Ep. 1375: Where we lift the curtain on our new studio

-What's going on, ladies and gentlemen? Welcome to a very spooky 404 Show. I'm Jeff Bakalar. -I'm Justin Yu. -Welcome. I know we must look crazy but it's because we have a brand new studio, ladies and gentlemen. Check this out. -All right. -This is amazing. You know what else? I just-- I can't talk with this thing on. It's fine. -Yeah. You still look terrifying. -I'm still very scary. Happy Halloween. We hope you're really digging the new studio. We wanna thank everyone from our San Francisco team that was out here, put this together in record breaking time. -Yeah. -So, thanks to all those guys and yeah, I'm just delighted that we're finally in here. -Yeah. -This is something we've been trying to do for a very long time. -Wanna wave high to Ariel over there. Check out these shots. We have all these cameras inside the studio. They give you an angle on every single spot. -Look at that. -So, that is Mark over there too, helping us out with the jib. Thanks to you guys. -Hey, Mark. Hey. -Hey. -All right. Well, this is great. As you can see, the set is-- it's missing a few things, it's spooky but it's missing a few things. If you guys have something in mind that we should use to fill up the studio, let us know. E-mail us and maybe we'll go out and buy it and put it in here, right? -Maybe, maybe. It could happen. -Maybe. Other than that, I think business as usual. So, let's get right in to the first story of the day. Take it away Spam Justin. -You like this huh? -I don't like it but it's okay. -My outsides match my inside. Let's get into the stories of the day. -Yes. -This is the first one. So, we're in the middle of a big landmark court case right now and it's about Google Glass. -Okay. -So, it's finally come down to people committing crimes using Google Glass. -Oh, really? -And the latest one is a woman in California who's the first person ever to get a ticket, a moving violation for driving with glass. -So, it's illegal in California to drive with glass? -Well, there's some red tape here that we need to talk about. -Okay. -So, the story starts with this woman named Cecilia Abadie. -All right. -A couple of days ago, she posted on her Google Plus page-- -Right. -a photo of this ticket that she got and you could see that it was initially because she was driving 80 miles per hour in a 65-mile per hour zone. But way down in the corner here where that circle is on your screen, you could see that the officer also sighted her for "driving with a monitor visible to the driver." -Huh. -So, have you heard of this law in California at least? -Oh, I think it's pretty much illegal wherever you are. -Right. -You can't drive around watching TV. -Yeah. -It's essentially what it is. -Right. -Right. -You basically can't have any monitor in front of you that shows video. -Right. -So, I guess that could technically include GPS. -I was just gonna say obviously there's gotta be some sort of like a legalities that puts those things in a different category. -Right, right. It says, legally says if the monitor is visible to the driver and displays anything other than vehicle information or global position-- -Got you. -then you can have it, which includes Google Glass. -Okay. -So, you know, there's a lot of back and forth on her Google Plus page, about people who are sort of arguing whether or not Google Glass will impede your driving skill. -Okay. -What do you think of that? -I think it would distract me. -Uh-hmm. -Just because they're not like regular glasses. I mean, we've had them on before. -Right. -You can tell like it definitely takes away your attention. There's no way-- -It does. -There's no way around to-- I don't think it takes your attention away more than a really cool billboard does though or something like that. -Sure. Yeah or a bunch of crying kids in the backseat, that could also be a huge distraction. -That's arguably the worst. -Yeah. But also, I think you could argue that having Google Glass in front of you, it's worse than having a cellphone go off because you can't turn it off. I mean, you can. You can drive without them powered on. -Right. -But if they're on and you get a message, that will pop up in the display, right? -Yeah. -As supposed to just vibrating in your pocket like a regular phone. -Sure, yeah. -It's really invasive. -Yeah. -So, I will kinda be a little scared if someone is driving and I was a passenger in this car. -I just don't think we can handle all these things. -Right. -You know, I don't know. I haven't been in like a really brand new car in a couple of years. -Uh-hmm. -But from what I gather, there's already a lot of junk in them, -Right. -that's taking my eyes away from the road. -Right. -And I don't understand like why some things are okay and why other things are not okay. -Uh-hmm. -But I think the car does enough of the distracting. You don't need to bring your own. This woman got a ticket. -Right. -She was speeding anyway. She deserved a ticket for that but instead she got one from wearing Google Glass, -Right. -which must have been so awesome to give her that ticket. -I just don't feel bad for somebody like this. -You say that you are now served, nerd. -Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And she can afford it too. -Of course she can. -She could drop 1500 on a pair of glasses. She could definitely afford that speeding ticket. -Fifteen hundred, yeah. Okay. -So, I don't really blame her for that. In fact, I think all Google Glass ownership pay a douche tax and this is sort of something like that. -I thought you were gonna say all Google Glass owners should be put in jail. That's what I thought you're gonna say. -Soon they will be, perhaps. -Right. -So, the laws on this stuff is kinda hazy and I think once they please, need to definitely draft new legislation around this new devices, -Sure. -that could display more than video. -Sure. -I think the other thing is that car manufacturers need to kind of work with Google and those legislations. To sort of get the laws in check with how Google Glass is gonna work on the road. -Right. -We're starting to see a lot of technologies coming out that sort of integrate Google Glass and to kind of take you away from the actual monitor. -Sure. -So, the latest to that with that is Mercedes Benz. They developed a navigation system that actually uses voice activation from the in car navigation and so, this is the way it works. You know, if you look up, you know, driving direction with Google Glass, when you're walking it will show that in your glass monitor but once you step into the car, the navigation system takes over for the car. -Got you. -And it will speak those directions to over the stereo system. So, you don't actually have to look inside the monitor or the Google Glass. -Okay. -That's a good way to do it, right? -It's a smart-- it's just more elegance seen in the sort of way. -Yeah. -I like that. -I like that and I think we'll start seeing this more as more Google Glasses come out. -But will they come out? -Oh, they've already come out. Google actually debuted two new models this week and this is what they look like. So, I mean, a lot of people complained that the original models are really nerdy and this one doesn't seem any different, equally nerdy. -Yeah, but that model, he's not nerdy at all. -Why? Because he has a samurai ponytail? -Oh, he's got like really nice hair. -Yeah. -And he's, you know, he's like-- he's just enough apathy-- -Right. -that's not achieving completely. -Right, right. Exactly. -Why aren't Google Glass models so freaking sexy? That's what I wanna know. -This guy makes him look good. -He makes it look good, he really does. -The big difference in this model is you could see there's an earbud in his right ear that comes out of Google Glass. -Okay. -That replaced the bone conduction speakers that they were using. -Right. Yup. -And that apparently didn't work very well. So, now they're using earbuds. -Okay. -But soon that will come out to everyone in the pilot program. So, if you've already paid for Google Glass, you can trade this in. -Oh, you could trade it in? Okay. -Trade in your old one for the new one. Yeah. -That's pretty neat. I didn't realize you're in for life with that. -Yeah, yeah. You signed a contract. -That's nice. I like that. -Uh-hmm. -Excellent. All right. What else do we have here? -Well, the next story is about a really cool update to a story that we actually talked about last month in September. -Yeah. -Do you remember Phonebloks? -Yes. -Phonebloks was a-- like a-- not a kick starter but like a proof of concept project where we had-- you had like a board. -Uh-hmm. -Now, and you could use pieces of the board to dedicate-- -Build your own phone. -Right and build your own phone and dedicate some, you know, features, more space on the board than others. -Right. -So, I think we have a video here. So, basically you were saying, oh, I want the phone to be, you know, very-- a lot of horsepower. -Right. So, you can update the process. -Right, so you can devote more of the board to the processor. -Yeah. It's kinda genius. -It was brilliant. Seems almost like science fiction though. -Well, it's just kind of brilliant because I feel like now, you know, if you have your iPhone for two years, it starts slowing down because it cannot handle that operating system. -You mean, six months. -Right or maybe just a little shorter than that. -Yeah. -But the idea here is that maybe someday you won't have to upgrade the entire thing just because the battery life crapped out or because it's slow. You can just pop in a new processor. -Right. -Or if you're a photographer, you can, you know, maybe swap battery life or a bigger lens on your camera. -True. -Something like that. -Super smart. The video is so amazingly-- -I know. -You just feel like you're in the future when you see that kind of video. -Yeah. -Turned out it was like very far fetched, right? -It was just a video, yeah. -It's just a video. -It's a proof of concept and they sort of calling for public awareness to sort of get brands on board and the right people to see this. So that maybe one day it could become reality. -Well, guess what. -And there's a lot of criticism about this. I think we even said that this is never gonna come out. -But we were just like, look at it, it's too cool to be true like-- -Right. -And then now tell everyone what happened. -So, fast forward to just one month later, you know, we kinda thought this time, maybe years in the future. -We'd be like telling our grand kids about it. -Right. -The time when we were really young-- -Yeah. -and-- -We also said 3D movies weren't gonna be a big deal. -We were right, 3D movies are terrible. No one watches 3D movies. -People love those things. -It's like Avatar and Gravity, that's it. -Yeah. Those are pretty much the only two popular ones. -Name the third one that was good. It was Avatar, Avatar who's the one you had to see. -Right. -And then Gravity is, you know, the new one. But what's the third one that you have to see in 3D? Nothing because nobody cares. -Yeah, that's true. No one needs to see The Internship in 3D. -Maybe that would have made it funny. -Yeah. -All right. What's happening? -So, one month later, Motorola issued a press release, this week, and we were taking a look at it earlier today and the CNET actually wrote on this story, and they issued a press release for something called Project Ara. And here it is, Project Ara, they described as an open-source modular platform. That sounds pretty familiar, right? -Did they just jack Phonebloks? -So, this is where it gets kind of interesting. The concept is essentially the same, right? It will start with this sort of endoskeleton and then they're gonna invite third party developers to sort of create different pieces for the phone. -It looks really cool. -Yeah. The thing is they've been sort of hinting at this for a while and the blog Phandroid actually says that they've been working on this for the past year. -Yeah. -But they've also recently announced their partnership with the guy who put up the original video for Phonebloks. -Got you. Okay. So, we're getting a little slice-- -So, they're sort of [unk] with each other but we're not sure whether or not that Phoneblocks video is maybe a viral campaign to sort of see if people would be interested in this coming to life. -Oh, I like that. -That's sort of what the internet is sort of speculating. -Okay. Oh, that internet with their conspiracy theory. -Yeah. -But think about it, it makes sense. You do that, the video was cheap to do. -Uh-hmm. -You do it to gauge interest. Is there a buzz? Is there not a buzz? -Right. -Yeah, that's kind of cool. I really wonder if they were behind it but I don't know. -It sort of makes sense and they were laying the groundwork for it. So, Brian Bennett from CNET, the guy that reviews all the phones for our company, he wrote an article about the Moto X offering sort of customization earlier this summer. So, the Moto X is their smartphone, right? -Right. You can change the trim line. -Right. -You can change the casing colors and stuff like that. -Yeah and so that was called Moto Maker and-- -Right. -they let you just change the aesthetics of it. But that's sort of hinting at the future too, right? It's like customizing your phone and personalizing it to what you want it to be. -Sure. -And this is hopefully the next evolution of that. -That's very cool. -And if anyone were to make this reality, it beat Motorola. Right? They got bought up by Google about 3 months ago. Makes sense, Android is an open-source platform. Do you think there are still things standing in the way of this coming to life? -Yeah. I mean, I just don't think the technology is there. I just-- I'm not buying it yet. -Right. -That we see these prototypes, this is a real thing. -Yeah. -Once-- I don't believe anything until I see it. -Right. -I've been walking around this earth long enough to know that I can't just trust-- especially in tech, man. Come on. -Right, on this project. -And it's the scene on first podcast. You know, I mean, like how many times you get picking a product that sounds so good on paper? -Right. -And the second it comes at, you know, arrives at your door. -Yeah. -Galaxy Gear. Who said that? No, but seriously, like-- it turns out it's not as great as advertised. -Right. -So, until this thing is in our hands and we're playing around with it and it delivers, -Uh-huh. -all we can do now is just judge and speculate. -You know what I'm most dubious about? -What? -The fact that you're gonna need a circuit board, that baseboard, right, that we saw earlier in the video. You're gonna need a circuit board that can attach any kind of plug to it no matter if it's a graphics car, -Right. -or a processor or a hard drive. -Sure. -We still haven't seen this technology used in desktop computers. -Right. There's no streamline. -Yeah, you still need different chips and dims for your memory. -Right. -There's no universal platform for building a computer yet, much less a phone. -And you make your point. So, not only would-- so, Motorola/Google would have to revolutionize-- -Yeah. -the entire sort of interface, -Right. -you know, landscape. And then from there, go-- and maybe that's what they did. -Yeah. -Maybe that's what they did, man. -This would be cool. I'm sort of speculating that. Maybe it could go beyond technology, you know, for example if one day somebody needs to test their blood sugar level. Someone could create an accessory for your phone specifically that you could do that, that doesn't have to be get the cameras and-- -Like a diabetes adapter. -Yeah, exactly. Did you say diabetes? -I said-- yeah, I meant to say diabetes. -Okay. -Is it diabetes? -I'm basically dressed as diabetes for Halloween. -You are diabetes. -Right. That's basically me. -You're a walking-talking diabetes. -Right. Hey, mom. So, that's Phonebloks. We might see it happen one day. -That's cool, man. -We might not, but I think just the face that companies are optioning this to try. -I'm into it. -Just the fact that they're going through with it and trying to make it happen. -Yeah. -That's [unk], I think they step in the right direction. -And just so you know right now, it's not gonna be offered on Verizon. -No. -Because they don't like to have fun with anything. -Right. -Because I can't get my Nexus 5 on Verizon. -That's right. That's [unk]. We need to get a roger in here to sort of talk to us about that. -And what is-- I just wanna know-- I just wanna talk to somebody about it. -Yeah. -All right. Maybe tomorrow. We got one more story and we're gonna do a break, then we have a little show and tell. So, let's see what we got, what's up before the break here. -All right. So, I sort of wanna talk about data preservation and we talk about archive.org a lot and those are the guys that are basically trying to archive the entire internet. -Right. -Everything that's ever been put online. -Yes. -They wanna get a hold of. And you know, there's all these questions about how do we ensure the data that we put online is gonna be there for not just our kids but you know, generations, thousands, millions of years in the future. How are they gonna be able to access this information? -Through a barge in the water. -Yes and Google would be at the helm. -Captain Google at the helm. -Right. Well, hopefully there won't be just one big corporation in charge of all the stuff. -Right. -Because they're not gonna rewrite history themselves. -Of course. -Yeah. So, believe it or not, your Snapchats, your Google photos, all your Facebook photos, those are cultural artifacts that you're gonna wanna keep around to preserve. And the internet is really good at sort of burying digitals, materials. But there's at least one artist collecting in the Netherlands that's hoping to sort of preserve their own collection, a time capsule if you will, of Dutch art specifically. So-- -Okay. -This art is collective and I'm gonna butch you this name but it's called La Société Anonyme, and this is the website for it right now. They're deciding to preserve their own collection of Dutch art with something they called a score index. -A lot of big like-- I don't know a lot of artists and stuff. Dutch got a lot of good artists. -Of course, yeah. -Yeah, definitely. The Netherlands has a ton of great design coming out of there. -Yeah. -Copenhagen, all that stuff. -Yeah. I just wanna make sure. -Definitely. -You know. -Okay. -Sorry. I'm not a big art guy. -[unk] here. -I'm sorry. Sorry, Dutch guy. -Well, wait 'til you see the photos of this book and then that will show you how well-designed this stuff is. -Fair enough. -So, the book is called The Score Codecs. -Oh, that's cool. -And this book contains encoded sound recordings, -Oh, wow. -images and diagrams, all written in binary code. So, you can access an electronic version of this in PDF online if you wanna follow along as well. But here's some photos of it. Really crazy stuff. -I appreciate what's going on here. -Right. -Am I crazy in thinking the worst way to back up the internet is with a book? -On paper. -Was on paper. -Yeah, paper will be around forever, not like we can just burn that out or throw water on it. -It's not like paper like breaks down here after a while. -Right. -And becomes garbage. -Well, hopefully, that won't happen because there's eight of this book in existence. -Oh, hey, hey, eight. -You think that [unk] write forever? They would publish more than eight copies of it, right? -Or and on something not paper. -Yeah. There's gonna be way more Playboys running around than actual codec books. -Put it on Styrofoam, that stuff never breaks down. -That's true. -Right? Should just put on Styrofoam. -It's illegal. It just carved. That will be like the new Moses tablets, -Yeah. -just Styrofoam. -It's like the back of a McDonald's box. -Right. -Or something like that. There you go. -Well, everybody has these books. One copy was given to the guy that invented the World Wide Web. Three more were given away to anonymous people. -Wait, the guy who invented the World Wide Web? -Yes. Sir Tim Berners-Lee. -What? -Yeah. -Sir Tim Berners-Lee pioneered the infrastructure for this one. -Do we all agree on that? -Oh, yeah. -Are we-- we all agree that Tim-- who? -Sir Tim Berners-Lee. -Invented the World Wide Web? -Well, he laid the foundation for what would eventually become the input output for the-- -Not what happened to like the whole [unk] thing? -We got Wikipedia in here to sort of verify these claims. Yeah. -I'm just saying like, right, it seems a little strange. -I know. I know. -I thought it was Al Gore. -Well, that's who they gave it to. -Okay. -So, they gave it to this guy. -All right. -They gave three copies to people that they're not naming because they don't want those people to get murdered for their books. -For their-- yeah, I get it. -And then the last one is actually living inside the headquarters of Score as well as on the internet. -Cool. -Right. So, this is sort of a lot like that Golden Record that we love talking about so much. -Right. -Remember that Golden Record? -Yeah. -There are basically two records that were included on the voyager spaceship that launched in 1977. -All right. This is kick ass. -There were two records and they were actually golden too. I wanna see if I can pull up a photo of this or can you do that while I'm talking about this? -The Golden Record. -The Golden Record and they were made out of gold plated copper and aluminum. -Just so you know, when I pull stuff up, it doesn't matter and I can't see it. -Okay. Yeah, you can't see it. Okay, then I will Google it. It's our first day in the news studio. We're still trying to work things out. -Oh, there it is. I'm really enjoying it. -Only you. -So, here's a picture of it. This is what it looks like. -Oh, cool. -So, these are gold plated copper records actually contain music, noises and photos that were selected by NASA. -Right. -Side note, in a committee that was selected by Carl Sagan. I think that's really cool. -That is very cool. -So, Carl Sagan decided what's exactly on these records that maybe, maybe if we encounter other life forms in space, they'll be able to listen to these photographs. -It's not maybe. It's when. -Maybe Sandra Bullock will listen. -It's when. -Yeah. -I just want you to know that. -So, you wanna know what noises are on these records? -Yeah. -There are sounds sort of made by nature or things like waterfalls and birds chirping, animal sounds and things like that. -Uh-hmm. -And then these greetings of 56 languages and music like Beethoven, MoeTar, Bruno Mars. -Bruno Mars? -No, I was kidding, Bruno Mars-- -So Carl Sagan was like somehow was clairvoyant into the future. -Yeah, yeah. Let's get Bruno Mars on there. No, but Chuck Berry is on there though. -That's cool. -So, that's the most modern artist that's featured on the Golden Record. -I think that's like a friendly, you know, international like intergalactic music. -Wow. -Yeah. -The strange thing is that they don't actually include a record player with this. So, I'm not sure how the aliens are actually gonna listen to the web. -We're also assuming they'll understand one of 56 languages-- -That's true. -that we have had on our planet. -Right, right. -Don't worry yourself at these little inconsequential say. -Yeah. So, anyway, this Dutch book is sort of like that. It's preserving what we have now for the future. -And I'm a much worse medium-- -Yeah, much more analog disposable level. -Much more flammable. -Yeah, who's buried out in the ground, you know, lock box or something. -Why is it paper. Why did they do this on paper? -Promise. -When you wanna preserve something forever, you're like, we should make that out of paper. -Right. -That's why they build cars and everything out of paper. -Yeah, durability. -Right. All those Dutch people-- -Oh, it's raining. The book is done. -That's it. -End of the story. -What happened? You flip the page too quickly, oh, 17 years of the internet have just been destroyed. -All right. Well, that's gonna do it for this story. I think we're gonna take a break right now. -Yes, we will take a break but when we come back, there is much more 404 including a very cool show and tell demo. You're not gonna wanna miss this. Stay tuned, a lot more 404 coming your way. We'll see you in a sec. Hey. Welcome back to The 404 Show. We're doing a little show and tell today. A couple of months ago, we got a product from a company called Ploom and they make something called the Pax, which is a portable vaporizer. -Uh-hmm. -Now, e-cigarettes are insanely popular. -Right. -They are everywhere. I see people-- there's people in our office who just, all they do all day is, they're sucking on this thing. -Right. -It's crazy. Ploom is a San Franciscan company that makes a device that is basically the apple of portable vaporizers. What they have here is something called the Pax and it is the most elegant device I've seen that's just designed for you to smoke tobacco. -Right. -So, it's a really, really-- like you hold onto this thing and you feel like you're-- it's like plutonium. -What? -It's like one of the props from Back to the Future or something like that. It's a pretty high-end device. -Okay. -I was just gonna say like, you see all these like e-cigarettes, they don't really work on like very complicated technologies. They're just sort of-- -Right. -like-- they have a little cartridge and that's-- and you get the nicotine and that's how it works. But what this does is and what separate this is, if you smoke cigarettes and you don't wanna smoke like a real cigarette, -Right. -which is probably-- -Because it's tar. -It's tar and smoke and all this awful crap in there. This will actually vaporize tobacco for you wherever you go. -Yes, so how does this work? Does it actually just heat it up right before it catches on fire or how does that produce-- -So, I read up a little bit and we actually had one of our buddies in the office to use this for a couple of weeks and he loves it. I'm actually gonna give it to him when we're done here. -Uh-hmm. -So, the way this works is, it brings tobacco, it raises the temperature up to the point right before combustion. -Right. -And then it turns that into vapor and then you just, you know, just suck away on the thing. -Right. -So, here's how it works. Check this out. This is really amazing. So, it's got this magnetic little clip in the bottom here. You put your tobacco and they-- and Ploom sells this little like tobacco canisters. -But you can use anything though. -You can use-- -You can use any kind of loose leaf tobacco in there? -Yeah, if you really probably use-- -Any kind of flower you want. -Anything. You could use anything. -Okay. -Anyway, so what you do is, you pack it in this little oven here, right? You pop on this magnetic little clip which is great because it's magnetic, you can just even go down like that and it stays. -Right. -Then, you-- I got some spiderwebs on it. Then you click it, right? And it starts cooking. Can you see that little glowing light? Now, here's where it becomes apple, because it's like this glowing like sleeping light, -Uh-hmm. -like when you close a MacBook. -Yeah, it's purple right now. -Right? So, this will go and go and go and when it turns green, then it's ready. So, it brings the tobacco in here up to the point right before combustion. -Uh-hmm. -Now, check this out. You can rip off the mouth piece up top here. -Uh-hmm. -All right. Now, when you look in there, it's got a temperature gauge setting. I swear, this is insane, right? How amazing is this? So, you click this button and that changes the color, right? So, okay. Red is super hot. -Red. -Yellow is not so hot and then orange is like in the middle. And you know, if you're a big smoker, you probably have like a preference as to how you want your tobacco vaporizer. -Right. Like lights [unk] reds in real cigarettes. -Right, exactly. So, that's it and then when you're all done, you just click it. You just go like this, you're like, oh I'm done smoking my vaporizer. You click it and it's off. Okay? It gets better, -Uh-hmm. -when you're using it, it charges. Let us see how it charges in a second. When you're using it, here I'll show you if you come in real close, you shake it and it will tell you how much battery is left. So, see it's like yellow right now. That means it's like halfway done. You shake it again, okay, it's yellow. Now, when you need to charge it, here's my favorite part. You close it, upside down. Look at that, it's got a little docking station. -Uh-hmm. -Can you get in on that? And look, It's not charging. Pretty cool. -I like that. -Not bad huh. -Yeah. So, we've actually talked to that coworker who'd been using it for a week and-- -Yeah. -you know, I think that he vocalized some complaints about it and I think the first thing that I'm noticing here-- -Well, that's good because this is not perfect. -Right. It's not perfect. -Sure. -First of all, it's $250. -Right. Oh, yes [unk] the prize. -So, that's a big note here. -Yeah. -Two hundred and fifty dollars is a lot of cartons of cigarettes. -Is it though? -You can buy a lot of cigarettes. -How much are cigarettes now? -Fourteen dollars in New York. -Okay. That's a lot of money. -Bad place to pick up smoking. -Yeah. -So-- -It's an expensive place to make it work. -Right. So, to start off, $250 is a lot of money. This basically is a contract for you to be a lifelong smoker. You're not gonna invest in something like this and then quit five years down the road. -Well, ideally, you just don't wanna smoke anything ever. -Right. -Right. -And get into that more later. -Right. -But you know, in terms of the specifics of this thing, the first thing that I'm noticing is that it uses a proprietary charger. -It does. -I really wish that it had a mini USB charge, -Yeah. -because they sell these I think for $30 for an extra charger and that's kind of a lot of money. I'm sorry, $35. -Yeah. -So, if you want one for the office or as well as home, you're gonna have to shell out even more money to get an extra charger. -He also was talking about the maintenance. -Oh, right, yes. So, the maintenance thing is also a little troublesome too because you know, like anything that has a lot of moving parts, you're gonna need to clean it. -Yeah. -And you know, the tar build up gets pretty inside of there and a lot of people have actually complained about the mouthpiece sticky. -Okay. -So far in fact that Ploom now includes mouth lubrication. -Yeah, there's a mouthpiece-- -A mouth lubrication. -So, there's all these different sort of like, you know, little cleaning accessories that come with it. -Right. -It comes with a lot of like pipe cleaners because you really gotta get in there and clean it out. -Right. -You know, I watched a lot of the videos on how to clean this thing and you really need to be diligent with the cleaning and you have to-- they recommend doing it like every 12 times you use the vaporizer. -Yeah, that's true. -That's a lot of cleaning. Like I don't know how often someone who-- yeah, like whatever it is. So, you got the price, you got the maintenance that's required. -Uh-hmm. -But at the end of the day, it's a very impressive piece of technology. -I mean, I think we should also add that for people that use medicinal marijuana for medical purposes, they could definitely use this-- -For sure. -for more discreet way than just lighting a cigarette, you know. -Right, yeah. -Or in using a pipe. This is a much elegant way to do it. -For sure. -And I think the other thing that's great about this, and I guess this goes for a lot of portable vaporizers, is the fact that it's a great way to regulate the amount of smoke that you inhale. -Okay. It's interesting. -And so, to me, I would say it's a different, you know, smoking a cigarette versus the vaporizer is different between using a sniper rifle and a shotgun. You know what I mean? -When did you come up with that analogy? -As supposed to taking a huge breath out of them, you can really regulate it so that you're getting-- -Sure. -an intake the same every time. -Absolutely and-- -And that's really important. -And like medicinally, you know, that medicinal marijuana, how that's delivered to the patient, -Right -There is a lot of vaporizing technology that's used in doing that. I wished we've talked about it on the show before. But for something that's so portable and it could be like a game changer in terms of, you know, -Yeah. -helping people who are sick. -You know what's funny is, I was reading a lot of forums about this and I got a pro tip from somebody on Reddit-- -Pro tip. -that says if you really wanted to be discreet about it, you can wrap a pair of headphones around the Pax and make it look like an iPod Nano, which is sort of [unk]-- -Yeah. Which is true. -because it blends in all of these any colors. -Yeah. -You can get it in purple and green and blue. -Yeah, for sure. -So, you could definitely hide it. -It also looks like-- it looks like a baton in a relay race. -Right. -Yeah. -Why you would be sucking on your iPod though? And you're probably gonna do that without-- -Some people are attached to it. -I think that's the weird thing about electronic cigarettes and portable vaporizers in general. It's just having to explain what you're doing to people that don't know what vaporizers are. -Yeah. -And this happens all the time. You know like I was in Nordstrom's the other day or I was in an elevator too and the same thing happened. Some guy brought up one of those blue e-cigarettes. -Yeah. -And started smoking in an enclosed space, with kids around, with elderly people. -Well, there's no smoke. -There's visible vapor though. -But it's not smoke. -It's not smoke, -Right. -which is true but having to explain that every time you wanna smoke in a public can be a hassle. -But I'm-- -That's gonna be the worst part about it. -And especially here in New York, everyone is rocking the, you know, the e-cigarettes wherever. -Right. -Like that is-- I feel like that is just so insanely hot right now. -Sure. -And it's like in here in New York like once a trend starts it spreads like wildfire. -Uh-hmm. -But we thought this was a very interesting product. So, thank you to the people over at Ploom for hooking us up. You've made one of our co-workers very happy and hopefully, a little healthier, -Yeah. -because he's not smoking cigarettes as much anymore. -See? I think there is some freakonomics here too, -There is. It's clearly-- -because I feel like the fact that's it's so easy to do everywhere, -Right. -means that you're gonna probably smoke way more tobacco. -You're right. Totally right. But at the end of the day, and even if the jury is still out on like, is vaporizing tobacco safe? -Is sucking on aluminum safe? -Is-- that's-- having sucking on aluminum for a while and I'm fine. But no, is all of this safe? Yadi yada. It can't be worse than breathing in fire. -Right, right. It's all bad for you. That's the point. -It's all-- right. -Yeah. -So, in moderation but check it out, a little pricey but we kinda dig it. -Right. -So, that's our little show and tell for today. -And you're also not gonna get that gross cigarette smell on your fingers if you smoke too. -Right. -So, that's sort of a problem. -That's what it's all about, man. -But you know, big thanks to the Ploom people, obviously, but-- -For sure. -we do have to point out the obvious negative effects of smoking. We're not condoning smoking, -Of course, of course. -especially to those that are underaged. -Of course. -Anytime you inhale nicotine it's gonna be bad for you and there are heinous side effects. -Yes. -And we could about this all day long but instead of doing that, I wanna show you these masks that a British online clinic called Health Express created. Just to illustrate the effects of long term tobacco use, and we're gonna end on this because it sort of has to do with Halloween because they're masks. So, check these out. This is what they look like. -Oh, my God. -These masks that they've made, they show things that premature skin aging, the risk of stroke and what that looks like after you've had a stroke, throat cancer, sagging skin, -Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. -cataracts and all that. -Don't play that video. -Yeah, we're not gonna play that video. -Okay. -Although we will add a link to it in the show note today. So, go to CNET.com/the404 and follow along. But there's all kinds ranging from young to old. This is potentially what you guys are gonna look like if you smoke tobacco, and that's true. -They just kinda look lifeless. -Yeah. You remember that site Faces of Myth? -Oh. -It's sort of looks like that and could you imagine what these masks will look like for smokers? -Yeah, that's bad news. Yeah, that's messed up. -Pretty bad. -Well, this is, you know, it's good for Halloween, though. -Definitely. -Absolutely. -Yeah. -All right. Excellent. I think that's it. -Yeah. -I think that does it for us. -We made our first show on the new studio. -All right. Well, we hope you guys enjoyed the show. Thanks for tuning in. Give us a call and let us know what you think. Obviously this is a work in progress. We wanted to be fun for everyone. 866-404-CNET is our phone number. You can follow us on Twitter. You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, all that other junk, and we're still gonna be doing the audio version 2, so if you're enjoying that, thanks for sticking with us as well. We'll be back here tomorrow. Make sure you tune in. Until then, we'll see you very soon. I'm Jeff Bakalar. -I'm Justin Yu. -Thanks to Ariel, to Mark for rocking all of the equipment in here. -Yeah. -We'll be back tomorrow. Have a fantastic and safe Halloween. See you guys then later.