 I wanted to start the show, and usually by the time I start the show, I've already started the video. Hi, video people! What's up? How you been? Nothing to see here. We're just getting ready to start the show, right, Patrick? Absolutely. Nothing special happened before this. Nope. If you're a person who gets the audio of the pre-show and RSS, then just don't tell anyone. Let's just have it. All right, here we go. I can't believe this. Daily Tech News Show is powered by its audience, not outside organizations. To find out more, head to DailyTechNewsShow.com. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, September 27th, 2016. I'm Tom Merritt. Joining me today, Patrick Beja, in the house. Thank you, sir, again for joining us for the hangout, the quarterly hangout this morning. Oh, that's absolutely my pleasure, Tom. You know, we did talk about a lot of the world's problems as they relate to this show. We didn't solve all of them, but I'm sure we're on our way. Yes, absolutely. Like the time before. You got an expectation of me? I don't know why you would have that. Big thanks to all of the folks who are participating, either by watching or in our Slack or commenting on the Patreon post. We love getting all these different ideas. There's even a movement for people to kind of collect them all together. You guys are the best. Now, we are going to be talking about modular smartphones because Patrick was right. That is the entire basis for this discussion topic, which we'll get more into in a minute. Yeah, no, I have to admit, I differed with you on this, and it looks like you're more right than I would have liked to admit. But again, modular smartphones. Are they dead? That's coming up. A couple other things out there. DJI announced a foldable drone. That's the new hotness with foldable drones. Unique is doing it. GoPro is doing it. Now DJI is doing it. The Mavic Pro will sell for $999 or for the first time, you'll be able to control a DJI drone with only your smartphone. So if you don't need the remote, you can get it for $799. Amazon announced the Echo will go on sale in the UK, September 28th. And the information says that Facebook is about to launch its enterprise product for the workplace in the next few weeks. Now, here are some more top stories. Google announced a number of new products in India Tuesday all around saving data for people on slow or intermittent or capped data connections. The YouTube Go app allows offline viewing along with options to control quality and download time. Downloads will now pause if connectivity is lost. They won't fail out. They'll just pick up next time you get a connection. You can share videos over Bluetooth as well if you're nearby someone and you don't want to use your data for that. And there is no launch date yet for YouTube Go. The new Chrome for Android update will let users download webpages and some video and music for offline viewing. Google says Chrome's data saver feature is being improved as well. It'll save even more data. And they say it already saves 337 terabytes of data every week in India. Google also announced that Allo and Google Assistant are getting their second language. They started with English. The second language will be Hindi by the end of the year. And Google is expanding its free Wi-Fi and train stations, well, beyond train stations. Google Station is what it will still be called, but it will expand to 100 locations beyond just public transport buildings in partnership with private companies, things like cafes, malls. Some of these will be monetized. Some of them will be monetized with ads, but still be free. But they're saying some will have access fees. Now, Patrick, Google made a point of saying that India is growing very fast. It may soon surpass China as a market, as the Chinese market is maturing. And they are taking a different approach from Facebook. I think that's the most interesting part of this. While Facebook is out there trying to do their Facebook zero rating, which failed. It was rejected by the Indian market. Google was just taking a more neutral approach, saying we just want to save you data across the board. And I think this is, I mean, clearly it is a less controversial way of going about it. What I can't stop but thinking about is something, you know, this is a great way for Google to be training for when Africa becomes a major market as well. I think it's very interesting for India. And as you said, it's on pace to become a bigger market than China. But what that tells me is the next step of Africa is in their sites. It might be five, ten years down the line, but this is a great training ground. This is something I probably don't know enough to even form the question correctly. There are significant obvious differences between the Chinese market and the Indian market in that the governments take very different approaches to the economies there. Africa is a continent. It's not a country. So you're dealing with multiple different approaches. So, you know, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, they all have their own approaches to the economies and they vary. And this is why I say I don't know if I know enough to phrase the question. I'm sure there are things you could learn from the Chinese market that you could carry over to India, but Google, very famously, not in the Chinese market. How much, I wonder, will they be able to carry over from the Indian market to the various African markets? Well, I mean, clearly we're not the best people to talk about this, so I wouldn't want to speak with any sort of certainty, but I think India also has such a wide, you know, it's obviously a very big place, and it has very different levels of infrastructure. You know, you do have the big cities that are a lot better connected than some of the very remote places. My aunt happens to be working with a nonprofit to help schools in some very remote places in the Himalayas, and they just only got electricity, you know, a couple of years ago or five years ago. So I think that kind of, definitely not the exact same places or exact same setups, but the kind of challenges that they're going to be faced with to connect everyone, I think will give them clues and, as I was saying, training to how to approach them in the very different places they'll see in Africa probably in the next few years. Yeah, no, I hadn't even thought about that. That's a great insight. India also, even though it is one country, not monolithic from state to state. Twitter has decided not to comply with an order from a court in Turkey to block an account from instigating terrorism, that's in quotes. The account belongs to Washington, D.C. based Turkish journalist Bahir Zelenov. Twitter notified Zelenov of the request and noting the company may file a petition of objection. So the jury is out a little bit. Zelenov is actually saying he believes Twitter might still block him. And at the same time, Twitter in public is not saying anything in their private communication to the journalist saying we might object, but that doesn't mean they will. What do you think of this, Patrick? You know, I thought this story was really interesting because for all the discussions we've had about Twitter and other social networks, I think it's important to remember sometimes that yes, Twitter is a company supposed to make profit, but maybe as a branding stance, they have been defending that idea of freedom of speech and expression in fighting. It's one of the, from my, you know, what I can see, one of the only companies that has been fighting against such decisions and such orders, as far as, I don't know exactly when, maybe five years ago or six years ago, when it wasn't a big issue of, you know, fighting the government to protect users' privacy. And I just thought it would be interesting or important to mention it because Twitter is used in that way in different markets and they could very easily have said, well, we'll just comply and they are actively refusing to comply with a court decision, which is somewhat unusual in the policies of those companies. It's one thing for companies to say, you know, for instance, in Apple's case, with the FBI decryption of the iPhone 5C, they weren't going against a court order. They were saying we don't think that the court order is appropriate. They were appealing the order, right? It may sound like a fine line, but that is different than saying, no, we just don't believe that we will follow the court order. Usually it's, you can't come to us for things unless you have a court order. So I do think that Twitter gets a lot of good press for doing this. I do think that they probably hold a stronger line than others. They certainly aren't the first and only in Turkey to run up against this. Facebook has been suspended in Turkey for various reasons. YouTube has been suspended in Turkey for various reasons. So there is friction, particularly in that country, with the patterns of behavior of online companies, but not to take away from your point. I do think Twitter often is seen rightly as holding the line for freedom of speech farther up, sometimes to its detriment, though. Sometimes to the accusations of coddling abusive behavior. Yeah. I mean, this is always the other side of the coin. And I think it's important to remember, again, when we've had issues similar to these in European countries and in France even where Twitter has been accused of not doing enough to silence voices that were clearly, you know, I don't want to say criminal but objectionable for sure. But the issue is you can't really have it both ways. You can't, or I guess you can, but it's a very fine argument. It's a hard balance. You can't just say Twitter is horrible because they're not doing this. And then, you know, if they were doing it in one instance, they should, I'm sure, I guess what I'm trying to say, I'm sure the people who were admonishing Twitter for not acting in France would be commending them for not acting in Turkey right now. So, yeah. Yeah. Germany's Hamburg Data Protection Agency has ruled that WhatsApp sharing user data with Facebook constitutes an infringement of the National Data Protection Law. Facebook has been ordered to stop the practice and delete all data previously transferred from WhatsApp. Sharing was announced back in August. Remember, we talked about it, allowing some user data, including phone numbers, to be shared with Facebook in order to deliver more targeted ads, better friend suggestions, combat spam and fraud. Facebook said it will work with the Hamburg DPA to resolve the issue. So it sounds like they want to talk them out of it, essentially, or at least be able to share some data. This is a big deal, though, because as we talked about at the time, WhatsApp has built its reputation, and John Kuhn, its CEO, has built up the reputation of WhatsApp as the secure place to chat. We will not hand over your data to people. Now, he has also argued that this is data that is already shared, and all we're doing is saying, okay, if you're willing to share it across WhatsApp, then let's also share it with Facebook. But what the Data Protection Agency ruled was you didn't properly ask people for that. Yeah, they did have a little screen requiring you to acknowledge that this was what was happening, maybe not in so many words. So it's interesting that the court found that they didn't ask properly. I guess the bigger issue is that you can't really say no. The only thing you can do is stop using it or never agree to it. Well, no, you didn't have a chance to opt out, but it was... Right, I mean in the current way it's set up. Yeah, and it was very difficult to see and it was opt out. And I think that's the other thing Amber DPA is saying, is you should ask people if they would like to do this, not just opt them all in and then say, oh, if you don't want to, here's this thing you have to go to and do in the terms of service and it's buried. Yeah, I think, yeah. I mean, it seems to me like it's a little bit unreasonable, but it's Germany and we see... Once again, it had gone away a little bit, but the Germany we know and love, that is very, very protective of its user's private information. Yeah, and honestly, I felt the way they did it, skated the line. I didn't think across the line, but it really rode the line and if you're very privacy sensitive as Germany is, it's not surprising to me that they would rule it across the line. Yeah, I think for me, the way to address this is to stop using it, go to a competitor. And I know it's easier to say than to actually do because of all of your friends are here. Yeah, totally. Is it my turn? Yes. Okay, the Philadelphia 676ers? Is that... Yeah, because of the spirit of 1776 when we declared our independence from the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Excellent. Well, I learned something today. So the Philadelphia 76ers purchased pro-esports competitor Dignitas and League of Legends team Apex. Dignitas has a roster of roughly two dozen gamers competing in Counter-Strike, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm and Smite. As part of the deal, Apex will merge into Dignitas. In related news, team Liquid has sold a controlling interest to Peter Goober and Ted Leonsis, I guess that's how you read that, and former Esports ownership group Axiomatic. Leonsis is the majority owner of the Washington Capitals NHL team, the Washington Wizards NBA team, and the Washington Mystics WNBA team, I guess he likes Washington. There's also Magic Johnson is involved in this somewhere, and there's a number of people you'll know the names of if you know sports, which I don't. Well, but it's interesting because you've got two different things going on here. One is the consolidation of a team, and the other in both cases is professional sports investors getting in on Esports saying, yep, this is what we do. We invest in teams that we think will bring us a good return, and these teams are looking like something that will bring us a good return. Well, yeah, I guess in both cases it's traditional sports looking, seeing an opportunity in Esports, which is I think really interesting because it was just a year ago, was it that we were hearing some other sports person on ESPN commentator saying, you know, the day I see Esports on ESPN is the day I stop working here or something very inflammatory. And at that point, it didn't seem incredibly outrageous to say, well, it was offensive to people who enjoy Esports and video games, but it seemed like it reflected the mood of the sports world, what we like to call the sports sports as opposed to Esports world towards Esports. And now, only a year later, maybe that even helped, you know, opening people's eyes to the opportunity. Yeah, right. All press is good press, so they say. Yeah, I guess. And so it seems like everything is falling into place for Esports to become a little bit more, you know, present in the minds of sports people. And I guess what they're seeing is younger audiences, the opportunity to bring them in, and a potential for obviously a big growth in the next few years. Elon Musk announced plans to send a ship to Mars, part of the plan involves launching the ship to orbit, separating the booster rocket, which would then return to Earth, which they have successfully tested, be refilled on the same launch pad, and then launch right back up to refuel the ship for its trip to Mars. And of course, that burn would get it out of Earth orbit. It would then use solar energy on the flight to Mars and need the rest of the fuel for its landing. Musk says flights are hoped to begin in 2023. Oh, Elon Musk, can't you not bring us the dreams of science fiction every single month? You know, what I'm thinking when I'm hearing this is what happens if the launcher, when it's coming back to Earth, doesn't make it back to orbit to refuel the module that stayed up there. Well, yes, but that is something that they have been developing. So several of these rockets didn't make it back, but they have now twice been able to do it so that they did make it back. Yeah, you're going to have to make that work, but that is something they've demonstrated will work. Of course. I think the larger question is, you're going to have 100 people on this ship, and are you able to make a habitat for them on Mars? Those are the challenges he was addressing in his talk, it's no small task, but Elon Musk thinks that it's important that we do it. I mean, long term he's saying, yeah, we need to have multiple habitats, but it's also just for doing it, for being able to say, we need to take these steps as a species. Imagine 2023, it's really soon. I can't imagine that would be possible, but also if you're on your way to Mars in 2023, it is, I was joking about science fiction, but it kind of is. And also about the habitat on Mars, maybe they're just telling you they can get you there. No, he addressed that. He said it's important. He's like, there are people who would do a one-way trip, but it's important to know you have the option to come back, even if nobody takes that option. And he pointed out like the majority of people who moved from Europe to North America in the age of exploration did not go back. But they had the option and that makes all the difference psychologically getting people prepared for something like that. Can't wait for 2023. Yeah, we'll see. And finally, the Recording Industry Association of America, RIAA, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the IFPI, have a problem with acronyms, and the British Phonographic Industry, the BPI, filed a lawsuit against YouTube-MP3.org, the first attempt by the music industry to prosecute stream-ripping services. The suit, filed in California Federal Court, alleged that YouTube-MP3 accounts for upwards of 40% of all unlawful stream-ripping that takes place in the world. The complaint seeks a judgment for statutory damages and to prevent web hosts, domain name registrars, and other third parties from facilitating access to the site. Yeah, the big deal here is that they are claiming all of the copyright violations, inducement, facilitation, anything you can think of that can be illegal with copyright, they're saying they are marketing themselves as a way to violate copyright. And you know, I understand they have a case. I understand this is, I'm guessing, a problem. It wasn't really on my radar, but maybe, you know, it is a problem. It still, even with all of the goodwill in the world, it feels like the music industry is whining. And this is the result of, I think, what has been, in the eyes of some, demonstratively proven to be whining for years. Is it whining? I mean, we can have a long conversation, and I have before, about what the copyright laws should be. But at the moment, this violates the copyright laws. I agree. This is not, I mean, here's the thing. It's not YouTube, first of all, if you've misheard. It's YouTube-MP3. This is a site that is pitching itself as a way to rip audio. And here's where I think they may have a case, which is the inducement saying they're using copyrighted music in the demonstration video that shows you how it works. And to me, that's not being very clever. That's not being very smart. It's one thing, and I firmly believe that this technology should not be illegal. It should not be illegal for someone to offer the ability to rip a stream into a file or an MP3 or anything on your hard drive. But what is, in fact, illegal, without question, is telling people how to break copyright. Okay, so let me clarify what I was saying. They absolutely have a case. I believe they actually should protect their intellectual property by doing this. It is, you know, even if it, I suspect it doesn't really affect their bottom line that much because nowadays music is available, readily available everywhere. And I can't imagine someone going through the trouble of actually doing this and, you know, just launch Spotify. It's not that big a deal. So I absolutely believe that even with this, they should be going after them because just to protect their IP. And still it feels to me like they're whining, you know? I think that speaks more to the image of the music industry that they have crafted for themselves over the last 15, 20 years than to the validity, the actual validity of this specific case. Well, and I think part of the problem here is that the recording industry and music and many musicians see this as an attack on them. Whereas a lot of people familiar with technology look at it like you are and say, this is not damaging you. This is not removing money. You can say they're removing money from your wallet, but it's not removing a significant amount of money. The people who do this are few. And of those people, even fewer would pay for music instead if they couldn't do this. So you're really not making anything more than a statement here. I guess. Yeah. Well, thanks to all those who participate in our subreddit. You can submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. That is a look at the top stories. Earlier this month, Reuters reported the Google backed off project Aura. If you're not familiar, Aura was the modular phone project. Not dead, but it is abrupt. Google I.O. in autumn had a ship date for a developer edition of Project Aura, and now they've backed off. However, the company may still work with partners to bring the technology to market. So they're abandoning the in-house development of it, but that's a huge blow to it. I know, Patrick, that you predicted modular phones would not work since the concept of phone blocks, which sort of was borrowed and some of the phone blocks people were involved in Project Aura. Why is it that you never caught onto this idea of like, hey, I don't want to have to replace my phone every two years. I just want to swap out the speakers or the screen. So I don't want to, you know, it's not me saying, yeah, I was right. It's more me remembering myself from a couple of years ago when phone blocks was making the rounds with their concept video of me thinking this is ridiculous. It will never work. And it should have been, it's not like, you know, I had some kind of insight. I think it should have been obvious to everyone. And the reason for it. I mean, it actually does work technically. What do you mean by it'll never work? I think if you've looked at the computer industry, the tech industry for, since its creation, we have gone towards more compactification of all of the stuff. Yeah, for sure. You know, it's not just about the smaller stuff. It's about larger phone screens. Yeah, but they wanted sliver, right? Yeah, in the sense that they wanted easy to manage. And I think even a lot of people who, I mean, let me be clear, some people would love to have some phone blocks or project, our version of this, you know, for themselves. And I'm sure they would get great use out of it. And it would be perfect for them. What I'm thinking about is an actual wide scale application for it. I think from the usage standpoint, people don't want to have to deal with all of this crap. They want to have a thing that works. And it's exemplified in many different areas. You know, one of the obvious ones is the phones where as happens very often when, you know, we see we started seeing phones without an SD card slot. A lot of people mentioned, you know, this is reducing the amounts of options and blah, blah, blah. And yet today I understand there are many that do have an SD card slot and that they get great use out of it, but many don't. And people are very happy with them. But a little bit farther, look at the computers. Most computers sold today are very difficulty upgradable or changeable laptops. And people are very happy with those. But even besides, you know, aside from all of this, from a technology standpoint, I think it's pretty clear that, you know, things, parts evolve at a different, I don't even want to say pace, but when one thing evolves, when you have a motherboard that evolves, or let's say get a different way, when you have RAM that evolves, you need a different tip set and you need a different motherboard. If you have a camera, it probably is going to have a different interface with a new type of motherboard that is going to, and Google had some really interesting technological solutions to many of those problems, but even them, in the latest iteration of Project Aura, they had a base skeleton, which was basically the entire phone. Right, they were starting to admit what you're saying, which is, well, you can't really replace all of this stuff, the motherboard and the RAM, et cetera. Well, RAM you can replace, but a lot of the chips are essential to the working of the phone, and if you replace them, you have to replace everything else. And even the RAM, maybe there are ways of making it work, but anyone who's ever built a computer. You can always swap RAM out, right? You can upgrade it in that, but there are revolutions of RAM that no longer work with that motherboard. You have to have a new motherboard to support them. Exactly, because the idea of the Project Aura, or phone blocks initially, was, well, I'm going to have this one phone, and it's going to be great because I'm never going to change the entire thing, I'm just going to make it evolve over time. It just, you know, it just doesn't work like this. So, I guess... It's so tantalizing, though, because it could, and I think Tinvec summed it up. He's like, not Patrick has a point. As modular as PCs are, we don't have a simple modular design for them at all. And it's because of that backbone fact of, yeah, I can change my video card, I can change my sound card, I can change my monitor, I can change my power supply. I can change all that stuff in a PC, but at a certain point, I have to change the motherboard and maybe sometimes that case that I have just doesn't fit very well anymore or there's new input designs that don't work with that case, and so I'm going to have to replace the case, and it's not really modular, which is why we never got to a blocks concept with PCs, I guess. Yeah, I mean, there are some manufacturers that are trying this. I know Microsoft is rumored to have a modular version of a PC in the works and to be announced in a few weeks, but even that, you know, it's not just the motherboard, it's like technology evolves and you can't just amp up the clock on your thing to make it work with the next CPU. Sometimes you let a couple of years go by or maybe it's three years and if you want to buy the latest CPU, then it's not going to work on your old motherboard. You know, so it's, I guess what frustrates me a little bit in this story and in other stories like it is that some people look at the rough idea, you know, the seducing fantasy and think that that's all they need for it to be a cool, viable project. And I think that's what happened with phone blocks and that's why it irritated me so much because it was very clear to anyone who was looking at this with a little bit of experience that that's not how the thing works. Now, if they had come out and said, this is how we're going to solve these issues, maybe I would have believed it, but... Well, and they did to some extent, but not to your satisfaction. I looked at it and thought, they didn't. You know what? Yes, there are challenges there, but I've seen things that looked less likely to succeed that have succeeded. So I still think that it's possible somebody could overcome these challenges. I think another challenge is looks. One of the reasons people buy phones is because of the way they look. And if you have a modular design, then you don't control that look. That look is a function of the modularity of it. And so that's another challenge to get over. But I don't... Well, I won't go so far as to say these are insurmountable challenges. I think they're very difficult and they may not be worth surmounting. I think that's the big issue. I think it's easier in the end. You know what that makes me think of? The Google days of the PowerPC that Apple was trying to shovel down our throats towards the end of the PowerPC life. I remember having a conversation with my cousin who was a big Apple fan at the time and who was telling me that dual CPUs and quad CPU designs were going to invade the PC market because it's just so much more efficient to have two or three CPUs. And I kept trying to tell him, not really. If you have one CPU that does as well or a little bit less than those two or three, why bother? And the why bother factor is huge in this case. So I think you asked in the notes if the modular electronics ever be viable, I think ultimately for most people the answer is not really because in the same spirit as those dual CPU machines that went away very quickly once Apple switched to Intel, if your option is to have a device that you can swap two or three parts that will do the things you want to do at 100% efficiency, then most of the time people would rather have the same device with everything included even if that means the efficiency will be 80% for all of those things. If they care about it enough they'll take it in the easy package. And I think that is the biggest impediment to modular electronics ultimately. Well, let us know what you think folks. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. We did get some messages from folks about Veronica's question yesterday about people putting kids in their Uber and Lyft. There was one e-mailer, actually a couple of e-mailers reminded us of a service particularly meant for parents. We've talked about it on the show before that will allow you to get vetted background checked people to take your kids to and from school. Kimberly the Texas teacher wrote in and noted that the procedure at her school is for parents to get a card and grade that card can be given to an authorized person to pick up the child but if you don't have the card you have to show your driver's license and be on an approved pickup list. And Sakane who writes our driver's column a ride sharing column at DailyTechNewShow.com says that both companies actually prohibited anyone under 18 from having an account or taking a ride without the account holder present. This rule is not enforced though since practically no one is aware of it and neither company has done anything from creating accounts. Refusing to pick up a kid from school quite frankly is a bigger hassle than it should be and I'm tired of trying to explain the rules to screaming parents over the phone. Every other driver does it, why do I have to be difficult? You know this is, I never thought of it until I listened to yesterday's show but this is a huge headache and actual problem waiting to happen. I think it's gonna be, you know talk about predictions in, you know within a year there's gonna be an issue with a teenager that is, you know gonna get into some trouble and then, you know Uber and Lyft and all of them are gonna have to address it and at the very least allow for the creation of sub-accounts for parents who want to get their children picked up on Uber. So it's sort of mind-blowing that they're, you know, people under 18 aren't even allowed to create an account. I don't, it boggles my mind. And finally, several people wrote in about vertical takeoff and landing, VTOL. Jonathan, who's been a big fan since the Buzz Out Loud days and is a Patreon supporter, thank you Jonathan, says I'm a helicopter pilot in the Bay Area and want to comment on the Uber VTOL story. Veronica was right, there are frequent helicopter flights over the city but currently there's a city ordinance that prevents any helicopter landings within the city and county of San Francisco. That includes emergency responders, police and air ambulances like CalSTAR and Life Flight. In fact, when they were designing the new hospital by the ballpark, they wanted a heliport to be able to bring injured children in for treatment. The local citizens mobilized and prevented a heliport from being part of the development. The reason I mention all this is that to make their vision a reality, Uber would not only have to surmount the difficulties with the extreme cost of VTOL passenger aircraft, but also and nearly impossibly in my opinion, says Jonathan, the extreme not-in-my-backyard attitude that Bay Area residents have towards helicopters and by extension VTOL aircraft. Uber might have better luck elsewhere but in my experience this attitude pervades the United States in general. Maybe they could do it overseas. When I was flying in New Zealand you could pretty much land anywhere without too much trouble getting permission. I could go on and on with examples of how the helicopter industry is unwelcome as it is a passionate area for me but you get the idea. So Roger, you had some thoughts not only on this email but also on VTOL in general. Yeah, I mean, he brings up a lot of good points. I will bring up the fact that New Zealand is a very lowly densified country. I mean, it's four and a half million people in the country the size of Great Britain. But as to VTOL being something commercially viable, I mean, he brings up the first one, NIMBY, noise. Noise has always been an issue with helicopters. Now even if they went with another technology, like a tilt roger or perhaps some sort of auto gyro hybrid, I mean, you're dealing with noise and that's one thing people will not accept especially if they live in a very expensive part of town and they believe that they've paid for a right to some reasonable amount of peace and quiet. Two is safety. I mean, even just one of them, there's a reason why there's kind of a, I think, Jonathan can attest this. There's a minimum flight altitude that helicopters have over large populated areas and that's just because if there's something goes wrong and you need to get out of harm's way and avoid kind of a densely populated part of the city, when you're higher up you get more distance to move off to the side. But if just one of those on say like a heavily trafficked route saying they picked the tallest building in the city as a heliport, just one of those could give a very negative reaction by the population or by the populace like, hey, these things are dangerous. It can fall on you at any time and of course it goes back to the NIMBY thing about people not wanting that. I don't want helicopters falling on their heads. Yes. And finally, this is the most important. It's just cost. It's really expensive. Helicopters per flight are cost more to run than an airplane. Right? Because it's not just because they use more fuel but you have dynamic parts that need extra maintenance. Although Vutal is not a helicopter. It's a fixed wing aircraft. Well, no, there will be dynamic parts. For example, like take a tilt rotor tilt rotor aircraft. That's essentially a fixed wing plane with its engines that can rotate up to perform like a helicopter to do the vertical takeoff and landing. Those parts require a lot of time more so than just having a straight plane like Cessna because there's added technology. It compounds the cost. I'm not saying that it's not achievable but it eats into your margins and if they're going to be doing this, it's going to be a very thin margin. So these are the challenges that they have to overcome. Cost is always one that can be overcome somehow. It may not be easy but maybe there's research for that. Safety is one that I feel like people think is harder than it is because you're talking about safety margins but I feel like that's one that they could probably bring to acceptable levels. I live right near Santa Monica airport and people want to get rid of it because they're worried about safety but to be frank we rarely have had any air crashes because of the high level of safety that is enforced there. So I feel like that's one that could possibly be done. Noise is the one I'm curious about. Making a low noise aircraft seems difficult and getting anyone to agree even if it's low noise to let it into their neighborhood seems almost impossible. Helicopters are loud when they're up 10,000 feet up in the air. They're really loud when they're closer. These aren't helicopters so I don't know if the noise is worse or better. This is the thing. All VTOL aircraft whether it's going to be a helicopter whether it's some hybrid whether it's a tilt road or tilt wing, whatever they're going to generate noise. Now if you're going to put maybe the size of a minibus a passenger cargo say like 30, 25 people that's going to be bigger engines bigger rotors, bigger somethings it's going to be a lot more noise. And so unless they decide to go with hot air balloons or bring back zeppelins like lighter than air aircraft which is something that people have been talking about you're going to have a noise issue you're going to have a noise abatement issue. It's a problem with airplanes. The 787 has a new generation or next generation high bypass ratio turbo jet fan engines they're supposed to reduce the noise but you still can't put They're still noisy though. Yeah, they're still noisy and you still don't want to put a housing development at the end of the runway. Now some places do but those houses are super cheap for a reason. Well, thank you Roger. I can tell you're a fan of following VTOL aircraft. Yes. It's awesome. They're really cool but they also bring their own challenges with them. And thank you Patrick Beja as always. Where can people find more of you? Well, they can go to Frenchspin.com and listen for example to Pixels. The latest episode was recorded with Tom Merritt and we discussed the PlayStation Pro and basically everything you need to know to understand why Sony did this and I think I'm not quite sure yet but I think we tried to explore all of the possible reasons for that and we talked about Tokyo Game Show and a number of other things. If you enjoy video games you want a one-stop shop news podcast for video games you can go to Frenchspin.com and download Pixels. Hey folks, if you like this show and you want to keep it going there's lots of ways to support it and you can find them all at DailyTechNewsShow.com. We're going to be having some new pieces of content to keep our patrons happy you can find out the list of them and become a Patreon if you aren't already at patreon.com. Our email address is feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com We're live Monday through Friday 4.30 p.m. Eastern AlphaGeekRadio.com and DiamondClub.tv and our website is DailyTechNewsShow.com Tomorrow, Paul Spain joins us to catch us up on Microsoft Ignite and Scott Johnson is my co-host. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Broadpants Network. Get more at frogpants.com DiamondClub hopes you have enjoyed this program. Pachoon! Good show. Thanks guys. Thank you, Patrick. I know you got to get going. So take care. Hope all goes well. Thank you very much. All right. Bye. Good show. What are we going to call it, Roger? All right. We'll call it a show but let's look for a title. It looks like deja vu all over again. The what's amplification of privacy? No, amplification. Not amplification. What's amplification? Got it. Okay. Comcast wants to ruin sports too. I thought they already did that with their local sports highlights. Elon Musk says just do it. Google aren't... Oh, are not doing modular phones. Wow. I don't know if I love it or hate it. I see you. Maybe a little both. Really? I like it. It's a very interesting subject. I mean, my main argument is... No, I just mean the aren't part of it. Africa's a continent. That's good. But I don't know if people might get it in the context. Elon Musk must be crazy. Yeah. Get your attitude. Also, isn't he South African? God's most crazy. Yes. He's South African. Well, he's half South African, half Canadian. His mother's Canadian. He's bringing back Zeplins. Ripped me off a lawsuit. Esports gets a sporting chance. 76ers is that a thing. Germany puts a stop to what's happening at Facebook. Musk spells opportunity on Mars. Musk wants to help Mark Watney colonize Mars. Elon Musk be crazy is pretty good actually. I like that one. You like that one too? Yes. I vote for it. I like the double on thunder. He still hasn't come out with his own cologne. Elon's Musk. I know it's gross. It's totally gross. Elon Musk be crazy is the name. Hooray. So there you go. We got the show in. You did. You did. And it's levelating away. How did you get so interested in VTOL? Is that just part of your general interest in aircraft and military? I'll dovetail. Yeah. It's one of the things that always fascinated me because I've always been a military buff, but especially when it comes to technology, specifically Silicon Valley, how much of it is actually government funded indirectly? People think it's a lot of these startups that helped start a company, but the foundations of Silicon Valley were huge, fat government contracts originally for the space program. They needed reliable solid state computers. I thought it went even before the space program. I know that boosted it, but I thought it went back to even like World War II era stuff. Well, during World War II, there were a lot of university contracts given out to universities for research, especially things like radar and stuff like that. But what really kind of put the money in, like made it a business, business was like, oh, government's handing out contracts. And then with the 50, so post World War II, you came out with aerospace. Aerospace was big. People wanted jets. People wanted radar. People wanted advanced avionics. And then the space race came and people wanted these super small for the time computers, solid state computers, but the solid state transistor had just been invented. And so there weren't that many companies across the globe that produced, in fact, I think they're only in the U.S. What was it? Gosh darn it. There was a great documentary on the history of Silicon Valley. I'm trying to remember that. They call it Fairchild, Fairchild Industries, how basically everyone spun out of Fairchild, like all these people. Fairchild's and a conductor and all that. So they literally were kind of... That's where the intel folks came from, right? Yeah, and HP, like if you look at the Godfathers of the Silicon Valley, you draw a family tree and they all lead back to Fairchild. It's like the weirdest thing. It's like weird and cool at the same time. Like all the greatest podcasters came from tech TV? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wait. Just Adam Curry count? Well, no. Okay. Some of the greatest came from tech TV. Yeah. Like Adam did not work at tech TV. Fair enough. Neither did NPR. But... They had the voice for radio. Yeah. I interned at NPR. I got some NPR on my blood. Do you ever go for their biannual retreats? No, they don't have biannual retreats. No. They never invite me. I was made to the point to invite interns, even if they no longer worked at the company. I was only there for four months. Four months is a good stretch, dude. Bob Edwards still worked there. I was an intern for Morning Edition. He was on vacation for the first half of my internship there. Who's this kid? What are you sitting in my seat for? Yeah. Go away, kid. You bothered me. That was a good time, though. It was Clinton's first 100 days. Bill Clinton's first 100 days. It would be great. I just wondered if we could get a nice group of old journalists, like whether it's Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, or have them all together in a group, and go through their history of how they got to where they are and how they would do things now differently if they started. It would be difficult to get Peter Jennings, I suppose. Ted Koppels. How was it different back then? As to now, do you think it's easier? The answer is always it's easier in some ways and more difficult than others. I felt this way when I was looking for work anyway, and maybe it feels different now. Part of the problem with finding a job was there were too many people. The fact that we have such a large population meant that it was more difficult to stumble into something. It used to be you could show up at a place and just say, hey, I'm willing to put in my time and get a foot in the door. It's still possible, but it's much harder. That's one of my fears. I'm going to be when I put into those job applications competing with not just several hundred people, potentially several thousand people. I can only imagine what it's like now, especially if you have a job that can be easily off-shored and they're taking bits from, okay, who wants to do this? Who in the globe wants to do this job for the smallest buck per hour? The wage gap between the various parts of the world is smaller than it used to be. It's definitely closed. It's actually a really good example. Wage has gone up considerably since the early 2000s. It's gotten so high that many companies, in fact, are actually leaving China and moving to cheaper locations in Southeast Asia. That and India is starting to become more expensive than it used to be. Africa is kind of one of the cheap places these days, but it won't be forever. It always moves around. If you're going to invest in Africa, it's the Switzerland of Africa. It is considered the Switzerland because it's the most stable country on the continent. It's like the most stable country. They get a bulk of their revenues through diamonds, but they don't have the level of kleptocracy or corruption that any other country in the continent has, whether it's North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, anything. It's just really well-run. It's not to say that it doesn't have issues. It has a high HIV infection rate in the population, but most things are going. It's a pretty well-run country. Part of the testament is that the country is considered pretty boring because it's safe, relatively speaking, and there's not much exciting run-for-your-life atmosphere that you get that most people would assume. And it's weird because what's the other one? Namibia. Another one is a pretty stable country as well. I think South Africa is vassalates between depending on the election cycles, but also who the personality is. Even countries that you're not mentioning are more stable than I think people realize. There are flourishing economies in Nigeria and Kenya and Ghana. And Nigeria, not too long ago, had its first real democratic transition of power, which is a huge step. Yeah, I think part of the... Part of the flawed perception is that what you were mentioning to Patrick in the show is Africa is not a country, right? And he laughed because he introduced me to Eric Olander, and Eric is one of the people that has said that to me before. As someone who follows Africa very closely, he's very good at trying to make sure that people don't fall into that trap of referring to Africa as this unified thing. And it's kind of bizarre because just because someone's from Africa doesn't mean they've been to other neighboring countries just because they're all the same people. One thing I've always found that surprised me when I first learned it is very few South Africans have journeyed beyond the neighboring countries around them within Africa. They may travel to Europe to go to North America or the Far East, but in terms of traveling on the continent, they very rarely go beyond the immediate countries bordering South Africa. I guess that makes sense. If a place is lower in tourism as some places there are, it's not going to be an exception for people just because they're nearby. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we have states in the United States that no one has been to. Well, I shouldn't say no one. There are people who live in those states, and they've been there. But you know what I mean. There are states that receive very low tourism and there are states that I've never been to and I'm sure that all of the people listening who live in the United States can name a state that they've never been to. Maybe there's somebody who's been to all 50. I'm sure there's a few. I've only been to 12 states. Yeah, so you have 50 states. You've only been to 12. Yeah. When you think of it that way, it's kind of shocking. Yeah. But then I think about it. It's like, yeah, I did visit. It's like visiting the good parts of the stake. Aw, burn. So I won't mention this. I just don't start naming the states now because then you're going to be in real trouble. But I'll let people guess and they'll have the little spinner wheel of indignancy. He's never been to California even though he lives there. Figure that one out folks. I know. Am I in a coma? Am I disembodied? What's the deal? What's the deal? I've never been to Minnesota. I've been to Minnesota. I've been to most of the states. I've been to the majority, but I still haven't been to all of them. That's when Tom, the carpet beggar, was running an operation out of this Fort O'Connelline van. No. I've never owned a Fort O'Connelline van. I just, I just like the, that sounds like a great series, Tom, the carpet beggar. Not yet. No. I don't think that's a good series. I don't want to be a, who wants to be a carpet beggar? Nobody wants to be a carpet beggar. It's horrible. I never understood why that was such an, I mean, I understand. Also, going to Minnesota is the opposite of being a carpet beggar. Carpet beggars go south. Well, it hasn't the definition broadened out to. Okay. I didn't realize. I don't follow carpet beggars close enough, I guess. Well, maybe I'll start a carpet business called the carpet beggars. We bag your carpet. Oh, you can just sell bags of carpet for people to deploy. Yeah. There has to be an easier way to do that. Cause like rolling out a huge sheet of synthetic fiber on your floor. And it just seems kind of. Well, it looks like YouTube video went away, but in case someone is able to see this on demand later, we are ending the video now.