 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Scott Hepburn, Jeff Wilkes, Pele Glendale, and our lifetime supporter, that Charlie dude. On this episode of DTNS, Amazon wants you to scan your palm to pay for things in store more than ever. Netflix is entering quite the new era itself, and would Apple really pull iMessage out of the UK? This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, July 20th, 2023. From Studio, it's very sweltering in here. I'm Sarah Lane. From the land that rocks, I'm Richard Raffalino. From Deep in the Heart of Texas, I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chen. We've got a great show. As I mentioned, we're going to talk about Amazon Palm scanning. We're going to talk about Apple and perhaps legal trouble on going, a lot of stuff with Netflix. But first, let's start with a quick heads. 9to5Mac reports that individual YouTube premium subscriptions are increasing $2 to $13.99 per month in the US for new and current customers, as seen at youtube.com slash premium. Was it really an announcement? But a YouTube spokesperson confirmed the price hike, saying that the new price reflects the value of the service. Worth noting, if you subscribe through iOS and the app, it's $18.99 per month. So you are paying a premium for doing that. Family premium plans increased to $22.99 per month last year, with an annual subscription now increasing $20 to $140 per year. YouTube is also raising music premium $1 to $10.99 per month. Existing subscribers will see their new pricing in the next billion cycle. If you're a grandfathered in from Google Play Music or YouTube Red, which is what YouTube premium is now, you get three months extra at that old price. A bipartisan bill in Massachusetts could partially restrict use of facial recognition technology by police and law enforcement. The bill doesn't fully ban the use of the technology, but would limit its use to just state police rather than all law enforcement agencies. MIT Technology Review notes that Massachusetts has more municipal bans on technology than any other U.S. state, and it could serve as a bellwether for how sentiment on similar bills could go if it should pass. TSMC announced it will delay chip production at its Arizona plant because of an insufficient amount of skilled workers. TSMC makes chips for Apple, Qualcomm, and Nvidia, among others. Google has reportedly been shopping around a new AI tool designed to write news articles and to be used as a tool to help journalists. This is positioned to help reporters focus on more complicated tasks. And Gadget points out that of the sites that were already using generative AI to write articles, corrections have been issued for factual errors on pretty much a regular basis. We've got some sad news today. Kevin Mitnick has died of pancreatic cancer at age 59. Mitnick was well known as a hacker who served time in prison for stealing data files and credit card numbers and hacking government and university networks. After his release in 2000, he was prohibited from using the Internet until 2002. He then went on to become a computer consultant and speaker and in general, a white hat hacker helping other people understand the world of hacking in general. On a personal note, he was also a recurring guest and friend to many of us who worked on the screensavers at Tech TV back in the day. We will miss you, Kevin. All right. Let's talk a little bit more rich about what's going on in the UK. Yeah. So the UK government is looking to update its 2016 Investigatory Powers Act or IPA, sadly a non-delicious variety. Under the current law, the UK Home Office can demand technology companies disable security features before shipping them to consumers. But under the current law, there is an independent oversight process and companies can appeal prior to having to take any action. There is a proposed amendment out there for the IPA that would require companies to comply immediately. So kind of taking away that appeals process at least prior to shipping. Since these requests are not public, we don't really have a clear idea of how many times the government has used its powers under the IPA. We just know that they are out there. In response to the government's call for consultation on these amendments, so they put this out here, I think there was eight weeks for that, Apple has said these provisions could be used to force a company like Apple that would never build a backdoor to publicly withdraw critical security features from the UK market, depriving UK users of these protections. Justin, Apple services, you got FaceTime, you got iMessage, kind of are marketed for their end to end encryption. Will Apple just take its privacy ball and go home? They're certainly going to posture as if they will until they're absolutely forced to. And I do think that they would probably do it for a period of time if it meant getting their way on this. Apple has built their brand on privacy because the way that they make their money is selling hardware. And there is nowhere that they believe it is more important, especially as we move forward in information services, that it is crystal clear between them and the consumer that they want to make absolutely 100% is that your data is protected, even if there is a very compelling political and governmental argument to have public safety be the cost. And so that's really what we're seeing here. The UK government wants to say, but we'll catch rapist murderers and thieves if Apple does this. And Apple says, if you don't relent, we will take away these services. And so it is up to the citizenry of the UK. And I think I know which way they're going to go to make the choice. Would you rather iMessage in FaceTime or would you rather the governments promise that there will be better security? And considering the fact that Apple makes more money and is probably more powerful than the UK government, I think that citizens in the UK will probably want their services more than they will want that promise for better public safety. Yeah, I mean, I try to think of Apple kind of taking the stance or the potential stance of like, we're not going to do this. So if we're forced to do this, we're just not going to play ball in the UK with some of these services that need to be an encrypted period. What's the alternative for the company to say, okay, well, just so you know, because your government is doing stuff that we as a company don't agree with. And many of you don't either just know that, you know, we had to, you know, bend the knee on this one. That's that's very not Apple. I just can't really imagine a world where Apple has any other choice than to say, okay, you know, game of chicken here, you know, who and then I'm sorry to jump you here, Ridge, but the other version of this would be the government saying this is an unsafe technology and we are banning it. And that's like, that's how you know that the power dynamics have shifted. Because in a bygone era, that would have been the case, no matter how popular the technology company is, now the technology company is so popular, they can say, no, no, no, no, no, we'll leave. Yeah, and it's interesting to hear Apple's response in this basically saying like, we're not like this law essentially puts the UK in the driver's seat for setting our security policy for a global audience. There's also some like technical, you know, the considerations with this as well. But yeah, to your point, Justin, kind of being in the driver's seat. The other thing to keep in mind too, is that this isn't the only kind of front we're seeing in the UK in terms of, you know, kind of coming in for encrypted services, there's the proposed online safety bill that's been batted around now for quite some time that is more focused on child sexual abuse material. This is much more appointed to like fraud and general crime, less less targeted than that. But we've already seen meta and signal also saying like, we will just leave the market rather than comply with that. So it seems to be kind of the consensus of we just won't I'm now Apple will probably continue operating, but I don't know how they fence off their services, their encrypted services like that to not have to be liable under this law, at least, you know, that's uncharted territory for Apple for sure. Certainly is. And there's nobody would look at that as a permanent solution. Apple would look at it as a moment in which let's say the apocalypse happens and that's exactly what they're moving. They would understand and wait for someone else to say, okay, nevermind, this was a bad idea. Exactly. Well, they would understand that the voice of the people that would threaten the politicians that are making this decision would say otherwise. And then at that point, you back down the people that are pushing for this. All right. Well, speaking of big companies, Amazon says it's bringing its Amazon one Palm recognition technology to all of its 500 plus Whole Foods stores in the US. This tech started at Amazon's go cashier free stores, but you may have already experienced the technology. If you frequent one of the 200 Whole Foods stores, it's now live in its biometric technology that lets a user enter and pay for items by hovering that old palm over a scanner during checkout. As a shopper, you first have to connect your palm to a credit card. And then after that you can pay by hovering your hand over a kiosk. Yeah, I happen to be one of those people. There's a Whole Foods pretty close to me that has the biometric technology. And as soon as I realized it was there, I was like, oh, yay, fun. There was nobody behind me in line. You do have to do a little setup, but it's pretty quick. Even if there was somebody behind you or a line behind you, it doesn't last that long. So that was easy. I opted in about a month ago. In my case, I connected and credit card that I have through Amazon. So I'm getting cash back anyway. So it's like, I just get my broccoli, I scan my palm and I'm done. It has never been easier for me to be at a Whole Foods. Now, you might not have a Whole Foods near you or you might shop somewhere else. But I've had a pretty good experience with this. Amazon has also expanded Amazon One to some third party locales. I haven't tried out getting a beer at the Colorado Rocky Stadium, but you can. Or you can get breakfast at a Panera Cafe that has the biometric scanning also. But technology always has those critics who say this is problematic, might be a privacy issue. And I'm not saying that they're wrong. So let's talk a little bit about that. Some folks say this could potentially be used to track and target people in a different way than merely knowing where you might have scanned your credit card in the past because it's your actual body might be a protester or a person who is marginalized. Back in 2021, a law took effect in New York City requiring businesses to post conspicuous signs if those businesses were collecting customers biometric information. Now that would include fingerprints under this designation. Nan Amazon might need to face a proposed class action lawsuit saying that it has failed to inform customers at its go cashierless stores that it was indeed collecting their biometrics. Now Amazon says, listen, if we're scanning your palm and you opted in, we're not doing anything else and you don't have to do it. And only some go cashierless stores offer Amazon One palm scanning technology. In fact, the whole go experience is that you don't have to do anything. You just walk in, you get your stuff, and you walk out. The complaint seems to be more about how a customer would be tracked if they don't opt into the palm scan because the argument is, well, if you're walking into a store, there's some record of you being there. And that could be biometric information about your height or your weight, that sort of thing. So Justin, knowing what Amazon wants to do sounds like they're feeling pretty confident about the palm scanning. How do you feel about the backlash that it might entertain as a result? It's so funny that we're doing these first two stories back to back because in my mind, they're kind of the same story. These massive companies that are making so much money, they are putting the balance sheets of massive G8 countries to blush, have one thing that they are trying to prove to their customer base. You can trust us with your data if by some level you have an understanding of what we're going to do with it. With Apple, it's very simple. They sell you hardware, so no one's going to think, well, how is Apple making money on me when you're spending $1,000 on a phone? That's how Apple's making money on me. Amazon has a more transactional relationship with people, and so people understand it, but they might not. And that's what you're seeing here, where it's like, well, what if a company really wants my palm data? What if a government really wants my palm data? Unlike an account, I can't make more of these. There's only one that is all we are given when we are born. And unless there is an elaborate surgery, you are not able to change it. When you get into some of these companies that are advertising based, Google, Meta, things get a little trickier, because at the end of the day, your data is their business. But let's get back to Amazon. Amazon is moving into a world where they are kind of hybrid. They do sell devices, you do have a relationship with them there. And obviously, you spend a lot of money with Amazon if you shop on their website. But I don't think that they have the kind of customer reputation that they would like when it comes to stuff like this. And so that's why you're seeing the friction in my opinion. Yeah, see, from a from a risk proposition, just to your point, yeah, you only have one palm, you only have so many fingerprints that you can scan, right? Once those are, once those are, if you don't have trust in a company in the fears, once those are out there, you know, you're out of luck for lack of a better term. You also have that situation with social security numbers, right? And I think about this increasingly kind of being in the cybersecurity space. And the assumption is basically that at some point there was a very high likelihood that that stuff is going to get out there, not because Amazon necessarily is even going to have bad business practices with biometrics, which I don't even think they're collecting. I think they're using it for authentication. And then once it's authenticated locally, that is not passed on necessarily to a server kind of using a hash based system. So it's trust, but at a certain point, I, if I don't know, maybe this is just speaking from someone who is relatively informed on security issues, like go on have I been pwned and see what information of yours is out there, probably a certain number got out there at some point. And probably once you put your palm in somewhere or something like that, something tied back to that will get out there. And we live in a world where we cover data breaches that have hundreds of thousands of millions of social security numbers or similar IDs, passport information, like really sensitive information gets out there. And there's fraud out there, but also we can still exist in the world from a security perspective. I think Amazon is prepared for this. I don't know how you communicate that this might get out there, but it won't be the end of the world because it's already, we're already living in this, this hellscape anyway, as Amazon, that's the only thing. And that's the thing. You are, you are talking about a reality of what already is out there. That's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is the consumer relationship between Amazon and why you're getting the kind of friction that you're getting now. And no matter what, at the end of the day, there's a reason why when Apple debuted that Vision Plus, we have not seen days and days of news cycles about, about Apple scanning your retina, because Amazon has built that trust that, that is less of an issue than it would be if Meta, we're talking about, don't worry, unlock your device with our retina scan. Well, and, and also Amazon pointedly rolling this out with probably their most trusted or, or, or like most positive consumer brand that they have. Yes. What beanhole foods. Yeah. Yeah. Whole paycheck, right? But you pay, but you pay. That's why. I mean, don't give me, I love it there. There's a bar in the whole thing here. I mean, like, what's not to like. You love to say it. It's got everything you could ever want. But, but yeah, no, I, I, you know, there are a lot of ways where I could say, well, this could be good for privacy, right? Let's say my credit card gets scraped somewhere and somebody tries to, you know, act as me and let's say Palm scanning becomes more widespread, you know, it could be like, well, it's pretty obvious whoever that was wasn't her, you know, that kind of thing. There are, there are optimistic ways to think about this. There are also very, very pessimistic or worse ways to think about this sort of thing. I will say, just based on my, you know, again, only about a month long experience works real well if you're in a hurry. And, and I think that there are going to be a lot of customers who feel that way. We'll say before we move on that the first time I set up my palm, you know, the cat, the person working the register was just sort of amused by the whole thing. And the next couple of times I went in where I was like, you know, they went, oh, so yeah, we've had a lot of people being asking us about this and they're worried about it and this doesn't bother you. And I said, well, no, because I think I understand how it works. So no, it doesn't. But that's interesting, you know, that, you know, a lot of the workers, they're saying, yeah, people just, they're just fumbling through their wallets like the old days, which is fine, because that's still an option, you know, go ahead and do that. But yeah, to each their own. Well, thanks to everybody who became patrons. You are your own person. But if you join our patron, Patreon, we sure are glad to have you. Many of you increased your pledges, got a lot of new pledges, because we were doing a round of support to bring Molly Wood on the show one Friday, every other month. We're still, we're still working towards the goal of getting Molly on the show one Friday every month, but we do need more patrons to do that. So if you're on the fence, you've been thinking about it, might be good timing for you. Do check out patreon.com slash DTNS and become a patron if you can. Thank you in advance. All right, Netflix had some quarterly earnings and boy, was there a lot to glean from them. The company saw its second straight quarter of subscriber growth up a 5.9 million worldwide to 238.4 million. This is significant. It is a huge, huge jump over analyst estimates of 1.7 million new subscribers. And that's not the only thing the company also announced. It's expanding its password sharing crackdown to almost all remaining markets. It hasn't been implemented in yet. India is the big one. In case you don't know anything about India, there's a lot of people there. It's a giant market. It won't launch the option to add an out of household account on there at a lower cost in those markets because the plans are already lower cost and I would probably estimate lower revenue for Netflix as well. Justin, I have to assume that not all new subscribers, very, very, very possible that just a lot of people were just like, I like Netflix. Finally, I'm going to sign up, but so many of these people have to have been bounced out of being a freebie from someone else's account, right? I'd be shocked if we considered, if we still see in the next few quarters this kind of growth, but it is a good sign for Netflix that the juice is worth a squeeze in terms of their password sharing crackdown. Yeah. What this strikes me as I think the big question when they implemented this was how many people would say, nah, it's not worth it. I was only getting it because my sibling had it or something like that and I'm not going to do it, but it turns out a lot of people get a lot of value from keeping a Netflix subscription, regardless of how much they watch. It definitely was more than analysts thought. I mean, that number is crazy. Almost 6 million. They can only pull that ripcord one time though. Netflix also confirmed it will stream a promotional event for the companies that drive to survive and full swing docuseries, which is featuring a live emphasis on live golf match in November featuring race car drivers and pro golfers. What's not to like? Co-CEO Ted Serandos didn't say that Netflix was going to get into the bidding war for live sports though. What he said and words chosen carefully was, quote, we think that we can have a really strong offering for sports fans at Netflix without having to be part of the difficulty of the economic model of live sports licensing. The difficulty of the economic model of live sports licensing is a very, very long way to say these things are expensive and they are all more expensive. Also, for anybody who tried to watch the love is blind finale, you understand that Netflix's live offerings are not exactly foolproof. So they do need to get better at that before they even think about bidding on anything. Right now, there are two very, very interesting things to play here. Number one, what we just talked about in terms of where Netflix is going to be in terms of bidders for live sports rights, because I do believe that a major American sports league is going to go to, if not a totally online digital situation. Sorry, I'm a less. I know you already did that. But one of the other ones are going to go to a partial or total online host. But then also for Netflix, the idea of celebrity golf, we just saw a NBC air a celebrity golf tournament. This is something that I do think is an emerging world where Netflix hopes to microwave a vertical for themselves. And I think it's interesting, like all like Netflix is taking the opposite approach here, what we usually see from sports content, right? It's like you have the main thing that everybody watches, which is the big game or whatever sports league it is. And then you do hard knocks off of it, right? And then you get a small sub sample of that, but that's useful for the diehard fan and stuff like that. And Netflix is saying, like, no, the actual, the competition is an offshoot of our media, our content, essentially. And I think it's an interesting move, especially seeing like F one, I know pro golf has a, I don't know, a bigger audience. Sure, it's on main, it's on broadcast television. So I'm assuming it has a much bigger audience. But like, especially like F one, something like that, where it's like in the US, that's a fairly niche market. I wonder if they also think we could build this up to be something because we have this content that people already like, we can tell a story with this, we know how to do that really well. And then we can slap that narrative on an actual like competition down the road. I like that, that, that switcheroo from what we usually see with sports content is interesting. I think it's kind of going against the grain. Well, I mean, they have two docu series, one about golf and one about race cars, and you can't make golfers drive race cars. So you're going to make the race car drivers go hand, but that's a whole different show. Oh, that's kind of like a segment in top gear. Netflix also said in response to writer and actor strikes that it'll have a cool $1.5 billion more in cash than it would have had for a total of $5 billion. This plus accelerating revenue from rising subscribers means Netflix hopes to start ticking up our cash spend on content. Again, in the third and fourth quarters, according to CFO Spencer Newman, who added, we want to do it responsibly. I'm assuming labor disputes would be resolved by then. And Sarandos also told analysts that Netflix does not find the prospect of licensing any of its own content to others too exciting. I would also think that it's not, you know, people aren't beating down Netflix's door just yet for things like that. Oh, oh, I would disagree. Really? Would you? I mean, well, well, it depends on how long this strike goes. They do not find it too exciting yet. If this strike reaches into October, November, let's say it reaches into October, I think somebody from a major network is going to ask whether or not for the first time ever stranger things can air on broadcast. I have to assume people and some of you might be among them involved in the strikes are somewhat nonplussed with the idea of Netflix saying, well, it turns out we've got more cash on reserve and we are ready to start ticking up our cash spend on content again, based on the bank error in our favor. It's not exactly what the company said, but, you know, this is it's sort of uncharted territory right now. No, no, no, that's them offering the carrot to make a deal, right? They're saying, Hey, we got all this money sitting here. If only we had someone to spend it on writers and actors may become and agree to our favorable terms and all this money could be all right. Well, one thing that's definitely ours is a quality email in our mail bag. What's in there, Sarah? Rich, I'm glad you asked Bruno wanted to add to Marty's initial thoughts. Marty had written in about the idea of chat GPT getting worse in Marty's experience and Bruno says, yeah, I too have experienced a seemingly worse name of chat GPT's results have switched to Google a few times just to find better answers. I'm a paying customer for chat GPT. I fully appreciate the likelihood that my expectations might be increasing rather than the results getting worse or, you know, some combination of both. Bruno had a couple of examples. The first one was picture me uploading a boring engineering standard to the ask your PDF plugin expecting to save some time. Instead, it played a round of hide and seek, not finding the information I asked for. And then cheeky Lee suggested that I find the same document. It was supposed to read. He says the second example is I was looking for the official picture size required for a tie like visa for Thailand. And it confidently gave me the wrong size picture that which is required for an American visa. Again, Google prevailed. So, yeah, depending on what you're using it for, mileage is varying. But yeah, if anybody else has either examples of chat GPT not working as described or working better than expected because it goes, do let us know because, you know, it really depends on how you're using it. And I think queries, not necessarily user error, but that has a lot to do with what you're getting back out. Also speaks that this is a competitive landscape, you know, open AI and Bing, you know, made all the headlines got out to a big lead. They have the name share, but turns out Google can develop things. I'm not saying it's a parody, but like there is a landscape where you can seem like effortlessly try it and see if it's better. Also, chat GPT doesn't have browsing currently. They mean like it is dumber in that you are not allowed to use their browsing feature. Google can still browse for things. And so big public service announcement, do not go to any large language model for factual information that you don't want to fact check that anyway, like just in general, never, not right now, not with browsing. Like I give you actually need to know something that you're going to depend on like getting a visa. Look it up on the official website. You know, if you, if you have feedback for us, do send it our way. We love your feedback. Feedback at daily technewshow.com is where to send that email. You know who I go to for all my factual information. Justin, Robert Young. Oh, man, really rich. It was seamless. I had to crow it out. So I know. I mean, that's how away, uh, Justin, thank you for being on the show, for bringing your expertise, the spicy hot takes as always and your keen wisdom. Where can people find you on the cyberspace? Less trustworthy than both Chad and Brad, in my opinion, is Justin Robert Young. But you can know a little more about a podcast I do called know a little more by heading on over to know a little more on the podcast player of your choice. Tom Merritt, who you might have heard of, brings you through topics that you may know, but could stand to know more about. And I got to tell you, we're working on the new season right now. And it's pretty, pretty good. I love it. I can't wait to listen. It's good stuff. Know a little more. Definitely. If you're not following it, uh, you even going back into the archives, uh, you could, you can know a little more about a lot of things. Just a reminder patrons, stick around for our extended show, Good Day Internet. We call it GDI, where we'll be talking about a new survey from JD Power. Now you say, oh, that sounds boring. No, it's not. It might indicate that we've reached a tipping point for on in car infotainment. Mm hmm. So don't mess it. 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