The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Apple Issues & Review, Twitter Changes, WeWork Bloodletting & Other Tech News Nov 21, 2019

Episode Date: November 22, 2019

Apple Issues & Review, Twitter Changes, WeWork Bloodletting & Other Tech News Nov 21, 2019

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, coming to you with another great podcast. Thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you, of course, being with thechrisvossshow.com. Be sure to go to thechrisvosspodcastnetwork.com. You can see eight of the wonderful podcasts that we have and all the different things we have going on over there. Got some exciting stuff coming up. We have the CES show, the Consumer Electronics Show,

that's coming up in January, beginning of January. It's the big show. Big show we do all year. Lots of walking. I'm already starting to exercise. I saw some people on Twitter saying how they were already starting to go on their CES diet to lose weight so they're in shape. It's an extraordinary, probably the biggest show on earth when it comes to shows

and all the different products that are there. It's just a crazy amount of innovation and technology, and I love going every year. It's a lot of fun, but it's a lot of work, and it's a lot of walking. So you bring some good walking shoes. You want to bring lots of vitamin C. Make sure that your health is really jacked up because there's lots of viruses. You have people coming from all over the world and stuff,

so you've got to make sure you're staying healthy. You've got to bring those alcohol wipes for your hands and stuff. Yeah, it is a marathon of a an event and uh i don't think i don't think i've ever seen a show there's anything like it in the world uh it's crazy all the stuff that's there and uh every year i promise myself that i will walk every inch of the floor and i will see everything And every year I fail every year. I do not come close. And every year my legs go, screw you. We're leaving and you can just do whatever you want. So anyway, we're going to see the CS show. If you've gotten a chance, get some tickets to it. If you had the ability to do, of course you have to be in the association of the CTA or, um, you have to be like press or you know so you have to be someone

who works in the industry I know sometimes there are vendors that give away tickets so you know you can look watch for those but for the most part you kind of have to be on the inside to go see it but guess what you can watch the Chris Foss show calm and see all of our coverage that we'll be doing it will be probably 24 7 which it usually is it's pretty crazy and we'll be doing it will be probably 24 7 which it usually is it's pretty crazy and we'll be doing lots of interviews for the podcast we'll be talking to lots of people um bringing you all the coolest latest innovative stuff it's yes we're bringing a lot of stuff to you it's gonna be crazy so anyway the other show uh i believe we're doing in December is MJ is

con it's a marijuana business convention so we're gonna go see that it's gonna be in Las Vegas in mid-december and that's gonna be a really cool show to go and see of course we've launched just recently the potbizpodcast.com. It took us so long to launch that because we just could not come up with a name for it that we liked, but we finally did, Pot Biz Podcast. I mean, how hard is that to remember? And so on there, we're talking a lot of people who are in the business of pot, marijuana, this industry. We're talking about investments in the industry. Certainly if you're familiar with all the things that are going on in the world. If you're an investor, you buy stocks, you buy

businesses, you create businesses. Maybe you're an entrepreneur who wants to get started in the entrepreneur business of pot or legalization or CBD or other things like that. We talk about that stuff. So be sure to subscribe to that new podcast show that we have going on over there. Let's get into some of the news that's going on today. It's, what's the date today? November 21st, Thursday. Do you realize a week from now, it's going to be Thanksgiving. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

Oh, man. Man, I better start working out just for CES and Thanksgiving alone. I should be doing this podcast on my treadmill right now. If you guys hear pitter-pattering like, that's probably my treadmill. It's not probably anything else. Anyway, we'll leave it at that. Let's talk about tech news. What the hell is going on in the tech world, Chris?

Where have you been for a week? I don't know. I needed a break. So I took a week off. Don't hate me. Just love me. Sometimes we need to be apart you know we need some space so that we can learn how to appreciate each other better but i always love you it's just sometimes i need some i need to unwind i think i have to go to my man cave i have to go my man cave for a little

while and leave the podcast at the door. That's kind of what happens. Anyway, let's get into this. Bloomberg. Bloomberg sources say Apple is overhauling how it tests software. Mainly, it's making daily builds disable unfinished features by default

after a swarm of bugs marred the iOSos 13 debut so i guess what they're doing is uh trying to test things better before they launch it what a concept what an idea there apple way to go every software company does have this problem uh so um there you go uh and uh yeah i mean maybe that'll help them be less buggy. Here's an idea. Why don't you just get it right before you ship it? Instead of using all of us as beta testers. Like, you know, the hard part is all these companies, every company does it.

So I'm not just picking on Apple, but every one of these companies, they pretty much have set dates. Like, you always know that September is going to be a big launch date. You know, all of them do. Samsung, all these companies do. The problem is every year they're just scrambling down to the last minute, I'm sure, to get everything perfect. You see that in the beta test, especially like Apple. You can get the beta test on the back end so you can see all the holes and stuff like Swiss cheese. And, you know, maybe you should just not ship every september you should

just like do it whenever but i realize kind of the reason they do that i mean it's smart to ship in september because christmas those christmas sales those actually it's going to start next week in a day right black friday in fact you know i should make another ad. We are currently working on the best gifts to buy for Christmas. The highest quality, best gifts, the products that we've seen this year that we think would be great gifts. Now, they might not always be cheap. We're probably going to try and figure out a way to do some like budget stuff. Maybe we'll do two posts. We'll do like the best gifts you can buy, you know, if you got $500 kicking around, $300 to $500 kicking around.

Or another post for like the best budget things you can buy for someone that are going to be incredible value. Maybe I'll do two. But we're working on this post. We're asking all these PR agencies that we work with, wonderful people and companies, to send us their latest, hottest products so that we can bring you, you, not you, you. No, not the one in the back there. You up front.

Right there. You. Just you. And a few of you, the rest of you. We're looking to bring... I should have one of those stereo things where I can go left and right during that. Not you. That you.

I'm moving around the mic like that's going to create a stereo system through left and right channels. Maybe it will. Am I in the left channel now? Am I in the right channel now? Shut up and do the podcast, Chris. Shut up and do the podcast chris shut up and do the podcast anyway guys it's thursday man it's a week from thanksgiving holy crap it's that hell point of the year i'm not even going out on black friday you're going on black friday i ain't i ain't

because i like living and i'm not getting myself ma memed so that I can get $100 off a TV, eh? Not to mention that TV's going to get broke fighting my way out of a Walmart. So there's that. I don't know. Some people like shopping and they like the game. God bless them. And just make sure you buy lots of health insurance and life insurance. So what else do we have here?

Oh, yeah, so anyway, we're going to be building that list, so watch for that. I'm going to try and get this thing out hopefully this weekend, and then what we're going to do is we're going to put out the list because we're still getting stuff in. We're still trying to review and get it done, but what we're going to be doing is updating that list all the way up to Christmas. So if you see the list come out, best gifts to buy before Christmas, realize you might want to bookmark that list because we're going to keep updating it with stuff as we get stuff, all the newest and latest stuff,

and all that good stuff. So by Christmas, you should see wonderful rollouts of the best stuff you can buy for your family. If you really love them. You know what I should do? I know we're not getting any news and I've segued here. But you know what we should do? We should do a product, best gifts to buy for people you hate. We should do that list. I'm going to think that somebody reminded me to do that list.

If anybody's got any products they'd like to recommend that should go on that list, products you should buy for people you genuinely hate. Maybe they're family members that have a certain political affiliation. Maybe they're just your name that neighbor you hate your neighbor that their dog always comes and poops on your lawn or something uh actually i can think of a product that would make the top of that list um i'm trying to trying to think what the name of it is but what they do is they you you pay them with bitcoin and they're an overseas company and you uh pay them with bitcoin and you can say whatever you want in an anonymous um note and what

you do is you uh get this company i think it's called shit express i think it's one of the shit express.com anyway you you uh pay the company and they ship um horse poop or cow poop i'm not sure but it's literally cow poop in a container they ship it to that person with your dirty note anonymously to tell you what you think of them so hey man there you go uh uh so let's get on other news i'll have to think about that gifts you should get for someone you hate welcome to the chris voss show first up what's the best gift you should give someone who hates an apple iphone oh i'm just kidding that wasn't nice chris uh twitter twitter according to text crunch is rolling out its hide replies feature to all users

globally because god knows i just want to read posts and not know what the replies were um because why bother having more context to something i don't know what is that kind of fake news feature like uh someone said something i don't want to see what their replies were, whether or not they validated the post or called out the bullshit on the post. I don't know, man, but whatever. Anyway. Uh, so Twitter's up to that. Thank God.

Way to go Twitter. Oh, Twitter's kind of starting to make some right moves. I, I wouldn't turn off the replies. I like the replies. The replies are the best part. You know, the replies are like the comments section of a blog post, especially one that goes off the rails, like, you know, Reddit, Ken, you know, just about any, just about any Reddit post is fun to read the comments. And you're just like, oh man, the comments are better than the

post. Oh, wow. The trolling is real. So, um, you know, plus the nice thing about replies is they're a validation of the post. So either people go, yeah, you're right. That's so smart. And what you said is true. And here's some other proof that is true. Or, you know, sometimes you get called out. I've been called out. Like sometimes, uh, I'll wake up in the morning morning i'll see like a post from somebody and i'll be like yeah that makes a lot of sense and i'm like half asleep and i just post it repost it and then somebody will be like hey chris that was like 2014 what are you doing man and i'll be like oh crap man i just woke up oh my dad so uh you know what you know what they

should come out with twitter should come out with? Twitter should come out with Nevermind. I was going to say an automatic spell fixer, fixspeller. Is that even a word? Fixspeller for your posts. But I don't know. Then we'd assume that certain people who misspell fairly frequently, covfefe, on the internet aren't as dumb as we, probably dumb as we should know they are. What else is going on in the world?

Apple removed their ratings and reviews section from product pages on its website over the weekend. This is according to Apple Insider. This is kind of interesting november 17th apple removed the ratings and reviews section from all product pages on the apple website it's unclear why they did this it's a mystery tim cook let us know what the mystery is tim i don't know man one of the problems that i've been seeing a lot of reviews lately is uh a lot of trolling and i'm i can't remember what the word is for it but basically

it's like programmed uh mass trashing like recently i saw um what was the death stranding death stranding is a video game and uh i think the maker has a pretty good reputation in making good games, and it's a good game for my friends I've talked to. I haven't played it, but it's a pretty good game. And before its launch, before anybody really got to play with this thing, they got, I think it's called troll bombed or comment bombed, but they got bombed with ugly reviews just like zero stars one star just trashing the game before it even got launched and sold and i guess it was some sort of activist group uh that that latched on to a whole mess of other people who kind of got a

cancel culture sort of uh attitude about i don't know, some other stuff that he's done. Doesn't really have anything to do with gaming, to my understanding. So anyway, they comment bombed the ratings. We've seen this happen on Netflix. We've seen this happen on Amazon. And, you know, maybe that's what Apple's doing. They don't want to get bombed for rating reviews, which is really sad because even on Amazon,

I got to tell you, I was talking about a friend this the other day on Facebook. The Chris Voss Show, we get about two pitches a day, two to three pitches a day from Chinese companies largely and Asian companies pitching us to do Amazon reviews. We won't do them because they're against the TOS of Amazon and it's kind of unethical and it pollutes the reviews on Amazon. So you have to be really careful.

Not to mention I've seen reviews where clearly, clearly the employees of a company were going in and spoofing up the reviews. Seen the same thing on Google Play. You'll see a bunch of really angry people going, your app sucks, this app sucks. And then suddenly you'll see these things that'll be like, I don't know what these other people, I love this game. It's the greatest game ever. And I'm just like, wow, that's really weird.

Normally when I review something or bash it, I don't mention what everyone else is reviewing. So you know what I mean? Yeah, that's it. Anyway, according to 9to5Google, Google Duplex launches on web as Google Assistant in Chrome. Let's users buy movie tickets from 70 plus cinemas and ticketing services across the u.s so um google duplex it's moving beyond voice and coming to the web

so i'm gonna have to find out some more about google duplex you can tell me what you think of it uh next up in the news this is kind political, but we have to talk about it because we've talked about it before in the Chris Voss Show, and this is the tech biz. Evidently, President Donald Trump hosted an undisclosed dinner with Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel at the White House in October. Facebook confirmed this meeting. Kind of interesting. I'd love to know what these meetings are about. Uh, uh, right now, Twitter has banned political ads and Google has said they're going to dial it back. They're going to change targeting. I believe Facebook may have talked about targeting. I've verified that story.

I just saw some right wing media complaining about how the targeting is being changed, but I, I thought it, they said Facebook, but,, but it appears Google has taken and done that. They're taking away the micro-targeting so much with political ads, which is good. It makes it harder to play into biases and create false media that can manipulate people based upon their prejudices. So it'll be interesting to see what comes out of that. It's going to be interesting to see how social media and tech companies go through this whole maze of politics. It's going to happen at the 2020 election. And it's going to be interesting to see how that comes out the other side. And I'm sure we're going to have countries trying to mess with us.

There's lots of people who said 2016 election meddling was a cakewalk compared to what we're going to see in 2020. So keep your eyes on the prize at all times. Keep your hands and legs inside of the cart as it's moving. And scream loudly in terror. Microsoft has delayed the release of Surface earbuds which is said we're coming in the fall until spring of 2020 whoa what the hell happened there so that didn't go well uh this is an interesting story we've talked about this on the chris faust show over time is it as it came up and then is that it went down we you've probably heard about WeWork by now.

Holy crap. It's the company that started off as a unicorn that was going to be the most awesome thing ever and blah, blah, blah on the next Uber and whatever. Of course, Uber hasn't really done that good in the marketplace when it comes to stocks. Anyway, they, and let me give you a little more background on WeWork. WeWork, SoftBank, one of the main investors in WeWork,

had to basically buy out the other investors' pennies on the dollar, and they had to give $1.7 billion, I believe, to their CEO to get him paid off and make him go away. So he basically built a almost pyramid scheme of a company, kind of Ponzi-ish, and kind of had some interesting accounting measures that he used on the balance sheet. And in reality, they weren't a tech company. They were just a real estate office, commercial office company. That's really all they were. The only difference is instead of charging for leases for two or three years at a pop

and, you know, two or three months down for a security deposit, they took and, you know, they do this thing where, you know, you or I, if we're just individual employees, we can buy a month's worth of whatever and we can go use it as we like. Kind of interesting concept, but it's still a commercial leasing office business. But they turned it into a whole juggernaut of hype and said it was going to be something more, which it wasn't. The biggest problem with the commercial office leasing and commercial office stuff is that you, uh, you have to own the buildings or you have to, you know, have a long-term contract and then you got to resell that contract. It's not like it's

free. Um, and there's a lot of capital layout in it. It's cheap you know plus you've got to renovate uh the buildings to fit your open workspace model so there's that so anyway they gave the um ceo 1.7 billion dollars of walking money to get the fuck out uh and they just announced today that they are laying off around 2400 employees globally so they're trying to fix the business. They're trying to save it from bankruptcy, botched IPO. And this is what the problem is in our country, guys. This guy walks up, builds a shitty company that whatever. He walks away with $1.7 billion and and 2400 people get laid off it really should be

the other way around they should send the kid packing and they should be like um we're just giving your money to 2400 employees now that's my take on it if you build a faulty business i just don't understand man i built so many profitable businesses and uh wow man i just don't understand like you if i didn't have a profitable business i don't get paid that's how it works or that's how it's supposed to work i don't know so camali it's a whole different thing as long as they can go sell that turd to somebody else um you're still making money even though it's not. Should be a shirt I just made there. According to Thorot, I've never heard of those guys,

Google brings Smart Compose to Google Docs as a beta, initially available in English for the G Suite users on the web. I'm not a big G Suite user, so if you are, you might want to look into that. That might be cool for you and your Google Docs. According to Ars Technica, Google increases rewards for Titan M secure element exploits on Pixels to $1.5 billion and to $750K for other exploits. Android hack rewards used to top out at $200. So if you find exploits in their software, hey, good for you, man. Rock and roll.

So they're definitely paying people to fix and patch their problems, et cetera, et cetera. According to The Verge, Susan W., the CEO of YouTube, is we're going to bring ads to edge your content and its new gaming policy with fewer restrictions for violence in gaming uh thanks yeah thanks for finally getting around to that uh didn't used to be a big deal for like 10 freaking years everyone posted swear words and all sorts of other stuff on youtube and suddenly youtube's like hey we want to be moral youtube is turning into a cable channel, and they really don't care about creators anymore. They honestly, seriously don't.

That dream is dead. They're moving on to be a cable channel. So you might as well move on again as well. Here's the next Wall Street Journal. journal uh facebook according to sources sought feedback from large republican and democratic political ad buyers about changing ad targeting size from 100 to a few thousand they're considering boosting the minimum amount of people can be targeted by specific ads from 100 to a few thousand so that's why they're not stopping sales they're looking to make more freaking money out of it. There you go.

Well, what's the old saying? Follow the money. Let's see. According to VentureBeat, Gmail on Android and iOS is going to gain support for dynamic email starting on November 21st, letting users take action like purchasing products directly within a message. So dynamic email, whatever that means, you're going to be allowed to do all sorts of different things with it, evidently. Watch for that to launch, and away you go.

According to Amnesty International, they say Facebook and Google's omnipresent surveillance is inherently incompatible with the right to privacy and is a danger to human rights. A little leaf for that to go back in the Pandora's box, isn't it? Oh my gosh, we're being spied on. We should stop. Yeah, you can't stop that train, baby.

That's the way it is. uh according to tech crunch facebook brings stories to facebook dating letting users add their facebook or instagram stories to dating profiles that's kind of weird hey look at my dating profile i was out drunk with betty on friday and look she's puking you want to date me i don't know i like facebook stories when i when i'm bored like if i'm going to bed at night and i've read all the news and i got nothing better to do i'll like look at people's facebook stories and uh i'll be like what are my friends doing i'm like oh their lives are sad as mine okay facebook stories um you know that or their ability to deliver a live or recorded video really sucks i hate the ones where they post the meme i'm like seriously you posted a meme in your fucking facebook story

thanks yeah you can just do that on facebook your wall you seriously had to put that in a story because that's what i want to do is look for five minutes at a fucking meme quotation. Anyway, whatever. So Facebook is making so you can add stories to dating. I'm trying to think of what stories you can add to dating. I'm so lonely. Someone date me. I'm on Facebook dating.

The pool is really small. Let's put it that way, especially where I'm at in Utah. I'm up writing a book here. It's a real small pool. It's a real rough pool, man. It's a small, rough pool. So there you go. It looks like everyone has been thrown out of bed about 50 times,

and they hit the wall. And then they got run over by the taxi that was picking up the next morning. And oh, wait, I'm just describing me. Anyway, Facebook dating because that's what you need. I don't know. I kind of like Facebook dating for the reason it validates that you're not married. Like if you're married or something, you can't get into Facebook dating because it knows. And then if you really, like I guess if you want to get in, you have to create a fake Facebook profile,

which I'm sure a bunch of married guys are doing because that's what they do on dating sites. But for the most part, you can't just change your dating profile without your girlfriend or your wife being like, why did you change your facebook uh profile um oh i was trying to you know i just want to see what facebook dating was about what have fun with that conversation and give my girlfriend or wife your number only if she's hot though according to verge apple macbook pro 16 inch it's a 16 inch here ladies review not sure what that means best speakers on the laptop with a good keyboard and improve battery life wait they're talking about a macbook pro review and the top thing that sticks out the most of them is the best speakers

it has the best speakers on a laptop well shut up and take my fucking money but it only has a good keyboard you gotta learn to read reviews right because as reviewers we put little fucking easter eggs in here as to what we really think about something i've done it on my videos and people write me and they go i know exactly what you meant. That's not a glowing review. Let's see. It's got improved battery life, but it's heavy. And Mac OS Catalina is still buggy. Corny the Verge.

So there you go. Apple fixed the obvious things they said. The keyboard is fixed. If Apple did nothing else else that one thing makes the thing better is the speakers so go throw down 2500 bucks or whatever the hell those damn things cost and have fun or buy a chromebook 250 i think you can buy some really nice chromebooks actually we've reviewed some really nice uh laptops from uh acer we've got uh some other ac acers coming in the mail for the Christmas holiday post. So watch for that. Anyway, and then I'll go, what are you going to do?

According to Bloomberg, a look at Google's work with the U.S. military as senior military officials worry about the parts of Google's employee base approaching a state of open rebellion. There's kind of this conflict going on where the employees of Google are openly rebelling and not happy about the contracts that Google has with the U.S. military for different AI stuff, robotics, some of the darker secrets of probably Google X Labs or whatever. They're not really happy about them helping the military about some of their things.

So I don't know what's going to happen. Is he just military going to call in a drone strike to the Google employee base? Wait, can't kill the employees because the employees are the ones making the secrets to give to the U S military to use, to do the drone strikes to kill. Yeah, that's probably not going to give to the U.S. military to use to do the drone strikes to kill yeah that's probably not going to work all right good luck without U.S. military and Google

and when you look at it this way the U.S. military probably has it all anyway from the NSA they have everything already that Google's doing they don't really need them they're just like they're probably spying on the phones right now. Who's a Google subversive employee? It's like Hong Kong right now. Here we go. This is the story I was looking for. I talked about earlier, so let's go back to and expand. According to the New York Times,

Google's limiting micro-targeting of political ads for state and federal Democrats shakes up the ag plans and frustrates both demos and Republicans. Hey, man, fine with me. I want to see political ads die. Would it be great if we have any political ads? What a wonderful utopia that would be. I'll pay to see that. Like, charge me $10 a month for that. Not to see political ads.

Here's what I want. I want you to get up on your little soapbox, Mr. Politician, regardless of party. I'm not being political. But I want you to stand on your soapbox and dance for me, bitch. Dance. Dance. Show me your dance. And then, you know, tell me what you're going to do for the country.

But dance first because, you know. By the way, there's a poll. Make it rain, bitch like that uh that's what billionaires say uh let's see so anyway they're they're gonna take and do that but no here's what i think i don't want to see your spin ads and your misleading ads and you're like well you know uh my my my opposing opposing candidate killed Bobby in the street and ran him down with his car, and you're like, well, what an asshole, and the other commandos are like, that didn't happen, you faked that, you made that up, that's BS, and they're like, and then people are like, yeah, that must have really happened, because I'm fucking

stupid, so anyway, I don't know why I'm acting out this scene. Why are you acting out this scene, Chris? I don't know. It seemed entertaining at first, but now that I'm deep into it, it's not that funny. Maybe this part is. The narrative over the not funny part. Nice attempt to save Chris. Way to go.

According to The Verge, so anyway, I would just like you to stand on your soapbox. Let me see who you are. Let me judge your character, all your faults, blemishes, your warts, all that sort of good stuff. Let me see you. Let me evaluate you, not your little cheeky ads. There's some people that have political ads. You never see them on TV. They just have really good ads because they don't want to you know it's kind of like if

if i ran for political office you'd never see my face on a tv ad because i know i'd scare away voters people like oh oh holy holy shit look at that guy man we cannot let him get anywhere near the government holy crap he's holy, that guy is really, just got hit over the head with the ugly stick, so anyway, yeah, that's it, that's what I think about that, The Verge, Steam Remote Play is launched, this is pretty fun, I was kind of trying to try this out, Steam has put out Remote Play. Steam, the game distributor, seller, all that good stuff. Excuse me. I think that's the first time I've done that on a podcast.

That was weird. Let's users play local, mostly player PC games over the Internet with other gamers across desktop, iOS, and Android. Not really sure how it works or if you have to have the apps in themselves, like your friends have to have the games on their iOS things, or if they can just stream it through Steam SharePlay. I haven't really got a chance to play with it,

but if you have, let me know what you think, and we'll take it from there. Anyway, guys, that's a rundown of the news, the tech news as I see it. If you're a PR agency or a company, be sure to get with us so that we can get you possibly on the list.

We're considering, you know, we're not putting anybody on that list of best products. We're just picking the best products that we love. I know Master and Dynamics is going to be on that list. A few other cool lists from Centrance. I'm just looking around my desk at different things that impress me. Everything from OWC will be on that list, Otherworld Computing. There's a few other cool products that I'm just kind of looking around.

Anything from Kensington is always really good for us. We've got a bunch of Kensington stuff running around here. Logitech always puts out great product. Harman Kardon, JBL, of course, will always make the list every year. And, yeah, just anything you want to buy from those guys is going to be awesome. As far as I'm concerned, that's my opinion. I'm sticking to it. So there you go.

Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Go to thecvpn.com or chrisfosspodcastnetwork.com. Tell them, hey, Chris Voss sent me, man. I'm here. I'm here for you, baby. Anyway, guys, that's my story. I'm sticking to it. We'll see you next time.