The 404 1,527: Where we become the snake

It's Friday, July 18, 2014, I'm Ariel Nunez. And from our CBS studios in New York City, welcome to The 404. [MUSIC] << Hey, thanks for tuning in to the 404 show today. It's Friday, I'm really excited about that. I'm Justin U. << And Im' Bridget Cary. << What's up, Bridget? << Friday. << OK, started off with a song. We've been talking music a lot in the pre show today, so you must have music on the mind. << Yes, a little bit, a little bit. Yeah, well we were talking about nineties music, I didn't know you were such a big Ramstein fan, Ramstein, [LAUGH] I was just saying that whenever you're in a mood where you just wanna let that anger out, it's pretty therapeutic, You know where I would always go for my music suggestions in the nineties, whenever I wanted to buy new music I'd always go to Sam Goodies because they would have that preview console, you know what I'm talking about? It was like this big machine, right. And it had like, I don't know if was digital or if it had actual videos inside of it. But you could like press this button, and it would preview whatever song you wanted. It was always next to the huge rolls of posters you could buy. I saw that too in a Virgin mega store. Remember. Gosh. Also gone. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, they used to have that over here at the. Times Square one. Oh, really. Yeah, at the Time Square Virgin. I remember that. Oh, man, there was a Virgin in San Francisco, too. Is that also closed down? There was. Yeah, closed down years ago. There's no more Virgins anywhere? I don't think so. I think they're all gone. man. [CROSSTALK] And remember they always had, like, crappy headphones,too? Yeah. That was the worst. They always had like cloth headphones and. Like, yeah, yeah. Those were the worst, like the pack. I still remember like all the Maxim tapes they would have on the side. Yeah. Oh my gosh, no one knows what we're talking about. I know. But, it's good that we're talking about the 90's because there's some news that come out. Today, well yesterday but we're talking about it right now. Member Nokia? Nokia. Speaking of, Nokia. well, Nokia is no longer gonna be. A thing. It's gonna join the ranks of Sam Goody, and Virgin Megastore, and we're not gonna hear about it much longer. Right. Well, I mean, when Microsoft announced that they're cutting like 14% of their workforce, it's like 18,000 people. Most of those cuts are coming from the newly acquired Nokia team. But, it was kinda established already that Microsoft. Was probably not gonna keep using the name, Nokia. They were just gonna brand it as a Microsoft product. Right. And that's been up in the air. They haven't really been clear, but yeah, a lot of the cuts are coming from Nokia and they're just trying to streamline things and make it more, I guess you can call it lean. Mm-hm. But that's funny cuz I feel like they were pushing the Nokia Lumia brand pretty heavily. I think you'll still hear Lumia, I just don't know if you're gonna hear it as Nokia Lumia. yeah, I mean, that's a brand name that is just burned into our brains. To get rid of it I think they're a little. They're a little, not clear if they're gonna just drop it completely because, I mean, most of our first phones were Nokia phones. Yeah, so I'm glad you brought that up. Let's bring it back to what was the first Nokia phone that you had? Was it the 5190? I had, oh gosh, the number escapes me exactly because of the models are so you know, similar but- Yeah, yeah. I looked it up once. Yeah, it, it basically is just a candy bar shape. Yep, yep. It ha, the big thing about it was that it had some bat colors you could. You know, change the lights on. Wow. Could be like a green or blue or amber. Oh wow. For sure. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't have much more than that though. But yeah, I. Really cut the face plates and things like that. I do remember racking up quite the bill when I went off to college with that. Yeah? Cuz I was like, one of those things, you know, you just start learning how to use a cell phone. Right, right. Parents are like. [UNKNOWN] it's calling minutes, are so high. [UNKNOWN] But the bills, I mean, around that time. I mean we're paying $100.00 a month now. And you can do a lot with those phones. But I feel like the bills back then were like, maybe 40 bucks tops, or something like that. Well, not really. I mean, what we use today with data, it was calling only. Ya know [CROSSTALK] Who are you calling? Well I just. When you're away from home, you just want to talk to your friends okay, you just wanna talk and talk and talk all night long, yeah Who wants to wait for those nights and weekends too, Yeah exactly so, it has a little bit of a learning curve there, then after that it was the LG Envy. EnV, it was even the full word envy, it's like e v y or something. Wait, you didn't have that classic, what was it, it was a Motorola Razor that everyone had after the Nokia. That came out 2004. Okay, that came out, yeah a lot of people went with the razor, I was holding out on my Nokia, cause I didn't need it. But, LG had this flip that had a full keyboard, so I kinda like waited a little and jumped ahead with my full keyboard. So proud of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the next one was the iPhone 3GS. I held out for a little while too on that. Right. I feel like the Nokia 5190 is those candy bar phones you were talking about. Feel like those really were the start of the idea that you could customize your phone. Mm-hm. And make it part of your personality right? Mm-hm. It's, it's true. Everyone ha, went to the mall, hit up those kiosks where you could buy like your own stickers or whatever [CROSSTALK] faceplate. . Yep, that, that photo right there. That looks like about it. Yep. And you had the clip cause you could put it on your pants. This. Oh yeah. You had the clip. Which also coincided with like the popularity of raring, raving and like raver culture I feel like. Too. So a lot of my friends replaced the antennae that you could like pull up. Oh right. With a blue blinking light. You remember this story thought? Yeah I do remember that. And it would almost be like [LAUGH] a rave every time someone called you. [LAUGH] And it would like pulsate and stuff. And, and then your phone would vibrate too. And then they would have like Things that were dangling off the antenna. Like, little keychain things. Pulsing, dangling, you have some interesting friends. Yeah. [LAUGH] It was crazy. It was like a whole accessory in your pocket. [LAUGH] So that, I feel like that was a big part of it. I remember that. That, and like, you know, it was a grayscale screen. Yeah. So the battery lasted for like a week. Yeah. Cuz it was huge. It, it was a pretty thick thing and you could replace the battery too. Which is pretty convenient. And now they purposely make em, more and more breakable. [LAUGH] Yeah. But I guess it doesn't really matter cuz you couldn't do anything on it anyway. It wasn't like a emergency. Yeah. It's just, it was just a tool thing. There was texting at that time, like T9 or whatever it's called. Right. Right. I knew people that could do that without looking, they're just like text while driving Yea like this Yea its crazy i never got good at that. Right, like Alec Baldwin in The Departed. Right, yea, yea, yea [CROSSTALK] [LAUGH] That's crazy, i guess if you memorized what letters are on each number. You just, you just count Right Yea, yea, yea you have to do it. Man I just want to, It's a lot easier than texting now. That you have to look nine. I just want to ask you to explain T9 to people who don't know what we're talking about now. Okay, just like every number has a letter like when you're calling any number now, you can see like that one is or is it two that is A B C? Wait I am going to pull it out now. Yeah, well I, I, know 9 is like 0 or something or I don't know.>>Like, W, X, Y, Z.>> One of them, one of them doesn't have an actual number attached to it.>>Right, right.>> One is A, B, C and then 2 is D, E, F, and it goes on>>>Right.>>So if you hit 1, 3 times, you got C.>>Right. And, if you needed like a period or something, you'd have to hit zero four times. [CROSSTALK] Or whatever it was. But, yeah, you're, you're right Aerial, if you memorized where those letters were. And you can feel it [CROSSTALK] tactile, so you can know where your at the one, or the five. Cause the five has a little nubbing on it. [LAUGH] [CROSSTALK] The little nubbing guy in you [LAUGH]. Good times, remember when we used to use our hands? What a crazy time in our lives, so after that then I feel like, you remember the Matrix when that came out? After the 5190 got popular. People wanted a mechanism that would open the keypad cover automatically. And I remember the first Matrix movie when she made that call, she pressed it, a little button on the side. And a thing slid out, it was like Oh, I think And people wanted that like crazy. Do you remember this? I don't remember that. No. I know exactly what you're talking about. I've never. Seen one in a while. Never seen one either. But I do remember, like, third party companies selling keyboard covers, that you can put on to make it [UNKNOWN]. People were all about that, which is why I feel like, the clam show of the razor really took off after that. But it, but everyone razors broke, cuz that was so thin, it was so easy to snap. Well, was that the whole cover front part that snapped off. Well, [UNKNOWN] which is thin. I just think people, you know, kind of where used to. Abusing their Nokia's and were, and, and were you know. would drop it and everything you know just instantly your, your Razor just kinda couldn't last as long. Right, right, right. I never actually had one of those Razors. I went to a tech showcase recently this year where Motorola was set up showing a home phone. That was as thin as a razor it was like long and thin. And they're like they're holding onto that razor they don't want to let that one go. They still call their phones razor this and razor that like razor max. They don;t want to let that one go. Like holding onto the memories. Totally the good ol' days,. Yeah.>>Oh and I also remember the Razors were cool because you could see who's calling without even opening the clamshell?>>And you could take photos of your friends and like, hold on I'm going to put you in my contact book.>>But there's like such a delay that if anybody moved, that you'd get like a blur for 5 seconds. Oh my god I'm not even going to get to. Snake too, I mean that was a Nokia thing. How many hours do you think you had logged on snake? Not really, no. No? You didn't use it? No. I wasn't into that. I became the snake for 5 years. Yeah, me too. I became the snake. [laughter] Jim Carey sketch, you should look that up. So I wanted to show the CNET news article that we published today. There's a company called curve labs, curved labs rather, and they're sort of re-imagining some of the old Nokia devices if they ran android and windows phone now, so check out some of these photos, they're pretty cool. We're looking at one of the really old Nokia 3310's. This wasn't the 5190 that everyone was familiar with. One of the later models. But they kinda. It looks like a little kid's phone doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. Looks like it has candy inside. Okay. And it's got that like classic, now classic, Nokia blue sky blue color. Right. Right? And you can see the tiles from Windows Phone on it and everything. So. It's kind of interesting. They also put this up there too, which I think is pretty cool. This is the Sony Ericsson, I'm sorry, just the regular Ericsson. This is before they got bought out. The Ericsson T28 running Android. I actually had this phone. It was pretty similar to the Razor with the, flip and everything like that, but it had a little bit of a smaller screen. As you can see, they even have th original grayscale screen. But with Android, it's kinda silly, but that's what they looked like. Really creative stuff. So yeah, I mean, what can we expect from Windows in the future you think do you think? Are they gonna get rid of the Nokia line altogether, or are we gonna see it in some other form? But Windows is not that important to them, that's why they bought it in. But. So, the new CEO, Satya Nadella- Mm-hm. He said he wants to just kind of bring things together by putting more of a focus on Cloud, putting more of a focus on making sure all of these programs kind of just talk together seamlessly. Cause I think. He's on to something when it comes to the problems we're all having, biggest headache can be is that you have your files here and your files there and your emails with this and with Microsoft, its so big I guess he feels like they're not all talking to each other and he can solve that, Like I'm sick of having like. some files sync here and I don't know my iCloud this and my Google account that. If they can kinda get that to be easy for once, maybe, maybe he's on to something by focusing that and that's why they're taking attention away from XBox Entertainment Studios to. They're gonna shut that down. Yeah. That was their way of getting into the. TV, movie space by having original content that you can only see on the Xbox and it makes sense. I mean that's kind off like an extra expense but they're like, you know what let's focus on bringing it back home to you know. Pretty short lived project, right? I mean they're still going to have the Halo series that Stephen Spielberg's been helping out with but after that it's like. Goodbye Yeah, just focus on video games, keep that separate Right, Right. I think what I would really want too, is not to have to marry into like all windows phone devices, you know one day it'd be great if we could just have some kind of way to use an Iphone. With a surface tablet for example and not have to worry about signing on to one to one [CROSSTALK] I don't know if that's going to happen. Everyone is so greedy over getting you to be all in or nothing. Yeah, it's all about the teams. Yeah. So what team are you on. Are you on Apple team or Windows team. I'm not on a team. Or Amazon team. That's another one too. I, I have Full disclosure. Okay so I have an iPhone. Okay. but, I get my music off of Amazon. So I don't do the iTunes thing. So, so I Really? You use Prime music? Yeah, well I, I use, I, I just buy m, my music from there. Buy my mp3s off, off Amazon, you know? Okay. So. So I'm like all mixed up. I mean I don't have iCloud but I use the Microsoft version of it. The, what do they call it now, I, I lose track of all the names. Yeah. It's so many names. But they have a cloud service that. Has a lot of storage in it, and it's easy for my pho-, for my photos to sync to it, so. But then I try doing the Google version of that. I'm, i'm all over the place. And you use gmail too. I think it's cause I wanna test out everything. And, and, and i'm like a nomad now. I don't have a solid place, cause I wanna try everything out. And But, but now I'm a mess. It's like someone takes my phone, God forbid, you know, like, I'll, I'll be at a loss. Right. I just don't know how to recover anything. [LAUGH] It'll mess up your workflow. Yeah. But on the plus side, though, if anyone who was ever trying to say that Bridget Carey is an Apple fan girl,. That's definitely not true because you're spread out all over the place. No, I respect. I respect what Apple does well and I use, I use both a Windows computer and a Mac computer. Like I have, I have both at home and work. Yep. So I'm, I'm all mixed up, Justin. No that's not mixed up. It's called objectivity. Google that. [LAUGH] All right, speaking of Amazon though, they have their own announcement that they rolled out today, right? Oh, Amazon? Yep. They're getting it into the ebook sharing or, what do you call it, the service is, it's like a Netflix for ebooks. Right, right, right. Kindle Unlimited. Yeah, Kindle Unlimited. $10 a month, all you can read, which is something that [CROSSTALK] You can read. It's, it's been around on another server that no one knows about called The Oyster. Right. And Scribd also started doing this. Right. But Amazon's getting in and, it's different. It can be confusing for trying to keep up with all the things cuz. Amazon already had something for Prime users where Right. Where if you happen to have Prime. They'll give you one book at a time for free in your Kindle. Uh-huh. This is different. You don't have to be part of Prime. It's just [UNKNOWN] and it'll be on device. It doesn't have to be a Kindle. [INAUDIBLE] So at but now the question is well, you know, what publishers are signing onto this. Right. You know, you're, you're oh they're showing off Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings right now but you know, if every major publishers not on it it's kinda like Netflix back when you didn't have great movies on it Yeah You know, you're paying for it but, you know, if you're gonna still want to go out and buy the book you wanna read, you know. Yeah the the speed bump is always with the content providers not signing on right away. Right I think Harper Collins already. Said that they're not gonna be participating in this Kindle program they're already embroiled in another lawsuit with Hatchet, which is another one of the big five providers. Those big five take up two thirds of all books published in the United States, so you're, right there already, not getting a lot of the books that you could read. I think you're gonna get older books on here, so if you're looking for something and you read a lot, you know, it'll give you. That'll give you some incentive to read older things. But it's the beginning, you know, and you bring up a good point like I remember when Netflix first came out and they didn't have any new releases at all. Mm-hm. Like there was nothing new, it was all, you know, movies from the late 90s or early 2000s They have to build their customer base to. Thanks Prove to the publishers that it's worth being on. Right. Exactly the same thing with Spotify same thing with iTunes even. it didn't have music and it was expensive. So, if you want to be an early adopter of kindle unlimited you can do that now. But, you know, people that use a kindle subscription already,. Probably rent a few books a months, right. It's this really for people that, just wanna read five books a time, or how [UNKNOWN] you have of a reader to have to pay a 10 bucks a months for unlimited. I mean, a few bucks, that would make sense, right. Like if you have a shared account with a couple of your kids, you know, like you are a family of readers. Then, good value there. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, exactly, if you're already someone who knows what you wanna read, cuz you're following all latest stuff. Yeah. You're not probably going to pay extra for this. Probably not going to workout. I read kind of a depressing statistic in this article on CNET. It says that the average 25 to 34 year old person. 25 to 34 years old, they read blank minutes a day. How many do you think that is. That's so said to me. Oh, I think I remember it was like 6 minutes today. Didn't even hit double digits. Six minutes today. That's versus two hours. 120 minutes of TV minimum a day for the average american. They were combining the fact that when Netflix came out you were already were someone who watched TV so your habit didn't change that much. You changed your input on your TV of where you were getting your video from. from Right. And in this case it's like well, how many people are actually gonna read a whole lot because of this? And Right. That's cause the majority of Americans don't like reading. You're right. And that's sad and read people. [LAUGH] Right. Well, for me, I mean, I'll read more online than I will a book, but I'll read like a book a month. You know, slowly, in between. Everything else I am doing you know? Ten minutes at a time before bed. Or like you know on the commute home. You try to work it in. That's what I'm wondering are those statistics based on just books or does online count? I would hope it's just books my goodness. Cuz that would be crazy if people weren't even reading the news. I feel like people read a lot on line. Yeah, I think that's probably a big part of it, you're right, that people have switched to the computer to do reading of articles or current events, Right right right But yeah not a lot of people picking up those books. Well this could change it maybe. Yeah. [LAUGH] Yeah, I guess so, I don't know, that's, I don't know why do you feel like the literacy kind of goes down as you get older. You just don't have time Too many distractions. How am I, you talk about not having enough time to read. How much time are we putting on Facebook now? True. And then, you know, you get off of it and you feel depressed 'cause you just wasted like an hour of your day like oh I'm not getting anything accomplished, you know, so right. It's just about prioritizing. Too many distractions, I think. Too many app, games, too many other things getting our attention. Right. I think for me, the idea is like, during the day, there's so much access to news and things that are really happening in this world that I wanna read all that stuff. And to balance that between, you know, reading this. Are alternative, like fake story, essentially. Like some guy making up a story. I mean, I don't know, maybe I should just read non-fiction. I got a thing though, I spend so much of my time in front of a screen, I still buy physical books. Oh yeah, for sure. Because if I'm gonna have some down time at the end of the day. I'm, I mean I have a kindle but I tend to just to pick up the book. True. On the couch you know, kind of thing. Because girl's eyes need a break. Totally All I'm saying, from the screen. Do you feel a physical difference when you read a book versus the screen. Like do you get tired less easily when you're reading a book. Probably the e screen, not like, the e'ing screen, not like, yeah, I get more tired off like a bright screen but you know. Yeah. I don't know, it's just kind of nice to, like, pick it up and have my fun little bookmarks, I don't know, I just like this to hold on to some physical things. I'm old-fashioned that way, sometimes I like to just have paper and pen and send letters. I just am funny that way. Yeah. You're a romantic. A renaissance woman. I like that. You know, a lot of people are saying that, the reason why they're introducing this Kindle Unlimited program over at Amazon is because they're prepping everybody for the upcoming Kindle. Fire launch, right? The Fire phone, you mean? The Fire phone launch. Mm-hm. Yeah, which is happening what, next week, I think? Oh yeah, that's very soon, yeah. Yeah, like, July 25 Cuz they're get, they already started having commercials out for it. Yeah, did you see that commercial? I haven't, I haven't, I know there are people have been buzzing about it but, have you? Yeah, it's a. Pretty basic commercial. I mean for all the hardware announcements they had at the unveiling you know the 3D effect and all the cameras and things like that, They didn't really talk about that at all. If this was your first exposure to the kindle fire phone it's not going to be that impressive. It's basically just two kids talking about all the content you can get on it. Which is really what Amazon is pushing right? Even though you can get content on anything. Because everything has an app. You know why? Cause 3D doesn't sell. No Don't tell anyone that though. Yeah no one needs to shop in 3D, they'd rather just go to the store. Woah am I right in front of this object? It's like i'm right here [LAUGH] So I take it, it sounds like you're not going to be investing in the kindle fire phone. Or i'm sorry the fire phone. I'm still on my current phone. I'm kinda, i'm dandy with it. I like when amazon shakes things up. And gets the other guys you know, what is this E-Company like all of a sudden coming up with hardware for, I love it, It kind of brings, I think the best thing about that fire phone is the unlimited photo storage, I was just telling you about cloud and how it's like memory alerts and this and that. I'm just never having to worry. It just works. It just stores everything automatically as a backup for you. I have a feeling others may come in and copy that because that's competitive right there, that's a great selling point. Yeah, it's great to have automatic backup whenever you can Unlimited. Dude. Unlimited. Yeah, do you think we're gonna see that with Apple's iPhone 6 rumors? Well, they're getting all these people to pay for iCloud. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know when it comes to Apple. Maybe, maybe Microsoft might to, like, shake things up. They're really hungry with Windows Phone to do something different. Mm-hm. Maybe. When do you think we'll hear more about the iPhone 6. Do you think that's gonna happen in the fall, or at the end of the summer? Usually like a September-y thing. I mean, the rumors just get to be unbearable. I know, a little thick, right now. But then you end up knowing everything about it, right about a month before. [LAUGH] Yeah, yeah, exactly. But yes, it's like a September-y thing. Everyone has their leaks. We'll definitely be discussing that in the future. Mm-hm. As we get closer to the date. But, yeah that's, that's Amazon's Kindle Unlimited. Can you sign up right now for it? Do you know about the availability? It's on, it's on the website, yeah. It says sign up now for a free 30-day, 30-day trial, yeah, it's on there now. Right. So this is different from Kindle, from Amazon Prime. This is getting so confusing. We need, like, a. a group spreadsheet or something to take care of all this stuff. [LAUGH] Yeah a lot of different things. You, you would think they'd wanna give it to Prime to encourage people to buy more Prime. Yeah. But they're just doing something different here. I think they're giving away Prime subscriptions now. Those things would be like currency in the future. [LAUGH] okay, so let's move on. I wanna talk a little bit more about the. Fallout from that Comcast cancellation call from Ryan Block. You heard that earlier this week, right? Oh yeah, oh yeah. Pretty painful. Like, probably the most awkward eight minutes I've heard this month. But can you tell me why you don't want the best internet. Yeah, I just don't. Get off my back. What do you think about that? Have you experienced anything like it before? I haven't experienced. Strange and I think personally like that, but at first thing that came to mind for me was, like, you kind of think, wow. How could this guy not wanna move on if he's just so stuck to his script? And I didn't think that. I thought that he was worried he was gonna get fired. That's the kind of. Like, the customer service representative was acting, I feel, out of, out of fear, and then later, looking more into this after this got out, I started reading that yeah, your pay gets deducted, so let's not blame that one guy. Let's blame the culture of a customer service team at Comcast and probably other places too, where. It's more important to f, motivate you out of fear than reward. Mm-hm. That I, I, I almost can't you know, blame the guy to a degree. Hm. I mean, you know, maybe he already had three people randomly cancel on him and it's not their fault. Mm-hm. That they pick up that one call that wants to have the cancellation. Mm. And so maybe by the time you now, this guy calls you know, he was on his last. Leg. I don't know. I, I'm not, I mean, he's clearly like, not savvy. Right. You know, he just keeps, you know, he doesn't know how to interact right. But there's something there. Yeah. There's something more to this than just a guy who didn't get it. You can hear by the way he's speaking on the phone. When he tries to get the guy to. Continue with service that he's clearly reading off a prompt [CROSSTALK] He's reading off a prompt and he sounds desperate, he sounds just like panic, you know. Right, so on Reddit yesterday, someone that used to work at Comcast for nine years ended up joining into the conversation, and he told us, that apparently, your commission gets lower with each cancellation that you get, so you have a base. Salary, right? But then for each call, you get a certain percentage of the commission so apparently if you retain 85% of your customers ,meaning if the people that call up still have service by the end of the conversation, if you retain 85% of your customers then you get 100% of the payout. Right of the commission. If you only retain 80%, if you have 5% drop, then your commission drops down to 75%. So you lose 25% of your commission for a 5% loss in customers. Then 75% pay out of 5% below, you get nothing. You know, you can't help the random of, the random fact that someone could call because they can't get their TV to work? Yeah. Or they can't, they call because they're moving and they want to cancel because they're moving, you know? Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is not the fault of the person. There's something I've been reading about recently. Something that's come to mind when you're saying all this. Is that they have software right now that can tell how the call is going based on your tone. It automatically analysis the conversation with algorithms and. You know, how your pausing, how up you are, how down you are. Mm-hm. If there's yelling. And it gives a report on how that conversation went. Right. It's mostly used in, in sales. So it could apply here. They also do this on video calls, you know, if you're, now a lot of work is done with video conferencing. So you can tell the facial expression of the person and then the boss gets a report saying I saw like five smiles or, or, or facial expression that imply that something good came of this. That's more the experience you want to remembered with. You know, like that should be were the reward and the punishment comes in. How nice you are about it. He could have done his part. of course he has to do some part to let you know about what's out there. But as long as that check box is done he's done his job. Yeah, right, right. It shouldn't be a culture where the. Person refuses to take no for an answer because he's looking out for his own job. Right, and it makes me though think. If I had to be in that position and cancel my service. Yeah. I'll probably make up something like, oh I'm, I'm moving to my mom's house. Yeah. She already has. She's already, she's already a customer. She lived in Alaska. It's not my fault. Don't blame me. Don't cry. [LAUGH] Yeah. I'll probably just make up something because now I know there's only one way to get a no answer sometimes. Right. It's like, I can't help it I'm, I'm going on a ship for five years. Like trying to break up with an ex. You're like just It's not you. You don't need a reason, just. Leave, it's not you it's me. I'm going somewhere else. Right, right. So I"m talking about like this point of view, the Comcast guy's point of view reminds me when I was like 19, 20, I used to work at Goodguy's. And a large part of our paychecks were based on commission. So we had to sell a certain amount. In order to get the commission, I wanna say as like a couple of thousand, Yeah. Before you even get paid any commission, so there will be days where, people would be returning stuff that I sold to them and I would be that guy like trying to talk him out of it like, are you sure you were so excited about it the other day, Oh, yeah. . You know what I mean? So now, I kind of feel for this guy man, I hated him the other day but, this cam test guy,. Yeah. I feel for him. Yeah, I, I feel for both sides too. Cause, ya know, from a customers point of view. Whenever I go into a store where the, employees are clearly working on commission. You can tell, because they're, they're hounding you. They're happy, but there also, like totally pressuring you to buy the product. [CROSSTALK] And asking you every five minutes for everything you pick up off the shelf. Oh, do you want to like, look at that, do you want more information, and trying to talk to you. But for me, I'm the type of customer that just wants to be left alone. Like I'll do my research online beforehand, I just wanted to see it in person. But do you want the warranty, do you want the warranty though? And our membership plan, our membership plan gets you 10% if you spend a thousand dollars every day of your life. [LAUGH] And a pushy employee makes me not want to buy the product. So it's kind of reverse engineering. I don't understand why some places even have to have this. Here's a little insight from the female perspective. Like when you go into a store like Victoria's Secret, they're like, did anyone help you with this underwear today? And I'm like I can pick out my own underwear. Like do I have to remember the name of the lady who pointed me to this Right. Or maybe she won't get paid and have this panic attack, I'm like [INAUDIBLE] and I'm like why do I need to know? Like, like, that's not the kind of customer service that [INAUDIBLE] Yeah, or unless you're gonna get a part of the revenue share from their commissions, right? Then you can promise every time I come in here I'm gonna work with this sales associate. Cuz he's splitting the cost with him. It, it is a really bad situation all around. I don't think it works either cuz it's not a positive thing. It's the opposite. << Mm-hm. << So anyway after based on that conversation and things this story getting really a lot of publicity this week. I can't tell if that's good or bad for Comcast by the way. << Oh, it's definitely bad, but they're not going to get hurt. Yeah [UNKNOWN] are not gonna cancel over it, but you know it keeps it on the back on your mind. They're like, oh man, cable just stinks. Right. I mean, as if, like, isn't always that the worst customer service ranking, always have Comcast yeah. and cable right up at the top. Yeah. Yes, so this doesn't help them. Their, the, like, the consumers always [UNKNOWN] those worst companies in america and Comcast is always on the final front. Yeah, I think they've been on the top for the past. Three years. Undisputed. Between them and Time Warner. What was so bad is it was like, Monsanto and- [LAUGH] And, and the cable. And I'm like- Yeah. No, no, no, don't let Comcast win. Like, like people are doing messed up things with our food and you were like, no cable. [LAUGH] [LAUGH] yeah, yeah, yeah. [LAUGH] Like literally killing children Yeah, people are like no, no terrible things are happening on planet Earth and it's like no, cable. [LAUGH] Yeah, I have to wait five minutes People are passionate. to talk to a human being. No, I mean I, I agree though, you know. Any time someone brings up anything to do with cable television the conversation always goes back to should I cut the cord? And it goes along with all the streaming services we've been talking about lately as well. And of course the problem is that people want to sort of retain that subscription because they want to watch things that are exclusive to that network, like "Game of Thrones" on HBO for example. Can't get a separate HBO a la carte to subscription. You have to buy into the service. You can probably work it down by getting some internet-only with a little bit of an addition like. I've read that there are these offerings, they don't really advertise it, they don't want you to have the full, they want you to have the full package, they don't want you to have it smaller, but you can talk every single company into giving you like an Internet plus HBO or Internet plus showtime, so that way you can get your HBO go. And it's out there, you just have to work it, and I'm starting to think about, do I want to cut the cord? I. I am a sucker. I grew up as a TV addict. Mhm. Now I don't find myself watching as much but I like the comfort of knowing at any time I could record a show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just want it there. But I'm starting to think twice. It's probably more viable for sure with more options you get for services you can subscribe to the better. But you're right there's this. Weird secret menu. You know how fast food restaurants like In and Out you can get like animal style fries or well done fries. Well, there's a secret menu at these cable services, too, that I didn't know about and until I read this article in the Wall Street Journal. So check this out. There's a secret menu for all four of the big cable providers. Right? And all you have to do is say these. Words, these secret names, in order to get those deals. What, you really need to know the secret name? Or can you just say, I want this and this? No, no, you gotta say the code word. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, otherwise they'll pretend not to know what you're talking about. [LAUGH] Weird, right? So for com. The eagle slides at midnight. [LAUGH] Yeah. Momma bird is at her nest. [LAUGH] [LAUGH] So for Comcast, if you call up and say you want the quote Internet Plus plan, well then you, you should able to switch from your Triple Play. Which is phone, internet, and cable T.V. which normally costs $212 a month. Well if you ask for the internet plus plan they'll give you broadband internet, 10 cable channels, really basic cable, plus HBO. That's only $75 a month. See you save half and you get to sacrifice a lot of the cable channels that people probably don't watch anyway, like the weather channel for example. And they have stuff like that for Time Warner, Verizon and AT&T. So I'm looking at it right here. Time Warner, you say, starter TV plus HBO and an internet plan. For Verizon, you say, 50 over 25 megabits per second plus local news and sports plus HBO. It's kind of a mouthful of the secret code. [LAUGH] And then AT&T U-verse, you just say I want HBO Internet plus. So those are the magic words. If you say those things, you'll get the deals. The deals are out there, but you just have to lose out on some of your shows. Right. And, according to this Wall Street [LAUGH] Journal article, they say that they can also change the name of those plans at any time. Mm-hm. You know, after they've published this, they probably realized that a lot of people are starting to ask for it. By the time you hear this, it'll be a different secret code. Yeah. So, forget it. It's a moot point. Don't curt the cord. I don't know I'm kind of torn in the middle too. Cuz, I'm moving into a new apartment. So, it's a good opportunity to sign up for a cable plan. You know, I just, the digital antennas now. They're pt so bad you just hook them on your window. Oh, and you get like 5 channels or something? Yeah, and you buy a small machine to do the recording for you. There are a lot of DIY options that weren't available before. Yeah, can you get cable channels from there too? I don't know. I know there are some things that are streamed in addition that you don't get on cable. For example CBS will have two stations going out. One called CBS HD Plus that is just over the air, and a lot of people just seen it update that way actually in New York City. I've seen it that way in a. Straw before. Yeah. Yeah, I saw you in the restaurant. It's funny. They use it as a way to like, loop basic news and cable. Yeah, yeah. And kind of like a 24 hour here are your headlines kind of thing. And other networks do the same. I, I believe that NBC's was doing that too for a little bit. So everyone kind of uses those extra channels as a lot of. Over the air. Option [CROSSTALK]. Yeah and that's part of people who just get it for free with with a digital antenna. That's are really good alternative to say signing up for cable to get something like New York one which is a cable channel and I love New York one but I don't know if I want to pay 100 bucks a month to watch it so that's a great alternative. I like that. All right, last story of the day. And I know this one is your favorite. [LAUGH] We talked about this on the pre-show, but no Bridget Carey appearance would be complete without a little, little porn. I think we need like, like some music to come on. Every time I come on, there's always some sort of like, and a porn story. [LAUGH] I swear, I swear. It's always organic. It's a coincidence. [LAUGH] Like let's get some [INAUDIBLE] funky music on here. Yeah. Bridget's on. It's time. The porn section. Alright, so what's the news Justin. No this is good! This is actually a good thing. So the UK and I think the US should follow suite. The UK is finally taking measure to ensure that nobody looks at porn in public again. Apparently this is a really big problem in the UK Okay Yeah, so weird, right? [LAUGH] Blimey? I'm sorry. [LAUGH] I don't. I don't know if they're still speaking like that. That's like a cockney thing. Blimey! [LAUGH] So the initiative is coming after an investigation from the Daily Mirror that revealed that thirty two of the hundred and twenty nine wi-fi hotspots, public wi-fi hotspots they tested. Allowed them to view PornHub.com. Okay. That sounds like a very fun investigation to make. I want to know how it's been on PornHub. So the public WiFi was giving them access to the YouTube of porn. Exactly. Okay. Exactly. So obviously PornHub is a free service and, you're right, yeah, when, in public, you could have access. This before, which includes children or anyone that goes to a public terminal, like at the library for example. Or if you sign on to a WI-FI network even at a Starbucks, then you could have viewed these sites. Well, restaurants, cafes, hotels, museums, a bunch of public landmarks will soon be displaying a sign that says friendly WI-FI. And that friendly WI-FI logo looks like this. And In like comic san's like written with a crayon [LAUGH] That's the friendliest sign ever, right? It's got like all the prime colors too it's very kid friendly so that the families know they can access protected wi-fi networks, and basically, it's exactly how it sounds, these are networks that are protected by a filter so that you can't view any kind of adult content. I guess it's like the same filter you might see at a work place Yeah. Kind of thing. Or at like a library. Yeah. Exactly, it'll show you when you try to access a blocked site, and and a lot of the websites just won't show up at all. And, and at these, Wi, these WiFi networks Are they just run by the cafes themselves and so they're choosing to, to be friendly or not? Yeah. It's not like it's a rule, but it's more like a encouragement. Exactly, yeah. So it's often for the companies. Starbucks [CROSSTALK] Cuz then you're gonna start to find out where, where's the dirty coffee shop? [LAUGH] Yeah, exactly. Like, like, look at someone sipping their latte, I know what you're watching. [LAUGH] Like the underground coffee car. No. It's like a speakeasy for porn in public. Ugh. Just sex deviance. In public. That's gross. No, do all that stuff in your home where you're supposed to be watching it, if you want to. But, now you're not gonna be able to do that in public. I think they should do that. Here, right, because, as you well know, I think if you've ever entered a public library, and you've, like, seen homeless people [LAUGH] or kids on their computers, there's plenty of photos out there. I've seen a bunch on Tumblr of people that have taken photos of not so great stuff they've seen in the library. Eye, ya ya. I didn't know that. Yeah, it [CROSSTALK] I mean, there should be a filter, anyways, in the library just like they have at schools but you don't want to, like, restrict everything completely. There should be some sort of. Alert that goes out to the administrator of the library that says computer number 57 has gone on a site you should walk up to them and make sure they're you know, what are they doing over there? Because you don't want to have total restrictions and also these. These filters? They're gonna catch like size of a .xxx but they're not gonna catch maybe everything if it's just a naughty picture posted to something that normally is an innocent place. Mm-hm. So you have, so it's not gonna be perfect, no matter what. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well. They did say that they're gonna constantly be updating the list of websites that are banned along with keywords. Whitehouse.com Yeah, yeah, things sort of like that, or other sort of more nefarious website that I don't know about, but apparently they do. And yeah, so Is that still a thing, Whitehouse.com? I don't even know I don't know. [CROSSTALK] I just know in school, everyone's like oh, her [UNKNOWN]. [UNKNOWN] is like Netscape, and [LAUGH] Right, right. So for people that don't know what we're talking about, whitehouse.com was a porn site. Yeah, when you were doing your research papers in 6th grade, and you're like I need to look up who the senator is, oh no, I'm banned from this. Psych. Right, you want whitehouse.gov. Maybe you were looking for com? I don't know. No. Stephen made it through that porn story okay, right? Nothing too cringe worthy. You're not sweating. Keeping it cool or you, Jesse. Keeping it cool. Fine, fine, we all still have jobs. I think. We will see. Im actually not gonna be here on monday so Jeff is going to be doing this show either by himself or with a special guest. But I'll be back on Tuesday, I think that's gonna wrap it up for this episode. It's a good way to wrap up the Friday. Right, a little dirty story to cap it off there? Go and follow CNet update and Bridget Carey on Twitter. You can go to twitter.com/bridgetcarey, or cnet.com, I'm sorry or twitter.com/cnetupdate. That's right, I, if you just want the updates and you don't love me. I'll just give you, I'll just give you posts on update on that account. But you get the whole package when you go to [UNKNOWN]. Yeah. Do both. Yeah. Do both. It's free, it's a free folly. You don't have to pay for that cause that's really nice. Free folly, baby. Yeah, exactly. Free [UNKNOWN] on a Friday. All right. so, we'll see you next week. It's gonna be kind of a fractured week of shows, but we'll make it through, hopefully with this construction that's gonna be done next week. Fingers crossed. Yes. It's gonna be, for anyone who's watching, we're gonna have a few days where maybe we can't have a show. But we're moving to a new place while they construct things and reconstruct things. Yeah So it'll be some We're, we're kinda like floating around a little bit. Yeah. It'll be fun. We'll add to the flavor- yeah. Of what everyone's. [LAUGH] Recording in limbo's always gonna be a good time.>> Yeah. [LAUGH] All right. Well, have a great weekend! Go and follow us on Twitter, Facebook. Go to our subreddit. There's a lot of subscribers there. We're almost on Google Plus, all those different networks. Check us out there. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Justin Yu. I'm Bridget Carrie. I'm Ariel Nunez. It's the 404. It's high tech, it's low brow. Have a fun weekend. [MUSIC]