coming up next on Tech news today Airbnb comes Under Fire for discrimination against those with disabilities a new Qualcomm fast charging spec is announced One login is hacked and the encrypted passwords were likely decrypted in the process that’s no good and Sam movich from ours Technica tells us all about Nintendo switches online service delays and some good news all that more coming up next on Tech news today this is Twi bandwidth for Tech news today is provided by cash fly at [Music] c.com this is Tech news today episode 1781 recorded Friday June 2nd 2017 this episode of tech news today is brought to you by ORS and Alps powerful skincare made for a guy’s active lifestyle join thousands of men using ORS and today go to orand alps. c/ twit to receive 15% off your first order welcome to the tech news Palace we talk about all of the technology news that you need to know today I’m Megan Marone I’m Jason how we cleaned up the tech news Palace we dusted off the shelves made it look all nice tech newsy for you that’s what happens when men are alone they sweep clean totally that’s that’s what I do when I’m alone I’m like I’ve got nothing better to do I might as well just clean up uh shall we get started I think we shall according to a new study by redur University Airbnb hosts are discriminating against disabled guests the study claims that the rise of internet-based Home Sharing is perpetuating exclusion for people with disabilities because many services do not require full accessibility and create both intentional and unintentional discrimination researchers studied access for people with disabilities to Airbnb rentals using a randomized field experiment of 3,847 lodging requests made between June and November 2016 in the continental US they created profiles for people with the following disabilities blindness cerebal paly dwarfism and spinal cord industry in injury and they found that uh there was discrimination going on of course uh there has been proven discrimination in the past with Airbnb uh for people with black sounding names they put to get they put in a uh September 8th 2016 they put in a non-discrimination policy uh but they did this study before and after and found that people’s responses did not change uh at all so one of the caveats is what they also found that some people just went through without uh you know just I guess they call it a um pre-approval there was no pre-approval or they got pre-approval and so some people with disabilities did not get pre-approval and what they were saying what the researchers said was maybe that was because they said they had a disability and so the owners of the homes wanted to find out what accommodations they needed before they pre approved them so they they ended up getting approved but they just wanted to know what they needed yeah and that’s one of the recommendations that that they made kind of at the end is that Travelers with disabilities need to do their part and ask a lot of questions of the host even though they might be inclined not to because they’re worried that if they make mention of of these needs that they that they would have in staying there that it might sway the the host from from um allowing them in but also for the host to reach out to Travelers with disabilities to get a better understanding of what actually meets their needs to understand that instead of just automatically kind of I don’t know assuming uh the worst in in whatever in whatever case and and saying no you know for whatever reason you know you’re not you’re not approved for this Airbnb is basically saying that 90% uh well 90 plus% resp response rate thanks to superhost status which is is kind of an incentive for people to respond uh respond a lot they end up getting this badge on their on their hosting um profile that you know they’re a superhost and that that kind of elevates their results in searches if they if they do that if they put on these uh what is it called it’s a it’s it bypasses the pre-approval setup it’s instant booking there it is if they set it up as instant booking then they don’t have to go through the process of you know contact getting in contact with anyone that’s all that’s making these bookings with them that wants to get into the home they’re automatically approved and that moves them up in the rankings and potentially you know propels them to the superhost status which I’m sure anyone hosting on an Airbnb would want because it means way more visibility for them so airb Airbnb has done some things to kind of try and encourage that that behavior well I mean they said that there’s many instances with Uber doing this and Lyft and a lot of the sharing economy the new um companies that are disrupting uh you know different Industries find that they they you know they’re also bypassing a lot of regulations and so of course like the Americans with Disabilities Act requires you know that hotels have access you know ramps and all kinds of other things and you know parking spaces and so a lot of these houses don’t don’t have that and so it’s just reducing access for people and I’m glad that the study um you know will raise awareness of that yeah I mean they don’t have access to that because you know it’s somebody’s home it’s like their home that they decided oh well I can make some money on my home and so you know those those regulations that you’re talking the Ada regul regulations that apply to hotels I mean that’s that’s a b that’s a business that’s that’s an economy that has been you know that has been built up over so many years and then you have this whole influx of of new people to this industry that what do they have they have their home either their primary or their secondary residence and that’s what they’re runting out you know letting uh people stay at so of course they haven’t built built in some of these things that someone with disability might actually need access to uh any way that they can encourage them to do so um you know obviously is a good thing this is a big technology push and you want it to be inclusive of everybody if you can qualcom has a new fast charging spec for you yes you Megan a cool 6 months after it unveiled its last fast charging spec but hey fast charging is awesome so I say bring it on Quick Charge 4 plus brings a new uh a few new features a few new uh improvements to quick charge for compliant devices that’ll speed up quick charge by up to 15% faster it’ll also lower the temperature while charging by up to 3° cooler which makes for better charge efficiency so less power kind of dropped in the process and improved safety features that monitor both the case and connector temperatures to make sure things don’t overheat or short circuit uh while charging uh but there aren’t really a whole lot of phones kind of on the road map right now for four let alone 4 plus ZTE Nubia z17 is the only phone that’s really on the road map right now for 4 plus and I mean 4 was just rolled out you know like six months ago and still hasn’t had anyone kind of jump on board everybody’s still kind of stuck on the Quick Charge three specs so I think it’s going to be a while before we start to see this but any way to speed it up I’m all for it it’s interesting what a big deal this is that you know how fast you’re charging it made me think like once we have autonomous cars you know there’s not going to be that Z to 60 and you know 5 seconds it’s 0 to 50% in 15 minutes oh yes absolutely that’s going to be a big deal right yeah so like when we stop you know stop really leaving our house because we are you know just homebound most of the time it’s going to be like how fast is your charge that’s going to be the you know the badge of I don’t know what that’s that’s already the question that I ask people at parties is how fast does your phone charge it’s very important to me I mean I mean you spent a period of time with the pixel and it has the fast charging and the iPhone doesn’t have well I mean it doesn’t have Quick Charge Quick Charge is is kind of dedicated to the Snapdragon processors and uh in qualcomm’s technology but did you notice a difference between kind of the speed of charge did you care I didn’t really care I mean what I noticed was that the pixel ran out of charge faster than my iPhone right and uh that’s what I noticed more than how fast it could charge because I do tend to carry uh you know battery packs around but you don’t want to like if you have a battery pack and you’re out for a long time you don’t want to you know you want to be able to charge it fast with that and that this this is what this quick charge promises too even if you’re using a battery pack it’s going to charge right more quickly so you know you don’t have to carry it around up in the club or wherever you are where you need your yeah I’m in the club hold on let me take out this battery pack and plug it into my phone oh yeah that is not cool no think sad dancing you just did yeah you know no this is everybody wants to dance like me right now no they don’t okay fine I’ll stop look this is the best I can do I’m not feeling very well today um uh I don’t know like I guess I understand where you’re coming from as far as like the iPhone being super efficient with the battery that’s operating on the device to the point to where kind of the speed of charge is irrelevant because it always makes it through to the end of the day I think on Android at least my experience with Android is that almost every device I’ve ever had it’s been kind of a challenge at least at some point to get through to the end of the day maybe when you buy it new it’s great but then three four five months down the line you get back into that normal routine of having to charge it up a little bit here and a little bit there and because I’ve gotten so used to that the speed of charge is actually very important to me because it’s just part of my reality with Android devices well part of why Android devices run out of charge more quickly is because of the way all of the apps use I’m just thinking about the fact that we were just well I was just dancing on this show and I’m sorry well anyone who was just listening uh will uh have to download the video now to see dancing okay I’m My Own drug induced haste I apologize my point was and maybe this is a question because I’m not sure this is true but what I thought was that Android devices run out of charge more quickly because of the way the apps the battery management with the apps and isn’t that supposed to improve with the newest version of Android this is not the only time we’ve heard Google roll out features that do that so yes absolutely that’s supposed to be there’s theyve supposedly made changes under the hood on Android o that will tackle that uh but you know this is now three years running where there have been major changes to battery performance on the back end you know with doze and all these other features that improve battery and I’m not saying that they don’t improve things they definitely do it’s just the way Android operates you know um developers are given a lot of access to how that phone runs behind everything that you’re you’re doing intentially um and so yeah this time is maybe a little bit different because they’re really kind of reing it in as far as what can happen behind the scenes and I hope it makes a big enough change regardless of all of that I’m I’m always happy to to see like Quick Charge is something that I couldn’t not have anymore like it’s it’s that important anytime I have to go back to a phone that doesn’t have Quick Charge I notice it like immediately and it’s and I hate it so I’m happy to see things always improving on that front well ston weight in our chat room says uh fast charging is a fire hazard but qualcom also said that there’s isn’t the whatever this new technology is it helps ward off overheating right and short circuiting um certainly something that they’re working on yeah it’s intelligent thermal balancing very intelligent use a password manager they said it will make you more secure they said now corporate level password Management Service One login admits that a recent data breach exposed customer data even data that was encrypted the attack started May 31st in the company’s us operating region it lasted for 7 hours before it was shut down and now uh on their blog One login is saying they can’t rule out the fact that customers might have been able to uh gain the ability to decrypt data I think I meant to say not customers but uh hackers might have got gained access unauthorized access to uh to decrypt the data so that’s not not good so were they using two Factor was One login instituting two Factor all the time no they weren’t they said they were using machine learning to decide whether or not to use two Factor so they their promise was oh you know you don’t always need to factor with everything and so sometimes they’ll use it and sometimes they won’t and and the machines the robots know and apparently um maybe they did not yeah I mean is this problem related to the yes or no of usage of two factor or because and that very well that very well could be uh part of part of it I would yeah personally I would say if if two-factor yes always two Factor CU it’s better than not but maybe their machine learning is really super smart um from what I from what I understand about the backend of this basically it was an access of uh Amazon’s um AWS Keys as part of this access it was used to access AWS API they used a different host from a smaller service provider to basically take those keys and get access to this information and then of course uh the the service One login um detected that like what s hours later and immediately kind of refused those keys shut those keys down along with the AWS instance by that point um it was kind of a little too late but I just don’t know how if you are a a password U manager like this you store this information in encrypted database as they do which is what what you need to be doing but that it’s so easy to access the way to decrypt those keys I I don’t understand how that’s so easily done like this is devastating for One login I don’t think I think if you’re a user of of the service it’s really hard to trust them going forward after this because they really did not demonstrate that they that they were you know capable of protecting all of that very valuable information yeah I mean I I don’t know if it was easy I mean I think hackers are very very smart for sure there are some very smart people out there so I I don’t think that I read anywhere where they were like oh they were just keeping them there sitting there they you know had them in a notebook here are our passwords and here’s how to decrypt them yeah but you have to be able to I mean you salt them you hash them you you throw in a whole bunch of other layers that make it butter cheese you put them in between two slices of bread maybe throw it in the toaster I mean you you you have to protect this obviously more than just encrypting it and if it’s as simple as you know a decryption key that was this I don’t know it it seems to me like it was pretty darn easy compared to a lot of other services that this doesn’t happen with I don’t know the process that they actually did to decrypt all this information but they should have protected that encrypted information a lot better than they did obviously yeah but when I I mean whenever I hear stories like this I’m just continually afraid of the fact that you know what if someone did get access to my you know one password password or my last pass password and you know so I don’t like I don’t you keep my iCloud password in last p that’s like my one thing that’s I have two passwords that I remember and those are the two and so because I just get nervous about having everything in one cloud cloud receptacle yeah I think a lot I think more and more people are worried about that I mean it’s certainly if you’re a hacker and you’re looking for a a Target that has a lot of payoff I imagine a service like this is like a pretty pretty great payoff pretty very very attractive in that Pursuit because of just the amount of valuable information valuable data that they’re holding on to a lot of people this is why they use password managers that are on the device encrypted on the device don’t use the cloud at all it maybe makes things a little bit less convenient in certain ways or maybe Hardware encryption with a key like we were talking about the UB key um but uh you know it it gives you a little bit better peace of mind kind of lowers lowers the target a little bit more and that’s the thing human behavior has a lot to do with it as well because if you don’t use a password manager you’re more likely to create easier to remember passwords something’s better than nothing right like using a a password manager is better than having the same password on 500 different sites because you’re trying to remember it all and it’s and it’s impossible to remember 500 different passwords per service so yeah it’s all all these different levels I guess shades of security you probably forgot about delicious a long long time ago after all the social book marking service has been a thing for 15 years now uh but not for much longer alas pinboard has acquired delicious and as of June 15th the service will be switched to readon mode after changing hands a number of times over the years it now looks like pinboard is seeking to convert delicious users into pinboard users once and for all uh pinboard of course different from delicious pinboard costs $11 per year um but they do say that with the users that they transfer over that they can convert over uh users can move their bookmarks over to pinboard from delicious which I from what I understand was not easy to do or possible to do prior so they’re going to make that possible uh but that would be they’re going to gain around 1 billion bookmarks out of the deal if bookmarks is valuable which I guess that’s their business so it must be at least somewhat valuable I mean it must be valuable what are people looking at what’s important to them you know in terms of an advertising uh perspective uh Denise Howell this week in law she still uses delicious because I remember we both started our podcast on Twitter around the same time I stopped um she’s been going all these years and I said oh remember delicious I said that a few months ago and she said I still use it this was jumping jumping jump monkeys yes not yes and uh so that was what 2007 20087 2008 which sounds about right because that was about the time I was uh I was producing Buzz out loud over at scet and delicious I mean that was our staple that was our was built on delicious you know that was our primary tool um so I have fond memories of using delicious and then watching it just kind of fade off into the distance as other services and other ways of of cloud you know Cloud document sharing and all that kind of stuff kind of superseded it well they said that you can still keep your your your bookmarks won’t go away right they’ll still stay there and they said in the blog post you’ll be able to save new bookmarks after June you won’t be able to save any new bookmarks after June 15th but everything else will continue continue to work or break in familiar ways okay good that’s com so just like a little poke into uh you know just like we’ve given up right exactly because I think well well Gregory uh posted this on Gregory viewer Gregory thank you he posted this on our subreddit and also emailed me and I guess the uh one of the founders was delicious now works at pinboard or something there was some kind of like leaving um some crossover absolutely who’s that creepy Drifter hanging outside your kids Elementary School trying to hook them on the latest drug oh it’s Facebook a report in the information says the company is planning to launch a new instant messaging tool called Talk designed to get kids while they’re young the company is also trying to appeal to kids Facebook messaging parents by adding parental controls to talk that are not a not available in Facebook competitors like Snapchat it also appears that you’ll be able to use Facebook’s talk without having a Facebook account which everyone knows is for squares so they don’t know for sure that this really exists they found they found this in the code uh the information found this in the Facebook code that there’s that they’re coming up with this uh it’ll only allow uh kids to talk to people that parents approve that’s what what the this says in the codes it’s only for kids 13 and over or kids or their parents willing to lie and say that they are 13 and over um so yeah I think it’s interesting that the only um the the only parental control control that was mentioned was you get to approve who they’re talking to and in theory that is great in practice it is Impractical because I think you know I I used to think oh I got to check you know I tell my kids when they’re on Instagram or you you can only follow people that you know and then I’ll go through their followers or the people they follow and I’ll say like who’s that and they’re like oh that’s my cousins basketball coaches sister’s brother’s ex-girlfriend and like you oh totally approve yeah know them you you have no idea the trail or I mean is there also the thought that maybe that trail like you’re being thrown off the trail like you don’t actually know who that is based on who they told you sometimes perhaps but what I’ve realized is that kind of oh who are they talking to they’re going to lur lured into you know talking to a stranger like that issue is much less um I I would say like you know it’s they don’t end up in my kids sense they don’t you know they don’t end up being lured by strangers to chat online as much as I feel like the damage is just how much time they spend on it and that you know what this sounds to me as a tool to try to like get your kids to get on messaging you know young younger um as early as possible to get them on Facebook and get them sort of you know just really used to this uh you know just texting essentially and I know I was joking about a drug but I do I do the more and more I see my kids and their friends spending time communicating with their phones and not face to face I do really think that you know I would not be surprised in 10 15 years if uh you know the surgant general or we were all just like I can’t believe we handed our kids our 10-year-old kids over these phones that you know I’m not saying that like the radio waves cause cancer but just they’re damaging I think like that young I feel like kids don’t need to be communicating it’s an addictive behavior sort of thing I think in some ways and we already we already know very well that there is a lot of psychology that goes into the creation of social media and social networks and that whole thing you know I I know for myself that it’s very addicting for myself to to log into Twitter and to see what people are saying about today’s current events like it’s very habit forming to a certain degree which is maybe a strange way to put it it’s part of the way why I stepped part of the reason why I stepped away from Facebook because I knew for myself just being exposed to it I had more likelihood to open it up when I didn’t really need to I’ve got other things going on in my life and I’m you know I’m a I’m a grown-up I’m a fully grown man you know versus uh kids who who are learning to navigate this world from a very young age meanwhile technology companies of course they want to get get to them as early as possible because everybody else is doing that Google is also doing this you know we talked a couple of months ago about their family tool family link I believe is what it’s called and of course you know I’ve got my kids set up with that because they have their own tablets that we give them a short amount of time every week to do so it makes sense to do that because I have some family I have some parental controls so that’s like a win for me as a parent but what that does is that also gets the kid into that world and into that ecosystem and exposes them to that service from a very young age and yeah it’s like brand Affinity from a very early early time and I guess we don’t really know or understand where that leads 10 15 years down the line yeah I don’t think we do and you know we love technology if you’re listening to this you love technology and some ways we’re you know if you have children or you know you sometimes this is more of a concern to you than someone who isn’t immersed in this world who doesn’t really think too much about the effects of technology I mean there’s the common story everyone always throws this out but Steve Jobs did not give his kids an iPad you know because it’s like the people making this these tools that can be addicting are not handing them over to their children but at the same time they are creating um you know all of these new tools that make it you know that are trying to uh make parents hand them over to their children well yeah and they’re also meeting um requests that people have for their own families meanwhile do do the people that are making these requests like we we do it out of convenience we do it because our kids love te you know technology and of course they would spend all day on a tablet if we let them um but is that is that a is that a good decision you know is that good for for their brains while they’re developing um I don’t know but we’re we’re asking for it that’s why they’re making these things and it behooves them too uh to get them in early so uh quick reminder that you can uh comment on anything that we discuss including this story I’m sure you have thoughts on it email TNT twit.tv and let us know what you think and of course you can always subscribe to Tech News Today by going to our show page at twitch.tv/ TNT up next we’re going to chat with Sam movich from ours Technica about some Nintendo switch news and a few other things the return of Tekken uh as well but first let’s take take a minute to thank ORS and Alps they’re the sponsor of this episode and they make my skin wonderful it’s time to talk about your skin because I’m done talking about my skin GQ calls ores and Alps the new essential for your daily routine it’s powerful skincare made for a guy’s dehydrated skin and active lifestyle orzen Alps uh has a a few products that they have in the Box here and I can show them to you here real quick this is the orzen Alps face uh cleansing stick it’s the first men’s solid face wash that’s right it’s solid it’s spillproof it’s not going to spill out of there it’s activated charcoal uh that gently exfoliates pulls impurities out of your skin you just apply it on your face then splash a little water on your face and you’re good to go it smells really nice as well you also got let’s see here the twoin one hydrating and anti-aging face and eye cream it’s not greasy it’s fast absorbing and it’s going to make it so that I’m n all you know aging uh under under my eyes and all that kind of stuff no one wants that right uh and then their No Nonsense natural deodorant uh which nourishes your skin and absorbs odor which is what you really want a deodorant to do right everything is super portable it’s TSA approved uh made with powerful and natural ingredients that offer intense hydration uh products last up to three months and depending on how you use these products you could maybe even extended a little bit longer than that orz an Alps products were developed by two women Laura and Mia they developed it for their husbands they partnered with leading chemists and created ores and Alps to protect their husband’s skin from extreme outdoor conditions that often resulted in dry and cracked skin uh Laura and Mia also set out to solve a common problem which I’ve definitely had in the past spilled product in gym bags uh so they wanted to create uh things like this this solid face wash uh for men it’s it’s perfect uh to take on the go you can take it to the gym work travel your next adventure whatever it’s not going to spill it’s perfect for travel their name was inspired of course by their husband’s favorite outdoor activities ores as in rowing and Alps as in skiing but you know you can apply it to snowboarding if you like uh your skin care should keep up with your on thee-o lifestyle so this is perfect for you it’s perfect for all the dads out there if you’re looking for a unique gift for Father’s Day uh we have it right here orzen Alps is offering the twit audience a fresh start to your day join the thousands of guys using ORS and Alps visit orand alps. comom twit you’re going to receive 15% off your first order that’s Orsen Alps O A RS a n d a l PS or anals.com twit and we thank or and Alps for their support all right it’s that time again time to talk some switch news with Sam scovic from RS Technica how’s it going Sam hi I’ve got switch news I’ve got a switch I got I’m so jealous I want to switch now I that one is actually got the special new Neon yellow controllers which if you can’t tell are kind of ugly sorry Nintendo I mean they’re screaming at me a little bit we we watched a video on yesterday’s episode where a switch was dropped from a drone really really high up in the sky and it still feet yeah it still worked so it’s durable yeah I it it’s got a few scratches on it but my switch survived the fall that’s true oh good good I’m happy you were you were willing to take the plung okay so first up uh there’s been some news on Nintendo switch online those who are eager to subscribe probably won’t be very happy with the news what’s the word well Nintendo switch has an impending online service coming the Nintendo switch online service is its current temporary name and it has been delayed uh it was going to get a soft launch this summer with or actually I’m sorry a full launch this summer with a bunch of random features and that has been scaled back we’re going to have to wait until at least 2018 for the full Nintendo switch online Suite uh and that means there it’s a few things one there’s an app that’s going to be coming uh that will let you do online multiplayer matchmaking with friends setting sort of times and coordinating when you’re going to play with friends and doing voice chat with them and also a doing of games uh old classic for now NES games the idea being that if you’re a paying subscriber you’ll get some games now this delay got a little bit of good news because originally Nintendo said we’re going to let you play one Nintendo game classic game for uh per month with the subscription and at the end of the month that game goes away unless you pay up for the full game uh people said wow that’s really nickel and Di and intendo agreed which is shocking this is a company that tends to do historically these sort of anti-consumer things where they say we’re big and you’re just going to deal with it now they’ve come back and said okay if you are paying $20 a year uh which is a lot cheaper than comparable Xbox and Playstation plans uh you will get access to just this glut of NES classic games potentially other systems as well uh so that as long as you’re a paying subscriber you’ll be able to access whatever classic games that they have deemed you worthy uh so that is something we need a more detail on uh but that is the most news we have gotten for now which is essentially delay we might have more news and it might come at this coming month’s E3 any word on the $20 so the back catalog of these classic games do you just automatically you pay $20 for your first time I don’t know 6 months into the launch the service and you get all of the ones that have been released before then or is it just you get access to the ones that are released from the time you’re paying going forward that’s that’s a really good question because if you are an Xbox Live Gold subscriber or PlayStation Plus subscriber it works in a weird way where you need to be paying in the month that a game is rolled out to have access to it so if for example you’re a brand new PlayStation plus member you don’t get Rocket league for free like older subscribers do you simply get the ones per month that you had at the time Nintendo has not clarified whether it’ll have an ongoing collection that you’ll be able to access or whether it’ll be sort of a drip feed of a few games a month that compile over time so that information is lacking a ton of information is lacking I mean this is this Nintendo switch still doesn’t have a quote unquote Virtual Console yet which it’s other big systems the Wii U and the 3DS do being that you can pay five8 10 $15 a pop and just own old games we don’t know when that’s coming to switch if your old purchases will transfer to the switch and things like that so that’s still all pretty unclear so what about subscriptions uh services for games do you like I mean like I I love Netflix but I’m not a big fan of a lot of other subscription services do you what are the pros and cons of gaming subscription Services well that’s a there’s a lot of uh value that they can generate if you get in early enough again like I said with PlayStation Plus if you’re an old member and you’ve just been paying over time you’re are getting this giant catalog of games that are essentially yours you have to log in occasionally and prove that you are a legitimate subscriber but they’re there on your hard drive ready to go and they let you access online multiplayer at this point all the big systems are moving toward this that that uh $20 a year subscription with Nintendo will be required to play at least some if not all online multiplayer games going forward once it kicks in uh so in the meantime because it’s been delayed those online multiplayer games coming later this year including arms and Splatoon 2 and any others that Nintendo has yet to announce those will work online without paying so you get a little bit longer of this free trial of online play uh but the idea is when you’re paying you get access with Nintendo’s case to this app and i’ there for reasons I’ll explain further on there are some questions and issues about whether that little smartphone app is going to be better than Xbox Live and PlayStation Plus just having that stuff built into the systems good say way you also wrote about Nintendo’s messy strategy when it comes to online multiplayer games and that has something to do with the smartphone anyways explain this horory monstrosity so Hy is a peripheral maker they are best known uh HRI as a company that makes these fighting sticks these big bulky expensive uh fighting game controllers for your street fighters and Tekken and so on they’re making uh the first officially licensed Nintendo switch chat headset so if anyone’s watching on the video feed you’re probably going to see the image of what that entails you get a pair of headphones they plug into a dongle and the dongle has then two out cables one goes to your Nintendo switch the other goes to your phone it’s this sort of tangling of of cables and things and the reason being if you want to chat with your teammates uh who are in other places while playing an online game such as Splatoon 2 and this is a Splatoon 2 branded headset you’re going to need your phone your phone is going to be the thing that processes voice chat uh your Nintendo switch won’t be doing it uh and and that means you’re just going to have to do this extra juggle you’re going to have to contend now with two devices that have limited battery life and this sort of thing uh so it’s a funky thing that spells out something that Nintendo had not officially said which is if you want to chat with your online friends get your phone out have it hooked up and contend with that extra cabling and bungling well it’s a portable device just go and hang out in a bar with your friends like you do with your twitch not everybody plays online uh or plays in groups especially a game like Splatoon 2 which is very competitive uh and if you and your friends are teaming up and trying to be the best guys on the internet against other people in the United States or the world you’re going to do it online and you’re going to want some sort of way to get that chat worked out so and I know Nintendo wants people to think of Splatoon 2 as a competitive game if not an esport because they’ve been advertising it as such uh the very first first ads show Splatoon 2 uh with these guys in matching outfits all teaming up to Take On The World in Splatoon so I I know that matters and so they’re sort of setting this up as saying hey competitive gamer we’re kind of advertising to you but we’re also kind of treating you as the not the most crucial person because you get to jump through hoops right dongle the dongle life it’s everywhere it is even Nintendo is not safe from the dongle I can’t even imagine trying to play with this thing with the iPhone 7 which doesn’t even have a headphone jack like what the do you do there goodness yeah iPhone iPhone users left out in the cold serious business yeah wait it just got serious uh you’ve been spending some quality time with Tekken 7 I haven’t thought about Tekken in a really long time what do you think about it well teeken 7 I’ve been really impressed by and that review is going to be up at RS Technica tomorrow morning uh because I had to wait for the computer version uh you I’ve been playing fighting games for so long that I remember hooking up a gravis gam pad to my old PC and playing one Must Fall 2097 that’s a deep cut in terms of like cyber robot punching each other sort of game it was very weird I you should look it up but at any rate things have changed now that consoles and computers are sort of blurring you’re getting more fighting games on computers Street Fighter Killer Instinct other series Guilty Gear is a a kind of semi- Niche one that people like those are on computer but Tekken 7 is the most impressive PC port for a fighting series I have seen in my writing career and I’ll tell you why I can take my ply little Surface Pro which has an Intel HD graphics blah blah blah in it which is not like a 3D gaming thing and I can run Tekken 7 at 60 frames a second that’s insane the reason I can do that is because Tekken and the team at Bandai Namco have let me scale it they can they let me go you know what make it blurry make it ugly but you’re going to see your fighter dudes fighting each other and it’s going to come on in that rapid 60 frames a second refresh that number is crucial because when you’re doing a fighting game you don’t want to miss a frame you need as much of that control accuracy as possible to feel like you’re in the fight that fluidity is super important and so I think that’s one of the coolest things is that people who buy this on the computer are going to be able to play it no matter how crappy their system is if they just want to take Tekken on a plane and bust out a few rounds they can turn the settings down make it look blurry and crappy and get into Tech so I think that is a super interesting thing that I really dig into I go into all the menus and all that other wonky stuff beyond that Tekken has been this version of Tekken has been cooking for two years came out in arcades in 2015 uh Bandy Namco wants this to be a competitive game they’ve just essentially taken a familiar ’90s version of Tekken that very you know 3D fighting you if you played it on the old PlayStation you know what it feels like and they’re spit shining it it’s the 36 characters a bunch of them are new but it’s got this interesting variety of different characters beating the crap out of each other it feels good it feels tight it’s the kind of thing where no matter who you pick you have a chance to win and that makes her fun Competitive Gaming and there’s a lot of that in this in the twitch era in the Esports era fighting games are getting back in the sort of watchability way and Tekken 7 seems to be poised to really hit on that plus you know it’s awesome on PC so I may be 100% wrong on this but I like to think that sometimes people watch our show in order to learn things they can bring up at cocktail party so I will ask you this question when I was reading reviews it says that there’s a fair amount of button mashing button mashing and that was considered what I from the context a good thing can you talk a little bit about button mashing sure I think Tekken has always been decent at letting people who don’t know what the heck they’re doing get in so the buttons there’s four buttons uh left hand right hand Left Foot Right Foot so you simply are punching and kicking without knowing what you’re doing you can kind of create a logic of I’m going to punch punch kick or whatever the heck or you can just Mash you don’t have to know um the sort of quarter Circle or charge and turn around like there’s a lot of joystick trickery in a lot of fighting games and Tekken has always stood out as there there’s Technical and specific weird stuff you can do to be a quote unquote better player but I think it’s one of the easier ones to just get in and feel pretty badass immediately so yeah I would say there’s some button mashing friendliness but man oh man I have seen people talking about the meta the cancels the reversals the all these different little things and moves you can do to be a elite Tekken player and all the faceoffs that each C character has against the other it is super high level if you uh want to get into it and this game totally lacks a tutorial you really will just be button mashing as opposed to the game taking your hand and saying hey here’s how you play so if you get into the game and immediately get your buttt kicked in the online modes and you probably will go to Reddit type Tekken help and there will be some friendly internet people to help you in ways that bandam code did not that’s one of the bummers I think about the game but fun even if you don’t know what you’re doing I hope that um I can use button mashing and other things like on Twitter and stuff like just I don’t I don’t know what I want to tweet I can think of important I can think of important American officials who Button Mash uh for a living but that’s another topic good one finally uh you wrote about the sprawling oral history of Halo uh it’s up on Vice I took a look at that thing and that would take me some time to get through uh details exactly what happened with Halo Chronicles what did you learn so the Halo oral history that’s up at fece uh Waypoint quite good uh full disclosure my friend Steve hasy wrote it he kicked butt at it he worked on it for months getting interviews with a bunch of EX Halo and ex bungee people along with current people at 34 three Industries which is Microsoft Studio that does all things Halo now um and there are a lot of warts and all stories about the series especially because the people who aren’t working on it anymore admitted all of the things that were messed up as they known as Bungie were assimilated in the Microsoft Borg but the thing that really stood out for me was the story of Halo Chronicles which had been talked about this was a game an offshoot that never came to be because it was going to come out with a Peter Jackson movie based on Halo uh that project eventually crashed and burned uh it was in script process and pre-production and It ultimately didn’t get green lit for actual filming uh and that means it will uh the game that was associated with it they said well you’ve kind of been working on it but you can’t make it the people working on that game uh were essentially stuck waiting for the film to be greenlit but they were prototyping stuff and I call it mega halo Man X that was Mega Man X was the Super Nintendo version of the old blasting game and this Halo would have been a lot like that except absolutely no guns uh you would have been doing meleeing and dashing and sliding you would have been a less powerful not master chief character and you would have been the bullet I think is the tagline that they used uh it’s really fascinating stuff I recommend digging into the Waypoint piece uh if you’re really curious just contrl f for um Halo Chronicles to see that part it’s a long read I actually haven’t finished it and I think it came out 5 days ago it is just that long of a piece but it’s riveting stuff especially if you like to see drama in video game development I love drama stories well and there’s an actual warthog that exists in the world um which I want to know if we’re ever going to be able to see the actual warthog well the warthog uh Peter Jackson’s WETA I think that’s the name of the workshop W they made it like the film wasn’t completely greenlit and they said well we got to make a warthog and Peter Jackson showed it to the Halo developer helpers by just driving it past a window when they were in a meeting which is just Bonkers that’s just rich man stuff going just drive just drive our expensive actual working Jeep by and so they got onto it and drove it around and one developer from Bungie ran it into the side of a building uh is is a thing they disclosed apparently it still works it was used eventually in other Halo short films I’m pretty sure that somebody in the Microsoft side the owners of the franchise paid for and they still have it I don’t know if it’s parked in a lot if it’s parked at their headquarters just down the road for me in Seattle uh I wouldn’t be shocked to see it out in the wild again but you know I don’t know that I’ll be driving it any time soon but my fingers are crossed yeah parked in somebody’s driveway scaring the the pants off of everybody that’s around there uh yeah I would love to see that uh Sam movich that’s four awesome stories and we appreciate you taking your time uh talking with us about it thank you I am glad to be on and next week we we can talk more about arms which is coming out on the switch I’m having a very good time with it but boy is in an interesting Nintendo game so I look forward to chatting with you guys about that one excellent we will do that thank you Sam uh follow his work at rs.com thanks again next week we got some feedback yay George writes greetings from Sweden though I find your lack of faith in Ikea disturbing you might be interested in this story about Spotify that my former colleagues at Radio Sweden and Swedish radio have uncovered so first of all I just love this email because made me laugh uh for a long time today and yeah thanks for sending this story I guess uh Spotify is uh not going to uh to go public on the um Stock Exchange according to the story so according to radio Sweden we love hearing your stories uh you know your your actual stories also if you have a news tip send them to us so thank you very much for that do TNT at twit.tv uh TNT’s fan of the day is Paulo who sent us this 300 I think it’s a 360 degree photo although yeah I mean it must be yeah oh it definitely is you’re just not seeing it in 360 Degrees you’re seeing the full kind of uh spread of the photo here he says greetings from Iceland this is what it looks like in Iceland everywhere in Iceland looks like the interior of a car very strange uh Pao thanks for sending this in I might have to take this photo and throw on my cardboard or Daydream viewer and I’ll feel like I’m sitting in the cockpit with you uh show us how you watch or listen to TNT just record a video or take a picture of yourself or your setup you can post on Instagram Google+ Twitter or Facebook you can even email it to us TNT twit.tv uh use the hashtag how IAT TNT and we’ll find it if you are scared of robots taking our jobs consider the octopus German automation company festo has unveiled a new Rob robot that does the job of an octopus but better the festo Octo Grabber robotic arm features pneumatically controlled soft silicone with two rows of suction cups able to grip items tightly while also moving quickly in order to speed up work specifically factory work so all you octopi out there better find some new skills I might suggest a coating Boot Camp or something like that so so will this create robots that can climb up walls like well probably that is the unintended consequence but the intention is should be the intended consequence that’s obvious well the intended they they want them to be able to grab things in the factory pour things oh that is so cool looking so yeah it’s also inspired by an elephant’s trunk yeah and very very Remis it’s like an El elpus an o octop octant o let’s go with o I think octo Fant might be the safer direction to go with this uh but still nonetheless very very cool and it didn’t come from Boston Dynamics no it’s robotics that’s cool that didn’t come from Boston Dynamics German the Germans I oh those Germans and they’re octo fans or no not gonna say it TNT records live every Monday through Friday at 4 P p.m. Pacific 7: P p.m. Eastern 2300 UTC twit.tv like we’ve said a few times you can be part of the show by emailing us TNT twit .tv leave us a short voicemail at 260 TNT show and find us on Twitter at techne todaytv share your thoughts on the stories we discuss in the TNT subreddit at technews today. rd.com we check it every day and so we love it when you post stories and many of our stories come from the subreddit and we would love it if you would subscribe to our show at twit.tv TNT even if you watch live which we also love love to have live viewers because you guys help us out sometimes have questions that we can uh throw at our guests as well so watch live twit.tv but also subscribe and find all those ways to subscribe at twit.tv tntt and if you want to tweet at me I’m at Megan and I’m at Jason how thanks to our technical director Anthony for occasional coughs thanks to Patrick for helping out in the studio thanks to Kevin for editing the show and thanks to you for talking Tech with us today we’re not going to high five today we’re going to pretend okay we’ll see you on Monday bye everybody that’s [Music]