And do you have a heart out or anything? Um, not to that three, which should give us money. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, which we should be done long before that. Oh, so 2016, uh, DTNS is our longer. Oh yeah. Didn't I tell you the shows are no two hours long. Oh, I listened to, um, TNT. Oh yeah. That was fun. That was really fun. They were nice and put me in the middle too. That was so cute. I'd say it was nice to hear. Are they used old theme and everything? Yeah, yeah. All right, let's get this show on the road. Here we go. The Daily Tech News show is brought to you by me. Oh, thanks, me. If you also wish to bring it, go to dailytechnewshow.com slash support. That's dailytechnewshow.com slash support. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, January 5th, 2016. I'm Tom Merritt joining me today. Mr. Patrick Beja, happy new year or bon ané. Yeah, exactly. Bon ané à toi aussi, Tom. I've missed being on the show and being with the community and the listeners and all the fantastic producers and co-hosts. So yeah, it was a good break, but I'm glad we're back too. Two weeks. Two weeks. I didn't record a single show and I was going crazy. You're withdrawal. Unfortunately, what they do to us is give us CES. Boom, right when we come back. But thankfully for us, Tim, Steve and CNET editor at large is at CES and joining us to talk a little bit, especially about what's going on with CarTech there, which is huge this year, Tim. Absolutely. And I'm joining you on hotel Wi-Fi. So if we get through this without problem, I'll be quite impressed. And that's the last we hear. But Jenny Josephson, as you know, is also in CES, in CES. She's at CES. She's everybody's in CES in some way or shape if you're in Las Vegas. And you're on hotel Wi-Fi too. It's not bad. I know. I feel like it's our two hotel Wi-Fi is combined together, making one good hotel Wi-Fi. It's a bonded hotel. All right. We got lots to talk about because CES doesn't start till tomorrow, which means most of the news is coming out today. So let's get into that lines.  LG has a cool OLED TV. There's tons of TVs. Huawei has a new smartwatch and a Gold Nexus 6P coming to the US and a 10 inch tablet that's like a big Nexus 6P coming to China and Q1. Casio just announced smartwatches. There's there's too much. So our job is to try to say these are the significant things. These are the things we think as we do every day on Daily Tech News show that you ought to know about. And we start off with Nvidia announcing a new computing platform for self-driving cars called the Drive PX2. They did a similar announcement last year. This is the new generation has two next-gen Tegra processors and a Pascal-based GPU for a total of 12 cores delivers eight teraflops on a 16 nanometer architecture that uses 250 watts of power. It's liquid cooled and they say you could even integrate it into a car's cooling system can recognize 2800 images per second using the Alexa net neural network based deep learning platform. Nvidia also has its own deep neural network itself that it's announced called the Nvidia driver net. Volvo has already signed up to use Drive PX2 in about a hundred of its test cars and Nvidia says it's also partnering up with Audi, Daimler, BMW and Ford. Now we're going to talk a lot about car tech a little later on, Tim, but this is just a technology platform for research at this point, right? It is primarily for research, but ultimately this will save a lot of time for companies like Volvo because they don't need to go and create a discrete system.  This gives them an out-of-the-box solution that they can use and it also is a system that points toward a future that is something that could work in a car and, you know, these have to work in all temperatures, all ranges, baking on desert temperatures, freezing winter temperatures in Minnesota. This sort of system has to be able to work in those systems and that's something that an off-the-shelf system can't do usually. So it's good progress, a little save Volvo some time and everybody else is looking to it too. I also love the fact that, you know, we've been saying for a year or two that cars are now computers with wheels attached and I love that Nvidia looked at this and thought, you know what, we know how to do graphics for computers and it's not exactly a graphics card, obviously, but it does recognize images, it has machine learning to analyze the surroundings and they're doing basically a graphics card for a car. Yeah, I love this. It's a huge supercomputer graphics card, powering car, it was the cool thing in the demo where they showed the car eye view of what was around it so you could see how it sensed things. It was pretty nice looking. Yeah. Recode reports sources familiar with the company's plans say Twitter is building a feature to allow posts longer than 140 characters that could launch towards the end of Q1. A 10,000 character limit is under consideration. Twitter is testing a version that only shows the first 140 characters with an option to click to see more. There's a lot of panic around this story today, I think people are imagining their Twitter feeds with 10,000 character posts, which I think the CNET story I saw calculated is around 2,000 words. So, you know, short story length, I would imagine that that part about them testing a version that only shows you the first 140 characters and then allows more words when you click to reveal. Kind of like, what is it? Twit? What is the Twitter longer? I think it's Twitter longer. Yeah. So a little more integrated and fancy version of that could be cool and not pollute my stream. And the thing is, whether or not you like the concept, maybe 10,000 is a little bit long, but if you're going to go, you know, if it's 500 or if you go beyond 500, whatever, it's going to be long anyway. But the thing is people are doing it already. They're just dividing their longer. It doesn't mean that every post is going to be 10,000 characters, but they're dividing them in three, four, five, six tweets in a row with numbering. So it's happening already, whether or not you like it. So Twitter has been good at embracing those kinds of evolutions and hopefully, if they end up getting into it, they will do it right so that they can preserve the spirit of Twitter and hopefully they'll manage to do that. And that means no more squinting at full length articles taken as a snapshot, which I am all for. Also, please give it to Mark Andreessen first. Thank you. HTC is showing a new prototype steam VR helmet for developers called the HTC Vive pre a front facing camera delivers views of the real world into the helmet. Some are integrated into virtual views like they only show up when you get to the edge of the screen or maybe they do an augmented reality sort of thing. But there's also a full view of the real world called chaperone modes. You can pick up your drink, see where you're going. The controller now has a smoother tracking ring on it, a dual stage trigger, ergonomic improvements, some haptic feedback, headsets more compact, brighter display, some interchangeable nose gaskets and foam or inserts so you can actually wear your glasses inside the thing comfortably. A consumer version of the Vive still planned for April. Valve did not change anything about that in this version of the HTC product yet. This is interesting. The camera aspect of it is really useful only if you imagine that you're going to be moving around with the headset, which this HTC Vive is excellent at. That's where it excels compared to other VR headsets. However, it still remains to be seen how usable the VR system where you actually move around is going to be so I don't know that the lack of camera is going to be detrimental to other devices. I mean, it's probably not a huge deal to incorporate. It's a differentiator, but people are already excited about the Vive's ability to show virtual world when it was in its previous version. So I think this is just an added whistle, not necessarily the killer feature. Well, it's something that becomes necessary if you're going to be moving around because you bump into things, obviously. So yeah, 7500 people who backed the 2012 Oculus Rift Kickstarter at the $275 level or higher will are going to be receiving a free consumer version when it ships later this year. That's sent Oculus coming to a little bit late. Oculus will email those supporters a request for shipment information. This offer does not apply to backers of the second Rift development kit or those who pledged less than $275.  Essentially, they got the dev kit, the original dev kit, now a collector's item back in the day. And I think Oculus responding sensitively to people who said, hey, wait a minute, you got rich selling to Facebook and we funded you on Kickstarter. And this is a way to say, you know what, you're right. Thank you. Let's let's let you benefit from that a little bit as well. And it's not something they had to do. I think the, you know, the unrest from that event of being bought by Facebook had subsided. And so it's really a nice gesture, I think. And also if I can comment on your comments from yesterday about the price of the consumer version of the Rift, over a thousand dollars, are you insane? Probably. I'm probably insane. Yeah. Okay. All right. That reassures me because what do you think it's going to be? Oh, less than 500 for sure. OK, but you still think it might be a below above 350? Well, I'm just, you know, not being too, too definitive, but I think it's going to be around 350. OK, well, yeah, 1200. You're you're crazy. But I'm probably crazy. Yeah. I don't know where I got that number from. That's just what came to mind. And the first time I said it, I nobody blinked. So I don't know because they're crazy to maybe they're going to bundle in a computer with it. 12 Motherboard reports that malware was found in a network of Ukraine's Regional Control Center, which had a temporary powder outage in a section of the country on December 23rd. So a lot of people have been wondering if there is a connection. It seems like there might be Robert M. Lee, CEO of Drago Security, told Motherboard his team obtained a sample of the malware. It's modular in nature, one of a module of a 32 bit windows executable, and it gives them a high confidence that because it was modular, because it seems to have been specifically chosen for a power system, that it was responsible for the outage. Lee said it appears the attackers caused a temporary and easily recoverable outage. So either they wiped some data or they caused a system to crash. They weren't able to actually control the system. It doesn't sound like analysts from ESET claimed the malware is one called Black Energy. There's some debate whether it is or isn't. And there's some debate about how serious this is. But even the least serious interpretation of this is pretty unsettling, don't you think? You know, all I got from this piece of news was as you pointed out yesterday, that makes Jury right. I thought it was Len. Didn't Len have this prediction? I thought it was Jury. Well, he was right about the Spider-Man thing. It was Len's dark vision of the world. I don't know if this is as serious as Len was thinking. But I think it technically does fulfill his prediction, except he said it would happen in 2016. This happened in 2015. All right. HP announced the HBO Elite Book Folio G1. The 12 inch laptop comes with core and processors, USB-C, 180 degrees hinge and optional 4K display. It's 12.4 millimeters thick and coming in March starting at nine hundred and ninety nine dollars. Also coming in February is a new Spectre X3 360 laptop with a fifteen point six inch three thousand eight hundred twenty by two thousand one hundred sixty touch screen core i5 or i7 processor and up to five hundred and twelve gigabytes solid solid state drive, starting at eleven hundred fifty dollars. Also also in February, the new Pavilion X2 with a 12 inch display, a solid state drive up to two hundred and fifty six gigabytes with core M or atom processors. The X2 starts at a mere five hundred dollars. Yeah. And for the the Spectre and the Pavilion, those are big spec jumps for those those lines, but that HBO Elite Book Folio G1, except in the construction of its name is very much a MacBook competitor. It's a very nice it's a very nice machine and it has a 4K display. No, well, you know, it's very interesting that I would have maybe brought up Apple in this, but you did first. So that takes me off the hook. But there's a lot of awesome hardware on the PC side. And for some reason, it's never as shiny or doesn't interest me in the same way as when Apple does a big light show and shows you, you know, a laptop with just one USB seaport. For some reason, I think it's all in the presentation. It's all in the brand. And I think those companies that are doing excessively, you know, excellent products aren't managing to capture the attraction that interest even if Apple is nice looking. I think this is a sweet looking machine. It is for sure. It's just, you know, not sweet enough for you. I get it. It's not shiny. Maybe maybe add some kind of a, I don't know. Some partly. Yeah, some.  Ford said Tuesday, it's experimenting with integrating Amazon Echo into its sync system so users could start their car and check range from the echo. Also give the echo commands for things like lights and thermostats from inside the car. Ford also is partnering with DJI on a $100,000 contest, challenging developers to create a system that could launch a UAV from the bed of a Ford F-150 using a touchscreen from the cab of the truck and then have the UAV relay data and return to land, even if the truck drove somewhere else while it was up in the air. Aim would be to help you and disaster relief workers. Ford also announced it's expanding its self-driving car test fleet from 10 to 30, and it will implement a coffee can sized LiDAR sensor from Velodyne called the UltraPuck. And Tim, I know we're going to talk more about this in the discussion section. But I think the thing people were most shocked about is what they didn't say, which is that they're partnering up with Google. Some people were shocked. Some other people were not shocked. But yes, that was definitely something that a lot of people were expecting, some kind of a partnership. But you know, that would go against a little bit of what they're talking about today and expanding their own, the autonomous test fleet. They said that they're working with partners that are very open to working with other people. And ultimately, I think this is one case where the industry does need to work together. And in fact, Ford did talk about their work at the University of Michigan where there's an autonomous testing facility that a lot of manufacturers are all testing together and a lot of technology companies, too. So they're definitely getting out there and working with other companies, but Mark Fields was not willing to mention the big G today. Not yet. And also, the Microsoft Ben 2 can work with Volvo's on-call mobile app to lock, start, heat, or set navigation in, you guess it, a Volvo. The Ben 2 Volvo app should be coming out this spring. So you can control the Volvo from your fitness band, combining two of the greatest trends of CES into one announcement. Fitness and Volvos, yes. Yeah. Faraday Future showed off its FF-01 concept electric vehicle with a 1,000 horsepower all-wheel drive and a carbon fiber body. Goes zero to 60 in less than three seconds. Helmet delivers oxygen and water to the driver and there's a smartphone slot in the steering wheel with an app to control things like traction and throttle. Again, concept car, not something driving around. Concept shows off its modular architecture, though, which uses the same structure with different wheelbases, numbers of motors, batteries, et cetera, to make the different models of the Faraday Future cars. Don't forget, they're also building a battery factory in Nevada and Faraday Future is backed by China's LaTV. That's a Netflix-like company. So maybe the idea is to deliver video into these cars, I don't know. They hope to deliver their first production car in 2018. Tim, you did a great write-up of this on CNET. Convincing me that there was more to this story than just a fluffy concept car. Yeah, and ultimately, the most disappointing part of the story is the fluffy concept car because everybody wanted that to them to show off their production car, but ultimately they showed us this crazy thing instead that will never be put into production and none of us could afford it anyway. At least I certainly couldn't afford it, I'll say that. But ultimately, the LaTV backing is huge and I happened to recall that it was about 12 months ago that LaTV mentioned that they wanted to get into autonomous cars and electric cars and everyone said, why is this Chinese media company wanting to do anything with cars? And everybody basically laughed them off and now here they are 12 months later with this company that's basically entirely funded by them. So they delivered on that front anyway but we're still waiting to see a production model. I'm not sure why you need a helmet that delivers oxygen and water. That's basically the takeaway from- It's gotta be a race car at that point. It's a race, yeah. The oxygen I think is an extra but yeah, the water is so they can say hydrated while you're doing lap after lap after lap. Okay, it's not like it takes off and flies in the stratosphere or dives on the water or anything like that. Yeah, it is modular though.  It's like, that's where my mind went. I was like, oh, it's really fast. It's on its way to the belt. Yeah, exactly. Misfit unveiled the Ray Fitness Tracker the first new product for Misfit since it was acquired by Fossil. The tubular tracker measures 38 millimeters long and 12 millimeters thick. Tubular is because it's shaped like a tube not because it's awesome from the 80s. Just a side note. Good clarification. Here's a tri-axis accelerometer and a vibration motor. And unlike the Misfit Shine, the RaySports one led which glows different colors for texts, calls, and alarm notifications. The Misfit Ray is available for pre-order today in rose gold and black for $99. Yeah, I mean, basically this is the Misfit Shine in a nicer, depending on how you look at it, form factor. It's certainly more tubular. It's distinctive. And you know, there aren't any other tubular fitness trackers out there, whereas there are a zillion other Ray-shaped cells. Definitely, you know, it's easy to not appreciate these kinds of things, but if there's one thing, I think we almost touched on it earlier, but these kinds of things are important as well. And doing something, it is original and honestly it looks good. So that does count on that market. Fitbit announced the $199 Blaze smartwatch today at CES and apparently their stock took a tumble because they were seen as competing with Apple. Has a color touchscreen with call management, text and calendar alerts plus music controls and of course, a ton of fitness things. Heart rate monitor, fitness trackers, one called Smart Track, which automatically recognizes what kind of activity you're doing and records it. The Blaze comes in a removable frame with two elastomer bands. Those are basically plastic. New bands are $30 for the elastomer in black, blue and plum. Then you can spend $100 for a leather one in black, gray or tan. And you also get a new stainless steel case or removable frame if you buy the leather ones. Oh, did I say black, gray and tan? I'm sorry, I meant mist, gray and camel. And $130 for the stainless steel bands, which also has a new frame. The Blaze supports more than 200 iOS, Android and Windows devices and is available for online pre-order today and worldwide on the shelves, March, 2016. Anybody gonna guess Smartwatch from Fitbit? Five-day battery life? That's really impressive, actually. It's between Pebble and Apple, I guess. It depends on how much of your heart rate is being tracked during that. If it's constantly tracking your heart rate from five days, that's very, very impressive. If it's just intermittently tracking maybe a little less impressive, it's still five days, it's quite good. HTC and Under Armour announced the UA Healthbox, a set of three health and fitness devices. The UA band goes on your wrist, the UA heart rate goes on your chest and the UA scale goes under your feet after your workout and reports your weight and body fat by Wi-Fi. Data from all three feeding to the UA Record app for iOS and Android. This is kind of an Under Armour thing, but I think the secret story here is HTC trying lots of different product lines to diversify themselves and not fall under the weight of the stagnant smartphone market. Smart? Yeah. No UA bra, though. Yeah. Captain Kipper wanted us to mention that Paula Twoops is coming back online this week. If you don't remember, that's the service that archives deleted tweets of public officials. It was blocked from Twitter's API in August for technically violating the terms of the developers agreement. You're not supposed to keep the tweets that get deleted. You're supposed to respect people's decision to remove those tweets. However, Twitter, Paula Twoops, and several transparency agencies have reached an agreement to allow Paula Twoops to start back up in Europe, the United States, in a matter of weeks. They'll start in Europe this week and plans to expand afterwards because they realize the importance of treating public officials differently than private individuals. You know, this comes at a very interesting time for us in France.  And they targeted it at people that were following accounts that would have affiliation with gay content. So there was a big debate on whether or not Twitter should take it down on their own or if they should take it down when they get a court decision. And a lot of the French population, well, the people, I had a big discussion with a bunch of people from the Rendez-vous Tech community. A lot of them were saying, well, they should just take it down on their own. And Twitter was saying, actually we don't want to be in charge of deciding what is or isn't lawful. And this is a big difference in the way we see things. In France, it's very difficult to get this accepted because if it's hate speech, then it's sort of in a different category of then free speech. And I don't know. It was an interesting thing. And this decision does put Twitter in the position of deciding what content, who's a public official. They are saying it's a public official or an elected official. So it does not apply to unelected candidates. I don't think. It'll be interesting to see how they handle that. But if then they get elected, does it apply? Yeah. But it applies, does it apply retroactively to their previous? That's yeah, lots of interesting philosophical discussions to be had. Huawei announced the Android 6.0 Mate 8 will come to 30 countries throughout Western Europe, UAE, Mexico and Australia. It runs Huawei's Kirin 950 octa-core processor to power a six-inch HD display with a 400 milliamp hour battery and a two-day 4,000. 400 would be a little bit, if it could run two-day as claimed on 400, that would be pretty awesome. But no, 4,000 milliamp hour battery and two days claimed battery life. It starts at 599 euros for three gigabytes of RAM and 32 gigabytes storage and 699 euros for four gigabytes of RAM plus 64 gigabytes storage. It comes in gold, silver, gray and brown. Reuters reports China's state administration of industry and commerce has asked Microsoft to submit a complete explanation of major issues as part of an antitrust investigation. Investigation was launched back in July 2014 after the SAIC said Microsoft had not fully disclosed information about Windows and Office. They said it caused compatibility problems. Microsoft had recently announced a cooperative effort with the China Electronics Technology Group, a different state-run organization to tailor Windows to government needs. So it seemed like things were going well for Microsoft and China. That was after meetings with President Xi Jinping back in September. But now they're back on the hot seat from a different agency. And finally, Nikon announced a 360-degree camera called the Key Mission 360 that shoots in 4K. It's a small square similar in size to a GoPro with lenses in front and back. It's shock-proof to two meters and waterproof to 30 meters with electronic vibration reduction. It's coming in spring, but there is no price yet. Yeah, it's getting headlines for being 360-degree which is very cool, but it's essentially taking Nikon, taking on GoPro, saying we're gonna make a tough, durable camera that is also a 360-degree camera. And it's pretty smart. Ultimately, GoPro has already captured the action camera market. We've seen many, many companies try to get in there and ultimately all been destroyed. Even Sony couldn't make a dent. But Nikon here is trying to jump ahead of GoPro and basically leap, not just go with higher resolution and more durable cameras, but go with full-on 360, which is somewhere that GoPro hasn't gone yet. So if they could establish a foothold there, maybe this is the one way that they can be GoPro their own game. Yeah. Is that, though, a competitor for the camera arrays that GoPro and others are developing for VR use?  Those arrays are tens of thousands of dollars at this point. They're very, very expensive and they're huge, too. They're too big to fit inside of the car, for example, as I can say, because we've been trying to figure out how to use them for our own production. So this sort of thing would be much more practical and easy to use and if it's the size of a normal GoPro, it's obviously a lot more portable. So going the consumer angle could give Nikon a huge head start in this area. I definitely think GoPro will be going there soon, but it's an interesting move for that, for sure. There's more CES happening all the time. By the time you listen to this, Samsung may have already made their announcements, Sony may have made their announcements because it doesn't stop. So do come back tomorrow and we'll catch you up on the previous 24 hours. And let us know what you want us to talk about at our Reddit, dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Get in there, submit some stories, say, hey, I think this is interesting. See if other people agree by voting it up or voting it down. That's dailytechnewshow.reddit.com and that is a look at the headlines. All right, Tim. We've got super computers in cars. We've got cars being controlled by wearables and cars controlling Amazon Echoes. What makes some sense? What's hype and what's real in car tech this year? Well, I think one of the big trends we're seeing is partnerships, forward partnering with Amazon for Alexa, like you mentioned, and DJI for drones and GM partnering with Lyfts and making a big investment there for car sharing. This is basically a quick and easy way for these manufacturers to get in the news and basically to show that they are relevant because they know what cool companies are doing cool things, so therefore they can get on board of it. Of those partnerships that we've seen, the GM Lyfts one definitely has the most way behind it, if only because there's $500 million involved, but GM definitely really wants to get ahead of the curve. Obviously, autonomy is a big story here. Cars can drive themselves, but the belief really is that once cars drive themselves, ultimately people will stop buying cars because at that point you don't need your car to be in your driveway. It can be somewhere else as long as it's there to take you to work in the morning. That's all that really matters. So this is GM really trying to get way ahead of the curve there to figure out what exactly that next car economy is going to look like. So I think that was a smart deal for them. That was one of the first big automotive-related news stories that we saw coming out of the CES this year. I think that's one of the biggest that we've seen so far. What does it mean for actual people who drive actual cars is what I want to know. It's basically, because we've been here, it seems, I get the feeling that we've been talking about CarPlay and Android, it feels like we had that conversation last year. And last year it was like, yeah, now they're finally doing it. And so does AutoSync, like the Ford sync thing, does it help? Does it make things fast, come faster? Is it they've been working on it for a year and now it's here? What does it mean for actual people? So Ford actually made two announcements in that area, the infotainment area, which are actually kind of directly conflicting in terms of the direction that they're moving, which is interesting. So one is that they're adding both Android Auto and CarPlay, we knew CarPlay was coming, but that they're also adding in Android Auto, and things that regardless of whether you have an Android phone or an iPhone, you'll be able to use those systems in your car. And those will be coming in 2017 cars and they'll also be retrofitted back to 2016 cars as well, which is great. And also we're seeing GM get on board with that as well, we're seeing other manufacturers too. So those systems have been around CarPlay and Android Auto have been in your phone for about a year now, but they're actually gonna be finally available in a lot of new cars starting this year, and that's pretty exciting. But the big concern from the manufacturers is if you can basically plug your phone in and kind of take over the dashboard, then that's one less differentiating factor for my car. Now, any car looks the same if your phone is basically driving the main experience within the car. So manufacturers are trying to make their own systems look and work better so that they can basically compete with Android Auto and Google. And so that's the other Ford announcement that they made is that they're working on an extension to their own app link system, which they did make open source last year and now Toyota is getting on board. So ultimately, if they can position this to be a standard that other manufacturers can use, developers could write smart apps on phones that connects to the car directly without you having to use Android Auto or CarPlay, meaning that the manufacturer still maintains control, they can make the interface look how they want to work how they want, but still have the power of an Android Auto or CarPlay because the smart apps can talk to it. So that's what Ford's basically hedging their bet. They're gonna try to go both ways. They know consumers want CarPlay, so they're gonna offer that. But they also wanna make sure that they can control the experience, so they're gonna try to position that as a standard. So basically having Toyota jump on is the first big step there, but they said Subaru and Fiat Chrysler are also involved. And that could position itself as a manufacturer alternative to CarPlay or Android Auto. We'll see how that shapes up. It seems incredibly smart for Ford to say, we're really gonna take ourselves out of the equation and differentiate our cars by making them Fords, but making it so that if you buy a Ford, it doesn't matter what phone you have.  This Audi only has an iPhone integration. And I think that is way smart. And then they've gone the red hat route and said we're also making an open-source platform that we think we can benefit from. And we don't care if other competitors use it too because that'll just make the product better. It's like somebody came out with a laptop that runs Linux, Windows and OS 10 legally with whatever your preference is. Yeah, that's exactly it. And it's easy for them too because once you've implemented CarPlay in your car, it's pretty easy to also add Android Auto in there. The stumbling block has been that Google actually wants a lot more information than Apple does. So that really gets into less of a technical issue and more of a legal policy rights issue. But ultimately manufacturers have kind of gotten over that hurdle. And now we're seeing that most many manufacturers are coming forward and saying they're gonna support both and then Ford's taking the extra step of building their own system too. So it's definitely good news for consumers. So, okay, Apple, I understand CarPlay and Android Auto which are basically UIs for your phone's apps on your car's dashboard. Apple Inc gets between the two and what does it do is my first question. My second question is, if everyone starts adopting AppLink and all the manufacturers use it, doesn't that remove a difference? Differentiating that after for the cars as well. Isn't that counterproductive for them? So we've seen apps that can connect to cars for a long time. Now Pandora is kind of the typical example where Pandora works with a lot of different cars. If you have Pandora on your phone and you plug it into your car, then you can basically control your Pandora library from within your car. But the way that that works right now is Pandora has to go out and customize their app to work with every different manufacturer's system. So if you were to look at the code of Pandora, there's probably 15 or 20 different hooks in there for all these different infotainment systems which for Pandora is fine because at this point Ford or Toyota will go to Pandora and say, hey, we'll pay you to make your app work with our car. But if you're a smaller developer, if you have a new app coming out that's hot and cool but you don't have a huge development team, you can't expect to really extend your app to run on all these 20 or 30 or however many different platforms there are running in cars right now. That market is so fragmented it makes Android look, you know, fresh and clean and fully integrated. So what Ford is trying to do with AppLink is basically defining a single standard that would developers could target with their apps and have them run in a lot of different cars because you know the easier you make it for developers, the more likely they are to support your platform. So we're not talking about a full-on infotainment takeover here. We're talking about Spotify being able to integrate with your car so that you could browse your playlist, do voice recognition and say, you know, play me Van Halen or whatever and that'll go through Spotify and work. So it's a lower threshold of entry than something like CarPlay or Android Auto. But if they can truly define this as a standard that means that developers will be more likely to support it. But doesn't that problem go away if everyone starts adopting CarPlay and Android Auto? Yes, and then the manufacturers have lost that battle and they've given up the most crucial part of the interior of the car, which is the dashboard. At that point, they've ceded control of that to Google or Apple, which they don't want to do. Ultimately, if that's what they have to do to keep consumers happy, they'll do it. But they would rather maintain control of that. The other differentiator that's... Oh, sorry, Patrick, go ahead. Just to be sure I understand, that means Ford might be implementing CarPlay and Android Auto for their cars, but with AppLink, other manufacturers don't have to go to CarPlay and Android. They can just keep using their own system and have it be compatible with the AppLink APIs. Right. Yeah, in theory, manufacturers adopt AppLink and if developers get on board with it as well, that means you can get a lot of the same functionality that you would without having to then basically wipe the whole system clean and give CarPlay and Android Auto. There are some other advantages as well. AppLink, for example, will give data from the car back to the app. So apps that work with AppLink can tell where the car is with kind of fuel consumption you're getting and get a lot more metrics from the car than you can from Android Auto or CarPlay. The other differentiator seems to be trying to integrate with other devices. It's interesting to me that we have some trends at CES that aren't new, car tech, internet of things, smart homes, wearables, but they're all intersecting in different ways. And we mentioned a few examples earlier in the show where the car wants to communicate with the smart home and the car can be controlled or have features that integrate with a wearable that is part of the internet of things which is part of wearables and smart homes which are already integrated as well. It seems like it's a little bit of a wild west. I mean, Jenny, I know you're excited about the Amazon Echo. Tell me why. So I love the idea because my one, I love the Echo, first of all, she's my pal. I won't say her name out of deference to our listeners, but I really have gotten into a great conversation with that lady in my home, except that once I leave my home, it's just a flat 2D experience of like reminders in my phone. It just doesn't have the same experience. So if you're telling me that there's a world in which Echo is going to be in the car with me and I can continue the conversation, I mean, hey, it would be really nice to have it in a phone too, or a sign, but at least bringing that sort of effortless functionality out into the world or when I'm stuck in traffic. I also, in the reverse, I deeply love the idea of being able to say, hey, lady, play the Beatles when I'm not home and have it play for my husband and him be like, what happened? Like, there's all sorts of fun you can have with that. Yeah, so Ford is announcing Amazon Echo integration is being researched, right, Tim? It's not something that's ready for shipping. Yeah, it's one of those things that they're looking into partnerships and trying to do cool things. We've seen announcements like this before. For example, Mercedes showed off a concept a couple of years ago where basically you would, if you clipped your skis onto the roof rack of your Mercedes S-Class, your car would automatically call ahead to your ski chalet in Lake Tahoe and turn up the temperature on your Nest thermostat. So one of my greatest complaints when I go to my ski chalet. It might be, I'm telling you. So we've seen things like this before. This is definitely, you know, it's pretty exciting opportunity for a lot of reasons. The question on my mind is always, should this sort of stuff be in the car or should it be in your phone and then your phone takes over the car because, you know, manufacturers, again, they're desperate to make your car be a crucial part of your life and they wanna make sure that, you know, as your world gets more connected, that your car plays a crucial role in that. But ultimately, you know, your phone has a lot more access to more information about you, your calendar, your schedule, your emails, your messages. And so if your phone is driving that experience, then ultimately the car doesn't really need to. And so again, this is an area where we're seeing companies like Google and Apple directly competing with companies like Ford and General Motors because they all wanna control this space.  It was one of the most compelling things about the Faraday Future Concept car was the idea of slotting the phone into the steering wheel. I know that's probably just a design gimmick and I wouldn't like it in real life as much as it sounds, but the concept of, you know, my phone is the interface to my car is pretty compelling. It is a pretty neat idea. And, you know, I'm, again, very frustrated that we didn't see an actual production ready car from Faraday, which is what everyone wants to see. But that was one of the more compelling ideas. I spoke with Richard Kim, the designer of the car quite a bit yesterday before the event.  He said, but cars, of course, get much, they lose value as soon as you drive them off the lot. But at Faraday Future, excuse me, they want your car to become more valuable to you as time goes on. They want that car to be personalized. They want that car to learn more about you. And a big part of that is through the apps that they hope to develop with these cars that you can then have customized things like the interior lighting, the trash control, power curves, you know, favorite destinations, favorite radio stations, things like that that would be powered by your phone. And then you plug the phone into the car and the car will react differently based on those settings. I just actually had a drive with another major manufacturer and a mass produced car that's coming very soon, which I unfortunately cannot talk about for another 23 hours. But ultimately that is not unprecedented and we will see similar functionality coming from a rather more available car than not too distant future. Now, my take away from the outside looking in as we wrap this up is that unlike 2001 CES when CarTech was in the North Hall and it stayed in the North Hall and maybe had Bluetooth and the ability to show a song on a dashboard or integrate with your phone by Bluetooth, CarTech has now become something that everyone cares about. It's not just a niche thing because everybody drives and these are massively appealing features now. They are, they're huge. When Ford debuted the Focus Electric here, I think about six or seven years ago, everybody thought they were crazy that they didn't just wait a week and show it off in Detroit. Before, you know, saw the trend and they got way ahead of the curve and ultimately they had a huge impact here and they continue to do so.  I do take, I don't know if I agree with people who are calling CES a car show because CES as a whole has grown. I mean, the footprint of CES this year is massive compared to how it was just a couple of years ago. So while the connected car presence here is bigger than it ever has been, everything here is bigger than it ever has been. But cars are definitely tying into more parts of our lives and we're seeing that on the show floor. Well, yeah, when an open source app platform is one of the biggest CarTech stories at CES, things have definitely changed. Crazy days, crazy days, man. Real quickly, our pick of the day comes from Clive. It's a podcast called Answer Me This. If you've got questions about stuff like, you know, CarTech or anything else, these folks have been running since 2007, trying to answer them. He says a couple examples recently were free coffee, safety curtains, the internet on disk. He says it's both funny and informative and with episode 330 out soon, might be out by now, there are plenty of archives to enjoy. So you can check it out, AnswerMeThispodcast.com. Thank you, Clive. Send your picks to us, folks. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. You can find more picks at DailyTechNewsShow.com slash picks. Final email from Rich and Lovely Cleveland talking about that app link platform and the substantial shift in car infotainment from fragmentation with each manufacturer's product line to something that could theoretically be consistent across car makers. He says, while this is a boon for consumer convenience, Darren would remind us that generally this means a concession to security. With all the big players either committed to supporting app link or Android Auto or CarPlay, the state of car security goes from a security through obscurity model within car systems varying substantially even amount, various trims of the same car model, which we've already seen breakdown to concentrated effort to having two uniform platforms that provide a much greater impact for each exploit. I know the phone integrated systems are essentially apps running on top of existing systems at this point, so that may limit the impact, but I hope Google, Apple and the car makers realize the security implications of this switch. Tim, are we hearing much about security in these new platforms for people? Security is definitely a concern and I'm sorry to say that they definitely, they being auto manufacturers, definitely subscribe to these security through security concept. They don't wanna talk about the details other than it's a very important thing to them. I do agree that this does perhaps open some new attack vectors or a streamlined attack vectors, I should say, but that really depends on how deep you dig into these systems. If you dig deep enough, you'll find that a lot of these are actually running on Q and X, which is a standard platform across a lot of different manufacturers. So while there are three or four different layers that go above Q and X before you actually see something displayed on the dashboard, there are common features that are found across a lot of these cars already. So if there were a flaw to be found at that level, then we already have a major problem to begin with. And Q and X are to applique now too. Right, yeah, absolutely. So in theory, these systems are read only effectively. They're very heavily sandboxed and the firewalls are in place and everything else. But as we know, there are issues there. So it's a concern. Manufacturers are well aware of it. And ultimately it's one of those things we're gonna have to wait and see. It's hard to know exactly how things are going to go. I've got my fingers crossed. I hope that they're doing the right sort of investigations, but I do wish they were a bit more open myself. And you know what I would say to Rich and no doubt to Darren as well, if he was here, I would tell them both, can't you just let us be happy? Can't you just let us enjoy this moment? Do you have to mean everything? All right, be irresponsible. Do not think about security, Patrick. I don't know whose voice that is, but it's not Darren's. For Rich's. Well, yes, let's be happy. Let's leave out a happy note. Thank you, Patrick. And thank you, Tim Stevens. Folks, if you're not following Tim's great work at CNET, go check it out, CNET.com. You are a busy, busy man covering the car tech along with the great CNET crew. Anything in particular to tell folks about before we let you go? The big thing is we're launching a new item of websites in just a couple of days here. It's called Roadshow. It's available at theroadshow.com. We've got a couple of concept teaser videos up there that you can check out. Follow us on Twitter at Roadshow or again, theroadshow.com. And then, yeah, we're launching Detroit Auto Show, which is next week. Monday morning, we'll be live streaming the first two days of the show. Every product that's unveiled, you'll see it live at theroadshow.com. So please come check it out. And again, I'm Tim on the Square Stevens at Twitter. You wanna follow me there, too? Thank you, Tim. Appreciate it, man. Thank you. Patrick Beja, so good to have you back and be back in the saddle again. Remind folks who may be vague on where they found all the French spin stuff, where they should go. Well, they should go to Frenchspin.com, Tom. I almost said Tim. You know, we all have beards. It's all blending together. I know. It's very interesting. I know, it's free of your luck, too. Frenchspin.com. And you know, just before Christmas, we recorded an episode of the Phileas Club where we had a bunch of people. And I wanted to talk about Star Wars and how Star, well, we talked about a bunch of, you know, boring world news stuff first, but then we got into Star Wars and how people from Saudi Arabia, from Thailand, saw that amazing saga, you know, in their culture. It doesn't have influence. And we sort of diverted from that into something that was super fun and interesting. So go listen to the Phileas Club. It's at Frenchspin.com. I think you would enjoy it. And follow me on Twitter at notpatrick. That sounds fantastic. Jenny Josephson. Yo. Another day of CES in the books. I got quiet because I'm watching the livestream of Samsung, not the video, but like people reporting on it. And it's still, again, it's like all the stuff they've already announced. So maybe like right after we're done, we're going to get to whatever they have that's new. It's Samsung remix. It is. It's a little bit. It's like, hey, we have these SUHT TVs. So exciting. Yeah. We have a golden platinum version of the gear as to watch. It's quantum dodge, yo. We told you about Project Beyond. We're still telling you about it. So that's where we are right now. I'm sure we'll get to the rest of it in a second. Anyway, I'm on Jenny J, J-E-N-N-I-E-J, 23 at Twitter. And yeah, I'm here. We're doing this. We got stuff coming. Watch it, check it, keep going. Thank you for the support that makes this show possible. If you didn't realize, the show is funded entirely by whatever viewers feel they get some value out of it. If you get value out of the show, we just ask that you give a little of that value back. Maybe it's only a dollar a month. DailyTechNewsShow.com slash support, or Patreon.com slash DTNS. Stay tuned. If you're listening to the audio version, there's some special CES reports from Jenny and Allison Sheridan coming up after we finish up here. Or if you're watching the video version, you can find them in the treasure chest, which is available to Patreon backers at the $5 level above, or in the links in the show notes. Our email address is feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com, give Scall 51259Daily, that's 5932459, catch the show live Monday through Friday, 4.30 p.m. Eastern at alphageekradio.com and diamondclub.tv, and visit our website at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Back tomorrow with Scott Johnson and special guest Patrick Norton from CES. Talk to you then. That was part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program. I was putting a secret edit point in there. That's why there is a delay. Thank you again, Tim. I know you're way busy, so by all means, if you need to take off, take off now. Yeah, I need to, yeah, Bloomberg going. So thanks very much for having me. Always a pleasure. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you. I'll see you on the floor. Have a safe CES. Thank you. You too. Well, it's gonna be real safe with all that pack checking, I'll tell ya. Well, the good news is that I've taken all of my usual backpack full of gear and reduced it to a purse. I don't know how that's gonna hold tomorrow, but we'll see. Nice. Well done. Yeah, we'll see. That's before I gotta get Patrick Norton on the air, so I don't know. Let's see, what else? Oh, so the number one title right now is Alexa Where Are My Keys, which actually, I'll tell you what, if it could answer that question, that would be great. If the fob could talk to the echo, that would be awesome. I'm sure it could at some point. I like a car electronics show as well, but... Mm, that is, yeah. It's a little bit, yeah. All right, fine. You don't like what I like, I'm gonna leave, right? If I've learned anything from the Philius Club, it's that I don't wanna hang around with anyone who's different than I am. No, car electronics show is good. I'm actually gonna leave, though. Oh, you're actually gonna leave, okay, fine, yeah. No, and he's like, no, and I really am pissed. It's good to see you, Patrick. You too, thanks so much. Happy new year. Take care, happy new year. Have a good time, and Jenny, good luck with the rest of Crazy Town. Bye, chat room, bye, everyone. Yeah, so I... We've been very low on titles lately. We're all the title masters. Where have they gone? Where have all the titles gone? I think what's a show about reminder has not been in the chat room doing his reminding. Oh, I see. Boom, hey, Ellie. Ellie's got a title. Ellie's got a title. Alexa, where are my keys? Nvidia, adaptate your car's drivers? Huh? Huh? Car electronics show. I don't know. I still like Alexa, I think. And I'm sorry that I've now set off. We've all set off your Amazon Echoes in the post-show. I know. I at least didn't do it in the real show, so I feel like... Yeah, I think that's fair. At some point, really. I was like doing such linguistic circles around it to like, that nice lady I talked to in my house. I'm still looking at Samsung. Oh, they're trying to... I don't know, it's hard to look at these from a live stream. There are so many people that are live-blogging Samsung, but they all have video elements, too. And so every time... Uh-oh, I think it was an example of what happens, yeah. All of a sudden there was Brian Cooley, like, oh, Brian Cooley, I'm talking about things. And I was like, that's great, but I just need to look at their live-blogging. Love you, Brian Cooley. Just need to know what's happening in Samsung. Please, you're the best, but just please stop now, because I need to look at... Well, there's the Tab Pro S, crazy thin Windows 10, 2 and 1. Super light Notebook 9 series laptops. I feel like CES has gotten to the point where a laptop announcement just is not... It's like a PDA announcement was 10 years ago. Like... Yeah. I like Ellie's Trenchant commentary. What's that? I enjoy Ellie's Trenchant commentary. Is it Trenchant-like? Yeah. I said Trenchant. Oh, oh, I see. But I think also the wireless is getting less good.  Okay. I was, you know, you're from the East Coast, so I thought maybe something about Trenchant that I didn't realize. It's real Trenchan-ish. Come back, LiveBlog, come back. Hmm. All right, well, I like that. You like what? To do away with the difference between apps and input, which is to say it will be as easy to go from TBS to HBO as it is TBS to Netflix. Oh, this is the Samsung TV. Yeah. Yeah, we already talked about that. Yeah. But I'm still waiting. Yeah, no, they're still doing the... Here's some things we told you. Yeah. But I like it. I like the way they did it. Yeah, I was kind of like, I don't think, I like this Samsung TV thing with the interface in the remote until I was like, oh, it automatically recognizes devices. Oh, oh, it just like puts everything in one interface. That's kind of cool. Yeah. It one ups the harmony there. Yeah, I like the picture that they just took. Cause that is a weird, like sort of archaic thing. The... What, the remote? Well, yeah, or like having six remotes and having to go like, okay, wait, so I can't get that, you know, like so many devices and so many apps and you can't get the Amazon on the Apple TV yet. So that means I gotta go to the PlayStation. Yeah, right. And that didn't put, like that's a lot. Even with the harmony, you have to remember where it is, right? Right. And that solves that problem of like, oh, just take me to my Amazon app, wherever it is. Yeah. Yeah. All right, this is guaranteed to break somebody's podcast app. I'm almost certain. Oh boy. Cause it's got three different post-show elements plus the, I tried to put the, because there were so many post-show elements, I wanted to put the frog pants and the Stinger, Diamond Club Stinger at the actual end. Yeah. It says that it's mono 44, 100. So, That's what I did mine as. It oughta work. Tom Merritt, Patrick Beja, Janney Josephson, and Tim Stevens. The big cast. Yeah. Question. Yes. Well, do you feel like you'll want somebody from CES on Thursday, or will you kind of be over it from a discussion point of view? What do we got? We got Justin again on Thursday, right? Yeah. I wouldn't say no, but it's not something I'm like, we got to get somebody. Yeah. Cause I'm out of here. I'm flying out early Thursday. Yeah. The show begins Wednesday. It's basically over then. Yeah. I know. It sounds terrible, but it becomes the province it becomes an actual trade show on Wednesday through. That's kind of it, right? And I think in some ways that's really smart for CES to be like, let's get the press out of here so that we could all do our jobs. People get out. Yeah. So Thursday, I was almost wondering if we should invite Carboni on Thursday. Is he there? No, he's not. But for some reason I was just like, let's just do a lighter like review of CES because it's all going to be goofy stuff by Thursday. Yeah. Hey, I can reach out to him. All right. It was weird when you said that cause I saw a guy somewhere that looked just like Anthony Carboni and I was like, am I running into him again? I don't think he's there. I saw him talking with Scott Johnson on Twitter about drawing software. Yeah.  Hit in the wall. Hit in the mid afternoon wall. What's the time in Las Vegas? The same time as your time. I know, it always surprised me for some reason. But you feel like you make a time change. You feel like you make a time change because things are happening at seven in the morning. And at midnight. Yeah, and at midnight. Right, on my dinner reservation tonight is at 9.45 p.m. That's dinner.  Yeah, I'm like, I'm gonna be asleep in my pudding. So we'll see. Are you gonna get pudding? I don't know. I don't know where am I going anyway. I like pudding. What's a pudding? I want pudding. I have rice pudding in the fridge. That sounds good. Oh, no, I also have those sugar-free, jello pudding pots. But ever since the Bill Cosby thing, I don't want to eat them. Oh, farm to table, farm to table menus, which makes me think there will definitely be pudding. Wait, where, is this, is this where you're gonna eat them? Where do you grow pudding? Farm-gross pudding. You both grow corn, corn pudding. Can I, can you tell me what farm this pudding came from? Indian pudding. Which pudding farm? I remember growing up driving through the fields of pudding. Yeah. Kansas Plains Waving with Pudding, mile after mile after mile. What's interesting is it isn't pudding, only in the U.S. is pudding associated with dessert because I guess in Britain there's also... Salted roasted beets, roasted pear, Alaskan king crab. Sounds expensive. Yeah. Yeah, pudding is different. Pudding is a baked good in the U.K. Oh, slow poached organic farm egg. Why can't I open this up more? Oh my gosh, there is pudding. There's a foie gras brûlée. See? Oh. Whoa. Wow. There you go. Not the pudding I was expecting. There's your pudding. It may not be the pudding you expected. Yeah. But it's the pudding you deserve. Duck cruelty pudding. Yes. I'll just label it that. Yeah. Let's have honest labeling. Delicious cruelty. Oh, cruelty. Thy name is Tasty. There we go. We're trying to load the menu. Let's take it forever. All right, there we go. Yeah. This looks pretty respectable. I'm not going to make it through this whole meal. Is it really farmed at table? Is this that mean? You know. I mean, if I'm actually eating out in the farm, then maybe, but. Yeah. So where is this restaurant located? In the Aria. It's in a farm. What a farm. It's in a water farm outside of Vegas. It's artisanal in America. It's run by Fremen. After a while, I kind of got tired of all the hotel restaurants. I don't know why. I think it was just because it kept running into CES people. Yeah. Let's see. Do you have a car or access to a car? That is the sound of CES right there. I know, right? Oh, I just hit the wall. You got to go to the peppermill. Because Molly would just texted me and said, I just hit the wall. And I was like, oh, no. Yeah, she triggered you. Get it out loud. Now I'm like, uh-huh. Yesterday, she knocked you off the internet by walking in the room. I know. It was ridiculous. Like she walked in the room and I was like, oh, hey, there's Molly would broke the internet just by walking into my hotel room. That's expected behavior, though. Yeah. Yeah. That's a known issue. That's a known bug. You're not doing any of the events tonight, are you? Oh, god, no. I never go to a single event. Are you kidding? We used to be signed up that was nonstop. No, I did go to Unveiled. I did go to that one because that's small enough. But all those shows. Tom's point is so excellent, which is that that is why CNET is there. That is why The Verge is there. That is why all these people are there is to do all that hard work with their staff of 50 to 100 people covering this event. And for me, it's like, all right, what is the one pocketed, targeted thing I am going to go do today? I will go do that and well. That has become my strategy as part of a what? A grand total of three person show?  They'd make a fourth. I know. I always can I say, yeah. So like, are we four or are we eight? We're a few. We're an eight person show. We're a several person show. Yeah, we're a few people. Less than 10. I mean, there's all the listeners and all the patrons. Well, then we are like a huge show. We're a countless. That's right. We're a legion. Well, if you want a place to eat, that isn't bad. There's always stuff off the strip. Pepper mill. Go to, what is it? We went here one time, the Jerusalem Grill for SEMA. I'm going to Shake Shack. That's where I'm going. Oh, yeah. I forgot they had a Shake Shack right now. Well, no, I don't know. Is it the Steak and Shake? No, dude, it's Shake Shack. Steak and Shake is also good. It's been there for a while. Shake Shack came to Vegas. That's awesome. So now, apparently, there are washing machines rolling across the screen or across the stage. Oh, they're doing their white goods now? Yeah, they're doing their appliances. There comes the fridge. Here she is. Mrs. Smarty Fridge. She's got a 7-inch screen. I will be impressed with a Smart Fridge that has a built-in milkshake maker. My milkshake brings all the fridge to the yard. Thank you, you got there first. It's just there. It was made for it, exactly. I'm sad or not in the chat room right now. I couldn't get in. It was too much. The Wi-Fi was like, nope. I know that. No chat room. Or something, a smoothie maker, and that's something where you push and you get more than just water and ice. Yeah. You mean a frappin' fridge? Or like, yeah, so on the door side, you load it up with kale or whatever ingredients you need in the morning to make a smoothie, and then it just blends it right when you press the button. The only way to communicate with me is through showbot.tv. Suggest titles that are actually things to say. I'll make that the chat room. She has become one with showbot. Yeah. I only speak showbot now. I only speak showbot. So rainy, so rainy. Thank you, Ellie. I'm bugging Molly for crashing you. She's like, what? I'm not even there. All right. Publish this piece of CES. Magic. Magic. Exactly. Do that. 12 weeks is what? 12 weeks is three months, right? Yes. So we got a little money at the end. Vegas for a little over three months. If I just go based on CES and contents. Yeah. I know. It's nice hearing Molly's voice on the end of the show, right? Yeah, it is. It's great. That was a fun little conversation you guys had. So go find it in the show notes or the treasure chest, folks. And that's it. We're published. Published Tated. And we're going to all hit the wall now. Yep. Bye.


All right, welcome everybody Before we start does anyone have any additions to the agenda that they would like to make at this time Mason Yes Okay, hey mark you have anything you want to add to the agenda. We don't really open. Yep. Yep. You just made it on time He didn't miss you didn't miss anything Yeah, yes, I'd like to make a statement tonight about the roads. All right Okay And I'm gonna add on the agenda an update on the ongoing Legal dispute over Pine Gap Road And so we have Posted this agenda in these three places, right and on the website emailed interested parties so we can move forward on this and I'm gonna start with the minutes from The last meeting on July 8th, and I didn't see any corrections on that So I'd move to approve these as typed up all in favor I great And we have We Had a request for To move something ahead on the schedule because people got to be at work and so we're gonna just Jump right into that and that was about the liquor license inquiry about I guess it's not the license inquiry so much as Question about timing is the person that? Brought that complaint here. No No, all right, then You want to hang around a little bit longer and case he does show up. I guess he did know that this is a meeting Yeah, yeah, I mean we can talk about it without him here. I guess yeah, yeah You know we're trying our best, you know a lot of times Actually somebody called and complained about the noise after midnight and one of the neighbors had come in and said hey There's people screaming You know the park people don't realize a lot of the times It's not people coming from our establishment. They call on Tuesday And they said there's somebody drunk laying in the park yelling and I'm like we haven't been opened all day You know and then we had a couple fighting, but they weren't in our establishment. They were in the park on the corner So a neighbor came in and said hey, you know, there's a lot of going just screaming and yelling after midnight And you know ever since the neighbor said something about it at 12 o'clock Which that's when we're not allowed to have liquor in in our lawn area We closed the doors and we have people come inside the pub because we're allowed to serve liquor till 2 o'clock in the morning Yeah, we do our best the music goes off the lights go off, but we cannot control People that have left our establishment. I a lot of the in people do hang out on the lawn and we you know Jim is our neighbor. He's right there. We never have had a problem. It's quite all Winter long. It's just July is our busiest month and people are crazy That's all I'm gonna say we do our best to do control of the noise and Respectful of our neighbors and you know the alternative is what for one month that these people are kind of crazy And we try and keep them quiet is to what close our doors and have it shut down and have the whole place Just sit there and rot you know We're doing our best to keep it quiet there And they should have seen some sort of improvement in the last three weeks because we're running out there going Inside get inside, you know, we're already Well, just yeah, I guess thank you for your attention and in being aware of it and that's um, I think it's some Summertime, you're right. So it's Just to just clarified down we didn't say that this is about Docs Tavern in the Huntington house Just so not every people don't know yeah, which is on the park and and and people hang out on the park too So yeah, this is the first year. We've had expanded dining area out out on the lawn Yeah, there was always a few tables on the porch. Yeah, but now it's expanded out onto the lawn So there's quite a few tables out there. Yeah, it's been busy there. It's nice You know, it's like a family atmosphere.  Yeah, all right. Well Thank you for taking the time out of your your work. This is your work day right now, isn't it? Yes Yeah Well, if If the person that was really brought this to the meeting shows up then I guess we can summarize What you said, yeah, thank you It's good to know you're aware of what's going on Yeah, that's really that's all I wanted to bring it to a public forum just to Encourage you to keep doing a good job Yeah It's not like when the Eagles nest was was there that was really going to get pretty wild Yeah, so we're two no, yeah, we've all experienced it and it'll get cold and people will stop hanging out outside soon enough, so Yeah, right We have Joan could not make it here tonight, but we do have some updates on what is going on with what most people are interested in and is Betham out on the road and we do not have it ready to sign today But we're looking to award the con contract to GW Tatro as the company and We're gonna have that award ready for me to sign tomorrow and then Thursday morning is when we're going to have the Contractor sign and they're assuming that they're going to want to start work immediately because the of the Time crunch that was going on and that also people should be aware is they have permission to work 24 hours a day I doubt they're gonna Work three shifts, but more and likely two shifts and probably on some Saturdays, too And I don't think anyone's gonna be We don't know we don't they have the right to yeah Yeah, so you're gonna be set for the next next couple months you shouldn't have any problems because it's gonna be nice It's you know, we'll we'll see it's it's expensive they have you know You know, I don't think they're gonna want to be paying overtime to have people work if they have two crews It's already a big big expenditure. So but but We gave them permission to do what they need to do to get it done quick. So no, it might be realized As soon as possible we're signing with them Thursday morning. I wouldn't be surprised to see them mobilizing Thursday afternoon This is all about time 2.2 yeah 270 something To order the bid to GWT for the plan to sign the agreement the next day tomorrow. Yeah And then the contractor will come in on Thursday and inside. Yeah Hey, do you know where they're from north somewhere I think they have also done work in this town in the past As soon as possible, yeah, like immediately probably No, no, he's saying is there any urgency on their side to complete it Is Always late and over budget there there are It's unclear exactly what there were some What were the there are contingencies are Not over budget but over time The P is really trying to get it paved before winter August 11th is there But we've we've been to work beyond But there it's also in their Interest to wrap it up before winter and not have to then Remobilize in the spring, you know, it's it just makes it more expensive for them also to do that Engineering Poor samples To find out where the real ledges under the roads the surveying had to take place and then the rest of it was all in engineering So no not physically Not really not really, but hey paid the paperwork's all in order now. It's the muscle comes in And in terms of the upper part of Betham Mountain Road, which is site to Dubois and King is working on the right-of-way plans for 13 plus or minus properties that are involved with that work and They're working on preparing the specs and bid documents. So we don't have a projected date for that bidding yet But it's in the process for that Nope, that's a separate separate project separate, you know bid project could be but you know, we'll see we don't know Yeah, there are two separate, you know No, it shouldn't take so long it's not such a big deal. Yeah Yeah, but it is part of the the work that's covered under the emergency Highway aid in terms of the FEMA projects around I guess you you're having a call on Thursday To get more updated with that And then they're going to do another site visit in a couple weeks Yeah, any input on that cooter with what the FEMA projects or And So that's moving along in terms of the bingo road repairs now we've submitted a public use permit application with the Forest Service and They're going to be meeting with Cooter and Joan to be meeting with Chris Mattrick and other Forest Service staff on Wednesday Looking at both temporary and permanent repair options And there is a possibility of applying for a v-trans emergency grant for the temporary repair And we're of course open to the Forest Service Contributing funding to what extent that they can That's really what Joan has been up to which is a lot so that's Her report we got Those there You got any other highway news or is that pretty much the highlights? All right, all right and And Terry did you have any I see you finally got the the hydrant in down by the p-line This Sunday I got I got one question for you Terry. Well, I noticed that an invoice that you have rented up test pump Yeah, what was that for? for the deep wells We have to pump them all the way down Okay, take samples right so I hope them down the day before and come to dry it It dries again Right and then the next day you got to do the same thing and then you got to draw samples We tried doing with Baylor, but They're 70 feet down. So the Baylor only holds half a point So draw out five gallons and then Take you half a day Okay, and I price one now and they want $4,500 so it's a lot cheaper So that's it. Yeah Summertime nobody's here. Well, you have anything to contribute from the library Like what Okay, check out the bulletin boards, all right All right About the Muller report coming up So we're kind of talking a lot about roads Marv you had a statement you wanted to make about roads Yes, I would like to make a statement about History and future and that is to this select board and future select boards since In the last 20 years there have been two attempts to close a section of Mars Brook Road From Robert Finkel if I don't know the number Down to the bridge of the Mars Brook and so whether put a cold sack in and both places however, I As an advocate suggested that was a baby on the Porton Road not to discontinue and so forth and The select board did see my views since I did bring Mike Boyne a farmer that has a firm on the top of Mars Brook Road and one on 100 and that was a connecting point for him then secondly Another board wanted to discontinue that same section because of the washout, of course And he was going to cost too much to rebuild That I was on the board at that time not an advocate But of course I had a real conflict of interest now I think this emergency has really shown that we need to look at what could happen with any Connecting roads and that is for the future and I'm only talking I don't know what's gonna happen the past I can relate to but the future We got a look at and discontinues of road is very important I was 14 years old when some of these roads are in context right now was discontinued and So now there's a content Anyway, I'm just suggesting there's gonna be a lot of mind thought put into The discontinues of a road even though it goes to a trail or class for a road It doesn't mean that it can't be retained and that's the important thing So your point is just just like we experienced after Irene is that when a road goes down It's nice to have some options. Yeah. Yeah And I want to say thank you to those elect boards. Yeah, okay All right Mason you had something you want to say about the conflict of interest and civil authority I didn't get a chance to look at the minutes. Did you record? Actually the date of signing The conflict of interest policy, it's not in the minute in the minutes I don't have that memorized, but I would look it up. I don't know if the minutes say the actual date Suggesting that it isn't maybe tonight you might want to put in tonight's minutes that you signed it on the 24th as a policy We have to see what we did. We had discussion at our last meeting about that But there was no definitive answer about when yeah, because we thought we signed it in April June it was signed on the 24th of June All right So just we're looking for clarity that might be good to be put in the minutes if it was done in power It is if it was done in public and not an executive session There wasn't executives. That's what I understood That's what Tom shared with me so I'm just saying that for everybody's benefit might be good to make sure it's in the minutes I'll put them in there Yes, but I patty spoke with me earlier And it was great because like having an understanding that back in 2000 when Marvel was on the board that a the first policy of conflict of interest was put together and It was revised once after that and then this new one Which is actually a model from the Vermont leagues of cities in town. Mm-hmm. It's basically what we were functioning under I mean pretty close pretty close. Yeah, right Okay, you know, I just want to share that I thought it was a good Civil authority. I was hoping you might be able to give an update. I understand that the civil authority Hasn't had proper minutes that's been recorded or I maybe give us an update on where that is And a lot of this is you know building up to the next election to make sure we're actually functioning as well as we Should be for elections So Not sure what you're referring to in terms of what I was taking. Yeah civil authority to me. Yeah The minutes are in the book. Yeah, there is a book and there are minutes. Yeah Yeah, there's there's some that you're you were looking for that you couldn't find or something Okay Authority and how you know, are we set up to really function for the next election in a good manner since we did have some Disturbances in the last election process Thank you. All right So We've got On a lighter note approval. We'll have an application for use park. Thanks for coming in you guys For use of the park for a memorial for Vernon Rockwin of Rochester, Vermont and Amy Braun is the one that applied for this it would be on July Oh, she's applied on July 9th. Okay, then the event will be August 25th and Night move to the proof Yeah, not a second on favor And see we've got Well my my Little bit of news is we in terms of the ongoing litigation between Mason and the town over the existence of Pine Gap Road. He had appealed the select board's decision not to discontinue that road and the Court has finally issued a decision on the town's motion for summary judgment and the intervener's motions for some summary judgment and Basically, the court has ruled in favor of the town on Mr. Wade's appeal of the select board's decision Denying the petition for discontinuance. That means that the select board decision stands No part of Pine Gap Road is discontinued and the court also ruled that Mr. Wade has admitted that the town Highway 29 is a public road classified as a class 4 under 19 VSA section 302 A4 and the court also ruled that that Mr. Wade raised a genuine issue of material fact with respect to whether the section of Pine Gap Road identified by Mr. Wade is part of town Highway 29 and the court has said that the evidence raises a question about whether town Highway 29 Does in fact traverse Mr. Wade's land on that section identified and the court has granted him The 30 days to amend his complaint to address these issues So anybody have any questions about that? No, I'm just wondering if I could see a copy of this or Sure You could have this one at the end of the meeting I know that's a mouthful a couple mouthful Harlan I was wondering why you haven't asked that for a few months Yeah So at this point it has cost the town $45,983 and 29 cents and it's Mason Decides to take advantage of the 30 days. He's been offered to Raise more questions. I'm sure that amount will go up Yeah That would be a down payment on being able to take care of a road. It sure would wouldn't it? Yeah Sure would You know anybody else have any questions about that. Nope. All right We have Some of the Budget printed out some Where we're standing and where we're going with it I haven't had a chance to study on that you guys have any input on that Oh, yeah, no, it just just came out We're just we postponed the budget and finance committee meeting this last week because we were Nothing really to work on Yeah, nothing to chew on yet, but now we do so I know people know that but Every winter there's the budget and finance committee, which the select board is part of gets together and starts hashing out What we're spending and what we need to spend and in trying to you know, keep the Keep the taxes as reasonable as possible and our projects as reasonable as possible and this year The committee decided to try and keep meeting monthly Throughout the year. So when we come to that crunch time, it's not quite such a big hurdle To overcome so that's why That's why we have this stuff presented now and We're talking about it in July and not January. No, I'm sure we'll talk about it in January, too Yeah, and Got any other questions Harlan Nope, nope I Haven't taken a peek at it. No I've been maxed out like the Last person that has seems to have seen it is Mason's lawyer Back and when Tony was But anyway, that's I Think that's what we've got tonight and thank you all for coming and Come again in a couple weeks and we'll have more Hopefully we'll be here complaining about how loud it is and working on Bethamon Road That's