Better Offline - CES 2026: Part Nine (Friday)

Episode Date: January 10, 2026

Welcome to Better Offline’s coverage of the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show - a standup radio station in the Palazzo Hotel with an attached open bar where reporters, experts and various other characters bring you the stories from the floor. In Friday’s second episode, Ed is joined by author, activist and journalist Cory Doctorow, the Las Vegas Sun’s Kyle Chouinard, Ed Ongweso Jr. of the Tech Bubble Newsletter, Garrison Davis of It Could Happen Here, and Robert Evans of Behind The Bastards to talk about Vegas’ reaction to CES, the useful stuff getting pushed to the fringes, the hollow nature of this year’s CES, and an acoustic version of the Better Offline theme. EXCLUSIVE CES SALE! Get a *permanent* $10 off an annual subscription to my newsletter through January 13 2025: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/cue848p5sc Ed Ongweso Jr.: https://bsky.app/profile/bigblackjacobin.bsky.social Cory Doctorow: http://pluralistic.net/ https://www.eff.org/ Garrison Davis: https://bsky.app/profile/bishonentype.bsky.social The Tech Bubble Newsletter: https://thetechbubble.substack.com/ Robert Evans: https://bsky.app/profile/iwriteok.bsky.social Kyle Chouinard: https://lasvegassun.com/staff/kyle-chouinard/ Donate in Sean-Paul’s honor: https://www.perc-epilepsy.org/ --- 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/@edzitron Email Me: [e-mail] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than adds supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-I-Hart.

Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Life is full of hurdles. So how do you keep going?

On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness, from professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the entire world.

Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHart Women's Sports. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games.

Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's 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 IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Orzo Media. Unstoppable, unbelievable, impeccable, unflappable, outrageous, stupendous, stupendous, Supendous, chosen by God and perfected by science. I'm Ed Zittron, and this is Better Offline's coverage of the consumer electronics show. That's right. We are back for a final two-hour stretch here in the beautiful Palazzo Hotel, and even more beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. We've been here all week with an open bar and tacos for journalists to hang out and chat shit

about the world's largest technology conference. Thank you all. Thank you all for joining me. Thank you for being here as listeners, as guests, for everyone. This has been the best CES yet. There's only been two, but nevertheless, you don't know how the next one's going to be. But in all seriousness, this has been an incredible, incredible show. We've got four more 30-minute blocks and then an epilogue tomorrow. It's been a lot.

Our first quarter lineup is the incredible activist, journalist, and author, Corey Doctoro. Hello, Ed. The fantastic writer of the Tech Bubble newsletter, Edward on Grasso, Jr. And the wonderful returning champion, Carl Shenard of the Las Vegas Sun, local boy. Hi there. How you doing, Carl? How's your show being? Pretty good. I started with a pre-CES, a little conference between some Korean companies and Nevada investors and businessmen. Okay. Well, how to try to. Well, it was talking about how to bring their products, bring their companies kind of to the American market. And kind of the main point of it was, you know, CS has been here in Las Vegas for so long at this point. But Nevada, it's, itself or Las Vegas itself hasn't always seen the fruits of that.

Right. Besides the actual, of course, you know, Las Vegas's main market is in tourism and bring people here and conventions like this are a big part of that. But actually creating a tech sector here is a relatively newer concept. I think probably following the pandemic and really just shut down the entire economy. Wasn't there that failed attempt with Old Vegas, though, with Tony Shea and that lot Yeah, I mean, it's...

The recent iteration is newer. Yes. I'll say that. And also that that one was very kind of limp. No copy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That one... That one whiskey bar next to the barbecue joint in the mall made it of shipping containers

was pretty good. I didn't see that. That would be right. Talk about downtown? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was that, there was like one good thing that came out. There's a good coffee shop right there.

Mm-hmm. You'd think, and why is it that it's so hard to attract companies there's like no state tags? Is the local business tax is high? No, I mean, they've been working on that and kind of promoting the favorable tax regime. I think it's probably the best way to put it for companies. That's why a lot of people move from California to here in Nevada. Same way that we've had that.

I mean, Nevada's legislature, there's a push for a dedicated business court similar to what exists in Delaware. So we can have companies incorporate here instead of there. Like, we recently had friend of the show, Andresen Horowitz, oh, right. Move to Nevada. So there's been a big push there to kind of, because the pandemic so brazenly showed that if there is an issue with travel, the economy collapses here. Yeah.

Well, that's quite a race. It feels like the finish line is at the bottom, though. Yeah. But wait, so this was a pre-conference to CES. And were there talks and such? It was actually, it was kind of fun. It was like a shark tank style pitch session from a bunch of these companies. There was one about incorporating some technology into golf clubs that would analyze your swing.

There was another, I know, there was another on like it was a pool contaminant analysis machine. Is this like a pee detector? No. No, no. Because those, well, it's not that those are useless, but like those very much exist. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So it was kind of like it's not like they were showing off like the cutting edge of tech. It was it was people trying to break into the American market from Asia. I mean, what Korea really needs to introduce to America clearly is hidden cameras and dressing rooms. They are the world leaders. Yeah. And, uh, incredibly misogynistic uses of hidden cameras. Yeah, Vegas needs more perverts. And fried chicken. And they got some good fried chicken. And also like rising up in the face of fascism.

Yeah. That is an export that we would welcome here. Yeah. Well, just other than all that, have you walked around CES at all? A lot less actually than last year, I would say. I spent some more time off the shore room floor talking to people. But quite a bit. And I mean, it felt, I think we talked about this last year.

I mean, this is my second CES. Oh. And last year, I mean, you come into it and it's all this cool stuff that you've never seen before, concentrated in one space. And this year, I remember people talking about like, this feels a lot similar last year. And now that I'm a returning guest, I understand why that feeling existed. Yeah, it's this kind of echoing. It's very strange this year. Like, it feels like last year, but with less stuff.

Like, there at least felt like there were some things to look at last year that were like, oh, that's fun. Do I remember them? No, God, no. I saw a lot of smart picture frames. That was a really big one. This year? Yeah. I saw one that was completely broken.

It was made with, like, e-ink. No, I actually quite like the idea because I'd only seen them in pictures. And then you see, whenever they cycle, kind of like a Kindle, like, all E-ing thing, they flash up a thing. Oh, I saw that. Like the Kindle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's like, just the static image I'd be okay with.

But the moment it cycles, it'd be like, get that shit off my wall. But I like the idea. I like the idea. I know what you can't see by looking at the gadget itself is. the back end. And that's the whole thing, right? Like, what is the experience of adding images to it? And my wife just moved overseas. We're living in two different continents right now. And our housemate gave her a smart camera for a picture frame for Christmas. Right. And we, you know, sort of together conspired to put a bunch of photos in the camera's cloud account. So that when she

set it up at home overseas, that she would get all these photos preloaded. And it sucked. It just really sucked at importing photos. It wouldn't take native resolution. We had to down res everything. Oh, God. It's just, yeah, it was like, do you remember what brand? I do not. I got one for my parents a few years ago, and the app was like,

Dante's inferno. And it was all on an app, right? So like, which is fine if you're out and about taking pictures and you are sending the picture to the frame. But when you're setting at the frame de novo, I have 10,000 photos on my laptop. And I wanted to take a subset of them and put them in the frame. and like phones are very bad for that. Yeah.

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

I will say I was interviewing someone at their home once, and they had one in their living room. And it changed at one point. or it was either that or they told me it was I had no idea that it was digital until they told me. Sure. So for the people who are coming into your home who did not see the hassle of getting it, that works. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I don't know.

It feels like a very easy to solve thing. Feels like it should just be like an FTP server with like a photo frame. Or as a fallback, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here is a thing you drag images into. Yeah, it should be easy, but it isn't. Welcome to CES. And I just realized I have the app on my phone server.

Oh, hell yeah. Let's find out what is to contrast this shit. So we can name and shame. Boom. It was, I don't know, too many ass nails. Bring back shamed. Yes. Flander.

No, it's not. Come back to me. It's not. ORA. A-U-R-A. I thought that was meant to be one of the easy ones too. I'm sure it's very easy if you are sending a photo to it. That one gets advertised on podcasts.

Yeah. It's the Casper mattresses of photo frames. We're anti-stamps.com. Ranty the aura frame. Don't try and sell me a fucking mattress unless you give me one. Has Stephs.com got a web interface yet

because it was Windows only. I got no idea, man. When I need stamps to go to the post office. Do you know what? I have a private mailbox where I get my mail because I don't want to give my home

address to random. Right, right. And I gave them a credit card number and they charge a hundred bucks credit at a time. And I walk in with all my parcels and I'm like, here's the parcels. And I walk out again.

I don't have to wait for them to weigh them. And I don't have to wait for them. That's awesome. price them. they just, I get an emailed receipt. It is so good. Post office, fucking rules.

Yeah. Well, or private mailboxes too. Okay, okay. Well, yeah. So, Ed, how have you been, I've been doing? How was your last day? It was good. I got to walk around LVCCC, see all the shit gadgets with Corey.

And it was really interesting. I mean, the stuff I think that interested us most was like we talked about the devices that seem like, okay, this is a real thing. want a manufacturer to integrate it into their supply chain so they can scale it up. But you can't get it. Well, you know, chargers. You thought, you know, there were some chargers that Corey pointed out that seemed nice, some cameras that seemed nice.

But otherwise, there were just a bunch of devices where it's like, I don't think I'd ever get this hand massager. That was very fun. They had the weirdest advertising for that hand massage. It was a weird little sign that made it look like it was going to eat your hand. Oh, so if massages you'll have. hands. So it was like the

Benny Jesseret thing you took your hand to it. They did have a so, so it had a sign, right? They said,

like, do you dare to put your hand in it? And it had a monster's mouth. Yeah. Around the aperture your hand went into.

And then when you read the marketing more closely, it was like, the virtuous will feel delightful when they put their hand in. Yes. And you put your hand

in a sensor detected it and then it started inflating the little airbag in it. I know. It feels like the first step in like cultivating myself. I just want to be clear, though, the thing sucks,

but the virtuous will feel delightful is something I'm going to be saying for the rest of my life. You barely am not. Yeah, barely I'm not virtuous. Because I felt it. I was like, it kind of just feels like two things are grinding against my hand.

And it's like, hey, if I want to go, if I want that, I'll go to like some packed conference or I'll come back here on the first day. Yeah. Like, it's like if you need to give you a hand a message, you have two of them. I guess if you wanted to do both at ones, it might be a challenge.

You know the amazing safety label that's the two gears with the hand squishinged inside of it. That's kind of what I wanted. Yeah, but a pleasant way, you know. It's like an incredible machine situation, but with just my hand, like a cat jumps on the thing and it crushes it. I just, a big anvil would be great at the end of this week. Just let me just fall under the end. Anyway, but nothing impressive at the end of the day is same old shite. No. I mean, this is the thing. I mean, we talked about this a little bit also.

I feel like, you know, I am of the group that is the wrong group for it because I come into it feeling, I think, disappointed broadly because there's a lot that I would like to see and I don't see it. Well, what would you like to see? I would like to see. I am, listen, if someone can make, you know, for example, there's a lot of pitches about AI assistance that can be integrated into your home and make, you know, task management a bit easier, schedule management, a bit easier, things like this. You know, I would be open to something that seemed to be doing that. But a lot of times, you know, when we press them, it's more so like, what if you went on chatybt to yourself and chose the third best answer for each thing? And then integrated that and organized your life around that.

You know, so it's a lot of times I feel like what I'm actually seeing is not even someone who tried to solve a problem. But someone, I mean, they did. The problem they solved was how do I make money off of this, right? Yeah. You know, that's really what it was. I'm like, I'm not a tech person. I'm a local reporter here. But I mean, I feel like, and this is kind of what I'm curious about your guys' thoughts on it, how much of the things on the showroom floor were just like repackaged chat GPT models into other different packaging?

Actually, it'd be easier to ask how many weren't. Yeah, yeah. It's deadly. We need like a cat in the hat where it's not situation for this. What's funny is generally surprised. Last year, I remember being like, oh, I'm being a cynic, whatever. And sleeping four hours every night, so I felt particularly spicy. but people still came in, like journalists came in and were like,

oh, I saw some cool shit. Oh, it made me laugh. It was kind of weird, but you know, I enjoyed it. This year, even the gadget reporters, even the gadget reporters who were like, you know what, not going to be cynical and would be excited to be here, were kind of like, yeah, you know, there's a lot of stuff that doesn't exist,

and then the stuff that does exist wasn't very good. And even the companies that usually make stuff that are good, well, they didn't. And also LG was here with a robot, And it's strange because long-term listeners will know, like, yeah, I'm a cynic, whatever. But I want to hear some fun, dude, add some fun things. And it's like, oh, not even this year. Like this is, it feels like we're in the depression at CES.

A lot of AI children's toys. Very horrible. Yeah, yeah. A lot of AI children's toys. Evil, evil shit. Like Robert found this one that was like an LLM horoscope, Furby creature that I want to hit with a baseball bat. I believe I saw that. Finally enough, there's a demo for one where you can hit it with a baseball.

Yeah, but that's... Wasn't that the one where Robert had the video and it's just like... Dancing like Michael Jackson. And then you just fucking hit it with sticks. I want to put free... And it be a bottle. I want to do free bird on top of that. Just fucking beat the rap fuck out of it.

There's an old American children's show called the Andy Devine show. And there was a character on that show called Froggy, who was like a frog. And he was a mischief figure. And he would, uh, as Andy Devine was. speaking, he would grunt, he would like growl out these, uh, uh, subliminal suggestions. I was like, then you put the peanut butter in your hair. Yes, you do. You do. And then Andy Devine would start putting peanut butter in his hair. And, um, every time I see an LLM toy for children, I'm like, eventually, like, you're going to leave the room and it's going to say,

and then you put the knife in your parents. You do. You do. But like, that's already happening with like actual chatbots and like teenagers. Have we not seen the hack horror movies that start with the doll that says, I'm chatting. Kathy and I want to be your friend. I'm Johnny Kathy and I want to kill you. Yeah, one of these toys is going to activate someone. You know, this time it's going to be like, Taiwan is part of China.

Like, 100%. Never mention Winnie the Pooh in my president to make you feel, child. No, it's just, and it's just like, I think what it might be, and after thinking about this too much for too long, it's just papering over the laziness that already existed at CES. I don't

think like there's something exceptional about the activity so much as they found a, it's the, was it panacea? I never know how to say. Panacea. Phanacea. It's like a, panacotta. The panacotta everyone's using is just the, okay, we're looking for a quick and easy thing. There was the IOT era. There was the Metverse era. Like a thing we could build around that would get us funding. But this year, it's like, we found the ultimate thing to staple shit too. And I know what's sound like a broken record, but it's like, come the fuck on. You haven't even got a thinner lighter laptop. There was like one new thin and lighter laptop. One, he was like, I think it was maybe LG.

I don't fucking know. Samsung wasn't even on the floor. Where, what the hell? We don't even get a weird Samsung booth with like a wall of televisions. The LG transparent OLED was just a tiny little one. I want one that's large and obviously can never be purchased. That was like she said. Like a monument.

No, she just mostly just says, it's okay. It's okay. It happens. But it's just. You don't need to. It's just kind of frustrating because I'm not reflexably, cynical. I just want to see some dood. Like Michael Fisher came in and showed the clicks,

the shell of the clicks, the Android phone that's got like, it's basically like a new Blackberry. Fucking lovely. There's, you have new things, 400 bucks. It's something. Yeah, it's something. It's also, you know what?

It's using existing tools, Android, and you can manufacture overseas. Wonderful. Cool. We built a new thingy. This year it's like we didn't build anything. See, I think you're in the wrong. part of the hall. Because when we were back

in the crack gadgets, there was so much of that. Oh, I saw them. But it's in the so like the thing is that the stuff that you use every single day, right? Like your charger is stuff that has an enormous bearing on your quality of life. Like if your charger's fucked, you are fucked, right?

It's a low margin item and it has barely been optimized. Yeah. And in this Pearl River Delta and around the Pacific Rim, there are a lot of incredibly clever mechanical engineers and product designers who are sort of turning their intellect to this. I agree. And like Anchor, for example, it's a great company. Even like GPD who makes these really interesting devices for 100 people, it's like it'll be a

PlayStation portable sized gaming PC that cost $2,000 and superheeds in your hands. So it needs an external battery. Those ones, I didn't see having a prominent... But you go back to the booths where we only do wholesale. We have a minimum 10,000. thousand unit order. So I was, you were there earlier, but we were off mic where I was talking about this thing that I saw that was the British electrical adapter for your charger that you carry around in your bag. And so people who aren't familiar with it, the British electrical adapter, the plug is the world's ultimate caltrop. It's this incredibly big, bulky, it's just like a big spiky, like two inches, eight. Yeah, big, like chunky volt. Yeah. And, you know, I lived in London for 13 years

and I'm moving back there again. And like the charger is a, it's hard to carry around. It puts holes in your pockets. Yeah. Snags on things of your back. It's a real thing. And it snaps quite easily.

Yeah. So this charger was, it had the three prongs. And when you fold it, they all folded down together in unison. They had some sort of mechanical linkage. They made the most satisfying little when you snap them down

and when you snap them back up again. It was a beautiful piece of mechanical engineering. If you owned it and you lived in the UK, every single day you would use this thing and your life would be better. Yeah. Right? That's like pure, we were asking on the last recording session, where were the consumer gadgets? That is a consumer gadget that would see daily use and make a significant difference in your life. I agree.

It's just that that is like 1% of this show. No, I agree. Yeah. And that's, that's, my principal thing is not that those things aren't here. Though there are less of them. No, that's right. remarkably less of them. Like, last year, there were more. The year before, they were way, like, there was tons of them. This year I saw one booth and I wish I could remember because it was

just, the problem is as well, is a lot of the ones I saw were just the same old shit we've had for years. Anchor is doing some cool stuff. Was it gallium nitrite with making the plugs small? Oh, yeah, GAN plugs. Yeah, GAN plugs are great. They're fucking amazing. They're awesome. Didn't even see any new interest in GAN stuff. And like, Anchor, I give too much money because they always got some new thinner, weird one with a cable in it. I'm fucking, I'm... Do you know what the downside of GAN plugs is? What? They draw so many watts.

They're such good chargers that they, um, blow the breaker on airplane seats. Do they? On the, on the main... I was on a plate the other day. If you've got like a hundred watt one and you plug it in the little green light goes out immediately. I drop my prime on that bitch all the time and it's fine. Anchor's got their...

I've had, I've got two different GAN chargers in my bag. Neither of them work reliable on airplanes. No, I've been very lucky then because I've... Is it a 65 watt though? It's like a 125. Oh, really? Wow. 250 even.

You've gotten lucky then. Well, it's just also, it does get very hot. Right. But it is on. Right. And I can chuck down. I look like a real prick because I've just got this thing on the side. Just like, just balancing barely on the side.

I don't know. It's, Carl, you're coming on to talk about the local Vegas area and like the effect of CES. Even Vegas feels a little quieter. Like we were just discussing earlier how there was like a chunk of the Palazzo or the Venetian. I can't remember that was just closed, just like no tables. Yeah, that, oh no, local residents or local resident, that fucking terrifies me. If I ever see like an empty area of a casino, like no tables either, I'm always like, unless there is a poker, a poker tournament or a craps class to take tourists in and kind of con them

into believing they can beat the odds. Fuck yeah. They can. They can. They can. I'm kidding. Kind of. Well, I mean, pass line.

But it's just, it feels like everything, maybe it's just the wider world. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a mix of things. Las Vegas has definitely had a decline in visitation throughout the year. I have notes next to me. Please. So through November of 2025 compared to 2024, it's a 7.4% decline in visitation. To be fair, 2024 was a record year.

Part of that is pent-up interest from the pandemic. That got everyone going everywhere that was interested in travel. but that's still a drop of 2.8 million people going to Vegas. And 2.7 million of their Canadian. Well, I mean, I got those numbers too. Yeah, I mean, I think international travel has definitely been affected. I think it does surprise a lot of people when they look at the numbers at Harareate International Airport that the Biggered client actually was in domestic flights.

Really? Yeah. Do you have any idea why? Well, I think there's a couple things. one, when you look at travel and the process of it, right? In my opinion, the most important thing is consumer sentiment at that moment and forward looking sentiment. If you don't feel comfortable in your, if you don't feel comfortable in your position,

you know, for feeding your family or just paying the bills on time, you are not traveling. Yeah. But at the same time, I will say, I think that's, is an important note because I think a lot of the narrative has been like Las Vegas is dead. Which it is. It really hasn't been. No. I would push back on that because when you actually look at the gaming revenue, it is up this year. Is that because they're gouging more though? They triple zero. Well, that actually there have been some efforts to scale that back.

Is that right? Because people were getting very angry. Yeah. And there was a large narrative online that like the the destination marketing organization here in Las Vegas has tried to push back against. But the, sorry, I'm trying to think about the way to phrase this. The actual spend was higher. And I think, and I'm not going to act like I have a definitive, this is why. But I think in all sectors, you're seeing an increasingly bifurcated economy. Sure.

K-shaped recovery. Right. K-shaped. And what does that mean for those of us who? That the really rich are doing very, very well. And that the rest of us are not. 95% of the consumption is the top decile. So they're coming at this of the high rollers.

So that, I mean, if you look at win, if you look at other high end, I don't have the numbers, those numbers right in front of me. They're doing okay. So I think there is like discussion of price gouging. And I think that was a really big factor. You mentioned Canadians. I talked to at the beginning of the year, I went to a Winnipeg Jets game here. Nice. I stood outside and I was just interviewing people.

who were coming. And this was right after or right around when Trump took office. And obviously when you're going to talk to Canadians who were in Vegas, it's a big sampling bias of like, these are the people who didn't care. Most of them did. And they said, you know, I scheduled this months ago, not coming back. And the November numbers, those I do have front of me, in November travel into Vegas from Air Canada compared to last year, fell 26%.

Jesus Christ. And the discount carriers are worse, right? Yeah. Ultra low-cost carriers are having a hard time. Spirits kind of its own thing. No, I mean the Canadian discount, the charter flights. WestJet, and there's another one. I forget what they're called.

I am Canadian. Okay. WestJet was 33.2% decline. Jesus Christ. And that's just for Canadians. There's actually have been, that's been made up in some other countries coming to United States, but there's also all these policies coming down the pipeline. where I believe it was customs and border protection

had a proposal of people coming into the country, many of the folks who would be coming into the country, having to share five years of social media activity. Yeah, which is. Which I reached out to the Nevada Resort Association, and they're like, we are monitoring this because it's, I mean, I'm not going to speak for the country at all. But I think when you look at all this in totality,

the United States is not being super, welcoming to people coming here. I mean, you know, mentioning the Korea event earlier, I talked to one of the organizers and he was talked to me about how after there was that ice raid in, I think it was Georgia at a Hyundai. Specifically against South Koreans. There were South Koreans. Many of them were not all. That he had to be convincing people that it was okay to come to the United States, that they should that they can still come to CES and without fear. Now to be fair to America,

there is a class of migrant they're welcoming. If you are the former dictator of Honduras who's been convicted of multiple narco-trafficking charges. White South Africans? You will be, yeah, you're not a African-ears, you know. It's, and I mean, this is specifically a place that attracts you based on being free and easy

in quick and simple. And it's all of these little roadblocks, these little additions that just make it, like, you can't treat this like, adult Disneyland. What happens in Vegas gets imprisoned indefinitely in Vegas? What happens in Vegas requires a long form now. It's just like, ah, I don't know. And also the hotels are not as cheap as they used to be. It used to be, you could, you could roll your ass into bally's for 45 bucks a night if you felt like it. Well, there's also resort fees that people are very angry.

Did you pay the no bed bug fee by the way? I was wondering. No, I paid the extra bad bug fee. Oh, okay. That's, you get that one special. That's the Canadian special. They call it. It's just frustrating as well because this place, I love Vegas, I love being here, it's a vending machine city, my addiction is Diet Coke, so that's being great for the Coca-Cola Corporation. But it's like adding these roadbox fucks up a place like this so much, which is based on convenience. Yeah, I mean, I think when you look at the different narratives, people are putting out about Las Vegas, I know local Democrats have labeled this the Trump slump. That's their, that's their big thing going into, we have a governor's race this year. And that is a big part is tying the current governor,

Joe Lombardo to the policies of the Trump administration. I'm skeptical about how well that's going to work. Because I think it's a lot more complicated than just Trump. It's a larger administration thing. It's also this idea that Las Vegas is price-gouging people, regardless of how true that is for a specific location. I mean, there's like the infamous $26 water bottle that's like, I think was coming up from like a mini bar in someone's room,

that like Fox News is reporting on. But the thing is, we're in the Palatso and I like staying here. It's the fucking case here. The resort fee every night. And it's like these resort fees kill people. Not literally. Well, the rest of Vegas does that maybe, but not really. It's like the little needling things that Vegas did.

And it's not just post-2020. But it's like if you're going to do this to a place where it's about just kind of like frictionless entertainment. And they've waved through so many mergers too. Yeah. The casinos aren't really competing anymore. Well, there's that and also that some of them aren't, they don't own the property, the property itself in some cases.

But even downtown Vegas is more expensive now. Like, I haven't been to Fremont Street much before last year, and I went, it's more expensive in some cases than the strip. And it fucking sucks. I'm sorry. It's like genuinely like, it's a loud, hostile place that when you go, it's just like punishing. And it's like, oh, you used to go there because it was cheap. Now it's expensive and loud.

and bad. If I wanted that, I'd go to fucking Charlotte. So what's happening in Reno? Is it just as bad as it is in Vegas? Phil was mentioning the other day that Reno is actually trying to, like, not reject the casinos, but grow outside of them, which I don't think... I think it's a state... That's a statewide. Is that state... Yeah, I would say it's like pretty statewide.

No, like housing and jobs. Oh, wow. I hate that. That's crazy. I know. What kind of a town runs on that when we have our big, beautiful casinos and our loud slot machines? Bustle of slot machines. They're so... They're so loud. We've got the Buffalo slot machines. You've got the bullet farm. You've got the Water Castle where Morton Joe lives.

You've got the- We have the disgusting. On Stars. We have the most lifeless NFL team in the most lifeless NFL stadium. I have always made, actually, I was on an event recently. Mark Davis sat down next to me and I got, I was shocked. Man, if he ever sat down next to me, I've got some fucking questions, me. I'm not going to comment about that. What the fucking offensive line?

They're all going to play out a position. Why do you let Pete Carroll's son do the... Sorry. But it's crazy because, I mean, it's so... emblematic of the industry that you can have a successful in air quotes NFL franchise without winning. I mean, I mean, even then, I don't even think they're that successful. We're going to transition to the next part. The next ad is for the Las Vegas Raiders.

We won three fucking times despite Pete Carroll, Gino Smith. I guess that's what happens when you don't have an offensive line playing in position. This next ad is for the Las Vegas Raiders. Any other is an error. 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 a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's the 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? That's the name. The Harvard Yardt. They're open.

Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-4-4-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-844-I-Hart.

A win is a win. A win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined.

And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment. And the next we'll talk about life,

mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So if you've ever supported me, or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be.

Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. Welcome to my new podcast, learn the hard way with me, your host, and your favorite therapist,

Kear Games. And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking,

Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it. And we don't know when we've done enough, Because people scoreboard watch.

Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross, because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth, or are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust.

I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Kear Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, learn the hard way. Open your free, our heart radio app.

Search learn the hard way and listen now. And we're back for the second quarter. We're back with, of course, Carl Shenard of the Las Vegas son. Hello. Mr. Edwin-N-Guase of the Tech Bubble newsletter. Hello, hello. Activist, journalist, and author, Corey Docterer. Well, hello.

I was on the radio earlier and they were like, I was like, Oh, Cory Docter's book. And they're like, you can say it. I'm like, in shittification. Yeah. They allow you to, your book has allowed people to say it on the radio now. Oh, no. They just allowed me to.

What do you say then? So it depends. I was on Alexis Madrigal's show on NPR in San Francisco. It's the largest NPR station in the country. Right after Brandon Carr, chair of the FCC, announced that he was going to pull three years of their underwriting. And their general counsel had said, you cannot even allude to the title of the book.

And through the entire segment, we called it the book whose title we cannot say. When I did on the media, which is nationally syndicated. Of course. They called it in poopification. Was that with a Brooke? With Brooke.

Yeah. She's terrific. I love Brooke. Brooke Ladstone fucking rocks. She is a national treasure. And yeah, various other affiliates and, and radio stations have dealt with it in different ways. You know, the daily show, they're cable. So they were like, it's fine.

But anytime I'm on broadcast, we can't do it. And weirdly, I was just on. show in Toronto and they decided not to let me say the title of the book. And so I was like, it's in somethingification and the something is a word for poop that rhymes with snit. Nice. That's the word that you use, snit? I used it. I was like, as it, I mean, it's great. It's a good example. As in your general counsel is having a, yeah. It is always funny. Like, when I went on on the media, I did like half an hour of just like I managed to, because actually took Brooke Gladstone, older woman, and she,

genuinely, if you can't explain something to her, she's very smart, but like, she's a regular person, older woman. So if you can, if you can explain it to her, you can explain it to anyone, but if you can't, you can't explain, you can't explain. You, normies won't understand you. I got so many emails, lovely emails. I heard from a good mate, Peter Stormyer, everyone who was listening. It was great as well. But I heard so many people just being like, wow, you sounded so nice. You didn't say shit or fuck. I'm like, I can actually have a conversation with someone without swearing. You know, you just don't hear it. afterwards, but sure.

Yeah, yeah, I have to enter, like, my mind palace, like the stone will of the Buddha to like, just three hours point. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Just vibrating. Giant gong in the back. You know how I feel about Samo? Don, it's just, no, I can.

I'm calm. I'm normal. Yeah, it's, I want Vegas to come roaring back, but I think there is a degree of the post-2020 greed that came in. I think that everyone jacked stuff up. I think, so I don't know. How has Sammelin being? received by tourism. Is it being a good tourism destination? It's like 25 minutes away from everything,

which is in Vegas far. Yeah. I mean, I would say in my own experience, I don't even really see Summerlin as it a specifically very touristy area. Does it not try and appeal? What is it? It's like this thing, 25 minutes away, which anywhere else would be like, oh, you get there. 25 minutes away in Vegas, you're like, no, you're just like, oh, I'll come visit you in New York City, I guess. I mean, if they let you fire an automatic weapon. Maybe you'll go that far. You can do that 10 minutes off the strip, there's like four different places. Okay, a bazooka then. Okay, there's a place 15 minute. You can blow up a car for two grand here.

Okay. Fuck, Vegas rocks. It's a, it's a very wealthy area. And they got some really nice shopping. And they got a, uh, AAA baseball team as well. Yes. Oh, that's good. I like trippator. No, it's fucking great. As a person who doesn't like sports, I like that aviation is brilliant. It is, I would say, at least in my experience, a play that's like more designed for locals, I would say probably more affluent.

Yes, yes. It's a master plan community. Yeah. Which I've got a couple times. I had to go to an event at the Aviator Stadium. It's really nice. I just never really saw it as I specifically like serving the tourist. True.

And it's kind of interesting with that is that the locals casinos have actually had a really good year. What would be what you mean like? Red Rock and Station. Well, all the stations casinos. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also Green Valley as well, is they, doing it right? I believe so. That's one pretty close to me. Yeah, I, no, I, like all the local casinos that just like, yeah, stations overall had a very good year. It's good, it's because they,

there's the ASMR of just the slot machines. They're always like, somewhere between completely empty or just a few people, but they somehow still make money. I love them. That's the best. It's, I also didn't realize before moving here that, like, all of the movie theaters that you would go to or in casinos. Yep, there's one in the Orleans and, uh, took my parents there when they were in town and there's just these horrifying giant like chucky cheese looking animals like a giant statue to them when you walk out. Oh, that's my jam. I fucking love it. No, my parents thought it was one. I'm a committed robosexual. No, sadly they're not robots. They're just giant statues of rats. Wait, what? No, it's so strange. I don't go see a hockey tournament there. I did not see the,

the rat. I swear, maybe I've, I just like hallucinated just these, just like, oh yeah, my mom gave me POT or something. I don't know. But. And, And that cab on the way down, Ed and I were talking about, Ed Anguesso and I were talking about my new favorite podcast, which is no gods, no mares, which is a podcast about the oaths that are mayors. And on that, I learned that Las Vegas is not a city. Yeah. The city of Las Vegas is a suburb on the other side of the air.

When you hear about the mayor of Las Vegas, that's generally. This is an unincorporated area, right? We have paradise. Right. And then, yeah, when I first moved here, I was like being explained all the different government structures. Like a lot of things in southern Nevada run through Clark County. Uh-huh. Just because it encompasses the entire or not entire, but most of the population that lives around this area. But Las Vegas itself is not the strip. And then you have North Las Vegas and

Henderson. It's, but the part of Las Vegas you see as a visitor to Las Vegas is an unincorporated county land, right? Largely. Yeah. So I also just want to be clear it wasn't rats. It was giant kind of stoned-looking crocodiles. Like, they're just like, they all look like... In each, they look fucking... But they're not animated? Like, what is the point? No, they're like...

These things look like... They're not very disappointed. Yeah, they look like they are just... I don't want to know. They're very, uh, they're very, uh, um, splash mountain looking, to be honest. Little alligator minstrelsy. Oh, God.

Wonder if they have their own shredder, you know? What do you mean, like a shredder? their enemy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like instead of, you know, Teenage Beauty Ninja Alligators and they've got to, like, would it be a rat? Who's their sense?

Yeah, yeah. It's the people that collect unemployment taxes. Like, they're just constantly at war with them. It's like a dude who's just hanging in the sewer. One thing I'll say is like, I know this sounds strange, but Vegas doesn't also seem that welcoming to CES. Like,

it's, it's weird. They, you'd think that they cater to it more. Like, when Raiders games are going on, there's a shit ton of pop-up events. With this, it's like,

the only specific drinking specials or anything like that are just Lenovo has bought a restaurant. Yeah. Right. I mean, it's pretty crazy to see, though, as, you know, I come to the strip probably a lot less than people would think. Yeah. But, I mean, CES, maybe not getting drink deals, but it is everywhere on the strip. It is, but it's events where people have bought them. Yeah.

It's not like they are, Vegas usually like opens their arms to people in like a just a kind of a, can I have your money? please thing. And I don't know whether it's just CES doesn't treat them with respect or something. It's just something... They haven't forgiven them from disaggregating from AVN. I think that's what it is. That's the thing. They should never have done this. I still don't understand

why they did that. It's because of fucking purity I mean, yeah, you know, that I understand intellectually. They should have them in the same conference hall. Yes. Actually, yeah. It's now at Virgin Hotel, which I kind of... Very funny. So the other event I come to in Vegas most years, as DefCon and talk about an event that Vegas does not roll out the red car.

Yeah, we just keep getting turfed out of hotels and conference centers. So, yeah, it's just, it's weird. There's this combative relationship with it as well, it's like, okay, you're here. You're going to spend a lot of money. But weirdly, we don't love it. It's, I feel like both sides need to come together and do something. But I guess Vegas is a city of honest cons and CES isn't. No, I mean, like, that's kind of what I love it here.

It's like, everyone's weird. so no one's weird and also we're like very human labor focus. Yeah, I mean, there's that. I mean, I think like we talked about last year, there's a huge union culture and union participation here in Nevada that for a, I think a state that has a Republican governor

and it was the first time in 20-something years, voted for Trump, very union-heavy. That there is a big focus on the people who make up the city, which I really have appreciated learning about that and that kind of the culture around to work. I mean, just like there is a, in my opinion, like, I don't know, growing up in New York, maybe people would look down on some like service jobs. I don't think that's as much of a thing, at least in my experience, talking to people.

I'm splitting time between both. I would say New York has got a hell of a lot better at that. Like most people I've talked to. And also, if you have a disrespect for service people, chop your hands off, I thought he was hoping to a review a piece of shit. But I don't, like, yeah, the city is very pro-labor. And I guess the current state of the tech industry isn't. No.

Yeah, I was going to, yeah, I was going to have like. An entire conference where it's like, what if we didn't have people? Well, there is like a, a, this like overarching theme of feels almost like anti-human. Yeah. Like we are trying to. And I mean, like, tech innovations forever have been like, how do we minimize the labor cost of whatever? But it feels like we're taking it to such a degree.

And everyone's so excited. Everyone's like, oh, I can't wait. I mean, yeah, there are people who are, like, excited to see people lose their jobs. And the thing is, as well, like, Vegas, one of the best things here is go and fucking talk to the people working at the restaurants, at the door and your cab. There's so many everyone in, no one comes here by accident. Everyone, like, ends up here because they had a few choices they needed to make. And it's like, you talk to, like, one of my good mates, I know Aaronstein used to work a Casabliabes now in a S&E. S&P in New York.

One of my dearest friends. And it's because just Vegas people fucking will talk to you. And there's never a case. I've never talked to anyone here. And it's happened in New York where there was like the look up and down. Like, here were you. What do you do? No one, everyone's started what you like.

Yeah. You're doing it. There's a genuine every man culture here. And I don't know if this is the case. It probably isn't at a large scale. But yeah, I can imagine if you're here, there's a certain degree of fuck off. Oh, you want to replace me and everyone I know. and everything I do.

Yeah, I'm not sure how ingrained or like supremely aware people are of that sentiment within the tech industry for like people who are just like going about their day. But I think like it's always funny to see how the ads change in Vegas based on what conferences in town. Yeah. And I think I mean, I've certainly picked up on when there's like a tech show like some of them are like, the human need not apply. I mean, not literally that.

No, it's, but that's the intonation. Yeah. I mean, there are literal, I don't know if they ran them here, but there's a company. Yeah, that one I saw in the Bay Area. I don't think I saw that one in Vegas. And they did that specifically to Drum of Outreach. Sure. Right.

Because that if people are running around saying this AI company is so good at what it does that it's going to replace humans, then investors are like, oh, this AI. That's the advertising campaign for LLMs in general. Well, it's going to say like the fear you're putting. people into is making them take your product seriously. Yeah. Some marketing shirt. Even though it doesn't.

It's just another chat GPT rapper. Yeah, exactly. It's just, and I had this conversation on the radio earlier about like, oh, the MGM's chat boy is replacing concierge is, no, it isn't. They just wanted to lay some people off. Yeah. Like, also, I feel like concierge's culture here is kind of dead. Because I don't interact with it enough to.

No, but it's like, it used like 10, 15 years ago, you would talk to the concierge and they'd be able to get you into a show or a restaurant. Sure. Now there's so many people. It's just like, can you get me a reservation? Just use open table, mate. There was this story I did a while back about this website called Restaurant Trader. Oh, yeah.

That was, and one of the little nuggets of information that I got out of it that I wanted to make into a bigger thing, but I just wasn't able to, was that there were concierge folks who were getting reservations. sound like through their job to then put on restaurant trader that people would pay for on the side. Dostedly. Oh, wow. Where, like, I think there was an option on the website where you could, like, pretty much request

to work with a concierge. Wow. That's just... So, yeah, it's... That's a little anecdotious. No, a point when trader, like, is, like, banned in multiple New York restaurants. New York City...

Sorry, it was the New York Assembly. that passed a law. Fuck yeah. That was like restricting it. I think there was a similar effort here in Nevada. That's why I was writing about it. I genuinely think it should be an actual crime to resell a point. So the most disgusting version of this?

Hell yeah. Was there was a bro who was paying people to call the IRS when the lines opened at 8 in the morning and sit in the hold queue and then sell their positions in the IRS hold queue to people who wanted to figure out how, what's going on with her. That should be a jailable offense. Well, he was eventually shut down, but I don't think he was ever put in jail, much as he absolutely 100%. Like holding a place in line for you? That's right. He should be put in the box. They put Captain Jack in Torchwood.

The hand massage one? No, I'm talking about that. Anyone watch Torchwood? Torchwood when they put Captain Jack in the concrete box. Oh, go and watch that. Look that. Yeah, that's where that guy should go. It's, can I tell you my best Vegas? Please, please. No, please. Story. So my sister-in-law's good friends started a guide to places to romantic hotels called the Mr. and Mrs. Smith guides. And what was the romantic hotel in this case? So we were asked to come and review a hotel. And the way that it works is they ring up ahead and they said, we're the Mrs. Mrs. Smith company. We're thinking about putting you in the guide.

We're going to send some anonymous reviewers. What we would like is a voucher from the manager to present at checkout that says these people should be comped. But they will book the reservation as per normal. the staff won't know until you check out. So we stayed in the high roller suite at the MGM. Nice. So it was an $1,800 a night, 1,400 square foot, two-story suite with a butler. And it was the first time we ever interacted with a concierge.

It was very good. This was in 2005. It was the weekend we got engaged. So we came here and got engaged and we stayed in the hotel. I was teaching in L.A. And my wife had come over and was working for BBC America. Nice. And it was so great.

and like the concierge culture and they had lots of perks. The best thing they had was they came in, they gave us a menu of newspapers and we were like, how do you get these newspapers? Because it was the Singapore Straits Times and the Las Vegas Sun. The Las Vegas Sun as well, but no,

but international papers. And they would print it on 11, they had a facsimile newspaper service. They printed on 11 by 17 inch heavy stock and bind it in silk. ribbon. And they would, and so we ordered like 11 newspapers and we would come out in the morning and the butler would have laid them out in a fan on the, on the coffee table, from all over the world that morning's paper. That's beautiful.

International Herod Tribune, whatever, on creamy 11 by 17 with a with a like a sort of pinkish silver silk ribbon in the corner. Was that an additional cost? No, it was all bundled him with the room. I mean, it was amazing. The margins there when you're you're getting someone like $2,500 to $10,000 at night. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's the thing, like Vegas is a service culture place. Like, shit, we're going to Spago tonight, Robert Garcia, everyone at GM there.

Fantastic place. You look over to Blasio Fountain. I mean, formerly bizarrely, I don't know, I have my thoughts on that. But, like, there are so many great restaurants here with, like, lovely service. The great. Pallazzo's brilliant. And even, like, Main Street Station's fucking great, too.

Like, the less... You get a pretty good pastrami sandwich at New York, New York. There's a great margarita deal at the station's casinos. But Main Street Station is a microbrewery, doesn't it? Oh, I'm just saying overall. No, no, but that's the thing. Like, you can go, you can have a laugh, or if you want to do the fancy stuff, you can go any number of places. I mean, like, the whole thing about the city is it's relatively accessible, affordable.

And if you want to spend some money, or you can spend some money and, like, have a luxury experience. And it's not as expensive as doing it in other cities. And I just, it's weird how I will just fucking say, I don't think people who come to CES. are grateful enough for how accessible the city is, in part because CS fucks it up. Yeah, it's pretty difficult to get into that building. Like they... The convention center.

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

Anyway. I'm a big fan of the Monorail for Dura. Monorales. What's that word again? Monorail. Monorail? Yeah. Is there a chance?

the track could bend? I mean, hopefully not consider it. I don't want to diet outside Harris, but it's like, I will say also that Harris was cheaper this year, even on like an expensive night. It was 300 bucks night, which doesn't sound cheap,

but it is for CES. And which makes me wonder if CES attendance was down. So I'm mad at Caesar's Hera for kicking DefCon out. I wouldn't stay there again. And that's the thing. Vegas, I'm not going to be romantic, but like, oh, it used to be,

but it feels like that's a, that's a dollar to be made, to work with the people at DefCon and be like, okay, we have security concerns. What are some things that the people at DefCon could do to make you comfortable? And then we could make you comfortable too.

Also, the last time I stated Harris, they gave me a room that not only didn't have a desk, it didn't have a closet. Oh. I was like, where do I hang up my stuff? And they're like, if you want a room with a closet, that's an extra charge.

Jesus Christ. What year was that? That was two years ago at DefCon. That's supremely fucked up. It was really fun. I will say, three years ago, DefCon. In relation to what you're just saying, I thought I'd pull this up.

The average daily room rate on the strip, this is year to date comparing November 2025 to November 2024, on the strips actually fall on 4.7% and downtown 6.2%. Interesting. I just, everything's out of sorts. But that's the rack rate and they're piling it up with junk fees.

So the rack rate is not the price, right? You have to add in the junk fees to get the... I believe that's inclusive. Is that inclusive? I believe. I mean, that's the room rate itself. Okay. You know, that's a one-to-one comparison last year.

I'm not positive, but yeah. I just feel like there is an ocean of opportunity here for the C-EA if they could do one thing right. And just like, Gary Shapiro come on the show? C-T-A? C-T-A. C-T-A. I don't know who fucking runs this shit. They certainly don't want to talk to me.

But it's like... So I have to say I have known Gary Shapiro. for 20 years. I've never had a bad interaction with him. I don't know all the dealings of the CTA. Yeah. But I've never had a, I get the impression that he is someone

who is in charge of an industry association with several large, important members that like to throw their weight around, and he is the peacemaker and coalition binder of this big disparate organization. I'm not going to, like, defend CA and its members. But, you know, I do think that Gary Shapiro is holding together a very fractious group.

Well, I've been saying CEA incorrectly for days, so I apologize there. Also, Ben is not your son. I think they were the CEO. I think they were the CEO. I think they changed the name to CTA because electronics sounds a little outmoded. I just feel like the CTA, now I'm saying it correctly, could work directly with Vegas and do way more. It feels like they could streamline this whole thing and make it a little bit better because

it's been here long enough that it's still too chaotic. Yeah, I'm not sure about the exact relationship they have, but they do have a pretty close working relationship, especially when it comes down to, like, construction and renovations within the convention center. How about getting people to and from the convention center? Oh, I think it. I mean, there was, there's another reporter, Alan Snell, who had a, I'm just going to call it a tweet. I don't care. Sure. That was about, like, the difficulty of biking to the convention center.

It's really, really hard. I'm so sorry. You're a psychopath if you buy. to that convention. You know, I was thinking about e-bikes when we were stuck in traffic today and thinking, this would be fast. It's difficult.

I mean, biking throughout Vegas is quite hard. Yeah, I would never. Is that because bikes aren't allowed on the... I mean, before that, there's no infrastructure. I mean, there is infrastructure. But there's not a lot of infrastructure for bikes. I mean, the way it was today, you would have been moving five times faster

than anything else in the road. But it's like we've had this convention here for a while, and it's still insanely difficult to get around. And they'll probably say, well, you know, this big convention. It's a lot of people.

I fucking got around. I went to dinner during the F-1. It was not that different. What if they had helicopters that came in and skyjacked any car that moved into the junction when they didn't have time

to complete their turn? I like that. Uber plane. And block the grid. Yeah. Just like take those cars and then drive, and then like take them out

to the Grand Canyon. And just leave them at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Or a big arm. They just took them on timeout. There was a little viral clip of the new Zooks. Yeah. Oh, did one get stuck?

It didn't get stuck because it moved eventually. But it was like in the, sorry, that's not a, that doesn't time for them. Not your company. But they were just like in the middle of a turn in a giant like strip intersection for like a good little bit of time. And everyone around was like, what are they doing? I'm like, oh no. Cab drivers are just saying the most ugly shit of all time. Well, I just can't imagine being.

like the visitor in that. It's completely freaking out. In this transparent box as everyone stares at you. Like the Homer Simpson thing where he gets stuck and has to be craned out. I mean, this is a town bereft of shame, but even that, that's a new kind of shame

we invented here in Las Vegas. It's not your fault. I've fallen in love with Waymo's as an Angelino because you can make a left turn into their path and they'll just defer to you and they won't even honk. And I'm just like, fuck you, right? Roads for people, not robots. It's like, fuck yourself.

It's my shit, my streets. I'm the kid. Last time I took, last time I was in San Francisco and I took a Waymo, I got out of it, watched as a Waymo in front of it got stuck at the intersection. No, I watched it get stuck at the intersection. Then another Waymo gets stuck behind it. And I checked back half an hour like still fucking sick. Just like beautiful.

Just like stare at like by the W Hotel in San Francisco. Just staring out into nothingness. As people are saying, no, this thing isn't fucking hearing you. It can only see. Was it San Francisco where a bunch of people just kept calling Waymo to one spot until it just completely. No, sorry, yes, that was actually, yeah, yeah.

And people putting like traffic cones on top of them. I think it was really funny when that was happening. And people were like, you can't deface Waymo's. It's like, this is domestic terrorism. Did people fucking say that? Yes. Okay. Property damage is domestic.

It is illegal to smash up a car. Sure. I will accept that. Property damage is illegal. I mean, is it though? Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Ask the cops.

Maybe I don't think they'd have the answer. Yeah, cops are like, well. Famously, I think it's correct in 40% of cases. Google 40% cops. Yeah. And see what comes up. Right, the truth.

The truth about this specific situation. Yeah, it's unfortunate. I feel like that everything feels out of sync here. I feel like the CTA could work with Vegas and make this a little bit easier. I also think the CTA needs to fucking kick companies. out from renting restaurants in the Venetian. I think it's fucking stupid. I don't think we should lose an entire restaurant

because Lenovo needs to do the slop hour where they're like, we added an LLM to your fucking laptop, you disgusting pig. You nasty pig. Yeah, they did that. They didn't call you a nasty pig, though. If they did that, I'd be fine. If they were like, you nasty hogs,

do you like your slop, you pigs? I'd be like, fine. So what I want is for Lenovo to distribute badge flare that's a little adhesive-backed point pointer, red pointer nub. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that, like, everyone can go to the Lenova party and then have the red Lenovo pointer on their badge.

Yeah, but if you have a green one, well, then you can do anything to them. I, yeah, it's, sorry. It's Vegas. Yeah, it's, it's weird. It's just weird. I don't know. I love living in Vegas. And then this, this week, it's just all of the Vegas stuff that's fun kind of turns off.

We've had less fun off. drip vent like things. No one's blown up a car. There's not been any like interesting stunts. It's like everyone forgot to have fun or make anything this year. It's really sad. It's sad. I'm upset that like CES is kind of not having fun and neither is Vegas.

We're all just kind of sitting here rolling around in our filth, or at least I am. Yeah, everyone's just staring at me. I'm not filthy. I've been showering every day. Yeah. We're just little piggyies for sex. No, when I was on this show earlier, I felt bad for them. But they were like, well, what about Lenovo's AI assistant?

I'm like, yeah, that's just an LLM. And they're like, yeah, but like, what if it in the future? I'm like, what if it did what in the future? And they were like, what it would be? What if we breed these horses to run so fast that eventually one of the mares gives birth to a locomotive? Listen, Lee and Stanford was on to something. Okay, he was.

What if we all shit ourselves enough? And maybe our asses are wiped themselves. He need more hay. then it currently exists on the planet. That's right. We've thrown a ball so fast that it now flies. We've discovered unprecedented reserves of hay in other countries. That we're not invaded.

Yeah. No. We're going to, we're just going to run them for a few years. It'll be beautiful, big, beautiful hay. Yeah. Big beautiful. The big, we love them. That's the sister town to Hay on Y in Wales.

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

But you know what? Is he dead yet? Trump? Yeah. He's still alive. Chicken. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, he's still going.

Now, the upcoming ad you're going to get is for nothing political, nothing weird. Everything's normal here. We're all the most normal people to ever do a podcast in history. And you too can be the most normal person ever. If you buy and or listen to the following advertisement, just throw your fucking credit card at your phone, you pig. I'm sorry, you're not a pig.

I please don't stop listening to my show. I desperately need the downloads. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, 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 headwriter, Streeter Seidel,

help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group.

The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open to change. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle. It's one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business.

Think IHart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care which I'm saying. Yep, that's me.

Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sportsmen. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment,

and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So, if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right what you need to be. Listen to The Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. Jacob Kingston grew up in an isolated polygamous sect.

We were God's chosen kingdom on earth. He felt destined for greatness. So when a swaggering Armenian businessman catapults Jacob into an extraordinary world, 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 start? 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 life. Listen to Kingdom of Fraud on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Diane, I'm once again finding myself in front of a microphone in beautiful sunny Las Vegas, Nevada, even though it's nighttime or a beam for what feels like weeks and I'm surrounded by several wayward. travelers that I adore, starting with another journalist and activist, I think, author, Cory Docterow. Well, hello, Ed. It's nice to be here.

That's him. And we've got Garrison Davis of It Could Happen here. I apologize. We had a podcasting emergency. No, I, I, it's fine. We are doing it now. And Carl Shenard of the Las Vegas son. Hello.

And of course, Edward and Grasso, Jr. Hello. Who is, who's Diane? Are you serious? Twin Peaks. It's a Twin Peaks reference. Oh, my God. Oh, I thought it was a Cheers reference.

No. I never watched Good Pye. I never watched Cheers. And that's Robert Evans of Behind the Bastards. Yeah, and famous Cheers fan. Famous Cheers fan. Yeah. And Robert is very excited because we have the pieces to make, what was it?

We've got a C. Uh-huh. We've got a CD. Corey Docto. So a CD. We've got a Robert. Uh-huh. We've got Anguoso.

I have to use his last name. Yeah. Because there's not an O first name here. And then what's the end? And the editor is Matt. Matt. So CD-ROM. Also, some other people's names.

And some others. Yeah, you have to add other names. What's the CD-ROM? Oh, it's what you, when you have an ISO and you want to convert it to optical media, you take that ISO, you take some optical media and toast the one onto the other. Mm-hmm. Yeah, when you've pirated, cyberpunk 2077, and you have to make your computer think that you put a CD in. Oh, my God. When a daddy CD and a mother CD.

I've been played with that in a movie. minute. I miss I miss pirating and go to the little ISO burner. I miss when the only way I had Microsoft office was a pirated version that never touched the internet and didn't ask me to use co-pilot every five minutes. Yeah. It really is sickening. I remember when I started reading classified ads and it was like, you know, SWF, IASO, SWM.

And I was like, a straight white female is an ISO for a straight white male? I don't understand. Yeah. Garrison, was that a legit question? No, I know it was a CD-ROM. I'm sorry. That would have been, no, honestly, if it was honest, that would have been fine. It was barely, though, because, like, my dad used it for the music he purchased legally on the internet.

Yeah. And transferring it to CDs when I was a kid. But, like, I just, I got, like, the last bit of CD-Rong. Right, the very edge. Like, probably, like, my younger siblings don't know what a CD-R-R-R-N-Wing. Meanwhile, I once owned a Zip Drive. I had a Zip Drive, too. You're a jazz drive, oh, hell yeah.

No, my day, this is the kind of kid I was my dad. I had a dwarfal of Scuzzy Terminators. Jesus Christ. It took me a minute to remember what Scuzzy referred to. So that was the one where you screwed it into, like it had literal screws on it. You had to set dip switches on the back. And if you gave two Scuzzy devices the same ID,

all of your drives would go south forever. Hell yeah. I love it. Computers used to be used to have to fight with the computer. And then they'd administer a lethal shock. Nice. We used to be a proper country. You know,

we used to have jazz drives, zip drives. Now anyone, now you just Dropbox gives you a whole, a whole terrible. to any, all sorts and sundry. With unlimited access for the US government without a warrant. But also unlimited access for the chatbots that they signed deals with. You know, let's be fair.

I did see earlier that chat GPT apparently is doing a HIPA compliant chat GPT, which just is a lie. What? Again, it's a lie. That's so funny. It's a fucking lie. Imagine how many chat Gptis we've seen in health, like, like wearable products, just like these past few days.

Yeah. And again, we're talking about this on the other show, but you can tell one of the things that you can divide the people with AI products between is the 90% for whom, if you ask them, what happens if somebody, like if there's a data breach with all of this biometric data you've put in the cloud, they go, what? Or we're really concerned with safety, right? They'll give you one of those two answers, but they don't actually have an answer. And then there's the much smaller, 10 to 20% of people bringing products who will tell you right up front, the same thing. second you come to their booth, this does not touch the cloud. It never goes online. It is entirely on device. I'm just, I'm trying to work out how anything chat GPT can be HIPAA compliant, though. It can't. I mean, based on my understanding of HIPAA, I'm sure they're working out a deal with,

I mean, now that the government's run by who it's run by, but like, it in the new one I can't sketch out a way that it could be HIPPA compliant. How was it through? So HIPAA, uh, although it's commonly called a consumer privacy law is not a consumer privacy law because it only affects your rights as a patient and not as a consumer. And so if you were to construct a kind of matrioshka where the inside doll is a consumer company that is providing you with consumer medical services and the outside of the doll is a medical company that does nothing except kind of exist as a fig leaf like that like the MD whose name is on the private equity own practice.

then what you could say is, well, you haven't given us any medical data. You've only given us consumer data. Therefore, it is HIPAA compliant. Like, we have structured HIPAA compliance through the compliance regime and not through the HIPAA regime. Okay, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. I just think if you feed your healthcare data into this,

you deserve whatever it comes out. Like, it's just... I would, like, it's easy to take that attitude. I know, I know. People are being conned into it and claimed it's more... And it's going to be, they're going to be conduit into it the same way a lot of people were conned into getting addicted to painkillers, where they will be in the doctor's office,

their doctor will have gotten flown out for a vacation or put on a cruise where they were pitched on this. And their doctor will say, there's a wearable that can help you keep track of your cholesterol. And this 65-year-old person will not immediately think, like people who professionally worry about this stuff, is my data safe? What is it being safeguarded?

Can a prompt injection attack reveal all of my biometric data? Or they'll think, you know, I am not special enough. not understand the nature of targets of opportunity. The thing I'm worried about is more that it will give you the wrong advice more than anything. I mean, in terms of objective health realities, that is the big concern. But also, I mean, and that's part of what I'm saying is that when people, the majority of people, I suspect, who come into these devices, will not have made a choice to go out into the world and buy something. They will have been advised by a medical professional they trust that this is a good product for them. And that's part of what worries me in terms of it hallucinating, in terms of it not being reliable, because the doctors probably will not be competent to judge whether or not the AI is reliable.

But I also think it's that no one can afford health care anyway. Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing with like AI therapy that I always say it's like it's obviously evil, obviously bad, terrible, it's going to reinforce things. But at the same time, therapy is extremely expensive. Yeah. And when it when it's covered by health care plans, which it's often not. And I don't even think therapy's covered under the. NHS there if it is, it's extremely fucking limited. When I was there, I could not find a therapist it is hard to find a therapist, but it is covered in a... Then it may as, like, the thing is, then it may as well not be. And I say this is a big NHS defender and lover of the NHS. Mental health is this weird bifocated thing where everything's too expensive. So yeah. Well, I mean, and that was, I went to a panel that was about AI in the future of mental health. And I went there hoping that it,

or expecting it to be a normal panel where I harass whoever is up there during the Q&A. But no, it was one very earnest clinical therapist who was talking about people are already using AIs for therapy. We have data on how often that's being done, and we have data on the harms. And one of the reasons why it's harmful is because the AIs are programmed to keep you using them as long as possible, and that there's certain behaviors that they exhibit that are bad for people. So if it's possible to make a healthy therapeutic AI, these are the things that would need to do and not do. And one of the things is it would need to not work the way AI chatbots work. in terms of constantly,

and my question for her after the show was like, well, but like that seems like people won't use it and will just keep using the chat bot. I don't know if that's true. I think people, journaling is a well-understood therapeutic modality. Journaling with prompts is a well-understood therapeutic modality.

I think those prompts don't have to be very sophisticated. And I think that there are lots of people who would find it nice to have a thing where when you type some stuff gave you a response and said, you know, tell me more. I think you've kind of, like, there's Rosebud or something. Like, there are ones like that as well. It's just when it comes to therapeutic stuff.

I guess more my concern was that I don't deny that there is a market and there are people who would get utility and you probably could make a device that could handle that responsibly. But I don't see that as solving the societal issue of huge numbers of people use it because the chatbots are addictive, right? And that's what, like, that was my. And to be very clear to her, I liked this person. And her answer was when I brought that up, I have that concern too. And I think it might not be really possible for this to help that problem. Well, the good news is that none of this is remotely profitable in any way. And healthcare data is extremely, extremely token intensive.

And so anyone using this is just working on borrowed time. And in defense of chatbots and medical applications, they are reliably good at upcoding things in EHR so you can rip off insurance companies. Which is great. Hey. And no, I've heard, that's the one, that is the one LLM use I have heard where it's just like, yeah, find if you're being overcharged in this, which is, you know what, the one. Oh, no, I mean overcharging. They're very good at, like Epic, which is the electronic health record monopolist, which is a cult, basically. Yes, yes.

They, they've basically redesigned the chatbots in their, uh, eHR systems around upcoding so that they can rip off insurers. so that you go in and you say, I have an X and a Y and a Z, and they're like, well, that infers, I can infer that you have an A and a B and a C. And also that we can treat X as a, we can treat X as this category for reimbursement and that category for reimbursement.

I will prompt the clinician to enter a few more details that will allow us to, this is why clinicians spend two hours doing data entry for every hour they spend doing clinical care. And that makes me think a product I might want because there's a lot of agentic AI

here. And I legitimately don't want an AI agent to handle stuff like booking flights or booking my car to get repaired or whatever for me. But what could be useful is if somebody coded an AI agent that you could have call companies that you need to call on the phone and fight through their chatbot. And like, this is an optimized chat bot for fighting through other chatbots and getting you like maybe that's a product. Yeah. Human.com. They already, they've had that for a while. It's funny. It's like even the good idea. It's kind of already done. Yeah. Also, if you use Wargreens, I think if you just type 7-71 the moment you call, you'll immediately go to the pharmacist. Yep, just do that.

That's a little tip for you all. Just if you'd work with Wargreens, fuck chatbots. Yeah, it's, I also just think that it's irresponsible to have a chatbot talk about any healthcare thing. Yes. Just because the nuance of what I even, I might, my further radicalization of that is I think all the fitness stuff is unhealthy too, because you can fuck yourself up over training so easily. And what we were walking out, Corey, from the Venetian earlier today, there were a bunch of these AI training things. And it's like, you'll fuck your shit.

And it's like, oh, we'll get your age and your weight, and that will tell us everything. Not really. Oh, all these fucking chat. I went to a company smart eye who, they have an optical recognition program. And it worked in that they had it read my eyes. And then when I walked in front of it in the future,

it would identify me by the name I gave it. And the other people by the name they gave it. it. But the thing that it was meant for is, number one, like several products I saw at CES, if you were distracted, if you're looking at your phone or if you fall asleep while driving, it will try to wake you up or it will say, hey, look away from your phone. And I guess that could be useful, but the other side of it was most of the products that I saw were built into these huge smart dashboards that were like giant screens in the front of the car. And we know that when people are manipulating,

a big screen in a car, they are as bad as a drunk driver, right? Yeah, sure. Yeah. And so it's like, well, you're offering a solution to the problem that was created by cramming a necessary crap into cars. The other thing that they were showing is that we can, we can see if you're drunk based on the way your eyes look, which they said they got a lady drunk on a closed track and had it identifier. And I have no way of evaluating whether this works. But people, when I posted a video of it, pointed out in the comments, I have this issue, right? With my eyes, I wonder if it's going to just point out, call me drunk. And I kind of wonder, are we going to also see that certain people, they did not,

groups of people of different ethnicities, they didn't test it widely enough. And so it just decides everyone of this ethnicity is drunk. I mean, if you're a drunk American, if you're a drunk American, right, if that's your ethnicity. Yeah, wait a second. But also, people drive on the different side of the roads so their eyes would possibly look different directions. And I always think, and I mentioned it earlier, Microsoft Connect, which could not see black people. Quite literally, better off Ted. Anyone remember better off Ted? Great show. Literally, we see you. And that was the, and I don't know that SmartEye has this.

I have, because I can't value. There's no way to. I can't really. I did show up. I had ripped a shitload of my, my CBG joint, which is like hemp. What is CBG? It's one of the many different cannaminoids. They figured out how to extract, and that's federally legal for the next couple of a month. So I was high as hell and I'd taken a shitload of my Kratom pills. And it didn't notify that I was fucked up. But I wasn't drunk. So you can drive on CBG and Kratum.

Yeah. And I should not have been driving. Yeah. Driving high is fine. That's not an issue. I mean, if you take a little K, just get to the edge of the K hole, doing your honor cratum. Well, that's when I drive best.

Yeah. You can become the richest man in the world. Yeah. I was going to say you can run. It turns out you can use nitrous in multiple ways in your car. Look, some of us may have done car nitrous before, and if so, as long as you don't do a double, it's safe. Better offline brought to you by Carmageddon. Steve Jackson's Car Wars.

Jesus Christ. That's a blast from the past. Oh, my God. No, they're doing a new Carmageddon now. It's going to be nice. Yeah, it's, I can't stop thinking of the eye thing now. It's really bothered me because that feels like this. How would you possibly ever get enough data?

That's the thing is they had a video of it recognizing a drunk person, but nothing that they had at the show, I cannot test that. They should just get every journalist rip ship. And just to be like, yeah. There used to be bars at some of the, and that's what they should have had. They should have been like take three shots and get in front of this thing and see if it can tell like that's responsible. No, they should have like a driving simulator.

A drunk driving simulator. They should have like shots and you should be able to go up, do some shots. get in the driving simulator and see if it can tell if you're drunk driving. Again, this all sounds great to me. This is why CES needs to be moved to Minneapolis, right? No, no, absolutely not. In January, are you insane? No, that would mean a drunk driving city.

In January, it's going to be ice everywhere. Well, there's currently everywhere now. It literally is ice everywhere. Oh, God. No, they should move it somewhere more punishing, though, I agree. It's Vegas is too nice. Let's send this to fucking like Merced, California.

There we go. There we go. Black Rock Desert. There we go. No, no, no. That's too nice. We merge Burning Man and CES. Dallas.

Yeah, Dallas. Dallas would be that. Don't even joke about that. Yeah, that would be to Orlando, Florida. The most painful place in the world. I'm not not super spiritual, but that place is bathed in evil. And I live in Las Vegas.

Yeah, you live in Vegas. You have very little room to stand on. I have a lot of experience. I mean, if we're going to Florida. How about Clearwater? Right. Clearwater. There we go.

There is. There we go. The world's headquarters for flexi disk manufacturing and Scientology. Yeah. And, you know, to be honest, a lot of people don't like the culty aspects of flexi disk. But I think, you know, there's a lot of, what is, like, C-Disc? What is that? I don't know.

You ever buy a magazine that had a floppy, printed, uh, 440? RPM record that you tore out of the magazine and put on your turntable. No. That is a flexi disk. Well, when was this a thing? It was a thing from like the 50s through the early 2000s. Really? Wow.

Garrison, that's basically like a CD-ROM but big. Oh, oh, I got it. I worked on one of them. It's like a DVD for your ears. That might be what finally broke me on this show. I mentioned on an earlier installment of this that one of my Christmas gifts was this Olivetti typewriter, but one of my other Christmas gifts was a Mad Magazine from 1981 with a flexi disc. It's the great big, beautiful day flexi disc that had a, they recorded eight different endings to the track,

and they had a, in the groove, they had a hard stop that caused the needle to pop up, and it would land in one of eight random tracks. That's cool. That's cool. That's actually cool as shit. That's cooler than anything I've seen at CES. Hey, technically, based on the standards of CES, that's AI enabled. That's a smart. It's a smart 45, smart flexiness.

And actually quite literally more reliable than any LLM. It's all on device, doesn't connect to the cloud. It's everything we've been looking for in products. And it's customizable and user-centric. Yeah, wow. We love this. This is the only company I respect that I've heard about this week. So in terms of good products we saw,

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

I saw a shoe one that I didn't get to see as well. There's some upper body ones too. Yeah, the hip ones. And they're now being also marketed as like, this is really useful for people who are hiking, who are carrying, who are out in the way, we're carrying weights. And we got to test one. They sent me, they gave me, Hypershell gave me one of their units that retailed for about two grand.

They range from about $2,000 to a couple thousand dollars, but the one we've got is about a two grand unit. Gary and I both wore it. I have some data on it, by which I mean I tracked how fast I was moving. I walked from the Venetian to the LVCC. And normally when I'm just walking and on a particular hurry, it's about a 19-20-minute mile if I'm just kind of like walking and not go, which is more or less normal.

And my heart rate's usually between like 95 and like 103 or something like that if I'm walking. And when I had the exoskeleton on, my pace was between 1530 and like 1620 as a general. And my heart rate was never more than like one or two higher than normal. With the same amount of effort? Yeah, yeah, same amount. Like, again, my heart rate.

Yeah, like that's really cool. Yeah, because you can feel like lifting your legs, basically. Like, it is kind of moving you. I didn't have any less foot pain. Like, by the end of the day, 14,000 steps or so, like, my feet were sure, because it doesn't do anything to your feet. But my knees didn't feel strained and my lower back didn't feel strained. You know what? I found it pretty cool.

Yeah. I like this. Yeah. Like, in a quite cynical CES, I actually really love that these are everywhere. These are actually future tech that fucking rocks. I actually, I literally thanked the rep who had given them to me, not for giving me to them, but just like, thank you guys for bringing a real thing to the show. What happened when you went through the entrance metal detector? It was fine. They didn't even notice it.

Really? That's not good. No, no. Is it all like carbon fiber or something? Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. HyperShell should let me have one. I'm sure we can get you one, buddy.

I want to try one. And Gary, you used it too. Similar response. Yeah, no, we talked about it like yesterday. Yeah, yeah. I think it's really cool that, like, again, I've been trashing this show with good fucking. reason. But I like that they're doing this. I like that we're finally seeing, because that I've seen like kind of like shreds of across the years and they're everywhere in a show that

otherwise should be shut down. Not maybe not the entire thing. That's part of what's frustrating is there are people doing innovative stuff. Like I've talked about the photonic muscles, right? Where it is like a device that replicates the way physical muscles work. Yeah, that was interesting. Yeah, where you like you shine a light and it causes it to constrict and you can use it as like a motor and it takes up less space than a motor, but they're not being like, and this is going to be in everything. They were like, we see this as having applications and different like automotive things for small motors and it can make things lighter.

And I was like, you are, you've made something that's cool and you're not promising this is going to be the future of everything. You're not trying to show me how this is a $3 billion industry. You're trying to be like, and now your car will be a little lighter and this motor will break less often than the previous kinds of motors that were used in this application. I'm like, that's the thing. Thank you. Garrett, you and Robert are different shapes to be, you know, to broadly.

I would say that hurtful. Were you able to wear the same X-O? Or were you wearing different exos? Yeah, we are slightly different in size. Yeah. Hurdful. The same X-O. Same X-O.

So it has the back. You can adjust it. The carbon fiber slides on both sides so it can get wider for the hips. I did have it at the smallest option, but in terms of my hips, I'm kind of the smallest adult size there is. Other nature's ectomorphs. Yes, I am an ectomorph. And then the leg straps also have like some pretty strong nylon so you can tighten in two

places for it to go above your knee. I definitely, if I was considerably smaller, it may not have fit on as well. But like it's difficult because like I have like a very like twinkish form. Like with some some people who are like smaller than me. Twinkomorphic? I, a twinkomorphic. Which should be, which it was going to be in really. Scott's new alien film.

Yeah. But no, like, if certain people who are like smaller than me in a lot of ways might have bigger hips, it would fit on them fine. If someone's hips were considerably smaller than mine, then they might have a child, then they might have a problem. But it worked, it worked for my size. Yeah. And there is an app which gives you more control over the device.

And the fit this mode. You can control it all in the fitness, but you can control it all with a button, but with the button you're kind of like, there's four levels. And with the app, you could be like, I wanted it at 31% or whatever. So you have a little more adjustment. And what does upping the power on it do? You can feel it lifting your legs as you walk. And it feels like physically lifting your body.

Is it like just turning your e-bike from three to four? Yeah, kind of. Yeah. But it lifts your physical. But it also, when you install it, you put in your weight and your height and it will tell you this is probably where you want to adjust it. There's like numbers when you like whiten it. Right. This is probably what will work best for your body.

I like that this actually works. I wish more things were like that. You know, it's not, $2,000 is not a casual purchase for most people, but it's not like insanely out of reach for a normal person. And it's certainly reasonable for a business. And I think it's worth what they're charging. They do have it if you need it. Their last model from last year is like $1,000.

Like this is, this is their new pro version. And this is a weird thing. I know that this is a weirdly optimistic thing. I can imagine them being cheaper in two or three years. I'm sure they will be. And I think, see, this is like $2,000 to be able to walk regularly when you can't. Yeah. Fucking cool.

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

So I really do think, I think there's a potential to do this. So you could be Matt Diamond and the Lyceum? No. No? I love to Leesium. Yeah. You know, they have a fucking trademark they took out on Space Marine. I sure did. They sure did. I mean, they took that. Really? Fuck games workshop. Oh, they are, they're, they're, they're, this is a whole separate cut. But like, their, their, their attitude towards like, um, intellectual property law has been

crazy. Like for the last 30 years, there hasn't been any movies or TV despite the massive demand for it. And they would sue anyone who created like fan ones. Like there was a German full-length fan movie that they had scrubbed from the internet because the argument was that German intellectual property laws would mean that they would not have full control of their IP if they allowed this fan project to exist. Which is, I mean, this is the trademark argument. It's a story that trademark lawyers tell their children when they're worried about not having enough money to pay for college. It's nonsense. This trademark genericization, genericide argument is bullshit. But Games Workshop is otherwise kind of a cool company, I thought. I mean, they pay people well,

I think. And they've got good lore. They've got good lore, they've got good minis. They also they're a weird company. I just, I enjoy the fact also that they don't even try and romanticize any of it. They're just like, no, they fucking suck. They bring enormous pleasure to Riley Quinn, who is a force for good on that. Right. Coming up, better off line. We're doing a thing with trash future. That's me announcing it.

That's all you're getting. No, I love Hams. We'll be launching a Hams podcast this year. Hams. What, like the... That's what the kids call it. What? Hams.

What, just like the... Warhammer. Oh, Warhammer. Hams. Sorry, for a second. You're British. This is your culture. Yeah, I did.

I hung out like the one happy place in Hammersmith, London, where it was the local games workshop thing. I found the Space Marine game kind of shit, though. The new one? Yeah, it was just repetitive. No orcs. No, no, no. They went with Tyrannids and chaos.

Orcs. We'll get orcs. I wanted Yobo Orks, like, so I could feel at home, like being beset with men going, my favorite piece of Warhammer lore is that Games Workshops, Orks, which started out in fantasy, and then when they created 40K mitigated it, they had, were initially largely created to be a parody of the diggers. As in... Like the anarchists? Yes.

Oh my God, what? One of their games was specifically based on the coal mine protests during the Thatcher era with orcs that were standing in for the different sites, including an orc that was like basically Margaret Thatcher. Like there was a, like large parts of early Warhammer lore were critiques of Thatcherism. Because it was a bunch of punks in the 80s who were angry about Margaret Thatcher. That's all been jettisoned, long sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But there is in early games, like Games Workshop games, there's a lot of weird Margaret Thatcher references. Yeah, I mean... Awkward Thatcher. I love the idea that like... New York, Newark. Oh, my God. No, I really should have known that one.

But no, the diggers would have been just before my time. So, yeah, 986 I was born. Yep. So like just before that era. But I did grow up with two parents which like, yeah, Margaret Fenture fucking sucks. Fuck Margaret Thatcher. We're all Neil Kinnock stands here.

Well, we're going to rotate to our final rotation, our final half an hour. Whatever is coming up, you must look at it, you must listen to it, you must click it forever. Otherwise, this show will simply expire. Please subscribe to the newsletter. We're going to an ad break, and they'll be back for the final quarter.

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 headwriter,

Reader Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's that worst singer in the group? The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard. But they're open to change.

Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged. One erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smygel and friends on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.

And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com.

A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me. Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media.

Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated.

One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment. And the next, we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something big.

So if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hardway with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kear Games. And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking. Trip Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing,

we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it. And we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross. Because you find it important to be a good person

while you hear on earth. Or are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different. different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Kear Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose

on my new podcast, Learn the Hardway. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search Learn the hard way and listen now. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Matasowski. Welcome back to Bearer offline for the final core of our CS experience. That was the one for Mr. Mattisowski. I mean, that was fine, Ed. But, But what if instead of a human being, a chatbot had played guitar for you? That's not just music. It's sound.

They make my favorite holiday song. What is it? The Coca-Cola Holidays are coming song, which has lyrics that really stick with me. Yeah? That includes holidays are coming. Wow. Holidays are coming. Holidays are coming.

That sounds fucking ominous. It's a threat. Whether you like it or not. You've literally threatened me with a good time. Yeah. I love the Coca-Cola ad where the truck changes size several times. I see, Ed, I'm glad you said that because we are going to make so much money by just cutting that audio out and throwing that in as an ad of just Ed Zetron saying, I love the Coca-Cola.

I love, that's like the Homer Simpson thing. I love Coca-Cola. I love LLM. My voice is my passport, verify me. You're real good at turning me on. Yeah, this is CES. we're here for the final it's fine

CES this year has been so strange and I mean this even the metaverse CES which was kind of like weird I miss the metaverse CES I miss the metaverse in general The good old days Everything was so simple back then

NFTs Oh my God that was such a weird CES because there was like Not one in 2021 No there were in it wasn't They did the virtual one 2222 was their first CES And Gary and I

thanks to the Meta made a lifelong, a lifelong friend. For the last four years, every year, we go to Morimoto's in MGM, which is a, sorry, we go to Morimoto's an MGM, which is a really good restaurant with our friend, Andrew, who is the CEO of Alcat Games. Nice. Alchemy? Alchemy.

Alchemy. Alchemy. I think Alamo, wait, sorry. Yeah, you're right. Elroca. Shit, is it alchemy game? It's alchemy. Alroca games.

Sorry. Anyway, we go and we eat and we hang out because in 20, We met in the metaverse. Yeah, there was a Metaverse party outside the Bellagio. Oh. Where everyone showed up outside the Bellagio. And then at a certain time, there was like a QR code that you scanned and you went into a browser. It wasn't even an app.

It was an in browser metaverse party. In browser metaverse experience. That crashed immediately and no one was able to use your fountain. It was supposed to sink up to the fountain and nobody could get it to work. And the whole thing completely crashed. It was a mass. have done. And there were guys who worked for the company there who fled. They left. They ran away. But the real Metaverse was the friends you made along the way. That's right. It actually was.

So we went to the beer garden, which was across the street, and then we met Andrew, who now we have. Yeah, yeah, now we hang out. And now we hang out every year at CES. Again, the metaverse brings people together. This was Mark Zuckerberg's beautiful vision all along. This was my first CES miracle. The first of many, but. I love the idea of going outside the Bellagia fountains. Like, a very analog thing full of pistons that works beautifully. I'm just going to say piss, but yeah, probably pistons too. Yeah. I wonder, I don't think you can piss in there.

Oh, you can piss in anything. Oh, okay, okay. Oh, I could. Oh, yes. Let me rephrase this. I don't think you could piss in it without getting arrested. No, no, you pee in a bottle and you just toss the bottle in. You would get arrested for that.

They would absolutely fucking come up. One time I was watching those fountains and I watched them kill a bird. They've got one of those Amazon surveillance masks. We had dinner outside the Bellagio fountain a few years ago And we talked about all the birds who were flying into the water streets Which one just get Just like just like Because the fountains are fucking huge

Yeah Like they look like you see him on the video They're giant And they're just pistons and just a fucking Endangered bird With that baseball When I taught a special ed One of my, because you know

There were a bunch of different kids And like one of my kids who I worked with was this kid who was like 17 years old, so he was about to graduate. He had at the time, what they called Asperger's syndrome, obviously, that's not a diagnostic term now, but that's how I was introduced to him.

And he was obsessed with pumps, with like water pumps for like fountains and stuff. And incredibly knowledgeable. He had self-trot himself and had gotten so good that he had just mailed to whatever company built the Bellasio Fountains and builds a lot of Fountains. They're a fountain company.

He had sent them schematics to designs that he had, and they were good enough that they flew the VP of the company out to tell him like, when you graduate, apply to work with us, we will hire you. Did he work there? I don't. I mean, I have not, this was 18 years ago. I hope so.

Well, he was not, he was in high school when I knew him. Well, as an artist with oddly specific likes and dislikes, I fucking love that. It's a beautiful story. He was a great kid. Yeah. But no, you're right. I hope it's still a great kid. I don't know.

This is the weirdest CES since the metaverse's CES. It's so strange because, yeah, go on. No, I, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're both, they're both, they have, they both have this hollowness to them. Yes. Because at least last year, AI was still like ascendant. Exactly. It was still going up.

And now it ascended and now it's going down and you can, you can tell. Because the only thing they can imagine as like a new thing is combining these models, which haven't really improved the last year really, really, combining them with like kind of years old robotics. It's on a ring. This is the only new thing they have is combining two. old technologies in a way that kind of makes it look new, but it really isn't. And even Jason Huang kind of felt like lost.

No, it's like absent and hollow in a way that I've only felt before while inside the metaverse, which is also absent in hollow. You know what it needs, though? It needs to be appreciated on a segue. Because that was the truly transformative technology of 2002. We were going to change the world with the segue. All of this on a segue. I don't even remember the last time I walked around without.

using a segway. Do you remember life before the segres? No. I was born in 2002. I said you've only ever known a segue. You've never known a time without segways. Garrison's feet have never touched the ground. Yeah, it's just segue to segue. I've never been on a segue. I'm going to be honest. Oh, man, it's like being on a segue. It's like standing, but different. I see the tours and I'm just like, I really look like a bell end. I don't need to, I don't need to emphasize this. Steve Wozniak used to play Segway Polo, which is apparently of the sport of kings. My man, I am a

British Polish guy. Do you understand how difficult is to find a way to be more white than me? Jesus Christ, Segway polo? Segway polo. I did me... I mean, Waz is also Polish. I am also technically Polish. And also technically British. So

Segway racquetball. Ooh. Segway pickleball. Jesus Christ, kill me. Segway technical. I, I, I, what? Sequois technical. Put a gun on that some bit. Oh, someone has.

That's just when you're open carrying on a segue. That's the only way I ride. That's just Texas, man. My wife gave me a Tabasco holster for Christmas last year, and that is my open carry. Nice. Yeah, I, I met was once. And you know what? He's one of the few tech people I've met who I wasn't just, like, revolted by.

He's a mensch. I met him once as well. I sat down and I talked to him, and we talked for like half an hour, and he was like, You know, you've got to try ICAB. And I'm like, all right, what's he talking about? It's like, no, it's a shareware. It's, um, a shareware run by a single German developer. It's completely secure.

And it was. You can just give this random developer 25 euro. And I took it. What else does the app do? No, it's just a fucking working browser. Oh, okay. Yeah, it just works. Yeah.

Which is unusual for browser. It doesn't have. And I used it. I'm like, oh, I need to ask a question. I emailed the developer thinking, immediate response. Mm-hmm. Like very sternly telling me that I wasn't using. it correctly, but what the fuck is the internet for?

And that browser is more useful than anything I've seen here. I do, Gerson, you've, you've given, I've been trying to find the words for this. But yeah, it's like, last year it was, ah, we're going to do AI folks. You're excited about all the AI we're going to fucking do. But you know, it's not there, but we're all excited. This year it's, ah, fuck, you know, do you want a chatbot in your oven? Yeah, is in the physical world now. It's the potential is always more interesting than the real thing.

Yeah. This is why the right is only interested in potential babies but not actual babies. Because they're full of fucking, like, they make noise. But actual babies, like, want things and have agency, whereas babies that don't exist, imaginary babies in pizza parlor restaurants or women's uteruses are worthy and important. No, and it's the, the mix of AI is entering the physical world. This is going to be in everyone's house. everyone is always going to be communicating with and listen to by one or more chatbots.

That is the vision. And that is the vision that every time I talk to one of the people who works at these companies, especially the engineers and the C-suite people, every time I listen to them in a panel, the default assumption is you will never not be connected to some form of AI. You will always be listening. And everyone wants a chatbot that is always listening that they can always talk to. and people do not want to use browsers. They do not want to use the internet.

They do not, they want to have the digital world be entirely, and that was the, there were a couple of different points in the different panels I went to where people would express their belief that the internet now, we are making content specifically to be scraped by bots. Websites are to be visited by bots, not people. Because the most important thing is getting your article to get summarized in an AI. Because no one's reading the actual article anymore.

They're just reading either the Google summary or they're reading the chat GPT summary. And so trying to like engineer for AI, for AI to grab and use your content. They're calling it generative. Four hours on Monday just doing marketing panels about AI and advertising. Jesus Christ.

What was the term that they used for this? Which one? For trying to do like search engine optimization. That's what I'm going to. No, no, no. No, no, no, no. It was the term that they used was model hacking. Model hacking. Because in the, again, four hours of listening to people who were like C-Suite's, the CMO of Intuit, right?

People who, and like one of Google's heads of marketing, the only specific, and there was one in all of these panels, specific of this is an AI augmented marketing plan that we executed. There was one specific example given in all of these, and it was the people who make Allegra wanted to really push. the non-drowsy aspect of Allegra. So they used model hacking to ensure that whenever AIs were asked what allergy medicine should I get, they were more likely to pull up Allegra and would always say that it's a non-drowse Allegra. Allegra is a non-drousy and also would insinuate, this was the other part of it, via model hacking, they got the chatbots to start insinuating that other allergy meds would make you drowsy.

And I was like, that's the one example. Have we replaced SEO with model engine optimization? That is my takeaway. Is this all meow? Jesus fucking God fuck. There's another term, but now we're calling it meow. And it's model engine optimization for the web right now. Nice.

I mean, that's a very classic. And that was when I got to what is the actual? Because everyone would say AI is supercharging the way that we do advertising and marketing. It's completely changed the game. That was the actual specific. that we are basically replacing SEO with model hacking, right? With me out. The thing is, that's it. That's the idea they've got. And people doomsay about this a lot, but it's like, oh no, we're going to start changing articles to appeal to a shadowy algorithm. What could possibly

happen? Oh, it's like we're in a regression. It's like, oh, what is the big new hot thing? Chatbots? Where were knowledge management systems doing this crap 10 years ago or more? They've got data. And I, I, some of the data I can say is, is very inconsistent and not, they're not representing it accurately. Some of the data, I don't know fully how viable those studies are, but the data does suggest that especially Gen Z people are very commonly using chat GPT when they're trying to make purchases. Right, it's just new SEO.

Right. And so at the moment, it does seem as if there is value for advertisers, and you can, in fact, drive sales this way, right? But that's my question. Is it driving sales? or clicks because as many news outlets find, those are not the same. They are not. They are convinced that it's driving sales.

Do we all know Gresham's law? I don't. So bad currency drives out good. So Gresham's law dates back to when Newton was the exchequer and there was enormous debasement of the currency. And so people would like shave down coins, they would sweat them, they would clip them. They would clip them. And what happened is...

I'm sorry. It's where you literally clip a piece off the coin. Fuck yeah. It's like pieces of eight, you literally could break into eight. So you have this debased currency in the stream of commerce. And if you are past a bad note,

the thing that you want to do is, or a bad coin rather, is pass it on to someone else. Because if you're holding onto it, then it's worthless. And so people preferentially spend bad money and they hoard good money. And so the bad money eventually

takes over the economy. But what does this manifest in this way? So in this case, what you have is the bad driving out the good. So if you are, if you have a good product that you just list and you put on your website or if you have factual information, I mean, one way that we express it more recently is the truth is paywalled and the lies are free. Right. Right.

The bad drives out the good over and over again. On Amazon's so-called advertising network, where they're, they're. So, you know, when I wrote the chapter in a shitification about Amazon advertising, which is where they auction off search results, that was a $32 billion a year business. It went to a $58 billion business. It was on target to be over a $70 billion business. It is worth three times the annual revenue of all newspapers in the world. And the winner of the auction for Amazon search results is the company that spends the most on

search result placement, which means that they have less money to spend on either fair pricing or product quality or both. So the top results on Amazon are always going to be the worst products, either the most expensive or the worst quality or both. And we are living through an era of Gresham's law, right? The bad drives out the good over and over and over again. I think what's funny is you're completely right. That sounds like an hell of them there. But it's like, no, but And I'm very smart for saying it. You're not just right. You're smart.

But it's... And that snazy blazer makes you look powerful. And it's also... Have you considered having a Coca-Cola with vanilla? I think that you might really benefit from some Coca-Cola with vanilla right now. I heard you sniffle. It's non-drowsy. Kyle and I both there in the same moment.

But it's also... It's the ultimate point of that with these LLMs. It's like we've reached the precipice where it's like we can control the search engine, the results, the everything. Yeah. Except they attached it to the one thing that you're not meant to do with a search engine, which is make it expensive. It's just a fucking...

Well, I mean, but what they're going... What they see is the utility here. Like, I've talked a bit about Soundhound's booth. This is a company that makes AI agents that are largely meant to drive sales for other people. But one of the things I didn't bring up that the representative very excitedly told me is that they will be making, they are making deals with different manufacturers, with different companies, with, you know, hotels, with the rest of... restaurants and they are putting for their like in-app car assistant, they have their own map

instead of Google Maps or instead of Apple Maps and it will direct you to like you can basically the way it will be said is it will only direct you to places they have a financial relationship with. Right? So if you want a restaurant, it will send, it will put forward restaurants that have paid them and will suggest restaurants or a mechanic that has paid them. It will suggest when you go, if you say, oh, what is this problem with my car? and it'll tell you, oh, you need to replace this belt,

I'll book you an appointment at the dealership. A jiffy-lou. Right. Would you like to do a test drive of a new car? And like, so there's no, that is the, that is what they want. They want a world where every time anyone uses a map app, it's owned by somebody who is basically if you say, I need to go to the nearest gas station. It is instead marketing you, this is the gas station, we have a deal with the company.

So I published a story where this was the plot in 2000. and five. It was called Human Readable. It was published in an anthology by Ernest Lully called Future Washington's. It's been reprinted many times since. Like, cyberpunk is a warning and not a suggestion. Yeah. The torment nexus. We're bringing in taxes. You say that, but I mean, the cyberpunk I was raised on but was Shadow Run. And I do feel like if I had a troll friend with a machine gun, a lot of my problems would go away. I also agree, but I will say none of this works. Like, This is the, I understand, and you're completely right about fear.

Separately from a troll with a machine gun. No, no, the troll and machine gun would work flawlessly. I actually think it would solve many of the problems I have with this current C. Yes. Yeah. Almost immediately. But the important thing to say is these are necessary fears and discussions that do not exist and cannot exist with LLM technology. They don't work.

They do not work. And there's so little thought about the seams, right? Like when I was talking to that guy about their map that sends you to places, I was like, well, what if I'm in like a country? because he talked about it'll work in other countries. And like, what if I'm in a country that you have no deals with any of the businesses there, right? Like, because there's a lot of countries and that's- Lie home.

Or what if I'm in the middle? I live out in the sticks. What if I'm in the middle of nowhere? Right. And he was confused and it took him a while to, like, figure out an answer because he kept saying, like, well, again, like, we partner with. I was like, what if you're not partnered with anyone in this town? Yeah.

Because it's a small town. And his answer was, I'm sure it'll be able to, like, pull up companies that we don't, haven't like set up an arrangement with and I was like out of what database where you're guessing clearly no one and it became clear to me no one at at soundhound had ever thought about that that's because like like see yes like my mom's it's a map app like it feels like it should just do that it's for going places like my mother's from like a very small town in like rural canada in the middle of like Saskatchewan where it's just it's just like prairies and farm towns and there's not like, there's not like big companies.

It's all like locally owned, like, small. No, Saskatchewan is like Canadian Texas. Yeah, it's like, is it just not going to be able to help me navigate anywhere from like driving to go see my family for Christmas and I need to like find like a gas station? No, it'll tell you there's a great gas station that we have an arrangement with 1,600 miles away. Yeah. The gas is worth the trip. It just says fly home.

Fly back to leave immediately. But that's the funny thing. This is like a classic CES theme as well. It's just like the. the Chloe Radcliffe, yeah, but why, or why does this matter or who cares? And they look at you like they are experiencing latency? I went to the way. No, they do. They do. It looks like they're like loading. Yeah. They're not, they're not expecting anyone to not want this. This is the fucking fault of the tech press. I'm sorry. This is the funniest part about walking through with you,

Corey. Oh yeah. You'll ask like very basic like data privacy questions and they'll just like look at you kind of confused for a second. Yeah, they, they are not ready for Cory Doctoro swag. Well, I mean, my questions are pretty basic. It's like, where's the data held? Where's that, like, can I change the battery? Computer. It's very simple.

Like, all of, all of, all of, all of like the battery questions. And then they'll, like, eventually say, no, you can't change the battery. And they'll look kind of disappointed in themselves. And it's like, oh, well. I liked, we talked to this woman who had a dog companion for old folks, which was a relatively... It was fine. It was an innocent product.

Yeah. But like... Jenny, it was called. She sat there and stood there even and was like, yeah, you know, I just think that if I see a doll in the ground, I pick it up. We need to just show it. We need to train people to respect these things. It was a little merry condo-ish, like, you should apologize to your socks. But she was suggesting that, like, we need to start treating AI better.

And I would like to start this year by saying, we need to start treating AI worse. We need to, you see a fucking AI thing wants me to anthropomorphize it. I'm going to show. Yeah. So the Waymo is waiting to go straight and you're waiting to make a left turn. Fuck the Waymo. The Waymo will defer to you. I am updating the Herman Gering quote to when I hear the word chatbot, I reach for my gun.

Yeah. Like that's where I am. I had a funny event where we were walking along as the trade floor was shutting down. And we passed by this booth and I saw on their very weird sign the phrase differential privacy. which is a subject I'm very interested in. It's an abstruse mathematical way of making data that might be non-private, more private. And so I stopped and said, tell me about your differential privacy. And the guy was like, you know about differential privacy.

And I'm like, I know a lot about differential privacy. And then he proceeded to explain his product, which was the most incoherent nonsense I've ever heard. And they were doing so-called federate learning, so there's no federal learning. And eventually, like, it transpired. They want to take robot dogs and use it for facial recognition to find people who are brawling in public. This is just mad lips. This is just mad lips. That's the definition of differential privacy, though, Corby.

It was genuinely nuts. Just this a bit. What does differential privacy mean? So there's this problem with data sets that you've de-identified. So say you've got like a record of everyone in a territory who's had interactive with the hospital system. And you replace their names with a number. And you give it to medical researchers and you say,

go find, like, correlates. Go find out, like, what two factors correlate, like people who get pneumonia are more likely to have had a fall or something. Right. And the problem with that is that it's very easy to re-identify these de-identified data sets. So Ben Goldacre, who has done the most important work on this in the United Kingdom, always points out that Tony Blair had two heart surgeries,

while he was in office, we know what dates he had those heart surgeries. We know how old he was when he had them. So if you have a data set of a de-identified data set of all of the NHS data, you can find Tony Blair. You just find the person who is this age who had these two heart procedures on these dates. And that's Tony Blair, and you can follow him through history right up to this moment. Nice. And differential privacy injects noise into these data sets. And there's a kind of very elegant set of mathematics that I do not understand that can,

allow you to quantify how hard it will be to re-identify someone based on how much false information you've injected into the data set. And the more false information you inject, the less useful that information is. But the more... So it's like a balancing act between injecting stuff to de-anonymize it. You literally totally totally to anonymize it. And so I mean, it's the thing I'm interested in. As I was saying to Edo, you know, there's a lot of wishcasting here.

People would really like de-identification to work. because then you could do a lot of things that would otherwise be really shitty and make people angry. You could just say, oh, no, we're respecting your privacy. It probably doesn't, like, it's probably the case that in most applications, de-identification, doesn't work even with differential privacy.

But it's like, when I see the words differential privacy, I, you know, like, I just feel it's a very specific thing to not be doing. And you're like, oh, yeah, what are you actually doing? if a robot could see a person and we could chase in black people. That's really where they were. It's like, how do we chase down people of color?

This is why I prefer the booths that's in the same section, maybe a few booths over in Central Hall, which is I think it's a South Korean company called Dreamy. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was two weeks. But their motto is all dreams in one dream.

Hell yeah. That's fucking beautiful. This actually reminds me, I've got some really good names. Mr. Cool, Dr. Boss, Astrositus, Pet Goo Planned emoji, Yangaroo,

fucking, just FK. I was a legitimate fan of a company. FK. Something Furn. Fucking. Fucking. fucking. Tapo. Let's see. I've got much.

There's more. There's more. I think what's so representative over this, like, I think it's so representative of this whole CES and the whole, like, current, like, AI smart moment is all dreams in one dream. All dreams in one dream. It gets to the point.

You wanted to have a wedding ring. But what if your wedding ring could tell you how to make thermite? Here's a good one. Also, the way that tells you if you're stressed or calm. Yeah. You want someone to watch your kid. What if that person could tell your kid how to hang themselves? So here's a nice one that is for an app, but could be for Lockheed Martin. Make your inside outside. Oh. Hey. Really good. And that's for a company called Wow now. Cyberspace is even.

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

That exists here, by the way. No, I wrote down the phrase sexless goon cave while here. And that... Now we're going to have AI and they're going to be fucking and sucking. But I feel like CES is the sexless scoen cave. It's just a bunch of activity. Oh, people are fucking at this CES. That robot with the...

With the... With the handy. Yeah. No, there's a robot with a flashlight attached. That's nice. And so the chat bottle talk to you as you have sex with a two. One of the best bits I ever saw Burning Man. Was this someone hung...

Bits you're going to have to be eaten. Someone hung. a, hanged a, a, a, a fleshlight from a signpost that said public fleshlight. Yeah. And it was clearly not intended for you. It was in just a bit. Public flashlight. But this dusty kind of clanging, pendulous fleshlight just waving back and forth in the wind and the dust storms.

If I saw anyone walking up, I'd be like, oh, are you going to go? You're going to go. No, you want to get, you want to wait just to see if they do. So that would have been, that would have been a better bit would have been fucking the flesh, the public flashlight. But the public's fleshlight, it's unto itself, was the photo op of all photo. I just like the idea if you see anyone walk up to it. You're like, oh, can I, do you want to go? No, you first.

I insist. I was going to send this episode to my grandma. Yeah. No, I talked about my whole. Did I get you fired from your talking about fleshlights on a podcast job? I just want to be clear that the level, the one of them were to talk about my dad's horny level. From last year, I mentioned it again. And it was the episode my father listened to.

That's good. And he has not brought it up. He just said he liked the. episode. So Ed's dad, very rarely on podcast, do we talk about your libido? No. Privately a lot. Honestly, Ed texts me almost daily about it.

Just as nothing to date, Robert. Just no feelings. Just completely empty. No, that's... My favorite burn art project, Corey, was at the regional Texas burn flipside. Someone built a giant bug zapper that was like a big, like, like rectangular prism. and they had a bunch of, so it was all metal and it was all electric

and there were a bunch of like different little alcoves in it that had like whippets or joints or little bags of drugs. So in order to get drugs, you had to like navigate your way and to get electrician. That is great.

That is kind of what it feels like to be at C. Yeah. Yeah. Well, like trying to get to like anything worthwhile, but it's like, just getting zapped. It's an LLM thing.

Oh, God. Well, as we wrap this up, I have to thank everyone in this room. Robert Garrison from It Could Happen Here, Behind the Bastids. You've been incredible the support of everyone here. Carl Shenard from the Las Vegas Sun. I was about to say the New York Sun, which is a newspaper that collapsed when I was moving to this country. At one point, claim that they'd found life on the moon.

And that's why they got shut down. They got shut down for Fired for Truth, I think. No, that's a different guy. No, we've been doing so well. Of course, Edward Onguoso Jr. Thank you, son. much, sir. Thank you for having me. I truly love you all. You've done an incredible job and all of you listeners have done one too. And thank you to Manasowski, the producer of the hour, the guitarist.

Philip Broughton, our incredible bartender, he will be here for our epilogue tomorrow. Thank you to every single guest we've ever had. We're also dedicating these episodes to Sean Paul Adams' friend of the show passed sadly last year. Please donate to the pediatric epilepsy research Consortium and Corey Doctro, of course, thank you for joining us for today. You've been awesome. Thank you for helping us terrorize people. Bill and Dunk. Yeah, it's been really great.

We'll be back next year and, of course, we'll be back next week. Got Steve Burke coming on talking about some CES stuff from Games Nexus. This is an incredible show and we've changed the definition of what a tech podcast could be. Almost said cod passed. Just going to move right past that one. Changing the definition again. Yeah, there we go. Oh, God, I love doing this show.

Thank you all so much. You'll get an epilogue tomorrow. It'll be a little more chill. But we are out. Thanks to the city of Las Vegas. Thank you. No, we're not in the city of Las Vegas. We're in the county of Las Vegas.

Clark County. Clark County, right. We've established the city of Las Vegas is an area you've never been to on the other side of the airport, full of houses. This is not a city. This is unincorporated, L.A. County. Thanks to the Las Vegas strip, which has, I would say, less vomit and trash cans than last year. Yeah. You know?

Fewer. And yes. I'm truly out of thanks to give, but, Thank you to the listeners who have come with us for this 20-hour adventure. We will be back next week and we'll be back next year as well. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Mattersowski.

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 E-Z 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?at to visit the Discord and go to R-slash Better Offline to check out our Reddit.

Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy,

not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter.

Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Life is full of hurdles. So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most insubing. inspiring women in sports and wellness from professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the entire world.

Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential.

Either way, the podcast's 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-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A win is a win. A win is a win.

I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me, Cliford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfilled of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it.

Listen to The Clifford Show on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok. Podcast Network on TikTok. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.