CNET UK Podcast 545: iPhone charging woes, Facebook's brain and Venom

The iPhone won't plug and play. [MUSIC] We step inside one of the places you can actually touch Facebook, and we find out if Venom really is the dumbest movie of the year. It's all coming up on the Cnet UK Podcast. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Hello, hi, welcome to Cnet UK Podcast. I'm Rich Trenholm and I'm joined by Katie Collins. Hi Rich, how are you doing this week? I'm doing very well. We've had a little bit of a break, but we filled it with lots of exciting things. But first of all, let's start with some interesting news in the world of fonts. Font news everybody- [LAUGH] This looks like- Our favorite kind of news. Our favorite kind of news. Scientists have created a new font that's designed to boost your memory so you don't forget things. And it's called Sans Forgetica. [LAUGH] See what they did there? That's great, I mean I imagined this would be great for university students who are cramming and Yeah I can definitely see why this is a good thing. But how does it actually work? How does it actually work, well I'm glad you asked Katie. Because I'm about to tell you. The design of it is, it's a san serif type face. And it's actually designed to be harder to read Than most phones. Most phones are designed to be easy to read so you can glide over them and you can read quickly and easily. This is designed to be harder to read because it slants left. Okay. So it leans the other way to most phones. It's very fairly rare for that to be used in typography and it's full of holes. So there's bits cut out of different letters and so, with it slanting left and there's all these holes. Is harder to read so you have to concentrate more. Right Yeah Yeah, I can definitely see how that would work so it's asking your brain to kind of go into overdrive a little bit to Exactly To read through and therefore It's less likely to just slip out of your mind the second that you've read it. Exactly which is something I think we're all familiar with. It's called deeper cognitive processing apparently when you kind of ask your brain to work a little bit harder. And that promotes retention of the stuff that you are reading. Now interestingly, this psychological learning principle is known as desirable difficulty. Which is also my Tinder name. [LAUGH] All right. [LAUGH] So is this something that we are gonna be, kind of is it gonna be an option that we are gonna be singing word for Drinks and pool or [LAUGHING] [SPEAKER#2] I would hope so yes it's been new to us and exciting we should do it to everyone yes I think so everyone should be hard to read. Currently you can download it or you can use it as a chrome browser extension or to use some. [INAUDIBLE], so there you go. If you're perhaps studying, you've got exams coming or something like that, then that might be something worth looking into. Why don't you test it out and let us know how you get on with it. Absolutely, those Wikipedia articles won't learn themselves. [LAUGH] Sorry about, yeah, it get stuck in. Also, coming up, a problem that's been affecting a few people is the iPhone XS has a charging problem. Now, and it seems like there's always, I don't understand how there's a problem with New phones in this day and age. I mean, come on, sure they have mastered it, sure they've kind of figured it out. But apparently charging is a bit too difficult for the iPhone Access. So some users have noticed their phones won't charge If the screen is off when they plug in their lightning cable. Right okay. Yeah so it's [UNKNOWN]. Yeah it is niche. Apparently this is gonna be sold with a software update though so this. Thank God. [LAUGH] The next software update IOS 12.1. Mm-hm. Will is currently in beta, but it was gonna arrive on iPhones and iPads Later this autumn. So if you do have a new iPhone XS and you're struggling with this, or you've experienced it, then don't worry, a fix is coming. Until then, I think the The sort of temporary hack to fix this is just to make sure your screen is on when you plug your lightning cable in. Not ideal, but just something to be aware of now, I expect. Yeah, at least it's not as bad as last year when the new iOS system came along and It wouldn't let you use the letter I which was a bit, it's not that I use the letter I all that often, I mean that's all I ever use. I just talk about myself constantly. I mean this I do find generally that IOS updates are a lot more stable than they used to be. And I used to wait awhile, at least, to download the latest version of Apple software to my phone. Nowadays it tends to be a lot more stable, so it's not gonna wipe your phone and lose everything that you have. Good. Or delete all of your photos or anything like that, so they are generally a lot more stable, but There are obviously these little bugs that they find. Mm-hm. They'll try and patch up in later versions as well. Fair enough absolutely fair enough. Also what's happening this week is the Paris Motorshow has been on so we've sent our intreped roadshow team out there to look at the latest cars and Trucks and motorbikes and other road going vehicles. Some of the cool things they've seen. We're not gonna go too much into it. But I quite like the look of the Persia E-Legend concept which is an electric car Car, but it looks like a kind of like old muscle car. Nice. It's quite cool. It looks like kinda of a gnarly vintage look. It's kind of cool. There's also a drivable Lego Bugatti Chiron. Yeah. So it's a Bugatti Chiron. Made out of Lego, but you can drive it, which may be the coolest thing at the Paris Motor Show. With it being the Paris Motor Show as well, obviously it's a European show, it's got European cars. If you're American, then you might not get to see some of these cars. So we actually have a special gallery which shows you all the cars that aren't coming to America. [LAUGH] So I hope you enjoy that one. And if you're European, you can see all the cars that we get to keep for ourselves. So it's something for everyone really in that sense. Yeah. But yeah, look at cnet.com/roadshow. Anyway, and you've been on the road. I have. You've been out and about. Well, I actually flew to Ireland and back in the space of a day. So not on the road so much as in the air. But yeah, this was a trip that I did last week, I think. Or maybe the week before now. But I flew over to Dublin and I went to visit Facebook's new data center that they just opened. Just outside Dublin, in a town that I think you pronounce Clue-knee (Clonee). Or Clearney- Okay. So if I'm getting that wrong, I'm sure our Irish fans will tell us. [LAUGH] Let us know. Yep, race to the comments. Yep, but basically I went to see this data center that is, usually I won't lie, data centers can be quiet dull. Mm-hm. You know, it's just that they're these kind of big warehouses almost that are Full of servers, and they don't even have many people in them, because it doesn't take- Just a lot of flashing lights. Yeah, but this one I found particularly interesting, partly because it's owned by Facebook. So I was kind of wandering down these rows of sort of flashing Server stacks. And they are all kind of labeled so you see, you can see which bit of Facebook each server stack is related to. Really? Like likes and pokes. Yeah. And newsfeed and that kind of thing. Really? I was joking. Yeah. It's really that kind of thing? Yeah. So, you have all of these, you kind of have all of these different bits of Facebook and it's the kind of, it's Facebook in its most tangible form. And, the way that it works is if you click Like or something on Facebook, then. The, it will kind of, Facebook will sort of send all these signals to all these different data centers and the data centers will kind of scramble all the data together in the right order and deliver it back to you in the space of, you know, milliseconds, down the fiber cable, so. So yeah, it was amazing to kind of be inside this data center, and they've got all of this, so Facebook's pledged, as well, to run on totally renewable energy by 2020. I think originally, when they signed up to this, they said 2022, but they're actually way ahead of schedule. So they've got all of these This data center kind of runs totally on renewable energy. It's taking advantage of the fact that island is one of the best countries for wind power in the world, to make sure that it's kind of using all of that to To power it. Yeah. And it's also got this special cooling system that sucks all the hot air up from the data centers, and it kinda sends cool air back down into them. And it's about twice as efficient as normal. Okay. And it's also really interesting just to kind of, cuz you don't really get an opportunity to see. These kind of facilities very often, and to see how the silicon valley Facebook culture presents itself in this tiny town outside of Dublin and Ireland, because I've been to some of the Facebook offices in London, and they're kind of like, as you would imagine it's like, free lunches, and lot's of murals all over the wall, lots of cool stuff going on, very colorful. It has a Fun atmosphere. Meeting rooms with silly names. Yeah. That kind of thing yeah. So it was interesting to see. There are about 300 people that work on this site. And a lot of them actually I think are employed in security. But they have all of these kind of the whole datacenter surrounded by a lot of land. And they landscaped it so that it reflects the surrounding area. But they've got kind of Local flora and fauna. And as you go in, the first thing that you see are all these beehives. It's not very obvious, actually, when you arrive that it is a Facebook site. Okay. The first kind of branding that you see as you go in is there are all these beehives with All of the Facebook letters along them and they're all painted Facebook blue. Okay. And I was talking to some of the people that worked there, and apparently they have two beekeepers on staff. All right. But since starting to work there, it's kind of become a bit of an extra curricular activity for a lot of the employees, and they are now over 20 people on the staff that help Help maintain the beehives and they're all doing beekeeping at home. So it's a hiver activity. Bro. It really is. They mmake all of this honey and they serve it in the canteen and that kind of thing. So yeah, itw was just really interesting to kind of see inside, what's make Facebook kind of take over on a day to day basis Yeah like a physical manifestation of our online lives. What does it sound like, is it noisy? So, inside the server room it's kind of like there's a constant hum of all the servers, and yes kind of quite dark in places and also went up on the roof which is quite cool I was like going up on the roof of buildings. [LAUGH] Absolutely, yeah. But yeah it was just easy-- it was just interesting just to see the kind of, the way in which it sort of stands up and how Facebook has these sort of sensors all around the world. And how they all kind of, all of our data is sort of It's kind of passed up and stored in different place. And every time we kind of use Facebook, we're actually interacting with all these massive masses of machines. All over the place. So yeah, it was just an interesting insight into it. Yeah, it's fascinating. And there's an ask about that on the site? There is. And some photos- And some photos so you can actually see what it looks like as well. See what it looks like inside Facebook's brain. Yep. And hearts and liver and spleen. Yeah. And beehives. Yeah. [LAUGH] [LAUGH] So yeah so that sounds cool. Well so moving on we have some more news about what from Facebook. One of the world's biggest corporations to Disney another huge corporation. Yep. And we have some more news about what they're gonna be doing with their new streaming service which is coming soon in the future. Exciting. Yeah it is so they're There's been some new news about one of the shows they're gonna be showing on their new video streaming service. It's a Star Wars show, and it's gonna be called The Mandalorian. And this is the show that's gonna be produced and created by John Favreau, the guy behind Iron Man, and Swingers, and a bunch of other stuff. And the Jungle Book remake for Disney. So this is going to be a new show, we don't know too much about it, we haven't seen the pictures yet but all we know it's going to be someone who is in someway related to Boba Fett, the famous bounty hunter from the Yeah the original movies. The Mandalorian so Boba Fett was a Mandalorian he was from the planet Mandalor I guess? I don't know he was a Mandalorian bounty hunter and this show is gonna be about a Mandalorian, presumably a bounty hunter. They've been described as a lone gun fighter on the frontier of space. And it's set between the original movies and the start of the new movies. So it's set between the Return of Jedi and Force Awakens. Okay. So it's kind of a chapter of Star Wars that hasn't quite been explored up to here, thoroughly. So yeah, there's quite a few shows coming about Star Wars. We've got the spin offs like Solo and Rogue One and that kind of thing. But we're also gonna get Star Wars Resistance, which is about [UNKNOWN] and his mates. Now we've got this show, the Mandalorian, Clone Wars is coming back. There's a lot of Star Wars. Do you think it's getting to the point where we're getting a bit over saturated? Kind of milking the universe maybe a bit too much, think we're kind of losing the That kind of like real thread of excitement and the kind of canon almost of Star Wars and so splitting it up a bit too much into different directions. I think possibly, yeah, I mean, this is the thing where so our colleague Claire Rowley has written a piece that's basically talking about that very thing, she talks about when she was a kid, she probably would have loved to have seen all this stuff but Star Wars was like a special actual thing. Yeah. And every couple years a new Star Wars movie came along and it was a big deal. So, maybe that's true. Maybe we're a bit jaded. I was thinking about this the other day when I went to the premier of the new Doctor Who series, and it occurred to me that ten, 15, well, let's be honest, 20, 25 years ago I would have been absolutely over the moon to have the amount of Doctor Who stuff that's out there. The books and the The spin-off shows that are on at the moment, but stuff like Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures in [UNKNOWN] and all that kind of thing. When I was a kid, I would have just lapped that all up. Mm-hm. And now as an adult, even though I love Doctor Who and I love watching it still, I never bothered to really get into those shows, particularly. I guess I just grown up, so maybe it's easy for us to say, there's too much Star Wars. But, for kids, for kids who love Star Wars, it's probably a great time to be alive. What a time to be alive and young. And be a Star Wars fan. To be a Star Wars fan. Exactly. I do sometimes feel like there's so much stuff, the kind of binge-watching Bucks at revolution and the golden age of TV has turned slightly, for me, it feels like homework. You meet up with your friends and you're checking off the list. You're like have you watched Ozark yet? Have you watched [UNKNOWN] yet? And you're like, no, I'm really behind on Ozark and I haven't even thought about Westworld season two. It just feels like There's so much stuff, it feels like homework. Yeah, and actually, I think the thing that actually makes me do is to go back and rewatch a lot of stuff that I find really comforting. And it's kind of, it puts me off a little bit. It feels like once you start investing in a new series This is gonna take up a bunch of my time and you know, I don't know if it's gonna be worth it. And I'm really picky about new things that I'm prepared to kind of get into it. It's making me go back and just rewatch a lot of old stuff that I I've seen before, and perhaps I should step outside my comfort zone a little bit. But I do feel like I watch at least one new thing every month. That's cool, I think the important thing is probably to try something new without feeling beholden to finish the whole thing. Yeah, yeah. I think, I sometimes get put off actually starting something just because I feel like I don't want to complete it or I'm never gonna complete it. And also if something gets to season two or season three and you haven't started it already you just feel like, I'm so behind, I'm never going to catch up now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. I feel a bit like that with Game of Thrones, I know it's terrible. I'm not really that up on Game of Thrones, but I think maybe I might marathon it before the last season starts. Yeah. But there's been some good stuff that's been on, for example, on Netflix recently. Maniac I thought was great. And Final Space is fantastic on Netflix that is really, really good. It looks kind of like future armor, and it looks like a kind of wacky, silly, sci-fi spoof cartoon. And it sort of is, but it also turns into this kind of proper space opera. It's kind of like Guardians of the Galaxy. It's funny, but it's actually also really kind of surprisingly affecting and Exciting so final space. Well that sounds good. Yeah it's good. And I've noticed that maniacs been kind of advertised quiet a lot so I think I may give that a go as well. Definetely. Cause yeah the algorithium has suggested. [LAUGH] The algorithum decreases that maniac. Yes that it might be for me. It's up your street. They also said insasiable might be for me and it definetely wasn't so. Right. So just Just one last question on this. What else do we know about Disney's streaming service and who it's kinda gonna be targeted at? Because you know I'm already signed up to a bunch of streaming services. Taking on a new one now at this stage is- That's the thing. New streaming services are kind of the big thing at the moment that everyone's trying to do. Apple's trying to do it. Disney's doing this. The main thing that we kind of know is that Disney's taking all it's stuff. It's kind of taking its ball and going home. It's taking all its toys off Netflix and other places. And it's just gonna be available on the Disney streaming service. The exact details of how it's gonna work for us over here aren't clear yet. I'm not entirely sure if it's just gonna be a US thing. Okay. There's also DC have just launched or is about to launch their new streaming service which is gonna have Brand new live action shows like Titans. It's about the sidekicks of the superheroes. It's like Robin swearing and beating people up is quite gritty and violent. It almost feels like these are a bit more niche though. Because whereas anyone could probably sign up to Netflix or Amazon Prime and, Prime video and find something on there for them. And there'd be stuff for a whole family. If you're not into Disney or if you're not into DC, then it sounds like these services are not gonna be for you. Yeah, well that's the thing. Disney, sorry, DC is definitely something that is going to be fairly niche. I mean, you know, there's a huge number of people who love DC but it's still going to be pretty much all superheroes. Disney, at least, I mean, the thing about Disney is it has It has Marvel. It has Star Wars. It has, you know the Disney princess type movies. So, that's a fairly broad range of stuff, but it is reaching the point where you're going to have to decide. Like when Apple launches their streaming service, you're going to have to think. Can I spend $10 on Amazon, $10 on Netflix,>>YouTube premium as well.>>Exactly yeah. So Hulu, and so on and so on. I mean there's also already there's a bunch of other even more niche ones. There's Shutter which just does horror movies. There's movie and BFI player which are like Cinefile streaming services.>>Okay.>>But do kind of And Indian and classic movies. So, there's all these different streaming services, and I think what we're probably gonna see is, we've reached the point now where everybody is trying to get in the game, and then in a few years time it'll shake out and it'll consolidate back down, and we'll probably just end up with Netflix like we have now. Good luck lads. They's paying more for them. Probably. Yeah, yeah, so good luck. Enjoy it, have a good time, one last apple, and but we'll see, I guess. Apple have got some really big names lined up for their streaming service. We don't know what they're gonna be yet. We know, for example, they gonna have that show by Damien Chazelle who is the guy who directed La La Land and he's just directed First Man, which comes out next week, which is very, very good. Shall we talk about First Man just for a second? That's coming out on the Yes. eleventh of October and it is excellent. It stars Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong, who you may remember was the first man to walk on the moon. It also stars Claire Foy from The Crown as his wife. Directed by Damian Chazelle. And it's absolutely brilliant. It's really, really good. What they've done is something really clever where they don't show you these wide, epic shots of the spaceships taking off, they, That you might have got from Apollo 13 and that kind of thing. What they do is they put you right in the cockpit, in the capsule with Neil Armstrong. So a lot of the time all you're really seeing is Ryan Gosling's eyes, which is more than enough, obviously. And his helmet, and you're seeing the ->> I'm sold. Exactly, the dials, and the switches, and the readouts that he's looking at. And you're seeing there's all types Tiny windows as like the Earth falls away and the space appears. It sounds quite claustrophobic. It's incredibly claustrophobic and it's so immersive. Yeah. And it sounds counterintuitive that it's a very small kind of intimate sort of view of this guy's experience but it was so immersive that when I saw it on the Imax screen, the massive Imax screen, it really kind of brought me into it. So you know I think it's what the big screen is made for I think and then It also sort of shows the lives at home of the astronauts which is a little bit of a kind of like standard biopic thing. Where you gotta brilliant man being all driven and obsessed and his wife is like, but what about the kids? And she's like a no Niel, you listen to me All the time, that kind of thing. There's lots of slamming doors, and that kind of stuff, which is a little bit of a thankless task for Claire Foy. But I actually also, I did get to meet Ryan Gosling, and Claire Foy, and had a little bit of a chat to them about the movies, so let's have a little clip of that now. What I wanted to try to do with this movie was try to take a contemporary viewer, and put them, and try to really rewind in a true time travel kind of way, to the early 60s, where Where walking on the moon was as in the same proposition as you know today maybe to Mars or what have you but kind of as insane a proposition you can get and fell this unwieldy enterprise and just see step by step in a real time kind of immediate way. Not with a historical vantage point but hopefully in a present tense kind of way How one goes about turning in probable fantasies into realities and again the cost that we often forget. Human space flight anyway had sort of become at least where I grew up taken for granted, it wasn't something that really was being discussed. The Moon Man was the MTV Logo, and that's why I think, when Damien and I met about this and I read Neil's story. I just was so, it was just such an inspired idea on his end to want to sort of dive deeper into that. And to revisit it and to show that it wasn't this This predestined success. An incredible thing that Damien did, which is he gave us room to not have to feel pressured or that we had to get it right. And for me, I just personally felt really grateful because I got to test out an American accent for two weeks without anyone going. I'm not sure about that vowel sound, which was amazing and we all got to kind of live with each other and get to know one another and mess up and do it wrong and try things out, which is very rare. And so, yes, so that's First Man and the funny thing about First Man is that after it had finished, I'd felt like I just wanted to just sit quietly Just I didn't want to go out into the world of people and traffic and email and all that kind of stuff. I just wanted to sit in the darkened theatre and just sit with it. And yeah, it was a really strange feeling. I can't think of any movie where I've felt like that for such a long time. Yeah, so First Man, it's absolutely stunning. That's out on the 11th or 12th of October. So that's out very soon. But if you wanna go to the pictures now, then what you can go and see is what might be from a very smart movie, First Man, to a very dumb movie, which is Venom. And I actually thought it was really fun, so in a terrible way. Yeah, but I think that it's been that year, hasn't it? I mean, I was kind of wanting a bit of stupidity, and just I'm saying, it doesn't have to be good in the classical sense for you to really enjoy it. So Venom, for those of you aren't aware, Venom is a villain from the Spiderman comic books. And so he's appearing in his own Own movie. He's this kind of an alien hybrid guy who sort of. He's like this kind of super powered alien black cloud kind of weirdo who likes biting people's heads off. And he kinda bonds with Tom Hardy. Who's this sort of hapless reporter? Does he have eyes? He does, he does have eyes. He sort of takes over Tom Hardy's body and he has like, big fang teeth and he has sort of eyes. And he's this big kind of like huge black creature. And so the sort of the thrust of the story is about Tom Hardy is a Is trying not to let this creature take over him. And it's that sort of side of it it's really, really fun. Cuz Tom Hardy is like really kind of like, the way Tom Hardy is doing a bit of a funny voice and he's really like kind of twitchy and sweaty and committed to it. And he is playing this guy who just doesn't know what's happening to him while this monster is trying to take over his body. And so there's always a kind of David Cronenberg body horror element to it, and to the action scenes and stuff, and that bit of it is really, really fun. The trouble is, that's sort of pushed aside too often for this sort of fairly generic superhero story, where there's a Villain, and there's a love interest. And that's all a bit boring. What you really kind of wanna see is Tom Hardy just trying to stop himself from eating people. [LAUGH] Which is really fun. Do you think that's something that Tom Hardy struggles with in real life? I think it probably is. [LAUGH] I think he really kind of brought a lot of himself. To this role. What's kind of funny about it is that he said he drew influence from Woody Allen and Conor McGregor. So Woody Allen's the neurotic, twitchy normal guy and then Conor McGregor is this like pumped up almost bad guy figure. And what's great is that when Tom Hardy is fighting for control of his own body, he's like. Mumbling to himself all the time in this Woody Allen-ish way. He's like, what happened to my leg? My leg was broken. And my god, I just hit that guy. I don't wanna eat someone. It's just really funny. Those bits are really fun. And also, the Venom being has a bit more personality than I expected, and when that comes out it's quite funny. There's a whole sort of sub plot about Tom Hardy trying to get his girlfriend back and Venom, this kind of alien being that likes eating people, starts giving him advice which is just hilarious. It's like the devil on his shoulder. It really is, I wanted a lot more of that. And unfortunately, Michelle Williams and [UNKNOWN] who are both great, And I'm sure they probably got paid a lot of money. I hope so. They kind of, their stories are quite dull and they kind of brought the story down. Riza Midorsa plays the same kind of Silicone Valley tech but genius bad guy that he played in Jason Borne movies. It wasn't much of a stretch for him. I guess maybe they thought no one remembers Jason Borne because it wasn't very good, the most recent one. There. No. But then it's kind of fun, it's kind of silly. It's there's a lot of stuff that doesn't work. It's all over the place but it's kind of fun. I quite liked it so there so you go. It's a big dumb super villain movie that reminds you of big dumb super villain movies from like 10 or 15 years ago. Honestly. [LAUGH] If you look back fondly on Ghost Rider and Spawn And the Hulk movies that Marvel tries to forget about, then yeah pretty love Venom. Yeah. Sounds great. Yeah he's great. So yeah last know it is actually out now. So I think it's out now, yeah. But sometimes you hear this it will been out for a couple of days. So Yeah, maybe you've seen it, maybe you haven't, I don't know. Tell us what you think of Venom, let us know. You can get in touch, you can email cnetukpodcase@cbsi.com or we're on Twitter and Instagram, Facebook, all over the place. We on Snapchat? Anyone still use Snapchat? Yeah, I think they do. Okay But, not to the same extent. Not to the same extent, okay. You can Instagram story us, or something. I don't know, that's what the kids do these days. [LAUGH] You can find us. I'm on Twitter, @ Rich Knightwell, and Katie, what's your- I'm @ Katie Collins, nice and simple. Nice and simple, great. [MUSIC] And, if you wanna leave a review for us on iTunes, or leave some comments on Youtube, then we'd be very grateful. As long as they're nice. Because we are very thin skinned and we are feeling very delicate. Yeah. So yeah who knows. I think that is it. We'll see you hopefully very soon. Bye now. Bye. [MUSIC] [LAUGH] Bye. Sorry. [LAUGH]