A Repairable Phone at a Fair Price - 5047

0:00Jenn Cutter: With the Spark Cash Plus card from Capital One, you earn unlimited 2 % cash back on every purchase. And you get big purchasing power, so your business can spend more and earn more. Stephen, Brandon, and Bruno, the business owners of SandCloud, reinvested their 2 % cash back to help build the company's retail presence. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash Spark Cash Plus. Terms apply. Your daily supplement routine doesn't need to be managing a handful of different bottles. Onnit's Total Human brings key research-based vitamins, minerals, herbs, and amino acids together in convenient day and night packs.

0:38Jenn Cutter: One all-in-one product designed to make supplementation easier. The day pack supports cognition, focus, and cellular energy production. At night, the night pack helps you wind down and supports a calm, relaxed state. Less time managing your supplements, more support for your day and night. Shop Total Human now at onnit.com. 500 orders a month was manageable. 5 ,000 is madness. Embrace intelligent order fulfillment with ShipStation, the only platform combining order management, warehouse workflows, inventory, returns, and analytics in one place. What used to take five separate tools, ShipStation does in one.

1:18Automate fulfillment and rate shopping to ship up to 15 times more with up to 90 % savings. Go to ShipStation.com and use code AUDIO to try ShipStation free for 60 days. Meet Amazon Ads rising star Daryl Spencer, who set out to redefine men's self-care with his brand Crown Skin. Amazon Ads helped him grow.

1:38Jenn Cutter: I walked away from big tech to build a luxury brand in a category that no one was paying attention to. With the help of Amazon Ads, I'm reaching relevant audiences and competing with the biggest names in men's grooming. We've scaled to over$500 ,000 in monthly revenue. Watch Crown Skin's story at advertising.amazon.com slash rising-stars.

2:05Jenn Cutter: This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, June 25th, 2025. We tell you what you need to know, follow up on context, and by gosh, help each other understand. And today, Bart Bruchatz tell us about a pocket alternative and Fairphone brings out a lighter, repairable phone with a longer battery life. Oh, the geeks are going to like this episode. I'm Tom Merritt. I'm Jen Cutter. Let's start with what you need to know with the big story. Amsterdam's Fairphone has launched its first new phone in two years, the Fairphone Gen 6. You'll see it called the Fairphone 6. The Fairphone people are trying to get away from using the version numbers all the time.

2:42Jenn Cutter: They're like, you should keep your phone as long as you want. That's the whole idea with Fairphone. So we're just going to call it the Fairphone. But yes, this is the sixth generation of it. Has a bigger battery. That was a concern with the fifth gen. The sixth has a 4 ,415 milliamp hour battery that they say should last you up to 53 hours. So if you're bad at math, that's more than two days. And it can charge to 50 % in 25 minutes on a 30 watt charger. When and if that battery life degrades, however, of course, it's a Fairphone. so you can swap it out for a new one because the phone is made to be repairable.

3:16Jenn Cutter: Everything is put together with screws. Nothing is glued. Has a 6.31-inch 1116x2484 OLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate. And yes, you can replace that screen if you need to. Starts with 256GB of storage, one of the few components not replaceable since it's on the motherboard. but you can get it up to two terabytes with an SD card in the repairable SD card slot. As a 50 megapixel main lens with 10x digital zoom and a 13 megapixel ultra wide, the selfie camera is 32 megapixels. And yes, both of those are replaceable. You can also replace the back plate. And they offer you some custom alternatives, like one that has a finger loop built in or one that has a card holder.

4:01Jenn Cutter: So you don't have to use a case. And you can replace the flash, the SIM and the SD card slots. Those are both part of the top unit, the ear cup, the speaker, and the USB-C port. The trade-off for all that repairability is that the Fairphone 6 is only IP55 water and dust resistance. You can splash it. You could probably even hit it with a little bit of a jet of water, but don't drop it in water. It runs Android 15 with updates guaranteed until 2033. That's eight years away. Also has a five-year warranty. and a new item on the sixth version is a switch on the side of the phone that'll activate a new software feature called Fairphone Moments meant to minimize your interface for focus.

4:43Jenn Cutter: Still waiting on details on how that works, but it's, you know, a minimalist interface. Fairphone 6 is available now for 499 pounds sterling, 599 euros, and it does not sell to the US directly, but you can get it through a French company called Murena with a de-googled version of Android called EOS. That'll cost U.S. folks$899. Jen, it's a decent-specced, decent-priced phone that you can repair and upgrade and keep for longer. Why do you think this isn't more popular? Well, I am part of the problem. My iPhone was dying, and I didn't even look at other phones because I was like, I don't feel like learning a new ecosystem.

5:25I didn't feel like going to Android. I just went to a new phone. And then, of course, now I'm reading this. I was like, ah, this repairability is so good because I'm fixing a friend's iPhone with battery issues, another 11. And Apple wants$400, Canadian, and a local shop wants$40. Quite a disparity. It's a large disparity. I need to vet this local shop. It's like, you know, I've got some follow-up questions. Yeah. But, you know, things need to go the way the Fairphone is going.

6:02Jenn Cutter: Yeah. And Fairphone, the company makes other things like earbuds and stuff like that as well. They obviously will sell you the replacement parts, but they don't lock you into that. If you can find another usable part that works with it, you can do that. They encourage that. The reason it's called Fairphone, I think, gets lost in all the repairability is that they also vet the makers of all of the parts for their phones to be fair to their employees, to be ethically sourced, all of that sort of stuff as much as they can. Yeah, I think they're actually at least partially responsible for a lot of companies being upfront about how long they'll support a phone.

6:42Jenn Cutter: Yeah, yeah. This is certainly one of the things that people can point to, to say like, hey, You know, long support, environmentally responsibly sourced materials, get it from factories that pay people a living wage, all of that sort of thing, and repairable. So it's a little thicker. This one's lighter than the last one, but it might be a little heavier than another phone you might find at the same price point. But the tradeoff is, you know, you can keep this one longer if parts break or wear up. DTNS is made possible by you, the listener. Thanks to Larry Bailey, Michelle Sergiu, Kirk Steffensen, and Carlos Lasso.

7:46ChatGPT work can gather team feedback from Slack and use it to suggest updates to a project brief in Google Docs. You stay in control reviewing the draft and deciding what moves forward. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans.

8:09Jenn Cutter: With the Spark Cash Plus card from Capital One, you earn unlimited 2 % cash back on every purchase. And you get big purchasing power so your business can spend more and earn more. Stephen, Brandon, and Bruno, the business owners of SandCloud, reinvested their 2 % cash back to help build the company's retail presence. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash SparkCash Plus. Terms apply. Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text.

8:46You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average$21 with insurance, and some pay as little as$0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. you just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends.

9:22You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as$0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST. That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

9:52Jenn Cutter: Mod.com is changing the way people battle excessive fatigue. Ever hit a wall in the middle of the day and a third coffee just doesn't do it anymore? Here's what's actually happening. Coffee only briefly blocks adenosine, the chemical that tires you out. When it stops working, your system is flooded and you crash. Modafinil is a prescription treatment that works in a completely different way. Modafinil works by stimulating multiple receptors in the brain associated with wakefulness, including dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, histamine, glutamate, and orexin. It's a more complete solution that gives you 10 to 12 hours of steady focus and energy.

10:35Jenn Cutter: To learn more, go to mod.com. Fill out your intake form, meet with a licensed provider, and if approved, Mod Alert ships straight to your door. Go to mod.com to get started. That's mod.com.

11:02Socks, underwear, tees, and more. Bombas. Everyday comfort worth obsessing over. Visit bombas.com slash audio and use code audio for 20 % off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash audio. One purchase equals one donated. Always.

11:25Jenn Cutter: There's more we need to know today. Let's get right to the briefs. Windows 10 support ends on October 14th, but you can still get security updates for another year for free. You just have to agree to sync your PC settings to Microsoft's cloud using a Microsoft account and the Windows backup app. Normally, this plan called the Extended Security Update or ESU program is$30 per device. Now, there's probably a bouquet of reasons why they're doing this. The negative-minded will jump to the conclusion that they just want your data. And I'm not going to deny that maybe that's part of it. I'm guessing the majority reason for this is that if you start using Windows Backup and you're using OneDrive, they have a chance to upsell you on other things like Photo Backup and Azure and adding storage and all of that.

12:17Jenn Cutter: And they think that that would end up paying for giving it to you for free. They're hoping to upsell you. So if you want to stick it to Microsoft, do this and then refuse to buy anything they try to sell you. Or just pay the$30 per device and don't do it if you're like, I don't trust them to have my data. But it's another option for people who want to keep their Windows 10 machine going a little longer. Yeah, I think percentage wise, a lot of people will do this. I am not one of them. And I suspect other people who have very carefully set up their PCs to not use a Microsoft account will be in the exact same boat.

12:57I am fighting with my Windows 10 install on my oldest laptop right now because I ran just a normal Windows update. And the campaign manager telling me support is ending popped up in the middle of it right before the reboot for things to work. And I am now an hour like 60 of trying to get it to boot and out of the boot loop that it is currently in. which is so frustrating. I'm thinking a BIOS trip is happening next for me. I thought I would try to let it finish normally. They say, you know, let it run overnight and it'll sort itself out. And that's not where I'm at.

13:33Jenn Cutter: So I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. That's tantamount to putting auto exec bat in the auto exec bat level frustration. If you know, you know. Well, So, yeah. And so do you think you'd end up paying$30? Oh, yeah. I had planned to just pay for it. And then on a different laptop, I'm testing out some Linux distributions. Like Pop OS is the one I'm kind of leaning to right now. Just like I'm going to keep Windows for my work because, you know, I need DaVinci Resolve and all those programs to just work. But for like my everyday browsing and stuff, just anything's fine. Just, yeah, keep it in a different operating system altogether.

14:16Jenn Cutter: I can see a lot of people wanting to do that. Google announced the launch of Gemini CLI, an agentic model that can run locally from your terminal. It lets Gemini look at your local code base, answer natural language questions about your code, but it can also write, debug, and run code. It's basically the same thing as OpenAI's Codex CLI or Anthropix's Claude code. uh developers also often are using third-party tools like cursor or github copilot with gemini 2.5 pro to do the same thing so this wraps it all up in one package from google google says gemini cli can also create videos with vo3 vo3 generate reports with deep research and access search as well as use mcp remember i was talking about mcp before it's kind of the usb of ai apis you You can use MCP to connect to external databases.

15:09Jenn Cutter: And Gemini CLI is released under the Apache 2.0 license. That's one of the more permissive open source licenses out there. Of course, you still need to connect to Gemini to make use of it. But free users get 60 model requests a minute and 1 ,000 per day. So Google aggressively trying to keep or get developers to use their CLI. Now, I know I have joked slash threatened about this before, But man, it's going to take me like more than a week to put together a chart of which thing does what and where and how just to keep all of these things straight. Yeah, this one might be a little easier to categories if you think of it as a developer tool.

15:47Jenn Cutter: There are code assistance tools, CLIs, and now Google has their own. And then you can box that off and say, well, if I'm not a developer and I don't need a coding assistant, then I don't have to worry about that one because it's not a model. It's a way, it's an agent for helping you with something. Does that help any? Yeah, I feel like it does a little, yeah. Something that I've definitely noticed is that the makers of these tools have definitely been a little more permissive than I would have expected with the free uses. Yeah. They want people to get kind of hooked. And I was thinking like, boy, I'd have a hard time coming up with enough things that I would need in my day-to-day work life to use all these minutes.

16:33So I guess they're really just trying to get you in on it.

16:36Jenn Cutter: Yeah. Well, it's an example of knowing that there is a good reason for people to pay you to use your cloud service version of Gemini because it's more powerful. But what you want them to do is use it at all. So make it really easy for them to use it. And then more of them will want to use it and pay for the cloud version. Google also launched Imogen 4 and Imogen 4 Ultra image generators. The Ultra version costs a little more, but can, quote, precisely follow instructions. Both are available in limited free testing in AI Studio and as a paid preview in the Gemini API. Imogen 4 access will arrive for paid Gemini users in the coming weeks.

17:17Jenn Cutter: This is Google catching up a little. So the Ultra is actually pretty good and got some good reviews, but the 4 seems like it's just catching up with Dolly and Midjourney and those out there, which is good for Google to be able to do that. But as Engadget put it, significantly improved boring images coming in Image and 4. A poll by Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation found that around 60 % of U.S. teachers in kindergarten through 12th grade used some kind of AI tool in their work over the last year. A larger percentage of high school teachers used those kinds of tools. The teachers who used the tools estimate it saves them about six hours a week.

17:58Jenn Cutter: Examples of tasks it saved time on were making worksheets, making assessments, quizzes, administrative work. Some used it to help modify student materials or even help them construct feedback. Several teachers found that when they started to use the tools, they got better at spotting when their students were using the tools. We're going to have a closer look at the downsides of these tools for teachers and students in part two of our interview with Kevin Metcalf. That's coming into the feed this weekend. Yeah, I play hockey and I'm friends with a lot of teachers who definitely have been using the AI tools to assist at spotting.

18:35But because a bunch of the teachers I know are working in French immersion, the tools are slightly less useful.

18:43Jenn Cutter: Oh, because they're just not as good at spotting French language stuff? No, it's not great. It wants to translate it and work in that and translate it back. And then my friends have noticed that, oh, when I'm doing this, the AI has introduced some grievous errors. Tenses. I'm bad at French tenses, too. So I sympathize with the AI on this. I wonder if different models would work better because there are some really good French models out there. that are working natively in French. So I'm surprised that they have that much trouble. It may be just that the problem is these detection tools are not very good.

19:21Jenn Cutter: And a lot of teachers, anecdotally, that I've talked to say, they're better at detecting whether a student has used these tools than the detector tools are. Yes, absolutely. My friends who are teaching high school, granted, for the ones who have small enough class sizes, they don't need the tool to know who's using it. but they've been practicing using these tools because they figure it's going to be necessary in the future. But yeah, I'd say the hit rate is up and down. But also, I love my friends. They're not the most technical people. So I think they're just using one AI. I don't think they're testing through various.

20:01I will tell my friends in the French immersion, like, hey, use an actual French one, and then they'll notice it better. But also, I don't know how much the grade six kids are using it at this point.

20:12Jenn Cutter: It's probably not that high, but you never know. And there's one called Claude. It has a French name. Try that. Oh, there you go.

20:21Insta360 announced a new wearable wireless mic called the Mic Air. It's round and about the size of an Apple AirTag, wears 7.9 grams, gets up to 10 hours of battery life, and has a 300-meter range. A button on the mic can activate noise-canceling or start and stop recording. It connects to Insta360 cams over Bluetooth. Otherwise, you're going to need a receiver, though the company says wider Bluetooth compatibility is coming. You can get it for$70 bundled with a USB-C receiver, and individual mics alone cost$50.

20:56Jenn Cutter: Yeah, this looks great. It's really tiny. It attaches with a magnet, and it's fairly unobtrusive and easy to put on and off. I'm hoping to try it out because I know there's some really good ones out there. Obviously, Rode makes some really good ones. A bunch of other folks do, too. But this one looks pretty compelling. And Insta360 makes some good cams and gimbals and such. Yeah. I'm going to say we're both slightly older. We're from this generation that was like, hide the mics. You have to hide the mics. If you show a mic, you're doing it wrong. And now you see everyone wearing these huge mics on TikTok and even YouTube these days.

21:30I do wish it looked a little better. you mean the the fact that the clip on part round isn't what bothers you it's just the the way it looks itself it's just the way it looks like i understand you have to advertise your brand but like that text looks really big to me i wonder how big it'll be because it's supposed to be air

21:49Jenn Cutter: tag size so you may not be able to see that text when it's actually being worn as well i don't know yeah we're gonna find out yeah we'll find out i i'm from the generation that was like never use wireless, you'll have interference and it'll ruin your recording. Of course, that's silly now too. Here's another good piece of hardware news. Starting now, the Ring doorbell can add generated descriptions to the alerts you get when it detects motion. So for example, person carrying a box. That way you know, oh, it's someone delivering a package. Maybe I actually want to answer the door and get the package.

22:20Jenn Cutter: Whereas a person carrying a clipboard might mean a salesperson and you can just pretend you're not home. Ring says the descriptions are intentionally concise and only describe the main subject that triggered the motion alert. So they're not going to try to overdo the descriptions. Feature is available if you're a Ring Home Premium subscriber. So that's the top tier folks who pay about$200 a year. It's available on all models, though, although for now, only in English. Well, I am looking forward to the compilations of the Ring attempting to identify various animals in various regions. Well, I think they did a good job of saying, we are not going to try to identify everything.

23:02Jenn Cutter: We're going to use these tools to say what it knows is there, a person, a dog, or even an animal. And I'm like, yeah, that could be enough for me to decide whether I want to look at the camera or not. If you don't try to tell me all, a brown furry raccoon with a glint in his eye or something, right? The only problem for me is that I have to pay the top tier subscription for this. And I have my ring doorbell locked down. I don't pay anything for the subscription. I don't have it live streaming at any time. I probably just need to replace it with a different model. So I don't want to pay for this.

23:37Jenn Cutter: But this would be useful if I were to get it. Solos announced new smart glasses, the AirGo A5 and V2. If you want the most normal-looking pair, the A5 does audio and voice controls with no camera. The V2 has a 16-megapixel camera that supports live video with image stabilization over low-power Wi-Fi. There is only one camera, and it's fairly unobtrusive when it's off. The V2 can use multiple chatbots including Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, and DeepSeek. It has swappable batteries as well. The A5 goes on sale in August for$249, and the V2 comes in Q4 for$299. And I am surprised at how borderline affordable these glasses are these days.

24:27Jenn Cutter: This comes out of a smart glass summit that happened. It's a Hong Kong company, and it just goes to show we're getting more and more choices at decent price points these days. A couple of updates on Apple's ongoing regulatory issues. Apple has filed its official challenge in U.S. Circuit Court over the order requiring it to let apps link out to third-party payment options in the U.S. Apple's asking the court to vacate the injunction that requires it to allow the links, strike down the restrictions on anti-steering, reverse the civil contempt finding, and reassign the case to a new judge if it gets sent back down.

25:01Jenn Cutter: That was the only surprising part, is they're like, we don't even want that same judge if you send this back. In Europe, they're playing a little nicer. Apple has a proposal due June 26th to make it easier for third-party developers there to direct customers to other ways to make payments and get apps. Apple was charged a fine in April for problems with its current implementation. It sounds like they are trying to work it out ahead of time and say, let's make it so that we don't get a further penalty, at least in Europe. Definitely, at least in Europe, and possibly only the way these things shake out.

25:33But, oh, man, I cannot wait to read this new proposal because they have to they really have to eliminate these steps.

25:41Jenn Cutter: Well, what they're trying to do is work with the commission to say, what is it exactly that you object to and come to a reasonable compromise on that? Because, you know, one of the things, for example, that the commission had said is you can charge people for using an external store. You know, you can charge them a commission for that, but you charged too much. So that's just a matter of like, okay, well, what number is not too much? And they can agree on that. It's like, I'll know it when I see it is great, but you have to actually eventually tell them. Yeah, if the two sides can agree ahead of time, then that makes the proposal go more smoothly.

26:14YouTube will increase the minimum age for unaccompanied live streaming from 13 to 16, starting on July 22nd. Anyone found violating the new rule after that date will have the chat disabled and other features temporarily revoked. Eventually, YouTube will begin disabling the streams and possibly terminating accounts. Younger users can still live stream as long as there's an adult account as the co-manager, editor, or owner of the channel. And an adult is, and this is key, visibly present on the stream.

26:48Jenn Cutter: Yeah, and they even went so far as to say participating, like not just standing there watching. On the couch in the background, flipping around on their phone. You may be like, why aren't they just revoking these immediately? It's because the rules are changing. And so they want to be fair to people who are 15, 16 years old who were live streaming before. Give them a chance to hear about this and take the appropriate actions. I think that's fine. Give them a little grace period to switch over. And after that, then it's like, hey, we're given ample warning. Yeah, I think a lot of people kind of miss that terminating account tends to, I don't know if they're switching it for this new rule, terminates your Google account.

27:33So you will lose your email, your Google Drive, everything. It is a very, very big deal. so hopefully they're uh pushing this out in multiple emails to all of the streamers like even if i get an email about this i'm not going to be offended about it like just blanket everyone because at least you know we can tell cousins and stuff but the 13 to 16 uh again as a person who from 16 to 20 did not look remotely 16 to 20 i feel awful for those people who are going to have to send in photo IDs and driver's licenses to prove. No, I swear, I'm almost an adult.

28:10Jenn Cutter: Yeah, age verification is still not an exact science, is it? Not quite. No. All right, those are the essentials for today. Let's dive a little deeper. With Mozilla announcing it will shut down Bookmark Manager Pocket on July 8th, a lot of folks are looking for a replacement. Bart Bouchot's had an alternative you may want to consider. Bart, thanks for joining me, man. My absolute pleasure. It's always good when I happen to do something you want to talk to me about. Well, I heard you talking to Alison about your alternative to Pocket. And so I thought we could pass that along to people. And of course, they should go listen to NoCillaCast if they want to get the full experience.

28:53Jenn Cutter: But first of all, let's talk about bookmark managers. What do you use a bookmark manager for? So the most important use, the use that would really break my productivity, is I do two news-based podcasts. I do a bi-weekly one on cybersecurity, and I do a monthly one on Apple News. So let's talk Apple and security bits on the NassilaCast. And I read, I'm still one of those people who use an RSS reader. I think that makes me rare in 2035. Yeah, well, there's two of us together. That may be a majority of them, I'm not sure. Yay! So I read news all the time in the background because you can't possibly do a whole month's worth of news in an afternoon.

29:37You can't do that, right? So as the month goes on, I just every day I'm just keeping up with my RSS and I need to capture and somehow categorize stories that are relevant to either or both. And the or both means you actually need quite a powerful tool because one's based off folder structures, then it doesn't work so good. It's like, well, this Apple security news, what do I do? Which meant I used to physically put it into one folder and always try to remember, put it in the one I'm going to record next and then remember to bring it over to the other folder. It was fragile. It was terrible. But anyway, so I wanted better categorization.

30:13And then I just clean that folder out as I record the show notes and then I fill it up again and I clean it out and I fill it up again. And that is how I podcast.

30:21Jenn Cutter: Do you use it for things besides just the podcasting? Yes. So because I use it so much for the podcasting, I started to notice there were lots of other things. Oh, hang on, this tool here that I'm using anyway, this hammer can hit other things. So a big one for me is sometimes you come across not a new story, but a fantastic description of X. Like, really, what is a passkey? Or advice for people who know nothing about passwords for keeping safe. These kind of generic articles that you just want to have in your pocket. Excuse the pun. and then whenever a family member or a non-techie person says I don't understand you just go here hang on I'll get you this link right and assuming you've tagged stuff or whatever you just send them the link and so I started to collect these for reference is what I call those right things I know I'll want again and then I started to realize that I could use this for my cooking so I decided in the pandemic I was never going to waste food again it just became clear to me that food is not something we should take for granted and I'm not going to waste it.

31:22So the day before shopping day, I have combinations of ingredients I have never cooked before. And I just go Googling for ideas and I will find five and cook one. And I used to just throw the other four away. But now what I've started doing is anything interesting, just stick it in pocket or what used to be pocket. And then the next time, instead of going to Google, just go to my archive of stuff I already know I want to try someday and find something that matches the ingredients and hey presto off we go it's worked out really well and then the other one is i have a husband who is notoriously difficult to buy gifts for and i used to panic every christmas and now throughout the year i had to just capture gift ideas capture capture and then when it's time for a gift i just go to my folder and i go

32:06Jenn Cutter: well this choice hey presto i may have to steal that last one particularly as a matter of fact you know, because Amazon wishlists only take you so far, especially these days. So why did you settle on Raindrop as your alternative to Pocket? I got fed up of Pocket a year ago, so I have a head start. So I have already been settled into my new home for some time. And so I can tell you the water really is nice in here because Pocket started the smell of I'm dying. It's heard the smell of sinking ship. and I decided to be one of the early rats and I started off ahead of everyone else. But they killed the Mac app and at that point I was like, okay, these are not my people.

32:50This is not my thing. So I tried lots of different ones and I ended up with one that has a long history. This is not an app that's going to go away because I briefly ended up on Omnivore, which was really promising and amazing, but it was a young company and they were bought up a venture capital and that was the end of that. I was like, oh, well, sod. I've just done all this work to migrate from pocket to Omnivore and they evaporated. So my second attempt was Raindrop. And I tried everything, and I nearly did this self-hosted wallabag because I got so fed up of trusting other people, I thought I might host it myself.

33:21But I don't want to do that.

33:22Jenn Cutter: It's maintenance. It's work. It's work, yeah. And it's one more thing to, yeah, I just didn't want to do that. And eventually someone pointed me at raindrop.io. And it's a one-person shop, a bit like the Gus Muellers of this world, right? It's a one-person, but they've been doing this for ages. and when you read the about page and so if you get a sense of this is this is not a fly by night this is a person who has made this their way of putting food on the table they have been doing this for years and they are quite serious about this and it's mature it's not up and coming with great promises it is built it has been running for years it works and it's completely cross-platform Windows, Linux.

34:06There's a Linux client. The Mac, iOS, Android, and a really nice web interface. Now, as Alison hypothesized, it's probably an Electron app. I don't care. It's a really nice app. And it's the most cleverly thought out of them all. So you don't have to choose between the different options for taxonomies. Am I a categories person or am I a tags person? You can have both. We have the concept of collections and we have tags. And when you're searching, you can search for a tag across all of your bookmarks or within your current collection. So I used to have terrible trouble when I needed to cook with apples.

34:44Oh, yeah. Right. Whereas now I have a collection for my four problems to be solved. And when I'm writing show notes, I search for tags within the show notes collection. And I can tag security and Apple, no problem. I can search within just my collection of useful tips and I can search for Apple related tips, no problem. And I can search just within my recipes for Apple related recipes and I will find only my recipes. So we have all the flexibility of tags and all the flexibility of folders. The share sheet is amazing. That is really important. Getting things into a bookmark manager is really important.

35:28And some of them started to give you like the ability to add tags and stuff, but they wouldn't auto search your existing tags or eventually that did come to pocket. But then it got a bit buggy. And what I can do with this share sheet is I can write a little note describing why I'm bookmarking this, which is very powerful. The amazing thing is the share sheet is live, so it checks your history. and if you try to re-bookmark something you've already bookmarked, it will just show you its current status. Oh, you have this, it's in this folder with these tags with this note. And you might update the note, but you don't end up with two copies of the story, which is happening all the time.

36:08I just have like 15 copies of the same useful article or something that I just keep finding, right? And it's just real time. And like, as I say, I can put my notes in the share sheet. So I used to be terrible at crediting listeners, right? A listener would send me this amazing story and I would end up saying to Alison, someone in the community who's amazing told me about this. And now I can literally say so-and-so in Slack or so-and-so on Mastodon or, because I just, as I'm recording it right there and then, or for Let's Talk Apple, it's a month's worth of news. And why did I think this opinion piece was worthy?

36:45It could be a massive big piece over on Mac Stories or something that's God knows how long. Why did I think this was worth highlighting to my audience? Well, as I'm reading it, I put in a note to myself saying, this is the most insightful post I've read so far about blah, blah, blah. And then six weeks, or sorry, three weeks later or whatever, when I'm doing the notes, I know why. Why did I bookmark this? It's every little pain point I've had over the years with Pocket and everything else I've tried, they're all addressed. because Raindrop is so bloody mature. All those rough edges have been ironed out.

37:20No need for me to go through it.

37:22Jenn Cutter: And if anybody is blanking, they're like, wait, what's the share sheet? That's just when you hit the, like, I want to share this out of Safari, and then it gives you a sheet of options. And Raindrop, once you've installed it, is one of those. Yeah. Now, I should say there are browser plugins for browser people. But remember, I'm an RSS person. So a browser plugin is no good to me. I need to be able to hit that little square box with the arrow in my RSS reader to save my links. Yeah, this is fantastic. And I definitely recommend that everybody go listen to NoSilicast if you want to hear Bart talk a little more about Raindrop.io.

38:00Jenn Cutter: And of course, you can go to Raindrop.io. It's right there in the name if you want to find out more about that. If they want to find out more about you, Bart, where should they go? they should go to bartb.ie be really gentle in critiquing my very creaky old web page and follow the links to the stuff I actually do which is at let's-talk.ie for my podcasts and glass.photo is where I do all of my photography these days an amazing, amazing paid for social media that isn't sucky you will find all of my photographs there and because it's such a friendly community I'm actually sharing so you can actually go and see like it's free for everyone to see you just you know you need to sign up to become a member and you actually see my photography instead of it sitting on my iphone gathering digital dust which is nice that's fantastic bart thanks so much for talking to us i appreciate it man always a pleasure thank you for having me you can join in the conversation about all this stuff in our discord just become a patron and link your patreon account at patreon.com slash dtns

39:06Jenn Cutter: Being a serious business owner takes hard work, patience, and a drive to keep moving forward. So it's important to find a serious business card that goes the extra mile. With the VentureX Business Card from Capital One, you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase. And with big purchasing power, you can spend more and earn more. This is your sign to take your business to the next level. The Capital One VentureX Business Card. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com for details.

40:01always.

40:06We end every episode of DTNS with some shared wisdom. Today, Jeff has a thought about AI in animation.

40:14Jenn Cutter: Yeah, Jeff says, I recently came across a series of short videos on YouTube, one of the several Stormtrooper vlog series that have been cropping up. I showed it to my teenage son. We both had a good laugh. But then he made some comment about it being AI generated. I hadn't given a thought about it. I enjoyed the production quality and humor enough that I just looked past the obvious AI artifacts and the fact that the AI tool used to create them is listed right in the description. Like you were saying, the real value is in the creativity and the storytelling. There's lots of AI garbage being created right now, but there's also some very creative people who were limited by their technical abilities before, but for whom these AI tools may open a completely new avenue to express their creativity.

40:55Jenn Cutter: It's going to be hard to shift through the rough, but I think we're going to find a lot of diamonds when we do. Jeff in Knoxville, Tennessee. I hope this does not come off as throwing my mom under the bus, but my mom likes cute animal videos, and it turns out she is not picky about whether they are real or not. As long as they're cute. As long as they're cute. She's not big on animation, but there are some real-looking animal videos, and yeah, they're in her feed, and she's not bothered by it. She didn't notice. I just happened to be like looking over his shoulder one day and I was like, wow, that's not real.

41:28She's like, so.

41:29Jenn Cutter: And your point? That's funny. Yeah. As long as, yeah, that's to Jeff's point. Like they can be used well or badly. And when they're used well, maybe people just are like, no, that's fine. I'm glad I know, but I don't, it doesn't bother me. I guess part of it is no animals were harmed. There you go. Yeah. So what are you thinking about? Do you have some insight into a story? please share it with us over at feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com. Big thanks to Bart Bischotz and Jeff for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You can keep us in business by becoming a patron.

42:04Jenn Cutter: You can do it right over there at patreon.com slash DTNS. Talk to you soon.

42:15The DTNS family of podcasts, helping each other understand. The Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

42:51Jenn Cutter: What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com for details. Hey, I'm running out to drop off a stack of letters and packages. Need anything shipped while I'm gone? Save the gas. Stamps.com lets you print postage and schedule pickups right from your desk. Sync your contacts into the address book, get detailed accounting insights, and get notified the moment your certified mail is delivered. All from my desk? All from your desk. Join the 4 million businesses using Stamps.com right now with code podcast and get your free welcome gift. Stamps.com code podcast. Taxes and fees apply.