 Coming up on DTNS, if you're getting air tag tracked, you'll know a lot sooner. Facebook makes some changes to its banning policy, and where have all the sharks gone? This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, June 4th, 2021. At Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. In lovely Cleveland, Ohio, I'm Rich Trafalino. Drawing the top tech stories from Cleveland, I'm Len Peralta. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. And we're so happy to have Annalyn Newitz back on the show. Journalist, editor, podcaster, and author of Four Lost Cities, A Secret History of the Urban Age. Welcome back. Hey, thanks for having me back. We're very glad to have you, Annalyn, through a fun idea for us for the show. And it is shark related, and we are going to talk at length about what's going on with all the sharks. We were before the show talking about not just sharks, but blue jays and enclosed porches and birds and amphibians and all sorts of things. We talk about animals quite a bit on Good Day Internet. And if you'd like to join that conversation, do so by becoming a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Microsoft announced Microsoft Teams will support end-to-end encryption for one-to-one voice calls across desktop and mobile clients by the end of July. Enabling end-to-end encryption will support standard calling features and screen sharing, but disable recording and transcription services. TikTok updated their US privacy policy to include a new section detailing the app may collect biometric identifiers and biometric information, including face prints and voice prints. TikTok has not confirmed which developments required the addition of biometric data to its list of disclosures about the information that it collects, but it says it would ask for consent in the case such data collection practices do begin. On Thursday, President Biden signed an executive order banning US entities from investing in over 50 Chinese companies with alleged ties to defense or surveillance technology sectors, including Huawei Technologies and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. We know them as Friendly Neighborhood SMIC. The ban takes effect on August 2nd. Investors have a year from this date to divest. At the Bitcoin 2021 conference that's going on in Miami this week, Square CEO Jack Dorsey said that the company is considering building a standalone hardware wallet for Bitcoin. Dorsey leader tweeted more details, including that users should own their own keys, lots of people are on mobile, a Bitcoin wallet needs to be available and secure, use Layer 2, be integrated with Square's Cash App. Though this wasn't a formal announcement of a product, Dorsey, who's also the CEO of Twitter, says that Square will have a dedicated Twitter and GitHub account for the project if we decide to build. Nigeria's Ministry of Information and Culture indefinitely suspended Twitter in the country, citing persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria's corporate existence. Earlier this week, Twitter had deleted videos and tweets of Nigerian President Muhubadu Buhari that contained threats against the group IPOB, which were being blamed for recent attacks on government buildings by the president. All Nigerian telecoms were ordered to block access to Twitter and the country's National Broadcasting Commission has been directed to license all over the top and social media operations in Nigeria. Alright, let's talk a little bit more about devices and what kinds of devices that people have. Pew Research released its Mobile Technology and Home Broadband 2021 report with some interesting findings. We'll talk about them now. Overall smartphone ownership among U.S. adults continues to climb. It's up 4% over the last two years to 85%. Smartphone ownership among those that are 65 and older increased eight points over the last two years. Now it's 61%, although among those 75 years of age and older, 43% owned a smartphone. So as you get older, those numbers go down a bit. Those earning less than $30,000 per year also reported lower smartphone ownership. Overall, over 95% of those aged 18 to 49 reported owning a smartphone. 95%. The percentage of home broadband users also increased 4% to 77% of adults. 23% of U.S. adults that don't have home broadband most commonly cited either cost a broadband service or not having a computer to use broadband. Interestingly, 15% of U.S. adults are smartphone only internet users. Without a home broadband connection, most commonly reported among those who are 18 through 29 years of age. Overall, 91% of all adults reported having access to either of the two connections. Yes. Interesting findings in this report. One of the things that in some of the write-ups I was looking at, kind of digging in this report that I didn't see commented on, is that broadband adoption numbers, you know, they've been kind of a flat curve. But in the period before that we were looking at right here, there was actually a dip in terms of the percentage of people with broadband access, at least among, you know, Pew research. And so seeing this climb, which parallels that of smartphones, I think is notable even if you might not necessarily think it's surprising in and of itself. Really though the big thing for me is that 15% of adults that are smartphone only. And this is, Pew said, these were people that, you know, had the choice. This was not a decision, like strictly a cost-based decision that we can only afford one. It was a choice to say, hey, this provides everything that I need, don't necessarily need it. Maybe when you're 18 to 29, that is something that's a little bit more viable or, you know, you've been raised on a smartphone. So that's kind of the default that you know. What it will be interesting to me is seeing Pew's report on this, you know, in 2023, 2025, if we see that carry over, because, you know, as we saw owning a smartphone is almost ubiquitous among that 18 to 49 group. So you're going to have a smartphone as you get older. The question is, will that be your only internet source given that you may also have, you know, access to broadband at work or something like that if you really needed it? I actually thought the 15% number was kind of low considering that there are certain markets, particularly outside of the U.S., where a smartphone only adoption is so high that we're kind of at the point now where there are certain services. Okay. I mean, sure I can look at TikTok on my desktop computer. That's fine. But that we have gone so smartphone friendly in so many areas that I think that for a lot of people, there are fewer and fewer reasons to need anything that isn't a mobile only device. Annalie, do any of these numbers jump out of you as interesting? Oh, I think you're muted, Annalie. Yep. I've mastered my technology. I think it's really interesting to think about the growing of that group who are smartphone only because as you were saying, this is the norm elsewhere in the world that the majority of people are accessing the internet through apps, basically, and aren't even necessarily accessing the internet. They're just using apps and they're thinking of the internet as just an app. I can go on the web or I can go on the TikTok and they aren't necessarily viewing those as being kind of part of the same universe. But the other thing I'm wondering about is whether this brief bump that we're seeing in broadband adoption has to do with the pandemic as well. Because this is just from this past year and if we were seeing kind of a drop off and then a picking up during the 2020 year, I bet it's people who are just doing school from home, doing work from home, and they needed to have that really reliable connection. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And there was a lot of subsidies in that direction. So yeah, surprising that it became feasible maybe for a lot more people too. Yeah, I think that's right. All right. Well, next up, Apple is shortening the length of time it takes to detect an air tag of traveling or tracking someone after privacy advocates raised concerns. Previously, it would take three days before someone would be alerted. A tag was nearby. Now an alert will play at a random time between eight and 24 hours. The air tag updates will be automatically applied when in range of an iPhone and Apple says an Android app will be released later this year. Meanwhile, Bloomberg sources say Apple is working on a new iPad Pro with wireless charging and a return to a glass backing from the current aluminum plus an iPad mini redesign. The iPad Pro was the last redesign in 2018 and the mini in 2019. So, you know, been a couple of years now for those. What's really standing out to me though is we've been hearing rumblings about privacy concerns with with air tags going on for some time. You know, it's a new product. It has a massive network to kind of work with and the scale of that all of a sudden kind of being dropped obviously could lend itself to some privacy violations. What's interesting to me though that kind of stuck out is this automatically applying this update. We really don't see this, you know, Apple is very forward of sending you a lot of notifications like, you know, you should update to the latest for your latest security settings. But to kind of have this automatically pushed out there, I outside of maybe like a zero day or something like that, I can't think of something kind of being released to not even server side just kind of pushed out if you're in range to that. Yeah. Well, I guess it's I guess it's this whole I am being tracked without my knowledge. I should know this as soon as possible. There's there's there are not enough instances where I'd say no three days is actually preferable. So Apple's like, we're just pushing this out. You know, okay, so I have to admit once when air tags were announced, I was like, that's cool. I don't really need one right now. But you know, I'll wait and see which of my friends end up getting air tags and how great they are. And then I'll reassess. And I haven't really heard much sense. I know one person who bought, you know, a pack of three and was like, they work really well. And I did not realize that there was a three day window, which is listen, it totally depends on the situation being tracked or getting a ping that you're that you've got an air tag that's not yours. That's near you does not necessarily mean that somebody stalking you or you're about to get kidnapped, but it could. Right. I mean, there is there is the, Hey, I need I want to be able to, you know, be well aware if something like that was going on and every situation is different, three days is not going to cut it. I mean, eight hours, which sounds like, I mean, that's the minimum amount of time that something might be going on before, before you hear about it and are able to act that's still kind of a long time. So this feels right. It also feels right that anybody can't with an Android phone will have an Android app and be able to to to bank on this as well. Because as you mentioned, rich, great for, you know, iOS ecosystems, but doesn't help somebody who doesn't have an iPhone until until later this year when the app is released for Android. I thought it was interesting that rich brought up how this was like a zero day update because this is kind of, you know, we're in this new era of understanding security. If we have an internet of things, which I hate that term, but this is what we've got. And, you know, what is a security vulnerability when what you're talking about isn't like, okay, there's something wrong with the code, we need to update this, you know, you may not even realize that you're vulnerable. But with one of these, you know, you can have one of these little pucks like stuck into your, yeah, into your backpack or whatever, and someone can be tracking you. So I think, you know, it makes sense that Apple is treating it like a security vulnerability because it is, it's, you know, there maybe there's nothing wrong with the operation of these little, you know, air tags, but there is something wrong with the notification process. And especially when you're Apple and one of your primary differentiators in the market is doubling down on privacy in every single way, it's in there. It's also, you know, whether it's the right thing to do or security issue, it's also makes sense for their marketing purposes too. That's pretty true. Before we move on, I know these are just Bloomberg sources talking about new iPad designs, but Glassback, oh, that's bold. That is bold as somebody who I don't use an iPad regularly. I haven't for years, but I remember when the iPhones went back to Glassbacks and I am a person who now shatters both the front and the back of my iPhone because of that reason. So yes, treat your iPad pro carefully. If it gets glass backing wireless charging cool though. Earlier this week, we told you about the European Union's testing of an EU wide digital pass. It's going to use QR codes and public key cryptography to secure vaccination status and test results. The pass is only meant to be somewhat of a temporary thing for those who are traveling around the EU and beyond is the EU works on an overall digital ID system. Now we have more details on that system. So the EU unveiled plans for a smartphone app that acts as a digital wallet to store electronic forms of IDs, official documents, stuff like that. All you all EU residents will be entitled to an E wallet. It won't be mandatory to have one though. So if you're like, no, I like my wallet as is, that's good. It is an opt in situation. It can be used to open things like bank accounts or sign apartment leases, show your proof of age and roll in universities that are outside your home country. Those are just a few examples. The European Commission's executive vice president for digital Margaret Vestiger also said that the EU digital wallets could work as logins to access Google or Facebook instead of their platform specific accounts, as dominant online platforms would be required to accept this wallet in the EU, giving users, hopefully giving users anyway more control over their own personal data. That is an interesting detail of this. The rest of it, I'm like, cool. I love my, I don't know, the limited information that I'm storing in my smartphone now. It's mostly to pay for things, but anything that would be as useful as my actual physical driver's license would love to be able to have something like this, but to be able to log into Facebook with my official ID and not have to create some sort of Facebook, you know, whatever account Facebook wants me to, to, to give them beyond what my actual country ID is. That is an interesting prospect. And this is where that last part is really what reminds me of what Sir Tim Berners-Lee is working on with Inrupt and their whole solid framework where they're creating very similarly, instead of calling it a wallet, they're calling them pods and essentially kind of doing this, in essence, trying to do the same thing. It's more focused on that login aspect and giving people control of their personal data. And as a side effect, you could use it, I think, for things like bank accounts and stuff like that. But, you know, they've been working on getting the infrastructure for that set up. They already have trials in Great Britain with the NHS and in the Flanders Government in Belgium. So, you know, they kind of have inroads to this. I wonder, you know, this is kind of a, hey, this is an idea that we have and we have plans for this. I wonder if that will be something that they look at going forward, because it seems to be right along the same lines. Emily, what do you make of this? EU digital wallet? I mean, it is EU, but, you know, it covers many millions of people. Is this something that you would use? I mean, I was, as you guys were talking about this, I was thinking, you know, okay, so the idea is that it's encrypted. So obviously, if I lose my phone, you know, it's not going to be useful to like the bad person who's taken my phone. But I think just on a really practical level, I'm imagining as this gets rolled out, if we had something like us in the US, maybe we would want another piece of technology that would be separate from our phone that would handle this in the same way that we have a driver's license or a social security card, just so that if you lose your phone, you're not in that two factor off horror show of like, now I don't have my authentication device, what the hell do I do? And so, you know, like we already have dongles, we don't call them dongles anymore, but we have devices now that are sort of USB key devices that we can use. And I kind of want something like that, that I can slip into my wallet and feel like this is my ID chunk of data, and here's my phone, and I don't necessarily want them to be the same device. And so, yeah, I really, I think a lot about adoption when I hear about this stuff, I worry less about the encryption stuff, which I think is handled, and more just like literally people losing it or people, you know, kind of losing access to it. Yeah. Yeah, how many times have I had to reset my parents email password, and I can just imagine being like, oh, I need this to pay my mortgage and like, oh, you need it for my bank. I need it for my, yeah. So I think that that's, you know, it's this kind of weird UX things that you kind of have to think about when you roll these out. Yeah, I once left my phone about an hour's drive away before I realized that I had done so. And 2FA was so strong that even though I was somewhere with a computer, you know, like I could access someone else's computer, there was literally no way, there was no way besides driving back to be able to get into anything. Yeah, you know, works as advertised. Before we, before we move on, if you'd like to expand your Spanish tech skills, well, we have good news. Dan Compost is here to help with a handy Palabra. Hello, friends of DTNS. It is time for the word of the day brought to you by Noticias de Tecnología Express. This one is a tricky one. Friolera is a word that we use when talking about a trivial amount of money. Something really small, but more often it is used in an ironic way when referring to a huge amount of money. Like Fortnite generated a whopping 9 billion in revenue, which could be translated as Fortnite generó la Friolera de 9 mil millones en ingresos. In this case, because of the amount of money, we know that Friolera is used ironically. After all, we are not exactly talking about pocket change. You can learn this and more words by listening to Noticias de Tecnología Express available every Friday. All right, well, 19 million years ago, the shark population in the oceans dropped by 90 percent, with shark diversity also dipping by 70 percent. It was so dramatic, researchers believe the impact of this population change is still being felt today, but exactly how did the researchers determine this and what miracles of technology helped them uncover the past? Annaly, you've been kind of looking into this story and finding out all the cool science facts and the cool tech that's kind of brought this discovery to light and kind of reshapes how we're thinking about sharks today. So what was going on with the shark pocalypse? So why don't I start with the shark pocalypse and then get into the amazing technologies that the scientists use to figure this out. So basically about 19 million years ago, there appears to have been a dramatic crash in shark populations that they've never recovered from, as you said. So basically, there were a lot more species of shark and they were just much more populous and their population dropped by about 90 percent. So that's a huge number and about 70 percent of species died out at that point. So the sharks that we have remaining with us are still just a fraction of that original population before 19 million years ago. So we're kind of living in the shark post-pocalypse, the post-shark pocalypse. And the thing that's really interesting about it for scientists is we don't know why it happened. There were no dramatic events like an asteroid slamming into the earth. There was no reversal of the chemicals in the ocean. We don't know yet what happened. Now the cool part for me as a nerd is how they figured this out. So it turns out there is a program, an international program called the International Ocean Discovery Program, which cooperates with organizations that have huge research ships with giant drills on the bottom of them, huge drills that are like miles long. And they go all the way down into the deep ocean and then jam into the basically the ocean floor and go incredibly deep, hundreds of thousands of meters below the ocean floor and pull up samples of sedimentary, of sediment, you know, and of all of the layers from, you know, long into Earth's history. So Elizabeth Siebert, who is an oceanographer at Yale, got a hold of several of these cores because the International Ocean Discovery Program has core libraries where you can literally check out a core and look deep into the Earth's past. And what she discovered was that there is a way to measure shark populations by looking at how many dermal dendrites fell off the sharks and sifted down to the ocean floor. And I'd like to take a moment to talk about dermal dendrites if I may. Oh, you may. So sharks are covered in thousands of tiny scales, even on their eyeballs. They have these scales that are called dendrites. And they're microscopic, they're about the size of a human hair. But each shark species has a slightly different shape to their dendrites. So when they fall off, it's basically like, I guess dandruff, you know, it's just like falling off onto the ocean floor. And so by looking at the amount of dendrites accumulated over time in these cores, they can see, wow, this one year, lots of dendrites. And then, you know, the next after about 100,000 years of extinction, way fewer of these dendrites falling off. And in order to figure out how many dendrites there were, and also to distinguish the dendrites from each other, the researchers had to do some old fashioned counting and do some old fashioned eyeballing. But they also use software analysis to identify the shapes of dendrites and to classify them into groups so that they could start saying like, oh, this is the dendrite from this type of shark. Their dendrite looks a little bit more pointy. And then they also doing all their statistical analysis to try to figure out this signature of extinction. They had to use all kinds of software that includes, you know, machine learning and, you know, lots of statistical packages to kind of correct for any biases in their samples. And they did have samples from two parts of the world, but they're still small samples. And so they need to regularize it. And I think when we imagine this kind of work being done, we think about the big ship with the drill and the core and like people counting fossils. But we don't think about the fact that all of those processes are now made easier and faster by using these incredible software packages that allow us to make these statistical inferences about, for example, what percentage of sharks died out 19 million years ago during, you know, maybe it was like a global Sharknado event, you know, from the documentary film series Sharknado may turn out to have been more true than we thought. Yeah, I mean, it seems like, because it's such a huge number, right? It's like dramatic, dramatic stuff for the sharks. So many sharks perished. But it's probably not reasonable to think, well, and if we know enough about it, we can bring them all back, right? Because we probably don't live on an earth where we could have 90% more sharks than we do now. I mean, obviously populations are depleted in certain areas, but it's kind of like, then what do you do with the knowledge rather than know more about the past? Or maybe that's the point. I mean, it is actually really important for us to be gathering this data, because right now we are going through an incredibly difficult period where shark populations are being decimated partly by fishing, partly by habitat destruction from humans. And so knowing what happened to the ecosystems in the oceans after this previous extinction helps us understand, in fact, how important sharks are and how much we need them for our ecosystems and how much of a loss it would be if we continue with our overfishing. So this is actually kind of a warning sign from history that when we lose sharks, it's not a great thing. Their populations can come back, but they won't come back completely. And so here's my PSA for you is protect sharks. Actually, sharks are really great. They're really important to our ecosystems. We love them. We don't want another sharkpocalypse. So yay for dendrites. Yay for dendrites. Well, thanks, Annaly. This is, I think we all learned a little something today. But yeah, I mean, it's, listen, it's technology helps science. We talk about it on DTNS all the time. Science helps technology. And this is just such a great example of that. And it's all becoming smarter for it. Yeah. All right. We're going to talk about Facebook. We're going to do it right now. Facebook plans to change. Yeah, I mean, what can follow sharks but Facebook Facebook plans to change their previous policy protecting politicians from the same content moderation rules that apply to regular users. This decision follows the Facebook oversight board ruling the suspension of former president Donald Trump was valid and added the same rules should apply to all users rather than keep special treatment given to officials running for or in office. Facebook will now ban Trump until January 7th, 2023, at which point it will reevaluate the ban to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded. But that is the date that the ban is enforced for now, you know, just over a year and a half from now. Also in response to the oversight board, Facebook offered up a little bit more information on its strikes system against content that violates its rules, but doesn't warrant an immediate suspension. And Facebook has been a little bit cagey about that because it doesn't want people to understand it well enough to be able to game the system. Racking up enough strikes can lead to a permanent ban. So we knew that, but Facebook also did disclose a user can also receive a strike for approving violating content on a page that they manage. So it's not just necessarily your personal account, but all strikes also expire after one year. So if you've racked up some strikes over a long period of time, you may have a lot and you may not. Annalie, have you been following this story enough to feel that Facebook either did or did not do the right thing in the situation? Yeah, I have been following this story a little bit. And there's been a lot of criticism of the oversight board and how little their oversight there is of the oversight board and how really Facebook should be making these decisions on their own instead of kind of setting up this fake outside group that isn't really an outside group. I think this is actually a good decision though. A lot of activists and just community members have been pushing for something a little bit more clear, especially a clear policy that will be enforced no matter who you are. I think that's something that's a very, that's like step one and in 10 steps that they need to be taking to fix these problems that they're dealing with. I do think they should be much more transparent about the rules. I get the whole thing about gaming the system, but this isn't that this isn't a technical game. This is literally rules for what you have to do to be reinstated or what what you do wrong. And so I think, you know, we need more transparency around this, but this is a really good start. And I think it could turn into a good model for other platforms too. Well, if you have feedback on the story, sharks, anything else that we talk about on the show, anything we might talk about on a future show, we'd love to get your feedback feedback at daily tech news show.com. It's where to send that email. Shout out to patrons that are master and our grand master levels. Today they include Reed Fischler, Michelle Surge, you and Mike McLaughlin. Also, we got a few new bosses, brand new bosses, David Sierra, Nick Papa Giorgio and Brandon Boyer. All just started back at us on Patreon. Thank you, David, Nick and Brendan. All right, we also want to thank Len Peralta, who's been making some fantastic art to go along with our story. Len, I have a feeling it was it was going to be shark based today. It was going to be, it was always going to be shark based. Since the email a couple days ago, I thought, okay, we're doing sharks. This is going to be awesome. So I actually have my own theory about why the shark apocalypse happened 19 million years ago. And here it is, right? Here's two sharks, an older shark, how helping out a younger shark, explaining that at one point they were the most feared. And then there's some hieroglyphic that shows that maybe Arthur Fonzarelli may have had something to do with jumping over one of them to cause them to be extinct. So, oh, and the best part of this, too, is the little guy is going, that's my favorite part of this cartoon. It shows how old we are. Do you remember this? But anyway, yes, that's my jump the shark reference tip of the hat to John Hine. Also, if you want to get this print, you can do it right at my Patreon, patreon.com, you can also get it at my online store at LenPeraltaStore.com. And also, if you want to help me draw these things, help me come up with the ideas just like they did today on Twitch. I'm over at Twitch, twitch.tv, forward slash LenPeralta, before the show, and help out. It'd be awesome if you did that. So, thank you so much, everybody. All right. And helping us out with the sharks and Dermald Dendrites, we want to give a big thank you to Annalene Newitz. Thank you so much for being on. Where can people find more of your great stuff if they're so inclined? Thank you for having me on. You can always find me on the web at annalenenewitz.com. I'm also on Twitter at Annalene. You can find my new book for Lost Cities in Stores. And if you want to listen to me, I have a podcast called Our Opinions Are Correct. Because they are. Thanks so much for being with us, Annalene. We are live on this show Monday through Friday, 4.30 p.m. on Monday 12.30 at UTC. And you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live back Monday with Nika Monford and Terence Gaines from the Snowbows Podcast. We're covering WWDC. Talk to you then. This week's episode of Daily Tech News Show is created by the following people Host Producer and Writer Tom Merritt Host Producer and Writer Sarah Lane Executive Producer and Booker Roger Chang Producer Writer and Host Rip Strafilino Video Producer and Twitch Producer Joe Kunz Associate Producer Anthony Lemos Spanish Language Host Writer and Producer Dan Campos News Host Writer and Producer Jen Cutter Science Correspondent Dr. Nicole Ackermann Social Media Producer and Moderator Zoe Detterding Our Mods Beatmaster W. Scottus1 BioCow Capped Kipper and Jack Shit Mod and Video Hosting by Dan Christensen Video Feed by Sean Wei Music and Art Provided by Martin Bell Dan Looters Mustafa A. A. Cast and Creative-Assed Arts A Cast Add Support from Trace Gaynor Patreon Support from Steven Brown Contributors to this week's show include Allison Sheridan, Scott Johnson and Justin Robert Young Guests on this week's show included Emily Newitz, Live Art Performed by Lynn Peralta and thanks to all our patrons Make the Show Possible at frogpants.com Timing Club hopes you have enjoyed this brover.