CurrentC has its email list hacked, but the press is having a heyday. Microsoft reveals their fitness band & we are impressed.

Plus the GCHQ loophole & the Humble Bundle win for Linux users.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | HD Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | iTunes Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed

Become a supporter on Patreon:

Show Notes:

CurrentC Hacked

Here’s a bad sign for CurrentC, the fledgling mobile payment system in development by a consortium of retailers.

CurrentC is sending emails to people who signed up for the beta version of the app warning them “that unauthorized third parties obtained the e-mail addresses of some of you.”

It doesn’t sound as if it’s the worst breach in the world, but it’s definitely not good for CurrentC, which is just getting started.

CurrentC is in the news this week because of Apple Pay, Apple’s mobile payment system for the iPhone 6.

CurrentC is backed by MCX, the Merchants Consumer Exchange, which is a group of retailers trying to create a mobile payment system. It is being spearheaded by Wal-Mart.

• MCX Says QR Payments App Will Pivot To NFC If Necessary, Won’t Fine Retailers Who Break Exclusivity | TechCrunch

Davidson also detailed a hack of its email system that was revealed this morning, saying its email provider was hacked, though he wouldn’t disclose the name of the provider. He says the hack exposed dummy zip codes and “some tester email addresses.”

“The CurrentC app itself was not affected. We own this and are taking it seriously,” he said. The investigation is ongoing, and involves security experts and partners organizations. Stolen email addresses were not stored in the cloud.

Microsoft’s health revolution is here, starting with a $199 fitness tracker | The Verge

Microsoft Band, a black $199 wearable that tracks your steps, heart rate, and stride length, all while showing you text, email, and Twitter alerts. It will be available from Microsoft Stores in the US tomorrow.

Simply by virtue of being available to Android, iOS, and Windows Phone users all at once, Microsoft believes it can make inroads in an otherwise terribly siloed marketplace. Health will work with Android Wear watches, Android phones, and the iPhone 6’s motion processor, automatically collecting data from all three. Microsoft’s also been working with Jawbone, MapMyFitness, My Fitness Pal, and Runkeeper to import their data, and plans to incorporate many more.

The Band is sort of Microsoft’s take on the Google Nexus strategy, which Microsoft hopes will show others how to build great trackers. Microsoft is even licensing the ten sensor modules it has developed, so others can build new and different ways to measure your heart rate and step count.

Secret Policy Allows GCHQ Bulk Access To NSA Data

Though legal proceedings following the Snowden revelations, Liberty UK have succeeded in forcing GCHQ to reveal secret internal policies allowing Britain’s intelligence services to receive unlimited bulk intelligence from the NSA and other foreign agencies and to keep this data on a massive searchable databases, all without a warrant. Apparently, British intelligence agencies can “trawl through foreign intelligence material without meaningful restrictions”, and can keep copies of both content and metadata for up to two years. There is also mention of data obtained “through US corporate partnerships”. According to Liberty, this raises serious doubts about oversight of the UK Intelligence and Security Committee and their reassurances that in every case where GCHQ sought information from the US, a warrant for interception signed by a minister was in place.

Eric King, Deputy Director of Privacy international, said: “We now know that data from any call, internet search, or website you visited over the past two years could be stored in GCHQ’s database and analyzed at will, all without a warrant to collect it in the first place. It is outrageous that the Government thinks mass surveillance, justified by secret ‘arrangements’ that allow for vast and unrestrained receipt and analysis of foreign intelligence material is lawful. This is completely unacceptable, and makes clear how little transparency and accountability exists within the British intelligence community.”

Humble Indie Bundle 13

It’s baaaaacccckkkk! In the distance, a dog barks. A crow caws. A spider drops from the ceiling. Why the commotion? It’s the return of the Humble Indie Bundle! Pay what you want for OlliOlli, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, and Tower of Guns. Beat the average price, and you’ll also receive four copies of Risk of Rain (one for you and three shareable copies to give away*), Jazzpunk, and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. Pay more than $12, and you get all of that plus Shadowrun Returns.

But that’s not all! If your purchase is over $65, you also get a Fangamer merch box decked out in custom Humble Indie Bundle 13 art, 11 custom Humble Indie Bundle 13 collectible cards, a hoodie with custom Humble Indie Bundle 13 art, a cassette with tracks from the games in the bundle, and a Humble Indie Bundle 13 and Humble Bundle patch.

• You helped bring over 100 games to Linux

The post Microsoft Gets Its Band Together | Tech Talk Today 83 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

The FBI creates a fake Seattle Times website to trap a bad guy, but does this cross the line? We debate. The FTC goes after AT&T’s claims of “unlimited” data.

Plus more details surface in the NFC payments “war”, Windows 10 “borrows” more features, our kickstarter of the week & more!

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | HD Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | iTunes Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed

Become a supporter on Patreon:

Show Notes:

FBI created fake Seattle Times Web page to nab bomb-threat suspect

The FBI in Seattle created a fake news story on a bogus Seattle Times web page to plant software in the computer of a suspect in a series of bomb threats to Lacey’s Timberline High School in 2007, according to documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in San Francisco.

The deception was publicized Monday when Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C., revealed it on Twitter.

The EFF documents reveal that the FBI dummied up a story with an Associated Press byline about the Thurston County bomb threats with an email link “in the style of The Seattle Times,” including details about subscriber and advertiser information.

The link was sent to the suspect’s MySpace account. When the suspect clicked on the link, the hidden FBI software sent his location and Internet Protocol information to the agents. A juvenile suspect was identified and arrested June 14.

The revelation brought a sharp response from the newspaper.

“We are outraged that the FBI, with the apparent assistance of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, misappropriated the name of The Seattle Times to secretly install spyware on the computer of a crime suspect,” said Seattle Times Editor Kathy Best.

“Not only does that cross a line, it erases it,” she said.

“Our reputation and our ability to do our job as a government watchdog are based on trust. Nothing is more fundamental to that trust than our independence — from law enforcement, from government, from corporations and from all other special interests,” Best said. “The FBI’s actions, taken without our knowledge, traded on our reputation and put it at peril.”

MCX Confirms Retailer Exclusivity for CurrentC Mobile Payments, but No Fines for Leaving Consortium

Much of the Apple news in recent days has centered around Apple Pay and what Tim Cook referred to on Monday as a “skirmish” in which several retailers backing a competing mobile payments initiative known as CurrentC have shut down NFC payment functionality in their stores to prevent customer use of Apple Pay, Google Wallet, and other similar services.

Numerous sources have indicated that retailers backing CurrentC are contractually prohibited from accepting alternative forms of mobile payments, and sources told The New York Times that retailers breaking those contracts would “face steep fines.”

Importantly, if a merchant decides to stop working with MCX, there are no fines.

FTC sues AT&T over ‘deceptive’ throttling of unlimited data customers | The Verge

The Federal Trade Commission is suing AT&T because the second-largest US carrier throttles speeds of its unlimited data customers, a policy that the FTC describes as “deceptive” and “unfair.” In a press release, the FTC said AT&T has “misled millions of its smartphone customers” by slowing down their data speeds after they’ve used up a certain amount of data in a single month. AT&T has failed to make its throttling policies clear enough, according to the complaint. “The issue here is simple: ‘unlimited’ means unlimited,” said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez.

Update 11:15 AM PT: AT&T has given a statement to MacRumors in response to the FTC’s “baffling” complaint, stating that the allegations are “baseless” and that it has been “completely transparent” with customers.

“The FTC’s allegations are baseless and have nothing to do with the substance of our network management program. It’s baffling as to why the FTC would choose to take this action against a company that, like all major wireless providers, manages its network resources to provide the best possible service to all customers, and does it in a way that is fully transparent and consistent with the law and our contracts.

“We have been completely transparent with customers since the very beginning. We informed all unlimited data-plan customers via bill notices and a national press release that resulted in nearly 2,000 news stories, well before the program was implemented. In addition, this program has affected only about 3% of our customers, and before any customer is affected, they are also notified by text message.”

Microsoft borrows Mac trackpad gestures for Windows 10 | The Verge

n a keynote speech at TechEd Europe today, Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore demonstrated new trackpad features that will soon be available to Windows 10 testers. “In the past touch pads on Windows have really been done very differently because OEMs do them,” explained Belfiore. Microsoft introduced precision trackpads with the help of Intel in Windows 8 to improve the hardware situation, and now the focus is on gestures in software. “With Windows 10 we’re adding support for power users in a touch pad, where multiple finger gestures — which all of you power users learn — can make you really efficient.”

The new gestures include a three finger swipe down action to minimize all active Windows and three finger swipe up to bring them back. An interesting addition is the ability to use a three finger swipe up gesture to activate the new Task View feature of Windows 10. Not only does Task View look like OS X’s Mission Control (Exposé) feature, the three finger swipe up is the same gesture. Microsoft is also borrowing the three finger swipe left and right to activate switching between apps, something Apple uses to move between fullscreen Mac applications.

Kickstarter of the week: The Undress

The post The Cost of Unlimited | Tech Talk Today 82 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Popular retailers disable NFC in their stores to block ApplePay, and that drives Android and iPhone users to team up and boycott. Fitbit has some new toys, and Microsoft gets behind WebRTC.

Plus a surprise from Firefox OS & a Kickstarter of the week!

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | HD Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | iTunes Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed

Become a supporter on Patreon:

Show Notes:

CVS and Rite Aid Apple Pay blockade official as iOS and Android users unite in rare showing to fight NFC ban

Apple responds to CVS & Rite Aid blocking Apple Pay for CurrentC

CVS’s decision to not accept Apple Pay has been echoed by competing pharmacy chain Rite Aid in favor of a system called CurrentC. Rather than support both Apple Pay, CurrentC, and any other mobile payment system like Google Wallet, both chains have opted to actively disable NFC functionality at their sales terminals disabling Apple Pay support at checkout. CurrentC is an effort from the Merchant Customer eXchange (MCX) consortium which includes a number of other retailers like Best Buy and Walmart as well.

Both CVS and Rite Aid were able to accept Apple Pay at NFC terminals during the first few days of Apple Pay’s roll out, but both have since manually disabled support for all NFC-based payments. Competing pharmacy chain Walgreens, however, is a launch partner for Apple Pay and has encouraged its shoppers to use the secure mobile payment system.

• Let’s invite /r/Android to help us boycott retailers that are disabling NFC readers. We can unite to put pressure on them, since it affects us both!

• Tim Cook: Apple Pay received over 1 million activations in first 72 hours, bigger than all contactless competitors combined

Fitbit Joins the Smartwatch Race, and Replaces the Rash-y Force With a New Wristband

The company has just announced a new line-up of activity-tracking devices, including one “smart” fitness watch. Two of the new wearables include optical heart rate sensors, something new to Fitbits.

The new products break down as follows:

• The Fitbit Charge is being marketed as the “Force reinvented,” with an improved design. It measures steps, distance traveled, calories burned and floors climbed. It has an OLED display, is water-resistant and Fitbit is claiming it lasts up to seven days on a charge. As you can see from the photo here, it looks strikingly similar to the Force, but now includes automatic sleep detection and a caller ID function. It’s selling now for $130 dollars.

• The Fitbit Charge HR is basically the Charge wristband but with a combination of heart rate sensors that Fitbit is calling PurePulse. This means the wearer can monitor his or her heart rate continuously (some heart-rate wearables require you to press “start” on an activity to get a reading), and the device will use that data to give a more accurate calorie reading or spot heart rate trends over time. It also means the battery on the Charge HR will likely last around five days, not seven; this one will cost $150 and won’t be available until early 2015.

• And finally, there’s the $250 Fitbit Surge. This is the company’s first foray into connected-watch territory. It has a backlit LCD touchscreen display and eight different sensors: A tri-axis accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, ambient light sensor, GPS and heart rate. It records granular data around specific activities like running and cross-training, placing it firmly in the fitness-watch category, but will also cycle through the typical “smart” watch notifications like text alerts and incoming calls, provided a smartphone is in range. It’s water resistant, but isn’t meant to track swimming. Expected battery life is around seven days. Like the Charge HR, this one won’t ship until sometime in 2015.

Microsoft nears bringing WebRTC to Internet Explorer, eyes plugin-free Skype calls in the browser | VentureBeat | News Briefs | by Emil Protalinski

Microsoft today announced it is backing the Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) technology and will be supporting the ORTC API in Internet Explorer. Put another way, the company is finally throwing its weight behind the broader industry trend of bringing voice and video calling to the browser without the need for plugins.

For those who don’t know, WebRTC is an open project that lets Internet users communicate in real time via voice and video simply by using a WebRTC-compatible browser.

Microsoft and over 80 other participants are actively collaborating with the W3C and IETF to contribute and improve standards like the ORTC API for WebRTC. The W3C ORTC Community Group has issued a “Call for Implementations,” which means the ORTC specification has reached significant stability.

The main goal is to influence how the 1.0 version of the WebRTC API will function, though the company still hasn’t confirmed it will implement it in its browser. Microsoft is hoping to push ITU-T H.264 as the primary video codec and says it will offer audio codecs Opus, G.722, and G.711.

Mozilla hopes to challenge Raspbian as RPi OS of choice

The Mozilla Foundation staged a Mozilla Festival in the UK over the weekend, and one of the projects developers delivered was a port of Firefox OS working to the Raspberry Pi.

The NoPhone by The NoPhone Team — Kickstarter

The post NFC Payments War! | Tech Talk Today 81 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.