We're live. They don't make the ding anymore when you go live. I miss that. Is that ding, y'all? Jango's got a vet appointment after this. Oh yeah, I have my baby suit at least at 2.15 today. Oh, okay. Well, let's just get going then. We got reasons. Hey, let's go.  Let's just go. Let's just go, E. Let's just go. Oh yeah, Hunter.  All right, here we go. The Daily Tech News Show is brought to you by listeners like us. Go to DailyTechNewsShow.com slash donate to learn how. Mmm, doughnuts. No, Homer, that's doughnut. But I'm sure Tom wouldn't mind doughnuts either. This is The Daily Tech News for Thursday, April 14th, 2016. I'm Tom Merritt. Joining me today, Mr. Justin Robert Young of the Weird Things podcast, the Night Attack podcast, FSL Tonight, Politics, Politics, Politics, The Jury Show, Monday Hotline Bling. I can never remember the actual name. Hotline Monday. Hotline Monday. I feel like I just need one big catch-all, right? Man about the internet, Justin Robert Young. Absolutely, man about the internet. We're gonna talk about why it's a great idea to allow people to text in the theater while a movie is playing. Later on on this show, stick around for that. Let's start off with the headlines. Microsoft filed a lawsuit in US Federal Court in the Western District of Washington for the right to inform customers of government requests for email and other documents. Microsoft says that in the past 18 months it has received 5,264 legal orders under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 2,576 of those orders prevented disclosure to the subjects of the order, and 68% of those without disclosure had no end date, meaning that Microsoft effectively can never tell the person their information was requested. US House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday approved legislation requiring authorities to get a court warrant to obtain email stored in the cloud, which isn't always necessary. There's some case law about that. They removed, however, a provision that would regard notification and require that, so this bill would not solve Microsoft's problem here. Several things going on here, Justin. First of all, Microsoft's claiming a Fourth Amendment violation saying, hey, people keeping their stuff in the cloud is normal. It's their stuff under the Fourth Amendment. If you search or siege their stuff, you have to tell them, and they say it's a First Amendment violation because the government is telling them they can't say something to someone. What I think we're seeing here are the continued ramifications of the Snowden-Links and Project Prism, the idea that there was a program in which the federal government and our espionage agencies were working with private companies, and that private companies legally could not acknowledge that it was happening. This was something that, a deal that I feel like they had never been wild about, and they were far less wild about the idea that they were having their reputations just drug through the mud as they were patsies to the government in something that they may or may not have believed in, and now you have Microsoft, which is no stranger to getting in fights with the federal government now trying to take a step. As far as the House Judiciary Committee approving the legislation, I think that to me is a sign of maturation for how much money Silicon Valley has spent in lobbying in Washington over the past 10 years, that this is not little things anymore. It is my opinion that these companies look at their relationship with their customers in a market where things can go south really, really, really fast if you lose it as very serious and this is a poison pill that they would like to spit out of their mouth. Now, Big Jim in the chat room asked a question I bet a lot of you have, which is like, wait a minute, you just gave some specific numbers. I didn't think they were allowed to give specific numbers. Two different things going on here. These are legal orders for information you're thinking of national security letters where they are not allowed to even give publicly the actual amount they have to give it in ranges. Two different things. It does get confusing because there are so many different orders. What's part of the problem here is that email communications are treated as they existed in the 80s under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. So in other words, there's a law out there or there's a precedent I should say that says after 180 days on a server, an email is considered abandoned. If it hasn't been downloaded into your IMAP client and removed from the server, therefore, you don't even need a warrant to go get it. It's considered abandoned property. There's a lot of conflicting law on these points. And what Microsoft is trying to say in this lawsuit is, look, this is the modern age, just because someone stores their email in a cloud service doesn't mean it's not their email and doesn't mean it's not town amount to going into their home and getting their papers. We're storing all kinds of documents in the cloud these days. And you can't say that just because we're storing our documents in the cloud, therefore, they've been abandoned or they don't have to meet the same search and seizure requirements that papers stored in our houses would. There are two things that I think are absolutely clear. Number one, we have laws that were not written for the modern age no matter how well-intentioned they are and our technological prowess has outstripped them and we need to take another look. And as far as we are now entering into a far more publicly adversarial age where Apple took on the FBI and the Apple was almost better for having done it. They were not pilloried in some circles. Certainly it was a 48-hour little burst on the political scene. And I'm sure there's people in our audience who still think less of Apple because of that. And in fact, I know there are. Who think less of Apple for standing in the way of that. Right. Yeah, sure. It was not uncontroversial, right? But Apple, it's not like there were boycotts in the street for Apple stuff. It's not like that they reported some gigantic dip in sales or we even saw any of the cosmetic elements that might suggest that. And so you have to say now we are just in a different era for that. Well, let's move into the era of robots then. Sharp announced that Robohon, it's walking Robo cell phone, will release on May 26th in Japan. The Robohon has a two inch QVGA screen, Android 5.0 OS, LTE radios, and three types of voice recognition technology. Robohon can walk, dance, and show videos and pictures using its 720p projector embedded in its head. The Verge reports that it will sell for $1,800 American dollars plus $6 a month for nuanced cloud-based voice recognition service. Yeah, this ain't cheap.  It does have some on-device voice recognition if you're not connected to the internet, but paying for the good voice recognition is an interesting gamble. This is definitely for early adopters. It's very Japanese, but it's as cute as hell. I mean, listen, it's adorbs. There's no doubt about that, but it does seem far more well suited for the Japanese market than it does for the American. But yeah, if you saw this thing at CES or C-TAC and you were like, what? I want that.  Instagram made a change to its Explore page adding new video channels, including one called Videos You Might Like based on the kinds of people you follow and the things you've liked. Other channels are curated around topics. They'll have a Coachella channel, for instance, where they may have particular people with the highlight and all the videos from those people. Update comes to Android and iOS in the United States today with other countries to follow. Similarly, Vine updated its iOS and Android apps with a new Watch button. So now you can tap that and watch all the videos in a channel with one tap, whether it's a person's channel or a curated channel. Playback can be sorted by channel popularity, chronological order, or reverse chronological order. This goes with Snapchat's recent change. When you're watching stories, it'll just automatically take you to the next story in the list of people you follow. Everybody's trying to make that leanback experience. Well, certainly because you can far more easily put ads in the middle of a leanback experience. When you are just playing one, one, one, one, one, you don't know exactly what's coming in. It's very easy to, you know, just a real quick thing that you can tap or swipe to get to the next thing, but that would be very, very valuable. It's actually less, I hate to admit it, but it is less intrusive that way, isn't it? I mean, it certainly is a lot more friendly of a version and you already see it in Snapchat's featured stories where they have for events and stuff like that. That's where they slip in ads, is where you don't know exactly what is coming next and therefore you are almost more ready to be a wooed by any product and or service. Yeah, no, I mean, this just seems like the new wave of social media display. I may have mentioned this on this show. I know I mentioned it on cord killers. Eileen watched the MTV Movie Awards the other day on Snapchat, didn't watch it on MTV. She just went to Snapchat and looked at their story about it. Felt like, yeah, I got everything I needed out of it. GoPro has launched a developer program to encourage companies to create apps, accessories and mounts for GoPro cameras. More than a hundred companies are participating at launch, including BMW, Fisher Price and Periscope. Tom, tell me why this isn't just an app store which would ultimately only create one product, a white flag. Well, yeah, GoPro is desperately trying to show that it is doing things that make it continue to be worth investing in. And I think this is more than just an app store, partly because they have to do things that wouldn't be in an app store like mounts. So the Fisher Price thing is like, hey, here's a great mount for your GoPro that's child-friendly and can work with your toys so you can take darling photos of your kids playing with their Fisher Price toys. The BMW app is a lap timer. And this is something that's gonna go into other app stores like iOS and Android. So GoPro doesn't really wanna have their own app store. They're just trying to make it easy for people to make stuff that adds value to the GoPro ecosystem, makes people wanna buy more GoPro's and not say, ah, I got a camera on my phone, that's good enough for me. GoPro's in trouble. And GoPro's in trouble because right now, they are in a commodity battle. They're only going to be more and cheaper cameras. And GoPro's not going to be able to charge as much of a margin as they used to. This app store to me just kind of says, well, I don't know, we certainly hope somebody else comes up with a really great idea on why you need a GoPro. I admit that was my first reaction to the story when I read it. I was like, oh, good luck with that. Until I saw how many companies they have participating. So they have done the legwork. And actually the stock market ticked up a little when they saw this, because I think what they realized is, okay, they've got actual products. They got companies to spend money to help. This might prolong their life a little longer. You know, I'm sure that if they were still alive, the flip camera would be announcing their app store today as well. Yeah, I've got a bloggy over there from Sony that wants to have a chat. Hey, Vice News and Motherboard report that court documents made public in a Montreal crime syndicate case say the Royal Canadian Mounted Police used Blackberry's global encryption key to decrypt roughly one million messages in connection with the case dating back to 2010. By the way, lawyers from RCMP worked very hard to try not to divulge this to the public, but it has been divulged. Documents do not indicate how the RCMP got the key, although Blackberry was aware and cooperating in other matters on the case. A server in Ottawa mimics a mobile device to receive and decrypt the messages. The key is for the consumer Blackberry Messenger service. That is a service that Blackberry runs and holds the key for. This is different than Blackberry Enterprise service, which gives control of the keys to the customer. And this confuses a lot of these issues. For instance, India and Pakistan both ran into conflicts with Blackberry overwarning the key to the Blackberry Enterprise server. And Blackberry said, no, we don't give those keys. Those keys are managed by the Enterprise customers. And the confusion was because they're like, well, you gave us the key to the Blackberry Messenger service, or at least that was the implication. You know, this has been the key brand element of Blackberry, right? Is that no matter what, no matter what you might think of our devices, no matter what our trajectory as a company in terms of our stature in previous decades, the one thing that you know you can count on when you say Blackberry is that your messages are secure and increasingly, again, this goes on along with our first story, we're finding out that security on a consumer level is never quite what we think it is. And on one hand, that just shows that you are the Blackberry Messenger on a consumer level, certainly feels from these particular ailments, but also Blackberry Enterprise, maybe that is the firewall, and especially for companies, that almost shows like, hey, look, it's even secure compared to the other stuff that we do. Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of questions here. One is how much this is going to impact Blackberry Messenger, which is not nearly as widespread as Blackberry Enterprise Server. But the other is how the RCMP got the key makes a big difference. Obviously, Blackberry seems to have played along, at least that's the best we can tell from these documents. If the RCMP recovered the key some other way and then told Blackberry about it so Blackberry could secure it, that's sort of a good thing, not a great thing, but it's better than Blackberry handing it over and it's certainly better than having an insecure way to get that key. If Blackberry gave the key to the RCMP, that's extremely concerning. So for Blackberry, a pick how you would like to think about them. Are they a sucker or stupid? You got choices. One of the first big money makers on Kickstarter was the $13 million raised for the coolest cooler in the summer of 2014. Ah, 2014. However, in 2016, you could order one of the coolest coolers on Amazon right now for $400 with two-day shipping. The problem, most of the backers from 2014 haven't received their cooler yet.  Spotted an update to the 66% of backers who have not received their cooler yet. It offered to take $97 more from them for expedited shipping by July 4th, which last I checked was more than two days from today, April 14th. Yeah. This isn't a scam and it isn't fraud. No, let's just be clear about that. But wow is it shady. Cooler's cooler seems to keep saying, look, we just need you guys to be patient because we have to sell these other ones to make enough money to make the cooler so that we can make the coolers to send to you. If we sent you guys all the coolers, we wouldn't have any money to continue. At the very least is incompetence in poor planning, don't you think? I feel for them. Let's just say theoretically, I know a friend who recently ran a Kickstarter. I've run Kickstarter's that don't involve actual physical products that have skated close to this line, believe me. It's easier than you might think, especially on something that requires as many components and sold itself as a technological leap beyond something that is a fairly common commodity item.  There are a lot of reasons why this can happen. Does that excuse them? No, because ultimately, Kickstarter, for anybody who's run one, especially when it comes to physical products, it is like a genie. You are going to get your money, your wish will be granted, and yet, like many tales of genies, you will realize that the bargain was more complicated than you might have thought. And if you are always forthright and you are good at math, which is very important, because many people who run Kickstarter's are not so good at math, then you will be okay. You might have some hiccups here and again, but you will be okay. The coolest cooler will not be okay. They're gonna get out of this, and I don't know how long the coolest cooler will be around past them fulfilling their Kickstarter orders. I mean, depending on how they're selling on Amazon, I feel like all the people involved will probably want some kind of break from dealing with this, because this has gotta be hell. Yeah, and the outrage to them asking for $97 to guarantee shipping by July 4th was not pretty, put it that way. No, and that is a crappy thing to do. For the record, it's a crappy thing to do. I understand why they did it. It's a crappy thing to do, sorry, go ahead. Europe's Parliament passed the General Data Protection Regulation Thursday. It will come into force from 2018, takes a while for the countries to all reconcile this and transpose it into their own laws. Among the new rules are tougher penalties, fines up to 4% of global turnover, a required data protection officer at large data processors, 72-hour breach disclosure, as well as taking on liability if you process data, not just control it, expansion of the right to be forgotten, data portability rules, parental consent for social media is now required, and a bureau will be set up for handling data protection complaints for breaking all these rules. I mean, seems legit. Yeah, I mean, they've been working on it for a couple of years. Let's give them a hand for getting it done. Indeed, let's hear it for the boys. That's a lot of hard work. Facebook is working on bringing image recognition to video, including facial recognition. This would allow you to search video for people and automatically add captions. So people are getting real excited about this, I guess, because of the idea of it, but it's the same technology they use in images that sometimes recognizes who you are and tags you automatically. They would just bring it to video, which I know is a cool trick. I don't know how often I would use it. Like, how many times do I need to look for a person in someone's Facebook Live video?  I think the idea is more, I wanna search for my friend, how rich is that search? Yeah, okay, that's right. Yeah, I wanna see that video from the birthday party last year. You know, the one where Justin was in it, boom, boom. Yeah, well, or it's like, yes. Or you have a bunch of pictures and videos from that, like, let's say, the Night Attack Live show on May 7th at the Piano Fight in San Francisco. And why is video not a part of that? Why isn't video so easily brought up in the same way the pictures could be? A study published in the journal Nature describes how doctors from Ohio State implanted a chip in 24-year-old Ian Burkhart back in 2014 when the coolest cooler was still funding, bypassing a spinal injury to give him control over his right hand and fingers again. Essentially, the chip sends signals to a computer which learns what the signals mean. So they say, like, imagine yourself, you know, gripping, imagine yourself straightening and it interprets those signals. Then once it's learned that the computer can send the signals to a sleeve on his arm which stimulates the muscles to execute the action. Hence, it took a couple of years to get this up to speed and perfected. But now, Burkhart, while sitting in a lab connected to the equipment, can pour from a bottle and pick up a straw and stir. You can even play Guitar Hero. They show him, or it's some kind of Guitar Hero-like game in the video. And he's paralyzed from the chest down to the biceps unless he's hooked up to this machine. That's amazing. That is nothing short of a miracle, a modern miracle. And this is the first time that this has been done where they're like, we're not doing anything. We've set it up where he can just think and move. And yes, he can only do it in the lab right now. But this is that crucial first step to be like, okay, now all we need to do is make it more practical so that he could be able to walk around and do this all the time. Or, you know, I say walk around. Like to make it so he could walk around at all. Exactly. Reuters reports the .krd domain name has opened this week for private companies, organizations, and individuals to use. ICANN granted the domain name to the group of Kurds led by Haya Afandi, the head of the Department of Information Technology in the Kurdish region of Iraq. It is not a two-letter country code. Yeah, that's why I found this so fascinating. So if you don't know too much about the Kurdish situation without getting into the politics of it, the ethnic Kurds are spread out among several countries. They have been fighting in various ways with all of those countries for their own homeland where they are most successful is in the northern part of Iraq where they have been granted autonomy. And it is people from that region who've created this to try to, again, further assert that identity. So it's ICANN threading the needle here saying, no, we can't give you a country code because you're not recognized as a country, but we can give you a TLD. Anybody can get it. You can get a .coke bottle. You can get whatever. So sure, we're gonna grab this. I will say, I mean, again, listen, this is a far, far, far more complicated issue than some scruffy nerve herder on Daily Tech News Show can do to justice. But the Kurdish area of northern Iraq is one of the most fascinating regions geographically that you could possibly read about. Their independence and ingenuity is something that I think has been overlooked as we've focused quite a bit on the Middle East since the 9-11 attacks. And this is yet another sign of them making progress in what is oftentimes violent, violent opposition. Yeah. And then am I reading this last one? Oh yeah, no, this is, Roger just threw this in here. I had seen it earlier today, and I guess it's gaining some more steam. I think it requires Andy Greenberg reporting on Cornell Tech researchers demonstrating the unexpected privacy invasive potential of brute-forcing shortened URLs. Basically, you can guess at the shortened URLs until they found working ones and then sometimes could pull off the trick of spreading malware. It's basically just URL guessing. But researchers notified Google about the work in September of last year. The company responded by lengthening its shortened URLs to make them a little harder to guess and taking the new measures to identify and block automated scanning. Researchers say Microsoft, on the other hand, initially brushed off their concerns when they contacted the company in May last year. But last month, Microsoft removed the URL shortening feature from OneDrive altogether. So again, URL shorteners and linking to sensitive materials aren't good combinations to begin with, and this is why. And that's your moral for today. Thanks to PCGuy8088. Go share TM204 and all of those who submitted things we used from our subreddit. Submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com and that's a look at the headlines. Okay, AMC's new CEO, Adam Aaron, has been on the job for four months. He's at Cinemacon. That is a big conference about showing movies. All the big theater chains go. All the big studios go. So he sat down and he talked to Variety about his plans for AMC theaters. They've got a merger. They've got all kinds of things. One of the things that he said that's making headlines today is that he's open to allowing mobile devices and texting-friendly showings. Here's exactly what he said.  You can't tell a 22-year-old to turn off their cell phone. That's not how they live their life. At the same time, though, we're going to have to figure out a way to do it that doesn't disturb today's audience. What may be more likely is we take specific auditoriums and make them more texting-friendly. That's a very reasonable statement to say, hey, we're not doing anything. We're thinking about this. Maybe I'm over-stereotyping 22-year-olds in my example, but I understand cell phones are real important to kids these days, so I wanna do something for it, but we're gonna be careful. Can he, first of all, resist the torches and flamethrowers that were aimed at regal CEO Amy Miles in 2012 when all she said was they were considering allowing younger patrons to use their cell phones with certain types of movies, and she had to backtrack and say, no, I'm talking about interactive showings and stuff, and then had to totally turn it over and go, no, we will never allow that. So this is obviously more than what this quote is, right? Again, this is a quote from a CEO at an industry conference meant to be heard by other industry people. Certainly, cinema viewing is something that is culturally important in America. However, the reason why we are talking about this is the visceral reaction that people have when they are engrossed in a movie and they are taken out of it by a distraction. In this case, the bugaboo will be texting. And of course, the ever-present meddling millennials. An unnamed co-contributor to this show said, sounds like hot burning hell to me. So here's the deal. I'm for this. More so. What? I am 100% for this. Wow, okay. Tell me why. Why is this okay? Number one, let's recognize that theaters are not in a good position. They are not doing as well as they have been in the past. And the trend lines show that they are trending down.  Sorry, man.  Doesn't sound like a way to get me to go in theater more. Let me get, can I finish? All right, all right, Ross. Here's all I'm saying. Theaters need to understand that what is often the future is providing not necessarily an enhanced experience like we've seen with 3D or, I mean, God, I heard somebody talk about a hot burning hell. Somebody described the 4D or 4XD experience where you get like rained on and your seat shakes.  What has been successful and you've seen in the face of declining attendance for theater chains, you've seen rising attendance in the Alamo Draft House. What has the Alamo Draft House done? They have curated an experience for us cranky old people. Exactly. Who harken back to a day. You've proven the opposite of your point, Jerry. That's the successful model. I'm getting here. I guess my point is that that's for us, right? We used to go to a theater and say, it'd be really great if somebody brought me whiskey. And the Draft House said, great. We'll just get someone to bring you whiskey. That's how we'll change this experience and make it better for you. I applaud AMC thinking outside the box to say, what is something that we can make a theater more interesting for teens, for a generation that isn't us, for a generation that doesn't long for just a quiet, pristine screen and a clear sound system and a rigid, no-nonsense, straconian rule to kick people out. I think that this is something that they need to think about or else they're not going to survive. And so what I'm saying is that it's not necessarily texting that I am for. It is the idea of creating another unique theater-going experience that just might not be our preferred way to do it. We will always go to other theaters that do things in the way that we like it, but if they don't try something different, then they're literally just gonna keep coasting toward the iceberg that's very obviously there. Now let me give some statistical backup to what you're saying too. Because you may have seen that it was another record year at the box office for theaters, 38.3 billion worldwide, up 5%. 70% of people in the US and Canada went to the movies more than once a month, up 2%. But here's the concerning number for Adam, Aaron, and others who operate theaters. Among frequent moviegoers, that's more than once a month, in the 18 to 24, that 22-year-old bracket, they saw a big drop from 7 million frequent moviegoers, 18 to 24 to 5.7. Per capita, people 18 to 24 years old going to the movies is down from 6.2 to 5.9 per capita. So in other words, even when you adjust for the number of people in a demo, like, oh, maybe there's just more old people, and even when you adjust for that, it declined. However, 31% of frequent moviegoers own at least five devices, 24% own six, and most of those are computers and smartphones. So what he's looking at is, we see people 18 to 24 not going to the movies. We know they have phones. We know that's one of the things they do. This is our idea. We'll have certain showings, right? That say, okay, the text, here's my question. Is that going to bring in more 18 to 24-year-olds? Cause that's the one thing, like I'd go to the theater, but I can't text during it. I know. No, you're right. I do not necessarily think that this idea will be successful. I am for the idea that AMC is thinking, how can we diversify our experience to make it better and more attractive to younger people? Because I'm ancient, and I like to go to movie theaters, and I like to have these periods that I have, and I want them to diverge them. If all the kids want to do is talk on their phone and text during the movie, but they also want to go and watch the movie because they get to be with their friends and outside of their parents' gaze for two hours, then give them that. That's fine, like I just think that the idea that we are diverging things, if people think that it's a hot burning hell, that's fine. Like you are allowed to think that. Don't go to that showing then, yeah. Yeah, or say, listen, I just don't make all the theaters that, and AMC has been another, that they have theaters that do draft house like kinds of things where you're able to get and you serve to you. And to get back to your point, it's not letting people text while they watch a movie that's gonna bring teens into the theater, but it could be the thing that opens up movie makers to say, okay, we can do an interactive showing like Amy Miles wanted to do back in 2012 where you're allowed to use your phone. In fact, you're encouraged to use your phone during the show for particular things, whether that's hashtagging on Twitter or taking snapshots or whatever. Maybe there's a movie that responds to the audience and you switch to different plot lines depending on what the audience is saying about it in that theater right then. I don't know what the idea is, but you can't do any of that right now because the norm is your device needs to be off and in your pocket. I had an idea. What's that? You see every horror movie now. You see the trailer is a glow in the dark footage. Not glow in the dark, but a night cam footage of test audiences seeing a movie and them freaking out when a big thing happens. What if you are given either mounts on the back of seats or something that can then live stream directly to your Twitter or Facebook that is set to go off just when they know the most scary parts of the movies are about to come up so you can have a live feed, go out to your social media view getting scared for everybody. There is a million different things or you can just have it be like it'll text your friend like oh, record, Jamie, because you've now filled in or used his app or something like that. Yeah, sure, and I think that's it. This isn't about, everybody's gonna wanna take this story and go I don't want the kids in my showing texting. First of all, it's not about that, it's about particular showings. Second of all, it's not about letting people text while they watch shows. It's actually about letting people use their phones while they watch shows to create a different movie going experience that you don't have to like and go to, that's fine. But that's, I embrace more technology in the theater for people that want it. As for me and Tom, you'll just be able to find us at a very, very quiet mid-afternoon showing at the Alamo Draft House or requesting two whiskeys, please. That's probably true.  So, bring it, bring it movie industry. Convince me to put down my bourbon and pick up my phone during the movie. All right, let's get to our pick of the day from Brett. Said I had a quick pick, I wanted to shoot your way. That has made my life significantly easier in recent weeks. I've been using two desktop customizing programs, Stardoc's Fences and Start 10. Fences lets you organize desktop icons into simple folders which you can then hide and move about and Start 10 lets you customize your Start bar pretty extensively, which is nice if you're not a fan of the Windows 10 defaults. I've had them for a month now and love them. They're 15 bucks together, 10 for one, five for the other. I appreciate that Stardoc only makes me buy them once. A lot of software makes you pay for yearly licenses and you can use it up to two computers according to their end user license agreement. So check it out, Stardoc been around forever making cool things to customize your Windows experience and they're not stopping and Brett likes it. Stardoc.com. Look at him, he likes it. Send your picks to us folks feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com and you can find more picks at DailyTechNewsShow.com slash picks. Wow, lots of messages of the day. Thank you everybody for responding to Scott and I talking about e-readers yesterday. We've got loads of perspective, more than we can possibly fit in the show. So if you don't hear yours red here, it was definitely red and appreciated. We tried to pick a representative sample and so we're gonna run through these tag team style Justin. Starting with Gary the senior geek who says, I have a paper white I use for reading in the evening before I go to bed. It allows me to read magazines and books without messing with my circadian rhythm. No blue light. Claire I got a paper white too but for a different reason. Quote I'll be traveling to Asia this summer and I tend to do a lot of reading while flying and neither my iPad nor my other devices e.g. Android phone, MacBook Air, et cetera has a battery life that lasts much more than half the duration of a flight to Asia. Greg says I want my next e-reader to display the book and have no other features, no advertising notifications, shopping, browsing, tracking, my reading, no Orwellian removal of my books. In fact preferred device for me would have no internet connectivity, just a cable to my Linux machine so I can copy my e-pubs on it.  Joel writes I actually use my phone, the OnePlus One with the Kindle app to read most of my e-books now. It has a large 5.5 1080p screen so the text is crisp and clear. I can set the Kindle app to dark mode so I don't have a bright screen in bed next to my wife. On the other hand, Tony writes this year I made the switch back to physical books. Already I've finished three books and I'm halfway through the fourth I've fallen back in love with reading. True love never dies. Also on Tony's side, Rich from Lovely Cleveland says while it's great to be able to take notes on an e-book and have them available on all my devices I find that I take less substantive notes with the built in Kindle notes function even when using the Kindle's physical keyboard. And Kevin in auditing from Ann Arbor buys physical books for his own reason. He says I consistently have about four or five different books that I slowly read at different times. I have one in my car, one in my bathroom, one near my bed, one in my girlfriend's apartment and I never have to worry about battery remembering my device, eye strain, notifications. I always have something near me when I want to read. Mike buys e-books and keeps them cheap. I avoid titles over $10. I just wait until the price drops down below before I buy best sellers. Bookbub helps me find titles for cheaper even for free. I've heard a lot about Bookbub. Apparently it's really, really legit. And Drew likes the fact that the e-readers themselves are cheaper. He says I wanna go all the way and say e-ink readers are disposable but I do feel way more comfortable in situations where the possibility of dropping, breaking or losing the e-reader is somewhat higher. Don't wanna drop that $600 tablet. Mike in annoyingly cold DC prefers e-readers for weight. I kept offering to get my fiance at Kindle. She never wanted to spend the money. She just left on a trip to Iraq and was severely restricted by the weight of her luggage. She borrowed my Kindle and was an instant convert. Derek thinks e-readers are actually more comfortable. He says more than anything I just feel that the Kindle is the best form factor for reading. I have a Surface Pro 4 but it's too heavy to be comfortable in bed. My phone is too small and for whatever reason holding open books has always given me hand cramps. Then finally Simon splits the difference. On the bedside table I have a Kindle paperweight which is a lovely reading experience and somehow even feels indulgent when I settle down for a read. However for my commute by rail, I have an old Windows phone. So there you go folks. Lots of ways to skin a cat or you could read a book which is probably nicer and better for cats. We also got an email from a Tony who says he's a long time listener, first time writer in regards to our story about Alibaba's AI, the AI that's called AI. Anyway he says the one that predicted the winner for the Chinese show I'm a Singer. I just wanna give you a little background on the show. I'm a huge fan. What they do on the show is sort of like American Idol. There are 500 live audience members watching the show. There's always seven famous singers competing against each other and basically the season's winner is picked by the 500 audience members. So when they showed the prediction by AI they actually showed it to the television audience and the in studio audience did not know who the majority of people watching the show were picking. They didn't really mention too much about AI other than it was predicting using all these different algorithms and people's reactions. If you've been watching the whole season you'd know who was going to win anyway so it didn't really do much for the TV audience but I guess it kinda works. Also you should check out the finale of last season because they got some famous American musicians like ACON. Also one last thing, AI means love in Chinese so there's a double meaning in love the show. And finally we were going to get some invites from Kite, Adam Smith's new venture Kite.com which does like a cloud connection when you're coding. Whatever editor you're using it it can follow along, you give it permission and it can suggest things, it can help you look up syntax, it can get you checking out on things that you're coding. I did not get those links from him but if you're interested in trying out Kite.com you can just go to Kite.com and sign up. It's basically like a big auto suggest to help you code better and or you can email us feedback at dailytechnewshow.com and I'll see if we can get those codes from Adam. Thank you Justin, Robert Young for joining us. Of course May 7th you say? In San Francisco you say? Indeed, if you are a fan of the Night Attack podcast that is Wearing One, me and Brian Brushwood. Chop it up and have a good time. You can see us live for free. Oh geez, head on over to the Piano Fight Theater that is at 144 Taylor Street in San Francisco. May 7th at 4.30, more details to come. Hopefully we have a few special guests but this is the first time that we've ever done a live show outside of the context of a convention or some kind of festival like South by Southwest, DragonCon, Nerdtacular. We're very nervous but very excited about it and hopefully we can get a few people in there to have a good time. So Night Attack live, San Francisco, Saturday May 7th, it's an afternoon show. So just clear your day, man. You can have a few drinks in the mid-afternoon and party until the early light. It'll be a fun time, I guarantee it. Check it out. Thanks to everybody who supports the show at dailytechnewshow.com slash support. If you already support the show, thank you. If you don't, go check it out.  That's all we ask. Give that value back, patreon.com slash DTNS or dailytechnewshow.com slash support. If you can't afford anything, that's fine, too. Just tell people about it. Thanks to everybody who have been reviewing the show on iTunes or telling their friends about it. If each one of you convinced one other people, one other person to watch the show, we double our audience and double the fun. I guarantee it.  We'd be killing it. So please tell folks about Daily Tech News Show if you like it. Support the show if you can, dailytechnewshow.com slash support. One of the ways we reward you, if you give $5 a month on our Patreon or more, you get access to the treasure chest. Now, all you audio listeners, stay tuned after the show for tech and travel with Chris Christensen. He's gonna talk about smart water bottles, and if you want that, if you're watching the video show, or if you want that just on its own, it's in the treasure chest right now. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. You can give us call 51259 daily. That's 5932459. Catch the show live Monday through Friday, 4.30 p.m. Eastern at alphageekradio.com and diamondclub.tv. Visit our website at dailytechnewshow.com. Back tomorrow with Darren Kitchin and Len Peralta. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Brog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club, I hope you have enjoyed this brog. That was a show. That was tight. Tight. I lost connection in between somehow. Yeah, I was keeping an eye out. I'm sorry it took me a beat or two to get you back in. But it was like, ah! We were a solid, we were a television team right there on that texting story. I feel like that was- It was a good one. It was a good one. Headlines. Top is Tap Dat Snap. Robohon Price Not So Low. Lean Back and Vine. AMCOK's U2 text in movie theaters. Textual Frustration. I know I rarely ever ask for a title. Yeah. But I really want one that basically says texting in the theater is good. AMC for TXT. AMC for TXT is close, yeah. Another mass text cinema. Why you should text during a movie. I don't know, something like that. Something that just raises the blood pressure. Of everyone my age. Let me see. I think our chat room is too much abhorred by the idea to even form those words. I mean- Although Silverblade just wrote texting in the theater is good. Yeah, I think that's the point that I wanted to make. Oh wow, TVZ God might come up from Phoenix to Oakland. How sweet. Awesome. No, I'm not gonna come up too. You know, I was gonna say- It's fine, I'm on the floor. Pop, skip and a jump. You know, it might come up from LA. I'm just saying. Maybe if it came up from LA, it wouldn't be a bad thing. There's no reason I couldn't. I mean, I'm just saying. No. So are you coming up or not? Yeah, I'm definitely coming up. Why didn't I get your mass text time in your movie theater? I wish that wasn't so long. I kind of love that. So, matinee texting. Texting for- I mean, what do you guys think? Are you in along the same lines of the provocative title? Why don't you just say AMC says AMC will allow texting or AMC considering allowing texting? I'm thinking more, even more like- Blatant. Yeah. Let's all text in the theater. Like. Texting is cool, old man. Rev's engine. Let's all text from the lobby. Let's all text during the movie. How's that? Send mass spoilers, SMS, that's good. I mean, yeah, we didn't even touch on the idea of letting people use their phones couldn't piracy or spoilers. I have to grab my kid real quick. I mean, really, that's really the most encouraging element is that maybe theaters are realizing, you know, piracy is not the worst thing that could happen to them, like old style. It's not good, but it's not going, yeah, it's not the thing that they should make their top priority. Well, it's like they no longer control the feed, so it's like this is not the only place where you can watch these things. So it's like, hey, let's focus on creating the best experience. And I think what I wanted to try to get to, and hopefully I did, was just that the, I had the same visceral reaction as everybody else.  But at the same time, if they want to do that, then you want theaters to still exist? Then I applaud them thinking outside the box. Well, and you got me thinking during the show, I hadn't even thought about this until we were talking that this isn't about texting. This isn't about, because you rightly pointed out, whatever gets this age group to come to the theater, you need to be able to figure out how to do.  But if it's, oh, this is the thing.  Then I think that's the kind of thing that maybe the olds like us would be like, ah, that's too much trouble, but you'd get more folks in the theater seats that way. Yeah. All right, I gotta get back to the grind. I'll talk to y'all. All right, I'm gonna call it, texting in the theater is good. Good, texting in the theater is good. It is, it's great. Maybe we should all do it, all the time. All right, thanks. Do it, I do it. You do it. I just did it. Yes, by the way, I loved our TV show tag team. That was good. That was good. All right, I'll talk to you. All right, take care. And while Roger's out getting his baby, I know y'all might wanna see the baby, but I think I'm gonna stop the stream down because I gotta get off to the vet and everything. So thanks everybody for watching. Sorry for the shortened post-show today. We'll see you tomorrow.


Hi, my name is Asia and I'm from the United States of America, and I recently took the 128-hour TEFLE course without a tutor. And I currently teach in Japan at two elementary schools. The tools and materials have been helpful for me to integrate in classes, so I'm really excited that I was able to take the course. Thanks so much for watching. We are ITTT, the leading provider for TEFLE and TESOL training courses. If you like this video, please subscribe by clicking the button down here and click on any of the videos here on the left for more interesting teaching tips for getting certified to teach English abroad and online.


The Jive Time Show with Shania Black on Highland Radio. Very welcome back to the programme. Now here on Highland with our good partners, the Donegal County Council. We are celebrating Love Donegal Day. It is a day where everybody takes to social medias to proclaim their love for Donegal. And we are indeed taken to our social media. We're gonna check in now with our good friend, Kevin Fury, who is out and about around Donegal today. So let's see where he is. Kevin, how are you? I'm not too bad, Shania. How are you? I'm not too bad. Now, you got the better job today. You're out and about in the sunshine around Donegal. Tell me where you are. We're out and about, surely. We're actually live here at Fort Donery. So we are today. We are... Earlier in the morning, we were at Dunlosa, we were. And then we made our way over to Fanad. We were over at Fanad Lighthouse earlier on. And then we made the trip then to Rathmoreland. We jumped on the ferry. We just about made the ferry. The ferry was a 20-passed one. We made it there at 19 minutes past one. So we have to thank the Lough Sully ferry for waiting for us. This is... If you aren't here, wait a minute. I feel so proud of them for that. We're out and about today, of course. So thanks to our friends at Donegal County Council. And it's about celebrating all things Donegal and what's good about Donegal. And it may be cold today, but it is dry. And there's nowhere like Donegal when the sun shines. You can see the Donegal flag there in the distance. And we're here at Fort Dunray today. And I'm glad to say I'm joined now by John Carter, who works here at Fort Dunray. John, thank you very much for joining us. Not at all. Delighted to have you here. We're always welcome Highland Radio any time they care to call. And we've been lucky. We've been blessed. We may be in September, but so far the weather's been good enough. Yeah. I mean, we've just had a lovely sort of unusual week here in the last few days of very, very good weather. It may be coming to an end, but it's been very pleasant here. We'll keep the fingers crossed. Well, indeed, yeah. I was here a number of years ago as a child, as well as the guts of 10 years ago at the stage. So it's great to be back. But tell us what all Fort Dunray has an offer for people? Well, Fort Dunray has an awful lot to offer for people here and will have a lot more in the future, indeed. But really, we have a 70-something, 73-acre site here. And it's perched here right at the mouth of Locke's willy. And it's like a sentinel guarding the locke, which is why it became a military establishment. But it has all of that military history. It takes it right through its years of being British and being Irish and all that went with that. And that's all the whole story is told in our museum here. But as I said, the site is 73 acres. So there's about five or six kilometers of walks all around the headlands celebrating the flora and fauna of the area here with amazing views over the swilly and over the Atlantic Ocean. Great for people who like to watch whales and dolphins if you can see them. But it does have a great play area for dolphins. But here on the land, as I say, then there's all of the architecture of the military establishment plus plenty of access to the shore here. And we have our own harbor where we have kayaking and whatnot and orientating out of there. So there's plenty for people to do. We have a beautiful cafe here, probably the most scenic cafe in all of Donegal and everybody will claim that anyway. But it has fantastic views and a great range of food and people who just want to come somewhere beautiful to experience nature at its best and have a nice cup of coffee or tea and a snack when they're here, brush up on their military history if they want to do that or lots of just leisure time for everybody. And there's lots of history, but briefly look into the future. The future for Fort Donegry is very exciting. It certainly is because we've been successful in partnering with Faultier Ireland and Donegal County Council and I think the Faultier Ireland programs for our platform for growth program which was bringing an investment here of about 12 and a half million euro to enhance the site even more, to connect the sea, the area we're standing here on and the upper fort which is at the top of Donegry Hill here and connect those all together and again celebrate all the story and the history throughout the site but also add lots more enhancements to enable people to appreciate the nature of the place itself and to say things to do on the site and from elevated walkways and the 1930s village that'll appear here showing what it was like as a military establishment and lots of other stuff on the site to do and again enhanced facilities for catering and that as we go. So really exciting times ahead. It is, it is really, yeah. And are yous open all year round? We are, we're open all year round say if I think Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Well, we'll give yous that. We'll give yous that. But essentially, at that time of year when everybody's couched up in houses and overfed and over watered and dying for a bit of a good exercise to work off some of the Christmas cheer. This is a superb place to come to do that because you're right on the Atlantic coast here and plenty of hills and walkways to work off all the excesses of Christmas. And would there be, would you find it would be busy? I know probably not as busy as it would be during the summer but even the months of say September, October, 9 to November, some would be people. Yeah, it is because the real bright sunshine is not the sort of time that people like us that much because we're not a beach as such. But when the weather's like it is today and we get a lot of this kind of like, people, this is the sort of place people love as opposed to, it's not for sunbathers as such. But it certainly is, it's a great place for appreciating nature in a raw state.  Well, not just as long as I had about, almost 30. Right, almost 30, right. And you love it. I do indeed, I mean, it's been a passion of my life since I came to it back nearly 30 years ago. And we've always thought that Fort Don Reed deserved a place on nearly an international stage. And this present investment and development, I believe will put it on that footing and make it a very substantial tourist facility on the island of Ireland and right on a worldwide basis as well. Yeah, and if people are looking to find more information or if they say we never visited Fort Don Reed, maybe we like to visit in the future, where can they find information? You can look us up on a website or on Facebook, on Instagram, we're on them all just Fort Don Reed or www.donreed. We'll pick us up there, no problem at all. Very good, and open all year round as well. Open all year round essentially, yeah. Very good, so if you're looking for a nice walk in the month of October or something like that, you can call it Fort Don Reed. Lots to do all the time, all year round. Look at John Carter, thank you very much. Of course, we're inviting us up here today and thank you very much as well for joining us on the program. Not at all, the light and the help out. So there you have it, Sinead. We've seen lots today here, right across County Donegal from Dunlowe this morning and this is it up to Fort Don Reed and also to Phanod at Ernie, Iran today. So don't forget too, maybe you're not in County Donegal, maybe you're away somewhere else. We've been in Australia over in the UK. Get Love Donegal trending on Facebook. Use the hashtag Love Donegal or Dunlowe as well too. And also we have to say again, a massive thank you to Dunlowe County Council who came on board with us to help us get out and about today. But we, this is our last location today. We've really enjoyed it. As I was saying earlier, I've seen roads that I probably have never been on in my life. Some of the scenery is absolutely fantastic. I was tempted to slow down a couple of times to look on your side for a little time. Keep going. But we've had a brilliant day right across Dunlowe. Remember, keep Dunlowe trying to use those hashtags. Love Donegal or Dunlowe. Absolutely. Thank you very much, Kevin Fury and Anya indeed who are out around the Northwest, out and around celebrating our Donegal, our Let it County and rightly. So I was just saying, Kevin, you would need more than a day. Well, we're actually, we're saying that there earlier. You would actually need to need two days because you know, you could go all their part. You know, someone asked us. I know when you're going to do it, you may do it right. We'll take a week. We'll take a week. Exactly. I was just going to say we'll take the week. Make it Donegal, Love Donegal a week. We'll have to get that trend the next year. That's it. Thank you very much, Kevin Fury. Take care and thank you for bringing us along today. That is our very own Kevin Fury there, joined with John Carter from Fort Dunray. And as he mentioned himself, he has been out and around all of our lovely county today, celebrating Love Donegal Day in association with our partners, Donegal County Council. It's been a huge success previous years and indeed this year is no other. Don't forget if you want to get involved, you can do so by simply uploading and sharing some beautiful parts of our county, some landscapes, some people, some music, and anything that has a connection to our little county. You can use the hashtag, Love Donegal, or hashtag Dinnanallaboo. So we encourage you very much so here at Highland to get in touch to get involved in our little campaign. Thank you very much to Kevin Fury and to Anya now to celebrate Love Donegal. There is no song more fitting than Mr. Daniel Don...


Comedian Ed Bassmaster is set to entertain Popful Kentucky at the Appalachian Center for the Arts. I started on YouTube back in 06 doing hidden camera pranks. I was the first prankster on YouTube. I started going on the road doing live shows about four years ago, right before COVID hit, and then I was sidetracked for a while. And it's kind of been like off and on, hasn't been like real steady. So this is like unofficially the last tour and we're winding it up with Tennessee and Kentucky and Missouri. Super excited. I know a lot of people have been hit me up in those areas to come through. When my baby was born, it was magical. And as she grew, having a hospital close to home with advanced healthcare and specialized physicians being there along the journey was important. And along that journey, many special doctors touched our lives.  Pikeville Medical Center caring for every moment in life. With an impressive following of nearly three million subscribers on YouTube, Bassmaster's live performance promises to be an unforgettable experience. Well, I take the show that I do on YouTube on the stage, which is, you know, different characters. I come out as myself and open the show, you know, sort of, it has like a lineup of me and then usually like three to four other characters, sometimes more depending where and how much time we have. Unlocked traditional comedy routines, Bassmaster keeps each show fresh and exciting by incorporating exclusive content filmed in each city he visits. It's fun.   It's a good time. We always have a good time. We always have a good show. We always have a fun time. Couple of people that are a little too drunk don't end up getting thrown out, but I hope to see y'all there. The show is scheduled for Friday, August 25th, starting at 7 p.m. To purchase tickets, visit theapparts.org. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Ethan Miller.


St. Clout taking the trip to Bemidji to play the Jacks. In the first period, Bemidji killing a penalty. Hunter Olsen steals it away. Him and Zach Justice play some tic-tac-toe. Olsen fires it in the wide open net. They lead just six minutes in. Later in the first, Wyatt Halverson with the four checks spins it out perfectly for Andrew Donlinger. He beats the goalie five full, it's two to nothing. Into the second, Hunter Olsen does it himself this time on the near breakaway. Beats the goalie with the backhand. Bemidji is strong showing tonight's they win this one four to two.


Fy enw i'r llwyddiad bryddoedd, y llwyddiad bryddoedd. Fe gennym ar Arthyr Ransom. Fe gennym ar y llwyddiad bryddoedd o'r gweithio'r llwyddiad bryddoedd Cymru, y llwyddiad bryddoedd Cymru, a'r llwyddiad bryddoedd y Balshwyth Theatre yn march ar y Ffyrdd 2019. Felly, mae'n gwybod a'r llwyddiad. Mae'n gweithio'r llwyddiad. Mae'n gweithio'r llwyddiad bryddoedd a ddweud ac mae'r llwyddiad bryddoedd, dwi'n ddweud o'r cymdeithasol ymlaen. Felly, mae'r cyfrwyr o'r llwyddiad. Mae'r Ffyrdd Mosgo Sôviot yw'r llwyddiad, y Comitiynau Fyglwyr, y Cyfrwyr Fyglwyr yw'r Llywodraeth Cymru, y Ffyrdd Ymddir Hwyth, a'r cyfrwyr yw'r cyfrwyr. Mae'r cyfrwyr yw'r cyfrwyr yw'r llwyddiad, a'r cyfrwyr yw'r cyfrwyr yw'r cyfrwyr yw'r cyfrwyr. Camenef ar y gweithio, byddwch y solum ymlaen o'r ddweud o'r droswyr llwyddiad ymlaen. Yn ymlaen i'r awr o'r cyfrwyr o'r llwyddiad, dwi'n rhaid i'r cyfrwyr, a'r cyfrwyr o'r llwyddiad ymlaen, yn y fwyaf sy'n ei wneud oherwydd sy'n cymdeithasol ymlaen o'r Cyfrwyr, neu ymlaen o'r cyfrwyr o'r llwyddiad ymlaen o'r Brys. Felly, rwy'n ddweud i'r cyfrwyr o'r cyfrwyr yw'r cyfrwyr ac mae'n gallu cyfrwyr symud yma ynglynigol sy'n ymlaen i ymloedg ynglynig, rwy'n ddim yn ymlaen, ac rwy'n ddim yn rhaid yn olyb i'ch cyfrwyr o'r cyfrwyr. Rwy'n credu'n credu'n credu'n credu'n credu'n credu ymlaen i'r cyfrwyr. Prygaf iawn i ddim yn ddigonwch шyfwrdd â'r cyfrwyr rhaid o wneud o amlwg ymlaen i'r cyfrwyr, a geffred eich cyfrwyr. Felly mae'n rhaid i'r cyfrwyr panologol. First things first, why an international, why is it important for us as Marxists? I would say that the history of the working class and the struggle of our class shows that at its high point it has always coincided with internationalism. The birth of the communist movement itself with Marx shows us internationalism has been there since its inception. Now one of the myths about Marx is that he was an academic, kind of just an academic, that he spent his life locked away writing. And he sat in libraries just corresponding with Engels and writing all of these letters but was largely isolated. And this is not true. He did write a lot and he did obviously correspond with Engels. But he was a revolutionary and he actively participated in revolutionary politics. And it was through that participation that Marx was able to develop his ideas in the first place. Marx was exiled from Germany for his political work and eventually he finds himself in Paris where he has encounters with different French socialists, he has meetings with class conscious workers and it's here that he starts to see society in class terms. He begins to read English economists who were trying to understand how capitalism worked. Marx and Engels meet and collaborate in 1844 in Paris and they start to develop their ideas on a proper serious basis. And once they had those ideas in a serious enough manner, they immediately tried to turn towards organised workers in order to win them over to those ideas. That was always a priority of his. So there were many different iterations of the first international before it formally developed different organisations that existed as a precursor. For example, you had the Communist League as an organisation, which was a product of an organisation called the League of the Just, which was originally a German workers organisation. By the way, anyone who's been on the Marx Walk in London probably knows about this because we go through all the different sites that they had and we talk about that in London. But yeah, this was a German workers organisation that actually existed long before Marx and Engels. It was quite utopian socialist Christian even. It had a slogan which was all men are brothers, but eventually under the political leadership of Marx and Engels, they managed to steer them on a better course and they changed the slogan from all men are brothers to working men of all countries unite. And they renamed that organisation the Communist League. And at the second Congress, Marx and Engels were mandated to write a document and that document was the Communist Manifesto, which I'm sure you've all read. And that document really is the founding, if you will, of the Communist movement in a scientific sense for us today. And this was also written just on the eve of 1848 and that revolutionary period that swept across Europe. 1848 ended in defeat and this had an impact on that organisation, on the leaders and the kind of mood and the morale in that organisation. There were divisions between the members of the League on how to take things forward. There were followers of Marx who had a more scientific approach, but there were others who thought you could take power through plots and various other things. So in all these different organisations, there have always been debates and different discussions on how to take things forward. But Marx and Engels had a serious scientific approach and always tried to take the best layers with them. So eventually then, a few years later, in 1864, we finally have the creation of the International Working Men's Association, or as we know it, the first international. And it was founded in St Martin's Hall in London. Not initially as a solely Marxist organisation, it was made up of different types, different layers gravitated towards it. The former trade unionists, French radicals, followers of Proudhon, Russian anarchists and various others. Nevertheless, given his stature, Marx eventually becomes its outstanding political leader and he drafts the inaugural address for the first international and also the rules to guide its work. From the beginning, Marx really saw it as his task to ensure the proletarian nature and the proletarian character of the first international. He wanted to protect it against the encroachment of capitalist politicians who wanted to use it or would try to use it for their own means or their own ends. He was continually trying to strengthen the working class core of the general council and was also continuously trying to make sure it had a real international representation. So the general rules of the association written by Marx opened with the statement that the emancipation of the working class must be the task of the working class itself. That the struggle for the emancipation of the working class means not a struggle for class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties and the abolition of all class rule. The inaugural address, again written by Marx, stressed this working class objective where it says to conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working class and it concludes with the words of the manifesto proletarians of all countries unite. And as a result of this firm stand, a lot of the middle class elements that maybe initially were attracted to the first international by the spring of 1865 had moved away and had abandoned it. But this wasn't an easy or an automatic process. The history of our movement is one of constant theoretical debates and clarifications. And another one of the key theoretical debates that took place in the first international was also between Marxism and anarchism and Marx's debates with Bakunin, the anarchist. In 1864 he had met Marx in London where he learned about the international and wanted to cooperate and get involved. But he held the view that Marx was exaggerating the importance of the working class and wanted to look more towards the intelligentsia, the students and even the lumpen proletariat and middle class representatives as more likely agents for revolution. Now there's a lot that could be said about the discussions there between Marx and Bakunin and just the general history of the debate between Marxist and anarchists which you can look up, those discussions and debates. Eventually Bakunin was forced to take his ideas elsewhere and Marx and Engels continued their work. But big events were going to shake things up. In 1871 in just a few weeks surrounded by enemies you had the working men and women of Paris demonstrating with brilliance that is possible for workers to run society democratically, without capitalists, without bankers or even a standing army. This was of course the great Paris Commune, that great period of history. Marx actually based a lot of his understanding and development of his ideas about the state on the Paris Commune itself. However it was defeated and on top of this in this time period there's a growth in capitalism and upswing and this makes an impact again on the international demoralisation, disputes and so on. Finally in 1876 the general council under Marx and Engels declared what had effectively already become practice which was that it was better to formally bring the first international to an end. But this didn't mean that Marx and Engels were giving up on the idea of an international organisation itself. It was more just the secondary format of the organisation in that time wasn't possible. Marx dies in 1883 a few years later after an illness but the first international survived as an idea. It survived as a programme and so in 1889 we would say it re-emerges on a higher level as the second international. So the second international is established in July 1889 and Engels was involved in the initial stages of this and it's established on the centenary of the fall of the Bastille in the Great French Revolution and this organisation now assembled the best social democratic parties worldwide and it actually formally adhered to the ideas of Marxism so this was a step up from the first international. It's leading party was the social democratic of Germany and that was headed by figures such as Carl Kautzky, August Babel, Wilhelm Liebnacht and all of these people had actually been personally tutored by the likes of Marx and Engels. Kautzky for example had edited Marx's economic writings and had led the battle internationally on important theoretical disputes. He was in many people's eyes the undisputed leading theoretician of the second international. Unfortunately the second international and Kautzky in particular did not meet the tasks demanded of them by history. This organisation really should have been set up to lead the working class in this next period. They should have continued the link and Lenin thought the same. He had great respect for Kautzky and the SPD in fact up until 1914 Lenin had paid homage to the German SPD as the model of revolutionary social democracy and that's because at this time this organisation had over a million members it had 111 deputies in the Reichstag it had the support of a third of the German electorate and had 90 daily newspapers and this huge party apparatus. It was a mighty organisation. However the outbreak of war transformed the situation and on August 4th 1914 you had representatives of the German Social Democratic Party who voted in favour of the war credits in the Reichstag the German parliament together with all of the bourgeois political parties and it's said famously that when Lenin saw a copy of the SPD newspaper which was proclaiming support for this war that he refused to believe it entirely and he thought it was a forgery by the German general staff. Paul Axelrodd who was actually a Menshvik leader he said at the time the news was a terrible stunning blow it appeared as if an earthquake had overcome the international proletariat the tremendous authority of the German social democracy had disappeared with one stroke so we can't underestimate how shocking this was to so many across the international this same organisation had written in their own paper in their own propaganda not long before a direct quote the ruling classes who in peacetime oppress you despise you, exploit you want to use you as cannon fodder they had written that in their paper and yet when the time came and the pressure of bourgeois parliament was put upon them they voted in favour of those war credits they completely capitulated but it was not just them on that day the MPs of the French Socialist Party voted in favour of war credits and in country after country this was repeated this was really the death of the second international and it was one of the greatest betrayals of the working class seen in history and because of this by September of that year there was already talk of the need for a new international at its November 1914 the central committee of the Bolshevik party at its November meeting sorry the central committee of the Bolshevik party was already talking about the need to call for a new proletarian international and it's the following year then very quickly they didn't mess about or wait around in 1915 that the famous Zimmerwald conference is held with 42 delegates attending now this was a gathering of the left wing within the second international amongst them Trotsky and Lenin were there as well as a few others who obviously tried to make sense of the end of the second international but more importantly wanted to set forward a new path for how to reorganise true internationalists and true revolutionaries across Europe who wouldn't be thrown off course by changes in the objective situation and upswings in capitalism which all forms part of the reason as to why the second international degenerated in the way that it did so the Zimmerwald conference is in 1915 and it will take about four more years before the third international is formally born now a lot can and did happen in those four years to accelerate that process the war was dragging on the masses were tired but not just tired in that they weren't interested in politics it's actually that the mood was changing very rapidly people who had been enthusiastic about the war initially were now changing their tune and they were becoming wide open to revolutionary ideas in 1917 we have the February Revolution and eight months later the October Revolution the first successful proletarian revolution in history this is like a lightning rod that workers all over the world can suddenly look towards and then you have a whole series of army mutinies taking place ending with the German revolution itself in 1918 which is what ends the war despite what bourgeois historians or what your history class might teach you there's a whole talk on that tomorrow which you can go to so the years that then followed the first world war saw revolution sweeping the world there's intense class struggle in country after country and all of the old organizations of the working class are being put to the test as workers are moving immediately into strike action there's factory occupations, general strikes and news of all of these events are being celebrated in Russia it truly felt as though workers' power in country after country was suddenly an attainable goal this situation that was testing the old parties of the second international meant that the more radical layers started pushing on their own to form communist parties they wanted to follow the path of the workers in Russia in November 1918 for example the Hungarian Communist Party is formed and in March the following year the Hungarian Soviet Republic is proclaimed the international proletariat clearly is in desperate need of an international an organized force to take things forward and so finally it comes together the third international was the creation of a mass international organization of the working class and it was led by the leaders of the first successful proletarian revolution that truly threatened the future of capitalism itself and it was in March 1919 that they held their founding congress the first congress, I think we've got pictures of it on the wall which you can take a look at later and it had delegates representing 34 parties from 22 countries and they all gathered in Moscow for a four day conference so the congress immediately got down to business its main discussions were concentrating on the present stage of capitalism the character of reformism and the forms that the proletarian revolution would take now this really was a call to arms also to revolutionaries worldwide drawing a sharp line between the revolutionary internationalists of the world and the old reformists of the second international they consciously adopted the title communist to differentiate themselves from the social democrats who had betrayed socialism and they were trying to go back to the communist traditions of Marx and Engels and the communist manifesto itself this was about creating a clean banner we'll come back to that idea towards the end in the communist international it was Lenin and Trotsky who gave all of the main speeches and the main reports Trotsky drafted a manifesto of world revolution that's what you have on your seats which you can take a look at to all the delegates at the first congress Lenin and Trotsky had to make it clear what was the purpose of this organization what was the purpose of this international and that is we stand for the dictatorship of the proletariat we stand for socialist revolution and we fight for Soviet power so the first four congresses of the third international are the most important for us and you could say that the written record of the first four congresses form as some foundational documents for the IMT in terms of what we look towards and there's Trotsky's book about the first five years of the communist international which is an excellent record of all the main debates from those congresses which you can look at I'm not going to go into detail about all of those but we're going to cover the main themes so the early years of the communist international saw very important debates with the young French, German and Italian communist parties over questions of opportunism and sectarianism and this makes sense right you have a revolutionary wave that sweeps across Europe and the communist international was suddenly in a position where it was winning over large sections of the working class in places like France and Italy but it was doing so from these old reformist parties but of course they don't break with all of their reformist baggage that has been around them for a long time even if they have made this initial departure and moved towards the communist party and the fact that they won them over so quickly and it was such a quick process brought with it problems if you think about it the Bolsheviks had 20 years to develop, to go through mistakes and try out different things make mistakes, correct them and so on and so forth but you had the creation of these mass communist parties who were being born in the heat of revolution itself and they were trying to learn very quickly how to orientate themselves and they made a lot of mistakes they had this hangover, a lot of them from the old social democratic organisations and Trotsky in particular spent considerable time in the congresses of the common turn and in articles trying to expose the reformist and careerist layers that were still present in some of these parties in particular the French Communist Party which had a problem with this layer and Lenin as well was very concerned with this rot of reformism which was threatening the communist parties and so eventually he put forward conditions he put forward conditions to join the international as part of a way to get these people out the original draft I think had 19 but it ended with 21 there's a whole session about this at the end of the weekend but in summary Lenin's 21 conditions they're adopted at the second congress and he explains that or puts forward that reformists and centrists needed to be removed from all leading positions of the parties in the trade unions in the parties parliamentary representations in the editorial boards and so on and they all had to be replaced with tested communists when the socialist parties were requesting affiliation to the international they had to change their names to the communist party and this was partly as a way to distinguish themselves from the reformist socialist parties of the communist international but there was another important political difference that was being implemented here they were not named the Italian communist party but the communist party of Italy and there is a distinction there that's important to note it was a message to workers all across the world that the organisation, the international was one single world party there was one single party of the world's working class and that is how those who were approaching the international had to see themselves, not as isolated groups so there are other conditions of course there's 21 of them which you can look at but we'll go into this more in the final session and it is in these first couple of years there's this struggle to shore up the communist parties and make sure they're proletarian just as Marx did in the first international Marx and Engels were obliged to wage they waged a fferocia struggle actually against the followers of the anarchist Bacoonin so when it was founded the communist international it was made up of mainly small forces with inexperienced leadership but by 1921 it had spread to all the continents and gathered hundreds of thousands of members but by the time of the third congress there's a slight change the question of how to win the masses was posed very sharply when you read the documents from the first couple of congresses optimism is just pouring off the pages in terms of the revolutionary potential that exists in the world but when you get to the last couple of congresses there is a slight tonal change because the objective situation was changing and the communist parties were making mistakes and they were not correcting them so this question of how can we win over the masses correctly and as quickly as possible was becoming very urgent from the point of view of Lenin and Trotsky at this stage there had been a temporary re-stabilisation of capitalism and this initial wave of revolution was coming to an end I explained that there was this battle to rid the parties of reformist elements these hangovers from the past but of course the conditions weren't the same elsewhere it wasn't a battle against reformism in all the different sections that would have made it maybe slightly easier in some countries you actually had much smaller groups who came to the international forming communist parties such as in Britain and a lot of these groups had actually what we would describe as ultra-left tendencies so they already had a healthy distrust of reformism in the existing socialist parties and as such they refused to work with them entirely now Lenin and Trotsky realised that the task of winning the majority of the working class still lay ahead for the international and in most countries it was going to be necessary to find a road to the workers who were still under the influence of reformism and so they felt they needed to combat this ultra-leftism and there are two talks going into this over the course of the weekend the struggle against ultra-leftism itself but also the united front tactic which was put forward by Lenin on how to win those workers over and why the communist party should adopt that tactic and if you think about it this is a vital almost existential question for all communists what is the road to the masses and how can we win them over every delegate when they arrived at the second congress of the common turn was given a copy of Lenin's ultra-left communism and infantile disorder Lenin explained that these ultra-left parties they were being sectarian by separating themselves from the masses who could be won over in the struggle and he described this as infantile because he said this was a sign of their immaturity as a party, they were young and they didn't understand at the same time Lenin also warned against opportunism because ultra-leftism and opportunism have often been two sides of the same coin but in all of these discussions, debates, warnings that Lenin and Trotsky were giving out how did they do so they couldn't just declare it and force the communist parties to change everything about them that would make things much quicker but you're not going to get very far with that kind of method they did it through political arguments they did it through resolutions they did it through patiently explaining with a view always towards educating and raising the level of the comrades their method was to try and use the errors of ultra-leftism to try and help people learn now this is unfortunately not how the common turn continued this is not how all the debates took place and eventually it degenerates the third international the world revolution fails to spread and the young Soviet republic's isolation and backwardness ultimately leads to a crystallisation of a counter-revolutionary bureaucracy which develops in the Soviet Union now the years 1917 to 21 had been years of revolution but then counter-revolution workers in Italy, in Germany, in Hungary they could have taken power but they didn't and each one of these defeats was a severe blow not just to the workers of those countries but the workers of the Soviet Union and ultimately the workers of the world each defeat served to isolate and insulate the Russian revolution further leaving it isolated in its economic and cultural backwardness and Lenin saw this, he could see this coming and Lenin spends the last few months of his life trying to fight the growing bureaucracy and nationalism that he can see developing in the Soviet Union but it wasn't enough it wasn't enough to overcome everything that was happening or the material conditions and in the final analysis we explain that conditions determine consciousness and so by the time of Lenin's death which is in January 1924 the Russian party and by extension the Comintern was no longer what it had been and the 5th Congress really marks as a departure from the early healthy years of the Comintern and it serves as a bridge between Lenin and Trotsky's Comintern and Stalin's Comintern and this is where you see the theory of socialism in one country the madness of the third period and eventually the popular front that come out of Stalinism which there are talks about later this weekend which will cover these in more detail In May, just months after Lenin's death Zenoviev denounces Trotskyism he slanders and lies about Trotsky and his role in the revolution and the civil war and demands that he is expelled from the party but at this stage actually there's a lot of people who remember the truth about Trotsky's role in the revolution Trotsky's just spent the last few years leading many of the discussions in the Comintern so it wasn't easy for them to just try and get rid of him immediately but a serious campaign has conducted nonetheless to undermine him and undermine all the followers of Trotsky and eventually expel them and if you think about and you try and wrap your head around this is how does this take place all these eras of Stalinism the expulsion of Trotsky and then Trotskyism you know why didn't anyone do anything well if you think about it there's tens of thousands of comrades of communists all around Europe all around the world who trusted the Comintern they trusted the Comintern to provide objective and balanced political advice they didn't think that advice was coming forward on the basis of factional interests and so this advice then leads to disaster in one country after another it's clear that the eras of Stalinism concretely resulted in the defeat of the Chinese Revolution of 1925 the defeat of the Spanish Revolution the defeat of the German working class which leads directly to the victory of Hitler and fascist barbarism the Comintern eventually is completely wound up by Stalin in 1943 and he does this as a gesture to the Allies in the war he's basically saying we're no longer interested in revolution and that's it we're just going to kind of back off in that way there was no congress to confirm that decision which was actually against the rules of the Comintern and there was also complete silence from the national communist parties which also shows that this kind of degeneration wasn't just in Russia and it wasn't just coming from Stalin this generation had infected many of the communist parties throughout the whole of the international while Stalin was preparing this dismantling and the ending of the international and he was renouncing the struggle for world socialism on the other hand you had Trotsky who was trying under very difficult conditions to build he was trying to build the fourth international and he was doing that not only to defend the first proletarian revolution to defend October but to try and spread it also beyond its borders now the building of the fourth international was a part of Trotsky's effort to recruit and educate a new generation of genuine Bolsheviks who would be able to finish what the Russian Bolsheviks had started and by the way Trotsky for a long time didn't just immediately go to building the fourth international even when this degeneration and Stalinism began the left opposition didn't immediately seek to set something up but it's actually after Hitler comes to power and not just the victory of Hitler owing to the mistakes of Stalinism but it's the fact that there was no response from the communist party in Germany upon Hitler's victory it was actually complete silence and the German communist party had this mad position of kind of Hitler first and then us and this will expose the role of the social democrats which was the wrong position evidently but it wasn't just the mistake of the leadership again of Russia to the leaders of the German communist party even amongst the rank and file there's no discussion, there's no internal debate of what has happened, was this right, there's no analysis of the understanding of what fascism is and so this was a real lightning rod moment for Trotsky a real change in the situation where he realises you cannot reform this this cannot be reformed in fact something brand new needs to be set up Trotsky recognised he had to keep the banner clean we needed to keep the banner clean of genuine Bolshevism and genuine socialism and he says we will not hand this banner to the masters of falsification if our generation has proven to be too weak to establish socialism on this earth we will give its unstained banner to our children the struggle which looms ahead by far supersedes the significance of individual people factions and parties it is a struggle for the future of all humanity it will be severe it will be long and so the founding of the fourth international in October 1938 takes place and like the ones before it they too had to struggle and Trotsky had to struggle just as Marx fought Bakunin, as Lenin fought the reformist and the opportunists Trotsky had to conduct other struggles in the fourth international against different elements who were distracted and going off in various different ways so in all of these internationals you had outside and inside pressures that were putting these revolutionaries to the test I'm going to end on this point which is that the fourth international had many different forms in different places but the most important thing we need to remember about the fourth international was in essence it was about its ideas and it was about its programme and keeping the banner clean the organisation was secondary it's a secondary question in terms of what is the significance and the importance of the fourth international and what we want to study Trotsky spent all of his time in the last years of his life before he was assassinated by a Stalinist agent trying to educate the scattered forces but the objective situation made this very difficult although obviously the history of our organisation runs straight to the fourth international and the history of British Trotskyism in general and eventually it kind of whitties away but just as I would say despite the formal closure of the first international the first international which survived as an idea today so does the ideas and the programme of the fourth international in the work method and ideas of the IMT Thank you