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.

Staples suffers a data breach from malware, and Apple Pay launches right on time. We reflect on both these events, and the big shift thats coming up.

Plus Tinder gets an upgrade, good news for Spotify users & 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:

Bank Sources Reoirtubg Credit Card Breach at Staples Stores — Krebs on Security

According to more than a half-dozen sources at banks operating on the East Coast, it appears likely that fraudsters have succeeded in stealing customer card data from some subset of Staples locations, including seven Staples stores in Pennsylvania, at least three in New York City, and another in New Jersey.

Staples has more than 1,800 stores nationwide, but so far the banks contacted by this reporter have traced a pattern of fraudulent transactions on a group of cards that had all previously been used at a small number of Staples locations in the Northeast.

The fraudulent charges occurred at other (non-Staples) businesses, such as supermarkets and other big-box retailers. This suggests that the cash registers in at least some Staples locations may have fallen victim to card-stealing malware that lets thieves create counterfeit copies of cards that customers swipe at compromised payment terminals

Apple Pay Launched Yesteryday, Early Reviews are Good

Sharon Profis for C|NET Writes:

If the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus do one thing exquisitely well, it’s pay for stuff. Transactions take seconds to complete. For those who habitually dig their wallet out of a bag, the process will feel especially brief.

Apple Pay’s greatest asset is security. When you register a card with Apple Pay, its 16-digit number is not stored in the device. Instead, your iPhone pings a company like First Data to trade the card’s real number for an alias — called a “token.” That token, a devalued 16-digit number, is stored in an iPhone chip called the Secure Element.

Then, whenever you make a purchase, your phone sends the merchant the token instead of your actual 16-digit number. The *only* way to access that token is by scanning your fingerprint. The result? Three layers of security that greatly reduce the instance of fraud.

It’s also worth noting that Apple promises never to keep track of your payment activity. However, that doesn’t stop retailers from tracking you on their own, either through their Point of Sale system or loyalty program.

• Video: Here’s what it’s like to buy lunch at McDonald’s with Apple Pay – Yahoo News
• We Tried Out Apple Pay In The Real World | TechCrunch
• See Apple Pay Put to the Test at McDonald’s – ABC News
• Where You Can Check Out Apple Pay Today – ReadWrite
• Taking Apple Pay Out for a (Slightly Rocky) Spin
• Welcome To The Future: I Just Bought Chicken Nuggets With My Dang iPhone

Spotlight Suggestions Send Data to Apple, Exact Location and IP Addresses Not Collected

Following the release of OS X Yosemite with new Spotlight Suggestions, some users noted that Apple’s Spotlight privacy policy began offering a warning letting users know that search terms were being uploaded to Apple’s servers, with some of the info being forwarded to Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

The search terms were being shared with Apple in order to enable Spotlight’s new capabilities, which include searching sources like the Mac App Store, Wikipedia, and the web.

Apple has now given a statement on Spotlight Suggestions to iMore, stating that the company is “absolutely committed” to protecting user privacy and that Spotlight Suggestions minimizes the information that’s sent to Apple.

*”We are absolutely committed to protecting our users’ privacy and have built privacy right into our products,” Apple told iMore. “For Spotlight Suggestions we minimize the amount of information sent to Apple. Apple doesn’t retain IP addresses from users’ devices. Spotlight blurs the location on the device so it never sends an exact location to Apple. Spotlight doesn’t use a persistent identifier, so a user’s search history can’t be created by Apple or anyone else. Apple devices only use a temporary anonymous session ID for a 15-minute period before the ID is discarded.

“We also worked closely with Microsoft to protect our users’ privacy. Apple forwards only commonly searched terms and only city-level location information to Bing. Microsoft does not store search queries or receive users’ IP addresses.

“You can also easily opt out of Spotlight Suggestions, Bing or Location Services for Spotlight.”*

Tinder Swipes Right To Revenue, Will Add Premium Service In November

Sean Rad, Tinder’s CEO and cofounder, announced during the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia, that the two-year-old company (which currently has no revenue model) will launch a premium service in early November that will offer paying users more match-making powers.

Rad says there will be no changes to the current, free Tinder app. Tinder has been growing like crazy. Rad won’t comment on user numbers but did say that people now swipe through 1.2 billion Tinder profiles a day — that’s billion with a “B.” He also says that each day Tinder makes more than 15 million matches.

Spotify Lowers Music Price with Family Plan

Spotify is effectively offering a price cut on its subscription music service by giving family members a 50 percent discount on additional accounts. So if you have a $10 Spotify Premium subscription, your husband can get one for $5 a month.

Apple has been pushing the labels for more extensive price cuts. It wants to relaunch the Beats Music subscription service it bought last spring next year, and industry scuttlebutt is that it’s trying to get the price cut in half, to $5 a month.

The logic of Apple’s argument, relayed by people who’ve heard the pitch secondhand: Apple’s best iTunes buyers spend about $60 a year on downloaded music — $5 a month. So if subscription services dropped that low, any download buyers that switched over to the streaming model would generate just as much revenue for the music labels. And, more important, the market of potential subscribers would get much larger.

The post Bank on XP | Tech Talk Today 78 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Did Microsoft buying Mojang come around because Notch was burned out? Is the problem systemic to independent developers who just love to code?

Plus we respond to your strong feedback regarding privacy & much more!

Thanks to:

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

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

Become a supporter on Patreon:

— Show Notes: —

Feedback / Follow Up:

• Mike is wrong about privacy

• Secrecy

• Dvorak challenge

• From Tech / Coder to Teacher / Tech / Coder

Dev Hoopla:

I’m leaving Mojang | notch.net

As soon as this deal is finalized, I will leave Mojang and go back to doing Ludum Dares and small web experiments. If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.

Unity Technologies weighs its options, including a possible sale of the company

Unity Technologies, the makers of prolific video-game-development engines and tools, is exploring options for its future. One of those options is the possible sale of the company. The asking price is apparently very high — we’ve heard over $1 billion to as high as $2 billion.

The post Notch Escapes | CR 119 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Gmail passwords may have been leaked, but there is some debate as to how bad the damage is. Google Voice gets rolled into Hangouts & we take a look at the results from “Internet Slowdown Day”.

Plus our thoughts on mobile payments, a great deal for Linux users & 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:

5 Million Gmail Usernames and Passwords Leaked

In what appears to be an unknown attack, hackers have dumped over 5,000,000 valid gmail username and passwords on the Internet early Wednesday morning.

Unknown hackers have leaked over five million valid credentials pertaining to Google Mail logins early this morning. The random dump of passwords first appeared on reddit’s netsec section linking to the another website hosting the leaked gmail accounts.

The .txt file of all leaked gmail usernames was found on BitCoin security (forum in Russian), where the leak is believed to be first offloaded. The file of leaked emails does not contain any passwords or other sensitive information, only full gmail email addresses.

As the leak was posted only hours ago, Reddit users are warning each other not to enter any email username or password combinations into any websites “to check if your password is secure.” It appears scams are already appearing or Reddit users are getting ready for the scams to come.

• Google Says No Compromise

“The security of our users’ information is a top priority for us,” a Google spokesperson told TNW. “We have no evidence that our systems have been compromised, but whenever we become aware that accounts may have been, we take steps to help those users secure their accounts.”

Next, since the posting, the forum administrators have purged the passwords from the text file in question, leaving only the logins. Furthermore, tvskit, the forum user who published the file, claimed that some 60 percent of the passwords were valid.

Google Voice Integration Is Currently Rolling Out In Hangouts

Google Voice is finally being integrated into Hangouts, because God knows Hangouts needed to be even more confusing. You can enable Voice SMS and voicemail via a popup in the conversation list, so check the app. If you still don’t see it, hang on. It’s still rolling out.

“Internet Slowdown Day” sends over 111,000* new comments on net neutrality to FCC

The effort appears to have made a difference: According to the FCC*, by 6 PM ET the agency saw 111,449 new public comments added to the already record-setting total, with some 41,173 filed into the 14-28 docket of the FCC’s website since and another 70,286 sent to the openinternet@fcc.gov inbox, setting a new high water mark of some 1,515,144 to date, with more yet to come. As reported by Mike Masnick, citing ThinkProgress, the Internet slowdown generated 1000 calls per minute to Congress. *Update: Fight for the Future claims that more than 500,000 comments have been submitted through Battleforthenet.com and that the FCC hasn’t caught up. According to the nonprofit, “this happened during our last big push too when their site crashed. We are storing comments and will deliver all.”

IDG shutters Macworld Magazine, much of the editorial staff let go | 9to5Mac

International Data Group (IDG) is shutting down Macworld Magazine, the long time Apple periodical according to tweets by staff and conversations I’ve had with personnel.

The Macworld.com website will remain open [although as a shell of its former self -ed] with a reduced staff according to Dan Miller (editor), who himself is leaving in a month.

Why pay with your phone? : techtalktoday

Floppy-Bacon Writes

Is payment the stores in the US really as bad as Apple’s presentation made it look? When I pay with my debit card (or credit card), I don’t hand it to the cashier. I insert it into a small device and enter my 4-digit PIN code; fast and secure. I do not need to identify my self, I do not any detail about my card and I do not have 15 cards in my wallet or however many cards she had in the video. I know that I hate technology, but do you really want to pay with your phone rather than just fix the payment system to how it works elsewhere? For the time being you still need to have your wallet with your for all the other stuff. (And taking my phone with me with just be extra cumbersome.)

Crossover Linux 50% off : linux_gaming

I received an e-mail this morning from CodeWeavers that CrossOver Linux + 12 months of support is 50% off for the next 48 hours.

Promotional Code: FLASHME

For more information: https://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover-linux

The post The New Payphone | Tech Talk Today 57 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Apple introduces two new models of iPhones, a payment system & a watch. We stream it all live with our commentary, reactions & live covering for their bumpy stream issues.

This special edition of Tech Talk Today starts a bit bumpy, but finds its legs not too far into the episode.

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:

The hidden structure of the Apple keynote

The Apple Keynotes podcast on the iTunes Store lists 27 events since Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone on Jan. 9, 2007. (A few are missing.)

They are an average 88 minutes long, with a similar look and feel—a minimalist slide presentation with live demos from Apple executives and industry leaders, punctuated by videos explaining Apple’s design and manufacturing processes

When Steve Jobs was running Apple and healthy, he dominated the stage. During Jobs’ finest performance—his 2007 iPhone “Stevenote”—he spent more than 90 minutes on stage, with breaks only to invite partners up for remarks, including then-Google CEO (and then-Apple board member) Eric Schmidt.

Cook usually spends less than 20 minutes onstage per event

On average, it has taken about 45 minutes to get to that part. But more recently, it has been shorter. With plenty to cover tomorrow—supposedly including two new iPhones, a wearable device, and a payments system—there shouldn’t be much filler content.

The post Apple Watch Introduction | Tech Talk Today 55 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We’ve got the details on a critical flaw in the chip and pin credit card system. The future of secure hashing, doing proper backups with rsync, and how squirrels and sharks take down the Internet.

Plus a big batch of your questions, and our answers.

All that and more, on this week’s TechSNAP

Thanks to:

Use our codes TechSNAP10 to save 10% at checkout, or TechSNAP20 to save 20% on hosting!

BONOUS ROUND PROMO:

Get your .COMs just $5.99 per year up to 3 domains! Additional .COMs just $7.99 per year!
CODE: 599tech

Expires 10/31/12

SPECIAL OFFER! Save 20% off your order!
Code: go20off5

Pick your code and save:
techsnap7: $7.49 .com
techsnap10: 10% off
techsnap11: $1.99 hosting for the first 3 months
techsnap20: 20% off 1, 2, 3 year hosting plans
techsnap40: $10 off $40
techsnap25: 25% off new Virtual DataCenter plans
techsnapx: 20% off .xxx domains

 

Support the Show: