Tech News Today 259

Tech News Today Episode 259

Tech News Today 259: Angry Ink

EU hates Facebook, Microsoft might make it's own tablet, NATO goes to war with anonymous, and more!

Hosts

• Tom Merritt (@acedtect)
  • TomMerritt.com
• Sarah Lane (@sarahlane)
  • http://www.sarahlane.com
• Iyaz Akhtar (@iyaz)
  • http://thisoldnerd.finitecomedy.com
• Jason Howell (@raygun01)
  • http://www.jasonhowell.net/

Top Stories

• EU regulators scrutinize Facebook's facial recognition feature
• Facebook Facial Recognition Tips Off EU Privacy Backlash
• Facebook sorry over face tagging launch
  • EU regulators concerned about Facebook facial recognition feature
  • The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, which advises national data protection agencies, suggests the feature "can bear a lot of risks for users."
  • "Tags of people on pictures should only happen based on people's prior consent and it can't be activated by default," Article 29 member Gerald Lommel told Bloomberg Businessweek.
  • When photos are uploaded Facebook suggestions identities for people in photos, it does not automatically tag, Is on by default.
  • Just like tagging before, you can tag someone without consent, though they can remove themselves
  • "We should have been more clear with people during the roll-out process when this became available to them," said a Facebook spokesperson.

• Microsoft eyeing own-brand Windows 8 tablet for end of 2012?
• A Microsoft-Branded Windows 8 Tablet? Doubt It.
• Microsoft details SkyDrive integration with Windows Phone Mango (video)
  • DigitTimes citing upstream suppliers,
  • Microsoft looking into putting together an own-brand Windows 8 slate
  • powered by Texas Instruments silicon and put together by Taiwan-based ODMs. The deadline for this device is said to be by the end of 2012
  • John Paczkowski of ATD thinks it's likely to be a reference design, not consumer
  • MS is detailing SkyDrive options for WP7 users
  • share their stored photos via text message, e-mail or IM, and to upload their videos to the cloud with the touch of a button.
  • browse, share and edit uploaded MS Office documents directly from their handhelds
  • Storage limit 25GB

• Steve Jobs reveals Apple's new spaceship campus, calls it the 'best office building in the world' (video)
  • Steve Jobs appeared before the Cupertino City Council Monday to propose a new Apple campus
  • "human-scale" building to house 13,000 employees is the original home of HP's computer systems division, land that was recently sold to Apple.
  • senior arborist from Stanford will restore plants including adding apricot orchards
  • Apple plans to make the campus' energy center the facility's primary power generator using natural gas and other "clean energy" sources -- the city would simply provide backup power when needed.
  • Best office building in the world

Discussion Stories

• Industry Upbeat About IPv6 Day Despite Low Traffic Volume
• So far, so good with World IPv6 Day
  • initial monitoring by Internet security company Arbor Networks suggested that on June 8 Internet Protocol 6 will at best account for 0.02 percent of global Internet traffic at any point during the day. Akamai had similar numbers --- Scott Iekel-Johnson, an Arbor Networks product manager, noted that the overall levels of IPv6 traffic remain higher today by about 30% to 60% compared to other days.
  • Most OS's can resolve IPv6 but the routers can't
  • According to Arbor Networks, only around 10 percent of IPv6 on June 8 has so far been sent in native form, with the rest tunnelled or encapsulated within IPv4 to ensure compatibility.
  • "The day has shown that if you turn IPv6 on the world will not collapse," said Robert Kisteleki, R&D manager for RIPE NCC, who has judged the day a proof of concept success. "Many of the CDNs may just decide to leave IPv6 turned on. If that happens we will not need another IPv6 Day," he said.
  • http://test-ipv6.com/
  • http://ipv6eyechart.ripe.net/
  • The lessons learned from Wednesday's test, if any, will be offered to the industry at next week's IPv6 World Congress in London.

• 'Anonymous' Warns NATO: Do Not Mess With Us
• NATO plans force to respond to cyber attacks
  • establishing the "Cyber Red Team"
  • Last week at a conference in Lisbon, NATO named Anonymous on a list of enemies alongside terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda, The Taliban and North Korea
  • Today Anonymous replied
  • Today announced: NATO is planning to establish the Cyber Red Team (...) that would provide a significant contribution to the improvement of NATO's cyber defense capability,

• Senators seek crackdown on "Bitcoin" currency
  • stems from the "Silk Road" illegal drug site that used bitcoin
  • Bitcoin: inside the encrypted, peer-to-peer digital currency
  • background on bitcoin
  • Democratic Senators Charles Schumer of New York and Joe Manchin of West Virginia wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder and Drug Enforcement Administration head Michele Leonhart, expressing concern about Bitcoin
  • The letter focused on shutting down the Silk Road website, but expressed concern about the "peer-tp-peer" BitCoin service
  • Concerns and discussions in the BitCoin community center around whether the gov't can shut down BitCoin exchanges.

• The New York Times' Paywall Is Working!
  • NYT exec says the paper is seeing an uptick in print subscriptions (which gives unlimited access to the online content)
  • Unnamed senior NYT official told Business Insider that digital subs. are leading into an increase in NYT print subscriptions
  • Another executive confirmed this, saying the company is "seeing an uptick in new print orders in all frequencies--7 days, Weekender, and Sunday."
  • None of this is confirmed and lost of questions remain. But if true, considering subs have been declining, it seems likely that digital would be the main reason for a resurgence.
  • Main question is, How is revenue?

News Fuse

• Seven people were injured in an explosion at an Intel plant located in Chandler, Arizona. One person was severely burned. The blast occurred in a solvent waste treatment rooms of the Fab 22 facility. No chemicals were released into the surrounding areas and Intel is conducting an investigation.

• Google updated Chrome this week. Along with a new version number of 12, Google added malicious download warnings, easier deleting of Adobe Flash cookies, and some new hardware-accelerated graphics capabilities like support for 3D CSS. Chrome 12 is an automatic download.

• People may not be buying Nokia phones like they used to, but there are rumors of another company buying Nokia. There are whispers that Samsung is now interested in purchasing the Finnish corporation. When reached for comment, a Samsung representative said, "It seems like a market rumor and we don’t comment on rumors.”

• Last week, Sony was hit by hackers for what seems like the umpteenth time. Sony Pictures released a statement saying that 37,500 customer records have been exposed and has said it contacted those affected about the breach this morning. LulzSec has claimed responsibility for the hack.

• After getting some pressure from Washington DC, Apple revised its App Store Review Guidelines and now explicitly bans apps that "contain DUI checkpoints that are not published by law enforcement agencies, or encourage and enable drunk driving…" So if you wanted to make your fortune on drunk driving apps, you might want to consider a strategy pivot.

• From the "It's about time" file - Twitter's website will soon be able to shorten links automatically using its T.co URL shortener. Links will eat up 19 characters of your allotted 140. Automatic link shortening is live for a small percentage of Twitter users right now, but the service will roll out for everyone soon.

• Who is the world's largest semiconductor buyer? If you said Dell or Sony, you'd be wrong. It's Apple -- the company spent $17.5 billion on semiconductors in 2010 and is projected to spend $22.4 billion this year according to IHS iSuppli. HP, Samsung, Dell and Nokia round out the top 5.

• Buying games on phones isn't always a huge investment, but you can still feel frustrated that you paid full price for a lousy game. T-Mobile is working with WildTangent to set up subscription-based game rentals on Android phones. If you like the game, you can buy it and use that rental fee towards the purchase price. Rental fees will depend on the price of the game, but the fee could be around 25 cents.

Randomizer

• Angry Birds on Nook Simple Touch (eInk)

Calendar

• Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 on sale at NYC Best Buy today, pre-orders now open
• BlackBerry PlayBook now available from Sprint for $499
• Sprint and Motorola holding press event tomorrow, Thursday June 9 - sources say Sprint will announce an Android phone equipped with NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 superchip. more speculation that the event may also include a Motorola Photon 4G launch
• HP TouchPad to be available June 22nd, starting at $500 for 16GB according to enterprise vendor Synnex
• Wimbledon finals to be first 3D broadcasts on BBC - The matches, scheduled to be played on Saturday 2 July and Sunday 3 July
• Verizon confirms sales of its Galaxy S II 'superphone' start in July

Email

"Hello Tom

I was watching your reading the feeds before the keynote coverage and after hearing you would like some kind of listener submission digg or voting system I checked out reddit and it is possible there to make custom reddits. So I made one for tech news today. The address is reddit.com/r/technewstoday and I'd be happy to relinquish admin so that it can be controlled by TWIT staff if it does become used.

I've test submitted one article already and I hope it becomes adopted as it would be great to have a system for all tnt'ers to use.

Cheers

Scott Theede"

"With all the E3 news this week, few people seem to have noticed that yesterday RIM announced that they are acquiring Scoreloop, a social gaming platform. They provide services akin to Open Feint and Apple's Game Center, allowing cross-platform social gaming for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 7. I would imagine a Blackberry SDK will show up soon. Either this is an indicator that RIM is looking to back up the ""play"" in Playbook, or, perhaps, they are gearing up to become a cross-platform service provider, refreshing the rumors of the Blackberry Messenger service opening up to other OS's. I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

Cheers,

Jeffrey Matthias (muh-thigh-us) @idlehands Denver, CO"

"Hey guys,

I thought I’d drop a line and let you all know about one potential SNAFU with the whole Live TV coming down the pipe. It’s said that Microsoft will be requiring an “Xbox Live Diamond” account in order to access the Live TV features.. But right now, Xbox Live subscriptions can only be on one Xbox at a time. In my house, we have two Xboxes. If I want to use my Xbox Live Gold account on both of them, I have to “restore” my account on the second one, which effectively ‘signs me out’ of the first Xbox. If this limitation remains in place, it will severely impact Xbox Live TV.. Unless you only use one TV in your house.

Enjoy the show, keep up the good work!

-Jason"

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Production Information

• Edited by: Jason
• Notes:

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