 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Brandon Brooks, Alexander Nashev, and Hector Bones. Coming up on DTNS is sharing a Netflix password illegal in the U.K., it apparently is, plus whether facial recognition is at fault for a Rockettes Band, and YouTube looks to be the next home of the NFL Sunday Ticket! This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, December 21st, 2022 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. I'm Tom Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chan. We are excited to be here, folks. I know a lot of these other podcasters have already faded out. That's it, they're done. You're not going to get anything. No, we're not fading out until Friday, so hang in there with us. And we even prerecorded stuff for next week, so be on the lookout for that. We've got some special holiday episodes coming your way, but we're not done yet. Let's start with the quick hits. Anchor has admitted that its Ufie security cameras pose a security risk in a new blog post, although as The Verge points out, there's no real apology here, or even a real explanation as to why a security researcher was able to view an unencrypted stream remotely from an always local, always end-to-end encrypted camera. Anchor says no user data has been exposed, but that starting today, some things will change, users can log in to their web portal to view live streams of their cameras, but can no longer view live streams or share active links to live streams with others outside of Ufie's secure web portal. Good. That's all I have to say. Step in the right direction. Twitter CEO Elon Musk indicated on Twitter Wednesday that he would resign as CEO as soon as he finds a replacement. And in a conversation on Twitter's Spaces, Musk said that after cost-cutting measures and increased subscriber revenue, he believes, quote, that Twitter will in fact be okay next year. Analyst Ming-Chi Quo said in a series of tweets that Apple will cancel, or at least postpone, mass productions of the 2024 iPhone SE4 due to consistent lower-than-expected shipments of middle-tier and lower-than smartphones like the iPhone SE3, the iPhone 13 mini, and the iPhone 14+. Quo also added that the full-screen design that Apple wants for the iPhone SE4 will mean higher costs and price tags, so the company may need to, quote, reconsider the product positioning and return on investment and, quote, for the SE4. Raspberry Pi CEO Evan Upton said consumers should not expect a Raspberry Pi 5 system on a chip next year. He described 2023 as a recovery year. The chip shortage restrained availability of existing Pi boards over the last 18 months, and Upton said it couldn't ramp up demand for a new board in the next year. So they're going to catch up just not yet. EU antitrust regulators opened an in-depth investigation into Broadcom's proposed $61 billion acquisition of VMware. Broadcom makes server chips used in servers that often run multiple VMware instances. The EU will investigate whether the acquisition would result in competition restriction for a non-Broadcom hardware that works with VMware. Regulators will report their findings by May 11. All right, check it out. We'll be there May 11. It looks like NFL Sunday ticket is going to YouTube now. NFL Sunday ticket, if you don't know, is the one that lets you watch NFL games that you otherwise would not be able to watch. Most TV markets in the U.S. get around four games every Sunday, one on Fox, one on CBS, one after the other. But not every market gets the same four games. So Sunday ticket lets you watch all the games you don't get. It does black out the local game to encourage you to watch at least that one on your local channel. But that's all about money. Cable services pay to carry local channels. And if you were to just get Sunday ticket without getting local cable service, those local channels would lose out on those sizable carrier fees. Now, up till now, as of this moment, Direct TV has been the exclusive home of NFL's Sunday ticket. But it will not be renewing its deal at the end of the season. And recently, Apple has been reported to be the service most likely to get that Sunday ticket. But then last week, the dealer reportedly fell through. Apple reportedly wanted to get rid of the blackout restrictions, get international rights, possibly include the package at no additional cost with its Apple TV Plus subscription, which currently sits at $6.99 a month. Contracts with Fox and CBS would also have been altered to allow any of that to happen, including the cheap price. So it ended up not happening at all. Yeah. And as Bat Fink in our chat room puts it, Jets fans look like they'll be able to choose not to watch their team on YouTube TV. Google is the new front runner. In fact, by the time you hear this, it might already be announced. The Wall Street Journal was saying, and the New York Times was saying that the decision to grant the NFL Sunday ticket contract to Google might be finalized at an NFL owners meeting, which I think is happening as we're recording. Wall Street Journal says Sunday ticket would be available as an add-on, not just for YouTube TV, like you would add Showtime to YouTube TV or NBA League Pass or something, but also on YouTube proper. So you wouldn't have to have YouTube TV. You could add it through YouTube premium channels just to your regular YouTube.com premium subscription. It would not affect deals for Sunday Night Football on NBC. That's going to stay there. Monday Night Football is going to stay on ESPN. Thursday Night Football is going to stay on Amazon Prime Video. But it does look like they moved quick. They probably kept those conversations warm in case things fell through with Apple, especially because it looked like things were going to fall through with Apple for a couple of weeks, so they probably were ready to go. And that, Sarah, you're going to be able to watch your 4D Niners? Is that right? They are, yes. Yeah, gold pants represent. But yeah, so the whole YouTube thing is, I don't really have a horse in this race. Like whatever company can pay for the rights and they come to an agreement is where I'm going to eventually find those games. But as a person who is invested in football in the NFL, I find the whole thing a little amusing that, yeah, you still, if you want to watch football all weekend and many people do, it's like, all right, so let's start on Thursday. Thursday Night is Amazon. Then you go over to some network TV. Then you hit ESPN. Then you might go to YouTube TV for Sunday Night Football. Monday Night Football is a whole different ballgame because you got ESPN. I mean, it is, this is a dizzying array of choices, even if you kind of know what's going on here. And I can see why it's so frustrating for everybody. That said, the Sunday ticket is a big deal. And if it does come to Google, which would mean YouTube, but you know, in some capacity, YouTube TV is my cable alternative of choice. You know, I'm down with that. You know, the blackout restrictions are annoying, but it's always been that way. So I guess I'm just used to it. As far as my perspective on this, I'm, Tom and I had a conversation about this earlier and this keeps happening to me. Every year I sit down with my wife and go, it's not like a special meeting, but we have this conversation. Should we get into all the games this year, instead of just our sort of playoffs and Super Bowl kind of lifestyle? What if we actually cared all the way through the season about how various teams do like we used to do in, you know, back in the day. And I think part of it, you know, ended for me when I, when I cut the cord back in 07 or 08 and really never looked at cable again, because cable is where this stuff lived. So now that it's finally off of there and I'm feeling this urge again next year to have like a proper season follow-through, this has me pretty excited, maybe more than ever. And I don't know why exactly, except I think having it out of the contract with a cable provider, despite them having some digital options and in the hands of a pure digital source for me, which is YouTube, is more motivating. I don't even know why I don't have a good answer for why. I just think I'm going to do it now. Would I have liked this to be part of Apple 699 deal that I already pay? Absolutely I would have. I don't know what YouTube's going to do to drag me in. Will it be a part of their $10 a month subscription? I don't know. No. I'll answer that one right now. Ars Technica pointed out that there is a contract provision between the NFL and CBS and also with Fox that says that NFL Sunday ticket has to be sold at a premium price because they don't want it to be so cheap that people don't watch the games on Fox and CBS. They want to limit how many people go. They want only the most enthusiastic fans to go to it, which is one of the reasons Apple didn't get it for 699. So no, this is not going to be part of the $65 a month you pay for YouTube TV. Certainly not what you pay for YouTube premium. It's going to be an add on price. NFL Sunday ticket is $300 a season right now on Direct TV. That doesn't pay for itself. They have 1.5 million Sunday ticket subscribers. They pay 1.5 billion a year. But the idea is that they keep those people on Direct TV with other subscriptions and they pay for HBO and then that makes it worth it. It's almost a loss leader and I assume that's what Google is thinking here too. Yeah, it's probably what Apple was hoping to do. They were going to loss lead that as well, but in this case, I guess it just depends on what they call premium if right now the $300 mark is what's considered premium. It's still in the ballpark of what I think I would do. So this is more of a question of do I really want to invest in an NFL season in a hardcore way like Sarah who's my grand example today of someone who really cares about football and doesn't just show up at the end like I do. So I don't know, but I guess I'll wait and see what they charge and pull the trigger or not. I mean, okay. That said, the $300 annual fee is like, if you're used to it, okay. If you've been paying for that and you think it's worth it for you, great. I think that's wildly overpriced, but I understand the restrictions that have been in place for some time to make that price make sense. And even as you said, Tom, for Direct TV, they're not even making money off of that. So how this works going forward will be interesting. How let's just say the Google deal goes through how this will be an add-on for YouTube TV or YouTube premium separately and what that will cost. That's what I'm most interested in. Yeah, I'm curious what they'll price it at and how they'll package it. There's some fans hoping that they will introduce per game so that you don't have to pay the whole $300 that you could just pay for particular games. Your 49ers are still going to be on your local channel, though. They're not going to be on an NFL Sunday ticket. They're going to be blacked out. And that's going to be true for everybody's local team. So YouTube TV is going to have to make sure they have local carriage agreements with people because if they get people in because like, ooh, NFL, and then it's like, oh, I can get everything but my local team because you don't have an agreement with Fox in this market, that's going to be an issue. And that's been such a, for a lot of people who don't understand how these agreements work, they're like, but it's my team. It's the only team I care about. I actually don't even want to watch all this other stuff, which is why a lot of people don't pay for things like that. Yeah, no, exactly. Not to mention YouTube TV doesn't have Bali sports, so even though that's not football, if you're a sports fan, you're going to be like, well, wait, if I switch to YouTube TV, now I can't watch the basketball, the hockey team, the baseball team, if Bali's is the one who carries your local sports there. So yeah, it's going to complicate things. And this is going to keep getting more complicated until it all shakes out. We're in the transition period from cable to digital. And this is just going to be one of those steps along the way. Well, thanks again to KV87 on our subreddit for flagging this story. It's been floating around for the last day or so, but we have a little bit more information and there's a tech angle, so stay with me here. NBC News in New York reported earlier this week that on Thanksgiving weekend, a Girl Scouts troupe was attending a Rockettes show at Radio City Music Hall. Probably pretty fun. Lots of people are going to be there. However, one of the parents of the participants of the Girl Scout troupe was not allowed to enter the facility. The parent in question's name is Kelly Conlon. Conlon works for a law firm called Davis, Saperstein and Solomon, which is representing claimants in an ongoing personal litigation, personal injury litigation against MSG Entertainment, which operates Radio City Music Hall. MSG has a policy that it does not allow attorneys pursuing active litigation against it from attending events at their venues until the litigation is resolved. They're trying to protect themselves from attorneys doing a little like, you know, snooping around. Conlon is not working on this particular case, but MSG says the policy applies to everyone who's an attorney at the firm. That way the attorneys don't do things like, oh, I'm not on this case, but I'm going to snoop around for my buddy at the work who is. It just says blanket thing. If you work at that organization until the case is done, you can't come in. Yeah. So while Davis, Saperstein and Solomon were made aware of this policy, other firms have sued over the same thing, and Conlon thought a recent judge's order said that ticket holders could not be denied entry. Now, in response, Davis, Saperstein and Solomon is challenging MSG's liquor license, since that license requires them to admit members of the public unless there are people who would be disruptive or who constitute a security threat. Now, you might say, okay, all fine and good, why are we talking about this on DTDS? Yes, because MSG venues, Madison Square Garden, that's what the MSG is for, and Radio City Music Hall, which they operate, have signs up that notify visitors that facial recognition is in use as a security measure. And in fact, Conlon claims a security guard said, our recognition picked you up before asking to CID. So here's the question. Facial recognition did not make a mistake. That was Kelly Conlon. Facial recognition recognized Conlon. The security people said, are you Conlon? Looked at the ID and said, oh, you are. Well, unfortunately, our policy doesn't let you to come in. We can have a separate conversation about whether MSG's policy of kicking out lawyers is a good one or not. I'm not sure that I think it's great. I understand it, but I don't love it. I think it's a little abusive, especially when you can't go in with your daughter to see the Rockettes. But it was applied to the letter. So is facial recognition the problem here? Scott? Yeah, Scott. My take is no. I think the technology is usually not at fault at all. It's the use of the technology. I don't like this particular use of it in this case. I feel like there ought to be some granularity on how you apply it. I think just rubber stamping it and saying, well, this is the deal. So sorry, you're out. Isn't up to snuff in this one case. Because we're talking about a private company or a company that's, you know, not the government. I think that that separates a lot of the, some of the bigger issues or questions about surveillance. So I'm glad that those don't come up in this. But yeah, I feel like the technology is never the problem. It's usually us and how we apply it. And I think this probably needs some rework at the very least. I mean, the whole idea that MSG venues, you know, Radio City Musical as a very large example, saying, listen, we tell people that there is facial recognition in place. It's for everyone's safety, et cetera, et cetera, is not, I mean, that doesn't really raise my eyebrows all that much. Not every venue does that. But hey, you know, this is New York City. A lot of people come through there. I get it. For that venue to then say, ooh, you belong to, you know, that law firm that we don't like very much. And even though you don't seem to really have any direct involvement with this particular lawsuit that we're having with that law firm, you are not allowed to enter is within their rights. You might say, well, that's rude, that's mean, you know, it ruined the daughter's day. And maybe that's all true. But it's not illegal to do that. So I guess it kind of turns into a conversation of, okay, well, when facial recognition works, which it did in this case, you know, at what point did we say, well, that's not fair. Yeah. The argument I've heard against this is that if they hadn't been using facial recognition, they wouldn't have known that Conlon was the person who worked for the law firm. And therefore, there wouldn't have been any problem. But to me, that's just saying, oh, they would have got away with it, right? Facial recognition made sure they didn't get away with it. It's hard to separate. I get it because I too think this is a horrible policy. It's like, no, you can't go in with your daughter to see the Rockettes because you work at a law firm. But what if it was this person was banned because they had been disruptive, because they had tried to light a fire one time and they wouldn't have recognized them if it hadn't been for facial recognition. Would you feel the same way about the facial recognition being used in that case? To me, I think it's really hard not to get confused with, this is a horrible policy. And they used facial recognition, which makes me hate the facial recognition because it allowed them to enforce the horrible policy. When it's not the facial recognition's problem, it's, yes, they wouldn't have been able to enforce the policy, but the policy's still there either way. Yeah. It's complicated. The whole part about it being discriminatory or the question about whether it's discriminatory is an interesting one because this isn't one based on ethnicity or race or gender or any of that. This is a restriction based on, we don't like you. Like a weird professional competitive reason. It's unusual, right? So part of me is glad that this is getting talked about because I don't think people think about this very much. But this sort of stuff happens and it's awful. Now, Nick with a C asks a good question. Why did Conlin, why was Conlin able to buy a ticket? And I don't know, maybe the Girl Scout troop bought the tickets and they were just distributed. So they never saw Conlin's name. That is possibly an explanation. And they let her buy the ticket without telling her about this. No. They told Davis, Saperstein and Solomon, MSG says they told them twice that none of your employees will be allowed to attend. And it's pretty clear to me from Conlin's quotes that Conlin knew that and was like, but I thought because they said, I thought this judge's ruling would allow me in. So it's not like they didn't know this was a risk. I kind of wonder if they knew this was going to happen and wanted to get the press out of it as well. That is a possibility as well. Yeah. Well, folks, this came thanks to our subreddit. Thank you, KV87. Get in there and be like KV87. Let us know what you'd like to hear us talk about. Submit stories. Vote on the ones that are there at DailyTechNewsShow.Reddit.com. The UK Intellectual Property Office said Tuesday it believes that sharing passwords for services like Netflix breaks UK law. The office originally posted this guidance on its website, but has since removed it. However, the office confirmed to the BBC that password sharing where the intent is to allow a user to access copyrighted material without payment may breach contracts, constitute fraud, or qualify as secondary copyright infringement. The office said it would be up to service providers to take actions in court, but that it's possible in some cases that charges could be referred to police for criminal investigation and possibly prosecution. None of that is really likely to happen, though. No, the UK police have never given an indication that they're going to investigate password sharing. I think they probably have other things to do. And Netflix has never indicated it was going to sue people. They have not gone, they've been very gentle about this. But it is developing a system to detect password sharing and encourage users to either set up their own account or pay extra for a sub-account. Netflix believes more than 100 million viewers use the service with borrowed passwords. So converting even 1% of that would mean several million dollars in revenue. In fact, analysts at Cohen think it could raise around 721 million in revenue next year in the US and Canada alone, where an estimated 30 million share passwords. Yeah, so details on how Netflix is actually going to crack down on passwords or want to worldwide haven't been announced in any formal sense. But they've conducted tests in several Latin American countries, one of which when password sharing was detected, Netflix sent a code to the email of the primary account holder and the viewer had 15 minutes to enter that code. And then even then, the user still might get prompts to pay an added monthly fee to stay on the account or to migrate their profile to a new account. So Netflix is definitely paying attention to this and probably has a lot of data on where this kind of stuff is going on. Yeah, but they're going to have to be conservative about how they use that data. Netflix updated its help pages this year to say it's going to use IP address, device ID, and account activity to help it detect password sharing. But there are situations where the IP address can be in two places and it's not password sharing or at least it's legitimate password sharing or device IDs are moving around or you've got two SIM cards in your phone. It doesn't want to crack down on a large number of people who are not sharing passwords. That's going to blow back on it. People are mad enough about this as it is and they're going to have to make sure that if you're traveling, you know, three week vacation, you don't get the pop-up just because you're in a different location. Children sometimes travel between two parents' house. So if that child is logging in, that should be legitimate. They're a member of the household. How are you going to account for that? And of course, people use Netflix on mobile. India was used as an example where the majority of people use Netflix on mobile. They're moving around. They might have multiple SIM cards. These are not insurmountable challenges, but they do complicate matters. So Scott, how are you feeling about password sharing now? Well, as someone who has maybe a couple of his kids borrowing his password, just saying maybe, not saying for sure. They're your kids. They're in your household. No, no, no. Scott is just saying someone's kids. Yeah, someone's kids. I'll go ahead and say, sure, we'll say someone's kids. Maybe one of their kids is currently in Iceland for two months and maybe is using that password. I don't know, but part of it, part of me wonders if there's like a window here in Netflix to say, well, look at these tricky restrictions in the EU. It's going to force us to make some fundamental changes. And I'm sorry to let everybody know, but worldwide it's how it's going to have to be because it's one system. But that is what's happening. Before this UK thing, they were like, we're making fundamental changes and it's happening worldwide in 2023. I just think this helps them. That part already happened. I guess what you're saying is the UK thing helps them justify it. Like, see, we have to do this. Yeah, exactly. I think what it does is it gives them not an out, but an ability to say, look, this isn't entirely us. We may have been indicating that we're pro-cleaning this mess up, but also what are you going to do? Government, am I right? They can kind of put their hands up a little bit and say, well, now we have to do it. I think that helps them get whatever goal they're aiming for here. And I also, I totally understand why this is frustrating for them. And I totally understand why this is law in some places because it can be abused. It just straight up can be and is abused all the time. Whether government should get involved is a whole different conversation, but if Netflix is looking for a slightly more greased palm to get there, I feel like maybe the UK will give it to them. Yeah, I mean, this all sounds like, to me, a little bit of like, let's just put it down on paper how we have said we don't think this is the right thing. You know, you might be committing fraud. You might be breaching contracts. We don't want anything to do with this. We're going to deem it illegal. And we have said so officially. That's kind of what this seems like to me. Now, Netflix is a larger problem of, okay, if you're really going to crack down on password sharing, which is a rampant problem, not just for Netflix, but for a lot of streaming services. All right. Well, yeah, how are you going to do it? How are you going to do it in a way that if I, Sarah, am in Iceland for two months, how are you not going to be like, well, that's obviously not you because you live in Northern California. It's like, it could be me. And in that case, maybe it is me. And you, if you're on some sort of a family plan, people do move around. And as Tom mentioned, SIM cards do get swapped out. And a lot of that information, pardon me, does become problematic for Netflix to enforce because if they really want to enforce it, you know, down to the person, that's not a job that they want to do. I have been assuming from the beginning that this is going to be very softly done. Their job is not to convert all hundred million to become paying subscribers. I don't think, when I say that, I mean, I don't think Netflix sees that as their goal. Their goal is to get even 1%. Like we said, that would bring them in a few hundred million dollars because you're talking about $7 to $10 a month. So that's, you know, up to $120 a year or more. If somebody is like, ah, fine. I'm going to pay for the HD. I want the multiple accounts, whatever, right? So this is because profit margins are being squeezed. They are looking for hundreds of millions of dollars that they can make up for. So it's in their best interest to overcorrect against cracking down on people who are legitimate. Netflix has previously expressed that as their opinion. They're like, we think password sharing kind of helps us. So I feel like they have to do this for shareholders. They have to do it for rights holders as well who don't want, you know, the amount that Netflix is making to be less than it should because they get a cut, you know, based on residuals and royalties and payments and stuff like that. But I think what they're going to do is really say like, hey, we'll give you a pop-up that says, hey, we think your password sharing will annoy you a little, but I don't think they're going to really even cut people off. They are certainly not going to drag people to court, at least not under the current administration of Netflix. You know what hits me about this just a tiny bit is that the rest of the streaming world can kind of sit back a little bit and see how this gets resolved. And then they're going to want to implement this stuff too, but they can do it on the slide when it's done. They're like, well, that worked for Netflix. So now we're going to do it like they all have, they got a little bit of skin in this game. 100% HBO Max, Peacock, Disney Plus. They're all like, yep, let us know how that goes. Oh, that's what worked. Great. That's what we're doing. Okay. Yeah, totally. Well, thanks everybody who submits stories and votes on them in our subreddit or emails of stories or shares stories in our Discord. You make the show better. So thank you to all of you. Also, thanks to you, Scott Johnson, for being with us today. Let folks know where they can keep up with all that you do. Well, sure. There's a lot going on and I've always got something new and fresh going on, but I'd like to point people to a show that's now been around since 2011. If you like daily content, especially in the sort of comedy realm, and you just want a good time in the morning, check out the morning stream, which you can find at frogfans.com. TMS or wherever the morning stream is served up as a podcast. And the reason I mentioned this is because next week we are going to have just a little lighter, more fun sort of approach to the, to the holiday in between times. And we're going to have a great time on there. We'd love to have more people there. So check it out. Again, that is the morning stream, wherever you get your podcasts. Excellent. Thanks to our brand new boss. That boss's name is Tiff. Tiff just started backing us on Patreon. Thank you, Tiff. Welcome. Thank you, Tiff. Thank you, Tiff. Tiff is the best. Tiff for a press. Tiff for president of our hearts. Today. That's right. Yeah. Tiff. Tiff is now a brand new patron. Welcome, Tiff. Patreon.com slash DTNS. And Tiff, you and any patron, in fact, anybody watching the show, even if you're not a patron, email us your questions and answers. We're going to get to them on Friday's show. It's our last live show until CES. So come on in feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. What have you always wanted us to tell you? What question do you have feedback at dailytechnewshow.com? Yeah. We've gotten a few AMA questions so far, which is kind of fun, which we're banking. So yeah, keep them coming, you know? Nothing is off the table. I mean, we can't guarantee we'll answer every single question. 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