A lot is happening in the world of Google this week & some of the new changes are big improvements for it’s users. Plus the new MacBook killer by Xiaomi that might really be killer & Washington State is suing Comcast.

Plus a really neat Kickstarter of the week, local streaming to a Chromecast & more!

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Links:

• New Android Trojan SpyNote leaks on underground forums

• Google has sold 30 million Chromecasts, 5 million in the past 2 months

• Localcast – Simple stream for Chromecast

• Google Account sign-in notifications are now sent directly to your Android device

• 90% of YouTube and Google Calendar connections are now encrypted with HTTPS

• Xiaomi takes on the MacBook with the $750 “Mi Notebook Air”

• Washington state sues Comcast, says it sold near-worthless service plans | Ars Technica

Kickstarter of the week:

• Time Flies: Levitating Nixie Clock by Tony Adams — Kickstarter

The post Google Gets Pushy | TTT 254 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

A drone that attaches to your wrist & takes to the air with a quick gesture, Amazon brings unlimited storage of photos to Prime members, the head of the GCHQ goes on record hating social media & more!

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Show Notes:

Amazon Prime Members’ Newest Benefit Is Free, Unlimited Photo Storage

Amazon Prime members are getting another benefit today, the company announced this morning: free, unlimited photo storage. In a new service called Prime Photos, paying subscribers of Amazon’s membership program will now be about to store photos in their original resolutions to Amazon Cloud Drive from any device, including iOS, Android, and Fire phones and tablets, as well as Mac and Windows PCs.

These photos can then be viewed on those devices, as well as on the big screen via Amazon Fire TV, the new Fire TV Stick, game consoles like the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, and some models of LG and Samsung smart TVs.

To get started with Prime Photos, Amazon Prime subscribers can now visit the homepage for the new service (at www.amazon.com/primephotos) in order to download the Cloud Drive Photos iOS or Android application

Nixie wearable camera drone wins $500k in Intel tech contest

Beating nine other entries in the final, the US-based team behind the awesome wrist-based flying camera took to the stage at a special ceremony in San Francisco on Monday to collect the $500,000 prize money.

Nixie only requires a flick of the arm, at which point it unfolds from your wrist, flies off, takes your picture, and returns. Open up your smartphone and staring back at you will be your just-snapped image.

Google’s Nexus Player: More prototype than finished product | Ars Technica

The Nexus Player has 3 components. For $99, you get the set-top box and remote control, while another $40 gets you the optional Nexus Player Gamepad. The total package is a $105 premium over the $35 Google Chromecast, but the Chromecast is just a streaming stick. While the Nexus Player supports Google Cast (the retconned name for the Chromecast protocol), it also brings a dedicated TV interface along with local apps and games. In other words, it’s a smartphone for your television.

Inside the box puck is a 1.8GHz Intel Atom (Silvermont) processor, a PowerVR Series6 GPU, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage. Dual-band 2×2 802.11ac Wi-Fi provides connectivity, along with Bluetooth LE 4.0. While Android TV supports Ethernet, the Nexus Player doesn’t.

The worst part of the remote is that it likes to randomly stop working. You’ll be clicking along the interface and everything will just stop, which means it’s time to get up, flip the box over, hit the Bluetooth pairing button, and then hold home+back to set the remote to pairing mode. We had to do this three times in about two hours.

Given the emphasis on apps, that 8GB of storage is a disaster, though. After the OS and pre-installed apps, you’ve got about 5GB of storage free out of the box. Let’s install some games!

All the videos we tested from several sources (YouTube, Google Play, Netflix) would drop frames. The frame drops are seemingly random, too, as if the Nexus Player is just fast enough to run 1080p content at a smooth framerate but then the OS decides to do something in the background and things start to slow down.

U.K. Spy Agency Chief Goes Public With Anti-Encryption Appeal To U.S. Tech Companies | TechCrunch

Writing in the Financial Times newspaper, GCHQ’s Robert Hannigan claims that “privacy has never been an absolute right” and warns that the terrorist group ISIS has “embraced the Internet as a noisy channel in which to promote itself, intimidate people, and radicalise new recruits”.

Hannigan’s initial argument focuses on how ISIS is using social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook as propaganda platforms

“I understand why they have an uneasy relationship with governments,” he writes of U.S. tech firms. “They aspire to be neutral conduits of data and to sit outside or above politics. But increasingly their services not only host the material of violent extremism or child exploitation, but are the routes for the facilitation of crime and terrorism.

“However much they may dislike it, they have become the command-and-control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals, who find their services as transformational as the rest of us.

The Internet Archive Created a Free Online Arcade With Over 900 Games

If you were planning a productive morning of work, you may want to reschedule: the Internet Archive has created an online arcade which lets you run over 900 classic games right there, in your browser.

GO VOTE: Tech Talk Today

There are two kickstarter of the week submissions, the top voted one will make it on the show tomorrow for our jury to judge. You still have a chance to submit a winner too if your organized!

The post Unidentified Flying Selfies | Tech Talk Today 85 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.