Tag Archives: Yahoo

PTJ 274: Golden State

June 6, 2018 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Even without the NBA finals in the mix, it’s been a busy time out in California with a fierce net-neutrality bill passing a hurdle in the state senate and Mary Meeker’s mega-slideshow on Internet trends. El Kaiser and J.D. surf through the week’s tech news before stopping to ponder life without Twitter — if only just for a little while. Punch up Episode 274 and have a listen!

California Senate defies AT&T, votes for strict net neutrality rules (Ars Technica)
Microsoft leapfrogs Google’s Alphabet, while becoming the 3rd best tech company to-date (On MSFT)
Bring the Stadium Experience Home: Oculus Venues Now Available on Oculus Go and Gear VR (Oculus)
Google Will Try to Tackle Latest iPhones With Pixel Phone Upgrades (Bloomberg)
Former Snap Employee Questions Company’s Culture and Diversity (Cheddar)
Mobile Direct Traffic Eclipses Facebook (Chartbeat Blog)
HIDDEN COBRA – Joanap Backdoor Trojan and Brambul Server Message Block Worm (US-CERT)
International Hacker-For-Hire Who Conspired With and Aided Russian FSB Officers Sentenced to 60 Months in Prison (OPA | Department of Justice)
Foreign Cyber Actors Target Home And Office Routers And Networked Devices Worldwide (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
FBI Urges Internet Users to Reboot Home Routers (NBC New York)
Court upholds federal Kaspersky ban, dismisses lawsuits (Fedscoop)
Facebook to be banned in Papua New Guinea for a month (BBC News)
Shutting down Facebook in PNG is a reality (Post Courier)
Mary Meeker’s 2018 internet trends report: All the slides, plus analysis (Recode)

Downshifting Twitter

How to Defeat a Twitter Addiction (WikiHow)
How to deactivate your account (Twitter Help)
Clean Out a Crowded Twitter Feed With ManageFlitter (Lifehacker)
“I quit social media for a month — and it was the best choice I’ve ever made” (Business Insider)

Episode Links, Podcast

PTJ 272: Foiled Again!

May 13, 2018 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

This past week saw two big developer conferences unload several boxes of announcements, as Google I/O and Microsoft Build fought for media attention like Godzilla vs. Gamera. El Kaiser and J.D. discuss the ramped-up interest in artificial intelligence coming out of both conferences, along with other headlines from around the technosphere. J.D. also offers suggestions for dealing with an excess of emoji, and previews new characters under consideration by the Unicode Consortium. Come sit a spell and join us for Episode 272!

Links to Stories Discussed on This Week’s Episode

Everything Google announced at its 2018 I/O developers conference (Quartz)
Make Google Do It… And Then What? (BuzzFeed)
Build 2018 key takeaways: 10 most important announcements from Microsoft’s big developer conference (GeekWire)
Critical Windows bug fixed today is actively being exploited to hack users (Ars Technica)
Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17666 (Windows Experience Blog)
Customers can experience first-hand the convenience of the Alexa smart home experience and more in a real home environment (Amazon Press Room)
U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao Announces Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Pilot Program Selectees (US Department of Transportation)
Squirrel Is a New App That’s Just Like Slack but Made by Yahoo, and We’ll Leave It at That (Gizmodo)
Yahoo just released a group chat app called Squirrel (Android Police)
Introducing Tour Creator (Google blog)
Apple cracking down on applications that send location data to third-parties (9to5Mac.com)
Apple Plans to Sell Video Subscriptions Through TV App (Bloomberg)
FCC says ‘net neutrality’ rules will end on June 11 (Reuters)
Russia’s 2016 Facebook Strategy Exposed in Trove of 3,500 Ads (Bloomberg)
Exposing Russia’s Effort to Sow Discord Online: The Internet Research Agency and Advertisements (House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence)
Full Solo Soundtrack List Hints at What the Movie Is Really About (MovieWeb)

Emoji World

The Unicode Consortium
Overcome With Emoji (The New York Times)
157 New Emojis in the 2018 Emoji List (Emojipedia)
Draft Emoji Candidates (Unicode Consortium)

(Hopefully) Helpful Hint, Episode Links, Podcast

PTJ 250: “El Kaiser, Did We Forget to Mention This Was Our 250th Episode?”

October 6, 2017 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Google took its turn spewing out the fall product lineup this week, with the Pixel 2 phone, Pixelbook laptop, Pixel Pen Stylus — and a whole bunch of Google Home offerings — announced. Meanwhile, Yahoo’s big hack was worse then the company previously announced (why, yes, it is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month). The former Equifax CEO got trolled hard at his Senate hearing and NASA invites space fans to send their names to Mars. Upward!

Links to Stories Mentioned on This Week’s Show

Here’s everything Google announced today (TechCrunch)
Facebook Fought Rules That Could Have Exposed Fake Russian Ads (Bloomberg)
Facebook tests explaining media sources (The Verge)
Monopoly Man photobombs Senate hearing on Equifax (CNN)
Yahoo’s 2013 Email Hack Actually Compromised Three Billion Accounts (Wired)
Sonos launches public beta for Alexa voice control (The Verge)
Sputnik-1 (NASA)
Sputnik beep (NASA audio archive)
NASA Audio and Ringtones (NASA)
Send Your Name to Mars! (NASA)
Mars Exploration Missions (NASA)
Everything We Know About Elon Musk’s Big Freakin’ Rocket (Nerdist)

(Hopefully) Helpful Hint

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 229: Private Investigations

April 8, 2017 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Protections for consumer privacy and data collection took a hit this past week, as regulations were rolled back into nonexistence — sending some concerned Netizens to software they hope will help shield their online activity. The big question: Does it work?

Meanwhile, Yahoo and AOL take an Oath, Samsung’s Galaxy S8 reveals some enviable features, Amazon finds yet another way to get your cash and Google tries to make sure perfectly nice advertisements don’t end up on hateful YouTube videos. Join El Kaiser and J.D. as they discuss it all in Episode 229!

Links to Stories in This Week’s Show

Amazon launches Amazon Cash, a way to shop its site without a bank card (TechCrunch)
Amazon Cash (Amazon)
5 Samsung Galaxy S8 features Apple should steal for iPhone 8 (Macworld)
Microsoft touts Microsoft-customized edition of Samsung Galaxy S8 (ZDNet)
Apple Mac Pro design was a bad bet, admits firm (BBC)
Facebook rocket: what is the new icon? (Wired UK)
Artificial intelligence is key to defeating future hackers (The Hill)
Google training ad placement computers to be offended (The New York Times)
Spotify Premium users will get some albums two weeks before free users (TechCrunch)
Verizon announces new name brand for AOL and Yahoo: Oath (The New York Times)
Marissa Mayer will not be part of the new AOL-Yahoo combined company called Oath (Recode)
FCC limits order on Charter extending broadband service (Reuters)
ACA pleased FCC eliminated broadband overbuild mandate in Charter-TWC-BHN merger order (American Cable Association)
New bill would crack down on border phone searches without warrants (The Verge)
The Protecting Data at the Border Act (United States Senate)
Trump signs bill to roll back privacy rules into law (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
Post-FCC privacy rules, should you VPN? (Krebs on Security)
Choosing the best VPN for you (thatoneprivacysite.net)
Is Tor Really Anonymous and Secure? (How-To Geek)
TOR browser (The TOR Project)
VPNs Won’t Save You from Congress’ Internet Privacy Giveaway (Wired)
Search Internet History

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 216: So Long, 2016!

December 21, 2016 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

After a tumultuous 12 months in tech, culture and politics, this annus horribilis (as many found it) is finally on the way out the door. On this last episode of the year, El Kaiser and J.D. discuss the week’s tech news before exploring the highlights, lowlights and other notable events of 2016. Thanks for listening this year, Jammers, and we’ll be back in 2017!

Links to This Week’s Stories

CES 2017 rumor roundup (TrustedReviews.com)
Smart Living: Consumer expectations for smart home technology (Consumer Technology Association)
Brick-and-mortar is out, brick-and-mobile is in (Consumer Technology Association)
ASUS releases CES 2017 ZenFone video teaser, new phone (phoneArena.com)
Samsung claims sleek new laptops are lightest on market, at just 1.8lbs (Ars Technica)
New Galaxy S8 leak highlights Samsung’s big decision (Forbes)
How Apple alienated Mac loyalists (Bloomberg)
Apple extends discounts on USB-C adapters and accessories until March 31 (MacRumors)
Apple AirPods teardown (iFixit)
AirPods teardown reveals charging case may have been cause of delay (MacRumors)
Apple’s Tim Cook assures employees that it is committed to the Mac and that ‘great desktops’ are coming (TechCrunch)
LinkedIn resets some Lynda.com users’ passwords following data leak (Venturebeat)
Yahoo says 1 billion user accounts were hacked (The New York Times)
Airbnb is building a flight-booking tool (Bloomberg)
Amazon Fire tablets updated with kids’ reading app, Amazon Rapids, and a more powerful Alexa (TechCrunch)
Building Jarvis (Mark Zuckerberg)
Introducing group video chat in Messenger (Facebook Newsroom)
Minecraft for Apple TV released (Minecraft.net)

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)

Episode Links, Podcast

PTJ 207: Show Time

October 4, 2016 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

“Hey, where’s all those Batmans going on 11th Avenue?” Mass Invasion maestro Janifer Cheng stops by on her way to the New York Comic Con extravaganza to share her thoughts on cosplay and other convention fun with El Kaiser and J.D. (who is moderating three panels at the expo this weekend herself). In the news segment, we discuss Google’s fancy new Pixel phones, Facebook’s Marketplace’s problems, and the fact that some nice people from the government want to talk to Yahoo about its “security” issues. Oh, and two other words: Luke Cage.

Want to know where we got these stories? Check out the links below:

Google announces new hardware (Made by Google)
Introducing Marketplace: Buy and Sell with Your Local Community (Facebook)
Facebook Commerce Policy (Facebook)
Sex. Drugs. Guns. Meet Facebook’s Marketplace (USA Today)
Facebook says a ‘technical issue’ caused illegal listings (Business Insider)
Microsoft pulls Band listings from its Store; admits no Band 3 this year (ZDNet)
Apple will automatically download macOS Sierra on Macs starting today (The Verge)
New California law allows test of autonomous shuttle with no driver (Reuters)
Still Waiting to Hear From Yahoo (The New York Times)
iTunes Spoken Editions lets you listen to your favorite websites (Tech Crunch)
Dream Chaser: The Spacecraft That Will Transform Humanity’s Access to Space (Observer)
The Hilarious Way Jessica Jones and Luke Cage Weighed In On Netflix’s Crash (CinemaBlend)
Mission complete: Rosetta’s journey ends in daring descent to comet (ESA)

Podcast

PTJ 199: Conventional Wisdom

July 28, 2016 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Forget those grainy old newsreels of Republicans and Democrats putting on large hats and gathering every four years to nominate a candidate for president. Thanks to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and various other social platforms, wonks and watchers alike have instant access to high-definition video right from the arena floor, plus ongoing commentary from viewers around the world. Will this massive wall of easily accessible data make for a more informed body politic — or just lead to more online body slams? And what about those the hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee that some say were courtesy of Russian operatives trying to influence the results of November? Journalist Laura M. Holson drops by PTJ HQ with her observations on it all.

And, after a week off so J.D. could work on her monitor tan, she and El Kaiser are back behind the mic with a summary of the week’s tech news, including Verizon’s purchase of Yahoo and summer projects from Microsoft and Google. Pour yourself a cool, refreshing beverage and settle on in for a listen!

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!