 And We're live. Hi everybody We're gonna record a podcast now. Are you ready Patrick? Could I be more ready? I doubt it not the way you were born Are you ready Eric? I am all right. Let's do it It only takes a little to help a lot to show your support for Daily Tech News show Go to patreon.com slash ace detect and pledge just one dollar per month. That's patreon.com ACE DT ECT This is the Daily Tech News for Friday October 9th, 2015. I'm Tom Merritt joining me today. Mr. Patrick Beja usually on Tuesdays, but a a special edition here on Friday today. How's it going Patrick? It's going well. I said we say before we started recording. I've been binging on old friends episodes So there might be an unusual number of 80s humor Attempts in this episode fun game. Yeah, keep track of all the all the friends references Fighting his way through the friends references and the early morning for him We're very happy to have Eric Olander editor-in-chief and co-founder of the China Africa project and co-host of the weekly China in Africa podcast We're among other type of topics. They closely follow tech in Africa. Thanks for joining us Eric Very good morning. Very good afternoon to you guys and a good day to you Patrick. Yeah, we span the globe, sir Yes, we really do the Sun never sets on this particular episode of the Daily Tech News show We are going to talk about Some of the things that some of the insights that Eric finds in covering Africa regarding technology today Which is why I wanted to shift this to Friday is right after you say hi to Len. Yes Thank you No, but I wanted to explain that Never mind. Let's introduce Len. Hi Len Peralta who is here to illustrate the episode today as well. Yes. Thank you so much I I knew you were gonna come to me And Len Len's drawings if anybody doesn't know show up immediately after the show at Len Peralta store com And if you're watching the unofficial video which we put up on YouTube and archive org You can take a look at them there as well But yeah, so Eric's gonna talk about insights on on Africa from from the technology side of things Which is why Patrick which is where I was going which is why Patrick is on the show today So that we didn't have to make Eric get up ridiculously early before workday Let's get into the headlines as M&M SP posted on our subreddit last pass announced that it is being acquired by remote access software maker log Me in for a hundred million dollars in cash possibly a little more last pass provides password management software for consumers and businesses log me an acquired business identity management company Meldium last year and intends to integrate its capabilities into last pass through the two products And yet the two products will continue to exist independently in the near future last past founder Joe Seagrest will lead Development of log means identity and access management product going forward This has caused much consternation and concern among fans of last pass of which there are many last pass is Lawded for having very good pricing mechanisms where you can use certain things for free It's cross-platform on Linux, which is one of the reasons I use it But Patrick a lot of people are not very happy that log me in has gotten a reputation for raising prices Consistently and seems to be very enterprise focused people are afraid that maybe last pass may stop concentrating on its consumers I That would be very sad indeed. I've been using and recommending last pass for a couple of years now I think it's an excellent product, but at the same time Let's wait and see before we freak out and you know as with everything if it turns out that The product loses its soul. I'm sure another one will come and replace it So I'm not too worried yet and people are already debating Which is the best alternative to jump to there's a combination of things here, right? There's always consternation when somebody buys your favorite product You just people just assume it's going to ruin it. That doesn't always happen. Look at Instagram Everyone thought Facebook would ruin Instagram and Instagram has pretty much remained like Instagram was before Facebook bought it On the other hand, there are plenty of examples along the road of I don't know Nokia's handset business for instance Get receiving massive layoffs after Microsoft bought it. So it's hard to say about that There's also the fact that log me and just has a bad reputation because it used to be a free Service that a lot of people liked and it changed over time and a lot of people have not gotten over that Yeah, it doesn't seem like something like last pass would I mean I've been supporting them I've been a subscriber for for since the beginning basically It seems like that kind of company could not keep growing or you know It was fine as it was but it's not that surprising that it's finding someone interested in making it Maybe bigger integrated in into their own offering Again, I don't think they've expressed the fact that they would shut down the service But so let's wait and see what happens I Twitter announced a new offering for Twitter amplify that lets advertisers run video pre-roll ads before targeted videos uploaded to Twitter Publishers upload videos to video that Twitter comm and are paid a majority of ad revenue generated Recode reports Twitter says it will keep 30% of the sale. I uploaded a video went to video Twitter comm worked great Did you know I think 30% of the sales? There was no pre-roll on the ads I Think there's some reasons to be skeptical of this You know the problem, you know in my day job outside of China Africa I'm in the digital video space here and clients are looking for scale and the problem I think with Twitter is that you know Twitter's these micro communities oftentimes with the exception of some big celebrities And then the fact that Twitter really isn't a global platform I mean Twitter has some this has been Twitter's problem is that it has a lot of dark space around the world in terms of markets For example here in Vietnam Twitter is a non-player. It's non-existent. I mean a 300 million users You know how many of those are active users probably, you know decent percentage But I just you know compared to what Facebook and what even what daily motion and also what YouTube are doing in terms of Scale the big brands, you know, it might be a little try that they do but they're not gonna I don't think place big advertising bets on Twitter right now Apple has removed a few apps including ad blockers that do not use the iOS 9 ad blocking framework These are apps that are removed because they install root certificates and act like VPNs Without making it clear to users that they do that, right? So there's plenty of apps that re-root traffic to another server the opera mobile browser For instance does that only a lot of your VPN services do that, but you know, they're doing it It's very clear to you that they're doing it Apple says it's working with the developers to get these apps back into the store Probably just making sure they put in alerts when you install them that say your Encrypted traffic will be going through our servers. So you're saying you trust us not to spy on you One of the apps that was doing this that had been making a little bit of noise in the In the past few days was a bean choice Which is basically an ad blocker that goes through a VPN that allows them to block the ads even within the apps And not just on the web. So that App was removed along with the other ones wondering if it might come back being more explicit I think that seems what Apple is saying is we don't mind that you do this You have to tell people up front and they're probably trying to agree on wording You know not to launch back into the whole debate about ad blocking Using VPN to block the ads from within an app seems like even More questionable than on a website because an app really if you go to the app you you want to use it It's not like a website that you That you go to Automatically or because of a link or something Blocking the ads within an app seems I don't know it makes me here's the scenario I'm in feed Lee I click on a link the in-app browser launches And suddenly none of my ads are blocked and I used to block the ads and now I can't read the page because it's covered in Advertisements that are malicious and awful Well, I think in the case that's what they're that's what they're targeting here But it in an in-app browser the browser the only browser available in And the extension extensions apparently don't work when it's calling the in-app Okay. Hmm. All right Fine merit Well, you know what while speaking to German newspaper handles blood Tesla motor CEO Elon Musk noted Apple has hired people Tesla has fired and said we always jokingly call Apple The Tesla graveyard if you don't make it at Tesla you go to work at Apple That's what the quote he gave he also pointed out building cars is more complicated than building smartphones while adding For Apple the car is the next logical thing to finally offer a significant innovation it's So I don't know if he's being complimentary or just factual in the second part of his of his quote, but I would be I mean I don't know if Apple can manage to build a car and to make it appealing and to make it technologically worthwhile It's certainly a huge challenge, but the quote by Elon Musk first of all He's getting feisty, which I don't think we're used to for him In that way and second of all the the quote about well, you know, it's Apple they're building smartphones they can't build cars is strangely reminiscent of the quote from I think it was Blackberry CEO at the time about Apple making a phone when he was saying huh they make They make Computers phones is a totally different business in industry. So yeah It's you either you really think that Apple or Google are gonna actually make a car or they're gonna focus in on the OS for the car I mean that I mean Google's come out and said they don't want to make cars They want to build the the software that goes into all the cars and you know I'm not sure Apple's gonna be qualified to make a car either. It was the palm CEO by the way Patrick quick quick Google search by the way because I didn't remember exactly myself But yeah, I Eric. That's a great question I am still resistant to the idea that Apple would make a car now they have hired people involved in in parts Manufacturing and things that are definitely beyond just making an in-dash operating system But that could still imply that what they want to do is provide a whole car operating system That knows how parts work with each other and they need those people for that kind of expertise I just can't imagine Apple Creating manufacturing plants and assembly lines for cars I feel like they just in the end will have to partner with some kind of auto manufacturing Well, you know, they have the money to do it. They could basically they could seems like they could buy Tesla too Yeah, exactly. Maybe that's why Elon's all upset is they haven't Possibly but I mean they could potentially Partner with someone in the beginning and then do a car themselves. They could never do a car themselves You know, the truth is I think they're still exploring stuff and even Apple doesn't know what they're gonna do That's probably the most likely truth out of all of it Because they do that they spend a lot of money on research sometimes and then abandoned the product line because it just doesn't work out It's happened before apparently although they never admit it Fried ochre wanted us to mention a lily-puting article about an alternative Android app framework called micro g gms core Being developed by a developer called Mar V in or Marvin The aim is to create a free open-source alternative to Google Play services That would allow your apps like YouTube and Google Maps to run even if you didn't have the official Google version of Android if you don't mind testing beta frameworks You can find the latest version at the xda developers forum if I were Google. I'd be encouraging this This is gonna help your antitrust case, right Tom Yeah, I don't think Google is very happy about this. They've spent the last I didn't say they were what I said was if You've got Europe suing you for antitrust because Google Play services locks down your platform It would be smart to encourage this and go look see there's competition Well, yeah, yeah, I guess in a perfect world. They would say that's what happens But they spend the last what three years trying to make sure that Google services Play services are in place in fact to restrict these kinds of operations of getting those apps Not available on on they also open source the rest of the operating system. That's some Microsoft never did Of course, I think they did that in the beginning to get market share and then started thinking Oh wait, maybe we should have a little bit of this pie for us and not for other people, but We'll see. I mean they have their that's the way they're playing the game They got a lot of market share because of the openness of the system. So now they have to What quick metaphor Friends reference They have to jump in the fountain play with the smelly cat. I don't know basically. Yeah, exactly House of Bricks submitted the Washington Post report that US FBI director James Coney Told the Senate Homeland Security and governmental affairs committee Thursday that the administration would not seek Legislation requiring backdoors in encryption. Hurray said every geek in the audience The decision was made at a cabinet meeting on October 1st So like I said not seek as opposed to that they can't I mean if they could they would and they can't so they won't Pretty much. Yeah ISP review notes that what way and NTT docomo conducted the world's first large-scale field trial of 5g mobile broadband at an outdoor test site in Chengdu The test reached a peak speed of 3.6 gigabits per second using the sub six gigahertz band one test Involved multi-user MIMO with 24 concurrent device connections in the macro cell environment for an average downlink of 1.34 gigabits per second while we hope to launch their first 5g pilot networks in 2018 and have complete interoperability by 2019 ahead of the generally accepted commercial launch window for 5g of 2020 these may not be the fastest 5g speeds you've ever heard reported But these are the first in closer to real-world conditions with multiple devices out outside of a laboratory essentially So is the multiple user MIMO a thing that is going to be used? Is it going to be for like to cluster together? Connections to deliver faster speeds to You know, I don't know Buildings or something like that or is that going to be the way each device works? Good question. I'm not sure what multi-user MIMO will be be used for. I'm not up on that But I do know that it means that you had a bunch of different devices hammering a cell tower Which is very similar to what happens in you know downtowns of cities So the fact that you can still get a Gigabit well one point one and a third gigabits wirelessly is pretty exciting to me. Oh so that was a test of Load it was multiple That's part of it. I mean basically this is this is them this is just another stepping stone along the road to developing 5g speeds and Do you not want gigabit wireless? Oh, no, of course I'm just wondering what they were testing exactly and you know one point four gigabits if that is actual real-world Performance, it's it's pretty exciting. This is closer to real-world performance I mean frankly for me anything above five megabits per second seems pretty exciting I have a super good connection at home now. Do you know how you get to pick out with wireless? With wireless I get about I would say 60 70 Megabits that's really good. Yeah Wi-Fi. I need oh, no, no, no, I'm talking about on your on your 14 on your 4g service 4g must be 20 30 megabits. Yeah, that's a little bit. That sounds about right I can do a test now and report in a minute California's governor signed the electronic communications privacy act Thursday It requires a warrant in order for state law enforcement or other agencies to acquire metadata or digital communications from businesses It also requires a warrant to track or search electronic devices five other states require warrants for content and nine require warrants for GPS location tracking Now this only applies to the state of California's agencies, of course But it is definitely a signpost in the United States as to you know The kind of laws that can be written by other states So I would expect to see at least this sort of comprehensive law be considered in other states whether or not it's passed and It's also interesting to note that It's not like no one wants people to use those You know to acquire the data. It's just saying you just need a warrant. Yeah, fine Just, you know, you'll get them just get a warrant and that is a look at the headlines about 15 15 megs Oh, sorry 15 megs down 3 megs up. It's not great 15 megs downs. Okay. That's probably close to what I get You could submit your stories and vote on them a daily tech news show that reddit.com Let us know what kinds of stories you'd like us to cover. We've got great suggestions from you guys Today, so keep it up daily tech news show dot reddit.com Okay, so Patrick and I one of the things we had seen was an interesting story by Barrett Nash co-founder of Rwanda based safe modos It's more of an opinion piece that he wrote up calling for entrepreneurs to move to Africa He wrote it up on tech crunch He says look if you look out the window and you see San Jose You'll solve problems for the people of San Jose if you look out the window and see Kigali You will see problems for the people of Kigali Really interesting so many interesting stories. We've talked about the the fiber project that Google is doing in Ghana We've talked about UTEL sat and Facebook partnering up to bring rural internet and satellite internet To Africa and so Patrick had the excellent idea of bringing Eric Olander on the show who covers this Patrick you have you have some really good points that you want to cover today Yeah, well, so I think that really we've been dancing around this topic for a while now for the past two or three years At least where we peripherally touch on Africa and the development of it and we're always saying, you know Leap-frogging allows them to be very efficient in in in wireless Equipment and they're all using smartphones, but we never really dive into it And we don't actually know what the situation is so I guess I have a few questions for you Eric and the first one What is the actual state of the the tech industry in Africa more specifically maybe about the cell Equipment do they all have I mean admittedly Africa is a very large place So I'm sure there are differences in different countries, but is everyone equipped now? Is is everyone using a cell phone? Are they using only cell phones? Can you paint us a picture in 35 seconds? So let's just kind of step back and kind of redefine Africa It's 54 countries spread across, you know, obviously an entire continent of almost a billion people, you know Speaking multiple languages multiple ethnicities. I mean, it's a very complex market So I think the more the less we kind of think of Africa as a single kind of space the better We're off so there are different pockets of it You're looking at about 15% overall internet penetration across the continent. It's rising quickly. This is definitely a mobile first Environment as our most emerging markets and frontier markets like those in South Asia South America and obviously in Africa They're making the switch. They're getting online first with feature phones Which is doing very kind of simple WAP types of messaging and when weapon environments But then now with the Chinese and this is why the Chinese are so important in Africa Because the Chinese handset makers have kind of figured out a formula to bring a smartphone at about the $50 to $60 price range And that's proving to be a magic price point for people and just vast numbers of people are now connecting to the internet for the first time Thanks to the arrival of these Android powered smartphones Now Google likes to make a big deal out of its Android one program which just launched in Africa trying to sell it Around that price point you're talking about But they're behind other handset makers here It's not just the Chinese ones Huawei and and Xiaomi are in this market Nokia actually is kind of on the way out, but it's still selling in this market. So Do any of these others Mozilla's one plus? Do they have a chance or have these have the Chinese handset makers Gotten in and gotten entrenched Well, it's the Chinese in the Korean Samsung is number one in Africa and Huawei is number two and Huawei is really gunning for Samsung to be number one But the same time I mean really you know Nexus one these are small bit players at the end of the day You know producing a 50 and 40 $50 smartphone It's not an easy thing to do and this is our smartphones that have very different product requirements Then you have in more advanced economies So Huawei builds a whole line of smartphones that are dust resistant that are much more lean on their power consumption and power Consumption is really a critical issue in Africa in part because of the inconsistency of power So people need their batteries to last a lot longer. They want to have apps that are much more efficient You know and so Huawei is building in solar panels in the back of Smartphones which is in fantastic so you can recharge automatically dust resistant water resistant much more durable People hold on to smartphones much longer than they would in other markets because of the cost so they're very specific requirements that Countries companies from developing countries oftentimes have a little bit more sensitivity and sophistication to build for and that's one of the advantages that Lenovo ZTE and Huawei Have an understanding for because they're building for the Chinese the Indian the Vietnamese and these kind of emerging markets And they have a lot more experience than the apples and and some of the Android phones that are coming out of the US Hey listening to all of those well requirements and technical descriptions. I'm sort of thinking The the the Googles and the Facebooks of the world seem like they're kind of Starting from place of well where they are with a Western Economy and the Western market and trying to adapt that to Africa and saying we're going to build cheap Android phones And we're going to do this and that when from what you're saying. I'm sort of thinking Isn't that you know, maybe the people actually on the ground there are looking at this and thinking This is cute right this is not what we need what we actually need is this that and is that is there any truth in that or No, there's not what people people, you know throughout Africa and just like here in Southeast Asia People want the same things that that everybody else wants which is connectivity. They want functionality. They want good value So there's really no different in terms of the eyes of the consumers to what they want how that's delivered Well that might vary a little bit because of the specific kind of you know Physical requirements that are that are kind of unique to to emerging markets But at the end of the day social networking mobile banking kind of communication Transportation these are the things that people really love about smartphones So there's really no difference there the key thing to think about for Google and for Facebook and it's very important You know just this past month Google was displaced here in Vietnam as the number one site and the number one search engine So it's been displaced by a local player so more and more there's competition in emerging markets and these that's why Facebook is doing this I mean we look at the headlines for Facebook and Google Why are they rolling out connectivity because they need this next billion consumers in order for their businesses to grow? Everybody who wants a Facebook account in France or the United States or Japan has one There is no more growth in the advanced markets The growth is going to be in these frontier markets And that's very very complicated because you got to get these people online And that's the first step which explains why Facebook and Google are doing these infrastructure deals I thought it was interesting you pointed out a story that in South Africa just in this past month There's been a mini explosion of video-on-demand services, which is something I don't think people associate with With a developing market when you're talking about something like that But I think that shows that there are different markets within Africa obviously, but it also shows that you know You're really getting some advanced connectivity there Well, you are and so this is really key because in the next year to actually three major Backbone trunks are going to be connected to the continent and they're starting to light up And so what we're starting to see there's these great maps of Africa would show the connectivity as these trunk lines come in You're going to start seeing just the lighting up a video and multimedia because right now the biggest problem that most African mobile you internet users have is connectivity So that's one of the things I see from my podcast traffic very very little traffic coming out of Africa Just because the download the the download kind of requirements of a 35 40 megabit Megabit podcast is still too much because they're paying for bandwidth on their mobile cards So but now that these these trunk lines are coming in into South Africa into Rwanda in East Africa And now we're seeing one into West Africa as well A lot of that traffic doesn't have to be routed by satellite or via Europe, which is what it used to have to do So video is just exploding and that's really very exciting So YouTube is going to be a big player this again This is where Twitter has to grow its audience and markets like this It's done a terrible job of doing it But the opportunity for video and monetizing video is going to be very big in Africa Let me ask you about China We often well, I guess we heard in the past few years On a regular basis the fact that China was very much involved in Africa and you've mentioned it here as well I Curious about the nature of their involvement basically are they just there to sell phones or are they also? Building plans to get the manufacturing going in Africa as well. Maybe Giving a boost to the economy there as they're the middle class in there You know in their own country in China is starting to be so widespread that may be manufactured They realize manufacturing is not going to be there forever Yeah, so that's a complicated question So on one hand in the tech space China as I said at the top of the show is playing an incredibly important role Huawei in particular in ZTE the two bigger play biggest players Lenovo as well But on the infrastructure side they're wiring up the continent much more so than any other foreign player They're building cellular data networks. They're putting in the networking gear. They're actually selling the devices They're both on the B2B and the B2C side And so those companies are making a huge contribution to connectivity and they're doing it for private sector reasons There is no political agenda here. There's no governmental agenda. They're seeing Africa as an emerging market They don't look at Africa in the same way that many do in Europe in the US, which is some kind of charity case I mean even the Facebook story was all routed through internet.org. It's some kind of nonprofit thing That's not what the Chinese do. They are looking at this as an opportunity to grow a market now in terms of the Manufacturing that you talked about that's happening, but it's happening in the low-tech space So for example, Huajin the third largest shoemaker in the world has new factories in Ethiopia High-sense, which is a white goods maker. They're now in South Africa cars are being assembled in South Africa But for the most part these are low-tech items The high-tech still isn't going to come to Africa for quite some time in part because the supply chains just aren't there And really when you look at what it takes to put a phone together It's an incredibly complicated supply chain and you need infrastructure and you need suppliers and you need sourcing and you Need you know reliable ports reliable electricity reliable roads none of that is really in place yet for tech manufacturing I think it's really interesting what you pointed out with that Facebook satellite story because If you read the press release and if you read some of the European and Middle Eastern coverage the story is Utel sat is going to provide satellite internet to Africa and Facebook's gonna provide is gonna hop along with them and provide their their internet.org service through that as well Every American tech blog was Facebook provides free internet by a satellite To Africa and I and I think that's a really important point is yes, Facebook is doing that They should do it that helps people especially in rural areas that maybe can't afford Data plans to kind of get on the internet and maybe build up a business where they can but that's not the entire story of Africa There are incredibly viable startup communities in Nigeria in Kenya in Irwanda All all over the continent as you point out, which is a vast continent Yeah, and there's a very exciting startup community obviously in Accra in Johannesburg Nairobi is really a great hub Kigali and Rwanda a lot of tech going on there in part because the bandwidth So if you want to see where the startup hubs are follow where the connectivity is and once you see the connectivity You'll start to see communities and then they're gonna build products Which are again unique to the local market the the best case and this is the showcase that everybody talks about is in Pesa Out of Nairobi, which is the money transfer, you know But at the same time localized search is coming up localized You know transportation apps are coming up and it's a very exciting space again my only kind of final point We should do what the Chinese do We don't the Chinese don't look at Africa as a basket case or a charity case And we have to look at Africa as really an amazing dynamic place Where there's a lot of interesting things going on and where there's money to be made in businesses to be opened Hey, I have one last question How much is iPhones is Apple selling in Africa? Is that a virtual? No, this is one of those kind of those dark spaces for for Apple because they the price point is simply too high and And it's just for the vast majority of consumers the elites sure There's a small number of elites that travel and then there's probably a gray market like there is here in Vietnam For the most part, this is an Android and still a kind of a feature phone market I know when I when I look over the list of where they're going on sale And by the way, iPhone's going on sale internationally in 40 different markets today Cairo, Johannesburg, that's usually what you see that's as far as Africa goes. Yeah, that's right And so but that may spread a little bit But you know at about a thousand dollars a phone eight hundred dollars a phone That's a pretty big chunk of money and so it'll be some time before we see a mass A massive kind of play for Apple in Africa It's an interesting question Patrick because it is sort of an index of where a market is right China now is a big market For the iPhone it didn't used to be India is starting to be although it's not a huge market yet and and and that's sort of Following that trajectory the the iPhone kind of goes where when things start to get economically Wealthy, I don't know what the right word is but when they keep your eye on these Chinese manufacturers because I've noticed just here in Vietnam Which is Vietnam is a very similar market to Africa in terms of per capita income the Chinese fan-sat Manus makers opal Xiaomi are coming in and a very big way at the top end of the market And they're really eating into Apple's market share here in these emerging markets So Apple's got a fight on its hands for these new markets and you know The App Store also creates second secondary problems that a lot of the Android apps are cheaper and free Whereas you know the the Apple apps have to pay for more and so people kind of take that into concern as well I wonder if at some point once those markets start to open up. We're not going to see the App Store change a little bit and more variable pricing or Maybe not let me just kind of be up front here is that everybody in my office, you know And I showed them my iPhone. They're like, you know, and I said, well, how do you you know, there's no Vietnamese ice, you know App Store here. They said you don't pay for apps. Do you and I said, well, yeah, what do you do? And they're like they laughed at me that I So they're hacking, you know, they're all of the apps here on the on the Apple platform are all free So that's a very part of the reality here. Thank you so much for sharing your insights with us This is not a topic. We're done with by any means Jenny and I were talking yesterday We have plans to to maybe do a special report on it or bring other guests on bring Eric back for sure So I really appreciate you talking with us, man. Hey, it's my pleasure always always fun All right, a couple things before we get out of here pick of the day comes from Clint who suggests How the internet really works is a great series of blog posts by Russ White That explains how the technology of the internet works including DNS routing peering standards bodies How it's all connected together how every company involved makes money while most packet pushers content is deep into technology That only network operators would care about this series is accessible for anyone wanting to understand more about how the internet really works So if you've been curious about interconnects and DNS and peering and all of that stuff Check out NTWRK. Guru will have a direct link to the blog post in our show notes And then it takes you over to the packet pushers blog posts He's got them all collected nicely on that one page Just just a nice little collection there. Thank you Clint for sending that along Send your picks to us folks feedback at daily tech news show calm You can find my picks at daily tech news show comm slash picks Now Patrick when you heard about Facebook testing Emojis in a in alternative to their like button what emoji would you have picked to represent your feelings? Angry Well it sounds like if I had said like it would have been underwhelming so I went with angry well rich in Chapel Hill, North Carolina Has an alternative suggestion. He says I'm listening into the discussion about what should we add to Facebook? And what's staring me back in the face is feels Facebook should just make a feels button Ah man my car broke down feels hey a new baby picture feels my grandma's cat died feels my kid graduated from pre-k feels We guys think I think you know it it could work. It could work. It's uh, it's also a little bit more Facebook's own thing I Really think that's a very good idea. Yeah works Something generic that means more than just like It's almost it's a neutral because because feels can be angry feels sometimes. Yeah, exactly feels is completely adaptive It's just it provokes feelings in me. It's emotion some kind of emotion. It's it's pretty good All right, we'll see what the Irish and the Spanish Turn out in their test because they're the only country's getting it so far Finally with regard yesterday's discussion of the Indonesian app clue Had several people here in the US say hey my city does this too Alan says we have something quite similar in Los Angeles called my la 311 Alison and I were talking about we need this in LA. Well, guess what? We already had it. We just didn't know it one can upload a geotagged photo with a choice of service requests including pothole Streetlight repair illegal dumping and so forth. I've used this app perhaps a half dozen times I found the city's response to be fairly prompt. I recommend it highly Tom Schmidt on twitter said look up c-click fix It's available for multiple cities. He lives in minneapolis and says that it is paid attention to in that city And then james from pleasantly cool and apparently tech forward milwaukee Pointed out that the city of milwaukee has their own app He said they have an app to report potholes other service issues I'm happy to say milwaukee is on top of this already and I have used it with positive results How often do you hear stories about government working? I've I've seen a couple of apps That work in france as well and they're actually private companies Being then licensed. Well, they're licensing the product to government, you know, mayoral offices and things like that So I think many of them might not be or some of them might not be actually initiated by the government So well, yeah, it sounds like c-click fix isn't but that the city pays attention to it And yeah, and the milwaukee and the la ones are actually official apps that the that the city government are supporting. So That's really interesting. Um anyone else outside the us or inside the us Who has examples of these? I thought it was interesting that indonesia was doing this and apparently it's a worldwide trend So we'd love to hear from you That is it for the show. Uh, we were we are going to look at lens art in just a moment But before we go, uh patrick bezia Where can folks find more of you besides next tuesday when you'll be back on the normal tuesdays? Well, they can find more of me on twitter at not patrick dot Not patrick. That's it. No dot com. Uh, that's my twitter handle It's also on facebook my twitter handle and you can find the show pixels on french spin dot com Where actually mr. Tom merit was officiating Last uh for the latest episode. We discussed, uh, video gaming news with tom and tim stevens And it was uh pretty international as well. It was fun. Yeah, tim was over in japan So that that helped spread it out a little bit as well Eric ulander, thank you so much again Tell folks a little more about the china africa project where they can find it and what they'll find Sure, we've got a facebook community of almost a quarter of a million people at facebook.com slash china africa project Great place to kind of talk about tech and politics and diplomacy and kind of get past the stereotypes and caricatures of both china and africa Also, we do a weekly podcast. Uh, just look over on itunes for china and africa and we'll come right on up Uh, and so we do that every week and then you can follow me on twitter at e olander E o l a n d e r with the top china africa story. It's almost every day Len peralta has been busy at work creating some art. What do you got for us? Len? Well, you know, you just speaking of feels Right, uh, I wanted to do something that you know, uh, since you're talking about broadband in in africa and in china Things like that in africa I thought the the person the people who are going to benefit the most Are going to be the children and uh, I you know, I kind of had this whole idea of you know These kids who are going to be using this incredible, uh, uh technology within the next probably a couple two or three years so you have a young man wearing the aqueous rift and uh Young woman you you know holding on to an ipad which is of course She's a big fan of dts and if you look over in the corner. It says Hello, mr. Tom. Hello, mr. Eric. Hello, mr. Beja We Heart dts. Can we be bosses too? Yes, of course Absolutely Hey, so, uh, yeah, actually what do you think Eric when I like it I was looking at the picture and I thought I read Hello, mr. Tom. Hello, mr. Eric. Hello, mrs. Beja No, no, no Yeah, and I love that they're uh that that you've got like the irc chat Uh kind of effect going on with the aqueous rift on it's it's really good, man I wanted to do something a little bit different here. Um speaking of bosses. I wanted to mention, um Well, you can get this print if you go to my online store at lend parol to store.com But I also want to let you know this week I started at my patreon which is patreon.com forward slash lend If you want to get a dts boss avatar, that's one where I customize by me drawing you For a uh as an avatar You if you back at the two dollar and 52 $2 50 50 cent level you can become you can get one of those you can get one of those So go to patreon.com forward slash lend find out how to do that Excellent, uh and of course lend parol to store.com to take a look at the drawing and even buy a print of it if you like it Which I like it so I think you might like it too Thank you to all our bosses, uh folks We couldn't do it without you everybody who supports the show whether it's on paypal Or in the store just buying stuff or or on patreon patreon.com slash ace detect You guys are the reason we're able to continue to do the show. So thank you very much Uh if you support us or don't or if you're like, yeah, I can't really support right now Leave us a review on whatever app you use whether it's itunes or overcast or or our pocket cast Downcast whatever let people know, uh, just you can just do the five star rating You don't have to write anything in there. You can write a review if we have concerns in the text Nobody reads that stuff anyway But do review the show because it does help other people to discover the show Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. You can give us a call 51259 daily That's 512593 2459. Listen to the show live Monday through Friday at 4 30 p.m. Eastern at alpha geek radio.com And visit our website dailytechnewshow.com speaking to tim stevens will be back on monday with him and veronica belmont talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frogpants.com Timon Club hopes you have enjoyed this program That was a great show you guys. Thanks so much. Thank you very much. It's always a pleasure anytime Absolutely, uh, likewise Eric, uh, and I super appreciate you being willing to get up so early and oh, I do this Listen, Tom, I think I'm gonna be coming through la in january and it'd be fun to just come Grab a cup of coffee and finally meet in person. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, if you do, uh, let me know for sure I'd love that. That'd be great. You know, so I'll let you know what my travel plans are. All right. Sounds good. Yeah I'm real close to lax too. So nice. So I don't have to go very far. Yeah, exactly Okay guys, I'll talk to you later back I feel like we'd have that guy on the show all the time if he wasn't at 2 30 in the morning, right? I know uh, and patrick, thank you for being willing to shift the day around To make it easier for Eric that it was totally worth it. I think that was great No problem. Yeah, I really like Eric. I think he's great and uh, I'm always happy to have him on the show. Well, yeah, thank you for introducing me to him in the first place Uh, it was I think a filious club connection that you had had, right? Yeah Think so. Yeah, he was uh, I I first met him when he was working in paris at france van kout van kout That's right. Um, yeah, and he he contacted me and got him into the show and yeah, so Yeah, when we first because you recommended him we had him on tech news today and he was still working in paris I think at the time Yeah, yeah So title wise what should we pick? Um Well, don't everyone talk at once last be last me in Uh is currently leading the pack Does that like let me in yeah, but with the horror movie? Yeah, let the right one in is the The official name of the original the last passing of last pass. Oh my gosh That one's actually that one's got some poetry to it. Yeah, the tesla fires what apple hires Who of course your own faithful who blocked so poetic. Yeah Uh bless the tech down in africa Uh That's pretty good that made lend laugh I bless the tech down we have last pout Um That's pretty elegant actually yeah, can you feels it? Can you feel last mean? Do we go with the africa headline or log me out? I've kind of between those two it for me log me out is my vote Yeah, all right. I love me out is pretty Although it's it's so negative Well, yeah, I mean we're not sure I am gonna vote for the bless the tech in africa even though it only has four That made me laugh Uh Yeah, because that's that's what the show is about man Go to take some time to build some Healthy discussion about log mean versus last pass It's a total loss Oh Hey, that's your head. There it is Oh, how about a friends related thing? Oh, no friend. There's nothing man Well, I I thought I thought we would have enough friends references to call the this one Uh, the one where they talk about africa I guess we didn't deliver on that but did did you talk about you talked about the friends reference thing in the show though, right? Yeah, I did The one where they talk about africa is really good I vote for that just on pure 90s Even though you made me so much older patrick by calling it an 80s show I know I said 90s. I said 90s. All right top of the show. You said 80s and I was like I'm going with the one where they talk about africa. That's good. Oh, yes I You know and and also like just so jeff back all our nose It's on the record that we're doing it because of friends. We're not trying to rip off the 404 Which also does this that's always done this for their headlines Hey, uh, has anybody played the uh battlefront beta yet? Yes Uh, it took me 24 hours to download it. So I only got to play it for a minute literally one minute So I'm going to do that tonight Um, yeah, there are only two maps there. It's kind of fun I when I first launched it for the first 10 minutes. I thought it was Incredibly fun and then after 20 minutes. I was like, yeah, it's fun So I'm sort of worried that after half an hour it would be like well It's the tattooing map and uh, is there is there multiplayer? Can you do multiplayer? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's basically your multiplayer There's just a tattooing in a jaku map They're all and they're both just like generic desert scenes. No, it's kashik. It's uh, you know, no one wants to go to kashik No, there's tattooing which is a small like one objective based map that yeah, I'll play a little bit of that right So the other one is the um, uh, what's the snow planet hoth Hoth. Yes. Thank you. So the hoth atat attack with Like it's the crazy battlefield type thing with tons of stuff happening all around and you're you have these crazy You know the the a wings and the x-wing flying around and the atat's in the background And the you know you you're going to see Darth Vader and and Luke Skywalker show up from time to time It's kind of nuts and that's and that's in multiplayer Yes, okay. I will check. I think you can do both. Yeah. Oh nice. I will do that Yeah, I get a text from my son at midnight or 12 30 dad. You gotta you gotta download the beta You gotta go. I have been all day. I haven't had a chance to play it. It's so cool It's so the server's just getting hammered. Is that why it took so long? I don't know I might have been my connection or something because he you know people were getting it quicker, but it's eight gigs I mean, that's a lot to download. Yeah. PSN is notorious for being slow Sometimes a quick tip it helps a lot if you pause it and restart it Okay. Yeah, yeah that probably probably sends you to another different batch of servers. Maybe yeah overnight I was worried because when I went to bed last night, it was only 36. I'm thinking oh, I want to wake up It's gonna be like 46, but it was close to 70 or 80. So I didn't have to wait too long this morning But um looking forward to playing it. It's gonna be cool I'm looking forward to clone wars after the trailer that came out this week. Oh, yeah, you know ton more of uh, Ahsoka tano and darth vader So a little bit of the old little bit. I've not seen that show. Um It's good. Yes. We're only uh, let's see the ninth We're only we're we're a little over two months from new star wars, man. I know Oh my god, that's crazy Oh, and do you remember we get it, uh, like three days in advance? I I don't know if you remember that I really hadn't remembered that until you read it in my favor. You guys get in on the 15th Uh, I can't remember. It's like three days to Oh, yeah Well, you can give us a review and you can say is Patrick's just gonna come on the show and tell us like all of the secrets I'm gonna no, I already just gonna cut. No, you should just come on go. It was okay I know one of the secrets Uh, I actually this is cool. I can't say much more than this, but no don't say any more than that No, no, no, no spoilers on the movie. But oh by the way Oh Yes, go ahead. So no, I just want to correct myself. I said clone wars earlier. I met the trailer for rebels Thank you. Love Robin for correction. Go ahead Len. Oh, I I am I actually I actually know someone who worked on Star Wars So it was and I know a little bit about what they did on the force awakens particularly. I explain. Yes. Yeah You know what? I know someone that knows someone who worked on uh, I do too I know ryan brushwood who knows greg grunberg. I bet jenny josephson knows tons of people who know people Funny grunny worked on star wars. He works on every jj abram's movie in some capacity. Yeah, really Funny grunny, huh? Is he in the new heroes? um, yeah I haven't been watching it, but I saw him in the trailer. Have you watched it jenny? Nope I I recorded it. I was set to watch it I I even started it. I was like, I do not need this again Anytime I go to watch it I lean around and I lean is like nope Yeah, is that one guy talked too much the um the indian doctor. He talks too much I mean, I just was like, you know what? I went through this experiment in the o's and I don't need to go through it again It was a moment of perfect clarity for me It had so much that's the thing everybody that talked about everybody I've talked to about it was like It had so much potential Yep, they squandered it some shows should not come back. They squanched it They squanched it now. They wanted to bring back friends. I'd be okay with that well, the The the second half of friends was really not great Uh, that's sort of like the second half of x files I guess I think they should have a friends reunion called enemies and it's about how they all be old and bitter and And all them bitter are they just all or no, no, no, it's the alternate timeline. That's the alternate timeline. Just like I made on a community Actually, it would be time for friends reunion. Oh, yeah Oh, yeah, the fact that it came back on streaming and everybody's taught you like you for instance or rewatching it like Yeah, I expect that groundwork is being laid in some conference room somewhere That would be awesome. They're gonna get 35 billion dollars per episode each one of them Yep Well, I mean a reunion the question is which one of them is gonna hold out and say I don't want to do it There's always one well If if that happens we can you know, well, actually none of them have has done anything for a while They'll take the money. It'll be the naked guy. You're completely wrong. I'm sorry. They've all done tons of stuff since then Yes, but in actually five years joey had an Emmy nominated show Yeah, it's called joey Oh for episodes, right, right, right and then uh Um, what's her name with the dark hair TV had Web therapy and also, um Uh, uh the comeback came back and also the comeback post friends helped like totally define mocking sitcom mockumentaries and then chandler while not having a show that totally took off has been making major network bank doing all like the odd couple doing, um The one before that was the one where he was like in in in widow therapy widower therapy um, and Jennifer Aniston has a lovely career in advertising But also like I mean, hey like let's let's credit where credit is due. Um, what's what was the uh, the the, um Cougars something to Cougar town Courtney Cougar town. Thank you Is probably doing the best of anyone with Cougar town So let's all get our facts in a row. You're gonna be on current geek. You better be up on the geeky current Okay, listen. I don't call all they've been doing. I mean, it's okay. They've been doing okay, but I don't think they would turn down All right, I gotta stop talking because otherwise I'll just keep talking and it's gonna get No, I think he's asking a fair question. Jenny is like is what they're doing successful enough for them to turn down a reunion To be like, you know what? I don't need that I think they would do it to all get back together and hang out But there's always the go back to my question There's always the one who's like, uh, I just don't want to go back to that I don't there's always one in every one of those reunions who's like, no Listen, Tom. It's just for one episode. Like it's a it's a Christmas special We're not asking you to commit to to well. Yeah, there you go 2016 I think they would only want I'll tell you what I'll tell you how I think they would do it They would only do it if word never leaked out that they were doing it And then that would be that they just dropped it on Thanksgiving Um, that would be awesome We I ate dinner below one of the apartments from friends when I was out in new york at this time last year They used they used the building as the exterior Then you danced in the fountain Did you get an autograph from the building and then I went to central park Uh, no, I just kept trying to look up and go. Well, you can't really get the angle they did You can't really see the ugly naked guy Although he passed in season five No, somebody somebody found them That was all they had to move them down the the stairs Wasn't that remember that ever said where the ugly naked guy died? They had to move them down the stairs and it was like an hour long episode No, what maybe that should be the reunion No, it was They got to move them down No, there was an episode in in which, uh, uh Bros tried to move uh couch up his stairwell Though in a v naked guy's we're gonna get a 10 speed of brown shoe reunion Oh, oh that'd be who was uh, it was uh, that's jeff goldblum and That other guy No, you know, I want I'd love to see them reboot uh, uh, Cold check the night I wanted to say ben verine and then I had the panic moment where I'm like I'm gonna be wrong And it's gonna and it's gonna be insulting, but it's ben verine. It was ben verine. Yeah, really, uh, all right tom In an hour and a half Right Yes, uh, I'm just finishing up the post right now and then yes in A mere 90 minutes patrick and iable Rejoin each other for current geek with scott johnson and garret weinserl So join us again On most of these frog pants networks, and I've got to figure out what i'm doing for dinner. Who knows? Uh eating could be a good eating would be good Yeah, all right French and they're cuisine And Go to you in 19 minutes. See you. All right. I'm gonna take off too. All right. Have a good dinner. Whatever you decide on Uh, yeah, I think it'll be food whatever it will be. So good. It's good choice. Yeah Yeah, I like it my son my three-year-old son Uh, uh likes to eat socks. So maybe I'll buy him some socks Okay, yeah gummy socks. What's wrong with that kid? Anyway, anyway, all right. All right. We'll see you. Bye everybody