Just don’t bring it up.

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

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

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

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

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

THE RUN DOWN

Don’t buy YouTube Red on your iPhone

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

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

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

Advertisers say they broke the Web

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

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

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

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

Amazon goes after fake reviewers

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

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

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

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

Fortunately, Amazon is not going after funny reviews.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LogMeIn Bought LastPass

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

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

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

Google buys entire alphabet

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

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

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

Google?s New Flagship Phones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE RUN DOWN

Facebook ?Likes’ rumors of a ?Dislike’ button

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Random guy buys Google.com from Google for $12

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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, 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.

If Google can do it, we can too! The title of this episode is this GIF.

This week the guys geek out over Tesla adding an autopilot feature to their electric cars, mourn the death of TigerDirect retail stores, and wonder if they can follow in Google’s footsteps and communicate purely through GIFs. Plus, Ray shares his thoughts on the Cogito smartwatch.

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

Tesla Announces Software Update for Cars Which Adds “Autopilot” Feature

Tesla CEO Elon Musk held a press conference this week at which he announced that late model Teslas will be getting a software update that will give them a new feature called ‘autopilot.’ The autopilot feature will bring ordinary Tesla electric cars that much closer to being self-driving, enabling them to stay in their lane on a well-marked highway without driver intervention. Musk claimed that the autopilot technology would enable to a driver to make it from San Francisco to Seattle without steering.

Musk also announced a feature called Range Assurance which will alert Tesla drivers when the charge in their car is getting too low to make it to the nearest charging station.

$10 Million Target Credit Card Data Breach Settlement Gets Preliminary Approval

You probably remember the massive data breach that hit Target during the 2013 holiday season where tens of millions of credit cards were stolen right out of their systems. A class action lawsuit was filed and now Target is preparing to settle? for $10 million dollars.

If that amount seems low to you, it is because Target is not going to do the usual thing and send five dollars to every customer whose card number was stolen. Instead, card holders can only be reimbursed if they can show that they were actually hurt by the data breach. They need to have had fraudulent charges placed on their card that they were not reimbursed for, that negatively affected their credit score, or show that they spent a lot of time and money resolving the problem, or that it harmed them in some other way.

The proposed settlement is only preliminary, and members of the class action suit have until November 10th to object.

RadioShack Puts Customer Data Up for Sale in Bankruptcy Auction

RadioShack is on the auction block this week as its creditors attempt to sell the company?s assets – this apparently includes a large chunk of customer data, including 65 million customer names and physical addresses and 13 million email addresses. Consumer advocates are concerned, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claims it may be illegal under state law. Texas does not allow companies to violate their own privacy policies and signage in RadioShack promises that they will not sell their private mailing list.

AT&T is also opposing the sale of data because they say RadioShack is not entitled to personal information it collects from wireless sales. AT&T wants the data destroyed to keep it from falling into competitors hands.

A bankruptcy court still has to approve the deal.

TigerDirect Closing Retail Stores

Speaking of defunct electronic stores, remember Circuit City… CompUSA… Ultimate Electronics? Well, TigerDirect bought them in the late aughts. Well, now TigerDirect is joining them in the electronic retail store afterlife. Two of the former executives for TigerDirect were recently sentenced to 60 and 80 months in jail for a kickback scheme that cost the company $27 million. Apparently that hurt the company enough that the company decided to close all by two retail stores.

It makes me sad because TigerDirect was a “dot com boom” success story. They actually started as a catalog company, but transitioned into internet sales early. When all of the retail computer stores started dying, TigerDirect was holding strong, and they bought up the stores and their IP and entered the retail market. They did a fantastic job of turning stores like CompUSA and Circuit City, which were known for fancy displays and overpriced electronics, into stores with smart employees, simple displays and prices that competed with the Internet.

TigerDirect is going to continue selling computers, electronics and computer components on its website.

No word yet if NewEgg is planning on buying its stores, but that would be the perfect irony.

Facial Recognition Software Leads To Arrest of Jacksonville Man Who Faked His Own Death

Another thing the internet has ruined: faking your own death. Jacksonville businessman Jose Lantigua had been reported dead in Venezuela two years ago. But when he attempted to apply for a new passport under his new, false identity the US State Department used facial recognition software to match him to his original identity in their database. Federal agents then set up a sting operation and caught him wearing a brown toupee and ?a poorly dyed beard.?

Lantigua is wanted on numerous counts of insurance fraud, since his family attempted to collect on his life insurance policy after his death. The insurance company has long viewed this with suspicion.

Google Responds to Reporter with GIF Instead of “No Comment”

This week, Daily Dot writer Richard Lewis published a story about YouTube reportedly planning to relaunch its livestreaming platform with a focus on computer gaming and esports. This is similar to Twitch, which Google tried to buy last year before it ended up being purchased by Amazon.

Lewis reached out to Google for a comment on the reports, and they apparently responded with something only Google could get away with. Instead of the usual “no comment,” the representative sent Lewis this animated GIF of a little girl shrugging. No text, just the GIF.

Lewis at first assumed that this was a joke, and said that he received a “no comment” response from Google in his story. The same representative sent another message saying that the GIF was, in fact, their official response.

Reviews

Ray shares his thoughts on the Cogito swartwatch this week.

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There’s something about the unbridled enthusiasm of youth that can make you feel like you can do anything. Favorite quotes: “The world needs you to stop being boring… Yeah, you!” and “Not cool, Robert Frost!” And my absolute favorite, “It’s like that dude Journey says…” Nah, never mind. I won’t ruin it for you. Just watch.

Schadenfreude: pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. Whether we’d like to admit it or not, it is sometimes really funny to watch someone else get hurt, especially if they were in the middle of doing something remarkably stupid. Whether it was called slapstick or physical comedy, Schadenfreude has been a part of humor since the dawn of humanity. Comedians are great at faking it, but the funniest Schadenfreude has always been watching real people make really dumb decisions. In the old days, the only place you could watch videos like this were on America’s Funniest Home Videos. Nowadays, anyone with a smart phone can upload your humiliation to YouTube within seconds, and let the whole world laugh at you. On the Internet, we don’t call them Schadenfreude ; we just call them fail videos. Here’s a few examples of the funniest fails of 2012. Caution, contains some strong language, and plenty of painful falls.

Deemable Tech – Episode 22 – Turkey and Pie Hangover

On today’s episode Ray, Tom and Sean (for the first time on the microphone) talk about their Thanksgiving festivities and Black Friday/Black Thursday experiences. We also tell you how to transfer business cards wirelessly with the phone you already have, how to upload an audio file to YouTube, how to transfer a big file to someone else, and whether you should be keeping track of your business’ widgets in Excel or Access.

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

Need tech help? Got a problem or tech question about your computer, phone or tablet? Give us a call and leave us a voice mail at 904-372-DEEM (3336), or send us an email to questions at deemable dot com. We’ll take the best questions and answer them on the show.

Today’s Questions:

• How do you transfer a contact from your phone to someone else’s phone by SMS?
• How can you send a file to someone if it’s too big to email it?
• Why does YouTube say the video I uploaded is too big?
• Do I need to close my iPad apps or can I leave them all running?
• How do I transfer all of my files from my old computer to my new computer?
• Should I use Excel or Access to keep track of data?
• Is it cheaper to buy a modem, or is it cheaper to rent a modem from my internet provider?
• Can I block someone on Gmail like I can on Facebook?

Links we mentioned on today’s show:

• Share Contacts for Android phones.
• Abbyy’s Business Card Reader available for Android (9.99) and iPhone (4.99).
• Yolu Card on Android, iPhone and Windows Phone 7 (Free)
• Dropbox
• Google Drive
• Outlook.com
• How to upload audio to YouTube using Windows Movie Maker or iMovie
• YouTube.com/my_videos_upload
• Windows Easy Transfer software
• How to migrate your data from an old computer to a new one
• Gmail
• Viber
• OnDemand.WJCT.org/DT

Every parent in the United States should teach their kid at some point in their childhood how to use 911 (In other countries it’s 999, 000, 110, 112, and others) to make sure that their son or daughter knows how to call for help in the case of an emergency.  However, sometimes a parent needs to make sure their children knows the difference between what is an emergency worth calling the cops about, and what’s just going to embarrass them when the cops show up.

Both the Republican and the Democratic candidates for President have said that they want to grow the U.S. economy, and they have been doing that throughout this campaign. If it seems like the airwaves and the Internet have been filled with nothing but policital ads for the past few months, it’s because that’s mostly true. Both campaigns, and the super PACS that support them, have purchased a combined $900 million worth of ads! That’s $300 million more than at the same time in 2008. If the current rate of spending remains the same, they will likely surpass $1 billion in ad spending for the first time in history. For the states that are getting the majority of the ads, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, and North Carolina, this is a much needed infusion of cash into their state’s economy.

But, with the final days of the campaigns winding down, folks on both side of the aisle are getting tired of the mixed messages from both campaigns of hope, prosperity, fear and worry. So, regardless of who you want to be president, let’s have a laugh. Below are a collection of the funniest videos we could find about the 2012 presidential campaign. If you found any funny ones we missed, feel free to put a link to them in the comments below.

Patriot Game – OBAMA VS ROMNEY VIDEO GAME!

Debate Highlights Songified!

VP Debate Highlights Songified

Town Hall Debate Songified

FINAL DEBATE SONGIFIED! The Requiem Politicus Disputationem

“Eye Of The Sparrow” ? A Bad Lip Reading of the First 2012 Presidential Debate

Whedon On Romney

Epic Rap Battles Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney.

You Didn’t Build That – Barack Obama raps about “You Didn’t Build That” to the tune of MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This”.

Will The Real Mitt Romney Please Stand Up – Mitt Romney raps to the tune of Eminem’s The Real Slim Shady.

This one will definitely crack you up. Sometimes when you have a stupid idea, you don’t realize how stupid the idea truly is until you implement it. At least he didn’t have to go far to find ice to apply to the injury to help reduce the swelling!

WARNING EXPLICIT LANGUAGE: Even though the video is in German, there is some very strong, explicit language in English. Turn the volume off if explicit language offends you. It’s still hilarious on mute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd7c5tQCs1I

From deadly tornadoes ripping through Missouri to the faulty claims of judgment day’s arrival, this has been quite a hectic month. After being granted a week-long hiatus from writing to enjoy a mini-vacation (thanks again Ray), I return to close out the end of May by revisiting some of the trending topics in the tech world and… well, I might as well throw this out there – Go Mavericks!

The World’s Most Wanted: Osama bin Laden

Meet Cairo, a member of the Navy SEAL team who helped take out Osama bin Laden with the help of high tech doggie body armor, called the Intruder. Costing up to $30,000, the ultralight vest is not only bulletproof, but the Intruder also has a high-definition camera that is mounted on the war dog’s back so that its handlers can see his every movement. Now that’s one badass puppy.

Reconnected: PlayStation Network Back Online

What a complete nightmare the PSN outage has become for Sony, but it looks like they have finally gotten things under control as their latest Press Release may suggest. However, Sony won’t come out unscathed as the company has reportedly lost billions of dollars over the security breach, which has shaken consumer confidence in the PlayStation Network.

Greatest Marriage Proposal Ever?

3 million views in 3 days. 15 million views in 2 weeks. That means millions of women saw this marriage proposal video on YouTube throughout the world, leaving millions of women expecting a similar grand gesture of love. F.M.L.? More like “F.O.L.” for all the guys out there. But hey, at least Matt & Ginny appreciate all the responses you all have given them. Sigh…

Apple Gearing Up for Cloud Music Service

While Steve Jobs is currently on medical leave due to health-related issues, it’s not stopping him from delivering the keynote address at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference next Monday. As for Apple’s cloud-based music service, it looks like iCloud (or whatever they name it) will allow users to mirror their iTunes library as anticipated.

Official Press Release: Apple to Unveil Next Generation Software at Keynote Address on Monday, June 6

CUPERTINO, California?May 31, 2011?Apple® CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software – Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS® X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad®, iPhone® and iPod touch®; and iCloud®, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.

WWDC will feature more than 100 technical sessions presented by Apple engineers. Mac® developers will see and learn how to develop world-class Mac OS X Lion applications using its latest technologies and capabilities. Mobile developers will be able to explore the latest innovations and capabilities of iOS and learn how to greatly enhance the functionality, performance and design of their apps. All developers can bring their code to the labs and work with Apple engineers.

For more details, visit the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2011 website at developer.apple.com/wwdc.

Photo by CT via CraveSomethingMore

It’s been a slow week in the Tech world and while I could write about the latest developments in fields such as biometrics or cellular technology in order to bore you to death, I would much rather share with everyone something unique that I happened to stumble upon this morning.

From traveling across the world to rekindle a romance, or giving one’s life to save another… love can drive people to do unpredictable things. Sometimes these unpredictable actions have bad results when driven by jealous, blinding anger, but when the intentions are good, the outcome often leaves a touching story to be told for years to come. Now, more than ever before, these stories can be easily experienced by the whole world thanks to the advancements in technology and especially due to the acceptance and widespread use of digital media over the last ten years.

So while I was surfing the web in search of a topic to write about today, I inadvertently found this video of a man proposing to his fiancé in what can only be described as one of the most romantic marriage proposals ever.

Meet Matt & Ginny from Georgia, whose video was posted only 3 days ago and already has nearly 3 million views on YouTube.

Matt wanted to surprise Ginny with a proposal that she would never be able to forget; it came in the form of a movie trailer where he would ask for her father’s approval to take his daughter’s hand in marriage and… well, you need to see the rest of the video to get the whole story.

Learn more about Matt & Ginny and the background behind the proposal in their Hot 89.9 interview from yesterday:

Needless to say, Matt has really set the bar high for the rest of us with his proposal. Honestly, Matt, how are we supposed to top this?

The internet was designed to be an open and freely flowing network of communication. Sure, there are some sites that are blocked due to their content, but for the most part, you can access what you want whenever you feel the need. However, this could all change within the next few years depending on one heavily debated issue: Network Neutrality.

In December of 2010, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted three-to-two to adopt an open-internet neutrality plan, often referred to as Network Neutrality. Simply put, the basic principle of Net Neutrality is that high-speed internet providers should offer everyone equal access to the web, regardless of the content, data, applications, software, and platforms used while connected to broadband internet service. Therefore, Network Neutrality would continue to maintain the current status quo of internet access – do what thou wilt.

Last Friday, however, the House of Representatives approved House Joint Resolution 37, which repealed the Federal Communications Commission’s order of Net Neutrality. Opponents of Net Neutrality point to the need for stricter regulation due to the substantial amount of bandwidth consumed by the accelerated growth of online video and file sharing in recent years. Critics also argue that the government has no right to meddle in the affairs of business practices online and that some forms of data discrimination is actually desirable.

Without Network Neutrality though, broadband companies who own content providers, like Comcast who owns NBC, would be able to block the Web sites of their competitors and violate our freedom to information. Internet service providers would also begin to offer a tiered service model, where those who pay to be in the top tier gain the highest quality of service, speed, and access to Web content, while those in the lower tiers will get the short end of the stick.

Although the legislation must pass through the Senate first, President Obama, who is a staunch supporter of open internet rules, has already stated that he will veto any such legislation to overturn the FCC’s ruling. While the subject of Net Neutrality already has hit major, headache-inducing complications, this is an important issue to watch closely for the sake of our God-given right to YouTube as we please.

Photo by Steven Hodson via TheInquisitr