Tag Archives: Verizon

PTJ 360: All Hailing Frequencies Open

December 11, 2021 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

El Kaiser and J.D. are back with a new episode and the opportunity to praise the work of Nichelle Nichols, the trailblazing actress who portrayed Lt. Uhura on the original Star Trek as she retires from public life. Also in the mix: a discussion of recent headlines, including Big Tech’s increasingly warm seat in front of government regulators, and El Kaiser takes a listen to a new pair of Bowers & Wilkins Bluetooth headphones. All this and more on PTJ Episode 360 !

A New Tesla Safety Concern: Drivers Can Play Video Games in Moving Cars (The New York Times)
Instagram will bring back a chronological feed in 2022 (Engadget)
Instagram Chief Adam Mosseri Says Tech Companies Must Earn Liability Shield (Bloomberg)
What we learned at Congress’ much-anticipated summit of crypto execs (TheBlock)
House Hearing on Financial Innovation and Digital Currency (C-SPAN video)
Europe Pushes New Rules Turning Gig Workers Into Employees (The New York Times)
Epic v. Apple ruling put on hold after appeals court grants a stay (The Verge)
Kuo: Apple AR Headset to Feature Advanced Hand Gesture Controls and Object Detection (MacRumors)
Twitter Tests New, TikTok-Like Full-Screen Display for Explore (Social Media Today)
Roku, Google settle messy battle over YouTube distribution (Axios)
Verizon overrides users’ opt-out preferences in push to collect browsing history (Ars Technica)
Nichelle Nichols honored as she makes final Comic-Con appearance (TheGrio)
1977 NASA Recruitment film with Nichelle Nichols (YouTube)
Bowers & Wilkins PX7 Bluetooth headphones

Episode Links

PTJ 334: Grand Central Tracin’

April 29, 2020 J.D. Biersdorfer 2 Comments

Contact tracing! It’s all the rage around the world as countries try to track the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus though voluntary smartphone apps. In this week’s news segment, El Kaiser and J.D. discuss the various approaches these apps take before moving on to other headlines around the tech world. El Kaiser also shares his adventures with cloning a hard drive. All this and more on PTJ 334!

Links to News and Stuff Discussed on This Week’s Show

Avenue 5 (HBO)
Apple and Google release first seed of COVID-19 exposure notification API for contact tracing app developers (TechCrunch)
NHS rejects Apple-Google coronavirus app plan (BBC News)
Two Million Australians Download Coronavirus Contact-Tracing App (Bloomberg)
Germany flips to Apple-Google approach on smartphone contact tracing (Reuters)
Coronavirus: Why are there doubts over contact-tracing apps? (BBC News)
Europe’s Privacy Law Hasn’t Shown Its Teeth, Frustrating Advocates (The New York Times)
‘iPhone 12’ likely to ship in the same timeframe that the iPhone X did (Apple Insider)
Microsoft Teams Vulnerability Exposed Organizations to Attacks (SecurityWeek.Com)
Verizon, AT&T, Comcast won’t cancel service through June due to coronavirus (Reuters)
Twitter turns off its original SMS service in most countries (The Verge)
Google Pixel Buds 2 review roundup: What critics love and hate (Tom’s Guide)
An ESPN Commercial Hints at Advertising’s Deepfake Future (The New York Times)
Warning Signs And Symptoms Of Hard Drive Failure (Prosoft Engineering)
How to Make a Bootable Clone of Your Mac’s Hard Drive (How-To Geek)
SuperDuper!
Carbon Copy Cloner

Episode Links, Podcast

PTJ 311: Slide Tackle

June 14, 2019 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

On this week’s show, JD takes a short break from watching the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2019 to round up some news with El Kaiser — including the annual Mary Meeker Internet Trends presentation, legal looks at Big Tech and game-world announcements. El Kaiser, ever on the hunt for good-sounding audio gear at reasonable prices, offers his review of the Mixcder E9 wireless headphones. Have a listen to PTJ 311!

Links to News Stories on This Week’s Show

Mary Meeker’s most important trends on the internet (Vox)
US regulator acts over plague of nuisance phone calls (BBC News)
Sprint and T-Mobile Merger Faces New Hurdle With Lawsuit by States (The New York Times)
House Opens Tech Antitrust Inquiry With Look at Threat to News Media (The New York Times)
Amazon is creating detailed 3D models of suburbia to train its new delivery robots (The Verge)
Apple to Buy Drive.ai in Bid for More Autonomous Vehicle Talent (Bloomberg)
What Does Apple Know About You? (Axios)
NFC gets a lot more powerful in iOS 13 (TechCrunch)
Apple Accidentally Leaks Radical iPhone Upgrade (Forbes)
Telegram faces DDoS attack in China… again (TechCrunch)
Huawei Is Said to Demand Patent Fees From Verizon (The New York Times)
Microsoft deletes massive face recognition database (BBC News)
Why airport facial recognition raises privacy concerns (The Washington Post)
Google Fails to Have Lawsuit Originally Brought by James Damore Thrown Out (Gizmodo)
Exclusive interview: Google CEO defends YouTube practices (Axios)
YouTube CEO apologizes to LGBTQ community after outcry (The Verge)
Amazon to shut down its Amazon Restaurants business in the U.S. (GeekWire)
This week’s dead Google product is Google Trips, may it rest in peace (Ars Technica)
Stadia: everything you need to know about Google’s game-streaming service (TechRadar)
Microsoft Project Scarlett Xbox: 8K graphics, SSD, and ray-tracing in 2020 (The Verge)

Headphones Review

Mixcder E9 Wireless Active Noise Cancelling Headphones

Episode Links, Podcast

PTJ 297: Yes, It’s Time for Our Annual Smart Toilet Update

January 10, 2019 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Early January is here at last and El Kaiser and J.D. are ready to explore all the unique creations launched on the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. And as with last year’s round-up, the specifications and features on the Kohler Intelligent Toilet amaze. This week’s episode also features a look at recent technology news and a rave review for the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse film. Jump into 2019 with Episode 297!

Links to Stories on This Week’s Show

No, Samsung isn’t pre-installing Facebook on your phone (The Next Web)
How a Russian firm helped catch an alleged NSA data thief (POLITICO)
Less than you think: Prevalence and predictors of fake news dissemination on Facebook (Science Advances)
People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds (The Verge)
Microsoft adds more mobile, scheduling capabilities to Teams for firstline workers (ZDNet)
Three new ways Microsoft Teams empowers Firstline Workers to achieve more (Microsoft 365
AT&T promises nationwide 5G in early 2020 — using sub-6GHz spectrum (VentureBeat)
Pick up where you left off on Search (Google Keyword blog)
Building a Better World Wide Web (Chromium Blog)
Blog)
Instagram now lets you regram your posts to multiple accounts (TechCrunch)
Tim Cook: Apple wearables revenue is already exceeding peak iPod sales (CNBC)
Twitter will livestream some NBA game footage for the first time (Recode)

Consumer Electronics Show 2019

CES 2019: It’s the Year of Virtual Assistants and 5G (The New York Times)
CES 2019: Bread robots, bendy phones, talking toilets and everything else from day 1 (The Independent)
Hey Google, what’s new with the Assistant at CES this year? (Google)
Self-rolling suitcases and roll-up TVs: CES 2019’s craziest and coolest gadgets (The Washington Post)
The weirdest gadgets from CES 2019 (TechRadar)
Weird CES: The bizarre things we didn’t expect to see (Android Authority)
The Best Smart Toilets of CES 2019. Yup, We Said Smart Toilets (Digital Trends)
Kohler’s smart toilet promises a ‘fully-immersive experience’ (The Verge)
Numi 2.0 Intelligent toilet with KOHLER Konnect (Kohler)

Episode Links, Podcast

PTJ 290: Foibles & Fables

October 19, 2018 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Facebook’s public-relations department probably had another busy week, with all sorts of walkbacks and investigations concerning the company’s products and practices. El Kaiser and J.D. discuss some of the major events, as well as changes to the way Twitter enforces its rules and the State of New York investigating the net neutrality comments wars. J.D. also offers a look at the SmartNews app — which as its name implies — tries to gather online news in an intelligent way. Set your nav computer for Episode 290!

Links to Stories Discussed on This Episode

It turns out that Facebook could in fact use data collected from its Portal in-home video device to target you with ads (Recode)
Facebook Portal privacy walkback: company admits will collect data for ad-serving (9to5Mac)
Advertisers Allege Facebook Failed to Disclose Key Metric Error for More Than a Year (The Wall Street Journal)
In Virginia House Race, Anonymous Attack Ads Pop Up on Facebook (The New York Times)
Facebook Finds Hack Was Done by Spammers, Not Foreign State (The Wall Street Journal)
Enabling further research of information operations on Twitter (Twitter blog)
More clarity on reported Tweets and enforcement (Twitter blog)
Hello, Wear OS by Google™. Spotify Here. (Spotify)
How an Unlikely Family History Website Transformed Cold Case Investigations (The New York Times)
After backlash, Verizon giving 3 months’ free service to Florida counties hit hardest by Hurricane Michael (9to5Mac)
New York Attorney General Expands Inquiry Into Net Neutrality Comments (The New York Times)
Chrome’s turning 10, here’s what’s new (Google blog)

App Spotlight

This free news app lets you read stories from more than 300 trusted sites — even when you don’t have an Internet connection (Business Insider)
SmartNews app reaches 10 million monthly users as it counters fake news (VentureBeat)
About SmartNews
SmartNews for Android
SmartNews for iOS

Episode Links, Podcast

PTJ 284: Rock the Vote

August 26, 2018 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Election security — or lack thereof — dominated the headlines this week as social-media platforms moved to boot trolls and industry leaders met to discuss what to do with the U.S.midterms looming. Meanwhile, Walmart and Kobo teamed up on ebooks, rumors about Apple’s fall event popped up right on time, Samsung released its Galaxy Note9 and Google is trying to find regular doses of good news out there. All this and more on Episode 284!

Links to Stories Discussed in This Week’s Show

Hackers Attempt a Repeat Performance at the D.N.C. (Vanity Fair)
Hack attempt on DNC voter database was a false alarm, the national committee says (The Washington Post)
Facebook Identifies New Influence Operations Spanning Globe (The New York Times)
Taking Down More Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (Facebook Newsroom)
An update on state-sponsored activity (Google Keyword blog)
Tech Companies Are Gathering For A Secret Meeting To Prepare A 2018 Election Strategy (BuzzFeed)
It’s Too Late to Protect the 2018 Elections. But Here’s How the U.S. Can Prepare for 2020. (Lawfare)
A Note From Twitter Security
Jack Dorsey On Deleting Tweets, Banning Trump, And Whether An Unbiased Twitter Can Exist (BuzzFeed)
Tiny Doylestown Borough battled Verizon over 5G and won a big settlement (Philly.com)
Here’s a first look at Facebook’s “Aloha” voice assistant that might power its smart speaker (BGR)
Walmart and Kobo Launch Walmart eBooks, Including an Audiobook Subscription for $9.99 (Walmart News)
Investigation Finds It’s Hard to Turn Off Google Location Tracking (eWeek)
A Lawsuit Over Google’s Sneaky Location Tracking Could Be a Game-Changer (Gizmodo)
The Right to not be Tracked: a Spotlight on Google Maps and Android Location Tracking (Rise Lab / UC Berkeley
Manage or delete your Location History (Google Account Help)
Yup, we know exactly when Apple’s 2018 iPhones will be released (BGR)
Samsung’s Galaxy Note9: Too Much Phone for Most of Us (The New York Times)
Samsung Galaxy Note S9
Nikon mirrorless Z7 and Z6 full-frame cameras launch (BBC News)
Xbox All Access: Xbox Live Gold, Game Pass, and consoles to be bundled in new plans (On MSFT)
Hey Google, tell me something good (Google Keyword blog)

(Hopefully) Helpful Hint

When Troubleshooters Run Into Trouble (The New York Times)
Decoding Windows Error Messages (The New York Times)

Episode Links, Podcast

PTJ 264: Now Departing

February 25, 2018 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Going . . . going . . . gone. Twitter finally swooped into action and chopped off thousands of bot accounts and other automatons that were violating its rules. SpaceX fired off another rocket and the repeal of the Net Neutrality rules landed on the Federal Register —which means an open Internet could be gone by April 23. El Kaiser and J.D. hash out the news and also discuss using a Chromebook as a laptop, so hop aboard Episode 264!

Links to Stories Discussed on This Week’s Show

Twitter bot purge prompts backlash (BBC News)
Automation and the use of multiple accounts (Twitter blog)
Inside Twitter’s Bot Purge (The Daily Beast)
AT&T Drives Path to Nationwide Mobile 5G With Multi-Gigabit Speeds (AT&T Newsroom)
SpaceX PAZ mission (SpaceX)
Mr. Steven Will Catch SpaceX Gear (Live Science)
SpaceX misses catching Falcon 9 rocket fairing with a giant net on a big ship (TechCrunch)
Samsung Galaxy S9 smartphone images leaked by MWC app (BBC News)
Restoring Internet Freedom (Federal Register)
FCC publishes net neutrality repeal, but debate goes on (San Francisco Chronicle)
Apple Plans Upgrades to Popular AirPods Headphones (Bloomberg)
Apple rushes out fix to Telugu letter text bomb bug (BBC News)
Latest Intel Security News: Updated Firmware (Intel Newsroom)
More than a movie, ‘Black Panther’ is a movement (CNN)
Black Panther (Box Office Mojo)
Atlanta airport is now offering flights to Wakanda — sort of (CNN)

Chromebook Living

Using Microsoft Apps on a Chromebook (The New York Times)
Set up your printer (Google Chromebook Help)
Set up your printer with Google Cloud Print (Google Cloud Print)
Print with Google Cloud Print (Google Cloud Print)
Cloud-ready printers (Google)
HP Printers Compatible With Google Cloud Print (HP Support)
HP Printers: Printing From a Chromebook (HP Support)
Google Support videos (YouTube)

Episode Links, Podcast

PTJ 232: Love and Rocket

April 26, 2017 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Love is all around as the unofficial 2017 Geek Summer Movie Season gets ready to roll next week with the arrival of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 in theaters ‚ with Wonder Woman, King Arthur, and another Spider-Man right behind. After a stomp through the week’s tech headlines (including the hunt to shoot down fake news and drones you can fly with your head) El Kaiser and J.D. discuss some of the most anticipated films on the way over the next few months.
Ooga-chaka-ooga-ooga!

Links to Stories in This Week’s News Segment

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales launches Wikitribune, a large-scale attempt to combat fake news (Nieman Lab)
Wikipedia founder to fight fake news with new Wikitribune site (The Guardian)
Our latest quality improvements for Search (Google blog)
Uber’s C.E.O. plays with fire (The New York Times)
Tim Cook reportedly threatened to pull Uber from App Store (CNet)
We can do better (Unroll.me)
HipChat security notice (HipChat blog)
YouTube restores ‘wrongly blocked’ LGBT videos (BBC News)
(YouTube Creators blog)
DJI’s new FPV goggles let you control your drone with head movements (TechCrunch)
Cassini completes final — and fateful — Titan flyby (NASA)
The power of LinkedIn’s 500 million member community (LinkedIn blog)
Popular antivirus program mistakenly IDs Windows as threat, creating chaos (NBC News)
Marissa Mayer will make $186 Million on Yahoo’s sale to Verizon (The New York Times)
Computer pioneer Harry Huskey dies aged 101 (BBC News)
30 must-see upcoming movies of 2017 (NerdMuch)

Episode Links, Podcast

PTJ 223: Ahead, Warp Factor Four!

February 24, 2017 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Things down here on Earth may be business as usual — mergers, lawsuits, taxes, paradigm shifts, feature updates and so on — but exciting things are happening Up Above as well as Out There. SpaceX had another successful rocket launch and resupply mission to the International Space Station, the Juno craft decided to take the long way around Jupiter for bonus science, NASA announced the discovery of seven possibly life-supporting exoplanets and Winston Churchill was writing about life beyond Earth way back in the 1930s. El Kaiser and J.D. discuss it all on this week’s episode of Pop Tech Jam, so Mr. Sulu, take us out!

Links to Stories in This Week’s News Segment

Verizon and Yahoo amend terms of definitive agreement (Verizon)
Verizon to deliver 5G service to pilot customers in 11 markets across U.S. by Mid 2017 (Verizon)
Office for Mac gets Touch Bar support with Outlook integration coming soon (Macworld)
Announcing updates to Windows 10 Mail & Calendar apps (Windows blog)
MacBook Pro Touch Bar support now available for Office 2016 for Mac (9to5Mac)
The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto: Great for Facebook, bad for journalism (The Atlantic)
Uber investigating harassment claims by ex-employee (NYTimes.com)
Uber hires ex-U.S. Attorney General Holder to probe sexual harassment (Reuters)
Key moments from Snap’s I.P.O. roadshow video (NYTimes.com)
Share up to 10 photos and videos in one post (Instagram)
Apple will fight ‘Right to Repair’ legislation (Motherboard)
Apple buys Israel’s facial recognition firm RealFace (Times of Israel)
iPhone 8 will include ‘revolutionary’ front camera with 3D sensing abilities (MacRumors)
Apple Park opens to employees in April (Apple Newsroom)
Google Nexus 7 (2017) To Feature Andromeda OS (GigJets)
The robot that takes your job should pay taxes, says Bill Gates (Quartz)
SpaceX launches first private rocket from historic NASA pad — then sticks a landing (Space.com)
Juno to remain in current orbit at Jupiter (Phys.org)
NASA telescope reveals largest batch of Earth-size, habitable-zone planets around single star (NASA)
Churchill essay on the possibility of alien life discovered in US college (Guardian)
Churchill the Astrobiologist? (Scientific American Blog Network)

Episode Links, Podcast

PTJ 208: Safety Patrol

October 15, 2016 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

The crisp fall air has returned to the Northeast, as do memories of sipping apple cider in front of a roaring fire. Unfortunately for some, the only fire around was coming from their replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones…

On this week’s episode, El Kaiser and J.D. wrangle the week’s headlines, including the latest from the aforementioned Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Inferno, a new coat for Microsoft Paint and Sprint’s efforts to close the digital divide for low-income high-school students. El Kaiser discusses proper electronics safety and J.D. has a (Hopefully) Helpful Hint on how to find out what other household products might be problematic. Now, where are those marshmallows, Hershey bars and graham crackers?

Lithium-Ion Battery Information

• Battery University
• Why Lithium Batteries Keep Catching Fire
• How Lithium-Ion Batteries Work

Links to This Week’s News Stories

Samsung will ask all global partners to stop sales and exchanges of Galaxy Note7 while further investigation takes place (Samsung)
Samsung ends Galaxy Note 7 production as problems mount (NYTimes.com)
U.S. pressed to disclose secret court’s order on Yahoo email search (Reuters)
Amid breach talk, some Yahoo users finding it hard to exit (Associated Press)
Yahoo Turned Off E-Mail Forwarding Just When People Might Want To Leave (Consumerist)
Verizon won’t drop Yahoo but may seek lower price (Fortune)
Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter provided data access for a surveillance product marketed to target activists of color (ACLU of Northern California)
Comcast to pay $2.3M fine to resolve billing complaints (FCC)
Introducing Workplace by Facebook (Facebook Newsroom)
Here’s a first look at Microsoft’s new Paint app for Windows 10 (The Verge)
Microsoft is updating Paint with new features and refreshed interface (Thurrott.com)
Save the date for our Microsoft Event (Windows Experience blog)
Google Cast app to be renamed Google Home app (Variety)
Google Assistant is getting a sense of humor from ‘The Onion’ (Engadget)
Amazon eyes its own convenience stores in addition to drive-up grocery sites, WSJ reports (GeekWire)
Amazon’s secretive drive-up grocery store takes shape in Seattle neighborhood (GeekWire)
Five new Dropbox iOS features to help you work on the go (Dropbox blog)
Sprint provides free wireless devices and service to 1 million disadvantaged students (Sprint)

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!