Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Alfred Eng Google did a good job of wowing the crowd at its IO developer conference this week but it left out a lot of questions related to privacy and data collection to areas that are getting much more attention these days following Facebook's Cambridge analytical scandal Alfred do you see this as a bit of an oversight on Google's part or do you think that it's okay why would they do this it's not like Google is stuck in it I don't think it's that much of an oversight I think that you know they kind of follow Facebook's idea of we provide a really great like service for free so you can you know but we need your data to do it in the same way like all the features that they showed off like Oh Google assistant now knows like where you work so you can like have your map like lead you to it using AI very easily that like essentially means that Google like has all this information on you already and they still showed it off so it felt it looked very bold in the sense of like hey we know like what time you're gonna wake up we know what time you get home we know where you work but you know check it out we've got all these cool features to help you out with it like the Google photos feature that they showed off it was like hey we can colorize like some of your old photos now using AI that also means that like they have complete access to like all your photos and like your childhood memories and all that stuff so I think a lot of tech companies these days are also trying to present the trade-offs and they understand that users are getting a little bit savvy or a little bit more uncomfortable with providing too much information to them so they say look you can you can delete this information you can get rid of it or we don't have to hold it for you but the quality of this service is going to be worse I feel like Google says that Facebook says that too these days and I don't know maybe maybe consumers I'm gonna get yeah if you want a service that really doesn't have that much information on you but you still want good AI I mean look at Siri on Apple like look at how it compares that you know Google's AI it's not that much info yeah and it's not that good related to the Facebook scandal Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee today released more than three thousand Facebook ads bought by Russian trolls from 2015 to 2017 tene Alfred you wrote about this did we learn anything new with this big data dump yes I spent a good amount of time looking at the ads last night and this morning so I found the most successful Facebook ad it was a back of the badge group that got more than a million views on it and it only cost them about like a thousand dollars to get that many views and and they they went across like a lot of different spectrums so the second most viewed was like a pro Mexico Facebook page they got about nine hundred thousand views on it so they really you know hit all the targets here so they're just trying to like incite chaos like you said they're trying to hit a yeah although every trigger possible there were there were nine different categories on it that I'll probably talk about in the post yeah yeah okay let's get to the next story also Spotify is going to be banning or burying hateful quote hateful music or artists this is already being dubbed the r.kelly rule because apparently r kelly is gonna get bounced from playlists and also gonna get buried on Spotify it definitely raises I think questions about where does this it does this give Spotify too much power but who knows I mean I think Spotify is looking at its role as like a radio station a lot more because radio stations do this a lot there was a radio station in Detroit that said it would never play any Kanye West songs ever again after the always like Twitter rants like that's totally political though but okay I mean I think they have a right to choose what they want on their platform though it'll be interesting to see how Spotify decides what's hateful and what is and I remember last year they also banned a lot of white supremists like rock bands off of Spotify so it's not like this is the first time they've done anything like this okay last US Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao yesterday announced ten projects to test out using drones in US skies I think this one's pretty exciting FedEx is going to be involved in testing out delivery drones in airports there's also going to be delivery of medical packages like the fibula defibrillators Amazon though wasn't included in this latest round of approvals anyway we're out of time so if you want to read more about these stories check us out on CNN I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Alfred Eng thanks for listening that's actually our new sign off song I like that so where it is spot if I stand if I just hate something don't be a musician Yeah right I don't know it's a good controversial issue I would say now has it because like like what what about First Amendment what about like what what actually like counts as hateful speech Spotify is a private service Spotify is a private opt-in service Alfred I'm glad you brought the comparison up excuse me to a radio station because I feel that's exactly the case and you have every right to just cancel your Spotify account and move somewhere else to get the content you want that's screens supposed to be blue don't worry about that it's the same deal is like a chord cutter I don't want to watch TV because I don't like what's on TV if Spotify doesn't deliver the content I want I'll go elsewhere I for one don't care for our Kelly at me bros wait a minute what about the kanye west point that you were making yeah but that's like leaven right well like July Kanye West supporting the president should I mean I'm like I yeah like I said like I think I think the privately owned radio station I mean I think it's more than him just supporting the president but that's for another thing I mean it like I said it'll be interesting to see like what they consider hate speech because like there's a lot of people that think that Beyonce is is like an anti-police like Black Panther protester kind of thing but like I'm I think a lot of people will disagree with that so it's like where is Spotify is like perspective on this right I I think the broader message here is that like everything is getting more political a lot of businesses of are now being asked to take sides in a lot oh yeah like social and political culture wars that are going on Spotify is obviously decided that they want to weigh in but you raise like the obvious point which is how do you determine what is hateful yeah when you mention the thing about like white supremacist rock bands like I don't know I'm sitting here being like yeah that makes a lot of sense you know but like when you're gonna go and bring it to Arkell who has not actually been charged he's only been accused of things that puts it more into a gray area yeah I think I think the the push for this has come from a lot of folks that have wanted a lot of radio stations to basically boycott or Kelly and take him off the airwaves for a long time and it's not really like it's not the content of his music more so that like you know if he there's all these allegations against him I'm circling around him for a night very well and I think it's more of a boycott perspective of you know stop helping this man make millions of dollars and like supporting him there's there's a difference and with somebody like an are Kelly that is a news headline making controversy as opposed to somebody just not wanting to do this because they don't like it what's more wrong me being a DJ at a radio station saying I'm never gonna play Hall & Oates again because I think they suck which would never be the case cuz I absolutely love yeah that's weird why did you use them as an example because I always played a hollow notes in fact I was told to play less hollow notes when I was oh by the way I want to correct myself our Kelly was charged he was just he wasn't convicted thank you but I mean that's just statistics at play if you really look at it at least to me that's people saying like no he does kind of objectively suck at everything why would I want to support this because it does better business for me well there's a lot of people who agree and don't want to hear our Kelly songs anymore because they're disgusted by his B it's also interesting to see like if Spotify is doing this I wonder where other platforms will go like I don't know if like Netflix would do the same thing with like Louie and all their specials that they paid him millions for I think I feel like HBO already did that they are definitely show on Netflix though HBO got rid of the louis c.k comedy specials yeah but what about the like like it's yeah it'll platform when Netflix is different yeah so that's why I'm wondering like if Spotify is doing something like this I wonder like how will influence like other platforms hmm here's the ultimate question coming in from APEC in the chat that's what I was wondering what would they consider hate speech who draws a line and rules and why does everything have to be about politics getting sick of Touche I think what matters is it doesn't matter because Spotify although it is it's publicly traded right mm-hmm it is now it's still privately it's a private it's a business so they can make a choice about their product I mean that's the core of privileged American right system as it is well not not exactly I mean like you're not allowed to discriminate as a business in a variety of ways now this discriminatory against our Kelly public figures are not protected by slander and libel in all cases well put well you guys are making very good points about this I think Spotify has the right to do whatever the hell they want with the content that they publish I mean like I just want any label they can write something they decide robbing our society to excessively limit things they put too many things in the bucket of this is hateful because I don't like Hall and Oates like the example that you were putting proposing everybody knows you know but people aren't gonna use the service anymore because they're being like way to restrict exactly and as we've had brought up so many times in recent memory especially when Jones here there are lots of fantastic alternatives out there to find the content you want and they're all pretty ok price these days it's just it's really interesting when you when you thought about music as a sense of like you know protest music or any kind of like um like it's supposed to be like an like an artistic thing so like would you consider like any songs by like NWA like like a hateful song about like police or anything like that now that's a question right grab salut possibly or like the YouTube video from childish gambino which is like you know kind of goes across the board is that is that hateful i I mean like I wouldn't perceive it that way but listen as long as it's like a hateful or violence like it was obviously violent but it was done with a political message in mind so that's very true and if we start going down that path all we're gonna have left on Spotify is VeggieTales VeggieTales very hateful okay interested to see where this goes just being somebody with the history and music I'm glad we added in this very last well it's always good discussion and I'm glad we're not getting too overly biased and political with it but if you're in the chat let's hear what you think who's an artist and be serious let's take this one seriously because it could be easily run with the joke's on this one who do you think Spotify is likely to drop from the roster who do you think deserves a Ted Nugent there you go man seriously I washed in a bowl why would he be questionable why because a gun lover no no absolutely not but because he's made some off-color okay that's also very anti-muslim that's okay all right those are good points he literally threatened to shoot the president yeah the figure much YG's song like that's that would be considered like eight fall under this I don't all right yeah there's a lot of like gray area here extremely there's an area where do you draw the line with artistic integrity and expression Saji also threatened to shoot the president so yeah there is takes all sides whoof all right next topic good discussion Ryan Williams wants to talk about the privacy not so much once to talk about the privacy brings up a good point and I'm kind of with Ryan on this one personally I don't mind having Google have all that information since I don't really have anything to hide but it's and it's only to help you or so I hope and it's just like I'm with him on that as far as that goes is it a summary slope it's a trust issue exactly I mean I'm glad that you know he's willing to trust Google and it's different for everybody but I've never really been a fan of the argument of you know you don't have anything to hide so you should let people like see all your information I don't then opt out yeah you don't want it opt out of Google or say it's almost impossible to opt out of Google entire I mean you can just not use don't use products how would you do that like how is that even possible Yahoo Bing DuckDuckGo knows like privacy concerns Firefox there are alternatives there are apps here's the fun part they're all mining your data yeah I mean you would have to really go out of your way to do that and Google just makes it oh so easy to just hand over all your information yep so it's it's like the point that you were making in the podcast like they know where your your workplace is it's like Google knows where my house is and Google's known where my house is and like what what like GPS location I'm in on a daily basis at all time so it's just that's that's been yeah I think for a year I think of it more as like a necessary type of information like if you were asking somebody like how to get like home from where you are like just let random stranger on the street and he's like okay well where do you live and you're like no I want my privacy okay like that it's like you need to hand over some type of information to like to get help in that sense so I understand like why Google has some of this data but it was just interesting that you know they were so like brazen about it we're just like no look forget it like we've got all these cool amazing features don't don't worry about us knowing all this but anyway yeah I've always come from the mindset of like do they really care about you you're nothing more than a blip you're a number you're a statistic no but they really care about selling that firm for tons of money sure and I'll keep saying try to sell me something I want yeah I still I know it's a weak argument but I'm still in that mindset of you know I don't really have anything to hide all right let's take this conversation to the point of what people were talking about with Facebook f8 where they were like I should Facebook have a paid service where they're not packaging your data to sell ads to you or or to sell advertisements your information and a lot of people thought that that was a great idea Facebook Plus Facebook subscription service there's my personally would never hurt my face there's been a lot of like consumer studies on that and like no one really wants to pay for that I'd say like maybe like one in ten people would pay for that I would also assume that those one in ten people have probably have the money to spare on that right or that one in ten people isn't on Facebook ya know and I don't think the numbers even that high Josh Boyd who says I don't mind if Google has my information if it makes my life a little more convenient Ryan goes on to expand I guess the thing is the worst thing that can happen with Google having your information someone hacking and stealing your info so it's not about Google having it's about Google not protecting it and then Demonte said the same thing we don't know the people at Google so really what is the tipping point for everybody are you scared of somebody else abusing this are you scared of I know I may be scared it's not the right word are you concerned that Google just has too much what are you willing to trade for the services that come with giving up a little bit of your privacy honestly even with like hacking in your information getting stolen I don't think that's enough for you to get to get people to stop using Google I mean like oh I'm not saying people are gonna stop yeah and to be fair to Google the likelihood of Google getting hacked is much lower than you know some know named smart home company that like makes a device in their house like they they have more controls and more protections than some of the startups yeah but I'm just like yo Facebook like had the scandal of its life you know just last month and there's still kind of like dealing with it but like the whole delete Facebook movement that looked like it was like growing is like completely dead now there's like there's no tweets about that and like they actually they made more money even after the Cambridge analytical scandal scandal like people stayed on Facebook like there was all this outrage over in Congress but like you go you go to like Main Street you go and like somebody's home or something like that no one is like has left Facebook like people don't really care I would say that like in my own personal life that scandal did resonate on Main Street like III talked to people like on the weekend my neighbor's whatever they actually recognized and they paid attention to that story outside world are they still using Facebook for us yeah then of course but it was at least something that was that was recognized oh yeah I think that that matters to the point that Facebook is now on notice and if they screw up again everybody's gonna remember this situation and I I do think that is important because some of those problems could potentially compound after a while I mean historically speaking we've always wanted to know more about each other and ways to exploit it I mean looking back at the Nielsen box even though that does still exist it's valuable but that's just to track your TV watching habits in order to better cater Talib commercial and look at the census i mean people are just finding new ways to delve deeper if you could put a Nielsen box on everybody they would oh wait they have in your brains in your pocket actually saw a Nielsen box for the first time I've never seen one my well my girlfriend's mom has one what and you have like this remote that like you can Dex like so it's like there's designated like who's watching buttons is there an incognito version or like it yeah it is they're not watching TV paid for it though oh that's pretty yeah I think that's why she does it pretty minimal yeah anyway let's switch over to the drone topic real quick before I round up for the day APEC says for the drones are they going to be using that drop service here in the US and if so wouldn't millions of drones flying overhead dropping things off cause some issues oh to be clear this is very small limited highly regulated testing that's going on we are not anywhere close in the u.s. to having drones flying over your heads delivering you toothpaste civilian level air traffic control no no not even close and Amazon wasn't even included in this so they've been pouring money into prime air and really trying to develop their drone delivery program at this point they weren't included in this group of ten some of these projects sound really cool it's like you know emergency defibrillator services or you know airplane inspections so you would have a drone like flying around an airplane to make sure everything's safe and everything's well taken care of but getting it to consumers that's that's gonna take a really long time or it will never get there is possibility that there's it just doesn't happen I remember I wrote a story about like three years ago about South Texas like police officers getting drones for like just in time for like the spring break rush and when I asked them like so what are you what are you using these drones for they they like gave the most wholesome answers where it's like oh we can use these if somebody's drowning out the middle of the ocean we kind of drop a life like a lifejacket off to them pretty Swift a drone I don't know that's not what you're using the drones for oh but these coded crowd control yes like yeah I was like make sure people weren't like doing drugs on like the beach or anything like they use that to patrol the beach they they didn't drop a single life jacket that weekend that's too bad because I really like the life jacket idea well going on totally awesome life saving going on that same theme living here in New York you see the traffic that emergency services have to battle just to do their jobs right now I'm not saying they could put a whole firetruck in a drone but think about but that would be on that would be dough right turns whatever why wouldn't they just get the drone with like a hose attached to it and like fly up that thing that has to be massive to get the appropriate amount of pressure behind it to actually do anything but maybe like a small truck I'm thinking more like the defibrillator concept if somebody is you know in the middle of Central Park and having a heart attack and people call emergency services it's going to take a longer time for an ambulance to get there to go through the gates and get through the traffic then for a drone dude boom right and the good news is is that this testing gets us one step closer to that but to assume that this is actually going to result in your life changing anytime soon no that's not going to happen this is this is the u.s. in particular is taking a very slow and deliberate process when it comes to drone regulation good they want to make sure that they get it right they don't want any packages falling on your head which is business we're doing something slow which is great for lyft caution it's great from a safety perspective from an innovation perspective the US has to be mindful and aware of that there are other countries out there that are being a little bit looser with their regulations and therefore may innovate a little bit faster than we do Rodney art design in the chat says the drone testing is coming to San Diego and they're looking forward to it keep us posted we want to see what you see Phyllis in his in the chat tweet at us email us let us know what your experiences you know even on the outskirts of it if you're seeing anything cool developing what the processes and experiments might be looking like if you have any kind of antigen to it one I just remember there's one really cool project where there's intercepts or drones where like if is flying somewhere it's not supposed to there's an interceptor drum like a hawk that will come and show up and and take it out I want to watch that nature documentary I want to watch like a Werner Herzog narrated in the drone drones taking out other drones the drone in the mating season punches too close to the old drone nest and then this thing the desirable word is ugh then we got to get Josh Goldman in here to do that impression probably Annette Oh oh my god I want to see that drone I want to see a fake documentary where the lot of disciplines and robots a lot of cool stuff with drones but okay just take it easy everybody because it's gonna take a long time for the robot Lords to take over hey but didn't take a long time for us to get through this show we are out of time we are ending it for the week it's been a great week is when we've covered some decent topics yeah we had to focus a lot on Google i/o but some of it was e tolling stuff did happen in Google i/o so thanks everybody for joining in the chat and Roger is still away roger is still away next week so you're stuck with us for all of next week but then he's gonna be back the week afterward for what it's worth we have no idea where he is he's completely lost or where we're sending out rescue teams rescues groans that's fine Roger so yeah yeah anyway the 3:59 podcast is available on itunes TuneIn stitcher feedburner google play music the amazon echo and of course cnet.com thanks everybody for joining in and celebrating our 400th episode effort it's and Brian it's been a real pleasure it has and everybody enjoy the weekend and stay safe out there - 400 more well then