Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Joanie Saltzman so Jeff Bezos is public life took an interesting turn Amazon's founder and CEO has maintained a mostly positive image as a press shy geek but on Thursday night his personal life spilled out onto view after he revealed an apparent blackmail plot by the National Enquirer supermarket tabloid which was threatening to publish his racy pics including if I remember correctly a below-the-belt selfie as they described it that he sent to his mistress um what's going on here like I guess to connect this to the fact that like we work for CNN and you know not a fellow tabloid what are your thoughts about this like as far as like how does it impact BAE's Oh sad as an impact Amazon like what do you think about that well it definitely puts Bezos on the forefront of a lot of different kinds of discussions national security discussions because you know the Trump administration is all wrapped up in the whole national fire thing Muller investigation is all wrapped up in the National Enquirer thing like so it takes Bezos as a gigantic figure as the world's which is man and also the leader of one of the most powerful companies the world takes him all out of being that like larger-than-life figure on a tech stage and make some larger-than-life figure on a world stage right politics and and other other issues and he was connected to that that's a great point he was connected to that initially through the Washington Post but the Washington Post and and Trump was kind of at loggerheads with Bezos already to begin with about Washington Post's coverage and calling it the Amazon Washington Post and all this other stuff but this really does seem to insert him into these long term other controversies that Trump has been having to deal with yeah so so that is definitely a weird thing the other interesting aspect is is like what does this do to his public persona at this point and I wrote about this on Friday he seems to be enjoying a really nice PR coup yeah everybody could have been talking about his racy photos but about his judgment what's he doing you had this long-term marriage now all of a sudden sending photos you know basically dick pigs to his mistress like what's going on here and it seems like he's really presenting himself as a hero at this point yeah and I think a lot of people it's been funny and I'm sure that you noticed this being Amazon's reporter that at the same time there was a lot of sort of like who knew that I would be on Jeff Bezos aside for like totally flipping the script on this attempt to blackmail the richest man in the world which I don't know how wise that was to begin with but it's happening at the same time that people are sort of there's annoyance at Amazon in New York City still over these queue - there's annoyance at Amazon over this tipping only going into base pay for drivers issue so there's a lot of reasons why people there's there's a kind of public relations thread that's negative towards Bezos on a lot of other friends but this you know because it's such a juicy lurid stuff right the main thing people are talking about are all right let's change gears completely Joan you had a chance to test out the magic leave a hourglasses at Sundance you watch something called be a jesters tail using the Skagit can you tell us a bit about the jesters tail what was a lightning it was really weird I did three experiences with magically bolos at Sundance two of them were made by magic leap itself and the third was this jesters tale experience that wasn't made by a guy who does other has done other a are experiences in the past but he doesn't work from a if he was just using their technology and it was really weird it had like this YouTube pop star in it named poppy who liked her her her brand is just being aggressively weird so if you know anything about poppy you get a sense of just how strange this experience was there was like a live actor in it a little boy who was trapped behind the trapped behind a wall and I had to choose whether to kill him or kill myself there was a live act or a hologram no well he was a hologram and then he was also a live actor I know well they so there were there was a floating ball the part that magically helped with was there's like a floating ball of dots that was an artificial intelligence that was doing a reverse Turing test on me it was trying to determine train determined it was testing me on whether or not I was a human and asking me questions about stuff that these what are called volumetric assets there are basically Holograms of people this little boy and his mother and papi would stand in this room and I'd walk around them it was and no none of this really gives you a sense of what the story was supposed to be like it sounds totally just so it was super trippy so it's hard to it's kind of hard to describe so the cost of this headset is two thousand two hundred ninety five dollars so considering that very big price do you think magically is going to be able to really inject a lot more enthusiasm into the AR world right I mean they've even termed that this first edition of their device is a creator edition it's designed for people like Assad who made this experience to get their hands on it make weird or crazy or interesting or tear-jerking experiences and then they can have magic leap - or magical III be something that's a little more accessible that's the idea anyway yeah anyway if you want to read more about these stories check this out on CNN I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Joni Zaza thanks for listening alright thanks as always for joining us for the recording of the audio podcast you can subscribe using the links below in the description now it's a time for you to go ahead and send in your questions and comments many of you already have coming right out hot and heavy here is Michael Brown I don't think this affects amaz okay the puns are gonna be through the roof today oh yeah clearly Michael Brown says I don't think this affects Amazon this is more personal news than tech news Mike rhymer says this is a rich white person problem Oscar says this is all just organized distraction yeah I kind of feel the same way I like organized distraction I think is definitely I feel more interesting hovering this so going back going back to what John was talking about there are obviously a lot of criticisms about Amazon on a number of fronts so the theory that this is this was intentional or this was an organized distraction to try to avoid those problems I think is a really interesting one it's a fun one to talk about but I don't really think it holds a lot of it could be distracting from some from some of the criticisms those criticisms about Amazon because those criticisms are going to exist regardless maybe Bezos gets people to not think about this stuff for a couple of days or maybe he gets like a little bit of a public-relations windfall for a few days but I think it would be short-lived a lot of the criticisms about Amazon and its business those are fundamental issues and then she like resurfaced over the years yeah and if anything they've gotten louder yeah you know so an Amazon hq2 in New York for sure going to what you said Brian as far as like this kind of feels icky to talk about I would say that like when I had to write about Bezos his divorce I was kind of like this is a personal issue I understand that he tweeted about it and therefore we do have to cover it because he's the CEO of Amazon but now we're really getting into a point where this is very newsworthy yeah like the possibility the CEO of a major tech corporation could have his dick pics leaked to the National Enquirer and they're lording it over him this is significant and it is a personal situation but it is something that does impact a major tech company how the CEO operates that major tech company I think that there are I mean like the stock itself is it really moving so that is a bit an indicator but I would say that to suggest that this isn't a distraction with an Amazon how is that even possible like I'm sure a lot of people are paying attention to this yeah moving on let's tackle some more questions great ones filing in Timothy do says the timing of this is just amazing right after the divorce announcement talks with TJ says why does the media use personal life to interfere with business do we really think that's the case here I think that I mean like look I was writing about this stuff and my hands were tied like how are you not gonna write about this like as much as you know as many of the lurid details and what-have-you but it's it's Bezos came out and had a very lengthy medium post about this is what's going on in my personal life and this is a guy that every single time he says anything we tend to write about it and he tends to keep it pretty quiet so this was this was an unavoidable situation and in terms of the timing I think that the basis is announcement of the their divorce was specifically because they the Enquirer had already reached out and like Newt was trying it was gonna or was it knew about his mess it seemed very likely III mean without knowing 100% the timing is really pretty pretty stark he announces his divorce on Twitter with it with his wife and then a couple hours later the National Enquirer comes out and says hey he has a mistress so you do the math on that one so who doesn't these days I mean really I don't have a mistress I'd be Bezos mistress for that kind of money yeah I have a number of mistresses you know that's because I'm so damn good-looking but do they deliver in under 24 hours what two days in two days shipping from Mike Shaw if I was Jeff I'd say publish what you got I mean below the belt selfie who cares he's not untouchable at this point but kind of an interesting point from my you know Dan Savage made that argument in the New York Times he said that like the damage is already done and let's get rid of the taboo about these types of pictures by just coming out with them yeah I think that's I don't want really dumb move do you find the idea that like no one should feel I mean like personally embarrassed for people to see like it's embarrassing for people to see you in a bathing suit it's embarrassing to see people naked but the idea that it's like somehow a moral failings or it's I have poor judgment yeah just some pictures like that to someone who's your loved like who's your partner like whatever you want to say about extramarital or whatever like this was a consensual relationship there are two people that really like each other having a good time and everybody does this now I don't I don't but say it is very typical it is typical and I totally appreciate what you're saying as far as like treating it as judgment you know I think Dan Savage definitely has a point as far as that's concerned he does take it a little far by making it a bit more philosophical than actually realistic yeah cuz nobody really wants to see Jeff Bezos his dick pic why why he already had his the benefit of everybody like came to his side even though he's the world's richest person revealing these pictures I think from a public relations standpoint is utterly nonsensical so the idea is that he would do it himself he would yeah - just get to defang the situation completely exactly but also and I think going to Dan's point to also be kind of a figurehead to get rid of the taboo off like nudie pics or whatever and like Dan Savage he's like a sex advice columnist so of course he would say something like that anyway it's a good point that was Mike Shaw right yeah it was yeah I don't know if you read the dan Savage piece but you're definitely dead on with what Dan was talking about with that comment TJ says you can't be upset about media responding to your situation if you make it public you affect not only a personal life but your brand and business so I guess to a sense yeah Bezos brought this on himself to more than a sense he absolutely brought this on himself eg that he did it like everything that he's done has been in reaction we assume everything that he's done has been in reaction to somebody else saying we're gonna report on this no one's actually on your wife bro what and no one said cheat on as well like all right also I want to just say I'm a lot of people calling this a mistress because we don't really like if they were separated and he's it's hurt it's his girlfriend like that spicy buzzword I think yeah you're right I said I said mistress during the podcast I think I was reading too much of The Daily Beast before we went on I did not say mister I'd like I don't write mistress in my stories I just said like dating or something because you're right mistress definitely puts more of like a lurid spin on it than it's really necessary especially if they're separated and apparently Lauren Sanchez is also separated right again this is super weird to talk about as a tech reporter so and and I totally get why some of the commenters are flagging that issue but that's the this is yeah this is what happened you know and we like from from my perspective as a person that writes about Amazon I now have to pick and choose as far as how much of this I really care to write about anymore like the Thursday stuff when he came out with this huge medium post obviously we're gonna write about that we're gonna write about the fallout afterward but every everybody wants like the divorce proceedings like I don't know like the scene I care about that I'm not really sure well we'll find out on a scale of one to ten Ben how mad are you that we are just a gossip mill right now very true this is I I like going back to what I said before this is this is definitely interesting to me because it has so many potential impacts on Amazon and Bezos being like a credible leader of his company I think so far those things are fine but at the same time this is this is like material stuff to report on as opposed to the divorce which is like people get divorced it happens yeah you know it's it's people get separated and date other people how much do I really care about that man you know okay National Enquirer a blackmail plot and we've got your dick pigs yeah gonna be I've just been writing about to head I mean there's like a whole Trump thread and all this the Saudi threat yeah there's there's a lot going on well there it'll be a lot that that out that you know truthful out so wolf will eventually maybe know where all this stuff came from right which we didn't mention so The Daily Beast which has been writing a lot about this claims that they have an exclusive from the National Enquirer multiple National Enquirer sources that are unnamed that it was Michael Sanchez which is the brother of the woman Jeff Bezos is dating has that's girlfriend whatever so Michael Sanchez has like Republican connections apparently knows Roger stone and it's it's yeah it seems very likely that it was Michael Sanchez at this point yeah so juicy very very very brother free like intrigue that is not cool bro but whatever I mean the most humiliating thing about this is that people still take naked selfies like are you twelve bro like are you in high school what you're doing here I feel like everybody does that doesn't everybody do this reminds doesn't make it any less humiliating this reminds me it's very childish so you remember there was a major Google executive it was Eric he used to be the chairman he was like Eric Schmidt Eric Schmidt was asked about like what when things come out on the internet and they're embarrassing whatever he said something that like a lot of people felt was like very very puritanical which realize if if you don't want embarrassing things about you to come out on the internet don't do them in the first place right which is like so judgy so going back to the point if like should you or shouldn't you do like dick pics or naked pics in the first place it's kind of like live your life alright maybe I shouldn't be espousing such things but yeah let's not espouse tolerance and understanding for other people when they make errors in judgment judgment it's not a big deal this is the ultimate thing it's so not a big deal it's not only normalize it either why it's it's not a big deal is it a very interesting conversation it's not expecting to start my Monday this way Mike this is i opening i say if you point a camera at your wee-wee you're just asking for trouble there you might as well just all right Eric Schmidt you and Eric can hang out whatever all right anyways let's try to move on Mike Shaw says if the National Enquirer is blackmailing Bezos can't he just see them out of business Michael Brown says what are some of the criticisms of Amazon and their business practices and storm king wants to expand on that saying how much of his personal affairs are really going to impact the stocks it hasn't impacted the stock much at all so so there's that answer CEO like Elon Musk is a great example where he's shown real errors in judgment like smoking pot on camera which we're like illegal and lots of places working but it's still just and then like all this stuff what a total emotional very public emotional breakdown yeah so like that's an example where a CEOs personal behavior has had an impact on the stock this however has been pretty fairly limited yeah in Amazon's case the other interest the the other issue to pay attention to as a release to Amazon is is that Amazon is a company of 650,000 people he has multiple executives that have been with the company for a long time that he can lean on if he's having times of trouble or difficulty in his personal life there are two co-ceos that run major parts of the business that had they those been their own standalone businesses would probably be fortune 500 companies so Jeff is probably gonna be fine dealing at least with his divorce the the issue is is what goes on with this National Enquirer stuff is that going to drag on is that going to turn into like a whole criminal proceeding because that is going to get distracting and not and if it's criminal its criminal and deal with it but it's it's hard to operate your business when when you have all these different distractions going on and then this what are some of the things that are recurrent a lot if it really has to do with treatment of workers that's that's really been the most recurrent issue and oh that that seems to me to be directly related to the fact that Amazon seems to be against unionization or they're openly against unionization of their workforce and unions don't really like that especially the warehouses so there they are they butt heads a lot with the unions and there have been a lot of expose is about how the where warehouse workers are treated how the delivery drivers are treated that's something that's been ongoing for years yeah all right let's hear hereby hope that it really doesn't impact the company that much because those workers have had a rough enough already but the most important question on the table how long until the porn parody oh I think it's already happened probably it's a great question because it's almost certainly a guard all right moving on let's talk Sundance it's to me it's kind of weird that Sundance has become such a platform for tech related topics not to be not that it's not easy to kind of tie those connections later being that it's you know the entertainment aspect of it but Michael Brown is asking magic leap has been around for a while do we expect it to ever really start to reach the masses soon and that's the question on everybody's mind who's interested in VRA are yeah so magic Leafs been around for a while in the sense that as a company it's existed for like four yeah about four years but its first product that people could actually like oh like see and touch and be like it's all actually real it's not just fake that only came out like five months ago and that was magic leap one it's the one that's like two thousand three hundred dollars and the idea like I said is that it would be something that creators and developers are the ones that mostly are the people that's kind of the target for this edition of magic leap and then subsequent versions of it would be cheaper and more accessible for people and also better like right now it has some downfalls as with a lot of a our headsets the field of view is limited so like if you had a giant standing in front of you you'd be like I can see the head and neck and now I can see the body and now I can see the tail you can't see the whole thing at once cuz the field of view is so small you back up sorry then you got to back up or you know you could back up if you're in a giant warehouse or if you're in your living room as this is intended to be used you can because you have walls that go bump into so does that take you out of the experience a lot magic leave has a better field of view than hololens which is the only other really functional out there a or headset so it's better than what ha what hololens which hasn't been updated in a while it's better than that but yeah there's a lot it's a really brand new technology literally in the case of magic leap this is the first public version available and so there's a lot of things that need to be improved upon for it to be something that people really get excited about a the prices come down needs to be more content for it reasons for you to try it and technology itself has some kinks to work there speaking of excited I'm just kind of curious what was your personal highlight of the different selections you actually saw at Sundance what was one that you really thought was kind of fun of the magical ones yeah yeah listen state of that of the magic leap ones I liked the jesters tale most just because it was so bizarre it was so weird the other ones definitely felt very the ones that magical eats himself magically magically itself presented they were very kind of polished safe yeah like they were safe they'd already been presented at their their convention their developer conference in October so I got so they brought mica which is there humanoid artificial intelligence kind of like a digital assistant but it's not designed to like answer your questions and set your timer and then they also had this performance of a Shakespearean monologue by this Royal Shakespeare Company actors who's a little hologram stand in front of me and they're really good they were really well done and the animation was great and it was really real and clever but it was definitely not taking risks and so a jesters tale took a lot of risks it was really out there so that one made more of an impression and they were saying that jesters tail was coming to home can I call a home video it's king yeah they come into VHS it's got it'll be available to the public later this year right yeah so the idea I don't know exactly how they'll do it because Assad said that they are going to release a mobile version of it a mobile that's it mobile yeah like a mobile AR version of it sometime sometime in the second quarter which basically means the next four months oh that's sooner than I thought I was thinking like nd year no I mean it could anything can change but and I don't exactly know how a mobile AR version would work because so much of the version that I saw it was set in a bedroom where it was kind of like the set itself was very elaborate with a bed and there was a desk and there was a key in the desk I had to pull out and there were pictures and bookshelves and bric-a-brac all over the place and the volumetric assets like of the little boy the Holograms of the little boy and the mother and a poppy and of these other computer-generated characters you know it's all very specific in this room the boy sits on the bed the mother joins him on that sits him on the bed with him and you know like comforts him and yeah and you I don't really know exactly how it work but I don't know assad's really he's like a wunderkind he's annoyingly smart and he's like 22 years old so I'm sure hopefully it's pretty impressive that he managed to or like when you talk about like risk-taking it makes sense that you know the finished product was kind of more of a risk-taking effort because it doesn't seem like there are that many third-party developers that are actually making magically content at all because it's so new there are some but like we don't know about them yet because they're like I said it magically was only been out for about five or six months and that's only given creators that weren't already like kind of welcomed into the fold previously like Royal Shakespeare Company had been working with magically before the announcement of before the release of magical point so there have been the NBA also has been working with magic leave on some other stuff but we but nobody really has had a chance to get their hands as a consumer as a user and try it except for people like Scott Stein and me and people that happen to go to this conference the magic leap conference normal people just don't have access to the technology to view it so yeah even like people like Scott and I have only had a chance to try a few things from magically so I don't know it'll be interesting to see what sounds like I will take a couple years for it to trickle down yeah Timothy asks if ARV are really starts picking up you think within ten years we'll have ready player one status tech world sure my Mike Shaw asks how soon can I go to the Super Bowl in VR or more importantly a Def Leppard concert Mike I'll be there with you for that one I mean there's already lots of examples of going to sporting events or concerts in virtual reality not necessarily Def Leppard and not the Super Bowl but the NBA has been very aggressive and doing like courtside VR experiences or in the store you get to pick your placement where you can be like in the hallway where the players run out so you can be there when they like come out for their you know lets get ready to rhumble or whatever moment you can be on the sidelines you can be in the stands you can choose where in the stands and then there have been a lot of concerts that people have recorded for VR or broadcast live in 360 for VR for awhile and so that's a place people are exploring I mean they're trying to figure out whatever they can figure out to make it something that people want to do yeah and we'll see I think that with oculus quest coming out this year that's the one where it's like you get what's called six degrees of freedom where it can like recognize where you are without having to set up cameras all over the place it just kind of knows where you are from a camera in the in the headset you don't have to wear a backpack or anything like that I think that's gonna be really interesting because it's kind of finally the one that sort of hits the main things that you need VR to be able to do yeah those aspects seems to be really critical yes all right getting people on board you know cuz obviously some of the earlier rigs where you had to pay for really expensive PC Tower and then you have to like plug it in like you're in the matrix yeah to it that's a big deal for its it's a lot it's a lot to deal with and it's not anywhere close to being for like mainstream consumers or for like every day like videoed like gamers like PC gamers some of them will be into it and some of them won't be and then on the other hand like the low end with like gear VR 9s on headset that ray stick phone in or like the pixel yard remember the ones where you like stick the phone in that okay dream thank you right those are great in the sense that they make things accessible but the experiences that you have on that because you don't have that six degrees of freedom thing they it's really just like a 360 viewer so you can sit on a chair like this and spin around and see things but you can't play a game you can't like reach out to somebody in social VR and wave to them and actually have your avatar wave or anything like that although it's with Google you had a controller so you could kind of do that anyways I think it'll be really interesting when quest comes out to see what happens people are already over it and just don't want to care about VR anymore if it could be something that actually takes a lot it takes off with the very limited amount of time we got left us talk resolution and ranking mike shaw is very curious how magically magically deals with resolution he thinks that perhaps to his understanding you need to have 4k in each eye Oscar's wondering where psvr falls on the spectrum Michael Brown says we should hit them together with magic leave hololens Google glass who really has the best visual presentation who looks best to the naked eye well we're talking a are it's been a long time since I tried Holland I haven't tried Holland's and over maybe even two years like I said it's been a while since hololens has been updated and my only experience with hololens has been in a demo environment Scott Stein would it be great because he like gets out and gets to try those things all the time not all the time but more than more than I do I don't know about resolution types up but I can't say just from like offhand experiences magic leap the visuals automatically pet said are much better and look more real and feel less you don't get pulled out of the reality of what you're seeing as often as you do with hololens I think mostly because of the field of view being better on magic leap but and those are all better than Google glass because glass is like not it was a failure well not only that but like it was it was a version of AR that was very simple yeah just basically put a very very tiny computer screen if I remember correct right in front of one of your eyes which is like the true version so there's all these different definitions the true definition of augmented reality is literally just like Google glass where it's just like digital information on top of the world and hololens and magically like to talk about mixed reality the idea that like that like one of the Holograms could walk around the table and it you psyche as they walk around the table you lose the visual of the bottom half of their body you know like that it interacts with the things that are actually in the room around you and not just like overlay on top and so if ever interested if you ever want to be annoying at a party super annoying a party and tell people like that's not really augmented reality that's a mixed reality that's the difference between the two so that's another reason why it's kind of like an unfair comparison between magically and hollands and that genre and then like the Google glass was there another question I didn't address somebody else asked a question I can't remember he's talking about resolution I don't know much yes gods a better guy to ask that question he's we don't have we can't beam him in quite yet soon we'll work on that on beaming in Scott using a our mixed reality my mistake because he's got to sit behind the desk bring us Scott Scott hologram man wait how come we how do we know you guys aren't just augmented mixed reality Halle Berry Turing test man I took a reverse Turing test and I'm human cuz I didn't kill a boy that's how we know I am a hologram so there's that he was a hologram I could punch him right in the face and it would just go right through right through me all right go for it hey Star Wars Oh Google glass the virtual boy of augmented reality I in the mean time we will work on getting Scott in here so bring those questions back but we are out of time thanks everybody for joining us thanks for your great questions we will see you again tomorrow Ben get us out of here all right the 3:59 is available on itunes TuneIn feedburner stitcher google play music google podcasts the amazon echo and of course cnet.com thanks everybody for your great questions we will probably not do more gossip stuff tomorrow but who knows nobody knows what's gonna happen with Jeff Bezos his life but anyway thanks again we'll see you tomorrow you