Plus what we suspect is behind the elementary OS countdown clock!

Plus the Android App that truly saves battery life, Popcorn Time expands & more!

LinkedIn buys Lynda & their plans leave us a bit creeped out. Plus why Samsung is teetering on the edge of something huge.

Plus some good Bitcoin news & much more!

Plus new interesting details turned up by the Sony Hack, a tip of that hat to John Siracusa’s OS X reviews & more!

Plus the trouble with rooting your Galaxy device & why we’re trying to sell a MacBook Pro like its hot!

Plus the Comcast merger falls flat, no upgrades for Apple Watch & more!

Plus the Steam Mod controversy gets swift action, your feedback & more!

Plus Google Now just got better & Ubuntu goes back to the desktop!

Plus Chris reviews Hello’s Sense sleep tracking device. Can it unlock the secrets of a good sleep?

Plus replacing Plex with Kodi, the burdens of a hand model & much more!

Plus Ubuntu, GE & Microsoft team of for Network connect fridges & more!

The new 4k Blu-Ray spec is revealed & the YotaPhone 2 with an E-ink display back is coming to a country near you!

Plus Bill Nye the Science guy is also the Planetary Guy. We discuss his ambitious new Kickstarter.

Then we have a Kickstarter of the week to help you men lucid dream, the penis way.

Is Microsoft repeating their mistakes of the past with Cortana? We’ll make our case.

A special bonus lost episode of Tech Talk Today is embedded at the end of today’s show!

Plus a look back at the best Star Trek games of all time, a browser extension that reads that Terms of Service for you & Kaspersky labs gets hacked!

Plus a recap of the most interesting things from E3 so far & more!

Plus Amazon announces a major deal to bring Marvel comics to the Kindle store, we discuss this big news and how it might impact the traditional comic book store.

Plus the Core Infrastructure initiative throws a little money around, the US Navy is sticking with XP & more!

Then it’s our kickstarter of the week & much more!

Plus we explain why NSA phone records surveillance are turned back on early, the 11 attacks on San Francisco-area Internet lines & more!

Plus the big tech rumor of the week & more!

Big changes are coming to Firefox, 2TB SSDs coming to a desktop near you, Prime Day is near & more!

Plus our Kickstarter of the week & more!

Plus how the mainstream is reacting to the new release, the sliding market share of the iPad & the teleportation breakthrough scientists are reporting.

Plus what the state of Android looks like in 2015, another OS X bug & more!

Plus Oracle's security chief demands you stop looking for flaws, veggies in space & more!

Plus Pearbuds… Our Kickstarter of the week!

Plus some big news for Jupiter Broadcasting & more!

Plus the real dirty secret behind Ashley Madison & more!

Plus an illuminating Kickstarter of the week!

Plus Roku 4’s best new features, Android M hits the web & more!

Amazon has a snailmail solution to your “big” data, LoopPay gets hacked, Lyft and Uber have a public spat & more!

These developers ask why is there is much pressure to buy the biggest house, buy the best TV, get a great car?

Before us now is an entire world of possibilities & cultures, some of us have been completely blind to. The ability to live comfortably, in a tiny home, or an RV & move about or bring your home with you when you travel is an amazing way to live. We look at a few remarkable examples.

Plus the most disruptive technology in the last 100 years is probably not what you're thinking, Intel, Microsoft, HP, Dell & Lenovo form supergroup to save the PC & it’s terrible.

Then it’s our Kickstarter of the week, a new breed of computing!

Benjamin Kerensa joins us to discuss the ambitious new project Glucosio, it’s exciting goals & the open source model that enables it.

Plus our Kickstarter of the week & more!

Then we fail to make even the most obvious Kickstarter sound compelling & wrap it all up with a little technical disaster vamping.

Plus the fun news for Sci Fi and Netflix fans & of course, our Kickstarter of the week!

Google's Chromebooks make up half of US classroom devices. As parents, are we comfortable with Google having a lifetime of history on our kids?

Plus some follow up on a previous Kickstarter of the week with a special guest, the likely conclusion to a five year old tech story & the inside scoop on the Jupiter Broadcasting SWAG for the Holidays giveaway!

Microsoft drops some more open source code & Tokyo’s rolling out the “drone squad”. Plus a very risqué Kickstarter of the week!

Plus the FCC wants to talk to T-Mobile and AT&T about their sponsored data plans & our Kickstarter of the week!

Plus our Kickstarter of the week & more!

Plus Netflix’s global expansion is astonishing, account sharing is cool & the secret of the codes.

Plus Uber tracks it’s drivers to see if they’re speeding, our time-saving kickstarter of the week & more!

Plus our Kickstarter of the week & more!

An Ex-Mozilla Team Unveils “Sense” in our Kickstarter of the week & more!

Plus a Kickstarter follow up & more!

Windows 7 users start getting auto upgraded to 10, the incredible images that reveal bacteria motor parts & of course our Kickstarter of the week!

Plus our Kickstarter of the week!

Plus our Kickstarter of the week & more!

Plus our “Kickstarter” of the week might be the craziest IoT device yet!

Plus the long term negative impact of self driving cars, the Rock’s got a clock & Windows 95 like you’ve never seen it before!

Then our Kickstarter of the week & more!

Plus the end to the latest Bitcoin saga, the FBI labeling TOR users & a Kickstarter you won’t believe!

Plus Apple confirms it was deleting music, the day Smart doorbell owners saw video from other houses thanks to a weird bug & more!

Plus our Kickstarter of the week, some great news for fan projects & more!

Plus our Kickstarter of the week & more!

Plus a 3d Printed bus, Marvin gets named & our Kickstarter of the week!

Plus our Kickstarter of the week & much more!

Plus Huawei gets tough, YouTubers gets exposed & Angela nearly dies!

Plus Chris gets serious about sleep tech & our Kickstarter of the week!

Plus a really neat Kickstarter of the week, local streaming to a Chromecast & more!

Plus our kickstarter of the week & more!

Plus a quick review of No Man’s Sky, the last VCR ships, listening to your hard drive & our Kickstarter of the week!

Plus our first hands on with Android 7.0 Nougat & a Kickstarter of the week that’ll give you a real boost.

Plus a striking Kickstarter of the week!

Plus our Kickstarter of the week & an important production announcement!

But it almost didn't happen.

Plus the tech news, Kickstarter of the week, and our plans for Season 1.

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• Facts About SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Rocket — Musk first announced a bigger rocket — the Falcon Heavy — in 2011. At the time, he said the rocket would carry 117,000 lbs. (53,000 kilograms) of cargo to orbit — twice the capacity of the space shuttle. Musk also predicted the first Falcon Heavy flight would come in 2013.
• Fresh off Falcon Heavy, Elon Musk launches broadband test satellites - ABC News — On Thursday, SpaceX on Thursday launched a pair of prototype satellites intended to form the basis for Starlink, a constellation of about 11,000 satellites that are designed to beam broadband internet down to Earth.
• Amazon plans to open as many as six more cashierless Amazon Go stores this year — New futuristic convenience stores could appear in Seattle and Los Angeles.
• Since October, Apple Made Around 1,600 Accidental 911 Calls — “We’ve been seeing these calls for the last four months from Apple,” said police dispatcher Jamie Hudso
• Using a laser to wirelessly charge a smartphone safely across a room — The beam charges the smartphone via a power cell mounted on the back of the phone. A narrow beam can deliver a steady 2W of power to 15 square-inch area from a distance of up to 4.3 meters, or about 14 feet.
• Kitchen Robot with Multi-Zone Cooking & Refrigeration by Suvie — Gourmet meals from fresh, raw ingredients ready when you come home; designed by former Apple engineer, appliance expert & gourmet chef.
• Google plans deeper Assistant integration with phones and wireless carriers — The other two announcements being made today will arrive throughout the year: deeper integration between the Assistant and both smartphones and carriers.

Plus the dirty secret from Mobile World Congress 2018, Apple gets caught using Google's cloud, and finally a useful password tool.

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• Red Hat at Mobile World Congress 2018 — Connect with Red Hat onsite at Mobile World Congress 2018 to see why 100% of telecommunications organizations in the global Fortune 500 rely on Red Hat technology.
• Mobile World Congress 2018 | Ubuntu Insights — Today Canonical operates telco networks worldwide in partnership with leading hardware and NFV vendors . We’re also collaborating with institutions worldwide to build tomorrow’s applications on Ubuntu: blockchain, machine learning, robotics or autonomous vehicles… To make sure that your infrastructure will be future proof.
• FCC Will Auction 5G-ready 3.7-4.2GHz and mmWave Spectrum — Speaking at the Mobile World Congress today in Barcelona, Spain, U.S. FCC chairman Ajit Pai today announced that the commission is prepared to quickly make 5G-ready wireless spectrum available in two critically important ranges: Mid-frequency, including both 3.5GHz and 3.7-4.2GHz ranges, and high-frequency, including 24GHz and 28GHz millimeter wave (mmWave) ranges. Pai suggested that the FCC is ready to auction the spectrum in the near future, but requires Congressional cooperation by May 13 to make the 24GHz and 28GHz allocations happen.
• Samsung Galaxy S9, Nokia 8110: All smartphones unveiled at MWC 2018 — With 5G technology taking an increasing share of the spotlight, as top executives stress the importance of the next generation of mobile networks, smartphones are still very much center stage.
• How to find out if an old password has been stolen — The Pwned Passwords tool, integrated into the popular password manager 1Password, lets customers type in an old password and find out if it's been leaked in a data breach.
• Pwned Passwords — With Half a Billion Passwords for Download
• Apple confirms it now uses Google Cloud for iCloud services - The Verge — Apple has confirmed that it uses Google’s public cloud to store data for its iCloud services in its latest version of the iOS Security Guide last month, as spotted by CNBC.
• Apple confirms it uses Google cloud for some of iCloud | Hacker News — From Apple’s actual iCloud security document: > Each file is broken into chunks and encrypted by iCloud using AES-128 and a key derived from each chunk’s contents that utilizes SHA-256. The keys and the file’s metadata are stored by Apple in the user’s iCloud account. The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using third-party storage services, such as S3 and Google Cloud Platform.
• Vulkan is coming to macOS and iOS, but no thanks to Apple | Ars Technica — The open source, royalty-free release of MoltenVK—a runtime for macOS and iOS that offers an almost complete subset of the Vulkan API implemented using Metal. Released under the Apache 2 license
• Israel-Based Vendor Cellebrite Can Unlock Every iPhone, including the Current-Gen iPhone X, That's On the Market: Forbes - Slashdot — The Israeli firm, a subsidiary of Japan's Sun Corporation, hasn't made any major public announcement about its new iOS capabilities. But Forbes was told by sources (who asked to remain anonymous as they weren't authorized to talk on the matter) that in the last few months the company has developed undisclosed techniques to get into iOS 11 and is advertising them to law enforcement and private forensics folk across the globe. Indeed, the company's literature for its Advanced Unlocking and Extraction Services offering now notes the company can break the security of "Apple iOS devices and operating systems, including iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, iPad Pro and iPod touch, running iOS 5 to iOS 11."

Plus Google's Slack competitor launches, Spotify's secrets revealed, and why 96.5% of YouTubers will fail.

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• Amazon to acquire Ring video doorbell maker, cracking open the door in home security market — The surprise acquisition marks the latest move by the Seattle-based tech giant into the smart home technology market. Financial terms were not disclosed, but Reuters puts the deal at more than $1 billion.
• Watch: “Shark Tank” judges reject Jamie Siminoff’s idea for Ring that Amazon just spent $1 billion — In his Shark Tank pitch, Siminoff said he was seeking a $700,000 investment for a 10% stake in his then-struggling startup—called DoorBot at the time—which he thought was worth $7 million.
• Hangouts Chat, Google’s Slack competitor, comes out of beta — For all intents and purposes, Hangouts Chat is Google’s take on Slack, Microsoft Teams and similar projects
• Spotify Files for Public Offering, to Be Listed As ‘SPOT’ — Spotify officially filed for a public offering with the Security and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. The music service intends to trade under the “SPOT” symbol at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)
• ‘Success’ on YouTube Still Means a Life of Poverty — In fact, 96.5 percent of all of those trying to become YouTubers won’t make enough money off of advertising to crack the U.S. poverty line
• Drones for Space Operations by Gateway Foundation — Kickstarter — Our primary mission is to develop drones to be used at the International Space Station to retrieve objects that drift away during spacewalks and repair activities by astronauts.

Plus the Telegram outage, Google's good news, and more.

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• Signal and Telegram are down for many users — You might want to move your private chats to WhatsApp or Telegram for the time being: it appears popular encrypted messenger Signal is currently down globally, according to numerous reports from users.
• Alexa has literally lost her voice as users report outages and unresponsiveness | TechCrunch — Amazon’s Alexa smart assistant seems to be down this morning. We’ve been hearing reports over the last hour of either delayed responses or just total loss of connection.
• Google Chrome: Flash Usage Declines from 80% in 2014 to Under 8% Today — The percentage of daily Chrome users who've loaded at least one page containing Flash content per day has gone down from around 80% in 2014 to under 8% in early 2018.
• SpaceX Fired A Rifle Into A Tank Of Helium To See If Someone Sabotaged Their Rocket | IFLScience — “We literally thought someone had shot the rocket,” CEO Elon Musk said in summer 2017, according to an excerpt from the book on The Washington Post. “We found things that looked like bullet holes, and we calculated that someone with a high-powered rifle, if they had shot the rocket in the right location, the exact same thing would have happened.”

Plus tech headlines, and more.

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• Oculus Rift is effectively bricked right now — First discovered in the Oculus Forums, the cause of this Oculus Runtime Service error is an expired certificate. Because Oculus failed to renew this certificate, the Oculus Runtime Service is being viewed as invalid. The only way to fix this is for Oculus to release an updated version of OculusAppFramework.dll with a new certificate. Once that happens, your Oculus services should return to normal operating speed.
• Android P Developer Preview arrives with new notification panel, notch support — However, device support for this release is pretty limited: you'll need a Google Pixel phone to play. The developer preview works on the Pixel 1, Pixel 1 XL, Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, and that's it. Pour one out for the Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, and Pixel C tablet, which were all part of the Android O developer preview but didn't make it to Android P. I actually confirmed this with Google—those three devices won't be getting Android P.
• Android P drops support for Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, and the Pixel C tablet
• Slack Gateways
• SCALE 16x JB Telegram Group

Then McAfee buys TunnelBear, Netflix shares some data on you, and Ghostery goes open source.

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• Pop!_OS Weekly Update: 17.10 Beta & New Community... — System76 is happy to welcome our new Community Manager: Sriram Ramkrishna, or ‘Sri’ as he likes to be called! His role will be to help create and evolve strong relationships between our upstream projects and the Free and Open Source community as well as continue our fabulous relationship with our customers through our social media channels.
• Ad-Blocker Ghostery Just Went Open Source — Many of Ghostery’s users struggled to understand the company’s old, complicated business model.
• Oculus brings Rift VR headsets back to life with a software fix — The fix is available from the Oculus Rift website, and includes a certificate that hasn’t expired. Oculus thanked owners for their patience in a Twitter message today, and co-founder Nate Mitchell apologized for the embarrassing lapse. Mitchell also promised Rift owners affected by the issues “will be provided with an Oculus store credit.”
• McAfee acquires VPN provider TunnelBear — TunnelBear hadn’t taken on any known outside funding, so McAfee is unlikely to have broken the bank over this acquisition. However, TunnelBear had also previously revealed that it is profitable, so was likely in position to wait until the offer was right.
• Netflix data: 70 percent of viewing happens on TVs — Netflix says 70 percent of its streams end up on connected TVs instead of phones, tablets or PCs.
• Lawmakers approve year-round Daylight Saving Time. — Lawmakers agree for more daylight, but Gov. Rick Scott still must sign and then the U.S. Congress must pass a law to move the Sunshine State into Daylight Savings Time year-round.

Plus Geek Squad's cozy relationship with the FBI, Intel's hardware fix for Spectre is closer than you thought, and what the hell is a Steve?

Then our Kickstarter of the week, big Jupiter Broadcasting news, and more.

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• Coder Radio 300 Shirt and Hoodie
• Coder Coasters
• Coder Radio 300 Poster
• Google to Weed Out Cryptocurrency Ads | Online Advertising | TechNewsWorld — The ban includes, but is not limited to, initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets and cryptocurrency trading advice.
• YouTube didn’t tell Wikipedia about its plans for Wikipedia - The Verge — YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced that the platform would start adding information from Wikipedia to conspiracy-related videos within the next few weeks.
• Intel redesigned its 8th-gen processors to patch ‘Meltdown’ flaws — The changes will start with Xeon Scalable "Cascade Lake" processors and 8th-generation Core chips shipping in the second half of this year.
• Lyft is testing a Netflix-style monthly subscription plan - The Verge — Lyft is testing monthly subscription plans for high-frequency users, a sign that the company is shifting toward a Netflix or Spotify model for transportation.
• MoviePass Wants To Gather a Whole Lot of Data About Its Users — Lowe said that was possible because "we get an enormous amount of information. Since we mail you the card, we know your home address . . . we know the makeup of that household, the kids, the age groups, the income. It's all based on where you live. It's not that we ask that. You can extrapolate that. "Then," Lowe continued, "Because you are being tracked in your GPS by the phone . . . we watch how you drive from home to the movies. We watch where you go afterwards, and so we know the movies you watch. We know all about you. We don't sell that data. What we do is we use that data to market film."
• Amazon is testing a “brief mode” for Alexa that replaces verbal responses with beeps - The Verge — This seems to be the only difference with brief mode — using beeps instead of verbal cues to acknowledge successful commands — but it’s not hard to imagine how Amazon might expand its applications. (We’ve reached out to the company to find out and will update the story if they reply.)
• Geek Squad's Relationship with FBI Is Cozier Than We Thought — Some of these reports indicate that the FBI treated Geek Squad employees as informants, identifying them as “CHS,” which is shorthand for confidential human sources
• No, Space Did Not Permanently Alter 7 Percent of Scott Kelly's DNA - Slashdot — The mistake stems from an inaccurate interpretation of NASA's ongoing Twins Study. When Scott went to space in 2015, his identical twin Mark -- also a former NASA astronaut -- stayed on the ground. The idea was that Mark would serve as a control subject -- a nearly identical genetic copy that NASA could use to figure out how the space environment changed Scott's body. Some fascinating results have come out of the experiment. For one thing, Scott's gut bacteria changed significantly while he was in space. And yes, he did experience genetic changes. The protective caps on the ends of his DNA strands -- known as telomeres -- increased while in space. But space didn't permenantly alter 7 percent of his DNA. [...] NASA also confirmed this in a statement to The Verge: "Scott's DNA did not fundamentally change," a NASA spokesperson said. "What researchers did observe are changes in gene expression, which is how your body reacts to your environment. This likely is within the range for humans under stress, such as mountain climbing or SCUBA diving."
• Steve, a Famous Northern Light, Stays Mysterious (and Keeps His Name) - The New York Times — Now a research paper has shed light on what Steve actually is, and scientists have proposed a moniker: Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.
• Deadwood 1876: A Safe-Robbing Game of Teamwork & Betrayal by Travis Hancock — Kickstarter — Work with your team to collect the most gold and then fight your teammates to the death to keep it all for yourself. 2-9 Players.

Plus Google, Target, and Walmart's unholy alliance to battle Amazon and Twitter's Cryptocoin crackdown.

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• Uber Halts Autonomous-Car Testing After Fatal Arizona Crash — The 49-year-old woman, Elaine Herzberg, was crossing the road outside of a crosswalk when the Uber vehicle operating in autonomous mode under the supervision of a human safety driver struck her, according to the Tempe Police Department.
• Google plans to boost Amazon competitors in search shopping ads — Google made the announcement on its AdWords blog this morning, detailing an initiative called Shopping Actions. Through this feature, retailers can leverage a "universal cart" that allows customers to easily shop across mobile, desktop and voice-controlled devices. Basically, Google says this will make it much easier for you to shop by voice or with a phone/computer from a number of stores.
• Cambridge Analytica harvested data from millions of unsuspecting Facebook users — Cambridge Analytica, a company that profiled voters for Donald Trump’s campaign, allegedly harvested private information from more than 50 million Facebook profiles, which they used to influence and wage a "culture war" during the 2016 election.
• New York professor sues Cambridge Analytica to find out what it knows about him
• Facebook wants more video creators to compete with YouTube, so it’s rolling out a subscription feature - Recode — Facebook will soon let you subscribe to your favorite creator for $5 a month.
• GrayKey iPhone unlocker poses serious security concerns — According to Forbes, the GrayKey iPhone unlocker device is marketed for in-house use at law enforcement offices or labs.
• Twitter Will Ban Most Cryptocurrency-Related Ads — Twitter plans to ban most cryptocurrency-related ads in the next few weeks, as Sky News first reported and a source confirms to Axios. Why it matters: The recent boom in cryptocurrencies and digital tokens has unsurprisingly attracted some fraudsters. Twitter is following in the footsteps of Facebook and Google, though it's been having its own problems with accounts promoting scams.

Plus the huge space station that's falling to earth, we talk a little GDPR, and own up to the big mistake Chris made.

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• Umm, @ChrisLAS , when did the USA population grow to > 500 million — Umm, @ChrisLAS , when did the USA population grow to > 500 million (I had to do a double take when listening)? Plus not sure that every man, woman and child is on it in the USA ;-) Just thought I'd check :-) #techtalktoday #CambridgeAnalytics
• Facebook is limiting developers' access to account data — here's how that will impact them - Business Insider — Facebook will limit developer access to user data in response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the company announced on Wednesday.
• SpaceX founder Elon Musk piles on as Facebook's woes continue — The blowback against Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica scandal hit a crescendo Friday when Elon Musk ordered pages for SpaceX and Tesla Motors deleted.
• Craigslist pulls personal ads after passage of sex-trafficking bill — Online classified site Craigslist has pulled its entire personal ad section after Congress passed a new sex-trafficking bill that puts more liability on Web sites.
• An Introduction to the GDPR — The GDPR is the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. Its purpose is to “harmonize data privacy laws across Europe, to protect and empower all EU residents’ data privacy, and to reshape the way organizations across the region approach data privacy for EU residents wherever they work in the world.”
• GDPR explained in 2 minutes - YouTube — The General Data Protection Regulation is an EU regulation that aims to harmonize the data protection regulations and strengthen data protection for all individuals in the European Union. GDPR was approved by the European Parliament on April 14th 2016 and it starts to apply in May 25th 2018.
• To comply with GDPR, Google asks publishers to manage user-data consent for ad targeting in EU - Search Engine Land — Google is asking publishers in Europe to obtain consent for data use and ad targeting under the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy rules, which go into effect May 25. Companies operating in Europe are required to gain opt-in consent for collection and use of personal data under the new regulation.
• Telegram Ordered to Hand Over Encryption Keys to Russian Authorities | Threatpost | The first stop for security news — Russia’s top court ruled Tuesday that the Telegram messaging service, with 9.5 million active Russian users, must hand over encryption keys to authorities.
• New York City May Grant Employees the ‘Right to Disconnect’ — The “Right to Disconnect” bill, introduced by Brooklyn Councilman Rafael Espinal on Thursday afternoon, would make it illegal for private employers with 10 or more employees to require their employees to answer work-related calls or emails outside of their official work hours. Employers would have to establish a policy informing workers of their rights.
• Amazon Patents Delivery Drones That Detect Screaming, Flapping Arms, May Smell Human Fear — The patent, US9459620B1, covers how an unmanned drone might interact with and respond to humans it encounters while making a delivery.
• MoviePass™ Lowers Price to $6.95 per Month | Business Wire — MoviePass™ lowers annual subscription price to $6.95 per month
• Tiangong-1 Reentry Tracker — Tiangong-1 is currently predicted to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere around April 1st, 2018 ± 3 Days.
• Slice of Sauce™: an All-Natural, No-Mess "Slice" of Ketchup by Bo's Fine Foods — Kickstarter — Bo’s Original Slice of Sauce™ is an individual slice of flavor-packed condiment offering a portable, convenient, clean label experience
• The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires — It is easy to forget that every development in the history of the American information industry–from the telephone to radio to film–once existed in an open and chaotic marketplace inhabited by entrepreneurs and utopians, just as the Internet does today. Each of these, however, grew to be dominated by a monopolist or cartel. In this path breaking book, Tim Wu asks: will the Internet follow the same fate? Could the Web–the entire flow of American information–come to be ruled by a corporate leviathan in possession of "the master switch"?
• MEET UP LOCATION: Belltown Brewing — Belltown Brewing is the neighborhood's brewhouse. Be there 8pm!

Then we'll cover a study that shows just one percent of Reddit users cause 75 percent of the drama, follow up on some topics, and discuss our thoughts for Season 2.

We set off to SCaLE this year with a goal in mind, but quickly realized the trip and this season of Tech Talk Today, we're going to be about something entirely different.

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• Feds pushing new plan for encrypted mobile device unlocks via court order — The Department of Justice is pushing for a new industry proposal that would grant law enforcement access to encrypted digital devices with a warrant, according to a new report by The New York Times.
• Valve has 1,700 CPUs working non-stop to bust CS:GO cheaters | PC Gamer — Right now there are about 600,000 5v5 CS:GO matches per day, and to evaluate all players in those matches Valve needed about four minutes of computation, amounting to 2.4 million minutes of CPU effort per day. You need about 1,700 CPUs to do that daily work.
• Face ID Deemed Too Costly To Copy, Android Makers Target In-Display Fingerprint Sensors Instead — Android phone makers are 'rushing' to implement fingerprint sensors under the display for upcoming handsets," reports 9to5Mac, citing a new report from Digitimes. "Android manufacturers have decided that recreating the 3D facial recognition used by iPhone X is simply too costly to include, and are instead focusing on implementing Qualcomm's ultrasonic fingerprint scanners.
• State Department Seemingly Buys $15,000 iPhone Cracking Tech GrayKey — On March 6, the State Department ordered an item from Grayshift for just over $15,000, according to a purchase order listing available on the U.S. government's public federal procurement data system.
• Since October, Apple has signed 12 TV projects, nine of them “straight-to-series”; sources say the company aims to roll them out between March and summer 2019 — Since October, Apple has made deals for 12 projects, nine of them “straight-to-series” orders — an aggressive method of creating new programming that skips the pilot-episode stage.
• Deals Like AT&T-Time Warner Won't Solve TV-Streaming Mess - Bloomberg — Media companies are scrambling to get bigger and create their own online-video services, which don't make much money or even meet consumers' needs.
• One percent of Reddit users cause 75 percent of the drama — In the self-published research from Srijan Kumar, Jure Leskoec, William Hamilton, and Dan Jurafsky of Stanford University, “intercommunity conflict” is defined as “negative sentiment to comment in another community.” These users wouldn’t necessarily qualify as trolls or sockpuppets; they’re instigators, posting links to other subreddits and encouraging other users to target, harass, and fight with users on that subreddit.

Plus the fascinating audio isolation AI Google's developed, and leaked memos!

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• Elon Musk says ‘humans are underrated,’ calls Tesla’s ‘excessive automation’ a ‘mistake’ | TechCrunch — In a rare mea culpa for the mercurial billionaire, Tesla CEO Elon Musk acknowledged that the company has been too reliant on robots for production.
• Russia starts blocking Telegram for failing to turn over encryption keys — The Russian state telecommunication regulator has began blocking Telegram as expected.
• Pandora's CEO is doubling down on podcasts
• In a Leaked Memo, Apple Warns Employees to Stop Leaking Information - Bloomberg — Company memo says it found 29 ‘leakers’ last year, 12 arrested
• 'GrayKey' iPhone Unlocking Box Seeing Wide Adoption Among Law Enforcement — Motherboard found that regional police forces like the Maryland State Police, the Indiana State Police, and the Miami-Dade County Police have purchased or are soon purchasing GrayKey technology
• Gmail’s new design will include a ‘Confidential Mode’ — Gmail on the web is getting a big update in the coming weeks with a new design and features, but Google is also introducing a new Confidential Mode.
• Google works out a fascinating, slightly scary way for AI to isolate voices in a crowd — Google researchers have developed a deep-learning system designed to help computers better identify and isolate individual voices within a noisy environment.

And why autonomous boats might be here much sooner than self-driving cars.

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• And now there's ~20 million or so AWS/Google Cloud addresses blocked in Russia. — More on Russia v Telegram v The Cloud in today's briefing: - Russia demands Telegram encryption keys, they refuse - Russia blocks Telegram - Telegram uses AWS + Google Cloud - Russia blocks the cloud
• Twitch is reportedly blocked in Russia right now — Twitch is reportedly blocked in Russia after the country’s state communications regulator announced it was blocking specific IP addresses owned by Amazon and Google.
• Telegram plays down Russian block — claiming no ‘significant’ impact yet | TechCrunch — A court in Russia ordered a block of messaging app Telegram this week but founder Pavel Durov has shrugged off the impact of the ban 24 hours in — claiming the app hasn’t seen “a significant drop in user engagement so far.”
• Regulatory filings indicate a flurry of new iPhone (SE?) models launching soon — Devices typically appear in this database about a month before the products ship. These iPhone references were posted yesterday, suggesting a new iPhone launch will be debuting in early May/June.
• Amazon’s new ‘Alexa Blueprints’ let anyone create custom Alexa skills and responses | TechCrunch — Amazon this morning is introducing “Alexa Blueprints,” a new way for any Alexa owner to create their own customized Alexa skills or responses, without needing to know how to code.
• Autonomous Boats Will Be On the Market Sooner Than Self-Driving Cars — Startups and major firms like Rolls Royce are now looking to automate the seas and help maritime companies ease navigation, save fuel, improve safety, increase tonnage, and make more money.
• Self-driving boats | Amherst | Buffalo Automation
• Reddit now has more active users than Twitter — That’s an increase of more than 30 percent in less than 6 months, and puts the platform in equal 11th place in our new global social media platform ranking (see chart above).
• I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place — A conversation with former Reddit product head Dan McComas on the problems of growth as a metric and what Twitter is doing wrong.
• Supreme Court Tosses Out Microsoft Case on Digital Data Abroad - The New York Times — The dispute arose from a federal drug investigation in which prosecutors sought the emails of a suspect stored in a Microsoft data center in Dublin.
• Neova | A Unique Connected Ring For Musicians by Enhancia — Kickstarter — Add musical effects to your play using simple and natural hand gestures. A brand new way to enhance musical performance.

Plus the puzzle that was hidden in Windows years ago, and a new project that aims to be a Wikipedia for Terms of Service agreements.

Special Guest: Noah J. Chelliah.

Sponsored By:

• Linux Academy: Sign up with a free 7 day trial when you visit: linuxacademy.com/unplugged

Links:

• Google confirms some of its own services are now getting blocked in Russia over the Telegram Ban — Google has now confirmed to us that its own services are now also being impacted. From what we understand, Google Search, Gmail and push notifications for Android apps are among the products being affected.
• Valve acquires Firewatch developer, Campo Santo - Polygon — Dev team will continue to make its own games
• Amazon Has a Top-Secret Plan to Build Home Robots — The retail and cloud computing giant has embarked on an ambitious, top-secret plan to build a domestic robot, according to people familiar with the plans. Codenamed “Vesta,” after the Roman goddess of the hearth, home and family, the project is overseen by Gregg Zehr, who runs Amazon’s Lab126 hardware research and development division based in Sunnyvale, California.
• Microsoft Developers Hid a Secret Puzzle in Windows Backgrounds as They Knew Images Would Leak — Over the course of numerous builds, the puzzle was developed -- but only one person ever solved it! Over the weekend, Jensen Harris -- a former group program manager of Microsoft Office and Microsoft director leading the team working on the redesign of Windows 8 -- took to Twitter to come clean about the secret puzzle.
• List of Easter eggs in Microsoft products - Wikipedia
• WhatsApp drug dealer convicted using fingerprints taken from photo — Police in South Wales have arrested a drug dealer based on a WhatsApp message with a photograph of the dealer’s hand holding an assortment of pills, according to a report from the BBC.
• Welcome to the Wikipedia for Terms of Service Agreements | WIRED — A website that turns lengthy terms of service agreements into bulleted summaries, and then rates those terms from Class A (very good) to Class F (very bad). It functions as a sort of Wikipedia for terms of service agreements.
• Terms of Service; Didn't Read — “I have read and agree to the Terms” is the biggest lie on the web. We aim to fix that.

Also - how GEDmatch was helpful in busting the Golden State Killer.

Plus the new horrible truth we just learned about online dating... All live from LinuxFest Northwest with special guests!

Special Guests: Allan Jude and Chase Nunes.

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• Ting: Take $25 off a device, or earn $25 in service credits if you bring a compatible one! Promo Code: Visit LAS.ting.com

Links:

• The next major Windows 10 update is launching on Monday | TechCrunch — Microsoft today announced that the Windows 10 April 2018 Update will be available as a free download to users worldwide on Monday, April 30, with the broader rollout starting May 8.
• Someone Is Trying to Extort iPhone Crackers GrayShift With Leaked Code - Motherboard — Last week an unknown party started to publish code snippets from iPhone unlocking tool GrayKey. To stop, the extortionists are demanding 2 bitcoin, but they may not have more code to offer.
• How did this advocate of e-waste reuse end up behind bars? - The Washington Post
• Researchers are keeping pig brains alive outside the body - MIT Technology Review
• GEDmatch, a tiny DNA analysis firm, was key for Golden State Killer case | Ars Technica — "No court order was needed to access that site’s large database of genetic blueprints."
• Online dating is so awful that people are paying virtual dating assistants to impersonate them — Quartz — Every morning I wake up to the same routine. I log into the Tinder account of a 45-year-old man from Texas—a client. I flirt with every woman in his queue for 10 minutes, sending their photos and locations to a central database of potential “Opportunities.” For every phone number I get, I make $1.75.

Plus a brilliant Kickstarter of the week, some picks of the week, and more.

Sponsored By:

• Digital Ocean: Smash our promo code heresthething after you create an account, and get a credit on us! Promo Code: heresthething

Links:

• Cambridge Analytica to File for Bankruptcy After Misuse of Facebook Data - The New York Times — In a statement posted to its website, Cambridge Analytica said the controversy had driven away virtually all of the company’s customers, forcing it to file for bankruptcy in both the United States and Britain.
• Pocket Casts acquired by NPR, other public radio stations, and This American Life — One of the best podcast apps just got bought by some of the biggest podcast producers
• Amazon halts Seattle expansion over city tax proposal | TechCrunch — The new law is designed to address Seattle’s housing crunch, charging large companies $500 per head. The proposal is pretty clearly aimed at Amazon’s own expansion, and the company is taking the move to heart, potentially abandoning construction on a new building and just moving into a pre-existing space instead.
• Amazon success in Seattle has squished families out of housing.
• Amazon Launches Own Pet Product Brand, Wag; Starts With Food - Bloomberg — The Wag brand launched Wednesday with dry dog food and Amazon plans to expand the selection to include other pet supplies. The brand is available only to Amazon Prime subscribers, who pay monthly or annual fees in exchange for fast delivery as well as video and music streaming.
• 2016 MacBook Pro butterfly keyboards failing twice as frequently as older models — Following anecdotal reports of a keyboard more prone to failure than in previous years, AppleInsider has collected service data for the first year of release of the 2014, 2015, and 2016 MacBook Pros, with an additional slightly shorter data set for the 2017 model year given that it hasn't been available for a year yet.
• Humble Software Bundle: Python Dev Kit — Improve your Python development skills with a new software bundle. Get egghead.io, Postman PRO, PyCharm Professional Edition, and more great resources (including books and videos, too). Go ahead, pick up this bundle and see what develops!
• TIC-80 tiny computer — TIC-80 is a fantasy computer for making, playing and sharing tiny games.
• ELIA—the world’s most intuitive tactile reading system by Andrew Chepaitis — Kickstarter

Plus we have a question for you, and more!

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• Digital Ocean: Smash our promo code heresthething after you create an account, and get a credit on us! Promo Code: heresthething

Links:

• Microsoft Build 2018 // Vision Keynote - YouTube
• Microsoft announces Your Phone app for Windows 10 and Timeline coming to iPhone | VentureBeat — These updates are part of Microsoft’s Continue on PC functionality, which, as its name suggests, lets you send a task from your Android or iOS device to your Windows 10 PC. The feature first arrived with the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update in October, and Microsoft has been slowly broadening it ever since.
• Google I/O 2018: 8 things to expect from this year’s keynote - The Verge — Google’s annual developer conference will be a jam-packed affair about the future of Android, AI, and the smart home
• Android P will finally restrict apps from monitoring your network activity — A years-old privacy flaw will finally be coming to an end on Android. It’s an issue you’ve probably never heard of, but one that you should absolutely be concerned about. Currently, apps on Android can gain full access to the network activity on your device—even without asking for any sensitive permissions. These apps can’t detect the content of your network calls, but they can sniff any outgoing or incoming connection via TCP/UDP to determine if you are connecting to a certain server.
• Making every phone smarter with Federated Learning - YouTube — Federated Learning works through collaborative learning, using de-identified, aggregated information from many devices to improve machine learning models.
• NSA triples metadata collection numbers, sucking up over 500 million call records in 2017 | TechCrunch
• 4 Things to Be Worried About in the NSA’s New Transparency Report | American Civil Liberties Union
• NSA_transparecy_report.pdf
• Tesla Will Lock Out Contractors on Monday Unless Employees Vouch For Them — The company CEO is planning to cut off access to the company to any contractor who doesn’t have a Tesla employee to vouch for the quality of their work.
• Senate vote on the Congressional Review Act May 9th — Upcoming Senate vote on the Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to block the Ajit Pai’s repeal is going to define the battle field that we’re fighting on possibly for the next decade.
• SquirrelBot — SquirrelBot is a Telegram bot that saves links that you send it for viewing later. Currently, it only saves Youtube videos and formats them for easy viewing in Kodi. On the roadmap are handling videos from other websites and saving arbitrary links in a personal RSS feed.

Plus Apple deals a blow to GrayKey, our Kickstarter of the week, and sending ultra sonic commands to Alexa.

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• iOS 11.4 Disables Lightning Connector After 7 Days, Limiting Law Enforcement Access — The iOS 11.4 update, currently being beta tested, includes a USB Restricted Mode that introduces a week-long expiration date on access to the Lightning port on your iOS devices if your phone hasn't been unlocked, which has implications for law enforcement tools like the GrayKey box
• Steam Link App to Bring Steam Games to iOS & Android-Based Phones, Tablets and TVs — The Steam Link app will be available for Apple’s iPhone, iPad, and TV devices as well as various smartphones, tablets and STBs running Google’s Android.
• Google Photos will add more AI-powered fixes, including colorization of black-and-white photos — Now the company is making it even easier to fix photos with a new version of the Google Photos app that will suggest quick fixes and other tweaks – like rotations, brightness corrections, or adding pops of color, for example – right below the photo you’re viewing.
• Exclusive: Android P is Google’s most ambitious update in years - The Verge — Android P, due out later this year, will have a new dashboard that tells you how often, when, and for how long you are using every app on your phone. It will also allow you to set limits on yourself. You could give yourself a half-hour of Instagram per day, for example. Once your 30 minutes is up, the icon will go from its usual eye-catching gradient to a dull grayscale.
• Google Grapples With ‘Horrifying’ Reaction to Uncanny AI Tech — At its I/O conference on Tuesday, Alphabet Inc.’s Google previewed Duplex, an experimental service that lets its voice-based digital assistant book appointments on its own. It was part of a slate of features, such as automated writing in emails, where Google touted how its artificial intelligence technology saves people time and effort. In a demonstration on stage, the Google Assistant spoke with a hair salon receptionist, mimicking the "ums" and "hmms" pauses of human speech. In another demo, it chatted with a restaurant employee to book a table. The audience of software coders cheered.
• Alexa and Siri Can Hear This Hidden Command. You Can’t. - The New York Times — The technique, which the Chinese researchers called DolphinAttack, can instruct smart devices to visit malicious websites, initiate phone calls, take a picture or send text messages. While DolphinAttack has its limitations — the transmitter must be close to the receiving device — experts warned that more powerful ultrasonic systems were possible.
• SpeakEasy by Como Audio with the Google Assistant Built-in by Tom DeVesto — Enjoy music and more with voice command. SpeakEasy™ is Como Audio's newest hi-fi music system with the Google Assistant built-in.

Plus the return of a classic!

Sponsored By:

• Digital Ocean: Smash our promo code heresthething after you create an account, and get a credit on us! Promo Code: heresthething

Links:

• Critical PGP and S/MIME bugs can reveal encrypted emails—uninstall now [Updated] | Ars Technica — The Electronic Frontier Foundation. It said: “EFF has been in communication with the research team, and can confirm that these vulnerabilities pose an immediate risk to those using these tools for email communication, including the potential exposure of the contents of past messages.”
• EFAIL
• Wi-Fi Alliance’s Wi-Fi EasyMesh certification aims to standardize mesh networks | PCWorld — The new certification program will ensure that wireless mesh network routers, gateways, and access points from different manufacturers will all work together.
• Google Employees Resign in Protest Against Pentagon Contract — Now, about a dozen Google employees are resigning in protest over the company’s continued involvement in Maven.
• Apple CEO Tim Cook says Apple takes different path on privacy — Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a commencement speech at Duke University that Apple rejects the notion that getting the most out of technology means trading away your right to privacy.
• BitTorrent Inc. Changed Its Name to Rainberry — BitTorrent is without a doubt one of the more recognizable technology brands of the century. It, therefore, comes a surprise that BitTorrent Inc. has changed its name to Rainberry. According to the company, it's strictly a "corporate decision," but a more detailed motivation is lacking.
• Nintendo brings NES Classic back to stores in June — For those of you who didn't pick up the NES Classic first time round, it's being reissued and will be available in stores June 29.

Plus the big Nest outage and the SOUNDCAM. You're going to want this Kickstarter of the week.

Sponsored By:

• Linux Academy: Sign up with a free 7 day trial when you visit: linuxacademy.com/unplugged

Links:

• Senate votes to overturn Ajit Pai’s net neutrality repeal | Ars Technica — Senate defies "armies of lobbyists," but House may help FCC kill net neutrality.
• US cell carriers are selling access to your real-time phone location data — Kevin Bankston, director of New America's Open Technology Institute, explained in a phone call that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act only restricts telecom companies from disclosing data to the government. It doesn't restrict disclosure to other companies, who then may disclose that same data to the government.
• OnePlus 6 specifications: More expensive, more swagger | Android Central — The OnePlus 6 now comes in three storage sizes, with a new 256GB option (paired with 8GB of RAM and only available in Midnight Black) pushing the phone above $600 for the first time.
• This Guy Heated Bath Water With Bitcoin Mining and It Worked Too Well — "Lee" used cryptocurrency mining ASICs to heat his bath, which turned the temperature up to 122 Fahrenheit.
• Entire Nest ecosystem of smart home devices goes offline  — Works with Nest... usually
• The First Handheld Sound Camera for Everyone by SOUNDCAM — Kickstarter — Experience seeing sound. This camera images sound sources - it's like having six senses.

Plus MoviePass's desperate grab for data seems to be going bust, and IBM warns of cracking encryption with their Quantum Computer.

Then we wrap it up with our Kickstarter of the week, that wants to build open source VR for exploring Mars.

Sponsored By:

• Ting: Take $25 off a device, or earn $25 in service credits if you bring a compatible one! Promo Code: Visit LAS.ting.com

Links:

• Mnuchin on Google and tech monopolies — Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Monday joined the growing chorus of government officials concerned about tech monopolies. His comments come on the heels of a "60 Minutes" segment on Google's unparalleled market share in online search.
• Google sued for 'clandestine tracking' of 4.4m UK iPhone users' browsing data | Technology | The Guardian — The collective action is being led by former Which? director Richard Lloyd over claims Google bypassed the privacy settings of Apple’s Safari browser on iPhones between August 2011 and February 2012 in order to divide people into categories for advertisers.
• Google’s The Selfish Ledger (leaked internal video) - YouTube
• YouTube Music launches Tuesday; YouTube Red will be replaced by YouTube Premium, which will cost more. — You’re now going to have to pay $12 a month instead of $10 a month.
• How 2 Million People Loved MoviePass Nearly to Death — It works if enough people sign up and literally forget they have the subscription
• Netflix's DVD.Com Business Is Still Profitable — The company’s DVD.com DVD rental business has 3 million subscribers and generated a whopping $56 million in profit on just $99 million in revenue during the first quarter, CNBC is reporting.
• IBM warns of instant breaking of encryption by quantum computers: 'Move your data today' — Quantum computers will be able to instantly break the encryption of sensitive data protected by today's strongest security, warns the head of IBM Research.
• How it Works: Quantum Computing - YouTube
• MarsVR - Virtual Reality Platform To Support Exploring Mars by The Mars Society — Kickstarter

Special Guest: Allan Jude.

Sponsored By:

• Digital Ocean: Smash our promo code heresthething after you create an account, and get a credit on us! Promo Code: heresthething
• Linux Academy: Sign up with a free 7 day trial when you visit: linuxacademy.com/unplugged

Links:

• Apple is going to ruin cops’ favorite tool for breaking into iPhones – BGR
• A hacker figured out how to brute force iPhone passcodes
• U.S. Supreme Court Bolsters Mobile-Phone Privacy Rights - Bloomberg
• Google sends out referral codes for 15% off Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL
• Driver charged, speed a factor in Hamilton Mountain crash
• Happy FreeBSD Day!
• BSDNow Celebrates FreeBSD at 25
• Details about the office affair that led to Intel CEO resignation
• Larrabee GPU designer is joining Intel’s graphics team under Raja Koduri
• Larrabee (microarchitecture) - Wikipedia