 Michael L. Hale started supporting independent tech news directly just now. Don't let Michael be the lone newbie, become a DTNs member at patreon.com slash DTNS. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, July 11th, 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Fieland's Grandma's House, I'm Sarah Lane. From the shores of Lake Merritt in Oakland, California, I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. We have got a nice summer bouquet of tech news for you today. There's, there's some vulnerabilities. There's some speculation. There's some hope for, for future fears, all packaged together for you. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Apple released an automatic update to Mac OS that removes Zoom's vulnerable local host web server, which remained on machines even after the Zoom client was uninstalled. Apple said that the move was done to protect users and won't affect functionality of Zoom on the platform. Clicking on Zoom, links now will prompt users to approve opening the Zoom app rather than automatically doing it. Apple also disabled the Walkie Talkie app on Apple Watch, citing a security vulnerability that could let somebody listen to a user's iPhone without consent. The exploit came through Apple's vulnerability reporting panel. The company said there was no evidence the vulnerability was exploited in the wild. Walkie Talkie app functionality will remain disabled until Apple rolls out a fix. For those following the hull, will they, won't they move their stuff from China? The Economic Times reports that Apple has started exporting iPhones made by Wistron in India to Europe. Reports recently indicated that Apple has been considering moving 15 to 30% of its production outside of China, and India would be one of the more likely places. Microsoft plans to let users log into Windows 10 without using a password. Instead, you would use facial recognition, fingerprints, or a pin. The bin would only be stored locally on a trusted platform module, making it harder to crack than a password stored remotely. The option will be available to businesses through Azure Active Directory as well. And the Financial Times reports data from media research that Amazon is gaining music service subscribers faster than Spotify or Apple. Amazon Music Unlimited's customer number jumped by 70% in the past year. That puts Amazon in the number three spot at 32 million subscribers. Behind Spotify, still number one with 100 million subscribers and Apple Music in the number two spot at 50 million. Although at this rate, Amazon could lap Apple Music if growth stays constant. We'll see about that. It's it's easy to grow fast when you don't have much to go from. Let's see if they keep it up. All right, let's talk a little more about a different Amazon plan to help us in the future, Justin. Ah, yes, Bezos smiles upon his children. Amazon announced that it plans to spend $700 million to retrain 100,000 US employees by 2025. That's about one third of its US workforce. Retraining will be offered to employees in corporate offices, tech clubs, fulfillment centers, retail stores and transportation network. The Wall Street Journal cited examples like fulfillment center workers trained as IT supporting corporate office workers trained in software engineering, but also nursing and aircraft mechanics. Amazon says it's designing the retraining program around the needs in its own workforce, but participation in the programs does not require that you stay working at Amazon, its fastest growing job areas include data mapping specialists, data scientists, solution architects and security engineers. Amazon has 200,000 job openings in the United States. Twenty, 20,000, 20,000, 20,000, a lot. It's a lot, not that much. Don't get up. Well, let's walk through this. Amazon automating warehouses. It's going to be horrible for people kicking them out of jobs. Well, wait, Amazon's going to retrain those people who might suffer from automation for new jobs. Oh, of course, they're locking them into Amazon. Well, Amazon's also training them for things that Amazon doesn't necessarily need like nursing. Oh, but they're going to make them stay at Amazon anyway. Well, no, they're not. I think this is a fairly well designed program and the kind of thing that companies should do, especially when you're like, we've got all these job openings, we've got all these people. We could make them qualify for these job openings. And it sounds like they're at least trying to do it in a responsible way. Yeah, you know, I wonder exactly how much this is going to work. I would like to see eventually where it goes because right now, this is obviously the great PR example to a problem that has begun, but has yet to really reveal its true sinister face in automation and the unemployment and displacement that it will cause. But I don't know, is a warehouse worker tomorrow's data scientist or solutions architect? Well, it depends on what you're doing at Amazon, right? I mean, to say, listen, we're plunking down 700 million, but you're not really going to see the fruits of our labor until 2025. Kind of gets Amazon off the hook. But at the same time, yeah, if you if there's workers that can be moved to other positions and yeah, maybe potentially they would be good at some of these other jobs. Retraining is necessary. I mean, there's kind of no other way for the company to do it unless they just rehired a bunch of people or hired other people. Yeah, I mean, yeah, like hired new people. That would be the other way to do it. And that is just fire the people who don't qualify for jobs and replace them with which would and I think that, you know, even if it's front facing and not necessarily what the company mantra is, a company does not want to be the company who does that. You know, if you're Amazon, you fire everybody and you hire more skilled people based on what your needs are in the future. Everyone's going to hate you. Also, I mean, they want to retrain 100,000 by 2025. It doesn't mean they're waiting until 2025 to train them. It means that by 2025 they hope to have finished retraining 100,000. Some of them will happen before that. This is good for morale when people feel like the company actually cares about helping you to make a transition. Yeah, maybe not every warehouse worker wants to be a data scientist, but there's lots of options to choose from. And if you really go through it, you're like, no, I don't want to be retrained for any of that. Well, I don't know what else Amazon could do to help you. No, no, no. And I think that again, they are trying to put a bow on something that they are going to be a part of, but they did not create. They did not create automation. They are just trying to take advantage of it as best they can the same way that any company of that scale would look to take, you know, make their product faster and more efficient and stuff like that, which automation promises. The only question that I have is like, you know, literally is the guy running the forklift like, ah, a solutions architect. That's my few. Yeah, maybe, maybe is, if not, maybe can become a nurse or an aircraft mechanic, right? You'll never be a solutions architect. That's what my dad always said, I would never be a solution. I'll show him. I also feel like, you know, I, you know, the, the price keeps me from like going and getting another degree, you know, going back to school. The idea of being trained by a company that I'm already employed by to learn new skills, that sounds great to me. But again, it totally depends on the person and what you're interested in. Yeah. Yeah. And also, I can't remember. It already flew by on the chat room. But one person pointed out that the things that aren't needed by Amazon that they're training for are things that Amazon needs from its clients. It's getting into health care. It, it, it rents planes. So, you know, there's some self interest there as well. Thursday, France approved a 3 percent tax if a digital company has more than 750 million euros of revenue and makes sales of at least 25 million euros of that in France. So you have to make a certain amount of money and a certain percentage of it has to be in France, and then you get taxed. The new law targets companies that have French digital users, but few physical premises in the country, which makes it easier to shift tax burdens to lower tax nations. France has pushed for an EU wide rule like this, but it has been opposed by Ireland, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. The BBC estimates about 30 companies in France will pay this, that they include Alphabet, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, as well as some Chinese, German, Spanish and British firms also affected would be French online advertising from Cridio. US Trade Representative Robert Leiter said Wednesday after the passage that the US or before the passage that the US will investigate whether this tax is discriminatory or unreasonable and burdens or restricts United States commerce. That kind of investigation has often been a precursor to slapping tariffs on countries. Austria, Britain, Spain and Italy have also announced their plans for digital taxes. This is all countries trying to say, look, taxing based on where the employees are isn't very accurate in a world where the employees can just do a lot of their job and get customers over the internet. Yeah, I mean, as somebody who's I'm doing my job remotely now, I'm not outside of the US, but I could be very easily and exactly. And and and that's sort of the beauty of our line of work for the most part is that as long as you go out the internet and you can be awake at a certain time, you're good to go. So so yeah, this this this would factor in very much to me. If I was I was planning on a moment of France. Well, no, I mean, that's the thing, though, is that if you are not stationed in France and therefore paying French taxes, then now if you make over a certain amount of money, what is 25 million euro, then you are now taxed on on for beyond that, basically, you are right. Yeah, like a French citizen, yeah, because French citizens are engaging with your product on the internet, you are now being taxed for it. If Daily Tech News show made 750 million euros and 25 million of that came from patrons in France, we would fall under this law. Yeah. And now, no matter what, OK, I will leave it up to the dear listeners to decide whether or not this is right or wrong. I will only say it is the most French way to solve the fact that we're not getting money. We're not getting enough money from the internet. Or because companies are taking advantage of the fact that they don't have to be in a country to do business there and then moving their people to a country like Ireland that has lower tax rate. That's what they're trying to solve for. And also what kind of the implications of this? OK, let's say the tax rate was something crazy, right? This doesn't seem crazy right now, but let's say, oh, man, I don't want majority of my listeners and viewers to be from France because then it's going to, you know, we're really going to get talked here on Daily Tech News show. How does that change the way that marketing works for people like us? Who might? Good. That's a really good point. It could have an effect on that sort of thing is if France stays the only one, if every country starts to do it, then that waters that down a little. Right, right. Tell us about the Twitter bots, Sarah. Oh, Tom, I'm glad you asked to Twitter bots commonly send out identical coordinated tweets in order to influence a large amount of followers. We have heard about this practice going on for several years now. The latest topic is a proposed Smart City project in Toronto, Ontario. On Monday, journalist Sean Craig noticed that dozens of Twitter accounts were all linking to a press release using the same tweet language about a smart neighborhood that's been proposed by sidewalk labs. That's a subsidiary of Google's parent company, Alphabet. The press release was originally published on the Future of Privacy Forum. That's a nonprofit think tank that focuses on data privacy and has received funding from Google. John Verdi, the VP of policy for F.P.F. and Sidewalk Labs, they say they didn't buy a botnet. That was not something that they did themselves. Notably, though, Verdi noticed that many of the counts use images, Twitter accounts use images of people wearing sunglasses and says this could point to photos being pulled from a neural network rather than photos of real people because getting the eyes right is hard if these aren't real people. Verdi also thinks that the bots were probably part of a network being built to be sold or rented and the Sidewalk Labs story was proof of concept more than it being a story that needed to be propagated across the Internet. Fascinating. I guess you would need the AI generated image if you want to avoid being scanned and matched against the database of known clip art because it's not hard to find a lot of pictures of people that you could just throw up there. Exactly. But yeah, if that gets you past a filter of some sort, maybe, maybe that works. This does seem to be some kind of test of a botnet because the press release that all of these Twitter accounts point to is fairly neutral about Sidewalk Labs. It's not it doesn't seem to be an axe to grind kind of situation. So that that sounds sounds like a test to me. Also, I've seen I mean, we've we've played games on the Night Attack podcast where we had to guess whether or not a photo was real or from a neural network. And like it's amazing what you can do with eyes now these days. So I don't know if I totally buy the sunglasses thing, although the idea of using a neural network is fascinating. This is a reality that we have to deal with, right? Like the fact that these these bot hordes are are out there, they are, you know, man, I'll tell you what, I would love. The Twitter should just open this up as a marketplace. Like just just bring it from the bring it from the black market to the sunshine of the light and say, buy your botnet through us, Twitter, and we're going to get a 10 percent cut. Well, but the point is usually the people wanting to do a botnet are wanting to do something Twitter doesn't want them to do, right? They're they're they're trying to influence something. They're trying to get around the advertising costs of Twitter by running a botnet. So I don't know that Twitter wants botnets on its platform. Do they? Well, I mean, they certainly like those accounts. As somebody who has been argued, somebody who has argued with a bot before on Twitter unknowingly, I thought it was a real person, but it was a bot and it was pointed out to me and they were right. You know, it can be difficult and it kind of reminds me of a recent story that we were talking about Google's initiative for kids in schools and parents be internet awesome, where it's like we whether or not this is going to solve any issues, at least especially at a younger age, being able to be like, oh, I know what's going on here. I can I can see there's certain signals I can tell by that bio or something about it, the way that we've all gotten used to understanding. What's ma'am look like? Then, you know, it's this is all kind of something that that we need to just understand more about even if we don't understand exactly why the bottom was created. It's one of the situations where it's sad now that I can't run the bots that I used to run perfectly innocently to just post things automatically for me. I have an account called at Tom Merritt that I used to just post anything that went up on Tom Merritt.com to doesn't work anymore because you have to work harder to get around the bot limits and they've ruined it for everyone. Yeah, lots. Yeah, you should post your own bot network of a neural network generated Merritt family, just relatives of yours that don't just continuously every new day a new relative. Yeah, according to my driver's T.F. Securities Analyst Ming-Chi Guo, the report he reports that the 2020 iPhone will use a smaller front facing camera lens for the true depth face tracking system, resulting in a substantially smaller notch on the device and potentially indicate a redesign for the model. The rear camera on the next iPhone will also reportedly feature a seven piece lens system. Meanwhile, Business Times reports that credit. Tom, you have to help me on this one. Swiss Swiss Swiss Swiss. Just say Swiss credit Swiss says Apple suppliers are developing a notchless screen, which may result in an underscreen true depth camera for face ID, whole screen optics based touch ID or both by 2021. Yeah, I've seen some stories take this to mean that that Apple might get rid of face ID in favor of touch ID again, if they could put touch ID as whole screen optics, I don't see why they choose if they could put face ID underneath the screen as well, then what they would very Apple thing to do would be like, we know some of you like touch ID, we think face ID is great, but we want to give you the ability to use both and we got rid of the notch, aren't we the best? And you know what they would be if you bring back touch ID, I will never stop buying your products. Face ID is something that I live with. It is tough, but I do it barely. Touch ID is is is the better authenticator, period. Well, I wholly disagree with you and so do most people, but I get it. And this would this would this would end that debate, right? Right. Yeah, we wouldn't have to let us all eat cake. Yeah, we'd be we'd be fine. Well, and that's and that's Apple's goal. Apple's goal is to make that unlock as magic as possible as like seamless. They want you to have the experience of as if you had no password at all. That's why they move to face ID, because you're always looking at your phone unless, of course, you have any kind of sunlight behind you in that case. Face ID never works. But if they had another factor that could seamlessly work together, then yeah, I think that yeah. No, so and Mingchi quote, by the way, if people don't recognize has a great record with the sort of thing. So I believe in the idea of a smaller notch. I believe that iPhone is working or that Apple is working on the underscreen stuff. I'm a little more doubtful of credit with Swiss saying it's coming by 2021 that it might be. But Apple waits until technology is really solid before they put it in their phones. And it's not by all accounts, not quite as solid as maybe you would expect Apple to want it to be to go into their hardware. A Google contractor gave Belgium Public Broadcaster VRT more than 1000 audio clips collected from Google home devices. 153 of the clips appear to be accidental recordings containing snippets of private phone calls, discussions of health and personal matters. So this is a person contracted to review these to help improve Google Assistant and amongst the snippets are ones that were accidental triggers that therefore include unintended transcriptions. Now, Google told Wired that 0.2 percent of all recordings of voice interactions are transcribed to help improve the accuracy of voice recognitions with the contractor saying he generally transcribes around a thousand clips a week. Those could both be true. Google does a massive amount of data and even with Google Home being one of their less popular products, I could see a thousand clips a week being less than 0.2 percent of all recordings of voice interactions. The contractor, however, said Google does not have clear guidelines for instances of reviewing audio of people in distress or potentially violent situations. Google's current privacy policy also does not mention using human workers to review clips. This is similar to the Amazon Echo situation that may violate transparency requirements of GDPR in Europe. Google has launched an investigation saying the contractor violated data security policies, so they're going to try to figure out how he was able to get these clips and give it to a broadcaster. Hopefully they're also going to investigate whether their policies are up to speed because I don't think this has changed my opinion from the Amazon version of the same story, which is I think it's necessary for companies to have human review of some of this data in order to improve their services. And I think that's reasonable. You just need to disclose that it's happening and let people have a little bit of control over whether it happens to their transcriptions or not. Yeah. Yeah. Again, this is kind of running back the same story. But I think you if you want to make this better, if you want to have less frustrating experiences where your voice assistant doesn't know what you're talking to them, then this is the way it happens. Like you just have to train the thing on the voices and there has to be human curation of it. You know, that said, the idea that you might be working for a third party company and be like, oh, I'm hearing something that's disturbing or potentially harmful and I I I should take appropriate steps. Yeah, those need to be in place. And I just you just have to have that kind of thing. If you're a human curator of this sort of thing. Also, if you're not supposed to be able to pass along information. Well, then Google has to figure out a way that, you know, if you're a human curator and you hear something that's potentially damaging, you know how to take the appropriate steps and you also don't pass it along to somebody in the media. Well, the reason that they won't allow someone to report this is they're not allowed to use the snippets for anything but training the AI. And that's because they haven't asked people for permission. So they're trying to skate through on a loophole. If they just said, look, give us you give us permission to use this for training, by the way, if we have this explicit permission and we discover something, we may report it back, they could build that in. It's tricky, though, because a lot of people are going to say like, well, wait a minute, like, yes, I wanted you to use it for training, but this is a private matter and I don't think it's your business. If there was an accidental of recording. I think that we are only now beginning to get to a point culturally where you can have that conversation with the end user and hope to sell these units, because if you led with that, then it would be, oh, really? The spy bot? Nope, get out of here. Yeah, because there's already enough of that kind of thought about these sort of things and it is a very rare situation and a very rare occurrence. But the scale of the amount of data collected means that it does exist. And it does happen out there. Yeah. Got a little more Google News today. Google's Area 120 unit, lots of experimental stuff going on at 120 has made a new social network. If you haven't heard of it, it's called shoelace. Users can pick interests and then connect with each other for various activities, notably if a user uses shoelace, like if I have it, Tom doesn't, I can share activities with Tom, even if he doesn't have shoelace. So it's designed to be almost a bit of an offline scenario where you don't have to have all the same connections on both sides. However, it is limited invitation only in New York City, at least for now. So and you have to sign up with an interest, right? You can't you have to be vetted. You have to say like, yeah, man, I'm way into pickleball. And then the pickleball people look at you and like, yeah, it does seem like Sarah's into pickleball. Bring her in. She's in the pickleball interest. And every time we have a pickleball event, we'll make sure you know about it. And then the reason you can then share that with anybody, whether they have shoelace or not, is because all you're saying is, hey, the pickleball tournament is in Central Park this Friday. If you're interested, come on over. It feels much more to me like, OK, Google has had, well, you know, mixed results with social networking. This feels more like next door to me than it does Google Plus, because next door is definitely based on where you live. It's less about interest, you know, in the offset. But you can kind of use it that way. I, for example, I'm, you know, my my local next door is almost all people talking about animals, because that's just the kind of person that I am. You know, the fact that we live around each other is is secondary. So I can see where this would actually would actually be really great, especially because it's Google, if you get enough people to sign up, Google services like this, I find are always best when they are trying to solve a problem and not achieve a goal. And I think Google Plus very clearly was we need to achieve the goal of harvesting data when Facebook locks us out, right? And so they built the network to try and achieve that goal. But when they're solving problems like, hey, it is painful to delete emails. So we'll have Gmail where you never delete an email again, right? I think that they are they are often at their best, but maps is another great example. But this seems good. I mean, this seems like it is at least in the strong suit of Google. And I look forward to using it before they cancel it through. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there is that aspect of it, whether people trust up to stick around. But again, this is risk free to try. Like it's just going to point you to events around your interests. If you're like, I don't see why I would use this. It's because we haven't hit on the example of you're like, oh, but I do want to know when the magic the gathering tournaments are taking place. That would be cool or whatever your interest is. If you if you don't want to ever leave the house. No, shoelace is not for you. Get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes. Be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. And thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddit. Sometimes you talk about shoelaces, sometimes not. You can submit stories and vote on others that you care about at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. We're also on Facebook. Join our group if you haven't yet, facebook.com. Groups slash Daily Tech News Show. Let's check out the mailbag. Got a real good one from Kik. Kik said, when you were talking about the potential issues that players of the existing Lotro game might have with the new Amazon game, the real problem that I think was inferred, but not explicitly stated, is that of fracturing the player base. According to MMOpopulation.com, Lotro is the 26th largest game at 22,582 active players compared to the number two game World of Warcraft at 1.526 million players. Lotro is tiny. While yes, some players might be upset that they're not getting the new content or the new location, the game can hardly sustain a loss of players. Assuming the previously mentioned numbers are accurate, the new Lotro game, maybe one content and better graphics, better graphics, or whatever the case may be, may draw players away from the old game to the new one. A loss of even 5,000 players could be a major setback, as that's almost 25% of the player base. So at what point is Lotro no longer profitable? We could have a situation like City of Heroes where another popular, though niche game dies because the publisher or developer is no longer making enough money to run it. Unlike City of Heroes, it's too early to know whether private servers may pop up to keep Lotro alive. A quick search indicates, though, that private servers don't exist yet. And depending on how things go, they may never. Yeah, this is a really good point. If you're someone who's like, I have no interest in this new game, I just want to keep playing Lotro forever. And I'm worried that others don't feel the same way and will go to this new game and the game I love might go away because of that. Get that. That's totally fair. That's also kind of the way the world works, though, like things become less popular and other things become more popular. And sometimes things we love go away because we're on the other side of that. You should be like France and tax people for playing games that aren't your favorite. Wait, is that actually an analogy or are you just taking a dig at France? Oh, I'm just kicking France. Soccer blue. Yeah. We also got an email from Jesse because we have been asking on Good Day Internet, the wider version of the show available on twitch.tv slash Good Day Internet or to the patrons as an RSS audio feed about changes to our Patreon. Are there things you would like from our Patreon that would make you sign up or keep you happy or make you excited? Jesse suggested the following. I would love a video of your studio setups for patrons. That'd be a cool perk to give people little tours. And also for Good Day Internet, a mailbag segment on Good Day Internet, which would require us to actually plan a thing for Good Day Internet. But it's not a bad thing. It would. And I actually, you know, even though I'm like, hmm, that's more work on our part. But I think that's a great idea because we do get a lot of GDI mailbags. They're not necessarily right for for DTNS, but but they're a thread that, you know, all of you that that listen or watch GDI regularly would get something out of. So good, good feedback coming. Yeah, keep the feedback coming. If you haven't heard us talk about it, if you only listen to DTNS feedback at Daily Tech News Show dot com, send us your ideas about what you would like in the tiers or if or if there's something in the tiers right now that you're like, please never take that away. That's the thing I love the most. Let us know feedback at Daily Tech News Show dot com. You know, who else has good feedback? Justin, Robert Young. And besides great feedback on DTNS, where can folks keep up with the rest of your work? Oh, man, you know, I want to thank everybody because I know we have a large crossover audience and so many folks from DTNS have supported my political endeavors at TakePoliticsSeriously.com, which is my Patreon where I do the newsletter and the podcasts and the YouTubes and the Instagram videos and everything, but I want to thank you guys because literally today we went over our previous high watermark for patrons and during the midterms and there were a bunch of other, like I used to have other stuff on that Patreon that I sent split out, but now we are we are in uncharted waters. So I want to thank everybody. If you've never given the politics show a shot, then go ahead and download it. Politics, politics, politics on the pod catcher of your choice. Listen, folks, it's really easy to get your name right on the show. If you're new to us on Patreon, sign up. Patreon.com slash DTNS. Had to go back a couple of days to be able to thank Michael L. Hale here. Why don't you join Michael L. 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