Mobile Phone Plans, Privacy Concerns, and Emerging Tech

You are tuned in to Steve Megatron on Altered

Geek Hello and welcome to Altered Geek I'm your

host Steve Megatron Phillips and in this episode

of the podcast I'll be talking about Technology

I've been kind of dying to talk technology for

a little bit and I Thought that this would be

kind of the perfect chance to do so Then he also

prefaces with this is recorded on my birthday

and released the day after So Had a great birthday.

I had a great weekend for Father's Day and Spent

the time with my wife and kids had to replace

a back patio door not very fun, but It needed

to be done Wood was rotted out the door was slamming

every time it closed because it was all bent

and broke and it was the original From whoever

lived at my house before me. I Had to read I

had to learn how to do this on my own was not

very fun But I feel accomplished having figured

out how to do this And to Do all the work myself

so it was it was a difficult process to to figure

out how to not that they don't now, but they

had a specific plan that allowed you to get two

phones and it was $20 a phone. It was not the

unlimited freedom. Each one of the services like

Sprint has unlimited freedom, Verizon is beyond

unlimited, AT &T has unlimited plus enhanced

plan, T -Mobile has one plus, they're all...

more than I want to spend. Sprint, surprisingly

enough, is the cheapest one now at this point.

And they have, like you can get two lines for

$100 plus tax and phone costs. But they had this

kickstart plan that was new. And it was a $20

a line intro. To their data their unlimited data

and what they did is they didn't give you high

def They gave you No shared data no no high def

It was unlimited everything however what it was

was very like You know 480p For for the the standards

and they they would limit some of your internet

speeds But you still got 4g and you still connected

to Wi -Fi and you could still do all that So

it was fine for me, if I was able to get it.

The unfortunate part is the phones that they

carry, I did not want. I was wanting the Google,

can't think of the name of it now. They had this,

the Google XL or Pixel 2 XL. That's what it was.

I wanted to get that However, they didn't carry

it Verizon's the only publisher that carries

it or a service provider that carries it and

I did not want any of the phones that sprint

had because Any of them that I would want which

would have been the galaxy s9 was too much so

and I'm not an Apple fan, so I don't gravitate

towards the iPhones and a lot of their other

phones were basically the same setup as my Galaxy

S5, which is four versions out of date. It's

old, it's got its own problems. I mean, it still

works, but there's a lot of issues with it. And

see, a lot of these services like Sprint has

Hulu. is an included benefit with their full

unlimited plan. Verizon has Go90, HBO is on AT

&T, which funny enough, they own it now. T -Mobile

has Netflix. And see, I don't care to have any

of those streaming services on my plan. Because

essentially, you're still paying for this stuff.

They just say, oh, it comes with it to make it

look interesting, but you're still paying the

bill. I guarantee it, no company's gonna swallow

that up. So they had a pretty good deal going.

I talked to somebody, they said more or less,

buy a phone, buy the cheap $145 phones, which

were actually worse than my S5, and then sell

them afterwards, which everybody knows, once

you buy something, it's not worth what you paid

for it. So I thought it was kind of a... Cheap

offer like I was gonna sign up for their plan

and go with it And then buy the phone I wanted

on Amazon Because not only did it have a better

battery than my s5, but the the processor the

memory the amount of storage the camera in a

lot of other things that I've been looking at

were Going to be what I was I was needing out

of my next phone and the operating system would

be updated more frequently because it's a Google

produced phone instead of like a Samsung where

they kind of decide a year down the road it's

time to upgrade to one of the little segmented

point numbers of the smartphone because my S5

they've got 6 .1 or something on it and it took

them until everybody was on Get on the Android

version 7 before they did that. I know they've

got food names for all of them I don't know what

they are So anyways yeah, it was it was a little

Frustrating to say the least is as far as they

They were concerned with with with this whole

phone process so I just I opted not to do it

because I wanted to ensure it was getting this

plan and I didn't want to have to Deal with the

phone issue So yeah, I was a little bummed but

at some point there'll be a special like that

again in the future and I'll sign up then If

not, I'll just stick with my AT &T that gradually

is going up little by little and buy some unlocked

phones Because the benefit of the Google Pixel

2 XL is that I can use it on any of the services

because it's CDMA and GSM compatible, so I can

also put the SIM card in it. So I'm a little

excited if I ever do get it. I still hate the

aspect of paying almost $1 ,200 for two cell

phones, or $1 ,400 for two cell phones. Either

way, because to me that's like I could replace

my air conditioning with it, which I will say

it's been very atrocious the last three days.

As far as heat is concerned, not even my basement,

which is normally an ice cube, is a safety net

for the heat. However, now it's back into the

70s and so we won't need the air conditioner

again the rest of the summer. More than likely.

If we do, it'll be in August. It's just that

the weird way Michigan works. So, I... I have

this huge problem with spending that amount of

money. I like my computer is all cobbled together

old stuff Like I don't even I have an i3 Pentium

like I don't have Like the the i7 or the i9.

I don't have an up -to -date motherboard. I don't

have more than 12 gigs of RAM Because ideally

I'd love to have like 32 gigs. I'd love to have

multiple hard drives I've got a DVD burner a

CD burner DVD burner, combo, whatever. So again,

it's a lot of money to throw away on a phone.

And some of them are even going back to the leasing

thing now to where you don't actually buy the

phone, but you pay the payment on it. And then

they're like, hey, at the end of the lease, either

pony up and get a new phone on a lease, buy the

phone, or give us the phone back, which I think

is kind of crap. So like I said, it's... It's

something that kind of bothers me with some of

their phone plans. I wish that I could get that.

I know you can get the two gigabyte plan, which

is like 40 bucks a month and two gig of high

speed data, but you have unlimited talk and text

and everything else costs you money. It would

have been nice to get in on that other unlimited

plan, but it didn't happen. That was a little

bit there. The other thing I thought was kind

of interesting is is Facebook Messenger is going

to now include auto playing ads with private

conversations Yay more intrusion Why do people

trust like I don't I don't put anything in Facebook

or any of these other services that I don't want

shared because Somebody sees everything everywhere.

It doesn't matter. There is no privacy. There's

no such thing anymore It doesn't exist, and that's

kind of unfortunate. I'm a little leery of technology,

and this is coming from somebody who grew up

with it. I grew up with a 486. I grew up with

a pre -Penium computer. You know, back in the

day when you had to daisy chain hard drives together

to get over a gig, and you had 16 megabytes of

memory, and you had... a 2x CD -ROM and the five

and a quarter floppy and the three and a quarter

floppy, I don't know. I'm from that old school

era where I just don't trust any of this modern

stuff, especially when we're getting into the

AI and the recording and the fact that they input

things into your messages. So anyways, Facebook

is going to start having this new way to force

ads on you. I am one of those people that I will

not use Facebook, the app, or any of their other

apps except for Messenger on my phone because

one, they run consistently and it's difficult

to shut off all the stuff including the notifications

because to me it's like a red flag automatically

when the number pops up it drives me crazy and

I can't stand it. So I automatically disable

everything right from the get -go, but I have

my browser logged in to Facebook as a bookmark,

and so I have to physically toggle Facebook on

my phone to get onto Facebook, and despite the

fact it can read whether the screen size, whether

it's mobile or not, doesn't bother me. If there

comes a point where I can't access Facebook without

the app on my phone, I just won't use it. I'll

delete my Facebook, there won't be a point in

it. Because honestly the only thing I use it

for right now is family I use it to keep in the

know of people on Facebook, and I keep it mostly

for the Like geek cast radio fan page and the

alter geek fan page and various other fan page

things that I run For for podcasts and organizations,

but I don't use Facebook like everybody else.

I don't sit there and live on it. And so to me,

I have no problem cutting out Facebook. Twitter,

on the other hand, that's where I have a difficult

part to separate myself from. I have nothing

really drawing me to Instagram. I have nothing

drawing me. Google Plus is a complete bomb. have

no idea what any of the other ones are I don't

want to use them I use Facebook I use Google

and I use Instagram and I use Twitter and Twitter

is my primary and so I already know Twitter has

ads like to put them in your messages though

I think it's kind of a dicey kind of a crappy

way of doing it but I know that they're there's

kind of having traditional ads showing up in

the private messages and You know, now they're

saying that they're gonna have autoplay videos

start rolling out on Messenger starting this

week, which I think is kind of crap. And so basically

the company is going to monitor user behavior

to determine if these ads turn people off. And

they say that like Stefanos Lukajkos says, top

priority for us is user experience. He said from

a beachside cabana at the... Advertising festivals,

so we don't know yet if these will work however

signs until now When we tested basic as didn't

show any change with how people use the platform

or how many messages they send because people

are addicted people are addicted and It's kind

of disgusting I'm having this problem myself

like separating life from from digital content

and I kind of find it almost appalling that we

are so attached to these devices. And it's not

just people that grew up with it, it's people

even now. It's so intertwined in our culture,

it's difficult to separate because we need a

lot of it or think we need it. And I joke...

even recently about going back to a dumb phone

and just using my old phone as a tablet and While

that would serve my purpose and be fine I Use

like the maps For when I go go places or I use

like the email if I or work from my phone sometimes

so like it's it's convenient Very convenient.

I don't have to hulk around some big device,

but at the same time do I really need it? and

so like that's that's kind of how i'm thinking

now with with facebook uh because they're saying

that they're uh there's you know they're planning

on putting these ads in and i just see it as

another intrusive way and another way just to

get crap to to run funky on your your device

i mean we get enough stuff spying on us with

everything we download um and i have yet to see

the ads actually physically pop up in but that

doesn't mean that it won't. It could be just

because mine has not updated. I'm a little on

edge with anything Facebook does in terms of

their advertising. The other thing that's kind

of getting creepy is Amazon is launching an Alexa

system for hotels. Anybody that has an Alexa

right now, it's going to, you know, Alexa, Google

Altered Geek or Alexa, look for Altered Geek.

So the echo is coming to the hotel room. Amazon

announced that a new program called Alexa for

Hospitality is designing to bring its voice assistant

technology to everything from hotel chains to

restaurants and vacation rentals. The system

can be customized, include key guest information.

Checkout time or pool hours allows guests to

request services like housekeeping or room service

and can be configured to Control smart hotel

room functions like adjusting the thermostat.

Okay, so some of these I kind of understand like

You can request a phone call you can request

entertainment trends, you know maintenance room

service Weather requested items from the front

desk cleaning Okay, I can see some of this stuff,

like, you know, raising the blinds or the thermostat,

like, you don't want to get up and you just want

to change the thermostat when you're in bed,

you know. Like, for instance, it gets too cold

or it gets too hot. Like, there's points in the

night when you're in a hotel because there's

really no good control for any of it. It kind

of makes sense to do that or to get, like, hours

for things or get information from the hotel.

Because sometimes it's annoying to try and get

somebody from the front desk, but you can also

do like simple guest interactions like you know

When's the wait room open or when's the when's

the pool open? You know set an alarm to wake

me up at such -and -such a time or book an appointment

for this So I mean I get it it makes sense for

some of that stuff I just don't trust it because

of the other fact that these devices have been

known to record people and Send the messages.

So there's this whole privacy thing surrounding

these devices And so I don't know if I would

be comfortable with one of these in my hotel

room. I Don't know how you guys feel about it

But I find it kind of creepy and especially with

the recent news that it recorded some couples

Conversation and sent it to somebody else on

their contact list It just doesn't mesh with

me Having this technology Around like that. That's

another reason why I won't have in my house.

I just don't trust it and so to me that's That's

like the ultimate reason not to have something

in in my vicinity so moving on to a little bit

different territory than AI and craziness Does

anybody that listens to this podcast does anybody

use Google podcasts? Or like Google Play music

to play podcasts like what wondered the the platforms

that you guys use like I I have the show on on

multiple places like pod being it's on iTunes

stitcher Google Play Tune in I heart radio Working

on getting it on Spotify their process is really

insane It's on Spreaker, it's on a variety of

other places. What is your guys' platform of

choice when you're listening to the podcast?

I don't use iTunes unless I absolutely have to.

I hate iTunes. I do not like it. annoying. I

understand that the majority of the devices that

play podcasts or the majority of the people that

listen to them use Apple devices of some kind

or Apple podcasts or iTunes or whatever, but

I don't even use Stitcher because I find that

it eats a lot more bandwidth when you're using

Stitcher as opposed to using something like Google

or using speaker or using iHeartRadio. So I tend

to gravitate towards those. Now if I want to

download it, I usually download them directly

from the publisher on their website because I

find it more controllable when I want to put

it on something or download it to a device and

dump it in a folder and then just play everything

in that folder. And so then I just purge items

as I listen to them. Because I've recently gotten

back into listening to podcasts because I feel

like I'm getting rusty on Formats and structures

of the podcast and so like I'm trying to get

more Communicative when I'm recording and less

like and Here's the news and don't care what

anybody says like it's just I don't know I I'm

trying to get more in tune with that and so That's

just something that's been kind of eating at

me for a while. So anyways, Google is planning

on this new podcast strategy, which they're hoping

will double audiences worldwide, basically to

reimagine how people find and listen to shows.

Basically, they want to help in the doubling

of these podcasts listening over the next couple

years. They want podcasts to show up in Google

search as a first -class citizen alongside text

image and video results that we usually see because

at the moment podcasts don't So they also want

podcast listening experiences that will be seamless

across devices and contacts Thanks to their Google

assistant and then Google speech and language

understanding will open doors basically to future

feet features so You could have the possibility

of pressing it, say Google Play or Google Podcasts

Play Alter Geek or something to that effect.

It's kind of how they're doing some of it. But

I guess some of the strategy behind it is that

podcasts is already available through Google

search on Android. And a huge number of Android

users are ready to be introduced to their first

podcast because podcasting is booming. It's been

booming, but it's really starting to boom because

everybody's starting to get into it. It's this

new advertising venture that if you can build

trust and you can build a different way of going

about it, you can gather people into their shows

and just kind of it brings more value when you

have somebody else promoting your product. And

so that's why a lot of people are going to go

to that. and then have advertisements for services

they enjoy or use. So yeah, that's kind of why

podcasting is booming, but I'm kind of hoping

to see what they do with their ecosystem, for

their podcast creators, for the content, for

the audience, for the business model of it. Because

currently, Google Play Podcasts sucks. You can

add your podcasts? It goes through an authentication

thing. You can remove them, but they never actually

fully removed from your account. You still have

ghost entries. You can't update your RSS feed.

It's mind -boggling difficult. You cannot get

a hold of an email for anybody or a phone number

at Google. You have to submit a form, which I

saved my email that I got when I did that for

one of the shows. I was like, look, I've got...

I've got like 33 shows I have to edit. I don't

want to fill out this form 33 times for multiple

shows. Can I send you this document? Like I said,

it's terrible. It doesn't give you any stats

on the opening of it, whereas Apple does or some

of these other services. The way that it pulls

it in like it pulls it in and almost imports

it in a sense like it's not Very intuitive or

friendly for a podcaster to gather their information

from it Or to get totals. It's it's just there's

not much information there So it's it's almost

as pointless as using like feed burner in today's

age feed burner is another one of those sites

that that is just Really not the way to go Blueberry

actually, B -L -U -B -R -R -Y, actually has a

podcast mirroring feed. So you can change your

RSS feed as you see fit. It's podcast mirror

by Blueberry. And they're essentially like the

new age version of Google's feed burner, which

feed burner for podcasts anymore is kind of a

no -no because when your feed gets too large,

it boots out anything that's new. We had this

problem back in April and shows would just stop

showing up in RSS feeds. So I had to go through

every show and submit updates to all of the feeds.

It sucked, but it works now. They're all to the

Spreaker feed, but still it was not fun to have

to do this. And so like if you're going to have

it hosted on your site or you're going to have

it hosted or you have the possibility of moving

it, That would probably be the way to go. I had

them all on FeedBurner for years because I never

had to worry about changing anything. It's the

myth of FeedBurner and then it was good as gold.

That's kind of why I did that. I'm kind of curious

to hear what you guys think on Google entering

this arena on a bigger capacity than what they

have been. I know Apple is changing up the arena

a little bit, now requiring podcasters to use

secure feeds, which they state that only about

17 % are ready, which I find a little bit mind

-boggling, because if you're hosting with anybody,

whether it's Libsyn or Podbean or Blogtalk Radio

Spreaker, any of the big publishers, They're

all HTTPS, for the most part. I don't think SoundCloud

is, but SoundCloud's archaic and disaster -winning

to happen. If you're using SoundCloud, get off

of it. Go somewhere else. My friends over at

Spreaker or Blocktalk Radio would gladly help

you out. So... They're saying only about 11 of

the top 200 shows use HTTP HTTPS for their their

podcast XML and the remaining 189 feeds use plain

old HTTP I know I used to hand code the feeds

and that was not helping things either But they're

saying that out of the 250 ,000 podcast series

from Apple podcasts and analyzing them about

204 ,000 are not secure while 42 ,000 are. And

that's kind of a disturbing ratio. Obviously

there's more podcasts in there than that, but

just out of the trending podcasts, that's kind

of what the standing is. And so it's kind of

necessary to do this at this point. To to have

it because anymore Google like even at the end

of July Google is is gonna put this kibosh on

Sites that are not and I say are not taking care

of Having their their websites secure like if

your website is not secure or HTTPS SSL they're

going to put this basically scare tactic on the

websites when they are redirected in Google,

essentially saying that this is not a safe location,

it's not a safe website. And I had this conversation

with a friend, Hank, from TPE, and he says, you

know, is it hard to switch a website, you know,

podcast website, like WordPress from HTTP to

HTTPS, you know, any concerns or issues with

it? And he says, pretty soon it will be a must

for all podcasters from what I hear, which it

is for the feeds, you know, that is a must and

that's kind of already a thing. But there's also

issues when that will arise the website, both

on the website and various things of, you know,

It breaks things like certain features will break

there are plugins that will break features images

a lot of things will have to be troubleshot through

the website after you get it to the SSL HTTPS

and We are in plan like our hosting has HTTP

SSL So when we move to this new website of GeekCast

Radio, I'm going to have it ready for SSL because

not only am I taking information through the

website and I want it to be secure for those

people, but I want the website to be secure and

I want Google to flag it as a healthy website,

as a site that is capable of just being safe.

I know that they want to basically change the

rankings. Like after July, Google Chrome will

mark all HTTP versions of websites as insecure.

So it's gonna be very frustrating for a lot of

people to have to scramble and change this. I

didn't even know that was a thing until earlier

the beginning of the month. which means we really

don't have much time. Obviously, GeekCast Radio

will be ready when it's ready, I'm not going

to rush it, but it may say that it's an insecure

website to begin with, which I hope not, but

it determines based on a variety of factors,

but that's kind of the key thing there. So, I'm

not sure where the internet's going, but I do

agree that security is a major issue. Moving

on a little bit, Yahoo Messenger, which I didn't

realize was still around, is shutting down on

July 17th and redirects users to a group messaging

app, Squirrel. Yes, you read that correctly,

Squirrel. I have no idea what that is. They essentially

announced that they're gonna be winding down

the service and continue to experiment and consider

how and if it can have a relevant place in the

messaging landscape amid Facebook and other mobile

apps. There's not really a replacement product

available for Yahoo Messenger. But honestly,

I don't even know that many people that still

use it. But there's an invite -only group messaging

app called Yahoo Squirrel currently in beta.

Squirrel is like a group messaging app. They

started testing. last month. You can get beta

access to it, but why? Because Yahoo really hasn't

done much in the last 15, 20 years on that. You

know, OWETH recently shut down AIM AOL's equivalent

messaging app in October, and I guess they're

shutting down Yahoo Messenger, so I don't...

MSN Messenger was gonna end up the same way if

it didn't... merge with Skype when it did. So

obviously there's still room for it, but I think

that it kind of is going the way of the dinosaur

in a lot of these things, just like a lot of

old social media things like Clout and some of

those others. But something I found a little

interesting is California has new digital license

plates that they're experimenting with, which

gives you the chance to Kind of do your own thing

so you can get These new digital basically like

tablet looking things Which I'm sure will have

some kind of a gorilla glass on them And you

I'm sure you have to update them, but they don't

have the nasty stickers. They don't have The

rust on them like they've got the same stuff

on the left like upper side, you know December

and California and then 2018 and then they've

got the same seven digits. Would you think with

a digital one they could shrink the text and

give us eight digits? Finally because then we

could actually spell full words like I could

put Megatron or You know something It would just

be nice to have more than that because you can

even customize the bottom To have your own little

slogan so like I would I would basically put

something that was like altered geek in a sense

and then make it say like you know unleash the

geeky you or something to that effect but anyways

the department of motor vehicles is conducting

a pilot project with a bay area company reviver

audio which makes this plate and is about to

begin marketing it for sale at auto dealerships

which i think is awesome i would love to have

one of those It says the actual tag number will

still be visible, but it was shrunk down in the

upper right hand corner for some of it. And some

of the features are experimental. It says the

plates are essentially an E Ink display similar

to Kindle. And when the car is in motion, they

look fairly standard. But it says they're gonna

have some feature that may be experimental allowing

you to display a message when the car is stopped.

Like the actual tag number will still be. Visible

when it's shrunk down so like your license plate

number will be shrunk down in the upper right

hand corner You can make it say something else

while it's parked They're also trying to Make

it so that if your car is stolen you could connect

it to your phones like you could do Like a pseudo

find my phone feature So if your car is stolen

the plate will display the message stolen as

long as it hasn't been detached And the police

will be able to track this the vehicle's location

which I think is kind of an awesome way of doing

it I mean we're already being tracked with cell

phones you know with trackers and everything

so obviously if they put this in the back of

this it wouldn't be that big of a deal because

they're gonna know what you're doing anyway all

the street cameras that are out it just anymore

it kind of makes sense for this They're saying

that the idea of having your car bugged and being

assaulted by more advertising when you sit in

traffic sounds horrifying, but there's good news.

Each plate costs a whopping $699. More money

than I'd rather pay for a license plate when

it's like $10 to buy one. And it requires a monthly

$7 fee. Yeah, that would kind of put the kibosh

on the idea for me. Like, I wouldn't want to

spend $7 a month on a license plate. Yeah, that

may give people second thoughts. And then somebody

thought it would be funny on this particular

website, I think it was Gizmodo, to put a blue

screen error on the back of the plate as a joke.

Second thoughts. But I thought it was kind of

an interesting thought process anyway. I don't

know how well it's going to be received, but

I still think it's going to be funny. And then

you know Samsung's cranking out as far as like

some of their their hardware industries first

32 gigabyte DDR4 modules for gaming laptops,

which I think is a bit overdue because gaming

laptops have 16 gig and Honestly, like my regular

laptop doesn't even have it has like six gigs

It would be nice to see laptops actually start

having more memory in them than six gigs Just

regular laptops But yeah, so I don't know there's

a lot of stuff going on Intel's got you know

launch of a 28 core 5 gigahertz CPU by the end

of the year, you know Because I think they've

already got 18 cores and I guess they're working

on some other stuff now where they're gonna have

quantum computing in the next couple years Or

at least they're working towards it With like

a processor that looks like a giant wafer. It

has to be in a temperature controlled box I've

been having fun watching technology over the

last couple weeks. It's just it's been fun for

me another thing that's fun is when you When

you Have a birthday and you sign up for a bunch

of newsletters and you get a bunch of free food

some of it discounted But some of it free and

they give you a little vouchers on your birthday

so you get to eat out for like days Because I

did that all weekend so So let me know what you

guys think, what you guys want to talk about

in the next episode, what kind of conversations

you'd like to have, what opinions. I do plan

on touching base on my article I wrote the other

day about as the cracks begin to show, the internet

showing its true colors because I have another

follow up coming in the next couple days, just

depending on how I get fired up about it. I essentially

talked in that post about fandoms, the toxicity,

the news, humanity itself, the depression of

it all, the use of social media, the constant

attacking of franchises, the point of the internet

has become this place that people complain, hate,

attack, and attempt to destroy what others love

and enjoy and hold dear. It's not just about

complaining or constructive criticism, it's just

downright hateful words and pure spite. It's

something that was weighing on my mind, and TFG1

Mike was nice enough to share it around the internet,

but I do have follow -up concepts and articles

I plan on writing soon, just because I've gotten

this itch to write again, which is strange for

me. So anyways, like I said, let me know what

you guys think, what you want to talk about in

the next episode, what conversation. Let me know

with the hashtag What's Geeky to You. Tag the

podcast at AlterGeek. And you can get ahold of

me on Twitter at SCP21. So until next time, get

AlterGeeky with the AlterGeeks.