Better Offline - CES 2026: Part One (Monday)

Episode Date: January 6, 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 the first episode, Ed introduces you to Better Offline’s CES coverage, we talk about NVIDIA’s tepid press conference, smart glasses, LLMs on TV and Robert’s new exoskeleton. Featuring Ed Ongweso Jr. (The Tech Bubble Newsletter), David Roth (Defector), Scott Stein (CNET), Lisa Eadicicco (CNN) and Robert Evans (Behind The Bastards).We’ll be here all week - one episode from Monday, then two from Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and an epilogue from Saturday.David Roth, Defector: https://bsky.app/profile/davidjroth.bsky.social Defector: Defector.comIt’s Christmastown Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/its-christmastown/id1407429849 Ed Ongweso Jr.: https://bsky.app/profile/bigblackjacobin.bsky.social The Tech Bubble Newsletter: https://thetechbubble.substack.com/ Matt Binder: https://bsky.app/profile/mattbinder.bsky.social https://mashable.com/author/matt-binderScott Stein https://www.cnet.com/profiles/scottstein8/ Lisa Eadicicco https://www.cnn.com/profiles/lisa-eadicicco Robert Evans: https://bsky.app/profile/iwriteok.bsky.social Donate in Sean-Paul’s honor: https://www.perc-epilepsy.org/ YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. --- 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.

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Welcome to this year's incredible coverage of the Las Vegas-based Consumer Electronics Show, and I'm sitting in the Palazzo Hotel, and we've got a fully stocked bar, tacos, and the love and warmth that only comes from the power of friendship. We're going to be here all week bringing you the news and views from the ends of the tech industry's largest conference each day with a rotating cast of incredible people across multiple 30-minute blocks. My bartender Phil Broughton will keep me liquid. My producer Matt Asowski will keep me sane.

And my editor, Matt Hughes, will feed me stories, along with my guests from the show floor and my own goddamn eyes. Now, our first contestants are, of course, the wonderful Mr. Edward on Guasso, Jr. Hello, my friends. How are you doing? And he writes the wonderful tech bubble newsletter. And of course, David Roth of Defector who's joining us today. Hey, how's it gone?

Hell yeah. And Matt Binder of Mashabal. Welcome back, Matt. Hey, it's great to be here. This is like an annual thing now. Two years in a row is annual. It counts. It counts. So today, I thought the show floor was open and it wasn't, but that just meant that Ed, David and I went to watch the Jensen Huang CES keynote. And I must say, I have watched

some shit in my time. And I was, I was quite, I was quite bored, but not because I didn't understand. I was bored because I did understand. I was sitting there just doing, what, no, there were things he said during it that did not make sense. Yeah, you were bored and upset and I was bored and bored, which is an important distinction. Now, for those of you who actually want content about the keynote, don't expect that. Don't not expect that at all, because Jensen Huang did not actually announce anything new. Six new chips, Vera Rubin GPU. They're all, every single thing he announced today was either three or six months old.

Even the video of the dorky robot inside, this thing called the Omniverse. The Omniverse, by the way, and Ed is just looking at me. just like, just like, oh, God. The Omnibus is Invidia's little simulation space for robots. An imagination station. Yes. And yeah, they spent half the thing talking about, as David put it, what would the things that would be nice if they existed. Yeah, there was a lot of stuff that if it was, if it was, if it would be super tight.

And that's the thing. Like, Jensen Wong is that he's a real, he's a, he's a show. showman usually. Like a year ago he was like like screening and dancing across the stage. He was doing a little Avengers bit with a shield with a Black World GPU. This year he just looked kind of sad. He didn't seem happy. He didn't seem he was you don't want to use the phrase low energy because it's got its political valence now, but he was he seemed a little glum. A little sleepy. Sleepy Jens. Sleepy Jensen. Yeah, they don't want me to say it, but should we say it? Should we say it folks? But he was as shiny and

and like sort of bouffant as I'd hoped. Yeah, he had a very shiny jacket. As like a non-tech journalist, like I just know him as being an extremely rich guy with a really like obvious aesthetic. And so the idea of going to see him, like, that's actually the most Las Vegas thing that I could have done. It was basically the same reason that people would go see like Wayne Newton here where they're like, I don't really love his work, but I know that like when I see him on that stage, I'm going to be like, damn. Or go to the speed. That's Wayne Newton as hell.

And this was Jensen Huang as hell, like for whatever that's worth. It's something you just do while you're in Vegas. Right, exactly. Go see Jensen Wong. Right. I don't have to be a big fan of Gwen Stefani to go see her residency. Yeah, like this is, which is, I don't know, very instant switching on the Vegas part of your brain for this. But that was the thing.

There was a line of thousands of people to get in. Thousands and thousands of people. And we cut a lot of them. Yeah. And we cut some lines. And I'm very sorry if you were lining up to see the Jensen Huang Donkey Show. and you ended up not being able to sit down for two boobless hours. It was almost as long as Avatar 3.

Yeah, and I understood it as much as well. I haven't seen any of the Avatar. Don't slander my boy Cameron. I don't care. I would let him run in video. You know, I think he'd actually give us some products. He knows how to build a submarine. Yeah, yeah.

Which is a worrying fact I discovered during when the Titan submersible exploded. He's a sicko. Like he's an actual submarine fiend. But yeah, this thing was really weird because this. This is the largest company on the stock market. And it just felt, I don't want to say, dull is the wrong word because he certainly wanted to pretend to be excited, but it was like half, what if we could do robots, we can't, but what if we could?

And then it was like, we're Vera Rubin GPUs. What do you like this? What do you think of this? And then you may be thinking, listen, okay, at what point did he talk about AI? Barely. He was just like, yeah, got agents there happening. And then he did like a two minute long demo of this guy building an agent. personal assistant that did stuff.

And looked at a whiteboard and told him he had five things on it. Yeah, and he connected to a hugging face robot. Yes. That then told his dog to get off the couch. Potato. Potato the dog was treated very rudely, very nasty. Very unfair to potato. You know, when I first saw that clip, I missed Reddit and I was like,

there's a readout where it says, your dog is on the couch and I know you don't like that. And I thought it said your dog is here and I know you don't like it. Yeah. Shall I eliminate the dog? Dog, kill the dog. Jensen Juan getting up there. We finally worked out a way to kill dogs. Just someone off camera.

No, Jensen, we took the dog killing part out. He's like, no, it's good. They love this. We've got tons of dogs. Like, there's like billions of dogs. We want $10 a dog. We're in business. That's like one quarter of GPU sales.

As you see this chart, the price of killing dogs has gone down exponentially. Actually, here's 100, what it costs to kill 10 trillion dogs. The parameters are increasing over the year. The cost of each kill is dropping by five orders of magnitude. I don't know if I think killing dogs is funny. It's 10 trillion dogs. Yeah, for the listener he was talking about, at one point,

he was talking about how much it costs to generate tokens and to train models that were 10 trillion parameters. Yeah. They said the parameters were going up, And they had this great chart where it's like, well, you see it. It was the x-axis was just dollars. Yeah. And the y-axis was latency. And the dollar, the line was down, but the latency was up. And he didn't really explain what that man. He was just like, look, it's a tenth of the price. It was 100% like, do you hogs want to see a line go up? Yeah. Do you like the stonks guy? Do you want me to bring them out?

The hogs hated it. The hogs were sick. They clamped. I was surprised by that. As they should. He brought up a picture of Vera Rubin, who I've completely forgotten. almost. She was the person who observed that, you know, Newtonian mechanics predicts that things in the farther orbit around the central object should take longer to go around it than closer to it. And the edge of the galaxy rotates faster than you would expect, which suggests that there's other matter, dark matter, which is making the edge of the galaxy actually rotate at a higher velocity. Right. It's an interesting one, which we still haven't figured out what the fuck to do it. But more interesting than, you know, than anything they were doing.

But that was the one time people clapped. And we came back after just like mildly concussed, just like our brains just like hummeled. And we went and looked at the CES 2025 one. People were hooting and hollering and cheering and shit. This, because they were like, yeah, we're going to walk you through Blackwell and they tell a bunch of lies. But at least they had charts with the lies. This year it was just kind of like limply walking in. It's going like, yeah, this is really.

heavy. I'm not even kidding, he just lifted up. Yeah, he was pretty dialed in last year for what it's. I mean, that's like the bit of it that I, you know, again, to me, with the Wayne Newton comp. It's like, you don't have to like the songs to be like, damn, he's really got this patter down. Look, I've seen Metallica seven times and they put on a show well every time. Now, I'm the only person in this room, obviously, who did not see the keynote. Do you think this came, did it come across to you? Like, um, like they may have had something they plan to show here, but it fell through or wasn't, or did it come across?

like they really like busted their load last year and could it live up to the hype this year? I think it's the second one. They didn't really seem to have anything because I mentioned it in passing but it was it was a lot of stuff from GTC which the big developers conference and like they did this whole thing about new blackwell

chips and every chip they, sorry Vera Rubin chip and every chip was announced months ago it just felt weird. It felt like they didn't have any keys to jingle anymore. Because last year the hype for that keynote was weeks and events. People were talking it was like the highlight of CES. It was like the highlight of CES. It was

was like they had like some big musical artist or something showing up. It was that big. Yeah, it wasn't. This year legitimately you could see people like, people were leaving. Yeah, there were walkouts. People just walking out. After a thing took like, like last year there was a two and a half hour long line before it opened. This year there was a long line, but it filed in. Then they told us it was full, but then they were like, actually there are seats now. It's just very weird. It was a 3,800 person theater. It just feels like. like we're at the end of something, which is fun. I enjoy that. Which also, I don't think the rest of CES has got that message based on all the AI, everything,

everywhere. Matt, you've been, you went to CES and bailed yesterday as you. Yes, yes. Did you see anything interesting? Anything that? Well, I mean, everything, the interesting thing is actually, you would think AI is the main thing. And I guess there's crossover here, but the really big thing this year is robotics. Right.

Everyone's got robots doing something. And obviously, there is the AI, like, sort of angle. there. But it's not the same in terms of like how they hype it up. Like I remember a few years ago, every company wanted to be a metaverse company. Hell yeah. Or a blockchain company. And I said this last year on this show that that seems to be dead. And it seems like that's the case. It's just dead as you know, Trump coming back and crypto coming back in terms of these guys making all their money through insider training on crypto does not seem to have translated over back to the tech world. Do you see any crypto stuff?

No, I've not seen any, no, not even, blockchain is usually the way these tech companies try to like get their hold on that space. And I've seen nothing. Have you seen any prediction market stuff? No, no prediction market stuff. I mean, it's still early. The show floor hasn't even opened yet while we're talking. But I've seen none of that.

Everything, there was a few AI stuff here and there. Wearables are big again this year. What kind? Every wearable. That's where the AI stuff is coming in. Everyone wants a wearable that you have around your neck, where it records what you're saying and then gives you the transcription of your conversations. If only we had a way of recording our voices.

If only they invented some way that I could talk and then they would save it. Right. It's a good thing everyone listening to this is in the room with us right now. It was just lost. I saw Victoria's song post something of wearable that is like a taint of electrical. Yes. She's going to come on tomorrow. Then I won't say anything more about it.

It's a what now? It's a taint electricuter thing. It's, you know, maybe it's for kegles. Maybe it's for edging. I have no idea. Look, what people do with their taints is not my business.

Well, it's someone's business now. No, it's literally someone's business. It's big business. The previous time I was on this podcast, Victoria was on and she was wearing a wearable. Yeah.

And it was one of the ones, I forget what it was called. It was advertised on the subway a lot. The friend. It wasn't a friend. It wasn't something different, though. Oh, whatever it was, it was... The rabbit?

It was designed to be rude to you. Like, that seemed to be what the hack was. No, it was when you... Sorry, this was... I think it was the friend, because this was a few months ago. It wasn't CES. It was when you were in the studio. Yeah, it was just very rude.

Yeah, and it was... It got mad at her during our interview. Like, we, like, asked how she felt about it. And she said, she had, like, a name for it. She was like, it's Blorbo. We don't always get along. I mean, there's a whole theme restaurant that does that, right? where the waiters are rude to you.

There is an audience for that. And Debevic so you can wear around your neck. Just fucking scream at you. I love it. I love it when AI is rude to me. You know, that gets my juices going. I guess the idea was that it was like,

you know, it wasn't like the other AI. It's like it was a little edgy. I do like the idea that they're like, yeah, we're made an AI friend. And like all of my friends, it's very rude.

Doesn't want to talk to me. Doesn't like me. Just a guy who does not have friends. Just has a bunch of people who hate him. I'm so lonely. I just wish I had someone to be mad at all the time while I'm at work. Like just thinking my idle moments. This comic I love where it's like, you know, four panels.

One panel is a scientist and he's like, hey, I made this robot and it screams word cuck. And then it just keeps screaming cuck. And then someone's like, why'd you make this? And he's like, oh, I don't know. Because I can't screaming at any panel. I mean, listen, like the week we're recording this, like every AI we're going to talk about, They all seem good compared to what Elon Musk's grok is doing right now. Hey, listen.

But when Grock gets lucidity, you know, when it drops the Mecca Hitler, you know, when it's super woke, when it's not a conceptual form. It has its moments. It has its moments. But I mean, Grog's neighbors, remember he was a quiet man. We all think Trump is funny sometimes, right? Like, we all think Trump has his moments where class. Trump comes through. But at the end of the day,

he was friends with Epstein. Like, that's Croc now. Like, I mean, Grock is literally like, uh, undressing photos of children. It's fucking disgusting.

Of children. So you can go on. If you want to see a bunch of people who redacted, uh, go to R slash Grock on Reddit and it's just LLM generated pornography. And you'll never,

you'll be surprised to hear it's all woman. And what's crazy is, uh, I bet each one of those costs like five to ten bucks a generation. So Elon Musk is just, burning billions of dollars for like the most wretched perverts in the world. And what's great is you go on there and there will occasionally be a guy who's just like, this fucking thing's moderated and it's censored now. It's censored. I can't generate the

pornography I want. Elon Musk has failed us. And it's just like finding people who are more reactionary than Elon Musk is tough. But man, do they do it. Right. I mean, I don't even know that, like, I'm sure he's put some sort of limits on some things. But people right now, we're like a week or two into this whole scandal with Grock creating literal child abuse material. Like sexual, yeah, child sexual abuse material and they're still able to make

it. And Elon Musk is on on X right now. Laughing about pictures people are sending of non-consensual undressing. Frawling to beat the band. You think it's funny. The last thing I saw Elon Musk post was someone made the long essay about how the reason why Africa can't

manage itself is not because of colonialism. It's because of IQ or something. bigger than him quote tweeting it and going truth nuke or something in a hard truth I ever I actually saved a screen set the south african yeah jesus screenshot yeah screenshot from ar slash grok here we go again space exclamation mark those xAI grock motherfuckers back to fucking zombies in slow motion and constant over moderation thank fuck my subscription is nearly up these word i won't say are fucking losers fuck you eel musky fucking rock spider they've updated it again and made it even worse than before and then so i'm responding with

what my morning goon session went as usual I just, and any other forum would be like, that's someone doing irony, but no, what is the word? What was the word that? It's a swear word that I'm not going to say on this show. It's not a slur, thankfully. Yeah, no, I was curious how it says it is a square, is it a slur? Towards the beginning of the alphabet letter wise.

But like the fact that Grock does this, like, obviously every company who has an AI product now, their AI can do the same. Yeah. It seems like they have at least used the resources they have of like a trust and safety department to think these things through and limit it or stop it from doing that before it actually is able to. They seem to not only be aware that it could do that and not want to stop it. They're loving that it's doing this. It makes me feel at the risk of making an extremely prosaic observation about something that I think I don't want to put words in anybody's mouth that I think we all believe is bad. Yes.

The fact that this has been going on for two weeks makes me feel like I'm losing my fucking mind. Yes. Like, I can't believe that there is a thing generating child sex abuse material on the social network that we all were on. The people are paying for, like, 15 years. People are paying $40 a month to access. Like if an individual, human being went online right now and uploaded CSAM, a single photo on a social media site, they would have a knock on their door. Yeah. They'd be going to Jay.

Whereas Elon Musk's creation is literally creating this in mass over and over again, an image per second per minute. I don't know, but it's a lot. And it just keeps doing it. And no one's, whose job is it to step in and stop it? That's the bit that makes me feel most insane. Is that this is one of those things where it's like, there's not a great number of points of consensus in American culture at this point. But this is one that I think everybody's more or less on the same page on. So I thought.

And it's also one of the things that like, see what you will about the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They've been pretty consistent in their approach to this issue through the years. The fact that this is somehow now just like raffle fodder like all the rest of the shit. It's crazy. Well, the only good news in it and there really is none is how much this is probably costing. Like it's probably like, I reckon they're spending a couple million a day on this. Just the pervert C-San machine. I mean, but I mean, he's getting.

government is, the government, the U.S. government is paying to use grot. Yeah. There was, I mean, like, the money they're spending, like, on creating this stuff, like, the money is coming in to make up for it, at least for Elon Musk. But is it? Like, I'm pretty sure he's just losing money. It's insane that also he is building massive data centers to do more of this. This is the thing. This is the year we're walking into. This is 2026. We've got, what can LLMs do that they couldn't do a year ago? Well, guess what? It's child pornography.

That is the new thing. thing that they can do. We watch fucking Jensen Huang beat off for two hours, not really. If only. Think of the years it took Jeffrey Epstein to create this stuff. And now Croc can do it all in just the power of AI, the future

is that our fingertips? So in the Metaverse, you can go make your own island with Brock, you know, you can make your own network. That's the thing though. That's the use case for the Metaverse. Is it like if you want a little St. James? No. And the temple. Don't forget the

Oh my God. This is how we're beginning CES 2020. We're, Robert Evans isn't even here. And I'm like, okay, we've got to change the subject. Right. Created a version of the game missed. Talking of children. That would get me sent to jail for the rest of my life. Or a job is a senior product manager. Yeah, if you're willing to relocate to Austin. Yeah. Jesus fucking Christ. I thought this show would be normal. It wasn't. Did you catch that there was like Grock cameo in the Jensen Wong presentation? It's multimodal. Yeah. He was using this as an example to, like, show what the technology could do. And it was just like, sorry, the stomach sound. Hell yeah. Was it the stuff that came out this week?

Was that what they were? I love that. But it was funny to see it, like, given that that is like, I think that everybody's first thought on what is this. Also bragging about working with Palantir. I mean, they got out. So many. All the fucking bad guys were getting name chest Palantier. Yeah.

Palantir, I don't know if they're here this year, but they've been at past C. showing off their armed vehicles and everything. They're, they don't make armed vehicles. They're a, they're a, they're evil sales force. I,

I don't go to this Palantir booth, but the years I've seen them there, let's go to the Palantir. They were, with face masks. I'm gonna go over there and just be like, hey, mate, you got any guns I could borrow. And they just, just start asking them for a gun.

Can I see your phone real quick? Can I see your phone? I'm just downloading grok. Yeah, just downloading grok for real. Oh, oh, it's already hit. Yeah. Oh, what are your last, oh my God. But moving aggressively on from this subject. Speaking of children, I saw Lego.

Yeah, that was the segue I was trying to go for, but then we got into the Little St. James in the omniverse, like, can simulate. Jesus. But Lego, so there's a small- He wouldn't have got caught if he had the omniverse. I think that's probably what their salespeople would have been. I was surprised that Jensen Wong said that.

Yeah. And people cheered someone. Yeah. It was like, what is he you did? That was when they said, that was weird. You guys didn't want him to get caught? Yeah. And the little robots came on and he, yeah.

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

Disney for to use those two robots from Star Wars, Jedi Fallen Order? Were they from Star Wars? Yeah, they're Jedi Fallen Order. Jesus Christ, that was the cheap. He went and got like, Like, wow. Yeah, from Lucasville, we probably rented them. Yeah. So what's the cheapest robot you'll give me? What makes that crazy is apparently Disney gave these random robots, whereas I got C3PO and R2D2 and Chewbacca showing up at the Lego event.

Yeah. Okay. We got there. We got there, so we got there, the Mandalay Bay, thinking CSMvail was today, it was not, flawless organization as usual from me. And I walk in and it's got, I's just the Chewbacca room. Yeah. I peek through the door.

I see Chubbaca. I see some rubble. C3. C3 PEOs up there and we're like, all right, well, you know, sorry about that. It's like, accidentally open the door that isn't closed like at a bar.

I'm sorry, dude. I mean, you were like, they end up the Shining. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You just get out from down the hall. Yeah.

Joey, no. Julie. But yeah, so they just long brings out the blowjob bear from the shining. Why would he do that? There's no reason for that bear to be on stage.

He said it's multi-modal. Okay. That partnership with Grock is pulling through right now. Okay, please, let's talk about the smart brick. Right. So, Lego, I will say,

so Lego was making their CES debut. They've never done this before. Oh, really? Yeah. So Lego actually had something pretty interesting. Okay. Where it's this, it's their new product,

a smart brick in their smart play platform. And they basically took a silicon chip that's small, is what they said, smaller than one stud on a Lego. That's cool. And they put it inside a brick and you connect this brick onto your Lego creations, your Lego characters. And this chip basically, this smart brick basically has sensors and accelerometers and it could track color and sound and distance and direction. And it basically brings your Lego creations and characters to life.

So one example they gave in the demo was they put the smart brick on a little airplane Lego creation. and then they put a airplane pilot character on top of that plane. And when they were flying it around, the plane was making like, uh, whoosh and all like engine noises. And then the guy turns the plane upside down and the airplane pilot starts to scream. And this is the audio is coming out of this smart brick.

I mean, it's, what? Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, and from like, I would allow you to torture your Lego figure out.

Yeah. In fact, they were really playing that up too. They were saying, you know, if you run your Lego over with a, your Lego character over with a car, they'll be sound effects for that. Are you not being dead. Yeah, serious. The guy was getting great joy out of mutilating these Lego characters with the smart break. And the Lego's saw collection will be coming out.

If you told me as a child, wow, wouldn't you love a computer inside of this? You told me my bionicle would be better if it had a computer and I would have set it on fire. I like the antithetical. I was thinking about this I guess for like other toys where you just buy a toy and it's already built for you and then you add this other stuff

I guess you can argue it's taking away from kids imagination but with Lego they still have to build this stuff I mean so like the smart brick is just adding an extra like I guess like feature to it that helps their imagination

I think the screaming Lego is not going to take away from your imagination right when I just a kid it also has a kind of like it feels like it's for adults more than it is for kids. Oh, yeah, that's also the other thing. This is for the man babies that are buying children's sets.

That's the thing. They announced the first Lego smart play, place sets that come with these smart bricks. And that's where Chui and C3PO and R2D2 come in. The first play sets with this technology will be three Star Wars play sets, the Thai fighter, the X-Wing, and the Emperor's Throne Room

where you can have a lightsaber battle. George Lucas was not joking when he said that, selling Star Wars to Disney was like selling his children to slavers because they're going to be working these guys. Speaking of that, the slave-Leyer Playset will be coming out soon. Oh, God, what sounds does that one make?

I've always wanted to make my Lego figures screaming. It's going to make a Java sound. There'll be a Java sound very lightly in the background of whatever Leah says. I, I, I'm just like, I think the theme of CES from everything I've read so far is we've run out of ideas. Like, it kind of felt like that last year, but this year it's like,

Jensen Huang doing his just retread of everything. And Lego's like, oh, what the fuck? What do we put? Why don't we release more Legos? I guess they could make, what if the Lego figures could feel pain? What if you could reenact the, your witness to a great becoming scene from Manhunter with your Legos? You could do January 6th, Dr. Lgos. And in this place in the god of the Vida in the background.

Chewbacca, after his changing, do you see? It's nice. You're witnessing the grace. Oh my God, I didn't think we, I thought we'd wait until Tuesday for the Manhunt. You could do like, uh, I'm only here for one day. I got to get it in. I'm happy. I'm very happy to hear this.

Most of the content, not so much. Like, I didn't think we'd get to see Sam this quickly. But the thing that's interesting, though, to Matt's point, I don't want to skip you if you're trying to say that. No, no, no, don't worry. Is that it feels like, I agree that it feels like, to a certain extent, there's a deficit of new ideas. But, again, as like an oaf who doesn't generally cover this,

like, just as what it is, that's an impressive thing to me. Yeah. Right. And also, in a world where we just talked about everything we just talked about, like the Lego stuff actually feels like a breath of fresh air, where it's a company that actually is focused on, I mean, obviously they want to make money, but it's also focused on, let's build this stuff for kids,

and also adults that have this nostalgia love for Lego. And it's harmless and fun. I mean, harmless to the people, but the Legos. Luckily, Legos don't feel yet. Yeah. Oh, that's one I, like, that would have been if I was in there, putting my head up. Can they feel the, no, sir, again.

Okay, so you've got a Lego set, which has a massive computer at the center. It's going to do inference on device. On device pain for your legos. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The suffering you can make your Lego's experience is distinct and powerful. Reenact any historical event where people felt pain. My life massacre. Like, it's true.

I don't know. I want to be excited about it, but it's just, I look at it. I'm just like, you don't have, you, you could build literally anything. That's the point of Lego and they're like, well, fuck, we can't build. We have no more ideas of that. We just have noises. I get, maybe I'm being too cynical. I mean, they're coming up with new ideas for like, you can build

a big boat, you know? Like, there's stuff like that is in there. Trying to, I'm sorry, it's so gurgly. There's something about, like, that seems additive, I guess. It's like a little silly to me, but that's... I mean, it's the same, interesting. It's the same Lego brick for everything. Like, it's not like, oh, this is the specific smart brick for that Star Wars.

That's not bad. You can take the same brick and connect it to an airplane and it knows it's an airplane now. Do you take that same brick and connected to Star Wars set? It knows which Star Wars character it's connected to or what Star Wars. The R-Words vehicle it's on. It's this one brick that you could use for everything. If you have multiple bricks, they interact. One interesting thing I thought was, like,

if your kids are, like, racing their smart brick-attached cars, and, like, there's a smart brick, like, a finish line creation, it'll track which one actually gets to the finish line first and let you know by the color of the vehicle. Like, it'll flash that color of the winning vehicle. So the kids can't argue and fight over who actually won. The smart brick tells them. That's a key part of any racist fighting over.

All right. We're going to wrap this block for now. We've, of course, have Matt Bender from Mashable. Edongreso Jr. from the Tech Bubble newsletter and David Roth from Defector. We'll be right back off these ads, which I endorse all of, I am sure that they'll all be 100% alignment. Except for the Palantir one. Yeah, the Palantir one about the Death Machine. I endorse that.

That's an exitron ad rate. That one was programmer. Yeah, they got it mixed up. They did the other ad, which is me instead of it. This machine kills. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends.

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embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Diane, I'm entering the city of Las Vegas, Nevada for the Consumer Electronic Show. This is Ed Zittron, of course, is better offline. We're back here at CES, and I'm joined by the wonderful Scott Stein from CNET, Scott. How you doing?

Hey, great. Hey, great, Ed. I'm burnt out, is how I'm doing. That's fine, man. I just watched two hours of Jensen Huang going off, so you're in good company. Matt Binder, of course, from Mashable. Great to be here. And Mr. David Roth from DeFector. Hello. So, actually, going to start with you, Scott, because I want to talk about these X-Real glasses, complete subject change. We can get back to Lego in a little bit. But so you've been looking at a few different smart glasses. Any of these been actually interesting or useful?

In bits. It's like the, like, Kyrrits-eck thing. Like every, there are little bits that are interesting and they're all striving to like do more and you're trying to see where they're going to interconnect like X-real I covered them way back when they were enreal and they were trying to be like magically and then they do though like are they right right now they're display glasses so really it's like a big a big virtual display just flat screen and you connect it to your phone you connect it to your phone your laptop like anything that has standard USB video out you know like a display port video out um switch breaks that but they have they sell a doc now that can get a around that so you connect that and you can play. So it's practical. The impractical part is that you've

to spend several hundred dollars and the question is, is that worth it? But what impressed me about what X-Ril was doing in recent years and companies like Vecher is that I hadn't been following them for a few years and the displays were getting really good. Like TV quality good and I thought, oh, that's really interesting. And now they're striving, they're partnering with Google, they're trying to do more things. So it's like, it's interesting how they're super focused on one area versus trying to do everything. What are they trying with Google? What are they up to? So that's basically like Project Oro, which I tried in December, is like, can we make a VR mixed reality headset thing, but shrink it on the glasses for basically the kind of same experience?

So is it not, so is it screens still? Like I'm a little... It's screens, it's 3D, and, but the field of view is limited because it's like glasses. So it's like 50, but it feels kind of like a big TV view and it's projected and it was running all of the Android XR apps that run on the Samsung Galaxy XR that's like $1,800. Yeah. Yeah. And this one, there's no price, but it's probably going to be a lot cheaper and it has a little processor puck that you need to use.

But other than that, they're regular extra roll glasses. So it's like relatively more practical. What I thought was interesting is you got like effectively the same, a lot of the same experience and something a lot smaller that you might like stick in your bag. Right. I mean, where was the market for these, though? Like, would you use them in your day-to-day? So I would use the display part.

But the thing I want to, the thing I want to get to that I kind of always fantasized about was like, could I get work done without a laptop? Could I, like, sit there and just type away. Type away in a little corner of CES with like my little keyboard or invisible keyboard in the glasses. That still hasn't happened. Like, technically the Project ORA looks like you could do that because it runs a whole bunch of apps. But the question is how annoying that would be in what cost. And then are you just going to default to you? Like, even the glasses, I think they're super interesting and I'll use them on flights.

But then there's a point where I'm like, why don't I just use the iPad? Or like, could I just look at my phone? Like, there's a part at which you go, do I really want to carry this around? Right. But I think it's, you know, if the price dropped or it became something that did more than that, right now it's like display glasses and there are these other like meta-rayband and and Raybana like things. Right.

Two different products, completely unrelated, and then you're like, how many of those are you going to buy? That's what I, I've covered Xreal before, too, and I always thought it was interesting that they focused on the display thing.

Because you come to CES and smart glasses, you can find like 20 different smart glass companies, they all want to do something with AI and augmented reality and audio recording, transcription, video recording. But Xreal, I appreciated that they focused

on what if we just give you a TV in your glasses so like when you're on long trips or something, you can just be immersed and that's it. Right. The fact that you're saying they now want to, you know, do some more things with Google. Now I'm like, ah, I feel like Xreal is losing that focus that made them, that made them stick out for me as a company that, oh, I, I appreciate that they got their eye on the prize and that's, that's all they want to do. Well, what's interesting is like there are parts that are practical that are interconnected because it's like there are companies like TCL and there's like there's a bunch of companies that have been making these like TVs for your face like these display glasses but the thing that started like XRL backed off all that stuff and they started doing

these like very focused glasses but they started introducing stuff in the later ones that's more practical like you can pin the display which is actually useful because if you if you're trying to work with these as like a monitor it used to be that you turn and it would keep following your face which is awful because you can't ever look in the corner of the screen. It's like you just keep turning and it keeps moving. But they started pinning it in space. So you could actually treat it like a monitor, which is practical. And then they started having transparency.

So it's like you look at the display, everything is blacked out around you. But if you turn your head, everything goes transparent again. So it's like practical, but kind of a little A.R.E. A little like, and I feel like what they're starting to do is like blend some of that and then be like, they had this partnership with a company called Space Top, too. They were trying to float a lot of Windows apps. What happened to them? They got absorbed into becoming a software.

It was very nearly a Jiminy Glick moment there for you. What happened to space? I'm like crossing my legs aggressively as well. And then to you said that was R-A-R-related. I know. I don't know. I met with them last when they were debuting stuff in the spring, which was like they backed off hardware.

They started pivoting to doing more. software because they wanted to run it directly off laptops versus having you buy a whole a separate product. But then I also feel like in a lot of ways, that's what you're saying, who's the project or for? I feel like that if it runs eventually off a phone, it's like the Samsung Project Dextap they've been doing for years. Or it's like if you could make a thing and just carry your phone with you and carry glasses, that's more practical than carrying like a whole separate product. I just think that they're all trying to get away from admitting that they can't do this yet. Yeah, they can't do it yet. Yeah, I feel like, they've just, they're like,

we've added Gemini. Do you like this? What is this good? Do you like Gemini? The AI stuff is the weirdest. I mean, obviously, that's a whole, we're on the show. We're talking about them forever. But it's like, I see it like, yeah, that need to dump stuff like that. What interesting me about we're covering, I don't cover AI a lot because a lot of it I don't find that interesting. But I do find the idea of new interfaces. Could they find something new to do with it? interesting. But they keep doing a little party tricks versus something that's like really, really practical. I mean, I'm a vision pro, truther. And people do not like me for this. I've got in it.

They're very unfair to me about this. Because I like the idea of like a, like a different interface. Like you said, like something you pop in the corner. And I really wanted this in the vision pro and I tried way too hard. I really tried to make that shit fit into my life. And it is an embarrassing device, even when you're alone. Yeah. If you just like you see yourself in it in any way like, oh. You've used it a lot as well. I've used it a lot, but what I use it for are two particular things. If I'm alone and I have it nearby, I will do work with it basically as a Mac monitor. And then I'll go, because I don't have a monitor that's that big.

And I go, oh, that's useful if I get into a flow with it. And then I'll watch movies because I don't have a TV that looks as good like that in a moment. I have an older TV. And so I like that as a personal cinema. But at that price, no. And I'll never carry it with me anywhere. Never going to whip that baby out on the plane or something? I tried to watch June.

People keep asking if I will, I will not. No, I watched June or like half of June on June on a plane, and I got the worst migraine I've had in my life. And it kept freaking out. It was like shaking because it kept, like with the travel mode. Yeah, it was really mad at me. There's also like, I can never get it to focus, right? But I love the idea.

I love the idea of like a pop-up screen. Like, I really, I like that a lot. Well, that's why the order thing was interesting, because I felt like it was like, okay, let's take the practical, not, I mean, practical, relatively, more practical and much lower cost of like a pair of glasses you take with you, but there are another pair of glasses, but it's like headphones for your eyes. But then like, could you do most of the vision pro stuff? The thing that I felt was like when I was at WWDC, as a test, I just kind of took the X-Ril 1 pros with me

and filed my stories while wearing them, which wasn't really painful at all. And it was nice because I could float the screen. It wasn't really painful at all. No, I'm sorry. I wasn't laughing at you. Just like, that's the endorsement. Right. That's the nicest thing that anyone said about a pair of these glasses. But they actually held,

but they held in there. Like I was in the heat. I floated the screen up and I was able to watch the keynote and work. And it was like, I didn't have to hunch over the laptop as much. So I was like, oh, it's interesting. And like, that's like you,

I would not ever be doing with a Vision Pro at all. So I thought, yeah. David, you have, you wear glasses. Would you? Why would you, I know that this is kind of a loaded question. Why would you not use these glasses? Like, it's fine to give just, like, the truth. I mean, I guess the idea of it is, it's mostly a me issue.

Like, it's just a question of sort of being like, if I'm going to watch TV, I'll watch it through my glasses and not, you know, upon. But I'm, this is not one of those things. There's a couple of, you know, like, red lines in terms of, like, technology that I'm just simply not going to be comfortable using. I'm not a young man. And there's a bunch of things that, like, I don't need to, like, there were stuff like last year that there was like some, you know, like, it's a thing that jerks off for you, you know, that it's like, it's mounted on an arm. It's like, oh, I thought you were too about glasses for a second.

I was like, where's that berth? No, but right. I'm sorry that you at the end of the demo today. But like all of that, the idea of like the glasses thing, I feel like it could be cool. Yeah. I just, I would wait until a trusted source was like, all right, it's actually cool. Yeah, is the water fine. Right.

And I don't think I would want to, I would want to use it. for like recreation stuff. Like what you're talking about the idea of just kind of like being able to watch a movie or like have it be like a non-embarrassing way to enjoy like a high quality television experience. Like that part's neat. I don't think I'd want to work on it.

I don't know that like the invisible keyboard holds a great deal of appeal to me. I see me to use like a real keyboard. Like the invisible keyboard never. Yeah. So like you, most of these are still used a real keyboard and nobody's cracked like virtual typing. Yeah. They keep, they keep saying that they might.

That's entirely based on you like. Seeing commercials on TV and be like, damn, look, Zuckerberg's typing on nothing. That's something. I've even met up with the neural ban that there's no idea of even getting close to typing yet, but they do have this handwriting on your leg thing that's going to come out. But like, I don't do handwriting and I don't feel doing handwriting on my life. I have a coordination disability called dyspraxia. And the idea of those services working is really funny to me.

For years, I was told repeatedly, like, you have a doctor's handwriting and I thought it was a compliment. It wasn't. It was not. It turns out I have a physical disability. But yeah, it's, even the meta glass is like, when actually the episode with Victoria, I tried them on and it's like, wow, these are cool. And I was like, now what? Like, if I walked around with these, not only would I look like a bell end, which isn't a huge change, but it's just like you're just staring in the corner for the directions. It's like, it's like no, it's like the people making them haven't walked around as a normal person before. Right. And I think that's like the short answer to the question of like, what would it take for me to use it? Yeah, yeah. Like, could I do it if I didn't. have to like practice. Like, you know, the thing I can say for glasses is that I put them on every morning in the same, I have the same user experience every single time, you know, and all I have to do is look through the lenses and I can see things slightly better. I'm curious about,

because this is something that like, I don't, you know, cover this area. I haven't like followed it as closely. How much better is this and how long did it take for things to get as good as they are now? That's a good question. And I feel like, someone from the companies was like, why are you more interested in this now. And I was like, I don't know, because I feel like they started getting a little better. But it's all relatives. Like I think like smart watches following, like I remember covering smart watches in the world before the Apple watch and the Google watch has emerged. And it was like everyone's striving for random stuff and crap and some interesting things. But I find those territories before a sign goes mainstream, interesting because it's like

striving for the moment that you're like, the water's fine. So I feel like that's why I love covering those zones is it's like you see ideas being thrown against a wall, throwing against a wall, and then you're like, you get there. But now I feel like you could, something crossed over where it's like the meta ray bands became legitimately okay to wear if you're going on like vacation. I found them to be, yeah. No, stylistic. It's like the Roy Orbison machine. Like, I know, but I already wear Roy Orbisic glasses. You couldn't pull them off. That's a thing. Yeah. So I'm like, they literally are like the glasses I'm wearing now. Yeah, I think that's like the real breakthrough is that like if you're the type of person that wears that type of frame like the water the water is

right yeah yeah the problem is solved if you don't like that right there are some companies doing if you want to do the zoomer wire rim things where the lenses are the exact same size as your eyes i'm sorry you can't check your email they can't the closest thing to that is like i've been testing out even realities which is another company that makes the g2 glasses and they're like more of a metal thin frame but the only thing is that not only they weren't functioning that well on the floor here because everything interferes and stuff but also they don't have they don't have they don't have audio, they don't do camera stuff, which also people might really like. They have a display, but only for a couple of functions. And it goes to that, like, why am I doing this? But you

might not notice their glasses. So everyone's like getting to these like, like, would I tell a friend the water's fine there? No, I'd be like, and even smartwatches now, I still feel like if I was, I'm not reviewing them so much now, but I would say like, you don't need a smart watch. You know, it's like they never got to the point where you needed them. But I would go, okay, but if you want get one, they're okay, you'll be okay with them. And I feel like the problem with the raybans and all these things is that you have to recharge them. So the, the, the, the, the, the band gen 2s get up to eight hours of battery, but it's real like four to eight. So at least they don't, they don't crap out at noon, but they will go down at like 3 p.m. And then you're like, I have to put

them in the case to charge, so I don't have to bring out another pair of glasses. You're like, this is a broken. You have to dual wheel to your glasses. You have to dual wheel. So I'm always swapping glasses, but I say it to me, they're like vacation glasses more where it's like, I've been to theme parks, I record on the rides for fun because it's like the more than your GoPro on your face. Yeah. And also if you're at a super busy event like this or you're like at an airport, like, and this is such a niche thing, but it's like someone's calling and you don't want to reach for your phone or your, or your AirPods. But that's like a first super, that's like an ultra first world too many gadgets problem. But it is kind of nice to just be like, oh, I can answer them and not have

to do something. But could I justify that? People who have like, vision impairment or other things that I've heard about that have been using that for that. That is interesting, but the companies I feel are not making enough, I can't speak to the assistive landscape, but I don't think there's enough effort being made to really have deeper, helpful use of that. I feel like everyone's still taking like bits and stabs at that. Yeah, and I imagine that's part of, like, you have to appeal to the people that have the money and that are like trying to get you to do this stuff. And so like that, I remember that being like a big through line. Last year is the first time I'd been to CES. And I remember there were all these

technologies that seem legitimately like miraculous to me. Like for people that have very little motion. It's like a non-invasive chip that makes it possible for you to like communicate and move about and it was really cool. But I remember like Ed and I were at at, uh, Onguoso, we're at that that stand. And it was until we talked to one of the like engineering people, they were trying to sell it as some sort of like, uh, like a hack for like people working at fast food places. They're like, what if you've been touching chicken and then you got to handle money? this way you don't have to do it. You can just make a series of micro gestures and that will open the cash register. And it was like, well, that's way dumber. And also, I'm making $15 an hour,

but I will go under eight hours of surgery with a neurosurgeon costing me $85,000. It was not invasive, but it was the same sort of thing where it was just like, just say it's for fucking helping people, dude. Like, it's not, is that so bad? But the thing is, it's everyone, it's like one leg in one place, one leg in the other, natural phrase there, where it's, yeah, it could be an assistive device, but also regular people could use it. But we're not really going to try for either. Because you really kind of have to choose because there was the smart cane last year, which at first I wanted, and they kind of made fun of. But it's actually like, we can help people who are blind, like great stuff. That was a direct, focused product for a problem.

The glasses are like, do you want to record yourself making dinner and you want this? And there's assistive features too if you got something wrong with you. But it's just this weird thing where it's, they want to find the next growth pig. And it's like, okay, it's going to be glasses, I fucking guess. I mean, the main thing about wearables is like, you have to actually be someone who wears the non-technological version of it first for it to speak to you. Like, I don't wear glasses, whether it be prescription or sunglasses,

so I wouldn't buy a smart glass product. I don't wear a watch. So I wouldn't buy a smart watch because I have no need for it. You know, it does, it's, it, that's like the, the main leap for it. Like, I, okay, so, right, I, I, I went to a private razor demo, the, you know, video game company. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

And so they actually, they were, they were, they were, they, they have a project they're working on that's a prototype. That's smart headphones. Yeah, just saw these. Yes. What are those? And now, so their, their selling point for it is, you know, if you aren't someone who wears glasses.

Mm-hmm. You know, there's more people who do wear headphones. Everyone listens to music, but not everyone wears sunglasses. Right. So they put all that, like, all those, like, smart features except the display, because obviously it's a headset in the headphones. So basically, the headphones have this little camera on the side, and that's your AI assistant. It can, like, you're looking at a menu, like, reading, like, a menu at a restaurant in,

like, Japan or something. That was the demo they showed. Then the headphones can see the Japanese writing and translate it to you. in the headphones. Another thing they brought up is how smart glasses when they do translation features everyone in the vicinity

could hear the smart glasses talk to you. Whereas the headphones, because it's in the headphone set, only you hear the AI assistant talk to you. Another thing they brought up is how smart glasses

can get hot and uncomfortable on your face. The headphones are bigger and they're not directly on your face so they're more comfortable to wear. That was their selling point. But again, I feel like, in my opinion,

the reason to use smart glasses is for specific use cases in the moment for display purposes. Not AI assistant features, but that's just my, because that's not my cup of tea. But I guess if you're trying to sell a product to as many people as possible,

smart headphones actually do sort of make more sense than smart glasses. It's very much in the prototype stage. They don't even have a... No price. They just said it would be competitive. I'm just kind of like, how many...

It's always like, you're in a foreign country, you're gonna, you're gonna look at a menu you don't understand. How often are you fuckers traveling? Like, it's okay. That sort of shows the bubble they're in, because I bet a lot of these guys, because they work for tech companies with big budgets, they probably are traveling a lot. They're probably in Japan and China. What's the number one issue?

Is it when you're in Singapore and you don't know what to eat? Yeah. There's no translated. There's probably one of their number one issues, though. Yeah. Yeah. When your third vacation home, you're the nearby places, just don't have anything in English and you can't scream at the waiter until you understand. So you've got your smart

headphone and I guess do they even sound good? Like I've had a razor headset. They sound fine. I get back to the thing I was saying last, last chunk of this show, it's like, they're out fucking smart headphone. Fuck you. Make headphones that fit. None of my headphones ever fit in my fucking weird goblin ears. Like everyone, like that's the thing like, they're over the ear headphones. They're not earbuds. Great. Okay. So now that they can, they can, they can maybe come up with a reason. Because it's just like, okay, I can use Gemini with them or some such bullshit.

And that's the other thing too that I found with these. It just made me think about this, going on this tangent. Think about AI and glasses. There's a lot that's frustrating. But like, first of all, the meta stuff always feels like a weird experiment that I'm never using. And when I do,

I feel like I'm playing a weird, like, immersive game where I'm just, like, talking to something. And I have no idea what it's saying is correct. And then it's mostly this conversation. It really becomes like a performance art where I'm sort of like, what type of tree? Like I'll stand in my town. I'll be like, what type of tree is this.

What I don't know what to ask it. That's us. Yeah, AI is like, you know, it's an open door. Ask it whatever you want. I don't have any idea where to start. Like, is this, I end up with things like, is that a bench? What is this?

What is this? What is this shoe? And then I don't know. And then they'll say things like, You were in, a lot of his descriptive, which could help, like, assistive to be like, you're in a, you're in a large room with a chair. But I don't need to know that. So it's like, it looks like a comfy red cushion is there and a person.

And it will get things wrong. And then it'll apologize. And then it's like this strange. I love the future. A lot of the demos. It's like a play. It's like a weird performance art piece. A lot of the demos that show off these AI features really do act like you're an alien that

just came to Earth. That's like, so, yeah. It's just, it's like they're all baby. It's like, what the fuck is that? That's a bus. I mean, almost all of this technology, like, for as long as I've been, I mean, not even, I don't write about it really, but like, just sort of observing it is that a lot of it is solving problems that I consider to be just like basically solved. Like, you go to the grocery store for it. Or just like, I don't walk around being like, if I don't know what something is, as long as it's not like a creature. The idea of it getting it wrong and then being like, great point. Like, that was rather. You know, like, I don't like. It goes back to like if you can't really see it and you want assistance, that's interesting.

If you want to read something, which maybe if you're a bad vision, okay, but like what am I doing? I don't trust. There's no advice it can give me. Like the whole like, there is a continuing demo in glasses about like look in a pantry and get cooking advice. That is a stock demo where you're like, am I ever staring at a bunch of cans and asking? And then what is it going to tell me? Like, you could make a soup with the carrots. Right.

And the tomato. If I'm looking at a pantry and I don't know what I want to make. I'm just the type of person who's going to go for the microwaveable TV dinner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not going to use the AI to tell me what to make. Because I don't cook if I don't know what I'm dealing with. It's a search on my phone. Like there's a phone.

Yeah, exactly. It's also the other thing with it is that you're, you were more than anything else. Shoohorn, you're funneled into using the AI. And usually it's one AI. It was like on your phone, you've got a million or anything else. You got a million ways to check stuff. And so you're like, why am I trapped in this one? it's like I'm relying on a strange assistant friend to do things for me and it makes me feel

kind of helpless. So I was like, I just want to go do this thing. And it's like, I have to ask assistant person to kind of fumble a way to do it. And I'm like, of course you're going to take out your phone. And they do all these like over the top convoluted features. And I just mentioned how I'm not a sunglasses or eyeglass wearer. So I have no interest in the smart glasses. But I actually did for a specific use case look into the meta glasses.

So when I, my kids play. soccer and when I go to a game I would love to not be able to not have to hold my phone to record and that makes sense I would love to have it on just record but then you looked into the details of those video recordings the meta sunglasses can't record longer than a 30 second clip at a time well three minutes now so three minutes they've gone to three minutes unfortunately those soccer games are longer than I was going to say like there's no reason they should they should allow you to do it until the battery runs like an actual good use case for it that a lot of people, parents would go ape shit over something like that.

Yeah. And they're spending their, instead of spending the time on, can we make the video record longer than three minutes, they're spending their time on all these AI features that I can't think of any regular use case for. I think it makes sense, though, if you take it from the perspective, it's a tech executive. It's like, what do people do when they cook? Well, of course, they walk into their pantry, which they've not been in from some time. And they go, what the fuck is all this?

What, why are the tomatoes in a can? Usually someone brings these... How do I get them out? Yeah, they're just like bagging it. Just bagging it against them. And they're like, oh... Alexa, free these tomatoes. Jim and I break open the cats.

No, but it's also like, okay, how long when they need to do clips for? Well, what do what children do? TikToks? Ticktok's, that's 30 seconds. That's enough. I mean, it does speak to do how much time these tech executives probably spend with their kids. Have they ever attended one of their kids' eyes? How long do I spend with them?

No one records a video for longer than 30 seconds. It's going to go on Instagram. How long could it last? Yeah. What are you? A monster? Making a sentiment in a video? Three minutes and then I've got a call, Jimmy.

It's sad. It's also like they don't, these glasses do not full. And this is the thing I was interested about with Google with Project Orr is that they're trying to connect with your phone. Like the other part of this is that these things don't even do all. all the things to connect with your phone that you would expect to. There's a lot of broken paths where it's like, whether it's like, as much as you might not like Siri or or Gemini or anything else,

you're used to like earbuds on your phone doing some basic things that connect. These break that path. These will have another thing. You're using with meta AI. And it's like the oldies of smartwatches where like the hookins are like, oh, it's got one thing for this, but not that. And this doesn't do that thing.

And so you have to like discover like a puzzle because none of the phone companies have opened up good paths. It's also frustrating on that end. but that's like how do you even if you don't get to the point where you can at least work with the phone that you got that's a big problem like it needs to do at least everything that you want

even on the Samsung Galaxy XR the AI was like the Gemini Live thing was kind of interesting in that it could see everything in the room in your screens but then I would ask it to like close an app and it was like okay to do that move an arrow over to the X and close it

and I was like you're telling me how to close the app you're the what am I do? You're in there already, dude. Like, you're right there. It's not like, it's more like they're testing it than they have an idea of what you should be doing with this. It's like, if I go to a restaurant, I want a menu of, like, interesting things that you're going to tell me, like, what are my choices? And here it's like, in the AI land, it's like, what do you want in our magic kitchen? And it's like, I don't even know.

Don't give me choice paralysis. I'm like, what? And then you ask, and then sure enough, it can't do some of those things. So it's like, why did you ask me? I get mad. I just give me a menu of like five. options. No, I've been saying for a while, it's like, you know what the AI would be useful for? Getting through all the fucking menus they've added to my goddamn phone. The 100 different options

in the settings part of my iPhone that is now like one part. It's like, do you need to subscribe to Apple Music? Like, I'm already subscribed. I'm already a pay pig. You've already got me, Tim. And it's just like, no, we can't close a menu. But what if we looked in your pantry and came up with an idea? Maybe. And it's just, does it work every time? God, no, no, no, no. No. We don't do that here. We just, we guess, is. I don't know, it's, I wonder, I genuinely, I don't think they'll talk to me for many reasons, but I kind of want to just grab one of them and scream, I mean, just talk to one of them

and say, have you ever existed? Like, what do you, what does your day look like? Because, like, I don't know, when I cook, I like, go and see what's in the fridge. It's like, oh, it's a challenge. It's like a little shit. Like, oh, okay, I'll work out what the fuck I'm going to put together with whatever, like the 18 Diet Cokes and the three pieces of old meat in there, like, oh, gets, seasoning and just eat them raw.

But it's like you, that's part of being a human. It's like, what if we remove the friction? Well, not really the friction. What if we added friction, but an idea? It's just very sad. It's just sad. Well, it feels like the, like many things, AI is forcing the hand and kind of ruining the landscape.

It reminds me of like, among many things in the metaverse. I thought it was interesting following the philosophy of the meta, like I'm going to say, I thought the ideas in the metaverse are interesting. But then you could. see it turning, overhyping, cryptifying, becoming whatever, and nobody knew what the hell it was and everything became this hype cycle and it blew out

and I feel like AI's in that space where it's like beyond other things, everyone's so rushing that nobody's thinking about any philosophical ideas that are important. But the point is that glasses now feel like a place where all that AI hype is being forced in fast as opposed to like, how are you going to use these on like a design area?

VR for all the people would shit on it, I do admire thinking back that like VR headsets, you could really do a lot of things in them in terms of knowing how to navigate them. And glasses are just like, oh, they're going to be in your life, but nobody's really come up with any interface. Even the Orion things were like... And that's the $10,000 meta ones, right?

The one that doesn't, yeah, the one that doesn't exist yet. But like even like on the Rayband displays, all of a sudden you're just swipe, swipe, swiping through apps. And I'm like, nobody came up with a better way to do that because it's like, I don't know. don't want to swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. There's something kind of sad about that? Like, the idea of just being like, it's just another way to jam you into our stack of shit. The future is just swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe.

You're going to be spending all of, you know, like, whatever, our interface versus the other interface versus whatever. I want to have, like, some new idea. Like, it doesn't have to be, like, a new idea for new ideas sake, but it's like, could it be less annoying than other stuff? Right. And if it's not. So I feel like nobody has really solved that yet. I'm curious if it'll happen.

That's why I love covering this. It's just curious. All right. We're going to wrap this. this 30 minute bit for now. Matt Bender from Mashable, of course, joining us. We've got Scott Stein from Sina and of course David Rotha defector.

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And we were just talking about PEPCOM, which is a show that I can't remember if that's showstoppers or PEPCOM they wouldn't let me into. They're all very similar. So the media days when before even CES officially opens to the public, there's the first three nights of CES, there's like this big exhibition type event. Right. First night's unveiled. Second night's PEPCOM. Third night is showstoppers. And basically these companies, a lot of them smaller tech startups,

basically use these as an opportunity to get some attention because no one really seeks these companies out in advance because no one knows who the fuck they are before they get to see ES and see them. Last year, for example, the big winner unveiled, and I covered it, I think even spoke about it on this show last year, was the salt spoon. Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah, I saw the salt spoon.

And we got very sarcastic and it turned out to actually be very useful for specific people. Yeah, yeah, but like it was a, for people don't know, it was a spoon that basically, for people who couldn't eat foods with salt or high sodium situation. Instead of just being stuck eating plain foods, they take a scoop of their soup with no salt. And the spoon sent like a zap that you can't feel into the spoon, which like lights up your taste buds and makes it and like tricks your tongue into thinking the food tastes salty. And it worked. I tried it out. I was pretty shocked that it worked.

But it worked. And that's an example of sort of the weird type of stuff you could find at these like CES exhibition type shows. Yeah. Have you seen anything weird and unveiled at all? There was a chess playing robot. And you wonder like, what's the market for that? Like who's going to buy a chess?

You can walk into any park in New York and find seven old men. Right. For free. Yes. For free. Well, no, they will hustle. Yeah. It's just like, yeah, sit down, young blood.

The chess playing robot has not had nearly as interesting a life. Whoever the guy that was at Dan Amora for 22 years and it takes $50 from you over the course of a few games of chess. It's also like there are so many programs to play chess. Like, why would you need the actual robot? Who's chess dot home? Yeah, it's a, people don't know, like you just mentioned. Yeah. Obviously.

Those 3.1. Right. Why is this happening? You play against the robot regularly on your computer. This is a physical chess board. with a robot that sits on the other side of you and physically has a claw that comes down and moves the pieces. Which is weird because I've seen technological chess sets

that basically have like a mechanism underneath the board that just like slides the piece. Which seems, I mean, if you absolutely need a physical robotic chessboard, that seems like the more practical version than having this. Was it like a humanoid? Was it just a knob? It was like a BB8 size robot sitting across from you. with the mechanical arm that was moving the chess pieces.

Yeah, and it was sort of like, first of all, like, this looks very expensive. So I don't know who you're going to sell this to. I guess people who want to show off their robot playing chess. Yeah, I mean, that's a thing that would be in Drake's home. It's not like, all right, we already went over Crocs, LLM. You're not doing great if you have this product. A bespoke chess robot. Check this out.

I don't care. Like, it's just like, yeah. Look, it really, how fast, was it really slow as well? Please tell me it was really slow. It wasn't very slow. No, that's really, it was a normal speed. No, that's, if I want one of those, I want it to be like, like, really fucking like, just barely, like, like it takes like half a minute.

Yeah. Or, or like an arcade claw machine and it sometimes just drops the piece, like just randomly. Ruins the whole boring. I love this. So, but so the, did you talk to them at all? Because I have way more questions for them. than anyone else so far. I did it because I thought that.

I looked at it and I was like, I thought of the chest that, those chest boards that have the mechanism underneath that. I was like, what is the point of this? I don't know. I should have, maybe if I see them again,

I'll inquire more for you. Yeah, please do. I must not, anything else weird? Like, there was this thing that like, I don't even know how to explain it. It was like,

I just saw it in motion. It was like this, this almost like a roller type thing. that you would lay down and it rolls under your back. I guess it's like to give you a massage or something. That actually sounds like a foam roll situation. It was weird looking though because like if you know like in like cartoons when they go down like one of those like slides that have like the up and down things. And the cartoon like body goes like yeah in a way that your back can't go.

This thing was like making it look like cartoon people the way they were their backs were contorting. Yeah. I wanted to try it. But there was a pretty long line. for it. I love that. I did, I think one of our colleagues, Bridget, uh, did a demo that was talking about it afterwards and I was like, oh. Is it, is it, like, meant to like, give you, like, to fix your back? Like, I didn't really get, I think she found it fine. Yeah, I think she found it okay. That's the endorsement or one. Yeah. CES. CES. I think it was fine. I mean, a lot of that stuff that I

remember seeing last year, a lot of the sort of, like, robotic assistant things. Like, it seemed like the basically, like, the best you could hope for from it is like, I did not experience whiplash. from sitting in this gaming chair that moves at its own, like, a cord or whatever. No physical damage is a win. My spine functions fine. The robot did not harm me. If you want to put that on the poster, you can.

We have a colleague wearing an exoskeleton, walking around. But Evans has one of those two. I know. How's it going? I think he likes it. He actually got it for real therapeutic purposes for, like, his hip or something. But it's fascinating. I was like, we're at the show where I see people casually wearing exoscelotons

or whatever you would call them. And I think someone else is testing out one. I had a really hard time it unveiled finding weird tech. And that's actually my judging zone. I was supposed to look for weird tech. I had a sort of existential crisis where I wandered around. That's also hard.

Like maybe if you try to find it, it doesn't find it. I thought the same thing. And I think what happened this year was usually the weird tech is very visually appealing. Yes, there were no visually appealing. No, amateur hour. You need to go to the corner of the convention sense. into like the like Shenzhen Zhao Corporation.

Right. Where it's like cameras, cameras, batteries, dildos. Right. Yeah. Every time that it's like this 18 word long thing. And it has like, it's just a printed white piece of paper. So visually unappealing how? Like what did it?

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

Like, damn, I gotta see that thing play chess. Yeah, yeah. But, like, there really wasn't much of that this year in terms of visually. Like, you know, okay, I'll give you an example. Like, and this is another thing I wanted to bring up. So there's a lot of, I noticed a lot of, like, baby related tech. But to me, I'm thinking, like, a lot of this stuff

is for, like, very small, like, newborn. Yeah. And you're going to, like, spend this money on something that's going to last you, like, maybe six months? Right. So there was one thing. remember the name of the device, but it's this monitor that goes on your baby's ankle. Outlet?

No, it was a different company. That might be a Pokemon. But, no, Alet is a company that makes baby stuff. Yes. No, you're not wrong. But it's an ankle monitor for babies that track their alcohol intake. No, I'm just. Deactivates the car so they can't try.

No, but it was, it tracks their heartbeat. And the point of it. And that's useful. Like, this is like the. Is that like SIDS and such? No, the way they were selling it was so parents know when the best, the optimal time is to place your baby in the crib so they don't wake up. Nice. Baby hacking.

Yes. Finally. Yes. So I guess it tracks their heart rate and the optimal heart rate, I guess, when they're in a deep sleep, it lights up a certain color. And that's when the optimal time is to put your baby down. Psychotic. And like, listen, I wouldn't buy something like that to put,

I wouldn't put an ankle monitor on my baby, but I could see if you're a desperate parent who's having. trouble there. Maybe you would look into that solution. But also, like, unless it's priced very cheaply, I can't imagine buying something that you're going to use for just a few months. This sounds like something someone who remembers having kids built. Like, someone who's like, yeah, you know, fuck, what my baby do is crying? It's fucking, yeah. I mean, it is like definitely an experience that, I mean, I'm not a man of child personally, but it is like, I ain't a man a child. But I'm just saying, I'm an active uncle. You know, I'm a very engaged uncle.

But it is a professional uncle. But it is one of those. things. Yeah, I'm a chopped unk and I'm not afraid to come on here and talk as such. No cap. Actually, now that you bring that up, this does sound like a device that the uncle would buy at Christmas time or something like that. This is Uncle Tech. Yes. I heard these things don't like to sleep. So I got you a thing. They'll tell you when it's asleep. You can maximize your baby. You're like, what is that? You're your baby maxing. It's supposed to be good. It is funny, though, like the idea. I mean, like, the idea. I mean, like, It's as funny, and it is very funny to me, the idea of being like, you must optimize your toddler. Like, that is funny to me.

But it's also, like, it's a reflection of who is, like, funding this shit and who is coming up with these ideas. Like, in terms of what is the experience that you would want the most from your baby? And it's like, you want them to be healthy. You want to be happy. You want them to sleep. But then there's this other element where it's like, and you must excel as, like, a parent. I think what it is is like the venture capitalist. And this is not necessarily, like, therefore, I guess.

But like, a venture capitalist is by definition probably pretty well off. So they probably have like a lot more parental support. I feel like if you're funding baby tech, you should go and just talk to the most stressed baby owner. Yeah. I have a kid. I really shouldn't be like baby owners if I don't have one. But this was much older than that. I kept thinking about last year.

It's like, where is the consumer in the consumer electronics show a lot of the time? Yeah. And there were devices that, and the stuff I remember from the floor most fondly last year, were like old-fashioned American inventions with a technological aspect. It was like, it's a dog door that opens because your dog collar has a chip in it. So it recognizes that it's your dog and it's not letting in a raccoon or a prowler or whatever. And like, that's not, you know, groundbreaking. But it's like, all right, cool.

Like, I get it. Like, this is a machine that sits on your counter and it makes soft serve ice cream. Sick. Fuck me up. My kitchen is way too small to have that. But it would be great if it worked. We like ice cream. But yes, you can see where the consumer is.

is in all of that. And then the ones that always kind of blew me away were like beyond the stuff that's just like kind of junk or like white label or just over-extracted is the stuff like this where it's like you have this miraculous technical capacity and no sense of what an ordinary person

might use it for. And you clearly didn't ask. Like you never tried to get that. That's kind of what I'm getting at. It's like, have you talked to a parent? I don't mean a fucking parent clearing a quarter of a million dollars a year. I mean like a fucking parent who, has got two children and a part-time job and is fucking suffering. Because the outlet sock is like useful because it can like monitor the babies, make sure that some infant death syndrome

doesn't have like mental heart rate and breathing and such like useful things to make sure your kid is alive. Like very meaningful stuff. It's only for six months. But man, you really want to make sure they're alive for all of the months ideally. But it's like there's a real thing. But it's just like, yeah, great, you can make sure your baby's heart rate. No, you put the kid down when it fucking is ready. Like when the kid is ready to sleep and you just fucking sit there and go, fuck it just please, please, please go to the fuck to sleep. Please don't know this to me. Matt, you've got kids.

Yes. Yeah. I got, I got three. But each one of them was different about the sleep thing. But I can't imagine using the thing that are on any of them simply because like, is there really even an optimal time? Like, my also, wait, so was this an ankle monitor? Yeah.

It goes, it's a, it's a, they, you strap it on their, their leg, like around their ankle. And it's like a circular device. And it lights up red when it's definitely not time. It lights up on their leg. Yes. And then lights up. What's the fuck? And then lights up green when it's almost time, when they're drifting off to sleep.

Can I just be clear? You're talking about attaching a flashing light to a newborn's ankle. Yes. Yes. And my distinct experience from newborns is that sock just fucking comes off all the time. Right. So you're like giving a flashing light to a baby. You got to really clamp it on there.

You got to get it on tight. You don't think the baby's going to see the flashing light, one of the only things it can recognize. In the complete darkness, too. I mean, like, just fuck with it constantly because that's what a new... I want one of those for, like, my 17-year-old. Just to kind of be like, how you doing?

Yeah, my... Can I monitor your ankle? Yeah. Is that cool? Is that all right if I get a push alert to my phone that lets me know if you're actually sleeping or not? We could all have ankle monitors. No talking.

to the child. 17 and 12. Right. Yeah. And when you think about what the problems are, it's like they're emotional, so tech really can't fix that. They can add to them if you'd like.

If you'd like the more problems, the social network apps will help with that. Well, this is an interesting thing too. It's like the over-monitoring versus like personal experience. Like we didn't use a lot of tech raising our kids, but other than iPads. But like we, there's like personal experience.

It's like, do you want something to tell you how to cook or do you want to just like mess around with trying to see what cooks well and what burns and then you get natural experience that kind of gets ingrained and you go oh I know because I've been doing it over time that's like parenting you're like I begin to get a general feel and sense of that kid and their behavior it just happens it happens when you pay attention right and that's the thing like I don't talk about much about my kid on the show because I have a lot of people who listen to him like it's his world but it's like yeah you learn

Learn from your child what their habits are when they are sleepy. Right. When they will tell you, I'm not tired. You're going to sleep. You're going to fall asleep in two fucking minutes, brother. You're going to get in that bed. It's nice and cozy. You're going to go right to sleep.

This is where the category error that we're talking about here, where it's just like fundamentally being like, do you want your phone to solve this thing that is like, not your work, like not your commute? Like the shit that like you have to do so that you can afford the other stuff. It's like, do you want us to take the experience, like the actual pleasurable part of being alive? Like, and for me, like,

as like a, you know, again, we don't have kids. We can afford to, like, make dinner most nights. Like me and my wife, like, that is, like, really fucking precious time to me. I, like, I think about it, you know, like, we go in with a game plan. We enjoy, like, working and cooking together. We're not exactly being, like, behind you, chef, like, as we move through our shitty little kitchen. But we're, like, closer than is probably, you know, healthy. But the idea of, like, replacing that with being, like, I'm just going to, like, let my phone either tell me what to do or eventually.

I mean, this was, like, the big promise for a lot of the smart home shit last year. was like, just my house will do it. Like, they'll make the coffee for me. It's like, making coffee is really important to me, actually. Like, that is part of how I remember that I'm a human before I, like, get on my computer and get really upset about shit all day long, you know? And it's like they don't solve the actual things which are annoying.

Like, I love my dinner with my girlfriend. It's nice. It's an experience together. It's something you do. I fucking hate laundry and cleaning. And they've barely fucking got, like, they've been, I think, Scott, how long have you been going to CES? It has been a long one time.

So I went to my first CS for work purposes, probably 2004. Okay. How many times have you seen the laundry robot? Oh, so it's the same fucking one. What the folding the laundry? The folding robot. Like I think over a decade. Like there is one company that just every year's like,

this is the fucking year, folks. There's one laundry company probably. But there's a few companies. And I haven't been going anywhere near as long as you. Yeah. It's been a long time. I think this is either year four or five for me. But I've already noticed there's companies that I feel like literally just exist to go to CES.

Like they don't ever put anything out. They always bring the same or a similar product. And year after year, it's the same thing. And it's like, first of all, where are you getting in the, like, I don't know how much it costs to show up. And as with a booth at CES, but I'm guessing it's not cheap. Yeah. Like, what are you doing? The computer, the money laundering show.

I have notes for CES unveiled, like things like that. Here's my note for it based on what I saw yesterday. I made me think about, I was a judge at MIT reality hack last year, which was actually really interesting because it's like, it was a lot of students pitching random projects that involved like AR and XR. And you basically went around to a lot of tables

and you had five minutes with each one, and they had to come up with a pitch. And it was like, okay, like, I don't know what it could be, but it's like, we did this thing, we're going to come up with it, we're going to get you experience it, get to understand. It's like, and it's like speed dating. But a show like unveiled is not speed dating.

It's literally just find your way. If they made it, I don't think I'd want it to be a speed dating. But like you say, if they're not, like you say, if they're not perfectly clear and grabby and they have a headline, there are a lot of companies that was like Murkamioma, and it's like, okay, there's like, it's just an empty table with like an item on it. And then it's like, is the game that I'm supposed to talk to you

and retrieve the information? I'm like, I can't, I can't right now. Like, and I don't, it's, I'm not into that game right now. And so I felt the pitches were not, we're not clear. A lot of companies, it also is like some, you know, could be international, whatever else. But it's like, maybe they're looking for components or things, but this is a media, more media focused thing on unveiled. And they pay extra for this, don't right? Yeah.

And so you go, why am I looking at that? I just don't have time and it's over stuff with too many things. So, and plus there are no, like, it's not like a grocery store where you're like, here's the baking stuff, here's the meat. like I would like if they made categories where it's like the row the emotional robots that were like five of them it's just aisle 100

aisle 200 aisle 300 there were moments last year before emotional robots scattered throughout I kept walking through and being like oh I'm in the like this is the

the sex apps this is the like weird right but like no the sex apps are everywhere they're all over the fucking place and like

ditto for the one bit that seemed actually coherent I remember was in like one of the basements last year that was like kind of the whole

Hall of Nations. And then you would be going through and it's just like, here's like the Netherlands wants to talk to you about what it does. Yeah, there's the French zone.

But it's the only bit that felt organized at all. But what's interesting, but when they're going to scatter shot, yeah, that press event, yeah. Whenever I go down to the nation thing,

what I actually usually get like a little bit angry about it because it's like, damn, this is like countries that actually support their startup companies with funding because that's why they're there representing their country.

And there's like, no United States section because, US doesn't do that. Hey, that's the fucking show. What do you think this is? No, they usually have like a US government section though. There's like, oh, but it's just like the, this is what the post office is doing.

It's the Department of Commerce. But it's not like, oh, if there was a CIA one. I'd, uh, well, that's the, that's the Palantir. Right. I was gonna say, you go down to the CIA both. Hey, uh, what happened with JFK? You do that? Was that if, was that us? How's that?

What do you do? I would just watch the X file. mate. You do that shit. I think I could probably get killed at that both 100% within just asking annoying questions. It is one bit just to go back to what Scott said that like it's funny and I remember this experience again like just because I haven't been on on the floors this year. I felt last year both like heartened and a little bit embarrassed by how much like a little bit of oaf mode curb appeal like showmanship would like win me over. Like the reason I knew about that dog door was that they had made it out of some metal substance that they had, you know,

like whatever, perfectly calibrated themselves. And there was a big mallet that you could swing and hit it into the door and it never dented. And so the reason I found it was that like, I was walking around with Jesse Farrar and we were like, what is that loud noise? And then just like a pair of dogs off leash wandered over and we're like, what does this do? And like, it was something I really liked learning about it. Like I found the people very pleasing, you know, conversationalists, but it was 100% something that I found because I was like, and that's why we're here. Yeah, exactly that. This is why we're here. It's like, this is why it's a physical show. It's like, there's the internet. Like, there's information everywhere. You could always be looking up stuff.

But what people are here, you should be, like, it goes back to that science fair type thing. It's like, is this, you got to come up with a, if you're going to be here, you've got to come up with an interesting picture. Like, not, don't do a stupid one, but do like a, yeah, Try to get something to catch our attention and explain it because that's the whole point. What's that? Will the dogs just walking? No, Jesse and I were the dogs in this scenario. What was interesting about you bringing up, we were talking about just two seconds ago,

how nothing is like, the layout is not planned in like categories. I'm dying to know if they do it again this year, if there's even enough companies to fill it out. But last year, there was one section, and I brought it up on the show too. And I thought it was so funny. there was a web three section and it was like oh these companies are now so embarrassing we want like them off to the side

like behind a curtain we want them all in a specific section where they could be avoided and it was like they were they were there was no like straight up crypto or blockchain companies but they were still these companies that believed in like the promise of

without using the word NFT the promise of like the digital ownership of things and the metaverse type stuff and they actually did create a web three section that actually said the web three like arena or something and it was like there's no reason to do that unless you want people to know

where they can actively avoid if they don't want that. Yeah, or like the five perverts that need to go. Right, I feel like you're keeping everybody away from everybody else. The way that there's people that are like, I don't want to know, I don't have a fucking dog and I don't need a dog door. What I need is a picture of a dog that lives on the blockchain

that's on my phone that I have most of my savings invested in. A collection of dogs. The dog simulaccharis action. Yeah. Of C.S. It takes all kinds. I don't.

It's a big market. Oh my God. Yeah. There's supposed to be a holographic fish tank here. What are my colleagues? What? Okay. What the fuck?

I'm actually trying to find. What does that mean? I don't know, but my colleagues said we were trying to look for weird tech. We've actually been on the hunt. And we said, there's a holographic fish tank. And I said, I'm in. Okay. And apparently it's not here.

tech. How did it take you this long to bring it up? I've been, I've been, I want other people to talk. Oh, the fish holograms? Let me tell you, I don't know. I want there to be. I want to believe. It's in the web three area. Molda, there's no such thing. Holographic. There's no such thing is a holographic fish, Melda. It's NFT fish in the tank. I don't know what it is. But I do think, um, so all the other thing is that last night, we're talking about weird tech. The thing that people had said to me, what caught their eye, but I didn't see it. This doesn't sound that weird. Was a vibrating knife.

Oh, I saw it. The ultrasonic knife. I didn't get to use it. Yeah, ultrasonic. It was apparently a knife you just like lightly hold over the vegetable or whatever you're trying to cut. And then just like barely any pressure and just goes right through. It just wasn't visually appealing enough for me.

I saw a knife and I skipped and I thought it already existed because I don't cover that beat and I was like it's probably the same vibrating knife that they had last year with a new feature. Tell me another one. Isn't this a Star Wars thing? Or like William Gibson novels. Yeah. I feel like there's like, it's feeling a cyber.

And when I, when I'm thinking of tech I want, I'm reading William Gibson. Maybe it was in his, the torment nexus section. So you're telling me you've created it. That's really interesting. The cyborg sprang's spraw. It's so good. It's so good that I'm obsessed with this holographic fish tank. I'm going to fuck it.

I know. Can we put out an APB and just say, if you are making a holographic fish tank, tell us where it is. I know everybody was getting your ass for not bringing it up. I think it's very ethical that if you yourself have not, It's a holographic fish tank. You would sound weird if you were like, I've heard tell of the holographic fish tank around. I need to know that you saw it.

Like, I needed to get a description of it. I need to know. I, exactly. I need to see it myself. But then the other thing I saw there on the floor, that thought, but apparently it already existed because again, I'm not looking at massage chair tech. But there was someone sitting in one of those giant moving massage chairs that was like,

it looked like a transformer. Like they lifted their arm and the arm was coming with them and the leg was moving with them. But then I brought it up to people and they were like, ah, that's already been here. And I was like, okay, well, that interested me. The, the, the, the, the man trapped. It was called like the, the, the, the, the best massage body's friend or something like that. They were just moving, but it was like, it was like you, almost like you couldn't escape. It was like the, as they were moving, the chair pieces would move still with their arms. And I think I saw that. I was like, that. I, that's interesting. Cyberso sofa. I love the massage

man. I love the massage chairs. I, I love the massage chairs. It's the, it's the, it's greatest scam at CES. Every sort of you run in someone who's like, I just got the best deal on the massage chair. It's like, no, you did not. You just got scam. No, it's like, if you're not heard about the scam. No, I haven't. So they have these lines of massage chairs and they're like, I'll cut you

a special deal. They're not cutting you a special. At CES, they do that. If you walk around the main convention center, there's usually a very, I didn't know that they're even trying to sell. There's a very sad section where you see like the CES, like the guys who have been here 25 since it was called like Com, Com, like Comdex. Like the people have been here forever and they're sitting in this chair just like fucking just like fucking just the

only time I get away from my wife and kids just fucking just sit in the fucking chair all day. I sell software man. I just want to die. And they just sit in these chairs. But those people are not buying them. They just know you can scam. But no, you will I every few years I run in someone's like, I just got the best deal. It's like I paid $7,000 for two chairs and they're like, yeah, the RRP is $1,000 each. You've got fucking scam. It's like it's Alibaba chair situation that massages you. I did not know this is going on. It's beautiful. It's a, I'm, I'm a, You know what? It's part of the Vegas experience being like swindled by.

I mean, I do know that a lot, I don't want to say a lot, but there are companies then show up and like you could see on like the banners they have around their booth. They go like, oh, ask us a better.

CES only special deal or whatever. And I mean, I'm here as media, so I would never spend any money like that. But I mean, it always seems like, is it really the best deal? Yeah.

You're in last fucking Vegas. You think you're getting a deal here. You're getting dealt. I also like the idea of your wife. walking through the like air purifier section where there's 50 identical products and you're being like, this is the one. Like, do you take, can I, do you take Venmo? I do. Like, it's just like, one year I had a bit where I just lifted up stuff and asked if I could have it. And they really didn't like that. Like, especially with the TVs. I just like, lift up, can I have this? And they looked at me and

pause and went, no. No. It's just like, no. Yeah, they don't, they don't. They don't. They don't. But it wasn't bolted down. No, exactly. I'm pretty sure they do now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what the fuck was I going to do? You think there's going to be a ghost, like, just walking out, running away with the TV? Make your escape through this. Yeah, if you can get it out of the door, you can keep it. That should be the rule. They should, they should, is there swag? Is there any swag you saw? They, they, I mean, on the show floor, usually not, but a lot of these companies, when they see media, they want to, especially the smaller, like, startups. Yeah, they will, they want to, like, review it. Like, so they'll, they'll just, like, they'll come back later.

there's a thing for you. I think I have an aura to me. No one ever offers me anything like that. Sir, you can't have this. The thing I noticed this year, though, and this happened to me a few times was they almost seem more interested in content creators now than like a journalist.

Yeah, 100%. Like someone actually said to me like, oh, what do you do? And I was like, oh, I'm a reporter for it. And they were like, where are you based that of? And I was like, oh, maybe you could be our content creator from New York. And I was like, well, I'm a, I just said I'm a journalist. Right. No, I've got a real job.

So, yeah. But the content creates. You see that at like, yeah, at all the conferences where it's like there's been two different tracks, but also like a lot of stuff, I feel like tech companies have clearly been pushing that focus to like the content creator influencer path. I mean a lot of it overlaps, but like it's a very different track. And then they're like that's the primary thing. They just mean a guy, they just mean spawn con without the spawn. Yeah. I imagine that there's probably a lot of that of like people that like are on TikTok. Like check out all these crazy things I saw. Right, they just won't listen to you. And the thing is, I love getting free shit, but I'm not changing my opinion at all. Oh, right, of course. No, no, that's the thing. You know, you want to review.

I'm happy to review it if I'm interested in the product and I think it's interesting or cool. But if it doesn't work or something's wrong or there are negatives, I'm going to be truthful about it. It's like, I'll be truthful if I think it's cool and works. Yeah. You know, one interesting thing was one company actually said to me, like when they asked where I, you know, what my outlet was?

And I said Mashable and they were like, oh, what's the social media for it? And I was like, oh, it's a website, mashable.com. And they immediately pulled up their YouTube app on their phone and was like, let me see how many subscribers your YouTube channel. Wow. Right in your face. And then they saw it. And they were like, oh, oh.

Okay. So like that's the example I'm like of what we're dealing with now in terms of like content creators mean more of these companies now than actual outlets. They didn't even respond to the website. They didn't even bring up their safari and went to Mashable. It always makes me sad when people say. say like, oh, I've seen your, it's nice say, oh, I've seen all your videos, but I'm like, do you read

any, I write articles. And they're just like, huh. I don't do that. Let's skip that what you just said. I don't want to hear that part. So as we come to the end of this 30, I'm going to say Matt Bender, you've been joining us from Mashable, of course. Thank you for being here. Always a pleasure. And of course, Scott Stein from

CNA. Hey, thank you. Thank you for being here. And David Roth from Defecto. You're going to be here for a couple more. Six more. And this next ad is just for birds. Just try them today. They're sooner. Birds.

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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. Welcome back to the Better Offline CS Experience. I'm, of course, your host, Ed Zitron, and now I'm joined by, of course, David Rother DeFector. Hello. Edward Unguizzo Jr. of the Tech Bubble Newsletter. Hello.

And Lisa Edegico of CNN. Thanks for joining us, Lisa. Of course. Thanks for having me. So you saw a tri-fold Samsung Galaxy phone and the listeners got mad at me last time for being excited about something. What do you little picks want? What do you want from me? But yeah, so you've seen the trifold. What was it like? It was really cool, but I think my biggest criticism of it was that it didn't really provide a compelling reason to want this bigger screen that folds up and fits into your pocket. It's really cool when you hold it, like you open it up kind of like a brochure or a pamphlet. It, you know, has. twofold so you open it, it folds into threes. And then when it's open, it's a really slim

tablet, but then it's just, you know, it kind of feels like the fold plus in a way. Like I feel like you can get a similar experience with the Z fold, which already exists. So that said, I only had a few minutes with it. How big was it though? Like how many, what was it like 10 inches, I guess at that? Yeah. So it's 10 inches. So it's more like the size of an iPad when it's open, slightly smaller than like an iPad air. And then the Z Fold is more closer to the size of like an iPad mini when it's open. So that's kind of the difference.

And then when it's closed, it's I think around, I think the screen is 6.5 inches. I would have to double check that. But, you know, the size of a plus phone or a Pro Max phone, whatever. Did they give you a price? No, they didn't say pricing yet. That thing's to be to and off grand. It's good. Yeah, it's going to be a lot.

I mean, the Z Fold 7 is already like $2,000. Really? So, yeah. I can't be mad. See, this is the thing, this is my weak point. I'm going to get so many emails. People got so legitimately, people got really upset at me when Lisa was on because I was like, I like the idea. And they're like, Ed, you need to hate everything.

I'm full of joy and love. You can like things sometimes. You can have opinions. They won't allow me. They won't have the very much. I don't want Ed to have his screen time. No, yeah. Take it away from you.

Make me read more books. No, it's, but I kind of like that they're doing something. Like, I love the idea of a giant folder. I'm a freak, I guess, but it's like, it's sad they haven't, when you say it isn't, like, they haven't thought through why you'd need it. What do you mean exactly? I was kind of hoping that the software would do something a little different and interesting. But that said, to your point, I'm happy that Samsung's doing something because they have been showing these concepts for years of different kinds of foldables that fold in funky, weird ways. And they keep saying, yeah, we're working on something,

we're working on something. And then we just had no idea if any of those concepts would actually ever come to fruition. So I'm glad to see that they're experimenting and they're still doing that. But to me, my immediate reaction was like, oh, wow, this is really cool. But it doesn't, it feels almost like the fold did a couple of years ago when it's closed because it's kind of thick. Right. So it just didn't feel as different as I thought it would, I guess. And I think part of that is because when you open it, it's like you have the bigger screen or the front screen.

You don't have the in-between. And that's kind of what I wanted. Wait, wait, wait, what do you mean by that? So I think, and I'd have to double check, but I think it was either some of Samsung's concepts or, like, maybe the Huawei phone. Like, you can kind of use the different panels as, like, their own individual screens and have, like, almost. You have different apps on them. Yeah, like, almost have, like, three screens and one. And, like, this doesn't really do that.

It just has, like, the open state where it's a tablet and then the closed state where it's a phone, which is still useful. But it doesn't feel that different. If you're paying $3,000 for a phone. Yeah. And the one thing that I thought was interesting that Samsung is kind of thinking of is this being not just like a phone and a tablet, but maybe a phone, a tablet and also like a mini PC if you hook it up with like a Bluetooth keyboard and a mouse and whatever. Yeah, they're still trying that.

But yeah, I don't know. It's interesting. But I feel like this thing is probably going to be expensive. So the use case has to be really compelling. and their Z-Fold phones are only just starting to take off a little bit. So I feel like it's, you know, it's going to be a long road ahead for something like this. But I'm glad they're doing it. Yeah, at least someone's doing something.

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

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

while you sit at home. I did see they have added nanobanana to televisions now. And I feel like what a thrill to hear you say those syllables that was. You can do deep dives. I hate, I hate saying nano banana. I think it's a fucking terrible name. I think whoever came up with the name should be electrocuted.

Can I share a stupid accent thing that I heard on the plane last thing? By all means. A guy behind me, an Australian guy ordered Sprite with ice in an Australian accent. Just something to think about what that might sound like. Do I know anyone Australian? If you're an Australian listener, please record. Only one I know is my boy, Jathan, my co-hills. Yeah, Jay, get Jathan to record it.

In fact, just email me at easier at betteroffline.com if you record yourself as an Australian saying it. If you're- I'm gonna ask my Australian friends from CNET to say it now. Let's get the Australians on it. There's one thing that people love, it's being like, you voice is all fucked up. You mind saying a few freezes for me?

I'd know nothing about that. That happened to me when I was on vacation in Ireland, like last year, like a cashier at a convenience store, was like, can you say this? And I was like, why? And it was just like really bizarre. Yeah, this is my life. This is my life is people, people turning to me and saying, I can't help myself. I have to do my accent. If you have.

You can help yourself. You can. No, if you've ever said this to me, you're a fucking liar. Oh, I have a thing. No, you don't. You think your British accent is good. And you want me to tell you with. good. It's never good. It's never being good. Stop. I'm guilty of this.

I do it. No, your British accent's funny. Yeah. If you just do it. To be clear, if you're making fun of England, bully for you. I'm right there with you. I don't really have one. I just periodically be like, what or like my. Exactly. And like, that's all I've got. And that's fine. I do that. But it's just, yeah, it's Sprite with ice. It doesn't sound good when I said. Do you want to give us a demonstration? It was basically like Sprite with ice. No, it wasn't. That wasn't, that was British. That wasn't bad.

It wasn't. That was pretty good. Sprott with us. Sprite with us. Sprite with us. Yeah, were there any mouths go to the ceiling? No, he was two hours into the CES coverage. And this is, yeah.

This is. Gemini generating sounds back and forth to each other. It's just pure whale song. But no, I like the idea that like someone is generating images on their tele. Like what fucking freak did that? like, you know what people want to do? Generate an image. No. No. No one has ever been like, I wish I could generate something on my...

Jarvis, add some friends to this photo of me alone on the... Yeah. I think part of it is a lot of these tech companies have been trying to make TVs something that they're not for a long time, like trying to make them all these different types of ambient computers and whatever. And I feel like that's just part of that effort. And CES is the hub of all of that. I was saying in the cap earlier, it's just like at some point it's a fucking television.

Right. People just want a really nice screen that they want to look at. There was the thing of like, oh, you want to have to plug devices into it. Now you can do Netflix on it. Great. Okay. Now you can play games and I saw someone announce you can do Xbox gaming. Yeah, game passes. Which kind of make, and that's, I'm kind of like fine. That makes sense. It's streaming. And now what? And they're like, fucking banana. Now when you get home drunk at night and the TV's a little too dim, you could go, yeah, me too. Me too. Gemini, Pikachu, 9-11. Like, Gemma, just like, please. Gemini's Star Wars, Pikachu, 9-11. Like, just like, just like. Ed, are you sure? Calling your mother. No, no.

No, but you can't do that from a television, though. You actually can't, like, calling people, like, Facebook, Facebook portal is weirdly enough, like, the only product that can reliably do that. It's really weird. Is that true? Yeah. It's really hard to find a television, because, honestly, a TV with a camera and it is

bad. But at the same time, it's like a weirdly rare product. Weirdly enough, the Facebook portal is actually good. That's like one of the few products I actually have never tried. Don't worry. They killed it. Yeah, that much I know. They're like, no, no, no, no, no. We need to, you can't find your friends on Facebook. Oh, Facebook portal allows to talk to your family. Not so far. It's the fuck weird. You want some glasses? You want some glasses? They kind of work. What if it let you talk to a local restaurant that, like, has a lot of weirdly racist posts. Is that what you want? Let me call them during rush hour right now.

Hey, guys, what the fuck's my food? It's just trying to get away from the core function because there's not really many reasons to buy on UTV anymore. Right. Because, I mean, I have like a, like I'm an upgrade pig. I love upgrading my phone. I love the slightly fast, the better experience. I'm not going to upgrade my TV until it breaks. It's 4K, it's HTML2.1.

I mean, people just want bigger TVs that look nice that don't cost as much. That is what everybody wants. have a really big, like an 85 inch Sony Bravia. Oh, 85. It was $1,700 six years ago, I think. And it's like, why would I upgrade? What possible reason? And the TV companies are sitting there just being like, because there really isn't. It's like, oh, I can have Gem and I on my TV. I'd pay for it not to be on there. Right. Yeah. And it's also, like, funny to your point, like, the way that this is like the, the purpose of

CES versus the purpose of, like, consumer entertainment as you, like, would consume it or consumer electronics as you would consume it. It's basically like, you want the good TV, but they would be bored and they probably sense that you as a CES attendee would be bored if they're just like showing you a dope new TV that's showing a movie on it. That's like, yeah, what if it had one key feature that worked 30% of the time? Yeah. Would that be new? Would that seem intriguing to you? Yeah, but that is 100%. It feels like that is, I don't know what percentage of the stuff here. Yeah. But they even do, they have a TV section where it's just showing you nice stuff. Great. every, they have micro LED or mini, they have new stuff and the TVs are thinner.

There's a very thin LGT. Last year I saw TVs you could bend and I was like, in what situation am I fending my TV? I love, no, I understand. I'm not a bender, like what's going on? I just get home and like, fuck it was a ice. Thank God I got the bedible TV. I was last night.

Would have gone different. Yeah, I was trashed. I wanted to fight by television. We're marketing this exclusively to fans of bad NFL team. Yeah. It's going very. I'm a Cowboys. I'm a Cowboys fan.

How many nights if I wanted to break my TV? I'm a Raiders fan. I don't even turn it on. It's just no need. Oh, they lost. I knew they were done after the second game. They won three of them. Don't worry.

One day we're going to win a Super Bowl each. Yeah. Yeah, I actually don't know which of us has the worst chances. Oh, yeah. You're probably not old enough to remember a Cowboy Super Bowl win, are you? No. That's, well, I am. and the worst guys in America are going to be celebrating right alongside you when it happens.

I'm not old enough to remember a Raiders Super Bowl win, but I'm sure it'll be very nice. Yeah, I'll get Gemini to generate. I'm sorry, Ed. I can't do that. It's too unrealistic. Yeah, reality check, you're trying to spread misinformation. They would never win. Yeah.

And the thing is, I don't, I, I, I, I, I, I can think of ways my life could be, like the laundry bot we were talking about last time. All of those fall down because it's like the actual way that people experience laundry is a large pile of stuff. Like it's just like, hey, the sock is in within the catamari of shit that I've left for too long. Right. I want to be able to chuck the catamari into a box and then laundry comes out. There are also services that do that you could do this wash and folds in New York.

It's kind of like could do that. It's like, or you could spend $5,000 and something that I assume you need to like neatly thread the thing into. And the TV problem is a lot of things look weird. Like you, to customize like different situations, like sports games look different to movies and such. TVs don't seem to be trying to fix that. Like the fact that every show is incredibly dark now. That's what they should be using AI for, honestly. Yeah.

But no, no, no, no, no, no. Do you need nanobanana? You need the nanobanana or your television? Fucking Picardue 9-11. What are you? We need TV to look better? You want stranger things to look good? Fuck you.

There's an Eminem verse in there somewhere. Yeah, seriously. He was kind of spit in there for a minute. I'll be rapping by the end of this show. Did you see anything? What else have you seen at the show other than phones? Yeah, other than phones. Lots of robots, I would say.

Anything. What kind of robots? One that plays chess and it's like absurdly expensive. How much was it? Did you find out? I, you know what? I forget. I just remember being like, wow, that's a lot.

It was kind of something I saw on passing. I don't know if it was thousands, but it was something that was marketed as like, hey, buy this if you like really love to play chess, but you don't have anyone to play with or you want your kid to learn how to play chess or something like that. And you don't want to use any of the computer chess.

Right, exactly. Like there's whole... Yeah. I think that that again is like another one of those kind of classic CES things. Right, that's the other thing. Another thing I saw was a robot or it's really just more of a machine

that sits under countertop. But, you know, everything's a robot at CES. That can cook for you if you, if you like almost like a kerry for food where you put ingredients in and it knows. It's like extrudes a room temperature stew. Like where you? So nice.

Finally. Here's your slop pig. Yeah. It was a lot of things where it's just like, okay, nobody wants to do anything. But none of these alternatives seem like good. But it's like a curious thing.

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

Again, this is like me just walking around CES unveiled last night and being like, oh, there's a lot of people at this station. So let me see what everyone's looking at. And yeah, that was just like the impression that I got, though. It seems similar to like a carrig but for food. Like you put the ingredients in. It knows the recipes or whatever. And yeah, I don't know.

It was really bizarre. But how does, like, how does the food? get in that do you just throw a bunch of carrots? Yeah, you have ingredients that you like put in and it knows what the ingredients are and it has recipes or something. Or it's like there's a cocktail one of those that's like, that's like, now it's like you see commercials for it on TV. Yeah, yeah. I've used it. It's not bad.

I'm sure it's good. So is it's not bad. Is it like, okay, I put the ingredients in their nose or you got to sit there being like, okay, I put in celery. I put in. No, no, no. There's like recipe packs and stuff or something like their recipe book or something. Again, I'm like probably botching the details. No, no, no, you're not watching the details.

Something like that. That sounds weird. I'm the guy that was initially like, would you just fucking put carrots in it? What you're saying makes a lot more sense than what was just coming out of my mouth. But also there are startups out there that would do, yeah, you put a fucking carrot in there.

I did. I did see. Glorify juicer kind of. The Samsung fridge though, with Gemini in it. I did see that earlier. Yeah. The Gemini fridge where it's like,

oh, I haven't seen that yet. It's so good. You read the product demonstration thing. And it's like, yeah, you can use your voice to open and close the door. And it's like, you've never opened a fridge. Like, it's like, finally a way to open the fridge. That's not the problem that needs solving here. Their argument is like, oh, well.

That's also been around, like, not like the voice element, but like, didn't LG, haven't they been showing? Fridges for years that have motion sensors if your hands are full or something. One of those things where it's like, as an accessibility technology, it's probably existed for a long time. And now they're just sort of like, people are forgetting how to open the fridge. It's one of the big problems. Where are we as a society where people don't know how to their friends? I'm just sitting at home just going, what do I do? What do I do?

Imagine if we had a screen on the fridge that you could talk to and it would tell you what's inside. You don't ever have to, you know, the touch it. I love that. I feel very, I think you should leave. Like, what do I do? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I don't know what any of this shit is.

Yeah, exactly. I didn't ask for this. I don't know what I'm doing. I do love the ones where it's like, we will find, we'll use AI to tell you what's in your fridge. It's like, fuck, mate. I had no idea. I know something else that'll do that.

No, I was going to say there are so many times when I overbuy because I'm at the store and I'm like, oh, I'm probably low on this, but I don't know. So I do feel like that could be actually hopeful. Yeah, but like you're saying you're going to save $5 on carrots then. That's what I mean. But then you end up with so many carrots and you're like, oh, man, I bought too many carrots again. I have to feed them into this thing that I keep falling into this trap. I keep on my counter that turns them into creme brulee somehow.

It's like, I love my slop machine. That really, it does feel like there's a certain degree, though, of just like, what are human concerns? Well, there's poverty and there's a living situation and there's health care. Hmm, no, that's just, how do you open a fridge? What did you like a butler? What is in fridge? Would you like a butler? Okay, so someone that can clean up for me and someone could do my laundry.

Oh, oh, no. No, we can't do that. What if nanobanana? It always comes back to nanomanas. All roads lead to Gemini. And it's just like, I'm just, I'm really looking forward to seeing deep into the depths of this show and just being like, what, what reason have you come up with? Like, last year I remember there was this air purifier with a big spike underneath them. And I walked up to the person.

I'm like, what's with the spike? And they took a second to register because no one had spoken to them in that manner. And they're like, oh, no, it's really obvious. I'm like, sure. Is it? Not that obvious. No, you're not that obvious. No, you'll never believe this.

It's like, no, it's for dogs. I'm like, what? Yeah, it was a hair thing. I remember this probably. No, no. It was, it was an air purifier where the dog and then they paused or a cap could use it to scratch themselves. Oh my God. I'm like, and I just like, do you have a dog?

And they're like, no. I'm like, great, because, well, I don't know when a dog, like a dog's just walking around looking for places to scry. No. This is like someone who one time had their cat or dog go on the air purifying. They're like, Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.

What if we put something for them? You never know when inspiration will strike. It's a little weirdo. It's also like, how do you scratch a cat? Like one of the most pleasant things of the world is like petting a cat. It's like, nah. I don't want something that does that for me. Yeah.

That's like apex level like solving a problem that you don't have stuff. Right. Are you wasting too much time that you could be spent? sending sending emails, touching your pet that you love. Don't want to pet your pet. Don't want to teach your kid how to play chess. Don't want to use your TV. Don't want to cook.

That's time you could be on work calls. Yeah. You know what, actually, let's just imagine all of these. You could be boosting shareholder values all that time. Keep your eyes on the prize. What are you fucking doing when all of this stuff is automated? Just sitting inert waiting for the next email. It's Wally.

That's what we're having to work. I'm getting a promotion, brother. Yeah. I'm moving up the corporate ladder. option. As my slot machine spit, like burps out carrot puree. You're on a ZoomCon. It's the loudest background ever. It's all your devices. No, I got a ninja creamy, one of the worst name things of all time.

And it is, you feed stuff into it. You have to freeze it. And you turn it on and it makes more noise than I have ever heard. Is it a soft serve machine? No. What does it do? It just makes ice cream that's like sometimes the right texture. I love it. Yeah, when I think of ice cream, I think of ice cream shops. It's never, never heard loud noises.

Yeah. And it's so, it's so loud. It sounds like, it sounds like, ah, and it's shaking. Everyone knows you're making ice cream right out. I literally, so embarrassing. The first time I used it. It's like the third time today. It could be a different one of this is right there.

And it shakes violently. It's like, this is real? Yes. It's so loud. I remember the first time I turned out. I'm like, this must be something. I looked on YouTube and it's people being like, yeah, I've got the creamy on. As you could hear, it's like $250. Just one of the many times the wallet inspector

has visited me. I love it. You know that it was so loud and they were like, should we reduce it? And they're like, nah, they want their ice cream. These little hogs. They'll do anything for ice cream. They'll have no idea what these people are willing to put up with for their little treats. And it's, no, it's aimed at people who want to like lose weight. Okay. Yeah, because you see you can make sugar-free ice cream. Okay. But it's like the in-so...

It makes ice cream so unpleasant to consider it. It's just like... It's like... Have loves you into thinking and like, boom! Yeah. Ice cream is when I have a headache really bad. No, I'm... I cheat you not.

I put it in another room. I closed the door. My kid was asleep. I had to move it. Like, what if all your kitchen... Don't go in there. It's the ice cream room. Let me just go to... Go to your kitchen now get to be in another room because they're so fucking loud.

Yeah. We're disrupting the kitchen. Okay. The only thing to that room is like a drum set and a ninja creamie. But wait, Lisa, did you see anything else? Was it, were they loud? I mean, it's hard to. What was the loudest gadget? The loudest gadget?

Oh, gosh, I don't know. It's, I mean, it's always so loud just at CES. Yeah. Everybody's screaming everywhere. Like, I just kick in. Like, it's true. Everyone's shouting. I can't hear myself think.

I don't think you've heard anyone screaming. Not screaming, but everyone's trying to film videos. Everyone is like shouting over each other and trying to ask questions. The level of ambient noises. Yeah. Although the other bit that I remember from, I mean, I didn't exactly love the experience, but last year going to the convention center to the entire floor that was just like white label electronics from China's USB cables.

And it was silent. Yeah. Totally. Like you could hear the HVAC system going. And like, hear the sound of someone sleeping softly in one of the booths and that was it. They're both pretty unsettling, honestly. If I had to shoot video, I would do it

in the hall of USB cables. The hall of silence. Like, I also don't want to go back there. No, it's great. You go in there with a media badge and like everyone's, like every head switches to look at you, like you've hit someone in Murrowind. It's like, stop, citizen.

Let me show you my... Would you like to see my wares? Every booth is trying to. to send you on a side quest and you're like, I can't. I can't right now. I'm trying to find the big LG things. Sorry, I'm interested. You've got any ice cream machines that are very loud.

Like, I said, no, but we have an LLM for pets. Can you help me reduce the sound of this device? LLM for pets was last year. Really disappointing because it was just like a health app versus something to translate my cat's noise. And when I posted about it, the company fucking emailed me. They were like, um, actually, please don't. I just was like, no.

No, don't. I'm not taking down. wave post. Fucking sued. I didn't say that. But if they being so, if I called my lawyer, I'm like, I'm being sued by an LLM pets company, he would be like, he would not be surprised. You got to send him a video of your cat meowing really aggressive. Yeah. No, Babu lost me too much. Babu treats me with, with adoration. Yeah. Yeah. The only time my cats really get loud like that is like if I sleep in and didn't feed them at 6 a.m.

You know, as opposed to 7 a.m. My cat's just graze. Yeah. They happily graze and they don't get fat. They're just perfect. Mine have started grazing, but they used to not and they're still on the like, oh my God, I need food right now kind of mindset. And then you give them their food and they're like, I'll have two bites and then

I'll go back to it later. Sometimes they scream to make me watch them eat. They'll scream and they make me follow them down. And then I'm like, okay, what's up? You got your food and then they start. I have seen a few links to like pets that people have here. Like I saw before. the show there was this one that makes noise and purrs and is warm, which sounds, and like those

ones, again, not going to be cynical about those, because there's old people who, people with dementia who can't look off for a pet, except they made one that has needs. What does that mean? As in, like, you have to like, oh, no, you have to like a, like a, like a Tomicacci. And it's like, okay, so I get none of the benefits of a living creature, but most of the problem is. This is something I don't think they'll have a T. But I've been seeing New York, vapes with Tamagachi in them that you have to keep hitting to keep them alive. Oh God. What would the, what would...

Yeah, because the problem with vapes is people don't want to use them. Yeah. We need to make nicotine more addictive. We're gamifying the addiction space. Yeah, steal your friends vape and see what happens 30 seconds later. Yeah. You killed it. They should have a mural.

You killed my vape. It's dead. I truly know. Someone who's very stone just, crying their eyes. My vape died. So what did I do? I killed my vape.

And I can't find my keys there in your hand. And LLM to help you process the death of your vape. The loud, yeah, it's going to be an interesting week here in CES because I've been, I've been trying to like read it. Last year, it was just completely off the top of my head.

I just made this up as I went along. No one knows. But this year I've like tried to read ahead thinking, oh, I'll catch, no. it seems to be most of the stuff from last year again. Yeah, it's hard to plan ahead for CES.

Like, you can plan as much as you want, but then the thing that you plan for is going to end up to be really boring. And everyone's going to be chasing this other thing that you've never heard of. Like the omniverse. I'm a big omniverse head. There's a huge omniverse. And I was really happy to see the half an hour that Jensen Huang spent talking about it today. Yeah.

But yeah, it's just, I'm hoping that I'm really, if you, easy at that rough line email me, if you find any weird shit, or if you want to just say, what was it, Sprite and Ice in an Australian accent. I'm going to get a lot of WAVs in my email, I think. No, it's, it's, I hope that there's something weird, but I get the sense that this year just feels cobbled together in a very strange way.

Like last year was not quite half-hearted, but off, but this one's just like, oh, what's your fucking AI, I guess? Like, are you on this? Are you looking forward to anything, Lisa? Are you got anything fun? I mean at the show. I don't know if there's anything I'm looking forward to.

I feel like I'm just kind of keeping an eye out for like what some of the smaller companies are doing in AI. Because there's a couple of interesting. I feel like one small trend I'm seeing a little bit already are like wearables that aren't actually for health tracking but are more for like life logging. Because like you press a button and it'll record, you know, you can talk into it and record a reminder or something like that. there's the new pebble ring does that I don't know if you guys saw that at all was this was pebble do you remember pebble

yeah so they're back they have new they were at CES unvelled last night and they had some new watches which were interesting I didn't really look at those though but I was really interested in this ring because again it's just kind of like fun

and different what's it do though is it like a health tracking one no it doesn't do any health tracking it does one thing like it has a button on it and you can press it if you want to just like record a reminder or something that you want to remember later. Almost like a like a diary. Is it LLM powered or is it just a ring?

Is it just recording? So there's I think some AI that happens on the back end in the app because it'll like transcribe the things that you record and whatnot. So I just thought it's kind of interesting. How much is it? I think $75 or something like that. Right. We're in the realm of not useless.

Yeah. I just, I swear to God. want one thing I actually like at this show. I'm not even trying to be a hater. No, I know. Make my heart sing, please. Like a mechanical Turk. That's what I wouldn't like.

Yep. Oh, I haven't. Some great news there. I haven't looked at, I haven't actually seen this yet. But have you guys heard about the clicks communicator? Michael Fish who is joining us Friday. He's both a creator and an innovator.

But yes, the clicks communicator that's like, what does it do? It's like a little phone thing. Yeah, it's supposed to be like a second phone. So if you want a phone just to like actually keep touch with people and not to like fall down a rabbit hole on TikTok or Instagram or whatever or talk to nanobanana or whatever you um it has a built in keyboard it kind of looks like a blackberry and

yeah I mean it runs on Android I think so you probably could do other things on it if you really wanted to you can't send texts on it but you can't do other stuff um I don't know I have not seen it yet I was just kind of seeing it in the headlines um but since it runs on Android presumably you can do other stuff on it I think it's just designed to be like hey this has a smaller screen, there's a built-in keyboard, you know, something if you just want to actually talk to people and not, you know, be immersed in a screen all day every second of every day. You can still use your psychosis induction device on your own time, but like this is a little bit quieter experience.

I thought it was an interesting idea and like it's being pitched as like a secondary phone, almost like, you know, how we have work phones and personal phones. I guess in that case it would be a third phone, but I'm going to, it's funny, I have Michael on as a creator, but I'm just going to like bug him about his device this time. I don't think he'll listen to this, but Michael, that's what you've got coming. But then we're going to wrap it there. Lisa Edichico at CNN, of course. Thank you so much for joining us.

Of course. Thanks for having me. Edward Ngrasio, Jr. of the Tech Bubble newsletter. A pleasure. And David Roth of Defector, of course. And yeah, we're going to have one more bit. And then, yeah, we'll be wrapped for the day. Thanks for listening, everyone.

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Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the better offline coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show. We're back, folks, and this is the last part of this episode, but tomorrow we're going to have two two-hour episodes. It's going to be full of fun and laughs and giggles. Don't know why I'm making so much talking happening. That's normal, Ed. Anyway, today I'm joined, of course, by David Roth of Defector. Hello.

Ed Onguze, Jr. of the Tech Bubble newsletter. Hello. And Mr. Robert Evans, the magnificent. of St. Robert Evans are behind the bastards. It could happen here. Hello. So, we're all doing that, right? Yeah, we were just, we were literally just talking about doing voices. Right. Yeah. Culturally appropriating. Yeah. I, there are British people who get really offended by it, and it's so funny. The idea of a British person being like, you can't, you can't be racist. Did you just say what to me, mate? Are you having a laugh? No, there's a level of realism. And obviously, Americans crossed this

long ago where you can't get angry at people making fun of the way you talk. Yeah. And this is still true of Italians. It's been 2,000 years or whatever. I mean, it depends on when you call 1,500, whatever, 1,000, depending on when you call the end of the Roman Empire. But you can still make fun of Italians.

Yeah. It's never racist. I saw it's never racist. I know that it's true. The prince. When Romans talking like that, like, was Julius Caesar getting stabbed? Hey, hey. Oh, no. It's crudence.

His last words were Oof, madone. Oh, Brunus, you funny. What are you doing? I wish I knew any other Italian history. Just like, don't know. That's it. Caesar and pasta.

Caesar and pasta. That's most of it. Now, you can make fun of British people as much as you want. Sure. You're welcome to. I get enough emails about it. But let's talk about consumer electronics. And Robert, you are using an exoskeleton.

Yeah. So, like, a couple of weeks before we left for the show, this company HyperShell reached out to me and said, hey, we make, these different exoskeleton products, several different companies have come out with them that are just now hitting. They've been in industrial uses for a while. There's been varying forms for really the last like 10 or 15 years that I've seen increasingly that are meant to do a mix of things.

Some of them, and initially these were very separate product categories. They're ones that were meant for people who were having mobility issues. Right. right, to allow people with a disability to move more easily. And then there were ones that were more designed for, like, industrial use, right? Like you have people working like an Amazon facility, and they're going to be lifting packages and walking them repeatedly, and you want something that reduces the stress to their body

and thus reduces, like, workman's comp. Cool. Right. So those are kind of like the two different. Of course, not for the humans. It's the workers' comp. All right, we're back. We got disconnected due to the Amazon hit squad that was sent in

because we were discussing workers' comp. And while we're off microtiscusing, I do not think it's reasonable to suggest that every dog is a good boy. I don't think you should go in. Wow. I just don't think. Just drop that. Like we're all supposed to roll right past it.

Yeah, just I just want to just put this stuff out. We're also anxious to get back to talking about the exoskeleton stuff. Just seeing. Oh, ones that are active duty police officers. Yeah. If I got to walk by you at the airport, I don't know.

I don't know if you're a good boy. We can't understand how dogs talk. We don't know what they're really thinking. So that's all I'm saying. Yeah, maybe he's saying I fucking hate this job. Yeah, just cursing. Anyway, exoskeletons. Back to you, Robert.

Sure, yes. So, yeah, I mean, they reached out and asked if I wanted to try this thing at CES because people walk around a lot at CES, I guess. This is not really meant as a product for journalists who get their feet tired, walking around a trade show floor. This is mostly a blogging aide. Oh, yeah, this is to help you blog. Finally.

But I thought it was interesting. Like, I'm a nerd. I grew up playing Warhammer. So I'm interested in anything that is like a little step on the road to power armor, which was my immediate thought when it was like powered exoskeleton. I'm going to strap some body armor into this thing and see how it works. So I did that. I mean, I played around with it at home.

I've got like a sled that's like an exercise. It's like a sled that you load weights on to like push and to shove it because that's a thing that you can do to exercise. This is an awesome exercise. Oh, I love that. Yeah. And I threw on like my level four plates on a vest and my helmet with ear pro and stuff. just like, I don't know, 25 pounds maybe of armor,

and loaded the sled up to about 200 pounds and pushed and pulled it until I got to... Well, I did it first without any armor, or with armor on, but without the exoskeleton, to see how long I could go. And then I waited, like, a day or so to recover, and then I did it with the exoskeleton. Right.

I noticed, and I think this may just be down to how it works, because it's not meant for those motions. I noticed that when I was pushing it, I felt the machine assistant, like pulling my legs effectively. But when I was pulling it backwards, I didn't really feel much of anything at all. Right.

So I think it may just be sort of a factor of like when the thing functions, but I didn't really notice a benefit from that. I have noticed it does seem to like you're exerting less when you're like running or walking on it. Right. So I'm interested in how I feel I'm going to tomorrow probably hump around like a backpack heavier than I would normally take and keep it on and see how that feels.

and then probably do the same thing with. I don't know how else to do it other than do a control group experiment. It goes around, it fits around your hips and your thighs. It ends right above the knee. And there's like a waistband thing for it. And so it's just meant to kind of alleviate weight, I think, on your lower back and your legs. Like they've got some statistics that they have on their website that I have no idea how I would begin to verify. And I don't even know

how you would verify stuff like a four well I see like they say there's like a 42% decrease in the average heart rate of people using it. That's that seems measurable. Yeah. But there's like a 39% decrease in physical exertion. I'm not fully sure how they're using all the classic metrics for it.

What are you doing and how hard is it? Yeah. And they're saying it's something like a 40% reduction in like how much like you weight that you feel basically. So theoretically, you could carry a load that's 50% heavier or carry your additional load with like about half the strain, right?

Like that's kind of the claim that they're making. And this thing is supposed to have like a 30 kilometer battery range when walking. Now there's different settings, including like an eco and a power one. You can up or down the like intensity, the power of the assistance motor. So I assume that decreases substantially when you've got it on like level four because it goes from one to four, but I have not used it enough to, like, determine that. That's exciting, though. Yeah, it's a cool product idea. I've tested a, I think they emailed me because I've tried

some of these previous CESs, just like walking around at the actual booth. It's a really cool idea both for people who actually have, like, a physical disability. And, you know, obviously none of these companies are interested in stuff like this for people who are working in factories for their own sake. But if it does reduce the amount of wear and tear on human bodies. That's a good thing. Yeah, I got a fucked up ankle. It sounds kind of nice. Yeah. So I'm interested in how well it actually works for that. I'm not like a hyper shell has been nice to me. I'm hoping that the product works well, but I simply don't have enough time with it. How much does it cost? It varies. Their lowest inversion costs like 900 bucks. The one they sent

me costs about 2,000. But three years ago or so, I think we were looking at like five to 10 grand for most of these, so it doesn't look like prices have been coming down a lot. And what makes the more expensive? Is it a bigger battery or something? I think bigger battery. One of the upgrade version says carbon, so I'm guessing some of them are carbon fiber and some aren't. Mine definitely is. But yeah, so I think it's just a matter of like what kind of extras there are on it.

But the prices have been decreasing pretty substantially. And from the reading I have done for previous years, there does seem to be some evidence that some products in this category do reduce, like, strain and injury for people who are working, doing jobs, where you're like lifting and carrying stuff. So I, you know, I think there's some evidence to be optimistic here. I'm interested in how well, I don't actually think a convention is the best way to test a product like this out. But I understand why Hyper Shell is doing it that way, right? And I'm sure other companies in the space are because, like, it at least gives you a situation where journalists are going to be walking around a while and can, try it out. So I'll see how I think about it, but I am most interested in, like, can I make me into a space marine? Right. Right. And I mean, that's the ultimate dream. Of course. And this is interesting, because we spent most of the rest of the episode just saying nothing feels new, that everything's kind of just a series of different, like coming up with reasons to buy stuff that don't actually appear to be human. This is strangely useful. I'm just not used to.

It's the kind of thing I'm always most interested in at a CES, and that never makes it more than like 10% of the products you see where it's like, well, this is like a cool thing that I've known we'd eventually make as a species at some point. Like, we all knew they're going to have robot exoskeletons someday. I mean, it's, it's not like. If they had them on the Nostromo. Right. How hard could it be.

Yeah, exactly. It really seemed like they were cutting corners on that operation. Remember how wet that ship was? There was a lot of issues there. Although I think Nostromo was the first one. But I forget what the, so the Sulaco. was the second, was the marine ship. People will get angry at us.

Yeah, that's my fault. Defector regrets the error. Yeah. I apologize to Ian Holm. James Cameron is on a flight right now to fight you. I can't even argue with him. Luckily, we're landlocked. Otherwise, he'd come with us from the sea.

His greatest power does involve the ocean. Yeah, he'd rise from the sea like an... Like Aquaman. He's looking into air power with this newest movie. He's looking at the air power. Rising from one of the canals at the ocean. Ignatian and absolutely beating that ass. Running like one of the terminating of his stories.

I'm just like, you're such a visionary server. Like, whatever you see fit to do. He's a pro-AI guy, though. Yeah, I mean, I think he's, he made the statement that I think a lot of older guys in Hollywood are making without really thinking it through, which is like, oh, yeah, I'm sure it has some applications that I want to explore. And I'm thinking about, like, the broader sociocultural things that are going on with AI. He's just accurately

being like, yeah, it's got some uses. I'll look into it, you know. If it makes it easier for me to almost drown an actress. Right. And like, yeah. What can most effectively let me nearly kill Ed Harris? Is AI going to revolutionize my ability to nearly kill Ed Harris?

At least he didn't do what it tells me to do. Natasha Leon, who was like, yeah, David Lynch love this. That may be, no, I was saying the other day that yeah, that bummed me out. Media stuff doesn't usually enrage me that much, but if if I fucking hear about Twin Peaks remake. You have to put it in through the algorithm.

I'm not going to use nanobanana. Listen, put in a different props. Coup. I don't want to see nanobanana. It's your heart or die. Hell yeah. It would be heartbreaking. Yeah, no, no.

Anyone who, if you're trying to remake Twin Peaks, I will make war with you. I'll turn every media property I have against you. I'm not going to remake it. I'm not, no new season. I haven't finished season. Don't, don't ruin it for me. I've always thought the real problem with Twin Peaks was there were no

Dubach lizards, like moving around in the background. And there's a couple of scenes that could really use an ATS team, you know? I'm on the same page. Bob shot first. This is the way I think it's good that the Duffer brothers got their rights to the next day. This was something that I've been laughing about for like two days. I did not watch the Stranger Things the last seasons. I haven't watched the last, I guess, four or five seasons of it.

I just called it things. But the, uh, someone pointed out that all the effects in the, the finale look like the tried so hard video by Lincoln Park. It's funny to me. It's that and the corn, uh, corn as well. Like, yeah, it's falling away from me. I saw a clip from that and it looked, it looked really bad, but it was like one of them jumping and punching a big, horrible CGI aliens through.

And it's just like, doesn't this show have the budget of like Ethiopia's GDP or something? Hundreds of millions of dollars. And it looks like dog shit. I know. I love slot. And people like, well, this is just the. preparing to give you LLM. No, it's not.

It's just fucking Netflix. It's just Netflix destroying money. Aren't you excited they're about to acquire Warner Brothers? Shut, fucking just. Yeah, I don't know. Like, I haven't seen the new stranger things because after season one, I was like, I think I got what I wanted to. I didn't mind it either.

It was a basically one of those things were like, we never even talked about watching into the house. It's second season. Good for them. I'm good. Yeah. I'm glad they're getting their, their, their, their bag. I'm not interested here.

Most of the current season is apparently just like 21 people in a room standing around folding their arms. Yeah. Hell of yeah. So like Avengers. Yeah, yeah, get them in an airplane hanger, put them in a motion capture suit, and then have them talk about what just happened.

The cheapest big building, we can get them in. We're talking about real things. As we were discussing at the beginning of the episode, we saw the Jensen Huang thing. Robert, you missed nothing. Oh, good. Yeah. You're talking about the Nvidia keynote speech. Yeah.

But I thought was tomorrow. Oh, yeah, you really missed nothing, though. And I went, and I went and I looked, and the six new chips they announced, all announced in either June, October or November. Like, they're all old. Oh, but they're new. See it again for the first time. They're new.

This is the first time they've been together. And it's like, they're actually making one of them. Did you see that on the video that they're making it? They're actually going to manufacture. They're going to manufacture. It's in production. It's like, and I just saw before we went on, the AMD had, and really disappointed Greg Brockman for the CEO of Open AI.

went on. It's so cool. They went on. They did this big fucking speech about how, oh, this is just like compute as the new oil or something. Just blow my brains out whenever I hear this shit. That's a great statement. It's so fucking cool. But what's great about it, though, is like they didn't talk about the fact that they meant to build a gigawatt of data centers by the end of this fucking year. It's just like, it's just the farce. I don't think we'll talk about that again. Yeah, we don't need, we don't need to talk about the thing we agreed on. You're a sixers fan now. Trust the process. Right. You're, you're a Sixers fan now. Trust the process. Right. You're locked in.

Who's the James Harden of day? Commit to, like, yes. Oh, no. No, that's Jay Parique. No, no. He got fired. He moved from, no, Jay Parick. He went from Laceworks, a company that was most famous for buying $30,000 worth of Lulu Lemon gift cards to get people to use their software to Meta to Microsoft to run their AI group. Like, that's the James Harding.

But he doesn't, but you don't have anyone who, like, stroppily quits. We don't have any, like, people like that. That's what we needed. We need more, like, like, garrar. A Ben Simmons. We did a Ben Simmons. Yeah, that's like, I'm not taking layups. That's beneath me.

I don't do that anymore. It's the Ben Simmons is like, the three basketball listeners. They're just fucking loving it. Whatever happened to the strong, loud type, like Steve Balmer. Yeah, that's what we need. Yes, somebody, that, I honestly had that thought

when we were watching. Developers, develop. We were watching Wong Kong. I was like, I know how much more energy can be involved in this. He's not even sweating a little bit. If I had billions of dollars, I would be fucking.

losing it up there. I'd be going inside. I'd be like, well, you can't do anything to me. I'd buy this entire place. But yeah, it was so limp. It was so sad. It's like, they barely seem to be fucking trying anymore. Well, what is there for NVIDIA to really say at a

keynote, right? Like, it's not their products are really exciting to people who are in like the business of utilizing them, but it's not like a consumer product that they're hyping up right now. It's not a... Analysts and media and such.

Yeah. And it had... There was a line out the door. Because they're making all the money in the world. Right. That's what's exciting. Yeah, I think that was the little bit from the guy that I talked to who was sitting next to me. It was just like, part of it was like, he just wanted to be in a room with a guy that rich.

Yeah. Like, not even in like a way that I'm like... That makes sense. You're like dissing the guy for. He's just like, I've never been in a room with a guy that's rich before. It's crazy. Like, you're in Vegas. Go to a strip club.

Like, like... That's the beauty of Vegas. if you stay up late enough, you will get to watch a Saudi shake. Yeah, yeah. Lose $30,000 at a craps table. Just go to a craps table in like the Venetian or the Palazzo. You will run into someone with too much money. If that's really what you desire.

Yeah. But no, I mean, I saw John McCain once in the Venetian. Wild cut. But that's like, but otherwise it's just people that shouldn't have that much money that you've never met. Yeah. Just burning it. Yeah. You know, maybe, didn't he have a lot of money?

Wasn't his wife like God? His wife is very rich. Oh, yeah, his wife is great. Is now. I think it's like regional liquor wholesale money. Like one of those like classic American gentry things where it's like. I'm thinking hides. Yeah.

No, that's John Kerry's. Yes. Right. Oh, so you said hides. I was like, I don't know people get rich. He didn't know. He did great off of hell. John McCame as a fur trapper.

Yeah. I look forward to the CES fur trapping section. I prefer that background for him. I would love it if there was a fur trapping sex He was kidnapped by beavers In the middle of a fur trapping expedition They tortured him for five years Turns out they don't like what we're doing to their dam

Yeah Not happy with it Yeah the word Vietnam was really just Ungorging And ripping up those dam That's what it was Oh I wish tech was actually this fun though Because it was just like

Greg Brockman going and talking to Lisa Sue From AMD Just fucking just wobbling around mumbling shit about compute and data centers that they can't build because they don't have credit. Like, what is they're exciting to say other than look at how much money we're worth and look at how much money we're making? But that was the thing with Nvidia.

They didn't talk about any products. Like, they didn't even talk about their own products. It's like, it's the most egregious cave I've ever seen. Because gun to their head, I don't think any of these people, that's not a threat. Gun to their head, I don't think these people are, like, actually have an answer. No, I mean, because it, like, there's not a solution. financially to the sheer amount of money that's been invested. And like

Nvidia is in the enviable position of like their, the money they've made is like real. People are actually buying chips that they made. But the industry supporting it, there's a lot of vapor. And everyone's kind of aware that like at some point

it's going to come crashing down to Earth. And we had like a reality check in the last quarter of last year on Nvidia. Not all the way down, but like they're their bubble got certainly deflated partially. And there's, I think, a growing awareness that like, well, whatever happens with this, you know, even if the bubble never pops, even if AI doesn't, like, get sort of punctured in the way that people, including a lot of us, think it's going to,

invidia is not going to keep riding this high forever. And I don't know, there's not a graceful way for them to deal with that. But they're trying? They're trying. Yeah. They're doing this thing called the Omniverse. Yeah. What?

Yeah, yeah. It's called the Omniverse. They're calling it the Omnibus. Very, we love the Omnibus. What is, okay. It's just, it's this whole bullshit thing. World Models is another thing. It's just a made up thing for we'll do simulations using GPUs.

Not to be confused with the Metaverse. Which is very different. This is way. It's bad. Better is good. It reminds me, and this is a really deep cut. Anyone who remembers this, please email me. There was a thing called,

the DC did called Death Metal, where like the Batman who's a Joker Batman, just best to get past that. There's a bit in it where they meet a guy from, there's a thing above the multiverse called the Omniverse, and he's just guy with the Pumpkin Head. And I remember reading the Omniverse and that just being like, fuck off, just fuck you. And then, but what it is is they buy compute from like Microsoft or Metro or, sorry, Microsoft, Google or Amazon, and then rent it to people so they can run simulations using their Omniverse software. The information, credit to them put out a story today just being like, yeah, it's not making any money and everyone hates it. And it was the first half of an two hour long presentation. And they're just like, and Dave put it really well. It was like,

yeah, here's a bunch of stuff. If we could do this, how good would that be? And it's like, none of it's real. Right. It's so cool. And I think what they're trying to do is be like, look, you bought all these GPUs. What if you could do this? Well, you can't. You can't do that. We cannot do this. But what if you could? And it was so straight. Because I, everyone was, you could, you could hear people coughing in there. Yeah. People are leaving. People were actually, it was really strange.

And then there was a tiny bit of AI stuff. It's really, truly bizarre. I mean, it does feel like people are starting to get sort of fed up with the lack, the things that have not materialized that should have by now. Yeah. Right. And I find you get a lot of, you get a lot of pushback if you're like, this is fake and this is bullshit, which is like my emotional opinion, but you get a lot less pushback if

you're like, I just don't see how this can be worth as much money as it needs to be for the industry. And you get a pretty broad agreement of like, yeah, something, like, there's something fucky with that. That was the bit that I wound up coming out of it. Like, I think the big feeling that I felt afterwards beyond, like, bored and hungry was that, I felt kind of sad about it. Because it's, like, it's clear that there's, like, there is all of this capacity to do all of this, like, computational stuff that you couldn't really do before.

but there's not any sense of like what that's for or what you're going to do with it. It's just compute for compute's sake. And I think, and this is me, there's a degree to which I'm not even fully confident what I'm saying here, but I get the feeling. I'm a sports writer man, it's like fucking go off. I get the feeling and have read some accounts

that make me believe that there are applications for a lot of this, a lot of like a, what gets broadly lumped in as AI in like different kinds of medical science. Yeah, exactly that. But nothing that's going to make this company worth $15 trillion or whatever. And nothing that does anything on its own. It's not the AI will come up with the medicine.

It's like, no, the AI is capable of like brute forcing its way through doing a lot of like theoretical tests or analyzing like a huge amount of data. And if you build a model specifically to deal with like this kind of medical data, that it can be a time saving tool that allows you to do other things. which is not a sexy thing in the way that like AI is going to cure cancer is. And it's not sexy to be like, well, AI will allow us to prototype more efficiently different kinds of like materials to make holes of spacecraft out of. And maybe that will speed up the process of developing these things, which is like a thing that theoretically might happen. And that's not as sexy as like AI is going to figure out how to take us into space.

And the conversation is also so fucking old at this point. That bit of it where it's sort of, like, I'm so aware of the thing where it's like, it's going to be able to think for itself and it's going to like fix. We're not going to need to have jobs anymore. Right. But then like eventually, like you work your way back from that to like protein folding. Right. I don't know what protein folding is. Apparently AI is extremely good at it. Sure. But it's like you can't talk about that because nobody knows what protein folding is. But when you talk about the other shit, it makes me for one thing doubt that it's any good at protein folding. Right. You know? It's because protein folding is a totally, like it's not even LLM drew, it's not even GPU. It's machine learning. Yeah. And it's the thing is with the, like the medical example as well, they're doing that already. Again, it's only kind of LLMs, but not really.

And it's just, I did, do your point about we've had this one before, I'm pretty sure I heard this conversation, not even for much. Like, I've heard some version of this. We're sitting around being like, yeah, you know, it might be good for this. When? Because before the Nvidia thing, we had this panel with these people. who were just saying stuff that slowly was driving me insane and I was getting ready. I eventually just started muttering to myself like a crazy person. But there was just the CEO of a bridge, which is an AI scribe for doctors.

I thought you were saying a bridge. And I was like, how do you get that job? Just a single bridge. Easy work. And he kept trying to sell me. And he was just talking about, he was just word salad on word salad, trying to get around the fact that his AI just transcribes what doctors say. And it's just like, who?

fucking care. Great. Well, it's one of those things where it's like, I think doctors would like that, but you can't, for his business to be worth, which I believe you looked it up was like $5 billion in change.

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

And it's just, and it's almost cliche. It's like, yeah, it's being forced into anything I was mentioning on the earlier. It's like, and Microsoft today. It's no longer office. It's co-pilot.

Like, fuck you. How many times have I said, no, I'm not using co-pilot. You're trying to force me. That's amazing that they just like, they've got such a doubt on their hands that they're like, the Batman movies are now the Avengers or whatever. It's like to some other like. Google did that already. They changed Google Assistant to Google Gemini.

And they're like 400 million activists. They're going to do the same thing with fucking co-pilot where it's like, look at all these people. No, we're all using fucking word in Excel. Well, what's funny, though, is they're not going to be able to do it. that because I have fucking Microsoft's numbers. I have Microsoft's revenues. I'm coming out with it at the end of January. Frank Shaw, you fucking want some email me. Yeah. And I already have GitHub co-Polol that's revenue too, fucker. Like, there's the thing, like these, I'm fucking sick of this because people are being lied to. And I'm just doing an episode of, I guess this is the

show I'm recording, but it's just walking around hearing they put, the thing that made me actually snap on this trip was they put nano banana in a television. And I'm just, you got a co-batte. What is a nanobanana? It's an image. It's an image. three straight episodes. It's an image-generator model from Google that they called the world's dumbest fucking name because they insist on making me angry. That's literally its name. Nano banana and nano-banana pro.

I got a go. Nano- Banana-pran-a-prone. It's now in a television. They should make a, the version that you have to pay for should just have a normal. Nano- Banana Pro 3-plus. I think it's just, it just shows loathing for the customer. Like, you little pigs are called anything. Nano-bonan, you fucking pigs.

I think they're probably, it's probably jealousy and some FOMO at Elon Musk where, well, he gives his stuff really funny, stupid names. Maybe that's why that's the secret. Maybe we'll get some of that. You can be epic too? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they'll call a 420 in there? Maybe they can copy the other things.

What was up with Mercedes and then and they're calling their things plus plus? Yeah, Mercedes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they had a whole thing with a panel with Mercedes and this guy from Skilda. AI, who was like one robot, one brain, one purpose or something. One cop.

He was also spinning up there. He was, yeah. They were just one bike, one robot, one brain. It was just one panel. It was just a panel of just people just like, all in varying stages of concussion protocol. Just like saying shit to each other and Sarah grow the species just spurn. So when AI is powerful and large language models, would that be interesting? guy going, I agree. They would be powerful. And indeed, robots. Yeah. And it was just in,

and people around going, yeah, yeah, yeah. That is interesting. I loved our little chat when this was going on, um, where the guy was like, you know, we're making base layers by watching. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then practicing. That's, you learn to do any real task as everyone knows. And it's just, you watch a YouTube video 3,000 times. Yeah. I can't think of any other. Not now. I'm base layering. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm watching. all Crawford's sickest buckets. Yeah, 22 minutes. I'm watching unexpected LeBron

at its compilation, 45 minutes. It's just so strange as well because I've been fucked with a lot in my life. It just feels like we're being fucked with. Yeah. It's just like a weird, we're not even con at this point, just like everyone's just like,

it's taunting. Well, that's the thing that's so dispiriting is that like I can tell you're not even, you're past the point where you think you have to even work to lie to us. Exactly. Like, you're just being lazy. Like, we all know everyone, like the majority of people found copilot annoying and said no repeatedly.

And you want to be able to claim it. Everyone using an office product is using AI to trick your shareholders. So you're just fucking changing it. And like, there's nothing. There's not any more thought to it than that. You're not at all scared of regulators. You don't give a fuck about what the people paying to use your product. And that's just, it's dispiriting because, like, yeah, there is nothing I can do.

I could switch my word processor, I guess, and probably will at some point this year. It just means embracing a pain in the ass of switching a bunch of stuff around. But at this point, I think it's worth it because I'm annoyed at you. Like, you've annoyed me enough. And I don't think that's going to impact Microsoft's bottom line. I don't think enough people are going to switch for it to matter. It's just, again, dispiriting. Also, no one's going to call it co-pilot 365.

It's a stupid name. They're going to call it Microsoft Office, because you're going to say it to like a grandma. I'm using Word. Now I'm not using fucking Kobe. I'm writing, you dipshit. It is so cool. We now have software that's deliberately annoying. It's just like, hey, hey, do you want to use Copilot?

You want to, you want this to write it? I'm fucking writing it. I'm writing it. Please leave me alone. No. I use Apple notes now, not because I like it, but because it doesn't screen. It doesn't prompt. You want help generating the document?

The problem is every big player in consumer technology, right now has attained and is expressing the exact vibes of like a guy that you would cover your drink around. Yeah. Right? It's where it's like they're just, it's just this constant pressure and constantly like, hey, hey, hey, hey. What are you doing like? Yeah, you know what? Why don't you come sit with me? I'm just going to sit down next to you. I'm just going to hang out with you. Like it's, it's this, I've said no so many times and you are not at all listening. Nope. And that's how using technology feels. And I hate it. I mean, that is, and that's a good way to kind of like wrap up the episode as well,

but I think that's what the theme of CES appears to be this year. It's just like obtrusive stuff. How, like, I know I keep saying nano-bonana. The reason this has driven me insane is it's like, I don't need the TV to generate images. Are you sure? I'm watching the television. Why don't you try it? Yeah.

Maybe you like it. What if your TV was a computer too, though? I don't want. Nano banana pro offers many features that aren't available. Nano banana can generate a winning season. the ratings. It's just like nanopanano.

And also what kind of fucking freak is sitting there being like, I want my television to generate an image? No, if you try and do that,

your television should break. Yes. Hey, I know you're putting on a torrented copy of Star Trek the next generation to watch while you cry

yet again. What if Franker's dick was out the whole episode? Would that improve this for you in any way? Fucking Franks. Fucking Franks. Would that get you

to start saying Gemini? You call it Gemini if we show you Wreckers a month for that? Oh my God, during emotional blackmail and it's wrong. And before we wrap as well, Robert,

I've said this earlier in the episode as well, but there was a bit where NVIDIA, Jensen Wong was talking to two robots. He just like, and he was like, this is how we make you. This is from,

and it turns out it was from like the fucking fallen order, like the second of the games with Calcastus. Yeah, with the guy from, what, shameless? Oh,

yeah. This is a shameless. Right? That is him or looks the Joker. Yes. Yeah, that guy.

And it's like, I did not know. I'm a big Star Wars head, but of like the actual Star Wars stuff. And it's like, okay. And how much did you pay like a million dollars for that? But you know that they were like,

what's the cheapest one? Yeah. What's the cheaper? We got to get one of the games. We'll give you one of the. What's that guy from the N-64 game? I bet he's cheap. Kyle Katan.

Kyle Katan. Bratron. bring his ass in. Just immediate. Don't remember anything, but Kyle Katan. Oh, let's sign off with that. All right. David Roth,

thank you so much for joining us. Pleasure to be here. From Defector. We'll have you in the episode notes. Robert Evans, you'll be back. He'll be back. Yeah, I'll be here all week.

Hell yeah. And Edward on Grasso, Jr., who also be here all week. I will, I will. And then to wrap the episode. So before we go, I want to talk about something we'll be doing at the end of every episode.

So just a little history on the suite. Back with the PR firm, used to have this suite and have Jonas come in. and back since the late 2010s we did this, we had Gernos come in, and there was a bloke called Sean Paul Adams who came to visit.

It was a good mate, and my friend, Tachian, as he passed last year. I wanted to honor him by encouraging you to donate to the Pagiatric Epilepsy Research Consortium. Sean Paul's son is epileptic and his family would deeply appreciate it.

He was awesome. He's deeply misplaced friends and family. He's one of the highlights in the suite when he visited. So yeah, I'll have a link in the show notes. We'll be here all week, everyone. Thank you so much for sticking with us from this episode.

and yeah, we'll have two more tomorrow and every day. I'll just have one. Cheers, everyone. Bye. Go with God. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Mattosowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Mattisowski.com.

M-A-T-T-O-S-O-S-K-I.com. You can email me at 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 our slash Better Offline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media.

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