Gadgetory

on Thursday February 8th it's episode 353 of the 359 podcast on BVG and your host today our alfred Inge and Joanie Saltzman good morning everybody what up we have a stack show that's not about the Super Mario Brothers Super Show as it would have been given about 30 seconds ago if you'd been in the room with us because we can't stop talking about it well toad is definitely a mushroom toad is not a mushroom toad is a pure throat as a citizen of the Mushroom Kingdom it doesn't make him a sentencer true but like it's clearly not a hat anyways real headlines today all right yeah we've got some big stories today one talking about our scoop from yesterday on nest rejoining Google and essentially what that's gonna mean for Amazon coming up and Joan had taken a look at Comcast you know new channels for the Winter Olympics which they're saying is gonna make it much easier for you to watch you know curling or that's the only Winter Olympics yeah so yeah yeah we got a big show today anyways everybody hang out we're gonna come back and take questions and comments from you about today's subjects as well as pretty much anything else you feel like throwing in after we record the allegedly 3 min and 59 second long audio podcast so hang out we'll see in the chat in a 3 minutes of 59 seconds from 3 2 1 welcome to the 359 I'm Alfred Inge I'm Joanie Salzmann and there's Roger Cheng behind you yesterday's seen at first reported a big scoop that Google and nest the smart home company known for their thermostats were getting back together so ness used to be a part of Google and then split into its own company when Google became alphabet but you know Google's been trying to get into the smart home game to with its home assistant an array of smart home speakers it makes a lot of sense for these two companies to get back together but it kind of puts Amazon in this awkward position so you know if you haven't been keeping up Google and Amazon are rivals with each other over their smart speakers Amazon which isn't really a mystery you know Amazon's Alexa dominates more than 60% of the market while Google's struggling to find its place our Amazon reporter Ben Fox took a look at what that means for their weird relationship you know he basically laid out the worst case scenario would be that you know Amazon no longer sells nest products while Google makes sure that nest products don't work if Amazon speaker Alexa anymore I mean do you see that actually happening though between the two you know you would think that that's something that would be and it so works against consumers you think that could never happen but the fact is it has you know not too long ago it was just over I think the holiday season leading up to the holiday season that Google is like we're sick of Amazon not selling chromecast because they're threatened by us we're just gonna take Amazon's video off of our streaming media product yeah and then they also had taken YouTube off of Amazon right like streaming products ooh it's weird it's every time this gets brought up you know I always have to bring up the fact that you know when these two giants like go to battle with each other it's kind of like us that losses that they're using consumers as a pawn in their own battles which you know isn't fair to consumers yes definitely not consumer friendly and the thing is is that like these kind of tactics have worked for that ma'am asan did put out a statement around January I believe or so saying that yes we're gonna start selling chromecast again right which actually I haven't seen yet I have not seen chromecast but I haven't checked in yet see it'll be interesting especially because the Smart Home space and you know the voice of system space is so competitive between them right now it'll be interesting to see how they compete against each other so been noted in this article that they kind of can't do this like scorched earth approach to each other and they kind of have to be like frenemies in the sense of like they rely on each other you know Google does sell other products like a ton of Chromebooks and their pixel phone on Amazon meanwhile Amazon does rely on Google a lot to get on search results when people like look for product so kind of like we hate you but we also need you kind of yeah usually they operate as frenemies but sometimes they just become enemies yeah so next up Jonah you had the opportunity to check out Comcast a new set of virtual channels for the Olympics right yeah so the Olympics is uh it kicks off today there's gonna be 2400 hours of coverage so much that if you wanted to watch it all it would take you three months assuming you never slept so how do you figure out how to watch all of it and win what Comcast is doing is they're testing out this new feature virtual channels it strings together video kind of like playlist focused on one subject like maybe gold medal moments or biggest upsets or it can be dedicated to a specific sport so what Comcast does is they use the Olympics when they have all this coverage to test out new features so if you're a Comcast subscriber you might see something like this rolling out other kinds of programming to yeah that makes a lot more sense than what it actually is because every Olympics that I ever watched like oh that's on it this time I had no idea or right when I put on like the channel that it's on it's like why's archery on I don't care about I don't care about this or like shooting like that's weird I want to watch like the USA but do you think given that they have all these kind of advanced features is that enough for you to want to sign up for assuming you didn't live in New York where we don't get Comcast what you sign up for Comcast for no I don't pay for cable ever I also don't care about the Winter Olympics it's Summer Olympics all the way right right yeah so if you like these stories or more check us out on SEANET I'm Alfred hang I'm Joni sauceman thanks for watching so let me just say is a very very poor sports fan American citizen world citizen I totally forgot to do a live picture starting today but let me just say this is an awesome idea and I never thought I'd use these words Comcast had an awesome idea that's the funny thing is people hate Comcast I mean and that's not like surveys show cable companies is fantastic yeah they are those is the worst company at least like poorly most poorly rated companies on in America otherwise because of their serve no but this is the thing people who have x1 their high tech cable service they may hate Comcast but they love excellent because it really is whenever I get to MS from them like oh my god this is amazing but it also does cost a lot of money and you have to be in an area where Comcast yeah and yeah I know I don't care about the way I think it's a good idea and it's a good approach to TV I feel like they you know other networks should be doing something like that yeah in the sense of like if I only wanted to watch like cartoons from before 2005 like there should be like a playlist yes so it starts with the Olympics Comcast likes to use the Olympics where they have like it's just like a salt of different kinds of video to play around with their technology and figure out what they can do with it with the idea that they could the guy that I talk to you there Matt Strauss who's in charge of the Xfinity services he says they could potentially have an infinite number of channels ones that also work not only with editors curators but with algorithms that can cater to people like to your own that would be really cool Adi I think of like the YES Network which I think is only available in New York because it they only play Yankees and Knicks games yeah and when there's not a game going on they'll play like classic games from them which is really sad because like they just keep rerunning the same 90s like Nick stuff but yeah I mean III think like you know curated channels would be really cool in the sense you know you don't have to get like a whole new network for that it because there's that one lining your story where it says like you know TV channels are basically just playlists yeah and yeah it'd be cool if somebody could you if you could arrange that yourself I feel like that would be even like cooler you know yeah I think the idea that comcast is going for is kind of like the Netflix mentality where you could do it yourself you could be a Spotify like user and make your own playlists but if you know Spotify has discover weekly they make it easy for you that's kind of the idea making it easy so you don't have to do the work of finding the playlist that you love mm-hmm you have any questions what we do have one I'm not sure if this is really something we can talk about but Scott Maya this guy thank you Scott for being in our chat because you constantly fish out really really great stories to cover for us sometimes very sensitive stuff too I tell you I've seen as ever hiring we might want to recommend this guy top-secret Apple source code for iOS leaked and posted to github this morning opening a new dangerous avenue for hackers what are your thoughts do we want to go down the sucess here about I boot I've been following this this morning we haven't done a story on it yet but our sister publication ZDNet has like pretty much everything that you need to know about it so this is originally from a report from motherboard from the folks over at vice so the iboot source code it was from iOS 9 and it leaked on github ores like everything is kind of pretty much on there and you know a part of it like when you you can dig through the source code and like CI the iOS is like boot chain like the process of like what happens when an iOS device is switched on this is really valuable for a lot of like hackers only because iOS like source code is extremely rare like it's really hard to tell like how to crack like basically iPhones are really secure and most iOS devices are really secure because they keep their source code so secretive and with this you know hackers are able to look at the source code and basically like dig through to find what where the vulnerabilities are I mean the good news is that you know this is the source code for iOS 9 and we're on like iOS 11 now but the idea is you know just because you're on a different iOS version doesn't mean that it completely changes it you know they probably use some of the like stuff from the old source code into it like it's not an entirely new thing so that's like the biggest concern of it currently that and you know it's it can definitely be used to compromise a lot of iOS devices currently you know with more research I'm glad you had more details on that yes that one sword right over my head yeah I was following it this morning but I'm trying to figure out like it what ways to do a story on it other than you know the news that had already broken let's talk a little bit more about television entertainment before we swing back around and get back on the nest Google can we call it the buckles it's going back into another one and they haven't done anything yet I sincerely don't think they'll go like full like worst case scenario like what Ben had written about but and the benefits that are there that are possible are that yes if nest and Google aren't operating as these separate entities if there's closer collaboration between them it could make nest have a better product yeah have more AI chops - yeah they are they're planning so right now because like they're just joining together is still gonna be like working a little bit like separately throughout 2018 but they do have like their roadmap like for like the next two years now on how they're gonna work together and like collaborate with their products yeah but I mean like you said earlier they all these let's let's go ahead and call what it is pissing matches it's the consumer that pays for it in the long run we get caught in the Riptide we had caught in the crossfire from what you mentioned with Google's and an Amazon and now nest and everything when is this going to actually I'm getting way too heavy on this very when are when are they gonna stop being I'm dick bags only stop fiend dick bags well that's so I don't know if we can even answer if not in this in this case because nothing's really happened yet wasn't what I think I think you have to get to a point where like one is like clearly the dominant like winner here in the sense of you know it's like we're not even gonna try to compete with you anymore and we're just gonna like integrate our products and with you it's kind of like but there are some Isis out there that are just are that there are no brainers where these things should be cooperating yeah yes it they're their license to print money I think the idea is though is that like I think every company right now it's gonna be very competitive in the like smart speaker space only because they know that that's the gateway drug into like smart homes and they know that like I think I think about viral infections at home yeah I think I think a lot of people understand I'll I should by 2012 analysts have written by by 2020 like we're gonna spend like something to the tune of like 1.1 trillion dollars on like IOT devices and the thing is like you know I think companies like Google Apple and Amazon are looking at that and thinking that's a lot of money and we should like be able to get like be the ones in control of that it's the same way and you know when Apple like Apple is pretty much like got like a strong control of like the smartphone market and I think that's kind of the cash grab or like you know attention people are paying to like smart speakers right now yeah so yeah I can understand why they're being really aggressive about it I think at one point one one of them is going to emerge as like the dominant like company and all the other companies like yeah will will like make sure our stuff work that works with yours but they're so but also it goes it should be said that generally more competition is better for consumers it's only when we have these sort of duopoly x' or monopolies where one company or two companies are really duking it out to each other they have the power to be able to put consumers in the middle mm-hm usually you have to be putting the consumer first to actually get consumers to like you well I'll let you know if I can't come in to work tomorrow because I have an ecommerce infection let's talk a little about TV again Christopher Osborn this is a great bit to think on this might take a second do you think cable is going towards an all on-demand kind of service where shows no longer come on a certain time but they're always just kind of available to stream so instead of tuning in to CBS to watch whatever they want at any given time you choose whatever CBS show you want wow that depends on the media you're consuming further away but it's definitely moving in that direction it's actually interesting that you ask that so Comcast like I said they like to use the Olympics as a way to test out new features one of the things that they tested during the Rio Olympics and the Sochi Olympics was this idea of making a live broadcast basically on-demand almost as soon as it starts becoming live so that if you drop in like 15 minutes into a program you could jump back to the very beginning without having to put it on your DVR without having to think about it in advance and so that's kind of getting closer and closer to that everything is just on-demand world what's holding it back is the fact that the people that make TV and the people that distribute TV are usually different companies and the people that make TV make money with advertising and you can get the most money from advertising if you can get people to watch at an appointed time and prove that they're actually there and so that's what's holding back from the sort of Netflix model becoming how everybody operates is that people are still people that make TV still need to find ways to get you to watch at specific time so they can get those advertising dollars but that's it's it's becoming less and less it's definitely moving in the direction of watch it whenever you want that's a really great by the way I just want to say thank you for lining that up that was a fantastic way to kind of put it in common terms I think far as why can't we just have TV when we want it like there I just happen there's still logic and reasoning behind it and yes it's largely business based but there is also programming structure and it applies to societal norms so they can sure I was gonna ask isn't that why you know they're also heavily invested in Hulu and like they're all just like taking their stuff off of Netflix yeah so well if we're talking about Comcast we are seeing so what we're seeing you asked a lot of different kind of things so that's what I do haha bloated Alfred by asking a very vague question you've touched on many very important specific questions so yeah so calm so talking about Hulu Comcast is one of the owners of Hulu so is Disney so is Fox and to a lesser extent Time Warner which is the owner of HBO and and other and CNN other networks so that who has always been a weird case where it's like frenemies like we were talking before where they're people that they're working together on Hulu but they're also competing against other each other on normal TV it's nobody really know who lose a weird case but when you talk about pulling stuff off Netflix that's an example of where Disney how to deal with Netflix to put like like Moana and all the Star Wars movies they had been going to Netflix Disney said you know what we're just gonna have our own streaming service cuz we don't want you to be getting the benefit of Netflix we don't want you to be getting the benefit of on-demand watching which is how everybody's starting to do things over the internet so they're gonna be lunch Disney's gonna launch their own streaming service and instead of giving it all their goods to Netflix anymore just to pivot back real quick to the today Apple leak there's a fantastic conversation that I'm watching in the chat right now between imagine sake and and pakodi a couple of a regular shout out guys I just couldn't resist I'm not gonna go into details about it but they're talking about how how wrong Apple is how failed Apple is on a larger scale like wow they just can't can't keep it together anymore and MP Cody points out like well they're still making money they're printing money and then imagine saga goes once upon a time Kmart was the king of discounts Rome didn't fall in a day I just thought it was a good lie oh don't remind me I miss Blockbuster but that's a conversation for another day let's go and talk to serene joy for a second something I asked yesterday we must have missed it apologies Google will be launching its own ad blocker for Chrome currently in beta can this lead into Amazon ads being stifled during the tension between them so I think the answer is technologically yes politically it's a dangerous idea especially because there's been my my reaction would be that especially since there's been so much focus on the googles and the Facebook's about all the like Russian influence in the election the fact that Congress and the public is kind of on high alert for how these companies are being bad actors or failing to be good actors it would be reckless to make that kind of business decision to make that it'd be a reckless strategy to do that but I think that they could I don't think there's anything stopping them except for I mean I think the risks of all of their ad dollars like comes from Amazon you know a lot of the times like if people want to buy a product like this isn't even on Amazon itself it's just like local businesses or small businesses that like want to sell like I don't know Tide Pods or something and then yeah it like always redirects back to Amazon so either way like Amazon kind of wins out on this like no matter like what they're blocking alright if you say so we've got just a couple minutes left we'll pivot back into talking well this is not absolutely related but it definitely stems off of the conversation between Google and nest realigning Matthew dacher I know this is an old trope but imagine if the auto industry and let's go ahead and broaden that out into any other industry is a separate and segregated as the new technologies we have like the home assistance imagine if other industries and companies behave the way this ecosystem between the Google Apple Amazon pissing matches were out there what would what kind of world would we live in so the idea is that what if like like a car company had to source a code you know like a phone needs a Snapdragon processor and a Google and a Gorilla Glass and they need to assemble this is like this bizarre puzzle piece thing yeah even that was so much overhead into it imagine if cars had to exist that way and of course I know cars are made out of separate parts but they're largely built on the assembly line kind of approach where it's pre existing partnerships kind of thing yeah even like Apple and Samsung aren't like that because Samsung does like make a bunch of like iPhones and they're like outside factories so what you're saying is like Ford should make Tigers for Chevy or something I'm saying they don't have this like weird relationship but like if it wasn't obvious we don't all know a lot about cars here but that was still a good question but that's why I said like apply it to other places how could we come up with a good analogy for I don't know food or something like something that everybody understands and knows as opposed to the way that the tech companies are currently behaving like what's the behavior I mean that's kind of like what it's like that's kind of like what it's like going on between like Spotify and title right now we're like jay-z's just taken to all his music off of and then Apple music has like the same thing where's like we you can only listen like Frank Ocean and like chance the rapper for here for like the first three weeks before it gets on Spotify or anything like that right Christopher Osborn is thrown in a good analogy that's that kind of works is you can only gas up your Chevy at a marathon gas station that's that's kind of a good way to approach oh I think I think relating to USBC versus thunderbolt versus etc etc etc is another good way to look at it is how you're just you're so stuck into a very specific process to try and get your smart device or whatever go yeah I think that maybe the reason we can't think of analogies because that kind of proprietary behavior generally doesn't give you it works good in the short term but not in the long term with notable exceptions like Apple is like a classic place where they love their walled gardens and they keep it that way but in other industries that maybe aren't quite as new you know computing on the in in the world of consumers buying things and they're being industries it's computing is relatively new it's possible I'm not you know a competition expert but I see I imagine that in the early days of automotives maybe there was a lot more exclusivity well here's another great expansion on the concept from dacher the old trope was that in cars the accelerator pedal couldn't be in the same place amongst different manufacturers and we see that with phones now where you got the touch idea in the back you got the face idea in the front you got the lift awake you got the all this and that to just get the damn thing working yeah I imagine the the pedal analogy I imagine the I imagine I don't know I'm not a history expert on an old Trump to be honest but let's say that was a little over my head too but I'm glad he brought it up I imagine that was it was that like a regulatory was that a regulatory like precept or was it something that no but I have to imagine how to cooperate that a must otherwise people would die like if you thought you were putting slamming on the brakes and you're really accelerating people that's why I imagine it's something that like a government came in and said hey it needs to be here or else everyone's gonna be running into each other killing up honestly I don't know but now I actually do want to research this so we'll look it up for the conversation and a later show but I mean you got to think there are still exceptions to for people who have disability you have different accelerators available then yeah arm's length and that's enough I mean a DA that's also where government has to step in so maybe it could be an instance where government has to step in if Amazon and Google start taking consumers and making them pawns in their in their competition maybe no I'm sad sad we have to end the show on that I know let's go ahead and look to the future what we got still coming up well this is the it for us for the week but next week is going to be a regular series of regular shows and then the week following that we've got the episode 359 of the 359 show it's a three hours and 59 minutes podcast we're gonna be partnering up with Mouse a nonprofit that that basically tries to encourage more you know more of the youths into stem research the youths and yeah they'll be they'll be joining us for a show and you know it's gonna be a jam-packed episode we're gonna have a lot of our reviewers on if you want to ask about TV you want to ask about VR you want to ask about you know speakers cameras I think cameras alright is um yeah it is karna nut carnie yeah it's still formula forming up but the short list right now includes Dan Ackerman with laptops David Katz Mayer TVs and Scott Stein with ER arv our wearables and wearables and then Bridget Carey with toys and gadgets and kind of somewhere in between I as all been joining us to hopefully for a top-five episode of the 350 I is gonna talk a la arts our top 5 359 episodes so that'll be on Wednesday February 21 first we'll still start at the normal time and you're still gonna get the regular first you know four minute audio headline followed by the standard 20 or so minute of Q&A that we do every single day and then we're going to build on there and have the director from mark lesser to the director of Mouse he's gonna come on the show for a while we're gonna try to get everyone involved to try to help encourage the youths the youths to learn more to help Mouse out with their organization and then just serve up a ton of stuff to fill in the gaps just so that we can have the excuse to sit in here for four straight hours that's pretty much why we came up with there right yeah so it'll be a fun marathon day we hope to see you there and until then we hope you have a good weekend who wants to take us home today III guess I'll do it so if you liked what you heard today check us out on cnet.com our podcast is also available on cnet.com as well as itunes tune in stitcher feedburner google play music the amazon echo and once again cnet.com alright take care everybody we'll see you on Monday you