Gadgetory

do you like the pod I like the pod and I'm here with ayahs and been for the 359 podcast episode 216 I like the cast great intro but ones that I really like your intro from 420 you just like slid it in there if you like hey everybody its podcast 420 go waste like okay not past tense present right of course so what we talking about on the podcast today so today we're gonna talk about the future of Transportation in many different ways all of them google related one of them is way mo which is part of Google's parent company alphabet they're introducing self-driving cars to the public in Phoenix Arizona and also we'll talk about Kitty Hawk which is Larry page's flying car cons one of two one of two lion car companies he's got apparently and then we'll round it off with Spotify potentially coming out with some new hardware that they're hoping is category defining so that's pretty high up there it could be the next likes this table is Spotify enabled yes sorry I would I would buy that is my name on table yeah so then cable and fables hold it are you ready for me then labels send in your questions and comments Brian we'll get to them or as many of them as you can at the end of the show and let's get podcasting and maples alright here we go in three two welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Ruben I as the wolf actor self-driving cars are here well sort of wham-o a part of Google's parent alphabet is opening up its pilot autonomous cars program in Phoenix Arizona looking to get hundreds of people to test out its self-driving Chrysler minivans and Lexus SUVs is if you were in Phoenix would you go for this well yeah there's the other thing is this is first it's free so if you actually get accepted into the program you can take this as much as you want and it's not like like a ride hailing service they actually want to be working with people so they can see what their patterns are like so they can figure out what is the future for self-driving cars and they're saying that this area's about this about twice the size of San Francisco so it's gonna be pretty interesting interesting to see how that pans out right you're not gonna be able to take these cars cross-country or anything right no I don't they're gonna keep them in the Phoenix area for the interim but at the same time it sounds really interesting that we're actually getting to the point where the future of self-driving cars as I said they're actually doing it it's possible which to me sounds really interesting but at the same time how likely do you think that this is gonna be that this is gonna expand out from Phoenix and really arrive in a lot of other places well one of the cool things about this test being in Arizona I was looking at their blog post about is that Arizona doesn't require an actual person behind the wheel for these self-driving tests now way most cars will have a person behind the wheel just in case anything goes wrong but that allows it to move much faster so they can actually see and test I would imagine in the future you will see way no cars without an actual person in the vehicle as to the driver right so you're not gonna have like a but at this point you are gonna have something right now he's sitting over there well I wanted to throw out there to that uber is another company that is testing out this idea but you know because they always work in this like legally murky gray area they were kicked out of what was at San Francisco they tried to do it in Phoenix so at this point if you're really interested in getting behind the wheel of a self-driving car or in a self-driving car you're more likely to do it through way mo I would think it's two totally different approaches way mo trying to license that technology to other ride-hailing companies and uber is just trying to do it on their own yeah yeah next up also in more Google related transportation news the company Hawke is showing off a quote flying car it's actually more like a one person sized drone with pontoon Landers for water but hey that's pretty cool right in the demo video it's like some lady saying hey you should meet us at the boat and I can get there really fast how so she gets on this one looks like that that speeder bike Star Wars was like a net underneath her and she gets up and she was flying it looks really cool they're claiming you won't need a pilot's license for it although the videos they're showing off they're saying look the one that comes out when this does come out will not look like this this is a prototype this is never coming out look do you think that people are actually gonna use this kind of thing I have no idea how much it's gonna cost we were just talking about self-driving cars which people are just starting to get behind and starting to understand flying cars well this is more like a flying jetski if anything because I'm saying you can only use this over water you're not supposed to use this over land because that's how this is supposed to be although you know sure people are gonna mess with that a little bit they should Morgan cities but it really depends on the price I really think yeah I mean I'm still skeptical but we'll see last Spotify is reportedly working on a new piece of hardware for music and podcast listening that it hopes will be quote category defining like the Amazon echo and snapchat spectacles you excited about this you know getting Spotify on a portable device not so easy so I'm hoping it's something like that there was that rumored and that rumored pebble said they were coming up with a modify enabled core where I was like excited about that but that never came to be yeah at the same time yeah Spotify doesn't really develop a lot of hardware so I'm curious to see what exactly could be category defining from them but good for them for making an effort I mean earbud they can also using your nose yeah that could definitely be an idea anyway if you want to read more about these stories check us out on CNET I'm Ben Fox Ruben I as well factor thanks for listening I'm personally interested in the Spotify aspect I know a lot of people probably want to talk about flying car quote-unquote throat is throw it out there bvj I mean give me more better platforms like I I'm addicted to the Spotify model just because it's a decent fidelity as a bit of an audiophile but not the most stringent audiophile so as far as like keeping and collecting my music it's more convenient if it was in fact that might that would be the one thing to get me to wear a SmartWatch otherwise I have almost zero interest but if I can quick interface because I'm always out and about on the go my earphones you you would want something that's like a dedicated Spotify wearable as opposed to like because you always have you already have your phone on you right so they convincing in and out of my phone and I like to change things and okay that's fall so there is a value for you if you were gonna have something dedicated yeah that's interesting you can kind of do it with Android wear it's kind of rudimentary you can have play pause controls you can and you can move things around with that and it's not exactly great my knee means because it's just this really crappy extension of this if it's a moment thing like an iPod shuffle style thing that's what the court was supposed to be this little device you can take with you without having to take your phone that to me is actually a bigger deal like me do other stuff not worrying about this device because of phone especially what we're seeing now they're getting more and more fragile I don't want to be dropping this thing if I'm working out or something that's a good point I like having a separate ipod mp3 player of any sort I still have an old iPod Nano somewhere just to hang out and be that things like like I'm traveling I'm not gonna have easy access to an electrical or I won't want to like murder my phone battery listening to stuff but I also don't want to be bored that's alright it'll be a category defining battery case for your phone that is a Spotify player I'm down there you go I guess so I mean the thing is too is that it's probably not gonna be the same thing as an iPod Nano because the iPod Nano already came out that's not category defining if they just came out with like an iPod Nano with like a wristband attached you could have bought that like what seven years ago you know we have been looking for a killer reason to have a SmartWatch and there hasn't been a single thing yet maybe this is it maybe not I'm not sure yet but when it comes to like speakers it can't be a smart speaker because of the echo and the Google home you can make Spotify the default music player for that so it's gonna be it's got to be some thing it can't be glasses you're definitely a head scratcher it's interesting they've definitely like elevated it to a point where they want it when they say something like category defining it definitely gets me very curious as far as like what type of hardware that might look like but we really don't know a lot yet about it or when it will come out shall we speculate besides the table where this could occur yeah it could be a involved it could be smart earbuds you know I've seen I've seen those ridiculous ones that you guys should stick you know iPods in them and I've seen other ones that have built-in storage but why not a Spotify enabled pair of headphones because that's all you would need and yeah it could work with your phone so it doesn't kill the battery all the time but you could also offload your playlist to that that I think actually would make sense because that doesn't exist well in the real broad sense yet if that fits in my mind that fits much better than potentially you know glasses which like I don't know why you would have Spotify glasses I don't know how you would be able to listen with them so bone conduction bone conduction sure course yeah tell that to snapchat anyways other benefits to this is depending on how much store take could cram into something I like the idea of dedicated earphones that are just like this is my music player right on how much storage do you think it could actually hold probably more than you think yeah I mean like we've really moved very very far as far as storage is concerned so you you could store quite a bit of your library in many earphones these days and Danny Green our friend Danny Green in the chat points out that he still got an iPod in his car with over 5,000 tunes on it because he does want to pay for dad cuz that that would be what I knew is I would just cash a ton of stuff onto that thing just to have it at a moment's notice instead of actually going up and down the data stream let's not wait for Spotify to come out with something let's just make this thing right now Danny are you on board you want to be our investor where would you like to see a dedicated music platform calling out to the chat what device do you think if it's a wearable if it's of this or that or the other thing where do you think would be valuable what it was like a backpack and it's like a terabyte hard drive in the chair oh my god I would love to see that come out audiophile Spotify back oh god a filing cabinet the audiophile hold on I thought we were gonna talk about self-driving car but people want to listen to music like yeah you're not gonna how many people are in Phoenix oh maybe they're just like I'm nine the greater Phoenix area screw that right let's talk about spies are all weird with that we have everyone listens to music and Spotify I mean I pay for google play music and the reason why is because you can have your music on there yeah uploaded stuff so stuff doesn't disappear if spot if I added that feature other than that local playback stuff I'd be all over that I'm moving back to that I really like to Spotify experience it's right full disclosure I don't really listen to Spotify that much I actually still do a lot of digital downloads like I'll download a song and then listen to it like ad nauseam for weeks and weeks and weeks and they'll stream a song yeah so I don't really like I don't use the streaming music services as much I mean like I listen to chance the rapper on soundcloud but like partly because I have to like I would have paid him outright if he just let me I got a point out something important to somebody in the chat - best of all universe you can't just say unsubscribe out loud and hope that it works out you actually have to click the unsubscribe button it's not like that episode of the office network where Michael just screams bankruptcy thank you thank you for coming listening anyways yeah you know that's that's nice we expect you to come back tomorrow and say unsubscribe to subscribe then unsubscribe just do that over and over and over right we have a viewer listener in Phoenix DJ Rodgers we hope they like come back and keep us posted as to the the white mode developments as high as they come along apply to the pilot program rides are free so like that's still a really big deal you're not paying for gas you're not paying for the driver and you can do pretty much what you want so this was one point that I really wanted to make in the podcast but it's only four minutes so I didn't have enough time but we often talk about self-driving cars and don't really mention much about the potential negatives so Christopher Mims who's a columnist tech columnist for The Wall Street Journal I think does a really good job of trying to remind people that like wow this is like so gee whiz it's really interesting this could save lives with like reducing accidents but at the same time we really do have to like ask a lot of really big questions as far as like do we want this what's the insurance implications what's going to happen or like truck drivers what's going to happen attacks drivers is the type of thing where you can't just say you know objectively this is gonna be good this is gonna be perfect you know so I just wanted to like throw that out there I don't know what folks in the chat think about that but I think it's good to like at least consider some of the negatives yeah I mean when Moe claims if they've driven or self driven over 2.5 bill a million miles that is and if simulations have done about a billion in 2016 so the thing is there's a lot of testing going on and don't forget about the idea of a of liability on the drivers side and people in like real society but these companies are going to be dealing with the tons of lawsuits if their technology fails right so I think that their interests are aligned with you know the good of society because if one a most tech is licensed to Volvo and GM and whoever and other ride-hailing services and it fails like they're dead in the water so I would think that we're seeing a maturity level in this technology that's gonna be not as scary I think as people think it might be right i I also wonder like what exactly is the business model as far as like who owns the car is it all gonna be ride hailing services that you're gonna like hail for a ride to get to work every single day or are you gonna own the self-driving car there's still a lot of those questions to be answered pal early on in the chat asked and I'm not really sure what the context of this is they say so people would share their cars and they would almost never stand still is that kind of the premise like they would kind of cars themselves justify usage that it would almost never be a parked vehicle it'd be well with the way Moe trial in Phoenix those are definitely like community cars sure right so almost a zip cars right exactly and I still don't know exactly like how you hailed a car I'm guessing you do it through like a phone app or something like that and then it shows up you know fairly quickly I would hope like they're gonna have enough cars on the road to serve like hundreds of different people but at the same time you could assume that like I don't know people that are really wealthy you might not want to share their cars or they want might want flashy or self-driving cars so they might own those it's hard to say really what exactly the models gonna be like I say you want to customize your own car and its self-driving could be a feature that you don't always take advantage of but if you wanted to you could that kind of thing I don't see it being either/or like you can't take over the vehicle because there's always gonna be a way to do that I'd imagine because maybe sure yes I pictured this horrible thing airplane they go be a social network that develops from this that's kind of like Foursquare where somebody's like the mayor of the car they use it enough you think that's possible in a car you don't be in a shared car that reeks of you know somebody else's perfume or something or you want to have a customization in a badge right or they perfume or they spilled their beer in the car or something right like that's the issue one of reasons it's like no other just like every other taxi or shared car you want to make sure that it's it's clean and neat and everything well eventually the things gonna have to go back to the garage or dock or whatever it is it was gonna be some kind of maintenance crew keeping these things up they don't look it's a car it doesn't last forever right I was gonna have to do general mechanical maintenance internal cleaning etc etc etc going back to your point though is I was always under the assumption that eventually regular like human driving would eventually be found to be so dangerous that it would be determined to be illegal like we would look back as old men and be like I can't believe we drove our own cars like now it's like completely illegal you're never allowed to do it when I was your age I had to put my foot on a pedal right I'm like that's what I always thought was miles in the snow like decades from now they eventually would be creating cars that don't have steering wheels don't have pedals don't have gear shifts like it's just it's just a box you know you go inside well I'm thinking you think I'm like a train that you just step into this thing they're all in a line and move about 50 miles per hour I don't see that happen there's another some kind of take over sure but there's I mean we've been talking about wood tech enable than everything how fantastic some of these developments only for the differently-abled like you in the chat he says he's in the UK and he's nearly blind and this would be a huge help out to his daily life absolutely absolutely the idea of letting people or or enabling people to be able to get around much much more easily as far as that's concerned I think that could be really huge and very helpful for folks now we didn't have time to mention in the podcast but their fleet of cars is like 100 100 Chrysler Pacifica's they were adding 500 more yeah that they announced that really quietly like I'm one line in their blog post about oh by the way we're adding 500 more cars so that's gonna be what means that like valuable ooh I'm assuming from reading that too that there is substantial demand like they probably got way more applications than maybe they expected because there they're not going from a hundred to two hundred they're going from like a hundred to roughly six hundred right so that means that there's like pent-up demand to like actually test out the service and maybe people are you know at least people in Phoenix are really you know they believe in the idea they trust the technology I really think the use cases that's really what what way mo is gonna say Google what a mole really wants to knows like how are people really using this it's one thing if there's taxis and you're just going from one spot to the next I mean whatever but if it's somebody's regular everyday life that's why in the video and in there and their application page they showed like real people and families and how they're gonna be using it that's I think information we don't have yet really why like why would I have one just because like I don't I don't want to get up early the easy answer is lazy yeah the easy answer is well but their technology's so lazy besides for the differently-abled maybe some others in the chat have an idea how this could be beneficial to them and a day to day life you know and speaking of testing calling out to DJ Rogers and anybody else we know in the Phoenix area if you're getting first-hand experience with this we'd love to hear about it Oh totally awesome join us on the join us on the show in the chat tweet at us we'd love to hear just email me Ben dot Ruben at cbs.com yeah I'd love to hear from anybody in the Phoenix area about what this is like we don't have any regulars Cena editors out there so if anybody's got like a positive or negative experience with how this is all playing out we just love to hear what you got wanted to throw this out there too as far as like you have a kid I have kids how old do the kids have to be to ride in the car yeah by themselves so there's just like another interesting nuance I mean like my daughter is going to enough to end on a smartphone I suppose I guess my daughter's going to kindergarten next year so she's gonna take the bus by herself to school with the same dolt is it right with the bus driver and going to school but is it the same concept so this is another one of those like nuances that like technology is now getting to the point where you have to you know reconsider what's normal for like regular Society do you think that's weird no I just think of the news tours like you like would you track your tile with this robot there's a tablet on has been hacked your child who have never been safe again and loved the plot find out it's like that's what my head is screaming if they'd if they designed a robot to look cute and kind that's what they've been trying to do as parents would you trust a robo bus oh great question depends how long has it been an operation fair enough you want to make sure that it's a it's been really I mean I can't imagine them not doing a thorough test a it's been like five years do they have an emergency driver sit in there I would hope so yeah so they don't want it we don't want our kids being the first ones I guess that they don't have my kids do not have the right stuff okay like I'm not I'm not like having them be like the guinea pigs for something like that need somebody stop them from messing with any of the controls stay back Lord of the Flies we're going to Mexico all right deploys airbag I just love this line from J Smith in the Chad cuz ya mess around miss a car payment the damn thing will drive itself back to the bank totally true love that oh my god it's very good point swinging back over to the Spotify a topic real quick before we call today because we're going way long today this is great imagine soggy points out you know who really buys tech anymore for just a unit Oscar you know just one thing now the trend is for a piece of tech to have multiple issues with your phone is your camera is your video camera or iTunes player is your GPS is your music player is your everything would you like to have a unit a score like that hey guys when the headphones would they put other stuff in there would it interface like a wooded naturally Bluetooth with the phone so they could take a call on it at the same time like any normal bluetooth headphone but still just be that separate storage unit for the music and I think that if and again this is all like rumor and speculation but I think that if Spotify were creating it and they were smart about it they they wouldn't make it a unit ask a piece of hardware they would have like Spotify be the core of it it would be like the the main reason for it existing but adding little additional apps or features into it probably wouldn't be that complicated or difficult and those are all value-adds if this only did Spotify then it really would be pretty hard to justify I don't know like how much would you pay for that like 50 bucks if it's 50 bucks you know only does one thing okay maybe I think I'm Spotify is getting into the hardware game they shouldn't overload this thing with features because if it's just another smartphone it's just another smartphone yeah and we already have smartphones already have these bad watches and we have these lousy other products a lot of people aren't buying unit a Spurs but Spotify is in so many different devices already there spot if I was to come out with hardware it would make a lot more sense that it was very singular focused of yeah there are headphones they have Spotify offline or it comes with premium imagine that like oh by the way you buy your headphones you got premium for a year mmm two years okay good idea they give you a reason why would you do this same thing with the the echo if you the echo you can get Amazon Prime music for like five dollars per month if you just have read I think it's because it's less than five yeah like nothing as long as long as it's just the loft ooh that's a cheap ring not much only on that speaker you can't yes but whatever I would think yeah not other thing a lot of people will go out and go this is gonna be the end of it that's why still thinks it's probably the headphones that makes the most sense you're gonna buy them anyway everyone needs headphones so or I modify branded speaker in your house that would be pretty yeah my sticker to put on any speaker you have before it's pretty hard to stand out as a speaker that's they're probably defining stickers sir I'm gonna butcher this name sir hacked kick in the chat says I definitely need a device it's not category defining the category merging instead something like Apple watch iPod Nano ah but music still don't use don't like using the phone to listen to music these are all very good comments by the way yeah I like a lot of the analysis it's getting thrown out there so very good point and then one more time back around the horn Jacob craf asks how will do children have to be to ride alone on an airplane I went back to riding alone and a robo car I don't know yeah I haven't children thing I think it's like eight to ten but that's because the maze isn't that high I believe I could have swore there was something like you could as long as there's a like documented parental permission and like they've recruited flight staff to assists a child maybe it's almost any age that the you know more than a potato however there's no flight staff in that car so there's no there's no professional it's okay right people in the flying cars but there's AI spective just a long sigh by the water you okay Marie okay I don't know why kids names Marie it's coming back to very popular name mmm and then one last really good comment from fully daily value to me with self-driving car the time of my commute becomes my time instead of my driving time I can browse a web sleep more get an early start in the office work etc that's what I do my train ride yeah self-driving we're spoiled because we take the public transit where we don't have to pay as much attention granted try to pay some attention as you can maybe learn the hard way in the New York subway system but the point remains yeah the idea of just having that amount of time back because we don't there are people out there they have our two-hour long commute as they drive and that's you know as someone who misses my car because I live in New York now driving around can be a very enjoyable experience but I'd imagine is it not in New York driving can be cathartic but having to do what every single day would get oh yes I'm riding a horse like yeah you don't have to do that every freaking day anymore but you just go do it for fun yeah it's fine okay getting so mad I like this car but Philippe also says soccer moms can get a life again yes but then what would we call them we would have to give them a new name they're still going to soccer practice no no you just send the kid to soccer I'm going to the mall just all mama mama yeah and on the note to finish it off with a perfect tone for today's episode Dre Frey Spotify jeans for a party in my pants that is excellent well done okay let's do this the 359 podcast is available on itunes toon and stitcher SoundCloud Google Play Music Feedburner did I get to everything and also cnet.com thanks everybody for watching great comments great questions today we'll see you all tomorrow you tomorrow you