Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 03/29 – And Now NFL+ ?

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

Sony’s answer to Xbox Game Pass is here. Spotify wants to TikTok-up your podcast listening. Have you ever gotten a spam text from your own phone number? Okta still has some ‘splaining to do. And forget AppleTV+, Disney+, I dunno… BobRoss+, how about NFL+? Isn’t it inevitable? Sponsors: Linode.com/techmeme Masterworks.io/ride Links: Sony merges PS Now and PS Plus to create three-tier subscription service (GamesIndustry.biz) Sony announces new PlayStation Plus subscriptions, its answer to Xbox Game Pass (The Verge) Spotify puts its Podz acquisition to use with test of new podcast discovery feature (TechCrunch) My own phone number is now spam texting me (The Verge) Leaked Details of the Lapsus$ Hack Make Okta’s Slow Response Look More Bizarre (Wired) NFL considers creating a streaming service of its own (The Athletic) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech Meme Right Home for Tuesday, March 29th, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough today. Sony's answer to Xbox Game Pass is here. Spotify wants to TikTok up your podcast listening. Have you ever gotten a spam text from your own phone number? Octa still has some spaining to do. And forget

Apple TV Plus, Disney Plus, I don't know, Bob Ross Plus. How about NFL Plus? Is it maybe inevitable? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. weird is that Sony has watched the success of Xbox Game Pass and has gone this long without really responding to it in a meaningful way. Well, no longer. Sony has announced this morning that it is merging PS Now and PS Plus to create three new tiers launching in June. PS Plus Essentials for $9.99 a month, extra for $14.99 a month, and premium for $17.99 a month. This was the long-rumored Project Spartacus, quoting gamesindustry.biz. PlayStation is uniting PSNow and PS Plus to form a new three-tier subscription service.

The new service sitting under the PS Plus brand is set to go live in June and will include a number of new features. PS Plus Essentials is the same as the PS Plus service today, which includes two monthly downloadable games, online multiplayer access, game discounts, and cloud storage. It costs the same to $9.99.00. $0.99 a month, $2499 for three months, or $59.99 a year. PS Plus Extra includes all of the above, but adds a collection of 400 PS4 and PS5 games that can be downloaded. These games will include the likes of Spider-Man, Spider-Man Miles Morales, God of War, Returnal, Mortal Kombat 11, and Death Stranding. More titles, including those from third-party developers, will be announced nearer the time. Additional titles will be added on a regular basis. PS Plus Extra will cost $14.99 a month, $3999 for three months, or $999 a year.

PS Plus Premium includes all of the above, but also adds classic games from the PS1, PS2, and PSP, which can be downloaded or streamed, time-limited game trials, and PS3 and PS4 game streaming. This service will cost $17.99 a month, $4999 for three months, or $11919. $0.99 a year. Sony's combined PS Plus and PS Now install base sits at around 50 million users with 48 million of those subscribe to PS Plus. Sony hopes to convert more of its PS Plus audience to the higher tiers while lowering

the overall price for those who currently subscribe to both services. PlayStation has decided against putting its first-party games into the service on the day it comes out in contrast to the Xbox GamePass equivalent. In an interview with Games Industry.Biz, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan says that doing such a thing would result in less investment into its studios and could lead to lower-quality games, end quote. It's that last bit there that is coming in for a bit of criticism, quoting Tom Warren in The Verge. Sony isn't promising to make all of its upcoming exclusive PlayStation games available on launch day through the subscription service, though.

That's what has made Xbox Game Pass an attractive option to Xbox gamers, alongside the impressive back catalog that allows the latest Xbox Series S-slash-X consoles to natively run original Xbox games alongside titles for the Xbox 360 and Xbox 1. Still, Sony's combination of PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now offers more choice of how to play classic and new PlayStation games without having to subscribe to a separate streaming service. It might not be a true GamePass competitor, but it's certainly a big improvement for PlayStation owners, end quote. It's funny, I keep hearing that Spotify, is number one in market share in terms of podcasting in the U.S.

And yet I just checked the numbers, and only 3.4% of you listened to this podcast on Spotify over the last 30 days. Slightly more than half of you listen on Apple Podcasts, which kind of blows my mind because that app sucks so much to me as to basically be unusable. And I guess because we're a tech audience, we have an unusually large number of you listening on Marco Arment's Overcast, around one-fifth of you, which I definitely approve of. That's the best podcast app out there, in my opinion, the one that I can't live without. Anyway, Spotify is testing a vertically scrolling

feed for podcasts inside its main app, featuring an automatically selected 60-second audio preview, quoting TechCrunch. Spotify acquired podcast Discovery Platform Pods last summer for roughly $49.4 million per A-Securities and Exchange Commission filing to help accelerate the streamers extensive investments in podcasts. Now Spotify is testing a feature that leverages the startup's technology to help users find new podcasts they may like, the company confirmed. Pods had originally attempted to solve the problem of podcast discovery with something it called the first audio news feed. That is, it presented users with 60-second audio clips from various shows that you would scroll through in a vertical feed similar to the format popularized by social apps like TikTok.

What made the company's technology interesting is that it didn't rely on podcast creators to produce their own clips for its feed. Instead, it used a machine learning model that had been trained on some 100,000 hours of audio to help automatically select clips to showcase. Product designer and tech early adopter Chris Messina tweeted about the test and posted a video of the feature, which was first uncovered by the Twitter account at Sleepwell Cap. Chris, did you know that they quoted you in TechCrunch? Chris ended up calling it a TikTok-style change, quoting again, a dedicated podcast button to takes you into the vertical feed where you'll see the show's cover art while the audio clip plays.

The clip is also transcribed as you listen with the words in the clips highlighted as they're spoken. There's a play button to continue to listen to the show and a plus button to add the episode to the apps Your Episodes list. Given that this is only a test, it's worth noting that the feature could change before a public launch. The feature may also simply be used to help Spotify gain an understanding of how users would engage with such an option, which could then be used to inform future product developments. In other words, there's no guarantee you'll soon see the same vertical feed of audio clips in your own Spotify app. Spotify confirmed its testing pods technology through this experience, but would not commit to a launch date or plans, end quote.

Many customers on Verizon and Verizon's MVNO visible have reported receiving spam text messages from themselves, from their own phone number. Among those who saw this happen was Chris Welch at the Verge, quote, many customers on Verizon have reported getting similar spam from their respective numbers over the last few days, same for its MVNO visible, and several Verge employees on other carriers have also encountered them. I posted an Instagram story about it and have gotten plenty of same responses. SMS fishing or smishing has been on the rise in recent years, but there's something more disconcerting and invasive about it being linked to your own number. It's all very, the call is coming from inside the house. The main reaction on Twitter is confusion and how. Again, this is all spoofing and

technological impersonation. It's trivially easy for spammers to camouflage as any number they choose. My Verizon account is secure and my number hasn't been hijacked. If you've gotten the same message, there's no cause for panic. I'd advise against clicking the link included with the message, though, I did exactly that for investigative purposes. The link I received forwarded me to the website of Channel 1 Russia, a state TV network. Others have reported similar results and say they're redirected to Russian websites when they click the link. I've asked Verizon for comment, as many companies are currently on high alert for cyber attacks amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It often feels like the phone carriers are losing the war against scammers. I don't envy having to contend with the sheer volume

of spam attacks that come across their networks daily, but this is getting out of hand. I've noticed an uptick in general SMS spam over the last several weeks. And as Alex Lansstein noted on Twitter, this particular message contains several phrases, free message, bill is paid, gift that one assumes would be flagged by Verizon's spam protection systems. And yet it came through successfully. And since this one showed as coming from me, the text also successfully evaded Apple's filter unknown messages feature. So what can be done? In addition to offering various measures of spam protection, Verizon and other U.S. carriers encourage customers to forward spam texts to spam 726, though some people might have pause about reporting spam from their own number.

I've asked Verizon about what happens in that situation, and we'll report back to you, end quote. Follow-up time, according to a leaked mandiant report, Octa's contractor SITEL first sent a LAPSIS breach notification to ACTA on January 25th and detailed an intrusion timeline on March 17th. So more questions for ACTA and now for Citel, quoting Wired. The sub-processor Sykes Enterprises, which is owned by the Business Services outsourcing company Citel Group, confirmed publicly last week that it suffered a data breach in January 2022. Now leaked documents show Citel's initial breach notification to customers, which would include

Octa on January 25, as well as a detailed intrusion timeline dated March 17th. The documents raised serious questions about the state of Sittell-S-Sysk's security defenses prior to the breach, and they highlight apparent gaps in Octa's response to the incident. Octa and Sittel both declined to comment about the documents, which were obtained by independent security researcher Bill Demer Kappi and shared with Wired. When the Lapsis Group published screenshots claiming it had breached Octa on March 21st, the company says it had already received CitTel's breach report on March 17. But after sitting with the report for four days, Octa seemed to be caught flat-footed when the hackers took the information public. The company even initially said, quote, the ACTA service has not been

breached. Wired has not seen the complete report, but the intrusion timeline alone would presumably be deeply alarming to a company like ACTA, which essentially holds the keys to the kingdom for thousands of major organizations. Octa said last week that the maximum potential impact of the breach reaches 366 customers. The timeline, which was seemingly produced by security investigators at Mandient, or based on data gathered by the firm, shows that the Lapsis group was able to use extremely well-known and widely available hacking tools like the password-grabbing tool MimiCats to rampage through Sittel systems. At the outset, the attackers were also able to gain enough system privileges to disable security scanning tools that might have flagged the intrusion sooner. The timeline shows that attackers initially

compromised Sykes on January 16th and then ramped up their attack throughout the 19th and 20th until their last login on the afternoon of the 21st, which the timeline calls complete mission. Quote, the attack timeline is embarrassingly worrisome for Sittal Group, Demir Kappi says. The attackers did not attempt to maintain operational security much at all. They quite literally searched the internet on their compromised machines for known malicious tooling, downloading them from official sources, end quote. With just the information Sittal and Acta have described, having right away at the end of January, though. It is also unclear why the two companies do not

seem to have mounted more expansive and urgent responses while Mandian's investigation was ongoing. Mandian also declined to comment for the story. Acta has said publicly that it detected suspicious activity on a Sykes employee's Octa account on January 20th and 21st and shared information with Sittal at that time. Sittal's customer communication on January 25th would have seemingly been an indication that even more was awry than Octa previously knew. The SITEL documents described, quote, a security incident within our VPN gateways, thin kiosks and SRW servers, end quote. Sotel's notification does, however, seemingly attempt to downplay the severity of the incident.

The company wrote at the time, quote, we remain confident that there are no indicators of compromise and there is still no evidence of malware, ransomware, or endpoint corruption, end quote. Quoting Lily Hay Newman on Twitter just continues to be extremely unclear why Octa and its sub-processor SITL apparently didn't have a greater sense of urgency about investigating this breach and its implications for their customers, end quote. And quoting Bill Demer Kappi on Twitter himself, quote, my questions for ACTA. You knew that the machine of one of your customer support members was compromised back in January. Why didn't you investigate it? Having the capability to detect an attack is useless if you aren't willing to respond,

and quote. And finally today, I know I've asked smart people on this show. before? Why doesn't someone like the NFL say, just go and do their own app or their own subscription service? Like, why does the NFL need a middleman? Why do they need to sell rights packages to others? Couldn't they make more money going direct to consumer? As the saying goes, I can't exactly remember what the answer was those smart people gave me, but it basically, as I recall, kind of comes down to the divvying up of rights is still going to be more lucrative for the foreseeable future for folks like sports organizations. That an auction process is a hell of a drug, basically. So still, why not lay the groundwork now, right? So you have optionality in the

future? Well, sources are telling the athletic that the NFL is working on NFL plus, a subscription streaming service that would include games, radio, podcasts, and team content. Quoting from the Athletic. Teams were briefed on the development at the annual NFL owners meeting occurring in Palm Beach, Florida. The NFL has distributed live games for free through mobile devices and on Yahoo for tablets and laptops, but these deals have expired. In the future, it appears if fans on go want to stream games on their phone and they don't have a cable subscription, they will need to pay for what is tentatively called NFL Plus. The brand, NFL Plus, was included on slides viewed by a meeting of Team President Sunday at the Breakers, the resort hosting the meetings.

The streaming service is nascent and likely won't be ready for an owner's vote until the next meeting in May, said one team president who requested anonymity because the plans are still developing. Lee Burke, a sports media consultant said it makes sense for the NFL to enter the streaming wars, which have sparked a wave of subscription overload among consumers. It makes perfect sense that the NFL would be exploring the development of a streaming channel, much like they developed platforms for cable and satellite when each was cutting edge media technology, Burke said. That noted, any streaming launch could tie into the NFL's negotiations to potentially sell a portion of NFL media to a technology partner like Apple or Amazon, end quote.

The NFL has three major media deals percolating, finding a replacement for its mobile streaming, a replacement for Sunday ticket, which has one more year remaining on DirecTV, and potentially selling a stake in NFL media, which include an NFL media, which include NFL network and NFL.com. Burke speculates that if Apple or Amazon buy the NFL media stake, then that party may have a role in NFL Plus. Right now, however, the trio of deals are moving on different tracks. The league needs a solution to how games are distributed via mobile tablets and laptops by the upcoming season. There is no similar hard deadline on the NFL media sale for which the league

over a year ago hired Goldman Sachs to shop. But sources said there is no deal imminent and one may not materialize, at least in the form of a hard equity sale. Similarly, the league has a year remaining on Sunday ticket, so a deal for the out-of-market package is still at the very least months away, if not longer. Mobile-streamed games, which were available in market, so fans in Chicago could stream on their phones' Bears games, but not others, had been exclusive with NFL sponsor Verizon. The league loosened that exclusivity, opening the streaming to all mobile carriers in recent years. It now appears that the league is moving in a different direction. Patrick Crakes, a sports media consultant, wonders if the prospective NFL Plus is merely a way to leverage a better deal out of mobile carriers.

It's hard for me to see how any one mobile NFL plus system replaces the economics from Verizon slash Yahoo, he wrote in a text. The big question is whether the NFL is suggesting this to get Verizon to pay more. I don't think the NFL has a lot of bidders for this package, end quote. What would NFL Plus cost? The price on the slides presented to team owners was $5 a month, though a team president cautioned that number is more hypothetical. A potential element of a new NFL plus is team content, said one club president. How this would work is unclear, the president said, whether all 32 teams would have content on the new channel or would they have their own. Nine years ago, the NFL launched an ultimately unsuccessful site NFL now, which aggregated content from the 32 teams.

teams then resisted the content demands from the league for the new outlet. Clubs today, however, are major generators of media content, so that same tension is unlikely to surface if the league wants to tap the 32 franchises for NFL Plus, end quote. If the children don't grow up, our bodies get bigger, but our hearts get torn up. Talk to you tomorrow.