Tech News Today 186

Tech News Today Episode 186

Tech News Today 186: Who Are Yooodle?

Is Craigslist a hive of scum and villainy? Lenovo's new laptops crush new Macbooks, the full scoop on Thunderbolt, and more.

Hosts

• Tom Merritt (@acedtect)
  • TomMerritt.com
• Sarah Lane (@sarahlane)
  • SarahLane.com
• Jason Howell
  • JasonHowell.net
• Simon Dingle
  • simondingle.com

Top Stories

• Thunderbolt smokes USB, FireWire with 10Gbps throughput
• Intel Thunderbolt: a closer look
• Can be either copper or fiber (Apple is doing copper) 10 Gbps bidirectional. Twice as fast as USB 3, 12 x faster than FireWire. Backup a full Bluray movie in 30 seconds. Sync 64 GB of music in 1 minute. 3 meter length limit for copper. (10 feet) Fiber for data copper for electrical can be tens of meters. Fiber only cables can be hundreds. Daisy-chain up to 6 devices. Up to 10 w power per port power. All the way through the chain. Uses displayport but no word on how that will work with optical connectors. Using PCI Express x4 for data and DisplayPort for video. (can work with FireWire and eSATA adapters) Promise and LaCie promise drives this summer. LaCie's is called Little Big Disk (SSDs inside)
• Video showing daisy-chaining of Thunderbolt
• Intel still promises native USB 3.0 support... someday

• Apple intros updated MacBook Pros, dev preview of Mac OS X Lion
• Starting from the bottom of the line, the 13" MacBook Pro now comes with either a dual-core i5 or i7 processor up to 2.7GHz and Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics for $1,199. The 15" and 17" models got the majority of the upgrades, however—the 15" base model now carries a 2.0GHz Quad i7 processor, 4GB of 1333MHz of RAM, a 500GB 5400rpm hard drive, and a 1440x900 display driven by an AMD Radeon HD 6490M for $1,799. The 17" base model is similar, but the processor is a 2.2GHz Quad i7 and it has a 750GB 5400rpm hard drive, along with an AMD 6750M and a display resolution of 1920x1200 for $2,499. The 13" and 15" MacBook Pros also got an SD card slot upgrade: they now support SDXC cards up to 64GB (up from 32GB). All three get Thunderbolt, new "FaceTime" cameras support 720p. . Reduced battery estimate from 8-9 to 7 hours.
• Apple refreshes MacBook Pros with Sandy Bridge processors, AMD graphics, Thunderbolt I/O tech, and HD cameras
• Apple FaceTime for Mac finally out of beta, available on the Mac App Store for $0.99
• Apple Discontinuing MobileMe Retail Boxes, Preparing for Free Overhauled Version?

• Apple releases dev preview of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion with AirDrop, FileVault
• Apple brings multi-touch, full-disk crypto to latest OS X

Discussion Stories

• Lenovo flaunts ThinkPad with 30 hour battery life
• $719 - $1329 available in March
• T420s, T420, T520, L420, L520 and W520. All come with better power management (30% more battery life) and voice calling features, with the latter boosted by dual array microphones and keyboard noise-reduction technology. -- al share docking feature and battery. All SandyBridge. The highlight of the crop though is the T420s, which has a whopping battery life of 30 hours - achieved of course with an extended battery pack.

• British court orders WikiLeaks' Assange extradited to Sweden
• Judge Howard Riddle ruled WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange is to be extradited to Sweden.
• WikiLeaks boss labels UK extradition order a 'rubber stamping process'. Julian Assange was awarded bail this afternoon, after his lawyers secured funds understood to total £200,000.. Assange has 7 days to appeal.

• Want LTE on your Motorola Xoom? Ship it back to Motorola in May and wait a week.

• Classifieds Wars: Craigslist, Oodle Fight Over Safety
• Oodle put out a report with classifieds research firm AIM Group this morning noting that 330 crimes, including 43 violent ones, were tied to interactions on Craigslist over the last year. Oodle called its rival a “cesspool of crime”

News Fuse

• The Federal Court of Australia has dismissed a case from the movie industry which argued that ISPs must take action against file-swappers, based on allegations of infringement from copyright holders. The court made clear, in future cases, it is possible an ISP could be found to have "authorized" infringement based on the specific facts of a case.

• Microsoft is doing their best to explain what's been going on with their Windows Phone 7 update. The company reports that around 10 percent of users attempting the upgrade encountered a problem, but of those, "nearly half" failed because they lacked a proper internet connection or enough disk space. Keep on spinning, Microsoft.

• More rumblings of Sprint abandoning WiMax. Bloomberg cites "three people familiar with the talks" that 4G LTE wholesaler LightSquared is in active negotiations with Sprint to use its network infrastructure. Sprint currently partners with ClearWire to provide 4G service on WiMax. ClearWire could also switch to LTE if it so chose.

• Microsoft might win the "Do Not Track" battleof the browsers. The W3C -- you know them as the standards body responsible for HTML5-- accepted and published Microsoft's member submission for standardized privacy features on Thursday. The W3C said Microsoft's submission was "both timely and well-aligned with the consortium's objectives and priorities." An official announcement on the standard should come in early March.

• Here's one more reason why streaming subscription music services like Spotify are having such a heard time striking deals int he US. According to RIAA-tracked revenue stats shared with Digital Music News, revenue declines ocurred in 2008 and 2009 after a modest peak in 2007. Rhapsody had a modest subscriber gain last year, but the trend is largely in the other direction.

• Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office, goes live today for all Windows users running Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and 2010. No love for Mac users yet. Google Cloud Connect is a plug-in that gives Office users in multiple locations the ability to edit and collaborate on Office documents at the same time.

• The police raided the home of Graf_chokolo, who has contributed to much regarding PS3 homebrew and jailbreaking had his private home raided by police this morning. They confiscated all of his "accounts" and anything related to PS3 hacking. In response, he released all of his PS3 hypervisor knowledge to the world. It will help other devs to reverse engineer the hypervisor of PS3 further."

• Google's under the Swiss gun again. While the company blurs the faces of 99 percent of the people who appear in Street View using an automated system, that's apparently not enough! Switzerland's top privacy official is asking for Google to do a manual review to get that last one percent. Google says a manual review to get to 100% is not feasible, “logistically or financially.”

Kickers and Weird Science

• Sony PS2 handheld mod looks downright gorgeous, just needs a battery pack (video)

Calendar

• Space Shuttle Discovery makes it's final flight today
• The other Thunderbolt has been delayed. HTC's Thunderbolt phone is delayed until March 4th, says a Best Buy store with a Twitter account
• HTC Arrive is Sprint's first Windows Phone 7 device, launches March 20th for $200
• Yahoo Is (Finally) Shutting Down MyBlogLog May 24
• SXSW coverage Saturday and Sunday 3/12 and 13
• Watch the TWiT studios get built

Voicemail

• Mike in Newark: Lightpeak versus Thunderbolt (round 2)

Email

"Tom, Jason & (insert other host/guest(s) name here)

Regarding the company called LightSquared getting FCC approval to build out its 4G terrestrial and satellite based broadband service. This effort is a potentially major threat to the GPS service currently in use. This editorial in GPS World goes into detail, explaining the potential impact on GPS and the FCC fast tracking LightSquared's plan.

Basically, LightSquared's signal is broadcast in the portion of L Band (1525 MHz–1559 MHz) immediately adjacent to the 1559–1610 MHz band used by GPS and is about 1 billion times stronger than the GPS signal. Most affected would be high precision GNSS receivers which are the most susceptible to jamming. Please mention this on the show, I believe public awareness is minimal and much more scrutiny is required before this system is implemented.

- Daniel"

"This issue about in-app purchases brings up something that would maybe be helpful on an iPhone/iPod touch. How about different people having different user accounts? Then the kids could have the area they can play with the games you want and then if you enter a password you can access the financial/internet apps, etc. This would be nice for families with kids or even a couple that shares an iPad. Although I think improvements to the notifications system in iOS is a much more needed improvement, this would be a nice feature to add as well.

Dan Ficker St. Paul, MN"

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Production Information

• Edited by: Jason
• Notes:

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