Gadgetory

on Monday October 24th it's time for episode 128 of the 359 podcast with Ben Fox Rubin and Alfred and good morning guys good morning welcome back everybody so today we're gonna be talking about obviously the big AT&T Time Warner deal we're gonna get into more samsung galaxy note 7 I thought we were done with now it'll never be over this is like jon snow coming back to life again yeah even even worse even worse than that and then we'll end with an interesting feature that Alfred you wrote about that came out today as always send in your questions and comments Brian's going to get through them at the end of the show and yeah ready let's get moving do it and in 32 welcome to the 359 where we talk about the top tech news of the day plus whatever crap we want to throw in I'm Ben Fox Rubin now I'm out for dang alright the big news this weekend is of course a TNT's mega deal to buy Time Warner with the phone company snatching up the owner of HBO CNN and movie studios Warner Brothers the acquisition is expected to close by the end of next year so Alfred do you think this deal makes sense I think it makes perfect sense i 80 you know they were looking for a content provider hmm you know they have this giant platform that where they have you know they're trying to push out DirecTV now and you're just there online streaming service that they're going to yeah it's supposed to come in November yeah you know they're trying to you know just have more content for all their devices that they have out there and it makes perfect sense for you know to have time warner so instead of you know them trying to create their own content they have this you know giant platform what they can just take all this stuff that's already being shared like crazy i mean think about how many people tweet about Game of Thrones every Sunday and then there are going to be able to have have that I i can buy that that makes sense from 18 tease perspective but what exactly this time warner get out of this i mean like are they going to benefit from this deal in any way do you think i think they get a massive platform to be on now I mean obviously they're already on everyone's television and you know you have all these apps that you can already watch it from you can watch it from roku amazon all these different you can watch out on your TV or you log in from your smartphone but i think you know this partnership with AT&T gives them kind of more you know a place to provide more features yeah maybe yeah i'm not i'm not buying that as much I like what you said about the AT&T stuff yeah the other aspect that I think is interesting is that first of all regulators still have to approve this deal and if they do I basically think that like every telco and every media company is going to be scrambling to try to find a partner so I for one will welcome our new corporate overlords when CBS gets taken over but we'll see what happens with that I I think they're gonna have a hard time getting it through the regulator's day you know they did a conference call today and they're not worried about that at all they're kind of you know they made the same argument on Saturday that this is not a horizontal integration more so vertical and I know haven't I convinced but um you know we'll see how it goes when it gets to Capitol Hill yeah next Samsung is reportedly still trying to figure out why Galaxy Note seven phones are catching fire and that's now causing delays in the development of the upcoming Galaxy S aid so do you think Samsung is ever going to be able to pull it together this sounds really problematic that they still don't actually know why the phones had those problems I think they'll be able to pull it together I think this is you know a pretty big deal t that you should probably solve before you start you know developing your next phone you know they'd solve it before they uh the regular recall so it's kind of one of those things where it's a you know probably this is just should be priority number one I think it's a good thing that they're you know not saying we'll figure out of the next phone but I do think it's weird that they still haven't been able to figure it out yet considered a that's so many of their other devices aren't exploding you know yeah it's weird that this one you know a device has been tripping them up so hard yeah I think they will figure it out but it is surprising that it's taking time and it's expected that there would be some bleed over be fair though please take your time like yeah can you imagine how embarrassing oh to be in the next year when they drop it again I really really don't expect that to happen I would hope so last outfit you wrote a story today about a company called sesame enable which develops an app for people with physical disabilities can tell us how it works a bit yeah so it uses the front-facing camera on your phone you need an android seven point 0 device though and using that at track it scans your head and then it basically generates a cursor on your phone screen and then you move your head around you know pretty much as like a mouse mmm kind of on your screen so you don't need your hands or anything like that it's been really helpful to the paraplegic community who haven't been able to use their hands are needed a caregiver at you know control their phones for them some people have been able to use it to run their own companies now others wow you know they can make private phone calls or the one man even use it to you know order flowers for his wife who what usually was the one helping him use the phone so you can never really surprised it with anything Wow very cool well check out this story and if you want to read more about that or other stories check us out on cnet I'm Ben Fox Rubin malva I'm Alfred Aang thanks very much let's say that line was your last I can edit that in post so I'm just giving I'm everything okay I'd have no clue i botched that it's okay isn't just saying they had cut this later I'm out for dang there we go oh that was nice I like the second go-around that was that was highly happened for messing up your name that was very confident second well I don't think it was the name I think was that I'm whatever yeah I maverick it's a daily podcast people just bear with us while we which means he should know his own name by now okay I don't try to be nice look I don't introduce myself to people very often okay really I always introduce myself as I'm Ben Fox women nice to meet you it's true because I as every time he sees me in the hall goes hey I'm still I as I nice day so I should yeah um elfin in the room an iphone 7 exploded as well yes okay talk about that half a fair fair absolutely all right I think it was just one is very uh it to me it seems like more of an outlier at this point then what happening with the notes Evans which they were happening so often that they had to do multiple recalls on them right so well this is a first though maybe like there's going to be more happening on next two weeks maybe we'll be doing to be kind phone Apple can't figure out why their iphone sevens are exploding if that were the case then we have a serious problem with battery technology and we don't know why our technology is doing what it's doing which would be extremely scary and I'm getting ready for the headline unlucky number 7 ooh don't steal that don't steal that don't steal that but if that does happen you know oh yeah of course I'm like terrified of battery technology now yeah but what's weird about it as smartphones have been around for like 10 years like white well more if you're going to include blackberry of course but why would it be happening now with the iphone also i think i keeps coming back to that conversation we had i think last week maybe the week before is it's gonna completely change the game for quality control maybe we just got lazy yeah collectively but i think that the other thing someone else in the in the chat last week definitely said you know it's it's electronics and mechanical moving parts and chemicals like things are going to explode and they absolutely are but like you said this is what was that look I'm sorry about like what thank you for not dropping this bomb thank you for gonna explode well the written you seem like Irish technology has been around for less so the risk factor in really the risk is that's like saying as far whenever such as the fire again like there's always going to be an inherent working with these elements especially when they make them smaller pack in more technology for sure however when they have an assistant basis I would go out on a limb and say Apple would be one of the dumbest companies in the world if they saw what was happening with Samsung where they were twisting themselves in a pretzel over the fact that their flagship phone was literally crashing and burning yeah and and then they still came out with the iphone 7 if it if it did have quality control problems I think that that seems unlikely to me however crazy things do happen so we'll see if more iphones evans catch fire at this point it seems like an outline we're not like other previous iphones also catching fire but again was an outlier case where it was like kind of just like that one phone yeah I mean they make millions of them so there are always going to be cases where something is going to go horribly wrong collective percentage across all smartphones we're not doing too bad I hope so I hope so because of those two flagship phones let's suggesting that were the case and it's not the case at this point if that were to happen we're like going back to the Stone Age like I'm gonna just buy a flip phone because I know it's not going to explode a better face yeah just get of agent or a brick phone I would love it if fashion were the way that it is where brick phones leasing back yeah or just come back with these things I mean it's not been to Brooklyn lately okay no I haven't I make it a point not to go find it and then just use the Find My brick phone app by my break it's actually just a string then that you keep time to your belt loop or like I'd like I'll ugh what are those like twisty cords or something at least taken technology two cups yeah that's what I use now trace have nothing will blow people explode in your face uh we've kind of touched on this before but maybe opinions have changed their main the chair asks will they permanently stop the note line now we've taught we've definitely talked about that before and there are many people that are on this podcast Roger and Alfred included that seem pretty confident that that's going to happen I'm still skeptical that they're going to give up on the note line after our developing it for years but let's sit tight and find out well you think about that story that we were you know just talking about it's saying that you know these battery explosions are delaying the s8 production not the note 8 right because the s8 is the next one to come out in like late februari or march so they're still working on the no date i hope i don't know maybe they might not be yeah if I were them I would sound like if I were them I wouldn't be you know what they could call it is the Samsung iphone and then there's brewing and then ruin that name too and then there's also talks about you know just essentially Samsung moving to a one year one phone a year like timeline as opposed to you know dropping like three or four different phones yeah that is you know it could be a way of you know maybe they would just call it the s8 plus or something because sa name as a like the S name hasn't been tarnished the same way as the notes him yeah so you could do the essay tej the essay that's Roger and I were talking about though it's not oh is that right it's not them like just like dropping the note line I think it's more so dropping the name of it just because it's such like bad press for them now that like whatever phone they drop you know whatever note they drop next year it's gonna be scrutinized like crazy yeah yeah yeah absolutely um do we have any like 18t time warner question yes here's a really good one with the marriage of 18 teen Time Warner will that start axing HBO from other carriers like Comcast and xfinity right so that's a big big concern from a consumer perspective that if AT&T ends up controlling HBO CNN those different places are they going to then put them in their own little garden and not let anybody else have them from a distribution perspective that's obviously very problematic for Time Warner because they make the most money by distributing it to the most places but you know would a AT&T benefit from that in some way maybe I think that would be really stupid on 18 days part especially for CNN because it's like an editorial type of situation I mean they already noted today that eighteen t is not going to have any like part of CNN's editorial decision hmm which is smart to say that I think and I am I am saying that would be a really stupid play for AT&T just because you know a lot like even CNN and you know Game of Thrones a lot of their like popularity has been through you know people unfortunately taking their clips and posting it on their their own pages and things like that just like you know just getting around everywhere like the time warner model you were talking about and you know for AT&T to just say we're just going to keep this private to ourselves i you're basically they're basically they would just be saying you know please pirate our content yeah that were the case i would say though that like don't take a tease word at face value and like obviously regulators aren't going to take that position either and that's why deals like this where a like a distributor ends up a content provider is problematic for consumers this is like okay is it going to be harder for us to get this content now so that's why I think I'll regulators are going to scrutinize this one very very closely and related how do you think this whole up to chain into Warner Brothers movies similarly um so that distribution model is a little bit different right opposed to like TV and cable so distributing it to movie studios is probably distributing it to movie theaters is probably going to stay the same because those are different companies afterwards maybe the distribution model could change like after like leaves the theaters like maybe AT&T ends up holding on to those a little bit longer I have no I mean I think I see the like peculation is more so about like you're probably not going to see that many you know time warner movies on netflix or who you know amazon prime anymore with that in that regards with AT&T wanted to put it on their own platform right like DirecTV now yeah I think I think that's a little bit more likely and i think netflix has been preparing for this for some time now if all the original program that it's been mm-hmm you know adding to its library i think they expected you know all these like conglomerates should just take over and you know take their fringe yeah yeah yeah yeah i i'm definitely good with that it's kind of a shame because it kind of defeats the purpose of what we were all helping the internet would be those of us who were the code cutters really yea the a la carte model now you're just making it more complicated now I'm gonna pay the exact same amount of money to buy like 27 different yeah yeah that being said a lot of the that those fears haven't really born out with NBCUniversal one time when when comcast bought NBC Universal like you can still get a lot of NBC shows on Netflix and I think Amazon so it benefits these companies like the content providers it benefits them to get their stuff in as many places as possible Netflix pays you know so it I don't I don't know how much sense it makes for them to like only have it in DirecTV now but it is certainly a possibility so from from 18 T's perspective it would benefit but wouldn't benefit Time Warner I think we're in that post honeymoon online streaming content phase where everybody starts diverting off on their own path and then we realized that was a stupid mistake yeah it fix it later right let's let's we had it right the first time it's ruined let's ruin everything and then go back and fix it later that seems America that seems to be the direction the world is taking it breaks it on 2016 theme 16 theme let's break stuff and then sugar how to fix it later so maybe they should be more concerned for Warner Brothers to actually start making some better comic book movies whoo oh that's that's a burn it's accurate too that's that's a samsung note 7 right there and on that note yeah seven probably done to rip it up okay that works for me thanks everybody for your questions as always we'll be back tomorrow the 359 podcast is available on itunes tune in stitcher SoundCloud feedburner google play music and of course on cnet com thanks for watching guys and we'll see you soon you