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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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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.

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

Ray may not have written Johnny B Goode like Marty McFly, but he almost broke the space-time continuum.

On this week’s episode of Deemable Tech, Ray creates a temporal causal loop by leaving a voice mail for Deemable Tech and answering it.Then, he and Tom answered questions about whether you can play 3D Blu-Rays discs on your HD TV, if can you delete a picture without deleting the picture, how to stop your Kindle devices and apps from synchronizing, how to Google better, how to extend the battery life of your cellphone, what order you should unplug your laptop in, and does Facebook owe you money?

All that and more, on this episode of Deemable Tech!

Make sure to subscribe to the show in iTunes by clicking here, or subscribe to the show in another podcast reader by clicking here. Also, make sure to leave us a review in iTunes. The more reviews we have the higher we’ll be listed in iTunes and the more listeners will see our show!

Need tech help? Got a problem or tech question about your computer, phone or tablet? Give us a call and leave us a voice mail at 1-888-972-9868, or send us an email to questions at deemable dot com. We’ll take the best questions and answer them on the show.

Links mentioned on this week’s show:

• PhotoAlbums+
• ?You Google Wrong? by The Atlantic Wire
• Inside Seach – Advanced Power Searching – Google
• www.fraleyfacebooksettlement.com
• AppGratis
• Apps Gone Free

Episode 28 – A Voicemail Causal Loop

Crowdsourcing an Answer

Ardis asked,

Dear Deemable Duo,
I’ve recently been having some issues scheduling D&D games due to the busy lives of my fellow dice rollers. I’m sure you find the idea of D&D players having lives as shocking as I do, but regardless, if games are to continue we need to find some way around this problem. I was wondering if there was any kind of program that might make it easier to coordinate our schedules? Not necessarily something that will show our full schedules but something that could let us see what free time we have in common or something to that effect. Thank you for whatever insight you might be able to give.

What do you recommend for Ardis? Leave your suggestion in the comments down below. Thanks!

Deemable Tech – Episode 13 – Online dating makes me paranoid

Debunkable:

Links we mentioned on today’s show:

• Carbonite vs Mozy
• Setup a bulletproof automated backup system with CrashPlan.
• 5 best offline backup tools
• Java.com
• Should you disable Java on your computer? MSNBC
• Slate – Why you should disable java on your browser right now
• Mashable – Why ?Slacktivists’ Are More Active Than You Think
• http://blog.okcupid.com/

Bumper Music

• 8 Bit Remix: Mission Impossible Theme

• 8 bit James Bond

Yesterday, both Nokia and Motorola announced their latest flagship phones, the Lumia 920 and the Droid RAZR HD respectively. Both of them seem like they will be quite impressive phones when they come out. The question that wasn’t answered at either of these press conferences is, when are they being released?

Kobo did the same thing today. They beat Amazon to the punch by announcing two new e-readers and a new 7-inch Android tablet hours before Amazon’s event scheduled for later today. They didn’t provide a specific launch date for the Arc, the Android tablet, but at least they gave us prices and told us what month it was coming out.

Why is it that Apple and Amazon seem to be the only companies able to wait until a product is ready to be sold before they announce it? Nothing, and I mean, NOTHING, is more excruciatingly frustrating as a consumer and a tech enthusiast than to listen to an entire announcement about an amazing product, only to be left hanging, waiting for the two most important details: when can I buy it, and how much does it cost? Does announcing a product before the company has even decided how much they are going to charge for it actually help to increase sales? I know that beating Apple out of the gate has to be good idea, but announcing a phone or tablet without a price or a launch date is like jumping the gun and then tripping and falling on your face. You’re not going to win the race, even if you are a better runner. In my humble opinion, announcing a product before it is ready to be launched screams insecurity. Your company is saying that you really don’t think you can compete head-to-head with another company’s product, so you have to announce yours first, or you’ll lose in the long run. That doesn’t make me want to buy your product. That makes me want to kick you in the shins.

I’m done.

End rant.

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