Ep. 1395: Where OK, Glass, where is the pulmonary artery?

-Hey, it's Wednesday, December 4th, 2013. Thanks for checking out The 404 Show on CNET.com. I'm Justin Yu. -And I'm Bridget Carey. -I'm Ariel Nunez. -All right. You mean you're raw Bridget Carey? -Yeah. -Oh yeah, I'm raw today. You don't know what's gonna happen. -I don't know what that means. -I had weight too much coffee-- -Yeah. -and I had a couple of donuts and so I'm hitting that like fall from the high of sugar and coffee. -Okay. -You just-- I'm so unprotected basically. -We're passed the peak of caffeine, you know. -You just don't know. -Man, I'm little scared about that. Is that because you knew you were coming on our show and you needed to have a high energy level? -I had it early morning today and so I'm already at that crash zone. We're gonna see. -All right. Well, just to have seen that update to do so save your energy, which by the way you guys should all check out. Thanks again to Bridget Carey for filling in for Jeff on today's show. Check out CNET Update every single day. It's a bite size version of this show where you cover a lot of the daily news-- -Yes, all the top tech stories less than three minutes. Wham! Bam! And you're done. -Yes. And thanks for being back in the studio. Ariel, on the boards thanks again as well for helping out today. -Uh huh. -Of course, of course. Yeah. -Bridget and I ask you to take off everything on your wrist because on based on yesterday's episode, you can't be trusted. -I have killer bracelets. Basically, they fly off and destroy that big set in the corner. -Yeah. -And I get very animated with my hands. -If you weren't caffeinated yesterday, then today I'm super scared. That's gonna happen. You need a pad everything in the wall. -So, we're back. You wanna talk about the stories of the day. We're just jumped right into it. -Yes, we jump into it. -Let's do it. When was the last time you guys were at Applebees 'cause it steps about the change? -Oh man, I came so close to go on the Applebee's, but I didn't go over the weekend. -Really? -Yeah. -In New York, Applebee's is different than in most places because it's always has a stigma of like, "Oh, you didn't go to the Tourist Trap Applebee's station. -Right. Yeah. Yeah. -You know, we're-- when I grow up, it was like, "Yeah, we wanna go Chili's Applebee's, pick one on the Fridays, you know." -Right. -Yeah, totally. -But here it's like, "Not the Time Square Applebee's." -Right. There are a lot of foods in our set here-- -Yeah. -that don't want to see you in the Applebee's. -No. -Did you go to the one in Target or were you-- -No, no, it was at the-- when I went to the Outlets, I'm also with the Applebee's. But the only reason why I almost went is 'cause Kevin Hart has this little bit where he talks about Applebee's and was hilarious. -Right. -So, I wanted to go. But that's the only reason; I don't go there for the food. -'Cause of fried hoppers. -Yeah. -You know, like a specific dish he was talking about or something? -No, no, no. He was talking about like his bodyguards protecting him in Applebee's. -Yeah. You got to watch it. It's funny. -Okay. -The last time I went to an Applebee's was for the new Star Trek movie premiere. I always-- I had to eat before the movie, and that was nearby and then I have a thing where every time I go to really big movie like Star Trek, I do something whether I dress up or something to represent. Now this wasn't on the premiere night. It was the next day, so I didn't go all out,-- -Okay. -but I wanted to order something, so I asked the waiter like, you know, what kind of drinks they had and-- -Uh huh. -I tried to get something that was Romulan Ale. I said, what kind of blue drinks you have? So, I think it's really interesting answers from these folks at Applebee's or TGI Fridays-- -Okay. -if you ask for like crazy drinks; so, it's something I always do and, yeah, so I had my Romulan Ale at Applebee's. -Those guys have to do anything you say too. -Pretty much. -You can make up word and they'll have to do it. The customer service there is crazy. -Yeah, exactly. -So that's kind of a weird story. -Yes. Yes. I have a bunch of those. -Well, if you haven't been to an Applebee's in a long time, you should go soon because everything is about to change. You're about to start seeing a lot of technology being used in those restaurants. So yesterday, as the restaurant chain announced plans to install tablets at every table of their restaurants in over 1800 Applebee's locations. So, over 100,000 tablets will be distributed to these locations and they're gonna be at every table, so what you can do on this is order food whenever you want. You can play video games that will sort to be on a smartphone-type pricing plan. It will be about $1 to play while you're at the table. -Greasy. Tablet is greasy. -Yeah. Hygienic. -Yeah. -It's like eating on a subway in New York. And then you can also pay the check whenever you want as well. So, you can sort of do all those things. -Uh huh. -But Applebee's is really quick to say that they're not getting rid of their wait staff. You can order appetizers and desserts through the tablet, but if you wanna order food, there'll still be the old style menu and the waiter taking your order to do that. -Well, yeah, it's really just, you know, gimmick and let's go to have fun with it and let's see where it goes. -Yeah. -Basically, I guess they got to the point where they figured it doesn't hurt to at this point, a couple of years into the iPad's existence. -Right. -They feel comfortable going, "All right, let's see where it takes us." -Yeah. -It's not a lose situation for them. -So, you're not hating on this at all. You think it's a good idea? -I think it's not-- it's not gonna take away jobs. -Yeah. -Waiters still need to rush out and come out, but it's more just like, you know, while the kids play with their mom and dad are still gonna use the-- the menu, you know. -Yeah. -It's just something they do at the table to make you forget about the long wait time. -Right. Right. It's like, you know, for the kids, you could say, you know, "Give him some crayons or something to color with." But now, they're just doing it with their finger. -Yeah. -What do you think, Ariel, are you on to this idea? -I don't know, man. I feel like it's-- it's a beta-- -What do you mean? -the beta test to replace waiters. -Oh yeah. -I really think that they are gonna replace waiters like-- -I've seen a lot of stories like that where you can order, but they still-- someone still has to come by-- -Yeah. -Yeah. -and have a question to-- or to have a conversation to answer questions. -Right. -Uh huh. -I mean, it could maybe help some-- deal with more customers. -Yeah. -But-- -Well, I think it will get-- I like the idea 'cause it will get rid of too big problems in restaurants. I mean, you don't encounter them very often, but there's still something to talk about like, you know, they'll get rid of wrong orders. -Uh huh. -Yeah. -Waiters always get your order wrong or if you are sort of a picky eater and you don't want onions or something like that, or a special preparation, then, you know, writing that on an iPad or a tablet would be a lot easy. -If they have the option for there-- -Right. -for that. I hope they would let you customize what you have, you know-- -And then paying for the bill will be the second sort of use this for those who come early and handy. You know, you could pay the bill whenever you want. If you're on a rush, you don't have to flag somebody down kind of rudely. -You know, I think-- I think they should take it another step further and just have drones deliver your food to your table. -Yeah. -Yeah, that's the next. -Amazon style. -Right. To your table, to your house. You don't even need to go out or leave your house anymore. -Yeah. Yeah. -Applebee's. -Yeah. -These more poppers. -Yeah. -Yeah, a lot of people-- the comments in this article were interesting, and a lot of people were saying that, "Oh, this will be the end of the era of people talking to each other at the dinner table or, you know, dinner time and sort of for the family and people should be talking to each other. It's really not a technology in the tablets that are causing a problem. -It's only one tablet per table, too. -Yeah. Right. I think it's more of the family that has to sort of keep each other in check. I don't know. -There is a study I heard. I don't know how-- how widely this was done this study. -Yeah. -But this is-- we actually talked more, but we're still very social even though we have texting. -Right. -We're still hanging out with our friends because it's more about, "Hey, can you meet up really quickly, you know." -Right. -Whereas, people assume because you have smartphones we're not as social, but we still are. -Yeah. -I'm not-- My friends also keep me in check a lot too, like if I pick up my phone while someone is talking-- -Yes. -And I think I can get away with it all suddenly. A lot of them would be like, "Hey, talk to me, you know." Just call me out like that, and I think it's good. -No, I have a problem with that too because I want to post online that, "Hey, I'm here and you're something funny." But I take forever to crop it 'cause it must be the perfect status. -Yeah. -And this is spelled correctly, and I have a lot of pressure, maybe I'll come up with something even funnier. Hold on, hold on, I got to take the picture again and they're like, "You know, most of us just click, send, and go," like "what's taking it so long?" So I got to work on that. -Yeah. -You know what I think is sad is when you're at a restaurant and you see a couple or, you know, two friends, and they're just not talking to each other at all. -Yeah. -Have you guys seen this before? It's like-- -Yeah, for sure. -I think a lot of people call it the dining dead, which is like a very cheesy way to talk about it, but it is really sad, nonetheless. Like have you seen this before? -It happens. Sometimes, you catch yourself and you're like, "Oh wait, why are we not talking?" -Yeah. It's like-- I think an iPad or some kind of tablet where you can play game just to bring up any kind of conversation, you know-- -Yeah. -like I think after a while people just lose things to talk about. -I do-- Yeah. I always find it weird when he's been going on like that for more than 10 minutes. -Yeah. -Because it's understandable if you like have to check on something at work and you say, "Excuse me, I have to check this." -Right. -But that's totally okay etiquette in my book. -Right. -As long as you just say, "I have to check this for this reason" instead of just blindly going to the phone and going-- and I'm gone. -Yeah. Yeah. -What's worse when there's no technology involved, like that's what I'm saying is when you-- when you just see two people that are just sitting there and like staring at each other for about 30 minutes. -Yeah. Or they're like staring off and like looking around, but they're not actually talking to the person they went out to eat with. -That's called the awkward date. -Yeah. Then, why aren't you-- why are you even out? You know, you might as well just eat in front of the TV at home. -Now, if you don't need to talk while you're eating, that means you just love each other so much. You don't have to have a conversation. You could just look into each other's eyes and just enjoy each other's company. -Uh huh. The comfort of silence. -And helping your poppers. -Exactly. -You know, it'd be really smart if they allowed you to rent movies or TV shows on the tablets in the Applebee's, so that way you can watch a program while you're eating. -I guess it's another take on the drive and theater, you know, when they brought food to your car. -Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, back to the story, there's a couple of the specifics I wanted to talk about. So, the tablets will be 7 inches. They won't be Apple branded. -Oh minis. -Minis, yeah. -Okay. -Typically mini tablets. They're not gonna be branded with Samsung or Apple at all. These are gonna be special tablets made specifically for the restaurant. -So, it's probably-- -And that's to cut down on theft because obviously that will be a bigger issue. -Yes, probably just somebody has locked down, right? -Yeah. -Only has that app. -But you've brought a good point before is hygiene is a really big concern when it comes to this stuff, right? Like if you're coming in from the street, [unk] even touching. -You need some moist towelettes to clean that off. -Yeah. -Yeah. -Especially in New York, you're grabbing on to subway poles and chains. -Oh, I got the lean whenever I can, you know. -Yeah. Wait, what? -The subway lean when-- we have an opportunity not to hold on to a pole. You take it and you do like a leaning game-- -Yeah. -or a surfing game, you know. Just lightly grab on to the backpack of the guy next to you. -Subway etiquette is something that's like an entirely different conversation. -Yeah. I don't-- -It seems like you've master the art. -I didn't mean to dive into that, but I have-- we'll save that for another day. -Yeah. -I have plenty to say too. I was stupid. -Okay. Well, maybe we should all make a trip to the Applebee's. I think there's one in Time Square. -Yes. -God, that is depressing. -There's also another one. I forgot exactly where, but I've seen it. -Yeah. -I've seen a couple. -Well, it's bad in Guy Fieri's restaurant, right? -I have not gone even though I wanted to make fun of it so bad. I just can't get myself to give that man money. -Yeah. -I feel like going to a place like that is a lot like going to a strip club, right? Like talking about the experience beforehand. It's probably a lot more fun than actually being there. -It's like I immediately regret this decision. -Yeah. Yeah. -[unk] -It's really gross-- So that's Applebee's. Let's move on to this next story that I really wanted to talk about. Are you familiar-- I know you're a huge hip-hop fan, but are you familiar with Rap Genius? -Hip-hop hurray. Hip-hop-- -Hip-hop hurray, yes. You love it, and so you must be familiar with Rap Genius? -No, I'm not. -Okay. Well, Rap Genius is kinda cool. Ariel, I'm sure you use this site. -Yup. -Rap Genius sort of breaks down hip-hop lyrics. They define different, you know, like slang terms-- -Oh I could use this. I could be-- -and they also explain the context of it. -It can help me be cool with the kids basically. -Yeah, yeah. -Okay. -Yeah, exactly. So, it sort of, you know, breaks down all the different meanings and definitions. -Okay. -It's pretty useful. I'm using it a few times to look up lyrics. -Yeah. -And then they also have clips of the songs. -Yeah. -That if you wanna take a preview of it. Well, this week, Rap Genius came out with Rap Stats, which is really cool. Here it is. Rap Stats is basically this experiment put up by Rap Genius, where they basically inputted of their entire database of hip-hop lyrics into this massive Excel spreadsheet-type database. The database sort of lets you search and track trends in words that have been used in hip-hop throughout decades of its-- of its existence. -Uh huh. -And so it goes back to 1988. You can track lyrics back then and sort of look at, you know, a graph of how common these words are being used or uncommon and how that's changed. -This is really cool especially for white nerds like me. -Yeah. -So, this is-- this is helpful. I feel like-- feel like finally, a good tool. -Yeah. Well, you know, obviously, hip-hop uses a lot of slang and that changes over time based on what's cool and what's out. -Uh huh. -One thing that the tech world has sort of taken the news Rap Stats for, and I think this is really cool is the existence of technology and hip-hop lyrics, and that's something that's been around for a really long time, right? -Yeah. -I mean, Ariel you're saying before the show that you remember when hip-hop lyrics used really old words, right? -Oh yes. I mean, I just remember when the two-way pager was like what everyone was rapping about. -Yeah, the Sidekicks. -The little Motorola Timeport. Yeah, the Sidekicks. I remember the i90s. Everyone with Motorola i90s, do you remember those? -Oh, that's right. With a little TV? -You have the chirpers. Yeah, everyone was talking about those. -Right. -That's pretty much where I used to find all my new technology was through rap lyrics before. -Pagers, right? They were like a really big thing, too. -Yeah, pagers were huge, all the newest cars, you know. -Yeah. So check this out. This is-- I just did like a little search for a Sidekick right here, and so you could tell that Sidekick obviously peaked at the same time it did in the general popularity of that gadget in, you know, sort of the late 2000s about-- -Uh huh. -I'm kind of surprised that it was really popular even in 2009. That was not long ago. -Yeah, it's weird. -And people are still doing that. -Yeah, it's old by then. -Yeah. So, this is cool. All things D actually kicked off the conversation with a list of words to compare and they compared Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace as well as Snapchat, so a few of-- a few of the different, you know, sort of modern era technologies that we've used. -Uh huh. -So, unsurprisingly, you know, Friendster kind of peaked a long time ago, you know. -Yeah. -There has not been a lot of going on in Friendster. And then MySpace also peaked around 2007, which sort of makes sense, right? -I feel that's about right. -Yeah. -And then that gave way to Facebook, of course, and Instagram. So, Twitter is in the lead at the moment right now. -Yeah. -So every mention of Twitter right now is really like that's-- -Very popular. -that's what they're tracking and that's what's high. Okay. -Right. Yes. You could see that it's on that yellow line right here. -Uh huh. -It's continuing to grow. So, Twitter is really popular. Also Snapchat is starting to get a little bit more popular, and Tumblr, which is really sort of interesting to me. I had no idea that hip-hop artists are really into the Tumblr. -Yeah. I think a lot of young-- younger kids are in-- really into Tumblr. I don't even have-- I don't even use my Tumblr. -Yeah. -But I don't know. For some reasons, everyone is into it. -Tumblr makes sense. I feel like a lot of people use Tumblr for inspiration. -Uh huh. -You know, like inspirational photos or fashion and things like that. -Yeah. -You can also post music on Tumblr too, so I'm sure a lot of kids use that. -Uh huh. -You were saying that a lot of the artists that you worked with on the production side also use Rap Genius just-- -Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I was-- I just kind of really started using Rap Genius recently because I saw this-- there's this one artist specifically out of Brooklyn. A young guy. His name is Hefna Gwap. -Uh-huh. -But I've been working with him a lot and I saw all his lyrics are on there. He worked out a deal with Rap Genius. -Right. -And all his lyrics are on there and you can actually go in there as an artist or if you're part of the team-- -Uh-huh. -and you can like explain what you mean by your versus. -Right. -You know what I mean? So,-- -Right. -And then-- And then you can also include a video so it'd be like, oh, what I meant by this line was blah, blah, blah, blah. -Right. -You know? -Right. -So, it's pretty cool. -It's kinda cool. -Yeah. I kinda like it. It's like a Wikipedia basically for any-- -For sure. -pop song you can think of. I like the crowd sourcing element of it. -Uh-huh. -So, this is sort of what you were talking about, right. Anyone can go in and kind of add a note to a lyric-- -Exactly. -And then post either a photo or a video that sort of references what they're talking about here. -Yup. -And then people can sort of upload and download those based on their accuracy. -Yeah. -I really like that. That's cool. -Well see, it used to be that it would-- however you heard the lyric or misheard the lyric-- -Yeah. -Was how maybe you were feeling and what that song means to you. And when you find out the real lyrics, it means something different to you suddenly. -Yeah. -Yeah. -So, you know, it really changes how we listen to music compared to before. -Yeah. -Uh-huh. -Like I've misheard so many lyrics in songs and I'm like-- -Right. -Oh wait, it's about that? Oh, I guess it changes the mood for me now, you know. -Yeah. -Yeah. Definitely. And it definitely-- especially for hip-hop where a lot of lyrics are just-- you can't tell what they're saying, you know. -Uh-huh. -Or I feel like hip-hop also is fluid in the, you know, slang terms that they use. -Oh yeah. -Like ratchet for example,-- -Uh-huh. -is the first word that comes to mind. -Uh-huh. -That changed so quickly from a good thing into a bad thing and then back into a good thing. -Yeah. Yeah. -Right? Can you explain that? -I saw that used the other day. -And for someone who doesn't-- -I don't know. -know what the word ratchet means. -I mean, honestly, I use this Rap Genius a lot to try to keep up with what a lot of these slang terms mean-- -Yeah. -because I don't even get it sometimes,-- -Yeah. -you know. Like it used to be like an insult to call someone ratchet. Like, oh,-- -Yeah. -that girl's a ratchet. -I mean it still can be. -Yeah, it's still bad-- -Yeah. -just depending on how you use the word in its context. -Yeah, but I think-- -But then it can also be good too like-- -Exactly. -let's ratchet, you know. -Yeah. It's like, you know, a bad meaning and good meaning, you know. -Yeah, exactly. -It's weird. -It's the bomb. -Whatever. -This is one thing that I thought was really cool. So, you know, after Rap Stats came out, a lot of people sort of started inputting their own keywords to compare. And someone did the words you versus I and so I think this is really cool. It kind of shows and check this graph out. It looks like the words you and I are actually inversely related. In other words, hip-hop is sort of selfishly getting-- Well, it's been getting more selfish over the years. And it's sort of a zero subgame too, so you and I very rarely appear together in a hip-hop song. -Uh-huh. -Normally it's either about me or it's all about you whether that's an insult or a compliment. I'm assuming it's usually an insult. And those words very rarely appear together. You could see that here. It's slowly starting to grow apart and then I has been starting to get used more and more in the past decade. So, I don't know maybe-- -It's because the face generates. Generation of me, me, me. -Yeah. For sure. I mean I'm sure that it has a lot to do with just showing off what you have and that sort of-- -Yeah. -That sort of started happening, I don't know, like mid 90s, I would say. -Yeah. For sure. -Started like seeing a lot of jewelry and cars being used like-- -Uh-huh. -the whole cash money thing started to happen mid 90s. -Yeah. Yeah, mid to late 90s. -Yeah. -Yeah. Have you ever heard of the secret meeting? -No. Apparently, I just read about this recently and it could be some conspiracy thing, but apparently in the 90s there was a secret meeting amongst CEOs and big rap artists and just like a small community of people saying we're gonna change what hip-hop talks about today, you know. -Okay. -And to sell alcohol, to sell cars just to sell to the youth. -Like product placement. -Exactly. And then-- And the thing is the only reason why I kind of believe this is because that's really when hip-hop changed. -Right. -'Cause the early 90s-- you know, it was very conscious and like it wasn't really materialistic. -Right. -I mean it was a little bit of it. -But the early-- I feel like the early '90s hip-hop was still kind of romantic. -Yeah, totally. Totally. Totally. Like people really talked about real life, real struggle, and stuff like that and then it just switched. It just changed all of a sudden. -Yeah. -And you didn't hear any of that. All you heard was just like flamboyant rap, you know. -Right. Right. Right. -So, I don't know. I just-- It was just crazy. I just read an article recently about that. -Yeah, that's interesting. And I believe it too. -Uh-huh. -I feel like a lot of-- I feel like that meeting also happened after social media came out. -Oh yeah. -Because right before Lady Gaga, the first album came out. You started seeing her a lot on Facebook and stuff like that. -Uh-huh. -It's always changing. I wouldn't be surprised if they had a meeting about it too. -Yeah. Maybe we'll get-- use Rap Genius to help figure out if this really happened. -Yeah. -Yeah. -I feel like it's B.G.'s fault. -Right. -B. G., yeah. -It's got to be B.G.'s fault. -Yeah, B.G., it could be. -Yeah. Totally. Like you did the whole bling-bling thing. -Yeah. He started it. -And then after that it was-- it was kind of over. -Yeah. Yeah. He was the beginning. The big timers and all those cash money guys. -Right. -Yeah. -Yeah. -They did start that. -We could pretty much track it all back to-- -To them. They just got-- -I like how there is a chart here between Puffy P. Diddy Diddy and Puff Daddy. -Right. -What to call him now? -Right. -And when the terms were-- you know, were more popular. -I think Diddy would be the most popular. -Diddy wins right now. Yes. -Yeah. -Yes. -Uh-huh. -That's funny. They also talk-- Here's another chart that's tracking-- this ones' kinda cool-- all the different cars that have been mentioned-- -Oh yeah. -in hip-hop throughout time, you know. Obviously, Escalade has a pretty commanding lead, but Porsche has gotten pretty big. -Interesting. -I'm surprised that Maybachs aren't on here. -Yeah, it's true. -Right. How many times is that Maybach-- -Yeah. -drop have been used recently? -Yeah, all the time. -That's gotta be contributing to it. -Throw that in the search. -I would love to see a side-by-side comparison of Rap Genius with equivalent to like a Country Genius and like-- -Oh yeah, totally. -what kind of car is it? I'm gonna tell you, I want a pickup truck and like, you know-- Oh, when the Escalade was hot, this was hot. -Yeah. -And when-- You know, you like to compare the culture-- -It's just a flat line. You know, hip-hop is always changing, but country has been the same for the past 50 years. -Here's another one comparing all the popular drinks, all the popular alcoholic drinks, right. Ciroc, it has gotten-- -There it is. -a huge surge and then obviously Patron. -What year does it start? 1990? -For what? Patron? -No, just alcohol in general. Like the chart in general. -'90, yeah, exactly. -The meeting took place-- -Yeah. -Uh-huh. -It's gotta be that crazy. And then obviously here's the-- here's the drugs that go along with it. -Uh-huh. I'm surprised that-- Well, Molly obviously, that's been a big thing recently. -Uh-huh. -But man, weed's kind of taken a dip. -Yeah. -People aren't smoking weed anymore. -Unless they're calling it something else. Maybe they're not saying-- -It's a search term, right. -Yeah. -Yeah. -I like-- I like the terms you got to call your girl. Babe, boob, honey, or shorty, and of course shorte. -Yeah. -It's the thing now, but it used to be all about the honey. -Uh-huh. -Can you do that too panting? -Shorte. -That's awesome. -Pretty good. -So there it is. I wanna know what search terms other people have come up with. Play around with this. It's pretty cool. You can just go to rapgenius.com and then there's a Rap Stats, a little button for you to click on. -So, that's that. Let's switch gears for a little bit. Talk about Google Glass. -Oh boy. -Speaking of trends, I feel like, you know, we talk about Google Glass all the time. -Uh-huh. -But in the past few months, it's kind of gone out the spotlight. -Because there's only so much you can do, -Yeah. -you know. And they are giving it to developers more. -Uh-huh. -There's some apps that keep coming out once in a while. Oh, you can play Google Music now on it. -Right. -And-- -Version 2 is coming out soon. -Yes. And there was just news about the developers are doing more complicated apps-- -Uh-huh. -like being able to instantly translate a sign in another language using the camera and an app translating it on your screen. -Right. That's cool. -So, I think we're kind of waiting for that to come along, right. The more useful things besides the things you could do like hands-free calling. -Uh-huh. -Well, we could just pick up our phones to text and call. -Right. Do you think that once it goes on to consumer, the consumer level, or maybe as an attachment you can put on to your regular glasses, it will get more popular? When do you think it will really hit a surge? -I think it's definitely popular for people who want to use it as a camera, kind of like the go pro mentality because you could just take it and go. It's kind of fun. -Right. -The battery right now doesn't last that long to give you an all-day thing. -Oh really. Okay. -So, you know, you only get a couple of hours out of it at best if you're really using it a lot. And just like Bluetooth ear pieces, you might only use it for certain times of the day, you know. You-- It-- -Right. -It's gonna drain fast. It's not gonna be something you wanna always walk around with because you become-- it-- someone stares at, you know. -Uh-huh. Uh-huh. -Kinda like the person who talks themselves with Bluetooth. It's kind of like-- There's that balance area of learning to be in society with one. -Right. You know, it's funny. We talk a lot about these devices that are sort of projected by the company to be used by mass consumers. -Uh-huh. -But in reality, I feel like these types of technologies are better designed when they are for a specific use cases. -Yeah, you're on a bike. -Yeah. -You're exercising. You want directions. -Right. -Oh, beautiful example of hands free and then you'd put it on for your bike, right? -Yeah. -But you like-- -Maybe you would wear it from dawn to dusk though. -See, what I wanna get is like some sort of like glasses like grandma's have when they put their glasses down like little necklace. You gotta put your Google Glass down. Maybe use it as like a-- like a headband. -Yeah. -Because you wanna just take it off. You wanna just keep it down. -I didn't think Google Glass could get any dorkier, but you just-- -I will always find a way. -Congratulations. But we were talking about this yesterday too, this concept of mass consumption with technology with the Amazon program. -Uh-huh. -The Amazon Air. I mean, does everybody need their packages delivered by drones? -No, not really. -But it's cool. -But can we use drones for other stuff? -Probably. -Uh-huh. -And we have an e-mail about that that I wanna read later, but right now I wanna sort of talk about a very specific use case for the Google Glass and it's a surgeon who has been using it in the operating room. Does that alarm you? Does that scare you right off the bat? -It's a camera. -Yeah. It's a camera. -So far-- -That's nothing new. -So far, I'm not weirded out. -Okay. So, we actually touched on this story in the 404 a few months ago, but we're starting to get a bigger profile of this doctor. His name is Dr. Pierre Theodore and he's working out of San Francisco's USF Medical Center. Shout out to San Francisco. -Yeah. -He's been using Google Glass in the operating room for the past few months, past three months; and he's been getting a lot of exposure because of it, but right now it's sort of-- it sort of hit this premium because he started to give anecdotal review of how it's being used in that surgery room. -Uh-huh. -So, he's a cardiothoracic surgeon, which means he does a lot of surgery for heart disease and lung disease, things like that. And he mainly uses the device to sort of view x-rays during operations. So, hopefully you guys have never had to have this kind of surgery before, but, you know, doctors usually have x-rays on a video monitor-- -Uh-huh. -usually on maybe like a 48 or 50-inch television screen, but that's usually placed across the room. And they have to sort of look at the screen and then look down as they're operating at the same time. So, a shift between those two scenes-- -Uh-huh. -in order to do a clean operation. Well, you can imagine that sort of presents some difficulty, inaccuracy because obviously when you're looking up at the screen-- -You're refocusing distance and-- -Exactly. -I mean, when you have the Google Glass on, you are kind of going a little cross-eyed on one eye just to-- -Uh-huh. -kind of like focus on something small, but you're still at least keeping it in the same area, right. -Right. -You kinda do a quick up and back whereas it goes on a television, you have to kind of go a little-- It's a little more of a nonimmediate comparison. -Right. Yeah. Exactly. So, with this, it's kinda cool. He describes it as sort of having x-ray vision. -Uh-huh. -You know, what he's looking at with his real eye is also being projected out of his television eye. So, it's kinda cool. He talks about how the assistants actually send him over Wi-Fi images of those x-rays and then they can update it as well. So, you can kind of get this constantly updating stream of pictures. -It's still pretty small. I'm sure for serious cases he kinda also has like the real one also in front of him for a TV. -Uh-huh. -But it's interesting for like just that quick double check. -Yeah. Yeah, exactly. He does talk about a few problems though. The main thing is the Wi-Fi connection. And this is something that we sort have been seeing with a lot of different products. -Yeah. -Like the Chromecast for example. Just doesn't work unless you have a really strong Wi-Fi connection. -Uh-huh, yeah, yeah. And even in CNET in our labs, you go from one area to another like it's not that far away, your phone can get the connection, but the Chromecast can't. So, with Google Glass, let me ask you this 'cause you had the pilot program for a while. Does that have Wi-Fi built into it or does it connect through your phone's Wi-Fi. -It can connect to a Wi-Fi, but you need to help it along with the phone app-- -Uh-huh. -to-- 'cause it'll talk to your phone with Bluetooth. -Okay. -And then it goes, all right, so what's the Wi-Fi password and you kinda use your phone to enter in the Wi-Fi password-- -Yeah. -or probably find it. You can do that through a website, but, yeah. So, it is able to connect to the internet on its own. -Uh-huh. -And if you're out and about, it does rely on your phone for internet. -Right. -And you can, you know, kind of sometimes get into moments where like if you leave one area and it's trying to transfer between two, you kinda have to fiddle. -Right. Okay. So, there is some stuff that's still to be worked out. -It's not smooth, right. -Yeah. That's why it's still in beta here. But another issue is voice commands and that-- this is something I wanted to ask you about-- -Uh-huh. -in your testing 'cause he sort of talks about how voice commands aren't always accurate. -Uh-huh. -And you can imagine in a surgeon's office, you know, when he's performing surgery, he's not gonna wanna sort of take his gloved hand out and swipe across the band to sort of go through the menus. So, he says since the voice recognition isn't a 100 percent accurate,-- -Uh-huh. -it still got some kinks to work out. -I would say I was surprised at how well it can translate words when you're trying to send a text message or e-mail. -Right. -Like as you speak, you see the word in real time show up on the screen so you can see a typo immediately. -Oh okay. -And it's-- that was very, very accurate, you know. -And you can train it too, right, if there's a new word that you pronounce differently. Can you do that? -Well, not in a clear menu way. At least not in what I've seen. I mean maybe it kind of figures it out over time because based on like who is in your contact list, maybe it knows that that's the name and not a noun or-- -Right. -you know. -Right, right, right. Okay. Well, do you still have those things, by the way? -Yeah. Yeah. -Are they in your office? -Yeah. I can-- We can, you know, kind of go through another overview. We're talking about, you know,-- -Yeah. -doing another-- you know, another look at it now down the line. More apps have come out. -Okay. -You know, does it stand right now? And we're still kind of in that phase where they're gonna replace it with the ones with the earbuds because that was a big problem. -Right. -If you're in any noisy environment even like a mall where it's just a murmur around you,-- -Uh-huh. -you can't hear anything because it sits on top of your ear and it's not in your ear and they're coming out with one where you can plug it in to get a better-- -Yeah. -better audio. -Yeah. I've tested a lot of those 'cause it uses bone conduction technology, right. -In a quiet room, you can hear it. -Doesn't ever work. -But I mean, you walk on any street-- -Yeah. -and it doesn't have to be one where people are honking and you just can't hear anything. -Right. Yeah, I've tested a lot of active lifestyle-- -Uh-huh. -like exercise headphones that use the same technology. -Uh-huh. -Use your bones to conduct the sound. Never works properly. It's never as loud as you want it to be. -And if we were sitting this close, you could hear everything that it was saying or you can hear the audio. You can hear something coming out of it,-- -Right. -you know. -Well, we'll have to test that new one. You wanna do open heart surgery on me when we-- -Yeah, sure. I should have to do a little, you know, Youtube tutorial first off. -Right. All right. So, let's finish up the stories of the day because I wanna read these two e-mails. With this last story, kind of boring, but it does solve a problem that everybody has been complaining about with technology in the past two decades and that's USB plugs. -Oh. -And you know, if you've ever plugged in a USB into a port, 50 percent of the time you're gonna do it incorrectly. You're gonna have it flipped upside down and it won't go in, right. It's not an ambidextrous plug. -It's such a first-world problem. -Tiny little problem. Tiny little problem. I know. I get that. But the guys behind the USB invention actually announced plans for a new version, a new USB called type C. -Uh-huh. -And of course, we have USB 3 right now and we're starting to see new technologies come out around USB since everything basically gets charged-- -Uh-huh. -and displayed through USB. So, we're gonna get a new one next year and there's no photos of what it looks like right now, but, you know, there's some details that we know. -Okay. -Have you read anything about the story? -I briefly saw the summary. It's something about how ill just-- It doesn't matter if it's upside down or not. -Yeah. -Like it's not [unk] that click in click in. It's like-- Is it like an Apple connection or like it's like a magnet? -I don't know if it'll use a magnet, but you can definitely do it either way. You could basically just close your eyes and plug this thing in,-- -Uh-huh. -which will be cool. The other thing is that it will be a lot smaller. It will look more like the micro USB ports that you see on a lot of Bluetooth speakers and Bluetooth headphones and things like that. -Well, the new Apple Lighting port in the new iPhones. -Tiny. -That one-- That one could be either way. -Yup. -It's very small and you don't have to worry about which way is up, so-- -Yeah. -I'm sure it's taking a page off that. -Yeah. Small is good. I remember with the original 30-pin connector, I still have it right now. -Uh-huh. -Anytime I have coins in my pocket, they always get jammed up in there. It freaks me out because I'm afraid it's gonna break my phone, but hopefully with the new one we won't have that problem. The other benefit is that it's gonna have faster data transfers. -Uh-huh. -And so, right now, I think USB 3 can do up to 10 gigabits per second. -Uh-huh. -They haven't announced the exact speed yet of the type C connector, but you can assume it will be at least 15 gigabits per second. Not quite as good as Thunderbolt, but we'll see. -Give it to me faster. Everyone likes better, stronger, faster. -That's right. All right, so that's USB type C. Look for that next year and then CNET will of course report on that. -I wonder if we'll see it at CES. Maybe it's too early. -Maybe. -But that's be exciting. -If plugs are the most exciting thing that we see at CES,-- -It's so exciting. -I'm gonna check it out right now. E-mails. We guys-- We told you guys to send in your e-mails 'cause we're not doing voicemails just yet. We will, just not yet. So, we got this e-mail from our buddy, Burbank, from Phoenix-- I'm sorry-- Felix in California. Ariel, this one's about you. -Oh yeah, is it good? -Well, I think you're gonna like this. It's good. Yeah, I think it's good. -Okay, good. -I think you're gonna like it. -Okay. -Burbank from Felix says, hey, I was thinking about ideas for a Yuletide show. You know, those are the holiday episodes-- -Uh-huh. -that we air while we're on vacation. And he says, to tell you the truth, we don't really know Ariel as well as we know Justin and Jeff, which is true. -Yeah. -We've heard stories about Justin getting lost in the woods over Memorial Day. Of course. We know more about how Jeff met his wife. And as listener, we feel close to you two, but I would like to hear more about Ariel. And I agree with Felix. He says how about interviewing Ariel for a Yuletide episode. I've noticed a bit of hieroglyphics and far side influences in his music. -Definitely. -I would like to know more about his musical influences and things like that. I think that's a great idea. -I'd be down for it. -Yeah. -I have a problem talking about myself. It's weird. -Really? -Yeah. Yeah. I don't-- I don't talk about myself unless other people ask questions. So, if you did wanted to get to know me, you have to ask me. This would be the way. -What will prompt you though? You're not-- You're not uncomfortable talking about that, right? -No, no, no. Not at all. No. I mean, you know, I used to really have a hard time talking about music, my music. I don't know why, but-- -Yeah. -But, you know, over the years I've been able to talk about it a little bit more. And he's right like hiero and far side, those are some of my biggest influences-- -Yeah, for sure-- -of all time. -For sure. I do wanna talk to you about that mainly because I don't think a lot of our listeners know that you actually used to run and host your own show based upon-- -Yeah. -based on SF hip-hop, which I think was-- -Yeah. -really cool. -Yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, I watched Distortion to Static before I even knew who you were. -Oh, is it? -Yeah. Yeah. Always a fan. I mean it was this big video show called Distortion to Static. It had all kinds of Bay Area based artists. -Uh-huh. -And I watched that show. It was you-- -That's awesome. -and your brother and a bunch of other people as well. -Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. -So, I wanted to ask you a lot about that and-- -Let's do it. -You will do a Yuletide episode. -Yeah, that would be awesome, man. I got a lot to talk about. I have stories. -Well, for the holidays. -Yeah. -That'll be cool. Plus, I really like that shot that we have you in right now. Switch to yourself and it's right. We have this huge mixing board and all the switchers, all those diodes. -It feels so official. -So, we'll be shooting those Yuletide episodes next week, I believe. -Cool. Great idea. -Yeah. You'll be on those and hopefully Bridget can come in for a few of 'em. Keep those ideas coming because we usually do them around a central them. -Uh-huh. -So each Yuletide episode has a theme whether that's like our favorite movies or a TV show that we love. Last year, we did Back to the Future. -Oh, I miss that. -This year, I kind of wanna do Mrs. Doubtfire. -That'd be good. -How do you know? -Or any kind of-- -That was a really bad Mrs. Doubtfire. -What's that? -I was trying to do the-- -Like Mrs. Doubtfire on helio. Really loud. All right, next e-mail we got is from Richard. He has something to say about the Amazon flight program-- -All right. -that we're talking about with the drones yesterday. He says, guys, just because Amazon wants to develop drones for delivery doesn't mean that people will only develop drones for that reason. Justin was saying that wouldn't it be better to develop drones to deliver medicine or work with rescue crews, but it does take a huge company like Amazon to work on the logistics to make it possible. Good point. If Amazon is pushing the technology, working out the technical issues, and making drones safe and lobbying the FAA to put more reasonable regulations on them, then more humanitarian services like Justin suggested can benefit from doing that instead of doing the legwork himself-- themselves. So basically, he's talking about, you know, if we want this stuff to be used for personal stuff and for maybe philanthropic uses then we can lean on Amazon and their corporate arm to sort of help us get there. -Well-- -Do you think that's true? -I think we're still on that PR phase. It's kind of like saying, well, Google is gonna help us have driverless cars. -Right. -It's the same kind of thing. You know, think about the fact that Futurama still needed a pizza delivery boy, you know. I just don't think it's gonna happen. -Yeah. That's true. We should base everything off Matt Maranian-- -I think you should. -cartoons. You know, I think he brings a good point though. The fact that Amazon has the infrastructure and logistics to work it out means that maybe one day it doesn't have to be a grassroots sort of thing. -Uh-huh. -Maybe it can come from the top down, but obviously there's a lot-- there's a lot to be concerned about there too 'cause I don't wanna be sold something every time I pick up a drone,-- -Yeah. -so. -Drones. -That's Amazon. That's drones. That's the show. That's it. How long has it been? I feel like these shows are really short. -It'd been about 40 minutes. -40 minutes, wow, okay. -Yeah. -That one went really quickly. -Times flies. -You know, all that USB talk. -Yeah. Like I said earlier, you guys should send us your thoughts on the episodes. We're gonna be here all week. So, shoot us a line. The e-mail is the404@cnet.com. You can check out the shows at cnet.com/the404. We're also on Facebook and Reddit. We're trying to reach 10,000 users on-- I'm sorry-- 10,000 followers on Twitter. So, add us, @The404. We've also got an Instagram profile that we've been updating a lot with shots around the studio and around the office, stuff that we're up to. And also, keep sending in your suggestions on what we should fill these shelves with. -Yeah. -As you can tell, we've kinda been adding more stuff slowly, but we'll always need more. So, shoot us a line, let us know what you think. I think that's gonna do it for us today, you guys. -Right. -866-404-CNET is the voicemail number, although don't bother sending in a voicemail because we can't play them yet. Bridget, you'll be back tomorrow as well. -I will, yes. -Ariel, you'll also be back with us too. -I'll be here. Yup. -So, we'll see you guys tomorrow. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Justin Yu. -I'm Bridget Carey. -I'm Ariel Nunez. -It's The 404. It's high tech. It's low brow. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you tomorrow.