Tag Archives: Ashley Madison

PTJ 159 News: Solid Opinions and Virtual Reality

September 16, 2015 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

It’s been a busy September already, but the Federal Communications Commission hasn’t forgotten about the proposed merger of Charter Communications/Time Warner Cable/Bright House. The agency has put forth the request for public comments on the possible transaction, just as it did last year with the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger that later collapsed. You have until October 13^th to comment and yes, you can file your comment online, as several people have already.

In other legal news, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco has ruled that copyright holders must pause to consider if use of their material qualifies as fair use before issuing a takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It’s all in the case of Lenz vs. Universal, also commonly known as The Dancing Baby Lawsuit, and it started way back in 2007.

https://www.eff.org/files/2015/09/14/lenz_ca_9_decision.pdf

Although a triumphant Monday press release touting first-weekend sales did not arrive, Apple did release a statement announcing that global pre-orders for the new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus models were on track to beat last year’s 10 million first-weekend sales of the iPhone 6. The iPhone 6s Plus does seem to be sold out in numerous areas, but a manufacturing issue has been rumored in the shortage blame game. And if you’re thinking about buying one of the new iPhone models, The Washington Post has a guide to the various payment plans you can choose from now if you have to have the latest model.

This week saw yet another Republican debate on television as next year’s Presidential campaign continues to grind on. In the spirit of things, Twitter announced that it was teaming up with Square to let people in the United States donate to the political candidate of their choice with a tweet.

Facebook bought the Oculus Rift virtual reality company last year and many wondered why, but The Wall Street Journal is reporting that The Social Network is developing a stand-alone video app that would support “spherical” or 360-degree clips. Facebook is not commenting on that topic yet, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg did say this week that the company was developing a Dislike button for posts.

Flickr is also getting into virtual reality and did a little VR demo at a festival in Oregon last weekend. After putting on a the VR goggles, a user would be immersed in a 360-degree panoramic photo. Oh, and Sony announced its Project Morpheus product is now PlayStation VR.

Also in the world of “virtual” but not “reality”. . . Annalee Newitz over at the Gizmodo site continues her investigation into the Ashley Madison site and how the company alleged used female-identifying chatbots or “fembots” to lure unsuspecting male customers into paying for credits in order to keep interacting with what they thought were real women. Although they used more sophisticated language, the Ashley Madison fembots were not all that far removed from ELIZA and some of the early chatbots from the 1970s.

NASA is preparing to send Microsoft’s HoloLens hardware up to the astronauts in the International Space Station, with delivery scheduled for a cargo mission in early December. And for those with Ultra High Definition 4K TV sets and not much to watch on them, NASA just announced it’s partnering with Harmonic to create a new channel called NASA TV UHD. NASA says this will be the first ever non-commercial consumer ultra-high definition (UHD) channel in North America and said it plans to start broadcasting on it November 1^st.

And finally, an Oculus Rift virtual-reality production has become the first show of its kind to win an Emmy Award. The production, called Sleepy Hollow: VR Experience and set in the town cemetery of the supernatural FOX TV show, won the 2015 Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media category for User Experience And Visual Design. Perhaps next year, NASA will start a non-commercial consumer UHD VR channel so we can really reach for the virtual stars…

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PTJ 157 News: Come September

September 3, 2015 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Yes, the Big Apple Fall Media Event was confirmed for September 9^th, and we’re all expecting the fancy 4^th generation Apple TV, the iPhone 6s, iOS 9 — and who knows, maybe even the iPad Maxi. Hardware aside, Hollywood trade mag Variety is reporting this week that Apple is looking into doing its own original programming, just like Amazon and Netflix. Apple, of course, is Not Commenting. The company did comment on — and even put out a press release — about another meeting it had this week, this one with networking giant Cisco to optimize networks for iOS users.

If you’ve jailbroken your iPhone and are running Cydia, listen up: Researchers have discovered malware called KeyRaider that has snagged more 225,000 Apple ID user names and passwords. The malware is getting out there though a third-party repository.

And if you’re got an iPhone but want to skip the Apple Watch in favor of a Android Wear device, you can now pair an Android-powered smartwatch or fitness tracker with an iPhone 5 later, thanks to the Android Wear app for iOS that arrived this week. Also in the department of smartwatches, Samsung announced its latest models, the Gear G2 and the Gear G2 Classic, at a Berlin trade show this week.

Those with Amazon Fire Tablets HD and HDX can now stream video content from the Dish Network’s Sling TV service. A free trial period is available for new customers and Sling TV is already available on the Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Nexus Player set-top boxes, the Xbox One, IOS and Android tablets and computers running Windows and Mac OS X. Also in Amazon Land, Prime Instant Video users with Android and iOS devices can now download selected titles for offline viewing. Very handy for planes, trains and automobiles — or anyplace without Wi-Fi.

PayPal is making it easier for friends who lend and borrow money to get squared away. With its new PayPal.Me service, the peer-to-peer payments platform lets users set up their own personalized URL that can be shared with others to request money.

Nintendo also has new stuff on the way for gamers on the go. The company is releasing smaller version of the Nintendo 3DS handheld console for those with more petite paws to play with.

Google’s tussle with the European Union continues, and could expand now to a number of civil lawsuits over antitrust allegations. The E.U. has had an investigation into Google for the past four years, trying to discern if the company was favoring its own services in search results. If Google is found guilty there, the ruling can be used as evidence in civil cases from other companies. A Google lawyer
posted a statement online last week that argues against the European Commission’s Statement of Objections with the headline “Improving quality isn’t anti-competitive.” In other Google news, the company changed its logo this week.

Facebook, which probably already knows a lot about you anyway, is getting into the virtual personal assistant game. Last week, the company announced its new M software, which hopes to muscle into Cortana and Siri’s territory. Facebook’s Instagram also got an update this week to add threaded messages and the ability to send photos from your feed as a direct message.

Speaking of virtual personalities, the hacked and sacked Ashley Madison trysting website has been accused of creating fake female profiles and powering them by chatbots to up boost the impression than that the site had more female users than it actually did. According the Guardian of London, a former employee sued the site in 2013 saying in a complaint that the site had required the creation of so many fake profiles, she had sustained repetitive stress injuries. Spokespeople for Ashley Madison have said that despite the epic data security fail and public resignation of its CEO, “hundreds of thousands” of new users signed up for the site, including 87, 596 (allegedly real) women and everything.

And finally, up in space, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft isn’t basking around doing nothing after its slam-dunk flyby of Pluto in July. NASA scientists are directing the probe toward a 30-mile wide object in the Kuiper Belt called 2014 MU69. While NASA doesn’t quite have everything in place yet for this bonus trip, it does have to do a little prep work ahead of time. New Horizons needs to fire up its steering engines in October to get situated for the flyby, which would actually take place in January of 2019. Start planning your 2014 MU69 flyby parties now!

Podcast

PTJ 156: Creation Sensation

August 27, 2015 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

The Ashley Madison Hackpocalypse shows no signs of fading away, Google has brought back its Map Maker tool (now with adult supervision) and the Japanese have sent whiskey into space. J.D. and El Kaiser march through these stories and more in the weekly roundup of geek news.

Technology has changed many aspects of daily life — including how we express ourselves through music, art, photography and more. Laura M. Holson drops by to discuss how people are finding outlets for their creativity with mobile apps. If you want to play along at home, check these out:

• DubSmash lets you lip-sync the hits in Vine-like clips. (Check out how much fun the the stars of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and Agent Carter had with the app this summer — and now there’s even a contest for charity brewing.) Oh, and it’s free for Android and iOS.

• GarageBand is music-making software for OS X and iOS and even if you don’t know the first thing about multitrack recording or writing your own songs, you’ll learn fast with this gem of a program. It’s $5 if it didn’t already come on your device and the help guide can be, well, helpful.

• Paper By FiftyThree is a free drawing, sketching and brainstorming app for the iPad.

• Frontback uses your smartphone’s front and rear cameras to take two images that are then shared as a single photo or video. It’s free for Android and iOS.

• Disney Frozen: Story Theater lets you create your own stories using characters and props from Disney’s unstoppable 2013 animated ice-princes film. (Yeah, good luck getting THAT SONG out of your head now.) The app is $5 for the iOS device of your choice, but that doesn’t mean it’s ad-free, as a disclaimer on the site warns: Before you download this experience, please consider that this app contains advertising for the Walt Disney Family of Companies.

• Buddha Board goes beyond the mobile app and lets you get the Zen with a $35 piece of hardware designed to let you live in the moment.

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PTJ 156 News: Insecurity Checkpoint

August 26, 2015 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Well, that Ashley Madison thing sure blew up last week, didn’t it? At last count, there are five lawsuits seeking more than a half-billion dollars filed against the site and its parent company. In further fallout, a $500,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the arrest of the hackers. But in an ironic twist noted by security blogger Brian Krebs, other files posted in the data dump indicate that top dogs from Avid Life Media itself may have hacked a competing website themselves to hijack customer information. Oh, and the Columbia Journalism Review has some thoughts on the journalistic ethics of the whole sordid mess.

The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has ruled that the Federal Trade Commission has the authority to sue companies that fail to enforce data security policies and lose personal customer data to hackers. The ruling stems from the original case filed by the FTC back in 2012 against hotel conglomerate Wyndham Worldwide Corporation for three data breaches in two years and $10 million dollars in fraudulent charges, all due to epic security failures.

Microsoft may not be dominating smartphone sales, but the company is finding new uses for the devices. A Microsoft Research Project called MobileFusion lets people use their phones to scan objects and create high-quality 3D images that can be later used for things like augmented reality video games or 3-D printing. The research team on the project will formally present MobileFusion in early October at the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality but you can check out the demo video now:

Microsoft also just released a public beta of its Cortana assistant for Android for anyone interested enough to jump in. And in celebration of the 20^th anniversary of Windows 95 this past Monday, the company gave away free downloads of the classic Rolling Stones track “Start Me Up” in the Windows Store for anyone who was paying attention or feeling nostalgic about old advertising campaigns.

Comcast has big plans for the next couple of years. The company told the Fierce Cable site that it plans to upgrade its entire cable network with DOCSIS 3.1 technology, which can support maximum data speeds of 10 gigabits per second. No word on pricing for the home crowd yet

In the Department of Just Not Having It, Mozilla CEO Chris Beard has threatened to fire — if the person was found to be a Mozilla employee — an anonymous Reddit user posting remarks about feminists and “social justice warriors.” In other company news, Mozilla announced a shift for the Firefox browser last week and has plans to move away from the add-in software created by third-party developers to the more secure extensions model used by Google Chrome.

Twitter has informed Open State Foundation, the Netherlands-based political watchdog group, that it was suspending access to the company’s API for both the Diplotwoops and Politwoops apps. The apps displayed deleted tweets of lawmakers and diplomats for journalists and other to see. While the US version of Polititwoops got the kibosh on May, other companies had been able to use it.

Google has re-opened its community-editing Map Maker tool to 45 more countries after shutting down the utility in May after a bout of user-generated vandalism was uncovered. Two weeks ago, Map Maker, reappeared for six countries. Google has changed the way Map Maker works, and now includes Regional Leads, or people who will moderate edits to maps in their area. Polygon editing is no longer available and Google warns that is you mess around and violate Map Maker’s terms of use, you will not be able to use the software anymore. The Android Police and other sites are reporting that Google is experimenting with adding food photography to its maps for people browsing restaurant possibilities.

In drone news, Sony is working with the Japanese robotics company ZMP and experimenting with an unmanned aerial vehicle that look like tiny airplane, but that can take off and land vertically. The two companies have formed a new company called Aerosense for commercial drone adventures, and have another model that looks more like the traditional buckshot-magnet quadcopter.

And finally, the International Space Station just received a cargo module from Japan with 4.5 tons of supplies — and a batch of Suntory Whiskey products. Now, before you have visions of the astronauts playing quarters in zero gravity or taking some really loopy spacewalks, the booze is there for scientific reasons. The whiskey samples will be studied to see if aging in microgravity has any effect on the mellowing of the liquor’s flavor. All in the name of science, folks.

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PTJ 151 News: Hacks ‘n’ Snacks

July 22, 2015 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Hear about that a big giant hack of the database belonging to the dating-for-married-people Ashley Madison website last? If you’ve never heard of the popular hookup site — run by the Avid Life Media, the same company that also makes Cougar Life and Established Men a reality — you probably have nothing to worry about. If you were a patron of the service, well, you may want to pay attention. An entity calling itself The Impact Team made the heist and large chunks of stolen confidential information have already been posted online. Security blogger Brian Krebs has been following the story and reports that the hackers did the job because they claimed Avid Life Media’s $19 “full delete” service for wiping your presence from the company’s websites was a rip-off.

The excellent KrebsOnSecurity blog also has details on the big hack of the CVSPhoto.con website last week. If you’ve ever uploaded photos and had the processed at a CVS drugstore, check your credit-card statements.

Microsoft had a little freak-out of its own late last week on the exploit front. If you haven’t already, hit up Windows Update to get the security update for a flaw in the font driver software.

Sad news to report: Joshua Greenberg, the founder of the new-shuttered Grooveshark music streaming service was found dead in his home down in Gainesville, Florida. He was 28 years old. Condolences to his family.

Twitter has made some changes on its site in the past few weeks. For one, the company removed custom backgrounds for users of its web version, replacing personalized color choices with a bright white backdrop, perhaps better to display advertising upon. Twitter also introduced a new Safety Center area of its site which is supposed to school users on Twitter’s tools for privacy and battling harassment. It’s probably not the Troll Cannon we’d all like, but it’s a start.

The Pebble smartwatch line, which got early financial traction as a Kickstarter project a few years ago, is hitting the big time and the big-box stores. The $200 Pebble Time smartwatch, which had originally been available on the Pebble website, are now for sale at Best Buy and will be showing up in Target stores next month. You roll, little Pebble!

Apple’s quarterly earnings report showed profit was up 38% (largely due to 47.5 million new iPhones getting homes), but the company did not break out sales numbers on the Apple Watch. Analysts have found that Apple Watch customer satisfaction with the device was at an overall 97% and higher than it was for the first generations of the iPhone and iPad. However, The New York Times had a story this week that looked at app developers and why some, like Facebook, weren’t rushing to create wrist-sized versions of their programs quite yet. Still waiting for time to tell on the Watch-success verdict there.

Apple also found the time to finally put out an update for the iPod Touch last week. While The Washington Post wondered if anyone cared about this at all, it does give Apple yet another platform to grab new Apple Music subscribers.

Meanwhile, Samsung, which didn’t have much luck with its Galaxy S6 line against the iPhone 6, looks like it’s going after the iPad now. The company just announced two new versions of the Galaxy Tab S2 tablet, now with an iPad-esque 4:3 aspect ratio for the screen and other similarities. The new Android-based tablets, due in August, come in screen sized of 9.7 inches and 8 inches. Pricing has yet to be announced.

As we know from the sad tale of Google Reader, Google giveth and Google taketh away. In the giving side, the company announced that it was providing its high-speed Google Fiber service to low-income homes in all the broadband markets it is currently in. It’s all part of the ConnectHome initiative recently launched by the White House and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help more people get online. So that’s the giveth part, as for the taketh part, well . . . Google+ Photos is being discontinued on August 1^st and replaced by the newer Google Photos service. If you don’t want to use Google Photos, you can go to Google Takeout, download your stuff and go. Didn’t see that one coming, nosiree.

Windows 10 will be here next week and Microsoft is getting Cortana, the system’s virtual personal assistant software ready for her international desktop debut. Cortana’s developers say they have done research and taken the cultural sensitivities of each country where the software will launch; these include the United Kingdom, China, France, Italy, Germany and Spain, along with the United States. Thanks to this regional research, Cortana’s personality will be tailored to specific areas, as Microsoft explained in a blog post on its site. But as the Kaiser asks, “When will the Bronx Cortana arrive?”

And finally, for those who like to cook, Ten Speed Press released an updated edition of The Twinkies Cookbook last week, featuring new recipes using the long-lasting sponge-cake snack. This new 85^th Anniversary Edition of the cookbook features such treats as Twinkie Corndogs and Deep-Fried Bacon-Wrapped Chocolate-Covered Twinkies. Now that’s good eatin’ — but don’t forget to pop your cholesterol meds.

The independent audio magazine devoted to mashing up pop culture, technology and more. J.D. Biersdorfer and Pedro Rafael Rosado are your hosts. It's an Internet Radio revolution!