The Vergecast - CES 2017 Day 2

Episode Date: January 6, 2017

This year, we hosted The Vergecast Live at CES 2017 as a Twitter Live video show. We've decided to share the full audio here, but you can see clips from the show on Twitter (@Verge) and catch our last show Friday at 4:30PT at ces.twitter.com. The following is from Thursday, January 5th. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, I'm Deeter Bone. And I'm Neely Patel. We're the host of The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Theverge.com. And this week, we are doing it on video, live on Twitter, because, you know, it's CES. It's Vegas. We're doing it. We're doing it. We're going to check out a bunch of the stuff of the show, a bunch of tech.

We're going to have a bunch of friends come in. We're doing it right after this. It's a Vergecast. Cut through the Night. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Vergecast live at TES 2017 on Twitter live streaming. I'm Neelai. That's Deeter.

Hello. We're on video. So the hype desk is back. Our friend Megan Fokanish sitting there. Hey, Megan, how's it going? Pretty good. I got some good tweets to read today. Basically, I'll be reading more Twitter polls today.

You guys have questions. Tweet at the Verge. Use the hashtag CS 2017. And we'll talk. Yeah. You got a Twitter poll going already, or are you doing one later on the show? Oh, we've got one.

We're going to talk about it a little bit later in the show, so I'm looking forward to it. All right. Father Megan, hashtag. Always bother Megan, hashtag. Bothering Megan is like my favorite part of CS 2017. I got to be honest with you. All right, we guys get right into it later.

Let's do headlines. So I want to do a whole big section on self-driving cars because it's one of the big things at CES, and this year is a big year for concept cars. Yeah. And the first one I want to talk about is the Toyota Concept I. Oh, boy. Yeah, that's what it's called.

It's a good name. It's a great name. It's a concept. A little lowercase eye, just FYI. Yeah, Apple gave up in the eye branding, so Toyota's like, let's slide in there. So let me tell you about this thing. It has an artificial intelligence in it called U.E. Oh, boy.

Ui, and it wants to have a relationship with you. Don't be all. It wants to get up close and personal. So it will watch how you drive, and it will learn from how you drive. And before I get more into Ui, I just want to point out, it's on the screen now. And the concept eye is adorable. It looks like a giant Tomogachi. It really does.

It's just like all the curbs. When was the last time you saw Tomogachi? I do not agree with that at all. I don't know. It's just like, this is the most concept-y concept car that it ever did concept. It looks like a Twitter egg that's come to life. What's interesting is Toyota's regular cars right now look super mean. Yeah.

They look like they came out of the Matrix to eat you and that one's really cute. So this one, it like displays text in random places on the inside and the outside of the car. That's real. It does all kinds of crazy stuff. So, okay, Ui, it has two modes, guardian mode, where it, you drive, but it watches how you drive and gives you little tips and protects you if you screw. up and want to like, you know, drive into a pedestrian or something. And then it has chauffeur mode, which is the proper self-driving mode. And the idea is that it will, you know, use machine learning to watch and learn how you do it in

Guardian mode, and then it can, you can switch over to Schoform mode. It sounds like a really good future buddy cop movie. Yeah. Yeah. Guardian chauffeur. Exactly. It's like in the future when there's no humor left in the world and we just use extremely proper now, it's everything. So this is a big trend, right? Proper self-driving is really hard.

There's much of regulation. We talk on the Veritas all the time, like, what if the robot kill somebody who's viable? The trolley problem. Yeah, yeah. Look at the trolley problem. It's a Wikipedia hole that will make you lose all faith in humanity. And incredibly sad. Anyway, but assisted driving is a lot simpler, right? The car's just going to help you drive better. I mean, my car does that right now. Like the steering wheel jiggles when I go in the lane or it will break if I don't break. Last night, Nvidia had a keynote. Yeah. very long, Nvidia-style ramble of a keynote.

NVIDIA always has a ramble of a keynote. But this year they had the main keynote, and so we thought they would, like, lock it up. No. Just not at all. I mean, they went with a you-do-you philosophy of being a big company. Anyway, but they're a big thing.

They're really into self-driving to you. They're going to mount cameras in the cars and look at you. Jordan Gelson, our reporter there said, the camera will know if you've had too good of a time, which I thought, I totally misread. He just meant if you've been drinking. So the camera will look at you and it can tell if you're drunk. How can it tell if you're drunk?

You know, AI. Whatever buzzwords are improved. A bunch of Nvidia engineers started out as bartenders, and so they just have a lot of experience. And then they use machine learning to code that experience into the self-driving car. There's a glassy-eye algorithm. But I think the big question for the concept I, for the Nvidia stuff, is if you have more cameras looking at you in the car,

are you, there's already devices where you plug them in your car, and the insurance company will charge you less to drive safety. before you drive more dangerously. Now you have a camera looking at you while you drive. You have a car saying, don't do this. You might do it anyway. There's more privacy stuff around assist driving than I think we're giving anyone credit.

But there's another car company that's basically doing the same thing watching drive, right? Yeah, oh, Honda has a car too. Oh boy. Well, you have a Honda that watches you drive. Yeah, right. This new car from Honda is the electric urban vehicle. It's the new electric urban vehicle, which means.

It's pronounced the new V, which makes me personally want to die. This one is much more of the ride sharing. You'll have a fleet of them in a basement. All through cities. It looks insane. It looks like they're like, you know, cyan's over. What if we just call maximum cyan?

It's a little two-seater. It's got a steering wheel, but you're not supposed to use it. The whole dash is a screen. It's supposed to like basically be a car for ride sharing. It has inductive charging, so we're done. You send it back. And like, while she charges the concept, all the fun concept stuff.

It comes with an electric skateboard. What? So when you arrive at your destination, in your ridiculous Honda, you can then sort of like roll away, and everyone can think to themselves, the future is terrible. You shoot out the back, right? You shoot at the back of that way.

Yeah, you just, it just launches you from the seat. Here's the thing, so it also has an AI that helps you drive. It's from SoftBank. Uh-huh. It's called the Emotion Engine, which is very confusing. Especially because Sony's used that branding before for their TVs and PlayStation stuff. So the emotion engine isn't the engine

because it's a motor, because it's electric. Yeah. It's... Is it powered by emotions? Are my feelings generating energy? It reads your emotions and helps you drive better. I think that's actually the name of the new Carly Ray Jepson album. I'm not kidding.

That actually would be great if that was like the remix record for emotions. It's like the super EDM Carly Ray Jepson album. Two concepts from two big carmakers. They're both looking towards the future. Then there's other stuff happening here too. Right. Real. Right.

Well, so the real thing is Ford is officially officially the first car maker with the official Amazon Alexa integration. So later this month, you will be able to talk to Alexa's and control stuff in your Ford car. So you'll be able to open the locks or start the car if it's freezing out. So they're just flashing this onto the Ford cars. I guess. Right, so they're just putting this software there.

Right. Because I know people who have taken echo dots. Well, so that's coming this summer. This summer inside the Ford car, you will be able to talk to Alexa and do Alexa stuff in the car. you talk to the echo in your house. The first stage is in the house, you ask the dot or the echo to do stuff,

and then Alexa sends a command over to your car. Second stage is they're actually putting Alexa into the car, and Alexa going into things is like the big theme of the show. Right, right. So I know people have like taken Echo Dot because that's a USB device. So you like plug it into the car port

and you plug the ox and you like ask about to play music, and you have a Wi-Fi hotspot. It's true. I know at least. You have to have a Wi-Fi hotspot. Yeah. And then you have to plug the thing and you have to figure, find the plate.

Okay, I want to do it. Yeah, it's like, those are all things you, those are all things that some cars have. But here's, I think the big danger here for Ford is most voice assistants, CarPlay, Android Auto, and they support CarPlay and Android Auto. Right. When you push them, what you're doing

is you're getting another interface to your phone. If you're Google, you have Google Maps. For Apple, you have Apple, you have Apple Maps. Right. You can make phone calls. No, that's the thing is, with Google and Apple and CarPlay and Android Auto, like they know my stuff,

they know my contacts, I get my texts. Alexa doesn't have any of that. So, like, how are they going to square that? Am I going to have to give Alexa access to all that? That's going to be, like, you need to talk to the phone to be a successful car system, I think. Yeah.

In my car, the first push of the voice assistant is, like, the bad garbage car assistant. If you hold it down, you get activated Syria on my phone. So they do that, and Alexa is just the first cut, and it's like helping you do a bunch of stuff in the car. Eh, it could work. All right, well, we got one more piece of news, I think. So this one, I like, I love this piece of news.

T-Mobile had an event today. Classic T-Mobile event, John Ledger on the stage, doing shots, swearing, yelling at all. Everybody's the worst except for him. Took out an AT&T logo and just burned it with a lighter. He didn't do it. He would totally do that. It's so possible.

But they did some rate plan stuff, which is really cool. I actually commend T-Mobile for being more transparent. Oh, they brought back neutrality? They didn't see them. I do not commend T-Mobile for that position. But they are now putting the taxes and fees right into the advertised price. No one does this. Oh, yeah, that's good.

So it's more transparent, they're doing a thing, or if you don't use all your data, they give you credit. Yeah. Nice. But the more interesting thing is our reporter, East reporter, Chris Welch of The Verge, who tweeted yesterday that he is your traffic OG and we respected as such.

And I am super into that tweet. He stood up at the Q&A and said, Hey, John Ledger, are you going to buy Sprint now that the regulatory environment in the United States is a little bit more open to business? Ledger answered. Check it out. The rumors that SoftBink wants to try again,

to merge with the team. Can you just say whether a team mobile is open to a deal with any of its competitors or do you think it's important to maintain the full system? Let's list what we know. In the future of the structure of the industry, there are a number of people that think, well, it may make sense from a scale standpoint to consider the coming together of T-Mobile and Sprint or Sprint may be acquired by a cable player as a way that they, you know, come in. What I've always been clear about for T-Mobile is we will.

focus the company on organic and inorganic growth, and there are multiple, multiple ways for us to continue to increase shareholder value. I gotta say that is the most corporate I've ever heard John Ledger Sound. He has a history of like, he used to be like deep in the telecom corporate world and then he turned into a crazy person. But like that was a throwback of like, I'm gonna parse some language. But he sounded like super reasonable there. He's like, yeah, maybe.

I mean, I think his directness is his directness. So the fact that he's not thrown bombs, Z's saying, maybe we'll buy Sprint. He's got to try to a little carefully. Right. It's interesting. You know, obviously AT&T tried to buy T-Mobile once before. That got knocked down by the Obama administration.

ATT currently trying to buy a Time Warner. Seems like trying to want him knows what's going to happen. There's been big, big moves. Yahoo keeps buying defunct Internet giants. Or, sorry, Verizon keeps spying defuncting the end up against. Yeah, okay. I think Sprint's dying, right? Like, one of the things Ledger said was

Sprints like an exploding plane planes of one of the things. If they're going to fall apart, you might as well let Team Mobile, which seems like a much better run company. I mean, the context of his answer. Make a real competitor to the big job. Right. The context of his answer is like he's expecting there to be a bunch of big changes in the telecom industry broadly in the next year.

And I think he's fundamentally right. Yeah. But we'll keep an eye out for that. But right now, Paul and Ashley were at PEPCOM and another one of these satellite events around CES. And they went and played with some gadgets. So let's see what they saw. Ashley, where are we at?

We are at PepCom. Pepcom made it. The digital experience, as I like to call it. It's a lot of quality stuff here, I would say. Everything I tried work, which is wild. But there's one star of the show. There is definitely a star. And it's this chair.

This is a quality situation right now. I would say, I would say quality. All right, Paul. I think I'm gonna go, I think I'm gonna go standing up. All right. Bye. Let's see. I don't know what's gonna happen.

You have never in your life been safer. I would say. Really? I don't believe that. Actually, I feel like my apartment's really safe. Alright, we're going to stand. It's going up. Push it forward.

All right, Paul. I'm free. See ya. I'm gonna be so productive. Bye. I got some blog post to write. It's really doing it for you. It's like just hit it home.

Boom. It's there. It was a good show. No, it was nice. work. What more could you want? Honestly. Good job. And we're back and we have Paul Miller and you don't look like Ashley.

No, unfortunately I did not have the fun experience of sitting in some type of reclining, you know, computer desk. That was amazing. That's amazing. That's always been the dream. That's always been the dream. Reality, just as good as the dream. Yeah? Yeah.

You got one of these in our new office for you? They're like relatively affordable. What do you think of these little small satellite events at CES where you'd like get to go and be really up close with the stuff instead of in a huge conference hall. It makes sense why they do it. It just eats up your whole evening while you're at the show, and it keeps you away from, you know, we're going to another one tonight.

Right. There's like three in a row. We don't get to spend as much time at the literal convention center because we're popping around. But this was a good one. There was a lot of good companies. Everybody was nice. Almost everything worked, which was astonishing.

That's great. And everything works. People brought their A game to PEPFOM. Speaking of things at work, We don't have one of those. But Lauren's here, because you have been running around looking at a bunch of Alexa stuff, I'll show. Yes.

We're going to have a lot more from Lauren on that. But this is Lenovo's take on the Echo, basically. That's right. In fact, it looks so much like the Echo that when I was writing about it, I wrote Lenovo Echo and had to like... What's its actual way? It's actually called The Smart Assistance. Of course.

Yes. And it's kind of far... Should I grab it? I'm like, Alexa, come to me. Yeah, so this is... the new Lenovo Smart Assistant. I think it's Lenovo's first speaker. I don't know if Lenovo, I mean, obviously the biggest PC maker in the world, they made this speaker. And it works just like an echo. So it has Alexa built into it. And anything that you would ask Alexa on your

echo, you can ask this. So you can say, like, read me the news, play me some music, set a timer, which is what I use my echo for 90% of the time. Right. Yeah. And but they did do something a little bit different with it. First of all, the colors are different. You can see that. Its price is lower. It's The base model is $130. So you're already coming in lower than the Echo. But they're making a harming card inversion, too, with better speakers. That one of the biggest knocks on these smart assistant speakers, like the Echo and to some extent the Google Home is that there's speakers and the speakers aren't that good.

So this, you know, if you get the harming card inversion of this, then presumably you're going to get a little bit better audio quality. I mean, it looks fine, I guess. It looks a little bit like a cigarette, but. Yeah. I've seen a number of people. have told me it looks like a sign. I will say this volume spinner isn't as nice as the echoes.

Because the Echo is like, it's a prototype. It's a prototype. Yeah, they'll get there. I just realized this, it's the exact compromise between Google Home and Amazon Echo. Oh, yeah, right? It's got the cloth bottom. Yeah.

So here's my question. Why did Lenovo make this? Why didn't Amazon, I mean, if the big knock on the Echoes, the speakers are very good, why do they have to go to Lenovo and say put better speakers? Has Amazon ever made a good speaker? Well, no, I think they've only made the one. Well, the answer is no.

Yeah. The second one is a little dot, which is even worse. The dot doesn't count, but the tap is like a not a good speaker. The Echo is not a good speaker. Right. Well, I mean, the thing is that Amazon has made it really easy for a lot of other hardware manufacturers to do Alexa stuff. You can do it a couple different ways. I mean, based on the people I've talked to, they say you can either just make a skill,

which means you're just doing some software stuff, but then if someone happens to have an Echo or an Echo dot in the home, they can access your skill. Right. So like Whirlpool, for example, you can do something. something with Whirlpool appliances with Alexa now, but you have to have an echo dot in the home. But then you can also just build Alexa, or excuse me, Amazon voice services directly into your own product. And Amazon has just made that possible.

So that's what Lenovo did. Yeah, they just took Amazon's kit for these voice services and they built it into this thing. So it's interesting to me is like Lenovo, you said the world's biggest PC manufacturer. Usually they take Windows, they take an Intel reference platform, they screw with it, they load a bunch of their own software onto Windows and now it's a Lenovo product and their own design.

They take Android when, you know, they still make a bunch of phones overseas. Take Android, they load a bunch of their own software onto it and now it's a little over product. You can't do that with Alexa, right? It is just kind of an echo. There's no differentiation here for there. Yes, this is true. This is true. It's not like you would say, you know, what's the weather today and it's going to be like, you should buy a yoga book, I think. Which, you know, if we did that like one out of ten times.

Have you seen the new Carbon X1 ThinkPad? Yeah, it's like, your laptop sucks. Right, exactly. Just whispering in the night. They get like skin it like that, but you are required to use the Lenovo mobile app to activate this. So I guess they get you in that way. Yeah, yeah, I guess Amazon's deal is like they just want to be dominant before Google gets real, before Apple enters the market, right?

Isn't that their move? They just want all the stuff at every price point? Yes, and they were coming at it from the exact inverse position of what Apple and Google did. Like Apple and Google started their artificial, intelligent, assistance. mobile, and then they eventually made their way into the home. It's been a particularly slow rollout for Apple in the home. Amazon started in the home, and now they're trying to figure out how do we get this in as many places as possible and how do we get people to take this on the go. So Paul, you got any gadgets for us later?

Give us a tease. One small keys. There's going to be hugs. There's going to be hugs. Hugs. Hugs. There's going to be typing. I don't want to give it all away.

That's where you guys stick around. You guys stick around for the secret breakers. Hugs in typing. There's no more compelling. That's basically my job description. Paul, do you buy this? I, no. I think Amazon is due.

I mean, I love that they're sharing, but they're due for another, like, a hardware revision. Echo's getting a little old. But also, like, I'm going to go to Target next week, buy some shoes, and they'll happen to have Alexa in them at this point. Everything is getting Alexa. So I could wait. Earlier, you're talking about there's rumors

that the next Amazon one will have a screen. Yeah, that's, I've seen that. I think it was Wall Street Journal said that. So who knows, but they're due for an upgrade. And everybody's beating them because it's so easy to just make better sound. Well, stay tuned for Alexa powered shoes after the break. And we're back. If you've watched the show yesterday, you've been watching the coverage on the verge,

you know that Ben Popper is having the time of his life at the show. He's just going on adventure after adventure. Every year at CS, there's a bit of a drone rodeo out in the desert where they can fly the things. Ben flew on that goes 100 miles an hour. Check it out. Hey everybody, it's Ben Popper, here for CES 2017. I'm not actually at CES.

I'm in the desert near Boulder City, just outside the restricted airspace for Las Vegas. That's because we're here for the CES of drones, a place where everybody can fly these aircraft without even to worry about cutting somebody's nose off. And the exciting thing today is we get to try out the Draco. In the past, when you wanted to have a racing drone, you had to build it yourself.

You didn't know how to program. how to solder. This is the first racing drone you could just bar off the shelf and go 100 miles an hour. What are the pieces that make this a racing drone and differentiate it from like the DGI Phantom that everybody knows? It's basically trying to compare like a Ferrari

to just like a general minivan or something like that. Like it's in terms of like the general idea is the same, but everything's just more powerful. Right. Obviously you got four motors, four props on this. We're required to fly, you've also got a camera up the front here. So this is the HD version of the Draco. So this actually streams 720P was almost zero

So this system is very fast and that's required for racing. You have to be able to dodge gates, dodge whatever you're flying around. So, you know, I've flown a lot of drones doing reviews, but these are, you know, camera quads for consumers. I feel like I would have no idea how to handle something that goes 100 miles an hour. I mean, is it safe to like put this on the shelf at Best Buy or anybody can grab it? Yeah, I would say the nice thing about them is that you can tone them down so that if you're just learning, you can go beginner settings and that kind of lowers it down. So you won't be able to go 100 miles per hour, maybe you can be able to go 100 miles per hour, maybe you can be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be. can go like 30, kind of around the backyard.

If you break something or if something is wrong, everything is modular on this device in some shape or form. If you break a motor arm, pop that out. All the electronics internally, well protected, but if you still manage to break it, replaceable. I mean, I've flown in many, many drones, but not a drone that goes 100 miles an hour and is full manual.

And it's different when you had the FPV on because you don't have that situational awareness. So many ways this could go wrong for me. or for the people around me. Okay, so they brought me out here where I'm far away and maybe can't hurt anybody and I'm gonna do my best to fly this race drone, not crash or kill myself. Should be fun. Alright, here we go, you ready?

Oh yeah. Oh, too far. Okay, how's that better? Am I coming down? We'll just be dropping. You just hit the ground. Oh, shit. Why? Let's go see what's left of this drone.

They were going to break it down for parks anyway. I was just helping disassemble it. Oh, man. Sorry about that little guy. We're just on one piece. Hey, and we're back. And guess who's here? The pop himself, drone guy.

Can we call you the pop? We should not call you the pop. That's my hashtag. So, Ben, drones are kind of your beat. Yeah. I'm covering a lot of drones at CES. I love drones. I'm that nerd who loves drones.

But you are just constantly telling me that this bubble's gonna pop. What's going on? It just feels crazy this year. I mean, the amount of space on the show floor that's dedicated to drones and the crazy stuff that they're doing, I was supposed to go swimming in a tank with a fishing drone and a mermaid.

And I showed up last night and they had built a tank and it like burst and exploded and they were like vacuuming the water frantically off the floor of their booth. And it just feels like. It's like, it's too much. metaphor. Yeah, exactly. So, like, I think the whole thing is about to kind of burst like that. Just feel like there's so many companies and there's no differentiation, you know, it's just like a million brands I've never heard of all doing new stuff with a device that's kind of dangerous,

inherently. Yeah. But you're saying DJI is just kind of the winner, right? Like, that's what's happening in this world. Yeah, I talked to Chris Anderson. You know, he used to be editor Wired, and then he started 3D robotics, and he said, you know, we knew it would be DIY, then consumer, then commercial, but we didn't know that consumer would be winner take all. And that's what it feels like it is right now. It's just winter take all where GGI is just getting farther and farther ahead. I mean, the interesting opportunities are like, when I was at the drone rodeo, there's a company that's building an out-of-the-box racing drone. Before you had to know how to solder and program, now you can go to Best Buy and get a drone that goes 100 miles an hour. Whether or not it's a

crash immediately. So I was like watching this edit of the package before going on. I was like, man, I wish we had more of the drone flying. And Tom, our director was like, well, one, the drone goes 100 miles an hour, so it's really hard to shoot. Two, Ben, crash. Yeah, so I've flown a lot of drones. Is it a good thing if a 12-year-old can go into Best Buy and buy this drone? I would say probably not. But, you know, those interesting little niche products, the racing drone. I play with the Dobby Pocket drone, which is like real small, real cheap.

I don't think DJI's going to go there. And it was cool. You throw it in the air, and it does computer, you know, facial recognition and, like, follows you. So I think there's some stuff that is interesting on the periphery of not being that $1,000 camera drone. So what should we look for next? What's going to be the next turn of the screw drones? Oh, man. I mean, I do think that because this computer vision stuff is becoming so commoditized,

a lot of people are building really interesting small pocket drones. And I think the selfie drone is kind of more interesting because it's cheap and it makes sense to anybody. I love drones. I'm going to buy them all. Anyway, we got more Vergecast coming up right after this. Hey, and we're back. Earlier, we talked a lot about self-driving cars and a lot of the concepts that were new here. But understanding what's going on with self-driving cars and CS can be a lot of work.

So we put together this package to explain it to you. So, CES is becoming the car electronic show. The sheer number of carmakers here is mind-boggling. Just a few years ago, Ford was making news as the first automaker to appear at CES, but now we have an entire convention hall filled with cars. There are two big trends to watch for this year. First up is self-driving cars. Automakers are spending billions to develop autonomous technology, and companies like Google

and Uber are joining them. Hundreds or even thousands of self-driving cars will hit the streets for testing this year, and companies are eager to show off the hardware that could hit deal with. showrooms in as little as four or five years. Self-driving cars could be the biggest and most important advancement of the next 20 years. They have the potential to save tens of thousands of lives from car accidents. Little else that CES can make that claim. The other trend will be connected cars, pulling information from everywhere.

Your self-driving car will know everything from when to break because of upcoming traffic to where patches of black ice are on the road, all thanks to information automatically provided by other cars. And, thanks to smart cities, your car will know when the traffic light will turn green. traffic light will turn green or what roads to avoid because of congestion or construction. Oh, and expect always on data connections to become commonplace. How else we stream Netflix and Hulu while your car drives itself? Last year, GM introduced the first affordable long-range electric car, the Chevy Bolt, and we gave it our best in show award.

Will a car beat out the TVs and tablets and steal the show again this year? And we're back and we have a special guest here, Bridget Carlin, who's the managing director of the Internet of Things at Intel is here joining us. How are you doing? Good. Excited to be here, as always. Yeah, so tell us, Intel's doing a ton of stuff at the show. I don't want to give us the full rundown, but just give us sort of the lay of the land. I mean, CES is always a terrific show.

We've got everything from our new VR technology, where we demonstrated for the first time live. We streamed an NCAA basketball game using our VR technology over an Oculus Rift headset, so that was super cool. All the way to our exciting news around automated driving and our Go platform. Yeah, so the Go platform is the day. That's your big push here. There's like a 5G motive involved into it. Kind of unpack that for us.

Exactly. So when you think about automated driving, and there's all various levels of automated driving, essentially you've got three critical areas to automated driving. You've got the car, you've got the connectivity, and you have the cloud. So Intel announced our Go Automotive Platform solution that includes technologies across all those three critical areas, the three Cs of automated driving, you know, car, connectivity, cloud.

So in our Go Automotive Solution, we have an in-vehicle compute platform for development, which is really key in terms of the processing speed and so forth that happens in the vehicle. We announced a 5G automotive connectivity platform for the high-speed, low-latency requirements for the connectivity. And then we included in that, we announced our Go-automotive SDK, which has all the different tools you need for machine learning, deep learning, sample applications. operating system layer? Are you operating system agnostic or neutral or are you actually trying to build an OS for the vendors? It's a good question. I'm not really sure. We're not trying to build an OS. We're trying to create the platform because all the different technologies that are going to be operating in the vehicle. We want to have a consistent platform for things to integrate into. Are you looking to sell this partner and sell this thing to like giant automakers? Is this like little indie devs? I want to make self-driving cars. I'm bored on the weekends.

Who is this for? Who is this for? So the Intel Go Automotive solutions are really for all of the above. It's for the developers. It's for the technology providers. It's for the car makers, right? Because you can think of the different types of technologies

and the different scenarios automated vehicles are going to go into, whether it's, you know, the content inside the car that's streaming for, you know, entertainment or whether it's the functions in the vehicle itself. So the development platform is going to appeal to the entire entire automotive community from, again, technology providers to the car makers themselves. So when I think about connected car, right, the line everyone uses, and I hate to even say

the car is the ultimate mobile device, right? It beat me to it. It's there. It's just sitting there and we all have to deal with it. We all have to deal with it. Actually, we should commend you for not saying the word millennial, so. Oh, okay. Soon.

Millennials love mobile devices. Look, we got all, but obviously Intel had a big shift happen without it, right, in mobile, and you had the arm process take off. You're talking now about we're going to build modems and cars, we're going to build a compute platform, we're going to do services. Do you think this market is big enough? Does there enough richness there? Even as there's so many other players coming out, right, at this show, there's tons of

other solutions for cars. Do you think Intel can get in there and make a splash the way that it kind of wasn't able to in traditional mobile? Well, I'll tell you, we are really excited. We can't, you know, overstate our excitement about automated direction. It is a huge market, it's a huge opportunity, and it's really gonna allow Intel to shine in terms of the technologies.

You know, when you think about the car and all the processing that's gonna have to happen in the vehicle, you're gonna need high-performance, efficient processing, and we have proven our capability and leadership in that for years. The other thing in terms of high-speed connectivity, this is another area where Intel leads, and by announcing the 5G modem,

the first global 5G modem today at the show is another example of that. The other thing is that in addition to the compute that happens in the car, the machine learning and the retraining and all those things that really, you know, deliver the self-driving experience happens in the cloud. And we have something like a 97% share in the data center where all that processing is happening with our high-performance compute and our ZM processors. So we really feel like we have, we sort of uniquely bring all the technologies

from the car, the connectivity, the cloud that's going to make this vision a reality. All right. Carlin, is the managing director of Internet Things at Intel. We're talking about smart cars. But Sean O'Kane went and played a super fast electric car. Let's look at that now. It's the Lucid prototype.

Hey, it's Andy here at the Verge. We're here with Lucid Motors checking out their new air prototype electric vehicle. They hope to beat Tesla at their own game, and what better way to do it than by hiring a lot of their old engineers. So we're going to go check it out and see how it works. The pickup on this car is really quite impressive.

When you accelerated before, I felt myself being pressed back into my seat in a really kind of tactile way. Lucid Motors is a small electric car startup based in Los Angeles, California. It's among the latest in a wave of electric car startups to spring up with sleek, dynamic, attractive sports car models. A couple months ago, they released their first production car,

The Air. Lucid thinks that the Air could be a Tesla killer and they should know. The company's chief technology officer, Peter Rawlinson, is the former lead engineer on the Model S. Lucid joins Car next EV and Faraday Future,

and their quest to steal some of Tesla's shine. As a result, the electric horsepower wars are heating up, and Lucid is a contender with its claim that the car will make 1,000 horsepower and raise from 0 to 60 miles per hour in less than 3 seconds. And boy was it fast. We took it for a spin down the Las Vegas Strip during CES, and suffice to say, this car could cook.

It flew down straightaways and blazed around corners with torque to burn. A few times I almost ended up in Peter Rawlinson's lap. The air is super roomy. Lucid says that was part of their goal to make a larger than normal interior to put the driver at ease. Unlike their competitors, like Faraday Future, Lucid seems more grounded in reality, steering clear of making lavish promises about the future of mobility and how they're going to transform transportation. They just want to sell a car, and fortunately for them, it seems like they have a real winner on their hands. It was a sweet ride, and I can't wait to take another

spin. Oh my God, that was Andy Hawkins. Toronto came to the photos. The photos are great. Go read that post on the site. Check it out. The car's amazing. The car's nuts. Andy's great. That's great package. But whatever. Cars are whatever. Twitter's the future. Megan, what on earth is happening on Twitter right now. Hey, I just talked about the Twitter poll we put up this morning. So we asked you guys what kind of wearable you would actually wear. We had activity trackers, smart clothing, smart watch, health monitor.

Overwhelmingly, people said smart watch. Really? Yeah, I mean. Not what I would expect. Really. I think that's what I chose. Wait, you voted in a poll, biased? I always voted in the poll. You don't?

I believe in democracy. Everybody gets a vote. Everybody gets a vote. Speaking of which, we have another poll today that we're going to release soon. So we want to know what will win in the end. CES 2017, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, or actual reality.

Oh my God. Let us know. Pick actual reality. There's also, I think, merged reality, but that's not on the poll. You can only choose from those. We're not going to talk about merged reality, because they're not going to talk about about virtual reality because I think that's really stupid.

I will say the broadcast in the past has featured an hour-long argument about whether it should be called 360 video, spherical video or virtual reality. No one knows the answer to that question. I pick spherical video. You're wrong. So that's it. Yeah. We're back right after this.

There it is. Hey, we're back. You're taking this one? Sure. Scene stealer. What do you want? We're back. Let's just do some headlines.

All each other out last. Fine. So we need to talk about gaming. PC's because it's been... What? This is the segment where I come under my desk, excuse me. Don't you love gaming PCs? I do.

Yeah. It's these particularly that like... Where... It's like they're the ones that, well, we should get into it, but it's gaming PCs are the fish that live under the ocean at the deepest depths. Right. And they've evolved in a different direction than the rest of the ecosystem. The news is that both Samsung and Lenovo want a piece of that sweet, sweet deep

sea fish action. Yeah. And they have created gaming laptop lines that look ridiculous. Completely right. So Samsung's gaming lineup is called Odyssey. There's a 15 inch in February and then a 17 inch just monster in April. And they kind of look bad. They look like low rent razors.

Yeah. Behind the scenes. My bullet point here, I'm pretty sure our friend Ross Miller wrote this bullet point, all it says about this laptop is look awful design recon, They don't look good. I don't think it's that they look awful. It's just they look like stereotypical gaming laptop. Like what you think like a gamer would use.

It looks like you should be like DJing in your basement while you play like Dota or something. Samsung's has like chrome surrounds around the track pad and there's like LED. And it's like there's a part of me that like really respects that. Right? Like maybe every time I use my touchpad it should be a disco. So here's what I'll say. I will grant that you can make a completely insane, ostentatious, light-up, multi-colored, bonkers gaming laptop, and it's cool or it's fine. Like, I will grant that.

But if you make one of those badly, you just, you cannot come back. Well, so I think the flip side of this is Razor, for example. Razor put out like a three display. Yes, it's called Project Valerie. Oh, we're jumping ahead. We'll get to Razor. No, no, we just do it. It's called Project Valerie.

It weighs 12 pounds. Yeah. But the thing, like, under its own power, you flip it open and, you flip it open and, you and you have a massive giant screen. This is a concept that we've seen at CS for years and years and years. Yeah. And so the point that all of our team is making

is it's great to make gaming laptops. It's great to make gaming routers. Every year at CS, we find the silliest looking router. Yeah. But this stereotypical- Here it is spanning out. I mean, that's awesome. Yeah, so I think Razor kind of does it right.

If there's a way to do this thing right, to make the craziest, ostentatious, Wild laptop. Right. Razor traditionally is, they're the ones who are unchained, but they have like a design sensibility. Their products feel really good. Samsung and Lenovo.

Yeah, Lenovo is also here with the, they're called the Legion line, which is, I just picked the name, Legion. They just went for it. It's a cool gaming name, guys. Yeah, Legion. Every time we talk about this, I think about you at Polygon for the longest time. I'm like, we're just killing Megan right now. So are you a PC game or all right now?

going to make a really thin version of the Legion. So you play a little bit of a PC game. Did you ever get a straight up gaming laptop? No, because if I'm going to actually invest in a PC thing, I want like a PC setup. Like I have a laptop. I use it because I have to like go places and I need a quick, easy thing.

I don't want to take that to like a coffee shop. What am I going to do with that? I'm trying to work and it's like blinding people at the brainbows. Dude, you're gonna play games. Our first year at CS, the first year, the Verge ever came to CS, Addie Robertson, our great VR reporter, brought a gaming laptop and a netbook.

And neither one of the, those things was the right device to have here. Vlad were a great piece for us that you should definitely go read. Basically this is our own fault. It's like supply and demand is broken. Like if you want a gaming laptop, you have to buy one that looks like this. So all of these companies are convinced

that this is the thing people want. But it's like you don't have another choice. So I think PCs are really interesting again. Can I make my dad joke before you get there? So Lenovo has the Legion line. And what I want them to do is fix it and make the next one make it really, really thin and just make it sick as hell. And then it could be the Legionnaires disease.

Oh, Dieter, stop it. I'm sorry. Stop it. We were just... I asked permission. Well, the show's got me permission. So speaking of PCs being super interesting again, Dell put out a bunch of laptops.

The 58, I'm sorry, the XPS is first, is what we got. It's got a 5.2 millimeter border. It's a smallest 13-inch laptop in the world. Of course, of course, compromised on ports. So it's only as USB Type C. One of them is ThunderPolt 3 that can charge in Power 2K4 monitors. Comes with a little adapter in the box. Little shot at Apple there.

It doesn't give you the adapter. It's got a micro-s-de-slot. Shipping later this month, it's just $1,000. So good on the price. Yeah. It's the Core I-7 that's not the real Core-I-7. It's them, Core-7. But they took everybody's favorite Windows laptop.

They took everybody's favorite Windows laptop. Windows laptop and let you spin it around. Like, good job. And then Adele also put out the latitude 50-285, which, I'm just gonna say it, full-on clone of the Surface Pro. Yes. 12.3 inch display, 15 gears of RAM, quiet processor.

It's basically a surface. So only a 1080P processor, so it's not as good as a Pro 4. 899 in February, late February. So we were hanging out with Microsoft. Right. And we asked them, like, does it does make you mad? Yeah, are you, like everyone's copying you. And their answer very directly was, no, this

is what we want, right? We want to push the PC forward. They called it category creation, and we hope that these OEMs start copying from us. They also told us that they're sharing some of the hardware technology. So they put out the Surface Studio, they invent some new hinges, maybe they're gonna share some of that stuff out in the world.

Dell put out a service studio looking thing, it's basically, Microsoft is saying, okay, we're not immobile, we can push ahead on the PC. People still really like these. Interest in laptops at this show for us, just in a firm coverage standpoint, through the roof. People want to know about laptops here.

And Microsoft's saying, well, we're gonna invent a whole bunch of new kinds of laptop. And I hope that Lenovo, Dell, HP, just copy that stuff as fast as they can. So I'm really happy about, like, how, like Microsoft has quietly had one of the best years in tech. And this surface strategy of let's show everybody else how to do it worked really well for them.

Because I remember coming to CES three, four years ago, and we were all, you know, it was Windows 8. Yeah. But when Windows at Wait came out, it was supposed to be all about tablets, and so all of these PC makers started making crazy form factors. We were all excited to go see all the crazy form factors,

and they were all awful. Yeah. None of them worked. And it took until now, after Microsoft basically taught everybody how to make the damn things, that we're starting to see some really good PCs. Like, Nick Statt wrote a piece,

you should go read it. That's like, it's like, now is one of the best times to go out and buy a PC because, like, The processes are pretty good. I wish they're better, but they're pretty good. And like the form factors are right. And here's something that's interesting to know.

The battery life is turning around. One of the big themes at CES is here is there are a bunch of laptops that said, you know what, we're not going to try and make the thinnest damn thing on Earth. We're just going to make a good laptop and we're going to let it be a little bit thicker and it's going to have good battery life.

So HP is like at the top of this list. They made a specter, a 15.6-inch laptop. And they went from 15.9 millimeters to 17.8. So they just added a couple of millimeters. And that gave them 23% more battery life. Yeah. And that's basically last year's macro. Right.

Yeah. So that's great. There's the LGGram and that battery life thing is a different discussion. That's like crazy. That's weird. And yeah. I mean, they cheated on a battery life test. They said we have an ancient sort of benchmark.

So yeah, we have a better battery. And we're benching it on this old test. I don't know. I'm just going to read this headline that Vlad wrote. Yeah. Samsung found the courage. should put a full-size HTMLI port on its 13-inchulture book. Yeah.

So, whatever, it's peak flat. Anyway, we could just rolled up on set. Look at that. Just doing whatever she wants. Joanna Stern is here. Bridge founder, Wall Street Journal founder. It actually says on the rundown columnist, WSJ columnist. That's what I'm the topic.

I'm the topic that we're going to discuss right now. Tell me how you write your column. No, don't tell me how you know. You know how Joanna has a column. She texts me. I go to the verge. I text me. questions about this.

Is this a good idea? And then I give 2% of my salary to Nealai. Yeah. It's a good arrangement. If you can line it up, I encourage it. Anyway, there's a reason you're here. Yeah. It's because there's a new Blackberry.

Guys, I got a new phone. And I literally could not think of anyone who gets excited about BlackBerry's. I get excited about BlackBerry. What do you think about my new phone? Let me turn my phone to the audience. What do you guys think of my new phone? Looking real good. Yeah.

This is a phone from 2017, not. 2007. Right. So that's, it's a prototype. This is a prototype of the phone that is, it is a Blackberry, but it's going to be the first phone that TCL puts out after acquiring the BlackBerry brand. Right, they license, right. They have the exclusive license to make Blackberry phones.

Yes, it works too. So yeah, this is not final, they haven't announced the final name of it yet. Yeah. So it runs Android. It runs Android. It runs Android. And really, yeah. And people who are like are familiar with the Prive, which is the BlackBerry phone.

Oh, the Priv. Right, a great name. The great named BlackBerry Priv. It looks and feels the same way. The software looks and feels the same. Can I just say it looks insane. You probably can't see it on the camera, but the antenna lines are gloss black. The USBC port is lined in gloss black and has like a character line.

It's got a curve on the bottom and it's flat across the top on the corners. I'm pretty sure this is a camera at the top and this is a proximity sensor. The back has like this carbon fiber weave. This phone is feeling itself. Like, most of a phone... Don't care. It's having an identity crisis. No, I think it's totally comfortable.

But what is actually, they put the fingerprint sensor in the space bar. Yeah. This phone is a guy who watches the bar with a funny hat and doesn't care what you think. Yeah. That's me. It's Dieter. That's Deter. No, not Adora.

That's totally me. So you have been wanting a Blackberry. It was really since the day I've met you. Since the day I met you, I had a BlackBerry. So actually, this is interesting. This is my 10th CES. Yeah. Do you have a ribbon?

I got a ribbon. I got a ribbon. Yeah. Yeah. And I get a ribbon. Is this like nine for you? It's not, I think it's 10 too. Yeah.

Anyway. Did you not get a ribbon? Can we get a ribbon? Yeah, what we're doing? We have a TV show. Is this whole staff, no one has a ribbon? Anyway. Yeah.

But I came to CES 10 years ago with a BlackBerry and a Vista notebook. Yeah. Okay. And you were leaving here with a Blackberry and I'm leaving here with a Blackberry, one of those new PCs that Dieter was just talking about. Totally awesome. but I'm putting Bista on it. Yeah.

And a stylist. Those are the three things I'm leaving with. Fingerprints sensor on the spacebar. I miss the, who doesn't miss the physical keyboard? I mean, how I have, who doesn't miss the physical keyboard that matters? She's waiting for Zedars. She's looking at me because she knows that I've been running in from offstage. I mean, here's why take on the physical keyboard.

I desperately miss physical keyboard. I feel like I am better and faster and more accurate on it. I know that's a lie and that I'm not better, faster, and more accurate with it. But it just feels better. It just makes you feel like doing work. I mean, I think there's still that market of like people who live in D.C. who have a Blackberry and I wish I could just have one phone. I was just talking to the wonderful makeup artist here and she also wants a Blackberry.

Everybody... I was just talking to Kim Kardashian and she also wants a Blackberry. She loves BlackBerrys. You were just talking to Kim Kardashian? No. She said anything about Kanye? She loves this Twitter show, she was saying. Yeah, of course.

Yeah. She's tweeting right. She's tweeting about it. Yeah. But this is not BlackBerry, right? It's TCL. Right. are going to revive the brand.

They're going to make it happen. The Blackberry supports you on a soft. They're going to make BlackBerry great again, is what I heard their catchphrases. And that's your honest turn, everybody. No, but if the phone breaks, you go to TCL, but there's software back in that BlackBerry does. Yes, they're still going to do the security

and privacy, I believe, is still done. That's their differentiating thing. I was just keeping things safe. This is a prototype. Yeah, so he can't judge about that. Yeah, and so they're going to have all these details at Mobile World Congress next month. Right.

They say it's going to come to the U.S., and I assume it'll be unlocked. I think it's, you know, I think it's good news. They sell a bunch of phones. I will say it's the only exciting. I can't say I'm going to buy it, but I'm going to buy it. It's the only exciting phone at this show. I think I'm going to get it. I think the Huawei announcement was pretty interesting.

You know, because they're doing Alexa. They're doing Alexa, and they're coming to the U.S. And they, I mean, Huawei makes some really good hardware. I think if more people in the U.S. know about Huawei, maybe they'll do some more stuff in the U. It starts with the booth here in Las Vegas. and press conference. I gotta say this phone, I'm confident of video and pictures

don't do this phone justice. You should go, when it comes out, you should go find it and look at it. It looks crazy. I love it. It's so confident about the way it looks. Anyway, Joanna. It's nuts.

We don't see film. I love it. Anyway, that's Joanna Stern. We'll be back right after this. It's more Vergecast Live. CS 2017. Hey, it's Ben Popper here at the drone rodeo, CES 2017.

and I'm wearing some AR glasses made by Epson. These augmented reality glasses are something they've had for about five years, but they didn't have a killer use case. Then drone pilots started picking them up. I can see what the drone sees, and I can see the world around me, so I can pilot and walk, keep my situational awareness. Plus, I look kinda cool.

And we're back. Yeah. This is here. Paul Miller. Or is his badge, Miss Prince says. Paul Millier. Just making that name a little bit harder to pronounce. Just rubbing it in.

Ashley Carmen's here. Yeah. Circuit Breaker crew. I'm back. We're here. I'm excited play with some toys. So what's happening? Where we got all the cool toys?

Yeah. Like I promised, typing and hugs. Yeah. I think Asher should go first. So I'm doing E-Inck today. That's nothing right now. So I have, first I'll show you guys this backpack. I show you the tags.

Everyone can see this. It is a backpack. that has an e-ink display in the front. Oh my god. And you can literally display whatever you want. It connects to your phone over Bluetooth. It's a backpack with a screen. It is a backpack with a screen.

It's a back on a screen, so it doesn't take a ton of battery. Right, it can last for 30 days without a charge. I think that you still have to charge it because like, ugh. You can't just like register your motion? Yeah, exactly. Oh yeah, totally, yeah. So I'm gonna show off. I'm gonna take a little selfie.

Oh, hey. You've got way better selfie style than I do. I'm a professional. A professional, well. Okay. Just wait, it's gonna be great. So we're gonna display it now. Hopefully this works.

Oh, Megan, you're in the background of this. It's a good selfie. You're like, what? Oh, I'm like, oh. Don't do it, girl. Tomorrow on the Rochcast Live from Twitter. Oh, it works. Whoa.

That's awesome. Oh, my God. Oh, Megan was something. Wait, wait. Yeah, so that is a thing. Would you guys wear your faces on a backpack? Sure. Yes. How much does it cost to wear my face in a backpack?

It starts in $99. the size of the screen and whether you get canvas or whether. Can you pull the screen out? Yeah, so I have one actually. This is under the table. Oh man, sorry guys. Bye. But here it is.

And it's a frozen display. Why is this just? No, no. It's frozen. It's not frozen. It's a display of frozen. It's a frozen. It doesn't weigh anything.

Doesn't add any way. It's like just a gigantic Kindle. Yeah. Can you put books on it? Can you like put text on it? You know, maybe. Like you know, I'll look for years and years in Subway you would like advertise your interest by like having a hot-down rug.

This is gonna turn into billboards isn't it? No. No. No. The first page of like the road is open on your track. My personal brand. Just follow me on Twitter. Just follow me on Twitter.

No. You're following here. It's like a QR card for your Tinder profile. Oh my god. That's the worst. This is great. I love this. 99 dollars.

Deeter had a great idea where you take a picture of what's in front of you Yeah. And then you're like, see-through. You become invisible. Oh. Oh. It's not as good of a joke as the frozen display joke. I'm just going to let you know.

This is cool. What black and white object do you have for? This is remarkably similar. It's called mnemonic. And it's a thermal printer. But prints sticky notes. You can see there's a little bit of adhesive up here. So you can just keep printing.

It's not a problem to just keep printing. It's a thermal printer, right? So it's just for black and white. But with sticky notes. I will say it's a little too fast for this guy. It's also got an app. I drew a nice smiley face. But you could also, you could draw anything you want.

Like you could draw like kick me, for instance, something that someone could write on a note. Paul wants some gadget to bully people. Yeah. Paul's a bully. I think the thermal printer. I think the idea is that because it will like print, like when it was printed and who printed it

and you could put like shopping lists on. or something like that. I really don't. But same thing, we could do a selfie. How's our, it's not, I don't know what Ashley. I just made it out. You gotta get a little bit. I think our selfie game is not quite as strong as Ashley,

but we'll keep practicing. So yeah, this is about $120. It's gonna launch like April or May. Yeah. The paper is pretty cheap. It's like four bucks for 200. You gotta buy this special paper though, right? Yeah, it's thermal paper.

Yeah. So it's the wrong paper where there's sticky stuff on it. Yeah. Because it's sticky notes. What's their pitch for it? Like, why do you need this in your life? I don't know. You guys ask so many questions.

I think, I imagine this would be relatively either in the kitchen or kitchen adjacent. Oh, good. Oh, the photo of me says kick me on it just in case you're standing behind me and you want to know who you're bullied. And so you'd put your shopping list on here. You'd put some reminders, stick them to the fridge, stick them to whatever. Okay. Wait, right. What do you got?

Okay, I gotta do another under table. Oh, it's so shiny. How is it? Spoiler alert, it's shiny. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Deter. Alright, guys, I'll show it for you first.

Oh my God. What is that? Wow. What is happening? I gotta say, hopefully I'm not blinding anyone. Thermal printer to solid gold keyboard. Really having a...

Real tone shift. Yeah. So what is this thing? Okay, so this is the free right, which is an older device that we've covered. It has a mechanical. A medical keyboard and E-E-E-E-Sring, it's a distraction-free typewriter. So it connects over Wi-Fi to the cloud. Okay.

So you're kind of using a computer in the sense of your work is saved, you have a backspace, but you don't have the internet to distract you. And then for CES, they plated it in gold. Of course. Because it's CES, like what up? If you're gonna go to the coffee shop with your steampunk typewriter, yeah, it might as well be as flashy as possible. Yeah.

And you can leave your copy of the road sitting out right next to it and your Tinder QR code on your backpack. Hey, this is for luxurious upstairs. Yeah, okay. Do you guys want to try typing? Yes. I know you want to do. I know you guys are into the keyboard. Yeah.

It's cool. Is it because it's planted in gold? You know, you're going to write that novel, buddy. This is right here, right now. Be to work. Oh, man. There's a slight delay. How much is this thing?

Is gold is available for sale? No, gold is just, you know, a special item. Yeah. But it's expensive. It's $500. $500? $500? It's crazy.

That's too much. Your novel's worth it, though. Yeah, imagine how rich you could be. Invest in yourself, Deeter. What's the last product? What do you got? All right, we got, I told you there'd be hugs. I told you there'd be typing.

Ashley came through. Told you there'll be hugs. This looks, what is happening? What? Oh, my God. This is Perry hug. Oh, my God. They're not bears.

I'm going to need you to move. I need you to leave. I guess I'm going to the hype desk now. Hello. Wow, super mega mutiny on the show. What is this? I don't know. This is Perry hug.

This wire is just for demonstration purposes here at the show. They're actually going to be wireless. They'll connect over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. And it's for tele-intimacy. This is a new term, the Adi and I coined. We're going to trademark it. Tele-intimacy. Like, for example, if you were kicked off your chair

and you feel really far away from your friends. Mila, I wish I could hug you right now, but I'll just have to hug Perry. And then hug Megan. What is the noise? What is, is this the hug feeling? Yeah, this is the feeling of hugs. Oh, so when you hug it, the other one vibrates.

Yeah. Wait, hug me again. It's just like, I never thought like being hugged would feel so much like being farted on. What is it? Is this like a vibration? Hold on, we're going to try it. Wait, Paul's hug sounds way deeper than things. I love is much deeper.

Wait, what if we hug at the same time? Okay, one, two, three, hug. They just explode. I'm feeling the hug. Oh, my God. And it does it as long as you hug. The idea is like you're like away on business and your kid has one of these, you have one of these, and then you can like tell a hug them.

Yeah. If I'm away in business, I'm not carrying this thing with me and my carry out. I travel very efficiently. Does it have like an app that I can like fake hug my kid? For bad parents, there is an app you could just push the, or if you forgot Perry or whatever. There's an app you can push a button to tell. So you can pay your assistant to hug your dog your dad. This is like the most like, sorry I could make it to your soccer game, but my sister can hug you.

It's terrible. There was some debate, hot debate earlier, whether this is a bear or not. This is not a bear. This is not a bear. This is like an art bark. Just the thing. They told me this nose design. So when you cuddle with me, right now.

Hey, Nil. Twitter's great. How's Twitter going? I always say super hype over here, really connecting with the community. Got some great tweets that I won't share with you. Because you kicked me out of my chair. That sucks. I hope you enjoy hugging your robot.

75 bucks pre-orders soon and then they're gonna craft one. All right. We gotta take a break. I gotta fire Megan for mutiny. We'll move back right after this. You need to buckle up for something that's gonna be a pretty rough ride. And I wanna tell you what you're in for in a segment that we're calling, let's be clear. If you've been paying attention to the news out of CES this year,

you can't help but notice that Amazon's Alexa Digital Assistant is everywhere. It's in LG's refrigerators and, and Lenovo speakers. It's in neck buds and systems designed to help you watch your children. It's in Ford's cars and Huawei's phones. But as far ahead as Amazon seems, it doesn't yet own the entire market yet.

Google's assistant is showing up in TVs and watches and cars. And even though Apple famously sits CES out, you have to assume that Siri is waiting in the wings. Oh, and Microsoft isn't doing nothing either. Cortana is coming to cars and speakers, too. So, let's be clear, we are staring down the barrel of a good old-fashioned, knock-down, drag-out, platform war, and the prize is nothing less than all of your personal data

and a cut of everything that you buy and everything you ask about on the Internet. The most important thing that happened to the Internet in the past 15 years was Google. You could ask a question, and the Internet would give you a bunch of answers. It's what we think of as the 10 Blue Links. You might not trust all of them, but you'd trust that one of them would be, the right answer. But now, with these smart assistants, you only get one answer, and who determines that answer turns out to matter a lot. Say you're in your car. Do you talk to your Android phone that talks to Google, or to your dashboard head unit that talks to Bing? Or

maybe it talks to Amazon. Who knows? Whatever it is, owning that one answer equals real power and real money for the company that provides it. So when you see that you can talk to a gadget now. It isn't just a neat add-on feature. It's a battle for the future of the internet. And yes, these platform wars are super annoying for consumers. But at least that

competition is a little bit better than a single company just picking the answers for everybody. We'll be right back. We're back. Hey. Do you know we do this a lot? Yeah, every week in fact. Yeah. A little thing we call the Vergecast. We host it. Do you know how to host it's podcast? You can find it iTunes.

Yeah. You should listen to it. It's, I will say it does not have quite the production value of this. You're trying to drink a lot more on the Prochcast. But we talk about tech every week. Runtown, have some friends on. Yeah. iTunes, go find it. It'll be there.

Speaking of things that people like from us, people love Casey Newton. Yeah. And we had to get more Casey on the show. So Casey and I ran around, CES unveiled, gotten some trouble. Casey asked everybody a certain question that I'm dying to find the answer to. Let's check it out. It's like regret.

You know, I have a recurring nightmare that I should. show up to CES and I'm not wearing any pants. And we found a man who's living it. I want you to meet Arthur Meenard. What are these boxers doing? Those parts and boxes are the boxes of the future and they're high-tech boxers, which protects your manhood from cell phone and Wi-Fi radiation.

You know what, I think this business takes a lot of balls, so I congratulate. We're looking at a hovering selfie cam. It's basically a drone for selfies in bars. It's everything I've ever dreamed up. It takes the guesswork out of taking a selfie. Is it safe? Yeah, it's very sad.

So when I launched it, it was just spinning around and then try to find him. You're going to get that guy. All right. He loves him. Did he know him? I've heard a story that is a perfect CES story. An exhibitor of intelligent underpants was not allowed to be exhibiting. And so he got kicked out.

Meanwhile, intrepid reporter Ben Popper of Theverge.com has his own pair on, and he's just wandering around. and the guy who owns the pair is gone. He's literally an underpants bandit. Ben! He stole the underpants, man. I'm trying to give him back and they got kicked out. So you've just got illegal, illegal pants? I've got electromagnetic pants, my friend.

All right. Yeah. Always an adventure at CES, unveiled 2017. Aiding and abetting a felony here at CS 2017. All right. Great. Ben, we're back. I mean, I was taking a back.

He's been stolen underpants. Like, I don't know what else to say. Casey New and everybody. Casey's here. Lauren's here. How are you guys doing? We're great. Yeah.

We're here to bring some energy to the last segment of the show and give you guys the emotional support. What have you been doing all day? I've been talking to celebrities. While you guys are here at your country club, some of us have been working for a living. Are we going to see some of this tomorrow?

Did you just a hermit sip your tea? I did. It's none of my business, what you guys do here. But me, I work. So yeah, so tomorrow on the show, you'll see me interacting with a number of celebrities, asking them about the technology in their homes, and posing for selfies. Can you give us a clue or a hint?

One of them was on television. Like real television or Twitter television? Yes, a non-live branded Twitter property. Has you been wandering the floor, talking to famous people? And millennials. The worst people. Two of my favorite groups. Celebrities are you doing.

What are you been seeing? What's like catching out? I saw you standing outside a giant Amazon Echo. Yeah, there's a giant Amazon Echo here, which you knock and can enter, and I don't know what's inside because they didn't let me in when I knocked. Do you just act as Alexa?

Like, other people walk by and scream at you? No, the best thing is, is that the tall echo actually works as an echo. It's like 14 feet tall, but when you open the door, there's this tiny little dot inside of it that's powering the whole thing. Yes, it's kind of nice.

It's amazing. But, yeah, I mean, like, isn't that the whole theme of CES is just like put a tiny sensor in it and magic happens, right? I mean, like, yes, you know, what are we seeing? I mean, I think it's kind of a continuation of sensors and internet coming to everything.

Anything that's already in your house now has smart in front of it, and of course, voice control just everywhere and everything now. So your beat for the past year or so has been kind of the failure of the app economy, right? Are you seeing a renewed interest in like, make smart stuff instead of make iPhone apps?

Yeah, well, I think there are a lot of good reasons to make hardware. are not apps, but at the same time, almost every piece of hardware that we're seeing has a companion app with it, right? Every single person I've talked to you today has pulled out their phone and said, and see, we've added a gamification layer

to the thermostat, which is deeply disturbing. Millennials love it, though. But the millennials can't get away from it. So yeah, smartphone apps have their challenges, but if you're making smart hardware, you're probably gonna have an app that goes along with it. Yeah, Lauren, what do you see? And it's interesting you hear.

TVs. Just TVs? Pathode Ray. That'd be great. You could see somebody doing it. You know what, Trim Chon is great. Yeah. Here's a 500 pound, 7-inch TRT TV.

Like last year we saw the Kodak Super 8. Let's bring back big butt TVs. Let's just do it. Let's just do it. No, I think to what Casey's saying, like a lot of it is about just, I hate using this phrase. I hate the IOT. There it is. Yeah, IOT.

It's true. Like, you see, I've seen everything from like smart hair brushes to smart high heels to smart underwear to the, and all those things like just happen to be clothing or things that you use, you know, close to the body, right? But it's this whole idea of taking stuff that was previously dumb, maybe didn't really need a Wi-Fi connection, but now all of a sudden has Wi-Fi capabilities. It's going to get to the point where I think, like, it's not even an announcement anymore that something has this package of sensors that can do this thing. Everything's just going to do it. You know, it's going to be very low power consumption. Things are going to last

forever on like a single charge, and it's just going to happen to have Wi-Fi. Yeah. I mean, I've seen a lot of that stuff and it's just where's it all going to come together and if the answer is only Alexa that's that's not good yeah well there's always the fragmentation too but yeah Megan speaking of apps what's happening on that Twitter icon oh Twitter app so we have our poll results so earlier we asked you guys what will win in the end virtual reality augmented reality mixed reality or actual reality the answer is actual reality there is hope for us all yet there's hope for us all yet Casey you played with some crazy HGC vibe stuff right yeah so I was in a mixed chamber today.

What, okay. When I said, what have you been up to? And your answer was dismissing me. You did answer I was in a mixed reality. Fine. I have to say what a mixed reality chamber is. Fair. What is a mixed reality chamber?

So a mixed reality chamber is essentially a green screen room where I am wearing an HDC VE headset and I'm having the same experience that you would have if you were wearing an HDC V. Why does the room? need to be green screen if you can't see it because you're wearing a mixed reality or wearing a VR headset.

Because the mixed reality chamber is actually for other people. And what happens is after I had my experience which involved shooting a bunch of aliens, I was projected, or rather the environment was projected onto the green screen and then it created a movie. So for everyone watching, they could see exactly what I was seeing.

So this has some interesting applications. You could, for example, make a trailer about the VR video game that you just made. Or you could have a VR arcade and people could actually see what the player was seeing. So there's some kind of interesting commercial applications for it. But for me, it was just a good time shooting up to millions. Yeah.

Does that grab you? Is that the thing that's going to make you buy a vibe? I actually think it might, right? Like, there's a huge marketing challenge around VR, which is until somebody puts it on your head, you don't really understand what's remotely cool about it. A mixed reality chamber is a way of creating a visual that at least begins to tell that story.

And I mean, I've been excited for VR arcades, like, for years. Like, it's just been like a thing that I think will happen that I think will be really fun to do. and a mixed reality chamber is a good way of starting to get toward arcades. Yeah, it sounds like what you're saying is just in general less isolating. The idea of people coming home and watching movies together, but wearing a headset is so awful and like this dystopian future. Right, you did it with the glimpse or whatever it was called.

Yeah, the glyph. And so this merged and mixed thing we're hearing about actually means, like, you might be wearing a headset, but you could stick your hand out in front of you and still see your physical hand. Or in your case, the human beings around you can see what you're doing, which is like, it's kind of cool. You've done more augmented reality stuff.

Like you've tried out HoloLens. There's a bunch of low-rent augmented reality stuff. There's a bunch of low-rent VR happening here. But on the component side, there's all the inside out tracking. You're seeing that stuff get better and better and better to place people in VR into real reality. I mean, we talk, when we go talk to the industry, everyone's making a bigger bet on AR than VR, it seems like,

but the VR stuff is out there in the world. Yeah, it seems like people are more. comfortable in general with AR because they've already been using it on their phones for a long time and like Pokemon Go is probably the best expression of that. On the inside out tracking, it's funny because I was talking to Addie Robertson from our team earlier today and then Vlad wrote a piece for us too about their AR experience. Their, what is it called? Those experiences, not being great yet. So we will have more on AR, VR, and a whole lot of other stuff plus the best of CES. Plus tomorrow. Casey with Slubbs. You should check it all out. Yeah. There's going to be Legos.

Yeah, I want you to talk with Alexa? It's going to be crazy. That's it. See you tomorrow. Bye.