Gadgetory

good morning on Tuesday February 20th it's episode 350 8th on the 3:59 podcast and your host today are Ben Roger Alfred hello good morning good Tuesday morning it's gonna say Monday but it's really Tuesday yes yeah happy Presidents Day yesterday yeah our president laid it all right we got a stack show so we'll get started right away we won't be talking about Mobile World Congress the big themes obviously 5g and Samsung's gonna pull out we all know it's gonna be the galaxy s 9 we'll be talking about cryptocurrency Bitcoin yeah awkward interview with Matthew let's go either the question mark guy or the free money guy depending on ya if you if you had a TV in the 90s you definitely know who this guy and then we'll talk about why students the goal figures into cryptocurrency yeah so without further ado if you have any questions leave them in the comments section Brian will pick out the best and we will get to them in three minutes and 59 seconds from 3 to welcome to the 359 I'm Roger Cheng I'm betting Fox ribbon I'm Alfred Aang Mobile will Congress the wireless industry's biggest trade show starts up next month next week but the big reason that you should really care about it I mean it's a little well Keats in Barcelona so it's a little bit off hours the reason you should care Samsung is showing off the Galaxy S 9 they're gonna hold an event on Sunday so we're gonna see the next big flagship throne phone from Samsung what's the big deal with this one it's gonna be the camera or something samberly imagine so they're you know obviously they haven't announced a details yet but they hints from their other teaser and the leaks that we've seen we've seen from my boy Evan blast evey leaks showed that yes the camera is the big thing we're looking at potentially a dual lens camera to match what the iPhone 7 or iPhone 8 and X have and that seems to be the big focus that the change of the phone actually physically doesn't look that different no surprise yeah we're we're expecting something as a result of Samsung showing up showing a big basically the story that I wrote the previous that basically everyone else sort of Nokia has kind of like dropped out of mobile Congress like there they're there and they're showing off like smaller or like lower profile phones yeah yeah our wearables but most most companies are staying away from the show because they're all comfy so how often does this happen where Samsung just comes and like steals the show from everybody so they generally dominate the show last year they weren't there the year before they were but almost always like LG has a big flagship phone Huawei has a big flagship phone for whatever reason I don't know everything's aligned in a way that like everyone else is kind of looking to hold their own events later this year and Samsung sort of has the entire show to itself feels kind of like a jerk thing to do though because they do have the resources to throw their own show you go to their like unveiled events like all the time oh yeah and they definitely have more reason it feels like they don't need Mobile World Congress they don't but it is a good excuse to you know it's good way to get everybody in one place for you to hold event I mean they've done traditionally they have owned the show in the past but I think they're gonna dominate Mobile Congress this year more so than in past shows and of course we have to talk about 5g Katie Collins or previous stories looking at how that's good it's less sizzle more substance so we've been hearing years of hype about 5g I think it started become reality first trials are coming out later this year so you're gonna start to see more concrete commentary on what's gonna look like at the show Katie actually mentioned in her story we won't see the first 5g device until later this year yeah what is that device it'll look like a puck okay wireless hotspot how first go in here like how good is it gonna work doesn't it need like a whole network around it yeah so 18t is announcing or is launching its 5g network in 12 cities so presumably in those cities you'll have generally good and fast coverage there and the hotspots basically will connect other devices to that network all right so we're moving on speaking of we're gonna be talking about the question mark guy yeah so if you're not familiar with him his name is Matthew Lesko he made his name in the 90s basically wearing this suit with a bunch of question marks and I'm really yeah and then just yelling about free money and how you can get it from the government I had been thinking about him in tandem with blockchain and like cryptocurrency for a while just because it seemed like like blockchain and cryptocurrency it was our generations Matt Lesko of all these like coin bros that are just like hey yeah look how rich I am now you can do it too just invest in this like so I'm like let me reach out of this guy so and surprisingly he's not a fan right no yeah he kind of looks at it like a scam and he's kind of saying like they're exaggerating in like the exact same way that I did 20 years ago okay all right speaking of cryptocurrencies Steven Seagal is the ambassador king of scam of Bitcoin with two eyes two gen bit quite cool yeah between you tell me what's going on can Steven Seagal please get a bunch of question marks on this little wannabe D I mean he's not the only celebrity to have their own cryptocurrency or be the ambassador dual cryptocurrency there's Paris Hilton Floyd Mayweather Ghostface Killah the game a bunch of rappers like getting into it now you know it's it's it's a big cash grab for them they don't really have to do anything in the press as Matthew Lesko says right it's free money free money in it alright so tomorrow is our big 350 ninth episode so we decide to go all out with a special for our podcast in cooperation with mouse which is a nonprofit group dedicated to spurning STEM education for children so don't be alarmed if your podcast just keeps going and going tomorrow you know we're doing something special for our big 350 new 9th anniversary so tell them I'm Roger Tsien I'm Ben Fox ribbon I'm out for gang thanks for listening thanks for the a cappella rendition alright thank you everybody as you heard tomorrow's gonna be a super long show so come prepared with your best questions until then I'm gonna go through your moderately okay questions that you've submitted today and keep the conversation going until then why are they making their own Bitcoin why is this happens you want to keep making in front of Steven Seagal I'm gonna send you a video right now if Steven Seagal running I don't know if you've seen this but it's called Steven Seagal runs like a girl and this is not - justjust hold on I'm sending it to you on slack right now it's okay so so this is this is an easy one to answer why are they doing this because it's free and easy money at this point of celebrity for the celebrities and also for the for the folks that do the Aiko's because in to a certain extent like oh by the way it's an initial coin offering so it's similar to an IPO in that regard but they are much less regulated than you would actually have to to get onto the stock market so while the regulations are considerably lower it just there's there's this big cash grab going on everybody's you know thinks it's like gold rush so at some point the thing is they're launching I SEOs seemingly every day do they make money though that's the thing like out of them do I mean you're just talking about - there's a lot of like crypto like ICO scams - where it's like you get all these investments and then you literally just disappear off the face of it which has happened so there there is a lot of like scamming going on and you know see like the authorities kind of bust like crack down and some of that yeah yeah I imagine this was taught me of costs which by the way everyone listening you should totally invest in Alfred coin which I won't do that I won't do that to you guys he's legit 3:59 coin is also tomorrow sounds like a really good idea frankly so I need to pay for my kids college education somehow the value is limit to three dollars though I'm okay with that it's gonna the total value of the coins all the billion of them that's an extra three dollars and 59 cents that I didn't have it's true that that is true all right Alfred we have this queued up doing are we gonna so Steven Seagal if you've ever watched any of his movies he does not know how to run I don't know why he runs like this it's like he's swatting like visors maybe there's some sort of martial arts move maybe yeah so this is the guy who's the master never thought about this by the way I don't think he's really a girl cuz I don't think girls no they don't but like that's just nature like normal people is like the fins I for one I'm glad to see Steven Seagal back in the limelight yeah I'm with Steven Seagal I mean I did too but I'm okay with him being gone he's a lot puffier than I remember oh he's definitely gained some weights but that's I had to write us yeah that's right a story about him like two years ago because he visited like the Russian ambassador's office or something like that and they gave him like carrots and watermelons and he like just straight he had to eat them like in front of them to like look polite I guess it's the goofiest thing that's a very strange combination I think the hands I will never get tired we make Harris and watermill yeah and I tweeted out a photo of it it's great I would never like get tired of making fun of Stephen Segal amazed how much you know about Congress and 5g we somehow decided listen if it's memed Alfred's gonna bring it to the table all right in the questions Danny Green are they s9 and the new iPhone going to be 5g because I can't burn up my data file fast no no no no chance the first 5g phones will come out early next year and even then I don't imagine there be showing up in the flagship phones I feel like it's gonna be kind of experimental for a little while or somewhere the phones might have 5g capabilities but then you know we're started gonna be there yeah yeah I would I would probably say from from what you said that 5g is only gonna be available from AT&T and a handful of markets well by G it would be spotty Mobile on Sprint and Verizon will deploy some level of it here and then you've seen deployments in Japan and Korea but like in Europe its way behind so from a global scale it doesn't really make sense to have 5g in phones yet with the hockey puck thing by the way if I were to get something like that how close what and I'm in the right market how close would it be that like I could potentially drop my broadband start using it as a Wi-Fi connection if I wanted to um that's a great question I don't know like it I mean that's what Verizon has been trying to deal with there there 5g plans is to you know basically drop traditional projects why they're not investing in FiOS as much as they used to right I mean isn't the reason why people don't do that already with like the LTE boxes that they also have like the on-the-go like Wireless stuff yeah because it's like stupid expensive yeah there's the thing of it is there are we don't know how 5g plans look both 4G right now you have decent speeds already but the Capulets are employment when you hit a certain level they throttle you down so it's not great if you're streamed for instance streaming all your content on some sort of set-top box or your it's just constant of phone using data it's not practical right all right moving on what do we think about ZTE axon 9 razor 2048 wants to know when will the ZTE release the axon 9 it seems that the renders going around is for a different device yeah we're not gonna see the Exxon 9 at Mobile Congress like I said most of the companies there have kind of shifted their flagship plans away from over Congress so you'll probably see it later this year I don't think that phone was ever in the cards for this show anyways but you know surprisingly like companies like LG huawei HTC have traditionally shown off phones at the show and they're kind of they are showing off phones but they're not really flagship phones so as for ZT yeah where I don't think were gonna get much we're gonna get something from them but nothing flagship level so from LG by the way LG usually shows off its latest G line right yeah g6 was at the last show the g6 was at the last show and they really they tried to dominate the show last year cuz Samsung was not there they were sort of de facto big player but the g6 was complete flop so guys to the point where I don't think they're good there is gonna be a G line phone this year there's gonna be something else shaking up their whole plans I love that the one year that Samsung doesn't show up the standout is a phone that was really popular in 1999 yeah that was it no Nokia 3310 was a standout phone was a darling a mobile Congress last year and just because it was retro I haven't seen anybody with that phone yet no nor would you but it's coming to the u.s. or did come to the yeah I came but you know who's gonna buy that phone I don't know like baby pictures like this weekend phone you kind of disconnect from the world which makes sense but also you think about yeah just like logically speaking or you really don't like pop out the SIM card in your phone and like put into this other phone like I'm gonna escape from also I would imagine that if it's the weekend you would want like your actual because you're probably gonna take like a lot of cool photos yeah you know like play games yeah it's like it's really not that hard to disconnect by like not checking your emails or like pretty hard for me I really drank the kool-aid on that phone at the time and that home sad that it didn't everyone drank the kool-aid I mean there is so excited for that drank the kool-aid I think it was more so just like 2017 was a big year of like nostalgia Tech yeah you know I can play these 8-bit games Wow take his back although it wasn't even like actual Nokia snake it was like an upgrade it is that great yeah yeah really funny I do you know if Nokia is doing anything like retro or like missed out possibly yeah yeah engage they'd be silly not to engage that was like the video game phone game phones out there compete with the Nintendo switch bring back the n-gage the bulky Nokia brick that I had was like 50 390 or something I love that thing though was indestructible I threw it at so many windows nice yeah cool okay more questions more questions Michael Brown isn't Mobile World Congress we're Android wear gets some brand new hardware maybe ooh a Google does have a kind of like stealthy but visible presence it's like it did they don't announce anything there but they've got like they've got collectable pins they have these big like a big booth there that you can like you get like bags or you get schwag basically and people go crazy for that stuff like they have collectable pins on every booth like a different Android pin that people literally spend their entire tradeshow walking around getting these pants not actually doing anything just getting these pins so as for actual concrete news like Android wear I would be very skeptical that they would make any news there but Google sort of has a knack for staying in the minds of folks at the show without actually announcing anything from Michael Laveau day what about LG are they gonna come with loaded guns or not I love that brand would love to see them snap back yes I was saying like that what we're seeing LG is gonna have something but it's not going to be like the g7 there'll be a phone they've sort of hinted that the phone will use artificial intelligence AI was a big theme for LG at CES they could continue that with phones Congress but it's not gonna be like the big super flagship phone it's gonna be something a lot of the rumors sort of point to it being an update to the V 30 right on from Moshood UE what do you think about these s9 leaks and I think he's looking for a more personal take away from what we've all been peeking at not the officials seen it reporting on it right right I mean yeah they're the phone's I don't it'll be interesting how they're gonna sell this phone cuz like the focus is on the camera which is smart but it doesn't look like it's particularly different from the previous version which to be fair the s8 I thought was a fantastic phone without a great new design to it but it seems like it hasn't changed that much so it means strategies work for Apple pretty well because Samsung so people are definitely gonna pay attention to it however I would say that the s8 was a much bigger gear for Samsung they had to bounce back problems with the note 7 the stakes were a lot higher the stakes were way higher so with this one III think that as long as it's it's an incremental improvement they do a little bit more work with the camera maybe we will hear more about their voice assistant Bixby right then people people will probably buy it well look if they have a dual lens camera that definitely is a good sign point cuz iPhone 8 still doesn't have that that's the base model of the iPhone still doesn't have a dual cam yeah the other problem is is that the like the iPhone 8 line isn't doesn't look any different than the iPhone 6 yea soda Samsung really have to completely redesign their phone from last year because of what I'm curious if they if they're if they've thought about like bringing a notch into it just like cuz they seem to like emulate a lot Apple stuff right we all know we need more notch it's it's certainly recognizable I mean you could immediately identify it so a lot of people made fun of it but it is an iconic I wouldn't be surprised by the Mobile Congress a lot of lower profile guys come out with the knotch mm-hmm at this point it's I believe in it's like it's become like a not status symbol but it's definitely like if your way that it's a way of showing that this guy sounds ah yes it's a way of showing you've got the lace and grace from iPhone and it's a knotch and that's really the only way to look at hey the essential phone also has a notch I also came out with first it's just small or not nobody owns it too small or not alright we are almost out of time there's lots of great conversation going on about Google project Phi and the Algeria 20 possibly bringing back the replaceable battery experience new flagship phone so thanks everyone for contributing but we just got to close it out with a couple of final thoughts danny green does ask he's on fire today do you think Google will drop the fiber and go with 5g in the future I think that's a great question I mean I think that's yes I mean they've already kind of backed away from physical fiber they after the initial city deployments I think they've completely dropped it like they don't they're not Google Fiber isn't adding any cities anymore because it's crazy expensive and you're taking up sidewalks it just doesn't really it seems like they had the exact same calculus that Verizon did yeah is that they realize that building out the fiber underground even though it works really well just isn't worth it and it's probably we have the extra incentive where Verizon had to basically go in every city and sell them on this idea like we'll give you a free playground if you let us come in and dig up your streets whereas cities were welcoming Google in they're like oh yeah we'll just you know welcome we're working with Google don't worry about regulatory stuff we'll just clear that up for you even with that it was still crazy expensive just practically speaking like digging you up sidewalks and putting in fiber that's not easy and having so 5g or some other LD wireless technology is just a lot cheaper a lot more efficient and future proofing closing thoughts before we say farewell last year we had that 3310 sneakin underneath the radar on us and kind of blew everybody's doors off not in the traditionally like excellent register away more in less knowledge a man really are we going to see any more surprises like that what are you looking forward to what what is are completely off-the-cuff non-official MWC 2018 predictions I want to see another retro phone just just because it's funny and it's interesting in people it gets people talking alright so I'm hoping to see something hopefully from Nokia otherwise I mean Blackberry made a big splash last year it's like oh wait it's still alive it's a thing so maybe they'll say something we'll see or Motorola or more right that's right out with one bring back that sharpies yeah bring back the legit razor found the razor that's what I want to see or the star tech or the car phone by the way I don't know that you mentioned this yet on the podcast but you're gonna be at the show yeah that's right I mentioned so here's why Roger knows so much about this not only does he cover mobile regularly yeah I'll be living mobile for the next week or so but yeah I'll be I'll be there starting Friday yeah but there the whole week so look out for Roger stories yeah that's why I'll be gone next week actually tomorrow will be my last show and what a show it will be yes right speaking of as we mentioned earlier tomorrow is a 350 ninth episode of the 359 we will be live from 11:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time until 3:00 3:00 p.m. 59 and 3:00 p.m. 59 there will be a rotating cast of hitting me right now which is why I can't get the words that going why did I sign up for we're gonna be are our friend Mike Sorrentino will actually be most likely spending a lot of the same amount of time yes as well helping out with questions so we'll be here on YouTube as usual periscope as usual livestream as usual we're gonna spend a few minutes on Facebook as well but not for the entire four hours it's complicated but if you're around you can find us we'll be taking questions across the board lots of guests rotating in and out and all your favorites Dan Ackerman Bridget Carey is that dogs got Stein and then as you mentioned house David Katz Meyer and David gods mark yeah and and then mouse org all right and that's it for today we hope to see everybody back tomorrow at your best convenience for as long as you can give us we're here all day folks yeah yeah it was alright if you liked anything you saw or heard here check us out and see net podcast is available on iTunes tune in stitcher Feedburner google play music and the amazon echo thanks everybody see you tomorrow tomorrow