 individual than it does for the on-air's feed. So I have started the video. Ladies and gentlemen, you are witnessing an experiment in space and time. And in science. You're witnessing a court filing. But yeah. Ta-da. But if I shrink it, this shrinks the bar, right? This shrinks it forward, oh, it does. Oh, but no, it's showing on the screen. It's working. And it's working. It's working. I'm just wondering if I can do that. I'm seeing if I can override you, which I don't know if I can. What if I say you're overriding right now. So when you talk, you get a catch up. No, no, I did it for a split second. Yeah, I overrode you. It took me a while for the stream to catch up. But if I need to show myself, I can be like, no, wait. Show me. And then I can undo it. Oh, it doesn't show it's for me, though. Yeah, because I don't know why it doesn't show you what's going on in the stream. It only shows you a different view of things as a participant. So if I do stop, does that stop everything? Yeah, it gets back to you. So what happens if you're hidden, though? Well, he's not going to hide himself. He's just going to put the screenshot up. Then we won't see him. He can mute if you want. Probably a good idea, just in case you hack up along. You're still still here. I'll mute me. Yeah, just mute yourself and then put the screenshots up and then present to everyone when you're here. Put your screenshot up. Don't worry about muting yourself unless you want to. Put your screenshots up, but don't present to everyone. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. I have a pick of the day which has nothing to do with tech. Two minutes before the show, you told me this. Yes. And it has nothing to do with tech. Yes. Oh, sorry, keep do the. So when I screen share, so then what should I do? Should I not do anything? Just don't say anything. OK, OK, OK. That's you. All right, now present to everyone. And now, un-present to everyone. I think that worked. I'm looking on the stream. Again, it takes a while for it to show up. Also, I noticed there's something scratchy on someone's mic. Oh, is it that? One thing at a time. That works. So what you just did is the way you can show the screens. Got it. So I stopped. Keep the screens down there all the time. But when you want to cover the live video, put present to everyone. And then that puts it up. OK. OK. Who's scratchy? So there's some sort of scratchiness on someone's mic. I don't know who's it is. No, that's fine. OK. Was it, is it me? Oh, I just heard it. I just heard it. Whatever sounded like, shh, shh, shh. Yeah, that's that. I was rubbing my hand against the, oh, OK. No, it's so fine. All right. So I'll do that and we should be good. So you have a pick of the day. It doesn't have to do with tech. Yeah, it's something completely ridiculous that I just found that has to do with Japan. But here's what you do. And that's fine. I don't mind it doesn't have to do with tech. Here's what you do. Put it in the pick of the day slot. And you can always do that. Just put it in there when you think of it. And if there's already a pick of the day in there, just put it under that one and then tell me and I'll remove the one that's in there and pull it. Oh, wait, wait, no. I didn't want you to remove the pick of the day that was already there. Well, I didn't want a pick of the day. Oh, then no, I feel bad taking the place of a real pick. No, without that one, Williams had one tomorrow. Are you sure? No, I feel bad. Yeah, no, it's fine. That's totally fine. Don't feel bad. It'll get used. OK, it's like a stupid Japanese band. I love this. I know what this is. Actually, the chat room's going to go wild for it. OK, all right, in that case. Just know that there are people in the chat room who've been following that for decades maybe. Well, decades, I doubt it, because it's only like a year so old. Right, by its own nature. But yeah, for a long time, there's experts in that in the chat room. OK, all right, cool. So that's awesome. All right, let's get going. Here we go. Seriously, stop, why is it? I'm hearing it very faintly. I know, that's, there we go. All right, I had to turn it down because I was playing Clash Royale on it earlier. I'm being told that the mic I'm using is the one on my, is this one? It's not the right one? I don't know, you sound fine. Let's not worry about it. It's time to do the show. OK, is this better? OK, well, no, it works. Both works, very good. We're sorry, this pay phone does not accept coins for long distance calls. You may wish to consider using your nickel to support the Daily Tech News Show by going to dailytechnewshow.com slash support. That's dailytechnewshow.com slash support. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, March 29, 2016. I'm Doug Merritt, joining me today. This is Patrick Beja, French broadcaster, extraordinaire at twitter.com slash Patrick Beja and Frenchspin.com. If you want to know the spin that's French, talk to Patrick Beja from Finland. Yes, I am in Finland. I'm in the countryside and I have been carrying and burning branches and wood. And my weekly city boy body is not used to such amounts of physical exercise. Whoa, really? I thought you were just making them up. This is for real. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. For three days, we've been carrying wood and clearing the clearings. And it's very strange for me. It's the first time I've done this. But I think it's earned me. Yeah, don't I? Yeah, I think I do, too. That's what I was saying earlier. I think it's earned me, though, the official title of Forest Finn for this. Congratulations. I hear that is difficult to earn, especially for podcasters. All right, we've got an interesting story from a report that came out last week. That Patrick and I are going to go over about freemium. And maybe freemium and spam are kind of the same thing, in a way. We'll explain. Let's start off with the headlines. In a court filing, the US Department of Justice said it had successfully accessed the data on the iPhone 5C. It had previously asked Apple to unlock. It asked the court to vacate the order that would compel Apple's assistance. Ars Technica reports an anonymous law enforcement official said the government would not discuss whether the method used to access the phone would be shared with Apple. Cyber Security Coordinator Michael Daniel announced the vulnerabilities equities process back in 2014 to disclose vulnerabilities to an extent and only unlimited circumstances. There's no legal reason why Apple would have to be notified of this. The FBI can keep it all to themselves if they want. So there are a lot of things to say about this. I will only say two. The first one is that this is very likely not the end of this whole story. As we've been saying, there will be another phone at some point that will require, you know, it's very likely. It's not guaranteed, but there will be another phone and the same question will be asked again, unless Congress does discuss it and votes on something, some kind of law that clarifies the situation. The second thing is I find it incredibly amusing that now in this situation we're in, these phones, it seems to be only the iPhone 5C with this version of iOS, which is a little bit older, but these phones are not secure anymore. And I'm really wondering if there are FBI employees that are using these phones that now have weakened security that could be, you know, if they store some kind of confidential material, it could be hacked. Well, this is an older version of the operating system. First of all, it's also an older phone. So honestly, I know the FBI has budget constraints, but maybe don't have them using 5Cs. And more importantly, don't have them use 5Cs that haven't been updated to the most recent version of the iOS. But still, you know, I find it somehow amusing that now government officials might have to worry about the security of this phone. To me, I know a lot of people are making hay about that, of like, wow, now the FBI has weakened the encryption. FBI did not weaken encryption for anybody. Celebrite is thought to be the company, so let's pretend that that's the company. We don't really know, but it seems logical. Celebrite is in business to do this sort of thing all the time. The only difference about this one is we noticed because it's in a popular court case. There are other companies like Celebrite who do this kind of thing all the time. Celebrite is a white-hacker firm that does it for law enforcement. There are also black-hacking firms that do this kind of thing all the time. There are third-party hackers in malls that do this kind of thing all the time. We saw videos of them earlier. So this should be no surprise that someone was able to do this. This, to me, is a surprise that it took this long for someone to be able to do it for the FBI. Of course, of course. And that's not at all what I was saying. What I was saying was just pointing out the amusing element of if some FBI agents are using iPhone 5C, they should be worried that they're hackable because now they know, and we all know that they are hackable in that way, so maybe make sure that you really are. I'm gonna go for the joke. Yeah, it's me, but I get it. I get it. Fine, I was just... You've been out, well, you know, carrying water and chopping wood, though. I get it, you're used to long distances. That's fine. Waffle-Officus in the chat room brought up another good point. He's like, does this now cause a precedent? Because the order was given and it was never overturned? No, it does not, as I understand it, and maybe lawyers can clarify this. Because the FBI is asking for them to vacate the order, there is no precedent set here. They're basically withdrawing the request in another way of looking at it. So Apple never got to mount their defense. The judge never got to consider Apple's objection, so this is vacated, meaning like the whole thing is as if it didn't exist legally speaking. And all eyes now turn to New York, where we have that other case with the drug dealer, and the judge who did say that the All Rits Act doesn't support Apple's or shouldn't be able to compel Apple to cooperate. And in that case, we'll see if the Department of Justice continues to push for an overturned case. They have a chance to object to that order or appeal it, and they may or may not, we'll see. Right, this is only like episode three in season one of the very long series that this whole thing is going to be. For sure, and honestly, it's easy to just kind of get caught up into the idea of, well now let's look at all these phones that the FBI has in various cases, which one are they gonna go after next? They might not go after any of them next. In fact, the push may come at the congressional level, because that's what the FBI and Apple were saying is we need to fight this out in Congress. And so my guess is we'll have some little court battles maybe flare up here and there, but the FBI really won't want this to go to become a big public spectacle in court again. We're gonna see bills put forward and maybe more scintillating testimony on Capitol Hill. Right, all right, let's move on to Instagram. Yes, much more important. Yes, you know, videos on Instagram. They announced that they were increasing the length of the videos to a minute. This feature is rolling out to all users over the next few months, and iOS users also got back the ability to make videos from clips on the camera roll, starting with today's app update. I mean, what were iOS users doing? They couldn't do that. That was so incredibly frustrating. Thank God, Patrick. I'm Snapchatting you taking care of this and I only get eight seconds, and I feel like that was plenty of time. I don't know. I think maybe Instagram decided to rush this out. This is total conspiracy theory, by the way, to take a little of the heat off of the idea that they're changing the algorithmic feed. Like, here, we'll give you 60 seconds. You guys have a complaint about only having 15 seconds. I don't know. I think these kinds of product updates are planned in a way. And there was an app update, so my conspiracy theory falls apart, right? But I guess Amber Mac's going to have to change their show from 15 seconds. They can still make it 15 seconds, thanks. They just want to have the natural limit. Speaking of Snapchat, Snapchat's rolling out a host of new features today. CEO Evan Spiegel calls them Chat 2.0. Definitely taking Snapchat more in direct competition with messaging services like WhatsApp and WeChat. According to TechCrunch, the updates include auto-advancing Snapchat stories, more than 200 private chat stickers, the ability to record short audio or video clips in chat, not just in the My Stories. The ability to make video and audio calls any time, ability to send your camera roll during video and audio calls. So if you're on a call with someone and you want to send them a screenshot, you can do that. The way to mark up and send multiple photos at once and toggling between calls, stickers, video audio notes, and text all during a conversation. TechCrunch also notes that Snapchat's $100 million acquisition of personalized avatar sticker maker BitStrips, the BitMoji people last week now makes a lot of sense because that's another thing they can roll right into this Chat 2.0 stuff. You know, back in my day, Snapchat was a simple service where you could just send naughty pictures and they would go away really quickly. And now, with all their Jigama things, and there, I'm trying to sound American, all the old things. That's what we all say over here, Patrick, all the time. All of those Jigama things in the Snapchat 2.0. Those kids. Yeah, I never got Snapchat, even when there weren't any Jigama things. I'll tell you, one of the things that I don't make as much use of on Snapchat is the chatting ability. Veronica and Eileen and I, over a holiday break, were messing around with calling each other on Snapchat, but you both kind of had to be there at the same time and not everybody has Snapchat open all the time. So maybe this is gonna make that easier. There's certainly a lot more functions that'll make people wanna use it more often. So yeah, pretty interesting stuff. Yeah, I mean, it definitely seems like Snapchat is going towards the direction of, you know, it was gimmicky at first and it sort of allowed it to get ahead and be original. Now, they're trying to be also like an actual chatting service, you know, messaging service, which it's been going towards that sort of product for a while, so. It's a slow pivot, in a way. Much like the boaters on the canals in Venice, California, in which they exist, they are navigating the treacherous waters of social networking. All right, well, you know who else is navigating treacherous waters? It's Alphabet's Google Fiber. They are, their service is introducing a home phone service called Fiber Phone. And so those waters are, you know, the telecommunications industry waters. Just so that works. The service will offer unlimited domestic calls for $10 a month and international calls at the same rate as Google Voice. So it's a triple play now. If you get Google Fiber, you can not just get TV and internet, but you can also get landline service. I guess they found that there were enough people that wanted landline service that it made a difference and they already have Google Voice, so it's kind of a no-brainer to hook it up and make it work, but they are now, remember AT&T used to criticize Google Voice over this. They're like, Google doesn't want to play by the telecommunication rules. Well, they are now a telecommunication provider, even if it is VoIP. Are they, are triple play services coming? Yeah, all the cable companies have them. Comcast, Time Warner, they all offer phone service bundled in with their TV and internet. So maybe it's also a matter of making sure you're competitive with your competitors. I mean, we're hearing rumors about Alphabet selling Boston Dynamics. Is that the name? Yes, I think it is. I'm always getting confused with that. Boston Dynamics is right. Right. And because it's not likely to make any money anytime soon, and so maybe they're looking at Google Fiber and thinking this can actually make us some money and if so, we have to be to align our service with that of our competitors. No, I think you're absolutely right. Google Fiber is now a unit of Alphabet and it needs to show a profit and this is a way to do it. Big Jim's like, why wouldn't you just buy a box and plug it into your internet? You know? It's like, yeah, that's what we all would do, but there's a lot of people that scares them and what they know is like having the service bundled in. I know that, I'm comfortable with that and so that's what they get. Yep. Starting today, you can add descriptions to images you post on Twitter apps from iOS and Android. Up to 420 characters are allowed to describe the image for the visually impaired. This will not show up in your post. It will be alternate text. Those of you who've coded HTML for a long time recognize that for screen readers. So when a screen reader is going over the image, right now it often doesn't have much to go on other than saying, well, there's an image there. Now there can be a description. Update applies to the REST API and Twitter cards as well so third parties can use this. It is not available however on the web only when you're posting through the apps. So first of all, it is weird that it's not available on the web. I'm sure it's gonna come at some, I mean hopefully it's gonna come at some point. Second, I do wonder, it's super cool that they're doing it but I really do wonder how many people are actually going to bother adding an alt text unless you have a personal experience or relationship with a visually impaired person. I'm guessing most people aren't gonna do it. It's still cool that it's there but the really interesting thing is hopefully one day they will connect it with some machine learning service that can describe images automatically. We've seen this with Microsoft and Google having research units having apparently pretty successful experiments in that area. Right now I can tell that it's a cat zone. Yeah, it can be, you would go. It was actually a lot more complex than just a cat. Google was actually describing the pictures pretty accurately so that would become super useful I think. For sure. All right, Nintendo's first smartphone game, game is a generous term here. Mi Tomo will launch in Europe and the US on March 31st on iOS and Android. You can import your Mi from Wii U or 3DS using a QR code. Nintendo will also launch my Nintendo at the same time, a rewards program that rewards player for buying games or using apps. I guess there are very good reasons why they have to start a new login system for this and probably has to do with the NX as much as anything else but why couldn't I just transfer my Mi? They have it. Just say, I want it in Mi Tomo. You're the same company. Instead of making me use a QR code. It is not the biggest problem in the world. It just puzzled me a little bit. Well, the problem is Nintendo has been horribly behind on networking infrastructure for a long time. Their service was horrendous and they decided a few months ago to basically scrap the entire thing, work with a company in Japan called DNA that does that, it's their specialty and build a new modern, reliable network for their gaming systems from the ground up. And this app is actually, I think, as much a sort of chat, playful, gamey app as it is sort of a first test, first run for that new network and infrastructure. So my opinion, in my opinion, that's why they're not launching their first iOS app with a very recognizable character. It's not a Mario or Zelda or that kind of game. You know what I'm just saying, they have my Mi on a server in Nintendo Land. Why can't they just let me authenticate with that server and bring it over instead of using the whole QR code thing? That's how bad it was. They just threw everything. They just threw everything away. They were like, you know what, we can't even tell. No, you're right. That is probably the answer. Samsung Pay has launched in China. The payment services partnered with Bank Card Association, China Union Pay. We've mentioned this before. China Union Pay process is the vast majority of credit cards in China. Samsung Pay will launch with the support for nine banks, six more to follow. So they'll end up with 15 in the end. In China, it's supported on both Galaxy S7s, the S6 Edge Plus, and the Note 5 only for now, although more models are supposed to be supported in the future. In an interesting move, the SoundCloud Go music service has launched for free for 30 days in the US. After that, it costs $12.99 on iOS and $9.99 on the web and Android. You get unlimited ad-free and offline access to an expanded catalog of music. Now, if you're SoundCloud, you look at this and say, hey, we already have all this amazing music for free on SoundCloud from artists who are willing to publish on the SoundCloud platform and isn't that awesome. What if we were able to pay a little money to the big record companies and convince them to add their music too? You guys pay a little bit of money, you can get offline listening. Everybody wins, except already, a bunch of those indie artists who were putting their music up for free are like, wait, hold on a minute. If they're giving you money and listening to our music while giving you money, why don't we get a cut of that money? And so, wait for those battles to heat up now. Which is, yeah, it's an absolutely valid criticism. And I mean, yeah, you've said it all. It's just, it looks, it's entering an arena that is incredibly difficult to navigate and it doesn't seem, you know, that expanded catalog. What does it mean? How many titles? What do they have? Do they have stuff that you don't understand? Apparently right now, there's not much in there. Exactly. I'm sure that will change over time. They're probably still populating a catalog, but... Yeah. There's other issues as well. It's the very difficult life of a Silicon Valley, I'm guessing they're in the Valley, but a Silicon Valley story. Oh, they are? SoundCloud is in Europe. Do you know Germany? I think it's German, is that how you said? You know what? I just remember how awesome SoundCloud is. It is, you know, they are incredibly dynamic. I think that idea is gonna bear fruit very soon. I know they're in Europe though. Well, this podcast that is available on SoundCloud for free also would like to know if we could get a little of that $9.99 a month. I mean, I'm just curious, I'm just wondering. You know what? If they did do that, I would consider putting my podcasts on SoundCloud. Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Yahoo has set an April 11th deadline for preliminary bids to buy its web businesses as well as its Asian assets, Verizon and Time Anchor among those expected submit bids according to Reuters. There was a hostile proxy fight being launched because they said Yahoo was delaying. So this is a good response for Yahoo to say, no, we're not delaying here. Here's a deadline to show that we're not delaying. The reverse spin-off. It's finally happening. I can't believe we're here. You know, we've been talking about it for so long. It's almost like a Star Wars movie. It's real. I don't know what to do. April 11th coming to you. Marissa Meyer's Golden Parachute begins. All right, India's Commerce Ministry issued a notification Tuesday, allowing 100% foreign direct investment in e-commerce companies. Such companies cannot influence prices of goods and not more than 25% of goods sold can come from a single merchant. Foreign-owned companies that own the goods sold on the platform, I'm sorry, that own the goods sold and the platform will still not be allowed. Yeah, so like Amazon in India doesn't do what they do in other countries with a warehouse and a fulfillment center. All they do is operate the Amazon Marketplace for people in India to be able to sell goods. So that's what's happening here. As India is saying, you can now 100% foreign-owned, an eBay-like marketplace or an Amazon marketplace without the fulfillment. You can't be an e-tailer yet at 100% foreign investment. Xiaomi introduced a new smart rice cooker called Demigia. Not pronouncing that right, apologies. Induction heating pressure rice cooker. That got your attention. It allows you to adjust the softness of your rice from an app. You can scan the rice package to determine which of the 2,450 different heating methods is right for you. The cooker joins Xiaomi's air purifier, water purifier, blood pressure monitor, and others as part of the newly named Mi ecosystem of home appliances. Rice cooker will be available in China on April 6th for 999 RMB, surround $154 US. And it looks incredibly good too. You know, I'm going to a country where there are many rice cookers everywhere and I'm probably going to be needing one. I would love to have that one. That's the one I want. Yeah, I know. We've been talking about getting a new rice cooker and Eileen has her eyes on these Japanese rice cookers that are insane. They're great. And Xiaomi's going head to head with them saying you don't need to pay out the nose for those high end Japanese rice cookers. Get this one instead. I would. Yeah, I mean, listen. I'm married to someone who grew up taking their rice seriously. So I have learned how important this is. Those of you who still put butter on your rice like I did as a child may not understand this, but this can be a big deal. I'm just saying. You know, Tom, when you said put butter on your rice, it hurt me a little bit. It hurts my wife too when I reminisce of that. I was like, how could you do that? Hey, thanks to Abituele Condosé, Steve Ayo, Mozzacult, all of the people who were those submitting things that we used from our subreddit, submit stories yourself and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. And that is a look at the headlines. Okay, swerve monetization, which by the way, SWRVE Irish Company, if I have it right, swerve monetization. But they are a well-known, what's called a mobile engagement marketing firm. So they come in and they help you get your message out and engage your users and all of that. It's a very popular service in the online world and they're apparently very good at it. So they did a study looking at 40 free-to-play titles and analyzed everybody who played them. So it ended up being 20 million players to see how many times those people actually paid for something in the free-to-play games. These are the in-game purchases, the free-to-play, but you can also buy some gems or gold or whatever. They found that more than 48% of all revenue from the mobile gaming came from just 0.19% of users. In fact, the total for February was 1.9% of all players paying. And about half of that came from 0.19%. So very few people are spending the money to keep these games afloat. And it's an industry that's worth $10 billion apparently. 64% of the 0.19% only spend once a month, which gives you an idea how the other 50% are pretty much not spending anything. The average spend per player is $24.33. That's up from $22.20 in 2014. Typical paying player makes 1.8 purchases each month, averaging $13.82. And some games they say look for behaviors that mark out spenders and convert themselves from skill games to money games as you play. You may have experienced that where you steer like this game's really easy. Why would I ever pay for anything? And then it gets harder and harder. And you think, well, it's just getting harder. Just buy a couple gems to boost me and there you go. Next thing you know, you spent $50 on donuts in the Simpsons games. So just to clarify this last point, I'm not sure people will understand it exactly. Some games convert themselves from skill games to pay games. Meaning once you start paying, they make the game, the game becomes more difficult for you specifically because you have started paying. This is, it's a scam. It's some kind of a, you know. It is not in fact legally a scam in the opinion of some brilliant LLC. No, but I mean, it definitely feels that specific element of it feels icky. I don't know if, you know, I'm alone in this, but it feels like they're baiting you and once you're hooked, they're changing the rules. It's a bait and switch, it's... But here's the thing. And Biocow is among the many people in the chat room saying, I never pay for games. Apparently you're the majority. You're the 99%. Like most people don't. And that's why I was comparing it to spam at the beginning of the show. The reason spam proliferated is not because people kept responding to it. Nobody responded to spam. But just enough people did and spam could go to a large enough number of folks that there was enough money made on it that it was still worth doing, right? And it's not necessarily that mobile games are at the level of spam, which was at the trillions of messages going out. But there's enough people out there playing the free-to-play game that even if a very, very small amount of them spend any money at all, the game company is profitable. And I think there's... So the analogy is definitely, it's interesting and it rings true to an extent. I think the big difference is that for people who don't click on spam links, the spam email is just an annoyance. Whereas the people who don't pay for free-to-play games still get to enjoy the game free-to-play, which costs a lot of money to do and needs to be paid for at some point. But I guess I've always had a little thing in the back of my mind that says, am I being a bad person by never buying anything, right? It's like, no, going to the movies in the US, you know that the theaters make most of their money on popcorn, so if you like the theater, I feel like, well, I should buy some popcorn, help these guys out, I like their theater. And there's been a part of me that's like, oh man, I'm not paying for Clash Royale, I'm just using it for free, is that fair to them? And you may say, well, that's ridiculous, Tom. And yes, you're right, apparently, because they don't need many people to pay for it. They make their money off the small slice of people that can't help but pay for it because they just want to be good. Well, so I think this is the situation they're in. I'm fairly sure that the industry would be, I can't speak for the industry, but I mean, I think it actually said what I think you're gonna say at the end of their press release, which is you need to find more ways to convince people to pay. Yeah, exactly, this is not a, I mean, it is sustainable, it's been working, but it doesn't seem like a healthy model because it does feel like you're tricking your customers, and in some cases, apparently, you actually are, and this will make me less likely to pay because I don't want to turn the game to trigger the game into pay game instead of skill game. I think most companies don't do that, I'm not sure, but I'm guessing at least some companies don't, but I think developers are workers who create a product and I'm fairly sure they would rather have a lot of people pay for it a reasonable amount and not have to trick anyone. But the reality is, all of those, I play a few free to play games, I rarely pay for anything, I sometimes do, but rarely, and the reason is, it's kind of like comparing it to spam makes sense, but also comparing it to, let's say, information on the web. The problem isn't that you would want to pay for it if you thought it was worth it, is that if they were asked you to pay for it, you just wouldn't play it, right? You would go somewhere else, just like if you're asked to pay for some piece of information on the web, most people, unless they have a very specific relationship with that source, are gonna say, you know what, I don't really need to pay for this, I can get it somewhere else, and that's the true tragedy of free to play games. If that game wasn't there for free, then you would play another one, and that's why paid to play games are more and more difficult to find on those app stores, because most gamers don't really care that much about those games, it's more a pastime, and they're very replaceable for the most part. There are good models of premium games, and I know we're both fans of Hearthstone, but I think that strikes a very good balance of you're able to play for free, but if you want to really play competitively and move up the ladder, you're going to want to buy more cards and get the cards faster, and to me, that's different than we made the game harder, it's basically, if you just wanna play casually, play for free, we'll match you against other people at your same skill level with your same kind of decks, and you'll be fine, you'll have fun, but if you wanna do this other thing and get ranked and move up, well, either you just gotta really play a lot and build up that free gold, or you throw $50 down for a bunch of packs and build up your arsenal, but to me, that doesn't feel like a cheat because it's a choice I'm making of like, well, I don't need to be ranked, that's, so I'm not gonna pay, I'm just gonna play for free, or vice versa. You know, there are a number of those games, I mean, Hearthstone is notable because it is on mobile as well, but free to play games, basically free to play games that are geared towards gamers, like quote unquote real gamers, and sorry, I should probably disclose still at this point that I used to work for Blizzard who develops Hearthstone a few years ago, but those games are a little bit more serious and they don't feel like cheats. That's a harsh word, but I'm sorry, that's the way it feels to me personally. And there's actually a whole gamut of those different types of behaviors and I'm pretty sure I don't have any hard data to back it up, but on Hearthstone, for example, I'm fairly sure that there are a lot more than 1.9% of the player base that pays for some type of content in the game. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the number was way higher and actually even the purchase average would be a little bit higher as well. And there's a whole gamut, you were mentioning Clash Royale. It's interesting to see Supercell, a Finnish company, evolve their business model from the different games they've had. The previous one that was really popular was Clash of Clans and on that one, it was much easier to play for free. It's still very possible in Clash Royale to play for free for a very long time, but the nagging, oh, now you should probably get some gems to open your test faster has increased dramatically. It feels like it's constantly poking you and telling you, hey, hey, why don't you pay a little bit? Hey, whereas it wasn't the same in Clash of Clans, which is two or three years older. So it's definitely a trend that is solidifying in that area. And as a gamer, I'm not a fan of that trend for sure. There are some great free-to-play games, those don't seem like it. And people without a lot of time, like me, don't care. Pick up Clash Royale, I could play a game in five minutes if it gets to the point where it's annoying and it's bugging me too much, I can find something else to play. I mean, that's what's going on, I think, and you identified that already in free-to-play games. That's the thing they're dealing with. But what the study shows is that's fine. They just need to figure out how to get those people who will spend to spend more often. But okay, most people don't spend anything, right? Right. The vast, vast majority. Is it, we're circling around this idea that we're guessing developers would prefer more people to pay for things. I still feel a little bit weird if I've been playing a game for two months and I haven't paid for anything. Is it, I mean, yes, it's fine because that's what every, or it is what everyone's doing. It doesn't mean it's fine, though. Shouldn't we feel a little bit of, you know, push to me? They could sell the game. They could make you pay for the game, but they didn't. Or they could make it so hard that you'd have to buy something. I think what I'm saying is here, they're not starving. You're not taking food out of their baby's mouths if you don't pay anything. That's true. So it's okay. Yeah. There's an interesting naming difference with Nintendo for their games that they're releasing on mobile platforms. And the first one is Meetomo, which we mentioned a little bit earlier. They're calling them Free to Starts, right? They're not saying Free to Play. They're calling specifically Free to Starts. It's gonna get really hard and you'll have to pay. We're just telling you now. Well, Free to Starts sort of implies you can play a little bit, but then you have to pay not necessarily to, we don't know because the next games aren't available yet, but it sort of implies. So I sort of like this. It seems more honest. Again, it's all about presentation. All right, let's get to our pick of the day, which comes from Patrick, who has been very much like Anthony Carboni planning a trip to Japan, been following both of your preparations and you have made a discovery that I know many people in our chat room have also made and some of them adore. So I'm sure if you've ever heard anything related to Japan, you know what idols are. They're basically girl bands that are incredibly overly produced, very little artistic freedom in those bands. I've known those intimately when I was living there and they're very cutesy, very everything you associate with Japan. Then I'm sure most of you know what metal is as not the Apple technology for graphics, but the type of music. Well, it turns out some marketing genius producer figured out they could put together a band that merges the two and they have a band called Baby Metal, which is three girls that are super cutesy and everything. The music is incredibly metal and pretty skillful and they sing half metal, angry person, half cutesy Japanese idol. By the way, this is a whole genre, not just one band. There are a few, but this one is, honestly I was certain I would not like it, but it has this incredible eerie quality of all those Japanese very heavily produced music bands that it gets in your ear and it never gets out. It's super high quality, it's ridiculous, but Baby Metal, listen to it. Seek out the title Karate. I'm pronouncing it with the English, the American accent. Baby Metal Karate in YouTube, you'll find the title. I assure you you will listen to it a couple of times and then you will never get it out of your head. Send your pics to us folks, feedback at dailytechnewshow.com, you can find more pics at dailytechnewshow.com slash pics. Message of the day comes from Debra, who said, both Tom and Patrick seem hesitant to embrace ad blocking. I'm curious, do you feel the same way about skipping commercials using DVRs? They seem similar to me, but perhaps I'm missing something. Does Patrick think TiVo is morally bankrupt? That is such a good question. I'm actually, you got me Debra. I do not feel that way about TV ads. I think I understand that I should and that it's conceptually the same thing, but I sort of don't. I guess TV ads, you can't really ignore as easily. Of course, the big pop-up ads, you click once and it's kind of gone. The TV ad, it's every five minutes and you have to watch three minutes of it. I think the level of annoyance of TV and TV ads had risen even higher for me than the current level of annoyance for web ads. So maybe that's why I feel more strongly about TV ads than web ads. And just to be clear, Debra, I think you as a browser user should have the right to block whatever you want, as well as the website should have the right to respond in whatever way they want. So I don't think it's immoral to block ads. I think Patrick and I have different opinions on the fundamentals of that. And that's okay. But I do think it's a really good comparison to say like, hey, Tivo now has this auto-skip, which by the way is fantastic. Within like an hour of a show airing, it has put in codes that you can just press one button and skip over the entire commercial break without seeing a thing. I do not feel nearly as guilty about that as I do for ad blogs. But why? Excellent, Debra. I don't know. It's a great question. I've been saying you have to have an answer. I'm just like, there is definitely a feeling that there is a difference. But logically there really isn't. So maybe if you allow me to go on for just a little bit longer, maybe the big TV companies feel like those big corporations that are so rich anyway, whereas you know the small content creators of the internet, they're tiny. And we need to protect them. Those publishers like Condonast are just trying to get by in their little one room apartment. I don't know. There's definitely a different feel to it. I think it may be because you have a more intimate relationship with a website than you do with that thing up on a big television that's blasting something at you that isn't relevant at all. I don't know. That's maybe interesting difference. Well, thank you, Debra, for that. That was a great email. And thank you, Patrick Meija. First of all, I'm gonna plug Philius Club because I think it is fantastic. I recommended it to a friend of mine who is going to move to London to work across the entire European-Middle East region. He's gonna have to go to Jordan and she's like, I know nothing about Jordan. I was like, well, they just talked about Jordan on the latest Philius Club. Great insight into what's going over there. You gotta listen to it. I honestly, I don't wanna overstate it, Patrick, but I think the Philius Club is important for people to understand how very good people in different parts of the world just think differently about things. Wow. I guess there is nothing I can add to that. Thank you so much. If you wanna give it a try, just go to Frenchspin.com and listen to it. It's a show I really love and I do. Honestly, it's my small stone in the world that we're building together or something. I do also think it's a good show. It's important. I like to fool myself that Scott and I farting around on Current Geek make the world a better place. And maybe Daily Tech News Show arguably helps people understand technology better. But Philius Club I think really is like something that can help people understand other people and I think it's great. Thank you very much. Frenchspin.com. Thank you everyone for supporting this show and our efforts, value for value model. If you are giving us something to support the show, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. The fact that we're still around and still able to do this is because of you. You guys are the best. DailyTechnewshow.com slash support. If you've been thinking about giving or you're just a new listener, you're like, wait, how do I support this show? All you need, that's all you need to give us a dollar. If that's all you got, we'll take it. If you think we're worth more than a dollar, we'll take that too. Patreon.com slash DTNS as well. And if you're like, I don't even have a dollar or you're already giving the most you can, just tell people about it. Give us a review on iTunes. Give us a review on Overcast. I almost said Overwatch. Give us a review anywhere or tell a friend about us. The more people who know about us, more people you can commiserate when you disagree with me and Patrick. So spread the word. DailyTechnewshow.com. Our email address is feedback at DailyTechnewshow.com. You can give us a call 51259 daily. That's 5932459. Catch the show live Monday through Friday, 4.30 p.m. Eastern at AlphaGeekRadio.com and DiamondClub.tv. And visit our website at DailyTechnewshow.com. Back tomorrow with Scott Johnson. Talk to you then. Bye. This show is part of the Frogpants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. DiamondClub hopes you have enjoyed this program. Cool. Excellent. Good show. How did it work, Roger? I had a look from your side. I couldn't tell. You know, I was too busy reading the doc so I wasn't really paying close attention. But what I did notice looked great. Cool. Especially the baby medal. The baby medal, so from my perspective, it looked really jerky. Yeah, probably was. Stuttery, so I wasn't sure if we could just maybe skip it. It's illustrative. It's illustrative? Yeah, it's just supposed to give an idea of what it would look like. Illustrative, illustrative, illustrative. This is illustrative. All right, showbot titles. If you're a filmmaker, showbot, I think of the GoBots TV commercial. Showbot, showbot, my tea titles for the show. Showbot. See. Pay to lose. That sounds pretty good. That sounds like a bad 70s movie, comedy movie. Pay to lose. Any which way, what's the one? Any which way, forget. Any which way, but lose. No, I don't remember any of those. Free to pay, that's also good. Free to pay, I like that. Jigama things. FBI says, never mind we got it. That's actually pretty funny. I like that one. Never mind, we got it. We got it. Sorry, we're good. I know you didn't want to do it. We're sorry to push you. You know what? Man, you don't want to do it. We'll get it. We got this friend. You don't want to do it in the back, he didn't read it. It's okay, thanks guys. Thanks. It tells a whole story, that title. It does. It's an FBI saying, celebrate, celebrate. Nah, I like, never mind we got it. I'm voting for that one. I like free to pay though. All right. Pay to lose is winning though, pay to lose. Yeah, but you've never always been up to the top. Well, free to pay is, free to pay is good. What was the other one I just saw? Oh hey, it's me, Mario. Get it? Hey, it's MII. So you like FBI. Patrick, which one do you like? I think the thing is, I usually like the title to refer to the discussion topic. So that's why I would say, pay to lose. But really, FBI says, never mind we got it. That's fine. Okay, I'm exactly in the same mindset, which is like, ooh, pay to lose, free to pay. Those are both really good. They apply, but that FBI one is pretty hilarious. Well played, Dr. Payne. Bringing the pain. Also Dr. Payne, that's a vicious name. Is it? It's like that hip-hop group, or was it a group, or just a dude, House of Payne? Oh yeah, no, that's different. I mean, Doctor, I'll be your doctor for a day. Maybe it's Payne. How do you know it's just not a short version of Doctor of Pain Relief? It's pronounced Pine. Well, just so you know, I actually had a teacher in high school whose last name was Payne, but it had a E, like Thomas Payne. So if he had a son or he'd be able to teach him. That's not how Dr. Payne spells it though. Yeah, oh no, I know, but maybe like I said, he just cut off the E. I don't think he did. Wow, the chat room is educating me in lots of weird Japanese bands I've never heard about. I was hoping and afraid and excited about that. All right. So I mean, is that just, are you, so you're not into J-pop or you are? Sorry, coming in, I was being invaded. My ears were being invaded by those weird music. Go ahead. Oh no, so you are or you aren't into J-pop? Well, I listened when I was living there, you know, morning Musume, that kind of thing, because you can't avoid it. It's literally blasted in your ears when you're walking down the street. So yeah, I listened to that, but no, I don't. I mean, I listened to actual music. Whoa, wow, wow, wow. That's a culture, there's a thread of cultural ethnocentrism. I'm a provocateur. Sure, starts speaking French, I think we won't follow. By the way, Shane says it's Dr. Aubon Payne. I don't get it. You're just pretending you get it. Tell me you don't get it. Oh, oh, yes. Oh, your pronunciation was so bad, Tom, I didn't understand what you said. Oh, so maybe, right, it's Dr. Payne in that sense, Dr. Perl. Which is also true, which is amazing. I mean, I was all of a sudden, I went from being afraid to go to that doctor to wanting to go there. Yes. Delicious. Yes. I need treats. Dr. Delicious. I'll get a croissant. You know, there's one thing I'm missing in Finland. It's pastries. What, I mean, they have finished pastries, but I know they're not the same. What kind of pastries do they have? You know, I will make a comment analogous to that comparing Japanese music to real music. I eat real pastries, not the things they have here. So there's no traditional Finnish pastries, I guess, is what I'm... Well, so no, they have lots of German-type bread, like black bread, they have tons of different types, but they're not big in two pastries. They don't have the know-how, they don't have chef. Because I know what you mean. When I would get the cornettos in Rome when we were visiting there, they were amazing. And then I came back and it's like, oh, this place has a cornetto. You know, like, no, it really doesn't. It has something like a croissant with chocolate stuck in it. See, not exactly. Yeah, yeah. So... Yeah, no, there are definitely things, you know, it's weird because you would think they know how to do it there, how difficult is it to just, it's crazy. And vice versa, like trying to find pizza outside of the United States, totally doable, right? And actually, Italy, they, you know, make sense. Oh, it's not the same. It's good, but it's still not the same, right? And, yeah. Yeah. Two guys talking about food. That's our new post-show podcast. Two guys talking about food. Well, yeah, do you need to get to sleep? Yeah, probably. I mean, before I go to sleep, I'm gonna honor the work of Big Jim and T2T2 and listen to all of those things they sent me. Aha, nice. Yeah. Little in-house concert. Preparation for my Japanese trip. Which, is there anything we need to discuss, settle before? Because I'm leaving in three days, so next week it's just about, yeah, let's take it offline and thank everybody for watching and we can wrap up the details, not bore them with dates. We'll talk to you soon. Bye, buddy.