Tech News Today 298

Tech News Today Episode 298

Tech News Today 298: The Circle Of Tech

Opera people aren't so smart, BlackBerry avalanche!!!, and Android es muy mal 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
  • thisoldnerd.finitecomedy.com
• Mark Turpin (@the_t)
• Joanna Stern
  • thisismynext.com

Top Stories

• Opera people are not the smartest: story was bogus
• Dumb IE users' report faked, admits scam's architect
• Aptiquant website
• Tell-Tale signs that should have uncovered the hoax in less than 5 minutes! (from Aptiquant)
  • Study from AptiQuant that said IE users were the dumbest and Opera users were smartest is being called a hoax today.
  • AptiQuant's website was examined, found that its staff images were copied from a legit business in Paris called "Central Test" with different names.
  • Website appeared to have been set up in the past month.
  • In a blog today on a fake company's website, the perpetrator of the scam admitted the whole thing was a put-on.
    • "There is no company called AptiQuant, and no such survey was ever done," the blog read. "This was all meant to be a lighthearted joke."
• Operation Shady RAT: The Biggest Hacking Attack Ever
• Security Firm Says It Found Global Cyberspying
• Operation Shady RAT: Five things to know
• McAfee blog post: "Revealed: Operation Shady RAT"
  • 5 year attack, covered 72 organizations & governments incl US, Canada, South Korea, India, the IOC, UN discovered by McAfee
  • In these cases networks were compromised by remote access tools, or RATs
  • McAffee says the attacker was a ""state actor"" but didn't name a country which makes people think that China is involved
  • The attacks were carried out via email with a malicious attachment (spear phishing)
  • Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee's VP, Threat Research says that several petabytes of info were taken.“I am convinced that every company in every conceivable industry with significant size and valuable intellectual property and trade secrets has been compromised" - Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee's VP, Threat Research in a blog post.

• RIM announces trio of touchscreen BlackBerry smartphones
• RIM launches Blackberry Torch 9810, Torch 9860 and Bold 9900, we go hands-on!
• AT&T Says Three of RIM’s New BlackBerry Phones Are Headed Its Way
• BlackBerry Torch 9850/9860 is ‘all-touch,’ coming this year
• RIM's BlackBerry Torch 9850 goes official for Sprint and US Cellular
  • RIM's announced BlackBerry smartphones, all have are touchscreens.
  • Bold 9900, familiar form-factor with keyboard
  • Torch 9810, slider QWERTY, 3.2 touchscreen, excl. to ATT on HSPA+, uses BB OS7, 1.2GHz Processor
  • Torch 9850 and 9860: 3.7-inch display, all screen. The all-touch Torch is split into two SKUs, a 9860 for GSM carriers including AT&T, Telus, Rogers, and Bell, and a 9850 for the CDMA networks of Sprint and US Cellular.

Discussion Stories

• iTunes Replay rumor redux: now with TV, movie re-downloads
• Exclusive: Apple To Launch iTunes Replay In The Coming Weeks
  • AppAdvice has been told and was able to confirm independently that Apple is on the edge of finally launching a full-fledged re-downloading and possibly streaming service named iTunes Replay.
  • The feature will be giving users access to movies they bought as far as back as January 1st 2009,
  • The name, “iTunes Replay” is currently being used internally, and is planned to be kept when Apple makes this public. You should expect this to go public in the coming weeks"

• Android users twice as likely to see malware than six months ago
  • Security firm Lookout issued a report: If you're running Android you're 2.5x more likely to encounter malware today compared to 6 months ago
  • mobile users havea 30% liklihood of clicking a malicous link
  • An estimated 500,000 people were affected by Android malware in the first half of this year, a period when apps infected with malware rose from 80 in January to more than 400 in June, according to the report, which focuses on Android and Apple's iOS.
  • Lookout collects data from more than 700,000 Android and iPhone apps and 10 million Android devices around the globe, and offers free and fee-based versions of a security service for the open source Android platform, but not for iOS.

• Samsung Is Said to Examine InterDigital’s Patents After Approach for Bid
  • Google and Apple already looked into InterDigital
  • InterDigital is selling 8800 patents - currently holds patents on mobile tech used to transfer info
  • company may fetch more than $5 billion, according to analysts at Algorithm Capital and Dougherty & Co

News Fuse

• Finding porn on the .XXX domain has been incredibly difficult until today. The first porn .XXX site at Casting.XXX is live! We won't be showing you a screenshot of it, but just be aware that it's obviously NSFW. Now for all you TLD aficionados, there was already a .XXX site but it was a corporate site, casting.xxx isn't.

• The Blackhat conference is coming up this week and IBM is ready to show off a new system for running an open wireless network in a secure mode. The plan was created by IBM's ISS X-force (great name!). The X-Force system is designed to withstand stuff like man-in-the-middle attacks and sniffing via digital certificates.

• Qualcomm, makers of such Snapdragon chips such as the MSM7627, APQ8055, and who could forget the QSD8560 has decided to rename their processor lines. Soon, Qualcomm chips for mass market smartphones will be go by the moniker "S1," high performance smartphones and tablets will use the "S2." For gaming and multitasking - "S3." Now these S-designations are merely classes and each class has several variants, so maybe it'll help branding.

• Time Warner has looked into its crystal ball and decided that tablets are the future of publishing! Time announced that it will be introducing all of its magazines on lots of platforms. By the end of this year, you'll be able to get mags from places like Android store, iTunes, and HP. Although if you were giddy about reading People magazine on your PlayBook, Time's press release made no mention of RIM's tablet (although you could find a workaround with Android Player). You'll be able to get digital subscriptions as well as just buying single issues.

• Surely if ISPs want to implement data caps, they should have a way to accurately measure your usage, right? AT&T's caps on U-Verse and DSL were to go live on May 1st, but not all of its customers had access to meters. Additionally, a user at the DSLReports forum says that he was called by AT&T and was told that U-Verse meters may not be making accurate measurements. Don't panic - that same forum was told that no charges for overages would occur until AT&T hashed this out.

• Earlier this year, a South Korean lawyer sued Apple and was awarded $1 million won, or approximately $945, by a court this past June when it was discovered back in April that the iPhone and some iPad models were secretly tracking users. Apple blamed a software bug and issued a fix, but that didn't stop the lawsuits. Today a second fine against Apple was awarded to the Korea Communications Commission in the amount of $3 million won, or approximately $2,829.

• Pegatron Technology has landed orders for 10 million units of iPhone 5 which will make it the second biggest original design manufacturer (ODM) of the smartphone. Shipments will start in September, say industry sources. Pegatron's gearing up for orders for iPad, MacBook Air and other Apple products and has increased production equipment and employment.

• Google SVP and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond has taken to Google's main blog, and he's pissed. At whom? Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle. About what? Patents. Drummond says Google is battling a “hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents.” Day-um.

• We're sure you've heard of Clearwire - its the company that uses WiMAX for faster wireless speeds. Today, Clearwire has announced that it is working on an LTE network and would sell access to it wholesale - that is assuming Clearwire can raise the additional funding. Is this the end of WiMAX? Probably, but Clearwire says it is committed to serving its existing 4G WiMAX customers.

Randomizer

• Wii Fit balance board hack takes a virtual Segway ride around Google's mapped world (video)

Calendar

• Best Buy dishing out free Nexus S for one day only, ball and chain included - no verizon
• Samsung's detailed the TouchWiz UX update for Galaxy Tab 10.1, OTA rollout goes public on August 5th
• Toshiba's Qosmio F755 delivers glasses-free 3D August 16th, for $1,699

Email

"Hey guys, Love the show. In Episode 297 you talked about how ShiftyJelly was less than pleased at their treatment from the Amazon app store. They complained that after Pocket Casts was featured as the free app of the day they stopped getting downloaded after the free period. I hate to say this about a program, but it was barely functional as a podcasting app. It was beautiful but had so many little problems that would drive someone crazy if they consumed a lot of podcasts (which any TWiT lover does). I think that had more to do with this fact that they stopped getting downloaded.

In All About Android a couple weeks ago, they had the developer of Field Runner 3d on, and they talked about how Amazon was the only way to put an app out for free for awhile and then later charge, as Google makes developers lock in a price on apps when they go on the Market. There have been multiple times where the free app i downloaded was great and I told people who later bought it. I think the system is solid and this was just a scream for publicity on ShiftyJelly's part.

Craig Boulder, CO "

"A new concern with buying Mac OS X via the Mac App Store...

In the past, I would buy a Mac OS X upgrade for my computer. When I bought my next new computer that already came with that new version, I could sell my old computer and include the Mac OS X upgrade disc.

But today, if I upgrade my computer to Lion via the Mac App Store, then later buy a new machine that comes with Lion, I can't very well give away that copy of Lion when I sell my old computer, can I?

The Mac App Store software is tied to me, so even if I sell the old computer, I can't transfer rights to the copy of Lion I bought for it...

Have you heard of a way to transfer rights to digital goods (not counting virtual shovels or whatever in those silly Facebook games)?

- Allen Huffman"

Sponsors

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Production Information

• Edited by: Tony
• Notes:

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