Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm dr. Chang I'm Alfred Eng I'm Alexander Abel Gmail is getting a massive update Google's ubiquitous email service gets a fresh coat of paint as well as some new features like self-destructing emails and two-factor authentication for some messages and also use AI to nudge you on important emails you may have missed I know it's coming out to G sweet customers or people who use Gmail for work but folks can access some of these features at least some folks can I wasn't able to but go to the city there go into the settings menu and locating the try the new Gmail option and yeah I don't have it that's it's like every time there's a new gmail update and they switch you to the new Gmail the new calendar the new hangouts like I don't want it and I go back and this is the first time that I've read something like about the new Gmail's like give me this I want like a yeah some of this stuff is awesome the self-destruct the email thing I mean taking a page out of snapchat a little bit and then really I mean that's really easy yeah I also think the the other security feature where like you can set it so that this email can't be forwarded or printed yeah I got that is like incredibly useful too and I mean you can still take a screen cap but you're right it definitely makes it a lot harder for people to move that email yeah I feel like I'm gonna set all my emails to self-destruct now great I'm more excited for the calendar feature since I'm in meetings constantly at all times of the day and I think it'll be a lot easier but how's it going well because it's already built into Gmail which I have open all the time but I don't always have my calendar so I'm always freaked out that I'm gonna miss a meeting and I just think that having that built-in integration is gonna be a lot easier especially for people like me who have meetings all the time yeah I mean this is definitely a time where people are spending more time on things like slack or whatsapp to coordinate things I feel like this is Google's response to that yeah hopefully we can spend less time on slack now next up developers have found a flaw and Alexa that let lets malicious developers use the digital system record audio indefinitely Alfred you have the story in this or the details yeah so you know how when you're Alexa like doesn't hear you properly it says like hey can you please like repeat that again or something so they developed a skill for like widgets basically it's apps that would keep listening but it wouldn't say can you please repeat that so we would keep listening until you told it to stop they didn't have a calculator app so it was like hey what's 7 times 6 and then Alexa answers 42 and then you think it's done but it just keeps listening for them Amazon said they fixed this that happened around April 10th when they fixed it and then the news came out today but the idea was before they had fixed it any developer could have gone and like made an app that did that and so that's the that's a critical thing like do we know if any developers had done it from what I understand this has not been spotted in the wild yet or like before where Amazon had fixed it like there weren't any apps that were doing this and I from what I understand Amazon did like scan through all these skills that were available to see if any of them were taking advantage of this opening but no it didn't happen but these researchers did report it to Amazon when they described it and so the key is this is this is sort of a loophole that got closed up yeah and the argument was was you know you know the ring is still lit when you like it's rational but the idea is like how often do you look at your you know echo like when you're using it the whole point is to not have to look at it right alright lastly the last story in our follow the money package looks at mobile payments and cryptocurrency and how you might be able to help the poor specifically these technologies might give people who don't have access to bank accounts access to financial services and allow them to move money around without high fees or even start just simply saving money it's kind of a good feel good story there no yeah it's it's it's a really good look at how you know we're not really driven by like paper money anymore and or like banks even for that matter where you can you can you know store all your cash will cash I say that with like quote more exam yeah yeah no and look this is a we talk a lot about technology and gadgets and how it you know often times this is for people who can afford all these fancy toys it's kind of nice to have a story or looking at how technology can help folks who are a little bit less privileged so as always check us out on CNN I'm Roger Chang I'm Alfred Engel thanks for listening and thanks to everybody for joining us on the live recording it's weird why don't we just call this radio now it's a live podcast just radio what the hell is a radio you're like that what's the lapis I like Pandora yeah exactly so uh thanks everybody go ahead and submit your questions and comments in the Chapman to start fishing on through and I just sorry I laughed at myself I had to like mute my mic because you said when it when the echo gets lit I can't yeah like it's crazy there so if you if you listen back on that I was like kinda like trying to figure out a way to phrase it was like I have to say light damage yeah well wait so is the Alexa still listening does that have anything to do with when Alexa was randomly cackling no no that's completely different but it's weird right that she was that she would have unprompted responses and and now it turns out that there was this flaw where I was still listening well I don't know if that was related to like any like one specific skill or not I don't know what the cause of the Alexa like laughing like no we didn't really yeah they patched it but they never really explained it this looked like this was something that would specifically W have to buy developed by a to have a specific purpose of listening yeah and so they don't get the recording of you and they don't get to hook like listen in real-time of like what you're saying but they do get a transcript of what you're saying in real time right some might argue like better than a recording yeah yeah actually like written proof yeah but so developers always like can get access to to a partial transcript but they don't get a full transcript so they don't hear every word that you're saying but like so for example if I asked in the calculator app if I had asked like what's six times seven it would just say six times seven instead of like what is six times seven or like six times seven but then it would go on yeah yeah but like so it you would have you basically have like the cliff notes of like a conversation for legit skills like how long do they actually record your voice they're suppose it's supposed to stop recording like once it fulfills the request okay yeah like when you use it like that light goes off once it like does what you write what yeah yeah so part of Amazon's fix was that they limited how long it could do it at all okay so like it would have to be like at most like 2 or 3 minutes now to like listen New York West which like if you take 2 or 3 minutes to make voice requests yeah maybe you consider not having a voice assistant yeah maybe consider a real assistant we talked to the voice you aru and so when I'm back in California I use my echo every morning what do you do she wakes me up by listening to podcasts and but I do nine podcast obviously yeah and actually I wake up at five so I don't think you guys are up that early and puppet eight o'clock yes turn time which is luckier times our podcast yeah I don't think the podcast but I do we do come in later in the day yeah so we replaced the tech today that starts the morning off so if you need that for your morning commute and then in the evening finale you can get the 3:59 refresher it's on my commute home on the ferry but I do like that you know sometimes with those specific commands you have to phrase them in a certain way so I do like that she listens after but keeping what I'm saying is a little bit freaky to me yeah I didn't even know that they they kept transcripts that day yeah I didn't know that either that was a new discovery learn something new um do you know how long they keep the transcripts or how long may I it might be a different set of rules for developers versus like what Amazon guts because Amazon actually gets the recordings but yeah you can control that you can you can delete that on your own I'm not sure you can delete what developers get right because if they get access to the transcripts it's not like you can tell somebody delete it yeah listen yeah this er goes back to the whole Cambridge analytic approach yeah that's all that's its own issue all right let's talk about Gmail for a little bit yeah specifically email clients does anybody still use Yahoo when are we gettin that I you know I whenever I log into something that I knows well why would you have a burner that's already that's bad you can piron's Gmail it's tender it's cinder no no no it's not I signed up for this after all this happened I've checked it it's not compromised actually is it's only fine it's an account that whenever I know that there's gonna be spam I have a personal gmail account I tend not to sign up for things on that unless it's like really critical all the kind of like if I sign up for like but like promotional orders it's usually but you can make a burner gmail account yeah like why would you I don't I don't like I don't know I just like having the separation I feel like there's some weird karma and play that you're punishing yahoo have all this spam yeah kinda that kind of is well also I you know when they the reason I did is because when Yahoo offered up those new email domains like I was able to get my name for Yahoo I can't get my name of Gmail right but it's a burner though so why would you need your name on and she won yeah I think I have logic is all flawed so tell us about these new yahoo email features I think I still have like a burner I just use like my old middle school email that's on Yahoo but is not my hobby like I just I think you know he's got a Netscape on his outlook way well wait you don't my my burner name is just this kid that I didn't like in elementary oh I sign I sign him up for a bunch of stuff but I mean I get it like I get the emails but I'm just like yeah I don't know it's probably cool now he's probably like a cool person I know I really want to know like yeah I have this person on the show right yes like not tell Alfred just have a usual reason why from getting all these like he probably gets like all these like weird mail what doesn't get the emails though cuz it's my account like I just you use his name and so yes you probably tried to find an email address with his name and he couldn't find one I feel like there's an editorial here like the deep dark secrets of how you hide your email and where the Karma plays out and how you what it all means yeah subconscious level yeah this this weird karmic well for the time that's subconscious it's pretty direct right yeah I mean like I I stopped like having a grudge by like middle school just one of those things where I was like I already have a nice just let it go man so are we excited about these new features most off what you want your top three are I'm totally excited I like that this two-factor authentication for certain emails if it's like a fairly critical email I like a great example is if ever I'm sending stuff to my accountant right I could be sending me information critical advice however I like for like two-factor authentication to be in place exploding or these self Denning emails are kind of Awesome I can see the two factor authentication thing being like really useful to like stopping like phishing attacks yes in the sense that like oh hey you got your credit card was compromised click on this to log back in and then like I my feeling is if it doesn't have two factor authentication like I would know like this is a scam although world companies you think I'm easily savvy enough to use it they should be yeah absolutely should be should be but will they that's the biggest no but then this this new email cuz it works for a way does it only work within Gmail or can you can this work with fin like I think it only works within Gmail so that's that's the thing counter emails don't a lot of corporate accounts though use Gmail no I mean it's growing it's still a minority of really corporate Gmail I am a locked in that exactly myself outlook is still by far the most widely used I am a big fan of the feature that doesn't let you like forward anything though because this yeah yeah every time I write an email now I'm always like really mindful of the idea like whatever you write can be forwarded to anybody I write emails knowing that like if this is this could be broadcast on Twitter tomorrow hmm right so that paper trail man you know ya know that's the thing you just have to be mindful of that yeah the idea that you can't Ford you can't it's kind of a great little feature there Alexander I'm with you I'm really excited about the calendar integration cuz I live and die by my Google Calendar it doesn't tell me to brush my teeth I don't brush my teeth I have release saying you guys give me all the crap today yeah I have to keep that straight it's so true it's like so many different meetings so many things to do I have to block out time when I need to do like my actual job I use it to organize all of the studio scheduling here exactly like it's so important to me to have like a good seamless calendar and my personal calendars on iCal and I love iCal but you know having like my work on Google calendar just makes my life so much easier and having that built-in integration is just I'm so excited the one feature that I hope that Gmail never adds or any email company like feature platform ever is what Facebook messengers and like iMessage has done with like red tags because there are so many emails that I ignore that if they if they knew that like I opened it and like read it and just didn't want to reply please don't please don't that's that's not cool I purposely ignore 90% of my yeah let me ignore people in peace yeah I mean I've always loved the filtering yeah Gmail actually yeah I've never used that but I hear great thank you ladies it saves me so much grief because I get notifications anytime anything's trending on Twitter and I and I can be a little bit yeah 30,000 yeah I also like the smart reply I just realized that that was going to be it is such a great feature but I would I really use I use it all the time I only my my only thing is I wish they could let us custom them oh my comes up with like what I usually say so like when I get requests to post something and yeah it's not Alexander respond Google yeah it's like God to be more authentic with my response I really like I'd really like one that's just like I'm not interested in this press release there are there are like thanks but I'm not in its called the spam button can you yeah you can't program in your response I they should you should be able to but I don't think I haven't been yeah you can create a filter that you know if you have those certain keywords yes I've done it for blockchain and some other thing that I forgot but yeah who is it Zack Whittaker he always gets weird blockchain email repressor requests and he's like worst I think every tech report we all I haven't I'm pretty pumped props to you Alexander two for your Ruth Bader Ginsburg sticker that's right up front Centuri I just realized that I'm sorry can I have this strand I have to represent the strand and then I have taco cuz tacos are my favorite right I have seen it because I love Cena calm because we have I haven't I haven't gotten the seen that sticker yet so if anybody wants to we have autonomy I have a certainty I look up see they say this once it's on you can't take it off you don't go back I mean I think that's okay this is like my third work compute and then you show up oh yeah you show up to events and then it's just like settled wait for the day somebody walks up is like what's Canet the next time you show up to an event where you know your laptop has to be out you should wear all your CNET swag you should wear like those I wear my socks I wear like leisure from t-mobile and yeah exactly so I'm a mile away at comic-con brand that's the next like swag we should have seen at jumpsuits like just about like romp in you see on the rocks yeah yo see no onesies would be kind of cool actually it's like we don't we don't even I don't sleep we just work all the time like for adults or for kids no for adults okay no no no I mean see that was easy I mean yeah that would be cute but I think I seen it onesie for adults I have a t-mobile onesie it lights up and everything's just cuz t-mobile loves you I'll get right on that guys okay we only have a few minutes left let's try to get through a few can Google prevent an exchange or other user from forwarding that's from dacher yeah features as you'll be able to select how nobody's asking right if your recipient is like not using Gmail though like they're using X Joe yeah that's different right that I think this one works within Gmail yeah I'm I'm like working on a story about like the privacy features from it so I can I can ask a little bit we could definitely fall out with you though all right coming in from Josh boy uh sorry I was just knee-deep in my coffee my college is on Outlook is there a way to link it with my Google Calendar yeah I did that and I did that in college like top three right yeah standard pop yeah no but that's calendar though Oh have three email but can't you sync them yeah yeah you're able to you're about like so on your Google Calendar you should be able to import calendars from like other like accounts let's take another one from syringe Roy doesn't Google also hear us all the time this is obviously pedaling back into the echo I mean yes this is definitely actually hearing or like scan your emails sorry like we're Jamie from topic to topic which I think he's saying here is okay Google yeah Google also hear us all the time Google my activity log shows the not gonna say the activation word audio recorded with the following instruction yeah so that's this is arguing it was like Siri and Alexa in the sense that they don't they're hearing but they're not like recording or like water they're they're literally only hearing for like the wake word which would be that so that's their argument but like the the other side of the story is well if they're always listening for the weak word then technically aren't they always listening yeah let's take one from Alex Mitchell I use Google inbox and it's amazing I never looked back but why does Google have to have email like to multiple email apps I feel like that is just the Google way yeah there's inboxes Gmail they they have multiple chat apps that's just not worst it's just how it works allo cheetah Hangouts I mean hello or you know a Louis oh yeah so it's voice look a lot of this is Google I think experimenting with different features I think inbox came out and focus on a number of different features I think it was like prioritization it was like oh it was being able to like hit snooze on a message I think Gmail is still like the centerpiece email service that Google has that's but those are the you can tell it like this is where they're putting their resources behind mm-hmm but Dad I mean I agree it's knowing that Google like likes to experiment with these one-off projects and like sometimes they support them sometimes they don't we got just enough time for two more questions from old fan Ryan Williams welcome back sir hey it's been a while I see Gmail was updated by only use inbox is there a big change that should make me go back can we as as users as editorial recommend the the switch back for our dear friend Ryan switch back to old-school Gmail standard Gmail I use standard Gmail like from standard from and the new features that just came out he's saying he's only been using his onboard inbox app should he switch back to a formal Gmail oh I don't know I don't know like how they're gonna separate the features for like apps got it yeah that's also like it just just wait a bit because like right now the all these new features aren't really available for all Gmail users yeah this is right now for professional users and do we have a date of when this is gonna roll out publicly no this is public now certain select Gmail personal account users are able to try it out but everyone could get it if I feel burnt I'm a power user yeah if you're a G suite user like we are at work see that is a gmail shop it's really up to the account administrator to basically turn on but it's available now it just it's dependent upon each company whether or not they want to take advantage of this yeah I would wait a bit though before like jumping back to like the Gmail app if that but like in the sense I don't want you to like download the Gmail app again and then like realize that the features aren't there yet and then like have to delete it again so I would like wait a bit yeah and one more for the road let's pivot right back over to find digital finance from AIPAC I wish the mobile payment services would just be one or two apps that I can use anywhere like Apple and hey I really don't want each store to have their own app why are they doing this why is Netflix and Hulu and Disney and Showtime and all of the video streaming trying to consolidate their own individual services at the same time but yeah I'd be the same deal like every company want control has yeah exactly they want control over the the the user over the customer that's why Starbucks isn't that interested in Apple pay because they have a successful mobile app themselves and more importantly they have access to that data Apple pay is kind of like this neutral part a same with Android pay or Google pay and Samsung pay Android pay I was getting all confused but the idea that they serve as neutral parties and so they're not giving up the data to the retailer's and so for them it's why they why are they putting the money into investing in new terminals that take the stuff if they're not getting the data whereas someone like Starbucks as well as a number of other retailers are really kind of pushing their own kinds of apps but the problem is obviously it's super fragmented and you'll have to have like 15 apps on your phone in order to be able to pay for everything you want welcome to the a la carte world yeah well doesn't it also like what works with what bank and and sort of the relationship that these apps would have with the bank like then Moe you know it kind of depends on which bank but then Zell we know who sells the banks right right so I think that also plays into you know why they haven't all consolidated well it's not just that you're talking about exchange of digital money online I was just talking about paying at like the register oh okay Apple pay I mean which is two different things I think it's a good illustration of why it's so fragmented because those are like two different universes with different kinds of players Apple is trying to do that with iMessage right basically be able to exchange money like Benbow but it's not available to everyone because it's not everyone's an Apple users right yeah I think it's just sorry let's just the point that it's super fragmented and there are companies that have their own vested interest in keeping things to themselves and that's why there aren't universal standards out there and that is just about gonna do it for us today thanks everybody for joining us and a special happy birthday to Alex Mitchell he's celebrating his 30th birthday yeah awesome and wrap it up yeah happy birthday to Katy Collins by the way she also turned three Oh today oh wow our very own very own so if you liked anything you saw her here check us out on CNET our podcast is available on iTunes tune in stitcher Feedburner google play music and the amazon echo and thanks to Alexandra for joining us today always lovely to have you around the New York office take everybody see you tomorrow you