 And it seems like... Who's mic stand? Yours. Mine? Yes. What about it? Because so the thing is, here's the thing. My mic stand is on my desk and it's not like an arm articulated or anything like that. And the problem is, with my chair, I'm not close enough to the desk. And so when I'm like this, it's too low, right? So I have to be a bit closer. That's not too bad, actually. The mic picks it up pretty good. But I get what you mean, like you want to make sure you're on top. And so I always, I have to get closer like this. And so my back gets messed up because I'm always, you know, so I was wondering because you don't seem to have an articulated arm stand thing. Oh. He does. Damn it. It's actually a mic stand that I got a guitar center. Well, not a guitar center, but it was like a guitar center. It was called, it's a music store. So you managed to bring it a little bit closer to you as you. Yeah. And then it just puts it right in my face. Actually, that's not too, that doesn't seem like a bad solution. And then it's not touching anything, but it's also not attached. I used to have one and I still have it that's attached to a desk. But the problem with that is then you have to, if you move it somewhere else, it's harder and it's attached to the desk. So when you bang on the desk, it's more likely to, yeah. Okay. Okay. That's interesting though, what you're doing there. All right. That is useful. Thank you very much. Helpful. You know, you can find the exact same mic stand that I bought on Tom Merritt.com slash store. There's a link to list of Tom's equipment on Amazon. I'm not sure it will be available in French Amazon and even worse, there is no finished Amazon. Yeah. That is the tragedy of my Japanese Amazon. Yes, there is. But so soon buying a mic stand in Japan to bring it back to Finland sounds like a counter productive use of our. Yeah. Yeah. There has to be a guitar center or something. Sure. Maybe a keytar center of Japan. Ooh. Well, maybe they're my friends synthesizers. Yeah. All right. But however, oh, we're going to start. However, express delivery from France usually arrives the next day. No, it's a bit more expensive. But man, there you go. Shall we begin? Let's are you sitting comfortably? Not really because of that stupid mic. You just like I just explained, Tom. I'm not sitting comfortably. All right, here we go. Do you know that it's Tuesday? It is a day of not we hear his frank opinions, even though he's not in France. If you want to help us out, there is one thing you want to go to daily tech news show dot com slash support. It's true. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, March 22, 2016. I'm Tom Merritt joining me today. Mr. Patrick Beja of Finland. Do we have the best audience or what? That intro was amazing. I like that he put let me be Frank in there, which is a nice reference to you being French. Even though I am now in Finland. Yeah, even though you are a Frenchman in Finland on the way to Japan on my way to Japan. Absolutely. I would also be in Finland on the show. But the week after that, I will be calling in from Kyoto. So I say, we just call you Earth. Oh, I think, you know, I know I've gained a little bit of weight, but you know, you're comparing me to. You're an Earther, you Earther, you big stocky Earther. Oh, there's a TV show that where there are Earthers. Kids ask your parents about the expanse or watching. We are going to talk about what the US FBI is up to in the Apple encryption case. You probably have already heard if you've been paying attention that the FBI has put pause on the case. So the hearing we were expected today is not going to happen. We're going to tell you about that in the headlines and then put on our tinfoil hats and speculate why they might be doing that in our discussion. But let us start with said headlines. Monday afternoon, the US FBI filed a motion to vacate Tuesday's hearing and issue a stay on the order for Apple to assist the FBI in accessing data on the famous iPhone 5C. On Sunday, the FBI says a third party demonstrated a method for unlocking the phone without Apple's assistance. US Magistrate Sherry Pym has canceled Tuesday's hearing and issued the stay that was requested. That means Apple is no longer being compelled. Remember, up until now, Apple was under an order from the court compelling them to assist the FBI. They had just issued a response saying, we want a chance to explain why we think you should reconsider that. So the judges issued a stay on that order saying, OK, you don't have to explain. And you also are not compelled for the time being. The FBI has asked for two weeks to test the new method. The FBI must give the judge a status report by April 5th. And that was the FBI's own deadline. They said, we'll know by April 5th. So that has been put into the order. And we'll talk about this a little bit more in a little bit. In the meantime, TechCrunch reports Google is renaming its Chromecast application to Googlecast to better reflect how the technology works across different devices. The updated app rolls out this week. Google also announced that Vizio's Smartcast P-Series AGTVs and Soundbars will support Googlecast. A full list of supported devices can be found at google.com. I suppose that makes sense. Seems like more of an issue for the partners like Bang and Ellison and Vizio who are saying, well, hey, hold on, we're not Chromecast devices, but we work with your cast technology. So do you mind changing that app so that it doesn't look to people like they have to have a Chromecast? And it comes at the time that they're announcing the Vizio Chromecast integrated set. So that makes sense. And I think the wording is very subtle because it used to be Chromecast one word and now it's Google cast two words, which means they can say it works with cast. That's sort of the kind of branding, which I think is even better for that technology. Just, you know, it's cast compatible. Yes, it rolls off the tongue. It's very, very nice. Cast compatible. Lost in the Apple announcement haze yesterday was an announcement that engineers from Google, Yahoo, Comcast, Microsoft, LinkedIn and a company called One and One Mail and Media Development submitted a proposal to the Internet Engineering Task Force for something called SMTP strict transport security. In other words, a system to ensure email is encrypted and before delivery, SMTP STS as it is abbreviated, would check if the destination supports encryption and has a valid certificate, making sure it is the server it says it is before sending an email. And if it didn't, it would tell the sender email failed to send. We couldn't we couldn't validate the receiver. You kind of think maybe emails should have worked that way from the beginning. But remember back in the sixties, they were worried about getting an email from one imp to another. They weren't too worried about encryption or people listening in because I don't think they imagined just how big the Internet would become eventually. So yeah, it is a little late in the game for us to finally encrypt email. But this is some big names getting together, saying, all right, IETF. Let's let's do this. Let's let's encrypt email. So well, email is already encrypted can be encrypted. But it's it's a little bit of this and that put together to make it. But this would would make sure that this the person you're sending it to is the person they say they are before it even sends it. So even better security, which I'm not going to, you know, joke about the FBI now. Not yet. Not yet. Ars Technica reported that Apple was in advance talks to acquire the UK's imagination technologies, which designs the power VR GPUs used in Apple's a series ships departing from the usual no comment. Apple told the London Stock Exchange, we had some discussions with imagination. But we do not plan to make an offer for the company at this time. Apple owns 9.5 percent of imagination technologies. And that last is probably why they had to make a statement. Usually Apple just issues the blanket. We don't we we acquire companies from time to time and we don't comment on it when we do. But since they already own stock in this company, and they could be seen as manipulating the stock price. If they didn't make this statement, I think it was wise of them to come out and say, yes, we were talking to them, but but everybody just settled down. We're not going to buy them right now. I wonder why they're not, though, because they you when they bought P.A. Semi way back in the day to be able to design the A chips. It made a lot of sense and they work very closely with imagination technologies, but maybe imagination technologies is going through too many financial hardships right now. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how they're doing, but certainly I think another factor that might have encouraged them to comment is that they buy other companies all the time. But this would have been a really big deal. It would have meant that they were able to design the entirety of their silicon that they use in. Well, not the entirety, but the CPU and GPU couple. This is a chip. Yeah, right, which is enormous. And and, you know, that would have been a big deal for the industry. So maybe that might have been a contributing factor as well in their commenting. And if you read this, our technical article, imagination technologies has been restructuring, focusing on the graphics. So it could be that Apple will come back around later on and still want to pick them up. We'll see. Andres Groff was born in Budapest in 1936, lived through World War Two, escaped to the United States after the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. And known in the United States as Andy Grove. He got a job at Fairchild Semiconductor and then followed a couple of guys when they started a company called Intel. Andy Grove was the first person hired by Intel in 1968. Grove became Intel's president in 1979. He was CEO of the company from 1987. And he remained chairman of the board until 2004. Grove died Monday at age 79. Credit to another Jay Martin for submitting this on our subreddit. He is universally admired in the tech industry. Well, first of all, and most importantly, rest in peace, for sure. The other thing is, you know, it seems, I don't know if it's a pattern of randomness, but it seems like we're seeing more and more of these obituaries for people that have been very important in the tech industry. And I think it might be for a very good reason that, you know, it was that industry sort of started maybe 50, 60 years ago. And the young people that started it are reaching an age, an advanced age where they're starting to to pass away. So I'm guessing we're going to see more and more of those, unfortunately. But yeah, good luck. Unfortunately, you're right, though, there were pioneers like Grace Hopper. You know, there were people taking taken from us too early, like like touring. But we are now hitting the point where the tech industry, you know, by the 70s had become populated. We had the Internet. We had Silicon Valley forming. We had HP had been around for years. Intel had for Oracle was forming. So yeah, I mean, it makes sense that that generation, which was much, much more numerous, would start to be getting old. I mean, age 79, Andy Grove lived a good full life, so he will be missed. But but yeah, it's an interesting point about the maturity of the technology industry. The BBC has begun shipping its pocket sized computer, the micro bit. The machine is being given away for free to year seven students, the ARM SOC computer ships with a USB cable and battery holder. Microbit.co.uk has tutorial for teachers and students covering programming and project development. Thanks to Captain Kipper for submitting on subreddit. Yeah, this is somewhat different from the Raspberry Pi, but it's in the same class. It has it has more DIY to it. If you if you could believe that you just have input, output pins, which I know the Raspberry Pi has something similar to that, but it's it's it's very much a you want to get into building things and programming things. This is this is your deal. It was supposed to come out in September and got delayed. And it is one of the main efforts of the BBC's educational initiative of late. You know, there's I'm not sure about the let's get everyone to program initiative, but a friend of mine recommended on an app recommendation show. He recommended an app called Tiny Bop, the incredible machine or something like that, which basically is a superscripting app on the iPad that allows you to take control of each element of the iPad, link them together and sort of make it tiny. Well, little machines of scripting that sort of introduce young kids to the idea of programming. It's sort of Play-Doh programming of sorts. And that was really interesting to me as a concept. So yeah, it's it's the it's the the company is called Tiny Bop. And I think it's the incredible machine or the machine something. I'll try and find it. Yeah, I'm curious. I'd like to I'd like to play around with that. That sounds that sounds really interesting. Sony's PlayStation VR headset bundle went on sale Tuesday morning. That's the one that gives you the move controllers and the camera. Sales started at 10 a.m. Eastern time for four hundred ninety nine dollars. PC World reports that Amazon, Walmart and Target sold out quickly. Best Buy and GameStop continued to take orders for a little while after them. Best Buy also charged my credit card, even though it said it wouldn't charge until it was going to ship. Lamar Wilson pointed that out. He's like, did this happen to you? I'm like, yes, yes, it did. Not sure why they did that. Again, if they said this is where it's going to be, we're going to charge your credit card had been fine. But they actually if Lamar and I both remembered it the same way. They actually said, no, we charge you at shipping. But anyway, Sony also announced pre-orders for just the headset. Now that includes the wires to connect it and the headphones and everything. But no camera, no move controllers. That goes up for pre-order next week, March 29th at 10 a.m. Eastern for three hundred ninety nine dollars. And for some incomprehensible reason, we in Europe do not get that five hundred dollars or five hundred euros bundle. We only get the one with the with just the PlayStation VR. So we have to go around and hunt for those other elements, which is very frustrating. But I think I'm going to I'm going to pre-order it anyway. So we'll be in the same VR boat, Tom. I pre-ordered the bundle because even though I have the camera, I don't have the move controllers and buying the move controllers separately would have been almost the same price as the bundle. And as Shane pointed out on Friday on the show, I can tell the camera on eBay or something. So there you go. Fair enough. Oh, or you can sell it to me. I. Yeah, you want it? We'll see. Let's let's talk. Let's talk. Next piece of news is mine. And it's about Nintendo that announced its mobile game. Mito has reached reached one million users on iOS and Android since its launch in Japan on March 17th. Meanwhile, Venturebeat passes along that Japan's Nikkei newspaper says sources tell it Nintendo will seize production of the Wii U this year. Wow. That would be very fast. Now, Nikkei also says that and they'll announce the NX. And it's like, well, yeah, we kind of expect them to announce something about the NX at E3. That doesn't mean it's going to go on. The NX is going to go on sale this year. But given the slow sales of the Wii U, if they were to start selling the NX in 2017, stopping production later this year would probably leave them enough inventory to keep selling the Wii U into 2017. So that timing might match up. And so my my theory is that the Wii U might very is I'm sorry, the NX is very likely to go on sale actually this year. But regardless, what could they stop production? Yeah, it could be if they stop production of the Wii U, they're probably going to have inventory for a few months, not more than that. And it means that they stop selling that device very early after the next generation is put on sale, usually on those types of of machines. The older generation is still on sale at a lower price for a good time. You know, the next PlayStation arrives, but the previous one is still on sale for years at lower prices, different markets, different budgets. Here, I mean, we're beating a dead horse by this. By now, the Wii U is not a success. And that's just another proof that that's the case. My guess is they have a bigger inventory of Wii U's than they would like to have. And they expect the sales to plummet once the NX does hit the shelves, or even after the NX is announced, frankly. So those could both play into that decision as well. Also, it might be that there is some kind of Wii U emulation in the NX or compatibility of some kind, which would mean no one would want to buy the Wii U, just buy the NX, you'll get everything. So that might also be the case. US Department of Commerce announced Tuesday it will give China's ZTE a reprieve until June 30th on export restrictions imposed March 8th. ZTE is accused of breaking US sanctions against Iran. We talked about that previously on the show. The restriction would have banned US companies from selling any technology, any software, any equipment, any parts to ZTE. This reprieve could be extended if ZTE is deemed by the US Department of Commerce to be cooperating in resolving the matter. And finally, French Trade Association, Geste, which includes major news outlets like Le Monde and L'Equipe, streaming service Deezer and radio and TV stations, has called for a week-long blocking of readers who use ad blockers. L'Express's editorial director, Eric Métoux, I don't know why I was gonna pronounce this with an English accent. Eric Métoux, is that what you were gonna say? Eric Métoux acknowledges ads can be disruptive and says advertisers and agencies aim to resolve the problem. I, you know, I'm gonna tell you that did not go over well on the French web. They actually had, most of the big websites had campaigns that would encourage people to deactivate their ad blockers or just block the content as we were mentioning. And the problem is, I don't know if that's the case everywhere, but definitely in France, these publications have not at all thought about the underlying cause that pushes people to use ad blockers. So I've seen countless examples of people tweeting. I just saw the website encouraging me to deactivate the ad blocker. I did. And the first thing I saw was a full page pop-up ad that blocked the entirety of the content. And that lack of understanding of the reason, they were very eager to tell people to stop using ad blockers. And I for one, don't use ad blockers. I don't, you know, I think there's, it's ethically gray to do that or even a little bit black. But I understand why people do it because this is outrageous. And the way they refuse to see the problem is very concerning for me. Yeah, when I first read this story, sitting here in Los Angeles, I thought, well, why are they only doing it for a week? That seems weird. And you just explained it to me, which is if they did it for more than a week, imagine the outcry. Like this is something where they're just trying to make a point to say like, hey, you guys, let's start talking about this. But as you mentioned, Eric Matoo saying, hey, we're gonna resolve that problem of the abusive ads is doesn't, doesn't wash. They want the problem resolved or they wouldn't be using ad blockers. Ad blockers are the kind of thing the geeks use. And it's perfect. I mean, it's now 30%, like a third of the French web audience uses ad blockers. That's a lot. That's a lot of people that had to go to the trouble to download the thing, install it, learn how it's used, keep it up to date because it's worth that amount of trouble versus the amount of trouble that the ads cause. So this is not just about, I don't want to see an ad. This is about ads are disruptive and they're getting in the way. And I won't go into it again, but there are also tools like Privacy Badger just meant to stop tracking you around the net and tools like NoScript, which are meant to give you control over what scripts gets executed to help protect you against malicious scripts that are also treated like ad blockers. And so we're getting into a situation where trying to make people use ads makes them less secure. And that's not a good situation. Yeah. And even me, who started out very opposed, vehemently opposed to ad blockers on a philosophical principle, I'm starting to come around and I'm wondering if I wouldn't myself, I'm not using anything yet, but at least something like NoScript or Privacy Badger, things like that might, you know, I feel like it might be warranted. And the chat room is having fun with ideas like ad blocker, blocker, blockers. It's getting to that point, yeah. It actually already has the problem with this thing that happened on the French web was that it was so backwards, what Eric Métoux was saying, we're working on resolving the issue. You don't ask people to take away that their quote unquote protection against ads before having even thought about resolving the issue. The amount of lack of awareness and understanding of the problem is staggering. I haven't seen this anywhere. You know, the only place I've seen this to that extent has been in the music industry at the time of music piracy. And we know what happened there. Well, thank you folks for submitting stories and voting on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. It absolutely helps us to figure out what stories we're going to put in our headlines every day. It is one of the many signals we look at, but it is an important one. So get in there and vote dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. That's a look at the headlines. So here's the timeline. According to the FBI on Sunday, an outside party, which because it's Sunday, a lot of people are thinking, well, it must have been an Australian or somebody on the other side because they wouldn't be at work on a Sunday. Okay, maybe. Yeah, sounds. Maybe, maybe not. Sunday, March 20th, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farooq's iPhone. That's the iPhone 5C in the case. Monday, March 21st, the FBI filed a request to vacate the Tuesday hearing saying they needed time for testing this. They want to make sure that this method won't destroy the phone's data. So they want a couple of weeks to verify it. And I've read Jonathan Jarski's description of forensic testing before. And that seems like a short amount of time, but it seems reasonable. So they proposed filing a status report by April 5th, 5.30 yesterday evening. Magistrate Sherry Pym vacated the order and issued a stay on the order compelling Apple to assist the FBI. And then she ordered the FBI to file their status report by April 5th, as they said. Regarding this in a press conference, Apple told reporters if the case continues, the firm will insist in court on knowing everything possible about this vulnerability. They would like to know what this outside party found so they could patch it because this is a security vulnerability, which goes back to the whole point of this. A lot of people are saying, aha, the FBI got scared off. Aha, the FBI could have done this all along. Or some other people who are more on the FBI side say, look, no, this proves that the FBI just wanted to look at the stuff on the phone and they couldn't until now. And now that they can, they'll drop the case. So where do you lean amongst those various interpretations? Or is there, I've seen some even more convoluted or maybe complicated, is a less pejorative term, theories on this? I think it's certainly possible that the FBI is acting in completely good faith and in complete honesty in this case. That's a possibility, but it seems to me a very naive way of looking at it. I mean, at the very least, if there is a way of, okay, we've heard a lot of people coming up with ideas on how that data could be extracted and the 10 attempts be circumvented by copying the data off the phone and doing your 10 attempts on different copies of that data. But I mean, they're having a lot of those different types of suggestions that it could be done. What strikes me is that in the best possible world, the best possible scenario for the FBI would be that they didn't know that this method existed and now that they do, they're gonna be trying it. That alone, the fact that they didn't realize that that was possible seems to me like at the minimum, it is, I don't wanna say incompetence, but it is a failing, right, on their part. That if that piece of data- Yeah, you're right. It's not incompetence. It's showing a lack of capacity to handle these issues. They don't have the right people in-house to say, hey, there's a way to image these chips and look at it and figure it out. Jonathan Jarski was saying that a couple weeks ago, we talked about it on the show, like, hey, there's this way of doing this. They could probably come up with something around that particular method. And of course, today, Jonathan Jarski has a blog post saying he guesses that's probably what they're doing. It's some kind of method of imaging the drive, being able to try to guess the password and if it does corrupt the data because they guessed 10 times, just re-imaging the drive to make some fresh starts. And you know the thing that pushes me to the idea that this should have been figured out by the FBI already is that, I don't know if you remember, but we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, maybe longer, maybe it was a month ago, we came to that idea. We didn't know if it was possible, but just on our own, we were sort of discussing this with you and Jenny and Roger before the show started and we were thinking, oh, is it possible to copy the data and then to try and then to virtualize it? And of course, we're just messing around here, but if that is a possibility, and it seems like serious researchers have talked about this several times afterwards, if that ends up being the way, how could the FBI not have thought about it? Do they really not have the people that? Yeah, they don't have the right people. And that was part of the congressional hearings, right? Was you need to fund the FBI to create a group of people. The NSA had them, we know this because Edward Snowden was one of them. The FBI needs to have, and no disrespect to the guys who work in cybersecurity, the FBI. I am not trying to undermine your talent, but I also believe you probably wouldn't disagree if you were allowed to publicly that you are underfunded and not given enough of a team. Like just because one person didn't think of it, there might even have been a person who thought of it but didn't know enough about how it worked to properly say how to execute it, right? It's one thing for us to sit here and go like, hey, you can image that drive, but it would be another thing for them to come to us and say, great, you think you can image the drive? How do I do it? I wouldn't be able to tell you how to do it. You need to have someone with a certain level of expertise. Obviously, yeah. And I mean, it is a very delicate process. I'm guessing you have to actually cut off the board and take the chip and copy it. I think you have to desoderate it if I understand it, right? Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it's very easy for us to talk about it. But so anyway, I think we would agree that at a minimum it is a failing on the FBI system, right? And that already doesn't look, I don't think very good for the FBI. And especially when they were claiming we've done our due diligence, we've researched this. The only way we can get it unlocked is to ask Apple to create that OS that would be signed and that would allow to circumvent the 10 attempts. Okay, this is if they were indeed acting in good faith, the FBI. There's another possibility, which I think the Apple fans or the fans of freedom, I'm gonna invoke freedom because apparently it goes over well. Right, because that doesn't raise the rhetoric to that of proportions. Absolutely, I'm doing this on purpose, obviously. But they would think that the FBI was indeed scared of, that they messed up, that they were ill-prepared for this case. They didn't realize how strongly Apple would react on one end and on one hand. And on the other hand, they didn't realize, and again, another failing, that it would end up being possible to find a way out. And they're sort of now estimating that they are not going to win this case at either in the court of public opinion or even going to the Supreme Court. I've seen a couple of legal minds saying that actually the law seems to indicate that it is probably not gonna be winnable for the FBI. And so they're calling, they're cutting their losses early and they're saying, all right, you know what? We messed up, we're not gonna win this. This was the wrong battle to fight, even though all of the cards were in their hands. And we're just gonna, again, we don't know. Maybe on the April 5, they're gonna come back and they're gonna, I don't know, invoke the terrible attacks in Brussels today and say, you know, we couldn't crack it and we need to crack it because of terrorism and they're gonna keep going, maybe. But it's also possible that they're gonna say, all right, we got what we needed, goodbye, thank you. And cut their losses. And that seems to me, we have no way of knowing this, but it seems to me like they invested too much in all of this for it to not be seen as a failure if that is what happened. And that seems to me the most plausible scenario here. It would be very, it would be unthinkable that the FBI would go to the point of asking the judge to vacate and issue a stay if they didn't have a high degree of confidence that this method was going to work. And if they're only asking for two weeks to see that it works fine, that means that this is not something that needs to be tested for the first time. This is something a company is like, look, we know how to do this. We'll go through your forensic hoops to make sure that it's clear. We'll dot all the I's across all the T's, but this is going to work. And the FBI must be convinced that it's gonna work. Anything's possible. It might not work. They might find a snag in it. But my guess is that April 5th, by April 5th, the FBI will say, yeah, this worked, we got in, that's fine, we're dropping the case. That seems to be the consensus right now amongst all sides of this argument. So the question has been people have moved on to like, well, now what's Congress gonna do? What's the FBI gonna do next? And the fact of the matter is like, we don't know anymore now what they'll do next than we did before this whole case arose because they have dozens of iPhones in dozens of cases. And they may, I know most people don't wanna think this, they may back off. They may realize, oh, okay, we actually can work with security companies on this. Let's contract out a few, put them under NDA. Let's hire a few more, let's push Congress to fund us. This is going to move to Congress. And that is where the encryption battle is going to be fought and it's gonna be slow and it's gonna wait until after the presidential election. But that's where this is gonna happen is whether we should make it easier for law enforcement to get into encrypted phones or not. That talk isn't over. I kind of feel like the FBI, I know it's crazy. I know nobody wants to hear it. The FBI might not have been doing this to set a precedent or if they were, it wasn't their only reason for doing it. I know people are dismissive of this phone. They're like, oh, there's nothing in there that you wanna get. But the fact of the matter is if you're in law enforcement, you don't want to rule out any possibility. And so there are detectives, there are investigators on this case who do wanna see what's on that phone, even if they don't have a high probability that there's anything in there. So again, I'm not saying that Apple was wrong in defending this. I personally believe they were absolutely right in defending against this. I think it's a bad idea to force a company to create software that breaks their own encryption. But I think the FBI did find what I would have expected them to find which is another way to get into things that they need to get into under court supervision. Again, I was less of a problem with this case from the beginning because they went to a judge and got a warrant. Somebody asked me on Twitter, they're like, would this break the terms of service? I'm like, probably not because it wasn't their phone, first of all, but also they had a judge, they had a warrant. They had the right to break in. Yeah, I mean, certainly the question of the future is being asked and rightly so on your right. We don't know what is going to happen. It's possible that there, we have a saying in France which is reculer pour mieux sauter which means you take a few steps back to back to jump to leap forward better. And maybe they're gonna come back with another case that they think is even more valid and easy to win. I think in this case, either, there's certainly a possibility that they've understood now that they can work with security experts to get the information they need because certainly ultimately their goal is to get information they want, maybe the information they need even but certainly the information that they want to get. So if in the end they get the information, fine, they're happy, but maybe they're also going to bring forth another case later. I think this ultimately hurt them if they decide to do that because there's always going to be justified or not the impression that, all right, you want, wait, what do you want now? There's another one that you really can't get into for sure, but what are you, are you certain? This time, are you really sure? Don't you wanna look at it for another couple of weeks to make really certain? And it's kind of hard to make this case a second time and drum up the same amount of excitement once you've failed on the first one. So I think ultimately that hurt them if that would be something they would want. Everyone assumes that the FBI is a political organization and certainly James Comey is a political director of the organization. I'm not gonna discount that. The FBI usually is trying to fight crime. It's the NSA that was doing mass surveillance and it's congressmen who are calling for backdoors, like actual backdoors into encryption. So I know it's easy to just lump this all together and certainly influence flows around. And I'm not saying it's impossible that people weren't leaning on the FBI to push this case. It's absolutely possible. But the FBI isn't the most likely to advance some kind of agenda to increase mass surveillance. In fact, I can put on a tinfoil hat and see a world where the NSA comes into the FBI and says, hey, don't push this. This is not going to turn out the way we at the NSA want this to turn out, even if you win because it's caused all this fear. Stop it. We like to operate in the shadows, break things open and listen to things without anybody knowing. So you know, like I think I'm not saying I know what's going on with this case, but I think there are a lot of wrong handles you can get from this case. And I worry much more about some of the representatives in Congress calling for actual backdoors to be legislated into encryption. I think that is the danger. I also worry more about warrantless wiretaps and warrantless surveillance and drag nets that pull in whole swaths of data and store it forever so that you can look at it and sure, under a secret court decide what you get to look at. That stuff worries me a lot more than this. Yeah, I think you've summed up the situation pretty well. I would say that James Comey for, you know, yes, the FBI is not a political organization, but James Comey has come out several times with pretty strong opinions about encryption. Let's not talk about political leanings, but he is being rubbed by encryption the wrong way. And he's said so very publicly. So the fact that he- And again, before you write the email that says, Tom, the FBI is a political organization. Yeah, the director is, I get that. But a lot of the agents who are out investigating aren't. Yeah, you could say that about any law enforcement body though, so. Although apparently one guy at the NSA was really political so much so that he fled the country. I'm linked to much of secrets. So yeah, it's always possible that that's true anywhere. You sent an interesting email to us yesterday about what you think's gonna happen to director Comey. Me? I don't know. Who is this listener who sent an email to- Is it another Patrick Meija? I apologize if I confused you. Yeah, so I have a prediction, basically. My prediction is that director James Comey is going to leave the FBI before the end of the year. I think this actually hurt him. It cost him some credibility. And if it turns out that they are stopping the lawsuit or the injunction. And I think at the very least it showed that he was not using the right methods. And he's been so vocal that at some point this debate is gonna have to be decided on and he's not on the right side of it. I think it's gonna cost him politically since we were talking about political leanings. So not leanings, but organizations. So yeah, I think my prediction is that he's actually either of his own volition or be pushed out the door. I think it's gonna happen before the end of the year. And the side prediction is that he's gonna explain in a very solemn press conference that he wants to spend more time with his family. And after that, a few months or years he's gonna go consulting for a defense contractor. Now the only wrinkle in your theory here is we have a presidential election in November and a new president inaugurated in January. So I don't know that that invalidates your prediction. I don't know how it affects it though because if a Republican wins in November he's gonna lose his job anyway, most likely. If Democrat wins, I would expect that he could stick around maybe, but even then a new president is going to be taking over for President Obama and so they may want their own person in there. So it's kind of likely he leaves anyway. It would be dramatic if he left before the election and then that's possible. I think you're dead on it about him starting to consult for a defense contractor. Now, well, okay, there you go. I think he might go, you're right, I didn't factor in the election, how could I forget? But I think he might go before the election so that he doesn't, well, I don't know, he could be easily replaced and it would be a lot more understandable if he was replaced even by a Democrat who would take office. It's a good time to change people. So maybe a hard road to get his appointment through by a lame duck president with an opposition Congress. All right, so maybe within a year, within a year, which puts us inside the window of the election. I'm gonna change it a little bit. All right, all right. Hey, let's get to our pick of the day. Basam from Dusty Riyadh, although he says he's currently in LA, at least he was when he wrote this email, said, I wanted to recommend NPR-1. It's an audio app that learns your taste and plays back the NPR news items or shows that interest you. You can tailor the stream by marking items as interesting or skipping ones you don't like. You can even follow your favorite shows to make sure the latest episode is always available. Radio Lab and Planet Money are my personal favorites, says Basam. I use this in the morning while getting ready to get up to date on the latest happenings in the world. It always starts with the short national newscast, which I find to be very informative. During the election season, this is my primary method of staying up to date. NPR-1 is on the Play Store and the App Store and for Android and has great integration with Android Wear and a beautiful interface for Chromecast. And NPR won't be telling you about it on their radio shows because apparently they have forbidden any of their radio programs from promoting their podcasts. That story's been kicking around. So we'll do it for them. Go check out NPR-1, says Basam. If you like NPR programming, it sounds like a great app. Why would they not want to promote their podcasts because they're not making money on them because the local stations rely on the programming for fundraising and the local stations don't want people sending you to a podcast and undermining their fundraising. Right, right. Send your picks to us, folks. Feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. You can find more picks at dailytechnewshow.com slash picks. Real quickly, Steve, I in our Slack channel at the analyst level was recommending the Facebook check-in as a possible pick. And I was like, it's not a little weird making that a pick, the Facebook safety check, but it is a great thing to keep people aware of. We've mentioned it on the show before. It's a way for you to check in and it won't tell you for sure that someone is okay, but if they are on Facebook and can respond to you, it can give you a little reassurance. And Facebook does this in times of emergencies as Patrick alluded to earlier the horrible events in Brussels. Facebook activated it there. I believe they activated it in Ankara previously. So something to know if, you know, heaven forbid something like that should happen to you and you need to check in on loved ones, look for the Facebook safety check. I can tell you that when the events happened in Paris in November, it was an incredible tool, super useful. And I think it's one of the few times where everyone was agreeing that something on Facebook was actually only good. Thank you, Steve, for reminding us of that. Our message of the day comes from Mark W in Detroit. He says, hey, that segment you did about watching YouTube yesterday with Veronica was interesting. And now I see there's a new movie coming out that shocked completely as a first person shooter called Hardcore Henry. Mark's like, I wonder if it can ride this trend of putting yourself in the place of the thing that you're watching. Have you seen the trailer for Hardcore Henry yet? Yeah, I have. It seems interesting, a little bit gimmicky, to be honest. If people don't understand, it's entirely shot from the perspective of Henry and it's an action movie. So the thing is, I don't, you know, it's, I don't know. It seems like let's do it because we can kind of movie, but maybe it's gonna turn out to be awesome. I don't know. By the way, a bunch of people are saying we have to disclaim that Jenny, our senior advisor works for Marketplace. Marketplace is not NPR. Marketplace is APM. They are different companies, although both public radio companies, not the same public radio company. Thank you, Patrick Beja, for joining us as always on the Tuesdays, Frenchspin.com, the place to go to find out what's going on. Your latest Philius Club with Wendy Dunford was fantastic. I finally got a chance to listen to it right after you mentioned it last week and I highly recommend it. Thank you. Yeah, it was, we had a lot of fun. We discussed for those, if you don't remember, we discussed clicks in high schools, in American high schools, and what makes them click and why, how, when, it was a super interesting discussion. And just today, we recorded a new episode of Pixels where Garrett Winsrell and myself discussed many things, including the Division, which is a new game super successful at the moment by Ubisoft, and he explained to me why he likes it. I explained why I'm not getting into it yet and we discussed a bunch of other things, Blizzard News and other things as well. All of this is available at Frenchspin.com. Go there, listen, you'll be happy. Thank you to the folks who support this show. We exist entirely because of you. If you get value out of the show, we ask that you give value back. We will continue to try to meet that value. So if you keep raising the value, it's going to force us to try to raise our value as well. In that vein, I recorded over the weekend an explainer piece, it's about 10 minutes long, about public key encryption. Now it's a very simple explainer. So if you're a security expert, you know, I hesitate to send you that way. But it gives you the basics of Alison, Bob and Eve and how public key encryption works. So if you are a supporter of the show at patreon.com slash DTNS at the, I believe it's $5 and up level, I just sent out a link right before the show where you can listen to it. Let me know what you think. We would like to do more things like that. So the more you support the show, the more things we do. That's the point here, dailytechnewshow.com slash support. Our email address is feedback, dailytechnewshow.com. You can give us a call 51259 daily. It's 5125932459. Catch the show live Monday through Friday, 430 PM Eastern, alphageekradio.com and diamondclub.tv. And visit our website, dailytechnewshow.com. Back tomorrow with Scott Johnson. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club, I hope you have enjoyed this program. Damn it, Waffle-Officus. I just saw your chat room note about promoting the movie draft. You're right. That would have been a perfect time to do it. Oh well. We are doing our summer movie draft on Night Attack tonight. Ah. Batman Superman. What movies are coming out? That is the first movie in the movie draft, yeah. We're gonna go see. Oh, is it out tomorrow? I wanna see it tomorrow. It's out in the US this week, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so I'm gonna go see it tomorrow. Nice. You crazy. You get things on Wednesday in Finland? I don't know. Wait, I think it's supposed to be out. All right. Are the movies already dubbed and finished or are they subtitled? No, they subtitled everything. Yeah, it is. It is absolutely available. We need to get the international engineering task force on the idea of standardizing movie release times. I don't like this Finland gets at a day before I do stuff. I actually would love that because I think that Warcraft is not coming out in Japan before I... Yeah, see that's... There you go. And 10 Cloverfield Lane is not out in Finland at all. It doesn't come out. Maybe it's out in Japan actually. Maybe I can go see it there. You head out to Japan first week April? Is that right? April 1st. So yeah. Yeah, but then when you get on the plane, now they're just like, ah, we're not flying into Japan. April fools. Go back home. And then I will curse at them in front of you. You guys thought we were flying today. Gotcha. Show titles? Yes, please. What do you got? Top of the list is Federal, that was what they spelled Bureau incorrectly, but Federal Bureau of Indecision. I like it. I like it. Followed up by Apple's lack of imagination. Number three and a distant third is We You Know By Me. What? It's Why You Know, Why You We You Know By Me. I submitted We You Later. We You Later. Yeah. We You Later. We Know You Want the NX. Ah. That's a good one. Big Jim. A lot of wee puns in here. Let me just say. Yeah, Big Jim submitted a good amount of them. Dr. Payne submitted it. Clay Doe programming for your, I think I just, I found the name of that application. It was, I think someone mentioned it. Yeah, it was Simple Machines? Thinking Machine. Oh, thinking? I thought it was. Sinking Machine? Sinking and sinking. Let me see what else we got in the category. Donning, our tinfoil hats, a farewell to any Grove. We're all in the same VR boat. Who blocks the ad busters? FBF company. By the way, we're all in the X boat and who X's the X's is. It's Donny. Yeah, we're kind of, I'm just saying, you keep submitting them. They're funny, but I don't think we're gonna use those for a while. Never say that. We, we un-purchased. We, oh, uh-oh, we, uh-oh. We, oh, I think, oh. Do you like any of these? I like Federal Bureau of Indecision, despite the misspelling. I feel like it's kind of pejorative. Yeah, I think the problem is it picks a side. The Apple lacks imagination, I like, because you could kind of make it work lots of different ways, but it's literally about them not buying the company imagination. Or me. Oh, right, right, right, right. Okay, I get it, I get it. I was wondering what, okay. Yeah, imagine Techno, they do the classics. I do like the, we know you want the NX from Big Jim. FBI blinks first is less pejorative than Federal Bureau of Indecision. FBI blinks first, let's do that. All right. Credit, Schnogo. Schno. Schnago. Schnago, from W. Scottus One. All right, I'm actually gonna go. Okay. Okay. Have a life. Thank you very much. Have a sleep. Be like that, have a life. All right, thank you very much, guys. It was a super enjoyable show. Yep. Thank you, Chad, for being with us. Lovely as always. Have a great night. Next week. Bye. Exporting. The best kind of porting is an export. Any export in a storm? Oh, I just, sorry, I was just reading this Neil Gaiman tweet. What did he say? Two elderly ladies discuss medical complaints at a table nearby. One just realized that the word she needed was exacerbated, not masturbated. You know, my lower back pain has been, what's the word? I remember when someone used the word mastication, someone flipped out, but you can't say that word. It's like, dude, you know what it means, right? Yeah. By the way, for anyone who doesn't know, mastication is to chew on something with your teeth to masticate. Tomorrow, Scott Johnson. I have not heard back, I heard back from Andy. I have not, I emailed them and he got my email, but I think he's still mulling times. Okay, yeah, great to have him on. I hope we can figure it out. I haven't heard back from Angelica, the robot, or not robot AI, the AI experts, when I try to contact her a different way. Until she's like, totally get away from me, you're freaking me out. We got Shannon for those two days. Oh, I have to contact Jaren to see what his schedule is, but I think I know it's April one, based on what you sent me. Cool. Unless it changes. Be dead, dead, dead, by tongue, Denise Howe. Don't send anyone's email address, Alan. Roger at roger.com. Do you wish you had roger.com? No, not really. You know, the more I think about it, I think you want to name that people recognize you, but don't want it for people to easily find you. Well, that's the problem that Veronica has, and even more so Ryan Block, because he has at Ryan, and everyone sends him tweets for Ryan Seacrest. I have at Jolly Roger, which is probably the closest I'll ever get to having something that works, but I get a lot of, gotta let tweets in five different languages have nothing to do with me. And tweets. Yeah, ACE detect never has that problem. Yeah, but see now, but the thing is it's been attached to you for so long, people who know you know it's you. What happens is poor ACE detect, with an E, actually handles that, I think it's Coohan runs it, actually handles those people who misspell it and then sends them to me. So it's almost the reverse. I almost thought about at Roger Chang, but someone has it and they're in Taiwan and they have two followers. The last time they tweeted was- Making them offer they can't refuse. Well, I'm just gonna refuse any offer by not dealing with them. No. That's how you get around it. The problem is you can carry your tag across any platform, right? Like Facebook or whatever, and people would be able to find you. Mine is like, well, someone else that's popular or not that someone already has it. Yeah. Well, I ran into that with Team Merit in the 90s. I was like, I'll be Team Merit. And then, I mean, not just Tom, but there's Todd and Tim and Terry and Team Merit was almost impossible. Even then, back in 96. You didn't try Wunderkind? Wunderkind. Wunderkind. No, I didn't. I tried Pilot X for a while, which is actually, it was me parodying a story about a plane crash and some brilliant news. Created Pilot X, which then became a username I tried to use. But even then, that would sometimes be taken and then turned into the character in my ink shares novel that I'm trying to get back to. Pilot X. Pilot X. It sounds like the airborne version of Racer X from Speed Racer. It kind of is like that too. Probably was in my mind. I loved Speed Racer as a kid. I hated that cartoon so much. Oh, I loved it so much. Even in like, I think I was eight, I saw it and I can say, how can they keep reusing the same scenes because they saved money on animation by recycling? Yeah, I noticed that too, but it did bother me. It's quiet Veronica. Oh yeah, you're gonna be on Dear Veronica. Yeah, Dear Veronica. What question did you answer? Someone wanted to know, are there, he wanted to take advantage of Steam or you play Steam but play on his TV is one of your dirty PCs you could plug in as simply as a console. I said yes, but he also added the word affordable and that's less of a yes. For sure. Yeah, it's kind of crazy how small, like I bought an Alienware that is Oculus Rift compatible and I knew it was small, but just like, it still shocks me how tiny it is. Is it loud when it really cranks up or? Oh, not really. That's always been my issue with small form factor gaming boxes is to quiet if you're playing, watching a movie, but if you wanna play like a hardcore AAA 3D title, it really cranks up the fans. Cranking up the fans is what I do. Pilot X is not related to Perks the Pilots, Nago was asking. Perks the Pilots was not in my head, I don't think. But yeah, Inkshare's books going well. That's cool. I've got, I'm like 28% I think. And then you start that one. To the first goal, the Quill goal. And that was just, you started it a week ago or two weeks ago? Sunday. Sunday. Oh, that's good. Yeah. It's great. I have no idea of how that typically. Time means nothing to you. Well, it does just in different ways. Time is bent for Roger. It's like my back as I get older. You know, I used to think it was just because it wasn't enough calcium or protein and that I just realized it's just because as life sucks the soul out of you, you just kind of hunch over defeated. So you think it's a soul depletion? Yeah, you know, it's an emotional depletion. Can you take a supplement for that? Supposedly vitamin D. For your soul? Vitamin D for the soul? Yeah, and serotonin. Or what's the, what's the supplement that gives you serotonin or melatonin? Chocolate. Something that basically, it's for people who have sad seasonal effectiveness disorder. Vitamin E? Maybe. Whatever you lack in a lot of the fakes sunlight. Got it. Well, I'm out of the post. Thanks everybody for watching. And we hope we have shed some light and entertained you at the same time as always. We'll see you tomorrow when we resume our broadcast day. And for those of you who are watching the Night Attack Movie Draft, I'll see you tonight.