Tech News Today 377

Tech News Today Episode 377

Tech News Today 377: 75% Off Crapcakes

You are only 4.74 steps away from me, Software industry withdraws support for SOPA, Samsung and LG backing Google TV, and more.

Submit and vote on story coverage at technewstoday.reddit.com

Hosts

• Tom Merritt (@acedtect)
  • TomMerritt.com
• Sarah Lane (@sarahlane)
  • SarahLane.com
• Iyaz Akhtar (@Iyaz)
  • thisoldnerd.finitecomedy.com
• Jason Howell (@raygun01)
• Christopher Null
  • blog.intuit.com

Top Stories

• HTC considers to appeal S3 Graphics patent lawsuit against Apple
• EU: Apple-Samsung row could be stifling competition
• EU Injects Itself Into Apple-Samsung Patent War
  • International Trade Commission (ITC) of the US, on November 21, ruled that Apple did not violate any of the related patents and will end its investigation of the case.
  • HTC's general counsel Grace Lei said that the company respects the ruling but will consider an appeal after evaluating the ruling.
  • European Commission decided to open an investigation into the warfare between Apple and Samsung
  • "In particular, in the IT sector, it is obvious it is not the only case. Apple and Samsung is only one case where IP rights can be used as an instrument to restrict competition," EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told Reuters

• As Palm bidding continues, HP wants a sweet deal to keep webOS in printers (exclusive)
• HP has sold more tablets in 2011 than Samsung, says NPD
• HP CEO: 'Googles, Facebooks calling us' due to HDD shortage
• Hewlett-Packard Wins Court Bid to Keep Report on Hurd’s Departure Secret
  • VentureBeat reports HP has made licensing WebOS for printers (for cheap) a condition for anyone purchasing WebOS
  • Intel and Qualcomm in the running. No more word on Amazon these days.
  • NPD Group study found that HP is the country's second-leading tablet manufacturer thus far in 2011, responsible for 17 percent of non-Apple tablet sales. (204,000) - 16 percent and 192,000 for Samsung's Galaxy Tab
  • NPD study excludes Nooks and Kindles
  • During earnings call Whitman said "Facebooks and Googles" calling HP for hard drives.
  • The Delaware Supreme Court yesterday affirmed a decision by Delaware Chancery Court Judge Donald Parsons Jr. that the “interim” report by lawyers at Covington & Burling to the board shouldn’t be made public.

• The Distance From You to Almost Anyone Is 4.74 Facebook Friends
  • Facebook and Università degli Studi di Milano.n joint study
  • Facebook users are on average 4.74 steps away from any other Facebook user
  • in 2008 the distance from any one Facebook user was, on average, 5.28 hops, it’s now 4.74.
  • People tend to friend people like themselves so within a country average separation around 3
  • in 2008 the distance from any one Facebook user was, on average, 5.28 hops, it’s now 4.74.

Discussion Stories

• Wanna see Ice Cream Sandwich on a tablet? Look no further
• Eee Pad Transformer is first tablet to get unofficial Android 4.0 port
  • Nvidia released a video of the Asus Transformer Prime (with a Tegra 3 processor) running ICS
  • ability to drag one app icon atop another to form an app folder
  • full 1080p video; and the Riptide GP game that exercises the quad-core ability of the chip.
  • Also an unofficial YouTube video of ICS on Transformer

• Samsung in last-stage Google TV talks, exec says
  • Yoon Boo Keun, president of Samsung's TV division, told Reuters Samsung is currently in "last-stage" talks with Google to launch a Google TV-based device and it will "differ from those of competitors"
  • Will be unveiled at an event not at CES
  • LG rumoured to have a CES announcement
  • Previous reports speculated Samsung had TVs in the work, but no clarity abotu it this time. Could be using Samsung chips.

• Business Software Alliance Withdraws Support for Stop Online Piracy Act
• SOPA Needs Work to Address Innovation Considerations
• Sign the petition against SOPA/PROTECT-IP, and Ron Wyden will read your name into the Congressional record in an epic filibuster
• Boffins: SOPA breaks DNSSEC, and won’t work anyway
  • "Valid and important questions have been raised about the bill. It is intended to get at the worst of the worst offenders. As it now stands, however, it could sweep in more than just truly egregious actors," BSA president and CEO Robert Holleyman wrote on the BSA blog.
  • Senator Ron Wyden has vowed to block PIPA and SOPA with an epic filibuste. StopCensorship.org hopes he'll read into the record the names of every American who signs the petition against the bill.
  • How would SOPA and Protect IP break DNS? --- Today we have insecure DNS. We enter website.com and we get back an IP address. No authentication. MiM attack could have delivered wrong IP. --- DNSSEC mandates domain record is cryptographically signed. End-to-end encryption. No MIm --- HOWEVER with the prosed legislation US would redirect (not block) traffic on affected US ISPs to deliver the wong IP address This. violates DNSSEC. ---- Additionally you can just enter IP address directly if you know it, or use a FReeNEt or other alternate DNS like Tor.

News Fuse

• AT&T and T-Mobile's proposed merger just took another blow. The Wall Street Journal reports that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will ask for a formal hearing on the proposed merger.The Department of Justice has already filed its lawsuit to block the deal, so the FCC hearing would happen after that suit is resolved. So T-Mobile will exist independently for a few months longer in 2012.

• Canalys says Apple could be the top PC vendor before Q3 of 2012 - that is as long as you count the iPad as a PC. Currently, HP is the leader of the pack, but the research firm thinks the iPad 3 will be integral in Apple's move to the top. Canalys also says that Ultrabook adoption will not be widespread until prices drop considerably.

• Major publisher Penguin Group is removing its ebooks from libraries citing security concerns. OverDrive, the digital distributor for many libraries, posted on its blog that it was told to disable ""Get for Kindle"" functionality for all Penguin titles, but it is working to bring the titles back. Meanwhile, the decision has the American Library Association upset. ALA President-elect Maureen Sullivan said, “If Penguin has an issue with Amazon, we ask that they deal with Amazon directly and not hold libraries hostage to a conflict of business models.

• The University of Washington and Aalto University in Finland have successfully created a contact lens that can receive data via an embedded antenna and display signals via a single pixel. The hope is that one day, many more pixels can be crammed into that contact lens for all kinds of augmented reality goodness in your eye. Right now, the research team has tested the contact lens on rabbits. So watch out for rabbits.

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15834476 The Tor Project is calling on people to donate bandwidth by setting up bridge relays on Amazon's EC2 service. Since there is no complete public list of all the bridges, it becomes difficult for any ISP or authority to block traffic on that network. The Tor Project says it only takes a few minutes to set up a bridge on Amazon; for full instructions, check out

• AT&T alerted customers that it was the subject of an "organized and systematic" attack, but that it did not believe data was compromised. AT&T says the hackers were using scripts to find out if AT&T phone numbers were linked to AT&T online accounts but did not provide more details. The attack was on 1 million accounts - only 1% of AT&T's total accounts.

• Microsoft says you won't have to babysit your Windows 8 install because a full setup can be completed in as few as 11 clicks. A Windows 7 upgrade took up to 60 screens. Microsoft also detailed how long a "super upgrade" (which covers 1.44 million files and 120 apps) would take. What took Windows 7 over 8 hours took Windows 8 less than one.

• Microsoft just bought VideoSurf, a video discovery company. VideoSurf's tech can search video by identifying images in frames so you can find content. Microsoft says to expect the tech to pop up in the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live. TechCrunch Europe says the deal was for $70 million, but Microsoft didn't officially disclose the price.

• Rohm, an electronics parts supplier working with Osaka University, has created a chip that successfully achieved wireless data speeds of 1.5Gbps by using terahertz frequencies at 300GHz. When can we expect these chips? They won't be mass-produced for three to four years. The company says that 30Gbps should be possible in the future and should cost less than $5 to produce.

Randomizer

• Baker Has to Make 102,000 Cupcakes For Grouponers

Calendar

• Today is the end of the road for the Gmail app for BlackBerry. RIP.
• Sony's dual screen Tablet P is now available in the UK for about 500 British pounds.
• Samsung Illusion Headed To Verizon Tomorrow for $80. Techcrunch calls it yet another ho-hum phone for Android. specs include Android 2.3, 1Ghz processor, & a 3-mp camera
• Microsoft has confirmed the revamped Xbox 360 dashboard will launch on December 6th- deeper Kinect integration with better voice recognition, Facebook sharing, plus live TV, music and movies, available for streaming. The dashboard is in beta now.
• LG holding 'exclusive launch event' on December 1st
• T-Mobile will offer the Samsung Galaxy S II in white for the holiday season (exact date not announced yet, T-Mobile says in time for the holidays)

INCOMING

Email

"Tom, et al

Please don't use my real name, since I now work for ""the man"" but I need to share this rant - In reference to the continuing coverage of the hacked IL SCADA system - I have a little perspective on this story, having worked as a system, network, and firewall admin in public utilities and universites through the years. I have had to deal with these cooties time and time again. This continuing problem is merely a failure of common sense. Why do unprotected SCADA systems, unpatched 15 yr old PCs driving HVAC systems, and various ""wall wort"" implementations need internet routable addresses? Why do vending machines, etc need to be visible to the internet? NAT people, NAT. Wouldn't it be ridiculously simple to put these WFO operating systems behind a <$50 SOHO router?

Thanks for all those of you in the Twit-verse do for we wage slaves, Cable Ninja" "Hey TNT crew, I can tell you why a local utility district would want to have something like the pumps for the water system connected to the internet: Lower labor costs.

On a non-connected system if there's a problem with one of the pumps it can be difficult to pin down exactly which pump it is and what's wrong with it, so you have to send a service crew out to check all the possible pumps in the area where the problem might be. With internet connected pumps, you log into a web page, find out which pump it is, and head out.

Nor are things like infrastructure pumps the only things connected to the web. My brother works as a service tech for a fountain drink maker. All the machines they've built since the late 90s have been internet connected. This enables my brother to make sure that a service call is a real problem, and not simply a case of the clerk being too lazy to fill the machine. Its enabled his employer to cut his staff, while expanding the amount of territory he covers.

Brian Drake Gallatin, TN"

"Hey Tom, you can uncheck upload podcasts in #Googlemusic options -

just deleted 2k+ podcasts and turned it off this weekend -- Options > Advanced > ""Include Podcasts in Uploads"" <--- Uncheck

Then go to music.google.com - Genre - search podcasts, highlight all then right click in bottom corner - delete. I had ~2,300 that had been uploading every day since GM Beta started. - Bill B."

Sponsors

Ford

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Epson

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Production Information

• Edited by: Jeff
• Notes:

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