Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm rather Chang I'm Alfred hang verizon's out with a new a limited plan and it's even more expensive it comes with perks like more high-speed data and international passes but bucks a trend of carriers introducing cheaper plans so and frankly I kind of miss the days when a limited was just limited it's now above and limited yeah that will never happen again I think once they realize they can milk as much money out of you as they wanted it was yeah they've now broken things out like HD video mobile hotspot capabilities whether or not you get these international data passes they've even thrown in cloud services for this really expensive plan which again it's called above the limited it starts at $95 for one line but goes down as low as $60 for four lines I think a big question that some people that don't know all the aspects of the deal might have is like does this have anything to do with net neutrality not I mean tangentially I guess well right now it's the answer would be no I think down the line there might be some effect but the fact that it is an unlimited plan you are technically getting a limited data but they've kind of slice and dice the definition it's a little bit dated but it's not necessary high-speed data all the time so now that Verizon is kind of cross this line do you think other like telecoms or essentially say oh hey we can do that too we should probably get more money I'm sorry to see a little bit of it I mean 18t and t-mobile have slightly different tiers and options based on again like HD video if you want to watch high quality video you've got pay extra sprint just launched a $15 lumen plan that strips out all the perks it's basically just unlimited data so there are there you can see the carrier's are experimenting with different models all right Alfred you got an exclusive look at how uber fights fraud tell me more about this ok so there's been a lot of scam attempts for uber like they say they fight them off about every day or so well and it usually revolves around a GPS spoofing apps you can basically tell like your phone that you're actually in one place when you're not and then scammers who use like fake or stolen credit card numbers they will use that to basically give themselves money on uber that way and they'll also use that to game uber so uber has these incentive programs where like if you do 120 five rides in one day they'll give you an extra $500 how does this I were to fight I mean where's yeah yeah they've been using machine learning now it's a kind of analyze like okay so these are all the trips that are on this route if you notice they're all at this altitude hmm where as if it's from a GPS spoofer this altitude is insane like they're like over the place they're like 200 feet up in the air and unless these are the new flying cars flying cars yeah we've all been expecting it's just like okay this is probably a scam so they've they've been been able to work ways out like using machine learning to block them now got it and really this I mean this is a good thing because some of these scams really hurt the drivers themselves right not just uber oh yeah and it they it hurts the drivers where they end up having to pay for it because the credit card companies will say like hey this was a stolen credit card right right us the money back but if they report it to her than uber ends up paying for it so they don't lose that much money if they report it okay but uber like loses like three times in this scenario because pay the driver then they have to pay the credit card company and then like they still have fallen victim to the scam that they don't know where it's like coming from alright let's talk about comcast the nation's largest cable provider officially offered its deal it's a sixty five billion dollar bit in cash to buy Fox now Kim mine Disney already has a deal with Fox on the table for fifty two point five billion and in stock this is obviously a much richer offer but yeah as we as we said yesterday this kind of takes away from the idea of that Avengers x-men reunion I didn't know you were allowed to do that I didn't know you were allowed to be in talks for like billions of dollars and like no you can you can come in you can stake it again this is unsolicited bit it's not like Fox asked for this and come gas even offered to cover roughly four billion dollars in breakup fees if they were to basically switch partners oh my god comcast sounds very Thursday about lastly Brazil is in the news thinks was scooped from our own Steven Shanklin he reported that the Firefox makers are working on a web browser that you can control with your voice called Scout I mean that sounds pretty cool I really would have to check that out but if it gets really popular I feel like I'm just gonna go to people's houses like cnet.com go to cnet.com read everything alright with that from when these stories should sound CNET or murder Chang I'm Alfred Eng actually all right this music just got really creepy welcome to the scary zone this is the true 359 after-hours I don't know why it lines up like that so I'm Stewart I was totally on it by the way our timer never we forgot to turn on the timer actually wasn't on at all wait you've been using a timer yeah I'm more like a bird where I have an internal timer where I did well your internal timer is always wrong then so I think our audience just wants to hear me talk more so that is not the case it is definitely not the case anyways it is time as always to go ahead and have me jump into the chat yeah and see what good comments and questions y'all have listen topics at hand what's that listen to the people Brian listen to the people the people's voice a way who was that was that uh what wrestler was that now you're thinking about the rock Dwayne Johnson here's the People's Champ People's Champ there we go a question from Ethan Shafer do you think Amazon is starting to transition into the mobile phone world I'm going down that path hey hit it before it didn't work out so well the old fire phone I still keep trying to get Ben to to talk to bring up the idea of Amazon resurrecting the fire phone but he's not budding no look it's at this point they do have a program to sell cheap phones made by other companies there's a good Amazon phone program but yeah in terms of them making their own hardware it seems unlikely I know there are some rumors about a low low cost phone like Amazon ice like fire nice but that never really came to fruition maybe it's still in the works we don't really know but as for now I would say Amazon is probably staying away from from phones given how terrible the fire yes if anything they would probably just try to get a LexA and like as many phones as they can yeah like yeah also providing the software then like making the hardware themselves totally agree I think they are absolutely there their mission is to get a LexA into everything to really expand this ecosystem and really getting it on your phone that's where you spend most your time is critical to Amazon let's take another question from Ethan Shafer have you heard about the t-mobile and Sprint merger if so you think that's going to affect how do you think it's going to affect sprinting Isabel yeah no yeah that we are well aware of it I've been covering this potential murder for seemingly the last decade well not decade the last four or five years at least it's finally happening and given what's happened with 18 Time Warner I think t-mobile and Sprint are feeling pretty good about themselves in terms of the prospects of that deal getting approved in terms of what this might mean for Sprint users at least in the near term even after the deal is completed I think you're gonna remain on your service some of those crazy deals might go away I know there's there's that $15 limited data plan right now that's definitely not gonna be around over time you're gonna see it a gradual transition as people move over to the t-mobile network that's usually what happens in these acquisitions because they've got two incompatible networks right now one is GSM LTE that's t-mobile the other ones CDMA LT that's Sprint they don't work together so eventually they've got to move all those customers over whether through free phone offers or whatever just to make sure everyone's on one network down the line I would say presumably the service would be better this is a combined company with better wireless spectrum assets so theoretically that can make for a better service down the line let's take one more from oh who we gonna talk to this time here's one from APEC first of all happy birthday APEC with Comcast bidding for Fox and Disney wanting it to Ken Fox choose who they want and decide to just screw the other bidding company over I think they would get a choice ultimately it would be the board making this decision and and of course they still need to shareholder approval that's ultimately who will decide who actually who they choose to go with and right now it just seems like Comcast has a better deal it's sixty five billion dollars in cash as opposed to fifty two point five billion in Disney stock you always want to take the cash is there is there a chance of that like maybe they could sell off like all the Marvel properties to Disney and then like just split up the family I'm pretty sure if I'm Comcast I'm gonna insist that those yeah those x-men characters go with with Fox you know there's a chance that Disney comes back and ups the the offers so there there's definitely people are looking at a potential bidding war here what if comcast is just doing like a very like bro thing for Fox where it's like we know that Disney will like bid more for this so we'll just like throw this like bid it I'm pretty sure you don't throw on a 65 billion dollar offer unless you mean it yeah that would be a heck of a break okay guys look we can get you more money for this deal just hang back all right we had to kind of cut the Firefox story short because it's right at tail in there we ran out of time yeah but let's expand on it a little bit because Josh Boyd uh first and foremost says why would we need a voice-controlled browser that sounds terrible so there are all kinds of accessibility reasons of so they're folks who who can't use their hands who do require some sort of like plugging noun so just a default voice control web browser I think that's useful for not just accessibility reasons but even if I'm walking down the street and having you know this browser read my story to me or like a Wall Street Journal story on your time story to me as I'm walking down the street just having that be the default feature that's that's kind of cool I think voice-based like I don't know being online like with your voice is like that I do think that's gonna be like the next stage of like where we're going yeah I mean you know if a Google home assistant I see it now yeah echoes in the Google homes the computer and your browser seems like a natural like evolution of it absolutely I like from Alex Mitchell what if fox bought fox and kept it out of the other twos hands I'm you from the future Fox Men days of futures piece here to make you money so what about this question does Fox have the option to deny both willed obviously they still keep control right I mean well at this point you know companies have to act on the the benefit or the sorry in the best interest of shareholders and walking away from two really rich deals like that is pretty much impossible they would immediately trigger a lawsuits and litigation and frankly no one wants to walk away from that I think they're at this point trying to milk the best offer possible let's take one from Mike Shaw won't Siri and Google assistant be able to control browsers via voice soon anyways is Mozilla project really necessary I mean that's a great question point not exactly so like you can obviously tell serially like go to this go to you know google.com or something like that but you can't have it like read the article back to you you can't be like click on this page like on like click on the first link on this article or something like that like it I mean I think down the line Apple might be able to introduce some of these features but it would sort of be like a bolt-on feature yeah opposed to Mozilla working on a browser that is like front and center that's the that's the reason for its existence is for voice control is the ability to use this thing without without hands without physical controls I guess the difference is like with the other voice assistance that exists currently it's like assisting you like we'll take you to this page but like for Mozilla it's like this is the browser like you use this to do things that you would normally do like with your mouse and like exactly board from Hunter Monzon so lyft and uber should use a way to confirm hang on let me start that one again so lyft and uber maybe should use a way to confirm all credit-card GPS in the smart card add a GPS or bring up a notification in uber and then the tech for you to allow this transaction I'm not really sure what he's going out with that um I I think the like recommendation is to basically like know when something is a stolen credit card or like have some kind of like authentication process like hey like you know if somebody charges you send like that person's card and email like basically saying like hey your chart you're like are you taking this ride or something like right and that's but there are some there features like that but it's more up to the individual yeah customer that's very tricky though because they're not setting they're not doing it with your account though so like how will they know who to email based off just a just a credit card number I mean there's so there are features on your credit but you can sign up for for a large in your mobile alerts if yeah you make a charge but that again is sort of up to the individual yeah and so that's very tricky for uber because I you credit card transactions are just credit card transactions like if I don't check between no they don't think yeah they don't know if they're stolen or anything like that so that's that's like the trickier part and that's not something exclusive to like uber or lyft yeah every industry like faces that issue well that's the thing like if especially if the card is in reported stolen yeah yeah there's no real way for yeah that's the other thing to like because these cards are like these stolen numbers are usually sold in bulk online like that's like the bigger issue with it right and so I think that's why it's important for this like to have these kind of behavioral model yeah track like specific actions that tell her this is fraud yeah another good one from Ethan could Amazon partner with the voice browser allowing Alexa to be the key AI involved Oh with Mozilla that's that's a great question I don't know yeah I mean I think that would be the big play here yeah for them but I also think that in the same way that like Google pays like Mozilla like millions to be the default browser on Firefox yeah they're gonna probably have to pay like a lot of money to like have their voice integration into Amazon with Mozilla yeah maybe yeah or like Google my that's kind of weird to see like like I have to ask Alexa or Google to bring up a browser and then have to talk to Scout I guess to ask for the content of the page just a little I feel like now you're just talking to like a whole bunch of different assistants it's awkward yeah we have a comment from Alex Mitchell says I want to hear from my excited about smash guy I think he's talking about you over a Roger this is your man no Alfred please what is the question let's just hear me he wants you to gush about smash more oh well I'm just the fact that you gush about yeah so gush away I mean I'm going to go play it later today at the Nintendo World yes I am letting him go to play video games this is very important this is give me the Paula Terry you might as well I mean I don't know I'm still thinking about it's very interesting yeah yeah I mean you haven't really played it so it's kind of hard to yeah yeah well I think I've been watching a ton of gameplay footage of it because there there's this guy video game boot camp or something VG BC and the guy that hosts his name's gamer yeah but he he's ID three now and he's been just recording one-on-one matches where like people that have the opportunity to go up sorry that's right I just dropped my phone they're so mad about it but like instead of like actually fighting each other they're just they're like testing out different mechanics like oh she owed exactly when I do this and I want to see if I can do it so instead of actually having fun with a game they're doing like extremely dirty to watch I mean it's like it's fun to find out like all you can about the game words out yeah this is like educational yeah so like there's a few things that I know about it already anyway yeah there's somebody took like framerate data where like there's landing lag for like 15 frames whereas in super smash brothers melee the landing lag when you did like a certain move was only like 10 frames which means that you get punished more if you like mess up that move that it's Wow yeah this is I'd say III was watching some e3 footage yesterday I was watching the the spider-man playthrough on the ps4 yeah this this looks like it's probably gonna be the best spider-man game since spider-man 2 spider-man 3 was a complete ripoff but yeah this looks pretty fun put spider-man in smash so wait would the old memes at play and you being the meme Lord and all Alfred does this mean that we now have to use the phrase confirmed for ultimate while everyone is in it now literally every new character will be every other character will have to be a new character so yeah I guess a derp but confirmed for brawl was so much more fun to say yeah I mean but the thing is is that like everybody is confirmed so I don't really know what you you can do now oh there's a new character yeah you want to confirm any character that they add in would have to be a new character though they say what at this point is there a dream character you'd won Shrek put Shrek in the game right also everyone really wants waluigi that's like well he's not in it no he's an assist trophy oh right and like he was in brawl as well that is surprisingly see I think that's kind of a crime when you have Wario as well and even green Mario but no while Luigi yeah they even put in Daisy who the hell cares know that exactly like like Daisy's in it my Luigi's not in I mean I get the argument we're like okay well if we let wha Luigi in then what are we gonna let Berto into but like come on Berto is in tennis yeah I'm just yeah while luigi is in tennis they created waluigi from mario tennis cuz Wario needed a partner in 64 it made perfect sense yeah this is like this is what I'm gonna do from now on Rogers I'm just going to be Alfred oh my god Wow while our Gees incredibly he deserves much more than being left out all right let's get all right one more serious question Troy Road yeah Josh Boyd asks how does GPS spoofing actually benefit people frauding uber I guess we need a few more details yeah alright so I explained this yesterday to my friends cuz they're like why are they just spending money on uber rides so when you have a stolen credit card you can't like just go to an ATM and like take money out of it or anything like that I mean most of the times because you only have the number so people in Lund like the dark web community they call them like carter's because it's called carding they try to find all these different ways that they can make money off of the stolen credit cards cuz all you really want is cash out of it so they'll get these stolen credit card numbers and they'll do things like they'll buy like a ton of ps4s or something like that and then they'll sell it online yeah to get cash that way yeah so they figure out a quick way to do it is to do it through like rod share apps where you are the driver and then the stolen card is the passenger so they give themselves the money right but like obviously they're not gonna like you know do the drives themselves do so like the way they do it instead is they use the GPS spoofing apps on both phones so it makes it look like the driver yeah and then they use the stolen credit cards to pay themselves uber takes like a 20% cut of it or like how yeah I think they take that much but then they still get like the like the 80% of like this yep money that they stole in the first place so they use the spoofing apps to basically do all this stuff without ever having to go anywhere it would track down these scammers through the account that they serve to become a driver but they the money out before they were takes the money back and then once there they don't care that they're banned they can just make another make a new kid yeah wow I didn't realize was that easy I thought there was a screening process for yes so there was a guide on it at one point on like how to pull off this game unlike the dark web and they said like you're supposed to like go in and like do the screening thing and but apparently it's like so easy that like anyone like they don't really check that much yeah it's crazy and then like I said there's other they also like scam like ubers incentive programs so like if you do like a hundred twenty-five trips a day they'll give you an extra five hundred dollar bonus right that's a lot of trips in a day but like yeah you know you like but if you're not driving all that much if you're just tapping on your screen that's like an extra five hundred dollars just for like just for like on top of what you're already stealing Wow so wait well how did they screw it up so bad so that the algorithm makes it look like they're flying that's what I want yeah or is that part of it is that supposed to be that way yeah that's it's not supposed to be that way so GPS like spoofing apps are like pretty decent like people use them to cheat Pokemon go all the time like when they're not like they don't want to keep going around so they just make their phone say like oh I'm at this location that's just basic VPN yeah but the thing is is that like while they're good at adjusting your latitude and longitude they're not that good at like adjusting your altitude I'm like and that's how they kind of figured it out where like because like when you're driving or when you're going in and we're obviously the altitude always changes like hills and different roads and stuff like that the GPS spoofing apps are like are not that advanced to know like Oh on this street it's this altitude and then on that street it's like lower so they just have like one steady altitude all the time for some reason it's always in the sky so there was like oh like that's how we know these are the scam rides I think it's funny it just makes me think of remember the movie office space where they try to scam like fractions of a penny on the dollar kind of thing transactions Superman super misses foreskin yeah yeah Michael Scott Superman three three three or was quest for peace I'm sorry that had some we will not speak of it again Roger which one quest for peace quest for peace I liked it anyways it's a plot of Superman three and then they go to check the balance in the morning and it's just like yeah oh crap and he's taken like a millions of dollars from the company fun I feel like that that's cuz it basically this rumor is a sequel to that yeah pretty much except it's but it's effective yeah they've they've caught it that's not nearly as fun we are just about out of time and let's just get meta for a second math - math you'd address if I was wondering what does the CNET gang do on Fridays if it's not clear we play smash well you two plays smash I don't I don't play smash we'll get you there we are out of time we are out a week and it's great to be back everybody thanks again for being patient with us during that a tumultuous scheduling stuff that we've been dealing with lately but we're back yeah you know my leg will be we'll be back on Monday with a more consistent schedule on camera I'm sure some curse will happen yeah we've been we've had a run of bad luck so Thames Kevin Durant I'll blame Kevin Durant everything is Kevin Durant's fault alright our podcast is available in iTunes tune in stitcher SoundCloud Feedburner Google music and the Amazon Alexa course we're on CNET chicks out there see you all have a good weekend sale money bye bye you you