US House Judiciary Sends Letter to Google Over DNS-over-HTTPS Concerns

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US House Judiciary Sends Letter to Google Over DNS-over-HTTPS Concerns
Number 956
Broadcast Date SEPTEMBER 30, 2019
Episode Length 5:53
Hosts Rich Stroffolino

The US House Judiciary Committee sends a letter to Google over DNS-over-HTTPS concerns, Facebook will reportedly pay a minority of organizations for content in its News section, and WeWork delays its IPO.

Headlines

The Wall Street Journal reports that the US House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Google on September 13th inquiring about the company's intentions to use any personal data gained with the adoption of the DNS-over-HTTPS protocol for commercial purposes. Since DOH passes DNS data over an encrypted connection, the letter states the committee is worried this would give Google an "unfair advantage by denying access to users’ data” for cable and wireless companies. According to a Google spokesperson, “Google has no plans to centralize or change people’s DNS providers to Google by default. Any claim that we are trying to become the centralized encrypted DNS provider is inaccurate.” Google is expected to begin testing DOH rollout in Chrome next month.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook will reportedly pay a minority of publishers whose content is shown in its upcoming news section, according to sources. The news section is expected to launch by the end of the year, and feature headlines and links from about 200 publications, of which Facebook will reportedly pay fees to about 50 organizations. Facebook is still in content negotiations with publishers into how much content and access would be granted in the news section. Fees are reportedly as high as $3 million a year for national publications, with a three year contract.
The coworking rental startup WeWork announced it will withdraw its S-1 filing as it postpones its initial public offering. Since announcing its intent to go public on August 14th, the company's co-founder Adam Neumann stepped down as CEO and diluted his voting power with the company on September 24th. In a statement, co-CEOs Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham said the company will focus on its core business, intend to run WeWork like a public company, and will revisit going public at a later date. In its last private valuation, WeWork had been valued at $47 billion, but after filing its S-1, sourcing speaking to CNBC said public investors were valuing it below $15 billion.
Reuters reports that ByteDance, makers of the popular TikTok app, posted review of 50-60 billion yuan ($7 billion to $8.4 billion) in the first half of 2019, according to sources. Overall for the half ByteDance lost money, but reportedly turned a profit in June, with Reuter's sources confident that the company would be profitable in the second half. According to The Information, ByteDance generated $7.2 billion in revenue in 2018. Most revenue reportedly comes from China-focused products like the news aggregator Jinri Toutiao, and the domestic version of TikTok, Douyin. The company also recently launched a search engine, a work efficiency app called Lark, and plans to launch a music streaming app.
A new iOS exploit called "checkm8" could lead to a permanent, unblockable jailbreak on hundreds of millions of iPhones, according to researcher axi0mX. The exploit is a bootrom vulnerability allowing hackers access deep enough that Apple would be unable to block or patch out with a future software update. This is the first bootrom-level exploit publicly released for an iOS device since the iPhone 4. It works on the iPhone 4S to iPhone 8 and iPhone X so A5 through A11 chips. For now, this is known as a “tethered” exploit, only triggered over USB. But possibilities include Apple no longer having control through software updates or revoked signatures, downgradeable iOS devices that could be easily rolled back to previous versions of the software, dual-booting between multiple versions of iOS, and more.
HP announced Chromebook x360 12b and x360 14b convertible laptops. The 12-inch 12b supports the Universal Stylus Initiative the first open standard stylus protocol. The 12b will start at $359 and the 14-inch 14b is $370 more both available later this month. HP's Rechargeable USI Pen arrives in November at $69.99.
Netflix made the first episode of its new original series "Bard Of Blood" available to non-subscribers in India for a limited time. The episode can be streamed on the Netflix homepage on desktop or on Android devices. The move is similar to other streaming services like ALTBalaji, which offered up to three episodes to non-subscribers, and MX Player, which offers ad-supported free access on original content. Netflix has been experimenting with this model in other regions recently, with the first episode of the Spanish original series 'Elite' in Mexico and Colombia earlier this month.
Linus Torvalds approved a new Linux kernel lockdown security feature, which when enabled will restrict some kernel functionality from even root users. The feature comes with two modes, integrity, which disables kernel features that allow userland to modify the running kernel, and confidentiality, which disables features that extract confidential information from the kernel. The feature will ship as a Linux Security Module as part of Linux kernel 5.4, and be disabled by default.
Amazon announced that YouTube TV is now available on the Fire TV platform. The streaming service can be accessed on Fire TV sticks and set top boxes, as well as “Fire TV Edition” smart TVs, although Amazon notes first-generation Fire TV Stick or Fire TV are not compatible.
Spotify announced that users can now add podcasts to playlists. Podcast episodes can be combined with music, and shared out like other Spotify playlists. Creating and adding podcasts to playlists is currently limited to mobile.

Links



Preceded by:
"Week in Review for the Week of 9/23/19"
US House Judiciary Sends Letter to Google Over DNS-over-HTTPS Concerns
Followed by:
"Leaked Zuck Audio References Company Breakup"