Gadgetory

and good morning from Sina New York studios it's time for the 3:59 podcast episode 237 and to borrow a phrase from the immortal Bryant on what's up y'all what's up y'all hello Byul is immortal now is that what we that's what we've bestowed upon I mean he's been seen it for like eight 883 years or some 150 years it was longer before we have before it was actually it existed so good for Brad Todd that's a quite the accomplishment I would keep referencing Bryant because everyone thinks of Bryant talk damn it and welcome to the brine tongue fan of podcast but I'm Betty not true whatever he doesn't here's a walk this show who would guys were you talking about today I'll be talking about more home pod more horizon I'm gonna be talking about sort of stacking up the privacy aspect privacy of the home pod relative to Google home and Amazon echo we're speaking of Amazon then was at the wired conference yesterday where he got get the first reaction from Amazon really I do believe it was the first reaction I just hesitated to say that in my story because you never know you throw a little shade one through a little shade at after lotion yeah we'll get into that very good either lastly we'll touch upon the the Comey testimony which is going on live right now both CBS News and CNN covering it lives if we check it out but you know we'll just touch upon some of the revelations that he laid out really on about the the Russian hacks no I'm try to stay away from politics too much so good idea with that give any questions about these topics let us know Brian's gonna pick out the best well 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 smart speakers are always listening to you so how secure are they our own alfrid and compared the echo Google home and home pod on privacy and it looks like Apple comes out top at least for now while they all encrypt the voice recordings Apple takes the extra step and anonymizing the data so it even it doesn't know who's asking what which is kind of useful if the government comes knockin right um for instance Amazon I believe our do or serve obligated if there are legal reasons to give up some of those recordings well not only that but they also have those identifiers you would hope to benefit customers yes they are linked to your account so they're there for yes it's a lot easier to identify a user with their recording right so if you have a Google home in your house for instance it connects to all your other Google services yep Google Calendar Maps like it knows your location but I can see why a lot of people or certain customers might not really like that that might make something like the home pod less useful for people yeah however if you are interested in that additional layer of security maybe the home pod is right for you that's I mean that's my broader question is like Apple is going to try to sell this as a safer more secure more private speaker is that something that people care enough about that they'll actually buy this as opposed to the other speaker it comes at a steep price point right so you're doing or even as well it's got the tweeters don't forget the tweeters but it's also got privacy like is that enough to justify the you know more the double the price tag look I might argue that if somebody is really paranoid or worried about um you know you're smart speaker listening in on you or you know getting getting like government requests or different things like that you're probably not on the market for a smart speaker so true I'm paying three hundred and fifty dollars for a home pod versus an echo or a Google home I don't know that they're really going to get a benefit from that extra privacy layer right I'm speaking of the home part of the reactor's the home pod I bet you're at the wired conference yesterday with a wired business conference right where Amazon's head of devices Dave lip was there and you really got sort of first reaction from Amazon from Dave on the whole pod What did he say yeah we asked him it was a room of reporters and we asked him full well expecting that he was going to give a non-answer or I'd say like I declined to say anything and instead you know much to Dave's credit he provided like a pretty thorough response as far as why the home pod is a very different product than the echo you know there are two aspects to that one of them is price Amazon philosophically he said once to have the echo be cheap enough that you could have it everywhere around your house that's why they have something like the echo dot for 50 bucks whereas the home pot is three hundred and fifty dollars so you're really only going to buy one or maybe yeah yeah I mean they position that as like your main speaker right and that was the other aspect was sound quality the echo has reasonably good sound but it also makes it really easy for you to connect to other speakers so if you have a personal interest for both speaker or some other speed right Amazon makes it much easier if you're going to spend for a premium to your speaker that's it with the home pod that's what you would get okay lastly we want to touch upon obviously games Kobe's testimony going on right now we actually have a story up sort of taking a look at some of his comments on the Russian hacking efforts and he called this massive effort it went beyond the DNC actually affected he believes hundreds maybe even thousands of people individuals not just with the government but charity organizations and really so it seemed like is a lot more widespread than we realized but for more that and live coverage of the testimony check us out and see that Roger Tsien I'm Ben Fox Ruben thanks for listening alright everybody that's a wrap on the recording of the audio podcast thanks for hanging out with us just taking a look at the chat he had what we want to get a shout out to the blue wind project he says cuff when you wait until 1:00 a.m. to watch this because you're on the other side of the world cuff so thanks for pulling the egg you brain midnight all for us we're realistic is really happy to have much props team we will try to live in it absolutely away will do better right or or maybe this is to help you fall asleep maybe you have insomnia and we'll just talk we did Lee slow turn this into an ASMR diet Danny Green a boy Danny Green if you what's up Danny he's saying what we're all thinking if you're worried about people listening to you go off the grid that's right that's true don't buy I mean you made that point you're not gonna if you're worried about this stuff I guess you're not buying all these speakers yeah not only that but like your smartphone has a mic on it yeah camera so if you ain't always on you that's way worse yeah I would say so yeah I mean the phone isn't always listening though right no that's absolutely no that's I think that's what has people freaked out but technically these devices are always listening for a wake word right yeah so at the wired conference Wired's editor Nick Thompson he was talking to Dave Lim and had this fairly ridiculous idea that wouldn't it be great if the echo was always recording not just always listening always recording so you would actually have like if you got in an argument ripped yeah if you got in an argument with one of your kids or your wife or whatever you could actually go back and say like you know whatever Alexa Alexa like what did I say three minutes ago or so that's like a remedial that's like a really basic foot step towards a black mirror episode right right brother the context but that's basically an audio version of that I like if I had water in my mouth I would have done a spit-take where I would just like that's a horrible idea not yeah that's not a good I do not do that did he say this sincerely it was a joke or he in a very specific context of wanting to find out like a whodunit situation in my house it might be helpful but like you're literally creating like a security state within the four walls of your yeah just so you know like oh who broke the vase or something like that Wow how did how did lip respond I mean who's on typically is like we are not always listening to you you can imagine that it was like we're only listening for awake where dress is very like tight loop where Alexa is constantly listening for yeah that word and will delete if it doesn't hear it over and over and over again so yeah no I don't think you like the idea all right another quick shout out to a newbie Josh it's our hits his first time watching the show well hey Asha joining welcome yeah man and let's go ahead and jump back into the jet CJ Speicher people need to hear the sound of the home pod in order to want to buy it that's an excellent point if there's going to be like a new station at the Apple Store with like a listening zone where they can demo the Seymour property instead of having to deal with the noise have a go about living room that's it like sort of the walls around as you keep partner with IKEA yeah that's true ooh uh yeah they put that in IKEA people buy it totally right oh yeah spending thousands of dollars or furniture like well what's another 350 bucks so it's admittedly because it's an apple product I know thousands of people will buy this thing oh yeah the sight unseen it's getting out till December 30 lined up yeah so they're they're gonna they're gonna get sales regardless but I like that idea okay key idea know the mountain zone oh yeah I feel like they'll definitely need to have something like that cuz it's not gonna work in a crowded dam I mean none of the other speakers really touted audio fidelity that much like it's a speaker it makes noise it's fine right they they want you to tie it into your pre-existing system but apples like no no we got seven tweeters on a subwoofer this thing's gonna this is going to be doing four tweeters yeah which I don't know what exactly what that means I mean it's a Stoli I was a little nugget it can always I was so looking I was looking at some of the speaker technology that's wrong that stuff's not really new like a lot of other high-end speakers have the ability to sense where they are in the room and kind of like adjust the sound so they broadcast out as opposed to like broadcasting at the wall so it's not Apple was like taking some of these features that have been around for a little while and sort of wrapping them up in a nice bone that's which is the Apple way again it's not it's not necessarily new I would definitely be curious to see what the big-time audio people hear that like do that we've got we've got some great audio heavy hitters yeah yeah I'm gonna need to get a get Steve on that oh yeah get his expert ear yeah and tie together because even at $350 it may not really hit the level that you want it's not gonna do audio it's not gonna be a Bose speaker right no be the high-end stuff going to be Bose I'm a Yamaha it's gonna be Apple we've seen I mean is it does anyone else remember those like crystal clear desktop domi type speakers that were out in the early aughts I think I remember all of my friends had these at college I'll try to pick up an image of them but they were these like clear plastic tubes they look kind of suggestive but you could see the innards of them and like the subwoofer looked like what the home pod looks like now and I think they were front they were Apple speakers maybe a released co manufactured by Apple I'm gonna try to be mom Apple did by the way make they this is not their first speaker they did actually make another speaker there's a dock for the iPod and disappeared very quickly yeah but that's it but I think that's the only other like audio product that it's made you're not kind of obviously the iPod but like speaker wise here we go hang on up right now is this it's suggestive looking product yes anybody will hit the wrong button there sound stick down stick three-way are they still available apparent good buy them now everything guys anybody remember these I don't I do now I mean it's obviously not identical but like it's kind of raining in my head thinking about what the home pod might sound like and maybe reminiscent it's obviously this is not an Apple speaker like I originally kind of thought it but they went really well with those old IMAX that you could get yeah similar actually lecture they still look kind of cool enough I'd want them in my house but not the subwoofer is the subwoofer for other thing for a look like something I don't use to cook I don't they just yeah sure will go cook made you think about something else but yeah sorry periscope you can't see this uh they just kind of reminder you go over they just kind of remind me of the what the home pod may be leaning towards these days uh let's go back into the chat Danny Green is asking can you talk to the echo while it has sound playing and have it respond I think you said the home pod does yeah obviously that's a yes that was an early nature and it's it's still not perfect obviously but yeah yeah you've been able to since day one I believe you've been able to die I think you start with the home part though the home pod can definitely do that they mentioned Phil Schiller mentioned that on stage and yes you can do that with the echoes right the echo is getting better about triggering I know that like it's gotten to the point now where I can watch an echo commercial and it doesn't trigger yes oh yeah yeah Dave limp talked specifically about that yesterday he said that you know they're working on the commercial stuff or interested as to how they do that though because they still say her name right and I'm curious to what the production procedure is I'm just interested in hearing about her just figuring out that it was coming from the television to a certain extent I think was one aspect that he said one of the follow-ups that I didn't get - was that if you say the name in the middle of a sentence it doesn't trigger as much as it used to I've noticed in my ona using the echo so I think that they have actually improved some of those you know false positives or whatever you want to call it again still not perfect still yeah well perfect but I've definitely noticed that because it used to be get to that Boeing was like crap another ad and I'd like to try to cover her cover she like wrap your arms around it's like it's cylindrical how does that work I'm just sitting there like Shh no tears wait you have a dot or the actual I have a dot I'm all right yeah that's easier yes you're tomorrow Betty you try to like yeah Buffalo abroad act like a tag it with a pillow be like just go nurse ratchet on it oh man all right we're obviously off our rocker here and getting towards the end of the week yeah what what can be expanded on in the coma hearing before we wrap it up for the day where we what was a revelation uh in terms of the the hacks yeah uh I mean a lot of that stuff like we I mean look a lot of that stuff has been kind of run through I think the fact that he became aware of the connected cyberattacks run around the late summer 2015 which is right around when Trump announced he was running for president is interesting like the timing of it is basically since the start he's been aware of you know he was aware of this other cyber attacks and as he said during the podcast the the level of the attacks were you know really considerable and you also presented the fact that you know really no doubt 100% the Russia was involved yes which I know we've been hearing a lot about in you know the media but it's definitely good to see like it's coming from this was from Comey source right on the record at a Senate hearing yeah so that kind of added a lot of credibility to those to that conversation as far as you know is this happening or isn't it happening yeah you know the former FBI director very clearly and concretely said yeah yeah Russia was involved they were trying to influence the election one good thing that I did hear about that was as far as he could tell Russia didn't or there was no influencing or changing of the actual votes you know so there was no like hanky-panky like on election day of the votes themselves which Trump did was a relief prompt to confirm to Co me that he'd there were no hookers so there's that there were no hookers in Russia yeah he was not involved with any hookers in Russia really talking about the PP das es he talked about he talked about did he did talked about it he addressed it so all right sorry international audience we couldn't help result you're kind of obligated it says something yeah we can't we'll influence what's going on in the tech world we're sure our s yeah and we can't take our eyes off of it right now the testimony is pretty literally can't they have it on every TV in the damn office right and and my computer yeah all right on that note is probably a good place to wrap it up for the day and the week and the we yeah yeah did a good week has a week busy week a home pod week yes lots of Apple today or this week thanks to everybody who's been putting up with all the little technical full pods as I get this new system kind of up and running it's been nice to be on not only YouTube but now livestream and periscope as well yeah that's been a lot of fun and we're gonna keep doing that going forward so thank you for putting up with us yeah yeah thanks for watching alright if you liked anything you saw or heard here check us out on CNET our podcast is also available on iTunes TuneIn stitcher SoundCloud Feedburner and Google Play Music see y'all next week see ya you