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and good morning on Thursday November yeah yeah it just went over to my head I already forgot at time for episode 135 of the 359 podcast good morning good morning up to today we have two special guests today we have Connie gooey Elmo who was our editor-in-chief of cnet news so thank you very much I think this is your first time on the podcast is that right that is right all right so thank you very much for being here and Connie you got a chance to test out the google home so that's why we're having you here today and as always and we're also going to be talking about Facebook's earnings and voter selfies which I'm sure is a very important thing for everybody going into november eighth as always send in your questions and comments will get to them at the end of the show and let's get started alright start the recording in three two ok Google beatbox if you want a freestyle my friend has you covered welcome to the 359 where we talk about the top tech news of the day plus whatever crap we want to talk about I'm Ben Fox Rubin and i'm here today with editor-in-chief of cnet news carnegie elmo and it's a google assistant Connie thanks for coming behind my pleasure ok Google stop so reviews are out for the Google homesmart speaker which becomes available tomorrow the speaker can answer personalized questions by integrating with your google calendar and google maps but our reviewer andrew gap part said that it's still clearly second banana to amazon's rival smart speaker which is the amazon echo Connie what did you think of this device you got to try it out so I agree with our reviewer not because a google home doesn't have a lot of potential it absolutely does but amazon has a two year head start so the amount of things that you can do with their device versus Google home it's just there's no comparison 3,000 skills or applications that it works with an integrated that's the echo the echo all the number of devices that work with it google is starting out with four including the nest thermostat I think the most interesting thing for me about Google home it's when we talked to send our pj back at Google i/o few months ago when he introduced this device that the Google home assistant was not developed by the nest labs Google home was actually done by google the search team right because they don't look at this as a home assistant they look at assistant which is the part of this that talks to you as the fundamental AI tech that's going to drive everything google doesn't is going to move you from the text bar to just basically being integrated into your entire life which i think is a really interesting concept the thing that I also liked about the Google home is that it's very pretty it's smaller than the echo and I certainly like the idea that there's more competition in this market so the way that these assistants also work is that they're constantly updated from the cloud so you can definitely expect these to get better as time goes on and Google is certainly hoping the fact that they come in seven different finishes and colors we don't know how much this cost that will be announced tomorrow the space unit of one hundred twenty nine dollars and then you get the optional cover pic i think or maybe you get to pick your cover when you order it we'll see yeah but they're coming out tomorrow so check them out and yeah 130 bucks which compared to the echo which starts at well the the original is 180 right next Facebook's latest quarterly report show that the social network is raking it in profits tripled to two point three eight billion dollars I had no idea me wasting my time on social media was so valuable well it's not just that they are raking it in that was a really good earnings report for them but it's that it's the third or fourth in a row where they've topped estimates and the big driver of their success is not just mobile which is where they're putting a lot of effort getting people to use facebook on mobile devices but how much video now is going into face yeah exactly Mark Zuckerberg talked a lot about that yesterday he said the video is going to be a primary form of sharing going into the future I don't really know if that's true I think people are using their cameras a lot more especially with Instagram however maybe video is going to be much more critical I think that's good for facebook it increases engagement but I don't know what do you think about that well I think that you have to think about who's you Facebook and different age groups right people were looking at snapchat at the beginning and saying what why would you do that and that's a ton of video totally facebook is copying a lot of the features that snapchat have brought to the market so certain people are very comfortable using video and it they just don't give it a second thought yeah yeah that's those are very very good points last with the what little time we have left a judge upheld a century old law that bans voters taking selfies with their ballots that's in California apparently these laws were started to prevent vote buying and coercion and there are about 18 states that have these laws kind of do you think that they're a little outdated by now though the laws are outdated but as you mentioned before we started this podcast training people who work at the voting polls to uphold that and try to build tech into the process takes a lot of time especially when you're dealing with 50 individual states managing polling places well we'll see if we get to do selfies in 2020 in the meantime it's still illegal so if you want to read more about these stories check us out on cnet I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm conakry Elmo thanks for listening thanks we should play with Google some more well first we need to acknowledge there's some weird stalker guy in the chat named Roger he says that when lucky knows you let me see ok Google who's Roger Cheng according to wikipedia Roger Cheng is a computer enthusiasts and American television personality best known for his time as a segment producer in his appearances on tech tips call for help in the screen savers uh is that our Roger Cheng I don't think so I think Roger tank has a doppelganger I I think that sounds like I'm much more important and impressive Roger Chang than the one that we know that's okay I'm gonna go there thanks for listening Roger by the way here's a another that is so not right there is a good question in the chat what are the languages does Google support well right now we know it's being released in the US and they haven't really talked about beyond that what I talked to a bunch of Google executives just earlier this week you know this is very beginning Google home so if you're buying this and you're one of the first people congratulations you on the cutting edge you're a risk-taker they are going to look at using different voices right now there's a woman's voice that is the voice of assistant and they're going to look at accents they are going to bring it to different markets but they're testing all of that right now so don't have a lot of details yet I know we've spoken about this on the show before to that it took quite some time for the Amazon echo to even reach the UK because if you ask certain things like how do you spell color it's different whether it's in the US or the UK so there's a lot of effort that goes into that kind of thing and that's that's still the same language yeah just different advantage for Google is that I have Google now Google assistant was born of Google now Google now has been in use so if you look at where Google now and the languages that are available that's a good guideline for you we should do some more more tests uh ok Google what's the weather going to be like this afternoon in New York this afternoon it's predicted to be 70 in cloudy that doesn't sound like November to me you can also have fun with it ok Google tell us a fun fact according to cleaning building services New York ink fun facts about New York City known by many nicknames including the Empire State and the Big Apple New York City is one of the most important places in the world as one of the largest and most diverse cities New York is home to many famous and talented people like Roger Cheng how is this a fight i don't know if that really constituted a fun fact it's a very famous rip that wasn't your weather might have yeah oh it's lert it's starting to learn it's hurting quick let me go oh god well we can try one more ok Google tell us a fun fact sorry I'm not sure how to help let me try this ok so my daughter loves when the echo sings she literally sings happy birthday it's the only thing that she actually sings so let's see if the Google assistant will do the same thing ok Google sing happy birthday happy birthday to you happy birthday to you oh happy birthday to the most amazing person in a universe I'm frosty birthday that's not bad lovely she's got good time so that you heard it first here yeah wait can we get sued for that don't they and their copyright on the birthday song I would love I would love if we were to get sued over having the Google assistant sing us happy birthday on a podcast that would be a real pinnacle for her career um what was the price on this again 130 bucks 130 think that I come down soon or it'sit's actually as far as I'm concerned that so that's a pretty reasonable price considering that the the original echo starts at or the top price is 180 dollars so the difference is 50 bucks you can get the echo dot which is just the top of the speaker it's this little hockey puck shaped thing and I would probably recommend that if you haven't tried any of these before because the echo dot is fifty dollars and it is probably going to go on sale for even less and seeing it gave the dot a five star review yes and it is I have the echo and the echo dot in my house and yeah I use them a lot mostly to ask about the weather I'm interested to see where this will be in about six months if it really does like an accelerated catch up compared to the echo and yeah we already kind of brushed off poor Siri well as with all online services this isn't actually the product Google home we are the product everyone using hit is the beta tester for google and figuring out what questions people want to ask what kinds of things they want to know so they need uptick among users using google assistant which also is built into the pixel phones those have just started coming out so they're not very many users so they need users to test an assistant amazon has done a fantastic job with partnerships they've partnered with all these different smart home makers and andrew gebhard our reviewer mentioned this that google still has a lot of work to do as far as getting a lot more partners involved so i would expect a lot of that to happen over the next six months as well sorry yeah uh ok Google remind me to buy milk later sorry I can't set reminders yet Oh probably cuz we have an attached it's anyone's calendar yet potentially yeah I mean she knew she knew what you were talking about that's right good yeah them have the the banks to go ok Google what's the closest star to earth according to sky and telescope the Sun is the closest star to our day about night I guess I was kind of a trick wasn't it neighbor I wasn't tori is actually a triple stars stars bound together by gravity Alpha Centauri a and B are too bright closely orbiting stars with a distant dim companion Proxima Centauri we hope you're all learning something today it was a thorough answer bob says it's an NSA covert spying tool it's entirely possible very possible well we should mention an important thing about the home and that is it's synced to one user account so anybody coming into your home and having access to your Google home would also have access to whatever you synced to write like we're counting your calendar or read my email so it is in your home so hopefully you are not inviting people that you don't want into your home but you know inadvertently if you have I don't know a house cleaner or babysitter or some or somebody who just wants to mess with you one of your friends they do have access to everything that you've opened up to go home to totally a good point because the rumored Apple rival echo is there at least testing out the idea of having a camera on that device so it will actually recognize different people when it comes when they come in I don't like that yeah well a lot of people might not like that and it's a continuation that like we're going to give you more services but at the same time you're going to give up you know smaller you know little pieces of your privacy along the leg and so it's it's helpful that there would be multiple accounts that could be very easily and seamlessly found using this device but I don't know how much people actually want to amra looking at them in their kitchen well I think it speaks to the point that people understand that having that open mic into your digital life hmm I mean you're giving that access right now to Google which is already problematic for some people yeah how much are they listening what are they listening to what's going to happen it's a subject that I know amazon has been touching about when i have written about the echo it is an always listening speaker but they want to make sure that you know that it's always listening for the wake word which is alexa or amazon depending on that and i think google is probably just as sensitive about it because they know that people don't want a hot mic around them at all times that being said like I say Alexa sometimes and just whatever like I'm talking about the device and she picks up and starts listening I'm not actually talking to her so she's like a jealous girlfriend exactly well that she's more like one of my kids she's like fourth kid where I say like you know I really don't like it when Alexa does this or whatever so it would be interesting if if Google got possessive if you mentioned Alexa around and it got mad wait who's that ok Google whose Alexa sorry I'm not sure how to help with that it's very diplomatic every day yeah yes that is very different here's here's our rabbit hole we we shouldn't go down but I'm going to ok Google explains a string theory string theory a cosmological theory based on the existence of cosmic strays oh I thought that was all that was very yeah it was efficient I think I think that's one of the big benefits of this device by the way that it's connected to google search Google's been doing search for 20 years and it's going to be able to answer those questions in many ways much more effectively than the echo that being said our people are really going to be like pinging this thing for trivia questions all the time no so maybe it's the weather and yeah yeah maybe kids want to use it for homework sheets that's that's like what their sizzle reel showed that like I did was using it for homework yeah but I can see people sitting around the dinner table and what was the name of that movie now you can just ask you don't have to pull out your smartphone which is so annoying oh the joys of First World Computing ok Google what was Christopher Walken's last movie Christopher Walken's movies include the deer hunter pulp fiction and 59 others alright not precise but the right words and a giver partial credit for that one yeah yeah alright that's pretty fun cool no wait I have another one oh ok ok Google what's the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow I depth to know if it was in african or european swallow oh wow all right that was pretty cool got some nice little easter eggs there that make it worth your 130 bucks um all right let's cool do we have any other questions ok Google what are the lyrics to smash mouth all star sorry I don't know she's got a bit of a delay on her a little bit as opposed to I I think they've done a really good job with the echo where it doesn't seem as delayed with time that's going to change I'm sure bata me wonders if that's anything at fault with the Wi-Fi network in here and we are asking fairly complex questions right ok Google who is Siri Siri is Apple's intelligent assistant she's very well that's such an Alexa oh my god so you know serious but you don't know who alexis I get it that's fine that's fine all right but serious rude yeah maybe a little bit maybe that was that was a diplomatic way of google saying witty he said she was witty so all right maybe that's a good place to wrap it up for the day I would say so ok google play us out all right playing Adele on Spotify oh come on you can do it now since this is a great song by Adele okay 359 is available on iTunes tune in stitcher SoundCloud feedburner google play music and of course on cnet com Connie thanks very much for joining us and always everybody for listening see you next week see you on Monday tell me you may be for the big