This week Ray, Tom and Sean talk about quantum computers, Google’s new messaging apps, and the possibility of an all-glass iPhone. Plus the guys share some sad news.

A special message from Ray, Tom and Sean

If you’re an avid listener to Deemable Tech, it will probably come as no surprise that we’ve been having some difficulty putting out shows for the past few months. The three of us have gone through some major changes in our careers and lives over the past year, and those have taken away a lot of the time we’ve had to devote to bringing you this show every week.

So, after months of not recording an episode, we’ve made the tough decision to end the Deemable Tech podcast. For now, at least.

We’ve come to the realization that it is just not sustainable. We can’t keep producing the show to the level that we did before, and it was unfair of us to leave you in the dark about it.

We may relaunch the show down the road, if we are able to. If you are interested in finding out when we or if we do, sign up for our newsletter on the right side of this page. You’ll be the first to know.

We won’t be gone completely, though. You can still catch us answering your tech questions every week on Ask Deemable Tech, so be sure to subscribe to that podcast or listen live Thursdays on 89.9 FM WJCT.

If you have any farewell messages for us, leave us a voicemail at 1-888-972-9868 or send an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

We’ve truly appreciated you listening to (and sometimes even enjoying) our shenanigans for the past four years. It’s been a blast.

Now let’s take this baby for one last ride!

THE RUN DOWN

Google releases Science Journal app

For those of you who loved doing science projects as a kid, Google recently released a new app that you’ll love.

The app, Science Journal, uses the sensors in your phone to measure and record data in real time, including movement, light and sound.

As Google says on the Science Journal site, “See something you want to measure? How much light is in my room compared to outside? How loud is the dog’s bark compared to my cough? Record your observations in real-time at the press of a button. Explore your environment or measure things you’ve built yourself.”

Among other features, Science Journal lets you record measurements as charts and graphs, and record a voice memo as you’re doing your experiment so you can give extra details about it.

Google has also partnered with the Exploratorium in San Francisco to sell special little kits with materials like sensors your phone doesn’t have to let you measure other stuff.

Science Journal is currently only available for Android.

It’s all about the qubits, baby

Verge is reporting that IBM has made a working quantum computer that anyone in the world can play with.

What does that mean? Glad you asked! Basically, as anyone who has watched any movie from the 90s that involved computers can tell you, computers work by translating ones and zeros into machine understandable language and then translating that into human language and user interfaces. Quantum computers use ones, zeros and both at the same time.

Now the question is, what to do with that. We’ve built an entire industry out of a binary system, and now that we have the capability to expand it to a trinary or “ternary” system, the question is how to use it. So, IBM has opened it to the public for research and experimentation because basically the only people who understand what we just said are scientists.

Google says hello to Allo and Duo

One area where Google has long lagged behind competitors like Apple and Facebook has been in messaging. Rather than having a single, unified messaging app, Google has introduced numerous messaging systems like Gchat, Google Hangouts, and the default Android text-messaging app.

This week at Google’s I/O event, the company announced two new messaging apps, Allo and Duo. Allo is for text messaging, and includes Google bot technology which offers up auto-responses to messages based on things you usually type.

Duo, meanwhile, is a 1-on-1 video chat app. It is optimized to work even in low-bandwidth situations.

Both apps support end-to-end encryption, however, controversially, it will not be enabled be default. Some think this might be because it would impede their ability to offer features like the auto response bot.

All-glass iPhone?

We couldn’t do a final episode of the podcast without Ray talking about iPhones, could we?

Forbes is reporting that the iPhone 8 could lose the unibody aluminium case for an all glass one. No, you didn’t read that incorrectly, the next iPhone is the presumptively going to be coined the “7”, but this rumor is about the iPhone 8.

The glass case is expected to wrap around the entire device and have no bezel as a result.

And apparently the entire front of the phone will be screen. The front facing camera, touch ID sensor, speaker and proximity sensor will somehow all be behind the screen.

Android apps coming to Chromebooks

The Google Play Store is coming to Chromebooks. Along with every single Android app!

As Ars Technica puts it, everything “from Microsoft Word to Hearthstone to Firefox will be able to run on Chrome OS without noticeable performance penalties.”

That’s the pretty great stuff. Here’s the asterisk: Google has released a compatibility list for this amazing new feature and it basically excludes any Chromebook older than two years old. This even includes Google’s souped-up and overpriced Pixel Chromebook.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

That rumor mill’s a-churning. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

This week, Ray, Tom and Sean delve into rumors about the next iPhone as well as Twitter’s famous 140-character limit. Plus, the latest about the Oculus Rift, and the story of a man who found more than he bargained for in his Amazon cart.

By the way, we don’t just have a subreddit page for the fame and the glory. We have it because we want to know what you want us to talk about! We know you’re purusing the tech news all week. Go to our subreddit page, reddit.com/r/deemable, and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down.

And make sure to subscribe to the show and leave a review on iTunes and on Stitcher. The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

If you have a response or comment for the show, give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

THE RUN DOWN

Apple planning to remove headphone jack on the iPhone 7

The rumor mill about the next iPhone is churning and this time it has come up with a doozy. In order to get the next version of the iPhone even slimmer, Apple is supposedly going to ditch the headphone jack.

These rumors actually started swirling about a month ago, but now Fast Company has a new source which has confirmed them, along with adding new details: that the replacement will be a lightning jack with a headphone adaptor, or completely wireless EarPods.

Fast Company also says that the next iPhone will employ a new noise-cancelling technology to improve sound quality.

Oculus Rift announces release date, final price

The product that arguably has launched the current wave of excitement about virtual-reality-tech has finally gotten a price, and a date on which you will be able to buy it. That product, of course, is the Oculus Rift. The date? Sometime in March, assuming you pre-ordered, oh, last week. The price? $599.

According to Ars Technica, that scores you a cutting-edge VR headset, a head-tracking camera, an Xbox One controller, an Oculus remote, cables, a carrying case, and two games. That sounds pretty good, but note that it doesn’t include the beefy high-end PC you’ll need to plug your headset into.

If all you’ve got at home right now is Sean Birch’s Chromebook, expect to drop $1,500 to gain access to a high resolution universe of virtual wonder.

After two dev kits, which were priced at $300 and $350 respectively, and Oculus founder Palmer Lucky stating in an interview in October that the Rift would cost “more than $350,” many eager fans are experiencing sticker shock. They have taken to the internets to express their anger. Outrage was so great that Palmer Lucky popped up on reddit to apologize for misleading people. That said, if you pre-order the Rift right now, you’ll be lucky to get it by April, so clearly the high price has not been enough to discourage everyone.

Netflix gives customers socks for the holidays

You probably remember the Netflix-and-chill button that Netflix recently released design specs for so DIY enthusiasts could build their own. Well the company has topped themselves with their latest DIY brainstorm – Netflix socks.

If you regularly binge watch so much that you fall asleep, Netflix socks are for you. These socks detect when you’ve fallen asleep and send a pause signal to Netflix, so you won’t miss a moment of Jessica Jones! You can check them out at makeit.netflix.com. There are even multiple snazzy templates for great Netflix-themed patterns!

Just to be clear, you can’t buy these – you have to make them! So get out your darning needles and soldering iron and get to work! If any Deemable Tech listeners are planning on building this or the Netflix button, we’d love to see your work!

Lenovo ditching the Motorola brand name, but keeping “Moto”

Motorola was once a powerhouse in mobile phones, but it has been through a lot of changes lately. First it was purchased by Google, which launched the Moto X line of phones, and then it was sold to Lenovo.

In an interview with Cnet this month while at CES, Lenovo announced that it would begin phasing out the “Motorola” branding on its phones and replacing it with Lenovo branding. Lenovo will, however, be keeping the “Moto” name and the iconic “batwing” logo. So you can still say, “Hello, Moto.” But really, it is goodbye to Motorola as we know it.

Twitter to break the 140 character limit, probably for real this time

There are always endless rumors swirling that Twitter is about to increase its famous 140 character limit. And actually right now it looks like those rumors have some substance.

According to re/code, sources within the company say that tweets will still initially appear in your Twitter feed as 140 characters, but will then feature some kind of call to action which allows them to be expanded, showing up to 10,000 characters of text. This would be a pretty significant change for a company that has built its reputation on very brief messages. The same rumors also say that Twitter is experimenting with changing its reverse chronological timeline, another core feature from early days.

Since Twitter went public in 2013 it has struggled to impress investors with steady growth. CEO Jack Dorsey and other company heads are definitely looking at radical changes to keep the social media giant relevant.

IE is Dead, Long Live Edge… and IE

Microsoft finally buried Internet Explorers 8, 9 and 10. If you have one of them installed on your computer it will still work, but just like when Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows XP back in 2013, you won’t receive any security updates anymore.

Speaking of operating systems, Windows killed another operating system this week. No, it wasn’t Vista, it was Windows 8! If you’re running Windows 8, you need to upgrade to 8.1 or 10, because you will no longer get bug fixes or security updates. Why did Microsoft skip Vista? Who knows, but our guess is that there is a very small user base running 8 compared to Vista. But the reaper is coming for Vista too. Vista will swim with the fishes in April 2017.

Customer finds unexpected dildo in his shopping cart after poor customer service experience at Amazon.de

Ars Technica reported on an unusual customer service snafu last week. Not that customer service screw ups are unusual, but this one came from Amazon, typically known for their top notch customer service.

An IT contractor living in Ireland had ordered a textbook from Amazon.de, the Germany-based version of the site. Unfortunately he was shipped the wrong edition. After spending a great deal of time on the phone with a customer service rep, he was informed that the company did not have the right edition and they would only be able to credit him his money back.

Upset, the contractor left a negative review on a customer satisfaction survey.

A few days later he was browsing the site at work and noticed that there was something in his shopping basket. Not having added anything to the cart, he clicked to see what it was. At this point he discovered that a dildo known as “The Hulk” had been added to his basket.

Since the contractor was at his job and was being observed by coworkers, including a woman, he was not pleased by this. He reports that he was able to get in touch with an executive at Amazon.de and had been credited with 100 euros for the incident. The company hinted that the dildo had been added to the contractor’s basket by the customer service rep, but would not say if any steps had been taken to discipline the rep.

Image credit: Glade_Creek_Grist_Mill.jpg: Gabor Eszes (UED77)derivative work: WVhybrid at en.wikipedia (Glade_Creek_Grist_Mill.jpg) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

This week, Ray, Tom and Sean look at the dangers of over-the-top Christmas decorations, wonder when a tablet is too big, and try to solve the mystery of Bitcoin’s creator.

By the way, we don’t just have a subreddit page for the fame and the glory. We have it because we want to know what you want us to talk about! We know you’re purusing the tech news all week. Go to our subreddit page, reddit.com/r/deemable, and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down.

And make sure to subscribe to the show and leave a review on iTunes and on Stitcher. The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

If you have a response or comment for the show, give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

THE RUN DOWN

C130 pilots blinded by Christmas decorations

Are your Christmas decorations sufficiently over-the-top this year? Apparently if you’re not blinding low-flying planes, you aren?t really trying.

In mid-November, the crew of a Coast Guard C130 plane over Sacramento radioed that it was being blinded by a laser light – a distressingly common ‘prank’ that has dangerous consequences for pilots. However, when Sacramento police tracked down the source of the laser, it was not a prankster, but a home Christmas light display.

NBC Los Angeles reports that a Christmas light display projector called the Star Shower was the culprit. The Star Shower uses hundreds of pinpoint laser lights to simulate a surface covered with lights. It comes with a warning to point it only at solid surfaces, not the sky, and not to use it within ten miles of an airport. However, it appears that it is easy for someone attempting to project it up onto the wall of their home to allow the projector to accidentally beam lights into the sky, and the cockpit of passing planes. Homeowners using this product are advised to exercise caution.

Google ProjectFi gives customers the gift of Lego

You guys will remember we had long time listener Ardis on a few episodes ago to talk about his experience using Google?s ProjectFi cellular service. Well Ardis informed us last week that Google had sent him an interesting gift in the mail: a Lego kit that could be assembled into a charging stand for his Nexus device.

The Verge reports that a number of ProjectFi subscribers have been reporting receiving the kits, along with a note that says ?Thank you for your support, let?s build on this.? It is not known if the kit will go out to all ProjectFi subscribers or not.

Samsung unveils new giant tablet

It seems like the giant tablet arms race has officially begun. Apple has released the 12.9 inch iPad Pro to compete with Microsoft?s Surface Pro, which is a measly 12.3 inches. So they’re the winner, right? Not even close.

Samsung has jumped into the game with the Samsung Galaxy View, a “tablet” with a massive 18.5 inch screen. The only problem is, no one knows quite what to do with this monstrosity. In an Engadget piece entitled I just don’t understand why Samsung?s Galaxy View exists, tech writer Nathan Ingraham says that “Because it’s a giant tablet, you need to be close to get your videos playing, but because it’s so giant you naturally want to be a little farther away than your arm’s reach.” Samsung seems to want to position the tablet as a media playing device, but if this is a portable TV, it is one without a remote.

$599 is not a bad price for an elephantine tablet, but it?s very pricey for a small flatscreen. And when your screen is over 18 inches, you are definitely getting into flatscreen territory.

When drones are outlawed, only outlaws will have drones

A warning to drone enthusiasts: get in the way of the police, and they may take away your toys. According to a report by Ars Technica, Martin Sheldon of Los Angeles was caught after allegedly buzzing a police helicopter with his drone over Sunset Boulevard. He was charged with interfering with a police investigation. He has now been sentenced. In addition to community service and probation, Sheldon must turn over his drone and is banned from owning or operating a remote-controlled airplane, helicopter, or drone for a period of three years.

Hackers steal massive trove of children’s data from Vtech

Another major data breach is in the news lately. In November high tech toymaker Vtech reported that hackers got into its servers and stole the personal information of over ten million users, half of whom were children. The rest are parents.

Gizmodo reports that the data includes first names, genders, and birthdays of over six million children. But if that wasn?t scary enough, the cache of leaked data also contains 190 gigabytes of photos from Vtech?s kid connect service, most likely containing headshots of kids who used the video chat service to talk with their parents.

The hack has been catastrophically damaging to Vtech, which has suspended of their stock on the Hong Kong stock exchange after word got out that they had been transmitting customer data completely unencrypted.

Is Australian entrepreneur actually the creator of Bitcoin? Eh, probably not.

Bitcoin fascinates people for at least two reasons: one is the digital cryptocurrency itself, but two is because nobody knows the true identity of the person who really invented it. The inventor was known on online listservs as Satoshi Nakamoto, but this is undoubtedly just an alias. Last year a major Newsweek investigation featured a California man named Dorian Nakamoto as Satoshi, but this was later proven false.

Well this month the media is at it again, as both Wired and Gizmodo published stories claiming that an Australian entrepreneur named Craig Wright, in partnership with a Florida man named Dave Kleiman, was probably the secretive inventory of Bitcoin. The stories were based on documents leaked to the outlets by an anonymous source including unsent emails in which Wright admitted to being Nakamoto.

However, since the media have been burnt by false leads before, so both outlets hedged their bets, with Wired writing, ?Either Wright invented bitcoin, or he?s a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did.?
That was a smart thing to say, because things got weird in a hurry. The day after the stories were published, the Australian Federal Police raided Wright?s home and office, according to the Guardian, executing a warrant on tax issues unrelated to the Bitcoin story.

Since then, Wired reports, more holes have appeared in the story, casting doubt on whether or not Craig Wright really has two PhDs or whether his company in fact owns one of the world?s most powerful privately-owned supercomputers. Wright does, however, appear to own millions in Bitcoin, a point in his favor that is hard to explain away.

A post on a listserv supposedly from Satoshi Nakamoto denied that Craig Wright was him the day after the original stories ran, however there was no way to verify.

The full story is still unfolding and appears to involve either an extortion scheme or a hoaxer pretending to extort himself.

We were left with nothing to remember Sean Birch except dozens of his high school graduation pictures.

Producer Sean Birch is back. So, Ray is under control, no more innuendos and inappropriate jokes. In this episode Ray, Tom and Sean tackle how Facebook helped France but forgot about Lebanon and talk about crappy USB-C cables, Microsoft putting the Zune out to pasture, the new Star Trek TV show and the Chromestick.

By the way, we don’t just have a subreddit page for the fame and the glory. We have it because we want to know what you want us to talk about! We know you’re purusing the tech news all week. Go to our subreddit page, reddit.com/r/deemable, and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down.

And make sure to subscribe to the show and leave a review on iTunes and on Stitcher. The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

If you have a response or comment for the show, give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

THE RUN DOWN

Facebook Safety Check Helps France, Ignores Beirut

The Washington Post reports that Facebook turned on its ?Safety Check? feature for a man-made disaster last weekend for the first time, for the attacks in Paris. With Safety Check, users who are in an area affected by a disaster who login to Facebook are greeted by a message asking them if they are safe. If they indicate that they are, a status update is then posted to their wall letting their friends and family know.

Facebook said that about 4.1 million users checked in within 24 hours after the attack, about one-third of metropolitan Paris?s population. Safety check has been deployed on five previous occasions, including the earthquake in Nepal in April, Tropical Cyclone Pam in the South Pacific, and Typhoon Ruby in the Philippines. It was originally inspired by the aftermath of the 2011 Japanese tsunami.

Facebook has drawn criticism because it has not deployed the feature for several recent disasters in the Middle East, including for the double suicide bombings in Beirut just a day earlier. Facebook says that it plans to deploy the tool more frequently in the future.

Crappy Cables Be Crappy

One of the dangers of buying something online is that it could be a dud. This is especially a problem if you buy things from some random website. But sometimes even products from Amazon can be lemons, and the reviews ? which are often written by less-than-tech-savvy customers ? don’t always save the day. Well, one very tech savvy customer is doing everything he can to change that.

Gizmodo reports that a Google engineer is buying USB-C cables off Amazon, testing them and reviewing them. Benson Leung is a Chromebook engineer, specifically an engineer on the Chromebook Pixel team, which, no surprise, has a USB-C port on it.

From Benson’s experience, good USB-C cables are hit-or-miss. And unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to matter if they name brand or not. He’s found some cables with the wrong wiring, the wrong resisters, or will just completely burn out your charger, USB hubs or your mobile device.

You can follow him and read his reviews on Amazon or on his Google+ page, because? he works for Google? so of course he has a Google+ page.

Microsoft Finally Puts Zune Out of Its Misery

This week marks a sad time for those who love Microsoft?s Zune audio players (don?t laugh, there may be some out there).

PCWorld reports that Microsoft officially shut down all Zune-related services this week, including the Zune Music Pass streaming subscription service, and the Zune marketplace where users could buy MP3s.

Anyone still subscribed to Zune Music Pass was automatically switched to Microsoft?s new Groove Music service. As for the MP3s, if any of them had DRM they sadly might not work after a while because the license can?t be renewed.

It has taken a surprisingly long time for Microsoft to both stop the services and stop using the Zune name. The company stopped making Zune hardware all the way back in 2011. They kept using the brand name for a few years before they switched to using ?Xbox? branding for a lot of things.

Google Answers

Shout out to redditor BHK123 for suggesting our next story. Google?s search app is about to get better at understanding complex questions. According to VentureBeat, a new update to the Google search app allows it to better understand superlatives, ordered items, and dates. As an example, Google suggests the question ?Who was president when the Angels won the world series?? Google will figure out that you?re talking about US Presidents and baseball and combine the two to return the correct answer: George W. Bush.

Chromestick

Fans of ChromeOS rejoice, you are that much closer to being able to have Chrome on almost everything. Ars Technica says that Google and Asus have partnered up to create a 2.6 oz HDMI stick with ChromeOS that can be plugged into any monitor or screen, instantly turning it into a Chromebook. The stick contains 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. It also has a single USB port. The stick will reportedly retail for $85.

Star Trekkin’ Across The Universe

You are all no doubt very excited about the new Star Trek television show that has recently been announced. I know I am. Well The Hollywood Reporter claims that the show will not, as you might expect, be airing regularly on network TV. While the pilot episode will indeed air on CBS, the regular episodes will stream on CBS All Access and will require a $5.99 monthly subscription to view. CBS All Access includes CBS feed, which as of right now includes 85 shows, according to IT World. Some shows do appear to include commercials.

The new Trek show is slated to appear in January 2017.

If you have a suggestion, or just have a comment for the show. Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

And, don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

Ardis loves his new Nexus 6P on Google Project Fi.

It’s Sean Birch’s turn to venture through the Pacific Northwest, so he is out of the studio for this week and next. (When’s Ray’s turn? #justsayin.) But Ray and Tom press on none-the-less. The Deemable Duo were joined by long-time listener Ardis Meade who showed us his new phone, the Nexus 6P and told us all about his phone carrier, Google Project Fi. Very interesting stuff if you’re in the market for a new phone or a new carrier. Stick around after the news for that.

By the way, we don’t just have a subreddit page for the fame and the glory. We have it because we want to know what you want us to talk about! We know you’re purusing the tech news all week. Go to our subreddit page, reddit.com/r/deemable, and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down.

And make sure to subscribe to the show and leave a review on iTunes and on Stitcher. The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

If you have a response or comment for the show, give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

THE RUN DOWN

Turns Out Disney Isn’t That Bad After All

CNN reports that one Star Wars superfan with terminal cancer got to screen the film early. Daniel Fleetwood is a 32-year-old who lives in Spring, Texas and a Star Wars enthusiast who camped out to see new releases of the films and collected Star Wars paraphernalia. He is also dying of spindle cell sarcoma and is not expected to live to see the official release date of the new Star Wars film Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Hashtag  ForceForDaniel promoted by actors Mark Hamill and John Boyega persuaded director J.J. Abrams and Disney studio execs to let Fleetwood view an early edit of the film according to a spokesperson from Disney Studios.

The film will be released to the public on December 18th.

Chrome OS And Android OS To Become One

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is planning to merge ChromeOS and Android OS starting in 2017, with a beta appearing next year. The first Chromebooks came out back in 2011. At the time, the idea that Google would release an OS that wasn?t Android created quite a stir. However Chromebooks soon made inroads thanks to their super-cheap, basic, and lightweight SKUs. Chromebooks have an OS that is essentially the Chrome browser plus a couple of simple add-ons. The Chrome app store has never really taken off, but the OS has delivered on its promises of being lightweight and receiving constant, invisible updates. While Android is also a relatively lightweight OS it works entirely differently from ChromeOS, and its update process is much more laborious. How the two operating systems will merge remains to be seen.

Facebook Kicks More Competition To The Curb

Facebook, and practically all companies on the web, stay in business from ad revenue. The more you are on the website, the more money they make. Yep, that’s right, Facebook is making bank from all those pictures of your kids and stupid quizzes you fill out.

Well, another social media network, Tsu.co, decided to share its revenue with the users. The more that people view your content, the more money you make. And you make money off of inviting people to join Tsu.co. You make money off of the posts that the people you invited posted. If that sounds like a pyramid scheme, it’s because it basically is.

And much like any other new social network that has started since Facebook took dominance, (Instagram, Pinterest, Vine, etc.) Tsu.co is trying to grow by letting its users share posts on Facebook.

This worked, right up until Facebook blocked them. Unlike how Facebook made YouTube videos look like crap on Facebook to make its own video platform stand out, Mashable is reporting that Facebook went with the nuclear option. Users cannot even mention the website on Facebook. If you type Tsu.co into a post or comment, Facebook will not allowed it to be posted.

Facebook says it’s because users posting links to Tsu.co are engaging in spammy behavior and Tsu.co encourages it. I will say after checking out Tsu.co, it doesn’t seem very spammy. It’s mostly the same type of posts I see on almost every social network: cats, muscle-heads, news, cats ? you get it.

Don’t Buy Things From The Guy In The Back Alley

Gizmodo reports that a security research blog claims that in third-party Android stores, popular apps like Candy Crush, Facebook, Google Now, Twitter, WhatsApp, and more are infected with adware that gives itself root access to a user?s device. It appears that hackers are taking popular apps and repacking them with their own malicious Trojans and uploading them to these other stores. Right now the Trojans do nothing but serve up ads, but with root access much nastier things are possible. So far, no Trojanized apps have been found in the official Google Play store. So as always, people, you sideload apps at your own risk. Playing outside the official sandbox is still the #1 way to get your device infected with malware. Be very certain that you trust an app?s maker before you sideload it.

One More Reason To Hate Comcast

If you live in Little Rock, Arkansas; Houma, LaPlace and Shreveport, Louisiana; Chattanooga, Greenville, Johnson City/Gray, Tennessee; or Galax, Virginia you’re about to have one more reason to hate Comcast. DSLReports says that the lucky customers in those cities will no longer have unlimited Internet on Comcast, but instead will have a cap of 300 GB per month starting in December. If you go over, you will be hit with $10 per 50 GB over the limit.

Why is Comcast doing this, you ask? They say it is for ?fairness and providing a more flexible policy to our customers?

According to the email DSLReports obtained, Comcast believes “that 300 GB is more than enough to meet your Internet usage needs.”

All hope is not lost though. You can still get unlimited Internet from Comcast in those markets. All you have to do is pay $35 more each month for unlimited Internet than you were already paying for unlimited Internet.

Teen Stoners Hack CIA Director’s Email. Yeah, It’s That Easy

A pair of teenage hackers who enjoy ?recreational pot smoking? are apparently on a hacking roll, according to Gizmodo. Calling themselves CWA, short for ?Crackas With Attitude,? they hacked CIA director John Brennan?s AOL email account last month. This week they did one better, posting the contact information of 34,000 government employees online, including the phone numbers of FBI agents. So far it appears that all the data leaked is legitimate.

The hackers have been communicating at times with the press, often via disposable Twitter accounts. Asked how he felt about hacking the government, one of them told Gawker, ?since only 13 i am pretty hype about it.? He also said he had no problem with being labeled a ?teen stoner?, saying that he felt that ?it just kinda describes us in away.?

Just don’t bring it up.

Last week was Back To The Future Day, but the Internet went and ruined it, so we’re not going to talk about it. But we are going to talk about YouTube Red, Amazon taking on reviews for hire, laser razors, and LogMeIn buying LastPass.

Don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there

If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on the website, make sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher. And, while you’re there, leave a review. The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

What do you think about comics on television? If you have a response or comment for the show, give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

THE RUN DOWN

Don’t buy YouTube Red on your iPhone

YouTube has decided to launch a premium service. For $10 a month, you can watch YouTube videos without any ads, plus you get streaming music from YouTube Music and access to exclusive original content.

If that does sound like something you’re interested in, don’t buy your subscription on your iOS device.

That might sound crazy, but as you may know, Apple takes 30 percent of in-app purchases. Most companies just bite the bullet and eat that loss because the convenience of being able to pay right on your Apple device, and some companies, like Amazon, decided they weren’t going to pay, and pushed the checkout page to a website. Google is trying something different. Instead of eating the cost of Apple’s commission, or potentially losing a sale by sending the customer to a website, Google is passing the cost on to you! If you buy a subscription to YouTube Red on an iOS device, you will pay $13 instead of $10. So, come October 28th when YouTube Red launches, make sure to go to YouTube.com to sign up to save yourself $3.

Advertisers say they broke the Web

The Washington Post reports that the online advertising industry is saying, ?We?re sorry.? Or at least, the part of it which is represented by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. In a recent blog post, Scott Cunningham, a high level exec for the Bureau wrote, ?We messed up.? He said that the systems that allowed marketers to track and target advertisements “have slowed down the public internet and drained more than a few batteries.? He attributed this to plumbing that was, quote, over-engineered.

In case you are wondering why the online advertising is suddenly waking up to the fact that they have been annoying users and slowing down web pages after all this time, the answer is two little words: ad blockers.

Ad blockers have become hugely popular on desktop browsers and now are beginning to come to mobile as well. The latest version of iOS opens the iPhone up to adblocking. Advertisers are, well, concerned.

In Cunningham?s blog post, he announced that the IAB is developing a new ad system called LEAN, which stands for Light, Non-invasive, Ad-choice supported and Non-invasive. If its ads really are all those things that will be a welcome change.

Amazon goes after fake reviewers

Amazon has filed a lawsuit against more than a thousand people they say have offered to write fake reviews for money.

As Mashable reports, Amazon is going after people on Fiverr.com, a website that lets people do tasks for as little as $5, who offered to write and post five-star reviews for products in exchange for payment from the sellers or manufacturers of said products.

This follows a similar lawsuit Amazon filed in April of this year against a group of sites that offered to write Amazon reviews, including buy-amazon-reviews.com and buy-reviews-now.com.

As Amazon says in the claim, “While small in number, these reviews threaten to undermine the trust that customers, and the vast majority of sellers and manufacturers, place in Amazon, thereby tarnishing Amazon?s brand.?

Fortunately, Amazon is not going after funny reviews.

A razor with “frickin’ lasers attached to its frickin’ head”

Crowdfunding can often be like a bug zapper drawing people into something that they probably should be staying away from and definitely shouldn’t be investing in. There have been quite a few Kickstarter and Indiegogo projects that have been successfully funded but never materialized. Kickstarter and Indiegogo have been fighting this since their inceptions.

Well, Kickstarter took some action recently to prevent it from happening again. The Skarp Laser Razor got the boot from Kickstarter after having raised just over $4 million from backers.

Now, as the name of the product specifically states, the Skarp Laser Razor has a “frickin laser attached to its frickin’ head.” In other words, you can shave your face with a laser beam.

Why did Kickstarter kick them off their site? Well, Kickstarter says it’s because of one pesky little fact. Kickstarter says Skarp doesn’t have a working prototype. Kickstarter said, that the laser razor was ?in violation of our rule requiring working prototypes of physical products that are offered as rewards.?

If you watch the promotional video you will see a “prototype.” I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t use that thing on my face, and not just because I have a long, luxurious beard, but because I want to keep my face.

Not surprisingly, Skarp has setup shop over at Indiegogo and has raised a measly $400,000.

LogMeIn Bought LastPass

Arstechnica reports that LastPass is being acquired by LogMeIn, which makes remote desktop management and support software for individuals and businesses. LogMeIn will pay $110 million for LastPass.

If you?ve never heard of LastPass (and really, how could you listen to this show and not have heard about it? We talk about it all the time) it?s a password manager that generates strong passwords and stores them in an encrypted vault. It offers extensions and apps for desktop and mobile browsers that will automatically fill in password fields once you?ve logged in with your master password – the LAST PASSword you?ll ever have to remember. They currently offer free, premium and enterprise versions of the software.

LogMeIn actually bought another company last year called Meldium, which makes a password manager for teams and businesses. It looks like those features will be integrated into LastPass once the deal goes through.

Google buys entire alphabet

As you probably remember, last month Google restructured itself under a new parent company called Alphabet. Jazzed about their new name, Google ran to snap up Alphabet.com but – whoops! It was already owned by BMW, and they weren?t selling.

So, Google decided that if it couldn?t own Alphabet, it would buy THE alphabet. It has officially purchased abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com.

Right now the domain name leads to an inactive website. You can still learn all about Google/Alphabet at abc.xyz.

Google?s New Flagship Phones

We promised our listeners last time we would talk about the new Nexus phone, which is of course Google?s flagship. Well, actually there are two of them as it turns out: they are called the 5X and the 6P, respectively.

The 5X is the smaller, cheaper phone, and it is made by LG. It has a 5.2? 1080p screen, a 12.3 MP rear camera with laser autofocus, and a 2700 mAh battery. The phone starts at an affordable $379 for the 16 GB version.

The 6P is made by Huwai and supposedly the ?P? stands for premium. It does feature an anodized aluminum case whereas the 5X is pure plastic. It has a 5.7? screen that has some sort of super ultra mega high density Samsung display. It also rocks a 12.3 MP camera but the battery is a whopping 3450 mAh. This phablet is a little pricier, starting at $499 for the 32 GB version.

Both phones ship with Android Marshmallow on them and have fingerprint sensors.

We still don’t make any money doing this, so… you know… this is the best graphic we could find in the public domain.

It’s the 100th episode of Deemable Tech. It only took us three years to get here! Jessica Palombo, co-host of the mystical, never aired “Deemable Tech Pilot Episode,” and current WJCT News Director, joined Ray, Tom and Sean for the big celebration. The foursome talked about Facebook’s new “dislike” button, a new service that promises to be “Yelp for humans,” Amazon cuts out the competition and some guy who managed to buy the domain “Google.com” from — get this — Google!

Don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there

If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on the website, make sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher. And, while you’re there, leave a review. The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

What do you think about comics on television? If you have a response or comment for the show, give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

THE RUN DOWN

Facebook ?Likes’ rumors of a ?Dislike’ button

Pretty much ever since Facebook introduced its ubiquitous ?like’ button, users have been clamoring for a ?dislike’ button. Well last month, Business Insider reported that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had announced that the company was working on one. Only, it isn’t quite what you think.

Don’t worry, the world’s most dominant social media site isn’t about to turn into a den of passive-aggressive backstabbing – anymore than it already is. Zuck says he wants to give users a way to express sympathy or empathy when someone posts that they are having a bad day or going through a difficult time.

While Facebook’s CEO promised that the ?dislike’ button would appear in the not-too-distant future, as of this recording it is not available. And you should be wary of scams. Gizmodo reports that ads have started appearing promising that people that take a survey can get early access to the ?dislike’ button. You can’t and you won’t. Although you may ?dislike’ what happens to you if you try.

The internet gives ?Yelp for Humans’ a one star rating

Ever app developer hopes that their app will go viral and gain massive media attention. Last week, one soon-to-be-released app did, although probably not in the way its creators wanted. The Washington Post ran a story about an app called Peeple, which founder Julia Cordray billed as ?Yelp for Humans’. Supposedly the app would allow you to rate anyone you had a phone # on a 1-5 scale. The people you were rating did not have to be signed up for the app.

Although Cordray promised that there would be controls in place to prevent cyber-bullying and that those who received negative ratings would have 48 hours to respond to them before they were posted, the internet backlash was swift and massive. Within hours, #Peeple was a trending topic on Twitter, with the Tweets about it almost uniformly negative. Peeple’s Facebook page was flooded with angry comments. Ironically, Peeple began to delete negative feedback from their Facebook page before taking both it and their Twitter feed offline entirely.

Over the weekend, Snopes.com speculated that Peeple was actually just a hoax intended to rile everyone up. However, there has been no confirmation that it is in fact a hoax at this time.

As of this morning, Peeple founder Julia Cordray has posted a lengthy ?clarification’ on LinkedIn. In her article, she claims that the purpose of the app has been misunderstood, that it is a ?positivity’ app, and that it will NOT in fact allow negative reviews or allow reviews of people who have not signed up for the app. This seems directly contradictory to what has been stated about the app before, including in a handful of ?webisodes’ that the team had posted on YouTube.

A further wrinkle in this crazy only-on-the-internet story: Peeple is also the name of another startup, this one a company which has developed an electronic, wifi-enabled peephole for your front-door. Wired reports that the other Peeple is less-than-pleased about the unwanted publicity. Since the other Peeple owns the trademark to the name in the US, it is not clear how the app makers will proceed. Should they choose to, their stated release date is in November.

Random guy buys Google.com from Google for $12

Mashable reports that last week a random guy was able to buy Google.com from Google for the massive price of $12. Sanmay Ved, a student at Babson University, was playing around with Google Domains when he noticed that the site said that “Google.com” was unclaimed. He added it to his cart, checked out, and a few minutes later had an email informing him of his successful purchase of “Google.com.”

Just a few minutes after that, however, his purchase was mysteriously cancelled. Ved reports that he did notify Google of the glitch after the fact. No word on why Google had its own domain up for sale in the first place.

Mashable notes that Microsoft lost Hotmail.co.uk in a similar glitch in 2003, but had more trouble getting it back.

Amazon.com to stop carrying competing streaming devices Chromecast and Apple TV

Competition in the world of streaming TV and movies continues to heat up. Several different companies now offer low-cost solutions that allow users to stream high quality video from several different services on the cheap. The leaders are Google’s Chromecast, Apple’s Apple TV, and Amazon’s Fire TV Stick. Well Bloomberg reports that Amazon.com has decided that that is a few competitors too many. It has announced that starting on October 29th it will no longer carry either the Chromecast or the AppleTV in its online store. Just in time for the Christmas season!

Amazon states that the reason for this move is that its competitor’s devices don’t “interact well” with Amazon Prime Video. Of course it would appear that it is up to Amazon to develop software for the devices, not the companies that make them.

Other streaming devices, including Roku’s set top device and Microsoft’s XBox One and Sony’s Playstation 4 are not affected

Tom is out of town, and there was an Apple Special Event Wednesday, so Ray and Sean get to talk about Apple without Tom’s skeptical cynicism.

Don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there

If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on the website, make sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher. And, while you’re there, leave a review. The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

What do you think about comics on television? If you have a response or comment for the show, give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

THE RUN DOWN

Apple Watch

Tim Cook opened Wednesday’s announcement by touting the huge success of the Apple Watch, and then didn’t tell us any real numbers, and then touted the new Watch OS 2. There wasn’t much to talk about here, other than there are now 10,000 apps on the Apple Watch.

Apple also figured out that people who don’t have $10,000 to spare still like the color gold. Apple announced two new finishes: gold and rose gold in annonized aluminium. They also announced new leather watch straps from Hermes and a new Product Red model.

Apple TV

Apple also announced their first update to the Apple TV since 2012 at the event. The 4th generation Apple TV will feature major hardware and software updates, a new remote, new apps, and something called Siri (not sure what that is).

While the Apple TV box mostly looks the same as the old one from the outside (besides being a tad bit taller), the inside contains a lot of the same hardware as the iPhone 6 so it looks like it will be much faster than the previous generation.

It will need this extra speed for all of the new apps that are coming from the new Apple TV App Store. For the first time in the device?s history, Apple is letting developers create apps for the Apple TV and what they?re calling the new ?TV OS? operating system. They said these will include universal apps that will work and sync across devices. They made a particularly big deal about games on the Apple TV.

And it looks like those games will utilize a lot of the features of the new Apple TV remote. The new design includes a glass touch surface across the top that you?ll be able to swipe left and right, and up and down, to navigate menus and control game characters and the like. The remote also has a built-in gyroscope and accelerometer.

The biggest thing about the remote, though, is the Siri button.

Yes, in a greatly anticipated move, Apple has added Siri to Apple TV. Press that button, and you?ll be able to ask Siri to search for content across platforms like Netflix, Hulu and iTunes. You can even get really specific – the demo included a search for ?the episode of Modern Family with Edward Norton? that resulted in Siri pulling up the exact episode of that show in which the actor guest starred.

You?ll also be able to use Siri to search for information while watching content without pausing. A Siri special bar will pop up at the bottom of the screen with the results, which you can then swipe up for more details.

There was no release date for the new Apple TV, but Apple did reveal some prices. A 64 gigabyte version will be 199 dollars, a 32 gig one will be 149 dollars.

iPad Pro

The biggest news of the event (see what I did there?) was the iPad Pro. Coming in with a 12.9″ display, it is the biggest iOS device ever made. There were rumors forever that there would be a pro version of the iPad, and that it would have OS X, the operating system that runs Mac computers. Not surprising, that rumor turned out to be a dud.

Apple announced two accessories for the iPad Pro: the Smart Keyboard and ? the Apple Pencil.

I can tell you everything you need to know about the Smart Keyboard in five words: it’s not a Surface Keyboard. It looks pretty much exactly like a Surface Keyboard. It connects to the iPad very similarly to a Surface Keyboard. It’s a little more expensive than a Surface Keyboard at $169 instead of the Surface Pro Keyboard’s $129.99

Then there’s the Apple Pencil. It’s magical, it’s revolutionary? it’s a freakin’ stylus. Steve Jobs is rolling in his grave. Again, Apple Pencil, $99, Surface Pen, $49. #imjustsayin

In all seriousness though, Apple has a habit of “inventing” products that have been around forever, only to make them worlds better than the ones that are already out there on the market. The Apple Pencil does look really incredible, for a stylus.  It detects pressure and angle so it gives you a lot of variation. It’s supposed to last for 12 hours between charges, and it charges by plugging into the lighting connection on the iPad. Time will tell if it lives up to the hype.

Just like the original iPad announcement though, there was not a lot of “Wow this is amazing!” moments in the iPad Pro announcement. It does have a four speaker stereo sound system. So, that should help with how awful sound always is on every tablet device. The huge screen boasts 2732-by-2048 pixels across its 12.9 inches on the diagonal, and it’s the fastest, most powerful Apple product that runs iOS. In fact, Apple claims it is faster than 90% of portable PCs. So, there’s that.

iPhone 6S and 6S Plus

No surprise, Apple announced the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. Since we are on the “S” cycle, there wasn’t much new in the outward facing hardware department.

Other than the addition of a new rose gold finish, one of the biggest change was the addition of 3D Touch. This is one of the hardest features to explain. Basically, instead of just tapping, dragging and double tapping, you can tap deeper. And, if you tap deeper, on some menu items you’ll find additional options.

3D Touch is going to be the least used feature of the iPhone 6S.

Another big change to the iPhone 6Ses was the camera. The iPhone 6S has a 12 megapixel camera and can shoot 4K video.

The front-facing camera, known as the FaceTime camera, also got an upgrade. The FaceTime Camera is now a 5 megapixel camera, and it can shoot video in 1080. Also, the FaceTime camera now has TrueTone Flash, by using the screen as a flash bulb. Instead of adding LEDs to the front of the phone, Apple engineered the screen to flash brighter.

And, now you can have moving pictures! with sound! Apple is calling them: Live Photos. when you are looking at a picture that was taken with the Live Photo option turned on, you’ll be able to pressed the photo and it will start moving. Basically, it captures seconds before the photo was taken and afterward so you can be more in the moment. These are not movies according to Apple.

iPhone Upgrade Program

But, I hope you can afford to pay for a new iPhone with cash, because AT&T is the only carrier left that sells iPhones on a two-year contract.

But, Apple did announce a new payment plan to buy an iPhone. Starting at $27 a month, you can buy an iPhone directly from Apple. This works out to 24 payments, so starting out at a total of $649, the same price as buying an iPhone outright.

This would be great, if you could theoretically get a lower priced service plan from the carriers, but we really haven’t seen much of a difference in prices since Sprint and Verizon announced that they were no longer selling iPhones at the two-year contract price.

One Republic Apologizes

And finally, Apple, as it often does, closed out the announcement with a performance from a big name band. Fortunately this time they did not also force feed a new album into our phones. One Republic played a few ditties. They also apologized for all the times you’ve had to listen to “Good Life” while you were shopping at Whole Foods.

Weaponized drones, Ashley Madison, Facebook’s new virtual assistant and artificial intelligence are all in the news this week.

If you?re listening to Deemable Tech on the website, make sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher. And, while you?re there, leave a review. The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

If you have a response or comment for the show, give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

Make sure to share Deemable Tech on the forums, Facebook, Twitter and all over the interwebs.

Thank you to our Redditors who have been helping us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. Deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

THE RUN DOWN

Ashley Madison was nothing but a honeypot

Ashley Madison is still in the news. Gizmodo is reporting that hardly any of the real women on Ashley Madison actually used the site. Salon says that the number of fake female accounts is close to 95% which sounds about right from my experience. Like I’ve mentioned on the show a few times most of the women on the site are bots. By most, I mean, I don’t think I ever spoke to a single real person the entire time I was on the site. So, there were only about 5.5 million female accounts, meaning that there were only about 250 thousand real women on the website.

To make things even worse for Avid Life Media, of those 250 thousand women, a very small number of them actually used the site. Only about 2400 used the chat system and 1,400 used the messaging system. Considering the site also had 31.3 million men, and the site billed itself as a place to find women who wanted to have an affair, that is pretty rough for the company. It looks like they didn’t have the product to sell, so they built bots. Lots of the accounts have email addresses like 100@ashleymadison.com.

Ashley Madison CEO gets the “mutual agreement” boot

So, it shouldn’t come as much surprise that Avid Life Media CEO Noel Biderman, has quit his job as CEO ? “in mutual agreement with the company.”

A company that sold a service so crappy that women barely signed up for it, so the company had to make bots, and the site was so insecure that all of its data was dumped on the Internet. Yeah, I don’t know why they didn’t want to keep him around.

That being said, we are happy to say, this is the last time we are going to talk about Ashley Madison, Established Gentlemen or Avid Life Media, hopefully for a long time.

Facebook launches new virtual assistant “M”

Following in the footsteps of Apple?s Siri, Google Now and Microsoft?s Cortana, Facebook unveiled a new virtual assistant this week that they?re calling ?M.?

M will be built into the Facebook Messenger app. Unlike its competitors, M is – at least for the time being – is entirely text based.

As Wired reports, there is another huge difference between M and the other virtual assistants: M will use a hybrid of artificial intelligence and real people to complete tasks.

A team of employees called ?M trainers? will work alongside the software to make sure every question and request is answered. Facebook says M will offer a true personal assistant experience by helping users book restaurants, pick out and deliver gifts and more.

During internal employee testing, one of the most popular requests for M was to call the user?s cable company so they wouldn?t have sit through long wait lines and automated messages.

David Marcus, vice president of messaging products at Facebook, says they are also looking for a way to partner with businesses that get a lot of requests through M.

Facebook is currently doing a trial run for M with a few hundred users in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Facebook Hits 1 Billion Visitors A Day

Speaking of The Facebook, the Associated Press reported this week that the social media behemoth hit a major milestone as one billion users visited the site in a single day. Facebook hit a billion users back in 2012, but there is a significant difference between having a billion users and having a billion people actually logging onto your site and using it every day. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg celebrated the milestone in a Facebook post, stating that this meant that 1 out of every 7 people on earth had logged onto the site that day.

North Dakota legalizes armed police drones

NPR reports that North Dakota has passed a law legalizing use of drones armed with ?less than lethal? weapons by law enforcement. Less than lethal weapons apparently include  tear gas, rubber bullets, beanbags, pepper spray and Tasers. The bill?s sponsor, Republican State Senator Becker said that the bill was actually intended to require police to get warrants before using drones for surveillance. In order to pass the bill, however, compromises had to be included. Becker says that he hopes to get the weaponization part of the bill overturned in a future session.

Arrrrrrr-tificial Intelligence Predicts Pirate Attacks

Our next story is about the rapidly growing field of Arrrrrr-tificial intelligence. David Nield at Science Alert reports that the Navy has filed a patent for a computerized system that can predict pirate attacks based on previous intelligence, weather, and other factors. Modern day piracy is a real problem, costing the US maritime industry an estimated $16 billion per year. The Navy?s pirate attack computer model would be able to simulate attacks by large numbers of ?virtual pirates? and generate probability estimates of when and where pirate attacks are most likely to take place.

Uber hires Jeep hackers

Regular listeners will remember that not long ago we talked about the two hackers who were able to take control of a Jeep?s engine and brakes through its uConnect system. The hack made such big headlines that it caused Fiat Chrysler to issue a recall. Well Engadget reports that this week Uber announced that it had hired the men behind the hack, Charlie Miller and Chris Valacek, to work at its Advanced Technology Center in Pennsylvania. Like other tech companies, Uber is known to be exploring the possibilities of autonomous cars. Making sure that your driverless car has robust security to keep it from being remotely controlled by a hacker is probably a smart move.

BEM Twitter Account

Just wanted to share a great Twitter account I just discovered: Bored Elon Musk. This parody account purports to be the downtime thoughts of Musk, the inventor, entrepreneur and cofounder of Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX.

Photo credit: “Don’t Taze Me, Drone!” by Ray Hollister is a derivative work of “Project 365 #121: 010515 Attack Of The Drones!” by Pete used under CC BY 2.0.

Image credit: Ashley Madison

If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on the website, make sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher. And, while you’re there, leave a review. The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

If you have a response or comment for the show, give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

Make sure to share Deemable Tech on the forums, Facebook, Twitter and all over the interwebs.

Thank you to our Redditors who have been helping us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. Deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

THE RUN DOWN

Google Launches New Router

Google announced this week that is partnering with networking manufacturer TP-Link to make a new a Wi-Fi router called the OnHub.

In the announcement on their official blog, Google says they want to alleviate the setup headaches and connection problems that many people experience with their wireless routers by introducing a simple, user-friendly device. The OnHub, which looks like a large cylinder with a single light on top, is filled with 13 antennas – 12 for signal, and one that checks the airwaves to make sure there is no wireless congestion in the area. This supposedly will make sure that you?ll always have the fastest connection.

You set up and manage the OnHub by using the Google On Android and iOS app, which Google says will let you prioritize connections for specific devices, and give you easy access to your router password so you can copy and text it to your friends. In a really cool twist, you connect your phone with the router at first by using SOUND.

As for the clean design, Google had this to say: ?Many of us keep our router on the floor and out of sight, where it doesn?t work as well. We replaced unruly cords and blinking lights with internal antennas and subtle, useful lighting, so you?ll be happy placing OnHub out in the open, where your router performs its best.?

The OnHub is available for preorder now (though it apparently is completely sold out). It?s a little pricey for a router at $199.

Google Project Sunroof Tool

According to an article on Vox, Google is working on a new tool called Project Sunroof that will help you figure out if solar power is right for your home. The Project Sunroof tool allows you to enter your address and then uses aerial imagery to calculate how much sunlight your rooftop receives. The tool then uses other information such as your monthly electric bill and whether you want to buy or lease the panels to determine how much going solar could save you.

The tool is still in its early stages. Right now, it doesn?t work for North Florida, where we are located, but you can have fun playing with it for Google?s stomping grounds in California.

And then there was one. Sprint stops offering two-year contracts.

Verizon announced in early August that it would not be offering subsidized phones with two-year contracts to new customers. Existing customers could still get a new phone at a cheaper price, as long as they didn’t change phone plans. This made Verizon the second company to drop the ol’ two year routine. T-Mobile, the company Siri thinks I’m talking about everytime I say “Deemable,” started this trend in 2013 when they became the so-called “unCarrier.”

Now according to the Wall Street Journal, Sprint has jumped on the bandwagon. Sprint is no longer offering subsidized smartphones on two-year contracts, leaving poor old AT&T as the only major carrier that offers subsidized phones.

Now, if you can’t afford to drop $650 for a new iPhone Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile offer a payment plan to buy a phone. At Verizon and T-Mobile, if you have good enough credit, you can pay for the phone in 24 monthly installments. Sprint doesn’t have  a similar purchase plan, but it will let you lease an iPhone starting at $22 per month. No word yet if they will offer the same deal with Android phones.

Google Reveals Real Name Of ?Android M? Version of OS

Okay guys, so as you know Google likes to name each version of its Android operating system out of something sweet, in alphabetical order. The last three versions have been Jellybean, KitKat, and Lollipop, and the next one up is Android M. This week, Google revealed what the ?M? would stand for. Any guesses?

And the answer is?

Google says the new version will be 6.0. Android Lollipop is currently on version 5.1.1.

iPhone 6 Plus Camera-gate

If you have an iPhone 6 Plus, you may have bought it for its significantly better camera. Well, jokes on you! Engadget is reporting that the camera on several of the iPhone 6 Pluses are defective, making the image blurry. If you think you are a victim of this atrocity, you can go to a page on Apple’s website and enter your serial number to find out. If you don’t have an iPhone 6 Plus and your camera lens is blurry, for instance if you have an iPhone 6, 5S, Samsung Galaxy, Nokia 3390, you’re OK, it’s not a defect. Just wipe the lens off

A Dog Joined Twitter

While Ray was worried about robot civil rights last week, a dog joined Twitter! 

Computer science student Henry Conklin thought that his dog, Oliver, was so outspoken that his thoughts needed to be shared with the world. So he created the account @OliverBarkBark. As Conklin says on his blog: rather than transcribe every bark out of his dog?s mouth, he set up a system that ?automatically detected, filtered and published each one of Oliver?s deafening vocalizations.?

Conklin?s system consists of a Raspberry Pi – a type of microcomputer that is promoted for teaching basic computer science in schools – a microphone, and a Wi-Fi dongle. The computer starts recording when it hears a loud sound that matches a library of barks Conklin created. The system then tweets out a random string of ?barks,? ?woofs? and ?ruffs.?

Conklin says he hopes to replace this with a bark-to-text translator he says will be ?more accurate to Oliver?s actual voice.?

Boston Dynamics Unleashes Walking Robots

Robots: threat or menace? No matter what you think about our future robotic overlords, one thing is clear: they are getting better all the time. Gizmodo reports that cutting edge robotics company Boston Dynamics released a video this week showing off two of its robots. Spot, a quadrupedal robot, features a robotic arm that allows it to open doors. A bipedal robot named Atlas is shown walking over uneven surfaces, including a bed of rocks. Atlas is also shown navigating through a forest outdoors. Essentially, the only thing stopping it from running the Boston Marathon is the fact that the model is not yet wireless and must remain hooked up to a power source at all times.

The company reports that they are working on this.

Ashley Madison, Established Men

Hacker group, Impact Team, announced last month that it had gained access to Avid Life Media’s user database. ALM is the parent company of Ashley Madison, the dating website for married people who want to have an affair, and Established Men, the dating website for rich men to find young, beautiful women.

Impact Team demanded that Avid Life Media take down AshleyMadison.com and EstablishedMen.com, and last week, one month later, Impact Team published the data on the deepweb.

This is the second major hack of a dating website of ill repute. Back in May, AdultFriendFinder was hacked. CNN Money says that customers’ email addresses, usernames, passwords, birthdays and zip codes, were included in that hack.

The data in this hack is just as extensive, and more so. The data includes most recent communications, last four digits of member credit card numbers, and more.

Roughly 10 GB of data in the dump. Almost 23 GB uncompressed. It’s not available on the “regular” web; it was posted to the deepweb. If you don’t know what that is, or how to get on it? educate yourself, we are not going to get into that. We have the data, but we haven’t had enough time to dig into it before this episode was recorded.

CNN Money is reporting that almost 7,000 email American and Canadian government email addresses are in the data dump,

Obviously, this is causing a lot of marital fall outs. The Daily Mail is reporting that lawyers are saying this is going to be “Christmas in September” as spouses find out that their partner was registered or paying to be on the site in the next few weeks. Other lawyers are calling it “Legal Black Friday.”

CNN Money also pointed out one disturbing fact: “The website’s users were worldwide, and there are 79 countries where homosexuality is illegal. In Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the punishment is death.”

Josh Duggar Had Paid Account

One of the first widely known names to be exposed in the Ashley Madison data dump is reality TV star and conservative value promoter Josh Duggar, of TLC?s 19 Kids and Counting fame. Gawker reports that Duggar had not just one AshMad account but two, one linked to his home in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and the other to an address in Oxon Hill, Maryland. Both accounts were ?paid accounts?, which included the $250 purchase of an ?affair guarantee? from the website.

Duggar drew controversy in May when it was reported that he had molested several girls as a teenager, including his own sisters. His family claimed that he had since reformed.

Josh Duggar has been married to his wife Anna for seven years and they have four children.

Ritch Workman

Closer to home, FloridaPolitics.com confirmed that Florida State Representative Ritch Workman was a paying Ashley Madison member. Workman did admit that he had an account on the site, and regretted it. He said it was when he was single, but he still wishes he had never joined the site.

Disney Unveils Plans for Star Wars Lands

Ever since Disney bought Star Wars, speculation has been rampant that the company would introduce Star Wars-themed attractions to its famous theme parks. Well this week Ars Technica reported that the company made it official, announcing massive, fourteen acre Star Wars expansions to California?s Disneyland and Florida?s Disney World. There are few details yet but Disney says guests will be able to fly around in the Millennium Falcon and visit the Mos Eisley space cantina. The attractions will reportedly be staffed by ?local inhabitants? of the Star Wars universe.

If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on the website, make sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher. And, while you’re there, leave a review. The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

If you have a response or comment for the show, give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

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THE RUN DOWN

A is for Alphabet, G is for Google

In our top story this week, tech giant Google announced a major corporate restructuring which included, to everyone’s surprise, a name change. A new holding company has been created called Alphabet. Alphabet is made up of a collection of companies including Google. Google itself is being slimmed down so that just the products and services traditionally associated with it, such as Google Search, Gmail, and Chrome, are part of it. Unrelated projects such as Google’s famous “moonshot” projects, Google Fiber, and its research into self-driving cars will be spun off into their own companies, all under the Alphabet umbrella.

As part of the restructuring, Google’s Senior Vice President Sundar Pichai has been made CEO of the new, slimmer Google, while Larry Page and Sergei Brin are taking control of Alphabet.

For the moment, no branding is changing, so if you want to search something you don’t suddenly have to “Alphabet” it and you won’t be checking “Alphabet Mail” anytime soon on your “Alphabet Phone.” At least, we sure hope not.

You can check out the new company’s website and a letter from its founders at abc.xyz.

Why not Alphabet.com?

You might be asking yourself, why didn’t Google just go with Alphabet.com? Well, it turns out, even the mighty Google can’t just have any domain name they want. The New York Times is reporting that car manufacturer BMW already owns Alphabet.com and they are not interested in selling it.

Alphabet is a subsidiary of BMW that provides vehicle fleet services. Micaela Sandstede, a BMW spokeswoman in Munich. She described the website as a “very active” part of Alphabet?s business. Which is ironic, because the website has been inaccessible ever since the Google Alphabet (or is it Alphabet Google?) announcement, presumably because of the increase in traffic. It makes us feel better knowing that even mega-companies like BMW have issues keeping their website running when they get hit with a ton of traffic.

The article points out that it would only be trademark infringement if it creates confusion with customers… which wouldn’t be an issue if Google and BMW were in entirely different industries, which they were, right up until Google entered the automobile industry with self-driving cars and Android for automobiles.

Android flaw that got patched actually not patched

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago we talked about a major security flaw in Android that allowed a remote attacker to execute code using a vulnerability in Hangouts. Google rushed out a patch for the vulnerability, which has now been codenamed “Stagefright,” and it was just a matter of getting it out to the phones for all the different carriers. Except, according to the BBC, it turns out that the patch doesn’t work – or at least, that it is easy to bypass. Better keep Hangouts disabled for the time being.

How to lose an internship at Facebook

If you figure out a huge flaw in the company you are going to start an internship at, perhaps it’s a good idea to keep it to yourself. According to Boston.com, Aran Khanna created a web-app demonstrating a huge privacy flaw in Facebook Messenger shortly before he was to begin his highly coveted internship at Facebook. Facebook Messenger stored your location automatically and shared it with anyone you chatted with on the app. Khanna’s web-app took that information and placed it onto a map showing where everyone you had chatted with was when they sent the message.

He tweeted about his app and posted it on Reddit and Medium, and a few days later, Facebook asked him to disable it, and then let him know that his internship was also disabled.

According to Khanna, he wasn’t fired from his internship because of the app, but because of the way he described Facebook?s user data collection. Khanna says the Medium post wasn’t in line with the high ethical standards expected of interns.

Drones make bears nervous

Drones seem like an ideal method for wildlife biologists to study the habits of wild animals such as bears, but it appears that there is a catch. NPR reports that a new study shows that the presence of drones make bears nervous, elevating their heart rates by as much as 400%. Mark Ditmer, a biologist at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul, flew a drone near bears that had been previously implanted with heart rate monitors to study their hibernation states. Although the bears appeared outwardly unphased, all of them showed elevated heart rates when buzzed by the drone.

Meet the world?s biggest hard drive

Samsung has unveiled a new device with the catchy name of PM1633a. According to The Verge, it’s a 2.5 inch solid state drive, and it packs a whopping 16 terabytes of storage space, making it essentially the biggest hard drive ever. Samsung has not announced a price tag, but they plan to sell servers with up to 48 of these drives installed, which they are calling JBOF. One JBOF should hold about 768 TB. JBOF stands for Just a Bunch Of Flash. Before you ask, the next step up after terabyte is petabyte.

Still No Apple TV

Apple TV, the long delayed, rumored, mystical device and service is further delayed. Bloomberg is reporting that negotiations between Apple and the big TV networks are holding up the works. According to Bloomberg, Apple was to announce a new live  streaming TV service at its Sept. 9 press event, but instead Buzzfeed News says Apple is only announcing a beefed up Apple TV set-top box.

eSports Drug Testing

Top-ranked Counter Strike: Global Offensive player Cory “Semphis” Friesen admitted in an interview last month that he and his competitive eSports team “were all on Adderall” during a recent tournament. According to NPR news, at least one eSports league has decided that it is not okay with that. The Electronic Sports League, which sponsored the $250,000 tournament Friesen and his team took part in, has announced a ban on drugs and alcohol during its tournaments and will be instituting random drug testing during its tournaments going forward. The League says the substances banned include those prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency. The first random drug testing at a League event will occur at ESL One in Cologne later this month.

LOL is OOS (Out of Style)

You may have seen an article from the New Yorker back in April about how we express laughter online – appropriately known as e-laughter – and the increase in the use of “hehe.”

This piqued the interest of the he research team at Facebook, who decided to look into how users showed amusement. They did so by analyzing posts and comments from last week of May. Don’t worry – they only looked at ones that had “at least one string of characters that matched laughter” and they left out private messages.

So what did their study find? Well, among other things, the form of e-laughter that is used more than any other is “haha” – which they found is used over 50% of the time. In second place are emoji, followed by “hehe” in third. And it last place… our dear friend “LOL.”

The first text speak that many of us learned is now used only about 2 percent of the time.

Mic.com has a great breakdown of all of Facebook’s findings, including which phrases are most popular among different age groups and states.

If you have a suggestion, or just have a comment for the show. Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

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Murdered robots, silent video chat, drones being shot out of the sky, X-ray vision cameras and more Windows 10 news. All the tech news worth talking about this week on Deemable Tech.

If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on the website, make sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher. And, while you’re there, leave a review. The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

If you have a response or comment for the show, give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

Make sure to share Deemable Tech on the forums, Facebook, Twitter and all over the interwebs.

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THIS WEEK’S RUNDOWN

Yahoo released Yahoo LiveText. No one is sure why.

Yahoo announced a new app this week called Yahoo Livetext on iOS and Android. With the new app you can chat with people you know, while you look at them on a live video. What makes Livetext different than any other video chat app out there like Skype, Facetime or Google Hangouts is that you cannot hear the person on the other end. Don’t worry, it’s not your phone. Yahoo designed it like that? for some reason. We tried it out.

Windows 10 Updates

Windows 10 has been out for a week now and we’ve learned a few more things about it.

Among other things, it turns out that Windows 10 collects a lot more data on its users than previous version of the operating system did. The main reason for this appears to be Cortana: the nifty digital personal assistant needs a lot more personal data to power her search results and voice recognition. Of course, that isn’t to say that Microsoft isn’t just taking a page from Google and Facebook here.

If you want to stop Windows 10 from gathering up your contacts, calendar details, text and touch input, location data, and a whole lot more and sending it off into the cloud, you will need to let Windows know. This can be done at installation: you’ll need to select ‘custom settings’ instead of ‘express’ and then you will see the personalized settings for what data Windows will collect on you. If you’ve already installed Windows 10, you can also limit the data it is phoning home by signing in with a strictly local account rather than a Microsoft one.

Cortana herself also has settings that you will need to adjust.

Needless to say, you may find Cortana to be less functional if you disable all of these options.

Another surprise in store for those upgrading to Windows 10: Windows Media Center, Microsoft’s free media player which has for years allowed DVD playback in Windows, will disappear. Its replacement is an app in the Windows Store called Windows DVD Player, but this new app isn’t free – it will cost you $14.99. Which is too bad, considering that it doesn’t do any of the cool stuff Media Center used to do, like DVR, image slideshows, and media organization.

DVD playback isn’t the only formerly free feature is holding its hand out for your credit card in Windows 10. Minesweeper and Solitaire, those old Windows standbys, are now full of intrusive ads unless you pay a $9.99 annual fee. That’s not so great.

You know what IS great? VLC media player! It’s still free, it still plays DVDs, and it still works with Windows 10. We’re just saying.

More fun drone news

The Daily Dot is reporting that a Kentucky man blew a drone out of the sky with a shotgun. He claims that his kids told him the drone had passed over the house multiple times before, and he claims that the drone dropped down to close to the ground and was hovering over his back deck where his 16-year-old daughter was sun bathing. He had enough at that point and fired duck shot knocking it out of the sky. When the drone pilot and three of his buddies showed up to collect the drone, the father told them, “If you cross that sidewalk onto my property, there’s going to be another shooting.” Instead of doing that, they waited for the police to arrive and the father was arrested and charged with wanton endangerment and criminal mischief related to his firing the gun.

The drone owner has since released video to WDRB in Louisville showing the drone was almost 200 feet above the ground and it moving when it was shot. The drone operator says he was heading to his friends house to shoot pictures for him at his request and was only passing by.

When you shut down the newsstand, you don’t sell newspapers

Back in October 2014, Spain decided to impose a levy on Google for using snippets of Spanish news articles and linking to news articles in Google News. Google responded by almost immediately removing all Spanish news outlets from Google News.

A report commissioned by the Asociacio?n Espan?ola de Editoriales de Publicaciones Perio?dicas (Spanish Association of Publishers of Periodicals) came out last week showing that Spains little experiment is working? for no one.

The study showed that in the short term, the law will cost publishers about ?10 million or about $10.9 million. The cost will fall especially on smaller news outlets who disproportionately are getting less traffic since Google News went dark in Spain.

Fujifilm camera sees through clothes

Fujifilm has announced a new camera called the X-T1 IR which boasts a 16 megapixel sensor, high speed autofocus, and wifi connectivity. Oh yeah, and according to a new Wired report, it may be able to see through some clothes. That’s right, the “IR” in X-T1 IR stands for ‘infrared’. Infrared photography allows would-be shutterbugs to capture some trippy and dreamlike images and helps specialists like crime-scene techs locate blood spatter. But it can also allow pervs with cameras to get an eyeful, given the right conditions. Specifically, the clothing in question would have to be pretty thin in the first place for these cameras to see through it.

Hopefully dweebs hanging around the girls’ locker room will be priced out of the market: the cameras will start at $1700 when they go on sale in October.

Macs get malware too

Wired is reporting that the first firmware worm for Mac has been developed. The worm dubbed “Thunderstrike 2” is a proof-of-concept. (The original Thunderstrike did the same thing, but required physical access to the computer) The worm can spread from Mac to Mac without it needing to be networked. Even air-gapped Apple computers would be vulnerable to the attack. Since it is a firmware worm, the processor chip would have to be reflashed to eliminate the worm, and since these are Macs we are talking about, this basically means they would have to be thrown away, because who can work on Macs, amirite?

Fortunately, the worm was created by hackers who are discussing their findings at the Black Hat Conference this week in Las Vegas, so manufacturers like Apple will be able to use their research to improve the security of firmware.

The mysterious murder of HitchBot in the city of brotherly love

Our next story is something of an unfolding saga.

A year ago, a team of Canadian researchers created a small robot which they dubbed HitchBot. HitchBot was completely immobile, but it could interact with people. It’s mission was to hitchhike from place to place. In 2014 it successfully hitched all the way across Canada. Later it made a similar journey through Germany and the Netherlands. On July 17th of this year, HitchBot set out for its biggest road trip yet: crossing the US, starting in Massachusetts and hopefully winding up in San Francisco’s Exploratorium. Sadly, the little bot that could had only made it to the city of Philadelphia when tragedy struck.

The precise details aren’t known, but HitchBot was found dismembered, its limbs strewn across the street and its internal wiring damaged or scooped out. Although HitchBot reportedly takes a picture every ten minutes or so of its currently location, no picture was taken of its assailant.

This is where things get a little weird: two Philly-based YouTubers were reportedly the last people who the bot ‘hitched’ a ride with before it was destroyed. They then came forward claiming to have obtained surveillance footage from a nearby camera showing the attacker. The footage they delivered appeared to show one of the YouTubers kicking and stomping on an obscured object and waving what looked like HitchBot’s limbs around. After some initial confusion, the YouTubers said this was a prank and that they in fact had nothing to do with HitchBot’s demise.

There are still some good Samaritans in the City of Brotherly Love. Hackers from a local makerspace offered to rebuild HitchBot. However, the bot’s original creators intend to rebuild it themselves better than before, so that it will be ready for its next big trip. The predicted starting point? Philadelphia.

If you have a suggestion, or just have a comment for the show. Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

And, don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there

So much for Windows 10 fun. Now Ray has to reinstall Windows 8.1 just so he can upgrade it to 10, so he can reinstall Windows 10!

Killer robots, self-aware robots, cars, guns and Android phones getting hacked into and the death of another Google product? Yeah, that sounds like a typical Deemable Tech episode.

If you?re listening to Deemable Tech on the website, make sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher. And, while you?re there, leave a review. The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

If you have a response or comment for the show, give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

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THIS WEEK?S RUNDOWN

Windows 10 is released.

Our top story this week is the long-awaited release of Microsoft?s Windows 10. In an unprecedented move, Microsoft has made the new Windows available as a free upgrade to anyone who had Windows 7, 8 or 8.1. The upgrade became available to download for most of those folks starting on Wednesday.

With Windows 10, Microsoft hopes to reunite its fractured userbase, many of whom are still stuck way back on Windows XP. Windows 10 will feature continuous upgrades and may be the last major windows version for the foreseeable future. To lure back customers scared off by the controversial Windows 8, Windows 10 brings back the Start Button and does away with the charms menu.

Other new features include the integration of Microsoft?s Siri-like virtual assistant Cortana, the brand new Edge web browser, virtual desktops, and Mission Control, which gives you an overview of all the apps you have running.

Ray Hollister has bravely volunteered to install Windows the 10th on the dual boot partition of his MacBook, so let?s dive right in.

The beauty of Windows 10 is that you can’t install Windows 10 as a fresh, clean install. Except you can. But you can’t.

Forbes – Windows 10 Updating, Reinstalling And Activation Guide: Essential Advice To Avoid Problems

The Verge – How to get Windows 10 on your Mac

CEO of Mozilla Firefox complains in an open letter that Windows 10 upgrade resets default web browser

Mozilla CEO Chris Beard is one person who is less than pleased with Windows 10. It appears that when you do an upgrade with ?Express Settings? that it will default your browser to Microsoft?s Edge browser, even if you had Firefox selected by default before. Even worse, in Windows 10 the default browser is now buried down in the settings control panel, meaning that it is difficult to find for non-technical users. Microsoft defends the changes as making the upgrade ?simple and cohesive? for users and says that they may make ?improvements? in the future.

Facebook builds an Internet drone

The BBC is reporting that Facebook has built a drone, with the wingspan of a Boeing 737 that will fly as high as 90,000 feet and for up to 90 days at a time to provide wireless Internet access at up to 10 Gigabits per second.

The drone will communicate via a laser beam that can hit a target the size of a dime more than 10 miles away. The lasers will connect the drones together and to the ground.

This is part of Facebook’s Internet.org project to bring Internet access to the developing world. No word on whether this will be like Internet.org’s last launch which only included access to a few sites, which caused a bit of a backlash since the access gave an unfair advantage to those sites.

Facebook will be testing the drones later this year in the United States.

Google+ dies a slow and painful death

Google?s ill-fated Facebook competitor, Google+, courted a lot of controversy in 2013 when Google started requiring users to create a Google+ profile to comment on YouTube. This week on the official Google blog, the search giant announced that they would be hitting the ?undo? button on that policy. They said that a Google account would be all you need to share content, create contacts, comment on YouTube, and more, across all of Google. This change will reportedly be rolled out ?in the coming months.? This announcement comes on the heels of Google splitting Google+ in two, with Google Photos becoming its own stand-alone service and app.

Killer Robots

I posted this on our Facebook page, facebook.com/Deemable, but it bears repeating. As a general rule, everyone here at Deemable Tech is anti-killer robots.

Unless, as I said, the uprising has already happened, in which case, let me rephrase that: How may we serve you, robot masters?

I bring this all up because Elon Musk (you know, Iron Man, the guy who brought you PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, the Hyperloop, and who plans to die on Mars) and Steve Wozniak, (the reason why you have a computer at your desk, smartphone in your pocket and ultimately why you’re listening to this podcast) and Stephen Hawking (who you’ll know as the guy who played poker with Data, Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton.) and have joined a letter calling for the banning of autonomous weapons.

We talked about a weaponized drone last week that had a gun attached to it, well imagine an autonomous drone with a gun. The icons aren’t as concerned about them throwing a revolution and killing humanity as they are concerned about another cold war arms race where every country tries to build bigger, better faster killing machines. But considering a robot recently demonstrated self awareness, perhaps they should be concerned about a robot uprising too.

Hacking Smart Rifles

Speaking of things that shouldn’t be connected to the Internet, like killer robots. As much as I love my connected light bulbs, switches and thermostat, The Internet of things is not necessarily a good thing. Not everything should be connected to the Internet. Case in point, smart guns. In case you didn’t know, TrackingPoint makes an smart rifle that almost anyone can use to hit a bullseye up to a mile away. The gun, which sells for $13,000, has a computer screen for a scope where you can enter wind speed, ammunition weight and distance. The computer calculates the correct aim and after you pull the trigger, it waits until you have the shot lined up perfectly before firing the gun.

The Mirror is reporting that a couple of married hackers have hacked the gun wirelessly to shoot 2.5 feet away from the intended target. They also managed to get it to disable the firing pin, making the gun unable to fire.

Android hack

Speaking of hacks, NPR is reporting that the security firm Zimperium says there’s a “gaping hole” in Android that would allow hackers to take over your phone, and all they need is your phone number.

The app Hangouts automatically processes videos when they are received by text message. So, all a hacker has to do is send a video with malware inside it and send it to your phone. Since Hangouts instantly processes the videos, there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

Google has released a patch and manufacturers have been notified, but we’ll see how long it takes for them to get the update sent out to users.

Fiat Chrysler follow-up

Last week we reported that if you had a Jeep Cherokee with Fiat Chrysler?s ?uConnect? system, hackers could remotely take control of your vehicle and destroy everyone that you hold dear. It turns out that this was a source of some concern to Chrysler Fiat, as they have issued an official recall for 1.4 million vehicles to patch the issue. Affected models include certain Dodge Rams, Dodge Vipers, Dodge Chargers, Dodge Challengers, Chrysler 200s and 300s, and of course Jeep Grand Cherokees, all model year 2013 or later. If you are driving one of those vehicles you should check to see if your specific model is affected. The recall does not actually require the vehicles to be taken to the dealer: affected owners will receive a USB device which can be used to load the patch into their uConnect systems.

Wired – This Gadget Hacks GM Cars to Locate, Unlock, and Start Them

This week Ray, Tom and Sean discuss the hacking of the adultery-centric site Ashley Madison, drones causing problems for California firefighters, and security flaws in Jeep Cherokees. That and more on this episode of the Deemable Tech podcast.

If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on our website, make sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher. And, while you’re there, leave a review. The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

If you have a response or comment for the show, give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

Make sure to share Deemable Tech on the forums, Facebook, Twitter and all over the interwebs.

Thank you to our Redditors who have been helping us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. Deemable.com/reddit will take you there. We’re also looking for a new admin to help manage and moderate our subreddit page. Submit a text post to our subreddit explaining why you would make a great admin.

If you have a suggestion, or just have a comment for the show. Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

And, don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

THIS WEEK’S RUNDOWN

Ashley Madison gets hacked

Last week, hackers targeted AshleyMadison.com, an online dating site for married people looking to have an affair, and claimed to have downloaded its complete database of 37 million user profiles. The hackers, who call themselves The Impact Team, are threatening to release all the profiles publicly unless Avid Life Media, the company that owns Ashley Madison, shutters the site permanently along with sister site EstablishedMen.com.

Image credit: Ashley Madison

The hackers also take issue with Ashley Madison’s paid “full delete,” where the site charges users $19 to full erase their profile. The hackers claim that Ashley Madison does not in fact purge all of their records from their database, even after a full delete has been paid for.

Strangely, as of this podcast, the hackers have released only two of the 37 million profiles. One belongs to a man in Brockton, Massachusetts, the other to a man in Mississauga, Ontario, in Canada.

Stupid, stupid drones

Drones prevent firefighters from putting out a fire on the 15 Freeway in Southern California’s Cajon Pass. Cars were stopped on the 15 because of a wildfire and several caught fire. Firefighters were unable to get water to the cars because five drones were hovering over the site. Apparently this has been an ongoing issue with the wildfire that is so bad it’s been given a name, North Fire.

Drone operators have been flying around while firefighter helicopters have been trying to do their job. This particular incident was so bad, several people were severely burned, and twenty vehicles were completely destroyed. Two of the drones even pursued the helicopter.

In equally stupid drone news, an 18-year-old decided to attach a gun to a drone and fire the gun. He probably would have been fine if he hadn’t also decided to video record it and post the video to YouTube. The FAA is investigating the case to see if any federal laws were broken.

This isn’t the first time someone has weaponized a drone. In 2013 a company that creates screen protection built a drone, attached a gun to the gimble and shot some video of the Skynet-esque monstrosity shooting soda bottles and cans, and a Samsung Galaxy.

Hackers demonstrate exploit that allows them to remotely control Jeep Cherokee

Wired reports that white hat hackers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek were able to take control of a Jeep Cherokee using the Chrysler Uconnect system installed in the vehicle. The hackers performed their exploit remotely while Wired’s journalist was inside. The hacker’s code reportedly allows them to control the AC, change the volume of the stereo, control the transmission, disable the brakes, and kill the engine.

The hack comes just as senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal are introducing new legislation that will mandate digital security standards for cars and trucks.

Apple kicks Nest out of bed

Re/Code is reporting that the Apple Store no longer carries the Nest Thermostat, Nest Protect or Nest Cam online or in its retail stores.

This all happens of course after Google bought Nest last year, and Apple is about to launch the first of its HomeKit automation enabled products. No surprise, around the same time as the Nest Thermostat was taken off the shelves, the Ecobee 3, a wireless thermostat that does work with HomeKit quickly took its place.

Unfortunately, none of this is terribly surprising. Apple sold tons of fitness bands like the Jawbone Up and the Nike FuelBand… right up until they launched the Apple Watch when they quickly dumped the products off their shelves.

This could be a sign that Nest won’t support HomeKit. Which is sad for iPhone users who were looking forward to the day when we could tell Siri to turn the temperature down, like their Android friends can do with Google Now.

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If you have a suggestion, or just have a comment for the show. Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

And, don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

This week Ray, Tom and Sean discuss the train wreck that was Amazon’s Prime Day, the loss of Nintendo’s Saturo Iwata and New Horizon’s historic visit to Pluto.

If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on our website, make sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher. And, while you’re there, leave a review. The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

If you have a response or comment for the show, give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

Make sure to share Deemable Tech on the forums, Facebook, Twitter and all over the interwebs.

Thank you to our Redditors who have been helping us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. Deemable.com/reddit will take you there. We’re also looking for a new admin to help manage and moderate our subreddit page. Submit a text post to our subreddit explaining why you would make a great admin.

If you have a suggestion, or just have a comment for the show. Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

And, don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

New Horizons flies by Pluto

Space has been in the news this week. The spacecraft New Horizons, which launched in 2006, ventured closer to the dwarf planet Pluto than any other man-made object has ever been, 7,800 miles from the surface of Pluto. And the best part is, it took pictures! New Horizons has already sent back a handful of high resolution images of Pluto and its moons and more are expected to follow. New Horizons? journey is not over yet, as it is scheduled to continue on out into the largely unexplored Kuiper Belt.

#PrimeDayFail

Amazon held their much-hyped Prime Day event this week to celebrate their 20th anniversary.

Described as a summertime Black Friday for customers with Amazon Prime accounts, the company promised great deals on hot items all throughout the day on Wednesday. And depending on who you are and what you were looking to buy, this was true.

It was certainly a success for Amazon, who reported that sales were up 80 percent on Prime Day. They also most likely saw a jump in Amazon Prime subscriptions, since you had to be a member to get the deals.

The overwhelming reaction on social media, though, was ?meh.? Disgruntled shoppers quickly took to Twitter and Facebook with the hashtag #primedayfail to voice their complaints about what they saw as Amazon?s failure to deliver on all of their hype. Reactions ranged from disappoint with the selection of sale items (some described it as being like a bad garage sale full of weird stuff), underwhelming prices, and frustration over limited quantities for items they actually wanted.

Gizmodo’s List of Prime Day Fails

Nintendo President & CEO Saturo Iwata

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata passed Saturday July 11th at the age of 55 after an almost year-long struggle with cancer.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Iwata-san, early in his career he helped develop or worked on the Mario, Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, Super Smash Bros., Animal Crossing and Kirby series.

Iwata was promoted to president of Nintendo in 2003 and became CEO of Nintendo of America in 2013. Iwata took over Nintendo when it was struggling from poor sales of the GameCube, and brought the highly successful Wii and Nintendo DS to market. He was uniquely the first Nintendo president that was not related to the Yamauchi family since its founding.

Iwata was a very charismatic business leader that reached out to the community. He started an interview series on the Nintendo website called “Iwata Asks” where he discussed games with the developers and gave gamers a behind-the-scene view of the process.

He famously said at the Game Developers Conference in 2005, “On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer.”

There have been tons of memorials to Iwata on the Internet since his passing, one of my favorites was Mashable’s “5 games you can play to honor late Nintendo President Satoru Iwata”

Hacking Team Gets Hacked

Secretive cybersecurity firm Hacking Team has long courted controversy for selling advanced cyber surveillance tools to governments with a less-than-spotless record on human rights. Well, two weeks ago they were hacked. Massively. An unknown hacker going by the pseudonym of Phineas Fisher broke into the company?s systems and dumped over 400 GB of the company?s data, including invoices, code for software, and software exploits it had paid for known as ?zero day exploits?, and posted it using the company?s own Twitter feed. Most controversially, the documents show that Hacking Team was doing business with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and the UAE, many of whom have been criticized by international human rights organizations for their aggressive surveillance of citizens, activists and journalists both domestically and overseas. Even Sudan, with whom Hacking Team had denied connections, was shown to be a recent client. These countries didn?t just use Hacking Team?s software, they often called upon Hacking Team?s specialized services to go after specific ?high value targets?, including journalists.

At this time Hacking Team has officially requested that its clients immediately cease use of all of its tools and software. This is slightly odd as leaked documents show that the company claims to have the ability to shut its own software down remotely.

The Hacking Team dump has also had some consequences for the larger software industry. The company had purchased a number of what are called ?zero-day exploits?, which are unpatched, undiscovered software vulnerabilities that can be used by hackers to infiltrate software or systems. Three major zero-day exploits were discovered for Flash, which Adobe had not known about and has been scrambling to patch. The fact that this company had access to loopholes in such a major, widespread piece of software is reason for concern.

Also, it is just one more reason that everyone should stop using Flash.

Firefox Axes Flash

Speaking of Flash. Computerworld is reporting that partly as a result of these new and really bad vulnerabilities, Mozilla Firefox has taken the unusual step of blocking Flash until it is completely patched. Alex Stamos, the chief of security for Facebook, has called on Adobe to announce an end-of-life date for Flash.

Image credit: Dave Bugdale / Flickr

On this episode of Deemable Tech, Ray and Sean call up Tom at home to let him know why they can’t do a podcast this week.

If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on our website, would you subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher? And, while you’re there, would you leave a review and say a few nice things about us? The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

Make sure to share Deemable Tech on the forums, Facebook, Twitter and all over the interwebs.

Thank you to our Redditors who have been helping us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. Deemable.com/reddit will take you there. We’re also looking for a new admin to help manage and moderate our subreddit page. Submit a text post to our subreddit explaining why you would make a great admin.

If you have a suggestion, or just have a comment for the show. Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

And, don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

Photo Credit: “Telephone Pick Up – Off the Hook” by Dave Dugdale is used under CC BY-SA 2.0.

This week Ray, Tom and Sean discuss news about Netflix’s growth, videos on Facebook, SpaceX and more. Plus, Siri hits a little too close to home when we ask her to divide zero by zero. That and more on this week’s Deemable Tech!

If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on our website, would you subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher? And, while you’re there, would you leave a review and say a few nice things about us? The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

Make sure to share Deemable Tech on the forums, Facebook, Twitter and all over the interwebs.

Thank you to our Redditors who have been helping us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. Deemable.com/reddit will take you there. We’re also looking for a new admin to help manage and moderate our subreddit page. Submit a text post to our subreddit explaining why you would make a great admin.

THIS WEEK’S RUNDOWN

Netflix expected to be bigger than major TV networks

A Wall Street research firm estimates that Netflix will have more viewers than ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX within a year. Or at least it would, if Netflix were a 24-hour broadcast television network and not a streaming video service. The way the networks and Netflix measure viewership are different, and they also serve up different kinds of programming. For instance, the networks carry live sports events and Netflix does not. Even so, a rough crunch of the numbers shows that Netflix is expanding rapidly even as the TV networks’ audiences are shrinking, which means that by next year Netflix will probably have more eyeballs than any of the big four.

Google Photos tags African-American developer as “gorilla”

Google Photos found itself scrambling to do damage control when a black developer found that the service had tagged pictures of him with his black female friend with the tag “gorillas.” After the dev posted a screenshot of the issue on Twitter, Google?s Chief Social Architect reached out to him within an hour-and-a-half saying, “This is 100% not OK.”

Google says that the “gorilla” tag has since been removed from the tag database and that Google is tweaking its algorithms, specifically in regards to dark-skinned faces. Google says that this is not the first time the automatic image tagging has had issues, and that an early bug labeled humans of all races as “dogs.”

Facebook considers paying video content creators

Facebook has built a video empire off of letting people rip videos off of YouTube and post them on its site. We can’t tell you how many times we’ve seen a video on Facebook that I know the person who posted it did not own.

To make things worse, Facebook reduced the size of YouTube video previews, so the creators had to choose between posting the video on Facebook natively where lots of people would see it, but not receiving any revenue, or posting the video on YouTube and sharing it on Facebook and few people seeing it.

Facebook is finally letting creators earn a bit of money. Now when you are watching a “suggested video” ? perhaps after you watched a funny cat video that your friend posted ? you’ll see a short ad before Facebook automatically goes to the next video. Facebook will keep 45% of the revenue and give the rest to the partner who posted the video which is right on par with YouTube’s rev-share terms.

Dan Rose, Facebook?s VP of partnerships told Variety, “We’ve heard consistently from media companies and other video creators that if they were able to make money from their videos, they would publish more.”

The question is going to be how will Facebook get rid of all of the pirated content on its website?

“Rampage” game developer releasing MS-DOS version

Game developer Vblank has announced that it will release a new version of its 8-bit-style game Retro City Rampage for MS-DOS. The game will be called Retro City Rampage 486, and the system requirements include 3.7 MB of hard drive space, 4 MB of RAM and, yes, an Intel 486 CPU. Oh, and a copy of MS-DOS, obviously. That’s the one with the blinking text prompt that you had to use before Windows 95, in case you’ve forgotten. You mean you don?t have a copy sitting around on six floppies somewhere?

This is not Vblank’s first port of Rampage to a decidedly “retro” system. They also recently finished a port designed to run on an original Nintendo. In case you?re keeping track, a classic Nintendo console squeezes out barely 300K of memory all told. Wow.

If you’re eager to run the game but don’t have a working computer from 1992 sitting around the house, we recommend the emulator DOSBox.

Leap second causes “sporadic outages” across the Internet

You may have heard that the world’s official time keepers added a leap second to the world’s official clocks this week. They do this every so often to keep the clocks in sync with the spinning of the earth – apparently the atomic clocks we use don’t account for small changes in the earth’s behavior. Time keepers have had to add 25 of these leap seconds since 1973.

You might think that one second wouldn’t make much of a difference to anything, but it totally does when computers are involved. Most machines rely on software code that isn’t prepared to deal with this extra second. In fact, the last time a leap second was added in 2012 sites like Reddit went down, and flights in Australia were grounded because machines at Qanta Airways went dark.

Companies were a little more prepared this time around, but according to analysis from a firm called Dyn Research, the leap second still caused sporadic Internet outages including a hiccup that lasted about five minutes. And apparently it was caused by a particular router.

There was a lag as internet service providers and other companies worked to reroute data through other paths.

SpaceX rocket explodes shortly after launch

Over the weekend NASA’s partnership with privately owned company SpaceX suffered a setback when an unmanned rocket on a mission to resupply the International Space Station exploded approximately two and a half minutes after launch. In a Tweet, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said that there had been an “overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank.” Up until Saturday’s explosion, the Falcon 9 rockets used by SpaceX have always been perfectly reliable. This is, however, the third ISS resupply mission in a row to fail. The ISS crew is currently reported to have enough supplies to last through September.

Someone is cutting internet cables in California

The Wall Street Journal reported that early Tuesday morning unknown persons severed fiber-optic cables carrying internet traffic across Northern California, apparently intentionally. This was the most recent of several such attacks on internet infrastructure in California in the last year. Internet disruptions and slowdowns were reported between Sacramento and Seattle. The FBI says that someone broke into an underground vault to attack the cables. They are asking for the public’s assistance in finding the culprits.

Fiber goes faster

Speaking of fiber optic cables, reddit user FrakinBeast posted a story from Gizmodo that engineers were able to make fiber optic cables carry more data even further than ever before. The electrical engineers at UC San Diego got a transmission to travel 7,400 miles. Unfortunately, that’s all that we could understand in this story.

Ask Siri to divide zero by zero

An Easter egg found in Apple’s Siri virtual assistant has social media abuzz this week. When asked the question “What is zero divided by zero?” Siri responds with a philosophical – and at times personal – answer.

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If you have a suggestion, or just have a comment for the show. Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

And, don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

This week Tom shares news about Taylor Swift tackling problems with Apple Music, Sean hits the “undo send” button on that embarrassing email he just sent, and Ray looks at why a branch of the U.S. military is still running Windows XP. That and more on this week’s Deemable Tech!

If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on our website, would you subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher? And, while you’re there, would you leave a review and say a few nice things about us? The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

Make sure to share Deemable Tech on the forums, Facebook, Twitter and all over the interwebs.

Thank you to our Redditors who have been helping us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. Deemable.com/reddit will take you there. We’re also looking for a new admin to help manage and moderate our subreddit page. Submit a text post to our subreddit explaining why you would make a great admin.

THIS WEEK’S RUNDOWN

Taylor Swift makes Apple change its mind about paying artists during free trial period of Apple Music

In an abrupt about-face, Apple has changed course and decided to pay artists during the free trial period of Apple Music streaming.

Apple executive Eddie Cue specifically attributed this change of heart to an open letter penned to the company by Taylor Swift, in which she said that she would not be making her album “1989” available on the streaming service because she felt they were not compensating artists fairly. Since Apple’s announcement, several indie labels have announced that they were signing up with Apple Music.

Image credit: Jana Beamer / Flickr

Gmail officially adds “Undo Send” feature

If you’ve ever sent an email and realized that you didn’t attach an attachment — or worse, wrote something you never meant to say to the other person — Gmail added a feature this week that you will love: Undo Send!

Well, maybe “Undo Send” is a bit of a misnomer. What the feature really does is delay sending your message for 5, 10, 20 or 30 seconds to give you the chance to change your mind. Just turn on “Undo Send” in your Gmail settings, and the next time you send something you didn’t mean to you can just hit the “undo” button at the top of the page.

The team at Gmail has actually been experimenting with this feature for the past six years (and you could use it before now, if you knew that it existed and knew how their Google Labs section works), but they officially made it part of their mail service this week.

We should note that this appears to only work for personal Gmail accounts at the moment. So if your employer uses Gmail for your work email, you still need to be cautious about what you send for the time being.

Disney and ABC TV cancel plans to offshore IT jobs

Back in October, Disney gave notice to around 250 IT employees that work for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. To make it worse, they thought they were being called in to find out they were getting bonuses.

Actually, no, it gets worse than that, they then found out that they were being “given the opportunity” to work longer if they stuck around and trained their replacements. The controversial part was their replacements were foreigners in the country on H-1B Visas. The purpose of the H-1B visas was to attract IT workers to the US to fill the gaps in tech labor shortages, not to replace American workers with lower wage earning employees.

Some media outlets mentioned it, but it really picked up steam when a few weeks ago, Disney’s ABC Television Group called in about 35 application developers for a meeting, and told them they were being laid off, and they were going to be training their replacements, more foreign employees on H-1B visas.

However, just last week, Disney did a complete about-face, and canceled the layoffs. Of course, no one would speak to the media on the record, but an anonymous source told Computerworld that Disney just “want[s] this to go away — right now.”

A source at Disney also told Computerworld that this change had absolutely nothing to do with the dozens of negative news stories that popped up after the news got out.

You can get Windows 10 for free, but there’s a catch

Since Windows 10 was first announced, Microsoft has released a lot of conflicting statements about who exactly would be able to get it free. From the beginning they’ve been consistent in saying Windows 10 will be a free upgrade to users who have Windows 7 and Windows 8 and 8.1. But for other users, things have been less clear.

First they said that even users without legitimate copies of Windows would be able to upgrade, then they said they wouldn’t. Then this week there was more confusion. It appeared that Microsoft would be giving away a free copy of Windows 10 to any user who agreed to test it. However it now appears that the situation is more complicated than that.

Installing the Windows 10 preview will grant users free access to Windows 10, but only as long as they stay in the preview program. If they leave at any point, their preview copy will eventually expire. In other words, you can get Windows free as long as you agree to beta test new releases of the operating system… forever.

Facebook working on facial recognition software that doesn’t need to see your face

Facebook researchers say they are working on experimental systems that will allow Facebook to recognize users in photos based off their hairstyle and clothing. In other words, it is facial recognition that doesn’t actually need to see your face.

According to the researchers, the new system is accurate 83 percent of the time, far better than current facial recognition systems which need clear, full frontal shots of people’s faces to recognize them. The researchers described the project as “experimental” and “long term” and said that we shouldn’t expect it to be rolled out on the site any time soon.

Good thing, considering the controversies that Facebook’s facial recognition algorithms have caused in the past.

The Navy says Windows XP is worth $9 million

According to Computerworld, the U.S. Navy has about 100,000 computers running Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Office 2003 and Exchange 2003. Server 2003 expires in July, and all of the others have been expired. To keep their computers running in tip-top shape with security updates, the Navy is paying Microsoft $9.1 million.

If there was ever a computer you wanted to be secure, it would be a computer in the Navy.

And, to be fair to the Navy, Windows XP still has approximately 10-14 percent market share, depending on who’s counting, which, either way, still puts it over Apple’s OS X.

Ebay and Amazon banning confederate flag merchandise

Major online retailers, including Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba are banning and removing Confederate flag merchandise from their inventories in the wake of the tragic shooting at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The man the police have identified as the shooter, Dylann Roof, had posed in several photographs with a Confederate flag. As calls have spread for the flag to be removed from state flags and capitals, retailers have been quick to distance themselves from it publicly.

Actually getting flag merchandise off the shelf may take time, however. As of the time when we recorded this episode, however, some confederate flag merchandise was still available.

Microsoft Office coming to Android

Microsoft released full versions of its Office productivity apps (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) for the Android operation system this week.

This comes after about month of beta versions of these apps being available for Android users. Microsoft said in a statement that the incorporated a lot of feedback from users of these early versions into the final ones.

These apps won’t work on all Android devices, especially older ones, but they will work on a majority of smartphones and tablets. The Microsoft Office mobile apps are currently free in the Google Play store.

Amazon now paying Kindle Unlimited authors by the page

Amazon has announced that starting on July 1, they will begin paying authors in the Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Lending Library programs by the number of pages read, rather than simply when their book is downloaded. To keep the system from being gamed by large fonts, Amazon has introduced the Kindle Edition Normalized Page Count, or KENPC, which is a formula that will attempt to standardize page counts for all books.
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If you have a suggestion, or just have a comment for the show. Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

And, don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

Photo Credit: “Taylor Swift RED tour 2013” by Jana Beamer is used under CC BY 2.0.

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!

If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on our website, would you subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher? And, while you’re there, would you leave a review and say a few nice things about us? The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

Make sure to share Deemable Tech on the forums, Facebook, Twitter and all over the interwebs.

Thank you to our Redditors who have been helping us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. Deemable.com/reddit will take you there. We’re also looking for a new admin to help manage and moderate our subreddit page. Submit a text post to our subreddit explaining why you would make a great admin.

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.

Image credit: Soylent

—

If you have a suggestion, or just have a comment for the show. Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

And, don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

This week, Ray, Tom and Sean look at some of the news coming out of Apple’s annual Wordwide Developers Conference (WWDC), including the unveiling of the latest version of the iOS mobile operating system and the new music streaming app Apple Music. That and much more on this week’s Deemable Tech!

If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on our website, would you subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher? And, while you’re there, would you leave a review and say a few nice things about us? The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

Make sure to share Deemable Tech on the forums, Facebook, Twitter and all over the interwebs.

Thank you to our Redditors who have been helping us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. Deemable.com/reddit will take you there. We’re also looking for a new admin to help manage and moderate our subreddit page. Submit a text post to our subreddit explaining why you would make a great admin.

THIS WEEK’S RUN DOWN

Apple WWDC 2015

This week Apple held their annual conference to showcase its new software to developers. Since there was so much to talk about, we are just going to focus on the stuff we found really interesting. For full coverage of the announcements made at WWDC 2015, check out iMore’s article about everything you need to know about they keynote.

iOS 9 to offer ad blocking

Apple unveiled the latest version of its mobile operating system this week, and with it comes a host of new features. iOS 9 is going to have ad blocking for the first time ever. Specifically, Safari is going to allow extensions that include the ability to block ads. Publishers that depend on ad revenue to stay in business are super excited about this announcement.

Six-digit passcodes

In an effort to make their devices harder to break into, Apple revealed that newer iPhones and iPads that have TouchID and are running iOS 9 will be required to upgrade from a four-digit passcode to a six-digit one. Passcodes will remain optional, but if you choose to use one you will have to change it to at least six alphanumeric digits.

Another safeguard they introduced: after 10 failed attempts to enter your passcode, your device will erase itself.

iOS 9 brings multitasking to iPads

iOS 9 will also introduce a long-expected feature for iPads: multitasking. This comes in the form of three features, actually, called SlideOver, Splitview and picture-in-picture.

SlideOver will let you quickly slide in another app from a menu on the right side of the screen. For example, you could be using Safari to read restaurant reviews and then slide in Messages to message your friend. Other apps they showed taking advantage of this feature were the Calendar app and Notes.

There will also be a more traditional Split View mode where you can have your screen equally divided up between two apps running simultaneously and independent of each other.

There will also be a picture-in-picture mode that will let you have a small video player on top of other apps. Yes, Apple has finally added a feature all of our TVs had in 1993.

Not all of these features will be available on all devices. The Split View mode will only work on the iPad Air 2. SlideOver and picture-in-picture will be available on late 2013 or newer iPad Airs as well as all iPad Minis.

iOS 9 brings battery life, performance boost

Apple says that iOS 9 is all about making the existing hardware run better. They said that they have seen an extra hour of battery life on the iPhone 6, and iOS 9 has a new lower power mode that can save iPhones an additional 3 hours of battery life.

Apple News

Apple News is Apple’s latest attempt to disrupt a dying industry. This new app will be built into iOS 9, but fortunately it will replace the utterly useless hunk of trash app that was Newsstand. Instead of being what was essentially a folder for news and magazine apps, Apple News is going to be a a news curator app. You’ll be able to read Sport Illustrated, the New York Times, Wired and tons of other top tier media and some not so top tier media like local newspapers, TV and radio stations.

According to Apple, the new app learns what you like and suggests similar content. We’ll believe that when I see it. The promise of learning content has always been higher than the actual end product.

Apple News can include a lot of interactive features like charts, graphs, videos, and photos. So, it’s basically just like Flipboard, except it’s built into your iPhone. So, it’s going to destroy Flipboard.

Apple Swift programming language will be open-sourced

Apple Swift programming language is going to be open-sourced. For the first time ever, developers will be able to create apps for iOS and OS X on a computer that isn’t a Mac OS X. Don’t get too excited Windows Developers, it only runs on Linux.

Apple Music

Apple’s “one more thing” this year was Apple Music. Apple basically took Beats Music, Ping (you guys remember Ping, right?) and the new MySpace (you guys remember MySpace, right?) and stuck them in a Blendtec blender and poured out what was left and called it Apple Music. With Apple Music, you can listen for free to a 24 hour online radio stream called Beats 1, or you can listen to streaming music on-demand for $9.99 for a single membership or $14.99 for a family of up to six. They’ll give you a free, three?month trial membership to get you hooked too.

So, yeah, Apple created a Spotify killer. Built into the iPhone and you’ll be able to get it on Android too. That’s fine, but apparently Apple thinks that you don’t have enough social media accounts in your life, and you need one dedicated to communicating with your favorite artists with. You know, just like they thought when they came out with Ping. And it flopped. And, just like Justin Timberlake and the gang thought when they bought MySpace from News Corp and relaunched it as a social media site for musicians, and it? well we don’t know what happened to it because we’ve never been back for more than enough time to download our pictures and videos. But we’ve heard it’s a barren wasteland.

On Apple Music, you’ll be able to get exclusive content like behind-the-scenes videos, intimate conversations with the artists and musicians can post blogs and updates on Apple Music. You know, just like they can do on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and their own website.

Oculus Rift reveals consumer version of virtual reality headset

Oculus Rift held a major live event this week, officially unveiling the consumer version of their long-awaited, greatly hyped VR headset. Purportedly light and comfortable, the headset slips on like a baseball cap, is easily adjustable, and allows users to substitute their own headphones for the pair that comes with it. The screen is actually a pair of small, high-res LED screens set right in front of the user?s eyes.

Two controllers were announced. The one that it will ship with? The Xbox One wireless controller. Yep. A slightly more revolutionary controller called the Oculus Touch was also announced: this is a pair of thumbsticks with motion tracking and haptic feedback which the user holds in each hand. The Touch will release in 2016 but is not expected to be available when the Oculus Rift first launches.

Speaking of launching, you are probably wondering when exactly the Rift will launch and how much it will cost. That was one thing the press conference did not shed any light on. The company still says that it is targeting 2016 and there are rumors of a price point around $400.

Comcast takes away woman’s email address, gives it to new customer with the same name

Cable internet provider Comcast is infamous for their poor customer service, and this next story is not going to help their reputation any. Ken Amaro of First Coast News reports that Comcast took thirteen year veteran customer Kathleen Cox?s email address away and gave it to another customer with the same name who had just signed up in Michigan. Kathleen had used her Comcast email address as her primary email account and when it was taken away lost access to all her emails. She said that it wasn?t until local news took up the story that Comcast finally returned the address to her. No word on whether she got her old emails back as well.

Google Chrome will start pausing auto-playing Flash videos

Google says that their next version of Chrome will roll out a feature that “intelligently pauses” Flash content that isn?t central to the web page. This is in the interest of memory and battery life for laptops. By some estimates, disabling Flash while using Chrome on your laptop could give you 10-20% more battery life.

PornHub crowdfunding sex tape shot in space

Major porn site PornHub has launched a crowdfunding campaign on IndieGogo to raise money to shoot a sex tape in space. The campaign is looking for $3.4 million in funding which takes into account chartering the flight, insurance, crew, equipment, as well as backer perks. PornHub has not specified who exactly they plan to fly with or the exact date they plan to film on. They do, however, have the actors picked out.

Facebook payments

And here’s a story we apparently overlooked back in March that recently came to our attention. You can send your friends on Facebook money through Facebook messenger. If you have a debit card on file with Facebook (perhaps you have bought an ad or a dumb game), when you message someone on the Facebook messenger either the app or on the desktop website, you’ll see a dollar sign with a circle around it. Click that button and you can send your friends money. Right now it doesn’t cost anything to send or receive money via Facebook Messenger. Fortunately, you can set a PIN code for payments so that when you accidently leave your Facebook profile logged in and your friend or girlfriend “hacks” you, he or she won’t be able to transfer all of your money to a new account.

Reddit bans FatPeople Hate subreddit, throws angry redditors into an uproar

Reddit, which bills itself as ?the front page of the internet?, and is of course where post the news stories we are working on for this podcast, saw some major drama this week. Reddit has long had a policy of allowing people to create subreddits around virtually any topic they want, even when those topics are awful. There are subreddits devoted to racism, bigotry, and all kinds of vile stuff. Reddit generally leaves them alone, unless they start crossing certain lines.

This week, apparently, lines were crossed. Reddit banned five subreddits, the largest of which was one called FatPeopleHate, which boasted over 150,000 subscribers. At the risk of editorializing, FatPeopleHate was actually even worse than it sounded, as redditors there had linked to the Twitter feeds, YouTube channels and personal information of real people, allowing other redditors to pour abuse, bile and mockery on them. FatPeopleHate had also become very popular and was regularly voting threads to the top of reddit?s /r/all, the ?front page? of the internet?s front page.

Reddit said that FatPeopleHate and the other four subreddits had crossed the line by getting involved in harassment instead of just being about ideas. This did not go down well with a very vocal part of reddit?s userbase, who begin creating a flood of alternate subreddits like FatPeopleHate2 and FatterPeopleHate and filling up unrelated subreddits with angry posts about reddit CEO Ellen Pao.

This is not the first time reddit has had problems moderating its own users. There was similar outrage when it tried to crackdown on users posting images from the nude celebrity leaks last year and before that when it attempted to purge subreddits dedicated to ?creepshots?, where men shared sexualized pictures taken of women without their consent.

The problem for reddit is that it doesn?t even require an email address to sign up for the service, and creating a new subreddit is the work of a moment, thus creating a situation that is very difficult to moderate.

—

If you have a suggestion, or just have a comment for the show. Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

And, don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

This week, Ray, Tom and Sean discuss the Federal Office of Personnel Management being hacked, Facebook finally adding support for GIFs, and a woman who didn’t realize the old computer she was throwing out was really a piece of Apple history worth $200,000. The guys are also joined by Ryan Thompson of GAAM (Games Arts and Music) to look at some of the week’s top video games news, including Lego’s new “Minecraft killer” game, Lego Worlds. All that and a whole lot more on this week’s Deemable Tech!

If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on our website, would you subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher? And, while you’re there, would you leave a review and say a few nice things about us? The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

Make sure to share Deemable Tech on the forums, Facebook, Twitter and all over the interwebs.

Thank you to our Redditors who have been helping us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. Deemable.com/reddit will take you there. We’re also looking for a new admin to help manage and moderate our subreddit page. Submit a text post to our subreddit explaining why you would make a great admin.

THIS WEEK’S RUN DOWN

Woman junks $200,000 Apple I prototype

Okay, so you’re cleaning out the attic and you spot an old computer moldering in the corner, so you decide to cart if off to the electronics recycler. Stop! Is that an Apple I computer? Because if it is, it might be worth as much as $200,000!

Now the chances that you have an Apple I in your attic are slim, because only about 200 were ever made and they weren’t commercially available like their predecessor, the Apple II. But a woman in Silicon Valley apparently did have one lying around, as she showed up last month at a local recycler on dropped one off along with a bunch of junk, saying her husband had died and she was cleaning up.

The recycler is now searching for the woman because it is their policy to split half the proceeds of any sales with donors. Unfortunately, the woman left no information. In fact, when they asked her if she wanted a tax receipt, she said “No, I don’t need anything.”

An example of an early Apple I computer on display in the Smithsonian Museum.
Photo credit: Ed Uthman / Flickr

Science teacher suspended for using cellphone jammer to crack down on cell phones in class

This next news story was submitted by redditor FrakinBeast:

A Tampa Bay area science teacher has been suspended after he allegedly used a signal jammer to prevent his students from using their cellphones during class. The school board issued instructor Dean Liptak a five day suspension without pay, saying that he might have interfered with people trying to dial 9-1-1. It is not clear where Liptak acquired the jamming device, but they are available online. On its website, the FCC reminds consumers that “It is a violation of federal law to use a cell jammer or similar devices that intentionally block, jam, or interfere with authorized radio communications such as cell phones, police radar, GPS, and Wi-Fi.”

This is not Dean Liptak’s first run-in with the school board. He is a former professional wrestler and has previously been reprimanded for test questions referencing the velocity of a student thrown against the wall by a teacher, and the mass of a car running over a baby.

Facebook adds GIF support

After years of waiting, you can now share animated GIFs on Facebook! The site finally added support for GIFs this past week, and using it is as easy as posting a link.

Just like videos from YouTube, you simply copy and paste the link for a GIF into your status update window, wait for it to load, and hit post.

Also like videos, your auto-play settings affect animated GIFs. Depending on how you have those set, GIFs will either automatically start looping or they will show up as a still image with a little white circle that says “GIF” in the middle which you have to click to play.

We should note that while you can now post animated GIFs using links, you still can’t upload them directly from your computer or phone.

Facebook also tests pronunciation tool

In other Facebook news, they have started testing a feature that will let you tell the world how to pronounce your name. On certain profiles, a phonetic pronunciation of the user’s name is displayed in their details. You can also click that pronouncer to hear an audio clip of how to say the name.

They are just focusing on English speakers in the US at the moment. It looks like most people who fall into that category have this feature, which you can find in the About tab on your profile. Look under the “Details About You” menu for the “How do you say your name?” feature.

You’ll see that Facebook offers three suggestions on how they think your first and last names are pronounced, or you can enter your own pronunciation.

Amazon Prime launches same day delivery in 14 cities

Good news for Amazon Prime members living in New York City, Seattle, San Francisco, Tampa Bay, and ten other select cities – you never have to leave your home again! Amazon is rolling out free same day delivery in your area for orders of $35 and up. For orders that don’t qualify for free same day delivery, it costs $5.99, truly a bargain when it comes to avoiding the unwashed masses! In fact, even if you live in one of the chosen fourteen cities you may not qualify for same day delivery, depending on where in town you are. Amazon has a zip code search page where you can check your eligibility.

Amazon has been rumored to be working on same day delivery for years. Expect these fourteen cities to just be the tip of the iceberg.

IRS and OPM hacked

The Office of Personnel Management, basically the HR department of the entire Federal government, was hacked this week. According to a letter released by the OPM, almost 4 million current and former federal employees may have been impacted, including yours truly. The source of the hack has not been confirmed yet, but CBS News White House Correspondent Major Garrett is saying all signs point to Chinese hackers.

As a former IRS employee, Ray is terriefied. The Office of Personnel Management has more personally identifiable information on him than his wife and his mother combined.

Netflix probably not planning to ruin everything

This week some news outlets reported that Netflix was experimenting with pre- and post-credits-roll advertising. This had some folks in an uproar – was Netflix about to devolve into a Hulu Plus-style cesspit of insidious advertising? Well, probably not. Think less Hulu Plus, more HBO. Netflix says it is experimenting, just experimenting mind you, with showing previews for Netflix’s own original series at either the beginning or end of streaming content. If this is in fact the case, this seems fairly innocuous to us and could even be welcome if the previews are well done and well targeted.

How did Vanity Fair keep Caitlyn Jenner a secret?

According to Mashable, Vanity Fair went to great lengths to make sure the story did not leak out. The story and photos were edited on a computer that was air-gapped. All network connections, Wi-Fi and bluetooth connections were disabled, and every night the files were deleted from the computer. The photos were even hand delivered to the printer.

GameStop to purchase ThinkGeek

In a surprise turn of events, game retailer GameStop appears to be buying nerd-themed online retailer ThinkGeek. ThinkGeek was set to be acquired for a cool $122 million by mall retailer HotTopic when GameStop swooped in and topped them with a $140 million offer. The acquisition will allow GameStop to display ThinkGeek merchandise in its stores, a move which has obvious synergies.

Valve begins offering refunds for all Steam games

Valve, the company behind the popular Steam PC game store and download client, announced this week that it is changing its refund policy.

It used to be that Valved that only offered refunds for games purchased through Steam in extreme circumstances. Their new policy, however, applies to all games.

“Maybe your PC doesn’t meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn’t like it,” the policy reads. “It doesn’t matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within 14 days of purchase, and the title has been played for less than two hours.”

This does not necessarily mean you can try out games for free, though. Steam said they reserve the right to decline a refund if they think a user is abusing the system. BUT they will allow you to return a game right before one of the famous ridiculous sales and then repurchase that game for the newer, lower price.

Lego Worlds Launches

TT Games and the Lego Group have made Lego’s hotly anticipated “Minecraft Killer,” Lego Worlds, available as an early access beta on Steam. For under $15 you too can help TT Games and The Lego Group debug their open world plastic brick building paradise. Lego Worlds lets players build existing sets, do free-form building and even customize your own mini-figs. Still missing from the game is any form of multiplayer. Possibly Lego is concerned about players sharing certain types of anatomically-correct tall buildings.

—

If you have a suggestion, or just have a comment for the show. Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

And, don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

Photo Credit: “Apple I Computer” by Ed Uthman is used under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Here’s Ray’s iPhone rebooting thanks to the “effective. Power” bug. Seriously, don’t be that guy.

This week Tom and Ray were left by themselves to hold down the fort. In Sean’s absence they talked about Google’s unsurprising announcement that the next version of Android will be “M” and the surprise announcement that Android is getting HBO Now… sometime later. Ray and Tom also talked about a text message that will make iPhones crash, presidential 404 pages, Jony Ive’s new promotion and, on a more serious note, Ross Ulbrich’s sentence to life in prison for his involvement in Silk Road.

If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on our website, would you subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher? And, while you’re there, would you leave a review and say a few nice things about us? The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

Make sure to share Deemable Tech on the forums, Facebook, Twitter and all over the interwebs.

Thank you to our Redditors who have been helping us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. Deemable.com/reddit will take you there. We’re also looking for a new admin to help manage and moderate our subreddit page. Submit a text post to our subreddit explaining why you would make a great admin.

THIS WEEK’S RUN DOWN

Android to get HBO Now… later

At the Google I/O conference this week, Google VP Sundar Pichai announced that HBO Now is coming to Android devices. While a specific date has not been announced, Pichai mentioned that it would be available in time for season 2 of True Detective, which debuts on June 21st. HBO Now will be available as an app and will be compatible with the Chromecast.

Apple was believed to have a window of exclusivity with regards to the HBO Now service; it is clear that that window is now coming to a close.

Reddit User PeanutButterShutter commented, “There is a God and his name is Google.”

Apple is trying to look at things a little closer

Apple has filed a patent for a built-in telephoto camera for a possible future iPhone. Instead of adding lenses to the existing camera, the patent proposes a solution that would add an additional camera to the device. So you would have a regular camera and a telephoto camera. The telephoto camera would have a much narrower field of view, but also a much higher magnification factor.

Of course, just because Apple has filed for a patent doesn’t mean that we will ever see it come to fruition in an Apple product. Apple has an incredible amount of patents that have never seen the light of day as a real product. Apple currently has a patent for bayonet-style camera lens attachments for the iPhone and iPad, a patent for an iPhone with interchangeable lenses and even an iPhone with multiple camera sensors and beam splitters to separate the blue, red and green light spectrum.

Google announces Android M

Surprising absolutely no one, Google also announced at Google I/O that the next iteration of its Android operating system will be coming out this year and that it will be code-named ‘M’, in keeping with the alphabetical theme of previous releases. What is not known is what delicious, sugary treat ‘M’ will stand for. Android ‘K’ turned out to stand for Kit Kat and the current version of the system, ‘L’, is Lollipop. The word on the street is that ‘M’ will stand for Macadamia Nut Cookie, but we hasten to add that this is pure speculation.

Oh, you want ‘substance’ to your news reports? Fine. While previous releases have focused on upgrades to the system’s design, performance and battery life, ‘M’ promises a focus on the basics: stability and usability. Google also says that M will give users the ability to grant permissions to apps on a case-by-case basis. Interestingly, this ability was present in earlier versions of the Android OS but was intended for developer use only and was eventually disabled. iOS users have enjoyed so-called ‘granular permissions’ for years.

This is one case where we are glad to see Google taking a page from Apple’s playbook.

Jony Ive becomes Apple Chief Design Officer.

Jony Ive is stepping down? or is it stepping up? Let’s call it stepping away from ? the day to day routine at Apple. Jony Ive as you may know has been the Senior Vice President of Design at Apple for quite some time. Jony is the man behind most of the iconic designs that have come out of Cupertino. Jony is now the Chief Design Officer at Apple. Which is safe to assume means that he will have less to do with the day to day management. Richard Howarth is taking over as vice president of Industrial Design, and Alan Dye is the new vice president of User Interface Design, two departments that Ive was overseeing at the same time. Now Ive can focus on overseeing design, and potentially spend more time at home with the family.

Silk Road Founder Gets Life

Ross Ulbrich, founder and operator of the notorious dark net drug market The Silk Road, was sentenced this week to life in prison. Ulbricht, alias The Dread Pirate Roberts, was tried and found guilty narcotics conspiracy and other charges earlier in the year. The minimum possible sentence that he faced was twenty years, a term that he and his lawyers had pleaded for.

During the sentencing hearing the court heard several accounts of people who had become hooked on drugs or even overdosed on drugs obtained through the Silk Road. Ulbricht’s failed attempts to order hits on other members of the Silk Road community probably did not help his case either.

His life sentence comes without the possibility of parole. Barring a successful appeal, Ulbricht will die behind bars.

The text message that will reboot your iPhone

This next story sounds like it must be an urban legend, but it is not: there is a text message that, if you send it to a friend with an iPhone, may cause their phone to reboot.

OK, you are probably waiting breathlessly for us to tell you what the message is, but here is the thing, we can’t tell you, because it is gibberish: it involves a lot of special characters from other language character sets. The first two words are in English, however, and they are ‘effective. Power’. So we can call this the ‘effective. Power’ bug.

From what we are hearing, the ‘effective. Power’ bug happens when an iPhone attempts to display a shortened version of this message in the notifications. The iPhone will then reset if your phone is locked. Otherwise your phone’s screen will go black. That is the only effect, it is basically harmless. You can clear it out by asking Siri to read unread messages, and then using Siri to reply to the person that sent the offending text.

Early reports indicated that turning off text message notifications would disable the bug but some users are reporting that it still works even with notifications disabled.

While Apple is working on an iOS fix, as of this recording one has not yet been released. However, something else really interesting has happened. Tonight as we were attempting to test and verify this bug, we found that we could not send each other the message! It simply will not go through. It would appear that some carriers have wised up to this trick and may be blocking messages carrying the dangerous string of characters.

Regardless, be a cool friend and don’t spam your friends with the “effective. Power” text.

404 Candidate Not Found

As candidates throw their hats in the ring for the 2016 presidential election, The Atlantic has identified one key issue that no one has looked at: whose campaign website has the best 404 page. The 404 page is the page you see when you try to reach a page on a website that is broken or that no longer exists. The majority of the internet’s websites produce uninspired 404 pages with stock text, but a few, like Twitter’s famous ‘fail whale’, are memorable classics. If you think about it, this is exactly what America wants in its chief executive: the ability to remain cool in a crisis, maybe crack a joke or two. And being unable to find the web page you need? That is definitely a crisis. So, Ray, with your permission I thought we would visit a handful of the announced candidates’ campaign sites and 404 it up.

• Bernie Sander’s 404 page.
• Carly Fiorona’s 404 page.
• Hillary Clinton’s 404 page.
• Lindsey Graham’s 404 page.
• Marco Rubio’s 404 page.
• Mike Huckabee’s 404 page.

?

If you have a suggestion, or just have a comment for the show. Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

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This week Microsoft clarified who exactly free Windows 10 upgrades would be free for, Blizzard cracked down on World of Warcraft cheaters, and Apple abandoned plans to make TVs. Plus, Ray, Tom and Sean share websites through sound, discuss driver-less semi-trucks and a whole lot more. That’s this week on Deemable Tech!

If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on our website, would you subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher? And, while you’re there, would you leave a review and say a few nice things about us? The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

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Make sure to share Deemable Tech on the forums, Facebook, Twitter and all over the interwebs.

Thank you to our Redditors who have been helping us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. Deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

THIS WEEK’S RUN DOWN

Microsoft backtracks on free Windows 10 upgrades for pirated copies

In an update to a story we brought you back in March, Microsoft is clarifying their initial offer of free upgrades to Windows 10 to everyone currently running Windows 7 or 8.1, including those with pirated copies.

Almost immediately after Windows chief Tyler Myerson was reported to have said even pirated copies of Windows would get the upgrade, Microsoft began releasing vague clarifications about the upgrade still being free to pirates for a trial period before they would have to pay. Now, Microsoft says there will be no free upgrade – pirates will just have to pay. The company is planning some ?very attractive? offers to those with cracked copies of their operating systems, but no real details have been released.

Over 100,000 World of Warcraft cheaters detected and banned

Activision Blizzard, the company that makes the uber-popular massively multiplayer game World of Warcraft, fights an ongoing battle against cheaters. One of the major forms cheating in the game takes is the use of bots, software tools that automate tedious tasks like leveling up, collecting gold, and improving skills. This week, Blizzard dropped the hammer, banning what was reportedly over 100,000 players using such bots. The bans were not permanent, instead lasting for six months. It is estimated that they affected about 1.7% of World of Warcraft?s user base.

In a statement, Activision Blizzard said “We’ve recently taken action against a large number of World of Warcraft accounts that were found to be using third-party programs that automate gameplay, known as ‘bots’. We?re committed to providing an equal and fair playing field for everyone in World of Warcraft, and will continue to take action against those found in violation of our Terms of Use. Cheating of any form will not be tolerated.”

Apple Has Abandoned Apple TV

Remember those rumors that Apple was going to release an actual TV? Ray is pretty sure he even predicted that we would have already seen it by now in one of our prediction shows. Yeah, well according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Apple was working on a 4K television set about a year ago. And many years ago, they were even considering a laser television set. But, as many research and development projects go, the Apple TV set has gone the way of the Microsoft Courier Tablet and the Palm Folio. It is never going to be released.

Apparently Apple realized that there is no way to make a new TV that isn’t better than all of the other TVs that are already on the market. Because, just like printers, the best TV is a dumb TV. Now if we could only convince the other TV ? and printer manufacturers ? of that, the world would be a better place.

Google experiments with using sound to share URLs with new ?Google Tone? Chrome extension

Google released a cool new experimental extension for their Chrome browser called Tone this week. This add-on lets you share URLs people nearby using SOUND.

To use it, Tone must be installed on at least two computers that are within earshot of each other, and each computer must have their volume turned up. This extension works on all operating systems. Open the tab you want to share, click the small megaphone shaped button on your Chrome toolbar, and your computer will play a series of beeps. A Chrome notification will pop up on the nearby computers with a link.

The extension was apparently developed in a single afternoon, according to Alex Kaufman and Boris Smus at the Google Research blog.

“Tone grew out of the idea that while digital communication methods like email and chat have made it infinitely easier, cheaper and faster to share things with people across the globe, they’ve actually made it more complicated to share things with the people standing right next to you,” Kauffmann and Smus write. “Tone aims to make sharing digital things with nearby people as easy as talking to them.”

Woman sues her employer for installing an app on her phone that tracks her 24/7

A California woman claims to have been fired from the firm Intermex after uninstalling an app on her smartphone which her employer was using to track her movements 24/7, including during her off time. Myrna Arias said she her boss had bragged to her that he knew how fast she was driving at specific moments ever since she had installed the app on her phone. She was required to keep her phone powered up at all times. She said that when she uninstalled the app she was ‘scolded’. She is now suing Intermex for violating her privacy, wrongful termination, and $500,000.

Apple quietly launches new MacBook Pro, 5K iMac and Lightning Dock

In other Apple news, even Apple understands that not every product launch requires U2 to perform and shove an album down your throat. This week Apple quietly announced a new 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display. It has the new “Force Touch” trackpad, like it?s 12- and 13- inch MacBook cousins. No surprise it also has more storage, longer battery life and better graphics.

Apple also released a new 27-inch iMac with a Retina 5K display, and reduced the price to $1,999. So, if you like the desktop, and you don?t want to pay a boatload on a Mac Pro, Apple finally has a good option for you.

The best news, was probably the smallest news, Apple finally released a lightning port dock that is compatible with the iPhone 6. So, if you like the nice, uncluttered look for your night stand,  and you have the iPhone 6, now you can go back to your functional minimalistic life.

Nintendo of America hires Bowser

News from Nintendo this week that Bowser, Mario?s mortal enemy (and sometimes go-karting buddy), has gone straight and entered the corporate world.

Oh wait! Sorry… wrong Bowser.

Nintendo of America announced that Doug Bowser has been hired as their new vice president of sales. In a press release, Nintendo said that Bowser shares no relation to the video game character (full name King Bowser Koopa) and ?brings decades of experience, not fire breath, to the new role.?

Bowser formerly worked as an executive at video game maker Electronic Arts. He’ll apparently be relocating for the job, and will of course bring his children Larry, Morton Jr., Wendy O., Iggy, Roy, Lemmy and Ludwig von Koopa with him.

That awkward moment when you search Google maps for the n-word, and it shows you the White House

The Washington Post ran a story this week that searching Google Maps for the phrase ?n-word king? would bring up the White House as the result. It will even zoom the map in automatically! This glitch appears to be the result of user edits submitted through Google Map Maker. Google has suspended map maker indefinitely. Remember kids, algorithms aren?t racist? but the human beings they model? Definitely.

As of press time Google had removed the unfortunate map label.

Self-Driving Trucks Roll Out!

As you may have already heard, Freightliner, manufacturer of semi-truck cabs, is rolling out its first semi-autonomous truck, the shiny and futuristic Freightliner Inspiration. So how autonomous is the Freightliner Inspiration? It still requires a driver, however the vehicle is able to stay in its own lane, keep a safe braking distance from other vehicles, and slow or stop based on traffic conditions. Driver intervention is needed for merging, local roads and docking duties, and the vehicle is programmed to transfer control to the driver if there is a situation that it cannot handle.

In an article for Medium, writer Scott Stanten predicted that the fully self-driving truck could have an outsized impact on small towns. Fully autonomous trucks will have no need for truck stops, which are often a staple of small town economies. Trucks without drivers will have no need for all nite diners, coffee shops, and many other staples of the interstate support system. Of course, autonomous trucks can?t fall asleep behind the wheel, run off the road and kill people.

—

If you have a suggestion, or just have a comment for the show. Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

And, don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there

This week Ray warns us about storing our SSDs in hot places, unless you want to wipe your drives clean. Tom explores the dangers of asking questions on Quora. And Sean finds out why one company is trying to make the food replicators from Star Trek a reality. Plus the guys look at Facebook’s new “instant articles,” learn why Microsoft is saying Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows they’ll release, and delve into Verizon’s purchase of AOL. Then later, Sean acts like Steve Harvey as Tom and Ray play a few rounds of the online game Google Feud.

But first, could we ask a favor of you? If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on our website, would you subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher? And, while you’re there, would you leave a review and say a few nice things about us? The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

Make sure to share Deemable Tech on the forums, Facebook, Twitter and all over the interwebs.

Thank you to our Redditors who have been helping us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. Deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

THIS WEEK’S RUN DOWN

SSDs can lose data really fast

You know those amazingly fast SSDs that are replacing hard drives in high end laptops like practically every Mac on the market? Well, there is a trade off. You definitely don’t want to store your wedding pictures on them. Or your tax records. Or your receipts from Best Buy. Because, some SSDs can lose their data in only a few days.

According to Gizmodo, heat is the enemy. The length of data retention is cut in half for every nine degrees of temperature increase. So, if you do like a lot of people Ray has talked to have done, and stick your old computer in a hot storage unit, expect to reinstall Windows on it when you get it out, because the SSD might be blank.

Just another reminder to back up your data!

Man weighing two job offers finds one of them retracted after asking Quora which of them he should take

In the news this week, yet another cautionary tale about being very careful with what you post online.

Last week a San Francisco engineer who was weighing competing job offers from Uber and Zenefits posted on Quora, asking the advice of its users on which to take. The engineer said that he liked what Zenefits was offering but that it didn’t seem as compelling a ?buzzword? to have on his resume as Uber.

The dilemma was presumably cleared up for the engineer when Zenefits’ CEO responded, saying “Definitely not Zenefits,” and retracting the job offer.

While the post was later changed to remove the public job retraction, presumably the damage was done. It was not clear if the candidate, who remains anonymous, had accepted Uber’s offer.

Microsoft representative claims that Windows 10 is the “last” version of Windows

This week at Microsoft’s Ignite conference, tech evangelist Jerry Nixon was quoted as saying, “Right now we’re releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10.” Microsoft confirmed this statement to The Verge, saying that it would be focusing on “Windows as a service,” delivering continuous updates to the system rather than rolling out new versions of Windows.

That is of course until the next time Marketing gets a bright idea in its head and they announce Windows 20.

Facebook rolls out “instant articles” from major news publishers

Starting this week on the iOS Facebook app, some news articles will load much, much faster when you click on them. Facebook is calling these ?instant articles?, and they will be available from a handful of publishers that have partnered with Facebook, including the New York Times, BuzzFeed, The Atlantic, BBC News and National Geographic, among others. Instant articles won?t look much different to users, at least at first – they will just load instantly when clicked. In the future, however, Facebook may add auto-playing “video covers” as well.

Facebook will allow new, special interactions with Instant Articles, including audio captions, geotagged photos, and interactive maps. And of course, there will be no ads.

No word yet on when Android users will see this feature.

Israeli company creates Genie, a futuristic appliance that can create instant meals on demand

A new Israeli device called the Genie, which claims its inspiration from Star Trek’s fictional replicators, can turn pods of dehydrated powders into meals on demand. While details are light, supposedly the meals can be customized to personal preference, including specifying whether they should be gluten-, dairy-, or egg-free. The Genie will also work with smartphones and mobile devices.

No word if it responds to voice commands like, “Tea, earl gray, hot.”

Verizon announces plan to buy AOL for 4.4 billion dollars

In a surprise announcement this week, Verizon and AOL announced that Verizon will buy AOL for $4.4 billion dollars. People with knowledge of the matter say that Verizon is looking to acquire AOL’s mobile, video and advertising technology. Verizon may be looking to offer its own streaming video platform which it can sell ads against. It will also acquire popular news site The Huffington Post, not to mention the legacy dial-up service which once made AOL a powerhouse.

Verizon is currently valued at $200 billion dollars, making the four and a half billion in cash they plan to spend on AOL little more than a rounding error.

It’s time to play the feud!

Credit: Google Feud

You may have seen the site Google Feud making the rounds on social media recently. This online game combines weird Google autocomplete search suggestions with Family Feud style game play, in which you have to guess the top 10 ways Google autocompletes a specific sentence or question (for example, “Is it weird to _____”). Sean plays the role of Steve Harvey – or John O’Hurley, Louie Anderson, Richard Dawson, or whoever you favorite Family Feud host was – while Ray and Tom guess their way through a few rounds.

This week Tom brings the joyous news that Nintendoland is coming! Ray wants fast passes to the Mario Kart ride. But none of the guys want to ride on a Boeing 787 after Ray tells the guys that some of the planes are turning off… in mid air. Not good. Oculus finally announces a consumer model of the Oculus Rift. People are breaking/not breaking their Microsoft Surface 3 tablets. Twitter broke MS-DOS games, and Tesla just brought the future one step closer to today. All that on this week’s episode.

But first, could we ask a favor of you? If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on our website, would you subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher? And, while you’re there, would you leave a review and say a few nice things about us? The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

Make sure to share Deemable Tech on the forums, Facebook, Twitter and all over the interwebs.

Thank you to our Redditors who have been helping us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. Deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

THIS WEEK’S RUN DOWN

Nintendo Theme Park

Who is up for Mario Kart in real life? Nintendo announced during an earnings call this week that it is partnering with Universal Parks and Resorts which runs the Universal Studios theme parks to create Nintendo-themed rides and attractions. Nintendo has not announced specific details on which of its properties it would adapt, but it seems like a safe bet that it will leverage long lasting and popular characters and games like Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong. In fact, Universal executive Tom Schroder said pretty much exactly that in a press release: “The immersive experiences will include major attractions at Universal?s theme parks and will feature Nintendo?s most famous characters and games.”

Have you tried turning your plane off and on again?

The FAA sent out a warning on May 1st that Boeing 787s may have some computer problems that could cause your terrible, terrible death. Mashable reports that the administration discovered the computers in 787s have a “software counter” that periodically shuts down all electrical systems, which results in “loss of control of the airplane.” Now, I’m not an aviation expert, but I think that is a bad thing. Am I right in assuming that guys?

Boeing is working out a software update that will eliminate the problem, but until then, they have issued a work around. If you work in the IT industry or have ever worked technical support you are probably familiar with it:

“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

Yes folks, it’s the I.T. Crowd fix.

Call Roy and Moss or your plane will crash to the ground.

Oculus announces “Q1 2016” release for Rift

In other news that is sure to have gamers everywhere jumping for joy, Oculus announced this week that the first commercial release of their hotly anticipated virtual reality headset the Oculus Rift will be in early 2016.

The company also released promotional images of the sleek final consumer product after several years of prototypes.

Oculus first made a splash at the E3 gaming expo in 2012, followed by a very successful Kickstarter campaign. They also kicked off a virtual reality race, with other big companies like Sony and Valve and HTC working on releasing their own VR products.

How low can you go?

One of the most interesting tablets to come out, other than the iPad, has definitely been the Microsoft Surface. Sure, it’s had its share of troubles. It came out with Windows RT, which was this weird, stripped down version of Windows. It had two interfaces, the desktop and the “tablet” UI which really confused people. But, it was an incredible design that really changed the market, making it a serious contender for a laptop replacement. One of its signature features was the coveted kickstand that can hold the tablet in one of three positions. Well, now the Verge is reporting that Redditors have discovered a secret fourth position for the Surface 3 kickstand. Apparently, if you keep pressing the kickstand back after the third position it will break away and fold all the way back.

Microsoft said in a statement that the kickstand “contains a safety mechanism unique to Surface 3 to help protect the device, but the mechanism is not designed for use as a fourth kickstand position.”

So it might work once, twice or maybe even a few times, but it’s probably going to ruin your Surface 3.

The lesson here is, don’t play too rough with your toys. Just like a Slinky, once you bend it out of shape, you can’t bend it back, no matter what happened in Toy Story.

MS-DOS games on Twitter update

Last week we told you how you can embed and play classic MS-DOS games in tweets. Sadly, it looks like Twitter has put a stop to that.

It was discovered last week that Twitter users could embed these games from the Internet Archive?s site into tweets using Twitter?s Cards widget (that?s the system that allows videos, images and other media to be displayed in-line in the Twitter stream). But it turns out that embedding interactive media, specifically games, is against the terms of service for Twitter Cards.

You can, however, still play the MS-DOS games at the Internet Archive?s site, archive.org.

Powerwall

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, the maker of powerful electric sports cars recently announced that his company will begin manufacturing batteries for homes. This week Elon Musk announced that demand for their ?Powerwall? batteries was ?crazy off the hook?. He said they have received over 38,000 reservations, a level of demand which could take them up to a year to fulfill. Orders included over 2,500 from companies for their commercial-ready Powerpack.

The Powerwall batteries are designed for a 24-hour charge-and-discharge cycle, which would be ideal in combination with a solar power system that could charge them during the day letting them run the house at night. The batteries are designed to be mounted on the wall and a 7kWh unit starts at $3,000.

Note from Ray: The Powerwall is apparently not nearly as bad as the Power Glove.

If you have a suggestion, or just have a comment for the show. Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

And, don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there