 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you including DeGrasche, A. Daniels, Erwin Sturr and Ken Hayes. Coming up on DTNS, Shannon Morse busts myths about multi-factor authentication. Hint, you need it. Plus, France tries to combat Amazon's book sales and is podcasting just radio? And if so, does it matter? This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, September 23, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. In Studio Colorado, I'm Shannon Morse. Drawing the top tech stories from Cleveland, Ohio, I'm Len Peralta. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chen. Ooh, we're just missing someone from the Central Time Zone, and we'd have all the mainland time zones covered. Because we've got Amos producing today, so he's in Alaska and we need a Hawaiian. Okay, and someone from Newfoundland. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Nvidia announced a model called Get 3D that can generate 3D objects like buildings, vehicles and video game characters at around 20 objects per second using a single GPU. You train the model on the shape you want, like car images or animal images, and then it can generate an unlimited number of variations on that. The shapes are output as a triangle mesh covered with a textured material. They look like cars, but that makes them usable in game engines. 3D modelers, film renders, you can import them right in there. When combined with StyleGAN from Nvidia, you can use text to apply styles to an object. So for example, if Get 3D outputs a car, you can use StyleGAN to convert it to a burned out car, for example. Right now, using a Fitbit device requires a Fitbit account. However, the company announced that at some point in 2023, some uses of Fitbit will require a Google account, including to sign up for Fitbit or activate newly released Fitbit devices and features. Existing Fitbit accounts will have an option to migrate data to their Google account, and users will be able to continue using non-Google Fitbit accounts until at least early 2025. This is very similar to how Google handled Nest accounts as well. Hopefully it'll be a little smoother than that. I had some bumps in the road personally, but yeah, maybe they learned from it. According to Ucla speed desk data, overall speeds for Starlink satellite internet dropped from Q1 to Q2 this year in every country surveyed, and that might be good news for Starlink. We'll explain. Downloads went down 31% to 62.53 Mbps. Uploads were down 22.5% to 7.24 Mbps in the US, and Ucla attributed that to growing popularity. There's more people using it, which is slowing down the speeds, and they intend to keep putting up capacity, so hopefully they'll keep up. Hopefully they catch up. Tiktok began testing a dislike button on Commons way back in April, and is now rolling it out to all users. The button is only used by the algorithm as it won't be public, and the commenters will not be notified, and other users will not see how many times a comment has been disliked. Instead, it's used as a signal to help flag spam and abuse. You can take back a dislike at any time by tapping the button again. So, if you dislike something and no one knows, have you really disliked it? It's a conundrum. Philosophical question. It's estimated that only 30% of corporate data is stored in the cloud, which means there's a lot of opportunity for cloud business, and that explains the continued rush of big tech companies to invest in the cloud. Microsoft and Amazon obviously are getting the most press and have the two largest market shares in the world. Google is usually described as trying to catch up, trying to get in that game, but the third biggest cloud provider in the world behind Amazon and Microsoft is Alibaba. Most of Alibaba's business, however, is in mainland China, and it faces some headwinds overseas. As you might have noticed, if you follow this show, because there are tensions between the US, Europe and China, and that has driven some potential Alibaba customers away. To counter that trend, Alibaba announced it's going to spend a billion dollars over the next three fiscal years to support its, quote, global partner ecosystem outside of China. Basically, you know, convinced you to buy their service anyway with a little money. Never hurts, right? Alright, let's talk a little more about that book thing going on. France is one of many countries that has problems with the way Amazon does business, among the many problems France has with Amazon. One of them is the way it competes with smaller booksellers. Amazon offers free delivery of books in many markets, and France's booksellers objected to that because they could not afford to eat the cost of postage and still make a profit the way that Amazon eats the cost of postage and makes profit other ways. Reuters says local bookstores typically charge up to seven euros for delivery of a book. The argument was that Amazon was abusing its size to offer a service pretty much at a loss in order to drive competition from the marketplace. So what did they do, Shannon? So back in 2014, France enacted a law requiring all book deliveries in the country to include a delivery fee. Amazon and some of the other vendors like Fnac and Leclerc commenced charging one whole cent for delivery. That's it. In December, France decided to address this workaround, this loophole, passing legislation that required the government to set a minimum fee for book deliveries. On Friday, France announced the minimum fee would be three euros for online book orders of less than 35 euros, and the fee cannot be avoided by customer loyalty programs or ordering books with other items. However, if the cost of the books is one order in one order is more than 35 euros, then Amazon and others could drop the delivery fee back to one cent if they wish. There is a joint statement from the Culture and Finance Ministries which says, quote, the three-euro delivery fee is not dissuasive for book buyers, and the 35-euro threshold will favor grouped orders which is virtuous in environmental terms. So France will now notify the European Commission of the new law and it will take effect six months after Europe approves. I'm guessing it sounded better in French. Listen, there's some things to consider here. France already prohibits offering discounts on new books. So keep in mind that the publisher's price is the same price for every store including Amazon in France. So they're not competing on price because that's the law, at least with new books. Use books are a different thing. Amazon is likely not going to charge more than that three-euro minimum, yet smaller booksellers might have to if they don't want to make a loss. The French Bookstores Association called on the government to lower postage rates in response to this. They're like, look, three euros, that's not enough. You need to make it cheaper to send stuff. Also, the 35-euro cap means that Amazon is now motivated to encourage customers to buy more books in order to get that low delivery fee. They're going to say like, hey, your book is 20 euros, add 15 more euros of books and your delivery fee goes down from three euros to one cent. So in the end, you could look at this and maybe expect the effect of this law to raise the prices on books because now overall, your delivery fee can't be lower than three euros. So that's just going to raise the price in general. Now, I know the ministry said, we don't think that's dissuasive, but it still raises the price and it could possibly drive higher sales on Amazon if Amazon successfully convinces people to buy more books in each order in order to get that fee down to one cent. So I do think it's pretty interesting, especially the piece where they said they wanted to lower the postage rate because I know I have some experience here in the US. We have something called media mail rates, which is with USPS, the North American USA Postal Service and we're able to get very cheap rates whenever shipping things like newspapers, journalism documents, any kind of papers or forms and books as well and comics too. You can ship media mail. So I know that those are very, very inexpensive and I wonder if Europe may introduce something like this for smaller businesses so that they could compete with that three euro because you're right. Amazon is not going to charge anything more than that. Yeah, and I'm not sure this is going to have the effect that it's meant to, whereas I think the Booksellers Association has a good point, make it cheaper to sell and then you don't have to have a minimum law. It just becomes something that Booksellers can compete on a little better because it doesn't cost them as much to send it. Of course, that also can have bad effects on the postal system, right, if they're not making as much money and it's heavy to move books. So I'm not saying I have the answer. If you do, feedback at DailyTechnicshow.com. Folger's Nicholas Qua has an interesting article up today called, podcasting is just radio now. It's been ages since the last blockbuster narrative show. What does that mean for the medium as an art form? It's a well written, well argued article. We'll have a link to the show notes and I highly encourage you to go read it. It starts by referring to the fact that on Monday you may have heard a judge in Baltimore vacated the murder conviction of the man who was the subject of the 2014 podcast Serial. So Serial had an effect on this case and it describes the excitement that Nicholas felt when Serial debuted. We had another round of podcasting being discovered at the time. I might call it the true crime era. There have been others in podcasting, the comedian era, the MPR era, the Apple added podcasting to iTunes era, if you go way back. And like at the end of each of those eras, we seem to be having another moment of wondering if podcasting is quote unquote over. Now the article doesn't really say that podcasting is over. It just talks about whether there is any true creativity in podcasting anymore. It mentions that seasonal narrative shows are losing out to cheaper to produce shows, so-called always on podcasts, especially interview shows that have valuable back catalogs like Joe Rogan. The article identifies chat casts as the biggest new hits, but then dismisses them as either shallow or something that could be done in any medium like radio. You don't need podcasting to do a daily show that's news about tech. So the question of the article is where is the creativity? In the end to me, it felt like Nicholas Quad would just really missed that feeling that Serial caused when it came along and was wondering if we'll ever see a mass hit like that again, a water cooler hit like Serial. I want to bring in Len to talk a little bit because Shannon and Len and I have all been podcasting for more than 10 years, in Len's case, all the way back to 2005. Len, do you think podcasting is out of ideas because it's popular? No. As a matter of fact, looking at the article, I just felt the only thing I could think of was clickbait. I think they're just trying to stir up and because Serial's back in the news. Is creativity over? No, of course not. One thing, like you had mentioned, I've been podcasting since 2005, and the funny thing is that I still feel that there's a lot of creativity. There's a lot of open area to create. As a matter of fact, I just created a brand new show which is just like me talking, which I guess would be considered a chat cast. No, I don't think it's the creativity is gone. As a matter of fact, one only has to look to this show. Daily Tech News Show is the creative outlet and all of Scott Johnson stuff and everybody else's things. So no, I don't think creativity is out the window. Please, Nicholas. He's just stirring up some controversy according to Len. That's what I think. Shannon, what do you think of this? I think it's an interesting perspective and even as a content creator, sometimes I've struggled to come up with creative ideas for new shows that I want to introduce on YouTube. But I often find that the bigger argument here could be maybe podcasting is over saturated. Maybe they haven't discovered these beautiful creative concepts because they are out there. They're just not as popular as they used to be because there's a lot more of them available now. So of course, you know, your next door neighbor, your co-worker are not going to be into the same exact podcast that you are. So you might not have those watch parties like you used to, but there is a lot more saturation. It's a lot easier to get into and it's not as hard for people to develop their own podcast now. We have applications that are available now that you just download and start talking to your phone to create a podcast. It's a lot easier now. And I think that popularity has created a lot more availability. So, yeah, we're not going to have the same popularity that we used to. Yeah, one of the threads in this article is that there are so many podcasts out there. And one of the less spoken threads is that there's a lot of people listening to podcasts. It's harder to get attention to a podcast because there are so many, but more people than ever know what a podcast is. More people than ever are not only making podcasts but listening to podcasts. And there was someone that they quoted in this article saying that the business of podcast is reaching maturity. And that is the thing that I would note here is that we, as I mentioned earlier, have gone through many cycles where podcasting was great and then podcasting was over and then podcasting was great and then podcasting was over. And each one of those cycles, the popularity grew and then the popularity waned until the next thing came along. Serial was one of those cycles. And so I think what's interesting is podcasting isn't over. In fact, Jonathan Kwai isn't even saying it's over. He's saying, gosh, it was such a special time and sort of implies that it was new in 2014, which of course all three of us know that it was already 11 years old in 2014 or nine years old in 2014. But 10 years old, math is hard. We'll go with nine. That sounds good. But the thing is that we have not seen the drop-off the way we did in previous cycles in those first 10 years. And I think podcasting is mature to the point where, like many mature media, it starts to appeal to the widest number of people, which means it appeals a little bit to the lowest common denominator, which means you see these sort of massively popular types of shows that don't stick out because they're like the reality shows. They're the housewives, the Kardashians. They're massively popular, but they're not critically acclaimed. I don't think that means we won't see more creative uses of podcasting though. It just means they're not going to dominate the way cereal did when the landscape was a little smaller. Sure. I have a creative idea. A 60-second TikTok podcast. Ooh. Wow. So some sort of audio thing in 60 seconds? Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, it'll speak to the audiences that can only pay attention to something for like 60 seconds on TikTok, which I'm one of those people, so I'm not dogging on anybody. I'll talk to Rich Strufflino about getting Daily Tech headlines down to 60 seconds. Oh, gosh. That sounds like a great idea. Rich, don't worry. I'm not really going to do that. Well, folks, if you haven't thought about podcasting or anything else you hear about on the show, send us an email. We'd love to hear from you. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Last week, we talked about a breach of Uber's internal IT systems and the fact that it may have been achieved by something called second-factor authentication fatigue. This can work when the second factor is, say, an app on a phone that you just tap yes to authorize a login or no to deny. The attacker can repeatedly send requests in the hopes that the authorized user eventually makes a mistake and taps the wrong button or just gets tired of the prompts and presses yes to make it go away. Multifactor authentication is not a magic spell that enables perfect security. And a lot of people have pointed to this story and said, well, see, why should I bother? But it is still way better than a password without multifactor authentication. So Shannon put together six myths that were going to bust about multifactor authentication. And I will play the part of the whiny user who doesn't want to do it. First, Shannon multifactor authentication is too expensive. I can't afford that. I already evaluated with inflation in this economy, multifactor authentication, come on. Tom, Tom, well, I will argue this fact for both businesses as well as users. First off, it is free, completely free if you want to use it in a free way. You can just get two-factor authentication text messages, which you probably already do and you don't even realize that you're getting them. Whenever you authorize a new application on your phone and you sign in, it might need to authorize your phone number and it sends you a six-digit code. That's free and that is two-factor authentication. Applications like Authy, Google Authenticator, all of those are free to download and use. And for businesses, it's very inexpensive to implement two-factor authentication. There are many companies who do it for businesses and set it up for them and then you're good to go. You don't have to do too much managing in order to make two-factor authentication work. And if you really want to upgrade, you could spend $25 and get a hardware key, like the ones that I have here. I have Yubicos all over my desk and these are hardware two-factor authentication keys. They're super cheap and it's the best 2FA version that you can get. All right, fine. It doesn't sound that expensive, but it's complicated. You use the word set up. I ain't got time to go set something up and learn something new. Oh, no. Well, I would argue you could do this on the toilet, but I won't go that deep. Maybe you shouldn't, but you could. Yeah, you probably shouldn't, but yes, you definitely could. Just make sure you wash your hands before you touch your phone because that's gross. But yes, sites offer 2FA.Directory is a wonderful website that I recommend that you go to. This website has linked tutorials for all the famous and popular banking, financial, social media websites. Every single one you could think of, it has a link to whether or not they accept 2FA and it shows you how to do it. So you can just go through that tutorial and in my experience, most of them take about two to three minutes to set up and that's it. Easy. You're good to go and then you're ready. All right, but it's going to slow me down even if I get it set up. It's inconvenient. It's just a P-I-T-A. So this has everything to do with user sessions and cookies. If you're on a computer that you use all the time or a smartphone that you use all the time, you will probably only have to set up your 2FA code to log in like once and then you're logged in as long as that session remembers you. So if you're ever on a login screen and it says remember me for 30 days, that's a user session. And as long as you're logging in on that same computer, it will remember your 2FA login session and you won't have to type it in or you won't have to plug in your hardware key every single time. So for me, it usually happens every 30 days or so that I will have to plug in my hardware key and reauthorize my session, which is for security and it's very convenient. All right, all right, fine. But what if those attackers get a hold of my 2FA code, right? That gives them another thing to steal. That's going to make me a target. That's a really good question, actually. And you know what, if you are using SMS for two-factor authentication codes, there is something called SIM swapping and that does exist. In fact, I did a video on it many, a few years ago discussing how you can protect yourself from SIM swapping where somebody steals your phone number and then they get your two-factor authentication code sent to them over text message. But when you have 2FA setup, it does require additional work for an attacker. And if you aren't the low-hanging fruit, if you're just using username and password, then you're going to be the low-hanging fruit. If you upgrade to something that's a little bit better, even SMS, that's better than nothing. And that way, you're going to make it so much harder for an attacker that they're more likely to target somebody else other than you. Okay, all right, fine. But we talked about that Uber hack. It's not secure. They can get around it. Why should I bother if people are just going to get around MFA anyway? Good question as well. And yes, there are bypass attacks that have been known to happen. In fact, a couple of years ago, the FBI was warning about multi-factor authentication bypass techniques back in 2019 or so. But the thing is, MFA is going to be a part of a whole online security hygiene. If you're just using MFA by itself and you don't have like antivirus on your Windows 10 machine, then you may run into malware and somebody might be able to snoop on your screen. They would still be able to read that code that you're putting in. They'd be able to read your username and password. So obviously you want to use this with other products as well. Password manager for different passwords, antivirus to protect yourself from online hacks and malware. You want to protect your router with a firewall so that you don't get ran somewhere, et cetera, et cetera. So make sure you're auto-updating. Make sure you're using different passwords everywhere and turn on MFA. All right. So MFA isn't any less secure than a password alone. And password and MFA together are more secure because it's two things. It won't really slow me down. It's not that complicated. It's not that expensive. But thank goodness I'm not a target. I don't really need it. Well, well, Tom, I think you would be a target. Well, I'm totally up. I mean, not only do you do podcasts, in pretend land, yes, you're still a target. Anybody could be a target, especially if you make it easy for an attacker to do so. Anybody can be a target if you make it easy enough. And that's the thing to really take away from this. Attacks are so automated, especially now in 2022. It's so easy for somebody to attack thousands of people at the same time with phishing attacks. Social media, malvertising. You even have malware being distributed through advertisements that you see on YouTube. There's all sorts of different ways that attackers can attack thousands of people at the same time. So they may not be targeting you specifically, but you may end up in this big swathe of people that just happenstance to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. But MFA can prevent as much as, and this is a quote from a government affiliate, as much as 80 to 90% of attacks according to experts. And even President Biden is behind MFA too. Like he signed in an executive order back in May of this year to require MFA for agencies that work in the government. So it's extremely important to add MFA. I don't care which way you do it. I prefer hardware tokens myself, but anything is better than nothing. Don't let the fact that President Biden ordered it dissuade you though. It's still a really good idea. Multi-factor authentication, as Shannon has just laid out, is an excellent way to provide a roadblock. And I think one of the best point, Shannon, is that they don't have to know who you are for you to be a target. It's not like someone sitting there going, I am now going to attack Shannon. It's I am broadcasting to as many places as I can find. And if you happen to be one of those places they can find and there's so many reasons that you could be, you're going to need it. So you want to put roadblocks in the way. Yes, make it as hard as possible. These are great explanations. Thank you so much, Shannon, for laying these out. Let's move on to something a little lighter though. Music. Yeah, let's talk Apple Music. So Apple Music will sponsor the next Superb Al, or the Super Bowl, halftime show replacing long time sponsor Pepsi. Now this will make people wonder if it means Apple is getting close to a deal for NFL Sunday ticket, which leaves direct TV after this season. The New York Times reports that while the NFL has also talked to Google, Amazon and ESPN, Apple is thought to be the most advanced, in the most advanced stages of the negotiations. But I have a question for you, Tom. Okay. The real question here is, does this make Apple Music the Pepsi of music services? Yeah. And if so, does that make Spotify the Coke? Ooh. Yeah. Ooh, we've got some competition. And then who's the RC Cola? Who's the President's Cola? Oh, no. Yeah. I think this is significant that we're seeing, you know, the handover of a sugar water drink to a streaming music service. But it also makes more sense. The halftime show at the Super Bowl is the biggest concert of the year in the United States, anyway. The biggest televised music event of the year. So it makes sense that a music service would sponsor it, right? It does. Yeah. I think it's kind of cool. Yay technology. Indeed. All right. Well, before we go, let's check in with Len Peralta to see what he has been drawing today. Len, what have you drawn for us? Well, of course we talked about podcasting. I couldn't let that pass. Today's image is, I don't know. I guess because this is the way I feel, it's not exactly a self-portrait, but as an OG podcaster starting in 2005, I feel like I would do a podcast about, is podcasting over? It can't be over. I just published my RSS feed. No, seriously, what am I doing all this gear? I don't know. I don't know. I feel like, even though I've been around for a while as podcasting, I feel like every time I start, I feel like I'm starting over again. So I don't know. I disagree with Nicholas, unfortunately, but I don't think it's over. By the way, if you like this image, you can get this image at my online store at LenPeraltaStore.com or at my Patreon, patreon.com forward slash Len. By the way, I am doing commissions for, I know this is really super early, we're the first day of fall, doing commissions for holiday cards. So come on over to my store, LenPeraltaStore.com. Listen, folks, if you're anywhere in the Los Angeles area enjoying the 95-degree weather while slipping your pumpkin spice latte, order a holiday card from Len. It's perfect timing. Yeah. It's great. But yeah, podcasting's not done. All right. Shannon, what have you got going on these days? Oh, man. YouTube.com slash Shannon Morse is the best place to find all of my video content. Most recently, I did a Def Con 30 recap video and ran through a whole tutorial on how to use electronic badges that I picked up this year. It is so much fun. If you like hardware hacking, I think you will really enjoy that video. Excellent. Go check it out, folks. Also, the notifications are working again. Thanks to brand new bosses, Derek and Levine, who just started backing us on Patreon, and you can send me pronunciation corrections. I will accept them. But thank you, Derek and Levine, for supporting us on Patreon. Welcome! Welcome to the club. You could be the next big new Patreon. Just go to patreon.com slash DTNS. Folks, stick around for the extended show Good Day Internet. If you are a patron, because we're probably going to be talking more about that podcasting thing, you can also catch the show live Monday through Friday, 4 p.m. and 20-hundred UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Back on Monday, talking board game augmented reality tech with Chris Mancini. Talk to you then. This week's episodes of Daily Tech News Show were created by the following people, host producer and writer, Tom Merritt, host producer and writer, Sarah Lane, executive producer and booker, Roger Chang, producer, writer and host, Rich Strafalino, video producer and Twitch producer, Joe Coontz, technical producer, Anthony Lemos, Spanish language host, writer and producer, Dan Campos, news host, writer and producer, Jen Cutter, science correspondent, Dr. Nicky Ackermans, social media producer and moderator, Zoe Detterding. Our mods, Beatmaster, W. Scottis1, BioCow, Captain Kipper, Steve Gutterama, Paul Reese, Matthew J. Stevens, a.k.a. Gadget Virtuoso and J.D. Galloway, modern video hosting by Dan Christensen, video feed by Sean Wei, music and art provided by Martin Bell, Dan Looters, Mustafa A. Acast and Len Peralta, live art performed by Len Peralta. Acast adds support from Tatiana Montias, Patreon support from Dylan Harari. Contributors to this week's show included Lamar Wilson, Scott Johnson, Justin Robert Young and Shannon Morse. Our guest this week was Dr. Kiki Sanford and thanks to all the patrons who make the show possible. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Timing Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.