Diving into our Google Pixel 9/Pro reviews and Gamescom 2024 | Engadget Podcast

[Music] Bo [Music] [Music] Bo [Music] what's up everybody welcome back to another live broadcast of the inaga podcast I'm senior editor Dinger hardwar this week joined by Deputy editor sherlin low hey sherlin howdy howdy and podcast producer Ben Elman hey Ben good morning everybody good morning how is everybody doing in the chat today actually didn't pop out the chat yet so let's see I how do you do the chat I guess yeah Sim B says Montreal in the house wo very cool oh Ed says his pixel his pixel 9 Pro XL just arrived congrats pixel pixel 9 Pro XL just are we twinsies what is the color of that I can't quite tell this one's called rose quartz but it's a really nice pale pink I really like it that's a really nice color it's very it's very better than the stuff we saw from the rumors around Apple where people are like the new iPhone Pros is may be slightly gold Maybe kind it's so boring because it's all metal that they have to deal with basically how's how's everybody else hello chat room says good morning watching from Laval I think yeah where is Laval I was wondering about that myself uh Tom Rogers is in is that Florida is FL short for Florida I think yeah I think so uh Jeremy Thomas is from Charlotte andc also says yeah Quebec Canada so actually broccoli and um Simon are in the same Province hello hello yeah the the thing about Canada airport to quite hilarious to me uh a lot of things I love Canada but yeah the dealing with a lot of the airports and everything is kind of a mess YYC totally know where that is Yul that makes sense for Montreal I think it has to make so sorry Tom I didn't mean to make it it does not make sense at all what on Earth is sorry go ahead I don't I think it might be because all of the airport codes in like North America maybe even the Americas need to like be um starting with it's a different quote too it's like a different what I read was but they need to be unique and so there might be like something else that took like the MTN uh could be um what I what I did see was on thread someone asked that question question like Canada or UK like what's wrong with all your airport codes starting with why and then someone else pointed out that they're actually a different type of airport code than the ones that we're used to which is like JFK EWR I mean gota love it set ofes this week folks we'll be we we have reviews we've got reviews of the new pixel devices so sherlin has edited those reviews and can talk about these things um we have talked so much about these devices so I think we'll be directly about like what are our overall Impressions at this point we've also got some news from Gamescom and hey some other fun news crazy news going on this week how's everybody doing are we ready to start the live recording yeah I am recording for first timers we're recording our audio podcast so you're just seeing us do that we will keep an eye on you in the chat but we won't always directly respond to you we'll try to do some Q&A in between sections okay yeah sorry we can't be like twitch streamers but I do want as the producer I want to make sure that people who can't listen to the podcast or watch the stream live don't feel left out and they're just like listening to us respond to you know a bunch of people in chat so hi to Tom Rogers hi to Jeremy Thomas um hi to Ardo of Al yes James Royce yep Quin Thompson Italy uh so another thing that we're going to do is we're going to countdown from three if you've seen um at the stream before you know we're going to do like a clap or snap your fingers this is like The Clapper board in TV and movie sets then we're going to do like five or 10 seconds of silence and then we're actually going to get into the recording of the show so if you want to put clap or snap fingers emojis in the chat that's always fun it makes us feel want yeah Make some noise Make some noise but also keep keep the emo emojis appropriate let's just say that there any emojis that are inappropriate unless you make them inappropriate your mind we symbolize things inpr yeah sure sure um damn Benn it on my own dirty mind okay whatever are okay in our chat just just nepl how much that's fine to yeah okay let's get off of this so let's count down from three 2 one and some silence while we're doing the silence thumbs up the stream it helps people find us okay silence over let's get into talking about the pixel let's go folks and uh I like how during the silence I took a giant sip of water through the straw and went into the yeah well sorry that's why the silence is always a little longer than it might otherwise need to be because people do like they'll shift around their chairs it it happens all the time don't worry about it yep uh okay folks let's go in three two one what's up internet and welcome back to the gadged podcast I'm senior editor dendra hardwar I am Deputy editor Sherin L this week we've got reviews for the pixel 9 and N Pro and xl's and all the various pixel9 models except for the fold that's not out yet so it's very sad it's going to be a couple weeks away um and we've also got some news from Gamescom 2024 which is I guess still happening but most of the major news is already happened from the opening night and uh some follow-up events and yeah got some Weekly News as well as always folks if you're enjoying the show please be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or your podcast of choice leave us a review on iTunes and drop us an email at podcast and gadget.com and join us Thursday it's typically around 10:45 a.m. eastern on our YouTube channel uh where we live stream the show and you can talk to we'll show off some gadgets I know sherlin has something she wants to show off soon uh during our q&as and it's fun time we've also got a good group of people here uh so join us we've got the pixel phones now sherlin uh I'm sure you've been like in editing hell for the past week can you broadly tell us so how do we feel about the let's focus on the pixel 9 right now how do we feel about the pixel 9 yeah um the pixel9 I wasn't expecting it to get a super high score but Sam who um reviewed the pixel 9 for us seems really impressed I mean like Sam Rutherford senior writer yeah Sam Rutherford is our like Android main person and he is also our photable person so so having him review like the most standard pixel 9 I was just like it's a he's gonna be bored right I was like this man's used to his big foldable screens but Sam really enjoyed the pixel9 and like to contextualize it for everyone I went from Reading Matt's review first of the pixel 9 pro and pro XL so Matt Smith our UK bureau chief um I went from editing him and then going on to Sam who's reviewing up the next day and like again you you read the pro review you're like of course it's good of course everyone lik Pro very very high like that is surprisingly High well let's get to that I I wanted to talk about that but I mean you asked to start with the nine so we'll start with the nine well if you if you feel more interested in the Pro you can start there it's up to you we can I've just started talking B let's finish this thought uh so so after I went from like Matt to Sam I wasn't expecting I was expecting like I wish this was the pro you know kind of that Vibe I didn't get that I actually got Sam going like at the end he said like truly if you don't need the Gemini Advanced AI if you don't need like a telephoto like a dedicated telephoto camera you may even be very happy with the pixel 9 which is like again what we always differentiate between the pro and the regular uh flagships the iPhone and iPhone Pro situation too right like same exactly is a same situation now um so I think it used to be though in previous years that because there was never a smaller pixel Pro it was always like a larger pixel Pro was always a larger phone we had more reason to recommend uh the nine because of size but now it's like no even if this there's like an alternative size in the premium like premium topend like sort of uh variant we still are like The Nine's pretty freaking good so I was just surprised by that now okay back to your point uh the more interesting review in my opinion is the the the fact that Matt decided to award the pixel 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL respectively like really high scores for any I think even any Android handset ever for us 94 and '92 is where we landed with the 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL respectively and again to contextualize and give you all like a little bit of behind the scenes uh he Kendall he scored them a little bit higher at first and I was like whoa we're not gonna have a 100 out of 100 mat yeah yeah I just was like I think we might need to Tamper this a little bit like I feel like we're very excited but we need to give ourselves some hey a little bit of wiggle room like what are they they're not perfect right so I think we tweaked in the tweaking we tweaked the original scores for both devices both went down a little bit I think if you look at our score for last year's pixel 8 Pro um it was 93 and again this is like way too in the weeds and both Matt and I will be like we hate arguing over like one or two points but here's the reasoning um 93 for last year's and usually we're like this is just as good if not better so maybe we'll go to 93 or 91 but then we brought the pixel 9 Pro XL down a point and that is part because Matt still wanted to have like a big enough gap between the 9 Pro and the 9 Pro XL and so 93 just was wasn't giving us a lot of room and then the other reason is that the N9 Pro XL actually even though it has is the same size it screen is 0.1 of an inch uh bigger this year which like doesn't sound like much when you're talking about a frame that's still the same size but the screen for Matt who boldly claimed he had larger than average hands or average or whatever not too small hands I don't know what he's telling us there but uh he was all like it was a very humble brag but even for Matt it was like hard to reach the corners and so with that we were like all right it's worth like saying it is unwieldy it is a more expensive phone than last year these AI features don't do enough for us to be like yeah it's worth that that you know keeping it same score sort of situation yet so we brought it down a point but that's not a bad thing why the N the vi 9 Pro holy crap we like it's arguably one of our highest scored phones around like 94 um so obviously you've read these reviews dendra like were you shocked at the scores we gave I me I was shocked at the score of the nine Pro um the XL you know being a little more unwieldy I was not surprised there but it does seem like I don't know I I was talking about this with Sam a little bit too like uh around his review it is funny to see Google's Journey on like the way it's thinking of Android phones right because they launched with let's go back in history right they launched with like the HTC G1 right and some of the like early motorolas like stuff from third parties then third party started making a lot of garbage and putting a lot of stuff into Android software so Google was like okay okay hold up let's have these Nexus phones which are just pure Android which run all our stuff and doesn't have any of your third party garbage and uh at that point that never that was never a big seller right that was for the fans the super fans the people online the super nerds pixel was their attempt to be like okay screw it let's just go iPhone and I feel like nine Generations in they finally done it the camera bar has been chopped up uh the design looks a little spiffier I'm not too surprised I do feel like it seems like Google like knocked this one out so I was shocked by the scored number but uh yeah I feel like Google it's been a long road for Google to get to this point to make like the ideal Android phone I'd say it has and I I mean I don't know if I would call it the ideal Android one even if I think it is a very like significantly improved device over let's say the earlier pixels even though it feels like over the pixel 8 which I also like have here right and for those of you on the stream I'm holding up side by side so you can kind of look right the design felt nice on the pixel 8 Pro you know the colors you know Google's always nailed the color combo um if feels very different this time um I think you've seen all our reviews mention this independently Matt Smith in the UK and Sam in New Jersey with both all like this feel like an iPhone Matt almost like picked it up and was like looks iPhone and it looks like an iPhone and that's not a bad thing right because like they still have enough of a distinction like the camera bar is different enough there's the G logo I guess um is that a that's a that's a good thing in the sense that it feels premium it feels solid it feels like a good real phone um and I'm sure there are people who won't be happy about that they're like you know don't keep copying Apple oh phones are so boring now they're all the same because don't forget the Samsung s24 Series also feel like iPhones um I've got an Samsung s24 in hand as well and it's like they they've all become more or less the same and whether it's a good or bad thing is really up to you to decide but for Google though the design is a huge step up right like they don't feel the need to differentiate they don't feel the need to do these like incredibly like slimy curvy sides anymore to achieve a slighter slightly thinner profile it's it feels very grown up um and I wrote a blurb for our um best smartphones guide about the pixel 9 Pro saying that this feels like a grownup phone and uh to Matt's point in his review a showcase for Gemini AI um and I think that that's what these phones are all about pixel phones have always been about the camera but like these are like camera plus you know are we liking the AI features and we should also differentiate between the local stuff which you don't have to pay for and then there's the fancier stuff which comes free with the pro devices for a year but you will have to pay for that eventually at least 20 bucks a month is the a stuff any good I mean some so the the the the capability and the like actual good of it like the the the how well it works right seems like pretty good I mean like ad me everyone's been having fun with like again independently Sam and we're like we use adme to clone ourselves um in the and adme to be clear is the feature on the camera where you can have um you know you're taking a group shot and then you can hand someone takes a photo first and then hand the phone off to someone else and then you the photographer can go and take your place in the picture uh and the phone will give some AI AR guidance to show you where to you know frame up the shot and to make you make you in the picture um so that seemed impressive enough and fun enough that they both were like playing around with it um because it's only been what like a week since these phones were launched uh and the review units are in hand for about that long too um excuse me it's uh not enough time to say how much we'll use this in the real world things like the pixel screenshots app I think there are problems here and there where like Sam enjoyed it Sam really found it useful Matt had issues with it like he points out that like you can't um automatically back up your entire Google photos history on setup so it' be like you will go to you will have to manually import pictures one by one um and it's just not yeah I mean not there's nothing wrong with like manually importing pictures and this is a huge privacy thing because some people it's definitely a privacy thing yeah yeah it's like Google photos my mine is like so many years in history and and I don't want to like yeah give it access to everything at once um so anyway there's also um the pixel studio app which I think both Sam and Matt liked because it was fun but both of them were also like eh like I think this is more of a criticism of image generators like that in general where like you feed mid Journey a prompt and it comes up how much are you going to use that we're not really GNA do that all day it's not that much useful um so those are the main AI features I mean the rest of the stuff like your typical Gmail summary things or like your even Apple intelligence is trying to do some of these things I I didn't get a real big sense that they were that in like crazy good I mean Sam mentioned call notes in his piece but I think none of us have really like put it to through the ringer through like really difficult calls to see if it works through all those situations as well so and that's the thing that will like summarize your call and like give you not the thing in text that's cool yeah a transcript and a summary which is cool I think yeah Okay cool so but I mean overall uh I guess any surprises any any surprising highlights from thein or any like surprising disappointments I mean I think zoom in hands on videos is a weird like it take it took them one year to actually bring it out to a device yes uh and then the um the fact that it's not on the nine you have to have a nine Pro to use it was what Sam pointed out in the nine which is you know I would expect that from Sam right who's used to reviewing Pro funds um and then for Matt I think he but they both pointed out in low light Google's cameras still Far and Away better than the competition they both meticulously put it through his Paces in the camera front I think we all really enjoy camera testing and uh it still came up tops right Google still came up Tops on camera um and Matt our review almost didn't get up on time because he had to run the battery test for the pixel9 pro and pro XL well the pro arrived a little later than the pro XL did so he didn't have as much time but also the pro ran for so long the last of 25 hours on our battery test that's a lot I mean the pro XL got 23 hours thereabouts wait that's already like longer the 25h hour mark is longer than our next closest number which is the OnePlus um 12 I believe so all around just incredibly impressive phones I'm surprised and I think that that's what's surprising right I we like whoa these are good these are good well there were a lot of shocks early on like these are stylish these seem capable and good like I know like I think that's going to be a big compelling factor for a lot of people shn like Google for a long time has been like we're making phones for nerds and for people who don't care as much about Samsung bling and whatever and now it's just like no Google's like no we're just just gonna do the same thing we're gonna do iPhone typ stuff how does this compare to the current Sam Samsung stuff charlin um I mean I think Google has the upper hand in AI for sure and cameras so I think that's what I was seeing across the board that like the s24 cameras were good but in some situations not as good although one in one occasion like Samsung did better on the pro XL or something and then um I want to address some of the questions in the chat really quickly so uh mini mea1 1231 asks if we will be comparing the Google AI versus the Apple AI obviously we can't right now because the Apple intelligence stuff isn't out we could compare Samsung's uh to your point of in Samsung's Galaxy AI to Google's Gemini AI but like I said it's just like different applications different like uh Samsung's uh AI Galaxy AI feature and the Z flip 6 and the z46 which are its latest uh to feature like new Galaxy AI features uh came with like you can draw onto a picture and it'll like add a cat you know that sort of thing to me is really fun but like the actual use of it IDK right meanwhile Google's like got no equivalent feature it's got autof frame and reimagine and it's got like pixel studio and so there's no easy way to do an apples to Apple's comparison but but uh I also want to address that cud or cud who is a a familiar name from our chat says that whole ad me feature is this something that people want because it's a bit weird if it becomes the norm people would just be adding in all their friends and family and photos when they were never there might as well add your cat and dog while you're at it um I don't think you can after the fact add people FYI so like yeah for add me it's like you're holding up the phone and then for example I've had family visiting um this past couple weeks or so and uh if I'm sounding rged that's why um and we've been taking like family pictures right like so it's four of us and we were trying not to like bother people so we don't ask strangers also you don't always feel safe right when you're on the street and like standing in front of a museum and like take a four for four of us please who's to say they won't just run yeah um so I could have my cousin you know hold up the phone and take the initial picture while I pose with his mom and dad and then he comes into the picture I hold up the phone and he go I think that there are a lot of specific use cases where it'll be helpful and I don't think you can add a cat and dog in because you'll never get the cat and dog to stay in the place they need them to so CD cut I am sorry but I don't think you can and I think I would uh I could see some use for this ad me feature I'm sure people figure out ways to like hack it but it does seem from the demos they did like it creates like an AR situation of where you are right now an outline yeah if you break that environment like where it is like I don't think you can actually even Stitch something into that um I think the bigger issue is just like it is weird to have some features locked into just Google's phones when Google is both you know a company making phones but also the company providing the software to everybody else this is very much like in Explorer on Windows you know or apple locking down some features just to its devices like it feels like uh if this goes on people can shout Monopoly or something going on here do you feel weird about that trillin like some of these just being on Google stuff or so far um I don't know it just seems a little odd because Google is by the way I'm so sorry I don't know if y'all heard the fire alarm just went off in my plat so if I just suddenly turned it's because of that fire alarm went off I heard something but I think something it's not mine but some like the building it's okay it's went off so it's okay uh we will well that part of your audio will be muted so don't worry about it um let let me go on again the last bit sorry so how do you feel charlin about features like this like very specific features and like interesting features being basically locked into Google's phones and not anybody else's at this point I a I I don't know that they're going to always be that way I think that like for some things because Gemini Advance is something that you can apply for and get with any other like phone right like you can apply for and so some of these features might come out to Future Android phones or other branded Android phones and then with pixel there have been a few things that have been locked into pixel for a very long time like pixel UI things pixel's um call screening pixels like General like call assistance things have been very uh pixel phone Centric and I feel like that's because it's built so deeply into the U OS as opposed to like it's an app right the pixel screenshots app pixel recorder those things have eventually opened up to some other uh maybe Samsung maybe like I don't even think there's other Android players out there really but but Samsung and they work closely enough with Samsung to be like eventually maybe right Circle the search is a feature that launched first on Samsung even though it was a Google feature so I feel like it's not necessarily super locked in and even if it were to answer that part of your question I don't know it's that is such a huge deal I think maybe Google does need to keep some of this for itself right like we we know that Android's supposed to be like the most open ecosystem is supposed to be like welcoming and like whatever but Google at this point needs to be able to play the game the way Samsung Apple especially Apple it's it's inherently unfair to be both the software vendor doing it and also be like oh also hey Partners we're also going to directly compete with you in hardware and also keep features to ourselves that you can never touch like that that is where anti-competitive stuff like starts to arise I guess yeah I mean I think uh Google has its feet and toes and so many things like it's anti competitive in a lot of other areas but I think on front like it's generally been trying to bring pixel first or pixel only features to more devices um but then like you know when you said the whole like oh you're talking about the software and the hardware I was like At first really readying to reply being like apple does that but then you were saying that it's not fair because Google competes with its own customers so like yes yes I get that I don't know I don't know that like I don't know how they're going about it really and they've already been the US government has declared them monly right or at least has antidust so search they are search Monopoly Android is such a open ecosystem that everybody supports like I just feel like Google is going to start to be worried about this because we already talk about the potential repercussions from the search Monopoly thing like could could be like hey maybe you should split up a little bit maybe we should take out some of these parts of Google and make them separate companies I wonder if the company itself is a little afraid of that because it's not just like oh we're going to slap a five or10 million fine on you which is like the money Google you know that it's in their couch cushions um it's like more serious things could happen yeah uh can I quickly go back to the chat for specific to pixel questions too the pixel 9 I mean so um Daniel Diaz asks where where Mark is and we're all like yes where's Mark D um has Sam maybe Sam in an alternate timeline is like would love to hear about the heat management of the tensor 4 and this is something that did come up in our uh pixel 9 Pro review so Matt noticed that the tenser G4 actually runs a lot cooler uh than older pixel phone so like sorry it's very weird to be like the tensor G4 runs cooler than the pixel 8 Pro because like where else is the tensor G3 the j3 going to be obviously the pixel 8 Pro um but I think it's important to focus on the phone than just to chip because even though the chip does supposedly run cooler it's also the fact that like to Dro 9's point in the chat pixel9 has a a better like thermal dissipation system so like it's a lot cooler I did notice that yes the pixel 8 Pro that I was using would run really hot um I haven't I think pushed the 9 Pro XL enough to feel like it would in you know that circumstance otherwise be hot um but I've never felt it run hot right so like to that point it certainly seems to run cooler Matt definitely pushed it harder in his review and was like it was cooler so um Hassam I hope that answers your question and I mean that I think the fact that the phone's a little bit thicker of a of a profile it's partly because it needed to build in some sort of like better cooling um system so yeah gotcha gotcha okay well any other thoughts on these things uh I want to point people to our reviews go check them out on the site go check out our side pixel 9 pro pro reviews been up since yesterday and our pixel 9 reviews up today uh the on sale date for that series of phones this up today and then we have so many other pixel devices coming in send me your questions about them like what you want to know most about the 9 Pro full the pixel watch 3 and the pixelbuds Pro 2 um and then I also oh did you hear that yeah I heard that are you okay are you okay I never know if I'm okay I mean is it telling you to leave the room okay okay but yeah maybe maybe we have to wait a couple minutes let's just uh do Q&A while yeah let's do a little Q&A and then we can like put a end on this segment yeah sorry guys sorry charlin I think we might be done though let me say one line and then we'll do a quick Q&A so my my one line is um last week also on Saturday like I did a quick like in gadget review recap and I will be doing one of these for the um pixel all the pixel products at some point so like again I really want to know your thoughts on the upcoming devices before we review them so that I can like go into them looking for those questions um so send them our way podcast engadget.com you can always email me cad.com as well cool cool okay okay we can break here for chat q& a I see a lot of Q&A um sorry do you mind if I jump in because I um deac Murthy is like how about the battery consumption we did mention this earlier in the episode they're very long lasting for the pixel Pro Series video rundown test right so it's not like a bunch of different things but it's video so it's something it's a looped video and we're in the process of updating I think some of our battery test but that's not ready yet yeah I was about to ask that as kind of like an audience surrogate question because I don't do the phone reviews at end Gadget I just do the podcast when you're doing the battery test you're talking about the video Loop right or do you do other things the simplest for us to replicate right now is the video rundown test because you have to consider that if we wrote an app that we can't run on Apple or iOS yeah yeah you know the the ban of our existence is crossplatform benchmarking and on PCS on like there are a couple geekbench runs across everything that's super helpful but batteries on phones it's a pain yeah I know thing you can do is literally just go to YouTube and loop a video yes so that would be over Wi-Fi and I think the one reason we don't do that that's part of the I think the decision we're looking at is to like do we want to Loop it over Wi-Fi instead um I think the the part of the issue was in early days like the the type of Wi-Fi you had had more of a bearing on the results or something like that I couldn't tell you why we didn't use that always um but know that me dindra and Sam are all talking about like how to upgrade our tests and we want to make sure they're like accurate and um like useful for people um I also wanted to uh reply to Mike Jones Jr who's all like where is Android 15 and I'm like you're asking me yeah Google like we we're wondering too um it doesn't matter as much as Gemini like Gemini is the new like underlying thing I feel like Google wants to get out there an update faster than Android at this point so that tells you uh yeah thanks to Dro 9 and BR Mitchell who are like get out run Jason B is in the building yes thank you um Simon is like Yahoo yes hi sup I think you mean like as opposed to Google but deeper n points at pixel users are basically the beta testers for Google and I think that's a good way to frame it a lot of these things come there first um and then yeah occasionally slowly get to to other people there's a good thing Dale Dion says doesn't a monopoly mean you don't have a choice there browsers and search engines that you could use in place of Chrome and search and no one's stopping you to change you should go listen to our discussion around this Monopoly and go read our coverage and other coverage around it because specifically what the US court found was like Google is paying other companies billions of dollars to make itself the default on those devices and by doing so it has so it's sort of like and most people don't question the most people don't don't question don't change or anything and they're saying that is an unfair competitive move because Google itself is so large and is already the dominant thing so there it is getting to like specifics here but I think there are things that the court has called out that seem legitimately kind of kind of messy so it's not just about being forced to do one thing it's about what is the default how why is it the default what is happening to competition are they free to grow or not yeah yeah and I think the general question is like is one of these companies just so big that they're taking up all of the air out of the room for other companies uh you know if there was a better search platform startup that was you know just getting started right now would it have a possibility of like growing to challenge Google or is Google just going to buy it because Google has so much money so much money they won't I mean that's what the anti like if they buy another competitor shouldn't right like yeah and uh this the the news around this also brought up that number from Mozilla which I found to be freaking wild I'm still thinking about it right now like $510 million of the Mozilla foundation's Revenue uh they've only reported 593 million uh in 2021 22 510 million comes from Google so that is Google basically through funding a nonprofit directly having um influence in Firefox in another browser and also the search that goes in that browser but also what does that mean for browser competition because if this deal ends the Mozilla Foundation is kind is dead they don't have money so this is like yeah industry Rippling news potentially um yeah I just want to say hi to Deno Diaz who joined in Lee as well like um Walt Gunther and de py both have questions so and Simon B so Simon B is like question do we know what feature will be Cloud feature features that older pixels will be able to get uh get in the on device features I think I'm confused as to the last part of this question but um do we know a feature will be cloud-based I think anything that's Gemini events but it sounds like they're all like this is not very clear yet some of them are like Gemini Nano based so they're all like online I mean on device features the lighter ones that are I believe the ones that are way more sensitive so things like the call notes um if I'm not wrong screenshots is a Gemini Nano so like on device feature um I I have this information somewhere deep M uh Simon B so I will get it out for you and deep mury says is Gemini live really useful is it just a chat bot on steroids yeah so Matt in his review that crazy man Matt uh says he doesn't like talking verbally to an assistant he likes typing to assistants and because Gemini live right now is a very like audio conversation first um or to the point where even if you're like talking while looking at the screen there's not quite a visual um like transcript on screen um you'd wait till after your conversation's done before you get like the the transcript right so like as you're talking and Google's responding or Gemini's responding it doesn't like type out the subtitles or whatever I'm like why don't you just do that a it's better for accessibility and B like it's easier to follow if you're in a Noy environment um and Google was like oh yeah right I like all right go ahead bro cons friendly feature interesting hav't thought of it yeah anyway um I I don't know if it's like say really useful or just a chatbat on steroids in part because to Echo both Sam and Matt I think we need a bit more time uh like I said Matt being a person who prefers typing would not find it useful um at least in this iteration Because unless they add that type two Gemini life feature it's not going to be useful for mat so it depends on you oh yeah depends on you um but yeah I mean I I I think we to give it a bit more time are you sure everything's okay on your hands through I think I'm fine it's just a residual like trips I haven't heard any movement you know what I mean like people aren't running out nobody's knocking at your door nobody getting calls from your super okay all right well embarrassing thing possible would be that RP sherlin she died recording embarrassing is the word you chose for this embarassing embarassing yeah oh well okay she died posting yeah unfortunate sad you went with embarrassing men see where your brain's at I see where your head's at no I'm not calling you embarrassing I'm no no I me this is embarrassing for you if I died as opposed yes but as opposed to tragic and like sad you would be embarrassed first that I di yeah no that's generally how I feel be embarrassed right now yeah yeah put that on her to all right we should move on because we got bunch of stuff to talk about Ben are you ready to chat to yeah I'm ready I'm recording but actually while we're uh stopped right now I did want to ask if we wanted to talk about uh flying Lotus putting uh ringtones in iOS I can yeah throw that just mention that somewhere towards the end that that was cool yeah quickly I want to say that um Eddie D had a question which is so far with what you've experienced pixel 9 or profold phone what would you pick um I can't we can't say yet because we haven't reviewed the pixel 9 Pro fold so just come back Eddie in like I don't know week or two I don't know a little while um and then we'll talk about that I mean I keep getting this question from people and it's like well it's almost like a thousand difference between the non fold and the normal fold so do you want a folding ph00 you have an extra yeah 800 plus dollars for this thing then okay sure go for it I guess I don't know um okay we've got some Gamescom news Ben is going to join us for that chat yeah introduce me at the beginning yeah I will introduce you uh Sheran feel free to like mute for that thing too unless you're chiming in because especially with all the fire alarm stuff this is a good time I I not only might I don't know if I would mute because I probably might not be talking you know what I mean and if I don't talk fine if I talk I'm and whatever I'll we'll figure it out yeah yeah uh just in case there's more fire alarm [ __ ] and then hopefully by we get to other news it'll all come down okay all right let's move on with another section here uh let's move on to some news from Gamescom 2024 which is happening right now in Cologne Germany we are not there in person I believe but we're covering a lot of news from the event and uh some highlights here and joining us for this discussion is our podcast producer Ben Elman hey Ben because when we're talking about video games it's Ben time it's Ben time and uh we don't we don't want to break sherin's brain with some of this game stuff because I'm sure Sherin does not care about the Indiana Jones game coming to Xbox I don't know do you I have heard I have heard that Indiana Jones what who who that who was the actor [ __ ] you mean shy above you mean no young what's his face young Uh crap this older man okay this is why young Harrison Ford Harrison Ford young har Ben is on the this is why Ben is helping us out I've heard that young Harrison Ford is hot anyway that's all Yes it doesn't but it doesn't look like Harrison Ford it's it's a toal different I know I'm just saying that when I hear Indiana Jones I think okay so Char is talking about the CG version of young Harrison Ford that I've been sent pictures of him on his Heyday AI okay well yes he was hot yes but also in the most recent movie they Ed AI to deage him so you get a glimpse of that that old hot Harrison Ford face anyway we're talking about the game here this game is one of the like rare exclusives that Microsoft has and there's a lot of talk about this thing this is Indiana Jones and the great Circle um it's coming from uh it's a developed by Xbox sub subsidiary machine games I believe it this came as part of the uh the whole zenimax acquisition so when Microsoft but ID software Arcane Bethesda um machine games came alongside that and I believe there was a deal to get this game to Sony's eventually so here's what we learned is that this game is coming to Xbox and PC on December 9th it's coming to the PlayStation 5 a couple months later in Spring 2025 and the Nerds especially the Microsoft nerds the Xbox fans have gone a little crazy because they're like our exclusive what's happening now do you have thoughts about this charin or Ben this is Microsoft admitting that not very many people have Xboxes and don't want this to just be a PC game yeah they Microsoft is a business and they like to sell games and unfortunately their Hardware has not done a good job of that so I think that's the basic thing here does this feel odd to you Shin or is this just like weird Fanboy infighting at this point I always think of it as strange Fanboy infighting because I don't pay attention as much to this news um doesn't really matter to me it's funny like when you tune like what are the gamers up to uh they're mad about Indiana Jones uh they're mad about this lady character starring in a game the gamers are not okay yeah every now and then there's like this big controversy in gaming right like oh well what trans characters sexism violence there's always kind of up you know like public outcry over a lot of these things I think I'm more concerned when it's like uh when blizzard Activision and all they all that stuff right sexism at the workplace toxic environment like that sort of like we'll talk about that soon even more harm yeah so we'll get to that don't worry we've got that so anyway if you want to Y great I was looking forward to it awesome there is news here okay so dendra one of my big questions was you know as I was watching the trailer for this game and reading Jess's yeah uh First Look the game which looks sick as hell by the way I do think this game looks fantastic yeah so I was wondering okay with the Uncharted series and everything like why isn't this a third person game but then after like watching the trailer I realized okay I think they want to make it really visceral like there's a lot of hand-to-hand combat in this game they want to make it feel like the movies did the fight choreography in the Indiana Jones movie back then just fight choreography overall was okay fine and I think what they're trying to do is make you feel like you're the main character in the game and like you you know Indiana Jones was never known for like huge like martial arts Maneuvers like Batman or anything oh no he's known for shooting the guy Swinging The Sword yeah exactly so you can't really have like an Arkham Asylum you know third person Style like uh indones game where Indie is like breaking a Nazi's back over his knee they they could have done some I I honestly prefer third person like angles like games too um because I like to see my characters when I'm running around but I think that mostly this comes from machine games right in machine games they did those uh the Wolfenstein um the most recent like Wolfenstein games which are fantastic and good and also I did not really care to play like a modern Wolfenstein shooter but they did great stuff when it came to like environmental storytelling good writing um they did some interesting stuff with first-person shooters so I I think it's just a an interesting choice to do this I think the camera pans out sometimes so you do see the character and in cut scenes you see him too um well we'll see how this goes go read Jess's Jess condit's Hands-On with this thing um the title is Indiana Jones in the great circle has a Nazi slapping mechanic and that's to see gotta love it shout out to this game for doing that also in Microsoft news there's a couple assistive Tech things that they announced uh there's a new um XBox adaptive joystick which is a single stick type of thing which looks like honestly it looks a lot like a VR controller like something with the Oculus uh headset or something but you can plug this into an existing Xbox controller the Adaptive controller and gives you a bunch of controls that you can handle with just one hand um let me see here there are also some 3D printable files for uh adaptic thumb stick Toppers um so you can download these files they're free you have to get access to the 3D printer talk to your local library because often they will have some of these devices um but you can print out these things to get like better grips uh on your phone too for people who have trouble with uh with you know very typical gripping there's also this cool thing um let me see here in partnership with 8bit do uh that controller company there's the light SE 2.4g wireless controller which is a gam pad with all the inputs on the top has low resistance buttons and hall effect joysticks also has those like giant Ito the super buttons that they put on their mechanical keyboards just like a big ass button you can hit and I guess program things too so a lot of interesting options here too chat saying that it looks like a wi nunchuck that is not wrong it is not wrong but it more specifically if Microsoft were to be like hey maybe we should do a VR headset or something this kind of looks like what a VR control looks like maybe without the motion controls um so that is cool uh also also that the all series Xbox series X the All Digital Xbox series X which we thought was kind of a joke when Microsoft announced it a couple months ago you can pre-order that now it's $450 it's going to be uh coming to the US on October 15th it's only $50 cheaper than the dis version that dis version which by the way often goes on sale for $400 sometimes even less so I'm still a little B baffled by this thing I'm even more baffled by the $600 special edition the uh which one uh which has a 2 terte drive and the dis drive but it's $600 I don't I don't know and we were just talking about how Xbox is only doing okay they're only doing so rather than like lowering the prices to ship more boxes they're like I don't know man People Like Us um we'd rather sell more games through Sony than uh make our boxes cheaper so a really interesting calculation Microsoft is making um char did you ever decide on an Xbox did you ever get the series s because we've talked about that for a couple years never baby A PS5 Pro or whatever never that was that was a good time to avoid that but I don't know more steam deck stuff for you or those PC handhelds I know you've been playing around with those yeah I think that actually the PC handhelds are probably the best option for sherlin as they get smaller too because they're still big and than we smaller is better they're a bit big and heavy right now um I mean I played a lot with the I think the in I mean I played a little bit with the steam deck um and my switch is still beautiful ornament um you can you can honestly play most of the like good indie games right now on switch so y yeah you're not missing out on pretty old switch um got it like right before the pandemic so oh yeah me too but you probably had the updated battery at least if that was 202 yeah better battery for sure I had that I mean I think I'm interested in these games I like the handheld games but like my I don't know my habits have changed so much over the last two years like oh I've got into crocheting a lot oh now I just sit around drawing you got to vampire survivors on your phone right and that made you a little crazy so I think you can do that on switch I am a beast at vampire survivors I don't know what you're talking about I'm a gamer you're total gamer Borderlands 4 is coming which feels like a threat gearbox in 2K Games announc it coming in 2025 which I think the impact of this announcement would have been maybe they were planning for the movie to go a little better maybe they were being like Oh yeah people are hyped for Borderlands right now let's announce our next game uh no everybody hates the Borderlands movie uh I called it a disaster it is it's a huge mess so I don't know who's excited for this thing but hopefully it's better than Borderlands 3 which I recall being a little disappointing in ret could we have said that the Borderlands we knew that the Borderlands movie was not going to be that great when we saw that Kevin Hart was casting it he's not the problem he's not the problem in that movie uh the problem is that uh you know uh the script is bad a lot of things are bad you know oh yeah that's true also your video is Frozen right now our video is frozen sorry just your video is Frozen right now okay and now it is oh that's my camera this oh I guess everybody gets to look at me yeah everybody oh no camera resets I think sometimes it gets warm because it's near my oh near light my monitor hold on okay it's a little bit away from the monitor a little bit away from the heat okay so talking specifically about Borderlands 4 I just wish that I had more of a squad to play it with because I have been playing like Borderlands one and two I got those on sale as part of a kind of like buy the whole collection deal a couple of years ago and I was having a good time playing it by myself but I was like I feel like I need more people and like when I started playing this was a time kind of like taken a sabatical from uh like online kind of squad-based games and now that I have been playing hell divers so much I've got like 125 hours in on there damn it yeah yeah uh now I'm thinking okay yeah I really want to like find a squad of people to like do other like squad-based games with I mean you've got a lot of options now you've got all the all the other sorts of like uh what ballerin and whatnot so I don't know there's so many Squad based games right now this is um I do Wonder like wouldn't the actual like evolution of Borderlands be like let's do a destiny type of thing where you're actually going on you know multiplayer missions and stuff with people um I think because you could do co-op play and just like dick around in Borderlands but it was never as robust as something like Destiny um so I don't know that could be the thing did you see the story Ben and shin about the Nvidia Ace virtual humans those are I got a lot to say about this but go on lot to say these are these are so last year I believe Nvidia showed off it's Avatar Cloud engine technology Ace uh technology that's powering um characters in some games so basically creating NPCs that will react to you the way like chat jpt does so that they would speak if to you um if you ask them a question or if you choose a certain prompt or something they could like React to what you're saying or maybe react to your clothing but also their model will like look like it's talking properly they will like have a semi- AI conversation um a lot of people were criticizing this as a way to like be like um so you this means you're not you don't need as many writers right this means you could just populate your games with this weird AI spouting avatars and not actually write dialogue for them or storylines or anything that's the controversy the news is that it's actually coming to a multiplayer Mecha game called Mecha Break um I've not heard too much about this game but it is actually happening it's it's totally real uh what did you think about this news Ben so I watched the video where you know you're basically in kind of like a cyberpunk esque world and like you're going into a sushi shop and you're talking with the like sushi shop owner and I think it's cool that you can use your voice to interact with this AI character I think that that's a really cool like method of input and um something that's probably going to pop up in a lot more games but when the character started talking it felt very wooden it felt like you were talking to a robot it the voice didn't have very much color to it and hey I'm a voice guy so oh you can tell really yeah I really want that to feel more alive and so I was thinking how would we end up using this technology because I think that it could be useful in some cases but definitely not as the main player character definitely not as you know the next rung of NPCs these are like NPCs and weird submissions off at the end of the map or something should probably like the most important you know five or so NPCs should probably still be written and acted but where this could end up being really useful is if you have like a big open world game I'm thinking about like Assassin's Creed or something where you're like always running through these like crowded marketplaces or something and you just hear people like yelling things that if you have a couple of people doing background acting like lines and then the rest of it generated by Nvidia Ace then that could be a good way of like stretching your budget a little bit further and making the overall um you're you're making their case More Alive yeah yeah uh you are absolutely right Ben that's I'm sure what they're all thinking I hate that idea because especially like when I was playing the latest like Assassin's Creed game which is set um way back in like um I don't know it's it's in the Middle East thousands of years ago and walking through the towns like walking through the villages and seeing the way they constructed it and seeing like people interact with dialogue that has been recorded by humans and written by humans like it felt like so alive I was kind of astounded by that and if you replace that Ambience with uh with AI stuff you know like that's that to me will kill the realism of the game and I'll just feel like I'm oh I'm just walking through the simulation right now I'm not walking through uh ancient Baghdad or anything right it's I feel like that'll kill it more so I'm sure you all have thoughts podcast and gadget.com listen to what you think about this I'm not a huge fan not a huge fan of like I just hope it doesn't kill the art of the like little in joke kind of world building thing one of my favorites from Mass Effect was there was that one race of aliens that felt like it needed to or like in order to communicate with other species it needed to preface the emotion that it was putting into its sentence like yeah say it in words it's amazing it like when you're in an elevator or something there's a little ad for a all that alien species production of like Hamlet or something so like that's very funny and if we lost that I would feel like we're losing so much from like I don't know quirky Little World building things in video games Quicky little things I mean that's just good writing that's human Ingenuity and creativity there is maybe something interesting that'll happen with like hey emergent AI is avatars uh that is like we love like game systems you see what people do with like the just the systems and breath of the wild and teus of the Kingdom or think back to Far Cry 2 where people are just like having a lot of fun with the rules and the mechanics of that world I'm sure it's going to lead to some of that stuff I'm just worried that some of these companies will over rely on all of it uh let's move on to Blackmouth Wukong though which is a game that is totally killing it um Charan I feel like this may be up your alley too because this is a journey to the West game basically it's sort of like an ad I love the idea is it a fighting you like fight it is very much it's like a Dark Souls game it's like God of War it isn't actually a Souls likee game that's the thing it isn't it looks like a Souls but it isn't it has the mechanics it has the healing it has the crazy ass bosses like what I'm saying is it is very much God of War the sort of like adventuring around not as open as like the way Elden ring was but very like in specific spaces it feels like Dark Souls it feels like actually playing early Dark Souls but also with the big ass bosses from Elden ring and even God of War the the newer games ended up doing a lot of that so that's what this game is in trying to get myself up to speed on this game I was watching a lot of videos uh watching some streamers and stuff and the thing that I saw from so many of the YouTube videos is saying that this isn't a soulslike game and then when I watched actual gameplay it showed you know big bosses like when you hit a boss or when you hit one of these like larger enemies all you're doing is Chip damage and like the fights are pretty long which makes me feel like it is kind of more souls like than not more souls like than it is I think some people are being weird and precious because gamers are weird um but no you have to walk around and light like lanterns and this is where you respawn when you die the big thing is you don't lose all your stuff you don't lose all your experience and your items when you die so you can just go back and keep hammering at a boss which is something you cannot do in Souls game uh very easily I guess it's more like when you're exploring somewhere and you die from some stupid enemy and you lose like a lot of good experience um that's the stuff that breaks my heart um that just doesn't happen in this game you can explore and do whatever anyway the news is that it was released this week and it broke steam's concurrent single player record launch uh within hours of its launch so that is an insane thing for for it to happen I think the numbers we saw not so much of an asterisk though the concurrent players so many of them were in China like this I ask enthus they were they were in China because the thing about small minority of people like single digit percentage of people in the US were playing this game what's up and they were all Chinese too a lot of a lot of people were Chinese people in Asia in America um no I I mean I I I'm not surprised by the numbers I think the the Wukong title is interesting like I wanted to ask you about like you know because you all both delve into the similarities to Dark Souls and like talk about the mechanics a lot and the like components of the story but like I'm like are the story characters that I like from grow growing up are they there you know like are um does The Monkey King fall in love with the spider demon does like does he played so far yeah I know so that's that's what I would be curious to see if they've like Faithfully adapted the sort of story things that me and I'm sure those concurrent streamers who are hugely Chinese um are looking for that's the sort of like Vibe we're looking for maybe you play as The Monkey King so I'll give you that you got the staff you got the the cloud he flies on what is funny though is that I started watching Dragon Ball with my daughter and she is very much into Original Dragon Ball I'm like look Monkey King there's the staff here's my thing too there have been a lot of like not that I'm not talking about like U specifically Dragon Ball but there have been like a lot of other adaptations maybe even Western adaptations of The Monkey King story that don't feel as faithful like I remember Monkey King appearing somewhere as like a playable character or like in some other like um smaller movie type thing as a baddy or something right and I'm just like that's not what the Monkey King story is it's a story about Redemption and like that Redemption yeah and the Wy monkey anyway I just want to point out that that crazy numbers from the game uh what we were seeing is 88% of the players were in China um so us was what a nice coincidence we love the number no I was yeah I was wondering about that like how it that it was 88% very lucky that that just seems like the books were cooked we GED it y'all let's be clear I am not ofing the books on this but it just seems like a really interesting coincidence well let me put the context down here so this is essentially China's first AAA game the first like game that is on the level of something like a god of war so yeah I'm pretty sure if uh if probably well Abed yeah if no but also but if the government was like we really gota get the numbers on this game like what just turned on everyone's G consoles those consoles are turned off because of gaming lockdown time uh the govern's like yes please please all you all get free copies of the game I don't know uh no we don't like we're good we're done uh I think a lot of people in China definitely wanted to play this game uh I'm playing through it right now uh a couple of things worth mentioning because uh the developer game science was like in the news too because apparently um there was a document that went out to some streamers or not streamers but people who were um like got first look at the game or something the people who were covering the game mainly in China but apparently this went out to other country like a couple of other European countries too uh there was a list of forbidden subjects in their review agreement which include do not mention politics do not mention feminist propaganda do not mention covid-19 or China's video game industry policies the stuff we're talking about right now and other content that instigates negative discourse um also believe like violence was one thing even though this is a game about The Monkey King like bashing giant gods in in their heads with his stick um just kind of funny there is that whole thing uh game science uh did not respond to an email I'm looking at the New York Times reporting here um but this is not too surprising right because we we deal with all sorts of limitations when it comes to when we cover games it's mainly just like it's embargo like hey please don't spoil all the story lines that's just like an agreement to like not spoil all the big surprises in the game please like an embargo is like okay everyone is going to try to publish at this time or sometime after that's like the general agreement we'll go to but certainly not content of our reviews not like avoiding certain topics um yeah also the leader of game science has I don't know he's just a poster like imagine this most whacked out stuff that yeah Elon Musk has been posting about recently um this comes back to the idea of are Gamers okay like gamers are not okay I don't even want to mention it it's just like kind of nasty like fratty culture um you know in a Chinese design studio which makes me think oh man are all Gamers the same that's kind of sad I think a lot it's in especially cies that mostly consist of dudes and Industry that is very dude heavy like unfortunately it leads to that there is great reporting over at IGN uh last year it's called how black myth Wukong developers history of sexism is complicating complicating its Journey to the West uh written by Rebecca Valentine and kiun Chan um this is a good piece worth uh worth reading because yeah essentially the culture of the studio does not seem great it seems very very fratty FR very much like a boys club I will tell you all this um I'm 10 hours into this game and now I do feel guilty about like playing it because I did not realize how fully shitty they were but not a single woman 10 hours of me playing this game talking to other creatures talking to Gods talking to like uh you know other people I'm fighting or people like living on the mountain not a single female character is unusual L question for go go go no go ahead I'm sure that's what you're about to ask Ben was just let me just tell you the story itself is heavily male dominant right the story of the Journey to the West is this Monkey King this Monk and like his three disciples including The Monkey King so there's a pig boy and uh tanang is the Monk and then he has like a a dude with the Burly facial hair that's one of his disciples and then The Monkey King it's like the second disciple right or the third and um along the way they go all the way to the west to like retrieve something I forget what the key the key point of the whole entire story and I forget but along the way they encounter demons and you know things that are meant to like they want to the monk flesh basically because it'll give them immortality or something and they're demons and they're lesser beings in the lore right so two of the demons that they encounter or three the spider demon and the nine-tailed fox or the fox demon or whatever Jing goni Jing these are both women these are these characters yet so I don't know so probably you have encountered them because they might be like bigger like enemies to fight but I also will point out that in the historic telling of the story that these two are known to seduce the The Monkey King and the the monk they're attempt to and it's very sexualized that way and also like it kind of filtered out into like like slang I wouldn't say slang but like the vernacular where um in Mandarin the words Jing spider demon or juling fox demon mean women who are like I don't know how to use the S word but you know what I mean like they're a little promiscuous or they're a little more out there right story itself is like inherently sexist too yes yeah I I not surprised not at all surprised but it does seem like the game is reflecting that listen I think a modern developer could be like well screw that right like we could we could change things up because we are retelling the story could be it would have been so cool it is also China it is also China like you mentioned those stipulations and in media and in entertainment they're very careful about the messaging which is why I was like noding along when you said those things that they stipulated because it tracks it tracks anyway uh g game is okay so far like I'm I'm enjoying at least but it does SU that this company has a history of this I feel like this is like something if they cared if they cared at all just a thing they could have noted but no it doesn't seem like they're they care at all also rewatching Original Dragon Ball uh you learn pretty much that go Bulma is the goat nothing would happen in Goku's story without Bulma so shout out to Bulma my daughter Sophia loves Bulma she's like Bulma has all these like capsules she's got all these uh Vehicles she's cool Bulma is super cool shout out to Bulma um oh man we are running long so I think we're gonna let's cut this Samsung story and I'm just gonna move through news real quick and we don't really have do you have pipe culture picks this week Shin we could sure do but we can jump straight to that instead of working on if you want yeah yeah we'll do that okay I'll run through news real quick okay okay so that's Gamescom go take a look at all of our coverage from that event and uh yeah if for playing Blackmouth Wukong let me know what you think let's move on to some other news real quick a couple things I wanted to shout out I wrote up something that is so deeply nerdy but I'm very proud that we put it on the site because like this is this isn't Gadget okay xmms the company that Billy steel has written about which has produced solid state um Solid State Drivers for earbuds and things like that so not like traditional speakers with like the coil and the magnet all that stuff solid state silicon that can that can work as your earbud driver this company has used that same technology to produce a 1 mm tall fan on a chip so this is 1 mm tall essentially a chip that can work as a fan it's using like Ultrasonics to move air around within it that's really interesting isn't that crazy so the whole idea is I was wondering like where are the moving Parts where are the moving fan blade really really tiny Ultrasonics Ben Ultrasonics um so anyway this company and they're using mems technology which is Micro electromechanical Systems Technology that is essentially like really really really small Machinery but in this case with no moving Parts um but essentially like you could put one or two or a couple of these fans inside a future smartphone inside a tablet inside a device like the MacBook Air M2 which died on me at Apple's campus Because I was working in the Sun and that computer has no fan so when you have no fan yeah the heat from all your work is just kind of Trapped in there there so I just think this is really cool um this is something that could end up being in devices in the future could really change the way like ultra thin devices are made like if the rumors about Apple wanting to do that crazy ultra thin iPhone are true like maybe we got to get some airflow in that and I just think that idea is is just think it's neat what do you guys what do you guys think I really hope that this doesn't drive dogs crazy it's they say it's silent ult outside of the hearing range of like any creature hopefully it could it could charlin thoughts I mean I think the technology the idea itself is really cool I think fan on a chip like just that alone like we were all like d you got to like look at this one and then you were like yes H yeah I think we all nerded out like a group as a group nerded out about this good nerd stuff uh do you want to point out uh there is like a competing product for I hate saying it out loud for uh uh they are producing airjet mini which I believe the Verge and other sites have uh have covered and Forest thing is 2.5 millimeters to 2.8 millimeters thick so you know a couple couple millimeters taller um and it also looks like a bigger package in this thing like the thing about xm's technology it looks like a tiny little chip so it could easily go inside your iPhone where there's this little space on real estate it's a sort of thing you can put it right on the GPU right on the Apu looks cool could change the way our devices are designed so check out my coverage of the xm's chip um we wrote a story San Francisco real quick is aiming to take down AI undressing websites in a new lawsuit this is just good news because the fact that there is a prevalence of these apps uh both on the web and in app stores is absolutely disgusting and we are like fully unequipped to deal with them right now so um this is a good thing hopefully we see more of this on a federal level too not just uh San Francisco and something I wanted to ask sh Lin because we saw this news drop Chick-fil-A the chicken sandwich place um is launching a streaming service for reality TV and own programming what do you think ofa's streaming service okay first of all yeah should paid better attention to our show notes yes you should or not let me surpris that's actually great that's really funny that you weren't aware of this because now we're getting your real what is your yeah what are your first impressions on this news this is my first why what are they gonna show me feels to Mees are like um handling an idea like they they took out a Ouija board but instead of communicating with Spirits they're they're communicating with the spirit of like 2015 and they're like okay what is the best business Logic for growing our national company let's just do a streaming service because streaming services are really hot right dude they're going like they're all um consolidating because the piper has asked to be paid in terms of streaming um in Paradise in the chat like are the cows The Producers cut it's c is like chicken dating show I'm sorry if this is the actual content we're expecting hell yes I mean animal PL has like puppy football like we we have a lot instead of Love Island it could be love pasture listen listen if they do like chick Farm content and then they slaughter the chickens and fry them I think that is kind of concerning but I will also say that have they have y all seen the KFC like Hallmark movie I've not seen it I know it oh my God where Mario Lopez plays Colonel Sanders and then he falls in love with a woman I I think maybe that was their inspiration like we got to we got to out Chicken KFC we got to we got to do something good I'm sorry if I've gone ultrasonic am my like good I think Chick-fil-A is flying too close to the Sun I think what it is like they are doing really well and just got all this money going do all this also like Chick-fil-A is notorious for like you know did a cow write this sign it's like e more chicken like all spelled wrong so I can only imagine what the closed captions would look like oh man but also Chick-fil-A is a notoriously a like a very religious religiously leading that's what I was thinking too Again hmark movie may actually be a good yeah no that's what I was thinking about it could be kind of like Mark or it could be like what if we had our own Hallmark yeah yeah right but like what if they bought Farmers Only which I don't know if you all know is like a Farmers Only dating website yeah and then they were like chicken Farmers Only and then they put them on a show um okay so we had funny news how about some WTF news because this is a crazy story and I'm just bringing it up because it is freaking wild it's also basically the plot of Industry season 3 British billionaire Mike was recently uh found dead after his yacht sank several days ago or it may have been a week ago at this point um I'm mentioning this because this guy is involved in a lot of shady stuff like back when I was covering HP and startups and stuff uh he was a CO of autonomy and HP bought that for 11 billion dollar and not too long after HP was like oh crap we made a huge mistake 8.8 billion do write down just for buying autonomy um he and his former vpa Finance were um basically like I believe San Francisco was charging them for a while they were recently acquitted in June on he was acquitted on 15 counts of fraud um this is a guy was just a boners bonker's life so he disappeared from his boat now proven to be dead we think oh this is a kind of a weird story right his former VP of Finance Steven Chamberlain died mysteriously this week after being hit by a car extremely Myster serious extremely extremely like Bank who's very pissed off about the billions of dollars that they probably lost because of your deal or your business practices extremely like oh you just we're gonna make you go bye-bye now um anyway that is purely conjecture purely conspiracy theory yeah remember that episode of Breaking Bad where they coordinated a hit on like five different possible Witnesses in different prisons all in the same five minutes yeah I mean it's just it is wild like there are some things that happen in real life that is totally freaky um I don't know there are reports about what like Exxon Mobile does to reporters like when they Co cover um oil fields or stuff somewhere reporters have said like my hotel reservation was cancelled things are just really weird like weird [ __ ] that these companies have the power to do folks like we see stories about the mobs and stuff but don't forget who has all the money and all the power dropping that weird story right there any anyway watch a watch industry if you want another angle or another type of story like this charlin again you should watch that show I think you'd enjoy it I know quick thing yeah go ahe I just want to point out that d vindra i i you know me I like to rewatch [ __ ] creek until the day I die before like start a new show so well it's more like uh you want some nice uh drama nice steamy drama I want some nice non-science fiction drama non science fiction drama with like human characters who have flaws who are very ambitious like I think you would sound like this other show this succession it's very in fact I wrote a whole piece about that charlin so you should go you should go read that review uh flying Lotus the artist one of my favorite artists has confirmed that he composed two Apple ringtones Daybreak and Chalet which have been on um iPhone since 2019 so I'm just that's cool it's cool to me is it cool to you Ben must have been a nice bag must have been a really nice bag and this is also has like a podcast connection because uh the podcast 20,000 Hertz which is a podcast all about sound design in movies in your phones just like you know why does a certain tone play when like you make a mistake in uh Mac OS or something you know how they make that sound that you hear so often and so they were doing a little series called the sound of apple and they talked about it and so now flying Lotus was like okay I didn't just ghost produce these I can say yes I produce these two ringtones and I'll drop these two ringtones in on the audio version that that's super cool I I've switched back to Daybreak but they have the same like uh layers and Vibes of like flying Lotus and stuff like okay we should have should probably told that this is like uh the rumors about Michael Jackson Working on the Sonic 3 soundtrack this is like that level of like uh geek and Artistry kind of combining which I don't think was ever fully confirmed like maybe he did some consulting or something but that soundtrack did slap so there's that um let's move on to some pop culture pics for the week what do you got Shin so I when I thought I had pop culture pics this week I realized I might have already shared it with the this podcast but but but but but but um just reminder that I still watch scary interesting till I die uh because it's hilarious I mean hilariously morbid uh it's just hilarious did I listen to those stories of um people getting stuck in caves and underwater ding accidents why would you do this to yourself because I enjoy it somehow um but uh so I think I have mentioned this right on the podcast I think Ben or Dev you might remember scary interesting like cave exploring gone wrong anyway so instead of um that sort of Pop Culture pick I'm going to give you all a different one which is I recently discovered because it's surfaced on my app YouTube has these games now have y'all have yall seen these aware I'm aware that they're yeah so it's not like new information it's not brand new information as BB Buffet would say but I just started playing some of them and they're quite hilariously not great and but also somewhat addictive in classic me way classic Trin yes Classic Air the game included on the airplane TV Shin yes yeah okay there there is a there is a um a a game that I've been playing on YouTube games called a phone case designer okay that's my recommendation this one thank you for that sherlin uh actually Ben do you want to shout anything out because I gotta I need to run to the bathroom right now I think so go for it give us something and you guys wrap the the I get to do a producer pick that's cool okay so a couple of years ago there was a book that came out called uncanny valley by Anna Wier or Wier I think it might be Wier um and it's like a story that I am very familiar with which is like someone graduates from college with a degree in like English or something they go work in like publishing this is a non-fiction book um it's about a woman's experience going from the publishing world to working in startups in the early 2010s she started out working for this um like big data company when Big Data was first Rising and then like moved over to GitHub and is just talking about her personal experience with the weird culture of the Bay Area during that time because in that time of like the early to mid 2010s was when like the population of the Bay Area especially like San Francisco uh Oakland area was really turning over there were a lot of people a lot of young professionals coming from all over the country to work at these startups making a lot of money like talking about doing iasa trips and how um even when they're tripping they're thinking about like B2B Business Solutions it's strange it's not something that I wasn't already aware of but it was it's just fun to listen to I'm listening to the audio book yeah uh I mean that's why we all do the pop culture picks from different people because different people have different tastes and you have your taste and I love to play silly little YouTube games so there you go um Simon be in the chat says YouTube games are too addicting so I feel like I feel supported um where were you back in the Facebook games era sherlin like were you were you deep in Farmville or not evz uh no I didn't play Farmville even though I think I could have and I think a lot of people in my circles did play them feels like a okay so Dev do you have pick or yeah I'll I'll do real real quick I do want to shout out that one of the greatest TV shows ever made which has been inaccessible for a long time homicide life on the street one of the best cop shows ever made is the wire wire before the wire based on David Simon's book um with a lot of people who went on to produce other TV shows like Bosch um it is now streaming on peacock it's an incredible show starring the late great Andre Brower so you miss Andre Brower from Brooklyn 99 a lot of great actors like characters that were established in homicide went on to Law and Order and other things so it's a fantastic show you should check it out especially the first few seasons it's streaming right now I have the DVD set which was just on sale but I don't I'm still happy to have that because I feel like the digital version can go any any time you gotta buy the things you love so that's what I've got for this week all right uh we're going to wrap excuse me for the podcast but we'll quickly talk to the audience after the live chat after this I think but we are running low on time anyway well that's it for the episode this week everyone thank you as always for tuning in our theme music is by game composer Dale North our outro music is by our former managing editor teren O'Brien the podcast is produced by Ben Elman you can find Dev or dindra online at at dindra on Twitter Blue Sky M on the usual places and uh I try about movies and TV at the filmcast the filmcast tocom if you want to hit me up I am occasionally on Twitter still I am at sherlin L there c h e r l y NN l w but you can hit me up on threads where I am posting engagement bait uh at c h e r l y n n s t a g r a m always email us your thoughts about this podcast at podcast engadget.com leave us a review on iTunes or whatever you're getting your podcast on because that helps people discover us and subscribe on anything that KS podcasts okay I wanted to shout out that we have chat user CJ by steps in here man I haven't seen you in a long time welcome back um most s say Farmville was a dark time I want to shout out to my cousin Jason who's tuning in hello hello my camera keeps it for heating yeah your camera keep yeah it's going off all um so yeah thanks everyone for joining us in the chat today we've miss seeing you we know that uh some of our more regular viewers like Mark Dell could make it here today but we do not blame you whenever you couldn't make a live taping as the old people call it old people being myself um but yeah we appreciate audience exactly this you guys are our live studio audience and you get a shout out and you get a shout out and you get a bookmark Tom Rogers said thanks for another great podcast appointment viewing thank you in the world of streaming and everything thing the concept of appointment viewing has been getting like more and more never heard of that term oh yeah the idea of like I have to be home because I want to watch Mash something you what's also interesting is that I've noticed our YouTube the numbers for the Post live stream stuff people are tuning in to the stream and yeah know the pixel stuff did really well yeah you're watching you're watching a couple of weeks from now it's now Thursday August 22nd hello people from the Future come watch one of the shows live if you can yeah a Thursday morning ritual for Simon that's so sweet um love it it's cut cud says make sure to send Mark a copy of the podcast on VHS yes all the like old shout outs um no I'm gonna on betx yeah oh gosh time for us to say goodbye to everybody so drop by so we can say bye to y'all Daniel Diaz Simon b c Tom Rogers I know uh Mo Squire just said something Paradise um said nice things my hair was on fire but like like not on fire fire but like looked good this morning too I was pretty happy hair is fire and hair that's why my fire alarm was going on because my hair was so fire there we go so goodbye to Eduardo goodbye to Tom Rogers goodbye to Simon b goodbye to Daniel Diaz who was talking about Rebel Moon even though it was three hours long congratulations for getting through that good God goodbye to I don't know somebody named sherlin low uh platform fanatic um Paradise face with four eyes do name Charlie we love do name Charlie Yash Shasta revu dat Advocate High Court Kolkata that's your whole username Kik C so thank you everybody for being in the chat like I always say you remember stuff we forget you bring in context that we wouldn't have otherwise thought of you make the podcast better the the podcast comes to you via dindra who's on OBS I'm doing much lazier or not much less lazy camera switching although I was getting a little dicey with the camera switching a little earlier but I'm I'm watching chat I'm making notes I'm doing all these other produc yeah you're you're doing stuff if I ever get my uh the thingy the little or something stream deck could help yeah yeah but thank you everyone for tuning in and we'll see you next week thanks bye he