Gadgetory

good morning on Wednesday November 22nd it's episode 321 of the 359 podcast I'm BVG and your host today are Alfred Inge and Ben Fox Ruben hi yo what up episode 3 2 1 let's jam that worked out way better than I expected at 321 oh yeah thanks everybody for joining us yeah we don't expect anybody on everyone's traveling for holidays but you forget we have fantastic international representation and thank you to everybody around the world watching the 350 probably should have prepared better Alfred you're gonna lead us off so give us a rundown yeah God there was so much news yesterday before turn yeah yesterday when we started this show the net neutrality orders had actually just come in so we weren't able to talk about it on the show yesterday but we had a lot of time to prepare for it we took a look at the order and we'll be talking about on today's show plus right around the tail end of Tuesday uber had some pretty big news regarding a breach from November 2016 oh I was hoping it was good news about Hoover for once and then Ben has a very interesting story about Black Friday shopping and virtual reality so we'll be talking about all that be sure to send your questions over in the comments and we'll get to them in 3 minutes and 59 seconds not really though because we never meet that mark in the best of efforts we'll see it back in the chat in roughly 3 minutes and 59 seconds from 3 to welcome to the 359 I'm Alfred Inge I'm Ben Fox Ruben so net neutrality has been an ongoing battle for several years on Capitol Hill and it feels like every time the proposal is struck down it comes back even stronger yesterday's orders by the FCC Commissioner Ajit PI maybe the closest we've seen net neutrality approach its death if you're out of the loop killing net neutrality with but it would essentially mean the end of the open Internet with net neutrality you can expect to pay a flat fee for access to everything online without it highest peace would be able to choose what speeds certain sites would get you know imagine having to pay extra if you wanted to watch us on YouTube or a startup website never getting any traffic because its speed is limited pi issued his order on Tuesday and the FCC will vote on it on December 14th there's been massive protests online about this as there is every time but do you think that you know this kind of it for net neutrality yeah probably I mean like the Republicans are running things at the FCC right now they have three votes versus two votes for the Democrats and essentially under the Trump administration there's been a big push at deregulation so I would absolutely expect net neutrality to die off at least under this it was extremely frustrating because it's almost as if literally everybody outside of the FCC and ISPs all are in agreement on this that net neutrality should stay the way that it is you know you see these massive protests online nearly every time the proposal is brought up the FCC has their own like comment section that got flooded with people just saying don't do this this is a terrible idea and it just seems like what was the point of all of this if you're just going to ignore it anyway that's a good point but I'm personally of two minds when it comes to net neutrality it's obviously pretty easy to say hey new net neutrality which also sounds really positive is a good thing but at the same time I think that the ISPs do at least have some argument here as far as saying that having too much government regulation when it comes to the Internet is stifles innovation stifles investments and they they have an argument there and to at least listen to their side I think is reasonable yeah well in northern other news uber announced yesterday that it had suffered a breach affecting 57 million accounts in November 2016 yes this happened a year ago and uber is only telling the public about this now the company said they had paid the hackers $100,000 to delete the stolen data and said that it had assurance that the data was destroyed there's a lot of issues with that rubriz based in California which does have breach disclosure laws which that you're supposed to inform the public within a certain amount of time not a year this is a company that has kept hidden from the public like it's great ball program which help block police meant to catch their drivers and their help program which tracked lyft drivers the company's new CEO Jericho's Raja he said it was wrong for the company to have kept this a secret for so long I mean do you think this is kind of the final nail in uber his coffin though Oh scandal after scandal after scandal of the old CEO this is the new CEO new CEO gets kind of this honeymoon period to air out the old dirty laundry and I I think people are actually celebrating the new guy saying way to go way to reveal this bad practices from the old uber you're now the happy I know Renly new I know a lot of people in the security community were basically saying you know you should never pay hackers because this happens a lot I mean the hacker behind HBO's breaches during the summer just got arrest not arrested indicted yesterday and he demands six million dollars for that and they didn't they didn't pay him either so Ben you also wrote a story about the future of Black Friday shopping and augmented reality and in virtual reality does this mean you know am I am I getting crushed by like a suburban mom that like really wants that discounted toaster in VR now yeah absolutely I think that there's a very good possibility that that could happen and I certainly look forward to that future well that's all the time that we have if you like what you heard here check us out on CNET I'm Alfred Inge I'm Ben Fox Ruben thanks for listening I don't thank them for listening but in its patronizing what patronizing how is that patronizing thanks everybody for watching by the way I think I'm for watching you thank them for watching but not for listening yes that's super weird cuz it's an effort to watch it alright alright you know what that one of the many things that we disagree on on the show but that's fine I don't celebrate Thanksgiving either and I hate net neutrality so let's start off with an easy question from the chat first and foremost from Chuy 909 why is it called Black Friday actually no this one do you know this one go ahead go ahead I think I mentioned it on a previous podcast okay I'm gonna let you do it so like in in the business world in the bra wear ties so if I'm wrong like feel free to correct me at any time this is what I had heard so like they they they recorded their like prophets flight as by colors where if it's like dipping it's red and if it's like good it's black and the idea is that like on this Friday where all these sales go on and stuff it's like all their profits go into the black and it's like it's it's not for the year yes you're basically right it's it's retail is a very difficult game and it actually takes until Black Friday very late into the year for some retailers to actually start seeing a profit because most retail doesn't actually happen until Black Friday it's like this entire holiday window is when most people open up their wallets and start spending yeah crazy so what color is Cyber like for my nail it's orange it's an orange it's you know we're a chartreuse and I suppose they've gone plaid yeah something yeah expect to like just keep buying stuff or get bothered by retailers constantly to keep buying stuff because this is this is when they make all their money so they save a lot of their ad buy be fair I am I am planning on buying like a ton of crap yeah the next week same here and like if you want to buy a TV now is almost certainly the best time to do it like starting either this week or Black Friday or Cyber Monday when there are a lot of very good deals for for that neutronics I feel like we don't have enough time to talk about your VR story though and I feel like that's okay I talk about it more I mean I just like talking about e-commerce again to me the the interesting thing about this is is that like right now it's like not very interactive to shop online it's not that much fun it's just basically like a grid of stuff with a white background and the idea of potentially I don't know if this is actually gonna happen but potentially putting on a VR headset and you know like shopping in the VR world like one of the concepts that was mentioned by Marc Laurie from Walmart was let's say you're looking for a 10 you go and you put on a VR headset you're transported to a campground you can go inside the tent you can walk around the 10 you can even ask your voice assist and questions like as if there are sales rep it's kind of like a cool concept we're way beyond what ecommerce is today yeah I usually when I'm shopping online I really just have to rely on the old imagination yeah and that is that it's failed me plenty of times I almost and and you know what I think it would be really help before like flying out sizes of things yes I almost bought a Kinect four set the other day where and it was like the travel size yeah I almost bought it and I read through the comments like this is the pocket-sized one don't don't write so VR is probably gonna come the from from like talking to a lot of folks that are in retail and also analyst VR is expected to come later for a lot of things they are you should see baked into a lot of phones much more not just for games and you know stuff like google lens but also for retail where potentially you'd be able to shop like at a mini a arson or like if you're just kind of like hanging out in the office or whatever all right let's divert back into our original topic about net neutrality hot pizza do you think the internet will change completely and how can we all get involved and help out because lo and behold a lot of our listeners are not in favor of the repeal of net neutrality sure um look I personally don't like some of some of the things that are being thrown out there right now and this is not a fashionable position to be taking our gloom and doom scenarios that may not show up the problem is is that a lot of ISPs are essentially monopolies in their specific regions where I live I have two different options I have Verizon FiOS which I'm a customer for and also the cable company in that scenario the likelihood that one of those providers all of a sudden starts doing an ala carte internet service where you start having to pay more for Amazon video or Netflix would be significantly reduced due to competition the problem is is that there isn't that competitive landscape in a lot of areas like mines and and I think that's what people are especially worried about yeah so this is specifically for the u.s. there's plenty of countries out there that don't have net neutrality and there was a tweet in October that got viral basically showing what it looks like in Portugal that doesn't have net neutrality I remember those I'm sending it to you right now so you can pull it up on the stream but it's basically like it's different package that you can buy for access to the internet so there's a certain internet web so it's basically like oh if you want the entertainment package where you you want to pay like this much so you can get like top speeds for like Netflix and it's almost like different cable bundles it's basic you list there yeah and nobody nobody in the United States wants to see that yeah I'm just a little hesitant or skeptical to immediately say that this is definitely what's gonna happen because they're gonna strip away net neutrality it is possible and I think I think both are that scenario is much more likely to happen than you know the doom and gloom scenario that you're talking about where everyone says the Internet it's gonna be really slow now unless you pay like a million dollars for these kinds of things I don't I don't think their purpose they're gonna be slowing down the internet so much per se as much as it is gonna be you're gonna have to pay like way more if you want like only access to like these websites because actively yeah this is up on the screen right now this is where'd you say from Portugal yes yeah so if you look at it just in passing the dollar signs don't really add up too badly on the surfaces but that's not to say that things will change quickly and it's something to just be on awareness for because this is now the ball is completely in their core you're not gonna have any argument and there's no going to be no control from the customer anymore this is completely giving like God control to the corporation's these ISPs and broadband companies and yeah yeah if anything it makes it extremely more complicated yeah than anything else and as far as this is if this is the scenario for which we're gonna end up in I think we're a long way away from something like this and I think that if a major provider were to some at some point start to offer something like what's offered in Portugal people would lose their minds I I think that it's just not something that Americans yeah would want to see and I think as far as like what we can do about this I think that's you know the big question everyone's been been wondering about like I said you know you look at websites with you go on reddit nearly every post is about net neutrality is it their Twitter on Twitter that has its own hashtag with the emoticons YouTube launches campaigns like every year or so you know basically saying we dislike we don't agree with this it should be stopped and it just seems like you know unless this reaches the ears of somebody who's like in power it's reaching the because you but the thing is is like the people that vote on this are FCC commissioners who are not publicly elected like officials mm-hmm like we don't vote them into office so like they're like you know there's not that many consequences to like what they do and what can you do at that point yeah at mr. Ajit punch in the face was appointed by Obama into the Commission however it was Trump that made him the chairman the Chairman mm-hmm and boy this guy he's gonna have a rough life going forward well I it's it's he has a different philosophy for how the Internet should be yes regularly especially interested yeah I wonder why I mean maybe it's because he used to be Verizon's top lawyer okay Tom wheeler who was the previous chairman was also like came from that world as well and he's the one that actually helped push forward net neutrality so I wouldn't I wouldn't immediately like you're right there's no mutual exclusivity however there is a question of character and the interpretation of the values that you bring with you and this is sheer exploitation in my personal very personal non-si net affiliated perspective I hate as you tell us how you really feel just did and I think okay and going back to like what what should people do I mean anybody that you know lives in the States can and should get involved in the democratic process people have been vocalizing this not just on reddit but through you know the FCC channels and yeah they don't have any comments anytime there are public comment sections you know whether you agree with net neutrality or not like that's just I'm not here espousing like if you're if you're throwing that neutrality go there and you know argue that point like people that actually think that this is too much regulation should also have their voices heard that's what the public comments are for you know and yeah and on that note in the notes of today's show when it goes up on demand we'll put the link in the description so that you can go to the FCC page file in your your your opinion your points will include all the right information I forget which order it is the numerical e but we'll put it all in in the description so you can get involved in voice have your voice heard yeah instead of just ours yeah absolutely do we have other comments about neutrality yeah so let's kind of sure that's what all the comments yeah this is gonna be a huge effect on literally everybody stellar tech what exactly would be the benefits of letting go of net neutrality do we see any benefits well the main argument that a G PI has been making is basically look how innovative like we were before all these regulations and you know basically these regulations are stopping innovation on the internet I don't know what any of these animations that he's talking about yet has he cited any specific on cept about innovation but also investment you know one thing that Maggie Reardon who's a reporter that's been covering net neutrality for years mentioned in her story from yesterday she said that a lot of ISPs and internet providers are now more reluctant to go into rural areas out of concern that their enormous investment to go to those harder to get to areas they're essentially going to spend millions or billions of dollars and then their pipes are going to be treated as if they're a utility yeah that is a disincentive for them to go and it really vibes me up at night when I'm thinking you know those poor billion dollar companies man it's just I really would like I told them you know look that's how markets are structured you know like that's the they're not they're not charities this isn't the government providing this stuff if the government wants to build pipes going to rural areas that's a different situation sometimes I just saying you know how come the government's not looking out for these billionaires out there I gotta make more money it's it's come on they all they want to do is be richer than rich okay i I think also yeah it's so that's that is a benefit of this actually you uh ISPs make even more money so I think that's a pretty nice benefit if you're a billionaire oh man that must be great all right moving on Pele which companies are supporting this net neutrality repeal and which aren't a lot of times to me I I don't know any companies out of publicly like spoken out other than like Verizon I would say saying you know this is probably a good idea no no Verizon AT&T III I think a lot of the major but I'm providing most of the the Silicon Valley like Giants have spoken out against this Google has been like very vehemently like against repealing net neutrality read it Twitter's like publicly made statements against this I don't think I've heard anything from Apple on this yeah Apple isn't really internet service yeah Facebook's also spoken out against I would probably imagine that like Netflix too but like I never get like super against it right and and the reason it's important to mention that Google and Netflix are very much opposed to this as I'm I'd imagine Amazon would be is because they probably know that this is going to cost them more money to there's obviously a huge concern that this could cost customers more money but word you know kind of piling on the ISPs here and saying they're just gonna make more money the thing is is that when Netflix goes and starts providing 4k video but doesn't have to pay anything extra to start sending those through the pipes then that's a concern for the ISPs and you're basically asking the ISPs to shoulder that burden completely through net neutrality again I'm just trying to provide both sides of this and Netflix is obviously making more money in the current regime than they would without net neutrality yeah but I'd like to keep my stuff cheap so ok put it on the ISPs they're billion dollar company sure but like so is Netflix in Google yeah I mean like this is this is a battle between multiple billion-dollar multinational companies and like it sucks that consumers could potentially end up getting stuck in the middle of this yeah and like in some ways it reminds and then it was blackouts that used to happen on you know with cable channels and then the other concern is basically you know with if a you know and that neutrality is repealed imagine there's a company that wants to be like the net Netflix the next Netflix re and they they want to stream like 4k video and they can do it much cheaper and all this stuff but you know they don't have the funds to pay for like their stuff to get through at the soil that it deserves to be I think that's easily one of the strongest arguments yeah preserving that neutrality if I can let my inner conspiracy theorist now I think this is all about the restriction of information and the general trying to dumb down society I mean like that's interesting however the major internet providers like the major Internet companies like Google and Netflix are fighting actually they maintain there was a point no no I get that I get that but the entire effort not the entire effort because mostly it's probably fueled by money but a large portion of the effort behind any kind of corralling to the access to information is to try to dumb down your audience well there was actually a point brought up that I had been seeing uh flowing around Twitter yesterday basically saying if this repeal goes through that it would actually stifle like fake news spread just because you know these are these are the same startup like websites that we're talking about startups where you know that's like you know like this guy that like only makes fake news to make like a quick buck and then it's basically well it's not worth every I'm gonna have to pay extra for it to like get like the bandwidth that it deserves there's an interesting notice I mean look at that I got you to actually say something that was not you at all I did I got into your brain all right let's fly through a couple more questions real quick because we're getting almost out of time here Frank Paul Masson Oh even without net neutrality would package pricing setups even really work especially in the wireless space when there's so much competition wouldn't people just switch providers I've I saw that packaging like argument I'm like that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard because they're basically taking it the inspiration from it from like TV like what cable companies do right words right that's worked out so well for that I only want to watch sports or I only want to watch the news that coming that's not like the internet dudes like nobody nobody's like oh yeah I only go online for email like that's not hard tech news that's like absurd like nobody does that it's so it's so dumb it's the problem with that argument I would say is that too many Internet service providers are monopolies in their region it's like there aren't the competitive pressures that would normally exist like if I opened like a buffet and I'm like ok do you want like the vegetable deal do you want like or just right it's dessert do you later yeah that makes no sense for the internet it works I guess in Portugal I haven't been to Portugal I don't think I don't think people like that I don't know if they're doing we should fly to Portugal and interview people there and find out that might not be a parable the internet terrible road trip next time around you're seen it definitely from a Pusa car and reinforced by Pele how will this affect users outside the US and specifically Pele wants to know how it's going to impact in Europe that's a good question I don't know do you know I think it would affect you know if the website that you're going it is based in the US which last time I checked a hell of a lot of them are including cnet.com the probably one of the better tech news websites out there I like it it's fair but anyway but the point is that like if the website that you're trying to access is based in the u.s. even though you're not like affected by net neutrality and where you know where you are if it's based on the US and that website doesn't want to pay more to like increase the bandwidth on something like that you like it might be a raw deal for you sure I I think another point to add to that is that the United States because of its stature in the world is an influential regulator and so if the u.s. decides to take a specific regulatory regime it could have influence beyond its borders as well and that's how you know again hypothetically that could end up influencing Europe or other regulators out there oh what an ugly time we're in here let's switch gears real crappy Thanksgiving yes before we call it a day and talk about hacking quick Matthieu dieter the - in the chat is etch is there a point to hacking people's information anymore it seems like all of our informations already out there it's a great point I would say so because most of the times when these hacks happen like these massive breaches at least the people that are stealing the information primarily aren't the ones that are using them most of the times they get sold online and you're right that you know a lot of it is like already out there but I think the the premise is like you can always sell it as new information because people when they're buying these like you know millions of Records and patches they're not looking to see like oh these are these have already yeah let's take that I don't want to buy that one like you buy it in bulk and then you basically use that there's several programs out there it's like when you bought pokemon cards and you got like 14 Ratatat yeah yeah so basically like there's there's like programs that you can use that basically it's it's called credential stuffing where you you take like all these records and you stuff them into like every website imagine one and eventually you get one in return and the thing about these like ubers preaching in particular is that even though there were no passwords or anything like involved in it so from what I understand it was the name email and your phone number which through some legwork can actually end up getting you like a lot of information on somebody including their password like all you really need to do a password reset on Facebook is like an email address and a phone number and if you have I think it's a lot of things going and going back to what - mentioned - is that it's it's I think it's so easy to get desensitized to all of these hacks especially this year there have been so many of them and Alfred I'm sure you would agree that like it's important to stay some level of vigilant and not walk around with your social security number on your t-shirt or do is probably already out there that's not like a really millennial thing to do and protest we've seen how that can go horribly horribly wrong for the LifeLock guys so somebody did try that as an idiot it really didn't work all right I wish we could keep talking about this all day because this is an utterly fast and it's not terrifying topic but we are out of time we will be talking about this in detail for weeks and weeks and months to come undoubtedly as long as the internet still there we'll see what the next coconut brings we're gonna try to get Maggie in the office she comes to visit pretty regularly and she knows way more about net neutrality than I would say most people in the United States and we would love to get her in front of you guys and ask whatever questions you want about net neutrality yeah please we should definitely have her in for an extended period of time just griller yeah she's you know she knows this stuff in and out she's been writing about it for years so definitely check out her story from yesterday because it'll probably answer some of your questions about what the impacts are as always it'll be in the description of the show until they shut us off behind the paywall that's gonna be it for us for the week because we are gonna be on Thanksgiving holiday until Monday and just as an FYI warning to everybody Monday will be a later show due to some other scheduling conflicts and I do want to leave us on a bit of a good news note today since it's been piled with bad we have added another opportunity to listen to the 359 podcast you can now subscribe to see net podcasts on your Amazon echo woohoo you can add Cena to your flash news briefing in the mornings it will be occupied by our tech today news segment in the afternoons the 359 podcast so if anybody out there wants to add us to your echo we'd love to join you in your evening commute and I of course references on behalf of Eastern Standard Time because we are in New York so hopefully we get some subscribers there anyways thanks to everyone else who's here with us and Ben you or no Alfred you should bring us home yeah I do the think at the end of the show anyway thanks so much for listening if you liked what you heard here today check us out on cnn.com the 3:59 podcast is also available on tune in stitcher SoundCloud Google Play Music Feedburner and again cnet.com and iTunes and cnet.com and the echo yeah echo now yeah I guess we have to add that also it's on Sina comm anyway thanks everybody and have a good turkey day and we'll see you on Monday and have a great rest of the week for everybody who doesn't celebrate turkey day yeah just enjoy your life just enjoy life until there's no more internet you