 or ignite a huge ball of incandescent gas over an area and see what kind of reports they would get in terms of observations of how people explained it, because they wanted to kind of get a general idea of how many people were maybe embellishing what they were telling the authorities or what they saw and what actually people would have seen. Interesting. You, I knew you'd have something about that to know, though you always know stuff, I'd bring up anything. I could say, there are lizard people and you'd have some story to tell me about lizard people. Oh, lizard people. Aren't there? Well, if you believe in the hollow earth theory, there is lizard people. All right. Of course, one leads to the other. You can't have a hollow earth without lizard people. Well, that's a Donald Trump. You watch Doctor Who, right, Scott? On occasion, I'm not a huge diehard. But you know the episode where there's that kind of Victorian lizard lady or reptilian lady that's pulled off that myth, tall, tail, extravagant conspiracy theory. I've seen a room. Well, this is way more interesting than these computers. Yeah, I was going to say, I was going to say in the next files episodes we could refer to, there's all sorts of. Well, let me ask you this, Evan. Of any vintage computer, are there any computer lines or models that specifically, that stand out to you? Like for me, it's always been the Amiga. Whether it's the 500, 1200, or a thousand, or three. The last one was the three or 4,000. I was always been fascinated because that whole thing was started by a bunch of doctors. And initially it was supposed to be a video game console. And the bottom fell out of that in the US market. And it's like, well, let's just make it a computer. And through a quirk of the way to design it, it became a super awesome tool for TV studios and doing video work because you could basically run with the call of Genlock, which is basically a time sink to allow you to insert graphics in between the frames. Right. There's a wonderful book. There's a wonderful book called The Future Was Here. It just came out a year or two ago. And all about how the Amiga was more advanced in the Macintosh, even though it was a year later, had the color and the video capabilities and everything else. And the author argues that, and this is not my personal opinion, the author argues that the Amiga is where modern multimedia computing started, not the Macintosh. Yeah. It's an interesting argument. Yeah, it is. And there's some, I think there's some validity to that. That's super interesting. It is. I think I have the book somewhere right about... I love that. I love the fact that you have the book right behind you. Yeah. Like Tom never left you. Here it is. Here it is. Here it is. There's a book. It's called The Future Was Here by Jimmy Mehar. Here it is. Oh. I'm gonna have to write that down. It's a good book. That sounds great. The future was. Let me answer your question, Roger. For me, I grew up on an Apple II. Platinum right here. That's just the computer we had in my middle school and everything, learned basic on it. And so that's the one that made me a computer geek. Yeah. Oh, nice. Yeah, Apple II. Did you, you grew up in the... You spent your formative years in the 80s, I take it. Right, I'm 41. I was born in the end of 74. So I have a picture on my wall here, which you can't see, but a picture on my wall here from December 79 when I was five, my brother was eight and we're unwrapping our Atari we got for Hanukkah. And then, you know, my bar mitzvah present was the Apple II. So that's my background. Was that something that came as a complete surprise or did you drop hints? I don't, I think it was a surprise because we already had in television and the only game we had was Pong. And as dumb as it sounds now, it's funny because I remember distinctly as a little boy playing Pong on the TV. And I always wondered, I don't think I said anything to anybody, but I always wondered why the controller had other buttons on it beside the paddle. We didn't know what they did. We didn't know there were other games. We just thought it was a Pong machine. And we had no idea there were other games. Like for life and me, I couldn't figure out what all those other buttons were for the controller. And then we got Atari. So I never stopped and thought about it any further than that. And we stopped playing with Intellivision. But now I know there were lots of other games you could have got. We just didn't know. So I went in television, Atari, and then Apple II, and then, you know, 46 from there, I guess. So you had... You got the Compute Magazine, right? I know we got Byte. I remember, I'm not sure if Byte did, but I know definitely Compute used to have those programming pages, which would be like six pages of essentially just assembly for the Motorola or whatever processor, and you just type it in one by one. And if you wanted to learn as a kid what was logo and then basic, I never got that far in some way. Well, you had to because initially, the Commodore and a lot of the other computers didn't really offer any really useful, interpreted languages until basic started shipping. Yeah, I think actually, I think I was in... So fifth grade was my last year of elementary school, and they had this one computer, it was either a VIC-20 or a 64, I don't remember which exactly, and they went the week or so they roll around to the kids, and me and a couple other kids just took to it, and we learned logo and turtle graphics, and it was okay, but when I got the Apple II and learned basic in sixth grade and middle school, that's the one I really associated with. So sorry, Commodore people. Family computing used to do that. They used to offer basic programs in the back and you would have to type those. What did you say? My parents would buy me books, you know, you would have to do programs. I loved Byte. Yeah, Byte was great. Where's Byte now? It's gone, I guess. Yeah, it's gone, yeah. In fact, I have here where, I don't know, where somewhere on my shelf I have the first basic book my parents bought me when I was a kid. Oh, basic. Very basic. I like about Evan's camera frame is, it is like a window into like 1985, that's great. Platinum, I think came out in 86 or 87 or something. Okay. Yeah, it says like a third power parties, or power party, power supply on the side of that. This is the very famous Kensington System Saver. Every one Apple II. Yeah, so the Apple II power switch is on the back and everybody had to have one of these, Kensington System Saver, so you plug from the computer to the back of this and from this to the wall and it's got this great red switch on the front here and turns on as a separate fan and it goes into where the vents are. But everybody had an Apple II, so it was almost like your Apple II. They gave you a Kensington System Saver and they gave you a TV computer switch, which I'm gonna call it. It's like a case on a smartphone, you can't plug out of there with that one. Yeah, or those switches called. I should know this. Oh, the search, no, no, the, I don't know this. You know what I'm talking about. The UHF, the UHF plug, yeah. So those are two pretty standard features on this. My kid's not gonna know what that is. What is dad? What's UHF, VHF? Well, the radio frequencies and the most famous for basically bringing TV in your dad's home. And I remember the day we got this computer and my parents went to a place called Hammett Computer Center on East Punzik, New Jersey and buying a computer back then was a big deal. And I remember, so they were doing the paperwork for the Apple II and the salesman was trying to keep my brother and I out of our parents' hair. So he said, kids, look at this. And he showed us what I now know was a Mac. And I remember, again, very distinctly, he showed us a mouse and it just made sense because we already knew how to control a joystick on a sprite on Atari, you know? And I remember, like it was yesterday, no one had to show us how to use a mouse. It just made perfect sense. And yet my parents were, you know, perfectly educated people. As an adult, I had to sit down and show them, okay, this moves in proportion to that and you press the button. For me, it was a joystick. And it's bright and perfect, you know, just there was no explanation needed. But I'm glad my parents did it. My parents, hey, we want this computer. And they said, no, no, no, we're getting Apple II. And I'm glad we did because with a Mac, I might not have learned basic and stuff. And I also know all my parents had a Commodore budget but we got the Apple II because my mom worked for the school district. So we had to pay discount on the Apple II. That's the way to do it. Yeah, I was lucky. Yeah, save a bunch of money back then. Doing that. Roger, I think we have everything, are we good? Yeah, you can. Sorry, you got me started. Oh, no, no, no, I'm, the audio's, other than AGR, it's, I think everything's good. So let me get. I think there's a working. It was working the other two days. The difference is unlike Tom, my system, or the way I'm doing it is essentially scraping the YouTube feed. Typically, it comes in maybe 30, 60 seconds. Comes in a little later, yeah. What channel do you want me to do it? Sure, I mean, I have it running now so I don't know if that will. Oh, is it running? It didn't show when I got in, hold on. Oh, no, no, I do see, it doesn't say live and that may not mean anything. So usually what he has me do is, he has me do the data tech news show server side audio, like the DTNS2 and then I run, oh no, it says you're running these. Yeah. No, it must be working then. Okay. Something's cashing on the images, it must not, it must be me. All right, so I am going to hide my video and silence my audio and then, so basically Evan, Scott's gonna start the top of the show. You're gonna hit record, Scott, right before the Patreon read poll open, you do it, you do. Whoa, why do I see you, why do I see Engadget on my screen? Oh, that's me, we do a screen share, this is for the news bit, I basically poll open the story. Yes, when I'm talking, he'll throw those up for the audience that are watching live and they'll see some of that stuff as we go. So we are good right now, so I'll leave it up to you when you wanna start, so like in the next 10 seconds. Yeah, it's ready, so I'm gonna hit record on my side, everything sounds good on levels. Do this intro and I'll bring you in and off we'll go, so here we go. Cat room hides, good to see you all, glad you're here. Amish, you're listening, offer this and have fun in Japan, all right, what are you doing? All right, here we go. In three, one. The Daily Tech News Show is brought to you by listeners like me. To find out more, visit DailyTechNewsShow.com slash support. Hey everybody, welcome to the Daily Tech News Show for Wednesday, August 31st, 2016. I am Scott Johnson, I am filling in for the still vacationing Tom Merritt. You've been listening to all this week, you know that Tom is in Asia, getting the best ramen, perhaps known to man. I know actually what he's doing today, but I know he's in Asia for sure and I'm thrilled to be here. We got a bunch of stuff to talk about, we're gonna talk about vintage computing today. I have a guest with me who knows all about that, it is Ev Koblenz, he's the author of Abacus to Smartphone, The Evolution and President and Co-Founder of Vintage Computing Federation Incorporated, that is a 501C3, non-profit, so good to have you here Evan, thanks for being on the show. Thanks Scott, it's a Vintage Computer Federation Inc. Oh, did I get that wrong? I thought I had it. I always say computing, didn't I? Well, look at me, it does not compute. It's good to have you here, I'm excited to talk about some of the stuff that you've been dealing with over the years and some of these awesome collections that you have and what people might wanna look for today if they're looking for a way to maybe recoup some of the cost of their 20 year old Mac in the garage or something. We'll get onto that in a second, but real quick, this is just a side note for folks, Bill Nye lands a Netflix show, it's called Bill Nye Saves and the show will feature Bill Nye tackling specific topics from a scientific point of view. I think it's a marriage made in heaven, I'm pretty excited about it. The show is set to debut in spring of 2017 and now some top stories. So last week, Dropbox forced password resets for all accounts that have not changed their passwords since 2012. If you think you're maybe one of those people, I wanna listen to this. Motherboard followed up that story with a report that it has uncovered some 68,680,741,000 Dropbox account details. That's a lot of account details. The accounts were found in four files, the total is five gigabyte in size. Currently circulating the database sharing community, both Dropbox and security expert Troy Hunt have confirmed the data is legit. However, Motherboard does note 32 million of those passwords were found to be secured by a strong hashing function. I checked my email, turns out I was notified, but I had changed, apparently I've changed my password since 2012 because it never gave me the prompt when I logged in to Dropbox the next time, which is what the email said. People at home, check your email boxes, make sure it didn't go to spam, make sure you're okay with Dropbox because that's a pretty big leak of a lot of data and you wanna be safe. Apple also launched a two terabyte Alclide, or as Alclide, iCloud storage tier today. That's two terabyte plan, which is their largest available. It'll set users back $19.99 a month. I think that's too expensive. We'll talk about that in a second. Nine to five speculations because of the previous largest tier, one terabyte was roughly 8x larger than the largest iPhone device storage option. It suggests that a 256 gigabyte iPhone skew might be in the works and they put this out ahead of that that would make a little bit of sense. Evan, does it strike you as a little expensive for two terabytes? It seems like not a lot of space for 20 bucks a month. It does strike me a little bit expensive, although if anybody paid for it, it's Apple. Yeah, they will, right? Well, here's the problem. I'm an Apple person, but I've never fallen for the iCloud pricing. It just is kind of a bad deal and the starter amount, which is what, five gig a month for free is nothing. It just doesn't account for anything. I can't really use it for anything meaningful. So I use the aforementioned Dropbox and a million other services that work pretty well for what I need to do with apps and that whole ecosystem. So it's just not been an issue for me. But I wonder out there if the rest of the sort of the iCloud world's looking at this and watering at the mouth that they can now have this much space for only 20 a month and I look at it and I think that's just, I feel like Apple is not, how do I put this? It's not an honesty thing, but they're not being too forthright on at least acknowledging the current state of storage costs, which is almost nothing these days. And the fact that I can get 30 gigabyte a month from Google for a buck 99 or whatever it is, is kind of ridiculous. So... And also security-wise, people for whether a Dropbox or Apple or anyone else, people forget that cloud just means someone else's computer. Right. There's no magic cloud. Yeah, the cloud. Just someone else's computer. It's fun to dispel that cloud thing with people who really do have this vision in their head that there's like something floating up there and all secure and everything. It's just somebody else's computer, that's it. Just a server farm somewhere. Yeah. That's how it works. Anyway, we'll see how that goes. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that sources familiar with the matter. Say that Google is planning on rolling out a carpooling ride share service in San Francisco. That may sound familiar. In May, Google began a pilot program around its California HQ allowing Waze users. So that's the Waze app. If you're not familiar with them, buying Waze, they actually own that. This allowed them to connect with other commuters. The company plans to expand the program this fall. The program charges $0.54 a mile and Google doesn't charge a fee. And the talk is that Google believes the income would be taxable or wouldn't be taxable because the payment would effectively just be gas money. Any thoughts on Google getting into the ride sharing world? No. Right on. I'll say this. Whenever Google gets their hands in a new place, a new part of the industry, I always imagine that those who already occupy that space get nervous as to what they're gonna do and maybe there's nothing to worry about here. Maybe both Lyft and Uber can just sit and smile and not worry about it too much, but just the idea that Google's moving in on your potential market can be a little frightening. In a blog post, Google announced a new search mode called in apps. This is interesting. In apps will allow users to find content-installed apps on your device. The new search mode works with Gmail, Spotify, and YouTube and will feature support for Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn, Evernote, Google Keep, Glide, and to-do list in the coming months. To access the feature, users need to go to the Google app on your Android phone and or device and find it in the apps tab. The LG V20 phone owners will be able to access the new apps mode directly with a dedicated shortcut on the home screen. Seems like a nice feature. I wish I could do a little more sort of smart searchy between apps and within apps and that sort of thing. Do you think it'll be hard even for other third-party app developers and some of the bigger boys to get involved so that they can have the same functionality? It depends how well Google puts out SDKs and how well they advertise it, I guess. My idea of apps is, this is my idea of apps. Yeah, I like it. Five and a quarter inch flat for those at home are listening to the audio podcast that there's some vintage flop you got right there. I like it. I have to ask you, actually, I'm glad you brought that up or you held that up, brother, because later I've got to ask you about this giant one I've got over here. It's like 10 inches of this thing. It's an eight-inch one. Eight-inch, that must be it. I don't know what it ever went into or whatever, so when we get to the part of the show, I want to know all about it. I want to know if it's worth any money and whether or not I should just hang it on the wall and appreciate it for what it is. You got it. All right, we'll get to that in a second. Oh gosh, what else? Hey, check it out. Acer in the news that they unveiled a slew of new laptops, including a new convertible Chromebook R13 Plus, a new line of Windows 10 Swift notebooks and spin convertible laptops with Intel's seventh-generation core processors. What we've really got our heads spinning is what Acer is calling the first laptop with a curved screen. This is the Predator 21X notebook. It comes with a 21-inch, as you might guess, curved screen. And I don't know how that's gonna shut. I still have questions about this, but hey, until we see it, I guess who knows. It also has the Tobi eye-tracking technology. The machine will come pre-installed with Windows 10 Intel's latest seventh-generation processor, 2G-Force GTX 1080s. Those are two fast freaking GPUs, man. And five cooling fans. Oh, and you need two power supplies to run it. Comes with a hefty 17 pounds. That's eight kilograms for those in the metric. And it ships first quarter of 2017. We'll retail for, get ready for this, $5,000. Evan, that sounds like when you had to go buy a computer in 1986, does it not? Not even half that much. If you ask me what I think of a curved screen or laptop, the answer is nothing nice. Oh, really? Nothing nice to say about that. Why would you not want a curved screen laptop? Just curious. Why would you? It's a fine question. I mean, I'm kind of racking my brain now. I will admit. I suppose, being open-minded, I suppose if you had a curved screen laptop, maybe you could help with security, because people sitting next to you couldn't see it. If it's pointed at you from both directions, maybe a little, I don't know. And if that is the case, if they were immediate enterprises, maybe they could price hike the price a little bit, but not $5,000. It's a lot of money. You can get a security filter for 20 bucks. Yeah, I kind of agree. As far as curved screens go, I used to be, I'm not really that big of a proponent of it when it comes to televisions, but I've kind of been converted to a 20s, how big is this thing? It's a six-inch curved screen that I bought from my PC for gaming, and I like it because there is this weird effect of only sitting a few feet back from the screen of it kind of wrapping around you and creating, I don't know, a more immersive experience. Oh, well, I've never had one, so maybe I'll try one day. It's pretty cool, but anybody telling you that you need to pay 5K to have the privilege, I think is, maybe that's a little much for now. But hey, I know there's a market. I know some guys that are ready to throw cash down on something like this. Dual GeForce GTX 1080s, that is just about as fast as you're gonna get, and you're gonna be fast for a very long time. And it makes that two terabytes of 20 bucks a month in like a bargain. You know what? I clad for everybody at this rate. Lots of people buying this notebook. Finally, the news, Instagram now finally, finally lets you zoom and pinch on photos. I have been asking for this forever. People say why, who needs it? Well, I want detail. I wanna like zoom in. I wanna see what the front of the guy's car looks like, or I wanna get a nice close shot of that potato if you took a picture of it or whatever. And it always drove me crazy that I was limited to this tiny little few inch sort of view and not be able to zoom and pinch, where I can do that with every other photo service with every other app. And even on the web, when I would look at an Instagram photo, I could do something to make it zoom there. I could do Command Plus or something to get a little closer to the image. They're gonna let you do it now. This also goes for videos and profiles to explore. The feature is coming to iOS today, an Android version of the ship in the coming weeks. Not sure what that means. Probably the next couple of weeks. Very excited about that update. I think that's gonna be great. Are you a user of any of these social networks, Evan? Not so much on the image side. I mean, we have an Instagram for the nonprofit, but no. Obviously Facebook and Twitter and stuff, but I don't use the image ones. I'm not really much of a photography person. Sure, sure. Well, for those out there who've been begging for this, your day has come. And for those who don't care, it's not really that big a deal, but it's about time, guys, way to go. I wanna thank, big thanks to JJ Hessman, PC guy 8088, and all those who participated in the subreddit, bring us stories each and every day, submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.com, or sorry, I got that wrong. Dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. So many people contribute, and it's really, really nice when you do. So continue doing that, and that is a look at the headlines. All right, Evan, let's dig into this. I'm a big man of old stuff. I think this was a feature of my personality passed down from my dad. He kept everything. I wouldn't call him a pack rat necessarily, but we hung on to slide projectors a lot longer than I think you're supposed to. He had old Super 8 cameras and stuff that were long past functionality, yet there they were in the basement. And it was always fascinating for me to go downstairs and say, what's up with this real to real thing that was bought in 1954 and try to record on it. I mean, it was like being in a mad scientist's lab or something with all this old stuff my dad had. He's a little bit before the time that we would have started to collect our computing devices. And that was just a little bit after his prime. Had he been around, or had it been younger during that time, I'm guessing he would have storage units full of Apple II E's and Commodore 64's and Amiga's and what have you. You're kind of that guy, or at the very least you're an expert on what it means to be a collector of vintage computing. How much of that stuff do you have? Just give us a ballpark of the kind of the range of things that you've got at your fingertips. Our organization has a 7,000 square foot warehouse. And we have everything from, I believe our oldest individual artifact is in IBM 026 Key Punch or an IBM 083 Sorter. I'm not sure which one's actually older. They're both from the 40s. Up to early 90s, some internet appliances and Newton and that kind of thing. Was there a place where you cut off or stopped or felt like I've got everything I need to know or do you just need to let enough time happen until something's vintage again? Yeah, you never have too much stuff. But you don't want a hoard. You want to collect with a purpose, right? When I got into the hobby, the vintage computing hobby about maybe the 2002, 2003, people talked about, oh, the 10-year rule. And then somebody said, well, that could be Windows 95. Okay, well, the 15-year rule. And after a while it got ridiculous because it kept tagging years onto it. So most of us have stopped using years entirely and it's more of a, I know it when I see it. There are some people who say, well, if it can run DOS natively, if it can't do modern software or vintage, well, that means Windows 98 or that window is ridiculous. Most of us, these are just used commodity PCs. So I stick with, I know it when I see it. Most of us who are active collectors are, say, 30 to 50. So for our generation, vintage is eight bits, right? With a couple of exceptions, Amiga, SGI, some release on, but pretty much 60s to 80s, before which only museums like ours have this stuff, after which it's pretty commodity. But for the last couple of years, I am seeing quite a few people who are half my age, even their late teens, who are digging out their parents' Pentium-1 and say, wow, retro, man. Yeah, big time. My head exploded, but hey, when I started collecting Apple IIs, I'm sure there were many computer people who made their hair explodes too. Well, they probably had big vacuum tubes or whatever they were into and punch cards or what. And so the best analogy I use to explain our hobby is we do the exact same thing as people who collect antique cars, right? No one's saying they're better, but they add chrome and fins to white walls. You fix them up, take them out for a Sunday drive, go to shows. The big difference is that when I was a kid, my dad took me to old car shows and I said, this is awesome, someone's 34, 457 Chevy, let's go for a ride. It was obvious, it's an awesome thing to do, let's take a ride. And they said, oh, dumb kid, what do you know? And that was very insulting, it's a machine. So at our events, we require the exhibitors to have everything up and running. Oh, and that's actually one of my questions. If you can say that I have, oh, this ancient Mac up in the cellar, it's a Mac classic and it was made in 91 or whatever and it's old and dusty, but I don't think it works, but hey, shouldn't that be worth something? Your answer to that would be no, like a vintage car, you need to have that in some kind of shape, right? No, it's worth something. Generally speaking, the more they made, the less it's worth. So a run-of-the-mill Mac classic or a run-of-the-mill Commerce 64, TRS-80 is not worth, it's worth something, but not much because there's simply so many of them. However, every day there are fewer of them. On the other extreme, last week we saw an Apple One go for $815,000. And the winner openly said in public that he was willing to bid up to a couple of mills. Yeah. So, there's a whole range in between. It's obviously, there's some money. There's a Wall Street Journal article that came up that kind of prompted this discussion today about how much is that PC in the attic that's titled, that's by Andrew Blackman. Yes, yes, I was part of that story, I believe. Yeah, and you were featured in here. Was I? Well, I don't know, maybe featured a big word, but they talk a lot in here about establishing value, who's got passion for the sort of thing, how you know if you've got something that's rare or not. Yeah, by the way, the guy in the picture with the niner shirt on, he's my group's West Coast VP. Oh, cool, all right. And he's representing the finest team in the NFL, I would argue. Well, I'm a New Jersey Giants fan, not New York. So, if I came to you though with something I actually have, I have an old Apple Newton, the original model sitting over there actually would work if I put batteries in it. Yeah. As the box and all that other stuff. Is that a thing that I could take some place, have evaluated, decide to sell it, that sort of thing? Absolutely, Newtons, and a lot of the early handhelds are quite collectible. And the oldest thing you've got is what? How, what's the oldest single device you've got? Well, I mentioned earlier, I'm pretty sure. I have to look up the chronology, but either our 026 Key Punch or our 083 Sorter, are probably our oldest. Now, our oldest full computer is a Bendix G15 from 1956, serial number three out of 500 made. Wow. And it's a fun story with that one because Bendix made that computer from 56 to 64 unchanged. And ours says control data on the front, CDC. And CDC acquired Bendix in 63. So we just assumed ours was one of the last to the run. And then we found out ours is actually number three. It was an eight year lease turned back in. CDC bought the company, rebadged and sold to the next customer. So it actually is a 56 model. That's incredible. So do you think there's much of an impact on these kinds of older computing devices on contemporary technology? In other words, places I might see it as like, musicians are making chip tunes and they're doing it with old eight bit processors and old eight bit computers. You see it in other aspects of technology where vintage equipment is being used, not just in artsy fartsy ways, but in some sometimes, you know, technically helpful ways. Do you think that's a thing that we can, you know, look at this old stuff and find? Well, I mean, every once in a while, there's articles in the news about, you know, the Air Force and nuclear silos to us on the vintage floppies or whatever. And what gets me is the art of the people who write that always spin it as, oh, look at our pathetic government, how backward they are using this old stuff and they should be mocked. But quite the opposite is true. If it works and it's that important, keep it, you know? They use some of these old machines because they're that reliable. So the government should not be mocked for this. Right, and it doesn't always mean that they're behind the times or their IT people are out of touch or anything like that. It could just literally mean they finally got to a place that is secure enough where they're comfortable enough with it that you can't swap that out every year. And that's actually, that leaves me my other question. How long is, well, I mean, it feels like if I buy a new computer today, I feel like I'm getting way more years out of it than I did even 10 years ago. Do you find that that's true? Actually, I find this true with cars and other things too. It just seems like stuff is lasting longer in the computing age than it used to or we are perhaps diminishing returns on processor power, RAM capability, that sort of thing. I think it's true and I think the numbers would show whether it's a PC or especially a mobile device, people are upgrading less because you just don't need to. The hardware is good enough. I mean, in my pocket, my Delhi phone is a Galaxy Note 4. And so there's the five and the seven now, this gets the six, but this is perfectly good. It's Android 6 and it does everything I need. Even it's a three-year-old phone, it's still better than most phones. Yeah, look at that phone and go, oh man, I wish you were the latest thing ever. That sort of thing just doesn't get to you. Once in a while, like for example, I upgraded from the three to the four because I wanted Android 6, you know? But I agree with you generally that today's hardware is so advanced and there's fewer reasons to upgrade the software unless you're operating system vendor makes you. Well, it's one company out in Seattle, I think. But there's fewer reasons to upgrade, I think, in general. So obsolescence comes slower is the bottom line, right? Like that just is gonna be a slower process. I'm still using a Mac that's, I think, seven years old upstairs, no problem. I think I'm... Yeah, I mean, my Delhi PC is just a five, six-year-old PC but it's perfectly fast because it runs Linux. And people tell me, oh, my computer is four years old and you get a new one, it's so slow. Your computer, tell them your computer's fine. It's not your computer, it's your bloated operating system. That's a good point. So to finish things out, I'm very curious, what are the hot ones to have right now? What is it someone should have in their attic that if they can go find it, they're gonna be lucky dogs? Like what are the hot movers, C64s, Amigas? Like what? Well, as I said, that stuff is still very, very popular and commonplace. I think if I were starting to collect today, I would focus on newer things that are going to be collectible. The original first gen iPod is already going for big bucks on eBay as a collector's item. Yeah, that's true. Things along those lines, I would focus on things that are novel now that maybe hold on to rather than throw out or upgrade it because they're gonna be collectible one day. One day, original iPads will go for money. One day, I have this Creative Labs Nomad MP3 player that came out prior to the iPod. It looks like a CD player, kind of, this big chunky blue thing. I really want that to be worth something one day because I've still held on to it. I'm frustrated that I've gotten rid of all my game consoles as new ones have come out. I wish I would have held on to all of that. Do you find game consoles are kind of in this ballpark as well, old NESs, Super Nintendo's, Genesis, that sort of stuff? Actually, we're happy on the computer side to be in their ballpark. The vintage gaming world dwarfs the vintage computing world. Interesting. They have their own, I mean, our shows are, Computer History Museum will get a couple thousand people, et cetera. The vintage gaming world rents out convention centers. They have massive events there. They dwarf us. But what's interesting to me is a lot of people I meet are collectors and don't know it yet. To use the computer term, they're accumulators. And they think they're the only one. And then one day by accident, they realize other people do this too and they realize it's a hobby they're part of. They just didn't know it. If you ask me when did our hobby, the vintage computing, become mainstream, I say the day Steve Jobs died. Because that's the first time there was a public figure beyond the computing world who passed away and everyone felt kind of sad and looked back and started to care about computer history even if they themselves weren't computer people. That's very interesting. So I think Steve Jobs' death is the day Computer History became a mainstream thing. Wow, that's a big moment that I'm not sure I even noticed, but now that you say it, I think I didn't. Yeah, because I meet a lot of people. If I used 100 people on the street, hey, do you know about old cars? For most people, the cars is the point and point B. They're not car people. But they know car people exist. They know old car people exist whether they're personally interested or not. And yet, before Steve Jobs died, if I put the 100 ID guys, they would say, well, why would I want an old computer when I can have a new one? Right. Why should that be? When Steve Jobs died, suddenly people cared and realized that there is a history of computing. Well, I have a 19-year-old that wants nothing but typewriters and weird old technology and tapes, so I totally get it. I think they will help keep this world alive. Let's get to a message of the day. We got an email here from Brett Stewart. He mailed us regarding the Chromebook story yesterday and he writes this. I wanted to write in regarding Patrick inquiries about the Chromebook and its use purposes. By the way, we should mention, Evan, you're using the Chromebook right now, right? I love my Chromebook. It's my favorite computer since the Tanya Model 100. Oh, wow. See, that's some high praise. I even have an old vintage computer to compare it to. That's fantastic. The Tanya Model 100 ran for eight hours on four AA batteries. Oh, my goodness. Now, granted, it'll have a power was a little tiny screen, but the Chromebook, you open it up and it's on and it just works. And by the way, people dig on the Chromebook for not having offline apps, but it does and they're good ones. Yeah, they're good. I really like my Chromebook. I think it's awesome. I love my Chromebook. Well, as he says, it goes on to say, as a big advocate of the hardware for select usage, maybe I can shed some light on it. He says, I have a lot of older people in my life. My grandparents, aunts, uncles, and my mother are approaching 60. None of them understand computers very well. The Chromebook has been the solution for them. It's really easy to use. It's portable. It's got great battery life and there's less room for error. I can worry less about them clicking something they shouldn't with Chromebooks, due to the limited capability versus them wandering around on a Mac or Windows OS. I can't tell you how many times I fixed windows for one of these people. Chromebook, I remote in on a rare occasion and fix a simple issue. As a family gatekeeper of tech, I couldn't be more pleased at how well the older folks had done with them. For my usage, I have a Chromebook stowed away for simple uses, take quick notes, writing music, clicking into my apartment's sound system, and so on. For me, it's more effective than a tablet for those uses. I imagine students in high school or younger would find valid uses too, especially in low income school districts. The catch, none of these devices cost more than 150 to 250. The $1,200 Chromebook has always been an absurd idea, the completely wrong price for the demographic, which I agree with, by the way. You know, I bought my Chromebook for $199 brand new and it's perfectly good. I have a lot of friends who are teachers and they love them in their schools. What brand did you get? Just curious. I have a Acer. Oh, okay, yeah. I've heard great things about the Acer's. In fact, I've gotten in the market. I have an older HP and I think I'm in the mood for something new, so I may be looking at it. I wouldn't mind buying the kind that flips over to become a tablet, but I'm very happy with this. Well, that's awesome. Big thanks for that email, Brett. I think we here generally agree with you. I think Chromebooks are coming into their own and I'm excited about what the future holds for that stuff. Hey, real quick, we got a Amateur Traveler podcast minute with Chris Christensen. He's awesome. I know him. You know him. You love him. And here he is. This is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler with another Tech in Travel Minute. When I was on the Daily Tech News Show recently, both Tom and I mentioned that one of our favorite travel apps is the Tripit app, but I don't really think we mentioned what it does. Tripit is both an app and a website and a service. With Tripit, when you get an email from your hotel or airline reservation, you can simply forward that to plansattripit.com and Tripit will recognize the email that it's getting this from and will automatically add it to an itinerary for a trip for you. And so if you wanna keep track of multiple upcoming trips, you can do it very simply. And some days I wouldn't even know what city I'm in if I couldn't open up Tripit and find out. Tom mentioned to me after we stopped recording that he also uses Tripit's feature that lets you keep track of your airline miles and how many you have on different carriers. The paid version of Tripit also lets you get notifications when there are gate changes or delays in your flights and that has come in very handy sometimes. I'm Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler. Thank you, Chris. That's awesome. Tripit's everybody. Use it, have it, live it, catch it. Hey, I cannot say enough thanks to Evan. Evan Koblenz, author of Abacus to Smartphone, The Evolution of Mobile and Portable Computers and president and co-founder of Vintage Computer Federation Incorporated. Again, that's a 501C3 non-profit. Love the work that you're doing there. Is there anything else you'd like to tell us or where people can go to learn more? Sure thing. People can visit us at VC Fed, Vintage Computer Federation, so VCfed.org. We have our museum in New Jersey. We own the largest discussion site for the hobby on the internet called the Vintage Computer Forum. We put on events like VCF East and VCF West every year and please check us out on social media as well. You said you had an eight-inch disc you wanted to show me. Oh yeah, and I don't know where it is, but okay, so I got this, I'm glad you reminded me. I've got a big eight-inch floppy. I don't know where it is, dang it. I'd love to hold it up for the camera, but I don't know where it came from. I don't know how I got it. It is definitely before my time in terms of when I started doing things, five and a quarter is about as far back as I go. What was that used for? If I had somewhere to put it now, where would it be? It's the exact same thing as a five and a quarter, just older, bigger, less reliable, hell less data and cost more. Just as I suspected. Eight-inch disc really are quite floppy, that's what I call it, I mean. So, well, throughout the late 60s and 70s, there were plenty of computers, business mini computers and even consumer computers that at eight-inch drives. Eight-inch drives weigh 20, 30 pounds, they're beast, and they simply had anything else had to get smaller, cheaper, better, but they even look like five and a quarter is just scaled up. They're really are the same thing. Wow, well, all right then. Now I know exactly what to do with that thing. It's probably not worth anything, right? Like you can't sell it on eBay for, I mean, probably sell it for something. You probably could, but if I were you, I just had the one, I were you in unknown condition, now we just hang it on the wall. Yeah, I just want to hang it up, make it look cool or something. I don't know what to do with it. What you need to do is get yourself an eight-inch drive. There you go. Let's see what data's on there. Finally, we'll know what important data has been on that eight-inch. Send me the disk, I'll read it for you. All right, sweet. You probably have plenty of those things, I'm guessing. We do. That's insane. And teletype and punch cards and paper tape, you name it. My goodness. A huge pleasure having you on, Evan. Thanks so much for being with us. All right, thanks for having me. I want to thank everybody else out there for supporting the show. As you know, I'm just sitting here taking over for Tom for a day. I have other days to him doing, but it's not because I'm better than Tom. In fact, Tom's just towers over us all, like the Time Lord that he is. But while I'm here, I at least want to remind you that you can support this show by going to patreon.com slash DTNS and help them out. It's how they pay for the show. There are no ads. There are no other ways to do it. It's all crowd-funded and you guys are the backbone of it all. So please do that. If you want to just send us headlines, that's fine too. You can subscribe to the Daily Tech News Show Reddit page, which I mentioned earlier. And I'll tell you about that again if I can find the address. Yeah, this is my first go for the show. That's great. Where is it? Oh, there we go. DailyTechShootNewShow.Reddit.com. I should know that. Or reddit.com slash r slash Daily Tech News Show, whichever way you'd prefer to go. The show is live every Monday through Friday and I'm not sure who's on tomorrow, but I know it's gonna be rad. Oh, it'll be Patrick Beijon and Jen Cutter tomorrow. It looks like. Thank you guys for being here. Email him. Give back a Daily Tech News Show. It's gonna do it for us, for me, for Evan and for the vacationing. Tom, we'll see you next time. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Fireman Club hopes you have enjoyed this program. And we're clear. Hey, here's Scott. Yeah, that was great. Evan, I'm so glad you were my guest today. Thank you. I had to restrain myself from making a sarcastic comment about your eight inch floppy. That's all right. Everybody has to hold back. No, because you said something a lot of lines of, I have an eight inch floppy. I don't want to hold it up for the camera. And I was like, I was like trying to arm out the crack up, but he said that. I tend to throw people softballs all the time like that and not even notice I'm doing it. I restrain myself. Family friendly show. It's all good. Hold it up for the camera. Roger, we all good on your end? Yeah, let's quickly go through titles. All right. You can help us pick a title if you want. Top of the heap is Retro Tech News Show. Followed up by Vintage Computing Never Gets Old. That one I like, it's pretty funny. There's the iGouch. They should call it Goober. I'm a big fan of old stuff. They should call it Goober? Goober. All right, we're probably not gonna use that, but I'm gonna vote for it, because that's a great... What I used to be at eWeek every April Fool's Day, we had an internal, you know, spoof head cuff out cover. And one year there was Earthquake in Seattle. So the spoof headline was, God Smites Microsoft Misses. That's great. It's not a horde, it's a collection. Drop box drops, the ball, accidental collectors. When Tom's away, I rush away. That's not a floppy, this is a floppy. Someone had to put that in there. They don't make tech like they used to. I like the one, it's not a horde, it's a collection. I like that one. That was not bad. And I also like vintage computing, never gets old, because it's a funny ironic. It's a nice plan words. I'd vote for that, I'd vote for vintage computing. It never gets old. All right, let's do that one. You do Twitter and Facebook all immersion, we call you twitface. Yeah, you twitface. Hey, I had a dog, I had a dog that was a Cocker Spaniel, a shitsu and a poodle, and we called it a cock-a-shitsu. It was the best day of my life when we could do that. I have a cat named Floppy Discat. Of course you do, Evan. I call her Flops. Of course. Floppy Discat. I'm not surprised. You probably have, I don't know, a dog named USB stick or so. I mean, this is just, this is amazing. Floppy Discat. That's really great. All right, yeah, so there's your title. Cool. We'll do that one. And I guess Evan, we can let you go. Again, man, it was awesome having you on. That really made my job easier today. Thank you for having me. I hope I didn't sound too dumb. Oh, no, no, no, no. It was great, it was great. I got a thing that's made for radio and a voice made for print. Well, I've got some combination of those things that I'm not sure with. All right, so people are already asking me, when should I have a link I can send them? The link will be in the show notes for the, oh, for the show. I'll email it to you this evening. I basically have to post everything, but I should have it after. Feel free to put my email in there if you want. Just Evan at vcfed.org. Okay. Perfect. Into the actual show post. Sure, it's fine. I like email. Okay, cool. All right, have a good night guys. Thank you so much. All right, my pleasure. Later. I will start the broadcast now. Thank you everyone for listening. You've been awesome and thanks for supporting the show. Yeah, thanks guys.