Gadgetory

episode 2 22 of the 359 podcast and may the 4th be with you all I'm here with Alfred and Ben Fox Ruben good morning guys what up I didn't think we were gonna do Star Wars stuff I thought we all agreed I wouldn't stop me I was gonna beat boxing mime okay I was not Star Wars related at all gonna go Star Trek stuff anyway what we've got today for you is we'll be talking about the Google pixel what our wish list is for the next one and how it can compete against the Galaxy s8 I'm sure we'll get some good questions and comments about that also wanted to round out the show talking about the Google Docs phishing scam that got shut down pretty quickly yesterday and also something about a red bathing suit on Instagram which alfred is going to fill us in on if you haven't seen it it's hilarious like just the whole the way the saga unfolded such an internet dumpster fire you will literally get 45 seconds to explain it to people so good luck doing live so without further ado we're gonna get this thing rolling send you your questions and comments we'll get to as many as we can at the end of the show and let's podcast alright here we go in three two welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm alfred hang with the samsung s 8 & LGG 6 already out our own lynn la offered up a smart wish list for what she'd like to see in the next google pixel two of the biggest weaknesses she identified are the current pixels lack of waterproofing and it's designed which includes a whole lot of bezel alfred what do you think of this phone i actually really appreciate the pixel i kind of wish I had one but i mean i've already got like two phones there's no reason for me to have three okay and i also don't want to buy it but it's also it's hard to find in stock right now so for me that would be the number one demand to actually meet you know the demand on it where like a lot of people want pixels but they can't get them and then by the time they can get them they might as well just wait for the next one one of the things that I think is most noticeable for me about it is is that the design looked perfectly reasonable when this got introduced in October last year and now with the si coming out it already looks a little old head I mean like you could disagree with me on that because I know the iPhone has looked basically the same for the last three years but the s8 really like push things forward with design with like the no bezel look so I'm wondering if Google is going to go that route I think most phones are actually not gonna go that route I just think that the you know galaxy si was one of the first ones to be able to do that I mean they'd been toying around with it for a long time if they're you know edge devices mm-hmm what do you what are your thoughts on the waterproofing I don't drop my phone on the toilet that often yes but that's not the reason why it's waterproof they're not waterproofing it's like oh go ahead and throw it in your sink it's one of those things where it's like oh if it's you know raining really heavily on you don't have an umbrella or if you do happen to drop it in the sink you know that's not something that you should have to worry about and I do I think the waterproofing phone should be a standard at this point yeah those do definitely seem like table stakes I would agree so we do want to caveat I think Google i/o is coming up pretty soon this month but we aren't really expecting this phone to be introduced until October so a wait a little bit longer frozen yeah next Google Docs was hit by a massive phishing scam yesterday but don't worry the goog shut down the problem fairly quickly right yes so what Google did because this wasn't any kind of malware this was actually more of a you know look-alike kind of thing where they made an app that made it look like it was Google Doc but it wasn't mhm and then when you went to it it would ask you for permission to get access to your account so even if you don't type in your password or type in your username or anything like that the way typical phishing attacks work this one is more of an authorization scheme where you say oh I'll give permission to it because it's Google Docs I've given permission to it all the time but the thing is is that you know they don't need your password if they have the permission it's pretty much the equivalent of that so if you agreed on it then they have access to your account and then it was basically they could send that to all your friends and contacts after that well that sounds nice the good news is according to Google at least you know they've gotten rid of this rogue app and it only really affected 0.1 percent of all you know Gmail users which is still a lot because how many people use it yeah I last up we also wanted to talk about something happened with a red dress on Instagram fill us in on this so it's a red bathing suit I know you've been seeing - dick if you've been seeing on Instagram all over it's because one company thought you know as a social media promotion if you repost this image we'll give you uh you know this for your bathing suit yes but the problem with that is that people on the internet love free things so it turns out that they can't meet the demand surprise surprise and this whole thing just completely backfired and blew up in their faces because now this image is all over people are really annoyed by it and they can't even give it away because there's so many like people like demanding it well at least we know the name of this company now maybe they got some small benefit out of that which I'm not going to plug I mean you can't even pay like to get rid of that kind of negative press on you I guess that's true well if you want to read more about these stories check us out on SEANET I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Alfred Inge thanks for listening all right jumping into the chat yes yes says regarding the the the phone the UH pixel this battery life is a number one issue yeah um that is a very good point and one that Lynn mentioned in the story I didn't actually get to it in the podcast uh in the testing that scene it did I think they said thirteen hours for the pixel which is pretty good if they stuck with thirteen hours that's great however the s eight and the si plus gets you closer to 16 and 18 hours so if Google hopes to keep up that is definitely a very good point that they're going to want to amp up the battery as well I mean I still think availability is their biggest issue like when when it came out they basically was if you you can either buy it through the Play Store like straight from us or you can get it through Verizon which means that you like if you wanted to do kind of oh let me just pay like thirty dollars a month for like the next two years you can only do that if you had Verizon which like is very frustrating like as someone you know I mean there's so many other phone companies out there just make it available through I didn't realize it was still having availability issues I mean like this thing was introduced months ago so like maybe there really aren't making that many of them I mean and the other thing too is you know it obviously should be on the next you know chip that comes out like because you know the Galaxy s8 is on the Snapdragon 835 now hmm which kind of makes every other phone look like it's old news at this point yeah it's not even going to be able to reach like not like near 5g capability which isn't out now but like you can reach much faster speeds if like the new right if this thing is coming out in October my assumption would be that they're going to get the newest yes Qualcomm chip but you know again this is all speculation we're just kind of wish listing in spitballing here so we don't we don't actually have any super duper inside knowledge on what this next pixel is actually going to look like quite yet Brian comments that yes availability is the number one issue for him and for many is this Brian like a commentary you Brian Flores okay Brian doesn't speak in the third person uh yeah see were friend yeah sooo what's up yahoo says as long as the s8 doesn't launch pure Android edition phone the pixel does have hope he brings a breakpoint says even Star Wars was built on hope oh my god bless you for that bless you yeah ooh that's a great point though a lot of people a lot of Samsung customers get really frustrated about the bloatware that's been an issue for Samsung with their phones for years that hasn't prevented them from being the number one phone maker but at the same time it really gives a lot of big-time Android fans you know like this is this is pure Android unadulterated here you go I mean that was always a big draw for like all the Nexus phones where you were gonna be the first to get you know all the updates from Android and then you were also gonna be not gonna have you know Samsung milk on your phone or like four right whatever later yeah there are all those extra funds that they throw in there yeah so that that was the main appeal of it but you know those phones were also like two hundred and fifty dollars now like they're charging like a premium price because they have a premium device and it's not available and it should be you know adding all these features in this is gonna sound like totally first-world problem whatever but that's all it'll attack if you're I it's true it's true let's admit it the the fact that the fingerprint sensor is actually in a better location on the pixel as opposed to the s8 is also beneficial like they put the fingerprint sensor too close to the camera on the essayed the pixel it's a little bit easier to get to and it's right in the middle you're not going to accidentally like touch this the camera camera yeah I mean I think when the Galaxy s8 like was announced they were like showing it with like some kind of like Viper like that you could actually put on the the not put on but like used like wipe down the camera mm-hmm like because they were expecting people to like smudge it that's just a design flaw Larry I don't really like that well the reason why they put it there is because it was like last minute they wanted to keep it originally where it was but if they were gonna get rid of the bezel it was like then they couldn't figure out how to make a fingerprint scanner and like a home button at the same time without a bezel right and we're expecting or really we're at least hoping Apple might might get there when they announced their phone we're expecting sometime around September I mean I do it'll be interest I like the fingerprint scanner on the back though it is so much better than like this where you can like do this my only problem with the s8 version is that that phone is huge and it's I feel like you have to like stretch like super hard right we've talked about this before the two of us with our tiny hands not very well well-trained for the SAT plus so one in the chat has a wish list he says for the pixel how about both daydream and tango that would be great that's a great idea I mean like look project tango is still very early days and it's only in like one LG phone that we constantly forget the name of is it an lg phone that was Lenovo it might be the yeah you're right it's little novo something or they've seen it it's huge yeah that's the thing like if it me if it needs to have it needs to have like all this like insane processing power to be able to use tango right not only so if you want it like the phone is gonna be like and it needs extra cameras so it needs more space like actually get like the like the three dimensionality of yes project tango this is this is an AR thing by the way if you guys haven't heard of project tango but tango is a Google concept so the idea of adding it into the pixel makes a lot of sense like if you're gonna have a phone that's big enough for tango like you're not gonna be able to do daydream because it'll like just weigh your head down it's a funny idea we have some criticisms coming through Brian Barry says the Verizon exclusive was stupid and made a lot of lists from made a lot of less Pete a lot of people less familiar with Google think they couldn't get the phone and I would sympathize with that I'm kind of grandfathered into an 18 t deal I don't love it but it is what it is I think I was very interested in pixel and well the thing is you can dye it directly yeah but mine I bite off-the-shelf I want to deal yeah that's that's right way Mike right with it is because it was like exclusively through Verizon that it was basically either you're gonna pay in full for this from Google and then just put your SIM card in it which is what they've done for like the Nexus and only mike michael brown rob and several others point out that there is financing available yeah but yeah that's different like t-mobile AT&T Sprint they all like did their own specific offers for but it's like the all of these like kind of workarounds or it's like you have to buy it first and then go to t-mobile with it and they'll give you like credit for it and things like that it's not very customer friendly you're totally right about that especially like when you're adding on top of that the like the availability issues it's definitely Google putting a lot of stones in its path to actually become much more competitive most market my theory on the reason why they did it as a Verizon exclusive in the first place is because this was their first run as like a you know we're making our own phone and they wanted to make sure that it you know the experience was like as smooth as possible mmm where I think they sided with Verizon on that one I mean when when the first you know Android phone came out it was a t-mobile exclusive at first yeah um the as many will recall the Amazon fire phone was also an exclusive with AT&T and that did not work I think the pixel has obviously done better than the fire phone but I totally agree with people that these types of exclusive deals aren't customer Friday I honestly thought that we did away with you know company like carrier exclusive phones like a long time ago we did who is sure next will came out and decided prove me wrong and you know that's let's see how well and that that's paid off for them since Natasha says the pixel was too expensive and not enough features I had the note 7 and minus the exploding part it was hands-down the best phone pixel was no comparison yeah I mean Natasha definitely brings up the point that like the folks that did get the note 7 absolutely loved it and you know a lot of the reviews before all those problems started coming out with them were really glowing and and they did Samsung packed a lot of really impressive features into that phone so I can definitely appreciate the fact that you might felt might have felt letdown after going to the pixel which was was like a little bit more of a run in the boom I think the pixel is a great device I but for me the you know biggest selling point was the unlimited storage on like Google Photos hmm that was incredible I honestly wish like every Android phone just had that feature yeah I'm that sure definitely nice selling point I'm sure Google has some preferential treatment for their own phone but you know it makes so much more sense hmm I love having our regulars and friends coming on back Michael Brown says do you think the design of the pixel 2 would be completely different from the first as he confers with imagine soggy who says the first version of any phone use the best the pixel 2 will probably be better in every single way Riki expands on this saying I really hope the pixel 2 looks totally different and then Michael Brown brings it full circle says compare the first iPhone with the first pixel iPhone had the same problems availability and exclusivity yeah indefinitely absolutely 110 percent right so I have heard the point that like especially with the first pixel what is that they got a HTC to build it and it's basically like off-the-shelf parts yeah so they wanted to see the viability of it they were a little bit more careful with it with you know bringing it to Verizon so they would at least have a major carrier back it up and an advertise it the expectation I would think from from folks in the like techs fear from customers whatever is that this is going to be a much better much more different design because they're going to have a whole other year to actually design this thing with like its own customized look as opposed to whatever HTC was able to pull off the shelf Matthew dacher says would having we're moving into another topic here sorry I guy I got distracted for a second let's move on to the to the Google Docs issue that's all you man Matthew dad sure says would having two-factor authentication have protected people from the Google scam no because two-factor authentication is usually when you log in like you type your password in and then it'll out it you know sends your phone a text or it sends another email address like oh here's the code you can put it in this one was you specifically gave permission for them to do it already so you're not using a password here so two-factor authentication when I've done anything because even if they have your paths have access to it they can't log in from a different device right and that's where two factor authentication comes in in phishing you know when you have when somebody has your password then they just log into your account and if you don't have two factor authentication that's different but in this case they already have access but they only have access to the device from the device where you like gave it permission already so so in this case the Google Docs like rogue app so this was an actually Google Docs it was like an app like kind of like any other app that you see like Google sheets or you know like any like I'm trying to think like what other asset is I use like beverage if things like that like you give them permission to get access to your accounts and your Gmail accounts and things like that like TweetDeck like you tweet that has permission your Twitter so in that case this basically looked like Google Docs but it wasn't and then you give it access you give a permission to like read and read your emails and write emails on your behalf kind of thing and then most companies like won't do anything with that you only give it permission so that you know you can use it to do those functions but in this case you know because they had permission they pretty much had your password without ever needing to login so too backed off authentication didn't come in at all here well luckily they attacked everybody all at one so it was like much more bald-faced and obvious than i guess it could have been if they were a little bit more targeted about it to be fair was fairly smart mmm like they I mean like it was a different scam yeah it was a different kind of attack I just think it got way more attention because they literally blast at everybody well no I think it got way more attention because they literally blasted like newsrooms and journalists no I'm seriously they were the majority of the targets like like average people like that I were talking to like didn't even really know what was talking about Wow until like they checked the news could have been the Russians no big this was like specifically targeted in newsrooms that's always like blowing up on Twitter like way before like any of the news like Brooklyn mmm like all these reporters that I was following like talking about this don't click on this you might have gone an email from me like don't don't fall for it guy saw lighting up on my facebook yesterday and then I spoke first and my girlfriend she knew someone who was affected by because they were actually awaiting a Google Doc delivery yeah and sure as hell that's what fell through and yep I was I was offended that I didn't get one until like two hours after that all having is like what am I not not real enough of a journalist but I got one I got mine I got I got two I was on one right after the other do we know anyone here who was affected cuz I mean Derek is asking in the chat if we have any idea how many Google Doc accounts fell victim um while according to Google 0.1% of all of Gmail users were affected by this but they shut down the Excel so they closed down the rogue app so that that rogue app is like gone now yeah and if you were affected by this and you're you still don't feel like 100% safe about it even though Google has already shut down the rogue app you can go to like your security settings and then there should be an area where you can check on like the permissions on your on your Gmail account like what a few do allow permissions on and you can just revoke access like one by one I mean you can do the same thing on your Android phone also when you like give permission Stanny apps thank you for that I was going to ask you next what were suggestions were for those who were affected yeah um before we wrap it up could do it what what I still don't understand this red ok bathing suit thing ok sorry so this company they make bathing suits and they're fairly small they decide to do a giveaway on their Instagram account and the giveaway was basically please post this photo and tag us in the photo so they're looking to spam Instagram feeds everywhere pretty much by free advertising yeah it was basically like oh post photos of our product and tagged us so it's free advertising for us and we'll give you like this free give you the whole bathing suit yeah we'll get this free night just like a percentage ah basically cost like 64 dollars an average sponsored post on Instagram cost $300 you do the math all yeah people who are desperate for free bathing suits are you know basically saving them like 200 and like something like 30 something dollars so I mean they were gonna make a ton off of this but then it turned out way too many people requests like posted the photo and tag them in it and then they couldn't meet the demand right because they didn't cap it either and we're like a lot of rookie mistakes and then it's also a really dumb strategy to like oh post this and you'll get the free promo code for it because I mean it's not like they're out anything you didn't sign a contract yeah but they like idiots now yeah they can't they couldn't find every individual user who posted it you know because it's like way too many of them an Instagram search isn't really that good no um so instead of like individually going through because there were more than like 5,000 that I had seen and that's that's like when I decided to give up counting you individually looked at all of these so there were rows of them so instagrams like grid does like if you've been tagged in something it's like 3 by 3 or whatever and you just keep scrolling down I counted up to a thousand like rows how they are that's like about three thousand I just kept scrolling down like I stopped counting and I was like this is like probably like five thousand - or so in like the last 24 hours and then there were even more after that I'm like geez I'm not counting all of this I'm just gonna more than five thousand whatever I said rookie mistake yeah I I think it's it's not as like much of a blow up as like fire festival because there's no ja Rule involved but at the same time it's like 2017 Oh baby ja Rule is been posted this bikini photos I was like I want one but yeah like 2017 is proving to be the year where like there have been like a bunch of marketing watches and let this is another one but the best part the best part is that because I couldn't count all of it they posted another image and say here's a free promo code so even if you didn't post the picture you just get the freebie you could get it anyway I'm getting myself a red base all that spam was completely useless hey cheese and then the dress all all their bathing suits are like sold out on their website now which you can't even like verify that's true maybe they just put sold out so they wouldn't have to like shell out all this stuff because they updated like their terms of the contest where it's like due to over well overwhelming demand and we didn't expect this to go viral we might not like we're gonna have to cap this which basically means we're not going to fulfill our promises um so if anything we've learned from this is that things on the internet tend to go viral but if you tweet at me I'll send you a locket of my hair then we'll be bald by Monday alright anybody doing anything for Star Wars day before we call it a day there's a bunch of Star Wars stuff on our website for the 40th anniversary check it out tons and tons of stuff there's like a ton of stuff so you know joy you know live long and prosper alright and get out okay back it out let's let's call it let's call it a week thanks everybody for joining in great questions and comments as always love having you guys here the 359 podcast is available on iTunes TuneIn stitcher SoundCloud Feedburner Google Play Music and of course on CNET comm we'll see y'all again on Monday later on have a great weekend everybody thanks Oh