Radio Better Offline: Kyle Barr, Alex Cranz & Michael Fisher

Summary

Better Offline – Radio Better Offline: Kyle Barr, Alex Cranz & Michael Fisher

Podcast: Better Offline (Cool Zone Media & iHeartPodcasts)
Episode: Radio Better Offline: Kyle Barr, Alex Cranz & Michael Fisher
Date: August 27, 2025
Host: Ed Zitron
Guests: Michael Fisher (Mr. Mobile), Alex Cranz, Kyle Barr (Gizmodo)

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Overview

This lively episode of Better Offline brings together a “gizmos and doodads” roundtable with tech journalists and reviewers Michael Fisher (Mr. Mobile), Alex Cranz, and Kyle Barr to dig deep into what’s actually exciting, weird, and fun in gadget land right now—beyond the usual noise about AI.

Host Ed Zitron sets the tone: he’s tired of AI buzz and wants to celebrate the oddball corners of consumer technology—foldables, experimental hardware, wacky new laptops, VR, AR, and the “dorky joy” found in hands-on innovation, not just corporate-dominated platforms.

The conversation is playful, opinionated, sometimes nostalgic, and always rooting for devices that do something different—even if they’re impractical, expensive, or utterly niche. The group dishes on foldable phones, “ambient” gadgets, immersive drones, AR/VR headsets, customizable hardware, repairability, crowdfunded risks, and, of course, their complaints about the status quo from Apple, Microsoft, and Google.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. Gadget Culture: Where’s All the Fun?

(Starts ~02:57)

• Ed details the inspiration for the episode: searching “gadgets” on Amazon returns only mainstream tech—not the quirky oddities he craves.
• Everything feels dominated by “fucking AI” stories, pushing weird and fun devices out of the spotlight.

2. Foldables and the Limits of Mainstream Phones

(03:50 – 05:32)

• Michael Fisher introduces the Honor Magic V5—“world’s thinnest foldable,” not yet available in the US.
• Panel laments Apple’s absence in foldables; all agree foldables offer needed variety versus “maxed out” standard phone interfaces.
  • Michael Fisher: “I think [the camera bump] gives it all kinds of character.” (04:28)
  • Ed Zitron: “We’re approaching the limits of the current interfaces we have. The current tablet phone interfaces are just kind of maxed out.” (05:14)

3. Meta’s Shifting Tech Bets: Wristbands and Smart Glasses

(05:32 – 07:47)

• Zuckerberg’s move from “metaverse” to AI and hand-tracking wrist gadgets—still mostly in the VR context.
• Praise for Meta’s Ray-Bans: surprisingly good at calls, music, and quick photography—despite Meta’s refusal to market them for those strengths.
  • Michael Fisher: “The tragedy is, those are practical benefits... but Meta wants to market them as an AI tool.” (07:32)
  • Ed Zitron: “I don’t walk around being like, what the fuck is that? What is that?” (07:47)

4. Immersive & Experimental Hardware

a. Insta360 Drone & VR Drones

(08:12 – 10:07)

• Kyle reviews Insta360’s drone: adds 360-camera and immersive “Kamen Rider” goggles, allowing pilots to truly “look around.”
  • “You’re a big floating head in a glass jar high above the ground.” (09:13, Kyle Barr)
• Despite flaws (clunky flying, uncertain launch date), everyone agrees: “Glad someone’s doing something different.” (Ed Zitron, 10:00)

b. Terminal – E-Ink Dashboard for the Home

(10:29 – 12:59)

• Michael explains “Terminal”: $150, E-Ink screen for ambient updates like weather, transit, etc., but setup is “very hackery.”
  • “It’s fun if you want to nerd out.” (11:52, Michael Fisher)
• Alex: Too much work/tweaking for casual use, but “maybe if I was a YouTuber...”

c. GPD Win Series – Wild Handheld PCs

(13:18 – 15:10)

• Discussion of Win 5 (and Win 4): ultra-niche Windows “handheld PCs” in PSP form factors.
  • “I love it and I fucking hate it. It is so large... but it scratches that itch, doesn’t it?” (Ed Zitron, 14:05)
• Panel debates the utility/silliness of external batteries—everyone seems OK with the jerry-rigged approach for extra playtime.

5. Handheld Gaming: Microsoft and Power Management Nightmares

(15:34 – 18:13)

• Extended discussion of ROG Ally, Xbox handhelds, and Windows’ notorious power-management failures.
  • “Windows will always be the most inconsistent handling of power.” (Alex Cranz, 16:11)
• Microsoft’s belated attempts to make a handheld mode for Windows—“they laid off everyone who did that.” (16:16, Ed Zitron)

6. Game Streaming and Universal Desktop Modes

(18:13 – 21:06)

• Nvidia’s GeForce Now moves closer to “remote shadow PC” experience.
• Michael spotlights the rise (again) of “Dex”-like Android desktop modes—plug your phone in, get a pseudo-laptop interface.
  • “Atrix promised us this... 15 years ago.” (20:52, Alex Cranz)

7. Wearables: Style, Utility, and (Un)Comfort

• Panel riffs on the (un)appeal of Alcantara and velour finishes for Razer phones—Gross or stylish? You decide!
• Universal wish: Apple needs to make a foldable.

8. XR, AR Glasses, and the Search for Useful Interfaces

(23:01 – 33:41)

• Candid takes on Vision Pro: moments of magic, but “works 4% of the time” (Ed Zitron, 23:37), heavy, hyper-finicky.
• Viture/Xreal glasses: love for “secondary screens,” but “attached to my fucking face” (Ed) limits real-world utility.
• Even’s “G1” glasses—simple, notification-focused AR, not “trying too hard,” ideal for notification dashboards.
  • Michael Fisher: “They look like they have no tech in them... they do very few things, but they do them all pretty damn well.” (32:13)

9. Voice/A.I. Interfaces: Disappointing and Overhyped

• Ongoing discussion on the unsuitability of voice as “the next UI,” particularly for non-standard accents and non-linear task flows.
  • Ed Zitron: “I think people need to accept that voice is not a good interface.” (42:23)
  • Michael Fisher: “Unlimited use cases... but beyond that, to be usable by such a wide swath of humans, almost impossible.” (42:52)
• LLMs (like Gemini) can guess your intent better for search “but will be 20% wrong.” (44:15, Michael Fisher)

10. Bookmarks, Browsers, and Ownership Fatigue

• Wry complaints about bookmarks, browser switching, and the ephemeral nature of digital memory.
• Longing for real device customization, not just software tweaks (see Framework laptops and Cyberdeck projects).

11. American vs. Chinese Device Innovation

(51:50 – 54:25)

• Admiration for Lenovo, Huawei, and other Chinese brands pushing boundaries with foldables and wild computing devices.
  • Alex Cranz: “American gadgets are about disconnecting. [Elsewhere,] it’s: ‘what could it do for me next?’” (66:11)

12. Crowdfunding & Niche Hardware: Risks and Rewards

• Advocacy for using Kickstarter/Crowdfunding—with caveats. Large brands use it as PR/market validation now rather than genuine risk.
  • Michael Fisher: “Hardware is really difficult. Can confirm.” (59:13)

13. Retro and DIY Gadgets: From Moon Watches to Cyberdecks

• “DSKY Moon Watch”—a functional recreation of the Apollo guidance computer as a wristwatch (59:30–61:03).
• Pebble E Ink smartwatches are back, small-batch, with loyal tinkerers (61:31).
• Fairphone, minimal phones, mesh networks, cyberdeck DIY projects ("build your own Neuromancer!") all celebrated for making users feel more connected to their devices as owners.

14. Disconnection Devices & Digital Minimalism

(66:00–69:10)

• “Light Phone” and “Minimal Phone” favor ultra-stripped-down use—texts, calls, GPS, little else.
  • Michael Fisher: “It lets you do phone calls, text messages, and a handful of apps... meant to keep you as disconnected as possible.” (64:07)
• Minimal Phone: E Ink, QWERTY, all apps—but so slow/unpleasant people won’t linger.

15. Ownership, Repairability, and Modularity

• Framework laptops and Fairphone as rare examples where the user can actually swap/repair parts (and feel like their device is their own).
• Riff on the nostalgic fun of Cyberdecks, Netbooks, personalizing form factor.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“I want something weird and stupid. And I genuinely was like, wait, why is it so hard to find these? ... You go on a tech site these days, it’s all about fucking AI.”
—Ed Zitron (02:57)

"The tragedy of it is, those are practical benefits [of Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses] that we all love... but Meta refuses to market them as such because they want to market them as an AI tool."
—Michael Fisher (07:32)

“You're a big floating head in a glass jar high above the ground.”
—Kyle Barr on immersive VR drones (09:13)

"I love it and I fucking hate it. [GPD Win 4] ... It scratches that itch, doesn't it?"
—Ed Zitron (14:05)

“Windows will always be the most inconsistent handling of power.”
—Alex Cranz (16:11)

“I want Apple to do foldables so bad.”
—Ed Zitron (22:08)

“You have to keep this thing on your fucking head while you update it.”
—Ed Zitron on Apple Vision Pro (24:11)

“There’s so much more here than generative AI. Like with generative AI, I’ve not had a goddamn moment of peace in two years. But also not a goddamn moment where I’ve been like, okay, I kind of see it. And there were moments with the Vision, there’s moments with the Quest where I’ve been like, okay...”
—Ed Zitron (30:27)

“I think people need to accept that voice is not a good interface. Just in general. I don't think it needs to be perfect. I don't want to be trained. I want to use the thingy.”
—Ed Zitron (42:23, 42:47)

“I want to own the thing by controlling what goes into it. ... Imagine if every laptop had that ability.”
—Kyle Barr (71:09)

"[Cyberdeck] is just to be cool. The idea is that you're doing it yourself and it's your own and you're making it."
—Alex Cranz & Kyle Barr (73:24)

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Section Timestamps

• Intro & Premise – 02:37
• Foldable Phones & Camera Bump Rant – 03:50–05:32
• Meta Wrist Devices & Hand Tracking – 05:32–07:47
• Smart Glasses and Ray-Ban Use Case – 07:47–08:12
• Immersive Drones & VR Headsets – 08:12–10:07
• E-Ink Home Dashboards (Terminal) – 10:29–12:59
• GPD Win Handheld PCs & Portable Gaming – 13:15–15:34
• Microsoft's Power Issues & Gaming Handhelds – 15:34–18:13
• Nvidia GeForce Now & Dex Desktop Revival – 18:13–21:06
• AR/XR Interfaces, Vision Pro, Xreal, Viture – 23:01–33:41
• Voice & AI UI Fatigue, LLMs in Search – 42:23–45:20
• Bookmarks, Browsers & Ownership – 45:38–47:32
• US vs. China: Innovation – 51:50–54:25
• Kickstarter & Crowdfunding Hardware – 58:22–61:14
• Pebble & Light Phone Revival – 61:31–66:00
• Digital Minimalism Hardware – 66:00–69:10
• Framework, Repairability, Cyberdeck – 69:16–74:28
• Closing Thoughts: Joy in Tech Culture – 74:28–75:51

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Conclusion

The episode closes with Ed pointing to Steve Burke at Gamers Nexus as "one of the best out there," and a gentle reminder: the tech industry isn’t all grift or gloom. There's still community, DIY culture, and companies small and large making weird, delightful things—but it's usually outside the spotlight, and often outside the borders of American corporate tech.

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For Further Exploration:

• Michael Fisher: YouTube: TheMrMobile
• Alex Cranz: “alexhcranz” on most platforms
• Kyle Barr: Gizmodo’s Reviews Section
• Ed Zitron: BetterOffline.com

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This summary captures the episode's lively tone, the hosts’ genuine enthusiasm (and frequent curses!), and the panelists’ deep expertise, while offering clear structure and key timestamps for listeners who want to jump in on a particular topic or discussion.

Transcript

[Alex Cranz]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Ed Zitron]

So you've always dreamed of that state of the art home theater system. Here's the thing, if you invest well, you could get things like that. With Empower, you can get money working for you so you can go out and live a little. Isn't that why we work so hard to splurge sometimes, like on a massive high res TV or surround sound. That puts you right in the action. So use Empower to help get good at money so you can be a little bad. Join their 19 million customers [e-mail] not an Empower client, paid or sponsored.

[Alex Cranz]

Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported. Streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-IHeart.

[Ed Zitron]

And here's Heather with the weather.

[Alex Cranz]

Well, it's beautiful out there. Sunny and 75. Almost a little chilly in the shade. Now let's get a read on the inside of your car. It is hot. You've only been parked a short time and it's already 99 degrees in there. Let's not leave children in the backseat while running errands. It only takes a few minutes for their body temperatures to rise and that could be fatal.

[Michael Fisher]

Cars get hot fast and can be deadly. Never leave a child in a car. A message from NHTSA and the AD Council. I was diagnosed with cancer on Friday and cancer free the next Friday. No chemo, no radiation, none of that.

[Ed Zitron]

On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy winning producer, pastor and music executive to talk about the beats, the and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R and B.

[Michael Fisher]

And hip hop professionally. I started at Death Row Records.

[Ed Zitron]

From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it. Listen to Culture Raises us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Call Zone Media. Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I am of course your host, Ed Zittro and we are in a very intimate podcast studio on like 9th Avenue. And it's a wonderful day. The last episode we got lost, but it will not be happening this time. All of you were very kind with the notes you sent. One of you said, why don't you take a backup. Thank you. We never thought of that. It's not like there was another issue that could have happened in the radio station. Anyway, today we have a wonderful Gizmos and Doodads episode. On my right, I have the wonderful Michael Fisher, Mr. Mobile himself.

[Michael Fisher]

Ed, Nice to be back.

[Ed Zitron]

Thank you for having me and so happy to have you here. Alex Cran's the wonderful Gizmo and Gadget Queen.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah. I'm so excited to talk about the gizmos.

[Michael Fisher]

Me too.

[Alex Cranz]

But not the gadgets.

[Ed Zitron]

And I'm knocking my phone over. That's staying in the episode. That's where my elbow goes.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah.

[Michael Fisher]

That's what you feel about this important of good luck.

[Ed Zitron]

And there we go. That's what we do before every episode. And Kyle Barr of Gizmodo is here as well.

[Kyle Barr]

Hello. I exist.

[Ed Zitron]

And he does exist. So this episode actually came from an idea of. I told you all this now went on Amazon, typed in gadgets. Cause I was like, I haven't like. I mostly spend money on like Diet Coke and occasional baseball games and flights and like, weird protein snacks I don't really like. So I was like, you know what? I wanted some dude ads. I wanted to see what gadgets are going typed in gadgets into Amazon Fuck all appeared. It was like phones and laptops. I'm like, I don't need a new phone or laptop. I'm happy with those. I want something weird and stupid. And I genuinely was like, wait, why is it so hard to find these? You go on a tech site these days, it's all about fucking AI. So I brought you all together to talk about the weird stuff you've been looking at. And Michael, one of my favorite things you do is you've been the flip phone foldable advocate. And honestly, I'm deeply jealous you're on Android. I'm so addicted to imessage. But so much fun you have. So you've got a device in front of you.

[Michael Fisher]

I do the honor. Magic V5.

[Ed Zitron]

Which you cannot buy here.

[Michael Fisher]

One of the world. You cannot buy it here. No. One of the world's thinnest foldables. The thinnest foldable, if you decide to lie about it in your spec sheet.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, it's gorgeous.

[Ed Zitron]

And this thing is. And obviously we'll have links in there, but this thing is. You can see the crease, but you can't really when you're looking at it. No, I find these things magnificent. I realize that they're imperfect, but I think they're just lovely. And there's rumors that Mark Gurman was tweeting earlier about Apple's foldable. Please do It. Please do the Apple.

[Alex Cranz]

Yes. That's all I want.

[Michael Fisher]

Cosine. Yeah. Big agree.

[Alex Cranz]

I mean, I want this, but not Android. And sold in. In the United States.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Alex Cranz]

And no huge camera bump.

[Michael Fisher]

Oh, see, I like the camera bump. I think it gives it all kinds of character. I mean, it definitely slap a big. What it was with the quad. Oreo quad stuff or whatever. Slap a big one of those.

[Ed Zitron]

I feel like. I prefer. So this thing has a giant circular, like, blob coming out of it.

[Michael Fisher]

Like a giant moon crater.

[Ed Zitron]

Like the size of a thing. You would stick like a phone onto a magnetic phone thing. Like a fairly large circle. I prefer that to the weird boils coming off my iPhone.

[Kyle Barr]

The camera bump, the panel and you.

[Ed Zitron]

Get a case on. So you've now got a raised bit with three. And I don't know. I don't like that. I don't think it looks good.

[Alex Cranz]

I like that it captures all of the lint.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes.

[Alex Cranz]

Anytime I put it in my pocket.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm like, there's a bunch of crap. And also just a new thing for me to scratch.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, it's the best.

[Ed Zitron]

I think that what we're running up against, though, is we're approaching the limits of the current interfaces we have. I think that we are. The current tablet phone interfaces and the current laptop phone interfaces are just kind of maxed out. And I'm wondering if the next thing is just foldables and extendables and all this shit.

[Kyle Barr]

Not according to Mark Zuckerberg.

[Ed Zitron]

Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg has. He has reimagined his AI department four times in the last year. It's so cool. I love that this. He's going to apparently release a wrist thingy.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, yeah. No, he's doing the wrist stuff. So for better tracking.

[Ed Zitron]

So do you have any idea, Alex, what he's doing?

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah. So his whole conceit until AI came around was that the metaverse was going to be the next big thing. He's since changed his tune, except for presumably at. What is it? Kinect, back in next month. And one of the things he's doing is making it easier to track. Track your hands and stuff when you put on these headsets, whether it's the Apple Vision Pro or the Oculus Quest, which is cool. Yeah, they're cool. But when you put them on, you do hand tracking and it's kind of like, okay, but not great.

[Kyle Barr]

Yeah, it's good enough for some games, but even then you're just still using the controllers anyway.

[Alex Cranz]

Right. And this bracelet We've seen this before. I think Leap did it like 10 years ago.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, yeah.

[Alex Cranz]

But it really. It's meant to just be better at tracking you and tracking your hand boost.

[Michael Fisher]

To be clear, you have to be in VR for this to mean anything. Right. You have to first have an Oculus.

[Alex Cranz]

On your head, be wearing glasses that have it. That's the whole thing. Like, they're moving towards the one day when they can do the glasses. But everyone's been promising glasses for 10 years.

[Michael Fisher]

But props, though. I have to say, their Ray Bans are outstanding for content capture. I think we all agree on that. They're really, really good from a phone call perspective. For listen the music.

[Ed Zitron]

Wait, wait, wait. Phone call work. How's the phone. How's that work?

[Kyle Barr]

It's just.

[Michael Fisher]

It's a Bluetooth connection to your phone. Just like earbuds.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, so it just connects.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, yeah, because you've got the. I'm putting my hands in front of the mic. Take that back. Yeah, yeah. Because you've got the microphones in the nose piece of the glasses, so it listens really, really well.

[Ed Zitron]

And you can hear music using the glasses.

[Michael Fisher]

You have little speakers shooting into your ears over that. They're really, really good.

[Ed Zitron]

That's really cool.

[Michael Fisher]

Some of the best.

[Ed Zitron]

I hate and love this.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, it's cool. But it's also meta, so.

[Michael Fisher]

Well, the tragedy of it is that those are practical benefits that we all love about them, and they have a pretty good camera. But meta refuses to market them as such because they want to market them as an AI tool. So it's like, no, you gotta use meta AI to ask what you're looking at and what's the best pool shot I can get on this billiards table?

[Ed Zitron]

It's like, no, shut up. I love that fucking use case as well. Cause it's like, I don't walk around being like, what the fuck is that? What the fuck is that? What is? Just like, sorry, everyone, this is my first rodeo. Like, I'm just, like, constantly surprised by everything. But I hate that it's them. It's the onion thing. The worst person, you know, has a pretty good point. But the thing is, Kyle, you. You actually. Talking of glasses, you were looking at this insta360 thing.

[Kyle Barr]

Yep.

[Ed Zitron]

Where you were wearing these Robotnik glasses. It was like, connected to a drone. No, this thing, I will link to it in the notes. This thing looked fucking cool.

[Kyle Barr]

So those glasses that almost make you look like Kamen Rider, like that Japanese superhero, it's all part of this giant apparatus from Insta360. You know, they make 360 cameras. Okay, so what are they going to do when they make a drone? Well, they just slap a 360 camera on it. Okay. But then they also add the pair of goggles that's similar to the DJI goggles that you already can get. But this one makes you able to kind of look around in a360 space. So as you're flying around, you literally can turn around and see below. You see above, you see whatever is happening around you. It is cool. As far as, like flying around, you know, there's other drones, like FPV drones, which also have, like, a lot more maneuverability.

[Ed Zitron]

What is an fpv, Joan?

[Kyle Barr]

First person view. So it's almost like you can do flips and stuff.

[Alex Cranz]

It's like when you're in a video game, that kind of drone.

[Ed Zitron]

That's so cool.

[Kyle Barr]

But this one is more just like experiential. You can say it's quote unquote immersive. That's the word they like to use. But I prefer to just say you're a big floating head in a glass jar high above the ground.

[Alex Cranz]

Again, video games, that's just. That's awesome.

[Ed Zitron]

I like. Even though I know in your review you were like, it's imperfect. There are issues. And actually what were the issues you got?

[Kyle Barr]

So, I mean, it's not like the best flyer. There was problems. When you're trying to bank, it'll just stop.

[Ed Zitron]

What do you mean by banking?

[Kyle Barr]

When you're trying to turn. Oh, this isn't actually a product yet. It's not out in the open. It's gonna be in like 2026. This is just like the first iteration and they're trying to show it off to people and they're really trying to make it like a thing. It's also gonna cost, like, probably more than $2,000. I can already tell.

[Ed Zitron]

I can't hate. The thing is this is not meant to be, like, for everyone. And I'm glad someone's doing something different.

[Michael Fisher]

It's so cool.

[Ed Zitron]

You can look around a bit. If you go like going in a weird canyon or something. Ooh, fly it like above something like. I like that. I'm glad that there's something happening.

[Michael Fisher]

Yes. Sorry.

[Ed Zitron]

No go. No, no, please.

[Michael Fisher]

I just covered something that is almost exactly the opposite of this, right where this is this total immersion thing that you use outside. And I just got done covering terminal, which is this little tablet for the home.

[Alex Cranz]

I hate that thing.

[Michael Fisher]

Oh, I'm excited to hear why you hate it. Hold on. Let me tell you what it is. Terminal. Take out all the vowels because it is in fact 2008. And you put this in your house. It's like 150 bucks or something. And it's just an E ink screen that gives you ambient information throughout the day. It's like one of these Google Home or Amazon things that has a screen, except the screen is much less distracting and it only refreshes once every five minutes. And it doesn't listen to you, doesn't do anything like that. It just tells you the weather, tells you when the next train is, tells you how many city bikes are at your desk.

[Alex Cranz]

But it doesn't always refresh. And so you're like, oh, it's not going to rain. And then you just go outside and you're like, well, shit.

[Michael Fisher]

Whoops. Yeah. So you're right, because it's this very hackery thing. Not only do you have to tell it, it's not like an iPad where you're like, okay, refresh every five minutes. It's like, okay, now you have to go in and tell all the tools you added that you want them to refresh every five minutes too. It's like a Pebble smartwatch circa 2012. It's like, okay, well, we gotta tweak it. You gotta mess with it.

[Alex Cranz]

You have to tweak it so much. But it was. I don't know, I really wanted to like it, but the slow updates and it's just. It's very hackery and I was like, I'm too old today. I don't know, maybe it was just.

[Ed Zitron]

See, I appreciated it.

[Michael Fisher]

I liked having to put the effort in because here's the thing, I take the ferry everywhere, right? I don't take a subway because I don't have a subway near my house. But to do that, you had to, like, go get the API yourself from the ferry website and like plug it in and do all this crazy stuff.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay, that's insane.

[Michael Fisher]

It was fun, though.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. Okay.

[Michael Fisher]

It was like, you want to nerd out? I'm nerding.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay. No, this is. No, you're right. I know. I like this whole thing. And is it super customizable so it just requires the API?

[Michael Fisher]

Yeah, I mean, depending on. On what you want to do.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah. And that's like, what, 100 bucks?

[Michael Fisher]

150.

[Alex Cranz]

Something like that? Yeah, it's just a little.

[Ed Zitron]

Any subscription?

[Michael Fisher]

No.

[Ed Zitron]

Wow. So is it. When you say the API from the ferry, can you code did you have to code it in or is it just you give it a token, the API token, and it refreshes the data.

[Michael Fisher]

Doing kind of stolen, Stolen valor for nerds. Because I'm like, no, you just follow the instructions on the thing and copy and paste it.

[Ed Zitron]

That's fine.

[Alex Cranz]

Someone smarter than us has come before.

[Ed Zitron]

Us and we love them. I put a table of contents into my newsletter today and I had to, like, learn. I'd get my editor to do the HTML and then explain how it works. Yeah. Yes. That's part of being online. It's like learning standing on the shoulders of giants. You get two kinds of redditors. You get the one that's just like, I'm just a casual racist. And then you've got the one which is like, I'm actually the expert in homebrew on PlayStation portables and I'm in the middle of YouTube. I like the idea, but as ever, I'm like, what shit do I actually need to know every few seconds other than what the last thing someone posted was?

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah. I think if I was a YouTuber, if I was doing that sort of stuff, I probably want it more. I'm just in my house smoking weed, so it's like, I just need to know, am I gonna get rained on when I go sit on the deck? And it's sometimes good at that. And I haven't plugged it in in at least a month.

[Michael Fisher]

Give it another go.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, I'll plug it in when I get home. Thanks.

[Ed Zitron]

This actually reminded me of something that you posted about Kyle as well, which is the GPD Win 5, which is one of Kranz's favorite industries, the portable PC things. Oh, it's so fun because we're talking about real, just like rinky dink shit. It has an extent. An extra external battery.

[Kyle Barr]

Yep. So imagine, you know, you got your Steam deck, like handheld, except, you know, the battery life keeps dying. You're like, oh, that sucks. If only it had a bigger battery. Well, they have a bigger battery. It's just attached to a cable and you just, you have to. You can slap it onto the back of it.

[Ed Zitron]

Have you held it yet?

[Kyle Barr]

No, no. I mean, a lot of these companies, like, you know, a lot of the jankier handhelds are all like China based companies.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh. Yeah.

[Kyle Barr]

They're all just like cranking them out routinely, like gpd. This is the fifth one.

[Ed Zitron]

So I have the GPD Win four.

[Kyle Barr]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And it is. I love it and I fucking hate it. It is so large. It is so much Larger than. It doesn't feel as large until you've used it for one minute and you're.

[Alex Cranz]

Like, oh, but it scratches that itch, doesn't it?

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, it does. It feels just like a PlayStation Portable. If I take three of them together. But I went and watched the video and this thing, just for the uninitiated, is just a Windows tablet in a PlayStation Portable handheld form. And it's cool when it works. You can play Hades 2 and it looks great, feels great.

[Michael Fisher]

They took the keyboard off this year. It's not. It doesn't have a keyboard. You can.

[Kyle Barr]

No cube beard.

[Michael Fisher]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

So that's one with a keyboard you can slide up. That feels like four. I'm pretty. Yeah. And I like gpd, by the way, because they do just crank out these insane looking like, yeah, We've got a 10.4-inch tiny laptop with the worst keyboard you've used in the world. It sucks, but it rules. And you're like, ooh, why did you make this? Who's buying this? And it's like, every Kickstarter is 10 million. You're like, ah, criminal enterprises.

[Alex Cranz]

No one is buying these things. But we are all loving them.

[Ed Zitron]

I love that they're experimenting. But I actually, this is my controversial. I don't mind the external battery.

[Kyle Barr]

I don't either is the weird thing, because, okay, I already have to do that. Like with my Switch 2. I just review. There's a case that I got that has the external battery. You slap it onto the back and now it's lasting four hours instead of two. You already kind of have to do that with a lot of these handhelds. Unless you're just sitting at home playing it on your bed where you have the cable right next to you and you're like, I'm running low. Plug it in and go do something else or something, you know?

[Alex Cranz]

Well, yeah, you get the. The 10 foot USB C cable and then you get the even longer power cable and you plug everything together and you suddenly got 20ft of reach.

[Ed Zitron]

And I've seen a few people derisively talking about this external battery situation. It's like, I don't know. I love my Rog X ally, I really do, but that motherfucker. If you leave it, it's like you hit sleep and it just. You're like, this will sleep. And you come back in an hour and it's dead. It's just, oh, it woke up.

[Alex Cranz]

Well, that's because the Windows machines really struggle with powering down.

[Michael Fisher]

I'm just gonna say, I'M glad nothing has changed in Windows for the last 20 years.

[Alex Cranz]

Never. Yeah. It will never change. Windows will always be the most inconsistent handling of power.

[Ed Zitron]

I think Microsoft is truly evil. They have such an open goal here with handhelds. They have companies. I know that they're doing an Xbox Rog Ally X and I saw fucking Tom Warren on the Verge going for the first time, you just hit a button, you go to Windows and actually, Tom, you could do that with all the rocks. Fucking. But it's just like, they're like, we're releasing a special Xbox. Did we change Windows in any way? Fuck you, customer, you piece of shit. We laid off everyone who did that.

[Alex Cranz]

I will say usually it's not Microsoft's fault. It's usually these other companies, they're just not building the drivers and stuff to properly handle power management. But it is also Microsoft's fault because the Xbox. Rog. What I didn't even hear about this.

[Ed Zitron]

Tell me more you didn't hear about. Appears to just be a Rog Ally.

[Kyle Barr]

It is basically a Rog Ally like handheld. Yeah. There's the Xbox grips that come along. Okay. So according to the Rog.

[Ed Zitron]

I want that. I want those grips so bad.

[Kyle Barr]

So this is the thing. You don't even need to get the new one really, like sell the grips. Well, no, because if you want the grips, then you have to get the new one. But the whole like thing with it now is that they've changed the software. They're saying that they've limited enough a number of stuff on the back end so that it should run better, it should sleep better, so it should be better with power management. And this is a lot of shoulds.

[Ed Zitron]

Right?

[Kyle Barr]

Because none of us have actually put it through its paces over a long term. I just think that Microsoft is trying, but they're doing it so late and it's coming off of a bunch of stuff that happened recently with Xbox that made them look really bad. So it looks like they're trying too hard.

[Alex Cranz]

They had a handheld. It was long rumored. I remember Tom was covering it at the Verge and then they just abruptly killed it because they realized.

[Ed Zitron]

I wasn't sure how far along that was even.

[Alex Cranz]

Well, it. My understanding was it was fairly far along, but they were entirely dependent on streaming to handle it.

[Michael Fisher]

They got a Game Pass.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, Game Pass is great. I use it on my Steam deck. But it's not great enough to do it that way.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, we're not there yet. This actually reminds me, I wanted to ask you about this at some point you said something about GeForce now install and I've seen stories about this. What is this GeForce now install thing, Krens?

[Alex Cranz]

I mean I just know GeForce now you tell me.

[Kyle Barr]

Okay, well, okay. GeForce now they just released an update. So GeForce now is a streaming service. You have to play your own games versus other like Xbox's cloud gaming thing where you can use their games and like you're paying for the service. This one, you're paying for the service to use their servers to download the games and play them remotely.

[Ed Zitron]

Right.

[Kyle Barr]

They've just added a thing where supposedly you'll be able to just kind of use your whatever games like not even on their list as long as a developer opts in, whatever that really means. If they're already opted in probably then you can just rent out space on their servers to download that game and then basically just have a Shadow PC to play those games.

[Michael Fisher]

Oh, interesting.

[Alex Cranz]

That's been going. I mean there was the company. Shadow.

[Kyle Barr]

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm still around.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah. Are they.

[Kyle Barr]

They are, they're just really expensive. They're.

[Alex Cranz]

And I mean Nvidia. The reason they're likely doing this is they have a lot of server space. They have a ton of server space because it's Nvidia and they've currently made everyone's 401k beautiful.

[Ed Zitron]

For now.

[Alex Cranz]

For now. For at least the end of this month.

[Ed Zitron]

Till Wednesday.

[Alex Cranz]

Till Wednesday.

[Ed Zitron]

Nah, we don't know that yet.

[Alex Cranz]

But yeah, that's why they're doing it is they have all this server space and it's like why not make a few extra bucks? Because it's not going to be a huge money driver for them. But there are people out there who want to play their games remote. They used to be able to do that when it first launched.

[Michael Fisher]

Yes, that'll get a little more popular once we get one of the more gadgety elements of phones back, which is this. Remember Samsung Dex? This sort of desktop simulator that lets you plug your phone into a monitor and keyboard and mouse and acts like a laptop. Well, it's been just decrepit and gathering dust for ages. It hasn't been updated in a meaningful way in a long time. But now that Android, Google's building it into Android 16 as this kind of mode that will not require you to have a Samsung phone. You can have any Android phone running 16. One of the things I did was thank you for reminding me about Shadow. Cause I forgot last time I reviewed Samsung Dex, I used Shadow to play like Titanic Adventure, out of Time, and other CD ROM classics from my youth. And it was absolutely great.

[Ed Zitron]

But wait, wait, wait. What does Dex actually do?

[Michael Fisher]

So you plug your phone into a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

[Ed Zitron]

Do you need a dock or something?

[Michael Fisher]

You do not. Usb C, usb, C, hdmi, whatever. And then it just creates a desktop environment like Windows, except it's Android. It's your phone. So you don't have to find a WI fi hotspot. You've already got a cellular connection. You don't have to move your files to it because your files are already on your ph.

[Alex Cranz]

Atrix promised us this.

[Michael Fisher]

Indeed.

[Alex Cranz]

15 years ago.

[Ed Zitron]

And the pad phone, the Atrix. What was this?

[Alex Cranz]

It was the Verizon.

[Michael Fisher]

Motorola Verizon, yeah.

[Alex Cranz]

Motorola Verizon.

[Michael Fisher]

AT&T.

[Alex Cranz]

Was it AT&T?

[Michael Fisher]

It was never trust Atrix 4G.

[Kyle Barr]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Never trust that fucking guy. Well, actually, Motorola is good now, though. They've got the Razr, the Razer Ultra.

[Michael Fisher]

We love that. We love a wooden phone in this.

[Alex Cranz]

Thank you, Lenovo.

[Michael Fisher]

It's wooden indeed. It's got wood on it. You got wood. You got Alcantara if you want to get it really gross overnight. And then. What? Fake.

[Ed Zitron]

Wait, what do you mean gross?

[Michael Fisher]

Other sexy leather. Yes. Yeah.

[Alex Cranz]

Alcantara is like a fabric. And that was what they put on the. The palm rest for the surface. And it can get dirty because it's fabulous.

[Ed Zitron]

I want a velour one. Just flipping out. A velour.

[Michael Fisher]

A razor.

[Alex Cranz]

But like two months in, after you do like a New York summer, it's just gonna be so disgusting on the front. No one will ever.

[Ed Zitron]

You drop it. It like just absorbs all.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, but you know, then it's your phone. You've got a nice patina. No one will ever touch it. Cause they'll be disgusting.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Michael Fisher]

Enough, right?

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, I think it's great.

[Ed Zitron]

And I will say I want Apple to do this fucking flip phone. I want them to do something different. I'm tired of. I want my. I have the most giant phone. I occasionally go back to the smaller iPhone. I hate it. I want the big one again, except I want an even bigger one. I want Apple to do foldables so bad.

[Michael Fisher]

You don't need to wait for a foldable. I got just the thing for you. You ever use clicks for the iPhone?

[Alex Cranz]

I have a click.

[Ed Zitron]

I have a Clix. I have a Clix.

[Michael Fisher]

Disclosure. I am a co founder of Clix.

[Ed Zitron]

I bought one. I sent you a picture of me.

[Michael Fisher]

Using it, which I appreciate it. Thank you. That makes it Big.

[Ed Zitron]

Just use that.

[Michael Fisher]

And it makes it clicky too.

[Ed Zitron]

No, the thing is, I don't have trouble typing on a phone at all. I just want the screen. I would like my screen to be twice the size.

[Alex Cranz]

Well, you could just carry an iPad.

[Ed Zitron]

I do carry an iPad and I love the iPad Pro. I really do.

[Alex Cranz]

Do you use it for taking photos?

[Ed Zitron]

No, I'm not my dad.

[Alex Cranz]

Okay.

[Ed Zitron]

My dad. No, I love my dad. He pulls out his iPad many and it's just like the most. Like he's just like, put it down. No, no, I love it. I love the fact that he's into the iPad. Cause I got him his original iPad whenever. Like the second. No, it was the first iPad mini that I released. And my dad, he loved hearing this and he loved it. And he uses it all the time. And I consider like that the best sign of technology.

[Michael Fisher]

If, like an old user, like an.

[Ed Zitron]

Older person who's just a regular person who does a business job and listens to the radio and watches the news, what are their use cases with it? And the fact that he picks it up and uses it as a. As a picture taker. That's the term, picture taker, isn't it? I think it's lovely.

[Michael Fisher]

It's the beauty of a foldable.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, look, it's me. He's photographing me. And that's actually really cool. And I get back to my thing that the UX situation, we're just at the limits of the current ux.

[Alex Cranz]

I think so.

[Ed Zitron]

And also my controversial opinion, which is the Vision Pro is amazing when it works.

[Alex Cranz]

It's so heavy.

[Ed Zitron]

It is. But when I say when it works, I mean we're talking 4% of the time. Have I told any of you what's happened with my Vision Pro? So I got told my good friend Matt Bamberg, who told me that Metallica was on the Vision Pro. I'm like a big heavy thing that's kind of lost its way and we're not really sure why we engage with it. Sounds like Metallica. So I get this thing, I put it on, it goes, you need to update. Fuck yeah. Okay, I'll update. I update shit all the time. I let it start downloading, I pick it up, I put it down, I pick it up, the UX doesn't load again. Yeah, you have to keep this thing on your fucking head while you update it.

[Michael Fisher]

Yep.

[Ed Zitron]

It's like a 15 minute long update. This feels like just the easiest thing in the world for them to fix. And it's just, it's so annoying because there are. There are like several minutes at a time when I'm using the Vision Pro, when I can make it work, which is not at the moment where I'm just like, damn, this feels like the future. It's a giant screen. Like, I can grab things and then like the headset moves 3cm and now it's out of focus.

[Alex Cranz]

Have you used the Quest?

[Ed Zitron]

I have the Quest 3 and it's just like, even then my strange skull. Lots of people love measuring my skulls for different reasons, but it's just like the Quest 3 doesn't feel right, but it feels better than this. But the Vision Pro has these moments. And I think it's just because it's less about the Vision Pro, more the idea of. Yeah, an interface that we could reach out and grab and move around with our hands.

[Alex Cranz]

It's cool as hell.

[Ed Zitron]

And it works when it works, but it doesn't work very often. And it's just. The problem is every article is either this is the most amazing thing, which is not, or it's this completely sucks, which it does a lot of the time.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, it's in a journey phase.

[Ed Zitron]

I wish all the money from AI had gone into this. Not because I think it would be particularly successful, but we'd get somewhere quicker.

[Alex Cranz]

It did go into it at Meta for a couple.

[Ed Zitron]

It didn't go. Yeah. $42 billion. Went into experiments.

[Michael Fisher]

Doing air quotes.

[Ed Zitron]

Quotes. Yeah.

[Alex Cranz]

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

[Michael Fisher]

American history is full of wise people.

[Alex Cranz]

Walt Whitman said something like, you know, 99.99% of war is diarrhea and 1% is glory. Those Founding Fathers were gossipy AF, and they love to cut each other down.

[Michael Fisher]

I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, the show where you send us your questions about American history. And I find the answers, including the nuggets of wisdom our history has to offer.

[Ed Zitron]

Hamilton pauses and then he says, the greatest man that ever lived was Julius Caesar. And Jefferson writes in his diary, this proves that Hamilton is for a dictator based on corruption, my favorite line was what Neil Armstrong said.

[Alex Cranz]

It would have been harder to fake it than to do it.

[Michael Fisher]

Listen to American history Hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm John Lithgow.

[Kyle Barr]

We choose to go to the moon.

[Michael Fisher]

I want to tell you about my new fiction podcast.

[Kyle Barr]

That's One Small Step for Man.

[Michael Fisher]

It's about Buzz Aldrin, one of the true pioneers of of space. You're a great pilot, Buzz. As far as I'm concerned, the best I've seen. That's the story you think you know. This is the story you don't predisposition.

[Alex Cranz]

To depression, alcohol abuse, and suicide.

[Michael Fisher]

We'll see Buzz try to overcome demons.

[Ed Zitron]

What do you say, Buzz? Another beer.

[Michael Fisher]

And triumph over addiction.

[Alex Cranz]

Here's to you, Buzz Aldrin.

[Michael Fisher]

Good luck to you and become a true hero.

[Kyle Barr]

Buzz and I will proceed into the.

[Michael Fisher]

Lunar module not because he conquers space, but because he conquers himself.

[Kyle Barr]

Buzz, we intercepted a Soviet radio transmission.

[Michael Fisher]

Starring me, John Lithgow. Can you put it through Translate on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alex Cranz]

I'm Dr. Joy Hardin Bradford, and in session 421 of Therapy for Black Girls, I sit down with Dr. Afia and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right? In terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, your spiritual beliefs. But I think with social media, there's like a hyper fixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel. It's how our hair is styled. And we talk about the important role hairstylists play in our communities, the pressure to always look put together and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neal Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to therapy for black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Kyle Barr]

I mean, that's what Android XR is supposed to be, right? It's gonna be first, Samsung's project Wuhan is just gonna be, you know, Apple Vision Pro, but with. Yeah, it's. So Samsung's making a Vision Pro. It's gonna have very similar, like, micro OLED displays. I don't know if it's gonna go the full like 4k, 4k or whatever. Bullshit. But it'll just be like, you know, it'll be Android's version of Apple's Vision os. It's just gonna be a little bit more AI focused. Cause it's all full.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Kyle Barr]

Cause it's Google.

[Ed Zitron]

I was using these viture glasses. Have you heard of these?

[Kyle Barr]

Yes, I've used them.

[Michael Fisher]

Are these weirdly intriguing?

[Ed Zitron]

You put them on, you have a usb, it doesn't try and be fancy or nothing. You just have a cable you put in your phone and you have them on your glasses and it looks pretty big.

[Kyle Barr]

That's the best thing about like, I like AR glasses because I just like secondary screens. It's like, okay, you know, they're good for a plane, they're just a little bit expensive. But yeah, they do what you need them to do.

[Ed Zitron]

But then I put it on the plane, I'm like, oh, right. I don't want to look straight ahead. Like it was just like immediately just like, this is cool. Can I move it? Nope. This is attached to my fucking face. But there is something here. I swear to God.

[Alex Cranz]

No, there is something there.

[Ed Zitron]

There's so much more here than generative AI. Like with generative AI, I've not had a goddamn moment of peace in two years. But also not a goddamn moment where I've been like, okay, I kind of see it. And there were moments with the vision, there's moments with the quest where I've been like, okay, like horseshoes and hand grenades. Yeah, Steam game where you can just like pick up guns. And it's like extremely realistic and it just feels so good and it's satisfying. Like, exactly the kind of moment that you're like, this is great fun technology. I fucking love the future. Like the same thing when I, I remember when I got the original iPhone on Singular Wireless in Penn State and I remember the moment of like, wow, I don't have to wait for my voicemail. Wow. I can just type out a text and I can move apps. This is cool. Those moments are there with XR and VR. I'm actually like, like, I'm not like a fantasist about it. Most of the shit sucks.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, Well, I think what Google is gonna say is that they've invested in AI so that the AI can go and actually fix all of the problems that the brilliant scientists and researchers haven't been able to do to actually make a pair of good looking XR glasses that you can wear on your face that aren't gonna be Silly.

[Ed Zitron]

That's so funny.

[Michael Fisher]

Well, so I spent almost the entirety of last CES looking at displays. Cause I was gonna cover other things and then I very quickly realized the most interesting stuff on the floor was eyeglass. You know, applications. And I used the even realities. G1. Have you used these?

[Ed Zitron]

What are these?

[Michael Fisher]

These are some very normal looking glasses that if you're a Harry Potter fan, you're really a fan of them because they kind of make you look like that, but they don't look like they have tech in them. In fact, the first ad I saw for them, I did not believe that they existed. I'm like, you guys are just hitting me with a render and this is vaporware, it's never gonna launch. And I saw them on a friend's head and I'm like, wait, are those they. And you put them on and they have a monochrome War Games esque, like green text display.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes, I've seen these on Instagram. Yeah, dude, they are.

[Michael Fisher]

And they look. They do very few things, but they do them all pretty damn well.

[Ed Zitron]

That's amazing work. I saw Chris Velasco, the legend over at Washpie, was talking about them.

[Michael Fisher]

They're great. I kept wearing them for weeks after the review and what they do and caveat, I'm a sucker for notification dashboards, terminal smartwatches. This takes your smartwatch, puts it on your face, and so if you're just interacting, you're fine. And then you look up and then you have a little dashboard. There's all my stuff.

[Ed Zitron]

You have to look up.

[Michael Fisher]

No, you can set it so that if you get notification, it pops up right in front of you. So if I'm looking at you, I'm actually reading my messages and that's creepy. So I keep that off.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm the other way around though, where I'm like, I wouldn't want this on all the time, but if I could look up just to take a look. Yeah. Because if I see a notification, I want to chew on it. Yeah, I want to take a look. What you got for me?

[Michael Fisher]

Absolutely.

[Ed Zitron]

And I love this. And again, again, is this super useful? It's useful. Is it too expensive? I assume yes, probably.

[Michael Fisher]

I forgot how much it cost.

[Alex Cranz]

They look like you have to wear a leather duster with them whenever you wear them.

[Michael Fisher]

Yeah, no, that's the thing. So this is my main complaint with all the other stuff you're talking about is like the. I'm sorry, I always bring out Xreal just to like beat on them. But like, great technology.

[Ed Zitron]

But when you wear it, it's like, what is xreal?

[Michael Fisher]

You put on sunglasses, but you have like four inches of, I don't know, foam between them in your eyes. Like they just ride so damn high. And they're just, just because of the.

[Ed Zitron]

What is xreal?

[Michael Fisher]

They're like what you just described for airplane viewing. They're like, you know, wearable displays.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, they've been doing it for years.

[Kyle Barr]

But they're also working on an XR thing for Android.

[Michael Fisher]

Are they?

[Kyle Barr]

Yep.

[Michael Fisher]

Okay. I mean, display technology that doesn't require you to sit like, you know, we.

[Ed Zitron]

Would have for Vision Pro by now if they'd have put the $400 billion into this shit. Like, that's the, that's the actual thing. If they wanted to invest in the future, even if it's not XR VR, if they put hundreds of billions of dollars into the next interface and their argument would be, oh yeah, well, AI is the next interface. Because you talk, right? No, I can't. No, I can't at all. I have a British accent. Do you know I have to have British Siri sometimes?

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Because sometimes Siri just goes, I don't fuck. I don't fuck.

[Alex Cranz]

Oh no, my.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't fucking know.

[Alex Cranz]

A lot of my family has really strong Southern and Texas accents. It's incredible. Like, it has not. Nothing has improved from when Google first announced, first issued like voicemail where we would transcribe it. Nothing's improved Siri, Android, any of them. If they've got a really strong accent and they're talking like this, then my God, it is not gonna fucking work.

[Michael Fisher]

Oh my.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, just tough it out.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, you have to.

[Ed Zitron]

People in the south and people in like Baltimore just fuck.

[Alex Cranz]

Just absolutely fuck.

[Michael Fisher]

Give them that phone question. Actually, did you know that when you go to Europe the Android dictation engine changes?

[Ed Zitron]

No gdpr, I assume or something like that.

[Michael Fisher]

I don't know why. All I know is when I'm in Europe and I'm trying to type and I'm like, no, I'll come to you, period. It says, period. I have to say, no, I'll come to you full stop.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, that makes more sense.

[Michael Fisher]

Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's pretty smart.

[Kyle Barr]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

If you go around in England being like, period, people don't look at you at the end of every sentence like, oh, you seem fine. But it's. I do think though that this is, this is a very dread infused time. It's very doomery. But then I see these little foldable. I see the fun Device. I'm like, the tech industry does actually have other things. It's just, I think we might have maxed out software. I think we may have reached the limits of what software can do based on what we have as computing devices.

[Alex Cranz]

I would, I think something else.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm sure, I'm sure it's not fully at the limits, but I'm just saying as far as consumers go with using stuff. But what do you think, Alex?

[Alex Cranz]

I would say that it is more laziness of the large companies. The Apples and the Samsungs and the Googles and the Microsofts, the Lenovo's, I mean, well, the Lenovo actually, they have fun.

[Michael Fisher]

They're actually better than most of them.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, Lenovo's actually really good at. Like we're gonna experiment. And they're a Chinese company, they're always.

[Kyle Barr]

Trying something, you know, a lot of.

[Alex Cranz]

But primarily these American making gadgets and stuff, they don't try. All of they're interested in is how can I get you to replace what you have in two years? Yeah, that's it. And instead of being like, how can I get you to replace what you have in two years? By completely redefining the entire industry. They're like, now you can use magnets.

[Ed Zitron]

It'S longer and it's like, well, that's.

[Alex Cranz]

Cool, but am I really gonna upgrade my phone just for that? I might.

[Ed Zitron]

No, I.

[Alex Cranz]

The people in this room might.

[Michael Fisher]

I definitely would. But you're right, but with the people.

[Alex Cranz]

Outside of this room, I already have a case for.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. It's also, I think they've tried to do everything with one device, which is great, but that's where you bump up like the limits of entertainment. I think we're reaching especially because watching. I'm done with people telling me to watch. I don't know how people watch like full movies on their phone. Even the biggest, most hugest phone.

[Alex Cranz]

Well, they're young. They started.

[Ed Zitron]

No, I mean older people too. I mean I've met people and it's like on like a 6 inch phone and it's like, what the fuck? This is worse than an AirPod.

[Alex Cranz]

My brother did that. He watched Sinners like on his iPad. And he's like, why does everybody like Sinners? It's not very good. And I was like, how'd you watch it? Like, you know, in the middle of the day with the lights all on on my iPad. And I'm like, well, of course you didn't like it.

[Ed Zitron]

Hell yeah.

[Alex Cranz]

Get it together, sir.

[Ed Zitron]

Watching the Good, the Bad and the ugly on a Droid 2.

[Kyle Barr]

Yeah.

[Alex Cranz]

You paying attention?

[Ed Zitron]

That was a good film. I liked the Droid 2.

[Alex Cranz]

That was.

[Ed Zitron]

And also, just to be clear, you can do experiments that suck. I did also try the BlackBerry Storm back in the. With its like. It was a screen where you could just like do hap. It was like you could press. It felt like you were pressing in, but it felt.

[Michael Fisher]

It did. It floated on a button.

[Ed Zitron]

It felt bad. It felt like it was bad. A slightly harder version of poking some, like, Greek yogurt. It was. Which is not the sensation I want while typing.

[Alex Cranz]

No one wants that.

[Ed Zitron]

It, like, had a clunk to.

[Alex Cranz]

It wasn't that. That was the one that, like, BlackBerry was like, this is going to save us from Apples.

[Michael Fisher]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

It was their big. It was soul. It was like the homomobile of phones. It fucking. I love them for how bad it was.

[Alex Cranz]

Y. They were like, we don't need this multi touch stuff. We got this.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, we go.

[Michael Fisher]

You want your screen to move?

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

We want a screen that feels. That makes you feel bad every time you touch it. And everyone else is like, we're working on that with different ways. I also think that it's nice to hear that there's some fun as well, because the AI stuff and I'm not going to make this a big complaint fest about AI. You've got the rest of the episode, but there's something joyless about large language. It's not fun. I'm not using any of it. And being like, oh, how whimsical. Like, oh, you're having. They don't seem like they're having fun. We're not having fun. At least with some dorky, insane fun. You're like, okay, what are you.

[Alex Cranz]

I mean, the vibe coders. The vibe coders are having fun.

[Ed Zitron]

No, they're not. Read the vibe coding Reddit. It's a bunch of people talking like they've been captured by North Korea.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

It's straight up like, I love doing this every day. I've put three months of my life and thousands of dollars into this and I have eight paying customers.

[Alex Cranz]

It's the best thing in the world.

[Ed Zitron]

It's so funny. And you read. And they're like, yeah, I don't get how this happened. And someone will be like, yeah, you don't read code. You can't understand how this can. Well, I asked it to tell me. It's like, yeah, that's the problem. But it's like, there's nothing dorky or funny about it. Even the metaverse was more Fun than this.

[Kyle Barr]

It was more fun to make fun of.

[Alex Cranz]

No, I wasn't like the metaverse. That first time you put on that stupid window and you had your big windows playhouse and you go and you put a giant dinosaur in it and then you ask your co worker to try on the headset and they're like, why the hell is a giant dinosaur staring at me? Like, that's fun. But you can't do. Yeah, it's hard to troll people with AI. I mean, you really have to, like, you really have to think about it.

[Ed Zitron]

That's the thing, though, people trolled a little hard. Because what I also enjoyed was watching during the metaverse, regular journalists being like, I'll check out this VRChat thing. And just like getting the worst people online. A bunch of people dressed as knuckles just doing racism. Constant, just like endless racism.

[Alex Cranz]

And a few 13 year olds.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, just 13 year olds saying the worst shit you've heard in your life and like, hey, I'm here from business magazine. It's like, fuck you, you piece of shoe. No, it's great. I think the journalists need to see the real Internet occasionally.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, but you can do that with.

[Ed Zitron]

You can just do that with the Internet. You've been able to do it for decades. It's just. But the metaverse also, you saw some people try some weird shit. You saw a lot of grifters and all this crap, like, whatever. But it was like, at least someone was having fun. Mark Zuckerberg was lying. But also people didn't really full. Ask the metaverse. I wish that they had put this kind of money into it because we would have got one really shit thing and one really funny thing.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, and I mean, they, to an extent, they did put the money in. Like Apple spent a lot of money on that.

[Ed Zitron]

I don't think they did that because of the metaverse. I think that they were planning it anyway.

[Alex Cranz]

Really. I think I always felt it was like, we need to play catch up. Everyone is talking.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I can see that.

[Alex Cranz]

Apple.

[Ed Zitron]

But I refuse to believe it's been two, three years. What came out 20, 24. I don't think they've only been working on it two years. Maybe they accelerated it.

[Alex Cranz]

They've been working on it for.

[Ed Zitron]

Steve Jobs would have fucking killed them. Can you imagine Steve Jobs finding about that?

[Alex Cranz]

He never really let go.

[Ed Zitron]

He would have beaten someone to death with one of those.

[Kyle Barr]

Wasn't the idea that they were creating glasses first and then they're like, this is the step towards the glasses. And now. Now. Well, There was all that talk whether or not they're actually making the glasses. Now they're back on, whether or not they're gonna be smart glasses or AR glasses. It seems silly.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah. Everybody was like, okay. And this is the dumbest part of the generative AI moment is 10 years ago, everybody was like, we're gonna have smart glasses, but they are gonna be. You put them on and you talk to somebody because Alexa's doing it and there's Siri and all of this. So we're gonna do it just like it didn't work because we don't know how to interact audio wise with computers and stuff. It's not just like it is in Star Trek. It's actually more complex. You have to consider multiple users and stuff. So everybody's like, okay, how else can we do this? Well, we'll do the Metaverse and we'll do these AR glasses. And then they were like, wait, we can't figure out how to make these glasses small enough with battery life, with good vision. We can't do all of that. And then generative AI came out and everything. Cause if he's like, you know what? We're gonna do that Alexa shit again.

[Ed Zitron]

I love that as well. Because Alexa didn't work.

[Alex Cranz]

It still doesn't.

[Ed Zitron]

And they were like, well, we'll make a new one that works worse.

[Alex Cranz]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

And it's. I haven't. Have any of you used Alexa yet. Not yet.

[Kyle Barr]

Not only in demos.

[Ed Zitron]

Damn. I really. When I read about that, and they're like, it's worse. And it can. You can be like, yeah, make me a recipe for like chicken pasta. And it will tell you it. And I just think that people need to accept that voice is not a good interface. Just in general. I don't think it needs to be perfect. Perfect.

[Alex Cranz]

I think it requires so much more training of ourselves. Right. Cause like, you get.

[Ed Zitron]

But I don't want to be trained. I want to use the thingy.

[Alex Cranz]

But you are trained. Like we're all trained. We're trained to use our phones.

[Michael Fisher]

Yes. Unlimited use cases like, you know, turn the lights on, open the garage door, whatever. But beyond that, you know, to your point, it's required to be usable by such a wide swath of humans that it's almost impossible.

[Alex Cranz]

And we all want to do it just like Star Trek.

[Ed Zitron]

I also think it has a very flat view of tasks. I think that most people think that it's gonna be. Well, people like Sundar Pichai or Andy Jassy think that people go into their house and they go, and I will do this, and I will do this. Not me. I'm like, what about that YouTube? What about that Chrome thing? Should read this article. No, wait. Fuck, I meant to send an email. Send an email. Okay. Fuck. No, I haven't got the information for the email. Shit. Why am I. Why is it so fucking hot in here? I need to make it cold in here. Fuck, it's cold. I'm Gonna put this YouTube back on. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Alex Cranz]

It can't multitask at all.

[Ed Zitron]

It also just can't do any context, so you cannot do it in.

[Michael Fisher]

I will do something which I think would be tantamount to suicide on any other day. I will defend an LLM on your podcast.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay, go on.

[Michael Fisher]

No, please. I feel like it's probably a good mechanic for training these things to do exactly that. Because I have found the one enjoyable bit of using LLMs I've found is that I'll talk to Gemini Live a lot because I'm very used to, as we all are, doing a Google voice dictated search for what I'm looking for. But I love that Gemini lets me talk to it like my brain actually works. I'm like thinking about this thing. It's like a wrench, but it's not. It's like a rack ratcheting socket. That's probably not ratcheting anyway. It's a vacuum cleaner adjustment.

[Ed Zitron]

You know what I mean?

[Michael Fisher]

And then she'll be like, oh, yeah, totally got it. Here's what it is.

[Ed Zitron]

But that's a nice.

[Michael Fisher]

And then her return. To be fair, we will be 20% wrong. But at least she's gotten me.

[Ed Zitron]

No, I'm not. This is the use case of LLMs, which is they are better at inferring meaning from what we say. And they have found a way to do that which is just better search. Which gets back to the thing that you were saying, Alex, about how these companies are lazy. Because why doesn't. Why didn't Google have this 10 years ago? How are there no other ways to do this? And why is Google still not really like this? In the search engine part, you have to go into Gemini and even when you. You can't type in to Google search that kind of thing. No, when you try and I will type in like cite the information term and it will be like, I don't fucking know, man. Because I didn't write dot com. Yeah, because it's just. I don't know what. What possibly could cite colon, the information. Oh, you added a dot com. It's a website. My bad. Like I'm only worth. We're only a market cap of $4 trillion. Fuck you.

[Alex Cranz]

Well, they would say you should be using Chrome to do it or Android.

[Ed Zitron]

I wasn't on Chrome.

[Alex Cranz]

No, I wasn't.

[Ed Zitron]

I'm still in Chrome a little bit. Because certain websites don't work. We live in the future.

[Alex Cranz]

I tried to switch to Coggies mobile browser. Worst experience.

[Ed Zitron]

I switched to Firefox and they hate.

[Alex Cranz]

Sometimes some things just work better.

[Michael Fisher]

I live in Chrome. That's where I'm at. Especially since Pocket died. Now I have to use Chrome for all my mobile bookmarks. And it has all my passwords. It has. Oh man.

[Ed Zitron]

That's actually another thing just really grinds my gears. Bookmarks are the same still. I don't use bookmarks because I'm chaotic and every time I save something, I forget where I saved it.

[Alex Cranz]

I just assume I'll remember everything.

[Ed Zitron]

I actually. No, I genuine. I genuinely do. Like, I remember.

[Alex Cranz]

No, same, same.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, and it works.

[Michael Fisher]

I'm like, oh my God.

[Alex Cranz]

He's horrified.

[Michael Fisher]

I remember everything. But at exactly the wrong time.

[Ed Zitron]

I remember everything.

[Michael Fisher]

Oh yeah, I should look that up.

[Ed Zitron]

As long as I have the weirdest cues, like several words. If you read my notes from my newsletter, they're insane. It's like three broken sentences with like a question mark and a typo. I'm like, that's 16,000 words, babe.

[Michael Fisher]

Yeah, well, hold up. I didn't have this on my list, but there's a gadget for that. What is it? The Plowed or Plaud? Plaud AI request quarter things. Right?

[Alex Cranz]

Those didn't work.

[Michael Fisher]

I thought they work pretty well. And in fact you could say they work too well. They make a little credit card sized thing. It's very thin, it's very impressive. It's metal, it's concave.

[Kyle Barr]

They have a necklace too.

[Michael Fisher]

Now this is the note pen. This is the thing that works too well. They had a bug. You want to know what the bug was? What was it that fucker would record when you didn't ask it to? I have four hours of me snoring at CES on the note pin. And I was like, hey guys, you have to fix this because. Because it's the one thing it can't do. And they're like, ah, yes, we're replacing those affected units. I'm like, yeah, you damn.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, I'm so sorry though. Now that is an impossible to buy device.

[Michael Fisher]

That's what I said in the review. That's what I said.

[Ed Zitron]

Anyone who knows that happened to you. I wouldn't be able to buy it.

[Michael Fisher]

Nope. I don't trust it.

[Alex Cranz]

You probably have, because we all have phones and phones have definitely done that too. I've more than once had my phone just be like, I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. And I was like, I was on the fucking toilet. I didn't need you to catch that.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, I like my homepods, but they do occasionally hear me and just go like, I don't know what that means. It's like I was screaming to myself, thank you.

[Alex Cranz]

I was just watching tv.

[Ed Zitron]

I was just mad. I was just saying some of the words that I say inside when I am upset.

[Kyle Barr]

Well, even the PS5, the PlayStation 5 has that ability. You don't know it because nobody enables it, but it actually works. You can talk into the controller and control the PS5 that way. And I turned it on and I just keep forgetting to take it off. And now I'm just like, I'm just talking with my brother. And then the PS5 is like, are you sure?

[Ed Zitron]

And I'm like, what do you mean, no PlayStation 5? That's why I'm talking.

[Alex Cranz]

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

[Michael Fisher]

Hello, I'm John Lithgow.

[Kyle Barr]

We choose to go to the moon.

[Michael Fisher]

I want to tell you about my new fiction podcast.

[Kyle Barr]

That's One Small step for Man.

[Michael Fisher]

It's about Buzz Aldrin, one of the true pioneers of space. You're a great pilot, Buzz. As far as I'm concerned, the best I've seen. That's the story you think you know. This is the story you don't predisposition.

[Alex Cranz]

To depression, alcohol abuse and suicide.

[Michael Fisher]

We'll see Buzz try to overcome demons.

[Kyle Barr]

What do you say?

[Michael Fisher]

Buzz? Another beer and try triumph over addiction.

[Alex Cranz]

Here's to you, Buzz Aldrin.

[Michael Fisher]

Good luck to you and become a true hero.

[Kyle Barr]

Buzz and I will proceed into the.

[Michael Fisher]

Lunar module not because he conquers space, but because he conquers himself.

[Kyle Barr]

Buzz, we intercepted a Soviet radio transmission.

[Michael Fisher]

Starring me, John Lithgow. Can you put it through? Can you Translate on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kyle Barr]

Columbia.

[Michael Fisher]

American history is full of wise people.

[Alex Cranz]

Walt Whitman said something like, you know, 99.99% of war is diarrhea and 1% is glory. Those Founding Fathers were gossipy AF, and they loved to cut each other down.

[Michael Fisher]

I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, the show where you send us your questions about American history, and I find the answers, including the nuggets of wisdom our history has to offer.

[Ed Zitron]

Hamilton pauses, and then he says, the greatest man that ever lived was Julius Caesar. And Jefferson writes in his diary, this proves that Hamilton is for a dictator based on corruption. My favorite line was what Neil Armstrong said.

[Alex Cranz]

It would have been harder to fake it than to do it.

[Michael Fisher]

Listen to American History Hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alex Cranz]

I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, and in session 421 of Therapy for Black Girls, I sit down with Dr. Aia and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system.

[Michael Fisher]

Right.

[Alex Cranz]

In terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, your spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyper fixation and observation of our hair. Right. That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel. It's how our hair is styled. You talk about the important role hairstylists play in our communities, the pressure to always look put together and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neal Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to Therapy for black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Ed Zitron]

I. I don't know. And it, I just, I want them to do more fun things. I'm. I'm so glad to have the fact that you, Michael, have this flip phone tablet. I keep looking at him as being like this. But there's the trifold now, right?

[Michael Fisher]

We love the trifold. Yes.

[Alex Cranz]

China is actually doing a lot of these Chinese companies are doing really interesting stuff.

[Kyle Barr]

They're innovating.

[Michael Fisher]

Absolutely.

[Alex Cranz]

Like, Huawei is doing it, Lenovo is doing it. Apple is like, we'll get there in five years after everyone else has done it.

[Michael Fisher]

Right.

[Alex Cranz]

We can, like, test it There and make sure.

[Ed Zitron]

One thing I will say is you can't do contiguous touch between the windows.

[Michael Fisher]

So. Yeah, when you're running two apps side by side.

[Ed Zitron]

I am. Exactly.

[Michael Fisher]

That kind of Android demands you, like, you select your focus. Yeah. So you can't be doing them both at once.

[Ed Zitron]

And that's the weird thing. Like Apple used to, like, they had the Apple hi Fi. They used to take fun risks and then Steve Jobs would kill the families, everyone involved.

[Michael Fisher]

Well. And they failed at a risk. The air dock.

[Ed Zitron]

What was that?

[Michael Fisher]

Yeah, yeah, the charging plate.

[Alex Cranz]

Air power.

[Ed Zitron]

So the listeners. There was this thing that now exists in 19 different forms where they were going to do this block where you could put your AirPods, your Apple Watch and your phone. And they would talk about it every few months and they'd be like, it's just around the corner.

[Alex Cranz]

They announced it.

[Ed Zitron]

They're like, yeah, it was like a big thing. They announced and Mark Gurman would just put out. It's like, no, it's not gonna. And it was. They just canceled it one day. And then Anker and several hundred other companies.

[Alex Cranz]

Well, it was different.

[Michael Fisher]

Yeah, go ahead, Alec.

[Ed Zitron]

What was different about this?

[Alex Cranz]

So what Apple was trying to do was like, take those coils, the charging coils, and stack them on each other so it's one real small spot. So you could throw it on anywhere on the pad and it would charge.

[Ed Zitron]

That is cool.

[Alex Cranz]

Whereas everybody else is like, no, you have to have your little spots. And I love. I've got one and it's great, I use it all the time. But air power would have been slightly cooler except for it was like melting things.

[Michael Fisher]

They couldn't figure it out one way or the other.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, wow. Customers are so demonic.

[Alex Cranz]

It's like, oh, no, I melted a hole in my floor.

[Michael Fisher]

Now we have like MagSafe obviated the need for it, right? Because the magnets are better for like. It's like you don't. It doesn't matter that you need to like discreetly place it because the magnets are going to put it there anyway. And that's better for a bunch of reasons.

[Ed Zitron]

I will say. There is an anchor thing that I have at home that I don't replace out of spite, which is. It's one of the things where the Apple Watch component flips up so that the circle. Except that thing. There are so many times I put it on, it just does not stick for some reason. And every time it happens. Piece of shit. Do I replace it? Fuck no.

[Alex Cranz]

No.

[Ed Zitron]

You just don't have Your I paid my $50 and I will get every dollar's worth. Ten years later, I will replace it when I throw it from the window.

[Alex Cranz]

I mean, that's like all my GAN chargers.

[Ed Zitron]

GAN is cool.

[Michael Fisher]

Gan is gallium nitro.

[Ed Zitron]

We love gallium nitrite here. Oh, we really. I genuinely are.

[Alex Cranz]

I mean, that's how you know it's a bunch of, like, nerds who love gadgets. Cause we're all like, yeah, gan.

[Ed Zitron]

And if you've not heard of gallium nitrite, of mentioned it before, it's the thing where they basically found a way to make plugs smaller and batteries smaller. I actually have, like, these amazing anchor things. There's just all this cool shit that came out of it.

[Michael Fisher]

So great.

[Alex Cranz]

Ugreen makes really good stuff too.

[Michael Fisher]

Mm.

[Ed Zitron]

Ugreen.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, Ugreen.

[Ed Zitron]

I thought they were just the slot brand.

[Alex Cranz]

No, they're real people.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Kyle Barr]

But I have one in my bag right now.

[Ed Zitron]

And they're actually good because I've been looking for anchor alternatives just because I like.

[Kyle Barr]

Because they keep melting.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

No, I like anchor mounting things.

[Michael Fisher]

Yeah.

[Alex Cranz]

Recalls things have gotten a little more expensive. Ugreen and there's a few others.

[Ed Zitron]

I like Anka.

[Michael Fisher]

So they committed the ultimate sin long ago for me. The same thing. Allbirds did the same thing. Everything company does that achieves scale is they go from building something interesting looking in a fun color with a weird shape to like.

[Ed Zitron]

Ah.

[Michael Fisher]

No. 80% of people buy the boring black rectangle. So now that's all we're gonna show. Anchor's variety is black or white.

[Ed Zitron]

I am. I somewhat disagree.

[Michael Fisher]

Oh, come on.

[Ed Zitron]

Just because of the Nebula X1, which we talked about. It's this insane, like, $3,000 projector. Oh, yeah. You can put it in a weird angle and it will still keystone in. They do claim it's like, oh, you hit a button and it just works. Not for me. I am the person you should bring every new thing to before you say that, because it will break everything.

[Alex Cranz]

Has there ever been a projector that just works?

[Ed Zitron]

But it does. It gets about as close as you can. It sets up in, like, a minute. You can keystone it at the weird angles. It's fucking cool. And it looks weird and it's, like, really nice. And, like, the wireless speakers just work.

[Alex Cranz]

How much is it?

[Ed Zitron]

It's 3,000 fucking dollars. It's so expensive.

[Michael Fisher]

Good news. If you Google it, you will get your first three results. Are cheaper alternatives that they're being paid to be put there.

[Ed Zitron]

Nice. When I bought my GPD for WIM4. I ended up getting scammed by a Google Ad. I had some and I. It was just. I was buying it. I was excited to get it and I saw. And I am so resilient to these things. So I was like mad at myself. Yeah, I emailed. Fucking gpd. I emailed Google. I was fucking. I was like, listen to me. Fuck. No, no, I didn't. I was. And to be fair, GPD got back to me. Like, holy shit. Like, we're gonna contact Google. Google did not. GPD was actually like very concerned.

[Alex Cranz]

Well, yeah. Cause that's like their whole brand.

[Ed Zitron]

And it was just like a Chinese guy's Gmail as well. Like he had a fake. A perfectly good GPD website.

[Alex Cranz]

Did he just mail you a box?

[Ed Zitron]

No, I canceled the payment. Like put it on a credit card because these things happen. Haven't for a long time. I was quite embarrassed. But no, I like Anker and they occasionally will do something like the Nebula X1, however. Yeah, they are mostly just blocks. They have them in different colors now.

[Alex Cranz]

I mean, the batteries. I have one that's like mint green. Yeah, they're lovely.

[Ed Zitron]

Like a pink one in my pocket.

[Michael Fisher]

How about that?

[Kyle Barr]

I mean, Anker's. Anker's like, you know, charging brand, it's just kind of stayed. But like all the other shit they're doing with all their other sub brands, because now they have like 12. You know, they have that UV printer that's really cool.

[Michael Fisher]

Wait, what is that too?

[Ed Zitron]

What is this?

[Kyle Barr]

So UV printers, they basically use a UV light on UV activated ink to.

[Alex Cranz]

So sort of like thermal printers kind of.

[Kyle Barr]

But there's less heat involved since it's just light. So it'll just. You can technically print on almost anything. And it can print in 3D. So if you like, you know, you're looking at oil painting, it has those like raised edges where, you know, the oil thickens. It can technically do that. It's really. It's very cool. And I got to use it. I printed out a meme on a little magnet and it looks really nice. I can't wait to actually try it out more.

[Ed Zitron]

How much is this thing?

[Kyle Barr]

It's probably around like $1300. It was more than that.

[Ed Zitron]

But like a 3D. A good 3D printer is that much.

[Michael Fisher]

Is this like one of those printers that I saw a number of years ago that is kind of like a mouse and you like run it over the surface you're printing on or not?

[Kyle Barr]

No, this is a big unit, but it's like Other UV printers are, like, gigantic. And this is like a tabletop one, which is why it was, like, big in the maker space for, like, a hot minute. I don't know where it is right now, and I've been trying to get a review unit in and anchor, if you're listening, please.

[Ed Zitron]

So I actually do have a question for all three of you. I keep seeing things on Kickstarter, but I haven't touched Kickstarter in years because of all the shit. Is it trustworthy still? Is it still dodgy?

[Michael Fisher]

Depends on who you're going. Like some companies, big companies will use Kickstarter to validate the market. Like, Unihertz is famous for this.

[Ed Zitron]

Who is that?

[Michael Fisher]

If you want an interesting phone, Unihertz is there for you. They make all the BlackBerry revivals, all the ones with weird QWERTY, and they're huge. They have a screen on the back for no reason.

[Ed Zitron]

Hell, yeah.

[Michael Fisher]

Yeah, you'd love a Unihertz.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Michael Fisher]

Try it. Every launch they do is on Kickstarter and they. I think they also use it as a PR thing because they know they're gonna exceed their goal in the first day.

[Ed Zitron]

But it isn't 2013 anymore. I run a PR firm and I know that doesn't work anymore, but yeah.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, you'll see that with, like, it's mainly the big brands, the smaller brands. I would still be a little.

[Ed Zitron]

They're still dodgy.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah. Because it's. You just run into this. I mean, it's just the practical nature of building gadgets.

[Michael Fisher]

Hardware is really difficult. Can confirm. Yeah.

[Alex Cranz]

And it's only gonna get more difficult over the next because of the tariffs and stuff. I suspect especially Americans are gonna have, you know, until we get manufacturing in the United States again, it's gonna be a challenge.

[Ed Zitron]

I look forward to that happening any day.

[Michael Fisher]

There is one that I actually invested in which is technically a gadget. Now, I was going to say this till the very end, because no one could possibly care about this if they didn't follow the moon landing program in the 60s.

[Alex Cranz]

Tell me more.

[Michael Fisher]

Okay, this is a watch. It is called the DSKY Moon Watch dsky. And it is not a smart watch. It is not an lcd. And all this stuff, what they took, there's an Apollo guidance computer from the moon capsule, and they shrunk it down to the size of a watch.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, my God.

[Alex Cranz]

Hell, yes.

[Michael Fisher]

And it is not just an aesthetic reproduction. It is literally the same computer that's replicated so you can program it with, like, old 60s noun verb, you know, combinations. And what I love, my favorite thing about it is, you know, in the 60s, you didn't have LEDs. Well, we have to have LEDs in the watch to do stuff. They came up with color filters to make the LED match the incandescent bulbs of the 60s. Like, it's perfect.

[Kyle Barr]

It looks like an oscilloscope. Kind of like, I don't need this.

[Alex Cranz]

But I'm gonna get it.

[Michael Fisher]

That's what I said the minute I saw. I think holy crap is expensive.

[Ed Zitron]

How much is that?

[Michael Fisher]

890 bucks or something like that.

[Alex Cranz]

Their website, it's 659 pounds.

[Kyle Barr]

Yeah, there you go for the Americans.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Michael Fisher]

Anyway, I'll let you know if I get it because I have backed it.

[Ed Zitron]

But what does it do?

[Michael Fisher]

It tells you the time.

[Alex Cranz]

It looks cool.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, that's fine.

[Michael Fisher]

It also is the guidance computer, so you can program it to. It is limited by your imagination and your coding ability. If, you know, 1969 error.

[Ed Zitron]

Of course.

[Michael Fisher]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Which I do.

[Michael Fisher]

But it's all open source, so you can actually do whatever you want with it, which is really fun. It also has gps for some reason. I don't know. I don't know what else.

[Ed Zitron]

Fuck it. While we're there, it's. Yeah. I'm so glad. I wasn't sure coming into this whether we'd have more doodads. It seems like they're still a healthy. But there's just not in America.

[Michael Fisher]

Well, no, they're good stuff here.

[Ed Zitron]

No, sorry. You can get it here. But it's not American companies that seem to be driving this. Like, anchor's Chinese.

[Michael Fisher]

Yeah, well, I've got a couple, actually.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, please, please. I genuinely like to know Pebble.

[Michael Fisher]

Pebble.

[Ed Zitron]

Okay. Pebble is back.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, Pebble's back.

[Kyle Barr]

Because people are tired of their regular watches.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Michael Fisher]

No, it's just they're never should have died.

[Alex Cranz]

Let's say never should have died. They're doing E Ink watches again. They start shipping this month. I definitely ordered both.

[Ed Zitron]

What do they do? How much do they cost?

[Alex Cranz]

You know, they're just watches.

[Michael Fisher]

Well, they're smart watches.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, they're smart watches. They've got, you know, they've got heart rate monitors in them. They do notifications.

[Ed Zitron]

Is it Bluetooth or Ant?

[Alex Cranz]

Oh, I don't know. Bluetooth is it. And it's. And it's just. It's just a watch. And you can, you know, they have a very robust user community.

[Michael Fisher]

That's the killer.

[Ed Zitron]

And what, like apps and such?

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, right. So that was the thing. I mean, Pebbles, Apple was the first one doing apps on a watch and they did it well and people liked it. And then they sold, Right.

[Michael Fisher]

They sold to Fitbit, who were then bought by Google immediately and then died.

[Alex Cranz]

It killed it. And the guy got it back, got the rights to the couple back. That's sick. And he's like, he's just out there making cool as hell watches.

[Michael Fisher]

Yes. And I think the user community is the thing because all these. I love a smartwatch, but the ones from Google and Apple are kind of soulless of necessity because they're corporate products and they're meant for the wider consumer. Exactly. Whereas the Pebbles.

[Ed Zitron]

Wow.

[Michael Fisher]

Who made this weird ostrich watch face that's like. Oh, some guy in Denmark. Oh, that's cool.

[Alex Cranz]

I mean, the pebble watch, my best friend, she goes to Orange Theory. She's like, very drinks for Starbucks. Very. I love her, but she does not give a shit about smart watches. And she's not gonna care about the Pebble. If I told her about it, she'd say, what?

[Michael Fisher]

Yeah.

[Alex Cranz]

Whereas an Apple watch cares about. Yeah. And it's just a perfect gadget. And I'm.

[Ed Zitron]

How much was it again?

[Michael Fisher]

I don't know.

[Kyle Barr]

Was it the 200 something?

[Michael Fisher]

Yeah, it's not bad.

[Alex Cranz]

50.

[Ed Zitron]

No.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah.

[Michael Fisher]

And he's only making small batches, so it could be cheaper. But he's only doing me how much.

[Alex Cranz]

I spent on these watches.

[Michael Fisher]

Yeah, right. That's credit cards.

[Alex Cranz]

I spent a lot.

[Ed Zitron]

That's future Alex's problem.

[Michael Fisher]

Exactly.

[Alex Cranz]

I already paid for it all, so it's not. It's past Alex's problem. Yeah, I just get free stuff now. Yeah, that's how I think of it.

[Ed Zitron]

That's how it works.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, boy.

[Michael Fisher]

Any other American company. The Light Phone. The light comes.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah. I didn't get a chance to watch your video.

[Michael Fisher]

What a trash friend you are.

[Alex Cranz]

Okay, well, I watched it.

[Ed Zitron]

There's only one person I have telegram for and that's you.

[Michael Fisher]

So you don't even use that anymore. Don't lie to us.

[Ed Zitron]

And I don't use it. That's why I miss your messages. But anywho, so wait, so this Light phone, was it good or bad?

[Michael Fisher]

The Light Phone 3 was a very, well, it was a very 7 out of 10 experience because it was basically half unfinished when I was covering it.

[Ed Zitron]

And what does it do exactly?

[Michael Fisher]

Very. It lets you do phone calls, text messages, and then a handful of apps that are meant to keep you as disconnected as possible. You have maps, you will Never have email, you will never have social media, you will not have a web browser. But like things to get you from point A to point B. Except right now, no payments, no Lyft, no Uber, none of that stuff. So it made life very difficult. I tried it for two weeks. I found I had to carry an iPad mini along with me, which the light phone does. Generate a hotspot so you can use. That's cool. Like, you know, if you want to pop open a laptop. I really enjoyed experimenting with that lifestyle again of reverting to the late 90s when we had to decide to be online and then decide to be offline.

[Ed Zitron]

Well, I decided to be online all.

[Michael Fisher]

The time as a kid.

[Ed Zitron]

Sort of like it's not really.

[Michael Fisher]

I think it worked out well for all of us.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Alex Cranz]

So sometimes.

[Ed Zitron]

But this thing is it. What kind of screen is it? Like a black and white screen.

[Michael Fisher]

So that is. It's. In my opinion, it's shot shining achievement. Like, this is a remarkable piece of hardware. I love picking it up. It is like if you blew up an Apple Watch to by 4x the size and made it out of black metal and glass and put a knob on the side to control your brightness. And the screen is black and white, but it has this diffusion filter on it. It does have a camera with a nice chunky dual stage shutter button. It's okay camera though, actually better than I expected, to be honest.

[Ed Zitron]

But it's black and white.

[Michael Fisher]

I'm sorry. The display is oled. So it is a black and white image and when you fire the camera, it activates the color oled.

[Ed Zitron]

This thing's so cool. But also it's like the opposite of what I want.

[Michael Fisher]

Is it?

[Ed Zitron]

But I'm abnormal. I need to. I love being connected always.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

I was gonna say I am like a problem.

[Michael Fisher]

Try it. Try it. The second weekend I was like, I get it. I get by people who like talk about presence and intentionality. I hadn't gotten it.

[Ed Zitron]

But I also have the steel will of the Buddha. If I need to focus on people, I can just not look at my phone.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, well. And I think this is what's it.

[Michael Fisher]

Like to have restraint.

[Alex Cranz]

I don't know.

[Michael Fisher]

I'm unfamiliar with that.

[Alex Cranz]

I think this is the thing we see though from American gadgets is a lot of the American gadgets are about disconnecting. They're about taking a step back. And as we all look at our.

[Ed Zitron]

Phones, I was checking the time, but.

[Alex Cranz]

That is, you know, it's about how do we disconnect from Google, how do we disconnect from our corporate overlords? How do we disconnect from social media? Those are the things driving a lot of American and ingenuity and gadgets, which is like, cool, but culturally like, oof, where are we as a culture? That's the driving point.

[Ed Zitron]

I also understand, like, that is cool, but it's also sad. Yeah, of course, it's very. I get the sense that other countries, when they look at technology, they see like, oh, like regular people. Like, oh, what could it do for me next? Now everyone's like, ah, is there a fucking way that I could stop using it? Versus, like Katy Natopoulos from BI Business Insider wrote a few years ago, I think this thing was like, I love stop trying to get me off my phone, make my phone better. And I kind of subscribe to that. And I know I'm a freak for like liking the phone and being online all the time, but nevertheless, it's like this sense of I want to get away from big tech, I want to get away from my phone, I want to do all this. It's very sad. And also they're clearly building towards it by making, oh, we'll just control the shit for you. You have no control, you have no industry over this.

[Michael Fisher]

So there's a flip side to this. And then I'm going to stop talking about phones. There's a another philosophical approach done by a company called the Minimal company, the Minimal phone. Now, they are much smaller than light. They also have some problems fulfilling orders. I think their customer service, whatever. But their phone is a good idea because the phone, it does the opposite of the light phone. It gives you all the apps you want, but the display is E ink, so you don't want to use any of them. But you can if you need to, like Uber, which I needed a billion times on the light phone. It didn't have it. I was running pissed off. That was really, really cool. The minimal phone idea is a very cool one and I'm a nerd for this. But they put a QWERTY keyboard on there, which I also like.

[Alex Cranz]

Oh, yeah, that's just cool.

[Kyle Barr]

TCL is making a phone. Well, they made a phone last year that's their NXPT paper phone that you can't get in the US and you can swap it between a fake E paper screen and to a regular screen.

[Alex Cranz]

It's really E paper.

[Kyle Barr]

Yeah. It's not actually E paper. I know, but it looks, it has a kind of sheen to it that makes it look less.

[Alex Cranz]

Or you can just go and spend $10 on a matte glass for your phone. That's what I did. Because I looked at that stuff and I was like, oh, this is cool. I'll just put matte glass on my phone. And I get the exact same experience.

[Michael Fisher]

I said I would stop talking about phones, but you just made me think of another one.

[Ed Zitron]

This is my podcast. Talk about the phone.

[Michael Fisher]

I don't care. Fairphone 6.

[Ed Zitron]

What is this?

[Michael Fisher]

I have not paid attention to Fairphone almost at all because it's been about repairability, which is important, but I don't really care about it. So. Okay. Fairphone 6 has a big neon green switch on the side, and when you flip it down, it turns from a regular Android phone into a dumb phone. And I like that physical trigger because, yeah, you can do it with a custom launcher. Yeah, you can do it through umpteen software options. But having a switch seems to suggest more intentionality is required of you. And switching out of it feels like more friction. A little more friction.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, exactly.

[Alex Cranz]

It's a little more friction, but it's also less friction in the setup. Right?

[Michael Fisher]

True.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah. Because if I, you know, you can do that with an iPhone. You are gonna spend a very long time ticking around with your iPhone to get to that point.

[Michael Fisher]

Yes.

[Ed Zitron]

I think a lot of these problems come down to the fact that just notifications have become an invasion of our privacy. That when you look at your phone, it'll be like, hey, it's Etsy again. Yeah. You bought one thing seven years ago. You didn't delete this app. Do you want to look at flowers?

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

And you're just like, leave me the fuck alone. And Apple's just like, we don't give a fuck.

[Alex Cranz]

New York Times used to do breaking news for everything. They'd just like every damn thing. They'd be like, you know, Beyonce is gonna be in New York. Great. Why is that breaking news?

[Ed Zitron]

You can't fix this as well with the phone. It's the companies. They've made it worse. And they make it worse every day.

[Alex Cranz]

And they're like, well, we'll give you control.

[Michael Fisher]

You have to do way too much work to do it to your point, you have to do way too much tweaking.

[Ed Zitron]

You can't tweak the notifications.

[Michael Fisher]

Well, if you have an Android.

[Alex Cranz]

Yeah, and that's the thing where imessage.

[Ed Zitron]

On a fucking Android, you want to.

[Alex Cranz]

Be able to go to your phone and just say, fix it. And Google keeps promising that. And have they delivered someday?

[Kyle Barr]

I mean, speaking of the fairphone. Like, there's a. Framework is making really cool laptops. I was just thinking, I really, really like Framework and, like, I don't tell the audience. So Framework's laptop, where all you kind of have to do is, like, you get a bunch of the parts and you. You slot in the ssd, you slot in the RAM and you kind of put the screen bezels on and then you put the keyboard on. You screw everything in. It's like, oh, it's a laptop now. You built it. I mean, it's fun because the company makes it really easy to do. It's Lego, so you make yourself feel smart, even though they literally put everything out there for you and you just did it. But it also means you can repair it, yada, yada, yada, but the. Yeah, you can upgrade it. I like the feeling of, like, ownership, because half the problem with ownership is that I don't feel like I actually own the thing. I bought the thing and they're managing my life for me. They're putting all the software on it that I don't want. They're putting this program on it.

[Ed Zitron]

You change how you use it with UX updates.

[Kyle Barr]

Yeah, exactly. So I want to own the thing by controlling what goes into it. And I feel like I want more products that have that ability to just, like, I can just control the hardware, at least, if not the software. Like, if I could control both, I'd be in a happy place. I'm more nerdy. But imagine if like, every laptop had that ability to just, like, take off the back and, like, just swap things around.

[Alex Cranz]

Well, you were seeing that in gaming laptops for a long time before Framework came along, right? Like Dell, Quite a few of them.

[Ed Zitron]

You can still swap the ram.

[Kyle Barr]

Yes, some of them, although some of them are more soldered on. Like, some of the smaller 14 inches.

[Ed Zitron]

Are soldered on, which kind of makes sense.

[Alex Cranz]

One of the tricks here is just for laptops, order the business laptops because they usually do have much more upgradability. Because. Because the big companies are like, no, we're not gonna pay you that much for ram. We will replace the RAM ourself or you will die and never get our business again. And so they fix it for them. That's why you see that from Dell.

[Michael Fisher]

And Lenovo, others on the build your own stuff. Kyle, do you follow the. Or does anybody follow the Cyberdeck building community?

[Kyle Barr]

Oh, yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

What is.

[Michael Fisher]

I have a blast. If you want to have a gadget binge, I would say just Google Cyberdeck builds on YouTube it's basically people are.

[Alex Cranz]

Trying to really live the Neuromancer book, and they're just building cyberdecks from the neuromancer.

[Ed Zitron]

What is a cyberdeck?

[Kyle Barr]

Oh, my God. All right.

[Alex Cranz]

I was like, you don't know William Gibson, so I'm familiar.

[Kyle Barr]

Yeah, Neuromancer. Kind of like that whole cyberpunk era aesthetic. The idea of, like, cyber deck, it's like you literally plug into the Internet. You know, you have this. This deck that you. And you sit down in a chair and you plug yourself in and you're literally a body. And like, the whole, like, idea of a metaverse kind of stems from this, except it's a lot more grungy and a lot more punk.

[Ed Zitron]

Right.

[Michael Fisher]

The deck itself is like part of it is like it's personalized to you, right? Like, you build it yourself. So it takes the form in modern day with what we can do of like, little laptops, like, kind of like the GVD stuff, right? Except it's netbooks.

[Alex Cranz]

I loved netbooks.

[Ed Zitron]

I miss netback. What is the functionality of a cyberdeck, though?

[Kyle Barr]

What's it meant in modern day? It's just basically what a little laptop.

[Alex Cranz]

It's just to be cool.

[Kyle Barr]

But the idea is that you're doing it yourself and it's your own and you're making it like. I mean, I don't know, are they using like, Raspberry Pisces?

[Michael Fisher]

Often they'll be built in a Raspberry PI or something like that. But if you want functionality, the meshtastic is another good thing to look at. Meshtastic, that is like these little pocket terminals that are. Are being built around what is. I had to look it up. An ESP32 system on a chip which enables a lot of cool stuff. And the meshtastic network is like node to node. You're not on the Internet necessarily. Like, each phone or each terminal is a node. So what did you. Jack Dorsey just dropped an app for this.

[Ed Zitron]

Oh, God.

[Alex Cranz]

I mean, everyone.

[Kyle Barr]

He's dropped several apps.

[Ed Zitron]

He's dropped a lot of things.

[Alex Cranz]

No, I'm talking.

[Michael Fisher]

That's an app for the iPhone. And if we all had bitchat, we could talk to text each other without connecting to the Internet. Like, it's a direct peer to peer network.

[Ed Zitron]

I like that.

[Michael Fisher]

And the meshtastic, there's a lot of handheld hardware. They all look like blackberries. They're all really cool. They're little mini cyberdecks. And it's just to utilize that network. And again, you can build your own a lot of the time if you're more skilled than I am.

[Ed Zitron]

So I'm gonna wrap it here and I want to end with a message that everyone should go and support Steve Burke over at Gamers Nexus, who Bloomberg has been fucking him up by doing bullshit YouTube DMCA. He's coming on the show next week. Week. This is a ridiculous situation. Bloomberg should be fucking ashamed of themselves. The legal department and everyone involved. Other journalists, including at Bloomberg, should see this as an offense against journalism. And not giving him support is tantamount to not having solidarity with your peers. Steve is doing some of the best work out there, and I realize that's kind of a grim thing, but one of the reasons I love all three of you is you really, in the same way as Steve, get into this stuff and actually know it and love it and are excited about it. And I think that that is a dying art within journalists, especially within tech. And I hope everyone's enjoyed this episode because I certainly fucking have. It's nice to talk about stuff and like, sure, there's bad things going on and it can be kind of grim out there, but there's still people making dorky little innovations out there. And it's worth remembering that the tech industry is not all bad, which does not mean that AI doesn't fucking suck. Bing Bong Michael, where can people find you?

[Michael Fisher]

They can find me on YouTube @theMrMobile T H E M R M O B I L e or on three threads at captain two phones. It's captain the number two phones.

[Alex Cranz]

Ms. Kranz, most places. Alex Hcrans, Bluesky, Threads, all those places.

[Kyle Barr]

And Kyle, you can go to goodsmodo.com and just look at the review section because it's me and like two other guys, hell yeah.

[Ed Zitron]

You can find me of [e-mail] and on the podcast you're listening to. Please subscribe to my newsletter and hit the premium as well. We will have some really fun episodes coming up. We've got of course, the interview with Steve Bergman Games Nexus next week. I will work out a monologue later today. I am really loving doing the show. Things are about to get spicy. I have a spiciness in the air. So looking forward to the next few episodes as things begin to collapse. Because that's where we're going. Peace out everyone. Thank you for listening to Better Off. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osawski. You can check out more of his music and audio [e-mail] M A T T O S O W S K I dot com youm 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.at to visit the Discord and go to online to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

[Alex Cranz]

Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

[Ed Zitron]

And here's Heather with the weather.

[Alex Cranz]

Well, it's beautiful out there. Sunny and 75, almost a little chilly in the shade. Now let's get a read on the inside of your car. It is hot. You've only been parked a short time and it's already 99 degrees in the there. Let's not leave children in the back seat while running errands. It only takes a few minutes for their body temperatures to rise and that could be fatal.

[Michael Fisher]

Cars get hot fast and can be deadly. Never leave a child in a car A message from N.N.H.T.S.A.

[Ed Zitron]

And the Ad Council.

[Michael Fisher]

I was diagnosed with cancer on Friday and cancer free the next Friday. No chemo, no radiation. None of that.

[Ed Zitron]

On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy winning producer, pastor and music Executive Executive to talk about the beats, the business and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R B and hip hop.

[Michael Fisher]

Professionally. I started at Death Row Records.

[Ed Zitron]

From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it. Listen to Culture Raises us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Kurt Browner.

[Michael Fisher]

And I am Scotty Landis and we host Bananas, the podcast where we share the weirdest, fun, funniest real news stories from all around the world and sometimes from our guests personal lives too. Like when Whitney Cummings recently revealed her origin story on the show.

[Alex Cranz]

There's no way I don't already have rabies. This is probably just why my personality is like this. I've been surviving rabies for the past 20 years.

[Ed Zitron]

New episodes of Bananas drop every Tuesday on the Exactly Right network.

[Michael Fisher]

Listen to bananas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

[Alex Cranz]

Back to the Future was released 40 years ago this summer, but the original star was just not feeling the story and was fired after most of the filming was done. Turns out a lot of stars have made blockbusters they hated. Check out the backstory with Patty Steele on the iHeartRadio app. This is an iHeart podcast.