TechCraft Podcast

This week Hrishi and Sergey discuss the Olympics, Firefox going multithreaded and China's new bus. - Hrishi’s mobile phone contract coming to an end. He will get out of the bill contract - Sergey against bill pay and has a month-to-month contract - Best time to upgrade is early next year - Olympics have started: Where do we watch it? There are no live streams as such. - The media is a very critical of Brazil -Hrishi is boycott the olympics since is a corporate money splurging - Hong Kong based bitcoin exchange got hacked - Bitcoin has been out of the news, it is a good thing. - It is great Bitcoin is still around, the tech is maturing - Also good that Ethereum is developing rapdily. - The real test of Bitcoin is how many new people are joining the ecosystem: how many new retailers supporting bitcoin? - Coinbase now supports Ethereum, - Pokemon gets tons of 1 star reviews for some update on the tool - iPhone has a music industry model, one or two become superstars - Firefox goes multi threaded: the ececltrolysis project. - It is slow now compared to other browsers. Firefox needs to innovate and move the stack forward. - A great example of this is the new Firefox Servo engine - Mozilla is a non profit committed to keep internet open so there is a conflict of interest. - Mozilla needs to focus on the basics - Windows 10 Anniversary update is out: How do you tell if you have it? - People are having a lot of issues with drivers including Sergey whose camera does not work properly on Skype. - Bash is now on Windows is quite good - Some people are reporting data corruption issues. - Finally China launches rollin bus, it is a bridge on wheels - It is good they are trying something out and trying something new, kudos to them.

Another slow-news-week is upon us. We blame Pokemon Go :) Sergey shares his experience with migrating his Windows and Linux operating systems between SSDs on his desktop. It went surprisingly smooth without the need to re-install anything – technology has certainly come a long way. We discuss the ongoing trend of Chinese manufacturers creating phones that are on-par with the flagship phones from Apple and Samsung – but at the half the price. Xiaomi, ZTE, and OnePlus are starting to substantially expanding to the US and European markets. We try to understand what that means for the current kings of the market in these regions, and what they can do to stay competitive. If you like the show please subscribe to us on iTunes, or any other podcatcher of your choice. Also follow us on Twitter @TechCraftNation. Follow Sergey on Twitter @SergeySlash and Google+ Follow Hrishi on Twitter @HrishiBallal and Google+ Follow Ben on Twitter @bcurdy and Google+ Follow Ashish on Twitter @AshPingle and Google+

It is a slow news week!. Hrishi and Sergey talk about cloudy weather and the Irish summer. - Sergey is moving his operating system becuase he bought a new SSD. Fun! - Slow news week, everyone is playing Pokeman and hrishi does not get it. - Is Pokemon more social than playing Halo. - Ingress vs Pokemon - Iphone remove headphone jack so what happens to all the existing head phones? - Hrishi is indifferent and Sergey is concerned / against it. - Sergey breaks down the audio internals and the changes - Earphones will be more expensive for everyone now. - All of a sudden you will need a earphone for Android and one for iPhone - Google implements DeepMind to their Data Centers - DeepMind predicts the power consumption to turn on or off servers and save millions of dollars. - Google collects all the data so they are moving forward with AI at a pace much faster than others, at least it appears so publicly,

We are back after taking a week-long break due to everyone traveling into the different corners of the world :) One piece of news that has taken the world by storm and we just had to cover was Pokemon Go. What is up with it and why is it so popular? We try to answer that question. Sergey believes that it is a sign of the things to come with the advance of augmented reality technology, while Hrishi has a more sceptical view. SoftBank has bought ARM - a company that designs the most popular chips in the world that power just about everything other than your computer and large servers (at least for now). What could it mean for the future of mobile devices? If you like the show please subscribe to us on?iTunes, or any other podcatcher?of your choice.? Also follow us on Twitter?@TechCraftNation. Follow Sergey on Twitter @SergeySlash and Google+ Follow Hrishi on Twitter @HrishiBallal and Google+ Follow Ben on Twitter @bcurdy and Google+ Follow Ashish on Twitter @AshPingle and Google+

Ben is back in the studio today! Hrishi is on his way to Brazil for Geodesign Hub. Sergey considering whether to MacBook or not to MacBook. It is time to replace his 5-year-old Macbook Air. Ben is TechCraft’s Guinea pig when it comes to food... He finds Food Tech fascinating: Burgers out of meat cultivated in vitro, meals that have all that you need, like Soylent. In blendrunner.com you can see a comparison of foods similar to Soylent, made out of natural ingredients. There are quite a few brands in Europe with different ingredients. Are foodtech companies trying to solve the scarcity of food in the world and avoid food waste. The likes of Soylent give you all the nutrients, and they are easy to store, but for now, they are not targeting third world countries and seem quite expensive to produce. Maybe this will change in the future… If you like the show please subscribe to us on iTunes, or any other podcatcher of your choice. Also follow us on Twitter @TechCraftNation. Follow Sergey on Twitter @SergeySlash and Google+ Follow Hrishi on Twitter @HrishiBallal and Google+ Follow Ben on Twitter @bcurdy and Google+ Follow Ashish on Twitter @AshPingle and Google+

In this episode, Hrishi and Sergey analyze the announcements at E3 2016. - Sergey has news that is secret at the moment, more will be shared in the coming episodes. - We have a heated preshow debate about Brexit - Hrishi is Brazil next week doing a workshop and it is his first time there. - Sergey is planning to buy a macbook to replace his five year Macbook Air. We discuss the resale value of old Apple products. - Hrishi and Sergey then discuss E3 2016 and the main announcements especially from Sony and Microsoft - Microsoft first, the key announcements are: - Play anywhere - Pressure on MS Xbox teams to build a great console - Resurgence of PC gaming and sales. - Project Scorpio: Mid generation Xbox upgrade - Huge power of graphics and its implications. - Sony and Microsoft have different takes on Gaming. - Playstation next - Playstation mid gen upgrade - Hideo Kojima is back - EA is at it again: Snoop Dogg playing battlefield one, why? - The new Call of Duty is terrible and the marketing hype surrounding these games. - Free DLCs for games, we hope that this is a thing now. - Finally, a discusion that critical reflection of E3 is missing and it has degenerated in to marketing events that the press considers as news.

It's a morning show today since Hrishi is traveling to Bristol for a wedding. Plenty of coffee. Sergey is back to Opera browser, with a built-in ad blocker and Chrome Apps that you can install. Surprisingly, Opera is much snappier on Ubuntu than Firefox. WWDC was this week. Apple are giving more access for the developers to the core functionality of its OS. On the desktop side there is not much innovation. An interesting announcement is a new file system, it seems fairly advanced. The ability to unlock your Mac desktop with a phone looks great, but what is the big deal? Maybe we are just getting old and no longer understand what Apple is trying to do. The one interesting thing was how focused the whole conference was on the security bit. That is their differentiation point. It is technically more challenging work to do and we really appreciate it, although most people don't care. Following up on the Internet Trends Report, India is the fastest growing economy in the world and the report paints a fairly rosy picture of the country. India's internet population is bigger than the U.S. internet population: There will be more and more people coming in, and more than 65% people are younger than 21. It is such a young country. If you like the show please subscribe to us on?iTunes, or any other podcatcher?of your choice.? Also follow us on Twitter?@TechCraftNation. Follow Sergey on Twitter @SergeySlash and Google+ Follow Hrishi on Twitter @HrishiBallal and Google+ Follow Ben on Twitter @bcurdy and Google+ Follow Ashish on Twitter @AshPingle and Google+

Hrishi is thinking about setting up a forum for all the users in Geodesign Hub. He is really debating if he should go ahead with it or not... The movie "World of Warcraft" has come out and the reviews are fairly positive. Streetview has been banned in India; and is only allowed for the landmarks. Hrishi is a big fan of Open Streetmaps - it is like Google Maps without Streetview. The 2016 Internet Trends report was published by KPCB, a venture capital form. It is comprehensive, meant to inform investors on what's going on, and open for anybody to read. China has their own ecosystem, companies and own technologies. The action is in Asia. India will be the big thing in the next few years. When it comes to data consumption, millennials are curators and consumers. Generation Z (the younger generation) are the creators and sharers. The network of their choice is Snapchat. We will continue with the report next week. Stay tuned. If you like the show please subscribe to us on?iTunes, or any other podcatcher?of your choice.? Also follow us on Twitter?@TechCraftNation. Follow Sergey on Twitter @SergeySlash and Google+ Follow Hrishi on Twitter @HrishiBallal and Google+ Follow Ben on Twitter @bcurdy and Google+ Follow Ashish on Twitter @AshPingle and Google+

In this episode of Sergey and Hrishi decode the 2016 WWDC event invitation. The 2016 WWDC invitation is out (https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/) and we discuss the invitation. Some Highlights: - Siri on the watch with a new API - Updates to the Car OS to have better maps integration. Hrishi just bought a new car the Hyundai i20 and we discuss what to expect with a car os update. - Workout in living room? Is Apple going to support Kinect ? or updates to healthkit or new fitbit like hardware - Sergey tries out snapchat - Double tap heart: Is it about Apple music or Apple watch? - A new weather API will be announced - We both cringe at six seconds of fame is the disappearing video on iMessage. - Finally is the big idea API for Pencil v2 or a new Apple TV screen

Hrishi has been watching "The History of the Universe" in the BBC. It is a six-part series by Brian Cox and it is really impressive. It kind of gives you the sense of how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. Pebble 2, Pebble Time 2 and Pebble Time Core have been released on Kickstarter. Pebble 2 has a GPS and more geared towards running, Pebble Time 2 is thinner and more stylish, and Pebble Time Core, a Fitbit type device, has 3G and you can pair it with your phone. LinkedIn have disclosed this week that it was hacked. Hackers are so clever that people don't know they what's really happening... Snapchat are planning to break a billion dollars in profit next fiscal year. They seem to have completely turn around from what they were, a simple chat App, to become a social network. They don't have a web version so they are targeting people who grew up with smartphones. Their audience will grow up and they may be room for a Snapchat that will mature, but why are they raising so much money now? From a long-term return point of view, it looks like a risky investment. If you like the show please subscribe to us on?iTunes, or any other podcatcher?of your choice.? Also follow us on Twitter?@TechCraftNation. Follow Sergey on Twitter @SergeySlash and Google+ Follow Hrishi on Twitter @HrishiBallal and Google+ Follow Ben on Twitter @bcurdy and Google+ Follow Ashish on Twitter @AshPingle and Google+

This week we discuss the Google IO 2016 announcements. In this episode Hirshi and Sergey discuss the recent Google IO 2016 announcements. Some other highlights include: - Hrishi discusses hydrological modelling flood and working with worldwide terrain data on Geodesign Hub. - We discuss the pros and cons of Github and the search for open alternatives. - Sergey is going full time in to Linux and he shares some of his journey including Windows solid state drive and migrating data - Sergey updated his sound system and gets a new DAC More about Google IO 2016 - Problems with Google hangouts and sending text with it. - We discuss the world of Google Allo and smart replies and what it means for communications. - what would we like to see in a messaging app. - The good and bad in Google’s AI platform including examples from the keynote. - The state of the art in Natural language processing from Google. - Finally we discuss Google VR, Android wear 2.0 and if it is dead

It finally feels like summer in Ireland! This week we haven’t established a new format yet, so Sergey and Hrishi discuss their ideas for a new show format and latest tech news, native vs. web apps, chatbots, and new Star Wars movies :) Speaking of new format, we are thinking of moving away from the seasonal style that we’ve had for the past 1-2 years. Instead, we’re looking to move to a more agile, couple of episodes per topic, show format. Topics would be a lot narrower in scope compared to what we had for seasons. We’re also thinking about shifting to a more technical and dev oriented topics. Listen to this episode to find out more, and let us know your thoughts and suggestions for the new format. What’s your take on web apps? Ever since Sergey switched to Ubuntu, he has warmed up to them. News this week Sunrise is coming to a sunset :D Seriously though, Microsoft, who bought Sunrise a year or so ago, have now integrated Sunrise app into an Outlook app, and are retiring the standalone app now. Hrishi and Sergey are big users of the app, and are sad to see it go. If you like the show please subscribe to us on?iTunes, or any other podcatcher?of your choice.? Also follow us on Twitter?@TechCraftNation. Follow Sergey on Twitter @SergeySlash and Google+ Follow Hrishi on Twitter @HrishiBallal and Google+ Follow Ben on Twitter @bcurdy and Google+ Follow Ashish on Twitter @AshPingle and Google+

It is the season finale of our payments discussion. This week we’re back in a take two of our season finale. We took a unexpected break in the last week. Firstly, we discuss three pieces of news: - Developers and Linkedin, Sergey and Hrishi discuss how developers are courted in LinkedIn and how to optimize for most unsolicited email from recruiters, which Hrishi does not seem to get at all - Battlefield One is announced and so is the public beta of Overwatch. Hrishi and discuss the "new" Battlefield and the Overwatch open beta. - Finally, NVIDIA releases a new graphics card that is truly ground breaking in performance. We discuss the implications of this. In our show we wrap up our long season on payments with last thoughts and discussion around the future of payments, centralized vs de-centralized payments, the lack of innovation in the fin tech space. We also touch upon the motivation to build a decentralized payment systems and the business model that underpins most of the companies that are in this space.

This week we’re back after a bit of an unplanned 2-week break, and we’re catching up on the news and what’s been going on with us. Before we jump into the topic of the show, we’d like to apologise for missing last 2 weeks of shows: they ended up being very chaotic for all of us on the show. India launches Unified Payments Interface – what is essentially an API to unify a diverse payment ecosystem – something we wouldn’t mind having in Ireland either :) Apple has posted its quarter end results, and its 51 quarter-long growth has come to an end. But what does it really mean? We discuss. For the past couple of weeks Sergey has been using Ubuntu and his daily driver at home; he shares his thoughts and comments on what its like going from Windows to Ununtu (or any other popular Linux OS). If you like the show please subscribe to us on?iTunes, or any other podcatcher?of your choice.? Also follow us on Twitter?@TechCraftNation. Follow Sergey on Twitter @SergeySlash and Google+ Follow Hrishi on Twitter @HrishiBallal and Google+ Follow Ben on Twitter @bcurdy and Google+ Follow Ashish on Twitter @AshPingle and Google+

Hrishi is enjoying Portugal and Ashish is travelling.... So Ben is with us today! He is organising an event on drones in Geneva, the European UTM Day. This is our last episode in our payments season and we will talk about digital wallets. Digital wallets are pretty much non-existent in Europe. In Switzerland ("modern Europe" as Ben calls it) they have Twint, but it's not very convenient. In Russia, Yandex money is used to transfer money between people, and for payments like property tax. Is there any value in a system that is not just a digital wallet? In Switzerland they already have electronic bills, by subscription. You get a reference number that you enter and you get all your bills straight in your bank system. Digital wallets would be useful for parents that can top it up for their kids, and they will see how they are using their money. You can account for scenarios where your child overspends, is on the other side of town and needs some more money to get home. He can click an SOS button to get money for the bus... Or for another beer, according to Ben. We hope you'll join us next week for the season finale! News this week Mainstream users can buy VR now. HTC and Steam have started shipping this week. Reviews are still quite negative: Content is just not there, it's fairly poor. When the technology matures, it will go to VR and the magic will happen. BMW have launched a premium car sharing service in the States, 49 cents per minute, 50 USD max for 3 hours. Finally, a manufacturer is getting into the service provider space. In Switzerland, with Mobility, you can rent a car anywhere, near to a station, and it's 2 to 3 euros an hour. You can also rent a van. Availability is key. If you like the show please subscribe to us on iTunes, or any other podcatcher of your choice. Also follow us on Twitter @TechCraftNation. Follow Sergey on Twitter @SergeySlash and Google+ Follow Hrishi on Twitter @HrishiBallal and Google+ Follow Ben on Twitter @bcurdy and Google+ Follow Ashish on Twitter @AshPingle and Google+

In this episode we will talk about Google Pay and Apple Pay. Google Pay has been around for the past 5 years. It had a secure chip element on your phone that stored card details and NFC was used to transfer the data so the payment would go through. Since nobody was willing to partner with them, they succeeded to continue by not using a secure element, just using a normal security implementation in the file system. It now uses a prepaid card. The user still ads his card details in the cloud, but when the user pays with Google Pay, Google tops up their own card through the user's card and pays to the merchant. Google Wallet's debit card will be shutting down on 31st March.... Which means they will need to start partnering with banks and card issuers. Apple uses a secure element, a chip on your phone that has direct access to NFC, but it never stores your card information. Your card and the bank need to partner with Apple Pay. You input your card information into your Apple Pay like you would do when you pay online. This gets encrypted; it goes to Apple servers and then to the bank. The bank checks it like any other transaction, and if it is approved, it issues a token to Apple. Apple sends it back to your device and it is stored on your phone. There is no credit card information on your phone, just a security token. Banks and issuers pay Apple for each transaction that goes through the Apple Pay system. News this week Tesla Motors 3 has been unveiled. They've already had 322,000 orders. It's great that they have managed to make a car that is affordable. It will be shipped a year and a half away from now.

In this episode we will talk about unified currency. When you buy online from the Amazon store, you choose to pay extra money for the convenience to buy something that is not available in Ireland. The currency is converted at a "premium" rate. It seems that with different conversion rates, things get a bit complicated. In Ali Baba, the wholesale site, you can buy products at the closest price to production. If we could pay with a global currency on Ali Baba, we would be able to get better prices. If social networks had a currency they would have a notion of a worldwide currency that has the same value. The productivity is very different in the real world. Bitcoin was the promise of an internet currency, but it ended up being like a gold rush. What may be backing up a unified currency? Is there really a need for a back up? Given the decentralised nature of digital of things, the trust would be implicit. Having a global currency backed up by the governments sounds like utopia these days. News this week A crossplay between Xbox and Playstation 4 is fairly possible. Alphabet is launching a new version of Android.

The topic of today's episode is peer-to-peer transactions, and how payment systems adapt (or don’t adapt) to it. P2P transactions are becoming more and more widespread due to the rise of the sharing economy. There might be an open market niche for a P2P protocol to facilitate this kind of commerce, but there are two problems: Taxes and legislation. Intermediary solutions exist that essentially create a new digital presence for a user in their system, and allow users to easily transfer funds within their system – PayPal is a prime example of such a system. Even the likes of Airbnb and Uber provide the transaction handling service, although it is transparent to the user. News Playstation VR – apparently current Gen PS4 isn’t powerfull enough to drive games at 1080p 60fps; PS 4.5 is on the way? In the meantime Microsoft is thinking of upgradable Xbox. If you like the show please subscribe to us on iTunes, or any other podcatcher of your choice. Also follow us on Twitter @TechCraftNation. Follow Sergey on Twitter @SergeySlash and Google+ Follow Hrishi on Twitter @HrishiBallal and Google+ Follow Ben on Twitter @bcurdy and Google+ Follow Ashish on Twitter @AshPingle and Google+

This week Hrishi showcases his research skills by walking us through alternative types of payments, taking… It is a long one, but worth it! :) What alternative types of payments are there beyond cash and credit cards? The first one is bank transfer. There are systems where, instead of giving bank account information, you get a token and you pay based on that token when you log into your online banking account. There are also e-wallets, credit card schemes, mobile wallets and direct carrier billing. Cash-on-delivery is quite common in India. The very first e-commerce company in India grew on cash-on-delivery. You place the order online, there is verification by phone number, and when you get the order in your hand, you pay cash to the courrier. E-invoicing provides payment services for online storefronts. There is a company called Klarna that acts as a broker between the customer and the retailer: They assume the risk. It is very popular in Scandinavian countries. Finally, we come to digital currencies. A study has been done of retailers that accept Bitcoin. Just putting the Bitcoin sign "Bitcoin accepted" drove their sales down by 14%. There are huge usability and trust issues around it. It has a long way to go. Remember our season on Bitcoin, where it took us 6 months to understand what it was? News this week HTC Vive VR headset went on sale a few days ago for €899, a bit more expensive than Oculus Rift. It's been developed in a partnership with Valve, the gaming company behind Steam. The idea is to push it for gaming on Windows PC. They pre-sold 15,000 units in the first 10 minutes. Google's AI engine beat the best Go player in the world last week. It shows the maturity of machine learning and it is the next really exciting frontier of software. It reminds Ashish of the times when IBM's computer, Deep Blue, beat Garry Kasparov. If you like the show please subscribe to us on iTunes, or any other podcatcher of your choice. Also follow us on Twitter @TechCraftNation. Follow Sergey on Twitter @SergeySlash and Google+ Follow Hrishi on Twitter @HrishiBallal and Google+ Follow Ben on Twitter @bcurdy and Google+ Follow Ashish on Twitter @AshPingle and Google+

Ashish is starting an MBA next month, exciting times ahead... Today we will be talking about subscription based payments. One of the first companies that started using subscription based payments was Amazon, with AWS. Subscriptions have taken over not just the digital world, but also in the real world, with the likes of clothing of food services. Subscription-based services store your payment details. Your data can be compromised or stolen and PCI compliance is the first step to secure them. Companies are starting to store just part of the payment information, like everything except your CVV number, that you have to enter every time you want to pay. To process payments, they use Stripe or another payment gateway through API integration. Why can't companies just use a token or an authentication key instead of storing payment details? Bitcoin would work well. For now, governments and banking systems are in control of payments and they seem quite reluctant to implement new technologies. News this week Amazon has just announced a wireless speaker and voice recognition device, Amazon Echo Dot.