Tech News Today 438

Tech News Today Episode 438

Tech News Today 438: Dirty Dirty Spectrum

Apple's done with the whole contact list crap, Lightsquared is toast, why Georgia hates the Internet, 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 Mitchell (@communitynets)

Top Stories

• Twitter uploads contact list data without consent; retains for 18 months
• iOS apps and the address book: who has your data, and how they're getting it
• Congressmen question Apple on Path controversy as Apple promises updates
• iOS to require explicit permission for contact data in 'future software release'
• Apple Says Grabbing Address Book Data Is an iOS Policy Violation
  • Twitter has admitted it stores user contact details — including phone numbers and email addresses — for an 18-month retention period when the service’s “Find friends” feature is used. - The Verge's Dieter Bohn has a comprehensive survey of popular apps and how they behave. Facebook and LinkedIN also behave as Twitter did and Foursquare behaved a bit like path though they have now added a pop-up.
  • Carolyn Penner: “Along those lines, in our next app updates, which are coming soon, we are updating the language associated with Find Friends — to be more explicit. In place of ‘Scan your contacts,’ we will use “Upload your contacts” [iPhone] and “Import your contacts” [Android],” she said.
  • US House Representatives Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) and G. K. Butterfield (D-NC) sent a joint letter on Wednesday to Apple CEO Tim Cook to inquire about the Path incident and whether Apple is making it too easy for iOS developers to collect user data without users' permission or knowledge. - nine questions that they want Apple to answer before February 29
  • In a comment sent to All Things D on Wednesday, Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr spelled out that apps transmitting contact data without user permission are in violation of the company's guidelines.
  • "We’re working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release," Neumayr said.
  • 17.1: Apps cannot transmit data about a user without obtaining the user’s prior permission and providing the user with access to information about how and where the data will be used
  • 17.2: Apps that require users to share personal information, such as email address and date of birth, in order to function will be rejected

• LightSquared to Be Blocked by FCC Over GPS
• LightSquared Blow Gives Falcone Few Options to Salvage Value
• FCC says GPS stakeholders need to help free up mobile broadband spectrum
• Happy Valentine's Day: US government breaks up with LightSquared
• Sprint May Have to Return $65 Million to LightSquared
  • Yesterday U.S. Federal Communications Commission said LightSquared's proposed network won't be happening after tests found the wireless venture would disrupt navigation gear.
  • The agency is preparing to withdraw the preliminary approval it granted last year for the company to build a high-speed network, FCC spokesperosn Tammy Sun said.
  • “There are no mitigation strategies that both solve the interference issues and provide LightSquared with an adequate commercial network deployment,” Lawrence Strickling, administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, said in the letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.
  • Fallout:
    • Tomorrow, the FCC will post a notice seeking public comment on the matter.
  • What can LightSquared do now?
  • Walt Piecyk, an analyst at BTIG LLC in New York says LightSquared’s options include selling the spectrum, swapping it for better airwaves, suing the government and reducing costs to stay afloat until a solution is found, said
  • Sprint may have to return $65M in undoing its deal with LightSquared
  • Winners:
    • Acc'g to Walt Piecyk, an analyst at BTIG LLC in New York - says Dish and Clearwire will likely benefit since they don't have the same issues.

• Chinese Workers Get Only $8 From Each Apple iPad 2
• Are Chinese factory workers getting just $8 for every iPad sale?
• FLA says iPad plants better than sweatshops
  • Korea Daily report which claims that, based on average salaries, workers in the region get a 1.6 per cent slice of the pie ($8), Korean factory workers, on the other hand, share about $34 per unit among them, giving them 6.8 percent of the sales price, according to the report.
  • wages at Foxconn are not in fact low by Chinese standards. They’re above average for manufacturing jobs in the country
  • After visiting FoxConn: "The facilities are first-class; the physical conditions are way, way above average of the norm." according to Auret van Heerden, president of the FLA
  • "So the problems are not the intensity and burnout and pressure-cooker environment you have in a garment factory. It's more a function of monotony, of boredom, of alienation perhaps."

Discussion Stories

• A ban on iPads in China? Not a chance, Beijing says
• Exclusive: Proview says any ban of iPad exports hard to impose
• Amazon China and Suning Quit Selling iPads in Ongoing Trademark Battle
  • "The customs have told us that it will be difficult to implement a ban because many Chinese consumers love Apple products," Proview CEO Yang Long-san told Reuters.
  • Looks like the plan to appeal to local governments instead
  • Yang said the best option to resolve the legal dispute would be an out-of-court settlement. The next hearing of the case is due for February 22 in Shanghai.
  • Amazon China and Suning.com have removed the iPad from sale in response to Apple vs Proview legal battle and according to micgadget, this was Apple's doing.
  • Apple says it bought Proview's worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago from Taiwan subsidiary of Proview International, which sold the rights to IP Application Development Ltd, a London-based co. set up by Apple, for 35,000 pounds, says Proview. IP Application Development then sold iPad name to Apple for 10 pounds. Proview Technology (Shenzhen) says the sale did not cover the trademark's use in China.
  • Proview Technology (Shenzhen) is a unit of Hong Kong-listed Proview International Holdings, monitor maker that suffered in financial crisis in 2008.
  • Reuters correspondents visited the Shenzhen offices, found the building largely abandoned, windows shattered and debris everywhere.
  • roview International, whose shares have been on a trading halt since August 2010, posted a net loss of HK$755.8 million ($97 million) in the six months ended December 2009, which was the last time it published financial results.
  • Proview International's shares last traded at HK$0.20. On Tuesday, Apple's shares ended at $509.46.

• Crypto shocker: four of every 1,000 public keys provide no security
• Random number flaw leaves secure encryption exposed
• Flaw Found in an Online Encryption Method
  • Paper: "Ron was wrong, Whit is right" by Arjen K. Lenstra, James P. Hughes, Maxime Augier, Joppe W. Bos, Thorsten Kleinjung, Christophe Wachter. Released ahead of an August conference.
  • Duplicated factors lead keys to be insecure. Analyzed 7.1 million 1024-bit RSA keys - 27,000 of the keys they examined were cryptographically worthless because one of the factors used to generate them was used by at least one other key. (- 2 out of every thousand (.2%) are insecure.--- Number may get larger as more keys are examined)
  • Euclid's algorithm finds the greatest common divisor of two numbers. The greatest common divisor is just the largest number that will divide two numbers without leaving a remainder - so the greatest common divisor of 12 and 15 is 3, for example. In this case, the greatest common divisor of two public keys that share a prime is the prime itself.
  • The archives of affected keys have been taken off line, and owners of least secure keys have been notified. Have not issued the paper with the details on how to replicate how they found the keys.
  • Eric Wustrow, a second-year graduate student in the University of Michigan's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science told Ars
  • all but one weak key encountered were self-signed. most of weak keys they found were used to protect routers and similar gear
  • other formulas such as Diffie-Hellman and DSA aren't as vulnerable because the duplication of a factor makes a key holder vulnerable only to the person who holds the corresponding certificate.
• Security Now clips:
  • "The random number generators which are being used to find the primes are not being seeded correctly. Not being seeded with sufficient entropy..... because they're all about not being random."
  • Let's say the public keys are 35 and 77. Euclid's algorithm tells me the greatest common divisor is 7. Now that I know 7 is one of the primes, I can divide it into the public key and get the other prime. I have now broken the private key."

• The Case for Publicly Owned Internet Service: Susan P. Crawford
  • Georgia legislature is currently considering a bill that would effectively make it impossible for any city in the state to provide for high-speed Internet access networks -- even in areas in which the private sector cannot or will not.
  • Nebraska, North Carolina, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee already have similar laws in place. South Carolina is considering one, as is Florida.
  • What does the bill in Georgia propose?
  • What is the public justification for these rules? (not the secret motivations we may suspect)
  • What positive developments do these kind of laws prevent?
  • What can communities do, what should they do, to keep an open marketplace?

News Fuse

• Cisco wants the EU to reconsider its approval of Microsoft's acquisition of Skype. In a blog post, Senior Vice President, Emerging Business Group Marthin De Beer asks for conditions to be placed on the deal to "ensure greater standards-based interoperability" and makes clear that Cisco does not oppose the merger. Cisco also is joined by Messagenet, European VoiP company.
• PATENT WARS! So Kodak is suing Apple over patent infringement. Apple has asked a bankruptcy jude for permission to sue Kodak in the ITC and a district court over - you guessed it - patents. Apple didn't need to ask permission but its lawyers said it is doing so "out of an abundance of caution."
• Sony issued an apology for increasing the prices of Whitney Houston albums on iTunes UK the day after she died. Many people thought the label was trying to cash in on the singer's death, but Sony's statement says the price change was a mistake and the company corrected the price the same day.
• The SEC has told telecoms like AT&T that it must allow shareholders to vote when it comes to the company's net neutrality principles. Organizations like Trillium have been trying to gain access to this kind of thing for at least four years. Previously, the carriers were able to omit the issue from a shareholder vote saying net neutrality wasn't a significant policy under SEC definitions.
• A Samsung guide for Mobile World Congress may have been leaked and it says the Galaxy Note 10.1 will be included in an exhibition. The Verge found some information at a casting call site that also mentions the Galaxy Note 10.1. Samsung has mentioned it would be trying out all kinds of variants of tablets, but we'll find out at the end of the month.
• Mathias Ortmann, the co-founder and CTO of Megaupload, has been released on bail under some conditions like Ortman will not be able to access the Internet. The U.S. will use a UN treaty to extradite people related to Megaupload. Currently, of the accused Megaupload team in New Zealand, only Kim Dotcom is still locked up, but his court date is next week.
• AMD announced two affordable models in its 28nm Radeon HD range. The 7770 lists for $169 and is billed as the world's first reference GPU factory clocked to 1GHz. The 7750 sells for $109 and boasts a low 75 watts so does not require its own power connector. Reviews have been mixed. AnandTech liked the power-to-performance ratio of the cards, but not the price-to-performance of the 7770.
• Motorola Android users - rejoice! You will get Ice Cream Sandwich… someday. Moto updated its chart showing when its phones will get Android 4.0. Devices like the U.S. versions of the Droid 4, the Razer Maxx, and the Xyboard are in the "evaulation & planning" phase and no speicific time was given by motorola. However, if you've got the Moto Razr outside the US, rollouts are scheduled for the 2nd quarter.
• Google has fixed a Google Wallet flaw and now supports prepaid cards again. On Monday, Google had disabled the usage of prepaid cards from Google Wallet since a simple trick would allow access to prepaid funds. Google Wallet is still vulnerable on rooted phones to brute-force attacks.

Calendar

• AT&T has expanded their LTE network in the Tampa Bay - St. Petersburg metropolitan area, bringing the LTE total to 28 markets in the U.S. AT&T also expanded its LTE coverage in North Carolina to include Durham along with parts of Raleigh and Chapel Hill.
• RIM sets PlayBook 2.0 release for MWC 2012. February 29th in Barcelona.
• Facebook will bring its Timeline profile pages to brands this month in the U.S., according to executives briefed on the company's plans.
• Happy birthday to yoooooou: You Tube debuted in 2005
• Kevin Mitnick famously went to jail on this day in 1995.

INCOMING

Voicemail

• Mike sends a video about Aereo

Email

"Hey TNT Crew,

I was just listening to Episode #436 (Monday, February 13th) and you were talking about Windows 8 Metro Style Browers.... I've been listening to TWIT podcasts for almost 2 years and have found a lot of great tips from the shows like LastPass. I think if extenisons list LastPass can not be used on the Metro Style Browers, that's a no go for me. I live by extenisons like LastPass and I couldn't live without it now.

Just wanted to put my two cents in.

Love the show, Shawn Virginia Beach, VA"

"Inspired by the brilliant Louis CK, I have decided to debut my all-new hour stand-up special on my website, Jimgaffigan.com.

Beginning sometime in April, “Jim Gaffigan: Mr. Universe” will be available exclusively for download for only $5. A dollar from each download will go directly to The Bob Woodruff Foundation; a charity dedicated to serving injured Veterans and their families.""

Looks like Jim Gaffigan is also taking the approach that Louis CK did for selling his new act. Not sure how tech this news is, but it is awesome to see more content creators embracing the openness and new methods of the internet. We are getting ever closer to the way things should be.

Thanks Love the show

-- Jordan Patterson"

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Production Information

• Edited by: Jason
• Notes:

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