Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm Roger Chang I'm Ben Fox ribbon Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the House Energy and Commerce Committee and well he's got terse after a relatively easy session before Senate duck face a lot more pointed questions and some of those seem to get under his skin okay what'd you think I mean he didn't say anything new though right he did the question okay what it was the biggest revelation was that Facebook tracks people who aren't Facebook users now that's been reported but it's never been explicitly made clear by the company and Zuckerberg I think it was kind of cornered and finally admitted that yes they do track people who aren't even Facebook users is that through the well that can't be through the facebook login because you need a Facebook so if there are a lot of different tools if there's something called Facebook pixel is like one pixel on various websites that actually have they've got they're loaded with a whole bunch of tracking tools then basically can track what people are doing what they're seeing and they're they're basically creating what's known as a shadow profile of folks who aren't on Facebook in case you join Facebook they actually already know you and the idea of the shadow profile is being able to kind of hook these shadow profiles to their existing users and making it a lot easier to or more accurate when they're selling they're they're targeting their ad targeting to sponsors I I will admit that does sound creepy however there are a lot of tracking companies and there are a lot of cookies out there absolutely not surprise me that Facebook would do the same thing oh yeah look it's I would you say the tone of the the the whole testimony was a lot different from day one day one it seemed a lot more cordial the Senate Senators didn't seem to be fully knowledgeable of questions they were asking to punch right and it seemed like with the house the house clearly watched the Senate's testimony and they learned their lesson the questions were a lot more point a lot more specific and there were times where the clicker Brooke did I mean he was not smiling at all the entire thing he smiled a lot during day one day two he was a lot more serious his answers were a lot shorter he seemed a little punchier granted he was sitting before Congress for six hours the day before it was about five hours I'm second day so anyone would be a little bit irritated it's a tough life being a multi-billionaire all right so Amazon's closed its reported one billion dollar acquisition of smart doorbell make it ring up and yet the exclusive interview with Amazon's head devices and the sea of ring talk about what they would be said yeah unfortunately there was a lot that was still TBD like they're still waiting now that the deal has actually closed now all the difficult work actually gets started where they evaluate their portfolio I mean if anybody's been paying attention Amazon now has three different security cameras with three different brands they're the Amazon Cloud cam there's a ring and there's also blink so they are gonna have to try to figure out how they're actually going to start working all those things together but for the time being ring is gonna remain an independent company no employees are gonna lose their jobs so that's a part the thing is like that that integration is probably something that people are interested in if they're if they're a ring customer if they're a Amazon or potential Amazon key customer integration could be really useful yeah and that was probably the lousiest bit that I got from the conversation which was there was still a lot of uncertainty as to what the plans are gonna be after the deal closed after the deal closes but Dave limp the head of devices specifically mentioned that they're gonna look very closely or they're gonna look pretty closely into integrating Amazon key the in home delivery service with rain alright Spotify and who are opening up their popular $12.99 bundle to everyone starting this summer that's just a $5 discount over the if you'd bought both plans together what do you think is this enough to to entice you and to join the Hulu and Spotify family look it sounds like a really good deal to me unfortunately I'm already a user of both at higher tiers so we have Spotify family plan at $15 through my little brother and I get the Hulu one with no commercials so I pay more so unfortunately how much is the non-commercial one I think it's 11 or 12 dollars I had the commercial one before and I didn't like it as much and just to break it down for you it's $9.99 for the Spotify Premium account which is one account for music can't share and it's $7.99 for the commercial filled Hulu version I would say this is a good deal for a lot of people that might be curious about either of those absolutely this discount takes into effect in the summer obviously this comes after Spotify has gone public so there's a lot of buzz lot momentum behind it yeah I'm actually consider this I'm not a Hulu customer right now but I'm a big Spotify user and I'd be kind of interesting but like you I would want a Spotify family account right anyways if you might think these are here check this out see net and Roger Cheng I'm Ben Fox ribbon thanks listening remember when this show was three minutes and 59 seconds a whole minute a whole minute why do you think I was doing this whole time re yeah we gave like 20 seconds to the Hulu Spotify we actually spend more time on who the Spotify than I thought we would so I mean look it is a good it's interesting deal it's why we spent a little bit of extra time I think we probably spell a bit too much time I spent on $12 on that egg timer to try to wrangle you guys $12 going over by like 12 minutes if it wasn't for those things that's very true that but get better actually we got work out we got worse we're getting today was way worse we're actually bad we're about 5 to 10 seconds behind the last couple of sessions and we spent a lot of time on Facebook I mean it's a big story we need to spend a little time on it I just like to say that 359 doesn't necessarily mean it's a four minute podcast it's more of a philosophy it's a way of life is you guys aren't even listening to me just forget it I'm looking for questions all right so let's let's let's talk Amazon because we talked Facebook enough and Amazon I mean you're the first to get out the story the Amazon closed that position and you did get the exclusive interview with the Amazon head of devices Dave lip so I mean talking about like is this enough to entice people you think like this integration and what would that integration look like between Amazon key and say the board you want to another another element this was also an Uzi bed from the conversation this was also in their press release they dropped the price on the original ring doorbell to $100 the price was roughly $150 before an amaz and 179 dollars on ring.com the ring CEO specifically mentioned that this is a great opportunity to introduce this type of security feature to more people broader demographic and I realized when ring the moment ring made it bake was when my parents installed one really yeah they've got they've got a ring system in their house they're very happy with it they're very proud of it there's uh they're in an LA right they are is somewhere in Southern California yes okay sorry there was an LAPD pilot program specifically in the LA area right that it looked at two different neighborhoods one of them they installed ring doorbells so that's why I asked you the other one they didn't and the amount of burglaries dropped in the neighborhood with the ring doorbells by fifty five percent now is it just a matter of like thieves come in and they sort of see this smart doorbell they're like oh this is not worth my trouble I mean like there's a video camera pointing at your front like outside at your front door that is certainly a deterrent and I remember the ring CEO specifically mentioned I wish I had a but like I asked him a follow-up about this but he said that like apparently burglars and robbers do ring the doorbell so that makes sense though like they want to see if there's someone home right right yeah yeah so if you ring the doorbell and you activate the video camera right you just go like run for it like oh geez like I got I got caught I'm also wondering if like they're savvy enough to recognize that it's a ring doorbell I get a smart doorbell as opposed like the standard one yeah I mean like I think it looks like it has a camera on it they're not yeah that's true yeah whereas with like a lot of other smart home tech that's inside your house you can and they're trying to like hide that it's a camera that's Allah grant you with these it's like it's part of the security feature where they want people to know they're being watched right so that's interesting so your parents like it oh yeah they love it like you know there's smartphone they like show me like a check it out see the front of my do of my house I mean like I wouldn't get one of these for a hundred bucks I don't know how so I'm kind of a cheapo though $150 so hundred dollars I'm like sure I mean it's a third cheaper pretty good deal yeah not bad several folks in the chat are agreeing with you they say hundred bucks is a better price but even some of them still think it's kind of a ripoff yeah really is it and also I have to pay attention to like whether there's a cloud subscription there I think there is but it's not acquired similar to nest right like you just do the camera thing you don't have to pay for the monthly like storage executives it's the same thing yeah Amazon Cloud cam - yeah and we'll see if some of that changes the whole idea with Amazon is they did with ring like they did with Whole Foods where they selectively lower prices to say hey we're the low price guys so I would expect that they would probably try to do more of this kind of thing to get people excited and interested about these companies but I don't really know why they would have all these different brands so I do wonder if they're gonna start sunsetting some of them or trade like like surge and combine them or merge them and you know a conversation with a head of devices he was like we're gonna start looking at that that was as far as he was willing to go and he said I don't know if we're gonna do that or not they just launched a new sub brand called Camus's on that's like a bad porn site or something okay I was thinking camels no I was thinking like outlet mall hands-on shops there's I don't know ecommerce for camels but I I think differently than you I think on behalf of the internet from Matthew Dasher I'm wondering how Amazon is going to integrate ring I have a ring but I do not do not want to be a key customer no okay they're gonna be a lot of opt out scenarios available to us as customer I don't yeah I don't think it's gonna be op de it's definitely me opt in I mean I don't even know if it's gonna work with existing customers right like how would they work at this point like I said he did Dave lamp said where we're gonna look closely at this we're gonna look pretty closely I did there is no confirmation whether this is or isn't going to happen but it seems pretty clear that this is this is a good idea for Amazon key yeah so they would probably add it at some point but I would say if you're an existing customer like it's pretty good to be divorced it's a good bet that yeah it won't be forced on you you want all of a sudden like be an automatic Amazon key customer if you're happy with your ring service we will ring product I think you li you'll be fine with the way it is yeah what might be interesting too is that because ring already has a camera attached to it I wonder if you wouldn't need an additional Amazon Cloud cam inside your home but that's the way that Amazon key works where you have a smart door lock and the cloud cam yeah it's pointing at the door and that's why that's how the delivery person is able to open your door you see everything that's going on from inside the house they slide the package in and then right was in store so that I mean the ring cam could replace the the other camera maybe maybe or it's just an additional layer of security now you got two cameras looking at the delivery person little redundant I don't know I mean we live in a cam world man yeah see not to get too soapboxing but at what point do we spend so much time watching each other and tracking each other that there's nothing left to watch or track yeah maybe we'll get the cameras to watch the other cameras is that camera functioning correctly all right taking another question from Josh boy to this time is Amazon planning on integrating ring into the echo and Fire TV like the nest doorbell works with Google home and chromecast so some of those integrations already exists there is an Alexa integration with several ring products and you can check those out through your Alexa app so you you can actually like with the ring doorbell for instance if you have a fire TV stick you you can see the feed on your on your television I believe so cool I'm I'm not a ring customer so I haven't tried it personally but you can go on Sina comm to find out more of this stuff a nice plug nice plug sure storm king asks isn't a huge risk to give Amazon access to your home through the key system what about someone hacking your lock now I'd say this from my perspective isn't any worse than giving a friend a spare key you know I grew up in a small town and any we knew our UPS drivers and if we wanted to we'd be like we left the door unlocked you mean I would say it is definitely worse than offering the spare key it's like it's analog right like one key Turkey as opposed to a hacker coming like a knowledgeable hacker yeah but anybody can pick a lock period not anybody you can learn how it's not that hard I guess or you could break a window I mean like if we really want to if somebody wants to get into your home they're gonna get into your well look if they pick a lot I can't wait to not sleep tonight but if you nobody you pick a lock and say there's alarm system or there's a camera then you've got other troubles if you're a hacker and all this stuff is connected I mean theoretical worst-case scenarios that can come and disable everything open the door from the door disable all the cameras shut down the alarm system cuz it's all supposed to connected and on the web you just make a waltz right in and steal everything you that would be a pretty sophisticated it would it would definitely be but I'm just saying like theoretically that could happen because everything is connected I would say though that the locks themselves are probably priority security wise as far as Rd goes for those products you would you and your biggest problem not really it depends on who you're working with I mean yeah there are a number of like name-brand companies that make smart lock like August like that that I'm sure put a lot more resources in security but if you get like a cheapy smart door lock and that's some people are gonna do it do not get one oh yeah do not get that but some people will those are susceptible hacks companies are not not all companies focus on security true and it that's sort of the biggest problem that's why I'm a little I'm always a little bit nervous when it comes to adopting a smart home tech and being really extra choosy about which companies I work with I mean you know it's always a case of you get what you pay for if you happen to get a deadbolt lock your doors gonna stay more secure than if you get a hook latch lock it's you gotta invest smartly I'd say a bigger risk is that Trojan horse element where if something is dumb on your smart home you can essentially lead a back door for somebody who's sneaking through the stinkin coffeemaker to get access to your lock but have some of the locks for your like computers or something if it's all Wi-Fi connected going back to the original question though about like a lot of skepticism around Amazon key that's bit that's existed from the get-go and Amazon key and look it may eventually prove to be a bridge too far for people it's really up to consumers to decide whether they like or prefer and it's having this level of convenience so pretty yeah and it's clearly a balance yeah as far as whether you trust Amazon enough to do this a lot of people have mocked it and it's still it's still like we'll see what happens Amazon has definitely presented itself as being very serious about it they think they can change people's minds about it and we'll see if they can Lost Legacy asks I know hold on sorry I read that wrong excuse me that's huge egg huge egg asks is Amazon accepting liability for their locks or are they passing that off to the end-user they don't actually make smart door locks they have third-party companies like Yale oddest well they sell August but Amazon key doesn't have any August locks okay I think it's it's Yale and and one other company I'm not thinking of so there's no those companies that accept a liability it's to a certain extent but like I I don't I don't know off the top of my head what the terms and conditions of a Yale smart lock are you know it's the same thing as like an autonomous car is that when it gets in an accident as a Tesla's fault that's something that people are like talking about and trying to work out legally right now so if you got a small wow that would we saw that was a goober uber I know they're not the smart car maker right and luckily with door locks yeah door locks have existed for a very long time yep and you know it's like his deadbolt liable if like there was there was a faulty mechanism or something and like everybody was yeah yeah I don't know you know like there are a lot of people that sue a lot of company storm King says I'm old fashioned I think I'm gonna keep my regular lock and key for now until this idea is more fully realized I think I sympathize with you yeah yeah I'm fine for now there's something alluring about the concept of having that because I've lost my keys before and it can be me to ever stay it happened to me this week I forgot my keys and my wife was busy didn't check her phone I was stuck outside my apartment in like half an hour and the cold cuz I didn't have a key I would love to just pop in my smart phone then just like walk down the street go to Starbucks or something like the rest of us no I was like oh I was waiting for her to like get the text message or like my super to come down the super finally did come down get me but yeah well so it sounds like from the chat people aren't as into the smart door locks but I'm curious to hear whether people are interested in the smart doorbells not just this is a point of convenience sure like who's at the door but also the ring folks mmm excuse me specifically say that this is something that can reduce crime in neighborhoods and make ya safer I mean I think that's why my parents got it there was a wave of robberies in the burglaries in the neighborhood and I think that's what kind of motivated them to get that mm-hmm definitely gave them more of a sense of sure especially because they travel a lot and so being able to kind of check in on on the house from the front definitely gave them more confidence I think that's why that it kind of breeches that it goes from that's how you get from you know tech enthusiasts to that mainstream audience right you sell them on a benefit that they can that's universally understood intangible and tangible right yeah this come for a peace of mind security those are all things that people can immediately embrace it's not just like oh it's it's cool and techy and I can check it on my phone like people don't care about that and it's not well Millennials do it's not yes to tech savvy people mainstream customers don't care as much but when you say oh actually it's gonna help you security break lowers the odds that your house will get burglarized then yeah exactly it's also not a privacy concern because if Amazon or someone else where to get the feed of like just the camera pointing outside your house who cares right like that's not really that interesting it's totally different than those baby monitors where like some creep on the Internet is able to like look at your kid's room yeah there's good reason why people would be really frustrated or you know right hours facing camera it's a tough one to sell but that does seem to be some a wholesome consideration behind it like there's a positive mission statement it's just tricky to integrate that one into our lives because it's risky it's risky I I just I wanted to point out I liked this comment from Carlos Medina or Martinez the addresses of what about a smart door lock with face ID oh geez yeah after all this Zuckerberg testimony about like all the racial recognition and the user data that they pull I mean it sounds like a good idea I feel like I saw that in my mirror no no like you know like a Microsoft or an Intel conference oh hey I mean that Cheryl kind of makes sense right like there are definitely a lot of security implications with that and vulnerability issues but just don't know the basic principle of like your door recognizes you and open unlocks for you that's kind of cool mm-hmm I mean like the voice I mean if it's things like the iPhone 10 face come on recognize me eyes open here we go yeah face paint you came back from the game and actually no that's that's not fair I phoned iPhone 10 actually fails on me whenever I'm waking up and like I'm in bed and I like look at my phone it doesn't recognize me I don't know why it won't recognize me when I'm laying down in my bed but when I get up it's almost like oh it's you all right cool it's the pillow yeah let's move on to Hulu Netflix just sounded like a great idea to me I would have definitely been into this if I was still in college and really on a budget heck I'm into it now because I like saving money well the key right you don't have to be a college to anymore we're all very true yes you know from Michael Brown if we stack up the audio and video sub-packages subscription packages which do you think is better bang for your buck the Google YouTube red package Spotify Hulu or Apple music which also does include video as part of their service but the video options for Apple the apples something great right like it's fairly limited planet of the apps yeah so that's it that's it right I mean that's hard to say cuz I'm not Hulu I don't watch i watch Hulu you can watch a lot of the newer shows like Roseanne was was live and then it shows up on Hulu pretty quickly oh right right right immediately afterwards so a lot of those shows like Rick and Morty Roseanne The Simpsons well Rick and Morty's on there yeah reckon we're right and I wanted to watch Handmaid's Tale for a while then I watched it yeah that's why I got Hulu to begin with but I already have we have Amazon Prime we have Netflix it's even sometimes it's not even about cost it's about time like I don't have time to watch all these different programs yeah I would probably say this package is the best one that I've seen and I think YouTube red is still trying to get off the ground Apple music is pretty light on video to you as you said so if you're interested in the video aspect and like also Spotify has basically all the music that you want you could probably talk about this yeah I feel like the spotify aspect is more appealing to me then cuz like I have other sources for video but I use I mean I use a free cheer for Spotify but I would love the premium tier because I do go off why every once in a while I hate commercials I hate skipping through those things and being able to control my playlists staefel Roger the commercials keep us alive we love we love we love commercials alright are we gonna start charging us a subscription for the 3:59 no no our service will always be free some component of our podcast will always be free okay we're almost out of time and we do have to talk about Facebook a little bit I just broke a couple of comments yeah yeah okay Michael Brown the biggest revelation is that our Congress knows nothing about the tech industry and how free software like Facebook works I agree 100 and oh look so I would say that that's generally that was generally the case for the Senate I think the house did a lot better the questions were a lot more pointed duck was pushing back a lot less because I think he understood that the representatives the congressmen seemed to be a lot more prepared that second day like the questions definitely caught him a bit cornered him a bit more than Don day one so I have to give them credit rallies look they're not they're not supposed to be technical technologically savvy right they're supposed to represent but they should at least stay awake when they're in the seat yes did you see the one I enjoy I did Oh crap yeah well granite is sitting there for like five hours that probably falls he's been sitting there for 300 years [Laughter] look so okay random Congress sleeping congressman aside I thought they did a much better job on the second day and look they're supposed to be representative of the average person I guess and so the average person isn't supposed to be that technically savvy their collective average age is somewhere in the million yeah that's that's true I think actually it's somewhere like in the 60s this is important which is not average no it's not regardless of whether they did a better job one day or the other asking questions what do you see as the next steps in this process and yeah is there actually gonna be regulation I mean it's my skeptical that would ever happen no I think there will be regulation and after hearing the the testimony I'm almost certain there will be some form of regulation that's the key is what that regulation is gonna look like is it seem like Zuckerberg I mean he's under a lot of pressure Zuckerberg seems then really independent seems really open to regulation but the thing of it is is if it's gonna be regulation on his terms cuz the thing of it is it's actually in some ways advantageous for him to be in the driver's seat dictating what the regulation is gonna look like cuz it's gonna it's gonna benefit Facebook right of course competitively clamps down on Facebook's own abilities it's gonna be a lot worse for the next Facebook and the next startup that tries to become Facebook and that's that's another potential concern as you're writing these regulations like how do you how do you do it without stifling the next big startup right the next big Harvard dropout was kid it's not from Sir enjoy I must say the hearing and some of the questions and it made me doubt the basic technical competence of the members of Congress rather than sucks I think Brian here showing your hand too much look obviously Zack is way smarter than anyone else in that room and on day one he definitely show and he's yeah he's definitely more technically savvy than these people these people are not supposed to be technically savvy but they're supposed to be competent and a lawyer I don't know but to my my point is I think the point that the congressman were trying to make was especially when it comes to terms of services and communicating what you're giving up to Facebook I don't think you need to be technically savvy to do that that's I think that was a point a lot of the congressmen were trying to make is some of these the day that you're giving up the way they're communicating it to you is not done in a way that a normal person would be able to understand and you know it was a senator Kenny said like your Terms of Service suck yeah right that was great yeah that was I mean buddy he's not technically savvy at all but it cuts to the the point and the point was that it's not clear what any of us are giving up to Facebook and that should change here's another thing though from just from another like my very personal perspective very biased perspective is that their their views on it they've had enough time to become aware right this isn't new technology right Facebook sit around for 13 14 years at this point they should at least have a basic understanding of it and they shouldn't need to go to school today congressman or just general the general public the general public which and by and large the general public does get it obviously so many of us are using I don't think they get no no not not the the core things that we're discovering are wrong with the infrastructure I'm talking about the basic functionality and purpose of Facebook and how and you could argue there's a lot of subjectivity to the purpose quote-unquote yeah I would totally disagree people and and I think the congressman sort of proved that point they kept referring to the users as people who use Facebook as a customer they're not the custom customer know where the product the customer is the advertiser and that is that's still a point that most people get lost on I'll give you that it is a difficult thing to grasp right but their inability to develop comprehension or what seemed to be lack of desire to try made me cautious about what kind of regulations they would impose on the future because they just seem to be crusty old stuck in their ways which is which is probably concerns Facebook because the last thing they want are draconian oh serves everyone under the age of seven I don't think it concerns Facebook I think Facebook looks at that and they're like salivating because they've got an army of lawyers and and and lobbyists who will gladly write the laws for them like hey do you guys need some help what this seems like you're not fully technically savvy we got a whole bunch of experts I'll come in and help write that rule for you yikes so I don't know you know that's either City is a little bit a little bit dark so who knows but I do think regulation there's gonna be something people are gonna try I mean all we see there's the honest ads act already which which affects social media but isn't that politically driven yeah it's definitely you know there I think there needs to be and there was talk about a the idea of a data privacy agency and that might be an interesting thing I don't even know how that would that would work I mean that's definitely more as a consumer that sounds interesting to me for sure yeah I mean I don't know again I don't know how organ who would actually run that and how the who'd like how that would be who'd housed that basically which department that would fall under but there are definitely a lot of interesting ideas mmm I guess I'm just salty because the essentially was forced to watch the entire thing and just got progressively more and more frustrated and bored it was long it was long and that's by far nowhere near the longest testimony we've ever seen in front of the Senate in history but right it's very drunk well no the Senate one was unusually long it was almost as tough an hour - longer than normal because it was a joint session its room so there was twice as many senators all getting four minutes of questions it makes you almost feel bad for the robot Zuckerberg well he had his nice seat cushion it seem like he's comfy yeah and they avoid them up beforehand yeah you know with like a little tin can the best was it the best meme I saw there was one where someone photoshopped him to look like that wasn't a Photoshop and it was the other one where they referred to as his seat cushion as his wireless charging path I thought that was pretty good too now if we can just get in an Orange County chopper this probably already exists like that meme connected with Zuckerberg that would just be perfect I don't know what that would look like how timely have you been staying up on the old the mean trends now coaching you after hours yeah yes I was otherwise I would have like mentioned rickroll or something yeah right although Westworld just rickrolling everyone right I didn't say that see this is the level of my like knowledge like completely drop all right if you liked anything you saw her here check us out on CNET our podcast is available on itunes tuna and stitcher feedburner google play music and the amazon echo take care everybody have a great weekend we'll see n Linda yes