**The Thrill of Jetpacks and Hover Cars: A Conversation with Tech**

We finally have one that works! Yeah yeah, I'd have to give that a shot yeah I mean jetpack hover cars are the next thing that I absolutely demand that Tech come up. We're just in a Holodeck we're close to a Holodeck so I mean really everything I want is happening right now I just need a personal laser so where is I mean where is this contest are you in the contest you have to fly down to California yeah no it's in L.A. I just guessed in California of course it's in California yeah I would have guessed San Francisco no it's La yeah so it's a pack you win a Southern Ohio yeah yeah they have to have it over water as what my guess is they probably don't want you flying over land there's probably a lot of things you have to sign before it could be one of those jet packs the water-based ones did you see that this one's not one of them no this is slowly autonomous yeah all you need is a propane tank on your back and you're good to go pretty much. Yeah, you stop a bunch of strap a bunch of jet fuel and yeah and then go off go off over the water wow uh yeah it's pretty cool though so it's from a guy uh Chief pilot David mayman so there's a video of him and I think he talks you through how to use it if you were to win this but you can enter right now. So, digitaltrends.com giveaways that's just awesome I want one of those so bad um oh yeah and you also get a thousand dollars in travel vouchers so go there and enter and then uh give me the prize when you win yeah yeah there it is.

**Holiday Survival Guide**

Finally, I do want to mention over anybody that way flying over okay you wanna trip over those people trying to stay warm holidays with Caleb no kidding I'm such a scrooge I'm sorry you don't have your your Red Vines in here you had chips though before you did you should be good to go. Okay, all right we're gonna we'll get our licorice delivery to you all right well finally um we should talk about the holiday Survival Guide that's at digitaltrends.com uh featuring Naomi here in a whole bunch of the pictures which is awesome so it's uh it's kind of a guide maybe you can tell exactly what the guide is for like is it just for for the holiday I'll tell what the guide is for so it's uh essentially a guide to help you you know buying everything that you need for the holidays or if you want to buy gifts it it should be a gift guide but it's really a holiday Survival Guide is what it's being called and there's lots of different suggestions on here and the theme is great. I mean, it's really around family or friends and the pictures are I highly suggest if you've gone to dinners of course during Thanksgiving or Christmas you know how it is always grouped up with people that you may or may not like right yeah right and uh yeah and don't talk politics with those people so this is yeah I won't even talk about it. Got a couple of cousins that anyway um so so yeah it's a really great guide so tons of different things on there different suggestions if you're looking for something to buy and you're not sure what to get like family there's a whole section on family dinner um and uh different things you can buy there I don't know it's just an awesome guide that's up there at digitaltrends.com so one of the many things that that we've got there that you can go and check out.

**Final Thoughts**

I think that's about it for today any you know any uh final comments Caleb do you have any final thoughts I really really do wish everybody a uh happy to holiday season Merry Christmas have a good time I love you all I'm very positive and uh remember at the end of the Grinch that he turns positive oh this is it okay it's part of my process I just happened to do it with you guys during a podcast okay that's all right well I'm glad you worked it out you know I'm glad you used today to work through these feelings and these these issues and we're all here I always like it when people show vulnerability yeah think about it yeah exactly that's what we want to see growing I'm impressed I am all right thank you so much everybody for tuning in to do this podcast every week hey get there buddy find us on iTunes uh Stitch wherever you find audio podcasts we will be there and also we do the show Live on YouTube so you can always check it out right there and check out all the back episodes send us an email podcast digitaltrends.com a big thank you to MailChimp send better email sell more stuff and we will be back next week with another episode

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enforeign hello everyone tuning in this is Trends with Benefits this is our weekly podcast Where We Gather a round table of experts to talk about the tech topics of the day Today's Show is sponsored by MailChimp send a better email somewhere stuff so we got a bunch of things that we're going to get to today we're going to talk about a jet pack which is always awesome uh Microsoft's chat bot we've got some Samsung news and we're going to talk about the Amazon go store but first let's uh introduce everybody here that's on the show I'm Greg Nibbler and to my right now Evo hello Naomi Hi Ian Bell you're just staring at the camera dead pen no we have people walking by the window oh there were people walking by okay all right all right Brandon and Rick before that so okay all right so there was actually things going on fans are here gathering around and on the end down there last week I deserve a lot for what happened last week yeah yeah they I had to do some editing last year I didn't know I left it in there until midnight I don't know that's how you know that's fine all right let's talk about some some tech things here that are going on so the biggest news that I've seen that's been happening for quite a while right now is Amazon and their announcement that they have a beta store open in Seattle which is going to be essentially a convenience store or a grocery Market where you don't have anybody there as far as clerks you walk in you use the Amazon app to get in you go through like a little kiosk and you you walk in with that and then once you're in there you just take things off the shelves throw it into a bag and then walk right out and they have the ability to scan whatever you pick up and it'll just instantly charge your account so there's nobody there monitoring it it's just walk in walk out completely checkout list shopping which is which is an interesting concept I can see a lot of ways that that's going to go wrong it's freaking awesome are you kidding me coming from the guy who hates everything yeah this is the best freaking thing ever oh God yeah no I'm all about talking about how this Tech sucks right because yeah you know because there's there's supposed to be something cool about it but really it's stupid this is awesome this is great I love this because well listen how many times have you gone into a Plaid Pantry or 7-Eleven Circle K whatever right and you know there's just some skis yeah Circle K bro you remember that they're still around yeah there's lots of Arctic circles oh they're all on the they're on the coast in Seaside all these things they're just kind of grouped together no you go in and it's there's somebody skeezy there it's taking them like 18 hours to pick their lottery tickets and then they won no wait I want those people great the great Swisher Sweets instead of those Cherry swishers no the convenience store is supposed to be you go in you get your stuff you get it and you get out that's actually a marketing line for one of these companies but you never can you never can because people use them as a place to get warm when it's cold or whatever I mean it's just sorry let me step over you sir in the sleeping bag that's true look there's nothing convenient about convenience stores that's the bottom line and I think this is gonna like is this gonna put a little bit of the you know convenience back in okay so you are all for it all for getting rid of the clerks all together and just not dealing with anybody so you can walk in there grab your Red Vines you hate people yeah I don't hate all people I just hate the ones that get in my way well Ian what do you think about this you know I mean look anybody that knows me knows I'm all for like the balance between Tech and you know non-tech I hate Automation and sometimes I like it I I don't like it because I don't like to replace people symbols out yeah I don't do like the self-checkout at grocery stores intentionally for that so I will go through and make sure I use a person yeah who I'm like okay you're paid to be here I'm gonna use you and I want you to be replacing your job so that's you know I have my little principles I live by on that um I noticed that you like the hand pump coffee as opposed to the the new fingers where you push the buttons you know why because that's how I work out that's as much exercise as I get into it's a cool concept until people are like oh there's a Jam at the check-in to get my app up the app's not loading and there's always something that works or doesn't work with tech right I mean yeah I mean it's a cool concept it's neat it's fun I like the idea but but not practical to your point previous podcast like it almost never works the way it's supposed to right it's like that August Smart Lock have you guys heard of that huh I bought that for the house it's supposed to recognize when you walk up and unlocks the front door only if your garage door happens to be by the front door and you pull into the garage with your car what does it do it unlocks the front door and then you gotta go all the way in the house and then re-lock the front door so I mean there's always things that are going to go wrong to this stuff but that is an interesting problem right there but I think it's a cool concept I just don't like replacing people for the sake of placing people yeah Naomi what do you think I like when I go into a grocery store I'm there to buy you know whatever I need to get like right away and I'm trying to get out of there versus waiting in line and like people have to take out their cash and like you know or write in their checkbook like that she hates people too see that's so different convenience whenever I go into a store I just want to get a coupon you know don't get me wrong like eight pennies nobody likes hanging out in the grocery store I want out as well I mean I just want somebody to actually like put the items in the basket and if they can just scan my phone that's it that's good yeah yeah well I mean so the thing for me is I don't see how it's really going to work because it's going to be compromised I would think pretty easily as far as why wouldn't you just walk in there and just jump over the little kiosk on the way out and and take things I mean how are they going to stop that unless they have access to Florida check in and you probably have to have the app run into check out which you I mean somebody with a really dumb job and their job is to sit there and make sure that the light goes green or red right it's red Greg you can't like you can't leave you don't have the app turned on leave right or it's green come on in I mean that's somebody's job right and you think it'll be that simple and that they'll solve that problem don't you think that's probably going to be somebody's job or clean up on aisle two you know because you yeah you dropped the grape crush or whatever on your way somebody's got to be around I'm sure that it's not completely unmanned yeah but for me it's not about replacing people I mean I totally sympathize with what you're saying for me it's about putting the convenience back in the convenience store you get in you get your stuff and you get out like when I you mentioned self-checkout before I only use self-checkout if I have like six items and I'm slowing somebody else down in the main line who actually needs that person to check all their stuff and get it nicely bagged and loaded into the cart you know um sometimes I'm doing a huge trip I'm not going self-checkout with a gigantic card at groceries but if I'm carrying a basket and I just want to help keep those lines free for other people that's how I roll so it really it's because I love people that I do these things I think we just saw Indiana Jones walk by you know that it was catered as well everyone in the same really I think it's cool concept yeah absolutely I mean I think if it's successful you're probably going to see this take over in a lot of other places too I mean where if you can get rid of I mean I know like you said you want to keep people having jobs you know some that's somebody's job but if a corporation can figure out a way to skim that off and just automate everything I think this could be a sign of where things are going Amazon is so weird right now like yes they're big they have tons and tons of money right they're going into all these different places they're just like they're taking over commerce period yeah e-commerce it's just like Commerce cloud computing it was just amazing they're on planes now for delivery yeah yeah planes delivery system yeah they really are kind of taking over everything so this uh it it sounds like they're going to be opening up some more presuming that this is where are they now it's in Seattle but it's in Seattle yeah but it's just for employees I think just Amazon employees that can use it right now just let that drizzle down two and a half hours to the South to Portland and let us let us at it yeah it looked like the chicken salad sandwiches were pretty good yeah in the picture and that way you don't step over anybody when you go into the grocery store that's right I don't have to have the app to get in redeem your bottle tax somewhere else that's all I'm saying wow hot takes by Caleb in here is it the holiday season I'm kidding all right let's uh let's bounce out to something else here too this is um as always you know we always have phone ribbers and updates usually it's the iPhone that we're talking about it feels like every week there's some new iPhone 8 rumor that's that's circulating about what they're going to be doing um now though it has to do with Samsung and as they're getting ready to release the S8 I think next year is when it's going to come out and there's rumors that are happening about what they're going to be doing and one of the main ones is this that they too are going to get rid of the headphone jack and just go to the USB type c so not the Lightning Jack that's what Apple's doing but still another company getting rid of the Jack altogether presumably to make it Slimmer but it's it's a weird choice to me a because you know their last phone's all blew up so you'd think they'd want to just stick with something nice and nice and simple um but that was mean that was a mean comment it was mean oh it was it was but I mean it's true I mean there's it was the note nothing it was the note you're right okay maybe uh maybe that was too harsh that was too harsh but uh but I'm just talking like PR wise you would think you just wanted stick with something basic although maybe they're just trying to go completely the opposite end and do something completely fantastic but getting rid of the headphone jack with the backlash that happened last time and I know this is a controversial thing some people are for it some people are against it I would think it's a kind of a bold move it's a bold move I hate it I mean I have the iPhone 7 and I absolutely I like to listen to my headphones in charge at the same time when I'm driving home and I can't do that yeah and so pain in the butt I don't think the audio quality is any better quite frankly I know technically it might be but if you get the right headphones it can be but but then you're investing a lot in headphones too yeah and you're also making your phone unchargeable unless you have any number of different dongles that you and I mean the same thing is going to happen with Samsung first of all here's my commentary first off how weird for Samsung who's always talking about blazing the trail Apple's always just catching up to them you know to go and flip the script and suddenly drop the headphone jack like apple just did like yeah that splash of news that that crazy crazy move has it's already been done now it's just sort of like wow really Samsung that's your that's your way of going it's almost like giving credence to Apple to say hey yeah you did have a Forward Thinking idea and I guess we're going to hop on board with that too although I heard he's doing it now too yeah prior to Samsung I heard HTC it's HTC even a still a company like they are yeah I know they're making phones but they're not doing great anyway I'm not too worried about what HTC is doing oh evil Now LG if LG after making a phone centered around amazing audio an amazing video where suddenly to say yeah we're gonna kill it too I would yeah mind blown honestly which by the way they did in the G5 remember that they had the I don't remember who made the the DAC in that it was a big name was it Wilson or something like that yeah but they still use the regular a headphone jack in that and sound phenomenal yeah no LG has the best sounding phones out there right now if you want to listen to music and most people can hear the difference this isn't like you know audiophile crazy head stuff it just sounds really good and the recordings they make are good and um I don't get why no it's stupid quite frankly on the iPhone 7 the thing that makes me mad is uh I can't find a dongle that allows you to charge and plug your headphones in yeah and use the microphone so they do have a dongle where you can do both but not where you can take a phone call a microphone in line on that dongle yeah and if you're a business guy and you've been here you get off the plane you gotta jump in that conference call you know while you're trying to get to your hotel or whatever and you're thing is about to die and you can't Bluetooth headset it and yeah absolutely right yeah absolutely right it's just it does it's not practical it's not convenient I mean the iPhone 8 they were talking about how it might be wirelessly charging you know that so maybe that would solve a little bit of that problem but you still have to have something to wirelessly charge it too so that's carrying another device or that wireless charger base only needs to plug into something yeah you're on a plane it still has to be plugged in right to do that yeah so it's still still going to be inconvenient no matter what well I mean this is I mean it sounds like if you're saying HTC is doing it too and Samsung and the iPhone I mean it sounds like people are the companies are saying nope this is what's going to happen whether you like it or not and this is what we're going to you know the argument I heard is they're trying to do it so that they can get a Slimmer design on the phone yeah is that but that little bit of this yeah slim you know slimness is that really worth it well I think the the so and inside the headphone jack if you were to look inside that little hole is surrounded by a much larger Square okay much larger but it is a larger square is attached to a printed circuit board with solder her and and then it has to have little stabilization points because you've got things going in and out of all the time so yeah I mean it does add a little bit of thickness to the phone that's legit right um and you can't go too thin I mean there's a point of diminishing returns right I mean remember years ago they had the little tiny phones and you'd see people holding oh yeah it was like stupid like who would buy those right and of course that company went out of business so it's like I mean the human hand Can Only Hold certain you know size phones or whatever I mean how thin you want the phone to be right you want to cutting yourself right I'm gonna break it anyway regardless I'll drop it and break it so it's not gonna do me any good Naomi what do you think about this I do remove it I'm I mean I use a Bluetooth headset so I don't care but I just don't understand why cutting off that is a good idea like is it for profit I mean I get it to make it thinner but you know yeah is it that much money invested in the headphone jack where yeah maybe you have to buy you know a ton of dongles I mean yeah no joke I have headphones here at the office I have headphones in both my cars I have headphones at my home office headphones downstairs in the kitchen I'm always on headphones yeah but they'll all be useless and now I have to buy these yeah at nine bucks make the old headphones work and then I'm still having issues where they're not working 100 either so which is dumb well that's that seems to be where they're going some of the other things they were talking about that they might be having is the retina scanner which again it it seems like they're following some of what the iPhone is doing but uh I don't know we'll see what happens this is the new the new uh Galaxy that's uh supposed to be coming out next year so let's get on to some other topics before we do uh do you want to talk about our sponsor which is MailChimp send better email sell more stuff and a couple of things that they've got going right now you can uh sign up for forever free email lists so essentially what it is if you have a company here if you have a business or you know a band or whatever I was talking about this last week where you want to get a hold of people you can sign up for this service and you can send 12 000 emails a month to a list of up to 2 000 subscribers for completely free so absolutely no reason not to not to give that a shot and they also have something called e-commerce integration so it's one of the things that MailChimp has done to help you sell more stuff so if you have an online store and you wanna you wanna better monetize your customers as far as giving them suggestions on other products that they may be interested in and finding out what they're buying and what they're into you can use their services for that so it's their e-commerce integration for small businesses individuals whatever you want they'll give your customers product recommendations tons of stuff so definitely check that out mailchimp.com send better emails sell more stuff all right so let's get on to uh another company that's that's going back to The Well of uh of AI here in their chat box and that's Microsoft now I don't know if everybody remembers Microsoft's attempt a couple of months ago maybe it was more than a couple of months ago with their Tay chat bot on Twitter where they put this thing up they tried twice and users turned it into a racist Nazi within about I don't know a couple of hours just by bombarding with things and so it would learn from what people were bombarding it with and then repeat those things back and it started spouting off horrible things you can look that up now they are attempting another chat bot and this one they're launching on Kik of all things the Kik App and it's called Zoe and they're saying it's going to be a better version they're saying it's going to be they've got uh some kind of safety mechanisms in there to keep it from turning into what it did before I don't know if that's really possible though if it's learning from people once you put something out there like that use it's the internet people are going to do something terrible or going to bombard it I mean it's just a fact keep him away from it negativity over here yeah and depressed chatbots yeah that thing would turn into like Marvin from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy just perpetually sad and Moby no listen I'm not that much of a downer all right I'm not I'm not I just call it how I see it I mean I think the idea is good because AI does need to learn you know it needs to learn from actual interaction and not sound so robotic and this is definitely I think how you have to improve it I don't know what it is that Microsoft has had a problem with that other one um you know it's it's an interesting thing to launch on Kik though of all do people even use that that's the same thing I was thinking like I don't know anybody that uses kicks and teenagers app yeah you know and maybe that's specifically what they're trying to Target it was a teenager's app and now those teenagers are in their young 20s and they are not using that app that's what yeah all right well what what do you guys think about this you think it's a good idea to put like a chat bot out there like that or how are they going to teach the AI you know to properly interact with people without putting it out into into the I think they have to put it in the universe because like they're going to be safe if they do if they do internal testing you know otherwise which is what how they got taped I mean yeah exactly and I I do enjoy it somehow well that's true that's true does this does this spot have a name yet uh so so yeah z-o is the name of it and you can try it out right now with these names by the way by the way yeah so yeah I'm not sure I'm not sure why well these are the people that you don't want internally testing the chat bot you gotta throw it out there and and see the wolves um and see what happens I would love to see a group of just really positive like nurturing people attack it with the same ferocity that you know the trolls do and see if you could like counterbalance it like and test it out see what would happen you're the best thing ever right now yes I'm serious nice people yeah yeah what is the purpose of a chat bot anyways like why because it'll chat with you and it learns you know lingo and it's a replacement and ultimately it could replace humans for uh like customer service customer service and troubleshooting like instead of going through a long ass FAQ you could just ask it something and it could figure out what you actually mean maybe ask clarifying questions and ultimately get you to the answer that you need the thing about every time you call a credit card company and you're like it's like how can I help you and you're just like customer service customer service yeah customers zero zero zero zero actually was like hey how are you you know things we can talk about talk about yeah you guys ever use a use ink oh yeah with smarter child have you heard of that no no it's just like that it's where you can ask like smarter Channel anything you want and like it'll like respond back to you that was like back in the early 2000s what was I doing back I used that and then icq back then icq all right yeah I see he's still around yeah there it's a whole dark little dank corner of the web the icq users you still use it don't you right now thanks Mr negativity over here all right well there's some things going on with Microsoft Let's uh let's talk about um let's talk about the giveaway that we've got going and then I want to bring up the survival guide uh before we before we wrap things up so DT has a ton of giveaways that are happening on the website at any given time this one though is the best to me this is the best thing that that's happened so far and it is uh part of a giveaway to win a chance to use an actual jet pack an actual jet pack we've got a video of it if you're watching on YouTube you can see that otherwise you can go to digitaltrends.com if you're listening via podcast and and see it right there just go to digitaltrends.com giveaways um it's it's the real deal it's a JB 10 uh jet pack from jetpack Aviation and you would have a chance to put this on and use it I think that's the greatest thing ever I would wish I could rig the competition to win it myself but uh would you guys use it would you guys actually try it or I would try it you would try it yeah yeah I've talked to some people who are you would be terrified and would not want to yeah and that's why they're like nah I'm gonna drown because I'm just gonna crash it right into the water well they've been working on the jet pack since well at least the early 70s I remember from 70s TV shows like the Fall Guy right where they have a working jet pack and he goes he goes like what the heck is Lee Majors never heard of them anyway but no I mean the jet pack has been a dream of everybody's for for so stinking long now we finally actually have one that works yeah yeah I'd have to give that a shot yeah I mean jetpack hover cars are the next thing that I that I absolutely demand that Tech come up we're just in a Holodeck we're close to a Holodeck so I mean really everything I want is happening right now I just need a personal laser so where is I mean where is this contest are you in the contest you have to fly down to California yeah no it's in L.A I just guessed in California of course it's in California yeah I would have guessed San Francisco no it's La yeah so it's a pack you win a Southern Ohio yeah yeah they have to have it over water as what my guess is they probably don't want you flying over land there's probably a lot of things you have to sign before it could be one of those jet packs the water-based ones did you see that this one's not one of them no this is slowly autonomous yeah all you need is a propane tank on your back and you're good to go pretty much yeah you stop a bunch of strap a bunch of jet fuel and yeah and then go off go off over the water wow uh yeah it's pretty cool though so it's from a guy uh Chief pilot David mayman so there's a video of him and I think he talks you through how to use it if you were to win this but you can enter right now so digitaltrends.com giveaways that's just awesome I want one of those so bad um oh yeah and you also get a thousand dollars in travel vouchers so go there and enter and then uh give me the prize when you win yeah yeah there it is um all right and finally I do want to mention over anybody that way flying over okay you wanna trip over those people trying to stay warm holidays with Caleb no kidding I'm such a scrooge I'm sorry you don't have your your Red Vines in here you had chips though before you did you should be good to go okay all right we're gonna we'll get our licorice delivery to you all right well finally um we should talk about the holiday Survival Guide that's at digitaltrends.com uh featuring Naomi here in a whole bunch of the pictures which is awesome so it's uh it's kind of a guide maybe you can tell exactly what the guide is for like is it just for for the holiday I'll tell what the guide is for so it's uh essentially a guide to help you you know buying everything that you need for the holidays or if you want to buy gifts it it should be a gift guide but it's really a holiday Survival Guide is what it's being called and there's lots of different suggestions on here and the theme is great I mean it's really around family or friends and the pictures are I highly suggest if you've gone to dinners of course during Thanksgiving or Christmas you know how it is always grouped up with people that you may or may not like right yeah right and uh yeah and don't talk politics with those people so this is yeah I won't even talk about it I got a couple of cousins that anyway um so so yeah it's a really great guide so tons of different things on there different suggestions if you're looking for something to buy and you're not sure what to get like family there's a whole section on family dinner um and uh different things you can buy there I don't know it's just an awesome guide that's up there at digitaltrends.com so one of the many things that that we've got there that you can go and check out um all right I think that's about it for today any you know any uh final comments Caleb do you have any final thoughts I really really do wish everybody a uh happy to holiday season Merry Christmas have a good time I love you all I'm very positive and uh remember at the end of the Grinch that he turns positive oh this is it okay it's part of my process I just happened to do it with you guys during a podcast okay that's all right well I'm glad you worked it out you know I'm glad you used today to work through these feelings and these these issues and we're all here I always like it when people show vulnerability yeah think about it yeah exactly that's what we want to see growing I'm impressed I am all right thank you so much everybody for tuning in to do this podcast every week hey get there buddy find us on iTunes uh Stitch wherever you find audio podcasts we will be there and also we do the show Live on YouTube so you can always check it out right there and check out all the back episodes send us an email podcast digitaltrends.com a big thank you to MailChimp send better email sell more stuff and we will be back next week with another episode foreignforeign hello everyone tuning in this is Trends with Benefits this is our weekly podcast Where We Gather a round table of experts to talk about the tech topics of the day Today's Show is sponsored by MailChimp send a better email somewhere stuff so we got a bunch of things that we're going to get to today we're going to talk about a jet pack which is always awesome uh Microsoft's chat bot we've got some Samsung news and we're going to talk about the Amazon go store but first let's uh introduce everybody here that's on the show I'm Greg Nibbler and to my right now Evo hello Naomi Hi Ian Bell you're just staring at the camera dead pen no we have people walking by the window oh there were people walking by okay all right all right Brandon and Rick before that so okay all right so there was actually things going on fans are here gathering around and on the end down there last week I deserve a lot for what happened last week yeah yeah they I had to do some editing last year I didn't know I left it in there until midnight I don't know that's how you know that's fine all right let's talk about some some tech things here that are going on so the biggest news that I've seen that's been happening for quite a while right now is Amazon and their announcement that they have a beta store open in Seattle which is going to be essentially a convenience store or a grocery Market where you don't have anybody there as far as clerks you walk in you use the Amazon app to get in you go through like a little kiosk and you you walk in with that and then once you're in there you just take things off the shelves throw it into a bag and then walk right out and they have the ability to scan whatever you pick up and it'll just instantly charge your account so there's nobody there monitoring it it's just walk in walk out completely checkout list shopping which is which is an interesting concept I can see a lot of ways that that's going to go wrong it's freaking awesome are you kidding me coming from the guy who hates everything yeah this is the best freaking thing ever oh God yeah no I'm all about talking about how this Tech sucks right because yeah you know because there's there's supposed to be something cool about it but really it's stupid this is awesome this is great I love this because well listen how many times have you gone into a Plaid Pantry or 7-Eleven Circle K whatever right and you know there's just some skis yeah Circle K bro you remember that they're still around yeah there's lots of Arctic circles oh they're all on the they're on the coast in Seaside all these things they're just kind of grouped together no you go in and it's there's somebody skeezy there it's taking them like 18 hours to pick their lottery tickets and then they won no wait I want those people great the great Swisher Sweets instead of those Cherry swishers no the convenience store is supposed to be you go in you get your stuff you get it and you get out that's actually a marketing line for one of these companies but you never can you never can because people use them as a place to get warm when it's cold or whatever I mean it's just sorry let me step over you sir in the sleeping bag that's true look there's nothing convenient about convenience stores that's the bottom line and I think this is gonna like is this gonna put a little bit of the you know convenience back in okay so you are all for it all for getting rid of the clerks all together and just not dealing with anybody so you can walk in there grab your Red Vines you hate people yeah I don't hate all people I just hate the ones that get in my way well Ian what do you think about this you know I mean look anybody that knows me knows I'm all for like the balance between Tech and you know non-tech I hate Automation and sometimes I like it I I don't like it because I don't like to replace people symbols out yeah I don't do like the self-checkout at grocery stores intentionally for that so I will go through and make sure I use a person yeah who I'm like okay you're paid to be here I'm gonna use you and I want you to be replacing your job so that's you know I have my little principles I live by on that um I noticed that you like the hand pump coffee as opposed to the the new fingers where you push the buttons you know why because that's how I work out that's as much exercise as I get into it's a cool concept until people are like oh there's a Jam at the check-in to get my app up the app's not loading and there's always something that works or doesn't work with tech right I mean yeah I mean it's a cool concept it's neat it's fun I like the idea but but not practical to your point previous podcast like it almost never works the way it's supposed to right it's like that August Smart Lock have you guys heard of that huh I bought that for the house it's supposed to recognize when you walk up and unlocks the front door only if your garage door happens to be by the front door and you pull into the garage with your car what does it do it unlocks the front door and then you gotta go all the way in the house and then re-lock the front door so I mean there's always things that are going to go wrong to this stuff but that is an interesting problem right there but I think it's a cool concept I just don't like replacing people for the sake of placing people yeah Naomi what do you think I like when I go into a grocery store I'm there to buy you know whatever I need to get like right away and I'm trying to get out of there versus waiting in line and like people have to take out their cash and like you know or write in their checkbook like that she hates people too see that's so different convenience whenever I go into a store I just want to get a coupon you know don't get me wrong like eight pennies nobody likes hanging out in the grocery store I want out as well I mean I just want somebody to actually like put the items in the basket and if they can just scan my phone that's it that's good yeah yeah well I mean so the thing for me is I don't see how it's really going to work because it's going to be compromised I would think pretty easily as far as why wouldn't you just walk in there and just jump over the little kiosk on the way out and and take things I mean how are they going to stop that unless they have access to Florida check in and you probably have to have the app run into check out which you I mean somebody with a really dumb job and their job is to sit there and make sure that the light goes green or red right it's red Greg you can't like you can't leave you don't have the app turned on leave right or it's green come on in I mean that's somebody's job right and you think it'll be that simple and that they'll solve that problem don't you think that's probably going to be somebody's job or clean up on aisle two you know because you yeah you dropped the grape crush or whatever on your way somebody's got to be around I'm sure that it's not completely unmanned yeah but for me it's not about replacing people I mean I totally sympathize with what you're saying for me it's about putting the convenience back in the convenience store you get in you get your stuff and you get out like when I you mentioned self-checkout before I only use self-checkout if I have like six items and I'm slowing somebody else down in the main line who actually needs that person to check all their stuff and get it nicely bagged and loaded into the cart you know um sometimes I'm doing a huge trip I'm not going self-checkout with a gigantic card at groceries but if I'm carrying a basket and I just want to help keep those lines free for other people that's how I roll so it really it's because I love people that I do these things I think we just saw Indiana Jones walk by you know that it was catered as well everyone in the same really I think it's cool concept yeah absolutely I mean I think if it's successful you're probably going to see this take over in a lot of other places too I mean where if you can get rid of I mean I know like you said you want to keep people having jobs you know some that's somebody's job but if a corporation can figure out a way to skim that off and just automate everything I think this could be a sign of where things are going Amazon is so weird right now like yes they're big they have tons and tons of money right they're going into all these different places they're just like they're taking over commerce period yeah e-commerce it's just like Commerce cloud computing it was just amazing they're on planes now for delivery yeah yeah planes delivery system yeah they really are kind of taking over everything so this uh it it sounds like they're going to be opening up some more presuming that this is where are they now it's in Seattle but it's in Seattle yeah but it's just for employees I think just Amazon employees that can use it right now just let that drizzle down two and a half hours to the South to Portland and let us let us at it yeah it looked like the chicken salad sandwiches were pretty good yeah in the picture and that way you don't step over anybody when you go into the grocery store that's right I don't have to have the app to get in redeem your bottle tax somewhere else that's all I'm saying wow hot takes by Caleb in here is it the holiday season I'm kidding all right let's uh let's bounce out to something else here too this is um as always you know we always have phone ribbers and updates usually it's the iPhone that we're talking about it feels like every week there's some new iPhone 8 rumor that's that's circulating about what they're going to be doing um now though it has to do with Samsung and as they're getting ready to release the S8 I think next year is when it's going to come out and there's rumors that are happening about what they're going to be doing and one of the main ones is this that they too are going to get rid of the headphone jack and just go to the USB type c so not the Lightning Jack that's what Apple's doing but still another company getting rid of the Jack altogether presumably to make it Slimmer but it's it's a weird choice to me a because you know their last phone's all blew up so you'd think they'd want to just stick with something nice and nice and simple um but that was mean that was a mean comment it was mean oh it was it was but I mean it's true I mean there's it was the note nothing it was the note you're right okay maybe uh maybe that was too harsh that was too harsh but uh but I'm just talking like PR wise you would think you just wanted stick with something basic although maybe they're just trying to go completely the opposite end and do something completely fantastic but getting rid of the headphone jack with the backlash that happened last time and I know this is a controversial thing some people are for it some people are against it I would think it's a kind of a bold move it's a bold move I hate it I mean I have the iPhone 7 and I absolutely I like to listen to my headphones in charge at the same time when I'm driving home and I can't do that yeah and so pain in the butt I don't think the audio quality is any better quite frankly I know technically it might be but if you get the right headphones it can be but but then you're investing a lot in headphones too yeah and you're also making your phone unchargeable unless you have any number of different dongles that you and I mean the same thing is going to happen with Samsung first of all here's my commentary first off how weird for Samsung who's always talking about blazing the trail Apple's always just catching up to them you know to go and flip the script and suddenly drop the headphone jack like apple just did like yeah that splash of news that that crazy crazy move has it's already been done now it's just sort of like wow really Samsung that's your that's your way of going it's almost like giving credence to Apple to say hey yeah you did have a Forward Thinking idea and I guess we're going to hop on board with that too although I heard he's doing it now too yeah prior to Samsung I heard HTC it's HTC even a still a company like they are yeah I know they're making phones but they're not doing great anyway I'm not too worried about what HTC is doing oh evil Now LG if LG after making a phone centered around amazing audio an amazing video where suddenly to say yeah we're gonna kill it too I would yeah mind blown honestly which by the way they did in the G5 remember that they had the I don't remember who made the the DAC in that it was a big name was it Wilson or something like that yeah but they still use the regular a headphone jack in that and sound phenomenal yeah no LG has the best sounding phones out there right now if you want to listen to music and most people can hear the difference this isn't like you know audiophile crazy head stuff it just sounds really good and the recordings they make are good and um I don't get why no it's stupid quite frankly on the iPhone 7 the thing that makes me mad is uh I can't find a dongle that allows you to charge and plug your headphones in yeah and use the microphone so they do have a dongle where you can do both but not where you can take a phone call a microphone in line on that dongle yeah and if you're a business guy and you've been here you get off the plane you gotta jump in that conference call you know while you're trying to get to your hotel or whatever and you're thing is about to die and you can't Bluetooth headset it and yeah absolutely right yeah absolutely right it's just it does it's not practical it's not convenient I mean the iPhone 8 they were talking about how it might be wirelessly charging you know that so maybe that would solve a little bit of that problem but you still have to have something to wirelessly charge it too so that's carrying another device or that wireless charger base only needs to plug into something yeah you're on a plane it still has to be plugged in right to do that yeah so it's still still going to be inconvenient no matter what well I mean this is I mean it sounds like if you're saying HTC is doing it too and Samsung and the iPhone I mean it sounds like people are the companies are saying nope this is what's going to happen whether you like it or not and this is what we're going to you know the argument I heard is they're trying to do it so that they can get a Slimmer design on the phone yeah is that but that little bit of this yeah slim you know slimness is that really worth it well I think the the so and inside the headphone jack if you were to look inside that little hole is surrounded by a much larger Square okay much larger but it is a larger square is attached to a printed circuit board with solder her and and then it has to have little stabilization points because you've got things going in and out of all the time so yeah I mean it does add a little bit of thickness to the phone that's legit right um and you can't go too thin I mean there's a point of diminishing returns right I mean remember years ago they had the little tiny phones and you'd see people holding oh yeah it was like stupid like who would buy those right and of course that company went out of business so it's like I mean the human hand Can Only Hold certain you know size phones or whatever I mean how thin you want the phone to be right you want to cutting yourself right I'm gonna break it anyway regardless I'll drop it and break it so it's not gonna do me any good Naomi what do you think about this I do remove it I'm I mean I use a Bluetooth headset so I don't care but I just don't understand why cutting off that is a good idea like is it for profit I mean I get it to make it thinner but you know yeah is it that much money invested in the headphone jack where yeah maybe you have to buy you know a ton of dongles I mean yeah no joke I have headphones here at the office I have headphones in both my cars I have headphones at my home office headphones downstairs in the kitchen I'm always on headphones yeah but they'll all be useless and now I have to buy these yeah at nine bucks make the old headphones work and then I'm still having issues where they're not working 100 either so which is dumb well that's that seems to be where they're going some of the other things they were talking about that they might be having is the retina scanner which again it it seems like they're following some of what the iPhone is doing but uh I don't know we'll see what happens this is the new the new uh Galaxy that's uh supposed to be coming out next year so let's get on to some other topics before we do uh do you want to talk about our sponsor which is MailChimp send better email sell more stuff and a couple of things that they've got going right now you can uh sign up for forever free email lists so essentially what it is if you have a company here if you have a business or you know a band or whatever I was talking about this last week where you want to get a hold of people you can sign up for this service and you can send 12 000 emails a month to a list of up to 2 000 subscribers for completely free so absolutely no reason not to not to give that a shot and they also have something called e-commerce integration so it's one of the things that MailChimp has done to help you sell more stuff so if you have an online store and you wanna you wanna better monetize your customers as far as giving them suggestions on other products that they may be interested in and finding out what they're buying and what they're into you can use their services for that so it's their e-commerce integration for small businesses individuals whatever you want they'll give your customers product recommendations tons of stuff so definitely check that out mailchimp.com send better emails sell more stuff all right so let's get on to uh another company that's that's going back to The Well of uh of AI here in their chat box and that's Microsoft now I don't know if everybody remembers Microsoft's attempt a couple of months ago maybe it was more than a couple of months ago with their Tay chat bot on Twitter where they put this thing up they tried twice and users turned it into a racist Nazi within about I don't know a couple of hours just by bombarding with things and so it would learn from what people were bombarding it with and then repeat those things back and it started spouting off horrible things you can look that up now they are attempting another chat bot and this one they're launching on Kik of all things the Kik App and it's called Zoe and they're saying it's going to be a better version they're saying it's going to be they've got uh some kind of safety mechanisms in there to keep it from turning into what it did before I don't know if that's really possible though if it's learning from people once you put something out there like that use it's the internet people are going to do something terrible or going to bombard it I mean it's just a fact keep him away from it negativity over here yeah and depressed chatbots yeah that thing would turn into like Marvin from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy just perpetually sad and Moby no listen I'm not that much of a downer all right I'm not I'm not I just call it how I see it I mean I think the idea is good because AI does need to learn you know it needs to learn from actual interaction and not sound so robotic and this is definitely I think how you have to improve it I don't know what it is that Microsoft has had a problem with that other one um you know it's it's an interesting thing to launch on Kik though of all do people even use that that's the same thing I was thinking like I don't know anybody that uses kicks and teenagers app yeah you know and maybe that's specifically what they're trying to Target it was a teenager's app and now those teenagers are in their young 20s and they are not using that app that's what yeah all right well what what do you guys think about this you think it's a good idea to put like a chat bot out there like that or how are they going to teach the AI you know to properly interact with people without putting it out into into the I think they have to put it in the universe because like they're going to be safe if they do if they do internal testing you know otherwise which is what how they got taped I mean yeah exactly and I I do enjoy it somehow well that's true that's true does this does this spot have a name yet uh so so yeah z-o is the name of it and you can try it out right now with these names by the way by the way yeah so yeah I'm not sure I'm not sure why well these are the people that you don't want internally testing the chat bot you gotta throw it out there and and see the wolves um and see what happens I would love to see a group of just really positive like nurturing people attack it with the same ferocity that you know the trolls do and see if you could like counterbalance it like and test it out see what would happen you're the best thing ever right now yes I'm serious nice people yeah yeah what is the purpose of a chat bot anyways like why because it'll chat with you and it learns you know lingo and it's a replacement and ultimately it could replace humans for uh like customer service customer service and troubleshooting like instead of going through a long ass FAQ you could just ask it something and it could figure out what you actually mean maybe ask clarifying questions and ultimately get you to the answer that you need the thing about every time you call a credit card company and you're like it's like how can I help you and you're just like customer service customer service yeah customers zero zero zero zero actually was like hey how are you you know things we can talk about talk about yeah you guys ever use a use ink oh yeah with smarter child have you heard of that no no it's just like that it's where you can ask like smarter Channel anything you want and like it'll like respond back to you that was like back in the early 2000s what was I doing back I used that and then icq back then icq all right yeah I see he's still around yeah there it's a whole dark little dank corner of the web the icq users you still use it don't you right now thanks Mr negativity over here all right well there's some things going on with Microsoft Let's uh let's talk about um let's talk about the giveaway that we've got going and then I want to bring up the survival guide uh before we before we wrap things up so DT has a ton of giveaways that are happening on the website at any given time this one though is the best to me this is the best thing that that's happened so far and it is uh part of a giveaway to win a chance to use an actual jet pack an actual jet pack we've got a video of it if you're watching on YouTube you can see that otherwise you can go to digitaltrends.com if you're listening via podcast and and see it right there just go to digitaltrends.com giveaways um it's it's the real deal it's a JB 10 uh jet pack from jetpack Aviation and you would have a chance to put this on and use it I think that's the greatest thing ever I would wish I could rig the competition to win it myself but uh would you guys use it would you guys actually try it or I would try it you would try it yeah yeah I've talked to some people who are you would be terrified and would not want to yeah and that's why they're like nah I'm gonna drown because I'm just gonna crash it right into the water well they've been working on the jet pack since well at least the early 70s I remember from 70s TV shows like the Fall Guy right where they have a working jet pack and he goes he goes like what the heck is Lee Majors never heard of them anyway but no I mean the jet pack has been a dream of everybody's for for so stinking long now we finally actually have one that works yeah yeah I'd have to give that a shot yeah I mean jetpack hover cars are the next thing that I that I absolutely demand that Tech come up we're just in a Holodeck we're close to a Holodeck so I mean really everything I want is happening right now I just need a personal laser so where is I mean where is this contest are you in the contest you have to fly down to California yeah no it's in L.A I just guessed in California of course it's in California yeah I would have guessed San Francisco no it's La yeah so it's a pack you win a Southern Ohio yeah yeah they have to have it over water as what my guess is they probably don't want you flying over land there's probably a lot of things you have to sign before it could be one of those jet packs the water-based ones did you see that this one's not one of them no this is slowly autonomous yeah all you need is a propane tank on your back and you're good to go pretty much yeah you stop a bunch of strap a bunch of jet fuel and yeah and then go off go off over the water wow uh yeah it's pretty cool though so it's from a guy uh Chief pilot David mayman so there's a video of him and I think he talks you through how to use it if you were to win this but you can enter right now so digitaltrends.com giveaways that's just awesome I want one of those so bad um oh yeah and you also get a thousand dollars in travel vouchers so go there and enter and then uh give me the prize when you win yeah yeah there it is um all right and finally I do want to mention over anybody that way flying over okay you wanna trip over those people trying to stay warm holidays with Caleb no kidding I'm such a scrooge I'm sorry you don't have your your Red Vines in here you had chips though before you did you should be good to go okay all right we're gonna we'll get our licorice delivery to you all right well finally um we should talk about the holiday Survival Guide that's at digitaltrends.com uh featuring Naomi here in a whole bunch of the pictures which is awesome so it's uh it's kind of a guide maybe you can tell exactly what the guide is for like is it just for for the holiday I'll tell what the guide is for so it's uh essentially a guide to help you you know buying everything that you need for the holidays or if you want to buy gifts it it should be a gift guide but it's really a holiday Survival Guide is what it's being called and there's lots of different suggestions on here and the theme is great I mean it's really around family or friends and the pictures are I highly suggest if you've gone to dinners of course during Thanksgiving or Christmas you know how it is always grouped up with people that you may or may not like right yeah right and uh yeah and don't talk politics with those people so this is yeah I won't even talk about it I got a couple of cousins that anyway um so so yeah it's a really great guide so tons of different things on there different suggestions if you're looking for something to buy and you're not sure what to get like family there's a whole section on family dinner um and uh different things you can buy there I don't know it's just an awesome guide that's up there at digitaltrends.com so one of the many things that that we've got there that you can go and check out um all right I think that's about it for today any you know any uh final comments Caleb do you have any final thoughts I really really do wish everybody a uh happy to holiday season Merry Christmas have a good time I love you all I'm very positive and uh remember at the end of the Grinch that he turns positive oh this is it okay it's part of my process I just happened to do it with you guys during a podcast okay that's all right well I'm glad you worked it out you know I'm glad you used today to work through these feelings and these these issues and we're all here I always like it when people show vulnerability yeah think about it yeah exactly that's what we want to see growing I'm impressed I am all right thank you so much everybody for tuning in to do this podcast every week hey get there buddy find us on iTunes uh Stitch wherever you find audio podcasts we will be there and also we do the show Live on YouTube so you can always check it out right there and check out all the back episodes send us an email podcast digitaltrends.com a big thank you to MailChimp send better email sell more stuff and we will be back next week with another episode foreignforeign hello everyone tuning in this is Trends with Benefits this is our weekly podcast Where We Gather a round table of experts to talk about the tech topics of the day Today's Show is sponsored by MailChimp send a better email somewhere stuff so we got a bunch of things that we're going to get to today we're going to talk about a jet pack which is always awesome uh Microsoft's chat bot we've got some Samsung news and we're going to talk about the Amazon go store but first let's uh introduce everybody here that's on the show I'm Greg Nibbler and to my right now Evo hello Naomi Hi Ian Bell you're just staring at the camera dead pen no we have people walking by the window oh there were people walking by okay all right all right Brandon and Rick before that so okay all right so there was actually things going on fans are here gathering around and on the end down there last week I deserve a lot for what happened last week yeah yeah they I had to do some editing last year I didn't know I left it in there until midnight I don't know that's how you know that's fine all right let's talk about some some tech things here that are going on so the biggest news that I've seen that's been happening for quite a while right now is Amazon and their announcement that they have a beta store open in Seattle which is going to be essentially a convenience store or a grocery Market where you don't have anybody there as far as clerks you walk in you use the Amazon app to get in you go through like a little kiosk and you you walk in with that and then once you're in there you just take things off the shelves throw it into a bag and then walk right out and they have the ability to scan whatever you pick up and it'll just instantly charge your account so there's nobody there monitoring it it's just walk in walk out completely checkout list shopping which is which is an interesting concept I can see a lot of ways that that's going to go wrong it's freaking awesome are you kidding me coming from the guy who hates everything yeah this is the best freaking thing ever oh God yeah no I'm all about talking about how this Tech sucks right because yeah you know because there's there's supposed to be something cool about it but really it's stupid this is awesome this is great I love this because well listen how many times have you gone into a Plaid Pantry or 7-Eleven Circle K whatever right and you know there's just some skis yeah Circle K bro you remember that they're still around yeah there's lots of Arctic circles oh they're all on the they're on the coast in Seaside all these things they're just kind of grouped together no you go in and it's there's somebody skeezy there it's taking them like 18 hours to pick their lottery tickets and then they won no wait I want those people great the great Swisher Sweets instead of those Cherry swishers no the convenience store is supposed to be you go in you get your stuff you get it and you get out that's actually a marketing line for one of these companies but you never can you never can because people use them as a place to get warm when it's cold or whatever I mean it's just sorry let me step over you sir in the sleeping bag that's true look there's nothing convenient about convenience stores that's the bottom line and I think this is gonna like is this gonna put a little bit of the you know convenience back in okay so you are all for it all for getting rid of the clerks all together and just not dealing with anybody so you can walk in there grab your Red Vines you hate people yeah I don't hate all people I just hate the ones that get in my way well Ian what do you think about this you know I mean look anybody that knows me knows I'm all for like the balance between Tech and you know non-tech I hate Automation and sometimes I like it I I don't like it because I don't like to replace people symbols out yeah I don't do like the self-checkout at grocery stores intentionally for that so I will go through and make sure I use a person yeah who I'm like okay you're paid to be here I'm gonna use you and I want you to be replacing your job so that's you know I have my little principles I live by on that um I noticed that you like the hand pump coffee as opposed to the the new fingers where you push the buttons you know why because that's how I work out that's as much exercise as I get into it's a cool concept until people are like oh there's a Jam at the check-in to get my app up the app's not loading and there's always something that works or doesn't work with tech right I mean yeah I mean it's a cool concept it's neat it's fun I like the idea but but not practical to your point previous podcast like it almost never works the way it's supposed to right it's like that August Smart Lock have you guys heard of that huh I bought that for the house it's supposed to recognize when you walk up and unlocks the front door only if your garage door happens to be by the front door and you pull into the garage with your car what does it do it unlocks the front door and then you gotta go all the way in the house and then re-lock the front door so I mean there's always things that are going to go wrong to this stuff but that is an interesting problem right there but I think it's a cool concept I just don't like replacing people for the sake of placing people yeah Naomi what do you think I like when I go into a grocery store I'm there to buy you know whatever I need to get like right away and I'm trying to get out of there versus waiting in line and like people have to take out their cash and like you know or write in their checkbook like that she hates people too see that's so different convenience whenever I go into a store I just want to get a coupon you know don't get me wrong like eight pennies nobody likes hanging out in the grocery store I want out as well I mean I just want somebody to actually like put the items in the basket and if they can just scan my phone that's it that's good yeah yeah well I mean so the thing for me is I don't see how it's really going to work because it's going to be compromised I would think pretty easily as far as why wouldn't you just walk in there and just jump over the little kiosk on the way out and and take things I mean how are they going to stop that unless they have access to Florida check in and you probably have to have the app run into check out which you I mean somebody with a really dumb job and their job is to sit there and make sure that the light goes green or red right it's red Greg you can't like you can't leave you don't have the app turned on leave right or it's green come on in I mean that's somebody's job right and you think it'll be that simple and that they'll solve that problem don't you think that's probably going to be somebody's job or clean up on aisle two you know because you yeah you dropped the grape crush or whatever on your way somebody's got to be around I'm sure that it's not completely unmanned yeah but for me it's not about replacing people I mean I totally sympathize with what you're saying for me it's about putting the convenience back in the convenience store you get in you get your stuff and you get out like when I you mentioned self-checkout before I only use self-checkout if I have like six items and I'm slowing somebody else down in the main line who actually needs that person to check all their stuff and get it nicely bagged and loaded into the cart you know um sometimes I'm doing a huge trip I'm not going self-checkout with a gigantic card at groceries but if I'm carrying a basket and I just want to help keep those lines free for other people that's how I roll so it really it's because I love people that I do these things I think we just saw Indiana Jones walk by you know that it was catered as well everyone in the same really I think it's cool concept yeah absolutely I mean I think if it's successful you're probably going to see this take over in a lot of other places too I mean where if you can get rid of I mean I know like you said you want to keep people having jobs you know some that's somebody's job but if a corporation can figure out a way to skim that off and just automate everything I think this could be a sign of where things are going Amazon is so weird right now like yes they're big they have tons and tons of money right they're going into all these different places they're just like they're taking over commerce period yeah e-commerce it's just like Commerce cloud computing it was just amazing they're on planes now for delivery yeah yeah planes delivery system yeah they really are kind of taking over everything so this uh it it sounds like they're going to be opening up some more presuming that this is where are they now it's in Seattle but it's in Seattle yeah but it's just for employees I think just Amazon employees that can use it right now just let that drizzle down two and a half hours to the South to Portland and let us let us at it yeah it looked like the chicken salad sandwiches were pretty good yeah in the picture and that way you don't step over anybody when you go into the grocery store that's right I don't have to have the app to get in redeem your bottle tax somewhere else that's all I'm saying wow hot takes by Caleb in here is it the holiday season I'm kidding all right let's uh let's bounce out to something else here too this is um as always you know we always have phone ribbers and updates usually it's the iPhone that we're talking about it feels like every week there's some new iPhone 8 rumor that's that's circulating about what they're going to be doing um now though it has to do with Samsung and as they're getting ready to release the S8 I think next year is when it's going to come out and there's rumors that are happening about what they're going to be doing and one of the main ones is this that they too are going to get rid of the headphone jack and just go to the USB type c so not the Lightning Jack that's what Apple's doing but still another company getting rid of the Jack altogether presumably to make it Slimmer but it's it's a weird choice to me a because you know their last phone's all blew up so you'd think they'd want to just stick with something nice and nice and simple um but that was mean that was a mean comment it was mean oh it was it was but I mean it's true I mean there's it was the note nothing it was the note you're right okay maybe uh maybe that was too harsh that was too harsh but uh but I'm just talking like PR wise you would think you just wanted stick with something basic although maybe they're just trying to go completely the opposite end and do something completely fantastic but getting rid of the headphone jack with the backlash that happened last time and I know this is a controversial thing some people are for it some people are against it I would think it's a kind of a bold move it's a bold move I hate it I mean I have the iPhone 7 and I absolutely I like to listen to my headphones in charge at the same time when I'm driving home and I can't do that yeah and so pain in the butt I don't think the audio quality is any better quite frankly I know technically it might be but if you get the right headphones it can be but but then you're investing a lot in headphones too yeah and you're also making your phone unchargeable unless you have any number of different dongles that you and I mean the same thing is going to happen with Samsung first of all here's my commentary first off how weird for Samsung who's always talking about blazing the trail Apple's always just catching up to them you know to go and flip the script and suddenly drop the headphone jack like apple just did like yeah that splash of news that that crazy crazy move has it's already been done now it's just sort of like wow really Samsung that's your that's your way of going it's almost like giving credence to Apple to say hey yeah you did have a Forward Thinking idea and I guess we're going to hop on board with that too although I heard he's doing it now too yeah prior to Samsung I heard HTC it's HTC even a still a company like they are yeah I know they're making phones but they're not doing great anyway I'm not too worried about what HTC is doing oh evil Now LG if LG after making a phone centered around amazing audio an amazing video where suddenly to say yeah we're gonna kill it too I would yeah mind blown honestly which by the way they did in the G5 remember that they had the I don't remember who made the the DAC in that it was a big name was it Wilson or something like that yeah but they still use the regular a headphone jack in that and sound phenomenal yeah no LG has the best sounding phones out there right now if you want to listen to music and most people can hear the difference this isn't like you know audiophile crazy head stuff it just sounds really good and the recordings they make are good and um I don't get why no it's stupid quite frankly on the iPhone 7 the thing that makes me mad is uh I can't find a dongle that allows you to charge and plug your headphones in yeah and use the microphone so they do have a dongle where you can do both but not where you can take a phone call a microphone in line on that dongle yeah and if you're a business guy and you've been here you get off the plane you gotta jump in that conference call you know while you're trying to get to your hotel or whatever and you're thing is about to die and you can't Bluetooth headset it and yeah absolutely right yeah absolutely right it's just it does it's not practical it's not convenient I mean the iPhone 8 they were talking about how it might be wirelessly charging you know that so maybe that would solve a little bit of that problem but you still have to have something to wirelessly charge it too so that's carrying another device or that wireless charger base only needs to plug into something yeah you're on a plane it still has to be plugged in right to do that yeah so it's still still going to be inconvenient no matter what well I mean this is I mean it sounds like if you're saying HTC is doing it too and Samsung and the iPhone I mean it sounds like people are the companies are saying nope this is what's going to happen whether you like it or not and this is what we're going to you know the argument I heard is they're trying to do it so that they can get a Slimmer design on the phone yeah is that but that little bit of this yeah slim you know slimness is that really worth it well I think the the so and inside the headphone jack if you were to look inside that little hole is surrounded by a much larger Square okay much larger but it is a larger square is attached to a printed circuit board with solder her and and then it has to have little stabilization points because you've got things going in and out of all the time so yeah I mean it does add a little bit of thickness to the phone that's legit right um and you can't go too thin I mean there's a point of diminishing returns right I mean remember years ago they had the little tiny phones and you'd see people holding oh yeah it was like stupid like who would buy those right and of course that company went out of business so it's like I mean the human hand Can Only Hold certain you know size phones or whatever I mean how thin you want the phone to be right you want to cutting yourself right I'm gonna break it anyway regardless I'll drop it and break it so it's not gonna do me any good Naomi what do you think about this I do remove it I'm I mean I use a Bluetooth headset so I don't care but I just don't understand why cutting off that is a good idea like is it for profit I mean I get it to make it thinner but you know yeah is it that much money invested in the headphone jack where yeah maybe you have to buy you know a ton of dongles I mean yeah no joke I have headphones here at the office I have headphones in both my cars I have headphones at my home office headphones downstairs in the kitchen I'm always on headphones yeah but they'll all be useless and now I have to buy these yeah at nine bucks make the old headphones work and then I'm still having issues where they're not working 100 either so which is dumb well that's that seems to be where they're going some of the other things they were talking about that they might be having is the retina scanner which again it it seems like they're following some of what the iPhone is doing but uh I don't know we'll see what happens this is the new the new uh Galaxy that's uh supposed to be coming out next year so let's get on to some other topics before we do uh do you want to talk about our sponsor which is MailChimp send better email sell more stuff and a couple of things that they've got going right now you can uh sign up for forever free email lists so essentially what it is if you have a company here if you have a business or you know a band or whatever I was talking about this last week where you want to get a hold of people you can sign up for this service and you can send 12 000 emails a month to a list of up to 2 000 subscribers for completely free so absolutely no reason not to not to give that a shot and they also have something called e-commerce integration so it's one of the things that MailChimp has done to help you sell more stuff so if you have an online store and you wanna you wanna better monetize your customers as far as giving them suggestions on other products that they may be interested in and finding out what they're buying and what they're into you can use their services for that so it's their e-commerce integration for small businesses individuals whatever you want they'll give your customers product recommendations tons of stuff so definitely check that out mailchimp.com send better emails sell more stuff all right so let's get on to uh another company that's that's going back to The Well of uh of AI here in their chat box and that's Microsoft now I don't know if everybody remembers Microsoft's attempt a couple of months ago maybe it was more than a couple of months ago with their Tay chat bot on Twitter where they put this thing up they tried twice and users turned it into a racist Nazi within about I don't know a couple of hours just by bombarding with things and so it would learn from what people were bombarding it with and then repeat those things back and it started spouting off horrible things you can look that up now they are attempting another chat bot and this one they're launching on Kik of all things the Kik App and it's called Zoe and they're saying it's going to be a better version they're saying it's going to be they've got uh some kind of safety mechanisms in there to keep it from turning into what it did before I don't know if that's really possible though if it's learning from people once you put something out there like that use it's the internet people are going to do something terrible or going to bombard it I mean it's just a fact keep him away from it negativity over here yeah and depressed chatbots yeah that thing would turn into like Marvin from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy just perpetually sad and Moby no listen I'm not that much of a downer all right I'm not I'm not I just call it how I see it I mean I think the idea is good because AI does need to learn you know it needs to learn from actual interaction and not sound so robotic and this is definitely I think how you have to improve it I don't know what it is that Microsoft has had a problem with that other one um you know it's it's an interesting thing to launch on Kik though of all do people even use that that's the same thing I was thinking like I don't know anybody that uses kicks and teenagers app yeah you know and maybe that's specifically what they're trying to Target it was a teenager's app and now those teenagers are in their young 20s and they are not using that app that's what yeah all right well what what do you guys think about this you think it's a good idea to put like a chat bot out there like that or how are they going to teach the AI you know to properly interact with people without putting it out into into the I think they have to put it in the universe because like they're going to be safe if they do if they do internal testing you know otherwise which is what how they got taped I mean yeah exactly and I I do enjoy it somehow well that's true that's true does this does this spot have a name yet uh so so yeah z-o is the name of it and you can try it out right now with these names by the way by the way yeah so yeah I'm not sure I'm not sure why well these are the people that you don't want internally testing the chat bot you gotta throw it out there and and see the wolves um and see what happens I would love to see a group of just really positive like nurturing people attack it with the same ferocity that you know the trolls do and see if you could like counterbalance it like and test it out see what would happen you're the best thing ever right now yes I'm serious nice people yeah yeah what is the purpose of a chat bot anyways like why because it'll chat with you and it learns you know lingo and it's a replacement and ultimately it could replace humans for uh like customer service customer service and troubleshooting like instead of going through a long ass FAQ you could just ask it something and it could figure out what you actually mean maybe ask clarifying questions and ultimately get you to the answer that you need the thing about every time you call a credit card company and you're like it's like how can I help you and you're just like customer service customer service yeah customers zero zero zero zero actually was like hey how are you you know things we can talk about talk about yeah you guys ever use a use ink oh yeah with smarter child have you heard of that no no it's just like that it's where you can ask like smarter Channel anything you want and like it'll like respond back to you that was like back in the early 2000s what was I doing back I used that and then icq back then icq all right yeah I see he's still around yeah there it's a whole dark little dank corner of the web the icq users you still use it don't you right now thanks Mr negativity over here all right well there's some things going on with Microsoft Let's uh let's talk about um let's talk about the giveaway that we've got going and then I want to bring up the survival guide uh before we before we wrap things up so DT has a ton of giveaways that are happening on the website at any given time this one though is the best to me this is the best thing that that's happened so far and it is uh part of a giveaway to win a chance to use an actual jet pack an actual jet pack we've got a video of it if you're watching on YouTube you can see that otherwise you can go to digitaltrends.com if you're listening via podcast and and see it right there just go to digitaltrends.com giveaways um it's it's the real deal it's a JB 10 uh jet pack from jetpack Aviation and you would have a chance to put this on and use it I think that's the greatest thing ever I would wish I could rig the competition to win it myself but uh would you guys use it would you guys actually try it or I would try it you would try it yeah yeah I've talked to some people who are you would be terrified and would not want to yeah and that's why they're like nah I'm gonna drown because I'm just gonna crash it right into the water well they've been working on the jet pack since well at least the early 70s I remember from 70s TV shows like the Fall Guy right where they have a working jet pack and he goes he goes like what the heck is Lee Majors never heard of them anyway but no I mean the jet pack has been a dream of everybody's for for so stinking long now we finally actually have one that works yeah yeah I'd have to give that a shot yeah I mean jetpack hover cars are the next thing that I that I absolutely demand that Tech come up we're just in a Holodeck we're close to a Holodeck so I mean really everything I want is happening right now I just need a personal laser so where is I mean where is this contest are you in the contest you have to fly down to California yeah no it's in L.A I just guessed in California of course it's in California yeah I would have guessed San Francisco no it's La yeah so it's a pack you win a Southern Ohio yeah yeah they have to have it over water as what my guess is they probably don't want you flying over land there's probably a lot of things you have to sign before it could be one of those jet packs the water-based ones did you see that this one's not one of them no this is slowly autonomous yeah all you need is a propane tank on your back and you're good to go pretty much yeah you stop a bunch of strap a bunch of jet fuel and yeah and then go off go off over the water wow uh yeah it's pretty cool though so it's from a guy uh Chief pilot David mayman so there's a video of him and I think he talks you through how to use it if you were to win this but you can enter right now so digitaltrends.com giveaways that's just awesome I want one of those so bad um oh yeah and you also get a thousand dollars in travel vouchers so go there and enter and then uh give me the prize when you win yeah yeah there it is um all right and finally I do want to mention over anybody that way flying over okay you wanna trip over those people trying to stay warm holidays with Caleb no kidding I'm such a scrooge I'm sorry you don't have your your Red Vines in here you had chips though before you did you should be good to go okay all right we're gonna we'll get our licorice delivery to you all right well finally um we should talk about the holiday Survival Guide that's at digitaltrends.com uh featuring Naomi here in a whole bunch of the pictures which is awesome so it's uh it's kind of a guide maybe you can tell exactly what the guide is for like is it just for for the holiday I'll tell what the guide is for so it's uh essentially a guide to help you you know buying everything that you need for the holidays or if you want to buy gifts it it should be a gift guide but it's really a holiday Survival Guide is what it's being called and there's lots of different suggestions on here and the theme is great I mean it's really around family or friends and the pictures are I highly suggest if you've gone to dinners of course during Thanksgiving or Christmas you know how it is always grouped up with people that you may or may not like right yeah right and uh yeah and don't talk politics with those people so this is yeah I won't even talk about it I got a couple of cousins that anyway um so so yeah it's a really great guide so tons of different things on there different suggestions if you're looking for something to buy and you're not sure what to get like family there's a whole section on family dinner um and uh different things you can buy there I don't know it's just an awesome guide that's up there at digitaltrends.com so one of the many things that that we've got there that you can go and check out um all right I think that's about it for today any you know any uh final comments Caleb do you have any final thoughts I really really do wish everybody a uh happy to holiday season Merry Christmas have a good time I love you all I'm very positive and uh remember at the end of the Grinch that he turns positive oh this is it okay it's part of my process I just happened to do it with you guys during a podcast okay that's all right well I'm glad you worked it out you know I'm glad you used today to work through these feelings and these these issues and we're all here I always like it when people show vulnerability yeah think about it yeah exactly that's what we want to see growing I'm impressed I am all right thank you so much everybody for tuning in to do this podcast every week hey get there buddy find us on iTunes uh Stitch wherever you find audio podcasts we will be there and also we do the show Live on YouTube so you can always check it out right there and check out all the back episodes send us an email podcast digitaltrends.com a big thank you to MailChimp send better email sell more stuff and we will be back next week with another episode foreign\n"