CNET's tech-deals guru reveals his secrets (The Daily Charge, 9/3/2019)

Today on The Daily Charge, first Instagram, now Facebook may start hiding likes. Wi-Fi 7 already on the development table. And dovetailing off the best Labor Day tech deals, the Cheapskate Rick Broida is here to break down what's still hot. [MUSIC] Good morning and welcome Welcome to CNET's Daily Charge. It's Tuesday, September 3. I'm Joan E Solsman. I'm Alfred Ng. Let's get to the headlines. [MUSIC] Here in the US, we're coming back from a Labor Day holiday weekend, which like most holidays here, means shopping. But there are still deals out there for you to grab. Rick Broida has been spearheading CNET's coverage of tech deals for years. And he's joining us now remotely. Rick, thanks for coming on the show. Hey, thanks for having me, guys. So what are some of the best deals still out there for people right now? Right. So as you mentioned, the Labor Day holiday was a great excuse for everybody to have deals because that's American. That's what we do. And although a lot of the deals are wrapping up because it's the day after Labor Day, there are a few that are still holding on. For example, Each piece having a really nice sale at one of their more entry level laptops, it's like a 15 inch but it actually has a decent processor and it has a 256 gigabyte, solid state drive and it starts at just like 519 bucks which is a really good price for that. I recommend anybody who's getting that going to the costume config tool and bump up the screen resolution to a full HD, that's an extra 50 bucks. [BLANK_AUDIO] The one I haven't right here in front of me, so don't forget. The little novo smart clock is down to 60 bucks and this is a really nice item for a college student or anybody else who wants to be able to wake up with videos or See a live weather report stuff like that. The air pods deal with the wireless charging case that was like one of the all time best deals on that is now expired. But Black Friday is coming so deals like that we'll be back. Right, well something I've always wanted to ask you and so I'm glad I get to do this live in front of an audience. It's how do you keep on top of Identifying these deals all year round. I can't even imagine- [LAUGH] What goes into finding these deals? Joan, you cannot ask a magician to reveal his secrets. Right. [LAUGH] I don't care if we're live or not. No, seriously though, I have a number of different ways that I track these deals. A lot of times vendors will reach out to me and say, hey, we wanna do an exclusive thing for Cheapskate. Readers. I scope out different deal sites like anybody and then of course I have my spies here and there who bring me the good stuff. The one thing I'll mention though is that for anybody who wants to kind of track deals on their own if they're hoping to score a deal on something and they wanna find out when it goes on sale There's a couple tools that they can use that help them do this. One is called camel, camel camel, and the other is called honey. And both of these let you set up what are called basically price alerts. So you specify what price, what threshold you're hoping to get. And it will send you an email alert as soon as that particular product gets to that price. So that's a Great way to keep tabs on individual products that you're hoping to score a deal on. That's great. So we're gonna talk to Rick some more and left. If you guys have any questions for him, stick around. He'll be there to answer your questions. But next up Facebook, maybe the walls Most powerful force addicting us to gabbling up those likes on our posts making them go higher and higher. But, it's considering hiding like accounts. The company already tested a similar move on Instagram in August, so this is all part of Digital health right? This idea that it's not healthy for us to be constantly trolling and feeding these, this need for likes, but Facebook is the one that kind of pioneered it across the globe. Yeah, they are often cited when we talk about dark patterns, which are ways that pages are designed to make you keep coming back to, there's a reason why the notification is an annoying red, on Facebook's page, and not a color that doesn't bother you when it's just lingering on your page so much. Right. You know there are studies on people getting some kind of like a dopamine rush whenever they do get like a like or retweet or share on their post or something like that. And a lot of people have noted that this is a step in the right direction to kind of hide that. So you're not like constantly reminded to like, click on the app and keep looking back at it. Right. Yeah. And also, not only just engagement also It feeds into like self worth and self appreciation when you see somebody else's posts get. Yeah. High or even just friend counts, which they're not talking about here. It's really just talking about a test for like counts. Those sort of numbers have led to people self assessing their own self. Yeah, I remember I would delete photos if I knew if I didn't get like more than 10. Right. Likes on Instagram for a while. So l kinda shifted myself outta that and l made like another Instagram page what has no followers and l don't follow anybody on it. Great. I just post stuff on it. It gets no likes or anything like that but it's very liberating like to break myself outta that chain. Yeah. Yeah. The next step would be just not uploading photos at all. [LAUGH]- Which. Come on. With this face he can't do that. [LAUGH] Exactly. And finally, Wi-Fi 6 is just now arriving from phones, laptops and network equipment. But engineers already moving on to Wi-Fi 7. It's the next standard that promises viewers better streaming video, longer range and fewer problems with traffic congestion. Basically the idea is that it would deliver a wired like connection over wireless. The guy that Stephen Shanklin, he interviewed, Qualcomm's vice president technology he said like blanket your house and every nook and cranny with us like Hyper Speed Internet connectivity. What do you think about this? Do you know why Wi Fi six is afraid of Wi Fi seven? Why? Because it's faster is probably gonna be the new standard and like, wipe out Wi Fi six months. [LAUGH] It's like more adopted. But, yeah, I mean, it's a very strong promise to say that will be Exactly as fast as a wired connection. But just from somebody that plays online games a lot, usually when there's lag people will say you should be using a wired connection. What are you doing? So hopefully that upends that. And it does bring a lot of new possibilities for streaming potential. Netflix constantly talks about how they want to have like more 4k content. And 8k is starting to become a thing now. And I keep looking at it, like who has the bandwidth to download all that? But yeah, with Wi Fi 7, I mean, that definitely does bring that possibility. Right, Wi Fi 7 though, we will be waiting a while, it's not supposed to be arriving until 2024. So we've got some time to prepare Yeah assuming that the internet would still be there by that time. Assuming we all still be there. Yes. [LAUGH] For the Daily Charge I'm Joan E. Solsman. I'm Alfred Ng. Thanks for joining us. [MUSIC]