PTJ 103 News: Shoot the Messenger

July 31, 2014 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Facebook’s move to shove users onto its separate Messenger app is reportedly coming soon — if it’s not here already by the time you read this. Millions of people are already using it, and Facebook says the Messenger app is a faster and more efficient for sharing text and multimedia messages. The company has plans to monetize Messenger with a payment system as well. The Messenger app’s Terms of Service is causing some concern with the privacy-minded, though, and some users are complaining about the forced march.

Splitting up app services seems to be a popular move. Foursquare recently divided its eponymous mobile software for checking into places and reviewing them into two apps They are Foursquare and the new Swarm app, available for Android and iOS. Swarm is now the app required for all the check-in-with-your-pals activity, while Foursquare has been transformed into a user-reviews database. The split has gotten media criticism and a fair amount of backlash from users who are checking out of Swarm, but the company did just release another update earlier this week. (Yelp, the service Foursquare seems to competing with most, updated its own mobile app this week and now allows users to add short video clips to their reviews.)

And about apps… there are new reports of a security problem with the way apps are identified by Google’s Android operating system. The research team at Bluebox Security says the new “Fake ID” vulnerability that it has just discovered allows malicious applications to essentially copy the identity certificates and credentials of trusted apps and get into places where malware is normally not allowed. The research team said this security hole has been around since Android version 2.1 in January 2010 and devices that haven’t been updated with last April’s patch for Google bug 13678484 are vulnerable. Bluebox waited 90 days to publicize its findings so Google had time to get out the April patch.

Apple has just purchased BookLamp, a book-recommendation service in what’s said to be a shot across Amazon’s e-book bow. Also in Apple’s shopping cart: Swell, the podcasting app described by some as “Pandora for talk radio.” The Re/code site reports that Apple is scooping up Swell for about $30 million and could put Apple’s own poorly reviewed Podcasts app out of its misery or boost iTunes Radio. (Apple has now quietly confirmed the deal; the Swell website has been shut down now and the app has been removed from the App Store.)

This summer marks 15 years since the Napster peer-to-peer file-sharing service stormed onto the scene and made MP3-swapping all the rage. At its peak, Napster claimed 80 million users before its original incarnation was shut down by court order for copyright violations in 2001. After several years of being bought and sold, the remains of the company eventually merged with the Rhapsody streaming service and this week announced it had just hit the two-million subscriber mark. On the way back up at last!

Beats Electronics, another of Apple’s more recent acquisitions, is getting sued by Bose Electronics. Bose, which makes a line of high-end and very popular noise-cancelling headphones says Beats infringed on five of its patents. Sounds like QuietComfort is getting ready to rumble…

Microsoft is also finding itself in a spot of legal bother this week, as the Chinese government is investigating the company for violations of its antitrust laws. Chinese officials have also investigated Qualcomm for alleged anti-trust violations in recent times.

Legal troubles overseas haven’t dampened Microsoft’s sense of fun when it comes to giving Apple a virtual wedgie on TV. The mighty Redmond giant is running a new television commercial for Windows Phone that shows off its Cortana virtual assistant being much more talented and helpful than Apple’s Siri software. The general theme of the ad is similar to last year’s Microsoft spots that touted its Surface tablets over Apple’s iPad.

Microsoft is also cooking up its own recipe for Raspberry Pi. But while the bare-bones Pi computer (shown here) costs a mere $40, Microsoft’s own version of the naked circuit board computer is called Sharknado 3, er, The Shark’s Cove and runs about $300. The Shark’s Cove is intended to be a serious dev board for programmers and less of a hobbyist gadget like the Pi. The Microsoft Shark board does come with a copy of Windows 8.1 and the oomph to actually run it.

A lower-cost cable plan that brings broadband, basic channels and HBO for about $49-a-month is said to be in the works. The budget package had a trial run with Comcast last year. Game of Thrones for fewer bones, perhaps?

And finally, up on Mars. We’d like to congratulate NASA’s Opportunity Rover for setting an off-world driving record. The rolling robot has been cruising around the Red Planet since 2004 and in that decade, racked up just over 25 miles on its little odometer. And a big “Happy Birthday” this week to NASA itself. The agency came into existence on July 29, 1958, after Congress and President Eisenhower made it so with the creatively named National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. The mission? “To provide for research into problems of flight within and outside the earth’s atmosphere, and for other purposes.” It’s not quite as poetic as, “To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before,” but hey, you have to start somewhere.

Podcast

PTJ 103: Company’s Shopping and Records Dropping

July 31, 2014 Pedro Rafael Rosado Leave a comment

This week we channel our inner AV club as El Kaiser reviews a USB headphone amp and digital to analog converter called the Dragonfly from Audioquest and J.D. takes a look at how to deal with DVD region codes. Yes, DVDs. You remember? Shiny disk that looked like CDs and every PC and laptop used to have a drive that could read them…

In the news Facebook officially splits off their popular Messenger feature; Foursquare looks to improve it’s new Swarm app; Yelp allows users to post videos along with their reviews; Google addresses another major Android security vulnerability; Apple goes shopping; Napster announces it has passed the 2 million user mark, Bose and Beats Electronics go toe to toe over noise cancellation; the Chinese government investigates Microsoft over anti-trust concerns; and the Mars Opportunity Rover breaks a record.

Episode Links

We Are Region

July 29, 2014 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

In this big old streaming world these days, DVD region codes seem like a quaint artifact of a bygone era. For those who don’t remember: The world is divided up into six distinct geographical regions and embedded technology on the disc and DVD player have to match up in order for the movie to play. So if you buy a French movie on Region 2 DVD during your Paris vacation, you can’t play it on your Region 1 DVD player back here in the States. Blu-Ray discs are divided into three regions of their own, although many are released as “region-free,” meaning they’ll play on any system.

Not every movie out there is available as an online stream or download, though, and sometimes, you actually want to play things on disc for various reasons – you have no Internet access, your bandwidth is puny or maybe there are groovy extras on a long-out-of-print disc you really want to see. So what can you do if you run up against the region-code lockout?

Well, as with many roadblocks in life, there are ways around it. Be aware, bypassing a region-code restriction on a disc is something of a gray area. Hollywood, which sets up these things so movies come out in certain parts of the world at a certain time, does not want people messing around with this stuff. People who have legally purchased discs on vacation — only to find them useless when they return home — probably have another opinion.

Depending on whether you’re watching on a computer or a standalone DVD player, here are three options. (Blu-ray drives are much harder to crack and can take some heavy technical lifting, so for now, we’ll focus in DVD discs.)

1. Playing DVDs on the Computer

When you stick in a DVD from a different region into your computer’s drive, you’ve probably seen the box that pops up (like the ones below), asking you to change the drive’s region setting and letting you know you can only change it 5 times total before it locks for good. In many cases, you can use software to get around this, like AnyDVD, a somewhat pricy Windows program that promises to unlock restrictions on DVD and Blu-ray discs.

But there’s another program that’s cheaper, cross-platform and it works on a lot of DVD drives: VideoLAN’s VLC Media Player. The VLC FAQ does warn that RCP1 drives work quite well with the program, but newer RCP2 drives are problematic. If you don’t know what’s under the hood of your computer, the VLC site advises simply popping in the disc and seeing if it works on your system.

As shown below, a Region 2 disc does work on a MacBookPro with external USB SuperDrive. The video was later streamed to a widescreen TV with Apple TV and AirPlay for more relaxed viewing and a proper toasting to Dame Helen Mirren‘s superior acting prowess.

2. Playing DVDs on a Standard DVD Player

If you run up against region lock on your DVD player, you may be able to gently unlock it with a hack. Keep in mind that doing so voids any warranty you may have left on the machine and the manufacturer would rather you not go messing around in there. End disclaimer.

In a nutshell, to do these hacks, you basically punch a specific sequence of buttons on your DVD remote to unlock it. To find out which are the magic buttons for your player, check out sites like Video Help’s DVD Hacks or DVD Exploder.

Just look up your model number and fiddle away. Again, don’t do this if you have warranty concerns or a really expensive player you don’t want to risk messing up. As you may read on the forums, some players are more finicky than others and some may have problems playing discs from certain research, so check the boards if you’re having problems.

As an alternative approach, you can also look up a DVD hack code for one to the newer models and then buy the machine, do the hack and watch your discs. Some DVD players can be purchased for as little as $20 or $30, so you can in effect, make your own region-free DVD player for a relative pile of peanuts.

3. Playing DVDs on a Region-Free DVD Player

If you just want something out of the box that’s meant to play DVDs from all over the world, you can find region-free DVD players for sale, cheap. As shown below, Amazon sells a Philips region-free 1080p HDMI upconverting player that can handle PAL or NTSC and it’s less than $70. Sites like RegionFreeDVD.net or CodeFreeDVD.com have plenty of models to choose from too.

In a perfect world, everything ever filmed would be legally available as an instant stream, we would all have broadband at South Korean speeds and these issues would be a fading memory. Until then, if we want to watch globally, we’ll just have to act locally.

Podcast

PTJ 102: Making The Leap From Windows to OS X

July 25, 2014 Pedro Rafael Rosado Leave a comment

This week on a super-sized edition of the best geek culture web radio show on the planet we answer a question from a longtime listener who is about to make the dramatic leap from a Windows PC to a shiny new Mac. J.D. and El Kaiser offer suggestions on how to make the transition painless.

In the news, Apple edges closer to official i-branded wearable tech; a forensic scientist and hacker claims there are a slew of attack points, system backdoors and surveillance mechanisms purposely built into iOS devices; The Electronic Frontier Foundation has developed its own browser plug-in that prevents third party online snoops; Facebook tests new “buy now” and “save for later” features; The FCC closes out the first round of public comments on its proposed new rules for Net Neutrality; Samsung gets into the luxury headphone game; and The Simpsons get the marathon treatment.

Episode Links

PTJ 102 News: It’s About iTime

July 24, 2014 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Could Apple’s mythical smartwatch be edging closer to reality? The iWatch watchers were all titter earlier this week when the US Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple a patent for an electronic wristband. The original paperwork was actually filed back on January 31, 2011, and the patent just granted this past Tuesday, but it’s full of sketches and diagrams — and the working name “iTime.”

Things are not all shiny with Apple, as Jonathan Zdziarski, a forensic scientist (who also happens to be a hacker and an author of five books on iOS-related topics) revealed what he says are attack points, system backdoors and surveillance mechanisms purposely built into iOS devices — and that these entry points could give user information to government agencies. Apple, for its part, denied that it has ever worked with government agencies to create drive-thru windows for personal data pickup, but said that diagnostic functions were built into iOS for enterprise IT departments, developers and Apple itself for purely troubleshooting purposes.

While it hasn’t had any major public privacy flaps of its own this week, Facebook is tinkering with new ways to buy and save — as detailed in a pair of recent posts on company blogs. First, The Social Network announced it was testing a Buy button on advertisements and product pages so users could purchase goods right there. Second, the company is rolling out a Save feature that lets users mark a post or link for reading later.

On to the next round. After overwhelming demand, system crashes, and a deadline extension, the Federal Communications Commission finally closed out the first round of public comments on its proposed new rules for Net Neutrality. The Consumerist blog has gathered up a selection of the highlights for your reading pleasure. (Oh, and Netflix, a company that would really like to see the Net stay neutral for its own corporate well-being, just announced it hit the 50-million global subscriber mark and the second season of Orange Is the New Black, helped bring in some new members who’d heard good things.)

One of those big telecom companies, Verizon Wireless, just launched a rewards program for its customers. In order to participate in the Smart Rewards program, you need to consent to let Verizon track you around the Web. In other Verizon news, the FiOS broadband department is rolling out faster upload speeds for customers. FiOS customers will soon have symmetrical upload and download speeds. Take that, cable!

Amazon launched its Kindle Unlimited plan last week. The service costs $10 a month and gives readers access to about 640,000 ebooks and audiobooks. Not everything Amazon sells in the Kindle format is available, though, so many people are already complaining about the limits of Kindle Unlimited.

Google is working on a new file type called WebP. Google’s developer page said the format makes for smaller and richer images that help make the Web faster. (And while Google would like to change image formats to make the Web faster, Italy would like Google to change its data-use practices.)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of the groups here in the States that consistently fights for the digital privacy and rights of the common user, and now the group has taken its own action. The EEF has developed its own browser plug-in that’s supposed to block third parties from snooping on your Web travels. The plug-in, which is just out of alpha and into beta now, is called Privacy Badger, and it works with Chrome and Firefox so far.

The P-Badger is just one of the options out here for people who’d like to avoid being tracked — or want to know just who is tracking them. The Ford Foundation has also helped sponsor Lightbeam, an add-on for Firefox that provides interactive visualizations for the first and third-party sites you encounter while surfing. AdBlock Plus, Disconnect and Ghostery are even more options for shielding yourself.

Samsung is not letting Apple and Google make all the expansion and acquisitions this year. The South Korean company has its own “Level” line of fancy high-end headphones available now in the States. The products in the family cover most headphone styles and are available on the Gilt.com luxury-product site. So while it has its own high-end headphones like Apple now has with its Beats acquisition, Samsung is also trying to keep up with Google in the Internet o’ Stuff department and has reportedly bought a company called SmartThings, which develops home-automation software.

Refugees pining for the return of the real Windows Start menu button might have some hope next year. Leaked screenshots, (like the one below) supposedly of Windows 9 in development, show Microsoft getting closer to the Start button known and loved from Windows 95 to Windows 7.

Speaking of tech nostalgia, Sony is still tinkering with its Walkman line, first released in 1979 and the iconic personal cassette player that changed how we ignore each other on the subway. Sony’s new upscale NWZ-ZX1 Walkman, however, costs $700 but offers 128 gigabytes of storage for high-quality lossless music files.

And finally, if you are a fan of The Simpsons, the FXX cable network will soon be holding the longest-running marathon in TV history. The network plans to show all 552 episodes of the classic animated series, as well as The Simpsons Movie, in chronological order from August 21 to September 1. That’s 25 seasons of quality Bart jokes and tidbits for mathletes. In case you’re on vacation or your DVR melts, wait until October, when the company launches Simpsons World, streaming on-demand portal (with apps) for all the episodes and plenty of extras. Bulk-buy your snack food of choice and settle in through Labor Day!

Episode Links

Moving to Mac

July 23, 2014 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

So, after all these years, you’ve decided to leave the familiar Windows PC behind and switch to the Mac. Whether it be corporate migration, fear and annoyance with Windows 8/ditching Windows XP (at last), or just the need for a change, the process isn’t as drastic as it used to be. Let’s break it down: After you get the new Mac, you have three basic steps to make it feel like home.

Step 1: Move Your Stuff

You can physically schlep your files from the PC to Mac in a number of ways, including copying folders and files to an external hard drive for a SneakerNet transfer, or moving them over a network. But Apple, wanting to make PC refugees as happy as possible, has its own free Windows Migration Assistant program (shown below) and detailed instructions for using it on its site. The Assistant moves basic stuff like contacts, calendar info, mail accounts, browser bookmarks and more — but not Windows programs. (These won’t run on OS X anyway unless you get fancy, as we’ll discuss in a bit.)

You can also use the Migration Assistant to move files and folders. Common file formats, like JPG photo files, text files and unprotected MP3 audio files work well on both platforms. The Assistant can even put your pictures into the free iPhoto program that comes with the Mac, but if you prefer other photo-editing and organizer programs like Google’s Picasa or Adobe Photoshop Elements, there are OS X versions to download or buy.

Likewise, if you need Microsoft Office, you can either buy the Mac version, use Office 365 or get one of the various other programs out there that can open and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. Apple’s iWork productivity suite is now free with every new Mac and can handle a lot of Office chores.

Apple’s iTunes program can’t plan Windows Audio Media files, but iTunes can convert unrestricted WMA files to iTunes-friendly formats. If you were using iTunes for Windows, you can transfer all your ripped and purchased iTunes content between computers.

Many apps and services are cross-platform — Dropbox, Amazon Cloud Drive and Amazon’s Kindle Reader, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and so on. You can download new versions from the sites themselves. The Mac App Store may also have useful software.

The bummer for most people is that PC games will not work on the Mac and the Mac has never quite caught up with Windows in that area. (Some say Macs are getting better for games, though, and Steam might help ease the pain of PC-game withdrawal.)

Step 2: Get to Know Mac OS X

Let’s face it, over the years, both Windows and OS X have gotten similar: Taskbar/Dock, Programs/Applications folder, Recycle Bin/Trash Can — navigating the desktop is not that hard to do anymore between the two systems. Mac keyboard shortcuts may differ, as well as the placement of desktop icons, but these are often minor things to relearn.

Apple’s site has tons of basic info about getting used to Mac OS X and even an “On Windows, I used to…” page. Many people around the Web have posted their personal tales of switching from PC to Mac. Resources abound online, so read up.

Step 3: Fine-Tuning, Workarounds and … Windows on a Mac?

Once you get your stuff moved over and become somewhat used to navigating the Mac interface, you’ll probably find some things you need to tweak. You may also find you need some programs that just aren’t available for the Mac.

As for the tweaking, the Mac OS comes with a ton of printer drivers already installed, but you may need to snag more obscure ones or utility software from the manufacturer’s site. Many new Macs don’t include disc drives or Ethernet jacks anymore, so if you need these, external add-ons are available. Of course, you’ll want to get a backup drive for your system, but you get free backup software with Mac OS X called Time Machine.

If there are some Windows programs you still need to use, you have options. Programs like Citrix will let you tap into some Windows servers and systems virtually from your Mac. Apple’s free Boot Camp software (below) basically lets you partition your Mac’s drive and carve out space to install a copy of Windows side-by-side on the same machine. Virtualization software like the $80 Parallels Desktop can also run Windows on your Mac, but without all that partitioning business. Note that you do have to buy the copy of Windows, however. (Microsoft software sold separately. Void where prohibited. Your mileage may vary.)

After years of Windows, it may take a few weeks to get used to OS X — especially if you’ve never used a Mac, but go on in and get comfortable. To help you relax, check out these OS X Easter Eggs left by kindly Apple software engineers. You can play a round of Tetris, see the legendary Mrs. Field’s cookie recipe — and if you miss it from Windows — watch the ASCII version of Star Wars over a Telnet connection in the Mac’s Terminal window. Feels like home already now, doesn’t it? And if it doesn’t…well, Windows 9 is due out next year!

Podcast

PTJ 101: The PTJ Players Present: “The Jedi Doth Return”

July 17, 2014 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

So what comes after William Shakespeare’s Star Wars and William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back? Why, William Shakespeare’s The Jedi Doth Return, of course!

Author Ian Doescher has completed his journey to the verse side with his translation of the Episode VI into iambic pentameter, now available in stores — and on the Quirk Books website. Once again, actor Francis Mateo joins J.D. and El Kaiser in the studio for a few selected scenes. If you’re new to the Pop Tech Jam Players, you can hear excerpts from Mr. Doescher’s first two volumes on previous episodes here and here. May the Force be with thou!

Episode Links

PTJ 101 News: Song of Dice and Ire

July 17, 2014 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

This past Tuesday was supposed to be the end of the first-round public comment period for the proposed Net Neutrality (or Open Internet) rules but forth by the Federal Communications Commission. Due to an overwhelming volume of people trying to deposit their $0.2, however, the FCC has now extended the initial round of comments until Friday, July 18^th, at midnight. [Quick! To the Rantmobile!] The FCC’s website even has a chart showing the huge flurry of messages coming in through the site’s Electronic Comment Filing System on this particular topic. In addition to mere mortals, several large tech companies have stated their support for an open internet and thirteen US senators also called on the FCC to support net neutrality. A decision could come in September, after the next round of comments.

The FCC is also hearing it from the DISH network, which has formally asked the agency to block the pending Comcast-Time Warner merger due to serious competitive concerns. (By the way, the FCC just picked its panel last week to review that looming deal.) DISH also doesn’t like the proposed AT&T and DirecTV merger, but the company should be celebrating the recent court ruling in favor of its Hopper DVRs.

Adding to the alphabet soup: the FAA and the FTC: A few weeks ago, the Federal Aviation Administration said it wasn’t authorizing drones for commercial use, but Amazon is persisting. Last week, the megamoo überstore filed an official request to the administrator of the FAA to ask for an official exemption from the No Commercial Drones rule. In other Amazon news, the battle with publishers over ebook pricing drags on and oh, by the way, the Federal Trade Commission just sued the company for improperly billing parents for in-app purchases made by their children.

If the rumors are to be believed, the iPhone 6 will come on two sizes, (a 4.7-inch and a 5.5-inch screen model) but are whispers from analysts that the 5.5-phablet-size version will be delayed due to complications with components and the manufacturing process. So if you want to buy the thing that doesn’t offically exist yet, you may have to wait a little longer.

Microsoft, which is starting to but cloud and mobile moves of its own, has plans for a $199 Windows laptop from HP in time for the holiday season, as well as similar low-cost laptops from Acer and Toshiba for about $249. Take that, Google Chromebooks.

After a month of drama, diving and oh, fútbol, the 2014 World Cup wrapped up in Brazil this past weekend as Germany won the large gold trophy. Along with setting new records for global television viewership, the tournament was also the biggest streaming multimedia video event in history. The Spanish-language channel Univision Deportes got 81 million total viewers for the tournament and was up 34% in viewership from the 2010 World Cup.

Also up in recent numbers — album sales on vinyl. Nielsen Soundscan’s mid-year report shows the once-dominate format for audio recordings has clawed its way back to 4 million units from near-extinction at the hand of CDs and digital downloads .

In robot news, the folks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are working on phase-changing material made from wax and foam that could allow robots to become “squishy” or shift between hard and soft states. These robots are intended for good works.

Now, if you missed the supermoon on July 12^th, there’s another one on August 10^th, and some are calling it the superdupermoon because it will be even brighter and larger than the previous mere supermoon. August 10^th will see the moon’s perigree coincide with the hour that the moon itself is most full. There will also be a supermoon hat-trick this year, with another (but dimmer) one occurring on September 9^th.
Mark your calendars.

The frostiness between Samsung and Google is probably going to get a little more polar vortex-y as Samsung has opened its own Android app store that its users can shop instead of Google Play. The new store is called Galaxy Apps and claims hundreds of exclusive programs just for Samsung shoppers.

Samsung is also working with Google’s Nest division on their own Internet of Things standards club called Thread Group. They are not alone.

And finally, Dungeons & Dragons is not just a role-playing game, it’s a skill-builder for writers and programmers. As The New York Times reported earlier this week, several renowned authors like Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist Junot Díaz, Sherman Alexie, Sharyn McCrumb and yes, George R.R. Martin were all influenced by the game and said it helped with their development as writers. D&D’s ability to teach players creativity, narrative and problem-solving skills is nothing new. In his 1998 Gen X memoir, Extra Life: Coming of Age in Cyberspace, author Davis S. Bennahum said the complexity of the game even got him into computer programming. Perhaps there’s hope for the younger generation today, who have grown bored with repetitive casual games. Wizards of the Coast just released a Dungeons & Dragons Starter Kit for $20 this week. Get rolling!

Podcast

PTJ 100: Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now

July 10, 2014 Pedro Rafael Rosado Leave a comment

As we approached the century mark in episodes J.D. and I considered all the cool things we could do to mark the occasion. Sky divers, bouncy castles, and a Blade Runner marathon were all discussed but in the end we decided to offer up what all of you have come to expect from us: tech news, helpful hints, product reviews and shenanigans. Thank you for sticking with us for these past 100 episodes and we look forward to serving up many, many more!

This week El Kaiser takes a listen to Bowers & Wilkins flagship P7 headphones and J.D. makes using your set top boxes a whole lot easier.

In the news, Facebook experiments with its users; the NSA takes a particularly strong interest in Linux users; protocols for the Internet of Things popping up like weeds; Python is more popular than Java in schools; and The Beatles film “A Hard Days Night” gets the remastering treatment.

Episode Links

PTJ 100 News: Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge

July 10, 2014 J.D. Biersdorfer Leave a comment

Oh, Facebook. The revelation of your controversial “emotional contagion” experiment was weeks ago, but people are still talking about it. (In case you were on vacation, too, this was the one where Facebook deliberately tampered with the feeds of about 700,000 users back in January 2012 and took note of how those people reacted to really negative or really positive postings — but the site never informed the affected users that they were being used as guinea pigs.) The news broke in mid-June when a paper on the study was published and now the editor of that academic journal, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has issued an Editorial Expression of Concern over the whole thing.

Facebook, facing a backlash, defended the its actions and said a clause in its terms of service informs users that their data may be used for research purposes. But, as The Daily Dot, Forbes and others point out, that policy wasn’t added until four months after the experiment took place. Why, yes, the Electronic Privacy Information Center has already filed a complaint against Facebook to the Federal Trade Commission. Regulators in Ireland and the United Kingdom are looking into the matter as well.

This is apparently nothing new on the Facebook campus, as a former data scientist for the company basically told The Wall Street Journal, hey, if you’re a Facebook user, you’ve been experimented on. Andrew Ledvina, on his blog, later clarified some of his statements and said several were taken out of context by the paper.

Also in the Department of Things Under Scrutiny: Linux users. New disclosures about the National Security Agency and its practices claim the NSA is particularly interested in visitors to the Linux Journal site, along with those who frequent the TOR (The Onion Router) and Tails Linux distro site.

If we’re going to have an Internet of Things, we’re gonna need some protocols and specifications. Wouldn’t you know it, major technology companies are jumping in to create an open-source standard for wirelessly connecting devices.The latest group is called the Open Interconnect Consortium and its founding members include Intel, Samsung, Dell, Wind River, Broadcom and others. However, this is not the first Internet of Things club. The Allseen Alliance, formed last year, counts Qualcomm, Microsoft, Cisco, LG, Panasonic, D-Link, HTC among its 50 or so members. (Will there be a nerd war over IoT standards?)

Interconnected smart homes are starting to go mainstream, though. Box-boxer The Home Depot, is now working with Wink, the app and platform that lets you control and monitor your connected thermostat, locks, lights, blinds and other household furnishings from your smartphone.

If you’re getting ready to study computer science at any of the top universities here in the States this fall, odds are you’ll probably be taking a Python course or two. According to the newsletter for the Association for Computing Machinery, Python has now passed Java as the most popular programming language taught in introductory computer-science courses. (If you can’t afford the time or money to go to college, you can take a free Python fundamentals course online at the Codeacademy.) And yes, the name is derived from the British comedy classic, Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Also in education news, alumni from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dropbox have teamed up on a new email platform called Inbox. The Inbox announcement comes a few weeks after Google announced its new Gmail API at the I/O conference.

The PC market, once thought on the decline thanks to the rise of tablets and mobile devices, has had a bit of an uptick — or perhaps, less of a slump than expected, According to Gartner Research, PC shipments will only drop 2.9 percent this year, compared to a plummet of 9.5 percent last year. Part of this change is said to be people upgrading from their ancient Windows XP machines at last.

And finally, the latest digital restoration technology is to thank for the restoration and re-release of A Hard Day’s Night, the 1964 film staring The Beatles in their youthful prime. The Criterion Collection folks created a 4K scan of the film from its original 35-millimeter negative to work with and added a 5.1 surround sound mix.

The restored film had a limited release in theaters last week and is also available on Blu-ray and DVD. Yes, it’s true, money can’t buy you love — but you can get a lovely restored classic piece of movie (and music) history on Blu-ray disc for less than $40.

The independent audio magazine devoted to mashing up pop culture, technology and more. J.D. Biersdorfer and Pedro Rafael Rosado are your hosts. It's an Internet Radio revolution!