Show Notes: error.show/67

The post Mind the Apps | User Error 67 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We discuss the details of the current crop of smart phones, then look at Microsoft’s new Surface 3, get skeptical about Project Spartan & celebrate the Supreme Court’s GPS Tracker decision.

Direct Download:

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

RSS Feeds:

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

Become a supporter on Patreon

Show Notes:

Microsoft’s Surface 3 is a $499 tablet that could be a full Windows laptop | The Verge

Surface 3 will start at just $499, and it’s available to pre-order today with devices shipping on May 5th in the US / Canada and May 7th internationally.

Introducing Project Spartan: The New Browser Built for Windows 10

As we started building Project Spartan, we took a hard look at everything we were doing with the browser — from the way we engineered it, to the way we designed the user experience, to the way we approached compatibility and interoperability, to the way we interacted with our customers and Web developers, to the way we released it.

License Details Hint MS Undecided On Suing Users of Its Open Source Net Runtime – Slashdot

With Microsoft proudly declaring its .NET runtime open source, a colleague and I decided to look at the licensing aspects. One part, the MIT licence, is straightforward, but there’s also a patent promise. The first two-thirds of the first sentence seems to announce good news about Microsoft not suing people. Then the conditions begin. It seems Microsoft can’t yet bring itself to release something as free software without retaining a patent threat to limit how those freedoms can be exercised. Overall, we found 4 Shifty Details About Microsoft’s “Open Source” .NET.

U.S. Supreme Court: GPS Trackers Are a Form of Search and Seizure — The Atlantic

The Supreme Court clarified and affirmed that law on Monday, when it ruled on _Torrey Dale Grady v. North Carolina, _before sending the case back to that state’s high court. The Court’s short but unanimous opinion helps make sense of how the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, interacts with the expanding technological powers of the U.S. government.

“It doesn’t matter what the context is, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a car or a person. Putting that tracking device on a car or a person is a search,” said Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF).

In this case, that context was punishment. Grady was twice convicted as a sex offender. In 2013, North Carolina ordered that, as a recidivist, he had to wear a GPS monitor at all times so that his location could be monitored. He challenged the court, saying that the tracking device qualified as an unreasonable search.

North Carolina’s highest court at first ruled that the tracker was no search at all. It’s that decision that the Supreme Court took aim at today, quoting the state’s rationale and snarking:

The post Google Kills Your Battery | Tech Talk Today 150 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand & Google is reversing course on a major Play store position. Plus a new study shows Firefox and Chrome users make better employees & the huge direction change for Nintendo.

Direct Download:

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

RSS Feeds:

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

Become a supporter on Patreon

Show Notes:

Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand | The Verge

Speaking at Microsoft Convergence yesterday, Microsoft’s marketing chief Chris Capossela revealed that the company is currently working on a new name and brand. “We’re now researching what the new brand, or the new name, for our browser should be in Windows 10,” said Capossela. “We’ll continue to have Internet Explorer, but we’ll also have a new browser called Project Spartan, which is codenamed Project Spartan. We have to name the thing.”

App Submissions On Google Play Now Reviewed By Staff, Will Include Age-Based Ratings | TechCrunch

Google has today disclosed that, beginning a couple of months ago, it began having an internal team of reviewers analyze apps for policy violations prior to publication. And going forward, human reviewers will continue to go hands-on with apps before they go live on Google Play.

Analysis: People Who Use Firefox Or Chrome Make Better Employees – Slashdot

In the world of Big Data, everything means something. Now Joe Pinsker reports that Cornerstone OnDemand, a company that sells software that helps employers recruit and retain workers, has found after analyzing data on about 50,000 people who took its 45-minute online job assessment, that people who took the test on a non-default browser, such as Firefox or Chrome, ended up staying at their jobs about 15 percent longer than those who stuck with Safari or Internet Explorer. They also tended to perform better on the job as well. Chief Analytics Officer Michael Housman offered an explanation for the results in an interview with Freakonomics Radio: “I think that the fact that you took the time to install Firefox on your computer shows us something about you. It shows that you’re someone who is an informed consumer,” says Housman. “You’ve made an active choice to do something that wasn’t default.” But why would a company care about something as seemingly trivial as the browser a candidate chooses to use? “Call centers are estimated to suffer from a turnover rate of about 45 percent annually (PDF), and it can cost thousands of dollars to hire new employees,” says Pinsker. “Because of that, companies are eager to find any proxy for talent and dedication that they can.”

Nintendo is making smartphone games with Japanese mobile giant DeNA | The Verge

The company has announced that it will team up with DeNA, a major Japanese mobile gaming company, to make smartphone games featuring Nintendo characters.

The two companies “intend to jointly operate new gaming applications featuring Nintendo IP, which they will develop specifically for smart devices,” according to a Nintendo statement.

The post Google's Human Revolution | Tech Talk Today 145 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.