 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you including Ken Hayes, Phillip Shane and Paul Boyer. Coming up on DTNS, why are UK folks cancelling streaming services is in person shopping, beating online shopping, and you are now free to scrape public websites? Is that a good thing? This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, April 19th, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. And joining us, Bloomberg Tech editor and host of The Tech's Message podcast, Nate Langston, welcome back. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for being here. We have got some good stuff to talk about. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Smart Home provider Insteon appears to have shut down its servers. Multiple outlets, including Stacey on IoT, reports that users are saying their Insteon hubs have stopped working as of last Friday. Insteon has not tweeted since last June, and multiple executives at the company no longer listed or its parent company Smart Labs on their LinkedIn profiles. Several even listed 2022 end dates. Insteon devices do have local control features, but cloud services needed for integrations with Amazon and Google. The Insteon app is no longer working, which makes it difficult to change settings. It does look like they fired everyone and closed the company and shut down the servers. Very curious how that all plays out. Wise launched a $70 motorized deadbolt lock with fingerprint scanning, keypad code, or you can unlock it using the app. And if you're like, I have not forgiven wise for its lack of security updates for older cameras, wise would like you to know this lock is not cloud based. The new lock uses Bluetooth to set up codes and configure the fingerprint. All the data is stored locally. It can handle 20 access codes and 50 fingerprints and run 10 to 12 months on two AA batteries because of that. It, however, cannot integrate with automated routines or be controlled by voice assistants. But hey, the upside is way smaller surface area to attack. Logitech has launched the lift vertical ergonomic mouse with a 57 degree vertical design meant to keep your wrist in a more natural position. It's also more compact than the MX vertical designed for people with small but mighty hands. You can use it with Bluetooth or with the bolt USB a receiver that can be stored in the battery compartment runs for up to two years on a AA battery. The Logitech lift vertical ergonomic mouse is available for $70 and three colors for righties, but only graphite for us Southpaws. The Verge brings us the good news that graphics card prices have dropped an average of 30% in the past three months. The most popular GPUs are only selling for $200 to $300 over MSRP, which is a lot less than it was. And in fact, used in video RTX 3080TI or AMD RX 6900 XT are selling for less than the original asking price, which is what used items usually do. Shops are not immediately selling out of cards anymore, especially if their sale price is high. So you can actually get cards. The effect is even spreading to game consoles to Xbox Series S is selling at sticker price. And the series X is only selling for around $50 above its sticker price. Only the PS5 is still holding on to its inflated value for now and prices are expected to continue to fall as demand is dropping, supplies are catching up and in general because of inflation consumer sentiment is falling. People aren't spending as much money. So GPUs inflation fighter protocol reports that Amazon is looking to hire a number of people for an unannounced AR slash VR product, including senior positions for computer vision scientists, designers, program managers, product managers, researchers, technologists. One of those job listings includes the description, you will develop an advanced XR research concept into a magical and useful new to world consumer product part of a greenfield development effort that will include developing code for early prototypes through mass production. Magical. Can't wait. Wait, is that a dig at Magic Leap? All right, let's talk a little more about that streaming subscription number that came out of the UK. Let's do it. Streaming subscriptions are shrinking in the UK. A survey from Cantar showed that the number of UK households with at least one streaming service fell in Q1 for the first time by 215,000. That still leaves 58% of households or around 16.9 million subscribed. So still a lot of people are using streaming, but the number fall on average, each household subscribes to 2.4 services, but it is significant that the overall number fell. Cantar said Netflix and Amazon services were the last to go when households cut back. Apple TV plus did buck the trend raising its subscriber share to 9.2%. That is its highest point yet about a third of cancellations were attributed to the need to save money. So what price would be better? Well, fandom put out its annual state of streaming report and among the questions it asked users of the platform was how much they thought they should pay for streaming. It's not a surprise that they all said, let's pay less. The average overall was $7.46 per month. However, some services were valued more than others. Netflix was valued the highest at $10.60 per month, followed by HBO Max at $9.30 per month and Peacock was the least valued at $5.50. The report also recommended ways to retain subscribers, including leaning into genre strengths and value ads as well as super serving customers beyond the screen. For instance, 73% of fans would justify the cost of a streaming service if it gave them exclusives like behind the scenes content, as well as merchandise and collectibles. Now, before we get into how streaming services might keep customers, Nate, where do you think they're turning to? Are they going back to the BBC? Are they going over the air? Is it Sky News subscription or some ad-supported services like a Pluto TV or something like that? Yeah. I mean, the BBC has got a very compelling offering here because the iPlayer is included with everyone who pays a license fee, which is basically everyone who has a television in Britain because it's the law. And there are a lot of very good shows on iPlayer, both new and old box sets. If you want to go and watch all the Doctor Who's, for instance, you just go to iPlayer and they're there ad-free in HD and many, many others. I also have fallen into this category because I've cancelled subscriptions this year, partly to do with the overall cost, but also just kind of having a bit of a step purge of everything that we're paying every month for. There's only so many hours in the day and we just didn't need all of these streaming services. I personally watch almost no Netflix. I know that might sound strange, but I've increased the amount that I spend on an audible subscription because I read significantly more. So we've got rid of Disney Plus, we've got rid of Apple TV, but then there was a new season of The Morning Show that we wanted to watch, so I resubscribed to Apple TV. And then I thought, well, there's actually a trick here. You just wait for the seasons to finish and then go back to that service and watch them all in one month. And that way you can sort of just every month, you just change which service you're on and while you're never, therefore, bang up to date with everybody, I mean, who cares? There's other things to talk about in the world like the weather and podcasting. It's not like there's anything illegal about doing that. Not everyone's going to. It's a rolling contract. So why not? And that's worked really, really well. I mean, yes, it doesn't save huge amounts, but psychologically, it's a massive saving. I think they don't mind spreading the word on that either if it gets people to try them because while everyone thinks they will be as responsible as Nate and cancel at the end of the month and sign up for the new thing, most people aren't. Most people forget. Most people don't stay on top of it, don't prioritize it, mostly because, as you said, there are other things to think about. There are other things to talk about. So getting people in the idea of like, yeah, I'll just sign up to binge this and then cancel isn't bad for the streaming services. My interpretation of what's going on here is we had the phase where everybody was creating streaming services because nobody really knew where we were going with them and what would work. Then we had the phase of everybody signing up because they felt like they had to have everything. And now people have realized, okay, I don't think I need this one or I can do what Nate's doing and just sign up when I need to watch something and then cancel or just rejecting ones. You're like, yeah, it's not really for me. I think we're going to continue to see streaming services differentiate themselves to try to hold on to core audiences. And we'll see a few streaming services go out of business because of this. But this is a natural phase. It is. And one very, very quick thing that I will just throw out there that's quite specific to the UK right now is that energy bills have risen by about 50% this month across the entire country. And so ever since the beginning of the year when this was announced, everyone's been like, okay, how do we save some money? Otherwise, we will literally have no money left at all. So that's, it's an easy thing to cut. Real quick before we, oh, sorry, go ahead. Oh, no, I was just going to say you're going to see other pressures like that, not even just from energy, but from general inflation in lots of parts of the world. Before we move on to our next topic, Tom talked about the UK subscription numbers a little bit more with Charlotte Henry on her podcast at the addition. Check it out at the addition.substack.com. Yeah, that was a fun conversation. High Q Labs uses public data to analyze employee attrition, attrition meaning like employees leaving a company, which employees retain their, which companies retain their employees, which which don't. As part of its data collection strategy, it scraped public data from LinkedIn to estimate how many people are reporting on LinkedIn that they're joining or leaving various companies. It only access data made public by users. The same thing you or I could access by just go into LinkedIn.com in our browser. However, it did it in an automated way. So it was able to take in a lot more data than you or I would be able to if we just went there in our browsers. LinkedIn's terms of service, however, prohibit such automated scraping of data unless you're on their whitelist Google, for example, is on the whitelist because they want search engines to index the public stuff. High Q was not. So in 2017, LinkedIn blocked High Q from accessing its site and followed a lawsuit. LinkedIn argued that High Q had violated the US computer fraud and abuse act. That act, among other things, prohibits accessing computer systems without authorization. And LinkedIn argued that High Q was not authorized to scrape data. The Ninth Circuit Court, however, ruled in favor of High Q in 2019, noting that the CFA does not prohibit a company from scraping data that is publicly accessible on the Internet. The court wrote that, quote, there is little evidence that LinkedIn users who choose to make their profiles maintain an expectation of privacy with respect to the information that they post publicly. In other words, we don't see any evidence that when someone posted on the Internet, they didn't expect anyone to scrape it. LinkedIn appealed that decision to the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, but they took a privilege that the court has to refer it back for a retry with instructions. So they asked the Ninth Court to re-hear the case in light of a June 2021 ruling by the Supreme Court. That ruling found that a person cannot be found to have violated the CFAA if they improperly access data on a computer they have permission to use. That was the case where a Georgia police sergeant took money in exchange for accessing the license plate database. Justice Barrett wrote the majority opinion stating that while the sergeant plainly flouted the police department's rules, he did not violate the CFAA. Justice Barrett wrote that a broad interpretation of the CFAA as prohibiting exceeding authorization would apply criminal penalties to, quote, a breathtaking amount of commonplace computer activity, you know, like browsing the web. The justice said that when a computer or website's gates are up and therefore information is publicly accessible, no authorization is required. So you may say, like, why did they send it back to the Ninth if they agreed with the decision? They wanted this precedent to be included in the new decision. It was buttoning it up even more. The Ninth Court reaffirmed its earlier decision, now bolstered by that Supreme Court precedent, saying that the concept of without authorization does not apply to public websites. LinkedIn is, of course, disappointed with this decision, pointed out that this is still a preliminary ruling and said it plans to keep on fighting. Now, the court is likely going to look at LinkedIn and go, you lost twice. Even though it's preliminary, we don't see a need to do it all over again. So this is a good example of using the wrong law to apply to a situation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that LinkedIn should join the EFF in pushing Congress and state legislatures to adopt consumer and biometric privacy laws that would prohibit scraping people's sensitive information without their consent. But the EFF says, but the CFAA wasn't designed to do that. So you shouldn't be using that as your legal crutch. So Nate, I know that's a long conversation, but in the end, we're basically saying the CFAA should be limited. That's what the U.S. Court has found. And if you're going to stop people from scraping things, well, you need to come up with a new law. Do you think there should be a law? I know this is a U.S. case, but in the U.K. as well, maybe. It's a U.S. law, but it's a global issue. And I think part of the problem comes down to the fact that laws tend not to keep up with the pace of technology. So whatever you legislate for today, often by the time it comes into force and is of practical use to lawmakers, the technology has already advanced and moved further anyway. I don't think that necessarily means that you shouldn't draw up new legislation to prevent a problem occurring if there is actual detrimental effect on websites or services being impacted. For instance, it's not great if you are scraping small websites and it's actually impacting their server load or their user base, or it's allowing for ads to not be displayed if they're reliant on page views and display advertising, things like that, then it feels like a more legitimate case there. But actually, if you're just scraping data and there is not really any material harm, then I don't really see why that should be illegal unless it's being used for outright commercial purposes in a way that would violate some other issue. But I tend not to lean on legislation as being the solution for any of these sorts of problems, at least not initially. Yeah, go ahead, sir. Yeah, I was just going to say that I think most of our audience is like, yeah, of course, if something's public on LinkedIn, these sorts of things are going to happen. And if they shouldn't happen, then yeah, there needs to be legislature that covers it in a better way than the CFAA was designed to do, I suppose. But I think there's still a lot of folks who go, wait a second. That data is not supposed to go anywhere else. So it's just a good reminder that some things are under lock and key and many things are not. And things like job information on a site like LinkedIn is very valuable information for a lot of companies. Now, it didn't involve the law in this case, but there was a lot of uproar when companies were scraping publicly available images of folks and making facial recognition database. Again, not a computer fraud and abuse act situation. Computer fraud and abuse act should be I hacked into a computer I wasn't supposed to. And that's what Justice Barrett affirmed was like, this is not overuse of your authority to use a computer. That should be a different law. This is, did I break in? And I'm glad that that's been clarified. But, you know, you're all everyone's fine with public scraping until there's a public scraping case they don't like. And so I think there does need to be some careful consideration of when is automated so much more efficient at getting this data than you or I would be publicly, that there is a legitimate difference and how does the law account for that in a way that doesn't isn't tailored to a specific thing. You can make a law against scraping facial recognition, but if somebody will come up with some other thing, you're like, ah, well, we didn't think about that. So there needs to be some kind of principle that just says scraping at this level or scraping this kind of information, personal information without consent, something like that maybe would go into a legislation. Well, folks, if you've thought of the answer to this, please email us. We would like to hear it. Actually email your local representative or MP as well. But our email address, we don't know theirs. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Back in the early days of COVID-19 lockdowns, you know, good old 2020, or now if you're in Shanghai, there was a lot of discussion about how so many people staying at home might shift the balance permanently to e-commerce. Obviously e-commerce saw a huge rise and at some point people returning to the outside world was going to swing things back to the physical. No matter how much of a swing it would be, it was going to happen. We have some data showing it might be a little bit bigger swing than some of you may have suspected. The Wall Street Journal's overview shows that MasterCard reports this March was the first month since November 2013 that e-commerce sales declined on the year. Now they're only down 3.3 percent and you could argue that they spiked so much during the pandemic. Of course they're going to go down. Meanwhile, sales at brick and mortar rose 11.2 percent in the same month. The U.S. Census Bureau data reports that in Q4 2021, the estimated percentage of e-commerce sales as portions of retail fell to 12.9 percent. That was down from a peak of 15.7 percent and roughly keeping in line with pre-pandemic growth of e-commerce. So it does seem like it's a swing back to the normal. Anecdotally companies like Dick's Sporting Good and Best Buy are seeing online sales fall while in-store sales are balancing things out or in Best Buy's case actually increasing their revenue. And it's not just that people have stopped shopping. Monthly visits to indoor malls grew almost 17 percent in March over February. Open-air marketplaces roughly 18 to 26 percent and for the first time since 2017, retailers opened more physical stores than they closed. First time since 2017. So really changing some trends that were going the other way before COVID even existed. Is it just that people are dying to get back out of the house into the real world? Is this going to level back out? Is it a problem with supply chains that makes it more satisfying to actually look at what's on the shelf than to go through the cart only to find out it's out of stock? Is inflation having an effect? And people just feel better like maybe they can get a better deal if they shop around in person than clicking about online where you're not sure if you're actually seeing the right price. Nate, what do you think? What's your guess on this? Well, obviously, I mean, not being a qualified economist or expert in economic trends, you can safely discount everything I'm about to say because it is from a position of complete ignorance, at least academically speaking. But with that caveat, helpfully put to one side, I think you raise a really interesting point about whether there is essentially that novelty effect that we are now so used to not being allowed to have gone out and mingled and met in a mall, that actually there is an overwhelming urge and a disproportionate urge compared to pre-pandemic levels to want to go and do that. And if that's the case, then it's probably just too early to tell whether that is a trend that's actually going to stick. But I do think it's a really interesting one. The other side is whether basically when you break out what people are buying, for instance, in the UK at least clothing, sales are still trending so much towards online versus the high street that it is expected that this year, according to some studies I researched earlier before the show, that this year, the UK will be the first European country where online clothing sales outsell high street and bricks and mortar stores. And that'll be the first time it's happened in a European country. And that's despite trends going in very similar ways to what we've seen in the United States. So I do think that there are several factors here. I do think obviously overall, other economic factors, whether it's impacts from things like the war in Ukraine, whether it's COVID, whether it's, you know, extended lockdowns and supply chain stuff, meaning there are a few things for people who want to buy. There are a lot of things going on, which is to say that I kind of feel that we need to look at these on a three year versus three year basis rather than year over year or even quarter over quarter. But I also just, I just don't see the high street and bricks and mortar stores going away because they are so much more convenient. And right now, there's loads of empty ones that people can snap up for a bargain price. And that's certainly been happening in the UK as well. And as you've noted, that's been happening in the US as well. So there is loads of factors. It means it's super interesting, but I don't honestly think we're going to get any definitive conclusions on this at least for another 12 months is my massively ignorant opinion on what's happening. It's not ignorant. It's a very good opinion. Yeah, I just speaking from personal experience, when we were in more of a lockdown part of COVID, not that the pandemic is over, certainly, certainly not. But when things were really a lot more shut down, I could with a few exceptions, I could live my life out of my little cottage, everything could be delivered to me, pretty much anything I wanted. And that was a great thing. And it made a lot of sense. I don't want to live that life, though. I can, if necessary, but I like being out in the world. And I think a lot of other folks, you look at the mall numbers, people just, they just kind of want to walk around and be around other people, and see colors and browse items. And that's pretty normal. Just because it got taken away for some period of time doesn't mean that you people don't want to go back to what they consider normal. Yeah, I feel like we, we aren't great as a species that really understanding what we really want. And COVID forced us to say like, Oh, if you wanted everything to be online, here's what it would be like. And so we learned, Oh, this these sorts of things are great for me and it's going to be different for different people. But these sorts of things are great online. These sorts of things I really did not enjoy having to buy online. And now I want to go find those things in the real world. So I think we're going to have a situation where physical retail is going to be more long lasting and worthwhile than people were guessing when everyone was like, Oh, e-commerce is eventually going to take over the world and high streets will be empty. I don't think that's going to happen because we figured out faster than we would have otherwise what we want the in store for. And you're seeing stores like Best Buy who are like, we're making it more of a showroom, but it's also bringing in more revenue than it did before. We don't, we don't have to stock everything single thing anymore. We just have to stock the things people want to buy in person and we're learning what those are. Well, Reuters reports that Japanese researchers at Meiji University in conjunction with beverage maker Kieran Holdings have developed computerized chopsticks that enhance salty tastes. You might say, what? Why? Well, it could potentially help people who need to reduce sodium in their diets. The device uses a weak electrical current to transmit sodium ions from food through the chopsticks that, you know, are obviously going in your mouth on some level to your taste buds and eventually creating a sense of saltiness. Meiji University professor Homei Miyashita told Reuters, this is super fascinating to me. I am not a lover of overly salted food. In fact, it does not agree with me. So I avoid it, but I like the taste of sodium in moderation. I, you know, medical stuff aside, just sort of for personal preference, I can't wait to try this at some point. That's what I thought I would say about when that was, there was a company exhibiting at CES a vibrating fork that told you if you were eating too quickly. And I always thought I can't wait to try that. And then I realized that it was a stupid idea. And I can't figure out whether this is another case of that or if this is actually a really good idea. Because it sounds funny, but then the way you describe it actually makes it sound really quite useful to the people who would need it. But looking at the photograph, it's sort of a pair of chopsticks with a wire and what looks like a very, very large Fitbit or Apple Watch strap to the gentleman's wrist. And I just think that is not convenient. That is a use once never repeat sort of product, a bit like the vibrating fork was. So I'd love to know if someone actually uses this. Well, this is a prototype, I would guess. Like there's got to be some nicer design that they could do. I imagine that they could, if this works, that's my question. Does it really taste salty or do you're like, or is it a cool demo where you're like, Oh my gosh, it almost is like a taste saltier. But then over time, you're like, it's not really working. I need actual salt. Because if it really does taste saltier and you can't really tell the difference, put this thing in spoons and forks and chopsticks and whatever else you could think of. Because it would lower salt intake. And we can have a debate of whether salt is really the cause of high blood pressure or not. There's some conflicting results. But salt intake reduction is still something that doctors recommend constantly. And so it's a concern for a lot of people. Yeah. Alright, let's check out the mailbag. What did we get wrong yesterday? Oh, well, so we were talking about QR codes on jerseys for University of Central Florida's football team. And Brian wrote in and said, I just want to note that UCF only wore the QR code jerseys for their spring game and intrasquad scrimmage jerseys with QR codes would not be legal for intramural play since the NCAA requires numbers on the front and the back of the jersey. Thank you for your understanding, Brian, and your gentle correction. We appreciate it. We said it was a spring game. But I don't know why it didn't sink in that it's like, oh, if they're playing in the spring, obviously, this is an intramural game. Because yeah, that makes sense. And then that gives them the latitude to not care if people can't see the number because it's just for scrimmage for practice. Makes sense. Jerry wrote in about other forms of geocoding based on our what three words convo we had with Patrick Norton last week, Nate. I don't know if you caught that because I know you're interested in this as well. Jerry says, while not quite as pretty as what three words, the plus codes system has been around for a long time. It's baked into Google Maps and readily available to many folks just tap a place on Google Maps to drop a pin. And the plus code will show up. For example, the plus code for a state park nearby is Q six V seven plus F two Q Granger, Iowa. That is a particular spot near the river and not the street address or a shelter. In most cases, you can even just get away with the code and leave off the city and state. I mean, it's a good idea. And it was a good idea when Google came up with it about 10 years ago. I think it was 10 years ago. And I think it was Google. But essentially, you can't pronounce any of those words. So it's fundamentally useless. The whole idea of what three words is that you can say three words over a phone. And you can say, dude, where are you? Oh, I'm a dude. I'm here. I don't know if that's a place. And and they'll find it. And I've used it admittedly once ever. But I used it once when I was trying to meet someone for a dog walk near a canal where I live and she gone to the wrong bridge and there was a what three word sign someone had stuck on the fence. I said I'm at this place and it worked and she found us. And it was brilliant. It doesn't justify all the investments. Just use it at once. But I wrote a feature about it for business week a couple of years ago and learned a lot about the company. So definitely does work. Yeah, I I Jerry is on the edge of falling for the like, that's not a new idea analysis, which nothing ever is. You can always find another idea. So so but I think it is interesting to know that there was an earlier attempt at this. I think what three words is a better attempt. There might still be another better attempt coming. But yes, the idea of small codes associated with smaller parcels of land for precise instruction isn't the new part of what three words. It's the like, let's use three words because that's easy to remember and easy to pass along. I just I thought what three words did predate the because it's the open may have actually I don't I don't well see I feel like it did but I need to check. Yeah, anyway. All right. Well, thank you, Jerry, though, for reminding us about plus codes. Appreciate that. And thanks to everybody who writes in keep those emails coming. Also, thanks to you, Nate Langston for being with us today. Let folks know where you do your things. Yeah, well, I drop well actually is on all my listeners every week on text message UK tech show dot com, except for the last two weeks, because we haven't done an episode because I was busy being either ill or at a wedding for my brother. But we're back next week, this coming weekend. So go to UK tech show dot com, hit subscribe and just prepare for us to drop a zinger of an episode. Is that how the correct usage of that word? Sure. Yeah, that's great. Great. Don't know what it means, but we're going to drop one. It just means zing. Great. It's going to be that but for 30 minutes and British can't wait. Sounds awesome. Well, thanks for being with us today. We also want to extend a special thanks to Mark, the mysterious Mark, one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS. Thank you for all the years of support, Mark. And if you'd like your name in this space, you don't have to be a lifetime supporter like Mark. You could just start backing us today and then we'll read your name tomorrow. Indeed, we will. Reminder, there's a longer version of the show. It's called Good Day Internet. It is a lot of fun. It's available at patreon.com slash DTNS. Live folks know that it starts right about now, but DTNS is live Monday through Friday for PM Eastern. That's 200 UTC and you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Please join us live if you can, but we're always on demand. If you can't, we'll be back tomorrow with Scott Johnson and his thoughts on the Playdate game console. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frogpants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Club hopes you have enjoyed this brover.