Episode 2224 – Wheeler keeps on turning

Note: There was some trouble with the video stream today but thankfully AlphaGeek Radio captured all the festivities. Just imagine puppets doing all of the relevant parts.

Brian Brushwood joins the show to chat about Facebook getting all privacy-friendly and Hulu allowing free full episodes on your phone. The FCC even says it will fight for municipal broadband. It’s the nicest day on the Internet ever!



Or you can download the MP3 version here.

Headlines

 * Facebook had a few big announcement at the F8 developer’s conference Wednesday morning. Using Facebook to login on another service is now entirely under the user’s control. Users can choose line by line what they will and will not share with another service. Up to and including the ability to log in entirely anonymously. The company also promises to fix bugs within 48 hours, support all APIs for two years, and open source a system called AppLink that makes it easy for mobile apps to link directly to each other without going to a browser. Finally Facebook announced their “Audience Network,” a way to buy ads on non-Facebook sites that benefit from Facebook’s data. Facebook Audience Network is open for registration today.


 * Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins announced in a blog post today that this summer Hulu’s mobile apps will get a selection of full episodes for free, without needing a Hulu Plus subscription. Hulu added clips from shows to the Hulu app for non-subscribers in October. The feature will come first to its Android apps. The post also mentioned a redesigned iOS app coming later this summer as well as new ad units, including one that would allow a viewer to order something like a Pizza without leaving the Hulu experience.


 * Our top story on the Subreddit today, Ars Technica reports FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, speaking at the Cable Show, said he intends “to preempt state laws that ban competition from community broadband.” 20 US states have laws limiting muncipalities ability to create their own broadband infrastructure. TechCrunch also reports Wheeler said “If someone acts to divide the Internet between “haves” and “have-nots,” we will use every power at our disposal to stop it,” including considering reclassifying ISP’s as telecommunications providers. Wheller also said “Prioritizing some traffic by forcing the rest of the traffic into a congested lane won’t be permitted under any proposed Open Internet rule”. State laws that ban municipal Internet will be invalidated, FCC chair says


 * The Verge reports Google launched standalone iOS and Android apps for Google Docs, its word processing program, Google Sheets, its spreadsheet program and Google Slides, its presentation program. The new apps are similar to their counterparts in the unified Google Drive app, but with a different color scheme.


 * Wired reports on Dark Wallet, a bitcoin application designed to protect its user’s identities in more ways than the bitcoin system does on its own. Chiefly the application encrypts and mixes together users payment infos, so its not easily traceable from the Bitcoin public ledger. Dark Wallet was conceived by Wilson and Amir Taaki. Wilson Taaki also created the first entirely 3D-printed gun. Dark Wallet is set for release on Thursday.

News From You

 * MikePKennedy submitted the Engadget report of the WSJ story THAT Google has stopped scanning the 30 million email accounts registered under its apps for education program. Google scans email in order to display ads triggered by keywords. Ads were never used int he product, but the data was mined to inform targeted ads elsewhere.


 * metalfreak submitted the Slashdot posting alerting readers to the fact that the Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), is being considered by the US Senate Intelligence Committee. This third version of the bill was written by committe chair Dianne Feinstein and is circulating but has not yet been introduced. Under the current draft of the bill, companies could not be sued for incorrectly sharing customer information with the federal government, and broad law enforcement sharing could allow for the creation of backdoor wiretaps.


 * tekkyn00b submitted the Verge story that theUS Supreme Court made it easier to force the losing party in a patent suit to pay the legal fees of the winner. This is widely seen as a way to discourage frivolous patent lawsuits. The Patent Act stipulates a case must be exceptional in order for the legal fees to be shifted to the loser. Lower courts have used a high standard to determine when a case is exceptional, meaning it is rarely found to be so. Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing for the 9-0 majority, said judges should define an &#8220;exceptional&#8221; situation as &#8220;simply one that stands out from others.”

Discussion Section Links

 * http://gigaom.com/2014/04/30/hulu-is-opening-up-free-video-streaming-to-mobile-devices/
 * http://blog.hulu.com/2014/04/30/today-at-the-hulu-upfront/
 * http://io9.com/dreamworks-predicts-that-in-the-future-well-buy-movies-1569787028

Pick of the Day

 * http://owncloud.org
 * "I love using Dropbox for storing and sharing many of my personal files. However as I work in healthcare I have to be extra careful when it comes to storing and sharing Protected Health Information. I highly recommend ownCloud as a private cloud alternative. They have Mac, PC and Linux clients as well as iOS and Android apps. The data is securely stored on our company servers. And best of all it’s open source software."
 * "Cheers, Dave (aka DaHa the rare times I get to visit the chat room)"