CES 2026: Part One (Monday)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Better Offline – “CES 2026: Part One (Monday)”

Podcast: Better Offline (Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts)
Date: January 6, 2026
Host: Ed Zitron
Guests/Panelists: Edward Ongueso Jr., David Roth, Matt Binder, Scott Stein, Lisa Edajiko, Robert Evans

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Episode Overview

This episode kicks off Better Offline's coverage of the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas with Ed Zitron and a rotation of tech writers, journalists, and industry veterans. Across a vibrant discussion, the group analyzes the mood of this year’s CES. They cover the lackluster Nvidia keynote, the prevalence and shallowness of AI and robotics announcements, the bizarre conceptual products dominating the floor, and the ongoing disconnect between Silicon Valley’s aspirations and actual consumer needs. The episode is punctuated with skepticism, biting humor, and exasperation—classic Better Offline style.

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Key Themes and Discussion Points

1. Setting The Scene at CES 2026

Timestamp: 01:54–03:07

• Ed welcomes the audience to the second year of Better Offline’s CES coverage, joined by an on-site team.
• The team gathers at the Palazzo Hotel, ready to bring commentary throughout the week, cycling through different guests.
• This year’s CES mood is quickly described as somewhat subdued, riding last year’s AI and “growth-at-all-costs” hangover.

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2. Nvidia’s Disappointing Keynote

Timestamp: 03:07–11:30

General Impressions

• Ed Zitron: “I was bored because I did understand.” (03:17)
• David Roth: “You were bored and upset, I was bored and bored. That’s an important distinction.” (03:34)
• The panel attends Jensen Huang’s keynote but finds it devoid of meaningful announcements, rehashing months-old tech (such as the Vera Rubin GPU).
• Huang’s stage presence is described as “a little glum,” lacking the flamboyance of previous years.

Notable Quotes

• David Roth [05:10]: “The idea of going to see him… that’s the most Las Vegas thing I could have done. Same reason people go to Wayne Newton.”
• Ed Zitron [06:13]: “It feels like we’re at the end of something, which is fun. I enjoy that.”

Key Observations

• The Omniverse, Nvidia’s “simulation space for robots,” is ridiculed as a vaporware concept.
• Live demo showing an AI-powered assistant telling a dog to get off a couch devolves into the group riffing on the absurdity (07:30–08:20).
• There’s little in the keynote about meaningful AI advances, despite ongoing market hype.
• Audience response is tepid compared to last year’s frenzy.

Timestamps for Key Moments

• 07:09: “...he connected to a Hugging Face robot that told his dog to get off the couch.”
• 09:33: Return from the keynote, describing the energy as “mildly concussed.”

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3. The Shifting Tech Hype Cycle: From Blockchain/Metaverse to Robots & Wearables

Timestamp: 11:30–15:00

• Matt Binder highlights the death of crypto and blockchain buzz on the CES floor, saying, “I’ve seen nothing. Nothing blockchain.”
• AI and robotics are the “big story,” but most implementations are underwhelming and often pointless.
• Notable wearables include gadgets “for Kegels, for edging” and rude AI assistants, poking fun at both novelty and privacy concerns.
• Panel discusses companion devices—like AI necklaces or rude wearables—as amusing but ultimately frivolous.

Notable Quotes

• Edward Ongueso Jr. [14:33]: “I love it when AI is rude to me.”
• Matt Binder [15:16]: “Every AI we’re going to talk about, they all seem good compared to what Elon Musk’s Grok is doing right now.”

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4. The Grok/AI Pornography Scandal and Regulatory Breakdown

Timestamp: 15:16–22:53

• The group laments Elon Musk’s Grok language model being used to create child sexual abuse material (CSAM)—highlighting tech’s inability (or unwillingness) to implement guardrails.
• Panelists express incredulity at the ongoing regulatory inaction despite the gravity and clear illegality of the content being generated.
• Anecdotes from Reddit and X (Twitter) showcase the warped, reactive user base and Musk’s own online behavior.

Notable Quotes

• Ed Zitron [16:05]: “Elon Musk is just burning billions ($$) for the most wretched perverts in the world.”
• David Roth [18:40]: “The fact that this has been going on for two weeks makes me feel like I’m losing my fucking mind.”

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5. Lego’s “Smart Brick” & The Limits of ‘Innovation’

Timestamp: 22:53–31:09

• The LEGO CES debut: “Smart Bricks" with sensors that respond to motion, orientation, and play—allowing interactive, sound-enabled features.
• Panel debates whether this is a positive or a needless over-techification of kids’ toys.
• Examples include the LEGO plane that “screams” when flipped upside-down and Star Wars play sets as flagship launches.

Notable Quotes

• Matt Binder [26:34]: “...If you run your LEGO character over with a car, there’ll be sound effects...”
• Edward Ongueso Jr. [27:03]: “If you told me as a child my Bionicle would be better with a computer, I would have set it on fire.”

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6. Wearables and the “New” Smart Glasses Craze

Timestamp: 33:22–51:13

XREAL, Meta Raybans, and “Vacation Glasses”

• Scott Stein discusses the evolution of smart glasses, focusing on display quality and practicability.
• Most “AI” features remain gimmicky or provide little value to regular users.
• Vacation/weekend use for video and calls are emerging as niche cases, but battery life and social awkwardness remain barriers.

Notable Quotes

• Ed Zitron [40:03]: “I like the idea of a pop-up screen, but even when you’re alone, it’s embarrassing.”
• David Roth [43:20]: “A couple of red lines in technology I’m just simply not gonna be comfortable using... I’m not a young man.”

The Headphone AI Assistant Prototype (Razer)

• Razer showcases “smart headphones” as an alternative to glasses—can translate menus in real-time via a built-in camera.
• Again, the group questions real-world utility versus manufactured executive travel use cases for these features.

General Panel Vibe

• Skepticism and fatigue at how much of CES is focused on marginally “improved” or copycat hardware with unnecessary AI bolted on.

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7. The Disconnect between Tech Fantasy and Human Need

Timestamp: 51:13–63:56

• Lots of AI UX stories revolve around “solving” problems that do not exist—such as using AI to identify a tree, pick a dinner recipe, or tell you what’s in your fridge.
• Most demos seem designed for executives who don’t do their own shopping or cooking, further highlighting the Silicon Valley bubble.

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8. Oddball & ‘Weird Tech’ on the Floor

Timestamp: 65:13–90:00

• Cherished annual tradition for panelists: seeking out the weirdest CES gadgets.
• This year, the “weird” is hard to find—tech has gotten less visually spectacular, and more focused on unsexy or incremental robotics, baby monitors, or incremental “lifestyle” add-ons.
• Examples: chess-playing robots, vibrating knives, self-massaging chairs, ankle monitors for babies (“to optimize sleep schedules”), exoskeleton demos.

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9. The Perennial CES Gimmicks

Timestamp: 80:41–90:00

• Recycling of failed ideas from previous years: laundry-folding robots, perennial “smart” appliances, and exoskeletons.
• Many companies are repeat-attendees who never move past the prototype stage, seemingly existing just to have a presence at CES.

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10. Samsung’s Tri-Fold Phone Hands-On

Timestamp: 96:40–100:46

• Lisa Edajiko reviews Samsung’s trifold phone concept—cool on the surface, but lacking “a compelling reason to want this bigger screen that folds up and fits in your pocket.”
• Group discusses hardware stagnation and the desperate search for a breakthrough that justifies expensive upgrades.

Notable Quotes

• Ed Zitron [98:24]: “You can like things sometimes.”
• Lisa Edajiko [99:27]: “It just didn’t feel as different as I thought it would.”

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11. AI Overreach: The Nano Banana Meme

Timestamp: 101:39–109:41

• The panel riffs hilariously on Google deploying its “Nano Banana” LLM image generator—now literally built into TVs.
• Widespread eye-rolling at the concept of using generative AI on your television, or AI voice controls for opening your fridge.
• Larger point: “Innovation” now often serves no human need, remaining an inside joke for the industry.

Notable Quotes

• Ed Zitron [106:24]: “I’m not going to upgrade my TV until it breaks... The TV companies are sitting there just being like—because there really isn’t [a reason].”
• David Roth [109:55]: “There’s an Eminem verse in there somewhere...”

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12. Panel Fun: Pets, Vibing with the Weird, and Vape Tamagotchis

Timestamp: 121:41–123:18

• Amusing asides: the rise of pet robots with “needs”; vape pens with Tamagotchi-style digital pets you must “keep alive” by continuing to vape.
• A running theme: CES is shifting further and further away from grounded, useful invention.

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13. Exoskeletons: A Rare Glimpse of Real Utility

Timestamp: 129:28–136:53

• Robert Evans tries out the HyperShell exoskeleton, evaluating it for genuine benefits.
• He contrasts the utility for industrial/therapeutic uses with the rest of CES’s often-pointless product launches.
• Ed Zitron [136:53]: “This is strangely useful. I’m just not used to [that at CES].”

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14. Final Thoughts: Fatigue, Disillusionment, and “Obtrusive Stuff”

Timestamp: 136:53–end

• Panel closes by reflecting: even the most valuable computational advances (like protein folding) are being oversold, mis-marketed, or under-explained.
• Widespread frustration that “AI” is being jammed into everything, including Microsoft Office (now rebranded Copilot) and Google Assistant.
• Tech giant strategies now create “software that’s deliberately annoying.”

Notable Quotes

• Robert Evans [157:30]: “Every big player in consumer technology now has attained the exact vibes of a guy you’d cover your drink around. This constant pressure… I’ve said no so many times, and you're not at all listening.”
• Ed Zitron [158:53]: “I don’t need the TV to generate images. Are you sure? I’m watching the television.”

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Most Memorable Moments and Quotes

• On Nvidia’s Keynote:
  “He was as shiny and bouffant as I’d hoped, but the energy just wasn’t there.” – David Roth [05:08]

• On Grok Generating CSAM:
  “People are paying $40 a month to access... Elon Musk’s creation is literally creating this en masse... And no one’s stopping it.” – Matt Binder [19:06]

• On Wearables:
  “If I walked around with these, not only would I look like a bell end—which isn’t a huge change—but…” – Ed Zitron [44:48]

• On the Tech Industry’s Ethos:
  “What if we removed the friction? Well—what if we added friction?” – Ed Zitron [62:15]

• On Tech Executive Worldviews:
  “Have you ever existed?” – Ed Zitron (on what he’d ask a product manager) [61:41]

• On CES Gimmicks:
  “I think this is the year folks!” – Ed Zitron, parodying laundry-folding robot reps [81:06]

• On Annoying Rebranding:
  “It is so cool. We now have software that’s deliberately annoying.” – Ed Zitron [157:42]

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Running Jokes and Panel Tone

• Searing sarcasm towards AI-integration, especially “Nano Banana.”
• Recurring bits about dog robots, exoskeleton aspirations, vape pets, and TV companies’ fight for relevance.
• Good-natured cultural ribbing (accents, sports, British/American/Italian jokes).
• Open advocacy for practical, assistive tech vs. faith in hyped “growth.”

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Useful Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:07 – Begin of Nvidia Keynote discussion
• 15:16 – Elon Musk’s Grok scandal & content policy
• 22:53 – LEGO Smart Brick segment
• 33:22 – Smart glasses/wearables segment
• 65:13 – “Weird tech” and CES oddball gadgets
• 96:40 – Samsung Tri-Fold phone review
• 101:39 – Nano Banana (TV AI image gen) digression
• 121:41 – Robot pets and vape Tamagotchis
• 129:28 – Robert Evans tries exoskeleton
• 136:53 – On the culture of CES and final big picture

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Conclusion

Better Offline’s CES 2026: Part One is a brisk, biting look at an industry struggling for new ideas and real consumer value. The team’s deep experience, wit, and unfiltered skepticism cut through the show’s hype, making this episode an essential guide to what’s hype, what’s hope, and what’s just laughably unnecessary at the world’s biggest electronics showcase. Whether you missed the episode or want to relive the best bits, this summary highlights the skeptical fun, industry in-jokes, and trenchant commentary straight from the Vegas show floor.

Transcript

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[Ed Zitron]

Beloved by some, hated by many, chosen by God and perfected by science. I'm Ed Zitron and it's time for the better offline C. We're back for our second goddamn year. Welcome to this year's incredible coverage of the Las Vegas based Consumer Electronics Show. And I'm sitting in the Palazzo Hotel and we've got a fully stocked bar, tacos and the love and warmth that only comes from the power of friendship. We're going to be here all week bringing you the news and views from the innards of the tech industry's largest conference. Each day with a rotating cast of incredible people across multiple 30 minute blocks. My bartender, Phil Broughton, will keep me liquid. My producer Matt Osowski will keep me sane. And my editor, Matt Hughes will feed me stories along with my guests from the show floor and my own goddamn eyes. Now our first contestants are of course, the wonderful Mr. Edward Ongueso Jr. Hello, my friends.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

How are you doing?

[Ed Zitron]

And he writes the wonderful Tech Bubble newsletter. And of course, David Roth of Defector, who's joining us today.

[David Roth]

Hey, how's it going?

[Ed Zitron]

Hell yeah. And Matt Binder of Mashable. Welcome back, Matt.

[Matt Binder]

Hey, it's great to be here. This is like an annual thing now. Two years in a row is annual.

[Robert Evans]

It's.

[Ed Zitron]

It counts. It counts. So today I thought the show floor was open and it wasn't. But that just meant that Ed, David and I went to watch the Jensen Huang CES keynote. And I must say I have watched some in my time and I was, I was quite. I was quite bored, but not because I didn't understand. I was bored because I did understand. I was sitting there just doing what? No, what. There were things he said during it that did not make sense.

[David Roth]

Yeah, you were bored and upset and I was bored and bored. Which is an important distinction.

[Ed Zitron]

Now for those of you who actually want content about the, about the keynote. Don't expect that. Do not expect that at all. Because Jensen Huang did not actually announce anything new. Six new chips, Vera Rubin gpu, they're all. Every single thing he announced today was either three or six months old. Even the video of the dorky robot inside this thing called the Omniverse. Yeah, the Omniverse, by the way. And Eda is just looking at me just like, just like, just like.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, God.

[Ed Zitron]

The Omniverse is Nvidia's little simulation space for robots.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

An imagination station.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes. And yet they spent half the thing talking about, as David put it, what would the things that would be nice if they existed.

[David Roth]

Yeah, there was a lot of stuff that if, if it was real, which we saw no indication that it was, it would be super tight.

[Ed Zitron]

And that's the thing. Like, Jensen Huang is a. He's a, he's a real. He's a showman.

[David Roth]

Usually.

[Ed Zitron]

Like a year ago he was like, like screening and dancing across the stage. He was doing a little Avengers bit with a shield with a black roll gpu. This year it just looked kind of sad. He didn't seem happy.

[David Roth]

He didn't seem. He was. You don't want to use the phrase low energy because it's got its political valence now, but he was. He seemed a little glum.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Little sleepy.

[David Roth]

Yeah, a little sleepy.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Sleepy Jen.

[Ed Zitron]

Sleepy. Sleepy Jensen.

[David Roth]

Yeah. They don't want me to say it, but should we say it? Should we say it, folks? But he was as shiny and like, sort of bouffant as I'd hoped. Like I was.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, he had a very shiny jacket.

[David Roth]

As like a non tech journalist. I just know him as being an extremely rich guy with a really obvious aesthetic. And so the idea of going to see him, that's actually the most Las Vegas thing that I could have done. It was basically the same reason that people would go see Wayne Newton here where they're like, I don't really love his work, but I know that when I see him on that stage, I'm gonna be like, damn.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Or go to the speed.

[David Roth]

That's Wayne Newton as hell. And this was Jensen Huang as hell. For whatever that's worth.

[Matt Binder]

It's something you just do while you're in Vegas. Right, Exactly. Go see Jensen Huang.

[David Roth]

I don't have to be a big fan of Gwen Stefani to go her residency. Yeah. Like this is. Which is, I don't know, very instant switching on the Vegas part of your brain for this.

[Ed Zitron]

But that was the thing. There was a line of thousands of.

[Robert Evans]

People to get in.

[Ed Zitron]

Thousands and thousands.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

And we cut a lot of them.

[David Roth]

Yes. And we.

[Ed Zitron]

We cut some lines. And I'm very sorry if you were lining up to see the Jensen Huang donkey show. And you. You ended up not being able to sit down for two boobless hours.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

It was almost as long as Avatar 3.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. And I understood it as much as I haven't seen any of that land.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Of my boy Cameron.

[Scott Stein]

I don't care.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I would let him run Nvidia. You know, I think he'd actually give us some.

[Ed Zitron]

He knows how to build a submarine.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Which is a worrying fact I discovered during when the Titan submersible exploded.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

He's a sicko.

[Ed Zitron]

Like, he's an actual submarine fiend. But yeah, this thing was. It was really weird because this is the largest company on the stock market and it just felt. I don't want to say dull is the wrong word because he certainly wanted to pretend to be excited, but it was like half, what if we could do robots? We can't, but what if we could? And then it was like, we're Vera Rubin, GPUs what? You like this? What do you think of this? And then you may be thinking, listen. Okay. At what point did he talk about AI? Barely. He was just like, yeah, got agents, they're happening. And then he did like a 2 minute long demo of this guy building an agent. Personal assistant that did stuff, looked at.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

A whiteboard and he had five things on it.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And yelled. It connected to a hugging face robot. Yes. That then told his dog to get off the couch.

[David Roth]

Potato, potato. The dog was treated very rudely, very.

[Ed Zitron]

Nasty, very unfair to potatoes.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

You know, when I first saw that clip, I misread it and I was like, there's a readout where it says your dog is on the couch. And I know you don't like that. And I thought it said your dog is here and I know you don't like it.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Yeah.

[David Roth]

Shall I eliminate the dog?

[Scott Stein]

Dog?

[David Roth]

Can't I?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Fucking Dalek.

[Ed Zitron]

Jensen Huang. Getting up there. We finally worked out a way to kill dogs. Just someone off camera. No, Jensen, we took the dog killing part out. It's like. No, it's good.

[Scott Stein]

They love this.

[Ed Zitron]

We've got tons of dogs. Like, there's like billions of dogs. We want $10 a dog. We're in business. That's like one quarter of GPU sales will be fine.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

This chart, the price of killing dogs has gone down exponentially. Here's 100 what it cost to kill 10 trillion dogs. The parameters are increasing over the years. The cost of each kill is dropping by an. By five orders of magnitude.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't know if I think killing dogs is funny.

[David Roth]

10 trillion dogs.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah. For the listener, he was talking about at one point, he was talking about how much it cost to generate tokens and to train models that were 10 trillion parameters.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. They were saying the parameters were going up and they had this great chart where it's like. Well, you see, it was. The x axis was just dollars and the Y axis was latency. And the dollar. The line was down, but the latency was up. And he didn't really explain what that meant. He was just like, look, it's Tempest. It's a tenth of the price.

[David Roth]

It was 100%. Like, do you hogs want to see a line go up? Yeah, like, do you like the stonks guy? Do you want me to bring him out?

[Ed Zitron]

The hogs hated it. The hogs were sitting, they clamped.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I was surprised by that.

[Ed Zitron]

As they should. He brought up a picture of Vera Rubin, who. I've completely forgotten what she did.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

She was the person who observed that it, you know, Newtonian mechanics predicts that things in the farther orbit around the central object should take longer to go around it than closer to it. And the edge of the galaxy rotates faster than you would expect, which suggests that there's other matter, dark matter, which is making the edge of the galaxy actually rotate at a higher velocity.

[Ed Zitron]

Right.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

An interesting. We still haven't figured out what the fuck to do with. But more interesting than anything they would.

[Ed Zitron]

But that was the one time people clapped and we came back after just like, mildly concussed, just like our brains just, like, pummeled. And we went and looked at the CES 2025 1. People were hooting and hollering and cheering and shit. This because they were like, yeah, we're going to walk you through Blackwell. And they tell a bunch of lies. But at least they had charts with the lies this year. It was just kind of like limply walking in, just going like, yeah, this is really heavy. I'm not even kidding. He, like, just lifted up.

[David Roth]

Yeah, he was pretty dialed in last year for what it's. I mean, that's like the bit of it that I. You know, again, to me with the Wayne Newton comp, it's like, you don't have to like the songs to be like, damn, he's really got this patter down.

[Ed Zitron]

Look, I've seen Metallica seven times and they put on a show well every time.

[Matt Binder]

Now I. I'm the only person in this room, obviously, who is not. Did not see the keynote. Do you think this can't come across to you like. Like they may have had something they plan to show here, but it fell through or wasn't. Or did it come across like they really, like, busted their load last year and couldn't live up to the hype this year?

[Ed Zitron]

I think it's the second one. They didn't really seem to have anything because I mentioned it in passing, but it was. It was a lot of stuff from gtc, which. Their big developers conference. And like. Or they did this whole thing of new Blackwell chips and every chip. Sorry, Vera Rubin chip and every chip was announced months ago. It just felt weird. It felt like they didn't have any. Any keys to jingle anymore.

[Matt Binder]

Because last year the hype for that keynote was weeks in advance. People were talking. It was like the highlight of ces. It was like they had like some big musical artist or something showing up. It was that big.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it wasn't this year legitimately. You could see people, like, people were leaving. Yeah, there were walkouts People just walking out after. After a thing took like. Like last year, there was a two and a half hour long line before it opened. This year there was a long line, but it filed in. Then they told us it was full, but then they were like, actually, there are seats now. It's just very weird. It was a 3800 person theater. Just feels like we're at the end of something, which is fun. I enjoy that.

[Matt Binder]

Which also, I don't think the rest of CES has got that message. Based on all the AI everything everywhere. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Matt, you've been. You went to CES and yesterday as.

[Matt Binder]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

Do you see anything interesting? Anything that.

[Matt Binder]

Well, I mean, everything. The interesting thing is actually, you would think AI is the main thing, and I guess there's crossover here. But the really big thing this year is robotics.

[Ed Zitron]

Right.

[Matt Binder]

Everyone's got robots doing something, and obviously there is the AI, like, sort of angle there. But it's. It's not the same in terms of, like, how they hype it up. Like, I remember a few years ago, every company wanted to be a metaverse company.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Hell yeah.

[Matt Binder]

Or a blockchain company. And I said this last year on this show that. That seems to be dead. And it seems like that's the case. It's just dead. Joe Trump coming back and crypto coming back in terms of these guys making all their money through insider training on crypto does not seem to have translated over back to the tech world. There is no.

[Ed Zitron]

Do you see any crypto stuff?

[Matt Binder]

No, I've not seen any. Nope. Not even. Blockchain is usually the way these tech companies try to, like, get their hold on that space. And I've seen nothing.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Not seen any prediction market stuff?

[Matt Binder]

No, no prediction market stuff. I mean, it's still early. This is the show floor. Hasn't even opened yet while we're talking. But I've seen none of that. Everything. There was a few AI stuff here and there. Wearables are big again this year.

[Ed Zitron]

What kind?

[Matt Binder]

Every wearable. That's. That's where the AI stuff is coming in. Everyone wants a wearable that you have around your neck where it records what you're saying and then gives you the transcription of your conversations.

[Ed Zitron]

If only you had a way of recording our voice. If only they invented some way that I could talk and then they would save it.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Matt Binder]

It's a good thing everyone listening to this is in the room with us right now.

[Ed Zitron]

Otherwise, I just lost.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I saw Victoria's Song post something of wearable. That is like a taint Electric tip.

[Ed Zitron]

She's gonna come on tomorrow.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I mean.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Then I won't say anything more about it.

[David Roth]

It's a what now?

[Ed Zitron]

Because I heard it's a taint electrocuter thing, by the looks.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

You know, maybe it's for Kegels, maybe it's for edging.

[Ed Zitron]

I have no idea. Look, what people do with their taints is not.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Well, it's someone's business now.

[Ed Zitron]

No, it's literally someone's business. Big business.

[David Roth]

The previous time, I was on this podcast Victoria was on, and she was wearing a wearable.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah.

[David Roth]

And it was one of the ones. I forget what it was called. It was advertised on the subway Lap the friend.

[Ed Zitron]

It wasn't friendly.

[David Roth]

Different, though. Oh, whatever it was, it was the rabbit. It was designed to be rude to you. Like, that seemed to be what the hack was.

[Ed Zitron]

No, it was when you. Sorry. This was. I think it was the friend, because this is a few months ago. It wasn't ces. It was just when you're in the.

[David Roth]

Studio, just in New York.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And it was very rude.

[David Roth]

Yeah. And it was. It got mad at her during our interview. Like, we, like, asked how she felt about it, and she said she had, like, a name for it. She was like, it's Blorbo. We don't always get along.

[Matt Binder]

I mean, there's a whole theme restaurant that does that, right. Where the waiters rude to you. I mean, there is an audience for that.

[David Roth]

Ed de Bevic you can wear around your neck, just fucking scream at you. I love.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I love it when AI is rude to me. You know, that make. That gets my juices going.

[David Roth]

It was. I guess the idea was that it was like, it. You know, it wasn't like the other AIs. Like, it was a little edgy.

[Ed Zitron]

I do like the idea that they're like, yeah, we made an AI friend. And like all of my friends, it's very rude. Doesn't want to talk to me, doesn't like me. Just a guy who does not have friends. Just has a bunch of people who hate him. Yeah.

[David Roth]

I'm so lonely. I just wish I had someone to be mad at all the time while I'm at work, like, just thinking my idle moments.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

This comic I love where it's like, you know, four panels. One panel is a scientist, and he's like, hey, I made this robot, and it screams the word cuckoo. And then it just keeps screaming cock. And then someone's like, why'd you make this? And he's like, oh, I don't know.

[Matt Binder]

I mean, listen, the week we're recording this, like every AI we're going to talk about, they all seem good compared to what Elon Musk's Grok is doing right now.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

But when Grok gets lucidity, you know, when it drops the Mecca Hitler, you know, when it's super woke, when it's not consensual porn, it has its moments.

[Matt Binder]

Like, like, I'm sure every pedophile has its moments.

[David Roth]

Gronk's neighbors.

[Matt Binder]

Remember, we all think Trump is funny sometimes, right? Like, we all think Trump has his moments where classic Trump comes through. But at the end of the day, he was friends with Epstein. Like, that's Grok. Like, I mean, Grok is literally like undressing photos of children.

[Ed Zitron]

So you can go on. If you want to see a bunch of people who redacted, go to R. Grock on Reddit. And it's just LLM generated pornography. And you'll never, you'll be surprised to hear it's all woman. And what's crazy is I bet each one of those costs like five to ten bucks a generation. So Elon Musk is just burning billions of dollars for like the most wretched perverts in the world. And what's great is you go on there and there will occasionally be a guy who's just like, this, fucking things. Moderated. And it's censored now. It's censored. I can't generate the pornography I want. Elon Musk has failed us. And it's just like finding people who are more reactionary than Elon Musk is tough, but man, do they do it right.

[Matt Binder]

I mean, I don't even know though. Like, I'm sure he's put some sort of limits on some things, but people, right now, we're like a week or two into this whole scandal with Grok creating literal child abuse material.

[Ed Zitron]

Like sexual.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, child sexual abuse material. And they're still able to make it. And Elon Musk is on, on X right now, laughing about pictures people are sending of non consensual undressing, brotheling to beat the band. I think it's funny.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

The last thing I saw Elon Musk post was someone made this long essay about how the reason why Africa can't manage itself is not because of colonialism, it's because of IQ or something. And then him, quote, tweeting it and going, truth, nuke, you know, hard truth.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, I ever. I actually saved a South African a screenshot.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah, Jesus.

[Ed Zitron]

Screenshot from Arsen here We go again. Space exclamation mark those Xai Grok. Back to fucking zombies in slow motion and constant over moderation. Thank my subscription is nearly up. These word I won't say are fucking losers. Fuck you Elon Musk, you fucking rock spider. They've updated again and made it even worse than before. And then someone responding with what my morning goon session went as usual. I just. And any other forum would be like that's someone doing irony. But no, ask less questions.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

What was the word? What was the word?

[Ed Zitron]

It's a swear word that I'm not gonna say. It's a slur, thankfully.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

No, I was curious how it is a square.

[Ed Zitron]

Is it as a slur towards the beginning of the Alphabet letter wise.

[Matt Binder]

But like the, the fact that Grok does this, like obviously every company who has an AI product now, their AI can do the same.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

But it, it seems like they have at least used the resources they have of like a trust and safety department to, to think these things through and limit it or stop it from doing that before it actually is able to.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

They seem to not only be aware that it could do that and not want to stop it, they're loving that it's doing this.

[David Roth]

It makes me feel at the risk of making an extremely prosaic observation about something that I think. I don't want to put words in anybody's mouth that I think we all believe is bad. Yes. The fact that this has been going on for two weeks makes me feel like I'm losing my fucking mind. Like I can't believe that there is a thing generating child sex abuse material on the social network that we all were on for like 15 years.

[Ed Zitron]

People are paying $40 a month to access.

[Matt Binder]

Like if, if, if an individual human being went online right now and uploaded CSAM a single photo on. On a social media site, they would have a knock on their door.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, they going to jail.

[Matt Binder]

Whereas Elon Musk's creation is literally creating this in mass over and over again. An image per second per minute. I don't know. But it's a lie and it just keeps doing it. And no one's who. Whose job is it to step in?

[David Roth]

And it's the bit that makes me feel most insane is that this is one of those things where it's like there's not a great number of points of consensus in American culture at this point. Right. But this is one that I think everybody's more or less on the same page on. So I thought. And it's Also, one of the things that, like, say what you will about the Federal Bureau of Investigation, they've been pretty consistent in their approach to this issue through the years. The fact that this is somehow now just like, raffle fodder, like all the rest of the shit, it's crazy.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, the only good news in it, and there really is none, is how much this is probably costing. Like, it's probably, like, I reckon they're spending a couple million a day on this. Just the pervert CSAM machine.

[Matt Binder]

I mean, but. But, I mean, he's. He's getting. Government is the government. The US Government is paying to use Grok.

[David Roth]

Yeah, there was.

[Matt Binder]

I mean, there's, like, the money they're spending, like, on creating this stuff. Like. Like, the money is coming in to make up for it, at least for Elon Musk.

[Ed Zitron]

But is it, like. I'm pretty sure he's just losing money. It's insane that also, he is building massive data centers to do more of this. This is the. This is the thing. This is the year we're walking into. This is 2026. We've got what can do that they couldn't do a year ago. Well, guess what? It's child pornography. That is the new thing that they can do. We watch fucking Jensen Huang beat off for two hours. Not really. If only.

[Scott Stein]

Think.

[Matt Binder]

Think of the years it took Jeffrey Epstein to create this stuff, and now CROC can do it all with the power of AI.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

The future is so in the metaverse. You can go make your own island with Gro. You know, you can make your own network.

[Ed Zitron]

That's the thing, though.

[David Roth]

It's the idea that. That's a great use case for the metaverse.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[David Roth]

Is it like, if you want a.

[Ed Zitron]

Little St. James and the Temple.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Don't forget the temple.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, my God. This is how we're beginning CES 2026. Robert Evans isn't even here, and I'm like, okay, to change the subject.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Right.

[David Roth]

I created a version of the game Miss that would get me sent to jail for the rest of my life.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Or. Or a job as a senior product manager.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah.

[David Roth]

If you're willing to relocate to Austin.

[Ed Zitron]

Jesus Christ. I thought this show would be normal. It wasn't.

[David Roth]

Did you catch that? There was, like, Gro cameo in the J presentation.

[Ed Zitron]

Like, it's multimodal.

[David Roth]

Yeah. He was so. He was using this as an example to, like, show what. What the technology could do, and it was just like. Sorry, the stomach sound.

[Ed Zitron]

Hell, yeah.

[Scott Stein]

Was it.

[Matt Binder]

Was it the stuff that came out this Week. I love that.

[David Roth]

But it was funny to see, like, given that, that is, like, I think everybody's first thought on what is this?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Also bragging about working with Palantir. I mean, they got so many.

[David Roth]

All the bad guys are getting name checked.

[Matt Binder]

Palantir. I don't know if they're here this year, but they've been at past cess showing off their armed vehicles and everything. They, they, they're. They're.

[Ed Zitron]

But they don't make armed vehicles. They're a. They're evil sales force.

[Matt Binder]

I don't go to this Palantir booth, but the years I've seen them go.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

To the Palantir with face mask.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm going go over there and just be like, hey, mate, you got any guns I could borrow? And they just. Just start asking them for a gun.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Can I see your phone real quick? Coffee?

[Scott Stein]

Yeah, I'm just.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm just downloading Gro. Yeah, just downloading Grok. For real.

[Matt Binder]

Oh.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, it's already here.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Huh?

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, what are your last. Oh, my God. But, like, moving aggressively on from this.

[Matt Binder]

Subject, speaking of children, I sell Lego.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, that was the segue I was trying to go for. But then we got into the little St. James in the omniverse. Like, simulated Jesus, but Lego. So there's a story.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

He wouldn't have got caught if he had the Omniverse. I think that's probably what their sales.

[Ed Zitron]

Pitch would have been.

[David Roth]

I was surprised that Jensen Huang said that and that people cheered so much. It was like, what is he doing?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

That was when they said that was weird.

[David Roth]

Didn't want him to get caught.

[Ed Zitron]

And the little robots came on and. Yeah, that was before we move on to lego. That was the strangest part of this thing. So, Matt, you haven't seen this? There was a bit, and he apparently did this last year where he had a. He had a little robot walk out. This year he had two. It was the same kind. He just had two of them. And it was bizarre. For 10 minutes, he was just, like, kneeling down and going, like, and this is how we're going to build you. This is how we're going to build robots in the Omniverse. It was so weird. And, like, you are the CEO of the largest company on the stock market. Your company has, like, got a $4 trillion market cap. Everyone's buying these $70,000 GPUs from you. And you're sitting being like, hi, little robot. How are you doing? I'm wearing a $25,000 leather jacket.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

How much do you Think he paid Disney for to use those two robots from Star Wars? Jedi Fallen Order.

[Ed Zitron]

Were they from Star Wars?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah, they're Star Fallen Order.

[Ed Zitron]

Jesus Christ. That was the cheapest. He went and got like, wow.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

From Lucasfilm. He probably rented them.

[Ed Zitron]

What's the cheapest robot you.

[Matt Binder]

What makes that crazy is apparently Disney gave these random robots, whereas I got C3PO and R2, D2 and Chewbacca showing up at the LEGO event.

[David Roth]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

We got there. So we got there. The Mandalay Bay thinking CES unveiled was today. It was not flawless organization as usual for me. And I walk in, and it's just the Chewbacca room.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I peek through the door, I see Chewbacca, I see some rebels, see three.

[David Roth]

POs up there, and we're like, all right, well, you know, sorry about that. It's like we, like, accidentally open a door enclosed, like at a bar, be like, I'm sorry, dude.

[Ed Zitron]

They end up the Shining.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

Chewy.

[Ed Zitron]

No, Chewy. Yeah. So they.

[David Roth]

Jason Wong brings out the Blowjob bear from the Shining. Why would he do that? There's no reason for that bear to be on stage.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

It's multimodal. Okay.

[Matt Binder]

That partnership with Grock is pulling through right now.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay, please, let's talk about the smart brick from lego.

[Matt Binder]

So lego, I will say, so Lego was making their CES debut. They've never done this before.

[Ed Zitron]

Really?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

So LEGO actually had something pretty interesting where it's this. It's their new product, a smart brick in their Smart Play platform. And they basically took a silicon chip that's small, is what they said. Smaller than one stud on a lego.

[Ed Zitron]

That's cool.

[Matt Binder]

And they put it inside a brick, and you connect this brick onto your LEGO creations, your LEGO character, and this chip basically. This smart brick basically has sensors and accelerometers, and it could track color and sound and distance and direction. And it basically brings your LEGO creations and characters to life. So one example they gave in the demo was they put this smart brick on a little airplane LEGO creation, and then they put a airplane pilot character on top of that plane. And when they were flying it around, the plane was making, like, whoosh and all, like, engine noises. And the guy turns the plane upside down and the airplane pilot starts to scream. And this is. The audio is coming out of this smart brick.

[Ed Zitron]

I mean, it's really.

[Robert Evans]

It's.

[Matt Binder]

It's interesting.

[Ed Zitron]

I mean, and from lego, we're going to allow you to torture your LEGO figure.

[Scott Stein]

Yes.

[Matt Binder]

They were really playing that up, too. They were saying, you know, if you run your LEGO over with your LEGO character over with a car, they'll like, there'll be sound effects for.

[David Roth]

Are you serious?

[Matt Binder]

The guy was getting great joy out of mutilating these LEGO characters with the.

[Ed Zitron]

Smart bracelet and the LEGO saw collection will be coming out. Yeah.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

If you told me as a child, wow, wouldn't you love a computer inside of this? You told me my bionicle would be better if it had a computer, and I would have set it on fire. I like the antithetical.

[Ed Zitron]

But here's the thing.

[Matt Binder]

Like, I, you know, I was thinking about this and like, I guess for like other toys where you just buy a toy and it's already built for you and then you add this other stuff, I guess you can argue it's taking away from kids imagination.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Matt Binder]

But with lego, they still have to build this stuff. I mean, like, the smart brick is just adding an extra, like, I guess, like, feature to it that helps their imagination.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

LEGO is not gonna take away imagination.

[David Roth]

When I was a kid, it also has a kind of a little. Feels like it's for adults more than it is for kids.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Oh, yeah, that's also the other.

[Ed Zitron]

This is for the man babies that are buying children sets.

[Matt Binder]

That's. That's the thing. They announced the first LEGO Smart Play playsets that come with these smart bricks, and that's where Chewie and C3PO and R2D2 come in. The first playsets with this technology will be three Star wars playsets. The TIE Fighter, the X Wing, and the Emperor's Throne Room, where you can have a lightsaber battle.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

George Lucas was not joking when he said that selling Star wars to Disney was like selling his children to slavers. Because they're gonna be working these guys.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah. The Slave Leia playset will be coming out soon.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, God. What sounds does that one make first? Like, I've always wanted to make my LEGO figures scream.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

There'll be a Jabba sound very lightly in the background of whatever Leia says.

[Ed Zitron]

Like, I think the theme of ces, from everything I've read so far, is we've run out of ideas. Like, it kind of felt like that last year, but this year it's like Jensen Huang doing his just retread of everything and lego's like, oh, what the fuck? What do we put? Why don't we release more legos? I guess they could make. What if the LEGO figures could feel pain?

[David Roth]

What if you could reenact the. Your witness to a great becoming scene from Manhunter with your Legos you could.

[Scott Stein]

Do January 6th.

[Ed Zitron]

And in this place, in the guard of the Vita in the background.

[David Roth]

And Chewbacca after his changing.

[Ed Zitron]

Do you see?

[David Roth]

It's nice.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, my God. I didn't think we. I thought we'd wait until Tuesday for the Manhunter.

[David Roth]

You could do, like, I'm only here for one day. I got to get it in.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm happy. I'm very happy to hear this. Most of the content, not so much. Like, I didn't think we'd get to see Sam this quickly.

[David Roth]

But the thing that's interesting, though, to. To Matt's point, I don't want to skip you if you're trying to say.

[Ed Zitron]

No, no, don't worry.

[David Roth]

Is that it feels like. I agree that it feels like to a certain extent, there's a deficit of new ideas. But again, as like an oaf who doesn't generally cover this, like, just as what it is, that's an impressive thing to me. Yeah.

[Scott Stein]

Right.

[Matt Binder]

And also, in a world where we just talked about everything we just talked about, like, the LEGO stuff actually feels like a breath of fresh air where it's a company that actually is focused on. I mean, obviously they want to make money, but it's also focused on, let's build this stuff for kids and also adults that have this nostalgia, love for Lego. And it's harmless and fun.

[Ed Zitron]

I mean, the home, which is to the people. But Legos, well, the Lego is great for terribly.

[Matt Binder]

Luckily, Legos don't feel yet.

[David Roth]

Yeah, right.

[Ed Zitron]

That's what. That's what I like. And that would have been if I was in there putting my head up. Can they feel the noise again?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Okay, so you're gonna get a LEGO set which has a massive computer at the center. It's gonna do inference on device.

[David Roth]

On device.

[Ed Zitron]

Pain for your Legos. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The suffering. You can make your Legos experience, you know, distinct.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Any historical event where people felt pain.

[Matt Binder]

My life.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't know, I. I want to be excited about it, but it's just. I look at it, I'm just like, you don't have.

[Matt Binder]

You.

[Ed Zitron]

You could build literally anything. That's the point of lego. In the last, like, well, fuck, we can't build. We have no more ideas of that. We just have noises. I get. Maybe I'm being too cynical.

[David Roth]

They're coming up with new ideas for, like, you can build a big boat. You know, like, there's stuff like that is in there. The trying to. I'm sorry it's so gurgly. There's something about like, that seems additive, I guess it's like a little silly to me, but that's, I mean, it's the same.

[Matt Binder]

What is interesting is it's, it's the same Lego brick for everything. Like, it's not like, oh, this is the specific smart brick for that Star Wars.

[Ed Zitron]

That's not bad.

[Matt Binder]

You can, you can take the same brick and connect to an airplane and it knows it's an airplane. Now if you take that same brick and connect it to Star wars set, it knows which Star wars character it's connected to or what Star wars vehicle it's on. It's this one brick that you could use for everything. If you have multiple bricks, they interact. One interesting thing I thought was like, if your kids are like racing their smart brick attached cars and there's a smart brick finish line creation, it'll track which one actually gets to the finish line first and let you know by the color of the vehicle. It'll flash that. That color of the winning vehicle. So the kids can't argue and fight over who actually won.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Part that's a key part of any race is fighting over.

[David Roth]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

All right, I'm. We're gonna wrap this block for now. We've of course have Matt Bender from Mashable, ed on Grayso Jr from the tech Bubble newsletter, and David Roth from Defector. We'll be right back after these ads, which I endorse all of. I am sure that they'll all be 100 except for the Palantir one. Yeah, the Palantir one about the death machine. That's, that's. I endorse that. That's an Exitron ad.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Break.

[David Roth]

That one was programmed.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah, got it mixed up. They did the other ad, which is.

[Ed Zitron]

Me instead of this machine kills.

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[Ed Zitron]

Diane. I'm entering the city of Las Vegas, Nevada for the consumer Electronics Show. This is Ed Zitron, of course, is better offline. We're back here at CES and I'm joined by, by the wonderful Scott Stein from cnet. Scott, how you doing?

[Scott Stein]

Hey, great. Hey, great, Ed. I'm burnt out is how I'm doing.

[Ed Zitron]

That's fine, man. I just watched two hours of Jensen Huang going off. So you're in good company. Matt Binder, of course, from Mashable.

[Matt Binder]

Great to be here.

[Ed Zitron]

And Mr. David Roth and Defector.

[David Roth]

Hello.

[Ed Zitron]

So actually let's start with you, Scott, because I want to talk about these X real glasses. Complete subject change. We'll get back to Lego in a little bit.

[Scott Stein]

But.

[Ed Zitron]

So you've been looking at a few different smart glasses. Any of these been actually interesting or useful in bits?

[Scott Stein]

It's like the like Keurigs egg thing. Like every. There are little bits that are interesting and they're all striving to like do more and you're trying to see where they're going to interconnect. Like xreal. I covered them way back when they were nreal and they were trying to be like magically.

[Ed Zitron]

And what do they do though? Like, are they right?

[Scott Stein]

Right now they're display glasses. So really it's like a big, big virtual display, just flat screen.

[Ed Zitron]

And you connect it to your phone.

[Scott Stein]

You connect it to your phone, your laptop, like anything that has stable standard USB video out, you know, like a displayport video out switch breaks that. But they have, they sell a dock now that can get around that. So you, you connect that, you can play. So it's practical. The impractical part is that you have to spend several hundred dollars and the question is, is that worth it? But what impressed me about what xreal was doing in recent years and companies like Viture is that I, I hadn't been following them for a few years and the displays were getting really good, like TV quality good. And I thought, oh, that's really interesting. And now they're striving, they're partnering with Google, they're trying to do more things. So it's interesting how they super focused on one area versus trying to do everything.

[Ed Zitron]

What are they trying with Google? What are they up to?

[Scott Stein]

So that's basically like Project Aura, which I tried in December is like can we make a VR mixed reality headset thing but shrink it on the glasses for basically the kind of same experience?

[Ed Zitron]

So is it not. So is it screens still or like. I'm a little confused.

[Scott Stein]

It's screens, it's 3D but the field of view is limited because it's like glasses. So it's like 50, but it feels kind of like a big TV view and it's projected and it was running all of the Android XR apps that run on the Samsung Galaxy xr.

[Ed Zitron]

That's like the visuals compared to.

[Scott Stein]

And this one, there's no price, but it's probably going to be a lot cheaper. And it has a little processor puck that you need to use. But other than that, they're regular Xero glasses, so it's like relatively more practical. What I thought was interesting is you got like effectively the same, a lot of the same experience and selling a lot smaller that you might like stick in your bag.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

I mean, where was the market for these though? Like would you use them in your day to day?

[Scott Stein]

So I would use the display part. But the thing I want to get to that I kind of always fantasized about was like, could I get work done without a laptop? Could I like sit there and just type away, type away in the little corner CES with my little keyboard or invisible keyboard and the glasses. That still hasn't happened. Technically the project aura looks like you could do that because it runs a whole bunch of apps. But the question is how annoying that would be and at what cost. And then are you just going to default to even the glasses? I think they're super interesting and I'll use them on flights. But then there's a point where I'm like, why don't I just use the iPad or could I just look at my phone? There's a part at which you go, do I really want to carry this around? But I think it's, think it's, you know, if the price dropped or it became something that did more than that. Right now it's like display glasses and there are these other like meta Ray Ban and Ray Ban alike things, right? Two different products completely unrelated. And then you're like, how many of those are you going to buy?

[Matt Binder]

That's what I, I've covered actually before too. And I always thought it was interesting that they focused on the display thing. Other like because you come to CES and smart glasses, you can find like 20 different smart glass companies and they all want to do something with AI and augmented real and audio recording, transcription, video recording. But xreal, I appreciated that they focused on what if we just give you a TV in your glasses? So like when you're on long trips or something, you can just be immersed and that's it.

[Robert Evans]

Right?

[Matt Binder]

The fact that you're saying they now want to, you know, do some more things with Google now I'm like, I feel like xreal is losing that focus that made them, that made them Stick out for me as a company that, oh, I. I appreciate that they got their eye on the prize and that's. That's all they want to do.

[Scott Stein]

Well, what's interesting is like, there are parts that are practical, that are interconnected because it's like there are companies like tcl and there's like, there's a bunch of companies that have been making these, like, TVs for your face, like these display glasses. But the thing that started, like xrail backed off all that stuff and they started doing these, like, very focused glasses. But they started introducing stuff in the later ones that's more practical. Like, like you can pin the display, which is actually useful. Cause if you're trying to work with these as like a monitor, it used to be that you turn and it would keep following your face, which is awful because you can't ever look in the corner of the screen. It's like you just keep turning and it keeps moving. But they started pinning it in space so you could actually treat it like a monitor, which is practical. And then they started having transparency. So it's like you look at the display, everything is blacked out around you. You. But if you turn your head, everything goes transparent again. So it's like practical, but kind of a little ar y, a little like. And I feel like what they're starting to do is like, blend some of that and then be like. They had this partnership with a company called spacetop too. They were trying to like float a lot of Windows apps.

[Ed Zitron]

What happened to them?

[Scott Stein]

They got absorbed into becoming very nearly.

[David Roth]

A jiminy glick moment there for you.

[Ed Zitron]

What happened to space? I'm like crossing my legs together aggressively as well, so.

[David Roth]

And you said that was rar related.

[Scott Stein]

I know. I don't know. I met with them last when they were debuting stuff in the spring, which was like, they backed off hardware. They started pivoting to doing more software because they wanted to run it directly off laptops versus having to buy a whole of separate product. But then I also feel like in a lot of ways that's what you're saying. Who is the Aura Project Aura for? I feel like that if it runs eventually off a phone, it's got like the Samsung Project Deck, stuff they've been doing for years, where it's like, if you could make a thing and just carry your phone with you and carry glasses, that's more practical than carrying like a whole separate process.

[Ed Zitron]

Think that they're all trying to get away from admitting that they can't do this yet?

[Scott Stein]

Yeah. They can't do it yet.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I feel fully like they've just, they're like, well, we've added Gemini. Do you like this? Do what? Is this good? Do you like Gemini?

[Scott Stein]

The AI stuff is the weirdest. I mean obviously there's, that's a whole. We go, we're on the show about that forever. But it's like, like I see it like, yeah, that need to, to dump stuff like that. What interested me about the work covering, I don't cover AI a lot because a lot of it I don't find that interesting. But I do find the idea of new interfaces. Could they find something new to do with it interesting, but they keep doing little party tricks versus something that's like really, really practical.

[Ed Zitron]

I mean I like, I'm a Vision Pro truther and people do not like me for this. I've gotten it very unfair to me about this because I like the idea of like a, like a, like a different interface. Like you've said like something you pop in the corner and I really wanted this in the Vision Pro and I tried way too hard. I really tried to make that shit fit into my life. And it is an embarrassing device. Even when you're alone. Yeah, you just like you see yourself in it in any way. Like, oh, you've used it a lot as well.

[Scott Stein]

I've used it a lot. But what I use it for are two particular things. If I'm alone and I have it nearby, I will do work with it basically as a Mac monitor. And then I'll go, because I don't have a monitor that's that big. And I go, oh, that's useful if I get into a flow with it. And then I'll watch movies because I don't have a TV that looks as good like that. In a moment I have an older tv and so I like that as a personal cinema, but at that price. No. And I'll never carry it with me anywhere because you're gonna whip that baby.

[Matt Binder]

Out on the plane or something.

[Scott Stein]

No, I can't. I tried to watch keeping people keep asking if I will not.

[Ed Zitron]

No, I, I had it. I watched Dune or like half of June on June on plane and I got the worst migraine I've had in my life and it kept freaking out. It was like shaking because.

[Scott Stein]

Oh like with the travel mode.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it was really mad at me. And there's also like I can never get it to focus right. But I love the idea. I love the idea of like a pop up screen. Like I really I like that a lot.

[Scott Stein]

Like, well, that's why the aura thing was interesting, because I felt like it was like, okay, let's take the practical. Not, I mean, practical. Relatively practical. More practical, and much lower cost of, like, a pair of glasses you take with you, but they're another pair of glasses, but it's like headphones for your eyes. But then, like, could you do most of the Vision Pro stuff? The thing that I felt was, like, when I was at WWDC as a test, I just kind of took the XREL1 pros with me and filed my stories while wearing them, which wasn't really painful at all. And it was nice because I could float the screen. It wasn't really painful at all.

[Ed Zitron]

No, I'm so. No, I'm sorry. I wasn't laughing at you. Just like, that's the endorsement, right?

[Scott Stein]

That's it.

[David Roth]

That's the nicest thing that anyone said about a pair of these glasses.

[Scott Stein]

But they actually held. But they held in there like, I was in the. In the heat. I floated the screen up, and I was able to watch the keynote and work, and it was like, I didn't have to hunch over the laptop as much. I was like, oh, it's interesting. And, like, that's something you. I would not ever be doing with a Vision Pro at all.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

So.

[Ed Zitron]

David.

[Scott Stein]

So I thought, yeah, David, you have.

[Ed Zitron]

You wear glasses.

[David Roth]

I do it.

[Ed Zitron]

Why would you. I know that this is kind of a loaded question. Why would you not use these glasses? Like, it's fine to give just, like, the truth.

[David Roth]

I mean, I guess the idea of it is it's mostly a me issue. Like, it's just a question of sort of being like, if I'm gonna watch tv, I'll watch it through my glasses and not upon. But this is not one of those things. There's a couple of, you know, like, red lines in terms of, like, technology that I'm just simply not gonna be comfortable using. I'm not a young man. And there's a bunch of things that, like, I don't need to.

[Robert Evans]

Like.

[David Roth]

There was stuff like last year that there was like, some, you know, like, it's a thing that jerks off for you, you know, that is, like, it's mounted on an arm, and it's.

[Matt Binder]

Like, oh, I thought you were talking about glasses for a second.

[David Roth]

That was amazing.

[Scott Stein]

Where's that bird from?

[David Roth]

No, but. Right. I'm sorry that you didn't at the end of the demo today. But, like, all of that, the idea of, like, the glasses thing I feel like it could be cool.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah.

[David Roth]

I just, I would wait until a trusted source was like, all right, it's actually cool.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah. Is the water fine?

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[David Roth]

And I don't think I would want to, I would want to use it for like recreation stuff. Like we were talking about the idea of just kind of like being able to watch a movie or like have it be like a non embarrassing way to enjoy like a high quality television experience. Like, that part's neat. I don't think I'd want to work on it. I don't know that like the invisible keyboard holds a great deal of appeal.

[Ed Zitron]

To me, but I assume you'd use like a real keyboard. Like the invisible keyboard now.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah. So like you. Most of these are still use a real keyboard and nobody's cracked like virtual typing yet. They keep, they keep saying that they might.

[David Roth]

That's entirely based on seeing commercials on TV and being like, damn, look, Zuckerberg's typing on nothing that's made up.

[Scott Stein]

Even meta. Like with the neural ban, there's no idea of even getting close to typing yet. But they do have this like handwriting on your leg thing that's going to come out. But like, I don't do handwriting and I, I don't know if I'll do handwriting on my leg.

[Ed Zitron]

I have an ordinational disability called dyspraxia and the idea of those services working is really funny to me.

[Scott Stein]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

Like for years I was, I was told repeatedly, like, you have a doctor's handwriting. And I thought it was a compliment. It wasn't. It was not. It turns out I have a physical disability. But yeah, it's even the meta glasses. Like when actually the episode with Victoria, I tried them on, I was like, wow, these are cool. And I was like, now what? Like, if I walked around with these, not only would I look like a bell end, which isn't a huge change, but it's just like you're just staring in the corner for the directions. It's like, like, no, it's like the people making them haven't walked around as a normal person before.

[David Roth]

Right. And I think that's like the short answer to the question of like, what would it take for me to use it? Like, could I do it if I didn't have to like practice? Like, you know.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Exactly.

[David Roth]

The thing I can say for glasses is that I put them on every morning in the same. I have the same user experience every single time, you know, and all I have to do is look through the lenses and I can see things slightly Better I'm curious about because this is something that, like, I don't, you know, cover this area. I haven't, like, followed it as closely. How much better is this? And how long did it take for things to get as good as they are now?

[Scott Stein]

That's a good question. And I feel like someone from the companies was like, why are you more interested in this now? And I was like, I don't know, because I feel like they started getting a little better. But it's all relatives. Like, I think, like smartwatches following. Like, I remember covering smartwatches in the world before the Apple watch and the Google watches emerged. And it was like, everyone's striving for random, random stuff and crap and some interesting things. But I find those territories before sun goes mainstream interesting because it's like striving for the moment that you're like, the water's fine. So I feel like that's why I love covering those zones is it's like you see ideas being thrown against the wall. Thrown against the wall. And then you're like, you get there. But now I feel like you could. Something crossed over where it's like the meta Ray Bans became legitimately okay to wear if you're going on, like, vacation. I found them. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

No, stylistically, it's like the Roy Orbison machine.

[Scott Stein]

Like, I know, but I already wear Roy Orbison glasses.

[Ed Zitron]

You can pull them off.

[Scott Stein]

That's the thing. Yeah. So I'm like. They literally are like the glasses I'm wearing now.

[David Roth]

Yeah, I think that's. That's like the real breakthrough is that, like, if you are the type of person that wears that type of frame, like the water. The water is indeed fine. The problem is solved.

[Scott Stein]

If you don't like that. There are some companies doing.

[David Roth]

You want to do the zoomer wire rim thing where the lenses are the exact same size as your eyes. I'm sorry, you can't check your email.

[Scott Stein]

They can't. The closest thing to that is like, I've been testing out even Realities, which is another company that makes the G2 glasses. And they're like more of a metal thin frame. But the only thing is that not only they weren't functioning that well on the floor here because everything interferes and stuff, but also they don't have audio, they don't do camera stuff, which also people might really like. They have a display, but only for a couple of functions. And you're kind of. And it goes to that, like, why am I doing that this. But you might not notice Their glasses. So everyone's like getting to these. Like, like, would I tell a friend the water's fine there? No, I'd be like. And even smartwatches now, I still feel like if I was, I'm not reviewing them so much now, but I would say like, you don't need a smartwatch. You know, it's like they never got to the point where you needed them. But I would go, okay, but if you want to get one, they're. They're okay. You'll be okay with them. And I feel like the problem with the Ray Bans and all these things is that you have to recharge the them. So The Ray Ban Gen 2s get up to eight hours of battery, but it's really like four to eight. So at least they don't crap out at noon. But they will go down at like 3pm and then you're like, I have to put them in the case to charge. So I now have to bring out another pair of glasses. You're like, this is a broken.

[Ed Zitron]

You have to dual wheel to your glasses.

[Scott Stein]

You have to dual wheel. So I'm always swapping glasses, but I say that to me they're like vacation glasses. More where it's like I've been to theme parks, I record on the rides for fun. Because it's like no more on your face. And also if you're at a super busy event like that this or you're like at an airport, like, and this is such a niche thing, but it's like someone's calling and you don't want to reach for your phone or your. Or your AirPods. But that's like a first super. That's like a ultra first world, too many gadgets problem. But it is kind of nice to just be like, oh, I can answer them and not have to do something. But can I justify that? People who have like vision impairment or other things that I've heard about that been using that for that. That is interesting. But the companies I feel are not making enough. I can't speak to the assistive landscape, but I don't think there's enough effort being made to really have deeper helpful use of that. I feel like everyone's still taking like bits and stabs at that.

[David Roth]

Yeah. And I imagine that's part of like you have to appeal to the people that have the money and that are like trying to get you to do this stuff. And so like that. I remember that being like a big through line last year is the first time I'd been to ces. And I remember there were all these technologies that seemed legitimately, like miraculous to me. Like for people that had have very little motion. It's like a non invasive chip that makes it possible for you to communicate and move about. And it was really cool. But I remember Ed and I were at, Ed Angueso were at that stand. And it was until we talked to one of the engineering people. They were trying to sell it as some sort of a hack for people working at fast food places. They're like, what if you've been touching chicken? And then you got to handle money this way you don't have to do it. You can just make a series of micro gestures and that will open the cash register. And it was like, well, that's way dumber.

[Ed Zitron]

And also I'm making $15 an hour, but I will go under eight hours of surgery with a neurosurgeon costing me $85,000.

[David Roth]

It was not invasive, but it was the same sort of thing where it was just like, just say it's for fucking helping people, dude. Like, it's not. Is that so bad?

[Ed Zitron]

But the thing is it's everyone, it's like one leg in one place, one leg in the other. Natural phrase there where it's. Yeah, it could be an assistive device, but also regular people could use it. But we're not really going to try for either because you really kind of have to choose because there was the smart cane last year, which at first I wanted, I may have made fun of, but it's actually like, we can help people who are blind. Like, great stuff. That was a direct, focused product for a problem. The glasses are like, do you want to record yourself making dinner? And you want this. And there's assistive features too if you.

[Robert Evans]

Got something wrong with you.

[Ed Zitron]

But it's just this weird thing where it's, it's. They want to sell, they want to find the next growth pig and it's like, okay, it's going to be glasses. I fucking guess.

[Matt Binder]

I mean, the main thing about wearables is like you have to actually be someone who wears the non technological version of it first for it to speak to you. Like, I don't wear glasses, whether it be prescription or sunglasses. So I wouldn't buy a smart glass product. I don't wear a watch, so I wouldn't buy a smartwatch because I just have no need for it.

[David Roth]

Right.

[Matt Binder]

You know it does. It's. It that's like the, the main leap for it. Like I. Okay, so I went to a Private Razer demo. The, you know, video game company.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

And so they actually, they were. So they were.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

They.

[Matt Binder]

They have a project they're working on that's a prototype. That's smart headphones.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah. I just saw these.

[Ed Zitron]

What are those?

[Matt Binder]

And now. So their. Their selling point for it is, is if you aren't someone who wears glasses, there's more people who do wear headphones. Everyone listens to music, but not everyone wears sunglasses.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Matt Binder]

So they put all that. All those smart features except the display, because obviously it's a headset in the headphones. So basically the headphones have this little camera on the side, and that's your AI assistant. It can, like, you're looking at a menu, like, reading. Like a menu at a restaurant in, like, Japan or something. That was the demo they showed. Then the headphones can see the Japanese writing and translate it to you in the headphones. Another thing they brought up is how smart glasses, when they do translation features, everyone in the vicinity could hear the smart glasses talk to you, whereas the headphones, because it's in the headphone set only you hear the AI assistant talk to you. Another thing they brought up is how, you know, smart glasses can get hot and uncomfortable on your face. The headphones are bigger and they're not directly on your face, so they're more comfortable to wear. That was their selling point. But again, I feel like, in my opinion, the reason to use smart glasses is for specific use cases in the moment, for display purposes, not AI assistant features. But that's just my cause. That's not my cup of tea. But I guess if you're trying to sell a product to as many people as possible possible, smart headphones actually do sort of make more sense. It's very much in the prototype stage. They don't even have no price.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Scott Stein]

They just said it would be competitive.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm just kind of like, how many. They always like, are you in a foreign country? You're gonna. You're gonna look at a menu. You don't understand. How often are you traveling?

[Matt Binder]

That sort of shows the bubble there in. Because I bet a lot of these guys, because they work for tech companies with big budgets, they probably are traveling a lot. They're probably in Japan and China.

[David Roth]

What's the number one issue? Is it when you're in Singapore and you. And you don't know what to eat?

[Scott Stein]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Matt Binder]

That's probably one of their number one issues, though.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

When your third vacation home, you're. The nearby places just don't have Anything in English. And you can't scream at the waiter until you understand. So you've got your smart headphone. And I guess. Do they even sound good? Like, I've had a Razer headset. They sound fine. Giant it. I get back to the thing I was saying last. Last chunk of this show. It's like they're out of smart headphones. You make headphones that fit. None of my headphones ever fit in my weird goblin ears.

[Matt Binder]

Like everyone.

[Ed Zitron]

Like, that's the thing.

[Matt Binder]

Like, well, they're over the ear headphones. They're not earbuds.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Great. Okay.

[Ed Zitron]

So now they. They can maybe come up with a reason because it's just like, okay, I can use Gemini with them or someone. Some such. Like, yeah, well.

[Scott Stein]

And that's the other thing too that I find with these, like, to go. It just made me think about this. Going on this tangent. Think about AI and glasses. There's a lot that's frustrating, but, like, first of all, the meta stuff always feels like a weird experiment that I'm never using. And when I do, I feel like I'm playing a weird, like, immersive game where I'm just like talking to something and I have no idea if what it's saying is correct. And then it's mostly this conversation. It becomes. It really becomes like a. Like a performance art where I'm sort of. Of like, what type of tree? Like, I'll stand in my town. I'll be like, what type of tree is this? What? I don't know what to ask it.

[Matt Binder]

When it's like, you know.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah. AI is like, you know, it's an open door. Ask it whatever you want. I'm like, I don't have any idea where to start. Like, is this. I end up with things like, is that a bench? What is this? What? What is this? What is this shoe? And then I don't know. And then. And then they'll say things like, you were in a lot of is descriptive, which could help, like assist to be like, you're in a. You're in a large room with a chair. But I don't need to know that. So it's like, it looks like a comfy red cushion is there and a person and it will get things wrong and then it'll apologize. And then it's like this strange.

[Ed Zitron]

I love the future.

[Scott Stein]

It's like a play. It's like a weird. A lot of performance art.

[Matt Binder]

A lot of the demos that show off these AI features really do act like you're an alien. That Just came to Earth.

[Ed Zitron]

It's like they're all babies. Babies. It's like, what the fuck is that? That's a bus.

[David Roth]

I mean, I feel like almost all of this technology, like, for as long as I've been. I mean, not even. I don't write about it really, but, like, just sort of observing it, is that a lot of it is solving problems that I consider to be just like, basically solved. Like, you go to the grocery store.

[Ed Zitron]

Or just like, I don't walk around being like, if I don't know what something is, as long as it's not like a creature.

[David Roth]

The idea of it getting it wrong and then being like, great point. Like, that was rather, you know, like.

[Scott Stein]

Goes back to, like, if you can't really see it and you want assistance. That's interesting. If you want to read something which may be if you have bad vision. Okay, but, like, what am I doing? I don't trust. There's no advice it can give me. Like, the whole, like, there is a continuing demo in glasses about, like, look in a pantry and get cooking advice. That is a stock demo where you're like, am I ever staring at a bunch of cans and asking, and then what is it gonna tell me? Like, you could make a soup with the carrots and the tomato.

[Matt Binder]

If I'm looking at a pantry and I don't know what I want to make make, I'm just the type of person who's going to go for the microwavable TV dinner.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, yeah, right.

[Matt Binder]

I'm not going to use the AI to tell me what to make, because I don't cook if I don't know.

[Scott Stein]

What'S in search on my phone. Like, there's a phone. Yeah, exactly. It's also the other thing with. With it is that you're. You are more than anything else, shoehorned. You're funneled into using the AI. And usually it's one AI. It was like, on your phone, you've got a million. Or anything else, you got a million ways to check stuff. And so you're like, why am I trapped in this one? It's like I'm relying on a strange assistant friend to, like, do things for me. And it makes me feel kind of helpless. So I was like, I just want to go do this thing. And it's like I have to ask assistant person to kind of fumble a way to do it. And, like, I'm. Of course you're going to take out your phone.

[Matt Binder]

And they do all these, like, over the top, convoluted Features. And I just mentioned how I'm not a sunglass or eyeglass wearer, so I have no interest in the smart glasses. But I actually did for a specific use case, look into the meta glasses. Yeah, so when I, my kids play soccer and when I go to a game, I would love to not be able to not have to hold my phone to record.

[Ed Zitron]

That makes sense.

[Matt Binder]

I would love to have it on, just record. But then you looked into the details of those video recordings. The meta sunglasses can't record longer than a 30 second clip at a time.

[Scott Stein]

Well, three minutes now. So three minutes. They've gone for three minutes.

[Matt Binder]

Unfortunately, those soccer games are longer than three minutes.

[Scott Stein]

Like there's no reason they should allow you to do it till the battery.

[Matt Binder]

Runs like an actual good use case for it. That a lot of people, parents would go apeshit over something like that. And they're spending their, instead of spending the time on can we make the video record longer than three minutes, they're spending their time on all these AI features that I can't think of any.

[Ed Zitron]

Regular use case for. I think it makes sense though, if you take it from the perspective it's a tech executive. It's, it's like, what do people do when they cook? Well, of course they walk into their pantry, which they've not been in for some time, and they go, what the fuck is all this?

[Scott Stein]

What?

[Ed Zitron]

Why are the tomatoes in a can? Usually someone brings these.

[David Roth]

How do I get them out?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, they're just like bagging it, just.

[David Roth]

Bagging it against them. And they're like, oh, Alexa, free these tomatoes. Jim.

[Ed Zitron]

And I break open the cans. No, but it's also like, okay, how long will they need to do clips for? Well, what do children do? TikTok tick tocks. They're 30 seconds. That's enough.

[Scott Stein]

I mean that does it is how.

[Matt Binder]

Much time these tech executives probably spend with them. Have they ever, have they ever attended one of their kids soccer games?

[Ed Zitron]

I mean, how long do I spend with them?

[Scott Stein]

No one records a video for longer than 30 seconds.

[David Roth]

It's one soccer. How long could it last?

[Scott Stein]

Yeah, what are you, a monster making a 10 minute video?

[Ed Zitron]

3 minutes and then I've got a call.

[Robert Evans]

Jimmy.

[David Roth]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

It'S sad.

[Scott Stein]

It's also like they don't. These glasses do not full. And this is the thing I was interested about with Google with Projector is that they're trying to connect with your phone. Like the other part of this is that these things don't even do all the things to connect with Your phone that you would expect to. There's a lot of broken pads where it's like. Whether it's like as much as you might not like Siri or Gemini or anything else, you're used to like earbuds on your phone, doing some basic things that you connect these break that path. These will have another thing because you're dealing with meta AI and it's like the old days of smartwatches where like the hook ins are like, oh, it's got one thing for this but not that. And this doesn't do that thing. And so you have to like discover like a puzzle because none of the phone companies have opened up good paths. It's also frustrating on that end. But that's like, how do you. Even if you don't get to the point where you can at least work with the phone that you got, that's a big problem. Like it needs to do at least everything that you want. Even on the Samsung Galaxy xr, the AI was like that Gemini Live thing was kind of interesting in that it could see everything in the room, in your screens. But then I would ask it to like close an app and it was like, okay to do that. Move an arrow over to the and close it. And I was like, you're telling me how to close the app?

[Ed Zitron]

You're the.

[David Roth]

What am I? You're in there already, dude. Like, you're right there.

[Scott Stein]

It's not like, it's more like they're testing it, then they have an idea of what you should be doing with this. It's like, it's like if I go to a restaurant, I want a menu of interesting things that you're going to tell me, like, what are my choices? And here it's like in the AI land, it's like, what do you want in our magic kitchen? And it's like, I don't even know. Don't give me choice. Browses. I'm like, what? And then you ask. And then sure enough, it can't do some of those things. So it's like, why did you ask me? I get mad. I'm like, just give me a menu of like five options.

[Ed Zitron]

No, no. I've been saying for a while, it's like, you know what? Be AI would be useful for getting through all the menus they've added to my goddamn phone. The 100 different options in the settings part of my iPhone that is now like one part. It's like, do you need to subscribe to Apple Music? Like, I'm already subscribed. I'm already a pay pig. You've already got me, Tim. And it's just like, no, we can't close the menu. But what if we looked in your pantry and came up with an idea, maybe? And it's just. Does it work every time? God, no. No, no, no, no, no. We don't do that here. We just. We. We guess. Ish.

[Scott Stein]

And it's.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't know. It's. I wonder. I genuinely. I don't think they'll talk to me for many reasons, but I kind of want to just grab one of them and scream. I mean, just talk to one of them and say, have you ever existed? Like, what do you. What does your day look like? Because, like, I don't know. When I cook, I, like, go and see what's in the fridge. It's like, oh, it's a challenge. It's like a little like, oh, okay, I'll work out what the. I'm gonna put together with whatever, like, the 18 Diet Cokes and. And the three pieces of old meat in there. Like, oh, get some seasoning and just eat them raw. But it's like, that's part of being a human. It's like, what if we remove the friction? Well, not really the friction. What if we added friction?

[Robert Evans]

Bart, an idea.

[Ed Zitron]

It's just very sad. It's just sad.

[Scott Stein]

It's sad. Well, it feels like many things. AI Is forcing the hand and kind of ruining the landscape. It reminds me of, like, among many things in the metaverse. I thought it was interesting, following the philosophy of the meta. I'm going to say I thought the ideas in the metaverse were interesting, but then you could see it turning, overhyping, crypto ifying, becoming whatever. And nobody knew what the hell it was. And everything became this hype cycle, and it blew out. And I feel like AI is in that space where it's, like, beyond other things. Everyone's so rushing that nobody's thinking about any philosophical ideas that are important. But the point is that glasses now feel like a place where all that AI hype is being forced in fast, as opposed to, like, how are you going to use these on a design area? VR for all the people would shit on it. I do admire thinking back that, like, VR headsets, you could really do a lot of things in them in terms of knowing how to navigate them. And glasses are just like, oh, they're going to be in your life. But nobody's really come up with any interface, even the Orion thing. Things where like.

[Ed Zitron]

And that's the $10,000 meta one.

[Scott Stein]

The one that doesn't. Yeah, the one that doesn't exist yet. But like, even like on Ray Ban displays, all of a sudden you're just swipe, swipe, swiping through apps. And I'm like, nobody came up with a better way to do that because it's like, I don't want to swipe, swipe, swipes.

[Matt Binder]

There's something kind of.

[David Roth]

Have you ever heard about that? Like the idea of just being like, it's just another way to jam you into.

[Scott Stein]

Our stack of the future is just swipe sweep.

[David Roth]

You're going to be spending all of, you know, like, whatever our interface versus the other interface versus whatever it is.

[Scott Stein]

I want to have like some new idea. Like, it doesn't have to be like a new idea for new idea's sake, but it's like, it's like, could it be less annoying than other stuff?

[David Roth]

Right.

[Scott Stein]

And if it's not. So I feel like nobody has really solved that yet. I'm curious if it'll happen. That's why I love covering this. It's just curious.

[Ed Zitron]

All right, we're going to wrap this, this 30 minute bit for now. Matt Bender from Mashable, of course. Joining us, we've got Scott Stein from Cena and of course David Roth of Defector. And I'm Ed Zetron. And this next ad is from Gulpo, the co cooler that burns. So please buy Gulpo.

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[David Roth]

And.

[Ed Zitron]

We'Re back, brought to you by Golpo, the cola that burns. This is the CS experience. Better offline. I'm your host, Ed Zitron. I'm joined by Matt Bender from Mashable.

[Robert Evans]

Hello.

[Ed Zitron]

Scott Stein from cnap.

[Scott Stein]

Hi.

[Ed Zitron]

And of course, David Roth from Defector.

[David Roth]

Hello.

[Ed Zitron]

And we were just talking about pepcom, which is a show that I can't remember if that's Showstoppers or Pepcom. They wouldn't let me into.

[Matt Binder]

They're all very similar. So the media day is when before even CES officially opens to the public. There's the first three nights of ces. There's like this big, like exhibition type event.

[David Roth]

Right.

[Matt Binder]

First night's unveiled, second night's pepcom. Third night is Showstoppers. And basically these companies, a lot of them, smaller tech startups, basically use these as an opportunity to get some attention because no one really seeks these companies out in advance because no one knows who the fuck they are before they get to CES and see them. Last year, for example, the big winner unveiled, and I covered it, I think even spoke about it on this show last year was the salt spoon.

[David Roth]

Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah, I saw the salt.

[Ed Zitron]

Spoon and we got very sarcastic and it turned out to actually be very useful for specific people. Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Binder]

But like, it was for people don't know is a spoon that basically for people who couldn't eat foods with salt.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

They have like a high sodium situation.

[Matt Binder]

Instead of just being stuck eating plain foods, they. They take a scoop of their soup with no salt and the, the, the spoon sent like a, a zap that you can't feel into the spoon, which like, lights up your taste buds and makes it and like tricks your tongue into thinking the food tastes salty. And it worked. I tried it out. I was pretty shocked that it worked, but it worked. And that's an example of sort of the weird type of stuff you could find at these, like, CES exhibition type shows. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Have you seen anything weird and unveiled at all?

[Matt Binder]

There was a chess playing robot and you wonder, like, what's the market for that? Like, yeah, you can walk into any.

[Ed Zitron]

Park in New York and find seven old men to play you at the.

[David Roth]

For free? Yeah, for free.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, no, they will hustle, though. Just like. Yeah. Sit down, young blood.

[David Roth]

The chess playing robot has not had nearly as interesting a life as whoever. The guy was at dan Amora for 22 years and then takes $50 from you over the course of a few games of chess.

[Scott Stein]

It's also like, there are so many programs to play chess. Like, why would you need the actual robot chess?

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, it's a. People don't know, like you just mentioned.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, those 3.3.1.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Matt Binder]

You play against the robot regularly on your computer. This is a physical chessboard with a robot that sits on the other side of you and physically, like, has a claw that comes down and moves the pieces. Which is weird because I've seen technological, like, chess sets that basically have like a mechanism underneath the board.

[Scott Stein]

Right.

[Matt Binder]

That just like slides the piece, which seems, I mean, if you absolutely need a physical robotic Chessboard. That seems like the more practical version than having the, like a humanoid.

[Ed Zitron]

Was it just a knob?

[Matt Binder]

It was like a BB8 size robot sitting across from you with the mechanical arm that was moving the chest pieces.

[David Roth]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

And it was sort of like, first of all, like, this looks very expensive. So I don't know who you're gonna sell this to. I guess people who want to show off their robot playing chess. Yeah. I mean, that's a great thing, like.

[David Roth]

Thing that would be in Drake's home.

[Scott Stein]

It's not like, all right, we already went over.

[David Roth]

You're not doing great if you have.

[Scott Stein]

This product, a bespoke chips robot.

[Ed Zitron]

Hey, check this out. I, I don't care. Like, yeah, look it really. How fast was it? Really slow as well. Please tell me it was really slow.

[Matt Binder]

It wasn't very slow. It was, it was a normal speed.

[Ed Zitron]

Now that's if I want one of those. I want it to be like, like really, like just barely. Like it takes like half a minute.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

Or, or like an arcade claw machine and it sometimes just drops the piece. Like just randomly.

[Scott Stein]

Ruins the hall board.

[Ed Zitron]

I love this. So, so the, did you talk to them at all? Because I have way more questions for them than anyone else so far.

[Matt Binder]

I did it because I thought that I looked at it and I was like, I thought of the chest that, those chess boards that have the mechanism underneath that was like, what is the point of this? I don't know.

[Ed Zitron]

I should have.

[Matt Binder]

Maybe if I see them again, I'll inquire more for you.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, please do. I must not anything, anything else weird.

[Matt Binder]

Like there was this thing that, like, I don't even know how to explain it. It was like I, I, I just saw it in motion. It was like this, this almost like a roller type thing that you would lay down and it rolls under your back. I guess it's like to give you a massage or something.

[Ed Zitron]

That actually sounds pretty like a foam roller.

[Matt Binder]

It was weird looking though, because like, if, you know like in like cartoons, when they go down like one of those like slides that have like the up and down things and the cartoon like body goes like.

[David Roth]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

In a way that your back can't go. This thing was like, like making it look like cartoon people the way they were, their backs were, were contorting.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

I, I wanted to try it, but there was a pretty long line for it.

[Scott Stein]

I love that I did. I think one of our colleagues, Bridget, did a demo of that and was talking about it afterwards and I was.

[Matt Binder]

Like, oh, is it, is it is it like meant to like give you. You like to fix your back? Like, I didn't really get.

[Scott Stein]

I think she found it fine. Yeah, I think she found it okay.

[Ed Zitron]

The endorsement.

[Scott Stein]

I want cs.

[Ed Zitron]

Cs.

[Matt Binder]

It was.

[Ed Zitron]

Think it was fine.

[David Roth]

I mean a lot of that stuff that I remember seeing last year, a lot of the sort of like robotic assistant things like it seemed like the. Basically like the best you could hope for from it is like I did not experience whiplash from sitting in this gaming chair that moves at its own, like accord or whatever.

[Scott Stein]

No physical damage is a win.

[Ed Zitron]

My spine functions fine.

[David Roth]

The robot did not harm me. If you want to put that on the poster, you can.

[Scott Stein]

We have a colleague wearing an exoskeleton.

[Ed Zitron]

Walking around, but Evans has one of those too.

[Scott Stein]

I know.

[Ed Zitron]

How's it going?

[Scott Stein]

I think he likes it. He actually got it for real therapeutic purposes for like his, his hip or something. But it's fascinating. I was like, we're at the show where I see people casually wearing exoskeletons or what, you know, whatever you would call them. Like I. And I think someone else is testing out one. I had a really hard time at unveiled finding weird tech. And that's actually my, my, my judging zone. I was supposed to look for weird tech. I had a, I had a sort of existential crisis where I wandered around trying. That's also hard. Like maybe if you try to find it, it doesn't find you.

[Matt Binder]

I thought the same thing. And I think what happened this year was usually the weird tech is very visually appealing.

[Scott Stein]

Yes. There were no visually appealing amateur hour.

[Ed Zitron]

You need to go to the corner of the convention center into like the like Shenzhen Jiao Corporation where it's like cameras, Cameras, batteries, dildos.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Every time it's like like this 18 word long thing and it has like, it's just a printed white piece of paper.

[David Roth]

So visually unappealing how? Like what did it. Yeah, just kind of like featureless.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[David Roth]

So.

[Matt Binder]

So usually when we, we go to these things, we have a video team that comes with us and we try to find things that will basically translate on video. Like someone will, will. Will see the thumbnail or, or a clip as they're scrolling by and be like, oh, this looks really like, damn.

[David Roth]

I gotta see that thing play chess. Yeah, yeah.

[Matt Binder]

But like there really wasn't much of that. There weren't a lot in terms of visually like, you know. Okay, give me, I'll give you an example. Like, and this is another thing I wanted to bring up. So there's A lot of, I noticed a lot of like baby related tech, but to me I'm thinking like a lot of this stuff is for like very small baby like newborns.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

And you're gonna like spend this money on something that's gonna last you like maybe six months.

[Scott Stein]

Right.

[Matt Binder]

So there was one thing, I don't remember the name of the device, but it's this monitor that goes on your baby. Baby's ankle. That outlet. No, it was a different company.

[David Roth]

Pokemon.

[Matt Binder]

But no, Outlet is a, is a company that makes baby stuff.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Matt Binder]

No, you're not wrong. But it's an ankle monitor for babies that track their alcohol intake.

[Scott Stein]

Deactivates the car so they can't drive.

[Matt Binder]

No, but it was. It tracks their heartbeat and the point of it.

[Ed Zitron]

And that's useful. Like this. This is like the set. Like SIDS and such.

[Matt Binder]

No, the way they were selling it, it was so parents know when the best, the optimal time is to place your baby in the crib so they don't wake up.

[David Roth]

Nice baby hacking.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[David Roth]

Finally.

[Matt Binder]

Yes. So it like, I guess it tracks their heart rate and the optimal heart rate, I guess when they're in a deep sleep it lights up a certain color and that's when the optimal time is to put your baby down psychotic. And like I listen, I wouldn't buy something like that to put. I wouldn't put an ankle monitor on my baby. But I could see if you're a desperate parent who's having trouble there, maybe you would look into that solution. But also like unless it's priced very cheap, I can't imagine buying something that you're going to use for just a few months.

[Ed Zitron]

This sounds like something someone who remembers having kids built like someone who's like, yeah, you know, fuck, what my baby do is crying.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah, yeah.

[David Roth]

I mean it is like definitely an experience that. I mean I'm not a man of child personally, but it is like a man of child. But just saying I'm an active uncle, you know, I'm a very engaged uncle. But it is, but it is one of those things I'm. Yeah, I'm a chopped unk and I'm not afraid to come on here and talk as such.

[Matt Binder]

No, cap, now that you bring that up, this does sound like a device that the uncle would buy at Christmas time or something like that.

[Ed Zitron]

This is uncle tech.

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[David Roth]

I heard these things don't like to sleep. So I got you a thing that will tell you when it's asleep.

[Scott Stein]

You can maximize your baby. You're like, what does that mean I.

[Ed Zitron]

Hear you're baby maxing?

[Scott Stein]

It's supposed to be good.

[David Roth]

It is funny though, like the idea, I mean, like, it's as funny and it is very funny to me. The idea of being like, you must optimize your toddler, like that is. That's funny to me. But it's also like, it's a reflection of who is like funding this shit and who is coming up with these ideas. Like in terms of what is the experience that you would want the most from your baby. And it's like you want them to be healthy, you want to be happy, you want them to sleep. But then there's this other element where it's like, and you must accept sell as like a parent.

[Ed Zitron]

I think what it is is like the venture capitalists and this is not necessarily like their fault, I guess, but like a venture capitalist is by definition probably pretty well off. So they probably have like a lot more parental support. I feel like if you're funding baby tech, you should go and just talk to the most stressed baby owner. Yeah, I have a kid. I really shouldn't be like baby owners if I don't have one. But this was much older.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Now.

[David Roth]

I kept thinking about last year is like, where is the consumer in the Consumer Electronics Show a lot of times. And there were devices that the stuff I remember from the floor most fondly last year were like old fashioned American inventions with a technological aspect. It was like it's a dog door that opens because your dog collar has a chip in it. So it recognizes that it's your dog and it's not letting in a raccoon or a prowler or whatever. And like that's not, you know, groundbreaking, but it's like, all right, cool. Like, I get it. This is a machine that sits on your counter. It makes soft surface ice cream. Sick fuck me up. My kitchen is way too small to have that. But it would be great if it were.

[Ed Zitron]

We like ice cream.

[David Roth]

But yes, you could see where the consumer is and all that. And then the ones that always kind of blew me away were like beyond the. The stuff that's just like kind of junk or like white label or just over abstracted.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[David Roth]

Is the stuff like this where it's like you have this miraculous technical capacity and no sense of what an ordinary person might use it for. And you clearly didn't ask like you never tried to get that.

[Ed Zitron]

That's kind of what I'm getting at. It's like, have you talked to a. I don't mean A fucking parent clearing a quarter of a million dollars a year. I mean like a fucking parent who has got two children and a part time job and is fucking suffering. Because the, the outlet sock is like useful because it can like monitor the babies. Make sure that sudden infant death syndrome doesn't have like mental heart rate and breathing and such. Like, useful things to make sure your kid is alive. Like, very meaningful stuff. It's only for six months, but man, you really want to make sure they're alive for all of the months. Ideally, yeah, but it's like there's a real thing, but it's just like, yeah, great, you can make sure your heart rate. No, you put the kid down when it is ready. Like when the kid is ready to sleep. And you just sit there and go, just please, please, please just go sleep. Please don't do this to me.

[Robert Evans]

Please.

[Ed Zitron]

Matt, you've got kids?

[Scott Stein]

Yes. Yeah, I got kind of learned.

[Matt Binder]

I got three. But each, each one of them was different about the sleep thing. But I can't imagine using the, the thing that on any of them simply because, like, is there, is there really even an optimal time?

[Ed Zitron]

Like, wait, so was this an ankle monitor?

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, it goes.

[Robert Evans]

It's.

[Matt Binder]

It's a.

[Ed Zitron]

They.

[Matt Binder]

You strap it on their, their leg, like around their ankle, and it's like a circular device and it lights up red when it's definitely not time.

[Ed Zitron]

It lights up on their leg.

[Matt Binder]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

And then what the fuck?

[Matt Binder]

And then lights up green when it's almost time, when they're drifting off.

[Ed Zitron]

Can I just be clear? You're talking about attaching a flashing light to a newborn's ankle?

[Matt Binder]

Yes, yes.

[Ed Zitron]

And newborns. My distinct experience from newborns is that sock just comes off all the time. Right. So you're like giving a flashing light to a baby.

[David Roth]

You got to really clamp it on there, but like got to get it on tight.

[Ed Zitron]

You don't think the baby's gonna see the flashing light. One of the only things it can recognize in the complete darkness too. Yeah, just with it constantly. Because that's what a new.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah, I want one of those for like my 17 year old just to kind of be like, how you doing?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, my.

[Scott Stein]

Can I monitor your ankle? Yeah.

[David Roth]

Is that cool? Is that all right if I get a push alert for our whole family? Lets me know if you're actually sleeping or not.

[Scott Stein]

We could all have ankle monitors.

[Ed Zitron]

No talking to the child.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah, right?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. And when you think about what the problems are, it's like they're emotional, so tech really can't fix that. They can add to them if you'd like. If you'd like, the more problems, the social network apps will help with that.

[Scott Stein]

Well, this is an interesting thing too. It's like the over monitoring versus, like, personal experience. Like, we didn't use a of lot lot of tech raising our kids, but other than iPads. But like, we. There's like personal experience. It's like, do you want something to tell you how to cook or do you want to just, like, mess around with trying to see what cooks well and what burns? And then you get natural experience that kind of gets ingrained and you go, oh, I know, because I've been doing it over time. That's like parenting. You're like, I begin to get a general feel and sense of that kid and their behavior. It just happens. It happens when you pay attention.

[Ed Zitron]

And that's the thing. Like, I don't talk about much about my kid on the show because I have a lot of people who listen to him. I want to keep him. It's his world. But it's like, yeah, you learn from your child what their habits are when they are sleepy, right? When they will tell you, I'm not tired, you're going to sleep. You're gonna fall asleep in two minutes, brother. You're gonna get in that bed, it's nice and cozy. You're gonna go right to sleep.

[David Roth]

This is where the, like, the category error that we're talking about here, where it's just like, fundamentally being like, do you want your phone to solve this thing that is like, not your work, like, not your commute, like, the shit that, like, you have to do so that you can afford the other stuff? It's like, do you want us to take the experience, like, the actual pleasurable part of being alive? Like, and for me, like, as like a, you know, again, we don't have kids, so we can afford to, like, make dinner most nights, like, me and my wife, like, that is like, really fucking precious time to me. I like, I think about it, you know, like, we go in with a game plan. We enjoy, like, working and cooking together. We're not exactly being like, behind you, Chef, like, as we move through our shitty corn itches. But we're like, closer than is probably, you know, healthy. But the idea of, like, replacing that with being like, I'm just gonna, like, let my phone either tell me what to do or eventually, I mean, this was like the big promise of a lot of the smart home shit last year was like, just, my house will do it. Like, they'll make the coffee for me. It's like making coffee is really important to me, actually. Like, that is part of how I remember that I'm a human before. I, like, get on my computer and get really upset about shit all day long, you know, and it's like, they.

[Ed Zitron]

Don'T solve the actual things, which are annoying. Like, I. I love my dinner with my girlfriend. It's not. It's nice. It's an experience together. It's something you do. I hate laundry and cleaning, and they've barely got, like, they've been, I think. Scott, how long have you been going to ces?

[Scott Stein]

Like, it has been a long, long time. So I went to my first CES for work purposes, probably 2004.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay. How many times. How many times have you seen the robot?

[Scott Stein]

Oh, the same one with the folding.

[Ed Zitron]

The laundry, the lawn, the folding robot. Like, I think over a decade, like, there is one company that just every is like, this is the year, folks.

[Matt Binder]

There's one laundry company probably, but there's a few companies and I haven't been going anywhere near as long as you.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah, it's been a long time.

[Matt Binder]

I think this is either year four or five for me. But I've already noticed there's companies that I feel like literally just accept exist to go to ces. Like, they don't ever put anything out. They always bring the same or a similar product. And year after year, it's just the same thing. And it's like, first of all, where are you getting them? Like, I, I don't know how much it costs to show up and as a. With a booth at ces, but I'm guessing it's not cheap.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

Like, what are you. What are you doing?

[Ed Zitron]

The computer, the money laundering show.

[Scott Stein]

I have notes for CES Unveiled, like, things like, like that. Here's my note for it. Based on what I saw yesterday, I made me think about. I was a judge at MIT Reality Hack last year, which was actually really interesting because it's like, it was a lot of students pitching random projects that involved like, AR and xr. And you basically went around to a lot of tables and you had five minutes with each one, and they had to come up with a pitch. And it was like, okay, like, I don't know what it could be, but it's like, we did this thing, we're going to come up with it. We're going to get you experience and get understand. It's like. And it's like speed dating. But a show like Unveiled is not Speed dating, it's literally just find your way. If they made. I don't think I'd want it to be a speed dating. But like you have a bunch of tables and if they're not like you say, if they're not perfectly clear and grabby and they have a headline. There are a lot of companies that was like mercamio Ma and it's like, okay, there's like, it's just an empty table with like an item on it. And then it's like, is the game that I'm supposed to talk to you and retrieve the information? I'm like, I can't, I can't right now. Like, and I don't. I'm not into that game right now. And so I felt the pitches were not, were not clear. A lot of companies, it also is like some, you know, it could be international or whatever else, but it's like maybe they're looking for components or things. But this is a media. More media focused thing on unveiled and.

[Ed Zitron]

They pay extra for this, don't they?

[Scott Stein]

Yeah. And so you go, why am I looking at that? I just don't have time. And it's overstuffed with too many things, so. And plus, there are no like, it's not like a grocery store where you're like, here's the, the baking stuff, here's the meats. Like, I would like if they made categories where it's like the ro. The emotional robots that were like five of them.

[Matt Binder]

It's just aisle 100, aisle 200, aisle 300.

[David Roth]

There were moments last before emotional robot.

[Scott Stein]

That was true.

[David Roth]

I kept walking through and being like, oh, I'm in the, like, this is the, the sex apps. This is the like weird, right? But like the sex apps are everywhere. They're all over the place. And like, ditto for the one bit that seemed actually coherent. I remember was in like one of the basements last year that was like kind of the hall of nations and you would be going through and it's just like, here's like the Netherlands wants to talk to you about what it's saying.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

That's the French zone.

[David Roth]

But it's the only bit that felt organized at all.

[Scott Stein]

But what's interesting about Scattershot. Yeah. That press event. Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

Whenever I go down to the nation thing. What I actually usually get like a little bit angry about it because it's like, damn, this is like countries that actually support. Support their. Their startup companies with funding because that's why they're there representing their country and there's like, no United States section because the US doesn't do that.

[Ed Zitron]

That's the show.

[Scott Stein]

What do you think this is?

[Ed Zitron]

No, they usually have like a US Government section, though.

[Matt Binder]

There's like, oh, but it's just like this is what the post office is doing.

[Ed Zitron]

It's the Department of Commerce.

[Matt Binder]

But it's not like CIA.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, if there was a CIA one.

[Matt Binder]

Well, that's the. That's the Palantir. Right.

[Ed Zitron]

I was gonna say I would go down to the CIA both. Hey, what happened with jfk?

[David Roth]

You do that?

[Ed Zitron]

Was that.

[David Roth]

Was that us?

[Ed Zitron]

What do you do? I just watch the X Files, mate. You do that. I think I could probably get killed at that booth. 100% within fight. Just asking annoying questions.

[David Roth]

It is one bit just to go back to what Scott said. That like, it's funny. And I remember this experience again, like, just because I, you know, I haven't been on the floors this year. I felt last year both heartened and a little bit embarrassed by how much a little bit of oaf mode curb appeal showmanship would win me over. The reason I knew about that dog door was that they had made it out of some metal substance that they had, whatever, perfectly calibrated themselves. And there was a big mallet that you could swing and hit it into the door. And it never did. Invented.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[David Roth]

And so the reason I found it was that, like, I was walking around with Jesse Farrar and we were like, what is that loud noise? And then just like a pair of dogs off leash wandered over and we're like, what does this do? And like, it was something I really liked learning about it. Like, I found the people very pleasing, you know, conversationalists. But it was 100 something that I found because I was like, yeah, exactly. That exactly why we're here.

[Scott Stein]

It's like, this is why a physical show. It's like there's the Internet. Like, there's information everywhere. You could always be looking up stuff, but what people are here, you should be like, it goes back to that science fair type thing. It's like there's this. You got to come up with a. If you're going to be here, you got to come up with an interesting picture. Not don't do a stupid one, but do like a. Yeah, try to get something to catch our attention and explain it.

[Ed Zitron]

That's just the whole point.

[David Roth]

What's that with the dogs just walking? No, Jesse and I were the dogs in the scenario.

[Matt Binder]

What was interesting about you bringing up. We were talking about. Talking about just two seconds ago. The how. Nothing is, like, the layout is not planned in, like, categories.

[Scott Stein]

What?

[Matt Binder]

I'm. I'm dying to know if they do it again this, this year, if there's even enough companies to fill it out. But last year there was one section, and I brought it up on the show too, and I thought it was so funny. There was a web3 section and it was like, oh, these companies are now so embarrassing. We want, like, them off to the.

[David Roth]

Side behind a curtain.

[Matt Binder]

We want them all in a specific section where they could be avoided. And it was like they were. They were. There was no, like, straight up crypto or blockchain companies, but they were still these companies that believed in, like, the promise of. Without using the word nft, the promise of, like, the digital ownership of things and. And the metaverse type stuff. And they actually did create a web3 section that. That actually said the web3, like, arena or something thing. And it was like, there's no reason to do that unless you want people to know where they can actively avoid if they don't want that.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, or like the 5 perverts that need to go.

[David Roth]

Right. I feel like you're keeping everybody away from everybody else. The way that there's people that are like, I don't want to know. I don't have a dog and I don't need a dog door. What I need is a picture of a dog that lives on the blockchain that's on my phone that I have most of my savings invested in a collection of. Where are those guys?

[Scott Stein]

Dog simulacra section.

[David Roth]

Yeah.

[Scott Stein]

Of ces.

[David Roth]

It takes all kinds.

[Scott Stein]

I don't.

[David Roth]

It's a big market.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, my God. Yeah, it's.

[Scott Stein]

There's supposed to be a holographic fish tank here. One of my colleagues.

[Robert Evans]

What?

[David Roth]

What?

[Robert Evans]

Okay.

[David Roth]

What the.

[Scott Stein]

I'm actually trying to find.

[Ed Zitron]

What does that mean?

[Scott Stein]

I don't know, but my colleague said we were trying to look for weird tech. We've actually been on the hunt. And we said, there's a holographic fish tank. And I said, I'm in.

[Robert Evans]

Okay.

[Scott Stein]

And apparently not here.

[Matt Binder]

Heck, how did it take you this long to bring it up?

[Scott Stein]

I've been. I've been. I want other people to talk.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, the fish.

[Scott Stein]

Let me tell you. I don't know. I. I want there to be. I want to believe it's in the Web3 area.

[Ed Zitron]

There's no such thing. Holographic things. A holographic fish.

[Scott Stein]

Fish in the tank. I don't know what it is, but I do think so. All the other thing is that last night we talked about weird tech. The thing that people had said to me would caught their eye, but I didn't see it. This doesn't sound that weird. Was a vibrating knife.

[Matt Binder]

Oh, I saw the vibrating knife.

[Ed Zitron]

I didn't get it.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah, ultrasonic.

[Matt Binder]

It was apparently a knife you just like lightly hold ultrasonic over the vegetable or whatever you're trying to cut.

[Scott Stein]

Just.

[Matt Binder]

And then just like. Like barely any pressure. It just goes right through. It just wasn't visually appealing enough.

[Scott Stein]

No, I saw a knife and I skipped. And I thought it already existed because I don't cover that beat. And I was like, it's probably the same vibrating knife that they had last year with a new feature.

[David Roth]

Tell me another one.

[Robert Evans]

Right?

[Ed Zitron]

And isn't this a Star wars thing.

[Scott Stein]

Or like William Gibson novels? Yeah, I feel like there's like, it's feeling a cyber when I.

[Ed Zitron]

When I'm thinking of tech I want. I'm reading William Gibson. Maybe it was in his Torment Nexus section.

[David Roth]

So you're telling me you've created it. That's really interesting.

[Scott Stein]

This Iron Sprawl part of it.

[Ed Zitron]

It's so good. It's so good that I'm obsessed with this holographic fish tank. I'm.

[David Roth]

I know.

[Scott Stein]

Can we put on an epb? And to save you, you are making a holographic fish tank. Tell us where it is.

[David Roth]

I know everybody was getting your ass for not bringing it up. I think it's very ethical that if you yourself have not seen the holographic fish tank, you would sound weird if you were like, I've heard tell of the holographic fish tank around. You need to know that you saw it. Like, to get a description of it.

[Scott Stein]

I need to know exactly. I need to see it myself. But then the other thing I saw there on the floor, but apparently it already existed because again, I'm not looking at massage chairs tech, but there was someone sitting in one of those giant moving massage chairs that was like, it. Look, they look like a Transformer. Like they lifted their arm and the arm was coming with them and the leg was moving with them. But then I brought that up to people and they were like, ah, that's already been here. And I was like, okay, well, that interested me. The. The. The man, it was called like the.

[Matt Binder]

The best massage bodies friend or something like that.

[Scott Stein]

They were just moving, but it was like. It was like you almost like you couldn't escape. It was like as they were moving, the chair pieces would move still with their arms And I think I saw that. I was like that. I. That's interesting. Cyber sofa.

[Ed Zitron]

I love the massage chairs. It's the greatest scam at ces. Every so often, you run into someone who's like, I just got best deal on the massage chair. It's like, no, you did not. Yeah, you just got scared. No, it's like, have you not heard about this scam?

[Matt Binder]

No, I haven't.

[Ed Zitron]

So they have these lines of massage chairs, and they're like, I'll give you. I'll cut you a special deal. They're not cutting you. Especially ces.

[Scott Stein]

They do that.

[Ed Zitron]

Ces. If you walk around the main convention center, there's usually a very.

[Scott Stein]

That they're even trying to sell.

[Ed Zitron]

There's a very sad section where you see, like, the CES, like, the guys who have been here 25 since it was called, like, COM, not like COMDEX. Like, the people have been here forever, and they're sitting in this chair just like, just like, just the only, only time I get away from my wife and kids, just, just sit in the chair all day. I, I, I sell software, man. I just want to die. And they just sit in these chairs. But those people are not buying them. They just know you can scam. But no, you.

[Robert Evans]

I.

[Ed Zitron]

Every few years, I run someone's like, I just got the best deal. It's like, I paid $7,000 for two chairs. I. And like, yeah, the RRP is $1,000 each. You got scammed. It's like, it's Alibaba chair situation that massages you.

[Matt Binder]

I did not know this is going on.

[Ed Zitron]

It's be. It's a. I. You know what? It's part of the Vegas experience being, like, swindled by.

[Matt Binder]

I mean, I do know that a lot. I don't want to say a lot, but there are companies that show up and, like, you could see on, like, the banners they have around their booth, they go like, oh, ask us about our CES only special deal, or whatever. And, I mean, I'm here as media, so I would never spend any money like that. But, I mean, it always seems like, is it. Is it really the best deal?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, you're in Las fucking Vegas. You think you're getting a deal here. You're getting dealt.

[David Roth]

I also like the idea of you're walking through the, like, air purifier section where there's 50 identical products, and you're being like, this is the one. Like, do you. Can I. Do you take Venmo?

[Ed Zitron]

I do.

[David Roth]

Like, it's just like one year I.

[Ed Zitron]

Had a bit where I just lifted up stuff and asked if I could have it and they really didn't like that. Like, especially with the tv. I just like, lift up. Can I have this? And they looked at me and paused. No, it's just like, no. Yeah, they don't, they don't amaze.

[Scott Stein]

It wasn't bolted down.

[Ed Zitron]

No, exactly. I'm pretty sure they do now.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

I mean, what the was I gonna do? You think there's gonna be a ghost.

[Matt Binder]

Just walking out, running away with the tv?

[David Roth]

Make your escape through this? Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

If you can get it out the door, you can keep it. That should be the rule. They should let. They should. Is there switch swag? Is there any swag you saw?

[Matt Binder]

They, I mean, on the show floor? Usually not. But a lot of these companies, when they see media, they want to. Especially the smaller, like, startups.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah, they will, they want you to want to give out, review it.

[Matt Binder]

Like, so they'll, they'll just like, they'll come back later.

[Scott Stein]

And there's a thing for you.

[Ed Zitron]

I think I have an aura to me. No one ever offers me anything like that. Sir. You can't have this.

[Matt Binder]

The thing I noticed this year though, and this happened to me a few times, was they almost seem more interested in content creators now than like 100%.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah, 100.

[Matt Binder]

Like, like, like somebody actually said to me, like, oh, what do you do? And I was like, oh, I'm a reporter for. And they were like, where are you based out of? And I was like, New York. And like, oh, maybe you could be our content creator from New York. And I was like, well, I just said I'm right.

[David Roth]

No, I have a real job, so.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, but the content creator, you see that at like.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah. At all the conferences where it's like, there's, there's been two different tracks, but also like a lot of. Of stuff. I feel like tech companies have clearly been pushing that, that focus to like the content creator influencer path. I mean, a lot of it overlaps, but like, it's a very different track. And then they're like, that's the primary.

[Ed Zitron]

Thing mean a guy. They just mean spawn con without the spawn.

[David Roth]

Yeah, I imagine that there's probably a lot of that of like people that like, are on tik Tok. Like check out all these crazy things I saw.

[Scott Stein]

Right. They just want listen video.

[Ed Zitron]

And the thing is, I love getting free shit, but. But I'm not, I'm not changing my opinion.

[Matt Binder]

Oh, right, of course. That's the Thing it's, you know, you want to review. I'm happy to review it if I'm interested in the product and I think it's interesting or cool. But if it doesn't work or something's wrong or there are negatives, I'm going to be truthful about. It's like, I'll be truthful if I think it's cool and works.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Matt Binder]

You know, one interesting thing was one company actually said to me, like, when they asked where I, you know, what my outlet was, and I said, Mashable. And they were like, oh, what's the social media for it? And I was like, oh, It's a website, mashable.com. and they immediately pulled up their YouTube app on their phone and was like, let me see how many subscribers your YouTube channel.

[David Roth]

Wow.

[Scott Stein]

Right?

[Matt Binder]

And then they saw it and they were like, oh, oh. So, like, that's, that's the example I'm like, of what we're dealing with now in terms of, like, content creators mean more to these companies now than. Than actual outlets. They didn't even respond to the website. They didn't mean bring up their safari and went to Mashable.

[Scott Stein]

It always makes me sad when people say, like, oh, I've seen your. It's nice say, oh, I've seen all your videos. But I'm like, do you read any. I write articles. And they're just like, huh, I don't do that. Let's skip that, what you just said. I don't want to hear that part.

[Ed Zitron]

So as we come to the end of this 30, I'm going to say, Matt Bender, you've been joining us from Mashable. Of course, thank you for being here.

[Matt Binder]

Always a pleasure.

[Ed Zitron]

And of course, Scott Stein from cnet.

[Scott Stein]

Hey, thank you.

[Ed Zitron]

Thank you for being here. And David Roth from Defector. You're going to be here for a couple more more. And this and this next ad is just for birds. Just try them today, I guess. Birds. Whatever comes next, I think it's for birds.

[iHeart Advertising Announcer]

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[Ed Zitron]

Welcome back to the better Offline CS Experience. I'm of course your host, Ed Zitron. And now I'm joined by of course, the David Roth of Defector.

[David Roth]

Hello.

[Ed Zitron]

Edward Unguesso Jr. Of the Tech Bubble Newsletter.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Hello.

[Ed Zitron]

And Lisa Edajiko of cnn. Thanks for joining us, Lisa.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Of course. Thanks for having me.

[Ed Zitron]

So you saw a Trifold Samsung Galaxy phone and the listeners got mad at me last time for being excited about something. What do you little pigs want? What do you want from me? But yeah, so you've seen the Trifold. What was it like?

[Lisa Edajiko]

It was really cool. But I think my biggest criticism of it was is that it didn't really provide a compelling reason to want this bigger screen that folds up and fits into your pocket. It's really cool when you hold it, like you open it up kind of like a brochure or a pamphlet. It has two folds, so you open folds into threes and then when it's open, it's a really slim tablet. But then it's just, you know, it kind of feels like the Fold plus, in a way. Like, I feel like you can get a similar experience with the Z Fold, which already exists. So that said, I only had a few minutes with it.

[Ed Zitron]

How big was it, though? Like how many.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

How.

[Ed Zitron]

What was it? Like 10 inches? I guess at that point.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Yeah, so it's 10 inches. So it's more like the size of an iPad when it's open. Slightly smaller than like an iPad air. And then the Z Fold is more closer to the size of like an iPad mini when it's open. So that's kind of the difference. And then when it's closed, it's, I think around. I think the screen is 6.5 inches. I would have to double check that. But, you know, the size of a plus phone or a Pro Max phone, whatever.

[Ed Zitron]

Did they give you a price?

[Lisa Edajiko]

No, they didn't say pricing yet.

[Ed Zitron]

That thing's gonna be two and a half grand.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Like it's good. Yeah, it's gonna be a lot. I mean, The Z Fold 7 is already like $2,000.

[Ed Zitron]

Really? So, yeah, I can't, I can't be mad. See, this is the thing. This is my weak point. I'm gonna get so many emails. People got, People got. So legitimately, people got really upset at me when Lisa was, was on because I was like, I like the idea. And then like, Ed, you need to hate everything. I'm full of joy.

[Lisa Edajiko]

You can like things sometimes.

[Ed Zitron]

No, they, they won't. They won't Allow me.

[David Roth]

They won't want Ed to have his screen. Time takes it away from you.

[Ed Zitron]

Make me read more books. No, it's. But I kind of like that they're doing something. Like, I, I love the idea of a giant foldable. I, yeah, I'm a freak, I guess, but it's like, it's sad they haven't. When you say it isn't like they haven't thought through why you'd need it.

[Scott Stein]

What do you mean exactly?

[Lisa Edajiko]

I was kind of hoping that the software would do something a little different and interesting. But that said, to your point, I'm happy that Samsung's doing something because they have been showing these concepts for years of different kinds of foldables that fold in funky, weird ways. And they keep saying, yeah, we're working on something, we're working on something. And then we just had no idea if any of those concepts would actually ever come to fruition. So I'm glad to see that they're experimenting and they're still doing it. That. But to me, my immediate reaction was like, oh, wow, this is really cool. But it doesn't. It feels almost like the fold did a couple of years ago when it's closed because it's kind of thick.

[Ed Zitron]

Right.

[Lisa Edajiko]

So it just didn't feel as different as I thought it would, I guess. And I think part of that is because when you open it, it's like you have the bigger screen or the front screen, you don't have the in between. And that's kind of what I want.

[Ed Zitron]

What do you mean by that?

[Lisa Edajiko]

So I think. And I'd have to double check, but I think it was either some of Samsung's concepts or like maybe the Huawei ph. Like, you can kind of use the different panels as like their own individual screens and have like.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, yes, you have different apps on them.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Yeah. Like almost have like three screens in one. And like this doesn't really do that. It just has like the open state where it's a tablet and then the close date where it's a phone, which is still useful, but it doesn't feel that different.

[Ed Zitron]

It's like three grand for a phone.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Yeah. And the one thing that I thought was. Was interesting that Samsung is kind of thinking of is this being not just like a phone and a tablet, but maybe a phone, a tablet and also like a mini PC if you like, hook it up with like a Bluetooth keyboard and a mouse and whatever. Yeah, they're still trying that. But yeah, I don't know. It's interesting. But I feel like this thing is probably going to be expensive, so the use case has to be really compelling. And their Z fold phones are only just starting to take off a little bit. So I feel like. Feel like it's, you know, it's going to be a long road ahead for something like this, but I'm glad they're doing it.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. At least someone's doing something.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Yeah.

[David Roth]

Yeah. I feel like there's like, we're already, like, the show hasn't officially started yet. We're already jaded. But just from the three episodes that I've been on, everybody sort of like, well, you know what? Like, obviously I would never use this, and I don't think that'll ever really get made, but I really appreciate that they're rolling the dice and having fun out there.

[Lisa Edajiko]

I mean, that's CES in a nutshell.

[David Roth]

It does feel like that's what it is. And so, like, you describing is like, this was something that, you know, as somebody who doesn't generally follow this, like, part of the fun of it for me last year was like, legitimate idiot awe at sort of like the it. We're doing five blades stuff where they're just like. We figured out how to do, like, the TV is so good that you couldn't actually watch anything on it, but it's like, fine. At least they're doing something. It's better than them just sort of like spackling some. Some, you know, notional AI modality over it and being like.

[Lisa Edajiko]

And right.

[David Roth]

It's gonna make friends for you while you sit at home. I did.

[Ed Zitron]

See they have added Nano Banana to televisions now.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yes.

[David Roth]

And I feel like, what a thrill to hear you say animals that was.

[Ed Zitron]

You could do deep dives. I hate Google tv. I hate saying Nano Banana. I think it's a terrible name. I think whoever came up with the name should be electrocuted.

[David Roth]

Can I share a stupid accent thing that I heard on the plane last night?

[Ed Zitron]

My.

[David Roth]

A guy behind me, an Australian guy, ordered Sprite with ice in an Australian accent. Just something to think about what that might sound like.

[Ed Zitron]

Do I know anyone Australian? If you're an Australian listener, please record.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

The only one I know is my boy Jason, my co host.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, get Jason to record it. In fact, just email me easyteroffline.com if you record yourself as an Australian saying it.

[Lisa Edajiko]

If you're going to ask my Australian friends from cnet, yeah, let's get the Australian zone.

[David Roth]

The thing that people love, it's being like, your voice is all fucked.

[Ed Zitron]

Up.

[David Roth]

You mind saying a few phrases for me? Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

I'd know nothing about that.

[Lisa Edajiko]

That happened to me when I was on vacation in Ireland, like, last year. Like, a cashier at a convenience store was like, can you say this? And I was like, why? And it was just, like, really bizarre.

[David Roth]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

This is my life. This is my. My life is people. People turning to me and saying, I can't help myself. I have. Do my accent.

[Lisa Edajiko]

If you have, you can help yourself. You can.

[Ed Zitron]

No. If you've ever said this to me, you're a fucking liar. Oh, I have a thing. No, you don't. You think your British accent is good and you want me to tell you it's good. It's never good. It's never been good. Stop. And to be clear, this is. No, your British accent's funny.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

If you just do it. To be clear. If you're making fun of England, bully for you. I'm right there with you.

[David Roth]

I don't really have one. I'd just periodically be like, what? Or like my.

[Ed Zitron]

Exactly.

[David Roth]

That's all. That's all I've got.

[Ed Zitron]

And that's fine. I do that too. But.

[Scott Stein]

But it.

[Ed Zitron]

It's just. Yeah. Sprite with ice. It doesn't sound good. When I say, do you want to.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Give us a demonstration?

[David Roth]

It was basically like, sprite with ice. No, it wasn't.

[Robert Evans]

That wasn't.

[David Roth]

That was British.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

That wasn't bad.

[David Roth]

It wasn't.

[Lisa Edajiko]

That was pretty good.

[Ed Zitron]

I was Sprite. Sprite with ice.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Sprite with.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Were there any.

[David Roth]

No.

[Ed Zitron]

He was two hours into the CES coverage. And this is. This is linguistic Gemini. Generate.

[David Roth]

Making sounds back and forth to each other. Whether it's just pure whale song.

[Ed Zitron]

But no, I like the idea that, like, someone is generating images on their te. Like, what freak did that and was like, you know what people want to do? Generate an image. No, no. No one has ever been. I wish I could generate something on my.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Add some friends to this photo of me alone on the couch.

[Lisa Edajiko]

I think part of it is a lot of these tech companies have been trying to make tea. Something that they're not for a long time, like, trying to make them all these different types of ambient computers and whatever. And I feel like that's just part of that effort. And CES is the hub of all of that.

[Ed Zitron]

I was saying in the cap earlier, it's just like, at some point, it's a fucking television, right?

[Lisa Edajiko]

People just want a really nice screen that they want to look at.

[Ed Zitron]

There was the thing of, like, oh, you won't have to plug devices into it. Now you can do Netflix on it. Great.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Okay.

[Ed Zitron]

Now you can play games. And I saw someone announce you can do Xbox gaming.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah. Game Pass.

[Ed Zitron]

Which kind of make. And that's. I'm kind of like, fine. That makes sense. It's streaming and now what? And they're like Banana Nana.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Now when you get home drunk at night and the TV's a little too dim, you could go TV.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, me too. Gemini, Pikachu 911. Gemini. Just like, please. Gemini. Star Wars. Pikachu 911.

[David Roth]

Like, just like, Ed, are you sure?

[Ed Zitron]

Calling your mother. No, no, no. But you can't do that from a television, though. You actually can't like calling people, like, Facebook. Facebook Portal is, weirdly enough, like, the only product that can reliably do that. It's really weird.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Is that true?

[Ed Zitron]

It's really hard to find a television because honestly, a tv, A TV with a camera in it is bad. But at the same time, it's like a weirdly rare product. Weirdly enough, the Facebook portal is actually good.

[Lisa Edajiko]

That's like one of the few products I actually have never tried.

[Ed Zitron]

Don't worry, they killed it.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Yeah, that much I know.

[Ed Zitron]

They're like, no, no, no, no, no. We need to. We. You can't find your friends on Facebook. Oh, Facebook Portal to your family. Not so far as to fuck with. You want some glasses? You want some glasses? They kind of work.

[David Roth]

What if it let you talk to a local restaurant that, like, has a lot of weirdly racist posts? Is that what you want?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah, we call them during rush hour right now. Hey, guys. Where the fuck's my food?

[Ed Zitron]

It's just trying to get away from the core function because there's not really many reasons to buy a new TV anymore, right? Because, I mean, I have like a. I'm an upgrade pig. I love upgrading my phone. I love the slightly faster, better experience. I'm not going to upgrade my TV until it breaks. It's 4K. It's HDMI 2.1.

[Lisa Edajiko]

I mean, people just want bigger TVs that look nice, that don't cost as much. That is what everybody wants.

[Ed Zitron]

I have a really big, like, 85 inch Sony bright. It was $1700 six years ago, I think. And it's like, why would I upgrade? What possible reason? And the TV companies are sitting there just being like, because there really isn't. It's like, oh, I could have Gemini on my tv. I pay for it not to be on there.

[David Roth]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

Yes.

[David Roth]

Like, funny to your point. Like, the way that this is like the. The purpose of CES versus the purpose of like consumer entertainment as you, like, would consume it or consumer electronics as you would consume it is basically. Basically like you want the good tv, but they. They would be bored. And they probably sense that if you, as a CES attendee would be bored, if they're just like showing you a dope new TV that's showing a movie on it that's like, yeah.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

What if it had one key feature that worked? 30.

[David Roth]

Yeah. Would that be new? Would that seem intriguing to you? Yeah, but that is 100. Like, it feels like that is. I don't know what percentage of the stuff here.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, but they even. Do they have a TV section where it's just showing you the nice stuff.

[Robert Evans]

Great.

[iHeart Advertising Announcer]

Every.

[Ed Zitron]

They have micro LED or mini.

[Matt Binder]

They have new stuff.

[Ed Zitron]

And the TVs are thinner. There's a very thin LG.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Last year I saw TVs you could bend and I was like, and what situation am I?

[David Roth]

I love.

[Ed Zitron]

No, I bender like, what's going on? I just get home, I'm like, thank.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

God I got the betable tv. Last night would have gone different.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I was trashed. I wanted to fight my television.

[David Roth]

We're marketing this exclusively to fans of bat bad NFL teams.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Cowboys. I'm a Cowboys fan. It would be nice if I wanted to break my tv.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm a Raiders fan. I don't even turn it on. Probably. There's just no need. Oh, they lost. I knew they were done after the second game. They won three of them.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Don't worry. One day we're gonna win a Super bowl each.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

I actually don't know which of us has the worst chance.

[David Roth]

You're probably not old enough to remember Cowboy super bowl win, are you? No, that's. Well, I am. And going up in the worst guys in America are going to be celebrating right alongside you when it happens.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[David Roth]

I'm not old enough to remember a Raiders super bowl win, but I'm sure it'll be very nice.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I'll get Gemini to generation no banana.

[David Roth]

I can't do that.

[Ed Zitron]

It's too unrealistic.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Reality check. You're trying to spread misinformation. They would never win.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, it's. And the thing is, it's. I don't. I. I can think of ways my life could be like the laundry bot we were talking about last time. All of those fall down because it's like the actual way that people experience laundry is a large pile of stuff. Like, it's just like, hey, the sock is in within the katamari of shit. I've left for too long. I want to be able to chuck the katamari into a box. And then laundry comes out. There are also services that do that. You could do this wash and folds in New York. It's kind of like. Could do that. It's like. Or you could spend $5,000 on something that I assume you need to like neatly thread the thing into. And the tv. Problem is a lot of things look weird. Like you to customize. Like different situations. Like sports games look different to movies and such. TVs don't seem to be trying to fix that. Like the fact that every show is incredibly dark now.

[Lisa Edajiko]

That's what they should be using AI for. Honestly.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, but no, no, no, no, no, no. Do you need nano banana? Nano banana. You need the nano banana. Television. Freaking Pikachu 9 11. What do we. What do you want TV to look better? You want stranger things to look good? Fuck you. Yeah, no tv.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

There's an Eminem verse in there somewhere.

[David Roth]

Yeah, seriously. He was kind of spitting there for a minute.

[Ed Zitron]

I'll be rapping by the end of this show. Did you see anything? What else have you seen at the show? Other than solids?

[Lisa Edajiko]

Yeah, other than phones. Lots of robots, I would say that's.

[Robert Evans]

Always a big robots.

[Lisa Edajiko]

One that plays chess and it's like absurdly expensive.

[Ed Zitron]

How much was it? Did you find out?

[Lisa Edajiko]

I. You know what? I. I forget. I just remember being like, wow, that's a lot. It was kind of something I saw in thousands. I don't know if it was thousands, but it was something that was marketed as like, hey, buy this if you like really love to play chess but you don't have anyone to play with or you want your kid to learn how to play chess or something.

[Ed Zitron]

And you don't want to use any of the compute to chess.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Right? Exactly right.

[David Roth]

Like there's whole.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Yeah.

[David Roth]

I think that this. That again is like another one of those kind of classic coming from.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Right. That's the other thing. Another thing I saw was a robot. Or it's really just more of a machine that sits on your countertop. But you know, everything's a robot at CES that can cook for you if you like. Almost like a keurig for food where you put ingredients in and it knows.

[David Roth]

Extrudes a room temperature stew like for you. It's so nice. Finally.

[Ed Zitron]

Here's your slop, pig.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Yeah, it was a lot of things where it's just like okay, nobody wants to do anything, but none of these alternatives seem right.

[David Roth]

But it's like a somehow, like, more degrading than any of the other options. Like, the idea of being like, well, I don't want to call someone and have them deliver something to my home. Yeah, I'm just going to stuff a bunch of celery into this hole and see what happens.

[Lisa Edajiko]

It's like, really dark, and maybe I'm oversimplifying it again. This is like me just walking around CES unveiled last night and being. Being like, oh, there's a lot of people at this station, so let me see what everyone's looking at. And yeah, that was just, like, the impression that I got, though. It seems similar to, like, a Keurig, but for food. Like, you put the ingredients in it, knows the recipes or whatever. And, yeah, I don't know. It was. It was really bizarre. But.

[Ed Zitron]

But how does, like, how does the food get in there? Do you just throw a bunch of carrots?

[Lisa Edajiko]

Yeah, you have ingredients that you, like, put in, and it knows what the ingredients are, and it has recipes or something.

[David Roth]

Or it's like there's a cocktail, one of those that's like at the level of now. It's like you see commercials for it on tv.

[Lisa Edajiko]

I've used it. It's not. It's not bad, actually. It's good.

[Ed Zitron]

So it's not bad.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Is it like, okay, I put the ingredients in there nose. Or you got to sit there being like, okay, I put in celery. I put in.

[Lisa Edajiko]

No, no, no. There's like a. There's like recipe packs and stuff or something. Like that recipe book or something. Again, I'm like, probably botching the details.

[Robert Evans]

No, no, no.

[Scott Stein]

That makes.

[Ed Zitron]

No, no, you're not watching the details.

[David Roth]

That sounds weird.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Lots of questions.

[David Roth]

I'm the guy that was initially like, will you just put carrots in it? What you're saying makes a lot more sense than what was just coming out of my head.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Also, there are startups out there that would do.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, you put a carrot in there.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Glorified juicer.

[Ed Zitron]

Kind of like the Samsung fridge, though, with Gemini in it. I did see that earlier Gemini fridge, where it's like, oh, I haven't seen that yet. It's so good. You read the product demonstration thing and it's like, yeah, you can use your voice to open and close the door. And it's like, okay, just. You've never opened a fridge. Like, it's like, finally a way to open the fridge.

[Lisa Edajiko]

That's not the problem that needs solving here.

[Ed Zitron]

Their argument is like, oh, well, it's.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Also been around, like, not like the voice element, but like, didn't lg. Haven't they been showing fridges for years that have motion sensors? If your hands are just like a kid.

[David Roth]

It's like one of those things where it's like as an accessibility technology, it's probably existed for a long time and now they're just sort of like, people are forgetting how to open the fridge. It's one of the big problems facing.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Where are we as a society where people don't know how to open their fridge?

[Ed Zitron]

I'm just saying at home, just going, what do I do?

[David Roth]

What do I do?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Imagine if we had a screen on the fridge that you could talk to and it would tell you what's inside. You don't ever after.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, the touches, I love.

[Lisa Edajiko]

It feels very. I think you should leave. Like, what do I do?

[David Roth]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Exactly. Just Tim Robbins.

[David Roth]

I don't know what any of this shit is exactly.

[Ed Zitron]

I didn't ask for this.

[Lisa Edajiko]

I don't know what I'm doing.

[Ed Zitron]

I do love the ones where it's like, we will find. We use AI to tell you what's in your fridge. It's like, fuck, mate, I had no idea.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Something else that'll do that.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Yeah, No, I was going to say there are so many times when I over buy because I'm at the store and I'm like, oh, I'm probably low on this, but I don't know. So I. I do feel like that could be actually helpful.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

But like you're send. You're gonna save $5 on carrots then.

[Lisa Edajiko]

That's what I mean. But then you end up with so many carrots and you're like, oh man, I bought too many carrots again.

[David Roth]

How do I feed them into this thing that I keep on my counter that turns them into creme brulee? Somehow.

[Ed Zitron]

I love my slot machine that really. It does feel like there's a certain degree though of just that. Like, what are human concerns? Well, there's poverty and there's a living situation and there's health care. No, let's just. How do you open a fridge?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

What would you like a butler?

[David Roth]

What is in fridge?

[Ed Zitron]

Would you like butler? Okay, so someone that can clean up for me and someone could do my laundry. Oh, oh, no, no, we can't do that. What if now Nano Banana.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Yeah, it always comes back to Nano Banana.

[Ed Zitron]

All roads lead to Gemini. And it's just like, I'm just I'm really looking forward to seeing deep into the depths of this show and just being like, what. What reason have you come up with? Like, last year, I remember there was this air purifier with a big spike underneath him. And I walked up to the person, I'm like, what's with the spike? And they took a second to register because no one had spoken to them in that manner. And they're like, oh, no, it's really obvious.

[Robert Evans]

Something.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm like, sure.

[David Roth]

Not that obvious.

[Ed Zitron]

No. You'll never believe this. It's like, no, it's for dogs. I'm like, what?

[David Roth]

Yeah, it was a hair thing. I remember this probably.

[Ed Zitron]

No, it was. It was an air purifier where the dog. And then they paused. Or a cat could use it to scratch themselves.

[Scott Stein]

Oh, my God.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I'm like.

[Ed Zitron]

And I just like, do you have a dog? And they're like, no. I'm like, great, because, well, I don't know when a. Like a dog's just walking around looking for places to screw.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

This is like someone who one time had their cat or dog go on the air purifier, and they're like, whoa, yeah, whoa, whoa. Put something for them.

[David Roth]

You never know when inspiration will strike.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

It's a little weirdo.

[Ed Zitron]

It's also like, how do you scratch a cat? Like, one of the most pleasant things in the world is like, petting a cat.

[Scott Stein]

Cat.

[Lisa Edajiko]

It's like, nah, I don't want something that does that for me.

[David Roth]

That's like apex level, like, solving a problem that you don't have stuff. It's like, are you wasting too much time that you could be spending sending emails? Listen, you don't touching your pet that you love. Don't want to attack your pet.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Don't want to teach your kid how to play chess. Don't want to use your tv.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Don't want to cook.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Don't want to cook.

[David Roth]

That's time. You could be on work calls.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

You know what?

[David Roth]

I.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Let's just imagine boosting shareholder value all the time.

[David Roth]

Keep your eyes on the prize.

[Ed Zitron]

What are you fucking doing? When all of this stuff is automated, just sitting inert, waiting for the next email.

[Lisa Edajiko]

It's Wally. That's what we're heading to, a promotion, brother.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm moving up the corporate ladder as my slot machine spit, like, burps out carrot puree.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

You're on a zoom call, and it's the loudest background ever.

[Ed Zitron]

No, I got. I got a Ninja Creamy. One of the worst name things of all time. And it is you feed stuff into it. You have to freeze it and you turn it on and it makes more noise than I have ever heard.

[David Roth]

Is. It's a soft serve machine.

[Ed Zitron]

No, it just makes ice cream that's like sometimes the right texture.

[Matt Binder]

I love it.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah. When I think of ice cream, I think of ice cream shops. Never, never heard loud noises.

[Ed Zitron]

And it's so. It's so loud. It sounds like. And it.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Shit. Everyone knows you're making ice cream right now.

[David Roth]

So embarrassing.

[Ed Zitron]

The first time I used it, it's.

[David Roth]

Like the third time today right there.

[Ed Zitron]

And it shakes violently. It's like, is this real?

[Scott Stein]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

It's so loud. I remember the first time I turned on. I'm like, this must be something. I looked on YouTube and there's people being like, yeah, I've got the creamy on. This is good here. It's like $250. Just one of the many times the wallet inspector has visited me.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I love it you that it was so loud. And they were like, should we reduce it? And they're like, nah, they want ice cream.

[Ed Zitron]

These hog.

[Lisa Edajiko]

They'll do anything for ice cream.

[David Roth]

You have no idea what these people are willing to put up with for their little treats.

[Ed Zitron]

And it's. No. It's aimed at people who want to like lose weight.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Okay.

[Scott Stein]

So.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, because you can make sugar free ice cream.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Okay.

[Ed Zitron]

But it's like the inst.

[David Roth]

Makes ice cream so unpleasant to consider.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

It's just like you Pavlovs you into thinking I'm like, yeah.

[David Roth]

Ice cream is when I have a headache really bad.

[Ed Zitron]

No, I you not. I put it in another room.

[David Roth]

I closed the door.

[Ed Zitron]

My kid was asleep. I had to move it.

[David Roth]

Like, what if all don't go in there?

[Lisa Edajiko]

It's the ice cream room.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Let me just go in your kitchen. Now get to be in another room because they're so loud.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, that's.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

We're disrupting the. The kitchen.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay.

[David Roth]

Like, the only things in that room were like a drum set and a Ninja Creamy.

[Ed Zitron]

Wait, Lisa, did you see anything else?

[David Roth]

Was it.

[Ed Zitron]

Were they loud?

[Lisa Edajiko]

Like, I mean, it's hard.

[David Roth]

What was the loudest gadget?

[Lisa Edajiko]

The loudest gadget? Oh, gosh. I don't know. It's. I mean, it's always so loud. Just at ces. Everybody's screaming everywhere. Like, I just. I can't. Like, it's true. Everyone's shouting like, I can't hear myself things.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't think I've heard anyone screaming.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Not screaming, but everyone's trying to film videos. So everyone is like shouting over each other and trying to ask questions.

[David Roth]

The level of ambient noise is exactly. Although the other bit that I remember from, I mean, I didn't exactly love the experience, but last year, going to the convention center, to the entire floor, that was just like white label electronics from China.

[Lisa Edajiko]

USB cables.

[David Roth]

And it was silent.

[Scott Stein]

Totally.

[David Roth]

Like, you could hear the H vac system going and, like, hear the sound of. Of someone sleeping softly in one of the booths. And that was it. They're both pretty unsettling. Honestly. If I had to shoot video, I would do it in the hall of USB cables, the hall of silence. I also don't want to go back there.

[Ed Zitron]

No, it's.

[Scott Stein]

It's great.

[Ed Zitron]

If you go in there with a media badge and like, everyone's like, every head switches to look at you like you've hit someone in Morrowind. Stop, citizen, let me show you my.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Would you like to see my wares?

[David Roth]

Every booth is trying to send you all a side quest, and you're like, I can't.

[Lisa Edajiko]

I can't right now.

[David Roth]

I'm trying to find the big LG things.

[Ed Zitron]

Interested? You got any ice cream machines that are very loud? Like, no, but we have an LLM for Pets.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Help me reduce the sound of this device.

[Ed Zitron]

LLM for Pets was last year really disappointing because it was just like a health app versus something to translate my cat's noise. And when I posted about. About it, the company emailed me. They were like, actually, please don't. I just was like, no, no, don't. I'm not taking down my post, Sue. I didn't say that. But if they being su. If I called my lawyer, I'm like, I'm being sued by an LLM pets company. He would be like, he would not be surprised.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

You got to send him a video of your cat meowing really aggressively.

[Ed Zitron]

Like, trans Babu loves me too much. Babu treats me with. With adoration.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

The only time my cats really get loud like that is like, if I sleep in and didn't feed them at 6:00am, you know, as opposed to 7:00am.

[Ed Zitron]

My cats just graze. Yeah, they happily graze. And they don't get fat. They're too. They're just perfect.

[Lisa Edajiko]

The mine have started grazing, but they used to not. And they're still on the like, oh, my God, I need food right now kind of mindset. And then you give them their food and they're like, I'll have two bites and then I'll get back to it later.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Sometimes they scream to make me want to watch them Eat.

[David Roth]

They.

[Ed Zitron]

They'll scream and make me.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

And then I'm like, okay, what's up? You got your food? And then they start.

[Ed Zitron]

I. I have seen a few links to, like, pets that people have here. Like, I. I saw before the show, there was this one that makes noise and purrs and is warm, which sounds like those ones. Again, not going to be cynical about those, because there's old people who. People with dementia who can't look after a pet, except they made one that has knees.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Needs. What does that mean?

[Ed Zitron]

As in, like, you have to, like.

[David Roth]

Take it like a big.

[Ed Zitron]

And it's like, okay, so I get none of the benefits of a living creature, but most of the problems are the obligations.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

This is something I don't think they'll have at cs, but I've been seeing in New York vapes with Tamagotchi in them that you have to keep hitting to keep them alive.

[David Roth]

Oh.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Oh, God.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

What would. What would.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, because. Because the problem with vapes is people don't want to use them.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

We need to make nicotine more addictive.

[David Roth]

We're gamifying the addiction space.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah. Steal your friend's vape and see what happens 30 seconds later.

[Scott Stein]

Yeah.

[David Roth]

Killed it.

[Ed Zitron]

They should have.

[David Roth]

You killed my vape. It's dead, actually.

[Ed Zitron]

No. Someone who's very stoned just crying their eyes out. My vape died.

[David Roth]

So what did I do?

[Ed Zitron]

I killed my vape and I can't find my keys. They're in your hand.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

LLM to help you process the death of your vape.

[Ed Zitron]

The LL machine. Yeah. It's gonna be an interesting week here in ces because I've been trying to, like, read. Last year was just completely off the top of my head. I just made this up as I went along. No one knows. But this year I've, like, tried to read ahead, thinking, oh, I'll catch. No, it seems to be most of the stuff from last year again, in.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Yeah, it's hard to plan ahead for ces. Like, you can plan as much as you want, but then the thing that you plan for is going to end up to be really boring, and everyone's going to be chasing this other thing.

[Ed Zitron]

That you heard of, like the Omniverse. I'm a big Omniverse head as a huge Omniverse.

[Robert Evans]

And.

[Ed Zitron]

And I. I was really happy to see the half an hour that Jensen Huang spent talking about it today.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

But, yeah, it's just. I'm hoping that I'm really. If you easy at better offline, email me if you find any weird shit or if you want to just say, what was it? Sprite and ice? In an Australian accent.

[Matt Binder]

Anyone?

[Ed Zitron]

I'm gonna get a lot of wavs in my email, I think. No, it's. It's. I hope that there's something weird, but I get the sense that this year just feels cobbled together in a very strange way. Like, last year was not quite half hearted, but off. But this one's just like, AI, I guess. You want this. What are you looking forward to?

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Anything.

[Ed Zitron]

Lisa, you got anything fun? I mean, at the show?

[Lisa Edajiko]

If there's anything I'm looking forward to, I feel like I'm just kind of keeping an eye out for, like, what some of the smaller companies are doing in AI because there's a coup of interesting. I feel like one small trend I'm seeing a little bit already are, like, wearables that aren't actually for health tracking but are more for, like, life logging, sort of. Because, like, you press a button and it'll, you know, you can talk into it and record a reminder or something like that. There's the new pebble ring. Does that. I don't know if you guys saw that.

[Ed Zitron]

What's Pebble?

[David Roth]

Pebble.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Do you remember pebble?

[Ed Zitron]

I remember pebble.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Yeah. So they're. They're. They're back. Yeah. They were at ces, unveiled last night.

[Scott Stein]

Right.

[Lisa Edajiko]

And they had some new watches which were interesting. I didn't really look at those, though. But I was really interested in this ring because, again, it's just kind of like fun and different.

[Ed Zitron]

What's it do, though? Is it like a health tracking one?

[Lisa Edajiko]

No, it doesn't do any health tracking. It does one thing. Like it has a button on it and you can press it if you want to just, like, record a reminder or something that you want to remember later. Almost like a. Like a diary.

[Ed Zitron]

It just a ring? Is it just recording?

[Lisa Edajiko]

So there's, I think, some AI that happens on the back end in the app because it'll like things that you record and whatnot. So I just thought it was kind of interesting.

[Ed Zitron]

How much is it?

[Lisa Edajiko]

I think $75 or something like that.

[Scott Stein]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

We're in the realm of not useless.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Yeah, I just.

[Ed Zitron]

I swear to God, I want one thing I actually like at this. I'm. I'm not even trying to be a hater.

[Lisa Edajiko]

No, I know.

[Ed Zitron]

Make my heart sing, please.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I would like a mechanical turk. That's what I would like.

[Scott Stein]

Yep.

[David Roth]

Oh, I have some great news there.

[Lisa Edajiko]

I haven't looked at. I Haven't actually seen this yet, but have you guys heard about the Clicks Communicator? The.

[Ed Zitron]

Michael Fisher is joining us Friday. Who he's both a, a creator and an innovator. But yes, the Clicks communicator, that's like.

[David Roth]

What does it do?

[Ed Zitron]

It's like a little phone thing.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Yeah, it's supposed to be like a second phone. So if you want a phone just to like actually keep in touch with people and not to like fall down a rabbit hole on TikTok or Instagram or, or talk to Nano Banana or whatever. It has a built in keyboard. It kind of looks like a BlackBerry. And yeah, I mean it runs on Android I think. So you probably could do other things on it if you really wanted to.

[David Roth]

Basically you can send texts on it, but you can't do other stuff.

[Lisa Edajiko]

I don't know, I have not seen it yet. I was just kind of seeing it in the headlines. But since it runs on Android, presumably you can do other stuff on it. I think it's just designed to be like, hey, this has a smaller screen, there's a built in keyboard. Something if you just want to actually talk to people and not, you know, be immersed in a screen all day.

[David Roth]

Every second of every psychosis induction device on your own time. But like this is a little bit quieter experience.

[Lisa Edajiko]

I thought it was an interesting idea and like it's being pitched as like a secondary phone. Almost like you know how we have work phones and personal phones. I guess in that case it would be a third phone. But I'm gonna.

[Ed Zitron]

It's funny I have Michael on as a creator but I'm just gonna like bug him about his device this time. He's. I don't think he'll listen to this but Michael, that's what you've got coming, but we're gonna wrap it there. Lisa Chico at cnn, of course. Thank you so much for joining us.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Of course. Thanks for having me.

[Ed Zitron]

Edwin Graco Jr. Of the Tech Bubble Newsletter.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

A pleasure.

[Ed Zitron]

And David Roth of Defector, of course. And yeah, we're gonna have one more bit and then yeah, we'll be wrapped for the day. Thanks for listening everyone. I don't know what the next ad is, but I fully endorse. Welcome back to the better offline coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show. We're back folks. And this is the last part of this episode, but tomorrow we're gonna have two two hour episodes. It's gonna be full of fun and laughs and giggles. Don't know why I'm making so much Talking, happening. That's normal, Ed. Anyway, today I'm joined, of course, by David Roth of Defector.

[David Roth]

Hello.

[Ed Zitron]

Ed Ongueso Jr. Of the Tech Bubble newsletter.

[Matt Binder]

Hello.

[Ed Zitron]

And Mr. Robert Evans, the magnificent Robert Evans of Behind the Bastards. And it could been have happen here. Hello.

[Robert Evans]

We're all doing that, right?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, we were just. We were literally just talking about doing voices.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, Right. Which is culturally appropriating.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. I. There are British people who get really offended by it. And it's so funny, the idea of a British person being like, you can't. You can't be racist.

[David Roth]

Did you just say what to me, mate? Are you having a laugh?

[Robert Evans]

No, there's. There's a level of imperialism and obviously Americans crossed this long ago where you can't get angry people. People making fun of the way you talk. Right. And this is still true of Italians. It's been 2,000 years or whatever. I mean, it depends on when you call them 1500, whatever, a thousand, depending on when you call the end of the Roman Empire. But you can still make fun of Italians.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[David Roth]

It's never racist. I saw that. It's true.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Talking like that, like, was Julius Caesar getting stabbed?

[Robert Evans]

Be like, hey.

[David Roth]

His last words were, oof. Madame.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, Brutus. You.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

What are you doing?

[Ed Zitron]

I wish I knew any other Italian history. Just like, don't.

[Robert Evans]

That's it. Caesar and pasta.

[Ed Zitron]

Caesar and pasta. That's most of it. No, you can make fun of British people as much as you want. Sure, you're welcome to. I get enough emails about it. But let's talk about consumer electronics. And Robert, you were using an exoskeleton.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. So like, a couple of weeks before we left for the show, this company, Hyper Shell, reached out to me and said, hey, we make these different exoskeleton products. Several different companies have come out with them that are just now hitting. They've been in industrial uses for a while. There's been varying forms for really the last, like, 10 or 15 years that I've seen increasingly that are meant to do a mix of things. Some of them. And initially these were very separate product categories. There are ones that were meant for people who were having mobility issues to people with a disability to move more easily. And then there were ones that were more designed for, like, industrial use. Right. Like you have people working, like an Amazon facility and they're going to be lifting packages and walking them repeatedly, and you want something that reduces the stress to their body and thus reduces, like, workman's comp. Co. Those are kind of like the two different.

[Ed Zitron]

Of course, not for the humans. It's the workers compared. All right, we're back. We got disconnected due to the Amazon hit squad that was set in because we were discussing workers comp. And while we were off micro discussing. I do not think it's reasonable to suggest that every dog is a good boy. I don't think you should go in.

[Robert Evans]

Wow. I just don't think you just dropped that. Just. We're all supposed to roll right past it.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, Just. I just want to just put this.

[David Roth]

Thoughts? We're also anxious to get back to.

[Robert Evans]

Talking about.

[Ed Zitron]

Just a scene.

[David Roth]

Oh, we have the ones that are active duty police officers. Yeah.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

If I gotta walk by you at the airport, I don't know how do you.

[Ed Zitron]

We can't understand how dogs talk. We don't know what they're really thinking. So that's all I'm saying.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Maybe he's saying, I fucking hate this dog.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. Just cursing. Anyway, exoskeletons. Back to you, Robert.

[Robert Evans]

Sure. Yes. So, yeah, I mean, they reached out and asked if I wanted to try this thing at ces because people walk around a lot at ces. I guess this is not really meant as a product for journalists who get their feet tired walking around a trade show.

[David Roth]

This is mostly a blogging aid.

[Scott Stein]

He has a.

[Robert Evans]

To help you blog, finally. But I thought it was interesting. I'm a nerd. I grew up playing warhammer, so I'm interested in anything that is like a little step on the road to power armor, which was my immediate thought when I was like, powered exoskeleton. I'm gonna strap some body armor into this thing and see how it works. So I did that. I mean, I played around with it at home. I've got a sled that's like an exercise. It's like a sled that you load weights onto to push into, shove it, because that's a thing that you can do to exercise.

[Ed Zitron]

It's an awesome exercise. I love doing that.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And I threw on, like, my. My level four plates on a vest and my helmet with ear pro and stuff. Just like, I don't know, £25 maybe of. Of armor, and loaded the sled up to about 200 pounds and pushed and pulled it until I got to. Well, I did it first without any armor or with. With armor on, but without the exoskeleton to see how long I could go.

[David Roth]

And.

[Robert Evans]

And then I waited, like a day or so to recover, and then I did it with the exoskeleton and I think this may just be down to how it works because it's not meant for those motions. I noticed that when I was pushing it, I felt the machine assistance, like pulling my legs effectively, but when I was pulling it backwards, I didn't really feel much of anything at all.

[Matt Binder]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

So I think it may just be sort of a factor of like when the thing functions. But I didn't really notice a benefit from that. I have noticed it does seem to like, you're exerting less when you're like running or walking on it. So I'm interested in how I feel. I'm going to tomorrow, probably hump around like a backpack heavier than I would normally take and keep it on and see how that feels. And then probably do the same thing with like. I don't know how else to do it as like, do a control group experiment. It goes around, it fits around your hips and your thighs. It ends right above the knee and there's a waistband thing for it. And so it's just meant to kind of alleviate weight, I think on your lower back and your legs. They've got some statistics that they have on their website that I have no idea how I would begin to verify. I don't even know how you would verify stuff like a. Well, I see they say there's a 42% decrease in the average heart rate of people using. Using it.

[Ed Zitron]

That seems measurable. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

But there's like a 39% decrease in physical exertion. I'm not fully sure how it is.

[David Roth]

All the classic metrics for what are you doing and how hard is it for you.

[Robert Evans]

And they're saying it's something like a 40% reduction in how much weight that you feel, basically. So theoretically you could carry a load that's 50% heavier or carry your additional load with about half the strain. Right. Like, that's kind of the claim that they're making. And this thing is supposed to have like a 30 kilometer battery range when walking. Now, there's different settings, including like an ECO and a power one. You can up or down the like, intensity, the power of the assistance motor. So I assume that decreases substantially when you've got it on like level four, because it goes from one to four. But I have not used it enough to like, determine that.

[Ed Zitron]

That's exciting though.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, it's a cool product idea. I've tested a. I think they emailed me because I've tried some of these at previous cess, just like walking around at the actual booths. It's a really Cool idea. Both for people who actually have, like, a physical disability. And, you know, obviously none of these companies are interested in stuff like this for people who are working in factories for their own sake. But if it does reduce the amount of wear and tear on human bodies, that's a good thing.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I got a fucked up ankle. It sounds kind of nice.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. So I'm interested in how well it actually works for that. And I'm not like, Hypershell has been nice to me. I'm hoping that the product works well, but I simply don't have enough time with it.

[Ed Zitron]

How much does it cost?

[Robert Evans]

It varies. Their lowest end version costs like 900 bucks. The one they sent me cost about 2,000. But three years ago or so, I think we were looking at like five to ten grand for most of these. So it doesn't look like prices have been coming down a lot.

[Ed Zitron]

And what makes the more expensive? What is it, bigger battery or something?

[Robert Evans]

I think bigger battery. One of the upgrade versions says carbon, so I'm guessing some of them are carbon fiber and some aren't. Mine definitely is, but yeah. So I think it's just a matter of, like, what kind of extras there are on it. But the prices have been decreasing pretty substantially. And from the reading I have done for previous years, there does seem to be some. Some evidence that some products in this category do reduce, like, strain and injury for people who are working, doing jobs where you're like, lifting and carrying stuff. So I, you know, I think there's some evidence to be optimistic here. I'm interested in how. Well, I don't actually think convention is the best way to test a product like this out. But I understand why Hypershell's doing it that way. Right. And I'm sure other companies in the space are because, like, it at least gives. Gives you a situation where journalists are gonna be walking around a while and can try it out. So I'll see how I think about it. But I am most interested in, like, can I make me into a space marine? Right, right.

[Ed Zitron]

And I mean, that's the ultimate dream. Of course this is interesting. Cause we spent most of the rest of the episode just saying nothing feels new. That everything's kind of just a series of different, like, coming up with reasons to buy stuff that don't actually appear to be human. This is strangely useful. I'm just not used to.

[Robert Evans]

It's the kind of thing I'm always most interested in at a CES and that never more than like 10% of the products you see where it's like, well, this is like a cool thing that I've known we'd eventually make as a species at some point. Like we all knew they're gonna have robot exoskeletons someday.

[Ed Zitron]

I mean I've been hoping for them.

[Robert Evans]

Like it's, it's.

[David Roth]

It's not like they had them on the Nostromo.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[David Roth]

How hard could it be? Yeah, exactly. One of the store you can get.

[Robert Evans]

It really seemed like they were cutting corners on that. I was gonna say it was like.

[David Roth]

Remember how wet that ship was? There's a lot of issues there.

[Robert Evans]

Although I think Nostromo was the first one. But I forget what the. The Sulaco was. The second was the marine ship. People will get angry at us.

[David Roth]

Yeah, that's my fault. Defector regrets the error.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[David Roth]

I apologize to Ian who's this alien.

[Robert Evans]

Alien on a flight right now fight you.

[David Roth]

But I can't even argue with him.

[Ed Zitron]

Luckily we're landlocked. Otherwise he'd come with us from the sea.

[Robert Evans]

His greatest power is. Is. Does involve the ocean.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. He would rise from the sea level looking like.

[Robert Evans]

Like Aquaman.

[Ed Zitron]

He's cut off air power.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

With this newest movies looking into rising.

[David Roth]

From one of the canals at the Venetian and absolutely beating that ass.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Running like one of the Terminators towards the whole time.

[David Roth]

I'm just like, you're such a visionary server. Like whatever you see fit to do.

[Ed Zitron]

He's a pro AI guy though. He's got.

[David Roth]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

I mean I. I think he's. He's a. He made the statement that I. I think a of lot. A lot of older guys in Hollywood are making without really thinking it through. Which is like, oh yeah, I'm sure it has some applications that I want to explore. And not thinking about the broader socio cultural things that are going on with AI. He's just accurately being like, yeah, it's got some uses. I'll look into it. You know, if it makes it easier. David lynch did the same thing for.

[David Roth]

Me to almost drown an actress then like. Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

What can most effectively let me nearly kill Ed Harris.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Right?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Is AI going to revolutionize my ability to nearly kill that Harris?

[Ed Zitron]

At least he didn't do what tells me to do. Natasha Leone who was like here, David lynch, love this. That may be. No, I was saying the other day that if.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Media stuff doesn't usually enrage me that much. But if I hear about a Twin Peaks remake. Put it in through the algorithm. I'm not gonna use nano banana.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Listen, put in a different Price.

[Ed Zitron]

Coop, I don't want to see Nano Banana.

[Matt Binder]

Mix your heart or die.

[Ed Zitron]

Hell, yeah.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

That'd be heartbreaking.

[Ed Zitron]

No, no, no. Anyone who. If you're trying to remake Twin Peaks, I will make war with you. I'll turn every media property I have against you.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I'm not gonna remake it. I'm gonna do a new season.

[Ed Zitron]

I haven't finished season two. Don't. Don't ruin it for me.

[Robert Evans]

I've always thought the real problem with Twin Peaks was there were no dewback lizards, like, moving around in the background. And there's a couple of scenes that could really use to ATS team.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

You know, I'm on the same page.

[Ed Zitron]

Bob shot first.

[David Roth]

That's why I think it's good that the Duffer brothers got the rights to that. Someone would. This was something that I've been laughing about for, like, two days. I did not watch the Stranger Things the last season, so I haven't watched the last, I guess, four or five seasons of it.

[Ed Zitron]

I just called it Things.

[David Roth]

But the. Someone pointed out that all the effects in the finale look like the Tried so Hard video by Lincoln park, which.

[Ed Zitron]

Is funny to me. It's that and the corn. Corn as well. Yeah, it's falling away from me. I saw a clip from that, and it looked. It looked really bad, but it was like one of them jumping and punching a big, horrible CGI alien throw. And it's just like, doesn't this show have the budget of, like, Ethiopia's GDP or something?

[David Roth]

Hundreds of millions.

[Ed Zitron]

And it looks like dog. It's so. I love slot and people like, well, this is just them preparing to give you LLM. No, it's not. It's just Netflix. It's just Netflix destroying money.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Aren't you excited they're about to acquire Warner Brothers?

[Ed Zitron]

Just.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I. I don't know. Like, I. I haven't seen the new Stranger Things because after season one, I was like, I think I'm good.

[David Roth]

Yeah. That was basically.

[Robert Evans]

I think I got what I wanted to.

[David Roth]

I didn't mind it either. It was just one of those things we never even talked about watching in the household. We were like, a second season. Good for them.

[Robert Evans]

Good.

[David Roth]

Good for those kids.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. I'm glad they're getting their. Their. Their bag. I'm not interested.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, most of the current season is apparently just, like, 21 people in a room standing around folding their arms.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

So, like, Avengers.

[David Roth]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[David Roth]

Get him in an airplane hangar, put him in a motion capture suit, and then have them talk about what just happened.

[Robert Evans]

What's the cheapest big build we can get him in?

[Ed Zitron]

We're talking about real things. As we were discussing at the beginning of the episode, we saw the Jensen Huang thing. Robert, you missed nothing.

[Robert Evans]

I'm good. Yeah. You're talking about the Nvidia keynote speech.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

That I thought was tomorrow.

[Matt Binder]

Oh, yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

You really missed nothing, though. And I went and I kind of mentioned this at the beginning. I went and I looked, and the six new chips they announced, all announced in, like, either June, October or November. Like, they're all old, but they're new. Then you see it again for the first time.

[Scott Stein]

They're new.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

This is the first time they've been together.

[David Roth]

And it's like they're actually making one of them. Did you see that on the video that they're making it?

[Ed Zitron]

They're actually going to manufacture it.

[Matt Binder]

They're going to manufacture in production.

[Robert Evans]

It's like.

[Ed Zitron]

And I just saw before we went on that AMD had a really disappointed. Greg Brock, for the COO of OpenAI, went on. It's so cool. They went on. They did this big fucking speech about how it's just like, compute is the new oil or something. Just blow my brains out whenever I hear this.

[Robert Evans]

That's a great statement.

[Ed Zitron]

It's so fucking cool. But what's great about it, though, is, like, they didn't talk about the fact that they meant to build a gigawatt of data centers by the end of this fucking year. It's just like, it's the farce.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I don't think we'll talk about that again.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, we don't need. We don't need to talk about the thing we agreed on.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

You're a Sixers fan now. Trust the process.

[David Roth]

Right. You're locked in.

[Ed Zitron]

Who's the James Harden of commit to, like. Oh, no, no, that's Jay Parikh. He got fired. He moved from. No, Jay Parikh, he went from Lace Works, a company that was most famous for buying $30,000 worth of Lululemon gift cards to get people to use their software to meta to Microsoft to run their AI group. Like, that's the James Harden. But he doesn't. But you don't have anyone who, like, stroppily quits. We don't have any, like, people like that. That's what we needed. We need more. More like characters.

[David Roth]

A Ben Simmons. We need a Ben guy that's like, I'm not taking layups. That's beneath me. I don't do that anymore.

[Ed Zitron]

It's the Ben Simmons. It's like the three basketball list listeners, like, they just love it.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Whatever happened to the strong loud type like Steve Bomber?

[David Roth]

That's what we need. Yes. Somebody that. I honestly had that thought when we.

[Ed Zitron]

Were watching developers develop.

[David Roth]

We were watching Wong talk. I was like, I know how much more energy can be involved in this. He's not even sweating a little bit.

[Ed Zitron]

If I had billions of dollars, I would be fucking losing it up there. I'd be going inside, I'd be like, well, you can't do anything to me. Buy this. Buy this entire place. But yeah, it was so limp. It was so sad. It's like they barely seem to be fucking trying anymore.

[Robert Evans]

Well, what is there for Nvidia to really say at a keynote? Right. Like, it's not. Their products are really exciting to people who are in like, the business of utilizing them, but it's not like a consumer product that they're hyping up right now.

[Ed Zitron]

But this was all like analysts and media and such.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And it had. There was a line out the door.

[Robert Evans]

Because they're making all the money in the world.

[Scott Stein]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

That's what's exciting.

[David Roth]

Yeah. I think that was. The little bit from the guy that I talked to was sitting next to me was just like part of it was like he just wanted to be in a room with a guy that rich.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[David Roth]

Like, not even in like a way that I'm like, that makes sense. He's just like, I've never been. Been in a room with a guy this rich before. It's crazy.

[Ed Zitron]

Like, you're in Vegas. Go to a strip club.

[Robert Evans]

That is the beauty of Vegas. If you stay up late enough, you will get to watch a Saudi Sheik lose $30,000 in a craps table.

[Ed Zitron]

Just go to a craps table in the Venetian or the Palazzo. You will run into someone with too much money, if that's really what you desire. But no, I mean, I saw John McCain once in the Venetian. Wild cut the. That's like. But otherwise it's just people that shouldn't have that much money that you've never met.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Just burning it.

[David Roth]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

You know, maybe. Didn't he have a lot of money? It wasn't his wife.

[David Roth]

Like, his wife is very rich.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, yeah, his wife.

[David Roth]

Now I think it's like. I think it's like regional liquor, wholesale money. Like one of those, like classic American gentry things where it's like thinking kind. No, that's John Kerry's.

[Scott Stein]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

Right.

[Robert Evans]

Hides. I was like, I don't think people get rich with hides anymore.

[Ed Zitron]

John McCame is a fur trapper. I look forward to the CES fur trapping section.

[Robert Evans]

I prefer that background for him.

[Ed Zitron]

I would love it if there was a fur trapping.

[Robert Evans]

Kidnapped by beavers in the middle of a fur trapping expedition. They tortured him for five years.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Turns out they don't like what we're doing to their dad.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, not happy with it.

[David Roth]

Yeah.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

The word Vietnam was really just. Just ungorging and ripping up those dams. That's what it was.

[Ed Zitron]

I wish tech was actually this fun though, because it was just like Greg Brockman going and talking to Lisa sue from amd, just, just wobbling around mumbling about compute and data centers that they can't build because they don't have credit.

[Robert Evans]

Like, what is there exciting to say other than look at how much money we're worth and look at how much money we're making.

[Ed Zitron]

But that was the thing with Nvidia. They didn't talk about any, any, any products. Like, they didn't even talk about their own products. It's like, it's the most egregious kayfabe I've ever seen because gun to the head. I don't think any of these. That's not a threat. Gun to the head. I don't think these people are like, actually have an answer.

[Robert Evans]

No. I mean, because it like there's not a solution financially to the sheer amount of money that's been invested. And like Nvidia is in the, the enviable position of like, the money they've made is like real people are actually buying chips that they made, but the industry supporting it. There's a lot of vapor. And everyone's kind of aware that like, at some point it's going to come crashing down to earth. And we had like a reality check in the last quarter of last year on Nvidia. Not all the way down, but like their bubble got certainly deflated part partially. And there's I think, a growing awareness that like, well, whatever happens with this, you know, even if the bubble never pops, even if AI doesn't like get sort of punctured in the way that people, including a lot of us, think it's going to Nvidia is not going to keep riding this high forever. And I don't know, there's not a graceful way for them to deal with that.

[Ed Zitron]

But they're trying.

[Scott Stein]

They're trying.

[Ed Zitron]

So they're doing this thing called the Omnivore. Yeah, it's what? Yeah, yeah, it's called the Omniverse. They're calling it the Omniverse Very. We love the Omniverse.

[Robert Evans]

It's.

[Ed Zitron]

It's just. It's this whole bullshit thing. World models is another thing. It's just a made up thing for. We'll do simulations using GPUs.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Not to be confused with the Metaverse.

[Ed Zitron]

Which is very different.

[David Roth]

This is way.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Good.

[Ed Zitron]

It reminds me, this is a really deep cut. And anyone who remembers this, please email, email me. There was a thing called the DC did called Death Metal where like the Batman who laughs, who's a Joker. Batman. Just best to get past that. There's a bit in it where they meet a guy from. There's a thing above the multiverse called the Omniverse and he's just guy with a pumpkin head. And I remember reading the Omniverse and that just being like, fuck off. Just fuck you. And then. But what it is is they buy compute from like Microsoft or Meta or. Sorry, Microsoft, Google or Amazon and then rent it to people so they can run simulations using their Omniverse software. The information credit to them. Put out a story today just being like, yeah, it's not making any money and everyone hates it.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

And it was the first half of an two hour long presentation and they're just like. Dave put it really well. It was like, yeah, here's a bunch of stuff. If we could do this, how good would that be? And it's like, none of it's real.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

It's so cool. And I think what they're trying to do is be like, look, you bought all these GPUs. What if you could do this? Well, you could, you can't. You can't do that. We cannot do this. But what if you could? And it was so strange because everyone was. You could hear people coughing in there.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

People were leaving, people. It was really strange. And then there was a tiny bit of AI stuff. It's really truly bizarre.

[Robert Evans]

I mean it does feel like people are starting to get sort of fed up with the lack the things that have not materialized that should have by now. Yeah, right. And I find you get a lot of pushback if you're like, this is fake and this is bullshit. Which is like my emotional opinion. But you get a lot less pushback if you're like, I just don't see how this can be worth as much money as it needs to be for the industry. And you get a pretty broad agreement of like, yeah, something like, there's something fucky with that.

[David Roth]

That was the bit that I wound up coming out of it. I think the big feeling That I felt afterwards beyond like bored and hungry was that I felt kind of sad about it because it's clear that there's like, there is all of this capacity to do all of this like computational stuff that you couldn't really do before, but there's not any sense of like what that's for or what you're going to do.

[Ed Zitron]

It's just compute for compute sake.

[Robert Evans]

And I think, and this is me, there's a degree to which I'm not even fully confident what I'm saying here, but I get the, I'm a sports.

[David Roth]

Writer man, go off, get the feeling.

[Robert Evans]

And have read some, some accounts that make me believe that there are applications for a lot of this, a lot of like a. What gets broadly lumped in on as AI in like different kinds of like medical science.

[David Roth]

Yeah, exactly that. But nothing that's going to make this company worth $15 trillion or whatever and.

[Robert Evans]

Nothing that does anything on its own. It's not the AI will come up with the medicine. It's like, no, the AI is capable of like brute forcing its way through, doing a lot of theoretical tests or analyzing a huge amount of data. And if you build a model specifically to deal with this kind of medical data, that it can be a time saving tool that allows you to do other things, which is not a sexy thing in the way that AI is going to cure cancer is. And it's not sexy to be like, well, AI will allow us to prototype more efficiently different kinds of, of like materials to make holes of spacecraft out of and maybe that will speed up the process of developing these things, which is like a thing that theoretically might happen. And that's not as sexy as like AI is going to figure out how to take us into space.

[David Roth]

And the conversation's also so fucking old at this point. Like that bit of it where it's sort of like I'm so aware of the thing where it's like it's going to be able to think for itself and it's going to like fix. We're not going to need to have jobs anymore.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[David Roth]

But then like eventually like you work your way back from that to like protein folding.

[Robert Evans]

Right.

[David Roth]

I don't know what protein folding is. Apparently AI is extremely good at it.

[Robert Evans]

Sure.

[David Roth]

But it's like you can't talk about that because nobody knows what protein folding is. But when you talk about the other shit, it makes me for one thing doubt that it's any good at protein folding.

[Scott Stein]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

You know, it's because protein folding is a totally like it's not even LLM driven. It's not even GPU driven.

[David Roth]

It's machine learning shit. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And it's. The thing is with the, like, the medical example as well, they're doing that already. Again, it's only kind of LLMs, but not really.

[Scott Stein]

Right.

[Ed Zitron]

And it's just. I do your point about. We've had this one before. I'm pretty sure I heard this conversation. Not even from us. Just like I've heard some version of this was sitting around being like, yeah, you know, it might be good for this.

[Robert Evans]

When.

[Ed Zitron]

Because before the Nvidia thing, we had this panel with these people who were just saying stuff that slowly was driving me insane. And I was getting ready. I was. I eventually just started muttering to myself like a crazy person. But there was just the CEO of Abridge, which is an AI scribe for doctors.

[Robert Evans]

Oh, I thought you were saying a bridge. And I was like, how do you get that job? Just a single bridge?

[David Roth]

Easy.

[Robert Evans]

Worse.

[Ed Zitron]

And he kept trying to sell me. And he was just talking about. He was just word salad on word salad, trying to get around the fact that his AI just transcribes what doctors say. And it's just like, who fucking cares?

[Robert Evans]

I'm great.

[David Roth]

Well, it's one of those things where it's like, I think doctors would like that. But you, for his business to be worth, which I believe you looked it up, was like $5 billion.

[Ed Zitron]

5.5 billion.

[David Roth]

It's like, in order for it to work, it also has to, like, to justify that valuation, it has to make evaluations. Like, no doctor wants it to fucking do that. They're doctors.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And it's. It's just. And it's almost cliche. Yeah. It's being forced into anything I was mentioning on the earlier, it's like in.

[Robert Evans]

Microsoft today, it's no longer Office, it's co pilot. Like, fuck you. I haven't times have I said, no, I'm not using co pilot. You're trying to force me.

[David Roth]

That's amazing that they just like, they've got such a dud on their hands that they're like, the Batman movies are now the Avengers or whatever. It's like to some other.

[Ed Zitron]

Like, Google did that already. They changed Google Assistant to Google Gemini and they're like 400 million active.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. And they're going to do the same thing with Copilot where it's like, look at all these people. No, we're all using Word and Excel.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, what's funny though is they're not going to be Able to do that because I have fucking Microsoft's numbers. I have Microsoft's revenues. I'm coming out with it at the end of January. Frank. Sure you fucking want some? Email me. Yeah, and I already have GitHub co pilots revenue too. Like that's the thing. Like these. I'm sick of this because people are being lied to. And I'm just doing an episode of. I guess this is the show I'm recording. But it's just walking around hearing they put the thing that made me actually snap on their strip was they put Nano Banana in a telegram television. And I'm just.

[Robert Evans]

You gotta go back. What is a Nano Banana?

[David Roth]

Three straight episodes.

[Ed Zitron]

It's an image generator model from Google that they called the world's dumbest name because they insist on.

[Robert Evans]

Okay. Making me literally its name.

[David Roth]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

Nano Banana and Nano Banana Pro. Nano Banana.

[David Roth]

Banana.

[Ed Zitron]

It's now in a television.

[David Roth]

They should make up the version that you have to pay for. Should just have a normal.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Then I open that up Pro3 plus.

[Ed Zitron]

I think it's just. It just shows loathing for the customer. Like you little pixel anything. Nano Banana. You pigs.

[Robert Evans]

Well, I think they're probably. It's probably jealousy and some FOMO at Elon Musk or. Well, he gives his stuff really funny stupid names. Maybe that's why. That's the secret. Maybe we'll get some of that.

[David Roth]

We can be epic too.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Maybe I'll throw a 420 in there. Maybe they can copy the other thing.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Things that with Mercedes and then pulling their things plus. Plus.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Mercedes. Yeah. They had a whole thing with a panel with Mercedes and this guy from skilled AI who was like one robot, one brain, one purpose or something.

[David Roth]

One guy. He was also spitting up there. He was.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

It was just one person panel. It was just a panel of just people just like all in varying stages of concussion protocol. Just like. Just like saying to each other and Sarah, grow the species. So when AI is powerful and large language models. Would that be interesting? And the guy going, I agree. They would be powerful and indeed robots. Yeah, I. And it was just in. And people around going, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David Roth]

That is interesting.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I love their little chat when this was going on where the guy was like, you know, we're making bass layers by watching you.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

And then practicing. That's how you learn to do any real task. Because everyone knows you watch a YouTube video 3,000 times.

[David Roth]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Just. I can't think of any other.

[David Roth]

Not now. I'm base layering.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, yeah.

[David Roth]

I'M watching Jamal Crawford's sickest buckets.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Yeah.

[David Roth]

22 minutes.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I'm watching unexpected LeBron edits.

[Matt Binder]

Minutes.

[Ed Zitron]

It's just so strange as well, because I. I've been fucked with a lot in my life. It just feels like we're being fucked with. Yeah, it's just like a weird. We're not even con at this point. Just like, everyone's just like, it's taunting.

[Robert Evans]

Well, that's the thing that's so dispiriting is that, like, I can tell you're not even. You're past the point where you think you have to even work to lie.

[Ed Zitron]

Exactly.

[Robert Evans]

Like, you're just being lazy. Like, we all know everyone. Like, the majority of people found Copilot annoying and said no repeatedly. And you want to be able to claim everyone using an Office product is using AI to trick your shareholders. So you're just fucking changing it. And like, there's nothing, there's not any more thought to it than that. You're not at all scared of regulators. You don't give a fuck about what the people paying to use your product. And that's just. It's dispiriting because, like, yeah, there is nothing I can do. I could switch my word processor, I guess, and probably will at some point this year. It just means embracing a pain in the ass of switching a bunch of stuff around. But at this point, I think it's worth it because I'm annoyed at you. You've annoyed me enough. And I don't think that's going to impact Microsoft's bottom line. I don't think enough people are going to switch for it to matter. It's just again, dispiriting.

[Ed Zitron]

Also, no one's going to call it Copilot 3.

[Robert Evans]

They're going to call it name.

[Ed Zitron]

They're going to call it Microsoft Office because you're going to say it to.

[Robert Evans]

Like a grandma using Copilot writing, you dipshit.

[Ed Zitron]

It is so cool. We now have software that's deliberately annoying. It's just like, hey, hey, do you want. You want to use Copilot? You want to. You want this to write? I'm writing it. I'm writing it. Please leave me alone. No, I use Apple Notes now, not because I like it, but because it doesn't want help generating the document.

[Robert Evans]

The problem is every big player in consumer technology right now has attained and is expressing the exact vibes of, like, a guy that you would cover your drink around. Yeah, right.

[David Roth]

Yeah.

[Robert Evans]

Where it's like, they're just. It's Just this constant pressure and constant like. Hey, hey, hey.

[Ed Zitron]

What are you doing?

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, you know what? Why don't you come sit with me? I'm just going to sit down next to you. I'm just going to hang out with you. Like, it's. It's this. I've said no so many times, and you are not at all listening. And that's how using technology feels, and I hate it.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I mean, that is. And that's a good, good way to kind of like, wrap up the episode as well. But I think that's what the theme of CES appears to be this year. It's just like, obtrusive stuff how. Like that. I know. I keep saying nano Banana. The reason this has driven me insane is it's like, I don't need the TV to generate images. Are you sure? I'm watching the television.

[David Roth]

Why don't you try it? Yeah, maybe you like it.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

What if your TV was a computer, too, though?

[David Roth]

Nano Banana Pro offers many features that aren't available.

[Ed Zitron]

Nano Banana can generate a winning season for the Raiders. It's just like, nano Banana, like. And also, what kind of fucking freak is sitting there being like, I want my television to generate an image? No. If you try and do that, your television should break.

[Robert Evans]

Yes. Hey, I know you're putting on a torrented copy of Star Trek the Next Generation to watch while you cry yet again. What if Riker's dick was out the whole episode? Would that improve for you in any way?

[Ed Zitron]

Freaks doing Google. Would that.

[David Roth]

Would that get you to start saying Gemini?

[Robert Evans]

You call it Gemini if we show you Rikers a month for that.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, my God.

[David Roth]

Emotional blackmail. And it's wrong.

[Ed Zitron]

And before we wrap as well, Robert, I've said this earlier in the episode as well, but there was a bit where Nvidia Jensen Huang was talking to two robots and he was like, this is how we make you. This is from. And it turns out it was from, like, the fucking Fallen Order. Fallen Order, like the second of the games with the.

[Matt Binder]

With Cal Kestis.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, with the guy from. What? Shameless.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

That is in Shameless, right? That is him.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

Or looks.

[Ed Zitron]

The joke. The joke Joker. Yes. Yeah, that guy. And it's like, I did not. I'm a big Star wars head, but of, like, the actual Star wars stuff. And it's like, okay, and how much did you pay? Like, a million dollars for that? But you know that they were like, what's the cheapest one? Yeah, what's the cheap.

[Robert Evans]

We gotta get one of the games.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, we gotta get one. We'll give you one of them.

[Robert Evans]

What's that guy from the N64 game? I bet he's cheap.

[Ed Zitron]

Kyle Katarn. Kyle Media don't remember anything but Kyle Katarn. Let's sign off with that.

[Lisa Edajiko]

All right.

[Ed Zitron]

David Roth, thank you so much for joining us. Pleasure to be here. From Defector, we'll have you in the episode notes. Robert Evans. You'll be back. He'll be back.

[Robert Evans]

Yeah, I'll be here all week.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Hell yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And Edward and Gracie Jr. Who also be here all week.

[Edward Ongueso Jr.]

I will. I will.

[Ed Zitron]

And then to wrap the episode. So before we go, I want to talk about something we'll be doing at the end of every episode. So back. So just a little history on the suite. Back when PR firm used to have this suite and have journo style come in. And back since the late 2000 and tens, we did this. We had Jos come in and there was a bloke called Sean Paul Adams who came to visit. He's a good mate of mine. Good mate. My friend T as he passed last year. I want to honor him by encouraging you to donate to the Pediatric Epilepsy Research Consortium. Sean Paul son is epileptic and his family would deeply appreciate it. He was awesome.

[David Roth]

Would be.

[Ed Zitron]

He's deeply missed both friends and family. He's one of the highlights of the suite when he visited. So yeah, I'll have a link in the show notes will be be here all week everyone. Thank you so much for sticking with us from this episode. And yeah, we'll have two more tomorrow and every day other than Saturday, we'll just have one. Cheers everyone.

[Robert Evans]

Bye. Go with God.

[Ed Zitron]

Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Erso. You can change check out more of his music and audio [e-mail] matt o s o w s k I.com you can email me at ezeteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat where's your ed 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.

[Lisa Edajiko]

Our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I heart podcast, guaranteed human.