The Vergecast - CES 2016 Day 3

Episode Date: January 8, 2016

Today on The Vergecast, Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn are joined by Nicola Fumo, Vlad Savov and Kirsten Frisina to discuss CES 2016. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, welcome to the Vergecast on day 5 billion of CES. I'm a broken man. My name is Neely Patel. I'm joined here by Dieter Bone. I'm a shattered man. My girl, Nicola's here. I have to take my hat off. Why?

Because there's shadows. Okay. Okay. So, Nicholas here is, I think, already... Removing accessories. Here, removing accessories. Already a fact, Nicholas here. And for the first half of this show,

Yeah? Yeah, you're good. Nicholas now wearing her hat back. Literally the crowd is heckling Nicola to put her hat backwards. I'm doing a quick check. Wow, this is the most, like, authentic. The guitar is playing. Everything about CES involves extraordinary amounts of noise that you don't want in your life.

Yeah. My boy Vlad Savile is here. Hello. You got a, I don't think we heard you. Hello. Hey, Glad. Hey, I hear myself as well now. Yeah.

There you go. So, it's day three of the show, according to it. are whacked out math of whatever fucking day it is. It's day two of the show floor. It's day two of the show floor. Right. I have literally been talking all day long. All I've done today is talk.

Why? Because if something very excited that happened this morning, which I'm just going to lead with, right now as we record this, you're going to hear it in your car later tomorrow in your life. But as we record this, the CEO of Vox Media, Jim Beacoff, the CEO of Intel, Brian Przanich, and Kara Swisher, the executive at our recode, are honest. stage somewhere else at CES, announcing the Hack Harassment Project, which is a partnership between Intel, Vox Media, Recode, and Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation to fight

harassment online, which is cool. I don't think we've ever been a part of a CES announcement ourselves. Yeah. So that's neat. So there was a callout on stage during the Intel keynote a couple days ago, and today there's an event that formally announced the campaign with the Gaga, the Born and the Sway Foundation from the Gaga. So there's a piece on the verge about it. I interviewed Brian Cresan, until this morning, we talked to care about it. It's really cool. I will just say this, like, it's a problem that we deal with on our site. I'm sure Vergecast listeners know that we had to shut down comments, and now we started flipping comments on selectively, which works really well, we have a great community, we value that community,

We want to keep it safe and positive for people. And there's going to be a series of hackathons throughout the year, next year, well, this year, where they try to build tools and resources for other platforms and other media companies to build safe spaces and safe communities for people. So I think that's really cool. I'm very excited about it. I'm proud to be a part of it.

I'm also, it's like, just pretty cool to have a CS announcement. Yeah. I never get to do that. We're here. Yeah. Announce the stuff. We're here announcing stuff. pointing at somebody.

Andrew and I are just our producer, Andrew and I we're just doing, we're just communicating telepathically. Yeah. Anyway, so that's cool. You can read about

in the verge. We'll have coverage throughout the year. Obviously, we're part of Vox Media. So we're going to maintain our editorial distance from the story a little bit, but I'm proud to be a part of a company that's doing it.

I'm working on this stuff. So you'll see more about that this year and there's a cool video with Brian Cuisand's coming up. Anyway, so that's, I think, the big news. I'm very proud of it. I think it's cool.

But let's get into not me talking and not me, my voice going away. Vlad, I want to know what's your CS like, man? What have you seen? What have you been? What have you been into? Where have you been? I've been all the little place. I've done a whole bunch of live blogs.

I took some amazing photos of Cass Uri. Yeah. Because. Oh, yeah, Vlad and I did the Sunday live blocks together. Which was beautiful. I mean, Kaz and Mike, they had absolutely nothing to announce, but I had so much to wonder about it. Your photos were the best thing.

to happen at that Sony keynote. Well, no, I don't necessarily agree because they had so much swagger about the fact that they had nothing to announce. They were just really great fun. And, like, my way of, well, my analogy to it is like, they're like your alcoholic uncle who is nevertheless still really fun and amusing when he's drunk. This is like the third time we brought up alcoholic uncles on the Vergecast this week. It's the first time out of that.

That's our theme today. Yeah. You're ready. But apart from that, actually, on the show itself, and in terms, terms of the new products that I've seen, I have somehow, as many laptops as I've seen and touched in my life, being excited by laptops again. Because HB have introduced this elite book folio, which is pretty much a 2015 MacBook, Apple MacBook, on Windows. But you know, you laugh, but I'm not laughing. I actually want one. Wow. You know, this thing has two USBC port,

so it doubles up the MacBook. It has just amazing construction. It's built beautifully. It has The touchscreen has a 4K display, and it even has Thunderbolt 3.0. So, I mean, the only downside, and I think it's going to be a camera. What kind of processor does it have? It has an Intel CoreRAM, but wait, wait, wait, okay? CoreRAM last year sucked, right? Yeah. It was not good enough, and nobody should have bought a laptop with last year's CoreM.

But the new Skylight CoreM has potential. I don't know that it's necessarily going to be good enough, but just browsing around the verge. And, you know, again, the touchscreen, pinching zoom. I mean, doing all those things, basic web browsing. Pitching, zooming, swiping, tapping. It's a basic but useful test for performance, and it looks really fluid. Like, I was impressed with it, and I am willing to believe in it. What I'm more worried about is actually battery life, because it's just so tiny and thin.

And it could be like four or five hours and just completely spoil things. But still, that is, you know, one of the highlights for me. The other is Razor, just introduced the plates. stealth, which is an ultra book that is nevertheless a gaming laptop because, again, he uses USBC and it connects to the Razor Core, which is a breakout box to stick a desktop GPU into it. Right. This is like an old idea, though. Oh, it's a old idea.

You know that you're going to plug your laptop into a thing that makes it like great a game. Does anybody done it correctly though? No, because we keep doing it and it might be impossible to do correctly. Well, we believe in USBC is the word we have, we have hope. What a strange thing to believe we have hope in USBC. I mean, ever since I could afford to buy a laptop, the first thing I wanted to have to have was a thing that I could take to lectures so it could be portable and then I could bring back and play some games when I'm at home.

Yeah. And this totally solves that problem. Yeah. I mean, looking at this HP thing, looking at the razor, looking at the other, I mean, honestly, MacBook clones that we've seen here. And, you know, even Dell's XPS 13, which is pretty old, but around, and they made a new version of it here too. Like, they made it gold, I think.

And it looks gorgeous. It looks gorgeous. There is no good reason to buy junkie, plastic-y laptop. Yeah. You know, if you can afford it. Like, once, if you have a thousand bucks to spend in a laptop, you can get something just flat out gorgeous. Yes.

And that has never been the case before. You could, like, pick your platform, even pick your manufacturer. If you're, I mean, are there HP fanboys? If you're an HP fan boy, you now can get gorgeous thing. I think they are Dell fan boys. Yeah.

They're like hardcore. They all live in Texas. Yeah. That's where Dell is. One imagines they have some hometown pride. Probably. Yeah. So what else?

I think they, the idea that laptops are great again is really interesting. But you have to believe in Windows 10, which is like hard. No, to some extent, there's also the fact that the touchpads have improved. Right. You know, they have they? Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Well, they have a touch. The touchscreen is like actually kind of makes up for it in some ways. No, well, the touchscreen is always a workaround. I don't want to work around. I want to have, if there's a touchpad, I want it to work. Right. That is like one of the biggest frustrations for me with piece of technology and it's frustration you get with CS every year is people put things in and they're like maybe this works we hope this will work and that's what I see with all the kitchenware stuff you can get me excited about kitchen seriously friages and washing machines etc if I could see is there a washing machine in your kitchen

yeah that's actually in the UK yeah wash machines are always in the kitchen oh there's a washing machine in my kitchen I live in a new york apartment so technically everything is in my kitchen But another bit of European trivia is that actually Dutch people are a bit smarter than us, and they tend to put the washing machine in the bathroom. And I look at that, and I think, why do they put in the bathroom? And I think, actually, that makes a lot more sense than what we do. Why? Because when you take your clothes off to shower.

You just throw them in the water. You just put them right in. Now who even needs a hamper? Strange. Strange moments. Efficiency. But the point that I was trying to make about C. What I'm trying to make about CES is I see all these things being thrown at washing machines and fridges,

Samsung, LG, etc. And I have zero confidence that they will be here again next CES saying this is our evolution of the last thing. I think they're going to come up with something completely different and random again. Like, LG has this thing where you walk in front of the fridge and it cracks itself open. Okay, that's here today and maybe a couple of people will buy it, but is that going to have an evolution in the future? Yes. Okay. It opens up another three inches every year.

Or it opens the other. I mean, like, it's just, that stuff I see evolving. What I don't see evolving is, like, will the firmware in the smart fridge ever get updated? Like, you buy the one to, like, next year they'll come out with a new one that has a whole new interface. Yeah. A whole new set of, like, bad apps. Because they have, they built a bunch of bad apps for the fridge in Samsung did. But are they ever going to update that thing?

I mean, is it ever, are they going to issue security updates for your smart Wi-Fi for for a thousand years or whatever. How long do fridges last? Is it a thousand years? Yeah. No, 10. 10? Yeah.

No, it's more than 10. We just had to, my dad just had to replace his. Yeah. Fridges are good for like 20 years. But I think the tank-like 50s refrigerator is. Like, what is the end-of-life cycle on the Samsung fridge? Like, when do they stop updating Tyson-in on the Android fridge? Oh, man.

The Samsung fridge. There's no way that lasts more. They're not going to update that for more than two or three years. But then again, if you're the sort of person who's buying a fridge of the 21-inch touchscreen, you're like maybe like, you're like, you're like, you're like, Like a fridge hypebeast. Yes. A fridge hypebease is a great thing.

Appliance Hypeatbeast. You know what my favorite blogs is? Appliancehytebeast. Well, appliances. Like, reading about appliances is wild. Like, people are into it. I'm telling you. This is the next mobile device.

A cooler? A cooler? A cooler is a mobile fridge. Yes. You know. The next one's going to have a touchscreen on top. Do you know that was one? of the most popular kickstarters of all time.

Was it cooler? Was it cooler with like a Bluetooth speaker? Like all kickstaters, it's kind of... Oh, for the best picnic. Yeah. It's simple. Why would we want a fun of that? It has a thing on the top

that you can stick a blender on and you can make margaritas. This is amazing. Yeah. And many, many people got scammed. They can't make it. It's like too good to be true. It's too cool.

Like, dude's like, I gotta get back in this lab. I got to go. They're making it. I think they started shipping to people who bought it straight on Amazon before they shipped it to backers because they needed to get the revenue to keep making as I think what happened. I don't know. It's just funny.

Like the coolest schooler scam was like a real story. Like they kept on being like it's delayed again. I don't know. Like integrating this Bluetooth speaker is too much for us. It happened. All right. So, Vlad, what it sounds like to me you're saying is like a bunch of stuff is really good and just getting refined.

Like we're at the laptop point. And then a bunch of other stuff here is like straight garbage. But there's nothing in that middle zone where you're like this is going to get, I can see the next two versions of this. Yeah. We're so so much garbage. You know, when we come to CES every year, the first thing we do is we kind of try and shed our cynicism.

Yeah. Because it's so easy to be jaded about technology and all of these things. And I think we succeed, as a group, we succeed. But it's, the companies make it really hard for us because they're super cynical themselves. Right. Like, they will come out and just use language which just does not belong, does not fit. in with fridges, okay, or front loading washing machines. Like LG will come out and say something like,

we have America's favorite front load washing machine. And I don't think America cares to have a favorite in that category, okay? And the other thing is, like you're saying, how long does a fridge last? A decade, two decades, whatever, right? Everybody's trying to get this short-lived technology into long-lived appliances

and just kind of force it in and then force you to want to upgrade the short-lived technology. So we're literally facing the future where somebody is going to say, my bridge doesn't have a quad-core processor in it, so I can't get the latest software patch. Yes, and that is the future I wish to live in. Can you imagine if everything around you is full of bad software in old hardware?

I can. Actually, I can totally imagine that. I mean, I'm not imagining it. We just take a walk. No, so I have this theory. I've been talking about it all day. I have this theory. You know, our most popular posts here were like record players.

Seriously, we're two record players, a Sony record player and the Technics player where our most popular posts. The Analog Renaissance. The Analog Renaissance. I'm standing right strong behind it. Yeah. Yeah. I believe that it is basically, like, Gen X, like, we just, we experienced, like, endless amounts

of convergence. We're like, first, the smartphone ate the CD player, and then it, it cameras, and it camcorders, but, and that was exciting. So we, like, went for the ride. but like another like I think the millennial generation like didn't get to experience the heady rush of digital music they're just like this is what music is like it kind of sucks and like there's a running away from software like things that don't require you to interact with software are all over the place here and they're super popular like the record player does not

require software although the Sony one has software yeah of course the Sony one acts up they can't help themselves. I remember covering National Records Store Day in like 2013 and having a step that it was the that was like the biggest year of vinyl sales ever. Yeah and that it's just every year is the biggest year of vinyl sales over. What's happening? Nothing. Don't worry about it. Does somebody have a record player over there? No. I think it's too distracting for us to be on the stage. There's like a lot of people moving around. Yeah. No, so there's a vinyl boom. We've talked about record players every day on the show here because that's what people want to about it, see yes, is like, have you seen the record player, which is insane to me?

I feel like I've been living in this record player moment. Yeah? For a long time. Do you have a record player? No. Are you going to get one? Probably not. Yeah.

But that doesn't mean that many of my friends don't have record players. They're carbon copies of me. Are you going to get it? They're record players, their collections. Oh, carding copies to me? Do you have a film camera? Would you ever buy a film camera? I do have a film camera.

What do you, where do you send a? film too. The one-hour Walgreens and Times Square. Oh my God. Hell. Yeah. You literally take pictures and send them to hell. I walk them there to hell. And then I walk back an hour later through hell again. Yeah. I'm telling you, there's like a whole movement of people who just don't want to use software. There's only like two places in like two chain places in New York to get your, okay, I'm going to say this wrong. I'm going to get so many angry people on the internet. There's more than two. But if you're looking at like the CVS Walgreens, there's like very, very few. options in New York to get your film, uh, developed.

There's probably some dude in Bushwick who has like a basement photo lab, and he's going to be like, my boutique photo lab, and it's going to blow up. That's a trend piece we should find. I mean, there's definitely not, not that right now. Yeah. We should, we should do a trend piece of basement dark rooms. Yeah. If you have a basement dark room in New York, I'm coming to your house.

Well, you just notice, you should probably specify for photography. Yeah, I just want to hang out. What do you like? What are you like person who buys chemicals to make photography? What's it like being in you? I mean, you're a little-sill person. I was a darkroom person. But again, like I'm saying,

like that was my experience with photography. It was like, you shot the black and white photos in middle school, and they taught you how to develop the thing. I have a scar on my face because the negative processing room, the door was really heavy and cracked me in the face when I was like 12. Wow. Yeah. And then I was like, digital cameras are way better than being physically abused by doors.

But there is a question, though, which is, who has all the space for all this analog stuff? because I don't have a room that I can dedicate to photoproscing at home, and I don't have all the shell space to be storing a massive, extremely heavy vinyl collection. But I don't think you get... So that's the thing, right? You live in the streaming moment, so you don't need the collection. I think you just buy the ones that you really...

So it's just a completely hip-son movement. It's like I have two vinyl records from a vinyl player. Well, not like two. No, you go to the thrift stores. This is what we do. Yeah, but okay, you get them, fine. then what do you do once you have them? Where do you store all this stuff?

On a shelf. Right, but then also... Next to the record play. Like you're saying, going back to analog, books are kind of having resurgence. Ebooks didn't kill off physical books. Yeah, actually, independent bookstore is doing better than ever. It's just crazy to me that we're at CES

and we're talking about physical media. People want to touch stuff. Yeah. Like, it's wild. I don't know. I mean, I get the whole tactile response and the smell and all of that stuff. These are my memories comic books and encyclopedias and the particular smell of just ripping them open

I get that but you were ripping your encyclopedias Nope ripping open the cellophane packaging okay Right, thank you for the correction it's an important one But at the same time we're living in ever more denser more urban environments and I just don't have any idea where people are going to store all this analog entertainment But I don't think it's all of it right I think that's the thing like It's just so weird that we're talking about this here It's, you're gonna store the ones that are like slices of your identity. Yes.

Right. You're gonna, you're gonna curate your bookshelf so it's like, it looks like these are the books I read. Here's the person. So this thing means something to me, so I have it in the physical world in some manifestation. Yeah, yeah. It's like your Facebook interests, but in your house. Right. No, I mean, this is precisely what I've done.

Like, I dropped out of grad school and I had a giant, like, wall of books, just an unbelievable amount of books. And then as I started moving, I was like, well, these suck to carry. And then I would slowly call them down. And like, every time I'd move, I'd look at my books and be like, well, what gets to go? And what's left are, like, the ones that I care about or that I, you know, want to care about. And then, you know, but the record stuff, like, it's not like because I have an LP player, I don't have Spotify in my phone. It's just like, it's like nice to, like, we talked about records for like a half an hour yesterday.

It's just that you have the stuff you care about. It's the story of the show. I'm telling you it's the story of the show. is like the two, the number of record players and film cameras and like Kodak's Super 8 movie camera that shoots old film. Like the fact that that stuff is coming back because there's a market for it and the demand actually drove these companies to produce the products. Not they just weren't like we're going to do some. Yeah, they didn't try and like create this trend that like happened to them but now they're trying to catch up. How would any tech company want to create a trend like let's go back

to paperbooks? Like nobody's going to like nobody has a lot. Like nobody has a lot of. library section here or a bookstore it doesn't work but I think your point about Facebook interest is very good because what we're finding is like people who I used to have a digital identity as now figuring out ways to build it in the physical world whereas as I says we're old enough and shattered enough to have the memories of like all of our identity was and embodied in physical things and then we turn it digital and like you're saying now it's a reversal we're going back around, which I guess you're going to make.

Wait, so let me ask you a harder question, because I was thinking about this too. The other thing that we came up with was like a handful of companies that transformed the world over and over again. So like Apple, Google, Facebook, like the... Sony? Well, no, no, yeah, Sony, but like we watched Sony die. We watch Microsoft. But like Apple, for me is the company that constantly reinvents things, right?

Like that was the moment. Like they were like, we're doing the iPod. It's brand new. We're doing a phone. Here's what a computer looks like now. No, it looks like this. Here's a tablet. Here's a new.

Like, that was the thing. And then Google was like, here's I use the internet. And then, right? But like little kids, like five, six, seven, eight, ten year olds. They don't have any of that context. And like walking around here and thinking like, why are people buying record players? It actually is like, what would it be like growing up in a world where Apple is the dominant one? And Google is the dominant one.

And that you don't recognize. them as underdogs in any way, or you don't recognize them as having reinvented anything, because those are the inventions in your life. And that, this part, there's nothing at this show that, like, indicates to me that anyone will ever perform that other role, but it's, like, wild to think about, like, just as we move back to these other formats, like, the reference frame for everything that we think about the industry might be totally wrong in 15 years or something. What the thing is, if we're going back to...

I've been smoking a lot of weed as I walk around the show. No, but if we're going back to Analog now, I don't know that we'll necessarily ever have that sort of giant company. No. The same way that, like you're saying, well, we had Sony, the 90s, we had Apple, et cetera. So that might just end by itself. Maybe the next big tech companies are going to be, well, not so much, maybe, probably. It'll be things like Facebook and their services. And it might even be companies like Gogoro.

You know, I spoke with those guys today. And their thing is we have an electric scooter, which is just one part of this entire vision of rethinking energy. But their thing that CES was like, oh, yeah, you can put some battery chargers in your house. But you still can't just go out and buy one unless you're in like one of these cities where they believe that they have a network, right? That's right. Well, you can, they have an open initiative now where people can volunteer their cities. And if they get enough city, if they get enough people, they will come, they will come up and set up then and talk in the city. But it does seem like in the tech world what's going to happen is you're going to have like really massively successful companies which finally solve the whole IoT internet thing and do like a global massive thing.

And if Gogoro works out the way that they envision it, it's hugely ambitious. So you're going to have like you say, a monolith. And you're going to have tiny companies and this sort of, you know, the gadget maker that makes it really big. Maybe that era is just over. Yeah, but you need to run. You need a screen and a processor and a battery, right? Like, someone's... Yeah, but those are commodities now, aren't they?

Well, not with the operating system. What do you think is better, Vlad? Android or iOS. Oh, God. Good question. Is that time for us to switch you out with first? I don't know that there's no difference anymore. Huh?

I don't know if there's enough of difference anymore. I've copied each other and everybody else to feature parity. That's an elegant Dodge. Vlad has clearly been interviewing... executives all week. He's just elegantly dodged the controversial question. Anyway, we need to break for an ad. The answer is not Windows, though. There you go. Yeah. We need to break for an ad, and we need to swap Vlad out for my friend, Carson, for Sina. So, Vlad, it's been good to have you. I don't know what we're doing. This is like, I haven't had any sleep. I just want to hold your hands.

Oh, I've been advocating fist pumps, by the ways. I've been advocating. Much more hygiene than henshi. Really good energy. All right. We need to make some money. Get out of here. Bye. Goodbye. Building website can be tough. Any of you do know we wear around coding, creating something that looks good and works well is a time-consuming affair. Whether it's for a business site,

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This is your first EES. Yeah. I feel like I should tell the people back. This is my first CES. Yeah. We're having dueling first CES. I really just want to hear what the two of you think of this show. I actually, I might not speak for the rest of the show.

I just want to know what it's been like for you here. Well, one, if you look at either of our Snapchats or the Virgin Snapchat, you'll just see us doing a lot of things. Golf cards, booth babes, all kinds of different topics to be covered. How many booth babes have you seen? Booth babes is a hot and dark topic. Really? The number of booth babes here has precipitously dropped in that three.

Really? Oh, my God. It's still really insane. I'm sure that that's true, but, like, being at CS as a woman is, It's weird It's really weird Like walking by a wall of booth babes To get inside of a thing to go use your mind

It's like oh excuse me let me just get through you and your tote bags Oh sorry Use your mind You know because I'm here to use my brain Oh I see. Oh I think you're a control of stuff But like walking through like prop women Being like oh excuse me you're here to use your body I'm here to use my brain

If I could just get past This wall you've created And like they don't know what you think about What? Do you get a tote bag? No I hate tote bags Sorry I have too many of them

They just want to give you a tobacco I know Actually there's less swag here than I thought there was going to be No you're totally wrong Maybe I'm not going in the right places Go south hall Yeah south hall is full of I mean have you ever wanted a free USB stick in your life

No I wanted to new house though No viruses I promise yeah So what else have you seen what have you actually seen here Okay yesterday I got here After some dilemmas And a desert road trip And I spent the day at where all the wearables are.

Yeah. So I pretty much looked at that, fitness stuff, 3D. Yeah. Yeah. Do you see any hot wearables? You know, I got excited about a couple things. I might have emailed someone this morning to ask if I could try it out

because I believe it might be the one for me. Whoa. More information to come. Possibly. Possibly. I feel really good about the new misfit. Okay. Right?

It has like this copper tube and like a leather band around it. Yeah, Lauren Good wrote up a piece better. It has, you get notifications from your phone and such, but it's just that tiny colored light that you sign to it. I like, I like that one a lot. I like the materials a lot. I feel good about it. But I got to play with it.

It looks like a piece of jewelry potentially. I thought it looks like a battery on a string. Really? Yeah. I dig it. I feel like it. I kind of like it too. I think like the minimal girl, meat supply type girl,

it's going to be all over that as an option. Fossil also has some new stuff coming out. That looks really good. with like these tortoise shell top things. Yeah. And I was looking at those and I was like, you know, you know in J. Crew, they do like, they have like brands we love, like not just J.Crew stuff.

They have like little curated, whatever. If they had that there, I wouldn't be that surprised. It would not look out of place next to like some chambre and like some brown leather shoes or something. It like really didn't look at. So if you're that person, you're wearing the tortoise shell. Yeah, you could throw it on, you know, get going. You know what, Nicola, you've been really harsh on all of the displays. I would love for you to talk about, like, the styling of the booths and stuff.

Because you have a very interesting perspective, comparing it to different fashion events you've been to. There's one more. There's one more wearable thing that I wanted to feel positive about. Oh. Yeah, tell us all the things. Wait, what was the third one? Oh, it's so hard. We also looked at a watch today that's designed for women, which means they put...

Design for women. They put sparkles on it. It's rose gold, and it has grassy crystals, like everything else. Oh, so actually, it was really funny. I was with a very senior person in a very large... company yesterday and I was like what's your big takeaway from the show he's like dude fashion is everywhere here like slimy crystals like all over it I was like that's like I know some people who don't think that you don't agree with you it's just like that's what the big companies think

it's only one flavor of female like it's small percentage like I would never wear something like that that's not me that's not you one of our producers Sophie earlier when right before we started made a great point which is that like they're styling this for like older women like and those older like more classically dressed women do not want a smartwatch yet. Right. And so it's like, why are you styling this for people that don't even want the functionality? It doesn't make sense to me. Still the displays.

It's really funny. They'll just like put a little purse. Like literally like these pink headphones and then a purse next to it. It's like. And the purse is smaller than the headphones is the best part. You could never put the headpoints in the purse. Because you're wearing headphones all the time. Oh yeah.

Constantly. I mean, haven't you seen? popular advertising. Everyone's always jamming out in their headphones. There were these watches and then just like flowers and jewels. Because women love pink jewels and flowers. Like big plastic jewels. Just like some flowers, not like fresh whatever flower, just like a flower.

Have you walked through the like Sony like built like a cool person's apartment? What did you think of that? Wait, I don't know if I walked through that because I didn't think I went to a cool person's apartment. That had the weird purse that you remember the. Oh, the bad urban outfiters display. It looks like a It's like a cool person's apartment, right?

That's what that was supposed to be. Okay, there's a tee for children there. Yeah, no, it's very confusing. Like, there's an entire array of things that there's like coloring books. Yeah. And like, blankets. This was like amazing to me. And I was saying when we were walking around that I was like,

I get what they're doing here, but it's executed so badly. And I'm really confused by it. I'm just, I'm like, I'm surprised by how many of the booths just are like, are like nothing. They're not well-style. It's so weird because at fashion trade shows, like, Obviously we have fashion week, but we also have trade shows. All of the boots are like amazing looking. They look like little stores.

Like stores you'd want to be in. You know, they create environments and atmospheres, whatever. I'm like really surprised here. I'm also surprised that there aren't more like designed for Instagram moments because Fashion Week especially is just like lush with anything you go to has the thing that you obviously want to take a picture in and the branding is there and whatever. I'm surprised by how few booths here have an area that like obviously you want to take a picture in. Well, you really, the only place.

Because most of the booths here are full of cameras. Yes. Well, one of the booths that Michael actually liked was the Kodak booth. Yeah. The little house. And we snapped it. Check out of Snapchat. They have stickers there because analog.

Today I was walking down a hallway with a large group of people. And Kirsten just appeared out of my peripheral vision walking backwards and like periscope. You're snapping. I was snapping me. I was snapping me. I saw the little flag. I was like, look there's the like. I'm just saying these two are just popping.

up how to know what Snapchating things all over see. Yeah, watch out. It's pretty wild. It's fun, yeah. So, Carson, what have you seen that you're into? What am I into? Yeah. Like, it's your first, yes.

There's got to be crazy shit here you've never seen. I'm just excited that people are finally executing on wireless headphones that don't, like, epically suck. Yeah. I still think that they all look like they're made for men, which is frustrating. I really like the Braggie Dash. I was into those. Yeah, those are a big piece.

Yeah, and Sean wrote up a piece about it that's really good. they're just black. You know what I mean? They're just one standard black. They're at least comfortable, which is not full, which is like a huge thing. But I don't, if I'm putting something in my ear,

I would like it to look as nice as, like, an earring that I would put in my ear. It should look like a piece of jewelry if I'm wearing it. Especially the wireless. Like headphones are signifiers, though, right? Like white headphones were signifiers for a long time. Especially when you have the preconceived idea of like a hearing aid? So, like, you don't want to skirt the line between looking like a hearing aid and having that entire kind of stigma with it.

Yeah. I'm, I was really excited about that. I'm trying to think if there's anything else that blew me away here. I don't know. What's your overall experience of the whole thing? I mean, it's back to, it's back to the, like, this show feels like it's built for men, and I feel like I'm constantly being treated really weirdly. Someone actually said to us. experience. Someone actually said to us, like, look at the two little girls in the world of men.

I'm not kidding. I had a security guard that helped me up yesterday and like, like, push my body against his body. And I was just like, what is happening right now? Wait, wait, I want to hear both these stories individually. We were like walking out of it. We got off the golf cart and we were walking in the door. And I like, we were like walking. We both were in like this crazy state of like, we're like buzzing off like whatever. You know, we're like in a rush. Like, and I heard a man say. that and I was like, did I actually hear, like, in a state of like, that couldn't have happened. And I looked around and there was like three dudes like walking out the door. And I was like, that really, I also, a lot of people don't assume that I'm media. So they yell at me when I'm in the booths

taking pictures because I'd look like I'm a like youngish female person. Well, you are a youngish female person. Yeah. But like the thing is, I'm wearing my badge. If you looked, if you took one second to look down and check my badge, you would know that it would be fine for me to be taking pictures. But you're not even looking down in my badge because you're assuming. that I am not a tech reporter. Which just makes my blood boil. You don't look like the best buy buyer either. Like, I don't know what I would have seen.

But it's like, I buy more tech than probably anyone here. Like, besides maybe YouTube. I just bought another Nexus phone for some reason. Another one? Okay. Just while we were talking. It's weird. This show has, I mean, honestly, for years struggled to redefine it.

Like, the Booth Bay thing is actually really interesting to me. because five years ago, six years ago, this place was, five years ago, Cassio over here, they had a line of cameras that could shoot in slow motion. Yes. So they hired the cheerleaders from ASU to come here. And the cheerleaders, like, did cheerletons while people like took slow motion video of them.

That's so funny. That's the other thing that on every single TV here. That's like the level that we came down from, right? Look at every TV. Look at literally 95% of the TVs. They're displaying women wearing not a full shirt. Really? Yes.

Go look at the demos of the TVs, except for... At the big companies or at the little? At the big companies, it's less of that. But you'll still... Any other TV that isn't like Sony or Panasonic has a woman where I can see her mid-drift. Why? Why?

Right. So that's a thing... That's actually a weird part about this show that we've never adequately figured out. or explained or like written it's a story but it's such an uncomfortable story it's the the assimilation into the cultural values of america in the west by little companies that come like there for example two years ago like wawao away showed up for the first time and wawa did a bunch of crazy embarrassing shit because they just didn't know and then after a few years walway has like

a very nice yeah their booth is fine to me like they've got a really classy like carly claus picture and ad with like i was into that yeah it just no that part that part that part's really weird. Like the watching people come here and like and then like learn how to behave properly and then learn how to have a CES booth is like really like there's a whole globalization story that is like slowly happening. But it's just such a weird story to be like, first the Korean companies came and they did crazy weird shit. But now Samsung has the biggest booth here and it's the classiest. Now the now the wave of Chinese companies is coming in and doing very strange things. And it's like do you want to say those words out loud all the time. Well, I just did. So, you know, it's like, but that, that is a story. Like, we, I think we started telling that story two years ago at CES when Huawei and ZTE showed up, like, in force, and those booths were crazy. And now they've toned them way down. And there's, like, a new generation of younger companies that has no idea what they're doing. And I think that's a lot where that, like, there's a booth right over here that I was walking up. And I was like,

wow, those ladies on the TVs aren't wearing any clothes. And I, you know, like, they're just going to, like, someone will tell them this year. I'm sure and they'll be back next year or they won't be back at all because where do these companies come from? Where do their TVs go? I do not know. Who buys these TVs?

I know. There's so many TVs here from that I've never heard of my life. I'm surprised in general just by how much junk there is. They warned me about the level of junk, but I was even still a little surprised myself. I mean, it's not like vetted. Like who's vetting these people coming?

Is it vetted? How do you just buy it here? Do you just pay money? You don't have to like that. How do you think we got this booth? Like the one that you're sitting in, what do you think happened? Like, do you think I, like, applied to college? There's no, but there's no, like, selection panel.

So, yeah, so at the events that you're at for, like, fashion trade shows, there's like, yeah. Selection, but you can't just show, you can't, anyone can't just go. It's free for all. Consumer electronics, baby. It's a thing. I feel like it's kind of hard to vet this kind of a show. I mean, like, how would you vet this kind of thing? Oh, let's see a prototype.

You need like an application, you know, like kind of a little bit of information. An application and a little bit of information. Just a tiny bit. There are parts of the show that are slightly more curated, right? So there's like Eureka Park where all the startups are. There is, I think the part of the show that you were in, more of the wearable companies. The show is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. But some of the curation is just convention.

Like, it's just tradition that all the crazy car companies are in the North Hall. Right. And that, like, this part of the South Hall is, like, for meeting. I don't know how much that is like the rules and how much it's just like it's always been this way. Like Sony always pays this much money to have that space. And if you had that space last year, you get first dibs on it this year. Right. And so it just sort of evolves that way.

Sorry. Breaking news. Just blatantly working in the middle of the Verge test. The FBI rated a Chinese hoverboard company's proof. Isn't that hilarious? Yeah. Oh, no. It's pretty good.

Federal Marshals. Yeah, because one wheel was like, you're copying us. We have trademarks. But now there's video of it on Bloomberg. Of the raid, the hoverboard raid. That's probably the most exciting thing that's happened. Yeah. That's awesome.

I saw FeddyWat play four songs at the Google ChromeCats. So you're on the party beat. You know this, right? I know. I got assigned, like, I mean, I just know what I'm going to, but then I saw, like, an assignment. And I was like, I'm sorry, well. You're assigned to party.

Can you handle it? Have you gotten any good party invites, or are we just sending you to party? I don't even know how this works. Well, last night was the one I was looking forward to. That Google party was awesome. I had three tequillas at 6.30 p.m. That's a lot. By 6.30 p.m.

They had lots of snacks, but that's still a lot. You were just in the spirit. Is that what they were handing out? That's what that drink was? Oh, God. I didn't take that drink. Anyway, yeah. You're just a young girl in the man's world?

No, it was really weird being there because, like, imagine the CES crowd, and it's also a Fettywop show. There was that one woman that we saw that was, like, totally bridging. the gap. She had on like a leather skirt, like an all black outfit that was really sleek and stylish. And then she had a black fitbit. A force? I think. Is the force the force the one with the little No, the force is the old? If this person is a stylish as you're saying they didn't have an old fitbit. They had the they had the charge that's this wide and has the tiny little display on it. That's a charge. The charge. Yeah. So there was the fitbit charge. I know my fitbit. But Nicola and I didn't even notice

it at first. Like the woman was standing in front of us and we looked at her and we didn't notice that she was wearing a fitness tracker at the first moment. Yeah. Which for me is like... Yeah, it wasn't like, ah, technology. I thought it was a really, like, I never see that kind of a successful outfit. Yeah.

With a fitness tracker. It's pretty cool. President Obama wears a surge every day. I'm telling you, man. Yeah, and he's a real fashionable guy. He's got a look about him. He's all right. No, I'm just kidding.

I'm getting the hard no look for Nicola. I mean, he doesn't... He doesn't have passions. He doesn't dress horribly. There you go. That's a win. It was like a president. That's a way.

Which has a blueprint. It's like you kind of know what you're going to wear as presi. As presi. So did you watch any of the press events? That was the worst segue that I've ever made in my life. But did you watch any of the press events? I watched the car come out underneath the sheet in the pink room on Snapchat. Oh, you watched the Faraday Future announcement.

You got Snapchat. I watched that from like four different angles of like different people that I knew that were in that room kind of as a game for myself to like watch all of you guys get so excited about it. And then they're like, they're like coming down afterwards. Like it was super funny. Yeah. That's hilarious. Do they not pull sheets off of things at fashion shows?

What are you going to pull a sheet off of? People, human beings wearing clothing. If you think if you come out of a runway, so you're coming from behind a stage. So that's the equivalent. So next year, Ford has to drive a car down a runway through a sheet. It probably will be. Have you been over to the car hall? No.

So if you guys want to see like the last bash. of the true crazy. You gotta go. Because like the sublifer companies are still there. The like monster truck with the world's biggest speaker with the loudest truck in the world

like all that stuff is still over there. Well they also tend to try to get away with more with like Yeah, it's just crazier. Yeah. But then also There's more garbage up there too. Like they used to have.

Speaking of the loudest car in the world. Nice. Just the loudest speaker company ever. Hello. They mean they're literally right behind us. You just want to listen to that much. Be like, yeah, that speaker sounds great. No, that's great.

No, play that hooting noise again. That was really sonically pleasing. But then the real car companies have started showing up in force. So, like, Toyota has a massive booth. Ford and GM have these massive booths. And it's all. I said Ford at the Ford stage,

and then the lasers started shooting into my brain. I'm going to go there. It sounds cool. I think I'll like it. That's the one. where it's like... I feel like car companies can put a booth together. Really?

I like that you're like... We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. That's so much a part of it. It's a trade show. Eli, this is back to what we were talking about. What did you think of the Samsung booth?

Fort Samsung. Call it what it is. I call it Samsung City. No, it's Fort Samsung. Because it's got walls. Is that the one that's like white? That's the one that we... I don't know that we walked you through that one.

And people were waiting in line for the big TV that you can see from outside of the line? They remember the booth that we passed that was all white and there was like a thousand people where we're not fighting through that. That was Samsung. Yeah, the crowds are crazy. People are all about that Samsung fridge.

You have to like push someone over to get to right now. Which, by the way, you cannot interact with. They only have demo reels going. And the doors aren't real. They don't open. Well, there's some, like, dummy fridges, and then there's actual real fridges behind, like, things and you have to ask special permission to go open the doors.

And then you can't. Why would you want the Samsung fridge over the, like, LG fridge? The, like, knocked a transparent fridge. Oh, because you're, I don't know, Samsung. Would you buy a fridge in the touchscreen? If you walked into somebody's house, like you were, I don't know, whatever you do, for whatever reason you walk into somebody's house,

and you see that they have a touchscreen refrigerator. What's the first thought you're like? Besides, please turn off that music. I would think, oh, I would have a really conflicting feeling of, like, I like the way you live, and also, like, we're probably not going to get along in a really authentic way. Like, we can be going out friends, but, like, we're probably not going to, like, have deep talk. That fridge costs like $10,000.

It's like, that's the moment. If the fridge costs like a normal fridge amount and they had that, I'd be like, sweet. How much does a normal fridge cost? Oh my gosh. I have no idea. I would have $3,995. $2,000? I don't know.

Does anybody here know how much a refrigerator cost, like average in your mind? $2,000? We've got a crowd. Can anybody just name? Yeah. 1000. But you're just like, I don't know the answer either. 1,000, Bob.

So literally you can say any number that you want. And I don't know that you can Google every. Price of refrigerator. It's a fridge $1,000? Hold on. I'm Googling average price of refrigerators. We know a lot about technology, we swear. I mean, when was last thing?

You gotta be able to get a fridge for like 500 bucks. The average cost in 2013 have a side-by-side refrigerator with a through-the-door ice water maker. Where does this come from? Why is Cleveland.com writing about this? They SEOed that... $1,109. Wow. Prior, but the new efficiency standard raise it to $1,197.

Okay. Sweet. Fridges are no small purchase. I'm just saying you can buy a fridge about as often as you buy a laptop. Right. But you don't want to do that much as a normal person. You want to be the fridge upgrade cycle. You wait until that thing really, really, really, really doesn't work.

When your fridge's fans start spinning. Constantly. Constantly. When your fridge touch tree and starts restarting itself. You wait until the white turns yellow on the plastic. No, fridge is, dude, we went through the stainless steel phase. There was a color phase. Matt black, right?

There was like a piano black and like a piano white phase for a two years. And now it's black stainless steel. Oh, you missed it. I gotta show you this. We should make a video of you just reacting to LG and Samsung executives

being like, it's the age of black stainless steel. The revolution has been, like it's like that level of like deep crazy. So much hype. So much crazy hype. Like he's like LG has been leading the black stainless steel revolution and we've done it again

with this washing machine. It's like what? It's amazing. I like the spirit. I don't know. I'm going to buy new appliances now. Wow, some of these are really expensive. I'm just looking at refrigerators.

This is how it begins. You can buy a fridge on the Vergecast, too? What if I bought a refrigerator? No. That was a bad idea. I should not have said that on that. What if, I mean, you know, I bought dumber stuff on this first cast. Yeah.

You know, the thing about your fridge, nilize, is pretty old. Oh, no. I saw it, and it wasn't very good. My fridge is five years old. It's older than my laptop. And I think it's time for me to just purchase a random, poor Becky. It's poor woman. Now I want to know how much other things cost.

Like a microwave. I think you can get that for like 150. Oh, no, you can get a cheap microwave for like 30 bucks. I have a microwave that looks like an original IMA. I like that we're just playing the prices right. I was thinking about buying a microwave recently, actually. Actually, and then what happened? I'm still thinking about it.

Continue with this riveting tail. I want to be able to make sweet potatoes really fast. I haven't seen a microwave here. Yeah, they have tons of microwaves. Where are the microwaves? They just didn't put any touch screens in. Oh. They're not cloud-connected.

Why isn't there a microwave with the whole front of it is a screen? And then there's a camera inside it. So when the food's in there, they'll turn that on. But otherwise, it's just a computer in my kitchen. That's what I want. I want a microwave with a giant iPad duct tape to the front of it. So right now, a Samsung engineer just got up from that chair. Sprinting back.

He's like, I've got it. CS 2017. Don't tempt them, Dieter. Finally, I know what to do. He's calling up the CEO. He's like, I've got it, sir. Straight from the horse's mouth. I taped a galaxy tab to this microwave.

I built a rough prototype. What I'm really hoping for is that when they break down the show, we can go buy those fridges for super cheap. Because they don't work. So you can fly at home with you to New York? Because they don't want to fly any of stuff home to Korea or China or Japan. So like a lot of when you walk around, when they're breaking the show down, you can just buy the TVs for a dollar.

Yeah. But then you have to ship it. Is there like a Las Vegas house tours, like, series to be done around this? Of, like, people who buy all of this stuff and have, like, these really nice, like, crazy houses because they just live locally. Are there flippers? They just show up in CIS. Like, are people flipping the gadgets? Well, I think that you just found a lucrative side hustle.

I can't believe I'm talking out loud about this. I just put it inside my head. This is Project Figurehead. Yeah, Project Figurehead. It is now flipping. I'm going to start flipping. gadgets. How did you achieve your meteor work success?

Well, I plotted my way under the 14th floor of Vox Media, and I started flipping old TVs at Cias. That's great. No, we should do that. What was it? This is like nine years ago now. I bought a bunch of stuff for a dollar from like, there's a whole hall of just Chinese clone vendors.

It'd sell nothing but like knockoff Kindles and iPads. I bought a bunch of them for like a dollar a couple years ago. It was wild. All right. It's a sample sale of, Tech. Kind of. All right.

We have to wrap it up, unfortunately. But we're doing this again tomorrow. I'll be back here tomorrow. I want some positive adventures tomorrow. Yeah. Think about it. I mean, the golf cart was positive. Yeah, we had a great golf cart.

He told me a negative story about the end of the golf cart. Well, that didn't happen on the golf cart. The golf cart was great. Oh, yeah. The lighting was beautiful. How did you end up on the golf cart? We walked up and it was there for us. Yeah, man.

Vegas. How do you end up in a golf cart? You just do. I usually end up in limousines, so I don't know. That's what I'm trying to get to. Tonight's a limo night. Mark it. I don't know if that means.

Mark it in your limo book. Wait, am I supposed to be here tomorrow? I don't know if you want to. You want to? Yeah, I can be here. All right. Think about it. Keep mulling it over.

All right, that's the Virchcast. Thank you so much for listening. We are doing it every single day at CS, which at this point, I believe, does not actually end. No, never. It's just going to roll right into the next year's CS. Yep. Please listen to our other, I don't know.

There's stuff I say at the end of the show. Please listen to what I encourage you, the listeners to do is go back to a show that was recorded before CES, skip to the end. Control, Alt delete. Listen to the end of the show. Oh, Kristen. That's me trying to do that.

Just name other shows. Recode as a podcast. Listen to the hell out of that one. Just nonstop. Kirsten, what are some social channels that they should engage on? You should follow us. If you want to see some of Nicholas and I's Adventures, we're at Verge on Snapchat.

You should also check out our Facebook videos because we have been rolling out some really awesome ones, including live videos, also featuring Nicola, so Facebook.com slash The Verge. Awesome. Well, that's it. We'll be back tomorrow at some time 4 p.m. here. It won't be live, so 99% of the people

listening to this have no use for that information, but now you have it in your car. There you go. Bye. Rock and roll. Bye.