 Coming up on DTNS, lasers are making some noise. How can NBC differentiate their streaming service and Apple in space? This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, December 20th, 2019 in lovely Cleveland. I'm Rich Strapolino. And from Alaska's backyard, I'm Amos. And remember, you can always get the wider conversation on our expansion before we get started here. It's called Good Day Internet, and you can find it by becoming a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Hey, let's get started with a few tech things you should know. The Philadelphia-based convenience store chain Wawa discovered malware on its payment processing server, December 10th, which appears to have been in place since March, 2019, and possibly have affected all 700 locations across Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia. Exposed data includes credit card numbers, names, and expiration dates, but not pins or CVV2 numbers. The company says it will offer a free credit monitoring and identity theft protection to all affected customers. And I got a sub from your Orlando location, so I'm on the lookout. Apple published an open-source version of the HomeKit Accessory Development Kit on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license. Anyone can now use the code to develop HomeKit integrations, but releasing a HomeKit-compatible Accessory still requires Apple certification. Facebook announced it will no longer use phone numbers provided for two-factor authentication to friend-feed recommendations after it stopped using the numbers for advertising purposes in June. The change is rolling out to Ecuador, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Libya, Cambodia, and globally in 2020. And Motorola announced it will delay the pre-order and launch of its Razer foldable phone, kind of dousing some of the excitement there. No new dates have been announced for either. It was originally supposed to launch January 6th, but Motorola says it doesn't anticipate a significant shift from its original timetable, we will see. All right, let's talk a little bit more about one of the big news stories coming out today. This is kind of developing throughout the day. I thought it was interesting. The first test flight of Boeing's CST-100 Starliner passenger spacecraft failed to reach the right orbit when it launched into space. No passengers were aboard the flight. It was a test. And Boeing says the vehicle is safe and stable. However, according to NASA, the Starliner will not reach its original planned destination at the International Space Station. It appears that the Atlas V rocket that launched the Starliner put it on its planned suborbital path. And from there, the Starliner was supposed to ignite its rockets and kind of get into its main orbital path to dock with the International Space Station. However, while something did ignite on the Starliner's engine, it didn't do the burn properly. And they suspect it's a software issue that kind of caused things to go awry. The Starliner is part of NASA's commercial crew program and a successful test was believed to pave the way for astronauts to use the vehicle sometime in late 2020. I believe December 2020 was when it was planned for. So, I mean, it was a minor glitch, which in space, I guess there are no minor glitches, seems like that's going to slip from now. SpaceX and Boeing were kind of the two or the only two companies in the commercial crew program. Both of them have had some issues with some of their early tests on this. Kind of a big deal for NASA's plan to use commercial flight to send stuff up and from the ISS, right, Justin? Well, yeah. And certainly because this is a far more competitive space than it used to be. I mean, granted SpaceX and Boeing are the only people there, but SpaceX didn't exist 10 years ago. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman companies like that, which are all part of the United Launch Alliance. They were really the only game in town. So the fact that SpaceX has been able to iterate and have tremendous amounts of success with these kinds of programs leading up to this point. Well, you know, that is, you know, certainly footsteps, footsteps that Boeing should be hearing behind them and this is not a good sign for them. Yeah. And it's, you know, on the one hand, I guess we'll have to wait to see till like the full report comes in on this. Because again, if it was, I mean, I don't want to say it would be a good thing if it was some sort of software glitch due to quality control or something like that. But, you know, at least, you know, we heard reports of, you know, SpaceX was having at some of their later stage rocket launches earlier this year or just I think last month, you know, where they were having unexpected pressure buildups and that kind of stuff. So if you have to have a failure, I guess software is the easiest and the less architectural to fix, but still could be a problem for them going down the road. Not to mention the fact that Boeing's got to be wondering like, when is it not 2019 anymore? Yeah, they've had a rough year. They want to change that calendar as soon as possible. Uber has announced that it signed a multi-year commercial contract with Electric Aviation Startup, Joby Aviation to launch a fast, reliable, clean and affordable urban air taxi service in select markets. This marks the first announced partnership committing Uber's plan to launch flying taxi services by 2023. Under the terms of the deal, Joby will supply and operate electric air taxis while Uber will provide air traffic control help, landing pad construction, and connections to ground transportation. Joby was founded in 2009, revealed in 2018 that it had raised $100 million in venture funding and demoed a plane drone hybrid aircraft to Bloomberg reports last year. The Bloomberg reports also add that they were described as twice as fast as a helicopter and as loud as a swarm of super bees, which I guess is not as loud as a plane, but certainly maybe more terrifying. Uber has previously named six other aerospace companies working on electric vertical takeoff and landing prototypes for the service. Yeah, this VTOL or EVTOL, if you're talking about electric vehicles, specifically vertical takeoff market, seems to be kind of, I don't wanna say blowing up or anything like that, but certainly growing up where someone committing to, within essentially three years, being able to offer this. But Justin, Uber has obviously been expanding its applicable market beyond, they wanna tell you they're not a ride sharing company anymore, they wanna tell you they're a technology platform and they've certainly expanded into things like Uber Eats, Uber Works, other tangential things, or not tangential, other markets like that. They've had their Uber Copter service, which seemed a little silly and is very specialized in New York City right now. Do you think if this launch is in 2023 it will be akin to something like that where it'll be this hyper specialized, hey, we're gonna have these EVTOL from, taking to LAX or just very specific locations or do you see this anytime soon having a broader launch like that? No, I think that this is going to be in very, very specific markets. I don't care how you think a swarm of super bees we will wait and see on whether or not it annoys people down on the ground because I think that that is a huge barrier that these people are going to have to cross. And I don't mean just a Joby. I mean, anybody who wants to be in this market, there's a lot of real world rubber meets the road that needs to happen between now and then. That being said, I do think that it is important for Uber to continue to branch out into other places. They maintain very, very clearly that they are a matching service. They are not there just for ride shares. And so anybody who thinks that that is the only application then specifically the state of California then they are wrong, right? But this is going to literally just exist so people can take off from south of market and so go and get down to Palo Alto or vice versa. I cannot see this being something that has a larger application or at least would be cheaper or more reliable and less dangerous than driving. I am a little surprised though, that they're hitching their wagon, I guess, or they're announcing this very close partnership with this company Joby Aviation, which not a lot of people know a ton about. All the reporting that I was seeing on it was basically like they effectively were just a name and crunch base at a certain point in 2018 was the first time that anyone kind of found out who was even backing them. And it seems like there was only like one bloom, two Bloomberg reporters got to fly in one demo aircraft and Joby is saying that that aircraft is not really representative of what they're working on now. So it does seem a little odd to be announcing this partnership with basically a company know nothing about, although I guess when you're not tying yourself to specifics, it's hard not to disappoint people if no one really knows what you're actually promising. Look, they're going to run the exact route that I said and people would be thrilled to pay $300 a pop to do it. I just say, why not call it a super swarm of bees? I would think that sounds not quite as intimidating. That would be my thought. CNBC reported new details about how NBC plans to differentiate its Peacock streaming service. The information previously reported that NBC was considering three tiers that aren't at all confusing, a free ad supported tier with a limited content library so wouldn't get access to all Peacock content, a $5 a month tier with limited ads and a $10 a month ad free option, the paid tiers would have full access to content. Sources now tell CNBC that Peacock will reportedly provide streaming content directly to users when opening up the app similar to turning on a TV. So you'd have something kind of already playing when you activated the service. This could be live content from NBC's free streaming new service, everyone's favorite NBC News Now or an on demand show depending. I'm imagining they would let you set some sort of preferences for that. Peacock will include 15,000 hours of content at launch including things like the office, cheers and Friday night lights with new original content planned. There's a Saved by the Bell reunion show that's supposed to be planned but reportedly it will not include NBC broadcast content or 2020 Olympic coverage. They don't, they're very eager not to cannibalize their existing broadcast business. Peacock is still in beta testing and not expected to launch until April so it sounded like especially that broadcast kind of when you open the app feature might still be in testing but Justin, do people want like the Netflix auto roll when they first opened the app? Does that sound like the best way to differentiate yourself as a streaming service? No, no, it doesn't. It sounds annoying. It sounds like something that if you were to open it up you'd forget you weren't, your phone wasn't muted and it would make a loud noise and you would find yourself embarrassed and apologizing to those in the meeting that you just disrupted because you were trying to sneaky watch Cheers. I, look, this is a decision by NBC to say for the stuff that they own or the stuff that they have close relationships with that they want to get in this game instead of licensing out things that they have the rights to. That being said, I don't think that that's really a winner here. If it's not integrating directly with live TV if it's not giving you everything that NBC can give you then that is not gonna be great in my opinion. And also it's confusing. Like, I don't know what would you want. I want like, I mean, theoretically the only reason why I would want Peacock is if I was just one of those folks and like, I think we all have friends or we might be those people ourselves that just want to watch the office as they go to sleep every night. There's just like a relationship with certain syndicated programs be they the Simpsons or the office or friends or something like that that is very comforting to people and are very valuable in a binge watching society because you see a lot of kids that like run out of content and so guess what's there for them? These gigantic behemoth shows that we're making 30 episodes a year in the 90s. And so that's why friends and the office have kind of had their own extended longevity. I can't imagine that this will take off. In fact, I would make a prediction that it will be dead by the end of 2020. Yeah, I mean, that's the weird thing is to kind of very publicly say like we don't want to cannibalize our existing services. Like they have to realize they're competing with services that like literally they're trying to do the exact opposite where they're just trying to give you as much as like Netflix is just trying to give you as much as possible. They're releasing more shows than TV released in 2005. We just talked about earlier this week. You know, you have Disney Plus. Can you imagine if Disney Plus had launched and they said, yeah, we're gonna have all of our original content. We're gonna have the man to learn but we're not gonna put our movies on, like our first run movies on there or anything like that. I mean, in defense of NBC, this is a different and more difficult decision to put on live content. If they are launching this with shows that are currently airing on their network that they did not make deals previously to allow for it, then that's something that they do have to either cut another check to the people that are making these shows or wait until those shows kind of die out and you can get new shows that do have that allowance on it and live television is not simple. So that and they also have other partners that they sell their stations to as part of other live television. Yeah, there's a larger contractual obligation but Justin, my question to you is not that you would wanna turn on the app and it would have the automatically playing a show but would you want like a thing you could select that would just automatically play, like say you like The Office, you like Cheers, you like some other NBC shows that you could just set like a certain favorite shows and it would just randomly pick one and start playing it kind of to simulate that kind of lean back experience. Like to me that's as close as I wanna get to that kind of I'm just dipping in and out kind of situation. I don't wanna have to choose something. I mean, I would be more into a TikTok style little teasers of a bunch of stuff that I might like that I can like, man, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip. No, that's the one, I wanna go with that. You know, I would be more into that, but no. And I think in general, people have been trying to make lean back happen for so long that I just, I don't think that we're ever gonna make that happen. The French competition has already find Google a 120 Euro or 120 million Euro after its investigation found that the company abused its dominant position in the online search advertising market. In its decision, the regulator found that Google's ad business had quote, opaque and difficult to understand, unquote, operating rules that were applied in a quote, unfair and random manner, unquote. With interpretations of rules changing over time and based on advertisers, Google must now define its operating rules for ads in an objective, transparent and non-discriminatory manner, set up a system of alerts to help advertisers avoid suspensions and provide annual training for Google ad support staff. The decision comes after a 2015 complaint was filed with the regulator by Gib Media after Google closed its ad account without notice. Google said it will appeal the decision, which I feel like that should be something that everybody around the world, whenever anybody reads a story about European regulators slapping a gigantic fine on an American company, we should all repeat and unison. Google said it will appeal the decision. Well, yeah. And that just goes to show how long these kind of cases go on. This is a 2015 complaint, odds are, this will probably continue well into 2020 with any kind of appeal and stuff like that. Who knows? That's one of the problems I have with some of, sometimes with these regulatory disputes is that any kind of change that's a result of it is so far from the actual infraction that it seems like, it's hard for, I mean, obviously I would, the regulator's doing their job, obviously they're going at the speed of, government for better or worse, but sometimes that I'm sure can be frustrating for a lot of these parties that are involved, four years later than having to get appealed on a lot of these roles. A new paper published in Light Science and Applications, it's also the name of my favorite Tangerine Dream Album, researchers at MIT described a system of using lasers to mimic the capabilities of an ultrasound machine, but can be used at distances of up to half a meter, as opposed to requiring physical contact. The researchers use a laser wavelength of 1,550 nanometers, which is absorbed by water, but won't harm skin and the eyes. By pulsing the laser to heat and cool the skin, the contracting skin creates steady oscillations and by effect sound waves, which go through the body like an ultrasound. The researchers use a second laser to measure the vibrations of the skin, the sound waves cause, which can be processed to actually produce an image of what's inside. Resolutions aren't quite up to ultrasound standards yet, they kind of had two side by sides there and the laser image is a little rougher than the ultrasound, so I check out the Weedlink to the Gizmodo piece here, but the technique can already distinguish between bone, fat deposits, and muscles. Justin, this is kind of exciting for me. I have some relatives that have some issues of either laying prone for too long. I know this can be also issues, be pretty relevant for if you're a burn victim or something like that and they need to see if there's anything inside of you that doesn't require physical contact. It's all around much more comfortable and a really interesting advance to basically use heat to create sound waves. That's kind of interesting. No, it's absolutely fascinating and I can't wait to see kind of where it goes because these kinds of breakthroughs very obvious or very, very often wind up becoming very interesting kind of groundbreaking commercial uses for it. There's a lot of things that like you just mentioned that we don't realize like, oh, you don't realize you need a better bicycle until somebody starts doing donuts around you in one. Of course, this article wouldn't be complete without featured dystopia news of being able to use this without your knowledge to theoretically, although I don't know if it could be used, obviously it would require watery tissue. So I don't know how weirdly dystopic that gets. I guess they can see if you're pregnant with lasers and you don't know it. I was gonna say, yeah, they'd be able to see the burrito that I howled. They wouldn't show. Yeah, my English muffin pizza will be on display for all of the dystopian governments to see. All right, remember you can get all of the tech headlines each day in about five minutes. Subscribe to Daily Tech Headlines at dailytechheadlines.com. You'll hear me there quite a bit. All right, Justin, big news was kind of all over Bloomberg's resident Apple whisperer Mark Gurman reported that according to sources, let's just keep that in mind, Apple has a team of about a dozen engineers working on satellites and wireless tech with the goal of deploying its results within five years. And that sounds a little ambiguous and that's because it sounds like they're still kind of nailing down exactly what this project is going to be, but the project is in its early phases and the clear use hasn't been quite finalized. Apple is reportedly looking into using them possibly to provide data connectivity to devices without a traditional carrier, essentially beaming internet from the space or for more precise location tracking, which seems pedestrian, but maybe easier to do. Also maybe creepy. It's unclear if Apple intends to develop and launch its own satellite constellation or develop earthbound equipment to send into an existing satellite network, kind of provide that back end, maybe to build a service on top of. The team is led by Michael Trella and John Fenwick who led the satellite imaging company Skybox Imaging, which you may have heard about because Google acquired them in 2014 and they continue to work at Google into 2017. Looking further into the Bloomberg article, it seems like Apple has staffed up with some people with some more wireless chops. There's Matt Edis, who's kind of regarded in the industry as a big technological visionary in the wireless space. They have former aerospace executive Ashley Moore-Williams and the head of Netflix's CDN efforts, Daniel Ellis. I think that is very telling in terms of much more practical implementations of this. So Apple in space, Justin. Why is space becoming the new homeless? We've seen SpaceX, we've seen OneWeb, Amazon kind of all wanting to get into the satellite game. Is that the next big cash cow for a lot of these big tech companies? Oh, there's no doubt. I think I saw something years and years ago that the first trillionaire will come out of people who are making money in space because there is just so much possible out there and you're gonna be able to build it on top of the existing stuff that you have. That being said, the reason why we are getting more of this is because it is cheaper to get out there. SpaceX, everything we're talking about up top about how fast SpaceX has gone, how much pressure it has put on some of the other rocket companies, how many more rocket companies are kind of being created each and every day, means that it's cheaper to put satellites into space. Therefore, you can be a little bit more experimental about it. But what I find fascinating about this is not necessarily that they are doing it because Apple certainly has a very long track record of buying whoever they want to work on whatever they want or not they are exactly going to do it. But it does remind me of about five years ago we first heard about Project Titan, AKA the Apple Car. This is something that apparently there are still people at Apple working on, although whether or not it's a full car prototype remains to be seen, that there have been reports that maybe those goals have shifted a little bit. But to look at that then, the idea that they would want to take to the ultimate in product sales, that oftentimes one of the most expensive things that people own in their lifetime other than a house is a car and Apple wants to bring their brand into that. And now that we see the prices per unit on Apple products continue to rise and the services become more and more of a way that they can make money. The idea of a satellite network that can give you internet or that can give iPhone or iPad or Apple TV users a leg up in terms of the kind of quality of their day to day experience is fascinating. I think that the two sides of that coin, the Apple Car, the ultimate product, Apple satellite internet, the ultimate service kind of shows you how different the focus of that company is five years ago to now. Yeah, and it's important to point out, I mean, this is still, from all the reporting, seems to still be a Skunkworks project for Apple at this point, like I said, it's a team of about a dozen people compared to a company like SpaceX is making plans to put 12,000 satellites into orbit, Amazon putting 3,200, they're already starting to do test launches and that kind of stuff, getting clearances with government agencies and stuff like that to put that up. But to your point, a little bit, I think this plays into kind of Apple's traditional space in that they're usually not the first movers in any of these. So let's let SpaceX figure out how much of a pain it is to do a lot of this stuff. And then if Apple does decide to launch their own constellation, which I don't even know if that's necessarily their plan, they can kind of learn from those initial efforts, they can see where the problem areas with those are. Like I said, they're not gonna be coming out deploying their first results to within five years and giving their competition theoretically a leg up, but also a lot of room to make a lot of mistakes with that as well. I think it's also interesting that basically since the launch of the iPhone, there was always that persistent memory that Apple really wanted to become their own carrier for the longest time. And I think that was even mentioned maybe in the Steve Jobs biography or something like that where they really didn't want to be tied into kind of the old telecom world and stuff like that and wanted to be able to just offer that service directly. Maybe the longer term play, I don't know if space was always in the cards, but this would certainly play into that as well. Well, the other thing to remember with them is that they will very often set stuff up just so they can then understand why they need to buy somebody else. And that is part of their plan. But to me, this just as it all written all over it is Apple wants more services. Yeah, and what's the one thing you can't quit? It's that internet. So we will, again, it's a hate to end a news story and a discussion with We Will See, but this is the ultimate We Will See, but certainly interesting news. And we'll see if we hear any more, if Mark German sources whisper to him in the dead of night and we see more reporting from that going forward. Thanks to all those who participate, though, in our separate We Get Stores From There all the time. I know I do for Daily Tech headlines. Submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com and join in a conversation on our Discord, which you can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash DTNS. Justin, let's check out what's in the mailbag. What do we got today? Well, Jerry writes, I wanted to write in about your discussion of the Google Assistant reducing our illuminating robo calls. I believe it was Sarah that said that she wish her iPhone had something like that. Well, it does in a way. It will not answer the calls by talking to the robot, but it will intercept the calls and screen them for you. You see in the newest version of iOS and the iPhone, there's a setting to send all calls not on your contacts list, not a recent outgoing call or not in Siri's suggestions straight to voicemail. It is so amazing. If it's a legitimate call, they leave a voicemail, otherwise nothing. If they do leave a voicemail, then Siri provides a transcript pure heaven. It has changed my experience with calls in so many ways. If you have flicked the switch or have not flicked the switch, I highly recommend it. I of course have my patented method of not asking anyone to call me and never answering my phone unless basically it's my wife or an in law or a parent. But if you're a social butterfly, definitely something good to keep in mind on the iOS side for sure. Indeed. All right, and of course we have, it's Friday, it wouldn't be a Friday without some Len Peralta artwork. Now we couldn't be on the show, but we let Len know what we were gonna be talking about and he created some amazing work. Amos, can we get that up on the screen if it's not already? But you can check that out and you can go head on over if you're interested in checking that out. Go to LenPeraltaStored.com. We actually have the link to that particular piece in the show notes, so check that out as well. Of course, we wanna thank Justin, Robert Young for being on the show today. Justin, you do a couple podcasts, maybe one that I was listening to while I was dragging my two year old to get a haircut. What's going on in the political podcast world? Gotcha, all right, so probably the big one is, of course, Raise the Dead. Raise the Dead is my brand new historical politics series that tracks the 1960 election between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. And the newest episode has now dropped. It is all about Richard Nixon. We've spent two episodes barely mentioning the man, so we dedicated an entire episode to him. His rise from being a poor kid in Southern California to the top of the political mountain and the moment in 1960 when he almost ruined his entire career and infuriated some of the most influential members of the Republican Party. Go ahead and check it out, Raise the Dead. Just fantastic, highly, highly recommend. And thanks to all of our amazing patrons, and we just wanna let you know, we have new Patreon Reward merchandise to celebrate six years of DTNS. Len Peralta created a six year anniversary DTNS logo. If you back at certain levels at patreon.com slash DTNS for three months, you can get either a sticker, a poster, a mug, or a t-shirt. Get the details at patreon.com slash DTNS slash merch. And you can always support our show at any level at dailytechnewshow.com slash Patreon. Remember, our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We're live Monday through Friday, 4.30 p.m. Eastern time, 21.30 UTC. This will be however the last live DTNS show for 2019. The cast and top Sarah and the gang on Thursday, January 2nd, 2020. And make sure you check out all of our pre-recorded episodes that are gonna be coming out. We're gonna be starting with the DTNS live with it and then it'll kick off all of our end of the year holiday specials. And don't forget to check out Tom Scott on their New Year's Eve live current geek at 6.30 Eastern 2330UTC at twitch.tv slash DC streamathon. Thanks so much. And remember everybody, have a super sparkly day. I hope you have enjoyed this program. Hehehehe.