 But you can read. That came when you're still lost in the Delta Quadra? No, she's back by the time first contact came out. She was back. Remember, she was like a general lady. I wouldn't have to be after T. Oh, is Voyager after TNG? Voyager, the movie first contact has Admiral Voyager talking to Kirk, Kirk with Kirk talking to Picard before they go off into Kirk. So would make sense to have Sir Patrick be a little bit older in this era? Yeah, and since he is, it's perfect. So you just bring him in. That's all right. TVZ Guns. Betazoid Wedding Planner, faux reality show. Oh, Tom, show them all. We're double checking this here. It's the Janeway thing that you made. You check your federation. I'll check my father's Peabody. You're going to throw stuff up on screen. It's entirely possible, though, that it was before Jane. I don't think the Peabody's going to shed any light on the federation timeline. George Foster Peabody. Please tell me what timeline. In that manner, it's useless. Alexa, Alexa. What, this ends at the Kittimer chords? This is useless. The Camp Kittimer. Geez, get current, man. It was 30. Oh, no, I say I couldn't even do it. It's just cool. You're ready. Here it is. She says this right here. Oh, wait. In first contact? Yeah, she says most noted for her services captain on the Voyager, she began the first federation captain successfully traversed the Delta to partner encountering dozens of planets, blah, blah, blah. By 2379, she was a vice admiral at Starfleet Command. Jane Way was trying to get the appearance on first contact. Here we go. While a junior officer, or a science officer, Jane Way invited captain's privilege by making first contact. Oh, that's not it. Hold on. During the first year of voyage, let's see. We've lost Scott. No, I'm just going to find a movie reference because I know it's in here. Oh, I better disappear before you guys get totally derailed. We got two minutes. Yeah, we're live on video, too. Live on video. I can't find it. Oh, it's section 31 show. No, this is in here. Here it is. That's interesting. Well, you know what? I'm sorry. It was nemesis, not first contact. OK, I'll buy that. Yeah, I was having a problem with first contact because first contact came out before Voyager was done. So that's kind of his pointer. Totally right. Totally right. Section 31 show would be awesome. It could be like agents of shield. Yep. Here's the scene. Let me see if it plays. See, oh, gray, hot. There's a shocker. OK, here I am. Get to Jane Way. Just take your medication from Starfleet Command. Oh, here we go. See you again. John Luke. John Luke. I'm in prison as a cook. You know what? My name is Red. Get me out of here. I'm undercover. All right, the ladies present. I've time traveled to the 20th, 21st century. She does the new Joe Hill book narration. She's quite good at that. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I forgot the name of the book, though. I'll buy that. Should we to the tech news? Yeah. Let's do it. All right. Bye. Goodbye. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we're about to record an audio podcast. Enjoy. Podcasts about technology in your daily lives from people who like to put pants on frogs and one guy with a trustworthy looking beard. The Daily Tech News Show with Tom Merritt is brought to you by you and I at dailytechnewshow.com slash donate. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, November 4, 2015. I'm Tom Merritt joining me as he does on Wednesdays. Mr. Scott Johnson, DTNS contributor and Grand Vizier of the Frog Pants Network. Grand Vizier. I'd like to be a Viceroy one day. That's my Viceroy of the fuck. Is this Viceroy like appointed by someone higher? So who would be the higher person appointing you as Viceroy? Oh, I don't know. That goes all the way up to High Command. It's all Star Trek and Star Wars in my head. So I'm not sure which one is which, but I know there were Viceroy's and Star Trek first contact or in Nemesis. And there was also Viceroy's in the Star Wars, you know, the prequels. There was a bunch of your admiral of the frog pants. All right, I'll take that. I'm also wearing a woolly hat. I just want everyone to know that winter is freaking here. It's cold today. So I wore this. Yeah, it's like 67 today in LA. It's like 42 here. OK, fine. You have real winter is what you're saying. We're going to talk about artificial intelligence, machine learning in ways that can help you with your life today, but let's start off with the headlines. Microsoft has been testing an iOS version of Cortana, speaking of personal assistance. They've been doing it for about six months, and now they want to include public beta testers, Windows Insider program members, so public-ish. Anybody can become an insider, though. Windows Insider program members in the US and China can sign up for the iOS Cortana preview after taking a survey. If chosen, just because it takes a survey doesn't mean you'll get it. They'll email you a link to download Cortana for iOS. And according to the Verge, the iOS version will look and work like Windows 10 Mobile and Android versions. You won't be able to say, hey, Cortana, like you can on a Windows phone, but that's to be expected. Same sort of thing is true of other assistance that aren't Siri. Sure. I've got a friend who really likes it on his Android device, and I'm color me excited to try something new. And it's interesting that this kind of does lead into what we're going to be talking about later. I feel like all these voice-enabled apps and phones and devices are just the frosting on the big AI cake. My problem with this particular flavor of frosting is iOS. iOS doesn't allow me to make Cortana my default virtual assistant to replace Siri. Now that doesn't make it useless, but I kind of prefer to just have the default be the thing I use all the time. That's why I don't use Chrome as my browser, because I don't like clicking on links and having them open in Safari, because all right, that's my default browser I forgot. Just want to keep it all in one place. It'd be interesting to see if Apple ever loosens that up, the way that they did with browsers and other apps. They said, yeah, you can have other default apps or default browsers, and apps can go straight to those browsers instead. And if they were willing to let that happen, and if voice interaction becomes a default interface for devices like this, it would behoove them to do it. I think they'll take their sweet time though. Yeah, absolutely. I did fill out the survey though. Oh, you did good. Well, if you get it, there's no if you feel like Master Chief more than you did before you used that. Yeah, I will. Outerwall, the parent company of Redbox and CoinStar, has bought Gazelle. He may have sold something there before. I don't know. The company that buys used gadgets for $18 million. They don't buy them for that. That's a good point. Outerwall also owns Echo ATM, or Eco ATM, is probably more accurate. A kiosk-based device trade-in operation. Outerwall CEO, Eric Princh, says Gazelle will help Echo ATM gain critical mass. And it's probably good for them to diversify anyway, because I made a prediction not too long ago that my friends think is that I'm full of crap, that we would see the down star of things like Redbox soon, so it's good for them to branch out. Yeah, Outerwall is doing well. The Redbox unit isn't doing as well. It's not doing as bad as you might think. But Echo ATM was showing promise, so buying Gazelle makes perfect sense. You combine the experience of Gazelle with doing that will buy or use Merchadise and turn it into profit with those kiosks. And Gazelle, I mean, if they only sold for $18 million, they can't have been doing great. I'm not saying they were doing badly, but that means that they weren't a big cash cow of any sort. So it makes sense. I think especially in podcasting, where Gazelle has done a lot of advertising, this caught some headlines just because people were like, oh, well, that's interesting. The Redbox folks own Gazelle now. It's kind of weird. Our static compass is along a Wall Street Journal report that Apple and GT Advanced Technologies will settle their dispute. Apple had claimed GT missed deadlines for delivering sapphire screens, things like iPhones and Apple Watches. Well, GT claimed Apple changed deal terms and then said, pray I don't change them further. GT will supposedly auction off 1,400 of their 2,000 sapphire making furnaces and split the proceeds with Apple, which will then forgive any remaining debt and get to dispose of some other equipment. Apple plans to turn GT's Mesa, Arizona facility into a data center. So it should keep things chugging along in Mesa. GT will seek a bankruptcy judge's approval of the deal next week. I know this stuff happens all the time with business. I totally get it. It's the ebb and flow of things, but doesn't it feel like a dragon flew by and burned a village down in a weird way? I don't know why I feel that way. And I love Apple. I like Apple products, but there's something about this that feels like, okay, let's say Apple is 100% on the up and up about saying these deadlines were messed on sci-fi or glass. Fine, we can all buy that. I just feel like they're gonna be left in ruins, not because of this necessarily, maybe in part due to this, but it just feels like their village is burned and Apple's coming in and reclaiming the village for their own. Yeah, I feel like the village owed Apple some screens and then burned itself down and blamed Apple. That's how I look at it. Fair enough. Fair enough. It was a dragon and Apple's like, no, it was not a dragon. You burned yourself down. It was Tim Cook. He's no dragon. Fans of Monty Python, prepare your people's liberation front jokes. Are you ready? All right. The Alliance for Wireless Power and the Power Matters Alliance have merged today to form Air Fuel Alliance. That pits them against, sounds like, what do you call it? People who go out and fight with fake swords in the woods. This is kind of what it sounds like for me for anyway. Anyway, here's what it says. That pits them against the wireless power consortium. Most major companies are part of multiple organizations. So it's not like they just stick with one. The Wireless Power Consortium, or WPC uses a key or chi, rather. Standard, that's a standard that is built into the Ikea furniture and Microsoft charging ring. Starbucks use the PowerMats Alliance standard, which now is part of the Air Fuel Alliance. So is it any less confusing, Tom, or does this make more sense that now we have- So the people's front of Judea and the Judean people's front have teamed up to give wireless power to the Romans? Is that, did I get this right? Yeah, the names are hilarious, but actually, this is a good sign. We've now gone from three standards to potentially two. I mean, obviously both standards of these previous alliances still exist, but now that they're all part of one organization, one could expect them to consolidate onto one platform and make it easier for the companies that are using one or the other to implement the other one. And then you've got the chi standard as the other. So we've got two. Now, usually what happens in this sort of case is we kind of settle out at two standards for a while, but I kinda, I mean, come on, Wireless Power Consortium. Get on in there and get a big old hug with the Air Fuel Alliance. Then you can be the Air Fuel Alliance Consortium or something. I would like one standard is all I'm saying. Yeah, and we'll get there. It's like USB. It's like anything. We'll eventually get to a place where the industry needs to have a single standard and then improve upon that standard and iterate on it. Wouldn't that have been nice if they had gone to the IEEE and said, let's make a wireless power standard. But that's not what happened. Robot Servant was among the folks who wanted to make sure we mentioned that the UK unveiled a proposed law. It's a bill at this point that makes surveillance powers in the country clear. Communication service providers, CSPs as they're called in the bill. So that means telecommunications companies and cable internet and all of that will be required to hold web browsing data for one year. Now supposedly that means domain names, not only individual pages. So it's like your traffic report on your website when they break it down just by domain name. They'll just keep that part of it. Each CSP will also be required to remove any encryption it applies on itself. So you won't be able to trust any encryption provided through your CSP in the UK from now on. Although there is no ban on encryption in general. So you can still provide your own. Security service would be allowed to crack devices and judges will review all the issued warrants with veto power over them. And they have the power to issue jail penalties for anyone abusing the system. So you can't just go break an encryption and looking at web histories of anybody, theoretically. You have to have a warrant and that warrant has to stand up to judicial review. The bill will be debated before becoming law and there is a big fight coming about that. I'm sorry. Am I right to see this as, well at least they're selling it as a transparency law. This isn't really about, I mean, obviously there's new things people would have to adhere to, but it does feel more like a thing to say, look, we're going to surveil, if lack of a better word, and here's what we're going to do. Is that all this is? Cause that seems okay to me. I mean, Conspiracy would say, still say, well, they're not showing you everything. Fine, whatever. But let's say that we've taken with their word. This just sounds like transparency. Yes, in a way it is. They're saying a lot of these things were already being done. We're just making it very clear and giving legal foundation to them. A lot of them are in reaction to a wider EU ruling about what can be collected, what kind of data can be stored, trying to deal with that. But the other side of it is, okay, now you've made it clear that you are overreaching in storing data about me with no reason to. Like why should an ISP have to store all this stuff in the first place if I haven't done anything wrong? And then the argument becomes like, well, we need to catch the bad guys so we have to store it in case. And it's the familiar fight that we've been hearing debated for years now about how much this really does protect against bad actors and how much it just puts everybody's privacy in jeopardy. And can it be used for legal uses that aren't fighting terrorism or something like that because somebody just gets it in their head that they wanna track down folks and can it be used out of proportion to the crimes that it's after, things like that? Yeah, I don't like the extent. I think I like the transparency, but we could just back off the extent a little bit. Reuters reports, Google has admitted 130 page reply to the European Commission's April statement of objections regarding search results, which mentioned the possibility of a fine if Google was found guilty of this whole thing. Google said a fine would not be appropriate because of its willingness to settle the case late last year. The unusual or the unusual nature of the case and the fact that it's a search engine is totally free. Those are the other two reasons they think that this is frivolous. Google says no trading relationship exists between Google and its users, third parties have until the end of November to provide feedback before the commission makes a decision. Wow, that's a mouthful. Yes. And the UK, that happens over there a lot. Well, here's what's gonna happen. The folks who have been accusing Google of abusing their dominant position in search in Europe are going to say, doesn't matter if you don't charge, you're abusing your position and keeping us from creating a business. And then the commission is going to say, yes, that doesn't change anything we said before and there's gonna be a fine levy. I don't know that Google did anything that will change the European Commission's mind here. When you become the most popular thing, is it on you that you now make it hard for others to compete with you because you made the thing that was better? And if you can't find any clear intent that they were screwing with other people's chance to compete, that's a part I don't get. Well, it's a really interesting question because what you're asking is, what could Google do? They have been successful and gathered 90 plus percent of the market. And maybe they're not doing anything to shove anyone else out, they're just good at it. In which case, what are the remedies? And what Google's saying is, look, we've talked about all kinds of remedies and you won't accept any of them. No other remedy exists for us to do except pay a fine. You know, like at this point, I'm not sure. And I think that's, maybe I'll backtrack on Google not doing their job in response here. Maybe saying, look, we will agree to these other settlements. So, you know, we'll agree to show results for competing engines and things like that to kind of mitigate our dominant position. And they make a great point that it's a frictionless system. If somebody comes along and makes an amazing search engine, it's free for anyone to switch, but Google is so entrenched in Europe that it's hard for anyone to get any mind share. So I don't, it's a thorny question. What do you do when someone has that percentage of domination? My personal belief, Scott, is that nobody is able to keep, usually companies are like, how do we keep our domination, right? And I don't know that Google in other markets is worried about having too much domination. They're worried about companies like Bing or Amazon or Facebook eating away at them. So I would expect that that might happen in Europe as long as Google isn't doing anything to keep those companies from being on platforms. And that's not what's at issue here. Yeah. I just, the whole thing just boggles my mind. I feel like it's just different here. We would have had this lawsuit six times over by now. We did. We had an investigation, the FTC said there's no dominant position, but the difference is Google only has a 70 to 80% market share here and sometimes in the 60s, depending on what stats you look at. So it's a much different situation than a 90 plus percentage. The lesson is be careful and don't become the best of the thing you're doing. In Europe. In Europe. Oh gosh. Alan Scharr wanted us to mention the TechCrunch article noting that former Twitter engineering manager Leslie Miley has written a medium post critical of Twitter's handling of diversity and inclusiveness. It's a very respectful post. It's very well documented. Miley says he was the only African-American in a leadership position in engineering at the company. He was laid off in October, but he had planned to leave anyway. So he decided to decline a severance package in order to be able to speak openly. Usually when you take a severance package, part of the deal is signing a waiver saying I won't criticize the company after I leave. So he declined that. A Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch we're committed to making substantive progress and making Twitter more diverse and inclusive. And Mr. Miley's medium post does end with a lot of positive things about Jack Dorsey saying he thinks that Jack Dorsey is the right guy to solve this problem. Kind of read to me like him saying, Jack, you've got to fix this. And I think you can, you know, I'm not there anymore though. And here's why. If you're telling me that somebody can take the time to write a reasonable thought-provoking post about something that may or may not disagree with and not automatically go to, you know, flamethrowers on the internet, I don't know if I believe you, Tom. Oh, I'm sure they'll be flamethrowers. They probably will at some point. We'll get on him for doing it that way. Recode reports Microsoft will offer Red Hat's Enterprise Linux on the Azure Cloud computing platform. What? Where's Balmer and all that? Oh, it's because he's gone and they're doing new things. The aim is to help corporations build hybrid computing systems that mix cloud and on-premise computing as your customers can install their own Red Hat virtual machines and run applications like JBoss web server and OpenShift. The deal includes comprehensive support from both companies to help with shared customers. I think that is a great- It's, yeah, it's funny. Like the me of today looks at this and goes, oh yeah, this is a logical extension of the strategy that Microsoft has been pursuing as far as operating Linux on the Azure Cloud system, which they've been doing for a little while now. Red Hat's the most popular. Obviously, the customers want that. So they're bowing to customer needs. I'm sure customers have been telling Red Hat that they want to be able to run on Azure as well. This makes perfect sense. The me of five to 10 years ago when, like you said, Balmer was calling Linux the Great Evil is like, they let Red Hat do what? Yeah, or there's a Cortana beta on an iPhone? Or a new place for Microsoft? Facebook reached 1.55 billion users in Q3 and beat expectations with four and a half billion dollars in revenue and earnings of 57 cents a share. Analysts expected 4.37 billion dollars and 52 cents a share. Facebook is 11 years old now with what a two out of nine, one day, just around 25% of the population of the planet using it. Can we call them old media? I think you can start to. They're mainstream for sure. Everybody keeps talking, you know, of political candidates get up and say the words mainstream media all the time. And I often ask what they mean. Do they mean Fox? Do they mean CNN? Do they mean all those collectively? Do these mean newspapers? Like what are we talking about anymore? And I think if you're gonna have that broad blankety term, Facebook has to be in there now. Yeah. And Twitter maybe even, I don't know. But the things that have the sort of critical mass like this, you can't just ignore them and pretend that they're no longer part of the discussion. I mean Twitter's still counting its monthly active users in hundreds of millions. That's true. This is, Facebook is out of control. It's astronomical, dude. And everyone I know says they hate it. I wonder why they keep doing so well. Well, that's always true of popular things, right? Something that's massively popular. Everyone thinks it's cool to say they hate it so that they look like they're an outsider. That's just a symptom of something being that massively popular. Well, the hot new thing in e-commerce is physical stores, it turns out. Brick and Mortar Baby apparently Amazon opened a real bookstore yesterday. Microsoft made a big deal of its Fifth Avenue flagship store earlier in the week as well. Now in Gadget reports, Motorola rather will open a store in Chicago on November 7th. Store will be called Moto Shop, designed to be a showroom and hands-on area. That's cool. And Motorola headquartered in Chicago. So that guess that makes sense. Do they have enough products to fill a retail space? You can build your own Moto X in there. All right. So big old table full of parts. Like a subway sandwich in there. Yeah, I mean, this is the new deal though. These shops are often considered showrooms. Even the bookstore is a showroom in a way for what you can buy on the site. So Motorola probably isn't worried about stocking the shelves with a bunch of stuff. They just want to be able to show off their phones. Yeah, a nice kiosk for their phones and their devices and any tablets or whatever seems like a great idea. I'm already excited about the idea of an Amazon store. I know it kind of sounds a lot like Barnes & Noble Nook store in a lot of ways. So we kind of already have a store like that, but I'm jazzed about how that will be laid out, what they'll do and how the traditional bookstore fits in and all that stuff. So I'm kind of all for this. Everyone wants to say everything goes digital and we're all out of places to go and have that shopping experience. And I'm not so sure. So I think signs like this point to maybe a different tale. About three years ago, and I think it was on one of the prediction shows for Tech News today, I said that I thought that we would see as shops close down because of competition with online, online companies starting to open shops. Now, in my fall team memory, I'm probably misremembering what I actually said, but I feel like this is what I was after is like these companies going, hey, you know what? We should create a showroom where people can come in and get their hands on stuff because it's the one thing we can't deliver even with virtual reality is actually getting your hands and around an object and feeling it. Yeah, and in some ways they may have an up on Apple who already kind of has figured that out, but they are very specifically showing off Apple products and Apple approved accessories. That's the whole reason to have an Apple store. These guys have opportunities to have real books on a shelf and a little coffee shop in the corner and whatever, whatever. And in Modo's case, who knows what that means, but they have opportunities to extend their brands in ways that even Apple is maybe a little artificially limited to. Is it wrong for me to think of my misremembering as Brian Williams-ing it? I think that's a totally great way to say that. And I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna forget something. I like Brian Williams too, huh? That's funny. He's a, you know, helicopter guy, all that stuff. Yeah, that's great. And that, my friends, is a look at the headlines. Hey, submit your stories to us. Let us know what you'd like us to talk about. We pay attention to what is up at thedailytechnewshow.reddit.com and not only can you submit stories and vote on stories, you can start conversations. Tyler's been taken topics. Sometimes I'll send him the topic ahead of time so he can start a conversation over there. So we'd love to hear what you guys think about stuff, dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. In fact, we might maybe we'll outsource, Lynn Peralta needs some help brainstorming some ideas for the poster. Maybe we'll outsource that there. Keep an eye on it, dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. All right, we talked yesterday about how Google is adding a feature called Smart Reply to its inbox app later this week. It's the one that suggests three possible responses to an email based on what it does. The machine learning recognizes the email and generates a natural language response. The Facebook AI research team, AKA FAIR, has been showing off a lot of what they do in advance of demonstrations that they'll give at the NIPS Artificial Intelligence Conference next month. Among these are the ability to recognize objects in a photo, 30% faster and 10 times with 10 times less training than industry's previous benchmarks. So the algorithm can say there's a baby there, there's a bicycle, there's an avocado. It just recognizes the objects. They also use something called MemNets, which Facebook's CTO, Mike Schrepfer, says, is a type of short-term memory to the convolutional neural networks that power our deep learning systems, allowing those systems to understand language more like a human would, except most humans won't understand that sentence. So one of the demonstrations they've given of MemNets is feeding it a short version of Lord of the Rings and then being able to ask it questions about Lord of the Rings and have it answer them using this MemNets system. They combine both of those, the image recognition and the natural language for virtual Q and A. You can ask questions about what's in a photo. And Scott, that's one of the spookiest ones I saw. There's a baby sitting in a bathtub getting its teeth brushed. And you see the demonstration like, what's in the photo, baby? Where is the baby? Math tub. What's the baby doing? Brushing teeth. Next line was, am I real? Exactly. Am I alive? Yeah, we're nearing where that place where both Bill Gates and to some degree car man, PayPal man's name just left me, crap. The guy has all the money makes Tesla. What's his name? Elon Musk. Musk, they're always talking about it. They're always reading articles about how they're terrified of the future of AI. And I always think that's kind of interesting coming from those two, which, you know, so much of their work is in the DNA of what we do these days. Not so much Elon Musk, but my point is that I'm not sure why they're afraid of it. I think there's so many positive uses for this. It is a little bit weird to have a machine see a photo and be able to break all those items out, although the baby, the avocado and the tree, it's like, you've got a pretty weird idea what a photo is, but, and knowing that somebody's gonna get it wrong in the early days and stuff, we are definitely heading toward a place where the machines can tell what's going on. Like literally can see what's happening in images, in videos, in our text, in our replies. The inbox feature that Google's rolling out for inbox, their app for phone and desktop, to include this ability to kind of know what you wanna reply with and to suggest with. And learn and adapt, yeah. Exactly. So when it really will start freaking me out or making me happy, I guess it depends on my attitude about all this, is when it can say, all right, you just had a blowout with your boss over email. He's just sent you this angry email or whatever, or a client or something. Here's three possible replies. Will those be anywhere near what is needed for a nuanced reply to a tough situation or any of those things? So I don't, I feel like for a while it's gonna feel like your phone, when you get a call and you're like, I can't take this now, flip it up, choose one of these three text messages. I'll call you right back, I'm busy right now or I'll phone you later or I'm on a call or whatever. Is it gonna be anything more than that at first or will this thing really learn about who we are? And will these devices and interfaces become the kind of thing that can truly know who we are so that they can express who we are to other people? Cause that's the idea, right? Eventually it's just gonna automate my replies, my response, my reactions. And do we want that, I guess, is the big question. Well, and that's a really interesting question because what you're talking about is this sort of supervised learning that they, what they call it a machine learning. So they have fed data in to say, this is what a baby looks like. And they've even done things where like, okay, Facebook showed this with dogs, Google showed it with cats, like we show you what cats look like often enough that then you start to table recognize cats even if we haven't showed them what it looks like. But there's still that idea of like, well, it's only learning what we've told it to learn. The real trick is unsupervised learning. Fair, the Facebook AI folks are working on unsupervised learning systems that can make predictions. So right now they show it off with like a tower of blocks and they ask the system, are the blocks gonna fall or not based on what you can see. And they can predict whether the blocks will fall with 90% accuracy. Sometimes that's better than what a human can do. And the other one is playing go. I don't know if you've ever played that game. Have you ever played go? Long time ago as a kid probably. Yeah. So it is way more complex than chess in its possibilities. It's less complex in its playing because you just have white pebbles and black pebbles and you can put them in certain places and then capture other pebbles. But there are 400 possible next moves with chess. There are close to 130,000 possible next moves on average with go. And fair is able to play go at a pretty good level where it can beat humans a lot of times. Now there are computers that play go but computers have notoriously been bad at becoming a master. Whereas computers have been beating people at chess, beaten masters at chess since the 90s. Yeah. We are getting to a place and video games which I have a lot of love for and a lot to deal with. We always hear about, well that'll be the place where we start to see really big leaps of artificial intelligence. I'm actually of the reverse opinion that these things will happen and then find their way into our entertainment experiences, whatever those may be. But it is just now that I feel like we're hitting the tipping point, hopefully. I don't know about this for sure, but it feels like a tipping point for computing power versus what we can do with these algorithms. So it's, you know, we've been at this computer stuff for a very long time. We've known what we want computers to do for us since really the 60s in Star Trek and maybe before that. Many authors and creatives have for a long time said, well wouldn't it be great if robots cleaned our house, did our dishes, took our notes, did our shopping, whatever it is. And I feel like we're just now getting there. We're getting voice interfaces that actually work, that respond to us and understand what we're asking. We're getting responses from that kind of interface that are actually meaningful and helpful and useful and that's iterating just about every release of every new device or phone. So we're getting to a place where excess processing power and cloud storage and all these other factors can kick in and actually start giving us real results when we need real things done that seem like they're intelligent. Now the real question is will it ever go to a point where the computer just knows everything about you? Like can you remind me what I was doing six weeks ago for lunch? Yes, you ate at Sardis and you had a burger or whatever. Like I don't know if we're ever getting to that but we are definitely getting there and I love it. For one, I don't see any of this as scary. Some people see AI as scary if you ever give it too much power and let it have access to things that shouldn't, even if it doesn't intend to or have sentience, it could still screw things up and blow down the power grid or whatever. I totally understand our fears but I'm jazzed about it. That means so many things in our lives about transportation, communication, education, all of it becomes something of a new level in a way and I'm not at all scared. Bring it on. When folks like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking are saying be careful with AI, all that says to me is AI is real. AI is something that we can actually use and just like plutonium, we need to be careful with it. We can do good things with nuclear radiation, like explore other planets or we can blow things up with it and the same is true for any kind of machine learning artificial intelligence system. We have got to the point where it's like, hey, you know what? This thing works well enough. It could do damage and I think that's perfectly wise to say like, hey, let's go slow. Let's be careful. Let's be cautious. Let's do it right. I don't think any of those folks are saying don't do it at all. And so these are examples of what you can actually do with machine learning that benefit people. If you haven't caught onto it, we didn't make it front and center when we described it but that recognizing objects in a photo suddenly becomes huge for people who are visually impaired. And Facebook has a great video of people who can't see having photos read to them. And a couple of them are joking about how they're just gonna freak other people out now by talking about what they saw in a photo because this algorithm was able to describe it to them so well. Yeah, I don't know why people, like if you post a public photo on Facebook and you look at it, Tom looks at a photo and says, oh, there's a guy standing by a baseball diamond with a couple of dudes at behind him and there's like something on the ground. Okay, so you've seen it, you've evaluated it, you recognize the patterns, you recognize the faces you recognize, you've seen it for what it is. I don't know why we would get up in arms of a machine doing exactly what you did because it isn't like he can do anything more with that information other than describe it or try to quantify it, but that's all you were gonna do and it's a public photo. So I think people tend to hear these things and just take it to the next science fiction conclusion which is we're all gonna die or something. But to me it's, you know. That's a good survival mechanism, I'm not against it. Just don't make it your only response, that's all. Right, and there was, I love this quote from, oh gosh, who was it, Andy Rubin, a couple of months or not even a full month ago, a month and a few days ago at the recode event said this and he's former Android chief exec. So guy knows his stuff, been around, got this new project and this quote's probably in service of that project, but he says this, computing evolves every 15 to 20 years, citing the shifts in mainframes and many computers when he spoke about this. Then home PCs, internet, now mobile says the playground's intended to prepare for the next thing which he believes will be AI. And when you look at computing from a historical perspective, the truth is it's always been about machine learning of one kind or another. We're teaching what we need word perfect to do for us and then it does what we've asked it to do. So in a way we've taught a machine to do what we need it to do. It doesn't continually learn, doesn't gain new knowledge unless you force it to. That's maybe the difference we're talking about now, but to me it's not that big of a stone's throw. It's not a bridge too far, it's right next door and we're just getting to the place where we have the resources and the technicality to get it done. All right, let's move on to our pick of the day from Ariadne in Kansas City, home of the world champion, Kansas City Royals. And yes, people who are not from the United States you can criticize it being called the World Series. Have at it, enjoy yourselves. His, yes, Ariadne's pick of the day is the Compute Midwest Conference. Ariadne says, I attended it last week and I found myself wishing that Tom and esteemed guests had also been in the audience. It was a few weeks ago, we got this email too, so. Due to time constraints, only two speakers did not take questions from the audience, but every other speaker did. I wonder what Tom would have asked the self-driving car advocate or the chief robotic scientist from the MIT Media Lab or the founder and CEO of BitPay. I know what you would have asked him, Scott. Robert Scoble was there. The complete list of speakers is at computemidwest.com. This year's conference is over, but I'm already jazzed about attending next year, says Ariadne. So I just love the idea that, you know, people think, oh, CES and Cedia and TED Talks. Those are where the only places you can go. Yeah, you can go to Kansas City, Compute Midwest. Here's some great talks. Sounds all right. I would ask them what is Bitcoin and how does it work? Yeah, blockchain. Actually, the economists did a really good episode of their money talks, discussing a little bit about blockchain. I think it was a money talks episode and how it is really starting to be investigated as a technology to be used for more than just Bitcoin as this sort of public ledger that doesn't require third parties to validate things. So instead of, you know, for Bitcoin, what it is the blockchain says, you don't have to have a bank as a trusted third party who says a transaction happened. You can just trust the blockchain. This is the internet of the 90s right now. It's the beginning, exactly. It's the beginning of us all having one government and credits. That's what I think. It's all credits from here on out, Tom. Credits? We don't take Republic credits here. Send your picks to us. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. You can find my picks at DailyTechNewsShow.com slash picks. A few messages before we get out of here. Hi, Tom, Scott, Jenny, and Roger. Marlon, the guy from Trinidad here. Patrick yesterday gave a definition of core gamers, those who set aside dedicated time to play games. And he kind of suggested that that's reserved for console and PC games. And he's expressed this view on his Pixels podcast. I want to challenge his assumption. I live in a middle income country where according to a 2013 survey, our cell phone penetration is 140% and smartphone penetration is at 76% combination of small population, large middle class, and a booming economy. For a lot of people, the smartphone is their computer. And by extension, their gaming device. A couple of months ago, I was talking to one of our security guards at work about how he nearly missed his nightly raid with his clan in clash of clans because his taxi was stuck in traffic. He puts aside time every night at 8pm to meet with his friends virtually and play what is considered a casual game. He would also play it casually during the day on his lunch break, et cetera. Sounds like a core gamer to me. This is true for many people. If I was Activision, I would be very keen how I could monetize these gamers who take their mobile games very seriously. I think he is 100% right. And I would argue with Patrick's point. It is easy for us to want to quantify these groups. We want to be able to say, these are indie games. Well, that may have been true five years ago and it was a one or two man team. But these days, it's murky. It's like, well, what's an indie game anymore? Well, some top-notch programmer left Blizzard and now made his own little small game with 10 other people. I'm not sure I'd call that an indie game. I think I'd call that his next project. Like, we've got to get away from these labels. For a second of all, casual gamers are called that because the top games on app stores for various devices tend to be the ones that are easy to get into. It's the candy crushes of the world and so on. That doesn't mean anything, though. There's stuff on those platforms that I play and that others play that I don't know what other word to use other than hardcore devotion to that game. I wouldn't call Hearthstone on mobile a passing interest for a lot of people and I wouldn't call lots of different games a passing interest and there's some really unique interesting games that you can only get on that platform that require a lot from you as a gamer. So 100% with him and this is only gonna get more so that way. You're gonna have the existing base of PC and console players complaining all day long that mobile's breaking into their world, making them feel like they're not being treated like they used to or whatever, but that's just the process of change and it's totally fine and those experiences will be there for everyone. And to be in Patrick's defense, I don't think it was unreasonable for him to say, hey, hardcore gamers are folks who behave this way and they generally play on consoles and PCs. In Europe and the United States, that's still largely true. I would say majority true and probably worldwide taken as a whole, still majority true. What Trinidad has added to the conversation doesn't contradict what Patrick's saying. It says, hey, but the next thing is places like Trinidad and places in Africa like Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa where folks aren't poor, but they don't generally have desktop computers or even consoles and yet they wanna play hardcore games. You can do that and people are. That's interesting. The broader the population that plays on mobile devices, the broader the selection of game types, genres and targeted individuals will be. We're gonna have games for the hardcore, games for the casual, games for everybody in between and that's only because it just keeps growing and becomes the dominant platform. If it isn't already, it's headed there. So we are, yeah. I agree with him and I see what you're saying about Patrick. It's just one of the things that happens in games. We just, we get in this machine of like last gen, next gen, independent, AAA title. Sometimes we get that a little bit convoluted and we have to kind of back off and just realize games are moving into a new era and that new era means everyone's got it in their hands. Alan writes in and says, I am heartened by Amazon opening a bookstore in this digital age, even though I don't do as much as I used to, I find wandering and browsing a physical bookstore much more enjoyable than a website where I rarely browse but I hope they have a wide selection since the fun part of browsing was finding that hidden gem on the back shell was not the best seller on the front tables. I'm not sure how they can claim to have the same price as their website when it has been shown that different people can get different prices for the same item on amazon.com. Maybe you'll have to pay with your amazon.com account. It also makes it difficult to have the price on display. Maybe they stopped doing that, so it won't be an issue. I thought the same thing as Alan. I'm like, I remember several years back and I think I was still at CNET. So it was a while back when Amazon got caught doing that where they had these variable pricing. My guess is they probably stopped doing that in general and they probably certainly are not doing it on books because of the whole publishing situation. They had to really clamp down on prices when the publishers went to court and battled them. So I'm pretty certain Amazon doesn't do that practice anymore. But it is saying that the price in the store is gonna be the same as the price online. Definitely has to be regional. It's not gonna be the same as the price online in Germany. It's gonna be the same as the price online in the United States and maybe even just to shoppers in Washington state. And they're gonna have to keep on top of that because those prices change. Right, and I would agree with his assessment too of this brick and mortar experience. And I can't say that enough. There's for whatever reason, if I'm near a bookstore and I'm out just shopping or doing anything else, we will make a point of stopping and going in there. And oftentimes don't even leave with anything but there is something to that experience. And I don't know that it adds to their bottom line. I remember- Do you feel guilty when you do that? I feel a little bit of guilt when I go into a Barnes and Noble and walk out without buying something. I do, I don't have that guilt if I do that at a Walmart or a Target or something. I know how many people are coming there to buy a ton of things and we're probably are too, but they're very rare occasion where I don't. Like there's a utility to that. The book store is becoming a, it's like a special experience that is no longer about making sure you're, you're not going there with a purpose. You're going there to go, oh, I love looking at books. Last time I went to Barnes and Noble on Twitter, I said it was like a time machine. It kind of is. There were magazines and DVDs and- Organs and toys and stuff. And I love it in there. But when I leave sometimes I'm like, oh, I didn't buy anything. It's like the incredible universe in the 90s. I used to go there all the time. I used to go to these giant mega electronic stores out here in Vegas and here in Salt Lake. We had one that was ginormous, awesome place and loved it, but would hardly walk out with anything and they're gone. Yeah, circuit city, good guys. Yeah, exactly. So I don't even know how Best Buy does it. I don't know how they're doing it. It figures something out. Well, that is it for this show. Thank you folks for listening and watching. However you consume the show, we appreciate it. Scott Johnson is found on the Twitter's at twitter.com slash Scott Johnson. You can find all his fine, wonderful shows that he is a hub in a wheel full of podcasts, spokes at frogpants.com. It's quite the unit. Here's what you wanna do. You wanna come see Tom and I at BlizzCon if you're coming this weekend and I know a bunch of you are, please find us and say hi. That's partly why we go. It's almost entirely why I go. I like to interact with the fans and talk to those who listen to shows and sharing that big, huge gaming experience. So if you see us, do not be shy. Come up, say hi and hang out. Yeah, absolutely do that. On Friday, just so listeners know, you're gonna get a headlines edition in the morning that will make it seem like it's one of those days where I'm not doing a full show, but we're going to do the second half of the show later in the day with the folks from AIE, Brian Ibbott, Todd Whitehead will be on that show as well. Hopefully Scott Johnson, but schedules may interfere and that's fine. But it's gonna be a fun discussion section so you basically get two shows on Friday. I'm not doing that, I really wanna be there. Yeah, no, I know you do. DailyTechnewshow.com slash support folks if you want to make sure this show continues and you're willing to help us out with like a dollar a month, do it. Go to DailyTechnewshow.com slash support. Also don't forget that Len Peralta is creating a poster of all of us in the style of Star Wars, The Force Awakens that just gets better all the time unlike Lando's deal. So go follow him on Twitter because he's just posted during this show a new update to it and you can get your name on the poster. If you act fast, he's got a few more slots for certain folks to be able to get their name on that poster. So go to LenPeraltaStore.com for more. Our email address is feedback at DailyTechnewshow.com. You can cover us to call 51259 Daily, 5125932459. Listen to the show live Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern at alphageekradio.com. Visit our website at DailyTechnewshow.com. Back tomorrow with Lindsey Guilton as our guest. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program. Yeah. Look at the update, it looks great. Oh, he's gonna put people's names in the credits. Yeah, it's so great. That looks really good. It's got so dark in here, guys. I still feel like someone pinched my bum in that. Are you reading Lovecraft? No, it's just like, it's so dark. Relay. Yeah, so he's gonna put DTNS like Star Wars and then he was like, should I put some kind of Force Awakens play on words or should we just put DailyTechnewshow? So I don't know if it's like the podcast Awakens or the net Awakens or if we just go DailyTechnewshow. I don't know. I'm looking at it. I like the font. It's your normal font. It just works with the yellow outline. Scott, all I can say is I'm Princess Leia. I know, look at the phones. They're sweet bottomed. So awesome. I look like Darren Kitchen pinched my butt. Did something happen with Showbot or were people just not title-inspired today? No, that's not happened on Showbot. Because, no, well, that's a reasonable amount of titles. Usually it goes, I have to scroll. And also, no votes. Oh, something's wrong with Showbot. One, two, three, four, six, eight votes. Well, I voted. Maybe it's just a day. Everybody's having a day. Dude, this poster is, I'm obsessed. Pretty off the hook, it's pretty good. I asked Tom, you're gonna hate this, but I asked him to make you just like a little bit bigger. Did it? I hate it. Like a little more center frame. I think I should not be on the poster so that everybody speculates about whether I turn to the dark side or I'm dead. Right, yeah, you would be the Luke in this situation. No, because I've had experience with not putting you like prominently on a thing even though you're on the front of the shirt, you're on the back of the shirt, people got all worked up. So, right there, front and center. Look at this. This is amazing. Just a slow day. Okay, now show about TV is working fine. Creepy as the title. Creepy. Creepy. I like AI won't quit the no game, although I feel like that's a backhanded slap at Justin, so. Yeah, a little bit, doesn't it? I don't want it to be that, but it's very clever. Yeah. Automated intelligence is not bad. Okay. AI, Karumba. Yeah, AI, Karumba, I like that. All right, I think we all like that one. Yeah, we have a winner. Even Ellie likes it. Ellie likes it, it's a go. Or was she protesting? I couldn't tell. Oh, it's always a something. Oh, he's up with that, baby. You guys don't see this unless you're in the chat room, but every day Beatmaster sends me a link to a paste bin with all the links from the show that he was putting in on DimonClub.tv. And he always has like the perfect pun to go with the show's topic. Nice. Beatmaster says, have a go at this. Oh, I just got sleepy. You've been sleepied. I've been running all around New York like a maniac and I just sat still for like one second and was like. East side, west side, all around the town. Were the cops play Ring of Rosie? No, but Molly and I played eat a lot of Nutella. Nice. That sounds like a good game. I want to play that game. Yeah, that was a good game. New York seems like your kind of town, though. It's where I was born and raised. Kind of like the Salt Lake City of Jenny Scott Johnson. Yeah. Wait a minute. Oh. Oh my gosh. We're the Greenville, Illinois of Tom. Oh my goodness. Is that about waking up like super early on the wrong coast? But tomorrow I'm not going anywhere at all until I finish Tell It Anyway and post it. Like I'm literally not allowed to leave the house. Oh sweet. I'm looking forward to another Tell It Anyway. I know, I'm so sorry. Such good Tell It Anyways taped including the one with Molly and Brian and it's just been like, I think I'm going to have to hire an editor. Should call it post it anyway. Yeah, it really should. I'm not pod fading. Or post it any day. Yeah, post it any day. Oh, that's terrible. I just, in my mind, I've like committed to a more rigorous schedule in 2016. And that's not 2016 yet. So, you know, that's reasonable. Lay off, people. It's terrible. People like that show and I love taping it and I am so demanding about the editing of it that I sometimes don't do it fast. That's why I go live to tape. I'm lazy. I know. That is not a criticism. That is an admission. I know. ICU says, Jenny J, you look like a mob informant in 60 minutes. Just so true. We asked J.J. What's she? A.I. Karumba. Oh, my God, Gordon MacLeod. It's going to be the weirdest week. Oh, it's going to be great. You're going to do well. You're going to have fun. I might even get in the Overwatch beta. You might very well. A whole bunch of people I'm talking to are getting it. I don't know what's going on today, but. Well, it's not me yet. No, I don't know why you don't have yours yet. Listen, I understand that I don't have a record of playing Blizzard games for the past two months because I've been so busy. I understand that I publicly have said I don't like first person shooters. Yeah. So I don't blame Blizzard. This is not an, I'm not angry at Blizzard, but I do hate not being in it. It's the, their highly advanced A.I. has determined you're a terrible target. No, their A.I. is right. That doesn't change the fact that I personally am jealous of all of you. I want to be making excuses about why I'm not playing it more, not not being able to play it. I'm in love. It's perfectly unreasonable request on my part. It's incredibly fun. It really got some weather. Sure it is. So it is. I was listening to the opening of the instance when you're talking about like, you know, well, we know, we know not everybody's playing it. I'm like, yeah, me. Yeah. I'm like, me. You're like, oh, influencers are in it. I'm like, I guess I'm not very influential. Well, here's the truth. I don't know this for sure. I can't confirm this, but I'm not sure. Had I not had a very specific inside person, I'm not sure I would have gotten it because it's basically Chris, Chris is the one that checked up with me and said, hey, we got access. I remember at one point, Randy asking like, hey, everybody, there's friends and family lists. Like, I can't guarantee anything, but you know, let me know if you're at all interested. So I know, and I think that list works. Yeah. I think that list is broken. And he, and again, I'm not, I'm not mad or even pointing fingers of just like, I know those things are harder than, I just want to, I just want to. They're so picky about stuff like this. And Patrick Beja was like, yeah, even if you don't like first person shooters, there are characters that are good for you. And I'm like. That was a good Beja. Thank you. That's pretty good. I will give, he's right. It does give, I think they're, they're doing that, you know, intentionally. They're making it like all Blizzard games, easy to get into hard to master and you'll, someone will. Not very easy to get into for me, Scott. Again. Sorry. You're getting a valid point. I fight for the user. When they used to do keys, it was so easy because they just give everybody a stack of keys and we could get them out. No, they don't do that. That's how I got into Hearthstone. I think you gave me my key for Hearthstone. It was our last, it was the last time. And then I just got into Heroes of the Storm. They just like. I was on a list. I got, I got flagged and I got in and then I didn't play it. People are falling for Overwatch key scams. Oh yeah, don't fall for that. That's a good point. Yes. I don't know how much money people make doing that, but man, well, yeah, it's like 50 bucks and you'll get a key. See ya. No, you won't. You won't get a key. No keys. Low key, not the key key. I will say that Len Peralta is apropos of this poster that I just saw in more detail in my email. It's so good at drawing Darren because he does it so often. He's got practice. Yeah. I'd say he's not good at drawing everybody else, but like Darren in particular looks almost lifelike. And Len himself is hilarious in the shot. BB Len. BB Len. Do you guys see the new single person posters that came out today? Yes, oh my God. The Harrison Ford one is the one that got me. I mean, that's the one I want. The Leia one, she looks really good. Oh, I haven't seen the Leia one. Yeah, but the Harrison Ford one, it's like, oh my God, that's grandpa Han. Yeah. Yeah, because he's got the blaster. I think that's the thing. It's like, that's the same blaster. Blaster. They're pretty cool, but then no Luke one again. Uh-huh. Did. I am very nervous about that. I have feelings about that. Oh, Leia. Oh, she looks great. She looks really great there. She looks in charge. Not just in charge, but there's a sadness and a strength. Yeah. When I first saw it, I was like, is that Monothma? Oh no, that's Leia. And I'm like, that's perfect. That's exactly Leia should be Monotha by now. Yeah. I feel like I love the Ray poster most, maybe. Yeah, the Ray one's really good, too. They're all pretty good, except for the Kylo Ren one. Except, I mean, the Luke one. What do you mean Luke's not in there? There he is right there. That's what I, I, I, Leia was like, Luke's not in. I'm like, no, he's right there. I think it could be a, yeah. Well, they'll say no more, but yeah. Tom, did I tell you I got the Duke? If I finally found a, a success plus? No, you didn't tell me. When'd you find it? So, you know, I'd been checking the, they have that thing you check every morning at eight and talking all that. And every time I'm barely too late or I get the one I want, I add it to the thing and I get, like, to the part where it wants to confirm it that somebody else got it before I did, so I missed again. So I was like, weeks of that. And one, the one day I was like, oh, it's like 9.30, I forgot. I, I don't know, and Kim goes, just check it. And I go, all right, I don't check it. I open it up. Look at my notebook. I'm browsing to the store I'd want to go to. They don't have it. Next door down, they don't have it. Go to the third. I was thinking, not even looking at this third one. They just opened. So, I'm like, look there. I thought, why not? I'll look. 128 gig gold. Not rose gold, but not rose. And I said, I can live with that. So I went and got the gold one. But you can't. I was like, honey, I'm out the door. I couldn't get a case on it. I'll see you later. So it doesn't even look like a gold one. Anyway, I've been very happy with it. I like it. The only complaint I have, I'll bet Eileen doesn't like this either. And it's such a funny thing to complain about, but that touch ID is so fast. The what happens so fast? The touch ID on the phone is so fast that you don't, that it immediately just opens the phone whether you want it to or not. Oh no, she hasn't mentioned that. I'll ask her about it. I just wanted to click and look at the time. And it's so quick it's, unless I hit it with a finger that's not coded. Oh, that's interesting. I always hit the side button for that. I probably should start doing that. Just I'm out of habit is the problem. Or they should let me, you know, I don't know if they can let me delayed out or not, but. Oh yeah, that might, I don't know if there's a setting for that for, for unlocking there. Yeah, if not, there will be. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am out of the post. Oh, you're post free. I am. Have a lovely day. I'm going to pick up my dog from the vet so she'll stop shaking. Cause she can't take any more than that time. What's that? Time to get in. Tomorrow I'm doing the show. Normal time. Then I have a dentist appointment at four. Wow, that would be fun. So I will get in probably seven. Okay. Ish. Or nine with the traffic. Let me know when you land. I may by then maybe, oh, actually I think I'm doing that. We're doing like a little pre-show prediction thing at the world of podcast thing at eight. And then I think right after that, I'm going to take Kim and the kids who were going to go straight to the bowling alley again. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I saw Garrett last night. We got, we grabbed coffee with him and Katie. Oh, they're already in town. I didn't know that. Yeah. They came in town a little early to visit some friends and they're heading down to Anaheim today. Oh, great. I'm on the wrong coast. Yeah, you are. You should come, Jenny. Dang it. I'm on the right coast, but I'm in the wrong city. Flatitude. Next year. Next year. Longitude. Longitude. Manjitude. Eat up. Manja. Ciao, Bella. Goodbye.