This Week in Tech 578

Leo Laporte: It's time for TWiT, This Week in Tech!  Ohdoctah joins Stacey Higginbotham and film Girl, Christina Warren.  Of course we're going to talk about the big Apple event coming up this week, our predictions.  We'll also visit Grumpy Cat.  We're going to blow the lid on the whole Grumpy Cat scam.  The whole thing.  We'll find out why Ozzy Osbourne wants his genome sequenced and how you can rent the Aviato mobile.  It's all coming up next, on TWiT.

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Leo: This is TWiT, This Week in Tech, episode 578, September 4, 2016.

Bitchin' Betty Says, "Pull up!"

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It's time for TWiT, This Week in Tech, the show where we cover the latest tech news.  Wow, we've got a massive audience for our labor day weekend show, for those of you outside the United States.  It's a day we celebrate labor by not working.  That makes sense.  With us here, three people who are working.  Owen JJ Stone, Ohdoctah, nice to see you again. 

Owen JJ Stone:  I just realized that it's labor day, and I shouldn't be here laboring, so I'm going to take a relaxing chill.  I might get a drink and a beer after.  Or something!  I should be upset right now.

Leo:  What can't we do?  We can't wear white shoes after labor day. 

Owen:  You can't wear white after labor day!  I forget what movie that's from. 

Leo:  I don't wear white shoes during any time of the year, but I guess this would be the bad time to wear white shoes.  Also with us, Christina Warren, from her new gig.  Hi, Christina, nice to see you.

Christina Warren:  Yes.  Great to see you too, Leo.

Leo:  Film_Girl.  She was at Mashable, she's now a senior writer at Gizmodo.  Big promotion. 

Christina:  I moved 12 floors.  That's the funny thing.

Leo:  You're in the same building?

Christina:  Same building. That was my joke.  I was at Mashable for seven years, and as far away as I could get was 12 floors.  So. 

Leo:  I'm wondering.  I'm seeing this vision of you with a box. 

Christina:  I could have done that if I hadn't had a week off in between the two gigs. But I had a week off.  That would have been a little weird.

Leo:  What did you do with your week off?  Did you go somewhere?

Christina:  I went to Atlanta and visited my parents.  Saw some friends, took care of some things.  It was nice.

Leo:  Congratulations on a great job. 

Christina:  Thank you.

Leo:  Also here from This Week in Google, an expert in IOT, you may remember her from Giga Om.  In fact, gigastacey is still her handle on Twitter.  Stacey Higginbotham.  Nice to see you.

Stacey Higginbotham:  Great to be here.

Leo:  IOT podcasts with Kevin Toeffl.  What a great panel.  Let's just sit and talk, we don't need to do news.  Nothing is going to happen anyway this week. 

Christina:  It's not like there are two major events on Wednesday.

Leo:  Two major events?  I know there's an Apple event.

Christina:  Sony PlayStation and whatever the hell they're doing with it.

Leo:  Let's take them one by one.  The event that Apple is doing will be in San Francisco at the Bill Graham memorial auditorium.  Where they've been having events lately.  It's a big venue.

Christina:  It's a big venue.  This is like their third or fourth event they've done there.  They did the iPhone event last year, they did WWDC and I don't remember where they did the smaller iPad Pro event in March.  That might have been...

Leo:  This is going to be one of the last events they do that's not at their new corporate headquarters.  That should be open by...

Christina:  That should be open soon.  I'm not sure if that will be big enough for them to bring in all the press that they want to bring in.  It's possible they could still do these in San Francisco, but it's interesting that they basically have gone away from using Moscone and just started using Bill Graham. 

Leo:  You're flying out, I assume.

Christina:  I am.  I fly out on Tuesday. 

Leo:  Wait a minute!  You work for Gizmodo!

Christina:  I do. 

Leo:  But you got the Christina Warren invitation. 

Christina:  I mean...

Leo:  Gizmodo has been going to these events.

Christina:  They haven't.  They went to the Apple Watch one I guess two years ago.  This was the first one in two....

Leo:  Is that Gizmodo's choice or does Apple not invite them?

Christina:  To my knowledge, it was not their choice. 

Leo: For people who aren't paying microscopic attention to everything that happens at Apple, back to the iPhone 4S where it was left in a bar.

Christina:  It was the iPhone 4.  That was six years before I joined the company. 

Leo:  You're not responsible.  It was left in a bar, somebody picked it up before it was released and eventually sold it to Gizmodo which did stories on it.  Then the police came and broke in the house and they took all his computers.  Nothing came of it, except Gizmodo stopped getting invited to Apple events.   So congratulations on breaking the embargo. 

Stacey:  Did Apple know, though?  When you joined?

Christina:  They knew. 

Leo:  It went to your Gizmodo address, not to your personal address?

Christina:  Exactly. 

Leo:  See?  It's a new Apple.  They invite everybody.

Owen:  They're going to need all the press they can get when they take this headphone jack out of the...

Leo:  All right.  Let's talk about it.  I'm seeing conflicting rumors now, which is good.  Otherwise it would be deathly dull.  Usually by now we know everything that Apple is going to announce.  It's going to be some little thing, like how many hours the battery has.  Except I saw a couple people run stories, not Mark German.  He's been consistent.  He's the leader on all of this, formally at 9 to 5 Mac.  He's now at Bloomberg.  He seems to have very good sources.  He says it's going to be an iPhone 7, 7 Plus.  7 Plus will not have a headphone jack.  But I've seen other stories from other people saying there were going to be three phones, there was going to be an iPhone 7, 7 Plus, and  a Pro.  The Pro was the duel camera model.  No?

Christina:  I've seen that story too.  That never made sense to me.  It's more likely, what I gather is they were probably at some point testing different devices and they were probably looking at maybe making... I don't even know three devices.  I think they probably just designed the larger phone.  Three different chassis leaked.  One was presumably the Seven Plus, one they were calling the Seven Pro.  Every leak that we've had from both Ming Shau and from Mark German has been pegging on this dual camera system for quite some time.  They decided not to release three models!  There were never going to be three models.  I don't think.  I don't think there were ever going to be three models.

Leo:  Normally Apple does Tick Tock, this would be a new design.  We already know based on the leaked body pictures.  I think those are probably accurate, right?  It's not going to be much of a new design.  This might be a very dull event.  This might be hey, we put a new processor in there, we added a lens. 

Owen:  At this point, what can they do?  No matter what they do, they're going to tell you that it's the greatest thing on Earth and that you should feel special about yourself, and that you won't be whole unless you have the phone. 

Leo:  I think they're going to have trouble selling this one.  I'm going to go out on a limb here. 

Owen:  First of all, why do you say stuff like that?  You say stuff like that to agitate me.  It's not like it's an iPad.  They have problems selling iPads right now.  They don't have problems with these phones.  People want...

Leo:  The growth rate of the phone has dropped considerably. 

Owen:  When a new phone launches a series, they don't have a problem moving up.  By the time they get to the S version...

Leo: This is an SS.  This is not much of a change. 

Owen:  How do you know? 

Leo:  Actually isn't this right about when Apple would have released articles/sourced stories to the Wall Street Journal?  This is typically what Apple would have done by now to lower expectations.  We haven't seen that this year, have we? 

Christina:  The big news here is obviously going to be the camera on the larger phone and the lack of a headphone jack. Those are the two things from what has leaked so far that are going to be big.  I am really interested in seeing how they're going to sell and convince this whole...

Leo: There is going to be a lightening ear pods bundled in.  And a connector and adaptor. 

Christina:  There was a leak of it looks like a box that showed a couple things.  It showed 256 gigabyte size.  Leased on the larger phone you can get a 256 gigabyte so that's good.

Leo:  Some people have gone as far as to say in a couple of years you'll wonder why they ever had a headphone jack. 

Christina:  If they can do Wireless audio correctly and I don't know if now is the time, but if they can, that could be accurate.  We've seen this big trend. 

Stacey:  Until we have good wireless charging for all these extra power sucking devices, I think it's a mistake. 

Leo:    I don't want to charge my headphones, I really don't. 

Owen:  I have all Bluetooth wireless stuff.  First of all, think of children, and...

Leo:  Think of the children, exactly!  Think of the children!

Owen:  On top of that, I don't know if anybody has watched any kind of video.  Watch Netflix with a Bluetooth headset and tell me you're not watching a 1940s Chinese film.

Leo:  There's a new Bluetooth Spec, Stacey you're up on this, Aptex, that supposedly is even higher fidelity than A2DP.  It's not the fidelity I worry about, it's the connectivity which drops.  And as you pointed out, battery life.

Christina: Well the battery life, in addition to the newer Bluetooth spec, there's something called NFMI, which we received from other headphone makers, people like Doffler labs, who are making the wireless headphones which will be out later this fall.

Leo:  This is hearing aid technology. 

Christina:  Basically.  They said they feel like they've nailed the...

Leo:  Near field magnetic reduction.  So that means it's a wireless charging? 

Christina:  That's for the sync issues.  For charging, that becomes a much more difficult scenario.  If you have... we've seen this with a lot of Wireless devices that are out right now.  They have charging cases where you can pop them in a charging case for 15, 20 minutes. 

Stacey:  That's not viable. 

Leo:  I have the Motorola Hint.  Of course a little thing in your ear doesn't have much battery life, so they include a case that's a larger battery and charge the case, and then that stays charged and gets you multiple charges on your earpiece, so you put your earbuds away in a case. 

Christina:  Let me ask you this, though.  I agree with you...

Leo: Solving a problem that doesn't exist!  What's wrong with headphones? 

Christina:   I don't know.  To play devil's advocate, I came to terms with the fact that the headphone jack is going away ten months ago, nine months ago.  As soon as the reviews started kicking up in January.  I was like it's gone.  I've got to come to terms with this, not because I'm OK with it, not because I feel like it's a good decision, but this is the reality of what it's going to be, and I'm an iPhone user and my next phone will be an iPhone.  But let me ask you this.  They're going to be including these lightening ear pods in the box.  Most people use the included headphones with their phone, they don't use third party headphones, I wonder if this is overblown in terms of everybody freaking out about, since most people will use the headphones that come with their phone to begin with.  They're going to continue to use the headphones that are there. 

Owen:  That sounds like a totally logical and reasonable explanation.  But then when you ask the reality of life, how many times has a cable like this in a headphone set broken on you, and how long do these lightening crap cables from Apple last?  I'll tell you what, they don't last very long.  So now not only do I have to pay 30/40 dollars for a new dongle or earpiece that's already broken, I've got Apple headsets that I have for five years now that still work.  I've got Dongles that don't last three months.

Leo:  Stacey, do your kids, does your daughter come to you and say, "I lost my headphones, can I have a new pair?"  I have a drawer full of cheap normal headphones.

Stacey: Instead of my kid, it's me. 

Leo:  It's you.  But lightening headphones are not going to be cheap, because you've got to pay the Apple tax on it.  By the way, let's look at this NFMI.  Is it your opinion, Christina, that this will also be part of this?

Christina:  I don't think it will necessarily be part of this, but I do think it's a standard people are using.

Leo:  Interesting. 

Christina:  I'm not suggesting that's going to be something Apple launches, but I know for a fact that their makers are looking at it.

Leo:  So it's a replacement for Bluetooth.  It's another form of Pan, personal area network, that uses magnetic inductions.  There are already people who think Wifi causes brain damage.  They're going to look at this and say they're going to shoot magnets through my head?  That's right.  Just tell them it's good for their health.  It's a secure wireless bubble around each user, using a low power inductive antennae.  Inside the bubble devices connect instantly.  Outside, they're invisible.  NFMI is the only technology that can be used where secure and reliable solutions are needed.  Apparently they use it in the armed forces on the battle field so you're tactical headset can't be broken into. 

Stacey:   What is the distance on that?

Christina: It's fairly small from what I understand, but I think it's probably ten or eleven feet.  I'm not really sure. 

Stacey:  The radio has to be in the headset and in the phone?

Christina:  No.  It just has to be in the headset. 

Leo:  This is really interesting. 

Christina:  I know a company that's working on a product that will be out this fall that will use this.  I was talking the other day. I feel like whether Apple uses something like that or not, who knows?  I feel like what's exciting about this, it's stupid for them to get rid of the jack, and that's a valid thing to say, but I think even if you accept that, the fact that they are getting rid of the jack is going to force whether it's Bluetooth or FMI, or any of these other things. It's going to force people to start taking wireless seriously.  We haven't had a lot of advancement in Wireless technology when it comes to headphones in the last ten years or so.  It really hasn't improved. 

Leo:  Wouldn't that be interesting if Apple uses this as an opportunity?  I agree with you.  The rhetoric that Apple uses on Wednesday will be fascinating to watch. If they do remove the headphone jack, they're going to have to have a story, a compelling story, why? 

Owen:  The advancement of things, again, that sounds great.  Again, when I use headphones, I can't watch video or the audio isn't clear.  When you plug in the physical thing, you feel and hear the difference.  We're going to make great advancements at the push of Apple with their iron fist.  That's great.  If that turns out to be the case.  One more thing to charge. 

Stacey:  We've been steadily conditioned to lower quality, lower resolution on all audio.  Think landline to cellphone... this may just be another departure from quality.

Leo:  There are a lot of people... Neil Young, who think that it's a terrible thing.  Musicians are making music, and there's a whole generation who can't hear because they're listening on crappy ear buds.  Apple loves music, right?  Maybe they'll make the case those earbuds aren't good.  We'll make you really good headphones and do it better. 

Stacey:  It's going to cost so much money.  And you lose those all the time.  I can see why Apple hates wires.  They're clunky. 

Leo:  They would love it if they had a glass slab with no controls, nothing. 

Christina:  That would be the perfect thing, right? 

Leo:  A bar of soap. 

Stacey:  You get a chip in your head and you interact with your phone.

Leo:  By the way, where is Jonny Ives these days?  Is he on vacation?  What's going on with Jonny Ives?

Stacey:  He's doing the new Macbooks.

Owen:  Maybe he's in Ireland.

Leo:  He seems like he's disappeared.  Here's your bingo card.  You've got to do a bingo card with an Apple event.  Will there be a Jonny Ives sighting on Wednesday?

Christina:  I think so.

Leo:  Will there be a Johnny Ives white room video on Wednesday?

Stacey:  Will we hear aluminum? 

Christina:  That's the big question.  When I interviewed him last year, I requested he...

Leo:  What is this phone made of, Johnny?

Christina:  I said, "Can you say aluminum for me once?"  And he did.  I think that was much to the chagrin of everyone else in the room. 

Leo:  Christina!  You are so crass.

Christina:  It's the only opportunity I'm ever going to get in my life to ask him. 

Leo:  "What are these phones made out of, Jonny?  Aluminum, Christina.  I told you four times already."

Christina:  I bet we see him, and I bet there's a video.  Especially with the showing off of the new camera system.

Leo:  Is he the guy that tells the story of the missing headphone jack?

Christina:  I don't know.  I think they're going to... they have to get some sort of audio expert on there somewhere.  I'm with you guys.  I wonder if they're going to start making...

Leo:  Hi, I'm Todd.  You may remember me...

Owen:  The thing is, no matter what they say it's a lie.  It's not better to have wireless sound than it is to have wired sound.  The spin move on that is something only Apple can do in a turtle neck white room environment to trick people and mesmerize them into thinking something is real. 

Stacey: They'll get Bono to tell the story. 

Leo:  I can't hear anything, but if I could... I wouldn't use a headphone jack! 

Christina:  Everybody will get a free album that they'll want again.

Leo:  Touch me!    Taylor Swift.  She's young and has good hearing. 

Owen:  We got 30 things on here besides this. 

Leo:  I'm going to drop it and we're going to move on.  Maybe it's me, maybe I finally hit it.  I've seen this happen with many of the tech journalists I've worked with over the years.  You get to a point where you stop caring.  Maybe I'm jaded, but this is not... I'm not going to buy this iPhone. 

Christina: Come on!  Of course you are.  You know you are.  That's such a lie.  Don't even. 

Owen:  Here's the thing, if you buy it and want to get rid of it, just send it to me.  But don't tell me you're not going to buy it.

Leo:  You know what I did get rid of?  My galaxy Note 7.  We'll tell that tale in a moment.

Owen:  Before it blew up? 

Leo:  Would you plug it in after reading all that?

Owen:  Not only would I plug it in, I'd plug it in 47365 and hope to jimminy crickets my pockets wouldn't smolder. 

Leo:  I wanted flames to leap out of them.  Obscure tech journalist podcaster phone explodes.  Nobody cares.  It burns!  We'll talk about that. But first let's talk about SquareSpace.  The place to make your next website.  I was telling this to somebody the other day on the radio show who has a different hosting company.  I won't name names.  He said, I don't understand.  I updated my Chrome and my site looks different, but my menu instead of going this way, goes sideways.  I don't know why that happened, but let me tell you it wouldn't happen with a Squarespace site.  You want to have, first of all, if you're going to have a website and you should, every company, every individual, it's your best way to control your image, your presence on the web is to have your own website, and you've got something to say.  You've got a unique point of view.  You need somewhere to put it, and putting it on Facebook or Twitter, that's not enough.  That's not your page, it's they're page.  That's Mark's page.  Put it on your page.  You want a web host that's got a great looking page that reflects your aesthetic, that lets you do your stuff, whatever it is, whether it's selling candles or writing about colors.  Whatever you love, and it does it in a way that you feel good about it.  That's Squarespace.  By the way, extremely affordable.  Every site looks professionally designed, you could do it yourself, by the way, if you are a CSS Javascript HTML guru, a lot of people use SquareSpace like that too.  A lot of people start with a blank template that gives you under the covers engineering, but you get to design it in exactly the way you want.  They've got templates for everything from brand new magazine style templates including interactive features like grid style landing pages.  You see these on all the big online magazines.  infinite scroll, that's all the rage now.  You got related posts, so people can explore more off their profiles.  All this comes with a basic account on Squarespace.com.  You can try it free. I want you to do that right now, if you go to squarespace.com, just press the get started button, pick a template.  One of the nice things is your template and your content are completely separate.  If you say let me try a different one, your template can change with your mood.  Every one of them, mobile responsive, so you don't have a separate mobile site.  Your set looks great on every sized screen.  When you upload images, a behind the scenes Squarespace software automatically creates nine different sizes, so that they have an image to fit the screen it's on.  They have ecommerce on every site, so you can always sell something.  Buy the way, it's the only e-commerce where your store matches the rest of the site. It matches your aesthetic.  That's really nice.  They now do domain names.  So you don't even have to go to a separate registrar.  That makes it very easy to get a custom domain.  In fact, you've always lot a free one with an annual purchase, but now you can purchase directly from Squarespace domains. register your domain, and unlike a lot of these other pages, they'll give you a parking place that's clean and spam free that's gorgeous, so that you have time to start building.  It's never been easier to sell online.  Power your business with Squarespace commerce.  They introduced analytics for commerce, which is really helpful.  You can see the traffic and real time.  That's fun, to put that up on the wall of your office.  You can see when people abandon your checkout.  That's important to know.  Device filtering.  How are they coming to your site.  There are people who do this for a living.  When Lisa wanted to create a site for her new agency, she said will you do it?  I said no.  But Squarespace has these great people who work independently but use Squarespace as their platform, and she found somebody to do it for a very reasonable price.  Artisinalagency.com if you want to look at it.  Anybody who builds or contributes to three or more active websites gets access to something new, this is the SquareSpace circle, it includes advanced guides, optimized support and six month trial periods for new projects.  A million customers and still going strong. And yes, they never go down.  Squarespace.com.  Only one thing I ask, if you decide to set up a Squarespace site for free, if you decide to buy after you play with it for a while, use our offer code TWiT, that way they know you heard about it here.  I know Squarespace has ads everywhere now, right?  Even the Super bowl!  But you'll also get 10% off.  Squarespace.com, use the offer code TWiT.  We're talking tech.  Three fun people.  Stacey Higginbotham, just love having her on This Week in Google every week, she does a podcast on Internet of Things, she just came back from Intel developers forum.  She really is keeping up on this very interesting space.  From Austin Texas. And also with us, from her brand new job at Gizmodo, senior writer at Gizmodo, film_girl Cristina Warren.  Hi, Christina.  Always a pleasure.  And Ohdoctah.  Owen JJ Stone.  I was just on your podcast.  What's that? 

Leo:  I should be on a beach!  But I'm stuck here with you, laboring away. 

Leo:  Is that the sunscreen where you squirt it on and it's purple.  I love that stuff.

Owen:  This is for the kids.

Leo:  You know what I'm talking about?  It's for kids.  You put it on and it's purple and you rub it in...

Owen:  I don't use sunscreen so I don't have the pleasure of doing that.

Leo:  Can I ask you a personal question?

Owen:  Sure you can.

Leo:  Do African Americans need sunscreen? 

Owen:  I've never burned in my life.  I've never had the pleasure of my skin...I've got some built in natural stuff that works pretty well. I have to be in the sun ten hours to even get a tan.

Leo:  It strikes me you should still wear sunscreen because of skin cancer.

Owen:  People say that.  A lot of my family members when I was younger, I never wore it.  People lived and died of other things, but nobody died of skin cancer.

Leo:  Ok.  That's awesome.  Nice.  What's the name of your podcast?  When is my episode going to appear.

Owen:  It's doctales.  I put it up the other day. 

Leo:  Tweet it out, man.

Owen:  I did.  The title is 500 pounds of Cheese. 

Leo:  We had what they euphamistically call wide ranging conversation. 

Owen:  I found the interview we did together from 2010.  I put that up as a bonus so people can go and listen to the lineage of Laporte.

Leo:  Was my voice higher back then? 

Owen:  You looked a little younger.  It was back in the cottage.  You were still in the cottage. 

Leo:  Anybody who sees me move knows that spry is not the word.  Maybe wizened?  Creaky?  Doctales.  Where would we find that? 

Owen:  iqmz.com.

Leo: iqmz.com.  I quit my zebra.  Zombie.  .com.  So I got an email from T mobile saying stop charging your Samsung Note seven because it could blow up.  35 people's phones have blown up... that's not a lot when you sell...

Christina:  Actually it is.  When you look at whatever the things are for these things, I think the 35 reported cases is significant.

Leo:  iPhones had a problem once, but they didn't have anywhere near that number.  Right?

Christina:  It was proven to be the unofficial cables. 

Leo:  In this case, Samsung is taking it one and a half billion dollar write off, because they've sold more than a million of them.  How many, do we know?  A lot. I bought one.  I feel bad.

Stacey:  It's a great phone. 

Leo:  Yeah, I've been recommending it.  I've been telling everybody this is the phone.  If you're going to get an Android device, this is my current favorite.  Never had any problems with it, I fast charged it, I normally charge it on a slow wireless charger overnight. 

Christina:  Does it get hot?

Leo:  No, it doesn't get hot.

Christina:  Because after I wrote the initial story that they were delaying production, I got a number of emails from people saying that theirs was getting very hot to the touch.

Leo:  That's a bad sign. 

Christina:  It is.  I don't know how wide spread this is.  I think it could be probably... maybe a couple batches.  Probably down to one supplier if they were to go down and see.

Leo:  So they're not doing this in China, they say it's a different battery.  We know what this is caused by.  Lithium ion batteries are anything that contains a lot of energy could be potentially dangerous, whether it's gasoline or batteries.  In the case of lithium ion batteries, if you over charge them, this is true of other batteries, by the way, if you over charge them, they can swell up.  They can heat up, in fact they can get so hot they can burn, and if they swell even more while they're burning, they can explode.  It's like napalm.  Apparently it can get on your skin and cause severe burns.  It's not a good thing. 

Owen:  I'm not trying to detract from 35, because 35 is a large number.  But at the same time, people get paranoid in their mind.  My iPhone sets ablaze when I talk on it for more than twenty minutes.  When you think to yourself, "Is it hot to the touch?"  Every phone when you do anything on it for more than ten minutes, it gets hot.  If you put it to your face you can feel it.

Leo:  Hot while it's working is a different kind of hot.  That's the processor getting hot.  Versus hot while it's not working but charging.  That means the battery is getting hot. 

Stacey:  My phone gets hot while charging.  It's the Nexus 5X.  It's got the rapid charging. I've noticed when it charges it gets hotter. 

Leo:  Rapid charging is widely agreed not to be a good idea.  That's hard on batteries.  We had a battery expert here--we talked after the show next week.  He is a researcher.  He said heat is the enemy for lithium ion.  It reduces the life.  He told me not to park your Tesla in the sun, park it in the shade. 

Stacey:  I am so screwed.  I live in Austin, Texas.

Leo:  The phone manufacturers know this. They know quick charging heats up.  Tesla says don't use the supercharger too much.  Same reason; it'll lower the life of your battery.  But phone companies go, "You're only going to have that phone for a couple of years.  It's never intended to be owned for longer, so we don't care if we're reducing battery life.  It's more important that we have quick charging." 

Owen: You know what I do to my phone in the car?  I stick it in the air conditioning vent face down so the sun is not beating on it and it stays cool.  I'm usually streaming stuff, so it gets hot, so I put it in the vent and it stays cool as a cucumber.  I use 30/40 gigs of data a month. 

Leo:  Christina, did Samsung go far enough?  Did they do the right thing?

Christina:  Yes.  Look.  They started seeing that the problem is existing, they stopped shipments, did an investigation and realized this is more wide spread than they thought. Doing a full recall, working with the carriers, doing the exchanges. They're treating this the way it should be treated.  At least so far no one has been seriously hurt, and that's a good thing.

Leo:  Do we know people who have had the phone burn?

Christina: All the photos have been from Asia.  I haven't seen any reported cases in the US, but that doesn't mean people haven't been hurt, but it looks like no one has, which is a good thing.  I think they've handled this the way they needed to handle it.  You can't force people to come in and do a one to one swap by making it as easy as possible.  The fact that the carriers are sending out emails, that's huge. 

Leo:  Here's the email I got from T Mobile.  Samsung notified us today, they were calling Galexy Note 7 due to battery safety concern.  I don't know who wrote this.  There have been 35 cases reported globally as of September 1, Samsung has communicated to us that they'll have replacement Note  7 devices that should be available in the next two to four weeks.  That's a problem right there.  As a customer your safety is our number one priority, we're making it easier for you to return or exchange galaxy note 7 free of charge.  Sign up, we'll let you know.  This is one option.  By the way, consumer report says this is a terrible option.  Sign up and we'll let you know when the new phone is available.  In other words, keep using it.  Or switch to a new device.  They'll have something you can use until the new phone comes.  Or return the phone for a full refund.  Samsung is saying we will buy back every one of them.  We don't care where you got it, we'll buy it back.  The problem is if it's your only phone, no one wants to be without a phone for two to four weeks.

Christina:  Right.  That is in a weird position, which is why the carriers are saying you can flop it out for a different phone and have it back out again.  Some of the retailers are saying they'll have new stock next week.  It depends on the person, how comfortable you are keeping  it, but if you're really concerned, there are going to be alternatives that you can do, and you can swap it out with your carrier and say, "hey.  Now that you have the galaxy note 7 in stock, I want to go back and get that again."

Leo:  Consumer report says Samsung hasn't gone far enough, because this is not an official recall.  If it were an official recall, they would go to the Consumer product safety commission and declare an official recall.  At that point, it would be illegal to sell the Note 7 in the United States.  According to Consumer Reports, some retailers are still selling the phone as late as Friday.  Samsung has not gone to the full length that they should, at least according to consumer reports that they ought to.  Consumer reports is turning it into a cranky nanny.

Owen:  They might have found out some information about the batch they came from and feel confident that it's not going to continue to happen.

Leo:  Here's an image from China.  That's not pretty.  That's a pretty nasty burn there.  That's right where the battery is.  It's a long battery.  You wouldn't want that to happen in your house, that's why Samsung is taking this seriously.  35 phones is enough to say hm. 

Christina: Consumer Reports might have a point in saying they should do an official recall, but they're working with all the retailers, they're working with all the carriers.  Maybe other than some web places, I can't imagine any place continuing to sell phone. 

Leo:  According to the New York Times it's 2.5 million.  That's a lot.  All right, we've said enough.  If you have a Note 7, I think you shouldn't take the chance.  You should trade it in.  I'm in the good position of having a lot of things I can use instead.  I'm not going to be phoneless, but I am going to be out of the country.  If it's two weeks, I won't be here. I'm going to ask for my money back.  I like the phone, but I hear there's new phones coming from other companies.

Owen:  Are they all going to be water proof?  Are they going to be dust proof? 

Leo:  Will  lil'Wayne give back his champaigne?  Never.  I can't remember anybody doing a recall of this magnitude for a Smartphone.

Christina:  Not in Smartphones.  We had the Sony laptop battery recall.

Leo:  Same reason.  The Dell was more like it would swell and twerk and bend.  I presume that's the beginning of something bad.  You don't want to overcharge lithium ion batteries. 

Owen:  The way people act about bend gate, I would venture to see if this were Apple, people would lose their minds.  I feel like this is a very calm problem.

Leo:  Apple would do the same thing, don't you think?

Christina:  Apple would definitely do the same thing.

Owen:  I'm talking about the wave of people that would storm down the gates upon Apple the way they do about everything else.  "My phone bent." They don't know what they're doing.  Everybody's like, "OK Samsung.  You made a mistake, we'll let it go." 

Leo:  Samsung is getting a pass because they did the right thing and they're doing it quickly.  No one was hurt, and they responded exactly appropriately, even though they're going to take a big hit on this.  The timing couldn't be worse. 

Christina:  The timing is terrible. 

Leo:  Your parents might end up getting an iPhone, Stacey.

Stacey:  My mom will never get an iPhone.  She's not going to go there.

Leo:  Is she an iPhone hater?

Stacey:  She's not a hater.  They frustrate her.

Leo:  Android does not?

Stacey:  She likes it.  She's not an iPhone person.  The increasing size of the Androids for a while upset her, but now she's like it's beautiful. I can see my screen!

Leo:  That's what I like about it.  It feels like a normal size phone with a giant screen somehow. 

Stacey:  She loves the magnifying thing and the tuning thing.  Which made me feel like we have to put more stuff on this design for older people. 

Leo:  You're talking about the adapt sound that we mentioned on TWiG.  A lot of people don't know Samsung does this, it buries it way deep in the setting.  But you can actually do a hearing test on the phone with your earbuds in and have the phone take the results of that and create an equalization curve tuned to your individual ears and it produces a good result, I do that with every samsung phone I get.  I don't know when they started.  S6 maybe.  They have a headphone jack, as they said in their announcement.  Apple isn't the first phone company to abandon the headphone jack.  The moto Zed does not have a headphone jack.  That's not out.  I don't know when that's going to be widely available. 

Stacey:  Do you think Apple would go back on the headphone jack if no one else adopts it? 

Leo:  Here's a question. Will they have two phones, one with and one without?

Owen:  No. 

Christina:  They will still sell the SE.  I think that... they're going to sell I presume the 6S and the 6S plus.  They'll sell those for less money.  You'll still be able to buy a phone with the headphone jack.  If you want all the fancy new hotness. 

Owen: They're definitively the final things.  When they say A is A, it's always going to be A from here on out.  Even when it's a mistake.  They force through it.  They get the standard. 

Christina: The only time I can remember going back ever was with fire wire on one of the macs, so when they released the unibody Macbook pro, they also released a unibody Macbook at the same time.  The unibody Macbook was the successor to the plastic Macbook did not have a Firewire port on it, and people freaked.  I was one of the people who freaked.  I was writing at the time and was like this is insane.  Within six months they re-released that laptop renamed it the 13 inch MacBook pro and put a Firewire port on it.  That's the only time I can recall in recent Apple history on them going back on something.

Leo:  Tim Cook did a really good Washington Post interview, he did admit to making mistakes.  He said the Apple Maps fiasco, for instance.  They worked hard to make it work better.  There's no new coke moment for Apple. 

Owen:  Someone in the chatroom said:  "We will never have a pencil."  But that's Jobs not being around.

Leo:  It was talking about a phone, not a tablet.

Christina:  The Apple pencil is definitively different than the typical stylus that you were seeing at the time.  It's a device that even other styluses that we were seeing, it's a different tool.  It's not a primary input mechanism.  If you're going to use the Apple pencil, it's because you need precision for certain stuff.  It's not a palm trio, who had a stylus.  Or the Windows Mobile devices who used Styli where you had to touch their touch screens to get stuff done.  It sure was fun to play bubble bobble, but it was a terrible user experience.

Leo:  I had a palm device that had a stylus on it, and I played a lot of Bedazzled on it.  Bejeweled.  What was the... the Cleo.  It was a Sony Palm device, I lent it to somebody and I got it back, and she apparently played a lot of bejeweled, because there was a scratched grid on the phone.  She played it so much with the stylus. 

Owen:  That's aggressive. 

Leo:  Never say never.  I don't think Tim cook is so adamant that he would say never surrender.  Never give up.  If they made a horrible mistake with the headphone jack, I could see him backing down.  No? 

Owen: No.  It's not even something you could envision.

Christina:  I think what's a lot more likely is that Apple does this and see how many other companies, as you said.  They're not the first company to not have a headphone jack. 

Leo:  Everybody will copy it, like stupid slave sheeples that will go, "Whatever you say, Apple."  It will be a mistake in every respect in my opinion.  I've been wrong more often than not with Apple.

Stacey:  I will never be able to talk to anyone again if I have to charge headphones to make that happen. 

Owen:  Don't worry.  They'll give you a dongle that will last for two months.  For two months you'll be able to talk to people.

Stacey:  I have Dongle fatigue. 

Leo:  The most obvious story is we want to make more money on headphones by licensing the lightening port.  That's not an Apple that anybody wants to see.

Stacey : It's compelling if you think about carrying your phone and you have to keep it with you all the time.  And talk to it, if Siri becomes better, you're going to have something that's lighter weight and you don't have to worry about making  a gesture and whacking out your headphones. 

Leo:  You mean when I throw my phone because Siri is such an idiot?

Stacey: Yes, but think about taking it into your car...

Leo:  Siri is never going to get better, by the way.  I can promise you Siri is never going to get better.

Stacey:  Maybe they can use Alexa voice services.

Leo:  Apple has been lapped twice now by voice recognition.

Christina:  I really liked Siri on Apple TV.  I had issues with it on the phone... but on the Apple TV it works well.

Leo:  Because all you're doing is saying show me Manics reruns.  It's easy. 

Christina:  But it works really well.  

Leo:  I'm sorry.  Gilmore Girls.  Did I say Manics?

Owen:  I could speak to my Amazon really well too for Tv. 

Leo:  TV is easy.

Stacey:  Even Comcast has TV. 

Owen:  And that's saying something.

Leo:  Speaking of TV, there's an interesting story, Peter Kofska writing in Recode.  From Walt Mossberg, remember in the Walter Isaacson story of Steve Jobs, Isaacson said Steve told him on his deathbed that we've licked it-- we've finally cracked it.  Then we never heard anything and there was a lot of rumors from people that Apple was going to do a TV set.  Walt Mossberg was sitting on this all along.  He said Steve Jobs called him on the night that he formally handed over control to Tim Cook and told him I think we figured out a way to do it, it's going to be fantastic.  Walt, come over and see what we're working on.  But he died two months later.  No one... Walt never made it over.  No one knows what it was.  The mystery passed with Steve Jobs. 

Stacy:  Jobs died in 2011.  So that was a very different time for TV.  I really want to emphasize that something you were planning way back then, even being Steve Jobs, I don't know if it would have a lot of relevance today.  So maybe that's why we've never seen anything from it. 

Leo:  The sync in me, you're going to hate me, says Jobs played Walt Mossberg like a fiddle.  He used Walt to get the Wall street Journal to tell the Apple Story.  Mossberg says Steve wanted to clearly communicate even though he wasn't going to be CEO anymore, he was still going to be involved.  Their press release made a big nod to that, but he wanted me to know he was going to be involved in big strategic things and also that he was going to reserve one thing for himself.  I said what's that?  Steve said it's television.  i think we figured out a way to do it, and it's going to be fantastic.  I want you to come out in a few months and I want to show it to you.  That conversation doesn't mean that there was anything significant, it could just as well have been Steve playing Walt one more time saying I'm still around, I don't want you to think I've left Apple.  By the way he was very sick at that point.

Owen:  Can I ask you a question?  Steve Jobs, great man.  Was he out here making things on his own?  Did he have a lab where he was working?  So even if he passed away, the team that was doing the things he ordained them to do is still in existence, unless they had a bomb connected to his heart that expired when he died.  So if there was something magical to happen, the magic would have been released.  This is a clickbait story, but don't tell me that he told you there was a magical wand...

Leo:  Here's the less cynical interpretation that he did have engineers working on something very exciting and Apple decided that it's not that exciting.  I don't think they're going to do a car, even after they spent so much money on it.

Christina:  I think they're going to do a car. 

Owen:  I think they're going to do a car too. 

Christina:  I think they're going to do a car, but I think the TV industry has changed so much. 

Leo:  There's a lot of opportunity right now, the FCC is going to open that up. 

Christina:  The FCC, the whole rise of chord cutting and skinny bundles  I think with the TV, as a lot of people have seen, it's become so commoditized.  Even going into 4K.  I don't know if it would make sense for Apple to be in that space, because Apple loves margins.  If they're going to have a TV that has this built in, they're going to have to realize in 2016 it would be difficult to say people will buy an Apple branded television set.  A set top box is different.  I'm with Ohdoctah....

Leo: Stacey, what's the status of that FCC ruling?  Are they still taking comments on that? 

Stacey:  They are still taking comments.  They may be in the second round of comments. 

Leo:  Of course the cable company hates it.  This is our value add, you take away our set top box... 

Stacey:  If you could put the Internet around television content and access on your TV.  That is the biggest screen in your house.  I get excited thinking about it. 

Leo:  Comcast X 1 is the state of the art, cable companies haven't tried.  They have not tried.  That is crap.

Owen:  They're on the ball on everything.  I like to ask you one general question.  Do you have 20 dollars on you, Uncle Leo? 

Leo:  I do.

Owen:  I bet you 20 dollars after you do this next add read, you can't go two stories without saying the word Apple. 

Leo:  I'll give you a Note 7. 

Owen: Ad read, two stories without saying Apple.

Leo:  You guys, you're the witnesses.  By the way, we got a giant studio audience today.  It verifies what I thought we'd be able to get a lot of people in our new east side studios.  Yeah.  We got 20 people here today.  It's wonderful to have you all.    It's labor day weekend so people got nothing better to do.  Including a guy up front who is wearing a t shirt in Morse code.  The dots are marshmallows, the dashes are graham crackers and chocolate and it says I love s'mores.  It is the bizzarest mash up ever. It's great to have you all, thank you for coming.  If you want to be in our studio audience, we love having you here.  The new studio is made for visitors.  Email us tickets at twit.tv.  We did have somebody yesterday who came late, he said I went to the old studio.  I guess he Googled it or something.  The email you'll get back from us is right.  You'll get directions to the new place. We're also celebrating the opening of Tess the side studio, with some new merchandise.  We got some merch, custom t shirts, hoodies, stickers with the east side logo.  Anthony Nielson in our marketing department did a great job with this. If you go to teespring.com/twit, you will be able to pick the merchandise if your choice.  These are limited time.  There's only three weeks left. Men's, women's, on the front the TWiT logo, on the back the tasteful east side studio logo.  Some people have the brickhouse tees that we made.  Here's the hoodie, which I think is nice.  It's a pullover hoodie and a mug as well and stickers which are cheap.  Four dollars for the stickers.  So teespring.com/twit.  Our show to you today brought to you by Carbonite, online backup.  A guy called the radio show today. He said don't be mad at me.  I'm so embarrassed.  I have never backed up in my life.  He said I've been using computers for 12 years and I have never backed up.  I thought don't be embarrassed.  Data loss happens, and of course it happens at the worst possible time.  That's why a good backup solution is so important.  If you've got baby pictures or wedding pictures, or financial emails.  There's got to be stuff on your computer you don't want to lose.  Imagine if you're a business.  The computers in your business, they've got your account's receivables.  They've got your suppliers list, your customer's list.  If that building burns down, you've got insurance, you can replace all that stuff.  Do you have insurance for your data?  No point in buying insurance for your data after the fire.  You buy it before the fire, you get Carbonite right now.  Automatic cloud backup, they've got great solutions for business, including appliances. They recently acquired a company called Evault.  If you're an IT person you know the name.  These guys are great.  One thing that should terrify every business is ransomware.  90% of all the phishing attacks out there contain ransomware viruses.  That's the virus that when it activates on your computer, it crypts your data and asks for a ransom.  Send us 300 bucks we'll un encrypt it.  First of all, even if you send them 300 bucks you're not going to get decryption.  But if you've got Carbonite, you've got nothing to worry about.  Carbonite does something every back up should do but most do not.  It's called versioning.  It doesn't save the most recent version, which might well by the version that's encrypted.  It saves previous versions, so you can always go back to that unencrypted version and say "Na, na, na," to the bad guy. Carbonite is kryptonite for ransomware. Try it out for free. You don't need a credit card. That means there's no way they're going to like say, "Oh, we're just going to auto-renew." They really want you to try it free at carbonite.com. But when you do try it, where you see the offer code, put in TWIT. And the only reason I say that, well 2 reasons. 1 so they know you saw it here but also so you get two months free when you buy. As little as $5 dollars a month to back up everything on a Mac or a PC but they've got plans for servers, networks and more. Carbonite.com. I'm on kind of a mission to get everybody using Carbonite.

Owen: Let me help you out with that mission, Uncle Leo.

Leo: Please do.

Owen: So long story short, I will not have anybody feel sorry for me, but the power went out and my security system was down and someone broke into my home. They stole all three of my laptops.

Leo: Oh, dear.

Owen: They stole the iPads. They stole my PlayStation and literally like, you know, I'm a chill dude. The thing that made me the most upset was thinking the pictures of my daughter are gone. Where's my stuff? And luckily most of my hard drives are still here. I still have stuff. But I have everything backed up. So if you don't have stuff backed up, whether it be a fire or a flood or somebody's coming in and taking it, you know, that laptop whatever, the value of it, the $3,000 dollars that you get from insurance, that's cool. You can't get back the pictures of your newborn, your grandfather, your mother, your kids first walk and rodeo. So, everybody should be backing up everything and $5 bucks to get you in the door is not that much when it comes to your memories.

Leo: Well I think it's part of a larger strategy. It's good to have what you have, to back up hard drives. You're lucky they didn't steal those. That's the problem.

Owen: Well yea, you still have to back up to the cloud because if a fire happens.

Leo: You have to have the offsite backup. You've got to have it. Thank you. And I'm sorry. Did your insurance cover it?

Owen: You know, they're insurance so I've got to wait a little bit (laughing).

Leo: I know we talked about this on the podcast. You lost your camera equipment too.

Owen: Yea, people in the chatroom are like, "Why aren't you in HD?" And I'm like, "Yea, well you know."

Leo: They stole—wait a minute. That is low. They stole your webcam?

Owen: It wasn't my webcam. I was using my Canon 70D. The crazy part about it, it was like a $1,500 lens. The lens is more than the camera's worth. But the thing that cracked me up is like these are really dumb thieves. They took the $300-dollar mic off of the top of the camera. Like unscrewed it, took it off and went down. And the tripod, I had like a $500-dollar tripod. They took the clip off of the tripod but left the tripod. So I'm like, "Why wouldn't you just take everything? It's all worth money." Like that's what thieves do. They're not that bright. That's why they're thieves. So anyway. Back it up. Back it up. Listen. Back it up.

Leo: That sucks though and I'm really sorry.

Owen: It happens.

Leo: Every time you come on I feel sorry for you.

Owen: Don't feel sorry for me. Everything's great.

Leo: I know.  You're like the sweetest guy. You're jolly. You're happy. You're smart. But bad stuff happens to you.

Owen: Hey, no, stuff happens. That's life, dude.

Leo: That's life, isn't it?

Owen: That's life. Things happen. You know sometimes you drop a glass and break it, sometimes it lands in this hole and you're happy. That's how the world works.

Leo: Wait a minute. You have a hole for your glass?

Owen: Not like a glass. Like you drop a wine glass and it lands upright and you think you're the luckiest person in the world. Like, "Oh my God, it didn't break."

Leo: (Laughing) when the toast lands butter side up, I'm a happy man.

Owen: There you go. Two stories, no using the word about fruit.

Leo: I got it. Google, according to Android Police, is going to have an event October 4^th and that's when we're going to hear about the new—well, I want to call them Nexus phones, the Google branded phones. But the rumor, David Ruddock writing for Android Police, it will be called a Pixel. The Pixel and the Pixel XL.

Stacey: I cannot believe you're leading with the phones and not Google Home. It's just so sad.

Leo: Oh, you're right, you're right. Google—well, so ok. I need a phone because apparently my Nexus breaks.

Stacey: Oh, that's true.

Leo: But I mean—

Stacey: But you're not going to wait until October 4^th for that.

Leo: No, I have other phones lying around. But is that OhDoctah? Did thieves steal his internet too? Oh my God. Talk about bad things happening. We'll get him back on. So, actually, yea, it is more than the phones. We'll start with the phones because people are very interested in these phones. I personally think if you're going to get Android, I wish the Google hardware was a little bit higher end, a little bit better cameras, a little bit better battery life because you really do want Android form the home office.

Stacey: Yea. I will not go back to alternatives.

Leo: They're just not, you know, like the Note 7 has a much nicer screen, a much better camera. I just—

Christina: I wish they still did the Google Pure.

Leo: Yea, the Google Pure.

Christina: Yea, those were great because then you got the best of like the hardware you really wanted but the software that Google—

Leo: This will be designed by HTC which makes very nice phones. But you know, they're going to be just a notch below I think.

Christina: Do they though? Does HTC make really nice phones?

Leo: Ok, maybe not.

Owen: I don't think they do.

Christina: I mean I'm just being honest. I don't think they do anymore. I hate to be that person.

Leo: The HTC 10 was pretty good.

Christina: How many years ago was that?

Leo: That was this year (laughing). That was a few months ago. Christina, how quickly you move on.

Christina: Oh, the HTC 10.

Leo: Not the 1. The HTC 10.

Christina: No because I was thinking about the A9. The A9 which now they're doing the crap—

Leo: No, I have the HTC 10 and I admit, I gave it to Tony Lang, one of our editors. He loves it though. He says it's an extremely good camera. It was a pretty nice phone. It wasn't like the best ever but it was pretty good. It's just going to be—you're right.

Owen: It's like 3^rd tier or 4^th tier. It's a good phone. It's not a Kalickakalucky or whatever you get when you go to—

Leo: I need to get a Kalickakalucky. Where can I get one of them?

Owen: You know what I'm talking about. Go down to Metro and go pick up one of those phones for $75-dollars.

Christina: TCL.

Leo: Or a Blue, one of the Blues.

Christina: Blue, yea, the Blue.

Owen: HTC is like the step above that. Like that's their Lexus right there.

Leo: Oh, that's sad.

Owen: Before you get to the regular market of phone.

Leo: And look at what Lenovo has done to Moto which used to be a great brand is now also another—although I like the magnetic backs. That's interesting. I don't know. I should just get an iPhone (laughing). Oh, no! I didn't say anything about Apple! That was just a side comment.

Owen: I think somebody's sending me an exploding Samsung 7. I don't know. I think that qualifies.

Leo: You don't want that phone.

Owen: I sure do.

Leo: Just my luck, your house will burn down and it will be my fault.

Stacey: That's fair.

Owen: I guess that's fair. Return it and get me a new one. A deal's a deal.

Leo: I'll get you something. We sent your daughter candy.

Owen: You sure did. And she loved it.

Leo: Like a lot of candy.

Owen: She loved it.

Leo: I thought, "Lisa, is that really the best thing to send an 8-year-old is a bunch of candy?"

Christina: Yes.

Stacey: Yes, they will love you forever.

Christina: Of course it is.

Owen: Yes, it was. She made an unboxing video of it too.

Leo: I know.

Owen: Yea, it's unboxing out there somewhere. If you look up Leia Sugar Wish on YouTube and you can see her enjoying all this candy. She even shared it with her friends. She's such a good kid. She wouldn't share it with me. But she shared it with her friends (laughing).

Leo: So this is actually—Stacey, we'll do this for your daughter. It's kind of—I mean I think it's mean but—

Stacey: No, don't send my daughter candy.

Leo: Yea, right? It's mean.

Stacey: No, she's a hoarder. She won't—she only eats one a day and then she keeps it for the rest forever.

Leo: So Sugar Wish is the site. You go there. We give you a certificate and then you pick your candy.

Stacey: Now my husband will go for that.

Leo: So they have just all kind of weird candy and you just pick it and they send you a box. So it's like a candy gift certificate. It's the worst.

Christina: It's amazing.

Leo: (Laughing) and they have old fashioned stuff too. Like they have the old fashioned candies.

Owen: Well, she's not here but I actually, I stole her—

Leo: You stole her Sugar Wish.

Owen: She still has like peach rings left.

Leo: Oh look, she's a hoarder too.

Owen: Well she's eating them one at a time. And these are for us. These are the last ones to go. These are mini gumballs and these are strawberry marshmallows. Look, I shouldn't be in this box.

Leo: What is wrong with kids today? I don't understand.

Owen: I'm not allowed.

Leo: They have impulse control? What's wrong with them?

Owen: She eats one at a time. She eats like one candy at a time so I'm not allowed to go in there without her.

Leo: You guys should make friends. So all right, forget the phone. They also supposedly are going to announce a 4K Chromecast. That's pretty awesome, right?

Stacey: Go ahead, Christina.

Christina: I was just going to say, that's weird to me. Like the concept—

Leo: Why is that weird? I've got a 4K TV. I can't see anything.

Christina: As do I. And there's not a lot of 4K content is what my point is.

Owen: Do you have 4K Netflix?

Christina: I do. I have 4K Netflix. I have 4K Amazon.

Owen: Does it feel like 4K?

Leo: You end up watching stupid shows that you would never watch just because they're made in 4K.

Owen: And that's exactly my point. I keep asking and people say, "I'm watching 4K on my Netflix." And I'm like, "What are you watching that's meaningful on your Netflix?"

Leo: Marco Polo.

Owen: Does it feel like 4K?

Leo: The worst show. Marco Polo. Terrible show!

Christina: No it's not the worst because even though I don't have the very fast internet, you know it's still the bitrate of whatever Netflix is putting out so if I had a 4K Blu-Ray player then that would probably be better but I don't so.

Owen: I could kiss you right now. That's exactly the answer why. What is your speed that you think that you're really pulling down this 4K that you're supposed to be getting it on your TV screaming? You're not. You're just paying extra for no reason.

Leo: I have 4K HDR which is the new thing. And I got the Sony, I mean the Xbox One S which has that new kind of Blu-Ray player. But on Netflix—by the way, this little tip. You can search for 4K or search for HDR and you'll get all the Netflix content that's in 4K or 4K HDR. One of them is Marco Polo which is the—just dumb, stupid show about Marco Polo. But the sad thing is, when you see it in 4K and HDR, it doesn't look like this. I'm showing a little video clip of it. It looks like you're watching some actors in a set in a room. It looks real. It looks like you're there. It loses all of it's magic. Oh, it's like that's some guy dressed as Genghis Khan. It's like Joe the plumber dressed as Genghis Khan and you're watching this. There's no magic at all.

Owen: I don't know if I can even believe you because you don't like the show and that just sounds silly.

Leo: You like Marco Polo?

Owen: I like history so I do like Marco Polo.

Leo: I love history. That's why I don't like Marco Polo.

Owen: I mean I enjoy it. I'm not watching on 4K so I haven't lost the magic apparently. So maybe that's why I still enjoy it.

Leo: All right, so 4K Chromecast we don't care a whole lot about. All right. Finally, Stacey gets her wish. Google Home.

Stacey: Yes. Google Home.

Leo: So Home is like the Echo competitor right?

Stacey: It is yes. Totally the Echo competitor. The big difference in Google Home, there looks to be 2. Multi-casting, so you can listen to things in multiple Google Homes and then the other thing that I'm excited about is the potential for notifications which they showed in their video. So not only can you talk to it, it will talk to you too like proactively.

Leo: What? What?

Stacey: Yea.

Leo: Do you want somebody in your house talking to you? Already Echo does and it's annoying. I'm watching TV and she says, "I'm sorry, I don't know what the hell you're talking about." And it's really annoying.

Stacey: They showed it going bing. And then you're like, I'm listening.

Leo: What is it?

Stacey: Yes. Whatever it is.

Leo: And it looks like an air freshener so it's got that going for it.

Stacey: There is that. I'm super excited. I want to know when I can buy it, when I can play with it and how much better or worse—although the Sonos news with Amazon, now I'm kind of like—

Owen: That's a big deal. That's a really big deal.

Stacey: It's huge.

Christina: I am so excited.

Leo: Only we care about it because Sonos is one of those things much like the Amazon Echo that is like if you're the handful of people that own it you can't stop talking about it.

Owen: So let me correct you.

Leo: And everybody else goes, "Oh, God."

Owen: I know two people in the real world that aren't tech people, don't really care about much but they use Sonos.

Leo: Oh, I love Sonos.

Owen: And both of them—and once you can automate it like that, people already had that system. So it's a big deal for regular people too, to involve them and bring them in.

Christina: My parents have a Sonos and they're not, I wouldn't call them tech people. I also got my mom an Echo for Mother's Day and she loves it and the fact that—

Leo: You want them to talk and they don't, yea.

Christina: But now they will which is—

Stacey: In 2017 they will.

Leo: Next year.

Christina: January.

Leo: Well guess what. We're in September. 2017, although that sounds like the future, is practically here.

Stacey: I know. Have you made your CES reservations?

Leo: Oh, my God. No.

Christina: No, I was at the Sonos event this week and they were saying that the beta will be out later this fall and it will be like early 2017. So it's—

Stacey: Wait, the beta's for Spotify though, right? They're just going to play things on Spotify?

Christina: Yea but they also said there's going to be a beta for the—

Leo: Yea, they have to test it. That makes sense. Did they tell you—because we were wondering this, Stacey and I and Jeff were wondering this on TWiG, if it would allow—one of the things that's great about Sonos is you attach it to all your accounts, not just Spotify but Deezer and Pandora and even Apple Music and then you can say, well you can't say, but you can say on the app, you can in effect say, choose something from Apple Music. Will, do you think, and Stacey says this will not be available, that you would be able to say to your Echo, "Play my Apple Music playlist on my Sonos in the living room."

Christina: I wouldn't imagine why it wouldn't work because you're basically controlling the Sonos app, the Sonos experience. I think they're building the two things in together. I wouldn't imagine why that wouldn't work.

Stacey: Are you controlling the app or the speakers? That's the question.

Christina: And that's not clear. And that's a good point. That would be the differentiator. If you're controlling the app then there'd be no reason you couldn't. If you're controlling the speaker then that becomes a little bit different. Then you're probably limited to whatever Amazon is doing although again, you know Amazon at this point doesn't have all the services that you can do with the Sonos. Sonos supports more services. But it is increasingly doing more and more of it. For instance, you've got an iPhone, you can control your Apple Music or your iTunes or whatever from that app. Experience will play it from your phone and send it to your Echo. So I don't know. That's a really good question. I don't know. They were kind of light on details which was disappointing. I was very excited though just to see the integration all the way around.

Leo: So the Home, Google's device which really seems—and I have to say, if they put whatever—what did they call OK Google? What do we call that? What is that?

Stacey: Google Assistant. Is that really Google Assistant?

Christina: Yea, they're rewriting that.

Leo: Oh and that's going to be in Allo the new messaging app as well.

Stacey: And if they have—that would be a reason to buy Home over the Echo because my Echo still thinks after Gene Wilder died, this is—I don't know why I'm so emphatic about this but it still thinks he died at the age of 81 when he died at the age of 83. And I'm guessing it's just a function of Bing. But there's little things like that where you're like, "Ah, come on, Echo."

Leo: Echo uses Bing?

Owen: That could mess somebody up on their school project because you know these kids are out here being lazy.

Christina: Of course they use Bing.

Leo: Oh yea, they're not going to use Google.

Owen: They're not actually checking the real dates on things. They're checking with Echo and Echo could be off by 2 or 3 years.

Leo: I think Echo should use Jeeves.

Owen: You know, the War of 1776 happened in 1778. That's a big difference. Somebody could get an F for that.

Leo: Ok. Ok. So that's an interesting point that Echo uses Bing.

Christina: Yea, I think we use Bing and they use Wikipedia. They might use Wolfram Alpha. I don't know who they use. But yea, but great, great point, Stacey. Yea, Google's going to be more accurate on that stuff for sure.

Leo: Oh yea, Google will be awesome. And the notifications will basically be Google Now, right?

Stacey: Ah. That's my happy Google Now noise. That's what I'm guessing. I mean we don't know anything about it because when we asked about it they shut it off.

Leo: It might say, "Hi, Leo. It's time to leave for work if you want to make it."

Stacey: I don't think that's the voice Google's going to use.

Leo: Can they use Scarlet Johansson for me? I don't care what you get but I want Scarlet Johansson.

Stacey: Sean Connery.

Leo: It's time to leave for work, Stacey. My, you're looking marvelous today.

Stacey: With my luck I'd get my mom. Stacey. Get up!

Leo: Stacey. Time to leave for work. Get up. Wake up!

Owen: That will get you moving. That will get you out of the house pretty quick.

Leo: Yea. We don't know what voice. That's an interesting point. Well they'll probably just use the Google Assistant voice, right?

Stacey: That's a terrible voice.

Leo: It isn't a great voice. But Siri's not a great voice either. We can do better with our voices. We need better voices.

Stacey: There's a company called Josh.ai that has—they've shown it off. I don't know if it's out yet or it's coming out momentarily but they've got different voices for the Echo that—

Leo: Oh.

Stacey: So you can get different accents, different sexes, different—

Leo: How open is the Echo? It's pretty open, right? You can put it on a Raspberry Pi. So things like having a new voice, you can theoretically—well, do they have to make a deal with Amazon to make it a task?

Stacey: I don't know how they're going to do it. I think it's a skill, sorry, a skill not a task, right?

Leo: Yea.

Christina: Yea.

Owen: Who would be the greatest voice of all times to be on any machine?

Christina: Patrick Stewart.

Leo: Oh, that'd be good. Make it so, Christina.

Owen: I'll take that. Morgan Freeman?

Christina: Morgan Freeman.

Stacey: I'm trying to think of women who I'd want. Can't think of any.

Leo: They use female voices I think because I've always seen this said, that fighter pilots when they're passing out because they're stalled or whatever, they use female voices for the fighter pilots, "Pull up. Pull up," because we all have mommies and we're trained to listen to female voices.

Stacey: Ok, that is just silly.

Leo: (Laughing).

Stacey: I want to see the study for that. That is ridiculous.

Leo: Really? I think that's true (laughing).

Owen: Yes, everyone has a mother. You are correct.

Leo: Yes, even women have mothers.

Owen: I'm just saying, that just sounds so silly.

Christina: It really does.

Leo: You think a male voice? Why do they use—

Owen: Ok, here's the thing about that. It's universally female voice for things. So if there's a woman—like I would almost believe like, hey, men are more inspired to not punk out when a woman's around. Like oh, you're blacking out or something. A female says, "Get up," you're going to do it because you don't want to embarrass yourself over everyone has a mom and your mom tells you to get up and  you think you're going to get up for your mom.

Leo: You know what they call that voice, by the way, what fighter pilots call that voice? Bitching Betty. Bitching Betty.

Stacey: Wow.

Leo: It's a slang term used by fighter pilots.

Stacey: Or Nagging Nora. Look at that.

Leo: Or Nagging Nora, yea. Or Hank the Yank.

Owen: Your door is ajar.

Leo: Your door—I hate that, the door is ajar. I hate that. But you don't—they're not trying in that case of course, you're not trying to soothe somebody, you're trying to get them to pay attention. Early human factors research in aircraft and other domains indicated—this is Wikipedia so you know it's true—that female voices were more authoritative to male pilots and crew members and were more likely to get their attention. Much—now it says citation needed.

Stacey: Citation needed.

Christina: Citation needed.

Leo: Somebody just made that up. Maybe even Leo put that in there. Much of this research was based on pilot experiences particularly in combat situations where the pilots were guided by female air traffic controllers—citation needed. They reported being able to most easily pick out the female voice from the flurry of radio chatter—citation needed.

Stacey: That's because there were no women pilots. Of course you're going to pay attention.

Owen: And that's another logic in the time period back in the day when they had this study, that makes a lot more sense too. Oh, you're going to listen to the female on the phone because there aren't supposed to be females on the phone. What is she doing?

Leo: And by the way, if we then go to actual studies, a study and Plymouth University in 2003 and Defense Research and Development in Toronto in 2009, and both cases a male voice rather than a female voice in a monotone or urgent annunciation style resulted in the largest proportion of correct and fastest identification times. Never mind, I forget. There is no citation needed here. There is an actual citation.

Stacey: Oh, actual citation.

Leo: Effects of Talker Sex and Voice Style of Verbal Cockpit Warnings on Performances from Human Factors, Volume 51, November 1^st, 2009. All right, so it's not true.

Owen: Now we have to change the whole system.

Stacey: I know. We've got to change Wikipedia.

Owen: We need more men in stuff because men are just as annoying as women are apparently and I don't know why they think they need to nag somebody.

Leo: You want to meet Bitching Betty? This is Bitching Betty.

Christina: Wow.

Leo: Yea, she's young and attractive. Why don't I hear her though? Do you have my audio?

Christina: We don't have your audio.

Owen: How old is she? Like who's her predecessor?

Leo: She can't be Bitching Betty. Unless this was shot in 1938.

Owen: Exactly. I don't know if they had cockpits that talked to you in 1938 but there's got to be someone older than her that was doing that before her.

Leo: This is probably another citation needed.

Owen: Yea, we can't trust this.

Leo: Fail from YouTube this time.

Owen: All right, we need another story.

Leo: Where's my audio? Why don't you hear my audio?

Owen: We are false reporting?

Leo: Have you figured that out? I really want to hear this woman's voice. I want to know if her voice makes me want to pull up. The Tesla doesn't have a voice, does it? Yea, it does. Is it female? Yes it is.

Stacey: The Tesla has a voice?

Leo: Doesn't it? Oh, I think it's Google's though because it's the guidance.

Stacey: Oh, that old female voice, yes.

Leo: Google does not get—now with Apple, you can change Siri's voice to a male voice by changing the nationality.

Owen: Yes.

Christina: Yes.

Leo: But you can't with Google, right? You're stuck with that voice. There's no—

Stacey: I have, yea—I have never messed around with it but I don't think you can. I was like, "Let us go to the internet."

Leo: The greatest thing about TomTom for instance—remember the TomTom GPSs, is you could use celebrity voices.

Christina: Oh yes, those were great. I loved those.

Owen: It's actually sad that you don't get to do those anymore. I was just talking to someone about that the other day. Because they're like, "Man, I used to listen to Mr. T." I was like, "You still have a TomTom?"

Leo: I pity the fool. Turn here. Go ahead.

Owen: He was like yea, he uses it when he travels and gets a rental car so he doesn't have to pay for GPS. And I'm like that's really awesome. I miss that stuff.

Stacey: Well so when you have an infinite variety of things to say though, you can't hire an actor to—

Leo: Right.

Christina: Right.

Leo: I used to have—can you not get my audio? Do you know what that's all about? Is that me or you or? You can't. Too bad because I wanted to play this. I used to have a voice. I used to have GLaDOS. Remember GLaDOS, the evil robot from Portal?

Christina: Oh yea.

Leo: I used her on the TomTom and she would tell you to turn left when you're supposed to turn right. And then when you would arrive she'd say, "I don't know why you went here. There's no cake here." It was awesome. It was a troll because it wasn't useful but.

Christina: It's like the least useful thing in the entire history of the world if that's fantastic. I love it.

GLaDOS: Hello and welcome to the Aperture Science Computer Aided Navigation System. Aperture Science is committed to the well-being of all its users of its navigation systems. Cake and grief counselling will be available at the conclusion of your journey.

Leo: And then I would—

GLaDOS: After 300 meters you have reached your destination. Congratulations. Please remain in your vehicle and your cake will be delivered shortly.

Leo: (Laughing) it was fun. I also had Dennis Hopper for a while giving me directions. Kind of stoned directions.

Christina: That's funny.

Leo: See, I don't understand why they don't—I guess because it's too much of a vocabulary?

Christina: Yea, that was what Stacey was saying that it makes sense.

Owen: Don't we have systems and algorithms that can just mimic things like that once they get the basic pattern down can't they just make the inflections? Like the have them say the alphabet and then you can just say anything. I'm exaggerating my point obviously but I mean, with technology now.

Christina: They do but it's expensive and I think that for most companies they can do it. But I think—

Dennis Hopper: At 800 yards turn left.

Stacey: I'm going to have to go like research this because—

Leo: Yea, would you?

Stacey: Yea because now I'm fascinated. I'm like oh, the difficulties—I mean we've been spending so much money on natural language processing and understanding people.

Leo: What about talking?

Stacey: Communicating.

Leo: Yea, what about talking? What about coming back to us? Because wasn't that—I loved the movie Her. And the thing that made that movie was that Scarlet Johansson was the voice of the AI and when you have a real—it wouldn't have worked if it didn't have that. It was—

Owen: It's the same way advertising works. Right now there's a commercial with Kevin Hart's voice and he's doing an advertisement for a business. And my daughter walks through the room and she stops. And the only reason she stops is because she hears the tone of his voice. And she looks at the TV. And she's like, "What is that?" And she doesn't care about it but she cares about his voice. She can feel his voice. So when somebody you know or somebody you care about or somebody that's soothing, like I said, Morgan Freeman—he could get me to do anything on my phone if he's talking to me on my phone.

Christina: That's true.

Owen:  He'll be my best friend. Siri's trash. I would use Siri every day just to talk to Morgan Freeman, like literally.

Leo: Well there's interest—

Christina: Or James Earl Jones.

Owen: James Earl Jones too.

Leo: This is the world's most important drive home.

Owen: We need to start a campaign.

Stacey: I don't know. James Earl Jones, I'd feel bad if I didn't follow his directions. You're like, "Oh, sorry."

Owen: He's on my text messages.

Leo: You know I find I like you're driving (laughing).

Stacey: I find the fact that you can't tell your left from your right disturbing.

Leo: Disturbing.

Christina: The Simpsons had this funny thing when I guess because he guest starred a couple times as a character, Bleeding Gums Murphy and at the end of I guess like his character's final appearance, he made like a lot of the comments like Star Wars and like the Lion King and CNN. Like bit by bit by bit. It was very funny.

Leo: But they do use humans to generate these voices. There must be a way to give, even though they have to do a lot, say a lot. By the way, the best of them all is Amazon's Echo. She is really good.

Stacey: She does have inflection.

Leo: Yea.

Owen: The thing is the price of it, right? So I saw the woman who was Siri's voice and I'm like they pay her whatever pittance in the beginning and now she's like not making money. If you had to get James Earl Jones, the amount of dough you'd have to pay him.

Leo: Oh, you couldn't afford him. No, so you get a voice actor but I feel like you could have better voices.

Christina: Yea but they also have to be understandable and they have to be—like the woman who did the original Siri, the first Siri voice and it's a different voice now but the first Siri—which is why she can now sell herself as, "Oh I was the voice of Siri." It's now actually a different voice. She was also I think the voice of the ATMs that Bank of America used to do.

Leo: I think she was Ma Bell. She did Country Stores.

Christina: Yea, exactly. She's done like a million different things. So I think that you have to have like the right celebrity like a Kevin Hart would be good or a James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman but you've got to have something that's easy to understand and is soothing and they can also be, like they can work in a lot of scenarios because you know, if it's something that—if you have any sort of accent at all or an accent that is hard to understand I think that that would end up negating the whole point of voice assisted stuff.

Leo: John Markoff did a great piece earlier this year in the New York Times, Creating a Computer Voice that People Like. And he was talking about Watson. And remember that Watson played Jeopardy and had a kind of bland voice.

Stacey: He sounded like a jerk. He was a real a-hole.

Leo: Well do you want to hear? Because this is the best part of this New York Times article. They began in 2009 searching for a voice for Watson and here are some of the finalists. Do you want to hear some of the finalists that weren't selected?

Christina: Yes let's get to the finalists.

Alex Trebek: This island that was home to a notorious—

Christina: Oh, God.

Leo: No, that's Alex Trebek. So they're going to actually put this in the Jeopardy game. So Trebek is going to ask a question and you'll hear—

Christina: Gotcha.

Leo: This is always going to be the same kind of basic setup.

Alex: National recreation area in San Francisco?

Watson Finalist A: What is Alcatraz?

Alex: Right.

Leo: So that's pretty good.

Alex: This state's only national memorial honors clergyman Roger Williams. Jennifer.

Watson Finalist A: What is Rhode Island?

Alex: That's it.

Leo: So that's pretty close to the final. But here's some other ones that didn't.

Alex: This island that was home to a notorious prison is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco.

Watson Finalist B: What is Alcatraz?

Alex: Right.

Leo: That's nice. A female voice, right? That's nice. That sounds a little like Siri. This maybe not.

Alex: This island that was home to a notorious prison is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco.

Watson Finalist: What is Alcatraz?

Alex: Right.

Leo: That's a little creepier, right?

Christina: Yea.

Alex: This state's only national memorial honors clergyman Roger Williams. Jennifer.

Watson Finalist C: What is Rhode Island?

Alex: That's it.

Leo: Now this is the one—I can't even believe they considered this. This is the one—this was a finalist. Didn't make it.

Alex: This island that was home to a notorious prison is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco.

Watson Finalist D: What is Alcatraz?

Alex: Right.

Leo: (Laughing).

Alex: This state's only national memorial honors clergyman Roger Williams. Jennifer.

Watson Finalist C: What is Rhode Island?

Alex: That's it.

Leo: That is creepy.

Christina: That is so creepy.

Stacey: I'm picturing like a little mouse.

Christina: Or like a small child and yea, I don't, I don't—because it's, you can disembody it enough. I think you're right, Leo. What made Her so amazing was ScarJo's voice which is a great voice, was it felt so real. But also you need to have that realness or you need to have the slightly disembodiness where you're like, "Oh, this is a nice, soothing voice."

Leo: So there's an uncanny valley. There's an uncanny valley.

Christina: But to have uncanny valley where it didn't feel like a child's voice. You're like, "Oh my God, a child is inside my machine." Like that's just creepy.

Leo: It sounded to me more like Chuckie, like a killer doll.

Stacey: Yea, that's what I was going to say.

Leo: Yea, Yea. Yea, Alex. You think you're so smart, Alex.

Stacey: When my daughter was small I taught her to say redrum. So it was awesome.

Leo: (Laughing) Did she do the finger?

Stacey: She did.

Leo: Redrum. Redrum. Redrum. That would creep the hell out of me.

Owen: Na, I couldn't do that. I would be like locking my kid in the closet, like stop it.

Leo: People come over and your daughter comes out and goes, "Redrum. Redrum. I'm going to my room."

Stacey: It was very effective. I encourage everyone to do that with their small children.

Leo: Wow, that is really—

Christina: That is awesome.

Leo: Some people teach their kids to swear. You taught them to look like a psychotic child that's about to murder someone.

Stacey: It terrified people, which is better.

Christina: Well they're both great but yea, I'm a big fan of the redrum. That's fantastic. Again these are all reasons I don't have children because I think that's all I would do.

Leo: You would do that.

Christina: If I had a child, oh, that would be all I would do.

Leo: Do you dress up your cats?

Owen: I don't know if you can see it but here's father of the year right here. That was Leia today. She's going to be Lady Deadpool for Halloween. That's a real sword.

Christina: That's awesome. That's so cool.

Owen: So we just got to get her her blonde little hair tail.

Leo: Here's why you're father of the year. You're planning her Halloween costume in September.

Owen: Oh, man, she got that thing a month ago. I have to fight her not to put it on every weekend. She just wants to run around in it. I got it because I didn't want it to be sold out by the time Halloween came. As soon as she said, "I want to be Deadpool," I'm like, "Word. Let's do that. Because that is awesome."

Leo: So is it sexist to have a female voice? Is that like well you're my servant kind of like subservient?

Christina:  I don't think so.

Leo: I think they're more pleasant to be honest. I also think, and maybe this is sexist, I don't want some guy in the house with me.

Christina: I don't mind if there's a guy in the house. It's just that the female voice is better. Although I do like the British Siri male voice.

Leo: That's what—Megan uses that. Yea.

Christina: That one actually does feel a little like a servant because it feels like it's Jeeves.

Leo: Right it's Jeeves, yea.

Owen: Yes. You feel like you just got an extra $20K in your bank account when you're using that voice.

Leo: I'm sorry, sir.

Stacey: That's what Amazon should use so then you'll be like, "Oh, yes. Buy more stuff."

Owen: Hey, we got to—can we talk about an ad and then can we talk about Facebook and some security maybe?

Leo: Ah, you are all over it. Steven Fry who has the best British voice ever did a talking clock for a while. It was called the Voco. And he did it, he did it as Jeeves.

Talking Clock: Good morning, sir. You're horoscope is unusually favorable today. Shall I get your bank manager on the telephone? Very good, sir.

Leo: This is a good way to wake up.

Talking Clock: Good morning, sir. I am delighted you have survived another night. If you would allow a personal nature, may I add my own small congratulations to the roar of the world's approval.

Leo: Oh, I want this clock so bad. This is the Voco.

Owen: If it didn't have that bird tweet in it it'd be awesome. But that bird is like a sharp sting in my ear. That thing is crazy.

Leo: It was a little piercing. Maybe not a good recording. Here, this is—

Owen: But he was funny. That's a funny clock.

Leo: Yea. I love Steven Fry.

Talking Clock: Excuse me, madam. The Duke of Wellington presents his compliments through the medium of my Aunt Vera. He's particularly admiring of your shoes. I am afraid I have no further information than that.

Leo: (Laughing) this is very random.

Stacey: You could actually create something like that with a Pi and just load like mp3s of Steven Fry.

Leo: Totally. That's why I'm just frustrated that they don't do a better job of this. They need to focus more on that I think.

Stacey: I think they're doing quite enough. I mean like, they've got a lot. They've got the APIs they're working on. They've got—

Leo: They also probably don't—I think the uncanny valley, they don't want to personify it too much because they're afraid of freaking people out.

Stacey: You're not going to get ScarJo talking to you just yet.

Leo: Yea, and Skynet and the whole thing. Google especially. Anyway, the Google Home—

Christina: Google especially.

Leo: Yea. The Google Home, looking forward to it. We'll find out more on October 4^th. You think we'll be able to buy it soon?

Christina: I hope so.

Stacey: They've got to get that guy out.

Leo: They announced it at Google IO. They announced it in June.

Christina: Yea but when they announced it, it was not well—it was so far away they couldn't even do an onstage demo because it was an empty box.

Leo: That's true. That's true.

Christina: So I hope that it's available but it might be one of those things where they actually now give us a demo and they're like, "Early 2017."

Owen: Yea, I feel like they're still in a beta phase, like they might get it out to certain people to like have it go a couple months of testing before anybody can even get a hold of that thing.

Leo: I want Allo. What's holding Allo up? That's the smart messaging client.

Stacey: Oh yea. Summer's over now, too.

Christina: This summer is over.

Leo: Summer is over. Well, it's over in three weeks technically.

Owen: Technically so they still have time.

Christina: Yea, they have until the 21^st.

Owen: They still have time.

Stacey: I was going to say, Labor Day technically means the end of summer.

Leo: Yea, notice nobody here's wearing white shoes or a white belt.

Christina: Well I will be wearing white Adidas tomorrow. I mean, you know, sorry.

Leo: Sneakers. That's different.

Owen:  It's still not Labor Day. You've still got time. Don't say sorry. It's your right and your privilege.

Stacey: You've got until the end of day tomorrow.

Leo: Sorry, not sorry.

Owen: Until midnight.

Stacey: There's still winter whites.

Leo: Our show today brought to you by FreshBooks, the super simple cloud accounting software that changed my life 10 years ago when I was still a freelancer. In fact Amber MacArthur told me about it because I hated doing invoices. And there's a problem when you're a freelancer. No one became—you know, nobody started their own business because they loved doing invoices so much. I mean that's like the worse. So it would come to the end of the month and I would put it off. I didn't want to fire up Microsoft Word and Excel and get all my papers and my receipts and uh. Bu the problem is if you don't do that, you don't get paid. And that's a problem. In fact there was a period when I was doing this, going to Canada and doing the TV show that I did not invoice Rogers for my travel or my time for like 4 or 5 months. And then you know, I'm starting to say, "I really need a check." So I put them all together and they were pissed off. They said, "How can—you're invoicing us for 6 months' worth of travel? We're not going to do it." Amber said FreshBooks. Comes out of Toronto. Great company. One of the first Web 2.0 companies and they've gotten better and better and better. In fact, 5 million small business owners now use FreshBooks for their invoicing, for their accounting. Come tax time you'll love the reporting. Your accountant will love the reporting. It literally takes 30 seconds to create and send an invoice including different currencies. I was billing in Canadian dollars. No problem. You can also brand your invoices with your logo. I had a nice little you know, Leo logo. You can set recurring invoices so you don't even have to do it every month. Attach receipts. You can use the FreshBooks app to actually take pictures of receipts and get them into the invoice. Clients can pay you online which most of the time means you get paid faster because it turns out clients don't like paying any more than you like invoicing. Not because they don't want to pay you. They do. It's just a pain in the butt. So if they have a button on the email that says just pay them now, they'll do it. Setup auto payment reminders. It's so awesome. They have this new thing. I'm not sure I really understand it but I think if you are—I would have used this probably then because you can invoice for a payment up front when you're kicking off a project. So a lot of times you go into debt basically, it comes out of your pocket until you get the expenses paid back. Now you can use FreshBooks as an escrow basically. You can also import expenses automatically so it's very fast, very easy. And there's so much more. It even has a chip, EMV chip card so you can dip the chip or swipe the stripe that goes onto your smartphone using their app. So if you're doing business in people's houses, you can invoice them. You can actually give them an estimate—all this with FreshBooks. Give them an estimate on the app, give them an invoice on the app and then take their payment on the app all at the same—you know, in one day which is truly amazing. You're going to love it. It's going to transform your life if you are invoicing people get FreshBooks. You can try it free for 30-days. FreshBooks.com/twit. FreshBooks.com/twit. There's no offer code for this but when they do ask you how did you hear about us, if you would write in This Week in Tech, I would be eternally grateful. FreshBooks. They've been a good sponsor for us since I started using them 10-years ago. Really a great company. FreshBooks.com/twit.

Leo: What did you want to talk about? Facebook, Ohdoctah?

Owen: I don't know. Facebook, security, something.

Leo: You want to talk about how they can now zoom in on Instagram? That's kind of a minor—

Owen: No, that wasn't it.

Leo: I watched people though all the time. I'll show them an Instagram picture and they do this. And you know what? It doesn't do anything. But now it does, right?

Owen: The worst part is unless you have a 6 Plus, when you're watching videos and stuff, everybody always tries to turn your phone because the videos are so small.

Leo: Right.

Owen: Like it's just a natural thing. Anybody who doesn't use Instagram I'm like here, watch this video. We're laughing. And they're like, "Why don't you turn it? Why can't we watch it bigger?" And zooming doesn't even help that. I still can't watch the video bigger. You zoom in on a video, what point does that make?

Leo: We had some pretty good coverage this week at IFA. None of you went to Berlin for that, the big IFA show? We sent Father Robert Ballecer to it. You know, that show was started by—the first show, I think was 1923 by Albert Einstein. It has been going on since then. It was a radio show originally, I-F-A.

Stacey: Oh, yea, we talked about this.

Leo: Yea. I mean that's so cool. Anyway, and Robert was there. He had some pics of some of the things he liked. I don't know if you would buy this but one of the things he mentioned was Sony's Walkman. Sony's released a new Walkman. Whoops. You know how much the Walkman is?

Christina: $3,000-dollars.

Leo: (Laughing).

Christina: Wait, but it's stupid.

Leo: But you can also get the $2,300-dollar headphones to go with it.

Christina: Oh my God. What is Sony doing? What is Sony doing?

Leo: It's their anniversary.

Owen: They're pushing Apple even into the pocket of not having headphone jacks is what Sony's doing if that's the price of something.

Leo: 70mm magnesium dome driver, aluminum-coated diaphragm, neodymium magnets and the headband is made out of beta titanium.

Owen: You're still called Sony.

Christina: I thought the $800-dollar Walkman was dumb.

Leo: Oops. My daughter's calling me. I'm sorry about that.

Christina: I thought the $800-dollar Walkman was dumb.

Owen: You could sell that if you called it Alph Alpha or Sprekenstein or something.

Leo: (Laughing) Sprekenstein.

Owen: But when it says—something luxurious that people name stupid things.

Leo: Sony even—you know what's sad?

Owen: But when you put Sony on it, I won't do it.

Leo: Sony used to be that. Sony used to be like that. That's what's sad. They used to be the quality. Remember?

Christina: They were. They were the Apple before Apple. Like Steve Jobs wanted Sony to buy Apple back in the ‘80s.

Leo: Not anymore, Sony.

Owen: When I first had my first Walkman and my first Discman I was the coolest kid on the block. I truly understand that. But for Pete's sake, Sony, give it up. Let it go.

Leo: Here's one thing I did want to get, I liked a lot. Gear S3 Classic from Samsung.

Christina: Huge.

Leo: And I really—is it really, really, big?

Christina: It's really big.

Leo: Of course it's really big. But it's so pretty. And by the way, this is not an Android wearable watch, this is Tizen.

Christina: Tizen yea. No, I mean it's good looking I suppose. I can't look at it and be anything other than angry because I look at a watch like that and Samsung has been like, "Well we can't make the female version of this because we just can't make the electronics small enough." And I just get so angry because it looks fine but this is a male watch.

Leo: If you were to wear that watch, it would be—you'd be like Grand Master Flash.

Christina: Yea, it would be impossible for me to wear the watch. A, it would be too heavy. B, it would be too big. Now I have small wrists anyway. I have like a child sized wrist. And so the 38mm Apple Watch—

Leo: Is too big.

Christina: It's not too big but I have like for the leather band I have the small size which is like the size that typically they're like, "Well, we specifically sell this to children." I'm like, "Thanks. Thanks, guys." But so—

Leo: (Laughing). That's so insulting.

Christina: But like you know, so the taking me out of it, I just feel like even the average woman, like so someone who doesn't have a super small wrist, it's still—that watch is still too big for them. And I was talking to someone who, like a male friend of mine who's really into watches and he was like, "Yea, anything under, anything over 42." I think it's like 46mm or something. He's like, "Anything over 42 is a big watch."

Stacey: That's a big watch.

Leo: This is the latest Moto 360. It's pretty big. You couldn't wear that.

Christina: Heck no.

Leo: I think it's 46. But I like big watches. I cannot lie. I mean it just—I just feel like, I don't know. Because I'm a big guy, right? It doesn't look—

Christina: Sure, it looks fine on you.

Leo: It looks fine. It looks manly.

Owen: That is something to be said like how people again missed the mark. I understand like people not having a female version of a watch all the time.

Leo: Well, they can't. This thing has a 380 milliamp hour battery. It's got a 4 day battery in here.

Owen: Again, you could still make something stylized for a smaller wrist or a female. That's why Apple—who would buy? Because who is going to walk around with this big, clunky thing on their hand? And you look at kids.

Stacey: No, no, no, no, no. Because you've got to have—if you're willing to compromise and not put like GPS or a cellular radio on it, then yes.

Leo: This has a GPS and a phone in it.

Stacey: Right, so if you're going to add the modem for the phone, plus the battery, you're going to move into like crazy fat territory. I mean that's just hard. But you can, if it's like a normal smart watch, like just Bluetooth and you're going to use your phone for most of the stuff. You totally could do something pretty. I was so pissed that the initial Pebble was just—I posted a picture of that. They were like, "It's like you're wearing a medical device."

Leo: (Laughing) if it's stylish enough, it has to be stylish. It has to look like nice—this is what's been a problem with smart watches is they look stupid. They don't look stylish. If it's stylish enough some people, not I admit, Christina, you're not in the picture, but some people would. I mean I think that looks very nice. Of course the problem with smart watches, and this is an OLED super AMOLED screen and this is 1.3", is they always look better in pictures because the screen always looks like those are real hands, that's real numbers. And then you see it and it's clearly a screen. I don't know. I'm going to buy this.

Owen: Somebody's sitting on a boardroom panel with this design and cruise and all the smartest people in the world could make a lovely wearable device for a female and it just needs to get done. Like again, you don't have to make one with every cycle of watch you make, but make one once a year. Give me options so I can buy one as a present for Christmas.

Leo: I would say women are the biggest market for fitness bands and fitness watches.

Christina: Yes, and I would say that women would be more willing to spend a ridiculous amount of money on a watch if it's attractive and fashionable. I mean again, my Apple Watch I spent $250-dollars on the band because it's an accessory, it's a fashion thing at that point not a tech object. So the way that I mentally am able to justify what I spend on something, is for me, I can't speak for all women, but at least for me, I'm able to sometimes say, "Well I'm now justifying this as a fashion purchase versus a tech purchase." And so I can make allowances to spend $800-dollars on something for my wrist because it's also a fashion item rather than being like this is a gadget.

Stacey: You spend $800-dollars on costume jewelry? Sorry.

Leo: Go ahead, Stace.

Stacey: I'm just thinking about because one of the things I have—

Christina: No, but on a watch I would.

Stacey: Do you think your band will work with future iterations of the Apple Watch?

Christina: I do.

Stacey: Ok because that's one of my things. Yea, I'm like, oh, you know, I have a Ringly, I looked into the bracelets. I've looked at a lot of stuff because I love having attractive things that interact with my stuff, especially because my phone's always in my bag. But a lot of it's really expensive for something that I'm like, yea, this is probably going to last—like smartwatch is a no go for me if it's more than like $200-bucks because my God—

Leo: Because you'll get a year or two. Apple's going to announce a new one on Wednesday.

Stacey: We're not supposed to talk about that.

Leo: And by the way, that's the other thing—no, we got through 2 stories. I'm going to send him a phone anyway so it doesn't matter.

Christina: (Laughing).

Leo: But the other thing I have to note is with the exception of Apple, almost everybody's doing now round faces. Apple's the only one who's doing square still.

Christina: Yea.

Leo: Anything to say?

Christina: I don't know. I mean I think it's an aesthetic decision.

Leo: I like round, that's the aesthetic decision. Round's good.

Owen: Again, it's Apple being Apple, wanting to be different.

Christina: And also I think that round unfortunately, it's harder to make a smaller round face so for me personally, I'm ok with the square because I feel like round to get all the stuff there it's harder for them to miniaturize that. I think Pebble did a nice job, but—

Leo: Do you still wear your Apple Watch?

Christina: I do.

Stacey: I like squares actually. So I feel like round from a design aesthetic, they just—they look weird on someone's wrist. It's like a square, it's a rectangular thing in the beginning. I don't know. I've always worn square watches.

Leo: Well my Cartier Tank Watch is a classic square watch. There's lots of square watches.

Stacey: See, classic. How do people feel about watches when they're no long classic? I don't know.

Leo: Yea, this I don't know. I think there's a macho kind of Ray Donovan element to a big, clunky watch.

Owen: Nice plug there for Ray Donovan. Great show. I was wearing my Apple Watch every day. So I'm looking forward to getting a new one.

Leo: Yea. I'm curious about this S3. It also thinks you can play Bluetooth music via Spotify from the S3 to a speaker. I mean this thing basically is a—

Christina: Basically it's a phone.

Leo: It's a smartphone on your wristwatch and I think that's kind of what Samsung's thinking is if we could just get all the functionality of a smartphone into a wristwatch now, then you'd have something.

Christina: You just have to make sure that the battery doesn't explode.

Owen: Yea.

Leo: That would be a bad thing, right?

Owen: I mean imagine that. Again, something where the size of it. But imagine if you could give a kid that, right? You don't want to give a younger kid a phone per se but you say, "Oh year, put this watch on and I can at least text you or call you when you're out at the part of outside or over at Suzie's house or something." You can still communicate with them. And they only have that one device. They don't have to carry something in their pocket. That would be huge.

Leo: It's also going to do something that Android Wear does not do which is Touch to Pay and it's going to do something the Apple Watch doesn't do which is not only Touch to Pay but Apple's, I mean Samsung's smartphones with Samsung Pay work with card readers, swipe card readers because they send out a magnetic signal that tricks the card reader into thinking it's a credit card being swiped. The watch will do that too.

Owen: You've almost sold me.

Leo: That's interesting. Well, you're a big guy. We're big guys. We can wear a bigger watch. And then I mean here's my question mark. Will it work with anything but Samsung's phone because in the past that's been a stopper for some people.

Owen: I doubt it.

Leo: Probably not, right?

Stacey: If it's running Tizen can it?

Leo: I don't know. I don't know what the capabilities are. AT&T's already announced they will sell it and it takes advantage of a feature, a new feature AT&T's been touting. In face it explains why AT&T's been touting it which is you will have a phone number on your phone and a phone number on the watch that are different but you can tell the phone that the watch phone number is now the phone number to ring when the phone rings so it's going to in effect spoof your phone so you will have one phone number.

Stacey: People's heads will explode. That is really complicated.

Leo: And you have to pay for that.

Stacey: Well of course you have to pay for that. That's another SIM.

Leo: Right.

Stacey: Whoa.

Leo: So that's the problem, right? Each SIM has a unique phone number except in this case you'll be able to have two devices with the same phone number.

Stacey: So really what you need is some sort of like dashboard where you control all of your communications from AT&T so or whoever your carrier is.

Leo: That's what I need.

Stacey: Well no, I'm serious because then you could actually set that up.

Leo: It's called Google Voice.

Stacey: Well exactly.

Leo: I wish Google would—Google makes me mad. Wish they hadn't just kind of thrown away Google Voice.

Christina: Google Voice was so good.

Owen: It works.

Christina: It's been abandoned.

Leo: How long is it going to work for, right?

Owen: They're not going to cut it off. It's going to stay there and float in the ether and be the exact same it is.

Leo: I love it. I love it. I've got 5 phone numbers and—

Owen: What's your main carrier service?

Leo: T-Mobile on the Samsungs, Google Fi on the 6P and I can't wait because I'm going to Europe in 2 weeks, that Google Fi I can't wait to try.

Christina: That's going to be awesome because you're going to get that LTE, right?

Leo: Yea.

Christina: That's awesome.

Leo: Same price in 19 countries as it is here.

Christina: That's so great. That's so great.

Leo: We'll see if it works in Russia. I'm going to Russia, too. That's going to be fun.

Stacey: Where in Russia?

Leo: St. Petersburg.

Stacey: Super fun.

Leo: Three days in St. Petersburg. I can't wait. I just, I wonder. I'm hoping, I don't know, I wish Donald Trump would get elected while I'm there. I think it'd be so fun.

Owen: You better make sure you take your fez to Russia.

Leo: But don't take it to Turkey.

Owen: Not to Turkey.

Leo: I can't remember whether you can or can't. Anyway, let's take a break. We're going to get some wrap. We'll wrap this up. Each of you pick a story for the runner. We've got some many more we haven't even got to. So pick something that you think we should have talked about but Leo's just terrible. I know I've got one. Oh, I've got several. Well Ozzie Osborne's genome.

Stacey: No, no.

Leo: The Grumpy Cat lawsuit. I mean there's good stuff in there and you can now rent Erlich's Aviato car.

Stacey: Oh, I'm so bad about that. Ok.

Leo: Ok, ok. When we come back. We had a great week this week on TWiT and we made a little movie so in case you missed stuff, you can watch this and you'll feel complete. Watch.

Narrator: Previously on TWiT.

Paul Thurrott: We're never going to surpass this, Mary Jo, but I believe this week we have Allo-gate, Battery-gate, Webcam-gate, Kindle-gate.

Mary Jo Foley: Someone who is not from the US sent me a tweet and said, "Why do you guys keep talking about all these gates?"

Leo: It all started with Watergate, the first scandal.

Paul: Which has become the least of the gates in my opinion.

Narrator: TWiT Live Specials.

Father Robert Ballecer: All around us there are tens of thousands waiting to get into these hallowed halls behind us, filled with the latest in televisions, the fastest of computers and the greatest in technology. I'm Fr. Robert Ballecer with TWiT TV. Welcome to IFA 2016.

Narrator: This Week in Google.

Leo: I am going to make an effort to use Google +.

Jeff Jarvis: Yea, I should too.

Leo: What else is there?  I think Twitter—it feels more and more as I go back there that all the communications there are very self-serving. None of this stuff is that useful to me, you know what I'm saying?

Stacey: I follow an amazing array of people. Basically if you are smarter than me, I probably follow you.

Leo: That explains why you don't follow me or Jeff.

Stacey: I follow Jeff.

Leo: Oh!

Narrator: TWiT. We love you.

Leo: She follows me too. That was just, you know, a little byplay. What's coming up this week? Let's find out.

Megan Morrone: Thank you, Leo. This is a short week because of the Labor Day holiday in the US but the tech news never stops laboring. I have two words for you, Apple and Sony. Wednesday is the big day when not one but two companies making big announcements. First there's Apple. Will we see new iPhones? Will they have headphone jacks? Will there be a 256GB option? Is it ok for men to buy the new rose gold headphones from Beats by Dre? Will you buy me the new Watch that they announce? These are the questions that everyone wants to know the answers too. PlayStation also planned an event for this Wednesday. We assume Sony is going to use this gathering to finally open the kimono on the PlayStation Neo 4GB capable upgrade to the PlayStation 4 console. We might also see a PlayStation Slim. That's a thinner version that's rumored to be a pretty lackluster product with few improvements to its predecessor. T-Mobile's new unlimited-ish plan, T-Mobile One also launches this week on September 6^th. And finally the XOXO Festival starts this week in Portland, Oregon. That's a gathering of independent artists doing cool stuff on the internet. Headliners include Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency, HTML and CES expert Eric Meyer from Meyer Web, Sara Jong from Motherboard and more. We hope to cover some of these happenings and oh so much more on Tech News Today every day at 4:00 PM Pacific with Jason Howell, right here on TWiT.

Leo: Thank you, Megan Morrone. And it all begins Wednesday, 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern time, 1700 UTC with our live coverage of Apple's announcement. And I guess while that's—is Sony's announcement at exactly the same time?

Christina: It's a couple hours later I believe or maybe it's an hour later. So I think that Apple starts at 10:00 and I think Sony's is at 1:00. Yea, no, Sony should have cancelled.

Leo: Every company in the world knows if you're going to say anything, get it over with before Apple, not—

Owen: I feel like maybe they just want to fly under the radar because this is the best, sweet rub move that you could pull if you don't want people to know what's going on.

Leo: I guess.

Christina: But this is like E3 all over again. Remember when E3 happened during WWC. Yea, no, I get it. Sony might not have realized. Although they should have because everybody had the rumors. And when they were planning this event out, they were like—for nothing else, just the fact that certain outlets are having to pick, do we cover Sony or do we cover Apple? And anybody in their right mind is going to choose Sony over Apple.

Leo: Well we'll do what we can to share the Sony news as well. It will mostly be PlayStation, right, the new PlayStation?

Christina: Yea, exactly.

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Leo: All right. I mentioned some stories but let's start with you OhDoctah, your story of the week.

Owen: Apple and money and hiding money and giving back money and bringing money back and getting sued for money and all kinds of stuff. We don't have to talk about any of them. Just let me read the headlines.

Leo: Tim Cook's pissed.

Owen: Apple's $14.5-billion-dollar tax bill. What it really means. Apple faces multi-billion-dollar tax bill with the EU ruling. Tim Cook says he--

Leo: $13-billion Euros is $14 and a half billion dollars' retroactive tax.

Owen: He can send cash back to the US next year. Tim Cook responds to the ruling of the Irish and says it's total crap of 0.005% tax rate is a false number. Well I'll be Jiminy Christmas. When there's a whole lot of smoke, there's fire. And I'm just saying, it's not just Apple. Microsoft—everybody starts looking at Microsoft. They'll start looking at all these people not bringing their money home. Bring the money back.

Leo: Tim Cook says it's total political crap. He says Apple paid $400-million-dollars in the year in question, not .005% but $400-million-dollars. He says, "I think we were the largest taxpayer in Ireland that year."

Christina: I'm sure they were.

Leo: He also says-- countries, cities in this country do that all the time. States do tax breaks to get the development, to get the companies to come into the state or come into the city. We'll give you some breaks because in the long run we're going to get more jobs and we're going to get more tax money than if somebody else wins you. So we're going to—and I think that's what Ireland did. The EU said they did it illegally. If the EU wants to fine Ireland, fine. But to retroactively demand $14 and a half billion dollars from Apple.

Owen: What are they building in Ireland? What does Apple make in Ireland?

Leo: Well admittedly they don't do—I mean they have a few thousand employees but it's a tax dodge. But it's a legal tax dodge.

Owen: And that's the problem with everything. But anyway, I just want to say about that. Just go look at all this money and I don't care. I want retro money coming back. I want extra money coming back. I want all these loopholes cut out. I want all these corporations—I know it's—I'm sorry. I apologize.

Leo: I agree with you but that's—no, that's legislatures need to do that. The EU can do that. What they can't do is say to Apple, "You've got to give us some extra money." They have to say, "We're going to change the law." Because Apple was following the law.

Owen: Go ahead and say it, Apple. Go ahead and say it to them. Just keep fighting the fight. You ain't going to get the money but just say it. Bring it up everywhere. Go talk to Microsoft next.

Leo: And the good news is Cook is now saying maybe we'll repatriate some of that money. Because right now they keep it offshore because if they were to bring it back to the US, they'd actually have to pay corporate tax rates in the US and that's like a third of the money shot. But that's still better than $14 and a half billion dollars (laughing). And there's a disadvantage to keeping $200-billion-dollars overseas as Apple does. You can't buy companies in the US. You can only buy companies outside the US with that money. That money is not usable inside the US, so. In fact, Apple's taken out bonds because they don't have access to that money.

Owen: Didn't Tim Cook just liquidate $65-million-dollars of Apple stock?

Leo: God bless him. God bless him.

Owen: I mean he still holds $100-million. I mean that sounds like somebody trying to buy something on the sneak. I don't know. I'm just saying. Let's investigate everything. That's my story.

Leo: All right. There's your story. Investigate everything. OhDoctah. Thank you, OhDoctah. How about you, Christina? What do you think we—what did we miss today?

Christina: I mean that Grumpy Cat lawsuit.

Leo: (Laughing).

Christina: You know I—

Leo: They covered this in This Week in Law by the way and they compared it to the other lawsuit where the monkey, the PITA lawsuit with the monkey.

Christina: Right, right, you're right, right. What I loved about this was it was Hudson's headline for Gizmodo which was Everyone Involved in This $1.8 Million Dollar Grumpy Cat Lawsuit Sucks Except for the Cat.

Leo: Yea, because Grumpy Cat's the only one who's not involved.

Christina: Grumpy Cat, the cat itself, I mean the owners are terrible. The people, everybody's terrible except for the cat. God bless the cat. Everybody else's just awful.

Leo: The cat's just there. Have you met Grumpy Cat?

Christina: Unfortunately, I met Grumpy Cat many times.

Leo: (Laughing).

Christina: It's just a cat.

Leo: I want to hear this story. Unfortunately? Is he really grumpy?

Christina: No, the cat's fine.

Owen: You've got handlers you have to deal with and that's the problem. She doesn't want to say that.

Leo: So it's like a pushy like stage parent that's just pushing.

Christina: It's a brother and sister and yea, let's just say that yea.

Leo: They're horrible people.

Christina: I mean you said it but—Leo said that.

Leo: I've never met them. I don't know.

Stacey: She wants to keep her relationship with Grumpy Cat.

Christina: Actually I don't really care about my relationship with Grumpy Cat. I don't work for Mashable anymore so I guess I can say.

Leo: Wait a minute. Did Grumpy Cat have a special deal with Mashable?

Christina: Well it came to South by Southwest like 3 times.

Leo: On behalf of Mashable?

Christina: As the Mashable house. It was like a whole thing. But now that I no longer work there, I can say, yea, you know what? The Grumpy Cat people aren't great. Grumpy the cat is fine. The people themselves not so great.

Leo: So apparently they licensed the Grumpy Cat image to a beverage company that sold Grumppuccino.

Christina: Right and with some sort of displeasure over money or something.

Leo: And then they went further. They didn't just do Grumppuccino, they did Grumpy Cat Roasted Coffee.

Christina: They were like, "Right, since you owe us money and you really sell like the name of this whole thing." It's like, your fortunate that—I don't know. I was really hoping that after the Lifetime movie flops—

Leo: There was a Lifetime movie?

Christina: There was a Lifetime movie, a Christmas special that Aubrey Plaza whose fantastic voiced Grumpy Cat. And it's a really terrible movie on every level. Like it was just absolute trash. But it was so bad you couldn't even watch it ironically. You'd be like, "Oh this is funny," like Sharknado. It was just bad. And after that flop, not only did it flop like in terms of ratings, but no one tweeted which is the real like—the whole reason you—

Owen: I never even heard about it.

Leo: Nobody tweeted. There was no social media.

Christina: Which the whole reason you do that movie, right, is to get people tweeting like Sharknado. No one cared. So I was really hoping that after the shark, after the Grumpy Cat Christmas movie fiasco, I was really hoping that the whole thing would just go away and the people would go away and the cat could just like live on in peace. Because I feel for the cat. But no, no we've got to continue to hear about these awful people.

Chrystal: I wish, I wish, I wish I'd meet a friend on whom I can depend.

Grumpy Cat: Who me? You really screwed up your big wish.

Chrystal: K.

Leo: Wait a minute. That's Grumpy Cat's voiceover?

Christina: Yea.

Grumpy Cat: I don't care.

Leo: That's the worst voiceover. That's terrible.

Christina: I love the actress but yea, it probably wasn't a great choice.

Leo: It's like they just phoned that in.

Christina: That's actually how she sounds.

Chrystal: Are you serious?

Grumpy Cat: Of course I'm serious. Look at my face.

Narrator: This Christmas.

Chrystal: You were talking to me.

Grumpy Cat: What are you, some kind of blonde witch?

Chrystal: I heard all of that.

Grumpy Cat: Stop it.

Chrystal: You stop it.

Grumpy Cat: You stop it, witch.

Leo: So what's the story with Grumpy Cat? Does he have some sort of—does she has some sort of unfortunate facial disfiguration?

Owen: Can you stop showing that? I have a weapon in my hand off camera and I'm going to hurt myself.

Stacey: (Laughing).

Owen: No, I'm dead serious. Don't put that back on the screen. I'm not going to shield—I'm going to shield this blade.

Leo: What? Why is she frowning like that? Why is she frowning like that? Is she—(laughing). That's just mean.

Owen: Get her off the screen. I can't even look.

Leo: That's just mean.

Owen: Get it off the screen. Stop it.

Leo: Can we merge it with OhDoctah's face? OhGrumpyDoc?

Owen: Oh, you merge that cat with my face and there will be a grumpiness upon you, you can't imagine. I say that right now.

Leo: Let's see. There's Grumpy Cat and there's OhDoctah. Let's put them in together into one amazing mashup.

Owen: Look.

Leo: Groctah. OhGrumpyDoctah.

Owen: If I turn into a meme, you're going to have a problem.

Leo: Owen J.J. Grumpy Cat (laughing).

Owen: It's going to cost you more than a phone.

Leo: Unfortunately, we don't have time for photo shopping but if anybody wants to send it to me I'll make sure we post it.

Owen: Next story. Don't we have another story?

Leo: Next story. Stacey Higgenbotham, what's your story of the week?

Stacey: Man, I should have gone first because I have nothing lighthearted and fun. I can't believe we didn't talk about hacking Google—

Christina: Oh Dropbox.

Stacey: No, well, ok there's Dropbox right, so—

Leo: 68 million, 68 million records revealed. Dropbox was very proactive. They sent an email to everybody and said, "We're going to change your password."

Christina: Yea, but it happened 5 years ago or 4 years ago.

Leo: 2012.

Christina: So what was yours, Stacey? What was it that you wanted to talk about?

Stacey: Oh so mine was the two state election databases. And granted—

Christina: Oh, yea, yea, yea, yea, yea. Those were crazy.

Stacey: So yea, Illinois—

Leo: Also hacked.

Christina: Well, ok so they pulled the data from the voter registrations I believe, election databases. So this isn't like hacked voting machines but—

Leo: No, that's coming next. Don't worry about that.

Stacey: Yea but so I'm looking at this and I'm like—they're like, look state and local governments don't hire security officials so we kind of can expect these thing to happen. And I'm like, you know what? Then don't put it online. Like seriously, Russia is already messing with our election cycle. We really don't need this.

Christina: We really need—when there are SQL injections. When I wrote the story and I was like going through the information I was like oh my God.

Stacey: 12-year-olds can do this.

Christina: Yes. I was literally thinking that it freaked me out. I was like oh my God, every local, small jurisdiction is at risk because they're probably using not even—they're probably not even using Digital Ocean. They're using just like the lowest end of lowest end like you know server that they can get. Probably not hardening anything and like literally—yea, it's terrible.

Owen: It's the worst thing in the world because that is only the two instances where they caught somebody. Ok, just so you all know, we're not safe out here. Your vote kind of doesn't count sometimes.

Leo: They should have never and every security expert says this.

Owen: They have all kinds of systems. We've got lobbyists giving out money to people.  Nothing's real. What we need to do is put it on your cell phones. At least everybody looks at their cellphone and they have it tethered to one number and you get one vote. We need to do something. We're the smartest company in the world but we're so dumb. Why are we so dumb? I don't understand.

Leo: Every expert says that immediately they need to turn off electronic voting machines and they have to do it on paper.

Stacey: Paper ballots.

Leo: Paper, paper, paper.

Owen: Please, just—that's how we got George Bush.

Leo: No, no, no chad. I'm not talking about any chads. Just write your vote on a piece of paper.

Stacey: No you could probably do it like—

Leo: No there's ways to do it that are safer but everybody agrees that the voting machines there are terribly, terribly—

Stacey: And well it's dangerous with Donald Trump saying like things about the election being rigged.

Leo: Yea, he's setting it up, right?

Stacey: Right.

Leo: Because—so when he loses what he's setting up is basically a revolution.

Owen: Bernie Sanders' people were saying the same thing. People who are actively going to protest counts where they were doing exit polls and the poll numbers came out different. People complain about this all the time but nobody cares. Now we're scared to death that a man monkey might become president, now everybody wants to look at it. But I mean it's been going on and it's been an issue and we need to do something to fix it.

Leo: I don't know if you watch Silicon Valley. One of the important plot lines of Silicon Valley—

Stacey: Oh, I'm so mad about this story. Sorry.

Leo: One of the important plot lines of Silicon Valley comes down to tabs or spaces when you code. And thank you to Michael Nunez at Gizmodo who actually wrote the story and did some—was it Michael who did the research? No, it was Google developers.

Christina: It was Google who did the research.

Leo: She said, "Well what is it? What do people use? So tabs or spaces?" And he did the research and yes, there you go, spaces win by a mile for every language except Go. I don't know why Go but every language people use spaces over tabs. That's all you need to say. By the way that means that what's his name, the guy in this lost because he was a tab guy. And his girlfriend who dumped  him over this won. And she won twice in that case.

Stacey: (Laughing).

Leo: Best part is as he's trying to demonstrate why you use a tab he stomps down the stairs, "Space, space, space, space, space," and then falls. And as long as we're talking Silicon Valley, this is the one that makes you mad? You can now rent Erlich's Aviato car. This is a real car with the Aviato branding. That's of course Erlich Bachman's bizarre failed startup, the one that he used to fund his startup House.

Owen: Is it a failure if he sold it and made money and has a flop house?

Leo: Maybe not.

Owen: I don't think it's a failure.

Leo: His Aviato branded Ford Escape can be rented in of course Silicon Valley for $49 dollars a day.

Stacey: Ok, this is not a story. This is what drives me nuts. This is marketing. This is viral marketing that both TechCrunch, Fortune—

Leo: It's brilliant.

Stacey: It is not brilliant. It is—I hate it.

Owen: Capitalism.

Leo: I like the story. It's hysterical. In fact I'm going to rent this.

Christina: No, you're not.

Owen: No, you're not.

Stacey: No you're not.

Owen: We forbid you from renting that.

Leo: I'm going to rent this vehicle, drive to Ohdoctah's house and deliver to him an exploding Note 7.

Owen: You are forbidden from renting that vehicle. You will not fund this kind of foolishness.

Leo: You're right. This is a very puffy piece but it is August.

Christina: It is August.

Stacey: There's hackers running around—

Leo: They did get, by the way, they got the guy that hacked Linux, the Linux kernel.org site at a traffic stop. And he faces—

Owen: (Laughing).

Leo: I love that. There's a picture of Tux in the jail. He's facing a potential 40 years in prison, Donald Ryan Austin of El Portal, Florida is going to appear in court in San Francisco later this month on four counts of intentional transmission causing damage to a protected computer because he hacked into kernel.org where the Linux kernel is stored. In 2011 stole the credentials of one of the server admins. Tried to install malware inside the site. Caused all sorts of unfortunate unhappiness and—

Owen: That sounds really excessive to me in a state where you can go to jail for 3 months for harming a person.

Leo: An interesting point, isn't it? An interesting point.

Owen: I'm just saying like-

Leo: But we don't know. He may not get 40 years.

Owen: He may not. I'm just saying when you throw that number out there. I mean—

Leo: Seems like a lot.

Owen: I'm not going to honor that dude by using his name, but I'm just saying that dude, his max would have been 6 years if he would have gotten that. Come on.

Leo: It's that computer crime scares people and they really, the legislatures really went kind of crazy.

Owen: Yea, that's crazy.

Leo: And I mentioned, so I have to mention again, Ozzy Osborne is going to have his genome sequenced because no one can understand how he's still alive. He's 62 but he's used more marijuana, alcohol and cocaine then people twice his age.

Christina: Ok, but Keith Richards is still alive too.

Leo: And he's the other one.

Owen: Well obviously that's the key to life, duh, if you were doing that, you could survive.

Leo: This is from The Guardian. "I was curious," he explained to the Sunday Times, "giving the swimming pools of booze I've guzzled over the years, not to mention all of the cocaine, morphine, sleeping pills, cough syrup, LSD, Rohypnol, you name it. There's no plausible medical reason why I should still be alive. Maybe my DNA could say why."

Owen: Maybe he's not alive. Maybe he's a zombie.

Leo: Sharon! That was a terrible Ozzy Osborne. I apologize for that. And I think we—I know there's great stuff. Is it true that the Space X rocket was destroyed by a drone? No one knows but I've just started that rumor.

Owen: (Laughing) Sounds legit. Sounds legit.

Leo: I like it. I like it.

Christina: Mark Zuckerberg is very disappointed.

Leo: Yes. Mark was in Africa. There's a very funny exchange. I think I—where did I read that—between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Elon's texting him, "Mark, I've got some bad news." Because on that Space X rocket which exploded was a $200 million dollar satellite for internet.org. Ok, we don't really need the weird music. I don't see a drone anywhere there, so. That would be pretty terrible if that were the case. Poor Elon Musk. I think that's actually going to be a big hardship for Space X. Nobody was in it. It wasn't even being launched. It was just being tested. However, the—

Owen: That's why we test. So we can learn.

Leo: That's why you test.

Owen: And make it better.

Leo: Mark's not happy. But they've got insurance, right?

Stacey: You do insure satellites, yes.

Leo: Must cost a lot to get satellite insurance.

Christina: Yea, I was looking at like a comment thread on that and it was like it depends on—I think it was $95 million so I guess you've got to kind of figure out how much do you insure it for? Do you spend—if it was like $10 million then it's worth it, right, but if it's like $50 million or $80 million, like meh.

Owen: Yea.

Leo: And let's face it, Facebook can afford it, right?

Stacey: Cannot?

Leo: Can.

Stacey: Oh, yea.

Christina: Of course.

Leo: That's like cigarette—that's Mark's cigarette money for the year.

Christina: No, they can afford it but they'll have to build it again.

Stacey: Yea, but this is also a strategic effort for them about getting—

Leo: Right. He was in Africa to celebrate this, right, because that's where it was going to work. Ok, ok, I'm going to let you off the hook. You've done a wonderful job. There are so many more stories we could talk about but golly, after 2 hours, who cares?

Christina: And it's Labor Day.

Leo: And it's Labor Day and you're slaving on Labor Day. What are you going to do, Stacey? Are you going to have an Austin barbeque?

Stacey: Yep, tomorrow barbeque and swimming.

Leo: Oh, what fun. What will be the adult beverages served because I could be there?

Stacey: Oh, what do you not like?

Leo: (Laughing) Oh my God. Do you hate me?

Stacey: No, I'm just having fun with you.

Leo: (Laughing) first you don't follow me on Twitter, now you're trying to kill me.

Stacey: I know. It's done.

Leo: No, that will be fun. I think it will be a lot of fun. How about you, Christina, in Manhattan? What are your-

Christina: Well Brooklyn.

Leo: You're in Brooklyn. What do Brooklynites do on Labor Day?

Christina: I mean similar. Drinking. So there will be some drinking. I can't drink too much because I've got a 7:00 AM flight on Wednesday, on Tuesday rather.

Leo: Oh, you've got somewhere to be on Wednesday?

Christina: Yea, yea, I've got somewhere to be. The Apple event so I've got to fly out on Tuesday for that but there will be some day drinking tomorrow for sure.

Leo: We will get some cameras down there to the Bill Green Memorial Auditorium. Maybe we can catch you as you come out.

Christina: Yea, that'd be great. Yea, as soon as I'm done with my hands on and time—

Leo: That's the reason to go—there's a couple of things. Andy Ihnatko always says you want to kind of watch kind of the gestalt of the executives as they're talking and announcing.

Christina: Exactly.

Leo: Maybe read something between the lines there. But also the hands on afterwards is always great.

Christina: That's the real value. Because the live blog anybody can do from remote.

Leo: Well we're going to watch the stream together and we'll see all of that.

Christina: Exactly. And so the real thing, the real reason you go is for the hands on time. You know, just to be able to offer your impressions and get the photos and do Facebook Lives and all that stuff.

Leo: OhDoctah let me see Leia's Halloween costume one more time. It looked like she had an actual Katana sword in her hand.

Owen: She did. Actually her costume's sitting over there and the sword is right here. It's on the floor.

Leo: You're giving your daughter a sword? Oh my God. Oh my—jeez Louise. Ok. Good, good, that's good. That's good.

Owen: She's been handling swords since she was 4. She's a pro.

Leo: Wow.

Owen: Christina, do me a favor?

Christina: Yes.

Owen: Pour some out for my homies and the headphone jack when you're out there.

Leo: (Laughing).

Christina: (Laughing) I will, I will.

Owen: Pour some out for my fellow-

Leo: Just waiting for us there.

Owen: Just go to the corner liquor store wherever there's one out there and get you a 40.

Leo: Get you a 40.

Owen: And tip it out for the people.

Leo: Cold malt liquor. Owen, besides plugging the fact that I am on the OhDoctah cast—what's it called?

Owen: DocTales.

Leo: DocTales. I love that name.

Owen: Yea, we tell stories.

Leo: iqmz.com. Anything else you want to plug?

Owen: No. I just want to plug supreme happiness and joy. I'm trying to get some positivity back into my world because of what happened.

Leo: Yes, yes.

Owen: But like I said earlier, don't ever feel bad for me because my life is great. I get to sit here and suffer with you on Labor Day—I mean enjoy myself.

Leo: I don't feel bad for you.

Owen: With you guys on a Labor Day Weekend.

Leo: You are just a—you're full of life.

Owen: And I'm going out tonight and I'm going to have some drinks later. And I'm going to have some drinks tomorrow. And some hamburgers!

Leo: And you've got to come here. You've got to come here because we had, remember we had your body outline on the wall in the old place.

Owen: And you couldn't bring that with you?

Leo: We did bring a wall with us.

Owen: What did you do with all those signatures?

Leo: They're still there. They're gone.

Owen: You had really important people sign that wall.

Leo: I know. I know. We had Nolan Bushnell drew a palm.

Christina: Ah.

Leo: I know. I know. But the same thing happened to TechTV. We had amazing stuff. Neil Gaiman had come in and drew a sandman cartoon on our set walls. It's a tradition in studios. You have people sign the wall. And when the set's down, it's gone. But we can start over, a new tradition.

Owen: Don't we have the technology to scan that and just like have somebody—

Leo: Yea, I was supposed to take pictures and I didn't get around to it.

Owen: There's pictures on the internet. People send them to me all the time. Because people signed inside my body and tell me people were doing that.

Leo: Yea, we put OhDoctah against the wall and I outlined his body with a magic marker. And then people would sign inside.

Owen: It stayed pristine for like a good year and then somebody went and soiled my image.

Leo: Once the dam breaks it's just out of control. Thank you all for being here. We do This Week in Tech every Sunday afternoon, 3:00 PM—rain or shine, holidays not excepted. 3:00 PM Pacific, 6:00 PM Eastern Time, 2200 UTC. We love having you in the studio. Great studio audience today. Email tickets@twit.tv if you too would like to suffer in the audience with us. If you don't though, you know, and you don't watch live you can always get it on demand, audio and video made available at your convenience either from the website TWiT.tv or from your favorite podcasting appliance. Thanks for being here! We'll see you next time. Another TWiT is in the can. Bye-bye.