Special Guest: Allan Jude.

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Links:

• Apple is going to ruin cops’ favorite tool for breaking into iPhones – BGR
• A hacker figured out how to brute force iPhone passcodes
• U.S. Supreme Court Bolsters Mobile-Phone Privacy Rights - Bloomberg
• Google sends out referral codes for 15% off Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL
• Driver charged, speed a factor in Hamilton Mountain crash
• Happy FreeBSD Day!
• BSDNow Celebrates FreeBSD at 25
• Details about the office affair that led to Intel CEO resignation
• Larrabee GPU designer is joining Intel’s graphics team under Raja Koduri
• Larrabee (microarchitecture) - Wikipedia

Plus MoviePass's desperate grab for data seems to be going bust, and IBM warns of cracking encryption with their Quantum Computer.

Then we wrap it up with our Kickstarter of the week, that wants to build open source VR for exploring Mars.

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Links:

• Mnuchin on Google and tech monopolies — Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Monday joined the growing chorus of government officials concerned about tech monopolies. His comments come on the heels of a "60 Minutes" segment on Google's unparalleled market share in online search.
• Google sued for 'clandestine tracking' of 4.4m UK iPhone users' browsing data | Technology | The Guardian — The collective action is being led by former Which? director Richard Lloyd over claims Google bypassed the privacy settings of Apple’s Safari browser on iPhones between August 2011 and February 2012 in order to divide people into categories for advertisers.
• Google’s The Selfish Ledger (leaked internal video) - YouTube
• YouTube Music launches Tuesday; YouTube Red will be replaced by YouTube Premium, which will cost more. — You’re now going to have to pay $12 a month instead of $10 a month.
• How 2 Million People Loved MoviePass Nearly to Death — It works if enough people sign up and literally forget they have the subscription
• Netflix's DVD.Com Business Is Still Profitable — The company’s DVD.com DVD rental business has 3 million subscribers and generated a whopping $56 million in profit on just $99 million in revenue during the first quarter, CNBC is reporting.
• IBM warns of instant breaking of encryption by quantum computers: 'Move your data today' — Quantum computers will be able to instantly break the encryption of sensitive data protected by today's strongest security, warns the head of IBM Research.
• How it Works: Quantum Computing - YouTube
• MarsVR - Virtual Reality Platform To Support Exploring Mars by The Mars Society — Kickstarter

Plus the big Nest outage and the SOUNDCAM. You're going to want this Kickstarter of the week.

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Links:

• Senate votes to overturn Ajit Pai’s net neutrality repeal | Ars Technica — Senate defies "armies of lobbyists," but House may help FCC kill net neutrality.
• US cell carriers are selling access to your real-time phone location data — Kevin Bankston, director of New America's Open Technology Institute, explained in a phone call that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act only restricts telecom companies from disclosing data to the government. It doesn't restrict disclosure to other companies, who then may disclose that same data to the government.
• OnePlus 6 specifications: More expensive, more swagger | Android Central — The OnePlus 6 now comes in three storage sizes, with a new 256GB option (paired with 8GB of RAM and only available in Midnight Black) pushing the phone above $600 for the first time.
• This Guy Heated Bath Water With Bitcoin Mining and It Worked Too Well — "Lee" used cryptocurrency mining ASICs to heat his bath, which turned the temperature up to 122 Fahrenheit.
• Entire Nest ecosystem of smart home devices goes offline  — Works with Nest... usually
• The First Handheld Sound Camera for Everyone by SOUNDCAM — Kickstarter — Experience seeing sound. This camera images sound sources - it's like having six senses.

Plus the return of a classic!

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Links:

• Critical PGP and S/MIME bugs can reveal encrypted emails—uninstall now [Updated] | Ars Technica — The Electronic Frontier Foundation. It said: “EFF has been in communication with the research team, and can confirm that these vulnerabilities pose an immediate risk to those using these tools for email communication, including the potential exposure of the contents of past messages.”
• EFAIL
• Wi-Fi Alliance’s Wi-Fi EasyMesh certification aims to standardize mesh networks | PCWorld — The new certification program will ensure that wireless mesh network routers, gateways, and access points from different manufacturers will all work together.
• Google Employees Resign in Protest Against Pentagon Contract — Now, about a dozen Google employees are resigning in protest over the company’s continued involvement in Maven.
• Apple CEO Tim Cook says Apple takes different path on privacy — Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a commencement speech at Duke University that Apple rejects the notion that getting the most out of technology means trading away your right to privacy.
• BitTorrent Inc. Changed Its Name to Rainberry — BitTorrent is without a doubt one of the more recognizable technology brands of the century. It, therefore, comes a surprise that BitTorrent Inc. has changed its name to Rainberry. According to the company, it's strictly a "corporate decision," but a more detailed motivation is lacking.
• Nintendo brings NES Classic back to stores in June — For those of you who didn't pick up the NES Classic first time round, it's being reissued and will be available in stores June 29.

Plus Apple deals a blow to GrayKey, our Kickstarter of the week, and sending ultra sonic commands to Alexa.

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• iOS 11.4 Disables Lightning Connector After 7 Days, Limiting Law Enforcement Access — The iOS 11.4 update, currently being beta tested, includes a USB Restricted Mode that introduces a week-long expiration date on access to the Lightning port on your iOS devices if your phone hasn't been unlocked, which has implications for law enforcement tools like the GrayKey box
• Steam Link App to Bring Steam Games to iOS & Android-Based Phones, Tablets and TVs — The Steam Link app will be available for Apple’s iPhone, iPad, and TV devices as well as various smartphones, tablets and STBs running Google’s Android.
• Google Photos will add more AI-powered fixes, including colorization of black-and-white photos — Now the company is making it even easier to fix photos with a new version of the Google Photos app that will suggest quick fixes and other tweaks – like rotations, brightness corrections, or adding pops of color, for example – right below the photo you’re viewing.
• Exclusive: Android P is Google’s most ambitious update in years - The Verge — Android P, due out later this year, will have a new dashboard that tells you how often, when, and for how long you are using every app on your phone. It will also allow you to set limits on yourself. You could give yourself a half-hour of Instagram per day, for example. Once your 30 minutes is up, the icon will go from its usual eye-catching gradient to a dull grayscale.
• Google Grapples With ‘Horrifying’ Reaction to Uncanny AI Tech — At its I/O conference on Tuesday, Alphabet Inc.’s Google previewed Duplex, an experimental service that lets its voice-based digital assistant book appointments on its own. It was part of a slate of features, such as automated writing in emails, where Google touted how its artificial intelligence technology saves people time and effort. In a demonstration on stage, the Google Assistant spoke with a hair salon receptionist, mimicking the "ums" and "hmms" pauses of human speech. In another demo, it chatted with a restaurant employee to book a table. The audience of software coders cheered.
• Alexa and Siri Can Hear This Hidden Command. You Can’t. - The New York Times — The technique, which the Chinese researchers called DolphinAttack, can instruct smart devices to visit malicious websites, initiate phone calls, take a picture or send text messages. While DolphinAttack has its limitations — the transmitter must be close to the receiving device — experts warned that more powerful ultrasonic systems were possible.
• SpeakEasy by Como Audio with the Google Assistant Built-in by Tom DeVesto — Enjoy music and more with voice command. SpeakEasy™ is Como Audio's newest hi-fi music system with the Google Assistant built-in.

Plus we have a question for you, and more!

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Links:

• Microsoft Build 2018 // Vision Keynote - YouTube
• Microsoft announces Your Phone app for Windows 10 and Timeline coming to iPhone | VentureBeat — These updates are part of Microsoft’s Continue on PC functionality, which, as its name suggests, lets you send a task from your Android or iOS device to your Windows 10 PC. The feature first arrived with the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update in October, and Microsoft has been slowly broadening it ever since.
• Google I/O 2018: 8 things to expect from this year’s keynote - The Verge — Google’s annual developer conference will be a jam-packed affair about the future of Android, AI, and the smart home
• Android P will finally restrict apps from monitoring your network activity — A years-old privacy flaw will finally be coming to an end on Android. It’s an issue you’ve probably never heard of, but one that you should absolutely be concerned about. Currently, apps on Android can gain full access to the network activity on your device—even without asking for any sensitive permissions. These apps can’t detect the content of your network calls, but they can sniff any outgoing or incoming connection via TCP/UDP to determine if you are connecting to a certain server.
• Making every phone smarter with Federated Learning - YouTube — Federated Learning works through collaborative learning, using de-identified, aggregated information from many devices to improve machine learning models.
• NSA triples metadata collection numbers, sucking up over 500 million call records in 2017 | TechCrunch
• 4 Things to Be Worried About in the NSA’s New Transparency Report | American Civil Liberties Union
• NSA_transparecy_report.pdf
• Tesla Will Lock Out Contractors on Monday Unless Employees Vouch For Them — The company CEO is planning to cut off access to the company to any contractor who doesn’t have a Tesla employee to vouch for the quality of their work.
• Senate vote on the Congressional Review Act May 9th — Upcoming Senate vote on the Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to block the Ajit Pai’s repeal is going to define the battle field that we’re fighting on possibly for the next decade.
• SquirrelBot — SquirrelBot is a Telegram bot that saves links that you send it for viewing later. Currently, it only saves Youtube videos and formats them for easy viewing in Kodi. On the roadmap are handling videos from other websites and saving arbitrary links in a personal RSS feed.

Also - how GEDmatch was helpful in busting the Golden State Killer.

Plus the new horrible truth we just learned about online dating... All live from LinuxFest Northwest with special guests!

Special Guests: Allan Jude and Chase Nunes.

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Links:

• The next major Windows 10 update is launching on Monday | TechCrunch — Microsoft today announced that the Windows 10 April 2018 Update will be available as a free download to users worldwide on Monday, April 30, with the broader rollout starting May 8.
• Someone Is Trying to Extort iPhone Crackers GrayShift With Leaked Code - Motherboard — Last week an unknown party started to publish code snippets from iPhone unlocking tool GrayKey. To stop, the extortionists are demanding 2 bitcoin, but they may not have more code to offer.
• How did this advocate of e-waste reuse end up behind bars? - The Washington Post
• Researchers are keeping pig brains alive outside the body - MIT Technology Review
• GEDmatch, a tiny DNA analysis firm, was key for Golden State Killer case | Ars Technica — "No court order was needed to access that site’s large database of genetic blueprints."
• Online dating is so awful that people are paying virtual dating assistants to impersonate them — Quartz — Every morning I wake up to the same routine. I log into the Tinder account of a 45-year-old man from Texas—a client. I flirt with every woman in his queue for 10 minutes, sending their photos and locations to a central database of potential “Opportunities.” For every phone number I get, I make $1.75.

Plus the puzzle that was hidden in Windows years ago, and a new project that aims to be a Wikipedia for Terms of Service agreements.

Special Guest: Noah J. Chelliah.

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• Linux Academy: Sign up with a free 7 day trial when you visit: linuxacademy.com/unplugged

Links:

• Google confirms some of its own services are now getting blocked in Russia over the Telegram Ban — Google has now confirmed to us that its own services are now also being impacted. From what we understand, Google Search, Gmail and push notifications for Android apps are among the products being affected.
• Valve acquires Firewatch developer, Campo Santo - Polygon — Dev team will continue to make its own games
• Amazon Has a Top-Secret Plan to Build Home Robots — The retail and cloud computing giant has embarked on an ambitious, top-secret plan to build a domestic robot, according to people familiar with the plans. Codenamed “Vesta,” after the Roman goddess of the hearth, home and family, the project is overseen by Gregg Zehr, who runs Amazon’s Lab126 hardware research and development division based in Sunnyvale, California.
• Microsoft Developers Hid a Secret Puzzle in Windows Backgrounds as They Knew Images Would Leak — Over the course of numerous builds, the puzzle was developed -- but only one person ever solved it! Over the weekend, Jensen Harris -- a former group program manager of Microsoft Office and Microsoft director leading the team working on the redesign of Windows 8 -- took to Twitter to come clean about the secret puzzle.
• List of Easter eggs in Microsoft products - Wikipedia
• WhatsApp drug dealer convicted using fingerprints taken from photo — Police in South Wales have arrested a drug dealer based on a WhatsApp message with a photograph of the dealer’s hand holding an assortment of pills, according to a report from the BBC.
• Welcome to the Wikipedia for Terms of Service Agreements | WIRED — A website that turns lengthy terms of service agreements into bulleted summaries, and then rates those terms from Class A (very good) to Class F (very bad). It functions as a sort of Wikipedia for terms of service agreements.
• Terms of Service; Didn't Read — “I have read and agree to the Terms” is the biggest lie on the web. We aim to fix that.

And why autonomous boats might be here much sooner than self-driving cars.

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Links:

• And now there's ~20 million or so AWS/Google Cloud addresses blocked in Russia. — More on Russia v Telegram v The Cloud in today's briefing: - Russia demands Telegram encryption keys, they refuse - Russia blocks Telegram - Telegram uses AWS + Google Cloud - Russia blocks the cloud
• Twitch is reportedly blocked in Russia right now — Twitch is reportedly blocked in Russia after the country’s state communications regulator announced it was blocking specific IP addresses owned by Amazon and Google.
• Telegram plays down Russian block — claiming no ‘significant’ impact yet | TechCrunch — A court in Russia ordered a block of messaging app Telegram this week but founder Pavel Durov has shrugged off the impact of the ban 24 hours in — claiming the app hasn’t seen “a significant drop in user engagement so far.”
• Regulatory filings indicate a flurry of new iPhone (SE?) models launching soon — Devices typically appear in this database about a month before the products ship. These iPhone references were posted yesterday, suggesting a new iPhone launch will be debuting in early May/June.
• Amazon’s new ‘Alexa Blueprints’ let anyone create custom Alexa skills and responses | TechCrunch — Amazon this morning is introducing “Alexa Blueprints,” a new way for any Alexa owner to create their own customized Alexa skills or responses, without needing to know how to code.
• Autonomous Boats Will Be On the Market Sooner Than Self-Driving Cars — Startups and major firms like Rolls Royce are now looking to automate the seas and help maritime companies ease navigation, save fuel, improve safety, increase tonnage, and make more money.
• Self-driving boats | Amherst | Buffalo Automation
• Reddit now has more active users than Twitter — That’s an increase of more than 30 percent in less than 6 months, and puts the platform in equal 11th place in our new global social media platform ranking (see chart above).
• I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place — A conversation with former Reddit product head Dan McComas on the problems of growth as a metric and what Twitter is doing wrong.
• Supreme Court Tosses Out Microsoft Case on Digital Data Abroad - The New York Times — The dispute arose from a federal drug investigation in which prosecutors sought the emails of a suspect stored in a Microsoft data center in Dublin.
• Neova | A Unique Connected Ring For Musicians by Enhancia — Kickstarter — Add musical effects to your play using simple and natural hand gestures. A brand new way to enhance musical performance.

Plus tech headlines, and more.

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Links:

• Oculus Rift is effectively bricked right now — First discovered in the Oculus Forums, the cause of this Oculus Runtime Service error is an expired certificate. Because Oculus failed to renew this certificate, the Oculus Runtime Service is being viewed as invalid. The only way to fix this is for Oculus to release an updated version of OculusAppFramework.dll with a new certificate. Once that happens, your Oculus services should return to normal operating speed.
• Android P Developer Preview arrives with new notification panel, notch support — However, device support for this release is pretty limited: you'll need a Google Pixel phone to play. The developer preview works on the Pixel 1, Pixel 1 XL, Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, and that's it. Pour one out for the Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, and Pixel C tablet, which were all part of the Android O developer preview but didn't make it to Android P. I actually confirmed this with Google—those three devices won't be getting Android P.
• Android P drops support for Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, and the Pixel C tablet
• Slack Gateways
• SCALE 16x JB Telegram Group

Plus Google's Slack competitor launches, Spotify's secrets revealed, and why 96.5% of YouTubers will fail.

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• Digital Ocean: Smash our promo code heresthething after you create an account, and get a credit on us! Promo Code: heresthething

Links:

• Amazon to acquire Ring video doorbell maker, cracking open the door in home security market — The surprise acquisition marks the latest move by the Seattle-based tech giant into the smart home technology market. Financial terms were not disclosed, but Reuters puts the deal at more than $1 billion.
• Watch: “Shark Tank” judges reject Jamie Siminoff’s idea for Ring that Amazon just spent $1 billion — In his Shark Tank pitch, Siminoff said he was seeking a $700,000 investment for a 10% stake in his then-struggling startup—called DoorBot at the time—which he thought was worth $7 million.
• Hangouts Chat, Google’s Slack competitor, comes out of beta — For all intents and purposes, Hangouts Chat is Google’s take on Slack, Microsoft Teams and similar projects
• Spotify Files for Public Offering, to Be Listed As ‘SPOT’ — Spotify officially filed for a public offering with the Security and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. The music service intends to trade under the “SPOT” symbol at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)
• ‘Success’ on YouTube Still Means a Life of Poverty — In fact, 96.5 percent of all of those trying to become YouTubers won’t make enough money off of advertising to crack the U.S. poverty line
• Drones for Space Operations by Gateway Foundation — Kickstarter — Our primary mission is to develop drones to be used at the International Space Station to retrieve objects that drift away during spacewalks and repair activities by astronauts.

Plus the dirty secret from Mobile World Congress 2018, Apple gets caught using Google's cloud, and finally a useful password tool.

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Links:

• Red Hat at Mobile World Congress 2018 — Connect with Red Hat onsite at Mobile World Congress 2018 to see why 100% of telecommunications organizations in the global Fortune 500 rely on Red Hat technology.
• Mobile World Congress 2018 | Ubuntu Insights — Today Canonical operates telco networks worldwide in partnership with leading hardware and NFV vendors . We’re also collaborating with institutions worldwide to build tomorrow’s applications on Ubuntu: blockchain, machine learning, robotics or autonomous vehicles… To make sure that your infrastructure will be future proof.
• FCC Will Auction 5G-ready 3.7-4.2GHz and mmWave Spectrum — Speaking at the Mobile World Congress today in Barcelona, Spain, U.S. FCC chairman Ajit Pai today announced that the commission is prepared to quickly make 5G-ready wireless spectrum available in two critically important ranges: Mid-frequency, including both 3.5GHz and 3.7-4.2GHz ranges, and high-frequency, including 24GHz and 28GHz millimeter wave (mmWave) ranges. Pai suggested that the FCC is ready to auction the spectrum in the near future, but requires Congressional cooperation by May 13 to make the 24GHz and 28GHz allocations happen.
• Samsung Galaxy S9, Nokia 8110: All smartphones unveiled at MWC 2018 — With 5G technology taking an increasing share of the spotlight, as top executives stress the importance of the next generation of mobile networks, smartphones are still very much center stage.
• How to find out if an old password has been stolen — The Pwned Passwords tool, integrated into the popular password manager 1Password, lets customers type in an old password and find out if it's been leaked in a data breach.
• Pwned Passwords — With Half a Billion Passwords for Download
• Apple confirms it now uses Google Cloud for iCloud services - The Verge — Apple has confirmed that it uses Google’s public cloud to store data for its iCloud services in its latest version of the iOS Security Guide last month, as spotted by CNBC.
• Apple confirms it uses Google cloud for some of iCloud | Hacker News — From Apple’s actual iCloud security document: > Each file is broken into chunks and encrypted by iCloud using AES-128 and a key derived from each chunk’s contents that utilizes SHA-256. The keys and the file’s metadata are stored by Apple in the user’s iCloud account. The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using third-party storage services, such as S3 and Google Cloud Platform.
• Vulkan is coming to macOS and iOS, but no thanks to Apple | Ars Technica — The open source, royalty-free release of MoltenVK—a runtime for macOS and iOS that offers an almost complete subset of the Vulkan API implemented using Metal. Released under the Apache 2 license
• Israel-Based Vendor Cellebrite Can Unlock Every iPhone, including the Current-Gen iPhone X, That's On the Market: Forbes - Slashdot — The Israeli firm, a subsidiary of Japan's Sun Corporation, hasn't made any major public announcement about its new iOS capabilities. But Forbes was told by sources (who asked to remain anonymous as they weren't authorized to talk on the matter) that in the last few months the company has developed undisclosed techniques to get into iOS 11 and is advertising them to law enforcement and private forensics folk across the globe. Indeed, the company's literature for its Advanced Unlocking and Extraction Services offering now notes the company can break the security of "Apple iOS devices and operating systems, including iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, iPad Pro and iPod touch, running iOS 5 to iOS 11."