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

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• 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.

Then we'll cover a study that shows just one percent of Reddit users cause 75 percent of the drama, follow up on some topics, and discuss our thoughts for Season 2.

We set off to SCaLE this year with a goal in mind, but quickly realized the trip and this season of Tech Talk Today, we're going to be about something entirely different.

Sponsored By:

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

Links:

• Feds pushing new plan for encrypted mobile device unlocks via court order — The Department of Justice is pushing for a new industry proposal that would grant law enforcement access to encrypted digital devices with a warrant, according to a new report by The New York Times.
• Valve has 1,700 CPUs working non-stop to bust CS:GO cheaters | PC Gamer — Right now there are about 600,000 5v5 CS:GO matches per day, and to evaluate all players in those matches Valve needed about four minutes of computation, amounting to 2.4 million minutes of CPU effort per day. You need about 1,700 CPUs to do that daily work.
• Face ID Deemed Too Costly To Copy, Android Makers Target In-Display Fingerprint Sensors Instead — Android phone makers are 'rushing' to implement fingerprint sensors under the display for upcoming handsets," reports 9to5Mac, citing a new report from Digitimes. "Android manufacturers have decided that recreating the 3D facial recognition used by iPhone X is simply too costly to include, and are instead focusing on implementing Qualcomm's ultrasonic fingerprint scanners.
• State Department Seemingly Buys $15,000 iPhone Cracking Tech GrayKey — On March 6, the State Department ordered an item from Grayshift for just over $15,000, according to a purchase order listing available on the U.S. government's public federal procurement data system.
• Since October, Apple has signed 12 TV projects, nine of them “straight-to-series”; sources say the company aims to roll them out between March and summer 2019 — Since October, Apple has made deals for 12 projects, nine of them “straight-to-series” orders — an aggressive method of creating new programming that skips the pilot-episode stage.
• Deals Like AT&T-Time Warner Won't Solve TV-Streaming Mess - Bloomberg — Media companies are scrambling to get bigger and create their own online-video services, which don't make much money or even meet consumers' needs.
• One percent of Reddit users cause 75 percent of the drama — In the self-published research from Srijan Kumar, Jure Leskoec, William Hamilton, and Dan Jurafsky of Stanford University, “intercommunity conflict” is defined as “negative sentiment to comment in another community.” These users wouldn’t necessarily qualify as trolls or sockpuppets; they’re instigators, posting links to other subreddits and encouraging other users to target, harass, and fight with users on that subreddit.