Jul 31st 2005
This Week in Tech 16
Episode 16 is on the air!
Hosted by
Leo Laporte
Get #16 now from the usual sources
Records live every Sunday at 5:15pm Eastern / 2:15pm Pacific / 22:15 UTC.
- Patrick's been at Defcon 13, the hacker convention in Las Vegas.
- Looks like Team PAD set a record for an unamplified WiFi link: 125 miles! Read all about it on Wi-Fi Toys.
- Steve's been playing with OpenWRT
- Is a Pringles cantenna an illegal device? The Sacramento High-Tech Crimes Task Force seems to think so.
- Someone better tell Cantenna.com
- Patrick says Yuban cans work better anyway.
- Hermosa Beach provides free wireless access, but the Feds are trying to make that kind of thing illegal.
- Dvorak is looking for a safecracker - he's got some "gems" he needs to access.
- We cover the saga of Michael Lynn and the Cisco IOS exploit lecture at Black Hat.
- Steve explains that the exploit is pretty difficult anyway.
- Patch your routers anyway, folks.
- We're waiting for Yoshi to tell us whether to install the Sony PSP 2.0 firmware.
- Buh bye Zodiac.
- Patrick reviews Beta 1 of Windows Vista. You can't store anything on the C: drive. That makes it more secure.
- And Leo says that's exactly why it won't ship that way: it will break too many programs.
- PC Mag has good coverage.
- We encourage the TWiT army to mobilize to fight the Broadband Investment and Consumer Choice Act [PDF Version] and support S. 1294, the Community Broadband Act of 2005.
- HP drops the iPod. Who's going to break Apple's monopoly on the protable music player?
- Apple has the best design (thanks Jonathan Ives) and the best UI.
- Prager likes the mobiBLU DAH-1500! ...24mm square, 18 grams, 1GB MP3 player... has a display, too.
- Prager, Patrick, and Leo agree, Etymotics makes the best earbuds!
- Dvorak says don't max out the volume on your earbuds... we don't want you to damage your hearing.
- Headwize and Headroom both have great writeups on how to protect your hearing while you're using headphones.
- The problem with the space shuttle is that all the engineers who understand how to glue the pieces on are retired.
- Our sources say the iTunes Top 100 Podcast list is based on the number of new subscribers in the previous 24 hours. And we've heard that Apple is caching the top 200 podcasts.
- But what happened to Violet Blue's podcast? Did Apple supress it because it was so explicit?
- Dvorak bemoans the success of Ebert and Roper but Leo says Skepticality deserves its success.
- Check out the Podscope.com podcast audio search. It works pretty well if you stick to dictionary words. (A tip of the hat to Doug Kaye of the incredible IT Conversations - the world's best tech podcasts - for that tip.)
- The Wall St. Journal even has a podcast.
- We offer Walt Mosberg $25 to join us on TWiT.
- Who is the most powerful tech journalist in the world? Dvorak says no one cares.
- The boys at Flexilis read an RFID tag at 69 feet! Check Patrick's article in Extreme RFID.
- Dvorak says just buy a lead wallet.
- Systm episode 3 is out now! And a new thebroken is in the works along with another show.
- We're close to a venue for our live shows - check out Cafe Amsterdam in Fairfax. We're also talking with the Marin Brewing Company. Check out the web sites and cast your vote for your favorite.