 Coming up on DTNS with the NBC YouTube fight and temporary peace means the reality behind the let's encrypt failure and what the US wants to do to stop swapping. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, October 1st. Welcome to Rocktober 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane. And from somewhere in St. Louis. I'm Patrick Norton. Draw on the top tech stories from Cleveland. I'm Len Peralta. And on the show's producer, Roger Chang. We were just talking sports teams. Choosing who to cheer for and who to cheer against and why some people think baseball is boring. Get that wider conversation on our expanded show, Good Day Internet. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. That is where you can join our top patrons like Dustin Campbell, Tim Deputy, and Brandon Brooks. Let us begin with a few tech things you should know. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the country's ban on Twitter be lifted on the condition it's used for business and positive engagements. Nigeria banned Twitter back on June 5th after the platform deleted one of the president's tweets. Nothing but ads and cat pics. Taiwan Economy Minister Wang Mehua said in an interview Thursday that Taiwan needs Malaysia's help to resolve the global shortage of auto semiconductors, particularly in auto chip packaging. Manufacturing happens a lot in Taiwan. Packaging of the chips happens in Malaysia. Wang said that Taiwan is a major chip producer, but companies in Malaysia provide services not offered by Taiwanese firms. Malaysia is home to suppliers and factories serving seven conductor makers such as STM, Microelectronics, Infineon, and automakers like Toyota and Ford. The California Department of Motor Vehicles granted Waymo and Cruise permission to operate general public autonomous vehicle rides under certain conditions within the state. Cruise's permit allows five autonomous, no human vehicle deployments for commercial services in part of San Francisco between the hours of 10am and 6pm at a maximum speed of 30 miles per hour with good weather conditions only. So if it's super foggy, can't be driving. Waymo can operate in parts of San Francisco and also San Mateo counties with a speed limit of 65 miles per hour with good weather visibility, but must put human drivers behind the wheel as well. The California Public Utilities Commission needs to sign off on deployment permits for both companies before paid passenger rides can begin. The human drivers in San Mateo are so they can turn around and explain. I can't go faster than the 65. I'm sorry. It's against the rule. Google has ended its plans to offer bank accounts from Citigroup and Stanford Federal Credit Union to users of Google Pay not going to happen. Google says that instead it will focus on, quote, delivering digital enablement for banks and other financial service providers rather than us serving as the provider of these services. Foxconn bought an Ohio EV factory from the EV startup Lordstown Motors in a $230 million deal. Lordstown Motors will remain a tenant at the plant and will work with Foxconn to build its upcoming electric pickup truck at the facility. All right, let's talk a little more about the spat fight brawl between NBC and YouTube TV. It's what I consider a sign that over the top multi-channel streaming services have come into maturity. It's a good old-fashioned carriage dispute. It goes back into the 80s even and find examples of cable companies and television networks blasting each other on air about who's at fault for losing channels. Well, NBC started running messages in the versions of its broadcasting cable channels that aired on YouTube TV. Warning viewers that greedy Google is going to drop its channels on Thursday and gave them a website where they could go complain to Google and everything. Google made a blog post saying it just wants to pay the same as all the other services that carry NBC channels. It's not asking for anything special. It also promised to lower the monthly fee of YouTube TV by $10 per month if NBC channels became unavailable. Thursday night came and went and the NBC channel stayed up. A spokesperson for NBC Universal said in a statement that NBC Universal and YouTube TV have agreed to a short extension while parties continue talks. They did not say how long that extension was for. Basically, NBC wants to keep its rates to YouTube TV high and wants Google to bundle in Peacock as an offering for YouTube TV. The way it bundles services like HBO Max, for instance. Although ours technical sources say that Peacock idea is now off the table that they're just talking rates. One question for you guys. Are these two companies fighting over scraps? I mean, multi-channel services on cable are declining. And while YouTube TV is doing better than some of these, these multi-channel over the Internet services are not booming. Patrick, what do you think? I don't know. It's been so exhausting over the last couple of years watching, you know, this company won't, you know, Amazon doesn't do this or this doesn't do that or that doesn't these. And yes, this is an old fashioned carriage spat. And I just feel like YouTube's promising itself or pushing itself that it's the replacement for cable because there's still a staggering number of cable users out there. And they need NBC to do that. This is a, you know, it's, it's yet another, you know, money grab. I mean, it's, it's, I just feel like multi, I'm so not into any bundle of channels where 90% of the channels I don't watch, I'm paying for. Yeah, I heard Sarah giggling there. Where it's just like, oh, 437 channels in the average person skims nine and watches more than four hours a week on like two or three. I think that was the numbers they told us years ago. It's just, you know, as long as there's, as long as there's carriage and platforms and fire TV and Apple TV and Roku TV and Google TV and YouTube TV and cable networks and. Pissy little, you know, ISPs that want to extort more money out of, you know, Netflix or any other channel. This is this is just never going away. It's never going away, Tom. Well, from somebody who pays for YouTube TV, I, I don't know. I don't know if I'm in the minority here, but I was like, I'd like to pay $55 a month instead of 65 who cares make NBC go away. It's fine. But during the Olympics, this would be much more of a headache, right? So it's interesting timing that this is all happening when it's happening. We also don't know how long the talks are being extended. You know, I sort of imagine someone being like, when do I pull the plug and NBC is like not yet or YouTube TV or who, you know, whoever we're still talking, give it a week. But, but I, I like YouTube TV is the only multi-channel cable alternative I have subscribed to for any length of time. It's just a lot cheaper than anything I could have gotten in the past. Even when you get like Comcast specials and stuff, it's like it's only $65 for the first year and then they jack it way up. I don't pay for any add-ons. I, you know, I have a little bit of a la carte stuff going on. I like it a lot, but I also completely agree that really I'm mostly paying for ESPN and maybe, you know, an award show here and there. Most of the channels go unwatched. I am certainly paying for stuff that I don't use, but it's kind of my best option right now for variety. I think you drive yourself crazy if you think about the stuff you're not watching. What I try to do personally is say, what do I need out of the service? And is it worth what they would make me pay for it? And pretend I'm only paying for that. Because a lot of people were complaining, speaking of ESPN, a lot of people were complaining, why can't I just get ESPN? I'm like, look, ESPN is probably going to charge you $20 a month if you just got ESPN, which you can do right now. You can go to Sling TV. Of course, I think it's now $30 or $35 a month, but back when I was making this argument in the early days, it was only 20. You could go to Sling TV, get ESPN, and only pay $20 a month or now $35 a month. If that's worth it to you, just do that. And people are like, yeah, but then I get all those other channels. I'm like, pretend you don't. If all you want is ESPN, just pay that amount and get it. People get caught up in like, yeah, but I want to pay for just ESPN, which that's a different way of looking at it. But I do think we're headed towards a world where you will, ESPN Plus will eventually get more and more things and become paying for ESPN. And I'm curious if these multi-channel systems will stay up then, because I pay for Direct TV Stream because we get sportsnet LA, which my wife uses to watch the Dodgers, and it's the only way to get it outside of Spectrum Cable, that there is. And then I also use it to watch NHL Network and MLB Network and stuff. But if we could get all of those out of cart, we might not get Direct TV Stream. It would depend on the cost, I guess. I mean, it's crazy. I'm looking at the list of NBC shows, and I'm laughing because I'm so detached from Cable. I'm so detached from the networks, but it's like America's Got Talent, 6 million viewers, American and Jewary, or 3.3 million viewers. This is us, 5.57 million viewers, Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, Chicago PD, 6 to 7 million viewers, law and order, law and order. It's interesting watching this whole, I had a conversation with somebody trying to explain to my, actually with my boys, talking about the miracle, the movie about the 1980 hockey team, and how everybody knew where they were when that happened. Because it was such this huge event, and it was something that everybody watched and was available anywhere anybody had a television, and just how fragmented things are today. Yeah. I mean, all those NBC shows you can get on Peacock, a lot of the Fox stuff is going to end up showing up on 2B, it looks like. So the shows at least will still be available even if the multi-channel services go away. It's all going to change. Yeah. I remember it was during Wimbledon, and a friend of mine who pays for ESPN Plus was like, wait a second, you know, because I'm like, oh, you got to, you know, tune into this match. He's like, hold on, like, so ESPN Plus is not going to show me this? Like what am I paying for? And I was like, I don't know. It's like, there's still so many questions about what exactly do I get with what I'm paying for, and if I'm saving money, what am I missing? So yeah, there's work to be done. There's a long time for the transition to happen, for sure. Yeah. Well, the standalone version of Microsoft Office 2021 launches on October 5th, and Microsoft just announced some details. If you don't subscribe to Office or you don't want to subscribe to Office, here's what you need to know. The major consumer version, Office Home and Student for Windows and Mac will be $150 and includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Teams. Microsoft 365 costs $70 per year or $7 per month with the family plan for up to six people running $100 per year and $10 per month. It adds OneDrive, Microsoft Editor, and Microsoft Family Safety, plus Access and Publisher for PCs. Office Home and Business 2021 costs $250 and adds Outlook and the right to use it in a business setting. In both versions, you get the new refreshed ribbon interface to match Windows 11. And coming over from the Microsoft 365 subscription versions are Excel and PowerPoint improvements with things like better inking and Outlook translation. You can now also collaborate on documents in real time, and there is OneDrive support and Teams integration as well. I'm glad you brought up the Microsoft 365 stuff, because I see a lot of people in our chat room and Discord saying, I don't want to subscribe, I just want to buy the thing, and they get very excited when the standalone version finally comes out. But you don't get as much, and I know there's still good reasons to just get the standalone, but you don't get the collaboration. You don't get OneDrive. Well, now you're getting the collaboration. Okay, but you still don't get OneDrive. You still don't get the continuing updates. Patrick, what do you think is the sensible reason to get the standalone version of Office versus the ongoing subscription? I was laughing because I was reading this story in pre-show, because I just canceled my office subscription simply because I only needed it for a client I was working with and not working with them, and I don't feel like paying $100 for an app I never use. I don't really understand why anybody still buys most of this stuff. And I also realized that this office is still the standard in so many organizations, in so many organizations most people work with. But yeah, it doesn't, I don't get the alternative. Microsoft Family is like $99 a year, and it covers everybody in the house, so I don't really know why you would go for some of these versions. It makes no sense to me. There must be something we're missing that it offers, but I got nothing. Yeah, well, I'm sure the legitimate uses are there. Feedback at datatechnewshow.com. Let us know what they are. Do you use Libra Office or just Google Docs? I still do so much writing and text editors, and I play around with different ones. But yeah, for most stuff I do collaborative, I do with Docs because it seems to work so much better than every other tool I've used for collaborative projects. Well, another good thing to use is a free security certificate on your website. Let's Encrypt offers free security certificates. They're most famous for enabling secure connections for websites, but they're often used in devices and used by enterprises, especially for Internet of Things devices to keep their connections secure, which is important. But if you know anything about security certificates, you know they expire every so often. In fact, I just got a notice that Let's Encrypt was updating my new security certificate for the website. It's a safety measure. Make sure the service you're using is still active and all that. One of Let's Encrypt's earliest certificates called IDENTRUS to DST root CAX3. You don't need to memorize that, but that's what it's called. Expired at 10 a.m. Eastern Thursday, September 30th. Now, this was not a surprise. Let's Encrypt gave lots of advanced warning. Of course, every certificate also says when it's going to expire. But Let's Encrypt foreign people like, hey, if you're using this one back in May, they said you need to be aware that it's going away September 30th. And we know a lot of you have this, but even with that advanced warning, a lot of folks didn't get the new certificate updated in time. Some of the bigger ones that had issues were Shopify, QuickBooks, Heroku, Fortinet, Rocket League, Shopify, for instance, acknowledged the problem and had its logins restored by 3.30 p.m. Eastern. So this hasn't caused widespread, ongoing outages. But you may think, well, it's obvious and easy to update a certificate. Why didn't you do it? Well, it's usually not just in one place. Sometimes developers within companies will implement a certificate without documenting it properly when they're developing somebody and nobody knows it's there until it fails. Modern root chaining allows for redundancies to back these things up, but you may have an older system that doesn't benefit from root chaining and you may not realize that. It can also affect consumer devices if the user hasn't kept their operating system or firmware up to date. So if you've got a system that's older than Mac OS 2016 or Windows XP Service Pack 3, Android 7.1.1, those all have reported issues as have older PlayStations, including PlayStation 4s that aren't up to date on the firmware. Companies that want to prevent future problems with other certificates expiring can do a test, set your system clock on the server forward after the certificate expires, and then see if your root chaining works properly or not. There's other ways to do this in other workarounds, but if you were seeing reports about this or if you're trying to play Rocket League or use QuickBooks and you were running into this problem, this explains what was going on out there. Did you know anything, either of you? Actually, yes. I did get an email from a service provider of sorts who said, yeah, there's some security stuff. Please stand by it. I just was like, it's not affecting me. So I didn't really understand what was going on until I read this story today. I mean, the solution is it's like quadrupled. To be on top of your... Yeah, the developer needs to be a better communicator. The folks who use encryption certificates need to not pretend that it's not going to be a problem six months after they're told it's going to be a problem. And then, you know, kind of everybody needs to understand that certificates are in multiple places and it's not just a matter of pressing a button and everything is fine. I guess that's threefold. Yeah, and I don't think most pretend it's not a problem. I really do think most just can't find all the instances. Maybe they need to prioritize it higher. I don't know. But yeah, I think it's a problem not knowing where all the certificates are. It's one thing when you have one website like us. It's a lot more complicated when you have an intricate system like an enterprise. Or if some junior level or middle level or even upper level staffer leaves and for some reason there... I mean, literally, there's an organization I worked at, big media company, somebody left, and nobody knew that that was the only person that knew how to actually, in this case, pay for the domain... They were the only person to have the domain name registrar access. It's amazing how much... There's so many things... There's so many failure points if you don't do a good job communicating or making sure we know what the tools are and what the dates are. But it's also kind of Shopify, QuickBooks, Rocket League. These are all complex systems, right? These are big organizations. Oops. Yeah, the bigger the organization, the more likely this is to happen, it feels like. Yeah. Hey, folks, this weekend we're released gaming news monthly. So if you're into gaming news, check that out. Jen Cutter is going to round up the month's biggest video gaming news in about 15 minutes for you to make it easy for you to be up-to-date, whether you're a hardcore gamer or just thinking about getting into video gaming. The monthly summary is going to bring you up to speed. You don't have to do anything. It's just going to show up in your DTNS feed this weekend. I just wanted to make sure you knew. SimSwapping is a practice where an attacker uses personal information about somebody, usually something they've found on the Internet, social security numbers, stuff like that, to contact a cell phone carrier and get the phone number of that person transferred to a new SIM card under the attacker's control. Once the attacker has that phone number, they can use it to access accounts that use that phone number for things like password recovery or SMS second factor. So the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has proposed new rules to prevent SimSwapping and what's called Port Out Fraud. That's basically the same as SimSwapping but going to a new carrier, not just to a new phone within the same carrier. The rules would require more secure methods for verifying identity. So before a transfer happens, the FCC proposes that a customer should have to do something like one of the following. Use a pre-established password. Some already do that right now. T-Mobile does that. Get a one-time code sent by text or voice to the existing SIM card to say like, hey, somebody's trying to change this. Is that you? Maybe a pre-registered backup number of another phone or have a code emailed to a pre-registered email address. Either one of those would help if you lost your phone and somebody was trying to swim SimSwap. The FCC seeks comments on which of these is secure enough and which should be required. So the FCC, in this case, is doing an actual notice for proposed rulemaking saying we want to change the rule. What should we change it to? Community? Security community? Talk to us. What should we do with the good options? The FCC also asks if there are more secure methods or whether carriers should comply with existing NIST digital identity guidelines. But instead of just saying we should do that, they're saying, hey, would that be a problem? Is that a good idea? They also propose requiring carriers to notify a customer when a SIM switch or port-out request is made before it is completed. Again, some carriers already do this, but they are thinking maybe we should just make that the standard for everybody. Another thing about this notice for proposed rulemaking is it really was a proposal. It wasn't, we're going to do this. Tell us if it's a bad idea. It was, hey, here are the options. Help us figure out what the best way to make a standard is. This is just so long overdue. It's been interesting to watch domain name registrars, which seems to be a theme for me today. Cell phone company. If somebody gets your number or access to your number, there's just amount of control over access to pretty much everything in their life. And it's kind of shocking how easy this is in some cases and all too often even a marginally talented social engineer with some patients can scam their way into your number if they want it. And this is, hey, I love it when they actually ask for the best way to do it. I think it's really interesting to see what the responses from this are and what the responses are like from different companies. That's always tremendously revealing about how different companies are thinking about security, but I welcome anything that, you know, well, I'll knock on both when I say this. I generally welcome anything that makes us more secure and makes it harder to steal these crucial points in our ability to be ourselves online. One thing I was impressed with in reading through the notice, I was reading and it said, maybe yes, should be sent to the phone before the SIM has changed and I was like, yeah, but there's that other way of without SIM swapping of getting a hold of a text message that you could use. The next paragraph was, but we know there's another way for text messages to be so should there be other ways like email and I was like, oh man, they really did the research on this one. Good job. It's nice when they do that. SIM swapping sucks. Between May of 2018 and September of this year, Netflix's data traffic on South Korean ISP SK broadband rose 24 times to 1.2 trillion bits per second. A testament to the popularity of Squid Game and DP on Netflix, particularly in South Korea. SK has sued Netflix to pay for the costs of managing extra network traffic caused by all those Netflix users. In a previous lawsuit last June, the Seoul Central District Court ruled that SK delivers a service provided at a cost, and it is reasonable for Netflix to be obligated to provide something in return for the service. Netflix argues that SK subscribers already pay the ISP for usage and appealed the ruling, which should be heard in December. SK says Amazon, Apple and Facebook all pay network usage fees. Google and YouTube don't. Netflix reached a deal with Comcast seven years ago on similar issues to this month. Yeah. The significance of this, I think, is that it's South Korean ISP. South Korea has some of the best, highest, fastest bandwidth in the world. It's like too much, too much even for us. I don't know how they got their deals with Apple, Facebook and Amazon, but I guarantee you none of them are doing 1.2 trillion bits per second the way Netflix is. And it's a testament to how successful Netflix has been in providing shows to the South Korean market as well. Yeah. I mean, it's in one hand, it's like, go Netflix and then ISP is like, we can't handle your popularity. You must help. And I know there's probably a temptation to want to bring in net neutrality and start talking about that here, but the deal that Netflix reached with Comcast was more about transit and more about peering than it was about net neutrality. And that's because Netflix said, look, we are not going to pay you to reach our customers, but we understand that there is a bandwidth trading going around and maybe we're acting more like a CDN than we are just a website. And I imagine that's probably what's going on with SK Broadband as well, and Netflix is going to hold that line in court as long as it can until it's exhausted, all its appeals. My guess is they come to a similar arrangement like they did with Comcast where there's some sort of peering involved, some sort of payment exchanges, and I'm guessing that's what Amazon, Apple and Facebook did too. But man, squid game, real popular all around the world. That's all I've heard about only over the last week, but it's, yeah, it's all the rage, I guess. I mean, and DP, you mentioned DP. That's a show about military police that have to hunt down draft or not draft evaders, but military deserters, people who go AWOL because there's mandatory military service in South Korea. Great show too. Not as well known outside of South Korea, but if you get nothing else from this bandwidth and transit story, get two recommendations for good Netflix shows. All right. Tell us about what's going on with the Wayback machine. It seems to be looking forward. Yeah, the Wayback machine, which was created 25 years ago by the nonprofit, the Internet Archive, shows anybody that's interested in historical data about how a web page looked in the past, even when the page or the entire website has been removed or totally changed. Now the Internet Archive has created what it calls the Wayforward machine. The preview is what we might expect in another 25 years. That would be 2046. When Ars Technica took it for a spin with Ars' own URL, it was served the following message. Quote, content on the site you're trying to access is protected by the content truth gateway. We cannot guarantee the accuracy of free content. It was followed up with a dummy credit card system payment form. Another message said, the content owner has made this content unavailable in your political block. The copyright on this material has been extended for an additional 200 years. So you're probably getting the idea the Wayforward machine's goal is to raise awareness about ongoing threats. For example, there are some from the book publishers toward the Wayback machine against the way that the Wayback machine stores copies of copyrighted works and makes them available to the public. The EFF, Mozilla, Fight for the Future, Week and Media Foundation are among a few of those who support the Internet Archives initiative. Yeah, it's a stunt and it's kind of exaggerated. But definitely hitting all the issues, overreach on copyright protection, paywalls, all that together. And I'm a big supporter of Archive, the Internet Archive. We've used them to host our things in the past and we support them. So go check it out. It's good stuff. Alright, let's check out the mail bag. This one comes from Bob. Bob says he's from the future and he also works at the Broward County Library in Florida. Bob says, you asked about possible solutions for the new Astro robot for Amazon outside of the house. I have the library on the waiting list to get one. We're going to test it for customers in a couple of ways. One, to help guide customers to a particular section in the library where the 3D printers are, for example. Two, for assisting staff with customer service. We could have Astro go check the shelf to see if an item is there so we can confirm for a customer an item is there. Bob says, will this work? Who knows? But this is why we explore new technologies. See what I love about this is Bob is being an example of what I like, which is skeptical. I'm not sure it's going to work, but not afraid. But let's try it. Let's see what the pitfalls are. Maybe there's a new thing that Astro can make possible. Good stuff. Thank you, Bob. Let us know how it works out, too. Absolutely. And if you have any on the ground stories like Bob does, please do share them with us. We love to hear the stuff. Questions, comments, all of it goes to feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. We also have a brand new boss to thank, and that boss's name is Lee Chisholm. Lee just started back in us on Patreon, so thank you, Lee. You've made our weekend already. Lee Chisholm. Ah, that's great. Look at Lee. He's smart. Lee is like, I will get all the applause to myself by becoming a patron on October 1st at the very beginning of the month. Well done, Lee. Good work, Lee. Thank you, Len Peralta for illustrating today's show. What have you been drawing, Len? Well, everybody loves a good old fashion carrier fight, right? And that's what this is all about. Yeah. It's fight night. It's good. It's got fight night. It's a peacock versus a TV. Come on. And it's all, like Patrick said, it's all a big money grab anyway, so that's what this image that's what this image is depicting. It's the peacock versus the tube and who will win? Well, probably the almighty dollar eventually will win, but you can get this image if you're one of my Patreon subscribers at Patreon.com forward slash Len or at my online store at LenPeraltaStore.com which also, by the way, I've started just to put out my custom drawn holiday card. So if you want to get an early jump on the holiday, so you can go ahead and go over to LenPeraltaStore.com and get those. So thank you so much for looking. Good work as always, Len. Also, great to have Patrick Norton here today. Patrick, where can people keep up with all that you do? Oh my goodness, abxl.com is the podcast I host with Robert Herron, talking about home theater and audio. We did a bunch of stuff talking about Kan Jam this week and you can tweet at Patrick Norton if you want to talk to me that way. Excellent. Well, we are live on this show Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern. That's 2030 UTC and you can find out more at DailyTechNewShow.com slash live. Tom will be working on Monday and Rich and I will talk to you Monday. Until then, have a great weekend. This week's episodes of DailyTechNewShow 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 Strafilino, video producer and Twitch producer Joe Coontz, associate producer Anthony Lemos, Spanish language host, writer and producer Dan Campos, news host, writer and producer Jen Cutter, science correspondent Dr. Nikki Ackermans, social media producer and moderator Zoe Detterding, our mods! Beatmaster W. Scottis 1, BioCow, Captain Kipper Jack Shit, Steve Guadirama, Paul Rees, Matthew J. Stevens 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, Creative Arts and Len Peralta, live art performed by Len Peralta, ACAST ad support from Trace Gaynor, Patreon ad support from Stefan Brown, contributors for this week's show included Scott Johnson, Justin Robert Young and Patrick Norton and our guest this week was Aaron Carlton thanks to all the patrons who make this show possible. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com Bob hopes you have enjoyed this program.