Dr. Bill | The Computer Curmudgeon

Gotta love them supporting Open Source.

Dropbox releases its chat app Zulip under an open-source license

TNW News – By: Jackie Dove – “Dropbox has released its recently acquired chat app, Zulip under an open-source Apache license.

According to a blog post by Zulip co-founder Tim Abbott announcing the move, Dropbox has released everything, including the server, Android and iOS mobile apps, desktop apps for Mac, Linux and Windows, and the Puppet configuration necessary for running the Zulip server in production.

Abbott had this to say about the overall genre:

The world of open source chat has for a long been dominated by IRC and XMPP, both of which are very old and haven’t advanced materially in the last decade. In comparison, Zulip starts with many useful features and integrations expected by software development teams today and has a well-engineered, maintainable codebase for those that are missing. We’re very excited to see what people build on top of Zulip.

The threaded chat app’s client and server code is now available on GitHub, and you can download clients for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android on Zulip’s site. The Zulip site also contains various hints on how to get started with building integrations and other enhancements for the app.

Dropbox has released the zxcvbn password strength estimator, the Djinni cross-language bridging library, the Hackpad codebase, and the Pyston JIT for Python as open source, as well.”

And yet, nobody needs it like they do!

Sprint Drops Out of Spectrum Auction

PC Magazine – By: Chloe Albanesius – “Sprint has decided not to participate in the FCC’s big spectrum auction next year.

‘Sprint’s focus and overarching imperative must be on improving its network and market position in the immediate term so we can remain a powerful force in fostering competition, consumer benefits and innovation in the wireless broadband world,” Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure said in a statement. “Sprint has the spectrum it needs to deploy its network architecture of the future.”

The auction will allow broadcasters to sell their unused spectrum to mobile carriers, and get a cut of the purchase price. Already moved from 2014 to 2015, a legal challenge last fall pushed the event into 2016.

Spectrum allocation might seem like a boring topic, but with more and more people picking up bandwidth-intensive gadgets, carriers need spectrum to support them. Without it, you could see a lot of buffering and dropped connections.

One of the big concerns from smaller carriers like Sprint and T-Mobile going into this auction, though, was whether their larger rivals, Verizon and AT&T, would use their sizable war chests to snap up all the desirable spectrum. Last year, there were reports that Sprint and T-Mobile would pool their assets and jointly bid on spectrum (but only if their now-failed merger bid was still in play). The FCC put the smackdown on that, and T-Mobile independently pushed for auction limits. The agency agreed to some restrictions—it set aside 30 megahertz of spectrum per market for smaller companies—but did not give T-Mobile everything it wanted.

T-Mobile CEO John Legere tweeted yesterday that Sprint is ‘crazy to sit out this historic auction.” T-Mobile ‘is going to go hard in this low-band spectrum auction and put that spectrum to good use for our customers.”

The last major spectrum auction of this nature was in 2008, when AT&T and Verizon were the big winners. Verizon has said it does not need any more huge blocks of spectrum, though recent reports suggest the company is weighing a lease of spectrum held by Dish.”

It does sound like a cool feature.

3D Touch Is Apple’s New Secret Weapon

Techcrunch – By: John Biggs – “I’m here to praise Apple again. Sorry. I have to do it. It’s not in my contract nor am I paid to do it – imagine if we were! We’d be rich! – but after manhandling the iPhone 6S Plus it’s abundantly clear that Apple has discovered another breakthrough. And they are surprisingly nonchalant about it.

Apple’s first interface breakthrough happened when it unleashed real multitouch on the world. Until the original iPhone, screens reacted to one single point and often required a stylus to operate. There were exceptions, but even after the iPhone launched competitors couldn’t keep up and had to release capacitive screen phones until they could join in the multi-touch game.

This next interface trick is far more subtle. By sensing pressure applied on the surface of the Apple Watch, the new MacBook trackpad, and the new iPhones, Apple has added a new layer to the touchscreen experience. In short, they have gone deep, allowing us to move past surfaces and into more dynamic menu systems and even UI tactics. As it stands 3D touch is pretty boring right now but imagine 3D touching into an MRI scan or anatomy textbook. Imagine 3D touching through the cosmos. Imagine 3D touching in games where you focus with a little pressure. There is a clear reason Apple abandoned the moniker of ‘Force Touch:’ what their experience offers has less to do with force and a lot more to do with a three dimensional experience.

3D Touch isn’t an incremental update. It is a real tool and you can be sure that, by CES time, manufacturers from Samsung to Xaomi will be offering stuff called Push Touch, Deep Finger, and Insert UI for their phones. It is inevitable. And Apple had it first.

This is not to say I don’t appreciate what competitors have brought to the table. Samsung’s Edge series is one of the most compelling and amazing screen technologies to reach the market in a long time and many manufacturers are doing things with materials and design that is to be commended. But non of them have released anything that intrinsically changes how we, as humans, interact with the slabs of glass and metal we hold in our pockets at all times. That’s a unique thing.

I’m not saying Force Touch has changed the world. What it has done is tweak the world in a very meaningful way. Apple’s products are starting to hit more senses. Thanks to haptics the iPhone and the Apple Watch are able to tap into our nervous system. In that case, Apple nuzzles us, offering a feather flick of interaction. Interestingly, I’m already feeling ‘phantom taps’ even when I wear a mechanical watch, a sign that old Pavlov was right.

With 3D Touch, The Apple devices ask us to touch them with a little more intent, to move past the glass and into something deeper behind the surface. This is an important change in how we use our phones and one sure to be successful. Of all of the other improvements in these new phones, 3D Touch is the most compelling and it is the one so subtle that Apple itself didn’t really talk it up during the keynote or briefings. ‘By the way,’ they seemed to say. ‘You can now stick your finger through the phone. No big deal.’

Apple hasn’t dented the universe in a while but they have tapped it with lots of force. They’ll ding it eventually, but until then we can all enjoy the odd ‘Tick’ of this latest feature.”

I may have found my new phone!

Nexus 6P Presentation Leak Includes More Images, Confirms Metal Body, Gorilla Glass 4, And 3450mAh Battery

Android Police – By: Michael Crider – “The leaks continue to flow out of Mountain View. The latest information on Huawei’s Nexus 6P, the larger and presumably more expensive of the two Nexus devices Google is expected to announce next week, comes from a public image gallery posted to Imgur. It’s a series of slides that appear to be designed for retail employees to use as an information and promotional tool. The slides include a set of hardware specifications and new photos.

By the way, that metal body means that the phone probably doesn’t feature wireless charging, but I’d be amazed if Qualcomm’s quick charging wasn’t included.

Slides dedicated to the camera and fingerprint sensor don’t reveal much that we didn’t already know – the marketing text says the camera ‘allows in more light,’ which probably just means a low F-stop value. The first slide in the deck includes a mention of Gorilla Glass 4, the latest design of enhanced tempered glass from Corning.

Other slides include more information on the benefits of Android 6.0 Marshmallow and Now on Tap, which most of you should be familiar with, and the last slide confirms that the Nexus 6P will be available in 32, 64, and 128GB capacities. Based on the Aluminium, Graphite, Frost, and Gold color choices, it looks like the body is made of aluminum (which is hardly surprising). And apparently that Gold color will only be available in Japan, at least during the initial launch of the phone. Google has a habit of releasing new colors late into a Nexus phone life cycle, so take that for what it’s worth.

One last tidbit: one of the slides includes a slightly angled photo of the rear of the Nexus 6P, which shows that the camera ‘bump’ so commonly derided in previous leaks may be less noticeable than we had hitherto thought. It’s still there, certainly, but it’s not quite as pronounced as it looked in other renders and leaked photos.

There’s still a few things we haven’t been able to confirm: the price, still unmentioned, and the display panel type, though IPS-LCD seems most likely. Google will announce the Huawei Nexus 6P, along with the LG Nexus 5X (and probably a few other things), in San Francisco on September 29th.”

Having trouble with Skype? Microsoft is aware and working on the issue

Windows Central – By: Rich Edmonds – “Skype appears to be having trouble staying online and connecting humans worldwide. We’ve received numerous reports from readers who have been unable to access Microsoft’s communication platform. We’ve been able to confirm that Skype is indeed down, but luckily Microsoft appears to be aware of the issue and is actively working on it.

‘Some of you may experience problems with Skype presence and may not see online. We have detected an issue with the status settings of Skype. Affected users will not be able to change their status, their contacts will all show as offline and they will be unable to start Skype calls to them.’

Interestingly, the web version of Skype still works, so if you’re in desperate need to communicate with a contact, you could try your luck on the web client. Also, Microsoft states that instant messages are still being delivered as usual, and you should be able to make calls and send messages on the web. We’ll update this article once services are back up and running.

Update: After several hours of downtime, Microsoft is now restoring Skype access after figuring out what went wrong:

We have identified the network issue which prevented users from logging in and using Skype today. We’re in the process of reconnecting our users, and focused on restoring full service. The issue did not affect Skype for Business users.’

Update 2: While a number of Skype users have indeed had their service restored, it looks like there are still reports of users who cannot sign into Skype.”

An audio-only Chromecast is coming to enable your speakers!

Exclusive: Chromecast Audio, codenamed ‘Hendrix,’ is a separate device & made to WiFi-enable your speakers

9to5Google – By: Stephen Hall – “We told you earlier today about the 2nd generation Chromecast, scheduled to be launched later this month. We also mentioned that Google is planning to launch something called ‘Chromecast Audio,’ although details were unclear until now. Thanks to several sources familiar with Google’s plans, 9to5Google has learned that Chromecast Audio is indeed a second Chromecast device targeted specifically at WiFi-enabling the speakers in your home, launching alongside the 2nd generation device…

Not to be confused with Google Cast for Audio, which is Google’s platform for making speakers and other audio hardware directly compatible with the Chromecast, ‘Chromecast Audio’ is a second Chromecast scheduled to be made official at Google’s September 29th event alongside many other announcements.

Sources have also informed us that the device goes by the codename ‘Hendrix,’ which makes sense given it being audio and music-focused.

As seen in the image we published earlier today, this device can plug directly into any speaker by way of 3.5 mm headphone cable, and it appears Google might plan to include one with the device.

This device will, according to the documents and sources, have multi-room support, which could mean that several devices could power multiple speakers outputting the same audio at the same time. Additionally, the device is said to have the ability to mirror the audio coming from your Chrome browser or an Android phone. Google brags that the device will feature ‘high-quality’ audio, and that Spotify will indeed support it.”