 This is Tech Talk of Buona Episode 301, Holy Folding Phones, Yo! Welcome to Tech Talk with Buona. This technology podcast covers tech news and reviews for the entire week. And now here's your host, me, Buona McCall. Greetings folks and welcome to Episode 301 of Tech Talk of Buona. We got a great show lined up for you. I'm chilling. It's a classic lazy Sunday afternoon for me. I am sitting here today, it's April 29th, 2019. And you just have one of those days where you're just like, man, I just want to vegetate and look at the wall all day long and wonder why that wall isn't moving. I just love it, but this is one of those really, really, really lazy Sundays for me. So I'm like struggling to breathe at this point. I just want to do nothing all day. But it's cool. It's a very serene feeling, relaxing feeling. So I can't really complain. We got, how many stories we got? Five? Yeah, we have about five stories to talk about today. And I think it's going to be a decent show. I hope you all enjoy it. Please, please leave me comments if you have any suggestions or, you know, any feedback or even opposing opinions on what I talk about today. All right, guys, let's get to it. If our first story we're going to talk about Gmail, Gmail is probably one of the most popular email programs out there. And, you know, I don't use it anymore, but I did use it for many, many years and a lot of people like it for its simplicity and ease of use per se. This article comes by Wayofengadget.com and it's kind of ironic. It says, former Gmail designer builds Chrome extension to declutter your inbox. Yeah, it's like the original, one of the original designers of Gmail has come back to save you from all the clutter that has accumulated over time. Now, like I said, I haven't used Gmail in quite some time, but judging by the screenshots over on engadget.com, there's quite a bit of new things that are, like, tacked on whether they have to do with contacts or labels or, you know, all kinds of stuff like that that may get into your flow of just actually using your email because I'm a simplest, you know, I like simple things. So if I use an email client, I want to do email and I want to do email well. All these other tie-ins and plug-ins and things that seemingly help sometimes getting away of people like me. And this, I'm looking at the screenshots, you guys gotta look at it, check out the link in the show loads. It essentially, it looks like he's just got an eraser and just removed everything around the email because there's, like, things on the left, things on the right and things above the email. And if you look at what the extension does, it just goes, it just erases all of that and all you see are the emails. I'm just, like, cool. It's all about improving Gmail's user interface, which Lagedd has been trying to do for more than a decade as Fast Company reports. After leaving Gmail, Lagedd co-founded inbox, this is the guy's name, Michael Lagedd. He co-founded inbox and later, while working on products like Messenger for Facebook, he continued to think about Gmail. He developed the extension to redesign other sites while Google, and when Google killed inbox, he decided to share Simplify. Simplify is the name of the extension that does all this. The extension reportedly now has been downloaded about 15,000 times and has about 500 new installs per day. It doesn't deliver ads or collect analytics and Lagedd has shared the code on GitHub. He's had an offer to sell, but he says he'll keep Simplify free, though he hasn't ruled out creating a separate paid service. It's kind of funny. How do these things come full circle? You start with a simple idea, a simple design, and then money. And then all of a sudden it turns into all these other big things and things that people don't want. And then the original designer's like, hey, let's take it back to our roots. So let's get back to simplicity. I'm going to call this thing Simplify. So check it out, guys. If you use Gmail and you're tired of all the clutter and all the things surrounding it, see if this extension works for you to remove the Simplify Gmail, which was known for its very simple layout. Check it out, guys. And for our next story, we're going to talk about Android notifications notably on your PC. This article comes about way from Engadget.com, it says Windows Preview. The latest one is Windows Preview brings Android notifications to your PC. So essentially what happens if you receive a notification on your phone, it pops up on your PC. And I first started using a app called PushBullet a long time ago, which did the same thing for Apple or iOS. And I believe it worked for Android as well. It was very useful, especially if you were in the middle of doing something very important and you just want to have those notifications on your PC. And it also had a lot of great options, too, on one screen to show it on sounds or no sounds, different themes. So it was actually pretty useful. So since that time, Cortana and other things that have been on PCs have offered that kind of support for mobile notifications. But Windows is about to bake it right in. As of Insider's Preview, this Insider's Preview build, built 1803, that's right, 1803, RS4, and you'll also need a phone running Android 7.0 Nougat or newer at the minimum of one gigabyte of RAM. You can't respond to notifications yet, but you can still see them pop up in the right left or wherever you want to put them. Now as a content provider as a streamer, sometimes I'm against this kind of stuff because I don't want a text message showing up on stream, which is why I appreciate features such as which monitor to place the alert on. Because you don't want that to show up on your main monitor if you're streaming in borderless windowed mode where you can see your desktop notifications and things like that, and you're not capturing the actual game, you know, you want to have that kind of stuff show on a different monitor. So if you want to give an early look at this, if you have Insider's Preview access, built 1803, RS4 has the support for it. And the cool thing is that you can clear all the notifications at once or one at a time. And anything you dismiss on your PC will be reflected on your phone. So there is a synchronization that goes on. So it's a good look. Good look for Microsoft. I'm glad they're adding this kind of stuff to the build. Mobile phones have become a big part of our lives and notifications are huge sometimes, especially if you're in the middle of something or you get caught up in something, or you're playing a video game, you know, you don't want to miss that important text message from your loved one or family or Uber Eats. Check it out, guys, over on the gadget.com to get the details. Windows Preview brings Android notifications to your PC. And for our next story, we're going to talk about Samsung, the Samsung Galaxy Fold. Oh, my gosh. What a story. This is a brand new phone, it's coming by way of RS technical, by the way, the article that we're talking about. This brand new, very expensive $1,000 plus phone called the Galaxy Fold. And when I first saw it, I didn't want it. It's a full, it's a screen that folds in half and then it has a screen on the other side, so you can either have half a phone or a phablet or a tablet. You can have like a phone or a tablet. And you can fold it in and out and it has like this big preparation mark in the middle. It just looks weird. It screams a prototype and that's exactly what people are calling it these days. But the reason why I'm talking about it is because it was a big story in the news. Because a bunch of people who got early copies or early units, they were complaining that the phone was breaking and the screens were messing up. So this story on RS technical kind of explains why I fixed the data breakdown of the actual device and it turns out, long story short, that there was a lot of holes in the device that allowed dirt and other things, excuse me, dirt and other things to get inside the device and actually mess it up. This is actually full of holes. So as between this tear down and the earlier blog post, I fixed it, has been building a compelling theory for why the Galaxy Fold has been dying in early death for some reviewers. The problem simply is ingress, while most other smartphones are resistant to the ingress of just about everything to the point of being water resistant. The Galaxy Fold is full of holes. You can actually stick stuff under the display when it gets really bad and if the wrong bit of anything gets stuck under the display, it can push into the back of the display and damage it. So specks of dirt or anything, pocket lint, debris, fingernails, some bugs. So the hinge is also an ingress point into the phone. Large gaps along the left and right of the spine allow bits of dirt to enter the phone, but considering this is on the back of the phone, it's probably not as much of a threat to the display as the front. So that's the bottom line. This phone, I don't know the price in front of me, but I believe it was like $1,400 bucks. It was really, really expensive. Let me say Galaxy, Samsung, Galaxy phone, Galaxy Fold price. I believe it was like $1,400. What was this set to? Yeah. I'm sorry. I was way off. Pre-orders are $1,980. We're $1,980. 1800 pounds, 2,000 euros. I was off by 500 or so, chat. You're not chat. Are you chat? I don't know. 500 or so with the Galaxy Fold, and this tear down reveals how the phone is dying. So Samsung, if you hadn't heard, they delayed it a month. They're going to give it some time to bake and manufacturing and design. I imagine they're going to have to redo some of the design points and probably cancel a lot of manufacturer orders, which is going to be expensive. Not something you want to see from the folks over at Samsung. Samsung is still in the process of gathering consumer trust. Even though the internet tends to forget, even though they claim not to forget, they are still holding on to the Samsung explosion battery, battery explosions, explosion batteries, stories of old. Haven't completely forgotten that yet. So Samsung really needs to step it up to make sure that if they're going to sell something for $2,000 that it doesn't explode or dirt doesn't get on the screen to mess it up. Really, really, really, really bad display. Oh, I didn't even try to do that. Really, really bad display by Samsung on the Samsung Galaxy Fold. Like I said, I wasn't in the market for one. I didn't like the way it looked, but still, this is not how you garner consumer trust. Check it out, guys. On ArsTechnica.com, that Galaxy Fold is full of holes. And for our next story, we're going to talk about Amazon, Amazon plans to make Prime shipping one day by default, according to ArsTechnica. And they're still building up support for more products and zip codes before a nationwide rollout. This comes off of their earnings call. And Amazon announced, I think they made like so many billion in profit. I think it was $1.3 billion this past quarter, which was a really good quarter for them. And they followed that up with an announcement about Prime shipping. Now, if you've been doing Amazon Prime shopping, you probably have seen some of these deals. It's like, if you order something $30 or more or whatever some price point is, we'll ship it to you in one day. So they've kind of been teasing it that way. They've been offering this one day Prime shipping thing. If you order a lot of stuff, if you order like $30 or more stuff. So I guess this is kind of like the test bet they're talking about to evolve the two day shipping default to one day shipping default. As they roll out more distribution centers, this is probably going to be easier. As they get their drones approved and online, it is probably going to be easier than that. This comes by way of Amazon CFO, Brian Olsowski. He said, we've already started down this path, and as he pointed to both an expanded number of zip codes and product selection for one day delivery. This would explain why you're intrepid reporters last Amazon ordered. Amazon guys estimate hints as an expectation that a default one day shipping will drive increased revenue for product sales. He emphasized this by saying, we've seen good order trends month to date with current paying Prime customers are already enjoying the benefit of very parts of the nation. He did not hint that Prime subscription fees would climb yet again as a result of the shipping speed upgrade. Neither did he point to a minimum order amount need to take advantage of the one day Prime perk. Like I said, I've seen it at like $30 when I order Prime stuff. This is Amazon, so Amazon is getting better about spend. They used to be notorious for spending way too much and making an absorbent amount of money, but still spending way more than they're making. But they've been getting better about that. And we've been eating the costs. Amazon has been, they'll adjust things, and it's seen from our fees like prices go up. I'm expecting Prime prices to go up as a result of this. That's just my thought based on their recent history. And I don't think they have any shame in doing it twice in a matter of a couple years because the price just went up not too long ago. So I don't think they'll mind doing it again. I don't think they will. But it's good. I like one day shipping. I think two day shipping was the major selling point for Amazon Prime. The free two day shipping, the money you save on that shipping cost alone pays for it. So that's why it became a no-brainer for a lot of people. If you order stuff on Amazon now, if you don't use Amazon that often, Prime is not a benefit. I think it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. But if you do use Amazon, you buy maybe 5 to 10 things a year, that shipping price pays for itself. So you should get Prime. It'd be nice to have more Prime options though because not every product on the store has Prime support. You have to look for items that have the Prime sticker on them. So I think personally I would rather have more Prime products than I would like to have one day shipping. That's just me. So check it out. I mean, they sell thousands and thousands of products, so I can't expect it all over the site. Just want more than what we currently have. Arts Technical has a story. Amazon plans to make Prime shipping one day by default. Let's hope the price doesn't go up again. And for our final story, we're going to talk about streaming devices, namely Fire TV, Chromecast, and those things, Roku. I use these every day now. I started using them quite a while ago when the Chromecast was first announced. That's when I got into it and I've been addicted to it. I have to have it. But some people feel like that they should go beyond what the device offers. And much like with mobile phones and stuff like that, you tend to hack them or jailbreak them. So these are called Pirated. I guess that's the name of the article over on CNET.com. Pirated streaming devices are filled with malware apparently. Turns out there was a hidden cost to those jailbroken Fire TV sticks offering every show for free. So what these people did is that they jailbroke the Fire TV devices and allowed you to watch stuff for free without paying. So Pirated. Many researchers from Digital Citizens Alliance or DCA and Dark Wolf Consulting looked into six streaming devices that offered free shows through pirated apps and found nearly half of them were packed with malware. Ah, shocking. These devices work just like a Roku or a Fire TV stick you plug it into your TV and connect it to your Wi-Fi network. In some cases, they're loaded with apps. The hardware isn't laced with malware. The apps are Timber Wolf, a principal at Dark Wolf Consulting found his research. He said that 40% of the apps on these devices were infected with malware that can take over a camera or microphone on a network within the first hour. That's scary. That's scary. On April 8th, the FCC issued an enforced advisory warning that they were finding up to $20,000, almost $20,000 per day for people selling these illegal streaming boxes as well as people using them. Wow. Big quote on this article. Once you start using these ROGAPs, nothing is free, there's always some angle to them and in this case, they'll take over your microphone and camera on your network. So pay just, I mean, it's entertainment. And I always have this discussion, it's kind of a rant, may save it for B-rants, but it's entertainment and it's not a right of living to watch a movie. So if a company is charging too much to watch a movie or executing illegal practices and things like that, things you don't agree with, then you know, there's other ways of protesting that rather than pirating and watching it anyway, either pay for it or don't. Or don't watch it. It's entertainment. And I think entertainment is being put on a pedestal these days, hired in food and water and air conditioning. I think air conditioning should be a right too. That's just my opinion. Everybody should burn to death. But seriously, it really is a priority thing. You really shouldn't be buying these pirated devices. It's ridiculous. Pay for the shows, even though the models may, you may not agree with it and don't watch them. Go read a book. Go outside and do some jumping jacks. I don't know, do something. Find some other form of entertainment that fits your principles, if you will. These things are laced with malware. Just like, just, I mean, if you look at piracy in general, it's a haven for viruses and malware. Yet people still pirate video games, they still pirate movies. They go to pirated video sites, they go to, you know, they watch stuff they're not supposed to be watching. They just can't wait. And then they get a virus and they go, I don't know what happened. There must be some Windows bug. They turn to Arnold because you can't wait. No self-control at all. That's a B-Rant. I'm going to save that for a B-Rant. But check it out, guys. Over on cdent.com, they get the details. Pirated streaming devices are filled with malware, shocker, shocker. And that concludes episode 131 of Tech Talker 1. Thank you so much for listening today. Follow my stream. Live stream at Twitch.tv slash Buona. You can find this podcast and others such as Tech Talk or this is Tech Talker 1. Same chat with Buona as well as B-Rant on Buona.tv slash podcast. You can also go to Buona.tv slash blog for my musings and blog posts on whatever is going on. And then on top of that, you can follow my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Buona. Check out my merchandise over at Shop, no, it's over at designbyhumans.com slash shop slash Buona. We're over on Design By Humans now. Well, thank you all for listening to the show and my other shows. I do notice that the numbers are creeping up and people are starting to listen and spread the word. So thank you so much for doing that. I do do appreciate it. If you want to support this stream monetarily, because this is the way I make my living, you can go to patreon.com slash Buona and contribute as little as $1 a month. Every little bit helps. Pay the bills and buys the burritos. Buys the food, man. Eating is good. Eating is very good. It was a great show today. I'm feeling lazy. I'm still feeling lazy. I'm drinking coffee. I have lazy energy. So I guess I can breathe and blink fast now. Oh, it's a classic lazy, so it's a lazy spring Sunday, man. It's like you can put this in the textbooks as one of those things. Look forward to Game Chat Buona coming out this Wednesday and I'm going to try to get a couple of BRants in, more than one, because they're so easy to record. I just have to turn my phone on, start talking in the phone and bam, I got a podcast. People in my live stream say, hey Buona, I start ranting on stream and they're like, hey, Buona, you should put that on BRants. I'm like, yeah, right. I should. I should put that on BRants. What am I doing talking to you about it now? All right, everybody, have a great rest of the weekend or Monday whenever you listen to this and I'll see you all next time. That's Tech Talk with Buona, episode 301. Bye-bye. Have a good one.