 Oh, look at that, we're back! Google acted like nothing ever happened. Even though dozens, dozens of people were posting angrily on their forums for 24 hours that they hang out on air was not working. Yeah, I would go, I think you got two out of the three right. I'm gonna replace Grizz with Tove Lowe. Alright, alright, that's good. I actually considered Tove, so I feel good about myself that I was able to even be on the block. Are you hip to Grizz? Because I was not familiar with the Grizz. Oh yeah, he's a DJ. When I say, oh yeah, to your question, are you hip to Grizz? I know who he is. It's about as far as it goes. Same as Tove, but I know Grizz a little more than Tove. Oh, I'm interested to hear a cover of Ultra Light Beam though. Well, would you like the song Ultra Light Beam because it includes, well, let me see if I've just misheard this lyric before. Oh, you're a good boy. It's gonna be a good episode, folks. Yeah, I'm on an Ultra Light Beam. I'm on an Ultra Light Beam. This is a God Dream. This is a God Dream. Which if there's anything more Kanye West than to begin your album by a song in which you discuss how you feel when you are inside of a dream believing that you are God. I think we've come to understand that is an all too frequent reality. Or this is a God Dream. This is a God Dream. This is great. I love it. I like that as a replacement for God. This is a God Dream travesty. All right, shall we? Yep. Here we go. It's December 1st, 2016. I'm Tom Merritt, Justin Robert Young alongside Justin December. The 2016 is rolling away. A lot of people are very happy about that. I can't remember. Oh, crap. I did something. Hold on. You're gonna have to say that again. Hello. Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember. I mean, number one added another thing to the list of why people are pissed off about 2016. But I can't remember people vilifying a year. The way that they have done this year. Yeah. I mean, it's become a cliche to say, oh, I'm so glad this year is over around December 31st. Sure. But people were complaining about this year back in February already. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, all right. I don't even think 2001 got the kind of heat that 2016 has gotten. And that is certainly saying something. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Well, today is gonna make you feel better about 2016 only because we are here to help you understand a little more about the technology that's happening. Fitbit is reportedly close to acquiring Pebble for its IP and operating system. They may not make Pebble branded watches anymore. It sounds like they wouldn't according to the information. And when I say that, I mean the publication called the information. More on that in our main discussion. Also Angel list, not to be confused with Angie's list. That's the one that finds plumbers. Angel list helps millionaires and billionaires invest in startups. Anyway, Angel list has bought product hunt and says it intends to let it continue as a standalone site. So there you go. Product hunt. Yeah. Now a direct pipeline from your millionaires dollars to the product on product hunt. I mean, I don't know how much product hunt means to people outside of the Bay Area. Certainly, I think it has probably an outsized a footprint here. It is very influential among a certain set of people. So, you know, say what a good pickup for Angel list, which similarly has an outsize influence here at the Bay Area. Yeah. And just a side benefit for Angie's list that I brought them up even though I have nothing else to do with the story. All right. Let's take a look at our top stories. Apple plans to use UAVs unmanned aerial vehicles. You call them drones to collect information on things like street signs, road changes, construction, other details to improve its map product faster. A Bloomberg source also said Apple is working on views inside buildings. They recently purchased a company that maps the interiors of buildings, improvements to car navigation, which I think we all kind of knew they were working on anyway. But the big headline grabber here, Justin, is using drones to collect map info. Well, that's certainly the headline, right? Because anything that we can figure out a way to try to make better by way of flying robot is something that we will pay attention to. My initial reaction to this when we were talking about the story was that it was a little bit of a gimmick that if either by how this story is reported or by Apple's hiring, I don't know exactly how much more you are going to get from a drone than you would from the tried and true driving around a neighborhood with a minivan that has a camera on the top of it. However, Apple Maps is something that was marred initially by its lack of data. Google certainly just had it totally dead to rights as one would expect. Apple was put into the very unenviable situation of wanting to split off from Google Maps being its default map solution. But you can't get the data unless you make it live for as many people as possible. But when you make it live for as many people as possible, then people want to go to grandma's house and wind up at some dead end bridge embankment, right? Because the data isn't there. So now they are trying to make it better. What I thought was more interesting is that the UABs are going to be feeding into a kind of a more rapid response live data center that will try to update things more in real time. And so that way, you look for more about road closures, for example, than necessarily having just more data points about the fact that one road goes to another road. Yeah, it does seem like it would be Apple's way of moving ahead in the game and stop playing catch-up, right? Like, we've been trying to get people to realize Apple Maps isn't broken for the past several years now. Let's give them a reason to want to use it in preference to Google Maps, because I have no problem with Apple Maps anymore. There's plenty of jokes about it, but it works fine the times I've used it, but I always prefer to use Waze or Google Maps when I'm using something. So they do need something like that. Like you say, certainly having an eye in the sky can get you more information faster than vans on the ground. I don't know how often you would have to have these things out here. And as you pointed out when we were talking about this before the show, it's not like they can operate these without line of sight. So if your brain went to, you know, unmanned aerial vehicles autonomously, you know, covering the nation, that's not allowed. The FAA requires you to be in view of your drone while you're operating it. And Apple got their commercial waiver to do this, but they have to abide by those rules. So, you know, with Apple, you could say, well, it's not a gimmick because they haven't announced it, but then Apple is very good at the leak game. So who knows? The one thing that makes me think this is a serious effort to improve their product is that they did hire someone away from Amazon Prime Air, Amazon's quadcopter program. Which, although who knows exactly how much that falls into the line of like actual big, gigantic new thing for Amazon and not just a gimmick so they can talk about how great. Oh, so now you're gonna say, you know, you hire a gimmick to do a gimmick. Well, all I'm saying is this, is that I think the more I think about it, especially in dense urban areas that oftentimes have road closures both expected and unexpected, it can be a benefit to have something that does not require you to drive a van through it to go fly over, see, okay, well, this is blocked. This is where people are backing up to. And now in the moments that we need it most in gigantic high population density areas, we can give you better, better alerts. I don't know though. You're not allowed to fly it over the high population areas. True. So who knows? Yeah, I don't know. Can you fly it? Can you get high enough to see? To maybe, yeah. Right? You know, as for the Amazon thing, all I'm gonna say is this, the way that Amazon makes money is by pushing Prime subscriptions. They wound up getting national headlines and continue to get headlines whenever anything about drone delivery via Prime is there. So I think whether or not we actually see meaningful drone delivery within the next five or 10 years, the fact that they have a division of, you know, drone delivery is a very profitable one. Oh yeah, no. And let's be clear to folks who don't realize this. There is legitimate drone delivery happening. There have been medical supplies delivered by quadcopter in Rwanda. There have been tests in Switzerland. None of them by Amazon. So Amazon gets a lot of press and credit for something that other people are actually forging ahead with. It's not that the technology doesn't work. It's that Amazon hasn't actually done much more than a 60 minutes piece about it. Yeah. And not to say they can't not say they won't. Absolutely. And you can certainly see the world of Prime now kind of building out a lot of that infrastructure and a lot of those, the warehousing for it. So we'll see. Meanwhile, Nokia announced that the first Android smartphones bearing the Nokia name will arrive in early 2017. Nokia is licensing the brand to HMD Global, which will design the phones. Honheis Foxconn will make them. Nokia added new phones to the section of its site at nokia.com slash phones. Nokia has already marketed some feature phones and tablets, one of the greatest phone brands that, you know, was in decline now back with hot new product, hot new merch. Tom, what do you think? Back ish. This is actually, I hope a good conclusion to a horrible story. Nokia was the leader in cell phones. Nokia was struggling but doing some good things with smartphones. I remember back in the N95, N97, they were making some good phones. Then Microsoft sort of preyed upon them in their time of weakness and bought away the phone division, turned out that didn't go very well, dropped using the Nokia brand for Lumia and now has pretty much abandoned their own mobile phone efforts for the time being. I fully expect them to bring back those phone efforts under the surface brand, but that's an entirely different conversation. So what Nokia has now is a telecom business that is very successful, unless you think Nokia is in trouble and the rights to use their name on phones, which they've been doing on feature phones, which makes perfect sense because there are still markets that need feature phones and Nokia is still the brand for feature phones. Is it the dominant player there? Yeah. Yeah, so the big question here is, can Nokia bring the brand back into smartphones where it never was as successful as it should have been or could have been? And this is not Nokia doing it. This is Nokia saying to some former Nokia employees who created the HMD Global Group, you guys go for it. Design a great phone. We'll use Android like everybody else does, including Samsung. We'll get Foxconn to make them because they're good at making phones and we'll see what we can do. I think that there's a market for it. Nokia is still a name that people associate with phones and there's certainly now, as we move into a very, very commoditized version of smartphones, we are now entering into who can do it for four pennies cheaper, in this specific vertical. Nokia can be there, whether or not, I'm curious to see what market they're going to kind of go for. Basically. They should go for the if our phones don't explode markets, says Goucho in our chat room. Well, hey, listen, there's certainly one there. There's an opening. Yeah. Part of me almost wonders whether or not Nokia is one of those brands that I just remember so fondly from my youth as these candy bar. Yep. Your phones, right? I had one too, had an FM tuner built in. So I used to listen to music on my phone. Oh, geez. I wonder if, if there's a, you know, like a Nintendo's little emulator, little NES classic that they're selling. Is there anything that we could possibly want to feature phone that I could say, Oh, cool. I have this element of my childhood back. Is there a nostalgia play for Nokia? Maybe it's a wearable. I'll tell you what, we're going to get into how profitable that is in a second. Reddit says it will ban or suspend users who target others with harassment, starting with comments directed against its own CEO, Steve Huffman. Reddit will monitor user reports, add greater filtering capacity, and take a more proactive role instead of relying on community moderators. In case you missed it over the Thanksgiving break, Huffman got in trouble for playing a prank and trolling the Donald subreddit by writing a little script that for an hour changed any reference to his username to the references of the mods of that subreddit's usernames that any insults directed at him would be directed at them, and then he stopped it. It has been described by former Reddit CEO, Ellen Powell, as childish. Well, that's because it is. It was thin-skinned. It was impulsive. And to be honest, I really don't know exactly how much more I have to say on this other than I know a large cross-section of listeners to this show have at some point been members of dedicated members of a message board. And we all know that from time to time there is message board drama. What we are seeing is message board drama played out on a far larger scale, and I do not think that we, as responsible analysts and journalists in this space, need to think that it is anything more than that. As I said to Justin on Slack earlier today, Reddit is the world's largest teacup and it is filled to the brim with tempests. Amazon has added HBO and Cinemax as options to add on to Amazon Prime video subscription. HBO would cost $15 a month and Cinemax would be $10. It appears that the service would only work inside Amazon video apps and not on HBO or Cinemax's own apps. Of course, this comes after the Direct TV Now launch, which also similarly offered slightly discounted versions of HBO and Cinemax logins, although it seems that those you can authenticate within Cinemax app and HBO Now. So with Sling, when you get HBO, I don't think you can authenticate. When you add it on to other services you usually can authenticate. So Amazon is going the Sling route here. But that makes sense because what they want you to do is use the Amazon video app so that your HBO shows and everything are showing up right next to the man in the high castle, right next to you know, transparent. And you want to continue to subscribe to Amazon video because of that. They're not giving you a deal. Direct TV Now must be subsidizing that to get the $5 a month deal. These are getting to know you prices. They are looking to burn a gigantic pile of money and I hope that everybody follows the smoke plume. Yeah, absolutely. So Amazon coming in with this certainly isn't going to compare on a cost basis but if you're already in that Amazon world subscribed to say stars or showtime suddenly you're looking at this going well, you know, maybe I should go ahead and do HBO here because then it's all in one place. That's Amazon's big pitch is all of your video in one app instead of having to move around from one to the other. I I think what you have hit on is very important because there is an element that especially Netflix Netflix realized that they had to make independent original content because when you saw their advertising it was Hey binge watch breaking bad print binge watch mad men and so you would think of these not as shows on AMC but rather shows where you could get the better experience by watching all of them at once on Netflix and Amazon similarly wants to do this it appears that HBO and Cinemax which are owned by the same company are looking to to license out and use these deals obviously they're not giving any kind of a discount on this but I'm curious to see now that a lot of money is coming into this cord cutting realm who winds up winning in the where you know the platform availability question because Amazon would seemingly have more of a case to prove because they are not on Apple TV right that they are there currently in this a match of wits with certain platforms about where they are going to put their service because I would probably be more willing to put my money to Amazon however I I like my Apple TV more than I like my Roku right now so the idea of switching to the Roku to go to places is something that I don't like so yeah well Amazon is betting that enough people will prefer having everything in one app to having an Apple TV that this will pay off or even switching apps right or even saying hey I'd rather just give it to you so I can have it all in one place rather than give it to a thing and I have to go to a menu and I can't just say I just watch all my Amazon video on my iPad where I can get Amazon video in which case I don't care Mozilla and Tor have published an update to patch a critical vulnerability being exploited on Windows to de-anonymize Tor users if you didn't know the Tor browser is built on Mozilla's Firefox the vulnerability affects macOS and Linux versions of Tor and Firefox as well they've only seen it exploited on Windows but they're advising everybody to patch it anyway the vulnerability is also patched in the latest update to Firefox it uses malicious JavaScript and code based on scalable animation vector graphics to gain access and resembles network investigative techniques used by the US FBI in 2013 to unmask Tor users in a child porn case that they were pursuing so there's a lot of suspicions out there a lot of discussion of whether this is also a state actor possibly the FBI that has been exploiting this on Windows Yeah How big of a deal is this? It's a big deal if you're a Tor user it's a big deal if you are someone who relies on Tor to protect your identity from a government or organization that is after you if you're a whistleblower or a leaker or something you know those are the people that we legitimately usually say oh well there is a reason for them to use Tor because they live in a despotic country and are trying to communicate and it could be that country that is taking advantage of this same network investigative technique to unmask them and find out who they are I'll tell you what we were talking earlier today about unheralded stories of the year I kind of feel like a story that has become more and more relevant as the year has gone on especially because we had these big high profile cases related to politics is personal security personal how much if you look at how people reacted to like the apple Santa Barbara case earlier in the year and now how people especially because they are both they had political ramifications look at personal security I feel like we have slowly but surely come to a little bit more of a healthy place where conversations about Tor which can be controversial considering what it does we'll maybe have a little bit more of an adult dialogue yeah no you're right it's not that personal security has been under covered far from it it's the change in attitude that maybe people haven't noted Spotify is introducing a series of original music called Spotify Singles each artist in the program will record an original song and a cover in Spotify's New York Studios Spotify Singles playlist will get an update every Wednesday in addition Spotify sessions will be phased out in favor of Spotify Live the first playlist features tracks from 21 artists including John Legend, Lindsey Stirling and Tove Lowe yeah they've got quite a lineup there 42 tracks to start with new ones coming every Wednesday and this is Spotify trying to say hey don't wait for an artist to make an exclusive deal with Apple Music come to Spotify every week for exclusive music recorded just for us it's not an artist keeping you away from music it's us creating music for you and don't you want to use us instead of Apple Music because of that I read this and that's all I thought was this is Spotify hearing Apple's footsteps and as you know right now the weekend the reclusive Canadian R&B superstar releases another album that Apple is going to lord over lord over everybody this is becoming a problem Spotify's solution, Spotify's guess was hey look we have Apple throw around all this money to lock down exclusives but guess what you got to be right on which exclusives that you push because that's what makes people believe that you have a track record well turns out that Jimmy Iveen as he has for the last three decades has an eye for the hits right turns out yeah turns out he's been pretty good at it and so now Spotify's in a situation where just being the Walmart that had the market advantage that has as many of these as possible with the freemium option is not quite the position that it might have been a year ago I wonder whether or not because I don't think this ultimately means a lot I mean listen the AV club does their cover session thing that is also really really cool and it's good I just don't know if it's something that you want to base your multi-million dollar super highly competitive business on when you have people in Cupertino getting on your downfall every second of the day I wonder whether or not Spotify is going to cave next year and just start paying for exclusives I I wonder about that too I think this is a very significant move by Spotify in the streaming music industry for a couple of reasons one from the Spotify angle it's very wise to say you know what we have an advantage of is discoverability everyone talks about Spotify's discover weekly and they've been coming out with new playlist to expose you to music that they think you'll know you'll like their gamble is discoverability is our strength and if we can help people discover hits that they didn't hear everywhere else they will start to think of Spotify not just as a place to listen to the music they like but as the source as the radio station that gives them the music they like that is a big gamble whereas Apple music is taking a much more safe approach of saying hey we know you like these artists we have a guy who's really good at identifying which artists you like and we're going to go after them and not try to make the music it's much harder to create original songs that are hits and that's what Spotify is trying to do here it's this is a big departure from hey we're going to do a live session we're going to do an acoustic session we're going to do a cover session although they are doing the covers part this is saying we're going to get artists to create original songs for us and record them for us and it's it's a big gamble and it's an attempt to change the way streaming is seen where I think most of us look at it as there's music out there made by artists and it shows up on streaming services Spotify is trying to say hey the artists actually make the music for us well I mean but that's kind of where it is now I mean part of Apple music part of the way that Apple music has substantively changed the game and you saw it it was more starkly than with Frank Ocean who released a visual album to burn out his Def Jam contract and then the next day released an exclusive album as a artist without a contract via Apple music using all of their resources to promote it that now these streaming services are becoming the hub they are becoming where artists go and if Spotify wants to become a label I think you know or all the parts of a label that they can do the best at that will probably be the way that they go into it but to your point if you want to be the place that becomes a hit then you better hope that John Legend's cover of what's going on or you know any of these other things that are on the the list now really blow up the local natives version of Ultralight Beam is something that turns into a radio hit but then again what's a radio hit right now like what does break out because for my money all the albums that were buzzed about the most that were talked about the most are going to make the 2016 list as they start coming out were all exclusives on either Apple or Tidal Spotify sitting there saying I can't feel my face Thanks to all those who participate in our subreddit you can submit stories and vote on them at DailyTechNewsShow.Reddit.com Alright as I mentioned at the top of the show the information reporting Fitbit is finalizing a deal to buy Pebble lots of outlets are independently confirming this the Verge for instance was able to get independent confirmation a source told Engadget the price was around 34 to 40 million dollars though that is not confirmed by the parties involved Pebble did announce last March that it was laying off 25% of its workforce and it is apparently been out shopping itself there allegedly was an offer of 70 million from Intel but Intel didn't want them to release new watches and they didn't want to go for that they apparently turned down an offer from Citizen Watchmaker but it sounds like Fitbit may have made the offer they can't refuse and according to the information would phase out the Pebble brand they're most interested in Pebble's intellectual property and the Pebble operating system okay there's going to be Pebble fans and we know many of them who are going to be very distraught at the idea that maybe there won't be any more Pebble watches they're going to be Fitbit fans who might actually be excited that Fitbit will continue to move into more watch like functionality and get the benefits of Pebble but there's a lot more going on here and Justin and I both have some interesting perspectives on this Justin you were looking at it from the perspective of Pebble being a Kickstarter success story well Pebble is not a Kickstarter success story Tom Pebble is the Kickstarter success story they have three out of the top four most funded Kickstarter's of all time so every phase they went to the public and the public rewarded them probably next to Oculus Rift which did make the big deal to sell out to a larger company earlier in this process they are the way that you look at Kickstarter and say hey look they can operate a business in a new way we don't need your old Moore's old man we have Kickstarter now that obviously is a very very very simplified version of this and I don't mean to make light of it because I am a Kickstarter business with the contender and it's something that I hold very very dear but if you look at what Pebble did it is both very very very heartening and now that we are here where they are essentially if you look at this price this is $40 million which might not even cover its outstanding debt this is being sold for parts this is a worst case scenario for what you would have hoped Pebble could have been but then again it leads into the other big hot take of this which is smartwatches I mean it's time to play tabs right? I think it's time to say smartwatches at best are ahead of their time and I didn't mean that to be a pun but you know it is you look at the wearable numbers from the companies like IDC and Cantilis and they combine what IDC calls basic wearables and smart wearables smart wearables are essentially smartwatches and they are dominated by the Apple smartwatch if you take if for instance Apple has a bad quarter like it did in Q2 and because it hasn't updated its smartwatch yet you see a huge drop in smartwatch sales smartwatch sales fell 27.2% in Q2 but then it comes out with series 1 and series 2 of the Apple Watch Cantilis shows Q3 smart wearables shot up 60% year over year so all that's going on is Apple fans are buying the Apple Watch and when there's not a new Apple Watch that market almost disappears what is a more stable market is what they call basic wearables and that's your Fitbits your things that don't necessarily have third party integration they don't have an app store they just track your steps your heart rate things like that they do some time and they work with any phone basic wearables Cantilis showed that the total number sold in Q2 was 9 million and then in Q3 it was 11.5 million up 18% year over year back in Q2 we don't have the IDC numbers for Q3 yet but back in Q2 you see basic wearables up 48.8% so you see instead of a big up and down based on Apple's whims you see basic wearables constantly rising now you might as I was when I was looking over these numbers think ah so what's going on is what people want are the fitness trackers more so than the smartwatches unless there's a big brand behind them except Fitbit mentioned more than once in its last earnings call they demand for activity trackers in the holiday season so people are starting to get commodified they're saying I've got a fitness tracker I don't need another one the sales are going to start slowing down and Fitbit needs to do something I think what's going on is that fitness is the catalyst it's the focus it's the thing we can all go oh well I don't know if I want a smartwatch but a fitness tracker makes sense to me I would use that some smart functions in there hence the popularity of the Pebble hence Fitbit making more smartwatch type devices because you want some of that integration you want some communication maybe even a little productivity in there but you don't want it to weigh a lot you don't want it to be big you don't want it to have bad battery life you don't want to have to constantly charge your smartwatch and you don't want to pay a lot for it and that's where I think Pebble is a great acquisition for Fitbit because it is a path to success for wearables if there is one to say how do we make a low cost long battery life smart fitness tracker we can take all the Pebble things that do just that and put it into a Fitbit and more specifically and who knows whether or not they'll call it this we'll see how much they value the brand name but it will be Fitbit now with Pebble OS or now with the Pebble Store now with the Apple ecosystem for my perspective on this is this is not about buying a fitness tracker or a smartwatch this is about both sides realizing that nobody wants to buy a second one and I'm in that boat I bought my Apple Watch when it first came out I really like my Apple Watch I feel naked without the Apple Watch I enjoy it I enjoy the new OS second Apple Watch came out I'm not a regular swimmer so the waterproof element didn't really do anything for me and if it's all the rest of it is just a step up in the hardware that maybe it goes a little faster I don't really have a lot of interest in it and I don't think a whole lot of other people do too I think it'll always be a great first thing but if you really want this to be a gadget industry in the way that the rest of the gadget industry works then you gotta have people buy one if not once a year at least once every two or three or you make your money on the data that's the only other way out is to say alright we've got fitness tracking and let's figure out with a Pebble App Store maybe or if you're Apple with your own App Store what other things can we collect data on for folks and how can we monetize that data both directly with people saying hey here's a service we can provide you that uses that tracking or to anonymize that data and sell it as trends to people who want to know what's the fitness of the populace that I'm trying to market something to I think when you look at the numbers right now there were 17.6 million wearables sold and that's up 31% in Q2 IDC said it was 22.5 million and that was up 26% so it's getting to tablet levels tablet levels in Q3 were 43 million but it's never well never say never but it is very unlikely to reach smartphone levels which in Q3 were 362.9 million so we're talking about a market that like tablets is probably going to commoditize very quickly and maybe even faster than tablets so you've got to figure out another way to make the money off of it that is a really really great point I've always said now that we are in this kind of everything's connected and we need these fitness trackers and everything I still think that we are years now into this industry being a thing and we have all the major players Apple Fitbit, Garmin everyone's in it and yet we still don't have let me just tell my mom about it kind of solution of what to do with all this data aside from just in our head saying oh I think that amount of calories is bad I think that amount of calories is good oh look my heart rate is 70 I guess that's what my doctor told me it should be there is no just an app I don't know if I'd ever pay for a personal trainer right but in the last couple months I've started running every day I would love a personal trainer that was somewhere away from me that I only interacted via my app and it would just dump the data and they would take a look at it and say oh yeah that looks good maybe you should try I'm looking at the map you should try taking the left when you get to this street that would actually add a little bit more to what you're going to do like there's nothing like that right now and yet we have all this we have nothing but numbers and we have so much less knowledge than I think we should get at all these bots and conversational interfaces and trying to figure out well how do we combine the best of human customer relationships with machine learning customer relationships could absolutely be applied here where you're not just marketing and selling people things but you're a personal trainer that most of the time is just a bot that knows how to do this stuff and then at certain points when there needs to be a human step in and make a judgment call then you get your actual personal trainer weighing in but you never have to meet them that's a brilliant idea. Well if only we could live in such a beautiful world Tom. Make it happen in 2017 year we've all been waiting for alright we got some messages of the day Dave McClain in Stealville, Missouri said I was watching yesterday's show during breakfast when you and Scott were discussing YouTube adding 4K live streaming and it made me wonder about YouTube's sound as far as I know all the streams still only have two channel audio. Do they have any plans to upgrade the sound to 5.17.1 Dolby Atmos or DTSX there you can support 5.1 on YouTube but it's not obvious to me how to do it in my stream I see exactly where I can add 4K resolution but it's two channel stereo as far as I can tell so there must be some special work around you do do it and it just I think it's a great question don't you like why aren't they paying attention to the audio side of things as much as they are the video. Cause they don't care yeah do enough of us care maybe that's all there is to it. Yeah I mean listen Google is a company that runs by the numbers and if the users are not banging down their door they will be slow to react to it and many times when the users are banging down their door they are also slow to react to it. As far as the idea of video choice and simplifying how we get our video which Scott and I were also talking about Alan said we'll never get to that point where we can say these are the content producers and these are the service providers because the service providers are becoming the content producers and we will retain exclusivity or other favorable conditions to their advantage and then Russell asks what if you were to overlay a service on top of all of these providers that held your account numbers and access codes etc and when you asked them to watch a show an algorithm could find the least expensive way for you to do it based on the accounts you have and even suggest a service or source if you were not a member but held something you wanted. That's a pretty good idea. Yeah I like that too. 2017 there's another request for you. And then finally a couple of responses to Netflix that are getting offline play as I do appreciate offline viewing to make a flight slightly less horrible. The feature I really want is playlists preferably with shuffle as a long time cord cutter we watch most of our reruns on Netflix and I can only imagine the personal joy of hitting shuffle on my family guy Archer Bobsburgers Boondocks at American Dad playlist. I've thought about this before where for a lean back experience where I'm like I've seen a lot of movies and TV shows I know I always will like watching that I could just say play something from there. I've always loved the idea of like just your own personal HBO right just that the channel you can turn on and like maybe you don't love exactly what you're watching right there but like it's it's just reduces that decision paralysis yeah a little bit I understand that like that's not the point and it's a logical to just want to turn on a thing when you can get exactly what you want started from the beginning always but yet I still yearn for it just start something I like something I've watched in the past 12 months or five years in the middle just let me hit a button starts and something I like does till dawn is 45 minutes in I would be very happy with that. I would pick I would throw like Star Wars movies in there I would throw Lord of the Rings movies in there I'd throw yeah all archers Star Trek just you know just throw up something I know I'm gonna like I love that idea and then Travis a.k.a. Mechagobbler said first of all thanks to Big Jim for organizing the DC meetup good people good conversation good beer I'm glad y'all were able to get together in the DC area that's awesome yeah and second DC is a big public commuting hub with sprawling bus train and subway lines between being underground on the metro or out in cell signal challenged areas on bus or train for hours at a time having the option to keep my content local is going to be a big deal for a lot of weary commuters well I'll tell you what Travis considering all the stories of metro trains like running into each other and lighting on fire you might want to keep your head on a swivel but I appreciate that you'll be able to be watching the Gilmore girls revival as the the perilous metro trips continue I used to ride the metro and I never had an incident no they had a thing with like the first hundred days of Clinton too dude the metro just for whatever it's like like the old hell these days all right well that is it for this episode of DTNS Justin Robert Young thanks as always we got to tell folks about going on I'll tell you what the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals might be gone however the bundles are here for the holidays at thecontender.us we have if you want to get all the base deck and the 2016 primary expansion and the politically incorrect expansion as well as two exclusive lapel pins you can get that for a cheap price if you want to get all of our mini expansions they're all back you can buy a piecemeal or get them all together in one big bundle and we had such a response to the price point of $17 and $76 for our base deck that we have been convinced to keep it for the holidays so this will be the cheapest you will ever be able to buy this deck $17 and $76 available until Christmas so head on over to thecontender.us get the ultra patriotic $17.76 price point on a game that has been allotted all year long and now we'd like to thank everybody who has made this Black Friday and Cyber Monday and our holiday season in general so so so successful so thank you so much to everybody and if you don't got it go ahead and get it $17.76 shall continue exactly it will rise again all right thank you to everyone who supports this show today's December 1st so this is the day where the funding of our patrons comes to us and helps us make sure that Roger has something to eat for producing the show and and Justin gets thanks for coming on and doing the hard work of preparing for the show and all our contributors and it's all because of you at patreon.com and we have a lot of new supporters like Matt Montoya to stalwarts like Ryan Alcott and Jose Arcasada you guys are the best audience in the world we cannot thank you enough our email address is feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com and I want you to use that to send us underrated stories we're going to do a special of the underrated stories of 2016 for instance I think Microsoft joining the Linux foundation is a bit of an underrated story that's a huge moment in history Justin if you were to suggest an underrated story give folks an example my underrated story which by your clarification was something that will probably be left out of 2016 top stories of the year list I think is kind of a cluster but everything that's happened in private space travel it's exciting repeatedly that they've been able to re-land a rocket both on a barge and on solid land Blue Origin being able to demonstrate the same and Elon Musk laying out the the stellar transport plan basically his railway to Mars that he wants to continue to run back and forth and testing some of the mechanics on that not just being a power point presentation I think that is a story that might not make it on all these lists and yet will probably when we enter in the Wikipedia data on private or just space travel in general this will have been a very pivotal year Mike Kepper just sent us one about the idea of connectivity becoming more ubiquitous through public libraries we people don't talk about that very often that's the kind of thing we're looking for so if you're thinking of one right now send it to us feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com this is the subject line under rated we're live Monday through Friday 4.30pm eastern at AlphaGeekRadio.com and DiamondClub.tv our website is DailyTechNewsShow.com and we will be back tomorrow with Lamar Wilson as our guest and Len Peralta here to illustrate talk to you then part of the Frog Pants Network get more at FrogPants.com I hope you have enjoyed this program Strike it Rich says how about overrated stories to which I reply see every single 2016 year in review story that's kind of what we're that's what we're reacting against there yeah alright we got headlines we got headlines we got lots and lots of headlines Rogers reconnecting to the hangout what should we call this Justin let's go ahead and take a look at old N.T. Shobit 2016 the year that wouldn't die ellipses too soon I really like survival of the Fitbit oh yeah that's a good one smartwatches are ahead of their time drones don't upset the Apple cartography I wish there were a better pebble one because really the story is about pebble and not fitbit but I do really really like survival of the Fitbit well as pebble becomes Fitbit it survives it does so it so elegantly sums up what's going on it must become let this be your last battlefield pebble no one did the he without sin without us he who is without sin cast the first stone is that what you're saying yeah he without a smartwatch cast the first pebble acquire the he without a smartwatch acquire the first pebble he without enough market share acquire the first pebble actually Fitbit has the top market share though so that one doesn't apply so much alright survival of the Fitbitist I like it I'm good with it Apple playing catch up uh Roger you're not in chat are you beatmaster is giving me the pace oh I'm sorry I'm sorry that's alright I'll send it to you apologies I knew there's some there you go oh anyone doing so many thank you so you keeping busy Justin a little bit Tom a little bit I got a partner with a full time job I got another two I hit in the beach posting amazing beach selfies every day in Solulita you're not just cheer you up where Solulita Solulita Mexico yeah um and uh I'm just uh pushing $13,000 worth of products out the door Black Friday has not ended for you I actually realized when we were talking earlier that we are really just in a bit of a pickle because I leave Wednesday morning and I doubt that we're gonna get those padded envelopes before then there's gotta be some wholesale office supply place they don't sell those was that the problem it's those they're not available in any post office you have to and I don't even know if because at least it's not easy um to get padded priority envelopes wait a minute wait a minute wait a second God yeah well you can buy them on Etsy really oh they crocheted padded with afghans on Etsy this is free mind you you can get them for free from the US Postal Service I looked at this price and I could not believe what do you think they are selling one of these free items for $5 $6.85 wow I was even trying to be greedy that I was like oh wait that's gotta be for like a pack of 20 sure yeah because they're free because they're free oh my gosh you just pay the postage right that's how that works usually what's like you go to the post office you get all their and like a flat rate envelope and everything like that and you pay the flat rate yeah well wait a minute if you get them from Etsy and you take them to post office would the post office not charge you no you still gotta buy these are literally just packing alright the post office doesn't consider the box to be the postage is what I was wondering no no no you still gotta put a sticker on it because I know you can buy I've seen them advertise that you can buy the box package it up and drop it off and you don't have to you just put the address on it but that's that's not for what you're doing I've been reviewed on Etsy wow this is exactly because if those were prepaid this is why people don't trust liberals on the economy this is all whoa it just went left on us I am I still have a very vague idea of what's happening alright so dig this there is a kind of envelope called priority flat rate envelope using it almost exclusively for the contender A because a deck fits in it B because it's padded it provides extra protection when it's being shipped and C because it actually provides the best international rate shipping internationally is very very very expensive especially for something that is as bulky as a contender deck so the cheapest way we can ship it is for the $28 international in that padded envelope our entire business shipping wise hinges on these if you go you just google priority padded flat rate envelope you click on the first thing you will see that you can get up to 10 packs of 10 for free the only issue is you cannot change like I can't pay them to send it to me faster but you can pay someone on etsy to send it to you I can pay somebody $7 an envelope to send me the envelope I will then still have to buy a postage on although you're paying them to send it to you faster how fast can they get it to you is it worth it? I guess that's the way I'd look at it one to three days is what they promise the USPS will do it in three to five days okay so it's not that it's not guaranteed to be faster that is why people can't know that these are free interesting why can't Justin go to the post office to get some it's because they don't have them at post office you can only get them online you can get boxes at the post office boxes? probably what people are thinking of and the thin envelopes right but not the padded ones but not the padded ones what if you got padded manila envelopes and then use that same service to use that envelope to get that same service you then have to pay by weight got it totally makes sense now thank you well remember not to do a card deck game that I need to ship internationally yeah boy it's a real mean motor scooter or you could do media mail and then they'll arrive sometime in the spring let me see if there's any other way I'm just going to order another 100 here yeah there's no option to do it faster let's say just go to the live chat and what's crazy to me is I can see why every single post office outlet might not have these but there are those large distribution centers like the one up in Richmond why isn't there a way for you as a business to go there and get them or something or some place you know dark redeemer says most underrated story of 2016 price gouging on padded flat rate envelopes Shane wants to know if you can get them on Ali Baba I do not know alright here I'm going to talk to James on USPS live chat okay hello James I need what is your real name James what is your real name I've that you're not a Dave you don't look like a James cause you look like a chat window they are not fully me James welcome James you're live James so my name is also James by the way the USPS live assistance app is powered by Oracle so a little bit of Larry Ellison's DNA survived Larry little bit of Monica little bit of Larry if one were to dissect Skynet in the future one would find a little bit of Larry Ellison's DNA in it James says one moment please one moment please please James not you James stop acting like you're the James in the chat I kind of do that it's like watching ace the tech cut the cord live watching the board out shipping yeah it's similar I'll say cutting the cord for me was mega easy it was easier than I expected yeah I think mine was only 20 minutes yeah I was literally like even me walking down the my Comcast box to a UPS store oh yeah I didn't count that oh I got to return my cable box Saturday telling the cuff my internet the following week oh when's the move Monday oh my god only half of my place is packed yeah we won't have any Roger Monday Tuesday Wednesday next week because he'll be on the road again maybe Tuesday okay yeah that's right maybe Tuesday you're a you're a possible on Tuesday I gotta bring a headset I'll bring this headset it's just everything will be a lot slower because I'll be working on a much tinier screen right to pack up my files my old tax just can't get on the road again I need to figure out how to do the internet wait hold on I can't I need to call the fulfillment center 1-800 stamp 24 to get my flat rate padded envelope ship faster Tom I will talk to you later alright man good luck bye Godspeed Justin Robert Young you know that should be a perfect ad for the U.S. Post Office I will talk to you later I'm off to post things working at the speed of business is that their catchphrase that's somebody's actual phrase is that the post office and yesterday was a day where nothing worked just nothing worked everything was broken wasn't just the hangouts but hey at least now I have OBS all set up just in case obese that's what it sounds like I can do some other streams with a Z obey your thirst there are 199 tasks queued to run before mine as Shane says in the chat padded envelopes an industry ready for disruption alright we are almost posted ladies and gentlemen thank you for joining us on this journey of self-discovery about padded envelopes that's right padded envelopes alright we'll see you later folks have a good evening afternoon day night whatever it is to you