313: Hey, You Got Podcasts In My Spotify!

Five Minute Tech News

Net Neutrality and AT&T, Twitter gets junk rated, Facebook goes to work, the State Department turns off its email, and Uber gets Spotify streaming (and podcasts).

Links for this episode:

• 'Battlestar Galactica' Creator Glen A. Larson Dead at 77 | Rolling Stone
  Glen A. Larson, the television writer-producer who created Battlestar Galactica, among many other hit series, died on Friday at the age of 77. In addition to Battlestar Galactica, Larson created The Six Million Dollar Man, Magnum, P.I., Knight Rider, and Manimal.
• FCC Asks AT&T for Info About Delayed Fiber Build-Out Because of Net Neutrality | Re/code
  Two days after AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said his company would delay building out its fiber network because of uncertainty about net neutrality rules, the FCC has some questions. Stephenson said the company would build fiber to homes as promised as part of its deal to acquire DirecTV but other investments would be delayed. The agency emailed AT&T Friday asking for more information about that announcement, including “all documents” related to that decision. The request may not be great news for AT&T, which still needs the FCC to sign off on its $48 billion deal to acquire DirecTV. Stephenson’s threat to stop the company’s fiber build-out may help bolster the case of Internet providers that net neutrality rules advocated by President Obama would hurt investment in networks. But it doesn’t help the case with regulators that allowing AT&T to buy DirecTV will expand high-speed broadband access to millions of Americans who currently can’t get it. FCC officials also want to know if AT&T’s financial model “demonstrates that fiber deployment is now unprofitable” and whether laying fiber to more than two million homes after the DirecTV acquisition “would be unprofitable.” AT&T has a week to respond.
• Twitter Stock Gets ‘Junk’ Rating - The Daily Beast
  After deciding that it has a low view of Twitter’s ability to repay its debts, ratings agency Standard & Poor’s assigned the social-media company’s recent bond offering a “junk” rating on Thursday. That rating, BB-, is used by S&P for companies that look fine in the near-term, “but face major ongoing uncertainties to adverse business, financial, and economic conditions.” S&P believes the network won’t have positive cash flows until 2016.
• Facebook is making 'Facebook at Work,' so you can Facebook at work
  Facebook is working on extending its network beyond the social realm and into the professional world. The company's new, enterprise-focused product will be similar to the functionality of its current site, with a newsfeed, groups and messaging capability. However, it will also include collaborative tools for work on shared documents. Facebook at Work will be entirely separate from personal accounts, with no information from a user's social profile appearing on his or her professional page, and vice versa. Because not enough people are using Facebook at the office.
• State Department shuts down its e-mail system amid concerns about hacking - The Washington Post
  The State Department scrambled over the weekend to secure its unclassified e-mails, shutting down the entire e-mail system after finding evidence suggesting a hacker may have been been poking around. A senior State Department official said technicians recently detected “activity of concern” in portions of the system handling unclassified e-mail. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the breach, said that none of the department’s classified systems were compromised. The shutdown affected the State Department’s unclassified e-mail traffic and access to parts of its public Web site, the official said. The breach is the latest of a series of electronic intrusions first detected last month on government computer systems at a variety of agencies, from the White House to the U.S. Postal Service to the National Weather Service. The suspected hackers of the White House’s computer network were believed to be working for the Russian government.
• Uber brings Spotify streaming to your morning commute
  Spotify is coming to Uber. After hailing a car via the app, you can decide what music you're in the mood for, and when the car arrives to pick you up, it'll already be playing inside. You'll need to connect a paid streaming account inside Uber's mobile software to opt in, but doing so not only sets the music beforehand, but allows you to control it for the duration of the trip. The collaborative effort is set to launch on November 21st in London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Nashville, New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Stockholm, Toronto and Sydney with a widespread rollout in the weeks that follow. Of course, the driver will need to connect their phone to the car's stereo for you to take advantage, but Uber says those folks are excited about sorting your playlists. If the car you hail chooses not to play music, the option to play Spotify won't show up in the Uber app. In other Spotify news, a developer build of the app features a podcasts category, and an mystery feature called Magic.

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