Gadgetory

hey what is up everyone we're live we're here I didn't get a count on here but it doesn't matter because my name is Jeff Bakalar you have found yourself in the best place to be every Friday afternoon that is here inside cns conversation show where we get some drinks and talk tech with you people who are watching live this is your chance to chat directly with cnet editors so send us your questions right now in the live chat on youtube or tweet using hashtag open tab joining us this week is cnet's section editor mr. dan ackerman ever ever in how are you sir hey ah also joining us the newest member of the Cena team here in New York Alfred in hello Alfred thank you for being here sir glad to be here you're enjoying your time so far yes all right good you're right yeah yes there's this might be where it all went sup okay you'll see Elijah uh so Dan you are here because you have a very special project you recently published a book hi yourself not that I have a letterpress at my house and I just stamp them out he's been out for six months doing why it took so long ah here's the book can we a shot of this it is called the tetris effect the game that hypnotized the world Oh congratulations thank you sir thank you very exciting is a very big deal oh you can get this wherever wherever you buy bar everybody bucks um so I want to talk to you about one just a little side note is the UK version and now the UK and the US version are like fighting each other it's right you wish by boat and both right cuz like we said before the show all the all the use and all the weird grammar is in this pound symbol of they went with the Cold War angle they did yes it did well there's a lot of that they're in your straighten you know they're still paranoid about that so I want to talk to you about the the book what is it about Tetris because I would about like we need a technician it's not that interesting by itself okay and I looked at her I said okay there's an interesting history there if you know anything about the history of video games or technology you may know that Tetris came from the Soviet Union during the Cold War and there are a lot of fights over who owned it and let you know legal battles and things like that that's fine the more I looked into it though I realized this isn't a game story it's actually a start-up story very similar to the startup stories that we obsess about over at Silicon Valley and elsewhere sure but the startup story from the Soviet Union in the middle of the Cold War in Moscow and that's made it super interesting to me that we were taking this modern you know startups or that we talked about but finding um the most unlikely version of it possible that had a huge global impact over 30 years so I mean the way you described like that almost makes it sound like it was this sort of accident though or at least its popularity of course it is how is a little software program some guy makes in a Russian you know science academy all of a sudden become a billion dollar global business is the most unlikely of success stories so like how and I don't you give away too much about what's what's in the book but like how does ownership work they're like hey and I'm obviously that you get into that but like how did that play out that's a huge part of it it's almost like like a cold war you know business spy thriller with all these big companies backstabbing each other and trying to make deals with these secret Russian groups alexey pajitnov the guy who created tetris he was a he was a computer scientist at the Russian Academy of scientists he was actually working on some very advanced stuff things like artificial intelligence voice recognition for the Soviet Union in the 80s that's like super cutting edge yeah in his spare time he used his ancient computer ancient even for them at the time to make this a game that mimic this puzzle game used to play as a kid many friends liked it he passed it around and to go viral back in the Soviet Union in the 80s that means making a big 5 inch floppy disk and walking it over to the other people in Moscow who have a computer at the time ago and hey check this out yeah it's it's sneakernet it's dude we still call that sneakernet but that's all they had and somehow him probably it just spreads and spreads because what else you can do for fun in Moscow in 1984 they got a lot going on you're not unless just want to like stand in a red liner yeah exactly that's right and then it makes its way to hungry which is an eastern bloc country but a little more open to to commercialism in the West okay that's where Rubik's Cube comes from that was also Eastern Bloc invention that made it out into the West they really love their squares and a business guy from the UK saw it and said hi wonder if I can sell this somehow maybe I'll try to talk to I'll find out it's from rush i'll try to talk to the Russians they don't understand intellectual property rights or licensing their communist right side is good all right below the not all we're going to deal with these guys but in the meantime I'm just gonna start selling this out of the back of a car okay and that led to you know many many intersecting lawsuits in this huge tangle that takes us through this whole you know legal and business thriller cool alright sounds like you're already working on like the movie adaptation I feel we're just gonna act it out right I feel like I feel like there's their substance there it could have the stage as a stage show a 203 hander now now I've read half of the book don't spoil the ending for me but the ship sinks in the end here's the spoiler it's let zigzag piece was the murderer well I there's no point of me reading the rest of it anymore but I think one of the interesting things though you put a lot of detail into the losers in the tetris race and you know most books it's essentially just alright here's this guy did a really cool thing that's their story but you know how did you get in contact and you know why did you decide to put so much like focus on you know people that didn't like when the rights to tetris when you were telling a history story or good non fiction story I think it's really all about it's not just about what happened it's about the character do you really need characters that that make the history come alive and what I found was this story had so many fantastic characters in it alexey pajitnov and Hank Rogers on one side but also the guys you talked about who lost out in the end guys like robert maxwell and robert stein and a lot of the other russians and the guys that like kangin an Atari and spectrum holla by and they were also interesting I thought it was a great sort of you know large cast of characters that I could walk through and a lot of them were very you know happy to talk to me and tell me you know their stories and a lot of like interesting anecdotes that hasn't been you know published anywhere else before so I found it was a great it was a great human story behind it and that's what really helped me to kind of put it together in that way and make it make it a character piece what was the most surprising sort of maybe even shady thing I mean a lot of shade is a lot of shady my favorite surprising thing was a little bit later when Nintendo is finally negotiating with the Russians for various Tetris rights for the famicom and nes a lot of game play tetris just within Tendo true and nintendo was a was kind of a johnny-come-lately to that but they're the guys who really mainstreamed it after it was a kind of a cult hit on PCs and of course we go to CES every year there's a big scene set at CES in like nineteen eighty-seven where the game is just on PCs but when Nintendo Howard Lincoln who's a famous you know figure he later went on to become the president of the Seattle Mariners I think he just retired a few months ago M&R Arakawa who was the founding president of Nintendo of America there in Russia trying to do some of these negotiations and there and they're sitting in a room and the Russians come in with a cosmonaut I they go uh comrades this is comedy so in total Kozma he wants to talk to you about Nintendo sponsoring the Russian space program maybe we could send the Soyuz capsule up it'll have to be Nintendo logo on the side these are very forward thinking right yeah right uh and then later they take our relation right and then later they take Howard Lincoln and his son to the secret top secret Soviet the space training town hall town they have set up to Train astronauts and they show them all like the training you know modules and everything so so the fact that they tried to do that I think that was the the coolest surprise thing huh yeah cuz I you know most people I feel like a lot of people don't even realize it is a Russian sort of institution where like this came out of oh yeah uh yeah go ahead but you think about the game that you remember with that the Russian plinky music the backwards are in the title and the and the cathedral on the Fox that's all the invention of Western publishers mirror soft in the UK and spectrum holla bite in the US the with sister companies owned by the maxwell's uh they said you know what we have this kind of plain looking game let's do it but it's from Russia let's play that let's make it the first big import from the Soviet Union make it kind of scary sort of forbidden and that's really what what causes huge mainstream breakthrough how is it that such a simple game like this has a back story that's more complicated than like the Jason Bourne movies because we were dealing with at the time this tie in credible tension between Russia and the West and we were dealing with the very beginning of the computer era and and the beginning of people starting to this is just before Gorbachev came in and we moved from this very strict communist system to glasnost and perestroika and this opening up so it was really the exact right time for people to start testing the waters mixing these two cultures finding things that's what Hank Rogers did he was kind of a software anthropologist he would go around to different countries he was a naturalized American from the Netherlands living in Japan at the time and he would go around and find software from other countries that he thought would sell well in Japan you know without a lot of localization so he said Tetris this is going to be this will work in any country you don't have to read the instructions you don't have to understand any story you could just watch it for 30 seconds and you know how to play it so that and the Russian stuff and that just the arrow computer stuff we're at and the birth of the NES and the Game Boy yeah this perfect storm came together and that's why you know instead of just being an 80s you know curiosity EA just sold 500 million Tetris downloads on smartphones and that's blows my mind 30 years later yeah still ice Tetris really ended the Cold War it was yeah this was right this was like the silent assassin it was the first Russian thing that a lot of people were exposed to that actually was from Russia right it kind of gave us the it's like the old sting song we're like oh the Russians are just like us they like video games too right no yeah it's an amazing story you can get the book wherever books are sold I think we might be giving one away I'm hat we're happy to give one away I don't know if it's designed it for you to the excellent know if it's this one in my hand it could Beit but we'll figure it all out so we're going to pass this along to someone in it was watching live but you'll lot of rules on how to do that I think they're going to be up on screen or something like that awesome eight to one thing very quick that was super happy to do which was finally be able to get some cool blurbs for other people I really admire and I think the most fun thing was to get I got Steve Wozniak word a little blurb on the back and Ernest Cline I wrote ready player one to the fantastic book Doug rushkoff is a great tech author he he actually can't coin the term viral media back in the 90s there i was able to send all those guys early copy than of super excited the day that they were what's that like when like you're you're looking for a quote like was i he literally cold email was yeah like because he was a big Tetris fan zactly eight is he would send his high scores into gay magazines oh no they would stop and they stopped running them at some point because he was in there every month you're always the one who always in here when I so he started sending his scores in under an anagram of his name and they started running it again and I knew that beforehand so i just said after the fact that you know what I bet he'd like to really tell them is that great send it to me and we got a nice we had a nice blur problem is they even verify those scores now that I'm thinking about it can I just you used to have to take a photo of your TV screen get it develop when you're dealing with a camera how you gonna do that on an old 35-millimeter camera travel back in time do it oh that was so we are looking for our a hundred Twitter follower for the handle of the show that's per that's a big accomplishment that's seen it open tab if you are our lucky winner you will get a signed copy of the tetris effect by mr. dan ackerman thank you so much for being here really appreciate it my flesh and good luck to everyone with that out of the way we're going to take a break we have a great video it's an oldie but a goodie luke westaway in our london office is currently spending his last week at cnet it's very upsetting but back in 2013 he made in adventures in text segment that spotlights both Nintendo's gameboy and the tetris effect so we have dug that up and we blew the dust off it we're going to play for you right now we'll be right back these days if a piece of tech isn't the fastest the biggest and the brightest gadget in town is tempting to write at office of failure but this iconic gaming gadget proves that sometimes less really and be more here's why the end of the 80s or Nintendo Sega an Atari all competing for the handheld gaming crown of these three Titans Nintendo's console was the least powerful by far and yet the Gameboy blasted past its rivals to become a genuine gaming icon the game boy was devised by Nintendo's R&D one division led by gunpei Yokoi a legendary figure who was the brains behind Nintendo's first handheld the game and watch it was a series of bold decisions from your Coy's design team that made the Gameboy an unlikely success the Gameboy didn't have the fanciest tech around quite the opposite it's processing power wasn't noteworthy it only had a few buttons and its tiny monochrome screen could only handle four shades of grey which sounds like some very lackluster erotic fiction and then she kissed his hair or something but he didn't like it compared to Sega's game gear and Ataris links which both had backlit color screens the game boy looked retro even in 1994 what seemed like this consoles weaknesses were actually its biggest strengths with their big bright displays the links and Game Gear each required six AAA batteries which they drained in just a few hours the Game Boy by contrast lasted way longer and by deploying more modest tech Nintendo was able to keep the price down less is more that's the key to the game boy puzzle and speaking of puzzles if you really want to see what made the system so popular you just need to flip it around tetris was born in russia but the rights to distribute the game on consoles were bought by dutch born entrepreneur Henk Rogers Rogers says he approached Nintendo about using the game telling them that if they bundled the gameboy with Mario to tell it to kids but if they went with Tetris that sell it to everyone indeed while say who was busy pushing Sonic the broad appeal of tetris gave the Gameboy a flying start that left its rivals in the dust Tetris got us all hooked on the famous type a music which is actually a Russian folk tune and is the source of a mental phenomena called Tetris syndrome which can cause hardcore players to see falling shapes while drifting off to sleep or in the corner of their eyes ook hey I just got off the phone with came from finance man this plugin is not very weird problem with your with your expense report this is it true you actually commissioned an entire work to extension of unit for the office with a cunning design and a brilliant bundled game the game boy stormed the world eventually getting a color makeover in 1998 in the US nintendo sold a million game boys in just a few weeks while the colorful sequel took combined sales to nearly 120 million units these consoles paved the way for the game boy advance and SP as well as quirky accessories like the Game Boy camera and Game Boy printer the game boy also served as a launch pad for the Pokemon franchise which is ballooned into movies trading cards and TV the game boy line has died out now replaced by the even more popular Nintendo DS but it's cultural impact is still felt this original model that was demolished in the Gulf War but still functions became an internet sensation while today bands use old game boys to create 8-bit music the Game Boy proved you need more than just cutting edge text to capture hearts and minds something would do well to remember in today's world of bigger and bigger screens and more powerful processors one in ten dough made was an unlikely masterpiece and I loved it so much I could kiss it but I won't because I don't know where this one has been for last 24 years do you have fond memories of the game boy and can you think of any other gadgets that have proved to be unexpected winners let me know and check back next time for another adventure in tech hey welcome back to open tab and right now it is time to dick fiend oh and this week's geeky cocktail so this company HobNob makes wine they sent us some wine and we happen to enjoy adult beverages here and we used about all their Chardonnay to make a sangria recipe that you are seeing on screen right now so there's like pumpkin spice in this thing there's all kinds of situational fall stuff we got going on here it doesn't look it doesn't yeah so hey just chill overnight okay chill every night just chill chill every night so here it is what are we calling this seems like autumn sangria autumn sangria alright so cheers to the book to make a book thanks and to alfred welcome hmm no no no this is I this was great no this will go here of this bottom sangre yes uh I was telling them this tastes like no I'm not gonna say what I thought it's just not the best it's not our style it's not our style there's a lot of fruit in there that's nice for you know people who like fruit and draw in their drinks I like it with peanutbutter outside of a drink so I'm gonna pass what do you think Alfred autumn sangria brought to you by what what is this what is disappointing paid for this it is brought to you by autumn the season autumn because it'll make you fall Oh watch out is that there's a youthful which I've heard so much about aha alright that was great let's move on to our next segment this week I tried out Sony's new slim edition of the PlayStation 4 everything about the console is the exact same except that it is thirty percent thinner it comes with HDR support but now all ps4s have HDR support and it will be available in 500 gigabytes or one terabyte of storage it also loses that optical audio output so if you're like me and you're big nerd you're upset about that I want to talk about the system I have it right here i also have a pic i thought i had a ps4 original but i guess not but here it is so I don't know are you do you like to play games are you a gamer Alfred love do you do yes so are you so you haven't seen this yet I am NOT all right so I want you to wrap your you have a ps4 I don't you don't you know what are you an xbox I'm gonna get like a Nintendo guy so what are you putting right now I super smash brothers so you play wii u brothers is what you do no I plan on the 3ds but I play the game cube super smash brothers okay you are in neva the rabbit hole here in varies because it's incredibly competitive yeah I guess no that's fine that's cool um anyway here's the the ps4 slim and i gotta say someone's your thinkpad yeah it's super light it's it's got a really small footprint I just don't know if I'm super psyched about that optical port yeah leaving like I used to let my HD mi mi mi audio yeah like that's a thing I use third-party surround sound headphones okay games and I can't do that now on this ps4 slim because it doesn't have that coveted optical audio out and I don't understand like there's no way that took up a lot of realist like there's no way like that put them over the the top for keeping this under three hundred dollars so we just don't know why it's not there you haven't heard it's like the cool new thing now to get rid of jacks it is the cool new thing I get it like headphone jacks suck now right but but yeah I don't understand why it's just not there ever had the ps3 started with a whole bunch of little slots and ports and every revision review just have a compact flash card slide I have that one do and then every time they did a new version to got a little smaller and it lost one of those slots yeah it was just like oh and shrunk but also lost you don't do that process I get it Sony makes a lot of proprietary stuff that you only need a USB slot for to hook up headphones too I understand that but come on don't like alienate the fact that i would i would venture to say tens of thousands of people who own third-party headsets like that it's a it's a big deal other than that this thing is is exactly the same so it's not even like the xbox one s that has like tiny tiny tiny hardware improvements this is one to one pretty much the same exact thing you could even replace the hard drive like you can on all these systems it's funny the only thing i don't like about it is that you can't really stand it you can stand it up on its side today finalists and but they sell estate i also would totally I wouldn't do it by like the other one I would let you guys stay ended up in its fine paper this one it just seems a little wobbly because it's so thin so maybe you got to buy that two hours dad it's always that twenty dollar piece of plastic that they sell you there's twenty dollars for stand and an optical audio out yeah I wish see hopefully this thing I would that's what I would pay for but yeah other than that standard affair it runs quieter doesn't really run cooler I know a lot of people thought it would be like a cooler system temperature wise but not man this thing heats up you cook an egg on this after a while and that's really it well it looks like a George Foreman grill it does oh you know what else like this is super lame we carry the console all around a lot of the office right so the original piece force it's super sharp it's like pointy it's got like really uncomfortable edges and they rounded it out on this guy so thank you to something for appreciating the move people who carry a calm where's the power button so the power button is right up front is tactile okay and the one next to it is these new jack because on the original PS for the power and eject buttons are so identical I can never tell which one is which I can make them turn it on Rose really jack guessing and they they did fix this in later models of the old one but the touch buttons are also kind of crappy on actually there was a problem with older ps4s that they would just eject for know okay so that was a total bummer that's why they made buttons on the new one and obviously on this one you're all set so that's about it this does also look like the ps4 pro that's coming out peace for pro basically just has like another piece of bread on the sandwich if that makes sense and yeah that's it ps4 slim it's a replacement not an upgrade if you already have a ps4 don't buy one of these you're wasting your time and your money anything else that I think we covered all the bases there you're still playing gamecube I think that's amazing I used to play eternal darkness on that or what oh yeah literally only super smash sometimes Super Mario strike have you ever played eternal darkness I don't think I have go find that game and put it in your gamecube that isn't amazing one of those game is like really hard to find you probably found on ebay for like 40 bucks by me like in like an actual like store like one it's a gamecube yeah okay okay we're a bunch of stores in the city that I guess nothing like jl has it i don't know anyway thank you the viewing audience for joining us together on another edition of open tab have a fun and safe weekend keep the conversation going in the comments section tweet us what you think make sure you buy the book make sure you enter to win a copy of the book will have a new geeky cocktail idea next week but if you've got your own send that in to open tab at cnet com we will see you next time thank you so much to Dan to Alfred to Joe and to be V G in the control room see you guys soon have a wonderful wonderful vital