Tech News 2Night 133 (Transcript)

[Top TN2 Animation ] Tonight! Yahoo to buy Flurry, Facebook launches Save, and Microsoft gets flack from politicians over the massive layoffs.. Tech News 2Night is Next! [TWiT Open] [Main TN2 Open] This is Tech News 2Night Episode #133, for MONDAY JULY 21, 2014 This episode of Tech News 2Night is brought to you by Personal Capital. With Personal Capital, you’ll finally have all your financial life in one place and get a clear view of everything you own. BEST OF ALL IT’S FREE. To sign up go to personalcapital.com/tn2. I'm Jason Howell, Let's get right to the Tech Feed! In a deal confirmed by Re/code, Yahoo is buying Flurry, the mobile analytics and ad platform company. Yahoo is behind the curve on mobile and has been working to strengthen its revenue in this area. Flurry gathers mobile analytics from over 50-thousand apps tracking over a billion devices. The company also recently launched a video ad solution for app publishers. In the last year the San Francisco start-up has beefed up their leadership team and secured over $70 million in funding. Bloomberg has stated the deal is valued at over $300 million. In an interview Scott Burke, Yahoo’s senior vice president of advertising technology said, “It ties right into Yahoo and mobile first and all of the investments we’re making into mobile today. Flurry is the next logical step to extend our reach.” / Facebook is saving you from leaving their service in order to read that article or view that video that was linked from your newsfeed! The new feature called save hits iOS, Android and its web client today, and it allows users to store links from throughout the Facebook experience for viewing at a later time. Users can stash those links away, though the pages themselves aren't cached like is the case with similar standalone services like Pocket and Instapaper. Users can look for the "Save" button or bookmark icon associated with stories in the news feed, Facebook pages for places, movies, tv show, musicians, and events. Clicking that button will save the associated link to the user's saved section in the navigation links on the side. And saved items are only visible to the user. And a quick note that Facebook's acquisition of Virtual Reality company Oculus for 2 billion dollars is a done deal. Announced back in March, the acquisition received the green light by the FCC and later, the California Department of Corporations fairness committee. Virtual reality fans can either rejoice, or get all grumpy now that Facebook owns one of technology's leading VR efforts. / At the recent Hackers On Planet Earth conference, forensic scientist Jonathan Z-Darsky detailed a number of backdoor security methods he says are included by Apple secretly in iOS. These undocumented services with names like lockdownd, paced, and mobile.file_relay bypass encryption granting access to data via USB, WiFi and possibly even cellular. Z-Darsky asks why Apple is opening up the iPhone to covert data access through intentional backdoors such as these. But Z-darsky doesn't feel like this is necessarily a security emergency. "My paranoia level is tweaked, but not going crazy. My hope is that Apple will correct the problem. I want these services off my phone." Z-Darsky also advises those concerned should use a complex iOS passcode and set Mobile Device Management restrictions as well as utilize Pair locking. Though, doing that might block third party forensic software, but it won't do anything to protect the data on the device if analyzed by Apple itself. / Verizon announced today, it is upgrading all existing FiOS customers to symmetrical speeds. Meaning: if you have a 15 megabit per second downstream and 5 megabit per second upstream, both will be 15 megabit per second. The upgrade applies to all existing and new subscribers. Verizon is also adding a new entry level tier of 25/25. The packages before the change were: 15/5, 50/25, 75/35, 150/65, 300/65, and 500/100. In all of these tiers the second (lower) upstream number will be increased to match the higher downstream speed. According to Verizon, these upgrades will continue throughout the Fall. The company expects current loads to double by the end of 2016 with more customers uploading videos, engaging in video chats, using cloud services and sharing files. Google Fiber and several other small ISPs do offer symmetrical service up to 1Gbps. / Coming up, What do you do with 10-thousand old payphones? The city that plans to turn them into WiFi hotspots. and next I'll talk with Alex Wilhem from TechCrunch about the political hot water Microsoft faces after announcing all those layoffs. [AD] Today I want to share with you a FREE and SECURE tool, called Personal Capital that solves 2 barriers to growing your wealth. The first barrier is that it’s hard to keep track of: stocks, 401k, bank accounts, etc... all on different sites with different usernames and passwords. The second is that you pay someone to manage it and you’re probably paying too much. Personal Capital brings all your accounts and assets on ONE SINGLE SCREEN on your computer, phone or tablet with real-time and intuitive graphs. This week Personal Capital announced the integration of its award-winning app with Android Wear, available for download in Google Play. The watch app seamlessly integrates with Personal Capital on other Android devices and provides users with relevant and timely updates on their finances whenever and wherever they need it. It shows how much you’re overpaying in fees AND how to reduce those fees. You also get tailored advice on optimizing your investment. So why wait? Signing up takes just a minute and it’ll pay BIG dividends. Personal Capital gives you total clarity and transparency to make better investment decisions RIGHT AWAY. [[OFFER]] To set up your free account go to personalcapital.com/tn2. Personal Capital is FREE and the smart way to grow your money. And we thank Personal Capital for their support of Tech News T2Night" [Segment #2] Welcome to the show, Alex Wilhelm, Tech Reporter at TechCrunch. Let's talk a little about Microsoft. Late last week, the company announced significant layoffs, totaling around 18,000 job cuts with a majority of those cuts coming from the recently acquired Nokia division. Wall Street appears to be satisfied with the move, but there's been some political friction. -Alex, what about the move has folks like Senator Jeff Sessions so concerned? -How much of a responsibility does a company as large as Microsoft have in paying attention to the social effect of layoffs in these numbers, in light of what it sees as good for business? -This morning, Microsoft announced that it is going to merge some of it's conferences together into a single event it refers to as a "inaugural, unified Microsoft commercial technology conference." Catchy. Why did Microsoft feel compelled to do this? -Is there any indication as to the scale of the event? Can people expect the same breadth of content as they were used to in the individual conferences? -Any word on Microsoft's popular Build conference or will that stay separate? Thank you so much, Alex Wilhelm! [Kicker!] What do you do with 10-thousand payphones? In New York City the plans is to turn them into free WiFI hotspots. In 2012 the city launched a test program converting 10 payphone kiosks in three boroughs. New York is now accepting bids and it could award the contract to the likes of Google, Cisco, IBM, Motorola, Cablevison, Time Warner, Verizon or Samsung. Several of these companies already run or are building Wi-Fi systems in the city. It's a great idea. We wish them luck. [good bye] That's it for this edition of Tech News 2Night. Subscribe to this show at Twit.tv/tn2, and write us at tn2@twit.tv Don't miss our morning news program, Tech News Today, tomorrow and every weekday at 10am Pacific, 1 pm Eastern. I'm Jason Howell, thanks for watching.