Montana is So Gangsta

Montana is So Gangsta
Number	3207
Broadcast Date	JANUARY 26, 2018
Episode Length	1:09:06
Hosts	Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane
Guests	Chris Ashley, Shannon Morse, Len Peralta

Is it possible to run an on-demand computing operation like animation and VFX into the cloud? We talk to CTO of Nimble Collective Rob DeMillo to find out. Plus Amazon is raising its Prime membership prices, how to turn off Instagram’s new feature, and researchers uncover a malware phishing operation in Lebanon aimed at Windows and Android users.

Guest

• Chris Ashley
  • SMR Podcast
• Shannon Morse
  • TekThing
    • Hak5
• Len Peralta
  • All DTNS drawings
  • This episode's drawing

Quick Hits

• These are the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+

VentureBeat's Evan Blass has two images of what he claims are the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+. Neither are significant departures from the S8. The Samsung announcement of the phones is scheduled for February 25th and shipping is said to start March 16th according to sources.

• Google experiments in local news with an app called Bulletin

Google is testing a service called Bulletin that lets anyone publish local news and events. Examples include high school sports, street closures, and bookstore readings. Bulletin is being tested in Nashville, Tennessee and Oakland, California. Users can post text, photos and videos from a phone app. Google wants to work with news organizations to take advantage of the service.

• Intel data center sales surge, warns of potential security flaw fallout

Intel beat expectations for Q4 growing 4% year-over-year on the strength of its data center business which rose 20% in revenue beating expectations of 10%. Internet of Things revenue rose 21% and programmable chips grew 35%. Intel also forecast continued growth despite the Spectre/Meltdown flaws in its chips. The company says the flaws WILL hurt sales, but promised to ship new chips this year that don't have the flaws or the performance problems caused by software fixes.

• Coincheck Says It Lost Crypto Coins Valued at About $400 Million

Coincheck, Japan's largest Cryptocurrency trader discovered 500 million NEM coins were illicitly transferred from the service. Coincheck suspended all withdrawals, stopped trading of all coins except Bitcoin and stopped taking deposits of NEM coins. Japan’s Financial Services Agency is investigating. Coincheck had applied for a license as an exchange and operates under the FSA's rules while it waits for approval.

• Walmart and Rakuten partner on grocery delivery in Japan, Kobo e-books and audiobooks in U.S.

Wal-Mart is partnering with Rakuten to offer online grocery shopping in Japan in Q3. Wal-Mart will also partner with Rakuten's Kobo to add audiobook and ebook sales to Wal-Mart's site in the US. A co-branded reading app will be released for Android and iOS.

• Facebook lets you tip game live streamers $3+

Facebook Live will now let viewers tip gameplay streamers a minimum of $3 from the desktop site. Facebook has not said how much of the amount it will keep. It's part of Facebook's gaming creator pilot program which begins tomorrow to help influencers build gaming communities on Facebook.

Discussion

Shannon Discussion Topic

• Amazon turns over record amount of customer data to US law enforcement
• Amazon won't say if it hands your Echo data to the government
• Amazon Information Request Report
• Inside Amazon Go: The camera-filled convenience store that watches you back
• Alexa doesn’t have the attention span to secretly eavesdrop on your conversations

Wiretapping was a concern, but now we use voice recognition in our households. Consumers don't generally look at their accounts to see the backlog of saved voice recordings and as such, who else has access?

The Echo buffers a few seconds of audio at a time to listen for the wake word. There is not enough AI on the device for it to do more than that. All the rest is in the cloud.

Chris Discussion Topic

• Montana governor signs executive order to keep net neutrality in the state
• Net neutrality will be enforced in New York under orders from governor
• AT&T wants Congress to draft a net neutrality law. Here’s why that’s a big deal.
• AT&T’s CEO penned an open letter calling for net neutrality laws to cover both ISPs and web companies
• AT&T’s Push For A Fake Net Neutrality Law Begins In Earnest

This week the governors of Montana and New York signed laws requiring ISPs to honor net neutrality principles in order to get contracts with state governments.

But a patchwork of these kind of state laws and the possibility of the FCC continuing to change regulations as administrations change has given the idea of a Federal law new momentum. AT&T presented its own vision of that this week which left out paid prioritization but included privacy regulations for companies like Google and Facebook.

Chris I know you were intrigued by these state moves. What interests you about them and how do you think they fit into solving this whole mess?

Adviser's Discussion

• What's the number one tech topic you're sick of?

Shannon: Smart refrigerators

Chris: Companies stealing features

Sarah: Cryptocurrency "experts"

Tom: Device rumors

Thanks to David Jones for the topic!

Host Discussion Topic

• Where has tech taken us?

Sometimes we get so close to tech that everything just seems like its broken and dysfunctional. But when you step back and look things are incredibly different than they were even in the past few years. From time to time we're going to step back and look at a topic in tech to see how it has changed over the last five to ten years. This time let's look at travel.

EXAMPLES

2003: No airport WiFi. No 3G for cell phones. Many fewer charging stations. No apps to check flights and delays. Maps came on separate GPS device. Cell phone service went out anytime you were in a busy location like a conference or a city center or when you crossed a bridge. You watched videos on portable DVD players. You could not have devices powered on during takeoff and landing. Few planes had chargers.

2008: Spotty WiFi. Some 3G but reception problems still rampant especially in places like public transit. Apps kind of existed but not in use for most of the things you needed. Could do maps on phones but connections might go out when driving. You had to have devices in "airplane mode: and could not use them during takeoff and landing. Spotty video access almost all downloaded on small screens.

2018: Tom had a flight delay notification form his app which he used to rebook to an earlier flight with one tap. His new boarding pass arrived over the Internet while on the BART train. He swiped his phone at the security checkpoint and to board the plane. On board the airline provided WiFi for a charge and inflight movies and TV to his device for free. He could use his phone from the moment he boarded until he landed only having to turn off connectivity to cell data.

Limitations today:

Sarah couldn't play a song from apple music using gogo on a flight this AM

Mobile boarding pass on United app bar code is problematic bc Sarah's phone is cracked

Links

• This episode on dailytechnewsshow.com
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Preceded by: "Millennials Are Killing CNN"

Montana is So Gangsta

Followed by: "Coming Soon"