Tag Archives: hacked

PTJ 194 News: Hot Sales

June 8, 2016 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Summer is a great time for yard sales and farm auctions, and The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Verizon will put up $3 billion dollars for Yahoo’s web assets in the second round of bidding this week. As Ars Technica noted, if Verizon wins the auction, the company would rule 1990s Cyberspace as the owner of both Yahoo and AOL. A grunge-rock revival could be next!

Virtual assistants continue to pop up in all kinds of hardware and now Microsoft’s Cortana is coming to the company’s Xbox One game console this summer, along with many other new features. And while there’ll be more gaming announcements next week when the E3 show rolls into town, Blizzard Entertainment is integrating Facebook logins and live video right into its new Overwatch multiplayer game and Battle.net online service.

Apple’s Word Wide Developers Conference kicks off next week. Expect a lot of software-based announcements and maybe a few hardware things. New iPhone hardware probably won’t show up to this party, but the Nikkei Asian Review site is reporting, based on conversations with suppliers and production facilities overseas, that Apple will probably start taking three years between major iPhone model changes. This slowdown is due to a slowing market and because the company is running out of whiz-bang features to unveil every year.

A wireless version of the popular Bose QuietComfort noise-canceling headphones have some industry watchers assuming the next iPhone is going to be the one where Apple gets rid of the standard 3.5mm headphone jack. The headphones have a list price of $350 and are supposed to get about 20 hours of listening time between charges.

While 2016 is largely being forecast as a ho-hum year for smartphone innovation from several manufacturers, Bloomberg News is reporting that Samsung might be releasing phones with bendable screens next year. Will the Galaxy line become the Gumby line?

Podcasts make for fun listening no matter what kind of headphones you have, and now Stitcher Radio, one of the popular podcast apps, has just been snapped up by the old-school media company EW Scripps for $4.5 million dollars in cash. Stitcher, which streams more than 65,000 podcasts including this one, will operate under another Scripps acquisition, the podcast advertisement company Midroll Media.

This week, the United States Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Google to throw out that class-action lawsuit over where advertisements were placed through Google’s AdWords service. Last year’s ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco stands — and the class-action lawsuit can go forward.

In other legal news, tech companies and privacy groups are lining up against proposed legislation that would let federal officials request even more types of user information in the National Security Letters they send to ISPs, banks, doctors and other recipients during investigations. The House version of the bill passed in April and the Senate version is due for a vote this week.

Microsoft Planner, its teamwork organizer app is headed to Office 365 subscribers over the next few weeks. True to its name, Planner is, uh, software for planning stuff.

Twitter has redesigned its Android app to fall in line with Google’s material design standard. The update is rolling out now. Snapchat also got a fresh new look this week that, among other things, mixes Discover content with Live Stories.

They pumped it up last week and this week, astronauts opened up the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, otherwise known as the International Space Station’s add-on inflatable bouncy castle. An air sample was taken and sensor data downloaded as astronauts prepare to actually use the module.

And finally, although news of the breach just surfaced recently, LinkedIn got hacked in 2012 and millions of user names and passwords were swiped – including those of a one Mr. Mark Zuckerberg of a little company called Facebook whose password was reportedly dadada. A hacker group called Ourmine used the swiped credentials to compromise Mr. Zuckerberg’s accounts on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn for a short time this weekend. It’s a reminder to the rest of us to change our passwords regularly or get a password manager program. Also, don’t recycle them across accounts and don’t use easily crackable codes like. . . dadada.

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Trouble in SIM City

February 25, 2015 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

If you thought your mobile-phone communications were encrypted and safe, think again. A lengthy article titled The Great SIM Heist over on The Intercept site last week claims spies for the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom “hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe.”

David Perry, a threat strategist for F-Secure, joins us this week to discuss the incident and what it means for consumers. (If you’re worried about security in general, David’s blog has info about getting a free trial of F-Secure’s Freedome app, and you can find plenty of VPN services around the Web that provide a layer of protection.)

What will Edward Snowdon reveal next? Have PigeonGram and the Progresso Soup Phone also been compromised?

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PTJ 108 News: Arrivals and Departures

September 11, 2014 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

We’re rolling into September and new phones are everywhere. Samsung released two new models in the Galaxy Note phablet line, the Galaxy Note 4 and the Galaxy Note Edge, the latter of which has a screen that curves around the side of the device. Then there’s Amazon! The company released its first Fire smartphone just a few months ago and this week, it dropped the price from about $200 to a mere 99 cents. Can we say…

Also heating up: The Net Neutrality debate. Netflix joined Reddit, Kickstarter and tons of other websites in an online protest this Wednesday in which the participating sites displayed the “loading” graphic so common with slow connections, along with more information about the FCC’s proposal. California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to FCC chairman Tom Wheeler asking him to reclassify the broadband as a telecommunications service to protect consumers.

The FCC sure is getting a lot of mail these days. Discovery Communications is one of the latest companies to speak out against the intended union. In a letter to the agency, Catherine Carroll, a Discovery’s vice president, said the merger would create monopoly-like conditions and had several bullet points to back up the argument. (Meanwhile, the Ars Technica site has noticed that Comcast is using Javascript to inject self-promotional ads for its services into Web pages on devices that are connected to one of its many public WiFi hotspots.)

Twitter announced on the company blog this week that it was rolling out a Buy button on posts from certain retailers that lets users purchase products advertised in tweets. Will people buy as impulsively as they tweet?

If you’ve used you credit card at a Home Depot recently, keep an eye on your statements, as the big orange do-it-yourself supply store has been hit with a Target-like security breach. A new variant of the same malware used in the Target attack has been found on Home Depot’s point-of-sale terminals and the breach had been reportedly going on since last spring.

Microsoft continues to develop its Office 365 tools for business users and is rolling out a new presentation and internal service app that looks an awful lot like Flipboard. The new tool is called Office Delve. And Google Play Movies & TV for iOS got an update this week so users can download videos and play them offline.

The run-up to the holiday season also means new videogames, like Destiny, which landed on Sony and Microsoft consoles this week. To help players really get into the science-fiction shooter, Sony has announced new gaming headsets coming this fall for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3. The models include the $99 PlayStation Gold Wireless Headset with 7.1 virtual surround sound and the $70 Silver Wired Headset, also with 7.1 surround.

And finally, TiVo, which announced a $50 over-the-air recorder a few weeks ago, is swinging to the other end of the price-tag spectrum with its new TiVo Mega recorder, which costs $5,000 — and comes with 24 terabytes of room. That’s enough to record 26,000 hours of standard-def TV or 4,000 hours of HD video. The TiVo Mega also includes six TV tuners. The recorder isn’t due to arrive until 2015, so you have plenty of time to figure out how you can fill up that bad boy.

Oh, and one more thing…

Apple had an event this week. Among the announcements:

The new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models
The arrival of iOS 8 on September 17th
The Apple Pay mobile-payments system
The Apple Watch

Not announced? The quiet death of the iPod Classic, the last click-wheel, hard-drive based iPod and the most direct descendant of the simple white block that put Apple back on the map as an innovative technology company. Be thou at peace, iPod Classic.

Podcast

PTJ 90: Court Cases and Fiber Races

April 24, 2014 Pedro Rafael Rosado Leave a comment

El Kaiser has a new toy and he can’t wait to tell you all about it. This week he reviews the Mont Blanc E12 portable headphone amplifier from FiiO. Let’s face it, ebooks are here to stay. J.D. fills us in on how to make margin notes and highlight our favorite passages on all the popular digital book readers.

In the news the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in American Broadcasting Companies v. Aereo; Lytro unveils a new camera; Rumors circulate that an Amazon smartphone will sport a radical new UI; Comcast reports its subscriber numbers are up; AT&T wants to beat Google in the Fiber Race; the AOL mail site is hacked; and Apple announces it plans to power all of its stores, data centers and offices with renewable energy sources.

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PTJ 90 News: Now With More Fiber

April 24, 2014 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

The Supreme Court heard the legal arguments in American Broadcasting Companies v. Aereo this week, a case that pits traditional over-the-air broadcast television companies against the feisty TV-streaming start-up with the wee antenna farms. Legal eagles and advocacy groups are watching closely and everyone awaits the Court’s decision, which is expected by June.

Creative types have some new outlets for expression. Serious photographers are buzzing about the new camera from Lytro and the Blurb service has made it easier for photographers and other visual artists to sell their works directly on Amazon.

And on the subject of Amazon, Bloomberg News is reporting on a study that shows Amazon’s sales numbers are down in states that collect online sales tax. (About 20 states currently tax Amazon purchases.) Perhaps the company can make up the loss in spectacular smartphone sales. The Boy Genius Report site has more details on what it claims to be Amazon’s upcoming handset, including tilting gestures for control and navigation. (Could the smartphone UI paradigm be tilting — or maybe even shifting — as well?)

Even before its planned merger with Time Warner Cable, Comcast continues to get larger. The company reported that its subscriber numbers were up for the second straight quarter, adding 24,000 new customers.

Comcast’s increasing size is what is driving monopoly fears in some people about the Time Warner Cable acquisition, and Netflix is one of the more recent companies to come out and voice its opposition to the pending deal. In a letter to its shareholders this week, Netflix said that with the decline of DSL in the broadband space, a combined Comcast and Time Warner Cable would have more than 60 percent of the broadband in US households. Comcast quickly put up a response to Netflix on its website, claiming that “Netflix’s opposition to our Time Warner Cable transaction is based on inaccurate claims and arguments.” (Also mentioned in that Netflix shareholder letter: prices for new subscribers are about to get higher. )

Google has been making noise about bringing superfast Internet fiber to 34 cities in nine major metropolitan areas, but now AT&T is jumping into the game and says it’s considering adding its own fast fiber to 100 cities in 21 major metro areas. Nothing has been built yet, but AT&T is at least talking about it.

Google has other things on its plate besides fast fiber. The company has combined SMS text and Hangout chats into the same conversation so everything’s all in the same place. That’s new with the Hangouts 2.1 app for Android. The Venturebeat site quotes sources at The Goog who say the company is looking into ways to make end-to-end encryption tools like PGP easier to use with Gmail so that users can keep their mail locked up against prying eyes from the government or otherwise.

If you abandoned an old AOL mail account for Gmail back in the day — or even if you still use AOL — you may see messages from your old address spewing spam across the Internet this week. The AOL Mail site was hacked over the weekend and spoofed accounts are sending phishing mail to addresses on AOL contacts lists. AOL has confirmed the hacking and said accounts had also been spoofed by spammers.

And finally, it was Earth Day this week, and Apple took the opportunity to announce that it has free recycling for all used Apple products and says it plans to power all of its stores, data centers and offices with renewable energy sources. The company’s redesigned Environmental Responsibility site has a video clip narrated by CEO Tim Cook that outlines Apple’s approach to green living. Critics of Apple’s approach point out that the company video neglects to mention that most of its products are built in China and that many Apple products are difficult to repair, especially for the do-it-yourself crowd who strives to keep old gear functioning and out of landfills. Hopefully, the Mighty Oak of Sustainability will one day grow out of Apple’s Acorn of 2014 Environmental Promises — or at least they’ll start designing gear with long-lasting batteries that are easy to replace and recycle.

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!