Tag: troll

DigitalOutbox Episode 176

DigitalOutbox Episode 176
DigitalOutbox Episode 176 – Twitter Trolls, Now TV and goodbye Skydrive

Playback
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Shownotes
0:41 – Twitter under fire after bank note campaigner is target of rape threats
7:55 – Internet troll who abused Mary Beard apologises after threat to tell his mother
9:36 – UK ‘losing fight’ against internet crime, warn MPs
13:39 – Google asked to remove 100 million ‘piracy’ links in 2013
16:18 – Blu-ray successor plan unveiled by Sony and Panasonic
19:20 – Microsoft forced to rename SkyDrive following trademark case with broadcaster
22:10 – British broadcaster BSkyB launches £9.99 Now TV set-top box to make all TVs smart
24:34 – The Old Reader bites the dust
27:46 – Brits can now get hands-off with the Autographer wearable camera
30:33 – Asda removes Nintendo’s Wii U from stores

Picks
Ian
Immunicity
– simple censorship circumvention
– basically, configure browser to point to a proxy.pac file. This file contains the latest list of URLs that are commonly censored in the UK. When your send a request to one of these sites, your browser is instructed to route that traffic via our HTTP proxy server gateway.immunicity.net:8080 which will fetch the content and send it back to you. When you send a request for a website that isn’t on our list of URLs that are commonly censored, your browser connects directly to that site, bypassing our servers completely.
– free but costs money to run and so looking for donations
– provided by torrenticity – http://torrenticity.com/

DigitalOutbox Episode 138

DigitalOutbox Episode 138
DigitalOutbox Episode 138, Facebook, Trolls and Do Not Track

Playback
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Shownotes
1:53 – Facebook has more than 1 billion users
– Facebook now has more than one billion people using it every month, the company has said. The passing of the milestone was announced by founder Mark Zuckerberg on US television on Thursday.
– The company said that those billion users were to date responsible for 1.13 trillion “likes”, 219 billion photos and 17 billion location check-ins.
– Funny – http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/1751.html
3:42 – Facebook could be used to prove identity for public services
– Personal login details for social networking sites, bank accounts and personal mobile phone accounts could be used be used as official proof of identity to access public services, the Cabinet Office has confirmed.
– Ministers are to announce in the next few weeks the first list of potential “certified providers” for its “identity assurance programme”, which will allow citizens to assert their identity safely and securely online to access public services.
– The scheme is intended to help people sign in securely to the gov.uk site that is being developed as a portal for all online government services, including looking for a job, applying for welfare benefits, paying car tax or applying for a passport or a student loan.
– The Cabinet Office says the scheme is specifically designed for citizens to retain control of their own data, avoiding the issues of privacy and security raised by a centralised database that was involved in Labour’s national identity card scheme.
– Under the scheme each individual is to be allowed to choose from a range of “trusted non-government organisations” to verify their identity without centrally storing or sharing their personal data or having knowledge of the government service that has asked for proof of identity.
7:27 – Troll jailed for three months
– A teenager who posted explicit comments and jokes about April Jones on his Facebook page has been jailed for 12 weeks. Matthew Woods, 19, from Chorley, Lancashire, made comments about April and Madeleine McCann, the three-year-old who went missing during a family holiday in Portugal in 2007.
– Woods was arrested for his own safety after about 50 people descended on his home. He pleaded guilty at Chorley magistrates court to sending by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive. The chairman of the bench, Bill Hudson, said Woods’s comments were so “abhorrent” he deserved the longest sentence the court could hand down.
– Hudson added: “The reason for the sentence is the seriousness of the offence, the public outrage that has been caused and we felt there was no other sentence this court could have passed which conveys to you the abhorrence that many in society feel this crime should receive.” The court was told Woods’s Facebook page was available to a large number of people.
– Martina Jay, prosecuting, said: “He started this idea when he was at a friend’s house , saw a joke on Sickipedia [an online database devoted to sick jokes] and changed it slightly.”
– In mitigation David Edwards, defending said: “In one moment of drunken stupidity he places himself as public enemy number two – behind only the person who carried out this crime.”
– Was it right to jail him? Is this any different to Frankie Boyle? Why not do this for other trolls?
11:33 – David Cameron joins twitter
– His first tweet
– I’m starting Conference with this new Twitter feed about my role as Conservative Leader. I promise there won’t be “too many tweets…”
— David Cameron
– The @ replies to him were…..amazing
– About time he was on twitter though
12:44 – Huawei and ZTE pose security threat, warns US panel
– Chinese telecom firms Huawei and ZTE pose a security threat to the US, a congressional panel has warned after an investigation into the two companies.
– The two firms should be barred from any US mergers and acquisitions, according to a House Intelligence Committee report. The panel says the firms failed to allay fears about their association with China’s government and military.
– The firms – among the world’s biggest makers of networking equipment – denied the accusations in front of the panel.
– On Monday ZTE issued a statement insisting its equipment met all US standards and posed no threat. “ZTE has set an unprecedented standard for cooperation by any Chinese company with a congressional investigation,” China’s Xinhua news agency quoted the firm as saying.
– Huawei is expected to respond formally to the charges later on Monday but the firm’s vice-president, William Buckley, earlier denounced the allegations as “dangerous political distractions”.
– The panel’s report will cause transatlantic friction over the role of the Chinese companies. In the UK, Huawei is a major supplier to the telecoms provider BT, and has supplied infrastructure being used in the new 4G superfast mobile network built by Everything Everywhere – the merged Orange/T-Mobile. Huawei provides access to its source code for GCHQ specialists who have reportedly examined it for threats and passed it as safe for use.
– Huawei is a private company founded by a former Chinese military engineer, and has grown rapidly to become the world’s second largest supplier, behind Sweden’s Ericsson, of telecommunications network gear, with operations in more than 140 countries. ZTE is the world’s fourth largest mobile phone manufacturer, with 90,000 employees worldwide, and fifth-largest maker of telecoms equipment.
– While both companies’ sales of mobile devices such as smartphones have grown in the US, espionage fears have proscribed any move into network infrastructure sales.
– Huawei’s relationship with BT now under investigation – http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/10/huawei-international-blacklisting
– The longstanding commercial relationship between BT and Huawei is being investigated by parliament’s intelligence and security committee, its chairman Sir Malcolm Rifkind has confirmed to the Guardian.
– In a move that could cause disruption to major broadband and mobile phone infrastructure projects in the UK should security fears be raised about Huawei’s equipment, the committee is “reviewing the whole presence of Huawei in regard to our critical national infrastructure and whether that should give rise for concern”.
– The committee has been taking evidence in private for some months from members of the security services, and is considering whether to make some of its findings and recommendations public. A report will be sent to David Cameron before Christmas.
– “In the background are allegations that Huawei has links to the People’s Liberation Army in China, and that any Chinese company is ultimately subject to the Chinese government,” said Rifkind.
17:02 – Do Not Track standard needs action says commissioner
– European commissioner Neelie Kroes has accused members of the online industry of watering down a standard designed to protect consumers’ privacy on the web.
– Websites are under pressure to allow consumers much greater control over how they are tracked online.
– But work undertaken by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to create a Do Not Track (DNT) standard was “not going to plan”, said Ms Kroes.
– She is angry about delays and a proposal to exempt marketing.
– She is concerned by suggestions that DNT might not be set as a default.
– “The commission services were very clear on this point in their letter to the W3C – at installation or first use, users must be informed about the importance of their DNT choice,” she said.
– She is also angry about the “extremely broad” exceptions now being suggested to the W3C, exemptions that have been described by the Federal Trade Commission’s chairman Jon Leibowitz as “a loophole you could drive a virtual truck through”.
– Much of the anger is reserved for the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), which has asked the W3C that marketing be added to the list of those activities exempt from the standard.
19:54 – BBC Launch iPlayer Radio
– Pulled all radio content into one web and app – iPlayer Radio
– Website is clean and usable
– iOS app out today (Monday) – Android coming – where’s the pitchforks
– The radio web app is the BBC’s first comprehensive attempt to put significant investment into bringing its radio programs up to speed with the work that the broadcaster has done on its video assets: BBC iPlayer allows users to watch content on demand both over its web app as well as via native apps, adding download component to the video service this past September.
– The app, meanwhile, has a couple of nice extra features in it: a dial on the channel selector is reminiscent of a tuner on an old-fashioned radio (something pointed out by a BBC radio presenter on a promotional program). Once you are in a radio station’s home screen, you have a little bump that prompts you to explore other features, such as catch-up radio shows as well as related video clips. The app also has a build in alarm for the app to work like a clock radio. Users can also select different programs and set reminders to listen to them when they are on.
– The BBC says that an Android app will be coming soon, although it will have to iron out issues with Adobe Flash first in order for the app to work across the many flavors of Android devices that are currently on the market.
– Meanwhile the web apps are designed for all-screens and give a significantly more cohesive experience across the many channels that the BBC operates — these include regional stations as well as those dedicated to particular music and other genres. Before this, each interface was slightly different from others, meaning that it wasn’t as easy for users to navigate between them. As with the native app, here again it’s about integrating video alongside the audio experience. The BBC says that this is just the beginning of development with the web app, which will also feature more content direct from DJs (perhaps original content in that sense) and more “two-way conversation between audience and studio.”
24:04 – Kindle Lending Library comes to the UK
– Amazon continues to roll out its content offerings in Europe. Soon, Amazon Prime members will be able to borrow books from the Kindle owners’ lending library. 200,000 books are available at the time of this writing. Amazon will increase the KDP Select program fund to catch up with the increase of demand in book lending.
– According to Amazon, authors who choose to enroll in the Kindle Direct Publishing program and skip the publisher step earns 77 percent more royalties on average than other authors.
– Like in the U.S., Harry Potter e-books will be available to lend. In October, the KDP select fund has been increased by $100,000 to $700,000. Amazon hints at another increase coming in November. Every time a book is borrowed, the other earns on average $2.29.
– Over the past couple of months, Amazon has been trying to bring its ecosystem to Europe ahead of Kindle Fire HD‘s release. Amazon makes little or no money on hardware devices and hopes that customers will actually use the device and buy content.
– Other companies have been trying to move away from the traditional buying model for ebooks. For example, Oyster is trying to bring the unlimited subscription model to e-books, with community and curation features.
– Yet, the lending library launched last year without any of the big six publishers in the U.S. Most of the books available to lend are exclusive self-published books. Some restrictions apply as well. For example, you can only read one book at a time.
– The lending library will be available the U.K., Germany and France at the end of October.
28:59 – Webplatform.org
– Develop in HTML – this is for you
– WebPlatform.org will have accurate, up-to-date, comprehensive references and tutorials for every part of client-side development and design, with quirks and bugs revealed and explained. It will have in-depth indicators of browser support and inter-operability, with links to tests for specific features. It will feature discussions and script libraries for cutting-edge features at various states of implementation or standardisation, with the opportunity to give feedback into the process before the features are locked down. It will have features to let you experiment with and share code snippets, examples and solutions. It will have an API to access the structured information for easy reuse. It will have resources for teachers to help them train their students with critical skills. It will have information you just can’t get anywhere else, and it will have it all in one place.
– And then the note of caution:But it doesn’t. Not yet. Right now, it has a wiki, docs.webplatform.org, which anyone with an account can edit, and structured templates for ensuring consistency. It has a massive import of data from Microsoft, Opera, Google, Facebook, Mozilla, Nokia, Adobe, and W3C, still in a rough form, that needs a lot of polishing. It has a chat channel and Q&A forums, and a blog. And all this material will be available free, for anyone to use for any purpose.
– The site has the backing of some of the biggest players on the Web: Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, HP, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nokia, and Opera. These organizations are stewards for the project, enabling W3C to convene the community and grow the site.
– Tech harmony?

Picks
Ian
Super Hexagon
– iOS – £1.99
– Minimal action game
– Fast, simple, addictive

DigitalOutbox Episode 122

DigitalOutbox Episode 122
DigitalOutbox Episode 122 – WWDC

Playback
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Shownotes
0:32 – WWDC Retina Macbook Pro
400 million store accounts, 650,000 apps, 30billion downloads – lots of other ‘facts’
– Notebook changes
– Macbook Air – new cpus up to 2ghz dual core, up to 8GB of ram, 512 of flash, USB 3, 720p camera, 1366*768
– Macbook Pro’s – 13 – new cpu’s up to 2.7ghz, Nvidia GeForce GT 650m graphics, USB 3, 1280*800 – 15 – quad core – 1440*900 – both shipping today
– New model – Next Gen Macbook pro – 2880 x 1800 – retina – better than my 27” imac in a15 inch screen, 75% less glare!, as thin as a macbook air, updated version of Lion to support display – will it be less buggy? Apps updated too as well as professional apps, wow – Adobe Photoshop updated for new display, Diablo 3, quad i5 or i7, 8gb ram, 256gb of flash, $2199 – out today – truely a top spec laptop
9:32 – WWDC – Mountain Lion
– OS X
– Detail 8 new features
– iCloud
– With Mountain Lion we built support for iCloud right in. When you sign in with your account, we configure all of your apps and your content is up to date across devices.
– “And we introduce three new apps: messages, reminders, and notes
– “We’re also bringing integration with your documents, with a feature we’re calling Documents in the Cloud.”
– “When you launch Pages, it shows all the docs you have in the cloud. And it makes these available across all of your devices.”
–
– Notification Centre
– Messages
– Dictation
– Sharing
– New Safari – unified smart search just like Chrome – sue them google! iCloud tabs, tabview – if the speed is good I may be switching back to Safari
– Power Nap (Apple really do like cheesy names) – Wouldn’t it be great if our computers still worked for us when we weren’t working? Now it can.” – Keeps your Mac up to date while it sleeps. Oh thank heavens — will backup while sleeping. – Automatically refreshes data, silent, power efficient. Works with MacBook Airs and the new MBP. Thats impressive. So the new Macbooks work like iOS devices doing ‘stuff’ in the background!
– Airplay Mirroring
– Game Centre
– “We support turn based and head-to-head gaming, across platforms.” More new apps I guess – Words with Friends for the mac 🙂
– $19.99, ships July!
17:03 – WWDC – iOS6
– iOS
– 1 1/2 trillion push notifications, 7 billion a day, 1 billion messages a day
– iOS 6
– Siri – whole load of american sports questions, yelp, opentable, movies (rotten tomatoes) – all american – I fear that nothing will come to UK. Ask about actors, directors. Launch apps via Siri, tweet, english premier league mentioned. Eyes free – We’re working with car manufacturers to include a button that will bring up Siri — so you can keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. A number of manufacturers have committed to delivering this in the next 12 months. Mobile search – US only is now around the world. Looks like commitment is there. Bringing it to the new iPad
– Facebook – Integrated like Twitter with API support – “We’ve also integrated it with Siri. And we’ve taken this deep integration and made it a public API so it’s easy for apps in the app store to integrate with Facebook. We’ve also integrated it in the app store, so you can like apps and see what apps your friends like — same with music, TV shows, and movies.” Contact integration, calendar integration and on the Mac too.
– Phone (low hanging fruit?) – Reply instead of answering – “If you choose reply with message, you can choose any of these, or if you choose remind me later, you can be reminded in an hour… or remind me when I leave, which will set up a geofence and remind you when you leave the building.” Do Not Disturb – “I can see many of you are like me and you’ve been awakened in the middle of the night — this tells your phone not to bother you. The messages will still come to your phone, it just won’t light up the screen or make a sound.””You also get fine grain control over which phone calls you can receive.” This is nice — you can also do groups. “You can also set up repeated calls — if someone calls a second time in 3 mins, it will come through.”
– Facetime – over cellular (not 3g?) – Integrate mobile number and apple ID – “Also, we’re unifying your phone number and Apple ID. So if someone calls you on your phone number for Facetime, you can answer it on your iPad or Mac. And we’re doing the same thing with iMessage.”
– Safari – “We’re adding iCloud tabs, and offline reading list.” Smart App Banners – for publishers – instead of popup you can have users jump right into the app or to download the app. Sync between web activity and app activity.
– Shared Photo Streams – Photo Stream sharing with friends. Choose the photos, choose the friends — friends will get a notification. The photos will appear in an album… and friends can comment. Weird, this is like a Facebook feature. Almost like Apple’s own social network.
– Mail – mark friends as VIP’s, attachments
– Messages – pull to refresh
– Passbook – This is a place to collect boarding passes, store cards, and movie ticket apps. Like a wallet. Geolocate will pull up your card when you’re nearby a store. Like when you get to your local Starbucks.
– Guided Access – “We were surprised at how many kids with autism have been using the phones, but there are controls in apps that you don’t want them hitting.” You can now select parts of apps to disable.
– Maps – “In iOS 6 we’ve built an entirely new mapping solution from the ground up, and it is beautiful. We’re doing all the cartography ourselves… this is a worldwide effort, we’re covering the world.”
– Integrated apps to replicate transit services – so missing transit info that Google supplies
– Traffic service
– Anonymous realtime incident reports.
– Built in turn-by-turn navigation – partnership with tom tom
– Quick Route –
– Siri integration
– 3D maps — very much like Google’s 3D mode on Android.
– Flyover – Wow, Flyover is very visually impressive. Detailed 3D. Huge applause in the room right now. “This is being rendered in realtime.” The level of details is insane.
– No streetview. Quality of maps isn’t as good as Googles. This is a big miss. Question – will Google release a maps app, will Apple approve it?
– Redesigned Stores – interesting. Chomp? New iTunes later in year?
– Beta for iOS 6 – today
– Full wrap smart cover, updated airport express, updated Mac pro – processor bump!
– iPad 1 not supported by iOS 6, iPhone 4 will not support turn by turn and flyover
– A big FU to Google really. Facebook alongside Twitter, no Google+, no Google Maps
44:52 – So Tom Tom and other sat nav providers dead with iOS 6 imminent
– Smartphones have been slowly killing the satnav but they could now revive TomTom, Europe’s largest navigation device company.
– TomTom’s shares soared as high as 16.5% on the Amsterdam stock exchange on Tuesday, after the company said its technology was being used in Apple’s latest phone software.
– “TomTom has signed a global agreement with Apple for maps and related information,” the Dutch company said, while declining to give further information on its deal with the notoriously secretive Californian group.
– According to the following legal notice Waze is included as a source for iOS 6 Maps, in addition to Getchee, Localeze, Urban Mapping, DMTI, MapData Sciences and, of course, TomTom.
46:44 – Android hits 900,000 activations a day
– Andy Rubin, the founder of Android (the company) and head of Android (the mobile software division at Google) is not leaving Google.
– And, simultaneously but unrelated, Android device activations are now running at more than 900,000 per day, according to the latest tweet from Rubin. Based on previously given figures (850,000 activations per day, and 300m devices activated, from the Google Mobile blog in February) that suggests that there have been a total of 390m Android devices activated in total.
47:45 – Three launches unlimited roaming data in Europe for £5 per day
– UK mobile operator Three is launching its new Euro Internet Pass today, offering unlimited roaming data to its customers who travel throughout Europe. For £5 ($8) per day, Three customers can use as much data as they like in most European countries, with some exceptions including The Netherlands, Switzerland, and Norway.
– The day pass can be activated for £5 ($8) as soon as data roaming is enabled on a handset.
48:51 – Internet trolls targeted
– Major reforms of the libel laws will see a duty placed on internet service providers to try to identify internet trolls without victims needing to resort to costly legal action.
Websites will also be given greater protection from being sued if they help to identify those posting defamatory messages, under government plans.
– The defamation bill, which will be debated in the Commons on Tuesday, will also see would-be claimants having to show they have suffered serious harm to their reputations, or are likely to do so, before they can take a defamation case forward.
– “Our proposed approach will mean that website operators have a defence against libel as long as they comply with a procedure to help identify the authors of allegedly defamatory material.”
– He added: “The government wants a libel regime for the internet that makes it possible for people to protect their reputations effectively but also ensures that information online can’t be easily censored by casual threats of litigation against website operators.
– “It will be very important to ensure that these measures do not inadvertently expose genuine whistleblowers, and we are committed to getting the detail right to minimise this risk.”
51:47 – Icann reveals new internet top-level domain name claims
– The full list of submissions for new internet address endings has been published by the global organisation co-ordinating the expansion.
– Requests to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) include .porn, .ninja, and .ferrari.
– The BBC was among the applicants, applying for .bbc as an alternative to .co.uk and .com.
– Several top-level domains have been applied for by more than one party, including .sex, .home and .diy.
– Both the US drugmaker Merck & Co and its German rival Merck KGaA appear to have applied for the .merck ending, which may trigger an auction process.
– However the .uk manager, Nominet, looks likely to secure .wales and .cymru after no-one filed identical claims.
– Likewise the Dot Scot Registry was the only organisation to apply for .scot and the League of Arab States the only body to claim .arab.
– Coca-Cola and the cereal manufacturer Kellogg’s, which also signed a petition in protest, have abstained.
– By contrast Google has applied for dozens of the generic top-level domain (gTLD) name strings.
– Obvious choices included .google and .youtube, but there were also unexpected inclusions such as .and, .boo, .dad and .new.
– The search giant has also requested .music, which has been claimed by seven other organisations including the online retailer Amazon.
– Other gTLDs attracting multiple requests include .art, .book, .news, .play, .shop and .vip. The most contested name is .app which received 13 applications.
– In the case of the names that have multiple bids, ICANN will evaluate the applicants on technical merits and in some cases have an auction. The applications cost a non-refundable $185,000 each and successful bidders will be obliged to pay high ongoing annual fees to ICANN. Many of the new domain names are expected to go live next year.
– Icann and domain registrars are the only beneficieries here. This will confuse the consumer, and break many assumptions around domain names going forward. What a mess. Icann should have ownership of this stripped and passed to a non profit, multi national owned company.
55:00 – Twitter launches tailored trends
– In order to show emerging topics that matter more to you, today we’re improving our algorithms to tailor Trends based on your location and who you follow on Twitter.
– These Trends lists are tailored for you by default on twitter.com and mobile apps like Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android. If you don’t wish to see tailored Trends, but instead want to see a more general list of Trends, just change your location on twitter.com.
55:59 – 4Seven – the TV channel with programs chosen by Facebook
– Channel 4 will launch a new TV channel called 4Seven next month screening repeats of the programmes viewers and critics have most talked about from the previous seven days, prefaced by a snappy selection of their comments, good and bad.
– The channel, which takes its place alongside E4, More4 and Film4, will keep open the weekday 8pm and 10pm slots so that shows that create a critical buzz in newspapers, chatter on social media through Twitter and Facebook, and reaction on the overnight log of comments kept by the broadcaster can be repeated the next day.
– “We think it is the first time a channel has incorporated the views of viewers into what goes on air. We will run a montage of comments before the programme starts, the rough with the smooth, not just propaganda,” said Dan Brooke, Channel 4’s chief marketing and communications officer. The rest of the programmes on 4Seven will be reruns of the most popular ones of the week, with the 9pm slot reserved for the programme shown on Channel 4 at 9pm the previous day. Weekends will be devoted to multiple repeats of the best-rated programmes of the past seven days.
– It is also a recognition by the broadcaster, marking its 30th birthday in November, that although there has been massive growth in people using on-demand services, which accounts for 5% of viewing, and catching up on computers via the iPlayer or 4OD service – where use is up 15% on last year – many more viewers still prefer to watch channels scheduled for them.

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