37 min read

02: Parental Advisory

This episode of Coffee & Code Cast we are starting to find our groove and we start with some follow up on some things from last episode, talk about the Spinn coffee maker and reMarkable tablet. We also talk Amazon's new Key service and talk Uber's latest changes
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02: Parental Advisory
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I think it was a coffee man we need to have the coffee because that guy is essential. I mean this is a fucking coffee podcast. We need the coffee It's not make that mistake again dammit. We sound like we're asleep on the first one. So yeah No, this was interesting. What do you think about that? Perfect. Yeah, that's good. It's a good format now. You've got and then you know, I like this like this section I'm gonna just do it again. This will be the bullshit but you literally label it bullshit. Bullshit segment. Well, that's what it is. Bullshit. And it, you know, it goes along well with our explicit. We have explicit, you know, a parental advisory on our podcast. So it's good that we have some bullshit. Yeah. Big E on there. Big red E watch out. Yeah. Like back in the day when you actually bought CDs and they had like the parental advisory. Maybe I should put that on our album. - It's so hard to do that, be fucking cool. (laughing) - I'm gonna do that tonight, please, before you go to bed, that'd be good. - I'll do that. - Yeah, explicit lyrics, keep your kids away unless you don't care about that. (laughing) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Cool man, so you got your cafe, espresso? Well, now I'm out of cafe, but... I'm out of coffee too, fuck man, we didn't make it. We didn't even make it to the actual recording, and I ran out of my fucking coffee. Do you have some more cold brew that you can refill or up with? Yeah, we should probably do that real quick. I'll hang, I got my water, but yeah, go fill it up. Sure, yeah, that sounds good. What do you want to follow up on? Do you have anything pressing you want to talk about? Well, I mean, the first thing was just talking about editing the show. And the experience of doing that, He was pretty interesting to go through it. It took a lot more time than I anticipated. Partially because the show was really long. But a lot of it-- yeah, we were-- what were we at an hour 25 or something like that, I think, for the last show? Yeah, yeah, we won't be doing that every week. That's for sure. I wouldn't listen to it for if it was an hour and a half. Oh, yeah, I had a hard time listening to it. So the thing that became pretty obvious is just-- and part of the reason that we wanted to do this For both of us, I think, was to try and speak more clearly and effectively. And we had a lot of these instances where we would use um or what did we say? You know what I mean or you know or something to that effect. I can't remember the exact word that we use, but we both did it many, many, many, many times. And it took me a long time to edit a lot of those out. Very bad. We will fix that. But I was telling you today it was pretty interesting as I was even talking to people at the office, it's amazing how more cognizant I am of what it is that I'm saying, even not on the mic. Yep. Same thing. It's pretty cool. Who knows where this will go if it'll even go anywhere, but if nothing else. It's been pretty cool just to make some improvements to acknowledge things that I wasn't paying attention to before, things in my speech the way I was maybe speaking too fast saying, um, that like, stalling a lot. Yeah, I noticed and stand up today. I noticed myself. I was aware of it because not only me, but listening to everybody else, a lot of people speaking at the stand up. We're doing that. Uh, that's interesting. I hadn't even considered other people. I guess I was more focused on myself. Yeah, I was paying attention. What I wanted to what I wanted to say, but I was noticing when people were going before me that People were almost caught off guard because you don't know who's going next. We didn't have a certain order who was gonna go and you know Brian was just calling people out one of the time at random it seemed and so People they got called weren't expecting to be called and then we're kind of stumbling around it first and then once they got going It was fine. So yeah after they figure out how to unmute because they're not ready for it. Yeah that too We still that's that's the other thing. It's like yeah It's still yet is not very smooth transition to this online stand-up thing because Yeah, there's the unmute thing and then it's like, oh, can you hear me? It's like we just have to get you a point. Yeah, it's like you're unmuted and you don't have to ask if you're Audible to start talking get in there Yeah, and if our plugin for teams would would deliver the actual report on an hour half hour basis Which is what we need it that would help out a lot because we could follow that as a diagram But yeah, keep people on track too. I did file a bug ticket for that and they did acknowledge it But I've heard nothing since so yeah, I'll sit there for a while So the only other piece of follow-up that I had was the show length which we kind of talked about or touched on earlier The previous or the first show. Yeah, if you will was an hour and 20 minutes Which was really really long and it took us off guard even as we were sitting here talking so What do we want to do? I don't even know you know are we trying to you know? That was the word that we said a lot Yeah, get out the you know jar man. We're gonna put a bucket in there. Oh fuck. I'm screwed It'll pay for our coffee habit. There you go. I actually I have a coffee habit But I'm a little concerned that I also have another habit which is my half and half habit So I bought a quart of half and half on Sunday and I'm running low like I'm worried that I'm not gonna make it I Go shopping on Sundays. I'm worried. I'm not gonna make it until Sunday with the rest of the half and half that's in the fridge man I'm with you on that. I at the office with the new espresso machine that we have, I make a shot of that. And I, more or less making an Americano and then put, I don't know, maybe one to two tablespoons of half and half in that. And it's like the most creamy, beautiful drink ever. - It's really good. It's better than dessert for me. It is dessert. I don't know. I like it. It's really good. It could be a problem though. Anyway. Show length. I think we should cut it back. mean an hour 27 was way long we we thought maybe in the initial run that we would get two episodes out of it I think we just decided no we'll just make one get it out there and then refine refine as we go I think it was a good call so yeah I think we want to shoot for what 30 to 40 minutes yeah I think 30 would be good we'll see how this one goes today but yeah if it goes a little over that's fine. Well one other reflection or correction rather. I wanted to quick mention was in the previous episode we kept talking about the iPhone X which is a misspeak. It is the iPhone X not the iPhone X so I just wanted to make that correction. It's something that I need to kind of in my mind rectify and quit saying X because it's easy to do but yes it is the 10 What is it about skipping over nine like windows? There was no windows nine either. It was you know windows I don't know I guess there wasn't what were interesting. So is there like a significance to nine that is like a bad omen or a bat You know, I think there's just a lot of anticipation for 10, you know, it's a big it's a big milestone to have like the 10th version or the 10th release It's like nobody gives a shit about the ninth release. So you get a little closer you get window seven Windows 8 I mean it wasn't called Windows like yeah Windows 8. Well would have been they skipped eight to didn't they Is there really was there ever a code there was an eight? I feel like there was an eight. I don't think so I think we're making that up right now Yeah, seven Windows VISTA Windows 8.1 disk image ISO. I've got it right here. Oh, there's the Wikipedia. Okay. Yeah, that's right I blocked Windows 8 out in my mind because Windows 8 sucked is what that's when they got rid of That was the big transition from start menu to that tile. That's right. That's right. Yeah, that pissed a lot of people off for sure Yeah, so I forgot about Windows 8 so they did have one But then there was no Windows 9 they just said you know Windows 8 sucked so bad We're just gonna go to Windows 10. We're gonna skip two versions and make it really good That's maybe that was for them just to indicate that they had a lot of progress, you know Yeah, they made a lot of you know They covered a lot of ground in the short amount of time there But not you know the same thing with the iPhone so you have got iPhone 8 and iPhone 10 Maybe one day will find some iPhone 9's buried out in the desert somewhere that You know or yeah left in a bar someplace Interesting okay, well that's cool. So it's the iPhone 10 Any other follow-up that you had No, I don't have a lot of follow-up. I thought it was a good first effort I hope that we didn't bore too many people with it. You know, if anybody that is listening, I know I'm going to share the link with some people soon and put it out in social media. But no, I think we're still trying to figure out what it's going to be like. So definitely want feedback. If people have feedback or other people listening have had more extensive podcast experience that could shed some light on this whole process, I think we're just doing it to, You know we have multiple reasons for doing it but one Reason is just to get more comfortable with doing it, but but this is new So I think we're looking for any kind of tips and tricks that are I think like that that people can offer And hey if you if you want to join us on the show, you know, we're open to we're open to that too Let's do it So I want to talk about and maybe there's something that can stick around if there's enough of them out there But I want to talk about some cool products because we kind of did that last time we talked about some gear our new gear, the, you know, I got the new microphone, you have some stuff we can have touched on. But there's a couple other things that came to mind that I wanted to talk about. And the first one is very apropos to our podcast here. It's a new product. It isn't released yet. It's still beta kind of in manufacturer. I don't even know what stage of manufacturing it's in. I ordered this thing last December and at last update I might get it in January. So it's kind of like when it was Kickstarter deals that you just have to wait as they try to figure things out and hope that it goes through. This one has a pretty good, I feel pretty confident this is going to go through. It's a coffee maker, spin coffee, spin, www.spinspin. SPINNN.com. n n dot com. Wasn't this a kick uh yeah sorry you mentioned earlier this is a kickstarter yeah. I don't know if they were on kickstarter or not but it's a similar type thing I mean they were raising funds somewhere I don't even know how I found it because it was so long ago but um it's just a lot on Facebook it was just everywhere. Yeah that's probably what it was they were doing a ton of Facebook marketing I think that's where I found it was an add on Facebook. They got me. There was like a few months there, the spring last winner where there was just tons of cool shit that I ended up buying on Facebook off of Facebook ads. And this was one of them. But it's the spin coffee maker. It's really cool. It's a, I mean, it looks like a traditional style coffee maker. So it's kind of your round, you know, like your Mr. coffee kind of a thing. But it's a more contemporary design than that. So it's not really fair to say that. But it's kind of a sleek round minimalist design. It has a bean hopper on top. I mean, it's engineered some really cool tech one into this. And it's really meant to be a commercial quality in a residential form factor, residential package. So it'll do, you know, it has a really fancy burgrinder. It uses a centrifuge to get the liquid out of the beans. And so to extract the liquid from the beans. And yeah, it can make everything. It can do espresso, americano, you know, drip, I don't know, whatever, whatever. Yeah, and it's a really sleek and kind of sexy looking machine, right? It has a very simple design, but it's very elegant. It is. It's really, I mean, it's a sweet design. It's the coolest looking coffee maker I've seen because a lot of times you want to, like even the the brevle that we have at the office, which is It takes a lot of real estate. It's a pretty wide box, pretty heavy, pretty commercial looking. Yeah, the footprint here is not very large. No, no, this is nothing like that at all. And it's a really nice all in one. All the components are really solid, really good components. In fact, part of the delay is just because in the manufacturing process, they went back and made some revisions. They wanted to make it quieter. They wanted to knock the DBs down on the grind or on the spin. and so they did that. And they wanted to adjust the height. I think the original one was a little taller and it wouldn't fit under some cabinets. So this one, it's even more paired down than the original one was. - Yeah, it looks like to me, at least from their imagery on the side, it looks like it's probably no bigger than maybe slightly larger than a roller paper towels, for instance. - Yeah, that's about right. A little bit larger than that, maybe, but pretty darn close. I think it's 13th tall, so it's not very big. I think the thing that was really cool too, that I was kind of interested in being kind of a tech nerd is that this thing is also internet connected. So you can control it using Siri, using an app, you could set it up to brew your coffee, you know, in the morning, whatever you want, pretty much. - Yeah, exactly. You can set it on a timer or you can just ask Alexa. It does have Alexa integration also. - Oh, that's cool. - Yep, so you can say Alexa make me an Americano and hopefully you have a cup under the damn thing. otherwise you're gonna have a big fucking mess. (laughing) Yeah, Alexis. - But it has a carafe and you can brew it into, you kinda has what the double walled espresso shot glass as well, I believe. - Yeah, I don't know if it comes with that gear. It's just kinda, they have a lot of photos of it on there, but you could, you know, the one that I bought, I'm sure does have the carafe. I do get the carafe and the one that I bought. But a couple of other things that are really cool. So for one, it's really no mess, no waste. So what's really neat about this, a couple things. The centrifuge is so powerful. Like actually, it extracts all the liquid out of the bean. So when it's done, it'll put it into a little, I don't know, a little tray in the back. And you don't have to empty it every time. So maybe weekly or something like that, you can go in. And because there isn't any moisture in there, it won't mold or anything like that. That's the claim. So that's cool. You go in once a week, you dump it out, go throw it in your, it's organic, you know, compost waste, whatever you can go throw it in your garden. Grow some shit out back. But it's really easy to maintain. There's also a really cool bean program. So they work with local roasters and small guys, really cool bean roasters across the US that have signed up for the platform. And so they have a separate app. And with the Wi-Fi integration and all that cool tech. It will tell you how many beans you have left and when it's running low, you know, it'll remind you, hey, you're running low, should we order some more, or it'll auto order for you. So they'll do that kind of thing too. You don't have to worry about getting beans. It'll just ship you another bag and then bam, you're ready to go. And then depending on your flavor profile and all that, there's different recipes and different, you know, for each type of bean that you get from from these guys, like they'll make recommendations and how to get the most out of the flavor with it. Really cool stuff. That's right. I remember reading something about that that kind of have, yeah, a little recipe book or a recipe guide that you can kind of choose from, and it'll make those things in such a way that it knows how to roast it correctly effectively. Yeah, yeah. They can tile in certain settings to make sure that it's being handled the way that they intended it to be. And I think this company, if I'm not mistaken, is from San Francisco. So you're now in the hood with this-- Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna start harassing these guys if I don't get an update on when this thing's gonna ship I'm getting tired of waiting. I think they're pretty close downtown here So I might have to go I was pretty disappointed when you moved moved away I was really really looking forward to bringing this in the office and getting a getting a demo Maybe maybe you can fly it all the way over here. Yeah, I you know, I get free bags with Alaska So I could always check it and bring it over there for There you go reps, you know Just make some coffee for the Stewardess on the flight. There you go. That worked fine. We can do that. But yeah, check it out spin.com SPINN.com pretty cool. I think Considering all that it does. I mean you could spend on a really good quality automated burger grinder. You could spend three or four hundred bucks pretty easily Their entry point the firm, you know, they're the base model right now is 300 and I think the 300, there's three levels, 300, I don't know, 49, 599, something like that. So it's a pretty good value considering all the components that go into it and all the things that it does. Pretty cool. Pretty excited to get that one in. Yeah, I'm really excited to hear your feedback on that and how well it does with extraction and how loud it is and so on and so forth. I think it's a really cool product and I'm glad that they were able to fund it well enough to actually be able to produce it. Yeah. Agreed. folks check it out. So the next product that you brought up or put on the list here was remarkable tablet which I actually thought was really cool that you added this because I recently was able to use one of these and I was ridiculously impressed and I had no idea that they existed. When did you get your hands on one of these? So I think it was over 4th of July we were with my wife's Antnunkel on Bamber J Island and we were playing some card games and we needed to keep score and they bring one of these things out and I looked at it and I was like I don't know what the hell this thing is like what is what is this you know yeah And yeah, they just started taking down the score just like as if it was a sheet of paper and it worked Amazingly well like I was I was blown away at how well this thing works and it theirs was pretty dropped at simple It was really just writing on the screen there and then you could click a button and it would pretty much erase the entire screen. That was really the only function that it had. I could kind of think of it as a kin to you. Do you remember, like as a kid, you would have these little tablets that you could write on and then if you peeled the paper up, it would kind of erase. - Oh yeah, I know you're talking about that. That's a lot like what this reminds me of, but the precision is actually really, really good. The thing that I got really excited about this product is that it was, it's by paper people for paper people. I mean, they're really at the fore, you know, the first thing they talk about is that this is really meant to be a paper product, a digital paper product, but it's not digital first. It's really like paper first in a digital format. So all those things, like the sensitivity. just the ease of use, the, you know, the responsiveness of it. That's, that was the intent was for it to really be for paper people. And so that, that's pretty cool. Uh, yeah, I'm pretty excited about it. Yeah, I don't, I don't know for personally what uses I would have beyond, you know, using it as kind of a scratch pad. But to be honest with you, I was very, very impressed with the technology. I didn't really realize, you know, even, even using iPads, or kind of fires or any of those type of devices I've never found one that feels really good when writing. However, I have heard that the surface tablets are pretty good. But this was a beautiful experience. It felt exactly like writing on paper. There was no issue when you rest your, you know, as you're writing, for instance, I'm right-handed. So my palm rests usually on the paper ahead of where I'm writing. Right. That had no effect on it whatsoever. It just kept on writing and it was, yeah, it was great. I loved it. They even went so far as to make sure that the surface had enough friction to make it feel like paper. So it's not going to be, you mentioned the surface and that's a pretty slick glass screen. Like this is, you know, there was a lot of design and intention around making it feel like the paper writing experience. Pretty cool. Yeah, I wish I should dig through the products here because I did when I came back from Bambridge look for one of these because I was curious as to, A, what they cost and B, what other products they did have. - Yeah. - And what I'm seeing, at least on their website right now on the homepage is some pretty sophisticated looking products where you can probably store things that you're jotting down and all those kinds of things, which this product that I used, did not have anything like that and was much, much more simple. - Yeah, this is really multipurpose, reading, writing, and sketching. So similar to the Kindle, I mean, there's a way that you can upload PDFs or ebooks or that sort of thing. You won't be able to put Kindle books on it because of the whatever DRM that's on there, but other things. You know, I subscribe to the daily paper. I still get it in paper format. I don't know how many people are still. The hell's wrong with you? [laughs] Older you, man. Well, it's because I don't have my remarkable yet. It's another product that I bought, you know, I bought it into a long time ago and they've been refining it. so I'm still waiting for the refiner. - Oh, so this is another Kickstarter project. - Yeah, I don't know if that, this one was on Kickstarter, or if I found this on Facebook too, it might have been around the same, it was around the same time. I think I bought this, I don't know. - So maybe it wasn't the same product that I was using, but it's something very, very, very similar. - They did ship the first batch, so it's possible to hang on the timing of this, like that you may have had when you're hand. I know that there's another, there are some other competitive products. I don't know how good they are, they stand up. I think Sony has one and I thought that Amazon was maybe working towards one. I don't think it's quite the same but I think in their new, I thought there was a new product announcement that sounded kind of like it was trying to go after these guys maybe. I don't remember. So this one this days of battery time and I think with the product that I was using, you could, you could probably write on that and erase it. I don't even know how many times, probably Thousands of times wow and it was running off no more than like a watch battery. That's that's pretty good Yeah, I don't know a lot of the details on this one I do know that it has a pretty good storage capacity you can store a hundred thousand documents So really any kind of notes. I would like to use it for note-taking Hopefully, you know if it does feel like paper then it'll be more natural because I've never really Got I've tried using tablets before and they're too clunky and just don't feel right So I'm hoping that this will be close enough to the real experience of paper that I don't care About having a tablet a paper pad in my hand that I could use this instead and not feel like I'm missing out on anything And you have one of these on order then. Yeah, so I have one on order. This one should ship Based on when I bought mine it mine should be shipping sometime in the next few weeks I think it should be shipping the end of this month and of October or sometime in November So I should have it soon, and I can give a full report on it. You use your paper tablet pretty heavily, or at least you were for a while, keeping up on your notes and making daily recordings of what you need to do, or what you were doing that day, and that sort of thing. So is your intention that you're going to completely switch to this digital format then? That's what I'm hoping for. Yeah, that would be ideal. I carry my mole skin around. I have a few different mole skin journals, depending on what's going on. So I have one that's kind of my bullet journal, which that's a whole other topic we can talk about some other time. Bullet journaling, just a process of like note taking, pretty cool way of taking notes and to-do's and that sort of thing. And so I have a journal for that. I have one for just my reading journal, you know, because I wanted to be able to have quick access to all this stuff that I'm reading right now and having that mixed in with my other one was kind of difficult. So yeah, I have a few different journals floating around and the idea would be that I could just replace those with this. You know, I like the most skin. I'd still like to hang onto one probably, but if I could have this with me when I'm traveling and be able to rely on that, I like that idea a lot. And the newspaper, I would also take, I have the paper version sent to the house, but I also get the digital version and I could email that daily to this device and then I'd have a pretty nice form factor for reading the news. I think that would be a pretty nice way to consume the daily news to more to come on that. Hopefully I'll have something here in a few weeks to talk about. Speaking of the news, what's in the news? Well, there's the Amazon key. I just heard about it. That is a professional transition right there, by the way. Good job. No, no singles required, man. That was pretty good. Right. Maybe a rim shot. Maybe I'll have to throw a rim shot in here. Yeah, do it. That'd be kind of fun. We're getting a little more sophisticated already and it's just our second episode. Look at you. Yeah, so I've read about this quite a bit or at least heard about it. The Amazon key, which is effectively two products really or kind of encompasses two products, right? There's the camera functionality, which is an Amazon camera. And then the, you have to have a compatible locking system, which I think right now there's only two supported. I believe it was. There's a Yale one and there you go. They're not surprised. So that's good. They're already out there. Yeah. Exactly. There are already other well-known brands. Yep. So the idea here is that the camera you would put at your front door and the delivery person from Amazon would come to the door. The camera could pick up the barcode on the package and therefore talk to the lock and open the lock for the delivery person who can then put the package in the door. Yeah. Pretty convenient if you have that ability. If that lock set works for you, I mean, it's pretty universal. I'm in an apartment and I have a kind of a storm door, kind of a thing. I don't know how to describe it. It wouldn't work for me, but it's pretty universal. How do you feel about doing something like that on your place? Are you comfortable enough with with that idea or I know there's been a lot of-- - I have pretty mixed feelings about this really. The technology is actually really cool. I'm really impressed with the innovative ways that Amazon is coming up to deliver things in a more convenient way. This reminds me a little bit of the idea that came out a bit ago where Amazon, I think it was Amazon would deliver things directly into your car's trunk. - Oh really, I didn't know about that. - If your car was parked on the road or something like that. Maybe it wasn't the Amazon, but there was somebody else that came out with an idea that you could just deliver to the car's trunk in some way. And although I totally think the convenience is amazing, the creepiness factor of this is above and beyond for me. And I'm not even generally that kind of a person. I usually don't care about Amazon echo listening, or sorry, Amazon Alexa listening to you or giving your data to other people. like, none of that stuff really bothers me generally speaking, but this, I feel like, is a little bit of an intrusion. Yeah. More so than the others that I don't know that I'm comfortable with. Yeah, do you get the turn it on or off? I mean, that's the art thing, too, is like, what if it's, you know, Saturday delivery and you and the misses are up to some shenanigans in the living room couch there right next to the front door and the Amazon guy comes in to deliver your package, man. I don't know. That's an interesting scenario. There's a lot of things like that. I thought of it being kind of cool actually to have the technology in like an Amazon locker for your house or something like that. Like if there was a way that they could leave it securely outside that wouldn't get stolen, like you could get a locker or get some kind of thing with the lock and then you could open it up. I think that'd be more comfortable with that than just opening up the house. I have seen some products similar to that, that are kind of Kickstarter-y type projects. One was kind of a pad that you, basically it was a big round circle that it would say like put package here. And so the delivery person would drop the package on that and it detected the weight. So as soon as something would remove the package from that block, it would send it, it would kick off a really loud alarm. Basically it was the way that it was trying to do to your theft. And then I would assume that the person who owns the product would be able to disarm that prior to picking up the package or something to that effect. So I know there are products out there that are trying to fix this particular issue, but maybe not in such an invasive way. - I might be okay with the drone coming in. I just don't know if I want the delivery guy coming in. - I have a rooftop deck, so I'm all for the drone. Drop that shit on my deck and I'm good. - You know, that's interesting. like that type of development now is pretty common place in Seattle because there isn't a lot of you know room to grow But up so a lot of the homes that being built are Three or four stories with a rooftop you could have a little Amazon target up there They could just drop them off. Maybe that was part of their plan was to Influence the housing market to give everybody rooftop Access for the drones to drop off their packages so it does say that Amazon is instructing the careers to to ring the bell or knock on the door in addition to scanning the package and letting themselves in. Yeah. It does say that in the art. It also does say that this is only going to be for Amazon careers. So third parties will not be able to use the service. Well, this would be a real problem for FedEx or UPS guys, even for Amazon guys too, when it comes to efficiency because having worked at UPS before, you know, for a period of time, Timing is everything those guys don't have time to scan stuff at your door and knock on the door and wait for it like they They could throw it from the card of your porch. They would do that just to save time So I can't imagine that they would actually wait that would that would add a significant amount of time to their Delivery route if they had to wait for the thing and all I kind of crap so I Don't know it is interesting though from the standpoint of this is another camera that Amazon now has in your home So now they have What the hell is the one the Amazon look or whatever the one that you take pictures of yourself in the morning You know for clothes and then they have the show Yeah, and they have the new one that they just did that's supposed to be like on your bedside table That's a little like alarm clock You know, so they're really getting into the video business and I'm curious as to what their their aim Exactly is with all these video products well the automation space is getting more and more competitive right I think that's just another way to get in with the nest to compete with nest and some of those guys just having their own hardware Everybody's got their own ecosystem now you've got the goog getting into it with Google home I should have a you know a home mini coming soon because I We ordered those two pixels and they come with free home minis So we'll have we're gonna have surveillance from Google and Amazon now in our home Yeah, I know I have some friends who that really really bothers and you know again and I'm not a conspiracy theorist or, you know, I'm not a big privacy freak, I'm kind of of the mindset that if you want to listen on me, that's fine. I guess you're gonna be really, really freaking bored if you listen to me, I guess. Same thing with like spying on emails or whatever, whatever, you know, I don't care, I'm boring. - I don't like it, I don't like the idea of it, but it hasn't pushed me enough to not use the technology. I find that I really like the convenience of the technology and even though in the back of my mind, I don't like it, it's not enough to influence me to stop using it. So I'm not sure if that really logically makes a lot of sense, but that's kind of my position on it. - I will say the barrier that I still will not overcome, or probably ever overcome is in the bedroom. And that's something Amazon I know is really on the hunt to try and get devices into your bedroom. That's something that I don't think Christina or I are comfortable with, or probably ever will be. - What about your phone? or do you guys put your phones? - Yeah, phones are definitely on the bedside table, but they're not on a dock or something where the cameras face forward. Whereas these other devices are leaning in some sort of way or have kind of a tilted screen that's always kind of looking off in a direction. So they always have a view of something, whereas the phone, for instance, is either gonna be looking straight down at the table or straight up at the ceiling so that, you know, I'm not as concerned necessarily about that. - Yeah. Well, I don't think a lot of people are concerned enough. I think that the numbers speak for themselves. Like these products are very popular and they're growing, you know, their numbers are looking very good. And so, I don't know. I think that's enough to say that there are people that are concerned about it, but I think there's more people that disembrace it and haven't really thought about it or don't consider of real threat. Just scary. I don't know. I don't think that's a good thing, but that's just kind of the reality that we're in, I think. Yeah, I think intrusions generally are just a problem. I don't know that it's specific to a product, but just data intrusion overall is just going to become-- it already is probably the number one business. You have companies like my wife's who that's the only function that they do is to detect data intrusion. and these are coming and they have to shift through just massive data sets, like terabytes and terabytes of data in damn near real time and trying to detect intrusions and that's a huge business now. - Absolutely, big data. So in the news, we're talking about cool things in the news, I noticed a couple things. I wanted to talk about what's going on with Uber right now because they've had a hell of a year, I mean they've gone through some management things and all kinds of bullshit over in Uber. And so now I think under the new regime, they're trying to get wind back driver support. I think the drivers have felt like they've gotten the shaft for a while that it's really, you know, was leaning towards the consumer in a big way, which it has been. But there's a couple of things that came out this week that I think are kind of interesting. So one way that they're trying to cater to the driver is that they've announced now that they're gonna be introducing fees for long pickups. So if you're in a suburban area, I believe if you're eight minutes or more away from the Uber driver, then the clock will start ticking like after that point. Like you might get eight minutes or something like that for free. And then if you're further away, then you're going to have to pay for that time. I think that makes good sense. I think they need to make sure that there's some sort of a warning or a notification, because I can see this becoming a problem if you are sitting and waiting and the Uber driver is maybe sitting in traffic or stuck in some sort of traffic jam or something to that effect and Yeah, I need to be warned about I don't know if that's the case. I think I don't know if it's like if he was downtown Seattle trying to get to you. I don't know if they would assess a fee for that. I think it's more like Long haul stuff like hey, he's he's going like Denver is a better example I think like my folks live in the suburbs and so there's not a lot of ubers Down in little tin, you know, and I think if I wanted one down there if I could even find one They're gonna spend a significant amount of time getting to me I think that's when they would assess that not so much in traffic. Oh, that'll be interesting to see How they how they do that, but they could probably do it just like You know search pricing you have to consent to it first otherwise You're not gonna get the ride right? Yeah, it does look like it's more Distance based rather than time based right is what it's what it's indicating. Yeah I don't know that I feel that Uber has been anything more than a driving. They've been leaning more and more to their drivers for years. I feel like when Uber came out, it was the darling of the tech world. In the reasoning for that was the drivers had clean cars. It was really efficient, really effective. It could always get a ride. It was very hassle free. The whole idea of the product was that you had your ride and your tip and everything. It was all cash-free. It was all one payment. It was super, super easy. And I feel like they've gone away from that in a huge way. I feel like now it's, they're akin to taxis to me. I don't feel that they're a quality product anymore personally. Well, I remember the good old days of Uber. We have some stories that's out of the time to tell them all the night. But I mean, as you know, I was a big fan of Uber back and when it came out in Seattle in 2012, with Uber Black service was the only service at the time. And I took that bad boy a couple days a week to the office right now. (laughing) I lived in first hill and I took that down to the waterfront, you know, two or three times a week. It was pretty cool. But you're right. And I think it's just because of critical mass. When they get to that point where everybody's using it, they can't maintain the quality. you had guys in the black car service that were actually making a decent wage. I think it was still a big price cut from what it used to be. But these were professional guys that, I mean my guy, well any of the guys that I had that would pick me up, not only did they know where to go, they didn't need a GPS because they had been driving for 25 years downtown but they knew which streets to take to make sure that they pulled up on the right side of the street. Like my building would be on the north side And so they would take the right streets to make sure that they could pull over on that side of the road and let me out without having to cross traffic anymore. You get like in an X you're getting a lot of people that don't know how to drive or that's not their primary in their primary. What do you want to say? Like that's just not what they do. Like this is more of a side gig side hustle right. And so you get people now that just have a GPS on their phone and don't really know how to navigate the city or live outside the city and just do it to make a few bucks and yeah I think that's diluted the quality big time. You can still pay for the better quality but I've even found that using black now isn't the same as it was before. You're not guaranteed to get the guy in the town car. It could still be someone who's more of an average Joe just trying to to make some money. Yeah, I feel like they've kind of degraded customer quality to a large degree, but they've increased their driver's quality, which is also good, but the customer quality should be coming along with it, and I think that's a little bit disappointing. Well, it's a price issue. Nobody wants to pay for the quality, right? Like, when you can get an Uber cross-town for five bucks, I think that's part of the problem, too, is that they want to to just squeeze out the other competition by lowering price. And so it becomes an issue of, hey, we're the cheapest, not necessarily like we're the best. But I haven't had quite the experience I had with caps. I haven't had people like regularly just not show up or cancel on me. I mean, that was something that with taxis I always had. But it's definitely the quality's been diminished because of the price point, I think. I do have that from time to time. I have drivers that will be on their way to me and there'll be maybe a block away or something like that and then suddenly cancel and I'm just like, what the fuck just happened? Like why did you do that? And then there's no penalty for them, but if I cancel, there's a $5 no-show penalty or something from it. - Yeah, they've started to look at you right. You used to have a grace period where you could cancel and I think now you get to feel almost right away. I don't think you can do this. - Yeah, so I feel, I just feel like they're stacking things against the customer, which is unfortunate, because they were such a tech darling for the longest time, and they've lost that at some point, and it's unfortunate. Well, not all is lost, Kyle. There was another feature in the news that came out today. I saw that they're now offering multi-stop trips up to three stops. So, you know, if you need to stop at the store on your way home and you don't want to have to get two rides, then they can wait for you, you can pop in a couple destinations, or if you want to drop somebody off at their house first. Which I think is kind of cool. That's a good feature. There's been times when I've wanted to do that before and I maybe asked the guy if he'd be okay with it. That worked better when they just had a running meter, but now that they kind of give you a tally, it's a little harder to get away with that. So can I be a pessimist here? - That's very honest. - We're honest. - Lift has had this function for almost a year at this point. - I've never used Lift, I don't know how that works. What are they up to these days? I don't even know. (laughs) - I mean, they do the same things as Uber, they just do them generally better, I guess, in my experience. - What happened to the purple mustache or the pink mustache? - I did like the mustache. I don't know why they went away from that. I think they're trying to be a little more professional nowadays. - Okay. - But Lift does have a lot of functionality that's pretty innovative and pretty cool that they do, that Uber just hasn't seemed to be able to compete with. And there's simple things to some degree. Like one of them would be that lift if you are a female and you are requesting a ride, lift will try as hard as it can to pair you with a female driver. That's very cool. For safety. Lift has these pretty kick ass light systems that you can put in your dash. I don't know if you've seen these. And it just literally, it's kind of like an oval shaped type device. And it says lift has their logo on it, but it can change color. So it's an LED device. And I think there's four different colors. And so when you hail a ride to be of the app, it gives you a certain color. So let's say you're hailing the ride and it's purple. So when the car arrives, you'll see this purple lift light in the car so that you know that that's your car and that's the one that you're supposed to jump into. Oh nice. and stuff like this, this multiple stops, they've had this for quite a long time. So again, although it is a cool feature and I think it's good that Uber implemented it, I just feel that Uber is falling behind and just I don't really understand what they're doing in the market. - Okay. Well, fair point. I don't have enough experience with the competition. I got in with these guys, like I said in 2012, when they were going show in town and I just never really, yeah, I never switched. Well, you're in San Francisco now, you need to move over to the left side. - Well, Ubers building a new headquarters in my neighborhood, man, I'm in Mission Bay and the warriors are moving in and Ubers moving in, Golden State. - All right. - Maybe a lift will come into, I don't know where they're at down here right now. - You don't need to be a ride chair, Snob. (laughing) - It's just easy for me, it's not even that. I don't even think they're better, right? I know they're probably worse, but I already have the fucking app on my phone already works and my payments there. It's just it's one more thing I have to set up. I don't want to do it. So, you know, I get it. I will say I was the same way. I have a friend though that works for Lyft. He's actually one of their he's pretty high in their engineering team. And he gave us some free kind of dollars one time as like a referral. So I went ahead and did it while we were I think we were in San Francisco when we did it. And their setup process is actually pretty slick. So it's all based on a, so when you get on there, you'll put in your phone number, basically, and it'll just send you a text with a code. So it's kind of like two-factor authentication. OK. And as soon as you bring in that code, bam, you're on. And you can continue to set it up further and give some more details and so forth. But really, all you have to do is install the app, give them your phone number, and you're ready to go. Wow, that's easy. That's pretty cool. Yeah. I'm a fan I use them probably more often than I use Uber at this point. I do use Uber often on but not not nearly as often. They do Uber does a few things to to keep me enticed to like I The timing sucks though. So I've been with my travel schedule. I'm traveling a fair amount and like they have 50% off X like I'll be a promotion for 50% off X I just got one like this week, but it's only for this week So I mean, you know, it was cool for a while there I actually had the timing working out where I could go to SFO and half off that was kind of nice, but now Like I haven't left I haven't left my apartment all week and so it's gonna expire and I haven't gone anywhere cool So I don't know well, and you were using some flat rate type thing too, right? I don't think that left has ever implemented anything Spiriting with that I did that for a few months in Seattle. I haven't seen it lately. They they had flat fairs where you could just pay a buy-in fee essentially to say okay if I wanted 10 $5 rides I would pay them five bucks for the month for for the buy-in and then my next ten rides would be five bucks within a certain area right and then if I wanted 20 rides I'd give them ten bucks whatever they had a few different tiers you could get into so they did that for a while and that was pretty cool I say you know but that was the the cheap thing we're talking about like it's hard because I don't know they're subsidizing pretty heavily like those rides or the drivers aren't getting shit or both but that that was good for a while. But then they switched it to where you could just buy, you could do that, but it had to be a certain fixed start and end point. So if you took the thing to work every day, then you could buy discounted rides, but it would only apply on that route. And they don't really use it that way. So it didn't really help me at all. Yeah. So there you go. That's that's what's in the news. Uber, multiway trips, fees for long pickups, Amazon key, Cool stuff Uber sucks. Hey Taking seven you guys want to send me some 50% off rides. I'll I'll take his two Hey, if you want to sponsor the show, I mean I'll I'll pinch the shit. Oh there you go. Oh shit man that didn't take much Much of an arm twisted all there was it Let's not keep you from learning react any longer. I got a react to the times man, you know, that's what's going on That's what the kids are doing. Ho! That's another rim shot. That's what I'm saying. We gotta encapsulate these moments right here. You can contact us on Twitter. The show's Twitter is @copycodecast. You can reach me at my Twitter @PragmaMike@pragma. And you can reach Kyle at KyleP Johnson, J-O-H-N-S-O-N. If you have a question, Ask us at #Ask3C. That's the number 3. Ask3C. Code Coffee Cast. Our website is HTTP CoffeeCodeCast.libsyn.com. L-I-B-S-Y-N.com. Now what to fix that? What to get domain in there? What's our website right now? And you can subscribe on SoundCloud, Stitcher, We will play music in iTunes. Rate us, leave us a comment, send us your feedback. Seriously, we're just happy to have somebody listen over there. So if you have anything to say, let us know. Thanks for listening. [Music]