Gadgetory

meltdown specter kaiser the computer industry was rocked by security flaws and costly fixes what might this mean for your pcs or your smartphones Apple takes a hit on new iPhone sales because of cheaper battery replacements and we'll chat out some of the rumors heading into this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas we've got a lot to talk about so make sure you're charged and ready for episode 2 8 6 of the PocketNow weekly record a January 5th at noon pacific time this weekly podcast is where we dis echt and discuss those gadgets that make our lives mobile smartphones tablets and wearables it's all the stuff you wished existed when you were a kid and Las Vegas was probably a way dirtier place to go visit than the Disneyland for grownups that it's become I'm Juan Carlos back now senior editor Pacquiao comm joined as always by plucky podcast producer mr. Jules Wong on the East Coast how's it going sir good afternoon and it's pretty cold it's pretty windy there was a bunch of snow that fell apparently ice shove is one of the terms that we should be putting in along with balm cyclone when coming into this because we had a like a good stretch of very like negative degree weather outside for the week prior to the storm so there was a lot of harbor I guess and then that got shoved up at the storm surge and yeah that apparently we're having going we're gonna have a fun time trying to melt this down yeah I mean it's even scary out here I think we're predicting lows of 55 here yeah I mean it's like of the Polar Ghost covered in sea rose it would like merge those I mean that's also why you know like after you join us for this hour of podcasting will be doing the PocketNow weather forecast brought to you by you brought to you by all the OEMs of the mobile industry the in the infinity display that we you'll be using the maps and stuff that's going be exciting to see so I'm we're gonna we're gonna be we're gonna be detailing are coming up our adventures in Las Vegas over the next couple days but I do not envy you flying out of the East Coast right now so I'm hoping you know you have safe conditions to make it out my plane starts up that's just start what starts up and you'll be travelling around the same time as Jaime and he's all about you know his in his previous life he was all about airplanes and stuff used to work for an airport or something I think ups I'm sure I'm sure he is well versed in like airplane de-icing protocols and stuff so he'll be going out you know all the way up to Boston to but this is not what our show's gonna be about this I'm sure there's all kinds of tasty news about 747s and stuff that we could delve into but that's not what we're going to talk about I just before we jump into the actual conversation the top news stories from pocketnow.com Jules how might someone get in contact with us for the show if they would like to join the conversation so contact at Bombardier comm sorry dot see a contact at Embraer comm know I'm Kennedy uh way to contact us is to talk to us via our Twitter with the p-n weekly hash tag that's P and weekly and you'll be able to enjoy in on the conversation whenever we get to our live broadcasts as we usually do on a Friday and if you can't make it well we certainly have those emails that we want to stack up for our mail bag episode that happens at the end of the month and you can submit those to nano calm soapy and weekly hashtag on Twitter or podcast at pocketnow.com just tell us what you want to talk about we'll talk about it yeah we already have a couple tweets in from from people watching the show live we'll be getting to those cuz they're actually on topics that we're gonna be discussing so some some really cool stuff that we're expecting to see over over the next week and I guess Jules we should probably just kick it off man what what was the news like this week leading into one of the world's largest consumer electronic trade shows bring for the week of January 1st 2018 this is all the news that's with the podcast we're talking about two new industry-wide bugs that people should be worried about on top of Wi-Fi is crack attack but we have to talk about there's also meltdown and specter and basically these vulnerability is just just milk well meltdown the holes the the the partitions between apps and the data that it's getting sent along and Security's at risk and this affects that runs on Intel arm so pretty much any smart device computer that you have right now so definitely a concern companies are working to patch that as we speak although the specter one is going to be a little bit tougher to deal with Spotify is planning on getting into the market through direct listing listing with an exchange Axios first reported that the music streaming company from Sweden has filed documents with the SEC in the u.s. to make that deal possible now this could allow capital investors to cash out and also avoids a lot of the fees that Spotify would have to incur from entering through a traditional IPO sequence going in there is no LD g7 apparently these games with numbers that were playing you might have heard that the Huawei P level might have not happened in favor of the quali P 20 well same thing might be going on over here with the LG G 7 giving way to the LG G 10 or LG G X Roman numeral 410 could still be called g10 because iPhone games iPhone 10 iPhone X yeah who knows at this point what would do now is that LG Display did not make any displays for the iPhone 10 iPhone 10 obviously what there's a OLED display so I'm Samsung but it is ready to go with future iPhone 10 orders or iPhone 10 esque orders 15 million panels the deal is going through almost finalized as is reported this week so it'll be interesting to see how we roll into more of the OLED competition more of those legacy LCD factories gone into it as we go on see you iPhone tens in general or in fact any iPhone actually because we're talking about the battery replacements discounts that are happening as a result of Apple's big apology that it slowed down older iPhones well at least one bank Barclays we're talking about is saying that this could have a meaningful impact on the bottom line from iPhones they're estimating a four percent drop in revenues for this calendar year because of that discounted replacements strategy they out of warranty battery placements are $79 usually now they're $29 and because this this could go out to potential upgraders who have would otherwise upgrade to a newer iPhone instead they're probably just gonna get a battery replacement so that could have impacts on the bottom line right there and finally CES 2018 is just days away and we're now learning that FCC Chairman a GTI has decided not to show up the consumer Technology Association said in the statement that's the chairman who helped lead the votes on the repeal of net neutrality rules for ISPs so this is just unable to attend at two panels he was scheduled to appear on a1 then was his fellow FCC chair excuse me commissioners and also after the Federal Trade Commission as well another on the Federal Trade Commission just as a panel by itself so definitely a lot of interesting news going on here I want to start off with Spotify we've been talking about Spotify as this money-losing entity streaming music still the growing in terms of popularity of in terms of take a subscription numbers just this week Spotify recorded its seventy million subscriber paying that $9.99 I know $15.99 for that family excuse me $14.99 for that family subscription so and there's also this lawsuit that's going on to with Wixon music publishing it represents Tom Petty where was Cuomo from Weezer a lot of big names and they're trying to eat get 1.6 billion dollars or some sort of at least better negotiation terms because it's a results of negotiations of for licensing back when Spotify made its debut in the US that these licenses completes that they were not well done and they're trying to against the leverage on that so well it is sting in media and entertainment where we watch both film TV and music all kind of repeat the same mistakes that their other counterparts keep making like moving from home video to streaming services mmm like the the movie industry signed away rights in a way that I was was very not good for her how people usually like monetize those kinds of services especially like when you look at how the actors unions negotiated for residuals on things like feature films new technologies came out and they completely underestimated the impact that these new technologies would have and I feel like the music industry is still reeling from the double whammy of illegal and legal online music sales so I mean this was that oh that's been decades in the growth but that's it is you know a lot of these things these contracts that company sign are years long contracts not decades long contracts but years long contracts and those renegotiations over time you you sort of then start to see what the zeitgeist is going to do I mean think about three years ago how competitive Apple was in the streaming music sector as compared to how competitive they are today and how services like Pandora only had a certain chunk of the overall music market Spotify represents a much bigger conglomerate of all of the media that you can stream and listen to and they're breaking out into other avenues - like getting into podcasting and stuff well I mean I see it as you know roll on effect from the Napster kazar days where you know pirating was the rule of the day when you just didn't want to buy you know whole albums for $9.99 anymore and that led to downloads being in single track downloads that led to just these very devalued was like they're counting like 1,500 streams for a dollar or something like that oh it's way less than that probably because we lost the power of terrestrial radio I mean there's them because rainy radio I mean you know the shift of audience to more spoken word and you know more live coverage dude there's the radios always been a touchy I think indie radio has found a resurgence in popularity in this new internet driven era like like I'm a huge fan of Warren only KCRW to the point and an amazing news show which was just recently taken off the air and has been moved into digital broadcast only it's only a downloadable podcast now but it's still of the KCRW radio station lineup still produced by KCRW but what I mean is in in light of the insane amount of media conglomeration and media acquisition you don't have radio as the primary resource for music discovery anymore you use radio is sort of this terrestrial way to reinforce stuff that's already popular and so at the same time as we saw people now having the economic freedom to only buy one song and not have to buy a whole a CD a whole album for twenty dollars back in the late 90s oh and $20 yum used to be worth a lot more um now you also solve the weakening power of radio as a music discovery service and that just goes hand in hand with the rise of services like Pandora and Spotify but I'll be curious to see and I don't know Jules what do you think about some of these these talking points that they're not going to be filing for for capital there's the direct listing as opposed to a typical announcement we're gonna be sort of underwriting this IPO is this is this evidence that Spotify is trying to go into this with reasonable expectations and not trying to blow up their market value do you think they're already levered up as much as it is right now and they're as far as we as they've told the media they're just on the verge of of turning profit and they don't want to be saddled up with more little wasted sweater they have a good strategy going on and alright you know to them at least and I think they want to be able to keep on that eventually should just be able to exponentially wrap that up and it's just sort of it feels odd like or maybe even refreshing I don't know it leaves me feeling a little strange because like we're still kind of climbing out of this social media investor boom you know like snap you wanted those big numbers the huge valuation all of the people getting excited this is how we're gonna make money and here's a company that actually does have a product that's not just selling people's data you know personal information and they're trying to walk into this with I feel slightly more reasonable expectations on to what the valuation of their company is yeah I mean they have for them it's always been about surviving the climb for scale and they're in 61 markets now again as I just mentioned 70 million subscribers on them most of them in the u.s. to be frank but you know it's it's just I mean when you get more expertise and you grow and you're able to negotiate better terms with more parties foreign parties because of course you have to license per country and it's just but that's always fun but um yeah I mean they're learning I'm not sure Eve this wits and Lawson will be but wicks ins apparently very much willing to just get them back on the table well Spotify has been really under balling the the settlements proposal it's been to get it again it's all about money and putting a number on these things so speaking of one company that seems to be learning moving to another cup of putting a number of these things learning about what to put a number on their products do you think that the LG's problems are are in a name that name is gonna fix the problem we already have a tweet from Andrew Wallace friend of the show he guested a while back to help us talk about some news and he doesn't he doesn't think that let me just read the tweet pea and weekly honestly I don't believe the changing the name of the phone series will solve their problems better and more intensive advertising as well as working on quality assurance the consistency of their product it's probably the bigger deal then if it's a G and a number well they've always had a tougher time trying to advertise these series as we've you know discussed before and we'll get into the whole campaigns again but I don't know where the brand comes into this because it's you know again optimist it was a great brand name Optimus Prime it was it was transferred but we had right okay okay right there but yeah and with this I mean I'm not sure how much they're trying to mirror with its iPhone 10x kind of deal or if they're going to do the numerals anyways and just say I think it's just it's stupid well but don't you feel like this is a room decision that like there's some guy in a suit saying well there's the iPhone 10 and Samsung's gonna come out with a galaxy s 9 so if our product is the G 10 it'll sound like it's one better than Samsung's like that can't possibly have any effect any significant effect on consumer behavior right no one's gonna walk into an 18 t store and go oh I was gonna get the s9 but that G 10 oh that's gotta be one better I think I start calling it G phone 10 G phone 10 that's that's just what the R in an H phone 10 just to be that much closer to the I Wow well and then also to confuse it against what what the Google phone could have been called that the the poem no III I'm really curious to see what LG does to follow up the g6 I'm still using the V 30 as my primary daily driver phone all signs are pointing to them finally kind of getting there there they're manufacturing and gear I like the direction of the design language I don't love things like glass backs and ceramic could be interesting if they start moving in that direction but it's only been it was last month the beginning of last month beginning of December where I saw my first V 30 commercial on YouTube TV I that's that's not a great look and also knowing that it proud wasn't actually broadcast you know like it was on an on-demand video and they had some sponsorship there so I mean cool is the thing like not a roll cutter that's not it that's not really advertising your phone well Motorola I mean if we're talking about court cutters I might as well talk about broadcast primetime television Motorola I mean if that's still getting millions of millions a worse Motorola has been plastering it just adds every break and I've been able to watch you know I did bit of it's when there's a TV around and you know every time I turn around its a it's a moto phone with those colourful lips and people jumping around and even approaching the the entry in mid mid range way smarter I really got to give it up to Motorola like you'll walk into a Costco and you'll see a kiosk for Moto G fives and so you know that that kind of positioning deal costs the company money when they're doing business with an entity like Costco and I can't for the life of me think of any time where I've seen an LG product outside of a TV LG TVs definitely get some phone some floor space but I can't think of a single time where I've walked into a Best Buy I walked into a mall I walked into a Costco or some other you know retail brick-and-mortar store and seen any kind of positioning for an LG product like that um the end the commercial that I did see for the V 30 was ultimately very forgettable it was one of those attempts of being anthemic like this is how I'm gonna capture in my life this is gonna how I'm gonna capture danger this is how I'm gonna cap I mean like it was about the camera but it didn't really feature the phone much at all and it still had the same problem of we're gonna do things that look cool or sound cool or we think are funny and then only loosely tie that to an image of the phone at the very end of the commercial after people have already stopped paying attention to the 20 seconds of media that we ask them to watch and it just seemed like such a letdown after using this phone for a while which should have been a stronger contender this year yeah I don't know how the actual advertising dynamics of that would benefit them because we do have a tweet from Renato Laporte at riina-chan on Twitter P and weekly whatever the name of the phone is make some ads for it put some pop-up stores up get on social media I mean that's just basic stuff they actually have to like place those ads and I don't know if they have the money or will to do that so that's I I will be very curious to see I I really think that there's a huge opportunity for a company to come in right now and I'm thinking we'll probably see more from say POIs way in terms of making the big advertising push at the desirable consumer demographics I mean they're gonna be doing something at CES it could be the start of something new in the meantime lots of new stuff in the next year because this is 2018 and with that iPhones we could see the iPhone 9 or whatever the heck they're calling it but who cares it no one's gonna upgrade to it or excuse me 200 million people are gonna upgrade to it well yeah this this one I thought was kind of interesting is the who was it that did the Barclays oculus yep this to me sounded kinda like that Apple market correction which we've talked about for a while you know how long we're holding onto our phones what kind of sales can you expect it you know it's like when I took that really basic econ class and the professor was talking about what a failure Campbell's soup was because they couldn't be like 70% of the canned soup market and you're like well but that's a lot so they're still winning but because they couldn't keep growing in a saturated market were they dominated then they were now considered a failure so it didn't matter that they were the most successful canned soup company in the world they couldn't I mean again it well it's about but the generic term of shareholder value and let go they want to set for the company be in short-term or long-term so I mean like I'll take those students from marketplaces Kyra's though I think I don't know if it's my connection of yours but I think I just lost your audio yeah I can't hear you sorry Jules you started off so strong with Kairos doll I'm a fan Jules wait I'm hearing something there's I don't know battery great so now I have to figure out which of these all these batteries I have to replace with and I might be like I threw these batteries away in the trash and someone decided to pick up put them you know put them into this bin and I know that there are some new batteries in here that uh you know what while you're taking care of that we have gotten some tweets about Spector and meltdown so why don't I just tackle that story good we'll do it live live and we can at least talk about that this is a this is probably I think the biggest news story of the week is it has far-reaching implications and ramifications for the entire computing industry this is from from clay dough at Chatty boy on Twitter PN weekly has Intel detailed the specific performance it will be dealing with per processor generation by meltdown and Specter and from at msg pudding I would eat pudding with MSG in it that's probably delicious PN weekly wouldn't it be worse to say something about Specter because more people now know about it which means more people will try to abuse it so let's get into the to the particulars I shot a pair of videos on my own personal channel talking about the initial breaking news the register put out the story initially this is sort of beating all of the official press releases by a couple weeks or at least by one week and then all of the companies scramble to actually disclose what the information was because the initial reporting did get a few things wrong so we have two specific security threats that we were faced with and they're named meltdown and Spectre meltdown is the big scary immediate threat and this is a hole in Intel's processor security where information that your kernel your computer's kernel your operating system kernel relies on is going through these secure memory elements which can be accessed by user level programs so essentially like any random script kiddie a piece of Java you know an infected website could actually use this hole to call information from what should be a secure part of the processor Intel's solution and this is already being patched I think there's already a patch for Linux operating systems OS the the current build of OS 10 for Mac's already has part of this patched up we should be seeing the rest of it fixed in a very in an update soon if it's not even out by the time this show is broadcast and windows I believe there are if you're on a windows insider then you've already been patched against this and we should be seeing those fixes coming out soon too so what happens with meltdown is we need to redirect some of that secure information for the kernel in a way that ties up processor cycles so it does create lag and that's where we're seeing these estimates where we could see performance deficits from 5 to 30 percent depending on the processor older processors are gonna be hit harder and depending on the application now the important thing is that depending on the application is where I think a lot of people are actually gonna be ok the types of performance degradation that we're gonna see is really gonna affect more networking and database driven things that call information that have to pass through the kernel a lot that's really where we're gonna see the most significant slowdowns so this is a huge problem for backbone service companies and for cloud service companies because they're they're actually having to chew through this information organize this information and keep all of this information protected and often utilizing virtual machines to help with user accounts so that's huge that's a real bad thing as so much of this industry is built on Intel servers but for general consumers once you load the program hopefully that program is coated properly so that you don't see it calling information through the kernel regularly so loading a game we might see a scientific impact on how fast the game loads but once it's up and running it shouldn't be making a lot of calls like that to have to go through the kernel so we shouldn't see too much of a performance hit if any for most modern video game titles I'm still afraid that we're gonna see some hit for video editing and rendering because of the way that file systems are built that most video editing software sort of creates its own mini file system within the program and then that has to access the actual computer file system we could still maybe see some problems there now that all the work six texts well yeah but again what we're hoping to see is if a program is efficiently coded hopefully it won't be the full upper limit of performance hit or performance loss that people are worried about microphone our just the inserts on there no worries okay so that's the first one that's meltdown that one's actually really freaky scary Spectre we're only just beginning to unravel what the problem with Spectre might be so when when we when this information was disclosed I found Intel's response to this to be slightly disingenuous because they kind of did this press release saying well all computers have problems sort of trying to downplay the fact that meltdown was a huge problem specifically for Intel processors and Spectre is a design flaw in CPU architecture that is that has been around since I want to say for at least the last 20 years and so we have been making certain assumptions about security while trying to improve performance and it would turn out that some of those assumptions have not been completely accurate and so there is a potential hole we don't know of any real world exploits utilizing this hole but it affects every processor that's been made over the last 10 to 20 years and there's no real way to fix it outside of menu during new processors there are a few things that we can do to make it harder to exploit this hole there are a few things we can do to try and move information around in a way that's more secure but ultimately there's a hole in the bucket and the only way to fix it is to make a new bucket specter is going to affect or it has the potential to affect desktops laptops Mac PC Linux and processors developed by Qualcomm high silicon everybody everybody is going to be affected by spectre so to get to the question from from Colton from MSG pudding there there's there are two sort of ideas about security you can try and have security through obligation by trying to hide this information from the public or you can have security by broadcasting this information to the public I am a fan of the latter idea I think the more you try and keep these things under wraps the more likely the stuff will be exploited by bad actors around the world and we just won't know about it now that we know about it and people will have it on in their mind like when I upgrade my computer I want to get a CPU that's immune to the specter bug you have I think ultimately better security in the long run and yeah there's gonna be a lot of information that's gonna be coming out I think over the next couple weeks and when it comes to security because like I said we're only just starting to see the ramifications and that's not to say that someone might not find a way to exploit specter before we can get new hardware to fix the problem now there's always a question of who's disclosing what information with each of these vulnerabilities and I was wondering if how do you think the register handle did as opposed to perhaps learning the company's point thing at the time that they did dictate I I kind of feel that the register wanted the scoop I'm not entirely thrilled with how they went about disclosing this because they didn't have the complete picture on what all of the problems were i buy it also sort of shine alight on manufacturer behavior I don't think it's directly related to the discovery of meltdown but it's a bad look when the end of November Intel CEO is dumping millions of dollars worth of Intel stock six weeks before the the plan had kind of been created to disclose meltdown to industry insiders so we have a time frame where Intel was probably sitting on this information for over a month and meltdown was a scary enough problem that a month of it sort of being vaguely aware I meant that we probably could have seen some actual malware created by this maybe not weaponized like that North Korean hack like wanna cry but again people could have started to try and exploit that and we know how many computers would have been vulnerable who weren't currently getting updates that's also going to be a major problem for the computer industry or all the computers that are sort of end of life and not getting the same quality of security patches and so I'm torn on it sorry Jules long rambling way to say I'm torn on what the register did I'm glad that the register kicked off a conversation and forced companies to actually get on the ball in disclosing to consumers what was going on but a week later probably would have arrived just the same this information would have happened you know at the end of CES when we were all talking about tech and news and politics and stuff and I'm not sure how much of a benefit it was but good on them they got the scoop so I guess that's that's what's important and in terms of the arm impact because obviously going to have to bring it back to mobile here how much of this is really going to be I mean already we had the crack exploit and Google I feel fell down on its face with the decision to put it on as an extra level patch as a November 6 patch where and even take the fifth patch and they're all just stuck on the first date patch and it wasn't until a month later that they got that patch so where do we lie in terms of that kind of attitude that kind of a you know approach to fixing these and I share your sentiment I think I think it's disappointing for a lot of a lot of Android users out there knowing what the relationship is between Google manufacturer and carrier it's something that we've been we've been griping about for a long time is it's great that Google can fix holes in Android and it's great that we're getting these sort of monthly security updates but how many manufacturers are really on the ball and getting them to our devices and so we can continue to be frustrated with the manufacturers but after a point it's also just like what is Google doing to actually put pressure on these companies to provide the service that they really should be in an era where so much of your personal data is referenced by your phone I mean that's a primary computing device for many people maybe even most people now I'm so much more likely to check my phone for a lot of my daily life information than I am to wait until I can sit in front of a desktop so it's I think it's another data point that Google needs to not only lead this discussion but but make it more painful for companies not to play ball especially is we're in an era of thousand dollar smartphones it's really not okay that a smartphone which costs more than a laptop and is used more readily than a laptop will have these kinds of holes in priorities priorities where do they lie well after a downer of a story I think I really think because you know I'm all against death threats here because a GPA I know that you know he's been talking about that he's been facing them and even on a topic that has been so this really been just just been against this guy against you know do you know the repeal of net neutrality rules he shouldn't have to face death threats I mean that's that's the and OBO yeah I mean that's really the only thing I have to say about it we all know that we wouldn't have gotten any good information from him in these panels at CES that's not what we're upset about it's not that we would have been able to confront him a story just came out I just read it on reddit this morning that literally zero public comments were referenced in their repeal of net neutrality so we know that they're not acting in good faith as a public regulatory agency we know that this is regulatory capture and we know that they're just going to continue parroting the same industry talking points that they've been voicing since Egypt PI's been on the FCC Council if there's any shred of it you know just appearing as if you know you're a public serving the public then you would want at least you know face the fire of a spray of journalists I think that it's just it's simply you know you could you know manipulate the conversation with what I wanted to be is beforehand which PI did do you know with traditional media outlets and if this this topic itself has finished my point we we could all have been certain about this type of conversation from the FCC currently and their role joining a public forum at an event like CES and that still doesn't change my opinion that death threats are unacceptable it still doesn't change my opinion that it makes it makes us look bad and I don't want to throw on the tinfoil hat like oh maybe this was like a false flag death threat that they did to themselves so that he would have an excuse and could call us bad actors and it kind of matter I feel there are enough people even in the comments of my own videos there are enough people who are trying to docs him and are trying to join the conversation with a visceral tone that I'm sure makes people feel good when their keyboard warriors you know hiding behind YouTube comments but that doesn't actually improve the situation and it can only be pointed to as evidence that were unhinged and were whiny and we're cranky and we're not really thinking rational it's a great tactic that I think they've been borrowing from internet commentators for a while now you can you can drive outrage this way and then use it as evidence for continuing a pattern of behavior which is only just going to drive more outrage another hand that outrage isn't going to go anywhere because this is the Internet we're talking about this in and I'm not saying that as like underbelly comments thing I'm saying that this is the central point of which our lives revolve around these days so you know his his his home address is public as a public official and it's not like he's gonna get any break you know just by staying home or he even you know circling around his Washington building it's you know what difference would it make if he you know had attended that's all I'm saying oh and and I'm I'm very confident that it would have made zero difference not to be and to nihilistic about it we when it comes to things like net neutrality if you are for net neutrality then the fight has already moved into other avenues there's literally no point in spending energy on edgy pie I posted another video in editorial talking about how he's basically just a distraction he is great for you to waste your energy on but he doesn't actually join the conversation in good faith and the people who do need to hear from you are being ignored because we're all too busy being angry about edgy pie so he's he's fulfilling his role phenomenally well from the people in the administration that are trying to dismantle these types of consumer protections so if you and the people who already agree with this administration are contacting their elected officials so we're losing that fight on two fronts if you really want to join the conversation posting a dank meme about edgy pie on Facebook does literally nothing and also improve the situation and it's a waste of your own effort and energy in time I know it's a little odd you know effect journalists you know that will attend the event anyways but if you're a passerby or someone who's vaguely interested you should still go to these panels because I mean there were two Republican commissioners that voted for the the repeal printing car michael o'reilly they'll still be there as well as when you buy Bern and Jessica Rosen I can't pronounce her name but especially mignon Clyburn I'm gonna try because I just like to shake her hand the way that she has joined this conversation and her write-ups her dissenting opinions are phenomenally well thought out and I think she has become an excellent voice in this in this debate for delivering rational information and in a way that really does seem to focus on consumer benefit which should be the priority at the FCC we did get a tweet in from at Panzers e retweeting at tech ninja speaks death threats are never okay though he is up there with Ted Cruz for the most punchable face award and I would agree which means he is exactly occupying the role like he should were angry at him he's got the punchable face we're gonna spend time photoshopping him into all kinds of of meme images and literally nothing will happen from that effort or energy other than us feeling better about him being annoying I mean that with anything on this one what do you expect so well there are certainly more things they're important and then a jeep I or even ccr FTC that are going to be at the CES Lisa V CES not a CES vez yes which is which apparently stands for nothing as they have taken away the meaning of CES I think I last year or yeah I thought the Consumer Electronics Show I know I'm not supposed to but ever heard of this Consumer Electronics Show CES so we're gonna be going to assess 2018 and we have boy I'm particularly over our calendar here and yeah this is a fun so lots of pre briefs lined up between I think the main events are publicized so I can just go ahead and say ZTE TCL LG has a thing going on Samsung Samsung Sony is also going going to be later on the Monday evening but a LG Samsung mostly our main mid-range smartphones in term and also foldables tuned ones so those that might have be might be in our interest to cover maybe but maybe if we feel like it sony sony sony sony sony sony yeah you you see more hyped up about Cydonia then then well I guess my colleague is man I have really enjoyed my time with the Xperia compact mini that this year's xz1 see as opposed to the ex mini the XD 1c fixed a lot of the problems that I had with Sony phones from last year where the X line was just a mess it was not a fun time to like Sony products so if Sony can in earnest join the sort of entry-level or mid range conversation again with this sort of refreshed approach from some of the rumors that we've seen walking away from classic Sony chunky bezels giving us something a little bit more current with maybe a two by one aspect ratio or something just a little more svelte III would be very interested in seeing what they have to offer that would be I think that would go a long way towards improving their their status in North America maybe getting them back on the right track for a carrier deal again they sort of got burned during the original Xperia Z era with 18 T and with Verizon so that to me would speak to a Sony that's showcasing some potential again I would really like to see that happen to see a Japanese company join this conversation in earnest against you know South Korea and China do you think we're not being fair to them given the you know glib comments about oh it's the same thing oh look at the XA - it's it's the same ol same ol it's tough to say because in being fair to them I had a lot of problems with them in 2016 they were probably consistently my lowest reviewed ranked phones of the year especially coming from such a premier manufacturer named that Sony name should mean something whereas this year I had a hard time putting the compact down I really know what that phone even for some of the obnoxious decisions on things like the camera app you know like the actual performance Android Oreo on an 835 on a low resolution screen that thing is a screamer that I think the only phone that really competes is the smaller pixel yeah so that to me it one year year-over-year progress has been astounding I will forgive them the recycling of their Ultra boxy form factor in design so if we can see Sony executing like that and improving on that line of phones with that kind of attention to detail I could be very excited about a Sony phone again I mean for the upgrades and improvements they've done in terms of optimizing the software as well as you know just contributing to Android features in general through a AOSP like they should be getting more credit but I mean I mean I don't know how many of us are just all in it for the looks yeah well and the thing is I do actually kind of like the boxy design I don't I don't hate it I don't hate bezels I like having something chunky that you can hold on to i like the dedicated camera button i like the flat sides it's why i like the form factor of the LGG 6 better than the form factor of the V 30 even though the FIH 30 is overall a better phone it's it's all of those little touches and nuances so if you could just extend the screen on a Sony and leave the other dimensions pretty much the same I think that would go way towards addressing some of these issues that people have with the form factor but I don't know I think we're gonna see in 2018 most manufacturers going to skinnier slimmer infinity display style knockoffs smaller bezels and the whatnot so well we'll have to see how Sony addresses it but I don't know I'm tentatively very anxious and very curious to see what they might have to show because if they can join the conversation like I said really join the conversation in the mid range that might be the best place to do it where you don't have to take a risk on a Sony product at $900 I that would mean that they are way more competitive against all of these other phone manufacturers even a oneplus in the middle of the pack with a brand name that still resonates with consumers I'm just checking my flight schedule and I thought it was I thought for some reason I've been thinking that I was supposed to leave on Wednesday at 10:00 when we still had like a whole bunch of other stuff to get through in fact I'm leaving on the 11th which is a good thing oh yeah whatever yeah yeah well we could record a podcast or something that sounds nice let's see we can put it together that would be um but some other things things that I think we'll see I I think we can pretty much nip the rumors in the bud that we'll be seeing significant phone announcements from LG or Samsung I think those are more likely to fall around MWC timeline not CES timeline at all for the Alcatel we had story on it earlier in the day on pocket now I wasn't able to add on but apparently they're I think they're dropping the idol name and just going for like five or something the page is freezing up on me so I'm just uh I'm just gonna say that well again this this is what's such a bummer is um the problem isn't the name the idol name is fine it's just they had something of a correction year where they tried to take their phone line up scale from entry-level to mid range from Idol three to Idol for they just got hit with one of the worst years of processor manufacturing of all time they just had the wrong chipset in that phone by the time they actually launched it against phones that were using better components and they made a bet early on VR that didn't pan out for them so now Idol 5 especially the Idol 5s that is a great little phone I really like that phone and it totally deserves to be in the conversation against devices like Moto G's and Huawei honor or even totally um so again they might be just trying to help erase some of the memory of the idol for in the Idol 5 underperforming and so they're gonna call it something else but I really hope they continue to keep fighting in this space because stereo speakers on $200 phones with decent headphone jacks and good performance and nice battery life I mean these are all things that people care about these are all things that actually satisfy market demand when you ask people what they care about in a phone and Alcatel has been able to do this with some very attractive devices to man I mean you gotta have the idol 4s with the with the front and back speakers that go on I'm actually I'm actually a bigger fan of especially the chipset what is it the Qualcomm 625 in the the idol 5s is way better than the 652 in the Idol 4s but again it's it's this is a company that executes this really well and they still haven't found I feel the credit that they deserve at the same time we know that TCL is focusing a lot of their expertise and acumen on blackberry so I hope that Alcatel doesn't get lost in that shuffle because what they do they do really well and I think again like I said if you were to say based on aesthetics the honor 6 X or the idol 5s I take the idol 5s in a heartbeat that to me is is worth is is worth them trying one more good push over next year to see if they can they can demonstrate some kind of growth yeah yeah maybe if we just take it a bit notch further and just go a stock-in-trade like like what ZTE is doing I mean we could have a pretty good race but I don't until we have only phones of last year to talk about because that's all that's I mean we don't have the future phones in our hands we can't just put them into you know from thin air so let's talk about those we had a poll go up just before the end of the year talking about what you would like to rate is your top phone of 2017 and I think it's time that we talk about the results they've been public for a little bit but I I think it should be of no surprise that the Galaxy Note 8 was the top finisher with 23% of the vote and there's that there's a tight pack in a four second third fourth place iPhone 10 was in at 11.7 where as what the 1 plus 5t was at 11 and then the Google pixel 2 was a to Excel excuse me from LG that was at 10% so I'm just a lot of big phones big hefty phones with you know the big display is the big flagships I mean that's why we were gauging the big flagships but in terms of just you know the bazaars of it well I think this is definitely so what I love I started that sentence 5 times let me try this one more time we posted our editor pics where we voted on the top 5 phones of 2017 we put a video together and of course all of the comments are like well my phone wasn't picked so you guys are biased or you guys are just Samsung fanboys like all the time and you're like it's a vote this is how votes work what I think is hilarious is the vote for the public is very close to what our internal vote was where the note took the top spot by a wide margin in terms of the actual percentage of the vote then the iPhone was second play it's just like we did in our video and then we had a couple other follow-ups the Google pixel to excel was sort of a surprise because that actually split our vote between the pixel and the pixel Excel 1 + 5 t is right in there - just like where it was with our video and I think the thing that that we we voted up higher than everybody else did were the specialist phones like the V 30 and the BlackBerry t1 t1 is not there they won't that bit was the key one is not getting the love it deserves it absolutely is not and for anyone who's talking trash about a blackberry and a keyboard phone in 2017 you fundamentally do not understand what that thing can do because it is an amazing communicator experience so if if you're trying to trash-talking not saying you have to like it but if you're just trying to trash-talk it as a phone that exists for people who like to get work done and like to communicate with other people then you don't understand smart is basically well I was I was about to say apparently no one has ever heard of the HTC you ultra I think that's a good thing yeah you you will Evan had had a decently strong showing considering HTC's actual market position what is it they did about 4% of the you know that sounds about right to me one major exclusion I forgot this is my dad totally was the Moto Z to force but by the looks of it at least we could have got at least maybe you know five or six votes from the comments at least so III think moto Z Z to fours and he had it actually been on the list and so shame on you Jules for not including it I think it probably would have been probably somewhere maybe just above LG g6 territory you know in that two to three percent of the vote I think it might have picked up there there's still something really interesting about what moto what moto is doing with their high-end flagship parts and I know that the echo chamber was really angry about the force having a smaller battery but if you look at the z2 force as just an upgrade to the Z then this is a great upgrade going to the chatter shield display if you if you're so hung up on names like you're that person who's angry that the iPhone 8 is called the eight and not the 7s um then yeah you're gonna be pissed off about a phone like the z2 force having a smaller battery but if you're rational to any great degree if you're a human being that can understand nuance then I think the z2 for is probably would have definitely did it would have done middling well in this lineup of phones so I guess that's that's my oopsie that I'll take away from this you'll you'll run your laps later and you've got you owe me some push-ups on that one definitely IR do I made a cardigan sweater so yeah a long week oh the cardigan why does that make such perfect sense in my head see I'm a walking around in like Cosby sweater or something well it's hilarious it's a story for when we get off the air and we'll talk about that so I think we should start getting off the air how about that oh you want to wrap this up we should probably wrap this up but um just before we completely walk away I know there are gonna be a lot of consumer consumer electronics and when we talk about CES it's not really a phone heavy show but I'm sure we're gonna be seeing a ton of stuff about VR I think we'll probably be seeing some of the first day dream headsets that are standalone headsets not just phone cradle style solutions I'll be super surprised if we don't see a ton of AR where VR is sort of there well maybe we'll see something from HTC a follow-up to the vibe and that'll be really exciting from a gaming perspective but AR is gonna be I think the buzzword like VR was last year in 3d TVs were the year before and then after that I'll be shocked if we don't see an outright assaulting explosion of smart home speakers and cameras in your dishwasher and IOT style products that connect to your Google home and Amazon Alexa and stuff so I think that'll be a good chunk of coverage there too we'll be seeing like how can we start tying these services together and will we see Alexis start making into things like headphones that to me will be a huge boon for Amazon if you can start having smart conversations with assistants over your normal bluetooth earpiece yeah yeah I mean that's what we've been seeing with Google assistant with the pixel buds and I mean more of them are gonna be popping up from third parties it's a major fest for the third party so I mean just imagine having that that Google assistant conversation baked directly into a nice pair of bluetooth headphones III would mean be be a bit more swayed by that I would prefer it if like we had just one universal solution where people from all different cultures could actually wear it and then we would actually have efficient instant translation and we could live in the happy world that Google wants us to live in when it debuted and I think to myself what a wonderful another episode of the pocket now in gone this show is over but the conversation on Twitter were Jules I'm humbly at some gadget guy and be coverage you'll find all over the place pocket now is around the web Twitter Instagram Facebook Google+ YouTube and our home sites now calm yes now shows like this cannot continue without your support sharing the weekly with your friends who love technology and by dropping reviews anywhere you can review a podcast and definitely helps us find new audience members because ultimately there wouldn't be a show if it weren't for those listeners and subscribers we've kept us on the air since 2012 the pocket now weekly we'll be back next week with all kinds of delicious knowledge goodness from Las Vegas to make sure you tune back