A little bit beforehand. Oh, hi. Wow, that went live quick today. Hi. Hello. Let me take a quick 20 seconds. Hiding. By the way, we don't make Roger hide because we're embarrassed about him. He needs to hide so he can present the screens. And he'll come back at the end.  I'm hiding. That's not true. Hi, Ashley. I'm going to pretend like we weren't streaming already on the audio. Yeah. Because the video people don't know. They don't know. They don't know. They don't know. That's Ashley's scared to video people. All right. I'm about ready. Are you ready, Ashley? Yep. I'm scared about what my dogs are doing because they're being quiet. But let me just look out the door really quickly and then I'll be right back. All right. They're just very sadly laying on the couch and they both just turned around and looked at me like, why you no play, mama? I thought you were going to say they had graph paper out. Earlier, listen, our puppy is a year and a half old. He grabs my pants and he chews holes in them. He chews holes in my pants. So earlier I caught him dragging a pair of my jeans out of my office. This pair in fact. Oh my gosh.  Like holes happen. He's the worst. He is truly the Leroy Jenkins of dogs. Right? He just barreled on in. Just rushes in, doesn't ask any questions. Do you give him chicken? He's just living life. All right. Here we go. Ready to go. This is a public DTNS announcement. A message in English will follow. Welcome to show in medaglia teknologiska nyheter med Tom Merritt och gäster. Jag heter Carl och en av flera exekutiva med producenter och alltså en av Toms skätver. Det kan du också bli. Genom att tonera en dollar eller mer i månaden på www.patreon.com. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, May 6, 2016. I'm Tom Merritt. Nolan Peralta today. No Darren Kitchen today. But we have Ashley Esqueda, senior editor at CNET, host of Tomorrow Daily with Jeff Canada. How you doing Ashley? Thanks for it. It's your day off and you're doing this show. No, it's not. I'm always working. I'm always working. No, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me back. It's been a while. It's been like two years. It's been too long. Has it been two years, really? I think it's been almost because I think the last time I was on, it was right before E3 of right after I started at CNET. That's amazing. Well, good. We will try not to wait so long next time to make this happen. But we've got a Tomorrow Daily story that you and Jeff talked about a couple of days that we want to get into even more because it involves the mysteries of the deep. It does. It's so weird, so very weird. We're going to get to that in a minute. Which is what we like. That's what we like on Tomorrow Daily. Basically living on the ocean in small bubbles. We'll explain. Let's start off with the headlines, though. On Wednesday, James Pinkstone wrote a blog post claiming Apple deleted 122 gigabytes of his music. He said someone named Amber, which he implies is from Apple, but he never actually makes it clear that she's an Apple employee, told him that Apple does delete files from your computer. Now, Apple doesn't say that on its website. On its website, it says, quote, Apple music doesn't change or alter your original music files that reside in iTunes for Mac or PC or on your iOS devices from which they were added. OK, so there's a conflict of evidence going on here. Serenity Caldwell from iMore.com explained how secondary devices may have their music removed to save on storage. So if you make your Mac the primary device, you've got to be careful not to treat it like a secondary device. Jason Snell on Twitter noted that the dialog box for deleting a song or just removing the download is confusing, and maybe that's what happened to James Pinkstone. But Ben Lovejoy from 9 to 5 Mac points out that Jim Dalrymple lost 4,700 tracks to what sounded like a similar bug, and 9 to 5 Mac's own Greg Barbosa described a similar experience. So Ashley, it sounds like everyone agrees that this is not the way Apple music is supposed to work, but maybe it's happening? Oh my gosh, your audio went out again. I don't know how. I don't know why. We might just start the show over again, because come on.  She's going to check something in a second. But while she looks for that, this happened right before the show, too. I don't know why we haven't figured that out. Let me try doing that. Talk now. No, still can't hear you for some crazy reason. Yeah, I don't know what it is either. Yeah, audio is supposed to work on a Google Hangout. And you all heard her. It was definitely working a moment ago. All right, she's going to be right back. Yeah, well, so video people, you get to see two versions of the start of the show today. Isn't that crazy? And maybe I'll record this and put it in the treasure chest for folks, too. This rarely happens that we get a bug three minutes into the show that takes us out. Hey, Roger, you don't have to hide now. I don't have to hide anymore. The shame is temporarily removed. If we were halfway through the show, I would have just kept barreling on.  You didn't like Donkey Kong. A speedrun, like a Donkey Kong speedrun. Barrels, barrels. Or maybe I'll knit the show together today. That sounds rather involved. Yeah, just if we can keep her audio live for the next bit, maybe I will. Apple. Apple muted her mic. That's what it is. That's what she's saying in the chat room. It's funny. Probably. I believe it. Probably true. It probably, they probably reached in through iTunes and muted her mic. Okay, she's coming back now, folks. Can we hear you? Can you hear us? No, we can't hear you. This is crazy, Chrome. Are you on Chrome? Or are you on Safari? Maybe that's it. Maybe Apple's doing it. All right, she left again. She's coming back. Play by play, folks. Story of your life, Tom. Women coming in and out of your life. Why would you even say that? Because it's something to fill time. You've been buried for more than 10 years. Hey, you know what? Not gonna say anything. Now you're making it sound even worse. I know. That's what's funny. It's by not saying anything. That's what I've learned. That's how you incriminate yourself on so many things. People ask you a question. You don't say anything. You did, didn't you? It's like, what do I then say anything? Oh, ladies and gentlemen. How about that rain that I'm getting right now? Are you getting rain? Yeah. It's supposed to rain tomorrow morning, too. Light drizzle. Okay, that's not too bad. The El Nino is in. It's probably why Fort McMurray is off ball and flames because of El Nino, no wet weather. I'm flying in tomorrow morning for the Night Attack Live in San Francisco 4.30 p.m. at Piano Fight, if you're gonna be around San Francisco. Bring your piano. It's saying rain, which makes me worried. Yeah, bring your upright. Don't bring a grand. It's a little easier to keep dry. It makes me worried when they shut down the runway at San Francisco sometimes. Takes forever. Well, there's only two. They can only do, I think they can only do, there's only two runways. And they can only do one landing, one takeoff or is it two landing, two takeoff? I forget, it's just basically limited, which is why a lot of people. Yeah, when they get a lot of visibility, they shut down one of the two runways. Yeah, but that's usually for fog, not for rain overcast, unless it's stormy. Talk to me when you're stuck in your most interior room with the family dog you might get. Well, that's why I don't have a dog waffle off, I guess, because I'm allergic. All right. It's still, well, yeah. Oakland doesn't shut down there, things, but it was cheaper to fly to SFO this time. Somebody, it was like fly to Oakland. You should take that high speed rail we put so much money into. Yeah, it's not about distance. It's always to me about, it's about the fare. Cause I'm going to Oakland first thing anyway. All right, I am going to pick up, well, let's see if Ashley comes back here in a second. Ashley comes back and she's talking. I'm gonna pick up where I left off with the headline. Oh, hey, look at that. Joe the pilot got rained out. Nice. I, so I'll pick up where, right after the headline and say, okay, where I said, okay, so it sounds like it's not, it's definitely not supposed to work this way, but it sounds like it is working this way. And then if we hear Ashley, it will carry on our conversation. And if we don't, I'm just gonna go solo until she figures it out. I think maybe she's rebooting the entire computer. Yeah, I think she's rebooting. I gotta get the whole thing in time to, I got a schedule, man. You're a busy man. No, I've got current gig at four o'clock and I have to squeeze in some stuff before then. So I'm gonna give her a couple more minutes though. Speaking of squeezing, where's my pen? That didn't sound right. If it hadn't been three minutes in, I probably would have just kept going too. Like I said. Sorry. You should be. It's your fault. It is probably in some way. No, it's not. You're right. Should I disappear? Let me see. It brings some light on my face. I'm so overcast either day. Oh, well, the big bang. So, Tom needs his own Charles Nelson Riley. Roger, you want the job? Sure. He might know. I don't even know who that is. Charles Nelson Riley. All right. Here we go. So, am I disappearing? Yeah. Oh, she says I don't know what's happening. Yeah, she's having major tech issues. Oh, entire rig just went down like the Titanic. Oh, no. Here we go. You go ahead and you can feel free to pipe in comments, but so in other words, leave your mic open but still do screens, right? Yeah. All right. We'll make this work and hopefully actually join back in. She don't want people to know I'm here, but to hear I'm here. Yeah, you could still show screens. It'll be fine. Okay, here we go. So, it sounds like it's not supposed to go and delete all your files, but in some cases it is. I mean, these aren't the only people who are doing that. Now, if you're wondering what Ashley thinks about this, I am too, because if you watch the video version, you know she disappeared because her mic got muted and now she's rebooting her computer. So we're gonna try to get her back in here as quickly as possible. If you hear a disembodied voice, that's Roger. Hi, Roger. How are you? Hello, disembodied voice. Roger Tang, our producer, is gonna pipe in and we're just gonna keep going while we see if Ashley can get her stuff fixed. In the meantime, I think that there are probably a lot of things. I think a lot of people that are out there saying I had my stuff deleted by Apple, probably did have user error, probably did fall for the thing that Jason Snell is talking about. I think there may be some situations where people's subscription expires and then Apple Music does some nasty things there unexpectedly. There may be some situations where someone replaces a Mac and the new Mac gets seen as the secondary computer, not the primary computer, which case Apple does do some management where they put things into the cloud. I've had that happen with my iPhone for sure so I could see it happen to a Mac if it thought it was the secondary device, not the primary. The upshot of all of this is, while yesterday someone on Twitter pointed the story out to me and I said, it seems like an old story. This kind of thing has been happening. Now people are really paying attention to it and it is something that points out that Apple Music's interface for managing cloud music doesn't work very well. And I've always felt like they're trying to be too fancy. Just give me a box. My music's there and it's on my device and I can choose what to do with it. And that's not what they do. They try to be fancy with iTunes match and that caused some problems for James Pinkstone where he had some actual original compositions that were matched incorrectly and then it replaced his original compositions. Now thankfully he's got a backup of all of this stuff but still Apple Music's iCloud story is supposed to be a backup to this stuff. You shouldn't have to think about your cloud backup and wonder whether it's going to mess up. It should be the same thing on your drive as it is in the cloud. And if you wanna use iTunes match to speed up the upload, then that should be an option that you can choose but it shouldn't mess with anything else. You would take it at least off for a slight warning. It's like, hey, we found duplicates. We're just gonna make a new folder. So the upside is, no, these headlines kind of Pinkstone was a little inflammatory in his blog post saying Apple is deleting your music. That's not, Apple isn't intentionally deleting your music despite what he says Amber said. But there is something wrong with Apple Music. Apple Music needs to fix it and they definitely need to work on the user friendliness of how this system works. Related news, Apple launched new discounted Apple Music plans for eligible college students in the UK, Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and the US can now get 50% off the normal subscription rate for up to four years. Eligibility will be validated by UniDays, a company that just does this. They basically say, yes, we can validate whether someone is a student or not. So no, my old student ID from 1988 is not gonna allow me to get this 50% off. But hey, if you pay 50% less, maybe you won't mind the occasional bug. I don't know. Definitely a good way to spike the numbers, right? Definitely an interesting selection of countries. I'm sure plenty of Canadians will be wondering why they are not available for them. Yeah, it has to do with rights, I imagine. They probably have certain, some contracts will specify that you can't do deep discounts and that sort of thing. So maybe that's what's going on. San Francisco's US district judge James Donato denied Facebook's request to throw out a lawsuit accusing the company of using biometric identifiers without consent in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act of 2008, Facebook Facial Recognition System is the one that identifies people and then suggests a tag.  This looks like Roger Chang. You wanna tag this person? Facebook argues that its user agreement requires disputes be resolved under California law. But the judge said, well, if we did that, then Illinois laws could never be enforced with any California company. That doesn't make sense. So no, we are not going to dismiss this case. It doesn't actually grant a victory to the plaintiffs. It just says that the court case is going to have to go forward. Facebook also argues that the photographs are not covered under the Illinois law and that will be something to contest at trial. They say you also have the chance to opt out of being tagged if you want, which that to me doesn't sound like it fits the law. The law says you have to get people to opt in for this sort of thing. I will make a note that this kind of seems like an internal version of what happens when Facebook or Google or Microsoft run afoul of international laws between are varying national laws that are different between countries. Like who do you follow? Who trumps who and where goes where? So it'll be interesting. I'm very curious about this case to see how it ends up. The story today is very not technology. It's a judge saying which law, which state law should apply. But the implications of this, once it's actually gone through court are very interesting. Whether a photograph facial recognition is equivalent to live facial recognition and there's lots of states that have restrictions on what you can do with biometric data. An update to Windows 10 Pro has removed the ability for administrators to block access to the Windows Store. The ability remains in Windows 10 Enterprise and the Windows 10 Education Editions. Thursday, Microsoft announced that Windows Store for Business will allow developers to sell paid apps in volume. I don't think that has much to do with the first story there, but it is interesting we got more apps to be sold through the store at the same time that if you're on Pro, you can't block that store anymore. I don't like that they took this away and I don't quite understand why they would other than monetary inducement, other than saying, we need to be able to sell more stuff and having it blocked on Pro reduces the consumers. But if I'm running a small business and I can't afford Windows 10 Enterprise, I don't need hundreds of site licenses. I still might need to block my users from using the store because I don't have savvy users and they might download stuff. Not, I mean, the idea is that Windows 10 Store isn't going to let you download anything horrible because it's curated, but they might download things that are going to conflict with other programs I have. You know, it's kind of weird. It's just as what you said, but at the same time, couldn't you just lock the store to your account and even if someone were to able to access it, they wouldn't be able to buy anything? Well, no, they can essentially, if I understand it right, and I'm sure someone will email us if this isn't right, but if I understand it right, if I'm on Windows 10 Pro at my workplace, I now can access the store and create my own account in it. Ah, interesting. Yeah. Google and Honeywell have resolved a 2012 patent suit filed by Honeywell, claiming Nest Learning Thermostat infringed on several of its patents. According to a press release, the two companies said they have reached a long-term patent cross licensing agreement reflecting the respective strength of the company's patent portfolios and that it, quote, fully resolves pending patent litigation between Honeywell and Nest Labs. Terms of the agreement were not made available. Tony Fiddell said some pretty nasty things about Honeywell when this patent lawsuit was first launched, but seems like they just don't want to fight in court anymore. You know, litigating things oftentimes takes a lot of time and a lot of money and perhaps it's just better to shake hands and make a deal that may not be perfect for each group, but, you know, it just keeps it less messy. Yeah. Warner Music Group announced that revenue from streaming services, like Spotify, for instance, was its single biggest source of recorded music revenue in Q1. Now that's the first time that streaming has topped the revenue charts at a major label. Streaming revenue rose $72 million for Warner. Downloads declined $17 million and physical sales dropped $6 million. That together is $23 million, so still much less than the amount that streaming rose. Music sales rose 10% overall for the company and total revenue for the company rose 10% as well. So this is an interesting one because you're going to continue and even in this earnings call, heard Warner Music and other music labels saying we're not getting enough from streaming and that doesn't necessarily contradicted by the fact that they're making more money on streaming. They want to make even more money. They want to have more than 10%. Even if they're making up the money they lost from physical sales and declining downloads, they feel like they used to make a lot more money and should be making more money. So you will continue to hear them try to preach the word that streaming services need to pay them more. I think artists probably do have issues with streaming and rightly so, but if they're saying we're not making money, they're lying. If they're saying we're not making enough money, then sure, that could be true. It's more like we're not making the money that we're used to. And you know, the thing is, you pick any business and the market changes over time. You're never going to be able to, and I use this word very resolutely, milk, your customers for so long before something else changes and streaming is one of those big changes that has allowed people to become a little more discerning and less captive to a particular brand or a marketing machine. My gut feeling has always been that we will see the market for streaming music get better and better and the money will start to come in then as it goes along. I think I hear things. Yes, Ashley, it's back, yay. I just, like I'm on a completely different computer. Oh no, I'm so sorry. I can't even get my PC to do anything. It's like it just cratered like a meteor in the sky. Just was like, ooh, goodbye. Well, we've only got a couple more headlines left and you're back in time to talk about the boats. But since we're talking about music with Warner Music, I do want your opinion on this Apple Music thing that's going on. I mean, and Apple Music is one of the streaming services that's feeding Warner Music, so it does tie in. What do you make of these people saying no, it just comes in and deletes my stuff? Well, isn't that one of the things that it's an iTunes match thing, right? Where you go into iTunes match and then it's like taking all your stuff off your system to like, it thinks it's, this is sort of the problem with smart anything is like it thinks it's helping, but a lot of times it is not helping. And so I think people maybe, Apple needs to make it very clear that like if you sign up for iTunes match and you have local music stored on your hard drive, like please make a backup of it before, like there should be prompts. I mean, I think it's a thing where, you know, Apple, like I'm not really sure when this happened, but Apple, especially with, I mean, iTunes has just traditionally always been a mess, but even Apple Music, it's just, it's a disaster. Like it's so not intuitive, it's so, it's not easy. It doesn't just work anymore. Like, and I think this is like an inherent problem that Apple has been having, especially as of late. And this is just another example of these sorts of things where it's just, it's not intuitive, it's very confusing. It's doing things people don't want them to do without their permission or even telling them that it's gonna do it. But yeah, I mean, I think when I signed up for iTunes match, there was like a notice that was very vague that sort of said we, like there was some sort of vague and more like kind of weird notification that said that someone could take it that way that it was gonna happen, but it was never really clear. It's not clear. First there's this whole thing about like what your primary device is where it's getting the music from and then your secondary device is where it mirrors the music and has them in the cloud. That I think is causing a lot of this confusion and Jason Snell was talking about, if you delete a track on your primary account, you can download it from the cloud first, but if you press remove download, that just removes it from the device and leaves it in the cloud. I think I already got it wrong just now saying that. Like, basically you delete a track and it says, would you like to remove the download or delete the song? Those, I mean, I don't know what the difference between those two are without reading the quest text that comes in the dialogue box. Right, exactly. And this is like, and it's the same with even iPhoto, with iCloud photo storage. It's just one of those things where it's very, it can be very confusing and it's like, you know, when you delete a photo, it's like, oh well, if you delete this photo, you're removing it from iCloud, but you're not removing it from your device. But then you're also keeping it here and it's just like, okay guys, simplify. Like this has to get simpler. Especially these cloud services, these companies that are just so huge, like it just needs to be made clear. They need to just not touch your physical files unless it really should be an opt-in thing. Right when you sign up for iTunes Match, it says, hey, do you want us to curate your stuff for you? If so, this is what that means, yes or no. Like it's very, it's pretty easy. Just have iCloud work like a network drive. Yeah, don't touch my stuff. Don't touch my stuff. I don't even like it when people will reorganize things in the house. Like when my husband puts some of my stuff away, I'm like, don't touch it. Stop defragging my house. Yeah, it's like it's organized chaos and my music library is the same way. It's organized chaos and I don't want anybody to touch it. Apple, I try to find it. You think you know better, but you don't. I have a very specific system for my music and I like it and it works and please don't touch anything. Get hands off my music, Apple. Jake Velletta of FireEye Security has identified an Android vulnerability that could allow access to things like system settings, call history, the database of your SMS texts, problem comes from Qualcomm's software package used in Google Android, but also used in other Android distributions like Cyanogen Mod. The vulnerability comes in the NetD demon that allows tethering capabilities. It's been present as far back as ice cream sandwich in 2011 and while Qualcomm has fixed the problem and they did it within 90 days of being informed by FireEye, it's up to OEMs to push that fix out to their devices and FireEye points out, a lot of these device manufacturers aren't going to push fixes to 2011 era Android devices. This is kind of, I mean, it's like kind of, it's Android, it's a sort of inherent problem with people holding onto phones for years and years and years. Yeah, so if you have an Android, you might want to check in and make sure of this. Thankfully it hasn't been seen in the wild, so that's good. Yeah, yeah. And finally, this one is really intriguing to me. AVSA or AVSA submitted a write up to the DTNS subreddit about the DAO, not the Dow Jones or not the way DAO, Decentralized Autonomous Organization, it's a centralized VC firm to pool money together to invest in blockchain enterprises. It's been developed by the Ethereum Development and Design Team and AVSA discloses like I work on some Ethereum stuff and is participating in DAO. What happens is you buy DAO tokens with your Ethereum coins, but you can also buy them with bitcoins or just regular currency. Voting rights are then proportional to the amount of DAO tokens that you hold. Company exists only on the internet. That sounds like something that'll be an interesting test case at some point and funds itself through the Ethereum blockchain. Campaign has raised the equivalent of $20 million so far. And it looks like the idea is to come up with a company structure that doesn't have any people directly running it, if that makes any sense. Right, I like a little decentralized, right? Also, can I just say like Ethereum coins and blockchain? I feel like we're talking about World of Warcraft currency. It's like, it's really great. But I like this idea, I'm sort of this kind of crowd.  But I like this idea of sort of this no management.  It's pretty cool. And I know like Stoic Squirrel is saying, why are people funding this? I'm sure a lot of people look at this and go, isn't that how stocks work already?  But again, there's no board. There are some things that are analogs and I'm a little fuzzy on the differences where they have a committee that hires the contractors that go and strike the deals. But they use the blockchain to validate the contracts, which is another thing you could do with blockchains to make sure that the contracts are enforceable and enforced. So there's a lot more to it than we could probably get to in a couple of minutes here. But it's trying to take the advantages of a virtual organization and push them to the limit. It is not accelerated anywhere. But I think that's the thing I'm like, we'll see how long that lasts if this thing gets successful. I mean, if I were somebody who was looking for VC, that is the one thing I feel like would make me a little bit nervous. Yeah. Like, you know, this is not incorporated, it's sort of decentralized. Like, who do you, where's the liability, like that kind of stuff. I mean, I think those would be the questions I'd ask. But I mean, I love the idea. Like, I like this idea. I took a bit of Bitcoin and put it in the Dow on behalf of Daily Tech News Show and we'll see what happens. Keep following it. So, it's probably not enough to have any sway over what they do. But at least I can keep an eye on how the whole system works there. But thanks to Absa for posting that in the subreddit, especially because this was just Absa sort of writing an original story, saying, hey, I'm involved in this thing. I think it's interesting. Here are links to the thing itself and the IB Times article on it, so you know it's legit. So it was a very good way of presenting some original content on the subreddit. Thanks for doing that, Absa. And thanks to everybody who submitted things we use from our subreddit. Submit stories and vote on them at DailyTechNewsShow.Reddit.com. Let's look at the headlines. All right, also thanks to Roger Chang for picking up the baton there while Ashley was persevering. And thank you, Ashley, for persevering through the computer issues there. I just, I think I just gotta get a new one. That's like, right? That's what I need. I built this one with Star Wars, the Old Republic was launched. And so I'm like, I think it's time. Now that Overwatch is coming out, I feel like maybe it's getting about that time. That's a good excuse, Zanny. I mean, that's a really good. VR, I mean, it's like, oh, I gotta have a VR-ready PC now. You need at least a 970 NVIDIA GeForce. That's my problem is, like, if I wanna build one, it's gonna be loaded, can't build a mid-range PC. I can't do it. All right, and then you can bring it onto your tiny home that will float in the ocean. Those of you who follow tomorrow daily know about the Unidentified Floating Object or UFO from Jet Capsule. It can go three and a half knots. For those of us who aren't sailors, that's about six and a half kilometers per hour. 40 square meters of solar panels plus wind and water turbines can provide the power. It has engines, or will have when they actually build it. Convert engines to convert seawater to drinking water. Vegetable garden can encircle the 12 meter diameter so you can grow your own food. The prototype will cost about $800,000 and they're seeking investors. In fact, their website says they're gonna do a Kickstarter campaign soon. There's no link to that yet. But you end up with a two story house. Top level's 20 square meters of kitchen. Lower level is 10 square meters of bathroom and bedroom. The main structure of the floating object can be aligned with a compass, keeping the position and angle oriented on the desired cardinal direction even in rough sea conditions.  Just gonna float around the world almost aimlessly because three and a half knots is not very fast. Or as Jeff D'Amato said, no more bills, you got gills. That's right. That is very true.  We talked about escaping your student loan debt by living in international waters. And if that would be, I think it's very appealing to millennials. I guess you'd have to go up to Alaska to cross the Bering Strait. I don't see this thing lasting out on the open ocean, right? You gotta stay pretty close to the coast. We had so many people email us who said, hey, I work on an oil rig or I work out in the sea and I've seen waves larger than battleships. And there are huge storms in the sea. So yeah, I don't think this is something you're gonna be making a trans-Pacific trek on. I think you're gonna have to stay pretty close to whatever land mass you're nearby. You know, the one thing I could imagine, though, is harbors with a whole bunch of these as a community sort of chained together, almost like a net, but then sort of all kind of tethered together to sort of create this like large sort of C-pod community, which I kind of like that. Like, I think it's very futuristic. It's very Jetsons-esque. It's just instead of going into the sky, we're going into the ocean. Yeah, and here's the thing. This is a company in Italy. It's an SRL, which is similar to an LLC. They do a mini yacht, which looks really cool, and it's an actual product. In fact, they have a map that shows where all the jet capsules are, which is in Italy and somewhere up in Russia on the Sea of Okhotsk. So they're not in too many places, but they're local to Italy, so they have a few in Italy. $150,000 for that mini yacht. That's really expensive for a yacht of that size. It's a tiny yacht. $200,000 is what they want to get this UFO to. That's also really expensive for 20 square meters, essentially. Well, not if you live in San Francisco, right, Tom? Well, yeah. Gee, so much space. Even 30 square meters in San Francisco is going to cost you, but you can't float around. It's not self-sustainable, right? So there's exchanges there. I do think if they're able to make this work, though, that you should view it less as this is the product should I live in it or not, but enthusiasts will try this out and experiment and they'll be able to figure out how to bring the cost down. And the idea of a sustainable floating home suddenly could, Ashley, create new places for people to live by chaining together and building out into the water. Yeah, and also, I mean, when you think about things like climate change, you know, these are going to be very serious issues that are going to need to be tackled in terms of, you know, when and if water levels do rise to the point where people on coastal cities around the world are going to have to either move inland or they're going to have to move into the water. And so it's, you know, some places more so than others and, of course, not imminently, but this is definitely one of those technologies that you kind of, it makes you think for a second, you're like, hmm, well, it sounds a little absurd now, but, you know, maybe this would be a thing in the future. And maybe, you know, I think there was a concept, that was pitched a while ago, and I don't, gosh, I wish I could remember who it was, but they pitched something like a network of these sorts of like house boats that would all be tethered together in that way, but used synchronized engine power to propel it, it could go across the sea, like the way that it was set up, and then with those waves, those really big swells, it would actually be able to like be flexible because it was like floating on a net, like, and they would all be these sort of like little meeting points, which I thought was really fascinating, and honestly, I mean, not to say that Waterworld's coming or anything, I know we joke around about, you know, the robot apocalypse, there's so many apocalypses, we like to say that are gonna happen. The Waterworld and the Robot Apocalypse and Mad Max, we're all gonna run out of water, we're gonna run out, but we're gonna have too much, it's like, it's really, it's nuts. But I do like the idea of finding new ways to house people in creative fashion that is very sustainable. I mean, we've seen that, the eco-egg, I don't remember, I don't know if you've seen that, where it's like a little sustainable egg that you can like just take anywhere, it's like a little mobile egg and it's solar powered. You can live a nap too. Well, and I think that's the most fascinating about this as well is, I'm a little skeptical that they can convert seawater to drinking water at a sustainable level, without you having to supplement it, but if they could, suddenly. But if they could, that's, yeah, it's like, yeah. You know, people will live on the sea, or you could just sell that as a way for people to make their own drinking water. So, I'm sure. Desalination would be a huge deal if you could make desalination cheaper than it is currently. I mean, that in and of itself would just be a huge breakthrough in technology, particularly for places like LA where we have no more water, like we're just running out. So I think this is awesome that they're even just working on this. So yeah, even if you just wanna look at this as some kind of concept that may not become a real product, it does point the way to something that is potentially doable, if not by JetCapsule, maybe by somebody else. And I just, I don't know. It's the same reason I like space is that idea of a self-contained system that recycles everything and makes the most out of it. And I know that grosses people out because as you guys were talking about, what do you do with your waste? What do you do with your poop? Yeah, that was number one question. And we reported on that early in the week. They're like, but where does your poop go? And then Jeff so eloquently put it, well, fish poop in the ocean. So why not you do? And I was like, okay, it's still weird. I imagine there's the same kind of toilet system that you have in trailers, right? And you probably would have rules about where you can dump it. But it would be great is if it was also reclaiming minerals and water and things like that. No, I agree. I 100% agree. And kudos to JetCapsule for being so ambitious about this. I mean, $800,000 prototype. We'll see if they can get it done. But man, just great. Listen, progress is progress. And I like people who are ambitious and have big ideas. Yep, absolutely. I mean, as optimistic as I am, I kind of doubt we'll ever see it. I know, I know me too. I'm hoping to be wrong. I'm hoping to be optimistic almost always. But yes, I would, I love to be proven, but I love when my skepticism is proven wrong. Exactly. Let's get to our pick of the day. Brian in Pittsburgh, formerly just Brian, he says. I guess he did live in Pittsburgh before he was just Brian. Would like to recommend a piece of software that he doesn't think gets enough love, Inkscape. Inkscape is a free vector graphics creation software that is to Adobe Illustrator, as Gimp is to Photoshop. Brian says, I've used Inkscape to create scalable graphics for web and print, but the coolest thing was being able to create schematics for a mini arcade cabinet and send them off to be laser cut. If I manipulated vector graphics all the time, I probably would get Illustrator, but for the occasional project, Inkscape really can't be beat. It's been around forever too. Inkscape.org is a fantastic product. I don't use it a lot. I've downloaded it before for exactly what Brian's talking about. Like I needed something right then that did some vectors, but I know a lot of people that still are enthusiastic about it. That's really cool. Inkscape.org. Send your picks to us, folks. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com and you can find more picks at DailyTechNewShow.com slash picks. Couple emails before we go. Rich from Lovely Cleveland says he enjoyed our discussion on the ideal streaming service on Wednesday. And he says, of course, I'm continually stymied in court cutting by local sports. There just seems to be no simple solution. I've tried to make the argument that getting MLB all access and using an out-of-state VPN is simple to my wife to no avail. So for him, it's not even the ethics of it. It's the fact that his wife's like, nope, too complicated. This got me thinking, would it be better to make all professional sporting events pay-per-view? Is that the only way to give teams the revenue they expect for streaming to loosen their grip? More importantly, am I really gonna pay $5 a game to watch The Stinking Browns? Remember, he's from Cleveland, he gets to say that. I don't think that's the issue, Ashley. It's not that they can't get the revenue to the teams. It's that the broadcast partners are still want their cut and still want eyeballs on the broadcast so they can get the ratings that they use to charge the advertisers, right? They still, they want that cut that they used to get before everybody started cutting the cord, which they can't, they can't get that anymore. So they're having to find these really weird kind of creative ways. Like we have Dodger's TV, right? You have to subscribe to see the Dodgers. And but yeah, that's basically what's happening. It's cord cutters. A lot of people like me, I don't watch a lot of sports on my TV and I'm like, why am I paying this $5 sports every month in my cable bill between $5 and $10? There's like a regional sports broadcasting fee. And for no reason. Like I'm just like, well, why am I paying this? And even if I wanted to watch sports, I couldn't watch the Dodgers. There's like teams that I can't even watch. So I don't understand why this is even a thing. I think this is kind of a weird transitional phase for a lot of local sports teams to try to figure out, hey, these, especially with longer seasons, like baseball especially is, I think that's the big one. It's like, when you have these really long seasons with over a hundred games, basketball, NHL too, yeah. NHL, it's like, this becomes an issue because most people are not gonna watch every single game. And so it's, how do you get those eyeballs if they're not watching it just casually on cable, if they're not flipping over to, flipping by ESPN and going, oh, you know, the kings are playing. I'm gonna stop and watch that. Like, how do you get those people to come in? And I think apps, I mean, for me, it's like apps is the way to do it. Just like, offer an app on Amazon Fire TV, Roku, offer it across all of your set top boxes and just say, hey, for $15 a month or however many, one price for the season that amortizes out.  It's the same kind of thing, but it's through an app as opposed to through a cable subscription. I think that's the way. Well, they have that. If, you know, as long as I can, for out-of-market teams, I can watch stuff fun on my MLB app or my NHL app, but it's not per team, at least yet. There are some offerings that are per team, but again, it's still out-of-market teams. If you wanna watch in-market teams, they're doing things where like, you can register with your cable provider, but if I'm a cord cutter, that doesn't help me. And it all comes back to the local affiliate, let's say Fox Sports Midwest. They do the St. Louis Cardinals games. Fox Sports Midwest doesn't want MLB to sell the Cardinals games to people who don't subscribe to cable that gets Fox Sports Midwest. They're not ready for that yet. They'll let you authenticate because Nielsen is doing more with rating digital viewing and they can charge their advertisers for that. But they're like, hey, we paid a lot of money for this and we need to make it back on advertising and we don't get that advertising if they're selling it to people directly. I predict a revolt amongst owners, team owners, because they're gonna start seeing, I think very soon, if not now. I think team owners are gonna start realizing that there's a lot of money that they are paying out that they could just keep. And people and owners especially really like money. So they're gonna say, hey, this is not gonna do. We need to really appreciate all this stuff. You're absolutely right. Sports owners are the perfect bellwether of when the meter finally turns to direct selling will make me more money than letting the broadcaster do it. As soon as they realize that, you're gonna be able to watch your Browns games whenever you want. They have a separate little Cleveland Browns app or whatever, or you go to MLB in the app and it says, choose your team, subscribe, here's the thing, like whatever. For good or ill. And finally, Zen Attitude sent me a note claiming you could add tips for Uber in the online platform because I was saying one of the things I like about Lyft is I can just add the tip right from the app. Now I told him, I did not see that option in my app. He sent me a screenshot and he's right. It turns out on the Uber website, you can set a preset tip for taxis. It doesn't happen after your ride. You have to set it in the app. And the site says, Uber says, this will apply to taxi fares only, not black SUV or Uber X and be paid to your driver. And so you may not have realized this, but Uber has partnered with taxi companies in some markets. For example, in April 2012, they introduced Uber Garage in Chicago. So you could hail taxis from the Uber app in 2013. They launched in New York City, allowing you to hail cabs from that app. So thanks to Zen Attitude for pointing out that feature, but it still doesn't solve my issue of if I take an Uber ride and I want to give an Uber driver a tip, I can't do it in the app. Yeah.  If not, no big deal. Like just here you go. Why not just post ride? Well, you got to rate your driver. You can rate them. And if maybe if you rate them five stars, it'll say, would you like to leave a tip for your driver since they did such a great job today. And we, I know Uber wants you to think, not to have to think about tips, but the fact is that the drivers are starting to get the attention of people to realize, hey, they don't pay us a rate that makes tips irrelevant. The drivers have to think about tips. That's, they don't want us to think about it, Uber has gone to the length of including it in their settings for taxis. So they can do it. They already did part of the work. Anyway, that's interesting.  Well, thank you, Ashley, for persevering and staying with us. It was awesome. It was absolutely worth the effort. And folks, you should watch tomorrow daily. Go to CNET.com. Is it CNET.com slash TD? Is that the- You know what, it's actually super easy. Just tomorrowdaily.com. I bought the domain and I forwarded it to the CNET site. Super simple. So go check it out tomorrowdaily.com with Ashley and Jeff. I like your Thursday conversations. That's cool. It's really fun. You should come on. You should come be a guest on the show. We should just have you as a third for the entire 45 minutes. Yeah, we do this, we do this cool, for those of you who haven't seen it, we do this really cool hybrid format where we do quick five minute episodes Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and it's just quick two headlines and a phone talk for the day. We like to feature photos from people who take pictures on their phones. And then on Thursday, we welcome a guest. We do a 15 minute deep dive into our three favorite topics of one each for each day. And then we talk about Kickstarter or crowdfunding. We also, we've had all kinds of guests. We had Steve Wozniak on the show. We had Will Sasso on the show. I mean it's just a real, we had this week Intel's managing director of the Internet of Things group at Intel which is really cool. And she got to talk to us about does everything need to be smart? So it's a really fun show and it's really varied. We like to just have fun with it and it's a good time. We're positive people like Tom is and so we're kindred spirits. Kindred spirits. Absolutely. Go check it out, tomorrowdaily.com. Thanks to everyone who supports this show. We're entirely funded by you. We couldn't do it without you. DailyTechnewshow.com slash support if you want to be one of the people who can say, yeah, I made that show happen. You can even get a co-executive producer title at patreon.com slash DTNS. And if nothing else, every one of you should tell someone about the show this week. Go find someone and say, hey, let me show you a podcast work or you should subscribe to Daily Tech News Show. Somebody you know would enjoy this show. So please spread the word. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Call us 51259daily. That's 5932459. Catch the show live Monday through Friday, 4.30 p.m. Eastern to alpha geek radio.com and diamondclub.tv. And visit our website, DailyTechnewshow.com. Back on Monday with Veronica Belmont. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program. That turned out great. Oh, thank you. I'm thanks for putting, helping you like, thanks for persevering. No, thank you for persevering and dealing with my computer issues. I'm like literally about to go on main gear right now and just build a new machine and have it shipped to the house. I'm so irritated.  But no. I restarted. It's like Windows is updating. And it was like 1%, 2%. And I'm like, I don't have time for this. Oh wait, is it still updating, or did it actually just physically not turn on anymore? This entire time, it is still updating. Amazing. Have not been able to get back into my PC. I just, oh my god, this computer is just so slow. I built it in the second quarter of 2008, 2007, 2008. So it's time. It's like due, for sure. But it's like, but then I have the problem of if I'm going to get a new computer, I want it like loaded out. And I want a small footprint. I don't want a big tower anymore. So I'm like, OK, if I get the X-Cube from main gear, which is really nice, and I get everything I want, then I'm looking at a $3,000 machine. Because I have very expensive taste. When it comes to technology, I have problems.  That's smart. That is the way I look at it is, you buy the max you can use, and you ride it until it dies. That's basically what I'm doing. And now it's finally like this year, it's finally starting to show its age where it's like, everything just loads so slow. It takes me 15 minutes just to boot into Windows. It's like 10 minutes. It's terrible. Do you have an SSD? I don't. And I'm like, I'm done with standard hard drives. I'm like, I don't want any RPMs. Just give me an SSD drive all the way. I'll put in a Thunderbolt drive. I'm just, oh my god, I can't. That PC makes me crazy. Like, I can't deal with it. I think this is the computer telling you. Ashley, it's OK. It is. No, it is. It's OK to let me go. Just let me die. Just leave me here to die. I just, ugh. It's time. I'm like, man, I'm like, because I'm trying to save right now for the Tesla, because I pre-ordered a Model 3 on my birthday. So I'm like, OK. I'm like, I've got about, because of the production thing, they're like, we're going to make $500,000, just ridiculous production goal, $500,000 in the first year of production. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, Elon, whatever. But because I ordered on the first day, I ordered at a store, and I think they said at the store it was like 80,000. By the time the event had started, so I'm under 80,000, I might be closer to 50,000, one of the first 50,000 people to order. Plus, I live in California, which prioritizes, like, California gets priority delivery when they start producing, and I'm loading out my Model 3. Like, I want ludicrous mode. I guess I want all the features. Ludicrous speed. Yes. So I want ludicrous mode and all the stuff, and the highest option Model 3s will get shipped first, like Elon had said.  And I'm like, I don't want a $70,000 loan on this car. So I'm like, all right. I've got to start saving up now. I pay off my car in August, and I'm like, OK, every extra penny I have is going to go toward, like, the GTF, the General Tesla Fund. Like, I've got a whole thing set up. My digit is, like, my General Tesla Fund. It's like, I just keep putting money. Hey, would you guys want to do titles? Oh, yeah. Sure. What do we got? Hey, you. Get off my cloud service. Patent piece. Apple needs user interface help seriously. Don't touch my stuff. Tiny bubbles on the sea. Just give me box. Apple, Joker or Thief, get your hands out of my music. Soylent, Inc., Season of Pod, Streams Giveth, Streams Take It Away. I see any of these make you think, yes, that should be the title of the show. I mean, I think you got to go with the Apple music thing. Don't touch my stuff. Apple, don't touch my stuff. I always like, but. Yeah. Don't touch my stuff. Don't touch my stuff. Don't touch my stuff. It is. Don't touch my stuff. That's just like, yeah, my poor husband, he just tries to organize the house and stuff. I'm like, why did you move this? And he's like, well, it was right in the middle of the table. I'm like, I know, but I knew it was there. I love the idea of you seeing your husband organizing things and yelling, stop defragging. Seriously, it's like defragging our house. I'm like, please don't, please don't. I have a very specific system in place. And he's like, this is not a system. I'm like, oh, it is in here. It's a system. Maybe not to anybody else. I will start cleaning up our dining room table. And as long as I am pulling things off that are mine, it's fine. But as soon as I touch something that's Eileen, she's like, well, I'll take care of that. I need to look at that first. And I'm like, but it's a receipt. Yep. I'm the same way. I'm like, it's in here. I have a proprietary organization system that I want to figure out on purpose. You have a proprietary algorithm encrypted. It's all in here. I got it. That's amazing. Well, we just stay, as you may recall, we just stay afterwards chatting while I'm exporting. And that's what I was doing just now was putting the two pieces, the beginning and the end, together here. So we're welcome to hang. If you need to go, though, you can go too. I don't think I might have a call with Bonnie at 3. That's it. Tell Bonnie I say hello. I will. She loves you. She's like, I miss Tom. I'm like, I know. I'm like, I know I don't miss Tom, because I didn't work with him at Sena, but I get it. I understand. Yeah, you don't miss me. I don't have to miss Tom, because Tom's in LA. Yeah, you know what I want to do? What are you doing during E3? I want to do a podcaster meetup or something. I'll be around. I'm going to be working with GameSpot. So what we'll be doing tomorrow daily from the main stage. Actually, we should have you come on and talk about. I'll send you an email, maybe, because we're always looking for guests. So if you want to come on the show, one of the days. I'm doing, I'm trying to make my schedule work on the 16th. The last day of E3, I got invited. I got asked to moderate a panel for the CVSI on environment thing, which is like, Bonnie was like, this is a big deal. Make sure you do it. So I was like, OK, because I guess Les is going to introduce me. And it's like a whole thing. So yeah, I know I'm really excited about it. And I mean, it's a good issue to cause, too. Well, I think Big Tesla is coming this year. And I'm like, oh, good. I'm going to grill him about my Model 3. He just spent the whole time asking him. So when will I get it? I'm just going to follow them around and be like, so listen. Which one will be mine? One of the like, focus testing, depending on my house. I will focus test a top-end loaded Model 3 for the low, low price of whatever you're selling them for. Absolutely. Give it to me at the end. Just hand me the keys, and that'll be my payment. That sounds great. Yeah, that's a lot of hard work. But somebody has to test those cars. Who would say no to you? Yeah, I commute every day. I could try autopilot on the way to work and home. I sit in traffic all the time. It's great. It's perfect. So what a match made in heaven. Sold me. That's what I'm saying. I just got to meet some people. I got to meet a network. Got to get it to work out. I like that you're just. Yeah, we should have you on that E3. Because yeah, I'm totally down for a podcast readup. You should ask Jeff, too, for we have concerns. And DLC, I think would be. Oh, yeah, Anthony. Absolutely. And they'll be there, too. Raj Diyut from Ruckiner in Australia is going to be in town. I know that my friend Derek Chen, who I have on. He works the advertising industry. But I have him on talk about digital advertising all the time. He's going to be around. Cool. OK, yeah. I mean, I'm down. And everybody's like, when can we get together? And I'm like, well, maybe we should just make a date. But that's always the problem. There's so many events. It's hard to pick a time.  Your headset just started giving Kodak robot voice to you. Me or Raj? Yeah, you. You.  It may be the old unplug the USB plug it back in fix. Wait, her camera disappeared. I know, hold on. Yeah, I know this better. Man, what is technology? What did you do to technology today? Maybe just going out with Hangouts today. Because I'm not like that. Yeah. Like this is. And I'm not even plugged. Nothing's plugged in via USB. I'm just on my headset because this has a microphone on it. It doesn't sound like the audio Kodak. The USB audio Kodak does that sometimes. Oh, no. But yeah, I mean, maybe if you do something like LA Live right after the show's over. Yeah, that's going to work. Just do like a little, hey, let's all hang out at the yard house at 6 o'clock on Wednesday or something. And that place is huge, although even as huge it gets crowded. But yeah, I mean, it's just like one of those things where it's like we could just show up there and hang out. Yeah, sure. That's a good idea. Come down. That's good space. All right, uploading. I think I'm taking the gold line the entire time. Are you really? Oh, you know what? Where does that new line? Where does the Olympic line go? I'm not sure. It goes through South. Where does it end up, though? The gold line now is from Azusa Pacific all the way into Union. And then I think it goes into East LA, but it makes a weird east-west horseshoe. It goes from the foothills and then down into East LA. It drops down through Pasadena, hits Union, and then turns back this way and goes towards Alhambra. Yeah, I was like, well, maybe I'll just take that in and take an Uber over to the convention center. It's like, I just don't want to deal with traffic. This is so horrible. I'm like, oh, I don't want to deal with traffic. Maybe I'll just take the gold line in all the days of the week. Yeah, so it comes in to Metro Center. Yeah, the new line. Yeah, the Expo line, I think, is opening the one that goes all the way down through Bundy. It's to Bundy, right? Bundy and Pico, I think, is the last stop or maybe one more. It is definitely at Bundy, because I get stopped by it when I go to the grocery store now. I don't know if it's extended all the way to Bergen Dammit or Colorado 14th in Santa Monica Pier or its eventual finish, but I think the Expo Bundy line is open because I saw people on it. I don't know. Maybe it is open now. I don't know. I think that's the only one. I think that's the end of the line now. I was asking Mike, because my best friend lives literally on Idaho and Bundy. He's like right there. And he was saying it wasn't open yet, but they were testing a line. So I don't know if maybe they're doing like inaugural test people or maybe like the officials or whatever. Yeah, mannequins, like in Home Alone. You just got a whole bunch of cardboard cutouts in there. Could be. But yeah, it's already bad enough getting the Ralphs, and now I have to wait for trains. Oh, I'm sorry. That's all right. It's for good. It's for the greater good of public transportation in Los Angeles, which we systematically dismantled in the 50s and then decided to rebuild now. Oh, shoot. What did we call it? Don't touch my stuff. Apple, don't touch my stuff. Apple, don't touch my stuff. Don't touch my stuff. It was an ID3 tag, but then I forgot to put it in the blog post. No touchy. Don't touchy my stuff. Oh, so now I need to change it on SoundCloud. Well, so sorry I had these ridiculous technology problems today. It happens. Like, it just happens every once in a while. There's nothing you can do about it. I'm like building out of me. As I said, as I built out a main gear computer, and I'm like, ooh. Are you doing it right now? Yeah, I'm looking at it right now. Is it a large box, or is it one of those skinny ones? Well, I want, so the X-Cube is like the size of a shoe box. So that's the thing about, and this is my, because I've worked on enough shuttle-sized PC cases, that generally accept upgrades as willingly over time. And that's really kind of a personal thing, like how often do you imagine yourself going into it and upgrading the GPU? And like, my biggest issue with those smaller cases is they can't accommodate a really big power supply. And they're really big, and they're really big. I just mean at least 850 or higher wattage power supply. Like, if they can accommodate, because I prefer the larger ones, because they tend to be more stable, like over the long term. Like, I have four magnetic hard drives and two SSDs, and a Jeep, like an old NVIDIA 570 plus a 4790. OK, so the drives, when they all spin up, when I use them, that's when the power pull is the greatest. And I used to have a computer that used to turn itself off, because all the drives would turn on at the same time. Nope. Yeah, I've just put the link to it in the group chat. You can see what the design is. It's not really tiny, so you can see, like, it's a full-sized card in there. But the way that they organize it is really nice, and it's all liquid cooled. And I'm like, yes, please. It's cool looking, too. Oh, it looks so nice. And I just, I'm like, all about, I want a really small footprint in the most. I'm just going to max it all out, like $2,503 grand or whatever, and just max it out. It's a nice power supply. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got the Alienware that they bundled with the Oculus Rift, and it's tiny. And so it just blows me away how tiny they are now. Yeah, I really like it. And I like that it's like, if you look at it, it looks like a little air conditioner until you look through the top into the computer. Like, that's where the glass is on the top. Oh, cool. It's pretty awesome. Starting at $8.99, that's pretty tempting. I'm just like, man, if I just load it out and then I could get some cool stuff in there, and it just sounds so good. Ooh, it actually is. All right, we are published. Woo-hoo, success. The show is there. Thanks everybody for watching. Thank you again, Ashley. That was awesome.  And we will see you guys later. Bye. Bye.


As doctors, nurses and medical technicians, we depend on a vast array of biomedical equipment to assist us in treating and caring for the patient. At a major army medical center, the biomedical equipment inventory may include up to 20,000 items. The availability and dependable operation of this equipment is crucial to proper diagnosis, treatment and often the very life of the patient. Much of this biomedical equipment is in daily use. Some pieces are one of a kind and cannot be immediately replaced. Other equipment is relatively simple and usually inadequate supply. To allow us to provide the best in patient care, our biomedical equipment must receive the best maintenance care available. These men and women are training at the US Army Medical Equipment and Optical School, which has become the model for civilian training programs throughout the country. As military medical professionals, we're extremely fortunate to have our own biomedical equipment maintenance and repair staff on call 24 hours a day. The availability of such staff expertise is a key factor in efficient biomedical equipment maintenance and also contributes to a significant savings in both maintenance and repair costs. A part of the Army's Academy of Health Sciences, the school is located at Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. Since the school is geographically separated from the academy, we're going to use this film to familiarize you with the medical equipment training program. Then we'll show you how a biomedical equipment section interacts with a medical staff to support the maintenance needs of a major medical center. The school's training curriculum is divided into a basic and an advanced course. In the basic course, students learn to install, service and repair mechanical and electromechanical equipment. Systems such as this respirator, dental equipment and sterilizers. This morning we're going to go into circuit four. Circuit four has four major components. We have the time delay. We have relay K3. Basic students begin by studying electrical fundamentals and simple mechanical components. First one to the two, three position. Doing this we energize T1. Initially, theoretical concepts are put into practice through laboratory troubleshooting exercises. The basic students then move on to analyze and troubleshoot malfunctions in a variety of actual equipment available to the school exclusively for training. The students get hands-on maintenance experience with dental operating units which combine electromechanical components with pressurized water, air, gas and hydraulic systems. They learn about pulmonary equipment such as this anesthesia apparatus which must operate precisely with zero tolerance for error. They also learn to service sterilizing equipment which utilizes higher amounts of electrical energy as well as steam pressure and some totally electronic components. Core students are also introduced to a number of other types of medical equipment. This variety prepares them for the diverse maintenance and repair needs they'll encounter in the field. The goal of the basic course is to teach the students concepts which give them the ability to analyze typical electromechanical components. For example, this training unit is equipped with a series of controllable malfunctions from simple to complex. By activating various combinations, the instructor teaches the student to analyze components in a logical order. The approach prepares the student to apply troubleshooting concepts to any type of electromechanical device, even if they've never seen that specific equipment or model before. The fact that this concept approach is taught using the latest medical equipment which the students will probably service in the field is an instructional bonus made possible by the school's exceptional equipment inventory. Throughout the training program, safety principles and practices are stressed. We talked about how much pressure these gases are under earlier and we said the cyclopropane under very low pressure so we don't use a regulator with it. The students are taught to appreciate and avoid the potential safety hazards associated with each maintenance situation. After completing the basic course, students are assigned to biomedical equipment repair units attached to field medical activities. Students might be at a major military medical center or with a direct combat support medical unit. To continue their academic training during this initial assignment, basic course graduates are encouraged to participate in the school's medical academic preparatory correspondence program. Subjects include introduction to military medicine and surgery, algebra and electricity. We're discussing RC time constants or resistive capacitance time constants. Now this deals with the amount of times it would take a capacitor charged from its minimum level zero to its maximum applied voltage. It would take us five time constants to completely charge this capacitor. After an initial assignment at a field activity, selected students return to the school for the advanced course. Here they broaden their theoretical understanding of electricity. Students can go on to master the principles of solid state and digital electronics. This advanced training is a prerequisite for maintaining today's highly sophisticated electronic biomedical equipment. Remember that when we were monitoring the power supply on the RD-2, the 250 volt range, we have to monitor the power supply on this unit also, except that the tolerance ... As in the basic course, the training approach in the advanced course continues to be concept oriented. The advanced students learn the electronic concepts and the logical troubleshooting procedures, which enable them to analyze malfunctions, even in unfamiliar pieces of equipment. Now that you're familiar with their training program, let's follow three members of a biomedical equipment repair section as they carry out their daily assignments. Like all military missions, successful biomedical equipment maintenance requires proper planning, efficient execution, and experience. Sergeant Wright, the section supervisor, embodies these key concepts. Specialist Trey is one of Wright's most experienced repair technicians. Specialist Judd, I have a work order here for you on an electric bit, award 57. Specialist Judd is a recent basic course graduate getting her initial job experience. In this instance, the mission involves the complex maintenance needs of a major army medical center, but the operational methods shown here apply in principle to all medical activities, regardless of size. Since I've arrived here at the medical center, I've really gained a lot of new experience, not only in equipment repair, but in developing a sound working relationship with the hospital staff, who depend on the equipment, and that's an important factor in doing a better maintenance job. May I help you? Yes, I'm from the medical maintenance, I'm here to fix your bed. Okay. Can I have a pop? Can you show it to me? Sure. Thanks for having me, please. In the six months she's been in the section, Judd's responsibilities have steadily increased. She's gained experience in servicing a variety of basic medical equipment. I was a little nervous about my first few field assignments, but my confidence has really increased now that I've had the chance to apply some of the things I've learned in the basic course. I'm getting eager to work on some of the more sophisticated equipment, but I still realize the important contribution to patient care I'm making by maintaining some of the more basic hospital devices. How's everything going? Fine. The beds working properly now. I replaced the switch and I repaired the tension in the screen. My next goal after I finish my tour here at the medical center is to attend the advanced course at Yusuf Meals, and I'm taking the required correspondence courses now to make sure that it happens. Specialist Prey has completed the biomedical equipment advanced course. His training and experience have made him proficient at repairing all types of medical equipment, including sophisticated solid state and digital electronic components. How was the heating bath on the CPK that I fixed for you last week? It's been working really well. It's a little bit warm. One of the most challenging aspects of my job is keeping up with the rapid advances in electronic technology. Advances in equipment sophistication have required biomedical equipment personnel to expand their skills into many new areas of technology. Increasingly stringent government regulations such as calibration and compliance testing for radiological systems have added further skill requirements. To meet these and other advanced educational needs, the Biomedical Equipment School offers a series of functional courses to qualified repair personnel. Whether it's a kidney or a fetus or whatever. Morning Major. Good morning. I'm having an in-service this Wednesday and I'd like for you to attend if you could. In-service on what? It's going to be on the cardiac monitors. Today's in-service is on the care of your monitors. All you need to take care of these monitors is a little soap and water. One of my responsibilities is to share my knowledge about new and current equipment with the hospital staff. It'll be very dangerous. May I sign right now, have you? Yes. This is Captain Ticklin on Ward 46. Our cardiac monitors have gone out. Maintenance is not always scheduled. Sometimes repairs may be necessary under emergency situations with patients' lives in the balance. Such critical equipment malfunctions require quick action from both the staff and the repair section. But effective emergency repair procedures don't just happen. They must be planned and coordinated. Planning, coordination, and overall maintenance management is the responsibility of the biomedical equipment supervisor. Well, good. It's coming back on. Very good. It's working just fine. Success of our maintenance program from routine inspections to emergency repairs requires effective coordination between the repair section and the hospital staff. So we'll go back and fix it up in case a problem ever happens again. We'll have a quick fix right for it. Sergeant Wright, I have some questions regarding the piece of the portable unit that we want to acquire. Specifically regarding the warranties, what is covered? The manufacturers give a one-year warranty on the controls. Another important function of the biomedical equipment supervisor is providing advice on the selection of new medical equipment. From a maintenance standpoint, we believe that the gas operator would be more appropriate because we fill that up once. When planning for a new purchase, he can provide valuable input concerning compatibility with existing equipment, ease of repair, and the best procedures to follow for maintenance. Sergeant Wright, thank you very much. Your information has been most helpful because I would have thought the battery power would be the unit we'd want. I think the gas power is the item we should purchase instead. Sergeant Wright uses a number of sophisticated management aids to keep on top of the medical facilities maintenance needs. These include computerized repair records, equipment calibration requirements, and preventative maintenance schedules. This tag represents another key management aid, the biomedical equipment maintenance control system. To determine how much money has been expended on a certain piece of equipment. It also determines the amount of PM and electrical safety that is due on this equipment. There are three primary factors. The control system helps Wright make the most efficient use of his maintenance resources, and efficient maintenance translates into maximum availability of equipment to assist all of us on the medical staff in our patient care mission. The men and women who maintain and repair biomedical equipment receive a high level of technical training. They're provided with the best tools and testing devices, and they utilize the latest in management aids. But to get the most out of their training and tools, they need our understanding and cooperation. In today's high technology environment, a close working relationship between the biomedical equipment operator and the biomedical equipment maintainer can go a long way towards ensuring continued high quality patient care.


I'm in the ambulance. I'm scared but I'm seeing something like that. That was Mayran Hollis. In an ambulance on the way to the hospital after her complicated pregnancy turned life-threatening. Soon after Mayran first found out she was pregnant, doctors told her she had a dangerous ectopic pregnancy implanted in her scar tissue from a previous C-section. Her doctors recommended she consider an abortion to protect her health. But by the time she made her decision, abortion had just become a felony in Tennessee. Without any clear exceptions for a pregnant patient's life or health, any doctor who terminated any pregnancy could be charged with a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison. So when Mayran's doctors asked specialists to help with her operation, they weren't willing to take the risk. Mayran was also at risk of losing her bladder, her uterus, and her life. Mayran didn't have the resources to travel out of state for an abortion, so she continued the pregnancy. But at any moment, her pregnancy could rupture her uterus and her placenta threatened to eventually invade her organs like a tumor. Even with the best medical care, some patients bleed out in less than 10 minutes on the operating table. Getting really big, really fast. This is as raw as it gets. Mayran had just had a baby months earlier. She'd constantly worried about what her husband and young daughter would do if she died. Then one night, when she was 26 weeks pregnant, she began bleeding so heavily her husband slipped in her blood. She rushed to the hospital and doctors prepared her for an emergency C-section. Beating the odds, Mayran survived her surgery. So did her baby, Elena, who weighed only one pound and 15 ounces. She was born so early, no one knew yet if she would survive. To save their lives, doctors had to remove Mayran's uterus. Now she can never have children again. This was horrible. We made the baby grow. We did it. You're out. You're saving sound. So happy that you're here. One of Mayran's doctors spoke with ProPublica about the experience of delivering Mayran's baby. People like Mayran who survive and their babies survive, it is not always a win because we still have a mom who's very sick, a mom who's lost her fertility and has lost her uterus and we have a baby who can be born very premature and has complications that can take years to get past. After two and a half months in intensive care, Elena was released from the hospital in February. But since then, she's had to return several times for difficulty breathing and has been on oxygen and a feeding tube. Mayran wants people to know that she's glad her daughter is here, but having her this way wasn't her choice. Maybe if my story just touches one person, one family, one senator, one right person, we can make a difference. Mayran's hospital declined to comment, but her doctors spoke to ProPublica in their personal capacity with her permission in order to give the public a rare view into the dangers created when lawmakers interfere with high stakes medical care. In April, Tennessee's law was slightly modified to allow physicians to perform abortions in limited medical emergencies. But doctors say it doesn't go far enough to cover the range of dangerous health issues that pregnant patients can face. For the full investigation, click on the link in our bio.