 Hi. Oh, what's up? Fancy meeting you here. It's a little fancy. What's the date today? Oh, no, I missed Mike McFauley. McFauley? Yeah. WDBA. So I want to go to the Frank and Son collectible show. I'll probably drag you along with me, Tom, since you're here by. Is it in Pasadena where all the collectible shows are? No, it's in the city of industry, so it makes it a kind of annoying. The city of industry. And it's not if they call it a show, but it's more of a flea market. It happens twice a week every week. Swap and collect. Yeah, kind of. But they call it a show, but I guess it's a show. So that's on a show. The next big thing is Raider Fest 6. So it's all Jerry Rice. Jerry Rice and Marcus Allen. Nice. Jim Plunkett. I thought he died. Tim Brown. No, I really thought I thought he was like, dude, that guy must be dead. Art Shell, Ted Hendricks, Dave Castro, Ray Guy. And you want to go to that one? Well, no, because I mixed. No, no, I want to go to the one of the 25th of February. I see, I see. Because as Rick Flair, the nature boy, you'll be there for Rick Flair. No, I don't. You know, you watch a lot of wrestling. I did not. I didn't know you were a big wrestler. I remember the Von Erick's. I watched a little bit of wrestling in junior high, but then I drifted away. I was interested into, I was really into glow because of the women. And then I started just watching, just like wrestling in general, because it kind of like, yeah, I just watched the WWF that comes on right after. I remember Sandy Phile. I think it was Sandy Phile in junior high. It was very sad when the Von Erick, when Von Erick died. He was inconsolable at lunch. Well, I was a little depressed when the Rowdy Rowdy Piper passed away. And that's because of the movies he did. Hell Comes a Frog Town and They Live. Oh, yeah, they live, dude. He's chewing the gum. He's all out of gum. One of the best, one of the best cult movies ever. Yeah, I agree. Well, boys, are you ready to do a show? Randy said. Yeah, I think. Here we go. This show is brought to you by audience members like me, not outside organizations. To find out more, go to dailytechnewshow.com slash support. This is the Daily Tech News for January 18th, 2017. I'm Tom Merritt. Joining me, Scott Johnson from the Central District of Frog Pants headquarters. Yes, that's what this is. And I'm in my office ready to talk technology with my favorite tech enthusiast, Tom Merritt, looking high above the world of technology. You want to talk about the man in the high castle, really? If maybe, maybe there's still people stumbling across our show for the first time, if this is your first time here, our job is to try to give you some context to what's happening in the world of tech news so that you can understand it better and sort of be able to speak smartly about it. Even though smartly is probably a horrible word and doesn't sound very smart when I say it that way. So come, join us as we provide color commentary to the world of technology, starting with the Seoul Central District Court rejecting a request for a warrant to arrest Samsung Group head J.Y. Lee on suspicion of bribery, embezzlement, and perjury. A lot of people felt it was a done deal. He was going to get arrested and this was going to be even worse of a year for Samsung than the exploding Note 7 year last year. But the district court rejected the request. So Samsung breathes a huge sigh of relief there. Yeah, I just found out their their home security cameras all have a common 100% across the board, no matter what model you have flaw that makes it easy for someone to hijack your camera. So I'm thrilled about that as well. Mozilla revealed a new logo with a colon and slashes as the I L and L and a new free and open source. Well, I don't know if it's open source, but it's open. There's an open font called Zilla. If you like the font, you can use it. Japanese toilet makers have agreed to standardize icons for eight functions used on toilets there with the hope of making them an international standard for soft flush, hard flush, the day, those kinds of things. For more on that, see this morning's the Morning Street. Now here are some more top stories. This one was a surprise. I think people knew Twitter was shopping around to sell off its developer platform, but Google has acquired it. Apparently Microsoft was in on the bidding as well. Twitter's mobile app developer platform called Fabric is the main part of this acquisition, but Google also gets the crash reporting system called Crashlytics. Mobile app analytics called Answers, the digits SMS login system and a development automation system called Fastlane. If you recall, Twitter launched Fabric back in 2014. It now serves 580,000 developers with apps reaching two and a half billion users. And don't worry, Google's not going to shut it down. They're going to continue to run Fabric and its related tools as part of the Google Developer Products Group. The guess is they'll use it to upsell developers on enterprise level offerings from Google. Crashlytics will become Firebase's main crash reporting tool. If you use that as part of Google's offering and Crashlytics founders, Jeff Siebert and Wayne Chang are leaving Twitter. They're not going to Google. Rich Perrette will lead the Crashlytics team that is going to Google. So every once in a while, you'll unearth a topic or something. I'll show up on a Wednesday and most of what you pull for the news. I go, oh, yeah, I've been following that. Or yes, I heard about that or whatever. I didn't know Twitter even had this. Oh, yeah, people who do development and use Twitter, obviously, 580,000 of them, very familiar with Fabric Crashlytics. I've seen knocked around in the news for various reasons because of its use. But I think the overall significance of this is Twitter had a strong developer offering and is now cutting out that offering to save money and focus the company. If Twitter were more successful right now, you would think they would want to expand this the way Amazon expanded web services as it built things that it needed to run its bookstore and retail outlet as Google has expanded Google Suite and services as an extension of its ability to organize the world's information as its mission used to be. Instead, I think people exaggerate how badly Twitter is doing, but this is definitely a canary in the coal mine sort of sign that they realize that they can't grow right now and they really need to focus on their main product. It also is the kind of thing you do if you're tidying up for sale, which we know Jack Dorsey has resisted, but there may still be pressure to do so. Yeah, it's interesting. And it's also I think a sign that you make a cool secondary product or tertiary product or have you want to put it if Google's interested in it and they come in and acquire it. So well done, I suppose. And hopefully that helps simplify things for the inevitable Google purchase of the entire Kicking Caboodle. Just my prediction, we'll see how it goes. Slack, another very popular platform is rolling out message threads to its web desktop and mobile apps today to make conversations easier to follow. To start a thread, you have to choose the context menu, choose the new chat bubble, and the thread will appear in a new pane to the right of the main chat. This helps separate conversations from each other. Any messages inside the thread can be sent back to the public channel and threads have their own unified inbox, which is pretty cool, located underneath all unreads and the left pane. I'm going to use this like crazy. I do wonder, though, if it goes against the habits of Slack users. I mean, Tom, when you hear about these changes and since they're in today, maybe you've had a chance to mess with them, but does it feel like something you're going to use? I would like it to be a little easier to get to. I actually have a hard time hovering and finding the emoji button. Sometimes when I want to, you know, add a little heart, I'm going to add a heart reaction to your message to me in Slack there. It takes me a little bit to do. And so it's not as easily as hitting a reply button to an email, which is what I would like this to be, because what Slack wants to do, they have said very clearly that they want to replace email. And this is part of their effort to do that, to say, look, if you want to have a side conversation and not clutter up the public channel, don't turn to email to do it, just have it right here. We'll give you an easy way to do that. And that's great. I love that idea. It definitely wants to keep me in Slack, which is fine. However, I wonder how often I'll really do it and how often I'll just reply in the public channel because I don't want to take that extra step of hover, find, select, click, wait for a panel, not the other way long. But, you know, it's just a bunch of steps. Sure. And I don't want to necessarily take this in a different unrelated direction, but this you reminded me that one of their core goals is to replace email. And in a lot of ways they have for me from a productive standpoint, like the way I work with collaborators, the way I work with clients and things that I do, it most definitely has certainly taken on the role of much of what I used to use email for. But as long as their pay structure slash business model is one of post all you want, but there's sort of an upper limit to how much that is. And when you've hit that limit, those things go away. In other words, your posts are sort of ephemeral, regardless of what you're typing. And eventually, it's depending on how active your free Slack channel is, that stuff's going to be gone. And the only way to retain it is to pay for it. I don't know that it ever replaces email because anybody anywhere can get a Gmail account and never lose a message that they've ever sent ever, first, far back as they want. And if they even if they hit their data cap and want to spend an extra buck a month or whatever it is, buck 99 a month, they can get a, you know, 100 gigabyte worth of storage. So I don't know if that's still their claim that this is a step toward that. I still feel like there's that elephant in the room that's difficult to get over. Well, there's replacing email in the enterprise and replacing email for everyone. And I think you make a very compelling case that this is not going to replace email for the widest populace. But I don't think that's what Slack wants. They want to replace it in businesses. And if you're a business who spends money to maintain an email system, you may like the idea of paying a little bit for Slack because it reduces the maintenance on that and reduces the load. That said, most of the cost of maintaining email is pretty sunk. So it's not like if you keep an email afloat, you're getting a big savings in Slack. Usually the argument is you're getting a productivity boost because people aren't wasting time on email threads and they're getting things done faster in Slack. Yeah, that's a good point. USFTC has filed a lawsuit claiming that Qualcomm maintained an illegal monopoly for mobile phone chips and charged customers artificially elevated royalties among the charges that the Qualcomm prevented Apple from using competitor's chips. Qualcomm can withhold licensing of essential patents if customers do not agree to its terms. Qualcomm says it doesn't. In fact, Qualcomm is appealing a South Korean fine of 1.03 trillion won. It's about 890 million US that was levied last month and is under investigation in Europe and Taiwan as well. So this isn't just the US doing this. This is a trend now in a press release. Qualcomm said it has quote, never withheld or threatened to withhold chip supply in order to obtain agreements to unfair or unreasonable licensing terms. The FTC's allegations to the contrary, the central thesis of the complaint is wrong. Wow. I mean, that has to play out in legal terms, but it does seem crazy to me that any company who is such an integral part of your supply chain for whatever your massive line of devices is, would withhold any part of that supply chain at basically blackmailing you to get the deal they want. That seems like you would never be able to get away from that. Like that's a thing that would haunt you for the entirety of your enterprise. So the careful wording, if we want to get into parsing is that Qualcomm has never withheld or threatened in order to obtain agreement to unfair or unreasonable licensing terms. Doesn't mean they haven't threatened to withhold chip supply in order to obtain fair or reasonable licensing terms in their opinion. So it all comes down to what does the court think fair and reasonable is? And are these friend, which is the fair reasonable licensing, which is sort of compelled and everybody agrees to, or is it fair and reasonable in a more wider sense where Qualcomm's like, no, it's worth this much. And if you won't pay us this much and we're not going to, we're not going to sell you our chips. And is that a monopolistic practice? If they do that, right? I had a, so this is a little weird, but I had a thought one day more. It was more like a dream. It's like one of those weekend naps where you kind of wake up while groggy and you think of these things. And I actually wrote this thing down and I've looked at it since and thought, I'm never going to use this for anything, but you just gave me a place to use it. And that's this in my head, I had this philosophical idea that as corporations companies, manufacturers get more complicated as we move further and further into the 21st century, the individuals at play, like the means and use of the world actually become more complex. In other words, you can't just look at the president of Samsung as we've noted earlier and say, you are directly responsible for some very specific criminal behavior, or you can, but you may not be able to prove it because it's very complicated, tons of red tape. So many people between him and every other employee. And so it's just more and more complicated. But the bigger you get in this dream I had, the companies themselves become simpler. In other words, a giant Samsung and a giant Qualcomm and giant Apple or whatever, they do things that can be easily interpreted as quote unquote evil or malpractice or whatever word you want to use. And in my dream, they fought like giant Godzilla robots because they had simple motivations like Godzilla monsters and robots had. They were just like, I'm going to smash you. And it's as simple as that. The bigger they get, the easier it is to define their large actions than it is to look at any one of the almost molecules that help run it, including CEOs and point the finger at them. So anyway, I don't know why I thought I was never going to get to use that in any kind of context. And I got to here today on the show. Yeah. So, so you're saying that the FTC in the United States and then the equivalent agencies in Taiwan, South Korea are the referees coming in and calling a foul on Qualcomm. It's very well said. That's basically it. Yeah. Uh, the information reports that Google will bring its Android one device program to the US market by the middle of the year. That's 2017. Android one is a program where manufacturers agree to follow certain spec requirements, deliver updates in a timely fashion and not load up phones with a bunch of bloatware that are using Android. In exchange, Google helps market the phones. Android one phones are available now in India, Spain, Portugal, Nigeria, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya and Morocco, to name just a shortlist. Uh, I always thought this was kind of an interesting tact for them to take. You know, the Apple tact has always been, well, we control everything from the software to the hardware to the end result to the, to the app store to the whatever they kind of have their hand and every possible cookie jar to control that supply chain all the way down to the end user and in theory, uh, ensure a better upgrade experience and, you know, more consistent updates and a more secure experience or whatever. And androids always had this reputation of, well, can't always, you don't always know what you're going to get. That Samsung phone may have a bunch of crap where you can never get rid of and you can't stand any hate or Verizon putting something on anything that they're carriers on. And that's weird. And that's a pain. And this is just a, this is a different way of doing that. I've always, I've always sort of admired this, but I never thought we'd see it here. Well, it's the low end, right? This isn't for smartphone users who would normally consider buying a Samsung Galaxy S seven, uh, which has its own blowware on it. Right. That's, that's Google's thing is we'll let Samsung and HTC and everybody put their stuff on there because that will sell more Android phones on the low end. They're competing against other operating systems, smaller operating systems, and a lot of times manufacturers say, look, we either cover this thing in blowware, uh, to make our money back or we don't use Android. Uh, and, and a lot of times they're not using Android in these markets like India. So, so Google wanted to do something to promote the use of Android on these more less expensive phones that seems to have worked in India. And they've expanded the con countries in Africa, uh, and Europe. And it is interesting that they're going to the United States next because I think Google may look at the United States as the next expansion market for people who make these, you know, more affordable phones. And we saw a few of them announced for the United States at CES. And so rather than say, well, obviously the next market that needs it is maybe somewhere else in Africa or maybe it's Pakistan, but we better get these into the U S and get this established there so that these companies that are making these lower end phones are working with us there as well. Yeah, I think it's really cool. I'm anxious to see who does what and see if that's like an interesting second device that doesn't cost very much for me to still seek sort of keep the edge. Well, I just, it's not marketed at you at all. This is, this is not meant for you to ever consider. This is for someone who is on an extremely low income, uh, and probably does a pay-as-you-go plan and wants to have a decent phone, but can't spend a lot on it. Do you think there's a chance for, I guess what I keep seeing in this and maybe I'm wrong to see it, but I keep thinking, well, some smart scrappy startup is going to be a part of this program. End up with some phone that just gets eaten up by every college kid in America or something because it just hits all the right needs and wants and I mean, possibly possibly. I don't know. Usually college kids have more money because they're able to go to college than, than the people that these phones are targeted for. But yeah, it would be interesting to see if a company could leverage that low end market into becoming a top end. And that's, that's Xiaomi. That's Xiaomi story is they're saying, Hey, we're going to, we're going to be a, an affordable phone maker, uh, but we're going to provide high end functions in our phones. Mm hmm. Latest version of the Google app for Android can save searches entered when offline, uh, another accessible feature for, for folks in places with spotty connectivity, uh, or bad coverage. Whenever a data connection is restored, those searches will be delivered and results are also saved for viewing offline. If a connection is lost, feature is meant for use in places with those lower spotty connections. So this is, you know, you're on the subway or you're out in a rural area and, uh, or maybe you just have a really low data cap, uh, and, and you want to turn off your data from time to time, but carry those search results with you. It's, it's a more elegant way for Google to work. Reminds me of a, uh, almost like a caching system. Um, well, it is literally caching things, but, but it, it's like a, um, how do you, how do you, how do you quantify this? I mean, it's one of those things since, you know, 1997 or whatever, that we just always sort of know if we need to search for something, it's going to have to be on a connected device or computer to get any kind of results. And it feels almost like time traveling to say, if I lose connection, it's not going to lose what I asked for, or in some cases, what results I got from the question I asked, I think it's, I think that's an awesome feature. And I can think of, I can think of specific examples where I could use this. Um, yeah, it's interesting to me that when coverage was worse, we didn't have these kinds of options because we didn't have as many people relying on data coverage or using phones. Right. Uh, I remember using an open source program to download those websites before I'd get on a plane back in the early 2000s, but even that was not a very widespread use, right? Most, most people just understood, well, I'm not going to have a data connection, but as coverage gets better and as phone usage has increased, we see more people wanting to use these functions in more places where they wouldn't have even dreamed of using them before, which leads the software makers to say, well, we need to come up with a more elegant way of delivering that functionality in those edge areas. Yeah. Well, it'd be nice if they put it on an iOS as well. It's the only other thing I would add. I mean, you should be able to, um, they often do with those same features. Sometimes they show up there first, uh, finally, the CIA has posted almost 12 million, that's a million with an M, declassified documents online covering 50 years of intelligence reports, briefings and more. And these documents include some of the following. And I love this stuff. Discussions about the assassination, uh, or the, uh, the idea of assassinating Fidel Castro, details on Nazi war crimes, reports of UFO sightings, and a study into human telepathy that they called Project Stargate, which is also probably what they called Stargate before they've made a TV show out of it. Anyway, Stargate, Yeah, Stargate, very important. Um, most documents are, uh, more than 25 years old and have been automatically declassified since 95, but they were previously only available on four total computers located in the U S National Archives in Maryland. So the database is known as Crest C R E S T. That's the CIA record search tool. And, uh, is now up there and available. How many, how many sci-fi storyline slash thrillers we need to get out of this data? I wonder if you could find, you could find references to MK ultra in there, the mind control experiments. Uh, you, you can find all kinds of stuff. And this is the kind of thing that I think a lot of people assume is never going to happen. They're like, yeah, the CIA doesn't want you to look too closely at this stuff. So even though they agreed to declassify some stuff, they, they keep it limited. So it's really hard to get to. And sometimes the reason things aren't made accessible is because it's just really hard and it takes a while to do. And if you don't prioritize, and we can argue about why they didn't prioritize, but lots of companies don't put things online because they're like, we just don't want to spend the money to assign a person to do that. Uh, and so it took a while. But the fact that this is now up there and, and of an easily searchable, like it's just search box type UFO into that search box and then see what, what comes up. Like, uh, this is kind of like the way back machine for, for CIA stuff. Yeah. I think it's awesome. I just think it took too long. I mean, I know, you know, it's easy to, to look a gift horse in the mouth. But 2017, and they've been, most of this has been available since 95 and they've been on four computers. Like, what were they on? Just like hard drives, where they all connected to some sort of central database. Like I, the way I picture that is way, way low rent and it bugs me a little bit that that was the case. But hey, I'll take it for what it is now. I love this kind of stuff. Get all the tech headlines each day in less than 10 minutes. Be sure to subscribe to dailytechheadlines.com. And now let's move on to our discussion story. Valves Gabe Newell conducted and asked me anything, an AMA on Reddit yesterday, where he gave substantial answers to things. I want to talk about one particular answer he gave. He had a lot of things about what his favorite games are and upcoming roadmaps of games. But the thing that caught my eye, I want to talk about is his response to transparency and how they talk to their community. And then Scott has some ideas on where Valve might be going that we're going to talk about. One person asked him, asked Newell, why Valve doesn't talk to its community as much as other companies. And Newell said the company cancels and changes things much later in development than other companies and that tracking our choices would be annoying and frustrating. So essentially he's saying, you know what, if we told you what we're doing, you'd all get really mad because we constantly would be changing our mind and Valve is already, as we all know, famous for you know, pushing its release dates. Can you imagine if they were giving us more details that they kept changing and pushing down the road? Yeah, I think what what they're asking for, well, I mean, this all needs to be in context before they were printing money with Steam. They were a company whose bottom line depended more on regular releases of new games and new products. And that's not the case so much anymore, like the way the way that Steam rakes in money, they now have even a bigger opportunity to sort of mull through things, iterate, decide to cancel before they even announce that sort of thing. So I think it's easy for users to get the feeling that they're just not telling them anything when really all this has helped them do is spread things out a little bit. A comparable company would be somebody like Blizzard, who often will not, will go to great lengths not to announce or leak information about new projects until they're absolutely sure that they intend to go to market. And the few times they haven't done that have kind of bitten them in the butt, but they're still the kind of company willing to cancel something very last minute be it like Starcraft Ghost or Warcraft Adventures or more recently their Titan project. And Valve's a lot like that. They're very much a very secrecy based company when it comes to their ITs and their ideas. And now that they've got a very broad base of let's take all the time we need because Steam pays for everything, I think we should probably expect that even more. I think that's just what we're experiencing now. So that doesn't surprise me. His answer doesn't surprise me. And I think it just sort of confirms what I already believed that that they are, you know, they're they're ticking to a different clock than the rest of us are. Yeah. And they don't need to do anything different. They're very smart and can take their time. And Newell admits like the company gets a bad rap for not communicating more. He said they listen to what customers say, but they communicate through the products they release with updates that address issues or functionality. Now, he admits that causes a lag between someone raising an issue and Valve responding, which may make it seem like the company isn't listening, especially if you don't realize that the product coming out is actually the response to your complaint from a year ago. And he wrote, so sometimes the latency is rough for everyone, including us when we want to address issues quickly on the balance, though, we think it's usually worth the trade off this. And I mean no disrespect Gabe Newell, because I think he's shooting straight here. I don't think he's trying to spin it, but it reeks a little bit of rationalization where maybe what they don't want to do is just spend time engaging with the community, like saying our products speak for themselves is somewhat of a convenient way of saying, we really just want to work on this stuff and not talk to you about it. Yeah. Well, again, it affords you that you can do that when you're laying on a giant bed of money. Sure. It's well earned money. It's legitimate that they've done incredible things to get where they're at. But also somebody once told me an interesting thing, the most successful, especially game companies, are often just dudes that like to hang around and look at cool stuff and talk about why something's rad. And they're not like these uber efficient guys in suits who have their day exactly timed out perfectly. And the culture tends to permeate from those leadership positions. And and what you end up with is way cooler things when they come out. But there are no real rush to get them done, you know. And so I don't want to generalize too much and make it seem too simplified. But I think that Gabe's one of those guys that he just sort of having a good time and enjoying himself and and and likes to see this company do cool things. He's not sitting around chomping at the bit saying, when am I going to have that idea for a half life three on my desk? I need it. Yeah, I don't think that's how they go. Well, and it's it's a very IT engineering attitude that I have had and found myself expressing, which is, do you want me to fix it or tell you how I'm going to fix it? I can't do both. Right. You know, it's it's when when your spouse or your child is leading over your shoulder and saying, well, what's wrong with it? What are you going to do? And you're like, I can either fix the washing machine or tell you about it. But you know, leave me alone for a minute and then I can explain afterwards. And I think there's a little bit of that there, too, which is we have a company full of people who just want to do the things. We don't want to talk about doing things or and keep in mind like you were talking about earlier, these these companies aren't monoliths like wouldn't hurt to hire a couple of people who would be able to talk about the things. No, I think you could. I mean, certainly they could do more. It's just whether or not they have the motivation to right? Like what what is the are going to people are people are going to stop using steam and droves because they feel like the company isn't communicating about where, you know, portal three is in development. Probably not. They just don't have the fire on them to do anything like that. And maybe that will come one day when it comes from some area we don't know. Maybe it will come from this perceived apathy from them. But I I've always felt like they're a company that has a very specific kind of culture. They have certain standards and they don't release anything if it's under those standards. And they make so much money hand over fist, even if you just took Dota 2 and said that's your business model. They are a very wealthy company just because of Dota 2 forgetting about everything else that they are and what they do and how they own it and what their platform is that I just think they've afforded themselves this ability and that makes them slower to do it. That being said, here's Gabe Nule talking on an AMA in the middle of Reddit. You know, be a transparent about why they're not transparent. Yeah, I think it's OK. Now, as far as as far as the company itself, I have some ideas about maybe their next step because part of me thinks although just sit there like they are and never go anywhere else. But I think one of the hallmarks of of Valve and their success in not just the gaming world, but really the I don't know successful startup world if that's the thing is that they're not OK to just sit on their laurels. They want to expand. Steam is definitely an expression of that and a pretty bold vision at the time that seemed crazy to everybody, myself included, and now is absolutely the PC gaming platform that I'm going to be I'm not a hundred percent certain, but I'm 90 percent certain that I said, good luck getting other game companies to participate. Valve, when they launched it and think about what they were proposing, we are a developer, we make Half-Life and guess what? That's a great game and everything, but we're also going to launch a service where people can buy video games across the spectrum. And everybody thought, oh, well, they'll be able to get Half-Life Team Fortress 2. You know, they'll get your games and nobody else will be left out. And that was absolutely not the case. They work with all the major publishers with very few exceptions, even companies as big as EA Activision and otherwise. And a huge swath of people who are making small independent projects, which have seen incredible life on the platform. So by all accounts, a screaming success, something the PC needed terribly, and a huge missed opportunity for Microsoft, which we talked about in other discussions. But then it makes me wonder where they go in next, where is Valve 10 years from now? Are they just still sitting back on chairs going, man, the Steam money sure is sweet. I don't think so. And here's some ideas I think that we may see from them maybe sooner than later in some of these cases. So they dabbled quite a bit in hardware recently with Steam Boxes, and that was more of a collaboration with providers of hardware. So you could, you know, basically license in to be an official Steam, Steam machine, and you could get one from Falcon Northwest or Alienware or whatever. And these were devices that were connected to televisions and other streaming boxes that would just stream from your main PC to your TV kind of like their own Steam link does. And Steam link in the controller, the Valve controller or Steam controller rather are two more examples of hardware dabbling. But they all feel like alpha work to me, them testing the water, see what it will bear and taking their time with it and analyzing what they learn from that. And I think ultimately we can end up seeing a whole bunch more from them in terms of official hardware, both on the PC side and potentially console hardware, all tied into the Steam ecosystem and all tied into their VR initiatives as well. That seems likely to me. And I don't know what the timetable is on that or any of that, but I feel like they're going to get more into hardware than ever before in the coming years. Although they seem to want to let others play on their platform. That's the HTC Vive. That's the Steam boxes. They are, in fact, a software company. So maybe that makes sense. Do you see them doing any innovation on the software side? Well, so that's a really interesting point. I mean, as much as they have done that as a platform for others to provide hardware for, kind of the Android method. At the same time, they've made their own controller to some success. People love them. Some people hate them. And they've made that Steam Link box. Those are two very specific valve branded pieces of hardware. But they've also, some people forget this, they also have something called Steam OS, which is basically a Linux fork that is designed to run a bunch of games in the Linux environment. You can get your machine all souped up with that version of Linux. I don't know how that's been in terms of success for them, but I could see them one day building out with their software expertise, an actual operating system that is 100% totally geared to gaming. And everything from how it's optimized to what it supports to, I don't know how, how the games interact with each other, I probably possibilities I'm not even thinking of could all be possible under the scenario. But that is a behemoth undertaking. You're basically talking about shifting the entire paradigm away from Microsoft Windows, away from the DirectX architecture into something that would be. Well, and we know Gabe has his issues with Windows. Oh, yeah, for sure. Right. So so he has some motivation there to to do that. And I think in some way they've made they've made efforts to kind of do that. Steam OS was a direct effort to do that. But to have that and it be a mainstream thing is only probable when only people when people only buy their PCs for gaming. But that's not the world we live in. People buy their PCs for lots of multifunction use and they're just happy that it also plays games. So few of us who would like to just invest in the hardware and have nothing but a gaming platform. But I think we're a little early for that. But I don't think it's off the table that Valve couldn't work on that. And also think about how big machine learning and AI is right now and how everybody's investing in research and development and products and everything else to do with those areas of technology. They could be a big player in that they've got this enormous base of users playing all sorts of games using all kinds of different hardware and software. I'm surprised we're not hearing more about them bringing in people to do that. It does it does seem that they're they're more engaged with virtual reality than AI and machine learning. It'd be interesting to see if they started to nab some people to research that. Well, and they even said the article mentioned or one of the article the AMA somebody asked him what do you see in the future of Valve and he did make some reference to how interesting work on AI is these days. So he's hinting that you know that I out for acquisitions and hires then. Yeah. I mean that's the other thing is you know they made some really good hires for their VR initiative. They've done some other interesting things internally lately but they also lost some really smart people. Some really good people left and went to Oculus also some really good people that Oculus went to went to Val so it isn't like that doesn't happen in that industry. But but yeah, like I think it'll be more overt. If they really want to put their foot in that pool, you're going to hear about it up front. You're going to hear him get up and say, you know what the next team works or what's it called? There's there's whatever it is their big conference they do over here or things like GDC. You can see them doing a big push for for AI and machine learning. But I think there's even smaller stuff they could be a twitch competitor in a heartbeat. Now I don't know that this is them wanting to do that why they would want that business. You could argue twitch doesn't build it into steam is what you're saying and just boom. Yeah, they just integrated in there, which they've done with some of their games. You can go watch a Dota 2 match right now in the engine. Yeah, browse those as if they were videos and they're happening in real time. So I just think there's some potential for the platform to do more things like that who knows if they will portal movie. Oh, yeah. Why not? Yeah, movies. That's another thing also getting more into like streaming content. And I know they do movies and TV shows you can get in there now. I find it a little confusing. It's all sort of nestled in with the entire ecosystem. Yeah, times I'm browsing. I'm like, I know that game. I know that game. I've never heard of that game. Oh, because that's a movie, not a game. So I run into that all the time. So they have to refine some of that. But they could be a big player in that area if they wanted to. And then we don't know what his big aspirations are. What are his Elon Musk things? What are they have those? Or is he just want to keep printing money? I don't know. See, that's the that's the thing. He's a guy with some sweet long hair and a pretty rad beard and would fit behind just about anybody's D&D table on his casual weekly D&D game where he's, you know, DMing a new campaign he wrote when he was in high school. Like he's just that kind of dude. And that may just mean that that's all he'll ever care about. I've only seen it twice in public myself. And it was at two different Blizzcons. And he loves to go around and see what other people are working on. He loves to he loves games. He used to work at Microsoft and was my senses. He wants to stay with games that I don't see him getting into, you know, starting a space exploration company or funding self-driving cars or anything like that. But it's possible. I mean, who knows? I don't know if he's got those aspirations, but I'm curious about what they might be. But like I said, all of this or just sit around and print more money. Yeah, just keep that steam steam powered ride. I mean, it won't roll forever. You got to keep you got to keep up on it. You got to keep it relevant. But for now, it doesn't look like it's long now. Thanks to everybody who participates in our sub ready. You can submit stories and vote on them at daily tech news show dot Reddit dot com. And thanks to people who email us feedback at daily tech news show dot com. John wrote in and said when you consider the fact that a political campaign is little more than demography driven data marketing, which let's face it, that's what it is, says John. It's hard to imagine someone more equipped to disrupt the political process than the CEO of Facebook, who has access to demographic data that would make the best campaign managers salivate. The irony is that it would raise ethical concerns for Zuckerberg to share this data with a candidate he supported. But if he decided to run for president himself, no one could really blame him for leveraging everything Facebook knows about all of us. Oh, I don't know. Oh, I think people could easily blame him. Yeah, I think I would have, I think I might even have no problem saying, this feels a little fishy that you know, I think that would be a big thing that he would have to disclose and I will not be using this kind of data, that kind of data transparency. But that doesn't change John's point, I don't think, which is he has, he is conversant in the sort of data. And it is the engine that powers campaigns these days. Yeah, I think I just I totally just or I totally agree. And I, and I, again, not to get to current events here, but I feel like, if there was ever a time where we're leading up to a time where you have to where you don't have to be so stringent about what you're willing to do or not do. Maybe Zuckerberg is your guy. I don't know. Yeah, James wrote the other day, you asked for game developers to write in if they've had problems. We had talked about, you know, game developers having a hard time finding jobs in the industry, they'd have to move out of the gaming industry to other developer jobs. James said, I almost wrote in since I'm a game developer, but I had nothing meaningful to say other than my anecdotal evidence from my data point of one that the game industry is great. In 21 years of making games, I was never forced to find a new job. But I did choose to upgrade twice and I have been very pleased with my career. I love making games. I love the industry. It's better than ever. As far as I'm concerned, I know everyone has different experiences. And yeah, I don't think James even meant for me to read this on the show to be honest, but this is the only response I got. Well, I mean, this was last we talked about these numbers last Wednesday. And I thought about a lot or a lot about this and about the part of the part of the lead that may have gotten buried a little bit, which is it isn't so much that it's a finite business where there are so many chairs in the minute something happens wrong, the chairs get pulled away and there's nowhere to sit. I think more than not people moved to other things. We've talked about the huge uptick in VR development. The big uptick in independent development, people doing things on their own. I think you can't discount those too much. In fact, those probably should be counted on more because it's happening more and more. So a lot of stuff maybe gets moved around and you hear about big examples like Oh, Disney Infinity and the whole team in Salt Lake City shutting down that Disney Interactive office going belly up. I mean, I don't think James is trying to argue there aren't these things happening. Definitely. But I don't think I think he's probably onto something. I mean, he may not be making this point, but I'll make this point. I think we hear about the shark attacks, but we don't think about all the times people swam without the shark swimmers. Yeah, maybe beatmaster writes in the chatroom. Well, we know he isn't working for EA or Konami then. Well, yeah. See, again, they're they're the outlier. Maybe they aren't the outliers and not an indication of an overall collapse or something. Well, that is it for this episode of Daily Tech New Show. Before we out of here, Scott, anything to tell the folks about nothing huge other than the Twitch channel has been screaming great since Twitch opened their arms to a much more diverse lineup of programming. So if you are interested in the kinds of shows that I produce, make and the games I play and the art I draw and all that stuff that's happening on the Twitch, you can find me over at twitch.tv slash frogpants for everything else. Frogpants.com or on Twitter, Scott Johnson. And thanks for having me as always. Yeah, absolutely. Just a note, if you're someone who's admired these Daily Tech News show mugs that we sell at DailyTechnewshow.com slash store, the ones with the blue interior on their way out. I don't even know how many we've got left and we're going to get a new batch, but they'll have a white interior. I don't know if that makes any difference to you. But if it does, I just thought I'd let you know. Daily Tech News show dot com slash support is all the ways to support the show. And thanks to everyone who supports the show in any way. Just a reminder, if you join our Patreon at $5 a month, which is about 25 cents a show, you get a weekly summary of the tech news emailed to you, as well as in that email, a weekly exclusive column by me that goes just to those patrons, anybody at the $5 a month level or up this week, I'm going to be sharing my thoughts on tech eliminating jobs. And I have a different topic every week. I talked about what CES means a couple of weeks back. That sounds interesting to you. Check us out $5 a month at patreon.com slash DTNS. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We're live Monday through Friday 4 30 p.m. Eastern at alphageekradio.com and diamondclub.tv. And our website is dailytechnewshow.com back tomorrow with Justin Robert Young. Talk to you that this show was part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program. Boom Chocolata. Good show. What do we call it? It was very efficient show. Was it? I think so. Good. I'm glad to hear that. It felt really just from my perspective really clean it. Yeah. Well oiled. Well, Roger, like a wet wrestler. I'm afraid your hangout is doing it to you again. Oh man. Nope. Goodbye. He'll be back. Well, let's look at showbots. Here he comes. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you now. Right now blows off some steam. Ah, opening the valve. I like this one. Full steam ahead. Not bad. X files through X files, declassified valve, new old proposition. Honestly, full steam ahead is the clear cut one for my definitely running away with it now running away with it. See, this is the problem with democracy. It was just down there with all the others until Roger gave it his endorsement. And then I know, oh, I think that's the right one. I should vote. Isn't that how democracy works? You influence people. The ideal democracy is that everyone votes based on what they think is best, not not at the whims of someone else. You know, my ideal dinner would include a lot of dessert, but you know what? The reality is I can't eat that much. Yeah, but that's that's that's different. You're talking about, you know, you and determining your own best interest, your ideal may be dessert, but you've decided that your best interests are not to have dessert. That's not someone else influencing you one way or the other. He's right. Thing is, the ideal of democracy never plays out in reality. Ideal is you just strive for the ideal. You never get it. Ken from Chicago rightly points out Roger's cult of personality is just persuasive. It is a cult. And with all cults, there must be some sort of Kulei. No, no, no. It's offering tithe. Yeah, there needs to be a sacrifice, a blood goat or something or money, money is easily fungible solution to murdering four legged barnyard animals. I want a vegan cult. No sacrificing. Maybe, you know, what would you sacrifice? A giant squash, muscle, muscle density and awakeness in the middle of the afternoon. I used to when I was just eating like vegetables and fruit because I got on some weird health kick, I was tired all the time. Yeah. Well, full steam ahead is going full steam ahead. Is it steaming ahead? Go about that TV. So I think we could probably settle on that one. Yeah, there's a full head of steam at the top there. A full head of steam. Full steam ahead. That's pretty good. Was for Robert. Full steam ahead it is. Hey, wait, Robert Ford, like the former mayor of Toronto. What? You know, you are reacting to something you can see, but people listening don't know. I'm sorry. I'm reading the I'm reading the chat. Ken from Chicago says a blood sacrifice was good enough for Robert Ford. Robert Ford, the the coward Robert Ford that shot Jesse James. That what you mean? Was that a blood? I don't understand the blood sacrifice part, though. Well, he killed Jesse. Oh, Westworld. Oh, that Robert Ford. Sorry, I've only seen the first two episodes of that spoilers. I'm hooked on Emerald City now. Are you? You like it? Like I said before, it's like it's one of the first takes of the Wizard of Oz, and I don't include the whiz as part of that. Where it's it's it takes kind of the not not even the thieves, but it just takes elements of it, but makes it a really interesting like new story. Like the names are similar and the circumstances is how Dorothy gets in that world is similar, but everything else is different. So it's it's really fun. I really enjoyed it. I didn't think I would. I thought it'd be like that weird Zoe Deschanel one that got really boring. She did that one 10 man or something. Yeah, I like that one all right. But I see. I know what you're saying. It was not, you know, I could skip it. And I would hate to say this, but it was forgettable. Yeah, I mean, like I could skip an episode and it wouldn't feel like all I need to catch up. This if I skip an episode of the mini series, too, which you shouldn't ever be able to skip an episode in a mini. That's what I mean. This is like it. I'll watch it and I'll watch like the little synopsis at the beginning to catch me up. Catch me up, catch up, catch me up. I'm up to the final episode of season two of High Castle and I have loved I'm exactly at the same point. That's so funny. You've you've caught me. It's we got distracted and we just now what we just watched episode nine of season two last night. Nine was so that's hilarious. Nine is so good. That was the best episode. Oh my gosh. It's it's totally changed from season one. And Eileen just keeps asking. Is it Tagami? Is that the trade minister's name? Trade Minister Tagami. She's just like, what is up with him? What is up with it? I'd like, we're going to find out just hanging there. And I think like this episode was the first time we started to find out. And of course, he had the big revelation about the guy from Hiroshima. Yeah, that's so interesting. And just there, I don't know. They're just they're really good at. They're doing that lost thing, right? Like the the reveals feel good. Everything feels good about the crossover. Is this real? Is this not real stuff? The historic stuff is really interesting. I really as as a huge fan of the books, my favorite book. I am enjoying the fact that they have transitioned to telling a story that's not from the book. Sort of, you know, somewhat in the same world as the book that I have no idea. Yeah, this is not like Game of Thrones where there are six books, obviously, there was just one one short novel. But yeah, you're just you're getting expanded universe here, which is super fun. And it feels right. It doesn't feel like it shouldn't like, oh, they've totally abandoned what Philip K. I mean, they're closer to Philip K. Dick's version than Blade Runner is to do Andrade's Dream of Electric Sheep. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. It's so funny as the time goes on, I switch around as to who's my favorite or what's happening is my favorite thing. I think every storyline round is really interesting. But Smith is so compelling. Rufus Sewell. Yeah, everything about his arc and Group and Führer Smith. Yep. And his thing in that room with Reinhardt. The guy from Overwatch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the guy from Overwatch. Hello. Get behind me. No, he goes in there. I thought I was believing Smith like you're supposed. I mean, he's I'm like, oh, we've skipped ahead because the show does jump, you know, plays with time a little bit. Sure. And I thought, oh, my gosh, the bomb an hour ago. Like, I don't want to give anything away. But like he's saying all these things and I'm and I'm buying it. And then I realize, oh, I'm as dumb as the guy in the cell. Oh, so good. Yeah. Now, when he started to say I had the same experience where I'm like partway through the conversation, it just started to dawn on me like, oh, this is not going to end how Reinhardt thinks it's going to end. And the way I mean, they brought his clothes and his ring. Yeah, really. It's just so meticulously made like it's very true to Germany of that time. Yeah. I don't want it to ever end. I hope I hope they keep going for a while. KV 87 says Smith is weirdly sympathetic for a Nazi character and he's absolutely right. I mean, that's the other brilliance in the writing and the performance of Smith is when you forget he's an uber group and furor of the greater Reich. Yeah, I like him. Yeah, he's top Nazi in the in the entire, you know, American Reich and his story is so weird because he didn't start there, but he ended up there. Yeah. And then he's really ruthless in some ways and incredibly sympathetic in other ways. And when mad his fate like Rufus Sewell who plays him, I don't think anyone's seen Dark City. He's really good in that. He's also in Victoria. Yeah, the new mini series about Queen Victoria. He's incredible. Just completely. I cannot take my eyes off him when he's in a scene. I'm just enveloped in his performance. So yeah. I can't remember who was HBO or somebody passed on that series before Amazon bought it. Oh, yeah. Idiots. Yeah. You know what? Me, everyone has so many good things on their plates. I mean, you know, really, it's it's a it's a what do they call it a bearishment of riches? Yeah, it's like they had HBO had a fish plate and someone suggested a red wine and they're like, no, we're not having red wine. We have a fish plate. And so Amazon was like, we're having steak. We'll take the red wine. That's pretty good. As someone who enjoys his metaphors, I find it. I mean, what do you call it? An age of TV? Or I mean, are we still in the age of TV? A golden age of streaming content to golden age? Probably. But like, we already had a golden age. Do we call it the Platinum Age? What was the golden age? Silver age, the golden age, Platinum Age. If we had a golden age, I don't know what that was. Yeah, it was the age of TV was considered the fifties and sixties. Well, I guess it's just the first age of television. I don't know that that's really the golden age. I call that the people called it the gold. I know what you're saying, Roger, people called the golden age of television because that's when television was brand new and all the classics came out. But I think we have to redefine now and just be like, that's just the first age of time. Yeah, I don't think we need classification. I think right now we're in the middle of some of the best stuff. That would be like saying the silent films of the teens are the golden age of cinema and the golden age of cinema is usually considered to be the fifties and sixties. Right. And it's funny because it's all flipped like movies are in a weird place for me right now. But TV is in this like really great place. So it's all kind of flipped around. I've given up on watching all the good TV, which is something I've never had to do. That's hard. You'd really hard. Yeah, it's really hard. Imagine there's always one or two shows you have to watch and then you decide what other things you want to watch. These days, it's like there are 15 shows I have to watch right now. And I'm not good. I'm just not going to force yourself. No, you dedicated. Totally do. You're not wrong. Kim, especially with especially with the. With so many stories threaded with so many subplots, you really need to pay attention like to get the most out of it. And if you, you know, if you're trying to watch 15 shows for a podcast or something, it's very easy to like, you know, I kind of watch this. I I actually watch some shows that I know aren't as good as other shows I could be watching because I don't have to pay attention to them. That, you know, it's it's it's more relaxing. Like I don't have to focus like I do on Game of Thrones. Not that I don't like focusing on Game of Thrones, but it starts to become like, man, I don't just read James Joyce. Sometimes, you know, I read James S.A. Corey and other times I read something that's just really light. Like it not every book I read has to be the same intensity. Sure. Be Bazooka comics. Bazooka Joe. Yeah. Yeah. Go buy a bunch of gum. Just read my gum. Catch up on the storyline that I'm sure is really great now. There's a great through line in Bazooka Joe comics that people don't even. It sucks because SNL got, you know, for the longest time, it was just in a wasteland of like really weird skits. And it's a really, really good high points, but it was just followed by like a wasteland of what? And it's just consistently been good. It's hard to keep up with that. They tightened up. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if it was like something they did with the the writers, the writer section where they, you know, brought in someone to kind of. Well, I wonder if part of it was, look, our audience falls off after the first half hour. Don't spend a lot of time and energy on the last half hour of the show because nobody's watching. We're just keeping the, you know, the airwaves warm for NBC at that point. And then at some point, people watching it the next day, things showing up like with digital shorts made them say, you know what? All of this can have a return because it doesn't have to be watched when it's live. And they decided, you know what, we need to try to make all of it really good because it could all take off in one medium or another. That's just I just make it that up. I don't know if that's actually true. I think part of it is they've mixed up. They started really before they used to do in the 70s. They did the little full commercials and they've always had that thing. But now they've made them their own separate production where they well, when they bought the Lonely Island guys that that's not really formalized. But even outside of those guys, I mean, there's I think there's a there is a dedicated staff that does only that. Well, yeah, none of those guys are there anymore. It's just become a normal thing that they do. They said, well, before they used to have everyone like work on everything. And it's just like you can't you got to get it. They learned to specialize. It's an assembly line of comedy now. Is that why there's so many evening shows that seem to have the same writers? Like, oh, we'll use that show. Use that show. Well, you know, the thing is a lot of those jokes are based on news or current affairs. Yeah. Some of the jokes are just the obvious ones that everybody thinks of. Right now they're just Trump jokes. Yeah, you know, that's going to get old pretty fast, though. Like I'm already tired of it. Yeah, it's like I can't. I understand we're coming from, but like you don't have anything else. I don't really watch a lot of late night comedy shows anymore, though. I mean, I don't know what I do. I watch Jimmy Falcon because that he he's he's doing the old vaudeville stuff where you do a bunch of yeah, a variety of skits. You don't think it would work, but it works really well. It's like a long barrel take, yeah, because he involves the guests in it, which is something that they kind of does that too. And Jimmy Kimmel actually was doing it before Fallon. Fallon is just sort of crossing over the top and then it kind of dovetailed on. Well, it's a staple, but they've brought it back. And he's I think I mean, I'm surprised he he's Letterman did skits, but they were him. Yeah, you know, stupid human tricks. What Fallon did was like, let's have the star who's here for the interview do something else besides just talking about it. Like Kimmel did that too. Yeah. But for some reason, the Fallon ones are so much more memorable, like when they do the like when they spun off the lip-seeking thing that they did on Fallon. Yeah. And then I always run off carpool karaoke into late late night talk shows. Late night TV kind of was born with Letterman and almost and kind of died with Letterman when he left. Oh, no, it was born with Carson. No, I don't know. Born before Carson. But for me, I was always a Letterman guy. So my interest in the new stuff is super low. I don't even pay attention to I'm a Jack Parr aficionado myself. What was it? What did he get fired for? Was a water closet or a joke or something? He's in water closet. Oh, that's what they didn't like the fact that he was in a joking context of bringing up the bathroom. It was just not. It's just not OK. Yeah, that's what those were the days. Imagine. That's crazy. He goes and bleeds the F word on Saturday Night Live. Jack poor Jack Parr got fired for saying water closet. Different times. Yeah. You know, before Jack Parr, it was the guy who started the Tonight Show. Everyone always forgets. Tom or Alan. Not Tim Allen. No, he took. Oh, no, he took over. You're right. Not Tim. What's his name? Allen, something Allen. Steve Allen. Steve Allen. He took over. Was he first? I can't remember. You see who Steve Allen was first. OK. I like Steve Allen. He's funny. In other things, I never saw obviously I was born. Screwed up the link. Johnny Carson is the one everyone knows because he is the one that he he was the one that stretched over to to not to demographics, but to age clumps didn't he? He got like the older viewers, but he also got a lot of the people in. Well, he also was on for the longest stretch to. Well, so is Leno, but I make Leno kind of. Is sort of who is as interesting as watching, you know, buttering toast. It's just he played it really safe. I mean, he played well to his audience, but it just wasn't, you know. What? It's like a SMR for me, watching people butter, butter toast. His little channel on YouTube, I get interested. Oh, yeah. No, we talked about this all yesterday. All right. Thanks, everybody, for watching, listening, enjoying. Spread the word. Tell people on Twitter and Facebook that you like the show. We'll talk to tomorrow.