Ep. 1321: Where we fake it til we make it
Ep. 1321: Where we fake it til we make it
43:12

Ep. 1321: Where we fake it til we make it

Culture
-It's Wednesday, August 14th, 2013. Thanks for tuning in to the 404 Show right here on CNET.com. I'm Jeff Bakalar. -I'm Justin Yu. -I'm Ariel Nuñez. -What's up everyone? Thanks for tuning in. Got a great show planned for you this fine afternoon and it all starts with the announcement of a new contest that we're very excited to bring to you the 404 Viewing and Listening Public. That's right. We're giving away these bad larrys. -Yeah. -They're called Powerocks and they're freaking great and I've been using one for a really long time. -Wait, what? -Yeah. -You've had so many of these-- -I had one-- -that they gave you for free. -Well, I didn't know that. -although you did not give them to Ariel and I to test them. -Yeah. What the-- -Well, I mean like-- -I'd appreciate that. -we got a lot of them. You guys I guess can have one too if you enter this contest, although you're not eligible. So-- -So this is like an external brick charger? -So this is an external brick charger, it's called the power bank 6000-- is that milliampere-hours, is that what that means-- M-A-H? -I think so, yeah. -Six thousand mAh hours, that's a lot for something this compact. -Uh-hmm. -It's got USB ports and you charge it with-- I believe you can charge it with any of the USBs and a micro USB. -That's cool. -Very cool. Also, can't forget about that fine velvet bag-- -No. -that comes along with this. These are like the ones to get now from what I hear. -Right. -Everyone is raving about the Powerocks. -That's cool. -This the Rose Stone power bank model. -Do you still have the-- I'm assuming you've used this. -Yeah. This, it's-- I'm not gonna lie, like we're not shelling 'cause they just gave us bunch of free crap. -Yeah. -This is amazing how long it lasts. -After you recharge your phone to 100 percent. -Yeah. -Does is still have room left-- -Oh, my God. You can do like 6 times. -Really? -Yeah, it's crazy. -Wow. That really would have helped me on my survival trip. -Hey, you live you learn. -And have lost in the woods. -Mistakes are made. -It would have been great. I would have stayed out in the woods. -You would have been okay. Not waterproof though, I would imagine, right? Haven't submerged it fully in water-- -Yeah. -We'll do that soon in Aruba. No. Anyway, so we're gonna give away I think like we have like 4 or 5 of these. We're gonna give them away. Well, all you gotta do-- we're just gonna do a simple comment leaving contest on today's blog. That's Wednesday August 14th. Make sure you leave a comment on the blogpost today and, you know, just give us like, I wanna get like a solid like slogan generated like some sort of like 404 Power thing. -Yeah, okay. -Like now you're playing with 404 power. -Right. -Can't use that one. I just did it. -Yeah. -That old Nintendo one. -No Back to the Future references mention like that. -None of that. Let's see what we-- -It's too obvious. -Let's see how clever you get. We'll randomly pick 4 or 5-- I gotta count how many we have. -Okay. -Four or five winners. And I guess maybe we'll do it when I get back. -We'll announce the winners. -Yeah. -All right. So you have until Monday. What is that? August 26 is what we'll do. -Sweet. -If it works for you guys. -Works for me. -You're squinting in confusion, Ariel, what's wrong? -My mind is-- -Are you okay? -Yeah. -Understandably so. You're in a state of trauma right now. -Yeah. My future looks crazy. -You already have PCSD and nothing even happened yet. You're getting married like next week. -Yeah, and it's like freedom. -Would you been so like-- -Yeah, you didn't even said "I do" yet. -Yeah. -And you're just crossed-eyed permanently. -I'm just so lost right now. -Do you have a bucket list that you're scratching things off of that you want to accomplish before you get married or-- do you have anything like that? -You better hurry up dude. -And you don't have much time. -Yeah, I got about a week to do it all. -Oh, my God. -Yeah. No, I think I got most of that in my system. -All right. Well, guess what we're getting you for your wedding? -A fully-charged phone. -A fully-charged Powerocks Rose Stone. -Cool. -All right. Well, thanks to the people at Powerocks for hooking this contest up and again, check out the block today. That's the post you got a comment on-- -Uh-hmm. -and good luck to everyone. And that's it. -Okay. -Good night everybody. -All right. -Let's get into the stories for the day. -Yeah. -And I wanna talk about myself 'cause you guys are leaving next week. -Uh-hmm. -And it's gonna be a very lonely week. We talked about this in the pre-show a little bit but it's just gonna be me and Richard looking at the window while it's raining. Thinking about the people we've met, the mistakes we've made. -It will rain. That's how depressing though, yeah. -It's gonna be upsetting. Yeah. You're gonna be in Aruba. -Yup. -And you're gonna be in Jamaica. -Uh-hmm. -I'm gonna be here-- -Wait a minute. -doing my normal. -I'm no-- I'm not a geography scholar by any stretch. -Uh-huh. -But we're like kinda close, right? -Yeah. Aruba, Jamaica. -Where-- can we get like a map out and see exactly where Jamaica is? I know where Aruba is. It's like north of Venezuela. It's an island north of Venezuela. Where is Jamaica? -Jamaica. -Do we know? -Well-- -Let's see if I can do some dragging directions from Aruba to Jamaica. -Oh, yeah. Try that. -Turns out they're both islands you guys. -Yeah, they are. No, I know that. No, Jamaica is west if Haiti and of D.R. -Right, right. -And so we're not-- I bet we're like an hour of plane ride from each other. -Yeah, yeah. -So what I'm proposing-- -Meet up in the middle. -Meet up in the ocean. -That's with jetski. -Let's meet up in the middle of the Caribbean Sea just floating-- you just have a beacon. Let's do it at night so we could see each other. -It's a good idea. -Right? -I would say for-- -You idiots. -I'll bring a ref-- -You bring a ref. -And we'll just have like a candle in the evening. -Just bring some of those charging Rock thing. -Yeah. -It would be good. -We leave the wives on land. -Yeah, and just us. -Just making a sea trip. -I'm psyched man. -You idiots. -You guys meet up while you're in the Caribbean, hell yeah. It took 91 days to get rescued. You fools. -I love it. I love it. -But you guys are gonna be having a lot of fun. I'm gonna be very lonely that week. -Uh-hmm. -But that's okay, you know. -Sorry man. -It is lonely living in the city though. I think anyone can attest to that. -Uh-hmm. -And though I personally never been to Japan before, I can imagine that it'd be a lot like walking around streets of New York City, right? Well a ton of people-- but if you don't have any one, you can feel pretty low. -Uh-hmm. -And, you know, it's a lot like that movie Lost in Translation. But unfortunately for the rest of us not everyone has like a Bill Murray to save them from their own relationship-- -I wish. -Right? That would be great. -I would do anything for him. -Of course. And his beautiful voice. -Such beautiful voice. -The rest of us have to take some desperate measures in order to fool everyone else that thinking we aren't quite as lonely as we really are, right? -Uh-hmm. -These are simple problems, I think. But in order to prove that you're really worthwhile to the opposite sex. Sometimes you gotta fake it. And there is a really funny article in designtaxi.com today about a Japanese photographer that is taking really desperate measures to fool everyone to thinking that he has a girlfriend on Instagram and he actually posted instructions on how to do it, how to fake these photos without Photoshop-- a real photo. That sort of makes it look like you're being cut, old, bad and otherwise taken care of by your pseudo-girlfriend. -What? -Right? -Interesting. -So his name Keisuke Jinushi, all right, a young photographer. And look, check it out, this is what he did. He basically put a bunch of make-up, a bunch of blush and concealer onto his wrist, right at the top his hand and his fingers. Sorta like lighten up his hand and make it looks more delicate, right? -This is the saddest thing ever heard-- -Hold on, let me finish. So you put on that-- all that make up on his hand and then he put nail polish all over his fingers, right? Then he even put a scrunchie on his wrist in order to make it really, really look like a female's hand. So here we see the finish product if you're watching the video. -We've hidden it all of the time. I mean, this is truly pathetic and said. Is it not? -Bite your tongue, it gets worst. -How? -He marries the right hand. -Wait 'til you see what he does and what it's like. -It's like that-- it's like that South Park episode. -Yeah. -With Hennifer Lopez -Yeah, Hennifer-- so yeah. Now his hand looks like a girl. What do you think he does with it? Well, not that. He-- look, he takes his pictures that are sort of made to look like they're from a person perspective of his girlfriend and he's feeding-- this girlfriend is sensibly feeding him. But it's actually his own hand. So-- -The best is the-- -You guys are speechless right now. I love those reactions-- -We're speechless because I'm scrolling down at this ridiculous story-- -Right. -and there is some unbelievable photos embedded within. -The detail is really good. So, here we see like a-- -He's doing it in a public-- -perspective-- -and that's amazing. -He's in the café and what blows my mind is that no one else is next to him. His neighbors are questioning the fact that he's taking a picture of himself feeding himself-- -Well, is this-- -with the painted hand. -is this in the US? -Nope. It's in Japan. -Japan. -This is in Japan. -Well, then I have a lot of respect for the Japanese people. -Yeah. It really does look like he's being fed by a girlfriend. -Yeah-- -But he actually goes into instructions on how to make it even look like your sort of reluctantly embarrassed to be doing this in public. -All right. -So he like, he talks about the facial features you need to put on and how, you know, the emotions you have to convey about like, "Okay, I guess you can feed me honey." -And take a photo-- the thing is like the photo-- the positioning of the photo, the-- -It's so close. -It doesn't make sense. -Right. -Right? Like it would just be impossible to do. -A girl would have to be holding a camera like this close-- -Yeah. It would be. It sort of ridiculous. -A guy should be like that. -Yeah. -But nevertheless, it works really well. -It's convincing. -Yeah. And then look, here's another one of his girlfriend playfully smooching his face and kinda like spreading food on his face, kinda like a mock food fight. -I kinda hate this guy. -Gross. -I kinda hate him too. -I kind of-- I kinda just like wanna beat him up a little bit. -Look at that silly grin on his face. -He go-- if maybe, if you freaking put this kinda effort into meeting people-- -Yeah. -you wouldn't have to deal with taken this selfie-- this pathetic and selfie. -I wanna put on nail polish and make-up and beat him up with those. -Exactly. I wanna put a little kiss marks all over his face. -Exactly. -Lick my fist. -Maybe like a picture of-- like a girl's hand choking him out. -Yeah. Dude, I love to see that. It's super cool. -That's funny. -You know what's weird though, is that I feel like he could only pull this off or someone with hands like him. Because if you had a hairy bear's paw of a hand, there's no way that this-- anyone would buy that this was your girlfriend, unless you were gay-- -Uh-hmm. -which then would probably be pretty cool, if you're being fed by like a big beary hand. But for him, his hand already kinda looks girly without the foundation and the nail polish on it. -Yeah. He kinda do it. -So that's why he can pull it off, right? -I guess. He's not pulling off anything. -I don't know. I think it looks pretty convincing. -It looks convincing but, I mean, he's just dead inside. -Right. -Right? -Yeah. -He's gotta be dead inside. -Yeah. -What are the comments? Or people would like actually congratulating him for-- -People are interested. There was one-- I'm trying to find this picture but there was another photo that he took where he was sort of instructing people on how to do like outside of the café. -Uh-hmm. -But there are other photos on his Instagram profile that show him like he bought a wig and he's like from the perspective someone sitting behind him on a subway train. But he just puts the wig up like next to him so it just looks like it's a really short girl and you can only see the top of her head. That's pretty creative, I think. -I just cannot wait for-- if and when he finally does find someone-- -Yeah. -and then these pictures resurfaced. How do you explain this? What's his name? -Keisuke. -I'm gonna call him KC. How you're gonna explain this KC? Look what you-- -Well-- -what is this? What were you doing on this website man? -He's an artist. -What were you doing with your right hand there guy? Oh, no. And you keep scrolling down. Oh, my God. I can't believe you did that. -A sex pervert. -Really. -Yeah. -Poor right hand. I feel bad for his right hand. -You guys don't know what it's like out here man. You guys have been in relationships for the past few years. It's a tough world. -But doing what he's doing does not feel the void of companionship. -Yeah, that's right. -Right? You know what I mean like. -Yeah. -You'll be surprised man. -His right hand just and can only do one thing and I guess sometimes that's all you need in life. -Yeah. One hand holds the phone, the other hand-- just pretty take pictures or whatever. -Yeah. I guess. I don't know to say and how-- good luck with us transitioning out of this story. -Well, I've got a good one. -All right. -As long as we're on the topic of sex, let's keep this going with this. Do you ever awoken up-- well I guess I shouldn't ask you this, the grand have guys. But, and obviously in the chat room and all the listeners. Have you guys ever woken up next to somebody in the morning and sort of wish that there was a universal rating system on how satisfied or dissatisfied your-- based on their performance last night? Sounds kinda like an infomercial right now. -Yeah. -There's gotta be a better way. Well, someone figured out how to sort of gamify the most sacred of all games, God's game, if you will. Someone figured how to gamify your sexual experience. So this is kinda cool. It's a new app, it's called Spreadsheets. Get it. -That's not bad. I'll give you a credit for the creativity of the name, for sure. -Uh-hmm. This new app is called Spreadsheets. It lets you quantify sort of all the things that typically make a good sexual partner, right? So this app lets you calculate using the accelerometer and I guess you have to have the phone somehow strapped to your naked body in order to gauge these things. But using the accelerometer, you can track how many thrust per minute you're averaging, right? So if you jack hammering, you can really get your number up there. How long you go for the duration of your sexual experience and then exactly how loud your sexual experience is using the microphone to measure decibels. And so based on all these things, you know, if you're having sex for a long time and it's rigorous and you're making loud noises, the app assumes that you're probably having pretty good sex, you know, compared to like-- I don't know, like regular boring sex. So, that's it. That's exactly what this Spreadsheets app does, you know, for being incredibly quite. Do you already have this app downloaded on your phone? -Let's just say I finished this game. I've completed it. -That cigarette is your reward. -Yes. Okay, I mean, you know. -Right? -Look, I don't think everything needs to be turn into a freaking game. -Right. -I get like the exercise stuff. I get like a traveling around the world. I get all that. When it comes to stuff like this, you know, there are certain things that are best left behind closed doors. -Right. -And this is most certainly one of them because being good at sex is a completely subjective thing. There's no-- you can't qualify any sort of points system on boning. Right? Come on. -That sounds like the words of a man that's bad at sex. -Again, there's no such thing as bad sex. -No. -You hear that? -Well, I'm sure yes. There is such a thing, you know. There is of course. -Right. -But I think you know. -No, of course you're right. I'm just-- -Everyone's got their own taste-- -Right. -if you will. -Right. And I think as we all know, anytime you interrupt sex to do something else is always very bad. -Right. -It's just not romantic to interrupt sex especially not to hit a button on your iPhone, right? Like or even just to turn on your iPhone and grab it and like tracking these things. That could have already makes you a poor sexual partner-- -For sure. -if you're already doing something like that. And just because you're having sex really fast doesn't mean it's necessarily good sex either. -Exactly. -Am I right, Ariel? -Yeah. I guess. -Yeah. -For sure. I mean, I don't know how to tread lightly with this story. -Yeah. -Yeah. -It's one of those "not gonna touch that one." -Yeah. But, you know, there's some privacy concerns here too because obviously it's like recording your entire experience. There's a good chance that somebody behind the board over at whoever created Spreadsheets probably a guy. -Yeah. Of course. -He's monitoring your sexual activity. -Well, yeah. But there's-- I don't think there's like useful data there especially when it's being taken so jokingly, right? -Yeah, right. And there's actually achievements too so I think it's definitely a joke like if you hit his or her in a matter of thrust per hour and you unlock achievements and there's no prize or anything. The price is that you're having sex, right? -Yeah. -Like there's no better thing than that. If you're already having sex-- -There's the achievement. -you won. -You won. -There's no game. -No game-- yeah. -You finish the game. -That's it. -Yeah. -Congratulations. -Right. This is like-- -Achievement unlocked. -I think this is like porn star training. -Right. -You know-- -Is it maybe. -I think this is the only useful thing you could use it for. -And that's how you know the app is created by a guy. -Yeah. -Basically the porn star experience. All right. Well, that's the Spreadsheets app. -Okay. Spread those sheets baby. -That's all I've got. -Although, that doesn't even make sense. How do you spread sheets? -See? Bad at sex. That's what I'm saying. -Oh, you're an expert sheets spreader, is that what you are? -Stretch sheets. -The old sheets spread and some-- -Oh, sheets spreader. Okay, well. We're already talking about making baby, so let's continue that conversation. See what I'm doing here? -You're freaking [unk]. You're a Work Smith Mastermind podcasting extraordinaire. -It took me an hour to put these stories in order for this transition. -And I bless your sacred heart for it. It's what I do. -So I was watching TV last night and I was watching ABC news in the evening. You know, normally I watched CBS news of course, but since Time Warner and CBS got into a tiff, now I'm trying to watch Stars Kids all day. -Is that what-- that's what it is? -Yeah. So-- have we talked about this yet? Are we allowed to talk about this? -I think we are. We're-- yeah, why not? We could talk about whatever the hell we want. -Okay. So, Time Warner and CBS are beefing right now-- -Yeah. -over a lot of money-- strange. -Yeah. There's just bitching at each other. -Right. -And so, in order to take a stand, Time Warner is now broadcasting Stars Kids Network instead of CBS. -That's what's airing on Channel 2. -Yeah. That's what's airing on Channel 2. -Interesting. Okay. -So yesterday, instead of watching Partysaurus Rex, which was the movie that was playing on Stars Kids. -Right. -I turned over to ABC News and they had this really funny story that sort of made me angry but I think it's an interesting sign of time. -I saw this on CNN this morning. -Did you really? -Yeah. -Oh, it's a good one, right? -It's good. Yup. -So this is the story of a couple in Houston, a man and woman named Mark and Lauren. And they have a 2-year-old baby, right? They lived in a big house and there's fairly well off so they can afford a lot of different electronics and gadgets for their kid. And-- well, the other night they finished tucking in little Alison, the name of their 2-year-old. And they turned off the lights and they turned on a baby monitor. And you know how most baby monitors are just audio. Well, because they're a little bit more affluent. They actually have a baby monitor that has a video camera in it as well. And then there's also, you know, the company one they put into their room so they can actually check out how their baby's doing, right? -Yes. -And so they left the room, turned on the baby monitor and when they got back to their room, all of the sudden, they heard a British accented voice coming out of the baby monitor. Isn't that scary? -Hello. -It wasn't him. -What? It was my fair lady. Yeah, how was that. -He was like-- -He was like cockney. -But what was the guy doing? -And the guy was like, "Show me your shoes, [unk]. -No. It was only-- -What's going on that crib right there? -Yeah. It was so brand I was on the other line. -No. This was the scary part, is the words were all directed at the baby and the baby's name-- -Baby's name is Alison. -Yeah. -The words-- the guy on the other side of the line was actually calling the baby by her name and was directing, "offensive sexualized words" at this baby. -Now that is the part that's definitely not cool about this story. -The call is coming from inside the house. -There's nothing cool about this story. -No, there's nothing. -There's a slice of humor but the humor does not reside in the disgusting comments-- -Right. -that this guy was saying. -Right. -We need to make that very clear. -Of course not. There's nothing funny about saying offensive things to babies. -Well, right especially when they're sexual. -Yeah, of course. Luckily, the daughter Alison is actually deaf and that's not a good thing. -No one's ever said luckily she's deaf-- -No, I know. That's not a good thing. -What is that? -Well, the father said this. -I know, -This is in the video. -In the context of this terrible thing. -In the context of this terrible thing. Luckily she kinda locked up because she's deaf, she has cochlear implants and the parents had turned off the cochlear implant-- -Right. They were off. -so that she could sleep better. -Right. -So she didn't hear any of that stuff. Thank God, that's good. But the parents looked into it and it turns out there's a vulnerability in their brand of baby monitor. It's a company the name of Foscam and their whole line of baby monitors were discovered to be vulnerable by Security Company back in April. And the company actually issued an emergency fix right after they found out there was a vulnerability. But the family wasn't aware-- -But you have to update. -that yeah, you have to update it because it probably works over Wi-Fi to distribute that video fee. And since there was no update system to notify them about something new or their new firmware, they just didn't have it. -It's a pretty common vulnerability in companies that are silly and stupid. -Yeah. -They just leave, you know, the log in and back in that's just requiring admin to log on. -Uh-hmm. Right. -And that was the case for this Foscam device. -And it's the same thing that happens with printers. You know, we've talked about this in the past before, where, all you have to do is a simple IP address search with the name of the printer and it shows up. You can even narrow it down by location using Google Advance Search terms. It's really easy to do that. So I don't know why companies keep falling for this. It's like, just like get a better admin password, right? -Right. -Does it make sense? -Right. For sure. -So that's a crazy story but also like kind of a-- how they move on behalf of the hackers, right? -Yeah. -Would you even call that it hacked really? -It's not a hack. -Like it's not like you to get bragging rights unfortunately for this. -It's not a hack when you just used admin, that's-- you're not hacking. -That's not a hack yeah. -You're-- what is that-- -That's a prank. -It's not-- well, yeah. But I'm saying the act of just-- I guess technically it's a hack 'cause you're gaining access to something you're not supposed to. -Right. -But you just have the password. -Right. -So you're just a little punk. -Right. -Harassing 2-year-old-- -Right. -in their cribs. I mean, if you're gonna perv out like, you know, find a better webcam to hack into. -Yeah. -And not like a baby's webcam is boring. -Boring, yeah. -Who wants to watch that all day? -And I'm gonna get a reaction of the kid. -Yeah. -Come on. -It's really scary story. -You stink. -I don't like that. -All right. What else do we have? -So be careful Jeff. -Yeah. -Don't buy that Foscam baby monitor. -No. Well, good thing I don't have a baby. -Yes. -I've got a Marty, I have a dog that we thought about putting up cameras. -Oh, really? -Yeah, you can do that and, you know. I just don't wanna freak the dog out like that. -Yeah. -'Cause if-- you know, he is a dog. He only understands so much of this world that we all occupy. -I'm gonna hack you for that. -The last thing I wanna do is-- -Touching your dog. -make him think like the wall is talking to him. -Okay. Dogs aren't that dumb. -They're not that dumb but, you know, I don't know. They kinda mistake like, you know TV dog is like a dog in the bedroom, so-- -Right. -that's pretty silly-- -That's true. -You know-- -Well, do you think it's kinda like try to eat the camera or something? -I don't know what it's gonna do. -I'd give Marty more credit than that. -You're right. My mistake. Sorry Marty. -I'm gonna shout all kinds of curse words at your dog. -Thank you. -You suck Marty, you suck. -Thanks. Thank you. -Oh, man. Okay, my last story of the day and then we could talk some gaming stuff. But this is kind of interesting. There's an elaborate prank that hit Best Buy stores in LA. So if you're walking in selected Best Buy stores last week, you might have noticed some small rectangular black boxes that were displayed next to some of the GPS navigation devices in the store. And this is kinda strange. But these rectangular boxes, all of the sudden, just started showing up. They were unlabeled on the actual box itself, about a size of a dictionary, right? So it's pretty big. And it started showing up in different areas but mostly around the GPS devices. And they came with product cards in front of them. So if you ever been to like a Best Buy, you know that those product labels usually have the yellow price tag on them. -Yup. -And look, here they are. This is what it looks like. -This is pretty clever. -Yeah. And so, it came complete with a yellow label that priced at $99.99 and it looked like a legitimate Best Buy product until you actually read the label and the name of this product is Useless Plastic Box 1.2 -So basically what we have here-- -Uh-hmm. Speaking of pranks-- -I mean, this is basically like an art installation. -Right. This is like Improv Everywhere but one guy. -Right. -Right? -I like it. It's like a banksy of Best Buy. -Yup. -Really cool dude. -No, it's funny. It's funny. -Yeah, you got us. Okay, we'll talk about that later. But basically the description on this card red, another gadget you don't really need will not work once you get it home, new model out in 4 weeks and the battery life is too short to be of use. You know how they list the features there. -Yes. -That's what it's said. -The funny thing here, someone somewhere saw this and I'm just like, "Well, that's weird." -Yeah -This doesn't really seem like it does anything. -I want that. -I need this. Okay? -It's really detailed though. I gotta hand it to this artist. The artist is a street artist named Mr. Plastic Jesus. -Oh, yeah Mr. Plastic Jesus. -Yeah. -Yeah, that guy. -Old Plastic Jesus. -There's even a bar code on the label. There is a QR code, and then even the brand is Geek Squad branding. -It's pretty good. It's like you would really never know that it's a forgery. -It's pretty-- yeah. -You kinda have to respect that man. -No. Don't respect it. -Why, you don't think this is a funny prank? -I mean, it's-- -It's a victimless crime. -worth like maybe a crack of a smile and then, well, you have too much time in your hands. Get a job grouch. You know, like that's what I would do. -Yeah, get a job. Why don't you paint your right hand and take photos of it instead of doing this commentary on-- -Get a life. -modern electronic stores. -Right. No, but here's a thing is that there is so much hypocrisy in this stories that he did all this. He went through a process of putting these in several Best Buy stores and then post all the photos of it onto his Twitter page. -Oh, that's silly. Okay-- -Which is dumb, you know. -Yeah, you don't wanna do that. -And on his Twitter page and his website. He sort of talks about like our nation's obsession with consumerism and gadgets and the fetishes-- the fetishization of technology. -And that's fine. -Right? Which is great, but 10 bucks as he took this photo with a freaking iPhone. Right? -Well, look-- okay. -Like there's no way he didn't use some kind of smartphone or at least a digital camera to take these pictures. -I'm okay with like-- -Then he posted it on this Twitter page, which is arguably the only, you know, the main way that people communicate through social networks now. It's a sane thing. He's buying-- he's drinking the cool-aid and then making commentary on it. What a hypocrite. -No. I'm not gonna call him a hypocrite for that because how else do you-- how like, you know what I mean? If anything, you should have just left it there and that's it. -Yeah. -All right. -And then made it a mystery. That's the best part about [unk] and things like that-- -There's no way-- sure. -you would know who made it. -He never should have like taken the photos and post, that's stupid. -Arrogant-- yeah. -You're right. And that is, I guess you could call it hypocrite at all. But I still think it's a harmless, victimless crime. -Yeah. This isn't street art, by the way. I think I'm reading this Daily Mail article and I feel like-- -This is street box art. -street art has just become, yeah like this. Blinking [unk]. -This is brick and mortar art. -I hate that term. This is a joke. That's what this is-- -It's a joke, yeah. -something joke. -It's a joke. -I do think it's funny though because Best Buy released a press statement after this and they told the press, he said, "We're also flattered that Best Buy so top of mind for Mr. Plastic Jesus. We're happy he presumably have the opportunity to witness our expert Blue Shirts and Geek Squad members in action during his visits. Hopefully he also had the chance to check out our fabulous back-to-school deals." I like this. -By the way, we're closing 38 more stores today. -Yeah. -Because no one is buying stuff from us anymore. -Yeah, like now we've actually stalk the black boxes. -I was gonna say, we will be doing that and we're gonna offer for half price. -Yeah. -This useless piece of plastic is now $49.99. -Get the extended warranty too while you're at it. -Might as well. These plastic boxes break all the time. -Not bad. So here's the zoomed in shot of that stupid-- -I'm okay with it. -I'm okay. -Interesting. -I'm okay. I just don't like that-- you're right. I don't like that he covered this on story. -Uh-hmm. -True. Yeah. You gotta let that happen organically. All right, cool. We're gonna switch gears for a little bit, talk about some news that Microsoft-- man they're having one hell of a year. They seemed to just be going back and forth-- -Uh-hmm. -We actually got to meet and sit down with some of their big head honchos the other day. -Oh, really? -It was very revealing. It was like an off-the-record thing so I can't really talk about what exactly we spoke of. -Uh-hmm. -But, you know, it humanized them a bit. We really got to understand the, you know, the trials and tribulations that they went through. This was a terror. I mean it's been a wacky year for them. -Yeah, that's funny. Did they come and just apologize for everything that's happened? -No. They have nothing-- -They're like dropping flowers-- -I don't think they have anything to apologize for. They're just being like, look, we gotta adopt this shitty sort of-- and what happened. -Don't you think it was a PR nightmare though? -Yeah, it was. -I mean, if you're on at E3, it just seems like there was a lot of miscommunication about what was going on. -I mean-- and don't get me wrong. Like they're not completely innocent-- -No, yeah. -you know, like they're definitely. There's definitely some-- there's a smoking gun there for sure. But, you know, one of the big things was the fact that kinect, this new kinect. There's no way to buy this console without it coming into package. -Right. -And Microsoft also said that none of the features, the games, nothing would work if this wasn't connected, if Kinect wasn't on and connected 24/7. -Uh-hmm. -Well, now it seems that just like a lot of things in this Xbox One policy, this is well is getting reversed. -Uh-hmm. -So you're not gonna need kinect hooked up. I even gonna need it connected like on or even attached to the Xbox. -Uh-huh. -Okay? I just feel like everyone freaks out about, "Oh, camera on a console." Like we all aren't currently sitting in front of a freaking laptop with a camera looking right at us right now. -Right. -Or take your freaking battles my nerd friends. -Uh-hmm. -Anyway, so they went out and they said, "Look, this is not gonna be a requirement. Obviously, some of the kinect games will need it because they are tethered to a functioning kinect." But for a lot of the other functionality of the console including games-- some games, you're not gonna need it connected. Now, this brings up the notion of like, "All right, well, if I don't need kinect, why do I have to pay for it in a baked-in price of $500?" and that doesn't really seem to have an answer right now. It's just, "Look, this is what it comes with. This is the price." Come on. -Why is it seemed like this story and-- maybe even gamers too are sort of framing this as a bad thing, right? Isn't that kinect pretty cool like wouldn't you-- if you bought an Xbox One-- -That's not the-- -and you're playing modern games that probably are better with the connected camera attached-- -No. -Why wouldn't you just wanna use the kinect? -Because the-- -It's like they're framing the kinect as a bad part about this product. -Right, 'cause no one likes it. -But it's not. It's a boon, is it? -No. No one likes kinect. -Is not? -Yeah. I mean like, right now and I'm sure they would love to hear me say this but right now the reputation that kinect has developed is a negative one and people don't like it because the current version of it-- well, it's just not fun. -Okay. -This new one is new and improved and all this of jury still out on that. We gotta wait to see how it really works and we'll have all that reviewed up in November. But, for now, this comes as good news because people like, "Oh, great. I don't have to do it." Even though you could have just put black electrical tape over the camera sensor, you could have done whatever you do. You could have dealt with it the way you deal with the camera looking right at you on your laptop. -Yeah, you just turn it around. You just can't do that with your laptop. -Yeah, you're right. You could have faced it the other way. You're exactly right. -Well-- -But this is what we're dealing with right now. -I think it's pretty cool because, you know, Microsoft's done this twice now. -They've done it a bunch of times this year. -And I kinda like it, you know. It's a sign that Microsoft is paying attention to what their users are complaining about-- -Yeah, but there-- -and fixing those problems. I don't think Microsoft would have done that year ago, right? -Well, no. Because the-- -And the people complain about the, you know, the original Xbox should have done a long time and give you that screen. -Right. -So they never fixed that. -Oh, no they did. -With the newer model? -I mean, when they have like 4 million Xbox coming and they're like, you know, these things over here, we should probably fix that. -Right. They should probably do something about it. -But the fact that they were able to mitigate this before it even comes out. -Right. They were able to-- -That's pretty cool. -sort of cut the-- -Isn't that good customer service? -Yeah, it is. I just think it also was like a gigantic knee-jerk reaction. -You know, they basically, you know, there was this outrage that erupted online and before they could even get this in the hands of one person-- not one person have this plated and said, "You know what? These DRM restrictions and everything, it's ruining." -Uh-hmm. -It was just a reaction from a very poorly laid out marketing plan and, you know, sort of like platform business plan and no one saw it. No one got to play it but the reaction from the hardcore enthusiast was just so filled with vitriol and venom that they were just like, "Oh, we can't afford this PR nightmare. We have to fix this and fix it now even if it was or was not the right way to do things." -So you're saying that, even though it's nice that they're correcting the mistake that shouldn't have even made it than made in the first place. -No. I don't think that-- no, I still-- I'm a little bitter the fact that they went back on the whole thing when I truly believe this all digital eco-system, one that exist in a very large way right now-- -Uh-huh. -would eventually have to exist in a couple of years anyway. -Right. -I'm not gonna get back into that whole thing again but it's just-- it's crazy that they seem to be really changing massive, massive planning-- -Uh-hmm. -on what a few enthusiast video game websites, how to say. -Right, right. And also, we talked about this before about the loudest voices that complain initially about new products online aren't necessarily the voice of the majority either. -Exactly, like why am I reading negative Amazon video game reviews or games that aren't even out yet. -Right. -What's up with that? For products that aren't even out yet. Chromecast had a billion reviews 48 seconds after it was announced. Why like how is that okay? Why Amazon is fantastic? -Uh-hmm. -We love Amazon, right? We love everything they do. -Fantastic, yeah. -Their one flaw, let people only review a product if it's in their order history. -Yeah. That's a good point. -Solved problems done. -Right. -Right? -Let the video game reviewers do their job, right? -Well that's-- -They're basically taking food out of your mouth. -No. I have no problem with someone writing up a hundred word review of a game-- -As long as-- -after they have played it, bought it and delivered. -Right. -Yeah, that's what-- that's the real caveat. Make sure it's in their order history and it was delivered. -Yeah. -Okay? I want that too. -It's an easy fix. -Is it? -I don't know. I feel like there some sort of, you know, psychological satisfaction that people get by being able to do that on the website. -Yeah, that's messed up. -Yeah. But anyway, that's the story with that. -Uh-hmm. -So we'll see how that plays out. Again, it's right around the corner guys. New consoles are like 2 or 3 months away. Are you excited? -No. -You're gonna be-- you're a little-- -I'm a little excited. -intrigued? -Yeah. -Curious perhaps? -That-- like a little spark. -A little tingle behind your right earlobe maybe? -Maybe? -I watched you play some games. -Oh, well thanks man. I appreciate that. Let's get once again to some of these e-mails and then we'll say goodbye for the day. -Let's do it. I wanna read this one from Rich. You know, recently we've been talking about how difficult it is to end your AOL subscription despite the fact that it seems like so many people-- how much did they make last year on AOL alone? -160. -Was it 160 million? -Yeah, I think that was on-- -Just on AOL subscriptions. -Yup. -And we are talking about how their retention system when you call up-- -Oh, no. I think there's more. -More than that? -Was it $600 million? -No, it can't be $600 million. -Yeah, maybe it was 160 -Anyway, so this is very difficult to get rid of your AOL subscription if you've had it for a while. -Six hundred-- is 600-- -$600 million-- -Jesus Christ. -Yeah. -Anyway, so Rich from Cleveland e-mailed us and he says, "When my Dad finally canceled their AOL dialup service circle 2005-ish. He had to call 4 times and it ended up screaming several times for one he insist-- they insisted he give his AOL account password over the phone. That's a no, no, no. -That's a huge no, no. -They never asked for that. Then when he couldn't remember that, he had to answer one of the security questions for the account. The problem was me and my brother had to setup the account and had to answer those questions how we thought my Dad would but without actually asking him. That's probably their bad-- in 1998. So several years later, we had no freaking clue what we put for his favorite actor or the name of his first grade teacher. I mean, that's really funny just telling lies for those answers. Finally, through a series of escalating incentives in which he threaten to sue if they would not let them cancel immediately. He was finally able to cancel the service. Unfortunately, they kept the e-mail account until 2012, when it finally got hacked and I had to set them up with the Gmail account and a secure password. And that's the story. -Yeah, man. -So it's tough. -It was real tough. -Yeah. -It's always-- I feel like, and this is not an uncommon story. -No. -It's for whatever reason and it happens with everything like we said, cable, internet-- -Uh-hmm. -They wanna, obviously they wanna hold on to it. -Right. -Cellphone service, all that stuff is really hard-- -Hate to see you go. Who wants you to go? -On the flip side to that, I always say like yesterday for example, I was late on my cellphone payment last month and I called them up and I was like, "Hey, is there anything you could do about this?" and they're like, "You know what, since you've been a customer for so long, wanna go ahead and reverse those charges." And they took $40 worth of reinstallation fees off my bill. -Well, that was nice of them. -So they can do that for you really easily. -So they're not all evil. -If you ever get any penalties and things, just call them up. -Yeah. You just gotta turn on that charm you-- everyone has. -Yeah, exactly. Don't be mean. Sweet talk them. -Sweet talk-- and they will do anything. You-- you know, I'm telling you man. Sometimes, I mean, sometimes it's too much. Like if I act-- one time I activated a credit card it was on the phone for 45 minutes. -Yeah. -Just because this one [unk] wanted to talk to me about [unk] and like Frank Sinatra and stuff like that and I was like, "All right.-- -So you just went on a date. -Basically I went on a phone date with a Beverly in Tennessee. But you really can't-- if you're nice and polite, is it amazing how far common courtesy gets. -Right. -Something maybe perhaps we've lost. -Well-- and if that doesn't work, ask to speak to the manager. -Right, and-- no. Don't ask 'cause that's the cliché that like never work. -That's like you're surfing there. -"I wanna talk to your supervisor." -"Yeah, I am the supervisor." -"Oh, yeah. Okay, hold on." If I'm that person, I'm like, "Okay, hold on." "Okay, here's the supervisor. It's me." -Yeah. "It's really me." -West writes in, our body from Phoenix. "Hey, guys. About a year ago, I sent you an e-mail showing you the retro-gaming setup I was making with the raspberry pie and you featured it on one of your episodes." Yes we did. I shelved that project for quite some time. But someone at work happened to catch that episode and word got around." This guy is a stud in Phoenix. "Long story short, my work decided to have me use company time-- -Where the hell you work bud? -to work on finishing the project in order to use it for a game room they're creating a work. It's still not a hundred percent but it's close to being finish and giving Jeff's comments about renting arcade cabinets on Monday show, I figured I'd show you the progress. And in all, I'm pretty pleased with the outcome and it's freaking fun to play even if it might be a gigantic copyright infringement that's fine." What would you do in your office is none of our business. -Uh-hmm. -Except when you actually sent photos of the evidence. Anyway, check it out, right? -Yeah, one sec-- here we go. -Here's what we got. This is unbelievable. It's a makeshift customized arcade cabinet featuring retro games from Nintendo Entertainment System and Super NES. -That is so cool. -How sick is this? It's got actual NES original controllers connected to it as well. -Uh-hmm. -Preserve that nostalgic feel and it's really awesome. -Wow, these USB ports too? -I can't tell what those are. -That is so cool. -There some sort of interface. I can't tell if those were Ethernet or USB or what. But-- really great job. I wanna know where he got that custom cabinet if he made that, and then obviously, here comes the game porn right here. -He's got it all of them here. -He pretty much-- he probably has every single game under the sun. -Oh, my God. That's so sick. -That is so great. I wish we could-- maybe West, you could send us a video. I wanna see this thing in action. -He even has the Box Art, like he loves-- -Yeah. -He took 3D photos of each games. -That is so cool. -Those box arts up there. Look at all those different controllers. -Oh, so sick. -Did they have the original Atari controller in them? -Sure is. Look at this guy. -Sick. -Nice. -What's this over here? -That looks like a Genesis controller. -That is too cool. He's got all of them here. -Pretty kick-ass West. -Goodbye work day productivity. -Yes. -He will get fired after sending this e-mail. -Yeah, I can't believe they let you do that man on work time. Good for you bud. All right, excellent. Send us your awesome e-mails and photos and voicemails and all that good stuff 866-404-CNET is our phone number. You can reach us through e-mail at the 404@cnet.com <mailto:404@cnet.com>. That will do it for us. Make sure you participate in today's contest that will go all-- the rest of this week and all of next week. I'm calling it the 404. Get your Powerocks off contest. -Get it. -That's a winner. -Get it? -Get it. -Just like the guy in his right hand. -Yeah. -Get it? -Get it. -You get it? -Almost as good as Spreadsheets dude. -Spread those sheets baby. All right. That's gonna do it for us. We're back here tomorrow and then on Friday and then Ariel gets married. And I get [unk]. -Should be a happy day. -No, I'm excited. -Of course. -All right. Excellent. If you don't know the blog, it's at cnet.com/the404. Make sure you're commenting on Wednesday August 14th's blogpost. That's gonna do it or us guys. We'll see you tomorrow. I'm Jeff Bakalar. -I'm Justin Yu. -I'm Ariel Nuñez. -This has been the 404 Show, high-tech, low brow. Have a great one guys. We'll see you tomorrow.

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