Gadgetory

on Tuesday May 9th you are just in time for sea nuts daily podcast show the 359 out of the scene at New York studios and here with me today I've got Roger Chang and Ben Fox Ruben what are we talking about today guys more hot news yeah Amazon all bed actually these are all bed stories we're talking about in stories suppose for 79 some of the best stories out there so thank you but so a couple weeks ago we talked about the echo look the Amazon echo look but yes is the newest echo product well that was enough was the news it was the newest echo product and we we got it on the show you know like an hour after it was released we've got another one it's the echo show and we'll talk about it yeah on the show we're not actually showing up we're not gonna show it off because we don't have it yeah but yeah we'll be talking about that and we'll be talking about something called threat casting which bed we'll have to explain to me because I don't quite understand it right so as always if you have any questions about either topics or anything else leave them at the comment section brian will pick out the best and we'll get to them in 3 minutes and 59 seconds from 3 to welcome to the 359 I'm Roger Chang I'm Ben Fox ribbon the Amazon echo family keeps getting bigger the online retail giant reduce the echo show a smart speaker that now includes a 7-inch touchscreen it will cost $230 that you had the scoop on this before so give us the details what is this about why should I care so it's basically a giant phone for your kitchen counter I think that's that's what our headline was and I was I was pretty happy with that because this is this is essentially a way for Amazon to get you to use your echo even more maybe it'll improve discovery voice shopping different things like that you can also like watch a YouTube on it so it's kind of like the bringing back the idea of you know like a kitchen counter TV yeah yeah yeah no I like that it's funny you say that because I I was at a friend's place this weekend and I noticed like me they had an iPad mounted to a stand all the kitchen they basically I use it to look up recipes watch videos so I feel like the this echo show is really meant to take that place right it is yeah I mean like that's essentially maybe it's like a slightly better version of or slightly worse if you don't like how big it is it does kind of look a little funky let's let's talk about that because it's lookup I'll just be straight with it it looks ugly to me yeah I mean like a lot of people were trashing leaked images of this last week and they were saying uh you know you gotta be kidding me this thing really does not it looks like something from like the 90s or whatever I mean like look the screen the screen looks nice it's also got Joby speakers so bulky why is it so bulky I think it might be the speakers I'm not really sure I mean like before the show we were talking about the fact that you were like I'll wait for the 2.0 version that I probably be a little bit this next year version yeah like people are used to like having their phones be like razor thin so yeah this this does seem a little bit off off key from that yeah okay so next up bad you visited the army cyber Institute at the West Point they're charged with dreaming up crazy scenarios where we're under cyber assault what you learn so there's this interesting idea called science-fiction prototyping where you get in a room you start to consider what the future might look like ten years from now whether it's a cyber threat or you know in certain cases for for looking into the future what certain technologies are going to look like and then you reverse engineer those concepts and you work back from there to try to figure out what exactly we should do today to try to get to the futures that we want to get to as opposed to the futures that we want to avoid so what are some of the craziest scenarios they've dreamed up the one that really stood out in my mind that I opened my story with was that a dirty bomb could potentially explode in the Greater New York City area because a bunch of smart refrigerators were hijacked by terrorists and they started asking for milk at the same time so they could like sneak a dirty bomb in if you like that seems plausible now like that futurecast a that is or threat casting that's like we've seen botnets take over smart devices yeah I mean like so that's one of the issues with threat casting is is that you you don't want to like be surprised by certain things so we talked about the stuff now and like it's it's pretty worthwhile to at least try to prepare for some of this stuff but at the same time I mean like I talked to some analysts and folks in the cybersecurity world that said like but in a lot of ways this kind of feels like throwing spaghetti up on the wall yeah that's me as a big skeptical battle like yeah you basically just throwing darts on the wall is basically just blindly guessing and like are you wasting resources building towards a feature that may never happen sure but one would argue that we're not as a species we're not very proactive and this is at least an effort to try to not be so damn lazy all the time so hopefully we avoid something you know doing this I mean it's better than doing nothing yeah your breakpoints that even if they do so prevent something that we may never know how effective they are right yeah that really cooked my noodle trying to think about that all right four more of these stories chicks on OC net a Roger Chang I'm Ben Fox Ruben thanks for listening take it we did it what's with all the spaghetti analogies spaghetti throw spaghetti at the wall cook my noodle oh my god you know why it's a weird some cops they get pasta last night I know I had grilled cheese but you know that's a good point I guess I'm kind of hungry yeah if somebody wants to like get me like a vicap ending with chicken just so hits it off yeah if somebody wants to get Ben a vodka go right ahead that too I would help with this podcast all right let's talk a little about this uh echo show okay people in the chat excited about it was there like a lot of judge largely yes people commenting on how it looks cuz I'm really curious about the acceptance of this because it is good it's like it's bulky it's just kind of bland really in my opinion but I mean we're looking for function not - Abed hit though it kind of looks like it came out of the 90s right it looks a little know if you've got kind of like a I don't like my kitchens like kind of white it's got like high-tech stuff like iPads or whatever I got imagine eventually like I don't feel like I feel comfortable having that fit into the decorum well like like every every Amazon echo product that's gonna roll out in a beta phase right they're gonna you know you have to get offered like a trial period and I'm sure when this thing actually hits a market market there will be skins and different options that could be dressing if you put it in the corner to in like your kitchen it's not like your phone where it has to be like as thin as possible right right lock it so you put it in the corner of your kitchen does it really matter I don't know it's gonna be a much thinner I don't have a lot of real estate in my kitchen like it turns I've got like kitchen appliances other stuff on top I've got fruit bowls I've got random stuff and like they have this big bulky thing yeah that's why I like deco dots this tiny thing I just searched and that that has been their most popular echo yeah the question is is like are people really going to be excited for this Jetsons future we're yeah you're gonna do a lot of voice chats this is this is like they've not only does it have the touch screen but it's also got the guys dilemma for because they really seem to push voice chat video chat as a real key feature and I think that's why we have that's why I have my iPad on a stand in the kitchen is mm-hmm it's a place for like my family and I could just sort of gather around we chat with my my parents or my wife's parents on that thing and it's just sort of a central location but it's I have an iPad I have that already right necessarily need another device to do this live chat yeah the the kitchen integration is a great sell point um imagine soggy says the echo show will be awesome for all the recipe features that tell you the recipes from the agreement you have what's up imagine soggy I know manatorian Xavier largely agree in similar fronts III would have fun with that because I'm similar to what you guys were talking about earlier before the show I myself took an old look that wasn't doing anything because it's a nook and I built a magnetic frame for it and I stuck it to the side side of my refrigerator now for recipes oh yeah but now this is a multi-purpose thing that's designed kind of for the kitchen design being right term right but you don't stick it on your refrigerator so we're talking about it taking up counter space actually I dare you to build a magnetic frame for this thing yeah is he gonna half pounds um where else it might fit in the house could also be interesting whether you want to put it in your living room instead on a side table I really don't think putting it bathroom I can nightstand is a good idea I don't think the bathroom I think that is a terrible voice calls in the bathroom I don't know rodeo view calls the bathroom while you're the toilet just Joe children that's all I see happening yeah yeah but that's that's really the potential that Amazon tries to look for the initial idea for the echo was they wanted to create computer from Star Trek so they're they're trying to get us to this future but maybe maybe we'll get there you know but not publicly idea I think I like this idea I think uh frankly the little bit sexy I probably people are interested by it that's why wait for 2.0 or 3.0 or whatever actually start literally just got announced like a boring like like oh we get 1.0 let's just let's just skip ahead no burkhalter you'll recall that the echo the original echo never really got a 2.0 like they had they made it in white it's now in white and black but they never made it like any specific terminal date they slip down exactly the dot they had the dot that was kind of like their their hit product it was kind of it yeah but it was a different one so I would I would hesitate to say that this is gonna have like a similar time schedule or cycle is the phone business where there's next year go look dot - Bry know where rolls right off of it an echo dot with a screen on top Matthew dacher says I'd rather use my laptop or a tablet with okay Google in my kitchen but he expands something that could create recipes from the ingredients you have would be a killer app maybe even start syncing it with your smart refrigerator that's uh yeah yeah the failure is like that could show up on anything like that doesn't have to go in Amazon that could be on sure Android tablet like an iPad you just pick up your phone ping Alexa what do I have in my fridge and smart fridge talks to your show and then it shows you from the show and then show show show me what I need to pick up on the way home kind of thing yeah okay you're right that there are other technologies that can do that but Amazon has proven that you know you get a first mover advantage and you get a lot of the market according to eMarketer that just came out with this report on Monday that um the echo controls 71 percent of the u.s. smart speaker market right Wow the Google home controls present 24 percent but it's like there's nothing else that's why there's nothing else in a while right and we'll see if and when comes out with one we've been getting like more and more rumors about that right yeah we're here about WWDC that's the big rumor that they finally come out with speaker we've talked about we've actually read about the speaker for this last year really so so the expectation I mean from what I've been hearing the expectation was is that Google home getting uh the ability to identify multiple users was a bit of a wake-up call for Amazon and now they are you know pushing out these pets maybe a little bit faster that's a big deal well that's a noise that's apparently on the roadmap but I don't actually know when it's coming out that you would be able to have multiple users so apologies to fresh vids 28 we set off the Amazon dot in their home all right Omar Alexa all right just spell the name out so going back to what you're saying earlier about competition Parker says with all these different products from Amazon can Google catch up with their Google home array it's a great question and we'll have to find out I think Google has a very significant edge in the market because they've been doing search for so long Amazon is not a search company so you can't really ask your Google you can't really ask echo course leaving a number that this has been their foray into that mm-hm yep and it looks they've got a huge market leadership with the Android phone so with Android phones in general so like tying them together that gives Google much bigger advantage to Amazon so truth yeah yeah so there is a very very good chance that Google could some at some point lap Amazon but the expectation is is that Amazon is gonna maintain its lead for at least the next couple years likely I like this comment from Michael ambarisa to remember the Sony - yeah yeah we're talking about the - it's this product that looks a lot like this thing people were talking about that there was also this thing called like chumby or whatever shiny yeah yeah the chumby was the original before they called it the Sony - I believe so what year was this thing this so this was at least this was me and this is running the chumby this example from Wikipedia that we found but I mean this isn't as much integrated for a purpose in the kitchen this is just your little video guide I think it did a little bit it definitely did less but um did have a voice assistant no no because like voice assistants are like super new like a crappy posted maybe it did I never hear said I didn't have a kitchen back then wait what you don't know I was probably in college when this game okay yeah like a crappy dorm I don't remember this at all yeah this was can you check when it came out what could blue be added this let's see this says you guys can read it better than I can from here announcer 2010 2010 2010 and see really that long is the long ago introductory price $1.99 so this one's slightly more expensive pretty on what it does more stuff yeah oh look I'm gonna be honest with you I'm gonna buy this Alexa Alexa don't sign I'm sorry sorry wrong our audience either never coming back again and yes they will it'll just come back troll us again cuz that's that's how YouTube works yeah that's how the internet works so let's take a look last few minutes and elaborate on this cyber uh what's the term I'm looking for ed cast cast casting we shouldn't laugh cuz this is kind of a fascinating topic is more than you were able to cram into that you know yeah any long segments it's like this this essentially like it's predictive modeling and in in some ways like what I was thinking about like what it there's like this book called like the wish or whatever do you know what I'm talking about or the promise when you try to like think about like what where you want to be your life the secret thank you yeah I was close yeah um you like you like imagine a goal and then you pursue that but just by the way just totally underwhelming like that secret is basically like if you think and it'll come true right right but like this is this is like taking you know the steps today to make sure that you don't have like a cluster cuss in you know sometime in the future and it makes to me it makes a lot of sense I came into the story very skeptical but um you know after I did a lot of research on it I realized that this isn't the same thing as like looking into a crystal ball you try to imagine like what certain futures are going to look like and to avoid those types of problems you do what you have to do today to prevent them and there is a concern a bit of calculus there's like a formula to this just like yeah there's a guy without thinking right no no unlike the secret we just sit there and wait for it to happen yeah or whatever I never read the book uh there's a guy named Brian David Johnson he's now at Arizona State University he was Intel's first futurist and he's the guy that came up with the idea of future casting which was the precursor the threat cast what companies use actually to kind of like ward off competitive threat to figure out how they basically did it yeah exactly they figure out what technology is going to look like ten years down the line it's it's actually a fascinating idea or like at least an exercise to think like well you know most predictive modeling is like what's going to happen two years from now what's gonna happen three years from now right the army is literally thinking what's gonna happen ten years from now and what that what that might look like there are other things that I found in my research that the Marines are looking at like what's going to happen in like 2035 well which could be I don't know this is like we'll see if we're still talking about the Amazon echo then or like will just be amaz well if you are if you're interested the subject actually this is you know but there's the first part of a two-part package that she has put together Alfred a actually went alongside with you to West Point and he's got a story kind of look at looking at how cadets kind of interacted during a hacking exercise at the NSA so he's got sort of a the you get at easily the video today but you the full story tomorrow so just a slow plug out for uh that story come back and check it out then that's a perfect place to end it up for the day yeah thanks everybody great if you liked anything you saw or heard here check us on CNN our podcast is also available on iTunes to knit stitch your SoundCloud feed burger and google play music that's right yep that's it thanks see y'all tomorrow see you tomorrow Oh