Gadgetory


All Cool Mind-blowing Gadgets You Love in One Place

UPS delivers on truck-drone hybrid. Is it more than meets the eye? (The 3:59, Ep. 182)

2017-02-21
welcome back after Presidents Day weekend here in New York City from the scene at studios this episode 182 of the 359 podcast with Alfred and Ben Fox Ruben good morning guys how was your weekend pretty good but I missed our great audience here yeah I was so happy to come back and see everybody that's that it's so insincere it kind of hurt a little bit what what we love all the viewers and we hope you also had a great President's Day weekend unless you are overseas you had some other long weekend of which we've never heard of well do they have Presidents Day and then have Presidents Day for sure no there's Presidents elsewhere so because it was a long weekend we've actually got a couple different things we want to get through on the show today I wrote this morning about ups doing a first-of-its-kind delivery drone test so we'll delve into that we have some video off it which looks pretty cool also there's some more bad news about uber Verizon Yahoo Alfred you wrote about that and we'll end with the New York Toy Fair which alfred was at over the weekend so there's like a lot to get through on the show yeah I didn't pay attention to any other news cuz I was at Toy Fair yeah you know zipping around on Electric skateboards and looking at yu-gi-oh cards that's pretty sweet which are back by the way everything's back they don't invent anything new anymore they just bring it back like Teddy Ruxpin which by the way was also at the show so let's get to the podcast as always send in your questions and comments Brian we'll get to the best ones at the end of the podcast itself and send it in whatever questions and comments you want obviously on topic stuff we usually like more but if you want to ask about Samsung or Apple stuff go ahead and that's let's let's make it let's make this podcast thing go buckle up everybody we're gonna make podcast and magic happen hangout for three minutes of 59 seconds and then we'll open the chat up and hang out with you from 3:00 to welcome to the 359 where we talk about the top tech news of the day plus whatever crap we want to throw in I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Alford hang-ups completed a first-of-its-kind test for the company using a drone integrated into the roof of a delivery truck to make a drop off the shipping giant said these drones could save gas in time by helping drivers cut down on stops Alfred how excited are you about delivery drones this looks like one of the coolest things I've seen all the other delivery drones that I've seen have been like it's just the drones on their own right now and they're flying off and that it's kind of creepy to me it's cool though what this one is kind of cool because it's like working in unison with the delivery man right there's still a human touch to it when I saw the video it kind of reminded me of if you've ever played The Legend of Zelda with when the ferry like goes under it's here when Navi flies around and like picks up stuff and gives it a link yeah that's what it's that's exactly what I thought of Oh totally totally yeah so it's integrated into the roof one of the things that I thought was also interesting was that there's so much talk about automated cars automated drones destabilizing the workforce taking people out of jobs UPS told me that this is something that would not cause people to lose their jobs because the drone would work in unison with the driver and the truck which is also something pretty cool and so you can see you it just kind of flies out and it comes back and you know you can do the deliveries it's like having two delivery people now on exact route exactly now my only concern is if nobody picks up that if nobody answers the door or anything like that and it's a package where does the UPS drone hide it now because it can't put it under your carpet or anything like that so this was just the test at this point I think it just did the drop-off and came back but those types of logistics are the types of things that they still there's a lot yeah that kind of thing to work out on your one day they'll get it right you need to get your personal drone to go get that delivery next up ooh BRR hired former US Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate allegations of sexual harassment at the company the move is in response to a blog post from a former uber engineer who said she and other women repeatedly complained to HR about problems but were essentially brushed off this is really interesting because this comes already uber was struggling with this boycott related to the travel ban how bad is this for the company and do you think this response is enough to to kind of quell concerns about what's going on there well from what I've seen on social media this is already one of the top trends on Facebook I am a lot of people already tend not to trust Eric Holder I mean he's had a lot of poll being the former US Attorney General but I mean for some reason the tech world loves this guy I mean Airbnb hired him also last year to help develop its anti-discrimination policies and look into those issues for them so it's kind of following the same trend here for uber and he seemed to have done the trick for Airbnb so he might be able to pull up pull it off again for uber but yeah this is not a good look for the ride hailing company yeah also more news today Verizon agreed to cut the acquisition deal for Yahoo by 350 million dollars Alfred you wrote about this today can you give us like a quick in a nutshell what happened here so basically after the two massive hacks were Yahoo seemed to outdo itself you know 500 million in September then 1 billion announced in December Verizon kind of backed off a little bit on it's four point eight billion dollar deal so it was announced today that they would be cutting that deal by about 350 million dollars also anytime if Verizon is sued for this you know people saying you know we want to see you over our hacked accounts and things like that yahoo has to put 50% of that bill but Verizon and Yahoo have agreed to handle half of any not half but handled together the any regulatory or you know government issues that comes with the hacks yeah and the good news for Yahoo is it looks like the purchase is actually gonna happen now so they aren't gonna be left out in the cold if you want to read more about these stories check us out on CNN I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm alfred Aang thanks for listening you and welcome back we got he had to skip Toy Fair yeah but we have Toy Fair now or our beloved real audience we might even try to do Toy Fair tomorrow if we if we want because Toy Fair was actually pretty interesting one thing that was pretty cool was Teddy Ruxpin Alfred you weren't that excited about rocks man was really cool I don't get it it's a bear because you didn't grow up with it I grew up with Teddy Ruxpin I didn't actually even have a Teddy Ruxpin but I remember the Teddy Ruxpin commercials and I'm pretty psyched to have him back he's got LCD screen eyes little touch sensors in his paws he's a hundred bucks so I don't think then I'm gonna buy him why is a teddy bear a hundred dollars exactly because he talks to you and he tells you stories and he's interactive and one of the things that I like about it is that they didn't really screw with Teddy Ruxpin all that much I think the voice is even the same it's in 1980 I talked to Bridget about this it's the exact same voice clips it's the same stories and stories but it's all digitized now so it works through of course your phone through the ad right and like I said I grew up on Teddy Ruxpin I thought this was really kind of cool if I had kids this is exactly what I would do for them because it's it's what got me kind of into like audiobooks and radio and just kind of fascinated by storytelling kind of stuff my god you just sold me on buying this stupid thing all right yeah it's fine I'll get it I think it's a little more fun and a better gateway for kids than just handing them the iPad and saying learn around yeah for sure there's a lot more creativity when it when you have a toy that you can interact with as opposed to like a kids tablet or anything like that so for this 3:59 after-dark the post-show alfred what was it like being a Toy Fair super fun night I love toys like it's like I said I'm still one of those people that had like a just like the chest like just filled with toys in there I go to thrift shops and just buy toys for no reason that like my girlfriend's not that happy about umm but yeah it was like being at Toy Fair was awesome I saw these like collectibles that like I they had they had like you know how like there's like those like Power Ranger mecha toys and stuff mm-hmm they had one for like Toy Story for some reason we're like Buzz Lightyear turned into like a mech and and woody had his own mech - and you could combine them into like you you've got a friend in me combined into a super powerful I'm desperately trying to find this on the page and we have so much stuff no story for hundreds and hundreds of photos and videos I'm not trying to do this as like some shameless self-promotion for the company I literally can't find what you're talking about cuz I'm sectioning through everything to try to show were you there by the way - Brian no I didn't get to go this year then they had all these like Megaman toys that I thought were awesome that like I couldn't get either but coolest thing I saw there was probably either the razor's like electric skateboard just because I've been kind of interested in getting one but it's always been like expensive it's pretty neat as if for something that I like it because I already have a skateboard so I can just kick I don't like why would I pay like more than $200 mine you're a tech reporter just buy and then they had one of these drones I was like marketed as like indestructible where basically it was like this challenge where is this like big netted area and then you could shot like a tennis ball gun at it and then knock it down and then it would like fly right back up was pretty cool yeah yeah yeah the little time that I've spent with drones usually like one of the propellers will come off really especially like the micro drones so that definitely sounds like it would have significant usefulness so yeah I definitely like that idea we got a question in the chat Alex wants to know do you think that these toys can help kids stay off iPads so out of curiosity how much was like integrated into iPads and how much did you see was like completely free of the tablet or mobile phones in general yeah well they had like a whole section just for like kids tablets and you know of course and things like that if anything it would be the parents on on the apps though and I was like kids on devices goes I don't know that much about iPads I know a lot of kids are like using phones all the time I don't think like I know I know when I was growing up I I like was on the screen like all the time like I had like a bunch of toys but I still didn't like stay away from like video games or anything I mean I had a gameboy when I was growing up yeah I don't think it'll keep them off no I don't think any kids gonna choose like one these toys over an iPhone or anything like to play games on but that's why I kind of like the idea of the Teddy Ruxpin comeback and the usage of that because you've got something that yeah the it's it's driven by the iPad but you're not using the iPad yeah necessarily right and it's still interactive so they can continue to use it there was another one it talks like a hologram Barbie which was essentially a Barbie that was like a personal assistant I don't know how useful that would be to like get kids off of their iPads because it's mostly like you would query it like you would query Alexa for any specific things I don't think you're generally having a conversation with it maybe you would but yeah I mean I think the reason I mean like all these toys are really cool and they're gonna like get kids away from like you know their phones or their tablets or anything like that but that's like during playtime there's so much like downtime for like apps cuz like think about like a kid just like sitting on the couch when they don't want to play with you know Teddy Ruxpin or anything anymore and they just want to look at their phone and like yeah yeah and zone out that's like that's the majority of like screen time yeah yeah yeah you're watching a show you're watching Dora yeah is Dora still around that still think Dora stole the thing very much so yeah you have to deal with I don't know my daughter's watching a lot of the Care Bears lately well it was the Care Bears episode where the kid was on their phone all the time yeah which was actually pretty interesting how Legrand Barbie totally reminds me of like Hatsune Miku expand please there's a in Japan they have a Vocaloid program called Hatsune Miku where it's like you make all the music like in the program but then it somebody made like a hologram of it where like it sings the songs and things like that it's Barbie dabbing yes oh yeah that always happens zabi they're always trying to figure out how to make her more relevant and cooler and whatever yeah okay daddy mommy you you should expect Barbie to keep doing whatever it is that people think are cool our old buddy Michael Brown in the chat he says UPS drone it's interesting but probably won't see this fully in action until at least 2020 yeah that's probably right it's still kind of cool to see totally so way all I can like a brown very very correct incredibly astute as always all I can think of as we were talking about this wait you brought this up before the show started unlike so it this Jeron comes out of the truck and then carries out the the bidding of the driver and all like I swear to God all I can think of a sound wave from Transformers totally with the like the cassette tapes popping out gets that tapes turn into other things right if they could only make the truck actually make this the transformer sound as the drone takes off I'd be sold I want all my stuff delivered by drone be like you me preferably if they could redesign it to look like a pterodactyl while they're at it I'm on that oh my god that would be so phenomenal that every single time it made a delivery would go air or yeah I hope we see that by 2020 Terminator p-51 says Skynet is rising it is it is important to note actually the 2029 user you wouldn't you would expect delivery drones to potentially come by 2020 but they're probably gonna be coming even later than that there was a well study out by Gartner recently that said that delivery drones were only gonna be 1% less than 1% of the commercial drone market by 2020 so 3 years from now you should still expect to see very very few deliveries well is that is that only applying to the US though cuz I can't imagine other countries of the same like restrictive you know regulations on drones that like the US has with the FAA that is a good question you have now stumped me and I have to go back and look at the report I have to punt immediately I mean rather me stumping you and somebody you know like audience question oh that's ok get stumped by the audience all the time I think mr. Oz is a little apprehensive about the whole drone thing he sounds a distrusting as he may have had some less than stellar interactions with actual human delivery in the past I mean wouldn't you be more trusting of drones in that case because they can't like there's less room for error Loran they can't make fun of you for being in your underwear at 12 o'clock but a good driver knows where to hide that package and also now yeah this trust well that's what I'm saying a drone can just drop it off on your roof think you just get it they're like no no robbers are gonna make that effort all smart homes come enabled with a drop point like a dumbwaiter on top of your house so that the drone drops it there and then it also has to make the Transformers noise though that would be oMG so but but I do it's it's cool to see all these different tests we were talking back in December about Amazon doing this very very small piloted study in England where it's it's in rural England and it they send out the drones from an actual factory or from a from a shipping area and you drop off like some Cheetos and then come back this is another area where you're actually bringing you know the drone directly to people so why Cheetos I don't know I was hungry he's sponsored by Jada CNET bought and paid for about you that's what the C stands for I love working for this company anymore now I don't know anybody see anything else cool at Toy Fair this weekend I don't know if anybody out there was there with us I know you went and Brigid went and Mark went and what else did we see I was really jealous I was watching all the the Ninja Turtles this is this was also there was like a larger bb-8 that was kind of cool yeah it's like if almost life-size kind of yeah well like a soccer ball yeah this wasn't this was pretty close to that I think it was a little bit smaller I was I was actually surprised that the price was only 230 dollars because it was it was a rather large size bb-8 and the the smaller one by Spiro was like a hundred or plus I didn't get the same access that Bridget got to Mattel like they told me I needed to make an appointment to see hologram Barbie or something like that so poor guy I was blocked off from of yeah I got rejected by hologram Barbie oh jeez I thought we had I was I'm trying to look for that BBA and I I don't think I can find it right we had a too much Tory Ferris we do we have a lot of toy first stuff I haven't even gone through it yet myself because I was lazy this weekend but yeah I was super jealous if I was awesome cool do we have any other questions just props out to Michael Hallett in the chat oh my god ermahgerd turtles in the half shell turtle power you're my hero sir I am a big man child and I love my ninja turtles definitely playing terrible's in time for the Super Nintendo over like the last few days good it's a great game it's one of the best one of the best like Super Nintendo game absolutely all right that's probably a good time to shut it down because oh my god Michael sing ermahgerd Cheetos ermahgerd Toy Fair this is one of the nerdy or podcasts we've done that's saying a lot and it's spiraling down horribly alright on the tower at all it let's call it thanks everybody alright the 359 podcast is available on iTunes TuneIn stitcher SoundCloud feedburner Google Play Music and of course cnet.com thanks everybody for watching listening setting in your questions we'll see you again tomorrow later bye
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