Gadgetory

and good morning on Thursday November 9th it's episode 314 of the 359 podcast I'm BVG and I'm sick which means you get treated to a severe case a sexy voice which is appropriate because today Alfred and Roger Chang are talking about nudes yeah this is my sexy voice there we go come on I'm gonna handle my sexy I'm not trying for that I just have a severe case of the plug yeah so we'd be talking about Facebook's odd request for your nudes and why there's a noble reason behind it we're gonna talk about Equifax and yahoo obviously obviously Equifax and yahoo appearing before Congress Alfred listened in on the hearing give us all the details and lastly 18 tees deal to by Time Warner may be in jeopardy the DOJ is asking for a specific specific divestiture to get the deal closed as always to give any questions on the topics leave it in the comments section Brian will get to the best I will try to answer them in 3 minutes and 59 seconds well not much ends I want to correct your semantics on that when you say we're gonna answer them in 355 podcasts we will get to them in time in 59 and we will spend a greater amount of time answering them than that maybe I don't know hopefully it will just stop anyways thanks for sticking around we're gonna record the podcast and we will be back and see in the chat and 3 minutes and 59 seconds from 3:00 to welcome to the 359 I'll run darshan I'm Alfred Aang facebook wants or needs but wait wait hear me out on this one the social network wants to make sure your nude photos won't be used for revenge porn so it's asking people to proactively send them in via messenger the company will then convert convert those photos into lines of code so it'll block the image from ever appearing on the site Alfred are you gonna be sending your nudes to Facebook I mean I send my notes to Facebook anyway just get him to look at you guys think you know where can I improve this is cut I feel like this is very much a Silicon Valley solution to this problem send us your nudes so we could create a vast database it's very robust very robotic like did where it just yeah we'll just get rid of nude photos with you just give us the nude photos and one person will look at them and reportedly I mean the at Facebook someone will have to look at these nude photos to verify that they are indeed nudes that need to be included in so if you think that you know oh no one's gonna see my nude photos know someone at Facebook is still going to see them which means that there's a paying job out there for somebody to just look at naked photos yeah just I have to wonder how you even request or how you even apply for that yeah I do think what are your qualification you know I've seen so many nude photos in my time I do think it's a noble cause I think you know revenge porn is clearly a major issue for them for sure but you know Facebook already has you know algorithms that search for things like nipples or right you know penis is on there like being uploaded in general right so I don't think they need your photo specifically to blog yeah I can't imagine this being very popular just clear this is a trial in Australia yes yep so it's not it's not national like here in the US we're not sending our nudes to Facebook yet unless you're into it yeah all right so exactly this from Yahoo and Equifax appeared before Congress yesterday to again answer for their respective hacks and as a reminder Yahoo suffered the largest attack in history losing three billion accounts and Equifax arguably topped Yahoo by losing 143 million Social Security numbers so Alberti listen to hearing what what went on I think the biggest takeaway was you know they really still don't know what had hit them to be fair this was Marissa Mayer's first public appearance to Congress like after it have been revealed the three billion number had been right all right and she started off you know apologizing saying you know I'm really sorry I want to personally apologize to all of our users effective which is all three billion of them right that's a lot of sorry's you're gonna have to hand out but you know she said we still don't know how the hack was caused the same thing can be said for Equifax when they're talking about you know a lot of the names and Social Security numbers weren't encrypted in the first place because they thought that their firewalls were enough spoiler they weren't but when they asked the current CEO he basically said I don't know if there's encrypted now so it could still be on encrypted so it's basically we're sorry but we actually haven't done anything to kind of get at the root of this problem yeah that's very very disconcerting the ad Time Warner deal may be in jeopardy Justice Department reportedly wants a teen teach advice to divest CNN and possibly the broader Turner Broadcasting properties to close the time warner acquisition now this comes after a president donald trump is railed against CNN calling it fake news leaving many to wonder whether he's got some sort of influence over the DOJ with this I mean it definitely does seem to be something coming from the White House on this because I've not heard of the DOJ commenting on deals like this usually it comes up with something of Congress right well DOJ will come out with a request for divestiture actually that's pretty normal but the fact that this is so specific mm-hmm has people watching the heads wasn't it wasn't was it CNN specifically or was it Turner Broadcasting which also there are some conflicting reports there there there was a request to 418 T's either divest DirecTV or the Turner Broadcasting company's CN CNN was a major part then but as far as I can tell 18 T's said no but there's a lot there's still a lot of questions that Justice Department still hasn't commented on this officially you know 18 t did talk about this yesterday said they never offer CNN up as a an asset for divestiture nor would they but that could just be tough talk all right so that's all the time we have for the stories and more check us on SEANET I'm Roger Cheng I'm out for dang thanks for listening I love that song all right thanks everybody for joining us the podcast is concluded I'm gonna go in the head and start digging through the comments section for some good questions and fodder for us to continue to discuss and right out the gate Lost legacy as the elephant in the room what's to stop someone from hacking Facebook and leaking everyone's news yeah the million dollar question here Facebook does have a very robust security team there I think there's a reason why after being such a massive target you know with all these people on Facebook that it still hasn't really you know there hasn't been any kind of major leak or anything like that from like Facebook's database itself that being said so these nudes they're not storing these nudes in their database as like the photos themselves so they're converting it into basically code and then if somebody else tries to upload that image that code can match up against that image and then like block it from being uploaded in the first place right theoretically couldn't you take that code in reverse engineer I would have to assume that space Facebook is a smart company when it comes to security and these codes would be encrypted mm-hmm that somebody only on Facebook would be able to access it that being said though that's me assuming that they are a smart company encrypts there because Equifax had all this important data and it wasn't it was okay so they were a pretty competent company that's the company you go to when you lose all your data because they credit and yeah yeah from no you know what would be crazy though if you're like because this this whole thing is stopped revenge porn right yeah like image is that only the people you sent it to are supposed to see what if somebody at Facebook wanted to have revenge on Facebook and then we know that as a revenge on revenge now think about it terrible last day right that's not too far off considering what that Twitter absolutely trump account absolutely it's like the revenge porn and all revenge porn yeah just awesome and really this only effects photos that you have it doesn't you know you have no control over yeah so yeah there are a lot of holes in this like I said this seems like a very like tech solution a Silicon Valley driven solution to a a real problem a legitimate problem I'm sure there are other ways that we can do this without having to offer up our nudes let's talk a little bit about these court dealings we've been encountering as of late yeah I have thoroughly enjoyed watching Congress truly put the screws to some of these I'm gonna go ahead and say irresponsible corporations and their in their practices now do I know how to run a giant media company no obviously not I'm here the buttons for another one but as far as the responsibility at hand there's a lot of people that should be held accountable and should be punished frankly with all of these massive security leaks and social security issues and I'm sitting here with my popcorn and watching these court cases unfold and I'm loving every second of it well they're not they're not Court cases ya know what I mean no but that's the thing like it is cathartic to watch these companies get grilled but ultimately nothing really ever gets ya a lot of times these hearings are really just public spankings they're for showing the politicians gonna say hey it's like the monitor and feathering it's a modern-day equivalent of that people being locked up in the thing and he was thrown to me at the gallows yes yes that's still entertaining it's a little satisfying but it just it is frustrating because it seems like these companies are really facing consequences yeah there was a point during the hearing yesterday where one of the senators said you know we're gonna be having even more of these hearings in the future because there are gonna be responsible companies out there and unless we put in legislation that like imposes a fine or some kind of punishment for not having proper security in place all we're going to get is an apology and more hearings right that's a great point there is no enforcement mechanism so yeah but to be fair though I mean Oh in their defense a lot of these companies make a good point where it's basically why are we being punished for being victims of a crime kind of thing but to be fair the other argument is why you shouldn't have been more secure in the first place right I guess the argument is all right you know it doesn't matter how secure your company is at one point or another it's going to be hacked yeah yeah I think it comes down more to if if the if the argument can ever be ignorant is no excuse again the law is no excuses yeah absolutely apply I think your egregiously irresponsible like if you don't at least put certain you know protections in place particularly yeah egregious yeah like like encrypting your you know files or have updating patches when you were told to there should be stipulations in like tracts with the executives like yeah he owes the CEO who departed right Smith yeah left with a huge paper yeah he should forfeit some of them yeah incompetence should be a factor in yeah this job right that's clearly I think I think of you if you've shown that like you've made an effort to protect your assets then sure you know you shouldn't be punished for being the victim but baby I'm but in that scenario when you haven't then yeah that makes a lot of sense yeah one correction Leviathan points out that it was the stocks not the gas oh I don't want to call me I don't they do hanging all right so devil's advocate we talk about these these proceedings and hearings and let's let's be honest this is kind of the first where ever getting into this this is a new field for a lack of a better term I guess and maybe that's why these folks aren't getting immediately punished and there's no direct consequence because we don't know why what to do about it what do we think is possibly the course of action in future cuz now that we've kind of learned how to set these standards in the and and and the concept itself starting to solidify what could come in later years what inevitably happen again I think it's about imposing security standards to begin with not yeah imposing security standards after the fact like punishments for being hit by a crime you look at how like ATMs now or all have the chips on them right it's not this magnetic stripes yep anymore nearly all of them yet yeah but that's because there was like a federal mandate where it was basically if your store like doesn't have the chip feature for your 488 for you know credit cards or anything I don't have the protection necessary I got their info stolen like you're the ones that have to pay for it right yeah and then you know once that legislation was put in place overnight like all these you saw a bunch of like check it like the point-of-sale terminals also yeah it's over to chip terms cuz all of a sudden I don't want to be yeah and that's that's setting a security standard to begin with not you know oh they got stolen you're responsible well you don't have this like security feature in and then I got I compared to come with the auto industry you know we have certain rules like inclusion of seatbelts air bags these are all these are all perks and features and the government turned them into mandates and like there should be some sort of security best practice mandate that all companies respect right well unfortunately you have to kind of learn the hard way and a lot of these things though those until people started dying in car accidents that they said sure probably have seatbelts and airbags that's not until somebody's entire fortune gets liquidated out of the bank that somebody can say hmm maybe we should actually start putting up some walls around the face but the thing of it is is and this is just me that being skeptical is companies hate regulations and they've got lots and lots of lobbyists why this process is so slow right that's why having regulation like this is tough to pull off we've got you know there are deep pockets they're arguing against it Oh America making it great well we're working on it slowly but surely it get it better hopefully one day its collective effort its kind of swing America is a great country the USA any any questions there is a thought on the table from Karen Jones that says mobile devices should replace credit cards to be honest oh now I don't know how I feel about that now I'm it's I'm completely torn what if your mobile device goes dead that's my biggest awesome how do batteries like they're going out of style so if I'm at a bar how do I keep my Bible on tab do I give them my phone they will probably just get my account leg accounting there's got to be like a to our system you can put in place it and that's done it's a good point I mean the reason why Apple pay why Apple was so late to mobile payments was because they were waiting for the chip technology that kind of makes so it is actually as or if not more secure than a credit card totally but yeah there are some practical limitations for just switching wholesale to just your phone your trading convenience for convenience because yeah it's less crap in your pocket but it's one more thing to still maintain and consider like if you get rid of your wallet great night carrying a battery yeah ready carrying a battery though truth yeah I don't know I'm totally torn on that one until they actually prefer until they improve the performance and longevity of a mobile device I mean I owe that tirely that's a real name and tech breakthrough I wanna seize and batteries battery tech man you everyone else yeah but the the longer they they milk the crap batteries though the more likely or to keep replacing them that's true so we should just be able to convert ourselves into batteries like the matrix yeah yeah I want to do I'm a battery all right that's the those are some low aspirations here we go here's a question from Watson do you guys think a challenge may be implementing security regulations presumably it depends on the company small business website wouldn't need to have a high security of a yahoo for instance yeah that's definitely the case but we're right yeah as far as the security concerns go we still don't know exactly where all the fault lines are don't even address that yeah and and especially for small businesses Security's like very hard for them to handle and yeah in the past you know something like ransomware wouldn't be that much of an issue just because it be we really only have like one computer anyway but now it's getting to a point where ransomware basically like a small business like their whole like operations could be on a computer and like if that goes down it there it's kind of like so they would pay there they're like losing a lot of money on it sure I mean I think it's tough because particularly for small businesses because yeah I'm savvy right yeah some mom-and-pop shops not gonna but yeah Yahoo ever brought up Bri ah who and Equifax I brought up an interesting point where so yesterday they Congress is basically asking you know what should like Congress do to you know prevent these kind of breaches in the future and things like that yeah and instead of you know saying oh there should be legislation to you know require security standards or anything like that they kind of went with we should work together to find the criminals like after the fact okay maybe don't get hacked in the first a lot like what Facebook Google and Twitter said yeah it's almost not regulations we should also work together yeah it should be more kumbaya moments really yeah which is like I feel like it's easy athlete because it's they don't want to bring up regulation now if we don't wanna bring up regulation so something to talk about you know working together cooperation those are all good word they're all BFFs yeah they're all one they're all positive sounding words so you know be constructive send us your social security numbers and we'll protect it a lot of code and nudes we send them along together really that's what we call though that was kind of back with faxes you know operate operations where it was they had your social security number without your permission and if like right like credit monitor yeah yeah where if it was used somewhere else they'd they'd warn yeah right so you know just take that into note Facebook sometimes that doesn't work yeah and it all starts here with Alfred calling out Facebook this is where the change begins all right the revolution begins with one person the revolution begins with Alfred mad about things yes you are sir as a true millennial should be yep all right and then that note we are just about out of time and I think it's a good place for us to end on a revolutionary uplifting and no yeah for the week yeah change enjoy Veterans Day that's right yeah yeah a salute to all of our troops and veterans and yeah our heartfelt appreciation from CBS Interactive CNET and CBS at large thank you to all of you out there risking your necks for our sorry butts sitting here in the purple room thank you very much yeah all right wrap things up take us home raise your good week you like anything you saw or heard hear check us out on CNET our podcast is also available on iTunes TuneIn stitcher SoundCloud Feedburner and Google play music see y'all next week safe C on Monday have a great weekend everyone you