 Broadly, Jenny, we will cast our pawns. And so the one. I did it with 25 characters to spare. Awesome. Nice. You'll find out shortly, video viewers, what she means by that. Wait, where? I'm putting it in in a second, but I'm trying to do a few more. OK. That's what she said. Meanwhile, I'm going to start Alpha Geek Media. I think that was enough time. Hope it was. And we can start the show. All right. I was born ready. I don't even have to ask that. I was going to say it, but hello, daily tech show listeners. I am. I didn't realize you were actually starting. It's my own fault. There we go. Hello, daily tech show listeners. I am Dr. Spitzel. The daily tech news show is brought to you by listeners just like you. If you would like to become a patron of the show, go to patreon.com. Slash ace detect. Thank you and enjoy the show. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, September 29, 2015. I'm Tom Merritt joining me this afternoon in my time zone, evening in his time zone is Patrick Meija from Paris, France. How you doing? Thank you very much, Tom, for the time zone accurate description of the time of the day it is for both of us. I try to keep those things in mind, especially because it's evening for you. I'm not even kidding, Patrick. If I were in your time zone, I wouldn't want to do this show because it would be past my bedtime. Well, I need the money really. It's the only reason I'm here. So, you know. You know, that's so French of you. It's just always about the money with you people. The only reason. Patrick Meija, of course, DTNES contributor and host of the Pixels podcast, Philius Club, La Ronde Vu Tech, and more. Check out frenchspin.com. We've got a lot to get to, though, today. So let's get into the headlines. Google packed, I don't know, three hours worth of announcements into 75 minutes this morning. Here's what we have. The LG Nexus 5X, a 5.2 inch phone with USB-C available in carbon black, sports white, and ice blue for $379. If you want 16 gigs, $429 for 32 gigs. And the Huawei Nexus 6P, a 5.7 inch WQHD AMOLED phone with a 64-bit processor, also USB-C, a much-improved 12.3 megapixel camera, 499 bucks for the 32 gig, 549 for the 64 gig, $649 for the 128 gig, by the way. These are all unlocked. And you can pre-order both phones today in the US, UK, Ireland, and Japan for shipping in late October. Google also now offers an extra year of warranty protection called Nexus Protect. Be a shame if something happened to your Nexus. So pay $69 for the 5X or $89 for the 6P to protect it from an unfortunate accident. Android 6.0 Marshmallow is going to roll out to the Nexus family and player next week. That's the Nexus 5679 and the Nexus player. Google Play for Families is coming later this year for $15. You can add up to six people on one account. A new Chromecast is circular like we saw in the leaked photos, but with a flexible HDMI cable so it doesn't crowd the back of your TV. Adds five gigahertz and 802.11 AC Wi-Fi support available today for 35 bucks. And Chromecast Audio can plug into your existing speakers with either a mini-jack RCA or optical cable also available today for 35 bucks. And the Pixel C is a 10.2 inch Android tablet that can connect to a keyboard that is sold separately through magnets. How do they work? And Bluetooth, so no wires, no dock, no kickstand, has an NVIDIA X1 processor, Maxwell GPU and 2560 by 1800 resolution screen. $499 for the Pixel C, if you want 32 gigabytes inside, $599 if you want 64 gigabytes. And to buy that keyboard, which kind of is the only way this makes sense, it cost you $149. All of the Pixel C stuff is available by the holidays. Patrick and I are gonna talk a little bit more about what we thought about some of this stuff later on. But if you had to sum it up in one word, Patrick, what would you say? Magnets. Well played. Yes, thank you. And actually they work for both of those products and they are magical in both cases. So there you go. Good news everyone, you can now use Skype on your Android Wear Watch. Features include caller ID, managing calls, responding to messages with pre-written replies, voice to text, emojis and hand drawn images. Skype for Android is available on the Play Store and is compatible with the Moto 360, the Huawei Watch, the LG Watch, Urbane and the Asus ZenWatch. So there you go, parody baby for Skype on your watch. Microsoft held a virtual Azure conference on Tuesday, cloud service fans, pay attention, a lot to dig through here. New virtual machines powered by NVIDIA GPUs, security tools, discounts. Microsoft launched Azure services in India with three new regions available. They also are adding Office 365 and Dynamics CRM as products in India in the first half of 2016. Actually, Office 365 comes in October, Dynamics CRM comes in the first half of 2016. The new Azure Container Service will combine Patchy, MISOS, Docker and MISOSphere's data center operating system, all together, Linux on your Azure. Internet of Things for Azure is now out of preview and has a bunch of certified partners. Some you would expect like Intel, but also Raspberry is in there as well. So if you're not into cloud services, probably all of this fell flat on you. But if you are, some interesting moves by Microsoft going on, trying to just make Azure a more attractive competitive option when you're considering Amazon or even Google. Yeah, I was basically gonna say there is a subset of the geek population that was very excited about this. Definitely. Small subset though, probably. House of Bricks submitted the PC World Report that James Forshaw, a member of Google's Project Zero team has discovered two vulnerabilities in the Windows driver for TrueCrypt. TrueCrypt's author abandoned the project in May 2014 stating the product may contain unfixed security issues. Security audit at the time had not found any driver vulnerabilities. The bugs have been fixed in Veracrypt as of Saturday. Veracrypt is an open source project built on top of TrueCrypt. Yeah, it's easy to get maybe overworked up about this. But it is one of those things where you're like, well, the TrueCrypt folks said there was something. It was pretty well hidden. I believe an audit didn't catch it and don't start pointing fingers at the audit. Audits don't always catch everything. This was a particularly difficult vulnerability to find according to James Forshaw. So the good thing is that someone was looking, someone found it, and if you rely on Veracrypt, which is sort of one of the de facto successors to TrueCrypt that's already been patched, which is good. Logitech has announced a new mid-range gaming keyboard that Vlad Savov at the verge of being a little smitten with if you read his article. The G410 Atlas Spectrum allows customizable colors that light up when keys are pressed. So you could have like your WASD be red and you could have your number keys be green or whatever you want. Savov said it creates a sense of joy in the typist. He described it as cascading waterfalls of color. It uses the same Romer G mechanical switches as the G910. The G410 goes on sale in October for 130 bucks in the United States or 149 euros in Europe. Patrick, host of Pixels is, people seem pretty excited about this and it's a mid-range gaming keyboard. So you know how I said that thing about the small subset of our audience, very excited about the cloud news. I think there's a small subset of the Pixels and gaming geek audiences that is going to be very excited about this keyboard. It's probably a relatively small subset though. Yeah. I mean, I guess one of the things that's cool about it is it brings a little bit of that feel of a high-end gaming keyboard because of the color lights and because they apparently work really nicely but you're only spending 149 euros. You're not breaking the bank. I guess so, but also it looks like a Christmas tree and I mean, those things are, it's like, I'm not sure everyone in the audience will know this but there are people who like to mod and tune their PC gaming PC cases. So they actually add stroboscopic lights and different colored LEDs in the case of their PC and I've never quite understood the logic behind this activity. I guess it's kind of this, I'm sure it's fun and I mean to each their own but I guess for me it's kind of the same feeling for these kinds of keyboards that are very bulky and colorful and you know, I'm French so I like plain things and color is like gray, white and dark. You just want it to be like the color of the sun on a rainy day, that's all you want. You've watched a lot of French movies, haven't you? I guess so. T Ninja 3000 wanted us to note that Apple has issued a press release acknowledging that OS XL Capitan will be available as a free update on September 30th. Apple had not officially announced the date though it did sneak into its website and as an image during the latest iPhone announcement. Yeah, this is one of the weirdest thing, it wasn't even a rumor, like there were images, there were things that you could look at and go, well, it says September 30th right there and that email screenshot but they didn't actually release a press release until the day before. So, well, Capitan coming tomorrow. TechCrunch reports that China's Alibaba has increased its investment in Indian e-payment company Paytm. India's Economic Times reports that Alibaba is spending $680 million to buy 20% of Paytm following an initial undisclosed investment back in February. Paytm has a mobile wallet app which it says has more than 100 million users. Another example of a Chinese company moving into a service, trying to take a stake in a service in India and we're seeing plenty of US companies doing exactly the same thing, either moving their own services or taking a stake in services in India. So India definitely shaping up and a lot of this has to do with Narendra Modi visiting Silicon Valley. So it created a lot more news and a lot more interest in Indian stories but India is becoming the darling of the investment world this week. You know, I'm wondering if the reason might not be because actually you've been saying on this show that India is becoming the darling of the investment world that people all of a sudden start investing. I just find it strange that, you know, all of a sudden- I have to say, for like about a week, roughly. I invested myself with all my Paytm stock. No, I've never owned it. I don't own any stock in any Indian company that I know of unless it's hidden deep inside a 401K somewhere. All right, fine, fine. Then it must be the other thing. Yeah. Recode reports Edward Snowden has joined Twitter. Twitter gave Snowden the at Snowden handle, a handle that hasn't been used in three years. Snowden's first tweet was, can you hear me now? As of today, Snowden only follows the NSA Twitter account and his banner image is of a newspaper headline saying a judge declared NSA program illegal. Thanks to Coolant... I'm not sure how if that name is Coolant's V or Coolant's SV. But anyway, thanks to that person, Captain Kipper and Habituala Kondalche for the tip-off. Yeah, kind of trolley, kind of funny. Snowden's feeling relaxed there in Russia these days. Feels like he had a conversation with Neil deGrasse Tyson. That's pretty much all he's done. And he has 500,000 followers already. It's interesting that he's on there now. Yeah, they should hire him for a reality TV show then. He's got a very engaged audience. I guess so. But you know, it's gonna be interesting once, because now there isn't a lot happening with Snowden. I'm wondering how it's gonna work out once he actually, things happen, you know, whether, well, you know, the things that happen with Snowden. At some point, there is going to be some activity whether he tries to get out of Russia or something. Yeah, when will that move? I mean, I've been waiting on that with Julian Assange for, I assumed he would have moved on from his London asylum in the embassy years ago and he's still there. So if, you know, Edward Snowden, who knows? He may be a man without a country for the next decade. It'll be interesting to see when he does actually move. This does feel to me, the more you describe that, like him settling in, like, well, might as well get a Twitter account. Not gonna be on the run anytime soon. Yeah, it's a serious issue. Microsoft will update Project Spark October 5th to make everything completely free, including downloadable content. In fact, if you bought anything, whether it's retail disc or content, after July 28th, you'll get a refund for it. And Gadget says Microsoft wants to spend more time highlighting user creations and opening things up. And Microsoft promises it's not winding things down that, quote, new programs and activities are coming for the more than 200,000 active creators. I don't think Project Spark has ever really delivered on the idea that it would be the place for independent developers, but it has attracted a lot of people who like to mod and play games and do interesting creations. Yeah, 200,000 active creators, if they're, you know, they were active in the last month, for example, it's not an insignificant number. That being said, I'm fairly sure that if they were very happy with the monetization of that game, they wouldn't be going free to play everywhere. So hopefully that move will allow more people to get into it and get interested in the creation aspect of it too. Sony will release a big update for the PlayStation 4 tomorrow, September 30th. Update 3.0 includes the ability to broadcast and watch games on YouTube gaming to send 10-second highlight clips to Twitter and a feature called Request to Shareplay and broadcast a friend's game. Storage for saved games on PlayStation Plus will increase from one gigabyte to 10 gigabytes and also the update, also in the update, sorry, an events app with a calendar for new games so you can know just how much time you have left to finish the Witcher 3 before Fallout 4 arrives. Hint, not enough time. Unless you've finished it already, but for most of us, probably not. Yeah, it's a significant update, especially with the YouTube gaming thing in there. And you tend to want to say, is this going to help PlayStation surge back ahead of Microsoft and preserve its lead? But I don't think it's that kind of update. It's just the kind of update that you would expect in that it adds a few features that people have been looking forward to. Yeah, I mean, first of all, as you were saying, Sony doesn't need a lot of help to stay ahead of Microsoft for this generation of consoles. And the YouTube thing is really something that was missing that should have been there already a while ago, especially with YouTube's efforts in gaming space. The most interesting thing for me is actually the tiny 10-second highlight clip to Twitter. Maybe it's because I'm a big Twitter user, but it's a lot of fun to share a little bit of a gameplay clip to a lot of people rather than obviously if you're gonna be streaming something to YouTube, it's something that you could already do on Twitch and that people who are dedicated enough are gonna go and watch, whereas that 10-second thing can get you to show stuff to your wider audience, a little bit of something that was fun and that you're excited about. So I think I'm gonna get more use out of that feature than the YouTube thing. And finally, Recode has sources who say Twitter is building a product to let users share tweets longer than 140 characters. No word on how it will, what? Out of characters. And also just Recode saying it's got sources. So we'll wait for Twitter to do that. No, I mean, it's definitely just a rumor, but there have been more than one rumor about this and there have been more than one request for this. It makes me think of the time not so long ago when Instagram allowed for pictures that weren't just square formatted, right? And there were a lot of people who were saying, but that's the soul of Instagram and that's how it came to be and that's why if you change that, you're changing the product. Well, I think at some point it might be okay to change the product a little bit and I think Twitter's gimmick of 140 characters has brought a lot of value to the core product, but I also think there might be cases where you want to go beyond that limit and basically imposing this on yourself just because you've always done it like that might be a hindering to the growth of the network which definitely needs growth. It depends on how they do it. To me, the brilliance of Twitter is that it is limited to 140 characters and it does make you say, you know what, look, we should probably go finish this conversation somewhere else more suited to it and that keeps Twitter clean. It keeps Twitter a certain way of doing things, a certain kind of place. So if it's like tweet longer where it's like, hey, you only see the first 140 characters and then there's a link to go if you really want to read the rest, I think that's okay because that preserves Twitter as looking like 140 character messages and only if you're basically going somewhere else even if Twitter is implementing it itself. I would be sad if they changed the interface to where now I'm seeing these long-threaded conversations a la Facebook in Twitter because then it loses a competitive edge in what may have been just a physical limitation at first because they couldn't include more than 140 characters in a text message, then became somewhat of a gimmick because they saw that that had an interesting creative effect. If they lose that all together, then I think they lose something essential to what makes Twitter Twitter. I agree. I think it's not going to be done just now there are no limits that would definitely not work. And they've been there, I'm hopeful. Well, we don't even know they're actually going to do it, but they did. I would be hopeful that they would do it well because they've been very careful in how they implement all of those things. You know, the retweets, the inclusion of the images and all of that. And maybe they could do it with, you can only do that once a day, a longer tweet, and then you can pay to do more. Oh, God, you can share with your friends to get even more of longer tweets off. No, all right. That actually makes sense on paper, but I hope we don't do that. Hey, thanks to everybody who submits stories at our subreddit, dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. It is a lifeblood of our story selection. It's not determinative. It's not the only place we look, but it's a really important one to see what things people have submitted and how you guys have voted on it. So please get in there and participate. And that's a look at the headlines. All right, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Chromecast, audio, Android 6.0 Marshmallow, telling you, man, the one that got me excited was the Pixel C. And let me tell you why, Patrick. As soon as he seemingly effortlessly, and these things, we saw one demo fail today. So these things are hard to pull off on stage live in front of people, but seemingly effortlessly, he just clicked the tablet and the keyboard together and then pointed out like, there's actually no physical connection. This is just done with magnets and there's no dock to get wrong. There's no kickstand that you have to deal with. You just do it and you get that, what is it, 100 to 135 degree slants that you can adjust all with magnets. I was sold. And I know in a lot of ways this is less than a Microsoft Surface because you have an Android operating system, a mobile operating system rather than full-on windows, and that's a valid comparison. But man, that form factor really captured my imagination because this is something that gets rid of a lot of the clunkiness of this form factor. And I found myself wanting to get it just because it looks so easy to use and trying to come up with reasons why I might want to have it. You know, so first of all, if any other company had presented that product, they would have spent at least 10 minutes on how the thing was designed and how they had to think about all of the engineering and all of those. So I appreciated the very casual manner in which they introduced this thing, which is very clever. You're right. I mean, it does everything you want with a keyboard. It, you know, wirelessly through induction charges the keyboard through the tablet. It is extremely clever. I think if you want a device that is a tablet that also has a keyboard for a serious work, this seems to be the most intelligent and practical implementation of that concept. And I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people copied it. It also seemed pretty solid. It's not like, you know, the magnets were weak and this seemed like it would fit. The biggest- Yeah, he held it upside down. Again, a thing that could have gone horribly wrong. Maybe there are ways to fake it and everything. I understand that. I would like to try it myself, though, but it looked legit. And so, yeah, I think it's pretty stable. The thing that struck me the most, though, is that this is a pixel device, which is traditionally runs on Chrome OS, but they, without, I don't even think they mentioned it. They said, well, this is Android 6.0. That was the only, that was the little bit of misdirection, right? Where they're like, we've done these great things with the pixel line and they're talking about Chromebooks. And then they're like, so this one runs Android 6.0 and it's like, what, huh? And, you know, it is, I mean, it's not a problem, obviously. It's, I think Android will do fine with that device. It's just weird that they wouldn't discuss it more. Probably, does that, they've been saying a lot of good things about the Chromebooks and I'm sure a lot of people are still gonna be making Chromebooks. And in some cases, it's very useful, but why call it the pixel if it's not a Chrome OS device? And so anyway, that was, I thought that was interesting and it sort of raised the question, where are they going with Chrome OS? I don't know if it means anything even, but I thought it was cool. Well, it goes back to the root question that I know Molly Wood has been asking since time immemorial, which is why are there two OSes? You know, and it used to be, to me, I felt like I could sort of rationalize, well, there are things that you do better on a laptop and Chrome OS maybe doesn't do those things, but that's the idea is that Chrome OS will be for that and there are things that are better on a touchscreen tablet. Except Chromebooks now have touchscreens and this, even though it's a tablet, has a keyboard and a tablet form factor. So I'm curious like, will they come out with a Pixel C that actually has Chrome OS on it, but they already called it a Pixel C? Wouldn't they call this one Pixel A? And then they can call the other one Pixel C? And then yes, why take the Chromebook brand and put Android on it when you're calling it a Pixel? I guess what they're saying is the Pixel line is OS independent. Don't pay attention to what OS is on it. It just means well-designed and I could certainly buy that after today's demonstration. Yeah, for sure. Again, this is a personal thing, but I'm not sure I need a keyboard on my tablet. But definitely, again, if someone does, this seems like we haven't tested those devices but it seems like an excellent implementation of that. Microsoft Office on the Pixel C would be one of the things I could see myself using it for. Yeah, yeah, that's true, that's true. But then if you wanna go full business, don't you wanna go with the Surface? Although the Surface is more expensive. Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's a lot more to say about the Pixel C. It's an interesting device. It's a fantastic design for the keyboard. Yeah. Yeah, I think you nailed it. It is a fantastically designed device still in search of a purpose. And if you are out there saying, hey, I'm the guy, I know exactly why I want Android with a keyboard in this form factor, give us an email, feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Mike Katz already sent us an email about Chromecast Audio. Just to catch you up if you missed it earlier, this is the one that plugs into your existing home speaker. So they showed it with a mini jack, but they say that'll work with RCA and Optical as well. And Mike says, I have a dumb question. Mike, there's no such thing as a dumb question. And I'm not just setting you up when I say that to call it a dumb question later. Mike says, what's the advantage of Chromecast Audio over a Bluetooth dongle? With Bluetooth, I can cast any audio from my phone to speakers. So why would I want Google's device instead of a Bluetooth device? And I think what he's saying is I can get a Bluetooth dongle and make any speaker Bluetooth capable by plugging it into the speaker. Why, what's the advantage of Chromecast Audio? Bluetooth range is limited. And if you wanna cast to any of the devices in your apartment, you need to go through Wi-Fi? Yeah, I think that's a really good one. Going through Wi-Fi gives you a better range. Also, multi-room sync, which maybe you don't care about, but you can't do multi-room sync very easily with a Bluetooth dongle. And this just does it apparently out of the box. Also, one button, one button cast, right? If I go into Spotify and wanna do Bluetooth, I have to find my device and I have to make sure that Bluetooth is on because I don't always leave Bluetooth on. Maybe that's a personal thing, but it feels like a couple extra steps. Whereas if I see that cast button, I press cast, I do have to select the Chromecast to a proper Chromecast Audio on. So there's probably more steps that I may be given a credit for. Oh, it's another tap, it's no case. Comparing when I send Bluetooth to my Amazon Echo versus when I cast video to my Chromecast, casting video to Chromecast seems easier. That being said, you still need to connect the Chromecast Audio to the power through a USB port, right? And it makes a lot of sense to connect that on your TV for Chromecast, but I'm thinking not every speaker is going to have a Bluetooth, I'm sorry, a USB port next to it. So I'm not sure how cool of an idea the Chromecast Audio is. I'm not sure, I guess it's kind of cool, it's kind of okay, but it's not as cool as the Chromecast period, especially that new version which I was very excited for. I bought it immediately as soon as it was available, I went and ordered one. I bought it immediately as soon as I saw you in Slack saying you had already bought one and then I realized the storage refresh since the last I looked at it. I betrayed laser. Yeah, no, I think the thing that's most impressive about Chromecast wasn't even the Chromecast itself, it was the updates to the Chromecast app which I hadn't even been using, and now I will because it's going to provide universal search, universal voice search, the Apple update within the next few weeks, but it's going to collect, and I think this is so smart, all the apps that are cast enabled that you already have installed and it will prioritize them, it'll show them to you in search results, those apps will come up first if it has what you're looking for, but then it will also suggest apps if you're like, hey, you're looking for that video, it's not available on Hulu or Netflix, but hey, you know what it is available on is this other service, Crackle, that you don't have installed, maybe you want to install it now. So I like that idea, I think a lot of that will work with existing Chromecast already, but I do want to try the new form factor with that integrated HDMI cable because I'm a little skeptical that that waggly thin cable, just hanging off the back, is really, I don't know, I feel like it might cause problems that I haven't foreseen, I know it will keep your USB ports from getting all tied up by a big blocky piece of plastic, but is it not going to fray or pull out or, I don't know. It seems like it should work, and again, I was referring to magnets earlier, this is, once again, a genius use of this, it's genius in engineering. For those who haven't seen the presentation, basically the Chromecast has a USB HDMI cable that is very flexible, a little bit longer, and a magnet that allows you to stick the Chromecast on your TV to, well, make it stick on the TV, and this is, I think, a brilliant move because the one thing that's annoying with all of those things you have to plug into your TV is that sometimes they're a little bit too big and you can't get them in right away, and especially if you only have a limited amount of ports, like I do, you might need to change them every once in a while, all of this, so this is already very clever. The improvements on the software side, I'm wondering how much of that is going to be available for the old Chromecast, but for example, they said more stability with Wi-Fi, which I'm very thankful for, the initial one tended to disconnect from time to time, but also you do have that universal search to help you find content, which I think might have been a little bit of a, not a failing, but something that was a disappointment, not a disappointment, but the usability hindrance, maybe those are the two right words. You're also going to be able to stream, well, photos, which that was definitely a failing of the device previously, games even, and that leads me to maybe another thought, which is, this is starting to eat into Android TV territory almost, and it's kind of a, as much as I give props to Google for the engineering, I'm sort of unsure at their positioning for those products. I mean, we discussed the pixels just now, and in this case, is it, I understand that they're not exactly the same products, but they do sort of compete with one another. But Amazon does the same thing. They have a Fire TV stick, and they have a Fire TV, and they're basically the same. I think the Fire TV now does 4K, and the Fire TV stick won't right away. To me, that's just like selling an iPhone 6S Plus and an iPhone 6S. Like, you want a dongle, you want a box. There may be reasons why you want the box, and the box will do a few things that the dongle can't. But as long as you're stealing market share from yourself, I don't think it's a big problem. Yeah, I guess it's what I'm saying is really about the positioning, so maybe it's just about the name. It might be as silly as that. Maybe if they called it Android TV stick, I would be, you know, happy with that. It's easier to navigate. I guess the difference is Fire TV stick actually has apps on it, and the Chromecast never has. It has always been about casting from your phone to the actual stick. We're starting to run out of time, so real quickly, they did talk about Android 6.0 Marshmallow coming out, and they did announce two new phones, the Nexus 5X and the Nexus 6P. Patrick and I were talking before the show. These seem like, you know, okay, they're not bad announcements, but have we reached that point where no mobile OS, no phone announcement is ever really going to be that exciting anymore? Well, I don't know about any mobile OS or phone. There certainly seems to be, we've discussed this a few times already, but especially with this year or the past two years, it seems like half the features from, you know, all of the OSs have been lifted from a competing OS. So there seems to be a lot of maturation happening and not a lot of super incredible features coming up. There are some interesting things, of course, being shown, but especially for these, the phones, I guess, for the devices, they're cool, but they don't have, like, you might see in a Samsung announcement or an iPhone announcement, they don't have this one feature which you can hang your hat on and say, you know, if you're a fanboy of one or the other systems, yay, this is fantastic, and this is why my phone is super cool. We have 3D touch, we have Samsung Pay, I don't know. Or we have this curved screen or, you know, these kinds of things. So, I mean, we're left with a couple of devices that are super solid, incredibly well priced. We've seen more devices in that price range to performance range in the Android ecosystem in the past couple of years, but they're very cool. Sina did a comparison of this to the iPhone 6S and the Samsung Galaxy S6 and even the Sony Xperia Z5, and by far, the best specs for your price is the Nexus 6P. Yeah, I mean, I was even, I was covering the announcement live with a few friends in French, and we mentioned the fact that the Nexus 5X, the initial price comes with just 16 gigabytes. And so we mentioned the iPhone line, which also comes with the first price is 16 gigabytes. And we're like, well, so you see, it's kind of the same thing. And then someone very acutely and very rightly pointed out, well, the iPhone is twice the price. So, you know, and it's true, these devices are excellent specs, excellent build, excellent, it's mind-blowing how fantastic the devices are at those prices now. It's really difficult to justify higher prices unless you're a geek and in love with a specific feature, like some of us might be. Now, in all seriousness, folks, it becomes a joke on the show sometimes, but my wife does work for Google. So when we cover these Google things, I like to disclose that. And furthermore, when you're talking about big, important announcements like this, I should point out that I don't get any benefits from her personal stock holdings. We have an agreement that those all stick with her even though we're married. So there's an exemption there if you're ever worried about that sort of thing. Our pick of the day comes from Gary, who heard me recommend the Plantronics headphones, which I still stand by. They've got great battery life, they're very durable, they sound awesome, but they are 78 bucks. And he says, after hearing your pick, I thought I'd let you know about these more affordable ones from FOTIV, Bluetooth 4.0 wireless sports headphones. They're not as thick as the Plantronics. They're more like an earbud form factor. But Gary says, I have a pair of these and they work great. I listen to podcasts with one ear as I'm driving to and from work and while out walking at lunch around the house, I listen to podcasts and sword and laser books. You know, he's kissing up to me there. While cleaning up the kitchen, battery life is good. I've never had the battery fail even on the longest walk. And to my 66 year old ears, they sound very good. They're less than 26 bucks if you get them on Amazon. They also have a very good sounding Bluetooth speaker from the same company available for about 26 bucks as well. Now, we're going on Gary's word here, but Gary's been around the business for a long time. I know Gary, he puts his tech through its paces. So if you're looking for a more affordable option for Bluetooth headset, might wanna check out the FOTIVs, P-H-O-T-I-V-E. Thank you, Gary. Send your picks to feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. You can find my picks at dailytechnewshow.com slash picks. All right, Patrick, yesterday Veronica and I talked about the difficulties of managing tech and your life when does it become overwhelming? When should you take a break in light of an interesting article in The New York Times? We got so many good responses here. I wanna lightning round through these. Bill in Huntsville wrote one of my favorites. He says, my wife and I have three great grandchildren who live more than a thousand miles from us. Their age is three, two and six months. We visit them through Skype a couple times a week. A couple months ago, our granddaughter and her family returned for a visit. And when they came to our home, the toddlers came running to us with their arms wide open to be picked up. Our granddaughters, other grandparents don't use a computer. I was told that when the toddlers visited those great grandparents, the toddlers treated them as strangers. So he's like, hey, there's a positive side to technology here for us, definitely. Yeah, I don't think this is exactly the same thing. But yeah, for sure. This is actually heartwarming as a story. I just love the story, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And my parents talk to my nieces all the time who are far away. And yeah, that is, it's the magic of Skype and they love it. So I agree with Bill. Wes in Nome, Texas wrote, I think mobile connectivity lessens our willingness to engage strangers inhabiting our immediate space. Check out lines, conferences, parks. In that sense, I can see where we would be losing some of our ability to respond with empathy, engaging the other around us, is one of the primary ways we broaden our view of the world. So this deserves a longer conversation, which you had yesterday. But I think it's, empathy can still be gained. You just have to work at it a little bit harder, I guess, in those cases. Well, and I think that was the point yesterday is like, maybe if these things are nudging us the other way, we just have to work a little harder. Exactly, exactly. To take care of it. If we see it as a problem. And I think, Patrick W, oh, go ahead. I think that the people who lack that empathy are going to get, we're talking about kids a lot. And at some point they are going to interact with other people. And it might take a super long conversation. Yeah, yeah. Patrick W thinks that it's more of a problem, notifications and interruptions and such are more of a problem for people like Veronica and I, who do it for work and do it as public figures. He says, the rest of us poor schlubs are all desperate for attention. The vast majority of the time the person messaging me is my wife. In fact, I do actually want to be interrupted any time of any day for a message from her or my boss, believe it or not. I'd like a raise next year. I think maybe he's overstating the celebrity aspect of it, but I think it's a really good point that notifications really depend on the world and whether you're getting tons of them or not. I certainly want to be interrupted when Eileen messages me because she doesn't message me unless it's really important. And so I put her in my, you know, exceptions list on notifications and things like that. I completely agree about that. I do, I mean, especially for Twitter, I think specifically for Twitter, it becomes a constant thing if you wanted to become a constant thing. However, I do think that anyone will can get into that cycle that Veronica was talking about, which is basically you check Twitter, then you check your RSS feeds, then you go to your favorite site, then you go to Facebook, then you go to Google Plus if you're one of those people. And then you go back to Twitter and it feels like you're actually doing something, but really you're just going in a circle. And I think that applies to everyone. And then Levi just wanted to say anyone interested in this kind of topic should check out the Note to Self podcast from WNYC. This is exactly what they cover every show, he says. So maybe take a look at that. Well, that is it for this supersized Chromecast Pixel Android inflated episode of Daily Tech News Show. Thanks to folks for sticking around. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you, Patrick Beja, for coming in and helping share your insights. Thank you. Well, you know, they did a relatively short presentation. We figured we could make it the appropriate size if you added this episode. Yeah, and we covered more than just their announcement, which they didn't do. So we're better than them. And if you want to find out more about what I do, you can go to Frenchspin.com. We just recorded an episode of the Phillies Club where we had a friend of mine who's a conservative, an American, and he's a conservative. I often have liberal people on the show. You know, it's my European socialist tendencies. And we also had another co-host who is Russian. He has a very deliberate way of speaking. It's very culturally interesting. So you can check that show out at Frenchspin.com. Yeah, I just caught up on last month's Phillies Club, and then I saw you dropped a new one this weekend, and I'm like, oh, I gotta get into this one. So I can't wait to hear that. That sounds like a fascinating conversation. Thank you to our patrons. 4,978 of you folks out there willing to make the effort to continue the show going. You are our favorites. Please, if you can find it in your heart to give us a dollar every month or really in your wallet, as well as your heart, we'd love to have it. dailytechnewshow.com slash support. There's no maximum, either. Thank you, folks, who do support the show. You guys are the best. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. You can give us a call 51259 daily. It's 5125932459. Listen to the show live Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern at player.alphageekradio.com and visit our website, dailytechnewshow.com. Back tomorrow with Scott Johnson and Robert Herron talking TVs. Talk to you then. The show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program. And it actually isn't that much longer than a normal episode. No, no, I'm actually looking at the- And it was worth it. Every second. I have title suggestions, even though the showbutt is down, which is all thanks to chatroom. Thank you, chatroom. Yeah, thanks for putting that doc together, you guys. You're the best. You guys are awesome. All right. Dark Redeemer, that's one I really like. It makes me laugh. Nexus protects us. It's just great. And I like me ashamed of something happened to your Nexus. It's a little bit pain. False script fails from the true script. Cloudy with a chance of news, so that was from you, Tom. We won the Capitan. Edward Trollden. Oh, I like Edward Trollden. Yeah. Then there was a Two-Twit-Finnity and Beyond, which I really like from Dark Redeemer. And then there were a lot of Chromebook pixels. Tablets gets pixelated. Pixels get magnetized. Chrome casting into the stream. The Chrome cast with an E system. And Google's Frugal Magnet Gadget, which I just like. Lots of good titles. I like the magnets. They work like this. Yeah. Woop. Voila. Guys, by the way, while we're picking titles, you've got to go check out the Honest Trailer for Avengers Age of Ultron. I feel finally cured of my Ultron-related malaise. It's so spot-on. So just enjoy it. Honest trailers are so good. They're so good at that. They're so good. That and how it should have ended are just, I can't live without them. They don't come out often enough. They're my favorites. And those two particular things just nailed Ultron in a way that's both loving and accurate. So anyway, that's my exciting update. I am torn between Google's Frugal Magnet Gadget because it has Google in it. And tablets get pixelated because it's spot-on to the main topic. But can I also love Nexus for Texas, even though, you know, I just love an internal rhyme scheme. What can I say? Sure. No, it's fantastic. Do you have a favorite, Patrick? Yeah, but it's neither of those. Which one is your favorite? Magnets, they work like this. Oh, it's the Magnets one, yeah. Which is also, I think they work like this. So many titles. Well, we should roll a four-sided die. Don't ever roll a multi-sided die. Take it to the universe. You know. That's random floor. Ah, damn it. I don't think they should even be called die if they're less than six-sided. Well, what do you do about people who live in a two-dimensional universe, Roger? Well, you know what? I don't think any of us here have ever met anyone who lived in a two-dimensional universe. How would you know? Metaphor. Metaphors. You know what? No, not today. I saw a guy who was pretty skinny one time. I worked for a guy who was pretty skinny. Yeah. Well, skinny by a very definition implies a third dimension. I'm so glad Roger is back. I miss Roger. Does it, though? Guys, I'm going to go. OK. Patrick, thank you. Thank you, Patrick. And by chat room, I love everyone in the world. But I love you the most. Oh. Bye, thanks. All right. Good night. Oh, next week is Friday. Yes. Oh, right. Yeah, a program. And lock that all down. Yeah, totally. Yes. Patrick will be on Friday next week. Yes. And Tom, I will talk to you on Monday. Yes, for pixels. Talk to you then. Yeah, I'll hopefully remind you if I remember. I put it on my calendar, so we're good. To remind you. I'll put a calendar item for me to remind you to remind me to remind you to remind me. Excellent. Bye. Bye. Did we also see, sorry to nerd it up here, that there's going to be a short film featuring Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown, called Doc Brown Saves the World coming? No, that's cool. That's cool. I'm sorry. Doc Brown from Back to the Future. Yeah. It's going to be on the Blu-ray for Back to the Future trilogy 30th anniversary release, or, you know. And I think I forgot and knew and forgot that there's going to be a Back to the Future game series coming from Telltale Games, and I'm like freaking out. But you like that, the Back to the Future Telltale one? I don't know. I just found out about it. Oh, no, I tried to play it. They're part of their episodic series line. I don't know, I couldn't really get into it. I really like Back to the Future, but that game was kind of. But it's not open world. It's like. No, you ever play Sam and Max at the road? You played any of the scum games? Nope. Monkey Island, Curse of Monkey Island, Return to Monkey Island. Does Telltale Games do The Walking Dead game? Yes. OK. So it's episodic-y? Yes. Or The Wolf Among Us, same thing, like that. Well, I was worried about my video game time budget, and now I'm less worried. PS, Tom, I'm so glad that we put that Twitter thing in, because I also put it on Twitter, and it is being well-received. Nice. I'm glad you did that. It's actually a joke for Twitter. Totally. It is used like 6,000 times a day. That's its native format. That's its native format. Did you notice that Taylor Swift and Katy Perry have both been added to Amazon Prime Music, and they have a picture of them up on the home page of Amazon? No, I didn't see that. You know those two have a beef, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking at Amazon.com. I've got to assess the picture. I mean, they're not next to each other, directly. Oh, but they're like kitty corner. Wait, go back. Don't go to the next one. Yeah, they're kitty corner to each other. They're separated by Kanye. Yeah. Oh, no, in mine, they're not. Oh. In mine, like on Amazon.com. On Amazon.com. It says, new to Prime, hundreds of new artists. Listen now. And then my picture is Katy on the left, Kanye in the middle, Taylor to the right. Oh, interesting. Mine is Taylor on the left, Katy Perry right next to the lower half of Taylor, and someone else who is that above, I can't quite tell. So it's like, you know how it splits this thing? It's different. I will stop trying to describe this verbally and send you a picture. Are you looking at it on the website? On my desktop, Amazon.com. Yeah. Because the picture I'm looking at, it feels like Katy and Taylor having a beef. Kanye's going to let her finish. I'm going to let you finish. I'm going to let you finish. Upload a file. Hold on. Here we go. I'll prove it to you. I believe you. Multiple clicks. I just don't know why they'd be serving two different images. That's why I asked what if you're looking at a table. Slack does not have drag and drop. Slack does not have drag and drop, do they? Are you using the desktop app or the web app? Yeah, the desktop app. All I know is that I sometimes believe that Jenny lives in an alternate universe that somehow I'm able to communicate with. Did I go away? It does, except that. Nothing works the same for you as it does for me. They're like different laws of physics that surround Jenny. See, look, I put a picture in daily. Oh, now I'm going to put two pictures. What's the problem with this picture? There's no real problem. What page are you looking at? Oh my god, amazon.com. That's it, www.amazon.com. It's really simple. Well, because this doesn't have any. I didn't take a screen grab of the whole thing. I think you would trust me to tell you that I'm looking at www.amazon.com. I'm just showing you the picture. Yeah, but it's out of context, so it doesn't tell me. You're persnickety! Stop! OK, I'll stop. Persnickety, wow. You're the second person I've ever heard use that term. I was the first person last week to use that term, and now I'm the second. Hold on. Let me take a full-size screen grab and show it to you. I was just showing you the relationship of Taylor to. Here we go. I mean, Chrome, maybe that matters? Cut a crow. Oh my god. See, now in trying to prove this one thing to you, I have. Just share your screen. Oh, it might have information. Maybe? Yeah, never mind. I would have to vet my screen. You can show me afterwards. I'll show you right now, and then I will share that screen because that should take up most of the screen. I'm not looking, either. I'm publishing, so tell me when to look. It's uploading. Thank you, yeah. OK, so it's a totally different. That's new to Prime. It's entirely different. Yeah. That's not even a picture. I wonder why they do that. That's really interesting. No, I can't even see the right. Come here. Come back. Oh my god. Really? You have to pull it out separate. Any time I try to do something, I just encounter problems. Like, I want to simply screen share this with you guys. And it's taking too many. Well, you don't need to now. I see it now. No, but I'm sharing it for the, our odd dance. Oh, I gotcha. Who's just spent 10 minutes listening to a fruitless discussion. OK, so the screen that Jenny sent me, the banner for it is album covers. Loads of album covers. So there's Sam Smith and there's Katy Perry and there's Amy Winehouse. And what started the confusion is that the Taylor Swift red album cover is Katy corner to the Katy Perry prism album cover, which is interesting in and of itself. What I was seeing is just a picture of Katy Perry, Kanye West and Taylor Swift. Now I wonder if they look at mobile desktop. I'm wondering if they look at your buying history to decide whether they feel like a wide selection of album covers would be more appealing or if they, you know, more narrow. But I have limited Amazon buying history. So that's interesting. Yeah. So maybe that could be it if they're like, oh, we don't really know. So let's just throw a bunch of album covers at those people. Right. I don't know why they think I like. Kanye West looks weird. Yeah. Do you see it now? Yeah. But when you put it, that just looks weird. He looks like a robot. Where is yours? I think it's because it's like. All right. Now I'm seeing Tom's. Oh, interesting. See, I wasn't being persnickety. I was just curious about the different, about the different images and why they would be different. I think I could solve this problem. Hold on. I think I know the answer. The answer is inside you. It's always been there. I have it now too. Oh, what'd you do? I reloaded Amazon. You probably, I wonder, it's one of those things where they like, I know what they're doing. Oh my God, I know what they're doing. They're A.B. testing. They're A.B. testing because it's very drastically different design. Yeah. And so they're trying to figure out which one compels people. Three big celebrities or the vast amount and they are A.B. testing. I figured it out. See, that's what I was looking for. That's what I was after. I don't know if that matters much, but I was just curious. So now what we do is everybody who's listening, when you see the album cover one click, but when you see the just three people don't, let's see if we can throw up their A.B. testing. I forgot that we used to do that at the internet company I worked for. Yeah, we used to do that at CNET as well. In fact, that was a hot new thing. I remember at one point that we can do this thing called A.B. testing. That was fun. Okay, I'm sorry. I apologize. See, I wasn't not believing. You were taking it like I didn't believe you or you were doing something wrong. I was just like, okay, well, what is the difference? I know. So what you're saying is that you went from logic first and I went from emotion first and we met in the middle. Is that what you're saying? I know. Sure. I got it. No, you went from solving the problem and I went from somebody's telling me I'm wrong. Oh, yeah. No, I was never telling you you were wrong. That's Kirk and Spock right there. Okay, so now I got to watch the trailer for Conman that I'm very excited about coming out tomorrow. You know, I still think that I still want to do that. No idea. I pitched it to Tom a long, long time ago. Well, this is different. I know. Sunday I'll get you together with Matt Flanagan and you guys can have beers and commiserate over all the ideas that you didn't write that other people eventually did. Well, no, the concept is different. Roger, your concept is still undone. I hope so. As far as I know. Well, then get on out there. Do it. I want to go into meetings with a baby strapped to my chest. It's the best way to go into meetings. It'll be like Wato from what's that movie? No, no, no, no. Oh, other Wato. Right, isn't that the name of the mutant creature that comes out of the guy's chest? I thought Wato was the guy in Phantom Menace. Yeah. Oh, who's the... Line tricks that don't work on me. Only Italian stereotypes. The rest is the bumblebee. Who's the one from Total Recon? Dang it. Look it up. Google it. All right, I think I'm done. This always happens to me when I try to do two things at once. Oh, did you mess something up? I'm like, well, no, I don't think I did. Oh, it's Wato. Wato and Wato. I'd like to see that as like an odd couple sitcom. Hey, Wato. Hey, Wato. You're terminated tricks that don't work on me. Yeah. Okay. But he sure was shrewd with his money. I think we've all learned a lot today. Yeah. So I'm ending this video, but thank you for watching. Bye. Bye.