Tech News 2Night 138 (Transcript)

[Top TN2 Animation ] Tonight! The Senate is expected to announce an NSA reform bill, Facebook pushes mobile users to Messenger, and OkCupid admits it conducted matchmaking experiments Tech News 2Night is Next! [TWiT Open] [Main TN2 Open] This is Tech News 2Night Episode #138, for Monday July 28, 2014 This episode of Tech News 2Night is brought to you by NatureBox. Order great-tasting, healthy snacks delivered right to your door. Forget the vending machine, and get in shape with healthy, delicious treats like Maple Habanero Pretzel Pops! To get 50% off your first box go to naturebox.com/twit. I'm Sarah Lane, Let's get right to the Tech Feed! Tomorrow is a potentially big day for privacy reform in the US - Senator Patrick Leahy is set to introduce a version of the USA FREEDOM Act that's stronger than what the House of Representatives passed earlier this year. The New York Times reports that the bill will halt the bulk surveillance of American’s call metadata and also reforms the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to force some form of public disclosure of information regarding the court’s decisions. The proposed bill would curb the telephony metadata program, but the NSA has a ton of surveillance tools like demanding data from Internet companies through PRISM, and tapping fiber cables.The Senate bill has been put together in collaboration with the executive branch which implies that the Obama administration has had significant input. / We passed along a story last week that online real estate listings service Zillow was in talks to buy competitor Trulia, and today it's official - Zillow will buy Trulia for around $3.5 billion in stock. According to Comscore, last month Zillow reported 83 million users across both web and mobile, while Trulia reported 54 million – together, they make up a 61 percent of total Internet users for the category. Until the deal closes, expected sometime next year, Zillow and Trulia will continue to compete. / In other acquisition news, Re/Code reports that Apple is close to buying the talk-radio app Swell for around $30 million, citing multiple anonymous sources. As part of the deal, the Swell app is to be shut down this week, though at the time of recording it's still available in Apple's App Store. / Last week, some Instgram users reported seeing what looked like an install ad for a forthcoming photo messaging app called Bolt. But an app called Bolt already exists, and The developer behind that app, a mobile voice app, has published a blog post is urging Instagram to reconsider its name choice to avoid a legal battle in a blog post published today. Techcrunch reports that an app by the name Bolt is being launched by Instagram as another photo-messaging app, and is expected to hit the app store this week. This isn't the first instance of Facebook taking app names that already exist - earlier this year the company launched “Paper,” which was was the same name as an already well-known app, “Paper by FiftyThree." The two apps currently co-exist in the app store. / In other Facebook news, the company is making good on a promise it made back in April, when it announced it would remove messaging from its core mobile apps, and force all chat activity to Messenger. Facebook isn't yet forcing anyone to download the Messenger app; it says there will be several notices before messages are finally unbundled for good. This is only for mobile - Desktop users will still have chat functionality in the main Facebook experience. / Rsearchers at Stanford University have developed a new lithium battery that could last much longer than the versions currently availble in devices on the market. The new technique allows for denser, more efficient lithium in the battery's anode by using a nanoscopic carbon shield that stabilitzes the chemical for a power pack that lasts much longer on charge and doesn't decay as quickly.. More engineering work is required before we see any shipping products, but the days of barely getting through the day on a single charge might be history before we know it. / Mozilla interiam CEO Chris Beard has been appointed full-time CEO by the Corporation. He also joins the company's Board of Directors. Beard first joined Mozilla in 2004 in time for Firefox 1.0 and was previously Executive-in-Residence at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners. Coming up, the luxury hotel chain that is investing over half a BILLION dollars in Smartphone door keys and next I'll talk with Eric Limer from Gizmodo on how OKCupid experimented on their users. [AD] "I’m going to say something that’s going to surprise you -- You should be snacking more! I’ve discovered Nature Box. Nature Box snacks have ZERO trans fats, ZERO high fructose corn syrup -- and NOTHING artificial. Nature Box sends great tasting snacks right to your door with free shipping anywhere in the U.S. Here’s how it works: Click on the “Continue” button to choose between 3 subscription options. Then place your order. You can select by dietary needs: Vegan, Soy Free, Gluten Conscious, Lactose Free, Nut Free and Non GMO. The next time you get hungry and are ready to eat anything, remember Nature Box. Snack guilt free on PB&J Granola, Bruschetta Pretzel Pops and over 100 more healthy snacks! [[Offer/ Call to Action]] To get 50% off your first box go to naturebox.com/twit. And we thank Nature Box for their support of Tech News 2Night." [Segment #2] "Eric Limer, Associate Editor Gizmodo Article written by your collegue Mario Aguilar on Gizmodo.com: ""OKCupid: We Experiment On You, Deal With It"" - So OkCupid came out with a blog post titled: "" We Experiment On Human Beings!"" In light of the recent uproar over Facebook's so-called emotional manipulation, explain to us what's going on here with OkCupid? - Did they lie to users by telling them they were a match when they were not so they could see what happened? - What other experiments did they do? Can you tell us about the Love is Blind day? - So what did OkCupid learn from this 'experiment'? - This blog post was written by one of the founders of OkCupid Christian Rudder. It's a bit light-hearted. Is this something that should be taken seriously or should we all get used to it? //Thanks Eric Limer, Associate Editor, Gizmodo" [Kicker!] finally, Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc, parent company of Hilton hotels, is investing $550 million dollars to allow hotel guest to use their smartphones to choose rooms, check in and even unlock doors. The new technology will roll out to its 4,200 properties world-wide, and by the end of this summer, travelers will be able to see the location of and select their own rooms by mobile phone at six brands such as the Hilton Garden Inn to the Waldorf Astoria. By Next year, arriving guests can start using their smartphones to unlock the doors to their rooms, sidestepping front desk lines, and the feature will be available at most of the company's hotels world-wide by the end of 2016. [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 Sarah Lane, thanks for watching.