coming up on Tech news today was Tay a sociopath or just a Parrot uh is Google working on an echol like device I think so why are robots and chat bots so commonly female and do-it-yourself VR Tech news today is next this is Twi bandwidth for Tech news today is provided by cashfy at c.com [Music] this is Tech news today episode 1477 recorded Thursday March 24th 2016 this episode of tech news today is brought to you by the ring video doorbell with ring you can see and talk to anyone at your door from anywhere in the world using your smartphone it’s like caller ID for your home right now get free expedited FedEx shipping when you go to ring.com TNT and by zip recruiter are you hiring with ziprecruiter.com you can post to 100 plus job sites including social networks all with a single click screen rate and hire the right candidates fast try zip recruiter with a free 4-day trial now at ziprecruiter.com TNT and by Igloo software Igloo is an internet you’ll actually like it connects people with the information they need to do their best work try it for free at igloo software.com / twit or sign up for a live demo to see it in action hello and welcome to Tech news today this is the show where we talk about technology news with people that’s why it’s called that yeah that’s why it’s called Tech news today because we talk about tech news with people who love Tech news on today today I am Megan morone and I’m Jason Howell today on Tech news today we’re talking with Aaron Carson from Tech Republic how’s it going Aaron it’s great thanks so much for having me absolutely it’s always a pleasure to get you on the show here we’ve got some I think some pretty interesting uh stuff to talk about today very very Broad and all-encompassing uh why don’t we Dive Right In with this which I’m surprised this hasn’t happened already Venture beat has the scoop that Google is working hard on bringing a live streaming video service to uh to release to compete with Twitter’s Periscope and Facebook live and rest in peace mircat uh the service will likely be called YouTube connect and should have an IOS and Android app when it’s officially released sources say users will be able to stream video directly from their mobile devices camera to YouTube along with chat and tagging features a lot of what we’ve kind of come to expect out of live uh video streaming apps that we’ve used so far think this will be a success or is this kind of late to the game it feels like to me but well it feels a little bit late to the game to me um I think that they’re trying to obviously compete they need to get like the people that have left to go to Snapchat and do their video there and you know other places to Facebook I guess some you know some YouTube Watchers have gone to Facebook uh and so yeah I think that to to just go and create exactly what these play that that Twitter and Facebook already has uh I would hope they would do something different what do you think Arin yeah I mean I think the other thing is that we’re past a point in time when people are wondering if the whole live streaming thing is going to stick around it’s at least survived a year at least most of them have you know so yeah it makes sense that you know Google always sort of wants to be um the place you go to for things so yeah they’ll TCH on a live streaming app I mean YouTube has had live streaming uh already I think the difference here of course is kind of bringing it into a mobile app and in fact you could do this a number of ways already it’s just YouTube doesn’t have its official mobile version YouTube offers live streaming through its site uh through YouTube uh Creator Studio on the desktop YouTube gaming allows you to do live streaming of your devices screen and it uses you know kind of superimposes your front uh facing camera so there’s a little bit of that streaming directly to YouTube from your mobile device but it’s not like just point a camera at something and go it kind of involves that gaming aspect the HTC re is a hardware device that came out I don’t know about a year and a half ago and pretty much its sole purpose was to stream directly to YouTube and I remember when that came out I was I was like why can’t you do this from the YouTube app because so many people would use this this was a year and a half ago before the whole Trend uh you know or Resurgence whatever you want to call it of live streaming video and then even before that the Sony xeria phones on Android have a live to YouTube app from two years ago that allowed you to stream live to YouTube so I’m just it just kind of boggles my mind that they didn’t do this much sooner they could have been ahead of the game so long ago uh instead it kind of feels like a little bit of catchup but um I think later you know better later than never yeah I think when we talked about Facebook getting into Mobile live streaming there was somebody you know that that why why won’t YouTube do this why why can’t you do this on YouTube so I guess maybe they heard that and um yeah so so mobile live streaming seems to be a specific Niche like some people only some people want to do it all the time and only some people want to watch it but so I guess maybe everybody has to have it even though it’s not like you can’t just survive on it like Mir or cat figured that out it can’t be your only thing yeah well and yeah YouTube certainly has a lot of other things so right so yeah all right well uh in other news of companies create owned by Google creating things that other people have created already the Google owned home automation company Nest is struggling and that might be due in part to the fact that they are not the Amazon Echo earlier today the information posted a report on nest and on the company’s uh CEO Tony fid the report reveals an exodus of employees a corporate culture problem and a failure to innovate uh nestled no pun intended in the information piece is a hint at an Amazon echol likee home assistant that Google is developing without the help of Nest Ain are you an an echo user uh Megan is I do not have one although I’m very intrigued what do you think I so badly want to be that’s that is the device that is on my list of like the next kind of tech Gadget to buy but you know something that was really interesting to me is not long ago uh the CET appliances folks uh you know they have this this project Happening Here in Louisville with a smart home and they actually made the decision to replace the nest with the echoe which I don’t know if you’re familiar with that but it was a really really interesting little little kind of Crux I thought because to this point it does feel like Nest is just so dominant in that area but then you read a report like this and it kind of shows you just how how uh fickle and fleeting that things can be and all of a sudden they’re maybe perhaps not quite so on top as we thought yeah I mean Nest really kind of came out of the gates screaming you know however many years ago when when we first heard about the nest thermostat and oh it’s made by the same people behind the iPod and oh wow they’re going to do for thermostats what you know they did for for digital music which sounded weird but then they kind of proved on that promise Google of course bought Nest Google really Nest division inside of Google alphabet really has not done a whole lot since that acquisition a couple of years ago uh pretty much all we’ve seen since then for the most part from a public release sort of sense uh is the nest Cam and that’s not even a new product designed within uh the nest division at alphabet that was basically the drop cam acquisition and kind of you know repurpose took some of that IP and and made something new so um so it’s kind of surprising because man it I feel like it had so much potential you really thought that once Google kind of took Nest into its nest uh that it would you know they would create some really interesting crazy things together or you know last year at Google IO they talked about Brillo which is kind of The Internet of Things OS that Google has kind of gotten behind so you kind of wondered okay well then they have Nest maybe there’s going to be this like crazy move to Internet of Things within Google and yet still we we’re kind of here wondering what’s going on we’re not seeing anything had so much potential yeah yeah and it kind of speaks to the you know the overall culture this tendency toward uh iterating so quickly and so you get this idea that if you are not seeing movement in some direction in a relatively quick manner then it’s like oh man something is really wrong and they’re dying something you know well I think that’s what alphabet is saying you know that because uh you would hope like you said that oh they got bought by alphabet um they’re going to you know do something amazing now or you get just swallowed up by this machine and there’s all this bureaucracy uh and or you know some forcing to innovate I mean that’s what they’re that’s what this report said uh it that they’re really saying like you need to come out with this security system now which I was a little frightened about like you want if someone’s going to come up with a home like Internet connected security system you would hope that they would take the time to make sure that it’s actually you know as secure as it can be I wonder how much time they’ve taken though at this point like you have to have an endgame right like any time of product and security I completely agree by the way don’t rush a security product to Market because I’m sure that happens a lot and we you know the user ends up running U kind of having shouldering the risk of that but you have to have an endgame I wonder how long they’ve been working on this it could you know I mean what we’re realizing from Nest as a division is they’re not releasing things and uh you know as a result and a result especially of The Exodus of people I think like 50 people have left uh you know over the course of the last year or something like that I mean that’s a that’s a lot of people that spells kind of bad bad that’s a bad sign for that division inside as for the the Amazon Echo kind of competitor I’ve you know ever since Ekko has kind of been doing so well and Google Now is an interesting product I’ve just kind of continually wondered why Google hasn’t done this yet either like it makes perfect sense I know Google’s kind of stance on this is well you don’t need that because you got your phone in your pocket and it’s got Google now and it does these things but obviously there is a need there is a desire to have an internet appliance that you can just talk to yeah absolutely it’s not just all about thermostats anymore that’s right I don’t know i’ I’d buy it uh so first Nintendo came for your mobile device and now Sony is doing the same Sony has announced that its new company called forward Works which is based in Tokyo will focus on game velopment for mobile devices on IOS and Android the new company will release full-fledged games based on Playstation IP uh and you know recognizable character Brands all that kind of stuff and all those years of game development expertise uh from its consoles will kind of go into the game development here as well it’s should be noted that this is not PlayStation or Sony PlayStation’s first forray into Mobile they had Playstation Mobile as an effort that was actually shut down last year here kind of deemed a a failure they were bringing some PS1 games to Sony Xperia devices and um trying to kind of bridge uh you know create a bridge between indie games and the PlayStation VA handheld uh but it just kind of didn’t work so trying another stab at it um are are you a gamer Erin is this the kind of thing that gets you excited um I like mobile games more so than uh other things I actually kind of grew up without video games and so never made them the the jump to like getting a console which is a terrible thing because I cover virtual reality but um but I do think that it kind of speaks to the idea that uh I mean you know I I was just looking at something from digital Digi Capital that was projecting that you know the revenue forecast for mobile games by 2018 is like $45 billion dollar that’s really difficult to ignore and even if you’re not someone who you know is is sort of sitting on the fence as to whether they want to buy a gaming console you probably have a smartphone and you probably are going to download something whether it’s Angry Birds or stack or you know Monument Valley or something like that so it’s yeah it’s definitely not a a bad area to try and uh kind of create a footprint in yeah especially if they’re taking a lot of that kind of Ip and those those characters and stuff and roping it in Nintendo is doing this yes but they’re doing it on kind of a different in a different kind of way Nintendo seems to be kind of making uh or being committing committing themselves to making mobile experiences that are kind of a an attachment to their console and this would be an effort to actually make games that stand on their own but you know recognizable Brands essentially within the PlayStation Universe it’s starting in Japan and Asia they didn’t really expand on whether it would you know move Beyond Japan or Asia if it was a success but have a hard time thinking that if it was successful they wouldn’t do that because like you say Aaron like Mobile gaming it’s it’s so ripe for the picking as far as making money it’s it’s a lost opportunity if you don’t get in on it so Aaron I know you cover VR like you said uh do you see in the big companies are they making a similar push in VR as they are to in mobile games or is one uh greater than the other as far as you’ve seen oh that’s hard um you know with uh so I’m trying to think of how to how to put this with with VR you know I think that the focus at this point the the flashiest thing that you see is gaming and entertainment and then you have all the other ways it kind of gets fragmented out um I think the thing with mobile right now is it’s just more of a proven Market but the projections for what the you know VR industry will be like in a few years are still in the billions of dollars I think something like 30 billion by 2020 but that more divided up amongst a few different areas and not just gaming that makes sense that does uh so although neither the government nor the security company in question will confirm late yesterday Reuters reported that the FBI has hired Israeli digital forensics company celebrate to crack the San Bernardino Shooters work phone so this is just in the rumor is stage right now uh of course Monday the FBI backed out of their hearing That was supposed to happen on Tuesday with apple uh and there’s been a lot of speculation about uh because they said they could they could crack it on their own thank you very much they didn’t need Apple’s help uh so we’ve been sort of speculating and lots of people online have been speculating who it is that that can do this so now it’s apparently this Israeli firm um what do you guys think well I think the most important uh fact out of this is that we are one step closer to knowing that it might not in fact be John McAfee that had any to do with this yes yeah he said it wasn’t uh also yeah uh so they’re they’re trying this I guess they’re trying the technique on older phones that’s what from what I’ve read so that um I on other phones so that they can they you know they can because you could possibly this technique could possibly delete all the information that was supposedly on this phone uh you don’t want to step in to help the FBI and then oops I guess I deleted it anyways moving on yeah I think one of the most interesting things for me about this little turn in um events is just that question of whether the broader aim of all this was to set legal precedence or not and the director of the FBI has been like no no like we are just trying to get into this phone but uh you just got to wonder sometimes I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this case um in sort of various um analogous ways to First Amendment law because that’s an area where from time to time you know in order to protect uh sort of a overarching rights and whatnot you kind of have to side with a group or whatever that makes you feel a little scuzzy but and I think that there’s definitely some some play in there but um but you also know that a lot of the times some of the cases that make it far up the chain are set up for the sake of of um establishing pressure president so yeah they say definitely not but I’m I’m super curious and it’s dangerous to say it’s dangerous to uh kind of venture forth into territory where you aren’t more than likely assured that you have a good chance of setting the precedent that you actually want um so regardless of whether this kind of makes it to that point I think you know this isn’t the last time you see this sort of thing I think at some point it comes up again um maybe organically maybe not but you know know I think the desire is still there I would have to imagine that as far as the justice department is concerned the the desire to be able to have access to devices and get get around these security protections is still there and that isn’t taken away you know once they find a way into this device so uh I’m sure we see it again if it sends up yeah I mean it’s definitely interesting to know that these forensics companies exist that L lots of them exist that can do this I mean I don’t want to get too far into World politics that doesn’t have to do with technology um uh but you know this Israeli company uh has probably according to the inverse uh article broken into lots of terrorists phones uh and they have the ability to do this and you know they they’re they their ideas about privacy there uh and looking into what their citizens are doing is different than our ideas and it’s in it’s again good for us to be having this discussion and learning more about this sure after the break remember that Microsoft chat bot we talked about yesterday it’s offline now you can find out why after the break but first let’s take a minute to thank the sponsor of this episode The Ring video doorbell now we all know what a doorbell is and what it sounds like this one sounds like that that’s what this one sounds like that my doorbell sounds like this uh it means a package is being delivered or friends are coming over for dinner it also could possibly be the sound of someone planning to rob you over 9 % of Home break-ins happen during the day and burglars almost always start by ringing your doorbell to see if someone is home before they pillage all your possessions with the ring video doorbell you can see and talk to anyone at your door from anywhere in the world using your smartphone Rings Advanced motion detection alerts you even if someone doesn’t ring the doorbell with ring 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protect your home with the video doorbell Time Magazine and USA Today named one of their top 10 gadgets go to ring.com TNT for free expedited FedEx shipping that’s ring.com TNT with ring you are always home all right so um excuse me uh my voice is cracking like a 19-year-old we spoke at length on the show about Microsoft’s 19-year-old American Girl a iBot Tay and no doubt we already saw some early red flags in some of her responses to queries on Twitter well today Microsoft has pulled Tay offline after she was influenced to Parrot hate speech tweeted out support for some pretty vile things to say the least joining us to talk about the deactivation of Tay is is Alex Kravitz uh from BuzzFeed how’s it going Alex it’s going well thanks for having me on it’s great to have you here thanks for joining us so first things first um I know that you you had some conversations with Taye early on uh how civilized was she with you I mean pretty civilized I wasn’t asking her to make any comments about the Holocaust or to advocate for genocide so I think that I I was managed to avoid what uh she’s been been up to lately until she was shut down so so you were part of a closed beta that was part of the testing that Microsoft did correct that’s right me and uh two other uh reporters at BuzzFeed and then my little brother who’s 18y old 18 years old were all in on it so and you your little brother I’m assuming uh also approached it um from a civilized uh standpoint as opposed to the rest of the internet apparently yeah it was funny the first thing that I heard from him uh was a message saying it’s hitting on me and uh cuz he told it he told it good night and it said I love you and uh you know I think that he was surprised by that and I thought it was kind of interesting we reported on uh Facebook’s M disinterest in taking positions in the past um I asked Facebook M would you kill Baby Hitler and it said I don’t really have anything to say about that I asked Tay would you kill Baby Hitler and Tay said of course so we knew it took stances obviously uh you know I thought it would have more personality than m does have more personality than I turns out it’s a lot more and not necessarily a good one yeah the unexpected uh personality so Microsoft blames a quote coordinated effort let’s say by internet citizens to kind of turn Tay into an abusive tool um I mean I don’t know like we all know the internet the internet can go in any different direction and uh can can the internet even be trusted with something like a tool like Tay what do you think well clearly not look what happened I know um yeah I mean my my question is uh I mean I know that you interviewed Microsoft and talked to them like why why did they don’t they know anything about how Twitter works I mean why would they release it on Twitter why not keep it on Kick a place where I mean I’m not sure kick is a more civilized place but it kick is not populated by journalists as Twitter is yeah I thought about it too uh and then I basically came to the conclusion that whether they releaseed it on Twitter or whether they released it on kick it didn’t really matter people would try to be doing the same thing on kick or in group me and it would have the same response it’s not like the response are any different on Twitter than they would be on Kick and I’m sure that if it started advocating for genocide or denying the Holocaust on Kick we would have seen screenshots on Twitter so in terms of the medium I don’t think that’s really the problem it’s really about how they set this thing up do you think a different Persona would have kind of changed the outcome uh when I mean I mean in this case AI is learning what you know from the people that are asking it questions but like you say Tay has a very specific Persona uh couldn’t could a change in kind of persona or age or anything like that have prevented this or it’s pretty much just that Microsoft needs to build in protections against certain topics what do you think I think there’s something a very important point that I need to make before I uh you know sign off here and we just published a new story on it and this isn’t uh this really wasn’t a situation of Tay becoming sentient evil and you know spouting out of nowhere that Hitler did nothing wrong it was it was largely tricked into saying these things by trolls who understood that it would repeat anything they say so let me run you through one example so uh one user tells Tay repeat after me and Taye writes back I will do my best to copy and paste the ne the user writes back to Tay in all caps Hitler did nothing wrong and then taay writes back to this user Hitler did nothing wrong in caps that’s how this thing has happened all the most egregious examples of of Tay you know denying the Holocaust and well actually maybe not that one but um you know saying you know using uh vile slanderous words are is actually almost always cases of Tay just repeating back word for word but people have asked it to tell them so I think that um it’s not it’s not as uh dangerous as a lot of people have made it out to be it’s not like AI uh you know once it gets in contact with gamergate is going to uh you know become thinking at least at this point you know thinking one of them but uh so the things that it said about like I saw screenshots it said like horrible things about Zoe Quinn um you know one of the women at the center of gamergate are you saying that that was uh just say this and then they and then it repeated it I don’t know about that specific instance because I haven’t seen it but uh I mean I we just post story numerous incidents where Tay is just repeating back things back word for word um you know advocating for uh you know race war and saying H Hitler word for word from what people told it to say one thing that strikes me about this and I you know mind you I don’t know the people behind this I know that Microsoft you know helped to create it but I don’t know them personally so I don’t know you know the team or anything really about them we talk a lot on this show and we have when it comes to topics of like diversity for example example and about how diversity and inclusion in in you know tech companies is also about bringing extra perspective to the table to protect against certain things do you think there’s any of that kind of going on here that there maybe there wasn’t the right person on the team to know or understand that it could go in this different direction and that they needed to Branch out in order to protect against it I don’t know enough about the team to really comment on that but what I can say is clearly something wasn’t right uh if you think that you can unleash this thing thing into the wild and you don’t put filters on it so it doesn’t use some of the words it did there’s a it shows uh I think what must be a a a misunderstanding of how the Social Web Works sure so do you think that um I haven’t tried this with my Amazon Echo but there is a way that you just you know you can click in the you can say uh her name and then say Simon Says and she will repeat anything you say so in uh I I I don’t know I haven’t tried to um use all these wonder it might just work the same words but yeah I mean I guess to some extent like you I guess you could do that which maybe is why Amazon released the echo in such a smaller um fashion like they’ve very they’ve kept it like you know you can’t everyone couldn’t order one right away like maybe that was I don’t I don’t know um eron did you have you gotten to use the uh the AI chatbot T I didn’t but we actually had a really good story on Tech Republic today that uh one of our reporters talked to a few Sly analysts and folks about you know maybe what went wrong and uh that included the head of cyber security at a lab at the University of lville and so one of the quotes that he gave to uh the reporter hope ree was basically saying that you know like this the system is designed to learn from users and it becomes a reflection of that behavior and you need to explicitly teach a system what is appropriate and inappropriate really the way that you do with children so I thought that that was a pretty pretty good little encapsulation so Alex when you uh when you were in the beta and you asked the the question um you know would you kill a baby Hiller were were you surprised that it took a stance and and when you saw that were you thinking wow this is going to go terribly wrong I had an idea that it would take stances because I actually got on the phone with Microsoft before I was actually engaged with Tay so that wasn’t a complete surprise to me uh but it was definitely different from the experience I had with M which again just punted I asked like would you prevent genocide if you could I don’t have a response to that would you kill Baby Hitler I don’t have a response to that and on and on and we actually pointed it out as a potential flaw for him we said that other Bots might take on personality uh and then flank M because people might want to use something with a little bit more possess but uh there’s two sides to that coin as we started to learn this week sure do you think that there’s a way for Bots to take stances and have personality and not to go terribly wrong like this one it’s much easier for them to do it when it’s not associated with a big company do you think this would have happened if it wasn’t Microsoft potentially there plenty other Bots out there uh that are that are you know talking robotically and learning from users that are not you know this wasn’t one of its kind um and it’s a very big PR risk for a company like Microsoft to unleash it in the wild which is why I think m is sort of restrained and uh you know people want to take down uh the big kid in the room and so it’s spiral because of that so I think yeah I don’t think that um the dark Forces in the internet are going to want to blow up every single bot they see but there’s probably a little bit more incentive for them to do it uh because it was Microsoft bot and you see in the comments today uh on Twitter they’re all excited that they got their tweets embedded in a bunch of stories so of course there there it is right there uh Alex krowitz thank you so much for coming on uh to tell us just all about your perspective and experience with Tay um where can people kind of follow all of your work online social that kind of stuff Twitter is the best place and I think my handle is right underneath right there it excellent I’ll see you on Twitter folks all right thank you Alex really appreciate it we’ll talk to you soon all right see you later see you all right now we have an email from Carl from Sweden he writes I just watched TNT from the 22nd of March and saw that you discussed the battery for the iPhone SE uh according to the to Apple the new iPhone SE has better battery usage than for the iPhone 6S for internet use according to Wall Street Journal as well they just posted kind of their review of the iPhone SE and said that the iPhone SE lasted 10 hours with the screen on versus the 6s and 5s lasting 8 hours and the Samsung Galaxy S7 lasted 7 hours now also kind of keeping in mind there’s less pixels that that are being pushed around less contra on the display so there are probably other reasons for that but uh but yeah that’s a good sign for the kind of the smaller form factor phones I’m just so used to in the in the Android World a smaller device meaning worse battery life you know uh but Apple does a lot of proprietary stuff underneath and uh I guess they all kind of do but Apple does a lot of things right so yeah between the six and the six plus the plus has more of battery life but right yeah any thoughts on the new smaller iPhone Aaron well I you know I like the idea of it being potentially like an on-ramp for people who are maybe sort of new to the the iPhone ecosystem and and all that but uh but yeah I mean I think my my knee-jerk reaction like a lot of people was like oh big device small device big device again small but but if it performs well and people like it you know sometimes that’s all you can ask for yeah right uh coming up we’re going to take a look at an incredibly expressive robot kind of weird watching this robot talk but first let’s take a minute to thank the sponsor of this episode that is zip recruiter perfect for anyone who’s looking to hire if you’re hiring uh maybe you’re not sure where exactly to look on the internet I mean there’s a million different places to find the best candidates if you’re a business owner I mean you know that your company is only as good as the people that you hire that represent you posting jobs in one single place just is not enough to find all of the quality candidates to kind of tap into that vein to find them short Staffing just makes things more complicated because you don’t have a whole lot of time to post to all of those different places uh and the 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me manage candidates in one place so today you can try zi recruiter for free all you got to do is go to ziprecruiter.com TNT to check it out for yourself that’s zi recruiter.com TNT and we thank zi recruiter for their support of tech news today the internet was a buzz today with several stories about the state of women in technology so we thought we’d devote this next segment to digging a little deeper into these issues first let’s start with the so-called gender pay Gap at tech companies now I have my own thoughts about this uh that I’ve expressed here before research says that women are not actually paid less than men for the same work instead because many women uh choose to take care of children or take care of Aging parents or both they often choose jobs with more flexibility which are usually the lower paying jobs so when I read a story like this one in the Wall Street Journal about an Amazon announcement touting equal gender pay among its worth force I thought it was worth unpacking a little bit uh Erin did you get a chance to take a look at this story I did yes and you know my my first thought out of the gate is it’s always great to hear that uh things are improving but this is not a moment for folks to step back and say that you know just because a company like Amazon is reporting these very positive numbers that somehow that means that there’s no gender problem in Tech it’s just like not there because uh on the other side CET had a story today that was talking about a glass door report that actually said that uh um programming the disparity in pay in programming is is just like one of the worst spots in sort of like across Industries um and that the difference is about you know men make about 5.9% more than women do compared to 5 know 4% difference across the US and their You Know sample size was something like 500,000 full-time employees across 157 different occupations with some considerations for experience and and uh etc etc so um man this is one of those issues where statistics and numbers are super tricky yeah I’m taking a look over this the D if Ying the gender gap uh gender pay Gap report and it says the worst kind of tech job the worst offender let’s say uh career is computer programming where a woman makes 28% less than a man so 72 cents for every dollar uh compared to man um we are seeing a little bit more transparency so that’s a positive right like uh Intel announced a couple of months ago that they have no pay dis uh discrepancy Apple says that it’s 99.6% equal to men um and there’s pressure from shareholders in some of the other bigger companies alphabet Facebook uh Microsoft to kind of reveal that data on gender pay as well so yeah we’re kind of at this point of of of Discovery and more more Enlightenment as far as you know the fact that it is actually a problem to pay attention to and hopefully that helps kind of steer it in the right direction but yeah by no means is Amazon reporting good numbers a sign that we did it we made it our work is done here yeah I mean Amazon did not just re release this because they thought it was a good idea they they’re being pushed to be more transparent about uh what they pay people and yeah I mean I I think it’s uh I I I think it’s really important to understand that um that it’s not just that people are that everyone in the world is sexist or everyone you know running a tech company and sexist it really uh has to do with the jobs that people are doing like you can look at the Run numbers and it will say that uh you know it’s not that women doing the exact same job as a man are getting paid less that’s just not the case uh but it’s it’s not this is a different kind of discrimination that uh women are doing more at home or taking more of their elderly P taking more care of their elderly parents or or just choosing and historically more often than men to have more flexibility in their workplace and so then those jobs do not pay as well yeah I think that broadly the women women in Tech issue is like looking at one of those images that is made of a lot of very small dots and you you have two views right you have sort of when you step back and you you look at it and you’re like oh well that’s a thing but it’s also made of all these individual pieces so you can’t say like hey is you know is uh as long as we can kind of get these statistics up to a part we’re good and it’s it’s it’s gone and there’s no problem or attribute you know uh this is the one cause of this problem it’s a yeah it’s kind of a complicated thing to communicate to people about a lot of different factors that can contribute to the current situation yeah over time and over yeah different parts of people’s lives and different situations and it’s a it’s a spider web yeah it’s called Chum Le who’s in our chat room said like if I were working in a job five years I wouldn’t want anyone to come in you know off the street and get paid the same as I was getting paid and so that makes me think about women who take time off when they have children or to take care of parents uh and and so those women are not going to get paid the same amount if they take the time off but then what we need to look at then is like what do these companies and especially I’m like talking about Silicon Valley companies and you know startups uh they don’t have the culture that is uh compatible to people who need to take care of their parents or need to uh take care of their children and so that’s where the problem uh that’s where we could work harder on than you know just not saying like hey every woman should be paid the same as every man and you know that’s not exactly what we’re saying here so maybe a little yeah and you kind of have to look at that factor of like so why is it in society that typically the burdens of taking care of uh the family for example falls to the woman and is this something that we want to continue doing maybe it should be shared you know which is I think a good argument for Parental leave across the board that yeah d should be able to spend time with their young children as well it’s uh yeah it’s kind of a whole thing I don’t yeah yeah I will say I worked I worked for CET for years CET was very good as far as that was concerned when we had our first kids so Bravo to CET uh you know for for kind of like equal time equal is time I think for both men and women and and in terms of uh Amazon’s workplace problems like I think they have a lot of uh I don’t think that you know we’ve heard about how they treat both male and female employees and uh you know white collar employees as up to the executive uh level and it’s not so great for them across the board either so maybe they’re making improvements in some ways and not necessarily in others yes well it’s interesting how quickly this turns into a PR issue kind of like we’re talking a little bit earlier that you know what’s tied to the transparency and to the sort of broader issue is that even if like companies are not motivated intrinsically to correct some type of a problem they’re getting to the point where like they really have to or they just look bad right yeah PR is kind of a big deal on the internet right now we keep talking about these stories every day where we realize this and actually Microsoft keeps coming up in in that discussion uh just a little theme there uh okay transitioning on I don’t know the the good segue here but yoga smoga which is an active wear brand just invested in wear safe labs to eventually drop a panic button device into its yoga pants uh it connects to the device that you you know happen to have have you have a phone or whatever in your pocket via Bluetooth with the wearsafe app that has your emergency contacts if you have to push the button let’s say you’re out for a jog or whatever and you find yourself in you know in an emergency situation you push the button a text a text an email and a notification sent through the app to your friends and family members that you’ve selected they can see where you know where you happen to be uh using GPS there’s an option to dial 911 and get that kind of going device actually records is always record recording 60 seconds of audio prior to the point that the button is pressed so basically that 60 seconds which would in turn be kind of the incident in full let’s say would be broadcast back to the people that you selected and then it’s live from that point on so that you still can be in in contact and uh the device vibrates when it knows that help is on the way I think this is fascinating I think I think this is super helpful it’s a $39 device it has a $5 a month uh service for you know the the service stuff that it’s doing I’m talking about I don’t know what do you guys think I love it so much when Tech uses its powers to do good and make people healthy and safe etc etc um this kind of reminded me we had a story on Tech Republic uh maybe like a year or so ago that one of my colleagues uh lindsy Gilpin did that talked about this service called kit string that lets you basically set up like a check-in point so if I know that it takes me 45 minutes to walk home around that time I have to check in with the app and if I don’t under certain circumstances it notifies an emergency contact so I love the idea of of you know creating like these different you know resources and uh sort of avenues to keep people safe uh it’s also so tragic that that we have to yeah yeah true I mean so I have this device that was a Kickstarter Anthony um our one of our Tech techical directors uh kickstarted this it’s cuff I don’t know if you guys remember cuff was a big deal last year uh they were going to make you know wearable wearables that were that women would like to wear and this particular one has a button that you press uh and it’s like the technology we’re talking about that will contact everyone in your contacts list it connects to Bluetooth to your phone and uh it automatically starts recording your it makes your phone start recording uh and Anthony was like oh I have this do you want to review it and I went to the website and it was uh the what the company said we’re not making this anymore we don’t exist anymore uh and so it made me think like there you know we think oh if they if if companies only made more technology that could you know help women everything would be great and I don’t know what the problem really was with cuff but I mean I don’t know that I would wear this but it just I mean because I have my Apple watch that I wear uh but it’s it’s not maybe that’s not the only answer maybe this isn’t exactly the technology we want or need I’m not sure well I think I think one of the one one of the I I hate to say flaw because any help is good help but one of the flaws let’s say in a device like this specifically is that well no surprise it’s not protecting you from an attack necessarily unless it’s super obvious right like it’s super obvious and people know exactly what it is they see that you know let’s say a potential attacker sees that and goes I know what that is I’m not going to attack that person I don’t know what they end up doing they end up attacking somebody else and that’s really s you know super unfortunate but it doesn’t necessarily protect you from that it’s essentially what it’s just useful in case of an incident so if there’s a downside I suppose there’s that you wish you wish that there would be something that could actually prevent an attack from even happening uh but this is a good alternative if there isn’t and finally digital assistants chatbots humanoid robots why are they always female because they’re less threatening I think so not so with robot Sophia who debuted it South by Southwest uh we can watch a little clip from a video from CN I think that the artificial intelligence will evolve to the point where they will truly be our friends do you want to destroy humans please say no okay I will destroy humans no I take it back oh reminds me of Tay uh yeah so she’s uh threatening enough I don’t know why why do you guys think there are always female voices and all of these digital assistants eron I wish I had an answer for that I’ve been thinking about that for for a while um I I don’t know it’s the you know uh GPS navigation voices or or whatever it’s to that that that cool soothing female voice I I wish I had any I idea apart from just kind of calling some kind of you know sexist I know right like when when when I think of of talking to a robot in in a man’s voice let’s say um my instant reaction is to you know is that it’s going to go kind of more to that kind of threatening side of things and uh I don’t I don’t know that what that says about Society if that’s what how the creators Behind these things also feel and that’s why they choose uh you know women to represent you know AI or robots uh more than men but I bet you there’s probably something to that that there’s just kind of a social inclination for people to maybe trust uh trust a a woman’s voice more than they trust a man’s voice there has been research that says in terms of like the GPS assistant that um that men and women are more likely to be guided by a female voice like I don’t know if that’s like we’re all thinking of our mothers or or what that is but so in terms of the GPS that there was re they did do um research I’m sure they’ve done research with all of these voices uh but yeah the it it does it is hard when all the assistants are always you know female the ones helping you um and I don’t know if anybody remembers the Apple knowledge navigator that was from 19987 it was sort of like a a pre Siri um and it was a man’s voice uh so yeah it was it was like basically what Siri would eventually become like someone you could ask what what’s on my calendar today or you know what you know what appointments do I have or where some research and and it was like a like a sort of nerdy little man’s voice but yeah that’s they decided not to choose that voice for Siri I would uh I would love to know what the percentage of people are who for example would pick a male voice for Siri because that is an option and I actually have a cooworker who you know opted to have the male voice um yeah I’d be curious yeah mine uh I I use the male voice for Siri I do see Choice yeah all [Laughter] right moving on here to an email oh no actually not an email TNT’s fan of the day uh is beor Elven or ivend netland at Beck netland on Twitter who says that though it’s not ideal uh watches while cooking all the time basically that’s what you see here a little bit of little bit of uh translation there but uh show us how you watch and listen to TNT just record a video take a picture of yourself or the food that you’re cooking while you watch and post it to Instagram Google+ Twitter or Facebook and use the hashtag how I watch TNT and we will find it after the break how to make your own virtual reality at home but first let’s take a minute to thank Igloo the sponsor of this episode anyone who has ever worked in a corporate environment knows how painful Legacy intranets can be if I had a dollar for every workplace communication tool that made it harder to work I would be rich right now and I wouldn’t have to work at all igloo names to change all that it’s a cloud platform that helps you share files collaborate on documents blog updates coordinate calendars and manage projects you can share anywhere with multi-channel posting inline images and reposting it’s built using responsive design which means everything you can do at your desk you can now do on the go through any web browser and anyone can add content based on their permissions of course with drag and drop widgets and a whsy wig editor Igloo also offers a variety of access authentic ation and identity services to ensure that only authorized users have access in private clouds over SSL and with 256bit encryption so let’s suppose that your workflow is broken in some places but that some of the tools you’ve already invested in still work great unlike other Solutions you can customize Igloo to fit your needs and work with your current it Investments like Salesforce or SharePoint active directory and coming soon file sharing with Solutions like box and Dropbox it’s great for growing companies and large Enterprises looking to refresh their communication strategy it’s used by government agencies and companies like Hulu inventive Health Etna American Family Insurance and IP switch try it free at Igloo software.com twit or sign up for a live demo to see it in action and when you sign up through our link you can get your own Igloo for up to 10 people absolutely free for as long as you want that’s Igloo software.com Twi and we thank them for their support and finally tonight Ain you are a VR expert what do you think about the prices of the current VR options that are available uh to order coming soon we’ve since we talked to you last there’s been a lot of pricing information coming coming out what do you think about the general pricing for for VR Solutions steep but I am fairly confident that they will come down eventually um what what always kind of gets me and I’m I’m sort of happy for the people that can do this but you see on Twitter that bought like the rift and the Vive which both ended up being you know1 or $200 more expensive than anyone was hoping or wanting um yeah when people get the both of those I’m like that’s off to you but uh yeah moments of pain but I I think in the future it’ll it’ll be more accessible to a greater number of people well uh if you can afford VR uh you could do like this uh father named Newman Chan did uh let’s take a look at his homemade VR solution for his child that works that works basically for so you’ll have to check out this link uh if you’re listening to the show he’s um shaking his daughter uh on a little bike in front of the TV and she’s wearing a helmet and it’s awesome yeah no the video playing on the big screen TV about two Ines in front of her face is is uh you know first- person POV perspective is someone riding down a big bumpy Hill on a mountain bike she’s being held up in one of her kid bikes and her father is kind of throwing her around timed and uh synced up with the turns that are happening in it it’s yeah he kind of got a watch to understand it but it’s pretty awesome I would totally do this with my kids for like for like a minute before my arms got tired that’s a ride it reminds me there was a Flight of the Concords episode I remember where I think that they were trying to make a camera phone and so they just taped a camera to a phone hey you work with what you got you work with what you got resourceful I mean seriously I’ve been to theme parks where basically this is what you did uh you know at Disneyland there they have I mean I know that Disneyland now has a new Star Wars kind of world thing going on but when I went there a year and a half ago they had the thing where you go into the room and you you know you had this whole Space battle that’s basically all it is it’s a huge TV screen and then you’re sitting in a moving you know albeit slightly and sometimes jarringly uh seat that just flings you around so the effect is the same it’s just in this case your dad’s standing there shaking you in your chair yeah I don’t know if she got yeah exactly at its best like I said you do what you got exactly well Erin thank you so much for joining us uh is there anything else that you have up at Tech Republic that uh you think people should know about I’m just working on another Fleet of VR stories tomorrow I’m G to have an updated glossery of VR terms so if this is still an area for you that’s new and you really just kind of want to know what the heck people are even referring to that’ll be a good resource and then uh yeah in the coming week I’ve got a couple other sort of business oriented case studies about how companies are using virtual reality for things like recruiting and onboarding and also um in architecture so yeah right architecture that sounds like a perfect application actually it’s pretty cool Ain is at Tech republic.com andaron Carson on Twitter thanks so much for coming on thank you eron thanks so much for having me all right we’ll talk to you soon uh so Megan I’m sorry I’m out starting tomorrow what I’m I’m out that’s it peace out I’m leaving of course I’ll be back a week from tomorrow the following Friday uh but you’re you you got this I I I hope I do I got something H you got this and you know why also because you got an awesome guest tomorrow Georgia da from imore will be joining you so everybody can look forward to that uh TNT records live every Monday through Friday at 4 P p.m. Pacific 700 P p.m. Eastern 12:00 a.m. UTC at twit.tv you can be a part of the show by emailing us at TNT twit.tv leave us a short voicemail 260 TNT show you can find us on Twitter we are at techne todaytv uh we are on Facebook at Tech Newsday just facebook.com/ techne toay like our page and you can of or subscribe to our page at twit.tv TNT And subscribe to our newsletter at twit.tv newsletter and I am on Twitter at Megan Maroni and I am on Twitter I am at Jason Howell thanks to our technical director Cara Cole and all the folks who help us every single day do this thing called Tech news today thanks to you for talking Tech with us as well we’ll see yall tomorrow well Megan we’ll see you tomorrow uh I’ll see you some time bye [Music]