Gadgetory

hey it's Thursday 420 get waste its time for podcast with is and then it's 359 episode 214 good morning everybody hello hello yes thanks for coming back on no problem thanks for composing this song been oh of course we know you did this in your spare time on your iOS device this is actually piping in from my brain right now look at that new interface did you write the new interface from facebook so that's one of the stories that we're going to talk about today facebook's building eight which is their hardware moonshots lab our own rich Nieva wrote about it and during the facebook developer conference that's going on this week we're also talking about a new google chrome browser this is or at least this is a rumor that's coming out this is a story from The Wall Street Journal about a google chrome browser that's going to be able to block ads and if we have time we'll also get to verizon's earnings which came out this morning which is way more interesting than you think it is again again made money lots and lots of money but they lost subscribers right yeah so as always sending your questions and comments bvg we'll get to them at the end of the show and let's get to the 359 stuff recording of the podcast and we'll be back in the chat in three two welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm I as a wolf akhtar ah woo Google may introduce new ad blocking software baked right into the google chrome browser according to a report from The Wall Street Journal the software would block annoying ads like pop-ups auto plays with sound and ads that come up before you even reach the homepage I as is this a good idea or is this at least somewhat ironic that Google which makes all of its money on advertising is doing this well I mean I think it's a good idea for pretty much any company like Google because they spent a lot of money on advertising so they want people to look at their ads so with this definition of what an annoying ad is will lose those things that really bother you and then maybe you'll actually look at the ad that you want to see but I think for Google it's probably a really good bet especially with this report saying that this would be on by default and it would be on mobile and devices it would be everywhere yeah but I don't really trust this this is this is assuming that Google is going to be able to tell us what are the good ads and what are the bad ads what makes them the right ones to make that determination they don't want to pay ad blocker plus or any of that stuff I think that's really what the thing is right here because there's other companies that whitelist certain ads based on payment and so with google and its what is it called the Coalition for better ads were part of that so to be fair those are the standards that they're going to be basing off of you're not losing all ads you're going to be losing some of those ads it really take away from the experience and I think that actually makes a difference especially when you're browsing on on mobile web yeah definitely next amid Facebook's f8 developer conference this week our own rich nieva wrote about building eight which is Facebook's new hardware lab for moonshot projects to early efforts include a brain to computer interface whatever that is that would allow us to send our thoughts straight to a computer and technology to quote unquote here or absorb language through vibrations in our skin I'm so confused by these I love the idea of brain to computer interface the idea that you can have these thoughts directly in the machine I know I think way faster than I type and I type pretty quickly so speak even quicker so my brain is at a rate that's ridiculous so I can't wait for this if it ever comes to being although there's no internal implants necessary yes that's what they're claiming it's gonna be a non-invasive concept it's gonna be like a wearable or something like that which obviously gets me more on board however facebook already knows so much information about me already do i really want them reading my thoughts well maybe you can take off the wearable me like it's it now it's now it's been time so it's bedtime first of all i'd just like to throw out there like how did we get to the point where we've been talking about brain to computer interfaces by the way Elon Musk also has a project I mean like what exactly is going on here that like one of the newest trends is we're gonna have a brain and a computer connected together I don't know it just seems so sci-fi well I mean if when you get a scream at you know Alexa do whatever it be easy to forget to think it you know and if you didn't have to know yell all the time or if you're a noisy party environment and those mics aren't picking you up these mics are essentially in your head yes yes it's all in your head last up Verizon averted a total disaster by finally giving in to the unlimited data trend as part of its earnings report Thursday the company lost a bunch of subscribers but it wasn't as bad as it could have been thanks to them jumping on board with unlimited there's something like 90,000 different there they had lost 318 398 thousand customers before they announced the unlimited plan then they lost a total of two nite 289 so they still lost yeah but it was even worse could be much worse I mean like look people really want unlimited and verizon finally gave in and decided they wanted to give it to the monstrously strong Network yes art argue with that right exactly so I think we're done okay if you want to read more about these stories check us out on cnet i'm ben fox rubin I as a wolf akhtar thanks for listening all right jumping right back into the chat a pre-party hey I apologize if I mispronounced that name do we know when this version of chrome is going to release the claim was in the next few weeks potentially this is it to be clear this is a Wall Street Journal report we haven't confirmed it independently but it is the journal so they do get a lot of stuff right and yeah next few weeks Matthew is asking if there is maybe a moral obligation to consider here is it right to block ads considering that's how sites function and we can sympathize with that yeah I I would I would agree with that notion one of the reasons that Google is wanting to do this is because people are turning on ad blockers a lot more so in many ways they just they have to respond to a certain extent that's what the journal story mentions so they're in a difficult place where they make a lot of money off of their ads and if they don't do anything about it then people are just going to keep flocking to ad blockers and then they won't have any control of the situation and the moral side if the if the idea of advertising was truly sell your products and not just generate revenue for the site because the idea so really these ads are supposed to be selling you something but they're just done in these sneaky annoying ways you're not noticing your trying to read the content and you can't ever get to it you're eventually that sites going to lose traffic anyway right because you're like I cannot handle your practices when it comes to advertising it's it's it's in a law of diminishing returns where you have these invasive ads which turn off customers and then you have to make them even more invasive to get to the customers and get really in your face a lot more and that's why people turn to ad blockers you know full disclosure see you know it has to deal with the same type of situation that every other publisher does when it comes to this kind of stuff so it's it's an interesting conversation to have but at the same time as a reader on the internet this is this is something that i would appreciate to a certain extent to get rid of some of the most annoying ads that you would see and have it be default I just I just hate how irrelevant some of the ads can be like I'm here you know my history you know everything about me you sell me something I want I don't care if the ad is good if it's video or not I do hate autoplay audio regardless but it's fine million or if I'm poking around the internet try to sell me something good something you know that I want it's not hard to tell but they keep trying to send me like depends undergarments and just like not yet not yet yeah maybe they know something with your browsing history seems to fill with this pattern coming soon maybe you just don't know yet that's true maybe they do know more about me than I can even realize and so going going back to what that comments are mentioned by the way there was something that mentioned mentioned in that story that I thought was really interesting which is one consideration that Google is at least playing with right now is blocking all the ads on some of these sites if they aren't up to standards with all of their ads so if some of the ads are not up to snuff we're just going to block all the ads which kind of seems like a nuclear option to me but at the same time like this that's that's certainly a way to get people to fall online yeah I mean it's kind of like a Walmart says we're not carrying your stuff it just you can always switch by the way you don't have to stick to chrome if for some reason like look I really love that publications it has these ads that don't comply with this standard you really love site X which is amazing whatever it may be and you want them to get ad revenue you can always switch but then again I don't really see you people a lot of people complaining on the consumer side going well this site loads faster and it's cleaner and I care versus this is taking forever I can't click on the thing I'm trying to click what is this more my hearing right now right now right I just think that there is a very strong potential for Google to get even more control or more power in this type of situation because it is by default then they already have so i don't know like hopefully they do it right and we'll have to see Brian in the chat a says I'm sure they would integrate a pass for their own ads that would make the most well to be no kidding their ads comply with that coalition already yeah so they would get a pass it's not blocking every ad it's those that don't adhere tzd specifications when it comes to write what isn't it obtrusive or intrusive at but at the same time it would seem extremely unlikely that google chrome would ever block a YouTube ad or a google search ad that would probably never ever happen I don't have to comply though yeah point well it makes them actually have to reconsider maybe their ad platform if they don't want to end up hypocrites hmm that's a very very good point branching off that Chad TV asks does Google plan to address the YouTube monetization as they are the same company and revenue maybe you want to jump in on that one I'm not sure they got to be related right in the sense it like yeah google does a parent company alphabet parent above all youtube maybe they're add structure might have to change you know i think that you've seen them increase the mid-roll ads as of late on both mobile and third party platforms is that going to have to kind of like backpedal I'm skeptical if it's google chrome that's doing it then google is the one that's in the driver's seat so if anybody's going to get any leeway in this situation it's going to be somebody like youtube because it's all within the family like I don't think all the Google executives are going to get in a room and yell at each other and say well we're pushing all these other sites into a corner but you know we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna get our only way if those YouTube ads don't have a problem with the standards though essentially right you're not getting like pop ups when you're watching YouTube it's not any of that stuff you get a version of pop up sometimes like while you're watching a video I mean on the video itself I mean like granted that that probably does comply with the standards but you understand what I'm trying to say here is that there is a potential of Google to become a hypocrite of themselves well expanding beyond that though there's been so much of the conspiracy concern over what's going on with the regulation of content on youtube Nikki monetization practices and how so many like concurrent youtubers are there they just claim that the revenue is just starting to tank and what the hell's going on with that how is this all tied together I don't think they are honestly because I mean YouTube is allowed to essentially operate independently even those within Google's when the strangers things that it didn't get spun out considering how different the culture is in YouTube versus Google from what I've heard I've actually don't people work there so it's not exactly this hey we're all one big family is like no you're this totally different branch even though Google still owns you when it comes to this whole issue of youtubers getting less money what I understood was a bunch of companies were afraid of their ads being placed before really controversial content so advertisers pull back in general that led to the amount of money being paid out to the youtubers to be less right and that's going to require google or youtube to somehow figure out how are these your house your company going to make sure that how is your ad not going to be in front of some horrifying piece of content right if you don't want like hey it's Kellogg's cornflakes and then and then we're showing like a monster truck exploding or something that's that's pretty tame compared to what they were I'm trying we're I'm like I think we all know what we're referring to without actually going down that and sure sure but yeah you're describing that they're two totally different situations I there is a possibility that it becomes harder for youtubers to make money on YouTube with the new chrome standards but at the same time they do seem a little bit they'd seem like separate topics yep yeah hey Bob before we move on Jr Garcia in the chat he's a McDonald's you guys want anything yeah yes what do you take fish fillet I'll come on I love fish fillet I'm kidding I'm gonna stand by that forget 20 piece chicken nuggets double that for me barbecue sauce yep is this was that nad yeah wow that was enough to know that's the way you get the atom there's a native that I one underwriting I i want that Jonathan I 359 I want that check McDonald's Big Mac big back back back I want that Grand Mac Tessa I'm not kidding about that I'm like one day I'm gonna get drunk enough ago that's a good idea and happened yet I as you got a shout out in the chat from Brian Kerrigan Karen Karen gani says hey I as hello I'm you got fam thank you nobody loves that for me hey Ben I'm a fan imagine soggy asks how long till Facebook does a google and makes a parent company like alphabet they are a auditing just a social network with the f8 initiatives it's a good question however watchin however like what really changed when alphabet was created I mean it was a different parent structure and I kind of allowed the like the CEOs have alphabet to be a little bit more hands-off with Google's day-to-day you know like they installed a like a CEO for Google proper but at the same time Facebook essentially operates in the same way already they just haven't renamed it I don't know something goofy that that's like the parent company above facebook I think it's really about the the leaders like how hands-on they want to be and when it came to Google they're like well we want to save the planet and eradicate disease and be a search engine and then we also want to have self-driving cars and like we really are all over the map that facebook i still think they have some kind of singular vision as to sell you add to know everything about you and it's through VR AR and through but they would connect people well yeah that's still a singular vision compared to what is driving self-driving car have to do with search ads I'm not really sure just yet other than it's picking up where you went it could track you as well I think it's more likely the facebook which is kind of quietly itself become a larger entity without actually rebranding itself repositioning itself it's a mission statement is stayed fairly clear that's the thing i think zuckerberg really believes in the idea of connecting people but also make sure facebook is the way people are being connected yeah vs how else can we catch what other things we want to do i could see them if it's Zuckerberg and he wants another company he will start another company got like musk does were just like I'm just gonna come up with a third company fourth company yeah the musk yeah the musca model the musk model is definitely a different one where he starts siloed separate companies I would argue that Facebook Amazon and alphabet are all very similar and their business models where they're essentially tech conglomerates that they include a bundles of different tech companies within the companies themselves it's just alphabet was the most a present or it's the most node ssible one because they created the superstructure of alphabet I things ups like Bezos that kind of thing if you want you can want to have an Amazon go ahead you won't have the Washington Post go ahead you want to have this but it's not like they're really connected mmhmm yeah Matthew gives been a shout out I'll be chased by Assad giving I as a second shout out thank you sorry I as is currently in the lead in the league this isn't as much a question but i like this comment is phrasing don says lots of malware gets spread on legit websites through their ad company the site doesn't know and the ad company says another company responsible we've seen this recently everyone just points fingers and the problem is never solved do I think that possibly this chrome initiative could start to kind of whittle that down the point of this was not related to malware at least that's what the journal story mentioned it does not mention malware however I think Google is in a very good position is in a better position than a lot of other tech companies to try to pull some of those nasty ads out so that would be great if something like that were to happen I think there's maybe a likelihood that it's an inevitability that would start to just kind of filter out the riffraff mm-hmm I think the problem two is is that like what if a site completely innocent of what was going on Google ends up like dropping the hammer on them because they had malware in one of their ads and then all of a sudden they lose alt here that'll wake them up you can't detain you can't be an absentee site owner that's what's going on with YouTube right now though there's lots of innocent casualties going on after all of this mm-hmm mmhmm yeah well it's the Internet is very big and very complicated and it's all based in algorithms yeah and being able to push through any of these efforts ends up resulting in those types of situations those innocent casualties because it's just really complicated and it takes a long time to get it right youtube always has a lot of growing pains from the very beginning before the google days so i think this is just another thing they got to figure out at they're going along when they first did the DMCA takedowns that was being abused like crazy they figured a way around this they'll figure a way around this latest problem i'm pretty sure dmca takedowns fill me in on that the DMCA takedown dmca Digital Millennium Copyright Act oh oh right thank you thank you guys come on I just forgot the acronym as you pull into the lead dhruv Assad and Yahoo all shout out Ben oh let's yahoo after my heart let's throw in one more single question before we close it out and this is semi related but not totally related gaming papaya asks why is Google not supporting Mac OS 10.7 point five anymore I don't know how old is that what are they up to now TenPoint 12 or something now is it 12 I don't know I on keep track I'd say it's a guy know where it's that company go ahead and call us out in the jab we don't keep it's uh I don't I don't know the answer to that specific question so I mean that's online somewhere I mean remember when Microsoft had internet explorer for Mac that was a thing was a big deal and they're like he never mind doing that anymore you got drawn line somewhere maybe the there's some kind of issues with Mac os10 back then also you can get a free upgrade anyway not the ones like work around guys like why are you bothering to have the old OS unless you have this mission critical machine you must run the OS that's really old there's yeah yeah no reason for a 10.7 machine right now don't sorry about that except maybe some somewhere around this office since some of CBS's also where one's a little dinosaur II entirely possible I keep one on 10.9 just for that hmm but that's besides that and probably information that I don't need to disclose to the public you heard nothing yeah pay no attention to the man behind the curtain alright that's probably good place to wrap it up let's call the week let's call it a week hey before we go we want to mention that we're gonna try something a little different this week we've had requests for extra stuff to listen to I guess you guys just really love the sound of our voices yeah so we're going to go ahead and try to start putting out an extended edition for the weekend you can opt-in opt-out of it it's just going to pop up after the regular four-day week you know 353 minute 59 second podcast feed on Fridays you'll get the option to download an extended episode we're just going to pick one of the episodes during the week that either seem to have the most interesting content best engagement most commentary but you'll get the whole post show that we do here on YouTube in the audio podcast on stitch itunes etc etc etc right um I guess we'll start tomorrow are gonna start tomorrow okay so we'll see how it goes and yeah thanks for the requests it's always great hearing from the viewers and the listener so and is thank you for coming thank you for having me yes alright let's let's do it end of a good week the 359 podcast is available on itunes tune in stitcher SoundCloud feedburner and google play music and of course on cnet com thanks everybody have a great weekend