 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you including Brad, Kevin, and Paul Teeson. Coming up on DTNS, we finally found a useful way to gauge Bitcoin's effect on the environment. Plus, what Shannon Morse, known coupon expert, thinks of Amazon's digital coupon program. And what Shannon Morse, known security expert, thinks of Europe's new cyber security directive. DTNS starts now! This is the Daily Tech News for May, Friday the 13th, 2022 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. Ooh, and from Spooky Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. Spooky-o Redwood. Ooh, from Haunted Colorado, I'm Shannon Morse. Drawing the top text stories from Cleveland, I'm Len Perolda. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Yeah, doesn't need to add any spookies. Yes, he's spooky enough on his own. He's just who he is. Just ask my kids. All right, let's start with a few tech things you should know. Elon Musk tweeted on Friday that his deal to acquire Twitter is temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users. He followed that post with another that said, still committed to acquisition. Some people are wondering if that's true. The 5% number came in a May third story from Reuters. Musk would face a $1 billion fee if he decided not to close the deal. He waved due diligence in the April 25th agreement to buy the company. In a totally separate story, I have no idea what constitutes stock manipulation. SpaceX's internet service Starlink expanded its satellite internet service availability to 7 more countries for a total of 32. Service areas cover most of North America, outside Alaska, Northern Canada, most of Europe, outside Upper Scandinavia, New Zealand and Southern Australia, southeastern Brazil and most of Chile. SpaceX also says it's now shipping equipment to customers immediately. If you recall, customers have reported waiting months after signing up to get their equipment. No more says Starlink. Security researcher Brian Krebs received a tip that unauthorized users obtained log in information to the law enforcement inquiry and alert system on May 8th, which he passed along to the FETs. The system provides search capabilities into 16 federal law enforcement databases including law enforcement sensitive and mission sensitive data. Based on screenshots shared by the tipster, UC Berkeley researcher Nicholas Weaver said that the actors could both view records and submit false records to the system. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says that it is investigating the reports. Now we've heard a lot of tech companies slowing down, but Gogoro is powering up. Bucking the tech downturn, Taiwan's electric scooter company reported a 61% rise in revenue in Q1 driven by an increase of sales in Taiwan. 25% of two-wheel vehicles sold in Taipei in December were using Gogoro's battery-swapping tech. Gogoro also reported a reduction in production cost per scooter. Subscribers rose 25% to 467,000. Gogoro has been trying to expand outside of its home market too. Right now it accounts for 95% of its revenue, so I'd like to diversify outside Taiwan. Gogoro has a partnership with Gojek's Electrum to build infrastructure for two-wheeled EVs and batteries in Indonesia. Bloomberg sources say that Samsung began informing its chip-making clients that it will raise prices 15-20% with chips made on legacy nodes seeing the biggest price increases. The increases will be applied to the second half of 2022. Earlier this week, TSMC reportedly informed clients of a single-digit price increase effective at the start of 2023, so seems like we're seeing a trend here. Yeah, and we're probably going to have higher priced electronics as a result. Alright, we'll need to save some money then, Sarah. Any ideas? So Amazon has introduced a feature in its, we'll call her app, Amazon Assistant, called Shopping List Savings that combines in-store purchases with Amazon credits, but it's something that you can do outside of Amazon. So here's how it works. You go to the Shopping List section of the app, you click on Savings. You look at rebate offers in the app, you add them to Amazon Shopping List. Maybe some of them apply to things that you want to buy. You can buy stuff at a store. Then you take pictures of the itemized receipt, showing the store's name, location, date, time of purchase, basically proof of life. I really did this, product price, total price. You upload that to the app and then you scan the eligible product barcodes. Up to a week later, if all works correctly, as Amazon describes it, you get rebates added to your Amazon gift card balance. It sounds pretty great for anybody who's like, I use Amazon a lot, but I also go to other places and it would be nice to get a little kickback from Amazon. Shannon, I know you're no stranger to coupons, how you can save a lot of money if you're on top of things, if you're, you know, you're kind of following where the money is. Does this feature appeal to you and is it too cumbersome? That's a good question. So personally, it does not appeal to me anymore, but had you asked me this like five years ago, I would have said yes, absolutely. I will totally do this because I was using A at that time. Now I have moved on to other forms of smart home hubs and I no longer use Amazon's products as my main source of shopping lists. So now it would not appeal to me, but when I was extreme couponing, I would have absolutely been on this because there are definitely ways that you can use these applications and get free stuff, which is very cool. Yeah, I mean, you know, the idea of coupons has been around since dropping was around, right? Oh my God, so long. Pretty much, yeah. Yeah. I mean, couponing takes many forms. It seems like Amazon is trying to bring you back into the fold by saying, hey, let's work with where you're already going, even if you're not shopping from Amazon all the time. We'd like to have that data about your shopping habits too, not just your local store. Right. Well, exactly. It makes sense, right? Because even though now I no longer use these kind of applications and to be very, very factual, there are plenty of these kind of applications available. I used to use one called Ibata and another one called Checkout 51. All of them basically work the same. You scan a receipt, you scan the barcode and then they give you some kind of rebate. In some cases that rebate would be a gift card. In other cases, it would be one or two dollars to your PayPal account, which you could then redeem for whatever you wanted. I preferred that way because I wasn't stuck in any specific merchandiser and I could use that money wherever I wanted. But if they give you a gift card, like what Amazon is telling here, that means that you're still stuck inside the Amazon ecosystem. Well, yeah. So my next question is, sure, everybody likes, you know, some free money, right? Or something that feels that way. But on the privacy side of things, here's what Amazon says about this new feature. We will get any information you provide, including receipt images and information we may extract from those receipts and the offers that you activate. You understand and acknowledge that your personal information may be shared with Amazon's service providers. The information you give to us will be used and shared as described in the Amazon.com privacy notice. Does this give you pause? Yes, it does. This is, again, very similar to the other couponing applications. All of them in some way, shape or form are paying you for your data. So even though you might end up getting something for free, like some kind of physical merchandise, you're still giving away some kind of data, whether that might be your shopping trends, your location, both your receipt information so they can see all the other stuff that you would normally buy in a shopping trip. There's a lot of data that they can collate about you to create kind of a personality about who you are, and then they can target you with ads. So in that way, that's one of the reasons why I stopped using these kind of applications and also because I didn't find it to be worthwhile, given it does take some time because you have to scan all these barcodes and you got to scan the receipts. And all of that requires some manual labor. Yeah, that's the downside, right? Is that Amazon, as it emerges as an advertising player, isn't going to get as much data from people because they won't go to the trouble to scan all of the private data in for that. But otherwise, it's pretty genius for Amazon quickly becoming an advertising company just like Google. Yeah, and I realize not everybody is going to care about the security aspect or the privacy aspect of these kind of applications. They'll be like, Hey, I'm saving money, so I don't care, they can have whatever they want about my shopping habits. And you'll see the same thing with like loyalty cards from from your grocery store, like you get coupons for those two. One of the nice things about these is that you can stack coupons whenever you're using these apps. So if you get like a physical coupon in the mail from the manufacturer, you can take that like tied detergent coupon to target, use it on top of targets discount, and then you can also use it on top of this application. So you can definitely like a bulk discounts and end up getting getting something for free. But is that discount worth your privacy that you're basically giving away? That's the big question that I want people to ask. Well, you mentioned Ibarra, you mentioned Checkout 51, Fetch Rewards is another company that's doing sort of a loyalty program like this. For anyone who says, Okay, targeted ads sort of a part of life. I don't know. Is this so bad? I mean, does it get worse? It can. Absolutely it can. I mean, think about it. It might not just be targeted ads. It could just be like information that they're selling to third parties. They could sell information to maybe insurance agencies like you never know. Like what if they're selling that kind of information about what you're eating to a health insurer? Like we don't really necessarily know who's giving away this third party data. So you really want to take that into perspective and think outside the box of just like, Yeah, they're selling my data so they know what to target with me with on Instagram while I'm browsing the web. Yeah, you may not mind, but you should know and you should know you should think about it carefully. Indeed. Speaking of security early Friday morning representatives of the European Commission Parliament and the EU Council agreed on the details of the network and information security directive to NIS to this will be an update to NIS one, which was just called NIS. That was passed back in 2016. As with most of these recent EU directives we've been talking about the final text is not yet available. It has to pass through a process of approval by the European Commission, which involves the nation states, the Parliament, which involves the representatives, and then it has to be passed into law by each of the member states. But Shannon, tell us what they're saying will be in this law once that's all done. Okay, so the directive itself covers medium and large companies so not necessarily all companies and organizations, including government organizations. In addition to it, financial businesses are included. It also covers wastewater and waste management, manufacturing, food supply, all of these kind of supply chain type businesses space. There's postal and courier services, public administration, both at central and regional level and healthcare, including medical device manufacturers. So more than 100,000 different organizations will qualify under this new directive. All right, so it's an expansion of who has to do all this. What are they going to have to do now? Well, it seems pretty logical in my perspective as somebody who's really into like security and privacy. They'll have to set up and audit some kind of security response plan, and that includes risk management features too. So kind of working before you actually get hacked to make sure that your plan is in place. They have to meet a minimum requirement of security technologies to combat combat any kind of attacks or they could potentially face fines. And that includes patching software in a very timely manner. So anytime you hear about these kind of vulnerabilities that come out from time to time, they will be expected to patch those. And they also have to notify authorities about incidents. This is pretty interesting within 24 hours, and they have to provide a full report within three days. That's really quick. Yeah, so they're basically making best practices the law. Yeah. And then there's also the idea of sharing information across the EU and there's a new agency for that. Right. Yeah, it's called the European Cyber Crisis Liaison Organization Network, aka EU Cyclone, which I love. They will coordinate responses to large scale incidents at the EU level. And then this will be able to encourage increased information sharing between member nations and coordinate vulnerability disclosure as well. Now you mentioned the fines and I found this part interesting. The fines are set at 2% of turnover for operators of essential services, 1.4% for what they call important service providers. I guess water would be essential. Maybe some of the others are just important. These were set to be close to what ransomware groups generally demand. The idea is to make not preparing as costly as actually getting breached so that you really don't have an upside to being like, well, maybe we won't get attacked and then we'll save some money. No, you're going to get fined if you don't do that. So what do you think of these rules overall, Shannon? So personally, and I know that a lot of people in the hacker industry will be like, no, no government regulations. But in some cases I feel like regulatory powers need to be in place in order to kind of force companies to actually take action and be proactive about that action. And in this case, I would rather see a company be safe and secure and keep my data safe than them fall negatively to popular opinion because of a hack, because they do fall victim to an attack. And I realize a lot of companies may look at this and think, okay, the fines may be equal to what a ransomware payment might be. But you also have to consider, they might have to pay a third party cybersecurity company to come in and do risk management to do a penetration test. And that can cost tens of thousands of dollars. So there's a very, very expensive upfront cost that businesses have to consider in order to fall in line with this directive. But I do think it's important because it's worthwhile. Yeah, it's interesting. You can make the argument that the government is putting a cost on companies, but usually that argument is around a cost that is optional. These should not be optional. At least I don't think so. These are things that companies risk themselves and others, others personal information or other services in the case of water, if they don't do them. So it's sort of like a public safety measure in addition to a regulatory measure. I mean medical device manufacturers, it's so important to make sure that those don't vulnerable to some kind of heart implant being able to be vulnerable to a Bluetooth hack. Those things do happen. We've seen those in the news. So protecting against this is so important. If you have a different thought about this, if you're like, well, you could still protect public safety without the regulation. If you do X, Y or Z, or maybe you have other thoughts on this or anything else we talk about our email address is feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Well, a lot of our DTNS audience has been asking us to address the environmental aspects of cryptocurrency, you know, carbon footprint, etc. Generally, you see critiques of cryptocurrency compared to its big energy usage to that of a nation like New Zealand or the Netherlands. So Tom, I know you've been reluctant to discuss this before now. Why is that? Yeah, because those comparisons are an emotional appeal to make a number sound big. And maybe the number is big, or maybe it really isn't that big, it just sounds big. And so I find the comparisons uninstructive. It's literally apples and oranges. I can compare the power usage of data centers or your favorite political party to New Zealand or the Netherlands, etc. And it also doesn't factor in whether or not renewable energy is used in any of these things, including New Zealand. So I just haven't found it very useful. I haven't made up my mind to say, oh, I believe this or I don't believe that. I'm just like, I want to I want to see some actual data to help me make up my mind. So I finally gave up trying to find a comparison of the banking industry. That's what I kept looking for is like, okay, can we find out the actual like electrical usage of the banking industry? That's hard to pin down. And it's not exactly apples and oranges to compare the banking industry with cryptocurrency. But I wanted to find a useful one that could account for all the subtleties and actually be at least close to comparing like with like. It sounds like you found a comparison. Then tell us more. Yeah, so I got to this point. The reason we're concerned with power usage isn't the power. If all the Bitcoin were suddenly solar based all the overnight, it would change the entire conversation, right? Because what we're concerned about is whether Bitcoin's power usage is irresponsibly or out of proportion contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. It's not the actual power usage. It's the power that has to be generated and whether that's emitting carbon dioxide. So today I decided this morning to just look for comparisons of greenhouse gas emissions. And while I could not find a reliable estimate, a.k.a. one that wasn't put together by a private company promoting cryptocurrency, there's one out there from a company called Galaxy, but they're a crypto company. So I'm like, it makes me a little queasy. I did find an estimate of the emissions of the total gold market from the gold industry. Okay. All right, let's talk about gold. Who are our sources here? Yeah, for gold emissions, I'm using a number from the World Gold Council. That's not made up. It's 31 gold mining companies. These are the companies that actually mine for gold in 45 countries. And they are advocating for sustainability in gold mining. So if these numbers are tilted, they might be tilted to make gold look a little less emitting because they're trying to do better. But they are generally accepted as a pretty accurate estimate. For the Bitcoin estimate, I used an outfit called Digiconomist, which describes itself as dedicated to exposing the unintended consequences of digital trends. Now, they talk a lot about cryptocurrency, but that's not the only thing they talk about. It's an economist named Alex DeVries. And typically sites all the work. You can go and double check it yourself. It's very rigorously done from an economic perspective. If there is a slant, it might be a slant towards trying to prove that Bitcoin admits a little more carbon dioxide. But again, it's fairly well respected. All right, so drum roll, everyone. What did we find? Right now, comparing gold emissions and Bitcoin emissions from those sources. It's about a tie. In 2019, the World Gold Council estimated greenhouse gas emissions of the total gold market to be 126.4 megatons per year. Digiconomist estimates the carbon footprint of Bitcoin at 114.06 megatons per year. Now, notably, Bitcoin energy consumption has been rising. It used to be a lot lower. It continuously goes up until around December when the market flattened out. And of course, we're also seeing the market dive now. So those megatons per year might actually go down, but they've been flat since December. Okay, so if I understand my math correctly, the use of Bitcoin is right around as bad for the environment as the use of gold. And Bitcoin has crashed recently. We've talked about that in some respects and some of you are following that closely. But if it were to skyrocket again to get really popular, this would get worse, right? Yeah, my personal blockchain validates that conclusion. Great. So Shannon, you've listened to all this. Basically, Bitcoin right now emits a little less than gold. They are not exact comparisons, but I find that the usage of gold is probably around the usage of Bitcoin. We're not all paying for things with Bitcoin like we are with cash. So how does this affect your opinion of this? Yeah, I was quiet for a reason, Tom, but now I feel like I'm going to have to call myself out. I do own Bitcoin. Oh, no. And I'm also one of those people that is very pro like recycling and being environmentally friendly and everything. So I do try to keep all that stuff in mind. This actually makes me feel not as bad about me being a villain about holding the Bitcoin. Yes, it's true. I thought it was a lot worse to participate. Well, thank you, Sarah. I obviously thought it was a lot worse. I thought and like being from a banking industry where I used to follow that stuff very closely and I was working within that industry myself. I thought that Bitcoin was much, much worse. And seeing those numbers and seeing that comparison give me a much better perspective and I feel a little bit more neutral about it. Yeah, and I don't think it's good. No, it's not. And like everything with Bitcoin, it's also more volatile than gold, right? Like gold is pretty established. We're not, you know, open. The thing you buy when everything else is volatile. So gold's probably going to stay around 126 or go down as the World Gold Alliance works to try to reduce emissions. Bitcoin has some people trying to reduce emissions. They're doing things like proof of work instead or proof of stake instead of proof of work with Ethereum. But Bitcoin itself is always going to be proof of work. So it as it gets more popular, it could get worse. To me, it's not about like Bitcoin bad Bitcoin good. It's what are the risks? What are the impacts? And these numbers give me a better sense of what those are. It does make me wonder, like other than getting solar, et cetera, et cetera. If I'm mining Bitcoin myself, what are additional steps that I can take so that I'm still investing in my future? But I'm also very much focusing on the planet that I'm living on. Yeah. Well, solar is an option. It's certainly an option. Wind power, trying to get on a renewable energy system, maybe buying carbon offsets. Although that's a whole can of worms as far as whether it's effective and all of that. But yeah, it's certainly achievable to make it sustainable is what this number tells me, even if it isn't there yet. Well, speaking of sustainable, you may have heard of a company called EcoFlow. It makes large scale batteries. You may already be a customer. Tom, I know you are one. You may not. You might also be going on a road trip this summer, somewhere where it's going to be really hot. The company has launched something that it hopes solves your problem. A portable air conditioner designed to give camping or driving in RV or anyone living on the road, even more of a reason to buy EcoFlow products. The new EcoFlow Wave is a portable air conditioner claiming to have the world's most powerful cooling and the longest runtime. The unit weighs 38.58 pounds by itself, so it's not light. 55.98 pounds with the 1,008 watt hour add-on battery attached. The Wave portable air conditioner is available at $300 off for early birds for $1,200. So you're getting a discount if you really care. A more expensive option bundles in its Delta Pro power station for $4,000. So this is not cheap stuff, but man, if you want to stay cool, might be nice. I love my EcoFlow. I use it as a safety battery. I've got a solar panel for it that I can use to recharge it. We don't have a lot of power outages where I live, but the one time we did use it, it was great to be able to just like plug all our phones into it and be able to use 5G and all of that. So I like the company that make a good product. I have no idea if I need an outdoor air conditioner, but you know what? I haven't been outdoor camping when it's super hot. Yeah, it sounds very decadent at the same time. Hey, you know, you're on a road trip, you're hot. This would be nice. Yeah, and Nick with a C is asking whether this is a swamp cooler. Roger had the same question and we couldn't find an answer about that. It does seem to just vent out the back. So definitely meant for sticking its butt out the tent door or out of the window. You don't want to just have it inside or it's going to be warming you up while it cools you down. It's an interesting one, though. If anybody has used this, if you drop the $1,200, let us know. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. Speaking of which, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. Ray in Tampa, Florida says, I just heard your discussion on the wireless charger uses at home. I don't know if this has been mentioned in follow-up episodes, but to me, a strong use case for this is fire alarms. Not having to deal with that annoying chirp and then suddenly realizing that you don't have any 9-volt batteries in the house would be heaven to me. Ray, I feel you. Definitely. I hear you. Nailed it, Ray. Yep. Yep. It's a $10 idea, Ray. The thing I hate the most in life is the term. 1000%. Yes. Someone invent that, please. Yeah. I think it's invented. Well, the fire alarm that could do this is already invented. We just need the good wireless charging system to finally take off, right? Right, right. Yeah. And then Reagan wanted to chime in about companies choosing a hybrid model for work. You know, you go in some days, you stay home some days. Reagan pointed out some companies are required to maintain some level of occupancy, maybe 60% for tax incentives on new campus buildings. I don't know if this is true for Apple, but I know it's true for a few other companies that are starting their three days in office policies. And some of those policies were waived during lockdowns, but they are now back and forth. So that's a very good point, Reagan. Yeah. Definitely something I hadn't really thought about. So much just about like, oh, are we going to make our employees mad by making them commune again? It's what's best for the company and the office space that they have. The city may have given them a tax break. The idea that it'll bring business into a downtown area. Exactly. And then yeah, what do you do when no one's coming anymore? You got to, you know, figure out something. Well, so many things to draw today. Len Peralta has been drawing them. Len, what have you drawn for us today? Well, leave it to the cartoonist to take a pretty complicated subject and bring it down to its base level. You talked about gold versus crypto, the emission comparison. Well, I kind of took it a different route. You know, here is gold and Bitcoin, sort of, you know, kind of whoever smelt it, dealt with the emission comparison between the two of them there. Not exactly what you guys were talking about, but you know, sometimes you give me these crazy ideas. It's metaphorically exactly what we were talking about. Gold and Bitcoin in a ring emitting. That's right. That's exactly right. And if you are a 12 year old boy or even younger and you'd like this on your wall, you can go to my Patreon, patreon.com.com. Even younger or even older. Come on. So you're such right here. You can get it. It's right there right now for you to download if you are a member. You can also get this on my online store, LenPeraltaStore.com. It makes a great gift, you know, for Father's Day, of course. For all the crypto relatives in your... Exactly. There you go. It's great for everybody. We've got the right audience. That's for sure. Also, Shannon Morse, thank you for being with us today. Let folks know where you've been up to and where they can keep up. YouTube.com slash Shannon Morse as usual. And I am currently scripting a Radon mitigation and a Radon sensor review slash upgrade video. And it's so fascinating. I absolutely loved getting super geeky about it. So I feel like y'all might as well. So please subscribe if you're interested in learning about Radon. Because I didn't know it existed before I moved here to Colorado. And now I'm very, very aware. Yeah, it is not the Canadian actress. No. No, it's certainly not. It's very dangerous. Well, you know, maybe she is too. Radon Jones is pretty dangerous too. Well, thank you, Len. And thank you, Shannon, as always for being with us. Also, thanks to a brand new boss that we have. That boss's name is Dylan. Dylan just started backing us on Patreon. Thank you, Dylan. You are a gold star. You know, like it's, it's like you bought a brick of gold, but you didn't have any carbon emissions. Yes. No emissions at all. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Asterisk. We can't account for all emissions related to your plan. Yeah. Not sure. Also, there's a longer version of the show called Good Day. Internet rules on right after DTNS. If you're not familiar, do check it out. Patreon.com slash DTNS. And just a reminder, we are live Monday through Friday, every day for PM Eastern. 200 UTC. Find out more at Daily Tech News Show.com slash live. And we hope you have a great weekend. See you on Monday. This week's episodes of Daily Tech News Show were 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 Rich Trafalino, video producer and Twitch producer Joe Coontz, technical producer Anthony Lemos, Spanish language host, writer and producer Dan Campos, news host, writer and producer Jen Cutter, science correspondent Dr. Nicky Ackermans, social media producer and moderator Zoe Deterding. Our mods, Beatmaster, W. Scottis 1, BioCow, Captain Gipper, Gadget Virtuoso, Steve Guadirama, Paul Reese, Matthew J. Stevens and J.D. Galloway. Modern video hosting by Dan Christensen, video feed by Sean Wei, music and art provided by Martin Bell, Dan Looters, Mustafa A, ACAST and Len Peralta. Live art performed by Len Peralta. ACAST adds support from Tatiana Matias, Patreon support from Dylan Harari. Contributors for this week's shows include Lamar Wilson, Scott Johnson, Justin Robert Young and Shannon Morse. Guests on this week's show included Ayaz Akhtar and Nicole Lee and thanks to all our patrons who make the show possible.