The Vergecast - CES 2017 Day 3

Episode Date: January 7, 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). The following is from Friday, January 6th. http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/7/14200992/vergecast-live-at-ces-2017-twitter-replay-rewatch-vod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, I'm Nilai Patel. And I am Deeter Bone. And we are here at the Vergecast. The Vergecast, the flagship podcast, the verge.com. We're here at CS 2017 in Vegas. It's the last final episode of Vergecast live from CS. So let's get started. Hey, we're back.

I'm Neh. That's Deeter. I am still Dieter. Over at the Hyped desk. We've got Megan Faroke Manesh. How's going to Megan? I'm super bummed. It's our last show, but I am very excited

because we still have lots of polls for you guys. If you tweeted the Verge, this is your last chance for us to read your tweets. So you should do that. It's the last chance for us to read your tweets. Ever. I will never look at your tweets again after this. I will throw them all straight into the block garbage can.

How can they get at you? Tweet it. Tweet it the verge. Use the hashtag CS 2017. That's super important. And stay tuned. There it is. All right, here.

Headlines. Let's jump right into some news. So there's no news. That's like the thing. It's the last weekday. C.S. still goes a couple days. But all the big announcements have been made. Yeah.

But there's a bunch of stuff that like sort of happened but wasn't like the massive thing, but still important. Yeah, so let's get started. So a bunch of smart watches of the show. Smart watches kind of limping along. Not doing great, but Garmin put out new Phoenix Five. Lauren wrote about it. It actually looks really nice.

Garmin quite kind of doing really well. Misfit did something called the Vapor. If you make a wearable called the vapor. Vapor wear. They made this just so you could tweet a dad joke about it. And I did. I tweeted that dad joke. Oh, he super did.

Yeah. It's got a new snaptrag and wear a 21. It's whatever. Yeah. Well, so actually, that Garmin, the Garmin is interesting. They're quietly great, you're right. But they don't have full access to stuff on the iPhone, but they're really great sport watches,

and they made multiple sizes of them. The Misfit is the thing that is, to me... I'm going to hear you. I want you to fast forward to Androidware being garbage. Because that's what I want you to talk about. The Misfit should have been Androidware. It's running some variant of Android. It's probably going to get released in China.

But instead, it's just running this thing. Maybe it's on top of Android Wear, but they couldn't run it on Android Wear because it couldn't do what Misfit wanted to do, apparently. And Android Wear is not having a good time right now. It feels like Apple do the Apple Watch. They had to reboot the whole thing. Now it's a kind of fun. It's an interesting product.

I wore it in for not a couple months and put it away. Google just kind of blew it with Android Wear. So these things on the screen here, there's a couple of them. It's the next evolution light up wearable. There's also a baslet, baselet thing. If you're like a club kid or like a music festival person, you're a, you're a, you You've seen these around. They're the most interesting risk things here.

Or if you just are looking around for your phone in the dark or something, just want to throw that out there. Oh, they light up or vibrate to the beat of the music. Yeah, I mean, that sounds very useful, Eli. Damn. Last day of the show, Megan's coming out for blood. That's what we all came here for, right? Blood.

Yeah, blood. Just sweet. I think the point here is, like, there's these other weird offshoot mutant wearables. They're way more interesting than Android Wear. Right. So Android Wear 2.0 is coming out sometime next year. we're going to see some more stuff.

We're going to see some like Nexus style Androidware devices. But right now the smartwatch game is Apple Watch. Samsung and Gear S3 is still hanging around. And a bunch of other things that are like not so good, but there's a few that like deserve more credit than they get. And I think that Garmin's stuff is like at the top of that list. Yeah. So the other thing that is going on at CES, I really want to talk about are displays.

So it's like a really broad generic category. but the screens at CES are incredibly interesting. So the first one, and probably the biggest news, is that Sony switched its Bravia line of TVs from LCD to OLED. What the top of the line? At the top of the line, yeah. So they come in, you know, multiple sizes.

They're running Android TV. They've got Dolby Vision HDR. But what's interesting about the high-end bravias here is they decided to do this thing that some, every now and then they trot this out, though they make the whole screen the speaker. Yeah. So that's fine.

but it's good to see that LG no longer sort of stands alone. It's like trying to push it over the TV market. Yeah, yeah. But there's other stuff too. So Dell made an insane bonkers 8K monitor. It's basically they just took like, what's the most you would ever want in a monitor and they put it in this thing?

It's $5,000. Of course it is. It's 32 inches. It's just, it's got all the stuff. So that's cool. Acer made a gaming monitor that's curved, and it has a Toby eye tracking. So if you want to do eye tracking

while you're playing a video game, you can do it. So it's like adding that stuff on. And the thing I'm really excited about this is for gaming. I had this big argument with Vlad Savo, who wrote a great piece about how displays are one of the best things at the show. And I told him, I bet you that that Curved

is actually great for gaming. I think Curved on a desktop is really great. He didn't believe me. And then he today went out and played it. And he's like, oh, yeah, you're right. It's curved on big TV. It's kind of over. But my favorite interesting display is,

it's called the Tanvis. It's a display that does haptic feedback, but it does it locally under your, your fingers. So if you're, they do a partnership or if you're running over like a piece of corduroy, it feels like corduroy. Or if it's a partnership. Do you have to like, yeah, they're going to try and like the Cardoory Institute of America is like, they're, they're, they're, can't feel corduroy and this way to. The thing's off for sale, they're trying to find partners to make this thing. I see. But the reason it's exciting is like, oh, okay, I described it, but everybody

who tried it ran back and said, yo, go try this thing right now. And so overall, like, all the displays here are like pushing forward a little bit and it's more than just picked up screens, right? Like, traditionally the move is like, we made it smart. There's a screen in it now. Right. And we're seeing, like, the next iteration beyond just LCDs. Yeah, and it's, I don't know, it's fun and interesting. It's more than just, you know, this I'm looking at right here.

Yeah. But screens are over. They're dead. The next thing is virtual reality. The screens, fake screens everywhere. So a bunch of Vive stuff happened in HGC Vive. They have new trackers that can turn literally anything into a controller. Okay, so what does that mean?

Standing offstage, Casey Newton is wielding a baseball bat with a thing on the end of it. Oh, so you just like slap it on whatever you want. And now it can, like, find it for you. They made a wall. wireless add-on so you don't need to be tethered to the computer. It actually works. Oh. I assume it would be like wireless HTML, which is like pretty laggy, but it's a new kind of tech.

It's called the TPCast. Okay. It's like, it's interesting. It's like, and you can also see on the screen, they built, they got rid of the headphone jack. Hey, they actually built a headphone attachment so you don't need your own bulky. They're basically making it more and more self-contained. Right, right. And I think that's what they're doing subscriptions in VR.

I think it's really interesting. the vibe to me is the one that's more interesting. Yeah. In terms of the high end. Go ahead. I should suppose my wife works for Oculus. But you're right. All the excitement around like weird stuff around VR seems to be going to the Oculus.

And I'm really shocked that this wireless add-on works as well as it does. It's a lot of bandwidth. A couple of them. Yeah. But like you would expect, lag is the biggest problem you can have in VR. If there's lag, you get sick, and you barf. So they have to, they have to fix. that and apparently they did.

Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know, I'm excited to try it out. Speaking of this tracker, Casey Newton, who I said is standing offstage, we're going to play with that stuff in a minute, but he went and did some crazy stuff in their VR chamber. Let's check that out right now. All right, I am here in HTC's Mix Reality Bay. I'm about to have a virtual reality experience, but because I'm in this green screen environment,

you're going to be able to see it. And the end result of this is going to be a video that we all can watch and you will see me slaughtering aliens. I'm literally ready to rumble because there is a rumble pack on my backpack. Let's do this. There's a lot more of them now. Nailed it.

Wow. Now I spent most of the first part of this in a panicked crouch. Now this entire street is gone like a Kool-Aid red, letting me know that I am on the first. the verge of death and at this point I really was just sort of waiting to die and I just and then Ryan came back into the picture and I was completely unaware of you and then things started to pick up a little bit I started to figure out how to fire these

orbs the screen was no longer Kool-Aid colored anymore and I sent a bunch of aliens to meet their maker and I feel great about it. Talk just for a second about e-sports so what you're saying is that this could be essentially a new spectator sport if you're able to see what people are doing inside virtual reality? Yeah, it's a possibility. I think people are looking at it. I think it's a definite opportunity for that business and that sector to actually go, OK, how do we take

e-sports into VR and how do we put this at scale? The mixed reality bay, like the one I was just in, gives you a really good idea of what I'm seeing and what it's like to be standing inside that virtual world. And as a result, I think you're going to see these bays popping up in lots of places, virtual reality arcades, trade shows like this one, and anywhere where I'm making of a virtual reality headset wants to show you what it's like to be inside.

How'd you do? Uh, my understanding is that this is the highest score ever achieved in this game. Well, that was ridiculous. Hey, look, Casey Nien's here. Hello, hello. You brought weapons. I did. Do not mess with me right now.

So what you got here? Yeah, so, um, uh, you know, as I think you heard in the piece, uh, ViV is making the ViV tracker now. It's coming out in Q2, and you're going to be a video. be able to affix it to any number of third-party peripherals to do things in the world of the game. Is it officially licensed bat or is this like any bat works? So I am told that this is actually a prototype unit that this is not something that you can buy in the way. It's a prototype bat. You cannot buy this in the wild for certain liability reasons.

But there is a super cool use of this thing. If you are a bit hitting people. Well, I am going to trash the set afterwards. But in the meantime, if you're a baseball player and you're going up against a pitcher, tomorrow in the major leagues, you can use a database of every pitch ever thrown by that pitcher and take batting practice against that actual pitcher in virtual reality. That's pretty cool. So, you know, whereas before you're going to the batting cage, you're trying to just hit,

you know, practicing your sport. Random fastballs. Yeah, my personal sport. Now you can do sort of a virtual batting cage and have a much different experience. So you need this on here and you need this on your wrist? Yeah, that's right. So anytime you add a Vive tracker to something, you are creating. and independently tracked object in the world of the game,

which means it's going to be tracked more accurately, there's going to be less lag, that sort of thing. Can it take inputs besides movement, or do you just strap it onto stuff? I see you've got it attached to a glove there with some wires and whatnot. Yeah, that's right. And so, of course, you would also need the headset.

There would be sort of more that you would need. You need the vibe setup. But yeah, go ahead and attach these things. So in that little VR cave, that's just so other people can watch you? Or does that have a benefit for you? So it has no benefit for me, other than that's the coolest I've ever looked on camera,

is destroying it. aliens with a gun. But what is cool about that is that if you've never been inside virtual reality before, you can take a look at that and understand what I'm seeing. And, you know, based on my conversations with HDC execs, they're saying this is the way that video game makers are going to make their trailers from now on. They're already starting to do it because it just sort of, you know, conveys information much more visually. I think you can also think about, like, e-sports applications. So once VR games get going in e-sports, you'll be able to watch what those players are doing and be a little bit easier to see.

This is like the big problem. Like how do we communicate what the hell virtual reality is? This is a way to solve it. Yeah, I mean, if you remember last year, I mean, there was sort of nothing like this. You just, you know, a bunch of like endless footage of nerds wearing headstones. Yeah. It was a huge problem for us. We'd be like, we want to convey this amazing experience and all we could do is like say

it was amazing. Yeah, right. Right. But now with things like this, you're going to start to see better visual experiences. Yeah. Are you buying it? Like, yeah, I think it's like, well, I mean, like the, I think the example of baseball players taking batting practice in virtual reality is insanely compelling,

and it's another example of where virtual reality is coming faster to business applications than it is to consumer applications in certain ways. But just in terms of, you know, is it fun to be in virtual reality with a gun shooting aliens? Of course. Yeah. Awesome. Well, that's pretty great. We're going to be right back after this with more Vurchase Live.

And we're back. Hello. Megan, you're here. What? Hi. I hired a new intern. I would like to introduce you to my wonderful intern. This is Sam Sheffer.

Sam Sheffer at the hype desk. So if you've never listened to Verchast before, we invented the hype desk to contain Sam's millennial fury. We needed literally a conceptual box to put Sam into it. And I'm back. Sam's not a matchable. How's it going on, Sam? It's going really well.

This is my eighth CES in a row. And it's been one hell of a ride. Can you take the spectacles off? Yes. Like seriously. Take the spectacles off. Like go start like a raw account. But you're in love of this.

spectacle. I do love, but not those. Anyway, but you're at CS. What are you looking at? What are you in love with? What's the hypest thing in CS? That LG transparent display was super impressive. And their new OLEDs, the blacks are the deepest blacks I've ever seen in a screen in my life. So those are really impressive. Um, the concept Toyota concept, concept, concept eye, concepty. I know it's purely a concept, but seeing those kind of futuristic cars in person, um, the concept Toyota. Um, concept, concept, concept. Uh, I know it's purely a concept, but seeing those kind of futuristic cars in person, is always something that gets me. So, yeah, those two things. Yeah, that's fair. Beef or bust, Alexa, everywhere. Ah, man. Beef, because Amazon is planning world domination right now, and I think by 2020, Amazon is going to be,

it's going to be insane how, Amazon is going to be everywhere. I'm excited. If you don't know what that means, that was just a hype beast code for Sam I use. Megan, you have some sort of cat. I brought you the most wonderful time in the world. Oh, my God. This is one of the Lego booths.

There are five you can get, but this is the best one, the cat. His name is Frankie. I know, I love it's much, you guys. You say it's cranky? No, his name is Frankie. He's not cranky. It has a light in its mouth. I know.

Oh, we're gonna get to that. Okay. Okay, so basically with this, you build it, and then you program it to do stuff. So it's like minestorms, it's simpler? That sounds like an old person reference. Wow. Anyway, moving on to the important thing.

So I'm gonna show you guys how to feed Frankie. So you've got the app open, so you'll select the feeding thing. thing you hit play and then this is the best part I love this cat so much you feed him is that a bottle oh my god it's making a lot of noise hold on check this out so if you're like hey you want the end of the bottle he's like no no no just fart at you you might have hold on okay this one this is the best actually nila I'm going to pull you into this so you can experience this wonderful thing oh good so there are different selections here like you select different menus. Get this one going. Okay. So Nilai, I want you to take Frankie and hold him gently

to your soft, soft beard. Just hold him up there, hold them up there. Your doesn't that soft. Puttled wood big. Oh my god. Wait, this is really nice. I know right? Yeah. Okay, put him down for a second. This is gonna make you feel really bad, but I want you to pick him up by his tail. I broke, I broke this fight. You broke him. Instantly broke his fight. Oh god, there's what you get, cat. I pick you up however I want. Okay, the good news is we can rebuild. We can rebuild the him. I'm not... Oh, wow, he's pretty... He likes this.

This is amazing. How many sensors are in this thing? A lot. A lot. A lot. But like a kid can like put this together. Yeah, the whole thing is like... Sam, even you could do this. Your kid puts together. I'm gonna come take it after. You're gonna pry it for my cold dead hand.

I will say we do Circuit Breaker, we're at Paul Nash on the show later, but Circuit Breaker stuff, some of the most popular stuff we cover on Circuit Breaker is all stuff that helps kids learn how to build stuff in code. I guess that's kind of the idea here. Yeah, pretty much. It's just like, imagine Lego blocks helping you learn to build things except that this is more interactive and you can actually play with it and it's fun to beat it and stuff.

Does it have Alexa integration? Not yet, but it might. That's the one that's funny. Sam, do you have an echo in your house? No. Would you? No. Literally the hype is thing on the market.

I don't like talking to my gadgets yet. I'm not on that hype train. You like talking to your audience. I like talking to the audience. With millennial influencers. Yeah, I think I'm deciding between that and at Google Home. Do you have? You have both, right?

I have both, but I use my echo all the time. Yeah. To do what? Play music? I don't know. I have like a couple like smart outlets and stuff. So this is the thing. We've been talking about Alexa and the Echo all show long.

Lauren Good has been running around looking at everything that uses Alexa. Let's check it out right now. Amazon is everywhere at this year CES and the company is not even an official exhibitor. They're here through Alexa. Their popular voice controlled personal assistant that first had its home in the Amazon Echo speaker. Seriously though, Alexa is everywhere this year. But just because it's everywhere doesn't mean it works well everywhere.

So Alexa is showing up in everything from copycat speakers to smart lights to connected fridges. Some of these are direct integrations, which means that Alexa's voice capabilities are built directly into that piece of hardware. And some of them still require some type of echo speaker in order for them to work. Put it this way. You can now look at your smart lights and order a pizza. So that's all fine and well inside of the home. But what's more interesting is Alexa outside of the home, where you don't have a stable Wi-Fi connection where there's a lot of ambient noise.

These $400 on vocal headphones are supposedly the first headphones with Alexa built directly into them. Built directly in probably sounds like, it's just like walking around with an echo strapped your head, but it's not exactly like that. You still need a cell connection, and it's not like you can just walk around

shouting Alexa into your headphones. You actually need to press a physical button to get Alexa started. Alexa is showing up in other wearables as well, like this Martian smartwatch. But again, you have to press a physical button not once, but twice, in order to get your question through to Alexa. And even then, you're probably not going to hear it very well

through this tiny speaker that's built into the side of the watch. They're going to have to open the Envoy's app, which is Martian's app, in order to see the response. There are other things to consider too, like the fact that Alexa still isn't officially available outside of the US, and she's still not great at accents. Alexa, what is the nutritional value of avocados? Sorry, I didn't understand the question I heard.

But there's no doubt that the person who stole the show this year is not even a person. It's an artificially intelligent virtual assistant who we gave a household name faster than you could say, Hey Siri or OK Google. Even Amazon seemed surprised by this. The company told me they were expecting around 35 to 40 Amazon integrations with products here at the show. And it turns out there are a lot more than that. And we're back. Hello, and we have more people at the table.

Lauren is here. Hello. And then notable verge trader David Pierce is. here. How's it going? That's great. That's actually on my business card. It's wired now. Notable perch trader. David Peer. So I'm just going to ask you, we saw Lauren running around.

We've been talking to Lauren about Alexa. Do you think Amazon's just going to win here? I think Amazon is winning by a mile at this point. I mean, it's, we're early enough in this world where there's really nobody yet who has won. Like you can't have built a lead big enough to be insurmountable at this point. Yeah. But right now Amazon is so far ahead.

Just because they came out and said, you want to build stuff for this and a lot of it's going to be bad? go. I'm going to disagree with that. Okay. Respectfully. Sure. Or disrespected.

All right, I'm going to disrespectfully disagree with that. Well, in this sense, so I think Alexa is one of my favorite virtual assistants. I think that Amazon really nail the ease of use and how user-friendly it is, and it works great in the home. But, as we just kind of saw, outside of the home on mobile, which is huge, by the way, it's still... By the way, David. You heard of sound? Is it a microphone problem? Or is it that, like, fundamentally, when you're out in the world,

your digital assistant needs to know your calendar and have your contacts and just be good at your personal data? Yeah, it's partly that. I mean, it's partly that. So let's look at the other virtual assistants really quickly, too. Like, obviously there's Siri on iPhone, and then Google has all their stuff going on on Android phones and stuff like that. So they already have the sort of mobile capabilities.

And then anywhere else it goes from there, it's just sort of like, well, of course, that's going to extend to your watch. And of course, it's going to extend your car and that's all going to happen. I mean, Alexa doesn't really exist on mobile, right? There's no Alexa mobile app that you can talk to and get an answer from. So Amazon actually is somewhat limited in that way as they're moving from in the house to outside of the house. They have to do all these direct integration. Do you want voice control outside of your house?

This is the thing I think about with Siri. It's like they were there first. Sure, I guess. They were there first. Siri's in your car already, right? If you have a phone, the pickup on Siri is still pretty flat as far as I can tell. But the thing is kind of bad. You want it in all the places you can't use your phone.

Your phone is perfectly sufficient everywhere you have you. you can use your phone. Right, I just think in your house, voice is actually turning out to be more powerful because you maybe don't have your phone in your pocket in your house. Right. And you just want to talk and no one can hear you.

You don't sound like an idiot being like, turn on the lights to like no one. Right, outside of your house, you kind of have like the Bluetooth headset. But if you're like out for a run, of course, I don't run because that would be ridiculous. Because I'm not a monster. No, he's not a baseball bat.

He's doing some sports stuff. He's not doing anything healthy. He's just threatening children. Here's my question with all this stuff that's getting Alexa built into it. Is there a danger? for Amazon that some people are just making garbage products and it's going to hurt the Alexa brand because some of these things are bad just because they're bad gadgets. And is that

going to be a thing that is a danger that people are going to associate Alexa with like crappy products? I think that there's a possibility of that. I mean, think about like the way Siri was five years ago. Like Siri now is really good, but nobody would believe, right? Siri was terrible for so long and it's now digging out of this giant hole of people just thinking it sucks. And the awesome thing about the Echo was it's this wonderful, magical thing that works the first time you use it, and then it's so fun that you want to keep doing it. But I think you're right. People are going to get these crappy smart watches. You want to go on the ride with the Echo and Alexa, right? Like you first get it, you play some music, you set a timer, that's all anybody does. And they're like,

I about a light switch. And I can say one thing to it and flip on the light switch. Why about the next thing? I can do one more thing. And you add these skills and you incrementally, you're cheering for it, you're rooting for it, where Siri mostly just fails you. That's the thing, right, because it worked. Because the first time you tried to do something, even if it was a tiny, pointless something, like it did that thing. And then that's so cool, you want to do more and more complicated stuff.

Whereas with Siri, you're like, set an alarm. She's like, do you want web searches for lettuce? I'm like, no, I don't. I'm never doing this again. When you talk about predictive artificial intelligence, which is where this is actually all going, a company like Google is actually much better equipped to do the stuff you want it to do,

because it has so much data on you. Like, Amazon knows everything you've bought in the past 10 years. And Amazon is going to essentially use some of that recommendation engine tech, and they're gonna try to make Alexa more predictive. But the other companies are actually better positioned to do that. I think Amazon being the place where you already buy stuff,

that's what you want an assistant only is you. You're like, I need something and it has a credit card, and it buys the stuff, and it shows up your door the next day. You're wrong, and we are super out of time. For this. This has been a very hostile segment on the broadcast here live at CES. We'll be back with much more after this.

Hey, we're here with the Dobby Pocket drone. Easily folds up and fits into your average pair of pants. And if you want to take off, you don't have to find great terrain. Just launch it from the palm of your hand. Easy as that. Hey, we're back with one of the most ridiculous things I've seen here at CES 2017. And therefore, one of my favorite things that I've seen here. I was taking it.

This is the Acer Predator 21X. It's been one of those popular things we've written about this year. We now know that they've got it here at CS that it's coming out in February and it costs $9,000. It's just an insane, ridiculous, massive gaming laptop. Here's what I want you to know. Yeah, here we go. I am currently holding the track pad, but I can take it out. It still works over here.

I can flip it over and now it's a new keypad. Wait, do you guys both fit at that computer? Yes. It's a laptop for couples. Oh my god. Oh, this is so romantic. In the curved screen wraps around you. It's got eye tracking sensors here.

This thing is a monster truck. It looks completely insane. It's so big it has its own camera. We could fit two of my laptops on this thing. Do you know that my number one theory in all of comedy is that big things are funny? I disagree. This is the biggest thing. Tiny things are funny things.

50 pounds. No, no, no, no. It's definitely a lot. It's 19.4 pounds. This thing is bonkers. So we were talking earlier about curve displays and gaming. Yeah. I see why you want a curve display here.

I own a Curve TV, a Samsung Curve TV. It is the dumbest, stupidest thing I've ever bought. You need to sit immediately in front of it and play Xbox. Yeah, but this kind of like makes a lot of sense to me. It's a monster truck. This makes sense to you? Yes, the whole thing. As conceptually, aesthetically.

You look like a villain, like you're plotting world domination behind that thing. That's how I should look at all times. I'm taking this back to the office. I'm loading up truckbeat on it, and we're going to make the verge fucking awesome. Together, it's family. How's the keyboard? Is it like big and clacky? The keyboard's like big and mechanical.

Look at me, I'm just... It's really loud though. Too loud. I'm just wrecking fools. You're gonna wake a beater. That's so rude. You guys... Like, fundamentally is an idea.

This is about being rude. So the one thing I don't know is the battery life, but I have to imagine it's about 20 minutes. Yeah. Like you plug this thing in. It's already not doing that. There's this like glass panel up here. So we talked yesterday about how...

The battery has an hour left. This is a prototype. We can't be too means rude, but that's what we talk. We talk about. What you just say about how a bunch of gaming laptops are like gaudy and ostentatious and bad? Yeah. This is gaudy and ostentatious and good. Yeah.

Right. In the sense that like Bigfoot as a car is not acceptable in society. The gravedigger as a car is not acceptable in society. But in their context, their platonic ideals are what they should be. I mean, if I were the kind of person that would roll into land parties and I rolled in with this thing. I mean... You would need the bell of the ball. I just keep looking at it and want to...

I just want to know everything. I want it to talk to me about itself. I could be pretty well from her, actually. Megan, would you roll with this thing? I think that thing weighs more than I do. Yeah. I mean, it's not small. Oh, we're not on the internet.

I can't launch Diablo. Like, I think I would put that on and immediately, like, follow up. Playing Diablo and this would be the best. All right, well, Dieter and I'm going to stay pretty distracted with this. Bigg, what's going on on Twitter? Yeah, so let's talk about Twitter polls. So earlier we asked you guys, which smart home gadget from CS 2017 would you actually use? And we asked if you would use the fridge cam,

food tracker, the Catspad smart cat feeder, the smart toothbrush, or the Ario Baby Cam. And overwhelmingly, the answer is Fridge Cam Food Tracker. Everybody wants to know what's going out on their fridge, which is totally fair. I want to keep track of all my things since they're going bad. I think we should have put this on the list and everyone should have voted for this. No. I think so too. I think we really messed up.

I mean, I have to say in a world where the MacBook Pro is disappointing because it doesn't offer enough, like, performance. That thing is Eats MacBook Pro. This is 100% like the opposite of that problem. Okay, anyway, so we have another poll we're going to put up. Question is, which new TV would you want on your wall from CS 2017? So the high sense 100 inch laser TV, the Sony LED Bravia 4K TV, the Samsung Q-OED TV, or the LGS signature 4K HDR OED. There are so many letters.

So many letters. So many letters. I think I know the answer to this question. I think we have different answers to this question. You definitely have different answers. Don't spoil it. I mean, you want WebOS on your wall. I know you.

I know where your heart lies. Anyway, vote in the question. Keep tweeting us at Verge. At Verge. At Verge. See me your tasty tweets, please. Is the hashtag. Now, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna let you behind the curtain.

Literally the only feedback I've gotten from the show for my wife is that she wants to see more Casey Newton. She doesn't care about me, she just wants more Casey. So we have that for you, and we have, with Casey, celebrity. I'm not even gonna ruin it. Yeah. Check this out, it's amazing. Here we go.

It's happening. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. We are here at CES 2017 with Nick Offerman and Nick you are here with a device like no other, I'm told. It's from American Greetings and it's sleek. It comes in several different models. It's a goddamn greeting card. I'm astonished by this technology and it comes with a custom stylus as well. It's a number two pencil.

Nick, you are well-known for your role on Parks and Rec. We thought we'd do a little Parks and Tech, but without any parks. So maybe we can take a look. I call that a bitching segue. Thank you very much. This is the ProFix, which is a smart toothbrush, and it has a video camera in it.

So you tap this button here, and then it will take pictures of the inside of your mouth, which you can then share with your dentist or a loved one. The thing that occurs to me is it's going to make it really hard to get away with the age-old prank of putting someone toothbrush in your butt. Right. This is Mars, and it's a levitating speaker,

and we're now rocking out to some royalty-free music. It's definitely dope, as my young friends would say. I just want to get a hockey stick and... Yeah, I mean... This is iPal. It is a companion robot for children and the elderly. There's a tickling function in this robot. That's as...

Let's see if... Yeah. It responds to spanking. Oh, any spankings? No. This is the E-Motor Go, a fully collapsible, scooter-like electric vehicle. What could go wrong?

This is dope. This is Nick Offerman? Take for your time. Thank you for having me. It's been most enlightening. Well, that was ridiculous. That... That beard.

I couldn't really. He's got the retired beard. It's like he stared at and it and stares back at you. Yeah, I love it. I do like the fact that he broke a couple times and laughed at the absurdity of CES. Yeah, that's what you have to. It's the only way to survive. We're going to do that ourselves, I think.

We're to laugh at the absurdity of CES when the verge cast continues after this break. This week at CES, Audi and NVIDIA partnered up to help Audi's cars learn how to drive better using artificial intelligence. Lucky for us, there's this huge parking lot across the street from the convention center, and we're going to check out. And we're going to check it out. So I'm here in an Audi Q7 with Nvidia, artificial intelligence self-driving hardware and software. All right, let's take it away. And so what they've built is this small track.

It's almost peanut shape. And it's got a couple of different driving environments in it. One is this half circle here with lines painted on the road for the car to navigate. And then as it heads around these two curves, it goes onto a gravel section. and then sort of an artificial grass section, and then an area without any lines.

So it's a bunch of different environments for the car to navigate. And then as it goes around this corner, sometimes they'll take this giant construction sign and put it in the car's way where it used to be able to go without any problem. And so then the car has to look at that sign, decide what to do, and avoid it.

The interesting thing about this car is that it's using Nvidia's artificial intelligence, machine learning technology, which is a lot of fancy buzzwords to say that the car learns how to drive like a human would. It learned by watching people drive it around. And it only had about four days of training. They were out here just driving it around this course. And it's a pretty simple course, but if it encounters an unexpected situation,

the car needs to know how to deal with it. And with the machine learning, they can do that in a much faster way than needing to program for every single circumstance that I might run into. For a transportation reporter, it's a little hard to believe that this was my first ride in a self-driving car. But it was totally normal. The wheel turned and we went around the corners and it was fine.

I didn't feel unsafe at all. It wasn't unnerving. Getting on a highway with traffic might be a little different. But if this is the future, I'm all in. Hey, and we're back. We're a special guest. Mike Fasullo, President, CEO,

Sony Electronics is here. He brought us some toys to play with. How's your CS going? It's going great. It is going just great. Yeah. Sony's got a new booth this year. It's like the most exciting thing.

I love the old booth, and you lose really cool. But architecture aside, what do you got on the table here for us? All right. So let me set it up. We introduced over 25 products at this CES, and each and every one of them stand on their own merits. But a couple of things we were trying to do as well as the individual products is have them interconnect or work with others or work with some other platforms, whether it's Google Home or Alexa or pretty heavy into the Google side of things, right? Your TVs run Android. Our TVs are all Android, Android TVs, and Google Home is also compatible with our TVs and with a number of other items that we have.

But also Alexa, we're working with Amazon and Echo as well. So we're trying to come up with choice, right? Customer choice. Make it fun, make it exciting, solve for those pain points. So these are, but you've got to have fun too, right? So this one here is our mini soundbar. It's the CT300, and it comes with a wireless subwifers. that you can fit underneath a sofa.

Why is it beige? It comes in multiple colors. This one happens to be beige. It comes in black as well. So I've had, I used to have a Sony sound bar that was like a giant hexagon that was like this big. Sounded awesome. Yeah, so is the idea that you can get, like,

it's supposed to be able to put out that much sound, or is this like I have a small apartment, I don't want to destroy my neighbors? Like, what's the story here? It's more for lifestyle size. The sound is still phenomenal. Sound is still phenomenal. These look like a new noise-canceling headset.

I'm going to get to those, In a minute, you're going to need these. Okay. But this is a new wireless speaker line, and it comes in various colors. And it's really meant to be great quality sound, but also be a lot of fun. So let me play some music.

Oh, there's going to go. It's happening. So not only is it happening, but you can't see it, but the audience can see their strobe lights in the front. And it's blaring out strobes. You could daisy chain ten of these. Yeah. Ten of these, right?

So, you know, sleeping babies and parents are going to just hate me. What the audience can't see is our audio guy back there just burst into tears. So sleeping babies and parents are going to hate me. Can I ask you a question? Why did you change the branding from megabase to extra base? Extra base. I know, but you have Megabase, which is one of those dominant base-related brands in the world. Which is more mega or extra?

Extra. Great answer. Right answer. 2017, it's extra. And the model is XP. You got to do some throwback classic Sony megabase.

There you go. It's free idea for it. All right. So now let's move on to this. So everyone's partying. This, by the way, we call a portable party. Okay.

The portable party. We can connect ten of them together. It's just designed to appeal to me. Does it connect over Bluetooth or some mysterious? It's Bluetooth. It's Bluetooth. see. So it's very simple. Touch and go. So while the kids are partying and the parents are freaking out,

you put on these noise canceling headphones. And these are the 1000X. These just came to market. They are the best, the very best noise cancelling headphones, but they've got some really cool features on them. One is they've got an ambient sound feature. So you're wearing it on your head and you're talking to me if I hold my hand to my right ear cup I can hear your voice it turns off the music hold your hand up to it

yeah well you have to hold it it's great on airplanes because flight attendants yell at you yeah yeah yeah yeah what do you want to drink I can hear you just fine I'll just think of diet coat they yell me if I'm not wearing

noise cancer my bones I just hold on the time also beige heavy into beige this year I wanted to match the speaker but it comes in black it comes in black black as well it also has a really interesting

function on here that is an optimizer. So if you wear glasses, you have long hair, you have short hair, you know, you have facial hair, you push the optimizer button and it forms the earphone. Oh, wow. So it keeps out all the noise and you don't get fatigued. How much these costs?

These are $3.99. Yeah, and you're going right up against the Bose quiet comfort kind of thing. These are the very best. All right. I believe you. And then the functions for up and down music or changing tracks. Oh, cool. There's swipes. So you just swipe up and down, left and right. Very cool. And those are available right now, right now.

Cool. And the other stuff is coming? This will be available in March, April. Okay, you got a little secret here. And then I want to talk to you about TVs. All right. It's all about TVs. This is a literal prototype. Yeah.

And these will be out in the fall. And they're what we're calling true wireless. So there are two earbuds. Okay. You guys are getting into this game now. They're true earbuds. Yeah. Yeah.

Can I hold one of them? You most certainly may. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I saw. They got a little thing so they come down as there. I imagine a microphone's up down there. Oh, sure.

Yeah. Works with iPhone. So do you control these with taps or anything? Or like? Yeah, you'll have functions right on them. Okay. And then the case has a power charger built in. Sure.

So you just plug and you're charged and ready to go. What do you think about the fact that like a year ago we were like a year ago we were but like, oh man, I really wish these would exist, and now they're just everywhere. Apple dole's making and Braggie. Like, it seems like everywhere you go, there's these wireless super ones. Was there some, you know, magic trick that happened?

Everybody figured it out. Like, why is it taken so long, and why do you think they all hit it once? Well, I don't think there's a magic trick, but I do think that there's choice, right? So we make over the year, we make on the year, we make in the ear, we make sports,

and now we're going to true wireless. And we have a whole lot of wireless as well. Do you think Bluetooth is ready for this? I mean, the whole back as far as it's been like, it's had to get developed over time. It's ready. We're ready. You'll be fine. Yeah.

When's this thing coming out? That'll be out in the fall. In the fall? Do you have the price yet or no? Actually, I'm supposed to say that'll be out in 2017. You heard of here first. The first. Do you got a price?

I do not. Yeah. But it'll be very reasonable and competitive. That's pretty exciting. I like the, so you're going to be competitive with AirPods, you think? We're going to be competitive. I like it. There it is.

All right. very weirdly said it's all about TVs. I mentioned it earlier, but we got to do it. We're very excited about it. I'm very excited about it. For years and years and years, there's been rumors about Sony doing OLED. You made a little OLED, the Xcel1. You remember everything.

I remember everything. Dude, I'm a Sony fanboy for life. Old school. That was the first OLED, and then you walked away from it, you did LCDs. You're back now. Big news of the show is Sony went OLED. You're at the top of the market. Where's the switch coming from? So there's a couple things going on. One, again, is choice because there is a difference when you're looking at OLED and LCD.

But the second is yield. So we've been making OLED on a professional side, studio reference monitors for years. I mean, they are the reference standard in the studio, 30-inch monitor. But for consumer consumption and for larger screens and scale of production, it's taken time for the panels to get to that point. Yeah. And that was really more of the holdout than anything else. Now that it's at a point of quality and scale,

yes, we're jumping in this year. We announced our new A1 series, which is just 8 million self-illuminated pixels. And then you add to it our proprietary technology. The picture is just stunning. Stunning. I mean, you have to see it to believe it. But it actually has many more features than that. You know, technology is phenomenal.

and it's the same technology we used in our Z series. The Z series we announced earlier this year, which is still the reference standard in the consumer television market. But with the OLED, we could do some neat things. So it's half inch thin, right? And we're calling it the standless television. So when you look at it straight on,

you see nothing but screen. There's no stand. Everything is all on the little tripod in the back there. There's no stand. There's no speakers. behind it there's a little case in that harnesses all the wires. So you'll see no wires either. Yeah.

So you think there's headroom in the TV market? Do you think you can drive another with 4K HDR or not OLED? You can drive another big refresh cycle like you did with the top panels? Absolutely. Do you think this is the year? Because we've been hearing about it for one time. Well, last year was a great year for 4K UHD. This year, 4KUHD with HDR.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're going to have compound rates year on year. least for the next three, four years. Remember when HD transitioned, everybody changed the television. So now we're getting to a natural refresh cycle. But here's the coolest thing about those OLED. Yeah. About our OLED television. There are no speakers. Right. The sound literally comes out of the screen. Yeah, that's really cool. And then you get a little soundbar, and then you get your wires headphones, and you let up the other one, you put it on the cans. It's all over the place.

That's great. You got to work on the space thing, though. Mike, thank you so much for coming. You know, I love having you on this show every year at CS. We'll be back right after this with more Virchkastlone. This phone has a molecular sensor. This phone's from Cheng Hong. It's called H2. And it's got this sensor from SIO that scans molecules. It's basically infrared, sees how molecules are moving around,

and then it can basically determine what's going on. So you can check your Viagra to see if it's fake. You can check your drink to see if there's alcohol in it. alcohol in it. You can check your strawberries to see which one's sweeter. It's kind of crazy. And then it's literally inside of a mobile phone. So there's a lot of ways to use this SIO sensor.

It can measure a lot of different things, but one of them is kind of like the sugar content of something. So you need to pick which fruit you're going to scan. So I'm going to scan an apple. I'll just put the sensor right on it. Scan. I want you to guess at home which of these is going to be sweeter. Now that's a pretty good, pretty good apple, above good.

Let's look at this red one. That one's a bit over good. I think this one's supposed to be sweeter. I'm not a picky eater, but I think I have a very discerning palette, so I'm going to see what I think. That's a very sweet apple. They both rated pretty sweet. Oh yeah, this one's way sweeter.

This app's a lot different. We're going to measure Viagra pills. to see which one's real, which one's fake. Snap can also measure meats for water-injected meat or for alcohol content and drinks. We're going for pills. So let's put this over here. Bam, got it again.

Okay, one more thing, we're gonna scan my body fat, which could be really embarrassing. Who knows? Maybe I'm great. Maybe I'm just the best at body fat. I have to scan my bice up. There's the directions right here. So let's put this right here.

Please be good. Please be a good one. Whoa! 27% average. I've done this four other times. It was always above average. But this time, when we got it on tape, I'm completely average.

A very healthy individual. Thank you, Sayo. What a great molecular sensor, I think. I don't know how I feel about that phone. Anyway, Paul Miller's here, Ashley Carmen's here, Circuit Breaker crew. That's in effect. That's terrifying.

It's amazing. It's the future. I cannot believe that works. It's basically a tricorder. Yeah. A terrifying tricorder that makes you feel bad about your body. Apparently I'm almost most, only mostly fat. I need to see something slightly less terrifying and slightly more whimsical.

How about adorable? Okay, here's what I mean. How much time I have, I'm going to teach Neal how to play. I'm ready the ukulele. So this is a smart ukulele. I've got an app. You know how to play guitar. No, the ukulele is like a guitar but upside down. Okay, okay, I'm going to teach you four chords. Are you ready? Yeah, that shows me know something. All right, right. D. Let's see look, I put I push D and now D is lit up there. Oh my god, really? There you go. It just lights up the chords? Are you confident that you have D? I'm pretty confident at D. All right, here's A. Yeah. There you go. All right, now C. When does this thing get a?

It's gonna make me play Ode Joy. See? This is the Populele. This is pretty awesome. No, that's not, that's not G. I mean, when is it coming out? G to G. I'm doing G.

I'm following the lights, man. Oh gosh. What is this crazy chord? Euclali people are crazy. G, just do a D. Just do a D. I've actually identified this special bug in this where if I do four chords.

Where it doesn't tell you how to do these. Do like a D shape. A real D shape. Okay. I like a guitar teacher. There's G. Okay, okay. So start on D.

So go like D, D, D, and then... This is the worst demo in the history of television. Wow. What up? What up? All right. Oh, crap. Yeah, Paul, you're a terrible teacher.

See? It's supposed to light up, man. I'm trying to get him to play photograph. No, that's awesome. No, that's awesome. Are they making an actually guitar that does this? They already make a guitar. Another company makes a guitar called Fretlight.

But these guys make pop utar, which is a guitar like this. And then this is their new one, Populele. It's going to be about like $130. Can this teach me how to play Love in the Club by Usher? I hope so. I hope so. Okay. That was embarrassing.

That's the plan. That's the plan. I really like that thing. Ashley, what's you got? Yeah. There's a lot to live up to here. Oh, man. I love that Ashley always has to play.

I don't know, I don't know what I think I've set up for failure. It was really tiny. I know, my arms are so short. This desk is so high. What is that happening? Okay. Wow. We have more speakers.

More speakers. Wow. This is really mean. Yeah, so show this here. These are modular speakers. Okay. They're from this company called I-5 from Sweden. Everyone loves Sweden.

And they are on sale in the US now. I'm going to show you guys how they work. They work. Okay, never one. Your passcode is... I used to be a cybersecurity reporter. That's true. Ashley was like...

It was like 24. Okay, so... All right. I'm gonna play some royalty-free music for us. I have no idea what this is going to be. Has any party ever started better than I'm going to play some royalty-free music for us? I have to light them up because they turned off. Oh no.

No, not my demo. Paul. So anyway, so you light them up, you start playing and you clip them together and they all go. Yeah, so they... Here we go. I like the club feel already. Yeah, so basically you can continue stacking. What's really interesting about these is on the sides and on the top and on the bottom

because you can stack from on the side and the top. They communicate over infrared. So they're transferring data and sound, which is how they adjust for stereo. Oh, look, the entire technology built on IR blasting. Yes! It's my favorite. Entire technology built with IRBlessing. So I'm an old school tech reporter, so I used to use Palm Pilots and they used to

like transfer contacts with infrared. And so the fact that these are using infrared to communicate with each other makes me deeply happy. Wow, we're having opposite reactions. All right, light up some royalty-free jams. I'm trying so hard. I'm ready for some. I feel like they're just not really working with me right now.

I'm trying. You work on this. Yeah, I'm working after. This is level. This is kind of like a, it's not necessarily for consumers. It's like more of a medical device or for like a medical professional. It's another judgey, judgey thing.

It's, okay. All right, I'm trying to remember how to do this. Okay, first I got to pick a mode so you can have like multiple users What are you doing? What's in there? You can't find out. I'm gonna take a breath. Okay.

What is happening? Okay. Wait, should you like taking a shot first? No. Okay. Put the thing back in. Oh, take off the straw. There we go.

All right, it's judging me. This is gonna tell me how well I'm burning fat. Two. What does that mean? Too low. What do that mean? What is all I've gotten from you today is like, we're fat and we can't play the ukule.

This measure is... I'm not doing great, Paul. It measures the acetone in your breath to like know how like active your metabolism is right now. Is there real science behind this? There's like a lot of stuff. This is a show. FDA approved.

FDA approved. That's right. I really, or, if you believe the FDA. Well, yeah, exactly. Exactly. I don't know where to look. They're all around. But I think I think the nice thing is we come to the show.

We see kind of crazy stuff that makes high claims. And then like we have a science section at the birds. I love those people because they can like dig into the real science of this. But as far as I know, this is a real thing, this can be measured from your breath, how will you're burning crap? So how do you act on this? You just feel bad at yourself? Work harder. Okay. Yeah. Like I'm a two right now, I need to start jogging. Get it up to a three. This is mostly for doctors, you think. Not. Yeah, it's like, it's like, it's only available in Seattle right now. It's like $200 per month to have this. Yeah. But, but yeah, it's got a

piano sensor in it. How much nothing costs? $200 per month. How much is the ukulele? 150, 130 somewhere. I gotta say ukulele is a better self-esteem. I mean, you buy the ukulele I'm cutting you guys off royalty-free music. Eventually, wait. How are you doing over there? You can see if it's going. Oh, it's playing. Hey, royalty-free music. That's what we've always wanted. Yes. So now if you stack them, is it going to play through? Yeah. So if I stack them, I'm just trying to turn it up louder. All right, well, if I stack these, in theory, it they would work. But you know.

Look, it's the S, it's prototypes. How much of those things? $299. For each one? Yes. Wow. There we go. There we go.

Oh, man. I'm scathing. Okay, they're colored. And you put them together. You can set up to you where you want. Yeah, so you can go side to side. And they automatically adjust their sound. Also, like to get stereo separation.

Exactly. That's what. That music makes me feel like I'm a really high end in our public. Like a show way. All right, Megan, okay. We got this. Megan, how's it goes. on Twitter. Pretty good. I've got some questions for you guys actually. Oh boy.

So the Justin Paul wants to know what is the biggest talk of CES this year? The biggest what? The biggest talk. It's a lot. I mean it's Alexa. It's got to be Alexa. It's everywhere we go people are talking about Alexa and that question we're talking about with Lauren and David like is Amazon just going to win. Yeah that's all right. Okay well that was a quick answer. All right we got another one. Okay. What is the ugliest gadget you've seen so far at CS 2017 Bob Hogg wants to know? I'm gonna turn over the circuit breaker team for that one. Yeah. I will say You guys were talking about that touch screen.

Yeah. It was like a really ugly prototype. Like I've seen, you know? Actually, I saw an even uglier prototype of a haptic touchscreen that was at the very first, at the very first, C.S. unveiled here. And instead of having just a case, it was like a bad 3D printed case.

You could see all the 3D printing lines. Yeah. Whenever you see something 3D printed, you're just like, ooh. There's something special to me. You've seen, like, some of the coolest tech I've seen at this show just looked like garbage on a tape.

Yeah. Right, because it's all. Yeah, I saw a 3D printed smart tea bag. I don't fully understand. It was supposed to tell you how long to steep your tea, which sounds really useful, but it was 3D printed and I was like, I don't know what's to do with this cube. I gotta it's been really fun having Circuit Breaker at the show.

We started a circuit breaker this year. Yeah. You have lit it off in the space, gadget space. We saw Alexa coming a long time ago. But it's fun to have our gadget team here and be excited about gadgets, because it shows a lot of gadgets, so it's fun to have you guys here. Speaking of Cash, it's, you might know that GoPro had a tough year. Yeah, the drones kind of fell out of the sky.

Ben Popper hung out with CEO of GoPro, Nick Woodman. Check it out. Hey, everybody, it's Ben Popper with The Verge here at CS 2017. I'm about to sit down for an exclusive interview with Nick Woodman, founder and CEO of GoPro. We're going to talk about why they had to recall their karma drone. Tell me about what you think, you know, went wrong, and how you fix that and you bring it back. Well, I think the world was expecting it to be a much more. it to be a much more complicated issue than it really was.

And in the end, we had a mechanical issue related to the battery retention mechanism. So during flight, vibration would cause a small number of the batteries to vibrate loose from their connector, not fall out of the drone, but just back out of its mount just enough so that the drone would lose power. Very disappointing, but it wasn't something particularly. to drone technology that the team failed to figure out. It was a mechanical battery retention clip. Yeah. We're back and we have Ben Popper here.

Hey guys. You know, the drone expert, if you haven't noticed. And... Wait, so I'm just gonna get right into it. So I... Yeah, that... So that, like, real-life shruggy. Yeah. It's amazing.

I heard him say, like, you could just, like, tape the battery in the place and the drone would be fine. He wanted to say that this was a small mechanical issue, you know, that the team did great and that people said, they bit off more than they can chew, but it was a huge success, which is a weird thing to say when you have to recall your product because it's falling out of the sky. There is one tiny benefit of the doubt that I can maybe give him. I'm not saying I believe that it was just this small issue, but man, every Vergecast, I go deep palm nerd stuff. Do it. That's what I hear. The original

Palm Pilot almost was a huge failure because the first batch was failing intermittently. They couldn't figure out why. And they finally figured out that they tested it, it tested fine at the factory and then it would fail three months later or a month later before it shipped because the springs and the batteries compressed and didn't re-expand so the batteries would jiggle in the Palm Pilot and the usual Palm Pilot lost all its memory when the batteries were disconnected.

So like really simple things on really complicated electronics can burn you all the time. But I'm not saying that's like, somehow this still feels insufficient to me. Well, I mean, I think he's right, but what he's describing is the symptom, not the cause. Like the way they designed it, they put this big gimbal in the front

and that makes the whole thing vibrate a lot, why the battery shakes loose, right? And so it's just weird. It's like, you didn't really, people said you couldn't make a drone, then you named it karma, and then it fell out of the sky. So I don't know, maybe they're gonna do another one, he said. They're gonna make a second drone, maybe they'll call it like hubris or something. I don't know.

I think of a good, yeah. Do you think they can bounce back from this? Right? I mean, it's a big question. Well, I hope so. As a drone reporter, I want an American company that can compete with DGI. And I think he said one thing, which is interesting. You know, I think the consumer market is totally overbuilt. I said that yesterday.

and I think it's due for kind of a bust. And when that happens, I think GoPro has the brand, right? They've got the shelf space, they've got the action sports sort of like people. I think if they can get it right the second time, they can make a comeback and be a player. If it falls out of the sky again, I think, you know, we're done. I have an insane idea. It's based on literally nothing.

So just take this sort of, just me being, you know, you don't know what I'm drinking this mug. I think Snapchat should buy GoPro. Whoa. I think that those are the worlds that should collide. You know, I did pitch flying. spectacles. That was something we talked about. Think about it. It could happen. Check it out. We got more casing-tuned

crazy things with celebrities. I'm hung out with Mr. Charles Barclay. Check it out. So we're here with Charles Barkley and is this your first thing? Yes. We've been here before. No, we did it here last year. I mean technology is amazing. Yeah. What did you say like did you pick up anything that made you say like wow I would actually bring this to my house? I'm fascinated by the robots. I'm fascinated about the TVs to be honest with you. They got this one I saw called the wallpaper that is so thin. So what I might do is get me one of these really skinny television and get me one of these robots to keep breaking me beer.

Well, one of the big trends we've seen at the show this year is voice control. I wonder, like, do you have an Amazon echo at your house or anything that you're talking with to do stuff for you? I do have the echo. Yeah, what do you think about it? I think it's amazing. Like, obviously, when I'm traveling a lot, I ask for the weather in most places. Yes. Does it make you feel like you, like, do you want to do voice control for more stuff?

Does that feel like the wave of the future you're just being able to hand in and stuff? I think Americans are lazy enough. Let's stop making something where we can just sit on our fat asses all the time. That's right. We've been talking a lot about cars on the show this week at CS, and I want to take a minute to go a little deeper in a segment we call Let's Be Clear. One of the biggest and most important technologies coming to the world the next five years is self-driving cars. Whether it's full-on automation that turns your ride into a living room on wheels,

or just a bunch of tech that helps you drive better and safer. Self-driving isn't just random tech industry nonsense. it's one of the most important technologies currently in the works. Driving is way harder and riskier than we ever really think about. Tens of thousands of people die in traffic accidents every year. Having smarter cars can move us around more carefully will literally save lives. But let's be clear, the big rewards from self-driving and assisted driving come with some big costs as well.

All this requires tons of data, and we haven't really talked about who can collect and share that data and how that data can be used when things go wrong. Here's an example. One of the big trends in driver assistance at CES this year is monitoring drivers with cameras. NVIDIA's system has a camera that can tell when you've had too much to drink. Honda's emotion engine can read your body language, and TREDA's concept I can detect when you're not paying attention. That's all great, but cars are some of the most private spaces in our lives.

Having cameras constantly monitor us in that space raises a bunch of questions. Who keeps all that data safe? If you get into an accident, while all that video be used against you, if the car's AI takes over while you're driving and makes a mistake, Are you still responsible? Insurance companies already offer lower rates if you put a data collection device in your car. Are they going to start to demand access to video

of you actually driving to pay out claims? This might sound silly, but some of it's already happening. Tesla's cars record a ton of data, and Tesla isn't shy about sharing that data when a Model S gets into an accident. Now, I'm ridiculously excited about self-driving cars, but we shouldn't let their enormous benefits keep us from asking where all that data is going,

because I guarantee you we're not going to like the answer if we never ask the question. We'll be right back. And we are back. We have Casey Newton and Lauren go to the table. But before we talk to you, schmucks, we're going to talk to I don't know. Finally, a little Casey fire

throwing right back to him. Where's my bat when I needed? Megan, what's going on on Twitter? So I have the results of our final poll here you guys already. So earlier we asked, which new TV would you want on your wall? And we had the High Sense 100-inch laser TV, the Sony L-E-T-Bravia 4K TV, Samsung Q-LED TV,

or the LG-Signature 4K-H-D-O-LED, which is the longest name in the world, and also the winner. Yeah, it had to be the Sony. Of course it was a Sony. Do you think VergeCast people aren't going to pick the one that runs Android? Hey man, I'm not here to predict.

I'm just here to read the results, that's all. I went out, and it's hard for me to say which one looked better, because the way that everybody lights their booths, it's impossible to tell. Everything's cranked up to the max. But Sony made its look a little bit better than LG's did, I think.

Yeah. But I like the LG, and I am, again, on record as saying, take the TV gets out, put it in the soundbar. Totally fine with that. And have it run WebOS with a smart assistant called the Beanbird. And then, you know, just mount into the wall and watch your dignity, just fly away on the wings of a Beanbird. I love the Beanbird. Who doesn't love it fucking Beanbird? Anyway.

Again, what else is going on Twitter? Any good tweets? I think that's kind of it for now. All right, well, this is your last chance. We didn't care. Sorry, guys. We're coming up on the end of the show at CES. Hit up, Megan, at Verge. C.S. 2017 is the hashtag.

We're going to get into some best of CES stuff. Yeah. Time for the best. We're actually going to blow up our own spot because the piece where we name all 20, 21 of our best of CES isn't going up, I think, until later. Yeah. But we're going to pre-announce some of them here.

Not all 20, just a few. Okay. Our favorites. You want to start with most hyped? Let's start with most hyped. Most hyped. The most hyped thing at CES. was AI.

So James Vincent wrote a thing. I think he got himself in a little trouble with some very angry companies. Oh, the companies are super pissed. James was like, none of this is actually AI, right? It's like pattern matching, it's collecting a bunch of data, it's doing, anything with an algorithm is now AI. I heard this word, this is a washing machine

with an artificial intelligence engine. That's what we're looking at. What does it do? It means nothing. Does it wash my clothes for me without me having to pick a bit. It sounds great. Yeah, it doesn't do anything for you. It makes no sense.

I think we saw, what was it, Jaumi was on stage, instead of the TV had big data in it. Yeah. Casey, you're my go-to on nonsense trends. Yes. What are the millennials think of AI? Well, I mean, AI is just becoming one of those words

that has expanded to encompass almost anything that a company wants it to be. And in a way, I do think it's sad that it has just become a meaningless marketing term. It kind of reminds me of, like, you know, 4G, right? But almost meant something. It almost meant something. And so does AI.

And so does AI. AI almost means something, right? It means that you're using some kind of algorithm to maybe personalize a piece of technology towards you to learn something over time. But the reality is you can't get real AI in a toothbrush, at least not now. And so it's been kind of silly this year

watching that just play out. It's an even more complicated term, obviously, than 4G. And these companies are abusing that complication. If there's a little bit of fuzziness and people have a debate about it, they take that debate and they, in bad faith, just call anything AI because there's no one set definition of AI. Right. And second to that is probably machine learning, which is very intertwined with AI because one really sort of doesn't exist without the other. But machine learning is being thrown around a lot, and that is, at the end of the day, very fancy math.

You could literally say these companies could literally stand up there and be like, and we're using math to make this smart. I would love that. And it would still be true. If Google was like, you know what? It would be more accessible to people. We're better at math than Microsoft. Right. That was straight out.

You are welcome for the idea. I just want to, like, just be very direct. Like, you are bad at math. Right. We're very good at math. You should buy Google Home. It's hard math. Okay, very hard.

So, the question for me is, like, is this just the goalposts keep moving? Right? Like, if I floated an Amazon Echo back to the 80s and was like, look at this thing. People like, it's a robot. It's artificially intelligent. Alexa, play me, Rick Springfield. Yeah. Well, the 80s.

Yeah, the 80s. I was going to say. That's all anybody wanted to say. That is the 80s, right? Oh, we're strange to know this is like forever. Like, it's just a long time. But, uh, no. So here's a problem.

Okay. Here's a problem. So when the average person hears AI, artificial intelligence, they think of the AI from her, right? The Scarlett Johansson character, it can have a conversation with you. It's emotional. It learns. It feels like a real human being, right?

But we're nowhere near that. And we're several insane breakthroughs away from that ever being a possibility. But in the meantime, machine learning has advanced to the point where we can do cool stuff that we've never been able to do before, particularly with computer vision, right? Anything that involves pattern recognition, we're getting really good at. And there are some cool innovations around that.

But there's such an enormous gap between that and AI in the popular imagination that my fear is that AI is just going to become meaningless jargon. People will hear it, they'll stop believing it, because they're going to pick up that toothbrush and they're going to realize it's not doing anything for them that their last toothbrush wasn't. Yeah, except telling you that you're fat.

Yeah. You're doing it. That's true. That's true. That's what every gadget here does. Here, bat at the ukulele and you should start running. Best laptop. Let's get into it.

The Dell XPS 2 and 1. Okay. So I'm gonna say this. I have lots of feelings about this. We've broken this category into two. Best laptop and best Chromebook. But let's stick with best laptop. Why the XPS?

Because the XPS 13, which this is based on, is just flat out one of the most straightforward best Windows laptops. They didn't screw anything up except the camera. Yeah, the camera's in the corner here. But you can just use some AI. And it just gets rid of your double chin.

The camera is shining up your face. So Adele took it and they like did basically most of the right things that you would want to in 2017. Look how happy to it looks. They put some USBC ports on it. They had a microSD card slot. But at least they tried with like at some kind of expansion.

And they made it, you know, fold all the way around. You know, we'll see if it is powerful enough with the processor that's in there. But, you know, we talked about laptops a lot this week and how there's a lot of really fun, innovative, cool form factors. But at the end of the day, what you want is a laptop that gets the basics right, doesn't screw up the battery life, the screen, the feel of the keyboard, the track pad, the, you know, Windows Hello Logging is actually really important on Windows laptops for me. And so far as we can tell, you know, seeing this thing here at CES, this is the laptop that we'll nail all of those basics and also look. good doing it. Nothing says basic like a Dell.

Right? This is basically like the like... By Casey. This is basically like the Lenovo yoga married last year's Dell XPS 13. And granted, the whole foldy, bendy thing is often a gimmick and even the PC

makers themselves will sometimes admit. Yeah, most people don't really use it in these modes. But it's nice to have that option and it's nice to have a touchscreen. Well, the yoga, you're referring, the one that I use is in Yoga 9-10, there's a bunch of yoga. but the yoga 910 is a perfect example of like screwing up the basics. Yeah, yeah. You couldn't hit the shift.

I want to get through all these. We put best Chromebook on here. It's obviously the Samsung Chromebook Pro. We split them up. The laptop and the Chromebook. You could make the argument that we shouldn't split them up, right? They're all laptops at the end. Yeah.

I would say what's happening on the Windows side with the laptops is so interesting, and they're charging into a space that Apple seems to have abandoned a little bit. They clearly don't care as much. clearly don't care as much about the Mac as we want them to. And even like Apple bloggers, like, this is a disgrace, it's a disaster. But what's happening on the Chromebook side is they're extending the idea of the Chromebook, they're putting Android on it. To me, it feels like they're different things going in different directions.

Yeah. But you could make the other. They're going in different directions, but like the Chromebook is coming into Windows turf a little bit, especially later this year when we see Android apps running full nuke it on Chrome OS when they're able to be fully resized. We might see some slightly more professional apps coming. And so that's why I'm okay having it be in a separate category because it's a separate kind of thing you want to track. Like we know what Windows laptops are doing, but Chromebooks are about to go into a interesting and new direction and they might become something

more than just like bulk sales to schools. Yeah. I'm actually a little bit confused by this Chromebook because I was looking at the specs and I was like, okay, it's running Chrome OS, right? But it has full Android capabilities. Yeah. But it has 32 gigabytes of internal storage. So I think storage, then I think, oh, I'm going to be able to like run stuff from it. But you still can't really run applications from it

like you would on a PC, right? You can run Android applications from it. Android. If you played with the beta stuff, it's there got to work that out. Yeah, I think Android. I haven't yet. When they put Newgate on it, it'll be.

Hopefully it'll be different. That's why I'm saying there's radically different ideas about what these things should be. It's basically a giant cell phone with a desktop browser. And the Windows laptop is like a laptop, right? Like they're weird. We have best millennial transport on here, which I think is an excuse for me to say,

millennials are student now. This Chrysler Portal. It's like basically what we're saying is best concept car. Yeah. Yeah. It looks cool as hell. I was so skeptical. You had like a sion for years.

I did. Yeah. So this is sort of my jam, I guess, weirdly. But man, I saw the images. I love rolling boxes. Give me a rolling box. I'm in a good mood. Neil, I think I know why you're so offended by this thing.

Because fundamentally it's a minivan, and you know it's in your future. Yeah, it's coming for me. We're going to pack that thing full of kids, and it's going to self-drive us all the way home. It's all, I don't know. It has cool of anything you want. It also looks kind of like one of those LG smart fridges, like you knock twice on the window and you can see what's inside. Yeah. I also feel like of all the concepts that we saw here, Chrysler's was the one that was like the least overextending in terms of bullshit AI stuff.

Yeah. Is this the one that had? Sorry, go ahead. No, that's it's it. selfies of you. Like Toyota and Honda like over promised. It's four of one. It comes with a skateboard or something? No, that's the other one. Oh, okay. It's the new V. Oh. All of these words make me want to die.

All right. Best in show. The very best thing at CES. Drumroll, please. It's got to be Alexa. It's not a thing, right? It's like this overwhelming wave. And there's already been, I think, slightly overblown articles that like Amazon Alexa is the future of all interfaces. I don't know about that. But I think Amazon's

lead here, they really dominated a trade show in a way that few companies over dominated a trade show and made it seem thematically unified. Without having a booth. Without having a booth. Well, they had a thing. They have something here. They have a giant echo here. It's just one giant echo here.

What's your read on this situation? Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly right. There is a, like, first mover advantage is a real thing. The faster you can create that ecosystem where you get the install base, you get the developers thirsty to build applications for the platform, and, you get the faster you can, you get the and it just starts happening, it gets harder and harder for someone to catch up. So, you know, Google is playing in this space now.

A lot of clones are playing in this space. But you know, like if you're Apple, for example, you're starting to look like you're really far behind. So, you know, this year there was a genuine, bona fide trend, and that was voice interaction in the home. It's real and it's here, and it's only gonna expand. Yeah. I think the big question for Amazon is what we talked about earlier.

Can they extend this into the other places they need to be? Right. But they've got kind of a bit of a bit of a bit of, big lead in TVs, right, they sell a bunch of fire sticks, they're going to make actual TVs that run their stuff. Lauren actually named the fire stick the best cheap set-top bottle thing. Yeah, it was pretty great.

And it was mostly because of like Amazon stuff, because all those little sticks and boxes are pretty much commoditized, right? Right. Well, I think it's interesting, CS for years, the 50th year of the show. Hopefully we all come here 50 years. It's always been about the home, right? It's always been about big stereo systems, big TVs, big stuff in your house. And this is the first year where that refocus

on stuff in your house gave this place purpose. And it seems like Amazon is like, we're just going to be in your house. And we failed on mobile because we had a bad idea about cameras doing face tracking on phones. But if we can own what's happening in your house, then we have a beachhead to like maybe go with you. Is that kind of how you feel?

I just have to say that I was at one of the preview events the other night, and I saw a prototype of the GE light, which is just big, it looks like one of those circles behind us, right? That is going to have Alexa. and the woman that was standing there at the booth looked at me and just without any irony, no smile on her face said, you can order a pizza through the light if you'd like.

And I was like, wow, the future is here. I was going to put it in. I kind of wanted pizza at that moment, too. So I was like, ooh, that actually stands with the future is delicious. So what don't you want Alexa in in your house? What I mean? Isn't the dream that you just have, like, microphones everywhere? I mean, I just want a whole rant about, like,

data and privacy. Yeah. But isn't that, like, you just walk around your house, like, saying things, the house listens to you and responds? Yeah. I think what Amazon doesn't have right is, like, if you have multiple things, they don't know about each other too well, right? Like, the right one's supposed to answer, but that doesn't always work. Yeah. You can't use your echo for your TV.

I hear that we have a tweet that's like the close is out. The final tweet. The final tweet is the most ominous words in the English language. The best of Twitter. We have a special tweet, specifically for Casey, that I would like to make sure we get on screen right that someone sent us. Oh my god. That's some of my hair inspirations from the past.

Alexa, turn that off. Wow. Oh man. It's just a brutal way to end. We have a tweet. Is anything good ever happened for your self-esteem after those ones? That's it. I mean, like it's been a busy show.

The Sugar Breaker team is going to be doing a bunch more videos of the show. There's a bunch of other reporting that we'll pull out from the show. Yeah, we've got a couple more days at CES, so stay tuned through the weekend. And we just want to thank everybody for watching. We want to thank everybody that helped put together in the show. Let's bring in all our friends. I want to see the fan.

They're very reluctantly going to walk out on camera now. Paul decided to wear this hat. We're on the web with the verge.com. This is a podcast in a week, mine of iTunes. It's called The Verge mask. It's the flagship podcast to theverge.com. There's a number of catchphrases. to say cut through the night rock and roll Paul that's it that's a verse

fast you see yes we'll see it Paul