 Do you want a holiday card from DTNS times a waste and become a patron and give us your address by November 15th and we'll send you a special DTNS holiday card. Coming up on DTNS, a new way to target your sleep. Facebook reduces the way advertisers can target you and a trio of Apple and Google court decisions. None of which put any of their matters to rest. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, November 10th, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm Scott Johnson. And I'm the show's producer, Roger J. Sarah Lane is back! We were just talking about what she's been eating during her time away from us. You know, keeping it real. Yeah, you can find out what that was. It was popcorn. But there's more details at gooddayinternetpatreon.com slash DTNS. Big thanks to our top patrons such as Philip Less, Daniel Dorado, and John Atwoods. Let us start with a few tech things you should know. Meta Platforms Incorporated's quarterly update on its oversight board suggests that the 30-day deadline to respond to its recommendations may be too tight. While the board's recommendations are non-binding, Meta found that teams took anywhere from 5 to 35 days to assess and respond to them. The current product roadmap for the Facebook product happens every six months, meaning that the board's recommendations are being considered more along that timeline. Of the board recommendations submitted in the last two quarters, 12 were implemented, 23 are in progress, with 17 being assessed for feasibility. It seems like a reasonable recommendation there. That's interesting. The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Uber alleging violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The suit centers around wait-time fees that begin accruing two minutes after a car arrives at your pickup location until the trip has begun. People with disabilities often need more than two minutes to get into a car. YouTube announced it's making the dislike count on videos private. The company says this is to protect its creators from harassment and reduce the threat of what it calls dislike attacks. Users can still thumbs down videos to give feedback to creators that will just be private now. Creators can then track their dislikes in YouTube Studio. Tencent revenue rose 13% last quarter, but that's its slowest growth rate since 2014. President Martin Lau told Investors Wednesday, the China's new tougher regulatory environment has affected the company's growth and profitability, but the company expects the stricter regime is here to stay. Lau said the impact on the industry will be less and less over time, basically saying, I guess we'll all get used to it. Tencent suffered due to several new restrictions, especially not granting new game approvals and limiting children to three hours of gaming time a week. Tencent is not the only one feeling the crunch. Alibaba was fined $2.8 billion in April for abusing its market position, and ride-hailing giant Didi is undergoing a month-long security review. Apple announced an upcoming service called Apple Business Essentials meant for small businesses with fewer than 500 employees. It includes cloud storage, support, and device management tools. There will be three tiers starting at $2.99 per month for up to three devices and two terabytes of cloud storage. Apple Business Essentials is still in beta and expected to launch to all customers next year. Alright, we got a reduction in ad targeting from Facebook to talk about. Facebook's VP of Product Marketing and Ads, Graham Mudd, announced Tuesday that starting January 19, Facebook will no longer offer advertisers the ability to target users by topics like health, sexual orientation, or religious and political beliefs. Jack Crunch points out that categories like lung cancer awareness, LGBT culture, and Jewish holidays will no longer be available under that new policy. This targeting was based on first-party information. We're not talking about third-party tracking here. This is stuff that Facebook has gathered from your profile's interest categories developed from your activity on the platform. It looks at what you do and says, ah, it seems like Scott's really into video games. He'll be targeted in the video game category. Facebook has tens of thousands of these kinds of categories, including ones it is not removing like knitting or rock climbing. Those are not considered sensitive. You can see what categories it has put you in, if you're curious, by going to settings and privacy, settings, ads, ad settings, categories. You can look this up later in the show notes. And there you can actually opt yourself out of any of those categories. If you're curious, Facebook thinks my interest categories, my top ones, are retirement, Gary Vaynerchuk. I mean, he's a great guy. Investment, tattoos, and insurance. I don't know that these work well for me, but that's just me. Facebook said in a blog post that it took input from civil rights experts, policymakers, and other stakeholders before making this decision and determining what categories to eliminate. Mudd described some alternate ways of reaching audiences, including one they have called engagement custom audiences that lets you target people who have engaged with your content on Facebook in the past. And then there's one called lookalike audiences, which identifies users that aren't your customers, but have similar interests to your customers. These are better ways to target people that don't involve figuring out their personal characteristics and potentially sensitive beliefs. Well, two things. One, I'm really excited for all your Vaynerchuk ads you're going to be getting. That's why it's just Gary all day long. Gary V ads. Up and down. But the other thing is, maybe I'm reading too much into this, but this feels drastic in a weird way. And by that, I just mean we are, it's been pounded into us that over the last five to 10 years, the way that we are getting all of these relevant ads sent to us is because, it's scouring what we say, do, post, reply to, view, favorite and all that. It sounds like they're not going to do that anymore. Or at the very least, they're not going to have third party or first party ad suppliers be able to target you based on the stuff you're saying on your profile or saying on your page or whatever. And that's surprising to me. But just look at the Tom's interest categories as an example, Tom is, you know, mentioning that they didn't necessarily make a lot of sense to him. And I encourage anybody who's on Facebook on any regular basis to go into those privacy settings and just see what your target keywords are because it doesn't. I don't think that Facebook's doing a wrong thing here. I think that there are, you know, there are trigger categories that it, the company says, let's do this. It just makes the most sense and it will quiet some, some outrage here. But is it really going to make your ads more relevant? I'm not sure they're relevant all that much to begin with. And it again, everybody's experience is different. Yeah, to your point, Scott, they are throwing away part of the baby with the bathwater here, but it's not the whole baby. They remember they've got tens of thousands of these things. And what they're saying is we have gotten into trouble and we have come under criticism is most recently in those Facebook papers for targeting people based on sensitive things about them that maybe they would rather not even think that advertisers knew about them. So that's what they're getting rid of. They're like, your personal characteristics, your religious beliefs, your politics, forget it. We're not going to target you, especially politics. That's a big one, right? And that's turning down money. But there's like, but yeah, knitting, rock climbing, video games, getting a check tattoos. Yeah. Yeah. Those are all fine. Those aren't sensitive. I hadn't even thought about the banner check tattoo coming soon. Check. We're doing this to me on purpose. We're trying to just drive you crazy. I think Tom probably should get a tattoo. I mean, Facebook knows. I mean, I should invest in insurance for my Gary V tattoo before I retire. It should be a digital token of some make it work. Yeah, make it work. Non fungible tattoo. That's what the teeth stand for. Let's move on. Google is going to expand its sleep sensing features in the second generation nest hub for all you sleepers out there. It should be all of us that uses a motion sensor to monitor your sleep patterns. The nest hub will now display a sleep staging chart to show stages of sleep. This includes periods of wakefulness and of course, rapid eye movement, sleep or REM sleep. It will also separate sleep related sounds like snoring and coughing. The noises you might make from sounds outside the sleep zone, like your dog barking or snoring or making otherwise. All of this will be available as a free preview through 2022. And then they're going to roll it out into the Fitbit premium program in 2023. The nest hub is also getting the calm app in December, offering a catalog of sleep stories, relaxing music, meditation sessions, and a limited number of those will be available for free with that service. If you want full access, though, you're going to pay $69.99 a year or a one time cost of $400. I remember, I'm old enough to remember when that service was 10 bucks a year. A lot has changed for the column.com. But anyway, yeah, they want to help you sleep better, I guess, or at least give you data about your sleep. Well, and it's weird because, well, it's not weird, but I am a Fitbit premium member. I've got my Fitbit Versa 2 that I wear and I wear it at night. And in the morning, I get my sleep stats. And it's pretty, there's a lot of stats involved. You know, we got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. That's all there. But also just kind of a weird period where I was like, I kind of remember I was a little restless. And it knew that I was kind of restless and not sleeping soundly. I don't totally know how much more data this would provide in a nest hub. But I know, as we were talking earlier today, Tom, you were saying, well, I don't want to wear a wearable when I sleep. And there might be ways that this could better understand, yeah, if there are dogs in the room, or you're sharing a bed with somebody else and they're on their own thing. And how does this data apply to specifically me? I love sleep data. It doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to sleep any better knowing how poorly I slept the night before. But the more I know, I feel like, OK, I at least understand the patterns that I'm going through. And I always welcome the next gen of these things. Yeah, I don't like the idea of wearing anything while I sleep on me. I mean, pajamas is fine. But you know, like, like a fit. Wow, that's a lot. It's quite an addition, I know. But something that can detect me is fine. Up until now, though, the problem has been we have two humans and two dogs in the room. Like, how's it going to know which motion was me? What snoring was me? What snoring was Ray and Sawyer and all of that. So this gets closer to that. I still want to know what to do with it. Like, I'm fascinated with collecting it and seeing like, oh, how much often do I wake up? But I'm still wanting a better idea of like, yeah, but what does it mean? Is it normal to wake up this often? Is it telling me something? And is there anything I could do about it once I see it? That still seems like we're in the part of this cycle where we're trying to figure that all out. Yeah. Back in the, I've done some of this with a phone app and it was just to determine whether I was snoring as much as my wife said I was at night. And sure enough, I was. And that data didn't do anything to help me. Although it gave me some like, I don't know, a moment of like practical thinking of, well, what could I do? Should I roll over this way? Should I try to not be on my back? Should I try that pillow? And I tried a few things and I got better. So it does drive perhaps results, but I don't know how any of this is going to, you know, nobody's going to get an answer out of their nest saying here's what you do tomorrow night to have the best hours of sleep you ever had. Yeah, not yet. Yeah, I just feel, I feel like the more that the data gets smarter, the more people, it's kind of like, oh, am I eating the wrong thing for myself? If you know something doesn't seem right here, or you feel like your sleep stats are really great. You can either change stuff or stay stay the course. Yeah, I guess if your sleep stats are really great, whatever really great is, then you know, like, oh, don't don't mess with it. You're doing good. Folks, have you ever thought like, did they hear about this story? I didn't hear them talk about it. Well, yes, we probably did. But if we didn't, you could tell us on our subreddit, go submit stories and even vote on the ones other listeners have submitted at DailyTechNewShow.Reddit.com. Back in September, in the Epic Apple case, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled in favor of Apple on almost all points. However, she ruled that Apple was not justified in its policy that forbade developers to inform users that there were alternative ways to pay for digital things outside of the app. This is sometimes called Apple's anti-steering policy. She also gave Apple until December 9th to provide its guidelines. Apple appealed that part of the ruling and also asked Judge Gonzalez Rogers for an indefinite stay until the appeal could be heard. Apple also claimed it would take months to figure out the engineering, economic, business, and other issues around allowing links out to the payment options. Apple argues that in-app links could lead to some developers perpetuating scams. Apple attorney Mark Perry said, quote, we believe that these changes, if Apple is forced to implement them, will upset the platform. They will harm consumers. They will harm developers. That is a fact. It's going to happen. And quote, none of that swayed the judge. However, she wrote Apple has provided no credible reason for the court to believe that the injunction would cause the professed devastation. She also added, quote, other than perhaps needing time to establish guidelines. Apple has provided no credible reason for the court to believe that the injunction would be cause would cause the professed devastation. Links can be tested by app review. Users can open browsers and retype links to the same effect. This is merely inconvenient, which then only works to the advantage of Apple, end quote. Apple would appeal that decision on the stay to the Ninth Circus Court. It will rather to the Ninth Circus Court. So this is not over. If you were hoping, nope, we got a ways to go. And Apple spokesperson said, Apple believes no additional business changes should be required to take effect until all appeals in this case are resolved. The original decision from September gave Apple until December 9th to make its guideline changes. So yeah, we got less than a month. Yeah, they're going to hurry up and get that Ninth Circuit Court convinced. I kind of feel like they will. My gut tells me that they'll win on appeal for the stay, right? Remember, this isn't even about whether Judge Gonzales Rogers decision was correct or not. They are also appealing that, but this is just we don't want the order to go in effect until our appeals are exhausted, which courts are generally favorable to unless you're the judge that issued it in the first place. And I don't think you would expect Judge Gonzales Rogers to say, well, I wouldn't have given you until December 9th if I thought you should have this on a stay. So I don't know. I feel like it's to be expected that she wouldn't be convinced, but that a superior court might. Yeah. And this all will boil down to, you know, obviously they're trying to convince the court of something. But I can tell you as a, as a user of Apple products and someone who tries to keep up on what's going on with this sort of thing, it's the most frustrating, irritating thing about them. And I wish that they would just kind of let this go. I think in that purchases are fine. They still have like full approval per view of every app that enters the store. And I realize there's enough of it that it's maybe hard to man that or to have a human being approve every single thing that comes through. But already they have that filter to help them be less prone to scamming, less prone to issues from developers. And even then those things still happen today with or without this particular aspect happening with, with payment. So I just don't understand why they are dying on that hill. I'm not going to die on that hill. They'll thrive on that hill. But I'm not so sure they won't lose this and end up seeing a future where this is the year to it. To be clear, I think they'll win on appeal for the stay. I think they'll be able to convince a judge like, Hey, shouldn't we hold off on all the work we would have to do to implement this until we're sure we have to? What if we went on appeal? I think they can convince a judge of that. I'm less certain they can convince a judge that Gonzalez Rogers was wrong entirely. Because I think the smoking gun is going to be a judge saying, Well, but you let Amazon take payments in their app for physical goods. So that hasn't devastated and caused all the scams that you're talking about, right? But that again, that's a separate issue. That's appealing the actual decision, not just trying to get the delay. Second of our three full court press items, Google won court case this week in the UK consumer rights campaigner Richard Lloyd brought a collective lawsuit that's similar to a class action lawsuit over the fact that between 2011 and 2012. If you set your iPhone to do not track that only applied to Google's apps. Google still collected data on health, race, ethnicity, sexuality and finance during that period. If you accessed a Google service through the Safari web browser. The UK Supreme Court wrote the claimant seeks damages for each individual member of the represented class without attempting to show that any wrongful use was made by Google of personal data relating to that individual or that the individual suffered any material damage or distress as a result of the breach. The law as the Supreme Court in the UK interprets it does not allow mere loss of control of your data as enough grounds to receive money in a collective action. You need to show that it harmed you and that means every single person has to bring their own case. Lord Leggett wrote in the opinion that he thought Lloyd had a real chance of success if he pursued the suit as an individual. But the fallout here is that Google won't be losing a bunch of money at once in a collective action suit. They'll probably, if they lose any money, lose less because each individual will have to bring the case themselves. There's no way that every single person was going to do it. So it automatically limits it. People don't have time and money for that. So yeah, that's a big win for Google. Well, here's the third of the full court press Tom talked about. Here's an update of one of the three EU fines that Google is appealing. This is the decision by the European Commission that fined Google 2.42 billion euros with a B in 2017 for abusing its monopoly on search by putting its own comparison shopping services at the very top of the results. Google appealed that decision to the EU General Court, which confirmed both the antitrust findings and the amount of the fine. So round one of this court battle goes to the EU over Google, but it ain't over just yet. Google, of course, notes that it made changes in 2017 to comply with the EC's order and Google can course or can, of course, decide to appeal the General Court's decision to the European Court of Justice. Yeah, I'm still waiting to see that confirmed, but I can't imagine they won't. That's the highest court you can go and they lost. So of course they're going to appeal. And eventually this will probably, I don't know, fool's game to guess on these things, but my gut is the EC jail will rule against Google as well. Not to pay the money. Yeah. And it won't be that much for them. I think the money's already in like an escrow account anyway. So it's not even like it. Yeah. Every time I hear about one of these kinds of fees, even big ones like that is a big fee. It's still Google. They'll be fine. Just fine. Well, and that is what's so frustrating to me about stories like this is it's important to know, you know, has Google been slapped on the wrist? You know, in a monetary way that maybe doesn't, maybe Google doesn't really care about all that money, but it's the precedence, right? It's what does this mean for, does this change the way that the company has to operate and other companies have to operate as a result? Yeah. That's what you hope, right? Like you, you, you see a lot of performative stuff from companies and there was the, you know, the recent California lawsuit against Blizzard and entertainment. They offered up 18 million bucks to say, Hey, here we'll pay this and then we're everyone's scot-free and whatever. And there's more to it than that. But the bottom line was that 18 million is just like nothing to them. But like you say, there's precedence and sometimes precedence is good and it doesn't affect other companies. So, you know, And, you know, thinking about it as we, as we talk this out, the effect of this in a couple of cases has been not an Apple's case. But, but in the, in the do not track case in the UK, Google says, look, we already stopped doing that. Because, you know, like, so, so they changed behavior, right? This is just like, let's slap them on the wrist more about it, but they already did change their behavior. And then in this EU case, they no longer prioritize their, their shopping results at the top because of this case, they've changed that behavior. So you have effectively changed Google's behavior in both cases. Maybe it doesn't matter how this ends up and how much money ends up being fine. Because the point was to make a public stink about it and put pressure on them to stop doing it. Yeah, I guess the question is if that's enough to deter the behavior in the future, or does that make them go, well, they didn't even charge us next time. I'll just force it until I do, you know, I don't know. I don't know how. Generally, every time one of these cases comes up and this goes back to Microsoft, even behavior changes, not always, right? Look at Apple, but, but more often than not, I feel like it does because they just don't want to have to deal with more law suits in the future. Well, okay, I'm just going to go ahead and say GM Crypto Fam. If you don't know what I mean, I mean, it's good morning. You know, whatever time it is, you probably seen this on Twitter. It's a new thing. GM time to brush up on a new buzzword. It's not GM. You NFT fans probably already know this one. But if not, you know, let's all get up to date on right clicker mentality. Vice says that this went viral on October 26 during a discussion of the celebrity Turkish chef commonly referred to as Salt Bay, who sells gold encrusted steaks in London for 1,500 pounds sterling. Someone had made a video showing how you could make the same gold encrusted steak for a mere 65 pounds, way less. Twitter user and alleged NFT fan, Midwit Milhouse, responded, this is a great example of the right clicker mentality. Sure, you can make your own gold coated steak for 65 pounds, but you don't have the satisfaction flex clout that comes from having eaten at Salt Bay's restaurant. The value is not in the cost of the steak. Right clicker mentality in the NFT world refers to the criticism that you can have the digital item sold as an NFT by right clicking on the image and then saving without having to pay, which a lot of people have rightly pointed out. That kind of gives you the same image, but not the same clout. The, uh, that whole paragraph you read the quote, literally made my fingers tingle. I just wanted to put that out there and I'm not in a good way. I really annoyed me. So anyway, sorry, Tom, you were about to say no, no, no. Why did they make your fingers tingle? I don't know. I think it's a golden crusted steak or something else. You know what it is? It's this, it's this. There's something here, like in the lines, uh, then you don't have the satisfaction. That's fine. The flex really clout really like, no, look, I understand. There's a lot of flexing and clouding happening. I know people are into it. I get it. I understand, you know, NFTs are, are a thing moving forward. We're, we're there and how it all susses out who that crap knows, but as it stands right now, there's just a lot of. There's a rowy McBrower sent around it and it just makes me feel icky most of the time. I wish it didn't and maybe we'll get to a place where it doesn't, but there's just a lot of that right now. And I feel like someone's trying to talk me into lifting giant, you know, giant steel balls at a gym or something. I mean, I gotta be honest. I have some right clicker mentality. I don't necessarily want to be a naysayer about something new that a lot of people are trying to wrap their heads around. I am trying to wrap my head around the NFT marketplace and I, I know how pumped people are about so many of them. So I'm not going to sit here and be like, oh, it makes no sense. You just right click and save the JPEG. Like NFTs aren't just images, you know, there's, there's a lot more to it. I'm not there yet. I want to, I want to get there. And I know a lot of people are in the same place. What is, what I find off putting is the people who say it doesn't make sense to me. So it doesn't make sense. Yeah. So it's dumb, right? Like, I think there's, there's room for you to be like, I don't, I wouldn't pay a lot of money for a receipt. You know, but I'm not right clicker mentality where I think it's just the same to have the image as it is to have the receipt. The receipt is apparently worth something to enough people to cause this to work. Now are there pyramid schemes? Absolutely. But I think there's more to it than just a pyramid scheme. I don't know. Maybe that's left clicker energy coming from me. I don't know how this works, but, but like, I, I, I get the criticism, but I, I don't think you should let that criticism undermine the fact that it may work for enough other people to have that receipt to have that deed that you don't even need to flex. You don't need to get all broy about it for it to be worthwhile. Also, we should apologize to all the Mac users. We do mean control click mentality for you. Well, depending on what kind of mouse you got. Command. Command. Command click. Command click. Again, apologize. That was like a low troll. Well, because I use a Windows keyboard on my Mac. So that's why I got it wrong. I use a, I use a Logitech mouse. So I've got no problem with right clicking. I, I say control the time and people say you mean command right now. I'm like, you know what I meant. Stop it with your right clicker control command clicker energy. All right, let's check out the mail bag. Let's do it. Shaz, Bazdan wrote in to share a little knowledge on taxation as it relates to crypto. We were talking on Monday. I wasn't talking on Monday, but Tom and Rich and the team were talking about how crypto is treated as security and gains are treated as capital gains. And somebody in chat wondered if those losses from crypto could wipe out your taxes. And the team didn't think so. Thankfully, Shaz Bazdan can clarify Shaz writes concerning losses in general, you can arbitrarily offset income with losses. For example, if you made $100,000 in wages and have $150,000 in losses, capital or other causes, you can't subtract the losses from your income and pay no tax. If the IRS will, however, let you apply the loss against income and capital gains over the years that follow the loss, but with a limited amount per year until you finally carried forward all of that original loss. I'd expect this taxing to be an issue if the crypto used is volatile like Bitcoin. It can go up and down significantly on a daily basis due to its market conditions like treated like stock. If a crypto is tied to a fiat currency like the dollar, it shouldn't fluctuate so much. Losses in the value of NFT based game items could be constrained by the game makers. Like, for example, the sword costs as much and until we say otherwise remains as such and can't be resold at a profit. Yeah, although that's no fun. Why would they do that Shaz? But yeah, this is all good info and definitely it starts to verge on like you'll just need to ask your accountant at some point. But that I think it will help a few people understand a little more why you can't just take all the losses and be like, hey, cool, cashed out. You know, there's a little more to it than that. Thank you, Chas Besna. Appreciate it. Yeah, thanks Chas. I spent a little bit of my downtime trying to understand a little bit more about the crypto world because I just felt woefully inept to even talk about it. And I'm still pretty woeful. But but I but I have a little bit more because tax was sort of the first thing where I'm like, I don't want to play this game. If I get tax headaches next year, you know, that is like the number one thing that makes this not fun. Yeah. And and yeah, it I think it's it's very much the Wild West still. And the more we all know about that going forward, whether you want to participate or not the better. Keep those emails coming folks feedback at daily tech news show dot com. We also want to thanks our brand new boss Wayne Pratt. Wayne just started backing us on Patreon. Thank you. Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne. Good job, Wayne. Also thanks to Scott Johnson for being with us today. Scott, what is new in your world? Well, often when I'm on here, I talk, we do a lot of stories about video games sometimes because they're tech related and I always have something to say. And if you wonder why that is, it's because I'm obsessed with that business. And if you want to hear more of that kind of discussion, I have a show on Thursday night. It's called core. It's a podcast as well. You can also watch it live where me and a couple of co-hosts break down what's going on in the industry, what games we're playing, why we're playing them, all that sort of stuff. That sounds like your jam. You may want to check it out. It's called core. You can find it anywhere you get your podcast or you can find it at frogpants.com slash core. We are live Monday through Friday on this very show at 4 30 p.m. Eastern 21 30 UTC and you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live. We will be off tomorrow for Veterans Day. Also remember and stay, but we will be back Friday with Shannon Morris and Len Peralta. See you then. This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program. Thank you.