 Daily Tech News Show is made possible by its listeners thanks to all of you including Philip Less, Daniel Dorado and Howard Yermish Coming up on DTNS Twitter telegram and now snap on a cell you a subscription But they're not giving us what we want in a subscription plus cyber pirates at sea That's literally true and tech to end bicycle This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, June 29th, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane in Salt Lake City. I'm Wednesday's Scott Johnson And I'm the show's producer Roger Chang, you know, it is a lost opportunity to book someone named Wednesday I know you'll never do it though. That's a rare thing. You'll have you'll find a million Scott Johnson's no Wednesdays Yeah, that's that's the old saying in a world of a million Scott Johnson's there are so few Wednesdays. Where are the Wednesdays? Well, this is a Wednesday and so we start with a few tech things you should know Mozilla released Firefox 102 with a feature that strips tracking information for the end of URLs Links sometimes include a question mark followed by a bunch of numbers and letters You might look at that and say what does it mean? That's one of the most common ways to add tracking to links Firefox's query parameter stripping feature as it is so Pluckly called takes that tracking info off of the URL when you click it and when you paste it into your address bar You do need to turn it on yourself in the privacy and security settings under enhanced tracking protection One of the five US commissioners Brendan Carr former aide to Ajit Pai Shared a letter sent to CEOs at Apple and Alphabet alleging that tiktok functions as a Sophisticated surveillance tool and does not comply with app store policies of either company Carr asked each company to provide statements on why the app was allowed to remain up by July 8th US District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco ruled that former uber security chief Chief security officer Joseph Sullivan will face wire fraud charges over an alleged role in trying to cover up a 2016 cyber attack that leaked information on millions of drivers Prosecutors alleged that Sullivan agreed to pay the attackers $100,000 in Bitcoin and signed non-disclosure agreements saying that they didn't steal the data We were settled claims by all 50 US states regarding the data leak back in 2018 for $148 million I just realized something Brendan Carr should have read his letter on tiktok and then put it out there for duets He would have got even more people paying attention to it Nothing confirmed to input that its upcoming phone will use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 778 g plus system on a chip That's the mid-range one customized to offer wireless charging and reverse wireless charging Founder Carl Pay said the decision to use a mid-range chip came down to performance power consumption and of course cost The central bank of Taiwan has reportedly finished trials of its central bank digital currency and is ready to make it available for public Retail use no timeline was announced for the rollout However, Taiwan's central bank governors said that the public must be educated about the benefits an illegal Regulatory framework must be put in place before launch, but the technology itself is ready Ooh CBDCs, you know cuz you listen to this show, you know, they're on the way here comes another one All right, let's talk about those subscription services I mentioned. Well, why not? Let's start with snap They began offering a $3.99 a month subscription called snapchat plus Because everyone uses plus now Anyway offering exclusive and early access features currently it lets you change the app icon See who's rewatched your stories and pin a friend to the top of the chat history Snap does not expect this to be much of a material new revenue source That's an actual quote and expects ads will remain quote the core of our business model. Note that this subscription does not remove ads Nevertheless subscriptions are all the rage snaps latest effort joins Twitter's premium service Twitter blue telegrams got their telegram premium And there's always been or has been for quite a while Nitro from discord as examples of popular services that are free But charge for little extra features here and there So let's go through some of these offerings and talk about who they might be for yeah Yeah, cuz honestly everybody says they want a subscription that removes ads So snap not doing that I think is is going to raise some eyebrows Twitter blue is only three bucks a month slightly cheaper than snaps four dollars a month It does not remove ads it removes ads from articles you click on from partners Which is very limited, but it does give you custom app icons Duolingo does this too. I pay for Duolingo for other reasons, but it does things like custom app icons. There's also themes Top articles you get undue tweet. I guess that's the big one Yeah, that's the one that's supposed to be the big one real quick I just wanted to say that the the undue tweet feature is horribly implemented and we can talk about that later hmm Well over you mentioned discord nitro scott and I know a lot of folks who pay for this It's nine ninety nine per month with a server boost Otherwise five dollars a month without you get sort of the same type of you know expanded and custom emoji options You can have an animated avatar Let's just stand out a little bit profile badges if you want to upload something Anything above 100 megabytes is allowed if you've got nitro and you also have that capability to do HD video and screen share I don't know a ton of folks who use discord for HD video, but I know you're out there So this actually seems like one of the offerings that makes the most sense to me If you're really if you're really into discord doesn't let you change the the app icon though. What good is it? Oh, man For net ten bucks. They should let you change that point Larry to let it our chat points out you could just use Nova launcher to change any app icon You don't have to pay anybody for it. Anyway telegram premium rolled out June 19th. That one's five dollars a month It actually removes ads. So that's one that people might go. Yeah, that's enough I'll do that also increases your download Top level from two to four gigabytes offers faster downloads Doubles a lot of things like the amount of channels you can have chat folders Favorites accounts on an app You can do nice little cosmetic things like longer bio Also does voice to text if you pay for it And then lots of other like gifts and stickers and badges and app icons that are specific to premium But no ads That is nice. I will say this the one problem I have with With Twitter is that they're inconsistent with their implementation and these other two examples And you could add others to this like YouTube premium and others that are more web-based services But they have apps and so on so you know, you could argue what those are but My problem with Twitter blue was and I used it for a month I was I was really curious and I thought well, I'll pay for this if this is You know gonna be beneficial to me and the number one thing there was undue tweet and The promise there was you'll be able to not only undo the tweet Yeah, it's like everyone on Twitter's been asking for for you know, next to the end of something Yeah, next to the end of this thing, right? Yeah, in fact, this is the thing people say well If you're not gonna give us edit give us this so it's there on mobile It's horrendous you you'd use this feature and it sends you somewhere completely different than where you originally were now They may have fixed this in the last month But I couldn't get off of that thing fast because it drove me crazy the web implementation totally fine No issues worked as designed So I feel like they fumbled a little bit on their subscription because their number one selling feature was just kind of worked on mobile But Nitro I get Nitro and wasn't sure about it until I got it I thought well, what's the harm in doing the free trial and I ended up sticking with it Just for larger uploads not even HD video so much Although that's a decent advantage when you're doing conference with people or whatever But larger than 100 megabyte files Is massive Compared to what they give you is the default service So I think it just sort of depends on what you wait as a an important feature and in telegrams case Maybe it is no ads and Twitter's case. Maybe it is undo and maybe in Nitro's case They're big selling point least to me is the is less limits on size of files, but Subscriptions are clearly the future folks. We're here. We're doing it. We're going Said though, I mean when I'm looking at what snapchat plus is offering and granted I haven't used snapchat in any regular capacity for years now. It's it's I'm just I'm just kind of off I'm off the platform even though I'd you know, I check in once in a while, but I go, all right Changing app icon that might matter to you See who rewatched stories starts to get a little weird to me unless you're a brand and that is really good Intel for you To have of you know, who might be coming back to this, you know content that you're offering that is is is Designated to promote something over and over otherwise. It's like hmm. This is kind of starts to get into weird territory Pinning a friend to the top of a chat history Okay, I mean none of this sounds like something I would pay four dollars a month for but again Not the target audience and I haven't been for some time It's interesting what some of these platforms do and and in snaps case I mean said quite quite frankly, we don't really think this is gonna bring up in a bunch of money So you might go well why the company even bother? Yeah, I think they just want to see who pays because maybe they're wrong It's really interesting. I think your rights got that subscriptions are on the way I don't know which of these are actually more successful But I can tell you discord and telegrams list look to my eyes like they paid attention to features people were asking for and provided those Whereas Twitter and snap look like they came up with features. They wanted to make Or sort of tried to come up with easy stuff They could sell and both Twitter and snap say well, this really isn't the final form This is really just a test. We're really just trying things out Whereas discord and telegram are like this is our subscription product, please if it sounds compelling subscribe So you can tell the difference in those lists Yeah, I do think it's interesting that most of them come down to one or two things that will grab people Whereas the rest feels really fluffy even a discord case. It's like do I really need added animated avatars? I guess it's nice perk if you're paying and you may as well use it But is it really that big a deal more emojis? I mean really we have thousands of them Do we really need more like a lot of these don't sell me? Until I see one item larger uploads and HD screen share Yeah, and then the other stuff make you feel like you're getting more for your money Like I wouldn't paid for the emojis, but oh, it's nice to have this one right now that I wouldn't have other That's what I'm saying is I feel like snap is missing. Yes, never that is a fluffy stuff. Yeah, it's all fluff. Yeah, yeah All right, well, let's talk about riding bicycles shall we I don't currently own a bicycle I wish I did because riding a bike is fun But if you have one, you know, there are a lot of advantages you can weave through otherwise stops traffic If you live in an urban area, it's good exercise. It's fun And you only emit a small amount of co2 that you're Exhaling from your body while you're riding your bike. That's true. We are all carbon emitters There are lots of reasons why more people don't ride bikes though and one of them in most parts of the world is theft When you get to your destination, you either have to take your bike with you inside I used to do that at some of the places I worked Or go through quite a bit to secure it with multiple locks or even wheel removal Make one mistake and your bike might be gone or mostly gone everything but that one wheel Might be left when you get back Yeah, this is in in certain places a pretty rampant problem In fact, a friend of mine just had a real nice bike stolen from his garage at home and was not happy Understandably, MIT technology review has an article about a startup called uni. That's oone That's developing a kit for modular parking pods that can securely So they say store eight to 80 bicycles at a time even scooters because scooters are, you know More or less the same form factor if you want to protect your bike from rain and snow Also a nice bonus depending on where you live Riders can use a key card or smartphone to unlock a pod each of which have a security camera So the implication is that it is safe and if it isn't safe, we'll know who did it Membership is free and includes insurance against theft. So you might say cool sounds great How does uni make money the company says it sells ads on the outside of the pod structures Of course it does Right And listen, that's that's not a terrible idea. It's just, you know, we're not reinventing the wheel Ha ha uni launched in new york city and jersey city both in new jersey A state in the u.s. And has about 4 000 users with plans to expand So it's it's a it's a small amount of folks at this point But man, if you're a bicyclist this might really really appeal to you Yeah, I thought they were in new york But but I may be wrong about that one thing. I definitely was wrong about is I thought these were locks and roger Told told me in the in the pre-show meeting He's like no, I think you have to provide your unlock and he's absolutely right If you go to the fact they're like, yeah, you get access to the pod then you block the bike up So really the theft prevention here is Making it another step to get to your bike. You have to you have to unlock the pod So I'm not sure how safe this is Because anybody can have a free membership and unlock the pod and then get at your bike Which is just using the same lock that you were using before now granted They're adding security cameras and they're ensuring your bike. So they're putting their money where their mouth is Uh, and and I guess that means they think it's enough of a of a dissuasion to have that camera there And the extra step of having to get in the the pod That it'll keep people from stealing it But I thought this was going to be a lot more ironclad I had imagined what I first saw the headline that this would be a single pod You'd put your bike in someone would have to break into the pod to even get at your bike Instead it's more of just like a bike rack locked behind a door Yeah, at the very least I thought maybe the pods would have a way to isolate your bike and lock it in place Uh as part of the functionality of the pod instead what they're really just saying is Well, what if you still locked your bike, but you did it within the storage container? I mean, that's really the difference here Yeah, that that sounds Which is sure that's one more level of protection if somebody somebody really wants to steal a bike quickly they might go The pod is too complicated. I'll find another bike And I know in san francisco in particular. I mean the the bike theft issue I I know this happens a lot of other places I mean, it's such a big deal It's it's people go through So many hoops to try to make sure that their bike is not stolen Even if it's securely locked up in a garage where nobody has the key to your garage I mean theft happens and so I I feel like the you know that the promise of these pods is like Well, that's cool But all somebody has to do is figure out how to get into the pod and then it's it's the same story And that would be the same case if it was in you know the foyer of your apartment building Yeah, and if anything whenever any time somebody comes by and opens the pod to get their bike normal You know pod access to get your bike back You are at least temporarily saying here's an open pod full of all these bikes Also, it's a free membership Anybody can create an account and say whatever they want on the account use a burner phone and get in and get the bikes So I I don't know. I think what I do like about uni is that they are trying to force the conversation about bicycle parking And saying like look when when you build a building you talk all kinds of ways about how are the cars going to get in and out Where are they going to park? Nobody talks about bicycle parking. Everybody builds bike lanes and doesn't do any bicycle parking So I like the fact that they are at least doing that. So maybe if you focus less on the theft and more on Just the idea of like comfortable out of the rain bicycle parking. This is worth it right there Especially because again, it's free They're subsidizing it with ads and I imagine they get a little money from the city to install these two Yeah, they may be pretty them up. They're kind of bulky and ugly. I'm just you know I'm not really I thought they looked kind of nice. They look okay. They just look like they looked all right It's like it's like those communication containers They just plop down in Chinese cities and say all right You have internet and then it's just kind of a big ugly gnarly blob Oh, no, I thought they had like nice Rounded corners and look kind of spacey. Oh, look at it. It looks like It looks like dropped cargo from a plane or something. I don't know. I can't tell how I feel about that I also I do not condone theft of any kind particularly bicycle theft And I wonder where we know like what's the big bicycle black market because Clearly bikes are being stolen to be sold And I just don't know like I don't I don't know who who that who Who are the people that are all involved in something where it's so lucrative to steal bikes all the time? I often wonder that myself But I also just accept that it's absolutely true because bikes are stolen all the time Yeah, totally must be a big old market some kind of something or it's just steel for use I can't afford a bike. So I'm just going to take one Could be yeah, yeah Well, folks, uh, what do you think about this? You think this solves bike theft? Are you living in new york city or jersey sissy and you've been used one of these? Let us know on the socials. You can get in touch with us on twitter at dts show and on instagram dts picks dts pix We are happy to hear from you. Please do it Bloomberg reports that in february 2019 a container ship bound for new york detected a malware attack on its ship systems Now fully autonomous ships are just beginning to be tested. So it wasn't like they could, you know, take over a Boat without any people on it But many cargo ships have automated systems for steering propulsion navigation and other operations Thankfully the february intruder never gained control of the vessel's movements at least not that time But attacks can hit ports not just ships India's busiest container ports suffered a ransomware attack this past february That same month a targeted attack against a freight forwarder in washington critically affected its systems for about three weeks And in may a supply chain company in california temporarily lost access to its access asset management platform means Couldn't couldn't tell where its stuff was supposed to be A security company called blue voyants surveyed shipping companies had found 93 of them had suffered a direct breach With the average number of intrusions rising from 2.7 per company in 2020 to 3.7 last year And that affects Our logistics quite a bit because around 80 percent of global trade goes by sea You may think about trucks. You may think about planes, but most of it's going by sea So there's a large and lucrative surface area for attack The good news is shipping companies have money to spend right now and are equipping their fleets and new ships With real-time tracking devices and sensors that can connect to the shore and report problems instantly The bad news is all those sensors and connectivity provide another avenue of attack and also need to be secured Not to mention the shore based systems that need to be secured In order to secure new tech, especially in older vessels The un's international maritime organization has issued some guidelines for safety and security for companies to adopt They issued that starting in 2021 They aren't exactly pleased with the uptake though the challenge at sea is the same as it is on land Companies may not take a threat seriously until it happens to them And the reason they want to rationalize that is because the cost and time it takes to implement proper security Is not small and makes it hard for those arguing for preventative measures So there's that and then like every other industry. We also need more communication We need companies to share information on attackers with each other So they can all prevent the attacks and companies just aren't used to sharing information with each other easily So, uh, it's it's kind of the same story we have on land It's just also at sea because connectivity is reaching out into the ocean Also seems like you I know they're shipping lanes and you know certain You can't just kind of willingly go wherever you want in terms of international waters and that sort of thing But I'm surprised to hear that it's 80 percent of global trade happening there but then that Knowing that that much is happening that much is being transported via water And then have the companies act like well, we're not really we will wait until it happens to us I mean, I know they're not saying that but they're they're not reacting But dragging their future but but we've seen that with every company The reason it happens with a sea company is no different than the reason it happens with your bank or or credit bureau or whatever, right? Yeah, that's true. I guess I guess what I'm saying is it seems like I don't know for some reason I'm thinking of space forgive me for one second Um when we get to space I always go man all these ideas of space pirates. That's so overblown There's so much room up there that you're never going to have to go anywhere where someone's going to know where you are You'll always have it to yourself Sure And then I hear this about the water and I'm like it's kind of like that on a smaller scale So maybe it is a thing we should think about and worry about Well, because two two things one is you do the attack when it's coming into port So it's you can keep track of the ports a lot easier than than the roots in between right sure sure and With the connectivity You don't have to be next to it True You just need to be able to get to it over the internet and if it's always connected that means you can always get to it Yeah, I mean if you were if you're a large container ship Uh carrying something that somebody might want and the port you even if you knew Oh shoot the port i'm Coming right into is getting attacked right now. It's like what are your options? There aren't really I mean we there you have a path That's the way you got to go because nobody else can accept you You know on demand and I don't know that might be something that changes in the future Um, especially with autonomous cargo ships. I at this point. I think it's yeah, I mean it's it's a real problem I think the risk is less that somebody wants to Get the cargo although. I think that is a risk Uh, but more ransomware ransomware is where it's at right so I'm going to lock up this ship And and I don't know maybe I'll I'll send it off on a course somewhere else if it's autonomous But but even if I can just lock it off so that the crew can't properly operate it Until you transfer x a number of bitcoin into my account and then I'll unlock it Yeah It's interesting. I um, I don't know this stuff kind of fascinates me because it's not like we haven't been You know, we've been doing this for hundreds of years like shipping lanes and and and ports of call and everybody bringing in their stuff And it's been there as long as we've had boats and and seafaring technology Um, but I do think it's I don't know weirdly time that that all got in line with really great security options Not just in the ports, but on the ships themselves And if I was in charge of any of that I would want to do it sooner than later as long as long as we've had ships We've had pirates. So I guess this shouldn't surprise it Also, I want to apologize for using the word boat improperly at the beginning of this conversation I knew it as soon as it came out of my mouth It's all right. Oh because a ship and a boat are different. I called cargo ship a boat in in passing Yeah, like two Actually Our seafaring audience supports and accepts your apology. Thank you. My dad was in the navy. He would be appalled There you go. Yeah, mine was too On tuesday nasa's rocket lab Successfully launched the 55 pound capstone cubesat which is designed to orbit the moon Eventually, this is part of nasa's our team's mission to send humans to the moon for the first time since 1972 We have been talking about it for a while y'all and people are getting close rocket lab using a Electron a rocket with an add-on called the lunar photon upper stage Which has the power to send it into deep space electron is a small rocket It's made to launch a payload to lunar orbit. That's what it's made for it launched from rocket lab site in new zealand's Mahia peninsula and rocket lab told tech crunch recently that it's the highest mass and the highest performance Electron has ever had to fly by quite some margin. So they're pretty happy with the results capstone will orbit earth for nine days That's in order to generate enough speed For a trans lunar injection or tli and if all goes to plan It will eventually be able to orbit the moon the gateway space station is the next mission That would be space x delivering it as a science lab and living quarters for astronauts and ports for future spacecraft Yeah, so so a couple of things going on here the electron rocket itself is pretty cool And the capstone being a tiny little cube set Out there pioneering the orbit for the eventual space x delivery of the gateway space station Pretty cool as well. Here we here we go. No space pirates yet Yeah, not yet. We've had since 72 to work on this. Hopefully we have a few ideas Yeah, it does I've been very skeptical of the Artemis mission But it's starting to look like maybe it'll happen. We might actually see people set their feet on the moon again, which is pretty sure Well, y'all have fun up there I'm not going to the moon. You let me know if it's fun and if it's made of swiss cheese, it's all I care about Yes, over in the mail bag Thor from boar Thor says it's sunny and delightful in boar norway this time of year Thor says just wanted to add on to the tips on what to do when you want to avoid tracking data Well, still using helpful tools on your phone. This is uh a conversation that we had with lamar wilson on the show yesterday Thor says maps.me can download maps offline to your phone. That allows you to turn off all communication But you can still route with gps Since gps is the only one way communication Because you get data from satellites, but you're not sending anything back You can get directions without sharing your data maps.me can store a log of your location history locally But that's a feature that's off by default Although it is a feature But if you really want to be sure you may want to wipe the apps data after you're done using it And Thor finishes by saying sorry for not waiting until thursday. I hope scott can forgive me I'm emailing from a viking market if that helps Okay, so it's an old we made a reference last week just briefly about Thor and thursday And I think only about half of you got it because it was a very quick little quippy dumb idea. I'm just I actually didn't full disclosure. I was like I needed the joke explained thursday is named after Thor thors day Yeah, it's thors day. It's thors day. Yes, but today is odens day wednesday Yeah But it's okay. We could still read thors email on odens day Well, and Thor might be listening by thursday. That's right. So it all works very good point Also, very good tip from Thor. We should not lose sight of that This is maps.me is great Obviously, if you have gps on you want to make sure nothing else on the phone is also taking that location and logging it Any of your other apps you want to limit the other apps? But but great great idea to use that and and just say like you don't even log my location But now I could still use it for for navigation. Thank you Thor for that. That's awesome Indeed Thor you're the best if you have feedback if you have tips if you have questions anything we talk about on the show We would love to hear about it feedback at daily tech news show.com is where to send that email Thanks to you scott johnson for being with us today Even if it's not thors day, it's always a great day with scott What's been going on since we saw you last well lots of stuff I'm going to tell people to make sure they check out my core video game podcast called core It's all about video games for the modern era whether we're talking about consoles or PCs or whatever And the reason I want to point you there is because for whatever reason that show has been Popping new listeners all the time all kinds of great conversations Everybody keeps telling me how much they love it So I believe them and if you want to be like them and find out for yourselves and you're a gamer and you want more And better gaming podcast check out core everywhere you get your podcast or if you want to get there directly Just head on over the website. It's at frog pants.com slash c o r e. That's core And for everything else ping me on twitter. I'm scott johnson over there Excellent, uh, we we we always thank new bosses when we get them And we thank longtime supporters and sometimes somebody gives us a raise and we'd like to thank them as well So we'd like to thank our boss brian who did give us a raise brian sent in a real nice note uh that Cameron his son has been enjoying good day internet And we're happy to have them along for the ride Apparently cameron was the one who said, you know, I should give him a raise So brian did we also would like to shout out jackie the dog as well Because brian sent in a dog photo and that is 100 appreciated at all times. Yeah as I understand it brian said I've you've got five dollars Who do you want to give it to and and we were the first choice? So So really cameron's a new boss if you look at it that way Indeed. Yes. Yes. Let's thank our brand new boss cameron. Thank you brand new boss cameron and jack Yeah Yeah, it could be you tomorrow. Are you going to be the next boss? Let's find out uh speaking of good day internet, uh gdi Rolls right after we wrap up dtns if you want to know more patreon.com slash dtns Is where you can find out just a reminder. We do the show live monday through friday for p.m. Eastern 200 utc find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live We are back again tomorrow because we do it every weekday. Justin robber young will be with us then talk to you soon This show is part of the frog pants network Get more at frog pants dot com Diamond club hopes you have enjoyed this program