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Tech News 2Night 169 (Transcript)

[Top TN2 Animation ] Tonight! 5-million Gmail usernames and passwords posted on a Russian website, T-Mobile's big push for WiFi cell phone calls, and Macworld magazine to shut down, Tech News 2Night is Next! [TWiT Open] [Main TN2 Open] This is Tech News 2Night Episode #169, for Wednesday September 10th, 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 Sarah Lane, Let's get right to the Tech Feed! Well, this is alarming - Russian website CNews reports that around 4.93M Gmail usernames and passwords were published to a Russian Bitcoin forum yesterday, but Google tells The Next Web that it doesn't believe this is the result of a security breach. Since the posting, the Bitcoin forum administrators have purged the passwords from the text file in question, leaving just the logins, but the forum user who published the file claimed that about 60% of the passwords were valid. Because text file shows includes mainly English, Spanish, and Russian accounts, but also includes older lists accumulated over time which could be unrelated to Gmail or other Google services, the leak probably isn't affecting close to 5 million users. However, if you haven't enabled 2-step verification, now's the time. / Yesterday on stage at its iPhone/Watch event, Apple's Tim Cook talked about how the company planned to include wifi phone calls into the latest iPhone. At its "Uncarrier 7.0" event today, T-Mobile announced it's broadening its Wi-Fi calling and text message feature with a program called "Wi-Fi Un-leashed" to get more of its customers on smartphones that can make calls and send text messages over a Wi-Fi network. T-Mobile also said it would offer a customized free Wi-Fi router to maximize speeds of its smartphones, and the company also signed a deal with GoGo inflight Wi-Fi service to offer free texting, photo messages, and visual voicemail in the air on any US-based airline. Back in July, T-Mobile launched its voice-over LTE network across the US, which is only compatible on specific smartphones, including the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. And good news for T-Mobile customers traveling, compatible phones can make calls to the US over Wi-Fi for free. / geekongadget.com reports that it received a confidential internal document from within Microsoft that says Microsoft will be completely dropping the “Nokia” branding from its devices, leaving “Lumia” as the brand for upcoming devices, and that the Lumia 830 and Lumia 730 will be the final two devices to launch with Nokia branding. geekongadget says the document also points to Microsoft phasing out the Windows Phone logo next to their devices in promotions and advertisements, opting instead for the standard Windows logo, as a gradual retirement of the Windows Phone name (and OS) which will merge with the desktop version of Windows in upcoming updates. / Twitter has announced a new developer conference focused on mobile called, appropriately, Flight. The conference will take place at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco on October 22nd, with a keynote from CEO Dick Costolo and technical sessions aimed at helping mobile devs to build on Twitter’s platform. Chirp, the inaugural Official Twitter Developer Conference, took place back in 2010, but never had a followup, and as Twitter's business strategy has evolved, its relationship with developers hasn't always been harmonious. Just last week we reported that Twitpic announced it would be shutting down due to a trademark dispute with Twitter. Twitter also said it's rolled out a newly revamped developer site, so perhaps it's a new dawn for relationships with third party services. / Facebook is testing a new feature that will let you schedule a post for deletion, at some point in the future after you post it. Several users have already reported seeing an option to "Choose Expiration" on their Facebook posts. This isn't the first time Facebook's experimented with ephemeral messaging - back in June, it released a Snapchat clone app called Slingshot that allowed users to sling back and forth photo and video messages that expire. But what kind of posts do people want automatically deleted from Facebook itself? Events? Article links? Seems like the opposite of what Facebook wants, no? / One question that came out of Apple's Apple Watch reveal at its event yesterday - at least from a few of us southpaws - is, does the watch work the same way on either wrist? Apple tells Slashgear that on initial setup, you can choose to have the watch face orient itself for use on the right wrist. The watch bands are also swappable, so your band won't be facing the wrong way. However, Lefties will still have to deal with a right-handed design in that the digital crown will be on the bottom of the left side of the watch when worn on the right wrist. Coming up, is your drone caught up a tree? Just call the San Francisco Fire Department. and next I'll chat with Seth Weintraub from 9to5 Mac about the end of Macworld magazine. but first. [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. Personal Capital has an award-winning watch app that you can download in Google Play that 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. Personal Capital 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 2Night." [Segment #2] Seth Weintraub 9to5mac.com article: “IDG shutters Macworld Magazine, much of the editorial staff let go” Closing down the magazine. How many staffers? What have you heard from staff? Did they see this coming? When is the last issue? macworld.com will continue. What will happen to the site? How long, what kind of history of Macworld? Macworld conference used to be one of the big Apple events. What happens now? //Seth Weintraub 9to5mac.com [Kicker!] Finally, here's a weird San Francisco story, in case you didn't think the city was weird enough. The San Francisco local fire department's list of provided services now includes... drone rescue. Drone enthusiast Eddie Codel published a photo on Twitter, in which a team of five firefighters work together to dislodge a drone from a tree. Local news publication SFist notes that San Franciscans increasingly are losing drones due to "flyaways," which is a popular term for vehicles that stop responding to commands and declare temporary independence. Call your local fire department, guys. They can't possibly have anything better to do, what with California being in a drought and all. [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.
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