Month: June 2024

A Chinese state-owned power company is splashing out 80 billion yuan ($11 billion) on an energy base that will generate electricity from solar, wind and coal sources. China Three Gorges Renewables Group, a subsidiary of the country’s largest hydropower company, plans to build a plant with a 16-gigawatt capacity and a five-gigawatt storage facility, Bloomberg reports.
This is part of China’s aim to build 455 gigawatts worth of renewable energy projects in the desert by 2030. This plant is being constructed in Inner Mongolia, which will get 135 gigawatts of the total planned output.
The China Three Gorges Corporation is looking to diversify its energy sources as building large hydro dams is becoming less feasible. According to Three Gorges, wind and solar generation from the plant will depend on grid accessibility. The coal plant is set to start operations in three years.
It’s somewhat disappointing that the new plant will have a coal power element, though it’s not fully surprising given the way China has bristled at renewable energy commitments during climate summit talks with other countries. As Bloomberg notes, China has been struggling to put all of its clean energy into the power grid. It often relies on coal when renewable sources like solar and wind aren’t available.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/china-is-plowing-11-billion-into-a-solar-wind-and-coal-energy-project-120007712.html?src=rss

A Chinese state-owned power company is splashing out 80 billion yuan ($11 billion) on an energy base that will generate electricity from solar, wind and coal sources. China Three Gorges Renewables Group, a subsidiary of the country’s largest hydropower company, plans to build a plant with a 16-gigawatt capacity and a five-gigawatt storage facility, Bloomberg reports.

This is part of China’s aim to build 455 gigawatts worth of renewable energy projects in the desert by 2030. This plant is being constructed in Inner Mongolia, which will get 135 gigawatts of the total planned output.

The China Three Gorges Corporation is looking to diversify its energy sources as building large hydro dams is becoming less feasible. According to Three Gorges, wind and solar generation from the plant will depend on grid accessibility. The coal plant is set to start operations in three years.

It’s somewhat disappointing that the new plant will have a coal power element, though it’s not fully surprising given the way China has bristled at renewable energy commitments during climate summit talks with other countries. As Bloomberg notes, China has been struggling to put all of its clean energy into the power grid. It often relies on coal when renewable sources like solar and wind aren’t available.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/china-is-plowing-11-billion-into-a-solar-wind-and-coal-energy-project-120007712.html?src=rss

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Motorola is still trying to reclaim the glory of its original Razr phone with its latest foldables. The new Razr and Razr+ are more stylish than the previous models, and at $700 and $1,000 respectively, they’re surprisingly affordable for devices with massive folding OLED screens. In other news, we chat about Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange being freed from prison, Rabbit’s massive security hole in the R1 AI gadget, and a horrific Sora AI commercial from Toys “R” Us.

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you’ve got suggestions or topics you’d like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!

Topics

Moto Razr and Razr+ first look: stylish and (somewhat) affordable – 0:51
Samsung announces its second Unpacked of the year will be in Paris – 13:14
Expect a bunch of new hardware at August’s Made by Google event – 19:56
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is free – 24:38
U.S. Supreme Court rules the government can ask social platforms to take down posts – 31:22
Rabbit R1 modder group discovers massive security holes – 36:11
Uber blames NYC law for locking drivers out of its app, more cities could come soon – 39:22
Toys “R” Us released a creepy ad using OpenAI’s Sora video tool – 44:43
Working on – 49:15
Pop culture picks – 51:24

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Credits 
Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Cherlynn LowProducer: Ben Ellman Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien

Transcript

Devindra: [00:00:00] What’s up Internet and welcome back to the Engadget Podcast. I’m Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar.
Cherlynn: I’m Deputy Editor Cherlynn Low.
Devindra: This week, we’ll be chatting about Moto’s new Razrs. There’s new Razr and Razr+ and yeah, their foldables once again, they look pretty cool keeping very pretty affordable prices for foldables too.
So we’ll be talking about that. We’ll talk about Julian Assange being set free from prison, a couple of Supreme court rulings, and oh man, we’re just gonna really look forward to events happening or at least one big event happening in August, which thank you, Google. We all want to do that. We all want to be traveling for work in August.
Thank you so much as always folks. If you’re enjoying the show, please be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcaster of choice, leave us a review on iTunes, drop us an email at podcast@engadget.com. Cherlynn, I know you were very excited. You seem so excited about the new Motorola Razr and Razr+.
I’m, you they look really nice. I like the prices. What is it? [00:01:00] 700 for the Razr 1000 for the Razr+. These are nice looking foldables. What’s up this year?
Cherlynn: Very excited is a very strong way to put how I feel about these things. I think are we no longer
Devindra: excited about foldables? Is it just
Cherlynn: I’ve always been, I think I was more excited for, and here’s where you could use the right word.
And there’s also a story behind this. Motorola did like a whole ass launch event. In Brooklyn for the motor Razr, 2024 lineup. This was this was earlier this week. The news was announced Tuesday. They also had their little event on little, it was more than little event on Tuesday and a featuring one Paris Hilton, who’s apparently there’s like Big fan of the pink Razr from way back when, right?
Like she was the whole that’s hot. And then flip the pink phone thing. Anyway this event also featured a magician. So I was like, all right, look, I guess I’ll go. And then I went
Devindra: and I was dragged. You heard there was going to be a magician.
Cherlynn: The main reason I was already out for a different meeting earlier that day.
[00:02:00] So I was like, all right, I’ll just go to the office, chill, and then go to this event and see get some light of my own hands on time with the phones. Cause Sam took the hands on demo for us. I was like, all right, I’ll go take a look at the phone, but also, yes. Okay. I was like, I’ll try to get a selfie with Paris Hilton.
Why not? And it turns out I left the event before Paris Hilton even started to do her DJ set because I was just so impatient. Oh wait, she’s doing a
Devindra: DJ set too?
Cherlynn: So she DJed at the launch event, but there was first like this magic show thing. I don’t, please, if Lindsay Lohan can DJ in Mykonos Paris Hilton can for sure.
Are we going to have a fight here, Sherilyn? Because listen, if we’re going to talk about somebody with, I don’t know, talent of any kind, the ability to produce. I don’t know if talent is a strong word. Lindsay Lohan is a good actor. I liked her until like her inevitable downfall. Yeah.
Devindra: Paris Hilton, not so much. Come on. Okay. So what was, what did you see at this event? Did you see the magician? Yeah.
Cherlynn: I will say the reason I keep bringing up the magician is because they used the magician to highlight a few of these features that are debuting on the new Motorola Razr and [00:03:00] Razr+.
And you pointed out rightly that the pricing is one of the outstanding things. Sam has it in his hands on headline that they might be the most stylish and affordable foldables of the year. The standard Razr starting at 700. I think the pricing is a little bit confusing because last. With the 2023 lineup, the Razr 40, as it was known, I think in the UK versus the Razr in the U S it was like, it costs about 800 pounds.
And that was quite a lot of money. That’s close to a thousand in the U S and I don’t know that it ever came to the U S. And so it’s, I don’t know about that one, but
Devindra: last year’s Razr was also 700. So at least the base,
Cherlynn: I don’t know, like I’m looking at our review of the Razr, 2023 and the hands on and it’s they put Matt’s review because Matt Smith who reviewed it for us is based in the UK says it was 800 pounds.
So that’s like I’m just so
Devindra: before let me just fill you all in here as we were doing the planning for this because I was just Like looking like how do these compare to last year? It does seem like the pricing last year did launch at 700 and 1000 But what we weirdly happened and i’m sure the uk folks are annoyed [00:04:00]about this apparently the base Razr was on sale like a quote unquote on sale for 80 percent of last year for 500 Which is a crazy price,
Cherlynn: whatever it is, let’s put it this way.
Motorola’s pricing strategy is strange AF, but this year it seems like the base one starts at 700 and then the higher end, the Razr+ is a thousand to begin with. And for that money, you’re getting like a larger external display than ever. You’ve got more app support on the external screen. You’ve got some colors like hot pink, which is like that original Razr flip phone. And then this like leather finish on the back. Sans pictures look great. The ones I saw at the event also looked really nice. And you have some AI features now. Look, I don’t know how y’all feel about magicians and magic tricks, but they’ve all been ruined for me because I’ve read or watched too many, reveal the trick shows.
You did
Devindra: it to yourself. Okay. Yeah.
Cherlynn: And then like the magician was like, Oh everybody hold up your phone and [00:05:00] Google this or a calculator that, and everything, and I was like, all right, fine. And but for example, the motor Razr+ 2024 and the Razr all have new AI based features.
For example, you can take a photo of, by the way, listen to how, listen to this. You can take a photo of your outfit and the. Quote, AI unquote will generate color themes and wallpapers for you. I was like, Alcatel did this circa 2018. Stop it. This is not a new feature. Stop calling things new. But there is another thing called magic canvas on Motorola.
Motorola’s AI suite that will let you type in a prompt and then it will create sort of a wallpaper for your phone. So if you like dancing puppies with balloons in the background, you can use that as your wallpaper, for example. And then there’s a feature that’s coming called catch me up. It will summarize all your notifications.
So you don’t have to go through all of them individually and then see. Sam is excited about something called Remember This, which sounds a little bit like Microsoft’s Recall. You can ask, or you can first prompt Modo to [00:06:00] be like remembering things for you, and then ask it to record a photo, screenshot, or some audio, and then it will repeat the important details back to you when you ask for those important details later on.
Oh what was in that photo? Or what date did I leave in that screenshot and something like that?
Devindra: So you have to actively tell it to remember things, which I think exactly
Cherlynn: you had to first be exactly. So it’s not like in the background, constantly screenshotting and tracking your activity.
I just feel
Devindra: like people won’t do a good
Cherlynn:differentiation
Devindra: because like you could just always just take a photo of something and be like, yeah, that’s how we wonder if it’s going to
Cherlynn: be a ram hog. Too. Yeah.
Devindra: Who knows? Who knows? I do have to say these things look really nice. Tri do they? As far as yeah, they
Cherlynn: look very cool.
Yeah, they
Devindra: look cool. I don’t see a huge crease on these And the external displays, especially on the plus looks
Cherlynn: oh yeah. The, to quote Paris, so the other thing that Sam did point out is that the crease there is still there, but that it’s very faint and he. Quote, he describes it as a shallow ripple that you only see at acute angles, which is wow.
We’re getting somewhere with these things, right? It feels like from the 2023 lineup of the Razrs to the [00:07:00]2024, what we’re getting is more refinement. Yes, a larger display, but I think the hardware feels like it’s quite Like ready for, to settle, and in the like candy bar format that iPhones have been in for a while, I think many foldables like that are more or less mature in terms of hardware.
And now it’s all about the software. And apparently AI is the way, which I have thoughts
Devindra: on. One thing that I’ve been thinking about is we still don’t have a foldable iPhone. I feel like everyone’s waiting for Apple to do something around that. The rumor was the iPad mini being some sort of like foldable tablet type of thing.
Yeah. But we’ve got several foldable Androids now, Cherlynn, and they seem pretty good. The prices are getting down there. At least like most of them are under the price of an iPhone pro max, even. If you’re considering Android phone, why don’t you just get a foldable? Unless you want something under 500.
Cherlynn: Yeah. I think the main concern has always been like durability and battery life on these things. And the, by the way, the light Razrs get like a slightly higher IP rating than before. And again, with the crease not [00:08:00]looking as bad, and then there’s a new hinge on these new Razrs too. There’s a lot of good things.
I don’t know that we’ll ever see a affordable iPhone. I think we see affordable iPad mini first,
Devindra: yeah,
Cherlynn: you’re right. That there are cheaper now, a thousand dollars for the higher end ones for the flips anyway, not the bigger folds These are pretty feasible as your daily driver, if you’re okay with your phone lasting only a day, not two.
How
Devindra: much is the Galaxy Flip now? Isn’t that like 800?
Cherlynn: It’s about 999 as well. Like it starts at and it does have that nicer cover display. I want to see Samsung do more with the Flip. I, and speaking of, we’ll learn more come July. We’ll get to that in a bit. We’ll
Devindra: learn more from Samsung. We’re also still waiting for Google is not doing like a top down fold.
The flip style, right? It’s just, yeah. Yeah. The pixel fold opens up. So I could see them doing something. It just seems like I the main appeal of Android is like, you can get a really killer phone for 500 or less, but if you’re willing to bump up a little more, it does seem like if you’re going to spend 700 or a thousand [00:09:00]dollars on a phone, get a flippy,
Cherlynn: it seems like we’ve reached that point.
I do want to point out has Sam in the chat says that the issue with Modo has always been their horrible software update record, which
Devindra: yes,
Cherlynn: very good point. And again, Sam does point out that Motorola says that the Razrs will receive three major Android OS upgrades and four years of software support.
That’s a jump from last year, but it’s. It’s still short of the 7 years you’re getting from Samsung and Google’s more recent devices. So for bumping the number of years of support up, Modo, but you’re still so far behind the competition. That’s
Devindra: not great. I feel like the thing when you mentioned Magician, Sherilyn, all I think about, I don’t take Magician seriously.
I’m not super excited by them. But I think about Joe Bluth in Arrested Development, and I can imagine if they had gotten Will Arnett to come here and just do his Joe Bluth thing while being sarcastic about Samsung features, that would have been funny. I gotta
Cherlynn: say,
Devindra: I was
Cherlynn: looking around the event.
First of all, they were like, okay, so the event started at six and was going to [00:10:00] end at 10. I bounced before eight, by the way, because like
Devindra: at night,
Cherlynn: yeah, that’s why I was able to go out. It was like after work. That’s why I was like, all right, it’s afterwards. So it’s not really.
Devindra: And then you’re really pushing it, Motorola you want people to hang out with you after you show up at eight or
Cherlynn: six that there was no food until after 7 45.
Nevermind. I showed up really for the food. But anyway, and then Perry Sildon was slated to show up at like It’s eight or something, but I think she started after eight from,
Devindra: she’s going to come in. I heard from friends afterwards. Yeah.
Cherlynn: Anyway, at six and then the wait, why was I starting? Oh, I was looking around.
I got in at six, 10 or something. And people, it was already like the seating area in front of the magician’s performance area was already full. And I like, I was like, all right, these are the plants, right? These are the plants. These have to be, have you
Devindra: people never seen a magician before? I don’t
Cherlynn: know.
I don’t think it’s I got, I think they were all plants. Like I, there’s a lot of audience participation that all requires. I think if magic tricks, you will know that there’s a lot of planted actors. Anyway, the,
Devindra: that [00:11:00] makes sense. Yeah, anyway, I was
Cherlynn: looking around and I was like, yeah, I noticed that there was a suspicious amount of people already there, but be, I was like, wow, does Motorola have a lot of money still?
Like what is going on? They’ve, got Paris Hilton. They got this magician. They got this big space. They got a magician,
Devindra: not even like a name. I got to say,
Cherlynn: I think they have a name and I just can’t remember, which sucks. But there you go. So I don’t know. Motorola must be doing something right.
Or Lenovo is financing it like crazy, cause Lenovo owns Motorola. I
Devindra: don’t know. Paris Hilton is not a big pull. Paris Hilton, the last we saw with her was doing like an ad deal with Twitter, right? The last I heard of her is on her
Cherlynn: reality TV series where she’s being a mom, but
Devindra: that’s, it’s even beyond that.
But d tier celebrity at this point. The Elon Musk will point to will like, Hey, you’re not mad at me yet. Would you like to do something with Twitter? Yeah, I don’t know. Okay. The phones look nice. The event seems they should get David Blaine. Like when they finally get the when they get rid of the bezel.
How do you make the bezel disappear? Oh God. Magic trick. That would be hilarious.
Cherlynn: Cringe. So much [00:12:00] cringe.
Devindra: Okay. Anything else on the Moto Razrs?
Cherlynn: No. I will say that it’s, they’re kicking off foldable season. And we’re going to hear more about that just a little, in just a little bit.
Devindra: Foldable fall, as it were.
We are, cause summer just started. Oh my God. Okay. So Samsung is doing something in July. We thought we were a chill for the summer, at least for July and August, but no, never. So what are we, what’s going on there?
Cherlynn: Samsung officially announced. The second unpacked of the year of every year is happening this year on July 10th.
Wonderful round of applause. July 10th is a lot earlier than we’re used to, right? These second unpacks used to be, taking place either during IFA, which would be in September, or End or mid August. And it’s just gone earlier and earlier. Now it’s in the middle of July. Great. Hey, you know who else announced they’re like important dates for July?
Amazon’s prime day is going to be July 16th and 17th. So if you understand the consumer tech media business, [00:13:00]you’ll know that’s. It’s really a lot of work for a lot of people. So I don’t appreciate the timing here, but Samsung anyway, officially announced July 10th and it’s holding his event in Paris of all places.
Now, earlier this year, when it hit, it had the S 24 unpacked Samsung did that in San Jose, which Silicon Valley, everybody was like, Oh yeah, it’s linked to AI and that’s why they chose Silicon Valley for that launch event. So if you think about Paris. Other than Paris Hilton, Paris and France.
Are you thinking fashion? Are you thinking bed bug controversy from last year?
Oh, yeah. Anyway, I won’t be going. Thank goodness. I’m just not thanks for talking about bed bugs. Cause I know we’ll have bed bugs, but I think Considering that this time of year, Samsung’s always launching foldables and wearables and watches make sense for the fashion setting.
And then if they wanted to make their flip a bit more stylish and also, yes, we are expecting to see the galaxy ring that they teed up in [00:14:00] January. There’s a lot to expect from Samsung. And like I said, it’s going to be foldable fall, ben, our producer is pointing out that the Olympics are also in Paris.
But is it in July? I think it is. Also
Devindra: true. Late July. Late July. Okay, so they’re trying to get
Cherlynn: out of there maybe before the Olympics really fully kick off.
Devindra: I guess getting, riding some of the fitness hype maybe. Like especially if there’s a watch. With the
Cherlynn: galaxy ring. So a lot of potential tie in things.
Now we already have
Devindra: Oh! Olympics rings! Wow. Multicolored Samsung Galaxy rings with the Olympics colors. Can you imagine if they make that? Oh, I can’t.
Cherlynn: Anyway, you heard it here first. Ben and Devindra both predicted it on the Engadget going to use the Galaxy Ring as the Olympics ring. Some kind of Olympics tie in.
Would not be surprised. The
Devindra: official Olympics wearable that nobody will ever buy, but yes. Will it
Cherlynn: get them all to not sleep? In the same rooms. Anyway, head on over to Engadget. com. We already have a what to expect out of Samsung sort of preview article up.
Devindra: Are we [00:15:00] excited about the ring yet? Like we, we talked about it.
I talk about my ambivalence around ring gadgets in general. How are you feeling now?
Cherlynn: I’m with you. Like I don’t wear that aura ring anymore. I just will. have someone else who’s more happy to wear rings, to, to review it. Like I really liked what the aura ring did in terms of the insights for sleep, because it’s something I was happy to wear to sleep, even though I still didn’t like it, I was like, all right, it’s better than a watch.
But it also actually gave very good. and different information, the aura sort of system about my sleep than I was used to. So that was nice to see. But otherwise, no. I wash my hands too many times a day for a ring to be really a feasible thing to wear.
Devindra: You could wash your hands with the ring, can’t
Cherlynn: you?
I can, but I don’t like to. I don’t like to have moisture retained around the ring. I would still take it off anyway.
Devindra: So it’s mainly cooking is the time where you want to be like, I don’t want to get sauce and oil and
Cherlynn: My comfort.
Devindra: I feel you. I feel like the only thing that I felt [00:16:00]that was good for sleep tracking back in the day.
We will Often bring this up but r. i. p jawbone r. i. p the job on a device that was too beautiful to survive in this world and also too bug ridden also r.
Cherlynn: i. p. The amazon had this Sleep tracking, halo rise. Gosh, that thing was great. I miss it. But I think maybe the,
Devindra: you miss Amazon staring at you and judging
Cherlynn: someone in our chat earlier today, when we were talking about that AI feature, where you take a photo of your outfit to generate wallpapers thing someone in our chat mentioned, didn’t Amazon have a camera that you would take outfits?
I was like, yeah, I loved it. I will say that the person in the chat who said that who mentioned that feature was I. It wasn’t a creepy when people realized they were undressing in front of an Amazon camera. I did not, I was not undressing in front of the camera to start. I would dress up somewhere else and then go in front of the camera thing.
But
Devindra: it sounds like a really easy to use device. I don’t, I still
Cherlynn: have it at home. I don’t, it doesn’t work anymore. Like the halo rise. I have a little, my own personal graveyard of Amazon devices that you, I loved watching me.
Devindra: They just threw money at so many things, the fire [00:17:00]phone. All these dumb devices.
Oh my God. I can’t
Cherlynn: wait to see what Panos Pane does with Amazon hardware. But we are digressing just so slightly. Back to the Samsung Unpacked event. I think, In addition to the, to the galaxy ring, we’re expecting also just making an educated guess here, probably going to see the new galaxy Z fold as Z flip galaxy watch.
I think they had a watch pro in the past too. And then we still haven’t seen new buds. So there’s a lot, have we seen a new tablet in a while? I don’t know. So that’s a lot. That’s a lot of things to expect Samsung to unveil. I will also say. That in that announcement about unpack Samsung also mentions the words galaxy AI is here.
Wonderful. Excellent. I yeah, I
Devindra: are they going to show Bixby just evolving into what is like Bixby is just
Cherlynn: running a baton relay Paris, that’s part of their event.
Devindra: Oh boy. Okay. We’ll see. Do you think it is wise? I could see August being a good [00:18:00] time to get away from the iPhone hype, have some time to yourself.
That’s what Google’s doing. But July. Nobody’s thinking about updating devices everyone’s waiting to see what the future things are, especially should I get an iPhone or iPad. July. I would not be surprised,
Cherlynn: now that you and Ben brought it up, that it is absolutely Olympics timing. They’re timing it for, try to get ahead of the Olympics so that they can make their Olympics announcement, something like that.
Would not be surprised if that is like a part of the reason. So there you go.
Devindra: There you go. Let’s talk about the Google thing because we’re talking about like upcoming events and Google’s announcing basically August 13th, is going to be the next Google, the made by Google event where we’re expecting new pixels and stuff.
Do we feel differently about this? Because this is this is just gonna be their major device launch. It’s not going to be tied to any events otherwise.
Cherlynn: So Google announced the meet by Google event is happening on August 13th. And like you [00:19:00] said, it’s a bit of time for itself. And I want to go on a rant after this about all of this, not a rant, like a little.
sideways talk. Google traditionally, and it’s like second half of the year event, it’s hardware launch brings us new pixel phones probably a new pixel watch, maybe new pixel, but similar slate of devices, I would say as Samsung. Except for because. Google doesn’t usually have a January event to launch its actual flagship devices.
It will have both like a standard phone and maybe a foldable as well. Or we might, we’re probably due to see like a new pixel fold. As well as the pixel. It’s been
Devindra: two years, right?
Cherlynn: Two or one, everything blends into one to me, but yeah, it could be Two years by now. But we really liked that thing, right?
Like we really liked it when it came out, it was very thin and how all that, it’s one
Devindra: year, it’s one year, it just feels it feels like too.
Cherlynn: So there’s a pixel fold two, we’re expecting to see, and then the pixel nine series of phones and then whatever the pixel watch three, I believe is also on the agenda, hopefully, probably.[00:20:00]
And then finally, maybe some other devices after. All of that internal reorganization under Rick Osterloh happened earlier this year that The Verge reported on. Maybe we’ll see some other hardware from the Nest side of things? That’s a lot of speculation on my end, but that’s an educated guess, right?
Based on historical evidence, based on what’s out there. And other stuff that I know.
Devindra: When those things. Okay. So July event that we’ll be all planning for, I will be gone. Sorry guys. Also August. So it’s there’s no break during the summer. And then once this Google thing is done, we’re all like, just thinking about iPhone and thinking about what’s going to happen with Apple and the whole fall and everything.
No rest for us, what do you, are you looking to doing are you looking to covering things or. Focusing on any kinds of other stories in July and August, Ryland? I would always May have a little time to breathe. I would
Cherlynn: love to take a break, but in July I’m traveling. Right after Prime Day.
And the I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll be able to escape any of the coverage. [00:21:00] And Google, by the way, is hosting this event in Mountain View. And as much as I would like not to travel, I do, want to say hi to some of the Google people I know that work there, get some FaceTime with some executives, because that’s always good for making sure Engadget gets like good information and do some reporting from the scene.
So I might, yeah, exactly. So that’s. It’s possible. I don’t know, but you haven’t finalized our plans yet is the reason. I’m not being like cagey on purpose. I just don’t have anything for him to say. But I did RSVP. I’m always like, invite me to things. I will always say yes, but I may or may not show up.
That’s like my thing.
Devindra: Oh boy. Okay. Okay. So that’s new Moto Razrs, which look pretty cool. Check out our hands on coverage and we’re. I guess soon you’re going to be prepping for the Samsung Galaxy impact and after that prepping for the Google Pixel event. Hey
Cherlynn: Kevin says in our chat asked, what about Fitbit?
And I would like to point out that Pixel Watch 3 is probably you can consider it almost a Fitbit device. Cause Google owns Fitbit and also Fitbit did [00:22:00] launch the Ace LTE wearable for kids last month. Fitbit is still doing its own thing. I don’t know if they’re going to do anything new for this made by Google event though.
So there you go. And they just say, yep, they had a big turnaround too of employees and things too. What is Fitbit even anymore? Man, I remember when we were excited about wearables. I remember when that stuff was cool and everybody was trying different ideas and Fitbit was not owned by Google and was a lot more nimble, yeah. Okay. We’ll be looking forward to all this stuff and check out our coverage on the Motorola.
Devindra: All right, let’s move on to some other news, and I think one of the surprise stories this week is that Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who has been in prison for a few years, was hiding out In an embassy in London, right? After WikiLeaks put out the documents, like a lot of secret documents, classified documents around the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the U.
S. did not like that. [00:23:00]So he is now free from prison. He pled guilty. To the espionage act at a courthouse in Saipan. He, I just saw the news. Like he has arrived back in his homeland of Australia. He’s reuniting with his wife. He’s not actually saying much except saying let me see here. The deal required Assange to plead guilty to conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information relating to the national defense of the United States.
He did defend himself in court. He did say let me see here. Working as a journalist, I encouraged my source to provide information that was set to be classified in order to publish that information. I believe the First Amendment protected that. And of course his source was Chelsea Manning too.
So she, they also went to prison for a while. There’s a lot of, there has been a lot of discussion about how. Is this an unfair thing? Should we, should the government go so harshly against leakers, but especially if it’s classified information, I think that’s where it gets so messy, Chelsea Manning spent.
[00:24:00] Years in prison was like what six or seven years and then obama, I think commuted her sentence so that kind of worked out better there, but it is I don’t know Do you have any thoughts on this sterling because we’ve been talking about the julian’s on stuff for so long It felt like the story would never end and it’s not done yet like he’s gonna say things his supporters are gonna be out there trying to You know say that Spin this a certain way too.
I don’t know. What do you think about it?
Cherlynn: I think You I mean, the question that you were getting at near the end of that portion there is that, does the penalty befit the crime and it’s hard, right? It’s, you have to talk about national security is one thing. We also have to talk about who was affected?
What’s the net good or net harm? It’s really hard to decide that there’s a reason I’m not in the legal judiciary system to decide these things. But I don’t
Devindra: know. It’s a, I think like one major argument I’ve seen against WikiLeaks over time is that Hey listen, the leakers getting confidential government information out there has been hugely important [00:25:00] in the history of this country.
Like the Pentagon papers were like, that was classified information that was massively influential in terms of that’s different. I’m going to get to that, but the Pentagon papers. That definitely helped us get a sense of what was actually happening in Vietnam and showed how bad the Vietnam war was for America and how a failed war it was.
Assange points out that he says the first amendment and the espionage act are in contradiction of each other. He accepts his actions were in violation of the espionage statute and that it would be difficult to win such a case, given all the circumstances, basically. If you leak anything, even if it’s like you believe it’s in, it’s for the greater good, like the government will come down against you with the full weight of its justice powers.
The argument against Wikileaks is that they did not do anything to redact Confidential information, especially things around I believe it was like locations of agents and people working around the world. There were, there was a lot of like [00:26:00] really sensitive stuff. We’re not like really redacted and what Snowden had done.
was a little different, like he had worked directly with Glenn Greenwald, who has now fallen far from like when we, from being played by Spock in the Snowden movie. Glenn Greenwald, you have fallen very far. But the Snowden stuff, they were working together with journalists who did a lot of that information, redacted a lot of confidential stuff.
And even he Ended up being, hounded and stuck in Russia and also not being like the hero of the left that a lot of people wanted him to be, but whatever that information is out there. Do you ever talk to people, Sherlina, around the Snowden reveals or Spectre, do you ever hear people actually talk about, wasn’t it weird that we learned that the U S government and a lot of governments were like actively spying on citizens and we just don’t talk about it.
I don’t, have you ever encountered people actually discussing it in your daily life outside of tech circles? I don’t
Cherlynn: think people like. Talk about any more like I think back in the day. Yes. I might’ve been a bit too.
Devindra: Did you have conversations back then with [00:27:00]people? I’m just wondering if you encountered this in the real world outside of the media world,
Cherlynn: no, because the people I was talking to back then were all media people. Like I didn’t have many I think it was like early in my move to America days. So all my friends were my J school friends and it was like, yeah. And Singaporeans didn’t really. They like, they knew the names. Oh yeah, you guys
Devindra: are used to it.
Yeah, we’re just like, also, yeah, we’re like, Oh, of course the government is
Cherlynn: spying on you. Everything, it’s not, no, we don’t think the government is spying on us, but we, it’s ingrained in us to be careful what we say, because if the government overhears you talking shit about them, they just jail you.
But the thing is, I think the question here is, yeah, the responsible treatment of sensitive private information that could lead to harm of individual people, but also I don’t know. Like people, wasn’t there a Jimmy, a John Oliver segment on like people getting names confused of do you know who Julian Assange is?
Do you know who Edward Snowden is? And then people were like, Oh, the WikiLeaks guy. And they were like, no, Snowden’s not the WikiLeaks guy. Like it’s, there’s a lot of confusion around all of this.
Devindra: There’s a lot of confusion. In the moment we didn’t have
Cherlynn:conversations as much around like what Snowden revealed, but [00:28:00] I think we’re feeling the impact of it now where everyone is aware that there’s a lot of stuff that’s spying on you, whether it’s your social media, whether your phone, whether it’s the government and there’s heightened, like antitrust sentiment, like just nobody trusts anyone anymore. So that’s what we’re feeling. I feel, I don’t know.
Devindra: There has to be room like for people to actually divulge information.
They think things are going wrong, but yeah, unfortunately, yeah, that, that does not work with the way governments and classified information without retaliation
Cherlynn: is like a huge Thing that needs to be supported, but I don’t know that it is. We’re going
Devindra: to, we’re going to be talking about the story for a while too.
Like Assange is not going to, he’s going to be much louder now. He’s going to be doing many interviews and probably going to have all sorts of like deals out of this. So we’re going to be talking about the story for a while. And Certainly it’s going to be worth diving deeper into it too. So I’m looking for a good guest to talk to around that stuff.
There are a couple other major bits of news we saw this week too. The Supreme court ruled that it allows the White House to request a removal of misinformation on social media. [00:29:00]This was I’m just reading out here from NPR. Basically, I believe this was a result of a conservative complaints.
Of the Biden administration going to social media companies and just asking them to remove specific bits of news around misinformation. I think one thing revolved around Biden’s granddaughter. So just specific bits that they thought were being like put out there badly. And the government was essentially trying to stop what they called misinformation.
I’ve seen a lot of commentary. Where people are saying this actually does set a bad precedent because, okay, what is misinformation? Could a more nefarious regime, if there was another Trump regime or something, could a more nefarious administration use this badly and just define misinformation as stuff they just don’t like?
That could be. A problem. I don’t know if you, have you thought about this at all, Shirlen? If
Cherlynn: you just can’t trust people, right? Like you can put something in place that’s supposed to protect people. They tear it down because they think it’s going to [00:30:00] be like abused, or you can put something in place that was bad and tear it down to protect other.
I don’t know. It’s I don’t trust that like a specific administration anymore. You know what I mean? I. Sometimes they do bad things because they’re dumb. Sometimes they do bad things because they’re bad. Sometimes they don’t think. I don’t know. I have very little faith in a lot of these things.
So no matter how this falls, I feel like the outcome It’s a ongoing and be like, I have very little faith. What’s interesting
Devindra: about this case too, is it was Amy come at Barrett who, is a Trump appointee who really tore down this whole thing, because I think at some point the plaintiffs were saying the white house was bombarding Twitter with requests to set up a streamlined process for censorship.
And that never really happened. Let me see here. I’m going to read from NPR in her opinion for the majority court of the court. Majority Barrett said that at every turn, the alleged facts turn to dust and that the plaintiffs have failed to trace the past or potential harm to anything done by [00:31:00] officials at the white house, the CDC, the FBI, or key cybersecurity agencies.
So it’s just like a lot of, it was thrown out because a lot of this was ruled as baseless. Just interesting, but I don’t know what this sets precedence for. I think a lot of people are worried, especially people worried about Information overall freedom of information. So there is that.
We also saw another Supreme court story actually just hit this morning. The Supreme court has blocked the Biden administration’s plan to curb air, so air pollution from basically key polluting States, I think in the Midwest and places like West Virginia, basically to stop them or at least help them prevent spewing.
Emissions that would go into other states. So here’s the story right now. The Supreme court put a temporary hold on the EPA plan to do that. Basically to curtail air pollution, the drifts across state lines. I think the ruling before was that states. Essentially, we’re going to have to deal with it themselves.
They would all have to come up [00:32:00]with their own plans for figuring out how do they would deal with their own messy air. And because that didn’t happen, the EPA was trying to come up with rules to set it up so that they could actually help curtail this. It’s just not going anywhere. This is another blow against the EPA.
And I can’t think of another blow against the government to actually stop things like air pollution or things that would make the environment better. What’s interesting is that Amy Coney Barrett was among the dissenters for this one too. She joined the three liberal members to push against this.
I don’t know if you have thoughts on this, Cherlynn, cause this one just hit, but it is astounding. Like at every turn, it’s basically, we have a very conservative Supreme court who will always lean on conservative values and states rights. Rather than something that could help people.
Cherlynn: Yeah. I don’t know.
I think we’ve not given the EPA a lot of authority to do what it needs to do. Basically.
Devindra: Yeah. Basically taking it away at every single turn or at least blocking whatever plans, there’s the other thing too, about the EPA can’t [00:33:00] set what was it? Their own environmental yeah, protections.
Like they can’t set standards. That was a whole other thing. So the EP just can’t really do much these days. That’s a pain. We’re going to see more about that story too, and maybe there’s going to be pushback against that. Let’s talk about the rabbit R1 because there was a hilarious chain of events.
where the group, the Rabbitude community that is reverse engineering the Rabbit R1 software revealed that a, they found a security issue within the company’s code that leaves sensitive information accessible to everyone. Did you see this thing show in? Because it just seems wild. It seems like there were API keys that were like open and vulnerable.
People could use it to see pretty much any information, like any response that the R1 device has given to people, including personal information. It could also be used to brick R1 devices, alter the R1’s responses replace the device’s voice. This seems bad. Dare you surprised that this company was not [00:34:00] really thinking about security very hard about the Rabbit R1?
Cherlynn: I love talking about Rabbit because every time something comes up with this company, I just start to laugh. Look, I, again, I was very like, I bought into the whole hype thing. I was like, Oh, this is so cool. The API stuff that they’re trying to build to make their large action model work seems really intriguing.
And then, yeah, clearly haven’t thought it through. Don’t seem to have tested everything. I think the most egregious thing is that the Rabbitude people say that the company, Rabbit, has known about the issue for the past month and quote, did nothing to fix it. And then after they posted, they said that Rabbit revoked 11labs API key, even though it up, even though it broke R1 devices for a bit.
But Rabbit did haul in Gadget in an email or a statement that was only made aware of, quote, an alleged data breach, end quote, on June 25th. So two days, I, it’s a, he said, she said almost, and I don’t know.
Devindra: I would not trust rabbit trust. Yeah. Why?
Cherlynn: Look, maybe here’s the thing. It’s you can say that you inform [00:35:00]someone at the company and say that the company has known about the issue for the past month, but maybe that one person that you informed didn’t tell the whole company, like there’s so many like little nuances that can be missing this, that like they do have some gray area that they’re playing in right now.
And both people could be like saying. Like the truth and it could be both correct. But
Devindra: I like how you’re trying to be nice and fair here, but this company has produced one of the one of the worst devices we’ve ever seen, a thing that is functionally useless and I can’t trust literally anything coming out of their mouth.
So I saw on the the rabbit, I’m still in the rabbit discord channel. They were doing some updates yesterday. They were like, Oh, we made a page to update all the all the news we have around this security issue. We’re going to get to the bottom of this. And I just, I cannot trust. This, the silly company.
It’s just such a, it’s just such a hilarious thing. So anyway, massive data breach. If you have a rabbit device I would say maybe turn that into a nice accessory on your shelf. No some solidist
Cherlynn: tea in our chat said that someone is running [00:36:00]full Android on rabbit R1. Hey, go crazy.
Devindra: It’s just a little, it’s a tiny powerless Android device. So yes, I’m sure you could run full Android on it. Stop using the rabbit R1. That may be the main takeaway here. We also saw another story that Uber is apparently locking out New York drivers out of its apps. It seems like sometimes in the middle of their shifts.
Because of a city pay rule and Lyft is apparently threatening to, to do the same. This is a local story, but it’s also a broader story too, because this kind of like ties into things where they were both both Uber and Lyft had lockouts in 2019. Around like the flat minimum wage requirement for drivers.
They threatened to pull out of Minneapolis because the city was trying to force a driver pay raise up. So these companies have generally done things that have been ruthless against the people working for them. And then they blame. City regulations or state regulations for that. What, I don’t know if you saw the story showing, or do you have any [00:37:00]thoughts?
Yeah.
Cherlynn: I heard about like the past situation where there’s like a minimum wage sort of situation that’s caused some of this and it’s not easy for companies like this to navigate. I’m not taking their side. I think it’s silly, but they need to find a way to make it work. Not just lock people out of the apps that make the money, it
Devindra: seems, this is the way because they don’t want to pay people, right? That’s the problem.
Cherlynn: But the problem is like, if Uber starts to pay as drivers for like, when it doesn’t have, they’re not picking up actual rights and like, where does that money come from?
It’s capitalism all over again, right? Capitalism is the problem because they want to, they’re going to try to pass that on to consumers. And then we’re going to start complaining that we were too expensive and then we’re going to stop using it as much. And then less, it’s like a cycle. Yeah.
Devindra: It’s, we should, we also know we should remember it’s hard to trust Uber.
It’s hard to trust Uber given how ruthless this company was at the beginning and how it just flaunted its own service against regulations, especially in New York. So here
Cherlynn: they’ve had leadership change since then and the new like CEO is like a more grounded person. It seems and [00:38:00] I think that they’re
Devindra: trying to be better, trying to be
Cherlynn: better, but I still think that.
It’s more of an industry sort of shift, right? Where the gig economy is the way things are right now. I think I’ve seen some reports saying that 50 percent of the workforce is going to be freelance in a certain number of years, and we’re already seeing the effects of this, we need to be.
Rethinking the entire system of how we pay people for gig work and for unworking hours, non working hours, that sort of thing. It’s starting to show. It’s not
Devindra: really, it’s not really non working hours is the thing. Like I’m going to read from our story. The mid shift lockouts stem from a six year old NYC payroll that requires ridesharing companies to pay drivers for idle time between fares.
So I don’t consider that non working hours. That is time you were driving around the city and like looking for fair, waiting for a fair to hit before you accept one. So going on with the story here, capping it, capped how long drivers without passengers can be paid means Uber’s Uber is paying them less, but it also means that drivers are taking home [00:39:00] much less money for the same amount of time on the clock.
And they can’t predict, they can’t predict when they’ll lose access to the app. One driver told Bloomberg that they used to work 10 hours and make 300 to 350. Now they’re working 10 hours and barely making 170.
Cherlynn:Unpredictability is like one of the worst things of this whole situation, which is also, by the way, very surprising to me.
Cause every time I’m like in an Uber, I see like the driver gets a next ride before I’m even out of the car. You know what I mean? So I’m like, Whoa, there’s people sitting around like looking for rides. So that’s where my brain’s at. Yeah. Yeah.
Devindra: I’ve seen drivers like running Lyft and Uber simultaneously and will pause one and take one of the other just so they keep themselves going.
But it does seem it’s because like it’s based on the amount of work you’re doing and you’re not working a set amount of time. That’s the big pain. I don’t know if you ever, if you’ve ever had a car accident. If you’ve ever worked like a, I don’t know, like a simple service level job drilling, where like you had to rely on shifts being given to you.
And sometimes you would not get a shift or sometimes like you have to ask, or sometimes a shift would be put on you. This would happen to me. Like when [00:40:00] I was working in sales, like it’s just, you have very little control over how much money you can actually make and it’s all just capricious.
It depends on like your manager and your company doing it. I don’t even know how the Uber thing is working. Cause Uber is so famously algorithmic, right? Most drivers do not have a human manager to talk to you. They put complaints in the app and the app will tell them, go here, take this direction or something.
So I almost wonder too, like this is likely an algorithmic lockout. That’s happening. Cause that’s how Uber works. So anyway, next time you have a cheap Uber, just just think about like the costs here and make sure to tip your drivers, cause I had a really long conversation with my last driver to the airport and they were just lamenting.
These companies are just paying us less and less like every year, every week, it seems like their pay is going down, even though they’re doing the same amount of trips. So think of that folks. One thing I don’t mind doing, especially at airports is like the Uber lines are a mess. You think you’re booking a car, but then you have to run to the thing and [00:41:00] find it and.
Every time I go to an airport, like the taxi lines are just like full, completely full and waiting to pick up people. So there are way other ways to get around, take public transportation. You don’t have to rely on Uber and Lyft for everything. One other thing we want to talk about, and we’re going to do something special for the live stream here, Toys R Us or the folks who own Toys R Us right now has released a brand ad, like a brand film.
That was created entirely using open AI Sora and folks, it’s a nightmare. It is an absolute nightmare. So we’re going to play it here live in the stream and comment on it. And those of us in the, those of you in the chat can join us. You could go take a look, just Google this thing too. You can find it online.
So I’m going to kick off this video. Let’s just take a look and Trillian, feel free to shout out like your emotions, like how you’re feeling about this as we’re seeing it. So let me unmute this tab. Did
Cherlynn: you ever wonder how Toys R Us and Jeffrey the Giraffe came to be? [00:42:00] That’s a lot of cars. Charles Lazarus had a vision that would go on to change toy stores forever.
Devindra: That kid’s head is just not shaped right.
Cherlynn: It’s so weird. My gosh, this kid looks so strange.
This reminds me of that game I play called Match Factory, by the way.
Devindra: Don’t you miss Toys R Us? Whose voice is this? It doesn’t even look like Jeffrey. They’re iconic Jeffrey. Too
Cherlynn: much stuff.
Devindra: This is a different looking Jeffrey. Now they can’t keep the design right.
Cherlynn: Is this the same kid toys arrest?
Devindra: No, the Giraf is named Jeffrey.
Cherlynn: But also the kid looks different. Your dreams come
Devindra: true too. Yes,
Cherlynn: and the continue toys. With the toys Arrest at every [00:43:00]Macy’s. They mean nightmare. Yes.
Devindra: They mean nightmare.
So I guess this is an ad meant to remind people that Toys R Us is not fully dead yet. The company that owns the assets of Toys R Us is now working together with Macy’s and I don’t know. Have you been to Macy’s lately, Cherlynn? There are little Toys R Us sections there now. It’s just it’s not the same.
No, it’s not the same as going through I did you guys have anything like Toys R Us?
Cherlynn: Toys R Us.
Devindra: So going through. The giant store filled with toys. My childhood memories is buying video games from Toys R Us, which was a weird thing. Cause you’d have to pull, you’d have to pull a paper and go up to the counter and hope that it was actually in stock.
But as a kid who only got one or two games a year. It was always like a monumental event to go to play games for free for demos. Those experience you will not get at the Toys R Us at Macy’s. And this is one of the first Sora AI produced ads I’ve seen. I think it looks like a nightmare. Like the kid just looks [00:44:00] inhuman is the thing.
I’m getting a lot of revulsion. There’s
Cherlynn: a lot of very uncanny value going on. Like the movement of the kid’s neck when Like they reacted and recoiled almost a little bit, not in a bad way, but it looked a little robotic, very strange. And then yeah, their face would change depending on the angle that they were being shot from, according to the ad.
And then the ad has these very clear labels that this is made by not just AI, but also some VFX team on Toys R Us’s side. So there’s some cleaning up because I will say that for a Sora made video, It’s just clean, right? There’s not too many glaring like errors, like too much teeth or too many fingers, that sort of thing.
Devindra: They had to like likely redo things quite a bit. They probably had to
Cherlynn: clean it up.
Devindra: They likely had to clean it up, but also what we have read and seen from people testing Sora is that if you, the prompts like break down after a while. So you can do 10 seconds, second clips or something, but the longer you go, the crazier and like wilder it gets, it just can’t like keep a story straight.
I’m like making a video in Sora’s just like a lot of like little tiny prompts and [00:45:00] hope that You cross your fingers and you hope it’s not a complete nightmare. This is, I’m getting a lot of people are bringing this up in the chat, but I’m getting a lot of like polar express and like the mocap stuff that Zemeckis was doing, but even I’ve seen all of those movies.
I saw Beowulf, which I think was one of the first ones he did. And those don’t feel as weird and inhuman to me as this does. But I’m also somebody that likes genuine animation too. And those had like painterly animation. Whereas this is inhuman CG child trying to be human. It’s just not quite right.
There’s your nightmare feel for the week folks. Enjoy. Let’s move on to what we’re working on. Hey, I just produced the surface pro co pilot plus review that is out there. Video is going to be up on YouTube. I’m also currently testing a Kia’s EV9, the three row SUV that Sam and I have been like eyeing for a while.
So I’m testing it. Hoping to write up something about using it as a family car. What’s up with you, Cherlynn?
Cherlynn: Yeah, doing a lot of summer slash fall event planning. We’re also doing some testing of the Apple [00:46:00] betas just to see just to get ready to, break out any sort of stories that might be interesting.
And hopefully get ahead of that crushing fall hardware season. So that’s me.
Devindra: Lots of plans. Do you want to mention anything around the site, Trillian, because you dropped them in.
Cherlynn: Last week we had a story from Carissa Bell go up and it’s titled, How Small Claims Court Became Meta’s Customer Service Hotline where people are apparently having to go to court as a last ditch attempt to recover their accounts.
It’s pretty incredible and the story did really well for us. I think there’s some really interesting stories in here that you might want to take a look at and if you haven’t already. It’s really good reporting from Carissa. I just thought, it’s worth shouting out here on the podcast so that people can go read it.
And if you’ve got, been locked out of your Meta account for some silly reason, or you got hacked or something, and you just, you’re not getting help directly from Meta. Apparently there are people who are having some [00:47:00] success in small claims scoring, which is really ridiculous if you come to think about it.
Devindra: It’s I guess it makes sense because these companies do not have often have like easy ways to get access to customer service. That was a complaint with the Amazon for a while. I think they’ve gotten better about that, but yeah. Man, just be persistent. If you have a lot of issues with these with these companies, also small claims court is like one of those things that is just like useful for people.
But you have to stick with it and you have to spend money to actually make that thing happen to, bring up your issues.
Cherlynn: And time, lots of time.
Devindra: Let’s move on to our pop culture picks for the week. What do you have, Cherlynn?
Cherlynn: Two main things. One, I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve been watching Wild Isles.
Wild Isles. On Prime Video it is nature documentary stuff narrated by David Edinburgh about the British Isles and each episode is of the five limited series episode, like five episode limited series. Each episode focuses on a different type of wildlife. So the first episode is just like general wildlife.
The second episode is like forest. The third is like [00:48:00] fields. The fourth is like freshwater. The fourth is like Ocean, stuff like that. It’s really cool because the footage is incredible. The BBC commissioned this TV series and, the team spent three years just camouflaged in the midst of bird poop infested woods to just get you really neat thermal image footage.
Footage of like a million birds roosting in this little patch and how they’re picked off by owls. Yeah.
Devindra: Forever. Yeah,
Cherlynn: they have, but this is like the thermal image technology is according to the show, like new. And a lot of these, the footage to me is really cool because. I haven’t never seen a slug.
I forget the full name of this slug, but like a slug in the middle of the night is glowing and it made it with another slug. So I’ve seen a slug’s dick, just so you know.
Devindra: Okay.
Cherlynn: Yeah. And then I also saw two snakes going at it. Did you know that male snakes? Their sexual organs have things [00:49:00] on them that help them stay attached to the female snake.
Yeah. Anyway,
Devindra: I can imagine for
Cherlynn: that and more risque footage of animals going at it, you can check out wild isles on prime video. The other thing I will shout out. How do you explain
Devindra: this to kids? No,
Cherlynn: kids can watch it too. It’s like animal sex,
Devindra: not a euphemism.
Cherlynn: I don’t know. Anyway. And then also over the weekend I saw the bike riders in theaters.
It’s that film about the motorcycle gang, the fictional motorcycle gang called the Vandals but stars Austin Butler.
Devindra: They’re real. It’s based on a whole real. It’s based
Cherlynn: on a real thing. The name is not the Vandals though.
Devindra: The name may be different. Yeah, it was based on a picture book of an actual picture
Cherlynn: book by Danny Lyons.
And it stars Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, Jodie Comer is amazing. And I love her. And I don’t know if that’s how you pronounce your last name, but And then also my boo, Norman Reedus shows up and I was like, yes, Norman Reedus. And he’s unrecognizable when he first shows up. I’m like, this is Norman Reedus, right?
This is no. And
Devindra: with the teeth and he looks, God, yeah, he looks like [00:50:00]such a
Cherlynn: meth head from, yeah, dirty hippie from California and the show, but oh, amazing. And then, yeah, I’m very inspired to go check out the story now, the written and the pictures. So if you’re interested in that type of history motorcycle gang stuff, go check it out.
But if not,
Devindra: it’s more like motorcycle gangs in the style of like good fellas or something. I saw the movie and I reviewed it and it’s it’s good. I really like it. And I like the director. I feel like it was a little more push a little harder. Tell us more about these characters. What is up with the Jodi Comer’s character who literally has no.
No inner life. What does she do for a living? I agree. What are her hopes and dreams other than Austin Butler, which he is? I
Cherlynn: don’t, Oh God, I don’t know why I’m so annoyed by Austin Butler, but I did really like Tom Hardy in it. And I will say that like Psycho in our chat says that they didn’t like the ending of Bike Riders pissed them off.
And that Jonathan Anderson says that the Bike Riders was good, but had some slow parts. Fully agree with both of these things. I just thought Tom Hardy plays. Obviously the same [00:51:00]character over and over again, but he was quite good in this one. And then also with
Devindra: a different accent, slightly different accent.
I love this. I
Cherlynn: thought this one was good. I also Jodi Comer is like accident in this one as well. But yeah, I am obviously not like super into the ending. I feel like you said, DaVinci, they could have pushed harder on the storytelling here, but
Devindra: gotta push harder. Yeah, the ending feels like week.
It’s just I watched a movie like this. I’m like, I want to just rewatch good fellas. You want to give me good fellas light. Just let’s just go watch good fellas. Everybody go. Fellas is a perfect. Movie. I want to shout out real quick. I talked about the acolyte being great several weeks ago, and now we’re at the point where my screeners have ended.
And episode five of the acolyte is one of those things that is just I was looking at this thing and like, how the hell does this exist? Something happens three minutes into this episode. And I shouted out loud and my wife had to come downstairs to be like, what, what’s happening? Are you okay?
Because one of the wildest things I’ve ever seen in Star Wars happened within three minutes of this episode. There are prolonged fight scenes the, I’m not going to reveal like what the thing is, but there is a big [00:52:00] bad that everybody has been like talking around and they make their full appearance in this episode.
And the fights are insane. Like it is full on. I talked about this thing basically being Crouching Tiger and they lean more into a lot of that stuff. Just the way you shoot. A Hong Kong style fight scene and I’m all for it. Nice. The reveals are great. Cherlynn, I think for your life and for your interests, you really should be watching the show and I think you will be very happy where things go in episode five.
Keyword is arms. The arms in this episode are very good. If you’re hanging around social media, the spoilers are out. Listen, you’ve got mostly arms, but there are some good arms in this episode. The spoilers are out there in social media. So I’m trying to, I’m not going to reveal things here and you’ll probably see clips for Lynn.
Of certain actors who are revealed to be bad guys. I think you will really enjoy watching the acolyte so highly recommend it I know you like hong kong. Yes. I do. Yeah movies. I will watch this after [00:53:00] i’m
Cherlynn: done with all the animal porn
Devindra: yeah after the animal porn. It’s good. It’s so good I don’t and now I go back and like i’m looking at like how people online are responding to the acolyte It’s just Sure.
Trashfire. It is the fans who you don’t, who like will reject anything made by women or featuring people of color, just like those bad Star Wars fans. They’re still around, but also a lot of weird nitpicking over the series. I’m not giving full judgment on the narrative until it’s done and I see a complete story, but what it is so far is fascinating and cool and action packed.
And I just fricking love it. Acolytes still good. Catch up folks, ’cause you’re gonna be spoiled this weekend. I am sure of it. I’m already seeing the gif and the memes out there on Twitter.
Cherlynn: That’s it for the episode this week everyone. Thank you as always for listening. Our theme music is by Game Composer Dale North. Our outro music is by our former managing editor, Terence O’Brien. The podcast is produced by Ben Elman. You can find dendra online
Devindra: at dra on Twitter Blue Sky [00:54:00] Threads all over the place.
Mastodon and I podcast about movies and tv@thefilmcast.com.
Cherlynn: If you wanna send me high quality footage of slugs mating, I guess please Peach G 13 only. I am at Sher Low on Twitter or x, and at she Instagram on ets. Email us your thoughts at podcast@enggat.com. Leave us a review please on iTunes or your podcast catcher of choice.
And subscribe anywhere you can get podcasts.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/engadget-podcast-motorolas-2024-razrs-make-a-compelling-case-for-foldables-113027343.html?src=rss

Motorola is still trying to reclaim the glory of its original Razr phone with its latest foldables. The new Razr and Razr+ are more stylish than the previous models, and at $700 and $1,000 respectively, they’re surprisingly affordable for devices with massive folding OLED screens. In other news, we chat about Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange being freed from prison, Rabbit’s massive security hole in the R1 AI gadget, and a horrific Sora AI commercial from Toys “R” Us.

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you’ve got suggestions or topics you’d like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News!

Topics

Moto Razr and Razr+ first look: stylish and (somewhat) affordable – 0:51

Samsung announces its second Unpacked of the year will be in Paris – 13:14

Expect a bunch of new hardware at August’s Made by Google event – 19:56

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is free – 24:38

U.S. Supreme Court rules the government can ask social platforms to take down posts – 31:22

Rabbit R1 modder group discovers massive security holes – 36:11

Uber blames NYC law for locking drivers out of its app, more cities could come soon – 39:22

Toys “R” Us released a creepy ad using OpenAI’s Sora video tool – 44:43

Working on – 49:15

Pop culture picks – 51:24

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Credits 

Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Cherlynn Low
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien

Transcript

Devindra: [00:00:00] What’s up Internet and welcome back to the Engadget Podcast. I’m Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar.

Cherlynn: I’m Deputy Editor Cherlynn Low.

Devindra: This week, we’ll be chatting about Moto’s new Razrs. There’s new Razr and Razr+ and yeah, their foldables once again, they look pretty cool keeping very pretty affordable prices for foldables too.

So we’ll be talking about that. We’ll talk about Julian Assange being set free from prison, a couple of Supreme court rulings, and oh man, we’re just gonna really look forward to events happening or at least one big event happening in August, which thank you, Google. We all want to do that. We all want to be traveling for work in August.

Thank you so much as always folks. If you’re enjoying the show, please be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcaster of choice, leave us a review on iTunes, drop us an email at podcast@engadget.com. Cherlynn, I know you were very excited. You seem so excited about the new Motorola Razr and Razr+.

I’m, you they look really nice. I like the prices. What is it? [00:01:00] 700 for the Razr 1000 for the Razr+. These are nice looking foldables. What’s up this year?

Cherlynn: Very excited is a very strong way to put how I feel about these things. I think are we no longer

Devindra: excited about foldables? Is it just

Cherlynn: I’ve always been, I think I was more excited for, and here’s where you could use the right word.

And there’s also a story behind this. Motorola did like a whole ass launch event. In Brooklyn for the motor Razr, 2024 lineup. This was this was earlier this week. The news was announced Tuesday. They also had their little event on little, it was more than little event on Tuesday and a featuring one Paris Hilton, who’s apparently there’s like Big fan of the pink Razr from way back when, right?

Like she was the whole that’s hot. And then flip the pink phone thing. Anyway this event also featured a magician. So I was like, all right, look, I guess I’ll go. And then I went

Devindra: and I was dragged. You heard there was going to be a magician.

Cherlynn: The main reason I was already out for a different meeting earlier that day.

[00:02:00] So I was like, all right, I’ll just go to the office, chill, and then go to this event and see get some light of my own hands on time with the phones. Cause Sam took the hands on demo for us. I was like, all right, I’ll go take a look at the phone, but also, yes. Okay. I was like, I’ll try to get a selfie with Paris Hilton.

Why not? And it turns out I left the event before Paris Hilton even started to do her DJ set because I was just so impatient. Oh wait, she’s doing a

Devindra: DJ set too?

Cherlynn: So she DJed at the launch event, but there was first like this magic show thing. I don’t, please, if Lindsay Lohan can DJ in Mykonos Paris Hilton can for sure.

Are we going to have a fight here, Sherilyn? Because listen, if we’re going to talk about somebody with, I don’t know, talent of any kind, the ability to produce. I don’t know if talent is a strong word. Lindsay Lohan is a good actor. I liked her until like her inevitable downfall. Yeah.

Devindra: Paris Hilton, not so much. Come on. Okay. So what was, what did you see at this event? Did you see the magician? Yeah.

Cherlynn: I will say the reason I keep bringing up the magician is because they used the magician to highlight a few of these features that are debuting on the new Motorola Razr and [00:03:00] Razr+.

And you pointed out rightly that the pricing is one of the outstanding things. Sam has it in his hands on headline that they might be the most stylish and affordable foldables of the year. The standard Razr starting at 700. I think the pricing is a little bit confusing because last. With the 2023 lineup, the Razr 40, as it was known, I think in the UK versus the Razr in the U S it was like, it costs about 800 pounds.

And that was quite a lot of money. That’s close to a thousand in the U S and I don’t know that it ever came to the U S. And so it’s, I don’t know about that one, but

Devindra: last year’s Razr was also 700. So at least the base,

Cherlynn: I don’t know, like I’m looking at our review of the Razr, 2023 and the hands on and it’s they put Matt’s review because Matt Smith who reviewed it for us is based in the UK says it was 800 pounds.

So that’s like I’m just so

Devindra: before let me just fill you all in here as we were doing the planning for this because I was just Like looking like how do these compare to last year? It does seem like the pricing last year did launch at 700 and 1000 But what we weirdly happened and i’m sure the uk folks are annoyed [00:04:00]about this apparently the base Razr was on sale like a quote unquote on sale for 80 percent of last year for 500 Which is a crazy price,

Cherlynn: whatever it is, let’s put it this way.

Motorola’s pricing strategy is strange AF, but this year it seems like the base one starts at 700 and then the higher end, the Razr+ is a thousand to begin with. And for that money, you’re getting like a larger external display than ever. You’ve got more app support on the external screen. You’ve got some colors like hot pink, which is like that original Razr flip phone. And then this like leather finish on the back. Sans pictures look great. The ones I saw at the event also looked really nice. And you have some AI features now. Look, I don’t know how y’all feel about magicians and magic tricks, but they’ve all been ruined for me because I’ve read or watched too many, reveal the trick shows.

You did

Devindra: it to yourself. Okay. Yeah.

Cherlynn: And then like the magician was like, Oh everybody hold up your phone and [00:05:00] Google this or a calculator that, and everything, and I was like, all right, fine. And but for example, the motor Razr+ 2024 and the Razr all have new AI based features.

For example, you can take a photo of, by the way, listen to how, listen to this. You can take a photo of your outfit and the. Quote, AI unquote will generate color themes and wallpapers for you. I was like, Alcatel did this circa 2018. Stop it. This is not a new feature. Stop calling things new. But there is another thing called magic canvas on Motorola.

Motorola’s AI suite that will let you type in a prompt and then it will create sort of a wallpaper for your phone. So if you like dancing puppies with balloons in the background, you can use that as your wallpaper, for example. And then there’s a feature that’s coming called catch me up. It will summarize all your notifications.

So you don’t have to go through all of them individually and then see. Sam is excited about something called Remember This, which sounds a little bit like Microsoft’s Recall. You can ask, or you can first prompt Modo to [00:06:00] be like remembering things for you, and then ask it to record a photo, screenshot, or some audio, and then it will repeat the important details back to you when you ask for those important details later on.

Oh what was in that photo? Or what date did I leave in that screenshot and something like that?

Devindra: So you have to actively tell it to remember things, which I think exactly

Cherlynn: you had to first be exactly. So it’s not like in the background, constantly screenshotting and tracking your activity.

I just feel

Devindra: like people won’t do a good

Cherlynn:differentiation

Devindra: because like you could just always just take a photo of something and be like, yeah, that’s how we wonder if it’s going to

Cherlynn: be a ram hog. Too. Yeah.

Devindra: Who knows? Who knows? I do have to say these things look really nice. Tri do they? As far as yeah, they

Cherlynn: look very cool.

Yeah, they

Devindra: look cool. I don’t see a huge crease on these And the external displays, especially on the plus looks

Cherlynn: oh yeah. The, to quote Paris, so the other thing that Sam did point out is that the crease there is still there, but that it’s very faint and he. Quote, he describes it as a shallow ripple that you only see at acute angles, which is wow.

We’re getting somewhere with these things, right? It feels like from the 2023 lineup of the Razrs to the [00:07:00]2024, what we’re getting is more refinement. Yes, a larger display, but I think the hardware feels like it’s quite Like ready for, to settle, and in the like candy bar format that iPhones have been in for a while, I think many foldables like that are more or less mature in terms of hardware.

And now it’s all about the software. And apparently AI is the way, which I have thoughts

Devindra: on. One thing that I’ve been thinking about is we still don’t have a foldable iPhone. I feel like everyone’s waiting for Apple to do something around that. The rumor was the iPad mini being some sort of like foldable tablet type of thing.

Yeah. But we’ve got several foldable Androids now, Cherlynn, and they seem pretty good. The prices are getting down there. At least like most of them are under the price of an iPhone pro max, even. If you’re considering Android phone, why don’t you just get a foldable? Unless you want something under 500.

Cherlynn: Yeah. I think the main concern has always been like durability and battery life on these things. And the, by the way, the light Razrs get like a slightly higher IP rating than before. And again, with the crease not [00:08:00]looking as bad, and then there’s a new hinge on these new Razrs too. There’s a lot of good things.

I don’t know that we’ll ever see a affordable iPhone. I think we see affordable iPad mini first,

Devindra: yeah,

Cherlynn: you’re right. That there are cheaper now, a thousand dollars for the higher end ones for the flips anyway, not the bigger folds These are pretty feasible as your daily driver, if you’re okay with your phone lasting only a day, not two.

How

Devindra: much is the Galaxy Flip now? Isn’t that like 800?

Cherlynn: It’s about 999 as well. Like it starts at and it does have that nicer cover display. I want to see Samsung do more with the Flip. I, and speaking of, we’ll learn more come July. We’ll get to that in a bit. We’ll

Devindra: learn more from Samsung. We’re also still waiting for Google is not doing like a top down fold.

The flip style, right? It’s just, yeah. Yeah. The pixel fold opens up. So I could see them doing something. It just seems like I the main appeal of Android is like, you can get a really killer phone for 500 or less, but if you’re willing to bump up a little more, it does seem like if you’re going to spend 700 or a thousand [00:09:00]dollars on a phone, get a flippy,

Cherlynn: it seems like we’ve reached that point.

I do want to point out has Sam in the chat says that the issue with Modo has always been their horrible software update record, which

Devindra: yes,

Cherlynn: very good point. And again, Sam does point out that Motorola says that the Razrs will receive three major Android OS upgrades and four years of software support.

That’s a jump from last year, but it’s. It’s still short of the 7 years you’re getting from Samsung and Google’s more recent devices. So for bumping the number of years of support up, Modo, but you’re still so far behind the competition. That’s

Devindra: not great. I feel like the thing when you mentioned Magician, Sherilyn, all I think about, I don’t take Magician seriously.

I’m not super excited by them. But I think about Joe Bluth in Arrested Development, and I can imagine if they had gotten Will Arnett to come here and just do his Joe Bluth thing while being sarcastic about Samsung features, that would have been funny. I gotta

Cherlynn: say,

Devindra: I was

Cherlynn: looking around the event.

First of all, they were like, okay, so the event started at six and was going to [00:10:00] end at 10. I bounced before eight, by the way, because like

Devindra: at night,

Cherlynn: yeah, that’s why I was able to go out. It was like after work. That’s why I was like, all right, it’s afterwards. So it’s not really.

Devindra: And then you’re really pushing it, Motorola you want people to hang out with you after you show up at eight or

Cherlynn: six that there was no food until after 7 45.

Nevermind. I showed up really for the food. But anyway, and then Perry Sildon was slated to show up at like It’s eight or something, but I think she started after eight from,

Devindra: she’s going to come in. I heard from friends afterwards. Yeah.

Cherlynn: Anyway, at six and then the wait, why was I starting? Oh, I was looking around.

I got in at six, 10 or something. And people, it was already like the seating area in front of the magician’s performance area was already full. And I like, I was like, all right, these are the plants, right? These are the plants. These have to be, have you

Devindra: people never seen a magician before? I don’t

Cherlynn: know.

I don’t think it’s I got, I think they were all plants. Like I, there’s a lot of audience participation that all requires. I think if magic tricks, you will know that there’s a lot of planted actors. Anyway, the,

Devindra: that [00:11:00] makes sense. Yeah, anyway, I was

Cherlynn: looking around and I was like, yeah, I noticed that there was a suspicious amount of people already there, but be, I was like, wow, does Motorola have a lot of money still?

Like what is going on? They’ve, got Paris Hilton. They got this magician. They got this big space. They got a magician,

Devindra: not even like a name. I got to say,

Cherlynn: I think they have a name and I just can’t remember, which sucks. But there you go. So I don’t know. Motorola must be doing something right.

Or Lenovo is financing it like crazy, cause Lenovo owns Motorola. I

Devindra: don’t know. Paris Hilton is not a big pull. Paris Hilton, the last we saw with her was doing like an ad deal with Twitter, right? The last I heard of her is on her

Cherlynn: reality TV series where she’s being a mom, but

Devindra: that’s, it’s even beyond that.

But d tier celebrity at this point. The Elon Musk will point to will like, Hey, you’re not mad at me yet. Would you like to do something with Twitter? Yeah, I don’t know. Okay. The phones look nice. The event seems they should get David Blaine. Like when they finally get the when they get rid of the bezel.

How do you make the bezel disappear? Oh God. Magic trick. That would be hilarious.

Cherlynn: Cringe. So much [00:12:00] cringe.

Devindra: Okay. Anything else on the Moto Razrs?

Cherlynn: No. I will say that it’s, they’re kicking off foldable season. And we’re going to hear more about that just a little, in just a little bit.

Devindra: Foldable fall, as it were.

We are, cause summer just started. Oh my God. Okay. So Samsung is doing something in July. We thought we were a chill for the summer, at least for July and August, but no, never. So what are we, what’s going on there?

Cherlynn: Samsung officially announced. The second unpacked of the year of every year is happening this year on July 10th.

Wonderful round of applause. July 10th is a lot earlier than we’re used to, right? These second unpacks used to be, taking place either during IFA, which would be in September, or End or mid August. And it’s just gone earlier and earlier. Now it’s in the middle of July. Great. Hey, you know who else announced they’re like important dates for July?

Amazon’s prime day is going to be July 16th and 17th. So if you understand the consumer tech media business, [00:13:00]you’ll know that’s. It’s really a lot of work for a lot of people. So I don’t appreciate the timing here, but Samsung anyway, officially announced July 10th and it’s holding his event in Paris of all places.

Now, earlier this year, when it hit, it had the S 24 unpacked Samsung did that in San Jose, which Silicon Valley, everybody was like, Oh yeah, it’s linked to AI and that’s why they chose Silicon Valley for that launch event. So if you think about Paris. Other than Paris Hilton, Paris and France.

Are you thinking fashion? Are you thinking bed bug controversy from last year?

Oh, yeah. Anyway, I won’t be going. Thank goodness. I’m just not thanks for talking about bed bugs. Cause I know we’ll have bed bugs, but I think Considering that this time of year, Samsung’s always launching foldables and wearables and watches make sense for the fashion setting.

And then if they wanted to make their flip a bit more stylish and also, yes, we are expecting to see the galaxy ring that they teed up in [00:14:00] January. There’s a lot to expect from Samsung. And like I said, it’s going to be foldable fall, ben, our producer is pointing out that the Olympics are also in Paris.

But is it in July? I think it is. Also

Devindra: true. Late July. Late July. Okay, so they’re trying to get

Cherlynn: out of there maybe before the Olympics really fully kick off.

Devindra: I guess getting, riding some of the fitness hype maybe. Like especially if there’s a watch. With the

Cherlynn: galaxy ring. So a lot of potential tie in things.

Now we already have

Devindra: Oh! Olympics rings! Wow. Multicolored Samsung Galaxy rings with the Olympics colors. Can you imagine if they make that? Oh, I can’t.

Cherlynn: Anyway, you heard it here first. Ben and Devindra both predicted it on the Engadget going to use the Galaxy Ring as the Olympics ring. Some kind of Olympics tie in.

Would not be surprised. The

Devindra: official Olympics wearable that nobody will ever buy, but yes. Will it

Cherlynn: get them all to not sleep? In the same rooms. Anyway, head on over to Engadget. com. We already have a what to expect out of Samsung sort of preview article up.

Devindra: Are we [00:15:00] excited about the ring yet? Like we, we talked about it.

I talk about my ambivalence around ring gadgets in general. How are you feeling now?

Cherlynn: I’m with you. Like I don’t wear that aura ring anymore. I just will. have someone else who’s more happy to wear rings, to, to review it. Like I really liked what the aura ring did in terms of the insights for sleep, because it’s something I was happy to wear to sleep, even though I still didn’t like it, I was like, all right, it’s better than a watch.

But it also actually gave very good. and different information, the aura sort of system about my sleep than I was used to. So that was nice to see. But otherwise, no. I wash my hands too many times a day for a ring to be really a feasible thing to wear.

Devindra: You could wash your hands with the ring, can’t

Cherlynn: you?

I can, but I don’t like to. I don’t like to have moisture retained around the ring. I would still take it off anyway.

Devindra: So it’s mainly cooking is the time where you want to be like, I don’t want to get sauce and oil and

Cherlynn: My comfort.

Devindra: I feel you. I feel like the only thing that I felt [00:16:00]that was good for sleep tracking back in the day.

We will Often bring this up but r. i. p jawbone r. i. p the job on a device that was too beautiful to survive in this world and also too bug ridden also r.

Cherlynn: i. p. The amazon had this Sleep tracking, halo rise. Gosh, that thing was great. I miss it. But I think maybe the,

Devindra: you miss Amazon staring at you and judging

Cherlynn: someone in our chat earlier today, when we were talking about that AI feature, where you take a photo of your outfit to generate wallpapers thing someone in our chat mentioned, didn’t Amazon have a camera that you would take outfits?

I was like, yeah, I loved it. I will say that the person in the chat who said that who mentioned that feature was I. It wasn’t a creepy when people realized they were undressing in front of an Amazon camera. I did not, I was not undressing in front of the camera to start. I would dress up somewhere else and then go in front of the camera thing.

But

Devindra: it sounds like a really easy to use device. I don’t, I still

Cherlynn: have it at home. I don’t, it doesn’t work anymore. Like the halo rise. I have a little, my own personal graveyard of Amazon devices that you, I loved watching me.

Devindra: They just threw money at so many things, the fire [00:17:00]phone. All these dumb devices.

Oh my God. I can’t

Cherlynn: wait to see what Panos Pane does with Amazon hardware. But we are digressing just so slightly. Back to the Samsung Unpacked event. I think, In addition to the, to the galaxy ring, we’re expecting also just making an educated guess here, probably going to see the new galaxy Z fold as Z flip galaxy watch.

I think they had a watch pro in the past too. And then we still haven’t seen new buds. So there’s a lot, have we seen a new tablet in a while? I don’t know. So that’s a lot. That’s a lot of things to expect Samsung to unveil. I will also say. That in that announcement about unpack Samsung also mentions the words galaxy AI is here.

Wonderful. Excellent. I yeah, I

Devindra: are they going to show Bixby just evolving into what is like Bixby is just

Cherlynn: running a baton relay Paris, that’s part of their event.

Devindra: Oh boy. Okay. We’ll see. Do you think it is wise? I could see August being a good [00:18:00] time to get away from the iPhone hype, have some time to yourself.

That’s what Google’s doing. But July. Nobody’s thinking about updating devices everyone’s waiting to see what the future things are, especially should I get an iPhone or iPad. July. I would not be surprised,

Cherlynn: now that you and Ben brought it up, that it is absolutely Olympics timing. They’re timing it for, try to get ahead of the Olympics so that they can make their Olympics announcement, something like that.

Would not be surprised if that is like a part of the reason. So there you go.

Devindra: There you go. Let’s talk about the Google thing because we’re talking about like upcoming events and Google’s announcing basically August 13th, is going to be the next Google, the made by Google event where we’re expecting new pixels and stuff.

Do we feel differently about this? Because this is this is just gonna be their major device launch. It’s not going to be tied to any events otherwise.

Cherlynn: So Google announced the meet by Google event is happening on August 13th. And like you [00:19:00] said, it’s a bit of time for itself. And I want to go on a rant after this about all of this, not a rant, like a little.

sideways talk. Google traditionally, and it’s like second half of the year event, it’s hardware launch brings us new pixel phones probably a new pixel watch, maybe new pixel, but similar slate of devices, I would say as Samsung. Except for because. Google doesn’t usually have a January event to launch its actual flagship devices.

It will have both like a standard phone and maybe a foldable as well. Or we might, we’re probably due to see like a new pixel fold. As well as the pixel. It’s been

Devindra: two years, right?

Cherlynn: Two or one, everything blends into one to me, but yeah, it could be Two years by now. But we really liked that thing, right?

Like we really liked it when it came out, it was very thin and how all that, it’s one

Devindra: year, it’s one year, it just feels it feels like too.

Cherlynn: So there’s a pixel fold two, we’re expecting to see, and then the pixel nine series of phones and then whatever the pixel watch three, I believe is also on the agenda, hopefully, probably.[00:20:00]

And then finally, maybe some other devices after. All of that internal reorganization under Rick Osterloh happened earlier this year that The Verge reported on. Maybe we’ll see some other hardware from the Nest side of things? That’s a lot of speculation on my end, but that’s an educated guess, right?

Based on historical evidence, based on what’s out there. And other stuff that I know.

Devindra: When those things. Okay. So July event that we’ll be all planning for, I will be gone. Sorry guys. Also August. So it’s there’s no break during the summer. And then once this Google thing is done, we’re all like, just thinking about iPhone and thinking about what’s going to happen with Apple and the whole fall and everything.

No rest for us, what do you, are you looking to doing are you looking to covering things or. Focusing on any kinds of other stories in July and August, Ryland? I would always May have a little time to breathe. I would

Cherlynn: love to take a break, but in July I’m traveling. Right after Prime Day.

And the I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll be able to escape any of the coverage. [00:21:00] And Google, by the way, is hosting this event in Mountain View. And as much as I would like not to travel, I do, want to say hi to some of the Google people I know that work there, get some FaceTime with some executives, because that’s always good for making sure Engadget gets like good information and do some reporting from the scene.

So I might, yeah, exactly. So that’s. It’s possible. I don’t know, but you haven’t finalized our plans yet is the reason. I’m not being like cagey on purpose. I just don’t have anything for him to say. But I did RSVP. I’m always like, invite me to things. I will always say yes, but I may or may not show up.

That’s like my thing.

Devindra: Oh boy. Okay. Okay. So that’s new Moto Razrs, which look pretty cool. Check out our hands on coverage and we’re. I guess soon you’re going to be prepping for the Samsung Galaxy impact and after that prepping for the Google Pixel event. Hey

Cherlynn: Kevin says in our chat asked, what about Fitbit?

And I would like to point out that Pixel Watch 3 is probably you can consider it almost a Fitbit device. Cause Google owns Fitbit and also Fitbit did [00:22:00] launch the Ace LTE wearable for kids last month. Fitbit is still doing its own thing. I don’t know if they’re going to do anything new for this made by Google event though.

So there you go. And they just say, yep, they had a big turnaround too of employees and things too. What is Fitbit even anymore? Man, I remember when we were excited about wearables. I remember when that stuff was cool and everybody was trying different ideas and Fitbit was not owned by Google and was a lot more nimble, yeah. Okay. We’ll be looking forward to all this stuff and check out our coverage on the Motorola.

Devindra: All right, let’s move on to some other news, and I think one of the surprise stories this week is that Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who has been in prison for a few years, was hiding out In an embassy in London, right? After WikiLeaks put out the documents, like a lot of secret documents, classified documents around the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the U.

S. did not like that. [00:23:00]So he is now free from prison. He pled guilty. To the espionage act at a courthouse in Saipan. He, I just saw the news. Like he has arrived back in his homeland of Australia. He’s reuniting with his wife. He’s not actually saying much except saying let me see here. The deal required Assange to plead guilty to conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information relating to the national defense of the United States.

He did defend himself in court. He did say let me see here. Working as a journalist, I encouraged my source to provide information that was set to be classified in order to publish that information. I believe the First Amendment protected that. And of course his source was Chelsea Manning too.

So she, they also went to prison for a while. There’s a lot of, there has been a lot of discussion about how. Is this an unfair thing? Should we, should the government go so harshly against leakers, but especially if it’s classified information, I think that’s where it gets so messy, Chelsea Manning spent.

[00:24:00] Years in prison was like what six or seven years and then obama, I think commuted her sentence so that kind of worked out better there, but it is I don’t know Do you have any thoughts on this sterling because we’ve been talking about the julian’s on stuff for so long It felt like the story would never end and it’s not done yet like he’s gonna say things his supporters are gonna be out there trying to You know say that Spin this a certain way too.

I don’t know. What do you think about it?

Cherlynn: I think You I mean, the question that you were getting at near the end of that portion there is that, does the penalty befit the crime and it’s hard, right? It’s, you have to talk about national security is one thing. We also have to talk about who was affected?

What’s the net good or net harm? It’s really hard to decide that there’s a reason I’m not in the legal judiciary system to decide these things. But I don’t

Devindra: know. It’s a, I think like one major argument I’ve seen against WikiLeaks over time is that Hey listen, the leakers getting confidential government information out there has been hugely important [00:25:00] in the history of this country.

Like the Pentagon papers were like, that was classified information that was massively influential in terms of that’s different. I’m going to get to that, but the Pentagon papers. That definitely helped us get a sense of what was actually happening in Vietnam and showed how bad the Vietnam war was for America and how a failed war it was.

Assange points out that he says the first amendment and the espionage act are in contradiction of each other. He accepts his actions were in violation of the espionage statute and that it would be difficult to win such a case, given all the circumstances, basically. If you leak anything, even if it’s like you believe it’s in, it’s for the greater good, like the government will come down against you with the full weight of its justice powers.

The argument against Wikileaks is that they did not do anything to redact Confidential information, especially things around I believe it was like locations of agents and people working around the world. There were, there was a lot of like [00:26:00] really sensitive stuff. We’re not like really redacted and what Snowden had done.

was a little different, like he had worked directly with Glenn Greenwald, who has now fallen far from like when we, from being played by Spock in the Snowden movie. Glenn Greenwald, you have fallen very far. But the Snowden stuff, they were working together with journalists who did a lot of that information, redacted a lot of confidential stuff.

And even he Ended up being, hounded and stuck in Russia and also not being like the hero of the left that a lot of people wanted him to be, but whatever that information is out there. Do you ever talk to people, Sherlina, around the Snowden reveals or Spectre, do you ever hear people actually talk about, wasn’t it weird that we learned that the U S government and a lot of governments were like actively spying on citizens and we just don’t talk about it.

I don’t, have you ever encountered people actually discussing it in your daily life outside of tech circles? I don’t

Cherlynn: think people like. Talk about any more like I think back in the day. Yes. I might’ve been a bit too.

Devindra: Did you have conversations back then with [00:27:00]people? I’m just wondering if you encountered this in the real world outside of the media world,

Cherlynn: no, because the people I was talking to back then were all media people. Like I didn’t have many I think it was like early in my move to America days. So all my friends were my J school friends and it was like, yeah. And Singaporeans didn’t really. They like, they knew the names. Oh yeah, you guys

Devindra: are used to it.

Yeah, we’re just like, also, yeah, we’re like, Oh, of course the government is

Cherlynn: spying on you. Everything, it’s not, no, we don’t think the government is spying on us, but we, it’s ingrained in us to be careful what we say, because if the government overhears you talking shit about them, they just jail you.

But the thing is, I think the question here is, yeah, the responsible treatment of sensitive private information that could lead to harm of individual people, but also I don’t know. Like people, wasn’t there a Jimmy, a John Oliver segment on like people getting names confused of do you know who Julian Assange is?

Do you know who Edward Snowden is? And then people were like, Oh, the WikiLeaks guy. And they were like, no, Snowden’s not the WikiLeaks guy. Like it’s, there’s a lot of confusion around all of this.

Devindra: There’s a lot of confusion. In the moment we didn’t have

Cherlynn:conversations as much around like what Snowden revealed, but [00:28:00] I think we’re feeling the impact of it now where everyone is aware that there’s a lot of stuff that’s spying on you, whether it’s your social media, whether your phone, whether it’s the government and there’s heightened, like antitrust sentiment, like just nobody trusts anyone anymore. So that’s what we’re feeling. I feel, I don’t know.

Devindra: There has to be room like for people to actually divulge information.

They think things are going wrong, but yeah, unfortunately, yeah, that, that does not work with the way governments and classified information without retaliation

Cherlynn: is like a huge Thing that needs to be supported, but I don’t know that it is. We’re going

Devindra: to, we’re going to be talking about the story for a while too.

Like Assange is not going to, he’s going to be much louder now. He’s going to be doing many interviews and probably going to have all sorts of like deals out of this. So we’re going to be talking about the story for a while. And Certainly it’s going to be worth diving deeper into it too. So I’m looking for a good guest to talk to around that stuff.

There are a couple other major bits of news we saw this week too. The Supreme court ruled that it allows the White House to request a removal of misinformation on social media. [00:29:00]This was I’m just reading out here from NPR. Basically, I believe this was a result of a conservative complaints.

Of the Biden administration going to social media companies and just asking them to remove specific bits of news around misinformation. I think one thing revolved around Biden’s granddaughter. So just specific bits that they thought were being like put out there badly. And the government was essentially trying to stop what they called misinformation.

I’ve seen a lot of commentary. Where people are saying this actually does set a bad precedent because, okay, what is misinformation? Could a more nefarious regime, if there was another Trump regime or something, could a more nefarious administration use this badly and just define misinformation as stuff they just don’t like?

That could be. A problem. I don’t know if you, have you thought about this at all, Shirlen? If

Cherlynn: you just can’t trust people, right? Like you can put something in place that’s supposed to protect people. They tear it down because they think it’s going to [00:30:00] be like abused, or you can put something in place that was bad and tear it down to protect other.

I don’t know. It’s I don’t trust that like a specific administration anymore. You know what I mean? I. Sometimes they do bad things because they’re dumb. Sometimes they do bad things because they’re bad. Sometimes they don’t think. I don’t know. I have very little faith in a lot of these things.

So no matter how this falls, I feel like the outcome It’s a ongoing and be like, I have very little faith. What’s interesting

Devindra: about this case too, is it was Amy come at Barrett who, is a Trump appointee who really tore down this whole thing, because I think at some point the plaintiffs were saying the white house was bombarding Twitter with requests to set up a streamlined process for censorship.

And that never really happened. Let me see here. I’m going to read from NPR in her opinion for the majority court of the court. Majority Barrett said that at every turn, the alleged facts turn to dust and that the plaintiffs have failed to trace the past or potential harm to anything done by [00:31:00] officials at the white house, the CDC, the FBI, or key cybersecurity agencies.

So it’s just like a lot of, it was thrown out because a lot of this was ruled as baseless. Just interesting, but I don’t know what this sets precedence for. I think a lot of people are worried, especially people worried about Information overall freedom of information. So there is that.

We also saw another Supreme court story actually just hit this morning. The Supreme court has blocked the Biden administration’s plan to curb air, so air pollution from basically key polluting States, I think in the Midwest and places like West Virginia, basically to stop them or at least help them prevent spewing.

Emissions that would go into other states. So here’s the story right now. The Supreme court put a temporary hold on the EPA plan to do that. Basically to curtail air pollution, the drifts across state lines. I think the ruling before was that states. Essentially, we’re going to have to deal with it themselves.

They would all have to come up [00:32:00]with their own plans for figuring out how do they would deal with their own messy air. And because that didn’t happen, the EPA was trying to come up with rules to set it up so that they could actually help curtail this. It’s just not going anywhere. This is another blow against the EPA.

And I can’t think of another blow against the government to actually stop things like air pollution or things that would make the environment better. What’s interesting is that Amy Coney Barrett was among the dissenters for this one too. She joined the three liberal members to push against this.

I don’t know if you have thoughts on this, Cherlynn, cause this one just hit, but it is astounding. Like at every turn, it’s basically, we have a very conservative Supreme court who will always lean on conservative values and states rights. Rather than something that could help people.

Cherlynn: Yeah. I don’t know.

I think we’ve not given the EPA a lot of authority to do what it needs to do. Basically.

Devindra: Yeah. Basically taking it away at every single turn or at least blocking whatever plans, there’s the other thing too, about the EPA can’t [00:33:00] set what was it? Their own environmental yeah, protections.

Like they can’t set standards. That was a whole other thing. So the EP just can’t really do much these days. That’s a pain. We’re going to see more about that story too, and maybe there’s going to be pushback against that. Let’s talk about the rabbit R1 because there was a hilarious chain of events.

where the group, the Rabbitude community that is reverse engineering the Rabbit R1 software revealed that a, they found a security issue within the company’s code that leaves sensitive information accessible to everyone. Did you see this thing show in? Because it just seems wild. It seems like there were API keys that were like open and vulnerable.

People could use it to see pretty much any information, like any response that the R1 device has given to people, including personal information. It could also be used to brick R1 devices, alter the R1’s responses replace the device’s voice. This seems bad. Dare you surprised that this company was not [00:34:00] really thinking about security very hard about the Rabbit R1?

Cherlynn: I love talking about Rabbit because every time something comes up with this company, I just start to laugh. Look, I, again, I was very like, I bought into the whole hype thing. I was like, Oh, this is so cool. The API stuff that they’re trying to build to make their large action model work seems really intriguing.

And then, yeah, clearly haven’t thought it through. Don’t seem to have tested everything. I think the most egregious thing is that the Rabbitude people say that the company, Rabbit, has known about the issue for the past month and quote, did nothing to fix it. And then after they posted, they said that Rabbit revoked 11labs API key, even though it up, even though it broke R1 devices for a bit.

But Rabbit did haul in Gadget in an email or a statement that was only made aware of, quote, an alleged data breach, end quote, on June 25th. So two days, I, it’s a, he said, she said almost, and I don’t know.

Devindra: I would not trust rabbit trust. Yeah. Why?

Cherlynn: Look, maybe here’s the thing. It’s you can say that you inform [00:35:00]someone at the company and say that the company has known about the issue for the past month, but maybe that one person that you informed didn’t tell the whole company, like there’s so many like little nuances that can be missing this, that like they do have some gray area that they’re playing in right now.

And both people could be like saying. Like the truth and it could be both correct. But

Devindra: I like how you’re trying to be nice and fair here, but this company has produced one of the one of the worst devices we’ve ever seen, a thing that is functionally useless and I can’t trust literally anything coming out of their mouth.

So I saw on the the rabbit, I’m still in the rabbit discord channel. They were doing some updates yesterday. They were like, Oh, we made a page to update all the all the news we have around this security issue. We’re going to get to the bottom of this. And I just, I cannot trust. This, the silly company.

It’s just such a, it’s just such a hilarious thing. So anyway, massive data breach. If you have a rabbit device I would say maybe turn that into a nice accessory on your shelf. No some solidist

Cherlynn: tea in our chat said that someone is running [00:36:00]full Android on rabbit R1. Hey, go crazy.

Devindra: It’s just a little, it’s a tiny powerless Android device. So yes, I’m sure you could run full Android on it. Stop using the rabbit R1. That may be the main takeaway here. We also saw another story that Uber is apparently locking out New York drivers out of its apps. It seems like sometimes in the middle of their shifts.

Because of a city pay rule and Lyft is apparently threatening to, to do the same. This is a local story, but it’s also a broader story too, because this kind of like ties into things where they were both both Uber and Lyft had lockouts in 2019. Around like the flat minimum wage requirement for drivers.

They threatened to pull out of Minneapolis because the city was trying to force a driver pay raise up. So these companies have generally done things that have been ruthless against the people working for them. And then they blame. City regulations or state regulations for that. What, I don’t know if you saw the story showing, or do you have any [00:37:00]thoughts?

Yeah.

Cherlynn: I heard about like the past situation where there’s like a minimum wage sort of situation that’s caused some of this and it’s not easy for companies like this to navigate. I’m not taking their side. I think it’s silly, but they need to find a way to make it work. Not just lock people out of the apps that make the money, it

Devindra: seems, this is the way because they don’t want to pay people, right? That’s the problem.

Cherlynn: But the problem is like, if Uber starts to pay as drivers for like, when it doesn’t have, they’re not picking up actual rights and like, where does that money come from?

It’s capitalism all over again, right? Capitalism is the problem because they want to, they’re going to try to pass that on to consumers. And then we’re going to start complaining that we were too expensive and then we’re going to stop using it as much. And then less, it’s like a cycle. Yeah.

Devindra: It’s, we should, we also know we should remember it’s hard to trust Uber.

It’s hard to trust Uber given how ruthless this company was at the beginning and how it just flaunted its own service against regulations, especially in New York. So here

Cherlynn: they’ve had leadership change since then and the new like CEO is like a more grounded person. It seems and [00:38:00] I think that they’re

Devindra: trying to be better, trying to be

Cherlynn: better, but I still think that.

It’s more of an industry sort of shift, right? Where the gig economy is the way things are right now. I think I’ve seen some reports saying that 50 percent of the workforce is going to be freelance in a certain number of years, and we’re already seeing the effects of this, we need to be.

Rethinking the entire system of how we pay people for gig work and for unworking hours, non working hours, that sort of thing. It’s starting to show. It’s not

Devindra: really, it’s not really non working hours is the thing. Like I’m going to read from our story. The mid shift lockouts stem from a six year old NYC payroll that requires ridesharing companies to pay drivers for idle time between fares.

So I don’t consider that non working hours. That is time you were driving around the city and like looking for fair, waiting for a fair to hit before you accept one. So going on with the story here, capping it, capped how long drivers without passengers can be paid means Uber’s Uber is paying them less, but it also means that drivers are taking home [00:39:00] much less money for the same amount of time on the clock.

And they can’t predict, they can’t predict when they’ll lose access to the app. One driver told Bloomberg that they used to work 10 hours and make 300 to 350. Now they’re working 10 hours and barely making 170.

Cherlynn:Unpredictability is like one of the worst things of this whole situation, which is also, by the way, very surprising to me.

Cause every time I’m like in an Uber, I see like the driver gets a next ride before I’m even out of the car. You know what I mean? So I’m like, Whoa, there’s people sitting around like looking for rides. So that’s where my brain’s at. Yeah. Yeah.

Devindra: I’ve seen drivers like running Lyft and Uber simultaneously and will pause one and take one of the other just so they keep themselves going.

But it does seem it’s because like it’s based on the amount of work you’re doing and you’re not working a set amount of time. That’s the big pain. I don’t know if you ever, if you’ve ever had a car accident. If you’ve ever worked like a, I don’t know, like a simple service level job drilling, where like you had to rely on shifts being given to you.

And sometimes you would not get a shift or sometimes like you have to ask, or sometimes a shift would be put on you. This would happen to me. Like when [00:40:00] I was working in sales, like it’s just, you have very little control over how much money you can actually make and it’s all just capricious.

It depends on like your manager and your company doing it. I don’t even know how the Uber thing is working. Cause Uber is so famously algorithmic, right? Most drivers do not have a human manager to talk to you. They put complaints in the app and the app will tell them, go here, take this direction or something.

So I almost wonder too, like this is likely an algorithmic lockout. That’s happening. Cause that’s how Uber works. So anyway, next time you have a cheap Uber, just just think about like the costs here and make sure to tip your drivers, cause I had a really long conversation with my last driver to the airport and they were just lamenting.

These companies are just paying us less and less like every year, every week, it seems like their pay is going down, even though they’re doing the same amount of trips. So think of that folks. One thing I don’t mind doing, especially at airports is like the Uber lines are a mess. You think you’re booking a car, but then you have to run to the thing and [00:41:00] find it and.

Every time I go to an airport, like the taxi lines are just like full, completely full and waiting to pick up people. So there are way other ways to get around, take public transportation. You don’t have to rely on Uber and Lyft for everything. One other thing we want to talk about, and we’re going to do something special for the live stream here, Toys R Us or the folks who own Toys R Us right now has released a brand ad, like a brand film.

That was created entirely using open AI Sora and folks, it’s a nightmare. It is an absolute nightmare. So we’re going to play it here live in the stream and comment on it. And those of us in the, those of you in the chat can join us. You could go take a look, just Google this thing too. You can find it online.

So I’m going to kick off this video. Let’s just take a look and Trillian, feel free to shout out like your emotions, like how you’re feeling about this as we’re seeing it. So let me unmute this tab. Did

Cherlynn: you ever wonder how Toys R Us and Jeffrey the Giraffe came to be? [00:42:00] That’s a lot of cars. Charles Lazarus had a vision that would go on to change toy stores forever.

Devindra: That kid’s head is just not shaped right.

Cherlynn: It’s so weird. My gosh, this kid looks so strange.

This reminds me of that game I play called Match Factory, by the way.

Devindra: Don’t you miss Toys R Us? Whose voice is this? It doesn’t even look like Jeffrey. They’re iconic Jeffrey. Too

Cherlynn: much stuff.

Devindra: This is a different looking Jeffrey. Now they can’t keep the design right.

Cherlynn: Is this the same kid toys arrest?

Devindra: No, the Giraf is named Jeffrey.

Cherlynn: But also the kid looks different. Your dreams come

Devindra: true too. Yes,

Cherlynn: and the continue toys. With the toys Arrest at every [00:43:00]Macy’s. They mean nightmare. Yes.

Devindra: They mean nightmare.

So I guess this is an ad meant to remind people that Toys R Us is not fully dead yet. The company that owns the assets of Toys R Us is now working together with Macy’s and I don’t know. Have you been to Macy’s lately, Cherlynn? There are little Toys R Us sections there now. It’s just it’s not the same.

No, it’s not the same as going through I did you guys have anything like Toys R Us?

Cherlynn: Toys R Us.

Devindra: So going through. The giant store filled with toys. My childhood memories is buying video games from Toys R Us, which was a weird thing. Cause you’d have to pull, you’d have to pull a paper and go up to the counter and hope that it was actually in stock.

But as a kid who only got one or two games a year. It was always like a monumental event to go to play games for free for demos. Those experience you will not get at the Toys R Us at Macy’s. And this is one of the first Sora AI produced ads I’ve seen. I think it looks like a nightmare. Like the kid just looks [00:44:00] inhuman is the thing.

I’m getting a lot of revulsion. There’s

Cherlynn: a lot of very uncanny value going on. Like the movement of the kid’s neck when Like they reacted and recoiled almost a little bit, not in a bad way, but it looked a little robotic, very strange. And then yeah, their face would change depending on the angle that they were being shot from, according to the ad.

And then the ad has these very clear labels that this is made by not just AI, but also some VFX team on Toys R Us’s side. So there’s some cleaning up because I will say that for a Sora made video, It’s just clean, right? There’s not too many glaring like errors, like too much teeth or too many fingers, that sort of thing.

Devindra: They had to like likely redo things quite a bit. They probably had to

Cherlynn: clean it up.

Devindra: They likely had to clean it up, but also what we have read and seen from people testing Sora is that if you, the prompts like break down after a while. So you can do 10 seconds, second clips or something, but the longer you go, the crazier and like wilder it gets, it just can’t like keep a story straight.

I’m like making a video in Sora’s just like a lot of like little tiny prompts and [00:45:00] hope that You cross your fingers and you hope it’s not a complete nightmare. This is, I’m getting a lot of people are bringing this up in the chat, but I’m getting a lot of like polar express and like the mocap stuff that Zemeckis was doing, but even I’ve seen all of those movies.

I saw Beowulf, which I think was one of the first ones he did. And those don’t feel as weird and inhuman to me as this does. But I’m also somebody that likes genuine animation too. And those had like painterly animation. Whereas this is inhuman CG child trying to be human. It’s just not quite right.

There’s your nightmare feel for the week folks. Enjoy. Let’s move on to what we’re working on. Hey, I just produced the surface pro co pilot plus review that is out there. Video is going to be up on YouTube. I’m also currently testing a Kia’s EV9, the three row SUV that Sam and I have been like eyeing for a while.

So I’m testing it. Hoping to write up something about using it as a family car. What’s up with you, Cherlynn?

Cherlynn: Yeah, doing a lot of summer slash fall event planning. We’re also doing some testing of the Apple [00:46:00] betas just to see just to get ready to, break out any sort of stories that might be interesting.

And hopefully get ahead of that crushing fall hardware season. So that’s me.

Devindra: Lots of plans. Do you want to mention anything around the site, Trillian, because you dropped them in.

Cherlynn: Last week we had a story from Carissa Bell go up and it’s titled, How Small Claims Court Became Meta’s Customer Service Hotline where people are apparently having to go to court as a last ditch attempt to recover their accounts.

It’s pretty incredible and the story did really well for us. I think there’s some really interesting stories in here that you might want to take a look at and if you haven’t already. It’s really good reporting from Carissa. I just thought, it’s worth shouting out here on the podcast so that people can go read it.

And if you’ve got, been locked out of your Meta account for some silly reason, or you got hacked or something, and you just, you’re not getting help directly from Meta. Apparently there are people who are having some [00:47:00] success in small claims scoring, which is really ridiculous if you come to think about it.

Devindra: It’s I guess it makes sense because these companies do not have often have like easy ways to get access to customer service. That was a complaint with the Amazon for a while. I think they’ve gotten better about that, but yeah. Man, just be persistent. If you have a lot of issues with these with these companies, also small claims court is like one of those things that is just like useful for people.

But you have to stick with it and you have to spend money to actually make that thing happen to, bring up your issues.

Cherlynn: And time, lots of time.

Devindra: Let’s move on to our pop culture picks for the week. What do you have, Cherlynn?

Cherlynn: Two main things. One, I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve been watching Wild Isles.

Wild Isles. On Prime Video it is nature documentary stuff narrated by David Edinburgh about the British Isles and each episode is of the five limited series episode, like five episode limited series. Each episode focuses on a different type of wildlife. So the first episode is just like general wildlife.

The second episode is like forest. The third is like [00:48:00] fields. The fourth is like freshwater. The fourth is like Ocean, stuff like that. It’s really cool because the footage is incredible. The BBC commissioned this TV series and, the team spent three years just camouflaged in the midst of bird poop infested woods to just get you really neat thermal image footage.

Footage of like a million birds roosting in this little patch and how they’re picked off by owls. Yeah.

Devindra: Forever. Yeah,

Cherlynn: they have, but this is like the thermal image technology is according to the show, like new. And a lot of these, the footage to me is really cool because. I haven’t never seen a slug.

I forget the full name of this slug, but like a slug in the middle of the night is glowing and it made it with another slug. So I’ve seen a slug’s dick, just so you know.

Devindra: Okay.

Cherlynn: Yeah. And then I also saw two snakes going at it. Did you know that male snakes? Their sexual organs have things [00:49:00] on them that help them stay attached to the female snake.

Yeah. Anyway,

Devindra: I can imagine for

Cherlynn: that and more risque footage of animals going at it, you can check out wild isles on prime video. The other thing I will shout out. How do you explain

Devindra: this to kids? No,

Cherlynn: kids can watch it too. It’s like animal sex,

Devindra: not a euphemism.

Cherlynn: I don’t know. Anyway. And then also over the weekend I saw the bike riders in theaters.

It’s that film about the motorcycle gang, the fictional motorcycle gang called the Vandals but stars Austin Butler.

Devindra: They’re real. It’s based on a whole real. It’s based

Cherlynn: on a real thing. The name is not the Vandals though.

Devindra: The name may be different. Yeah, it was based on a picture book of an actual picture

Cherlynn: book by Danny Lyons.

And it stars Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, Jodie Comer is amazing. And I love her. And I don’t know if that’s how you pronounce your last name, but And then also my boo, Norman Reedus shows up and I was like, yes, Norman Reedus. And he’s unrecognizable when he first shows up. I’m like, this is Norman Reedus, right?

This is no. And

Devindra: with the teeth and he looks, God, yeah, he looks like [00:50:00]such a

Cherlynn: meth head from, yeah, dirty hippie from California and the show, but oh, amazing. And then, yeah, I’m very inspired to go check out the story now, the written and the pictures. So if you’re interested in that type of history motorcycle gang stuff, go check it out.

But if not,

Devindra: it’s more like motorcycle gangs in the style of like good fellas or something. I saw the movie and I reviewed it and it’s it’s good. I really like it. And I like the director. I feel like it was a little more push a little harder. Tell us more about these characters. What is up with the Jodi Comer’s character who literally has no.

No inner life. What does she do for a living? I agree. What are her hopes and dreams other than Austin Butler, which he is? I

Cherlynn: don’t, Oh God, I don’t know why I’m so annoyed by Austin Butler, but I did really like Tom Hardy in it. And I will say that like Psycho in our chat says that they didn’t like the ending of Bike Riders pissed them off.

And that Jonathan Anderson says that the Bike Riders was good, but had some slow parts. Fully agree with both of these things. I just thought Tom Hardy plays. Obviously the same [00:51:00]character over and over again, but he was quite good in this one. And then also with

Devindra: a different accent, slightly different accent.

I love this. I

Cherlynn: thought this one was good. I also Jodi Comer is like accident in this one as well. But yeah, I am obviously not like super into the ending. I feel like you said, DaVinci, they could have pushed harder on the storytelling here, but

Devindra: gotta push harder. Yeah, the ending feels like week.

It’s just I watched a movie like this. I’m like, I want to just rewatch good fellas. You want to give me good fellas light. Just let’s just go watch good fellas. Everybody go. Fellas is a perfect. Movie. I want to shout out real quick. I talked about the acolyte being great several weeks ago, and now we’re at the point where my screeners have ended.

And episode five of the acolyte is one of those things that is just I was looking at this thing and like, how the hell does this exist? Something happens three minutes into this episode. And I shouted out loud and my wife had to come downstairs to be like, what, what’s happening? Are you okay?

Because one of the wildest things I’ve ever seen in Star Wars happened within three minutes of this episode. There are prolonged fight scenes the, I’m not going to reveal like what the thing is, but there is a big [00:52:00] bad that everybody has been like talking around and they make their full appearance in this episode.

And the fights are insane. Like it is full on. I talked about this thing basically being Crouching Tiger and they lean more into a lot of that stuff. Just the way you shoot. A Hong Kong style fight scene and I’m all for it. Nice. The reveals are great. Cherlynn, I think for your life and for your interests, you really should be watching the show and I think you will be very happy where things go in episode five.

Keyword is arms. The arms in this episode are very good. If you’re hanging around social media, the spoilers are out. Listen, you’ve got mostly arms, but there are some good arms in this episode. The spoilers are out there in social media. So I’m trying to, I’m not going to reveal things here and you’ll probably see clips for Lynn.

Of certain actors who are revealed to be bad guys. I think you will really enjoy watching the acolyte so highly recommend it I know you like hong kong. Yes. I do. Yeah movies. I will watch this after [00:53:00] i’m

Cherlynn: done with all the animal porn

Devindra: yeah after the animal porn. It’s good. It’s so good I don’t and now I go back and like i’m looking at like how people online are responding to the acolyte It’s just Sure.

Trashfire. It is the fans who you don’t, who like will reject anything made by women or featuring people of color, just like those bad Star Wars fans. They’re still around, but also a lot of weird nitpicking over the series. I’m not giving full judgment on the narrative until it’s done and I see a complete story, but what it is so far is fascinating and cool and action packed.

And I just fricking love it. Acolytes still good. Catch up folks, ’cause you’re gonna be spoiled this weekend. I am sure of it. I’m already seeing the gif and the memes out there on Twitter.

Cherlynn: That’s it for the episode this week everyone. Thank you as always for listening. Our theme music is by Game Composer Dale North. Our outro music is by our former managing editor, Terence O’Brien. The podcast is produced by Ben Elman. You can find dendra online

Devindra: at dra on Twitter Blue Sky [00:54:00] Threads all over the place.

Mastodon and I podcast about movies and tv@thefilmcast.com.

Cherlynn: If you wanna send me high quality footage of slugs mating, I guess please Peach G 13 only. I am at Sher Low on Twitter or x, and at she Instagram on ets. Email us your thoughts at podcast@enggat.com. Leave us a review please on iTunes or your podcast catcher of choice.

And subscribe anywhere you can get podcasts.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/engadget-podcast-motorolas-2024-razrs-make-a-compelling-case-for-foldables-113027343.html?src=rss

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