HomeTech.fm - Episode 265 - Dumpster Fire Sausage

Episode Date: July 5, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: Massive hacks and data breaches expose 2 billion home automation records, Alexa will never delete those secrets you told her, Bixby really wants to be a thing, Roku dominates and Netflix starts to pinch pennies in anticipation of more competition. We have a big discussion on how voice isn’t the next big platform we all anticipated it to be and Seth tells everyone how he really feels about his Echo. Spoiler alert: The Echo is out.

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, July 5th from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How are you doing, Seth? Pretty good. Pretty good. Staying hot. Staying hot. Trying to stay cool. Good. I went to my neighbor's house today and I've been bragging to him about my little air conditioner that I put in here and then I went over to his house and he put like a real one into his garage

and it's like... Put yours to shame. It absolutely did. I walked into his garage and it was like 70 degrees. He's like, it's been running for 45 minutes and I'm looking in here and it's like 90 degrees. And mine's been running for three hours trying to keep... Yeah.

As long as it's right here blowing on you yeah well i hope you're uh having a good fourth of july weekend i know you've got some explosives or fireworks there uh ready ready for the festivities so that'll be uh that'll be a lot of fun the big boys hey i don't know if you've ever looked at at and read what these things said on them, but they're quite funny. It's been a while. We should have talked about this. Yeah, there's one right here that says friendship fountain, and it's got

people dressed up in Spanish clothing. I don't know. It's really kind of funny. There's disco flashers. It's festive. Golden flowers, and then the four across the bottom are snow, fire, luck, and love. I think that's from Game of Thrones, right? Sure.

Fire and ice or something. Yeah. So cool. Well, Seth, remember, safety first. Yeah, well, if we don't have a show next week, you know why. All right. Well, we do have a show this week, so what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines? Let's do it.

Forbes is reporting that a team of self to a Chinese company called Orvibo, which runs an IoT management platform, had been left exposed to the Internet without any password to protect it. The database also included more than 2 billion logs containing everything from user passwords to account reset codes and even a smart camera recorded conversation. We're starting off the show on a bright note here this week as of yesterday zd net reports that despite continued efforts to contact the company not only has there been no response but the database remains freely accessible online with no password protection shenzhen based or vivo claims to have more than

1 million users including private individuals, and other business customers and manufacturers nearly 100 different smart home and smart automation devices. Yikes. Yeah, yikes. The good news is, I guess the better news is, is I've never heard of these guys. I don't think we've mentioned them once, but I went to their website and kind of poked around today when this story came out and uh it looks like they've got quite a bit uh and they you know they manufacture a bunch of stuff there in china but i've never heard of them so yeah yeah i can't say i'm familiar with them either but definitely not a not a good story to read i know there was a few security stories here in the news this week and always a little bit discouraging when you come across stories like this.

Well, this is a little bit better news. D-Link has finally agreed in a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in regards to a 2017 lawsuit in which the government agency accused the Taiwanese hardware manufacturer of misrepresenting the security of its devices and ignoring vulnerability reports. As part of the settlement, D-Link has promised to implement a new software security program for its routers and internet-connected cameras, and the company has also agreed to subject itself to 10 years of biennial security audits

from a third-party independent auditor. The FTC gets to choose the auditor, while D-Link got to decide on the certifications that the auditor must obtain before allowing it to review its security program. Pretty interesting that the FTC is stepping up finally and putting the screws in the companies that ship product with default passwords and then never ship a firmware update ever, ever again once they ship the product out the first time.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, some of the measures I read about in this story are like, wow, of course. Why wouldn't they have had that to begin with? But, you know, it's good, like you said, to see the FTC stepping in here. I know the story also went on to cite a similar settlement with Asus, which agreed to 20 years of security audits after it had failed to secure its routers. So some promising measures there. And Seth, like we've talked about numerous times on the show, definitely expect this to be a continuing trend. Speaking of network security and data privacy and such,

we've got one more story here we want to touch on. In May, this one is a story about Amazon confirming it keeps Alexa transcripts that you can't delete. So I'm going to read here from the story a little bit. In May, lawmakers reached out to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, demanding answers on Alexa and how long it kept voice recordings and transcripts, as well as what the data gets used for. Amazon's Vice President of Public Policy Brian Housman sent a response on June 28th and in the letter tells lawmakers that Amazon keeps transcripts and voice recordings indefinitely and only removes them if they are manually deleted by users.

Hussman also noted that Amazon had an, quote, ongoing effort to ensure those transcripts do not remain in any of Alexa's other storage systems, end quote, but there are still records from some conversations with Alexa that Amazon won't delete, even if people remove the audio the letter revealed. Yikes, again, quote quote amazon's response leaves open the possibility that transcripts of other voice interactions with alexa are not deleted from all of amazon servers even after a user has deleted the recording from his or her device and quote this was said by delaware senator chris coons in a statement quote's more, the extent to which the data is shared with third parties and how those third parties use and control that information is still unclear.

So a lot of unanswered questions here. I think this story prompts more questions than it does, than it does answers. And of course, these are things to continually remain aware of. Yeah. And I think Amazon has a major security issue on their hands, especially if they're handing off recordings of people to third parties without, you know, Amazon is the Wild West company, right? They're just, they're the company that's throwing the spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks. And that's how they got where they are. And they haven't, it's kind of like the cat's out of the bag, right? And they're trying, they're going to have to eventually one day cut some ties and figure out how to get that cat back in the bag

because Google did that, and we all got upset that Nest, you know, was going to have all these restrictions on it. Amazon is probably going to have the same thing if lawmakers keep looking into this and finding out more. And people know more about the audio not being deleted. I've got to say, mine's sitting on the counter unplugged it's it's gone like i uh my wife's like this was it just final you said it yep final straw it's it's done it it was sitting there ignoring her and and not responding it just i don't it doesn't work very well and i don't know it the final straw the camel's back was broken

and the amazon's the amazon's gotta go so bye bye alexa is it going in the uh well i guess it can't really go in the hall of of shame yeah no no i don't think it can go there technically because i the product is is still out because that's like the graveyard right right that's a graveyard yeah and for you know for all for what it'll be a while before that one goes in the graveyard. Exactly. Exactly. Dave Zatz is reporting that Wyze continues its march towards smart home domination with inexpensive camera hardware and powerful yet free service, which will soon include camera person detection.

Not to mention the wireless bulbs that just hit the market and an outdoor camera that is also in route. But wait, there's more, he says. The company plans on rolling out a smart plug and, oddly enough, a connected scale for presumably measuring how many pounds you got by not getting out of bed and turning off the lights. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what you would need, Wyze would need a hard scale for. It's kind of weird. It is an odd addition to the lineup. And Wyze is just a really intriguing company to me in general.

We've talked about this numerous times on the show. I'm just so leery of a company that sells hardware for as cheap as they do. But they continue to come out with new products. And, you know, we'll see if they stand the test of time. It's, we talk about the race to the bottom, and Wyze is really leading that race right now, so it's pretty fascinating to watch. Moving on here, Philips Hue is announcing a new line of connected smart bulbs that have the ability to bypass the hub completely.

Philips Hue with Bluetooth lights, as the name suggests, have Bluetooth built in which means you can set them up with a smartphone app no hub needed so pretty cool i know the hubs were the big thing when we started the show and and we're starting to see more and more of the there you go that that bell's been getting a little dusty yeah we're starting to see more and more of these these uh this guy's gonna have to end up in the graveyard as well. That's right. Yeah, when the last hub goes, so goes the bell.

Well, these are a little bit more restrictive than the ones that you do get with the hub. I think the hub's going to be around a little bit longer because you can't get HomeKit unless you have the smart hub with these. You also can only install 10 bulbs compared to 50 with the hub, and you can't group them into different rooms, which means you can't do more complex routines, and you can only control them all together. So it's best for putting these all in a single room. But they're low cost, though.

The standard light white is $15. White ambience light lets you adjust the color temperature for 25 and the white and colored option, white and colored option is 49. So maybe that's about the same price as the standard QLED. Yeah, sounds about the same.

And it does say they work with Alexa and Google Assistant, but like you said, if you're an Apple user and HomeKit, then you will need the hub. So definitely something to be aware of there. Bixby. This guy's going to need to be in the graveyard before too long.

All right. Bixby may be the forgotten child of virtual assistants, but Samsung is still hoping it can break through and compete with the likes of Siri, Alexa, and Cortana. Who? The company has opened the Bixby marketplace in the U.S. and South Korea, where users can download services to customize their assistant. There's speculation that the development of the Bixby Marketplace could be the prelude to Samsung finally releasing the Galaxy Home smart speaker, definitely going in the graveyard, to challenge the Amazon Echo and Google Home devices. Pretty bearish on Samsung there, Seth. Yeah, well, let's see. They got a lot of ground to cover.

They got a lot of ground to cover. I thought this was interesting, too. The Marketplace is going to offer these Bixby apps, which Samsung is calling, you ready for this? Capsules. Interesting. I don't know. Somebody in the marketing department needs to be let go i don't get it

capsules yeah exactly but you know all the usual suspects here google maps spotify iheart radio npr yelp um all the usual stuff you would expect to see in an app store like staff picks user reviews categories browsing etc so yep it's um you know nothing here that's show-stopping other than uh that we're finally seeing some progress and we may have more traction may or may not have more traction for bixby here in the near future time will tell moving on here fubo tv announced on thursday that they are soft launching the fubo sports network a live free-to-consumer tv network for u.s sports fans offering event coverage news and exclusive programming as part of the initiative fubo tv is developing its first slate of original content

which it will roll out in stages quote there's an opportunity to cater to the demand for free content, said David Gandler, FuboTV's co-founder and CEO. We want to be able to make sure we tap into that part of the spectrum in terms of entry-level video. That sounds cool. Another good option. Yeah, another good option for cord cutters, and sports has always been one of those kind of last frontiers for, for a cord cutters to really have, have some great options. So I've been kind of keeping an eye on, on Fubo. I think their, their paid package, if I recall correctly, is not super cheap. It's in like, I think, want to say the $40 range. I can look that up real quick, but, um, pretty sports focused. And they're one of the leaders, I I think in, in, uh, cord cutting space for, for sports fans. So definitely if that, uh, if that fits you, uh, go check them out. Yeah. We get, I gotta remember to put on my, my calendar when those auctions are for the, like the streaming rights, uh, or the broadcast rights for like NFL and, and, and college, like in CAA stuff, go, go on sale. Cause that's, that's going to be the college, like NCAA stuff, go on sale. Because that's going to be the real streaming versus broadcast television

when it's going to come down. I think when those all go to YouTube or something, we're going to be in trouble. Research firm Strategy Analytics' latest sales research indicates that Roku is expanding its dominance in the U.S. with over 41 million active media streaming devices. That's about 15% of the market. That's a 36% advantage over the next closest platform, Sony's PlayStation line, which is crazy.

I mean, PlayStation is super popular. It's crazy to think that Roku has a 36% advantage over them. Yeah, no, I agree. And the story goes on to talk about really one of Roku's big competitive advantages. One of the reasons they're so far out in front is their TV partnerships. And everywhere from low to mid to high end TVs are all available with that Roku interface built in. And we've talked about it on the show before. It's a great interface. It's we ha I have it on my, my TCL here. We admittedly don't use it too much because we've got an Apple TV and that just tends

to be our default, but I've played around with it and it's a, it's a great, it's a great interface. I mean, I would have no qualms about just using that input zero type of setup and having the Roku that's built right into the TV. And the story does also go on to say that it's not surprising that Roku's fastest growing competitors are, in fact, smart TVs with these interfaces built in. So they talk about Samsung and LG both have their TV platforms that they're really pushing as well. Yeah. I mean, I've got to also say it's a small, inexpensive, like, dongle, HDMI dongle type device that works. Like, what are you going to get an Amazon Fire and torture yourself that way? No, it's garbage.

Throw that away. Like, the Roku is a great 4K media and you just all you need to do is plug in the hdmi port and and you're good to go on any old tv so um i i i think they have i just can't believe that they're 36 more than the playstation line because man playstation is super popular so i think we need to start a counter for how many jabs, Seth, you can get in on Amazon in one episode. Got one more coming. Got one more coming. All right.

Well, shifting gears here, Netflix, known for taking big bets on experimental shows and ambitious dramas set in far-flung locations, but now the golden days of the company's cavalier spending on original content may be coming to a close. It is becoming more careful with its finances, a report from the information suggests. The company is expected to be more budget-conscious with future productions as it faces competition from upcoming streaming services by Disney, NBCUniversal, Apple, and WarnerMedia. Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos told several high-ranking TV and film executives in early June that the company had to be more picky with its spending on big budget productions. Any upcoming projects need to bring in large numbers of viewers and will no longer be

able to float by due to being loved by critics or earning the company more credibility. One example he gave of a big no-go for the future was Triple Frontier, an action drama starring Ben Affleck that cost $115 million and flopped. I watched about half of that movie, by the way, and I don't watch a lot of movies these days. I tried to watch that one and didn't do it for me. I've been meaning to watch it. Now on your recommendation, I'm just going to take that off the watch list.

You could tell it was a big budget production. I remember thinking to myself, like, wow, they must have spent a lot of money on this. And I've always wondered, frankly, how Netflix does it. And I've always sort of written it off to the economies of scale just being sort of so big they're beyond my ability to really wrap my head around. But yeah, at some point you got to imagine that they're just burning a ton of cash on just the amount of original content that they're producing and the production quality on it. It's got to be staggering. Well, they're slated, that article, same article says they're slated to spend $15 billion on original content in

2019. So yeah, they are spending money, but it sounds like the belt's getting a little bit tighter because they know that all these other companies are coming down the road. Disney, NBC, Universal, Apple, and Warner. Those are new competitors in the space that they've been just dominating or able to dominate for the past, you know, a couple of years now. And, uh, with competition, they're, they're going to have to get smarter and tighter about how they spend their

money, which is good, which is good. Cause I mean, stranger things, stranger things, uh, by the time you listen to this, stranger things would have been out right. The season three, that's right. It's a great little show and, and, and, and has proven itself. And, um, you know, now it'll, now it'll, it'll, it should be out. It's right. Great little show and has proven itself. And, you know, now it should be out. It's funny. I'm thinking, like, I bought a Stranger Things, like, DVD set or Blu-ray set or whatever. And my wife was like, why did you get this? I'm like, well, you know, just in case you wanted to watch it.

This is like, it's on Netflix. I'm like, oh, yeah. Yeah, it is. Oh, yeah. You're right. That's right. Whoops. Impulse buy.

Well, it was a good deal. It's like nine dollars for the whole whole series. So. All right. So let's let's move on to batching Alex a little bit more and see how much more trash we can talk about Amazon in one story. Let's do it. Why not? I found this really interesting story over at The Information today entitled, Alexa, is the voice still the next big thing after mobile? article that goes over a number of data points and talks to a number of people both inside Amazon,

outside Amazon, like working with their partners and some of their partners that have made like Amazon Alexa enabled devices. And man, this is a fascinating article that probably, I don't know, probably like 20% of it's devoted to home control alone and talking about what they've done there. But the more you read and kind of try and figure out what Amazon is doing with the Echo line, I'll try not to say it one time at least here. It seems like maybe they don't or didn't have a clear strategy. And truly, the strategy was just throw it against the wall and see what sticks and then we'll figure out how to to fix what's broken later a lot of their partners seem to be unhappy with with the progress that you know there's a couple

people in here like yeah we've made skills and and things that have that work with Amazon. And then Amazon comes in and says, yeah, now we own, we have that same skill and you're out, you know, that kind of thing. So it's, it's a very weird and strange market for a, for a manufacturer to get involved with because you don't have any like brand recognition. Like you look at your phone, like for, if you look at like mobile and phone and and and the way the phones got popular with apps like you could you looked on your phone and you have all these little icons on there and they're branded you know whatever calculator app you downloaded and you can tell that that's different from the

next free calculator app that you downloaded next to it. But there's no way to do that with a voice-enabled platform. I'm picking on Alexa here, but this also applies to both Google and Siri. You're just shouting random commands into the air. It gets processed on this device, and then the data gets sent up to whatever server, and then whatever response comes back.

There's no brand loyalty. There's no customer loyalty to those types of skills and those types of, those types of products, which I found fascinating to sit here and think about as I was reading this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess, you know, from a brand awareness perspective, excuse me, you're, you're probably right. I think you, I mean, you've hit on it louder than anyone. The user experience certainly is going to generate loyalty or disloyalty. But overall, I did think it was a really interesting read. It was a great write-up from the information, which does really quality work and just a deep dive into kind of the state of that whole technology. And it's true, like, there's just... Yeah, this story hovers around Alexa, but it's talking more about voice in general, I think, right? Yeah, I mean, and there's just been so much hype around voice,

like the title says, is it the next big thing after mobile? And I got kind of a laugh out of a line in here where it just, I forget the exact words and I'm going to struggle to find it in the moment, but it basically said, you know, there's been a lot of excitement about all of the different possibilities and use cases, but really the data shows that by and large, these devices are being used for music and timers. And I was like, that's exactly what mine is used for. 99.9% of the time, the echo in my kitchen is either a timer or we're playing music. That extra 1%, like literally I might be asking, well, you know, the weather, I guess I use it for the weather fairly frequently. Podcasts I would lump together with music, you know, like, so just general sort of entertainment and kitchen timers are really the most common. But the story goes on to talk about just some

of the staggering numbers that Amazon is investing here. And they've got, you know, they said 10,000 employees. Here we go. The team dedicated to Alexa inside Amazon has skyrocketed in numbers in recent years to more than 10,000 people. Amazon continues to hire rapidly for the group with Alexa-related job openings currently sitting at about 1,500 positions. I just can't even wrap my mind around 10,000 people working just on Alexa. Like, it just doesn't seem right. It's staggering to me. Yeah, and it goes on to say that because it's such a big team, it's led to confusion over what department inside is responsible for what tasks.

There are several employees in there that say, you know, we were working on this feature. And then we'd find out at a press release, at a product release time, that an entire different division of Amazon had actually worked on something and was releasing it. And there was no communication between team A and team B because they were in part of these different types of silos that are within that organization. You can see like how, here's the quote, there are 10 different business groups that all own a fraction of the sausage and they all decide that the key ingredient needs to be different. The first fraction is tripe, chicken, more beef, the person said. There is nobody that

owns the sausage end to end. And man, that quote right there, nobody owns the sausage end to end. You can see that in the product. You can see that in the garbage fire of an app that they have. You can absolutely see that. And you go over and use a Google home and the Google home app and say, okay, these team was actually talking to each other. You know, they know how, they know what was lining up here and needed to line up here and needed to line up here um but man i this this sauce throwing the spaghetti sausage against the wall to see what sticks um nobody owning a sausage indian man that's a perfect quote for what i feel about this product yeah the dumpster fire yeah yeah i i just yeah i looked while you were talking there amazon how many employees does Amazon have? According to a quick Google search here, 647,500 employees as of 2018.

Wow. This includes full and part-time employees between, wait, full and part-time employees between 2007 and 2018. So I don't know if that's aggregate or what but either way it's i mean it's it's a staggering large company and there's there's so much that they do like we think of amazon maybe on this show as the people that make the little echo devices and have this big store and then if you talk to anybody else they're like oh yeah that's where i get my toilet paper and you know things that come in in prime and whatever and then like you go talk to a developer and it's a completely different business like the the mass the massive part of amazon is all the servers and stuff that run the entire internet so like it's

it's a crazy crazy big company um so it's it's not surprising that they have it's not surprising that they're as big as they are but it is i was saying that that 10 000 number was surprising to me uh you sent it's that's a ton of people to be working on that product and apple probably has like three working on siri in a can right now so i have to get get the old shelf dusted off that for the graveyard. Yeah. Somewhere there needs to be a happy medium. Yeah, yeah. One of the couple other things that stood out to me in kind of this waiting for an industry section here, they talked to a few.

Actually, here's Wise Labs. They talked to them. They said that Alexa's growth has been a boon to smart home devices makers. One of the companies, Wise Lab, which sells the smart home cameras that work with Alexa for as little as $19.99. And Alexa created the Alexa Fund to invest up to $200 million in capital in startups focused on voice. One of those being Nucleus. We've talked about them in the past. They were great up until the point, it was like an Alexa-enabled intercom system, which was great up until the point where Amazon announced a competing product called the Echo Show, which basically put that company mostly out of business.

They shifted, and they've gone into designing products to help caretakers check on seniors. So it's interesting that, that, that, that part's very interesting where you can be, uh, be in like control of your product and thinking that you have something good and you're working with Amazon and then they flip the switch and, and then you're, you're out the door. Squash you. Yep. Yeah. It's crazy. And yeah, last thing I wanted to point out that I thought was interesting, you know, it talks about Amazon's never explicitly said how it intends to really make money from Alexa. And we've talked about this before. It's a big question.

And one of the most obvious ways that they talk about here would be voice shopping. It seemed like one of the most natural possibilities out of the gate, but one estimate by the firm OC&C Strategy Consultants for, well, so this consultancy had forecasted that voice shopping could hit $40 billion by 2022, but so far, few people are using Alexa to shop. The information reported last year that in the first half of 2018, just 2% of people with Echo devices had used them to make a purchase. And I know I'm in the 98%. I've never even really thought seriously about using mine to make a purchase. I just don't see it as a great interface for that. No. Another effort was at Alexa for Business. I think we talked about that too, where companies can pay a subscription to use an Echo in meeting rooms and

that kind of thing. I think we saw a little bit of that. I think maybe Crestron may have been using something like that. That particular product has generated less than $300,000 in revenue last year, according to one of the people involved here. $300,000, man, that is... Small potatoes. Wow, that is way, way small potatoes. That is less than most integration firms that I know are making. Much less than most integration firms. Yeah. So really interesting story. We will include a link to that. It is behind a paywall. Like work there. So if you're interested in diving into that, we'll have a link in the show notes that'll be at hometech.fm slash 265, along with all of the other links and topics that we've discussed on our episode here. Once again, that's hometech.fm slash 265. And while you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter where we'll send you weekly show reminders, as well as other occasional updates about all of the great things going on here in the world of home tech.

Yep, and don't forget, you could join us in the chat room live Wednesday starting somewhere between 7, 7.30 p.m. Eastern time zone. To find out more, head on over to hometech.fm slash live. All right, Seth, we got a gem of a pick of the week here this week, the Band-Aid, the Band-Aid picture. And the pros in the audience will definitely get a kick out of this one. I ran across this on the Control 4 dealer forums, and there was a humor thread that was kind of being posted there.

The first, the guy posted that he had installed some cameras, and then they came in and put the rain gutters in and the downspouts on those gutters went right in front of the PTZ cameras, which is strange. You know, that'll cause you to have this white part of your view blocked out on those nice 1500. Not ideal. No, not ideal, exactly. So, of course, guys started posting different pictures

of things that they've come across in the field. And here's one of a little IR bud pasted onto a that is popped off. And now the client has pasted it back on to the DVD player, Panasonic DVD player using a bandaid. A bandaid. Yeah. From Ron over there. It's so funny. I have not. This is the first one I have not seen. Yeah, from Ron over there. It's so funny. This is the first one.

I have seen a lot of things used to hold those earbuds on. I have never seen a Band-Aid. That is a first for me. You know, whatever it takes, right? I can just see the way this played out. It was like a support call. Hey, my DVD player is not working. They're troubleshooting over the phone. Oh oh the little flasher thing fell off you need to stick it on there with something oh crap all right i

got a band-aid here we go it just it's just got to be in the area and now look at it that might be a like a plasma an old panasonic plasma tv it's got the little two yeah no you're right on there uh but i the same thing, you know, the TV, the humidity gets those little sticky pads on the back of the IR buds and they pop off all the time. Uh, and really there's not much that I know guys that cement those on. I always use a hot glue gun to stick them back on and make sure they didn't come off. But, uh, evidently band-aids work too. It's definitely of the you know at one vision any when we bring on new folks onto the support team and we're training them up on support because some of them come with

some background in integration and others come more from a customer service side so we have to train on some of the basics and you know the the old ir emitter that's that's one of the oh yeah that's one of the first things you got to internalize. So I'm sure there are plenty of integrators out there who are thinking to themselves, if I never see another IR emitter falling off of a TV, it'll be too soon. Yeah.

We'll pass this around to the new guys at Lundin and say, you know, this is something you can tell the client to do. Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. We'll bring some Band-Aids to us when we see you. Yeah. That's right. All right, cool. cool well if you have any feedback questions comments picks of the week or ideas for a show topic or guest give us a shout we would love to hear from you our email address

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and talk about the inside baseball conversations about everything home technology related and Facebook outages. Facebook outages was big today. That was big. Instagram and WhatsApp too. Big deal. Well, there was a big Cloudflareage outages this week as well that took down a ton of stuff not not been a great week for that yeah bad week for the internet yeah yeah

if you want to support the show but cannot do so financially we definitely get that we would appreciate a review on itunes or a rating in your podcast app of choice those reviews definitely do help other people find the show. So if you are a fan and supporter of what we do here at the Home Tech Podcast, take a minute to do so and help others find the podcast. That'd be good. Jason, I finally updated to Control 4 OS 3 today. Oh, did you? I did. I did. I took the plunge.

Are there early reviews in or is the jury still out? I mean, it's nice it's nice i i'm not like i don't i have my little touch screen here that i kind of develop with on every day and then for the most part nothing else changes because i just use the remotes inside right i don't use the on screen too often but from what i understand it looks it looks good and it's been positive feedback and uh i definitely like like if you go under and try and control your fans, they used to have these small controls that you'd have to pinpoint and try to hit to get the fan to change speed.

And it's much larger now, easier to operate. So that's always a good thing when you can. Yeah, those little things make a difference. Yeah, yeah. For sure. So I've been happy with that so far, but I don't know. I haven't really been able to dig deep and find other things in this thing. All right.

Well, we'll be waiting with bated breath for the full-blown Seth Johnson review. I don't know. I have too much work to do between now and Cedia. You got bills to pay. I get it. Probably not going to get that done. Yeah. I get it.

All right, Seth. Well, I hope you have a great rest of your holiday weekend, and I'll look forward to reconnecting again with you next week. All right, sounds good. Have a good weekend, Jason. All right, take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.