 I have never used an iPhone other than testing purposes, but I really like it, but things like that, you know, where, like, oh, hey, I might, I might be considering one of those. How does it work in the long haul? Kind of the way that consumer reports gives you their long term road test for cars. Yeah. Because the initial review might be glowing, but having to live with a car for more than a few months is a lot different. You can even talk to other people about their stuff and yes, how do you like those shoes? They're great. Los zapatios para andar zapatos. These zapatos are Adidas or Adidas zapatos son sus zapatos. My shoes. That's when you know someone very well that you share your shoes with them. It's like walking a mile in my shoes. Literally. I don't even share shoes with my family. I knew that would creep you out. You know, this is the one thing I've learned from doing rummage sales, like for fundraisers and stuff. No one ever buys shoes unless they're like high quality, like cowboy boots or something or. Yeah. No, tennis shoes never sell. Tennis shoes never sell. No. Is it the gross? They're sweaty. Leather dress shoes or boots. Yeah. Something that's got a little more substance to it maybe, but. And worn very infrequently. Like I'm not buying dress shoes if a guy is like a professional entertainer. I don't care. Unless I just want to put under a glass and say, hey, this is, you know. I used to buy all my shoes at thrift store though, back when I lived in Austin. So you can do that in underwear. Those are the two things. Oh gosh. And I actually saw underwear for sale at a thrift store once. Yes. And I was just amazed. They were, they were boxers. I mean, maybe if they were donated in the package, maybe, but definitely not like just out in the open. Even if you're not, even if, you know, especially if you're not fashion conscious, you can buy those things by the dozen for like 10 bucks. It's like, no, there's no need to know those are, those are something even in my poorest days, I always paid retail for, but one thing I did not sell. Like I was, I've always known that vintage denim was a moneymaker, but I didn't realize the links that people go to shot. They like hit the thrift stores, but they hit the flea markets. They hit everything. They go to people's attics and they're picking up like, oh, you have some old pair of jeans vintage denim, man. Well, because it wears pretty well. Yes. All righty. Are you ready to do this show? Yes, but I need, I need to believe you have control. All right. You'll have talking web pages today. Here we go. Daily Tech News show is powered by you to find out more. Head to dailytechnewshow.com slash support. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, August 28th, 2017. I'm Tom Merritt of Veronica Belmont, prevented from joining us today by technical issues. Hopefully we will have her back next week. But in the meantime, our intrepid producer, Roger Chang, is still here and it's a mailbag Monday, Roger. Ah, yes, our full and very, very filled mailbag. This would be something that someone else gave me this idea. That maybe we would do off cycle, like outside the show, where we just go through emails and talk about them in its own show. So if that sounds like something you'd be interested in, let us know. Feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. In the meantime, for time to time, we just have really interesting emails. And if that matches up with a day that doesn't have that spot on lock for a discussion, we'll just read a bunch of emails. And today is one of those days where we have good stuff. But let's start with a few tech things you should know. Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal have joined the chorus of people with sources saying Apple will have an announcement on September 12th, where they are likely to unveil at the very least new iPhones. Apple, of course, has not announced an event yet. But Roger, this is like, I don't know, this is the fifth credible source and the dozenth, like even slightly credible source that said September 12th. So I kind of feel like that might happen. I wonder if the the brain trust at Apple kind of gets giddy when they see like rumor mills and stuff like, oh, they're talking about us. And I say this because part of me thinks this is kind of TMZ-ish. Like, oh, they're they're having in light of you think they're doing to get attention. But the other part of me understands that. Yeah, this is a significant product release for the company. And it could change, you know, heavily the market in their favor or not. But it's it's it's cool. I it's very close. It's very close. It's about what, two weeks, two and a half weeks away. That would be correct. Fifteen days away. The New York Police Department will scrap 36000 Windows phones bought two years ago as Microsoft and support. The New York Post says the department plans to replace them with iPhones. So. Oh, no, no, no, no. This is a hundred million plus mistake for the New York Police Department. Ouch. So the NYPD Deputy Commissioner for I.T. or Information Technology, Jessica Tish, was the one saying with. Was was basically want to put it put in place the order original order for the Windows phones and she's taking the heat for it now. But I'll be honest, Microsoft sold a lot of companies on Windows phones when they appeared to be willing to support them for a long time. And after two years, they would be selling the New York Police Department on upgrades to newer phones, you know, phones generally don't last even in enterprise environments more than, say, five years max. So I don't know that she deserves the amount of heat she's getting. It's it's it's kind of a bad coincidence for her. And it is bad that Apple pulled the plug on her that I'm sorry. Well, I'm wondering if this very quickly will make other institutions in the future kind of shy of perhaps investing in a Windows or not Windows, but but a Microsoft I.T. product that they like. Well, you know, all they're going to want to put it in its contract. This is going to be around for buy it back, buy them back. A team from Munich Technical University won the SpaceX Hyperloop Hyperloop pod competition Sunday with a prototype that reached three hundred twenty four kilometers per hour. It's about two hundred one miles per hour in a one point two kilometer tube at SpaceX headquarters right over there in Hawthorne, California. The war Hyperloop, as it was called W. A. R. R. was made of carbon fiber weighed one hundred seventy six pounds and was powered by a fifty kilowatt motor. So congratulations to the team from Munich Technical University. Yeah, I'm hoping some of this stuff that they learn will find its way into an actual production Hyperloop that I'm taking to get to the Bay Area or something so I can skip the airports. Here's some more top stories. Kara Swisher at Recode reports that Uber's board voted to offer the CEO job to Dara Kosar Shahi, who has been CEO of Expedia since 2005. Kosar Shahi had also served on the board of the New York Times. He often is ranked as one of the great CEOs to work for. He's been very critical of the current presidential administration. The plan, according to Recode, is to tell the Expedia employees he's leaving first then holding meeting at Uber to introduce him there. Bloomberg reports Kosar Shahi has invested has unvested stock options worth one hundred eighty four point four million dollars in Expedia. That's often a proxy for how much of a bonus somebody's going to get. So if they have one hundred eighty four point four million dollars unvested stock, the company hiring them away will usually make them good by giving them around the same amount as a bonus. It may or may not be cash or stock or something like that. But essentially the point of that is he's getting paid well. And it is a job that Jeffrey Immelt, former CEO of GE apparently did not want. And that Meg Whitman apparently did not want because those were the two names being bandied about all weekend as the folks Uber were after. This guy though has been CEO since 2005. He's been and he's well loved. I mean, that seems like like a good get for Uber right now. They need somebody that can come in and create a positive company culture. Creative positive positive culture. But like, you know, so not have any baggage. So you don't have this circus media circus that constantly orbits around the company. And, you know, and it's funny because it might not have any. It has an impact in a way that isn't seen. But it does affect the employees and as well as the perception of the company. Well, it's a vicious circle, right? Because what's happening inside affects the employees really badly. And the media doesn't hear about it until something leaks out. Then it leaks out. People blame Uber. People maybe very rightly blame Uber. And then that affects employee morale and around it. And it goes like you said, let's just hope he can put a cork in everything, so to speak. Wow. Now, I do not envy him this job. And we will keep track. He's been offered the job. The way the reports and recode are coming seem to be very clear that he is going to accept the job. But we have not got a confirmed report that he has in fact signed on the dotted line. So given that this is Uber, I'm going to put, you know, 12% possibility on the fact that this falls through. And they have to keep hunting for a CEO. But it does sound that they they finally settled on things. Somebody that I don't think a lot of people expected, but he is now thrown into the spotlight. This is in some ways similar to Marissa Meyer getting hired as CEO of Yahoo, because it's a company with a with a lot of trouble and a lot of spotlight on it. And it's someone in this case, someone very experienced as a CEO, but someone that is not well known in the media circles of technology. Could help. I mean, that that little bit. Yeah, Microsoft is making several mixed reality announcements that Eva in Berlin, Steam VR games are going to work on Windows mixed reality devices. That's big. Microsoft's also going to have versions of Minecraft and Halo for their VR devices. Windows mixed reality will work on a wider variety of PCs. Now it'll only work at 60 frames per second on PCs with integrated graphics, but it will work if you don't get nauseous. And then it'll work at 90 frames per second on PCs with discrete graphics. Windows mixed reality devices need USB or HDMI ports, but they don't need you to set up any external sensors. The devices are set to arrive by the holiday season in general. Dell announced theirs is coming in October. And the prices range from $299 to $399. That $399 includes some packages that have the motion controllers bundled in, at which point that's everything you need right there in one package. Now that sounded really cheap when Microsoft first announced this effort back earlier this year, now that the prices of the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive have been cut down to $399 and $499. This doesn't seem as competitive on the price, but it still is easier to hook up. You don't need the motion sensors, etc. And, you know, having Steam VR support huge, huge. So anything in the Steam VR store for the HTC Vive, for instance, theoretically, can work on Windows mixed reality devices. Yeah, I think Microsoft just really needs to do a much better job of explaining this to the consumer because, you know, mixed reality is like, you know, Microsoft mixed reality. Wait, is that the same thing as HoloLens? So what's HoloLens? And like, and so there's all these things that are tied to the Microsoft name, but there's no clear distinction, at least for a consumer. And so that, well, you know, I understand what the Oculus VR is. I understand what the Vive is. So, you know, it's something that they need to, I think, really work on is messaging and kind of clearing up the confusion around all their efforts. Well, and I think what they're hoping is that when these products hit the shelves, that's when it will become clear. Because this is a very Microsoft approach to say, we're not putting out our own products here. That's what HoloLens is. HoloLens is the flagship that points the way. What we're saying is Windows can handle VR. The Windows Fall Creators Update can handle VR. And so we want to have some devices out there when that launches. And I think that's when you see the consumer education push. Windows Fall Creators Update arrives, these devices hit the shelves, and then Microsoft goes into full press consumer mode to say, Hey, you don't have to, you know, you can use the laptop you have, you can use the desktop you have, if you can handle 60 frames per second, buy this $299 VR headset and be in the VR game in a way that's better than the Gear VR, the Daydream, because it's going to have a little more oomph being connected to your PC. Maybe. I mean, it's, it's, it's getting to be a crowded field. I mean, you really kind of want to make your things stand out early on. But isn't it a crowded field? It feels like there's just not enough. There's the Vive and Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR just got a price drop of about 50 bucks as well. That's about it. If you're not talking about the ones that are based on phones. Well, and see, this is the, this is the important thing for the consumer. They don't make that distinction. They just concentrate on the word VR. And that's what they focus on. And I think this is why I was stressing about they need Microsoft needs to get the messaging right about their products, because people will easily get confused because I mean, it's easy for us to say, like, we understand the difference between a phone based VR and, you know, a full on headset and all that, because we understand this market. But for consumers, I mean, what they're going to be looking at during the holiday season is, you know, hey, does this support Minecraft? Will this work with Jimmy's, you know, you know, phone or whatever, like, you know, they want very straightforward buying options. It doesn't mean they want a limited option. Microsoft's advantage here is to say, Oh, no, you don't need to have a particular phone. You just plug this in your PC. Done. Yep. Hopefully. Fitbit has a new smartwatch called Ionic. The watch focuses on health and fitness with readings for step count, heart rate, and calories burned right there next to your date and time. A limited number of partner apps are available at launch, including Starbucks, Strava and Pandora. It's going to sell for $299. And you can also separately purchase a Bluetooth headphones headset called Flyer for $129. The Flyer, you know, it's sweat proof. It's got some wings to keep it in your ears, but otherwise it's pretty similar to other Bluetooth headsets for working out that you might find out there. Both the Ionic and the Flyer arrive in October. And this is the fulmination of Fitbit's many acquisitions, including Pebble. And I'm not seeing an impressive app store launching at the beginning, which I think a lot of people hoped because of Pebble, that would happen. It may still happen. In fact, Fitbit intends for it to still happen. But it's Fitbit presiding over a diminishing lead that they're losing to Apple in this space. And it's a space that's not very big to begin with and doesn't seem to be growing at a rapid pace. It's, I mean, it is kind of, I mean, it was kind of described as kind of their Hail Mary pass. Like, you know, this could make a break. And the thing about Wearables is I'm not convinced that apps are as crucial to Wearables in the same way that they have been to smartphones. Why do you say that? That's interesting. So I mean, this could very well pull them out of the doldrums or it could not. I mean, for me, this is kind of a sit back and wait. But I think if they, and this is what they're doing, they're leveraging their fitness tracking technology heavily in this this watch. Well, and Apple's doing the same thing, right? Apple's focusing on fitness as well. That's pretty much everybody's decided for now Wearables. You sell Wearables by selling the fitness aspect of them. So that's not a big surprise. What's different about this is Fitbit is actually making it more watch and less Fitbit. The Fitbit Blaze, for instance, was very much a fitness tracker with some watchy stuff on it. This is a full-on watch with a lot of fitness stuff on it. And they're really touting their personal training and training plans and that sort of thing. But all in all, it does not seem like a big departure. It's certainly more affordable than an Apple watch, but it's not cheap by any stretch. I'm curious. I want to go back to what you said about you don't think that the app store is the compelling part of this. Why do you say that? I honestly don't see. I mean, it's, I mean, you have a smartwatch and I've only played with smartwatches. I thought you had it for some reason. I have one for a while and I don't anymore. But I think, I think when, I just, the part of this is just a gut feeling. I have a feeling that most people who purchase these will not be as overly app-focused as they are on the phone, mostly because of the way you use a watch. Like, I guess you could have a bunch of really cool non-fitness-oriented apps on your watch. But I don't really need the fitness apps on the watch and you want your music and then you want your calendar. And then, you know what I mean? Like, granted, you probably don't need an app store full of thousands of apps, but you are going to want the watch. You are going to want the ones you need and use. And if I use the Nike Plus app for my fitness tracking and I look at this at this watch and it doesn't have that app, I'm going to be less likely to buy it. Yeah, I can see that. I don't think apps, when I say apps, I don't think in the same way that you go to the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store where you literally have thousands of apps that you can pick and choose from. I think, at least for now, I think the public and the companies have decided these are essentially fitness enhancers that allow you to track, you know, all your entire fitness regimen. But also, you know, basically kind of bridge the gap between that and your smartphone. Yeah, that's where the apps need to be. And it looks like the problem is that the Ionic doesn't have a lot of any kind of apps, fitness or otherwise, at least at launch. Amazon cut prices at its newly owned whole food stores by 43% Monday, at least that's how Bloomberg estimates. Bloomberg cited examples at a Manhattan location of Fuji apples going from $349 to $1.99 a pound, rotisserie chicken falling from $13.99 to $9.99 each. Amazon Echo and Echo Dot was also presented front and center in some stores as a fresh pick of the month. Here's, I went over to our local Whole Foods to check this out and be like, okay, what do they got? Fuji apples were $1.99, but there was no indication that this was a price drop. According to this Bloomberg article, the price drop was being noted in the Manhattan location, like, oh, it used to be this, but because of Amazon, we brought it down. There was not a whisper that Whole Foods was now owned by Amazon at the store I went to. Now, whether that's just because they didn't get on the stick on day one, whether it's because maybe my neighborhood they know is sort of anti-Amazon. I don't know that it is, but I could get that idea of like, maybe people don't see Amazon as a plus at this particular Whole Foods. We'll just lower the prices and keep it quiet. There were definitely no Amazon Echoes on display or anything. The only thing I saw at my local Whole Foods was big signs for online ordering. Everywhere. Those may have been there before. I don't go to Whole Foods that often, but they weren't Instacart branded. They were just online ordering go to WholeFoods.com, so they were definitely pushing a technology portion of the service, but no, it did not look like there was any Amazon going on. What surprised me is how much of the impact of the whole Amazon buying Whole Foods really resonated. Not just in the U.S., not just in the North American market, but across the world. I mean, Britain, the British supermarkets all taking note because everyone is like suddenly, whoa, this is an entirely new operation for Amazon, but this is an operation that's going to cut to the bone for us. What's interesting is how much of these price drops really kind of overlap the premium stuff that current supermarkets do. So Vons and Ralph's have over the past decade have tried to upscale a lot of their ready-to-eat offerings or kind of their, not deli, but their bakery or other offerings. Prepared foods, yeah. Prepared food offerings. This really just puts it in line. Like the $10 rotisserie chicken from Whole Foods. I mean, that's exactly the same price point that Ralph does. And that's, you know, the Fuji apples used to be 99 cents a pound. They're a little bit out of season right now. So they've gone up to $1.49 at Ralph's, but they're still cheaper than they are at Whole Foods. Now, that may be because they're not organic and they're sourced differently. I don't know. But I have a feeling that what Amazon's trying to do here is take away that part of me that says, well, I don't want to go to Whole Foods because the prices are more expensive. And to do that, they just need to make it close so that the other things that a customer might like about Whole Foods make it like, well, if I pay 40 cents extra a pound, 50 cents extra a pound for my apples, no big deal. I'll be able to get a better selection of apples, say. And that's what the other grocery stores are scared of because price was the big advantage they had. And then like you say, they can have prepared foods and organics. Like Costco's really pushing their organic selection. Well, now suddenly it's like, well, I can get organics at both places. And if the prices aren't that different, why would I want to pay a membership at Costco for that? So it really resets the table and the competitive balance. Resets the table. Yeah. I know. And I'm expecting a lot of changes in my local supermarket over the next couple of years. Well, and don't forget too, Amazon Whole Foods makes a profit or an operating profit anyway. Operating income is in the hundreds of millions. Amazon makes like 800 million or so. These are rough numbers from its Amazon web services. And that kind of subsidizes everything else. They have a loss in their international retail. They make a little bit of money on their domestic retail. And so they can afford to slash that 100 million Whole Foods and let Amazon web services continue to subsidize the company. They've got room to move here. It's not just as simple as Amazon always has low profit margin, but Amazon is okay playing with low profit margin in certain sectors of their business. Yeah. It'll be interesting to, yeah, definitely see how all this shakes out over the next couple of years. Yeah. I mean, there are things I definitely buy that aren't available at Whole Foods. So they have that. The Intercept reports that security researcher Zachary Julian notes that the anonymous feedback app Saraha that we've talked about, that's the one where you can post up your link and people can send you anonymous messages. And it's tended to be positive messages. Uploads users email and phone contacts to its servers with permission. Okay. So there's some reports out there that's saying, well, on Android, it didn't use to ask for permission. And it always has on iOS. But now it does ask for permission on Android. The controversy here, I think, is getting blown out of proportion in the headlines. But there is a tiny bit of controversy, which is why are you even asking? Like, yes, I can say no, don't upload my contacts. But why does it need the information? Well, the app's founder took to Twitter and said that the upload is for a planned find your friends feature, which if it's anonymous feedback, I'm not sure exactly why you need to find your friends. And it hasn't launched yet. But that is a use that many apps will say, hey, can we look at your contacts? Amazon's Alexa does that as well. The data request will be removed in the next update. However, Saraha is pulling back from this. So this is one of those instances where a lot of people are getting outraged, thinking that the app does something worse than it does. But it is a little sloppy for an app to be asking for something without making a clear why it needs that or having clear terms of service of what it's going to do with that information. I honestly don't think it's anything nefarious or malicious. I just think it's one of those things like, oh, you know, if we can, we'll just bug in for that particular set of data. Because we can use it for these future ideas. Yeah, for not just that one idea of finding your friends, but, you know, a multitude. It's like, well, it's better to have it. Yeah. Then have to develop a standpoint. This makes perfect sense, right? Like, oh, let's ask for the data so that we have it when we need it. We don't know exactly what we need it for, but we want to have it. From a privacy standpoint, though, no, that is not okay. No. And that's one of the disconnects. I think when you develop an engineer software, you think in terms of the overall database or the infrastructure, without necessarily understanding or not, or I'm not shouldn't, I shouldn't say understand, but may not be especially cognizant of any kind of legal or social ramifications beyond of what you're immediately doing. And then, you know, once you start thinking about it, I was like, maybe not such a good idea. Well, I just, I wanted to make sure it's not actually that big of a story because I don't think there, there's no data breach involved. There's no overreach they were asking for permission. And it seems like almost all the cases. But it's something you should know about because you're going to see a lot of people outraged about it. And if you want to be outraged about it, that's fine. Just be outraged for the right reasons. Listen, when you have a headline, this is Saraha Harvests Your Phone Contact. By asking you for it, without telling you what they're going to do for it. So if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to dailytechheadlines.com. Daily Tech Headlines gets you up to speed every day. You can get it as a podcast or on your Amazon Echo. I think it's on your Google Home finally now. I think we worked out the kinks there. And of course, it's in the anchor app at anchor.fm. Also, I want to thank all the participants in our subreddit at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com, the folks at our Facebook group, facebook.com, slash groups, slash Daily Tech News Show, keeping all kinds of good information flowing into the show, but also to each other. That's one of the things we value here at DTNS is the community of listeners out there talking to each other as well. Before we get into the mailbag though, we should probably check in with Chris Christensen, except that I didn't actually load his bit early. So I'm going to have to tap dance here for a second, Roger. But Chris Christensen is going to tell us some pretty cool marrying of high-tech hotel ideas. Marrying. Yeah. And when I say marrying, I say bringing different high-tech hotel ideas together. Tell us, Chris. This is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler with another Tech in Travel Minute. Every week I seem to hear another story about a hotel that is trying to get some press because they are becoming the most high-tech hotel. In this case, the story of downtown Buffalo Hotel in Buffalo West and Western. Why does that happen? All right. Let's try that again. This is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler. This is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler with another Tech in Travel Minute. Every week I seem to hear another story about a hotel that is trying to get some press because they are becoming the most high-tech hotel. In this case, there's a story of a downtown Buffalo Hotel in Buffalo, New York, the West End Hotel that already had a robotic butler so that it would deliver things to your room. And now they're combining that with the Amazon Echo. They're putting Amazon Echoes in each of their 116 rooms and you can order things through there using a skill that has been created for it and have things delivered to your room by an electronic butler. It seems like just about the perfect thing for somebody like me who's an introvert who would just as soon talk to Alexa and get something delivered by a robot. You can order towels, toothbrushes, shampoo, and other basics from the main desk. I thought it was pretty cool. I'm Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler. Would you want to do it, Roger? Would you want to talk to your hotel rooms, Amazon Echo, and have it bring you a toothbrush? No. I honestly go to hotel rooms and the last thing I want to do is see anyone else. I kid you not, as soon as I get into the door of a hotel room, I take that little card that says do not disturb and I leave it on on the outside until I leave. But no, but that's it, right? You wouldn't have to see a person because it's the robot that brings it to you. I don't want anyone knowing when I'm in or out. I'm very weird that way. Yeah, but the robot could just leave it at your door. No one needs to know. So what you're saying, Roger, has this even with robots and Amazon Echoes involved, has too many people? Just too many ears. They might not all be human ears. There's too many ears. Let's get to our emails. Ward writes, Hey, Tom, was chatting with a security guard in a coffee shop up here in central Alberta, Canada. And I asked where he was working. He said at the construction of a Bitcoin mine near Three Hills, Alberta. Apparently, it's a server farm. Location makes sense really. Stable power grid, low population, environmentally stable, almost non-existent as far as natural disasters go, and stable, if not completely submissive, provincial government. Anyway, thought I would drop this to you and see what you thought, longtime listener of the show. I love the idea that Alberta is mining country, Bitcoin mining country. They have the real estate to do it. And it does make sense. I mean, I don't know much about Three Hills, but I assume it's, I should probably look at it, but this is actually a great idea. I mean, I think of, I'm thinking of all the towns and the cities that used to have a thriving industry that because of technology no longer requires that company. So whether it's mining, like the silver mines in Nevada, whether it's, you know, some sort of textile processing, this would be great because they, some of these towns have a diminishing populations and they have a lot of available land. And for the most part, most of them have infrastructure like power that leads into it. So this is be something that, you know, some places might be, might be wanting to look into. Not specifically Bitcoin, but, you know, something along the same lines. Joe, formerly from DC, but now based in Sweden was hearing us have our discussion about just-in-time learning on Friday's show and said, I wanted to write in as I think there was some downplaying on what a great resource, YouTube, et cetera, can be. Working half my time in Ghana, I've met people here who are working on projects, et cetera, where they don't have another person they can call for an answer or even know a person who might impart baseline knowledge, especially on some things like electronics. Despite that, there's a growing community of using things like Arduinos and Raspberry Pis, especially coming out of local technical universities where they have good access to an internet connection. It really is amazing how often you can now push the edge of your knowledge and find someone online who knows that bit extra in a specific area. So he's like, just-in-time learning may not be right for all situations. We were talking about kids mostly on the show Friday, but it's really helpful in places like Ghana, apparently. And he does say that having limited data connections when he is in Ghana totally changes what he's willing to spend his time watching on YouTube because you have to really commit and say, okay, it's worth going through a bit of my data plan to download that YouTube video and watch it. Yeah, I mean, it's... You know, my argument isn't that it's bad, but it shouldn't be in lieu of just traditional education. Like, it could def... It's a complementary thing for me. And I think what he was saying is, yes, and in fact, in places where there is nothing to complement it, it's essential. It's world-changing for people who would have... who wouldn't have that information at all otherwise. We got another email that says, as a driver and dispatch for a small trucking company, I have a slightly different perspective on the rumored Tesla Semi. The range is just a third of what my semis can run and any self-driving function is useless. Really? Useless? Since it's for local runs, I can find drivers willing to do that under every rock. But finding drivers for something beyond home every night is extremely difficult. My trucks normally have a range of 1,200 miles and can go up to 1,400 miles possibly more depending on weather conditions. One of my drivers doing a local run will go about 500 miles in a day, possibly more. What the Tesla truck will really compete against is the companies that are testing natural gas on their day cabs, short haul trucks. The real need for innovation in self-driving is in the long haul loads. As finding drivers for that is quite difficult and programming to drive on an interstate or highway should be far simpler than attempting program for city driving. Now, to be clear, the Tesla thing was saying self-driving was a goal for them. It was 200 to 300 mile range electric trucks. They were not self-driving. So when he says self-driving is useless, I wonder if it's really as useless as you say if you can convoy a bunch even on a short haul. But that's not what Tesla is after immediately. What Tesla is coming with immediately, according to that report we had last week, was the shorter haul, the short end of the long haul, the 200 to 300. And it sounds like he's involved in these legitimately long haul runs of 1,200 to 1,400 miles. And that's not where Tesla is ready to help out yet. Yeah, and I think the Tesla Semi might definitely find legs in areas where you're just shifting trailers. Back when I worked over at Tri Valley, or was it Tri Valley? Can't remember. At Tri Valley, they do a lot of shipping of tomatoes during tomato season. They have just a tractor that pulls empty trailers around to load them up, but they don't actually move out of the yard itself. And so I could totally see a Tesla Semi doing that because if the batteries are user-replaceable where you could just swap them out and just keep some charge continuously, it would be totally useful. Another Jay Martin combines these last two emails and says, Hey, after your talk on Friday about knowing how to change a flat tire, I had a thought about our possible future. Do the makers of self-driving cars have a plan for when they break down? Like getting a flat tire? Will it expect the occupant to change the tire? Or will it call a service station on its own? Will a self-driving tow truck come to take the broken-down car and replace it with another? Just wondering if anyone's heard of what the plan is or what you think will happen. I have not heard what the plan is. Those are all interesting suggestions. Run flat tires. Yeah, once you get a puncture in it. So there's several ways I think they could accomplish this. Some of them are more energy-intensive. One is they could have a central inflation system like they do on super secure, like heavy armored. Okay, but hold on. Before you go too far down the how to fix a flat tire on a self-driving car, what about the malfunction that you didn't plan for? What about when that central tire system malfunctions? What about the central question of what happens when your self-driving car breaks down? Well, we can't make them proof from ever breaking down. Well, I mean, you would just give them a system like GM's OnStar where they would just put your car up in a flat bed. You get in the cab and say, take me home. Here's the address. Here's my credit card. Yeah, I think another Jay Martin suggestion of sending another car to carry you the rest of your way is probably going to have to be part of that. Real quickly, Ethan said he's nitpicking, but it's his field of study and he wanted to make a quick point about quadcopters. Generally speaking, the more rotors a vehicle has, the less efficient it is. And Ethan doesn't think we'll see flying vehicles in exploration missions off-planet that have more than two rotors. The advantage of multi-rotor systems is high maneuverability. While it would be cool, space missions care more about stability and efficiency. And then finally, Jeff says, do you or anyone in the DTNS audience have games on Android or web-base to teach a young child and parent game programming? He wants to teach his daughter to code video games. Maybe even direct us to a sub Reddit. That would be helpful. We watched some YouTube tutorials on the Unity game engine, but it was over our head. My five-year-old daughter is very interested in creating a video game and we've gone through her ideas and written them down, but neither my wife or I have experience in the game development arena. The closest I've come to is VB and Excel. We're hoping it will help jump start other areas of learning, like reading math and science for her as well. So yeah, folks, send us your thoughts and we'll forward them on to Jeff feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We'll suggest if to check out Yo-Yo Game's Game Maker. Now, this is kind of... It's an integrated development environment, but I remember when it first came out and the whole concept behind Game Maker was to basically democratize game development. So even people without a very deep programming background would be able to successfully create a game. And like, I'm not talking about like Minecraft or Halo or anything like that, but you know, something that someone could learn from and build skills upon. If not directly programming, but understanding how things work in terms of you know, various aspects of game design. Yeah, so Yo-Yo Games, y-o-y-o-games.com if you want to check that out. And like I said, email us and we'll send other suggestions on to Jeff as well. Hey, thanks to everybody who gives a little value back to this show for the value they get from the show. Our goal every month is to have at least one more Patreon than last month. Although, this Friday, we're going to announce a new goal for September. So that shouldn't stop you from backing us if you've been thinking about it. We still want to get one more Patreon than last year. Or last month, rather. And we appreciate everyone who continues to support us at patreon.com slash dtns. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com We're live Monday through Friday for 30pm Eastern 2030 UTC at alphageekradio.com and diamondclub.tv and our website is dailytechnewshow.com Back tomorrow with Patrick Beja. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frogpants Network. Get more at frogpants.com The Primeman Club hopes you have enjoyed this program. All righty, good show, Roger. What should we call it? C NYPD blew it on the Windows phone. Nice. If the apps don't fit. NYPD put a screen of death of your phone plan. You must quit. Say how you spell to quit. I think there's a... Say it again. If the apps don't fit bit, you must quit. I don't know. I'm going to say something a little too... No, I mean, I think a quit has a C in it, but that's beside the point. I don't understand about a quitting. I don't know what that has to do with the story. Get it. You must quit. You got to quit the phone. Oh, you quit using the phone. I see. All right. I get it now. Thank you. Mailbag Monday. Amazon says, how do you like Dema Apples? Microsoft Dupes NYPD. You mean the Fuji Apples? Fuji Apples. They're a band, you know. Smartwatches are dumb. Wholesale Foods. Half Paycheck. Whole Paycheck Amazon Foods. Sarah Ha is sloppy, not sly. I like that one. Provide credentials to be anonymous. I like that. That's pretty funny. Provide credentials to be anonymous. That's funny. Expensive Mistake. UberGo uses Expedia to find CEO. That's pretty funny too. Windows phones goes blue screen on the men in blue. Microsoft's Mixed Reality Messaging. That's the blue screen joke I was looking for. Thank you, Silverblade. Fitbit Flies with Ionic. Fitbit Hopes Last Watch Flies. Oh, Latest Watch Flies. I do like it. You mentioned this one, right? Uber uses Expedia to find CEO. Yes. Yes, that one. I think that was really funny. War, what is it good for? Going 200 miles per hour. Yeah. Fair enough. Whole Foods, Half Price. Whole Amazon Foods, Reset the Table. Ah-ha, Sarah-ha. Disney Cars, Real Life. Going too far down the Flat Tire Road. You know, what's interesting is they're working on a replacement for the Dramatic Tire. So the Tire of the Future won't be gone. Yeah. You know, I didn't mean to cut you off on the different tire potentials, but I felt like we were going down a rabbit hole. And the central question is, like, what do you do in a breakdown? But tell me more about those technologies because that is fascinating. Well, you could do what they, like, so for people who get those personalized armored cars because their lives are so valuable, they have a central tire inflation system. Do you know a lot of those people? Because I sure do. No, I wish, because they'd be rolling in it somehow, some way, maybe through osmosis. They have a central tire inflation. So if you get a flat, they just keep filling it up with air until you get to your destination. Run flat tires that they sell. GM puts them on Corvettes. They're good. If you get it flattened, you can drive up to 55 miles an hour on them until you get to your destination because their sidewalls are stiff enough to keep the car rolling on them. And yeah, like in the future, I did their planning on trying to develop tires that don't require you having a rubber donut with air in it. So if you get a puncture in it, it's just like puncturing it. And I think that's fair, is that one of the things that gets under covered in car technology is the technology that prevents breakdowns and stops cars from breaking down as often. Well, if you go full electric, your breakdown issues are probably going to drop by 50%, if not higher. There's so many parts of the combustion engine that you just don't have to deal with. Yeah, I mean, you don't have to worry about filling the radiator, checking the steering fluid, the brake fluid, all the other fluid. Wait, you don't need a steering fluid in an electric car? Why not? I'm sure they, I'm wondering if they're using, I think they're using electric boost, but I'm not sure if those use hydraulic fluid to turn the wheel. But that's not directly related to the combustion engine, is it? Well, there's just a lot of fluid you need to check that over time. Yeah. There's just a lot of things that can go wrong in that. There's a lot more parts, that's for sure. So many parts. Because you have an entire engine that needs to create the power, whereas the battery is the thing that creates the power in an electric car. Well, and then you have so many things attached to the engine. You have your air conditioner, you have your transmission, anything that's dynamic, anything that turns requires lubrication is going to break. I feel like a lot of that stuff is independent of whether it's an electric or gas motor. Well, you don't have a transmission in an electric car in the normal sense. Right? You don't have, it's not a stick and it's not an automatic transmission. So yeah, that one's directly related. That's just a continuous variable transmission. Well, I'm not even sure if they would do that. They don't have, they have that. That's for hybrids. You're right. They may not need it at all in an electric car. They don't need it. They could use it to increase efficiency but the weight savings that they get from not having it and the reduced complexity, they think generally outweighs it. And they need to set that weight because they're needed in battery. Yeah. And they have a reduction gear and the electric motors are good on torque. It's the same reason why trains don't have transmissions. Electric trains. Uh-oh. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of cars have electric boosted steering but p-squared is pointing out and then G-PEG both with electric cars you can have drive by wire. You know, they tried that once. A lot of people didn't like them because there's no feedback, feel through the steering wheel. And so people felt like they were just, Yeah. It's kind of like driving a video game where there's, I guess they could put force feedback into it. Yeah. You can update, that's another reason to update the firmware of your car. That's how they're going to get you instead of having you- Do you want the high-quality force feedback? Oh, I'll just, I'll get the account. Case model has that. So you can get the basic force feedback and get the really good force feedback. Oh, I see your steering wheel's a lot of tech. Oh yeah, then you could upgrade your steering wheel itself. So let me see, what do we have? NYPD blew it, blew it on Windows Phone as tops. I like Uber uses Expedia to find C. Yes. That's kind of the big news of the day too. You know what? He seems like a pretty button-down guy. He could be the one, hopefully. He could be the one to break this- Unless there's like shenanigans inside of shenanigans at that company, then I don't know. I've been in a dysfunctional department before and I can say that stuff spins out fast and no one ever gets a good, no one ever controls it until it makes everyone look bad. Then people are like, well, we better do something. Although, all right. I'm going to publish this podcast. What do you think? You should. Is it a wise idea? Neat. Do you have the whole foods near you? How far is the closest whole foods to you? Yeah, it's about two miles away, two and a half miles away. All right. Three miles away. It's not bad. I almost had to go check out yours to see if it was any different than mine. But it was so late by the time I went to mine because I just assumed mine would have the Amazon stuff up and when it didn't, I was like, whoa, what's up with that? I noticed something weird about whole foods here that I haven't noticed in the one in the Bay Area is that it's literally filled with every local stereotype of people. These are the super, super healthy vegan, whatever. In San Francisco, they just look like every other person who either shop there. That's because in San Francisco, those stereotypes shop at co-ops. They don't want to shop at that big corporate monolith. Oh, I always get a chuckle when I go to the whole foods here. We have our whole foods near us is full of a lot of moms. That's what that's what I noticed. I don't get that. I get like young hipster LA people. No, we have a lot of moms. And some of them are yoga pants, mom age, and I'm just guessing they're moms, but also a lot of them with kids. There's some with kids. Most of them are like the ones I see are like in their late 20s, early 30s. They dress pretty well, like it's expensive clothing. So it's like, they're all piled into their beaners or outies. Maybe the occasional fiat 5000. I think Kayne wants to know if there's a philosophy behind our YouTube thumbnails. And I told them that you pick them. And my only guidance has ever been, don't put me in every one of them. And that's my rule of thumb. And since YouTube doesn't let you scrub the video, and I've done this occasionally, I'll take the video and scrub through it and pull a thumbnail, but I try to get the guest or a popular expression off someone's face. Well, yeah. I think what people, when Roger means is that YouTube will select three potential thumbnails for you that you can just pick. And then if you want to pick a different one, you can't just scrub through and pick one. You have to actually do it. Capture and edit it yourself. So if they suggest three, and you don't like any of them, you'll make it yourself is what you're saying, but you don't do it that often. Is that right? You could do it if I think like, oh, this guest, it's someone we don't normally get. And YouTube doesn't select any four. Generally, it does a pretty good job. But usually, only one of them is your face. That's good. But sometimes it goes weird, and it's nothing but your face. No, there was a stretch before I had you start doing it where I was like, every time, I started to go and make them myself because every day it was picking three thumbnails of just me. I couldn't figure out why. It knows you were picking them and it was trying to polish your ego or whatever the hell the phrase is. Polish. Polish. Polish. You mean Polish, my ego. Ah, Polish. Polish dogs. Those are some of the best deals at the Costco food court. Their pizzas are, I don't know. People buy their pizzas. I've eaten them twice and I've never been happy. Three more sleeps until dragging. Oh, I need to find a Thursday. Yeah, that's right. We need a Thursday. I asked him unfortunately out. I made some joke that he was going to Burning Man, but. It's really hard. I would definitely pay to see video of I as a Burning Man. All right. Thanks everybody for watching and listening. You guys are the best. And we will see you tomorrow with Patrick Beja.