptions start at $15 a month -- print subscribers (including subscribers to IHT) get everything as part of their subscription (sign up at homedelivery.nytimes.com)-- non-payers get 20 articles free per month on Web-- links from blogs and search engines will work even if you're over your 20. (5 per day l;imit from Google, so game the paywall by using Bing) -- Top news remains free in app - subsections require subscription. Front pages of alls ections free on .com. $15/month gets you smartphone, $20/month gets you tablet, $35 a month gets you both apps. .com available in all plans. Print subscription in my zip code is minimum $14.80 (for M-F delivery) at 50% off the first 6 months. (so goes up to $29.60 a month and still gives me all access.

• Twitter feed workarounds already cropping up...

• Major spam network silenced mid-campaign
  • At 15:30 GMT on 16 March, a network of spam-producing computers, known as Rustock, suddenly stopped. Rustock accounted for as much as 47.5 percent of all spam. "Such an action suggests that anti-spam activists have succeeded in executing possibly the largest botnet takedown in the history of the internet." -Security blogger Bryan Krebs. In the past, as Krebs describes, botmasters have been able to use emergency measures built into the software to regain control

Symantec said, the "increase from other botnets means that so far, the takedown of Rustock hasn't had much noticeable effect on the overall amount of spam.

• Spam levels plummet as Rustock botnet taken down... for now
• Rustock Botnet is Down, But Maybe Not Out

• Android 50% Faster than iPhone on the Web
  • website analysis firm Blaze took 45,000 website measurements using an iPhone 4 and a Nexus S. The study measured load time on the sites of a thousand Fortune 1000 companies (that is, every company's site in the Fortune 1000) over WiFi, and says that the Nexus S running Android 2.3 loaded the sites faster 84 percent of the time. The median load time for the iPhone 4 on iOS 4.3 was 3.254 seconds, while the Nexus S's median load time was 2.144 seconds. Blaze used its own iOS app, which Apple points out does not make use of any JavaScript performance increases that came with iOS 4.3. Mobile sites were another story. One hundred seventy-five out of the 1,000 test sites had a mobile equivalent—the iPhone was able to load those sites in a median time of 2.085 seconds, with the Nexus S loading them in 2.024 seconds.
• Study comparing Android to iPhone Web browsing speed flawed

Discussion Stories

• Broadband minister asks ISPs to better 'regulate' industry
  • Communications minister Ed Vaizey is calling on ISPs to beef up their commitments to providing UK customers with information about how they manage online traffic. Sir Tim Berners-Lee will be working with the UK's Broadband Stakeholder Group to ensure that any traffic management policies that go into effect are done with transparency and within a set of defined best practices.
• Sir Tim Berners-Lee signs up to verily protect UK net neutrality
• British ISPs Could 'Charge Per Device'

• Sony to Get PS3 Hacker’s PayPal Records
  • A federal magistrate said Sony may subpoena the PayPal account of PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz. Sony claims Hotz has accepted monetary donations for the hack from people residing in Northern California — an argument that, if true, might make San Francisco a proper venue for the litigation.
• PS3 Hacker Claims He's Jailbroken 3.60 Firmware

• How the Japan Quake Is Disrupting the Supply of Notebook Batteries
• Japan earthquake: Taiwan digital camera industry to see limited short-term impact
• PC supply chain still has up to 3 months of inventory, says Acer Taiwan president
  • Acer Taiwan president Scott Lin has pointed out that the PC industry's upstream supply chain still has an inventory level of about 2.5-3 months, and therefore will only see limited impact from Japan's earthquake; however, since some PC players are rushing to stockpile more inventory, causing the price of DRAM and panels to rise, players will see their component costs increase in the short term.
• Japan Quake Roundup: Some Companies More Disrupted Than Others

• Fukushima on Thursday: Prospects starting to look good
• Power line connected to help cool Japanese reactor
• Great resource for IAEA updates
• Japan: Bird's-eye view of Fukushima nuclear power plant (video)
• Scientist who studied nuclear worst-case scenarios talks about Fukushima worst-case scenario
  • Radiation levels at Nos 3 and 4 have been recorded as running at between 3 and 4 millisieverts/hour. Japanese regulators have now raised the permitted dose that site workers can sustain from the incident before being withdrawn from 100 millsieverts to 250. There is a risk of radiation sickness after sustaining a dose of 1,000 millisieverts, climbing to 50 per cent at 2,000. Most sufferers with lower doses recover but at 4,000 millisievert the death rate has climbed to 50 per cent. There is no indication that anyone at Fukushima will be permitted to get even close to 1,000 however. Readings at the plant gates had dropped from 0.7 millisievert/hour to 0.3 over the previous 12 hours: workers would be able to endure such levels for months if required, as these hourly doses are equivalent to those sustained by everyone on Earth from background radiation every few weeks. In summary it is looking more and more probable that the death and injury toll from the Fukushima quake strike will be limited to the one worker killed in a crane accident and others hurt by the quake and subsequent explosions at the site, perhaps with some very minimal long-term radiation effects among site workers. All being well, nobody else will have their health damaged in any way, and prospects are good that most or all of the current evacuation zone will be re-opened in a reasonable amount of time.

• By the time any of the radioactive isotopes reach American shores, the fallout will be so dilute that radiation will have dropped well below the levels that cause detectable increases in the risk of cancer. There will not be a reason for Americans to worry about their health. This is according to Kelly Classic, radiation physicist at the Mayo Clinic; Kimberlee Kearfott, health physicist at the University of Michigan; Ralf Sudowe, health physicist at the University of Nevada Las Vegas; Kathryn A. Higley, health physicist at Oregon State University; Jason T. Harris, health physicist at Idaho State University and, if you read the link above, The Union of Concerned Scientists.
• Radiation dose and risk table
• Forecast for Radiation Plume Path a combo of wind and weather
• Japan to repair damaged undersea cables
• Japan: 13,400 dead or missing 7,400 buildings and homes destroyed.
• Japan asks South Korea for 53 tons of boric acid to aid in nuclear crisis operations

News Fuse

• Nintendo 3DS has become the most pre-ordered console on Amazon, beating the likes of PS3 and Wii, the online retailer has claimed. According to Chris Poad, director of games at Amazon.co.uk, the level of demand demonstrated by advance orders is "unusual" for a handheld console. In Japan, the console sold over 200,000 units in its first week. Nintendo 3DS launches March 25th in the UK, and March 27th in the US.

• That no-good boyfriend of yours not answering his phone again? Well don't let it ring more than 30 seconds or it'll cost ya. AT&T confirmed to Wired that the meter starts running the moment you hit send, and they charge in 60-second increments. You will be charged — even for unanswered calls — unless you hang up within 30 seconds of hitting the Send button.

• Well here's a new one. Zediva will rent you a DVD for $1.99 giving you a four hour-window to watch it. The catch? You watch it online? The company is streaming DVDs over the Internet. They limit the number of titles they rent at once, so the idea is they're not streaming unauthorized movies, just renting DVD players and movies at a really long distance. Hotels tried this once and got the snot sued out of them.

• Take that astro-turfers! A Tennessee company called Legacy Learning Systems, Inc., has been hit with a $250,000 fine and other sanctions for hiring affiliate marketers to sing the praises of their DVD series by writing glowing reviews on websites. But because those affiliates didn’t disclose they were getting paid for the praise they heaped on the educational DVD series, called “Learn and Master Guitar,” the FTC said the ads were deceptive and illegal.

• That won't stop the Army. The Guardian says the US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American messages. But in order not to run afoul of US law, none of these personas will speak English so as not to target US audiences.

• For every Paywall that goes up, another must fall. Virgin’s Project magazine is now free. The change is thanks to an ad sponsorship from American Express. The first three issues of Project had cost around $3 a pop.

• Wal-Mart, Target and other large retailers are ganging up on Amazon to force them to collect sales taxes. The big-box stores are backing a coalition called the Alliance for Main Street Fairness, which is leading efforts to change sales-tax laws in more than a dozen states including Texas and California. Until now, the group has been largely associated with mom-and-pop stores, spotlighting stories of small toy shops and booksellers. You know the kind of businesses usually run out of town by Wal-Marts and Targets.

• Android 2.2 is now the dominant version of Google's OS with 61.3 percent of all active devices. Sadly that's the old version. Android 2.3 has 0.7% penetration and the tablet-oriented 3.0 has 0.2%. Remember Android 2.2 came out 9 months ago, so it took as long as a baby takes to gestate to become the top Android OS.

Kickers and Weird Science

• Accolades and anguish at the Baftas

Calendar

• Flash 10.2 beta hits Android Market tomorrow (3/18) only supports Honeycomb at release
• Nokia Software Updater for Mac available in beta, lets you update your N97 under OS X
• Paramount Pictures To Release Film On Bittorrent May 19(horror movie called The Tunnel, set in abandoned real-life tunnels under the city of Sydney)
• Google has released a preview WebM filter for Windows Vista and Windows 7. When installed, the filter will allow Windows programs—including Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, and perhaps most importantly of all, Internet Explorer 9—to play back WebM-encoded video.

Voicemail

(no link provided)

• J.D. Cartee: impressions of Time Warner iPad App from a cord cutter

Email

"Today March 17, HTC producer of phones and tablets are opening their very first ""Concept Store"" in Europe.

HTC chose to place it in the center of the Danish capital Copenhagen (perhaps the Danes also love HTC)

Danish PR regurgitation: http://www.mobilbladet.dk/index.php?module=News&func=display&sid=2173

Danish interview (with moving pictures) with Account Director HTC Europe Peter Frølund : http://www.mobilsiden.dk/nyheder/europas-forste-htc-butik-ligger-i-kobenhavn,lid.14884/

Location of store:http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=K%C3%B8bmagergade,+K%C3%B8benhavn,+Danmark&aq=0&sll=55.693403,12.583046&sspn=0.183442,0.54245&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=K%C3%B8bmagergade,+K%C3%B8benhavn,+Denmark&ll=55.690165,12.535057&spn=0.091728,0.402031&z=12

-- @HateBadDesign"

"Hey Tom and Sarah,

I was wondering what your thoughts were on the ridiculous scalper/reseller issue across the country in regards to the iPad 2. I have gotten in line at my local Apple store the last four days, by 6:30am, in hopes of getting an iPad 2. Each time I show up, I see the same people in the front of the line and a ringleader handing out a bunch of $100 bills to their ""workforce."" And this is in NH, the stories coming from NY have been 10x worse. It seems as there is little hope for many of us finding an iPad 2 that actually want to use it and not resell it on eBay or overseas. As much as I want an iPad 2, it seems I will be waiting until my online order gets filled at the end of April.

Thanks and keep up the great work with TNT!

-- Sincerely, Kevin Larrabee, CSCS"

"Hey TnT crew, was listening to episode 199, during the episode you mentioned that google is collecting data from mobile photos. Today I read that google is now asking volunteers to enter this data into a database. http://www.microsofttranslator.com/BV.aspx?ref=IE8Activity&a=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co.jp%2Fintl%2Fja%2Fcrisisresponse%2Fjapanquake2011_volunteer2.html

I'm planning on volunteering as soon as I get off work, but it's nice to find that there are actions we could take to help people in Japan. Also, I find it interesting that google, a company famous for automating everything, is asking for volunteers. I think this definitely shows that algorithm/tech can only do so much.

Love the show! TK"

Sponsors

GoToMyPC

• GoToMyPC.com/TNT
• G2MyPC 4
• ad times: :36-:47 and 15:08-16:47

FreshBooks

• freshbooks.com
• fb 2
• ad times: :47-:55 and 32:19-33:25

Production Information

• Edited by: Jason
• Notes:

This area is for use by TWiT staff only. Please do not add or edit any content within this section.