Better Offline CES 2025: Day 2

Also media Chosen by God, perfected by Science. My name is said Zeitron. You're listening to Better Offline. This is day one technically, but really day two of the Better Offline CES Saga, the Consumer Electronics Show. Here from beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. My home, I my van helsing like curse, but also my job. I must be in Vegas. Our beautiful slot machines must be filled with beautiful dollars. I am joined today by a remarkable coterie of people. Edon

Giant a giant banner above CES on the Venetian Expo floor.

Nice.

It was advertisement for germ Pass, which is this automatic ultraviolent light technology that automatically kills ninety nine point ninety nine percent of germs on any high touch surface.

Right, so to my right sets Philip Broughton, who is going to tell you what he does.

So Hi, I'm Phil Broddon. I am a health physicist, which means radiation safety and laser safety officer, which means I deal with the entire electromagnetic spectrum from gamma rays all the way down to radio.

And Phil is also the bartender for the Sweet So if you somehow came to episode two of the Cees Saga, I don't know why you would do this. This isn't like a there's not like a chroninal, there's not a plot to follow. I guess you could jump anyway, but like you probably start episode one anyway. We're in the bu Venetians suite. We're in a recessed area, separate room. On the side. We are running a suite with Boost for journalists all weeks. Tons of places to sit down

This is the eighth time been doing it since twenty fifteen.

And we love doing it. It's a Phil takes vacation time from his job elsewhere, and yeah, it's great. And also Phil's other thing he likes to do is a suffer torment. He likes to suffer pain at all times. Because Phil is a safety man and is well aware of things like codes and laws and stuff and regulations, and so, Phil, you may make a record this year. It's every year by Wednesday, someone has brought you something that required you to call the fire marshal.

Yeah, that's why.

Is that?

Because sometimes people lie on their applications. They lie when they're.

That applications will walk by.

Oh, so everyone who has a booth at CES is required to submit how many square feet they're gonna have, what utilities they're gonna need, and any hazardous things they might bring to the floor to the people who run the show, who then are required to tell the fire marshal. And the fire marshal then comes back and goes, oh, you've added rabid, flaming, radioactive gerbils to the show. That changes the occupancy we're allowed to have in this building. So please don't do them well.

And then they lie, and so what do you usually tell the fire marshal.

So what comes to me is a journalist will say, Hey, Phil, one could I get to drink?

Two?

I saw a thing and I don't think it was okay or m that seemed dangerous and I'm worried. No, okay, so what do you have? Where did you see this? Roughly? Let me go ahead and pull up the CES map of all the vendors. Oh, you're on that corner of that aisle. Cool. Let me go make a call.

So has anyone been like arrested for this if they've been like taken off the floor, Like, what are the consequences of.

The far removed from the floor.

Yeah, that's fun arrested.

No, but you end up forfeiting your fees and you don't get to present anymore for the rest of that show, or they take the dangerous thing away.

I think that maybe, based on what Ed will be telling us about in a little bit, I think we should maybe remove all of the booths from CS.

Like.

It sounds like that might be a good idea. But before we get to that, we're also joined by a man of the clergy. So for some reason, and I really mean this, I do not fucking know, we have a priest that joins us, father Gabriel Mosher, who joins me I left and weirdly connected with the tech media as well. But you just kind of show up in the robes, not complaining. Just I really do not remember why.

I have no idea how this all got started. But it was also ten years ago?

Was it ten years ago? Not fucking hell? Anyway, I age every day. But like, do you know how he got here?

Yes? I paid for his flight.

I'm know where buddy.

Hell, you know, I think part of it was I, especially back then, I was connected to quite a few sort of like tech people and whatnot.

Right, Yeah, and we figured might as well. Yes, so, And just to be clear, you have no worldly possessions other than those which are given to you.

Correct, pretty much.

Yeah, that's great. Would you describe cs as sinful or not sinful? Depends depends on which party you go to. I mean the convention, I mean that exactly. Enough about Yo, No, this is a scobullless zone.

No, I think it's great unless you you think that, you know, technology going to save you from everything.

But yeah, no, it's it's interesting.

I find, you know, the whole idea of these various people trying to develop innovations to make life a little bit better, a little bit more convenient, to be a good thing. I mean, it's that's just that's just human nature. It's great unless they are a bunch of liars, which they are half the time.

And talking of liars, so the there is an article in the New York Times at the moment about priests that using chat GPTM to make sermons. How do you feel about that? So?

I think that's pretty lame.

Do you think is it sacrilegious?

No?

But why not?

Well, it's just like if you're going to use chatgybt, for instance, to create sort of the outline of a book or something like that, I think that's fine. But if you're if you're using if you're using chatgybt to like write your sermon as a whole, then you've failed.

It's just like writing your term paper.

Okay, So very specific question though, So if it hallucinated a verse of the Bible? M hm, would that be like a false idol situation? Would that actually be a sin? No?

I mean I mean not from the chatgybt because it's not like no, no for the person publishing person. Yeah, sure, I mean yeah, that would be that would be pretty lame. I mean you would you would definitely be trying to like lead people into like weird places, and yeah, this.

Is this is how I imagine that's also bad.

Who knows? I mean, I don't know.

I means this is why the show is happening. We need to Yeah, it's just the and that article was I don't know why it had to. It's one of those things you read and you're like.

I've got to read this article.

It's not great. It's weirdly well reported, like it's the guy went out and like really reported the ship out of it. But it was just like, Okay, a bunch of people who believe in something that not everyone believes in, believe in another thing that let even less people believe it lots of people spend more money on.

But I can tell you, like most preaching is pretty terrible, so this might actually be a notch up. So anyway, yeah, you think, I mean preaching is pretty bad these days, is.

Not that fucking point? Looking at that, you would think it's why I can't go into churches other than the burning so terrible. Yeah, mister W. Gwisner, Junia, tell us a little bit about what you've seen today on the floor.

All right, Well, you know, I scanned a bit for a while because I was trying to find something that spoke to me.

First.

I went for these healthcare management devices for two reasons.

I won. You know, my coach Jaythan on This Machine Kills podcastant on This Machine Kills podcast not introduce you. I'm so sorry, totally fine.

You know, listen to the first episode, everybody, and then the second one and.

Then the other podcast.

Right.

Yeah, you know, Jaythan writes a lot about network devices and mythologies behind them, and that was one of the courts subjects of his first book, and so I pulled into that for that reason. Also because you know, my partner uses medical devices to monitor glue close levels since they're diabetics, so I'm always interested. I've been increasingly interested in them because you know, these devices don't really work, and so when I see innovative offerings or well.

You know, actual devices are qualified and do work with but health management aids aren't real.

Yeah, this is what I or what I what I should say, is that their devices work, but there are a malfunction regularly at a rate that surprises me considering they're supposed to be and are necessary, you know, for staying within a healthy range for blood sugar. But the health management aids, you know, they offer. They present themselves as more aggressive solves, as preventative healthcare mechanisms, right as ways to.

Overhaul your entire lifestyle.

So I was on the lookout for a lot of these because I've been interested in them increasingly, in writing about the ways in which they, you know, people are encouraged to be healthier or to empower wellness or to reward it, and in the ways this data gets you know,

Spect truck spect truck. I couldn't say it, reader.

You're infrared spectroscopy what N I R, yes, M spectrum spe speculum.

Yes, it activates speak speech.

Just be staring at the abyss the whole time, trying.

To say And so I came into the booth, you know, listening to them, you know, listening to them talk to other people about it. One of the use cases that was offered was, you know, imagine you have a c GM. There's no expensive, hard to maintain. You can use this to monitor your blood glucose because that the only hike and monitor right now, you know, implying it to a medical device. So I go in and I say, he is this a medical device? And he goes, oh, no, it's so.

Cool that they have that. They have to do that.

Yeah, Actually the healthcare management device that doesn't work if you have a lot of melanin in your skin because.

Interesting only tested it on Asians and light.

Skinned people and so it's not in market yet because they need to test it out on people from India and Africa.

And so thankfully there's not that many people.

Just a few billions.

That's It's like way less than Montana.

So biopop is very interested in helping you improve your healthcare management uh and empowering you to be a healthier person.

They also want to reward you for doing so.

So they are both on the blockchain and they will share information.

All right, companies understand which blockchain it's is crazy. They did not specify. I was listening the whole time, but my brain is just like, this is the same shit you hear blockchain, Yeah, didn't specify one. No, to what end? This is the stuff. I will be screaming at them and say they.

Want to encourage users to meet certain to meet certain goals and to stay within certain ranges. If you're on the blockchain, you might be able to get a reward. Great, maybe it's a coin in the ecosystem they might create, maybe it's from somebody at talking, maybe it's more established blockchain. They also, again are sending the information.

To the.

UH, to the insurance, the.

Insurers, because this is how they're going to be able to you know, kind of they're they're they're trying to avoid.

Certification.

No sorry, step back, they're trying to achieve it, and they're trying to get an insurance coverage. And they're also trying to forgure out a way that they can work with or you know, participate in some of these wellness programs that are popping up where your insurance coverage is modulated based on your own personal behavior to kind of ensure or regulate or govern govern and how you behave.

Outside so that you just become a healthier person. I think it's fucking sick that everything is becoming metro mile now. Everything is just like and what this kind of sounds like, and I hate to go a little far, it does sound a little eugenics, Jace. It's just like, if we all optimize our health, insurance will be cheaper, if we have the right numbers, we're the right kind of person. And there's only one way all that stuff goes. And they'll claim that it's an efficiency thing. But I've yet

You're creating a profile that if you know, they have got their hands on it, and we're just rich.

You want to connect that, you want to connect men can watch let me see how what you lift? You lift enough?

So the real customer is the insurance company, not Yeah.

The real customers who are interested in the data, I mean, And that's really also the thing that you'll see with a lot.

I saw a.

Lot of healthcare ecosystems and apps and smart tech that were purportedly about rewarding you for getting better sleep, rewarding you for eating better, rewarding you for meeting certain goals. But then when you think about what the reward actually is or how it's being distributed, what it is is that they are going to cut some sort of deal

Right, Yeah, this is great. This is also and there were lots of companies doing this. Yes, I would say.

Almost every take called health company I saw that was using artificial intelligence or was using some sort of rewards as them for empowering wellness seems to have a model that is premised on regulating and governing your behavior so that they can generate data about you that would generate profits about you and other people that then they could give you a small piece of you know, that's or you know, another company I actually use the data to

Honestly, at this point, my seventh pillow, I actually want the computer to try and wat this one out for me. Don't you want a computer in your pillow? And I don't know what this AI sleep musk is because I sleep with I sleep in an insane way. I have like a skull cap on and I have a giant eye mask. I must sleep in complete darkness. I also like I grab the covers, and I like c into a ball at the edge of the bed. My therapist says,

Every time one of these things said AI, it's an app and an algorithm that collects the data, presents it to you on a colorful graph, right, maybe gleans or infers insights about other elements of how you're sleeping eating.

Did they explain any of how this would work?

No, you know, for example, one place you know? For example, they said they can offer a way for you to reduce mental stress. And I asked how they measure mental stress and they say, well, if you got enough of our devices in the ecosystem, we can measure.

We can measure physiological.

Things like your heartbeat, we can and how much you sweat, right, and we can say, oh, this is not in the usual range for you.

What that is true with me? You're being anxious? You know that's yeah? I also I can see it, but also I should A person can do this.

Work booze to make that happen is like, I don't know, I don't know how this works.

Yeah, Like these rewards, what are they so other than discounts off of other members of the scam.

Discounts an unnamed crypto payouts.

This is so sick. This is I would love us to dig into the history of these people. Yeah, I would love to learn what their previous job was.

I'm hurting over here. You're not stress enough that the single one of these things is an fty A certified product.

If Costa Rica, I am going to fucking lose it. Listen.

I would like to know too, because I didn't think I was going to see crypto. I think we talked about it the other day, and you guys are like, it's not here, And then what's the first.

Thing I go blocked? We're on the blockchain that reward.

This is the thing, like, it's insane.

It feels like the one place you wouldn't.

Well they were they were kind of saying that by being on the blockchain, your data is secure.

That's not. It's entirely open. Yes, I know less they do a private blockchain. Those do exist, at which point you can ask the question of why don't I use any number of other databases that would be more efficient. Yes, Oh it's immutable. Who cares, No one gives a fuck, So the databases can be like that too.

It's just a trendy word that they can use.

It's not even trendy anymore.

But like ten years ago, right now the people.

Still saying new phone, who dis it's learn and you meme and also do another thing. Why is the crew? I love that that's still legal.

I'm scared it's going to be super leg It's.

Going to be super legal. And the FDI super.

Is in like above legal, it's above.

It's encouraged, it's sanctioned by the sanctioned by the Department of governmental efficiency.

I'm so scared to check Kaiser when I get home to see if they're thinking about this.

They what new alert Kaiser private blockchain.

That's a good question though. Did any of these companies have any contracts with insurance companies? No?

Actually, every single one that would talk about this either didn't have the product that was offering out in the market yet or didn't have a single insured that was approval to even work with insurance.

I just feel like insurance would build these things themselves. You would think that, and probably they will.

Well they just i mean not with the blockchain bullshit, but they are already building like you know, well established data pipelines to get in insights.

I mean.

One example of this is like cars and car insurance. Right, your car is a computer, right, and car insurance have a relatively easy time of using your driving behavior to modulate, you know, what they're going to charge you on a basic level, of course, if you do accidents and such, but you know, getting to the point where it's like, you know, how are you breaking, how are you how fast you're actually going?

You know.

But another thing is that this this already exists for the insurance companies.

It might be. Is a thing what semi it's the Medical Information Bureau.

It's it's a housing for all of the medical data of everybody that is involved in any medical stuff in the United States, and it's all housed University of Michigan. I think, okay, so who can access this? This is it's effectively supposed to be like metadata for actuaries. And so this is why actuarial data for insurance companies is so precise and accurate, because they can see all of this data and then use it to rate policies.

So we create like a little surveillance site just so the health insurance could continue.

And this has existed since like the seventies, like sixties or seventies.

I think, yeah, well, no, this is people.

Are piste off about insurance companies.

Yeah, and have been for decades.

Yeah, so it's like this isn't new, it's just now it's being monetized. I mean it was already being monetized, but just in a different way.

But a different way by a different group of people who are trying it. It's unclear if they're trying to replicate the thing or build their own infrastructure and products around it.

But yeah, yeah, because MiB is the whole point of it is and why it's at an academic institution is that it's it's a used to be you know, outside of outside of industry, right, that's kind of.

The idea available to everyone, right.

And so whereas this is now, this is now something you can put a patent on, this is something that you can Yeah, this is this is shady.

Yeah, yeah, to say the least, To say the least, was there anything other than this kind of ship that in.

The healthcare space, a lot of it was like you know what, you know, what's called like, you know, luxury surveillance, whor's just like we are gonna pay you know, you're gonna pay us for the privilege of giving us a continuous stream of your behavioral data so that we can figure out a way to give you more cool products or you.

Know, generate some money off of it.

Right.

It's amazing, It's beautiful. I love it.

I think it's a you know, it's a it's a it's a genuine value chain.

That you had me for a second that I was I was about to get concerned. Obviously, No, I'm actually a gobless. So what else did you see out on the on the health flow.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, So you know what else we saw we saw, I saw a lot. There's a there's an AI baby monitor. Okay, right, yeah, this is this for my AI baby or no, it's actually uh for your real baby.

Okay.

So the pamphlet that I had, I don't know if I actually still have it anymore, but it opens up with saying, did you know that you know how many kids die from a sudden infanitet syndrome.

That could be one of your kids.

The way to prevent that is to use our devices so that you can monitor your child if they start moving forward.

And these have existed for so long, like nan it is like over a decade, all like the ones for like the actual like the feet are very valuable. But that's also solved problem. Yes, it is a solved problem, right, but they found a new way to solve it because what they're trying to do.

Here, it seems, is build an ecosystem.

Where it's always an ecosystem. Ecosystem we are in Savannah. The catalog of products that your baby can have. That product, right, Babies love product. Babies are consumers, go.

For it, you know, well they have eyeballs.

I mean, so you know, stuff for their eyes, for their nose, for the ears, for their breathing.

Fully online, but these.

Products just being all separate products, replacement toaste, just.

Care.

Yeah, there's stuff for the ears, AI powder, nails trimmers.

Oh you found a slop company.

Yeah, they have the spine that goes in the base of the skull for the matrix and caliber.

This is an important CEES history things. So there are some fascinating companies. The most honest part of CES is the crust on the outside. So you go to the very ends of CES and it's just like black text on white background Chinese companies and it's just like that something something electronic corporation and they sell CCTV gear, battery packs, miscellaneous plugs and dildos and it is just that you can find these every cs and they are the most fun to talk today and.

Give us shit.

Yeah. But what Eddie is referring to as a slop company where the ones that are not honest enough to just be like, yeah, we sell everything, just we're here to money launder. I guess not saying the people literally at the fine companies that I've kind of named money laundered just for the legal purposes. But I feel like this one is like trying to pretend they're like doing good for the world versus being a wholesaler of baby safe.

Yeah, they opened with terror for your baby is going.

To exactly they sell them fair and also outlet exists. What the fuck is the AI part? What's that?

So that one was literally just monitoring if your child is moving and if it doesn't move a loading you and that this really has been Yeah, that's been sold for a long time, like you said, right, but what's they Well that's a great question.

What is the AI part of that? Well, I mean there is actual very like computer vision. Like to be clear that official intelligence has been around for a while long has actually been working.

When they say AI, they're implying there is a novel thing that is artificial intelligence on top of this and an obscurring.

Versus on top of the actual AI.

There's already around for a while, like some sort of generative is what's going on.

There's nothing new. They just want they just hope that you'll think.

It's generating a baby.

Yeah, this manual, if you look at the back, it says twenty seventeen on the.

All of a sudden you have a new baby. Like, it's just like.

It's it's it's soothing your anxiety. So you can generate that m grades.

You know, that would be a really great way for one of these people to sell something, just being like you're anxious, you're not able to have sex. Yeah, anyway, you need this baby monitoring a surveillance state in your house, or of course the wonderful the AI cat litter thing. Yeah yeah, oh my god, five G connected. Fuck yeah, that means there's an app, isn't that five G's whole point that it's like home broad bank connection. But what

Almost all of these devices are like, hey, so we will give you a nap and in the app you can see when your guy gets on and off, how much it ships or pisses, and if there's any differences in it, and it will give you a mediate alerts, right because it's.

Your cat has ship. Yeah, honestly, what do you You're more anxious?

Pops up like your cat has pooped.

You're on like a fucking like on a date. Yeah, sorry, my cat's not shitting right.

The weird thing is my partner and I were looking at a new cat litter box, and of course they all do have that five G integration, and the app associate the answer why, And it's a niche cases. Every time we have taken the cats to the vet, they've asked, do you have a stool sample? How can I tell the difference the different turds? Yeah, oh, because I know a fresh one has just dropped. Let me go get that in the medium so I hear.

So this is I'm describing this cat litter box.

How the AI knows which is and.

Apparently it has multi cat facial recognition.

Yeah.

A friend of the show Hunter Washington Post brought this to me yesterday. It was this, Apparently it can tell the different cats, so that if you have one sickly horrible cat and one beautiful sweet cat, you know which one to take to the bed for the last time? No, right, you know?

Or like if it commits a crime, yeah, ye, so that you're the cat stealing.

All the fucking food outside. But my question as well, is this cat litter thing, which is eight hundred and ninety nine dollars, by the way, which fucking rocks.

I assume it has proprietary litter that goes into it as well, because that's the consumable.

I mean, why wouldn't you use it?

All about I.

Need a subscription. I assume there's a subscription fee. Yeah, and I would be surprised that there was. If there's not, I will absolutely fucking lose it. Like why am I if I can't pay an extra five dollars a month to catgenie dot biz.

Yeah, well then I don't trust them after that because I ever thought through this process clearly, and.

For some time I was looking at an automatic feeder because I had this, I had a schedule and most of my roommates are out and friends weren't in town where I wasn't able to get someone to watch the cat I was like, okay, well, like I can get someone to watch them sometimes, maybe I'll get an auto non automatic feeder, automatic litter box. And then every single

I'm just imagining being like in court and you've you've silenced your phone and your judge is turning to me. He's about sentence. You're not meant to have your apple watching. It's like being catship, just like is it? Is it like nest where you get the alert it does and show you the video and you drag it down.

It's just like a big I don't want a video of cat ship a.

Big I'm sorry your honor, but my cat just ship.

Yelled up your hand. It's wild, mister Tinkling, you know which.

And it's also so funny because it's like the price the price jump.

Also, it's like a regular litter bar. It's not special.

Two dollars, three dollars. I mean, it doesn't cost that much, but it's just a little special.

Yes, not thing is not like it's a new kind of litter box other than the stuff they've stabled to it. It's like, hey, you're sophisticated buyer, this is not gonna work.

You love your cats, right, and you love your.

Cat Your cats must be fancy cats. Yeah, and I have to be. And they need five g We're throwing five dollars off fancy feast. Okay, Now, something just fucking occurred to me about this. It's even weirder. They're talking about five G. That's a cellular wireless standard.

Yeah, it's Chinese, which means.

The cat let the company very well, it's u dirty tech.

Sovereign citizens are going to come to your house and take.

Your They're already very unhappy with me. But also it's five G. Before the end of the show, can you try and get back there just to ask them if they mean five G WiFi because that is an egregious overstatement because they are people are just like the guys here that don't know how anything works. Go, it's got five G in it, which they think is like the cell phone standard versus this is the show though, this is ces we're just describing. Like I know, Casey Kagawa,

Actually it's not a happy heartbeats.

But you can go to a legacy media outlet and hear about all the computer stuff that actually matters, because that's not really the story of CS. That's the stuff that happens kind of outside, and what you have in there is people making series of a series of promises that have gone through a law firm to make sure they're not going to get them in actual trouble hopefully. Did you see any Wi Fi grills though?

No?

Oh buddy, I saw a TV with a chat bot why.

To help you choose channels?

Yeah, you know, I saw.

I saw sex toys that used video games for a long distance connection with groups sinking for multiple orgasms.

They did not promise that ties to the verst that I went to they, so I.

Was I'll never forget this.

I was at the Indiegog party the first CS and I was talking to this folks and they were telling me about their technology. Technology was about trying to have some sort of tactile response, uh, in a virtual environment.

Keep in mind talking to a priest in full white.

Yeah, exactly right, that's right.

And so this is Chinese folks, right, and so we're Chinese company and we're talking about it.

Was like, man, that's really amazing.

Technology like that would be great for for like the medical industry, Like that would really revolutionize a lot of stuff for surgeries and like yeah, yeah, no, but we're going into porn because that's where all the money is.

Just yeah, ten years later, same, you know, but it's not taken off thing. Yeah though, I mean it's not scaling.

There are toys that allow you to have group players to see them.

That's existed for a bit.

The that I was trying to figure out, the AI element, the metas, Yeah, the extended reality part of Wow, of the super duper you know, turbero charged flesh lights, Yes, the suction dil dos of the uh pro massagers lodged.

You said, all for the you're going to Caribbean.

Yea, this is where we need Father Bellasar like the.

Other member of the clergy that for some reason shows up here. But so other than dildos and other than health things, any other weird shit, anything loathsome pig.

Like anything like, oh, there there was a there's an app it's called an AI Public Transportation Bell and it's and it rings a bell when you're about to get to your stop on the bus or train.

Freaking. There was no one at that booth that I was like, this is what you're talking me about.

The alleged section of the conference where it's just this is a front.

Yeah, man, sorry, we're just we're using this for that. The serbian gentleman behind you, one that smells of cigarettes. That man, that's who we're talking to him. That's our one meeting the things that we're here for four days to kind of just cover for this. He will kill you.

Cigarettes and slim of it.

It's it's so strange that we have a show full of this because you kind of see articles about cs and it's like fastest computer. There's the three thousand dollars AI machine that I should have some of rotters coming in to talk about tomorrow. Hell yeah, but in video also who knows what they're doing at some point.

And the eternal Hall of TVs all.

Of televisions, which are fine, I don't we love the big screens and but really it's just so weird how much of this stuff is just like fake fake or like real, but customer base of like one hundred people like the cat. How much do you think that cat thing costs to make? Because I bet it's accidentally really expensive.

I mean it depends because it's is it also one of those ones with the motor that rotates it automatically sifts. Yeah, then those things break. Yeah, they break easily. We go one because they're not doing They are easy to installed, but I feel like they're not. They don't tell you how to install it, and so you're probably gonna.

Break it in installation. The app is probably not gonna work the time, you know. So I don't know.

They're probably accidentally expensive because of how much they wear down and how much they end up getting returned versus like, how do.

You really like load test those things? You get a really big.

Like you'll make it in garfield.

Do you think this is how they get the training data to find out about the TETs. Yeah, I mean that listen chosen by perfected by signs to be fair. This is how I describe my cat Babu. Yeah, you know, and also myself. I do use the litther box, but he just won't use these fancy ones. We've tried fancy ones and he just will not go. Only one of my cats uses the fancy one custody I do. I really, that's the most cat thing to do. As well, our gods can throw it away.

Yeah, no, our cast will only use the robot litter box for pooping. Altho other we have two other little boxes. Those are the piss boxes, only the robot gets turts.

Which one do you use? Ah?

I I am a discerning individual. I prefer to go use an actual toilet.

Okay, so you're good for this show. Now, you did see a speech from the incredible Linda Yakarina, CEO of X the Everything app, where I currently do my banking, my taxes, my dating, and my professional work. I have a DM I need to see you too, admnute from a fourteen words groper. That's my doctor.

And the medical care on acts as well.

My credit card was just charged eleven thousand dollars from it. Everything's going great there. But she is the CEO of this company, and you said it was kind of bad. It just wasn't that far.

Yeah, I didn't really know. A movie could have been an email, could have been a press release. Yeah. She talked a lot about the global collective unconscious, unconscious.

Oh god, the fuck does that mean? Uh? That's X the Everything saying. You know, did she say unconscious?

Yeah, the collective.

I believe, we believe. I have it in my notes. But the thing is, if she said conscious, it's still stupid. But if she said unconscious, I would believe that because that's like a yak Areino classic. Yeah, just like a complete because the thing she says sound like the kind of thing you say immediately after walking out of a car wreck.

Let's go to the notes since, yes.

But it's us.

But it's also like what an undergrad like philosophy student.

Right, she talks about how it's self regulating, but you know, the first yeah, the first question was about comparing Meta to X and talking about how it got rid of fact checkers, and she was like, they're trying to copy community notes basically, you know, they're realizing.

All websites sucks shit copying Like, Buddy, I'm on community notes, so I see all this stuff and it is a ship show.

It's a ship show. I mean, if you've seen the fucking facts that people post on Facebook, Yeah, you really want that community anyway?

Yes, and now that.

Great idea has been copied, and so.

The idea there is like you know, she's trying to, you know, talk about how Meta is going to emulate X's innovative system that inspires great behavior, which is that noted post or dramatically shared less.

Like suicide bump.

Yeah, I want to die like anything.

The cyber truck guy got his inspiration that and chat gpt apparently where which helped them.

Build they explosive. The police department recently reported.

That didn't quite work.

Yes, and that's chat GPT.

Yeah, as I described it, it's effectively just the anarchist cookbook. And you're going to get similar respect results.

Yeah, you know, I'll try and so so you know. Her rating of the meta abandoning.

Third party fact I team great victory for free speech.

Cool.

She talked about how the greatest product innovation, talked about how there have been like two hundred and fifty product innovations during your tenure. Extort of the fun what Yeah, but the biggest one is trend genius, which is when a trend kicks up on X and it hits a certain altitude. Advertisers they have agreements with are they're they're able to take advantage of those trends and they get

Almost some kind of like word you could advertise against, like some ad words right.

Right, you know all of the ads I get, Yeah, they're all everything is Temu.

I get Tamu, indie sci fi.

Books about how Donald Trump is going to save America, sig crypto that doesn't that that's happening right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.

Only get Timu. What are you like looking.

At blocking so many ads? At one point I just started getting the weirdest ship. I got like the most expensive coat ever, and it was like a seventy dollars coat. I actually think it's a great bed, but it was the worst looking outfit. It looked like something that bas Leman would have in his romeo and do you do you buy your Oh my gosh.

So what you're telling me is they've created an automated system to guarantee that the advertisers won't miss an opportunity to be next to an incredibly popular racist post, right and all these don't want to miss it.

All these trends are the ones that grok comes up with.

Oh lord, yeah, rock in the in the in the center of the racism computer.

They changed the image recently.

Yeah, you know, the logo for grok is really bad.

It's super It looks like like a jpeg.

Effects so bad one of the examples I really also loved. She was kind of like, you know, talking about how access to everything plays. It's real time, so many trends. But you know, sometimes me and my husband we fight all the time.

We fight all the time.

Oh really, imagine my husband my piece of ship, and so we fight all the time about what to watch, and we're fighting over the remote.

He thinks football is consequential. I want to know what's happening on the red carpet. We don't have to fight anymore because now I have X on my phone and I get real time updates and he gets the TV to white football.

Was she talking about the Golden Globes? What football game is on Golden Globes?

Happened? Now? This is also garbage.

I was trying to I was trying to check news the other day on Twitter X whatever they call it nowadays. Okay, I guess, And I was just like, this is a really bad place to get news.

Yeah, okay, pm pst. Was she really that attacked? Was he really that attached to Monday late night football? Maybe he does hate her, he might have been.

He's just like, h so, you know, that's the that's like first ten minutes or so, you know, she's talking. She talked talking about safety ad products and how there's no surrogate for X. This is the most important place. Talks about the NFL portal, which you know is an example of how we are expanding the town square and building a model that will bring to other areas of society. They want to make us a global sports league portal and I don't even know what that means nobody. It's provocative.

That thirty six billion view the impressions, impressions, that's not even I mean that that doesn't feel like as much as it should like it. It feels like they had higher numbers like that than the pospit. Also, the views numbers are completely cracked on that.

Now, well she's saying that are the best numbers, and they're gonna get even better.

They're gonna go to global sports leagues.

Uh. The interviewer tried to be like, do you want to do a news or journalism portal? She was very you know, she's like, look, look, we're not we're not. She didn't say we're not interested in that, but she basically was like, legacy media has.

Their own thing. We're post trusted in, yeah, telling the truth or providing information.

We want to distinguish ourselves from legacy media because.

That legacy media, it's one way filtered.

That's a psio to control your mind and influence as opposed to as opposed to Twitter, which is global, collective, unconscious, right and free of influence campaigns.

Right, just.

Influence campaign right that she just mentioned when that her boss is doing.

Yeah, and also the wasn't there a Paris Hilton one Paris on Saudi's I mean we could list all the influence campaigns that.

People still care about parasol. I know.

That's what's so good about it, you know, when you're like behind crypto on a trend.

Yes, yes, Like I think the last time anyone cared about her was when she was like eating hamburgers for Carls Junior.

Like that, I'm not familiar with. That's pretty bad. I haven't.

I haven't been following.

The j J Abrams move fair enough.

She also talked a bit about the power of acts, and she got really excited about the fact that one time she was like I was scrolling through my feet, leaned in, very excited and animated about Musk and Sundar talking about computing the brain, the brain. Where else can you get to executives you don't really understand?

And it's definitely them. It's what. There's no literally every executive. You know. Here's the thing.

I refuse, I still to this day refuse to use the term X like I will dead name.

I'm only using it here. It's just it's right, it's terrible. It feels like petting a cat's hair the wrong way. Yeah, oh, I'm on ex What the fuck are you talking about? Man? Everything it's everything, the everything app that has right a lack of utility with almost every day the racism generator terrible grows somehow the least racist racism generation.

Like, look, I didn't, I didn't.

I didn't join the full exodus when you know, when things so I stayed there even though I joined all the other stuff.

But it's just.

Like like the level of narcissism is just.

To open up. As we are talking, I have not spared today.

The world a world in an event like it's.

Gonna Yeah, I wonder what's uh, what's what's on X everything?

We start the count for you? Oh we did.

There's the thing about Samuelman's sister. Very very bad for mister Rotman.

Oh I got some betting ads. Oh that's a bat mgm man. Do you guys want to get up to two hundred fifty dollars back in bonus bets if your first wager loses?

I want that to do anything. That's why.

Okay, so he is quote it's a quote post Elon Musk is posting where someone said Bill Gates is donated of three. This is just a conspiracy theory thing just and it's Elon Musk has quoted it, and he he has used what appears to be an emoji of a pregnant man. What so this is the richest man in life. He could do anything. And he's like, what if what if her? What if her Bill Gates was was a pregnant man. Wouldn't that be funny? Great grinds, grab scramps.

I mean I opened up the app and the first thing I get is a nice little person from a friend of mine who I know, and then.

It's literally post me long mask. If protecting children makes one a fascist, then so be it. I think that, Wow, that's you know, perfect Segway.

Also because the next things that she talked about were the grooming gangs that he went on sweek long tiradeer bom and she and they were like, is this a red line? Because now you've got diplomats saying we're going to change in the relationship with you. Ask and she was saying, if not for X, where would the conversation be about saving thousands of girls, bringing people to justice who must be brought to justice. So I say, more than did.

That happen as a result of anything that happened on X.

No?

Great, that's she said, there is going to be an inquiry.

Wow, and well there's going to be an investigation. I have now retracted my statement. I feel like as we as we approach the end here, I want to really talk about something that I read about today that I will be doing an episode on. You know, you know that I can't help myself doing content, but we'll talk about it today. So Mark Zuckerberg of Meta has now basically he's fired all the fact checkers, and he's moving

I mean there's also like these moves also of trying to placate Trump. I mean, do there are a few questions, right, because other friends are doing them, are they gonna make the antitrust trials go away?

I don't think this.

I don't think it's related, but I'm interested in that also as a knockdown effect, right.

I think what people need to realize is, sure, there's some kissing up to Trump. Sure, but Meta has been helping conservatives for decades now. Yeah, you know, and they write calculation on the Meanwok plandemic. The thing that talked about the people killing Facebook episode, it's they were Joel Caplan. It's not Jeff Caplan. That's the Blizzard guy. Sorry, Jeff Jeff Caplan from a Blizzard. By the way, look up what the name of his his character was in EverQuest

Wait, we already call it boomer Book. Like, so you know, I work with students. I mean I work with students, right, so I'm always I'm always in the midst.

Of a bunch of young twenty year olds.

Same and it's just like, yeah, as boomer Book, and no one goes there because it's the most toxic place that you can go.

Like, it's worse than Twitter.

Oh, you need to look for the toxicity. It's usually just confusing to me, but just to be clear, the current state of Facebook that everyone has been used to. This was the one with fact checkers. Yes, now it's gonna be like lunatic, but it's gonna be actually insane. But I think this might this may be the poison in the veins. And I know a lot of people understandably are very scared of this because of the right wing side and the fact that this is aiding the

I mean, honestly, it's like, if I were Facebook, it's in your interest to at work at minimum allow for or try to ensure that you know, maybe right wing stuff is pretty popular, you know, because they'll give you less trouble or gluatorially. And you know, if I'm actually putting my foot on the pedal, you know, if I'm actually putting my hand on the on the on the tiltier or trying to you know, shift the balance, you know,

And I think you know that.

I think to come back to your earlier point, I think that's like a fair point to say, which is that like, yeah, you know, kissing up to Trump.

Misses it right.

Yeah, as you're saying that there's there's a deep for there's a deeper some biosis or a deeper interest there.

That's people overlooked David. He'd be davely if Bloomberg did a great opinion piece to that. Lincoln the in the notes, he did the thing where he just says it gave Zuckerberg permission to give up on the thing that he didn't give a shit about. Yeah, somewhat paraphrasing his words there, obviously, because I don't think Bluembo would report that. But it's a great piece because it basically says, look, Zuckerberg has

The benefits for benefit relative to them is it's they don't have monopoly, but they do have a walled garden, so they can do whatever they want inside of their garden. And if you want to bury toxic waste in your garden, well there are regulations about that, but we're.

Going to stop them from doing it.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean like I mean, if Facebook started as a place for a work to get a date, you know, and so I'm sorry.

You don't like that.

I feel like that point misses the problem again because yes, technically that was like the whole horny Harvard guy thing. The thing is is that that wasn't where that was an evil thing that a college student did. Where it became an evil thing that an adult started doing. Was the idea of Facebook, was the idea of growing Facebook. And what growing Facebook? Men, if we start with that, if we reduce him to this horny in cell. Kid, we miss the thing that this guy is, like Zuckerberg,

Kid, Yeah, there wasn't one.

It's it's really good looking out of the window with the tech industry right now. I feel very positive.

That's just how it felt to be drinking the water downstream of the chip fabs.

Yeah. Great, except it's fantastic except that hurt lesbian.

Thanks for getting.

But no, there's a cynicism, right right, there's a cynicism about the whole thing. And so it's like, you know, people, people just out there in the world sort of use these things, you know, to stay connected to their families, you know, like, for instance, the only reason why I still have a Facebook, you know, account, is because you like, my mom takes photos, right, and I see that.

And I use Instagram because there are some people who don't use anything else.

Yeah, exactly the same thing.

And uh and so that's I think that so many people like that's that's sort of their general sort of use case, that that these more sort of problematic aspects. They have a hard time seeing what the problem is. But but the problem really is just this, this this cynicism, the lack of care, the I think I think you think you hit to right on the head.

You ain't seen nothing yet. I'm deadly serious like Facebook. So shout out to Jeff Howitz. The Wall Street Journals taught me a lot, a lot about what I know about Facebook. I have yet to hear from Jeff if he was at CS to be so happy. There's no one I want more on the chat just going fucking And the thing is is that they've always been this bad.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, hey, like you know, what where do you go from? You know, facilitating a genocida you.

Know, where do you go? You know?

You all things are justified in growth. A terrorist attack plan on Facebook was justified in growth. I'm quoting Andrew Bossworth in the Ugly Letter. He is now the CTO of Meta. Very cool, very good stuff. So as we come towards the end of the this part of the episode, we're shortly going to be updated with Gara Davis and Robert Evans of course as a wrap.

Up, especially because I'm almost out of cocktail.

He's almost out of and I'm thinking about the Facebook leaks at the moment.

But yes, well, I think, as we come to the end of this day, and did you like anything? Was there a single thing that you saw? And there is no wrong answer here. If you saw something you liked, what was it? And don't say the exit the sex toys seemed neat cool, So it's just fun.

I think every ces this is what I've heard, and that's it. Horrified by that.

Woke up, just cracking up, all right.

You know the I saw some screens that looked crazy, But you know, I don't game like that, I don't goon like that, Like I just I couldn't you know those are really for me. Every episode you know, I'm I'm gonna watch.

I don't know.

I feel like maybe I would have liked a sphere you know whatever doing.

No Lenny Kravitz is there tonight. Oh I forgot to mention an important part of the things. So I found out a competing podcast called The Verge. I hear they are currently doing. Heard of them, haven't either, but I just the ridge the French you doing like a little German over had a hairball.

Somewhere right, and here we go.

I try not to be a catty bitch other than everyone this show. And I must say that I was seeing. I definitely saw this, and there was a moment I was like, oh man, another podcast recording out of here, big one too. I should go and check out what

Future of travel unless it's no more Boeing planes, cigarettes on the plane and bigger seats, I don't want to hear it.

But also.

Because what is it going to be?

We we we calibrated the formula for sky Miles.

Yeah, we we changed the app. You have made it harder to get sky Miles status.

Smart planes smart.

All all the planes are on the blockchain.

Anyway, I think you have had a much better experience with a health physicist and a priest, So I think that that's my choice. So more members of the clergy and more safety professionals. I think that's what makes up.

Generally more safety professionals is not what anyone wants to see, because we apparently ruin fun.

Sometimes apparently, so we as we close out of this part of the episode and will of course be back shortly after this.

Phil Where can people find you?

You can find me at Blue Sky at at Fundranium, and you can find my blog Funderanium Labs dot com.

Yes, and he makes a special kind of coffee. And if you look on Blue Sky, because I cannot advertise things on here, I will have a link for you at some point that we'll do something. I'm not even going to say what it is. Ed m Graso Junior. Now that I cut you off at the beginning of that saying what you did? What do you do?

I'm I'm a tech writer, a finance writer, a labor writer, an editor, a ship poster, a sign.

As the son of a mother.

Yeah, I'm a son of a mother and the father of cats were baby monitored.

Yeah, yeah, you have yet to give a link. That's true.

I thought you were going to say to my cats, and I was like, they're they're on my profiles, Big Black Jacobin on Blue Sky and uh Twitter.

Thanks to everything that too. And this Maschione Kills is the podcast where we yap about the political economy of tech and uh the tech bubbles my newsletter where I yap about tech. Also where can they find that tech bubble dot substack dot com? And wrote to that and father Gabriel Mosha.

Yeah, mosha.

I mean these days, these days, just on all the social media's in the same Okay, they do not fucking.

Mm every None of these people know their links. Your name is like luky something like if they type in your name, it doesn't come up. Sometimes.

Oh uk e I four six y five.

That's on everything except for blue Sky, Blue Sky it's eighth way.

Well thank god you specified that before I said anything.

Yeah, no, or you can just put in like if you just search Gabriel.

Moser's like priest into Google.

Then I'm there.

Well when will be right back? After these amazing products. You're gonna hear about these products. They're so beautiful. I personally love them all. They're definitely not going to immediately embarrass me in a way that every week I get one email from one guy who's like, this does not match up with the things you were saying.

We're here to embarrass you.

Did you know that there is a commercial a commercial that came on that was not in line with your beliefs. What do you think? No noster around and every time I respond with the same thing, which is, I bet you'd love it if I died, and then I hit send. Anyway, the next thing that comes up maybe by it. And we're back and we've replaced some of the people. We've got Gare Davis and of course Robert Evans from It could happen here, and they are just glowing from the time on the floor.

Yeah, I'm happy to be here. I'm kind of concerned that the former panelists you took out and forced into a goolag outside of nov garad like that. That seems a little extreme.

But I don't want to question. That is your show business. This is your show. That's show business. That's I'm glad you made the cut, you know. Yeah, we have to have two ads, at least one of the chosen.

Always to.

Want to crave the mind. Oh god, I'm going to be thinking about that all evening now. That's great. So we were previously talking about the Linda Yakarino speech. Oh my god, and I did not know that Gare was also that gay. What was your experience of the uh, the matriarch of social media.

It's the first time there was applause was when she mentioned Doge. The second time was the rape gigs. So incredible vibes happening.

Audiences love Dojian rape gangs.

You know. But what's so, what specifically was this rape gang thing? I should know about things that happened in England, but I've been running from England my whole life.

Well, there was like a kind of a bit of a bit of a program over the earlier last year, over over the idea that there were like migrants were running rape gangs, and so people started like we were like right wing riots in several cities, including like.

Oh, sorry, this is the thing that actually fucking caused that.

Well this was no, no, this didn't cause that, but causes an extension. This was trying to keep it going.

Yeah, oh yeah, sorry, I meant it. Yeah, that right wing ship storm was what caused the riots. Okay, great, because I knew the riots were happening. And then we've got very upset with the amount of racis in the England that newly created, considering it's England and has quite a lot already. Yeah, oh god, anyway, So that was that got applause.

Yeah, talking about that and and how how important it is on X to protect children and as a mother, it's very it is especially important. So and we need we need more more posting to save the children.

I mean that I agree with just the posting part. All things are possible posting.

I mean, one of the last times I was on X the everything app, I saw a deep fake porn of an eighteen year old. So yeah, I only I can. I really do feel what she says that very is deeply committed.

The last time, the last time I spent a decent amount of time on X, it was after a teenager did a mass shooting and I had to talk to all of their other teen friend nazis who are on X and they everything app everything, they communications, and that's where you find them, a whole bunch of teenage Nazis who had all just like talked, like talk to each other there and share phrenology memes.

Oh yeah, what's that girl's name like that? There's like some.

Rad fam Hitler the name on the one of my favorite podcasts.

We're having her on the show very very soon to talk about the other Hitler yeah, I'm calling it the two Hitlers.

When seeing that name, I was like, I can't believe this exists. Of course this exists. Well I love talking about technology. Yeah, so that was but that What was the context for the doge thing as well? Was it just the idea of firing people? Know?

It was was talking about like how important X will be as Elon and and focuses on doge in the next year for a government program, so you like, you know, well it's a fake a fake government, like a consultancy service that pretends to be a government but like it. It was basically a quick question about like like how much will Elon be using like X to like, you know, get like people, Like how much will he be getting like users to give suggestions for things to cut you know?

Oh god? Open source government regulation? Sure, I mean open source works. Yeah, yes, but.

Yes, look think about Linux, right stable operating system run by a guy who's only committed.

A few sex crimes.

We all love Linux. Why shouldn't the government be that way? It's already run by guys who commit sex crimes. Right match made in Heaven. It was much like I'm not trying to.

Oh, I am much like Linux it's way more complicated than they describe as. Oh yeah, and and and in the end, it only works for a few people and they can barely explain.

Why, but their computers are unhackable because honestly, if you're if you're hacking ship, nobody, nobody needs that.

That's really good. I'm glad you end that bit because we've now said several things that Linux fans are going to email me about.

It's the most secure to way to do things, the same way that invent your own language and losing the ability to communicate with the rest of the world is the most efficient way to avoid getting spied on.

Right, kind of like trying to use another Apple Linux. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I said something about Linux, like I wrote this newsletter and turned into a script as well where I talked about and I've talked about all sorts of things and rotten with intech and I quote tweeted it quote post of them blue Sky, I should say, and I said, just to be clear, stop recommending me Linux. Normal people

I will.

Actually it is, there's no Linux guys are exactly the same as like Norse pagans in the modern world, where half of them are like the chillest like like and violently anti racist, will literally fucking die to like fight a Nazi, and half of them are just the absolute fact, just diesel apple like like the bioless.

So we're also calling them back.

Linux people are either will let the drop of the hat, like like put down everything in order to like help you secure your phone to stop the FBI from getting in, and half people whose primary goal in life is to reform the age of consent to be lower, just to.

Be close to thing Linux fans, I please. That was like two fucking weeks.

I see all the people listening to this are the first kind of Linux.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. They all are, mm hmm yeah great, still going to get one hundred emails. Yeah.

So.

But otherwise, so there was no applause at all during this.

Otherwise it was just for the mention of doge and then for the rape gains.

Otherwise you just kind of they.

Were just talking for thirty minutes and like the biggest point of this discussion was basically laying out how in tendem X and the everything appen and and the new Trump administration are going to function out.

It's basically like trying to view.

These things as like symbiotic tools.

Yeah, it's kind of like a dear Sturmer type deal, right. Like the nice thing about it being a dere Stirmer deal is we we all know what happened to the guy who ran dere Sturmer.

I don't.

Oh he got hung by a drunk hangman that the US appointed because we didn't care who did the job. Made extra shared that it took a long time. Julia Striker was kicking up there for a minute. We got something to look forward to.

That one of the funniest things. I thank you for sharing that.

Smile.

Oh good, did you talk about the Zuckerberg fact checking thing.

We can talk about it again, because, as I was saying to it earlier, it is just Facebook slopping up like this is the ship they've always done. This is just them fucking instead of flushing the toilet, just pushing it into the kitchen. Like I said, Everyone's like, oh, it's so Donald. Try no, he just does an excuse now he knows laws won't or like morals will no longer be enforced, and Facebook already fucking sucked. I can't wait to see how much worse again.

My Facebook feed right now as fully thirty forty percent of it is. Yeah, like there's like half a number of people that I used to know that The only way I have of like checking in with him is Facebook.

It's bleak. I get like pitching and lifting things and like boxing.

Yeah, maybe this tells us more just about Robert, like your own interests.

Mine is just like, oh, I can't even read more than like seven or eight books about the Imperial German Army last year, so like it kind of like I'm that into the German German military history.

Garris.

This might just be the Facebook tracking is coming to be is coming to bite you all of it?

How do you have the reading habits that are like the only other people with my reading habits are very problematic?

Yes, magician versus slow mo camera. Ooh, that that one sounds Actually, this one's really good. It's kind of just free photo editing group. And it's just from December thirty one, twenty twenty four, and it is like a week later, and it's just like a very graty picture of a woman saying, is it possible to make this fuzzy photo shop? It is now with the power of AI in hants yeah, or like an the legacy of nerd Hulk Hoganmerton's w W A.

Crude AI cartoon of a soldier with neither of both of his legs kind of melting off into a puddle that says, why don't pictures like this ever trend?

I don't get any of the AI slop. I got boomer slap so much boomer slash slap.

I don't get only women can understand not married yet. And it's a picture of a tomato then got married, and it's a picture of a watermelon.

A lot of pictures of like kids crying and it's with like with like sad captions about how Kamala Harris is making kids cry if you agree, and.

Like like literally every like fifth post is some sort of picture with why don't photos like this ever trend?

Oh my other things, I've subscribed to a lot of Joker related that makes kind of unsettling. But yeah, no, no, no, no, you are the smiling man. No no, no, to explain the Joker mein thing, it's not because I believe in their views.

If he gets banking working on Facebook before Twitter, that would be payments.

Yeah, no, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, who would you rather trust with your money than Facebook?

I mean, I mean, I thought we all agree.

I went to so many panels today and half of them sounded like the stand up solutions comedy sketch.

Please tell tell me some of these wonderful things.

You're gonna have to explain that joke to Garrison.

Oh yeah.

Absolutions is just a is a comedy stand up routine released I think earlier this year by a really good comedian who I cannot connor O'Malley.

Okay, you should all watch it because it's very insane and it's also exactly the vibe. It's just half of half of it's a PowerPoint presentation of completely made up in the same ship by it's.

How it it's how you can make an A it's how you can buy an AI that does stand up comedy.

Yes, and this is what the things are like and this is what everything is.

I mean the first the first panel I went to today, I heard the phrase like augmentation not replacement, probably about ten times a lot a lot about keeping.

Yeah, that's what the plastic surgeon.

There was a lot of fear in the AI panels from people scared of how much like backlash there is two AI tools and trying like trying to like find wayte like trick audiences into enjoying or like consuming AI slop. Like a lot of it was about that I don't like like like a phrase one of the panelists used was trying to solve the AI ick problem.

Like like there's like there's like an ick around AI. We have this problem that fucking sucks. Nobody wants to use. Yeah, it looks bad.

And they they had someone from Meta at this panel and they talked about how a few days ago Instagram announced they would be having like a AI generated like fake profiles, right, people that don't exist. And there was so much backlash like based on this that they that they took it away, but they explained it by saying, actually, the market just isn't ready yet.

This isn't back to the future, isn't. It's not that it's not that this is a terrible idea. I said, the market's not ready yet.

There are certain issues where like we haven't been a specifically hear it from like a queer woman of color who's a mother in New York City. Right, there's a number of issues, yes, but an actual one.

But but a.

Person yeah, I don't I don't need an AI that admits it was coded by some white ladies in the bay pretending to be this person.

No, it's then like the pigs. The pigs have not being suppressed enough. We've not we've not sedated.

Yeah, get the ready for the And it really is another phrase that it is just like like AI, like like improvements will all be based around consumer acceptance. It's like we have all the text having but we have to trick people into actually like what they're looking for is consent.

There's a lot of attitude, there's a lot a vibe from them that is very much like a like a like a dude who's trying to pressure someone into sex and is like, and I can like massage this into like them being okay enough with it, right.

I can get him to agree to this.

Yeah, it's it's this very We're in a very interesting position with this fight where it's still recent enough. Every like everyone who is trying to push the the AI line remembers n f t S and the Metaverse going down in flames and how unified and effective the backlash against them was. Now neither of those ever had any actual technology on your life, if you.

Can call Metaverse any consumer adoption as well.

Yeah, there was no real technology that was in any way impressive, and there was no real user hunger. There's user hunger for some of the things AI does, and there's real technology there, but there's also a backlash that's very similar to the backlash for those two things. And they see that and they're very they're scared of it because they know it is a threat to because of how much how they have to keep up momentum if momentum drops at any point. A lot of these companies,

Talking about it, I can be.

Saying, like, the same way that we were able to beat NFTs and beat the metaverse to some degree, like that is this is going to be a longer battle than that, but like it is having an impact. You can like even look at like a like a Chapel Rome posted something about like AI generated images that received a lot of backlash, and like people and like ad agencies are like looking at this and they're trying to figure out a few ways to kind of navigate it.

Like saying on fleek gen Z.

Is so vest is so vested in like authenticity, and if you're gonna partner with influencers who you is AI, it has to have that authentic angle.

So what's funny about the influencer thing that I don't think companies realize is they think every influencer is this pliant brain who will do anything for vacation, and there are an alarming amount of them that will. What they don't realize is that there are many of them that, once they reach a certain scale, go, wait fucking minute, I don't have to go to the LG pain Maze. I don't have to to ride a horse to the LG compound to see the secret fridge. Yeah, and then

I don't know who you are.

Steven Games Next is probably the single most YouTube important, the single most YouTube, jesus, the most important YouTube in pretty much processes and chips. There are some others as well, but like, Steven's done this scredible thing and it's mostly just him standing looking exhausted over a table, just ripping these fucking companies to shreds, or going to their offices and be like hey, hey, Steven Games, like hey, what

Beast, yeah, especially considered that. What I think is so interesting about him is that he is he is into and speaking to this group of people who are profoundly anti media and like kind of chetty.

Yeah, like that's a lot.

But he's also he does very good journalism, yeah, within that space, like and really has done more than almost anyone to kill specific kinds of conn.

Did a podcast with me Rabbit reporting No big deal. But it's funny as well because they're definitely thinking that, oh, yeah, we'll get these stupid fucking gen Z kids and these idiot influences and gen Z as you all Knoweah, your gen Z yes thirty eight years old and I sound a hot. What's the age for? I do not know. It's at this point.

It's like if they can't yah seven or twenty eight, it depends.

Usually born twenty seven are are cusps, they're cuspers.

If you're born between nineteen ninety seven and around twenty twelve is usually the gen Z racket.

You like you are a young millennial.

Yeah, if if your knees make a sound when you stand up your Every.

Time older I do yeah, yeah, every time I do yoga, my knee makes a noise like a pinball machine breaking. That doctor said, it's great, but it's funny because what they don't realize is as legacy media dies, yeah, you're gonna have a bunch of insane influences. Those insane influences will be the ones that actually have a genuine animus with the LG Fridge. The fridge guy is eventually going to turn on the fridge manufacturers, and the fridge guy will bring them great pain as he reviews the fridge

It's going to be people have no vested interest in the politests that they can expect from like legacy media. Right, Yeah, there's no there's no space in like YouTube review guys or TikTok guys for Walt Mossburg. Nobody wants a dude like that. You want somebody who's snarky and got an angle and funny, and it's just easier to rip up a lot of these shitty AI products to like than it is to fucking pup them up.

And I will tell you something, running a PR firm, not a single fucking PR person for the most part, can prepare you for that. The only thing that can prepare you is well, actually that position training. Yeah, you get a lawyer to train you, that will do you fomo good.

With media training, having you know, growing up roasting people, that might help you a little bit bit.

But you also have to realize that the truth is generally useful and if you're trying to hide that an influence. So we really get around that.

What I think is so important to get back on the topic of like how do we win this fight against AI slopification of everything beautiful in the human spirit.

The aiic like the AI they simply don't have. The thing that matters most was that like, which is its ability to make like good compelling stuff and this is something that's that this is something like they actually know. I'm gonna read something about something one of the guys on the panel from Adobe was talking about. He was talking about how when you're making AI content specifically like targeted towards specific people, like a personalized content is always

And it also looks the same as it did, like he does look the name as did a year ago.

There's so much talk and finally on what because I listened to him, Like the first two Tech and Holly AI and Hollywood panels I listened to, there were a lot of talk about like we just need to be able to like if we can read people's brains while they're watching stuff, we can see how they're reacting, and then we can alter like yeah, yeah, the content that they're taking. That meta was talking about the ending or

It still extremely hard work from three das however you feel about those disgusting creatures, dominions.

And more than anything like the Barbenheimer thing was like certainly the most significant single movie trick last year, and that was the result of people wanting a shared.

Experience and a very specific aesthetic in those cases, not something that changes every frame.

Not wanting to, not wanting to, like go, hey, did you see that movie last night? Well, I saw the version that was made for me.

Was like people people.

Who actually want personalized content. I don't want to be music generated for me. I want music that I can share, and that's in some kind of cultural conversation with other people who also enjoy music, who I can talk to like that about and compare it.

Yeah, what do you think of that speech at the end of The Great Dictator? Well, when I watched The Great Dictator, Charlie just turned to the screen and said, everything's good.

Keep doing what you're doing, right. Nick Fury woke down as this is this is literally the future that these people want.

Travis Kelsey, Yeah, told me I look like Iron Man.

Oh my god.

Someone from Meta who works in like their hyper reality division, was talking about how they can start using AI and the metaverse.

That's the hyper reality.

Let's say that you're watching an immersive live concert, something that me and all my friends do.

By the way, right away, you want to go to a real using using m R mixed reality and and the AI can sense your excitement and it can personalize your experience based on your favorite song or artist.

So in AI, Taylor Swift near the end of the song can like come down in the stage and like and like dance with you. That would freak me the fun out or like that would not depend where they can change the song based on what your favorite songs are. So it's using AI and the metaverse you de crede ultra personalized experiences.

I have never done worse than we But can you even imagine this while stone that would be horrifying. It's following it does like a good time. The idea of like stoned brain being like, well, this is what this is what me and Atticus Rocks are gonna get down In.

The metaverse, Yeah, we're gonna Candy Flip and the Man and the metaverse.

You get it. I don't know what this is. I don't listen to.

I would rather play We're gonna show you at the Taylor Swift the Necessity of war.

Your Taylor Swift the whole time, shot that Taylor Swift. I want to watch a you made me.

Willie peaked on a school in Northern can't save you.

You gotta shoot those kids. You gotta shoot those kids. They're gonna turn it, just like Taylor.

No one else, nobody else was in that fucking bunker with us. No one else can understand what we had to do. And then you light your AI cigarette, your little hit of AI nicotine.

Thank fun. There's not a more crazed fan base than Linux. I'm gonna get killed. Doesn't everybody want to go to metaverse?

Fallujah Meta Fallujah, that's meta fallujahjah Verse.

Cinematicise.

As I was sitting through all these AI panels, I get a text from both Ed and Robert iBOT some breaking news regarding the Tesla truck bombing.

Yeah, yeah, that he used to planet sick.

First off, green Beret training is not what it used to do.

Yeah, they're taking us for a ride with whatever we're paying if they have to use this.

G had to use chet GPT to make a bombe.

My uncle was a Green Beret, and I'll tell you one thing, he did not need chat GPT to make an explosive device.

Every time I have you on, I'm just I'm just like texting my lawyer, just I'm sorry.

Well, what's interesting is he was specifically looking up as a detonator he was trying to use at some point tannerite, and he must have if he either got a detonator to detonate the tanner but he was looking initially at trying to shoot the tannerite to detonate it, which would.

Not have allowed him to shoot himself. Well, that's that's the problem. That's why he went else.

Chat GVT couldn't figure that one out.

I I love doing a show on the podcast about the future, and every fucking conversation I've had, without fail has been like everything I've seen is either fake or bad. And I don't even mean this. We get the occasional. You're a pessimist, motherfucker. Bring me some las. Robert should be one good thing to please please something. Oh shit, what was it? That's so good? Oh?

The suicide helicopter. There's a helicopter that'll kill everybody. Imagine if you had a helicopter. But it's two thirds the size of a smart car, and it can drive on city streets, but it has no side or rear view mirrors. All of that's all of that's a lot of cameras immers in this cramped little and then when you're ready to fly, it's a quad copter and you can fly up to two hundred meters in the air. Because if you're under that, you don't need a pilot's liice. Do

That's what you get.

Yeah, what happens if you run out of that ay Again, Let's let's say you a former Green Beret, decide to rint the suicide helicopter. Then you just fill that motherfucker up with fuel. All you need is ten minutes. As long as you like you you toe it up in your truck outside of whatever buildings you haven't.

You can't see that this is never got to be a real problem. This is this is I do love they made like a comic cozy simulator, like that is what it is, right, Yeah, I swear and be your own. I was like I do genuinely ask the question of did you see something you like? In good faith every time, and every time it's just someone being like, no, I mean you don't want to street. I don't. I love committing no crime.

I'm we're calling it the Tora to Torah.

Oh god, I've got to wrap this up before I get in any more legal trouble.

Okay, even the solar powered pell tours are not but I don't that. I don't think they're the military like gunshot safe ones.

No, No, they are. I saw them. What is that? What are you talking about?

The tours are high grade uh, like adaptive headphones, so like the ones I saw had like a mic output too.

Didn't have a mic just like I think they didn't. They didn't have like the indent to wear under a helmet. I think these were like workplace peltors, because the Peltores make a lot of different models of noise canceling headphones and only certain what only certain ones are used for, like military or like law enforcement or like gunshots suppressing.

But it looked to me like they were actually the the pel tours that you get where they're not attached to a band so that you can attach them directly to a helmet, and they had instead attached them to a solar band. Maybe maybe I need to go check on it.

Tomorrow to me, but those were and I talked.

Them specifically about using it for hunting.

Okay, okay, okay. So we found one thing.

It was pretty cool, like like headphones that can suppress loud noises but allow you to continue to converse while shooting. That charged themselves so you never need to worry about battery photovoltaic band.

It also can be charged.

By lights on the inside.

That's very cool. Yeah, yeah, that's that's me. We've found with one product everyone, we can wrap the show up. Then, okay, Robert Web can people find you?

People can find me at I write okay on Blue Sky and X the Everything app uh And then we have a podcast called It Could Happen. Here we'll be talking more about ce S and where the technology industry is going a.

Very good place. Yeah, where can People Find You?

Also on It Could happen here with Robert Evans and on Twitter sorry X and Blue Sky at at Hungry bow Tie.

And Ed Wick can we find you Big Black Jacobin on Twitter and on Blue Sky and then this machine kills and tech Bubble dot substack dot com and uh, you can't find me at the gym, be you find me at the bank. It's it tron, you find me and it's everything. Uh yeah, I am. I wanted to get you on the show floor. Ed. I can't wait, but I really could. It's so crazy. I don't want to go. I have not been downstairs. Yeah you didrow you want to Okay, everyone, thank you for listening to

You should use a AI generated music like and that great uh that great heist video last night personalized.

Every listener gets a different outrailer, gets a different outro song.

They are all billy joels up.

Can you imagine that's the only intro? All right, we're going out now, but just to be clear, like, can you imagine the ship that the people in the forum on the reddit, I'm one hundred years old on the four they're on the message boards about me again. Anyways, thanks for listening everyone, Thank you for listening to Better Offline, the editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song It's Matters. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T

For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.