Gadgetory

and on Wednesday February 14th happy Valentine's Day you're all my Valentines I'm BVG it's the 359 episode 356 and here's Alfred Inge and Roger Chang happy Valentine's Brian you told me I was your Valentine you're all my Valentine way to be politically say in their trade alright so we're gonna be talking about do watch your chairman yep we're gonna be talking about Qualcomm's latest modem and how that's gonna supercharge your phone's connection speed your future phone maybe not the one but you have today but in the near future and how basically you don't really need 5g yet we've got four G's getting pretty fast on its own I will also be talking about cryptocurrency and why criminals are in love with it and lastly we're gonna talk about a magic leap scoop from our colleague John salesmen out of the code conference so without further ado if you have any questions leave it in the comment section Brian will pick up the best and we will get to them in three minutes and 59 seconds from three to welcome to the 359 I'm Roger Chang I'm Alfred Eng can't wait for five Jeep well Qualcomm may have the next best thing it just unveiled its X 24 LTE modem and that's a walkie term for a modem that promises to gigabits per second of speed just a frame of reference that's twice as fast as the fastest possible speed you can get from home internet service and would allow you to download a seven gig Ultra HD Netflix video in 28 seconds so pretty fast yeah I'm just gonna be downloading a ton of stuff from Netflix now because of this I mean realistically though assuming that I have this modem but like my provider speed isn't fast enough like what's the point yeah so that that's definitely a great point these are these are theoretical peak speeds the more realistic speed you'll get or closer to 200 to 600 Meg's still very very fast that's our to be a downer here no no it's it's an excellent point to bring up this chip doesn't come out with this motor doesn't come out around 2019 at that point the thinking is that the carriers will upgrade their network so your your speeds will get significantly faster I don't know if I'll get up to speeds everywhere but in select pockets and they're gonna start rolling out more broadly it'll actually get that fast 92 gigabits well we're talking 206 I think the more important question is though will it get to a speed where I can mine for crypto currency like efficiently pretty much yeah I don't I think I think they should be selling that up that should be the surrogate Netflix on that is an excellent segue to our next piece on cryptocurrency cryptic currencies like Bitcoin and why they're so attractive to criminals Alfred you wrote you broke down the story what what is it that's so appealing yeah criminals criminals love cryptocurrency the biggest appeal of it is that it's not tied to your bank account like we had mentioned on previous of these podcasts you know blockchain is essentially decentralized there's no like bank or anything like that so it's hard to follow a paper trail I have read this one story where essentially in these like divorce cases a lot of people were putting their money into like Bitcoin and their cryptocurrency wallets so that the lawyers couldn't track it down for like alimony or anything like that which is insane but yeah I mean that happens in a lot of like cybercrime too so like a lot of these drugs that people are buying online or a lot of malware that people are buying online all of that has to do like you have to pay for that in some way and a lot of them they do it with cryptocurrency so that's like essentially been like their way of moving around there's and now bitcoin is like two popular criminals right yeah essentially you know with Bitcoin it's not it's not as simple as like I give you money here you have it kind of thing like immediacy thing it takes a bit of processing time that's why there's all these miners out there and because bitcoin is so popular it's gotten to the point where like some days you'll have to wait like four days to get your money and if you're a criminal like that's a lot of time wait and essentially you know sometimes people will do these scams where like I send you the money but because it takes four days you ship me the product and I already retract it back to my wallet before it like gets to you so people are like really concerned about that - all right plenty of risk lastly we want to talk about this scoop from Jones salesmen out of the code conference magic leap it's a startup you may not have heard of but really buzzy companies like Google and Qualcomm invest in it it's got this crazy mixed reality headset no one's really tried yet but everyone seems to be super excited about they told Joan exclusively that they are working to partner with a major telco later this year that's that's significant because they're about to launch the first headset but they're already talking about how a subsequent generations are hinting at least the subsequent generations might have a cellular connections you can go out on your own I really want to see what magic leap has to offer and I think it partnering for major telcos like a great move because you know it gets a lot of eyes on it yep but at the same time it's just like this feels like the Duke Nukem Forever of like VR there's like they've partnered with like they had Shaquille O'Neal at the code conference like wearing their sad they have like Beyonce use it and all this stuff but it's just like what do they actually do yes there's no we haven't really seen a real product I mean there have been some minor testing and there's some select individuals have tried it but yeah I'm really gonna see what happens with it so for those stories and more check us out at sea net from Roger Chang I'm Afra dang thanks for listening and it's time to go and ahead and jump back into the chat I'm gonna dig out some good questions and comments in the meantime you can talk amongst yourselves I like your Duke Nukem analogy I thought that was deadly it's gonna get to a point where like there's all this hype for it and when it actually comes out it's like it's just I know and then like the vision he laid out was amazing like the idea that this partnership with the NBA like eventually you wear these headsets and you'll be able to see if this miniaturize stadium with players running around you'll see 7 virtual screens around you showing the action on different displays different camera angles holographic projections there was all this stuff and he's like yeah this will happen in two years happened five years but like yeah we haven't seen an actual there are the only people that are the only company that I've seen that could get momentum from Beyonce and not go anywhere with it you know what there's still there's plenty of hype and there's a lot of big important backers behind it yeah that's the thing so that's why people don't you can't really write it off because it's just there are a lot of people invested yeah maybe I'm just very cynical that well you are a cynical person this is true this is true this is why I am great in the tech world well look it's and I do think it's a it's a good step in the right direction if they do cement a deal with a major telco that usually implies they've got an actual product that there yeah sell that's that you know the telcos aren't just gonna sign a deal for them for nothing you know for just vaporware so hopefully that means we'll get to see them soon they're they're already talking about magically one will be will be coming out later this year they said it's gonna be the price of a of a premium computer this is a stand-alone headset yeah yeah I know I know I know you the thing is the cheap alfred like the price of a premium computer would definitely change by the time it comes out - oh that's that's a good point I don't know I like that I imagine Sagi has thrown us a good analogy for the the hype train is all I could think of his IT 2.0 where they were so much high for the segue before we knew what it was right was the nickname for it what do you mean way the SCOOTER yeah I thought it was always just called segue no no no I before we knew what it was oh I have no idea I don't recall there was a they all have like manufacturing names like the Gamecube was the dolphin and right right right they're just trying to hide the hype I guess there's just like in production mode yes Matthew catcher is kicking us off with a batch with our first great question any speculation on how much the carriers will charge for 5 g 4 5 g or more more it'll be more well here's a sad thing like it is actually gonna be cheaper for them to deliver services to you but at least one carrier does or to go on the record and said that they see 5g as an opportunity to raise prices jerax yeah to be fair they have the lowest prices in the industry and they've been really aggressive in trying to get people to come how much how much was the price jump going from like 3G to LTE when like that was available that's a great question because I thought I was under the impression as a person that's never paid a phone bill I was under the impression that the price stayed the same because it's a rough name I mean what happened was when LTE became probably available I think like everyone had it but that were plans started changing right that was still around the shift you couldn't have unlimited data yeah going away from a lid so you know there was definitely that kind of that dynamically so I don't know we'll see if the other carriers you know follow suit at least Brett has said that you know they kind of see it as an opportunity so race yeah so we always use like downloading a Netflix movie as like a metric for a leg yeah this speed right so you're saying with this you'd be or with 5g you can get like a gig movie like an hour-long movie in what like two seconds seconds okay how fast is a right now and lt like really what depends on the movie right like yeah the example I gave was a seven gig Ultra HD okay the super highest possible movie I mean that could take every type every time like we bring up this scenario with like five G I'm just thinking like what kind of maniac is out there just like I'm getting this and I'm getting this well let me the thing we're just like and I don't know if it would actually work theoretically is like Alfred they're called Millennials well you could use your phone as a theoretical hotspot yeah could power that's like the better scenario for me not right I mean it's just easier to paint yeah we use these examples to kind of paint the picture of how fast five used yeah I don't think anyone's like going out here downloading everything of Netflix I mean I think the example I gave for a long time was like downloading the entire catalog of The Simpsons show in like half an hour yeah I mean that's kind of saying yeah but it gives you a good picture of how fast it yeah not that you're necessarily going to download or series but you know it's good yeah show how fast it goes let's talk about 5g versus 4G elephant in the moon Scott Maya is a man after my own heart with the curmudgeon II questions at hand I love it surely the network should concentrate on for 4G full coverage before working on 5g yes that is an excellent point I think what in all missing in all the hype about 5g is these carriers are still going to continue to invest in 4G and LTE in particular that's why you have announcements like this X 24 motive this is an LTE modem out of 5g mode ok good clearance so this really shows that carriers the chip makers everyone is still invested in 4G there's you know I think he Mobile CTO just said that they're gonna be investing in LTE to the next decade yeah but if your modem is like even if your modems really fast if I'm in a rural region that doesn't get it what's your point I think that kind of what his question is though you know like how about expanding this network to everywhere so that and that is happening some of the carriers are doing t-mobile has invested in expanding coverage I mean David notoriously were really good in big cities not so much elsewhere you know they've they've acquired spectrum they've got this what's known as a 600 megahertz spectrum that is a lot wider coverage so they're promising a lot better coverage in areas where they traditionally haven't had coverage so those are new areas the carriers are still investing in improving current coverage but right now there's a lot of excitement over 5g which is why we keep talking about it question from jeffer do you think that once 5g hits mainstream they'll just give out free phones to everybody no let go okay he references how kind of like Amazon did with the cheap tablets how it tons and tons of ads and them just for the sake of the data collection uh I mean I imagine some companies potentially doing that you're never gonna get a free iPhone from Apple yes like I on the side there might be really millennial we've we've been doing this show for almost two years oh my god that just happened this time talking about 5g guys were like stop talking about 4G 5g damn it anyways back to the question at hand I forgot the question was the question was about free phones giving away free phones we know Apple's never about other capitals never gonna do it I mean there's an argument that you can make for Amazon potentially doing this although they've gotten burned no pun intended by the fire phone so maybe they're a little gun-shy from going back into the handset business you can see companies doing I mean Amazon was offering those Amazon exclusive phones from the likes of if they if they did they were discounted but they had ads yeah so that what does that right off Amazon right if they did do it I would be like budget phones like the Moto G yes people are especially people who are buying iPhone 10 are not gonna want an iPhone with they're not they're not gonna yeah they're not gonna give away a phone like a premium like thousand-dollar phone for something that they know people are gonna buy anyway just for my sake of like collecting ads there's early 5g phones are gonna be expensive in walkie that's it's not if they're gonna do it'll be with a 4G phone like a cheap cheap 40 phone you know what I miss when you could upgrade to the free baseline model without actually having to invest anything like when you're when you're oh yeah they always had the free phone always that's what I always did right and you can't do that anymore really the good old days was like every year like every two years at least not from me on a GT well the thing of it is is your service price technically could be cheaper though like they change the dynamics around but you can find a way to save money you'll have a crappier you have a crappy old phone but like I just missed the lazy exchange right yeah that one grand but that that wasn't that was a time with like really feature phones it wasn't really all about smart phones you didn't have a good baseline smartphone you could trade up to no but I would gladly get last year's model because it would yeah yeah yeah you know anyways welcome to the show Jules catch up first time kitchen a live show nice to have you you know a dog asks I never get tired of saying that what would be the latency of a 5g network ooh that is an excellent question they're promising a latency of I believe 0.2 milliseconds and I I don't know what the LTE lane C is but it's a lot more it's like 10 milliseconds I mean basically it's a pretty large difference it's almost they're saying it's near real-time which you know seems like it's obvious but our networks now aren't real time at all there's a huge lag between you know when you you click the bun on your phone and it goes to the network and you know ask for a website and it comes back so with with 5g the latency so low that theoretically like as soon as you hit a bun on or hit you know clicking a link for a website like it'll pop up immediately you think that with something like that that you know online gaming would be really changed like mmm O's that are like actually mobile like I can play World of Warcraft like yes out here zero lag you have interesting I mean the bigger thing with latency is I mean the big example always give it a self-driving cars right but absolutely need to have real-time awareness of everything around it five g's that's why found five GS or the foundation forget about the cars man about gaming chart play pokemon alright i'm my phone alright all these billions of dollars getting invested so Alfred can get his Pokemon on question from Josh Boyd uh when carrier switched to 5g will LTE become like 3G in rural areas no I mean LTE for a long time I mean it's that when it's not like when Verizon or AT&T switches on the five you know or if they switch off the LT know that that thing's gonna be running for a while I guess the analogy is somewhat it will be somewhat more accurate as 5g starts mature thing 3G or LTE gets kind of pushed to the background it becomes more of a foundational network but that's gonna be a while for a while those who are going to coexist and has to you because like 5g the way it's structured sometimes the range isn't that great so you'll need LTE is that kind of baseline connection for a long time sure absolutely imagine soggy when will the fun limited 5g actually come to fruition ooh I mean we've got really we have technically unlimited plans now so I wouldn't surprise me if they start things off with the limit plans and then see where it goes a lot of is we're not sure what kind of applications are gonna be running on 5g to take up the kind of traffic that you know LT kind of let's deal with now so I'd imagine like right off the bat you'll see unlimited plans on 5g I mean it's it's a lot cheaper for the carrier's to deliver that that service to you so maybe I'm just being idealistic but I'm hoping for unlimited right off the bat and who do you think is going to be testing this like the petri dish for this first like what country is going to get it first the answer Aki's question oh I mean I think Korea hasn't now they have an early version of 5g in like very very limited basically for the Olympics like oh that's only for the Olympics it's like super limited to like hey give me a phone call or whatever or 5g I think Korea Japan and the US are sort of the ones leading the way with 5g and you'll see some version of 5g later this year with Verizon as it sort of a hombre band replacement and 18t says it's going to launch five G as a mobile service in 12 markets layer this year hmm alright a couple more before we call it a day Scott Myatt do you think mobile networks will ever replace hardwired Wi-Fi whoo I I kind of hope so I have my doubts and I'm concerned that is the promise of 5g that I'll theoretically make Wi-Fi less critical in your home because it's just she--but goodness it's fast it's cheap to provide and it's more secure yeah but I mean that's gonna take a while 5g networks it's gonna take years for this thing to build out and be like broadly available so I wouldn't hold my breath that we'd lose quite fine time soon and then in terms of like an actual physical broadband connection we're gonna need that for a little while - do you think that's gonna result in who was that they were experimenting with Wi-Fi with like blimps right in South America with like this like giant plane to record a key it wasn't Wi-Fi though they're broadcasting cell signals yeah sounds like sorry yeah they're basically like a portable mini cell tower yeah yeah how do you think that's gonna be like the the future of the the landscape of drones everywhere broadcasting a little like in Batman there's just blimps floating through the city oh yeah kind of gnarly and gothic what a terrible doctor yeah that's kind of grim just like only because these blimps would and they don't have to put cameras and everything because there's always a camera watching from the sky like the blimps wouldn't be like coaster in Batman though like like dreary and like dark and stuff it'd just be like these blimps I like sponsored by Google like this in your sky all the time you'd know it wouldn't be darkness and I would be like very colourful because all the blimps are colorful I think that would be an efficient way to get a lot of birds with one stone you know that's ad space up there yeah brother I in the sky watching every move you make it's like a Goodyear blimp except the only message it's like Wi-Fi the Wi-Fi password is like a dog has kind of a branching question off of this do you think ISP will stop supporting hardline Internet oh that's a really good question I don't know I feel like there's there's a dependability to hardline connections that just makes it kind of indispensable Wireless can get knocked out pretty easily right so yeah I don't see a reason for them to stop supporting it the only reason is that it's expensive mm-hmm it's harder and more expensive requires more people to maintain a physical network and like in terms of building out new networks that's really tough right it's like digging up you know sidewalks and putting in cables that's it that's hard that's why these companies are really looking to to wireless I mean Google basically with the Google Fiber right they've kind of like completely stopped trying to build out physical networks and like investing in mostly Wi-Fi so wireless stuff yeah right a couple to change things up before we call today jiff er do you think more companies like the big three will lock down all phones like Verizon just did I see all those phones being the same they do the same thing they think care carriers are going to stop secondhand sales altogether uh I mean look the truth is on their minds now the other carriers already lock their phones and they already have waiting periods what Verizon's did basically and you know you could argue that they're they're reneging on their commitment to keeping phones unlocked they're arguing that they're doing this to combat thievery Verizon's basically joined the ranks and putting in a policy that's consistent with what the rest of the industry is doing so I I don't see the other and the other companies looking to like push that even further right I think it's more Verizon just sort of getting in line with everyone else even though it's a bit of a controversial move I've you know I've noticed like the folks like at t-mobile that like the other carriers have been pretty quiet about this whole thing so I know I think they've seen the reaction to the move by consumers and they just don't want to be part of this right okay one more before the end of the show dacher asks when will Bitcoin mining collapse a national power grid all right Alfred well it has me all focused in one area and the thing about it is it's you know I think if everyone were mining within like one neighborhood in like New York or something I thought it would probably that would probably yeah what wasn't I read somewhere that like Iceland Iceland crypto mining is so popular like they're gonna run out of power yeah yeah yeah I saw that article I think I think it was from The Washington Post yeah this is about you know it takes up a lot of energy imagine like your computer running at like it's full processor like all the time instantly yeah and you know people I like very expensive computers for this that's why a lot of people don't mind on their own because like if they because the money that you make from it will eventually end up like costing you more like your hardware yeah your electric bill will cost you more than the money then yeah you make like all of cryptocurrency like all these like mining machines like take up the entire energy of like the nation of Singapore right which is that said yeah I think in Steven Jenkins article it talks about how it could power like thousands of homes in a day like if they did that instead but the thing is it's like spread out or across the world so it's not like all these machines are like hammering down on one network unless maybe Iceland has like a lot of miners there or someone yeah I guess it's like geographically huddled together that's why a lot of companies are not a lot of companies sorry a lot of like cryptocurrency miners are actually using like botnets they're using like other people's machines that they've like because it's easier yeah they they essentially like install malware on stuff and botnets used to be used for like DDoS attacks which would like take down a website but now it's just like why are we gonna do that we can just mined for that money and there's a cool term for it right crypto Jackie I love it someone was paid a lot of money for the Brendan yeah crypto jacking just sounds pretty cool I read about this research two days ago called it's it's drive-by crypto jacking where I mean this comes from like a another like security term called war driving where you drive around with like a Wi-Fi network on you and you try to get people to automatically connect to it right but in this scenario when you automatically connect to it it like loads up software it loads up this screen that's like a capture screen that's basically like enter this code to prove you're not a bot right if you want to connect to our Wi-Fi and people just enter the code in but every second then you're not entering the code your processor on your phone is being used is like at like it's max percentage I have this lightning for them I have this terrible image in my head of like somebody dressed up like the the Hamburglar running around with like a 5g hotspot a big battery and like a barcode scanner that you see next door just sneaking up the people and like their wallets just I have your crypto crypto Jack is actually my new space pirate names I was like it this needs to be like a Sunday morning comic or some like that the crypto checker by the way if you all learn more about crypto jacking bridge carey has a great video that's in Alfred story yes that just went up today as always the links are going to make a fantastic parody of an infomercial very entertaining and educational at the same time which you know that tries to I helped there you go Brian yes Brian did you had a you played a critical role in the video hold camera yeah yeah no oh yeah that was fun I just hope I hear me out for a second I have another image running through my head my imaginations on fire today so we're talking about collapsing the National Grid and like the collaboration and aggregation of all of the the crypto jackers into one place imagine if they pooled their cryptocurrency but an island off out someone actually opened well and then they get the they they self fund a data blimp right and then they set up a solar farm and they say and then they they itself it becomes its own like nation state and then like the world collapses around them and that is the next season of black mirror so there's a there's an interesting a New York Times article about these folks these like cryptocurrency billionaires that bought like a ton of land in Puerto Rico that they're calling crypto Pia alright hey we gotta go actually times up so you want to take us out Brian me well do you want to play the music if you like tape that you saw heard here excuse Brian's craziness but check out our podcast on iTunes tune in stitcher feedburner google play music Amazon go and of course cnet.com thanks everybody see you tomorrow