Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Alfred Inge okay so today is finally prime day if you are an Amazon Prime member and feel like spending even more money with the e-commerce giant today is your day as in past years Amazon is using the big sales day to promote its own devices and products offering discounts on echo and fired devices plus its growing list of clothing and home decor brands Alfred are you excited actually have a list going on of what I want to buy and I'm not sharing it for security purposes mm boy yeah like last week I had all this stuff that like I was going to buy and then because I needed it sooner rather than later and I just thought you know I can wait a week for this like in case like hopefully not toilet paper but yeah I get it you can wait a week for all right so obviously people are probably interested in some of the deals so I want to run through a couple of them so for instance the fire TV stick with the Alexa voice remote is going for twenty dollars the echo spot going for a hundred dollars that's a $30 savings the new second generation echo is for seventy dollars now granted if you're not like if you don't want to like pull the trigger on these specific deals right now these same deals are probably going to arrive in Black Friday Cyber Monday as well so you're not in the shopping movie yet honestly like I never look at the Amazon products as a real deal just because it's like they control the prices on these and they can go down to these prices at any time that Amazon chooses to which it usually does like sometimes it'll be a random weekend wears like oh the Kindles like $40 off today by the way yes so like those aren't really did the deals that I'm I would be excited about like with prime date content right so what kind of stuff are you excited about um I mean it's all random like you can I can never really tell when it's not Amazon products like it's a given that Amazon products are gonna be on sale but you know last year I got a cat tree that was like $90 retail and I got it for 48 it's like it's like the unexpected things that like I know like won't be this price again for a while I also wanted to mention there are other retailers jumping into the fray because July tends to be a pretty quiet period for retail so Target Walmart and eBay are also offering deals today so if you are shopping around online definitely do some using pricing Chavez on has basically forced other companies into like making deals on like prime day as well yes yeah and there's a lot more like traffic and interest going on so it benefits them to a certain extent to also Alfred you looked into how Facebook Twitter and YouTube are working to kill fake bot accounts on their networks tell me a little bit more about this especially like what Facebook is doing yeah so this was a deep dive into artificial intelligence that I was just generally curious about on my own after watching all these tech CEOs basically talking about oh we have all these problems that we're dealing with using artificial intelligence and then that was it there was bit and then it just got me thinking you know what artificial intelligent Israel called unmodified where it uses biometrics by like behavioral biometrics so like think about how you tap your phone the angle that you hold your phone at and like where you touch your screen when you're swiping around and think it could also sense like breathing to like it senses like the small small motions in the gyroscope but it doesn't yeah it uses your gyroscope so it's not like oh this guy's breathing like it basically when you hold your phone obviously you are breathing so it moves up and down so they use that as oh this is a human like this isn't a bot because it's like it's taking subtle movements like that and using that to tell like this is a human versus this is a bot so related to behavioral biometrics how easy do you think it would be for like fakers counterfeiters what-have-you to actually start to catch up and and provide you know ways of I think you'd have to be really sophisticated I mean like obviously there's GPS spoofing where you can like tell your phone you're in one location when you're not really so I don't think we're far off from like gaming the accelerometer and gaming you know the gyroscope but then like it's up to these bot makers to figure out oh how how human moves like they basically have to do the job of these AI companies as well like figuring out like the angle to like game the device out and things like that yeah the cat-and-mouse game continues if you want to read more about these check us out on CNN I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Alfred Inge thanks for listening no problems I'm out of practice so yeah thanks everybody for joining us as always time to jump into the chat and pull out questions and comments reigning question that's going to be overarching throughout the rest of the show will be what are you guys looking for on prime day is there anything that's got you excited do you think Amazon's gonna finally step up their game and not make it like a garage sale in the meantime that would be an improvement if it were a garage garage sales rule oh and there's stupid cheap at garage sales ouch look if you want a Roomba you should probably buy one today they usually sell a dumb amount of Roombas today and they are very deeply discounted so I've seen the Roomba deal happen at least two years in a row they also have TV deals but you know they haven't specifically mentioned like what brands are available so they're mentioning for instance this was this was info that was released overnight premium brand 49 inch 4k Smart TV for only four hundred and thirty-eight dollars we're gonna find out later today what that actually is so there are deals out there if you're interested in Amazon goes out of their way to say look they're gonna be about a million deals and you know you might think it's junk but it's someone else's treasure and that's why we're offering so many different things I think if I were if I were a competitor I would go the complete opposite way of prime day and I would make it like rich people day or something like that where the prices are actually jacked all the way up and then to stunt on your friends and like show them how much money you have you like buy stuff that's at above the regular price you can steal my idea if you want Walmart that's a pretty that's a pretty good idea what do you think of that one Brian yeah there wasn't that was like that and like Apple took it off the App Store it was like a thousand dollars or something and it did nothing for a red ruby yeah I remember nothing but yeah like you buy it to like show off like oh this is how much I spent on like apps today I think that app actually got kicked off because it had so little value but either way to answer your question Brian I am interested in getting a new TV so I'm gonna look around for that but it's it's sometimes the brands aren't exactly what you're looking for on prime day because they are a little bit more of the bargain side so definitely do your homework before buying stuff I would say it's probably ever done or prime - ever done games in the past cuz I would love it yes it's like build out my there was a deal going on today for I think it was only bundles with the Nintendo switch though like you could get it with Mario Tennis or another game who then I think it was Super Mario to see but the name is escaping me currently yeah there's current they they like teased out some information without like the full deal so there is a Nintendo switch gaming bundle for $300 that's going to be available yeah the the problem is and I understand people's it kind of like displeasure about it is is that some of the super popular stuff the really interesting stuff sometimes just doesn't get discounted you know like premium brands or the most popular games the reason for that is is that those companies realize that you're gonna pay top dollar for that stuff anyway they're they're the most high in demand so they don't they don't necessarily need to discount it and you might end up buying it today anyway just because you're shopping online let's take some questions actually we have a few people chiming in with their look for deals Pamela's looking for a good surround sound system I say your likelihood is pretty good on that today priority one is looking for ram rafael wants to know why does Amazon do prime de ok in the warehouse that one I have yeah I can clear out the warehouse idea is definitely one that I've heard a lot of and there's probably a little bit definitely to that the other reason is is that July tends to be a really quiet month in the summer in general tends to be a pretty quiet month people go on vacation they're saving up money for the holiday there's no reason to buy gifts during July right yeah and and Amazon manages to get people to shop more like providing more like home essential stuff it's not as much like yeah you'll see the TVs and electronics but they also offer discounts on just like giant tubs of petroleum jelly and like other just random stuff too like restock your your pants that is very much a home essential so so that's the primary reason why why they do it and it's been really successful for them they broke their single day sales record two years running on prime day which is pretty surprising it's it's impressive to the fact that you have to be a prime member to shop on prime day to begin with so it is a limited set of people it's not offered to every budget you have to take the sales numbers with like a grain of salt though because Amazon usually doesn't disclose their sales numbers like regularly yeah absolutely and also Amazon is growing really quickly so they tend to repeatedly break their single day sales record so it always sounds really great that like oh we broke the record again but the other the other thing too is that Prime Day this year is 36 hours so I expect them to say that they broke their single day sales record but Prime Day this year is not a sing so if they don't break the record that would be really weird but it will be with an asterisk this year sir and joy says ring video doorbell Pro is down to 175 Boyce convinced me I'm not gonna do that I don't think you should get a smart doorbell or home system I've spoken with the CEO ring a couple times and he his big pitch is that this is something that actually can reduce crime in a neighborhood and the more okay alfred is very aggressively rolling his eyes but anyway that is their their pitch where they think that video doorbells and and they did do a pilot program to try to prove this they think the video doorbells are a very useful security measure and if you are hesitant or uncomfortable about the idea of security cameras in your home in this case it's a security camera that's pointing outside your door so it's a little bit easier for people to deal with anyway that's that's rings pitch if you are interested the thing is is that it's a video doorbell it's so it's expensive and you know if you've got 170 dollars burning a hole in your pocket sure but I think a lot of people probably don't have that kind of money to spend on an on a doorbell yeah get a dog they're cooler and they can't be hacked nice well unless you have sausages dogs rule what about the Sony AIBO I don't know is that what it's called what the hell is that that's the Sony dog you can you can hack that dog I suppose so yeah zero out of ten yeah apex looking for a router Dodgers looking for a router as well so at this point I'm gonna plug our own website there like the the reviews and like Cheapskate team put together like a ton of content to try to like round out all the different deals so if you do want to go on SEANET and like they've just tried to like consolidate all this information so if you are looking for things specifically this is my shameless plug and I just I just did that well that's good because Screwtape is looking for good speakers it looks like we've got some headphones and wireless bluetooth speakers listed up here yet if you're looking for home stereo I'm not sure where those might be hidden in the list cuz it is a massive list and probably ever-growing but we'll do our best and I'll make sure to put the these links in the in the description down below in the show notes so everybody can find where they're going is it cnet.com it might be cnet.com edu no no no not see that I you know now I'm curious so I'm gonna check what seat we're seeing a dot edu takes you here's a fun question from bombs a bomb if you bought something before prime day and after you bought it it gets discontinued would be you sir discounted sorry would you still be able to get that discount I don't think so I don't think so but there is if you got it within like I think it's a 30 or 60 day window this is probably frowned upon but what you could do is just buy it again on prime day and then return the old one so you probably need a little bit of extra money because like let's say you bought it for $300 the first time in $200 the second time you have to wait for the the return to go through but people that I know have have done that in the past is that a people that I know is that just you and you're like my friend did my friend my friend has done this before but anyway if it does seem like a really good deal you can try to call customer service and get the discount but if they don't do that that is a method that has been used by people okay here's another fun one coming in from Priority One hey guys if you had $100 what would you buy on Prime whoo that's a good question well they don't have $100 no no I don't even have a hundred dollars in my bank account right now hundred dollars a year I mean are we talking about like specifically prime day stuff or like just Amazon in general let's stick it to prime day let's stay on theme man I wish I had a good answer to that I've got to spend like a thousand dollars replacing my water heater that is so not interesting that's like a real homeowner pilot crap right don't do that on prime day I'm not doing a big random buying I insist I mean I'm buying it from Lowe's so Lowe's day looks love day get your water heater with a free pamphlet I'd probably spend it on Amazon like gift card like a hundred dollar gift card and probably give it away to a good friend of mine because I'm very wholesome and cool give me a break that's horrible I'm sorry mr. selfish man okay once together the water heater for himself all right and altruistic I will give to the world okay I have to think I have to think about what I actually I guess if I had a hundred bucks like I would probably get a bunch of toys for my kids even though they have a bunch of toys already so whatever that's Bigley altruist I probably spend it on a prime membership for a year yeah that's not a bad idea to be honest here's a question from APEC do you find that the more you look at an item on Amazon the more the price seems to go up also does Prime day prices increase right before the discount is applied he's wondering if they're playing games with us and like if that really real so people have definitely had skepticism about that and some of the prime day deals in years past have been like really really tiny where it was like a dollar or five dollars especially on like more expensive items I think Amazon's trying to do a little bit better to not have those embarrassing like this isn't really a deal type of situation what the question or what is it like did do they jack up the prices before so that like when it's a 50% discount like cuz you're not supposed to do that they're supposed to like and I definitely know like specifically like I know what the regular prices for the Amazon devices so the Amazon devices are discounted from what you would regularly have them on an any given day but what was either way they do something called dynamic pricing where they will constantly change the price identifying a variety of different things that they that they notice online including what other retailers are pricing a certain item at how much traffic that specific page is getting so if you are seeing items go up usually they're supposed to fluctuate they're not supposed to just go up but they're always trying to like test out exactly how much to charge people so it's what you can do is also go on camel camel camel calm to see the historical price changes so you can get a better idea as to whether the price is a good one or not because the price does tend to change quite a bit on Amazon just about out of time so maybe we switch gears real quick before I call it a day Matthieu Dodgers asking how does a group feel about Elon Musk's recent incendiary comments great question going on to say what should we do when CEOs of companies we want to like are problematic yeah we were talking about this before the podcast and it was definitely a surprising comment and we were wondering if it even fits under libel where the this guy could sue so let's reiterate for those who may be and not in the know like myself what did it do alright I have been relishing this story so if you missed out on Sunday there was a video from CNN where they had interviewed one of the British divers in Thailand who had discovered that the boys were that the kids were stuck yeah and you know he was the one who had alerted you know the the British Navy and and like helped of the Thai government on like how to get there how to rescue the kids who were saved about five days ago now if you recall Elon Musk a the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and other companies also wanted to pitch in and help and he did so by sending a submarine that was never used and in this video the British diver talks about how that submarine was completely useless and how mr. musk you know going there and dropping off the submarine that was never used was essentially a PR stunt he specifically said that so Ellen must responds on Twitter basically in a fit of rage arguing you know you know what that Cape that that submarine would have worked okay and then at one point he says sorry pedo guy you really asked for this specifically about the British divers yes essentially insinuating that the British diver was a pedophile prior to that tweet and calling the guy a pedophile though he also had written I have never seen this British diver who happens to be living in Thailand and then in parenthesis he writes us which isn't suspicious he says that's about a lot of things yeah so he basically called this man a pedophile without any backup or claim and then he deleted the tweet he deleted it yeah he deleted all those to my video those were up for a couple hours yeah they were I thought he was gonna leave them up but you know I guess better judgment got to him but the idea is you know this is a tech CEO and billionaire with a lot of influence and power calling a guy pedophile because he said that his submarine was useless which is a fact how was that even related though it does musk have a history of these kind of like off the cuff yeah it's a rage does he oh absolutely he does it he does it against reporters for stories that he doesn't like he tends to be very fast and loose on Twitter so and I think doctor was asking about what you should do about texting yeah yeah like we should do about it and you know what boycott gets thrown around look the argument is is that does it matter what Elon Musk does on his free time you know complaining about people on Twitter if you like having a Tesla car and it's like is it is it valuable to you to just have that and kind of disassociated from the CEO that's that's an interesting philosophical argument I'm not really sure and I think especially with this last situation he is not making it super easy for people that may be on the fence to like him the people that do like him were already defending him right here's the thing I think it's very easy to idolize somebody like him and I think that you know he does have a lot of his fans my argument for anything has always been like you shouldn't idolize anybody or anything just because like they're human and they have flaws and they have mistakes and to stand by somebody for so long after like you know being problematic like this I'm sure you have your reasons but like my flaw like I it's like I think it's problematic to always like put somebody on a pedestal like that I was like oh well he's he called him a pedophile because you know he did this this and this and it's just like people like he's clearly wrong for it and you know that I don't know how that affects your view of him but at the same time I think that you know there really shouldn't be this sort of like worship of like any tech CEO for that matter it doesn't decide anybody yeah it doesn't matter like how smart or like talented somebody is like well and unfortunately we in the media I have a lot to do with really building altering bolstering and you know doing that deification and hero worship I mean we saw that with their thoroughness as CEO who ended up being a complete fraud so but either way that was definitely glad you mentioned that Dasher and it was something that we were certainly considering mentioning on the shows I'm glad you talked about it what we did we did talk about it so you know and and it's definitely an interesting conversation I think will absolutely continue and there's a possibility that there could be a lawsuit stemming from this and so we'll we'll keep an eye on it that's disappointing you want to like somebody like that like like you said the whole worship thing is going a little far but in my casual observation it's just like oh he's a lucky guy he likes science he promotes education etc etc I'm on board and then you find out he's a rage monster and a complete dick bag so let's see that's your problem you wanted to like somebody you should never want to like anybody that's a good philosophy to live by Alfred yeah I learn a lot from you it's uh it's gonna take me at least a few more years to become that Center having friends is overrated mm-hmm yeah yeah if you've learned anything about the 359 that's that's the big take off enemies now that's where the real that's where the rubber meets the road okay right before we take off let's take one more question about prime day maybe not so much prime day but just Amazon shopping in general this is a good question from Hector Sanchez does anyone know if you can use your prime account for different countries I have mine in Mexico you don't want to get onboard the Amazon US storefront I don't know that's a good question and I'm not entirely sure so let's research that that might be a good topic to come back to some days how Amazon functions internationally and how it affects consumers in different countries yeah it does tend to it depends on different countries and Amazon does tend to roll out its services in different countries in different ways like for instance I know like Canadian shoppers had to shop through the u.s. website for a while until like the Canadian website was a little bit stronger so when did that really mean just a pain in the butt with conversions hq2 is coming to Toronto yeah that's that's basically a no I think like and I don't know enough about this to really talk too much about it but I think it's it's you would have to get a lot of things shipped to you just over the border and then pick them up so if you loose yeah it was a little strange but now you don't have to do that as much because they expanded out their Canadian operations and their fulfillment so so it sounds like in large that's probably the way it's gonna apply in any situation in any nation that's not the u.s. store yeah the best is I can remember usually like the inventory is specific to your country and if it isn't then you might have to pay more for International shipping that's my best guess at this point but I do apologize that I don't know that information offhand you know a lot of information been will forgive you will find out more though for sure that's a great question we'll have to look into that but on that note we are out of time it's been back fantastic to be back regular schedule resumes we'll be back tomorrow you guys got any closing thoughts yeah what does that post it on your laptop say oh it's uh it's a list of equipment that I need to purchase for the studio it's not all that interests were like primed a are you buying that I'm not it's not even exciting stuff it's like hardware and cabling so otherwise I'd share yeah all right cool why don't you do it I always end up doing it alright sure if you liked what you heard today check us out on cnn.com the podcast is also available on tuning stitchers not soundcloud iTunes feed bird feed burner google play music google podcast the amazon echo and i already said this but it's a I'm just gonna plug it again cnn.com you can also join our conversation on weekday mornings on twitch.tv periscope which is on Twitter and YouTube which I assume the majority of you are on so thanks for joining us great job yes probably really good all right bye everybody see you tomorrow yeah I even you