Tech News Today 236

Tech News Today Episode 236

Tech News Today 236: Rare Earth Deficit

The real scoop on the LastPass breach, Who's buying Skype, Google's surprising social strategy, and more!

Hosts

• Tom Merritt (@acedtect)
  • TomMerritt.com
• Sarah Lane (@sarahlane)
  • SarahLane.com
• Iyaz Akhtar
  • thisoldnerd.finitecomedy.com
• Jason Howell
  • JasonHowell.net
• Steve Gibson

Top Stories

• LastPass Security Notification
• LastPass Loses Passwords for 1.25 Million Customers to Hackers
  • Tuesday morning saw a network anomaly
  • Also noticed an anomaly in the opposite direction from a database
  • strong non-dictionary passwords should be OK.
  • Could be attempt to brute force
  • Making all accounts verify email and change passwords
  • Traffic swamping means the process is not working so well."We realize this may be an overreaction and we apologize for the disruption this will cause, but we'd rather be paranoid and slightly inconvenience you than to be even more sorry later." - LastPass Blog

• STEVE GIBSON INTERVIEW
  • 1. How likely is this a bad guy attack?
  • 2. what could it be if it wasn't an intrusion
  • 3. What are the real risks? What do I worry about?

• Hearst Corp. signs on to sell its magazines through iTunes, bringing more O to the iPad
• Service launched for publishers to evade Apple cut
• Daily Telegraph also joins iTunes
  • Starting with July editions, you can subscribe to Hearst magazines through iTunes
  • Titles like Esquire, Popular Mechanics, and O
  • Subscriptions are $1.99 monthly, $19.99 annually
  • Hearst says it will eventually sell newspapers this way too
  • Yudu has Reader's Digest and Haymarket
  • Yudu Delivers pubs through app store even when payment has been made direct to publisher"

• Exclusive: Facebook and Google mull Skype deals
  • Reuters reports Facebook and Google considering partnership or acquisition of Skype
  • Facebook already has a partnership sending Facebook contacts and news items to Skype
  • Google competes with GTalk and Google Voice
  • Source reports Zuck has had internal discussions about acquiring Skype, another source says a joint venture has been proposed
  • Google has reportedly held early talks about a joint venture
  • Skype IPO is on the books for laster this year"

Discussion Stories

• Anonymous Claims It Took No Credit Card Numbers From Sony
• Anonymous letter
• Anonymous: Sony is incompetent (and we don't steal credit cards)
• Security Expert: Sony Knew Its Software Was Obsolete Months Before PSN Breach
• N.Y. attorney general subpoenas Sony
  • Dr. Gene Spafford, Purdue, testified Sony was using out of date Apache servers
  • Security experts monitoring forums learned Sony had old AWS and no firewall
  • The forum was monitoed by Sony employees and discussion was 2-3 months before breach
  • Anonymous issued a lengthy statement denying involvement in Sony hacks
  • “Whoever did perform the theft did so contrary to the ‘modus operandi’ and intentions of Anonymous,” the statement says. “If a legitimate and honest investigation into the credit card theft is conducted, Anonymous will not be found liable.”
  • Anonymous is a loose organization without a central authority, but AnonOpps is close as you can get and they deny responsibility.

• New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman issued a subpoena to three of the company's business divisions--Sony Computer Entertainment America, Sony Network Entertainment, and Sony Online Entertainment.

• CEO: EA will switch from discs to digital
• Electronic Arts posts higher 4Q earnings, revenue
  • During EA earnigns call, CEO John Riccitiello said ""Over the coming years, we will transform EA from a packaged goods company to a fully integrated digital entertainment company. We're transforming EA to a games-as-a-service model."
  • "What we've been doing is stepping down investment against our core Packaged Goods business, and stepping up investment against Digital opportunity," Riccitiello said, according to the Seeking Alpha transcript. "In fact, this year, we're getting reasonably close to 50-50."
  • earned $151 million, or 45 cents per share, in the January-March period. That's up from $30 million, or 9 cents per share, in the same period a year earlier.
  • EA's adjusted revenue, which accounts for deferred revenue from games with online components, was $995 million, up from $850 million a year earlier. On this basis, analysts were expecting revenue of $922.6 million.
  • The company said its digital revenue grew sharply, to $211 million from $144 million a year earlier. On an adjusted basis, digital revenue was up 72 percent for the quarter to $268 million.
  • Eric Brown, EA's chief financial officer, said the company continues to weigh more of its business to digital. In fiscal 2011, 22 percent of the company's business came from the non-packaged side.

• iOS 5 updates expected to be carried over-the-air, at least for the Verizon iPhone
  • 9to5Mac has multiple sources informing it that Apple and Verizon are scheming to start delivering iOS updates over the air from this fall, or just as soon as iOS 5 is made available. since iTunes currently acts as the major backup hub, 9to5Mac speculates Cupertino must be working on a cloud backup service as well.

• Google’s Plan To Win Location & Social
• Marissa Mayer explains Google’s social strategy, skeptical on Facebook
  • Google VP of location and local services Mariss Mayer spoke at Social-Loco conference in San Francisco.
  • 1. Exploration and discovery
  • 2. interactivity
  • 3. new perspectives
  • introduced Google Business Photos and Google Earth Android
  • Google’s location-based services are growing fast too. Google Places now has 5 million user ratings and reviews, and it adds 1 million ratings and reviews each month, Mayer said.""Our social strategy is to help users connect with each other,"

News Fuse

• According to an SEC filing, Barnes & Noble will announce a new e-reader May 24. Best guesses are that it could be a new e-ink version or a Nook Color with Honeycomb. The odd admission was made as part of an 8-K report and according to BArnes and Noble, was filed "to satisfy the requirements of Regulation FD." That regulation was put in place in 2000 to address concerns over insider trading.

• Does everyone know what time it is? It's class action lawsuit time. This time, 6 major companies including Apple, Google, Pixar and Intel are being sued for "anti-competitive employee solicitation agreements." That pretty much means they wouldn't poach each other's employees and fixed wages. The fun part is the companies already admitted they did this to the Department of Justice. Ought to be a quick case then.

• Bankrupt Nortel is in the process of selling its patent portfolio. Google has already offered the paltry sum of $900 million to Nortel to get those patents off its hands. A new challenger has arrived, RPX wants those patents, too - probably because they are a professional patent buying firm. Due to some bankruptcy rules, RPX has to pay at least $929 million. Let the bidding war commence.

• Intel's Wireless Display technology, lets you stream HD content from select laptops to an HDTV (with the help of a small adapter) But hasn't played so nice with DVDs and Blu-rays. Now everything has changed. Intel is supporting HDCP-protected discs (along with some online content) through a free driver update. One catch: it only applies to Sandy Bridge laptops.

• Boy Genius Reports is reporting that RIM is working on another PlayBook already. What makes this one different than the one that's out already? Does it come with a native email app? Who knows - but it will likely have a 10-inch screen. So sometime around the holidays, you'll may have your choice of a 7-inch or 10-inch PlayBook.

• Mozilla officials have refused a US government request to ban a Firefox add-on that helps people access sites that use internet domain names confiscated in an unprecedented seizure earlier this year. The add-on MediaaFire redirected users to domain names beyond the reach of US customs officials, where possible. Mozilla General counsel Harvey Anderson said there was no court order, so Mozilla chose not to comply with ICE's request.

• Watching HD streaming video from Amazon? Pssst. Do it on s low connection. Apparently, if the HD stream buffers, they step it down to SD for uninterrupted streaming, but then feel bad about it. Amazon is sending out credits for high definition video on demand rentals or purchases that may not have actually achieved sustained HD streaming. Iyaz got a dollar out of this policy! Rich man!

• The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the firing of a Wisconsin high school biology teacher and union president for viewing thumbnail images of porn for one minute. Robert Zellner, an 11-year teacher, claimed his 2006 termination for typing “blonde” in the Google search bar was in retaliation for his constitutionally protected criticism of his employer. So be careful what you search for, your work computer is not your own.

Kickers and Weird Science

• Flexible PaperPhone wants to get bent out of shape (video)

Calendar

• CRTC sets target of 5Mbps broadband for all Canadians by 2015
• Today is the anniversary of the release of Wolfenstein 3-D in 1992. It became the most successful of the early first person shooters
• 50 years ago on this day, Alan Shepard became the first American in space.
• Motorola Mobility and Sprint today jointly unveiled two new Android smartphones, the Titanium and the XPRT. They look almost the same, with 3.1-in. touchscreens, Qwerty keyboards. but the XPRT has rounded corners and sleek look. The Titanium, has angular corners and is built military-grade tough to handle dust, shock, vibration, low pressure, solar radiation and high and low temperatures.
• Samsung's Infuse 4G with its 4.5-inch Super AMOLED screen and 21 mbps capability, coming to AT&T May 15th for $200
• According to a research note released by Goldman Sachs today, the world's rare earth supply deficit will probably reach its apex this year, before converting into a surplus by 2013.

Voicemail

• Corey from NYC wants to talk about version numbers

Email

"Good morrow Tom and the rest of the fine lords and ladies of TNT,

I am just watching Episode 235, in which the gang is talking about streaming music services such as spotify (which now has download "packages") You regularly talk about how you wish we had more streaming music services, but I am not sure I ever heard any mention of Rhapsody. I have used Rhapsody for a few years now, and it's great. You can stream what you want, anytime, or download as much as you want to your computer, iDevice, Android, whatever! It's a service that is available now, and has been available for several years, and have quite a massive library. Just sayin, maybe give Rhapsody a little love next time.

As Three-Dog says, "Keep fightin' the good fight."

Jared

• http://mashable.com/2008/07/09/streaming-music-sites/
  • Napster, Rdio, Slacker, Pandora, Last.FM, MOG, Music Unlimited, Zune Pass, Grooveshark, Playlist.com, Jango, AOL Radio, Deezer, DI, iLike, Magnatune, SHOUTcast, TheSixtyOne, Yahoo Music, BlipSeeqPod, Live365

Sponsors

FreshBooks

• Freshbooks.com
• Freshbooks -3
• ad times: :35-:42 and 14:24-16:53

Production Information

• Edited by: Jason
• Notes:

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