 Hey everybody Patrick Beja's back Yeah, I don't even know if you missed me. I didn't listen to the show like I think maybe once But then I was like no, I'm gonna stay away from everything You're taking a break. Keep it away So I'm gonna assume that I you missed me. We totally missed you and when I go to on my holiday in a week or two I will probably listen to all this Yeah, but it's your I listened to my shows which I you know gave to other people But that was it. I Listened to the Elidan novel on audio book To prepare for the world's mention. I heard that was really good. It was really good I noticed you couldn't keep yourself away from the instance either Yeah, once like last week as like crap. There's so much happening much good. Well, there's just so much going on It's not like it's a fallow time for that. So And also being on the instance is not a lot of work You show up and you're like, hey, so this happened. Let me tell you things Yeah, what is that about Scott Johnson because Kurt Geek is the same way. It's just it's easy. It's fun I like this show was fun Or, you know You look like you're yeah, no, I know Tim Vick. That's Yeah, I Am excited. We should tell the folks watching video who might have seen headlines that hangouts is going away That you should not need to worry hangouts is not going away Hangouts on air it had already exist in YouTube. So all they're doing is moving it out of Google plus They're saying we will you'll no longer be able to access the hangout from Google plus. You'll only get it within YouTube So we'll still be right here doing what we do It's basically off the lights of Google plus. Yeah. Yeah, basically exactly It's the the never-ending pruning of Google plus that will you know, they have definitely pulled the plug Now this is interesting. I started I did everything within YouTube today Just to be sure that I knew how to do it that way and It's not showing up on on Diamond Club TV Hmm, and I bet it has to do with that transition out of Google plus of course the the URL is not the same is it Well, it's always a different URL But where he was grabbing the URL from probably has a different file or directory structure maybe or something Yeah Hmm So and that's oh, no, that's September 10. That is going to be final So September 12th is when it's gone September 11th is the last day. You can use the Google plus System so I don't have to worry about it for when you're on holiday No But why Roger and I were going through how it works. It's all exactly the same. There's just different pages So you you have to go to a page in YouTube and then you fill in all the same information and do everything the same way I'm sure Roger will lend his guiding hand. Yes, I'm sure he will Think you could probably find it on Google Yeah, probably not All right, let's get this going here we go Quality content thrives for the support of those who benefit from its creation If you gain value from the Daily Tech news show consider joining others like me who provide support learn how to help at DailyTechNewsShow.com slash support This is the Daily Tech news for Tuesday August 16th 2016 I'm Tom Mary joining me today Mr. Patrick Beja is back for vacation. Welcome back Patrick Thank you very much. I feel like all refreshed and ready to talk about tech. Everybody's like every other time Instead of dragged out and pale No, no, it's really good. We missed you We had some some good folks able to fill in your shoes, but but we definitely missed you while you were gone It's good to have you back and joining us also because we're gonna be talking about travel tech The host of amateur traveler you hear him on the tech and travel segments that happen after the audio show Sometimes and show up in our treasure chest. Mr. Chris Christensen is here as well. Thanks for having me I'm now I'm supposed to talk for a minute and then stop. Isn't that right? No, you actually get you can get you get to go in the show and and you can talk for more than 60 seconds I'm not sure that I can handle it. Well, I'm sure I will figure it out. I'm sure you'll be fine Just a quick note a lot of people are seeing headlines out there saying Google hangouts on air is going away That's if you didn't know how we record the show and how we make our video versions hangouts on air is not going away Hangouts on air is no longer going to be accessible from Google plus after September 11th So it's September 12th. It it leaves Google plus, but hangouts on air has always been accessible through YouTube That's how we're doing it right now today So it will not affect the show as far as we know in any way in fact It might be good news might mean that YouTube will pay more attention to it than Google did Wishful thinking I know I say that I shouldn't even say that right? I'm just probably cursing it Ignored forever, but we like I said, we're gonna talk about some of our favorite tech for travel and we're gonna have a little bit of some some some Explanation or at least Educated guesses about what's been going on with airline reservation systems when they go down, but let's start with the top stories Intel at the Intel developers forum announced an all-in-one virtual reality headset Along with something they're calling the Intel merged reality platform. So it's not virtual reality Everybody has to have their own name for this. I don't understand. It's merged reality. Well for this it does AR and VR, right? That's okay. So does really all augmented reality Not exactly But well it could like I don't know anyway. Yeah, okay So they've got a new buzzword merged reality Project alloy is wireless So you don't have to plug it into anything. You don't put a phone in it You don't even have to wire it up to a computer It has cameras sensors and input controls built-in promises six degrees of freedom meaning you pretty much move in any direction You can think of input comes from hand tracking and this is why Intel's doing it because they really want to promote their real sense Technology so they've got real sense cameras in it 1080p infrared and laser cameras are not laser cameras, but 1080p and infrared cameras and lasers sure I want to put laser cameras on my You know when I was writing this story earlier today It struck me like lasers are not as impressive in things as they used to be because they're all over the place now Yeah, and they're sort of disappointing even because I'm pretty sure that in the 70s or 80s If you had said you know putting laser cameras on your head you would have imagined something widely different from what this technology But but what do you guys think of this Patrick? I mean, it's it's Intel does this a lot where they're they're really trying to promote a chip in this case It's a sensor the real-sense chip, but then they come out with these products I think it's it's really this one is interesting because it's we're now in a Giant ocean of companies companies announcing VR products and VR headsets Honestly, it was novelty a couple of years ago now It's kind of shameful if your company doesn't create a VR headset on top of everything else They do but the reason this one is interesting of course is because it's Intel and it's I think one of the last Remaining companies that could announce something like that that would turn a few heads because they're so important in the IT industry So I think they don't want to be left behind like they were with mobile right exactly. Yeah I mean this is definite the thing which is interesting with VR is that we're still not sure how useful or good it is It's still you know in the next couple of years We're gonna find out for sure and as you were saying Intel doesn't want to miss that train as they did with others Yeah, it's real traveling. Do you do virtual traveling? There's a couple of the tourism boards that I have seen do things with virtual with VR British Columbia did one that was a virtual tour of a One of the destinations up the coast from Vancouver and it was interesting But you know part of the problem is the whole thing It's not like it's a game where you can go wherever you want It's still shot from a point of view and so you can turn around and you can look at all those sorts of things But then they're taking you wherever they want to take you and I'm not sure I'm just not sure that it's that Is that interesting, you know versus having the director tell me where to look. Yeah Well, it's more virtual tours basically which again could be interesting or it could be completely useless Yeah, I was just gonna get I was gonna set you up because Microsoft's got their own thing to go Yeah, they have Announced Tuesday that the Windows whole graphic mixed reality platform will come to Windows 10 as soon as next year Intel's and you sees with embedded iris graphics and Intel's new project alloy VR headset will support Windows whole graphic at launch Microsoft also announced the launch of Xbox wireless platform, which lets PCs use Microsoft's wireless Accessories Lenovo's idea center why 710 cube gaming PC is the first to support the platform So, yeah, we'll have to buy new PCs so that we can use Xbox controllers with them It's so yeah, there are two things here first the Windows whole graphic Which is moving I have to admit moving a little bit faster than I expected it to when they introduced it I think a couple of years ago now but I've been a market faster Patrick Yeah, I mean in if it is indeed available in next year. I wouldn't not have expected it to become commercially available Before you know about five years after they first announced it that being said I've been a I think it's okay to brand me Windows Holographic hater the HoloLens because I never thought it was gonna amount to anything and Even if I'm trying really hard. I would like this to be cool. I'm still not seeing the Viable Application to any of this there's lots of cool bells of end whistles definitely some some exciting things for 10 minutes But even less than VR of which I'm more and you know, I'm more excited about the art But I'm still not sure it's gonna hold up for for the long haul But on that I could be more convinced for for the HoloLens and Windows holographic It's gonna come out next year available commercially and I still have no idea what it could be used for outside of some professional uses Well, if you remember Intel announced some enterprise uses like you're talking about at CES My guess is because project alloy is working on this that those will also be able to work on this and that gives an enterprise level support to holographic systems that will allow those Intel devices to be deployed in the enterprise So that's where the money is made and that alone could make this a success. I think But getting down to you know, what are you gonna use this on? I feel like HoloLens is really the Microsoft surface Microsoft is going to say hey, we made HoloLens because we think it's pretty awesome And we're gonna sell it because we think it's pretty awesome But what we really want is people using Windows holographic on Windows 10 because then we can sell them back-end services Then that and that's that's where Microsoft is staking out their future is cloud services Yeah, still doesn't answer what the HoloLens technology is going to be used for consumers Chris do you have any thoughts on that because it is a fair point I mean we could say gaming or whatever, but those are all virtual. Yeah, but No, I don't and one of the things that I think of in this whole space in the VR space is so way Years ago back when computing was street steam driven I was at Apple and worked on the first version of the quick time VR plug-in and You know again It was the cool technology and you could do all sorts of things with it But you really had to develop special content for it to make it useful And it just you know it just never quite lived up to what it could have done because of that part So I Somebody may have a really great idea and you know, I would be glad to eat my words next year and say this is really cool I can't believe I didn't think of that, but I certainly haven't thought of it yet Yeah, I think we will get that idea I'm optimistic that that's why Microsoft has HoloLens out there even as expensive as they are in developers hands is to get Somebody to come up with what that killer consumer idea is there there are lots of good professional ideas out there But the consumer one I think is the one we're waiting for you know games where spaceships come through your walls are pretty cool That is yet to be seen if if they really catch on with people in real No, that's that's games that people who don't game think are games if that makes sense One gamers who think oh you're gonna be able to like shoot stuff in your living living room. It sounds awesome Yeah, it's just like that we that you played for two You know evenings with friends and that never left your closet afterwards. It makes a great demo Yeah, exactly I can see that if you could actually take it out in the real world if you could combine it with something like pokemon go But this is not really what we're Don't get me started on pokemon go. I will Not stop talking until the end of that. Well, you can take your project alloy out in the real world with you. Yeah Well, yeah, just to be clear. I'm sure there might be Examples of uses for you know AR and HoloLens that might be very exciting And I'm sure we'll get many emails of people telling us But this thing I saw looks amazing I just haven't seen something that that is exciting for me and that I think has legs in the long run for consumers Well, let's move on to something that doesn't have legs either self driving cars Ford and Baidu are jointly investing 150 million dollars in velodyne velodyne makes laser based sensors They're used in drivers again. I know right. They're everywhere Uh, these are these are the sensors that are used in driver assist technology now They'll obviously be needed for autonomous cars and ford is doubling the size of its palo Alto research team as well to more than 300 people And ford said today It plans to launch a fleet of commercial level four autonomous vehicles in a ride hailing service by 2021 Now This is throwing down the gauntlet, right? This doesn't mean they have it ready. They say in five years Ford will have a fleet of fully autonomous fords that you can hail for a ride now level four Means that it's fully autonomous And ford says the cars won't even need steering wheels that these will all drive themselves in five years You guys buy it. Yeah, I have a prediction That will not be the case This won't become true They might do it in 10. I think five is a little bit optimistic No, but they have a graph and it has colored balls They do five it says driverless Oh, sorry. I didn't realize I guess I here's the key patrick LiDAR the the the laser-based late radar is essential for levels three four and five and they just invested in velodyne Ah All right, so actually all right. Let me change my prediction. Uh, they will no actually it's not different Change my prediction. It'll be 15 years. Um, yeah, it's It I love the enthusiasm is all I could really say like But every person that I trust on this has said this is all possible level four cars are going to happen But it's going to be more like 40 years not five I needed to be more like 35 to 45 years My dad who's turning 90 Oh, wow a couple weeks and figure, you know, it's not going to be in time to get him off the road and you know Dad, you know give up the keys But I just needed to be ready when I'm that age, right? When my kids say, you know, dad give the robot the keys. That's what I you know, once people are around you are telling you You probably shouldn't drive you. That's when I want. Yeah, that's when I want fully autonomous cars For sure. Hopefully. Yeah, well Ford's going to get him to you by 2021. So there you go And also I would like to mention that both for, you know, the AR technology and this and many others It's very important that we have companies and people willing to do the research and to take the risks and to do all of this Even if it it seems pointless now or if it doesn't, you know Fit the the the stringent needs Of Patrick Beja and he's going to poo poo your your amazing research Because we need that kind of research, of course, because when a few of them fail we get one amazing thing that works So three three people in small rooms around the world probably shouldn't be telling the 600 people at Palo Alto research that they can't do it I I love to see them try it does seem A little aggressive based on in the chat room. I see you says I want to hail them with lasers That's a good point. Yeah, hopefully if you have your your, um Headset head mounted headset thing with lasers. It will work in tandem and you will be able to There you go. Your your intel project Alloy will just bring a car. Will you be able to tell the real car or not? That's the question All right, let's move on. Blizzard's overwatch has 15 million players and is popular among competitive players for its second season It's changing the one to 100 skill rating to one to five thousand with seven tiers from bronze to grandmaster Wait, Patrick. So this means I have to be 500 times as good Uh, well for you, it's kind of difficult You have to train and be willing to suffer. It's actually play. Okay fair enough I have read that it's this one's got 11 but This one's what this one's got 11 I'm sorry. Don't get it. Sorry. Spinal tap reference. Oh, okay. Okay. It's the age thing again. My apologies Um for tight games the coin toss and sun death goes away replaced by competitive points for both teams um Yeah, go ahead Tom. No, I was just I was gonna ask you what does this mean of which I have a feeling you were about to tell me Anyway, so basically I've been very Very much into overwatch in the past few months or year or so and uh for disclaimer I used to work for blizzard so my enthusiasm for the game might be colored by that but still it's it's very Exciting and fun and a lot of people are playing it as we said, but the thing that really interested me in this is the way they're tackling uh competitive game in their environment and the way competitive games Shape our approach to games in general or to these games because it's really hard To make competitive games feel good for the players. Of course, you're gonna hopefully if it works well, you're gonna lose have the games that you play and I've been wrestling with this quite a bit because overwatch is the first uh game which I got heavily into the competitive side of and Losing in those games Feel feels really horrible losing feels good. I'm sorry winning feels good losing feels soul crushing And I've had to wrestle with some emotions. I didn't know I had you know towards games and the current season was Crafted and that's where game design becomes really important and systems design and all of this because it was crafted in a way That didn't make you feel very good even when you were winning that one to 100 skill rating, for example You would go from rating 45.5 to rating 45.8 It didn't mean anything and that's why for example that those tiers from bronze to grandmaster You know if you're able to say at that point the ranking from one to five thousand doesn't really matter all that much But if you're able to say instead of you know, I'm rank 45 You're able to say I'm a gold player, right? I'm at the level of gold already. It feels a lot better the the the sudden death for for Tide games is going away completely and they're going when you have a tie It's going to be very rare. Hopefully, but they're not going to tell you. Okay. Everyone loses. They're going to give you a few points To both teams and reduce the amounts of ties Um, so there's a lot of psychology in this which was super interesting. I'm wondering if you've ever felt Uh that way because I know you play games a little bit. Um, I don't know. Yeah, no, absolutely I've even played overwatch Uh, and but have you played competitive bledo? No, because I'm afraid of that soul crushing defeat that you're talking about I want to avoid that But why so I've watched overwatch being played, but I haven't played it by it's my son-in-law's favorite game Why did being killed in that one feel different than being killed and Halo or marathon or you know anything that's been going on for years since the the mac The real old school mac person talking about marathon there Um, it's you know, it's not so much about this game that it feels bad. It's more about The ranked mode and the competitive aspect of it, you know, I've never really gotten into competitive games A little bit with hardstone, but hardstone is very different. You're one on one. You can't really talk to your opponent You are responsible for your own destiny in that game because you don't have teammates that could you know make or break the game for you Um, and in other games like league of legends, of course, which is the most popular competitive game There is at the moment or overwatch Um, there is this feeling that you can't if you're playing Uh, a bad game It feels like you're not responsible for your destiny because there are so many outside factors like your other team The heroes you're going to choose the the way You were matched against with or against people of widely different rankings than you and all of those factors Come together to make the experience better or worse And as I was saying when you're playing a quick match, which is just for fun If you lose well, you lose it's frustrating But you've just lost when the stakes the perceived stakes, of course It's just a number but when the perceived stakes are are higher Um, it those emotions go on a roller coaster, which is actually very Strangely difficult to to manage. No, no I totally understand that because Going like the fear of going like, oh my gosh I'm going to drop down a skill point and and it's only one to a hundred is bad If it's one to five thousand and really you only have seven levels You're not going to move between those seven levels as often So even if you drop from, you know, 300 to 299 or whatever, that's not that big of a deal If you stay in your silver level or your gold level, you still can look and feel like, well, I'm I'm still silver Right. I'm not I'm still gold. It's it's not the end of the world And and that psychological aspect of it makes a big difference Even though all they're doing is moving the decimal point essentially Yeah, and actually they didn't mention the fact that they were going to keep you on your level You know your metal level, even if you dropped ranking wise below it Um, so that's also psychologically something to make you feel a little bit I don't want to say better, but not not make you feel actively worse, uh, which It is probably a good thing A group of hackers claiming to have accessed software tools from the nsa's Internal hacking team known as the equation group have posted The files online and say they plan to sell the data a lot of the data is encrypted by them The files seem to be from the summer of 2013. Some of them as old as 2010 So they're fairly outdated as hacker tools go Ars Technica's Dan Gooden cites bank shath boltashar a researcher with hungry based crisis Saying the files are not fully fake. A lot of people were wondering if these are real He says they seem to be a legitimate tools that reasonably could have come from the nsa Some researchers suspect that the tools could have come from an indirect source Maybe a command and control channel server rather than an internal nsa staging server But It is something that this group of hackers is trying to use to embarrass the nsa and say we took your tools That or it's an nsa honeypot that they fell right into that's the Well, and and that that's a really that's a really interesting thought because if it was It didn't work because what the heck what this group is saying is we we owned you and and even if it was a honeypot Uh, it's making the nsa look bad to people who aren't skeptical about it It's also wasn't it this week that uh, microsoft lost it lost its key to the secure boot Um, it's not a great Uh, uh pure microsoft didn't lose its key Some security researchers were able to create an exploit that uh reverse engineered it that that to me is an entirely different class Of something where they can talk to microsoft and say hey, it's it's possible to get these keys out Versus this where Hackers have claimed to have accessed an internal nsa server Right. I guess what I mean is However secure you think things are They're never a hundred percent secure. I think is the and you know It might not be directly an internal nsa server, but it's the same thing. There's always a way to get stuff. So A hunt, you know, perfect security doesn't exist is the the common lesson I take away from this as well I'm a little skeptical that About what this actually is and I'm not even saying I don't believe that it's from the nsa. I just I it's hard to tell Because they put a tumblr post up and then the post was taken away They had a few of files available But the rest are encrypted and they say they want a million dollars And then a lot of people are saying they're not going to get any money from anybody for these These are just old hacker tools that other people can access anyway The fact that they're from the nsa is meaningless In that respect. So it's it's an odd. It's an odd situation. It's not just about The security of the nsa and should you feel safe to me? It's it's more about There's obviously a group out there who has a vested interest in trying to smear The u.s. government particularly and and the nsa is part of that Or maybe just to boast for and by making something seem bigger than it actually is Possibly. Yeah, possibly. Well, thank you for bringing me down and into reality That's what we do It's perfect, you know, I get old excited about things that are probably I shouldn't be excited about but then I listen to tom and he says Actually, have you thought about this and I go no, I didn't tom And I hate you a little bit for being so sizable. You miss me All right after vacation I'm I might maybe we'll see Uh google's new video chat app dual launched Tuesday on ios and android rolling out worldwide in the next few days The app does not integrate with any other google messaging service and only allows one-to-one calling However, neither party needs a google account and the knock knock feature lets you see who's calling on video before accepting the call The dual launch includes support for 78 languages So you don't have it yet even though it's rolling out worldwide. So it's definitely rolling out slowly Uh, some folks in our audience who are in the uk said they didn't get it yet either I didn't get it until I don't know like 8 30 this morning and they posted about it last night But once it comes it's It's causing a lot of confusion because it's not part of google's Chat that is built into gmail that is called hangouts confusingly It is it is it not even require you to have a google account You can just associate it with your phone number like you would with viber or something else like that It doesn't use your phone to call. It just uses that to identify you I have a lot of friends who've signed up for it, uh, obviously and I could get it on ios I couldn't get it on my tablet, which I don't understand Like why wouldn't I be able to use this on my pixel c nope not allowed to use it on pixel c I can use it on an iphone but not my android tablet, but I can use it on my nexus 5 It's It's trying to be FaceTime And it's a little more cross-platform and it's got the whole knock knock feature Best guesses on whether this catches on um It's impossible to tell isn't it the knock knock feature is really cool. I I honestly I think it's a very clever Move by google, but they also have of as you said they have hangouts They also have the alo app which is coming out soon. This one is limited to two people which I'm not sure why they would you know make this a core aspect of the of the app Um, but okay, I guess It's it's definitely confusing. I'm sure it's it's good But I'm not sure why we need it more than any other and If you know, you're not always going to be calling people you might message them does the dual Aspect only one-to-one feature extend to messaging as well. No use alo for that No, but oh so you can't even message people with dual well It's like FaceTime right you can't message people through FaceTime either you go use iMessage for that so right right right, but Yeah, I'm thinking more in terms of because FaceTime is part of the entire Apple ecosystem which comes with iMessage as well. I'm thinking more in terms of Competing with message, you know facebook messenger and whatsapp and these apps So I'm wondering where it fits in the middle of all of those and I'm not seeing a place Maybe it doesn't have a very clear place like FaceTime is the closest thing Yeah, I was gonna say it fits to the extent that FaceTime Fits and I honestly don't know and FaceTime doesn't fit into my world because you know, nobody wants to FaceTime me apparently got a case for audio but You know, I I know that It is more attractive than that because I've got one of my kids on android and the rest of us on Ios and something cross-platform is cool, but I just don't know how much I honestly don't know how much that app is taking off I don't know how much people need to do that want to do that Versus snapchat or something else these days right right why not use whatsapp? Which is already crossed by a platform which is the big advantage compared to to FaceTime so Well, thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddit You can submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com Benjy tech just posted in there that mr. Robot got renewed for season three So fans of that would be very excited. John Z 7 7 6 is in there. Abatuella Condolce, Jason Phil ICU Dr. Whiskey and more get in there and join them dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. That's a look at the top stories So because we have the amateur traveler with us We thought we'd go around the horn and talk about some of our favorite tech to travel with Start with you Patrick though because you you don't have a particular thing to tell people about So why not start with the guy who has nothing to say? Well, no though, but you have you have something to say. It's just the broadest approach to this Yeah, so basically, you know, well, as I'm sure you know, I've been traveling quite a bit Over the past year and in general, but I've I've been away not just for a few weeks, but for months at a time I've been in Finland. I've been in Japan and what really struck me which I sort of knew intellectually, but I really felt Is how much of our entire world is now portable, you know, I really only need a computer Possibly even a phone although, you know, for me I work on these things and I really do need more complex features, but With just the piece of tech I'm using at home I can just take my entire world with me and location Today doesn't really matter all that much I live half of my life online. I would say all of my work is off is online and a lot of my friends are also online friends. We interact through Twitter, Facebook a little bit Hangouts Skype all of these and what I've really felt when I was in Japan when I was in Finland and all of those was that I was basically My life was changing location, but that was it a few real life friends I couldn't interact with as much of course, but Nothing was changing and I think what I take away from it is that traveling doesn't really mean the same thing It has and and this is relatively recent It's happened, you know, some people might say oh well the internet is 30 years old or 20 years old However, long they've been using it But I really think that this really started when live video and Conversation video started becoming ubiquitous, which I would argue was probably five six years ago And it's very interesting that in that context again location doesn't matter You can do everything you do From anywhere when I was in Japan It felt different when I was going outside But everything else which it sounds You know like I was living in a cave, but Really all of my life which wasn't outside. I it's almost like I was only aware that I was in Japan when I wasn't You know at home working or or having conversation with friends or on my phone, you know, and I think that's really new No, I know what you mean because your device becomes your familiar surrounding So often I think it's getting more common than it was So for me, I understand what you're talking about and I completely relate to it, but not the time frame So really for me since the dot-com bubble burst I haven't had An office most of that time Except for you know, the only office I could think of that I had it was actually in boston Which is you know across the country from where I live. So I've been living out of My office being my backpack for a while and the only thing that's changed is it's gotten lighter you know, it's that you know now it's got a mac book air and a And a iPad mini in it and it doesn't hurt my back to carry it around but I've been living out of portable Offices, you know, even when I went into work We didn't have an office. We just had a table that people would put, you know, put your feet up on and And so for me my anywhere is my office, but for me that has been now 15 years There's definitely an element of that because I started working out of my home Only a couple of years ago. So that fits in that time frame as well but I I really think that In the past few years the prevalence of video streaming and not just that, you know, I we were talking about Overwatch That game was in beta when I was in japan and I could play with friends and chat with friends by the on You know in game chat It really isn't that different if I'm in the same city or if I'm half the world away My ping might be worse and that provides me with an excuse for why I got killed by my friend, you know that time But that's really the only difference. It's not It's not that different being in the same city and half the world away, which again I think intellectually we all know it, but it was really I felt it very deeply During this past year of long term type was probably the you know, a big Thing for me and I remember using it well when when we started podcasting back in 2005 All the episodes of amateur traveler that have been interviews have been done on skype So I think that was a big game changer, you know rather than just doing before that I was just doing chat with people who were remote and there is a different level of Presence obviously when you when you can add in the voice in the in the video and those sort of things but yeah, it's I don't feel as time to any particular location. It's just how good is the bandwidth? Yeah, exactly. That's my first worry when I arrived in a different country. It was like What's the best connection you have? That's what I mean. That's what so in in essence the thing that you you take with you Uh, when you travel the tech that you take with you the most is what bandwidth can I get like that is Seriously, like that's on my list too. Like when I pick a hotel now that makes a big difference In which one I'm going to pick. Yeah. Yeah, the bandwidth is definitely my my piece of travel Chris, what about you? I know you travel a lot So of course you've got a whole podcast where you can pick up stuff like this And you do the the tech and travel segments that we put at the end of the show But but just a couple of things that you would recommend folks take a look at Well, one of the things I was looking for is I try to remember the name of the site Just that isn't in the show notes because I was thinking of it when patrick was talking about there's a site that I used to get Hotel wi-fi speeds. I think we've talked about it in tech and travel, but the name is not coming to me So I'll think of that off the top of my head Tripit is definitely something that I think you I hear it on your list and it's online I don't know where I am Without looking at trip it sometimes You know just when you do a lot of trips back to back It's useful when you're planning not just one trip But you've got three trips in a row planned and you know just keeping track of You just email the airline confirmation or the hotel confirmation To plans at trip it dot com and they keep track of that and that's even just the free version You know the the premium version let you get notifications of delays and things like that the only the only flight I missed in the last Say three years at least that I can think of I missed because I booked it so far in advance That I missed the notification from the airline that they had changed the time of the flight and forgot to set it into trip it So I was treating trip it as as if it were gospel and I had forgotten to give it the information unfortunately, it was the flight to my daughter's wedding, but But that was that was user interaction probably that was user interaction failure, but it doesn't it doesn't update It doesn't get the data of flight delay from yeah, it's done that for me It gives the flight delay information. Yeah, but it doesn't get the only thing it doesn't get is Schedule changes. I got a schedule change through trip it So I wonder why when it works and when it doesn't because I've had it adjust that Well, this was october of the year before last so maybe it's something as long as it's on the same itinerary confirmation number. Yeah, yeah Interesting hotel wi-fi test the one that you were talking about that sounds like the right one. Yeah, okay I'll throw that in the show notes as well. You also have a travel router you like Yeah, well it's a travel router, but it's also that Extra battery basically the Hutu travel router is also an external bed Oh, we lost chris. Oh, no, which I don't think I mentioned the name of which is a built-in Battery in it so that when you're in the gate and you your phone is dead and you can't fight for that wall plug You know, you can get that although I think my wife has claimed that suitcase So I I've been traveling with the Hutu which is Both a travel router as well as a the extended you know the extended battery basically for i'm in the I'm in the airplane and my phone is dead. I'm in the gate or whatever because there's still there is not enough power in hotel in airline Airport gates and they're still not great enough wi-fi in all airports. That's why I always pack a power strip Nobody makes friends in an airport lounge like a guy with a power strip. Do you have one of the the small portable ones? It's not even that small. It's it's small ish But I just throw it in my laptop bag and then if somebody's got you know, the the wall warts taken up I just go ahead like hey, is it okay if I plug this in and then and plug you into it And most people are totally fine with it I don't think I've ever been turned down When I've done it and then it also makes sense when you're in a hotel room if you want to charge all your gadgets Especially if you're traveling in a place that has a different power system You just put the adapter on the right in the power strip and then all your devices plug in normally Well, the one thing you have to watch with that I I uh going to europe one time which he of course uses 220 volts I forgot to check whether the power strip was itself capable of 220 volts and managed to you know Let this all the smoke out of it You know how that is they don't work when the smoke gets out because they run on smoke Yeah, yeah, don't let all the smoke out of your your power could be yeah You want the best is to get a power strip that can handle multiple voltages, which you can get Uh, and your last one is called away. What is that? That's the suitcase that I was mentioning that their Their carry-on suitcase has a built-in battery and a usb port So you can basically charge your suitcase before you leave home and then have I think it's Uh, basically it's five recharges for your your iphone or whatever Just in case you need that The only thing I'm going to add to that because I'm a big trippin fan myself is flight aware Uh, the flight aware app or you can go to flight aware.com and use it on the web Let's you see where your plane is. So I use this a lot. I I don't know how helpful it really is It's more anxiety reducing Because when you walk in and they're not saying there's a delay which they don't always say But you don't see your plane at the gate I will go immediately to flight aware and find out Okay, is my plane actually in the air or is it delayed at its takeoff point and then I could start to plan accordingly Yeah, I tend to use that I tend to use the seat guru app for that which has that built in and then also has the feature of Which seats on the plane are good planes and for full and fair disclosure I've done a fair amount of contracting for last Year for Triv advisor on seat gurus. So All right now before we move on to our messages of the day Last week delta airlines had to ground 2000 flights in the u.s. Because of a power outage and the malfunction of a failover system Reuters pointed to ibm's transaction processing facility, which was designed in the 1960s as a possible culprit IBM says no it's been modernized and they deny that it's the cause the airlines aren't saying much at all about what The cause of it is uh, joe the pilot wrote in to us and said they do back up in recovery checked four times a year So it shouldn't have been back up in recovery But chris, you used to be an engineering director as you mentioned Of trip advisor flights met a search engine and recently got a chance to sit in the air bilan Operations center and talk to them about their system. So I know you're an outsider. You don't have inside knowledge But you do have some experience with travel. You've run large server farms. You know how they work Uh, what's your best guess as what's going on? Well, actually I found an article that delta announced what What happened and it was a problem with their backup and recovery They basically they blew a transformer and so I most of your audience probably already knows this but since the Since 98 or 2000 some probably about 98 all of the Sort of internet server farms out there have had, you know redundant connectivity redundant power You know your servers are either plugged into two different, you know two different power outlets Have two different, you know power things in your servers or you have redundant servers completely This one plugged into that power this one plugged into that power They had that it appears And so they lost their transformer and that happens I mean you things fail and and that is not what you try and prevent these days It's just how do you deal with what happens when they fail and what apparently happened was as they failed over to the other power circuit Uh 60 percent of their servers were not configured correctly To deal with that circuit. So I don't know what the I don't know what the story is about doing it four times a year But something either they launched a lot of servers recently and it misconfigured them or You know, it is one of those things backup and redundant systems are tough because you do have to do a test of it And it is a pain in the ass To do it because you risk an outage every time you do it and of course when you've got 24 by seven systems like an airline does it makes it even more fun I know what trip advisor for instance, they Do a I think it's every two to four weeks They basically completely switch over to their other data center And I haven't seen a lot of other companies that do that because it's a pain in the ass And they can do it a little more because they can just say well, you know You can't write a review right now. We're going to switch into read-only mode. You can't quite do that in air You know, well, we're not taking boarding passes for the next, you know, five minutes while we're switching not board only vote You know, we're not going to submit any new routes for, you know Basically the operation center with the operation center is doing Is it's keeping track of all where all your planes are in the air It's keeping track of where all your crew is because your crew has to show up And do we need any new crew and do we need a new airplane? For that route because this one's going to be delayed because of that weather pattern or When I was in the air berlin operation center in berlin, you know, they were dealing with the next day There was going to be an air traffic controller strike in france of all places. I don't know if you could picture this Patrick, but no, I that would never happen. You're like it must have been the time I'm sure I'm sure that's never happened before a strike in france But uh, and unfortunately for them it was only in the southern portion of france But then that meant they had to file completely different flight plans. It was going to change all their timing You know, and so there that's the kind of things you're dealing with in an operation center As well as, you know, you've got your passenger system that's keeping track of all your who's on which flight as well as your You know, billing systems the one thing in terms of updating these A lot of them are long and that you know are older Uh, probably the oldest one that was american in the of the three of the four major us airlines So you're talking about delta united american and i'm gonna throw in southwest american is the only one of those four that Hasn't had a major outage like this Within the last what six months a year Yeah, yeah Now but almost all of those have also merged recently where they've had to while they were continuing to run things Change systems and merge systems and such Um, and all of those had the chance every time they did a merger of choosing the newer system So there has been some updating going along and But it's a tough thing It is a more difficult thing to do in that business where you have to you know, keep the planes Keep the planes running at the same time keep playing. Yeah, but you know, it's it's part of the job of the the Operations crew and it is really you do end up with egg in your face when you have to announce Yeah, we we hadn't reconfigured everything correctly to handle this sort of imagine folks if in your job every mistake You made caused thousands and thousands of people to notice Because it could not not be noticed and perhaps make them angry. Yeah, that's what they're dealing with Uh, well, thank you chris uh for for sharing your insight there We got tons of messages from folks all the time. Thank you for sending us feedback feedback at daily tech news show dot com Russell wrote in Pointing out that while tablets may be stagnating especially for the consumer. Uh, they're doing very well in the enterprise And he's got an email about that with a link to the verge story about ipad business growing in the enterprise Mike wrote in that the canadian radio television and telecommunications commission is threatening to cut off a condo development According to the financial post if they don't let a new provider have access He says he thinks there ought to be more intervention like that And then big jim responded to our discussion of the fish tracking story from yesterday with a little more insight into why All of this food is being tracked in the way that it is. Hi, tom roger. Welcome chris. I'm of course bonjour, monsieur beja It is i big jim the trade nerd from just outside of hangar 18 here in soggy date, no How going today to talk about uh yesterday's story with regard to red sea food Going to be able to track at a website to be able to log in and hit a barcode and be able to tell Where was something taken from? Well, this data is actually Being promulgated by the food and drug administration because of the food and safety modernization act Which was passed after a 2008 scare in mexico Which led from salmonella that they thought was in tomatoes and then they thought it was in jalapeños And then they finally found out it was cilantro Um, and they couldn't identify which actual farm did it come from So a lot of this data is now actually required by law that you have to identify with a tracking number When things were taken out of the ground when did it go to a manufacturing facility? When was it processed? When was it canned? When did it go to a wholesaler and when did it go to final retail? And then all of that data has to be maintained By the food producer in case there has to be a safety recall and then they can trace back to what occurred when Reds is actually taking the forward step of actually being able to make it available for other people I think we're going to see this with other manufacturers soon Reds just seems to be in front of everybody else But that's just my two cents. Thank you for your two cents. I'm big jim. Oh, sorry big jim. Uh, thank you for your two sets Thank you for calling in from date. Ohio Did you see with the food safety modernization act or the food and safety modernization act? You know, I didn't catch the weather. I already said and and I'm looking forward to the modernizing the cheeseburger I think you could do wonderful things with that Well, thank you both As always patrick for being here and chris for being here with us today Where chris can people find more of the amateur traveler? amateur traveler.com or you can find me pretty much anywhere on the web as chris 2x Instagram twitter twitter pinterest now patrick as you kind of go through the reacclamation to non-vacation life What should be people be looking forward to? Oh, wow I guess a couple of things the pixels podcast We on the last episode with justin moffat We actually dove very deep into the woes of competitive ranked gaming I guess for normal people like us And sort of had a group therapy session, which was very cathartic So I would encourage you to to go listen to that trying to explain why the wise in house And the other thing of course is the philis club where we discussed a few weeks ago the brexit and Different sides of it and then Later the us elections with one tom merit where we had we tried to stay Civil and analytical more than judgmental And I think we did an okay job of it a lot of people were happy with that and Both of those are at french spin.com Check it out folks if you like this show and you're willing to keep it going Please support us if you don't already big thanks to those who do You can find out more about that at daily tech news show.com Our email address is feedback at daily tech news show.com You can catch the show live Monday through Friday 4 30 p.m. Eastern alpha geek radio.com and diamond club.tv And of course our website is daily tech news show.com back tomorrow with scott johnson. Talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants.com I hope you have enjoyed this program Yes, that was a great show you guys. Thank you And and thank you chris. I reinstalled trippett, which I hadn't used in Years and it's going to be very useful in the coming months I'm a fan. I'm definitely a fan of the meter. Yeah They I pay for the pro and they let you forward your points statements that you get on email I haven't used that part yet. I I have a A pro version that they paid for so I could use that but I I tend to get a little paranoid about you know, who I give access to all my systems to that's no That's the cool thing is you don't have to give them your password anymore You can just send the statement to points at I saw that and then when I tried to find the statement I couldn't find the right email that they would parse so I need to look at that again Oh, really? Okay. I did it. I've done it for delta and southwest now and it works for both of them I'm not sure that it works for every airline. Well, part of the problem is I see I don't keep my points in the airline anymore I keep them on the sapphire Hard and then I can transfer them into united or british america airlines over southwest. Gotcha Well, that's a tip right there actually no there. I guess I guess that is Well, there we go. Now you I'll put it in my uh, this the tech and travel. Uh, yeah. Yeah, that's a good one Uh show titles. Yeah, what should we call it? I love the picture of you doing double duty here Uh, so you got lasers there everywhere the de-plusification continues until of borg Ford makes his driverless bed and must now light our it That's pretty funny that's too long. I think yeah, it's probably is too long. We're really funny travel tech tips today. Mm-hmm flights of chance e I'm trying to find more travel loans All the way to 11 keys to the honeypot tech and travel our techniques travels fast Up up and dTNS dNTS Traveling with technology Hmm Patrick do you like any of these? Um, well the Ford makes its driverless bed and is now in it. That's really good, but It's it seems kind of long Yeah, I see I would go probably go with now with more lasers, but uh Places are everywhere Yeah Now with more lasers is also good. Yeah, I kind of like that too. Okay. That's good I do agree with chris that I I have a feeling it might the whole thing would be in the same might be a honeypot But that if it's not it should be Yeah, I mean But even if it is I still go with what my reaction to that which is like even if it is the the hackers don't care They just want to make the NSA look bad But it might not even be for it might not even it might be just an internal audit Like they need to find the they're curious to know what's leaking where Sure, and I'm that that's that's interesting, but the hackers really just want to make the NSA look bad and and they're still doing that So that's that's not a really good way to run a honeypot then Well, but if you know, I think you're a honeypot theory Unless they catch they catch the hackers. Yeah, that would be when you use the tools You know something happens that helps you catch the hackers and I you could live with Okay, all right thinking you were an idiot until you round them up I mean the NSA or I think already knows people think poorly of them That's a really good point Oh, no, you're gonna think less of us like yeah, so what how could you possibly uh at this point? Yeah That's fair And it's not as you don't understand the idea of a honeypot you get on the chat room. Yeah The military's been doing that for decades Military intelligence. They they actually leak legitimate data out to what they proceed the air force did this in the 80s. There was an air force sergeant or captain was approached By a by a russia or soviet intelligence Official about like yeah, maybe you can give me some data on some, you know movements of of you know But but okay, but at a certain point you have to be like, okay Not every hack is a honeypot, right? Like no snowden wasn't a honeypot like ha ha We'll let him steal all of our secrets and tell them to the newspaper. I think we could probably What if there was what if there was what if snowden really was Is like a long con it's like a decade two decades long Well, and I didn't want to go there eating during this show because I didn't want to get into the politics of it But I I think it's funny and ironic that you know as much a crap as hillary's getting for the The email server hack and she shouldn't have done it I mean, you know, that's clearly it was a bad idea and the odd thing though is it wasn't hacked as far as we know But the state department servers that she should have kept it actually were hacked So were they yeah I didn't realize that yeah, there were some hacks that got into there and then of course also the you know the DM The democratic party. So it's it's just right everything's a target these days Yeah, well that goes back to patrick's point, which is totally fair like nothing nothing is perfectly secure. No, no, you poop my point I didn't mean to poo poo it I know about poo and poo pooing Roger's reaching us 10,000 hours. He'll be an expert real quick Yeah, before you know, they uh, they go to college in the east coast and you know get married and move away. So, you know Enjoy it while you can as long as they come back and visit me in the nursing home and make up And give you and buy you the car that you can that the robot just think right be good to her. She's gonna pick your driverless car so I gotta run Thanks, it's fun. Thank you, Chris Nice to meet you patrick. Roger. Good to see you too. All right. Thanks for being on Good show great show It was it was a good show and now it's done Uh, well, thanks everybody Oh, I started to hear like uh music and it's because this This page started to automatically autoplay something I was like, I thought roger had a lullaby going um, all right Thanks everybody for watching back with scott johnson tomorrow Welcome back patrick beija. It's so good to have you back. Thank you. And we'll see you everybody later Bonk