 Coming up on DTNS should Google get off their cloud Apple gets suddenly reparable and some tech gift ideas and wishes. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, December 17, 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt in lovely Cleveland. I'm rich. Strafalino from the sunny skies of Southern California. I'm the show's producer Roger Chang and from West Alaska loving the abandoned gold mines. I'm Amos. We were just talking about the abandoned gold mines of Alaska, as well as many other things, including Roger's Pajamas on Good Day Internet. If you would like to find out why we were talking about any or all of those things or more, you got to become a member. Patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. YouTube Music released three personalized mix options for the service. Discover Mix, which will give listeners 50 new tracks each week with updates every Wednesday. New Release Mix, which covers the most recent releases by favorite artists with major updates each Friday and smaller updates midweek. And Your Mix, which features music you like, along with songs that are similar to your listening habits with regular updates. The new mixes are live today for web, Android and iOS. Researchers at Checkpoint discovered a vulnerability in WhatsApp that would let an attacker crash the app for members of a particular group chat. So users would then have to delete and reinstall WhatsApp to prevent the crashing unless they went back into that same group chat and then start the whole process over again. The attack could have been used to lock people out of a group chat and stop them from being able to view its contents. The attacker would use a pen test tool of some sort to decrypt secret parameters that would let the attacker replace phone numbers of group members with non-digit characters. So when WhatsApp saw these non-numerals, these non-numbers in the phone number, it would throw an error and crash the group chat. So all you had to do was send a message from the altered number and that would do it. Checkpoint disclosed the bug in August through WhatsApp's bug bounding program. WhatsApp passed the issue in September. Microsoft, you know them, opened the Chromium-based Edge add-on store and announced the new browser which general availability January 15th and come bundled with Windows 10 releases soon after. However, Edge will be available on its own from Windows Update and it will not be tied to the Windows OS releases. Edge will feature updates on a six-week cycle and security and compatibility updates as needed. Your menu pins, titles, shortcuts, those kind of things will migrate from legacy Edge to the new Edge and add-ons will too if they are available for the new Edge add-on store. There will also be an Edge block option for businesses that don't necessarily want to install the new Chromium-based one right away. Wallstreet Journal reports over the weekend that Amazon informed third-party sellers on the site that it wouldn't let them use FedEx ground or home delivery services for prime orders. So this is, I'm using Amazon to sell my stuff. Amazon's like, great, you can't use FedEx or home delivery to deliver that. The messaging added the ban would stay until the delivery performance of these shipping methods improves. FedEx ended its domestic contract with Amazon in August due in part to Amazon's in-house shipping services, which I imagine they would prefer that these third-party sellers use instead. FedEx delivery for non-prime orders and FedEx Express for prime orders are still allowed. So you have to use FedEx Express, not regular FedEx. All right, let's talk a little more about that new Apple Mac Pro, Rich. Yeah, so iFix, they did something interesting. They tore something down and that new thing being the Apple. Yeah, it's a weird thing they do, but they did their usual treatment and they did the Apple Mac Pro and the team found that overall the machine has a high level of disassembly ease and basic repairs being done with standard or no tools at all. There's a lot of interesting thought going in there as like a PC building enthusiast. It was actually really interesting to see. Main complaints are that the SSD modules, they're really easy to take out. They're basically like a standard M2 style SSD, but they're tied to the system's T2 security chip making use replacement a little more complicated and replacement parts not covered by the company's limited repair policy could be very expensive, but you can still use things like replace the RAM yourself or add in like a PCIe SSD or NVMe drive or something like that. So overall, I thought it was an interesting move coming from the trash can Mac kind of a return and not just in the look of the cheese grater Mac kind of in the spirit of that as well. It's the most repairable Apple product in recent memory according to iFixit and that's saying something because usually Apple fares very poorly on these iFixit teardowns because everything's glued together and they use non-standard and the cry from the populace is generally see Apple doesn't want you to repair things. They just want you to buy new stuff. Now granted the Apple Mac Pro is so expensive. Maybe even Apple would take pity on you, but I don't think it's about pity. I think it's about customers. They don't sell their normal stuff for people who are going to try to repair it for the most part. Yes, there's you and me and a few of us out there who would want to repair things and add our own RAM, but that's not the massive populace anymore for the Mac and the iPhone, etc. Whereas the Mac Pro is a professional item. It's meant to be sold to somebody who would be likely to want to repair things themselves, especially companies. Instagram is expanding its fact-checking tests in the U.S. to work with 45 third-party organizations. Material determined to be false will be hidden from the explore and hashtag pages, as well as be covered with a warning interstitial. You'll have to click through that if you actually want to see what's behind it. Copies of that image that show up elsewhere on Instagram and even on Facebook will apply that same warning. Instagram will not, however, fact-check content, including ads from political candidates. Yeah, not too surprising to see obviously the kind of political exception being carved out there, but I highly encourage everybody to take a look. We have the link to the TechCrunch story here, but take a look at the screenshots of it. I actually really think it's interesting that they're taking what appears to be an Instagram-native way of putting up this kind of warning where there's a full screen over the image. It's not just a disclaimer at the bottom of a post, so you can't see the image first. If there's some sort of misinformation there, that's not the first impression you get. The first impression you get is, hey, Instagram wants to tell me there's something weird with this, and I need to consciously click through or see why they're saying there's an issue with this, a fact-checking issue with this. I think that's a really smart approach to doing that, given the somewhat problematic exceptions that could be created with their policies. Yeah, Instagram probably not as much of a hotbed for clicking through and reading things, so they can take a different tactic than Facebook can, but I still prefer the way they're doing it with the interstitial totally blocking you from seeing something. You can't really accidentally scan this information and internalize it and not remember where you got it from, unless you make some effort. That's the point, is to make people realize, well, wait a minute, why is that interstitial there? Oh, it's because I shouldn't believe this. Some people are going to go ahead and blow through that anyway, and no kind of warning would help that kind of person anyway, I don't think. The one thing I'll say is, I've seen that Facebook is kind of saying, or I've seen the argument floated out there that having that database of Instagram content and Facebook content is an argument why their scale is better to have those two together in this larger conversation, possibly breaking them up, but I don't see any reason why they can also share that information with Twitter, with Pinterest, with other social networks, and just create a public database for fact-check images and that kind of stuff, especially for images, where that's fairly simple to do. There are some movements to do that kind of sharing more often. It'll be interesting to see if this turns into something like that. In the meantime, though, I guess the other question would be, why not just delete it? And the idea is, there are occasions where it's important to see what's being out there, so people can being said wrong out there, so people can see who's doing it, who's spreading it. And also, sometimes there are mistakes, and this is kind of a little bit of a backstop against that as well. In other Facebook news, executives have told Axios, the company is spending six figures, which I'm told is a lot of money, on a free e-course covering deepfakes and manipulated media for newsrooms called Identifying and Tracking Manipulated Media. Writers Hazel Baker, the head of user-generated content news gathering, developed the course material. It's about a 45-minute course from what Axios was reporting. Facebook is funding the international expansion as part of the company's Facebook journalism project. The course is available online only, and Axios says, like I said, it takes about 45 minutes. Reuters and Facebook plant on co-hosting events and panels around the course in 2020. So, you know, I was thinking about this earlier, Tom, and one, six figures on a 45-minute course, okay, you know, they seem to be going to the right places to develop it. It seems to be coming from, and I'm interested in what you think the intention of this. Is this a Facebook getting some positive press for doing this, or is this them trying to head off, you know, trying to hit stuff on upstream of saying, okay, let's identify this deepfake stuff in the newsroom so it's not being shared on Facebook? Yes. They definitely want us to go, wow, good job, Facebook, for funding the fight against manipulated media. But it also does come back to help them if newsrooms are better at this because then it causes fewer problems and they take less heat. For instance, when they left up the manipulated Pelosi video, which showed the speaker of the House in the United States speaking slowly as if she were drunk, and it turned out it wasn't a fake, it was just slowed down. It was a regular video slowed down. That's the kind of thing that Facebook wants to take less heat for and have people avoid. This isn't about deepfakes as much as it is about out-of-context media, though. If you look at the details on this course, deepfakes is a part of it, but most people are not going to be fooled by deepfakes in the future because we'll know deepfakes are possible and we see something outrageous. We'll question it. What you might get fooled by, even if you're a journalist, is a piece of video that's perfectly legitimate and checks out as real but is presented in a context that's giving you wrong information about why it happened or where it happened or what the outcome of it was. I think that's what's important from this Reuters course and that's the kind of thing that Facebook also benefits from having people know about. Yeah, absolutely. In a filing with the SEC Monday, Netflix broke down its subscriber numbers by region for the first time. Usually we get the U.S. number and the everybody else number. Well, here are the breakdowns. The Asia-Pacific region is Netflix's fastest growing region, 153 percent over the past two years for a Q3 total of 14.49 million subscribers. Europe in the Middle East revenue rose 105 percent in two years with Q3 subscribers at 47.4 million. Latin American revenue rose 71 percent, 29.4 million subs, and U.S. and Canada, which are put together. So Mexico is with Latin America and the rest of Central and South America, U.S. and Canada have their own category here. U.S. and Canada revenue rose 57 percent over the past two years with a Q3 total of 67.1 million subs. Average revenue per user is the highest in U.S. and Canada. They have the highest prices, $13.08 for Q3, followed by Europe in the Middle East at $10.40, Asia-Pacific at $9.29, and Latin America has the lowest average revenue per user at $8.63. Yeah, what's interesting to me about these numbers is the importance, like you said, of that Asia-Pacific region, specifically what Netflix is doing in India I think is really interesting. We had a report or a story, I guess, last week on daily tech headlines that Netflix is planning to invest a little less than $500 million in original content over the next two years in India. It's also one of their, you know, as we're seeing here that region in general is one of the biggest growth markets, and they're doing so despite being one of the highest priced options in that area. And I think what's interesting about that is not just that they're growing there, but that growth is actually quite valuable to them. I was really surprised to see these ARPU numbers for Asia-Pacific, Latin America, you know, areas that would generally be considered in a lot of other tech situations. If you look at something like Facebook where the ARPU for a North American user was like $34 and then the rest of the world averages like $2 or something like that, there's a huge disparity. Now, this is a paid service, so there is a little bit of a difference there, but the fact is that growth is almost just as valuable as growing in any other place. And so I think it's clearly they're investing in India in a smart strategy for them. Yeah, and these regions are standard, so it's not unusual for them to group this, but certainly your prices in the Middle East aren't going to be the same as your prices in the UK, but they're both in Europe and the Middle East. Your prices in India, Indonesia, Japan and Korea are going to be different, but they're all Asia-Pacific. That said, it's not a shock to me either that Asia-Pacific is a fast growing region. Netflix has been very aggressive in India, like you said, in marketing and adding content. They get the top shows in Korea on Netflix worldwide. They're not domestically in Korea, but those shows are still popular in other places around Asia and the Asia-Pacific region. So yeah, I think people tend to think of Netflix only inside the US, and Netflix has already shifted its attention not to abandoning the US by any stretch, but growing their international market to stay ahead of these domestic competitors like HBO Max, Disney Plus, etc. All right, well let's take this conversation to a higher plane, Tom. I'm talking, of course, about the cloud. The information reports that according to sources, in early 2018, then-alphabet CEO Larry Page, CFO Ruth Porfit and then Google CEO Sundar Pachai debated whether Google should exit the public cloud market entirely. They ultimately decided to invest $20 billion in capital expenditures on cloud over the next five years, with the goal of being either the number one or number two public cloud provider by 2023. Let's get you up to speed, kind of where Google Cloud fell in that time in early 2018. Gardner estimated that at that point, Google trailed Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in the US and Alibaba Cloud internationally. Alphabet bundles GCP or Google Cloud Platform revenue in other revenues, so it's kind of hard to get an exact feel for what exactly they're earning in that space, but in July of this year they announced that their cloud business had generated $8 billion annually. For comparison, Amazon Web Services generated $8.38 billion in revenue in Q2, so that's a quarter of a year, and had 37% growth on that. While Microsoft reported Azure grew 64%, they don't exactly break out their numbers either, but analysts had estimated that in that quarter they generated about $4.1 billion in revenue in that quarter. So we've talked about a lot of financials, Tom. Let me make this a little bit more real to you. The issue is, and I follow the enterprise and the cloud market fairly closely, the issue is, is that Google does a really good job when it comes to public cloud for machine learning, right? They have their tensor processing units that you can kind of rent on an on-demand basis. They have established that niche and they're kind of well known in that space. The problem is, is that Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure both have kind of Amazon Web Services is 800 pound gorilla in the room. They've been around probably the longest, they're the most well established, they're obviously the biggest and they're making the most money. Microsoft and AWS both have key partnerships now with VMware, which makes them incredibly easy now for existing businesses to move operations to there. So I like to think of this kind of race and the issue that Google is going to have in like a Netflix HBO, right? Where that conversation was a long time, which can HBO become Netflix faster than Netflix can become HBO, right? Right now, Google cloud is in that highly specific HBO kind of role, right? They do a couple of things really well, but to expand out, it's a lot harder for them than for AWS, the Netflix in the scenario to start working into the niches that make GCP kind of popular in those niches, right? They can start cornering these very specific use cases. They're already like their infrastructure spend is just unbelievable, unbelievably less. Every AWS reinvent, like you can't cover it because the features are just so insane that they add every single time. I'm very skeptical that 2023, they'll be anywhere close to one or two. Yeah, and the other shoe to drop here is if they don't become the number one or two cloud provider by 2023, the unspoken assumption is they'll get out of the business like Larry Page wanted them to in 2018, even though Larry's not there anymore. Sundar wants to give it another shot and Ruth Porat agreed. It's easy to look at this and say, gee, Google shouldn't they have been dominating this business? What's wrong with them? Because they start with the same initial conditions as Amazon. We've got all this power we built for one thing, Amazon's case retail, Google's case search. Why don't we turn it into a service? Amazon executed on that very well. Google hasn't. And now they're playing catch up, like you said, and it's not as easy as saying we've got all the data centers. Why don't we just turn on the cloud? You need expertise. You need people who know how to make that work well, how to provide the features people want, how to provide the support that keeps it working well, how to market it and sell it and convince people to buy your product, even if it is the best product. And that's something Google just hasn't been that good at up until now. The ultimate rub is that thing that's driving a lot of cloud growth is Kubernetes, a container orchestrator, which is a Google open source project. Yeah. And if you think about it, that's no different than the other Google stuff where they create great things. Sometimes they catch on like Gmail and dominate. Sometimes they are like, wow, that was a really great thing. I wonder why Google wasn't able to make a business out of that particular great thing. Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com, often hosted by Rich Straffalina. All right. It is getting close to the holidays. And we only have a few more live shows of the year. If you notice Sarah Lane's out today, that's because she's off doing some other work. She'll be back tomorrow, but then tomorrow will be my last day on a live show. And then Sarah and Roger will be doing a show with Justin Robby Young on Thursday. Rich will be back on Friday with Shannon Morrison Amos. And so, you know, we're not an exception to the fact that these schedules are getting a little wonky out there and everybody's scrambling for maybe some last minute gift ideas or to make it clear to somebody, what do you want? So we thought we'd talk about some holiday gift wish lists, both some good last minute ideas for people, as well as maybe just some dreamy ideas that you could throw out to the universe and maybe somebody will get it for you. This idea was actually started by Patrick Beja, who was supposed to be on today's show, but unfortunately couldn't be on with this. He sent in his pick, the Nintendo Switch. The other consoles are going to get new versions next year and those will be backwards compatible with the versions you could buy now, says Patrick. So it's probably worth waiting for those. And note that the current PlayStation and Xbox are sure to get even more discounted when the next generation arrives. The Switch, on the other hand, has a lot going for it now. On top of the many really fun and family friendly Nintendo games, it has popular free to play games like Fortnite, as well as almost every indie PC game out there and even some of the AAA releases too. The portable aspect is a benefit you can't get anywhere else. Besides, most of us own a PC, so we often already have access to the bigger games that are not available on Nintendo's console. That sounds like a good mix. Then the Switch is for you. What do you think? I think it's only a couple of hundred bucks too, I say only. If that's your price range, then that might be a good affordable pick, affordable compared to buying a more expensive console or even a PC. Yeah, the timing seems just about right. As a Switch owner, it's an incredibly versatile device. You can even watch your YouTube videos on it. It makes a lot of sense and I could definitely see it filling a lot of gaming needs. Like you said, get those great Nintendo's exclusives. Roger, you had a few gift ideas that you wanted to pass along as well. What do you got? Earlier this year, I got into a bit of a fender bender, which totaled the car I was driving. One of the must-have gift items that I'm gifting myself is a dash cam. A dash cam for most people seems like one of those YouTube videos that you watch endlessly at your amusement, whether it's a Russian driver or some guy in Florida or something closer home, but they are valuable tools when it comes to insurance. They often can help prove who's at fault no matter the circumstances of your accident. Wirecutter actually recommends the NextBase 522GW dash cam. Generally, I would say rule of thumb is have something that offers a really good quality image, because oftentimes you're going to need to be showing this to your insurance company. They need to be able to know what they're looking at. Good recording time and something that has the ability to either accept or comes with a second camera that goes in the back window so you can see if someone slammed into the back of you. The next thing is, if you have kids like I do, you will want to seriously consider a Disney plus subscription either by itself or in the bundle with Hulu ESPN. You gift those, or in this case, I will gift it to my wife. So when my kids come screaming into the room, I can placate them with either a Disney movie or a Marvel movie or a Star Wars movie or some other bit of childhood that they managed to claim over the years. If you're a big gamer and you have an Xbox or a gaming PC, consider getting an Xbox Game Pass. They offer both the Ultimate Pass which covers Xbox and PC games. They offer a beta version of the PC for about five bucks, which allows you to play PC games and, of course, watch the show. And again, something you can gift and doesn't have to be buying it yourself. Yes, something you can definitely gift. All these you can gift out, whether it's family, friends, or someone you don't like. Perfect gift. Music is a huge part of my life, just Tom knows before the show. And it should be the part of most people's lives. And if you find that most people don't like the music that you listen to, get headphones. Go to headphone.headfi.org. It's H-E-A-D-F-I.org. And it is a user-based enthusiast group, and they have excellent recommendations both for beginner, high-end headphones, but also things like headphone amps, types of digital music players that you find work with your phone. In fact, one of the digital music or audio interfaces I have work with my Android phone gives you a much better output than what you would normally get with your smartphone. And over the years, both Patrick, Norton, and I have gone to the site to call a number of picks, including the one that I currently use, which is the Atomotic, which is like an in-ear canal one. So that's head-fi.org. It's not where you go to buy, it's where you go to get recommendations. Now, if you're also like me and you're sitting on your computer a lot and you just want some nice to listen to, consider getting some nice bookshelf speakers combined with a class T, or basically a digital class D amplifier. Those are very small amps, bookshelf speakers great on your desk, although maybe not the best for near field listening. They do goo a very good job of filling a room with music. And oftentimes I use it to kind of basically put my youngest to sleep with a variety of new-age lullabies as well as punk rock. All right. Those are good last-minute gifts and kind of a range of prices. Rich, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, I'm a big advocate for when you're gifting tech, you're giving that to family of varying technical capacities, go for boring. Don't go for exciting. Exciting is you're giving them tech support. So just give them tech support. That's the best present you can really give. Just write them up a coupon. But in practical terms, that's kind of, I'll help you set up a computer, it's kind of a boring thing. But things like the subscription to a password manager, whether you're talking about one password or last pass, those are two that personally use. I have enjoyed using both of those for varying capacities. I think last pass is maybe is a little more user friendly for first time. But that's like so invaluable when you're talking with family and every single time they're asking you for help, oh, what do I use? Or what's my password for this? I don't know. It's my high school, my dog, and my address, like numbers. You're just asking for trouble. Things like an external hard drive. Again, super boring. But when you ask someone, how are you backing up your hard drive? The question is, oh, you do that? Show them how to do that. Show them how to use Time Machine, show them how to use the Windows utility to back up your PC, or get them to something like Backblaze, which is an incredibly versatile service. And then routers. The router that comes with your ISP is generally not the best. Sometimes it's good, depends on your ISP. But they have all sorts of Wi-Fi extenders and it's a nightmare going on where they're, oh, connect to this network if you're in the kitchen. But over here, get them a mesh router, some of the Netgear or B routers are fairly affordable for a pretty comprehensive mesh system. It's 802.11 AC stuff. So really boring tech. Get boring tech. I cannot stress this enough. Or upgrade the RAM in the computer. I agree with all of these. And in fact, I'll throw in a couple of truly last minute. Like all you have is an airport vending machine and you're on your way to the holiday party and you want to get somebody something technology related. SD cards, unless you know they can't use them for some reason. But if it's somebody who has an SD card slot or has a phone that uses SD cards, people will always appreciate a new higher capacity SD card. It's a stocking stuff for Style Gift, certainly. But the other thing that I think a lot of people don't realize they might need is an extra charging cable, especially if you travel a lot. Losing charging cables or having them getting frayed and worrying about like, oh, is this still going to be lasting? Make sure you get them the right one. Is it USB-C? Is it USB-A? Is it lightning? But yeah, that's another one that's kind of that thoughtful, unexpected gift that maybe nobody would ask for. And then Amos wanted to throw in the Amazon Echo Dot. Amos says it's cheap, essential for large families, perfect for starting into smart home space. So that's another one you can think about. And those are pretty affordable as well. Thanks to all those who participate in our subreddit. You can submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com and join in the conversation in our Discord. We've got a lot of people hopping in there, talking about stuff, hatching plans for creating content. You can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com. slash DTNS. All right, let's check out the mailbag. We got Matt Z writing in on the emails from last week about Chase, who wanted to watch a projector television in bed. Matt said, I'm often a day or two behind and listening, so I hope this is still relevant. Years ago in my first department after college, I designed a system so that I could watch TV while laying in bed on my back. It involved mounting the TV on a swivel mount that would let me flip it upside down. It also involved me mounting a mirror at a 45-ish degree angle above the head of my bed so that when laying down, it would reflect the TV's image as well as flip it right side up. It's pretty low tech, but effective. And he even said it's a rough sketch of the setup. Thank you so much, Matt Z. This is probably not the solution Chase was looking for, but it may be the solution he needs. That's some old-school overhead projector tech. I really like that. Hey, shoutouts to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels, including Jeffrey Zilks, Michael Keper, Paul Rhys, Steve Adderola, and Mark Gibson. Thank you so much for supporting us. And Rich Stratholio, thanks for being here today, man. Yeah, absolutely. If you want to check out what I'm up to, I'm on Twitter at MrAnthropology, at MRAnthropology. And you can also check out I write and produce content for GestaltIT.com, where we talk about public cloud and all sorts of enterprise tech. We just actually did a podcast posted today of the on-premise IT roundtable that talked about if the promises of the cloud are all unachievable by modern enterprise. It's a really great conversation there. And I also do a weekly show on Wednesdays at 12.30 p.m. Eastern time on Facebook, facebook.com slash GestaltIT, called the GestaltIT Rundown, where we run down the week's tech news. So much stuff. So much good stuff. Go check it out, folks. Don't forget we have new Patreon reward merchandise to celebrate six years of DTNS. Len Peralta created a six-year anniversary DTNS logo. And if you back us at certain levels at patreon.com slash DTNS for three months, you'll get either a sticker, a poster, a mug, or a t-shirt. Even if you got the fifth year one last year, you're back in the cycle again. So stay a patron or become a patron and look for the details at patreon.com slash DTNS slash merch. Folks, don't forget our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We're live Monday through Friday for 30 p.m. Eastern 2130 UTC. You can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live back tomorrow with Scott Johnson. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Well, I hope you have enjoyed this brover.