 Coming up on DTNS Mozilla 70 launches with more tracking protection Verizon gives away Disney Plus and private alternatives to Google products This is the Daily Tech news for Tuesday, October 22nd 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio feline I'm Sarah Lane and from the dark forests of Finland. I'm Patrick Beja And I'm Roger Chang the shows producer We were just talking about some of those dark forests and we were talking about the passage of time and Christmas traditions and all kinds of good things on Good Day Internet Become a member and get the expanded show at patreon.com DTNS let's start with a few tech things you should know Sources tell CNBC that Softbank is an advanced talks to take control of workspace company We work which would value we work between seven point five and eight billion dollars and give Softbank up to seventy percent Or even more control of the company last month We were canceled its plans to go public after its IPO prospectus in August revealed a nine hundred million dollar loss in the first six months of 2019 the company was reportedly going to lay off two thousand people about thirteen percent of its staff as of last week Hmm the European data protection supervisor or edps has found quote Serious concerns over the compliance of the relevant contractual terms with data protection rules and the role Microsoft and the role of Microsoft as a processor for EU institutions using its products and services Microsoft said it quote will soon announce contractual changes that will address concerns such as those raised by the edps Remember last month when we saw that leaked paper on nasa server briefly from google that uh, if if if it were you know A final paper would have indicated that the company had achieved quantum supremacy quantum supremacy being The idea that a quantum computer could perform some kind of calculation in this particular case a technique for determining random numbers In an amount of time that was reasonable compared to a classical computer taking an unreasonable or impractical amount of time however IBM researchers have proposed a method in which a classical computer could Achieve the calculation described in google's paper in a practical amount of time IBM's method would require using hard drive space so kind of like a ram disk In addition to ram and other optimizations to perform the calculation in two and a half days Rather than the 10,000 years google's method would have required google still hasn't published that paper and ibm hasn't tried their method So this is all theoretical but uh, just so you know, we don't have clear quantum supremacy achieved yet Not determined yet. All right. Damn it. Let's talk a little bit about Facebook patrick Must we I guess we must New york state attorney general leticia james announced that 31 more u.s. Attorney generals Have joined her investigation into facebook bringing the total to 47 including james the investigation seeks to Determine whether facebook's actions may have endangered consumer data reduce the quality of consumers choices Or increase the price of advertising. Yes, you got 45 states on board now, uh, as well as the district of columbia and guam Uh, I think actually I say that portorico might be in here too. I can't remember but Uh, that's pretty overwhelming. Uh, significantly california's attorney general not on board for this investigation of facebook I guess that's probably not super surprising But uh, also not surprising that all these attorneys general thought it might be good for their reelection campaigns to be seen as going out to facebook also I of course there needs to be an investigation to to make the determination But at least the first part Have they endangered consumer data? I think I know what the answer to that one is going to be Well, yes and no, I mean has there has consumer data from facebook been endangered. Oh, yes There's no debate about that. Was it facebook's fault where they negligent? That's the kind of thing this investigation has to determine I think you could make an argument facebook certainly has made the argument that yeah, I stand by my I answer well, that's you know mark zuckerberg's whole like this is the fifth realm or whatever his you know Fifth estate. Yeah fifth estate. Yeah the latest thing. It's kind of like well This is a thing that we did wrong, but it's new We're still figuring it out everybody, which is actually true. It is true Yeah, I think there are a lot of the fifth estate argument makes sense in a lot of ways The question of whether or not facebook endangered consumer data I think is separate from that and it's one of the elements of the investigation, but I think it's different. You know, many companies may or may not endanger consumer data Maybe I'm wrong. I'm surprised you're it would be the easier one to prove right. Yeah, exactly Well, speaking of another company Sometimes people think of us, you know having any trust issues But not in this sense google announced that its ai chat bot google duplex will launch in new zealand As part of a limited test to confirm holiday hours for a handful of local businesses Making this the first time that duplex has expanded even in a test outside of the u.s Google says that businesses participating in the test will receive an automated call from google Asking to confirm their hours for the upcoming labor day public holiday, which is on october 28th Those times will then be automatically updated on maps and search Well, I learned two things here one labor day is october 28th in new zealand. That's interesting But also that google wants to Be seen as reliable for these holiday hours because man when I see holiday hours on the internet right now I don't trust it. I assume that it's old or mistaken because it's so often is So if they're gonna do this if they're gonna test google duplex, which I think this is a great test automated calls Uh, it's got a limited scope helps them refine the algorithm. That's all great But at the end they need to be telling me like we just called and confirmed these hours Or I'm not going to trust it. Uh, it's because there's so often wrong Or they get this into the system on a consistent basis And you just get used to having reliable holiday hours over, you know, maybe not today But how do we get to the point where we know that they are reliable? Right? That's my question because they're always reliable If you're using google, but if I never trust them, then I'll never know whether they're reliable No, that's true But if there's some sort of like, you know check mark or star or whatever, you know Where it's like google duplex has verified this and you you know, we get to the point where it's like more and more It's like, okay. That that's great. That's you know, that was a vetting process that we all believe in then, you know That would be helpful Yes, but if they do it well enough, they don't even need the the check to say not oh sure, you know the others are not super reliable, but this one is And over time you just don't even need the check mark. You just Think that google's data is reliable I would like to live in that candyland world you are describing, but i'm not sure how which Well in a couple of years if uh duplex and other methods are Used consistently and efficiently we might we might tom be optimistic thinking of the future patrick I want to complain about right now Okay, fair enough live in the now man Mozilla launched firefox 70 for windows mac linux android and ios cross the board You're getting new social tracking protection Which blocks cross site tracking cookies from sites like facebook twitter and linkedin Firefox has been doing a lot of tracking protection natively within the browser So you didn't even have to use like a privacy badger or no script or anything like that But now they're expanding it to include social networks a privacy protections report will now let you see How many trackers both the normal trackers and the social trackers Fingerprints and crypto miners that firefox has blocked for you So you can track the trackers basically is what the rott pointed out that means firefox's password management service lock wise now has a password generator And we'll feed some data into the firefox monitor to alert you if one of your accounts may have been involved in a breach It'll say like oh there's been a breach at this account Would you like to check and see if your account was was part of that The green lock icon in the address bar is now gray to sort of de-emphasize You know to kind of say like hey a secure site should be normal. So gray, right? And now an insecure http and ftp connection will show a red cross out logo to say like you shouldn't be trusting this connection firefox 70 also strips the path information from the http referer sent to trackers that If you do get tracked we'll give them less information to go on and on the performance side On windows web render is rolling out running on integrated intel graphics and compositor updates on macOS should speed things up and reduce power consumption there You know interesting ux to to have gone from that sort of green check mark to the gray And you might go well, yeah green means go isn't that good? But that is it's a it's a subtle but important distinction Right because everything is supposed to be secure if for some reason it isn't that's when you get a flag Uh, and I think that that's I don't know it's smart on whoever's you know behind the design team on firefox but all in all these features are They're rock solid. Uh, I you know I talked on the show yesterday about uh browsers being one of those things that I drag my feet on the very most Just because there's such a big part of my daily existence and my work and everything that I fear change But uh, but I used to use firefox and this might be what's taken me back Yeah, my my reaction to this is is there a reason not to use firefox? And I say this as someone who doesn't use firefox as my primary browser, but There's no reason not to use it I mean unless there's a site you use that doesn't work well in firefox, right? Which there there are examples of that and that that's true of a lot of browsers like well I'd use it, but it doesn't work well in chrome for whatever reason That's the only thing I can think of it is zippity fast on mac os now. That is a technical term that I use Usually I only use that term with brand new browsers like when vivaldi first came out or edge for chromium first came out because Browsers that are brand new are always fast because they haven't had time to build up things in the code Right when they're built from scratch firefox feels like it was built from scratch right now So, yeah, I have switched. I I am using firefox 70 right now as we speak Well, if only I didn't have so many darn chrome tabs that are really nice Over cross platform Devices that I have you can use firefox sync and get your tabs cross platform Fine All right. That's true. All right. We can't I don't know I don't know why I I don't use it But for some reason, you know, it's really the I guess it is a an example of the importance of getting that market share on browsers because people if I don't switch as a tech enthusiast then And Normal people certainly won't well It's one of those things where when I when I decided to move all my tabs over to firefox I was like, ah, this is going to be a pain. It wasn't You know, I logged into google for my google drive and then gmail and everything else was fine It's it's a mental barrier more than an actor. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah Well talking about google google fi connects to three lte providers sprint t-mobile and us cellular Depending on which one it thinks is the fastest up until now it had to disconnect briefly to switch Starting with the pixel 4 a new feature called dual connect will let google fi Make the switch without the disconnect claiming you could watch a video during the switch and not see a blip google uses dual sim dual standby a k a d s d s to have two connections happen at once both to google fi So you'll need a physical fi sim along with a the e sim in your pixel 4 The feature will roll out to pixel 4s over the next few weeks and eventually come to other fi compatible phones This is a little bit geeky for sure And it's not as cool as dual sim dual active which would actually bind the bandwidth together and give you a faster connection Which probably the carriers are not too happy with google doing which is probably why they haven't used dsda But dsds is a great way to make that seamless now granted if i'm watching a video There's all kinds of things that could make it screw up So i'm sure someone's going to be doing this and go hey, i've made my video screw up But you know theoretically it should be able to do seamless connections like that Which is which is really good and and and something that will make fi even more attractive I've always been Something of a fan of google fi Just because of the fact that it has a pretty straightforward billing situation and has international Roaming and also the the ability to go on multiple networks at once like that Well, this is the sort of thing where you know, you have explained what google is doing to make Something like watching a video more seamless But for somebody who doesn't really understand what's going on under the hood You would just say i don't know google fi is like mostly fine But sometimes there's these like weird blips and i don't know, you know And so that is this this is just like one more reason that someone would say. Oh, yeah. No, this is like a legitimate Solid uh connection option. I used to have these weird blips, but I guess they they don't happen anymore. It's great. Yeah This would be why I I wonder why google fi has not expanded beyond I guess it's only the us, right? But they do have roaming Internationally. Yeah, I'm I wonder if it's just the the the complexity of becoming an mvno and in other countries That they just don't want to have to deal with that's a good question. Yes. Yeah Could I could one I guess there's a limit to what you can roam internationally? You have to make deals with everybody. Yeah, no, sorry. I meant could one could a european get to google fi Uh account and then use them in europe But it's a lot of trouble because then you have to you have to make sure that google will give you the account You know, so they have to think you're of an american Which might be distasteful to some I have no idea Well speaking of connectivity verizon will give all new and existing verizon wireless customers also new fios customers And new 5g home internet customers of verizon's a year of disney plus for free when the service launches on november 12th disney plus is six dollars and 99 cents per month on its own with tv shows and movies from disney marvel pixar Star wars and others we've talked about disney plus quite a bit on the show But uh, yeah, if you're a verizon customer get it for free I'm a verizon customer. I'm looking forward to it because i'm not sure I would have paid for it Otherwise not because I don't think it's a great service just because you know, I kind of have that service fatigue where I'm like, well I pay for other things. I I don't know if I need this but but getting me in for a year If it's a good enough service if it's if the platform is solid Then for seven dollars in a year from now, I'll be like, yeah, no, I need that um Two things first of all, I would pay multiples of the seven bucks to get access to this service Which I guess is coming to europe at some point Yeah, it's already in the netherlands right now. They got there. Yeah, that's the test and it's just in I'm just saying europe got it first patrick I I guess what I'm hearing is that I could move to the netherlands and I will consider it No, I think you get it on november 12th. I don't know if it's in finland per se, but there are plenty of european countries getting at november 12 right No, wait, no, no, no, no I don't think so, uh, I i'm pretty sure maybe it's the uk we can check that but uh, I think it's very few european countries if Maybe the uk and that's it Um But I would pay more and sarah within a year It might be more expensive because there's no way that the service is going to remain at that price, right, right? I just think I think it's you know, it's smart and you know, we're seeing more and more of these You know, this carrier has decided to you know, give you some sort of either a you know, a free or a Or a discounted option of this platform because the two companies had made a deal, you know ahead of time In order to get customers uh, you know To to make us feel like we yeah like we we we are dependent on on on these platforms for certain content And maybe it will be the case and maybe it won't I mean, there's so much competition right now But I do think it's it's smart of, you know, Verizon's kind of like hey, you know, we'll take one for the team here I Mean t-mobile has done a t-mobile Tuesday thing Where they gave away mlb.tv access the past two years I haven't paid for mlb.tv the past two years because i'm a t-mobile subscriber You mentioned the quibi thing With t-mobile. So these platforms what's interesting is instead of zero rating They're going for like just giving you things for free As a way to entice you onto your platform, uh, which yeah, I I agree I I think that's a much better way to go and it's not unlike When I my service now, which it's gonna change because i'm about to move but I use uh Comcast is my provider right now and you know, I was on a one-year really great internet speed plan Knowing that after the year it was all gonna go up But you know, that's that this is a very common industry practice that people use all the time Whether or not they stay is you know, that's up to them But it it gets you dependent on You know some sort of a business for something that you use in your everyday life and then you end up saying I'll have to pay you now or I have to pay you more now. Okay Yeah, no, it's good for disney plus for sure Uh patrick the the most important part of this story is that both of us get to say we're right It is launching in europe Only in the netherlands on november 12th because they already have it as part of the preview Comes to australia new zealand on november 19th, and then western europe Gets it in 20 the first half of 2020 eastern europe first half of 2021 latin america first half of 2021 asian pacific throughout 2020 and 2021 So yeah, not not launching everywhere november 12th, but it is eventually coming to most parts of the world. Yeah There yeah, I'm not gonna say what it was gonna say Folks if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines dot com Ed bot at zd net has an article up called how to replace each google service with a more privacy friendly alternative Ed bought of course a a great tech reporter and and tech pundit For many many years, and I thought we would be It would thought it'd be fun to just look over ed suggestions and maybe make a few of our own here Now we'll start with mobile os where he says well you have apple That's your choice If you don't want an iphone then you're stuck on android and and that's not 100 true There are a few other very small operating systems out there and and you can find those and and dig them up But they don't have wide support. They don't have wide development for the apps so he's he's sort of Mostly right of like well if you want the complete range of of services and apps available You're probably stuck between android and ios, right? Yeah, I like his approach. He's essentially talking to regular people who want to get actual viable alternatives not the Privacy obsessed geek maybe in our circles Who wants the best somebody who's willing to live with just web versions of things because they're like I want to live on sailfish. That's all I want to do. Yeah And and I I think it's a good thing to point out that it's easy We have to read these headlines and we might even say this ourselves, you know Well ios says it's more secure or private, but look at this that happened. Ha ha you don't really realize that if you use Facebook or whatever service then apple doesn't protect you from that. So is it really more secure? Well, yes, it's more private and on the os level, of course, you can always screw things up on top of it, but overall the Apple os is more respectful of your privacy than android and you know, it's almost it's also more pricey. There are trade-offs, but You can just send those emails straight to patrick, uh for that statement But I will back you up. I mean send them to edbot. Yeah, I mean apple Apple android can be just as private as apple. You have to work harder to do that's kind of my take on it Uh, apple makes it easier for average people. Like you said, uh to do that browser wise. He recommends edge The chromium beta. He says it's pretty stable. Even though it's a beta He's like, don't use the edge that's on windows right now Get the new one that is built on the chromium engine and he loves the simple tracking protection Now i'm a big fan of the firefox tracking protection, but it's kind of the same thing as android, which is I I am I want that extra control and that extra data that firefox gives me now firefox makes it really simple Uh, but microsoft makes it if microsoft interface on edge might be Even more attractive to people who otherwise might not worry about their privacy Yeah, it it sounds like to me from what I understand. He is recommending edge four is Firefox 70 it's they're kind of neck and neck same idea. Definitely. Definitely. Um What about search? Uh, he points out that bing is really your only major competitor to google But duck duck go uses the bing results as well as results from other search engines It does an amalgamation of them. So you get the best of bing plus and duck duck go Uh, you it's not perfect people have shown where it's like well, they don't protect privacy in this way They don't protect privacy in that way, but boy, do they protect it more than your google search It would be easy for me to say Oh, please, you know, i'm not going to use google search I mean it is it is now a verb that is part of the vernacular of the entire world However, we have enough people in our audience certainly Who use duck duck go and swear by it that I know that it is not like Some crappy search engine that you're using just because you don't want to use google. It's actually a very good button Yeah, I use it every day. It's my default search engine on my phone. There you go I've been using uh quant which is actually a french search engine Um, and it's it's fine. You know, I still default back to not default, but I still go back to google Every once in a while, but I've been using quant As yeah, like sometimes I I think google might be a little bit more, um, complete but For if even if you use your default search engine Most of the time and then if you really want something specific you go to google then Um, it's you're better Protecting your privacy. Of course I do all of this in chrome. So it's kind of moot, but it's not even completion It's almost like a flavor of search. There's a certain flavor of search that I know google is better at It usually has to do with like immediacy like oh They're gonna have Great example is uh rise of skywalker trailer breakdown Uh, I used google for that search because I knew they were on it faster than duck duck go would be But I always go into duck duck go use the bang g command Which then sends my search to google without any of my identifying information on it So I'm using google, but I'm protecting my information Uh, anyway, edbott's got other, uh, great recommendations over there Line two as an alternative to google voice outlook.com. He argues is is better than gmail Points out, you know office 365 dropbox box, etc As alternatives to google drive. He doesn't really have a good alternative for google photos or youtube But let's finish with his maps recommendation where he says hey folks get over it apple maps is good now You know one of the Apple maps has been a you know a punching bag of maps apps For some time with good reason when it first launched it was lackluster compared to Alternatives google maps being of course that you know kind of frontrunner Because I have been using carplay so much with my card now that that that does um support it When I'm you know, I can I can use google maps or ways or I could use whatever maps app That carplay is is compatible with if I want but if I'm using siri That's what is going to launch and so just because I'm not always thinking about it as a default I do end up using it quite a bit and I'll tell you It hasn't really led me astray the way that it used to it It does seem like a pretty solid product at this point at least in the u.s At least in my neighborhood or you know where I'm going That's what I was going to say. I'm not sure how Much better it is than it was before outside of the u.s It seems fine, but on something that is tangential Opening hours we were talking about in a good day internet I just had a bad experience Week ago because I was using apple maps, but on the map side. I think it's on par on the actual navigation side. Yeah Well, thanks everybody who participates in our sub reddit Sometimes we talk about navigation there. Sometimes we talk about other things you can submit stories and vote others At daily tech news show reddit.com. We're also on facebook join our group facebook.com slash groups slash daily tech news show All right, let's check in with chris christensen our amateur traveler Who's back with a handy app to help you find your next scooter rental? This is chris christensen from amateur traveler If you like using scooters to get around town things like bird lift Lime spin jump, etc But one of the things you don't like is that you have to use a number of different apps to find scooters Then there is an app for you and that app is scooter map dot com That app will help you find scooters and put them on a map for a number of different Companies that do rental scooters So if you like scooters get scooter map dot com i'm chris christensen from amateur traveler But will it help you find scooter lane? Hold hard to say Well, we're using apple maps. No All right, we got time for one quick email. Let's check out the mailbag Uh go to mon on patreon actually was responding regarding tom's recent differential privacy special episode that we ran on October just over a week ago. October 15th. Yes Go to mon said my girlfriend is in grad school and was telling me about a class where they learn about k anonymity And because I listened to this episode I was able to engage in a meaningful conversation and come off looking impressive. So thanks for what you do Yeah, I think it was the epsilon uh the epsilon stuff that I talked about on differential privacy came in handy that I love I love that that is what we want to do. We want to make you feel like hey, wait a minute I know this uh when you're in a conversation about technology. So I'm very very glad to hear that and uh folks If you missed that differential privacy episode like we said, october 15th. It's there at daily tech news show dot com Shout out to our patrons at the master and grand master levels including jeff wilks sonia vining and ken haze Thanks everybody. Also. Thanks to patrick beijer for being with us today patrick. What is new in your world? I guess uh everything all the time, but in particular Go check out the latest episode of pixels, which was recorded just a few days ago If you want to learn more about what's been happening with blizzard and china and gaming in general, we do a Significant discussion about all of this go into the different aspects And uh, I think you will come out understanding a little bit more about it than you did before That show is called pixels and you can find it anywhere you find podcasts And also i'm not patrick on twitter Folks i'm so excited uh that we're just over a week uh from the new patreon rewards being delivered I I I I can't wait to sit down on november 1st and figure out like okay, here's what I do Here's how I get to send to hear the new people. Uh, so if you want to be one of those Patreon.com slash dtns and don't forget if you're Starting at the two dollar level if if you're at the dollar level you won't get this You need to be at the two dollar level by november 1st to get a pdf copy of the official dtns Good day internet cookbook two dollars or more. Uh anybody above gets it as well So sign up right now patreon.com slash dtns If you heard anything in the show and thought ah, wow, I really want to give this some feedback I have some thoughts about this or that or the other thing feedback at daily tech new show.com is where to send those emails We're also live monday through friday at 4 30 p.m. Eastern. That's 20 30 utc for limited time Anyway, find out more at daily tech new show.com just live This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frogpants.com