coming up on Tech news today everyone is trying to overcome fake news on their platform also Germany is forcing social media to clean up its users Behavior Google’s Project fi could open up to thirdparty devices a look at the unreleased Surface Mini and blizzard is remastering one of its most popular franchises all that more coming up next on Tech news today this is T bandwidth for Tech news today is provided by cash fly at CAC ly.com [Music] this is Tech news today episode 1801 recorded Friday June 30th 2017 this episode of tech news today is brought to you by Blue Apron the number one fresh ingredient and recipe delivery service in the country see what’s on the menu this week and get three meals free with your first purchase and free shipping by going to blueapron.com tntt and by rocket mortgage by quick and Loans home plays a big role in your life that’s why quick and Loans created rocket mortgage it lets you apply simply and understand the entire mortgage process fully so you can be confident that you’re getting the right mortgage for you get started at rocketmortgage.com TNT welcome to Tech news today this is the show we tell you all the things you need to know to live your life and still understand the tech news I’m Megan I’m Jason H we give you all the news that’s required to keep that Wheel in the Sky turning keeps that’s what we do um I never realized that you were such a DieHard Journey fan I am I uh I I was singing some Journey uh with my new Echo Show and I posted on Twitter even though I a horrible singer um thank you Anthony um let’s I think it’s I think it’s worth it I think we need to actually [Music] and [Applause] and I think that was a little bit of the dog howling are you sure are you sure hey but you know what you did it did you sang you recorded it you uploaded it to the internet I did I’m proud you should be and now we should get to the tech news all right fine Facebook Twitter and other social media companies could face fines of up to Fe 57 million if they fail to remove IL racist or slanderous comments within 24 hours of receiving a report of the offense the German Parliament one of the strictest in terms of combating hate speech approved the network Enforcement Act which they say is not a limitation but a prerequisite for freedom of expression privacy groups have some concerns about whether the bill will force Facebook and others to censor users which would not only limit Free Speech but also could give social media way too much of a say social media companies way too much of a say and deciding what exactly constitutes free expression uh privatizing the policing of speech could have chilling effects for their part Facebook says they’re already removing 66,000 posts a week but they admit that there is more work to be done so I hate hate speech as much as an next guy but this sounds too uh too stringent I feel like Facebook is doing almost everything that they can do at this point and putting them in charge of deciding you know what’s offensive is tough I mean in in Germany has these very strict rules like if you post a swastika that is hate speech that’s what they’re talking about if someone posts a swastika on Facebook in Germany and then they someone reports it and they don’t you know they don’t get they don’t take it down in 24 hours which I mean I don’t know why they wouldn’t but it still seems like this is a little bit too strict yeah you know and and you mentioned there um exactly kind of the critical part of this is that Justice Minister hio mus in this um in this whole process basically said that legal pressure was required to make sure that large platform operators actually fulfill their obligations to clean up their Network and that I mean by that account they they’re essentially saying that Facebook is not doing what is required Facebook has that like we reported not too long ago that Facebook had doubled the amount of staff on the back end that’s monitoring all this stuff this just puts it more into codified terms that Germany says we do not we do not want these elements you know accessible to German citizens uh and so you are required to do something about it hate speech criminal uh material obviously removed from the from the network and if it’s reported which was something that I was unclear about when we were in prep whether it was just everything or whether it had to be reported first and it seems that it needs to be reported then it’s put in front of Facebook and then they have 24 hours to remove it although less obvious examples of what would fall into these categories could be reviewed for up to 7 days so they get a little bit more leniency but um but the question that I have about this is how this extends outside of Germany Facebook is a worldwide organization worldwide company uh and as we were talking about a couple of days ago I know we were talking rich and I while you were out um we were talking about how difficult it is to apply similar uh Sim you know similar status quo to the entire world everyone has different standards for for what is appropriate and what is not I think there are some Universal standards in there uh but it’s really challenging that something within Germany might not be deemed the same as something outside of Germany and how does that affect Facebook as a whole absolutely like my head not being covered is not acceptable in some places yeah it’s um I mean human rights activists are trying to say they’ll challenge the law it doesn’t go into effect till October so they have some time and then you know the other thing is when you talk about these it’s the C the cost to REM remove um or you know to hire people to remove these kinds of things like Facebook is a huge company and they can afford to hire people to remove them this only applies to uh sites with two million users in Germany so any you know so it’s just two million or more two million or more yeah so um I think if you have 2 million users you’re you’re probably doing okay I guess yeah yeah you’ve got a decent amount of amount of users at 2 million or more but I mean Facebook’s so far beyond that you know clips that at 2 billion users even Twitter where are they at 400 some odd thousand or sorry 400 million I can’t even remember at this point a lot yeah but yeah I mean it’s it’s a Sticky Wicket it’s tough because it’s you know this isn’t solving the problem of hate speech you know I mean and but they have to do something right right but yeah I mean I think a lot of people would say like more positive speech you know just it’s yeah I don’t have the solution for for hate either if I did I probably wouldn’t be working here and I mean you know another question here is if legal pressure actually pushes Facebook to overcorrect and potentially you know accidentally censor things that don’t fall within that that cut off and that you know again goes back to the the problem that you were saying up at the top which is that all these decisions are being made on the network side of things and I should they or shouldn’t they I’m I’m not entirely sure because this is kind of an example of both right it’s it’s Germany as a country saying do more and it’s Facebook as an organization saying do more with what with these things that we’ve determined that we’ve selected and hopefully that falls within there’s going to be some accidental C censorship as a as a result of that too right I mean if it’s really just posting a swastika like what you know what if I need to say like this a picture of a swastika this swasa was was painted on my school today we need to stop this hate you know is that I mean is that considered you know someone could report that and you know it’s slippery slope or as you just said what was it a a Sticky Wicket a Sticky Wicket okay I don’t know if I’ve heard that one before but I like it uh Sticky Wicket like it uh Twitter is reportedly prototyping a new feature that would allow its users to actively flag tweets containing misleading information and fake news the core of the issue appears to be how easy it is uh for the many Bots for example on Twitter to Echo and to amplify misinformation and coordinated efforts to bring such items to the eyes of its many users uh Twitter told the Washington Post who originally reported on this story that they currently have no plans to actually launch this product you know as with all of these social networks and just you know products online in general they’re always testing new things this would be a big uh I don’t know on one hand I get it I understand I I would enjoy having the ability to be able to report something if it should not be there on the the other hand totally right for abuse and that’s the the tricky spot that all of these social networks are in right now people are expecting them to make changes to the network that eliminate or reduce certain types of behavior um yet those mechanisms in and of themselves can be uh can be manipulated and done with you know bent and have the will bent uh in their own Direction depending on how you approach it it is another Sticky Wicket I hate to use the term again but I mean Bots are a big problem on Twitter they’re just um there’s so many of them and they can you know turn on whomever like good or evil that is what is so frightening um I mean you know we’ve we’ve talked about this in weeks past like how many of Donald Trump’s followers are actually Bots how many um you know how many of your own followers are Bots you can actually go to the the uh Indiana University’s truthy projects Botto meter which I did to tell if someone is following you as a bot or not it’s not very accurate I think I had like a 70 37% chance that I was a bot and I’m not a bot I promise I’m not a bot so autometer there’s also a name for this the it’s computational propaganda which is terrifying because I mean people can actually just buy bots and use them to turn them against anyone to turn the world against anyone um I was curious if I bought bought you a bunch of bots what would you use them to do I don’t even know how to answer that question I don’t know what I do with a bunch of bots other than like make me breakfast so that I don’t have to make breakfast on Twitter no not Twitter Bots Bots and I’m thinking of any Bots um I don’t know what I would do with Twitter Bots it’s not it’s not any part of anything like I don’t have an agenda to drive you know what I mean and that’s what Bots are really good for on social networks I would uh get them to like people’s dog photos oh okay I guess that’s what I would I guess I could get behind that I know I kind of derailed it um the discussion a little bit I’m sorry continue on Twitter no that’s that’s okay um I mean there there’s no denying that that Bots are a big part of of social media and I you know like I feel like last year in specifically we talked a lot about how Bots were you know in in the eyes of a lot of companies the next big thing I’m not sure that those Bots are the same as Bots like this but whether we like them existing in these social networks or not they’re there and it’s very difficult to police them it’s very difficult to know whether like you said what know whether they’re actually Bots or whether they are not and I think the challenge and and where so like what am I trying to say the bigger issue here is that this is an issue for social media in general in that they push for certain things yet those certain things that they’re pushing for can also be their downfall and they want more more interaction Facebook wants people to really interact more with with the network and I think it’s the next story we’ll talk about how that can kind of backfire as well um Twitter wants you know wants people to to have followers wants the social wants the network effect to work to where you know a bunch of people respond to a story and that story gets pushed to the top well hey what do you know that can easily be uh game gamified by Bots who can kind of Bend those Trends to their own will so I don’t know what the the right answer is is um putting controls in the hands of of the users is a great way to go about that but you can also immediately see how you know in a world not too far from now EV everything that you post as an individual is targeted by you know one person that has an army of bots that can take you down essentially and that kind of sucks right there’s nothing worse than like being attacked on Twitter and then trying to turn your you know then uh trolls also do that they will also like part of attacking you sometimes they will say that you’re a fake account that sort of thing that’s happened to me and it’s just like you’re like it’s the worst yeah if you post on Facebook more than 50 times a day you have a problem also Facebook is now officially calling you a spammer recode reports that Facebook is changing its algorithm to reduce the reach of anyone who posts 50 times a day or more regardless of the content of the links so posts links 50 times a day or more Facebook VP Adam misseri says they’ve identified a small group of people not Bots who post spammy links which he says are likely to contain lowquality content such as clickbait sensationalism and misinformation sadly like I said this only applies to Links so if you want to post more than 50 pictures of your drooling baby on Facebook you still can but I will I should warn you unfriend you you I don’t think you’d be alone either a lot of people would uh would unfred you if you posted your your baby pictures 50 times a day um yeah I mean and you know drawing back to the the discussion on the previous story right like Facebook has been pushing for a while now to get to drive people’s interaction with the site up now they have a level of quality like there’s a certain level a quality level of sharing and maybe sharing lots of links Falls below that quality level but still Facebook wants engagement up yet in the push to do that they’ve also they’ve given everything it seems like equal weight and as a result you know it’s been manipulated ated and so all of these uh stories rise to the top that maybe shouldn’t have so now they’re having to overcorrect and I think they’re all kind of doing this right now they’re they’re overcorrecting for previous behavior and realizing that they need to control their Network more so well I think Facebook unlike Twitter has some buil in um controls that prevent Bots because it is a network you have to use your real name you have to show you know you have to have connections to people I mean obviously there are fake Facebook accounts there are fake you know there are bot Facebook accounts but not as many on Twitter Twitter is a place where you can anonymously share your opinion and there are great and wonderful things about that and there are downsides too but Facebook is more of a community that was how Mark Zuckerberg set it up and so you know it it weeds out a lot of bots yeah but now the way people um you know spammers people with agenda uh a agendas agenda agenda they the way they’ve gotten around this is to pay people you know to constantly post links like actual people who have a connection who you know are not a bot and and so now they’re trying to you know combat that which you know I think is interesting all these stories seem very similar usually we can discuss a lot of the stories but you’ve had jury duty so we don’t get to power we’re doing a lot of this work on our own so I apologize that all these stories are are somewhat similar but I think the distinction between Twitter and Facebook is worth noting because there is room we I still want to be able to have Anonymous spe and I also like Facebook where you feel like you’re part of a community and they each have their own problems yeah uh Facebook VP of uh the newsfeed Adam moseri had said quote it’s one of this is one of the strongest signals we’ve ever found for identifying a broad range of problematic content this being uh the constant posting of of you know tons and tons of links per day that’s a really good indicator to Facebook of you know the the VIN diagram of people who do that or accounts that do that along with posts of misinformation or you know propaganda style uh postings and everything that are meant to kind of distribute themselves through the network fast as a result of this effort um overlap significantly so that I found that pretty interesting uh only applies to individuals doesn’t apply to Pages where Publishers often are and Publishers might possibly post more than 50 links a day you know Facebook’s been driving Publishers to get more involved with the network um that is unless of course those pages share the posts of people who are posting 50 or more uh of these types of links a day so it could affect it that way Reverend Dan in our chat room says that he does 50 in the morning and 50 at night and I’m assuming he means posts links that’s a lot um Maybe I’m Wrong maybe there are I mean I people could be posting that much and you don’t normally see it like people unless that’s a lot I mean what I mean I’m I’m very curious not that I not that I doubt or or anything but man I don’t know if I post 50 tweets well I definitely I don’t post 50 tweets a day and that’s really easy to do because tweets could be five five letters yeah but it’s easy to post a link too it’s just cut and paste and yeah that’s true that’s true some people some people do use social media uh Twitter Facebook whatever kind of as like their own link tracking system you know here’s here’s a link that I found interesting today and just keep posting throughout the day and that’s how they keep track of those for themselves and other people can see it too so maybe that’s where it falls in line uh okay now we’re totally Switching gears those three stories were related we’re going to move on to some other things Google’s mvno Project F has a lot of fans but due to Google’s own restrictions users have been limited to owners of G uh Google’s own pixel and Nexus devices so far Google has announced that a mid-tier partner device uh was soon to support the network sometime in the near future anyways and Venture beats Evan blast leaks on Twitter uh he’s a very notable leaker says that device uh in particular that Google’s talking about is likely to be the Motorola X4 4 the Moto X4 it’s expected to launch in Q4 2017 there had been a leaked kind of slide from a Motorola conference that kind of showed the tiers of moto devices through the end of 2017 the Moto X um category or or uh brand sub brand of their devices Moto X was basically the first phone to come out for Motorola uh in the pre premium category when Google owned it after Google had bought Motorola and Moto X those first few years they were really they were great phones uh my wife bought one uh upon my recommendation they were just really nice uh devices but they haven’t really made one in the last couple of years apparently that’s going to return and it’s going to support project F you do not use project 5 correct I don’t no I’ve considered it I mean I’ve got a pixel phone before that I had Nexus devices I considered it but for me personally I don’t do I feel like I don’t do enough traveling for project five to be worth it like T-Mobile here in town is pretty good and that’s what I have right now and it almost seemed like it would be more expensive for me in my scenario to do project five well I took the I took the project five quiz which is up on their site and it tells you whether you um it would be good for you and I said that I had uh you know five phones our family has five phones in on the program and they asked me what kind of phones and I said iPhones and they still said it was good for me for some reason um I would have to switch phones but right now I pay about $200 a month for five phones um and we have unlimited data which I think is pretty good and I’ll say again I I’m a proud Sprint user um but and the F quiz says that I would save about $45 a month so that is interesting but then if I think about the fact that I have to replace five phones and then probably get another job if I was you know using the um Moto Z or the pixel phone too as my main phone it doesn’t probably seem worth it but it does I mean it does make so it’s the family plan is $15 a month for every additional phone plus $10 for every gigabyte of data I think it would really make sense it would be nice if there were more phones yeah cheap phon I feel like that’s what’s really limiting project fire right now and there’s got to be a really good reason that Google has has limited it I don’t know if it’s to bring more value to their own devices which kind of seems silly if you have this mvno going and you’re not just loading it with people uh but the but the benefit I mean of of hopping networks between T-Mobile and Sprint you’re a Sprint user um already so that would give you an extra Network to kind of hop onto based on what the best connectivity is for any location that you happen to be that’s one of the big you know the big key differentiators but um that and then the pricing scheme where at the end of the year if you haven’t used anything I think it gets if you haven’t used all that you’ve paid for the remaining gets refunded to your account and you can apply that to the following month so you don’t really lose anything you know anything that you paid for there’s some kind of I I feel like there’s something very uh comforting about having unlimited data just having one thing to worry about to nag the kids don’t are you on make sure you’re on Wi-Fi make sure you’re on Wi-Fi it’s just like I don’t have to think about it anymore yep and once once you know you’re getting you’re paying by the gigabyte uh yeah it can be a little stressful you never quite know what’s going on in the background for example uh yeah I can totally understand that Windows Central has uncovered leaked photos of the Surface Mini but if you were one of the few people excited about getting your hands on an 8in device with a 1440 x 1080 display a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor and 1 gig of RAM and 32 GB of storage you are out of luck the leaked photos show a device that was cancelled just weeks before its debut in 2014 when Microsoft launched the Surface Pro 3 instead like Bigfoot before for it the Surface Mini has been rumored for years but hasn’t been seen until now the photos yes the photos look a lot like Bigfoot with a kickstand uh it’s housed in a felt-like material not unlike Bigfoot uh it was intended to be sort of a digital moleskin so like a little tiny notebook is that how you say that moleskin that’s how I say it okay because I like to be I always said Molin but then I realized there’s an e at the end of skin so is it mol skine I don’t know I never had one so I guess I just don’t know it’s like it’s Molin oh okay it’s um so apparently this was designed for Windows RT which by the way was killed a few months later than this was expected to release so you can kind of understand at least part of part of their rational of of killing the device itself not to mention I mean there are a lot of people that just really did not like Windows RT at all so maybe there was that but you don’t really see a whole lot of small form factor tablets these days I guess a couple of years ago a little more and one of my favorite tablets on Android was the Nexus 7 it was a 7in tablet looking at some of the pictures of of this tablet actually reminded me a lot of the Nexus 7 minus the the kickstand of course but that I thought that was a really great uh great form factor for a tablet you know um gave you a little bit larger of a screen really good for reading books and everything not the full size you know need an extra uh compartment in your backpack or or or your bag in order to fit it in there you potentially fit it in your back pocket as Ron Richards like to show off on all that Android repeatedly there’s a lot of people that like this mini form factor I mean um you know because they like uh Nate likes it because he’s an artist and he does want like a little notebook like I do carry um I carry you know my bullet Journal around and I I would like that idea of just being able to hold something like that and and write with it but yeah I mean uh the iPad they’re not making minis anymore and sad well you know we’ve got larger phones now and I think and actually I I say that partially ingest but partially I think that’s part of the reason why we don’t have this particular category it was like uh as phones got bigger and we got more used to having uh what some people refer to as a fablet which is kind of like a mixture of a phone and a tablet kind of that in between size then this particular size wasn’t differentiated enough but it totally has its supporters I mean I I continue at least on on All About Android continue to hear from people that are just like when is a new tablet the size of the Nexus 7 coming out cuz that was perfect for me and you just don’t see them much anymore sad yeah so I should make a correction Dan in the chat room was saying he does 50 push-ups in the morning 50 push-ups in the evening not 50 links on Facebook and 50 links you can still do ah time for me to do my 50 links this morning ah cup of coffee that makes more sense keep doing push-ups Facebook is not going to stop you from doing um 100 push-ups a day and if you want me to misread your comment in the chat room join us during the show twit.tv uh because we would love um I would love to to be confused by your comment in the chat room in your defense the only way we would have known that they were he was talking about push-ups is if we had continued to read on because I think after his post was when he actually said the word push-ups I don’t know just saying that’s what we get for for diving into the chat room during a show and trying to pick it apart multitask everyone knows that it never works idea and if you don’t want to join us live if you can’t you can always join us uh you can always email us at TNT twit.tv and we will try to reply or read your email on the show we always read everything we don’t get to reply to everything and subscribe to Tech News Today by going to our show page at twit.tv TN after the break Sam movich is here to talk about the weekend gaming news but first let’s take a minute to thank Blue Apron the sponsor of this episode cooking together builds strong family bonds blue apron’s mission is to make incredible home cooking accessible to everyone while supporting a more sustainable food system setting the highest standards for ingredients and building a community of home chefs I have a lot of favorite things about Blue Apron but I’m supposed to tell you my very favorite thing and here it is Blue Apron encourages my family and me to try foods that we might not ever have thought of trying or foods that I might have given up feeding my kids a long time ago only to find that they like them now that is the case of broccoli which I had given up three or four years ago but now they’re 12 and 12 and 14 and they like the fancy ways that blue apron shows us how to prepare it you can bake it you can put cheese on it it’s Way Beyond the ketchup I tried when they were little um it is it’s great and I really do appreciate that there are foods that I also had never heard of and and get to try with blue apron Blue Apron delivers seasonal recipes along with pre-portioned ingredients to make delicious home-cooked meals in 4 minutes or less there’s no weekly commitment so you only get deliveries when you want them you can also customize your recipe every week based on your dietary preferences you can choose from a variety of new recipes each week or let Blue apron’s culinary team surprise you here are some upcoming meals seared chicken and creamy pasta salad with summer squash and sweet peppers creamy shrimp rolls with quick pickles and sweet potato wedges fresh basil fetuccini pasta with sweet corn and cubel pepper chili butter steaks with Parmesan potatoes and spinach Blue Apron has established Partnerships with over 150 Farms fisheries and ranchers across the United States they ship the exact amount of each ingredient required for a recipe and that way they reduce food waste their freshness guarantee promises that every ingredient in your delivery arrives ready to cook or they’ll make it right check out this week’s menu and get three meals free with your first purchase and free shipping by going to blueapron.com tntt you will love how good it feels and tastes to create incredible home-cooked meals with blue apron don’t wait go to blueapron.com tntt Blue Apron a better way to cook all right blizzard has some big news for Starcraft fans and Sam movich from Mars Technica has all the details how you doing Sam wow I just walked in what I just walked into my house and I probably still have a wicked cic going on right here but yes also just walked in on Starcraft fever am I right ladies and gents or lady and gent yes I think you are right in fact you sat down with them you you got into the nitty-gritty you sat down with the people responsible for this remaster uh why are you asking me to sit down that’s this is getting aggressive no no no no no stay standing we need you in the camera shot uh why is a remaster needed some 20 years later on this particular game on Starcraft because of the viewership not necessarily because of the players Starcraft remastered was already announced and I didn’t exactly understand why uh there is a fancier looking 3di Starcraft 2 uh it came out years ago uh I just tested it out on my fancy computer at 4K and it looks really good and looks futuristic and so people especially United States might go why the 20ish two decade old game it’s a viewership it’s about the professional players who still demand audiences at Arenas and on C Chanel countes the easn Europe and especially Korea still about Starcraft 1 because the best players have shifted from Starcraft 2 back to Starcraft 1 uh the older game had different balancing and it had certain limitations which means you need more apms actions per minute to keep up 300 Clicks in actions and keyboard Strokes per minute in order to build giant armies and so Starcraft remastered is coming forward uh to essentially capture that to people if you’re going to watch it why not have it look better than the 640×480 VGA resolution of the 90s computer version okay okay so that makes a lot of sense so basically you’re talking about kind of the Esports uh element here of watching professionals play this game but that leads to a very interesting question because there are basically in the interview I learned that they had to recreate pretty much everything top to bottom cinematics renders code from the old version to this new version and when you’re talking about e Sports I mean you’re talking about people who have literally played this game for 20 years they know the timing they know the process and this the flow and all this stuff probably at an attention level of detail that is could possibly you know surpass the people that created the game how do how is Blizzard confident that they can recreate the game to the point that those playing these Esports will be satisfied with what they have well the answer is that it’s already out so the secret funny thing is that uh blizzard already put out a version of the game that is ready to have the fancier Graphics slapped into it the every everything that needed to be hooked into the fancier looking Starcraft with the redone assets with some of the redone code is all living on the basic core play that simply is designed so oh if I want to make the fancy if I want put the fancier 4K ready Graphics in boom they can go in that actually led to um there was a patch that was supposed to come out a while ago uh that got delayed and put off because it was going to break the the game worked with Korean uh uh I’m sorry Korean social networks that specifically manage Starcraft the country did not have uh lizards penetration in the 90s and early 2000s Koreans got together to build their own sort of networks one of the biggest one is called fish and because they were going to put out a patch that would have broken it for that giant group of Korean players uh blizzard canceled that one held it off they said they you know they took their licks as a result of that like they spent 18 months top to botom interviewing Pro players interviewing the fan base having people come in as testers and consultants in order to confirm it plays exactly the same just with a fresh cat of paint but it is funny that there was a lot of stuff that was lost hard drives code uh either lost or simply did not translate to the fancier stuff the art team in particular they admitted to me in this interview I did that they eyeballed everything they went back to Old boxes to Old manuals to Old sketchbooks a lot of stuff got thrown out they had to work with what they had the result looks quite good wow interesting so any chance blizzard is going to do this whole remaster thing with other titles in its catalog they have what they’re calling the blizz blizzard classic division at their office and they say they’re hiring full-time for it and I bet you dollars to Donuts that is not simply to add more patches to this one game that’s currently their only one in the blizzard Classics line which is StarCraft remastered I absolutely expect another game will be announced before long in a sort of perfect drip feed between their bigger games uh which one will be next is a good question I pushed and asked if it might be Starcraft ghost which is the Starcraft um third person action adventure game that got cancelled a long time ago and the guy laughed and said oh I’d love for that he goes oh that’s never going to happen but uh my money is on Diablo I just because of rumor rumbling uh and because of the it plays distinctly differently than Diablo I so that to me makes sense but who knows could be Warcraft 2 could be Warcraft 3 who knows uh Patterson in our chat room would request that you write an entire book about Korean internet culture I if he wants to pay for all of the reconstructive lung surgery it would required for all the cigarette smoke I would inhale at PC bangs in South Korea I would consider now if he’s talking about North Korean internet culture I could just write a real pamphlet real fast all right so we’re gonna move on to probably the biggest most anticipated game of the year who exactly has been pining for a new Micro Machines game oh I was there is a new Micro Machines game I’m forgetting the subtitle again I just ran in the door is it World Tour do you remember uh World Series world World Series Micro Machines World Series I am a fan of top down old school Super Nintendo and Genesis racing games micrin and rock and roll racing rock and roll was from blizzard by the way uh were these games that really did this right micr machines in particular made local everybody on the same screen multiplayer work sadly the rebirth that’s uh come out this week came out today is bad it’s currently a stinker I wasn’t even going to bring this up but I just want to warn anyone who thinks who catches an ad who catches a glimpse of this and thinks it might be fun do not get it the Xbox version runs at under 30 frames a second which is insane for a game that specifically limits its view so that it reduces the number of polygons hence the thing that would slow a game down uh the computer version crashed the first time I loaded it the camera goes all over the place and it’s sort of a top down thing so if you want to see where your car is going it would be uh good to have a camera that works um it’s otherwise and it’s very thin there’s not very much to do uh I’m very sorry to the 12 of you who care about Micro Machines video games there’s a really great ad that has the original voice of the C of the um advertisements the real fast talker yeah the real fast talking guy he came back and did an ad for it and even he couldn’t quite keep up I think that was kind of the bad port for what was to come so sorry about that guys that’s okay but we can move on to something that actually I’m very fascinated by this company cast AR um caught my attention and others here at twit a few years back Jerry Ellsworth Rick Johnson both brought the rig into the studio and it was really cool to play around with it’s an augmented reality tabletop game kind of method you can kind of see Leo has the the glasses on here and the space which when you’re looking into it just makes for like a three-dimensional kind of play space for tabletop gaming uh worked pretty well when we tested it out what’s what’s the news now with cast unfortunately cast AR also known as Caster because you pretend you’re a magic Caster uh is no more the company uh I heard rumors and Rumblings and it’s been confirmed that it has been liquidated uh because it uh took on outside Financial backing and that Financial backing had its own plummeting basically there was no money being made with this platform which agreed I did get to try it out as well which combined augmented reality glasses one projector in each eye that made you think that uh you were seeing something that appeared on a sheet you needed a sheet with a certain uh tone uh or uh pattern you you couldn’t just make your own sheet out of uh towels or paper towels or whatever um but they never had games and they never caught fire the way that Oculus Rift and HT pc5 and Playstation VR did now with the uh augmented reality you could actually see other things around you you were not suffocated by that view and that was a really cool perk when that was announced but the other VR headsets weren’t around uh other than early development kit versions of oculus and in comparison yeah castar looked cooler looked neater but as the VR headsets got better more refined a little smoother uh castar always felt clunky uh there was always latency after the wow effect you sort of had the sense of oh this is kind of ghosty it’s hard to track it’s not very bright and every meeting that we had with castar over at arnica we kept being told oh the next one’s going to be better and every demo we kept getting that promise and felt like we were essentially seeing the same thing perhaps a little smaller but never more convincing uh more awesome uh I always wanted to have like a D and D styled thing with it where you had the little pen and you were arranging figurines around on a table like as if they were really there but it never came to fruition it just seems like uh other VR sort of took the wind out of sales yeah it really seemed like it was maybe ahead of its time and uh in in light of solutions now that feel just a lot less clunky a lot less kind of it seemed like there was a lot of requirements for that versus now I mean especially with like news of the iPhone with uh with AR kit and you know Project Tango devices or whatever literally just taking your phone and going okay I see the same thing you what they were doing was admittedly different you you still got the three-dimensional aspect and it was really cool to be able to shift your view around and you’d see these objects come in front of other objects and it really made it feel like you were actually playing a top- down kind of board game of some sort uh but yeah it required a lot in order to buy into that and you’re totally right about telephones because if a telephone camera can now sense stuff in the room and project objects accordingly that beats the pants off of having to roll a sheet out and putting on a special pair of glasses I really do think Mark Zuckerberg is on to the right thing when he announced that he thinks augmented reality is the future of Facebook and to take advantage of cameras that people have as opposed to headsets and if castar is clunkier than the HTC 5 which is already a clunky thing with cables and a required expensive computer man card just had a giant uphill battle the whole way so promising stuff really good team but no content ever really came out yep and finally tell me why I need to watch Rick and Morty’s new season having never watched a single episode before well you have time uh until uh it’s going to be in a few weeks in July I want to say the 22nd 21st I’m blanking on the exact release date of season three of Rick and Morty but you have time to catch up now thank you July 30th factchecking I need that sometimes I’m sorry so that uh Rick and Morty I have talked about on the show before uh your wonderful co-host leer hosters who’s there more often than you are cuz you’re too busy at jury duty Megan has uh asked me what is it like is it like South Park and I would say Rick and Morty is a lot more Doctor Who meets Community the old NBC show that no longer exists uh and some of the folks from Community went on to work on Rick and Morty and they’ve been allowed to sort of let loose and go crazy with some Bonkers sci-fi nihilism murderous puking drunken weirdness with an equally large dollop of family warmth and togetherness that comes from a broken home there’s a whole broken home family that Rick and Morty are a part of and that family Works through issues while warping between dimensions and wondering which dimension each person is actually from it’s that sort of weird show all right so I guess I got to check it out I’ve heard a lot about Rick and Morty and I just been busy with jury duty you know how it is well the reason I was running late was because the Rick and Morty mobile was just south of Seattle and I just got this little squanch which is a character from like 10 seconds of one episode they made a little figurine out of I got other merchandise as well but this was the small one I could show up it was bonkers the line was around like five city blocks in the city of Tacoma and nobody chooses to go to Tacoma I will tell you that and I love that town but I’m just saying Fantastic Sam movich from Mars Technica if you want to go back to the bus you can now do so we really appreciate it I’m gonna go enjoy my long Fourth of July weekend I hope you guys do as well have a good one thanks man thanks for hopping on so uh so so quickly there appreciate it bye Sam all right see you later Sam all right coming up the internet knows you like cats and apparently knows that I like to sneeze but first let’s take a minute to thank rocket mortgage by quick and Loans the sponsor of this episode the mortgage experience I mean you know it it hasn’t really been keeping up with the times it’s dated it needed a client focused technological Revolution and that is why quick and Loans created rocket mortgage rocket mortgage gives you the confidence that you need when it comes to buying a home or refinancing your existing home home loan you’re going to need a little confidence boost that’s what rocket mortgage can do for you it’s simple allows you to fully understand all the details and to be confident that you’re getting the right mortgage for you it’s convenient of course their trusted Partners allow you to share your financial information with rocket mortgage at the touch of a button it’s powerful whether you’re looking to buy your first home or your 10th rocket mortgage is able to perform thousands of calculations in seconds based on your income your assets your credit you put all that stuff in there and Rocket mortgage can analyze all the home loan options for which you qualify specifically and then find the one that’s just right for you so you find exactly what you’re looking for Rocket mortgage by quick and Loans apply simply understand fully mortgage confidently to get started go to rocketmortgage.com TNT that’s rocketmortgage.com NT Equal Housing lender licensed in all 50 states nmls consumer access.org number 3030 and we thank rocket mortgage by quick and loans for their support of tech news today we got some feedback viewer David Monroe wrote in asking us to follow up on the story in the Washington examiner about Twitter users reporting Trump’s account over his tweets yesterday if you haven’t already uh read the tweets uh you can you can go read them anywhere just go to Google you’ll find them yeah open a new a news site of any kind of any kind yes or ask someone uh Seth Ferman from CNN had a really great piece about why Donald Trump doesn’t uh get booted from Twitter and uh and it his threat wasn’t violent I guess you could argue that it was an attack made on a person because of her gender that’s against the Twitter rules uh you could also say it was targeted abuse or harassment um but mostly I think it’s just really distracting and personally I wish current presidents would not tweet well yeah and I I suppose what’s what’s interesting is now like I I keep thinking of Twitter and what Twitter was couple of years ago versus what it is now and it’s just crazy that a that a network that was so based around people sharing very unimportant throwaway comments like I just ate a a tuna fish sandwich and now it’s actually in in some parts Part included as part of the presidential record um so that says something about Twitter and and just you know the the the power of social media in today’s landscape be it political or whatever um yeah I mean it’s it’s next to impossible to condone or excuse some of the stuff that that uh Trump had put out uh tweeted out yesterday totally foul taste totally unnecessary um but the argument like it kind of flip-flops around right like often I see people say we should kick Donald Trump off of Twitter because he said these things and that should be you know that’s crossing the line crosses the terms of service yet a similar tone or even worse is then applied against Donald Trump by in some cases the same people and so I think I I just think it’s worth it’s worth remembering that if you draw a line in the sand that Line in the Sand gets extended to everyone and maybe um maybe that’s a can of worms and you know to to Think Twice The Rage is okay you know being being um you know not condoning that is okay but remember that when you when you apply something like that to one person you would be expected to apply it to all and what is the I don’t know what is the waterfall from that you know what what falls off the edge as a result of that yeah I mean it’s if you want to report Donald Trump on Twitter go ahead but there are a lot of other ways you could uh use your time um to change things if you want to I mean I think when you say that what Twitter used to be that brings up a good point because I think especially in the beginning Twitter was a place where people had a voice when they didn’t otherwise and presidents have voices they have so many platforms so I guess I just think that it makes sense maybe not to have not to tweet at all and I’m not just saying this president but any president yeah yeah it is interesting uh where we’re at though uh certainly makes for for something interesting to read every day TNT’s fan of the day is Lane who says he watches Tech news today while working at the security gate security gate of do we know no I tried to look it looks like maybe it’s someone’s fancy house all vehicles are to have a pass or sticker so it’s some sort of security gate we’re there you know you know what maybe you know what I noticed we’re the biggest screen I know yeah yeah yeah there’s all sorts of security cameras and stuff like that but no we got we got the big screen we’re so lucky you’re so lucky uh show us how you watch or listen to TNT uh just record a video or take a picture of yourself or your setup post it on Instagram Google+ Twitter or Facebook and use the hasht how IAT TNT and find it on this show we have been accused more than once of hating cats we are allergic to cats we are we do not hate them we’re not about to go on a rant on Twitter about them we like cats we just don’t like being around cats and to show you that we like them virtually we wanted to show you pearly that’s p u r r l i a website devoted to the endless sounds of cats purring oh oh could that could put me to sleep you can add meowing as well or maybe that’s a squeaky door I don’t know but uh it’s created by Stefan pigeon uh it’s actually an update to the per generator that he created back in 2015 um I I could listen to this a lot but it does does it make you want to sneeze um I think there needs to be a sneez ometer in there maybe uh with variables like velocity and mucus viscosity that we could add in there so that every 20 30 seconds someone goes and that would be about normal for me uh I love this though it’s it’s cool it gives you the little sliders so you can kind of mix in the the frequency um the what is it the uh closer distant so if you go to close it gets really Bassy if you go distant it gets really trou I don’t know I think it’s really clever I love it I don’t know if it makes me want to get a cat though we’re going to we’re going to be dog sitting starting tonight oh don’t get cat then well some dogs like cats I guess we’re yeah we’re dog sitting for two weeks we thought we’d bring a cat in the house and see what could possibly go wrong we’re not that big no cool stuff though uh so definitely check it out pear.com and yeah can see what you think TNT records live every Monday through Friday at 4 P pm. Pacific 7 P p.m. Eastern 2300 UTC twit.tv you can be part of the show by emailing us at TNT twit.tv you can leave us a short voicemail to 260 TNT show and find us on Twitter or at technew todaytv you can share all your thoughts on the stories we discuss in the TNT subreddit at technew today. rd.com find all the ways to subscribe to our show at twit.tv TNT and if you know a way for me to buy a bunch of bots that can make Jason breakfast please tweet me at Megan you might as well CC me too because I would love to know about this uh ahead of it arriving uh at my home I’m Jason Howell on Twitter thanks to Anthony Neil for being our technical director today uh thanks to Mario for helping out here at the studio thanks to Kevin for editing the show I think it’s Kevin today and thanks to you for talking Tech with us today we’ll see you all on Monday bye everybody oh that’s right I didn’t know if you wanted I that was like a finger fingertip [Music]