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

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.

Read Deemable Tech’s live blog from the Apple special press event discussing the announcements of the iPad Pro, new Apple TV and the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus, and the new accessories, Apple Pencil and Keyboard.

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.

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

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.

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 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

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 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.

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.

Anyone who’s ever owned an iPod knows that stainless steel scratches.

This week, Google launched a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO). The new phone service uses Sprint, T0Mobile and Wi-Fi, but it only has one phone, the Nexus 6. There’s a few Apple Watch ‘scandals’ ramping up: tattoo-gate, scratch-gate and tap-gate. Microsoft has a new “edge”ier web browser, a man shoots up his Dell and the robots are coming to steal your car.

If you haven?t subscribed to Deemable Tech yet, get on it! Subscribe to Deemable Tech in iTunes, on Stitcheror subscribe to the show in another podcast reader. Make sure to leave a review on iTunes and Stitcher. The more reviews posted, the higher Deemable Tech will be listed, and the more listeners will see the show.

And 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 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.

THIS WEEK’S RUN DOWN

You can now embed playable MS-DOS games inside tweets

Earlier this year, the Internet Archive added roughly 2,400 MS-DOS games to their digital archive that are playable through your web browser on their site, Archive.org. But if you?re too scared to leave Twitter to check this out, never fear. The folks at Wired discovered this week that you can embed the games inside of tweets and play them right from those tweets.

So, you can now get your Oregon Trail, Sim City or Wolfenstein 3D fix from Twitter. Or, you can try out other classic games like the adaptation of the 1991 Hulk Hogan cinematic masterpiece Suburban Commando (just kidding, you should never do that).

Google announces cellular data network, which is actually two networks.

Google has officially announced its long-rumored cellular data network: its name is ProjectFi. As anticipated it is an MVNO network, which means that Google is ?renting? time on someone else?s network like many other small cellular companies. The differences is that Google is renting not from one other network, but two: Sprint & T-mobile, as well as WiFi. When you are on a ProjectFi connection your phone will seamlessly switch to whichever one of those networks is strongest. ProjectFi?s offers a very straightforward billing structure which will be appealing to some. It also will let you ?bank? unused minutes each month. And it offers promises of more innovations to come. The catch? Right now it is only offered for a single phone: the Nexus 6, and there is no LTE high speed service.

Robot car movers

The robots are coming to steal your car, or just move it out of the way. Gizmodo shared a story that researchers in Europe have created AVERT, the Autonomous Vehicle Emergency Recovery Tool. It is a system of robots that look like something out of Battle Bots. They are flat pieces of steel with rotors on the ends of them. Eight of them work together to pick up your cars tires and wheel it away. They only lift the car about an inch off the ground, but that’s all they need to move it out of the way. The idea is that the robots can easily move a car parked in a tight spot if there is a bomb in a nearby car. They could also be used to move an illegally parked car or a car that is blocking emergency services. Or, when the robots become sentient, they will likely start a car robbing career.

Man puts 8 bullets in his Dell desktop, tells police it was worth the ticket.

Police say that at 7 PM on a Monday, Lucas Hinch, the owner of a homeopathic herb store in Colorado Springs, Colorado, took his Dell XPS 410 out into an alley behind the store and unloaded eight bullets into it with a 9mm pistol. Hinch was ticketed for discharging a gun within city limits.

Lynch told the Los Angeles Times, which interviewed him, that the machine kept giving him the blue screen of death and that he had ?had enough.? He said that the shooting was ?definitely premeditated? and that he had no regrets. He reportedly told officers he did not know he was breaking the law in discharging his weapon.

Microsoft unveils Edge browser

During the opening keynote of their Microsoft Build developers conference this week, Microsoft unveiled the successor to their Internet Explorer browser (which they recently announced was ending).

The new browser, now called Edge (formerly Project Spartan), is said to be faster and more modern and will be a universal app across all Windows devices. Features will include, among others, extensions like you find for Chrome and Firefox, integration of Microsoft?s Cortana virtual assistant to help you search for things, reading mode (which removes everything from a page except for the text), and an annotation tool (which lets you draw on a webpage, take a picture of it and share that picture).

The new browser will not be in the initial release of Windows 10 this year, but will be included in a later update. Windows 10 will be shipped with Internet Explorer 11 for legacy compatibility, so you will have one last chance to use everyone?s favorite browser before it goes softly into that good night.

Tired of remember your passwords? Try swallowing them instead?

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Paypal?s global head of developer advocacy, Jonathan Leblanc, said that passwords might soon be available as ?embeddable, injectable and ingestible devices.? Mr. Leblanc said that in the near future thin silicon chips might be embedded under our skin or capsules might detect glucose levels to verify that someone is who they say they are.

The Wall Street Journal notes, “Mr. Leblanc admits that there’s still a ways to go before cultural norms catch up with ingestible and injectable ID devices.”

Google files patent for laptop with no spacebar.

Google already kicked the CAPS-LOCK key to the curb with its Chromebooks and now it appears it may be preparing to do the same thing to the spacebar. In a patent filed this week the company outlines a design where the spacebar is replaced by an extended trackpad. Sensors would determine whether the user wants the top of the trackpad to be treated as a spacebar or a mouse. Google told Quartz, who broke the story, that some patents get turned into products and some don?t, so only time will tell whether we will see a spacebar-free Chromebook.

Apple Watch – Tattoo-gate

Reports are coming in on Twitter and Reddit that people with tattoos on their wrists may have difficulty using their new Apple watches. iMore.com looked into it and confirmed the reports. The heart sensor detects pulse by flashing an LED light on your skin and senses the reflection. The problem is when you have a tattoo the reflection is distorted by the ink. Your mileage may vary, but for some folks it is really annoying. The Apple Watch uses the heart sensor to detect if you are wearing the watch, so when it doesn’t sense your heart rate, it forces you to re-enter your pin number.

Apple Watch – Scratch-gate

If you don’t like scratches, you probably shouldn’t get the stainless steel Apple watch. A lot of folks are reporting on social media that their steel Apple watches are already scratched up. 9to5Mac.com has an easy fix. Just buff it, like every other stainless steel watch in existence. Or, get the aluminum model, which is actually harder than the steel version.

Apple Watch – Tap-gate

Now for the first, actual, real problem with the Apple watch. According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple has found a major defect in the taptic engine in the watches. The taptic engine is the feature that causes the watch to vibrate or tap the wearer. It was a pretty groundbreaking feature because it models sounds so a tweet “feels” like a tweet, and a tap feels like a tap. Two companies built the taptic engines, but one of the suppliers has produced faulty engines. The Verge says that Daring Fireball’s John Gruber received an Apple Watch that had a taptic engine that didn’t work.

OUTRO

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@deemable.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

I’m Ray Hollister, I’m Tom Braun, I’m Sean Birch and this is Deemable Tech. Thanks for listening.

This week, Comcast can’t keep itself out of the news. First, Comcast announces that it is bringing the fastest Interwebs in the country to Jacksonville (WOOT!) and other cities in Florida. Then, the FCC and the Justice Department rain on Comcast’s parade and lets it know they are not going to let it merge with Time Warner Cable. In other news, a paranoid dad flew a drone to school with his daughter, and two guys took the iPhone/Android fight way too far.

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.

If you haven?t subscribed to Deemable Tech yet, get on it! Subscribe to Deemable Tech in iTunes, on Stitcheror subscribe to the show in another podcast reader. Make sure to leave a review on iTunes and Stitcher. The more reviews posted, the higher Deemable Tech will be listed, and the more listeners will see the show.

And 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

Comcast Gigabit Pro

People in Jacksonville and some other towns in Florida are going to be pretty excited next month. In a story Jessica Palombo contributed to Deemable.com, Comcast is bringing the fastest fiber optic Internet service in the country to a few cities in Florida, including our own fair town. The service, which is called Gigabit Pro, will actually have 2 Gbps download and upload speeds ? more than twice the speed of Google Fiber.

However, Comcast would not give a price for the new service. The next fastest service from Comcast is Extreme 505, which runs up to 505 Mbps up and down, and costs over $400 a month with taxes and fees.

Comcast Drops Its Bid to Merge With Time Warner Cable

Speaking of Comcast, earlier this week it was looking pretty  looked bad for its merger with Time Warner Cable. According to Bloomberg, the Justice Department’s antitrust department was going to recommend blocking the merger. And, the FCC was not negotiating the terms of the deal with Comcast, which made it look even less likely that it was going to go through.

But now, ?people with knowledge of the matter? have told Bloomberg that Comcast is backing out of the merger. There was supposed to be a board meeting Thursday. And an official  announcement will probably come Friday.

As the Verge pointed out in an editorial, throughout this whole process, Comcast has never answered this simple question: Why not compete?

Verizon to offer custom pay TV packages, let customers choose monthly programming bundles

And while we?re on the subject of Internet and TV providers, in move that is one small step closer to a la carte cable TV, Verizon recently announced that they are rolling out a new pay TV service that will let customers choose from channel bundles that they change monthly.

These Verizon FiOS ?Custom TV? packages will start at 65 dollars a month for broadband service, 36 fixed basic cable channels, and two genre-based channel packs that customers can swap or unsubscribe from after a month. You can also add packs for an extra 10 dollars. Verizon has seven of these packs to choose from, including sports and children?s programming.

Verizon says they are going after customers who want something in between giant, fully loaded cable packages and cheaper basic packages offered by their competitors.

After “Drone Dad” follows his daughter to school, DJI Phantom 2 grounded

Tennessee father Chris Early?s daughter decided she wanted to walk to the school bus by herself so he did what any tech-inclined father would do: he followed her with a drone.

The drone was a model known as a DJI Phantom 2 which has a high def video camera mounted on it. Early followed his daughter with the drone. A local news station caught wind of this and the story went nationwide. Chris Early has been called ?overprotective?, ?the world?s most embarrassing father? and ‘drone dad’. As a result of all the attention he says he has grounded the drone for now.

One World Trade Center Elevator Shows 515 Years Of New York City

One World Trade Center has added an elevator that displays 515 years of New York City history in 50 seconds.

The New York Times covered this story, but I wrote an article about it for Deemable.com.

While they haven?t developed time travel, the engineers and designers behind the elevators that takes guests to the observatory at the very top of One World Trade Center in New York City have come pretty close. When you board the elevators, you will see a panoramic view of New York City rising out of the underground in the 1500s all the way up through time to the 102nd floor today.

The elevator uses nine 75-inch screens to create the illusion that it is a glass-walled elevator traveling through time.

Along the way, you’ll see the arrival of the Europeans, the Revolution and the rise of the skyscrapers. Inevitably, as time travels through the late-1900s, one of the Twin Towers enters your sight and just as quickly fades away as the 2000s begin. It is a touching, beautiful memorial to the history of the site. You can see The New York Times video of the elevator on our website at Deemable.com

YouTube celebrates 10 year anniversary

This week marks the 10 year anniversary of the first video being uploaded to YouTube.

On April 23 2005, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim posted a 19 second clip of elephants at the zoo titled “Me at the zoo.”  In it, Karim discusses the elephants’ “really, really, really long trunks” and, well, that’s all. Pretty tame compared to what you can find on YouTube today.

About a year after this video was posted, Google acquired YouTube for $1.6 billion.

According to reports, YouTube will mark the anniversary with a month-long celebration starting next week.

Skycure Hack Can Use Wifi To Disable iOS Devices

A research firm called Skycure reported that it has developed a hack based around a bug in iOS that could allow it to disable all nearby iOS devices using a wifi router. The wifi router has to be configured in a specific way. It will then cause any device connected to it to keep crashing and rebooting in an endless loop. It can be combined with another hack that forces iOS devices to connect to that network. Essentially the only way to escape the endless cycle of rebooting would be to get out of range of the router.

Skycure has not publicly released technical specifications for the bug it used to create the hack to give Apple time to patch it.

Argument Over Which Smartphone Is Better Turns Deadly

Police in Tulsa, OK apprehended a man staggering around a parking lot late at night cut up and covered in blood. The man reported to them that he had been in a fight with his roommate over which smartphone was better – the iPhone or the new Samsung Galaxy. iPhone versus Android fights can get heated, but most stop short of physical conflict. The man reported that he and his roommate had been drinking and wound up stabbing each other with broken beer bottles. Both were admitted to the hospital and are expected to make a full recovery. No word on whether either man was arrested or whether either had his mind changed about his preferred choice of phone.

How many tabs does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

Redditor Peanut Butter Shudder suggested an answer to Ray’s question. Last week during Shower Thoughts, Ray said he didn’t know how many tabs he had ever opened in his life. Peanut Butter Shudder mentioned Tab for a Cause on our reddit page (reddit.com/r/deemable) Tab for a Cause apparently tracks how many tabs you open and it has a bit of slacktivism built into it. If you install the browser extension, you’ll raise money for charities simply by browsing the internet. Heck, why not?

Who had the best segue?

Vote! Send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com or leave us a voicemail at 1-888-972-9868.

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: iPhone vs Android by nrkbeta.no is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0.

Hey folks! We are not doing a normal podcast this week because of One Spark. Fortunately, there wasn’t much news in the tech world this week anyway. Basically everyone is sitting on their hands waiting for the Apple Watch to come out. But, if you have a Mac or an iOS device, Ray does have some news for you that you’ll want to hear, especially if you have an iPhone on Sprint. Enjoy this incredibly short, “all Ray” episode of Deemable Tech.

This week the guys are elated about the death of Internet Explorer, the low, low price of free to upgrade to Windows 10, (even if you never paid for Windows 7 or 8) and Mario, Zelda and the gang are finally coming to mobile phones, but not the way you want them to.

If you haven’t subscribed to Deemable Tech yet, get on it! Subscribe to Deemable Tech in iTunes, on Stitcher or subscribe to the show in another podcast reader. Make sure to leave us a review in iTunes and Stitcher. The more reviews we have the higher we’ll be listed, and the more listeners will see our show.

And make sure to share us 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

Windows 10 is free for everybody!

So, you may have heard of the latest version of Windows that Microsoft is working on releasing later this summer. If you haven’t, it’s called Windows 10. If you’re wondering why it’s called Windows 10 instead of… you know… Windows 9, it’s because of a little coding shortcut where programmers referred to Windows 95 and Windows 98 as – you guessed it – “Windows 9.”

Well, it turns out that Windows 10 is going to be FREE for everyone, well almost everyone.

Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s Windows chief to Reuters “We are upgrading all qualified PCs, genuine and non-genuine, to Windows 10”

So that means, as long as you have a computer running Windows 7 or Window 8 or 8.1 you can install 10 on your computer, at no charge, even if you stole the version that’s on your computer right now.

The Death of Internet Explorer

Microsoft confirmed this week that Internet Explorer will not be the primary web browser in Windows 10. Yes, the venerable Internet Explorer, which has been a part of Windows since Windows 95, is being put out to pasture. It will still ship with the next version of Microsoft’s operating system for backwards compatibility reasons, but a new browser with the codename Project Spartan will be Microsoft’s flagship browser. Project Spartan’s real name has not been released yet but Microsoft says that it will not use the Internet Explorer branding.

Nintendo to develop mobile games

After years of speculation, Nintendo is moving into the mobile game market. They announced this week that they have partnered with Japanese mobile game giant DeNA to “develop and operate new game apps based on Nintendo’s intellectual property, including its iconic game characters, for smart devices.”

They were quick to point out that their primary focus will still be their game consoles like the Wii U and 3DS, and that these new mobile apps are intended to complement, not replace, those systems. In the same announcement, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said that a new console codenamed NX is development.

Unfortunately for those of us hoping this means we’ll be able to play classic Mario or Zelda games on our devices, Iwata also said that Nintendo’s plans do not include direct ports of console games. He cited differences between dedicated controllers and touchscreens as the reason.

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If you have a comment, contact us at feedback at deemable.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-888-972-9868.

Help us decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story. Or vote other stories up or down. reddit.com/r/Deemable

Photo Credit: Internet Explorer, a web developers menace by Jorgen Kesseler is used under CC BY-SA 2.0.

What happens when you realize you skipped an episode number? Just keep on rollin. This week on Deemable Tech we are talking about… the Apple big announcement. Apple finally announced all the details on the Apple Watch. Apple also announced a new MacBook, ResearchKit and HBO Now.

An incoming call notification on the Apple Watch Edition. Image credit: Apple

This Week’s Run Down

Macbook

Apple announced a new laptop, called…the MacBook.

It’s thinner than the MacBook Air, but it is also less powerful than the MacBook Air and has less battery life than the MacBook Air, and it’s more expensive than the MacBook Air. So, it’s basically, just like the MacBook Air was to the original MacBook when the MacBook Air came out.

It has a 480p FaceTime Camera, but it does have a retina display though, which gives it an advantage over the MacBook Air.

The craziest part is that, except for the headphone jack, the new MacBook only has one port, USB-C. Everything goes through the USB-C port – power, display, thumb drives, accessories, everything. To do almost anything you will have to buy an adapter, which costs $79 a piece.

As a result a lot of people will not be buying this laptop, especially DJs.

The new MacBook is available in silver, Space Grey and… gold, for some reason.

The new MacBook has a new trackpad called a “Force Touch” trackpad. It does not have a physical button, but it is pressure sensitive, and gives haptic feedback when you click it. The Force Touch trackpad opens up new ways to interact with the computer such as “Gradually add pressure to the trackpad to vary the speed with which you fast-forward through a QuickTime movie or zoom in on a location in Maps.”

Apple TV – HBO Now

Apple also announced a partnership with HBO to bring unbundled HBO to cable-cutters. For $14.99 a month you can watch Game of Thrones without a cable subscription, but only on an iOS device. HBO Now is available on iPhone, iPad and the Apple TV.

ResearchKit

In one of the most surprising announcements, Apple revealed ResearchKit. ResearchKit is an open source software development kit that medical researchers can use to easily create apps for studies. The idea is that these apps will utilize the sensors in iPhones to “track movement, take measurements and record information – functions that are perfect for medical studies.” iPhone owners would be able to download these apps to participate in research and provide information regardless of where they are. Since iPhones are the most widely used smartphones, it is hoped that this will lead to larger sample sizes and more frequent data, thus creating a truer representation of the population.

Apple Watch

Preorders started on the 10th.

The watch will go on sale for reals on April 24th.

Three Versions

There are a whole bunch of combinations of watch bands and cases. Way too many to describe them all. If I did, I am pretty sure Tom would kill me.

Apple Watch Sport

• Aluminum Silver or Aluminum Space Gray Case
• Fluoroelastomer watch band
• $349 and $399

Apple Watch

• Stainless Steel Case or Stainless Steel Space Gray Case
• Fluoroelastomer ($549/$599), Classic Leather Buckle ($649/$699), Modern Leather Buckle (38mm $749), Leather Loop (Smartcase-esque – 42mm $699), Milanese Loop ($649/$699), Steel Link Bracelet ($949/$999), Space Black Steel Link ($1,049/$1,099)
• $549 up to $1099

Apple Watch Edition

• 18K Gold
• Priced from “Geez Louise” to “Hoo boy!”
  • Otherwise known as $10,000 to $17,000

Mashable – My Apple Watch Nightmare

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler pushed FCC to vote 3-2 in favor of Net Neutrality.

This week Ray, Tom and Sean talk about how the FCC has finally decided to step up to the plate and defend Net Neutrality, and the rest of the big stories in the tech world. Reddit is finally banning stolen pornography. Apple is holding a super secret press event in March. (SPOILER: It’s the Apple Watch announcement.) Pebble is Kickstarting another smartwatch. Three patients voluntarily had their arms amputated to receive bionic prosthetics. Google bought mobile payment company Softcard. And, we are one step closer to Skynet becoming self-aware, an artificial intelligence played 49 Atari games without instructions, beating the records of human players in 29 of the games.

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.

Deemable Tech Episode #73 Freedom Is Just A Four-Letter Word

Subscribe to Deemable Tech in iTunes, on Stitcher or subscribe to the show in another podcast reader. Make sure to leave us a review in iTunes and Stitcher. The more reviews we have the higher we?ll be listed, and the more listeners will see our show.

This Week’s Run Down

Reddit bans revenge porn.

Gizmodo reports that Reddit ? has outlawed porn. Wait, no. Reddit has prohibited unwanted porn. No, that’s not right either. Reddit has banned involuntary pornography. Reddit announced that that it is no longer allowing pictures or videos to be posted to the site without the permission of the subjects.

In a statement on its website reddit said:

No matter who you are, if a photograph, video, or digital image of you in a state of nudity, sexual excitement, or engaged in any act of sexual conduct, is posted or linked to on reddit without your permission, it is prohibited on reddit.

To take the photos or videos down however, you will have to report the offense to reddit. This change in policy is considered to be a direct response to the incident known as “The Fappening,” where a cache of leaked celebrity nudes was leaked online and posted to reddit.

Apple’s Not Super-Secret Press Event

The Verge is reporting that Apple sent out press invitations to a super secret event on March 9th. No one has any idea what it is about. Nah, just kidding, it’s the Apple Watch announcement. The tagline is even “Spring Forward,” an obvious time reference.

At the event, we are almost certain to find out what features actually ended up in the watch ? that will likely only run for 4 hours before the battery dies. The Verge is saying that there have been rumors of a new Macbook air and there may be an update on Beats Music.

Pebble Get Another Kickstart

Speaking of watches, Pebble has decided to rock the crowdfunding universe again. Pebble announced Tuesday it was launching another smartwatch. This one, dubbed the Pebble Time, has a color e-ink display, a microphone for dictation and voice activation, and it’s thinner than the original Pebble and more contoured to fit the wrist.

The microphone only works with Android actions right now, but Pebble is working on getting it to work with iOS soon.

Three Men Undergo Voluntary Amputations To Receive Bionic Arms

Gizmodo is reporting that three men with irreparable nerve damage have had their arms amputated and replaced with prosthetics controlled directly through their nervous systems. The procedure was performed by Oskar Aszmann at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria.

The prosthetic is powered and controlled by a small piece of healthy leg muscle that has been grafted into the patients? arm.

What is perhaps most notable is that the three patients all volunteered to have their arms amputated to undergo this procedure. While their whole arms were previously useless due to the nerve damage, they were intact.

Google Buys Mobile Payment Competitor Softcard

PachydermMcGurts submitted this next story on our sub-reddit page.

Google looks like it is doubling-down on mobile payments. According to a report from DigitalTrends.com, Google has purchased competitor Softcard. On February 23rd Google made the announcement that it had bought the wallet app company Softcard which was formerly named Isis, just like the terrorist group.

Isis started in 2009 as a joint effort by Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to get a foothold in the mobile payments industry. Unfortunately, in 2011, the terrorist group then known as the Islamic State in Iraq began fighting in Syria, and started being referred to as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS for short. The group apparently now just want to be called the Islamic State, but it was called ISIS long enough in the media to completely destroy the value, if it had any, of the company’s name.

Isis, the digital wallet app company, announced in September 2014 that it was changing its name to Softcard.

Google bought Softcard and work out a deal with AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, that all new Android phones will have Google Wallet pre-installed on them.

In a very ?Google? way, instead of consolidating the two services into one service. it’s going to keep the two services separate, and wait for this, add a new service.

Rumor has it that Google is going to announce Android Pay at the Google I/O next conference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKdvnhBFvXY

Artificial Intelligence Masters Atari Games

DeepMind Technologies, a tech startup that Google purchased last year, is working on artificial intelligence that will develop human-like problem solving skills. To do so, they needed to put it through exercises that have simple rules and clear standards for failure, yet still present a challenge for most people. They decided that old Atari 2600 games were perfect for this.

DeepMind made the AI play through 49 different Atari 2600 games without giving it instructions for how the various games were played. When it completed the games correctly and got a high score, the AI was rewarded. It eventually beat previous AI records for 43 of the games, and even exceeded the skills of master human players for 29 of them.

A DeepMind Vice President told Bloomberg that this represents “the first time anyone has built a single learning system that learns directly from experience and manage a wide range of challenging tasks,” and that their ultimate goal will be to use this for smart, general purpose tools.

THE BIG STORY

FCC Defends Net Neutrality

The Verge put together a great aggregation of reactions to Net Neutrality from around the net. It’s no surprise, the ISPs are NOT happy.

The FCC voted today, 3-2, to classify broadband internet as a public utility under Title II. This means that, for now at least, the FCC has the ability to regulate broadband internet and enforce net neutrality.

Verizon and Comcast released statements stating that they were disappointed with the ruling, while AT&T issued a more ominous statement hinting that the FCC might be overruled by congress or the courts.

Some Republican lawmakers have threatened legislative action to overrule the FCC. The FCC vote did fall along party lines, with the three Democrat board members voting for net neutrality and the two Republicans voting against.

Tech companies were almost uniformly ecstatic, with Netflix, Kickstarter, Microsoft and Tumblr all chiming in.

At the heart of the new classification are rules banning the blocking or throttling of traffic, as well as paid prioritization, and a requirement that ISPs disclose network management practices.

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Next week we are going to be tossing in some app and gadget reviews like we’ve been promising. 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.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: “Tom Wheeler – Caricature” by DonkeyHotey is used under CC BY 2.0.

Ellen writes, How do I download videos from my iPhone to my PC? When I try to email them to myself it shrinks the video. I’ve been told to just connect my phone to my computer and download them that way, but how?

Here’s what you need to do Ellen. Fire up your computer, grab the charging cable for your iPhone and plug one end into your iPhone and the other end into your computer. Only one end will fit the iPhone, and the other end is the obvious end you’ll plug into the PC.

With this easy to follow guide, you too can plug your iPhone into your computer.

If this is the first time you have plugged your iPhone into your computer, you’ll see a pop up indicating that the software for the device is being installed.

Without the device driver software, the two pieces of hardware cannot communicate.

Right after you plug in your iPhone, (or after the driver software is done installing) you’ll get a notification on your phone that asks if you should trust this computer. Tap Trust.

Trust is an important part of any relationship, especially the one between a smartphone and a computer.

You may see a similar window appear on your computer. Click Continue.

Trust is a two-way street.

Then, if you’re using a Windows PC, you should get a pop up window on the computer that basically is asking “What do you want to do with this?” It will literally say “AutoPlay” and give you options to choose from. Click “Import Pictures and Videos.”

So, uh, what do you wanna do with this here thing, eh?

All of your pictures and videos will be selected. You can make changes to how and where they are imported by clicking Import Settings.

Import pictures and videos? That sounds exactly like what I wanted to do!

On the Import Settings Menu, you can choose to send the images and videos to different folders, change the file name of the photos and videos, and other options. Click OK to keep your changes.

Lots of choices. Where do you want what to go? Don’t feel like making choices? Afraid of succumbing to analysis paralysis? Just click Cancel, and get out of there.

Once you’ve chosen which videos and pictures you want to import, then click Import. Your images and videos will begin to transfer to your computer. Depending on how many pictures you have, this may happen quickly, or it may take a while.

You’ll watch your life flash before your eyes ? if you took a picture of every moment of your life.

You’ll see a checkbox that says, “erase after importing.” We recommend not checking it. If there is a problem transferring the video, then the video is gone. It’s best to wait until you you?ve confirmed that the video is transferred, and then delete it from your iPhone manually.

Finally! The pictures and videos are on the computer!

Another window will open up showing all of your pictures and videos that you just imported.

If for some reason you don’t get a pop-up, click the Start button and select “Computer.”

Then, you’ll right-click the iPhone icon, and select “Import Pictures and Videos.” From there, you’ll do everything else the same as we said before.

If you are using a Mac it starts out the same: plug the iPhone in and tell it to trust the computer.

Then, you’ll need to open the application Image Capture or iPhoto. We prefer Image Capture because you can choose where the video is stored on your hard drive.

Just open the Launchpad, and find Image Capture. (Start typing in Image Capture. It will be the only thing that comes up.) You could use iPhoto, but trust me, you don’t want to.

Once Image Capture is open, at the bottom of the window, you can select which folder to import them to.

You can choose the obvious places like Pictures or Documents, or you can decide to save them where ever you want to.

You could even choose to import your pictures and videos to iPhoto, but no one really knows why you would want to do that.

Then, you can click the “Import All” button or select the individual video and click “Import.”

Alright, this week is your last week to jump ship. If you don’t like hearing tech news, you need to unsubscribe from this show now. Otherwise, you’re gonna be stuck listening to us talk about the latest tech news and listen to us review apps and gadgets! After this week, we won’t remind you any more. You can always just go subscribe to Ask Deemable Tech if you want to hear us answer tech questions though. We’ll always be there for you.

If you do like hearing about the latest happenings in the tech world, and haven’t subscribed to Deemable Tech yet, get on it! And make sure to share us on the forums, Facebook, Twitter ? all over the interwebs.

And help 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. reddit.com/r/Deemable or Deemable.com/reddit either way, it will take you to the same place.

Everything in the news this week was pretty shocking.

This Weeks Run Down

Apparently the FAA thinks it is 1967

This Sunday, the FAA finally released its proposal for regulations on unmanned commercial aircraft, a.k.a. drones. The proposed requirements, are surprisingly ? or unsurprisingly, depending on who you ask ? arcane and draconian.

The drones must be under 55 pounds or 25 kilograms. They can only be operated in daylight, and within the operator’s line of sight! They have to fly under 500 feet, no faster than 100 mph (Which those two aren’t unreasonable) But, they also can NEVER fly over anyone except for the people flying the drone.

This pretty much shoots down any plans that Amazon had for Prime Air since delivering packages with a drone, kinda requires the drone to be out of sight for it to be useful. And it would almost certainly have to fly over some people to get to my porch.

Some drone startups aren’t too concerned though. Drones could possibly be used for some commercial purposes, like a farmer surveying his field from the sky.

Lenovo got caught with its hand in the cookie jar

The Next Web is reporting that Lenovo has been installing adware on laptops. The adware, called Superfish, inserts third-party ads into your Google Searches and other websites, even those running with secure encryption, just like the kind of malware that doesn’t intentionally come with your new computer.

Once users started complaining about the ads Lenovo was quick to roll back the program and to post directions on its website about how to uninstall it.

Lenovo said,

Superfish was previously included on some consumer notebook products shipped in a short window between September and December to help customers potentially discover interesting products while shopping.  However, user feedback was not positive.

Unfortunately security researchers have discovered that simply uninstalling the software is not enough. Superfish also include a ?root certificate’ that allows any program that gains access to it to perform what are known as ?man in the middle’ attacks, potentially compromising the security of sensitive user information like banking passwords.

Lenovo initially denied the security vulnerability, but is now saying that it will release new software that will completely remove Superfish and any security certificates related to it.

In the meantime, laptops with Superfish installed are currently available from stores such as Best Buy. Caveat emptor.

After the story broke, a developer put together a website that lets Lenovo laptop owners find out if they are affected by the program, and Lenovo’s current instructions include how to uninstall the basic Superfish program.

LoopPay sold out to Samsung.

In an announcement Wednesday, LoopPay, the company that makes the electronic wallet/phone case for the iPhone, let everyone know that they have been bought by Samsung. They will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics America, Inc.

They haven’t said anything about incorporating the LoopPay Digital wallet platform into Samsung devices. However, it seems to support the rumors that the next Galaxy phone will probably have LoopPay built into it.

Ray recently reviewed the LoopPay CardCase on a previous episode of Deemable Tech.

Apple iCar?

Wired is reporting that according to a lawsuit filed by electric-car battery manufacturer A123 Systems, Apple has been poaching engineers for its own large-scale car battery division. The lawsuit alleges that an A123 engineer has been helping Apple woo senior-level engineers over to their company. This is adding fuel to rumors that Apple is working on its own electric car.

Other things hinting at this: Apple has over 600 employees that used to work in the automotive industry, including 46 that were formerly with Tesla. Tesla CEO Elon Musk told Bloomberg earlier this month that Apple has been offering $250,000 signing bonuses to entice Tesla employees to leave.

Also, a mysterious van registered to Apple has been spotted driving around San Francisco with an array of equipment including cameras mounted on top. People are speculating that this could be for a self-driving car or a street-mapping system.

In another interview with Bloomberg, former GM CEO Dan Akerson said Apple should stay away from making cars. Akerson said “They’d better think carefully if they want to get into the hard-core manufacturing. We take steel, raw steel, and turn it into car. They have no idea what they’re getting into if they get into that.?

Sounds a lot like Steve Balmer’s advice to Apple many years ago about getting into making phones.

Cable Companies Behaving Badly

A Time Warner Cable customer reported to Ars Technica today that she received a letter from the company in which her first name had been changed to, well, a word we can’t say on this podcast. It starts with a ‘c.’

The letter read, ?Dear C*#! Martinez? and then went tried to convince the customer not to cancel her cable.

The other major US cable company, Comcast, has been in the news several times in the past few months for similar cases. Comcast customers have reported receiving notices from the company in which their names were changed to things like  “dummy,” “whore” and “super bitch.” Comcast and Time Warner Cable announced last year that they plan to merge, pending Federal approval. However, both companies are notorious for their poor customer service and stories like these will not help their case.

Time Warner Cable stated that the name change was due to the actions of a third-party vendor. It apologized to Mrs. Martinez and offered her a free year of cable.

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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 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: “Blog OMG!” by Mike Licht is used under CC BY 2.0.

It’s always good to make sure you have the latest version of iOS that your Apple device can run. iOS updates include bug fixes and security fixes that keep your smartphone and tablet running fresh and safe. Here’s how to update your iPhone to the latest version, iOS 8.1.3.

Q: I’m fairly new to Apple computers, and one of the reasons I made the switch from PC was to avoid viruses, hackers and other bad stuff. Should I install an antivirus program on my Apple laptop?

A: If you’re like us, Nancy, you’ve probably heard a lot of people say that Macs don’t get viruses. While this isn’t entirely true, there is a lot to back this claim up. Macs are safer on average, and it has to do with a couple of factors.

Image credit: Ricky Romero / Flickr

When hackers write a virus or a piece of malware, their goal is to make money. The most efficient way to make money is to get the virus on as many computers as they can. Apple has always had a pretty low market share in the world of home computers, usually around 10 percent. So, if you were trying to write a virus, what would make the most sense: writing it for the majority of computers running a version of Windows, or writing it for the small number of Macs?

Also, Mac OS X is based on Unix, which (without getting into all the nerdy technical details) makes it much harder to hack than Windows. However, this does not mean that Macs are unhackable.

You may have heard about the recently-discovered bug called Shellshock, which can let a hacker gain unauthorized access to computers running Mac OS or Linux. Although it impacts very few Mac users, it is just one of several bugs and security vulnerabilities that have been discovered in Mac OS X lately. Apple does a fairly good job of patching these up once they’ve been discovered, but it usually takes a little while.

To answer your question, Nancy: we actually wouldn’t recommend installing any antivirus software, unless you are using your computer to run a business. This may sound strange considering what we just said about recent bugs, but it has to do with the cost-to-benefit ratio. As we said, the chance of you getting a virus is very low. When you take those odds into account with the cost of antivirus software, and the amount of resources that software takes making the computer slower and less productive, it just doesn’t make sense to invest that much into it.

We do recommend, though, that you install antivirus software if you use your computer to run a business, especially if you work in the medical field or if the data on your computer is incredibly sensitive. Avast and Kasperky both make highly rated antivirus software for Mac OS X. Avast is free, and Kasperky starts at $39.95.

Q: My son wants some games for our family’s new laptop. Can you recommend a way we can download games without being exposed to viruses?

Image credit: Valve

A: Well, Grant, you’re in luck because there are a few great one-stop game shops out there, including the Windows Store, the Mac App Store, and GameFly Digital. The one we recommend, though, is called Steam.

Steam was created by computer game maker Valve to go along with the release of their game, Half-Life 2. It was originally developed as a way to better distribute updates for Valve games, curb piracy, and to let players access online multiplayer games. Valve then began to sell their own games through the platform, and eventually let other companies do the same. Today, virtually every computer game that comes out is available on Steam.

If you have an Xbox, Steam is a little bit like Xbox Live for your home computer. It’s a program that allows you to buy and download games, chat with friends and play games with them online. Steam has all of the top titles you’ll find on Xbox and Playstation (for example, the Batman: Arkham Asylum games), but it also has simple casual games like you probably have on your phone (like Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja).

To use it, you’ll need to download their software, known as the Steam client, from their site, steampowered.com. They have versions available for Windows, Mac and Linux (note: since some games are made for specific operating systems, not every game you can purchase through Steam will work on all three). It doesn’t cost anything to use the platform itself, but games you can download through it do cost money.

Prices are usually anywhere from $0.50 to $60.00 depending on the game. Some games can cost more than that, while others are sometimes offered for free. Another thing we like about Steam is that they have sales basically every single day; you’ll see $50 games for $20, $25 for $5 and so on. You can add games you’re interested in to a wish list and Steam will send you an email when they go on sale.

Once you’ve purchased a game through Steam, it will automatically begin downloading to your computer. This will happen in the background, so you can check Facebook or watch some YouTube videos while you wait. Then, once it’s downloaded, you can launch the game from inside of Steam. If there any updates for the game, it will automatically download them for you. And don’t worry, all of this content is first going through Valve, who work to make sure there are no viruses in the files.

Steam also offers parental controls in case you’re worried about your son playing games that aren’t age-appropriate. Under the “Settings” menu, you can activate a password-protected mode called “Family Options” which will filter which games he buy or play.

So, Grant, Steam is one way to safely download games for your home computer. We also recommend checking out GameFly Digital (which is very similar), or the Windows and Mac stores. Happy gaming!

This week on Deemable Tech Tom and Ray answered questions about what to do if your Windows is upside down, how to delete multiple emails on your iPhone, how to print from your tablet, what to do if you have a corrupted USB drive, and more.

#52 Spin The Battery

TRANSCRIPT

RAY: From WJCT studios in Jacksonville, Florida, I’m Ray Hollister,

TOM: I’m Tom Braun,

RAY: and this is Deemable Tech. This week’s episode of 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 a small orange dot com.

TOM: Got a question about your computer, smart phone, tablet or the Internet? You can give us a call us at One Eight Eight Eight, Nine Seven Two, Nine Eight Six Eight, or send us an email to questions@deemable.com.

TOM: Today on the show we’re going to answer your questions about what to do if your Windows is upside down,

RAY: How to delete multiple emails on your iPhone,

TOM: How to print from your tablet,

RAY: And what to do if you have a corrupted USB drive. But first –

TOM: Ray, have you been to the Google homepage recently?

RAY: Sure?

TOM: Have you by chance noticed the blue bar across the top? Actually it’s been across the top of Google+, Google Drive, Google Play and several other Google sites.

RAY: Yeah, I’ve seen it, but I just clicked OK or dismissed it or whatever.

TOM: That’s exactly what they want you to do.

RAY: So what have they changed?

TOM: Basically, Google wants to do what Facebook did a couple years ago and show ads to your friends based on things you’ve +1’d or rated highly. So if I bought the new Daft Punk album on Google Play Music, you might see an ad that says “Tom Braun recommends Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories.” Or something like that.

RAY: Oh wonderful. So now anything I plus can be advertised to other people on Google?

TOM: Well, there is a way out. Next time you see that blue bar, actually click on the link to see the new terms and conditions. Or you can go to http://www.google.com/settings/ads. Then select the option to ?opt out’ of Google’s so-called ?interest based ads’. There will be a pop-up that tries to talk you out of it, but persevere.

RAY: Why would anyone want to be part of Google’s ad program?

TOM: Well they’re counting on people to just not care enough to opt out. And if you don’t, then don’t. But folks should be aware that it’s happening and no how to get out of it.

RAY: Absolutely. Alright, let’s take some questions. What’s our first question, Tom?

Prem writes, one of my 8 GB USB drive (with about 4 GB, very important data files in many folders) is corrupted or damaged. I can see all the folders but soon the computer goes to non-responding mode and cannot open any folder or files. What is the best data recovery software one can download and use or is there software i can purchase to recover the data from this USB drive? I do not want to send it outside for data recovery. Please help. Please note the types of files in folders are: word files, pdf files, images of checks, and saved e-files. Looking forward for your response.

TOM: Hi Prem, thanks for your question. Having corrupted or inaccessible data is not a fun situation to be in. We can give you a couple of suggestions, but there’s no guarantee that you will be able to get your data back. I know you don’t want to send the drive out for data recovery services, but that is the #1 best way to make sure that you can salvage whatever you can from the drive. It’s not as expensive as you might think, either. There are places that will do a basic recovery for as little as $60.

RAY: The good news is, your computer can still see the USB drive. If you couldn’t access the drive at all you would be out of luck.

TOM: Right, most likely the drive is only logically corrupted. In other words, the data has gotten scrambled somehow but there is nothing physically wrong with the drive.

Now, I hate to say this because it’s like telling you to close the barn door after the horse has escaped, but backup, backup, backup! Always keep your important files in at least two places.

RAY: In fact, keep them in three places. One on your USB drive, one on your hard drive, and one in the cloud. You definitely don’t want to keep something only on a flash memory drive, though.

Those little USB flash drives are not very reliable. They use the cheapest memory possible to keep the price down. Additionally, even if the drive doesn’t become corrupted, it’s very easy to lose or damage! I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve been unable to find a USB drive, and then later it turned up at the bottom of some drawer. Those things are easy to lose. You could leave it at the coffee shop. It could fall out of your pocket. It could get stepped on.

You should never rely on a USB drive as the sole copy of your files.

Anyway, enough lecturing. Tom, how can we help Prem recover those files?

TOM: First things first, just in case, try plugging your USB drive into another computer. I have personally encountered cases before where one computer could read a drive but another couldn’t. That probably won’t solve your problem in this case, but it’s worth trying.

Also, make sure that you do not attempt to update files on the USB drive, delete them, or add them. Doing any of these things will make changes to the drive. This is known as ?writing’ to the drive. At this point every ?write’ to the drive pushes it further towards irrecoverable oblivion!

Before we dive into the recovery tools that are available, let’s use the ones you already have. You didn’t specify but I assume you’re using Windows. Windows actually has its own, fairly powerful recovery tool. But you’ll need to run it from the command line.

Click the start button and then search for ?cmd’ and hit enter. This will bring up a black box with white text. Do you know the letter of your USB drive? It’s probably something like D, E or F.

At the command line, type CHKDSK and the letter of your drive followed by /r. So for example, CHKDSK d /r. CHKDSK is a windows utility that will scan your damaged drive and attempt to figure out what’s wrong. The /r option tells it to attempt to repair any problems it finds. Run that and then check your drive and see if it’s recovered any files. If it has, be sure to immediately copy them to your hard drive!

If you still don’t have all your files, there are several free recovery programs out there. You might as well try as many as you can. Get everything you can from one program and then try the next.

The first program we found was TestDisk. TestDisk is an open-source program, so it’s not extremely user-friendly. In fact you will have to run it from the Windows command prompt. But it’s pretty good according to LifeHacker. There is documentation at the link in the show notes.

Another program is iCare Data Recovery Free. It’s got some positive reviews. You’ll want to use the Format Recovery option. The user interface is barebones, but there is a tutorial. We will provide a link to it in the show notes.

There are lots of other recovery programs. Three others that we found are Disk Digger, PC Inspector and Restoration.

Again, you can try more than one. Bear in mind, though, that as these programs have to ?write’ to the drive that as you continue to use them the drive will become increasingly unusable.

When you’ve recovered your files, you may be able to recover the USB drive too. Try formatting it. If the problem is merely some corrupt data, this will wipe it clean and you’ll have a usable drive once more. Be sure not to keep the only copy of important files on it in the future, though!

Okay, Prem. Hopefully some of these programs work for you. Good luck!

Jan wrote in: I purchased my iPhone this year but have years’ worth of previous emails stored. How can I delete without having to delete one at a time? How can I sync my iPhone email and my computer email so that I don’t have to delete on both? How can I store photos sent via text messaging? Thanks!

Morgan writes, Hi, I have been having something really strange happen to my Galaxy S3. I will be using it and suddenly the screen will flicker and then it will shut down. It won’t turn back on until I plug it in, even if it was charged very recently. I am worried that something is very wrong with my phone. Help!

RAY: That’s scary!

TOM: Yeah, it is a scary-sounding problem. In fact I’m pretty sure I know what’s going on, and it’s a good-news-bad-news type of situation.

RAY: OK, what’s the bad news?

TOM: The bad news is that it is almost certainly a hardware problem. Something is physically wrong with Morgan’s phone.

RAY: Well that sucks! I hope the good news is really good!

TOM: It’s pretty good. The part of your phone that has probably gone bad is the easiest part to replace, and relatively inexpensive. I’m talking about the battery. My guess is that Morgan needs a new battery. And there’s an easy way to test that.

Okay Morgan, here’s what I want you to do: peel the back plate off of your phone and dig out that battery. Set it on a flat surface in front of you, like a table or desk.

RAY: Okay?

TOM: Now, spin it!

RAY: What?

TOM: Batteries are flat, or at least they are supposed to be. A good battery won’t spin. However when a battery goes bad, at least in the case of the Galaxy S3, it may develop a slight bulge. If your battery spins on one side or the other, that means that side is now curved. You’ve got a bulgy battery. Time for a new one!

Fortunately, replacement batteries start for as low as $9.99 on Amazon.com. If you’re still under warranty, you can take the phone to the store you bought it at, show them your cool battery trick, and they’ll probably replace it for free.

Morton asks: I recently bought an ASUS Transformer Pad (tablet), model #TF300T. I use it in conjunction with Wi-Fi connections to the internet.

I would like to know if there is any SIMPLE printer on the market which I can use with this Tablet (Made in Taiwan). Right now the only access to printing is a friend’s Wi-Fi-enabled Lap Top which has a printer attached.

My tablet is an ANDROID-based tablet, and all printers I see are only compatible with WINDOWS or MAC.

RAY: Go to https://www.google.com/cloudprint/learn/ or just look for the Cloud Print Ready. Or if you want to buy an AirPrint ready printer that isn’t Cloud Print Ready, there is an app called PrintBot which will let you print from an Android device to an AirPrint ready printer.

Susanna wrote in: I have a new laptop, and I am planning on selling my old laptop. I have Adobe Creative Suite for on my old Mac laptop and I want to move it to my new Mac. Is there anything I need to do to put it on my new laptop or can I just install it?

Adobe only lets you activate the software on as many computers as you have paid for; with a single license for Adobe software you may install it on two computers. So, if you do not deactivate it on the first computer and you only have paid for one license, you will not be able to install it on any other computers.

To deactivate the software from your computer:

Make sure the computer that has the software installed is connected to the Internet.
Choose Help > Deactivate in the product you wish to deactivate. If you have a suite then choosing one of the products will Deactivate the entire suite.
Select Deactivate Permanently

If you unfortunately already sold your old laptop, you’re not out of luck, but you will have to contact Adobe directly to deactivate it so that you can activate it on another computer.

http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/activation-deactivation-products.html

Richard writes, My cats walked on my computer one day and now my Dell laptop boots up upside down and to get it right I have to press the windows key and the p button, then when I stop duplicate screen mode, the screen reverts to normal. How can I get it to boot up right?
TOM: Geez, and I thought my cat was bad because he gets on top of the bookshelf.
RAY: Like any cat, this cat knows a good prank when he sees it.
TOM: Hahahah! Not to worry Richard, this is a very easy fix. On some versions of Windows some genius at Microsoft thought it was a good idea to have a hot-key combination that changes the orientation of your screen.
Now I can see why very occasionally you might want to flip your screen 90 degrees, but I can’t imagine doing it often enough that you would need a short sequence of keystrokes to do it. Basically, Microsoft created the ultimate hotkey shortcut for pranksters.
RAY: Or cats.
TOM: Right. To change the orientation of your screen, once you’ve logged in upside-down, hold down CTRL+ALT+UP ARROW and that ought to right your screen. CTRL+ALT+ANY ARROW KEY will change your screen so it’s facing the direction of the arrow.
Now you know, so do us a favor: once you change your screen back, don’t use this knowledge for evil.
RAY: If that doesn’t work, you can also do it manually through the Control Panel.

• Click the Start menu and open “Control Panel.”
• Click “Adjust Screen Resolution”
• Click to open the “Orientation” menu.
• Choose from : “Landscape,” “Portrait,” “Landscape (Flipped)” and “Portrait (Flipped)” Click your desired orientation option to have Windows display a thumbnail preview of what it will look like.
• Click “Apply,” then click “Keep Changes” or “Revert” to revert to the original orientation.

Thanks for all your questions, and keep them coming. Call us at our toll-free number, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email at questions@deemable.com. Also, subscribe to the show! Search for Deemable Tech on iTunes, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter and follow us or subscribe.

Our producer is Sean Birch. I’m Ray Hollister, I’m Tom Braun, and this is Deemable Tech. Thanks for listening. Have a great week.

This week, we’re finally half-back in studio. “Half-back” because Tom was out sick, but Amber Hollister, Ray’s wife, came in to fill Tom’s shoes. Ray and Amber were joined in the studio by Brian DeAlexandris, the owner of PrepChefs.com, to talk about his incredible company that delivers delicious, ready-to-cook, homemade style meals. If you’ve ever wished that you could pick up your iPhone and make dinner for the entire week appear at your doorstep, you need to listen to this episode!

After the interview, Ray and Amber recapped the Apple iPhone 5C and 5S announcement and answered a listener’s question about security questions.

#48 PrepChefs.com, New iPhones and In-security Questions

DRAFT TRANSCRIPT

RAY: From WJCT studios in Jacksonville, Florida, I’m Ray Hollister,

AMBER: I’m Amber Hollister,

RAY: and this is Deemable Tech, tech help worth listening to.

RAY: This week’s episode of 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 a small orange dot com.

RAY: So, as you can tell Tom is out of the studio today, so we’re joined today by wife Amber Hollister.

Does it feel weird being in here instead of at home watching the show on the website?

Got a question about your computer, smart phone, tablet or the Internet? Give us a call us at One Eight Eight Eight, Nine Seven Two, Nine Eight Six Eight, or send us an email at questions@deemable.com.

RAY: Well, as you might remember, we were doing a contest to win a $50 Amazon Gift Card, and the time is now to announce the winner.

[Drumroll]

… No one!

That’s right. A lot of people liked us on Facebook and Twitter and subscribed to the show on iTunes and YouTube, but not a single person emailed us at giftcard@deemable.com to enter the contest, except for one guy that sent us some spam. So, that contest was an epic fail.

But we’ve learned from the experience, and we are starting a new Amazon Gift Card contest that is much easier to enter. All you have to do is answer a few questions about the Deemable Tech podcast.

Don’t worry, it’s not a trivia contest. We just need your opinion on a few questions. If you could take a few minutes and answer our survey it will really help us out a lot. And, just for doing so, you’ll be entered to win a $20 Amazon Gift Card.

Just go to Deemable.com and click the link to take the survey.  You can’t miss it, it will be the first or second article at the top until the contest is over. Speaking of which, it ends September 30th, so don’t wait, go submit your survey answers right now,… unless you’re listening live, then just load the page in the background and answer the questions after the show is over.

Now, on to the show. So, Amber you remember the 90s, right?

AMBER: Sure,

• it started with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union,

• They were playing alternative, grunge and ska on the radio,

• Dolly the sheep was the first cloned animal,

• There was the Iraq war, the Lewinski scandal, the ramp up to the fear of Y2K bug,

• and of course, that was the decade when Al Gore invented the Internet.

RAY: Wow, that was a really in depth description.

AMBER: [pause] I just looked on Wikipedia.

RAY: Ah. Well, I ask because remember how back in the old days of the Information Superhighway, the Internet was going to change how we did everything? Back then, they predicted that by now, we would be doing all of our shopping on the Internet. Brick and mortar stores would be relics of the past. We would buy everything online, all of our electronics, all of our clothes, all of our groceries would be bought online.

I have never bought a single piece of clothing online, have you?

AMBER: *answer, and vamp*

RAY: Well, obviously the Internet has turned out a bit differently than they predicted. But, there’s one thing that you can do online that they did predict right. That is buying your food online. Now, I’m not talking about going to the grocery store and buying your groceries online, although there are services that will do that for you, and you can even buy groceries on Amazon. What I’m talking about is delicious, ready to cook meals delivered to your door.

So, a little over a month ago I found out about this website that is here in Jacksonville called PrepChefs.com. The website looked fantastic, so we decided to check it out. My wife Amber and I have been using the service for about a month now, and we have loved it, so I invited the owner Brian DeAlexandris to join us here in the studio to tell us more about it.

Thanks for joining us Brian.

Also, because, I’ll be honest, she knows more about cooking these days than I do, I also invited my wife Amber to join us in the studio to tell us about her experience using the service.

OUTRO

Thanks for all your questions, and keep them coming. Call us at our toll-free number, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email at questions@deemable.com. Also, subscribe to the show! Search for Deemable Tech on iTunes or point your favorite podcast app to dmbl.co/pod.

Our producer is Sean Birch. Thanks to Robert Snyder for Video Production Assistance. I’m Ray Hollister, I’m Tom Braun, and this is Deemable Tech. Thanks for listening. Have a great week.