 Coming up on DTNS video chats for lockdown dates, the danger of link previews, and the UK sets its phones free. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, October 27th, 2020 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Shane. And joining us today, we're very happy to have UK associate editor at the Mac Observer, Charlotte Henry back on the show. Hey Charlotte, how's it going? Hey, thanks so much for having me back. Missed you guys. I know. But nothing big has happened since we last hung out. No, no. Just a real dead pool of news. Bit of a real quiet year. But we have some interesting things today, finally. Yeah, thank goodness there's some news today that we can really get our teeth into. We were actually just talking a little bit about the iPhone 12 and cases and that sort of thing on Good Day Internet. If you want to get that wider conversation, become a member, patreon.com. slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. AMD has confirmed it will buy Zilinx in a $35 billion all-stock deal. Zilinx makes programmable processors for data centers and competes with Altera, which Intel bought back in 2015. AMD's purchase of Zilinx is expected to close by the end of 2021. Hey, Zoom launched its end-to-end encryption, finally. It's in technical preview for 30 days. You can get it if you're on a Mac, PC, iOS and Android or using a Zoom room. It does not work on the Zoom web client, on third-party clients, or if you're phoning in. And some features don't work with end-to-end encryption on. We talked about that before. Cloud recording, live transcription, polling, meeting reactions, joining before a host. You can't have end-to-end encryption on if you want to use those. And there's also a maximum of 200 participants if you're using end-to-end. Free users have to verify a phone number before using end-to-end encryption on Zoom, but they can get it. Remember, there was talk that free users wouldn't get it. They are gonna get it. You just have to verify your phone number. Ubisoft will rename its subscription gaming service from UPlay Plus to Ubisoft Plus and has added cross-platform availability as well. Ubisoft Plus still costs $14.99 per month, but some games will be accessible on Google Stadia and also Amazon Luna as well as your PC. This is separate from a Stadia Pro subscription or forthcoming Ubisoft channel on Luna Plus. But Ubisoft promises cross-platform progression as well and launches for all UPlay Plus subscribers on November 10th. Qualcomm announced an upgrade to its chip platform they use in Wi-Fi mesh routers. The immersive home platform as it's named uses Wi-Fi 6 and 6E. We have an episode of Know a Little More about those if you wanna find out what they are. They give you better capacity, faster speed, Qualcomm saying latency less than three milliseconds and Qualcomm says it operates cooler. Qualcomm says manufacturers that use immersive home platform should be able to make smaller, cheaper mesh routers. Wyze launched the third version of its flagship camera, the Wyze Cam V3. It's now IP65 rated for outdoor use, has sensors for color night vision and offers a 360 degree field of view at 15 frames per second at night and 20 during the day. They've also added an 80 decibel siren and the Wyze Cam V3 costs $20 and in-person detection requires the $2 a month cam plus service. You accidentally said 360 degree field of view. Instead of 130, sorry. I guess I just, I was just like, what's 130? Looks all the way around. Sorry about that, yeah, sorry Wyze. I didn't wanna promise something we can't deliver. Wyze didn't want those support calls. Hey, let's talk a little more about Tinder. Let's do it. Tinder has expanded its face to face video chat feature to all users. So the feature launched earlier this year as a test and lets people video chat without exchanging any personal information because that's important when you're meeting somebody for the first time. If two people match, they're chatting and then they can each toggle on the video feature but neither will know if the other has done so until they both have then the video would be engaged. After agreeing to the rules of video chat, Tinder will begin chatting to check that your video was on and you're facing the camera before beginning the chat and meeting your potential batch. Everything about this fills me with horror. Well, so it's funny Charlotte because Tom and I were talking about before the show and I was like, you know, I'm kind of like the unmarried person on the show. So, you know, I probably know a little bit more about dating apps than everybody else but I kind of like this. I mean, in a pandemic, sure. You may actually end up meeting somebody online and not hanging out with them in person for much longer than you would have normally but it also gives you a good idea of what someone is like beyond text before you were to go to a coffee shop, you know and socially distance outside and see them in person. Yeah, no, I get why it's happening now but so like as a single person, I'm kind of, I hate dating apps anyway. The concept fills me with horror anyway. I know I'm wrong, but that's just how it is. No, you're not wrong, I mean, wrong with horror. But it's like the idea that you would then end up you know, having some, this toggling thing whether it's like, oh, now the person also wants a video and suddenly the video comes on just and also this can only end badly, can't it? Like, I think we all know how this ends, Sarah. Well, but I mean, okay. So yes, devil's advocate here, you know if I'm kind of like, this person seems pretty cool, you know, I'll go ahead and say video would be okay with me and then they have to say video would be okay with them and then we, you know, it seems like there's everybody's kind of handshaking on the idea that, you know, it's not like someone's gonna like pop up and you know, on your screen unannounced. Yeah, I mean, it's not full, we haven't gotten full chat really late. Right, exactly. You're right, and that is obviously for so, so many reasons a good thing. And I suspect the truth is, kind of realize that basically people are going, oh, right, we can't meet in person and so why don't we just like load up Zoom or Skype or FaceTime and they go, well, we can make this our thing and you don't ever have to leave our app. And I suspect that is where this has come from. That doesn't mean it doesn't, the concept doesn't give me a panic attack. Fair enough, fair enough. Yeah, there's definitely, there's gonna be some complications as there always are with these types of apps, but yeah, it does make sense that they would wanna build it into their own platform. For sure. It's complicated. How about this? Imagine Facebook launched a new feature where any user could edit pages describing information about the US election and its candidates. Sound like are you screaming yet? You would imagine it would descend into chaos pretty rapidly, everybody would be upset about them doing that. But if you haven't noticed, what I'm describing is actually Wikipedia. And Wikipedia has not descended into chaos, at least not yet. Part of that is a result of a 20 year culture of developing standards around volunteer editors and not having to chase ad dollars, but it also has taken preventative measures for years. Wikipedia has identified certain articles that are targets of vandalism and given them more protections. They have lots of different tools in their toolbox to do that. Wired reports that all US elections and large numbers of involved people and organizations related to them have been added to Wikipedia's watch list where Wikipedia administrators will monitor to see if they're being targeted for some kind of vandalism or propaganda effort. Wikipedia also added what it calls extended confirmed protection to its 2020 United States presidential election page. If you wanna make edits on that page, you have to be a user that's been registered with Wikipedia for at least 30 days and made a minimum of 500 accepted edits to the site. So somebody can't just turn on Wikipedia today and start messing with that page. A Wikipedia editor told Wired that election results will likely be sourced from one reputable outlet once they're available, something like the Associated Press, and an experienced administrator will be the only one able to enter the final result of the election on Wikipedia. So they take these things in a case-by-case basis, but they're able to provide a wide-open editing with the ability to sort of monitor and see what's going on. The Wired article talks about how they just sort of slow things down. When somebody wants to make a controversial edit, they talk about it for a long time in the moderator pages, and it just makes it less of a target for people who wanna quickly spread misinformation. It's much better for those people if they go to social media where there isn't this sort of control on it. But I mean, I heard you say, oh, Charlotte, when I mentioned Wikipedia, you would think that Wikipedia would be rife with this kind of abuse because anybody can make an edit, but they've got a good system for this. It's so fascinating. When years ago, when Wikipedia started, it was like frowned on, wasn't it to use it as a legitimate research tool? Oh, you read it on Wikipedia, did you ha ha ha? But actually, I mean, you guys must have met people who've acted as worked as editors and volunteered as editors on there. I've composed a couple of people. They take it so seriously. They take it really seriously, and it's fascinating. Obviously, last year, I had a book published on fake news and did a lot of research into this kind of area. And actually, the thing that flagged up was not Wikipedia. That wasn't where the problem was. Yeah, and I think there's some things we could learn from that, right? From studying why that is. I mean, I've got my own ideas of maybe what it is, but I think looking at it could help us solve these other problems by saying, well, wait a minute, this exists in 2020 right now and is not suffering the problems. What can we learn from that? So it's fascinating. What you described is basically an old-fashioned newsroom. Oh, someone comes with some information, some more experienced people help you verify that information. Oh, and then when you verified it, it gets published. Yeah. Sounds like journalism to me. And it's a different purpose, obviously. Wikipedia isn't a social network. They aren't funded by advertising, as I said, which I think is a big difference here, but I still think the idea of how they moderate, like you said, it's kind of a time-honored thing that they're replicating here with learning from things we already know. And also I think the big difference is it's not driven by clicks and likes. You know, a page doesn't suddenly get boosted up in front of people's eyes because loads of people are talking about this one thing suddenly. It's a different, very different system. Yeah, I mean, Facebook historically has launched lots of features where people go, well, that doesn't work well. And the company says, ah, we've learned a lot. So if you were replicating the Wikipedia model, okay, we've seen that this has worked well in the past, but yes, two different pieces. Yeah. And Wikipedia is not perfect. Don't get us wrong. We're not trying to say call them a saint, but they do some things well. Moving on, T-Mobile will launch its streaming service, T-Vision. Get it? TV, T-Vision. For T-Mobile postpaid customers starting on November 1st, T-Vision comes in three separate tiers. For $40 a month, you get the major networks, both broadcast and cable. For $50 a month, it's a plus tier, which adds more sports channels. For $60 a month, you get NFL Red Zone as well. These plans include 100 hours of cloud DVR and up to three concurrent streams. A $10 add-on called Vibe adds 30 channels from AMC, Discovery and Viacom with two concurrent streams and DVR access for an extra $5. Is there a nickel in diving you a little bit, but you have a lot of options. You can also add channels from STARS, Showtime and Epic for additional fees. T-Vision will be available on Android, iOS, Android TV, Google TV, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV as well as on T-Mobile's own $50 T-Vision Hub Android TV streaming device. Now, this is only for T-Mobile subscribers for now, but they do say they intend to bring it to other people eventually. I think it's just a way for them to slow the rollout, make sure they've got it all technically working and all that. The most interesting thing to me was that $10 Vibe add-on which we called it an add-on, but you can actually just subscribe to Vibe without subscribing to the rest of T-Vision which is similar to Filo. Filo has AMC, Discovery and Viacom channels for a certain amount of months. So I think it's interesting how they're packaging this up to be able to make different deals with different networks that have different requirements like we only want to allow two concurrent streams like all right, well, you'll be on this Vibe tier and everything else can be over here and sports people, all your stuff is here so the people who don't want sports don't have to pay for anything beyond ESPN and FS1 which is in the base package. It's an interesting way of packaging this stuff. Yeah, there's a couple of other things I chuck in there as well with my watching Apple hat-on. You can get Apple TV Plus free for a year. If you do the live TV Plus or the live zone package you'll get TV Plus free for a year with that. Plus they're actually giving you a way to get a TV 4K, an Apple TV 4K, one of the actual physical boxes for $99. So that's $80 off. You get a rebate via a virtual prepaid Mastercard basically and you can get the Apple TV 4K box as well. So as you say, they're making deals with all sorts of different people. It's interesting Apple wanted to be part of this. But that's it, I don't know what I'll have access to this in the UK, but the way they presented it is kind of taking on, they described it as taking on the cableopoly, which is kind of interesting. And again, trying to cut the cord in so many different ways even though you, as you say, you have to have a T-Mobile contract. But it's again giving another pretty good price option because the thing that always costs people and the thing particularly here in the UK but I imagine in the US as well that keeps people with old fashioned cable companies is sport. I know you have slightly different options but basically you can't even now watch, for example, Premier League Soccer, you can't watch that in the UK without some kind of cable subscription. And I know lots of sports work to say when the US even those places where they have like NFL game pass and then we'll be at bat. There's still regional blackouts, aren't there, where it's on cable so you don't get everything. And this seems to do at least a large part with the sport problem as well, which I think is pretty impressive. Well, thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddit, you can submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Research published Monday by two app developers shows that link previews, like you see in Instagram or Slack, other messaging apps where you put in a link and then it doesn't just show the link, it shows the headline and little description of the webpage. Sometimes you get a picture off the page. Those don't always behave well. To get the preview, the app has to visit the link and download at least part of the thing that the link is pointing to. And if not properly configured, that action could lead to private materials being exposed to the company. I mean, if you link to something in Dropbox, like your tax records, that could be stored indefinitely on the apps if it's taking the file, putting it on its own server, creating the preview and then delivering the preview. It can also lead to downloading malware if you, because it's loading a page without doing all the security vetting that a browser would do. Facebook and Instagram download the entire linked file no matter what it is. It's also gonna use up your bandwidth in your battery. They then create the preview and execute JavaScript without security vetting. That's where the malware could come in. LinkedIn does the same, though it does cap its download at 50 megabytes. After 50 megabytes, it stops because it figures it's got all it needs to make the preview. Discord, Google Hangouts, Slack, Line, Twitter, and Zoom cap the file between 15 and 50 megabytes. And Line looks like it sends its linked file to its own server outside of end-to-end encryption, which would mean that if you're using a link in preview, you're not getting end-to-end encryption on that link anymore. The good behavior comes from iMessage, Reddit, Signal, Threema, TikTok, Viber, WeChat, and WhatsApp that do not copy the file at all. They just take what they need to generate the preview and then they put that out there. And in fact, Signal, Threema, TikTok, and WeChat even give you the option to turn off link preview and say, I don't even want that at all. They did not analyze Telegram, interestingly, in this. Sorry, Allison, but yeah, I don't know how Telegram handles this, but it looks like something that I don't think a lot of us would have thought of is when you're just pasting a link in, in a lot of these cases, it's as if you're visiting the link in a less secure browser. I think you've hit the nail on the head where you say a lot of us don't think about it. That's exactly, when I see a link come up, in fact, often you think, oh, that's safer. Well, because I haven't even clicked on it. I haven't even gone to the page. And I think what, the way you talk this through or illustrate is actually how important it is for all of us from, perhaps more savvy users like us, we'd like to think, us three would like to think of ourselves as, to everyday users who look at, use these things. We all need to be a lot more aware of these issues because it wouldn't occur to have occurred to me before reading this, the report and the R's technical story that actually the link could be a bigger preview than, the preview could be the bigger issue than the link itself. Cause normally you think, oh, I never clicked on anything. It's fine. I can't get malware. I'm not so stupid. I wouldn't kick on a random link. But the preview is, you explained could be enough. And I think it's an interesting element that we haven't yet thought of. And I suspect, as ever, the hackers are one step ahead and the people who want to inject malware are one step ahead and conscious of this vulnerability and looking to exploit it. Yeah. I mean, with a little bit more awareness and knowing that certain companies actually aren't, copying the entire file while generating the preview means that other companies could also do that as well. And if you are at all uncomfortable with how certain companies are doing this, which sounds like you should be, then there are other options and the company should be, you know, held their feet to the fire. Yeah, absolutely. The UK's Offcom announced a mobile network, announced that mobile networks in general will not be allowed to sell locked phones after December of 2021. So O2, Sky, 3 and Virgin already sell unlocked handsets only. Offcom is also requiring communications be provided in accessible formats like Braille by December of next year as well. Charlotte, you probably have some thoughts about this. Yeah. I'm really pleased about this because I've been with the same cell provider for ever since I first got a phone. A large part of the reason being, one, I don't want the initial outlay on an unlocked device and two, can I really be bothered to change provider and go through all of that? And as the Offcom stuff said, they make it difficult. Like the process can be delayed. You can suddenly find you don't have a phone for 24, 48 hours, your lines got down as they all take a long time to transfer. And so this seems a very good way of counteracting all of that. I think they've probably given everyone a reasonable time to get on board. It's well over a year to everyone get their house in order. Yeah. I think it's a really positive step. I haven't seen too much kickback yet from the telecoms providers, although that may be coming. Because obviously what a lot of people do is you phone up your provider. I want the new iPhone with you how much does it cost per month? Some people will go to the Apple store, to the Samsung store and pick up the device outright. And that's a different thing. But most, if you go to say the Vodafone store, the three store, whatever, you get the phone on their network. Whereas actually now, Offcom is telling you you actually have to be able to get it unlocked. They don't tend to sell unlocked devices. And I think we may see more people taking out the option of unlocked devices, which has not been such a big, as far as I'm aware, not such a big feature. People do eventually go to Simony, but that might only be once their contract is run out. This obviously gives consumers a lot more flexibility. If you want to spend X amount of money outright, you now have more places where you can do that. And the networks have to make it life easy for you instead of making it as difficult as possible for you. Well, I've almost always gotten unlocked phones and it's always been like, well, you have to wait a little longer. You have to pay a little more because the original big advantage to a locked phone was for the carrier to say, well, we'll subsidize it. Your phone will only cost you $200 because you can't take it anywhere else, right? That's just not the way most of these plans work anymore. Now, if you are paying it off, you're literally paying it off. You didn't get a subsidized phone that they're hoping to recoup back in the amount they charge you for your subscription. It's just added on top of the subscription. So you're paying for the phone. Why should it be locked anyway? And I could see some argument of like, well, until you pay it off, you're not necessarily owner of the phone yet. But really, I don't think too many people are trying to scam the companies by taking an unlocked phone and running to another provider with it. It's just not worth it. Sneakily changing the SIM card. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, you know. And I suspect I'm not unique in the fact that I've stayed with my provider for a long, long time. People just are like, oh, I'm with them. I can't bother that. I'm getting a good deal because they give me some kind of loyalty bonus, fine. But this clearly gives a lot of users a lot more different options. It can be, you can pick it up in one store and get a better deal for the SIM plan in another place. And it gives users a lot more flexibility. And I think, actually, it will be quite a positive move for consumers in the UK. Yeah, it'll be nice. You won't even have to think about it. Right, it won't be a discussion, yeah. Well, at Apple's iPhone 12 event, the company made a big deal about how it was less prone to breaking and scratching and it was stronger than ever. So CNET put Apple's new ceramic shield on the iPhone 12 through some scratch and dropped tests. The glass on the 12 is flushed with the metal frame rather than curving up. Apple says that design change alone makes it twice as durable as its older models. Sounds good. Was only scratched by sandpaper, CNET says. The back of the phone though, which does not have a ceramic shield cracked when dropped from hip height. The front survived without a crack from drops as high as nine feet. It was interesting read because they kept talking about how they even at nine feet they were trying to get it to land face down on the ceramic shield so they could get a direct impact. And because the camera is a little bump on the back, like a cat always landing on its feet. It kept wanting to land on the back where you didn't have the ceramic shield and of course that cracks. Yeah, which, yeah, it's all gonna be a slight design flaw. My colleague, Thomas, I already did a really good breakdown of what ceramic shield is and what it means. So that's worth checking out if people wanna know a bit more. First of all, the idea of dropping your iPhone, we was saying on good morning internet even I, with the ceramic shield stuff was like, no, I'm still buying a case. I do not trust myself. And I think a lot of people will be like that. I think the combination of two is probably gonna help protect a lot of people but the idea of just like possibly dropping it and it's still, as you say, landing on the back or catching the corner just right so that it shats the screen shatters which I know ceramic shield is meant to prevent but stuff happens. I think people will still want a case but it is a major step forward ceramic shield. Like it is a big deal, the level, you know the science and the technology behind it and also the level of safety it clearly does have. When I was going through a lot of the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 reviews when they first came out last week I noticed all the reviews who'd been sent a phone to test by Apple were like, well, I wanted to test the ceramic shield but of course I didn't drop it deliberately but suddenly it dropped from like they were all consciously like, Apple had clearly told all the reviewers you do not drop this phone. This comes back to us as we sent it to you Behave but inevitably in life these things do happen and it seemed to hold up pretty well. I suspect in normal life, you know the kind of classic I would dropped it on my kitchen floor when I was walking around or, you know, those kinds of things I suspect it will do a pretty good job but as I say, I still wouldn't be confident enough not to have a bit of a case. Yeah. Well, I'm kind of the opposite of you Charlotte I, my iPhones over the years I like the way that they feel. Yeah. I don't want a case, I want it to be naked and it's all, you know as it was intended that said I cracked them all every single one of them I'm walking around with a very cracked iPhone right now which is on its last legs. So something like this is like, sure I should probably put in more precautions but if you don't, all of the stuff points to it being more sturdy than ever. I totally agree with you. Like I hate, I love the bit of time when the iPhone is kind of, as you say a bit naked and running around free as it's named to intended but I don't trust myself. Yeah. I think the ceramic shield looks like it is sturdier like all signs point to it including the CNET test. I don't plan to test it on the one I paid for myself. What? So let us know if you do and in the meantime, we'll check out the mailbag. Let's do it. Brian points us to a link from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It's a, it's an article titled computational gene study suggests new pathway for COVID-19 inflammatory response. Brian says it's amazing to see what we can do with the computational power of today's supercomputers also related. Brian finally made it to the top 10 folding at home team GDI and said he was looking around the interwebs researching COVID progress and found this article keep up the good work. Yeah. We have a very active folding at home channel in our discord and Jerry Heiselman was just pointing out this morning that we have over 3 billion points 159,722 work units completed in team GDI unfolding at home. So thanks everybody who's contributing to that. That's amazing. Having an effect out there in the world where we're seeing things turn out from supercomputers not necessarily directly from folding at home in this case but from this research. So that's good. Absolutely. Thanks, Brian. Thanks for the link and thanks to everybody who sends us feedback all the time if you'd like to join feedback at dailytechnewshow.com also thank you for all the cat photos. I've never been happier. Shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels including Tony Glass, Jeffrey Zilx and Steve Ayadarola. Also extra special thanks to Charlotte Henry for being back with us today. Charlotte, let folks know where they can keep up with all of your work. So yeah, I'm over at the macobserver.com so head over there and check out all the stuff we do covering the world of Apple and beyond and I'm at Charlotte A Henry on the Twitters but don't send me cat photos. I don't trust cats puppies we can talk about. Oh, that sounds like a good GDI. Good day in that topic right there. Hey folks, if you want good day internet or an ad-free feed of Daily Tech News Show support us on Patreon. In fact, if you're listening to your Patreon RSS it's already ad-free. 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