 Coming up on DTNS, a service for free trials without risk, but is it ethical? Is the tech backlash fake? And space-based broadband may come faster than we thought. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, September 16, 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Feline, I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Very pleased to have back on the show today Dr. Kiki, Kirsten Sanford, host of This Week in Science. How's it going Dr. Kiki? It's going pretty darn well for a Monday. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for being on on a Monday. Believe me, I know. It's great to have you on. We were just talking to Kiki about what we use to stream our shows, like This Week in Science or DTNS. That was on our wider expanded show, Good Day Internet. That sounds like an interesting conversation that you want. You can get that show by becoming a patron at patreon.com slash DTNS. Well, let's start now with a few tech things you should know. Representatives from the Libra Association are meeting with the Bank of International Settlements or BIS Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructure on September 16. The meeting will include officials from 26 central banks and focus on the scope and design of Libra that will inform a report to G7 finance ministers. This will include officials from the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank. Google will hold an announcement October 15th in New York. Its invite asks folks to come see a few new things made by Google. Best bets are we're definitely going to hear about the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL because Google already said that's coming. Other devices we might hear about include a Pixel Book 2, a new Google Home Speaker maybe. Google confirmed the Pixel 4 will have a way to authenticate using facial recognition along with gesture controls. I imagine we'll hear more. The OnePlus 7T phone will be revealed on September 26th in India and also North America. A third event for the OnePlus 7T series will be held in London on October 10th. The invite, there's another one invite that says 90 hertz display smooth like never before. Maybe they'll both models the Pro and the Not Pro will have 90 hertz this time. And Apple's Arcade is launching September 19th but Mac Rumors says some folks already got access. Some users running iOS 13 or 13.1 beta. Apple Arcade offers a one month free trial and costs $4.99 a month. About 54 games appear to be available if you sneaked in somehow. Apple said new games will be added regularly once it officially launches on the 19th. All right. Let's talk a little bit more about a LastPass vulnerability. Yeah. So last month, Tavis or Mindy of Google's Project Zero discovered a LastPass vulnerability that exposed credentials entered on a previously visited site. The vulnerability let malicious JavaScript code run with no user interaction needed if the target visited an infected website. Obviously, we don't want that. LastPass did patch the exploit in version 4.33.0 on September 12th and users with auto extension updates should be just fine. Yeah. So if you turned off those automatic extension updates or you don't automatically update your mobile apps or any version of LastPass, make sure that you've got 4.33 installed. Two, this was discovered by researchers. It was never been found in the wild yet. It is not believed that it has been exploited in the wild. And even if it were to be exploited in the wild, it only gets the previous website's password. So it's not a great way to break into all of LastPass. I consider this a good news story because it's the good guys found a vulnerability. Dr. Kiki, I'm curious how you feel about stuff like this. I think it's great that researchers are looking into these vulnerabilities to be able to let us know that they're there. And you don't know if they have been used at any point until somebody says, hey, I've got all your data. But I think it's good for us to know. And like you said, if people have turned off those auto refresh, auto download features, they can fix it and get it fixed before it is a problem. Well, the Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon might be putting itself into its own little problem by starting to change search results that started to happen last year according to the journal to prioritize profitability over relevance and other things like customer satisfaction and help boost Amazon's own private label products in its search listings. The journal says that Amazon isn't directly boosting products based on profitability alone, but it's factoring in other details that end up boosting more profitable products anyway, and those that belong to Amazon. A spokesperson for the company says, quote, we have not changed our criteria. We used to rank search results to include profitability. But the company does say it uses a number of metrics for testing, including long-term profitability to see how new features impact the customer experience and our business as any rational store would. We don't make decisions based on one metric. Now, the reason this is even a controversy is Amazon is being investigated for abusing its marketplace dominance to hurt businesses that sell in its marketplace. Remember, Amazon sells some things directly to you. Sometimes they hook you up with merchants who sell through the Amazon platform. And some merchants have complained that Amazon brings them on the platform and lets them sell for a while until Amazon learns how to do their business and then outcompetes them or in some cases just kicks them right off the platform. So that's why this is brought up at all. However, if you're a company that's doing a search for your own company's results, I think the idea that you would tweak those search results to make your long-term profits higher seem reasonable to me. Am I missing something? I think you're right on there. Yeah, but you're a company you want to make money. I mean, the issue here is the anti-competitive nature of Amazon in that they're getting rid of even though they're a marketplace, they are dominating, and it's just not fair to the little guys. Well, so Amazon has its own diaper line, right? It's one of these private label products. The name is escaping me at this moment. If the search results were pure customer reviews and for whatever reason the Amazon diaper line didn't do that well, the company doesn't want those results buried so that nobody buys them. So I get why they'd say, well, we don't want to just use like one metric that you thought we were using before. We're going to use a bunch of stuff, but I think it's can someone argue that no, Amazon is always making profitability the number one metric that's rising to the top or is this just sort of the way that results work? I mean, telling a company like you shouldn't use profitability and making your product seems seems like that's too far, right? Companies have to make money or they don't stay in business. Saying to Amazon, you've abused your market dominance to hurt merchants. I think you can show that in other ways besides this sort of broad generalized, we're looking at profitability because it doesn't mean they're favoring their own results. It could mean that favoring someone else's results means more profitability and at that point the algorithm would kick out those results. It's more about whether they're abusing that competition to knock out merchants then this doesn't seem like the smoking gun for that, I guess is what I'm saying. This seems like something that any company would do because again, Amazon's not a general search engine. I guess maybe that's the problem is there really isn't a good shopping general search engine out there right now and that's why people kind of feel like it is. Yeah. I mean, what would the alternative be? Amazon has two tabs. Here's our Amazon stuff. Go there if you'd like and then here's all these other great vendors that we work with. Well, the company is not going to do that anytime soon, but would that quell some fears that we're getting into dark waters with Amazon? I'm not sure. The water's already dark. It's too late. I can't see the bottom. That's the real problem. In fact, Rob Walker has a column in the New York Times that disputes how dark those waters may be. He says there is no tech backlash and worse, we think there is one. That's the headline of his column. His take is to focus on actual behavior. He talks about all the things we say about technology, but then he points out that Facebook daily and monthly active users increased 8% last quarter, quarter over quarter. Facebook added a million users in the US last quarter. Revenue was up 28%. And it's not just Facebook. Twitter added 5 million new daily users. Snapchat grew 7%. It's best ever performance as a public company. Pew Research Center indicates that 72% of Americans use some form of social media and that has continued to rise over the year. A little more than 25% of US households have a smart speaker as of last year. That number continues to rise. Smart TVs, wearables, smart home devices like doorbells, smart bulbs, all of these are growing markets. So he says, look, I know that investigations by politicians are multiplying and I know that headlines decrying tech companies for their abuses are multiplying. But he's pointing out that it doesn't seem to affect the individuals. And he speculates a little about why that might be. But what do you folks think? Do you think there is that the tech backlash might be exaggerated somehow? I think people are aware that there is a lot going on. And I mean, how can you not be unless you dug yourself into a hole and covered it up? I mean, it's all over the news about what tech companies are doing. But people rely on technology to stay connected and to get information in this world. And so I think people are still using technology. They are going to continue using it at an increasing rate. But maybe they are becoming more informed as to how to use it in more efficient and maybe even healthier ways. I mean, I have hopes that people are going to take those tech blackout days every once in a while, not go on social media if their mental health is poor. There are solutions that don't mean you are getting rid of technology entirely in your life. Yeah, there is certainly a tech backlash that does exist to the extent that some people say it exists. Well, these numbers don't really show that trend, right? Sure, you could have people who triumphantly leave Facebook, but then another million people sign up the same day. So it's the trajectory is continuing. But I do think that a lot of the backlash is, and somebody on Twitter had compared this to sugar and obesity. It's like, well, as people start learning, oh, there's some really bad side effects to all of this going on. But is the industry really changing? And if it isn't, then how do we get to some root of the problem so that people's behavior changes? And I think that we're so especially when we talk about social media, we're in such early days of all of this that it's hard. It's hard to come up with an answer. Yeah, I think some people are misinterpreting what Walker is saying here, too. Like, certainly, there is a tech backlash amongst journalists. Look at the headlines, right? Certainly, there's a tech backlash amongst politicians, as I mentioned, so many investigations happening, right? Clamoring for punishments. But the usage isn't changing. And Walker suspects that it may be that people are like, yeah, I'll be outraged when I post this on Twitter, but I'm not changing my behavior. That's for somebody else to do, right? It's a little bit of a, I don't know if it's exactly NIMBY, but it's a, I'm going to say things but not actually do things to follow through on them. And then he says, is that really a tech backlash if people don't feel so upset by these things that they actually change their behaviors? Yep. And sometimes the tech companies make it hard to change behaviors as well. That's true, too. Many reports of people trying to delete their accounts on Facebook only to come up against all sorts of walls that make it very hard. Yeah. Or even, even mushier than that, like, I'm not going to use Facebook anymore, and then just getting lured back because, well, you know, that one person that I talked to or that thing that I need to keep up on is on Facebook and it can kind of draws you back in. Yeah. It's, unless you want to miss things, unless you deliberately want to miss everyone's life that you might love. And that's a cool if you do. It's really hard to stop using a lot of these platforms. Well, I don't use Facebook much. And I run into problems with that sometimes. My sister or my brother will be like, but you didn't see that on Facebook. I'm like, no, no, they've gotten used to that. So I mean, they will reach out on text message now to the old. I always blame the algorithm now where I'm like, you know, I just missed that. Sorry. Not my fault. Like all those photos of yours. A service called free trial surfing, which automatically cancels subscriptions at the end of a free trial period before you end up paying has launched in the UK after supposedly it launched in the US about six weeks ago, although we couldn't find any evidence that it's alive and well in the US. Yeah, I looked before the show to Tom. So developer Josh Browder, who you might have remembered as the developer of do not pay that was to help people fight parking fines, says the new company free trial surfing isn't linked to a customer's bank account. It isn't linked to any particular credit card belonging to the customer in name, but the company does have a partnership with a major bank. It's iOS only. They say they got a web version in development. And the way that it works is that a customer receives a virtual credit card and a number and a name that is not their actual names made up, which they use to sign it for a service. The card is registered to the company do not pay, which is browser's previous company, which is still alive and well. And Browder says Browder rather not browser that the card won't work for any purchases other than free trial. So that's all it's going to do. You're not going to be able to use it to buy other things. He also says that his partner bank is big enough that in order to block free trial surfing, which some companies have started to try to do, the companies would have to stop offering free trial programs altogether and nobody would want that. Is this ethical, right? Because if you if you didn't quite catch it, this doesn't use your credit card number in any way. So it's not like you can choose to say, Oh, remind me when the free trial is up and I'll say yes or no, whether I want to continue it. This is you're just going to get the free trial and then it will stop working. If you want to continue this service, you're going to go have to go into that services account and change the payment information yourself. That's that's the only way that this continues to work. And it's mostly being used for photography and Netflix, according to Browder. And if that's the case, that seems to imply to me that people are just wanting to get stuff for free. Yeah, and who's going to stop them from using the service and then using it again and then using it again, which is something that any, you know, and Netflix will say, Well, we have that problem too, because people have multiple email addresses or, you know, they get around stuff. That's true. But you make a good point, Tom, that the idea, the argument that Browder would be making with with the with the service called free trial surfing is that, well, okay, we're just making it easy for them to not have to pay in case that the slips their mind. And then they're all of a sudden paying for something that ended up being really expensive, blah, blah, blah. But they're actually forcing them not to continue to pay unless they take matters into their own hands. I don't know. I think it gives a certain amount of responsibility for your actions. So if you really do want a service, you make sure you go sign up for it. And it gets rid of that. I guess the risk involved with signing up for these free trial programs and not really reading all of the fine script, which we know is there. And suddenly your credit card is is charged month after month, and you don't realize it. And you owe a bunch of money that you didn't want to spend. Yeah, I think this would I would be perfectly behind this if it gave me an easy option to say, no, I like this free trial. Like if it prompts me, okay, your free trial is about to end, do you want to keep it or not? Yes, I know, I made that easy. But instead, what it does is it makes it hard to keep the service after the free trial. And I feel like it may be too far the other way. I don't know. The Wi-Fi Alliance launched the Wi-Fi certified six program, which lets manufacturers certified devices using the 802 11 a X Wi-Fi radios. Wi-Fi six, of course, we've talked about the standard was finalized. Now the certification program has happened. The the the actual adoption of the standard by the IEEE still has to happen. But the certification with manufacturers is the big one. That's what gets products in the pipeline and gets them made. So we're talking about Wi-Fi radios that are 40% faster than current Wi-Fi support WPA encryption, multi user, multi input, multi output, 160 megahertz channels, orthogonal frequency division, multiple access, basically Wi-Fi six routers can serve a bunch of clients simultaneously from a single channel is what a lot of that means. So your capacity will go up if you've ever had a situation where you've got a lot of devices in your house, you know, some smart speakers and maybe some smart light bulbs and an Xbox and an Amazon Fire TV and a few laptops. And you're like, man, why is the Wi-Fi so slow? It may be that there's just too many devices trying to access it at once. Wi-Fi six is going to make that a lot better because it can handle multiple devices on one channel instead of having a limited number of channels. So Wi-Fi six coming to some products by the end of this year, in a few cases, but definitely in a lot of products by next year. That includes the new iPhone, new Samsung phones, multiple the flagship handsets, and certainly by middle of next year, you'll have a nice selection of routers you can you can buy to upgrade. If you want to find out more about Wi-Fi six, we did a special on it not too long ago, dailytechnewshow.com slash Wi-Fi dash six dash DTNS or just search DTNS Wi-Fi six. It should show up in your search engine. I will probably be swapping out my routers next year to take advantage of Wi-Fi six because I have way too many things on my Wi-Fi network. I have a question. Does this mean better Wi-Fi at hotels? It could. It depends. You know how hotels are. They're always at the forefront of the good stuff. I stayed in a hotel in Montreal that had a really good sysadmin and their Wi-Fi was excellent and this was like four or five years ago. So it really depends on who implements their Wi-Fi for them and who manages it. But yeah, this will make it easier for hotels to have better Wi-Fi when they finally decide to go replace their hardware, which isn't going to be any time soon. But yeah, this and this is definitely going to help you with your Wi-Fi at home. A lot of times people think their Wi-Fi is crap because of their ISP when it's interference or capacity. So you know, this is going to just kind of make it better overall. Hey folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. Now let's get into space. Ars Technica reports that in a filing from August 30th, SpaceX asked the USFCC for permission to adjust the orbital spacing of its satellites to speed up deployment of its Starlink broadband service. So Kiki, can you walk us through a little bit of what they're asking for and what it means for us? Yeah, so what it means is that they will get more satellites up using fewer launches and with those satellites that they get up within a shorter period of time, they will have a broader coverage area for their satellite coverage. And ostensibly, what they say is that they would be able to fill the need in parts of the United States, the Southern United States, and areas that, like for instance, have been Bahamas, which was hit by hurricanes recently, that may have a need during storm seasons for better communications. That's what they say. So I mean, this is a Elon Musk company. Sometimes what he says turns out to be exactly true, and it's amazing. Other times, they miss deadlines. So there's no way to tell right now. Although when you're talking about space launches and having to get FCC involved and having to get NASA involved, it feels like they have less of a chance of missing deadlines. Or am I being naive? They're doing better on getting their launches up and their rockets are running faster than their customers at this point, according to some reports. But the issues are what seems to be coming up. About a week ago, there was a European Space Agency satellite that came within too close of a risk percentage of interacting, like smacking into one of the Starlink satellites. And so the European Space Agency was unable during this period to get SpaceX on the phone to find out whether it actually was going to be a problem to see if SpaceX could move their satellite for the ESA satellite. They had a communications breakdown there. And so as a result, the ESA is saying they are pushing now for some international guidelines, restrictions on where satellites will be and how different groups will communicate with each other about those satellites because there are other agencies in addition to SpaceX who are also looking to put these communication satellites up in space. There's one web space Norway, Telesat, Amazon. And so the sky is crowded now. There are about 5000 satellites up in space at the moment. And it's going to start increasing exponentially over the next couple of years now that launches are faster and easier. And that would put the pressure on SpaceX to want to be able to get their service going faster so that they have an advantage over those other companies. So they want to deploy in three different orbital planes instead of one. I can't decide if that makes things safer because now they're in three different orbital planes or if that makes it like, oh, there's three more orbital planes where they might run into something else. Yeah, I mean, they're spread all over the place and you know, now it's a couple hundred, 60 satellites, it'll be a few hundred and then thousands. I mean, it's just it's just going to get more and more complicated. It's going to be computers trying to track all this stuff because people aren't going to be able to do it at all. But it's I mean, there's going to have to be some kind of regulation. And I think that's exactly right. What's going on here. SpaceX is trying to get their stuff into space in and they're like, look, this is great. It's better. We'll get up there faster for your communications when really it's so that they can outrun the regulations and actually get their stuff up before they get before they before launches are regulated. It's not a land rush. It's a space rush. Space rush. That's right. Get your piece of the sky before the the sheriff shows up in town. Yeah, and it's a big concern. It's a big concern not just for existing satellites that are doing research and there's also military satellites up there, future satellites that might be important for humanity. I mean, our sky is going to end up like that sky. What is it? Wally, the animated movie where you look up and it's just junk in orbit around the planet and you have a hard time getting anything up or down. Well, and there's already a problem with debris, kind of unmapped debris and not knowing where it is exactly. So I always imagine some big bulldozer going up into space and just sweeping out big chunks of it, but that becomes harder if you've got satellites in the way. Exactly. You can't just sweep it all out. And another issue is looking up and out. Ground based telescopes are going to have a harder time getting past the reflected light of a lot of these satellites. If you've been out in a dark place and seen the Starlink satellites go overhead, they are brighter than stars in the sky. And so that means that their light will outshine the stars that telescopes are trying to look at. So it's going to be more difficult for ground based astronomers to do their work. Thank goodness those engineers at MIT accidentally discovered that super black that they could put on as the blinders. Maybe that'll help some. I hope so. Well, this is fantastic. Kiki, thank you for helping us understand a little more about this. And thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddit. A lot of space stories get in there and you could submit your own and vote on others at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. We're also on Facebook's group, in fact, and it's our very own Facebook.com slash groups slash Daily Tech News show. Not going to lie. It's the one time I visit Facebook every week is when I check in on our group. Let's check out the mailbag. Henry wonders. It was conversation we had last week about AB5 and how many contractors might not want this new law or like it if it goes through. Henry says, in the past, I thought about on one side. Henry says, in the past, I had thought of on the side either working for Uber or Lyft for himself. What I liked about it was the freedom to make extra money in my spare time. I have another job. If you're an employee of Uber or Lyft, I could see them changing this to where you either had to work a certain amount of hours per day or certain times and then there goes the flexibility. I wonder how they'll be able to do both or have contractors that work part time below a certain amount of hours. But if you want to be an employee and get those perks, right, you need to work schedule shifts. Henry says, I work for UPS. Our drivers are union. But at FedEx crowns, they're contractors. I see this bill working for them. They report to a FedEx building in the morning, grab packages, and go out. This is similar to what Amazon does. Both models rely on contractors to get deliveries, but they usually only work for either one, but work full time at the same spot. This is interesting insight. Thank you, Henry, for this because I wonder if FedEx and Amazon will continue to be able to employ contractors for their trucks because the court case that this is all based on was about a shipper, about a company deciding that all of their drivers were contractors. And you can have a part time workers that still are required to be considered employees under AB5. It's not the amount of hours you work. It's what you do. Now, granted, part time employees don't are required to have the same level of benefits as full time employees, but they still might not be able to be considered contractors. So it is a thorny little thing here. And Uber saying they're going to Boris Johnson this and they're just not going to pay any attention is very interesting. Also, we're going to give Alex the last word on the X versus cross naming convention for the PlayStation controller. He says wanted to weigh in. It's a cultural thing in his opinion in Japan. When you see an X in marketing, it's usually pronounced cross. This is very prevalent in video games. For example, Street Fighter cross Tekken is pronounced that way as such in Japan. It's called the cross, but however, since we're used to calling the symbol X because of the SNES, the name stuck. It's also used as a cancel button in Japan with the circle being used as okay in the U.S. These functions are reversed. I think the Japanese way makes more sense. Oh, in okay for the circle used to get that screwed up all the time. Thank you, Alex. Yeah, I was I was trying to come up with a reason to argue with you just now, Tom, and I can't. The Japanese have it right for once. Yeah. We all know a little bit more about it. Thanks also to Dr. Kiki Sanford for being with us today and bringing your wisdom to the show. Let folks know where they can keep up with your work. Thank you so much for having me on. You can find me at This Week in Science, www.twist.org is the website and on Twitter, I'm at Dr. Kiki, D-R-K-I-K-I. This Week in Science not even joking is one of my favorite parts of my week, so thank you for doing it. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you. Twist.org. We're changing our Patreon rewards, by the way, folks. Starting October 1st, thanks to everybody who gave us feedback about the new rewards over the past couple of weeks. The current rewards, as we have them before the change, will be delivered at the end of this month. So if you're like, wait, I'm not going to get the thing that I signed up. No, everything's fine. Everything's staying the same until October 1st. October 1st, the new rewards go into effect, and those will be delivered on November 1st. 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