 bean curd and stuff like that. Tempe. Tempe makes some pretty good chili. I mean, I appreciate what you're saying, Roger. The pinnacle of chili for me also is beef. It's like having a meatless steak. No. Steak is a side of cow. Well, at that point, it's just a tasty thing. Roger's bare knuckle today. He is. He is. I don't know. I'm just irritable. Heading into the holidays. It's that time of the year. I feel like Peter Venkman on the Ghostbusters on during Christmas Day. If you're not a fan of the real Ghostbusters cartoon, it's... By the way, this Uber story with the Arizona thing definitely was not leaked. It was in an emailed statement, which means that not even poor Marisa Kendall can get credit for, like, you know, having the sources. She just got the email like everybody else. She was the fastest to Twitter. And Uber spokesman wrote in an emailed statement. I mean, it could just be emailed to her. So it could just be, it could have just came. Oh, you got the link to her story now. Yeah. It came with a picture of the cars leaving on the truck. Nice. Oh, yeah. That's what she tweeted was the picture of the cars. Oh, right. I actually saw the pictures before I made the joke about them driving themselves. I knew, I knew better. I forgot. You ready? Yeah. Oh, and now I have also a little, a little, uh, what's it called? A little, uh... The demonica? Inspiracy theory on this. Oh, okay. Excellent. Love me a good conspiracy theory. Here we go. Daily Tech News Show is powered by you, the audience. To find out more, head to dailytechnewshow.com. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, December 22nd, 2016. I'm Tom Merritt, Justin, Robert Young, co-hosting with me today on a Thursday, last one of the year for us together. It's been a hell of a 2016, Tom. Uh, you know, this is, uh, been, been a real, uh, obviously up and down year in so many different facets and technology is certainly one of them. Actually, I'll say, let me, let me ask you this, of everything else that, that surrounds our daily lives. I almost feel like tech was the most calm of everything. Fairly stable. Yeah. We had a net neutrality fight. We had some exploding note sevens. That's about as, as like crazy as it got. But even then, yeah, like when, when, when your hottest story, pun intended, is a product recall. Yeah. Right. You know, like we had to dress that up with like the, the planes and stuff like that. Like that, that wasn't like there was, there was a huge gigantic seed change. So I'll tell you what, in a fairly stable year, I'm glad that we were able to cover it in as much depth as we did. Well, uh, one company that has tried its darnedest to bring some controversy is Uber. And we're going to talk about them storming out of San Francisco on a truck filled with Volvo's, uh, in a little bit. They have, they have decided to end their test. Uh, California told them that they'll lose their vehicle registrations if they don't stop. And so they're stopping and leaving. We got more on that in a bit. Uh, a couple other things. Tesla has claimed the top spot in the annual consumer reports owner satisfaction survey. So consumer reports, uh, for the first time in a little bit, send in Tesla some love, uh, even if it is based on owner survey, not I didn't say it. I didn't say Pokemon go for the Apple watch launched. It can integrate its step counts into Apple fitness apps. Guys? Anyone? No? Now here are some more top stories. The Raspberry Pi Foundation announced it has ported its Pixel desktop environment to run on x86 machines. That means it can run on your Mac and your PC. Foundation thinks that this can help students who work on Raspberry Pi's at school and then they go home and their parents have Macs or PCs. So they'll be able to keep working on this when they get home. System image will include all the software you would find on the ARM version for the Raspberry Pi with two exceptions. They couldn't port Minecraft or Wolfram Mathematica over because the licenses only allowed those two pieces to run on Raspberry Pi hardware. But everything else can, can be brought over and you can continue your work and then bring it back to the Raspberry Pi when you're ready. Raspberry Pi has over the last, I would say what, five years? When did they really kind of crack into the mainstream? Become one of the most unlikely kind of like retail brand names that I can remember. And it's great because the idea behind it is so rad. The BBC reports that the Raspberry Pi is the most popular computer in the British Isles. That's amazing. That's fantastic. And I applaud their ability to let people use their environment wherever they want to go. Because that really is so in keeping with what their philosophy is as a company in total. Yeah. So I just, I think this is a good move. It obviously, you know, it doesn't mean that you can do everything on a desktop that you could do on a Raspberry Pi. It's just the desktop environment, obviously. You're still running on a 38 on an x86 environment. But yeah, this, this will help students for sure. Canada CRTC has categorized broadband as a quote basic telecommunication service and quote, all citizens should have access to unlimited data at speeds of at least 50 down and 10 up as well as access to the latest mobile wireless technology. The government has committed $750 million to expand connectivity in areas that do not meet the new minimum standards. Wireless service providers must also address the needs of people with hearing and speech difficulties within six months. Canada has decreed, Tom, and they've got $650 million Canadian dollars behind their edict. Do you think this is good, bad? Not so good. A Mountie always gets his bandwidth. You know, they've said that for ages now. I, I think this is interesting because this is the Canada's FCC, right? Saying, hey, you know what? You should get this amount of service somehow. And if the marketplace isn't bringing it to you, we'll do it and make sure that everybody has access to this somehow. So the devil's all in the details. If, if this in places means figuring out how to foster some competition, figuring out how to get some private companies to roll out, or maybe in certain rural areas, the government does just plop down and say, you know what, we're going to string the lines because nobody else will. I think that's fine, but it's all about how you go about rolling it out. I can't argue with the ultimate goal of saying, hey, everybody deserves 50 down and 10 up. We constantly are revising our target of what is acceptable internet use. And that's because the internet and its uses keep changing at a breakneck pace. When I first read this article, I was thinking, you know, back in the day, the idea of electricity being something that all citizens much have as a basic service would have been laughable. Like, oh, come on, you can't bring your own water up from the well. You need to have some electric pump do it. You can't light a candle. Like, sure, electricity is nice, but you don't need it. And I think we all would think otherwise these days like, no, you know what? I really do need electricity. Our society is built on that now. So this is another piece in the slow motion development of the internet becoming an essential way we live. Well, and state and federal governments of the United States thought the way you thought about electricity and did do gigantic federal spending and statewide spending for electricity. I learned that in a documentary called Oh Brother Where Are Thou? What is interesting to me here is I don't know enough about, I mean, number one, Canada provides a lot of challenges. There are a lot of remote areas of Canada. Absolutely, yeah. We're saying that every citizen deserves this. And we are going to put $750 million to expand connectivity. I don't know if that's even a realistically large enough number to do what you said, which is actually string things up or provide technology, physical elements of technology to get that level of internet to people. However, who knows? Who knows where, I heard a feedback from people when I was talking about this story earlier today that Canada does have fairly crappy private internet that it's bad. And maybe this is just what it needs to get it kickstarted. Yeah, and the CRTC says this money is going to be spent over five years and they still expect 90% of Canadians to get the new speeds by 2021. So they're realistic about those difficulties. Like, yeah, there's some places where string and wires just ain't going to do it. We're going to have to figure something else out. And maybe somebody like Facebook or Google with their air-based internet can come in and fill those gaps. But the one thing I do like, and like I say, the devil's in the details, I do like them saying, hey, you know what, we think there's a standard floor and let's figure out how to make this happen for people. Indeed. Google product manager Jeff Chang told The Verge that Google is not giving up on wearables. They're going to launch two new flagship Android Wear watches in Q1 2017, along with, as we already knew, Android Wear 2.0, the update to the Android Watch operating system. The watches will be branded by the manufacturer, not by Google. So they compared it to Nexus devices. They say, like our Nexus tablets and our Nexus phones, these will be Nexus-like watches. Although they didn't go so far as to say these will be Nexus watches. I'm curious how they're going to handle that. Android Wear 2.0 will bring standalone apps, Android Pay, Google's voice assistant, and a few other features. The next developer preview of that operating system is expected in January. And Google said, besides the two flagships that we're involved with, other people are committed to rolling out watches all year long. So there should be more announcements at CES and at Bazelle World, the watch and jewelry trade show, March 23rd through the 30th in Switzerland. How on a scale, on the grand Google scale, I'm going to give you a 1 to 5, how Google is announcing new products three days before Christmas, or two days before Christmas. Well, there have been some numbers kicking around all month, and a new set of them came from a new analyst yesterday saying the wearables market is dead. And of course, you had the bad press of two of the major Android Wear watchmakers deciding to delay their watches till next year, and one of them saying, you know what, we don't know when we'll make another Android Wear watch. So I don't know about that. You always bring up the timing. They're always good questions. I don't know whether the timing is because it's going into the holidays, or sometime before the holidays, we need to make this announcement, and this was the fastest they could make it. Oh, no, no, no. I think it's totally ignorant of the holidays, which is kind of the underlying thing with all these Google stuff. Whenever the announcements are weird, it's like, man, they really are all about the tech, and so little about the retail of it all, like the big sizzle cell, which companies like Apple and Microsoft even are very focused on, no, we put on a show and we have people come out and Bruno Mars sings, and he's wearing a watch, and we put it in a Lady Gaga video, like that this is very, very Google. Now, let's get to, again, the elephant in the room. Our wearables dead, because here's what I have to say, and again, I still wear my first generation Apple watch. I didn't buy the second generation Apple watch because you have to explain to me what the killer feature, beyond just a really cool way that can echo notifications out to my wrist, that is there for a wearable. Because right now, if you're just saying, no, no, no, I swear to God, this one's nicer, maybe it runs a little bit faster. Well, for what it does well, it doesn't take a lot to do it. There's a reason that Pebble was able to run a fairly popular product on e-ink, that lasted a billion years. It doesn't need to look all that crazy pretty. I think there is a future for wearables, but, whoo, right now, you got a hard time explaining to me why I need to buy a new one. Well, and that is both the answer to the timing of this, because you know what Google probably won't do by making this announcement, undermine sales of Android watches, because so few of them are selling right now anyway. So that's part of it. And the other thing is Chang, in his interview with The Verge, said this is a marathon, not a sprint. He said, look, we don't expect this to be a hockey stick market here, but we know it's not going away. It is a market that people want. So he seems to be acknowledging what you're saying, like, sure, people aren't going to swap these things out as fast as they've swapped out phones and tablets and laptops, but that doesn't mean you can't do something beneficial by being in this market. Well, yeah. And again, for Google, it's about doing stuff. It's about keeping the ecosystem alive for all these manufacturers that they brought on board. And they can afford to wait, right? I mean, one might think. City regulators in Beijing and Shanghai have adopted new rules requiring drivers and ride-sharing services like ED Schuching to be registered to live in the city in which they drive. Apologies for that pronunciation. The New York Times estimates only 10,000 of DD's 410,000 active drivers in Shanghai have permanent residency papers. The new rules also lifted restrictions on prices and vehicle types. The rules do not go into effect immediately and may be subject to amendment. You know, here's how much I care about locally sourcing everything in my life, Tom. I even locally source my ride-share drivers. How do you think the point of this regulation is? Yeah, from what I can tell. And I know there's some people in the audience who are more up on the political end of what's happening in China than I am. But from what I can tell, there is a general push in China to slow down the movement of people from the countryside into the cities. A lot of people in the cities are saying, ah, it's getting too crowded, too many people flooding in. And so the policy I don't think is targeted at ride-hailing particularly. The policy is do all the things that will stop people from moving into the city. And one of those things is, well, if they can be a ride-hail driver, then they'll stay in the city. So let's take that away. And then that'll be one less inducement to go into the city because they won't be able to make money that way. In fact, the matter is if you take away ride-hailing, when you've got a $10,000 to $410,000, $410,000 gap, I don't think you're going to fill that gap with city dwellers. And also I don't think that you're going to get them to leave the city. They'll just flood into other parts of the job market. So it feels like there's a lot of negotiations going on between DD and local municipalities about how to best implement this. In some cities, DD points out, they have adapted these regulations when they apply them to not involve all of those policies. And I think they're hoping they can convince Beijing and Shanghai to do the same. That's why they're not out there making a big stink about it. They're saying, hey, it's really great that they have allowed smaller vehicles to be used. It's really good that we can now do different kinds of dynamic pricing. That's awesome. But we're just going to stay silent while we negotiate in the back room over this ride-hailing driver registration thing. It actually brought up a few feelings. As much as I was joking around about the locally sourced thing, I wonder whether or not that there is... Do we feel provincial about where our ride-hailing drivers come from? It's an interesting spin on the immigration thing. The joke has always been your taxi driver is a foreigner. And so this is interesting because it's not a foreigner from your country. It's a foreigner from your city. From your suburb. But I mean, that's the crazy thing. And I do not know. I mean, as we learned, only Nixon can go to China. So I dare not try to understand. Yeah, no one else can allow it in. However, if you think that passing a law will do anything, even if it's effective, to call a near half million person shortfall in the amount of people that already use this or uses as employment on some level. Man, that's... I mean, it's going to be interesting to see. Well, in India, they've also set out new rules for ride-hailing services. Ola and Uber are kind of the big ones there. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways recommended that surge or dynamic pricing, as they call it, within a certain range to match supply and demand should be allowed. They're being very careful about this, but they were outright banning it before. Now, Uber and Ola can charge up to four times the minimum price between midnight and 5 a.m. So they're trying... India is trying to strike a balance to say, hey, you know what? We need to encourage drivers on the roads. We get that, but we also don't want you gauging people. So we're going very slowly and cautiously. The new rules also allow private bicycles to be used as taxis. This is something Ola and Uber both launched and then had to stop. India said, no, you can't do that. Now they've changed their mind and said, okay, we're going to let you do bicycle ride sharing. And Uber is already back on the road with that. Yeah, I mean, hell, we're going to get a lot more into the Uber of it all in our main discussion topic. But this has been both the root of all their success and the cause of all their frustration is that they're trying to push their business model wherever they can and they will just stay around and fight for as long as they need to. The idea of surge pricing, I know, is something that is troubling not only to many people, but also troubling to Uber itself. I mean, there's a reason why in the year 2016 they went away from it. You, in the new version of the app, you never see blank X. You never see two X. You see what you're going to pay. And if you can remember what you paid yesterday, five hours, you know, previous in the day, then you can say, oh, well, it's more expensive now than it was yesterday. But you're never going to see, oh, I'm just, it's just going to be like four times what it normally is. Yeah. And DJ Sakane has pointed out that the drivers have issues with this as well. I mean, as it sometimes will help them, it will also cause frustration. So, you know, check out your private driver at DailyTechDoShow.com if you want more of his perspective from the driver point of view as well. Yeah. Well, it's also what helps him get out on the roads, which is why I suspect that the government wound up backing down on it is that, you know, it is kind of supply and demand. If there's more people out there that need, you know, need a car, then it makes sense to be able for the platform to be able to say, you should get paid more to be out on the road right now. Yesterday, I had a car lined up. I hadn't requested it yet. It gave me a quote of $5.30 for where I was going. And then I got distracted. I was doing something else. I went back to say, oh, that fare has expired. I'm like, oh, great. What's it going to be? $5.70. So the other thing is not having to put a 1, 2, and 3x, I think gives them a little more slice and dice to those fares. Sure. I mean, because they can just raise it by, well, I mean, it's not a full one. Maybe it's $0.50. You know, it just gives them more options. And finally, Honda announced it is in talks with an autonomous car research partnership with Alphabet's Waymo. Partnership will see Waymo technology used in cars. Honda had previously committed to developing vehicles that could drive autonomously on the highway by 2020, but it maintained that those would need a driver. Waymo has had a similar partnership with Fiat Chrysler. I almost feel, sure this isn't true, almost feel like Alphabet has been trying to put out as many press releases regarding Waymo as possible, since they announced that Google X's car effort would be called Waymo to get people used to saying the word Waymo. Boom, boom, boom. Let me hear you say Waymo. Waymo. I mean, this is one of those things that it's very, you're right. Like who knows whether or not at some point deals like this between Google and Honda, you know, or what we have previously thought of is that Google does self-driving cars, right? That has more brand value in the mind of the listener than anything else. So deals like that where Honda just says, hey, can we share this kind of technology? Or can we have you guys consult for us for a little bit and we'll pay X amount of money? Those deals get done every day, right? I mean, like those are not necessarily weird kind of deals. And a lot of them might not make it out in a press release because both sides don't necessarily want it to be a thing that people are thinking of when they are directing their business. So who knows whether or not this is something in which we, it is one of those just, hey, you guys are doing self-driving cars. Can we see your data and see all your information and understand your technology and do a couple prototypes? Or if it's coming in 2017, Waymo powered Hondas at the next auto trade show, you know, like it could be either, but I agree with you. They need to build up some brand value because right now who knows what Alphabet is, other than people that listen to this show. And who knows what Waymo is, including people who listen to this show. I'm just saying there's Waymo announcements that I would expect. I'll stop it. And the other thing to remember is one of the things that they did when they created Waymo was make the considered decision that they're not a car company. They're a technology company that provides the technology to the cars. They're not going to go making Waymo cars. They're not going to make Google cars or Alphabet cars either. So this idea of, hey, we're partnering with Honda, hopefully to lead to Honda putting out cars with Waymo technology in them. We're partnering with Fiat Chrysler with the absolute idea that Fiat Chrysler Pacific and Minivans are going to be out there with Waymo technology on them this year. They're hoping to have an actual service available by the end of 2017. So you've got to strike these deals. And they've been talking to GM and Ford. They just haven't been able to strike a deal yet. And you want two people to know like, hey, we're successful. We're getting people on board to work with us. You might want to work with us too, because Alphabet would like nothing more for Waymo to become the Android of cars. Alphabet would love nothing more than for another company in Alphabet to get some positive. Also that, yeah. Like that's the other problem is that like, listen, man, we're all on board with, oh, you're Alphabet now. You're not Google. Now Google is another part of Alphabet. It's like, all right. Well, I mean, listen, all the other high-profile stuff you've had within it that theoretically you split up the company so you could make room for them, i.e., the Boston Dynamics, right? The robotics company. Nes have, let's just say, charitably operated suboptimally under the Google umbrella. Yeah, that's fair to say, suboptimally. Thanks to all those who participate in our subreddit. You can submit stories and vote on them at DailyTechNewsShow.Reddit.com. As we have alluded to several times, Uber announced Wednesday it stopped its autonomous car pilot program in California after the state's Department of Motor Vehicles revoked, or at least threatened to revoke, registration for 16 test vehicles. Uber said it will redeploy the modified Volvo XC90s elsewhere, but in a statement it said, we're now looking at where we can redeploy those cars but remain 100% committed to California and will redouble our efforts to develop workable statewide rules. Now, right before the show, San Jose Mercury News reporter Marisa Kendall wrote on Twitter and then put out an article on the Mercury News that Uber is in fact moving its self-driving cars to Arizona. She has a picture of the cars on the truck headed to Arizona. They're not driving themselves there. They will be testing there in the next few weeks. Justin, you said you saw a quote from the governor of Arizona welcoming them, right? Oh, no, no, no, no. This is Uber's statement on the matter. Our cars departed for Arizona this morning by truck. We'll be expanding our self-driving pilot there in the next few weeks and the parting shot. We're excited to have the support of Governor Ducey. There we go. So the Uber is excited to have the governor of Arizona's support. Now, when they wrote their blog post last week, Defending the Use, when the California DMV had first said, hey, you need to get a permit for this, they said, we don't need a permit. Your rules say, and I actually went and looked this up, SB 1298 says autonomous technology means technology that has the capability to drive a vehicle without the active physical control or monitoring by human operator. And Uber said, well, we have to have a human in the car. They can't drive themselves on their own. California says, yeah, but you're testing autonomous cars and you're letting them drive themselves a lot. So that meets the definition, fundamental difference there. Uber went on to say there's a more fundamental point, how and when companies should be able to engineer and operate self-driving technology. We've seen different approaches to this question. Most states, Arizona, see the potential benefits, Pennsylvania, especially when it comes to road safety. And several cities and states have recognized the complex rules and requirements could have the unintended consequence of slowing innovation. Then they named names, Pittsburgh, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida in particular have been leaders in this way. And by doing so have made clear that they are pro technology. Our hope is that California, our home state, and a leader in much of the world's dynamism will take a similar view. So this isn't just the normal Uber fighting in every city to push things to the limits. It's Uber trying to set itself up as leading the charge to change California's restrictive regulations, in their opinion, on autonomous cars. And this is the key point that as much as there are certainly other companies that like to continue to fight the same fight, like Lyft in terms of ride sharing, this is a specific issue that because of the amount of technology companies that want to get into self-driving cars have all chafed under California's restrictions on how and when they can test them. When these laws initially were put in, they were controversial because they were looked at as too restrictive and would stifle the innovation and would create unnecessary legal loopholes and would force this kind of testing to be done outside of California. Now, whether or not California cares, because obviously for them, they don't want somebody to get run over by an autonomous vehicle and then for it to say, oh, well, it was licensed as safe. And so therefore the state is on some level, at least by political, or sorry, by the depressive at all, held culpable for it. But yeah, Uber is obviously very aggressive on these kinds of things. And so it should be no surprise that they want to be the tip of the spear on this and to force California's hand to define exactly what they mean by this and exactly how willing they are to enforce it. But they're not alone. I mean, Google has similarly been upset with exactly how California is enforced, this kind of stuff. Yeah, and so has Ford. And so have plenty of other autonomous car companies. But 20 of them have gone ahead and paid the permit and paid the $150 annual fee, which does not seem like much. I think the bigger burden is the paperwork. So here's the timeline of what's going on, just to set this for you. Back in 2014, so more than a couple of years ago, September 16th, California's current regulations went into effect. Those require that $150 annual fee. And you have to file regular reports about any time you were in an accident and any time that you had to disengage the autonomous vehicle and take over as a human. That's part of the paperwork. And I think it's probably more the paperwork than anything that Uber is objecting to. But what everybody has been fighting about. It's paperwork and the ability for that paperwork to then become public record and discloseable. And for people to be able to take a really deep numbers look is a kind of controversial thing. We fear many fear self-driving cars. So if you see, oh my God, look, it turns out this month, the amount of times that they disengaged auto driving went up our self-driving cars, becoming less safe, more at 11. Yeah. Well, and you saw that every time Google's car was in an accident this year, it made headlines, right? So December 16th of last year, just about one year ago, California issued a draft deployment regulation. So these are the regulations we're going to put out that say if you want to actually deploy cars as part of a service, like Uber was doing, actually, you have to do this. It has to be tested by a third party. You have to train the customer in a state-approved training program. You have to put in a new data recorder. You have to have a human on board at all times. You have to pay a $33,000 to $50,000 processing fee. And you ban cars without a human driver, as well as commercial use. So you know Uber is objecting to this, right? Because this says you can't run Uber with an autonomous car under these regulations. Yeah. So these were just the draft. Then on September 19th, the U.S. Department of Transportation put out its own voluntary guidelines with different safety assessments and collection of data requirements, et cetera. So on September 30th of this year, California issued revised deployment regulations and essentially said we're going to comply with those voluntary federal guidelines. We will allow cars without a human driver or a steering wheel, but we will require the 15-point safety assessment. And the big one that VW, Honda, Google, and Ford all objected to was a 12-month period required between testing a vehicle and deploying it on public roads. Which effectively is, I mean, it puts at its most aggressive. If you are ready to go now, we're waiting a year for whatever reason. Yeah. So those regulations were published on September 30th. On October 19th of this year, the State of California conducted a workshop in which Alphabet, the now Waymo operator and several automakers were able to raise objections. They're like, why do we need to do vehicle data recorder? Why aren't the ones we have worth it? Why do you need so much data out of our cars? Why is there so much paperwork? Why is there so much data being handed over? Why do police get access to our data within 24 hours without a warrant or subpoena? And then, of course, December 14th, Uber begins testing cars in San Francisco without a permit. And December 21st, California threatens to revoke those car registrations if they don't stop. So I look at all of this and I say, Uber's really pushing to get those regulations changed, saying we will not test our cars under that system. And if you won't let us test them without the permit, we just won't test them in your state. Can I give you my conspiracy theory? Yeah, what's your conspiracy theory? Uber is not a company without a flair for the theatrical, right? Fair enough. Absolutely. Many times it is to their benefit when they dramatically shut off Uber at midnight because the city council will not give them what they want. Many times it can be detrimental to them as their big gigantic headed off at the pass gambit for Austin. Failed fairly spectacularly. However, I think that this was, they let this get to a head and then ended it. So this is the story, both them agreeing to take the cars off the road and the punchline of all those cars getting on a flatbed truck and heading off to Arizona. There is no part of me that thinks that they really, I think that they knew what was going to happen. Or they had a heavy suspicion that this was going to happen. They wanted to make this a big, large point and they wanted to be ready to go. They wanted that truck to be, it felt like they just called a guy with a flatbed truck and was like, hey, oh crap, turns out this thing didn't work out. Let's load up all these cars and get them to Arizona to leave them in a parking lot until we figure out where we're going to put people to do it. I think that this is very much Uber sending a message. This is Uber saying, these are onerous guidelines. And furthermore, this is where the dramatic element comes in and it was part of the language that they said, it's embarrassing that California in general and San Francisco specifically does not have the ability to push this technology forward. And they were providing a service, right? I mean, it's one thing to argue. We weren't breaking the law. These cars aren't capable yet of driving themselves. Look at how often we have to intervene. All the reporters who took test drives have bared that out in their coverage of this, like, yeah, I was in there. The driver did have to intervene every so often. But the point was, we want them to not have the driver intervene. That's why we're testing these. Also, they were providing a commercial service. And I think that's directly pointed at that part of the regulations. Were they in San Francisco? Yeah. In Pittsburgh, the ride was free. Or is that any kind of designation? Oh, that's a good point. If you're not charging you for it. You are using a service. Yeah. And you have the option in Pittsburgh. You had the option to decline. And in San Francisco, you had the option to decline as well. So that's just how good they are. My skirt not lying. Well, I mean, this is there. This is what I mean. This is what they do. I know the story on the Twitch stream where I was going over these stories. But I heard an interview with Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban said one of the biggest regrets he has is not investing in Uber because he knew Travis Kalanick from his previous company. And his reason why, he was like, no, you're crazy. You're just going to keep running into government regulations. You're going to burn all your money just fighting these things and waiting for filing deadlines. You're just never going to be able to do it. And his regret was not seeing the vision of like, no, we fight it aggressively. And we push everything to a head as fast as possible. If even just to understand that we have to fight a lot of these fights to grow at scale, this is what they do. And they've done it globally. And by and large, they've done it effectively. Yeah, there's a few examples like Austin, you can point to where they haven't, but those are the minority of examples. And even then that was them overreaching. Nobody, they didn't even pass legislation in Austin. They tried to preemptively pass legislation that would preempt the legislation that was there. So that might have even just them being too, too aggressive. Testing their, yeah, testing their limits. Too clever by half. All right, let's get to our pick of the day. Glenn Bach has written a script that generates PDFs that help you find a star whose light has been traveling to earth since a certain date. So for instance, you can tell, you can find your birthday in these PDFs and find out which star's light hitting the earth now left the star around the time you were born. So you can kind of bathe in the photons like, ah, these are photons that left that star when I was born. He also tied it into my chronology of tech history. So you can find out which star's light hitting the earth right now left the day Queen Anne's first proclamation on copyright law was made. Or when Steve Jobs started back at Apple or when IBM first started counting things for the census. You can find all those details at go.gl slash Y capital H1 VE lowercase a or just go to the show notes daily tech news show.com and find the link. He's got it out there under a Creative Commons license and he's using the chronology of tech history under that license. And it's pretty cool. No, that's great. That's awesome. So thank you, Glenn, for doing that and send your picks to us, folks, feedback at daily tech news show.com. More picks at daily tech news show.com slash picks. Katie wrote in with three examples where a friend sharing location was super helpful. Remember yesterday, Uber launched the feature that says, just take me to my friend and ask your friend if they can share the location information. And then Uber sets that as the destination. Katie says, one, we met a friend downtown in a city where neither of us lived and neither of us were familiar with local businesses. We used location sharing to find each other. Two, I had overlapping soccer practices for two of my children. A fellow parent generously offered to give child A a ride to soccer practice, B, so I could be in two places at once. She knew the school to go to. I used location sharing, so she knew exactly where to find me, so she didn't have to drive around the school looking for us. And three, on an extended vacation with one car, my husband stayed at the vacation rental with the kids while I went out for a quiet lunch by myself using public transportation. He then decided to bring the kids out to do stuff after I was done with lunch and we used location sharing to find each other. So I have most definitely found it useful, generally in situations where there is a broad meeting location, like a downtown area or a mall or school, but not a specific point we agreed to meet at. You know, this is just one of those stories, you know, maybe Uber was. Uber was just the one little piece of spice in this year, right, where we could have these kinds of conversations. But I'm with Katie, you many times, not the least of which is, let's say later in the evening when you've maybe had a few recreational beverages with your friends and somebody else wants to meet you and you have no idea where you are. And you can just say, hey, meet me, just meet me. Wherever me is, get the car as close as it is to me. And then we'll figure it out from there. I think it's helpful. But again, it is that intersection of where it is helpful and creepy begin. Well, in this case, different than the can we track you when you're not using the app, which was I think the spiciest controversy. This says, hey, if they're in your contacts, we will contact them and ask them if it's okay. And only if they say it's okay to share the location will we share the location. So I think they're doing this one right. Oh yeah, I think they're doing it right. However, that is a concept that I think people do find, especially in certain domestic situations and stuff like that, that like, well, you're only putting somebody an accidental click away from a stalker or something like that. Regarding 3D printers for the consumer, Robert writes, it occurred to me that people with specific hobbies will always find a need to prefab parts for mods. I frequent a subreddit forum for Gunpla builders, Gundam models produced mainly by Bondi, and quite a few builders that are heavy into kit bashing, modding the kits with either parts from other kits, or in the case of 3D printing machines, creating custom parts from basically wide strips of plastic. Find that having a 3D printer invaluable to the process of bringing their ideas to reality. And then Kome adds, I don't even own a 3D printer myself, but I use online 3D printing services like Shapeways and 3D hubs, so 3D printing is pretty much in my life. Shapeways lets you upload your model and have the 3D prints sent to you, and 3D hubs lets the owners of 3D printers register themselves as a hub, and then other users can upload a 3D model, find a hub near you, order a print, and either pick it up in person or have it shipped. Dude, that's great. That's so smart. Yeah. And then finally, Dan wrote in on Patreon and said, one of the problems I've encountered personally and professionally is people not taking the time to understand the underlying how and why to a system, and as a result, be unable to troubleshoot or QA the results a system gives them. He talks about how he used to have to go into the Windows registry all the time, and he thankfully says he doesn't have to do that anymore in Windows 10. He says, I've also seen this with new sailors who come in and don't understand the old ways of doing things like contact tracking, bearing in range and two different times, and then do some calculations from there. Thus, they aren't able to recognize when the system gives them a bad calculation, which could result in a closer quarter situation with two ships than is ideal. This isn't to say that progress shouldn't be made. He says, I'm not a man who yells at clouds, but we need to take the time to understand what the building blocks of a system are, how they actually work, and have an understanding of what we expect to have happen based on a given input in order to ensure our devices and systems are running the way they should be and are making our lives easier and better. What was this in reference to? Our conversation yesterday with Aaron Carson about older people not being worse at technology, and the example of our grandpa Ray, who was playing with technology into his 90s. My the most technology forward person in my upbringing was my grandfather. My grandfather was a Mac homebrew guy and dutifully taught me, shared his hobby with me and his Apple 2GS when I was a kid. And I very much believe that especially those people who are in engineering professions like during that time in history, I think that computers very much can be a huge part of their lives. Yeah, and Aaron was saying, one of the things that she liked about her grandpa was he wasn't afraid to try things. And that's what she tries to impart to people like, you can't break it, just try it. And I think what we're seeing Dan try to add here is, people need to understand what these things are capable of and if they're going to use them properly, how to QA and troubleshoot them. And that is what I think one of the biggest issues with technology these days, especially regarding security, is people with Dan's mindset, people with my mindset, look at computers as something not to trust. Something that you're like, oh, you know what? It doesn't always work that great. I might have to do a registry edit. I might have to get under the hood and play around with some settings. I shouldn't just put in a password because I don't know where that's going. But people who aren't of that mindset are being sold these items as if they are appliances. As if they are, hey, it's a coffee maker. You don't need to know how it works. Just put the coffee in and press go. And technology hasn't quite caught up with the promise of that yet. I mean, we're really getting deep here on the final Thursday, DTNS. Isn't that kind of the root germ of the Mac PC debate that there is this element that we are dumbing down our populace and that we're not there yet? And selling something on the it just works is a great way to sell boxes. And maybe your boxes work, but you are doing a disservice to the herd health of our technologically inclined populace. Yeah. And the internet, the internet particularly isn't done yet. We haven't finished the internet. So it's still in beta, kind of. But also, but then you always get back to the fact that, you know, as Dr. Manhattan told Adrian Fight, nothing ends. Nothing ever ends. Well, thank you, Justin, Robert Young for being with us as always on a Thursday. What you got going on to tell folks about? I'll tell you what. Everybody go ahead and just follow me on Twitter at JustinRYoung. Got a new Twitch channel now that Twitch allows other people to stream than video games. And Thursday mornings, I'm doing a little coffee in the morning and reading through all the stories that are possibly going to get in to the Daily Tech News show. And I had a really great time this morning talking with people. I'm excited to keep doing it. So follow that, twitch.tv slash JustinRYoung. And Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. Thank you, everybody, who supports the show. DailyTechNewsShow.com slash Support can tell you all the different ways to do it. There's PayPal. There's Patreon. There's the store. Thanks to backers like Ichiro Sugiyoka, Sam Lowe, and Jamie Ashfield. And thanks to patrons in particular, Andrew Woodward and Thomas Alley, who just raised their pledge. All of you in whatever way you're supporting the show, these guys and everybody else, make it possible for us to do this show. And we cannot thank you enough. Our email address is feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. We're live Monday through Friday, 4.30 p.m. Eastern at AlphaGeekRadio.com and DiamondClub.tv. And our website is DailyTechNewsShow.com. Back tomorrow, it's just me, Roger Chang, and Len Peralta. We'll talk to you then. The club hopes you have enjoyed this program. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at FrogPants.com. I played those in reverse. In the order. That's fine. By the way, Arizona, the top five DUI state. Well, then they're like, please, hurry. Bring the autonomous cars now. Top five DUI states, North Dakota, South Dakota. Well, or would they? Or is that a, I mean, this is crass to say, but that DUIs are also a moneymaker for states. Are they not? I mean, any self-respecting state official would say we would rather have no DUIs and keep people safe on the road. I get that, but could hurt the bottom line if they all went away. Well, I was going to say, automated cars could potentially offer a new revenue stream through. There you go. You just replace it. You basically have targeted taxes. Like, oh. But that's the kind of thing Uber will leave your state over. Well, you know, that's the thing is like, it's kind of a balancing act. You want to, it's like enticing businesses by giving them preferential tax rates and then slowly inching it back up once they become established. And it becomes a little, becomes a little more. A little more painless. Yeah. It's one of those things that people have been pointing out if as we shift to renewable fuel sources or all electric automobiles is like, well, how do you tax? Where do you get the tax money to pay for roads? If traditionally you tax gasoline or diesel or whatever, people aren't using those fuels in the same level and the tax dollars drop. How do you pay for the same level of maintenance? Now, BioCal, although he's going by bios of Holly in the chat room says, you have to consider the mindset of a person who drives drunk. If they're not going to call a cab, are they going to call a self-driving Uber? I don't think that the issue is necessarily that they are more likely to call a self-driving car than they are an Uber. Although if the self-driving car is free, then the fact that they don't have to pay X amount of money might be an incentive. I think the issue more is just pushing the entire culture forward on not relying on your own car as much. If it becomes more convenient to take a self-driving car out, you're also going to take a self-driving car back. In terms of the DUI rates, California, number six. Behind you, Arizona. Right behind Arizona in Kentucky, California. I can see California and Arizona being connected. People drive between the two states a lot. Kentucky is a further drive, so I'm not sure what's happening. Well, I mean, they're both car culture cities. Phoenix and Scottsdale are effectively the same metropolitan area, and they're separated by about 20 miles. No, it's all cars in Phoenix. You're right. So it's even in your most populous areas, if you live in the Burbs, which a lot of people do, and you don't live downtown, which is more expensive, then you're, you know, it's, let's say, it's a lot more expensive than Florida and California. All right then, titles. Yes, titles. Number four, and at the top with four votes, is Waymo Cars, Wayless Drivers. Two is California Uber Allies, although I think we've done that one before. Yeah, it's also the name of Dead Kennedys. Dead Kennedys song, right? Yeah, Tesla May Cause Cancer leads California. High speed ahead. Tesla May Cause Cancer, what? Why did you even read that? Doesn't make any sense. Oh no, that was just number three. That's why. It's not. It's the only got one vote. It's tied. Oh, Canada, our homes all get broadband. That's good. Taking it self-driving cars and going home. See, Waymo technology used to be, will be used in Hondas. Oh, I thought this at Honduras. By the way, California Uber Alice needs to be listened for anybody who has not recorded in 1979. 100% agree. Precient on a level that new popular recording artists can be prescient down to the fact that they make fun of then governor Jerry Brown. For those of you keeping track at home, is the current governor of California. Yeah, he was out in the boonies for a while after being, and then he came back. He was mayor of Oakland when I first moved to Oakland. That was part of the beginning of his comeback. The Browns have a, I wouldn't say illustrious, but they have a long history in politics in California. Yeah, Edmund. Edmund, his dad was the other one as well. His sister. Waymo cars, way less drivers, I like, and it's still the top. I'm good with that. What do you think, Justin? Waymo cars, yeah. I mean, listen, get ready. Waymo, the more that Waymo is in the news, the more that Waymo puns are going to become the new show without it. Yeah, well, let's get in front of this and use them now while we still can. Yeah, so Waymo cars, way less drivers is the title. You know, I was thinking about what Dan wrote about like the sailors and understanding the old way of doing things. I kind of, I finally clicked them ahead in that you essentially want people to understand the the reason why things are done in a certain way. For example, like you could figure out a large complex equation using a calculator, but you still want to understand why, when you multiply, you do certain things and when you add, you do certain things and divide and all the rest. So you can kind of point out issues. The thing is, I guess the point I was trying to make is not everybody can know how everything works, right? Like we aren't all architecture experts, but we can still live in houses. And the electronics industry in the 90s was sort of a hobby. It was a hobbyist thing. And so the idea of like, hey, if you're going to have a computer, you should know how it works was just made perfect sense. These days it's becoming more widespread with smartphones and the idea of you should know how it works is less tenable. We'll see that, but see that's what I think he's not. I don't think that's what he's getting at. No, no, I don't either. But I'm just saying like, you know, when you're saying like, you have to know how math works for a calculator, I don't know that we need to have everyone know how computers work. I just think we need to understand that the computers are quite ready to just be handed out to everyone, right? And so I think I took what he wrote as, hey, we're still in that era where if you really want to use these things responsibly, you kind of have to know a little bit of how they work under the hood. Well, but see, that's what I'm saying. I don't think that's what he's saying. I think you have to understand the problem it's trying to solve. For example, with getting the contact bearing of a ship that you don't want to collide with, you understand the principle of how things are calculated in general to figure that out on paper. Before you move to a computerized system, so you could at least in the back of your head do back of the napkin calculations and look at it. It's like, oh, hey, this is correct. Or at least this is pretty close to correct versus like, oh, there's something wrong. Either a sensor's off or the GPS is not calibrated because I'm getting numbers that don't make sense kind of thing. Am I being clear? I'm probably not being clear. Well, yes, you are being clear, but I'm not sure how that differs from what I said, I guess. I mean, you're saying that for ships, you need to understand that. And I get that. And all I'm saying is, yeah, and that's still true of computers, although it won't always be true of computers. In other words, we're not going to move to a point where ships that he's talking about need to be user-friendly for the masses to use. So the metaphor kind of ends for me there. But we can get to a point where like, yeah, you know what? To drive a car, you don't need to be able to have a license to drive a car. You don't need to know how a combustion engine works. No. And I think computers will get to that point. They're just not quite there yet. Indeed. All right, guys, I'm out of here. All right. All right, man. Hey, happy holidays. Happy New Year. Yeah, man. Well, yeah, dude. Well, I'm sure we'll talk probably before the New Year, but hopefully. I will. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's a travel day tomorrow to Ohio. And then we're back on Monday, so. Oh, visiting the in-laws. The in-laws in Ohio. Yeah. Is it freezing cold this time of year? I'm trying not to think about it, but. Best. Best not to, I assume. All right. Peace out. All right. Thanks, y'all. Talk to you tomorrow, everybody.