Gadgetory

welcome to the 3059 I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm alfred Aang Amazon's Alexa continues to move out of the home with its latest expansion called Alexa for hospitality that was just announced today the new version of the voice assistant lets you check out of your hotel order a new toothbrush and check the pool and gym times for any local hotel that you're staying in if they have this it's rolling out in about ten marriott locations over the summer Wynn Las Vegas also introduced Alexa in all of its rooms about two years ago but it wasn't Alexa for a hospitality this one's a little bit more specific to like actual hotels which i think is kind of cool pretty interesting so why does amazon want to know what I'm up to in hotel rooms why are they spying on me in my in my private hotel room so it's interesting you say that Amazon like we asked them specifically about some of these things they said that they aren't going to share voice data with the hotel years they're gonna delete all the information every day if you do actually use this also if you have no interest in using Alexa for a hospitality you could either get a room that doesn't have echo speakers in the room or you could just unplug the speaker or keep it muted do I have to pay more for a room that has Alexa in it or is it probably not but that's a good question I didn't ask that is really annoying like do you want the Alexa concierge in your room that's like an extra service or something like that I would I would really hope not and if they're trying to get people to like actually use the service and get used to it that would be a really significant limiting factor I would think so it's not just in fogging out at the front desk though or I like would have control like the room temperature no that stuff together yeah depending on how forward-looking the different hotels when it be so it's gonna be different for each different hotel you're gonna operate the lights play music change the temperature in the room do all sorts of like different smart home controls that kind of thing so as this kind of thing gets expanded into more hotels you can expect to see more different like connected devices and connected controls anyway next up IBM created a system called Project debater which pulls from a library of about three million news articles and scholarly papers and its training in debate techniques to create on the fly arguments about space exploration or telemedicine or whatever else you want to argue about that sounds pretty cool I don't know how does it how does somebody decide who wins this debate though that work III BM like did a presentation and they basically asked people in the audience they were like who won this debate so apparently the project debater did win one of the debates pretty commandingly what if they just had to project debaters like debating each other I think they might have covered Network I don't know this is this was like my immediate impression about this too was that like this like in the world we live today like you can't even convince people that the world is round so flat right like they built it to like just shut all flat-earthers down but like it's just it's does it really matter that it has like 300 million like news articles and scholarly papers if somebody wants to like think something like Project debater isn't gonna convince them otherwise so that's what I think somebody should set it up in a way where it like sends out tweets to people where like so it's like debating people like on social media now is that's like in person you know what I really like that idea that's pretty cool last Alfred you finally got a chance to play Super Smash Brothers for the Nintendo switch the game doesn't come out until December 7th but give me some impressions what did you think yeah so I only got like two rounds to play with it but it felt really good to play on it like a lot of the tensions that were there from like high high level play that I experienced while playing on the GameCube version was back like they brought in a lot of like different features the perfect shielding where like you you have to time these like shields and you can counter-attack like at the same time yeah it had a lot of great features on it unfortunately we're out of time yeah so you felt like it was like less of a party game and more of like a potential like like a sport yeah like a competitive like fighting game again yeah that's pretty cool I definitely look forward to trying it out and hopefully beating you with Captain Falcon we'll see if you want to read more about these stories check us out on CNN I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Alfred thanks for listening all right thanks everybody for joining us we're gonna jump into the chat and start taking some questions so we can keep the conversation going right up front sir enjoy wants been to answer it sir enjoy did you leave your show shoes at the hotel sir enjoy you already asked me that on Twitter and I answered you and I said yes I did you're just trying to shame me all over again yes I left my shoes on on the bed oh oh I thought it like you I got he was like if I'm behind at the hotel if Brian can find the picture is actually like a picture of me like I'm the model for this story where like I'm like hanging out on the bed reading the literature about Alexa I don't see your shoes there that's me right there well sir enjoy very accurately asked whether I was or wasn't wearing the opening shot of the video has you laying down on the bed with your shoes on that's right sir enjoy watch the video I was there goes everywhere with his shoes on though I like went to the pool at this hotel shoes were still on there only clothes and everything I'm one of those people yes I wear my shoes in the pool it's like an extreme never made my horrible secret has been revealed by store enjoy does this effectively hide my Thunder strange why actually has a good serious question he says will we see an Alexa icon next to sorry again everybody for how many times yes please mute your echo speakers change your wake word people say Alexa all the time yeah well that's the world we've built will we see an Alexa icon next to Wi-Fi pool gym etc as a feature for online hotel bookings that is an interesting thought it was like a commodity like like on the website you know just to like give people an idea that like there's annoying like I'm just like in the same way that I look at Wi-Fi as like as like a thing that they boast it's like that should be a given like your hotel room should have Wi-Fi already no no no no we stayed at a hotel for CES and there was no Wi-Fi that's terrible that that's like that should be like a standard me like imagine going somewhere is like we have a bathroom in this hotel like that's like that's like a given you saw her you have a bathroom are you arguing that Alexa should be standard and I think that's what Amazon wants I think they wanted to be like everywhere so I think that you know I think for now they'll probably like boast like oh this room is like Alexa enabled there's something like that but I think the ultimate goal is to have it be as like ubiquitous as like and that is this plan this room has pillows like duh if you are super interested in going to a Marriott that's gonna have these the folks at Marriott told me two different locations that are definitely getting Alexa for hospitality those are Charlotte Marriott city center in North Carolina and Marriott Irvine Spectrum in California so if you're around those areas and are like super into this I guess you could book a room and try it out it was during the demo you could ask Alexa directly like hey Alexa I need a toothbrush and you just talked to Alexa you don't even have to like call the front desk or anything they go toothbrushes yeah I'll send you a toothbrush I bought in ten rush at a hotel that host and they asked they they initially asked for ten toothbrushes and Alexa was smart enough to be like sorry your maximum is 5 you can order up to five toothbrushes what do you want behind to me brushes my teeth either way while we were doing the debate we got one toothbrush signup to us and then or sorry while we were doing the demo and then by the end of the demo the toothbrush did show up in the room which I thought was kind of cool so there were some like fun little like ooh that's magic like aspects to this but you know in the world we live in these days there are obviously going to be people that just aren't gonna be interested in this and that's why even if you have like an Alexa enabled hotel they're almost definitely gonna have to continue to have rooms that just don't have echo speakers in them like people are just not gonna want it yeah to certain extent some people I want Google home speakers that exactly what I saw in chat is asking says what about Google Alexa sucks lol Wow Romans right there is it possible that there would be a version of this like a Google home for hospitality yeah absolutely just Google hasn't gotten to it yet and I think that there's just this constant push and pull between these two companies to try to do this land grab as quickly as possible and Amazon at the at the moment is leading the field and is just getting to things a little bit faster they look like the Google assistant like outsold the Amazon like echo this year that might be true for like q1 or q2 but in general overall overall the market in the US is that the echo speakers roughly account for 70% of the total market base and Google home is about 30% and Apple I don't think really counts yet like the home pod maybe it's like a single digit type of situation was that you laughing yeah that was it was in with a chortle there was Alexa was chortling a Michael Brown says home pods for life yo it'd be interesting to see if they started to use the hospitality market as a new competitive place if you start seeing like Alexa branded Amazon brand to Google branded Apple branded hotels what are we done I think that like if you're doing like a super luxury hotel a home pide to me sounds like the right move just because it's like more expensive it's very pretty I'm not trying to knock the echo I use echo speakers all the time but if you're at like a super luxury hotel I just kind of feel like that additional apple brandy I don't know do you super luxury place you should have a person doing all your lights off and getting your toothbrush you are correct sir send my comments yes and he plays like or she plays like a violin or something when you like ask for music that's like super luxury I really like that idea in your hotel and get you a toothbrush so you have a like a harpist that also gets you toothbrush that's super luxury okay I think you're right about that that might be the most first world thing we've ever said on this show and that's saying a lot mm-hmm anything you say brand-new to the show says hello guys why the name 3:59 because it shows supposed to be three minutes and 59 seconds and we fail miserably also how tall I am it's also the time that the show is we actually realized after we put the show together that the name is terrible because some people thought it was like one degree off of 360 and then other folks thought it would be the the show runs at 3:00 3:30 long p.m. so sure that's what I thought when I was doing research on it cuz like during my job interview and I'm glad they didn't bring it up now just cuz I'm like oh yeah that's what it means so if we could do it over again I guess we would just call it like the Ben Fox Rubin show or like the Ben rules probably yeah yes probably the biggest personality on the show I would say so yeah I feel like it would be more appropriate if we just called it confirm for Brawl yes it's always us rotating roster of you guys coming through well ID everyone is here now yeah that actually worked out better than I expected mm-hmm yeah ultimately the show supposed to be three minutes and 59 seconds and an O R is done the marketing people here at CBS thought we should just call it that see how that pans very creative but either way thanks thanks for joining the podcast it's always nice to have new folks come in so and thanks for the question Ricky B Alfred do you think they'll bring back wavedashing no there's no way they're not gonna bring that back I thought I heard that they were going to they brought back wave landing and they brought back two directional air dodges where like if you air dodge and you hold the direction with it like you go that way now which was in melee but they're not gonna bring back wavedashing from what I've seen they've already brought back like directional air dodging they did bring back - dancing and wave landing still has a lot of like lag when you like land on the ledges and things like that but yeah wavedashing there's been this whole debate that it was like only in smash as like a glitch and that's why they took it out in the future ones but there's also been arguments like they've talked about it before in a way that like makes it look like it wasn't a glitch so but I think I think the general consensus is like it's not it's not being brought back there's like a lot of other movement options that you can use in it like you know directional air dodging coming back in wave landing being like a big part of that so I don't think wavedashing is coming back though what about ice wobbling no they already demonstrated that that's not coming back either so that's too bad wobbling is this technique that ice climber players use where like because there's two of them they can just grab you and just like you up and you can't get out of the grab that's like a guaranteed kill out of time yes Wow but I thought the ice climbers of all would be so difficult it but it's really hard to you to do is the thing is like a very advanced technique because like you have to time the hits like perfectly and so often like be really sensitive about how you press the buttons so they got rid of that in this one because I know it like when you play for the ice climbers now when you grab them the other ice climber doesn't copy your movements anymore the other ice climber just like stands there I was like hey what's up mmm so yeah they're like wobbling it's not gonna be bad they're trying to make the game a little bit more competitive because from reading your story it sounded like melee was it was really hard it provided a handful of unfair advantages the people that actually knew how to utilize yeah right yeah which which like I I think from from a player perspective is very annoying like from from a pro perspective somebody that plays the game a lot they probably loved it because you're gonna win like 99 like much more exciting to watch like when you're talking about these like advantages that only pros know how to do if everyone knows how to do it though then like it's way more exciting to watch I guess it's like the closest example I can like make an analogy to is like the MMA where like these are all like advanced fighting techniques but everyone knows how to do it so it's like much more entertaining to watch yeah cool any other questions by the way yeah there's another good one from Sur enjoy as always Alfred you got news on smash competitive scene smash boards which is a home for the smash community are doing a Super Smash Brothers ultimate Invitational already how are they doing it like do they have access to the game I don't know about that but I'm sure they're just setting a date in it yeah yeah well means I'll check out I mean if it's an invitation or although I don't think I'm gonna get an invite so like cuz they're probably gonna invite like pro players and not journalists who'd you like just think that they're good at the game by the way how did you get to play the game because it doesn't really is until to Sam so they had a demo at Nintendo like the New York store they had it like during e3 from like Wednesday to Friday and I went on a Thursday around like 1:00 p.m. ish I kind of went so that like I'd avoid like the pre-work crowd and the after-school kids so like this is like the ideal time where only people that snuck off out of work to play would do and yeah there was like no line when I went and I saw a photo from Friday when like everyone wasn't working and there was like a massive line that day so it was just the short-term demo like if I can today it wouldn't be available stinks access to that full roster though no no they only had like the demo character so Ridley wasn't in it who else was it like Jigglypuff wasn't in it like they they had like the main character so plus they had some new ones like the the inkling the splatoon character oh yeah of course are gonna tap that that's the yeah new yeah is that the only new because everything else is returning well Ridley and oh that's clearly a big deal yeah you did you win by the way did you play another human or look ya played another guy who also snuck off during his lunch break nice you know let me interview him because he's like I gotta get back to work I'm like yeah before yeah I don't want your boss finding out this is where you were during lunch so the we like I said we got like two matches like they were both like 2 minutes and 30 seconds and in the first match I was trying to like figure out all the new stuff like oh this is how fast you fall around this is how you can grab the ledge and stuff now and I was trying to figure all that stuff out he just kept fighting me and I didn't want to be like hey hey for an article okay so I was like okay whatever then the second match I just beat him up so nice cuz I was like I gotta get a photo of me winning that's it's all I care about nicely done well I'm interested Alfred are you going woo too fast are you going to buy as soon as it comes out I'm release date are you gonna gonna like sit back and wait and get there casually I'm probably gonna get her on release day I mean I like went to like the midnight release for the 3ds version which came out like a month earlier than the Wii U version and for brawl and that came out I found a store that was willing to release it like three days earlier than the actual release date and how much did you pay them it was like $10 more oh but even before that I like there was this one store in like Coney Island that was doing play through like you paid like five bucks to play it for an hour so I liked it because they had like the Japanese version of the game so I like went there to play that for for like a good while before I came out publicly at this point I'd like to throw out a disclaimer for anybody that doesn't care about Super Smash Brothers this is probably the last time we're gonna talk this again Siviglia battle to select December but in December if you want to like just skip watching the podcast for like about a week or two it's gonna be like Walt Whitman challenge then though yeah I'm putting my friend code out there and see if any of our viewers want to play me I was gonna ask if you were interested in doing that because I was thinking about volunteering mine too I just got a switch I just be Odyssey I would totally be up for having some more people to play with yeah I don't get on dad often but at the very least I was gonna see if you wanted to have a tourney Alfred here local I'm sure we could get Joey in the lab to play yeah we should also do a cash prize we should do a cash prize like I don't know like like how much like $500 yeah you a cash prize among like our office oh okay cool oh you're saying like take a internal pool yes yes I I would love to take all your money yes you definitely would I'm not saying I'm good at the game but I have fond memories of playing melee yeah now I'm gonna have to like buy a switch and start playing immediately because that's in the meantime I need to beat you in the meantime we can also start a rocket League team I just got rocket League again so that one's not that easy I've been playing smash 4 on the 3ds the last few days though like just to prep for smash ultimate just getting like the the physics are more similar to that one than melees that game is it's not fun I don't like II sorry if you guys play smash more but it's not a fun game well anyways somebody's looking for more switch friends out there go ahead and tweet at us tweet at me I'd be happy to get some more friends on switch and we're also at the 359 party because Mario Tennis is gonna come out this Friday I'm getting this I totally missed the boat on that one it's coming out on Friday it's gonna be really fun I'm glad I got all my like Alexa for hospitality questions I just gonna relax let you guys keep talking about video games we actually want to take a quick pivot syringe ORS got one more good question what will I be Em's debate or base its arguments on I mean how vetted will its research source be what if its sighting fake news and trolls it's just Rick and Morty episodes yeah it just took the scripts for them and just learned based off that it's a it's a good question I would assume because this was a project that IBM had been working on internally like as researchers for years that they were vetting most of the information are all the information and and like using the sources whether it was like the New York Times or like certain scholarly publications as like the backup so I like fake news yeah fake news indeed I I would I initially thought that this was like a pretty basic concept where all he did was like create little scripts for certain things but I think it was pretty interesting that it tries to like figure out like stuff on the fly like that so what if I went to the master baiter every time and I was like I know you are but what am I say that sentence again slowly no we're not I keep the IBM today yeah you write a bit of a Freudian slip no that's not true it's very I know you are below like yeah every time I just went to the equity IBM do bears like no you and I just kept that that was my reply the whole time all right whatever what if like project debater just like totally flipped out after you did that like three or four times they'd be like just go to your right no you know dinner for you Alfred no you I think it'd be funnier if you just tried to answer only in memes and the thing just got dumber and dumber ooh what'd I do yeah challenge accepted I think we are out of time that was actually a fun episode unlike the other one yeah I'm like all of the other ones but thanks everybody for joining us we'll be back tomorrow with episode 417 I don't know what the hell we're talking about we only ever figure - no it's not my contribution so limited but yeah anyway thanks everybody for sending your questions and comments and welcome to the new people whoever you are out there and if you want to watch or listen to the 3:59 and it's available on iTunes tune in stitcher feedburner google play music the Amazon echo hospitality edition it was on Echo hospitality edition and cnet.com thanks everybody for watching and we'll see you tomorrow later you