 Daily Tech News Show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Logan Larson, Mike Aikens, and Norm Physikus. Coming up on DTNS, how bad is rings law enforcement policy? Turn any old laptop into a Chromebook, and will you use the new Hyundai EV as a home office? This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, July 14th, 2022. J-Hope, release day in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. Also in Los Angeles, I'm Lamar Wilson. And on the show's producer, Roger Chang. My friends, my friends, we have so much to get to, let's start with a few tech things you should know. The South Korean messaging at Super App Kakao will remove an external payment option in its Android app after Google blocked the company from updating the app in the Play Store. A recently passed law requires app stores to allow third-party payment systems, but doesn't mandate allowing links to redirect customers to another website. Well, they back down, but I don't think that's the last we're going to hear about that. Windows central sources say Microsoft's current internal plans indicate it will change from a once a year feature update cadence to updating features in what it may call moments that can happen up to four times a year. Major Windows releases would come once every three years if this plan turns out to be true. Microsoft announced back in November that it would move to annual feature updates with longer support terms. So ZDNets Mary Jo Foley notes that Chief Product Officer Panos Panai made it clear at that time that new features could still come at other times besides the yearly update. So Foley suspects that these quote-unquote moments may be more of a marketing move than a substantive change to support. A New York jury convicted former CIA engineer Joshua Schulte on nine charges related to gathering, stealing and transmitting classified information and obstruction of justice as part of leaking information to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks released data from Schulte as the Vault 7 leak back in 2017 detailing methods used by the CIA to access targets, computers and phones and smart TVs. People's Bank of China told the press Wednesday that China's digital yuan was used in transactions worth 83 billion yuan. That's about 12.3 billion US. 264 billion transactions have been conducted by May 31st. More than four and a half million businesses accept the digital yuan and it's still in the testing phase. The Central Bank Digital Currency or CBDC is going to expand its pilot tests beyond the 23 cities and 15 regions it's in now. So digital yuan definitely the fastest growing, widest used CBDC so far. Puck News reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook, Apple Head of Services Eddie Q and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell met during the Sun Valley Conference last weekend. Apple is among those said to be trying to get the contract to carry the NFL Sunday ticket package. Disney, Amazon and its current carrier Direct TV are also supposedly still interested, but Puck believes that Apple will be the most likely winner. Oh, you're going to get a bunch of people buying Apple TVs if that ends up being true. All right, let's talk a little more about what's going on with ring doorbell you might have seen some pretty screamy looking headlines out there. Responding to a request from the US Congress, Amazon executive Brian Hoosman and remember Amazon owns ring told lawmakers that as of July 1st, Amazon provided ring doorbell footage from customer doorbells to US law enforcement on 11 occasions 11 times this year without user consent or a court order. Usually, usually a user consent and says yeah, go ahead and give it. Sometimes there'll be a subpoena that means whether the user wants to or not they have to give it over, but 11 times ring handed it over without either of those rings law enforcement guidelines say that it reserves the right to quote immediately respond to emergency disclosure requests from police in cases of imminent danger. Hoosman said that Amazon quote made a good faith determination that there was an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to a person requiring disclosure of information without delay. Many companies have policies for emergency disclosure request so this isn't just ring Google has one Twitter has one look around. They all say hey in an extreme circumstance we might decide to just voluntarily hand over data, but it'll be good faith that there is imminent danger when we do to put this in context. Keep in mind ring reported it received 3147 legal demands in 2021 that was up 65% over 2020. One could reasonably assume that there are even more legal demands this year. So 11 is a very small percentage of the number of requests that it got that it decided to just go ahead and comply with without user consent or a legal order. I saw a lot of chatter about this this morning from everyone, you know, on one side being like if you want to ring device throw it out now. It's horrible company, you know, to people saying well, but what were the 11 instances where this data was shared with law enforcement. You know, if you knew a little bit more about that, you might not be so up in arms about the fact that this happened without the customers consent or knowledge. I think that that plays into this a lot. There are, you know, no, I don't want my, you know, anything video related of my home being shared with anybody ever without me knowing about it. But if there was a mad person on the loose in my neighborhood and somehow I, you know, things were moving quickly, and something that that had been recorded by my device was going to help the good guys get the bad guys. I don't know how upset I would be. I think the context is really important here. I was literally about to say that sentence. I was going to say context is key here to understand what's going on. I was thinking here in LA we have those infamous car chases and helicopters searching grounds at night sometimes. And we have instances in my area where they're looking for someone, you know, whether it's good or bad, like people drive all around and they, they're looking for someone. So in that kind of context, who knows that person shot at someone or the kidnap a child. If they're trying to, if it's an emergency thing, Tom, and I think it's what you said in your reading that it's an actual imminent danger type of emergency. I think that context is reasonable. I think most reasonable people would side with that. It's when there's lack of context that I can understand the crowd. But at the same time, it's emergencies are emergencies and I'm from one and I'm fine with that. You could still say, I don't trust ring. And I don't think they should ever be doing that. I think that's a reasonable position to take. But, but I think it's important to understand that you are talking about 11 cases. And if these were abusive cases, first of all, there's only 11 out of more than 3000. And you would likely have heard someone complaining about it before now in the current world in which we live in. They are not telling you the details of this because they are protecting the privacy of the individuals involved. You can't have it both ways. You can't say like, protect everyone's privacy, but also tell me all the details of every, every situation. It just can't work both ways. I look at this and I think, okay, this is a rare instance, but there could be an instance where the police arrive and find someone unconscious who's been stabbed. The ring doorbell is there on the front door and they know that there's a good chance that whoever did this might have been caught fleeing on the ring doorbell. They can't get a warrant fast enough to catch that guy because it's going to take a while to get the judge. And the person who could give them consent is lying unconscious being treated by the EMTs. Should they not, should ring not give them the information in that situation. Personally, I think that it's reasonable for ring to say, yes, this is a situation that counts. I think what causes the problem here is that ring has abused people's trust in the past. And so where you might say, oh yeah, no, that's a reasonable situation. People are saying, okay, sure, but how many times have they done the wrong thing? How many times have they made the wrong call? The fact that it's 11 makes me think that probably not that often, but it's ring. So you don't know. Google announced that Chrome OS Flex has moved to general availability. We talked about this back in February when they announced it. And you could get it before now, but now it's out of beta. It's available for everybody. More than 400 devices from Apple, Dell, Lenovo, HP and more are certified to run Chrome OS Flex, which can turn your old laptop into a Chromebook. You can down Chrome OS Flex to a USB drive for free. The certification list is just the models that they've been thoroughly tested. You can install it on uncertified devices. There's no breaking of the terms of service. It just means they haven't found out whether it's going to work well on that device. So if it's certified, it meets minimum requirements. But all the features may or may not work. Google says it will continue to add certifications as it goes. But Lamar, tell us about some of the details here. Yeah, so some of the certification includes basics like keyboard, USB, Wi-Fi, et cetera, but doesn't guarantee Bluetooth, which I thought was interesting. Tough screen, automatic screen rotation, keyboard shortcuts, and SD card slots. These should work, but they might not. So they just kind of let you know that. Other features that are not supported on Chrome OS Flex at all, including fingerprint readers, optical drivers, IR webcams, proprietary connectors, stylus input, and Thunderbolt functionality. So at least you know. If you've got a Mac, I mean, you think about a Mac that has Thunderbolt. You might not be able to use a Thunderbolt, but you can use a USB-C. So at least they're putting out there that that's not possibly available. What were you going to say, Sarah? I'm sorry. No, no, I was saying that Thunderbolt stood out to me as well because I've got a few. Well, I don't want to tell you how many old MacBooks I have behind me somewhere in the studio, but they're basically recycled bin fodder. And I just haven't had Apple come and pick them up yet because I won't get any money for them otherwise. They work, but not very well. But running Chrome OS on one of these guys for, I don't know, even something show-related. You know, having a screen where I could use that in some way, or even being able to donate that to some sort of, I don't know. Like a school? A school, yeah. Or like a childcare program or anything. Because I hate the idea that I'm like, well, the computer isn't dead. It's just not worth anything anymore. Not to Apple, right? Yeah. And so this is, you know, this is, I think this is a cool idea. I think people can get creative with it. Yeah. I'm a big proponent is I'm a person who likes to pass down technology within family and friends. And I love the idea of reusing that worked in schools that worked with inner city families who, you know, and it's not like, hey, I'm just going to give them my crap. And I don't, I hate when people do that. You know, get, like Chrome, I looked this up, Chrome OS Flex. It's very nice. If you want to live in Chrome, are you comfortable living in Chrome and giving Google your data? And Tom, what did it mean by cloud first? That's the one thing I didn't, I wasn't clear on. Is it internet? Is this an internet-only computer? Yeah, sort of. Okay. The thing about Chrome is that it's basically a big browser and it does some Android emulation so it can do some local behavior. It has local storage capability so you can store some of your documents online. That's good to know. It's really meant to be used online. That that's how it was designed. Yeah. Okay. Well, KV noted in our subreddit, reddit.com slash. Daily Tech News show. Yeah. What's the name of our show again? KV noted that PCMAG reports the US Federal Trade Commission or FTC will pursue action against companies that make false claims about data anonymization. Anonymization claims usually refer to stripping out personal identifying details from the data such as your name, your phone number, your address. However, if that anonymized information is sold to a third party, that third party can sometimes de-anonymize it by combining it with other data that it might be able to use and kind of triangulate and find out more about you. The FTC is especially concerned with this in regards to location data. The Acting Associate Director for the Commission's Privacy Division, Kristen Cohen, cited research published in the journal Patterns showing 95% of a data set of 1.5 million individuals could be identified using four locations with time stamps. So basically it sounds like the FTC would prohibit location data from being used in anonymized data sets. Well, that's what they want to do anyway. And they're making a lot of bombastic statements when they announce it, which is what politicians do. But I kind of think this is reasonable. If you look past all of that, you're like, oh, so you're saying like Sarah just said, if you're calling something anonymized, that should, you know, having the name in there, having the phone number wouldn't be okay. Location should be there too. So phone number address, name and location. Location should not be allowed if it's anonymized. I think that's pretty reasonable. Now, I wonder what else they might want to get out of there because there are other ways to de-anonymize data if you have other data to combine with it. So I'm not sure exactly where the line would be drawn. But I think it's pretty reasonable to say location makes it a lot easier to de-anonymize. So let's say you can't call it anonymized data if you're including location anymore. But I don't know. Am I crazy? That seems fair to me. I thought it was very reasonable. When I read that, it's like, oh, okay. They're doing something good here. So it makes me wonder why did they use, as you term, such bombastic language here? Why make it so charged? By just saying, hey, this is actually a good thing. If you win points by saying companies try to flout the law, but we're going to stop if you couch it in that phrase. But I don't even think that's necessary here. I think you could just, and granted, I'd be horrible. At being a government agency person, because I wouldn't do the things you need to do to raise funds and all that. But essentially just say, hey, location is really easy to de-anonymize. So we're not allowing that. We're drawing a line there. And we might draw other lines in the future. We're going to keep evaluating it. I think it's important to what was cited by the associate director for the privacy division of the FTC saying, listen, if Sarah goes four places, we can figure out a lot of other things about what Sarah's habitat, what she eats, where she goes, what she's into in general. And that's important to remember is that this sort of thing, de-anonymizing data can tell a lot of people a lot of things about you, whether you want them to or not. And where you go is a huge part of that. Basically, what this is saying is if we get a bunch of data and it shows us that this individual went to these four places at these four times, we can figure out that's Sarah Lane. That's all we need. We don't even need any more data. So that's why you shouldn't be including location data in there. At least 95% of the time in the study, they were able to do that. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. Well, folks, we'll be talking about that kind of stuff I bet next week with some of our special guests. It's going to be special guest week here on DTNS. So please, folks, start telling folks about it. They're going to want to tune in. We have Jack Reisider from Dark Net Diaries coming on on Monday. Quinn Nelson from Snazzy Labs. Joel Telling, the 3D printing nerd. Don't miss it. Please, if you can, tweet Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Friendster, work, whatever you still use. Let people know about special guest week, DailyTechNewsShow.com all next week. Let's talk EVs. So GM, EVgo and Truck Stop Operator Pilot Company announced they will install 2000 DC fast chargers for EVs. Add up to 500 pilot and flying J truck stops in the US. Now, this is in addition to the 3,250 chargers GM and EVgo are already installing. As infrastructure starts to take shape, the competitive landscape for EVs is expanding as well, which is good. Hyundai is one of the fastest growing makers. Sarah, tell us more about Hyundai. What are they doing? Yeah. So Hyundai is pitching its next EV, the Ionic 6 sedan as a personal mobile studio. So it's a car, but it's also a workstation. The car has four USB-C ports, one USB-A port, and will be Hyundai's first car to support over-the-air software updates. There's a notes application built into one of the two 12-inch screens, and the center console is wide enough to hold a laptop. Hyundai also showed off an accessory for the car called the Ionic smart table that snaps onto the center console and provides more workspace and three additional USB-C ports. So the idea is you fold it out while you're parked somewhere to get some work done. Maybe you're in between meetings. Perhaps you're charging up your battery for whatever you're not driving at the time, of course, but your car is an office. The ambient lighting lets you switch between 64 different interior colors and six pre-selected themes if you're the kind of person who cares about that sort of thing. Well, yeah, you might want to have a work mood or a relax mood, depending on what you're doing. If it's at night, you know, a certain light really appeals to certain folks. Totally. But we should not forget, it is also a car. It's designed with a 0.21 drag coefficient, which it claims can achieve 14 kilowatt hours per 100 kilometers in usage. So you get a little extra range out of it, and they're selling a big battery option. If you go for the top of the two options, you get a 77.4 kilowatt hour battery, which by European standards might be a little lower in the EPA, but by European standards would be a 379 mile range. The 53 kilowatt hour battery will give you a shorter range, but still a little more than you would normally get out of 53 kilowatt hours. At least that's what they're claiming. It offers all-wheel drive, can go zero to 100 kilometers per hour in 5.1 seconds, and those ambient lights that we were talking about brighten as you accelerate, so that you get the idea that you're speeding. But speaking of something that's very bright, check out this future. Because reasons, there's an NFT collection that you can drive the car virtually in Zepido and Roblox as well as in VR headsets. So what a bright future there. Now, production of the Hyundai Ionix 6 begins in Q3 in Korea, Europe later this year, and in the US in January. Yeah, they're going to have it unveiling in the US in November too. That's probably where we'll get a retail price here because we didn't get any prices for any of the markets in this announcement. But I don't know. It's a cool looking car. I don't know if I'm going to make it my home office though. I mean, it really depends on the person. I'd work from home. I mean, I drive pretty much every day to do something. And when I first read this, I was like, eh, I don't know. Carplay works pretty well. I mean, as long as I have cell service. But it's true that no, I'm not packing my laptop in with me if I did, and I was sort of holding it, trying to keep it away from the steering wheel would be kind of cumbersome or I don't know, I would sit in the backseat with my dog or something. I can see where, depending on what you do and how mobile you are, this could really, really be a great solution for anybody who's like, oh God, I had to do work in my car today. It sucked. But I figured it out type thing. If it actually becomes more of a comfort solution, then people might think about cars a little bit differently. Yeah, I was thinking about this too. I have some friends who are, you know, there's still unwrote salespeople who travel from city to city, whether they're selling devices in hospitals or whatever. So they're constantly on the road and they may have to go to the side of the road to take care of something real quick. Or they're entrepreneur. Heck, even somebody like me who's a video creator may have to make an emergency video. It has to go up. And so I have to edit it on the fly. I have had to do this. I've had to pull over and make an edit change for a brand new video because they were like, this is wrong. Fix it quick. And I'm out. Thank God I have my laptop with me. So there are good use cases for people with this. And as an EV owner myself, I was looking at this car and I'm not one of those who's like, only Tesla, Tesla for life. I love that Hyundai has a car. I love there's so many again. And I'm hoping that that get that price down to that sweet spot 35,000 even 25 if they have a car can ever get down to 25 again for EV. Because once people drive them, I think they'll like them. I think it's just the price point. It's scary for a lot of people and Hyundai is the company I see to to really get mainstream people involved in it. And then having the charging infrastructure, because that's what's important here, right? Having having the various chargers. That's not just Tesla. That's EV going or even just the brand you're familiar with having a GM one or maybe even Hyundai at some point. These different charging points have places that you normally go. They'll be at gas stations, but it could be at other convenience stores or maybe malls places that you have to go anyway to have charging infrastructure. There's a really good idea. You want to not have to think about it. You don't want to be like, oh, I can't park there. That's a supercharger. I need an EV go, right? You want it to just be so many chargers, so many places that you're like, well, I know I'm going to be able to charge up when I'm at X place. And yeah, I think the Ionic 5, it's a bigger car. It's more of a family car, but it's really doing well as an EV for Hyundai. And I think the Ionic 6 is an interesting move to say, well, let's go sedan. Let's go for the single driver. Let's go for somebody. You could pack a few things in it, but it's really meant for just the person who lives in their car. Not literally lives in their car, but spends a lot of time. If you lived in your car, this would also be helpful. I mean, you probably can afford it at that point. Right, yeah. Although it's cheaper than a house, so who knows? You've got a whole family. Give it a year. Give it a year. It's a tiny home. Hyundai Ionic 6. It's a tiny home. That's the marketing right there. I feel like it's over-promising. It's like, okay, four USB ports does not suddenly make this a home office. Like it's nice. Don't get me wrong, but. Yeah. These seem like features that we're just going to expect in the future. And Hyundai is at the forefront of that. Yeah, or trying to be for sure. Yeah. Well, there's an underground indie artist. You probably never heard of her, but her name is Beyonce. And she has joined TikTok. Her entire catalog is now available to TikTok users to use as backing sounds for their creative videos. You want to do a remix? You want to do a, you know, a clap back to somebody on TikTok. Beyonce wants to be your friend. It's a smart move. Her new single called Break My Soul, which is all over TikTok. If you hang out on TikTok, you've probably heard it. Also songs like Halo and Single Ladies, you know, the, the, the, the hot hits, they're all available. So Beyonce already has more than 3.3 million followers on TikTok. At least that's what it was when I checked this morning. Probably more than now. She's big on the internet though. She has 268 million followers on Instagram, 56 million on Facebook, almost 25 million YouTube subscribers and 5.5 million Twitter followers. Yeah. A respect to her. That's 15.5 million. You're not in a beehive, obviously. What does that mean? No, you said, you said 5.5 million. I was like, oh, 15.5. Yeah, I was like, respect to beehive. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. No, that's just, that's just brain freeze on my part. I would never, I would never want to upset the hive. The funny thing is they will, they will find you if you, if they had heard, heard that. At least we can all release the wiggle on TikTok officially. Yeah. This is the, it's smart though, right? Because it's very smart. We know that, I mean, a lot of TikTok, so many songs that I, I now understand, oh, that's a Harry Styles song. Like I heard it on TikTok and I just didn't, I didn't know the song that there was, never heard it on the radio or just wasn't listening to the right station, et cetera. TikTok is a great way to get your, your, your creative, well, in this case, a song out to a lot of folks, you know, who are enthusiastically sharing it with all their friends. Since Lil Nas X in Old Town Road, particularly, I think everyone has started to look at TikTok as an essential platform for releasing any kind of music. But today it arrived when, when Queen B arrives on the TikTok officially and gives it her blessing. TikTok is now, there's FM radio, there's Spotify and now there's TikTok. Like it is, it is, it is part of the, the major platforms when you release a song. I mean, that's definitely what that means to me because she was doing, she's doing this to, to give juice to her new album. So, and then smart, like you said, smart thing to do. Tom, will you be dancing to break muscle anytime soon on TikTok? On TikTok, maybe not. But I already have in private. Okay. I have released the wiggle Lamar. Do you have a ring camera? I'm asking, I'm asking for no reason. Is this an emergency that you find out? Might have been depends on how it looked. I'm not saying it was one of the 11 incidents that just, let's check the whale bag. Let's do it. So, James C. Smith wrote in agreeing with you, Tom, about Elon Musk flip flopping on that whole Twitter purchase that we talked about earlier in the week. James C. Smith says, many factors contributing to this. It would be a mistake to pin it all on one thing. Major factors, he probably thinks the price should be much lower than his previous offer due to changing market conditions. It's more than just Elon's Tesla stock losing value whose market dropped significantly since the offer was made. It would be silly to think that Twitter is still worth what it was months ago when Apple, Amazon, the whole NASDAQ composite is down 25%. It's hard to fault Elon for trying to get a better deal with conditions like this. James says, my partners and I sold our company back into 2008. We had an offer. Both sides agreed. Hadn't closed yet. Then the mortgage crisis happened. We got a call from the buyer telling us the whole market just dropped 30%. And so did your value. So we have a new offer for you. Take it or leave it. The good news, James says, is I took the cash I got from the sale of the business, invested it in the market at a market low. And I was able to ride the market recovery up and make back that 30% in not much time. Yeah. Interesting to get somebody who's like been in that same position. Maybe James, you know, acted a little less exuberantly and publicly in his situation. But, you know, a similar situation. So there's rationality behind this. And I appreciate you sharing the story with us, James. Indeed. And if you have anecdotes, anything we talk about on the show, you go, you know, I've got a great story. Please do send them our way. It really helps us make our future shows that much smarter. Feedback at dailytechnewshow.com is where to send that email. We would like to send you all the hearts. Lamar Wilson for being with us today. Let folks know where they can keep up with what's the latest. Why do all kind of cool unboxings and things? You can find me on Lamar.TV, of course. But I have a great exclusive worldwide interview. I have not done an interview in years. And I did it with the one and only Tom Merritt. On this new show, a word. And I can, and it released today. And I cannot wait for people to listen to it. And I'll talk about being a creator, transitioning to being an influencer. And Tom is one of the best interviewers in the world. I love this show. Oh, thanks. And I hope it goes amazingly. So please, please listen. I had a blast talking to you. And what I thought was really cool is you opened up and talked about your journey from being a creator known for YouTube stuff and moving to vertical video and TikTok and all that sort of stuff. And I think that's really valuable and fascinating for folks to hear. So hopefully, folks, you'll go check it out, awordpodcast.com. And you can hear Lamar and I just having a little conversation. The lockdown happened in the 16th. And I was like, that sounds vaguely familiar at those dates. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There you go. A little sample for you. OK. Great sample. Good stuff. Check it out, awordpodcast.com. And thanks to our brand new boss, Dwayne. Dwayne just started backing us on Patreon. And we like to give a big shout out when we get new patrons. So thank you, Dwayne. Dwayne, Dwayne, Dwayne, Dwayne, Dwayne. Thanks, Dwayne. Thanks, Dwayne. Dwayne. Who's as cool as Dwayne, Sarah? Who? The answer is whoever backs us on Patreon and gets mentioned tomorrow. Right. Yes. I was like, I don't know. Nobody's cooler than Dwayne. Not right now though. Not today. No. But as cool as, still, Dwayne, you're never going to be... No one will surpass Dwayne. No. No. As cool. There's a longer version of the show called Good Day Internet available at patreon.com. DTNS, which anybody who's listening live knows we roll into right after the show. But just a reminder, we are live. Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 200 UTC, and you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We're back doing it all again tomorrow with Rob Dunwood joining us. Talk to you then.