TEH 031: What a Gas

In This Episode: Scanning junk mail, hackers get free gas, hospital pager systems expose private data, what is Plugspreading? Siri Shortcuts may bring coding back to typical users, Wikipedia protests EU copyright law proposal, U.S. Postal Service uses the wrong picture, and a surprising copyright decision the other way.

This Week’s Hosts

  • Leo Notenboom, “Chief Question Answerer” at tech education site Ask Leo!
  • Gary Rosenzweig host and producer of MacMost, and mobile game developer at Clever Media.
  • Kevin Savetz, web site publisher and Computer Historian at Atari Podcast.
  • Longer Bios on the Hosts page.

Show Notes

  • In the warmup, Gary is back from a trip, Kevin is scanning Ted Nelson’s junk mail, and Leo is doing all sorts of things (parades and Corgis and cameras, oh my!)
  • Breach of the Week: Hackers Reportedly Stole 600 Gallons of Gas From Detroit Gas Station, says Gizmodo (at least it’s something different!)
  • BOTW #2 is ongoing: hospital pager systems often transmit unencrypted patient data, says a blog that talks about software-defined radios (but a simple cheap scanner works fine too, as they point out).
  • Plugspreading is just crazy, says The Guardian — Kevin and Leo solve that by using a PowerSquid.
  • And copyright is in the news: the U.S. Postal Service is slapped, and a judge says everything online is fair game?! (That one’s sure to be overturned on appeal.)

1 Comment on “TEH 031: What a Gas

  1. The court ruling was not about opening up the use of photos from or to the internet but about what falls into the “fair use” doctrine.

    There is a good discussion of it in the video blog at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6LtJxBbrTU

    This is by Tony and Chelear Northrup on their Picture This podcast. They are professional photographers that have dealt with copyright issues in other segments.

    Reply

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