OK, so we don’t really talk about Jurassic World on this episode. But Ray, Tom and Sean DO discuss some of the week’s tech news, including California’s new rules for Uber, the annual E3 video game trade show and more. Ray also reviews the food replacement product Soylent. All of that and more on this week’s Deemable Tech!

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THIS WEEK’S RUN DOWN

California commission rules that Uber drivers are employees

In what could be a major, precedent-setting decision for the so-called ?sharing economy,? the California Labor Commission has ruled that ride-sharing company Uber?s drivers are employees, not independent contractors. Uber has claimed that it is a logistics company and that drivers and passengers merely use its app to facilitate transactions.

However it seems that the Labor Commission took issue with this representation. It said that Uber controls the tools drivers use, monitors their approval ratings, and will terminate drivers whose approval ratings fall too low or who go too long without taking fares. The commission was ruling on the appeal of a labor commissioner?s award of $4,000 to Barbara Ann Berwick of San Francisco, who worked about two months for Uber last year.

If this ruling stands it could have huge consequences for Uber, currently valued at $40 billion. Uber is appealing the ruling.

European court rules news website liable for anonymous comments made on it

It?s a generally held legal principle that websites are not liable for offensive or infringing content users post on them if they remove that content when notified about it. In a surprising reversal, the European Court of Human Rights ruled this week that an Estonian news site called Delfi could be held responsible for anonymous and allegedly defamatory comments left on it. This goes against the existing European Union e-Commerce directive, which essentially has a version of the American DMCA. The court found the comments to be ?extreme? and Delfi?s efforts to control them to be insufficient – thus the ruling.

It?s not immediately clear what the effects of this ruling are. It doesn?t seem to change existing law, but could guide future European laws regarding what sort of content website operators can and cannot be held liable for.

LastPass hacked

If you use LastPass, and you haven?t changed your master password, stop listening to this podcast and do it RIGHT now. Seriously! Earlier this week, on its website LastPass announced it had detected an intrusion. Don?t panic, but the hackers did get email addresses, password reminders, and authentication hashes. So, that could be used to access your account.

The good news is, as we have said before, LastPass has multiple layers of encryption and it?s likely that no account data was lost in the breach. That being said, you must go change your LastPass master password, right now if you didn?t already do it, and it would be smart to set up two-factor authentication. We?re including a link in the show notes to Lifehacker?s article showing you how to do that if you?ve never done it before.

The FTC takes legal action against Kickstarter creator

One of the big stories of the internet over the last couple of years is crowdfunding campaigns, where sites like Kickstarter and IndieGogo allow people to back projects they?re excited about financially. Unfortunately, not all of those projects are on the up-and-up. Last week the FTC reported that it had taken its first legal action against a crowdfunding campaign – a Kickstarter-based project to create a board game called ?The Doom That Came To Atlantic City.? The FTC says that would-be creator Erik Chevalier had asked for $35,000 and wound up raising over $122,000 from 1,246 backers. Most of the backers pledged $75 or more in hopes of getting a backer reward that included pewter figurines. 14 months later, however, Chavalier had not provided any rewards and announced he was cancelling the game and would be refunding the money. No refunds were ever given.

The FTC has settled with Chevalier, forbidding him from ?making misrepresentations about any crowdfunding campaign and from failing to honor stated refund policies. He is also barred from disclosing or otherwise benefiting from customers? personal information, and failing to dispose of such information properly.?

Backers hoping for their money back are out of luck, though. The FTC would make Chevalier pay it back if he had it? but it appears that he doesn?t. It appears that the first rule of crowdfunding campaigns is still in full effect: let the buyer beware.

AT&T fined $100 million

The FCC won?t let AT&T be, or let AT&T be AT&T so let me see. The FCC is hitting AT&T with a $100 Million dollar fine for telling customers they had unlimited data, when in fact they were throttling them when they hit an undisclosed limit.

Travis LeBlanc, the chief of the FCC Enforcement Bureau said in a statement “Unlimited means unlimited. As today?s action demonstrates, the commission is committed to holding accountable those broadband providers who fail to be fully transparent about data limits.”

On average, affected subscribers were throttled for 12 days a billing cycle. The fine is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions of dollars AT&T has made from its so-called ?unlimited? plans. However, it is the largest fine proposal in the history of the FCC. The Federal Trade Commission also has a pending lawsuit against AT&T for the same issue.

SwiftKey vulnerability on Samsung Galaxy phones opens 600 million devices up to hacking

Another day, another hack that potentially affects millions. Security researchers at the BlackHat security conference in London have demonstrated that it is possible to exploit Samsung?s customized version of the SwiftKey keyboard to allow hackers to secretly gain access to the phone?s camera and microphones, text messages, memory, and to install malicious apps. It appears that Samsung grants the SwiftKey app high level privileges but makes no effort to encrypt updates to the software. The SwiftKey app is used on virtually all Samsung Galaxy phones, which means about 600 million devices worldwide. There?s not much users can do to make themselves safer at this time, other than to avoid unsecured wifi, and even this will not make them absolutely safe. Simply not using the SwiftKey keyboard will not help. The only real fix will be a patch from Samsung.

E3

This week is the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the annual trade show for the video game industry. This is where game makers announce new games and technology, as well as show off games that are currently in production.

There were many announcements and interesting things at this year?s E3, so we?re not going to be able to cover all of them today. In fact, we?re actually recording this episode on Wednesday, so there may have been more this week than we are even aware of. But we did want to mention two things we thought were cool, and they were both from Microsoft.

First, Microsoft announced that their Cortana digital assistant that can currently be found on Windows Phone will be coming to Android and the Xbox One. This means that you will be able to perform common tasks on your Xbox using voice commands. No firm release dates for these, but Microsoft did say that the Xbox One version will be out ?this fall.?

Microsoft also showed off their Hololens augmented reality headset live onstage at E3.

The Hololens — which Microsoft announced a while ago yet we?ve never talked about it — are holographic glasses that let you see and interact with virtual objects and environments as if they existed in the real world. Unlike virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift, the Hololens is transparent so you can see the actual world around you.

During their presentation this week, Microsoft demoed this technology using everyone?s favorite game, Minecraft. Explaining it verbally won?t do it justice, so we have included a video of the demonstration in the show notes at Deemable.com. The presentation begins with a Microsoft developer wearing a Hololens playing Minecraft using an Xbox controller on a virtual screen on the wall he was looking at. He then gets up, stares at a table on stage and says ?Build World.? This results in the Hololens building a three dimensional version of the Minecraft world on top of the table, which the developer can move around and look at from different angles. He can also manipulate things by using voice commands and gestures.

Polygon: Hololens hands-on review

Forbes: Hololens will cost significantly more than $400

St. Louis Cardinals allegedly hack the Houston Astros

Time to talk about SPORTSBALL!

The St. Louis Cardinals are being investigated by the FBI and the Justice Department for allegedly hacking the Houston Astros. What is a Cardinal or an Astro? A Cardinal is red birds that lives in Missouri and an Astro is a grey dog from the future that has a speech impediment. They get together to play sportsball with a baseball bat.

Why did the Cardinals hack the Astros? I have no idea. Were they trying to get secret sportsball techniques? Maybe. According to the New York Times, the database that was hacked contained statistics and values about the players and potential recruits.

The ?hack? looks like it was as complicated as using crappy passwords. Jeff Luhnow, who is now the Astro?s general manager was an executive at the Cardinals until 2011. He took some of the front office personnel from the Cardinals when he left. Investigators compared a list of passwords used by the staff when they worked for the Cardinals and they apparently used the same ones at the Astros.

REVIEW

Ray shares his experience with the food replacement product Soylent.

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