Gadgetory

Twitter faces the music kids break up with Facebook and we look ahead to the coolest gadgets for the rest of the year it's the scene at UK podcast I'm rich and I'm joining me is Katie Collins hiding yeah I'm great thank you go back from ether a week in Berlin looking at exciting new product products I mean some of them were exciting I'll tell you more about that a little later in the show well yet so to kick off I mean it's it's all going off over in the US and it there's a lot of a lot of hearings and I guess panels yeah people being interrogated well I mean it's it's been fairly quiet news week here in the UK and then you know sort of yesterday afternoon yesterday evening it all kicked off on Twitter and you know everyone was going mad for various news and some of which actually involved Twitter and now we've had we've had jackdaws II Twitter CEO testifying Jack at Jack testifying before Congress this week that's right and he's been trying to defend the platform from from allegations of bias especially in the direction of conservative news and conservative tweeters and one particular thing that he's been forced to kind of well he hasn't addressed it but he's been asked about it is whether Trump's tweets are abusive and he's quite he's carefully dodged questions on this and you know a lot of people have been complaining for it for a while now about whether Donald Trump and some of the things that he's tweeting should you know basically violate Twitter's rules of conduct and whether you know if some if anyone else had tweeted them whether they would be allowed to remain on the platform and you know up until now Twitter has always said and well now it was well actually has always said that you know it's it's important to have a figure such as Donald Trump on the platform because he contributes so much to the kind of the conversation and it's such a public figure in the he's there in the public interest but yeah it's worth pointing out I mean that's that Twitter isn't actually that big it has a kind of outsized significance in in the minds of some commentators and journalists and politicians when it actually isn't anyway in terms of sheer numbers it isn't anywhere near as big as the billions of people who use Facebook but then of course Donald Trump's broke his proclamations are sort of made through Twitter and that gives Twitter this kind of outsized out size kind of impact in people's in people's minds and and yeah it's it's it's a tough one so a lot of the things that that are being talked about with Jack Dorsey has been asked about by by US senators things like interference in in elections and advertising that that potentially is interfering in democracy and these aren't necessarily things that are such a big issue on Twitter it's possible they're possibly more things that should be addressed at Facebook but obviously yeah it's a Coburg has had his moment in spotlight and probably again have his moment in spotlight but for now it's a it's Twitter that are up in up in front of them well I'm so to imprint of this Senate Intelligence Committee it's been Jack Dorsey from Twitter and Facebook and Google were also invited now Zuckerberg didn't come this time he sent his second-in-command Sheryl Sandberg Facebook CEO and you know they've been chatting about what companies what these companies are doing to protect the integrity of midterm elections so that we don't have a repeat of what happened you know a few years ago and and you know have all of these so just so that you know voters really understand what role these platforms are playing in and hopefully they're not exploited again previously the US midterm elections coming up in November we're which is the middle of president's time time in office which seems crazy doesn't it because it does it feels it feels like he was just elected but yeah but and so these elections they're kind of they're often seen as a referendum really about how the president's doing but they're electing lesser officials but it'll be interesting to see if the Republicans can keep hold of control of the of the house and that kind of thing this it so it's interesting looking across the looking across the pond at all this kind of stuff because it affects us so much like the you know the way that the if the government does decide to the US government does decide to regulate Facebook how is that going to affect us in the elections that we have over here so yeah it's it's it's interesting stuff but I mean it very much seems that you know putting these guys on the stand people like Jack Dorsey and Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg on the stand it's it they don't really give us any kind of piercing answers I don't know if we're necessarily making much progress but it's it's it's the only interesting google it should be noted didn't turn up nope it was an empty chair Google yeah they weren't feeling lucky I guess you might say the they didn't have the answers for once yeah someone who did turn up with Alex Jones conspiracy theorist and a guy who was recently pretty much unilaterally booted off there is social media platforms including Twitter and green suit although they took a look at time to think about it and they did yeah so there's talk of Jack Dorsey kind of personally being involved in some of these decisions and saying no we've got to keep these guys on the platform but ya know he hasn't really sort of given that given us too much to to get excited about with his his testimony um interestingly enough speaking of Facebook we've we've seen numbers recently over the past kind of over the past year Facebook's had a pretty torrid time and so we've seen numbers that suggest that as many as 44 percent of younger users aged between 18 and 29 have deleted the Facebook phone app in the past year there's only half of 18 to 29 year old users that's that's crazy yeah well I mean as somebody who has been 29 this year I'm no longer 29 I can say that I I among these users I I deleted its Facebook from my phone and probably actually when I was 28 you know 2017 I think is when I when I deleted facebook off my phone and honestly I think a big part of it is that just as you see it does kind of come in waves I think and when you see your peer group and the people around you using it less and the people that you're closest to then you're just less inclined to use it yourself it's just not the best way of keeping in touch with people and connecting with people anymore and so I can understand why these why it kind of happens in sort of specific age groups and I do understand as well why people might not really want these are American so yeah and also younger uses are quite quite likely to be on other platforms on there like snapchat yeah Instagram especially you know which is of course a Facebook brand yes so it's all very well deleting Facebook and saying you know Facebook anymore we still using Instagram yeah you're still you're still in in in hock to Zuckerberg and there you go in more local news I guess you might say and but still looking at these American tech giants and the way they interact with other countries Netflix and Amazon are looking likely to be forced to stream more European shows in the EU so this is all about the the amount of local content that video streaming services have to provide and to Netflix Amazon are going to be regulated by the EU they have to provide 30 percent of their content would have to be European regularly will have to be European productions yes so stuff like the crown yeah and Marseille I mean I I heard somebody say that the Netflix Netflix has resisted this and they've actually already implemented a similar rule in Germany and I I've heard you know that Netflix really resisted it there but actually they're not that far away from this quota apparently anyway which is really interesting to see and you know I've some of the it's really difficult for food producers outside of the the US in the past to get you know big television series made and obviously here in the UK because we're English language speaking and then we we do kind of have and we have a great heritage of original television content you know we have it probably an easier time of it we do have shows like yeah like you say the crown and we have other shows that are kind of produced primarily in the in the UK by even big companies like HBO you know things like Game of Thrones it's pretty much all it done kind of in Europe now I think the like the one thing that I would really like to see out of this is some interesting shows coming out of different European countries I personally think that some of the some of the best TV that's been made over the past few years has come from other country so for example there was a TV show made by the Norwegian television kind of the national broadcaster over there called scam they've done an American remake of it but honestly it was one of the best things that I've watched and I went to know and I have Norwegian Prince and watched it there but you couldn't watch it outside of Norway because you know if things are because of licensing reasons and it would be great to see shows like that that actually have kind of got this cult audience online from globally get the kind of recognition and exposure that I really think that they deserve it'd be great to see some new shows coming out of countries like that everyone absolutely well I think it's I think it's worth pointing out that the Netflix I think has been responsible for making shows in other languages available and not kind of not segregating them off into it into different places you know not kind of having a section for German TV in a section of it but just putting you know shows like dark and sure and you know shows that even in foreign language is not for even flagging that they're in a foreign language just just just putting them in with the other crime shows or the other you know comedy shows or whatever and really mixing it up and I think that's that's that's really yeah that's really interesting so Netflix I think deserves you know okay I don't think this this sort of should be seen as like slapping rules on Netflix that it wouldn't otherwise have done I do think that Netflix is actually quite good at opening up these kind of international international sort of content things but it'll be interesting to see you know if once we're coming out of the EU because apparently that is a thing that we have to do yes it'll be and see if what that does to Netflix here in the UK and you know it's worth pointing out well that that you know the the English language thing does mean that the UK and UK broadcasters are quite often involved in joint collaborative productions so there'll be shows that a that I kind of produced joint produced with here and in the US and so we do see like a look for you quite a few British shows do have a bit of a sort of cult and even a crossover kind of mainstream hit audiences yeah us but it's just gonna see what Amazon does with this is largely yes Netflix is kind of further ahead with their original shows and they're producing stuff like Marseille in France and dark in in Germany and they produce spanish-language stuff they produce stuff in also various different various different countries and I'll be needing to see if Amazon kind of do the same and then others people like Hulu as well and all those other stream yeah I think Netflix is probably the the service that will thrive the most in this environment I think because I mean it's it's got money to spend on original content speed lots of money where is I think smaller streaming services might be hit harder by this because they perhaps don't have the same I mean it is done proportionally of course so you know it's it's 30 percent so 30 percent of whatever they have to spend I suppose but ultimately I think it might be more difficult for smaller streaming services are just making fewer shows over well yeah that's that's exactly that's a good point and in fact actually we're gonna say that you know it's all very well Amazon and Netflix are very big and they have very big broad catalogues so it's probably not gonna be that difficult for them to meet this quota but then if you look at some of the new streaming services that are coming up soon like for example the big one that's coming up is going to be disney streaming service and are they going to be affected by this if they're gonna have all the Marvel shows on the Marvel movies and all Star Wars movies not that kind of thing and they then gonna have to correspondingly produce British shows and French shows and stuff as well like how's that going to work with them so it'll be interesting to see what will they do but we have no idea when that's going to happen apple also launching a streaming service some point so you know they're banking on big names so yeah they're making a TV version of the foundation series by isaac asimov so if you're big sci-fi novel nerd then look out for that one that's quite exciting yeah I mean Apple again Apple and Amazon as we know Amazon had some some great news this week when it became a trillion dollar company Apple is already a trillion dollar company it's not like they are struggling for exactly to to spend in in these different ways they can afford to bankroll yeah so hopefully you know we'll we'll see some great stuff coming out of Europe from all of them speaking of Amazon just bit of a digression amongst all the kind of politicians targeting American tech giants Bernie Sanders who you may remember from such elections as the last one they just had I mean yeah he has launched an act in through the Senate through the Senate's called the stop bad employers by zeroing out subsidies Act and usually you catch it yeah but if you want to make that a little bit catch here you could call it the stop Bezos act which is of course the name of it as the acronym is Beezus Bezos which is the across the name of Amazon's boss Jeff Bezos the richest man in the world I believe so am i right thinking this is to protect Amazon workers Emerson workers yes that's right so it's dead the idea of this act is to require big corporations like Amazon and Walmart to pay the government for the sort of assistance programs that their work is used like food stamps public housing Medicaid and that kind of thing and budget so that was an amusing trolling there from Bernie Sanders naming his acts in that way anyway and yes speaking of Europe you've just spent a bit of time over there what was it like how was your week in Berlin looking at or latest at either Berlin was delightful as always right Aoife was delightful as always messy and crazy as always those who are unaware this is a big annual technology trade show where all the kind of big technology manufacturers they get together in Berlin every year and they have done for decades in fact and they announced their their new stuff yeah off their new wares yes that's correct so this is that it's actually Europe's largest trade show but we Tec Torito but we don't often see many phones there so we usually see a kind of the big slew of phones announced earlier in the year at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and now we did see a couple of phones at FIFA primarily ones that are kind of for Europe only Europe and Asia only rather than ones that going to be announced in the US and but there was there was one phone call my eye I was rather surprised I have to say because it's not something that I would usually be drawn to okay and that was the BlackBerry key to Ellie what year is this yes I know and you know in the past I've not always been the biggest fan of Blackberry phones but I think that this is it's a really interesting device I think BlackBerry's well it's it's really it's firstly it's it's brilliant value okay it's er it's got a QWERTY keyboard still hmm so you know if you're still in the market for one of those and which and also it's running the latest version of Android and it's got a huge touchscreen as well but it's effectively it's it's kind of I think when blackberry started making phones again they presume that the most of their customers would be kind of business people and enterprise users and actually what they found is that it's younger people and consumers who are buying their phone a little bit like it you know it has happened when when blackberry was popular you know I was gonna say the first time around but I don't think we can say that they're popular a second time around yeah yeah it might be a bit when they were around yeah and you know they became really popular among teenagers and younger users who we're primarily attracted to it for bbm pre ambassador yeah yeah so so they've got this they've got this phone it's a cheaper version of the flagship phone that they bought out earlier this year that phone I think is around I think it's around 600 pound mark and this this phone is around the three to four hundred pound mark and it's still kind of like premium phone and really nice-looking and they've actually done something quite unexpected for blackberry in that they've experimented with colour what they've discovered it well that was always the thing wasn't it like they you know the kids love the free investing this was before whatsapp this was before Facebook Messenger and and they love the free messaging and black we just didn't seem to know what to do with that and they kept making these like boring gray business brick leaves and kids couldn't get off of them but yeah so if only they figured this out about probably about ten years ago yes so they they they kind of they've made this phone in a kind of quite a bog-standard sort of slate gray blue color and then they've they've got a champagne gold version which is quite snazzy and then they've also got an atomic red version which is actually quite cool it's got like all these red accents around it and it's just it's it's the kind of phone that people would look at and be like hang on a sec what is that which you don't get much of in 2018 because so many phones just look the same yeah and you know obviously there's this blackberry phone it's got it's got this like deep red it's got this QWERTY keyboard and I think it's the kind I've had red phones before and I know them people or a bit like yeah yeah catch people's eye a little bit and they want to know what it is and so for people that want to make a bit of a statement as well I think this could be quite a popular option having a blackberry in 2018 is it really but it's fun seeing all these kind of like classic brands you know if they fail for long enough but they cling on eventually they'll loop back yeah so we've seen these kind of retro Nokia's over the past year or two had the banana phones come back and now blackberries back yes exactly so and there there are a couple of interesting features as well but that come on the software side that it's gonna actually roll out to its flagship phone as well and one of which is the ability to clone certain apps so you can have two versions of I think at the moment it's Instagram Facebook Messenger whatsapp and WeChat and it's working on more and it's something that BlackBerry is doing in-house it's not something it's working on developers for why and the idea is that you know it's seeing increasingly people managing multiple accounts oh yes or if you or if you're somebody that needs access to kind of a big company Instagram account or something like that and you don't want to just be switching accounts within the app so you can actually put don't mix them up it's got its got BlackBerry's also got a special kind of Locker feature this allows you to put certain apps into a kind of it's sandboxes them and if you try and enter the app it provides the sort of almost like a a second layer of authentication but you have to use your thumbprint again to just access the app so it really locks those apps down so if you've got a version of Instagram that you know as a company version that you can and you want to you will need your fingerprint to access it and it's it's separate from your own personal okay so it's so working on bringing more of that to to the to the phone and they're also working on better because this obviously the the specs aren't quite as good as they are for the main flagship phone it's much cheaper so that's what you would expect and and it's got a small among that it's got a smaller battery so it's working on bringing some new power management ok features for example if you've forgotten to charge your phone it'll look in your it will look at your calendar in your diary and your daily habits to kind of like find a spot where it thinks this would be a good time for you to charge it you're not doing anything else and it will give you a reminder and be like hey like charge oh no like that's cool it's like you're having an app I'm gonna power down a bit yeah that's amazing yes I like that so so BlackBerry actually surprised me I'm surprised I was thinking wrap this up wrap this up back yeah there's probably more time that we spent talking about black and the other the other phone news out of if it was not actually a launch it was just the launch date for the next big hawawa flagship flagship phone the hawala mate 20 and that's going to be on the 20th of October in London we will be attending that meeting in person yeah yes and yeah that's something to look forward to and so Aoife is obviously like I said the phones are usually earlier in the UMW see but Aoife is well known for its home stuff so for example there's always a lot of big TVs right really TVs well yes we did we saw lots of huge TVs and in particular we saw Samsung's 8k TV 8 k 8k TV it's the Q 900 mhm and I think if I'm right it might be I just going to check this I think it's 95 inches okay Green okay they didn't go for the hundred they're just go for it yeah so I mean we've talked a lot about 4k before and we our conclusion is that it's a it's a nice to have but it's not you know it there comes a point where especially if you're talking about a TV in your lounge having increasing the resolution isn't gonna make much difference because our eyes are only so good the screen resolution can be can keep getting better and better and better but like ultimately you know it's not gonna change our experience yeah and we've passed the singularity of team TVs are better than we can human eyes can perceive basic only robots can fully enjoy TV now but yeah on it on a massive cinema screen for example it could make a huge difference to have something that this is this resolution that said if I talked about this on the podcast last time but when I'm well I didn't interview recently with the visual effects people who had done the visual effects on Vanity Fair the TV show made an interesting point that that was a show that was made for Amazon and ITV here in the UK but those shows that are made in 4k they're more detailed than a movie yeah so that you know the amount of detail that goes in there they like to sit there CG in little tiny little little tiny bit in the crowd scenes the tiniest tiniest of people much more detail than you get a movie yeah and you know I think a lot of there are some things that have already been filmed in a Kay yes I'm at some a couple of films I think I can't remember exactly which titles but the the issue as well is when you are starting to film stuff in 8k first is the cost of the cameras so there are the the company that makes really high-end cameras red and already makes some cameras that are capable of filming in in cable obviously they're really expensive yeah and then the other thing is the size of the files you know because if you're filming in much much higher resolution it's just gonna increase the file size so if you're talking about whole TV series never mind a film if you had a whole TV series that's that's a huge amount of daydreaming or download yeah and even even making it I mean the fact that again these visual effects guys they're working on these huge huge files and every frame is this huge huge thing so yeah it's a maybe it's suburbia there's always a bit of a lack that isn't there between yes format and then actual content for you so don't rush out and buy an 8k TV just I mean you can't you just yet it will be out later this year so that we've no idea how much they would cost them I'm not sure if we've got a price for it just yet I know although I know that so this is the first 8k television that I think is going to be kind of publicly available but I think there was a company that put out a screen that was in a 8k screen in the earlier this year and I think it was selling for $11,000 well so yeah you can watch two 4k movies side-by-side but you know I think that this is something that we're gonna it's obviously a big kind of headline-grabbing thing for the show is it's a great thing for something to happen to be first on but when it yeah like you say don't rush out and buy them or put or even plan to buy them anytime soon because I don't think it would be really worth it we're only sort of starting to get into the territory where 4k is is worth investing in I I think increasingly we're seeing 4k content available and 4k streaming and eventually you know that will be the industry standard yeah I think maybe we should draw a line maybe we should just say 4k that's it no more yeah we can focus our efforts on improving other areas of technology I mean there is plenty of other things that need improving I could write a whole list but not undermining elections like yeah exactly all those guys who are working on 8k TVs just take them off that put them on the election thing well solve it in no time yeah you can have that one for free that's how it works right just gonna ask jack were there any other kind of big trends I know Alexa yeah so we found out at the show that Alexa is now on over 20,000 different devices which is up from from four thousand in January this year so that's that's like a five-fold increase again yeah device was available and one of the sort of stand out or more interesting Alexa enabled devices from the show was was from how our way and it was they've kind of gone into the smart speaker market and it's this is a kind of their rival to I guess the Google home and Amazon's echo and the Apple home pod and now their speaker is also it's a it's also a 4G router and you know it's it's kind of pretty much the same as the others and my favorite thing about it though is that it's called the Huawei ai cube and let me tell you it is not a cube it's very much a cylinder the irony of that gaslighting us now this is this is a cube this is not a cylinder it's reinterpreted the cube yeah you could be like hey Alexa what shape is this it is a cube and XOR it's not yes it is and then eventually you'll starts believe eventually yeah yes big a sizable excess so I mean we should say that alexa is amazon's voice controlled personal assistant where you ask it to do things like play your music and that kind of thing and control your thermostat and all that kind of stuff are we any closer do you think looking at the stuff that came out of eva are we any closer to deciding which of these voice assistance is the best is it Alexa is it Apple is it Google assistant or whatever it's called the thing is I think it's not such such a question of what's best as what's most ubiquitous at the moment so when people are buying products to work with other products what they want to see is you know consistency across the whole range of stuff and then got and you kind of got to choose an ecosystem yeah a little bit and you know until we can I mean maybe we'll reach a point where we can find some sort of interoperability between them but you know that hasn't happened on other systems you know on mobile operating system talk to Alexa but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to talk to Siri anytime yeah there are some devices that have Google home and yeah a Google assistant it changes in its name every five minutes I lose track yeah and a lexer on the same on the same devices which is kind of interesting so I I don't think that necessarily that is a sign that Alexa is significantly better than all of these other assistants at all it's just the fact that you know if you get it on enough stuff and it becomes the go-to thing it's a little bit like Google getting Android on everything right it's just people more likely people know what it is they get comfortable with it they buy more of it yeah yes and I think that you know seeing big companies like big other big tech companies like hawawa you know how are we doesn't necessarily have to it doesn't have any allegiance to any particular thing in in terms of in terms of who it's going to partner with and it partners with all of these companies on various things and yet you know it's chosen Alexa and I think is the more come the more big companies we see chew you know sort of like staking their claim and saying no we're going with this because I mean maybe maybe that is a sign that for them also it's not just the ubiquity but it works for them in some way works with their technology who knows but yeah and we're also you know we're gonna see Samsung we heard this week as well that something's going to be opening up its own rival Bixby lots of developers I think yeah Bixby I like that name it's quite old-fashioned yes sounds like a butler bitch I actually think that this should be a challenge for you because you have a history of going with the real underdog you know you were the one that was championing Windows Phone yeah look where that ended up yeah I think you should be the one that takes Bixby and that's the one not - I mean Samsung they sold a lot of phones in time let's see if they get a big spew up and running I don't know why it's taking them so long if they can get up and running properly that's all there's a lot of there's a big captive market there because that's what that's what ciri is all about right so many people already owned iPhones that they put Siri on it and it just automatically had millions people using it yeah and you know obviously the the issue that Samsung has it's the same with them when it introduced Samsung pay you know people also have Android pay which used to be Google Wallet they also have Google assistant available to them on an Android phone as well so it's just you know it's not that it's it's not necessarily going to be their first choice so yeah well there you go so any any other things exciting any less exciting novelty things that came out of ether was your best experience my best experience was let me think there was okay has a great beer and there was very there was a gaming chair that a lot of people were very excited about it was massive thing there was some exit LG had this kind of exoskeleton robot angel legs yeah yeah and that was quite cool there were some interesting fridges doing different things I think there was one that could like vacuum seal within the fridge back you see all your food I don't really understand a lot of the appliance stuff yeah I mean I think effectively they are all sorts of getting slowly smarter but you know and they are moving that some of those features are moving away from being like a novelty thing to being just like a standard inbuilt thing into fringes yeah which it's something for us all to get easy I mean it's not like we go out buying a fridge everyday is it so like I mean I don't know how long a fridge lasts but several years so I know that I won't be probably guessing one of those anytime soon well that's the thing about a lot of household appliance isn't it fridges and TVs they're very very occasional purchases yeah gotta keep kind of trying to think of new gimmicks to sell these things yeah but yeah so so yes some interesting fridges and our appliance team did an amazing job of getting like all of them right and covering all of them and we've got a big Aoife round up on the site that you can go to and you can see all of the fridges and everything else some of the some of the thrilling phones that coming to Europe including the new BlackBerry yeah I haven't said that for a good few yeah so yeah you should go and check that up if you want to catch up with all of our e4 coverage it's not too late you can still it's still relevant even if you don't care about fridges you know look yeah look at the code I mean honestly it's worth look at the crazy stuff that's going on the world of fridges right it was definitely something about I remember a cool wine a wine cooler things well that was very that was interesting the cementing stuff happening in the wine wine technology well I come and said that but there's like there's all kind of different different devices that will like put sensors on your wine bottles to tell you when it's ready to drink and all this yeah thing which is kind of interesting yeah we should I mean what I really need is just something to tell me what wine is good to drink and then maybe I can get to the point of like working out when it's good to drink yeah yeah but I'm sure wine connoisseurs will appreciate that I've seen alright well that's it for this week if you if you haven't yet sworn off Twitter because it's it's a hell website of terrible stuff happening then you can find us there as one of the few bright spots yes I say I only tweet nice things yeah and a new tweet as I tweet as Katie Collins just my name just you know I am rich night well with a K and you can also of course find seen it on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and wherever you get your social stuff from yeah if forget to leave a Sur review on iTunes if you've enjoyed the podcast or a comment on youtube as long as it's again nice let's keep it let's keep it clean let's keep it clean and yeah well thank you very much for listening and we'll see you next time bye