 You can pick your friends right now. I feel like I did a better than Oh, what happened to your your your video? Brett Brett Brett was it is was it when you went live or was that just a coincidence? maybe Brett if you can't hear us Brett if you can hear me Log out and then log back into Google Hangouts. I Didn't do nothing. No, he was fine. Oh Yeah, Brett we lost you there for a minute. Oh Oh, he's in because he heard me Also, I just realized I'm wearing my cat sanctuary shirt, but you can't see it because I put my hair in the wrong Just left but the back Yeah, that's the cool part just do the show like that Okay Well, just yeah, it'll be like a you know, we're new things Yeah, we're the crazy tech news show that stands backwards We're pro things on back of shirts. I guess I'd need a thing on the back of my shirt It's like yeah Ongoing project. I do love it though. I'm excited because I'm going to I'm sorry bio. Okay I just saw Okay, the chat room wrote back to you Tom back to you Sarah back to you Tom back to you Sarah get it back Maybe left all right um I was excited because I'm taking Ray the dog to get her vaccinations this afternoon and she always loves that She doesn't love it, right? No. No. She hates it. Yeah, it's usually because Vaccinations are easy at my vet because you don't have to make an appointment. You just drop by and they're like, okay cool No, we're done But they suck because you don't get to go into a waiting room So she gets all nervous out in the you know the lobby area Yeah, and start shaking and I'm like really it's not that bad. You're gonna be fine Sam peas when we take them to the vet every time that's a cat if anyone does Yes, my feline Sam. Yeah, yeah, but it's no fun. It's no fun for anybody. No Was it There was a I saw a video We were watching Animal Planet because of the puppy bowl and that I don't know if it was a promo or what but somebody was Showing like oh and at their wedding instead of flowers They had puppies and each made of honor carried a puppy down the aisle immediately were like That would pee all over you in your nice dress like How do you you put diapers on the puppy? How does that work? Don't you put diapers on monkeys and chimps? I'd never have No, not a thing I've done. I've only been around monkeys a couple of times. Oh Looky there made it You can know that text I just sent Okay, I will not read this thing that it says house things over there This is my polite way of like everything. Okay, it's stop stop breaking All right We were just talking about taking pets to be vaccinated Here what? You might need to step down the broadband sitting in hangouts Brett. Yeah on it Okay, extreme close breath That's that's good that's hangouts like high-tech way of dealing with bandwidth is like we'll just make the picture closer Is that why it zooms in like yeah shots are whiter? Well, it's fewer pixels when you're zoomed in so They never used to do this I don't know about yours All right four minutes four minutes people four minutes showtime I like it dare I Lens again Miko and I have talked. It's all good Try this right. I made it all the way through the rundown. These are good stories guys. I'm excited. Good work. Go team Thank you, Brett. We're very excited to do the show with you today. Go A's I think it's been a long time since anyone said that and meant it I I Actually beat it. I still love the A's Check this out. I'm very much loved the idea of the A's Show you my bona fides. Oh Yeah, look at that. Do you have the the new one about? What is it that shoot what's it called there's a new a book that just came out 2003 through 2008 media guides. Oh, wow That's important to have so close to your To your station there When when was the last time you opened the 2005 A's media guide I'm gonna be honest, I'm a little surprised you've ever opened it I Definitely opened it 2005. I always read through them and went to Europe. Oh, see it does show. I Guess if I like I'm out of breath from picking up But I could do it with my frozen shoulder. Oh, yeah, how's that I'm into much better I can do this now without assistance putting my arm behind my back. Nice. That's my big progress this week Did you have to have any surgery or anything on it? No, no surgery. Thank goodness. Yeah Just just rehab I Was out for like most of last summer. There was like six months there where I was totally useless I had to have shoulder surgery last year Yeah, that's why I was glad I didn't have to have the surgery because that makes the recovery time much more intense. Yeah Yeah, it's a weird feeling being like a useless 37 year old Yeah, being useless 47 year olds Fair enough. All right, sorry, how you doing there? You good? You about ready? Yep. All right well Here we Go then Daily tech news show is powered by its audience not outside organizations to find out more head to daily tech news show com slash support This is the Daily Tech news for Tuesday February 6 2018 from DT and I said quarters in Los Angeles I'm Tom Merritt and from studio feline 2.0. I'm surly and joining us from the nickel dime Oakland, California Brett rounds of ill aka Amtrak or how's it going Brett? Hello? It's great the nickel dime. That's from the way back machine Yeah, I pulled that one out of 2005, right Right like that media guide for the Oakland days. I pulled out right before the show Producer Roger Chang is here as well. How are you Roger? I'm doing good. I remember it the store is the five a dime I'm still riding the high of watching that SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch that happened about 20 minutes or so before the show that was impressive. Did you watch it Brett? I did yeah, that was super exciting I can't believe it would like what a magical world we live in after my entire lifetime not being involved in space at all I was I was Feeling jaded about the car. I was like this is impressive You don't need to put a car in there as a stunt then when they showed the car and played the Bowie song And I said don't panic on the screen. I was like, all right. This is pretty cool, right? Yeah, like that's what happens when you get like a rich nerd who really wants to do something Someday it'll be us Sarah let's start with a few tech things you should know The European Commission will review Apple's acquisition of Shazam, which was announced in December Seven European countries requested the review based on competition concerns. Oh and the trial of the Sun month week What's going on right now uber Waymo uber founder Travis Kalanick took the witness stand in that trial and said under oath That he believed Waymo is in the lead in developing autonomous cars. Remember he worked. He founded uber He would want to say uber but under oath. He had to say no, they have the lead and I guess that's important in Determining, you know, how valuable stealing information was Kalanick also admitted that he did meet with former Waymo and uber employee Anthony Levandowski in 2015 before Levandowski had left Google and if you recall the whole trial is about the fact that Levandowski is Accused of taking proprietary information from the Google division that became Waymo and then giving it to uber That's the allegation anyway New Jersey the latest state to pass an executive order that requires ISPs to follow net neutrality rules if they sell internet service to state agencies The order says these agencies may only buy internet service from ISPs that adhere to net neutrality principles and the protections Will cover both ordinary residents and government officials the order will apply to ISPs that accept state contracts on or after July 1st There's gonna be a lot of court cases around this sources tell variety that Viacom is Acquiring web video conference vid con They look so similar when they're written how next to each other. There's no way. This isn't just a typo, right? Yeah I know in 2017 VidCon drew more than 30,000 attendees many of them online video personalities It I have been at VidCon and seen Young people screaming and chasing after other young people it within a Beatles-esque kind of way Last month Viacom acquired who say a marketing firm that targets the younger demographic online with branded content So hey acquiring the comic con of the YouTube generation Maybe is a good deal for Viacom. I mean either that they have to put on their own conference Yeah, I want just buy it. Yeah and build it now here are some more top stories The Apple HomePod review embargo has lifted and the consensus seems to be general consensus looks good Sounds good, but it's three hundred forty nine dollars voice control is limited to Siri only working with Apple music No third-party service support the company might have its work cut out for it HomePod reviews published today shine a little light on upcoming features like full room Which will enable two home pods to automatically detect and balance each other to create stereo like sound the home pods Multi-room audio support via Airplay 2 will be available later this year Yeah, okay, this is this is the to me. This is the Apple fan person test right here I like Apple products when they work well with Things that I use Sometimes that's Naturally an Apple lock-in, but it's because hey, I have an iPhone. I can use it with this watch. That's fine With something like HomePod though. This does not appeal to me at all I want to have an Amazon Echo or a Google home that I can use with a bunch of different things in fact Those two feel too locked down for me as they are having something that's even more limited like this. I Mean just just music quality alone doesn't not enough to sway me Brett. What do you think? What's interesting about this is it's straight out of the Apple playbook, right? Like the iPhone came super locked down the app store didn't come until like the 3GS and we started getting third-party stuff But what they're missing here is back then they were the first to market for a smartphone like that now They're trying to use that same playbook when Siri is all right. I'm sorry Alexa is already amazing Google's fine like they're both better than Siri. Maybe not better at sound quality, but certainly a better like personal assistant Yeah, you know a lot of the reviews. It's like you hear the refrain of like I love Apple But this is perplexing to me even as an Apple fan You know, it seems beautiful sound is good I mean Apple has promised on that but Yes, it's um, it's it's expensive. It's limited. You know, you don't have the third-party support at all It's like it's a really tough sell. It's a better It's a 1.0 and you expect them to be amazing at 3.0 But but I mean they should have started 3.0 this time How long are we gonna be all like Siri's not that great? I mean Siri has never been that great and it's been years Yeah, yeah, and that's a big part of why you would buy a home pod I'm not gonna count them out yet Apple tends to come out with things that aren't great at first and get better, but they don't always so I'm putting this somewhere between Apple Watch and Apple Hi-Fi if you remember that iPod doc that's a pretty low end of the spectrum. That's a that's below the home buds better than that a letter from Apple to US Lawmakers in February 2nd and made public Tuesday said Apple has seen strong demand for replacement iPhone batteries And the company is considering offering rebates to those who paid full price for battery Replacements remember back in December Apple lowered the price to $29. Apple also said it updated software in January last year to slow Phones with weak batteries to prevent crashes But it admits it did not update the consumer notes to highlight the change until February Because Apple says it wanted to confirm that the update indeed reduced the crashes Apple doesn't call them crashes Old people and then still just like kept an eye on it Well, I I think I understand the logic of what they're saying is you don't want to tell people this stops crashes And then the next month find out. Yeah, I really didn't stop crashes But you still should tell people you're slowing down their iPhone in certain cases. I agree with you there Apple also said iPhone 8 iPhone 8 plus and iPhone 10 models include hardware updates that allow a more advanced performance Management system that more precisely allows iOS to anticipate and avoid an unexpected shutdown It's a little bit of a change of tune for them They previously said they might roll out this performance slow down to save crashes to other hardware in the future this time in the letter They said they didn't say they would never do it But they said these new phones have a different system sort of leaving you to fill in so they probably won't need this I Love the much bigger deal than I thought it was going to be at the beginning, you know Yeah, the headline on that first article seems so silly though, right like Apple Whoa, we have a lot of demand for new batteries when we told everyone they suck It's like it's like a GM came out and said hey There's a small chance that all four tires on the new car might explode And then like miracle of miracles. We saw a jump in demand on tires last month I mean, okay, your your iPhone's battery causing a Unexpected shutdown is not the same your tires exploding, but I go I go you're going with that Yeah, I may have used a little bit of hyperbole to prove my point But the point is the same like when you when your stuff is broke And then you tell everyone they can they can fix it for a cheap price like of course people are gonna jump on that And I agree Sarah this this has Turned into a big deal. I mean we've got congressional testimony Being required and it's all because they didn't tell people I mean, I I actually believe in what Apple's doing here Which is putting in a system to prevent unexpected shutdowns I don't mind if my phone is a tiny bit slower if it doesn't crash all the time like that's fair But and even their explanation is like, well, okay, you know, they weren't like trying to like upset everybody It just didn't work out. Just tell me you're doing it. I think that that's what they they blew here Yeah, the problem is it should have just been a toggle in in settings like your low battery feature and you get to opt into it Moving on to Google which has added augmented reality stickers to its motion stills app Android users can use it to stabilize shaky video add motion text or put a virtual chicken in the middle of your video I knew I was gonna laugh you place the chicken or the gingerbread man on a flat surface in the camera's field view Then you shoot a video and then the chicken or the cookie man or whoever will stand place as you move around It doesn't use a our core so it can't match objects to scale But it can work on any Android device with a gyroscope This is cool and it actually reminds me a little bit of how Apple's been doing their their AR kit where it's device independent. It just doesn't have as many features I think it's smart for Google to do this and bring it to the widest number of phones in the world And you know any anything with a gyroscope in it? Basically that that's you know within the last several years is gonna be able to put a chicken in your hand Or t-rex, yeah, I This is one of those things like Microsoft did a similar thing where you could put You could put virtual objects in a real scene and we played around that when that first showed up for Windows 10 The fun to play around with I I don't know that it's really and maybe I'm just in the wrong circles But I don't know that it's really catching on with the kids. Maybe it is I Don't think I think it's more like catch up Like Google is just making sure that they're throwing the same developer tools out there that everyone else is and It's kind of up to the developers to decide whether or not there's something fun in here Yeah, that's I know snapchat has all kinds of AR like filters and Instagram has some too Stabilizing shaky video too. I mean, yes, that what I get, you know, like I would use that Amazon announced that starting Wednesday February 7th. It's removing the lock screen ads From phones it sells in its prime exclusive phone program What this has been is you can buy a phone through Amazon and you'd get ads on the lock screen But you get a discount on the phone the phone will be a lot cheaper The removal will supposedly help fast unlocking tech so they can sell phones that have facial recognition and fingerprint sensors But it's gonna raise the price of the phone So you could still get mid-range phones from LG and Moto Nokia 6 as part of this plan But the discount won't be as much still have a discount Just won't be as much as it used to be but you won't have ads on your lock screen anymore The only promotional consideration will be they will come pre-installed with prime video prime music Amazon apps What's interesting about this one is like what what an afterthought the lock screen has become Like in the the first smartphones. It didn't have anything to do with privacy or buying anything It was just a way to not but dial and now we've reached a point where it's it's it's like this Clujie after story like we don't even really need them anymore with the tech that we have like that can sense whether or not we're actually typing or whether or not we literally did but dial and Privacy is app-to-app now. So it's it's it's a weird thing that That Amazon is realizing this first Well, and it's sort of like a pre-roll, right? It's like there are just better ways to advertise Rather than you know, it's a thing smack in the middle of the lock screen I wonder if that's part of it with facial recognition and fingerprint IDs You don't spend as much time looking at the lock screen So I wonder if advertisers are like we're just not getting enough awareness out of it People don't look at their lock screens anymore Easy ad to ignore to even if you are looking at it like you're looking at it when you want to be doing something very specific That is not looking at an ad Yeah, I you know, I'm I for one salute not having ads Token me in the face on my lock screen. So there you go Yeah, I mean if I liked a phone for all of the reasons I would not want ads on my lock screen Just kind of janky looking right? Yeah La Figueroa reports Francis High Court has ruled that drivers are not allowed to touch a smartphone Unless they're parked in a designated parking spot with the engine off an exception made for drivers who have been in an accident Or had a vehicle breakdown violators can be fined 135 euros so the reason the High Court ruled this is the law said you couldn't use your phone while you were Circulating in traffic and the court was deciding what that meant the court decided that means You're not in park or you're on the side of the road in park, but you're not in a parking spot They're like you're you're in traffic and that's that's what the law means So you can't touch your phone while you're doing that So this would mean in France now you can't pull over to the side of the road Put the car in park and talk on the phone unless you've pulled into a legitimate parking spot and turned your car off Like I turned your car off, right? That's that's a good point You can't even if you're in a legitimate parking spot that engine has to be off according to the court I mean You know, I mean it would be super sucky if that was the same restriction here because I know a lot of people text and drive But it's like nobody should you know, you got it like how do you change behavior? It's a pretty you know, you got to find people sure nobody should but don't you feel like this is misaligning the that um Like uh, I'm sorry. I'm also on a cough medicine right now, but Why wouldn't um, why wouldn't you just think? Oh, well it finds the same now. I might as well just do it while I'm driving I I mean that's a really good point because I am very strict about not talking on the phone while I'm driving Uh, and I have pulled over to the side of the road And put the car in park to have a conversation with brian brushwood on the phone Uh But I would have been in violation of this law So at that point would I have gone and found a parking lot to have that conversation or would I have just like You know, and I'll just put a month speaker phone. I'm sure it'll be fine Right and and to me it's the distraction. That's the problem not Not the the holding of the phone But moving over to the side I think it's fine if you can move over to the side of the road for other reasons You should be able to move over the side the road for this Yeah, it seems strange. It'll be interesting to see whether or not it has any kind of effect at all The thing too is like in my car. It's like, you know, I can connect to my car's speaker So it's relatively hands-free But the more you use the hands-free feature the more you're kind of like Needing to interact with the phone. Just you know for little things here and there. So it's like it's almost like A gateway drug like the phone should be like in my trunk or something where I just can't even touch it Yeah, well, that's why I like things like android auto Uh, because they they they put it in an automobile oriented interface for you and I think that's better. Yeah Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines You can get it on the amazon echo on the google home and the anchor app As well as there's a podcast at daily tech headlines dot com So last week telegram the messaging app, uh, if you follow this show You remember was suspended from the ios app store Turns out the reason it was suspended was because of concerns about child porn being transmitted over telegram system Now this is a hard one to maybe wrap your head around if you don't use telegram We're not talking about individuals on what is a secure messaging service that's supposed to be unsnoopable Sending illicit material to each other Not we're not saying the telegram wants that to happen. They should have no way of knowing that given their system What they're talking about are plugins and add-ons and bots things like that that can be known like Hey, add this bot to your telegram system and it will send you this kind of content. There's legitimate uses for that It sounds like there was an illegitimate use of that going on The way we found out the reason at all was because apple's phil schiller who's in charge of the app store emailed an apple user nine to five mac reader elyja emailed phil schiller about it and schiller wrote back The telegram apps were taken down off the app store because the app store team was alerted to illegal content Specifically child pornography in the apps after verifying the existence of the illegal content The team took the apps down from the store alerted the developer and notified the proper authorities including the national center for missing and exploited children Fair enough. I I think that is the right move for apple to do I think telegram did the right thing and in cooperating and making sure that they got whatever was causing this out of the system But brett as as an app developer my my first reaction when I heard this story was here Apple goes again with vague excuses that are hard to define I mean talk about your experience As a as an app maker with the eye with this kind of communication Yeah, I I never in a million years would have thought I'd have mixed feelings about an article about child pornography But what what is most shocking to me is uh, it's so tough to get information out of apple about What they don't like about your app if you happen to get If you happen to not get approved for the app store for whatever reason or if it happens get taken down They do give very vague reasons if they give reasons at all So what blows my mind is that they gave very specific reasons To a person who wrote in asking what was going on And especially when it's something like like the like the impossible black eye of child pornography Like that's that's the thing that if I were making telegram. I would not want apple to be Withholding from me also just odd pr messaging like Bill Schiller emails, you know just some consumer and the nine to five mac gets a like and that's the first anyone's heard of this It's it's very strange And I would I would say that from my experience the the developer end of apple is the worst run part of apple And largely because of communication gaps like this. It's such a strange world Yeah, there's a few moving pieces here to to think about as you're making up your mind what you think about this out there One is maybe they told telegram what the actual problem was in this case Maybe apple did communicate that directly. I feel like they probably did in this case But that's not usual. That's what you're saying is they don't maybe they did that because it was telegram And maybe it was such a big big problem That's one of the problems is like, oh, so you have to be big or in a special case to to get a specific reason out of apple That's frustrating for app developers. Right. And but the other thing is that Telegram decided they didn't want to make public what that reason was if they were told And then apple like you said went and and and told a reader of nine to five mac About it in a side channel Which just I know steve jobs used to do this and tim cook has done it where they answer a question To an emailer instead of the press and it's kind of apples way of looking like hey We talked to the people right but this seems like an odd choice to do that Sure, and like the the phrasing on the actual email that phil schiller sent is so strange because he He has an opportunity to just say The app store because the app store team was alerted to illegal content. Yeah period And instead there's this parenthetical specifically child pornography and that's So unnecessary from the app developer standpoint like I I don't need you tying my app to child pornography I don't want it there. Clearly. I want to remove it as quickly as possible And thank you for alerting me to it, but also don't tie child pornography to other users To to my brand that's crazy I mean in apples defense They are trying to combat the perception that they're arbitrary right and they they know that a lot of people use telegram for political dissidents or or whistleblowing and it didn't want to appear as if they were cracking down on that I think that's why they decided like we need to make it clear that it was a really really bad thing And that's why we did it to telegram Uh, but there's this other side of it. It's like well, okay In this unique case. I see I see what you're doing But it doesn't change the fact that your communications are generally pretty poor Right. Yeah, the other thing that's infuriating about the app store is just that there are so many different people who have control of different segments of the app store So like if you are trying to get a hold of someone for like Feature requests or something you might not even be talking to someone at apple You might be talking to someone at their ad agency for the ipad or something And then the ipad apps are a different agency than the iphone apps and everything It's just it's infuriating how bad their communication is around the developer side of the app store And I don't want to I don't want to single out apple The the daily tech headline skill uh for amazon got taken out for a couple weeks in october And it took us a couple weeks to fix it because we couldn't figure out why Yeah, it kept saying the feed wasn't validated and we're like well it works as a podcast It's obviously not the feed itself And we finally figured out Uh that it had to do with the server that it was on I don't remember the details now, but changing servers is what fixed it and And it was because we had changed servers To a different server that that it caused the problem in the first place anyway It's a problem with a lot of these app stores and it's I think it's indicative of a general problem with customer service Not just for developers, but for everyone where you say hey, I've got a problem with your product And these companies are not set up To handle the scale of customer requests, right? I don't know what the answer to that is though No, you know the answer to that the answer that mr. Eater may I'm like, you know Well, the answer to that in something like youtube moderation has been for youtube to hire 10 000 people, right? The answer in facebook to fight fake news is to staff up it it is It is something where the tech companies thought this is so cool We can use algorithms and it'll just make it happen and it turned out that there was an aspect of it that they couldn't handle with algorithms Yeah, and this has been infuriating since like 2000 you could never get someone on the phone at google for ad words or something Yeah, uh and companies have gotten better about it But it's still it's still something that that drives people nuts. So I was hoping maybe that brett would come in and go you guys I'm an app developer. I make an app work on an app every day things are so much different now Doesn't say like it's not it's not at all. It's it's not and it's I mean I had a situation where uh, we We didn't not get approved by the app store instead. We moved into an in review phase And then we stayed in that in review phase for a month and a half and we got locked into it So oh no, so we couldn't We couldn't pull it to to post a new update and we couldn't post a new update until that one got approved or dis or Or just kicked out. Yeah And you couldn't get a hold of anybody to help couldn't get a hold of anyone The only phone numbers that exist are the phone numbers to talk to people who you want to talk to about a feature request or something So we called the people To say like hey, uh, I know you're the guys who would feature or not feature my app on the app store But is there anyone that you can talk to to figure out what's going on and the answer is simply no Like they don't even know who that person is. They don't know how to reach out to them So we just had to sit on our hands for a month and a half until that approval finally went through And then immediately we had two other updates that we just pushed out as quickly as possible That's yeah, and that that is not ideal folks. No, hey terrible Uh, thanks everybody who participates in our sub ready you can submit stories of vote on them at daily tech news show Right at dot com and join the fun over at our facebook group facebook's your thing facebook.com slash groups slash daily tech news show Let's Find out what's the thing of the day sarah Chris christensen at air on air bnb's move into real estate This is chris christensen with amateur traveler with another tech in travel minute Interesting story that I saw this week about air bnb Now some of you have stayed in air bnb or maybe even like me been an air bnb host But there is a lot of controversy about this company in terms of coming in and taking up a lot of the apartments in a city So that it affects the rental market by people turning apartments into air bnb Locations, but apparently air bnb has secured a 200 million dollar investment And they're going to roll out their own branded apartment buildings across the united states They are in fact building a set of apartments a 324 unit building in kissimmee florida near orlando You can rent an apartment in this building and then you can rent it out on air bnb for up to 180 days per year The idea seems to be to change the image here that we're Taking away from the market. We're going to add rental units But then allow them to be available for air bnb It's an interesting idea and a 200 million dollar pr campaign in some ways I'm chris christensen from amateur traveler. Ah, I can't wait to see the try Hotel, I mean it's like yeah build more units and then nobody's gonna be mad that you're you know taking away rentals for everybody else It's like they're uninventing the hotel I feel like the margins have to be worse doing it that way than just keeping the rooms for themselves and renting them out 365, right? Maybe although they're renting out the apartments 365 so they get the money twice Right, they get the rent from the the people who live there And then they get a cut of the air bnb rentals that the people who are renting from them get When they sub rent out and the landlord's not gonna be mad at you change my mind tom. Yeah Well, and some of the charms like stain and someone's actual house, right? But air bnb probably knows what rentals tend to you know, they're like they're the cool ones So like that's what you could model your hotel after Yeah, I can't wait to see them try this in Barcelona. That's all I'm gonna say. Let's check the mailbag Sarah All right adam and always sunny san diego says I thought I'd share a voicemail I got from a scammer saying they were from del I was taken aback because the voice in the voicemail he left He verified my full name knew my computer model even my service tag So I did a google search There was a del hack of some sort over a year ago. Ars technica wrote about it Didn't have any luck getting del to admit What really happened or exactly what customer info was taken and what the company was doing about it I found it odd. They're calling me now considering how long ago this was so maybe just a word or the wise They're still trying to use the stolen information to contact customers You know, I he attached the phone call and I didn't want to play it because there were some numbers that he says in his Email were legitimate numbers. I'm like, I don't want to give that kind of information out That was a pretty convincing sounding call. It's like, hey, we're calling from del tax It was just bored enough to sound like an actual Tech support call and like call this number and then the giveaway though Was when he's like or go to this web address the web address didn't end in del.com and I'm like, well, hold on now Talk about like a scale of customer service not working in your favor I've never really considered this before but it's going to take millennia for people to use all 145 million pieces of information from the Expedia hack. Yeah One call at a time experience. Yeah. No, I knew what you meant. Yeah, uh, that's crazy They have so much work to do. Of course. He didn't get a call until years after the del hack Yeah, because I took him that long to plow through it all. That's that's crazy. Maybe These folks who are being employed by scammers could get employed by I don't know apple google amazon As actual tech support that actually supported people. I don't know how you make that transition though What was the url? Not del.com. What was it? Oh, no, I'm not going to give out the url But but it ended in like dot fr I think Certain dead giveaways like that's france and it wasn't del.fr wasn't that straightforward. So Like ff or something. Anyway, uh, That is uh, that is crazy. Thank you for uh bringing that to our attention adam Because there may be some people out there would get fooled by this and so it's good to have this on your radar So if you get this call, you think all right, hold on. Are you really from done? Right? Yeah, like step one is like if they call you be suspicious step two And so on Thank you to brett roundsville for joining us today. Let folks know what you're up to these days. Oh shucks Uh, I'm up to a whole bunch of stuff, but you can just follow me on uh, twitter at am checker am tre k k e r I just started posting some new stuff about a book. I'm writing about my old adventures Excellent. This is the the m trekker adventures. I would assume it is. Yeah. I just got a new agent It is a barack obama's former literary agent. No, wow Hey, that's a towel. Yeah, and uh, and the working title is uh, living a lifetime in 479 days Why why did the president fire this agent though? That's what I want to know Uh, well No, um, when you when you're big enough, you don't use an agent anymore. Yeah, you just otherwise I take 15% Totally that makes perfect sense Well, thank you to everyone who supports the show at patreon.com slash d tns cool thing the patreon launch today is called lens It's basically snapchat within patreon. Uh, it's not a competitor to snapchat It's meant to just be a way for creators to send cool little videos So if you have the patreon app, you might check it out I've been using it this afternoon as I was getting ready for the show Uh, it does cause notifications, which uh, mico and I were talking about on the creator page It'd be nice if you had some more granularity over that. I try not to abuse the privilege But I have been doing a few Lenses not snaps lenses in there. It's just one of the perks you get If you support us on patreon at patreon.com slash d tns Our email address is feedback at daily tech news show dot com We're live monday through friday at 4 30 p.m eastern 21 30 utc at alphakeek radio dot com and diamond club dot tv On our email our website is daily tech news show dot com Back tomorrow with patrick norton as our guest scott johnson had uh had to go somewhere else He'll be back next week patrick norton with us tomorrow. Here's a little scott johnson for you though This show is part of the frog pants network Get more at frog pants dot com I hope you have enjoyed this program I forgot this one doesn't have scott voicing it All right good show Thanks bret. Yeah, thanks guys. Uh, I appreciate you having me on that was fun Yeah, maybe I hope it was maybe a little cathartic for you Uh, um, I refrained from screaming so i'm pretty proud of myself Yeah Next time i'll try not to be hopped up on uh, cold medicine too. That'd be a nice touch So your anger flows through Oh, man There are so many dumb things that apple does that uh, like we'd never even have time to touch on I even had a thing recently where I started getting um So by far the worst app in the entire app store is one of apple's apps It's their itunes connect app Where you where you get your uh statistics your developer statistics But I had a thing for like a month and a half. I was getting 10 times the normal downloads according to their stats And they were all coming from china Without anyone ever actually clicking on the app store Uh page for the mission pick app. I have I have no answer for it whatsoever I wrote to apple three times and literally never heard a word back at all And then it just went away just went away after a month and a half It was the craziest thing that they're just a total, uh, never mind They're a total what should we call this show roger promises a chicken in every phone What goes up musk brings down Wait a chicken in every phone because the ar thing got it. Okay, sorry apple telegrams reason for app removal Because it's slow to respond. That's funny Apple twice the price half the features or just hadn't a telegram apple home pod farmer from a home run See Why did the chicken cross your vr Viacon is pretty funny. I don't know. I think it I think out of context It's a little it probably doesn't work but Um chicken. Oh, this one's good. Uh chickens and phones when cars fly Wow, because a car literally flew And chickens in your The sunken place for app stores We're not no no Fido I like the chicken in every phone Chicken in every phone. Yeah, all right I'm good with that Google for president Can you imagine a hive mind? I would prefer I think You say that But let me just say every time people say well, I would prefer x Then x happens Yeah, so stop saying that then you're like, oh, wait a minute. I really didn't mean x It's totally kidding all jokes It's a long way of me saying careful what you wish for Yeah, you just me Are you still in the east bay? I'm still in tom's condo. Yeah I didn't know if you wanted me to say that No, no, it's we've we've said it in public before. Okay. Yeah Cool. Yep. Still uh shipping tom money every month. Yep Fuck work on time too. I never get to complain Yeah, I lean and I really not I lean and I painted that red wall back there Yeah, I remember when the I mean came out to me. So what do you think of this and she gave me a swatch of red For the wall. It's really great because I like Unbeknownst had this red couch and storage that matches perfectly. It's great So thanks Eileen Are those still the red curtains over there? We didn't take those, huh? Oh, no, no those got those got the x pretty quick. Those are gone. Okay. Yeah I have red curtains here now Not the same ones here I just love me some red curtains around It's it's just they're very they make you feel rich They make me feel like i'm in the red lodge talking backwards with a dwarf. Where are you sarah? Black lodge. I'm sorry black lodge. You're right. I lost my twin peaks card there red curtains though Where are you sarah? What part of the world should be kind of cool? he uh sarah brett's ask you a question I'm sorry. I didn't hear you. I where are you right now? You're still in san francisco Uh, no, I live in venice down in la. Oh, holy cow. That's fun. Yeah. Yeah. How do you like it from tom? Yeah, it's actually ridiculously close to me like 10 minutes 10 minutes. Yeah Uh maricio's down in venice too, right? Yeah, he's over there in that the same way like I can walk to his house easily He's really close. Oh cool. We got a little mafia down here. Yeah, that's fun Connor kill patrick from uh I fanboy and Uh frequent guest on damn fine podcast the podcast I did about twin peaks when I pretended I really did know things about twin peaks Uh, he lives over there too. Yeah Yeah, I uh, I missed southern california I would totally move back down there in a heartbeat, but I don't think I could ever convince katie of that You can move a bit of this house You don't own it though. What would be the point? No, I know it's not the same That'd be such a shame I know that I know that uh, if I did move out of here then justin would be Justin would be in my way. I wouldn't be able to move out because he'd be trying to dump his stuff in He would just be moving the birds in Yeah Oh crap, what did we decide to call this show? Awesome There's still some work to be done, but all the google promises chicken and I'm really proud of it. It's looking good I laugh when I read it. So uh, I'm happy That's important. Yeah I just sent the third draft of the proposal to the agent uh late last night. So It should start going to publish her soon-ish That's exciting You know, I'm actually getting to the point where I may want to try the agent root Have you never had one? Never done it not for books now because yeah Well, I mean, I've never had an agent not for books, but just you know, you can get by Yeah, I don't think there's a a lot of reasons to have it Especially if you are going to write often like self publishing is a really viable route But since I was just gonna this is kind of a one-off. I don't expect to ever write another book Um, or at least if I do it will be a similarly strange reason So I I felt like I just needed to get as many people on my side as possible Yeah, I'd like to to try it out because I actually had a really good experience with ink shares Which is sort of like All the benefits of a publisher Without the need of the agent in the slush read right because you do the crowdfunding to get it going. That was great I'm definitely doing another book with ink shares. So like well, maybe I should try the whole agent route and just see how that Yeah, yeah, it'd be interesting to see how it goes. I mean, uh, it'd be interesting to see how many times I get rejected. Yeah Uh, Andrew has an agent now and it's uh, it's been great for him Yeah, I know Andrew's kicking. He's doing great. I'm I'm lensing where the old fireplace used to be so people get perspective Someone was asking in chat about it. Yeah, yeah, Andrew's busy too these days I mean, he's always been busy, but uh, that's he he is to a point where he is uh He's busy at one thing over and over again, which is a miracle for him Well, it used to be uh, when he first came to la it was around the same time that I came and we would get lunch every so often And it was always be him saying whenever Uh, and now trying to match up our schedules has gotten tricky because yeah Both doing things. Yeah Well, that reminds me buy my book Feveria at tom merritt books.com speaking of books I've got one This one's self published. So I really need you to buy it Yeah I actually just updated my website for the first time in six years yesterday. Wow six years. No kidding. Wow What I posted uh Was the motivation after all that time Uh, well the the link to that website is in the book proposal So I wanted to not look like it had been stagnant for six years Sure, um makes sense But I I also just posted so like the the way a book proposal works for a non-fiction book I don't know if you guys are familiar, but it's it's usually like a an anecdote to get people interested like a like a five page hook of some kind and then some marketing details and some other stuff and then uh, um Chapter summaries and then a big sample chapter, which is like 20 pages or so. Oh, nice So I I just posted the that anecdote the first like five page hook as a as a post on am checker.com cool Yeah, I'll take a look at that actually Yeah, it's about the time I almost got arrested in ohio first beating Nice, I love how most of your stories are about almost getting arrested I wouldn't say most not about arrested, but it's like there's that time I almost got crushed by a bulldozer or you know, it's like Yeah, like they're tales of true danger. Yeah, I feel like entirely too many times in my life I've come way too close to bad news and it's not it's not bs. It's not like Oh, no down to my door and a car went by I almost got hit by it. No, no, it's these are real These are real situations. No, it's like like, uh, like blood stains on my pants stories Yeah That's how you know, you had fun that was the pitch to the agent actually right there is I said that because there was a line in the proposal about about blood stains on my pants and uh, it was it was circled with a big what explain I was like, oh, I don't know. I kind of like to Kind of like leaving you wondering that's the hook makes you want to read the book near tragedy the am trekkers story Well, yeah, you got to you got to uh, make your way down here Yeah, I actually we might come down in uh, march. We have some friends that are, um Doing something that we're supposed to be at so we'll try and spend some time down there march madness Not march madness. That's a trademark term Who's face acts? What a fun day on twitter. No kidding All you have to do to have a fun day on twitter is spend billions of dollars launching a really heavy rocket into space carrying a car Oh Now glad I forgot. Bye Thank you. You're welcome my favorite, um Amtrek or cop story is far too short to actually put in there, uh for the proposal, but I was driving, uh A 1984 Cadillac Eldorado hearse across the country And I was in I was in Missouri And uh, I stopped for gas And the late the gas station attendant and this is a pretty good impression. So Bear with me, but which part of Missouri? Uh Far west side. I was just about to go into the next state. Okay. Um, and she said, uh Y'all got any dead bodies in there? And I was like, no Well, kind of I've just always found it's a lot a lot easier to smuggle drugs across state lines in the body of corpses Uh, and she didn't smile at all. She didn't think it was funny. She didn't laugh even a little bit Uh, so I pumped my gas and I went about my business and then I got pulled over like seven miles down the road And the cop goes, uh, do you know how fast you're going? And I was like, uh, The speed limit and he like poked his head in to look in the back of the hearse Uh, and saw that there was no dead body back there. He's like, all right. Keep up the good work and then Keep up the good work He probably You know what? Here's my imaginary backstory Is that woman at that gas station is a thorn in his side And always always calling him like this couple looks suspicious and they just came in And so he when he looked in and saw there was nothing there Said keep up the good work because you needled her and he was happy about it That'd be great. Or just like everyone treats her like that everyone that walks in gives her some ridiculous story about transgressions happening in their car Hey, were you were you the one I sent the information about? Remember I had a guest on uh, that texela on the system a while back about making alcohol Uh, I don't I don't remember getting anything like that if you're talking to me, but I have definitely made alcohol With dr. Tiki rudge Yes, I actually don't have that email I can dm That would be the way that I would ask sure If that's cool to you Yeah, no, I I just need to I don't have any contact info Okay Secret oh speaking of secrets. I'm gonna stop the broadcast Who's the email to well, we got to bring the hearse around Uh, so yeah, Patrick Gordon tomorrow and uh, we'll see you then. All right. Thanks everybody. Bye run. Bye. Bye. Thanks for the fun