 I'm right. I guess I could have told it in a different order. That might have been more of a window into a lonely. I've always approached playlists as like radio playlists. Like these are the songs I would want on my personal radius, perfect radio station. Oh, yeah. Oh, I mean, I think that's that's the yeah, that's definitely the problem. But the problem is what I also I also want to do heavy rotation. And like you can kind of fake it up by adding the multiple times to iTunes playlists. But then that doesn't work on some other platforms. I'm not using iTunes anymore to manage my playlists. So I wish there was like a standard playlist that's like, yeah, play the play this group more often than this other group. Well, I'll tell you what Apple Music's playlist recommendation sure finds every possible way to shove Kanye West songs in my face. And I'm loving it. I will beat all of you because I got one of the first CD players that played MP3 is off a CD. Like that was that was actual magic. The first person that I that a friend of mine that had that. And I'm like, how do you have 300 songs on this one normal CD? You're a wizard, Harry. And there are no titles, right? You just had numbers. It's so you had to kind of remember where the song was at. Oh, yeah, good times. Yeah, we still have a bunch of CDs that we had we had in our car back in the early 2000s. I still have CDs in my car. I have a CD player. They're named like Eileen jams and road trip. I was always that's another reason why I didn't do more playlists. I was very daunting about naming them or having reasons for them. Yeah. For whatever reason, like they were their own little living things and I didn't want to take responsibility for them. They were concept albums to you. They were. People would judge me for them and judge me for having too lame a music on my playlist. Also, why is it called Justin jams? Come on. I know, man. This has been a very revealing look into my life. Likewise. All right. I'm high. All right. Hide it up. Let's rock this party. You ready? Yeah. Here we go. Daily Tech News Show is powered by its audience, not outside organizations. To find out more, head to dailytechnewsshow.com slash support. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, August 25th, 2016. I'm Tom Merritt alongside Justin Robert Young, ready to take the tech news, hold it up to close examination like a vision and a palantir. Indeed. That's exactly. Oh, I would have been really awkward if I would have led with that because that was what I was going to say like a palantir. Good to join you yet again, Tom. Absolutely, my friend. We're going to talk definitely about WhatsApp changing its privacy policy and sending some data to Facebook. We're definitely going to talk about the Mark German leak that Apple is working on their own Snapchat-like app. Those two actually work together in a strange way. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission just approved Tesla's offer to buy SolarCity for $2.6 billion in stock. That merger is not done yet. They still need approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. And here are some other top stories. Screw you, Uber. Starting Thursday, Newtonomy will be the first company in the world to offer public autonomous vehicle taxi service. And they'll do it in Singapore. Customers can summon a ride from the company's app for free within a 2.5 square kilometer business district called One North. If you're familiar with Singapore, that might mean something to you. Newtonomy engineers will be in the driver's seat to ensure passenger comfort and safety. So they'll be taking test runs essentially and let passengers ride along. Exactly what Uber described they want to do in Pittsburgh. Company plans to offer a fully autonomous fleet by 2018. This Newtonomy company spun out of MIT Research Lab, by the way. So it's got some pretty heavy-duty researchers behind it as well. So is the big headline here these are coming and they're coming faster than we think? Yeah, I think so. I mean, this one goes into my year in tech history, my chronology of tech history. First company starting today. I think that's another thing that gets lost on people because we've been cried wolf to so many times. This is happening. You can go do this in Singapore today. You can get a ride in a self-driving taxi. Now granted, there's a guy behind the wheel and it's a test thing and it's a limited area. All of those copyouts apply. But this is the first company to do this for the public. Down to Singapore also for those of you who are not familiar with the fantastic city-state of the South Pacific is not all that large in terms of population. It's obviously very, very busy, but it clears out a little bit as the day goes on based on whatever I was able to find online. It's really only a population of about 3,000. Unlike what Uber is going to be doing in Pittsburgh, which is a little bit more populous and provides a lot more challenges, especially when it comes to the bridges and whatnot. But still, what this shows to me is that this idea of an autonomous taxi ride is A, the most beneficial application of autonomous driving, which I think is very important, and B, as far as we've been able to see as passive observers that aren't on the inside of these companies, the way that we think, the farthest that we've seen autonomous driving go are kind of on back roads in Palo Alto where Google's running their stuff, and obviously there's been stuff running in Pittsburgh. This is money where your mouth is, liability on the line, a real-world testing both in Singapore and as Uber is looking to do there in Pittsburgh. And that, man, that's extremely exciting. It says to me that this field is ready to burst. Singapore puts a lot of money and emphasis behind appearing to be a tech-forward place. And when I say appearing, I'm saying that that's what they want to cultivate. I'm not saying they aren't. They are a tech-forward place in many respects. So it's not a huge shock to me that this would crop up in Singapore. I think what I'm still skeptical about is, okay, they didn't come out and say, this is level four, level five, SAE autonomy. They didn't say, and we'll have a driver in there. They said, we'll have an engineer in there. So it still strikes me, as I said before, when Uber talked about wanting to do this, it still strikes me as a little bit more light than heat in that what they're saying is, we want to get some people inside the cars that we're already testing, but this is different than them saying, we're ready to launch a service. They're still saying their fleet won't launch till 2018. It's faster than I would expect, but we're not quite to the, like this is a service now that can be replicated anywhere in the world. Well, here's something to think about. If they are letting anybody do this, then there is a high likelihood that they are currently doing it internally. If they have the regulation in line to be able to make money, or I mean, in Uber's case, they're offering the rides for free, but to put strangers in these cars, I think it would be irresponsible if they were not already running these kinds of cars for their employees and such. So what is interesting to me is on what level they are doing it, and whether or not this is just kind of a, like you said, a press release, a science fair project where it's like, yeah, well, we ran one and it ran kind of okay, and then we're going to shut it down for two weeks, and then maybe we'll run another one again, but technically we started, which I think would be less exciting, but still the fact that this is running at a level internally for them, and we're presuming that they're running it internally, that they're willing to do it for strangers is huge, because again, their reputation is on the line. If one of these things, God forbid, has any kind of accident, let alone one that injures the passenger, then not only is that company really in trouble, but the entire vertical stands to be damaged. Yeah, and going back to your point about it being free, the fact that Neutonomy and Uber both are saying they're going to offer these for free, and I feel bad for Neutonomy who's like, hey, man, we're doing it first. Uber said they're going to do it, we're doing it. I can't emphasize that enough. This is a company that isn't got as big of a press machine as Uber, so they deserve a little more attention because they're actually doing it, but they're both talking about doing it for free, which tells me a lot, because then if something does go wrong, you're not like, hey, I want my money back, I paid for this. There's a whole different set of expectations come around when you start paying for it. I think that will be the big marker. The next big marker is when do we see a service like this that's up and running for the public that charges you? That's willing to say, yeah, we're going to make you pay money for it. Well, but even then, the big, big, big marker is when are you getting into the headless horseman? Right, like, you know, like, when are you? Well, yeah, that's down, that's the we've arrived marker. You're absolutely right. Yeah, that's the big moment. On August 10th and 11th, activist Ahmed Manzor received suspicious text messages and forwarded them to researchers at Citizen Lab in the University of Toronto. Working with Lookout, Citizen's Lab determined that the messages contained links to malware exploiting three previously unknown flaws in iOS, collectively being called Trident. The malware was traced back to Israeli tech company, NSO. Two companies alerted Apple, which issued a security update Thursday, iOS 9.3.5, fixing the flaws. The researchers believe, now here's where the news comes in, that the malware has been in use for years and NSO says it sells its tools only to governments. And NSO group spokesman told the Washington Post, it had no knowledge of the incidents. Now, it is not outside the realm of possibility that a government is after activist Ahmed Manzor. That would certainly not be a shock, probably not even a shock to Mr. Manzor. Washington Post talked about a similar situation with a Mexican journalist, where there was a similar activity and it looks like it was the same malware, also possibly a government operative. So there's a couple ways you can go with this. We've definitely heard of these companies like NSO selling malware to governments and then having that malware leak out somewhere else and people discovering it. What's controversial about that is that they don't reveal these vulnerabilities to companies like Apple. And so their malware can be intercepted by bad guys, their malware can be misused by governments, and their malware could be taking advantage of vulnerabilities that other attackers independently discover. And the manufacturer still wouldn't fix. And so it's putting people at danger. That is controversial. The other side of it is, hey, when Apple said we're not going to cooperate with the FBI on unlocking an iPhone, a lot of people said, well, but then how else are you going to get into it? And it looks like NSO is another one of these companies out there that will in fact sell you tools to crack into things. Where does this land for you on the spectrum of the kind of black hat, white hat, like hacking? What is NSO land? Yeah. Yeah. For me personally, I don't like this. I understand that governments do need to have secrecy and maintain an advantage in fighting the hackers who also are not going to tell the manufacturer about a vulnerability. But there doesn't seem to be a good set of protocols for protecting the public from these kind of vulnerabilities. I would like to see a framework set up where voluntary disclosure and cooperation happened. And there was a lot of talk about that in the wake of the FBI Apple case to say, hey, we understand you want to have an advantage, but there should be a responsible disclosure. President of the United States has said that he would like to encourage that, but it's far from becoming the practice. I think there needs to be a way to say, we want intelligence agencies under proper supervision to be able to have these advantages, but we also don't want them to be out there for years in ways that malicious actors can take advantage of. The only reason why people would be cool with this company doing what they do is because they sell to governments, right? Yeah. If they were selling to the private. That's a lot of things. People often question that. They're like, well, they say they only sell to governments, but how do we know? And we can understand that governments are not airtight, infinite lock boxes, right? And one man's beneficial government is another man's tyrannical government, right? Yeah. What seems interesting to me with this is that for me, I'm with you. This seems on its face to be like, I don't like what these guys are doing. But then at the same time, when the whole Apple FBI thing was going on, we were saying, well, hey, listen, Apple doesn't have to do it. If you really want this information, you have a control of the phone. You get it yourself. But if they can't do it internally, then they're going to go to vendors like NSO to get it done. So then are we saying to the FBI or to other government organizations, don't deal with these kind of vendors because we are uncomfortable with you purchasing this solution off the rack as opposed to maybe hiring engineers from NSO to say, no, no, no, you are now working for us. We want to pay you a salary. Like it is a salary and health benefits. Does that make us feel better? It certainly is a marginally bit better because then at least it's under the control of the government versus an independent company who might just sell it to anybody who's not going to have any scruples about which government they sell it to or or what shadow agency they might sell it to. Like it is out more out in the wild with a private company than it is with the government. But it doesn't change the underlying ethical problem there. I agree. ZDNet reports Microsoft's cumulative patch for Windows anniversary update, which rolled out Tuesday, has broken PowerShell. Remember they broke the webcams? Now they broke the shell. If you don't know PowerShell is a command line shell in scripting language usually used in the enterprise. Microsoft says a missing MOF, management object format file, breaks PowerShell's desired state configuration. That's a thing that's used by a bunch of CIS admins to manage groups of PCs using automation. So essentially it's causing a lot of CIS admins a bunch of unexpected extra work in managing their enterprises. A separate missing binary also breaks importing a remote session, which just makes your life even worse. Microsoft says they're sorry and their next update will come August 30th. That's seven, no, five days away. Is this something that for you is now, are we into troubling trend territory? It's starting to be like with the webcam thing. I am one to be willing, not just a Microsoft to any operating system maker to understand that this is a very complex problem. Every once in a while they're going to make a decision that they don't think causes a critical error and actually does. Some people are reading the release notes and saying it looks to me like Microsoft knew this was going to be a problem and they released it anyway. There is also the constant trend for people to want to jump on a Microsoft or an Apple or even a Red Hat. And if there's any problem with any release, point fingers and accuse them of trying to undermine them. And I don't think Microsoft's trying to undermine anyone. But at this point, Windows 10 certainly not airtight in its updates. Well, I mean, and even considering it came in like a wrecking ball for many users with the way that it sort of snuck in through the bathroom window two lyrics in one new story. Well done, Miley. You know, as far as getting itself on the computers in general, I will say it seems as if at least with both of these particular problems, I know my wife having worked at Twitch, the webcam thing was a serious issue for them. I mean, they had, you know, the people that this is a industry run by webcams effectively. And this for PowerShell, if you are, you know, who knows how dependent you are on something that is broken here. But the fact that this is not a hot fix kind of thing, but more of a let's wait five days kind of thing. Although on one hand, you would say, well, better get it right than create new problems, which, you know, updates obviously can do seems at least on its face a little callous. Yeah, I feel like Microsoft is caught in engineering thing where it's like, no, we have a plan and we knew we risked certain things happening and those things happened. And so we knew the risks and that's fine. But we have a plan and the plan is to fix it on August 30th. And if you're a CIS admin who's tearing your hair out because this just ruined your day, that doesn't make you feel any better. No, you know, also doesn't feel really good. Sports writer Jim Weber, who described on LinkedIn how he received a permanent suspension to his Twitter account after tweeting three GIFs featuring images of moments from the Rio Olympic Games. Weber received a DMCA takedown notice from Twitter, including an email from the International Olympic Committee director of legal affairs, giving him 10 whole minutes to confirm that he had complied with the takedown request. After three minutes, his account was suspended by Twitter and he subsequently received notification that his suspension had become permanent. After this story received attention, his account suspension was reviewed and unsuspended. However, this is not just an Olympic story. This week, the WWE suspended three accounts for publishing GIFs, including the most popular Senior Laredo, which not only posted GIFs from a WWE SummerSlam event, which was this Sunday, but also routinely post GIFs from various different organizations like New Japan Pro Wrestling and CMLL in Mexico. You have to imagine that this is something that we will see yet again when the NFL season begins as they have an actual monetary relationship with Twitter. Yeah, in the widest sense possible, this is very much just the typical thing that happens when a platform starts to partner with the big guys. And the most obvious example is YouTube. YouTube wanted to get the television and movie industry to be comfortable with it, so it partnered and it created Content ID and it has very similar issues. On the other side, Twitter is trying very hard to justify itself as the place to go for live and it doesn't help their cause to be the place to go to get banned because you posted something that was happening live. It's 10 minutes is ridiculous. Three minutes is, let's forget about the fact that they didn't even honor the 10 minutes they said, according to Weber. 10 minutes would be, I mean, I don't check my email every 10 minutes. I try not to check my email that often, especially in the evenings, right? That's how you drive yourself nuts. You have to give someone fair notice. This is not the way the DMCA is supposed to work. I hate the way the DMCA works, even when it is working the way it's supposed to work. So no, this is again showing the power differential between an actual user of a system and the people with the money to take advantage of it. Well, okay. So first things first, let's understand that this is not a problem that's going away. Well, I suspect that we are going to see more and more. It is going to become a more and more of a thing that people are going to get suspended for this kind of stuff. And I suspect it will be a big issue when the NFL rolls around. The one thing that I think is kind of not even controversial is that Twitter's policy and whatever auto-generated system that they have that calculates whether or not you are getting permanently suspended or partly suspended is broken. Because the reason why he got a 10-minute warning and then was suspended after three minutes is likely because and based on the emails that he got from Twitter that they got subsequent DMCA takedown notices. And so whatever Twitter's algorithm said, whoa, this guy is a serial offender and he keeps offending even after he was warned. We got to take him down immediately as opposed to saying, all right, well, you have a day, you have a week, whatever. But there is a legal argument to be made on either side about whether or not GIFs, and man, I'm so excited that we are finally here at the final frontier of where GIFs rank in terms of copyright or trademark infringement. But whether or not GIFs are fair use, whether or not GIFs are in any way under Safe Harbor, whether or not GIFs are something that when posted on Twitter is not cool or on a website is not cool, it seems like right now Twitter is debuting for their partners or for large users of their platform, ways that they can further police their content. But the personhood of a GIF is something that we really need to talk about legally. Well, it's not going to be any different than it has been, which is, yes, I have the fair use right on Twitter during a news event to post an image and make commentary about it. That's it. That's covering several of the factors of fair use. That don't matter, because if the IOC says, that's our image, we want it down Twitter, and Twitter says, great, well, you have to pull it down, dude. And I say, well, I'd like to counter notice. They first of all didn't give them time to counter notice. Second of all, then the IOC has the right to go, well, we're going to take you to court then. And who's going to respond to that? Say, fine, I will take the International Olympic Committee to court with all of my money bags, like very few of us. So it ends up that might wins. And you end up taking it down because you don't want to fight the battle, because fair use is a defense. And so you have to go to court to defend your right. You don't get the right until you go to court. And if you don't have the money to go to court, you basically don't have the right. I'll tell you what, I know how we can solve all this. Just have Peter Teal post a GIF of Hulk Hogan. Yeah, he can actually, yeah, you're right. No, he's got the money to do it. You just post a GIF of Hulk Hogan going over or getting pinned horrifyingly and that's about $8.97 in that total botch ending. And then we'll see whether or not WWE comes after Peter Teal. Researchers at Harvard University have developed an autonomous soft robot that looks like an octopus. Those are all factual words. I didn't make that up. Researcher George Whitesides has developed a microfluidic logic circuit that controls a hydrogen peroxide reaction that creates gas, which can power the machine's tentacles. The prototype is small. It's about the size of an SD card right now and it can only wiggle its tentacles, but it wheels them on its own. You don't tell it what to wiggle. It just does it. Team plans to build one eventually that can crawl and swim, which would, I think, impress more people. And it is made by a combination of 3D printing, molding and soft lithography and has no rigid components. So they're taking inspiration from biological structures like squid and octopus that don't have any hard structures and trying to make autonomous robots that can do things that rigid robots couldn't do and be programmed to do them on their own. One to 10, Tom. Where is this as nightmare fuel for you? I don't have a big octopus fear. So I'd call it a six for me on the nightmare scale. Squiggly tentacle things working on their own that are operated by a machine intelligence brings it above five. But yeah, that's about as far as it goes. At some point, I'm going to walk into a Halloween horror night's haunted house and there is going to be a gigantic Cthulhu that will scare the ever-loving crap out of me based on this technology. I'm calling it right now. Well, I would not bet against that. Absolutely not. Starting in September, Uber will begin experimenting with prepaid flat rate rides in San Francisco. Users in the test have to buy a pre-bundled package of 20 or 40 rides at $20 or $20 and $30 respectively. Users can then use those rides in September to obtain flat rate Uber pull ride for $2 or Uber X for $7. Rides that exceed $20 in value will have the overage paid out of pocket. Tom, this seems to be a fairly naked attempt to get the everyday commuter into the Uber habit. Do you think it'll work? Yeah, I think it's San Francisco to work. In fact, I wouldn't test this in San Francisco because I think that's probably the worst place to get a sense of what the average person would do with this. But I guess maybe what they're thinking is, well, if they can make it there, they'll make it anywhere. Why is San Francisco? Because you've got more people that are willing to use ridesharing in the home of the tech world than you would, say, in St. Louis, Missouri. Sure. I mean, there's also the idea that this is probably only going to be popular in a certain, in few places. San Francisco also has the geographical advantage of being serviced fairly sporadically by public transportation. BART only really goes through half the city. If you live in a place that doesn't have really close BART or Caltrain stops, this seems to be a godset that you would be able to just commute on Uber pool rides for $2 a day, which is. Well, but it's actually like $3 a day because you pay for the pool and then you pay again for the ride. You're paying for the privilege of a flat rate. Yes. But door to door. So if you pay for 20 rides, you're paying a total of $60 for the 20 rides because it's $20 for the package and then it's $2 a ride for the 20 rides. Wait, all right. $20 here. Let's get this straight then. So you're saying 20 rides, you pay $20, that gets you in the club. Yeah, exactly. That's the price of admission. You now have 20 rides before you have to pay $20 again. No. You pay $20 to get $22 rides and every ride you have to pay $2. But that doesn't come out of that 20? No. So $20. $20 gets you in the door and says, hey, you have $22 tickets now. You start to pay $2 for every ticket. You have the right to pay $2. Instead of paying surge pricing or whatever. Yeah. And that gets you a ride up to $20. Up to 20 rides. No, no, no. This is the problem with it. It's too confusing. Listen, listen, listen. Rides that exceed a $20 value would have the overage paid out of pocket. So. Right. That's an extra. No, you're right. That's an extra problem with it. From weekday to weekends, you pay $2 on UberPool or $7 on UberX. And by the way, if you're using UberX, it's going to be more, right? When your trip begins or ends north of Caesar Chavis Street in San Francisco. So if you're taking a ride outside of that area, then you have to pay the overage. AKA the airport. Yeah. This is too way too complicated. I've never. No, this, but this is for, this is for commuters within San Francisco. This is, I live, oh my God, this is, and this is, I'm going to use to drive me up the wall when I didn't live in the Bay Area. Now I'm going to do it. But if you, if you live in, in, in the Presidio, right? And you work downtown, then this is a way for you to get between those two places door to door. Just give me, let me pay $60 a month for flat rides within the area. That I can wrap mine. It's making me do all this math is stupid. Well, I mean, we, we apologize for taking you down this mathematical journey of provincial tech nonsense. Yeah. Although it might actually save people money. Or maybe, maybe we'll find out. Well, thanks to all those who participate in our subreddit and some of them braving the world of mathematics to figure out these stories, doing voting, doing submitting. It's dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. If you want to get in there and join T.G. Steller, PC guy, 8088, Strikot Rich One, and Tarros, we encourage it because it helps us put together our show. And that's a look at the top stories. All right. So I'm going to break down the WhatsApp and the Apple stories. And I'm going to throw it to Justin for a little comparison here, because I've got, I've got a thought about this. WhatsApp announced it's revising its privacy policy. Now Jan Kuhn has been saying, since Facebook bought WhatsApp in 2014, we're not, we're not changing our ethics, but they are changing the privacy policy. They're going to let Facebook see your phone number so that Facebook's systems can offer better friend suggestions and show more relevant ads to you on Facebook. So they'll show the phone number, which Facebook can then match, even if you don't put the phone number in your account. If your phone number isn't someone else's Facebook account, they can match you. It'll also show Facebook your last use, your operating system, your screen resolution, your device ID, and your country code. And they say that'll help fight spam. WhatsApp says it will not sell, post, or share your WhatsApp numbers with third parties. It will also test how businesses can use WhatsApp to connect to customers, which you can already do on SMS. So that's something that might be nice. You can choose not to let Facebook use the data. You uncheck a box at the bottom of the new terms of service. You also have 30 days to change your mind if you don't uncheck it at the terms of service. But Facebook still links the accounts. You can't stop them from doing that. All you can stop them from doing is using that data. Now, less firm, although Mark Gurman has good sources. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and Alex Webb are reporting that Apple is developing a video sharing and editing app for iOS as a response to Snapchat. So it would do things like apply filters, let you draw, send to contacts. Although the spin is you would send it through existing social networks like Twitter. At least that seems to be what's going on. Designed to be used with one hand, take less than a minute to create a video, aim for a 2017 release. Testing enhancements to make it easier to see all the interactions with a contact, email, text, and social network posted in a single panel. It's kind of a separate thing, but it's in this article. But at the end of the day, what Apple's considering is, whether it's in the camera or as a separate app, letting you have Snapchat functionality that you could then send out to others through social networks. Now, Justin, here's my question. Do we want either of these things that these companies are proposing? I would say more the Apple than the WhatsApp. The WhatsApp agreement seems to be something that needs to be done internally between the parent company and the fiercely independent WhatsApp. And you're right, the CEO of WhatsApp has made a cottage industry in talking about how they, sure, they took the money, but they are not going to change what they consider to be a very fiercely loyal relationship they have with their users, both on price and on privacy. What Apple is doing, which is kind of different than what Facebook has done, is stubbornly continue to try to build their own social networks and their social network functioning. Part of what is spelled out in this Bloomberg article is that Tim Cook sees hardware sales slowing. He sees the future to be service on some level. He sees the gigantic trail of pings that we've had from Apple as they have been very poor on web services in general and social networks almost laughably specifically. But what they do well is connect people with iMessage and connect people with their Messenger app and connect people with group chats. That has been something that continues to be a big point of connection for them. So they're saying, how can we continue to bring that to the next level by way of video and video sharing? It's also something interesting in this that they are using the developers of the iMovie iOS app as their developers for these new camera functionalities. So they are thinking of it as a little bit more, hey, let's make these things really quickly but be intuitive and robust in terms of how you are handling it like the iMovie apps are, which I think are pretty good for whatever is coming here now. But I think to answer your question, people want a more robust camera app. I don't know whether or not that's a standalone titled, funnily, weird Apple social network but I think that they want a more robust camera app that they can share more easily with group chats and on Twitter than WhatsApp users would raise their hand and say, oh, please share my information with Facebook. Yeah, no, it's fair enough. The 90% of the world that uses Android doesn't give a flying F about whether Apple comes up with some standalone app that only other Apple users can use to send things to each other. The reason iMessage is as robust as you're talking about is that it works with SMS. The reason FaceTime is even something that people still use is because it's layered on top of your phone and you can choose to, oh, I can do a FaceTime call with this person, okay, I'll do that. So that's why it would make more sense to me if they put these Snapchat-like features as just an extra feature in the camera. It's like, hey, you can now send these through text message on iMessage. You could send them through Twitter. Like, we're not creating a social network. We're adding a functionality to camera. I say, yeah, okay, then Apple is doing something that maybe users want. Maybe they didn't know they want, but maybe they want. If Apple makes a standalone app that I have to remember to download and I can only use to communicate with other people that have iOS, forget it. No, that's just dumb. Then it's going to be Peach-A-Jace, right? Yeah, exactly. It's going to be a thing that blows up for five seconds and we can all get really excited and the number one account will be Haramby and we'll all laugh and it'll be a fun week and then nobody will remember it ever again. On the WhatsApp side, they're feeling a similar pressure, right? What Apple wants to do is say, hey, Facebook's got three of the top 10 apps in our app store. We're not making any money off of those. We want to make something. Now, granted, they're not monetizing it directly, but we want to make something that brings that customer relationship back closer to us. How do we do that? How do we capture these Snapchat and Facebook Messenger users and bring them it back into our sphere? Facebook's looking at WhatsApp thinking exactly the same thing. Like, that's the most popular messaging app on the planet right there and we own it and we're not getting any benefit from it and they just can't resist any longer. So what they're trying to do is say, hey, we're not changing WhatsApp at all. All we're doing is saying with your permission, although you're opted in, you have to opt out, your phone number will be matched up with a phone number that's already identified with you on Facebook. It's not like we didn't know it and we're doing it only to improve your Facebook experience. Now, that can sound rational from a certain point of view, but I'm still curious how this is all going to shake out from WhatsApp users. I don't think a bunch of people are going to quit, but I certainly have seen a couple people say they're going to uninstall WhatsApp today because they relied on it for security. And to be fair, WhatsApp isn't changing its end-to-end encryption. They're not sending your message content over there to Facebook or anything like that, but I think a lot of people who are very sensitive to this issue see this as the first step down the road to perdition. Let's ask that question then because a lot has been made with Facebook saying, hey, where the fun hacker plays and we're going to, sure, we'll acquire all these companies and we'll spend a crazy amount of money on Instagram and a crazy amount of money on WhatsApp, but we're just going to let them go because we're just here for the smarts. We want to be where all the cool kids come and hang out, build cool things, pull them into our garage, we'll protect you, we'll let you let them grow in the best way possible because we're Facebook. Thumbs up, freeze frame. But now, Instagram puts in an algorithm that makes it a different kind of experience for some people. What's app now sharing data? Have the chickens come home to roost a little bit on these? I, you know, it's funny because it does feel, and this may be entirely unfair, but it does feel like Facebook said, we will acquire things and leave them alone and then they just couldn't, they couldn't resist anymore. They just couldn't leave them alone anymore. On the one hand, I actually like what they did with the Instagram news feed and I don't see that as intrusive because it's saying, hey, we're just doing a similar thing. Yeah, we're not actually putting Facebook inside your Instagram or vice versa. Whereas with WhatsApp, they are taking data, my private data and giving it to something that I, you know, I may not have been involved with and certainly is not what I considered to be part of WhatsApp. And I have to take action. That's the part that always gets me. Anything that's opt out always bothers me. I have to take action to stop it. And even if I take action to stop it, it really doesn't stop the identification, the association. It just stops the use of it. Yeah. It makes the big network effect slightly less effective because if three of your friends have your phone number and share your data or share their data with WhatsApp, then you're still going to get matched up just as well. Right? Like, Yeah. And honestly, okay, a phone number is not super private. I get that. A lot of people are probably saying, hey, what's the big deal? You know, people can look up your phone number. It's easy to find out phone numbers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But if I went to WhatsApp because Jan Coombe has been telling me like, we are all about your privacy. We are all about a simple service that just does messaging, suddenly that feels like a broken promise to me. Also, to answer my hypothetical question, I definitely believe I'm more on your side that I think that Instagram's evolution feels like just something that they are doing to evolve the product and that that is more the traditional relationship between a larger parent company and a smaller company that maybe there's some internal dialogue of like, oh, well, this is what a algorithm can do for you, right? Or some talent sharing there. But in general, this doesn't feel like something that was put, come down from on high with Facebook in the way that, well, I don't think WhatsApp was running to Facebook saying, hey, how can we better share our people's data with you? Yeah. I, you know, the 30,000 foot view here, though, for all of that is messaging is the new, there's gold in them, Darhills area. It's the new gold rush. Everybody is trying to figure out messaging, video and text in the Silicon Valley area over there in Tencent land. They're like, I think we got this cracked and lines like, we're doing pretty good with it too. But even them, they are trying to maintain their momentum. Like this, these are the gold fields of 2016. Do you want to, real quick, some breaking news coming in? Yeah. No. I'm glad you mentioned that. Google Fiber, according to ours, Technica, John Brodkin, who's very good at this sort of thing, has halved the size of its Google Fiber team to 500 people. This is according to a paywalled report from the information that's quoting people close to the alphabet. So shouldn't give all the credit to John Brodkin. Should give it to the information also very good at this sort of thing. The report does not say whether any staff cuts have actually occurred. And it apparently has to do with the fact that they're just not signing up enough people. So way short of the five million subscribers that apparently had been a goal for them. This is sad? Is sad a way to say this? I want to hold off, you know, the knee jerk reaction is definitely to say, well, that's it. That's sad. That's the end. Google Fiber's on its way down. It may be the right thing to do. It may be that what was happening was in the heady days before alphabet was formed, they just hired to the skies because that was the culture. Like don't worry about the money. Hire whomever you need. And in these more constrained times of we need to run like a business, this just may be what needed to be done to make Google Fiber a profitable company. So there's the other side of this that said it doesn't look good that they're cutting half the staff. Well, especially because Google Fiber has been such a change agent for the entire industry, the entire. I've seen most recently in Chicago, right, where Comcast is double the price for gigabit fiber that it is in other areas of the country where it's in competition with either AT&T or Google. Yeah, you know, I think that's that's the biggest thing. Although let's not put this on an island from other stories about Google Fiber, including that they are looking at more of a microwave point point broadband and away. I mean, effectively Google Fiber as great as they were, they were there because Google is mega rich and can afford to pay the lobbyists and can afford to pay the lawyers that gets them into the business of digging holes and putting wires into them and running them from one place to another so they can get an entire neighborhood or city onto their service. The better version of this is the one where you don't have to dig holes in the ground and you don't have to pay the same lawyers. You don't have to pay the same lobbyists and there are not protectionist legal systems in place to stop competitors, especially rich ones from coming into an oligarchy of telecoms. So it is interesting to see the mechanizations there, but I would say for all the cord cutters, let's not freak out just yet. Yeah, the other side of this is a lot of people who have been saying for a long time, no, it really isn't a good market yet. People don't want that fast of internet yet. Sure, all you guys in Silicon Valley, all you people who do tech podcasts out of your house, you guys want it, but the vast majority don't, which is why Verizon stopped rolling out Fios. And so this may be Google realizing, oh gosh, you know what? They were kind of right. Like not as many people want this yet. We're a little bit ahead of the game. And bring it to the places where we do want it. Seriously. Tip of the hat to another Jay Martin, by the way, who put that into the chat room and Beatmaster got it in there as well. Hey, the email for pick of the day came this week about Mr. Robot from like six different people. One of them wrote and said, I just started playing Mr. Robot, the mobile game today. And funnily enough, you talked about chat interfaces on the show on Wednesday. Mr. Robot is a chat based game where you find a phone, at least in the game, that you make simple predefined choices based on the text messages you receive on this phone. It's all done within the app and it's very simple and awesome. Even the name of the app dot IPA or dot APK follows the TV show Gestalt. You can get it on iTunes for 299 has no real references to the show. So it's not super spoilery if you're worried about that, but it does have that show feeling. That's great, man. I'm very excited to catch up on Mr. Robot. I kind of fell off when the conventions hit, but I'm pumped to get back into the season. Yeah, my wife just caught up on Mr. Robot last week. And so she had a little bit of a meltdown last night when we were trying to figure out how to start the show off the PlayStation View online DVR from the beginning while it was still happening. At one point I was like, you might just have to wait until the show's over and then start it. But then buried in the Roku interface, I figured it out and our marriage was saved. It's all good there. But yeah, thank you too. I believe it was Scott Foster who sent us today's pick. You guys are the best for sending it. Thanks to everybody who sent it as well. Send your picks to us, folks. Feedback to dailytechnewshow.com. You can find more picks at dailytechnewshow.com slash picks. Justin, Robert Young, before we get out of here, what do you got to tell folks about? Well, if some of the listeners to this show enjoy other fine Diamond Club programming and specifically want to represent those favorite shows with our Diamond Club logo. You can go to stickersordif.com right now. That is stickers or the letters dif.com to get our brand new pack. It is seven stickers with five original illustrations done by Carter Johnson. The scion of fellow DTNS contributor Scott. She did a fantastic job. They're all vinyl stickers that can be indoor or outdoor. We've seen them on cars. We've seen them inside on computers and laptops. It's been really great to see the reaction. But don't be left out. Go ahead and get some yourself at stickers or dif seven stickers for only $5 and we ship all over the world. Just a programming note to folks. I'll be taking off for a longish vacation for the next two weeks starting next Monday. But Justin, Robert Young, Scott Johnson, Patrick Beja, Veronica Belmont and more will be taking the reins of the show. And the reason I'm able to do that and keep DTNS episodes coming to you is because you guys are willing to support the show at patreon.com slash DTNS. Thank you so much for your support of the show. If you're not supporting the show and you want to find out more, head to dailytechnewshow.com slash support. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. You can catch the show live Monday through Friday, 4.30 p.m. Eastern at alpha geek radio.com and diamondclub.tv. Our website is dailytechnewshow.com. Back tomorrow with Jen Cutter and Len Peralta. Talk to you then. The Frogpants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. I hope you have enjoyed this brover. Done. Good job. That was a good show. Dude. You know we should put stickers or DIAF in the show notes. Hey. Stickers or DIAF.com. Stickers, stickers. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Yeah. Oops. Switch audio back in my head. You got some titles. Have you been combing through the titles? Looking for the best possible titles? No. But the top one is spy phone. All right. Actually, wait a minute. That was usurped by WhatsApp. WhatsApp was my privacy. Better call FUPA. I don't like that because that has a different kind of nation, I think. Yeah. Beware of wrestlers bearing gifts. Game of telecoms. I support a flat taxi platform. I'm kind of cool with WhatsApp with my privacy. I like that one. That's pretty clever. Well done, Beatmaster. You've beat the others out to gain the... Do you have a dissenting vote, Justin, before we... No. I'm with it. I'm with it. Motion carried. That was easy. Did any other good ones in there, though? Let me see. Software of a merit. Do you smell what the rock is banning? That was... I guess that would have been funny. What, eight years ago? Nine years ago? Peach adjacent. Sticky not to say that. It's not funny. It's just perhaps time. The Trail of Pings. Ply doesn't give a flying F. What's with all these... somewhat euphemistic lewd terms? Well, I said Apple doesn't give a flying F. That's a quote. From you. So what's with the lewd euphemisms? No seat driver. No seat driver. Oh, no seat... Right, instead of back seat driver. Okay. Power shell shock. Oh, is that Botopus? Botopus? Botopus. Botopus? Botopus. But... Oh, yeah, like Octopus? Botopus? Botopus? All right. Botopus Prime. Sounds like a transformer. Peace. Peach adjacent. I don't know what that means. Peach adjacent. That's the... Peach is the social network app that Justin referred to in the show. But there's no NT. Or is that... Oh, yeah. It's just typo. Okay. I assume it's meant to be adjacent. Facebook could leave well... Could leave well, update alone. Or like, what's up with my privacy? Oh, yeah. It's already in there. I was just... Yeah. I'm thinking of telecoms. Well done, Miley. Who is that? Well done, Miley's father. Miley McCartney? Oh, I was thinking Cyrus. No, because he referenced Bill Paul McCartney and Miley. The Cyrus. The Cyrus Clan. That sounds like someone you guys like a group of people you don't want to mess with. Cyrus Clan. Detailed pings. They take people's... Text you have in the chat. It's like, the vote did not include all delegates. It's happening again. You voted on your title without considering all the votes. Or the other votes. Because we picked the title before we actually read the rest of them. He's making a convention illusion. He's feeling the burn. Illusion or illusion? Ah, with an A. Ah. I support a flat taxi platform. It's kind of funny. Although I wouldn't fit in a flat taxi. I don't think most people would. That's the flat taxi. So, Justin, I noticed on your snaps when you were doing the callouts for D stickers or DIAF that in short succession you had a callout for Austin, Texas. Yeah. South Jordan, Utah. Yeah. And Los Angeles, California. I did, yeah. It struck me as coincidental. That I know people who live in all three of those locations. One of them would be me. Yeah, no. I also had a couple more for Los Angeles and New York City and Disco. And, uh... Interesting. It was interesting. A lot of... Well, no, I kind of was struck. I was thinking just about the stickers in general and kind of where we go from here. The reaction's been fantastic. You know, since we only started it like four months ago or whatever. But, uh, you know, really it was just like, it's like, all right, well, what am I doing? Right? And part of it was just like, this is for the community. And so I kind of had this thought, like, if this is for the community, then I want everybody who makes the most significant stuff in our community to have stickers. So I sent stickers to you. And I mean, I sent a bunch to Scott for him and Carter because... Oh, yeah, of course. Carter did it. But, uh, yeah, Andrew, Veronica, Anthony and Jeff from We Have Concerns, and Brian sent a bunch of other people. So... Would you say the largest number went to Los Angeles? Of the free ones that I sent out? Yeah. Probably. I mean, because that's Andrew, that's you, that's Canada and Carpone. Yeah, uh-huh. Silicon Beach, man. Represent. Yeah, no, it was, uh, it was definitely, definitely a bunch of them. But, um, you know, we, uh, I really, I don't know, I really like the idea that people want to put these up. Like, I kind of feel like it's one of those things that we probably should have done a long time ago. Uh, you know, people, I think it's at the point where half the things that you wear on a regular basis are merchandise that was created just by fans or by members of our community that just wanted them to exist. So they put their own time, effort and money into creating them. Yeah. Then it's like, yeah, we should probably take a more concerted, serious effort into putting diamond logo stuff just kind of into the ether because I think people just want them and they want good stuff. And, uh, we're going to have a pack at DragonCon. Okay. Is it a special pack or? It'll be a mix of what we have now and what we just recently phased out. So we're going to bring those back and there will be one specific DragonCon, Con of a Dragon 7. Yeah, this is our seventh, our seventh show. Between NSFW and Dynatech. This is the seventh. NSFW and Dynatech. This is the seventh show that we've done. Also, we are now on Saturday, not Sunday, which we've always been kind of uncomfortable with on Saturday because it's a bigger day. We like the quieter Sunday. Sure. And one of the bigger rooms too. Well, yeah. And we're in the Grand Salon East in the Hilton, which holds 1,000 people, which, uh, well, that's hope that we get people out. Wait, the Grand Salon East in the Hilton. Oh. That's basically where they used to have the Star Trek. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I think you did DTNS there. Yeah, I did. Last year. Last year. Was either last year or the year before. I can't remember, but yeah. It's a big room. That's what I remember about it. Uh, yeah. But you always, you're always like spilling out of the doorways in that crystal ball room. So you needed a bigger room. Yeah. I mean, you know, we hope, we hope, we hope we do well. No reason not to go. I don't think we're going to get close to the 1,000 limit, right? But hopefully we can, we can, you know, get closer to 800. Go visit more. Text Jeb, it's, no, the track. Not Star Trek. Yeah, yeah. The star, they put the autographs and they called it the Star Trek. Yeah. Right? It's like upstairs, right? Second floor. Yeah. Yeah. Not Star Trek. It's not where Patrick Stewart talked. No. Anyhow. All right, guys. Well, I'm going to, I'm going to get back to the ground here, but I love you. Hi, man. Quick question. You're all good from Monday, right? Monday, Monday, Monday. I'll be there with bells on. So what time should I start chatting with you, 1030-ish, 11? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, 10's fine. Cool. Sweet. Awesome. All right, bye. Bye. Bye. Just got to get that in there. Make sure, make sure, make sure. Reminder, you're all doing this tomorrow. Oh my gosh. What am I going to do? Look, Eileen, I can see, I can see the podcast burning from the other side of the business. Oh, stop. It's not going to be like that at all. I hope not. No, I should. It might, it might, the discussion topics might, might take a odd turn or two, I'm sure. That's fine. No, you guys should, you guys should discuss whatever feels right. How Tom abandoned us. Sure. That's what he really feels right. Oh, no. We'll, we'll keep it, we'll keep it close to the ideals that you have set forth. No, I want you, I want you to talk about stuff that you're into, feel you can do a good job with or enthusiastic about talking about. And that's, that's the only way I pick my topics. So it's going to be good. It'll be great. I'm just going to put it on Tuesday. It'll be great. It's going to fill that Tuesday. And it'll be great. Yeah, I said that. I think it Tuesday booked. I'm sure. Yeah. What is it? It's just something happened. It's just like a black hole. It's Warcraft. Warcraft comes out that day. Nobody, everybody just wants to stay home and play it. Me, I don't, I'm not a wow guy. Tomorrow should be good. Yeah, I didn't hear back from Jen, but I'm curious what topic she was good for tomorrow. I can ping her again. She told, I, I, she was on chat and I just pinged her six or you could for tomorrow. Yeah, I emailed her to basically just seeing if she had a topic idea. Oh, shoot her another thing. She'll respond eventually. I know she will. She's running around a lot, unfortunately, because of things. Things and stuff. Yeah, life. You know how life suddenly can present you with a bunch of decisions and choices you need to make in a short notice. Never experienced that. No, I don't know what you mean. You know, that's, I once complained to someone, it's like, why is it that opportunities and what's the opposite of opportunities, calamities, I guess, right? All happen in like, like rapid succession, right? They're never spaced, so you could take a breather. It's like, all right, you know, like, oh, you got to choose between five of these really awesome things you can do, but you can only do one. You can't do all of them. They cluster stochastically. It's just, and then it's just. Yeah, they're not evenly spaced. All right, well, thanks everybody for watching. I'll be back tomorrow with Jen Cutter and Lampralta. Talk to you then. Doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot. Are we off the air?