Gadgetory

today's episode of the 404 show is brought to you by a Cronus that's right i mispronounced them last time it's a cornice your files photos and documents are probably worth more to you than your computer right do you even have a back-up plan to protect those sensitive files I bet you don't that's why a Cronus is honoring world backup day it's March 31st and they're offering a bonus license of the award-winning a Cronus true image backup solution with any purchase you make so visit true image com / 40 for show and learn more about the deal that's a Cronus and I hope I'm saying it right this time thanks to a Cronus for sponsoring the show hey what's up everybody I'm excited or for Showtime what is it you got you got March 18th you got rust brush dick you got Justin you back here I'm excited okay clearly it sounds like it I had seen music enthusiast I had six cups of coffee this morning it's like it I've got I I'm all over the place I'm brought up the walls baby yeah yeah well I'm glad to be back thanks for having me again is this two notes widows one week that income here's two weeks ago that is here knows laughs Wow last week you what's that about Aunt what Santini's been away it's all the time lines have all been merging together I don't know what what date it is what time it is so what week is this that you're by yourself week sex is like yes week six or seven yes like a marsh passed away yeah 86 are you growing potatoes and you're living a red actually baking bread week six I lost another cat funny story actually when I was on the show last week apparently peony calls me up the next day and was like I heard you on the podcast and it was weird because one of one of her friends friends who is a fan of this show okay heard that episode and realized when I was talking about peony that I was talking about her Oh his friends friend that they hadn't met you know they had met maybe a few days prior and actually came up to her and asked her like is your boyfriend this guy Justin but she didn't and that guy didn't know that I had previously been on the podcast so imagine listening to a podcast that you know you have no affiliation with so he joy so he said listening after I left yeah yeah and uh and all of a sudden this person is talking about somebody you know that's weird very crazy so shout out to that guy have no idea what his name is but Chuck's friend what's up you have a lot of like situations like that it happens to you it doesn't happen to me it doesn't happen or us you're the guy that that has these things happen to you we're like oh come on i was walking down the street and this guy on a bike he dropped his keys in front of me and I picked him up and I gave it to me it goes are you Justin you from the 44 and I was like yeah he's like hold on he goes into his back pocket he's got a picture of your mom it's like I went to high school with what and that happens to you so weird i did i was playing call of duty about a week ago with some guys that like friend of a friend but like gamer friends like randoms total randoms and they're like are you r us from poly on and I first of all I'd never gave them my first name that's never gave like all they had was my gamertag which sort of implies for us but whatever and it was like a weird moment like that's and I've had a few like on the street things but like it is I like it's nice but like is it's strange it's like a weird thing yeah I you know I just don't want to get kidnapped yeah cuz you're really valuable like the ransom alone would be at least twenty dollars no I don't think the reason for kidnapping Jeff would be to get ransom sex I think you'd just be like the torture torture me okay I went right to sex yeah sure sure Justin's face was like oh god this is how my face puke yeah just hearing you talk to you guys talking to people torture torture I guess that happens there was that movie the room which I guess is the equivalent of like torture but it seems like just the kidnapped someone to torture them and I have like a monetary end goal seems very self-centered I think that distich do that defines liked Rumania yeah that's scary yeah that's when you're building a separate place around your house speaking of which I saw Chloe on the other day oh you did yeah did you guys watch that weekend Chloe no no I didn't see the movie I really want to see it yeah ok so the consular freeze well every totally I mean it's a brand new movie so okay it was really good to us we talked about how much I like the original cloverfield and Ryan gave me on a for it because it's not a good movie yes it's not a good movie but the concept was kind of interesting i think as New Yorkers people didn't like it because they got from like 96 street down to whatever prints in like two seconds underneath what I didn't like about it is that they didn't leave yet it really try to leave late hail broke in the middle of Brooklyn Bridge and they couldn't leave you I would swim across the Hudson understand it swim across the Hudson if Cloverfield monster was ripping up Chelsea Yemen is so big what is gonna hit you I guess but it's not like I'm gonna sit here and wait it out because I've know right away like all men air force is gonna come and bomb the out of and either get out of here they don't know it's not like they're broadcasting on cue 143 the compiler anyway anyway anyway so 10 Cloverfield Lane good is pretty interesting yeah so the story i guess if people haven't watched the trailer is that it is technically a sequel to cloverfield right and i want and if you do but you up have a sport like if you want here any i won't yeah baby stick like five minutes at here yeah i mean i will Jamie that was in the trailer okay but yet the concepts interesting cuz its kind of this new style of storytelling that we've seen in like fear of the walking dead we're on the story exists in the same universe whereas the first movie but it sort of talks about it different it said a point of it happens sure exactly yeah um but it's it's definitely story within a story because then you have John Goodman you see this in the trailer on the story is that a girl wakes up and uh you know she's told by this guy that she was in a car crash and she is underneath this uh this guy's house in sort of a safe house by doomsday prepper yeah and he says that something crazy has happened above ground and that she can't escape this this hatch this basement and the story kind of goes from there and she figures out whether or not this guy John Goodman is actually creepy and is trying to do weird things or if something bad actually happened in social so you enjoyed it so I really enjoyed yeah it's been getting great review had had I totally agree with them it's very compelling I know people have said it's like very Hitchcockian in that way I great super sorry you know psychological and like a like who do you trust I guess I I saw ex machina and I got that vibe from ex machina so I guess sort of in the similar vein of that yeah yeah jungermann plays such a good creepy guy yes I love him to death uh I don't know that X market ex machina I did but I knew right come on you knew right away Oscar Isaac was like bad news but that was not the mystery of that no but he was still bad there was certainly a moment in that movie again spoilers if you haven't seen ex machina were like he the main guy doesn't know Tom Hall Gleason doesn't know if he's a rope like right right yeah whatever that was fun writes like a lot of success start dancing yeah it's the greatest scene in the movie it's very good it's pretty good shot in Iceland beautiful but yeah go watch 10 Cloverfield Lane even if you didn't like the first one or in fact if you didn't watch the first one you still yeah as a man you still watch it is John Goodman just the coracle monster in a big suit yeah the wigs out how great he looks great as a lot of weight I love diamond I looking forward to in a few weeks maybe we can come back and just talk about what you think happens in the movie okay there's some interesting stuff he was my thing the only thing I found fascinating about the original Cloverfield was all of the supposed Easter eggs that likely that that hinted at well exactly was like a weird japanese company yes i shall show like that there's uh there's easter eggs that I over i think in a lot of JJ abrams stuff there's stuff were like they're splashes in the water and sad for the amulet was that that i want to know show me give me that like you need some of that without spoiling it again on those it pop up in this mug you soon yeah something i don't know how you would care if you didn't like the first movie why you would hear about this because I'm more intrigued about like I like I just mythology yeah I want to know the massage okay but you don't like the characters you didn't like no I thought that was a very stupid movie but I want I want to know like what people have liked to get here yeah but people didn't like the first movie I think because of the way it was shot to is already can play Giles is getting people kind of nauseous in the theater which object case here rights justifiable that movie is almost designed to make you sick i feel like uh the Muppet take a like said look to me the most intriguing stuff is what did what is this way I did this happen him where has all this footage connected you found the footage like that's did they ever explain that in blair witch they don't did you say like this was recovered yeah i see that's why like I don't think Blair Witch is amazing either but I think the idea the idea that was very original when it came out yeah the Cloverfield was the same thing I think they're sort of hinting at the fact that man might have created that monster because they they showed some toxic sewage and things like that I don't like when Godzilla was the new Godzilla right all right that was terrible yes bad um alright I like this because it leads really perfectly into some of the more weird stuff and that's like the theme of today's show it's just like weird stuff that we just don't know what it is we've talked about stuff like that before like remember that story we're like the disk guy found on a park bench I'll be like popped it in and they had a whole you know like weird video this cryptic video and it was a marketing stunt no it wasn't anything it was just like some artists it had went up being like an artist yeah uh it was gone I went on forever and ever and ever and now Justin it comes up to me today and he's like dude it just like we have to talk about this today and I just looked at I just glanced at it uh it's called Julie rubicon yeah and I just I'm gonna hand it over to you man blow our minds what is this well this this link got sent into my inbox on Tuesday and it was a link to a Facebook post that was just labeled Julie rubicon and in the subsequent days after I read it I kind of figured that this story would blow up because it's such an interesting tale and i've been googling it over the past few days just this week and no one's really talked about it so i thought that you know after Jeff invited me on this morning that I would bring it up because I want to know what you guys think about it and whether or not this story is true um so on tuesday i got this link right at this facebook post is from a guy named robin Sloane who'd you get the link from a friend okay source all right I got it a couple of the people got it as well I think Jason Kottke also got it um this guy robin sloan the author he tells a really interesting story that goes deep into how much facebook knows about the world right think about all the information and the data they're pulling in from our personal lives how much we volunteer it's no surprise that you know facebook and obviously take the stuff and offer insights into the world right commenting on advanced or you know figuring out stuff that that has happened analyzing things and maybe even potentially predicting the future and that's what this story's done trends yeah yeah so Robin sloan worked for this advertising team in menlo park and he worked specifically within the partner intelligence group at Facebook codenamed pig and that offers large advertising clients the ability to see you know how much they their brand has impacted the world and how much people are talking about sure and so obviously a big advertising companies will pay a lot of money to get these insights and you're basically looking at what Robin describes as a view of billion users from like 30,000 feet okay so using pig you can type in all kinds of queries for stuff you want to know about the trends right like you know how are the adidas yeezy is doing this year or that's a smoker yeah the sneaker right from Kanye right at Kanye's sneaker or anything right you put in seanad or anything so around april of last year robin says that he was entering search terms for a children's footwear brand into pig right and pig brought up all kinds of graphs and stuff for for data spikes and popularity and when he was looking at it as he was typing in the information for this children's footwear brand he accidentally forgot to enter the end date for when he wanted to see the graph oh no right and so that was a mistake and when the graph got brought up after that it was left open ended and it actually showed that the graph ended in October of 2016 when he scrolled all the way to the right so obviously that's in the future so what the hell right and anyway so it kept going so that the graph kept going this was in April of 2015 so it showed more than a year into the future of children in variation not just a straight graph and the more I can pretty can sit I'm looking at the fairly consistent really consistent so their kids he's like on a chill until of a June first that you could see that if you scroll to the right on this graph June first shows a big big spike June first of 2015 which was at the time three months into the future so this children's footwear brand called vernix right nothing happens with the brand then three months later on june first 2015 the exact date vernix announced that it was being bought out by nike know so after that happened obviously the conversation spiked like crazy all right so let's let's pause for a second so what that story implies yeah is that Facebook Pig predicted the acquisition predicted the acquisition who knows based on you know stock market speculation right like how do people pick stocks are and how much we should know it's like it's not it's not like a little dance well but it's not like a little spike it's like a 10 X huge white huge spike right if from this graph it's a it's a roughly of 4x and spike and again we're looking at some were I I guess assuming that this guy but obviously this all came out after the fact is there's no way it would publish it before the fact is why would you write Facebook close it down immediately right but again we're like sort of assuming that this guy didn't just hoax the hell out of it right okay so there's more to the story though yeah keep going this is fun after he realizes this when June first comes around and they got bought out by Nike he had a big wall moment right what to do with this much power so he decided to enter in other queries to see if this was this tool is indeed accurate and he did the same thing to predict the NBA Finals for last year that's okay that's a huge potential potential revenue scoffing right you know we're talking about back to the future style predictions and it didn't predict the winner not all I'm sorry it did predict the winner but not just that it actually showed the exact score and how much the players were or were succeeding in my search showed that the war is won then this is where I stop believing hold on after the Hat stay with me here after that he decided to really extend his reach for this tool and him and a co-worker Julie rubicon wait is that a real name that is a real name supposedly uh they decided to start making money by buying and selling stocks of companies using these graphs and search terms as predictors of the future and he says that they made a thousand dollars first betting on a spike for a company called Volkswagen I've heard of in September of last year and so they saw a huge spike then and prior to that had no idea what it well there's another question so Volkswagen was the ones that got caught for their emissions thing really so was there a dip that's what we're talking about so they saw a huge spike in September of last year for Volkswagen but that that's not an angel by short sell the stock based on that see the problem with these graphs that it only is that there are conversations being had around it does topics not necessarily whether it's good or bad right so so when our claim the stocks based on this information you gotta say well is it good or bad the Volkswagen you have to make ok talk about and chances are Volkswagen I cut most car companies are not gonna have that much of a spike read something really bad actually Tesla's right right you're right that's a good point i would think any sort of massive publicity would be rooted in something to the function right career so yeah yeah yeah absolutely and so they ended up being right and they netted a thousand dollars each bank so then shorty Volkswagen short shorting that's I know about this now cuz i watch the big short last week and i know i know the entire stock market go okay uh so that was a big success for them but after that it wasn't a hundred percent they start of betting on other stuff they actually lost money as quickly as they made it so because of that reason that it could be negative or positive news it's not absolute and they ended up losing a little bit of money but the real compelling part of the story and i don't want to give it away because i think you should go and read it yourself i'm not really doing the story justice by explaining it here but the long and short of the end of it without giving anything away is that they decided to put their own names into this tool alright then push they put Robin Sloan and they put Julie rubicon into the tool Robbins alone nothing right zero spikes okay but when they entered in Julie rubicon it showed a big spike in March of 2016 when the story breaks when the story breaks on this on Tuesday uh-uh March what was it like 13th or something so this is an great fiction and so the real thing about this is that conversation spike spikes according to this tool when uh championships are decided right through basketball games or it could be companies collapse or it could be when people die right select big celebrity right when they did Julie rubicon Julie rubicon wasn't a celebrity so now so I don't want to ruin the ending for you but if you want to know what happened Julie rubicon and what that tool did and why he published this on the exact date that the spike happened about jewelry con you should go and read it and um maybe you guys can tweet out the link to it or put it in the show notes but it's pretty crazy and I pretty sure that this story isn't isn't true obviously this guy Robin Sloane after doing a little bit of research has published a few books that are fiction yeah so it's not hard to assume that this guy just took a very interesting topic and wrote a good story about it yeah and that's how I think you have to look at it this I think you look at the tech Julie rubicon as the name of your face I would pick something a little more generic than that if you want to be able like that sounds particularly yeah I think he's trying to hide it too much I just think like this is a great work of fiction it's really good definitely I wasn't built out into a large story and maybe even a movie but I wish seen it fiction was this first one it's also not completely implausible that a tool maybe not officially developed by the company but you know a rogue project by an engineer something could be rigged up to do back then it definitely plays on like the idea of like you know Big Brother II it's a black mirror yeah yeah exactly it's like real it's really cool I like the idea was great yeah I mean that's kind of what we talked about all the time with Twitter how it's you know could be looked at as the collective unconscious of society or I guess you know their users and I'm interests to see what other kind of stuff that maybe people could pull out of it yeah it was um that show that was the prequel to battlestar galactica that wasn't very good at Caprica it was called and came out right after battle Battlestar Galactica came out and they talked about essentially reviving people's consciousness is through their social impede iya impact so someone dies you could essentially resurrect them in a robot body in this case using all of the data they've put online and that's enough to essentially get you pretty damn close so I mean all this stuff is very cool this actually reminds me of I think reddits what is it no sleep the subway laboriously where it's written and you like you're like half thinking like is this a real story yeah all that stuff so all of no sleep is definitively fiction yes you're right but like it's all a lot of italy's that i've seen has been written like the my crew count true accountant crazy stuff to happen these people i think uh it's totally in the vein of black mayor stuff I think that is because I think we're we're kind of do for like the next renaissance of not paranoia uh fiction but like maybe you know it's almost like the Red Scare stuff like in the one was McCarthyism if fifties right I feel like we're we're approaching that next and I hate to call it a Renaissance because Renaissance implies like a glory sort of thing but like I think we're due for that sort of stuff when it comes to intercept and I think sure this story only works because of the projections of um you know that Facebook has yeah you're like ninety percent there in terms of believing it because it's like this is stuff you've been hearing about oh of course they're reading all right so of course I have all this data and it may use it to make money right definitely it's all supported by like those moments those true life aha moments you have like when you discover Google history hmm like the first time I discovered google location history and I was like I was like looking like where I flew that day and where I traveled and like I went back to the day Dylan was born and we like relive that since I stem yeah what happened because we went back and forth to the hospital that day yeah and I was at work and I came back and like just watch wherever you go yeah it is very easy to to create a narrative around your location and it's very bizarre I i have i've been like sort of marinating an idea in my head for a little while of like seeing my kid when he's 30 or like when i'm gone right yeah and he then is it like for whatever reason all of our our generations history is released online and like you just have generations of kids who are like able to search dad's search history oh yeah think about like the about stuff like that but like thats dark but think about that right like think about you becoming your chew your children be coming of age and like for whatever reason all that's out well they're really cause there's no there's no rest like you know especially right now what's going on with the with the iphone stuff in the FBI like there's no reason to believe anything we ever did on line up until now is safe wherever care especially if you have a gmail account right so I think like yeah that's a crazy future and like it won't matter cuz we'll all be dead yeah like when everyone's information will be out there to be kind of an equalizing rays which kind of like makes me believe I kind of lifted this idea from this comic i read about the cloud bursting and how like everyone has to wear masks but to to camouflage their their true identity yeah but uh but yeah like imagine your kid when he's in it or whoever whatever and like says oh man dad was into some dark stuff but it's also weird because they're our kids will be the only they'll look at us and are like internet history and will be the last generation that has the weird 10-year gap where nothing happened at the beginning right like that's it like we are gonna be like their generation of whatever 15 sure 15th way so their generation from the minute they're born to the minute they die will be recorded online right but we have this the last like little gap where that we weird let's call that something we've seen both sides right right so we're like we straddle that line in nexus of whatever it is I feel like right now is like the middle point too yeah where it's like the first I'll be 34 in a week alright so that the first 17 years of my life was kind of offline yeah and now the last 17 ad if you will is a ai ai d88 now we don't want that ah but yeah like that's that's freakin nutty yeah yeah I getting too heady yeah what do you think I need to delete my browser it's it's already it's already there right yeah all like all that stuff has been done yeah see that's that's the thing about you know going back to that FBI Apple story too is I feel like everyone is open to the idea of a future like that and they don't see it as dystopic because it's that whole argument about what I don't have anything to hide oh that is the work that is a bad argument to have yet I don't remember why though I think it you know every time I I think about why I don't want my private information out there how I really don't have anything to hide that's that's just a singular case right and yes it's a singular case where you're not a terrorist right right or it's it's assuming that in the future I really don't have anything I'd know so if you can look at it one dimensional yeah right and say I'm not a terrorist I have no criminal ambitions our history right but I've searched some pretty effed up stuff on the internet yeah I mean privacy isn't just for stuff that you would be embarrassed to see leaked out you know there's there's a reason why we have doors on bathrooms and stuff yeah you you you want your dignity as if locks on your doors there's there's you know and the last bastion of freedom we may have is within our own brain and you know and that's like dark web Russ's eyes just blew up what it was that trouble you like did you guys hot box this room before we still reported a lot oh you just oh that what you thought that was just like a skunk loose in here no I mean you're right like that's the idea is that it's the last place that it's like quote safe and then we start getting into 1984 territory with Ron crime etcetera etcetera um precogs pre pre crime well it's effed up recon that's what this jewelry essentially free Primus it's it's cool stuff i like it i think uh it's funny because like a lot of people just to bring it down to reality there for a second here and well don't worry we'll take off again in a second but i think like the biggest thing that something like Twitter like all the adversity twitter has been facing in the last ten months because of its inability to really become the mega blockbuster you know revenue generating Silicon Valley darling is based around the fact that like oh well they have so much data on the world they should be able to sell that data uh and and and turn a profit just based on like how valuable data is right at its core yeah it's like kind of not what's happened well and it's also difficult because the since their user base is not growing they're not seen as like an updated resource for like where the world is at so if the users are elsewhere especially younger users which is the case you're not getting what advertisers one which is water younger users into right now so not as valuable and they're not gaining users yeah that's that's the issue they're running into oh man it's very it's weird i I just I don't know I how's that the doctor the other day and I'm like man is there gonna like doctors make mistakes yes free make mistakes a lot and I wonder if there will be a time where we're just like do you believe doctors used to be human beings you believe like we left our lives in the hands of actual um you know human beings like imperfect people yeah people who did not always know the right answer that or that change their minds yeah we left it to chance there was a here so here's a phrase you won't hear in a hundred years second opinion oh my right unless unless you don't trust the Apple OS opinion and you want the windows OS doctor but it's the best it's the most up-to-date version we have or you would have an aggregate opinion f a bunch of robots right you'd have like a yelp review of a specific doctor and their percentage of accuracy based on whatever it's just right you know i don't know it's it's really yeah black mirror yep that's what it is all right should we should we skip ahead a little bit let's do you wanna you want to take a shower you want to take a cold shower to shock shock the system just a tiny bit i want to talk about VR oh yeah because that has nothing to do with our completely dystopian future so VR is is real in 2016 it's actually hear all the experiences I've had I'm I'm just kind of lukewarm about really yeah you haven't had like a mind-blowing yeah could this is crazy VR experience may not be the oculus yeah just first time that's what I'm saying the first have you used the vive I haven't used the vibe I've tried the rift but I was blown away by it I mean that first experience Grey's always the same you should use the vibe we have i'm gonna go i'm gonna play right after this alright well to film you to make you look awful I look like the controller yeah hold okay so you even use anything I haven't used that at all PlayStation the PlayStation VR pricing and availability information was released this week and it's going to go for four hundred dollars right well it's obviously an add-on you need a ps4 and then you're also going to need a camera that is not included in that bundle right and n controllers I would say to make things easy for people to understand it's going to cost you five hundred dollars which is what they just announced the bundle which essentially comes with everything you could possibly need apart from your ps4 so effectively the psv our calls $500 right but that you know assumes you have a ps4 right but the oculus assumes you have a computer as does the vibe right which a gaming computer no less not oh yeah your old work computer definitely serious graphics card is required for those two things so I don't know I just think like and I want to get your tick because I know you're not really into any of the gaming sort of stuff yeah but you understand the three options right you understand what's there what what to you what feels like the most accessible thing like cardboard I mean yeah that's probably the most accessible but for me as a non-gamer there's still a lot of stuff to get excited about with virtual reality i was looking at this app uh forgiveness i was called a public speaking for cardboard okay and you could download it for your google cardboard or whatever google glass and it basically shows you a room full of people that resume said you know it's basically a virtual room that lets you practice speaking in front of a group and you can apply audience members actually try to do things to distract i go like they would in a normal situation not maybe not heckle cough but they'll cough yeah don't get up and walk around room or go to the bathroom and stuff like that and that's kind of cool because it has nothing to do with gaming although it is kind of a gamey type environment or is that your people read up like that's great and i would actually use that because i don't know if i told you guys but I'm going to a wedding uh next next month when we know about the band party that's right talking about that but I'm also officiating my friend oh you are yeah yeah and so oh yeah obviously that's terrifying and if I could actually do this to maybe simulate a thing and then potentially in the future even we does like overlay bases on top of that audience more likely we are going to be there in the world so you actually have to glance down here no really I'm like that super cool yeah I think the biggest thing is that people don't I think the other applications the non gaming applications are what people don't really understand yet and you came to me that's the coolest stuff you can't really wrap your head around it in the same way that like when the internet came out I was like why don't I just call people on the phone yeah like in this case why don't I just like get a few friends around and stand in front of it like a crowd but you can't like I think it's so early and people are just really starting to dig into like the possibilities yeah you can't even a man t vynn imagine like where thing like I would never think of that it's a great idea I mean even something as basic as uh you know sitting in a movie theater and having whatever video you play on your right device show up as like right super giant or like you have a fear of flying and you could like being a plane and do like fear flying adjustment whatever yeah like this a lot of really cool applications for that yeah the thing that's cool about VR is like it's one thing to think about the sci-fi stuff but it for me the coolest thing is like understanding that like VR only works when it convincingly tricks your brain yeah and there's like a few parameters that have to be mia for that to work sure and i just love the fact that like that's all vr is is brain trickery yeah like that's all it is yeah all it is is like putting a screen on your face with enough of a peripheral yeah sort of vision and the latency low enough that your body believes that your head moving and the image moving in sync with that is close enough to how it is in reality right well for people to haven't tried out the stuff which one do you think does the best or do they all do it really well I think the best technical demonstration out there is vibe yeah that's what I've heard is I think because vibe out of the box does the spatial stuff we're like oculus is at its start is only a head tracker I think move does through spatial stuffs well it does but it's also based off what is arguably an inferior technology right so that's the issue it's like a functionally you wouldn't able to run oculus on like a four-hundred-dollar 300 our PC it wouldn't be powerful enough and that's effectively what they're doing with the ps4 and not only that you have to run on the ps4 you have to run games at 90 frames a second um and so the end result is that the graphics you're not going to get realistic graphics on PlayStation VR you'll get like ps3 maybe yeah I think it need to be prepared for the for the sort of the D rezzing that's gonna happen and then and there is a way a way around that like I played a really good battle zone demo for PlayStation VR that like used heavily stylized graphics kind of like Nintendo very colorful very like you know emblematic of like a stylized look and so those work great but if you're looking like to be fooled into thinking you're in reality I think you're gonna have to look at oculus survive for something and even that stuff for me yeah it's always off I have issues like again and I don't know if I don't know if I talked about on this show or beast casts or whatever the hell I talked about it but I think like for me the VR you know sort of like birth that we're experiencing right now for me I feel like it's so cool because I know what's going to be in like 10 years hmm where it's like when we first got on the internet it was like oh yeah I get this could be faster like you didn't contemplate that yeah like when you first got online you weren't like all men 15 years from now when there's like 3d video on the internet and it 1080p it's gonna be great you didn't you didn't know but now the starting point at which vr is that you can easily tell like oh wait the headsets going to be way better Elijah yeah the peripherals are going to be way better right now there's like this John Malkovich like portal thing yeah where you can kind of see like the horizon do you mean like yeah uh and that that will get better the viewing angle will get better the head tickets but and the resolution for me which is a huge thing oh yeah when that's like 8k right in your eye it's gonna be like swim goggles it's gonna be tiny yeah but I but I'm saying for now it is like in the future it's basically gonna be like tiny some got the form factor of yeah that's a big part of it I think your be able to wear like sunglasses in they'll just project the image on your right contacts like on your retina or contact but it needs the sio at least accurate need to be a seal so you have the outside well right yeah yeah right but if it's being projected onto your retina I bet they could like or contact lens that they could do it in a way what you wouldn't see beyond it maybe I just think that's what's fun to think about because we have that knowledge like we know where things could go yeah so that's why I kind of remain positive and optimistic about unless it all tanks and non-voice them which is also a possibility makes you sad do you guys think that's more of a possibility with the the stuff that you actually have to actively play um you know where you're walking around in a virtual environment stuff do you think people actually want that or I think people want like a sitting down game I think it's like you look at it like the app store like marketplace like people want to mix of stuff they want applications that are useful for work they want games they want entertainment stuff like I think it will be a mix I don't know that you're going to see a 10 million selling VR game certainly not in the first few years because hey you need a broader market place and be yeah it's it's it's a really tough sell it's like hard to get people to wear something about Owens something that's so huge and expensive so I think we'll see but at the very least I hope if these don't sell well if they tank whatever I hope some like tiny company somewhere has just like a boutique business of just like doing VR stuff because I feel like that's you might not build a 10 billion dollar industry on that but you know as like a business as a small business I think it could survive at once people start building out their houses and placing furniture around their their their homes yeah to accommodate these games what's crazy to me is that even though it kind of seems like it's it's happened really fast we're already starting to build out a separate room in cnet in the office just for a virtual reality testing which is basically just gonna have to be an empty padded room yeah which is nuts because you know we don't really have too much space here now so we're kind of talking inside baseball but you know which room wouldn't work right and that's insane I never thought that we would actually have that in my time here if it takes off like it's reasonable to think like when you're buying a house like well which house will be the VR right yeah and it would have to be a safe room too because a lot of time you see me walking around blind yeah it's a holodeck assessment Lisa Howard yeah it's as close as we're going to get for a long time if it doesn't take I wonder what will happen two years from now if vive and/or oculus doesn't take off because I think regardless i do think PlayStation VR will do well because of the installation base because so many people because they have 35 million playable wells out there yeah but well it's relative like look at the Vita so Vita had PlayStation branding you think it do really well and it didn't and essentially Sony's forgotten about it doesn't support it anymore for the most part so you know who knows its heart it's hard to say I hope that's not the case i think gonna be great um yeah I mean really this thing I just one like my parents to try it out totally yeah I can't what alone I realize doing is too young but like I want to melt the brain of a little kids okay like how amazing would that be to watch a little kid doing vr over this thing no one under 12 should do it that's probably true i think i said no 112 should wear vr cuz i didnt care i'm still gonna like put it on his face i played a video game with with my niece very first time it was amazing ah before anybody rights in I will not put it on my kid's face i just want i will next time i visit i'm gonna sneak it in yeah i just strapped on don't say shut up or get it's just like yeah I want my dad to like total you it and I want him to freak out because like for the long for my entire life I've tried to like get my dad to give the slightest bit of a about games yeah he's like does it does not care I feel that doesn't get it he doesn't care yeah um like I guess with a lot of things i'm into he just doesn't get it um but like he's the one who bought me an Atari when I was two so like that wasn't kiddies into games no that's good I you to go where he was when I was too he was 30 yeah right yeah so like he he was uh he didn't just buy it because he thought it was a kid's toy he definitely bought it for himself you yea big it was like a this is like the future of life baby toys yeah I didn't think like that so I just have this like you know difficulty in understanding why where the divide was like what my dad played arkanoid when we were growing out and and just like totally lost interest yes probably cuz the controller started getting really difficult and yet part of it do a bunch of other things at once it wasn't just moving forward and back you to strafe but like that was why I grew up for me it's got you complicated brain is not so I didn't want to play and it wasn't fun right you're not the only friend I have who is completely devoid of gaming it and look I'll give you the benefit of doubt you tried you tried ps2 we used to do those ps2 like things with you which conan now does yeah have you seen that how it was like it's a video series where he intentionally toxic games right clueless gamer yeah we came up with a lot of good ideas so um so like I get that but like I have friends to who were just like yep the second games went 3d I stopped because my brain couldn't handle it so I don't know who knows all right what's up can I talk to you guys a little bit about virtual reality audio yeah I wanted a I don't know do we have time I want to do a little show and tell oh my god this product that I haven't had a chance to write about on seen it yet I have a few out of briefing for it yeah I have it in my pocket right now oh I thought you're just very much as soon as it's right here and lock it so on hey you're not watching this no one is it looks like a mini glasses case yes it looks like a mini glasses case but these are the here active listening bluetooth earbuds okay so we've been seeing a lot of those pop up lately I think you know there's like a braggy dash and onkyo has their own bluetooth earbuds but these are different because they don't actually play music and but they look like it because they go your bow so he opens it up and there's like all these LEDs that looks all it looks like a Star Trek little star trek think those LEDs indicate batteries but on yet what's unique about the system is that these earbuds don't play music they filter incoming sounds and allow you to basically equalize your world they describe it as Bionic ears which i think is really great marketing and yeah so that other noise cancelling they are noise cancelling but that's actually the least interesting thing that they do and I want one of you guys to put these in now because there app that I can start up and demo it for you everywhere both of them so you wear both of them that one is the left one and you just kind of stick it in and then twist up to engage the seal so they look like they're basically in-ear monitors so that yeah they're kind of like bit they look like bigger earbuds but they're completely wireless there's no wiring I don't number warning that's fine I'll just throw those tips away yeah you just got burned those tips okay also you're gross they connect to each other via bluetooth and then they connect to this phone by bluetooth to right and there's an app that you can run so he doesn't hear anything so you can you can hear that you can hear yes they're not engaged right now right and engaged they uh they basically have microphones in each ear bud okay and there's signal processing that happens to all the sounds and get filtered in and so um look I'll show you this app this is of one of the modes this is um the noise attenuation rights if you want to cancel noise you just drag down this slider here and it should be a lot quieter it is a lot kinda still hear them but yeah you could still hear a little bit but this will reducing the level down 22 death so just to describe Justin as an app that's basically like a slider slider for decibels right for decimals and just when it you just brought it down from plus 6 decibels down to minus 22 now Russ is but here let me put you back up and the cool thing about this what I think is the the most innovative is that there's no latency so look I'm turning the volume oops I'm turning the volume up now and it should have gotten really loud for you but look at my mouth when I'm talking no latency right so it's instance you're saying that dressing happens right away and that's very important process mouth is a gig it's really crazy it's interesting right yeah I had the same reaction during a demo and it's similar to what we were talking about before as the first time using oculus right it's modifying your world but you don't see that transaction happen right and so that's so that's one of them here I'll bring you down to zero so we can EQ again now if you really want to get into the yeah yeah just like looking around thing cuz if if one of your earbuds is facing the source of the noise also your voice sounds like my voice sounds super crazy right now right but if wonder your buzz is facing the source of noise that's what's going to be pick up and increasing this side is much quieter than normal like your normal air would be really your word directional yeah and you I mean you're wearing a form of hearing it right basically yeah yeah similar technology and uh so this is sort of gets down into the details of your live eq in where you can adjust frequencies are based on the exact uh hurts ratings so you could go Super Bass ears yes your base E and then on their precepts as well so they're larger vision is that eventually they want you to they want everybody to be wearing these all the time right kind of like uh that movie her right but that I mean okay and you know since people have different preferences for what they want to hear and don't hear um that's where you're really gonna find the utility here and so they describe to me this use case where say you're at a show right you're watching a live band play and you're unfortunately positioned right in front of one of the speakers so it's really loud but you don't want to wear earplugs because that'll ruin the audio experience I guess maybe you can turn down the bass on you know in the future you'll be able to adjust the direction of where the sound is coming in so that you can virtually stand in the sweet shop guys and you um so here let me boost you up a little bit and you could do things like add bass you can even produce an echo to so again no latency I wish we had video because well my shaking his head and that's racist echo will yes there's echo on here turn that off there's flange which you can adjust which makes my voice probably really warbly and it kind of sounds like I'm drunk are you drunk or something yeah that's bizarre so I mean anybody want that I mean these are just kind of mess around right and in the future it'll be a lot different and then here are the presets for things like an eight-track you know they have partnerships with places or I think they're working on partnerships places like Carnegie Hall okay to where they'll eq per seat so if you're sitting all the way to the right then make it sound like you're in the center cool left center etc how how much of an amplification can you do it's a only plus accessible that's crazy so he just turned on a setting that makes it sound like we're in a jolly big venue that's Carnegie Hall well that's not what the actual venue sounds like awkward but its reflection it's it's cool it's really cool yeah it's it's pretty crazy and up one of the stories that founder was talking to me about it all right I can't I need to try this did did you get gross no they're not you been all rights away which so this I've never forgotten so wait Justin explain to me how this works right yeah like does it just do these both talk to each other so those connect to each other by bluetooth okay and which is you know exactly the same technology as other bluetooth earbuds um except I think they do it a lot better because the sound doesn't cut out like other ones do yeah and then there's a Bluetooth connection that comes here as well um so the yet when I was getting the demo okay the the founder Noah Croft craft Croft I'm not sure uh he was telling me this interesting store where he was using them in his office and he boosted the sound 2 plus 6 decibels right and he could actually eavesdrop on the people that were talking and having conversations outside of his office you know walking around hanging out as best buy so that's where the bionic ear part comes in perhaps you could boost that well be me all on your at zero decibels right now ok this is noise cancelling it's probably got a lot quietly the underwater act yeah and then this is probably very loud for you cuz they just boosted its accessible see so it's not super loud it's not really really that but I mean I can do like the fans going on behind my it's a little more sense than yeah was crazy i was listening I was wearing them while I was raining the other day and I could hear every drop of rain that was on my backpack on my hat everything says it's very very cute yeah I me some of those wacky effects so here I'll eat this is another section that I didn't show you guys get this tune out oh so if you're standing next to a busy street or your job way station or bad your shitty person that they actually have that for a loud office so on i think that brings down the frequency of most calming voice and it's giving me a little bit of white noise now the other thing mm-hmm yes a lot of people know listen to music on their desk to drown out loud coworkers hopefully in the future you wanted to do that restaurants okay um as well so here's the restaurant setting and that'll take crowd noises and clanking of um you know dishes and what you do that big hall setting yeah okay yeah you want Carnegie Hall there you go you probably is that crazy is it it's crazy it seems like we're all in completely separate will you and yet can't even talk right now about the cross it's like 100 all in different corners this one is stratosphere and so you probably hear like a room you know your balls yeah that's actually exactly how they described it to me is true maybe you want to be in a different setting the mindset yeah see the echo yeah me the most amazing part is really the the lack of latency it's just you kind of forget after a while when you're wearing that well that's very impressive engineering feat they couldn't take me off echo oh my god they couldn't uh they couldn't have released this with a delay right it went okay wait that doesn't work yeah right yeah this is fascinating is there a little a literal delay and we just can't hear it I'm not there might be probably like I'm undetectable what was that I don't know is that this no no I don't we just heard a beep compromise at the podcast um I wonder if uh so how do these work do you think one talks to the other because they both can't bind to the bluetooth yeah yeah so I think that's how um their version of Bluetooth that they're using works is that you can have multiple you can okay yeah it's very cool just yeah that's great awesome it's the same thing with we were talking about before with the virtual reality headsets is that this is cool for now but um when you see the application of how they're gonna use it technology that's going to be really cool they partnered with South by Southwest and coachella as well upcoming to sort of give concert goers a very unique experience where I think about in the future maybe they'll have artists actually tune uh you know for the crowd themselves right so like I want my music to sound exactly like this with these frequencies boosted a little extra base here and there and you can really customize a sound like that or you know musicians that are playing their own instruments or think about how maybe you can use it to listen to music at home sure over speakers and then you know boost your EQ that I mean how many times are you in a situation where you're like and I just need to I need to be able to hear something that I just normally you know it's really now the kid like I need to know I want to know when he's crying totally and I know it's not like I was like oh you could use a monitor but like sometimes that's not what you want to do ah it's really neat alright but let's let's cut to the chase how much are these so they're 250 especially not that I always expect more not too bad you can't listen to music through it so to keep that in mind you know they're not a headphone you should I aim to well that's because it's a lifestyle sort of thing and so they're not really trying to UM they're not trying to be a headphone that can also do these other thing how hard could it be if I'm sending do yeah they can it's not that they don't have the technology I feel like they could and maybe they're just not happy with garlic the quality or whatever like this is just for real-world stuff all right yeah yeah exactly yeah but maybe there may be like the next model it'll also be a bluetooth you would imagine that's cross their mind oh that's absolutely right i think is yeah it's definitely the first thing yes decision yeah yeah that's where sure but i'm looking forward to a time in the future where we can maybe just isolate certain you know maybe pair this with another set of headphones and you guys can have a conversation in a loud bar right you know or some other venue and here as if they're whispering in your yeah that's super cool when did when did the warmer these guys here they were here couple weeks ago um yeah so definitely go and check them out it's the company is called doppler labs and the the device itself is called here h.e.r ichi re a TRS rh e re yeah it's not confusing at all well well i'll link to that in the show notes finally before we say goodbye this i saw this headline i just wanted to touch on this just for a second because it's in the same kind of vain yea high definition vinyl HD vinyl was announced yesterday he thinks these guttenberg freaking wants to kill somebody no actually I feel like he might he might like it for certain applications so yesterday yeah this was announced that HD vinyl was patented by some country in the in Europe oda it was Austria yeah rebate digital filed a patent for HD vinyl and their justification for it is that you know you can forego the pro cessive of you know lacquering and making a an acetate of a vinyl before you produce it very complicated process to produce a vinyl record yeah and uh this new process they patented uses 3d based topographical mapping and a laser to cut the grooves so um a lot of times why did take this wrong I think this is an obvious lie because they overshot and just went full digital yeah that's a thing they're like why are we trying to innovate on this performance and and you let say ironic part 2 i'm sure that's what steve will bring up if you guys talked about it is that the majority of music right now is recorded digital is really matter if you're doing that right like in a la only way right yeah it's kind of going backwards like hooking up uh the cooking up a turntable to a sonos system or something yeah it's it's crazy they they're saying imagine a record that has thirty percent more capacity and yeah the percent greater volume that's legitimate I do think that they'll be able to fit more on there and absolutely produce vinyl faster which is a huge that's a huge speed bump right now for the industry like record store day just happen to know a lot of stores and distributors hate that day because it pushes the rest of their release schedule back because they just can't it just can't push out the amount of supplies yeah quick enough yeah so if they can do it faster um that might be good for the entire industry I'm a double the fidelity yeah be cool and it's backwards compatible they're claiming so you hopefully won't have to invest in a new turntable if it was so that's like forward compatible yeah yeah we'll see about that yeah fork metal that's weird I don't know they could be it could be another one of those gimmicks you know I know that HD is definitely a term that gets thrown around especially these days with uh with claims of higher quality and especially audio in general you have to be worried about stuff like this that makes claims of having you know percentages are better all yeah fidelity because a lot of that stuff is just subjective yeah that's all mark an announcer was dependent on the rest of your equipment to yeah so it's it could potentially sound better but there's other benefits too that's cool man yeah I'm loving it well it's been great dude yeah it's not about a good we did good work today yeah yeah an episode think we covered every this is all the weird stuff a lot of weird stuff and that's where I want to keep it weird here yeah trying to keep 404 weird keep it ah leave his voicemail 866 44 cnet hit us up on email if you want to send us a note before for at cnet com we are back here next week with a new show I'm not here you're not going to be here so I'm gonna figure that out and I'll make that happen what are you going going to austin texas for the bright very first time oh you know just a little little vacation it'll be over by then yeah the music stuff isn't going on there god I hope not mmm I intentionally wanted to avoid some fit yeah go to Rainey Street okay uh go to uh I'll give you a couple good barbecue places yallick is really yeah I got some recommendations on Twitter as well go to Lake Travis okay ah and don't tell anyone you're Jewish kidding I'm kidding you can juzer welcome there it's the only place in Texas so my perfect i'm not quick before we say goodbye oh I want to ask you and maybe our listening audience and perhaps I should have front-loaded it because who knows who's still sticking around listen to the end of the podcast but my birthday's coming up next oh ok and I you know some the people who are close to me what you know I never have anything to tell anybody what I want yeah I'm the war I'm the worst person to have to buy a gift for because i'm so lame yeah right everyone agrees Jeff to order la mia very terrible yes what if you had to buy me something what would you buy me what should I ask for wish I get I mean if you're if you don't care about how it seems amazon gift card is like the best thing ever it is boring but that's the problem is like I at least for me I have the same problem you do which is to say like I don't know what I want right now but two weeks from now I might want like a new whatever give me monies I want you to give me a lottery what the problem the problem with buying gifts for people in receiving gifts is that we can get all the stuff that we want so what you should be asking for his experiences right like i like it so that score I'd like when subpoenas birthday was in December and uh I got her a gift card for one of the sensory deprivation chamber I am I don't know if you want to ask for that but if you got something to do then that's definitely an option one thing I always wanted to do that have you guys thought about that before he thought about doing it but it seems like it'd be too crazy torturous right uh well they say older bordered they say that you have all kinds of mental remedy don't drown Jeff I know you're not gonna drug that's the point is that it's filled with so much epson's chula to refloat it was a whole movie about sensory deprivation yeah it was called I don't know creepy water diet is based on silent yeah but that's the thing is when you have that Silas they say that you can you'll have all these crazy um you know epiphanies about your life right open up memories that you've previously treated there's a reason i hear ya i have a lot of stuff lurking on any surface there's a reason they're a lot yeah steamer trunk worked very hard to push those yeah appreciate it you know but you or the other thing you should ask for is maybe like a 23andme analysis that would be awesome so i know i have a disposition for something awful when I was you know you'll die in five yeah great you want to know that on your birthday oh you don't know what 23 means no it's that like DNA testing thing they tell you about your like you know ya penzi for drugs and thank you like oh the odds are you gonna be addicted to heroin yeah what I got apne said peonies basically said never try heroin because your body will love it yeah you'll have a great experience but don't do it cuz you won't stop I'm pretty sure you can generalize that with every I don't love it more than others the problem is stopping right I think that's her I guess so uh it's also never starting to let's not know it's not endorsing not even once well I don't know I maybe people can like tweet you ideas for yes what yeah I like the experiences ideas they're like music tickets or whatever fear if you're into that yeah that seems like a good thing right cuz physical things like I have everything I yeah right that's thing you have everything you want even that stuff is like viable like it's the one time things like a piece of art or something works like do you're not gonna get this ending you and by yourself yet I want something irreplaceable yeah okay right is that another child whoa relax let's get the one I have now up and walk down sounds good uh-huh all right that'll do it you heard where to contact us follow us on Twitter and like I said we're back next week big Justin you I'm gonna link to these here but what are they really cold that's what they're called here but it's good you're inning sort of here buds sit him very cool until next time I'm Jeff bacala I'm Ross fresh dick then I'm Justin you this has been the 44 show high-tech lowbrow thank you so much for sticking around we'll see you next time