Headlines:
The Verge reports Facebook updated its community standards page Sunday night to clarify what the policies are. They haven't actually changed the policy. Among the clarifications Facebook says they want people to use the name they go by regularly, not necessarily their legal name. Hate speech is allowed for satire or commentary. Nudity is still not allowed but more strictly defined and exceptions made for artwork.
TechCrunch notes numbers of government requests for Facebook data were also released. Requests decreased in the US and UK while increasing in India, Turkey and Russia. The US still requests the most while India is number 2. The total number worldwide rose from 34,946 in the first half of the year, to 35,051 between July and December 2014.
Open Signal's State of LTE post is up. Spaion leads the way with fastest LTE at 18 Mbps and Vodafone ES in Spain has the fastets network in the world at 25.5 Mbps. LG U+ in South Korea has the best coverage at 99% and South Korea as whole has the best coverage at 95%. Top 5 countries for speed were Spain, Finland, Denmark, South Korea and Hungary. The Bottom five were Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Mexico, the US and the Philippines.
The Next Web reports that Twitter finally confirmed it purchased live streaming startup Periscope - back in January. Periscope tweeted out "You may have heard some news: It involves a blue bird" followed by a bunch of hashtags one of which was #WeJoinedTheFlockInJanuary. Twitter then re-tweeted the announcement from its official account. If you haven't heard of Periscope until now, its because they haven't officially launched yet, and don't have a publicly available app. In totally unrelated news, live streaming video app Meerkat has attracted tens of thousands of users since it launched at the end of February.
Excerpts from the book "Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader" by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli are spinning out lots of stories ahead of its March 24th release. CultofMac reports among the tidbits are Tim Cook offering to give Jobs part of his liver and being yelled at. Jobs considering partnering with Disney to buy Yahoo. And Jobs telling Jony Ive after his return to Apple in the late 1990s "Apple will never make a TV again."
MultiChannel.com reports that Moffett Nathanson Research calculated Google Fiber ended 2014 with 29,867 video subscribers across, Stanford, Provo, and Kansas City based on numbers released by the US Copyright Office today. Moffett noted that counts for just 0.025% of the US video market. He also pointed out that high programming costs have dented deployment and has increased TV/1-Gig bundle prices for new subscribers in KC. Google Fiber's broadband subscribers, which would higher, aren't factored in the US Copyright Office's numbers but Moffett says they are likely to be "meaningfully higher."
Reuters reports IBM is considering using the blockchain system used in bitcoin, to create digital cash and payment systems for other currencies. The potential is there to make fast fee-free payments online using currencies like the dollar or the Euro.It would likely not be anonymous as a digital wallet would be linked to a bank account. IBM is seeking the cooperation of central banks like the US Federal Reserve. The Bank of England has stated it considers the blockchain open ledger a significant innovation.
ArsTechnica reports that Google will close its Google Code programming project hosting service. Google says the reduced number of users as existing developers migrated to GitHub and Bitbucket and the increased number of spammers and abuse are factors. Google itself moved a number of their open source projects from Google code to GitHub. Google is providing migration tools to export projects to GitHub and Bitbucket, and SourceForge is offering a Google Code project import service. New projects will no longer be accepted as of today and updates to existing projects will not be accepted after August 24th. The site will close down completely January 25, 2016.
The US Federal Communications Commission is putting its review of Comcast Corp.'s deal for Time Warner Cable and AT&T Inc.'s planned acquisition of DirecTV on hold, pending a court decision related to the disclosure of video-programming contracts. The FCC says it can't go forward with the review of these deals until a court determines whether interested parties should be granted limited access to confidential information about the involved companies. The FCC already has these documents and is free to review them on their own, but the broadcasters object to the notion of this sensitive data being shared with people outside of the Commission, even if done under high security and strict non-disclosure agreements.
News From You:
starfuryzeta submitted the Verge article by Russell Brandom about the new rules for transparency in the US FCC's Open Internet Order. Packet loss has been added as a metric for ISP's to make public which led some engineers to fear networks would be forced to add more buffering and latency to juice the stats to look good. However the full order says that packet loss will be listed alongside existing latency and bandwidth reporting.
KAPT_Kipper sent us this story from ArsTechnica that since the middle of 2013, Google Apps for Work leaked hidden whois data attached to 282,867 domains. A bug in the way Google Apps integrated with eNom's com registration program interface caused private whois info including names, phone numbers, email and physical addresses to be leaked when domains were renwed. Cisco Systems research discovered the flaw Feb 19 and five days later the leak was patched. eNom charged an extra $6/yr to shield the info from public view.
Discussion Section Links: Waning Weird
Pick of the Day:
Kevin: I hope this hasn't already been mentioned, but given the how many times Radio Shack has been discussed lately, my pick is:
If you, like me, spent way too many hours pouring through the catalogs, you will enjoy seeing these familiar pages again.
Messages
Hey Tom and Jenny,
For Valentines day my wife subscribed to HBO via my ATT Uverse cable. For several weeks I've been getting caught up with Game of Thrones which I've only been watching in the 5am EST hour on ROKU, when I've been running on my treadmill….Not a single problem. Tonight and for the first time I watched an episode on my XBOX One and it happened to be during prime time. It was extremely choppy would have to wait for queuing of the show just about every minute (not exaggerating). … Are the cable companies grasping at straws and slowing down online content at certain hours to make the consumer want to keep watching via the cable box? While I most certainly hope not…I can't help but think they are.
Not quite an executive producer, but close. - David Wilke
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I wanted to throw a totally self-promotional pick out there for your European fans. I put together a special 30-minute programme for my new podcast Tech's Message about the European Apple Watch. It's had some amazing feedback and in the interest of also trying to get some more ears on the show I hoped you might be interested in checking it out.
It's at natelanxon.com/podcast and marked as a special edition, and is in all the iTunes stores and podcatcher directories under Tech's Message.
Looking forward to joining you on the show soon! Nate
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BOL REUNION!
Just announced: The Buzz Out Loud 10 Year reunion on March 29th at 12:30 pacific /3:30 p eastern and 7:30p GMT! It's free! Tom, Molly, Veronica, Jason and many other special guests! Tickets for the event at the Hak 5 warehouse are available at http://bit.ly/BOLreunion but if you want to attend online you don't need even need a ticket. The event will stream live on Alpha Geek Radio and on YouTube with more details forthcoming.
Buzztown's Back!
PODCAST AWARDS
Also Podcast Awards! Remember yesterday, and the day before, when we told you how you could vote for your favorite podcast in the Podcast Awards? Well guess what, you can vote again today! For example, you could vote for DTNS in the technology category, but you can also support Night Attack in the "Mature" and "Video" categories. Also you can vote for The Instance, Film Sack and our good friends at The Morning Stream and Night Attack. I guess you could also vote for Serial. But only once. Vote once a day at http://www.podcastawards.com/ until March 24th.
Wednesday's guest: Eklund!
