Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm Roger Chang I'm Alfred Aang uber temporarily halted its autonomous car program after one of his vehicles killed a pedestrian in Tempe Arizona but this marks the first fatality from a self-driving car accident on a public road what do you think this means is this this is pretty bad fubá right well they had to completely halt it I think that this was inevitable for any self-driving car testing program eventually there was going to be there would be a fatality for it to happen at uber a company that has had so many you know negative headlines yeah yeah yes as a bad rep I think this just piles on top of I think if this happen or like Ford which is also testing its own self driving Google we know I think I think this would still be like a historic moment in tech yep for sure but like for it to happen at uber like definitely adds to all the controversies going on with the company now it's important to note that this at least the SF Chronicle after deal--but fall purporting they talked with the police chief local police chief who said that the way the woman emerged out of the shadows that basically no driver either autonomous or human probably would have been able to see her yeah this is something that's been brought up and like the moments in self-driving cars were kind of like announced the idea of if it gets into a car accident like who's at fault and things like that right there's gonna be a lot of interesting developments here I also am interested in because the argument for self-driving cars has always been that they're much safer right even than a person driving though now that this has happened I don't know that like opinion has shifted at all right and I think there were a lot of concerns maybe you know some folks were arguing it's safer but I think a lot of people in the public had fears about one denied truly was yeah all right next up 18 T and Time Warner are about to set butt kick off their legal battle with the Justice Department the trial begins tomorrow Varane colleague Maggie Reardon has a nice curtain-raiser sort of explaining why a teen teen Time Warner one emerged why this court case is so important for the future of median for streaming TV and it's actually this was a surprise that the Justice Department would actually block this deal a vertical integration where as you know two companies that don't copy each other are getting together what wasn't the original reporting though that they decided to block it because you know President Trump wasn't a fan of CNN and all that yes and the interesting thing is the the judge for this trial has all kind of thrown out any references to Trump they basically you know ATT initially tried to get access to some memos and between the White House and Justice Department that's not part of the case they're really just gonna be arguing on the merits of whether or not this deal should go through mm-hmm all right lastly we learn more about Cambridge analytic up the firm that worked with dog the Donald Trump campaign last year after an undercover report from the UK's channel 4 now the executives from the data form were caught on video offering to use everything from sex workers and spreading false information to describe political rivals this just isn't like another step in this Facebook drama the craziest thing about that report is what does any of that have to do with data analytics nothing right it's basically we'll just basically do whatever it takes to help your political candidate it's just like we're a company that uses data analytics from social media also sex workers and blackmail it's just like if there's any like sign that like there's shady activity going on there and like what they on top of what they had already done with Facebook this like this kind of is just like a blaring like and just just reminder this is a firm that basically took data from a Facebook third-party app to politically to target better target Facebook users for the Donald Trumpkin did you see camera Jenna Lucas response for that report but basically like the video was taken out of context job they said that we purposely said something so exaggerated to save the person that we were talking to from embarrassment like hypothetical scenarios like we would never do that we just did that as kind of a joke that it was really yeah sure all right for boiling these stories check us out at CNN I'm Roger Jiang I'm Alfred aying thanks for listening so we say how bad this looks for uber and it certainly does but this is the shine negatively on Volvo at all being that it was a Volvo model car that's an interesting point I'm you know there's not there hasn't been a lot of discussion about Volvo I think it's a lot of it is looking at the autonomous driving technology the sensors the cameras that are supposed to detect people I haven't seen a lot blowback on vulval yet mmhmm yeah I think it's because people you know like to pile on uber that's true too you know I think could have been any car company and either way would it just the headline still would have been like uber that said do you think if it was way mo or if it was Ford like do you think well Ford's about example cuz it's the actual automaker but yeah if it was way mo what people would be piling on to way mo or would they be blaming so yeah but I I think I don't think they'd be saying way mo though I think they should be saying Google yeah that's real self driver yeah I think but the the the broader point is I think they folks will be pointing the finger at the company that's pushing the advanced driving technology not the car makers yeah I I didn't hear the part about the from the police chief though saying the way that this woman like came out like even if it was exact came out that came out late late last night from them but yeah the word the wage she described it the woman was holding a bicycle came out the street emerged out of the shadows and very suddenly even the person in the car said like I didn't see her yeah until after the accident I think I think the issue for me is essentially that I still have like a lot of faith in self-driving cars only because so they've been testing them for what like four or five years now yeah and this is the first accident from a self-driving car I mean maybe it's like a because there's way more like well you have to remember that they haven't been on public roads for yeah that's been like a year that really looks bad on this one is it we're only aware of it as customers now well no they have been testing it significantly and they really have put a lot of load of research and development into the program a lot but a lot of the research allow the Rd a lot of the time spent with these cars have been on closed track yeah who know they're had they're not even accidents there were that's that's a whole different ballgame this in terms of public streets now they've only been on public streets for a year right at this point so I mean it's it's still a decent amount of time but yeah it's still like one I guess fatal car accident know how many normal car accidents there are where you know just I mean there was one it was one fault yeah but I'm still saying though like one in a whole year compared to like the ten that happens in New York City every day is true but if you're looking at your volume of cars and drivers we've got how many yeah that's not honest cars versus actual cars with terrible drivers in New York City alone yeah okay so certainly ideally one is too many right but there's going to be a huge deferring perspective on this and we're seeing it in the chat right now thanks everybody we're getting to your questions here in a second from one we've got Steve Allen who says straight up Banneker and maybe from other circumstances I could agree with him to a certain extent then from Lewis he says NASA has some accidents in their history killing more than 20 people and they're letting us explore the universe more concretely Mars with the discovery so what what's the question of the greater good and who is really really at fault is it going to be a technician and the developing program is it the entire company at large because in the past if you hit a person the drivers at fault that's how it goes yeah I would I would say there's a difference with the NASA analogy though and the fact that NASA is a public like organization whereas uber is a private company and like stands to make a lot of money off of this excellent point Roger do you have any I mean really I think it's Buber is probably held liable for this but I think it's it is interesting that this this is happening because it does give us a sense of ultimately who's gonna be liable I think the law this is going to be debated in courts but yeah I mean this provides a lot of clarity ventually will prevail about clarity yeah and that's gonna be an ongoing conversation yeah that's been that's been a scenario that like has been brought up like plenty of times but you know it hasn't actually happened yet so now for this to happen I I am interested to see if there's gonna be any like charges pressed or anything like that well that's what I'm saying is how do you find the true Fault in this can you just charge the at end of the CEO of uber and I don't think that's really the know I think I mean yeah not knowing I don't think any individual yeah so we on the liability who gets whittled down and now has to fix something what was wrong and whose responsibility is it to fix it because a company again it's got to be another thing it's not you can't single out an individual you can't sue an individual that's what I was trying to coach gonna be the gray area that it's still gonna be the company yeah yeah coming in from Matthew dacher as always hi - thanks for joining us one thing to be said about the uber accident in Arizona is that there will be no shortage of evidence from all of the data gathered by the sensors on the vehicle and that should make accident reconstruction fairly easy that's interesting in that scene at some point already dug into that fairly well and discussing about the lighting scenario and all the circumstances that's the thing like I don't think that police chief would have gone on records so quickly if she didn't have access to that kind of video footage from the car itself so you know they could they can tell pretty much right away what happened what the scenario was like and she could see from the footage like the woman wasn't visible until she was in front of a car yeah yeah I mean I guess that's the silver lining in this is that it's it's it's iRobot testifying in court to an extent yeah I mean with all these sensors with all these cameras it's gonna be a lot easier to figure out who is to blame what what happened and how to avoid this stuff in the future one more extended thought from Matthew dad sure is my fear as it regulators will halt the abilities of vendors to continue testing is there any discussion of that already I don't think you need to be worried about this specific scenario for you know politicians to halt like testing considering that it's already being done in so many other cities without any like legitimate reasons like they tried bringing it to New York City there were all these like issues that like New York City like politicians brought up San Francisco when Hooper just tried rolling it out without permission yeah like what are you doing no and that this is before like this had happened so I think yeah for sure there's going to be new like you know ledge not ledge but like arguments against it like pointing at this incident but right like there has already been like a heavy like history of a lot of politicians just saying we don't want this in our city and like here are all the reasons why like even without this scenario yeah and hopefully I mean this this is obviously a tragic event but this definitely brings up the need for I think clear regulations from even a federal level as to what house-elf cars self-driving cars should be treated mm-hmm right now it is sort of city by city I think politicians have kind of kicked the can with with actually regulating this stuff woman from a national yeah I mean I would still make the argument that self-driving cars are safer than like people driving them yeah but you know the counter-argument was always if you mix self-driving cars with unpredictable human drivers and that is probably less safe then but there's no evidence all one or the other no there's no evidence of it but again it's cars run on algorithms humans do not yeah when you mix the two it's we don't know what will happen everyone should just mean self-driving cars it's including the the human element of unpredictability will always skew whatever results you could come up with if you have all the robots you have concrete ish data yes absolutely I told you no they decide to take over the world yeah let's not go down the road again from Alex Mitchell fantastic comments from aligment Alex Mitchell this is a tragedy but the silver lining this is the first from a thousand hours driven by a self-driving degrees what you were talking about yeah this could be better for liability or could that could be better for liability in car accidents if they're going to happen at least we know who and why they're at fault and I still think that's a that's a very gray area though I don't think we you would know 100% who or why is that like like who is at fault here in in the sense of you know was it like the bad code that was written was it like a person that just happened a dart out of the corner and the car couldn't see it why couldn't the car see it kind of like perspective is there a way that we can fix it so like cars could see this in the future was it the human driver that was just in the front that like wasn't paying attention and like could have prevented it I mean I guess the the other silver lining is that they can look at this footage they can look at what happened here and figure out how to make self-driving cars safer to avoid this kind of accident again yeah you know whether it's code whether it's better sensors whether it's stuff that's whether it's night vision sensors right so you know there's there's that there's that hope from Josh Boyd I didn't California allow fully autonomous cars without a driver I'm not aware of that only not no no no they still have to have so I have captain there to maintain yeah it for like basically for safety reasons they need to have yeah like yeah baby got it one more about autonomous cars Mike Shaw this poor lady reportedly stepped in front of the autonomous uber car like Roger said a human would have struck her just as well there will still be backlash but on the long run the self-driving cars are still coming and I think that was kind of the largest take away we have here this is this doesn't stop the program if anything maybe if we're gonna be optimistic it'll help push it in a even safer direction right again the the calmness from police chief she had no she has no stake in what they're not self-driving cars will be popular or not right I'm just basically yeah stay in the facts yeah I'm just curious on how long over plans on stalling its program for cuz they they stopped the entire testing for it now they said temporarily yes so you're right it's I don't know I can't imagine it's gonna be that long but yeah we wait for this to blow over and quietly start this thing up again let's shift gears over into the 18 t court situation from Alex Mitchell stop AT&T and Time Warner from merging breakup Amazon just like we did the Microsoft this is cool and nice for consumers now but it's going to be bad down the line for competition oh he has an excellent point there they this continuing world of conglomeration that's all what consolidation thank you when when will it finally stop and when will we just have a Megamart I don't know I feel like it's still gonna keep going there are constant rumors of more consolidation not less at this point whether it's wireless providers whether it's telecom companies and media copies media companies and other media companies you've got Disney and Fox trying to get together as well well a portion of Fox portion of Fox I mean the portion that you actually remember about the comic book stuff I care about yeah that we care about you know that's the thing like this dear this this court battle between 18t time-warner and the Justice Department I mean if it goes badly for 18 t that could have a chilling effect on what happens with Disney and Fox and that could mean your favorite Marvel superheroes will all be under one umbrella that's very true all my favorite Marvel superheroes already aren't under wait you're not you're not an x-men fan no but like Deadpool is not yeah he is now he's no yeah they all are yep they go we did it they have dropped the balloons they haven't done it yet that's the whole point right it's still in negotiation could make the deal a lot less I know what spider-man and spider-man is still under Sony so but you know they got that deal with Marvel yeah but venom and all the other ones I'd be fine with having more agreeable just sharing but that's in a very specific instance when it comes to the intellectual properties here right there's a reason why Incredible Hulk by the way can't have its own movie but it's tied up with Universal Ruffalo can do his own movie but these considerations and rules don't really apply to media acquisition or right telecom 418 Time Warner they their argument is that they they're not really competing against each other anymore they're competing more against Netflix and Google YouTube Amazon Amazon Prime these are these are the threats that they see it's less about you know who's offering you Wireless serve or telecom service and who's you know who's running your networks it's more about this bigger threat firm and you know I sort of see their point I don't 107 agree with it but I can definitely see that the shift in the competitive dynamics is different now right your eyeballs are not just looking at like NBC or TNT or CNN you're looking Netflix and Amazon you're not actually looking at traditional telegram I mean what has the argument from the Justice Department been the Justice Department has argued that that there's too much ATT owning Time Warner would create too much of a powerful company in terms of both distribution and a creation of content that basically they would the fears that they would charge other people more money for the rights for Time Warner content like Game of Thrones and CNN and programs on TNT they'd basically other companies that need to carry these channels 18t could theoretically charge more than they would themselves giving themselves an unfair advantage hmm so I r18 T's argues the obvious that they say no it's it's we're trying to like distribute our stuff across even more platforms than ever no they're not they're just trying to line their pockets so any good businessman would how is Comcast able to do it with like NBC and like the concat that's the thing Comcast and NBC did this how many years ago at this point seven years ago different administration obviously and a lot of the arguments that are that were used to fight that merger which ultimately did go through are being rehashed for this deal as well so would they be able to use that as like precedent and like that so the 18 t feels good about this case because they can point to Comcast and NBCUniversal as a precedent for why the government didn't let that almost identical deal go through mm-hmm but I mean if you look back at it folks would make the argument that like Comcast NBC maybe that deal should have gone through the - place it makes me wonder about things that aren't exactly related but in a similar fashion where the consolidation ended up bringing the doom and gloom to all I'm gonna reference most recently like Toys R Us yeah being - it tore us went bankrupt in what was a 2009 they filed for protection 9 and then they were acquired like a six billion dollar there's a leveraged buyout by some VCS yeah by a debt consolidation firm which was the exact same one that did that the KB Toys and sunk them yes when have they sunk their own boat in putting so many eggs in the same basket well I mean it's a different scenario because what the these venture capital firm - a Toys R Us with KB was they saddled these companies with tons of debt and the idea was like well we'll get the business going so it makes enough money to pay off interest payments for the debt problem was it never happened right it has other outside factors like Amazon people not going into his arrest so you're saying it's just an investment in an already dead industry well no I think they I mean yeah the the model of loading up massive amounts of debt to acquire this company just only prolong the inevitable for for certain situations for some companies that works out just fine because you're able to turn that business around start making profits and pay down the debt pretty quickly mm-hmm problem once toys-r-us faced Amazon right yeah the last two or three years in particular was really really bad for brick-and-mortar retailers and that's why that's why Toys R Us got sunk yeah I was thinking now the 18t Time Warner deal is definitely different it's less about it's less about leveraging or or or adding more debt to the business and more about combining the idea of yeah you're basically you're paying them for phone service and you're also you're watching the movies that they create basically they're controlling everything you see yeah how it's how it's being shown to you I think it'd be really interesting in a couple of years as this generation of children start to become a little more cognizant teenagers and such yeah what their perspective yeah like here's what happens we don't watch anything on Time Warner and everything you just watch everything on YouTube no I'm far as like the the declining appearance of a brick-and-mortar store in every industry almost yeah yeah what the concept and experience kids have without going to a toy store because I can't imagine not going to a toy store as a kid it was this enduring endeavor where yeah you had to formulate a strategy and work up the sympathy to your parents it's like well I was good this week right my veterans and again you get the warm and fuzzies thinking about like you're you're running down the different aisles looking for like that that toy I'm actually trying to go to Toys R Us to see if there's any sweet deals so I went this weekend manual thing you've ever talked to them gonna go to this dyeing company and try to scavenge the rest no no everyone was doing that yeah no they are never seen this photo of like a Nintendo switch this isn't some other state but it was like a Nintendo switch for like $30 off like new really yeah from what I understand that why I talk they roll out forever it's different role and they're still getting stuck so the sales aren't coming yet so they're not trying to get rid of inventory they've got inventory is still coming mm-hmm so I was I was told this weekend was when sales would start to show up but you've got that like game you have to play where like the longer you wait the better the deals are but the fewer choices yeah there's actually really cute my dad offered to take me on Sunday I thought he like never took you to arrest no he took me every day after Christmas yeah what yeah he offered he offered to take me on Sunday actually we were having dinner and I'm late because this could be a good deal yeah I was telling like I'm thinking about going to Toys R Us to like see if they have any deals like you want to go like now I don't like we're having dinner do you know for a good deal people will go the extra mile it would be the last time my dad takes a Meszaros yeah and I just wonder is there any final thoughts about how that that kind of consolidation how that will reflect on on this eight potential ATT merger or fall out however you want to put it I don't know I know 18 t feels pretty good about this case usually when the the DOJ steps in and says no to a deal like that's the end of the deal like the companies almost never go to this length they always either settle is this fairly landmark as far as fighting against the man and the system China with their own system yeah I mean yeah it's hard to say that's 18t fighting if the man cuz AT&T is a pretty gigantic player by itself so but it is it's fairly unusual for a company to go this far to win over this deal yeah yeah well it is interesting to watch I don't know who I'm rooting for in this case we'll just have to see how it plays out yeah and on that note we are out of time we are all right if you liked anything you saw her here check us out on CNET our podcast is available on itunes tune in stitcher feedburner you can play music and the amazon echo thanks everybody we'll see you tomorrow yeah unless there's another snowstorm you