2020 Daily Tech News Show


1			TITLE: Big Data Spy Hunting	Guest:

2			Stories subject to change up until showtime
3			Coming up on DTNS what nation-state attackers do with the info they access, what Apple Fitness users (or at least Allison) do with their Fitness app, and whether you want your phone's back to turn colors.	Twitch Chat
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5			Today's date
6			This is the Daily Tech News for... Monday Dec 21st, 2020. In LA, I'm Tom Merritt
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8			From Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane
9			Allison Sheridan from the Podfeet Podcasts
10			And I'm the show's Producer Roger Chang
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13			Get the wider conversation on our expanded show, Good Day Internet by becoming a member at patreon.com/dtns.
14	:31	TM	Let's start with a few tech things you should know...
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16			Quick Hits
17		sl	TikTok users are getting a year-in-review feature with the launch of “Year on TikTok,” a video highlight reel that showcases individual users’ own top TikTok moments. It also id's your “vibes” — the videos you've liked the best in 2020, in categories such as crafts, cooking, animals, travel, or Cottagecore. If you haven’t been on TikTok long enough to get your own “vibe,” TikTok will include other top videos from its “Year on TikTok: Top 100” list instead.	https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/21/tiktok-launches-its-first-personalized-annual-recap-feature-year-on-tiktok/
18		tm	An update to Samsung's Galaxy Wearable app lists some of the new features on the company's upcoming Galaxy Buds Pro. This includes Spatial Audio for faux surround sound when connected to a supported Samsung phone, and "Voice Detect" which lowers volume and turns on audio passthrough when the buds detect you're speaking.	https://9to5google.com/2020/12/20/samsung-app-leaks-galaxy-buds-pro-in-full-including-copy-of-apples-spatial-audio-feature/
19		sl	Adobe released betas of Premiere Pro, Premiere Rush and Audition for macOS, optimized for Apple Silicon. The Premiere Pro beta is focused on core editing functionality, with support for H.264, HEVC, and ProRes codecs. Third-party integrations will need to be updated to be compatible with the new version. Zoom also announced the release of its Universal app for MacOS for its video conferencing client.	https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/21/22192979/adobe-arm-m1-mac-apple-silicon-premiere-pro-beta
20			---	https://9to5mac.com/2020/12/20/zoom-apple-silicon-support/
21		tm	A new report from security researchers at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto details an espionage campaign using an iOS exploit carried out against the personal phones of 36 Al Jazeera journalists. This appears to have been a no-click exploit, with a journalist's phone connecting to a unknown server. The report claims the code for the exploit belongs to the spyware company NSO Group. The NSO Group's said it does not have knowledge of who its clients use its software on, but investigates any credible charges of misuse. The report found the exploit was effective on "almost all" iOS devices not updated to iOS 14.	https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/20/citizen-lab-iphone-nso-group/
22		sl	This may be startling to hear, but there is another reported technical glitch with Cyberpunk 2077. Players are reporting that game saves over 8MB in size result in warnings that “saved data is damaged and cannot be loaded.” According to the game's developer CD Projekt Red, these saves can't be recovered, but the issue may be resolved in a future patch. The developer recommends using an older save and to keep a lower amount of items in the game to avoid the issue.	https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/20/22192375/cyberpunk-2077-save-file-corrupted-8-mb
23			Let's talk a little more about...
24	:34	sl	Part of the coronavirus relief package deal reached by Congress over the weekend includes $7 billion for broadband internet access. The largest allocation will fund a $3.2 billion Emergency Broadband Benefit, providing $50 per month for broadband for low-income families, with an additional $1 billion in grants for Tribal broadband programs and $300 million for rural deployments. The package also includes $1.9 billion for "rip and replace" efforts meant to replace Huawei and ZTE equipment from US networks. The FCC recently voted to approve the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019, which requires US broadband and wireless carriers receiving Universal Service funding to remove Huawei equipment. There's a LOT of money for energy tech Energy grid technology got including $3.4 billion for energy storage and transportation as well smart utility and distribution. $4.1 billion for new energy technology, photovoltaics and other solar tech, transportation and energy efficiency and weatherization. There's also some funding, all less than $1 billion for offshore wind energy, geothermal energy, marine and hydropower. And there's $6.6 billion for modernization of existing nuclear plants and development of advanced reactors and $6.2 billion for carbon capture and storage rollout. As well as some development money for carbon removal projects. Finally $2.9 billion is going to ARPA-E, the energy advanced research division. And there's a directive to the Department of the Interior to generate 25 gigawatts of solar, wind and geothermal production on public lands by 2025. The package also provides funds for the Federal Communications Commission's telehealth program and for a pilot program to improve broadband access for communities around Historically Black Colleges (HSBCs).	https://www.axios.com/broadband-access-covid-relief-bill-7-billion-5be48439-c1a4-4927-a0c4-515312a1d281.html
25			---	https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/21/new-stimulus-bill-includes-35-2-billion-for-new-energy-initiatives/
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27	:39	as	OnePlus revealed another concept phone, this time based on the OnePlus 8T. This concept phone has a back that can change color. The back uses a film with metal oxide under a glass panel. The film changes colors when you apply voltage. At its simplest this could be used for notifications, like turning green if you get a text message for instance. BUT the phone also features a rear millimeter wave radar precise enough to detect breathing, that can track objects as well. That could be used for gesture control but could also do some biofeedback. For instance the color could pulse along with your breathing or perhaps, if your breathing rate gets problematic, the back of the phone could turn red. And no, this is a concept, so OnePlus gave no indication of when it might show up in an actual phone you could buy.	https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/21/22189219/oneplus-8t-concept-color-changing-back-motion-sensing-radar
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29	:42	tm	One of the things known about the SolarWinds attacks is that the attackers do not appear to have accessed classified information or control of systems but rather email and documents in non-classified system. Foreign Policy magazine interviewed more than three dozen current and former U.S. intelligence and national security officials for a three-part series about spies battling over big data. It sheds some light on what a foreign government can use this kind of information for. Identifying spies. In 2013, the US CIA noticed that its agents in Africa were almost immediately being identified by the Chinese for surveillance. Rather than hunt for the mole leaking the data the CIA determined China was analyzing stolen data. This is something China has become an expert at in the past ten years. Back before 2010 the Chinese government was angry over the infiltration of the party and government by CIA assets. The Chinese launched a program to discover and exploit a flaw in the CIA's online system used by operatives and succeeded in rooting out spies. As a result, the party discovered that the prevalence of "dirty money" in the Chinese system was helping spies hide AND be recruited. President Xi Jinping began an anti-corruption push in 2012. Not just a coincidence. Then in 2013, the Snowden leaks revealed how far into Huawei's Chinese-based servers the CIA had penetrated. This spurred China to start collecting data beginning with tracking flights and passenger lists. It also went after biometrics data at airports, like Bangkok. China had stolen information before of course, but now it was building the infrastructure to process it. Intelligence facilities began to be located near data processing centers. The travel information was helpful in trying to uncover spies but another piece of the puzzle made it much more effective. An attack on the US Office of Personnel Management in 2012 leaked personnel data from 21.5 million people including health, residency, employment, fingerprint, and financial data. Background checks that included mental health, sexual histories and drug use were also included. That data could be analyzed to figure out who was a US agent. Pair that information with travel data and you could figure out who from China those agents met with. The background data particularly could be used to cultivate China's own assets abroad. For instance, recruitment of American translators at US intelligence agencies increased shortly after. As did much faster recruitment and harassment of spouses of US officials by Chinese and Russian officials. And Russia used information in payroll payments to identify the real State Department employees and the more highly-paid CIA operatives at the US Embassy in Moscow. That's what they did with data from one database in the US government in 2012.	https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/21/china-stolen-us-data-exposed-cia-operatives-spy-networks/
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31	MWF	tm	Join in the conversation in our Discord which you can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com/dtns
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33			PAUSE PAUSE PAUSE
34			More Discussion Stories
35	::50	sl	Last week we talked about the launch of Apple Fitness+ and who it's best for. THIS week we can talk about using it since Allison has been doing just that! Using Apple Fitness+. - the Watch requirement (ATV) - Awesome to see your metrics (HR, Cal burned, time left in workout, time left in interval, Burn Bar) - New users - Which device for which exercise	https://www.podfeet.com/blog/2020/12/fitness-for-the-win/
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37	:55	tm	ZTE is the first to market a phone with an under-display 32MP selfie cam, available on the ZTE Axon 20 5G. The reviews are in, and mostly find the phone to be a respectable upper-mid range smartphone with a pretty bad selfie camera. The Verge's Sam Byford describes the camera as producing "hazy, soft photos with weak colors and blown-out highlights," in good light, with "a ton of noise and obliterated detail" in lower light. Android Authority's David Imel described it a little more charitably as "adding a glow reminiscent of Vaseline on the lens of a 60s movie camera." The screen uses a combination of organic and inorganic film over the camera to let some light through, and that section also has lower pixel density, so you tend to see where the square is over the camera. Outside of its headline feature, reviewers seemed to like the package of a 90Hz 1080 OLED, Snapdragon 765G with 5G modem, and 8GB of RAM for €449.	https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/21/22191459/zte-axon-20-5g-under-display-camera-hands-on
38			---	https://www.androidauthority.com/zte-axon-20-5g-review-1186788/
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45		tm	Let's check out the mailbag
46	:00		Mailbag (feedback@dailytechnewsshow.com)
47		sl	Jared wrote in and was one of several people who noted that Tom and I kept mentioning fighter pilots in our discussion of the U2 surveillance plane and of course the U2 plane is a surveillance plane not a fighter and we regret the error. Jared also added "When you think about any aircraft, there is a lot going on around aviating, navigating, and communicating; ... When you are a single pilot, that alone is a difficult job. Now, add in the jobs of observing radars and cameras and reporting any contacts seen so they can be investigated, it can become a very overwhelming job. This is where an AI helping the pilot would be an incredible advantage. Makes me think back to the old “FireFox” movie from the 1980’s where the pilot could just think or talk to the aircraft for systems control.
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49		tm	Some folks also took exception with my answer to Doctor's question of what else could be broken out when I said ad tech and ad platforms from Facebook and Google. I want to clarify I wasn't advocating this, just answering Doctor's question about what the possible targets could be. As far as what effects it might have, Derrick, who works in advertising, noted: "If Instagram and WhatsApp were broken up into separate companies, it would help to make the marketplace more competitive - giving advertisers more options, better pricing, etc. ..We deal with Facebook ad sales the same way we do with NBC. The final transaction does have to occur within Facebook's platform interface, but we see the same for other social networks. Google, on the other hand, is far more problematic in that they own so much more, including ad-serving platforms (GCM/DoubleClick), analytics (Google Analytics), programmatic DSPs (DV360), ad networks (GDN, AdMob, etc.), on top of their monopoly in search and video (YouTube). ..."It just works" if you work across their suite but it can be a challenge if you don't want to go all-in on Google.
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55	:03	sl	Thanks to... Allison Sheridan	podfeet.com
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