Gadgetory

good morning on Tuesday November 14th it's time for episode 316 of the 359 podcast my name is BVG and your host today are alfred Inge and Roger Chang yo yo yo Alfred 3:16 says he just pawed your cast I have no idea what you just said that's from Stone Cold Steve Austin Austin 3:16 just so floored by just break the unusual introduction and huh he's also wearing cutoff shorts dear that is how dedicated he is to Stone Cold Steve Austin all right so we're gonna be talking about a couple things there were some reports out yesterday and I guess today as well about face ID potentially getting fooled either by mask or your sibling or son we'll be talking about the LGV 30 scene that's got its official review on it and it's surprisingly a worthy rival to Samsung's best and brightest eye laughs they will be talking about Firefox 57 also known as Firefox quantum and why you might want to give it a shot as a as a browser give it a shot yeah see as always if you have any questions about these topics live in the comments section Brian will pick out the best and we will try to answer them in three minutes to 59 seconds from 3 to welcome to the 359 I wrote your chant I'm Afra dang someone may have already cracked Apple's vaunted face ID system a Vietnamese security software company claims to have created a mask that was able to unlock the iPhone X's facial recognition lock Albert you dug into this story and you end up with more questions than answers let me should is this something we need to be worried about no I don't think so I'm very skeptical of it so there's a few caveats to this so they didn't really show their process of it so we don't really know what was registered on the phone to begin with right and then article from Reuters today from a reporter in Vietnam that visited the company they explained that it takes about nine hours to make the mask adjust adjustments to the mask it takes about a week to make the mask itself well and then nine hours to make adjustments to it and if you from according to Apple's white paper if you don't unlock the phone without face idea to begin with mm-hmm for at least four hours then it like you have to use a password right so it kind of destroys the whole purpose of it anyway so there's really no point to you know their whole all we made this mask that takes nine hours but right have about four hours to two days ID on it right so I mean a thief would basically have to steal your phone already have the mask already gave you and they'd also have to have your facial dimensions because it's right before it sensor actually to make some math yeah and I think a lot of people who read the article basically made this point where if somebody went to all that trouble to steal my phone and scan my face and you know make a mold out of it they probably you know like they can probably do a lot more than just steal my phone for that yeah no definitely I just it seems today there was a youtube video going around of a mother showing off her iPhone X and showing off how her son is able to unlock the phone yeah it was her 10 year old kid and if you watch the video they actually look similarly and Apple has made this point before they in their white paper about face ID they've talked about how for family members specifically twins right or even children under 13 because their facial features haven't fully developed yeah the odds of it fooling face idea are a lot higher and the idea is again if you if you're in putting your passport here kind of staring at the phone it's learning yeah it thinks that you're this person and it's starting to learning to accept you as a as the original person yeah so the way that face ID is able to learn who like you know even when you put on glasses or when you have a scarf on or when you're growing a beard or anything we get a haircut is that every time you're unlocking it and and you put your password in yep that new scan like it it learns based off of that new scan so some of the argument can be made where it's basically okay well maybe when you're unlocking it with your password and the kids on it then it's able to learn based off of that and like assume that kid is like the new person or some way it's basically if it meets a certain threshold but it doesn't meet it completely so they have to still look somewhat similar for it to train based on like my wife and I could really it could be fooled by that I don't know if your wife looks like you we don't look okay all right next up LG isn't a company that's got a lot of buzz on the phone front lately but see that it has its official review of the LGP 30 and editor Sean Hollister calls it a worthy rival to Samsung's Galaxy s8 plus as well as Google's pixel to excel this is a jumbo phone like the iPhone 10 like the Galaxy S 8 Note 8 is very slim bezels big screen I think the 6-inch display it's a big phone it's it's still a phone but it's it's packed it with a lot of sorta latest features dual cameras on front and the back you know very comparable I think it's just a little sad I don't think it's gonna do that well just because a lot of people kind of had their minds of getting a Samsung phone or Google phone or an iPhone yeah oh gee does not have the brand recognition that the other that its competitors do but I will say it is definitely a solid looking phone yep and you know camera wise I think it a shot does knock it a little bit for slow autofocus especially during low light conditions it is a but otherwise like the camera takes some really sharp photos it's just not quite up to par with some of the others and I'm also gonna knock points off for also being $800 plus because you know how cheap I am yeah well there is that I mean it's definitely part like the jumbo class of premium photos lastly Firefox 57 also known as quantum promises a speedier browser our own Steve Shanklin did a whole big profile a few months back on Firefox and it's come back this is sort of the big come back initiative for Firefox is this gonna get you to try it out I mean I I guess we'll have to find out but I mean one of their interesting points that they brought up is if you use Chrome you know that it's like a serious battery drain yeah yeah and I think that's one of their points that they're trying to say like this isn't gonna be like that we're not gonna take up that much of your baby yeah so we'll find out you know I'm gonna test it Allison I mean I think that's data load but make it a pretty attractive it doesn't kill your battery all right for those stories a boiler chickens on CNET I'm Roger Chang I'm out for ding thanks for listening I think you really need to decide whether it's the iPhone 10 or the iPhone eggs because you flip-flop or part of me sort of want to stick with X but then I kind of stuff correct every once in a while I don't know also our timer was I was set to 9 hours for 359 so the record we have done 316 episodes of this and they still can't do 4 minutes on the nose nope no we try probably could add so I have a question yeah why does the new Firefox mascot logo thing look like Batman I think that was just art for for that specific story no no it was art that they supplied yeah but for the original story right yes rebuilding Firefox part of Firefox's or Mozilla to copy hi Firefox their their attempt but I don't think that's their new logo I don't think their new logo is the photos of a big sort of an internal point to their own team yeah exactly like we're rebuilding Firefox from scratch this is a brand new browser faster it's leaner it's meaner I do like that art though because if you look closely in it there's a small screen of Rick Astley this like actually this image this is just a giant rick roll yeah we actually rick roll'd just thousands of readers did we recrawl them but Fox sent us the image so wouldn't they rolled yes into we also been Rick Rolled ception yes Rick Ross we're like three degrees into it it's pretty it's pretty dead stuff so any questions or still sure we've got a conspiracy theory from sky it says face ID hacked this is clearly a publicity stunt as the company are holding a press conference soon and looking to get into that mobile market yeah they're having their press conference later today at 9:00 p.m. to mark our time 9:00 a.m. vietnam time yep and bkv by the way is a software company but it also is has built phones there's like a lady right right and just try to get in the phone business so you know this is this could definitely be I think I think there's a reason why they're so when they first announced it I looked into their like research of it yeah usually when there's a big you know data breach or when they're not data breach but when there's like a big vulnerability like with the crack vulnerability or blue born or anything like that there's this whole like long technical research paper this is how we did they did like a small QA on their blog right and like there was no like actual concrete evidence there was no like here's how we did it or anything like that it was just one of the questions like oh how did you like make a mask to fool this one you know people that wired Wall Street Journal's CNET weren't able to do something like this even Apple if their Hollywood mask makers and they said because we know the AI and then they did like a winky face I'm like oh that's that's legitimate I take that as a good explanation yeah the Windy face had so much context and then I also think there's a reason why their demonstration was a minute long video of this this groundbreaking discovery where it's only a minute long and it's like look it unlock the Massa unlock with me we did it like that the whole thing yeah can you really do I mean it for the record this is not hacking no we should not use a term no this is this is tricking or fooling yeah and it's a really X or being method of tricking or falling it's an impossible crap we don't know for sure if it works that if it does it's super impractical because like the odds of someone knowing like your dimensions to create a mask and like your actual facial features to create a mass have makeup artists like basically paved down so it looks like a human face and then getting their hands on your phone and then also being able to do it within the time constraints that face ID has yeah so like like I was saying on the podcast face ID unless you unlock it with face ID every four hours it goes back using your password so if they made that risk there's like after four hours long like it's not gonna work and if it you only got five attempts to with face IDs after that you have to type in a password so if it fails like five times you're also out of luck if the phone's been just turned on for the first time so the battery's like dead you also need to put in password there's so many things I like this makes no sense it's completely ridiculous to think that this is like a plausible like attack method they slightly outsmarted it for half a second yeah although I won't say the other example the YouTube video the kid with the kid that is a bit more worrisome as a parent I mean I kids aren't enough to use a phone now but if my kid is able to unlock my phone to start paying for things using face ID from I mean that's the whole reason why we lock our phones from our kids so they they don't use it they don't buy crap with it I think use face ID that kid could use facial ID to make purchases or whatever that's the entire process there was a point where he mentioned in the LinkedIn article that the the kid's dad wrote yeah like explaining how he found this and all this stuff he was all like yeah you could get on the phone and by himself I scream if he wanted to but he's a good boy so you want to do that by ice cream I mean I relate to this a little bit cuz I mean I look at the ice creams bear the porn right I look exactly as an example I look exactly like my dad though so like this is a situation that I can relate to right what your dad would probably unlock your phone instead of you like the other way around no I can trust him my dad wouldn't figure that out well you know as long as you don't enter the passcode like the camera system doesn't read his face and yeah it's people have exploited the twin thing and it's like okay yeah that kind of makes sense but simple genetics where you tell it if we are not identical to but you're close enough if you look at the video the kid does look a lot like mother like facial but that shouldn't be enough right barely do we think we're gonna see any kind of patch or software upgrade out of apple sometime soon two defunct this I don't know I think as it learns more it will probably be able to pick up the differences much better like I remember when touch ID first came out everyone say look I tricked it so easily yeah I think just like touch ID face IDs gonna get better over the years I don't know if it's there's a near-term fix required but I think it's gonna evolve and become more reliable over time as anything just like as all the the smart home voice assistants they learn yep oh so creepy to say that out loud oh hey here's here's a thought too we talked about how face ID works would something like a facial tattoo have any weight on that while it would continue to learn based off of that I mean that's not the kind of thing that you develop that you yeah so the thing is it's like you can type in your last weird you type in your password if like it doesn't recognize your face and if it meets a certain threshold so like if I just get a scar but like it recognizes like the rest of my face like let's say let's say it meets like a 75% threshold like they would learn based off of that I think it was like under I don't know what the exact number is but it has to meet a certain threshold for it to say like yeah that's probably the same person something else like probably just changed about them so we're gonna like learn and based off of that that would be interesting to learn a little bit more about how that yeah software does work yeah but on your point about you like your kid being what being able to unlock your phone like if he if he looks like you or anything like that Roger does have a baby face that's uh it's been a really funny like pain point for adopting biometrics that I've seen a lot lately like there was that story that I wrote like last Christmas wears a some girl like her her mom was sleeping so she put like crazy and just ordered a bunch of like Pokemon stuff well didn't Scott Stein here accidentally order an Xbox ones Apple yeah there was a story that shows like they they had to like land a Qatar Airways flight on Sunday or so because a girlfriend found out that her boyfriend was cheating on her while he was sleeping because she put his fingerprints off the phone and like started reading through yeah I mean that's that's a smart girlfriend not a dumb phone there are some scenarios where it's basically your passwords probably like much more secure than your face or your yeah often with my wife none of them are perfect I put the phone up to her face all right here we go Ben Fox Reuben in the chat where is Ben Fox Reuben today I love that guy he's a serious question from Josh boy that does Apple give you an option like smart lock on Android where you can just push a button on the screen to lock the phone and block face ID they have the emergency a sponge you tap the power button five times really fast then you have to use a password in I think that was a way to get people it's like if cops pull you yeah they don't Apple doesn't like flouts say that they'll say hey here's a feature that we did a block police but yeah yeah five times though like I don't know someone's coming you're like oh god what I wonder how this is gonna affect further we hear a lot about even recently court cases where smart devices have been involved in our technically witnesses and yeah how that's going to weigh in and with the encryption and if face ID is gonna perform but I provide another obstacle to this or I mean you can get around it just like anything else though yeah biometrics are not as protected as your password is by the law so there was a court case there's been several court cases where they've said we can force you to put your fingerprints mm-hmm to unlock your phone where it's interesting it's like your passport is it's like because it's something in your mind it's it's the Fifth Amendment where you can't self-incriminate with your password because that's like knowledge like that's something you can keep like to yourself but they can put your face in your fingerprint that's not like that because in the by the same logic you know when you're arrested they can take your mug shot and they can also ask you to put your fingerprints in it's kind of the same logic where it's like okay if we can legally ask you to do that we can definitely ask you to unlock your phone the same way yeah yeah question about setting a password from can you set passwords with letters instead of numbers on the iPhone 10 like on previous phones that's an interesting thought I've actually never not used numbers myself so if you were able to use and say they haven't updated that interface I don't know it's one two three five even though you could use letters apparently you can cuz Scott's done it yeah alright thanks God for education is still in the chat I think I can go find him do we know we don't want that in here get out Ben yeah ban him from the chat so we've only got a few minutes left and we haven't talked any more about the the V 30 I myself and sporting a v10 right now yeah I've actually quite enjoyed it I'm interested in this phone I want to learn more from mr. Hollister but could you guys maybe expand what were you talking about earlier with the camera regarding the lenses the show has a dual lens setup both of the front and the back and they're like iPhones and unlike the Samsung those which have zoom lenses this is more wide super wide angle and like a regular camera lens and so yeah you could do like large I guess kind of panoramic shots versus more standard shots Sean says the photos are great they come out Chris to come out clear they look great on the P OLED display but in terms of in low-light settings in certain cases its autofocus is a little bit slower than your iPhone I thought of the door lens would help fix that no because it's still operating up it's not using both lenses at the same that's frustrating yeah so great camera is just not quite as good or as polished as the ones you get from say pixel or or I thought the Samsung I say it's a shame that they don't offer more size options like with iPhones like would give me at everybody else because like that's my biggest gripe about this v10 is its uncomfortably large yeah and this one is just as large yeah this is this is not I mean Sean kind of comparison to the Galaxy s8 or si plus I mean the other comparison to me would be the note 8 it's kind of similar in size of a digital stylus but that's sort of maybe they're going maybe it's a phone maybe the phone is so big that in the promo image that's that's not them trying to show the phone out of the pocket that's literally just how large it is that it won't fit in the pocket like go to it like the article bringing it up it's one it's one of the photos where it's like they're pulling it out of the pocket bonus you get to see an adorable photo of Sean's daughter yay so I'm still looking for you guys gonna have to vamp it's on our front page if you just go to see Netcom what's that website again CNET that's maybe the phone is actually just so long it is that is how I feel when I walk around the s7 in my pocket I hate carrying this in my pocket cuz like every time I bend over like stabs like my abdomen or something don't bend over oh oh I'm sorry I'm like that's why I like I prefer the wintertime because I actually have a coat that I can just put this in because I'm that kid that wears the trench coat everywhere there you go bring back the fanny pack yo my friend actually has one don't don't straight your friend lives in Brooklyn right yep I think it's a good phone it's a decent option I just think it is gonna get kind of you know lost the shuffle with the eight pixel all those phones out there right now that's been the core dilemma for LG for a while one more question from Josh boy to the MVP today do you think a 30 will have the same screen issues as a pixel to excel that is a very good question well we'll just have to find out now why why would that be are they from the same screen manufacturer I believe so yeah the P OLED display is that is the same type of display got A's have issues with the pixel to that cell oof yeah all right time will tell see I mean if if you pick up a V 30 you know and once it wins a street date on the V 30 is it out already okay I'm I'm obviously not the the tech reviewer here I'm just the butcher I just I just read stories I just judge people mostly just that all right it's probably about time to wrap it up that is about to wrap it it's nice to see that we've got some competitive phones again albeit they're all overpriced but there's some decent phones on the back then underwhelmed for a while and now we're like Oh cameras a little sad that like in order to get that competitiveness they all have to be like yeah stuff that's the reality I'm sure some people do all right all right the few ideas are heard here check this out see that our podcasts also available on iTunes tune in stitcher SoundCloud feedburner and Google Play Music see you all tomorrow thanks everyone here joining file see Netcom except Ben Fox Ruben no bf ours