Gadgetory

good Monday morning on March thirteenth episode 193 of the 359 podcast as I shatter my keyboard with my bare hands as you hear in the background here good morning it's a packed house with Ben factory when Roger Cheng and Alfred hang in the house this morning how's everybody doing good I had a good weekend yeah and I remembered your name this morning I know I wasn't what happened he like totally blanked on my name last week really I got back my god back to Barcelona I hope he didn't call you i don't think it's that guy I as the wolfpack time uh yeah we're already off to a great start here Horace so we're gonna be talking about two items a big merger Intel buying mobile I for 15 billion dollars and you may not have heard of mobile i but it is very important explain to you why it's important why it's really the key to Intel's self-driving car ambitions um we talking about next up Ben's feature on venmo the secret hip social network you've probably never heard of unless your millennial like Alfred they have been trolling on it like crazy yeah there you go right take that Sean Spicer and yes that actually is relevant to the story shot there was a Sean Spicer reference in the story Jesse doesn't spicy spicy spicy spicy all right all right let's uh let's get started you have any questions about self-driving cars intel mobile i then though Millennials leave in the comments section we do have a resident millennium well answer you're welcome in the comment section brian will pick out the best and we'll answer them in three minutes and 59 seconds i do have many questions about Millennials but let's get this policy why ha and here we go in three two welcome to 359 where we talk about the top texts of the day and only the crap we want to throw in I'm road to Chang I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm Alfred dang its merger Monday Intel said it agreed to buy mobile I and Israeli company developing tech for self-driving cars for 15 billion yes but the B dollars mobile I focuses on machine vision so the car can see what's around it what's in front of it and basically operate on its own then I mean you've been following this lot more closer than I have like what are some of the key details that we need to know about mobile mobile I is it's basically self-driving car technology there are a variety of different types of self-driving car technology out there like radar stuff different things like that what's interesting about mobile I is is just one camera in the front of your car and that actually enables it to be able to see where it's going either on the highway see if there are pedestrians in the way different things like that so I'm not that surprised that Intel would pursue these guys because they are in effect a chip maker they don't make the camera they make the chips in the software that run this so is that camera on any self-driving car dog in any cars now or is it just all sort of prototyping for like the future of self-driving cars they actually had partnered with Tesla for a while and they pulled out if that deal after if you remember the guy died yeah from the that turning on self-driving the self-driving mechanism but they've also got a bunch of other partnerships mostly with premium tier car makers like Mercedes and BMW the expectation is is that it'll trickle down to you know cars that I can actually afford some time later in the future it's really interesting what Intel is doing here right they feel like they missed the boat on smartphones yeah mobile and they're like doing everything they can to get into all these new trends whether it's AI whether its drones now self-driving cars VAR e io t yeah they're really trying to hit like all these times you don't want to miss whatever that next red is I don't want to miss it and some of these trends really aren't going to happen but Intel is at least being smart in trying to place a lot of these bets and I mobile I is definitely one of these self-driving car companies that's really on the forefront of actually trying to make that happen all right Meg Ben you wrote a fairly amusing piece on venmo and for those who don't use them though they a money exchange service you know if you want to give you your friend taking bucks for pizza you give why are you basically not wire but you send them via phone your venmo it you venmo to them but you've sort of looked at the the fact that they offer this public feed and how it sort of become a social network in itself yeah the social aspects of it were really quite fascinating to me for instance one of the ways that people started to jury-rig the service to try to make it more social was to just send each other micro payments so instead of you know texting Alfred to say like hey Alfred I'm thinking of you I would send you like 15 cents and be like oh my god like miss you boo with like I don't know like a little heart emoji or some and that way you're compelled to reply because it's basically oh man it gave him 15 cents I have to respond to this other how would you respond to by the way how would you respond had been giving you fifteen cents on you boo I'm copies and fifteen cents back or fifteen dollars but I just never do this again that's pretty polite I mean I didn't I did try this with a friend of mine while I was working on the story and yeah like I sent him 25 cents and be like hey what's up and he sent me the 25 cents back and were just like hey how are you so I don't know I guess we're still trying to figure that out however I mean how I mean how often you use then I use it pretty much every day because I don't carry cash on me and in situations where it's like cash only and a friend is the one that has a catch I just say look I don't want to go to an ATM right now how does that work with you and your group of friends do you have like a designated cash holder know the person that just has this giant money doesn't go usually there's also you know the one guy who wants all the reward points on the credit card sure oh I'll pay for it everyone just venmo me so I can get all these points for cheap flights gotcha alright well to read more about these stories check this out and seen it I'm Roger Cheng I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm Alfred dang thanks for listening I like venmo but I disagree with the social aspect of it cuz you're no Lee I guess an old man I don't want people to know what my money doesn't know what you know I've definitely felt the same way you know what a great social addition on venmo would be you know how on Facebook it tells all your friends like hey it's your birthday send them like birthday yeah in one venmo it like sent a message to all your friends like hey it's like this person's birthday everyone said I'm like a dollar yeah yeah like I like this place click this button is also called the Tooth Fairy effect yeah oh my god that is a phenomenal idea what a good idea why doesn't I have roll that out tomorrow I just it's the other thing is that if they already have the social feed 2 i'm wondering how long it's gonna be before they roll out pictures and video because they might as well like if you're out at a bar with your friends or you're getting a pizza late at night whatever snap a picture look I slice of a caffeine slice like you're already doing all the emojis and you're sharing it or whatever like why not inc I mean what they have the server space for all that though I have no ideas probably it's owned by paypal so like why wouldn't they know it is interesting because I mean I when I first start using venmo I was all turned off by the public feet but after reading your story I'm like especially the way people troll each other in terms of like you know this isn't this is for slice of pizza that really it's like haha thanks for last night or whatever like them your energies thanks for all the hard drugs right or eggplant emoji yeah thankfully my fake that's kind of awesome like I would I told you to be doing it you're just trying to like screw with your friends my favorite thing to do is so I found out that the character limit is about two thousand characters on venmo how did you find that I basically just copy and pasted a large block of text and wait and kept deleting it until I saw how many characters there's like you know thanks for the pizza whatever if you just keep scrolling down your feet then you see this giant block of text probably I've been continuously sending a person like the entire book of a tale of two cities how far along are you this on the first chapter wait wait alkenyl Alfred meme Lord why are you not sending in the entire script to be movie because it's the there's not enough characters that's probably like the next thing that I'll do but I also do like monologues that's like related to like why like I'm giving you like this payment there were some like ode to beer that I found online i like your ego really you really put a lot of thunder your venmo yes I don't want to be like every other venmo payment out there you're in so therefore there are like a lot of other like peer-to-peer payment services like square cash there's chase quickpay I also found out after writing the story that apparently there's a feature on facebook Messenger that you could send people money's in facebook oh yeah yeah which I didn't even I didn't even realize was there it's like kind of buried and let it go crack ecommerce reporter it is not like out in front right all like you have to find you have to know that it's there in search for I mean I don't know that a lot of people use it it's automatic anytime you send something with a dollar sign on ebay on facebook Messenger like you did so it's a link automatically and you can click on it like send them that like dollar amount which is really annoying because sometimes I just want to say like oh it costs this much and then as I oh do you want to send this person like five hundred dollars but it's so it's Levin most popular but why aren't people just using their bank surfaces because you can you can send that money through text message now right yeah a lot of them off for that I do it through chase yeah I do it through bank of america I think a lot of it really has to do with the fact that like venmo has been around for five years and it came first and it was one of the biggest ones and so it created this viral phenomenon with the social feed so if you start using it you try to make your friends start using it yeah and it has this build effect that's the only reason I jumped on venmo i was using paypal to like give my friends money on their hands like just go on venmo and give me the money like i don't even know yeah and I was telling like download paypal instead because yeah i use paypal or switched over to still use paypal venmo but then there's older then loes a verb and venmo has emojis I'm pretty much won the war out on this one so is it doesn't matter because vendre now I mean it's like I mean you take a look at it we're like yahoo came before google but then it's just one of those things where right everyone uses it so i'm using that yeah and by the way just a plug for ben's video if you haven't had a chance go on cnet watch the video that been shot with one of the vendor co-founders as he interviewed random New Yorkers at Grand Central Terminal uh asking them if they use them if they've heard of them though some of those responses are priceless the one woman there's one just the one woman the purple ladies surest person we found we won't we won't spoil for you but you really gotta watch that vid night it's awesome thank you I'd the first make the first comment I saw in our YouTube channel was she was a true hero cnet hire her hahaha her name is Regina she reached out to me on Facebook afterwards and thank you very much for being interviewed Regina you choose if she was issuing so much follows her reaction to the video did she want I sent her the video I haven't heard back yet but I told her she was very much the star of that video was yeah you should venmo like guess I should read more well you can't know we're game for sources so you can only you can only Bend like a zero sense key to vendo 0 I'll send her any because I've tried to do it as an insult to somebody but I think you're worth this much I do want to test something out to Alfred you you had this idea so it was my birthday on march ninth I didn't mention it on the show but now that we're talking about venmo if you want to venmo me fifty cents I want to see anybody even father's doing this probably i'm probably gonna get a boost actually if it happens you i'm gonna require quietly you write a story about this okay all right and my handle is as my name Ben Fox Rubin oh my god that's it we'll see once I feel like 25 cents I me done just one cent tell me one sec I'm gonna make money yeah I asked for 57 come on man I didn't say you can get a stick a gun for that so shut up yeah but anyway we'll see if anybody even you know a crab legs look yeah her like at least a cupcake since I'm only asking for a penny so I do have any questions actually really not really it's pretty quiet in the chat today however we should probably brush on the self-driving cars again yes so after all of this it just keeps popping in my head this is a right time it's a perfect time to reboot maximum overdrive ooh the Stephen King the Stephen King movie movie / book but he actually wrote the screenplay for the movie and co-directed a truck was horrified that's not the car kills people no it's like multiple it's try like all kinds of you it's technically all technology gets possessed by this uh asteroid just passing by earth I just call trucks and that's the big showdown is like heavy machinery corners a bunch of people into a gas station meanwhile you see this carnage or people are like getting choked by their toasters chased by a remote control car it sounds silly but it's like just violent enough to still be cotton oh you're way more horrifying realistic today the truck has the Green Goblin on the front of it yes that's that's what I remember and it's got Emilio Estevez and there's a rocket launcher and it's awesome and I love that movie so much and I think then they need to reboot it all right all right until you tell until you have money yeah there's like a futurama episode that parodies that when all the robots take over here yeah yeah but everyone also say like that the the robot takeover I for one welcome our robot over that like that's not a new concept that's not originated that the spin on the whole Stephen King thing was like the the the semi trucks yeah and now that we've got self-driving cars and be more like a computer virus infects in they all go oh that's so that's a plot that's like the farm fascinating fade in the fate of the Furious the latest fast in the Furious movie uh no that Vin Diesel turning on his whole his bros and family no that's the plot Slater's trailer we're like Charlize Theron is like all right oh you're right yes like like all new york city like just oh so yeah yeah it's some of the worst cgi I've ever seen but that wasn't see you like some of the cars crashing out of the parking lot you know that there was a flood of cars coming in from on the streets that looked like really bad CD the part in that trailer that really does i heard this is really stupid was when the rock like there's like a wooden yes I was like torpedo and he actually punches the torpedo aside and it blows up other cars like I don't know if that stupid or awesome cuz all right I don't want to see driving cars yeah it's any more realer but they're loving it all right Oh in related news Jacob craft wants a Knight Rider reboot which they already tried yeah they tried it with the UH suppose a Mustang you think I forget what the model the car was no related question related question was kid autonomous yes yes yes absolutely wait like it drove you can try to Rome itself yeah that's right it would always go to like it has to be able to like talk to kids rides right now I feel like Knight Rider and 2017 wouldn't work though because like when it came out in like the 70s it was not only the future of science fiction show that it's real what is it okay yeah uncle has that is my grandma that's way you talk to a watch and it like yeah yeah I can see that like that's real I don't think that's why the the reboot failed I think it failed because it was just crappy show yeah that Matt had no Hasselhoff so before we wrap it up today huge yeah let's go around the horn um we got a question from Zachary and I'm kind of paraphrasing here but like I let's find out from each of you if you personally are in favor of and find self-driving cars in that market and that future safe Ben would you ride in a self-driving car I've ridden in a self-driving car I wrote and one immobilized self-driving cars on the highway and at work and he survived and I survived and it was fine I mean do you think there's a difference in performance between an open highway and crowded City yes yeah absolutely yeah open much much safer taking way more intelligence to actually drive the city for that machine vision for the responsiveness that's why she comes in and all those other things like all these other technologies have actually come to promotion before self-driving cars actually work well everywhere the thing about it being in a city though is that it wouldn't be self driving cars coexisting with cars that are already out there it would just be like whole fleet of what no no no but that's the thing that's the dilemma is early on it's not gonna be it's not like you turn on a switch in every car self yeah they're gonna be like five or six self-driving cars for everyone to maximum overdrive catch fire yet but the problem with like urban areas is that they're designed for people to be driving around so like self-driving cars you know like what's the point of having all these parking lots of all these cars are driving on their own any exactly yeah you could build them out and you know never argue until they put forth legislation you will never take um manual let's cut manual drivers what is going to be regular regular drivers off the road now right that's kind of problems happen it's actually like I I'm of the belief that self-driving cars are safer than just human drivers but the problem is when you mix human and self drive together then yeah I've got this combustible mix i think the going back to the original question to the baseline involves the fact of like what we're currently living in and what we're currently living in is 3 30 thousand deaths a year or like automotive residents and you know crashes so if it improves from there then i would i would consider it a success we got a really good question but we actually have to go because you gotta go somewhere Ben but let's table this because this is a fantastic question and we'll bring it back up because I'm sure those will come up in another show but think about this one for the future how about misinformation on the web interpreted by your self driving car like knowing one row one way road was a two way or something like that yeah its liability on the manufacture the cars that could be on google or whoever the map that's a great cause actual really a debate about that yeah yeah what it's cable that because tables until another self-driving car and what time is it it's a little 25 I've got I've gotta run oh yeah you gotta run yeah alright if you liked anything you heard or saw here check us out on cnet our podcasts also available on itunes tune in stitcher SoundCloud feedburner and google play music and an orsina a sub-site know i know i know and maybe you'll see you tomorrow we're not sure yet cuz we've got a blizzard coming in tomorrow we don't know if we'll actually be here so maybe you'll see you tomorrow yeah we can stroll away from home and open tamas we'll figure it out yeah thanks everybody well