Better Offline - Better Offline CES 2025: Day 3 - Pt. 1

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

Welcome to Better Offline’s coverage of the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show - a standup radio station in the Venetian with an attached open bar where reporters, experts and various other characters bring you the stories from the floor. In the second episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Jesse Farrar and Michael Hale of Your Kickstarter Sucks, Henry Casey of CNN Underscored, Max Cherney of Reuters, Matt Binder of Mashable, Tom McKay of ITBrew and journalist Ed Ongweso Jr. to talk about trying to find something useful that AI does in a show where everybody uses AI so liberally that it's effectively stopped meaning anything. Your Kickstarter Sucks: https://www.patreon.com/yourkickstartersucks Jesse Farrar: https://bsky.app/profile/jessefarrar.com Michael Hale: https://x.com/dogboner Ed Ongweso Jr: https://bsky.app/profile/bigblackjacobin.bsky.social Max Cherney: https://www.reuters.com/authors/max-a-cherney/ Matt Binder: https://bsky.app/profile/mattbinder.bsky.social Henry Casey: https://bsky.app/profile/henrytcasey.net Tom McKay: https://bsky.app/profile/catturd2.bsky.social --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/  Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitronSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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When I was a young boy, my father, he took me to the Las Vegas-based Consumer Electronics Show, and he left me here for days. Welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host, Ed Zittl. And we are back talking about the Consumer Electronics Show. I slept five hours yesterday, so I was a little low energy. Today, I am way higher energy. So this is what you have to expect today. But I'm joined by another dynamic coterie of guests. On my left here, I have Tom McKay's, senior reporter at IT. Tom, thank you so much for joining us. Awesome. It's great to be here. Oh, yeah.

And across for me, I have Jesse Ferrar of your Kickstarter Sucks. Hello. I have loved YKS for years, but also tell people a little bit about what YKS is because it's so Jumean to the show. Well, thank you. You know, I guess it has morphed into something that is a tech skeptic show, you know, which you're familiar with. And it wasn't supposed to be that.

it was supposed to be about crowdfunding, but what happens when we get sucked into these worlds? You know, you often find, you know, maybe there's some more here than I really thought, and such is the way of crowdfunding, because now it's mostly AI stuff, or it's, you know, a little robot that spins around on a wheel and says, how you doing, or whatever. So most of the time, okay, that was a bad example because obviously that's awesome and we all want that, but so much of this, there's a big overlap, I guess, between bad tech and what's on our show. And you got a lot of your start as well was talking about just the shit that people are promising on crowdfunding campaigns. Yeah, I think that's what that's like, it shares like a particular DNA with CES, which we were talking a little bit earlier before we got started, which is, hey, I remember the stuff from last year and then you show up and it's not here, right?

Yeah. And also it's not anywhere. And that's what Kickstarter is, right? There's somebody who says, what if we did this? And you go, well, I don't know, man. I mean, I guess try it. And they go, okay. And then nothing happens after that at all.

And the only record of it sometimes is our stupid show saying how much it sucks. So really you're doing pure journalism there. It's anthropology as well, Ed. I don't want to sell it short. All right. So on my right, I have Henry Casey, electronics writer at CNN underscore Henry. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me.

So a lot of your stuff is just you have one of the more honest jobs, I would say, of the people that we've had on so far, which is not meant to sound like an insult. Though it does. Okay. In the sense that you're just like, I'm going to look at stuff. Like, it's not like you're doing like a trend piece. It's like, I'm going to look at some stuff that sounds or looks away.

Is it something that is either going to be released and has a price or likely to be likely to be released and has a price? But, well, we're all afraid of tariffs, so we're not going to give a price yet. Or is it really cool and you're going to want to click on it. And I'm sorry that we're going to say this is a concept that we're going to tell you that up front. Those are the three categories of what I do. But for mostly, I'm product reviews, Guy.

we have a customer we have an audience that's like oh I want to get something that improves X, Y or Z and that's how I get to not cover stuff that isn't going to help anybody or anything and how I got to avoid talking about the rabbit last year because it didn't have any germaneous to anybody

and you made a point before we got on as well so the rabbit R1 for people that don't know is this little box that promised to you could be like oh I need a McDonald's and I need a chicken nugget from McDonald's and then you talked into it and the nugget would appear except by the way in the launch of the rabbit when he tried to do this, it broke. Of all the shit to do like a live demo of,

your very broken thing, and it turned out that behind the scenes, all it was was triggering like these scripts. Nothing for Rabbit this year, but also nothing like Rabbit this year. No one has done a big quasi-lie. No one's just come up with a fake thing that they're selling, which is very disappointing. I was looking for some dog shit. Yeah, you normally, in these times, I find, you know, we look to the helpers, and so I looked for Will I am, and I found him. And I was able to take a creep shot of him from really far away. So if that helps anybody, I'd be happy to share. But it doesn't seem like even Will I Am had something.

It was like a speaker thing or some kind of headphones, right? Like seven speakers and a little bit of headphones with LG. They had an event. I didn't get to it last night. But yeah, they're doing a whole partnership. That's great. I feel like maybe, I don't know, maybe this is too cynical. I almost feel like we're good on speakers.

I think maybe I have enough ways to like play music in my house. and I probably don't need to iterate on that anymore, but these guys didn't get the message on that for sure. So, Tom McKay, so IT, bro, what are you doing here? What are you actually looking into? Because it seems like you might have a slightly different remit. So I mostly cover enterprise technology. So I'm here mostly to cover, you know, what there is of the B2B segment here. And also cybersecurity stuff. I don't know. Yesterday I interviewed a guy, Brandon Lucha, who does his a company called Efficient Computing or Efficient Computer

it dramatically lowers the power requirements of processing stuff stuff like that's actually useful Yeah That doesn't feel like that I mean And I've spent a lot of time just wandering around the floor The AI pavilion is baffling and horrifying Is that in the LVCCC?

Yeah that's the that's a big LG one Where they have a I forget if it's LG's brand name But there's like one that's like The rebranding it is affectionate intelligence and it's just absolute dog shit. What does that mean? Well, from what I can see, there's like a big board you go in there, or a big TV when you go in there,

and it's like playing CGI clips of like a family being like, it's cold today, what should I cook? In the fridge starts talking. It's like, wow, I suggest. The fuck. I know. And it's like, or like there's another clip that plays on it where it's like a girl like tossing a baseball.

And the dad's like, I need recommendations for TV. And lo and behold, the TV recommends. The TV recommends baseball clips. What I love about this as well is the assumption, there are assumptions being made by people that have not talked to a person in some time. They're just like, what the fuck do dads do with their daughters? They throw a ball, I guess? But it's also like the AI is like baby-talking adults.

It feels insane. I'm sure we all walk up to the fridge and go, well, there's one thing in there. It's a pack of ham. I don't know if it's 10 days or 10, 10, weeks old. Maybe I could make dinner with that. But also, I don't know who is walking up to fridge and going like, man, I wish someone would tell me what to make with all this. See, I wish the fridge would tell me, don't eat that. It's been there for seven days, but none of this does that. No, because that's an actual problem. There's no bachelor fridge. I did, however, see a bachelor dishwasher.

A dish, so this is really funny. Wait, it's marketed as four bachelors? It should be. It's a five-second dishwasher. So I walked up, and this is. this is very me. I walked up and go, all right, how much that? $400. I'm like, okay. I'm like, is it out here? So I'm only in China right now coming next year. And I said, all right, can you show me? And he puts a plate in there. I'm like, can you put the dirty one? He's like, oh, I'm already doing this one. I'm like, well, it's pretty short. And he just like, stares there and goes, okay, well, I'm going to put this one in. I'm like, okay, so the clean one. And he goes, so I'm like, how long? Five seconds. I'm like, great.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. And the guy's just like, oh, God. Because no one's walked up and timed it. Yeah. And he just, like, looked at me like, just, it's a dish. I'm like, no, this is great. It's for like, like, sad guys, right? And he just, he goes, I, sure.

He was like, this guy's already out timed the machine. So it cleans a single plate at a time? No, you can do like a few, it actually looked like, genuinely. I was like, I could see using this. But the reason I choose the bachelor thing is who is cleaning, like, three plates? Like, it's like a, but also absolutely.

Yeah. Like this is, like, when you're making one said me off, one said gentleman, talking about myself. And, yeah, but what's weird was that's arguably one of the most useful things I've seen. Appliances are useful. Yes. Yeah, we figured out, okay, it's good when you wash the dish or you make the food or whatever. So, like, we're all on board with how to do that kind of stuff. So if they put a different screen on it, you're going to get me to stop.

I'll look at the new screen on the fridge. I really do like all the AI screen stuff, though. But also, it's just like they haven't worked out why screen. that's you, Solita? Yeah, that's also a problem. I do, in theory, like the idea of, like, tell me what I could make with this

because I make the same sheet pan dish a lot. And if I could have a thing that could tell me, hey, or who's a new thing you could make with some of these ingredients? Just get one new thing. But you're saying you already have the ingredients? Yeah. Or, like, it could suggest,

hey, half these ingredients, get this other thing, make this other dish. Something that pushes you to be more creative with what you do. Because these things are all taking over our imagination, correct? That's what the whole gimmick is. AI is imagination that executives can buy and outsource human work to.

That's the message that nobody's saying about AI. Like, help me be a more adventurous cook. But it starts with telling you before you go to the store, though, right? You can't, there's no world where you have, like, you don't have, like, leaks in your fridge and like, what am I going to do all these leaks? Like, you fucking bought the leaks. No, no, yeah. There are leaks in the shoe.

Filthy with leaks. Okay, well, you know what? Leaks are good, so bad example by me. Well, I don't like them, so. Okay. All right. Well, I'll see you later then. The tension you can hear is, like, palpable now.

Who doesn't like leaks? Feels like there's a team leak and like a team anti-leak. So I did see one thing I like, though. And I think it confused them because, so I found... So you know those golf simulators where you knock the ball into a screen and it has like senses? They had one for baseball. Oh. So it was all of these, like, Korean guys.

And I walk up and like, how you doing? And they're like already just like British guy. I don't know anything about baseball. And I absolutely did. So have you got partnerships with the KBO? And they're like, oh, uh, like, does this work? Is this like hit tracks? So to explain some baseball tech for you, it's actually fucking cool.

If you go to like local batting cages, Z cages here in Vegas, just doing ads, they did not pay me. In fact, I pay them and they're very hard to schedule with sometimes. Anyway, what they have is this thing called hit tracks. So when you hit it, it sees the velocity of the ball and, like, where you hit it and such. And this stuff's fairly easily. This thing is it requires a natural bat in case you build around. This one is kind of like the golfing thing. It's like 15 grand. And they're like, hey, you could buy one. I'm like, no, no. No. But I was like, this is the only thing I'd like to see. Yes. And they seemed so happy. They seem genuinely happy. Yeah. And then they really wanted to sell me one. I was like I can. And then they seemed less happy. Are they trying to sell it to people or like bars? They're trying to sell it to teams. And and I assume like dying looking British men. Right. And. And. Sadly, that's a very small market there. But that was really cool.

And it's like, I did get this feeling walking around. I spent the day in the Venetian Expo Hall. So the one right connected to the Venetian. I did get this weird feeling that CS gets done dirty because most of CS is so fucking boring. But not in a bad way. It's like more efficiency driving battery technology. Mobility for this. Like, and urine sensors and such.

And I wanted to make, I saw urine and naturally I'm just like, photo. I'm like, oh, wait, this is useful. And it's good to look at P, yeah. I love to. I love looking at the piss. Yeah. But then you get... They gave me one of the P test kits.

I haven't used it yet. Yeah, I got to see how my phosphates are, I guess. I was walking out of a CES once and I saw like an AI semen thing. It's like, and I really went to talk about like, hey, you want to, can I have a go? There is actually, I saw a booth that's like selling like a, I guess it's a machine that like measures your sperm motility or something. And, you know, I don't think they were doing product amounts on site. But who knows? I didn't see if there's a little booth in the corner.

Yeah, can I just... I got some with me. But also, I did see a few things that really bothered me. And there was one where they had this VR glasses thing, and it said, a new hope for autism and dyslexia. I don't want to be talking about this a few times on this show. Move a VR. And I walk over, I'm like, hey, so have you talked to the FDA about this?

And the woman goes, what's that? which is a good star and I'm like okay well they're the ones you'd have to work with to make this legal in America

oh we're not a medical device I'm like oh okay so how is this good for autism well it's great for autism and dyslexia I just pause and I go so I have someone

in my family with autism so I started getting a little bit pissed off and I was like okay do you think those are the same things and you said no they're different how pause again

I go what clinical trials have you done Well, we've done clinical trials. I'm like, where? France. I'm like, oh, what are you talking about? And just to be clear, the classic thing that autistic people love is putting new things on and new experiences. And this thing was, by the way, you put the glasses on and you had to move a character through letters to like do something.

Okay. And let me just be clear, this person who I talked to clearly had not been asked a single question in their life. because they were very confused that I kept saying, how does this help autistic people? And they're like, they do, they play the game. And I just want to say, if you are on this floor and you have anything to do with autism and I find you, I'm putting you on this fucking show

and I'm putting your ass on fucking blast because it's disgusting. I have noticed, not through Kickstarter. Well, some through Kickstarter, but the impulse to take it easy on devices or products or whatever, whatever, that are ostensibly for people who need help in various areas is like, that's tempting, right?

To say like, oh, cool, somebody's trying to figure something out. But a lot of times there's so much worse than just the normal jackoff tech that it feels bad to evaluate them at all. Wasn't this the thing that Lena Conn, you were talking about how, like, oh, we're in a new area of technology. We want less criticism. We want more protection, less scrutiny. And this one is just a bit, and you're right, Jesse, there's a lot of stuff here

it's just like, oh yeah, we're helping people, so give us a break, okay? Now, I talked with Ben Wolf, who's a friend of the show, and he sent a quote through about this company, he said, where I think they're utterly full of shit is the other testimony on the website, Move VR. The principles of the experience offered by MoveR is to address the visual constraints found according to the TVPS4 manual. In diagnosed learning disorders such as dyslexia, ADHD and DCD, this is frankly crap. Dislexia is enormously variable in immersive environments and nonsensical, quote, treatment. He's doing little air quotes around that.

ADHD has no reason to be mechanically vulnerable to this kind of intervention. The point is that none of these people talk to any fucking scientists and the tech media needs to go and harass them because you should not be able to come onto this floor and feel safe. Okay, I don't mean physically. From criticism. There we go. That happens that. Because it just really

bothers me. And a lot of what's in the Expo Hall in the Venetian is this stuff. There's so much health stuff. We were talking about yesterday. It's disgusting. Oh, you guys love health. Yeah, I love...

No, I want to diet. Just we will kill you, Inc. Like, you've been asked, like, oh, talk about something you're excited and happy about with tech. The baseball thing. And the workout, the... I haven't seen any workout shit. But you post your, like...

All the time. Get jacked. That stuff is the stuff. I'm, like, using the supernatural VR thing. Right. That's actually getting my heart rate up. And I see the chart. whatever, and it's suitable alternative to going to the gym.

It's a, to avoid the weirdos, it's, there is good stuff out there to get healthy in tech, but it's, the venation floor is really condensed and too tight to make any sense of unless you're a team of 25 people and the verge doesn't have a 25 person health team. They got Victoria's song, one of the best. She's great. She's one of the best. I love Victoria. Yeah, she's got one of the single best.

She's like the remaining wearable reporter. She's so good. And now here's the thing, I'm just going to read you what this company WishTales AI had on that. I think it says, empowering creators and consumers with multimodal AI, the iPhone turned anyone into a photographer. WishTales empowers everyone to be a creator.

I could not make heads or tails of what this company did. I do not know. They just, music, art, automations create multimodal AI videos in Minsce in 28 languages. And it just says, ignite multimodal creativity. Imagine if they had any quality control here. I mean, this just sounds like stuff the iPhone already does.

Yeah, but also you create multimodal video. No, you don't. What model are you fucking talk? These people. The iPhone is mostly single modal, right? So that's like a huge, because if you do more of the modals, then won't that be like better and stuff? Yeah. Yeah.

Not like a hundred modals going right now. That's insane. That's like really cool. I'm spinning them up. I don't believe that's possible. Anything is possible if you lie. So Tom, but you've been looking at Enterprise stuff. Is there anything good?

Is there any joys? I mean, for the most... I mean, like, this is mostly, you know, consumer electronics. I've been, like, going around. Like, there's a lot of interesting drones that are intended for, I guess, like, the B-to-B market. Interesting how? For, like, industrial scanning and stuff.

That's interesting. I mean, the big themes this year are AI and robotics, I think. There's just a lot of... There's so many robots. I mean, it's funny. So I forget what it's called, but I saw this one drone that's like a... I don't know, tetra heat.

I don't know. The big sphere. It's just a sphere. Like a sphere with like, I can't remember the name of the shape. But yeah, it's like a sphere. And it rolls around. And then it can also fly. But I was talking with the guys that made this.

And I was like, all right. So, you know, what's the application of this? And he's like, actually, we're here to, you know, get ideas. It's what the potential applications are. And I'm like, you built this before, like, coming up with a business plan? Yeah, we're pre-reason. we just I mean, the only thing they had was like

they gave me a brochure where it was like a little diagram of a pile of rocks and they just said search and rescue and then it had a picture of a tube and it's like industrial inspection and I'm like, okay, I guess if you have a really big tube that you need inspected

then it would be great. I love rolling down large tubes. I hope there's not any corners. Old a fellas. Tube guys are eating. good at this year's CES. All my tube issues. I'm glad my tube's going to be sorted

by the end of this trip. Ah, this is a bad location to be. I also got this. Every CES, I do look up names. I have a lot of fun looking at names. I found one called Skeeper and the AI smart stethoscope. And when I showed this to Phil,

a resident safety expert, he made this noise. Edge AI technology application primary screening by AI for heart. and lung health abnormalities. So I'm going to stop there before I get angry. What everyone is doing is they're just like, we had an algorithm before,

and we are just saying AI. Because otherwise, they will realize it's the same thing from four years ago. And in fact, I feel like the theme right now for CS is, dang, we did this a year ago. And a lot of it is we had an algorithm and now we're slapping an additional layer on top

that's like chat GPT. So basically it does the exact same thing it did before. except you have an inaccurate robot relaying what's happening. And that's the thing. You couldn't find dumb guys to not understand stuff for free. You just get a bloke. He's just like, I think. What?

Okay, all right. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I ran into one that was like an AI-enabled like scuba diver kit with like the dive watches and stuff. And it's like, yeah, I could just like swim over in a panic to the other diver and point at the watch and be like, uh-oh, what does this mean? And I missed, I was really upset that I didn't hit the floor yesterday because there was apparently a speech.

the Web 3 tokenization fintech section, just called Metaverse and Quantum AI. Oh my God. I'm so mad I miss. It feels like a chance of mass, yeah. We're still using the word Metaverse in 2025. I never understood why anyone fell for that shit in the first place,

but the fact that some people are still chasing it is wild to me. I am also going to give a shout out to the only good booth here. The Hangzhou, Yoshi, Lighting Co-limited, just a big son that said wooden lamp. Nice.

I just loved that because it's like everyone else is just lying. Everyone's just making shit up. It's just like, I've got a fucking lamp again. You want to lie? Oh no, sorry. I finally found it the thing that I love the most.

So I walked up to a booth where the sign said bridging, massage, and purification for your pet. And I walked up, and I'm just showing everyone right now. It is an air purifier with what looks like a spike on the end. Oh, yeah. My dog would like that.

That's what they told me. Yeah. Because I walked up and said, Hi, so I just was reading your sign. What does that mean? She says, oh, of course, very ready for the question, alarmingly so. And you see, the pet will kind of massage themselves. I'm like, on the spike.

And they will just... So the dog just does this? And she's like, yeah. And we have a lower one for smaller dogs. I'm like... Right. So the dog just shoves itself. Well, have you ever seen that with cows?

They have like the big brushes on the farms that the cows walk up to and scratch their backs on? I have never seen a dog. do this. I've never seen the dog massage themselves. Do you attach spikes to your walls? Yes. Of course. Right. But I've never seen a dog. Well, no, those are for their impaling. But it's a Prince of Persia situation. We'll get to it later. But it's, I've never seen a dog massage themselves against something. Anyone's seen? My dog will come in and kind of rub his back on the couch.

But not on the spike. If the couch had a spike, you know. But it's also the spike is coming down. Yeah. I don't know. And this is a big booth as well. these people have spent tens of thousands of dollars being like, well, got to get the dog spike air purifier. Is that, I don't know, have you talked about that a lot? Like, the actual economics of putting on a booth, like sponsoring something here? I probably should have looked that up, yes. What does it take to show up? I mean, tens of thousands of dollars.

I would guess like $100,000. For Main Hall, yes, absolutely. Wow. And it's crazy. It's like, there's so much stuff that's theoretical. Yeah. Or pre-idea. Like, I don't know.

And it's just so. so strange. But, so Tom, did you see anything you like yet? Did you see anything good?

Uh, I like the massage chairs. I nearly thought they're at least. Every year, no, the massage chair's fucking rock.

They go, they scam guys who are going to see yes for the first time. Like, oh yeah, it's $4,000,

we'll do it for two. And it cost them $300 to build. And yeah, kind of like locked me into the chair. There was like panels that compressed me

and I couldn't leave and nearly fell asleep. That was great. Yeah. Anything else? Uh, Can we get back to me on that? No, but it's fine if you don't have an answer.

I saw some robots that were cool. There's this one company, I think, B-Bot that was working on a robotic turtle for like environmental research. Sorry. That sounds really good. Sorry. I thought you meant a member of entourage. And it actually looks like a turtle. I don't know why it needs to look like a turtle, but it apparently swims and everything.

And you can launch it into the sea. and it does somehow does environmental research don't ask me how when we kill all the turtles due to global warming we're just going to replace them

with robots yeah just in some post-opocalyptic future those will be like level one enemies just swarms of like little robot turtles yeah right now I have to kill the rats in the Vegas aqueducts to level up

the Vegas sewers yeah I go down there I kill a few rats then there's a giant one and I have to run out to the cops and they shoot me. Jesse, anything good? I was wondering,

I was thinking maybe Tom would bring these guys up. I accidentally got sucked into the sole semiconductor booth. I don't see that yet. Okay, so these guys basically make the most baller semiconductors you've ever seen in your life. I walked, it's a pretty big booth. They did a cool thing where it was like, they had some really like

post-apocalyptic messaging almost on the walls, but I think in like a cool way, like an environmental type of way. The thing they had on the sign at the top was like, like, birth does not guarantee success. Opportunity must. Something like really,

you saw this. Wow. It's like, it's almost a unity, like, it's a people empowerment. Yeah, yeah. And like people are meming the expletive out of it. I want to meet the guy you can swear here. Like, you can say fucking shit and bowls and all the other ones. I love that as well because

I want to meet the person who reads that and goes, fuck. Damn. Other than Jesse. I thought it was great. So I walk immediately in and it's like a super serious guy and he's like, hey, how's it going? And I was like, hey, what's up? You know, what are you guys doing? And like immediately looking around and realizing there's nothing here that I know what it is. So, but he was saying like, hey, we make all the LED backlights for like all of the TVs. I'm like, hey, I love TV. Actually useful. Great. You know, or they do like, you know, most, a lot of cars, new cars now, especially have the, the, the LED. headlights, tail lights, and all that kind of stuff.

So clearly they do that stuff too. That's great. I can't really make a joke about LED headlights. So I kind of got stuck in a conversation with him for about 10 or 15 minutes. But if you're just waiting to make a joke. I just truly trying to get out of there with, yeah, anything at all. Just trying to do something. I didn't.

I almost said like, oh, so you're the guy I should be mad at when I, you know, the lights are really bright on the road at night. But it looked like he wasn't even willing to like that wasn't going to go. over at all. He would just be like, no. And then he scanned my badge. Ah. He's going to send you an email. I had to run away really fast from the badge. The good thing is, is that with me, especially today, like, I'm fully energetic. So I'm just walking around with a black mask and my eyes just fucking bulging out of my head. And I walk really fast because I've done this show so many times that I just, I know exactly the route.

So you just see this high speed British man in a Jensen Huang style leather jacket, just fucking making a B-line for you, taking three photos, going, What's this? And it's... I actually apologize to anyone I've talked to... That sounds like a $2 horror game on Steam. But it becomes a hentai one later. Henry, what is so...

Is there anything you've liked? As much as it can be the negative person in any conversation. Actually, I have three things I'm going to say. Oh, God. That's three more than most. TCL is... They have these next paper devices. They've had max screens and stuff.

Now they're doing something really actually great with it. I think I expect Apple will have their own version of in two to three years. This thing is the next Paper 11 plus tablet, which basically has a mode where it switches into basically an e-ink-like screen mode, which will, A, incredibly good battery life, probably. Oh, yeah. B, let your regular Android tablet become an e-reader looking thing. Cool. And it has a matte screen device. Sick.

You know how Apple's got the IMac and the iPad now with matte screens? Poss that technology onto an iPhone screen, put this mode on it. and they're going to have battery life better than they've ever had. And then I'm not a huge fan of suitcase turntables. There's a good reason. I think Crosley's sort of ruined the idea of a suitcase turntable, but Vectrola has one that has hilariously, I think it has lighting in the front that you can sync up to the music.

And it's $75. It's called the Journey Glow, I believe. And it's like, if it's, Vectrola is a trustable brand, I feel like in sound, so it's like a suitcase turn table that doesn't ruin your records. And they play daft punk on it. it sounds pretty good. And then I told you about this earlier.

Lenovo's got a Think Book Plus Gen 16 laptop, mouthful of a name. But the laptop screen raises, it basically rolls up in size. So you can give them more vertical, but in the same size, it's your normal laptop. I didn't get to actually demo it

because I had to run, but that's the laptop changing in a great way, which we don't say that often in this tech reviewer industry that I get to play in. Well, hell yeah. It feels kind of strange having someone who remembered stuff they liked, though. I mean, actually, I'd be remiss not to bring this up.

Some of the stuff I liked here isn't even like electronics. It's like, well, half the stuff here isn't even electronics. It's like the consumer product show. But there was this one company, there were the most popular booth at this event last night that was selling like little metal strips that you, or advertising little metal strips that you put on your nose to, like, sleep better at night. And they work fantastically better than I. Like, I've got sleep apnea.

I assume 80% of people that go to CES of sleep apnea. So, I mean, it was wild. There's like 20 people lined up and this guy was, like, doing his, like, carnie thing of, like, gluing these to people's noses. Well, this has been such a wonderful episode. We'll start with you. Tom, Tom, where can people find you? People can find me on X.com at the Tomzone,

or they can find me at Blue Sky at Don't Judge Me, cat turd2. B-sky. social. He is cat, Ted. Jesse, where can people find you?

Your Kickstarter sucks is the podcast, and Goof-Kings is the Twitch stream. Jesse, I think it's Jesse Farrar.com

on Blue Sky, and yeah, all the links are from there. And Henry. I write primarily for CNN underscore, which you can open instantly just by

typing in underscore. com. I also have a newsletter and all sorts of stuff, which is accessible from Henry T-K-C-C-E-D-Net. That's Henry,

T-C-A-S-E-Y-D-Net. and also that's my blue sky name too. And as we close off this block of the episode, I just want to say something really quick before we go to an ad break. Just want to say Henry brought up Darth Punk. Darth Punk have not made a good album since discovery. Human after all is dog shit.

It is repeated bits. And I thought the soundtrack of Tron was kind of boring. Come at me. I'm sick of hearing about Darth Punk being good anytime recently. Human after all pissed me off so much. Anyway, coming up after this ad break, we're going to have even more wonderful people from CES. And if Darth Punk is listening, try not looping.

Try doing something interesting with your electronic music. You and me, Darth Punk, I'm sick of it. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk, to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an Acapella band with their between songs banter.

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he doesn't look back. Ferraris and Lamborghinis, private jets, meeting the president of Turkey. I'm Michelle McPhee, and this is one of the most shocking criminal conspiracies I've ever come across. When Jacob met Levant this went to a billion dollar fraud. But with two kings from entirely different worlds, just how long can their empire survive?

The largest tax investigation in American history. You need to tell me what you know. Is somebody coming after me? Jacob told Levan, you're ruining my. my life. Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Life throws hurdles big and small.

The question is, how do you conquer them? On hurdle with Emily Abadi, we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness, professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions to talk about the challenges that shaped them and the mindset that keeps them going. From the WNBA standout, Kate Martin, and rising hockey star, Layla Edwards. If a boy can do it, I don't see why a girl can't. Like, I've never understood that. Like, it didn't make sense in my brain.

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It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I just counted us back in for an episode, and I went 3, 2, 1, and I just want to be clear to the listeners that I did 2, 3, 4, I did 4 fingers up.

My brain is coming out of my goddamn ears. I am dying, but I'm joined by amazing people, nevertheless. Ed Onguoso Jr. is to my right, of course. Hello. How's everyone doing? Jesse Farrow, of course, from your Kickstarter sucks. Hello. And we have the other one, Mike Hale from...

What's up? Y.K.S, who is fresh from a tech company called Coles. Tom McKay, of course, from IT, bro. And we're back talking about CES. But Ed Ongreso, Jr., you've been on the main hall, the main floor. How was that? I mean, would you be surprised if I told you everything is powered by AI now? What?

Every single thing. Please elaborate. You know, AI refrigerators. Okay, but to what end? Well, you know, you need something that recognizes what time of day you decide to have certain types of coffee. and how much of that to keep. Morning, right? Morning?

Okay. You might be a freaky chicka and want to have it at lunch, you know? Whoa. So who knows? There was a legal tech. But one that I was really interested in is this company that is saying, hey, look, the future of technology, it's minimalism. We want to reconnect you with human nature.

And the way that we're going to do that, the way we're going to get you off your screen, We're going to give you a headset that you have to keep on for nine hours a day and it will give you uninterrupted access to your artificial intelligence suite of therapists, productivity assistants. So your connection with human is with AI? Yes. But that's so that you can reconnect with human nature. And it will give you notifications by calling you.

It will forward you to therapists that you talk to, friends that you talk to, powered by Claude, almost exclusively. This sounds like something you pick up in the tutorial level of like Bioshock. Yeah. Yeah. You know, this is the tutorial. Was this a big company or? No, they are connected with this other company.

This is a side venture of another company. Because it was the main hall. So the LVCC is, it's remarkable. Because it's so expensive to be that. Like we were talking about the economics earlier. You're talking 100 grand through the door, I'm sure. Yeah. And it's like, so we're doing 100 grand for this thing that is just barely conceptual.

Yeah, that's also the thing. As they emphasize, most of these things do not exist yet. They have demos that the demo did not work when I was there. What happened? What happened? Couldn't just couldn't even hear me. Couldn't connect to the internet. Couldn't recognize any command whatsoever.

They were like, well, you know, see, actually the thing that happened is one of our guys took the mic home. So it actually works really well. And did work with it. I have no idea. He didn't have supposed to be. He's chewing on it. He gets nervous. You know, he's playing with it.

But yeah, so this idea here is uninterrupted access to an AI so that you can reconnect to your human nature, which is to talk to a bunch of assistants. Did they explain why this reconnects to you a human? Why would you do? Because you look at your screen. Okay. So you talk to your microphone, though. Yeah.

And that's different. Yeah. Very different. No dopamine loop. Okay. So you're looking at you're not looking at a screen. Right. But you are talking to the microphone.

Yeah. Are you just staring into the abyss during? No, you're just walking around daily life. Just like doing something else he like. But then he was, you know, then they also, you know, admit that, oh yeah, also don't ask you to get on your phone a lot, you know. Way ahead of you. I'm already on my phone. Yeah, yeah.

I don't. It's like that movie heard. except she's constantly reminding you to buy paper towels. No, it's like, hey, remember to go on this website and buy gifts. Hey, take a picture of this so I can analyze it and put it in a search engine. Hey, go on this Discord channel. Hey, you know, talk to another, you know, always constant notifications to get back on your phone. But it's about getting off your phone.

Right. And that's the thing. Katie Natopoulos over at Business Insider said this last year. Very good thing. It's like, I love my phone. It's where all my stuff is. Yeah. I like, I'm on my phone because I don't know.

I don't have to look at the real world. Who wants to do that? The ultimate use case for the voice activated technology has always been being in the car. Because we're in America, everyone drives a car. It's the most dangerous thing to do except for to try to put your drink on a side table. Okay, Jesse, unblast on my fucking podcast.

Jesus Christ, I just party foul. And it went down like perfectly as well, so it's like a really like, It's a real sploot. Classic cartoon spill. Well, well, well. It's really not your fault because the side table has a slight rate. It's like a slight raised area in the middle of the side table.

Yeah, I'm like, I like have a knife out and I'm just pointing out. Really, when you think about it. It's the table's fault. Yeah, the table did this. Yeah, that's right. We're all mad at the table, obviously. Yeah, that's right. Okay.

That's why you should have picked up a seaman smart table from it. What's a smart table? I wish that was real. There was a smart table a few years ago. Table. It was just the vessel. Yeah, vessel and table, of course. Thank you, the beautiful bartender, Phil brought in it's here to clean up my mess.

May I have another, please. I'm drinking something called the Lahar, which is Phil's Black Blood of the Earth with some vodka. And Irish cream, thank you, Phil. Anyway, what were we talking about? Ed, so... Oh, yeah, and the name of the thing is, it's Italian for human nature. I'm forgetting this... Human natural. Natural.

Natural. Jesus Christ. Do you see it? What else? What else was it? I feel like coming out my, coming home and finding my kids fucked up a bunch of shit. Like, like, what else did you see there? I mean, that was the one that pulled me in because they had a giant banner that said AI people above it.

Oh, good. And I was like, oh, okay. So, you know, I walked up and I was like, well, where are the AI people? And then it's like, you know, they have five or, they have five phones on the table. another five elsewhere, some iPads. And they're like, they're in here. And you just put this on and they talk to you. But they don't. Yeah.

This is something I noticed that all the AI like this year seems to be marketed as like AI for people. Like they're like, because it's finally reaching a point where they're trying to create, it feels like they're trying to create the market for AI stuff by forcing it on people. And in doing so, they kind of have to reassure

them that this is not like as dog shit as you think it is. But it is. Yeah, it is. And it's like, some of it's really bad, yeah. It's so funny as well because I'm really like the pig that they would sell slop to. Like, I love my gizmos and doodads and apps and such. If there was anyone to sell shit to, it's me. And it's just not fun.

It's boring. There's no use case. Yeah. There's still no use. It's like a fucking whole industry built around finding the use case for technology. And it just doesn't exist. An entire show. I met with coals and we're going to be some great.

Use cases for AI. Like if you want, say, like, a larger than normal type of hoodie sweatshirt, they might not have it. But you can speak to an AI agent and it'll tell you to breathe. I did walk over to a... It's so important. It's cool. I walked over to a booth earlier that said AI agent. And this is kind of me being a dickhead.

But I just went, what kind of agent? He goes, I'm like, oh, good. And I'm like, what model? Chat, GPT. I'm like, great. So how is this a judge? He goes, I, you talk to it. I'm like, that just sounds like chat GPT.

He goes, yeah, but it's an agent. I'm like, how? And he just looks at me terrified. I don't understand how everybody's building these industries and businesses and stuff around Chatt GPT subscriptions. Yes. It's like you're hooked into like the chat GPT API and you're building a business on top of that. How?

I don't understand how it's. And then the magic of venture capital. I mean, I forget what economist I wrote about for, that said this, but it was like, the idea that AI is almost now like a tax on like the rest of the tech industry. Like it's like a software tax where you need to pay to have it in your product because everybody else does. And all it really does is suck money out of, you know, everything else. And it's great though. So Ed, I'm going to assume you saw nothing useful.

It's actually really funny because I was walking towards something that's an AI agent, kind of like the promise land when you hit me up and you said come back. Oh, fuck. Did you guys see the toaster where you can print? photos of your loved ones on pieces of toast That is actually real. Did you really see that?

I did not see that. We've actually... Fake news. Very unfair to toast a printer. Yeah, you got me, too. It's in the menu. Well, those are tortillas. Do you remember that?

We're going to do a few minutes. Yeah, we're building up to the final episode where I'm going to do something called the menu. Hope everyone joins me. I'm going to lock the doors. I think also the thing with this, Sanatura Umano,

whatever the hell the Italian name is. Similar to your point about making markets, I feel like this one is trying, because they are like, the end goal is to be able to make it connect to apps for you.

So you could go to your mom's house. You could order movies or order in. And it's like, okay, so I feel like they're trying to pretend as if, or they're trying to train people into accepting the disappointment that comes with insisting agents

or around the corner. None of that is agents. Exactly. No, you're right. So AI agents are meant to be these autonomous things, and they never are. But that's what we talked about at that other episode. They're not, but they keep misnaming things or presenting bullshit. So then, you know, I think this is part of the training process.

But they're training customers. Yeah, I mean, like it feels like they're basically just like prepping people to have Netflix scream at you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a, this is a, this is a, this is the thing that really drives me nuts is, like you were saying, training people. to expect certain things or to hear words and actually imagine something else. Like algorithm is something that now means a bunch of different things where it's like now people like, people who I think for the most part share our mindset, sort of a skeptical mindset towards tech and, um, and all that kind of stuff. We hear the word algorithm like our back gets up immediately because we think,

well, that's bad. But it's like algorithm's not even bad. It's just, it's like a thought process. And everything you like saying database. Yeah, yeah, right. Exactly. Everything has an algorithm in it. You're using an algorithm when you make a decision. But now it's like, it's just like a thought process. And then everything, it's become, it's got this tech stink grafted onto it and now we have to turn away. So eventually we'll go away from AI, right? And it'll be like, there's no algorithms in this at all. And it's like, well, I don't even, how's that possible? It's smart.

Well, what I like about that is it's also describing a bunch of things that are not problems. Like, no one is like, oh, I had to go over to my fucking mom's house and I had to want a movie. That took forever. I was like, oh, fuck it. That took me several seconds. Like, that is a solved problem. I'm not, none of the things they just go, well, how are you going to order dinner?

I don't know. I've never done that before. Also, the idea that, like, if you and your spouse, like, let's say you and your spouse, like, take a long time to settle on a movie, that a robot, like, interjecting in the middle of the conversation, it's going to speed this up. It reminds me of one of my favorite clickhole pieces. Which of my garbage sons are you? And they're like, yeah, we named one of our sons, Lance and Blake.

And the reason they did that was because they picked two names they didn't like. and named that for one son, which I think is kind of indicative of the consumer electronics show entirely. It's like we can't come up with a good idea, so we chose five bad ones. So anything else you see over there? I saw something where

they were scanning your face to present what your internal health looked like as an interactive city were organs. What? What the hell? Your organs. And the way that they interacted with each other

were depicted on a screen as if they were a city and you would get it is great little cells walking around a security? No, it's literally just a city My doctor has been wanting me to do this He keeps telling me I have to do it

It's like hey, is that abandoned part of town? You gotta get that checked out You're in a red state It's like your legs just fucking falling off It just soaps in on the liver and it explodes I'm just saying this It's okay to live in a red state Yeah, I'm not saying it's a problem

other than the fact that the governance might not be so big on the social services side. We actually get vouchers for those, so it's not a big deal. I mean, I get mine from Joe. Every time she asked to scan my face, I just felt like I was being asked to put my skull up to a measuring device. It was like, I was like, get that shit away from me. I thought you were going to say that it scanned and they just went, no. No, every time I was like, please no, no, no.

Just added a bunch of pleas to the city. Oh, wow, you know, would you step to the side? You match the description. Wait here. But what else? Come on. There must be a thing. You know, I spent some time trying to look at, there's a lot of virtual twin, digital twin stuff in manufacturing,

in optimizing industrial operations. And this health system was an offshoot of this virtual twin thing. There were two or three boots set up next to each other. The idea was if we can scan you. and we set up your virtual twin, you can tweak with it, you can experiment with it, we'll give you more insight into you. There were AI medical assistants and AI caregivers kind of extending off what we were talking about the other day, where it's like we are going to give you very colorful,

detailed and graphicly designed data and convince you to... What kind of data? You know, a lot of it seemed to be basic metabolic stuff. So stuff you could get than likely already have. Yes, right. But if you buy into this product or this application, buy into the ecosystem again, then you'll be able to gain more insight into your stress

or into concerning health. Next time you see one of these companies, can you just ask a very simple question? What am I meant to do with all this data? Be healthy. Okay. So wait, it tries to guess your metabolic health by scanning your face. No, these ones are different.

These ones, yeah, that, no, not that one. That's insane. That would never happen. Yeah, yeah. That's actually the tagline to CES. Isn't that basically phrenology? Yes. In fact, I mean, you know, yesterday I saw.

We invented digital calipers. That was like, oh, we are not a medical device. But if you let us scan your skin, not if you're black, because we don't have the technology for that. But if you let us scan your skin, we can tell what your blood sugar is. We can tell what a host of other, you know, metabolic indices are for you and we can determine what your stress is, you know, whether you are eating correctly, what you need to do to rein it back in.

Well, this is, that's so sorry. That's what you said is a huge problem. I mean, that's like, that's, that's, that's a whole thing. Our product currently does not support black people. That's, yeah, insane. Microsoft Connect, baby. There was a connect on the floor, which I don't know if you saw. Why?

Well, because, why not? Uh, we demoed a, well, so this. A wee snowboard. game or something. Oh, is that the court one? There was like an Abbott court thing where you could ball up with some people in Wii sports. It actually wasn't that good. I thought as an outsider, I always thought, see a snowboard game and it tests your depression level or something.

She said we've never had readings this high before. Your score is wellness check. We are calling your mother. So it's just a big TV Or, well, it was a big gaming monitor. So already were, I thought CES was like, this is where the newest, biggest TVs are. And that's true.

I don't know where they are, but they're probably somewhere. I mean, they're in the Las Vegas convention center. Yeah, there were some big eyes. There's some big TV. So this, instead of being a TV, this was an 85 inch gaming monitor. Okay.

Ooh. Yeah, yeah, like, uh. Crazy positive reaction to what I assumed was basically an impossible thing to use. because even like a 40-inch TV in front of your face on the desk is like crazy. Yeah, yeah, this is not a desktop. This is like... I'm sorry, I use a 50-inch screen.

That's like... You are a free. And a half in front of my face. You are crazed. I have to have to have windows at like 150% zoom. I call my X videos corner. I got my... Tom is laying down on the floor.

The microphone dangling over it. So it's really huge for a monitor, but also if you want an 85-inch thing, just get a TV. If you're going to play console stuff on it, just get a TV. You don't need the super high refresh rate and it's 5K. It's not 8K. If you're going to do something stupid, make it 8K, it makes no sense. Anyways, they seem like perfectly nice people, but it's a 5K, 85 inch monitor. And they had, to demo it, they had like these little skis on the ground that I stepped on to dutifully. And I played an Xbox Connect game modded to run off of like a little Tshiba

laptop that was plugged. It wasn't a fucking little... First of all, it was hard. My guy kept getting messed up. because they put the wood on the ski slopes, which is like, why would there be wood on those down slope, dude? This is a double-highman. Really high on the depression score. But why would you have that?

Can we talk about the thing, though? So you were bad at the ski game. We've established this. I don't think that's, like, that's what he said. It's saying it's the worst. It's debated. Narrative. I don't know if I believe it.

But it was, yeah, it was the demo of this gaming monitor, but using technology that's like 15 years old. Why didn't they just play an ex-spokes game? I don't know. In the same kind of area, there was like a, I tried on like an eyeglass thing or whatever. And it was like an Android app or something. It was like 9 by 16 on like a display. It was very cropped vertically and stuff. It looked very bad.

But it was just like, you know. To Ed's point, why would you, okay, you're going to spend a ton of money and it's a slush fund for the executive. okay, that's fine, have a good time or whatever. Why wouldn't it not be like a finished product at any point in the thing? I just don't, it feels like... But also, if you're demoing your monitor, why not get something that looks good and is fun to play? I think one thing I've been realizing, and I didn't actually realize as the case, most of these things do not seem to be finished, and everyone's fine with that.

I would have... I actually, like, would love standing next to people and listening to them as they dealt with a fully unfinished product and being like, oh, wow. Well, I mean, it feels like a lot of this stuff is, like, ostensibly supposed to be a preview of what's coming, but the what's coming depends on whether anybody pays attention to their booth. So I just, pardon me for interrupting here on my podcast.

I was looking through my pictures of things I'd taken pictures of today, otherwise known as the Photos app on my phone. And I found this thing called Alizei, your choice, your companion. And just showing everyone, it appears to be like some sort of horrifying, metal face you put you and has some sort of AI companion but i didn't read any of the highlighted characteristics which by the way is what it says and you go it's a speaks your way instantly mimics and plays any voice you love big promise expressive and natural sinks facial expressions perfectly with her speech and based on this image no it does not i want to fuck her i was i was just going to

say i already predict the primary market well jesse you're about to regret saying that Behaves different personalities and yes, behaves different personalities. There is a surprising lack of attention to detail on the stuff that's written, right? Well, there is some detail you wouldn't love. From a playful lolly to a confident boss lady.

Confident boss lady I could see myself. Yeah, well, the lolly part. How much? Smart with a memory, powered by advanced AI that remembers and adapts more customized service in replaceable silicon facial masks. You just got like a...

Oh, so it's a physical mask too. Yeah, but... Wait, is this just like a head that sits on your desk? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're bringing back Sophia. We're bringing back Saudi... We're bringing back body horror. So, for people who are at CES, I think mentioned this before, the best shit you can find is on the fringes.

You need to go to the back. You need to go to back and find the guy who's like wooden lamp. Like, the only honest guy at CES is the guy with... And there was one that just said, Felix is hot. That's true. It is true. And I also love the names like, PowerCube semi-ink, potential convergent smart.

Oh, I need that. I need that shit. And there's a whole Kersikstan thing. Empower your innovations with electric active polymers. Actually, that sounds real. Manage your neck, shoulders, and back through acupressure, massage, and moxibustian. I fucking, every time I walk around the show, I just see shit. I'm like, what do you...

Did you see the portable air conditioner you wear around your neck? It just like... Otherwise known as a fan? It blasts air at your ears. That's a fan. We have those. But can you wear a fan around your neck? Huh?

Yes. Hey, a fan is not going to give you tinnitus. I have that already. I have that. I've had that since I was a child. Every moment is pain for me. So that's why we're here, though. So within this AI stuff,

did you find the same thing as me where it's just no one really knows what they're talking about? And when you ask them questions, they go chat GPT. And if you ask them another question, they start having a panic attack. Or, it seems a little frustration

with asking why, like, the AI and I'm like, well, it's because like I'm trying to figure out if it's generative bullshit or if it's an actual thing underneath. And when I'm talking to like industry experts, like analysts or like people that like are like, like, has like trade associations and stuff, uh, I get the strong

sense that it's frustrating for them too because they're being asked to weigh in on this market that's so nebulous. And like, it's impossible to tell whether any of this is actually going to pay off. It's just insane to me We're like, I was into this shit My soul is being ripped away

There's something for that If you go to the convention centers for it They put the soul back into you Oh Yeah actually you should check out the demo For this human nature thing I was talking about You know you can talk to Athena Which is like the wellness

AIP people Her boons are terrible I like the soul cube idea The thing that CS hasn't really got it into yet Is like crystals and crystal energies, we need to bring that in. I actually wonder how far you could go just making up shit. You should get credits

for how clean your soul is. You can exchange these credits for soul-based social credit system. I just think that I think that that's what pisses me off. There's obviously some quasi-fraudulent thing. Where is the real fraud? Where are the people are just like, yep, it's the soul cube?

Do you ever see those guys who make those devices that are like just measurers for like various bodies? shit. It's like this pseudo-science. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. They sell like the E-meters or whatever the fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why aren't they here? I actually remember. Yeah, Scientology booth. It fits. Yeah, ghost hunting technology. Like, you see a whole ghost thing? There's no big. Probably, don't insist that CES is haunted. Right.

Honestly, I want to do that one year. Actually, when the product demo fails, they're like, actually, this is a good thing. Right. The ghost is telling me you should invest $40 million right now. It's never done that before. You just like Tom, a Tim, a Tim, Tom. Tell me that, give me your phone right now. The ghost needs to see your ID.

What's your, what's yours? What's your mother's maiden name? The ghost wants to scan your badge. Get your email address, maybe? Yeah, it's, that's the thing. Like, I don't mind if someone's just obviously scamming. Like, yeah, I'm a ghostbuster. I'm here with the ghost busters.

And that's what I do here at CES. We spend $150,000. and ghost busting. And if it breaks, you just go, you kind of ghost, that's why you need us. I think in real, the real answer,

I think, maybe you know more about this than me. Maybe somebody knows more than I do about something, although it's hard to imagine. I feel like the, the reason that there's not like the level one gimmick grift guy

on the floor is because, like with everything else, there's so many levels of detachment, like you have a problem and you want to call somebody and yell at them about it or get it fixed, I guess,

if you want. But you can't. Because the person you talk to is not empowered to do anything for you, and that's on purpose. And now there's an extra layer of AI stuck in between you and even that person. But the people who show up on the floor are just like, when you ask, what is this chat, GBT? That's literally all they know. Because the guy who makes the decision is so far away. And also, it does not work.

It doesn't work either, right. But I think actually what I'm going to start doing is anytime I see AI now, I'm just going to replace the word with ghost. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Ghost. Just like, oh, we have ghosts. There is a ghost of the machine.

I might actually just start asking people about it. And they'll be like, what's the ghost do? What's the ghost do? That's chat GPT. Yeah, the ghost. The spirit. How do you get the spirit out? What?

Why would you want the spirit out? The spirit does all the thinking for you. Just walk over. I'm very haunted. How are you going to help? I generally don't do bits with any of the people here. Because just to be clear, the reason that no one should, And some listeners have brought this up,

like, oh, you should go and, like, yell at them. The poor fuckers who are on the floor. These are PR people, sometimes external PR people. Or they're just, like, a marketing person who, to Jesse's point, is not empowered to answer a real question. And they have to deal with everyone at CS. And 50% of the people at CS are trying to make partnerships with other people that can't tell you what their products do.

And it's like, oh, these, and I admit with the company that claimed to, like, be a new hope for autism and dyslexia, I got a little heated, which is why I walked away. And you won't hear for this. They claimed that their smart glasses would help both dyslexia and autism. And my experience with that is that's bullshit. But it's, yeah, there's a reason that you can't really put the boots to these people. And I actually think it's deliberate.

They want to put a layer of abstraction between them and the responsibility for their thing actually doing anything. So they've got a fucking marketing person. And these people are there. And they're working like 10 hour days doing like just standing there. And if it's a bad show, you're just standing there. Well, the marketers are the real heroes, aren't they? Don't you find? Yeah, yeah, basically troops.

Yeah, that's what I... Except their jobs more dangerous. Right. Than the troops. Okay, as we trundled towards the end, Edward on Grasso, Jr., where can people find you? You can find me on Twitter and Blue Sky, Big Black Jackabin.

You can find me, my newsletter, the tech bubble. Dotubstack.com And my podcast, This Machine Kills, where we talk about tech. Jesse Varan, Michael, how? Where can people find you? Mike and myself host,

your Kickstarter sucks. and Mike, did we get the custom domain on Blue Sky, your Kickstarter sucks.com? I believe we did, yeah. You can also find me at coals.com slash about slash people. HTML. No, I think Coles took down the about page

because of the stuff that's going on, so you're not going to, they don't want the people to find you. Just to be clear, Michael's name is commonly dog boner. Tom, where can people find you? You can find me at ITbrew.com or on Twitter at Twitter.com slash the Tomzone or on Blue Sky at

Catcher 2.Bisky.com. Just so much. It works. It works. That's an embarrassing name. He joined Blue Sky and was like posting about how there's a scammer about, like warning his people before immediately getting banned. And as the listeners know, I am your cult leader.

And you can find me, if there's an Ed Zitron, it's probably me unless it isn't. And if you choose the wrong one, well, that means. you're not chosen. But if you need to spend your money from your hog slop job where you go out and you smash windows and you steal things from cars and you con people and you're walking around the street thinking, where's my next victim? How will I extract value from them? When you get your ill-gotten gains, the next ads will probably be for something you can spend them on. Ideally you want to operate in cash. If these are digital, you need a prepaid debit card. Email me at, what is it, tom.m.m. No, sorry.

Ed at East, no, no, no, just Google crime. And that's where you'll find my email. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guide, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan, to Bob Odenkirk, to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an Acapella band with their between songs banter. Who's that worst singer in the group?

The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, uh, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group, the yard birds, right?

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And you know how I feel about that. So we've had a slight rotation. To my right is Tom McKay of IT, Brew, of course. Hey, how's a gun. And actually, over across from me is Max Churny of Reuters. Hello, Internet. And thank you. Glad someone respects the computer. And Jesse Farrar of your Kickstarter sucks. Of course, he's back. Well, now I'll be on the left. He's on the left as he has not been... No, okay.

Come on now. Hey, come on. Whoa. So, Max, I'm actually really excited to have you here because we have spent like several hours just like dunking on this. They're just like making fun of stuff and being annoyed at stuff. But you are here covering chips and silicon and such. What have you seen? What has Enviour? video done. Actually, that's a great point. What's Nvidia covered this trip? Sure, absolutely. I mean, they've unveiled a few new things. In terms of Silicon specifically, they launched a computer

called Digits, which is essentially one of their supercomputers compressed in something even smaller than a Mac Mini. And that's like the $3,000 one, right? That's the $3,000 one, yeah, exactly. And so that was kind of an interesting thing.

We've reported that they're going to make PC chips themselves, So this is potentially on the road to producing some kind of laptop or desktop PC chip themselves. So when you say, what is this machine for, this $3,000 NVIDIA computer? Because I've seen a ton of coverage, but no one will actually tell me what it's for. Well, it looks like mostly it's for researchers and people that want to do experiments with AI or code with AI or essentially just do things. that require giant computers sort of on a small scale.

So is it generative AI focused? Well, I mean, of course you can run generative AI apps with it, but they sort of pitched it as something that was geared for researchers and developers. Interesting. Yeah. Because the way it's being reported is by other people

is that it's some sort of replacement for the large-scale GPUs that are being used for like inference for, so inference being the thing when you make a request from chat GPT, for example. example, it generates an answer. So it's not really for that. That's not the business use case. It didn't look like it to me. It looked like, I mean, maybe you can run, of course, I'm sure. Yeah, you could probably run it on it. Of course, but it looks like it's set up designed for,

you know, somebody who wants a computer in their office or, I don't know, at their university or whatever, just given the price point. And, you know, the setup it showed was with a monitor and a keyboard and a mouse. And so it's definitely like a, it's like a personal computer effectively. It runs Linux. So that also means it's probably not a consumer machine. Right. Because most consumers are not willing to learn how to use Linux or won't do it or whatever. So I should be able to run like 11 Chrome tabs on it.

So also I hate to do this, Max. We wouldn't mind turning a microphone just slightly. We've had a late entrant. We have the wonderful Matt Binder who made his way up here. Thank you, Matt. Thanks for having me at it. It's finally, I finally met you. No, Matt Binder and I have been on this podcast like three or four times, of course,

scam economy. Yes, yes. And we've never met in person. We've never met in person. And now we have these on my podcast. So, Max, back to you for a question. So what else was announced in general with Silicon on this, with the hardware in general? Absolutely.

I mean, as always with the big chip makers, they announce new PC, usually gaming stuff. Invidia announced a bunch of new line of gaming chips, the RTX-50 series. they're claiming the low end on that series is able to deliver performance that's capable of what the high end of the current RTX series is. Yeah, they use a technique called DLSS, which is just a fancy way of saying. They use AI to predict what the next frame in the game is going to look like. At the moment, they're rendering two frames at once. This one can render four frames at once.

But it's on the hardware side, not... On the hardware side. Yeah, yeah, this is all hardware. And this is differentiated from... When you say AI, this is separate to generative AI. This, I don't know exactly how it works. Right. But DLSS has been around for longer than the current boom, though.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. DLSS has been around for, I don't know, four or five years, I want to say, but don't quote me on that particular. We don't know things here. Don't worry. But, okay, let's move you up to Matt Binder, of course. Matt, what have you seen so far? What have you been cursed with on this eternal trip?

I've been covering a lot of, like, weird stuff. And I have done a lot of AR glasses. How are those? You know, I have yet to find one that I could actually, would actually use. Like, sure, you put them on and they're cool to, like, see, because some of them have different ways of doing things. But, like, there was one, for example, that, like, there's no lens. And usually the, it's the holiday glasses. And usually they...

What is a holiday glass? Holiday. So they're basically air glasses where the... Oh, you mean holiday like a name? Holiday, yes. Yeah, I'm just British. That's my problem. Yes.

So basically the AR part isn't built into the lens. It's built into the rim. Okay. So it's a little like a circular screen where basically you put the glasses on and your eye is meant to look at the circular screen above the lens. Oh, that's where I generally look. Yeah, of course. And I couldn't use it without going cross-eyed. I immediately would go.

Sick. I love the experience of being hurt by things. Right, right. So, I mean, the idea is interesting. but, you know, I think for me, though, the thing at CES is always, what's not here anymore? How do you mean? Like, you can see where the tech industry thinks it's going based on what has just disappeared from the previous years. Like, what buzzwords are companies staying away from that they used to proudly say they were back, you know, last year or the year before?

Like what? Like, I came here two years ago for the first time, and every company had to say they were doing something in the metaverse. Hell yeah. Every company was a Metaverse company. And this year, I don't think you could even find the word. Well, I did. I found a Metaverse and Quantum AI panel that I missed. A panel, though.

Was there actually any Metaverse product? I don't know because I missed it, which makes the trip of failure. So did you see anything you enjoyed or was it mostly pain? I mean, there's stuff that I've seen that worked, but again, I don't think I'd ever use it. I love that quality level with the show. It functioned. Like the weirdest thing I saw is hands down that, I don't know if you've seen it, the electric salt spoon? No.

Okay. It's by this Japanese company named Kieran. And it's actually available in Japan. So that's already ticking off a rarity at a CES. Something that's actually in stores and available. So basically, their goal is to have people eat less salt. And they want to make your low sodium foods taste saltier without. actually adding salt. So how do they make it taste better? They send an electric current through the

spoon to your tongue. So just so we're clear. Yeah. Just so we're clear as I begin to disassociate live on air. It's a special spoon. It's a special spoon. Oh, good. And I mean, listen, it worked. Wow. Like the food did taste a bit saltier. And I know because I thought at first I thought it was like a placebo effect. Like, oh, they told me it tastes saltier. So my brain now, thinks it's saltier. But then I fucked up the usage of it. Some Merivinjian shit. Yeah.

But then I messed up while using it and it turned off mid-sip of the soup they provided. And then, so. My spoon broke. Right. So the soup actually did taste less saltier as I'm drinking it when the machine shut off. So I was like, oh, wow, it works. But also, I would never buy this $130 spoon. Wait, are my spoons uncharged?

But actually, yeah. So did it have a battery? It was like, yeah, it was a battery powered spoon, yeah. So assuming you have multiple people eating in your house. Right. So the spoon handle and the actual ladle or whatever you'd call it, they're separate parts so you can replace. Oh good, I love my spoon to be multi-part.

Multiple parts, yes, yes. Thankfully only two, though. They could have went really crazy with it. So you'd need like, was it actually $130? I believe it was like $100 in Japan. They're not stuck in in the U.S. yet. Yeah, they got money there. Yeah.

I mean, to me, it's like the idea is noble. I must find the spoon. Where is the spoon? It was at the first night, the media night unveiled. I don't know where it was on the show floor. They're going to hide it from me. They don't need to buy multiple ones of these ostensibly. Right, right.

Some rich-ass guy who's like, yeah, now you don't need much salt at all. I mean, you could, I guess, you know, eat your food one at a time and just wash the spoon after every year. Find a bunch of people over and pass the spoon. Combined with so lot... Does it work with not soup? They just had soup there to try. And I'm assuming it's got to work with things that are not soup.

But otherwise, well, okay, no, no, no, no. I mean, what if you pick up the spoon by accident when you're eating where you would reduce the salt that wasn't soup? A lot of things? Like what, but what is the thing? I'm just thinking... Right, right. I don't know. Yeah, but like, wait, where are you adding the salt with fried rice?

Okay, that's a good point, I don't know. And why are you eating with a spoon? Yeah, so that's... You don't need fried rice with a spoon? That's fork-coded. Okay. You don't need this one to eat ice cream. You don't...

So this is just a very expensive soup-related technology. I mean, again, Japanese company, they ate a lot of soup over there. They do? I'm just thinking about this spoon, and I really fit... There's always a point at CES where I begin. to go insane. When I begin to just think of the special salt spoon and then I call my therapist and I say I'm thinking of the spoon. Anyway, did you see anything you like though? Everyone has the same answer. It's a it's a sigh and then a space of time. Right. Well, hey, wait a second. I mean,

some of the chips look pretty cool. Actually, yeah, Max, you take this question before so Matt can try and think of something he liked. I mean, I don't, you know, chill for any of these companies, But if you like something, please tell us. Well, AMD, Intel, and Nvidia did all announce new chips. Arguably, they all look pretty interesting for different reasons. AMB did something pretty unique. They added this technology called Unified Memory to their latest gaming processors. What does that do?

Apple did it a few years ago. It basically just makes the chip faster. It means that the memory and the CPU can talk to each other much more quickly, which allows more speedy graphics and more speedy. computing power. But it is actually an interesting thing. I haven't tried it. I don't know. I don't have any benchmarks, so I have no earthly idea how it performs in the real world. But theoretically, the technology is pretty good. So as I'm speaking to the listeners that don't know stuff and myself, how does that manifest into something good? Is it just that the hardware and the

software, the hardware parts talk to each other? Max, I think I can take this one. Basically, he's trying to say basically is it goes, like, so the chip goes into. More tabs. Yeah, well, it's more. More browser tabs. And to be clear, this is for computers. Oh. Oh, okay. Yeah, so if you just think about whenever you, you probably have a computer at home right now, right?

I don't right now, but... Well, a lot of people may have computers, and these chips basically can go in them. So from there, it's just pretty cool stuff, actually. Damn, I love logging on. Okay, Matt, anything enjoyable? I mean, the TVs are cool. Okay, yeah.

I mean, how can you... And the gaming monitors, the really big curved monitors, like, I would never buy these things because they cost, like, thousands of dollars. Well, yeah, you're in. journalism. Right, right, right. I mean, one thing I like is that coming to

CES, it is now clear that at least as a technology product, crypto is dead. There is no cryptocurrency. Nothing. Absent completely. Now I mentioned Metaverse, and like, you know, Metaverse is just like silly. But like, it is actually a breath of fresh air to

finally see that the tech industry, at least that represented by CES has seemed to move on completely from crypto, blockchain. I remember two years ago, every company doesn't matter if they were like a special

electronic dental floss company or whatever. They all wanted to give you a free NFT if you come to their booth. There is not a single I don't think the words NF or T or even here at CES. If you find them, please email me easy at betteroffline.com.

I want to find them and ask them some questions. I want to know what they're doing here. Right. You know, I think people realize like this is, if anything, It's like it's a financial day trading scam. It's not a tech product. But it's pretty cool, though. It is really cool.

Jesse, would you like to show for a crypto right now? As a crypto guy. As the crypto expert for the show. I think it's just kind of cool because they're like little pitchers or something. So it's like, I don't know. I just think that's, like, I hear what you're saying. It's like, okay, the tech companies have moved on from the little pitchers. But it's like, we're always going to have little pitchers.

You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? It's been forever we've had. these little pitchers. So I just think like, okay, maybe it's waned right now, but there's going to be a time where we come back to CES and we see the little pictures again. And I think that's going to be really cool. I think it is funny as well that like Max is probably the only person who has been at CES who has found the real stuff. Because like it's just because you can't really fake silicon. No, you can. I mean, you can fake it up until a certain point. You can, you can brag about how good

it's going to be or whatever. What your, what your startup's doing. And you can claim performance, But at a certain point, you have to send a chip to the fab and make it. And if it doesn't do what you say, it will, well, then that's that. And the thing is that's really important. It's actually good, like, good education for the listeners as well. Is it to give him back the microphone. Come on, Matt. Matthew Binder.

No, go ahead. No, go ahead. All right. But it's actually important, like, foundation people to know. With a lot of these companies talking about, like, AISC, so specialist chips, and like, oh, open AI or whomever will simply build a chip, it is not that easy. Right? It is not that easy.

So what is the process of a chip getting done? And you know a lot more about this than I think you're letting on. I mean, you know what an ASIC is? Yes, I just don't know what it stands for candidly. Application-specific integrated circuit. Thank you. Woo. Hell yeah.

Someone knows stuff. No, you're right, but you're really right. It's super complicated and expensive to make even a basic AI chip. I'm we're talking a couple of years, from scratch, a couple of years minimum. Right. At least half a billion dollars if you're lucky. another half a billion to build the hardware around it, because that's something people forget often.

When you make a chip, you make the actual piece of silicon. If you look at any Nvidia product or many others, they've got a whole board around it with a bunch of other chips and other stuff. And that, to make that is probably another half a billion dollars. So these are not inexpensive ideas. And then when it comes to the actual integration and putting these into servers, you have to do a bunch more cooling and actual, and there is a failure rate as well. Absolutely.

And you have to write the software on top of it. I mean, the whole, like, having the idea to make a chip is like, it's a multi-year. And if you only make one, you've just wasted your time and money. So you have to, as a company, you generally have to do multiples? Absolutely. Yeah, you want a roadmap. Because that's the whole, I mean, anybody that's buying AI chips for any reason, they're not buying the current generation.

They're buying Gen 2, Gen 3, and maybe Gen 4. So they're buying ahead. Absolutely, yeah. So this, I'm glad, I'm really glad you're here for many reasons. But I like putting this stuff down, because the reason that there is like the real and the fake parts of CES is, as I said, you can't really fake chips. You can be like, oh, yeah, we're doing an AI stethoscope, or we're going to claim to cure autism with VR or whatever. But you can't really be like, we're going to do a chip, because the actual chips people will just be like, no,

you're not. There is like very clear boundaries with what you can actually do, which is what's so interesting, because you have this chunk of CES with just the no bullshit zone, because you really, you cannot be making it. Like, Nvidia pumps themselves up and says all this stuff, but ultimately is what it does. It does have to deliver. It actually has to exist. At a certain point, I mean, people will buy them, put them in the field, try all the hardware, try the software,

and the claims have to, at a certain point, live up to the whatever they're, whatever they're, you know, saying. So forgive me for a very direct question, but how realistic is it for someone like Sam Altman to build out an AI chip? Like how, it's years ahead, right? It's years ahead. I mean, it's more of a talent question than a money question,

I think, for him. There are only maybe 10 to 12 teams of people around the world that can build cutting edge world-class chips. And all of the people that lead those teams have jobs that they probably like or enjoy. And so you have to find the right people in order to do that. Find disgruntled people or whatever the reason is why they're leaving. But you have to assemble the right group of people to be able to build a chip. And even if you get the right group of people with the amount of money that you need, there's still just risks with building a chip.

Like what? You could think the design works. You could, for example, you could virtually verify that it works. You could test it. You could do all the computer simulations and other simulations that you want. When you send it to the fab to the factory to print, it might not come out exactly how you think it will. And that will mean it doesn't work as well. It doesn't cool as efficiently.

It might not work at all. Oh. It might not. Yeah, there might be. So you can get like billions into this and like. And you might not. I mean, it does happen. frequently with the first generation of chips. Most companies that try them for the first time,

the first version will not be amazing. It'll do certain things effectively and well, but it probably won't be able to achieve, you know, just for example, Nvidia spent 20 years, 30 years, whatever it is, you know, working on its designs. So to expect that a company can come in and two years replicate the performance or whatever of, you know, somebody who's been doing it for a long time is kind of unrealistic. So it usually takes several generations to get right. Invidia has their own software, Kuda, for making GPUs do stuff. It took quite a while for that to kind of scale, right? I mean, they started in 95, I want to say.

Yeah, building Kuda, and they've been working on it ever since. I mean, it used to be centered around their G-Force graphics cards, and now it's obviously... A little bigger. A little bigger, yeah. I mean, maybe not as big as the electric soup spoon, but, you know, potentially one day, maybe. They'll have that success.

And they can do more than just soup. that's for sure. So, Matt, bringing it back to you. But the chips you're talking about, you can't even taste. So, I mean, come on. There are probably chips in the spoon, though. And there are chips that are salty. So anything hurt?

Anything hurt? You just saw it and upset you? Oh, I thought you meant physically. I mean, just walking is pretty rough, mate. I'm not going to lie, I'm in pain, but. Geez, I need a second. I'm trying to think. Well, anything just upsetting or annoying?

Yeah, I mean, it does pain me to see the AI integration and everything. Like, I don't need AI to be, like, the most random things. Like, I was actually surprised at the spoon didn't say claim AI integration or anything. You know, the smart glasses, I mean, I guess I could see with the glasses, like, the AI integration for, like, translations is a use case if you're someone who would wear AR glasses to begin with. But, I mean, do you really need, like, generative AI and things? things like that? Like, no. Like, I find the Raybans disgust. Pardon me. Disgusting. I think if you're walking around looking at things and trying to work out using the computer, or a pervert? Like, what are you doing? Right, right. Like, I... Perverts buy stuff too, though.

Perverts are a huge attestable market. Perverts are a great market. Many of them, many of them listen to this show. Right. Speaking of which, I think this might be the first CES where the sex toy industry is here. That's the thing... Wait, they weren't here before? They were, there was a huge thing a year or two ago where some company applied for CES and they were told we do not deal with this industry here and they smartly, I mean

used it to their advantage like with press and they were like, it got tons of coverage. They're keeping the dildos out of CES. I think on top of this this was like a sex positive woman owned business. There's nothing wrong with it. Yeah, no, nothing wrong at all. But like that company used that to their advantage and said like CES tells

you know, woman owned sex positive a person. A leased perversion is honest. Yeah, yeah. And so for the first time, I'm seeing these sex toy companies on the floor of CES. Like, why not? Why not? I feel like Vegas is something's economically breaking. I haven't seen the guys with the flappy cards. I didn't see the flappy guys either.

No, they're back. No, they're back. So these guys who are, I think it's strip clubs, personally never. Oh, the guys heading out like the... Yeah, yeah. And I haven't seen them for years. And they're back clapping. They're flipping together.

I've seen them. They put, they like, took a fan... It was actually kind of nice. Oh, no. They're very industrious. They took all the nasty little cards and they put them like on a street sign and made like a little fan. Yeah, yeah, I saw that. Kind of cute.

They have been gone for years. The fact their back is probably not a great sign. But I must be clear, there's nothing wrong with being a pervert as long as you don't. I think there's something wrong with that industry particularly. No, that industry. I was referring to me. Do these guys not know about QR codes? Like, right.

You're supposed to scan the porno. Right. No, but that's the thing. Nothing wrong with being horny as long as it's not anyone else's problem. In fact, let's go around right now. Let's just say who's horny in the room. So, Ed, are you... Nope.

Not horny. Tom? This is great. I love this. This is really good for the show. Reuters declines to comment. Reuters is off on this one. Okay.

Matt, when you walked in, I was like, no, here's... Can we quote that? Can I write this stuff and we quote that? On the question of horniness, Reuters declined... No, stop it. I'm sorry. Why did Dave?

I just didn't say anything for a minute, so I wanted to say something. Well, we didn't get mad on the... record here. Well, I can put Mashable here. Mashable very horny. Wow. That's so nice.

I'm so sorry everyone. I had Robert Evans listing all the crimes I commit. Every episode. I thought your listeners were the criminals. I know. And I made a joke about stealing stuff once and it's all that's in the

Reddit and even saying this there's going to be another thread and they're going to be like, oh, Ed did this crime. You're looking at your Reddit? I run. the Reddit, baby. Okay. I'm on top of that shit. Isn't that kind of a conflict of interest? No, no, no. Well, yes, but no, the Reddit was created by someone called like Comic-Con, and all it was for the first month was just like, this show fucking sucks.

That's a good Reddit. So I went in there and just argued with everyone. And now it's great. They love me because they now all fucking respond. Yeah, culture of fear, baby. So, Max, how long are you here for? How long are you suffering with this? I'm leaving tonight. That's probably for the best, mate. A short trip. Yeah. Just enough time to see the silicon and get out. Yeah, but the horny levels there, we don't even know what kind of silicon.

I'm so sorry, Maxie. I'm sorry. But so, do you like C? Is this your first? How many of you? I've been twice now. Right. So.

How does it feel? What's the vibe you're getting? Vegas is a city that I think you just have to accept. Yes. And when you do that, especially this part of Las Vegas, then, then I think it's a lot more enjoyable. Right. Because, like, I don't visit Vegas very often, you know, so it's kind of a novelty for me.

I get to go see the crazy casinos and walk around the room, see all the different people who are here. Various degenerates. Me. Okay. Most, yeah, exactly. Most of the most of you. So, I mean, and it is kind of cool to see, like, all this technology, you know, sort of stuck into, like, 16 different convention centers or whatever the number is these days. Right.

You know, but, you know, this is visit number two, I'm saying for two days. So I don't have the, you know, tenure to be able to talk about it. Like I'm a 20-year veteran and some people certainly have. I know. I find it fascinating when people haven't got much experience, how they feel. But you also deal with the real things, which is fun because everyone else is just going and being like, yeah, I saw an AI dildo and I can't. They wouldn't let me use it. Well, I mean, you know, the PC chips and so on are pretty excited.

but a lot of the stuff that we report on is the data center chips that power most of AI. And are they here as well? No, this is all consumer stuff. The most, I mean, the biggest thing that tends to get talked about now, you know, we're talking about things that aren't discussed or weren't discussed before, Matt, are these AI PCs. This is like one of these things that the industry has been trying to make happen for a little over a year now. And, you know, it's supposed to start lifting PC sales this year. And what these chips meant to do, just to be clear?

I wish I have a good answer for you. I have a demo with HP later today. I'll let you know. It's unclear to me either. I mean, I think the, I mean, I'm saying that because I think the answer is that this is one of those situations where if you don't build the hardware to do the thing, then nobody can make the software to do the thing. Right. Right. So if the capability doesn't exist, then nobody can code on top of it to make the cool application for whatever AI thing.

Okay. I'll buy that. Right? I mean, I have no idea if it. it'll succeed or not. I mean, I don't predict the future, but I think it is true with any generation of hardware. Like, for example, real-time rate tracing that Nvidia made a few years ago when they launched it, and real-time rate tracing just makes light look better. Video game graphics look better. So when they launched it, there was like one, yeah, I don't remember how many games, but it was like a small handful, you know, very, very few. And, you know, it was like cool, but not widely adopted.

It took until, I think, the video game consoles, the Xbox Series X and the PS5 included the tech in their systems for it to become like very widely adopted by developers. You know, so this is, I think, with AIPC chips, it's like kind of similar. Except how long will this bubble last? Right. I mean, I would give it a few years. Like, I would give it two or three years for the software ecosystem to, like, actually build out.

But, I mean, you know, at the moment, arguably the most interesting thing that Microsoft talked about when they launched their co-pilot plus program was the... And what is that just so quickly? It's their AIPC platform. Okay. The PCs that are part of it have to have a certain spec in order to run the applications. Was this thing called recall, which allowed you to look back. Oh, everyone loved that.

Everybody loved that. They killed it. They're relaunching it now, but I mean, you know, so. Yeah, I just, it's, go ahead, Matt. But, like, you see, you see this blowback even from, like, regular consumers, not just the disgruntled people in the room right here right now, like the five of us, but, like, regular consumers are not upgrading to, like, Windows 11, for example. They're choosing to stick with the non-AI.

operating system. And listen, I don't think they are aware that they're like, oh, I don't want AI for the most part. But also the AI has not been a draw for them to get them to upgrade. Like, they don't care about it. And when it comes to enterprise stuff, especially like what you're talking about,

like trying to sell like business like laptops with like integrated, you know, I think they call them NPUs, neuro processing unit, is, okay, all this stuff is already running in the cloud. I can't think of any other like, you know, sort of like function. where they offloaded it from the cloud to like your local PC.

Like, what's the business value in running chat GPT on like your laptop? I can actually answer that one in the sense that it will kill chat GPT because when you realize what you can run on your laptop, you'll fuck around with it and be like, oh, this doesn't do that very much. There's all these like software as a service companies

that are like speak and it'll text a voice right away for you. Well, there are models that you could just run off your computer. You don't have to pay a monthly fee to do that. You could just literally download the free, like a language model and there you go, you're set. They don't want people to know this, for real. Yeah, I mean, but in a lot of cases you can already run this stuff on a sufficiently powerful computer that just has like a GPU.

Oh, yeah, yeah. You could get right now like a probably a $200 M1 Mac Mini because they're now at M4 and even that's 500 bucks. And you're set. You could run all this stuff right off your silicon, you know, the Mac chip set if you want. Yeah, I just haven't seen. the use cases to like justify like these like like buying a new generation of AI PCs. It doesn't like really stand out to me as to why you would do this.

I mean, I think what's really going to drive people to buy new computers is the fact that Windows 10 is end of life. Yeah. I mean, no, my dad has to buy a new laptop because of it. Poor stops lessons. He loves his laptop. It's like he loves this weird surface thing. It's unfortunately not very funny or interesting the fact that, you know, that's the reason why people are going to upgrade. Also my dad, Jeff, hi dad.

You sometimes listen to these. Hi, Ed's Dad. Hi, Ed's Dad. Everyone say, everyone say hi to my dad. And Jeff, let's get a horny check on you as well if you don't mind. Do not. Now I am going to have to talk to my father about that. On a scale of Chase to Randy.

I'm going to tell the group chat I have with my siblings that I am shortly going to have to find out how horny that is. I could go down to AI powered Dildo Company and see if they can hook your dad up with what is you. I need you to send me the booth number on that. I'm going to FaceTime your dad right now. It's 10.42 p.m. in GMT. Just going for that. Okay, we've got to wrap up then. So, Tom McKay, where can people find you?

You can find me at ITbrew.com. You can also find me on Twitter at Twitter.com slash the Tomzone or X.com, whatever. And on Blue Sky as cat turd2. B.sky.com. So good. So I bet you're loving that you chose. that name. I am not.

It's so good. I'm on a bunch of block list because everybody thinks that I'm the actual catcher. I remember when you picked it being like he is going to get blocked by people. It's so good. Max Churny, where can people find you? Anywhere where there's a chip. Okay, well, that's not even factually true. And what's great, by the way, my brother just responded to the thing of, I am

shortly, my other brother responded with what the fuck. I can't wait to explain why my dad is going to have to do a horny check to my siblings. Johnny, where can people find you? Sorry. At Chern and Byrne on X and Blue Sky and then on LinkedIn if you want. Just look at look at my name. Very good. Matt Binder, where can people find you?

First of all, I'm sorry for bringing up the sex toys being at CES this year. But yeah, you could find me. Well, my MASHPEL cover. My CES coverage will be at Mashable, mashable.com. And you can find me on all sorts of social media, Blue Sky, X, the everything app, threads at Matt Binder. Very good. Jesse for wrong. Yeah, your Kickstarter sucks.

is the podcast. Go Off Kings is my stream. Yeah. And I'm not on the everything app, but yeah, on Blue Sky, jessieferrard.com. I probably need to change the episode links because I link to you on X. And I'm, of course, Ed Zittron. I am now going to have a very uncomfortable conversation with several of my siblings about this episode. Thank you for listening to the first part of the two part, day three, better offline CES experience. We're so grateful for you. We love you all. I'm Ed Zitron. You can find me everywhere where it says Ed Zitron, other than the parts that make me look bad. Thanks for listening and we'll see you soon. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Mattosowski. You can check out more of

his music and audio projects at Mattisowski.com. M-A-T-T-O-S-O-S-K-I.com. You can email me at at Better Offline.com or visit Better Offline.com to find more podcast links and, of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat. Where's Your Ed dot at to visit the Discord and go to R slash Better Offline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much

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