Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Alfred hang legislation to save net neutrality passed the Senate yesterday thanks in part to a few Republicans crossing the aisle but don't expect this to mean net neutrality which are rules that prevent ISPs from blocking or slowing Internet traffic from being back just yet the legislation still has to go through the republican-controlled house and get presidents Trump's signature as far as it seems to me that all seems pretty unlikely yeah I mean yesterday when the vote passed I had seen all across Twitter basically oh no neutrality is saved we did it but you know there's still a lot more steps to go through here but I mean it is a move in a direction you know in a positive direction for neutrality so I mean what's next for them then uh the Senators the the the Senate Democrats were taking a bit of a victory lap yesterday they're also claiming that this is going to create an additional amount like a nice momentum boost that will hopefully encourage more Republicans in the House to actually go through and vote for net neutrality to show like hey this is what the people won you you were you were voted in to do this kind of thing look that sounds like a nice argument I don't actually know that that's actually gonna work plus President Trump it seems to me super unlikely to actually go through and you know sign this if it actually ever reached his desk because he's the one that brought in a GP to become the chairman in the first place and he's anti regulation I mean even if he didn't sign it was is there any way for the Congress to basically force this through if they get like two-thirds of the vote which you know they barely even got more than half in the Senate that's a good question I don't I I think they do need president Trump's signature on this one there might be some sort of you know veto loophole but I'm not it's been a while for my physics class so I'm not actually sure physics but specific civics class it's Thursday people either way we'll see what changes actually take place when net neutrality rules are removed from the books on June 11th so we've still got some time before that actually changes next ebay is working on adding more personalization to its website I went to a press briefing yesterday about this where they set up this whole mini store called the store of Ben I can now retire as a tech reporter after getting this time aid to that just for you they made it they made it just for me and that was the idea is is that what you do is you take this like survey or questionnaire on eBay which I know that doesn't sound like very cutting edge or impressive you do a questionnaire but eBay claims that they did the a ton of work on the back end to actually start to surface a lot more stuff that you would find interesting if you just tell them a little bit more about yourself and your interests that's interesting all these interests like I don't go on eBay every day just to browse for a random stuff I might be interested in that sounds like something that I go on Amazon for right when eBay is probably hoping you do that more often with them I specifically go on eBay just to find like cheap versions of things I like I know I really want that like somebody else already owns yeah and a lot of people I think justifiably complain about eBay that it's a mess it's disorganized there's so much stuff there and I don't know what to find this is kind of them trying to answer that situation and they've been trying to do that for years trying to like organize the site a lot more yeah I don't know it feels like they're trying to turn like the thrift store into like a target yeah and no to it look that might work I don't I don't know I I liked getting the store of been I'll just say that last its global accessibility Awareness Day which focuses on making technology more usable for people with disabilities last week I got a chance to check out a bunch of Apple's efforts in the space including voice-over features for the blind our own Ian sure today we're at about Microsoft's new adaptive controller built for gamers with physical limitations either way this sounds very positive and it's nice to see these tech giants trying to make some of these efforts mm-hmm either way if you want to read more about these stories check us out on CNN I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm alpha ring thanks for listening now to be fair we did have a bit of a special plan for today that has absolutely fallen through by a person who will remain nameless wait what we're not gonna call them out by name for a friend's ridiculous for those aware of the scene at history you'll be familiar with an old program once upon a time known as the 404 we did have a special guest lined up today and the jerks on a bus right now I'm sure he's not that happy about it I thought we were just gonna go if that we couldn't find him because it was episode 404 wasn't that I mean I'm all for making fun of people being on buses but if we don't even want to do that you know it sounds appropriate to me right loser get it uber ouch anyway as anyway we had this we had this situation lined up for like a good week beforehand and we're pretty excited to have episode 404 with the 404 guys or the 404 guy but you know it didn't work out that's okay that's that's live shows that's podcasting uh-huh either way if you clinically we had stuff to talk about otherwise if you get a chance give Jeff hell on Twitter oh that would definitely be a big good motivator yes please fly my pretties I know who you are people that watch the show pretty regularly go find Jeff Bakalar and trash him on Twitter for us that would be amazing please destroy his DMS okay it would be pretty fun so I'm jumping back into the chat right now looking for questions and comments and I think it's safe to say we could expand a little more on net neutrality because this is a dense the issue that's gonna play out over a long time no matter what way it swings at this point but it was a nice little shining beacon of hope for those of us who are proponents of net neutrality maintenance to see that vote pass yesterday yeah there were like only three Republican senators that went across the aisle for this one yeah but that's usually how this horse trading works is that you really only need like one or two to get it over the line so generally you send as few of your people over as possible so that they don't they not as many people are risk when they are actually up for election that's that's generally how I've seen it so then and then they always claim the stuff where they were like well I was I wasn't sure until the vote was actually happening yeah give me a break you knew exactly what you were doing yeah I wanted to talk a little bit more about that xbox control that we ran out of time yes it's about on the Pocket Lily I did a story that was very similar to this for tech enabled about a year ago but this was more this is more so about like outside efforts to make controller specifically for gamers based on their disabilities that this was a guy you talked to in DC who played Street Fighter yeah but he's from Texas but the company that like sponsors I'm a major controllers for him they're they're based in DC North Virginia more accurately but yeah to see a company themselves be the ones to make this is insanely cool like I said like so there's companies that like that one of the companies that I spoke with AbleGamers they they make these controllers like they visit them and they see like what their needs are and then they have to go like extremely out of their way to like they one of the controllers that I found that they made was they found these like really old parts that were only made like in like 2001 to 2003 and then he he bought like their last stock because the company is no longer in in business anymore so he buys like the remaining stock that they still had like it more than a decade after they went out of business and then he used that to basically make these controllers and he's not like making any money off of this you know this is more for like as a nonprofit or like a charity so it's incredibly cool to see you know Microsoft themselves to be the ones to make this because then the you know they're not in short supply you don't have to really go out of your way to make something like this yeah it's it's really awesome they're doing stuff stuff like that yeah and the adaptive controller by the way is $99 so you know to me that seems like look that's not a little bit of money for a controller but at the same time the expense that goes into creating some of the stuff probably it's significantly more than that and the the base of customers is probably considerably lower yeah specially since so what I've seen from companies like like you know big game like game makers is that they they usually make these changes on the software like it's never really like a hardware thing that they put out themselves but on hardwood on the software like Uncharted is a really good example of this so I think in the first game or something like that they had an issue where it was like people that were colorblind really couldn't see that much so in the next one or they might have put a patch for it where like it changed the colors for it so it was like dynamic enough that you could see everything they have all these other features to where like there's like parts of it where like you kind of have to like mash the X button really fast or something like that so if you have a certain disability that won't let you do that they you can like turn on a mode that would like just get rid of that for you or anything like that yeah so like I said most of it is usually in software but it's like really cool that they're coming out for like hardware solutions which is usually the larger obstacle yeah yeah I I got a chance to talk to Apple about this they say from from their software from their operating system perspective they're constantly trying to add new features in year over year every single year to try to help people with different types of disabilities I got a chance to talk to a Paralympian who uses the Apple watch to track his workouts and he's able to toggle between the Apple watch because because he's able to walk but he has there's a cerebral palsey below his knees he's able to walk but not very quickly so he's able to toggle between the Apple watches walking functions and also wheelchair functions so he can kind of keep all of his workout information and all of his movement information in one place which I thought was pretty cool and he does it at like a very high level where like he's been in the Paralympics and 2012 in 2016 yeah it's always nice when you get to cover a story that's actually endearing and you know positive yeah it's rare but it's nice it happens yeah let's jump into the chat and take some questions actually let's start with a poem michael hazel says republicans are red democrats are blue neither of them care about you your money has more power with private entities screw net neutrality I'm actually impressed with that that was pretty good rhyme scheme wouldn't disagree with that poem either yeah he's got some points in there yeah however some of us are still proponent of it and where do we fall specifically ask you let's editorialize for a second we try not to get too personal about it I'm not so paranoid personally about the services having my information because hey spoilers I already got it it's more about the potential for abuse and the restrictions of access that that make me nervous I already with the ala carte and streaming media these days it's already difficult enough trying to maintain the different streaming channels you want to keep and if they're gonna put extra barriers up in front of that when you live in a place like I do and you don't have choices for service providers that really sucks mmm that's my biggest concern as a consumer as a consumer I mean like look also I I think I've been pretty open on the show that I've been a more skeptical about net neutrality rules in the first place and I'm definitely interested to see what happens on June 11th because there are certain people that argue that the sky is gonna fall and there are gonna be all these changes and I I think any changes if they do happen are gonna be fairly gradual by the idea that ISPs are gonna be blocking websites or some of the other nightmare scenarios I don't personally see that in the cards but I've been wrong about all sorts of things so III can understand why a lot of people would want to argue you know very strongly to try to protect these types of things because they think that it is entirely possible yeah so after the Senate vote passed yesterday I received a statement in my inbox from FCC Commissioner Brendon car which I I'm trying to like hear him out on this on this on his argument but I'm also like I don't understand why net neutrality would block that what he's saying so he's saying that you know we're fighting for better faster and cheaper internet act yet internet access by by cutting through all this red tape that net neutrality brings and I mean if if I still don't understand how net neutrality he essentially blocks that you know if you want to like leave a comment telling me why net neutrality is all this red tape that is blocking us from cheaper and faster internet because it I really don't see that happening where when if net neutrality does die all of a sudden your internet bills are gonna be way cheaper and faster that just doesn't seem like on the flip side they're also not gonna automatically just get more expensive and you know this is the kind of thing that's obviously gonna be a gradual burn but we're all entitled to have our own biased opinion again I've had a really really bad long-running history with a certain service provider that I will not name here CNET we all have yeah yeah everybody's got their own horror stories but I mean yeah as this is unfolded I've tried to force myself to read more into the other side of it and there is great potential for innovations and privacy and security improvements of the broadband it's just watch it unfold the broadband providers clearly do not want the additional restrictions you know you're gonna create a law telling them how to run their business obviously they're gonna take the position that no we don't want this law and they're gonna make the argument that like look you want to put a law in the books that you're not allowed to have a bear as a pet in your house why would that make any sense either so they're probably viewing it or that's their argument is that they're viewing it the same way is that you're putting unnecessary restrictions on us they like don't actually belong anywhere alex is also against net neutrality stating that I don't want them making money off the info I have without my permission of or benefit and that's where I get upset and that's another good point I just like that we've all got we're keeping it civil we've all got our own personal angle is to come in on this yeah shockingly personal but going back to the eBay story by the way eBay went out of its way to say like look we're gonna get this additional personalization and fro from you but we're not gonna sell the data and initially like maybe more than like two years ago or something when I first started covering tech I might have been like oh yeah whatever but like nowadays everybody is so much more aware of what's being done with your data that I actually appreciated the fact that they they wanted to highlight that and they wanted to say like look we're gonna give we're gonna take more information from you you're actually gonna use this feature we're not gonna package it and sell it we don't want to do that so you know yeah I asked me want to make you a customer ISPs would make the argument that you know you are giving them permission by signing up for their service and a green are their terms and conditions but that's also something that Congress has been talking I was you know watching a Senate hearing yesterday where they talked about that where they need to build better terms and conditions that protects consumers and in the sense of you know just because I want to use the internet doesn't mean that I'm giving you the right to tell everybody about what I'm browsing through and all this stuff but yeah I mean that's that's always been the argument of I he's like hey you're signing up for this you agree to the terms and conditions you are giving us your permission to sell this and you know there there is a lot of advocacy out there to change that I see we have a lot of questions yeah they're filing right on in APEC and I are on the same page I'm for net neutrality but would it end up providing even more ISP companies where I live I have one choice spectrum and I'm paying a lot for a little kindred spirits yeah do we think that we could potentially see other better options for service providers come out of either side of this unfolded we've discussed this before on the podcast aside from net neutrality regardless of where it ends up going there's a very significant expectation that 5g is gonna help provide a lot more broadband service precisely and I I think it's it might have been Alex in the chat who keeps pointing that out and thank you for that we are on board yeah and it's not gonna be a year from now by the way so we are if if things really go south for customers related to net neutrality and things don't actually shake out the way customers want it to it's not like 5g is all of a sudden gonna show up on a white horse in the next year or two or so so it's they don't expect it to be right around the corner where we're all gonna have all this additional competition and more options yeah it's just funny to me like the thought of you know all these like different ISPs that are like oh man I really wish I could give the world cheaper and faster internet if only this net neutrality weren't there to stop us no it's not that's such an unrealistic scenario just sitting on these giant piles of money and just be like I'd love to spend this much to give everybody a habitat have all this internet but we can't give it to people for free unless they get rid of his red tape come on guys very good points let's Jarrell you do you think discussions like this net neutrality are going to start becoming more prominent in not to get into politics or not diving into that but will it start becoming a more push button issue kind of thing with campaigns more prominent it seems to me the Democrats are definitely trying to play that card they think that they're getting traction on net neutrality and that's why they're saying like we've got momentum and we've got the public on our side we're gonna try to you know force the house to get involved with this I mean like people are demonstrating in the street about this kind of thing which if you took a step back that's kind of surprising this is this is a really wonky don't have CC rule I mean people really care about their internet access it's true I'm not a paranoid person but I really hate my service provider that's another big reason is that people have very little trust of a lot of the service providers so they don't they think giving them back some power is not gonna be helpful yeah well we'll make sure to stay with it as it unfolds how would net neutrality affect people in Canada if we use USA services in other countries do they have to be abiding by USA law for the server's being used we talked about this know if this impacts a u.s. there is global reverberation to this right there could be there could be there's certainly like some countries that have looked at strengthening their net neutrality rules because of what's happened in the US but it's also like it's gotten really jumbled on a state level where there are like more than it doesn't state yeah looking on adding net neutrality rules there's also this whole effort going on in the courts to where a lot of major Internet companies are trying to force net neutrality rules to stay in place through you know different lawsuits so it's it's just becoming it like a big mess at this point so if you're Canadian and get us you just you're just as likely to know what's going on is like a u.s. customer because it's it's probably gonna get Messier before it gets simpler I mean if anything defines the global playground it's the internet go figure cannot let syringe eyes poem go without notice I the correct answer is Laurel I'm hearing yani Senate reinstating net neutrality ajit finds it funny that's pretty good that's not bad well we got some real talent in the chat guys thanks a lot CNN is now a poetry website yeah I could go for like a spoken word like Poetry Jam kind of thing want to host a special episode of that we're literally doing that right now send in your net neutrality poems we'll be here all day we'll read them off for you so let's go back to the uplifting side of the stories and talk about tech enabled Carlos Martinez says I'm blind you should tell Apple to make a true speed dial feature mmm that would be nice inclusion what are some other email them today there's actually a blind PR person I was working with for the Apple story that I'm sure he'd be very interested to hear that insight from Carlos so yeah I will I will send it to him after the podcast Thank You Carlos do we know any other potential tech enabled features that they are working on right now in concert with the the Smart Watch and what we brushed on before they don't really talk about future features but you know they walked me through a lot of stuff obviously when it's it's series not really that great but using Siri especially for folks that are blind or have other physical limitations making Siri or any voice assistant more powerful is obviously useful because you just do it via voice and that's that can be really helpful and you can operate your phone operate small appliances in your house potentially lock the doors that's that's something that you you could see as a positive for the smart home yeah before we go Alfred I wanted to hear a little more about your experience with the gaming controllers and the people you spoke to there that seemed really awesome yeah I wrote the story about a year ago I I didn't get to use any of the controller spreaded I did see them getting used it was really interesting so there was one where was kind of like this like floor pad kind of thing where you would put your foot on it and you would use that to like control back and forth like look around in a first-person shooter because the way like she couldn't like basically turn and well like it would hurt her wrist a lot it's like to use the analog stick to like look around so she would use that to look around on the floor and then like like shoot with like her other hand which like she had no problem using so that that was like another really cool feature of that they showed one of the the ones that like you controlled with your mouth yeah this Street Fighter guy is oh no no that wasn't like a special controller like that was what I thought was super awesome this is that this guy that that you talked to is one of the best Street Fighter players in the world right yeah he plays with his face yeah so he he sets up like a an Xbox controller and he ki mapped it so that was part of the software like you can change like Oh punch can be like this button instead of like another one that's like harder for me to reach and he like sets it up so he can play like really well just by playing with it like his mouth and his tongue so like he he'll use his tongue inside his cheek to like press certain buns and stuff and he like totally owns people he's very good I never got to play him but III would definitely lose what was this player of choice chun-li really yeah that's a tricky player in general so the way that so I actually play Street Fighter and as so chun-li it makes sense because of like the way that she's played so if you're playing with like a character like Ryu or Ken it's like you have to do all these like different combinations and stuff but Chumley's characters like a charged character where right you like hold back and then like you press forward it's probably - forward and like attack or you can like button mash the kick button for her like multiple kicks so it makes sense at that like there's a character like that he plays a character like her I don't know he plays in Street Fighter 5 now I'm not even sure if he and yeah so so yeah that that was one of the other controllers so that's something that you can like map like different keys and she can put it anywhere she wants that's brilliant yeah so that that's what I was talking about that was like the parts that like he had to buy from a warehouse that like from a business that like no longer worked and that is her husband with her who like that he like he spends most of his time like gaming with her like that's how they bond together but it got to a point where she couldn't play that much anymore because her hand hurt too much and that's the floor board that she uses like turn that's so cool I mean I'm I personally just kind of curious I almost want to try um myself like I really want to try them to see how they yeah I mean it's awful when you can't like do something that you love because of a disability or anything like that it's like really cool that that you know there's people out there building this for free for them and now Microsoft getting into it too yeah one of the things that Apple also mentioned to me was that some of these features that they do develop for accessibility end up helping you know just broadly like the community and yeah enroll so for instance inverted colors which are used for people with visual impairments some people just turn that on when they're you know going to bed so like you don't get like a big white somebody that I spoke with about that called that like the curb effect where it's essentially you know how like on the sidewalks like there's there's like the parts that are flat that like it's easier to like push a wheel up toward like for a baby stroller or anything like that or like a bicycle that was originally like mandated by law for people in wheelchairs so to be easier to get them on the curb but like they found that you know by doing that it made it so much easier for like everybody with wheels to get on so like that's that's like exactly what your point is yeah as somebody who's pushed a stroller more than once I'm definitely very thankful for that it is interesting just to see what can be included in the gaming experience you know we see from the low level just how to game differently with a Wii mo which kind of changed the game and then we're seeing way more intensely amazing innovations with these devices here I'm really interested to see where it goes yeah we are just about out of time but we got one more poem that came through from Matthew - you're a haiku net neutrality feel screwed by my isp need Internet choice beautiful absolutely beautiful I we will should be let's let's offer to read any net neutrality poem on air as long as it's not dirty yeah yeah we got to keep it kind of PC so yeah but anyway Oh are we done yeah we are out of time I was trying to filibuster a little bit longer to see if Jeff gets here but apparently not this thus concludes our episode 404 Suns joy without the 404 yeah that's okay but you know maybe maybe we'll see you guys for episode 1000 404 and then we'll have Jeff on thenns just to remember the light up his uh his Twitter for us please do that we're depending on you hey I did want to make one more quick mention tomorrow is national museum day it's coordinated by the International Council of museums and held every year since 1977 this theme day is dedicated to raising awareness and importance of museums so to get a chance tomorrow and through the weekend go visit your local museum and get a little culture in your lives I'm a big fan of the Natural History Museum I've been like seven times and I still haven't seen the whole damn thing but I am a member very cool all right the 3:59 podcast is available on itunes tune and stitcher feedburner google play music the amazon echo and of course cnet.com thanks everybody for watching sending in your poems sending your questions so we'll see you again on monday care match that ratings button on on itunes don't but have a great weekend everybody