 Coming up on daily tech news show the galaxy s10 fingerprint reader glitch cool new accessibility products get Microsoft funding And why Netflix is not doomed don't listen This is the daily tech news for Thursday October 17th 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio feline I'm Sarah Lane from Oakland, California. I'm Justin Robert young and I'm Roger Chang the show's producer We were just talking about science fairs and history fairs and then the technologies that keep your bird from running away on Good day internet if you would like to hear that conversation and more of course you want to become a member at patreon.com Slash DT ns. Let's start with a few tech things you should know Google has discontinued Google clips its small camera that used AI to automatically take pictures Google first introduced clips back at IO in 2017 We hardly knew you seriously literally yeah say hello to reader in heaven a Listing appeared on Amazon for their yes yet unannounced Nvidia shield Pro Which has since been removed along with the $199 price tag upgrades appear to include the new Tegra x1 plus chip and support for Dolby vision HDR Plus a triple-a battery pack powered remote with motion activated black lit Backlit buttons and an IR blaster a new Google voice update for iOS adds better support for Siri So if you're using iPhone you can now use Siri to send messages in place calls using your Google voice number Outside of the app you have to manually enable the feature in your iOS settings to make that work But Google's own assistant can also send messages over over Google voice or place phone calls You just have to have that app running Mark Zuckerberg spoke at Georgetown University on Thursday among his remarks He said that Facebook has 35,000 people working on security and implied that the budget is around five billion dollars He also said that banning political ads altogether would favor incumbents and defended the decision to not fact-check Political ads as a way to encourage more political discourse Hashtag portal to Yeah, anyone anyone all right, let's talk a little bit more about the fingerprint reader on the Samsung phone Indeed Tom Samsung confirmed to Reuters that a fingerprint that if a fingerprint is registered on a galaxy s10 device With a screen projector in place It can then be unlocked by any fingerprint according to Samsung Support posts. This is because of some gel style screen protectors have a pattern that is picked up along with the fingerprints And then registers the biometric information Samsung says it will release a software patch soon Well, that's a relief. Yeah, uh, I find this fascinating because it's not if you use the the default screen protector that Samsung gives you This doesn't work. So that makes sense. Samsung tested it with their own screen protector But these cheap two dollar gel protectors apparently cause a pattern That makes the fingerprint register go well, that must be part of the fingerprint And then when the finger is not the same behind it, it's still seeing enough of that gel pattern to go Well, I see enough of the pattern that that works. Let's unlock the phone So, I mean the workaround is pretty easy. Don't register your fingerprint with the screen protector in place Uh, but this is a fascinating thing that Samsung Maybe should have anticipated but didn't uh and uh and shows Some of the limits for how it tells a finger apart, right? It's it's not that this is a problem with it telling fingers It's just it can't tell what's a finger and what's not when you're registering Which is usually not a big deal because you usually don't put anything but a finger over that fingerprint sensor Yeah, you know and it also kind of raises some of the questions about where you put the fingerprint sensor And the fact that some of these, you know, the apple went away with it or went away from it in the iPhone because You know, they they had more faith and face ID than they did the the thumbprint I think that this is I mean I'm I'm going to resist jumping on the like lol samsung Train here, but I do wonder whether or not they're going to be able to solve it through a software patch I I would guess they're able to like go and do some some quick training With whatever machine learning algorithm they're using and and differentiate The the kind of pattern that these screens show like that is something that they should Theoretically be able to do and apparently they think they can do it So so that's that's an advance This is a good thing in the longer run because it makes this more secure and that it really will work with fingerprints Not with other things. Yeah, but all of these biometrics do have Certain weirdnesses I mean there was a story out today that the the google face recognition the face unlock for the pixel 4 Will work with your eyes closed and a lot of people are upset about that because One of the things that you do to make sure that someone can't force you to unlock your phone is close your eyes, right? And that won't work pixel 4. Yeah, it's still a lot or if you're asleep or Comatose or something that that's that stuff this something you don't want someone to have control over I wonder, you know, it's It's obvious that samsung Would not be able to test a bunch of third party covers But they didn't make at the same time It and and just and i'm with you on this like it's not sort of like a ha ha thing because it's the problem that nobody Just probably thought that this would happen But at the same time, you know, how much would a cover that is likely to be bought by somebody because it's cheaper Or I don't know aesthetically pleasing or is the right color that sort of thing Gonna kind of ruin one of the privacy the big privacy security features of the phone itself Yeah, well and also it's like whether or not they were able to test it or we should feel that they were negligent in their testing if you have a security feature that by the way controls payments and all sorts of other stuff if it's unlocked Then you know, you have you have to understand that the mechanism by which you are using to guard that is faulty like or well and and I I would further say you should always assume that because Yeah, your your thing is for sure You're your your code that you could enter Into the phone, which is the other way of protecting the phone instead of a biometric Could all is actually less secure than this It's it's easier for someone to socially engineer that out of you than to socially engineer your face or your fingerprint Uh, so, you know, I don't think this undermines the idea of these biometrics But I I if if samsung did anything wrong it was being slow to respond to this because at first they said Yeah, this isn't probably a big problem and that that was the wrong answer But they finally got the right answer, which is we're gonna fix it narrator. It was Moving on to some google news now google says its wireless stadia controller will work wirelessly With the chromecast ultra when stadia launches on november 19th A usb-c cable will be required to use the otherwise wireless controller with a computer or a phone One of the controller's potential features would be to switch between devices without the need for repairing google told the verge It's focusing on getting wireless play right on tv first The google stadia controller also will not work with bluetooth headphones. At least not at launch now here I will Take a little shout in froida because google made a big deal google themselves made a big deal about how The big advantage to their controller was that it connected by wi-fi And so you wouldn't even have to unplug it or anything You just change your game from your phone to the tv and the controller goes with it Which it won't do at launch granted it'll get there But this kind of undermines the whole point of this controller Yeah, no, you want to know what? If you're like, oh no, don't worry It'll eventually get to where it needs to go and so far we've gotten two announcements with stadia where don't worry Eventually, we're going to get to negative latency eventually. We're going to be able to do these wireless with a couple of things Yeah, not with other things with really with one thing Just the one thing and trust us. Yeah, worry. Yeah this full future. I don't know Ahead of their skis, uh, sometimes with these This is you know, this is the early launch. This is the founders edition launch that you have to pay more for But yeah, uh, you know, it's not officially launching till next year. So I'm sure it'll all be fine by then Here's something good that google is doing temporarily increasing the amount it pays for discovery of exploits in site isolation It also explained or sorry expanded its vulnerability reward program to include bugs in blink The engine that chrome uses to render html site isolation was strengthened in chrome 77 It's meant to stop one website from accessing passwords or sensitive data from another site Access through chrome browser at the same time So they used to share a lot of resources and that would cause the ability for for one tab to access another tab Now they isolate them and they say look it has to be coming from the same site That is in this tab for it to work and that helps stop a lot of these vulnerabilities However in chrome 77 site isolation added protection for exploits coming through compromised blink rendering engine as well Which would have been one way to get past that So now Even if the rendering engine got compromised They're able to stop any kind of exploit through the rendering engine In addition password triggered site isolation has been enabled for 99 of android devices with at least two gigabytes of ram if you're like Well, wait, why isn't it On everything like it is on the desktop it takes a bigger hit on your phone in performance So they're only triggering it when you enter a password, which they think is the largest security threat for this kind of attack Well, you know, it's always good To see proactive stories about security, right as opposed to Oh, definitely it's out of the barn I do this does give me the idea that if they're increasing the pay that they must think This is a line of attack that is at least being researched By people as a way to get in and so they're trying to stay in front of it But like you say that's proactive and that's good much much prefer that I would rather that a company specifically one that that really does need to be security focused and conscious like google Is is there on the front painting it red and saying look, this is what we want to guard against So yes, we are tipping our hand as to what we think might be a problem in the future But guess what we're going to get more of the good guys Getting paid on this than the bad guys who are engineering whatever they're going to engineer This is a tiny tiny security threat in reality This doesn't happen very often. It's not even guarded against in a lot of other browsers Including safari because it's considered such a small threat. So Another reason to to give google a little tip of the hat here for for staying on staying as far in front of the game as they can Microsoft announced 10 new ai for accessibility grants among the recipients are objective ed Which tech crunch said is making a system that compares what a child says They are reading to what the braille display their reading says and offers corrections when necessary An ipad powers the braille display and azure powers the comparisons Another recipient is called smart ear it alerts deaf users of things like doorbells or alarms through their smartphone The city university of london is working on a project that personalizes object recognition So for instance, it can tell a user not just that it sees a mug But whether or not the users it's the user's mug or not And finally a billet track lets users rate and review the accessibility of the business and eave a system for generating Automatic live subtitles as well as map and hood Developing a navigation app for the blind and low vision viewers and more Yeah, there's there's about uh, I don't know what it was a 10 or so of these These projects that got funding from microsoft and as we heard you don't have to use anything but azure They are trying to get you to use the the benefits of azure in your project But you can use ipads you can use stuff like that if you're not Uh, as long as you're using azure for part of it And you know back to that braille when you were talking about that is something that is time intensive Usually because there has to be a teacher there to correct the student And what this does is takes that out. It makes it easier for the student to practice their reading Because the computer can see what they're supposed to be Getting from the braille compare it to what they should be Reading and and correct them as they go which which makes it more efficient. Uh, that that's a great project Yeah, there's so many there's so many of as these continue to roll out accessibility Advancements, you know, I think a lot of us are sort of clueless people who don't have accessibility issues of of this nature Go like wow really that didn't exist before no it didn't And it's it's heartwarming to to to hear about How you know life is getting better for the rest of us, you know, there there is probably a really good You know book to be written about what smartphones and smart devices tablets and everything have done for accessibility because it seems as if I've read far more stories of Stuff like that in in recent years than I did the previous I can see tom looking behind him to find that accessibility book Book, uh, it's not exactly what you're talking about, but if someone were to write that kind of book I mean shelly has done she's done a lot of the work on that in writing actual tips up, uh for people So yeah, I was like it would we're awful close there if if there doesn't already exist a book like that out there Well speaking of advancements sentence is a startup that has begun at marketing technology to eliminate buttons Says it's working with asus and two other smartphone makers The system uses ultrasonic waves to detect touches or presses or swipes and a variety of materials Including metal asus uses it in a phone it made for gamers in cooperation with 10 cent that was released Earlier this year in the summer the top edges of the phone can be used as triggers in games Sentences also developing a virtual jog wheel and a virtual shutter button to focus a phone's camera The system works with a custom chip that generates the sound waves and algorithms on the chip that interpret gestures The company hopes to expand beyond smartphones to watches and cars And include materials like wood and leather This is fascinating When I first saw this started reading the story I thought well, you know a lot of these phones and you know the iphone 10 a couple years ago It got rid of buttons, but it didn't right still got the side buttons And that's what they're going after is no buttons at all You could be able to hit those side buttons without their being buttons Let's use metal and wood As as the detection surface by using ultrasound And it's all about the machine learning It sounds like they've got the hardware to create the sound waves Pretty pretty much underway. It's all about making that algorithm so that you can easily detect what's a button press and what isn't Because you want to make sure that you don't get false presses when people are just picking up their phones And this might be better at that than an actual physical button because it can tell the difference when a phone is being picked up Versus when it actively is being pressed I know that this is not the hardware or or research that we are talking about with this specific startup But I will say We need similar advancements in making sure that a virtual button feels Similar if not better than a physical button, which doesn't mean you know that you pressed it. Yes. Yeah That is a psychological thing that for me specifically and it's not all buttons now But the important ones the ones where I want to feel satisfaction that okay Like am I just not touching this right like I need some kind of like I was always impressed with the haptics on the on the old iPhones With that because when the phone would be off and I would touch the button I'd be like Oh, wow, that's right. That's not actually a button. That's just a depression with haptic feedback So yeah, I wonder I wonder how much they can do that, especially if they're working with wood and stuff This feels like one of those advancements that People like us are like, yeah, but without a physical button Is it really going to work the way it's supposed to work? Are you even going to know when you've depressed it properly? I you know, we used to say that about mice, right? You know left click right click kind of thing Now I got a trackpad where I do all sorts of things without clicking anything Um, you know, it you know, it's just it's just sort of my finger being uh being detected And so yeah, I wonder I wonder if in five years we'll kind of laugh about the fact that everybody talked about physical buttons And what we were all going to do if we got rid of them I love the idea of different material besides metal though. That's really cool Because that's something that has never been I mean, we just don't you know have phones that have wood You know bezels you just we've had wooden cases for computers and mobile devices before but But yeah, this this takes it a little farther because now that wooden surface can be used as a control surface I know a lot of people like wood finishes in their cars and now now your control surface in your car could be You know could be entirely wood Yeah, you know, I I agree with you Sarah I I do think that at a certain might will look back and be like oh ha ha ha physical button What a what a relic of our past I do think that there is you have to do it right though because there is an element. Yes There has to be a way for you to know that you're hitting the right place I'm actually curious if anyone's tried this aces phone with the triggers On the side which is sentence first actual shipping product with their technology in it Do you get some haptic feedback from that? Is it easy to tell where those trigger buttons are? If anyone has used that Chinese phone, let us know feedback at daily tech news show dot com And if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, don't forget We have another show in the company's portfolio called daily tech headlines. You can get that at daily tech headlines dot com Netflix is dead. Oh wait. No, it's not with a stock market likes it But nobody else does that that summarizes the past five years maybe 15 years of of netflix news But we have another netflix earnings report netflix beat earnings expectations But missed on us subscribers. So everyone's happy. They can get to turn this into whatever story they want The company added 517,000 us subscribers and 6.26 million international subscribers But analysts had expected 800 2000 us subscribers and only 6.05 million international So they beat on international and they had a pretty big miss on us subscribers Netflix still blaming their price changes on the slow us growth 2.1 million additions in the united states so far this year compared to 4.1 million at this point last year But hey average revenue per user is up 16.5 percent So it's not hurting their bottom line and the international growth seems to keep making up the difference Starting next quarter the company is going to break out revenue and subscribers regionally So we'll get to hear what the asia-pacific number the europe number middle east in africa latin america and us canada numbers are separately Netflix projects 7.6 million additional global subs next year compared to 8.8 million for the same quarter last year I'm sorry next quarter So they are projecting fewer global subs than they were That they got last year. So there is no disputing that netflix is growing But it's growing slower than it was now CEO read hastings said the raft of new streaming service competitors would generate modest headwinds in the near term So he's saying it's the price change right now And it's going to be competitors. So don't expect us to have stellar numbers, but He thinks long term netflix is going to be fine. And here's why the upcoming arrival of services like disney plus apple tv plus hbo max and peacock Increased competition, but hastings says we are all small Compared to linear tv while the new competitors have some great titles, especially catalog titles None have the variety diversity and quality of new original programming that we are producing around the world Hastings thinks they will all steal market share from traditional tv. He says that's what happened when cable channels came along They didn't steal from each other. They stole from broadcast. That's what's going to happen here We're not going to steal from each other. We're going to steal from cable He says the likely outcome from the launch of these new services will be to accelerate the shift from linear tv to on-demand consumption of entertainment He said netflix will continue to take bold swings, but it won't chase every deal on the table Basically saying, okay, we've we've spent some money on some stinkers. We're going to try to be more select And he threw some shade at disney. He said, uh, I think that is every bit as valuable as drafting off a bunch of different franchises and waiting for them to burn out Oh, get Lucas film marvel Shots fired. Uh, he hammered away on stranger things. Martin Scorsese, Michael Bay, Noah Bombach also mentioned Seinfeld, uh as a sort of examples of how they've got great content Don't worry about netflix now Netflix needs more hits than that. No matter what it does, there's going to be pressure on domestic subs with new services until we get that wave of cord cutters Hitting the inflection point. I agree with Hastings Like once people start leaving cable in larger numbers, then all of these services can survive and and grow International growth is going to keep netflix going while he waits for that but to prevail when that influx comes Netflix is going to need to be seen as hbo. That's what he's trying to describe themselves We have the greatest originals. We're not just relying on back catalog and old intellectual property But it's going to need more than stranger things and Scorsese for that Yes, although do you think that they are not on the road that they seem to be They seem to have had a fairly good track record of being able to push out a a big Everybody's talking about it kind of series You know and and we're we just had a rash of them like with you know, russian doll season two will be another big A thing. So I don't know. I do think that Netflix certainly has spent a ton of money on Content, right? But I don't know if anybody is as far ahead of the game or as metrics minded as netflix is to take Educated guesses and I think that's his big slam on disney is like all right. Well, you did it that the caveman way Look, here's this gigantic old thing Well, we'll buy the old thing and turn out new versions of it. We're doing the the the Super new way of all right. Well, we're going to give david spade a deal because for whatever reason we know that hits six Through adult 60 all love adam samler movies to watch together and that's their strategy I I think yes, they are on the road They don't have enough going right now to counteract their slowing growth though If they were more solidly on the road, we'd see stronger growth from them Whether they have a price increase or not look at hbo Hbo is you know, everyone thought oh, what are they going to do after game of thrones? But now people are talking about big little eyes watchmen like they keep coming right just gemstones They keep coming a succession. They keep cut. You know what I'm saying whereas netflix It's like oh stranger things is done. Well, I don't have to watch netflix for another couple months till my My favorite show comes back and that's that's what i'm talking about. That's not always been the case though for hbo Hbo is on a hot streak now, but sure. Sure. I do sure these things happen cyclically and What netflix has that hbo does not because hbo is one clearing house, right? It's like they have their their sunday slots now they've expanded it into monday where prestige television Lives and they cleared the dance floor for that netflix doesn't care if you subscribe because you like these tween rom-coms Or you like stand-up comedy or you like prestige hour-long dramas They are there for all of it and they are constantly trying to micro target And that's you're right the numbers are the numbers are the numbers But If their play is content, I still think they're ahead of the game there You know netflix's argument that really the enemy is still The linear cable networks. I mean, yes, that's true. That's that's certainly true for us subscribers uh, and the tide will change Shelf shift and when that happens Netflix is yeah, I feel like they're going to win in the short term But it's what we always talk about is well Okay, when you have a lot of choice as a quad cutter and you kind of realize well, hold on a second I don't really want all of these channels. I want just certain things that are important to me I don't think netflix wins in the long term because the it will have uh, too many competitors And and right now the perception of netflix isn't what reed hastings needs it to be He wants it to be prestige programming. He wants it to be we're the place with the best originals No matter what your taste you like rom comes you like christmas prints You you like you like shine felt reruns. It's all here And that's really not how people talk about netflix They talk about it as a place to just sit down and watch something the person The perception is stuck in the past of netflix the dvd purveyor of they're the place that has everything And that's why you see people complaining like they're losing friends netflix is going to be worth something anymore He needs to shift that perception. I mean, but it is there on some level, right? Like It is and maybe this is just my own little twitterati chamber, but You know, it seems like it's still like it seems like five times this year A netflix show just totally took over my twitter timeline and everybody was talking about it And now I had to sit down and binge watch eight episodes of some random show Did you enjoy that random show though? Okay, that's that's that's the kicker off. I did off. I did Not always but oft Yeah, no, and I think he needs to have that happen more. That's all I'm saying so that when that influx comes People are choosing netflix for multiple reasons and don't get me wrong netflix is perfectly positioned to make that happen But but they haven't they haven't they aren't as far ahead of the game as I think maybe I expected them to be That's all Well, but but also this would be either this would be the scariest moment that then is as read Hastings hopes Not as bad as it seems with all the the barbarians at the gates right now or It's Really at the beginning of a huge problem where subscriber fatigue eventually starts eating at netflix Yeah, even even if they have the worst version of what i'm talking about though He's right people are going to start leaving cable and and just the rising tide will lift all these boats That I I go back to what we started this conversation with the problem isn't the competitors the problem isn't disney plus Uh, that that that is not going to be the challenge. I don't think here's the other thing that You know you that is not yet dawned that will be a a larger issue in the next five years Sports rights deals we are we are at the point now Where so one of these companies and it might be netflix if they want to get into more live stuff Uh or live stuff at all that they're going to make a pitch for something Yeah In that it won't be netflix, but as soon as sports becomes Perceived as something you can easily get without cable even though really right now it is Uh, that that's when that big influx is going to happen. You're right Hey, thanks everybody who participates in our subreddit netflix stories and others are encouraged You can submit any story you like and then vote on others at daily tech news show dot reddit.com We also have a lively facebook group come on and facebook.com slash groups slash daily tech news show I'm sorry. I just noticed beatmaster in the chat room wrote. Why do you think they say netflix and chill? They need future customers All right Let's check out the mail bag Let's do it paul the software entomologist Those are his words says the linkedin events announcement Which we talked about on yesterday's show is right on the heels of meetup.com Announcing that they are exploring charging for rsvp's He links us to a forbs article where yes, he would actually upset a lot of meetup.com Subscribers paul says several of the meetups that I attend are now ready to ditch meetup.com I don't think meetup.com is that differentiated except it has the bulk of meetup traffic right now A new competitor could swoop in and take it over pretty easily. I think especially If that had a lot of existing traffic like linkedin does That's a really good point. I hadn't even thought about meetup.com. Uh, they they could be the roadkill More so than than anything else on on the way to linkedin's Adding of of an incremental feature I didn't realize that that as many people were still using meetup.com as are so thank you paul for that And shout out to our patrons at the master and grandmaster levels including kevin s morgan paul reese michael akins Thanks to you and everybody else who supports us Thanks also to justin robert young for being with us this fine thursday. Justin. What's been going on since we saw you last Well, obviously we had a big debate on This week on cnn and co-hosted by the new york times and I covered it in depth Not only that but also we had a breakdown of the aoc endorsement of bernie sanders We had dav leventhal from the center for public integrity to break down all of the q3 fundraising Money and some of the troubling trends for a few candidates that those revealed and had a great chat with andrew heaton You might say wow, is that a week's worth of content? No friends It was all on one episode of politics politics politics That's the most recent one and we had another episode this week where tom texted me his thoughts on brexit as he is off to do Go ahead and check it out. Uh politics politics politics find it wherever you listen to find podcasts Yes, the harris tweeds and warren commissioners and everyone are welcome. 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