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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• Ting: Take $25 off a device, or earn $25 in service credits if you bring a compatible one! Promo Code: Visit LAS.ting.com

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.

Plus the fascinating audio isolation AI Google's developed, and leaked memos!

Sponsored By:

• Ting: Take $25 off a device, or earn $25 in service credits if you bring a compatible one! Promo Code: Visit LAS.ting.com

Links:

• Elon Musk says ‘humans are underrated,’ calls Tesla’s ‘excessive automation’ a ‘mistake’ | TechCrunch — In a rare mea culpa for the mercurial billionaire, Tesla CEO Elon Musk acknowledged that the company has been too reliant on robots for production.
• Russia starts blocking Telegram for failing to turn over encryption keys — The Russian state telecommunication regulator has began blocking Telegram as expected.
• Pandora's CEO is doubling down on podcasts
• In a Leaked Memo, Apple Warns Employees to Stop Leaking Information - Bloomberg — Company memo says it found 29 ‘leakers’ last year, 12 arrested
• 'GrayKey' iPhone Unlocking Box Seeing Wide Adoption Among Law Enforcement — Motherboard found that regional police forces like the Maryland State Police, the Indiana State Police, and the Miami-Dade County Police have purchased or are soon purchasing GrayKey technology
• Gmail’s new design will include a ‘Confidential Mode’ — Gmail on the web is getting a big update in the coming weeks with a new design and features, but Google is also introducing a new Confidential Mode.
• Google works out a fascinating, slightly scary way for AI to isolate voices in a crowd — Google researchers have developed a deep-learning system designed to help computers better identify and isolate individual voices within a noisy environment.

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

Sponsored By:

• 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.

Sponsored By:

• Ting: Take $25 off a device, or earn $25 in service credits if you bring a compatible one! Promo Code: Visit LAS.ting.com

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."