Digital Trends Live: Facebook’s privacy breach, grocery robots, and more

The tech industry never sleeps, and so on episode 41 of Digital Trends Live, relentless hosts Greg Nibler and Caleb Denison rose bright and early to gather the biggest news stories of the day.

First up, the convergence of tech giants is upon us, as Apple Music is coming to Amazon Alexa devices. The big clue is that the Apple app store is promoting the Alexa app. It makes sense for Apple, as putting its subscription service on new devices will open it up to a lot of customers it wasn’t previously capturing. As Denison explains it: “Apple HomePod is a one-time purchase, Apple Music is a subscription that keeps feeding the Apple monster every single month, so they want people buying into that subscription service. … And when it realizes that Echo speakers, Amazon’s ‘A-word’ is everywhere, you definitely need to be there.”

In other, more frightening news, a report from The New York Times revealed that Facebook has allowed other major tech companies access to its users’ data. According to the Times’ report, “Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages.” It’s a disturbing revelation and the latest public black eye for the controversial (but still widely used) social media titan.

Giant tech companies may be violating your privacy, but at least you can now get groceries delivered via robots! Nuro has partnered with Kroger to launch a fleet of autonomous grocery delivery pods in Scottsdale, Arizona. Customers enter their order using an app, workers at the grocery store load the orders into a Nuro pod, and then the pod drives to each customer’s house, at which point they enter a PIN number to open it up.

Over in DT’s New York studio, Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Kaplan sat down to talk to LG’s Tim Alessi about OLED technology and TV shopping for the holiday season.

Back in the Portland studio, Nibler chatted with USA Today’s Ray Soto about how virtual reality may shape the future of journalism.

Digital Trends Live airs Monday through Friday at 9 a.m. PT, with highlights available on demand after the stream ends. For more information, check out the DT Live homepage, and be sure to watch live for the chance to win occasional prizes.