CES 2026: Part Nine (Friday)

Summary

Better Offline – CES 2026: Part Nine (Friday)

Podcast: Better Offline (Cool Zone Media/iHeartPodcasts)
Date: January 10, 2026
Host: Ed Zitron
Notable Guests: Cory Doctorow, Edwin Nguesa, Garrison Davis, Robert Evans, Carl Chouinard, Gary

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Overview: A Cynical Turn at CES 2026

This episode delivers a sharp, discursive, and often irreverent wrap-up to Better Offline’s marathon coverage of CES 2026. Host Ed Zitron and a varied panel of tech writers, local journalists, and returning guests analyze the world’s largest tech show, focusing not on the flashiest launches but the malaise, stagnation, and ideological weirdness suffusing both CES and its host city Las Vegas. The discussion weaves personal anecdotes with acerbic industry criticism, and regularly detours into local politics, labor issues, and the consequences of AI’s relentless marketing.

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CES 2026: This Year's Overriding Themes

Stagnation and AI-Fueled Hype Cycles

• The team uniformly characterizes CES 2026 as a show suffering a “depression” of innovation and enthusiasm.
• AI “model-hacking,” repackaging of ChatGPT into every device, and a shortage of genuinely new ideas dominate the floors.
• The optimism and spectacle of earlier trends (IoT, Metaverse) feel replaced by tired demos and a sense of creative exhaustion.

Quote:

“It feels like we're in a depression at CES.” — Ed Zitron, [14:32]

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Vegas Tech “Ecosystem” Dilemma

(02:35–04:50)

• Edwin Nguesa describes efforts to build a real tech sector in Las Vegas—still nascent and stymied, despite the long-standing presence of CES.
• Previous attempts, such as Tony Hsieh’s “Old Vegas” project, are noted as “limp” by Ed.
• Aggressive wooing of California companies (e.g., Andreessen Horowitz) contrasts with Las Vegas’s persistent dependence on tourism and conventions.

Quote:

“Vegas needs more perverts and fried chicken.” — Ed Zitron, [05:00]

2. CES Show Floor: What's Actually on Display?

(05:04–21:12)

• Many booths just “repackage ChatGPT” into gadgets, children’s toys, or home assistants.
• Novelty products (hand massagers, smart picture frames) spark ridicule for poor usability and lack of purpose.
• “Virtue signaling” marketing—like a massager labeled, “the virtuous will feel delightful”—emblematizes the absurdity.

Quote:

“I want to be clear, though, the thing sucks, but ‘the virtuous will feel delightful,’ is something I'm going to be saying for the rest of my life.” — Ed Zitron, [11:51]

• True innovation is hard to spot; often only in obscure “wholesale only” booths (e.g., mechanical engineering marvels like compact UK chargers).
• Missing: real “consumer gadgets that make your life better.” The “GAN charger” segment highlights a rare positive example.

3. AI's Pervasive, Hollow Promise

(13:01–15:00; 65:00+)

• Repeated skepticism that AI “assistants” or “AI therapy” can solve real user problems—most products are just wrappers for LLMs (Large Language Models).
• AI products in mental health or healthcare: Panelists express alarm at the dubious claims of HIPAA compliance and likely dangerous advice.
• Most AI businesses lack rigor in data privacy or safety, and “the problem they solve is—how do I make money off this?”

Quote:

“The majority... I suspect, who come into these devices will not have made a choice... they will have been advised by a medical professional... and that's what worries me in terms of [AI] not being reliable.” — Robert Evans, [67:11]

4. Las Vegas: The Host City and Its Ongoing Transformation

(22:39–37:04)

• Las Vegas tourism shows a post-pandemic decline (7.4% drop in 2025 visitation vs 2024), but gaming revenue is up—a “K-shaped recovery” where only the rich are truly thriving.
• Resort/convention fees and monopolistic mergers contribute to rising costs, diminishing the “frictionless entertainment” Vegas sold itself on.
• Locals casinos thrive, but the “service culture” and labor-first attitude of old Vegas is at odds with the anti-human, job-automating spirit of much of tech.
• Panelists deride the “Trump slump” narrative as too simplistic; international tourism is dropping, especially from Canada due to policy changes and a less welcoming political climate.

Quote:

“Las Vegas is a service culture place... it's relatively accessible, affordable, and if you want to spend money, you can have a luxury experience that's not as expensive as other cities. I just don't think people who come to CES are grateful enough for how accessible the city is, in part because CES fucks it up.” — Ed Zitron, [49:21]

5. The Surreal, The Fun, and the Human

Exoskeletons: A Bright Spot

(80:06–86:10)

• Panelists test a “Hypershell” exoskeleton—one of the few products celebrated for genuine utility (“cool … future tech that actually rocks”).
• Real-world metrics: substantial drop in walking effort and joint pain.

Metaverse Nostalgia & Analog Weirdness

(92:27+)

• Fond reminiscences of the chaotic “Metaverse CES,” which, for all its flaws, created lasting friendships.
• Jokes abound about “model-hacking,” bad branding (e.g., “making it easier to edge with AI”), and the surreal spectacle of CES booths.

6. The Tech Industry, Labor, and Anti-Human Attitudes

(41:32–44:29)

• Vegas’ union-heavy, service-focused labor culture stands in stark contrast to tech’s rhetoric (“what if we didn’t have people?”).
• Tech is increasingly “anti-human”—products and ads hinting that “the human need not apply.”
• Discussion includes the injustice of concierge jobs being replaced not by better technology but by cost-cutting layoffs and appointment scalping.

Quote:

“Vegas, one of the best things here is go and fucking talk to the people working at the restaurants, at the door, in your cab... There’s a genuine everyman culture here.” — Ed Zitron, [43:05]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The ultimate thing to staple shit to.” — On AI being the new “buzzword” to chase funding, [14:34]
• “All dreams in one dream.” — Company slogan at CES, unintentionally summing up the show’s listless ambition, [116:15]
• “This is why CES is the sexless goon cave. Just a bunch of activity.” — On the hollow spectacle and lack of true excitement, [117:54]
• “Have we replaced SEO with model engine optimization? ... That's MeOW!” — On companies optimizing products for AI ‘model hacking’ rather than users, [102:36]
• “There is an ocean of opportunity here for the CEA...” — On the disconnect and lack of cooperation between CES organizers and Vegas, [52:28]
• “The majority of people who come into these [AI healthcare] devices will not have made a choice... they'll have been advised by a medical professional... that's what worries me.” — Robert Evans, [67:11]
• “We need to start treating AI worse. You see a fucking AI thing wants me to anthropomorphize it, I'm going to show…” — Ed Zitron, [112:12]
• “Cyberpunk is a warning and not a suggestion.” — Gary, [108:41]
• “Gresham's Law: bad drives out good… the top results on Amazon are always going to be the worst products.” — Cory Doctorow/Gary, [105:02]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Time (MM:SS) | |---------|--------------| | Las Vegas Tech Initiatives / CES “Depression” | 02:35–15:00 | | The Smart Picture Frame Rant | 07:03–09:46 | | AI Therapy & Healthcare Discussion | 65:05–70:50 | | Vegas Visitation Stats / Economy | 22:39–26:23 | | Concierge Culture / Appointment Scalping | 45:23–47:00 | | Genuine Product Praise—Exoskeletons | 80:29–86:10 | | Model-Hacking, “MeOW,” & Advertising | 101:17–104:06 | | CES as the “Sexless Goon Cave” | 117:54–118:02 | | Outtro & Final Reflections | 120:49–121:47 |

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Tone, Style & Speaker Highlights

• Ed Zitron: Sardonic, energetic, British bone-dry wit, always ready for a tangent—drives the “real talk” about both CES and Vegas, swinging from jokes about perverts and fried chicken to sharp frustration at tech’s cynicism and anti-labor posture.
• Cory Doctorow: Polished, erudite, with a knack for historical context (Gresham’s Law, data privacy), and equal comfort with industry memes (referring to “in shittification” and anti-trust.)
• Robert Evans & Garrison Davis: Casual, deadpan, occasionally sarcastic—both provide excellent field reporting from the CES floor, never missing a chance for a moment of absurdist humor.
• Edwin Nguesa & Carl Chouinard: Supply local color and detailed knowledge of Vegas’s political and economic scene.

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Flow & Structure

The conversation is sprawling and frequently nonlinear, in keeping with the “live, open bar” vibe Ed Zitron sets. Topics are revisited across the episode as guests come and go. The show is cynical yet affectionate—delighting in revealing the seams behind Vegas’s and CES’s glamour, and never shying from a bit of dark or scatological humor.

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For Listeners: Key Takeaways

• CES 2026 is marked not by breakthroughs but by repetition, frustrating mediocrity, and endless AI “wrappers” promising far more than they deliver.
• Las Vegas is in the midst of a slow-burning crisis, where tourism is declining for many but high rollers keep the cash flowing, intensifying economic bifurcation.
• Tech Culture is clashing with the labor-first, service-centric values of the city—and replacing genuine solutions with gadgets only an accountant (or VC) could love.
• The true innovation at this year’s CES is not in “AI everything,” but in the few overlooked gadgets quietly making life easier.
• Underlying it all: The genuine human moments, irreverence, and solidarity at the taco-and-open-bar “off-CES” zone, where better ideas and truer critiques are found.

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If you haven’t heard the episode: expect wry, rapid-fire commentary, honest tech criticism, social and economic context, and a healthy dose of weird, sidewinding humor.

Transcript

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[Ed Zitron]

Unstoppable. Unbelievable. Impeccable. Unflappable.

[Robert Evans]

Outrageous.

[Ed Zitron]

Stupendous. Chosen by God and perfected by science. I'm Ed Zitron and this is Better Offline's coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show. Better Offline, that's right. We are back for a final two hour stretch here in the beautiful Palazzo Hotel and even more beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. We've been here all week with an open bar and tacos for journalists to hang out and chat shit about the world's largest technology conference. Thank you all. Thank you all for joining me. Thank you for being here as listeners, as guests. For everyone, this has been the best CES yet. There's only been two, but nevertheless, you don't know how the next one's going to be. But in all seriousness, this has been an incredible, incredible show. We've got four more 30 minute blocks and then an epilogue tomorrow. Who it's been a lot. Our first quarter lineup is the incredible activist, journalist and author Cory Doctorow. Hello, Ed, the fantastic writer of the tech bubble newsletter, Edward on Grace O Jr and the wonderful returning champion, Carl Chouinard of the Las Vegas Sun. Local boy.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Hi there.

[Ed Zitron]

How you doing, Kyle? How's your show been?

[Edwin Nguesa]

Pretty good. I started with a pre cs a little conference between some Korean companies and Nevada investors and businessmen.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay, what happened then?

[Edwin Nguesa]

Well, it was talking about how to bring their products, bring their companies kind of to the American market. And kind of the main point of it was, you know, CES has been here in Las Vegas for so long at this point, but Nevada itself or Las Vegas itself hasn't always seen the fruits of that. Besides the actual. Of course, Las Vegas's main market is in tourism and bringing people here, and conventions like this are a big part of that. But actually creating a tech sector here is a relatively newer concept, I think, probably following the pandemic and what really just shut down the entire economy.

[Ed Zitron]

Wasn't there that failed attempt with old Vegas though, with Tony Hsieh and. And that lawn?

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah, I mean it's. The recent iteration is newer, I'll say that.

[Ed Zitron]

And also that. That one was very kind of limp, to be honest. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I.

[Gary]

That one, that one, that one whiskey bar next to the barbecue joint in the mall made it of trail shipping containers was pretty good.

[Ed Zitron]

I didn't see that. That was great.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Did they talk about Denton?

[Gary]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was. That There was. There was like one good thing that came.

[Edwin Nguesa]

There's a good coffee shop right there, you'd think.

[Ed Zitron]

And why is it that it's so hard to attract companies that has like no state tax is that is like the local business taxes high? Like.

[Edwin Nguesa]

No, I mean they, they've been working on that and kind of promoting the favorable tax regime, I think is probably the best way to put it for companies. That's why a lot of people move from California to here in Nevada. Yeah, same way that we've had that. I mean, Nevada's legislature, there's a push for a dedicated business court similar to what exists in Delaware, so we can have companies incorporate here instead of there. Like we recently had friend of the show Andreessen Horowitz move to Nevada. So there's been a big push there to kind of. Because the pandemic so brazenly showed that if there is an issue with travel, the economy collapses here.

[Gary]

Yeah, well, that's quite a race. It feels like the finish line is at the bottom though.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

But wait, so this was a pre conference the CES and were there talks and such?

[Edwin Nguesa]

It Was actually. It was kind of fun. It was like a Shark Tank style pitch session from a bunch of these companies. There was one about incorporating some technology into golf clubs that would analyze your swing. There was another. I know there was another on, like, it was a pool contaminant analysis machine.

[Gary]

Is this like a pee detector?

[Ed Zitron]

No, because those. Well, it's not that those are useless, but, like, those very much exist.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yes.

[Garrison Davis]

Yes.

[Gary]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

So it was kind of like.

[Edwin Nguesa]

It's not like they were showing off, like, the cutting edge of tech to school. It was people trying to break into the American market from Asia.

[Gary]

I mean, what Korea really needs to introduce to America, clearly, is hidden cameras and dressing rooms.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, jeez.

[Gary]

They are the world leaders and incredibly misogynistic uses of hidden cameras. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Vegas needs more perverts and fried chicken.

[Garrison Davis]

And, you know, they got some good fried chicken.

[Gary]

And also, like. Also like rising up in the face of fascism. Yeah. That is an export that we would welcome here.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, just other than all that, have you walked around CES at all?

[Edwin Nguesa]

A lot less, actually, than last year? I would say I spent some more time off the showroom floor talking to people, but quite a bit. And I mean, it felt. I think we talked about this last year. I mean, this is my second ces.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh.

[Edwin Nguesa]

And last year, I mean, you. You come into it and it's all this cool stuff that you've never seen before concentrated in one space. And this year I remember people talking about, like, this feels a lot similar to last year. And now that I'm a returning guest. Yeah, I understand why that feeling existed.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it's this kind of echoing. It's very strange this year. Like, it feels like last year, but with less stuff. Like, there were. There at least felt like there were some things to look at last year that were like, oh, that's fun. Do I remember them? God, no.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I saw a lot of smart picture frames. That was a really big one this year.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I saw one that was completely broken. It was made with, like, E Ink. No, I actually quite liked the idea because I'd only seen them in pictures. And then you see whenever they cycle, kind of like a Kindle, like all E Ink. Think they flash up a thing like the Kindle?

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And it's like just the static image I'd be okay with. But the moment it cycles, it'd be like, get that shit off my wall. But I like the idea. I like the idea.

[Gary]

You know what you can't see by looking at the gadget itself is the back End. And that's the whole thing.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Gary]

Like, what is the experience of adding images to it? And my wife just moved overseas. We're living in two different continents right now, and our housemate gave her a smart camera, a picture frame for Christmas. Right. And we, you know, sort of together conspired to put a bunch of photos in the camera's cloud account so that when she set it up at home overseas, that she would get all these photos preloaded. And it sucked. It just really sucked at importing photos. It wouldn't take native resolution. We had to down res every.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh, God.

[Ed Zitron]

It's.

[Gary]

Yeah, it was like.

[Ed Zitron]

Do you remember what brand?

[Gary]

I do not.

[Ed Zitron]

I got one for my parents a few years ago and the app was like Dante's Inferno and it was all on an app.

[Gary]

Right. So like. Which is fine if you're out and about taking pictures and you are sending the picture to the frame, but when you're setting up the frame de novo. I have 10,000 photos on my laptop and I wanted to take a subset of them and put them in the frame. And like, phones are very bad for that.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Gary]

And I did this elaborate thing where I plugged my phone in, moved 700 photos from my laptop to my phone, then used the app, which only let me select 100 photos at a time to upload the like it was. And none of that is visible. Right. You can be on the tray floor and you can be like, this is the most beautiful frame I've ever seen. But if it's a giant pain in the ass to get pictures into, who cares?

[Edwin Nguesa]

I will say I was interviewing someone at their home once and they had one in their living room and it changed at one point. Or it was either that or they told me. I had no idea that it was digital until they told me. So for the people who are coming into your home who did not see the hassle.

[Gary]

Sure.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Of getting it, that works.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

I don't know.

[Ed Zitron]

It feels like a very easy to solve thing.

[Garrison Davis]

Feels.

[Ed Zitron]

Feels like it should just be like an FTP server with like a photo as a fallback.

[Gary]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Gary]

Here's. Here is a thing you drag images into.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. It should be easy, but it isn't. Welcome to ces and I just really.

[Gary]

Like, I have the app on my phone.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, hell yeah. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Let's find out what is to contrast this.

[Gary]

We can name and shame it was.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know.

[Gary]

I have too many apps.

[Ed Zitron]

Bring back Shamed.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yes. Slander.

[Robert Evans]

No, it's not.

[Ed Zitron]

It's not.

[Gary]

Come back to me it's not.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Oh, no, no.

[Gary]

Aura A U R A. I thought.

[Ed Zitron]

That was meant to be one of the easy ones too.

[Gary]

I'm sure it's very easy if you are sending a photo to it.

[Edwin Nguesa]

That one gets advertised on podcasts.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I.

[Gary]

It's. Well, now we're doing Casper mattresses of photo frames.

[Ed Zitron]

We're anti stamps dot com. We're anti the aura frame. Don't try and sell me in a fucking mattress unless you'll give me 1.

[Gary]

Has stamps.com got a web interface yet because it was Windows Only.

[Ed Zitron]

I got no idea, man. When I need stamps, I go to the post office.

[Gary]

You know what? I. I have a private mailbox where I get my mail because I don't want to give my home address to random.

[Josh Whalen]

Right, right.

[Gary]

And I gave them a credit card number and they charge 100 bucks credit at a time. And I walk in with all my parcels and I'm like, here's the parcels. And I walk out again. And I don't have to wait for them to weigh them and I don't have to wait for them.

[Garrison Davis]

That's awesome.

[Gary]

To price them. And they just. I get an emailed receipt. It is so good.

[Ed Zitron]

Post office fucking rules.

[Gary]

Yeah, well, private mailboxes too.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Okay. Well.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. So, Ed, have you been. I've been doing. How was your last day?

[Gary]

Was good.

[Garrison Davis]

I got to walk around lvcc, see all the shit gadgets with Corey. And it was really interesting. I mean, the stuff I think that interested us most was like, we talked about the devices that seem like, okay, this is a real thing. We want a manufacturer to integrate it into their supply chain so they can scale it up. Like, what, but you can't get it. Well, you know, chargers. You talk, you know, do you thought there were some chargers that Corey pointed out that seemed nice, some cameras that seemed nice, but otherwise there were just a bunch of devices where it's like, I don't think I'd ever get this hand massager.

[Gary]

That was very funny. They had the weirdest advertising for that hand massager.

[Garrison Davis]

Weird little sign that made it look like it was going to eat your hand.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, so it massages your hand.

[Gary]

So it was like the Bene Gesserit thing you stick your hand into. They did have a. So it had a sign, right, that said like, do you dare to put your hand in it? And it had a monster's mouth around the aperture your hand went into. And then when you read the marketing more closely, it was like, the virtuous will Feel delightful when they put their hand and you put your hand in and a sensor detected it and then it started inflating the little area.

[Garrison Davis]

I know. It feels like the first step in, like, cultivating myself.

[Ed Zitron]

I just want to be clear, though, the thing sucks, but the virtuous will feel delightful is something I'm going to be saying for the rest of my life.

[Garrison Davis]

Apparently, I'm not virtuous because I felt it. I was like. It kind of just feels like two things are grinding against my hand a little bit. And it's like, hey, if I want to go. If I want that, I'll go to, like, some packed conference or I'll come back here on the first day.

[Gary]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Like, it's like if you need to give your hand a massage, you have two of them. I guess if you want to do both at once, it might be a challenge.

[Gary]

You know, the amazing safety label. That's the two gears with the hand being squished.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Gary]

That's kind of what I wanted. Yeah, right.

[Ed Zitron]

You know, it's like an incredible machine situation, but with just my hand. Like a cat jumps on the thing and it crushes it. Just a big anvil would be great at the end of this week. Just let me just fall under the. Anyway, but nothing impressive at the end of the day is same old shite.

[Garrison Davis]

No, I mean, this is the thing. I mean, we talked about this a little bit also. I feel like, you know, I am of the group that is the wrong group for it because I come into it feeling, I think, disappointed broadly, because there's a lot that I would like to see, and I don't see it.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, what would you like to see?

[Garrison Davis]

I would. I would like to see. I am. Listen, if someone can make, you know, for example, there's a lot of pitches about AI assistants that can be integrated into your home and make, you know, task management a bit easier, schedule management a bit easier, things like this. You know, I would be open to something that. That seemed to be doing that. But a lot of the times, you know, when we press them, it's more so like, what if you went on chatgpt yourself and chose the third best answer for each thing and then integrated that and organized your life around that? It's, you know, so it's just. It's a lot of times I feel like what I'm actually seeing is not even someone who tried to solve a problem, but some the. I mean, they did. The problem they solved was, how do I. How do I make money off of this. Right? Yeah, you know, that's really what it was.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I'm like, I'm not a tech person, I'm a local reporter here. But I mean I feel like. And this is kind of when I curious about your guys thoughts on it. How much of the things on the showroom floor just like repackaged ChatGPT models into other different packages actually it'd be.

[Gary]

Easier to ask how many were.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, yeah, it's deadly. We need like a cat in the hat where it's not situation for this. What's funny is generally surprised last. Yeah, I remember being like, oh, I'm being a cynic, whatever and sleeping four hours every night. So I felt particularly spicy. But people still came in like journalists came in and were like, oh, I saw some cool shit. Oh, it made me laugh. It was kind of weird. But you know, I enjoyed it this year. Even the gadget reporters. Even the gadget reporters who were like, you know what? Not gonna be cynical. I'm gonna be excited to be here. Were kind of like, yeah, you know, there's a lot of stuff that doesn't exist. And then the stuff that does exist wasn't very good. And even the companies that usually make stuff that are good, well, they didn't. And also LG was here with a robot. And it's strange because long term listeners will know like, yeah, I'm a cynic, whatever, but I want to hear some fun do that. Some fun things. And it's like not even this year. Like this is. It feels like we're in a depression at ces.

[Edwin Nguesa]

A lot of AI children's toys.

[Ed Zitron]

Very horrible.

[Gary]

Yeah, yeah.

[Edwin Nguesa]

A lot of AI children's toys.

[Ed Zitron]

Evil, evil shit. Like Robert found this one that was like an LLM horoscope Furby creature that I want to hit with a baseball bat.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I believe I saw that.

[Ed Zitron]

I want to.

[Garrison Davis]

Funnily enough, there's a demo for one where you can hit it with a baseball.

[Gary]

Yeah, but that's.

[Ed Zitron]

Wasn't that the one where Robert had the video?

[Garrison Davis]

It's just like dancing like Michael Jackson.

[Ed Zitron]

And then you just hit it with sticks. I want to put and it be a bottle. I want to do Free Bird on top of that proper song out of it.

[Gary]

No, there's an old American children's show called the Andy Divine show and there was a character on that show called Froggy who was like a frog and he was a mischief figure. And he would. As Andy Devine was speaking, he would, he would grunt. He would like growl out these subliminal suggestions. I was like, then you put the peanut butter in your hair. Yes, you do. You do. Then Andy Divine would start putting peanut butter in his hair. And every time I see an LLM toy for children, I'm like, eventually, like, you're gonna leave the room and it's gonna say, and then you put the knife in your parents.

[Ed Zitron]

You do.

[Gary]

You do.

[Edwin Nguesa]

But, like, that's already happening with, like, actual chatbots.

[Gary]

Have we not seen the hack horror movies that start with the doll that says, I'm Chatty Cathy and I want to be your friend? I'm Chatty Cathy and I want to kill you?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. One of these stories is going motivate.

[Ed Zitron]

Someone, you know, this time, it's gonna be like, taiwan is part of China. Never mention Winnie Poo and Winnie the Pooh in my.

[Garrison Davis]

How does hesitant make you feel, child?

[Ed Zitron]

No, it's just. And it's just like. It's. I think what it might be, and after thinking about this too much for too long, it's just papering over the laziness that already existed at ces. I don't think, like, there's something exceptional about the activity so much as they found a. It's the. Was it panacea panic? I never know how to say panacea. Panacea. It's like a panicotti panna cotta. The panna cotta everyone's using is just the. Okay, we're looking for a quick and easy thing. There was the Iot era. There was the Metaverse era. Like, a thing we could build around that would get us funding. But this year, it's like, we found the ultimate thing to staple shit to. And I. I know I sound like a broken record, but it's like, come the fuck on. You haven't even got a thinner, lighter laptop. There was, like, one new thinner, lighter laptop one. It was like. I think it was maybe lg. I don't fucking know. Samsung wasn't even on the floor where. What. What the hell? We don't even get a weird Samsung booth with, like, a wall of televisions. The LG transparent OLED was just a tiny little one. I want one that's large and obviously can never be purchased. She said, like a monument. No, she just mo. She mostly just says, it's okay, it's okay. It happens. But it's.

[Robert Evans]

It's just.

[Ed Zitron]

You don't need to. It's just kind of frustrating because I'm not reflexively cynical. I just want to see some dude ad give me a day. Like, Michael Fisher came in and showed the clicks, the shell of the clicks. The Android phone that's got like. It's basically like a new BlackBerry. Fucking lovely. You have new things. 400 bucks.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Something.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it's something. It's also, you know what, it's using existing tools, Android and you can manufacture overseas.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Wonderful.

[Robert Evans]

Cool.

[Ed Zitron]

We built a new thingy this year.

[Robert Evans]

It's like we didn't build.

[Gary]

See, I think you're in the wrong part of the hall because. Because when we were back in the crack gadgets there was so much of that. But it's, but it's in the. So like the thing is that the stuff that you use every single day.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Gary]

Like your charger. Yeah. Is stuff that has an enormous bearing on your quality of life. Right. Like if your charger is fucked, you're fucked. Right. It's a low margin item and it has barely been optimized.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Gary]

And in this Pearl River Delta and around the Pacific Rim there are a lot of incredibly clever mechanical engineers and product designers who are sort of turning their intellect to this.

[Ed Zitron]

I, I agree. And like Anchor for example is a great company. Even like GPD who makes these really interesting like devices for 100 people. It's like it'll be a PlayStation portable sized gaming PC that cost $2,000 and superheats in your hands. So it needs an external battery. Those ones I didn't see having a prominent.

[Gary]

But, but you go back to the booths where we only do wholesale. We have a minimum 10,000 unit order. So I was. You were there earlier but we were off Mike where I was talking about this thing that I saw that was the British electrical adapter for your charger that you carry around in your bag. And so people who aren't familiar with it, the British electrical adapter, the plug is the world's ultimate caltrop. It's this incredibly.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

It's just like a big spiky, like 2 inches.

[Gary]

Yeah. Big, chunky.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Gary]

And you know I lived in London for 13 years and, and, and I'm moving back there again. And like the, the charger is a. It's hard to carry around. It puts holes in your pockets, snags on things, your bike. It's a real thing and it's an actual.

[Ed Zitron]

Quite easily.

[Gary]

Yeah. So these, this charger was. It had the three prongs and when they, you folded. They all folded down together in unison. They were, they had some sort of mechanical linkage. They made the most satisfying little. When you snap them down and when you snap them back up again, it was a beautiful piece of mechanical engineering. If you owned it and you lived in the uk, every single day you would use this thing and your life would be better. Yeah, right, that's. That's a like pure. We were asking on the last recording session, where were the consumer gadgets? That is a consumer gadget that would see daily use and make a significant difference in your life.

[Ed Zitron]

I agree. It's just that that is like 1% of this show.

[Gary]

No, I agree.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. And that's. That's my principal thing is not that those things aren't here, though. There are less of them. No, that's remarkably less of them. Like last year there were more the year before that way, like there was tons of them. This year I saw one booth and I wish I could remember because it was just. The problem is, as well as a lot of the ones I saw were just the same old shit we've had for years. Anchor is doing some cool stuff. Was it gallium nitrite with making the plugs small? Oh, yeah.

[Gary]

GAN plugs.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. They're fucking amazing. They're awesome. Didn't even see any new interesting GAN stuff. And like Anchor, I give too much money because they always got some new thinner, weirder one with a cable in it. I'm. I'm.

[Gary]

Do you know what the downside of GAN plugs is? They draw so many watts. They're such good chargers that they blow the breaker on airplane seats.

[Robert Evans]

Do they?

[Gary]

On the.

[Ed Zitron]

On the main, I was on a plate.

[Gary]

If you've got like a hundred watt one.

[Robert Evans]

No, man.

[Gary]

I plug it in, the little green light goes out immediately.

[Ed Zitron]

I drop my prime on that bitch all the time and it's fine. Anchor's got this.

[Gary]

I've. I've had. I've got two different GAN chargers in my bag. Neither of them work reliable. Airplanes.

[Ed Zitron]

No, I. I've been very lucky then because I.

[Gary]

Is it a 65 watt, though?

[Ed Zitron]

It's like a 125.

[Gary]

Oh, really?

[Ed Zitron]

250 even.

[Gary]

You've gotten lucky then.

[Robert Evans]

This.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, it's just also. It does get very hot.

[Gary]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

But it is on.

[Gary]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

And I can chuck I look like a real prick because I've just got this thing on the side, just like.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Sure.

[Ed Zitron]

Just balancing barely on the side.

[Robert Evans]

I don't know.

[Edwin Nguesa]

It's.

[Ed Zitron]

Kyle, you coming on to talk about the local Vegas area and like the, the effect of ces. Even Vegas feels a little quieter. Like we were just discussing earlier how there was like a chunk of the Palazzo or the Venetian. I can't Remember that was just closed. Just like no tables. Yeah, that. Oh, no. Local residents. Local resident. That terrifies me. If I ever see like an empty area of a casino, like no tables either. I'm always like, unless there is a poker, a poker tournament or a craps class to take tourists in and kind of con them into believing they can beat the odds. Fuck yeah, they can. They can. They can kind of. Well, I mean, but it's just. It feels like everything. Maybe it's just the wider world.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a mix of things. Las Vegas has definitely had a decline in visitation throughout the year. I have, I have notes next to me, please. So through November of 2025 compared to 2024, it's a 7.4% decline in visitation. To be fair, 2024 was a record year. Part of that is pent up interest from the pandemic that got everyone going everywhere that was interested in travel. But that's still a drop of 2.8.

[Gary]

Million people going to manual and 2.7 million other Canadian.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Well, I mean, I got those numbers too.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Yeah.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I mean I think international travel definitely been affected. I think it does surprise a lot of people when they look at the numbers at Harry Reid International Airport that the bigger client actually was in domestic.

[Robert Evans]

Really?

[Edwin Nguesa]

Flights. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Do you have any idea why?

[Edwin Nguesa]

Well, I think there's a couple things. One, I. When you look at travel and the process of it, right. The. In my opinion, the most important thing is consumer sentiment at that moment and forward, forward looking sentiment. If you don't feel comfortable in your. If you don't feel comfortable in your position, you know, for feeding your family or just paying the bills on time, you are not traveling.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Edwin Nguesa]

But at the same time, I will say I think this is an important note because I think a lot of the narrative has been like Las Vegas is dead.

[Josh Whalen]

Which it is.

[Ed Zitron]

It really hasn't been.

[Edwin Nguesa]

No, I would push back on that because when you actually look at the gaming revenue, it is up this year.

[Gary]

Is that because they're gouging more though they triple zero?

[Edwin Nguesa]

Well, that actually there have been some efforts to scale that back because people were getting very angry.

[Gary]

Yeah.

[Edwin Nguesa]

And there was a large narrative online that like the, the destination marketing organization here in Las Vegas has tried to push back against.

[Gary]

But the.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Sorry, I'm trying to think about the way to phrases. The actual spend was higher. And I think, and I'm not going to act like I have a definitive. This is why. But I think in all sectors you're seeing an increasingly bifurcated economy.

[Gary]

Sure. K shaped recovery.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Right. K shaped.

[Ed Zitron]

And what does that mean for those of us who.

[Edwin Nguesa]

That the really rich are doing very, very well and that the rest of Us are not.

[Gary]

95% of the consumption is the top decile.

[Ed Zitron]

So they're coming at this high rollers.

[Edwin Nguesa]

So that, I mean if you look at Wynne, if you look at other high end. I don't have the numbers. Those numbers right in front of me. They're doing okay. So I think there is discussion of price gouging and I think that was a really big factor. You mentioned Canadians. I talked to at the beginning of the year, I went to a Winnipeg jets game here.

[Gary]

Nice.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I stood outside and I was just interviewing people who were coming. And this was right after or right around when Trump took office. And obviously when you're going to talk to Canadians who were in Vegas, it's a big sampling bias of. These are the people who didn't care. Most of them did. And they said, I scheduled this months ago, not coming back.

[Gary]

Jesus.

[Edwin Nguesa]

And the November numbers, those I do have in front of me in November, travel into Vegas from Air Canada compared to last year fell 26%.

[Ed Zitron]

Jesus Christ.

[Gary]

And the discount carriers are worse, right?

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah. Ultra low cost carriers are having a hard time. Spirit's kind of its own thing.

[Gary]

No, I mean the Canadian discount, the charter flights, WestJet and there's another one. I forget what they're called. I AM Canadian.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Okay. WestJet was 33.2% decline.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. Jesus Christ.

[Edwin Nguesa]

And that's just for Canes. There's actually have been. That's been made up in some other countries coming to the United States. But there's also all these policies coming down the pipeline where I believe it was Customs and Border Protection had a proposal of people coming into the country. Many of the folks who'd be coming into the country having to share five years of social media activity. Yeah. Which is which I reached out to the Nevada Resort association and they're like, we are monitoring this because it's. I mean, I'm not going to speak for the country at all, but I think when you look at all this, in totality, the United States is not being super welcoming.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Edwin Nguesa]

To people coming here. I mean, you know, mentioning the Korea event earlier, I talked to one of the organizers and he was talking to me about how after there was that ice raid in. I think it was Georgia at a.

[Ed Zitron]

Specifically against South Koreans.

[Edwin Nguesa]

They were South Koreans. Many of them were not all that. He had to be convincing people that it was okay to come to the United States, that they should, that they can still come to ces.

[Gary]

And with that, now, to be fair to America, there is a class of migrant they're welcoming. If you are the former dictator of Honduras who's been convicted of multiple narco trafficking charges, white South Africans, you will be.

[Ed Zitron]

And I mean commerce. This is specifically a place that attracts you based on being free and easy and quick and simple. And it's all of these little roadblocks, these little additions that just make it like. You can't treat this like adult Disneyland.

[Gary]

What happens in Vegas gets imprisoned indefinitely in Vegas.

[Ed Zitron]

What happens in Vegas requires a long form. Now it's just like, ah, I don't know. And also, the hotels are not as cheap as they used to be. It used to be you could. You could roll your ass into Bally's for 45 bucks a night if you felt like.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Well, there's also resort fees that people are very.

[Ed Zitron]

Did you pay?

[Gary]

Those are bedbug fee, by the way. I was wondering.

[Ed Zitron]

I paid the extra bedbug fee.

[Gary]

Ok.

[Ed Zitron]

You get that one special. That's the Canadian special, they call it. It's just frustrating as well, because this place. I love Vegas. I love being here. It's a vending machine city. My addiction is Diet Coke. So that's been great for the Coca Cola Corporation, but it's like adding these roadblocks fucks up a place like this so much, which is based on convenience.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I mean, I think when you look at the different narratives people are putting out about Las Vegas. I know local Democrats have labeled this the Trump slump. That's their big thing going into. We have a governor's race this year, and that is a big part is tying the current governor, Joe Lombardo, to the policies of the Trump administration. I'm skeptical about how well that's gonna work because I think it's a lot more complicated than just Trump. Yeah, it's a larger administration thing. It's also this idea that Las Vegas is price gouging people, regardless of how true that is for a specific location. I mean, there's like the infamous $26 water bottle that's like, I think was coming up from like a mini bar in someone's room that, like, Fox News is reporting on.

[Gary]

But the thing is, we're in the.

[Ed Zitron]

Palazzo and I like staying here. It's the fucking case here. There's a resort fee every night. And it's like these resort fees kill people. Not literally. Well, the rest of Vegas does that maybe, but not really. It's like the little needling things that Vegas did. And it's not just post 2021, but it's like if you're gonna do this to a place where it's about just kind of like frictionless entertainment.

[Gary]

And they've waved through so many mergers, too, that casinos aren't really competing anymore.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Well, there's that. And also that some of them aren't. They don't own the property. The property itself in some cases.

[Ed Zitron]

But even downtown Vegas is more expensive now. Like, I hadn't been to Fremont street much before last. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

And I went.

[Ed Zitron]

It's more expensive in some cases than the Strip. And it fucking sucks. I'm sorry. It's like genuinely like, it's a loud, hostile place that when you go, it's just like punishing. And it's like, oh, and now you used to go there because it was cheap. Now it's expensive and loud and bad. If I wanted that, I go to fucking Charlotte.

[Gary]

So what's happening in Reno? Is it just as bad as it is?

[Ed Zitron]

Phil was mentioning the other day that Reno is actually trying to like, not reject the casinos, but grow outside of them, which I don't think.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I think it's a state that's a statewide.

[Ed Zitron]

Is that state.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah, I would say it's like, pretty statewide.

[Ed Zitron]

No, like housing and jobs. Wow. I hate that.

[Gary]

That's crazy.

[Ed Zitron]

I know. What kind of a town runs on that when we have our big beautiful casinos and our loud slot machines.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Buffalo slot machines.

[Ed Zitron]

They're so loud. We've got the Buffalo slot machines.

[Gary]

You've got the bullet farm. You've got the water castle, the gun store. Joe Lives. You've got the.

[Ed Zitron]

We have the disgustars. We have the most lifeless NFL team in the most lifeless NFL stadium.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I have always made. Actually, I was at an event recently and Mark Davis sat next down next to me, and I got.

[Ed Zitron]

I was shocked, man. If he ever sat down next to me. I got some fucking questions, mate.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I'm not going to comment.

[Robert Evans]

What?

[Ed Zitron]

The fucking offensive line. They're all going to play out of position. Why do you let Pete Carroll's son do the. Sorry.

[Edwin Nguesa]

But it's crazy because, I mean, it's so emblematic of the industry that you can have a successful in air quotes NFL franchise without winning.

[Ed Zitron]

I mean, I mean, even then, I don't even think they're that successful. We're gonna transition to the next part. The next ad is for the Las Vegas Raiders. We won three fucking times. Despite Pete Carroll, Geno Smith, I guess that's what happens when you don't have an offensive line playing in position. This next ad is for the Las Vegas Raiders. Any other is an error.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

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[Ed Zitron]

And we're back for the second quarter. We're back with, of course, Carl Chouinard of the Las Vegas Sun.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Hello.

[Ed Zitron]

Mr. Edwin Nguesa of the Tech Bubble Newsletter.

[Garrison Davis]

Hello. Hello.

[Ed Zitron]

Activist, journalist and author Cory Doctorow.

[Gary]

Well, hello.

[Ed Zitron]

I was on the radio earlier and they were like. I was like, oh, Cory Doctorow's book. And they' say it in shittification. Yeah, they allow you to. Your book has allowed people to say it on the radio now? Oh, no, they just allowed me to. What do you say then?

[Gary]

So it depends on Alexis Madrigal's show on NPR in San Francisco. Yeah, it's the largest NPR station in the country. Right after Brandon Carr, chair of the fcc, announced that he was going to pull three years of their underwriting. And their general counsel has said, you cannot even allude to. To the title of the book. And through the entire segment, we called it the book whose title we cannot say. When I did on the media, which is nationally syndicated, they called it in poopification.

[Ed Zitron]

Was that with Brooke?

[Gary]

With Brooke, yeah. She's terrific.

[Ed Zitron]

I love Brooke. Brooke Gladstone fucking rocks.

[Gary]

She is a national treasure. And yeah, various other affiliates and radio stations have dealt with it in different ways. The Daily show, they're cable, so they were like, it's fine, but anytime I'm on broadcast, we can't do it. And weirdly, I was just on a show in Toronto and they decided not to let me say the title of the book. And so I was like, it's in somethingification. And the something is a word for poop that rhymes with snit.

[Robert Evans]

Nice.

[Edwin Nguesa]

That's the word they use, snit.

[Ed Zitron]

I used it.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Okay.

[Gary]

I was like, as in.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I mean, it's great.

[Gary]

It's a good as if your general counsel is having a. Yeah, is always funny.

[Ed Zitron]

Like when I went on, on the media. I did like half an hour of just like, I managed it because actually took Brooke Gladstone, older woman, and genuinely, if you can't explain something to her, she's very smart, but like, she's a regular person older woman. So if you. If you can explain it to her, you can explain it to anyone. But if you can't, you can't explain, you normies won't understand you. I got so many emails, lovely emails. Heard from a good mate, Peter Stormer, when he was listening. It was great as well. But I heard so many people just being like, wow, you sounded so nice. You didn't say shit or fuck. I'm like, I can actually have a conversation with someone without swearing. You know, you just don't.

[Gary]

You need to take a nap afterwards. But sure, yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

I have to enter like my mind palace, like the stone will of the Buddha to like just three hours point.

[Garrison Davis]

Vibrating giant gong in the back.

[Ed Zitron]

You know how I feel about Sam Orton just now. I can. I'm calm, I'm normal. Yeah, it's. I want Vegas to come roaring back. But I think there is a degree of the post 2021 greed that came in. I think that everyone jacked stuff up. I think so.

[Garrison Davis]

I don't know.

[Ed Zitron]

How is Summerlin being received by tourism? Has it been a good tourism destination? It's. It's like 25 minutes away from everything, which is in Vegas far.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah. I mean, I would say in my own experience, I don't even really see Summerlin as at a specifically very touristy area.

[Josh Whalen]

Does it not.

[Ed Zitron]

Does it not try and appeal?

[Gary]

What is it?

[Ed Zitron]

It's like this thing 25 minutes away, which anywhere else would be like, oh, you get there 25 minutes away in Vegas, you're like, no, you. You're just like, oh, I'll come visit you in New York City. I guess.

[Gary]

I mean, if they let you fire an automatic weapon, maybe you'll go that far.

[Ed Zitron]

But you can do 10 minutes up the Strip. There's like four different places.

[Gary]

Okay, Bazooka then.

[Robert Evans]

It's okay.

[Ed Zitron]

There's a place, 15 minutes. You can borrow up a car for two grand here.

[Garrison Davis]

Okay.

[Ed Zitron]

Vegas rocks.

[Edwin Nguesa]

It's a very wealthy area and they got some really nice shopping and they.

[Ed Zitron]

Got the AAA baseball team as well.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yes. Aviators.

[Ed Zitron]

No. It's great.

[Gary]

As a person who doesn't like sports.

[Ed Zitron]

I like Ava is brilliant.

[Edwin Nguesa]

It is, I would say, at least in my experience, a place that's like more designed for locals. I would say probably more affluent, local.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes. It's A master plan community.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah. Which I've got. A couple times I had to go to an event at the Aviators Stadium. It's really nice. I just never really saw it as a specifically like serving the tourists. It's kind of interesting with that is that the. The locals casinos actually had a really good year.

[Ed Zitron]

What would be. What you mean like Red Rock, Green Valley?

[Edwin Nguesa]

Well, all the stations. Casinos.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also Green Valley as well. Is they doing all right?

[Edwin Nguesa]

I believe so. That's one pretty close to me.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. No, I like all the local casinos that just like.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah, Stations overall had a very good.

[Ed Zitron]

Year, which is because there's the ASMR of just the slot machines. They're always like somewhere between completely empty or just a few people, but they somehow still make money. I love them. They're the best.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I also didn't realize before moving here that like all of the movie theaters that you would go to are in casinos.

[Ed Zitron]

Yep. There's one in New Orleans and I took my parents there when they were in town and there's just these horrifying giant, like Chuck E. Cheese looking animals. Like a giant statue to them when you.

[Gary]

Oh, that's my jam.

[Ed Zitron]

I fucking love it. No, my parents thought it was one.

[Gary]

I'm a committed robosexual.

[Ed Zitron]

No, sadly, they're not robots. They're just giant statues of rats. No.

[Robert Evans]

It's so strange.

[Edwin Nguesa]

A hockey tournament there. I did not see the rat, I swear.

[Ed Zitron]

Maybe I just like hallucinated. Just these just like, oh yeah, my mom gave me pot or something.

[Garrison Davis]

I don't know.

[Ed Zitron]

But.

[Gary]

And in that cab on the way down, Ed and I were talking about Ed ongueso and I were talking about my new favorite podcast, which is no Gods, no Mayors, which is a podcast about the oafs that are mayors. And on that I learned that Las Vegas is not a city. Yeah, the city of Las Vegas is a suburb on the other side of the.

[Ed Zitron]

When you hear about the mayor of Las Vegas, that's an unincorporated area, right?

[Edwin Nguesa]

You have paradise. And then, yeah, the. When I first moved here, I was like being explained all the different government structures, like a lot of things in southern Nevada run through Clark county just because it encompasses the entire, or not entire, but most of the population that lives around this area. But Las Vegas itself is not the Strip. And then you have North Las Vegas and Henderson.

[Gary]

But the part of Las Vegas you see as a visitor to Las Vegas is an unincorporated county land, right?

[Edwin Nguesa]

Largely.

[Gary]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

So I also just want to be clear, it wasn't Rats. It was giant kind of stoned looking crocodiles. Like, they're just like. They all look like.

[Gary]

Alligators, but they're not animated. Like, what is the point?

[Ed Zitron]

No, they're like these things look like.

[Edwin Nguesa]

They'Re so very disappointed.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, they look like they are. I don't want to know.

[Gary]

They're very. They're very Splash Mountain looking.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Gary]

Like a little alligator minstrelsy.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, God.

[Garrison Davis]

I wonder if they have their own shredder, you know?

[Ed Zitron]

What do you mean? Like a shredder? Like their enemy.

[Garrison Davis]

No.

[Gary]

Yeah, yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Like instead of, you know, Teenage Mutant Ninja alligators. And they've gotta have, like, what if he's.

[Gary]

Who's their sensei?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

It's the people that collect unemployment taxes. Like, they're just constantly at war with them.

[Garrison Davis]

It's like a dude is just hanging in this. In the sewer.

[Ed Zitron]

One thing I'll say is, like, I know this sounds strange, but Vegas doesn't also seem that welcoming to ces. Like it's.

[Gary]

It's.

[Ed Zitron]

We. You'd think that they cater to it more. Like when Raiders games are going on. There's a shit ton of pop up events with this. It's like the only specific drinking specials or anything like that are just. Lenovo has bought a restaurant.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I mean, it's. It's pretty crazy to see though. As you know, I come to the Strip probably a lot less than people would think. Yeah. But I mean, CES maybe not getting drink deals, but it is everywhere on the Strip.

[Ed Zitron]

It is, but it's events where people have bought them.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

It's not like they are. Vegas usually like opens their arms to people in like a. Just a kind of a Can I have your money please? Thing. And I don't know whether it's just CES doesn't treat them with respect or something.

[Garrison Davis]

It's just something they haven't forgiven them from. Disaggregating from avn, I think.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, that's what it is. That's the thing I. They should never have done.

[Garrison Davis]

I don't. I still don't understand.

[Ed Zitron]

Have them support because of fucking purity.

[Garrison Davis]

I mean. Yeah, you know, that I understand, but I understand intellectually they should have them.

[Ed Zitron]

In the same conference hall. Yes.

[Garrison Davis]

Actually, yeah.

[Edwin Nguesa]

It's now at Virgin Hotels, which I kind of.

[Ed Zitron]

Very funny.

[Gary]

So the other event I come to in Vegas most years is DEF con. And talk about an event that Vegas does not roll out the red car yet. We just keep getting turfed out of hotels and conference centers.

[Ed Zitron]

So, yeah, it's Just, it's weird. There's this combative relationship with it as well. It's like, okay, you're here, you're going to spend a lot of money. But weirdly, we don't love it. I feel like both sides need to come together and do something. But I guess Vegas is a city of honest cons and CES isn't. No. And I mean like, that's kind of what I love it here. It's like everyone's weird, so no one's weird. And also we're like very human labor focused.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I mean there's that. I mean, I think like we talked about last year, there's a huge union culture and union participation here in Nevada that for a. I think a state that has a Republican governor and it was the first time in 20 something years, voted for Trump, very union heavy, that there is a big focus on the people who make up the city, which I really have appreciated learning about that and that kind of the culture around this work. Tell me more. I mean, just like there is a. In my opinion, like, I don't know, growing up in New York, maybe I. People would look down on some like service jobs. I don't think that's as much of a thing. At least in my experience.

[Ed Zitron]

Talking to people and splitting time between both, I would say New York has got a hell of a lot better at that. Like most people I talk to. And also if you have a disrespect for service people, chop your hands off for 37 to rip you piece of shit. But I like, yeah, the city's very pro labor and I guess the current state of the tech industry isn't.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Well, I was, I was going to.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah, I was going to conference where.

[Ed Zitron]

It'S like, what if we didn't have people?

[Edwin Nguesa]

Well, there is like a, this like overarching theme of. Feels almost like anti human.

[Gary]

Yeah, yeah.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Like we are trying to. And I mean like tech innovations forever have been like, how do we minimize the labor cost of whatever. But it feels like we're taking it to such a degree and everyone's so excited.

[Ed Zitron]

Everyone's like, oh, I can't wait.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I mean, yeah, there are people who are like excited to see people lose their jobs.

[Ed Zitron]

And the thing is as well like Vegas, one of the best things here is go and fucking talk to the people working at the restaurants, at the door and your cab. There's so many. Everyone in. No one comes here by accident. Everyone like ends up here because they had a few choices they needed to make. And it's like, you talk to, like, one of my good mates, Noah Aronstein, used to work at cas supplier now in S and P in New York. One of my dearest friends. And it's because just Vegas people fucking.

[Robert Evans]

Will talk to you.

[Ed Zitron]

And there's never a case. I've never talked to anyone here. And it happened in New York where there was like, the look up and down.

[Josh Whalen]

Who are you?

[Ed Zitron]

What do you do? No one. Everyone's like, what are you? Like, yeah, you doing all right? There's a genuine everyman culture here. And I don't know if this is the case. It probably isn't at a large scale, but, yeah, I can imagine if you're here, there's a certain degree of fuck off. Oh, you want to replace me and everyone I know and everything I do.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah. I'm not sure how ingrained or, like, supremely aware people are of that sentiment within the industry for, like, people who are just, like, going about their day. But I think, like, it's always funny to see how the ads change in Vegas based on what conference is in town.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I think. I mean, I've certainly picked up on when there's like a tech show. Like, some of them are like, the human need not apply.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I mean, not literally that, but no, it's.

[Ed Zitron]

But that's the intonation.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah.

[Gary]

I mean, there are literal. I don't know if they read them here, but there's a. Oh, in the Bay Area.

[Edwin Nguesa]

That one I saw in the Bay. I don't think I saw that one.

[Gary]

And they did that specifically to drama about. Sure. Right. Because that if people are running around saying, this AI company is so good at what it does that it's going to replace humans. That investors are like, oh, that's the.

[Ed Zitron]

Advertising campaign for LLMs in general.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Well, I was going to say, like, the lie. The fear you're putting people into is making them take your product seriously.

[Gary]

Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Marketing shirt.

[Ed Zitron]

Even though.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I mean, it's just another chatbot rapper.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, exactly.

[Gary]

It's just.

[Ed Zitron]

And I had this conversation on the radio earlier about, like, oh, the MGM's chat bot is replacing concierges. No, it isn't. They just wanted to lay some people off.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah.

[Gary]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Like, also, I feel like concierge culture here is kind of dead because I.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Don'T interact with it enough.

[Ed Zitron]

No, but it's like, it used, like, 10, 15 years ago, you would talk to the concierge and they'd be able to get you into a show or restaurant.

[Gary]

Sure.

[Ed Zitron]

Now there's so Many people, it's just like, can you get me a reservation? Just use Open Table mate.

[Edwin Nguesa]

There was this. Yeah, there was this story I did a while back about this website called Restaurant Trader. Oh yeah, that was. And one of the little nuggets of information that I got out of it that I wanted to make into a bigger thing but I just wasn't able to was that there were concierge folks who were getting reservations sound like through their job to then put on Restaurant Trader that people would pay for on the side.

[Ed Zitron]

That's dastardly.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Where like I think there was an option on the website where you could like pretty much request to work with a concierge.

[Gary]

Wow, that's just so.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah, it's. That's a little anecdotal.

[Ed Zitron]

No Appointment Trader, like is like banned in multiple New York restaurants.

[Edwin Nguesa]

New York City. Sorry. It was the New York assembly that passed a law.

[Ed Zitron]

Fuck yeah.

[Edwin Nguesa]

That was Kittler's company. I think there was a. There was a similar effort here in Nevada. That's why I was writing about it.

[Ed Zitron]

I genuinely think it should be an actual crime to resell appointments.

[Gary]

So the most disgusting version of this. Hell yeah. Was there was a bro who was paying people to call the IRS when the lines opened at 8 in the morning and, and sit in the hold queue and then sell their positions in the IRS hold queue to people who wanted to figure out how what's going on with their taxes.

[Ed Zitron]

That should be a jailable offense.

[Gary]

Well, he was eventually shut down but I don't think he was ever put in jail much as he absolutely 100% like holding your.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Holding a place in line for you.

[Gary]

That's right.

[Ed Zitron]

He should be put in the box. They put Captain. Captain Jack, the hand massage one. No, I'm talking about. Yeah, Anyone watch Torchwood. Torchwood when they put Captain Jack in the concrete box. Oh, go and watch that. Look that up. Yeah, that's where that guy should go.

[Gary]

Can I tell you my best Vegas?

[Ed Zitron]

Please, please, please.

[Gary]

So my sister in law's good friends started a guide to places to romantic hotels called the Mr. And Mrs. Smith Guides.

[Ed Zitron]

What was the romantic hotel in this case?

[Gary]

So we were asked to come and review a hotel and the way that it works is they ring up ahead and they said where the Mrs. Mrs. Smith Company we're thinking about putting you in the guide. We're going to send some anonymous reviewers. What we would like is a voucher from the manager to present at checkout that says these people should be comped but they will book the Reservation as per normal. The staff won't know until you check out. So we stayed in the high roller suite at the MGM.

[Ed Zitron]

Nice.

[Gary]

So it was an eighteen hundred dollars a night, 1,400 square foot, two story suite with a butler. And it was the first time we ever interacted with a concierge. It was very good. This was in 2005. It was the weekend we got engaged. So we came here, got engaged and we stayed in the hotel. I was, I was teaching in LA and my wife had come over and was working for BBC America.

[Ed Zitron]

Nice.

[Gary]

And it was, it was so great. And like the concierge culture and they had lots of perks. The best thing they had was they came and they gave us a menu of newspapers and we were like, how do you get these newspapers? Because it was the Singapore Straits Times and Las Vegas Sun. All these. The Las Vegas sun as well. But no, but Cleveland International papers. And they would print it on 11. But they had a facsimile newspaper service. They printed on 11 by 17 inch heavy stock and bind it in silk ribbon. What? And they would. And so we ordered like 11 newspapers and we would come out in the morning and the butler would have laid them out in a fan on the coffee table. From all over the world, that morning's paper.

[Ed Zitron]

That's beautiful.

[Gary]

International Herald Tribune, whatever. Creamy 11 by 17 with a, with a, like a sort of pinkish silver silk ribbon in the corner.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Was that an additional cost?

[Gary]

No, it was all bundled in with the ribbon.

[Ed Zitron]

I mean, that was amazing. The margins there. When you're getting someone.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Oh yeah, of course.

[Ed Zitron]

2500 to 10 grand a night.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And that's the thing, like, Vegas is a service culture place. Like, shit, we're going Tobago tonight. Robert Garcia over at GM there, fantastic place. Look over the Bellagio fountain. I mean, formally bizarre. Me, I don't have my thoughts on that. But like, there are so many great restaurants here with like lovely service. The great palazzo's brilliant. And even like Main Street Station's fucking great too. Like, the less you get a pretty.

[Gary]

Good pastrami sandwich at New York, New.

[Edwin Nguesa]

York, there is a great margarita deal at the station's casinos.

[Ed Zitron]

But Main Street Station is a microbrewery, doesn't it?

[Edwin Nguesa]

Oh, I'm just saying, overall, no, no, but that's the thing.

[Ed Zitron]

Like you can go, you can have a laugh or if you want to do the fancy stuff, you can go any number of places. I mean, like the whole thing about this city is it's relatively accessible, affordable, and if you want to spend some money, or you can spend some money and, like, have a luxury experience, and it's not as expensive as doing it in other cities. And I just. It's weird how. I will just say this. I don't think people who come to CES are grateful enough for how accessible the city is, in part because CES fucks it up.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah, it's pretty difficult to get into that building.

[Ed Zitron]

Like, they.

[Edwin Nguesa]

The. The convention center.

[Ed Zitron]

I mean, you can go to the Renaissance Hotel, and then they Ubers will be like, I'm being told to go somewhere else. And you're like, mate, I don't know where to go, because CEA doesn't know how to wipe their asshole at this point. How many CES has we done with Uber around?

[Edwin Nguesa]

Anyway, I'm a big fan of the monorail for Dirty Word again.

[Robert Evans]

Monorail?

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah.

[Gary]

Is there a chance the track could bend?

[Ed Zitron]

I mean, hopefully not. Consider. I don't want to diet outside Harrah's. But it. It's like. I will say also that Harris was cheaper this year. Even on, like, an expensive night, it was 300 bucks a night, which doesn't sound cheap, but it is for ces, and which makes me wonder if CES attendance was down.

[Gary]

I. So I'm mad at Caesar's Hera for kicking defcon out. I. I wouldn't stay there again.

[Ed Zitron]

And that's the thing, Vegas. I'm not gonna be romantic. Oh, it used to be. But it feels like that's a. That's a dollar to be made to work with the people at DEF CON and be like, okay, we have security concerns. What are some things that people at defcon could do to make you comfortable?

[Gary]

And then we can make you comfortable, too, also. The last time I stayed at Harrah's, they gave me a room that not only didn't have a desk, it didn't have a closet.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Oh.

[Gary]

I was like, where do I hang up my stuff? And they're like, if you want a room with a closet, that's an extra charge.

[Ed Zitron]

Jesus Christ. What year was that?

[Gary]

That was two years ago at defcon.

[Ed Zitron]

That's supremely fucked up. That is insane.

[Gary]

Three years ago, defcon. Three years ago, DEF con.

[Edwin Nguesa]

In relation to what you're just saying, I thought I'd pull this up. The average daily room rate on the Strip, this is, you know, year to date. Comparing November 2025 to November 2024 on the strip, it's actually fallen 4.7% and downtown, 6.2%.

[Ed Zitron]

Interesting. I just Everything's out of sorts.

[Gary]

But that's the rumor. That's the rack rate, and they're piling it up with junk fees.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Gary]

So the rack rate is not the price. Right. The one you have to add in the junk fees to get.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I believe that's inclusive.

[Gary]

Is that inclusive?

[Robert Evans]

I believe.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I mean, that's the average. That's the room rate itself.

[Gary]

Okay.

[Edwin Nguesa]

You know, that's a one to one comparison. Last year. I'm not positive, but yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

I just feel like there is an ocean of opportunity here for the cea. If they could do one thing right and just like Gary Shapiro come on the show.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Cta.

[Ed Zitron]

Cta. Cta.

[Gary]

Is that cta.

[Ed Zitron]

Cta. I don't know who fucking runs this shit. They certainly don't want to talk to me.

[Edwin Nguesa]

But it's like.

[Gary]

So I have to say, I've known gary Shapiro for 20 years. I've never had a bad interaction with him. I don't know all the dealings of the cta.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Gary]

But I've never had a. I get the impression that he is someone who is in charge of an industry association with several large, important members that like to throw their weight around. And he is the peacemaker and coalition binder of this. This big disparate organization. I'm not going to, like, defend CEA and its members, but, you know, I do think that Gary Shapiro is holding together a very fractious group.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, I've been saying CEA incorrectly for days, so I apologize there. Also, Ben is not your son.

[Gary]

I think they were this. I think they were the CEO.

[Robert Evans]

Okay.

[Gary]

I changed the name to CTA because electronics sounds a little outmoded.

[Ed Zitron]

I just feel like the cta, now I'm saying it correctly, could work directly with Vegas and do way more. There's just. It feels like they could streamline this whole thing and make it a little bit better because it's been here long enough that it's. It's still too chaotic.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I'm not sure about the. The exact relationship they have, but they. They do have a pretty close working relationship, especially when it comes down to, like, construction and renovations within the convention center.

[Ed Zitron]

How about getting people to and from the convention center?

[Robert Evans]

Oh, I think it.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I mean, there was. There's another reporter, Alan Snell, who had a. I'm just gonna call it a tweet. I don't care. That was about, like, the difficulty of biking to the convention center. It's really, really hard.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm so sorry. You're a psychopath. If you bike to that convention station.

[Gary]

You know, I was thinking about e bikes when we were stuck in traffic today and thinking I. This would be faster.

[Ed Zitron]

It's difficult.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I mean, biking throughout Vegas is. Is quite hard.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. I would never.

[Gary]

Is that because bikes aren't allowed on the.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I mean, there's no infrastructure. I mean, there is infrastructure, but there's not a lot of infrastructure for bikes.

[Gary]

I mean, the way it was today, you would have been moving five times faster than anything else on the road.

[Ed Zitron]

But it's like, we've had this convention here for a while, and it's still insanely difficult to get around. And it's not. And they'll probably say, well, you know, this big convention, it's a lot of people. I fucking got around. I went to dinner during the F1. It was not that different.

[Gary]

What if they had helicopters that came in and skyjacked any car that moved into the junction when I didn't have time to complete?

[Ed Zitron]

I like, I'm down for that.

[Gary]

And block the grid. Yeah. Just. Just like, take those cars and then dry and. And then, like, take them out to the Grand Canyon and just leave them at the bottom of the Grand.

[Ed Zitron]

Or a big arm that just took them.

[Garrison Davis]

You're on time out.

[Edwin Nguesa]

You got. There was a. There was a. A little viral clip of the new Zooks.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Car.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, did one get stuck?

[Robert Evans]

That.

[Edwin Nguesa]

And like, it was. It didn't get stuck because it moved eventually, but it was like, in the.

[Gary]

Sorry, that's not. That doesn't.

[Ed Zitron]

Not your company.

[Edwin Nguesa]

But they were just, like, in the middle of a turn in a giant, like, strip intersection for like, a good little bit of time. And everyone around, like, what are they doing? I'm like, oh, no.

[Ed Zitron]

Cab drivers are just saying the most ugly shit of all time.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Well, I just can't imagine being, like, the visitor.

[Robert Evans]

I know.

[Gary]

It's a completely freaking out in this.

[Ed Zitron]

Transparent box as everyone stares at you. Like the Homer Simpson thing where he gets. Gets stuck and has to be craned out.

[Gary]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

I mean, this is a town bereft of shame. But even that. That's a new kind of shame we invented here in Las Vegas.

[Edwin Nguesa]

It's like, your fault.

[Gary]

I've fallen in love with Waymos as an Angelino because you can make a left turn into their path and they'll just defer to you and they won't even honk.

[Robert Evans]

Although they're.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah.

[Gary]

And I'm just like you, right? Roads for people. Not robots yourself.

[Garrison Davis]

It's my. My street.

[Ed Zitron]

Last time I took away. Last time I Was in San Francisco and it took away my. I got out of it, watched as a Waymo in front of it. Got stuck at the inter. No, I watched it get stuck at the intersection. Then another Waymo gets stuck behind it. And I checked back half an hour. That was still sitting. Just like, beautiful. Just like, stare, like by the W Hotel in San Francisco. Just staring out into nothingness as people are saying, yeah, this thing isn't hearing you. It can only see.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Was it San Francisco where a bunch of people just kept calling Waymos to one spot until it just.

[Ed Zitron]

No, sorry. Yes. That was actually. Yeah, yeah. And people putting, like, traffic cones on top of them. I. I think it was really funny when that was happening and people were like, you can't deface Waymos. It's like, this is domestic terrorism. Do people say that?

[Gary]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay.

[Garrison Davis]

Property damage.

[Ed Zitron]

It is. It is illegal to smash up a car. I will accept that. Property damage is illegal.

[Gary]

Is it though?

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

[Ed Zitron]

Ask the cops maybe.

[Garrison Davis]

I don't. I don't think they'd have the answer.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, cops are like, wow, in 40% of cases. Google 40% cops and see what comes up.

[Garrison Davis]

Right. The truth.

[Ed Zitron]

The truth about this specific situation. Yeah, it's. It's unfortunate. I feel like that everything feels out of sync here. I feel like the CTA could work with Vegas and make this a little bit easier. I also think the CTA needs to fucking kick companies out from renting restaurants in the Venetian. I think it's fucking stupid. I don't think we should lose an entire restaurant because Lenovo needs to do the slop hour where they're like, we added an LLM to your fucking laptop, you disgusting pig. You nasty pig.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, they did that.

[Ed Zitron]

They didn't call you a nasty pig, though. If they did that, I'd be fine. If they were like, you nasty hogs. Do you like your slop, you pigs? I'd be like, fine. It's so hot.

[Gary]

What I want is for Lenovo to distribute badge flare. That's a little adhesive backed pointer. Red pointer, nub. Oh, yeah, ThinkPad and that. Like, everyone can. Can go to the Lenovo party and then have the red Lenovo pointer on their badge.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. But if you have a green one, well, then you can do anything to them. Yeah, it's.

[Robert Evans]

Sorry.

[Ed Zitron]

It'S Vegas. Yeah, it's. It's weird. It's just weird.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

I don't know.

[Ed Zitron]

I. I love living in Vegas. And then this. This week, it's just all of the Vegas stuff. That's fun. Kind of turns off. We've had less fun on. Off Strip vent. Like, things. No one's blown up a car. There's not been any, like, interesting stunts. It's like they. Everyone forgot to have fun or make anything this year. It's. It's really sad. It's sad. I'm upset that, like, CES is kind of not having fun and neither is Vegas. We're all just kind of sitting here rolling around in our filth, or at least I am.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Everyone's just staring at me. I'm not filthy. I've been showering every day.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, we're just little piggies.

[Ed Zitron]

We just little. When I was on this show. Show earlier, I felt bad for them, but they were like, well, what about Lenovo's AI assistant? I'm like, yeah, that's just an LLM. And they're like, yeah, but like, what if it. In the future. I'm like, what if it did what in the future? And they were like, well, it would be.

[Gary]

What if we breed these horses to run so fast that eventually one of the mares gives birth to a locomotive? Yeah.

[Garrison Davis]

Stanford was on to something, okay.

[Gary]

He was.

[Ed Zitron]

What if we all shit ourselves enough and maybe our office will wipe themselves?

[Edwin Nguesa]

We need more hay than currently exists on the planet.

[Gary]

That's right.

[Ed Zitron]

We've thrown a ball so fast that it now flies.

[Garrison Davis]

We discovered unprecedented reserves of hay in.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Other countries that were not invaded.

[Gary]

Yeah, no, we're gonna.

[Ed Zitron]

We're gonna all.

[Garrison Davis]

We're just gonna run them for a few years.

[Ed Zitron]

Beautiful. Big, beautiful hay. Big, beautiful. The big. We love them.

[Gary]

That's the. That's the sister town to hay on Wye in Wales. Big, beautiful hay.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, God, like, the whole week, my brain has been broken. Someone sent me a video of someone doing. Trump was going, I made a boom boom. I mean, the biggest boom boom I've ever seen. They're saying it's quite beautiful. Yeah. But this specific week is like. Even the. Like the Trump voice just. I don't know if this is the week to do it. Very sad.

[Gary]

But, you know, is he dead yet?

[Ed Zitron]

Trump? Yeah, he's still alive, Chicken. Yeah. I mean, yeah, he's still going. Now, the upcoming ad you're going to get is for nothing political, nothing weird. Everything's normal here. We're all the most normal people to ever do a podcast in history. And you, too, can be the most normal person ever if you buy and. Or listen to the following advertisement. Just throw your fucking credit card at your phone, you pig. I'm sorry. You're not a pig.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

I.

[Ed Zitron]

Please don't stop listening to my show. I desperately need the downloads.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart, streaming radio and podcasting. Call 844-844-IHeart to get started. That's 844-844-IHEART.

[Ed Zitron]

Diane. I'm once again finding myself in front of a microphone in beautiful sunny Las Vegas, Nevada, even though it's nighttime where I've been for what feels like weeks. And I'm surrounded by several wayward travelers that I adore, starting with another journalist and activist, I think author Cory Doctorow.

[Gary]

Well, hello, Ed. It's nice to be here.

[Ed Zitron]

That's him. And we've got Garrison Davis of It Could Happen here.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

I apologize, we had a podcasting emergency.

[Ed Zitron]

No, I, I, it's fine. I, we are doing it now. And Carl Chouinard of the Las Vegas Sun.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Hello.

[Ed Zitron]

And of course, Edward and Gracer Jr. Hello.

[Garrison Davis]

Who is, who's Diane?

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Are you serious?

[Ed Zitron]

It's a Twin Peaks reference.

[Gary]

Oh my God.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, I thought it was a Cheers reference.

[Ed Zitron]

No, I never watched, I never watched this.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

And that.

[Ed Zitron]

That's Robert Evans of Behind the Bastards.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And famous Cheers fan.

[Ed Zitron]

Famous Cheers head.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And he, Robert is very excited because we have the pieces to make. What was it? We've got a C. Uh huh. We've got, we've got a cd.

[Robert Evans]

Where's Cory Doctor.

[Ed Zitron]

Cory doctor. Oh, so a cd. We've got a Robert.

[Robert Evans]

We've got Ongueso. Use his last name.

[Gary]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Because there's not an O first name here.

[Ed Zitron]

And then what's the end?

[Robert Evans]

And the editor is Matt.

[Ed Zitron]

Matt. So CD rom.

[Robert Evans]

Also some other people's names and some others names. Yeah, sure, yeah. You have to add other names.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

What's a CD rom?

[Gary]

Oh, oh, it's what you. When you have an ISO and you want to convert it to optical media, you take that ISO, you take some optical media and you toast the one onto the other.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. When you've pirated Cyberpunk 2077 and you have to make your computer think that you've put a CD in.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh my God.

[Gary]

When a daddy CD and a mother.

[Garrison Davis]

Cd I haven't played with that in a minute. I missed. I miss pirating again. The little ISO burner.

[Robert Evans]

I miss when the only way I had Microsoft Office was a pirated version that never touched the Internet and didn't ask me to use copilot every fucking five minutes.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it really is sick.

[Gary]

I remember when I started reading classified ads and it was like, you know, swf, ISO, swm. And I was like, a straight white female is an ISO for a straight white male. I don't understand.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, Garrison, was that a legit question?

[Robert Evans]

No, I'm sorry, that would have been.

[Ed Zitron]

No, honestly, if it was honest, that would have been fine.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

It was barely though, because, like, my dad used it for the music he purchased legally on the Internet.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

And transferring it to CDs when I was a kid. But like, I would. I just. I got like the last bit of CD rom, right? Like, probably like my younger siblings don't know what a CD ROM is.

[Robert Evans]

Meanwhile, I once owned a zip drive.

[Ed Zitron]

I had a zip drive. I had a jazz drive too.

[Gary]

You had a jazz.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, hell yeah. No, my. This is the kind of kid I was.

[Robert Evans]

My dad.

[Gary]

I had a drawer full of scuzzy terminators.

[Ed Zitron]

Jesus Christ. It took me a minute to remember what SCSI referred to. So that was the one where you screwed it into like it had literal screws on it.

[Gary]

You had to set dip switches on the back. And if you gave two SCSI devices the same id, all of your drives would go south forever.

[Ed Zitron]

Hell yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Love it.

[Ed Zitron]

Computers used to be used to have to fight with the computer and then.

[Gary]

They'D administer a lethal shock.

[Robert Evans]

This used to be a proper country.

[Ed Zitron]

You know, we used to have jazz drives, zip drives. Now anyone now just Dropbox gives you a whole. A whole terabyte to any. All sorts and sundry.

[Gary]

Unlimited access for the US Government without.

[Robert Evans]

A warrant, but also unlimited access for the chat bots that they sign deals with. You know, let's be fair.

[Ed Zitron]

I did see earlier that ChatGPT apparently is doing a HIPAA compliant ChatGPT, which just is a lie.

[Edwin Nguesa]

What?

[Ed Zitron]

Again, it's a lie.

[Robert Evans]

I talk.

[Ed Zitron]

That's so funny. It's a fucking lie.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Imagine how many chatgpts we've seen in health like wearable products just these past few days.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, and again, we were talking about this on the other show, but you can tell one of the things that you can divide the people with AI products between is the 90% for whom, if you ask them, what happens if somebody like, if there's a Data breach. With all of this biometric data you've put in the cloud, they go what? Or we're really concerned with safety, right? They'll give you one of those two answers, but they don't actually have an answer. And then there's the much smaller 10 to 20% of people bringing products who will tell you right up front the second you come to their booth. This does not touch the cloud. It never goes online. It is entirely on device.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm just, I'm trying to work out how anything ChatGPT can be HIPAA compliant, though it can't.

[Robert Evans]

I mean based on my understanding of hipaa, I'm sure they're working out a deal with, with, I mean now that the government's run by who it's run by. But like.

[Gary]

I sketch out a way that it could be HIPAA compliant. So hipaa, although it's commonly called a consumer privacy law, is not a consumer privacy law because it only affects your rights as a patient and not as a consumer. And so if you were to construct a kind of matryoshka where the inside doll is a consumer company that is providing you with consumer medical services and the outside of the doll is a medical company that does nothing except kind of exist as a fig leaf like that, like the MD whose name is on the private equity owned practice, then what you could say is, well, you haven't given us any medical data, you've only given us consumer data. Therefore it is HIPAA compliant. Like we have structured HIPAA compliance through the compliance regime and not through the HIPAA regime.

[Robert Evans]

Okay, okay, yeah, that makes sense.

[Ed Zitron]

I just think if you feed your healthcare data into this, you deserve whatever comes out.

[Robert Evans]

Like it's just, I would, I would like. It's easy to take that attitude.

[Ed Zitron]

I know a lot of people are being conned into it and claimed it's more of.

[Robert Evans]

And it's going to be, it's, they're going to be conduit into it. The same way a lot of people were conned into getting addicted to painkillers where they will be in the doctor's office, their doctor will have gotten flown out for a vacation or put on a cruise where they were pitched on this and their doctor will say there's a wearable that can help you keep track of your cholesterol. And this 65 year old person will not immediately think like people who professionally worry about this stuff. Is my data safe? What is it being safeguarded? Can a prompt injection attack reveal all.

[Gary]

Of my biomechanical or they'll think I am not special enough and not understand the nature of targets of opportunity.

[Ed Zitron]

The thing I'm worried about is more that it will give you the wrong advice more than anything.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, in terms of objective health realities, that is the big concern. But also, I mean, and that's part of what I'm saying, is that when people, the majority of people, I suspect, who come into these devices will not have made a choice to go out into the world and buy something, they will have been advised by a medical professional they trust that this is a good product for them. And that's part of what worries me in terms of it hallucinating, in terms of it not being reliable, because the doctors probably will not be competent to judge whether or not the AI is reliable.

[Edwin Nguesa]

But I also think it's. That no one can afford health care anyway.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing with, like, AI therapy that I always say it's like it's obviously evil, obviously bad, terrible, it's going to reinforce things. But at the same time, therapy is extremely expensive. And when it's covered by health care plans, which it's often not, and I don't even think therapy's covered under the NHS there. If it is, it's extremely limited.

[Robert Evans]

It is.

[Ed Zitron]

When I was there, I could not find a therapist.

[Gary]

It is hard to find a therapist, but there are. It is covered underneath.

[Ed Zitron]

Then it may as well. Like the thing is, then it may as well not be. And I say this as a big NHS defender and lover of the nhs. Mental health is this weird bifurcated thing where everything's too expensive. So.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, well, I mean, and that was. I went to a panel that was about AI and the future of mental health and I went there hoping that it. Or expecting it to be a normal panel where I harass whoever is up there during the Q and A. But no, it was one very earnest Clinton clinical therapist who was talking about, people are already using AIs for therapy. We have data on how often that's being done and we have data on the harms. And one of the reasons why it's harmful is because the AIs are programmed to keep you using them as long as possible and that there's certain behaviors that they exhibit that are bad for people. So if it's possible to make a healthy, therapeutic AI, these are the things that would need to do and not do. And one of the things is it would not have. It would need to not work the way AI chatbots work in terms of constantly and. And My question for her after the show was like, well, but like that seems like people won't use it and will just keep using the chatbots.

[Gary]

That are true. I think people journaling is a well understood therapeutic modality. Journaling with prompts is a well understood therapeutic modality. I think those prompts don't have to be very sophisticated and I think that there are lots of people who would find it nice to have a thing where when you type some stuff, gave you a response and said, you know, tell me more.

[Ed Zitron]

I think you've kind of like rosebud or something. Like there are ones like that as well. It's just when it comes to therapeutic.

[Robert Evans]

Stuff, I guess more my, my concern was that I don't deny that there is a market and there are people who would get utility and you, you probably could make a device that could handle that responsibly. But I don't see that as solving the societal issue of huge numbers of people using because the chatbots are addictive. Right? And that's what like that, that was my end. And to be very clear to her, I liked this person and her answer was when I brought that up, I have that concern too. And I think it might not be really possible for this to help that.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, the good news is, is that none of this is remotely profitable in any way. And health care data is extremely, extremely token intensive. And so anyone using this is just working on borrowed time.

[Gary]

And in defense of chatbots and medical applications, they are reliably good at upcoding things in ehr so you can rip off insurance, which is great.

[Ed Zitron]

And no, and I've heard that's the one that is the one LLM use. I have heard where it's just like, yeah, find if you're being overcharged in this, which is, you know what the one.

[Gary]

Oh no, I mean overcharging. They're very good at like epic, which is the Electronic Health Health Record monopolist, which is a cult.

[Ed Zitron]

Basically.

[Gary]

They, they've basically redesigned the chat bottom in their EHR systems around upcoding so that they can rip off insurers so that you go in and you say I have an X and a Y and a Z. And they're like, well, that infers. I can infer that you have an A and a B and a C and. And also you need treatment. We can treat X as this category of for reimbursement or that category for reimbursement. I will prompt the clinician to enter a few more details that will allow us this is why clinicians spend two hours doing data entry for every hour they spend doing clinical care.

[Robert Evans]

And that makes me think a product I might want, because there's a lot of agentic AI here, and I legitimately don't want an AI agent to handle stuff like booking flights or booking my car to get repaired or whatever for me. But what could be useful is if somebody coded an AI agent that you could have call companies that you need to call on the phone and fight through their chatbot. And like, this is an optimized chatbot for fighting through other chatbots and getting you out. But maybe that's a product. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Human.com. they already. They've had that for a while. It's. It's funny. It's like, even the good idea, it's kind of already done.

[Gary]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Also, if you use Walgreens, I think if you just type 771, the moment you call, you immediately go to the pharmacist. Yep. Just do that. That's a little tip for you all. Just if you work with Walgreens, fuck chatbots. Yeah, it's. I also just think that it's irresponsible to have a chatbot talk about any healthcare thing just because the nuance of what I even. I might. My further radicalization of that is I think all the fitness stuff is unhealthy too, because you can yourself up over training so easily. And while we're walking out, Corey from the Venetian earlier today, there was a bunch of these AI training things, and it's like, you'll fuck your shit and about, oh, we'll get your age and your weight and that will tell us everything. Not really. Oh, all these fucking channels.

[Robert Evans]

I did. I went to a company called SmartEye who. They have an optical recognition program. And it worked in that they had it read my eyes, and then when I walked in front of it in the future, it would identify me by the name I gave it and the other people by the name they gave it. But the thing that it was meant for is, number one, like several products I saw at ces, if you are distracted, if you're looking at your phone or if you fall asleep while driving, it will try to wake you up or it will say, hey, look away from your phone. And I guess that could be useful. But the other side of it was most of the products that I saw were built into these huge smart dashboards that were like giant screens in the front of the car. And we know that when people are manipulating a big screen in a car, they are as bad as a drunk driver. Right? Yeah. And so it's like, well, you're offering a solution to the problem that was created by cramming unnecessary crap into cars. The other thing that they were showing is that we can see if you're drunk based on the way your eyes look, which they said they got a lady drunk on a closed track and had it identify her. And I have no way of evaluating whether this works. But people, when I posted a video of it, point it out in the comments. I have this issue right with my eyes. I wonder if it's going to just call me drunk. And I kind of wonder, are we going to also see that certain people. They did not. Groups of people of different ethnicities, they didn't test it widely enough. And so it just decides. Everyone of this ethnicity is drunk American.

[Gary]

If you're a drunk American.

[Ed Zitron]

Right.

[Gary]

That's your ethnicity.

[Robert Evans]

I am.

[Ed Zitron]

But also, people drive on the different side of the road, so their eyes would possibly look in different directions. And I always think, and I mentioned it earlier, Microsoft Kinect, which could not see black people. Quite literally. Better Off Ted. Anyone remember Better Off Ted? Great show. Literally, we see you.

[Robert Evans]

And that was the. And I don't know that smart eye has this. Cause I can't evaluate it.

[Ed Zitron]

There's no way to.

[Robert Evans]

I can't really. I did show up. I had ripped a shitload of my CBG joint, which is like hemp.

[Ed Zitron]

What is cbg?

[Robert Evans]

It's one of the many different cannabinoids they figured out how to extract. And that's federally legal for the next couple of months. So I was high as hell. And I'd taken a shitload of my Kratom pills and it didn't notify that I was. Was up, but I wasn't drunk, so.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

So you can drive on CBG and Kratom.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

You guys should not have been driving.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah, driving high is fine. That's omnish.

[Gary]

I mean, if you. If you take a little K, just get. Just get to the edge of the K hole.

[Robert Evans]

Well, that's when I drive best. Yeah.

[Edwin Nguesa]

You can become the richest man in the world.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I was gonna say you can run.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

It turns out you can use. You can use nitrogen in multiple ways in your car.

[Robert Evans]

Look, some of us may have done car nitrous before, and if so, as long as you don't do a double, it's safe.

[Ed Zitron]

Better offline. Brought to you by Carmageddon.

[Gary]

Steve Jackson's Car Wars. Jesus Christ.

[Robert Evans]

That's a blast from the past.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, my God. No. They're doing a new Carmageddon now. It's gonna be nice. Yeah, it's. I can't stop thinking of the eye thing now. It's really bothered me because that feels like there's some. How would you possibly ever get enough data?

[Robert Evans]

I don't. That's the thing is they had a video of it recognizing a drunk person, but nothing that they had at the show. I cannot test.

[Ed Zitron]

They should just get every journalist rip shit. And just to be like, yeah, there.

[Robert Evans]

Used to be bars at some of the. And that's what they should have had. They should have been like, take three shots and get in front of this thing and see if it can tell. Like, that's responsible.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

No, they should have, like, a driving simulator and they.

[Ed Zitron]

Drunk driving.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

They should have, like, shots, and you should be able to go up, do some shots, get in the driving simulator and see if it can tell if.

[Robert Evans]

You'Re drunk driving again. This all sounds great. This is why CES needs to be moved to Minneapolis, right?

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

No, no. Absolutely not. In January. Are you insane?

[Robert Evans]

No. That would mean Drunk driving city in January.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

It's gonna be ice everywhere.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, there's currently everywhere.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Literally is ice everywhere.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, God. Now they should. They should move it somewhere more punishing, though.

[Gary]

I agree.

[Ed Zitron]

It's. Vegas is too nice. Let's send this to fucking, like, Merced, California.

[Robert Evans]

There we go. There we go.

[Gary]

Black Rock Desert.

[Robert Evans]

There we go.

[Ed Zitron]

No, no, no, that's too nice.

[Robert Evans]

You need to merge Burning man and ces.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Dallas.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, Dallas.

[Robert Evans]

Don't even joke about that.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, that would be to. Orlando, Florida.

[Robert Evans]

The most.

[Ed Zitron]

The most painful place in the world. The most. I'm.

[Josh Whalen]

I'm not.

[Ed Zitron]

Not super spiritual, but that place is bathed in evil, and I live in Las Vegas.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Yeah, you live in Vegas. You have. You have very little room to stand on.

[Ed Zitron]

I have a lot of experience.

[Gary]

I mean, if we're going to Florida, London. How about Clearwater? Right, Clearwater. The world's headquarters for flexi disc manufacturing and Scientology.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And, you know, to be honest, a lot of people don't like the culty aspects of Flexi Disc, but I think, you know, there's a lot of flexi disc.

[Ed Zitron]

What is that?

[Robert Evans]

I don't know, actually.

[Gary]

You ever buy a magazine that had a floppy printed 45 RPM record that you tore out of the magazine and put on your turntable?

[Ed Zitron]

No.

[Gary]

That is a flexi disc.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Well, when was this a thing?

[Gary]

It was a thing from, like, the 50s through the early 2000s.

[Robert Evans]

Really? Wow, Garrison. That's basically like a CD ROM, but big.

[Garrison Davis]

Oh.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Oh, I got it. That makes sense.

[Ed Zitron]

I worked on one of those.

[Robert Evans]

It's like a DVD for your ears.

[Ed Zitron]

That might be what finally broke me on this show.

[Gary]

I mentioned on an earlier installment of this that one of my Christmas gifts was this Olivetti typewriter. But one of my other Christmas gifts was a mad magazine from 1981 with a flexi disk. It's the great big beautiful day Flexi disc that had a. They recorded eight different endings to the track and they had a. In the groove. They had a hard stop that caused the needle to pop up and it would land in one of eight random tracks.

[Robert Evans]

That's cool.

[Ed Zitron]

That's actually cool as shit.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Also, that's cooler than anything I've seen in CES.

[Robert Evans]

Hey, technically, based on the standards of CES, that's AI enabled. That's a smart, smart 45.

[Ed Zitron]

Smart flexiness and actually quite literally more reliable than any LLM.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

It's all on device, doesn't connect to the cloud. It's everything we've been looking for in.

[Gary]

Products and it's customizable and user centric.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Wow.

[Ed Zitron]

I love this. This is the only company I respect that I've heard about this week.

[Robert Evans]

I will say, in terms of good products. We saw Garen and I, we talked about this on our show. I talked about it in the first episode with you. There are a lot of exoskeletons products out that are a mix of. And often they're meant for both, but a mix of therapeutic for people who have different disabilities, where they might need the extra assistance offered, and also for like laborers for people working. And I'm also like people doing. Working like factories where they're.

[Ed Zitron]

I saw a shoe, one that I didn't get to see.

[Robert Evans]

There's some upper body ones.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, the hip ones.

[Robert Evans]

And some they're now being also marketed as like. This is really useful for people who are hiking, who are carrying, who are out in the woods. I love. And we got to test one they sent me, they gave me Hypershell, gave me one of their units that retailed for about two grand. They range from about two grand or about a thousand dollars to a couple thousand dollars. But the one we've got is about a two grand unit. Gary and I both wore it. I have some data on it, by which I mean I tracked how fast I was moving. I walked from the Venetian to the lvcc. And normally when I am just walking and I'm not in a particular Hurry. It's about a 19, 20 minute mile if I'm just kind of like walking and not go, which is more or less normal. And my heart rate's usually between like 95 and like 103 or something like that if I'm walking. And when I had the exoskeleton on, my pace was between 1530 and like 1620 as a general rule. And my heart rate was never more than like 1 or 2 higher than normal.

[Edwin Nguesa]

With the same amount of effort?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah, same amount. Like again, my heart rate, you feel it like lifting your legs basically. Like it is kind of moving you. I didn't have any less foot pain. Like by the end of the day, 14,000 steps or so. Like, my feet for sure, because it doesn't do anything to your feet. But my knees didn't feel strained and my lower back didn't feel strained.

[Ed Zitron]

You know what?

[Robert Evans]

I found it pretty cool.

[Ed Zitron]

I like this in a quite cynical ces. I actually really love that these are everywhere. These are actually future tech that fucking rocks.

[Robert Evans]

I actually, I literally thanked the rep who had given them to me, not for giving me to them, but just like, thank you guys for bringing a real thing to the show.

[Gary]

Yes. What happened when you went through the entrance metal detector?

[Robert Evans]

It was fine. They didn't even notice it. Really?

[Ed Zitron]

That's not good.

[Robert Evans]

No, no.

[Gary]

Is that all like carbon fiber or something?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Oh, wow.

[Ed Zitron]

Hypershell should let me have one.

[Robert Evans]

I'm sure we can get you one. I want to try one. And Gary, you used it too. Similar response.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Yeah, we talked about it on like yesterday or two years ago on the show.

[Ed Zitron]

I think it's really cool that again, I've been trashing this show with good fucking reason. But I like that they're doing this. I like that we're finally seeing. Because that I've seen like kind of like shreds of across the years and they're everywhere. In a show that otherwise should be shut down, maybe not the entire thing.

[Robert Evans]

There is. That's part of what's frustrating is there are people doing innovative stuff. Like, I've talked about the photonic muscles. Right. Where it is like a device that replicates the way physical muscles work.

[Gary]

Yeah, that was interesting.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Where you shine a light and it causes it to constrict and you can use it as like a motor and it takes up less space than a motor. But they're not being like. And this is going to be in everything. They were like. We see this as having applications and different, like automotive Things for small motors, and it can make things lighter. And I was like, you've made something that's cool, and you're not promising this is going to be the future of everything. You're not trying to show me how. This is a $3 billion industry. You're trying to be like, and now your car will be a little lighter, and this motor will break less often than the previous kinds of motors that were used in this application. I'm like, that's the thing. Thank you.

[Josh Whalen]

Garrett.

[Gary]

You and Robert are different shapes to be. You know, broadly, I would say. Are you able to wear the same exo, or are you wearing different exos?

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Yeah, we are slightly different in size.

[Robert Evans]

Hurtful.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

The same exo. So it has the back adjusted. The carbon fiber slides on both sides so it can get wider for the hips. I did have it at the smallest option, but I'm kind of. In terms of my hips, I'm kind of the smallest adult size there is. Yes, I am. I am an ectomorph. And then the leg straps also have, like, some pretty. Some pretty strong nylon, so you can tighten in two places for it to. To go above your knee. I definitely. If I was considerably smaller, it may not have fit on as. As well. But, like, it's difficult because, like, I have like, a very, like, twinkish form, like, with some. Some people who are, like, smaller than me.

[Ed Zitron]

A Twinkle twinkomorphic, which.

[Robert Evans]

Which should be.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Which is gonna be in Ridley Scott's new Alien film. Yes, but no, like, if certain people who are, like, smaller than me in a lot of ways might have bigger hips, it would fit on them fine. If someone's hips were considerably smaller than mine, then they might have a chi. Then they might have a problem. But it worked. It worked for my size.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And there is an app which gives you more control over the device and the fitness mode. You can control it all in the fitness mode, you can control it all with a button. But with the button, you're kind of like, there's four levels. And with the app, you could be like, I wanted it 31% or whatever. So you have a little more adjustment.

[Ed Zitron]

And what of kind does. What does upping the power on it do?

[Robert Evans]

It. You can feel it lifting your legs.

[Ed Zitron]

As you walk, and it feels like something on the.

[Robert Evans]

Lifting your body.

[Gary]

Is it like just turning your E bike from three to four?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, kind of. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

It lifts your physical, but it also.

[Robert Evans]

When you install it, you put in your weight and your height, and it will tell you this is probably where you want to adjust it. There's like numbers when you like widen it. This is probably what will work best for your body.

[Ed Zitron]

I like the set.

[Robert Evans]

It's a good product. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

But I wish more things were like that.

[Robert Evans]

I, you know, it's not. $2,000 is not a casual purchase for most people. But it's not like insanely out of reach for a normal person, for a business, for. And it's certainly reasonable for a business. And I think they do worth what they're charging. They do have if you need it.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Their last model from, from last year is like, it's like a thousand dollars. Like this is, this is, this is, this is their new pro version.

[Ed Zitron]

And this is a weird thing. I know that this is a weirdly optimistic thing. I can imagine them being cheaper in two or three years.

[Robert Evans]

I'm sure they will be.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And I think I see this is like $2,000 to be able to walk regularly when you can't.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Fucking cool. Well, and the other thing that I'm working on and I'm trying to get one of the companies that makes a full body, the upper body one too because I have cement in putting on my body armor, like my bullet, my plate carrier and my helmet. And I think that there's an opportunity to create your own like Jerry rigged power armor out of this. And like every American boy, all I've ever wanted to do is be a space Marine. So I really do think, I think there's a potential to.

[Ed Zitron]

So you could be Matt Damon and Elysium.

[Robert Evans]

No, no, no. I love the Elysium Space Marine.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Gary]

I. Warhammer style hams.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Gary]

Do you know they have a fucking trademark they took out on Space Marine?

[Robert Evans]

They sure did. They sure did.

[Gary]

I mean, I mean really Fuck Games Workshop.

[Robert Evans]

Okay. They are, this is a whole separate cut. But like their attitude towards like intellectual property law has been crazy. Like for the last 30 years there hasn't been any movies or TV despite the massive demand for it. And they would sue anyone who created like fan ones. Like there was a German full length fan movie that they had scrubbed from the Internet because the argument was that German intellectual property laws would mean that they would not have full control of their IP if they allowed this fan project to exist.

[Gary]

Which is, I mean this is the trademark argument. It's a story that trademark trademark lawyers tell their children when they're worried about not having enough money to pay for college. It's nonsense. This trademark genericization. Genericize.

[Ed Zitron]

But Games Workshop is otherwise kind of a cool company.

[Gary]

I Thought.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, they. They pay people well, I think.

[Gary]

And they've got good lore.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And they got lore.

[Gary]

They've got good minis.

[Robert Evans]

They're a weird company. I'll say that.

[Ed Zitron]

I enjoy the fact also that they don't even try and romanticize any of it.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

They're just like.

[Robert Evans]

Like.

[Ed Zitron]

No, they suck. Everyone sucks.

[Gary]

They bring enormous pleasure to Riley Quinn, who is a force for good on the.

[Robert Evans]

Riley.

[Ed Zitron]

Coming up. Better offline. We're doing a thing with trash futures coming up in the. That's me announcing it. That's all you're getting.

[Robert Evans]

No, I love hams. We'll be doing it. Launching a hams podcast this year. Hams.

[Ed Zitron]

What, like the.

[Robert Evans]

That's what the kids call it.

[Ed Zitron]

What?

[Gary]

What?

[Robert Evans]

Hams. What?

[Ed Zitron]

Just like the Warhammer.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, Warhammer hams.

[Ed Zitron]

Sorry for a second.

[Robert Evans]

You're British. This is your culture.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I did. I hung out, like, the one happy place in. In Hammersmith, London, where it was the local games workshop thing. I found the space Marine game kind of shit, though.

[Robert Evans]

The new one.

[Josh Whalen]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

It was just repetitive. No orcs.

[Robert Evans]

No, no. They went with Tyranids and Chaos.

[Gary]

Orcs.

[Robert Evans]

We'll get orcs.

[Ed Zitron]

I wanted, like, Yobo orcs, like, so I could feel at home, like, being beset with men going, oi.

[Robert Evans]

My favorite piece of Warhammer lore is that games workshops, Orcs, which started out in fantasy and then when they created 40k, mitigated to that, were initially largely created to be a parody of the Diggers.

[Gary]

As in, like, the Anarchists.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, my God.

[Robert Evans]

One of their games was specifically based on the coal mine protests during the Thatcher era, with orcs that were standing in for the different sides, including an orc that was, like, basically Margaret Thatcher. Like, there was a game. Like, large parts of early Warhammer lore were critiques of Thatcherism because it was a bunch of punks in the 80s who were angry about Margaret Thatcher. That's all been jettisoned long since. But there is in early games, like, Games Workshop Games, there's a lot of weird Margaret Thatcher references.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

I mean, there's an alternative, awkward Thatcher. I love the idea that, like, New York, Newark. Oh, my God, no. I really should have known that one. But no, the Diggers would have been just before my time. So 1986, I was born.

[Robert Evans]

Yep.

[Ed Zitron]

So, like, just before that era. But I did grow up with two parents who were just like, yeah, Margaret Thatcher fucking sucks. Fuck Margaret Thatcher. We're all Neil Kinnick stands here. Well, we're gonna rotate to our final rotation. Our final half an hour. Whatever is coming up, you must look at it, you must listen to it, you must click it forever. Otherwise, this show will simply expire. Please subscribe to the newsletter, too. We're going to an ad break, and then we'll be back for the final quarter.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Radio. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart streaming radio and podcasting. Let us show [e-mail] that's iheartadvertising.com.

[Ed Zitron]

Ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Matasowski. Welcome back to Better Offline for the final core of our CES experience. That was the wonderful Mr. Matasalski.

[Robert Evans]

I mean, that was fine, Ed, but what if instead of a human being, a chatbot had played guitar for you?

[Ed Zitron]

That's not just music, it's sound.

[Robert Evans]

They make. My favorite holiday song, what is the Coca Cola Holidays Are Coming song, which has lyrics that really stick with me, that include holidays are coming.

[Gary]

Wow.

[Robert Evans]

Holidays are coming. Holidays are coming. Holidays are coming.

[Gary]

Something ominous.

[Edwin Nguesa]

It's a threat, whether you like it or not.

[Gary]

Literally threatened me with a good time. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

I love the Coca Cola ad where the truck changes size several times.

[Robert Evans]

I see. Ed, I'm glad you said that, because we are going to make so much money by just cutting that audio out and having, like. Like throwing that in as an ad of just Exitron saying, I love the Coca Cola.

[Gary]

I love.

[Ed Zitron]

That's like the Homer Simpson thing. I love Coca Cola. I love LLM.

[Gary]

My voice is my passport. Verify me.

[Ed Zitron]

You're real good at turning me on. Yeah, this is ces. We're here for the final. It's fine. Ces. This year has been so strange. And I mean this. Even the Metaverse, ces, which was kind of, like, weird.

[Robert Evans]

I miss the Metaverse, ces.

[Ed Zitron]

I miss the Metaverse in general.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

The good old days, Gary. Everything was so simple back then.

[Edwin Nguesa]

NFTs.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, my God.

[Robert Evans]

That was.

[Ed Zitron]

But that was a weird CES because there was, like, not one in 2021.

[Robert Evans]

No, it wasn't.

[Ed Zitron]

They did the virtual one.

[Robert Evans]

2222 was their first CES, and Gary and I, thanks to the Metaverse, made a lifelong. A lifelong friend. For the last four years, every Year we go to Morimoto's in mgm, which is. Sorry. We go to Morimoto's and mgm, which is a really good restaurant, with our friends and Andrew, who is the CEO of owlcat Games. Nice.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Alchemy.

[Robert Evans]

Alchemy Labs is part of. I think, Al. Wait. Sorry. Yeah, you're right.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

Al.

[Ed Zitron]

Roka.

[Robert Evans]

Shit. Is it Alchemy Games?

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

It's Alchemy.

[Robert Evans]

Alroca Games. Sorry. Anyway, we go and we eat and we hang out. Because in 2022, we were in the Metaverse. Yeah. There was a Metaverse party inside the Bellagio where everyone showed up outside the Bellagio. And then at a certain time, there was like a QR code that you scanned and you went into a browser. It wasn't even an app. It was an in browser, Metaverse browser.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Metaverse experience.

[Robert Evans]

It crashed immediately. And no one was able to.

[Ed Zitron]

Fountain.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

It was supposed to sync up to the fountain and nobody could get it to work. And the whole thing completely crashed. It was a massive dud.

[Robert Evans]

And there were guys who worked for the company there who fled.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

They left.

[Robert Evans]

They ran away.

[Gary]

Because Metaverse was the friends you made along the way.

[Ed Zitron]

Was it? Quite.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

So we went to the beer garden, which was across the street. And then we met Andrew, who now we have.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah. Now we hang out.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

And now we hang out.

[Robert Evans]

Every year at the Metaverse brings people together. This was Mark Zuckerberg's beautiful vision all along.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

This was my first CAS Miracle. The first of many.

[Ed Zitron]

But I love the idea of going outside the Bellagio fountains. Like a very analog thing for pistons. That works beautifully.

[Robert Evans]

I thought you're just gonna say piss, but yeah, probably pistons, too. Yeah. I wonder.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't think you can piss in there.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, you can piss in anything.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, they could.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, yes.

[Ed Zitron]

Let me rephrase this. I don't think you could piss in it without getting arrested.

[Robert Evans]

No, no, no. You pee in a bottle and you just toss the bottle in.

[Ed Zitron]

You would get arrested for that. They would absolutely fuck you.

[Robert Evans]

Not if you run.

[Ed Zitron]

One time I was watching those fountains and I watched them kill a bird.

[Gary]

They've got one of those Amazon surveillance masks.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

We had dinner outside the Bellagio fountain a few years ago, and we talked about all the birds who are flying into the water.

[Ed Zitron]

1 just get.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Just like.

[Ed Zitron]

Because the fountains are fucking huge. They look like. You see them on the video. They're giant and they're just pistons. And just a bird. Just a fucking endangered bird. Just bam.

[Robert Evans]

When I taught a special ed one of my. Cause there were a bunch of different Kids. And one of my kids who I worked was this kid who was like 17 years old, so he's about to graduate. He had at the time what they called Asperger's syndrome. Obviously that's not a diagnostic term now, but that's how I was introduced to him. And he was obsessed with pumps, with like water pumps, like fountains and stuff. And incredibly knowledgeable. He had self taught himself and had gotten so good that he had just mailed to whatever company built the Bellagio fountains and builds a lot of fountains. They're a fountain company. He had sent them schematics to design that he had Dr. And they were good enough that they flew the VP of the company out to tell him, like, when you graduate, apply to work with us. We will hire you.

[Ed Zitron]

Did he work there?

[Robert Evans]

I don't. I mean, I have not, but this was 18 years ago. I hope so. He was not. He was in high school when I.

[Ed Zitron]

Knew him as an autist with oddly specific likes and dislikes. I fucking love that.

[Robert Evans]

It's a beautiful story. He was a great kid. Yeah.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

But no, you're right. This is.

[Robert Evans]

I hope this is still a great kid. I don't know.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

This is the weirdest CES since the Metaverse versus C. It's so strange because.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, go on, go.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

No, I.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

They're.

[Robert Evans]

They're.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

They're both. They're both. They have. They both have this hollowness to them.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Because at least last year AI was still like ascendant.

[Ed Zitron]

Exactly.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

It was still going up and now it ascended and now it's going, it's going down. And you can, you can tell because the only thing they can imagine as like a new thing is combining these models which haven't really improved the last year. Really, really combining them with like kind of years old robotics.

[Robert Evans]

It's on a ring.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

This is the only new thing they have, is combining two old technologies in a way that kind of makes it look new, but it really isn't.

[Ed Zitron]

And even Jensen Huang kind of felt like lost.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

No, it's like absent and hollow in a way that I've only felt before while inside the metaverse, which is also absent and hollow.

[Gary]

You know what it needs, though? It needs to be appreciated on a segue, because that was the truly transformative technology of 2000.

[Ed Zitron]

I. All of we were going to change.

[Gary]

The world with the same.

[Ed Zitron]

All of this.

[Robert Evans]

I don't even remember the last time I walked around without using a seg.

[Gary]

Do you remember life before the seg?

[Robert Evans]

No.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

I was born in 2002, I said.

[Robert Evans]

You'Ve only ever known.

[Gary]

Never known a time without Segways.

[Robert Evans]

Garrison's feet have never touched the ground.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it's just Segway to segue. I, I've never been on a segment. I'm gonna be honest.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, man. It's like being on a Segway.

[Ed Zitron]

It's like standing, but different. I see the tours and I'm just like, I really look like a bellend. I don't need to emphasize this.

[Gary]

Steve Wozniak used to play Segway polo, which is apparently the sport of kings.

[Ed Zitron]

My man. I am a British Polish guy. Do you understand how difficult it is to find a way to be more white than me? Like, Jesus Christ. Segway polo.

[Gary]

Segway polo. I did mean. I mean, was. Is also Polish. I am also. I am also Polish and also technically British, so.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Segway racquetball.

[Ed Zitron]

Ooh, Segway pickleball. Jesus Christ. Kill me.

[Robert Evans]

I I Segue technical.

[Ed Zitron]

I I what?

[Robert Evans]

Segway technical. That's put a gun on that some bit.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, someone has.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

That's just when you're open, carrying on a Segway.

[Robert Evans]

That's the only way I ride.

[Edwin Nguesa]

That's just Texas, man.

[Gary]

My wife gave me me a Tabasco holster for Christmas last year, and that is my open carry.

[Robert Evans]

Nice.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I, I, I met was once, and you know what? He's one of the few tech people I've met who I wasn't just, like, revolted by.

[Gary]

He's a mensch. I met him once, I sat down.

[Ed Zitron]

And I talked to him and we talked for like, half an hour, and he was like, you know, you've got to try icab. And I'm like, all right, what's he talking about? He's like, no, it's a share. It's a shareware run by a single German developer. It's completely secure. And it was. You can just give this random developer €25, and I took it.

[Robert Evans]

What else does the app develop?

[Ed Zitron]

No, it's just a fucking working browser.

[Robert Evans]

Okay. Okay.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it just works.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Which is unusual for browser that doesn't have. And I used it. I'm like, oh, I need to ask a question. I emailed the developer thing and immediate response, like, very sternly telling me that I wasn't using it correctly, but what the fuck the Internet's for?

[Garrison Davis]

And.

[Ed Zitron]

And that browser is more useful than anything I've seen here. I do Garretson.

[Josh Whalen]

You've.

[Gary]

You've given me.

[Ed Zitron]

I've been trying to find the words for this. But yeah, it's like last year it was, we're gonna do AI folks. You're excited about all the AI we're gonna fucking do, but you know, it's not there. But we're all excited. This year it's, ah, fuck, you know, do you want a chatbot in your.

[Robert Evans]

Hovers in the physical world now?

[Gary]

It's the potential is always more interesting than the real thing. This is why the right kind of is only interested in potential babies but not actual babies.

[Ed Zitron]

Because they're full of like, they make noise.

[Gary]

Babies like want things and have agency, whereas babies that don't exist, imaginary babies in pizza parlor restaurants or women's uteruses are, are, are worthy and important.

[Robert Evans]

No. And it's the, the, the mix of AI is entering the physical world. This is going to be in everyone's house. Everyone is always going to be communicating with, with and listened to by one or more chatbots. That is the vision. And that is the vision that every time I talk to one of the people who works at these companies, especially the engineers and the C suite people, every time I listen to them in a panel, the default assumption is you will never not be connected to some form of AI. You will always be listening. And everyone wants a chatbot that is always listening, that they can always talk to. And people do not want to use browsers. They do not want to use the Internet. They want to have the digital world be entirely. And that was the. There were a couple of different points in the different panels I went to where people would express their belief that the Internet now we are making content specifically to be scraped by bots. Websites are to be visited by bots, not people. Yeah.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

The most important thing is getting your article to get summarized in an AI because no one's reading the actual article anymore. They're just reading either the Google summary or they're reading the chat GPT summary. And so trying to like, like, like engineer for. For AI. For.

[Gary]

For.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

For AI to grab and use your content.

[Ed Zitron]

Generative search.

[Robert Evans]

Four hours on Monday just doing marketing panels about AI and advertising.

[Ed Zitron]

Jesus Christ.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

And what was the term that they used for this?

[Robert Evans]

Which one?

[Ed Zitron]

For.

[Gary]

For.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

For trying to like trying to do like search engine optimization.

[Robert Evans]

No, no, no, no, no. It was the term that they used was model hacking. Model hacking. Because in the. Again, four hours of listening to people who were like CMO of intuit. Right. People who. And like one of Google's heads of marketing, the only specific. And there was one in all of these panels specific of this is an AI augmented marketing plan that we executed. There was one specific example given in all of these, and it was the people who make Allegra wanted to really push the non drowsy aspect of Allegra. So they used model hacking to ensure that whenever AIs were asked what allergy medicine should I get, they were more likely to pull up Allegra and would always say that it's a non drowsy Allegra. Allegra is a non drow. And also would insinuate this was the other part of it. Via model hacking, they got the chatbots to start insinuating that other allergy meds would make you drowsy. And I was like, that's the one example.

[Gary]

Have we replaced SEO with model engine optimization?

[Robert Evans]

That is my takeout.

[Gary]

Is this all meow?

[Ed Zitron]

Jesus fucking God.

[Robert Evans]

Fuck.

[Ed Zitron]

There's another term, but now I'm calling.

[Gary]

It meow and it's Model engine optimization for web right now.

[Ed Zitron]

Nice. I mean, that's a very classic.

[Robert Evans]

And that was when I got to what is the actual. Because everyone would say AI is supercharging the way that we do advertising and marketing, it's completely changed the game. That was the actual specific, is that we are basically replacing SEO with model hacking. Right? With meow. But the thing is, that's it. That's the idea they've got.

[Ed Zitron]

And people doomsay about this a lot, but it's like, oh, no, we're gonna start changing articles to appeal to a shadowy algorithm. What could possibly happen? Oh, it's like we're in a regression. It's like, oh, what is the big new hot thing? Chatbots. There were knowledge management systems doing this crap 10 years ago or more.

[Robert Evans]

They've got data, and some of the data I can say is very inconsistent and they're not representing it accurately. Some of the data, I don't know fully how viable those studies are, but the data does suggest that especially Gen Z people are very commonly using ChatGPT when they're trying to make purchases. Right? It's just new SEO, right? And so at the moment, it does seem as if there is value for advertisers and you can in fact fact drive sales this way. So that's my.

[Ed Zitron]

But that's my question. Is it driving sales or clicks? Because as many news outlets find, those are not the same.

[Edwin Nguesa]

No, they are not.

[Robert Evans]

They are convinced that it's driving sales.

[Gary]

Do we all know Gresham's law?

[Ed Zitron]

I don't.

[Gary]

So bad. Currency drives out goods. So Gresham's law dates back to when Newton was the exchequer and there was enormous debasement of the currency. And so people would like shave down own coins, they would sweat them, they would clip them. And what is clipping? I'm sorry, it's where you literally clip a piece off the coin.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Pieces of eight. You were literally break, could break into eight.

[Gary]

So, so you have this debased currency in the, in the stream of commerce. And if you are past a bad note, the thing that you want to do is, or a bad coin rather is pass it on to someone else because if you're holding onto it then it's worthless. And so people preferentially spend bad money and they hoard good money and so the bad money eventually takes over the economy.

[Ed Zitron]

But what does this manifest in this way?

[Gary]

So in this, in this case what you have is the bad driving of the good. So if you are, if you have a good product that you just list and you put on your website or if you have factual information, I mean one way that we express it more recently is the truth is paywalled and the lies are free. Right. The bad drives out the good over and over again. On Amazon's so called advertising network where they. So you know when I wrote the chapter in insidification about Amazon advertising, which is where they auction off search results, that was a $32 billion a year business. It went to a $58 billion business. It was on target to be over a $70 billion business business. It is worth three times the annual revenue of all newspapers in the world. And the, the winner of the auction for Amazon search results is the company that spends the most on search result placement, which means that they have less money to spend on either fair pricing or product quality or both. So the top results on Amazon are always going to be the worst products, either the most expensive or the worst quality or growth. And we are living through an era of Gresham's law. Right. The, the, the bad drives out the good over and over and over again.

[Ed Zitron]

I think what's funny is you're completely right. I was sound like an LLM there, but it's like no but.

[Gary]

And I'm very smart for saying it.

[Ed Zitron]

You're not just right, you're smart. But it's.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

And that snazzy blazer makes you look powerful.

[Robert Evans]

And it's also. Have you considered having a Coca Cola with vanilla? I think that you might really benefit from some Coca Cola with vanilla right now.

[Ed Zitron]

I heard you sniffle. It's non drowsy Kyle and I both there in the same moment. But it's also. It's the ultimate point of that with these LLMs, it's like we've reached the precipice where it's like we can control the search engine, the results, the everything. Yeah, except they attached it to the one thing that you're not meant to do with a search engine, which is make it expensive. It's just a fucking.

[Robert Evans]

Well, I mean, but what they see is the utility here. Like, I've talked a bit about Soundhound's Booth. This is a company that makes AI agents that are largely meant to drive sales for other people. But one of the things I didn't bring up that the representative very excitedly told me is that they will be. They are making deals with different manufacturers, with different companies, with, you know, hotels, with restaurants, and they are putting. For their, like, in app car assistant, they have their own maps instead of Google Maps or instead of Apple Maps. And it will direct you to. Like, you can. Basically, the way it will be said is it will only direct you to places they have a financial relationship with. Right. So if you want a restaurant, it will put forward restaurants that have paid them and will suggest restaurants or a mechanic that has paid them, it will suggest. When you go, if you say, oh, what is this problem with my car? And it'll tell you, oh, you need to replace this belt. I'll book you an appointment at the dealership. Jiffy Lube. Right. Would you like to do a test drive of a new car? And like, so there's no. That is what they want. They want a world where every time anyone uses a map app, it's owned by somebody who is basically. If you say, I need to go to the nearest gas station, it is instead marketing you. Just at the gas station, we have a deal with the company.

[Gary]

So I published a story where this was the. The plot in 2005. It was called Human Readable, was published in an anthology by Ernest Lilly called Future Washingtons. It's been reprinted many times since, like, cyberpunk is a warning and not a suggestion.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, the torment Nexus we're bringing.

[Robert Evans]

You say that, but I mean, the cyberpunk I was raised on but was Shadowrun. And I do feel like if I had a troll friend with a machine gun, a lot of my problems would go away.

[Ed Zitron]

I also agree, but I will say none of this works. Like, this is the. I understand.

[Robert Evans]

You're completely right. Separately from a troll with a machine.

[Ed Zitron]

Gun, machine gun would work flawlessly. I actually think it would solve many of the problems I have with this current system. Yeah, almost immediately. But the important thing to say is these are necessary fears and discussions that do not exist and cannot exist with LLM technology. They don't work. They do not work.

[Robert Evans]

And there's. There's so little thought about the seams, right? Like, when I was talking to that guy about their map that sends you to places, I was like, well, what if I'm in, like, a country? Cause he talked about, it'll work in other countries. And I'm like, what if I'm in a country that you have no deals with any of the businesses there? Right. Like, because there's a lot of countries, and that's fly home. Or what if I'm in the middle? I live out in the sticks. What if I'm in the middle of nowhere? Right. And he was confused, and it took him a while to, like, figure out an answer because he kept saying, like, well, again, like, we partner with. I was like, what if you're not partnered with anyone in this town because it's a small town? And his answer was, I'm sure it'll be able to, like, pull up companies that we don't haven't, like, set up an arrangement with. And I was like, out of what database? Where have your guests? He had clearly no one. And it became clear to me no one at Soundhound had ever thought about that.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Like, my mom's doing it.

[Robert Evans]

It's a map app.

[Ed Zitron]

It feels like it should just do that.

[Robert Evans]

It's for going places.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Like, my mother's from, like, a very small town in, like, rural Canada in the middle of, like, Saskatchewan, where it's just. It's. It's just like, prairies and farm towns, and there's not, like. There's not, like, like, big companies. It's all, like, locally owned. Like, small.

[Robert Evans]

Saskatchewan is, like, Canadian. Texas.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

It's like Alberta. Is it just not gonna be able to help me navigate anywhere if I'm, like, driving to go see my family for Christmas and I need to, like, find, like, a gas station?

[Robert Evans]

No, it'll tell you. There's a great gas station that we have an arrangement with 1600 miles away. You should go there. The gas is worth the trip.

[Ed Zitron]

It just says, fly home.

[Robert Evans]

Fly back to receive immediately.

[Ed Zitron]

But that's the funny thing. This is, like, a classic CES theme as well. It's just like, the Chloe Radcliffe. Yeah, but why? Or why does this matter? Or who cares? And they look at you like they are experiencing latency.

[Robert Evans]

I went to the way.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

No, they do. It looks like they're like loading.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, they're not pushing anyone to knock. Not want this.

[Ed Zitron]

This is the fault of the tech press.

[Robert Evans]

I'm sorry.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

This is, this is the funniest part about walking through with you, Corey. You'll ask like very basic, like data privacy questions and they'll just like, look at you kind of confused for a second.

[Garrison Davis]

They.

[Ed Zitron]

They are not ready for Cory Doctorow swag.

[Gary]

I mean, my questions are pretty basic. It's like, where's the data held? Where's that? Like, can I change the battery?

[Ed Zitron]

Computer.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

It's very simple, like all the, of all of the battery questions. And then they'll eventually say, no, you can't change the battery. And they'll look kind of disappointed in themselves. And it's like, oh, well, I liked.

[Ed Zitron]

We talked to this woman who had a dog companion for old folks, which was a relatively.

[Gary]

It was fine.

[Ed Zitron]

It was an innocent product.

[Gary]

Jenny, it was called.

[Ed Zitron]

She sat there stunned. They even and was like, yeah. You know, I just think that if I see a doll on the ground, I'd pick it up. We need to just show. We need to train people to respect these things.

[Gary]

It was a little Marie Kond, like, you should apologize to your sobs.

[Ed Zitron]

But she was suggesting that, like, we need to start treating AI better. And I would like to start this year by saying we need to start treating AI worse. We need to. You see, a fucking AI thing wants me to anthropomorphize it. I'm going to show.

[Gary]

Yeah. The Waymo is waiting to go straight and you're waiting to make a left turn. Fuck the Waymo. The Waymo will defer to you.

[Robert Evans]

I am updating the Hermann Goering quote to when I hear the word chatbot, I reach for my guide. Yeah, like that's, that's, that's where I am.

[Gary]

And I had a. Had a funny event where we were walking along as the trade floor was shutting down. And we passed by this booth and I saw the. On their, on their very weird sign, the phrase differential privacy, which is a subject I'm very interested in. It's an abstruse mathematical way of making, of making data that might be non private. More private. And so I stopped and said, tell me about your differential privacy. And then goes like, you know about differential privacy. And I'm like, I know a lot about differential privacy. And then he proceeded to explain his product, which was the most incoherent nonsense I've ever heard. And they were doing so called federated learning. So there's no federal. And eventually, like it transpired, they want to take robot dogs and use it for facial recognition to find people who are brawling in public.

[Ed Zitron]

This is just madness. This is just madness.

[Robert Evans]

That's the definition.

[Gary]

Differential privacy, though it was, it was genuinely nuts.

[Ed Zitron]

Just this a bit. What does differential privacy mean?

[Gary]

So there's this problem with data sets that you've DE identified. So say you've got like a record of everyone in a territory who's had interacted with the hospital system and you replace their names with a number and you give it to medical researchers and you say go find like, like correlates, go find out like what, what two factors correlate. Like, right, people who get pneumonia are more likely to have had a fall or something.

[Ed Zitron]

Right.

[Gary]

And, and the problem with that is that it's very easy to re identify these DE identified data sets. So Ben Goldacre, who has done the most important work on this in the United Kingdom, always points out that Tony Blair had two heart surgeries while he was in office. We know what dates he had those heart surgeries, we know how old he was when he had them. So if you have a data set of a DE identified data set of all of the NHS data, you can find Tony Blair, you just say find the person who is this age who had these two heart procedures on these dates and that's Tony Blair and you can follow him through history right up to this moment.

[iHeart Podcast Announcer]

Nice.

[Gary]

And differential privacy injects noise into these data sets and you. There's a kind of very elegant set of mathematics that I do not understand that can allow you to quantify how hard it will be to re identify someone based on how much false information you've injected into the data set. And the more false information you inject, the less useful that information is, but.

[Ed Zitron]

The more so it's like a balancing act between injecting stuff to de anonymize it.

[Gary]

And, and so I'm, I mean it's a thing I'm interested in. As I was saying to Ed O, you know this, there's a lot of wish casting here. People would really like make DE identification to work because then you could do a lot of things that would otherwise be really shitty and make people angry. Yeah, just say, oh no, we're respecting your privacy. It probably doesn't like, it's probably the case that in most applications de identification doesn't work even with differential privacy. But it's like when I see the words differential privacy, I, I, you Know.

[Ed Zitron]

Like, I just feel the very specific thing to not be doing. And you're like, oh, yeah, what are you actually doing? What if a robot could see a person?

[Gary]

Basically what it was about.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, that's really where it was. It's like, how do we chase down people of color?

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

This is why I prefer the booth that's in the same section, maybe a few booths over in central hall, which is. I think it's a South Korean company called Dreamy. Okay.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. With two E's.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

But their motto is all dreams in one dream.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Hell, yeah.

[Robert Evans]

That's fucking beautiful.

[Ed Zitron]

This actually reminds me, I've got some really good, like, names. Mr. Cool, Dr. Boss, Astrocytus, Pet Goo Goo Plant, Emoji, Yanguru. Fucking Just fk.

[Robert Evans]

I was, I was a legitimate fan of a company.

[Ed Zitron]

FK Something Fucking. Fucking Tapo. Let's see. I've got. There's. There's more.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

I think what's so representative over this, like, I think it's so representative of this whole CES and the whole, like, current, like, AI Smart moment is all dreams in one dream.

[Josh Whalen]

Really?

[Robert Evans]

All dreams in one dream.

[Ed Zitron]

All dreams in one dream.

[Robert Evans]

Wedding ring. But what if your wedding ring could tell you how to make thermite?

[Ed Zitron]

Here's a good one.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

Also, the ring tells you if you're stressed or cold.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. You want someone to watch your kids. What if that person could tell your kid how to hang themselves?

[Ed Zitron]

So, you know, here's a nice one that is for an app, but could be for Lockheed Martin. Make your inside outside. Oh, hey.

[Garrison Davis]

Pretty good.

[Ed Zitron]

And that's a company called wow.

[Gary]

Now, cyberspace is good.

[Robert Evans]

I love the. And they're usually foreign companies who did not think about some of the implications of their, of their branding or their American name. There was one booth I saw, and I don't know what they. The company did, but I took a picture of it because it just said making it easier to edge with AI. And there was another. And I talked about they had a legitimately good product.

[Gary]

It's like AI enabled.

[Robert Evans]

Goon Cave. I mean, that exists here, by the way.

[Ed Zitron]

No, I, I wrote down the phrase sexless goon Cave while here and that.

[Garrison Davis]

Now we're going to have AI and.

[Gary]

They'Re going to be fucking.

[Ed Zitron]

But I feel like CES is the sexless Goon cave. It's just a bunch of activity.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, people are fucking at this ces. That robot with the, the.

[Ed Zitron]

With the handy.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. No, there's a robot with a fleshlight attached. That's nice. And so the Chat bot will talk to you as you have sex with a chat.

[Gary]

One of the best bits I ever saw Burning man, was that someone.

[Ed Zitron]

Bits you're gonna have to be.

[Gary]

Someone hung a. Hanged a. A fleshlight from a signpost that said Public Fleshlight.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Gary]

And it was not intended for you. It was public Fleshlight, this dusty, kind of clanging, pendulous fleshlight just waving back and forth in the wind. And the dust store.

[Ed Zitron]

If I saw anyone walking up, I'd be like, oh, are you gonna go? You're gonna go?

[Robert Evans]

No, you want to get. You want to wait just to see if they do?

[Gary]

Yeah, that would have been a better bit. Would have been the flesh, the public flashlight. But the public flashlight, it's unto itself, was a photo op of all photo ops.

[Ed Zitron]

I just like the idea. If you see anyone walk up to it, you're like, oh, can I just. You do you want to go? Yeah, no, you first. I insist.

[Edwin Nguesa]

I was. I was gonna send this episode to my grandma.

[Ed Zitron]

I talked about my.

[Gary]

You fired from. You talking about Fleshlight on a podcast job.

[Ed Zitron]

I just want to be clear that the level. The one of them where I talked about my dad's horny level from last year, I mentioned it again, and it was the episode my father listened to.

[Robert Evans]

That's good.

[Ed Zitron]

And he has not brought it up. He just said he liked the episode.

[Robert Evans]

So that's dead. Very rarely end podcast. Do we talk about your libido?

[Ed Zitron]

No.

[Robert Evans]

Privately, a lot. I honestly. Ed texts me almost daily about it. Just as.

[Ed Zitron]

Nothing to date, Robert. Just. No feelings. Just completely empty. No, that's.

[Robert Evans]

My favorite burn art project. Corey was at the regional Texas Burn Flipside. Someone built a giant bug zapper that was like a big rectangular prism and that had a bunch of. So it was all metal and it was all electric, and there were a bunch of different little alcoves in it. In it that had, like, whippets or joints or little bags of drugs. So in order to get drugs, you had to, like, navigate your way in and get electrocuted.

[Gary]

That is actually.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly younger male)]

That is kind of what it feels like to be at ce.

[Gary]

Yeah.

[Edwin Nguesa]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Like trying to get to, like, anything.

[Gary]

Worthwhile, but it's just, like, just getting zapped.

[Ed Zitron]

LLM thing or. Oh, God. Well, as we wrap this up, I have to thank everyone in this room. Robert Garrison from It Could Happen Here behind the Bastards. You've been incredible. Incredible. The support of everyone here. Carl Chenard from the Las Vegas Sun. I was about to say the New York sun, which is a newspaper that collapsed when I was moving to this.

[Gary]

Country at one point, claimed that they'd found life on the moon.

[Ed Zitron]

And that's why they got. They got shut down for. Fired for truth. I think.

[Robert Evans]

No, that's.

[Ed Zitron]

That's a different guy. No, we've. We've been doing so well. Of course. Edward Ongueso Jr. Thank you so much, sir.

[Garrison Davis]

Thank you for having me.

[Ed Zitron]

I truly love you all. You've done an incredible job and all of you listeners have done one too. And thank you to Manasowski, the producer of the hour, the guitarist Philip Broughton, our incredible bartender. He will be here for our epilogue tomorrow. Thank you to every single guest we've ever had. We're also dedicating these episodes to Sean Paul Adams, friend of the show passed sadly last year. Please donate to the Pediatric Epilepsy Research Consortium and Cory Doctorow, of course. Thank you for joining us for today. You've been awesome. Thank you for helping us terrorize people.

[Gary]

Dunk.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it's been really great. We'll be back next year and of course we'll be back next week. Got Steve Burke coming on talking about some CES stuff and games. Nexus. This is an incredible show and we've changed the definition of what a tech podcast could be. Almost said codpass. Just gonna move right past that.

[Robert Evans]

Changing the definition again.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. There we go. Oh, God, I love doing this show. Thank you all so much. You'll get an epilogue tomorrow. Be lot a little more chill. But we are out.

[Robert Evans]

Thanks to the city of Las Vegas.

[Ed Zitron]

Thank you.

[Gary]

No, we're not in the city of Las Vegas. We're in the county of Las Vegas.

[Edwin Nguesa]

We're definitely Clark County.

[Gary]

Well, Clark County.

[Garrison Davis]

Right.

[Gary]

We've established the city of Las Vegas is a area you've never been to on the other side of the airport full of houses. This is not a city. This is unincorporated LA county to the.

[Robert Evans]

Las Vegas strip has, I would say, less vomit and trash cans than last year.

[Gary]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

You know, and fewer. Fewer.

[Ed Zitron]

And yeah, I would. I. I'm truly out of. Thanks to gear. But thank you to the listeners who have come with us for this 20 hour adventure. We will be back next week and we'll be back next year as well. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and computer composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matosauski. You can check out more of his music and audio [e-mail] m a t t o s o w s k-I.com you can email me at ezetteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat wheresyoured at to visit the Discord and go to R betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit.

[Gary]

Our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out.

[Ed Zitron]

On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or.

[Gary]

Wherever you get your podcasts.

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