Better Offline CES 2025: Day 4 - Pt. 1

Also media.

On April twenty fifth, nineteen eighty six, a disaster happen.

I was born.

What Welcome to better Off Lying, I'm your host ed Zititron. We have an incredible block to begin this with. I'm joined by Divindra, Hardwareven Gadget.

Hello.

Hello, I'm gonna going fantastically now victorious song from the Verge.

How you doing, I'm so tired we are.

Now I'm manager, I'm just the power of Christ, not really. Edwin Graso Junior tomorrow. Hey doo ed doing pretty good?

Pretty good.

So you're fresh back from the convention floor, right, Yeah.

After thinking I lost my passport there, which is so amazing.

Yeah, I found it. Well, then you'll be just trapped here forever. I just everyone's streaming.

Yeah. I did not want to say this to you, but that is actually a Cees right of passage of the people that like I know, at least I think like five people I know of like I lost my entire wallet in the LVC.

They didn't lose it in the LVCC, but one of the first Cees's I ever went to, I had a connecting flight back through Minnesota. There was a snowstorm I was stuck there for an extra day while begging every single airline counter to like put me on a flight out. I lost my wallet. Oh there, So like my company put me up with an extra hotel. I get to the hotel and they're like, you kind of need ID to check in. I was like, I don't know how to tell you. I just lost my wallet at the airport.

Go really just do like a credit check.

You have to do go really early though, because they do check everything you own with great companies.

Oh no, I know, because the last time I did it, there was like what car do you have?

Like the lady was going through my dirty underwear and that was my biggest nightmare. But you know, on the way to the airport, I had left a review unit laptop in the hotel rooms. I had to go back, and then on the way back from going back, the uber blew attire because it was so cool, Oh, oh my god, it was so stressful.

And I was like, oh my god, this is the worst light of my life.

I got home, it was like forty eight hours after I was supposed to you. And then two weeks later, the very nice people in Minnesota, the Lost and Found at the airport sent me back my wallet after I'd canceled every single card I owned.

So that's such a lovely story.

So, talking of finding things you don't want, what is your experience being as the pre eminent.

Wearbrales report, Oh thank you?

What have you seen that's crap or interesting or funny or good?

Oh?

You know, I wish I remembered all the crap that I saw, but I feel like I just jetted sent it front my head unless it's like super egregious. Oh wait, no, I remember now I'll call it. I wouldn't call it crap. I would just call it ridiculous, if that makes sense.

Sick.

It's ther human rare. The ultra human the name says the ultra Human Ring Air is actually a smart ring that I enjoy quite a bit. I did this thing over the summer where I wore six smart rings at wants to determine who is going to be the one ring to rule them all right? That one came in second, so I found it quite good and at cees. They're like,

Then Desert Snow.

Rose gold, gold and silver. Basically, the rose gold and gold are made out of eighteen carrot gold. The silver quote unquote is PT nine to fifty platinum. Guess how much they cost?

How much?

So the gold are nineteen hundred each, like converted from British pounds, the platinum is twenty two hundred.

Great.

I saw them on the floor and I was like, I have six thousand dollars worth of smart rings on my hand. I took a photo posted it online and everyone was like no, and everyone was just like, you know what though, your nails look better, and I was like, these are ten dollars press ons, so nice try. You know, it just goes to show you money isn't necessarily what catches there.

So they were expensive because of the metals. They were expensive because of three hundred dollars worth of at.

Most, So like the actual ring textpecs all the same, So the actual ring is three hundred and fifty dollars, so we're talking five to six times the price. And I'm like, you know, I was talking to the guy and I was I was saying, you know, tech becomes obsolete so quickly. The battery is gonna die in like three years.

My rings already dying.

Yeah, and you know rings that are actual gold, Like people don't blink spending that much money on real gold, high quality jewelry. But you get to keep those forever. Those are heirlooms. You can pass them down. So like, how do you reconcile that he And he was like, well, there will be an upgrade path that we're working on to guarantee the value of the metals.

Like a skilled tree.

And then also just like maybe we'll like I think they're working on a way to try and swap out the tech portion so that you can keep the metal.

And I was like, I gotta work that one out first.

Big if true, Big, if true?

This is the only way to get people into smart rings is to just construct artificial scarcity. That's the only thing. And I know, Victoria, you've covered this stuff a lot. I firmly believe that that whole category is bullshit, Like just I say that wearing one, yeah, I mean I.

Respectfully, it is very popular among women or as I'm sure demographic is now majority of women instead of men. And it's because they don't want to wear the swarm watches.

This is the thing that story is not well told in the media. I'm not saying is it any failure, but this is and this is actually a failing of better off line. As you literally just heard are preconception that we had as guys, which is just and even my experience of using AURA, the question is what is it that attracts them? Is it? Is it the data is more useful for women are more connected with those problems.

In some respects because they do have pregnancy. They have been putting so much effort into pregnancy research over the last few years. They found that they could actually they did a clinical study. So it's clinical, it's not it's not it's a real that's what I mean. It's a real clinical one. It's not a white paper, which is what I see a lot in my field.

And one is the difference that just for this white.

Paper is like a book report by a company saying we did our own internal research a clinical study or a clinical paper is something that they've done that they've published that they've paid the money to get published in an academic journal or peer review journal, and those can cost That cost can be sometimes up to twenty five thousand dollars for that review. I mean, there's so many

So there's a.

Long story, but the point being is that a lot of people or a lot of women have fertility issues. Right, this is something that is discreet that they can wear that integrates with other stuff that has like clinical backing. Because a lot of people use basal body temperatures to try and track their fertility. But that's so difficult to do accurately because you have to do it first thing in the morning, when you wake up, you cannot drink and cannot get out of wat you can sleep with these,

You're totally difficult. I understand the like functional and useful aspect of a smart ring for women that like that totally makes sense. I think overall that market though, if you're not always looking for the temperature market, it's it's so niche.

It's not like it's not like your first I always say that a smart ring is better with a smart watch, so it's kind.

Of a problem as well. Like it is this and also they're very annoying. The very I wanted the next aura because I really like my sleep tracking, other than the fact that the charging cycle lost like a day and a half the best and then it screams at me like an angry cat.

But it's three hundred dollars.

And the next one I was like, oh, I might get it like a Christmas present for myself, and it's like no, no, no, ma, I don't just try and fucking buy this, man, You've got to remeasure your fingers.

What I can actually tell you why, oh thank you. They changed the saint changed the sensor, right, so I have the four on me right now. If you look at yours and you take yours off, you have the bumps right.

Yeah, this says no bumps, bumpless.

It's bumpless. They've changed the sensors and the arrays on that, so that has affected the sizing quite a bit.

Still annoying.

So I went from an eight to one nine that that is the case, but the battery lasts a lot longer. So with this PO two tracking those last like tracking blood oxygen, thank you, So like with that tracking that last maybe two three days, I found it really annoying.

This is seven that's not bad. Yeah, this is still niche, though.

It's still very niche. It's still very niche. But I will say at the live Verge Cask recording that we did last night, when we were meeting readers, I had so many come up to me and they're like, look at my order ring. I bought it because of you. And I was like, I never tell people to buy yeah, but they're.

Like, look, look look I bought it.

And I was like, oh, yeah, congratulations, you're.

Someone so you know, like me, I've never I've never used these wearables. You know, what is the value proposition for someone who is not already in the Marketer ecosystem using it for one of the use cases you've kind of laid out, you know.

Usually, so the killer quote unquote the killer app for wearables is health. For there are so many different kinds of wearables, but the one that people most resonate with now is health. And usually like they get into it because they want to change something or they've had like a health scare, so oh, like I don't sleep well and that my doctor says I have sleep appneyet oh, I should track this sort of thing, or oh, my parents just had like a cardio respiratory issue, I'm going

What health scares is actually help? Is it just folds? Do they do more falls?

If you have abnormal heart rate? Like if you're at rest and your heart rate normally dips too low or too high, it'll alert you and be like this is kind of messed up. And there are many stories of people who have gone to the hospital have their live saved because.

Yeah, and the idea of having Apple Watch with built in cellular two and then you're all on the Apple family plan and like your parent could call you and say hey, I fallen or something, or they get immediate emergency help, whereas their phone could be in another room. Right, all those uses seem pretty useful.

Yeah, it's just what ED is asking. Here is a question I think many people ask about wearables. And I know, basically we spent most of the show just being like crapping on everything, But I like my orr A ring when it fucking works and you know what is that not the tech industry right now, but what Ed's asking

Can I want to use it for that? Yes?

Yeah, this has a use case of.

So very specific use case. I may be an unpopular thing. Does anybody remember the job own up I was carrying back that forum of fact was just you were you were definitely you were in pr at that point.

But that was on the screenless fitness track and I hear that, yeah, yeah, I hear that quite a lot from different people who were just like.

I don't like the smart watch.

It was thin, it was really light, but they couldn't get the h the engineering right.

Because kind of crap a building stuff sometimes.

Well their speakers were great, yeah, but they up destroyed them because the because it was a flexible bracelet.

It feels like a more challenging product.

It was really hard to build them. They kind of bet the whole company on it all fell apart. So you do you have any wearables, Divendra. I have an Apple Watch, and I always forget to wear it, so that's the thing. But I love the idea of an Apple watch. And certainly I'm thinking about my parents. I'm thinking about my daughter to who's six years old now, and parents have to think that devices for your kids. I don't I don't want to put a tracker on her.

But you don't want to give her a phone want to lose.

And also like if she's off somewhere doing activity, she misses the bus or something. I would love an emergency way for me to when in a couple of years, not at six, but at eight to ten. Yeah, be able to call me, be able to call for help something even just hit a button, or to see where they are on GPS if they're on like a school trip or something, because there are trips where kids get left behind. So you know, not surely not like the most important thing in the world, but it is something

I kind of want to put one on my mom. There you go, No, she's totally fine. She's doing well. She just forever does not pick up her phone. So it'd just be nice to know that too. My mom would probably not hear this, but I'm sorry mom in advance if you do so.

Devandra changing gears slightly?

Sure?

Have you seen anything exciting on the show for anything? Really been reving your engine?

Revving my engine. I spend a lot of time within the video, and I know you guys have been talking about in the video by all means, yah, I do think it is interesting watching in videous transformation to this sort of like AI Superpower Company. But I also feel like you know, I've been covering in video for a while. I've covering Jensen Wong for a while. Did you guys see that CES keynote?

I didn't see the keynote and just not it was not good for him. When you say you've been covering them for a while, yeah, how long?

I don't know, twenty ten, like pretty much since I started doing tech stuff.

Thank you. I knew that was the case. But for listeners this is important. A lot of the people not Max Journey, he's a dog, but a lot of people talking about Nvidia now have recently started, yeah, writing, and they.

Say the video And when you say that, I know you're opposed.

People say the video.

People say Gary Shapiro said the video on stage, Jensen Hoong, so.

Didn't he yell as well?

That was there for that too the way I think, I think Jensen's going through some stuff.

So why was it bad for Jensen?

Bad for Jensen? Because that was like a two hour long keynote where the thing everybody was there filling that auditorium. They just want to hear about the video cards, give me the new RTX fifty ninety or some shit, and he's been maybe five or ten minutes talking about those things. The rest of it was on their robotics AI virtualized

He's trying.

Also what they're they're real, they're real or industrial metavers that they're trying to construct this world which everything versus the omniverse. Plus in video Cosmos, it's a whole Cosmo Cosmo. So omniverse is this sort of like simplistic view of a three D environment that you could use to train a robot or something. Cosmos is a real almost looks like a real world version of that environment, so like

This is actually describing saying it for many reasons.

So it's black mirror. You have them through that simulation over and over, get better at it, and that's the whole thing. Really interesting pitch, maybe not for the CS audience, and that's kind of that kind of affected him. And then yeah, the next morning there was a press Q and A where people were asking questions, but he also seemed really uncomfortable and also like, yeah, he was really picking on the sound guy that poor Q and A because he was like, the speakers are pointing at me

Thing, man, It is such a penis.

But I think he's just like he admitted in that Q and A that he did a bad job at the keynote.

He was like, I failed to stors love to hear.

Yeah, that's what you want to hear.

That's what you wake up thinking about.

I don't feel I mean, dude due to a multi billionaire.

Now yeah, oh I feel I'm laughing at his pain.

He's dealing situation stuff. But yeah, the in video stuff is interesting. The video cards are interesting because they're leaning more in AI.

So tell me about with the video cards. So the lower end one is meant to be the equivalent of the forty ninety.

I want to say.

This is where it gets confusing because they using DLSS. They're using DLSS, so you explain that for US AI upscaling. So these new cards have DSS four, which have AI upscaling to basically smooth out frame rates so they can generate for every single real frame that video card renders, it can generate three artificial frames, which kind of smooth out gameplay. So if you have a really fast monitor,

Yeah, and then you can go back to the last car, the forty ninety, and be like, well, this is not generating as many frames that one could generate one frame per every real frame. So the number they can they can say the number is right. But if you turned off the LSS and you just looked at pure gaming performance without any of the AI stuff, certainly like the forty, the fifty seventy would not be as fast as the forty ninety. So they're picking and choosing more marketing for

So, and just before we get off the subject, so in Vidio you've been covering since twenty ten, pulling these games for a while, but they always have dumb, puffed.

Up marketing they have. But also the thing is like, what's change? Then they do succeed, like some things do work the LSS. When they first talked about it, even Jensen admitted he said nobody believed him that this idea of using AI to upscale a lower resolution to a higher resolution on a monitor gives you less like processing power on the cards, so it gets you higher frame rates. Nobody believed that would work, but it turned out it

Yeah, so Victoria returning to you, anything good, I know, good stuff, like, Okay, what's actually been exciting? What's this question with some alum because most people have had nothing?

So I actually so my favorite thing on the show. It's it's kind of girly, but it's Laorel sell bioprint.

Okay.

It is a it's meant for something like a dermatologist or an esthetician's office, and it is a machine. Basically, you take these skin strips and you take a sample from your skin, you put it in a chemical buffer solution, you stick that on a cartridge, and then that cartridge is stuck into this machine. It goes beat up, boop uh, and then it tells you if your skin's chronological age and biological age match, or if you know your skin's

Of things, and so what is the thing you meant to do with this information?

It is meant to help you wade through the cesspool of skin fluencers hawking different products to you. So like if you are you know, if you're a woman, probably you're on TikTok and they're like, oh my god, you need to buy a retinal. You need to have retinol every day. I'll like, as soon as you start thirty or you will shrivel up like an old crone. And that retinyl is vitamin A and it is the most clinically studied skincare ingredient. It is like basically what dermerenttologists

Yeah, that's what she really has.

Very cool and so like from different things that you notice. So like for me, it said, you have some issues with skin tone evenness, and yeah, I know that. I can see it and it pisses me off and I'm trying all these different things.

How do you deal with something like that?

So it's called hyperpigmentation, and there are different ingredients that are said to fight that. So vitamin C is one. Another one is nice cinemid. There's just like tranexamic acid and all of those. So you know, like the girlies, we're on TikTok and we are learning about all these ingredients that we are supposed to use.

In different serium.

It will give you more direction.

It'll give you more direction. And like when I was talking to them, they're like, it's going to help you know what not to buy. That's because like when you have all these marketers and these influencers, they're just telling you all these things that Like I was on there, I was like, do you know what the Creans use? The Koreans use beffita? And I'm like, what the fuck is buffita?

On social media? So like the other thing is you go into Sephora or something and be like, help me out, and I have bad skin, so I have to look at this stuff too. And they will either you will get a good salesperson who's like I got you, I will take care, or you get somebody who wants to make a lot of money and they will lead you to, oh you need nice in am, I do you need hyaluronic acid? All the fun stuff and plus retinol, and then your your face is a mess.

And then you end up with a ten step skincare routine, which was popular like ten years ago in Korea. Is like super nuts. Like my cousin's kid is like eleven years old and she came to She's like, let me show you my skincare routine. I'm like, you're eleven. The only thing you should be using is moisturizer and sunscreen, like.

A Dexta styles set up.

Yeah. No, And she was breaking out and I was like, you know why you're breaking out. You're overloading your skin and you're too young. You don't need any of this. It is a moisturizer and a sunscreen.

So does this thing give direction or is it just like it does.

Give you direction? Because for me it's so for me, it was telling me like, oh, you have hyper pigmentation, but technically the proteins you're not prone to it, so there's something.

Well the consequence is there?

So that means that means like I should probably be using a vitamin C. I don't currently, so I'm like, oh, I was trying a different ingredient obviously working, so like I can look for a vitamin C. It told me I was responsive, like highly responsive to retinol, which means it will likely work better for me than someone who's intolerant of it, and so that means I should probably use a retinal.

So this and the actual consequence is here is saving hundreds of dollars.

Hundreds of dollars because these things are not cheap to buy. Like, yeah, if you know what drunk Elephant is, I do not. It's a very premium brand. And Sphara you walk in, one bottle like seventy million liters is like one hundred and fifty dollars. Like these things can.

Cost a lot of them.

All this pressure on social media to buy Bye Bye, to fix every problem, make every part.

Like during the pandemic, skincare just blew up and then like Korean skincare is like super popular now because you look at you look at the stars of Squid Game, how do you think they are? They're like fifty five and their skin looks incredible. They do not look whatever. And it's because they take skin gear so much more seriously.

Right, there was a booth I stopped by.

It was a Korean skincare company with some tech, and they had like four pamphlets that had nothing to do with the tech and just talked about why skincare was so big as an industry Korea huge, which was which I thought was really interesting because I feel like almost every single pamphlet I've read besides those ones, has been trying to trying to pitch me or sell me on the tech, which I suppose that probably wasn't a way.

I mean, it's.

Interesting because there's there's an obsession with the lighter skin too, Like whenever I go to computechs, the stuff you see on billboards and everything is like, oh yeah, I want to light complexion, you want a fair complexion, and it all feels like this is all kind of I was like, I see what you're up to, eyes, Like there is

I mean, I'm really glad you brought that up though, because The thing is with CS is it is very easy, as I will know, to be a bit cynical, definitely pessimistic. When you look around, it's just everything has AI on it.

It is nice to.

Hear, especially for the tech industry, something for a woman that is like very like this seems extremely helpful.

It seems like it comes outside the tech industry too, right, it's more of a look.

It's like using technology to solve a problem, which is usually not the tech industry's idea.

And the funny thing is that people hear Lorial and they don't think they do tech. They have been a huge presence at this show for six, seven, eight years now and they are doing interesting things with tech. And you know, I hate the term fem tech because they usually talk about it in a certain way. Usually has to do like reproductive health tracking, YadA, YadA, YadA. But like, they have a really high tech hair dryer that uses infrared light to help you your hair.

Why is that good?

Because if you use so most hair dryers and hair dryers are gadgets. Okay, they are the they're the second most power intensive thing in your house besides the my like, I think they use more power than a microwave really yeah, and you use them for a long period of time. They use heating coils, and that heating coil like you want your hair to drive fast, you put it really close to your head.

It damages your hair, of course, because there's a giant heat.

Right, heat, so you can hold it from further away, use less heat, use less damage, and save a lot of energy. So it's like good and it's like not the sexiest thing in the world per se. It's not things like, oh my god, we're going to revolutionize the world.

That is different than the Dcon because they did try to revolutionize.

So the Dyson still is using airflow, right, it is like airflow versus They did a lot of cool things with airflow and engineering with the motor.

This is cool.

This is not actually applying heat to it.

No, it is applying heat, but it's applying heat from the light.

It's light.

So it's like the way to describe it is like when you have something rain right and there's no sun. The next day, the water will dry, but not quite as well because it's like the wind and whatever will evaporate the water. But if it's you have rain and the next day there is sun and wind.

It dries much faster.

It's the same concept but applied to your hair.

And I will respond to one thing you said, No, I actually think things for woman's skin and hair dryers that are less damaging to hair are actually the real revolutions. If CS was old shit like this, it would actually be a really cool show. If it was like ways to use less water in a tap, let's still get you as wet as you need to.

Like it's people.

I think it's because like the industry is like full what the press industry for tech is like full of men.

I mean we kind of proved that the beginning, like I'm actively.

Apolo, I'm actively the only woman in this room. But it's like no. But it's like they have a lipstick printer. That's pretty cool. You can take a you can app you look at yourself, you can try out different colors and then custom print to the actual thing. If you have a celebrity that whose makeup look you like, you can take a photo, you can color pick their exact shade of lipstick and print it for yourself and then take it on the go.

It's very thoughtful.

They have like a hair dye wand that like precisely applies dye so you don't like destroy your bathroom. Hair dyeing is like a ritual where it's like your bathroom will never be the same. It takes forever to clean up this. You can just brush your hair and you've dyed it. That's it super cool, so.

Real future, I wish we'll see us was this Sadly we're wrapping this book, d vingdro hottawall were came people find you.

Find me at Engadget. I do the Engadget podcast there and a podcast about movies and TV at the Filmcast at the filmcast dot com.

Lovely Victoria, we can people find you.

I am at Vicm's song on all social handles, but god, we got to find an alternative to Twitter. But then I'm also at the Verge, so you can find.

Me there Wonderful and mister Newsletters, Detect, Bubble dot Substack dot com podcast This Machine Kills, and Big Black Jacobin on Twitter and blue Sky.

You can find me hanging from various banisters as I crawl into your room to make you listen to the podcast the second time. I need these downloads. Everyone. We'll be right back after these insane advertisements that will blow your mind. And we're back by the Thing, Download the Thing or else. We have now been joined by mister David Roth of Defecta.

Hello.

He is fresh from the hyper Loop, which he described as thrilling.

Yeah, it was amazing. I had no idea that you could take a car through a tunnel like that was something that.

Yeah, how was the car right?

I did it too? Did you actually?

Oh my god?

You know there's all this talking dune about ancestral memory, but nobody ever remembers what it's like to be that that sperm swimming through the fromordio ooze. And you know what, if you want to know what that is, get in one of these uh tesla's and travel through these patchy white ooz looking walls and the fake rocks and the.

Very short list. It's like a very useless distance.

Yes, and I cannot emphasize enough how walkable some of the like basically a football field. You're in the thing for like less than two minutes, but.

They spent years digging into the ground to do this. I spend minutes thinking about why this is amazing.

I am the first time I went in it, and the only time I went in it the cut, we had a traffic jam and I just started to panic. I'm going to be honest, Yeah, because I'm very sure I was very closetrophobic. I was like, uh, I was doing not the Tina from Bobsburg.

Whenever you're going to the underground tunnel, like into Manhattan or something, you're like, it's could be bad.

Nowhere else to go. You're just in the tube. And so yeah, that's the thing I never loved. I'm not like a big height scot. I'm not a big confined space. I'm just a real cowardly guy. I'm always afraid every moment in my life. But in those tunnels, it's like it's a big there's other cars in there. It feels like it should in it together right where there's a whole.

Daylight.

Or if you get an ounce of the car in a tunnel, theoretically walk around the cause in this one, I don't know what you'd get out to me.

The tunnel is the size of the car, which I didn't care for. Also, very steep getting in and out, even by the sort of degraded standards of what we're talking about here, which is basically like getting in a car with one or two other people you don't know, and then traveling the distance of two football fields, Like it's still like it shouldn't be as unsafe feelings.

I feel like we gotta clown the hyperloop more. Yeah, just how dumb and useless it existed to stop the all.

There's some journalism I will say, defector has we have taken that torch and run with it. But there's also only so many things you can say.

It's only so far it goes right.

Yeah, I kind of remind people like this was the thing Elon Muski's to like kill the high speed rail.

Yes, correct, you got car in tunnel. This traces all it took.

It also cost fifty three million dollars yeap, and it costs oh wow, yeah, fifty three million to build, and then forty seven million for the two tunnels and three stations.

That's awesome, great, all every fucking penny. Yeah, especially as somebody who frequently rides the subway where one car can hold like a train can hold like twelve hundred people, right, Like in this case, it's like a car where there's a guy that helps you get into it, and then there's a guy that drives it. So the ratio of people helping to people riding is either one to one or very nearly one to one. And also it doesn't work like every time people get out there just like

Percent of that. Amazing.

Yeah, the super stuff great is the modern day Tony Stock. Yeah, he's amazing.

He's so good. So what did you see on the floor exactly?

So I tried to see as much as I could in terms of like I wanted to see the sort of the high and low of it, because I know that when we were talking about it yesterday, I had only been to the uh sort of the space here in the Venetian and a lot of that was like, you know, sort of their products, like they're identifiably like things that you know. In many cases they're like you

Can say it again, all right, Cool.

It is like the biggest of the big brands have their sort of like LG experience stuff and this is like a huge, like thousand square foots yeah, big awesome, deep pile carpet, Like it's like a pleasure to experience.

It's like like those those like self contained but.

One can eat vegetables.

Certainly that's a practical that's a thing that something does. Yes, and so so all of those items were neat to me. But then the smart home thing was basically like the most degrading, paying imaginable where they're like, is this what you hogs want? You want a robot to pick your clothes for you and then map your commute? I bet you want that, right?

Do you think that?

What if we told you that the robot cared for you?

There was a lot of best friends.

Yeah, there's so that language, especially LG had it.

Where is this affectionate intelligence intelligence Jesus Christ, empathetic AI?

Two years later it dies because the cloud service, right.

And it's going to make you feel like premium plan.

You killed him. You killed the guy that picks your pants every day, but.

You can bring them back to life for nine extra dollars a month. Did you guys hear about the robot for kids Moxie, Yeah, the one that tell us the story. I mean that the Moxie was just like very expensive robot for kids developed by the I Robot CTO. So somebody who like really wanted to build a companion, especially for kids who are maybe special needs or autistic kids and just something for them to interact with learn language. You're later that thing dies. Now you have to tell

It has been realizing I'm the guy in like these sci fi movies. You'd be like, I better not fucking see you with a cyborg.

Yeah, they had there's like a new version of what you're describing Amy Ai and what was this similar thing looked like a ferbie. It blinked and it talked in a childlike voice, and it was a companion. So this is again one of those things where like you kind of do got to hand it to him in the

Cute robots, Like yeah, a lot of those categories, Like there was one that just stares at you. It just like looks up at you, and it's like, Hi, that.

Was I don't need like an aggrod NPC from Morrow Wind just walk.

On some level, it's like it is technically impressive to be able to figure out a way to hack into what we view as cute, figure out a way to get something that you're gonna let into your home like that, But then it immediately brings you the next question, you need.

It, righteah?

And that's exactly that's where I was going with it too, that it's like as a design thing, it's like it's

I am a child and a lot of experience with special aids kids as well. And guess what, this stuff's fucking repugnant to me. It is disgusting to me the idea that and I understand it's like, yeah, companionship, what have you. But it's like any time I don't mean you to bendra any of these companies that try and suggest, oh, this is the we're going to use the computer to fix your sons, because that's what the actual suggestion is. It's not the it's not that they're like this is

That was the bit that So the thing that like kind of left me feeling sad ish leaving the convention center was that aspect of it, right, that all of it is sort of not just so the smart home was bizarre to me because it was infantalizing. But there's also and this was the bit that you're that Dan told me about, was it? He was like, this is also great to talk to more people with that, Like thousand yards stare, they've been to thirteen ces is.

Like the dad nothing God.

Yeah, so he was like, oh, there's probably six ces as ago.

Drag on a cigarette pre pandemic time.

Yes, you have to imagine this is actually just like a perfectly cheerful man the British accident.

Yeah British, right, he does.

But he was talking about an lg AD that they had then it like clearly had stayed with him. Do you know the video that I'm talking about on it? So this is it's like, uh it was. This was their like sort of smart home thing that they were working with then. And it seems like an important distinction that this is like a pre pandemic thing because so much of this stuff feels like it's designed to be

Is this the way, kid?

No? This is so here he wakes up, the thing is like hey, good morning, Like you know it's seventy one degrees outside. Would you like me to pick your outfit out for you and you just say thank you, and then it does. And then it comes out of like a steamer that's like built that's in your home, you know. So everything's just your fresh and flies. You leave the home, you get in a car, the same

That's that's just in that robot is just an Indian mother. Yeah, it is just wake up, my son, here's your outfit, here's your clothes. I found a date for you. That's all it is.

But this is the bit that was like striking me about like there's no agency day of this. He was like the Dan's words on it. He was like, this guy just gets bullied all day AI, he doesn't make a single choice all day long.

Actually sounds great, though, Yeah, I'd love to wake up with that.

I think a lot of people would want they would find some sauce in reducing choices.

I am mostly kidding, by the way, the idea of waking up and the well, yes, yes, I am nothing like this. I just wake up and read three different apps that tell me how to fail every day. Like I just go and read pages of stuff that twangs my emotions. And then I go and like use the text step to text my therapist. I read a post again. Yeah, it's totally different.

That's the bit that's weird about this too, though, is that, like, so there's something that's what made me sad about it was the idea of just being like a flag raw goose and like your whole life is just piped down your throat like fun and you're just like, oh, thank you. I feel this really is the hogs, It's the whole, the whole. This is what you guys like like just eat out this trough, like we've taken care of it all you need.

To doing towards Wally predicted different.

That's a ship one's it doesn't even work this way, but I do feel like it, So it doesn't.

The fact that it doesn't work is like funny to me, But it is also like the fact that they're promising this is that was the part that was like uncanny about it, Like the idea of you want to take all of this mastery that you have that's made your products so unfathomably cool and like project it across every spectrum of somebody's life, like to a certain extent, like

Do cars, you know, like we're moving beyond old, we're in micro led now and that stuff is it's it's wild.

From are going.

Yeah, But that's that's the idea though, is the sort of like I don't want to be protected from every aspect of like being a lot fel like.

There's another thing that pisses me off about this. First of all, they're lying just right, like the first.

Of all the line.

But two, if you look at how the tech industry actually treats customers, do you think that any of this would, even if it did work, be good. It's like I'm going to meet with a woman who is actually a pig butchering scam waiting to happen, and my car ends up pulling over to the side of the road because there was a traffic cone in the in the road and I'm late for the day and the other woman's

As an audio medium. But it looks amazing, thank you, thank you.

David's steaming right now. I am just steaming here. But even then that thing works mostly, but it just doesn't get all the wrinkles.

It's like they can't even get the fucking steamer right.

Yeah.

The problem is these companies think all we want is no friction. They think we want to glide through life like we're fully lubricated. You know, it's just like, oh, no problems. I don't want to think. I want to think about something to remove the friction.

This is my one regret for CS. I didn't get to visit the fintech section because the section, and that's where they believe in removing friction and they do. Whether or not they do so is whether or not doing so is good or bad. You know, let's see, it's almost always and not almost always, it is always bad, you know, when one of these fintech firms removes friction

But also these companies don't remove that I would love.

Look, perhaps I don't need to be fully loved or partially loved like I would like less friction instead as I as you heard in one of the previous episodes, it's like there's more friction than ever. And even with these companies they sell this dream, and LG, I think is one of the more guilty ones. They have all the apps in the world I think I have. I forget which washer I have, but I think I have an LG washer, And it's like there's an.

A the best appliances. Yeah, butce is are good.

But notice that there's never like they like those things, don't like the ways they change are just like clothes are more reliably clean.

Yeap.

The extensions from there have never worked because I feel like I've been to multiple ces is where there's been some form of demo where someone goes like, Elgae Intelligence, please please warm up my bagel I've already put it in the toaster of Michael. Yeah, it's already in there, and don't worry. I already emailed your wife. And it's like these things are meant like they've been promising this, but they don't fucking work.

It's just it's just make believe. It's pure fantasy. But the thing about the friction thing which I've noticed since I've been I've been see us since twenty ten, and I've just had a four year gap because pandemic stuff and I had kids. I didn't want to leave my wife along with young kids.

You mighttter have to explain why you didn't come.

I got it. This is my duty.

I should have to explain what you're twenty eight years Yeah, but the whole the rise will startup, the rise of startups.

Of what Consumer Electronics has been trying to do for the past fifteen years is just to remove that friction. And I think we've only really started to realize you remove friction, you remove humanity. Yeah, and to a certain extent, we need we need, we need a little friction in our life with challenges, we growth challenges. But maybe it's better for you to like not have an automatically prepared

A consumer is not a person, right, and this is this is a key part of I think the quest to remove friction. A consumer is someone who is is anxious or eager to move from one transaction to the next, and any time in between those transactions, any time between transforming labor into some sort of productive and is wasted.

And I think what it is.

Is they all moving friction, just not for us, it's just between us and the purchase.

Yeah, And that's again like sort of this brings us back to like the sort of the uncanny aspect of it in terms of being like, it's not necessarily making my life any easier. It is simply making it easier for me to like it's more transactive, right, Yeah, to like be productive and to consume more effectively or whatever. But it's not adding value in any way.

Like I think about with these chatbots that are coming in for therapy, it's like, is the therapy that they're offering going to actually help?

No?

But now it's.

Actually a more it's it's a more transparent and quantifiable market, so you can search out for whatever product you think is going to be a fit for your specific issue. Whether or not it's going to help you is another question, but you can find it and identify.

It's one less human you have to deal with, yes, which is also the less humans. Like it's part of using apps instead of calling a restaurant or something.

Yeah, I will fully admit like a mental health thing with me. I've loved that for years, and I found it because I got my various issues with anxiety, and we're not wanting to go outside and being scared of talking to people. Long story short, I got over that. But also there was a certain level of like, yeah, the Internet is really intense, just really good at selling you those abstractions between people so you can live a weird hermit life. And I absolutely didn't.

And then you think society is you, and these technicals.

Exactly become more exactly less experiences you don't grow like.

And this is this is why I hate the stupid the Google thing where it'll call a restaurant and make a reservation.

For I do like that for my accent.

I hate it so much because it's like, what burden are you putting on this restaurant. It's like, oh, I'm busy, Like I'm dealing with real customers, real reservations, this fucking robot.

I will argue my accent and when I call and I have to spell xron or even just like my numbers. So many people don't understand it. I've had to like.

Because you're like, Z I T I sound exactly.

I have to americanize my accent to a certain extent.

That yeah, But also in that case, an app way too, like a thing that actually makes life better for a restaurant, Hey just log this reservation please, yeah, rather than that's a case where you don't need to call the manager of the restaurant to like do all this stuff. And that's a case where an app based thing could be better. But now we're abstracting to the point where a robot is calling a number and talking to this human. The human does not know it's a robot talking to them.

User, and this is something that's been like a recurring theme in the conversations that that I've been a part of for this where it's like they invented a solution to like a pretty minor problem and now are sort of like, I mean not to.

No, no, no, living experience whatever.

Also mine is like minor in comparison to like.

But yes, and so in this case, it's like there's a you know something like that. It can't be easy, right,

Because Cory doctor I made this point last year on the podcast. He said that algorithms are inherently conservative. They move people towards the norm that is actually culturally dangerous. I think it will eradicate people of Calais, or eradicate culture that made America and made many countries the way they are. And something that you're seeing on a much well not necessarily a small scale, with social media, with what's popular, what's popular on TikTok, the infant int of

Right, because every I mean like everybody's gonna wind up dressing the same.

Yeah, like that's exactly and that's presumably I guess on the training data that it's given, which will probably lean more white. Right.

But this is also like one of those things where there's like this is again like a very labor intensive solution. Yeah. Problem, they're really breaking the back of it. Like if you're somebody that just has like sometimes you got stripes and plaids on, like you can fix that, Like someone could just tell you that that doesn't work.

You can learn that lesson once in your life and apply it moving forward. Yes, yes, I'm still waiting for them to like, hey, there are homes. I think most home tech is like kind of garbage even No, yes, I also there's a sale in the LG fridges with the little windows, and I got an LG fridge with the window because it looks cool. Yeah you know, you

Family and a few other things.

That possibility is still there, but nobody. Nobody's doing that because alg is just like, hey, I wanna yeah, I want to control your life rather than do the simple task that nobody likes.

Also, there's something quite joyful about when you're like, it took me into like the last end of last year to really enjoy dressing myself, and there's something fun about it. It's a quote Derek Guya, clothing is like social language. Forgive me, I have a misquote you, Derek. It's like there's something about it and it takes a while before you work it out. You feel very self conscious. I don't think an AI telling you what to wear fixes

There's always in between, right, you don't have to be like that. Maybe we don't need any dictator, but hey, you have these clothes, just try try this, try this, And actually I think you be look at like having a friend who's supportive to be like, hey, try this. I know you don't know how to wear it, but maybe it would look good.

That's that's an important distinction, I think because.

To mac Levine, by the way, he does that for me on text, very nice. Yeah.

I was talking to Philip before when you guys were recording black A about his experience with Pandora, which I didn't use, but was always the one that like my friends, and he was sort of explaining what it was like as it got worse, like how did I'm talking about you, dude, Philip walking there the like? Basically that was a sort of like of all the sort of algorithmic musical recommendation applications that have existed, that's the one that I think

It's like I think of it as the early on when Spotify, when the Europeans only had Spotify, they lorded that Americans can't stream music.

And it was just yea, all right, so that makes sense, like the convenience aspect of it. So what Pandora did was like basically like you would and maybe you can even just grab the mic and talk about it because actually understands how this stuff works. But I thought this was interesting in terms of how it got worse, is what I was saying on.

Us, all right.

So the exciting thing for Pandora for me was the seating where it was actually looking for a flavor of what you were interested, looking for the sound you're after, not oh, you like rockabilly, let me give you an entire catalog of rockabilly. It would ask you for what is your inspiration point? And the best inspiration point I gave it was Tom Waite's black Hole Sun Pink Floyd's Echoes. Okay, so to deeply confuse the algorithm forever.

For go ahead, doctor Jones, try to.

Figure out what to give me for that. And it did.

But my goal behind that was and what Pandora did a great job doing was fine things I'd never heard of that I might like that fit in that gap. Yeah, I found so many bands I'd never knew.

I have found and something that will both age me and piss some people off. My favorite comment, I remember my Pandora experience. In was out in Penn State, and I put in like a bunch of bands, and I got Caven Bank called cave In. They did some called an Anchor I think it was off a bank of an album called Antenna. Just fucking up every word in that sentence, and I remember being like, this is so good.

Now.

The funny thing is that this is Caven's one alt rock album surrounded by hardcore music that was just impossible to listen to for me, And so I stopped using Pandora because every other cave In album and I listened to was completely insane for me, and I assumed that there were two cave Ins for years. Anyway, The point is, after this point, I have never had a recommended band on any system ever, not Spotify, Apple Music, anything that has ever made me feel anything.

It's always been shit.

Apple Music wants me to listen to in my hand by Sound good, whatever song I'm listening to. It's like you remember a pretty Noose by Sound, you have a black Hole sun by Sound.

This shit, it's just so frustrating that you should say that was your experience, Like how it broke down.

So where it broke down and Pandora itself fall apart is the seeds started bleeding into each other and it basically learned me better and better and stopped recommending anything new. I mean after after I had found the Dreadnoughts, which was a really great band, which then led me to a handful of other bands I'd never heard before. That was pretty much the last thing Pandora found free that was new and exciting. Since then, the closest I've come

So as we wrap up the episode, Devendra, I know you have to go in a minute. I would like to know, is that anything that really like made smile shows anything?

Well, yeah, I'll show it up that I like a computer, A simple a simple computer in the aces Zen book A fourteen. This thing it weighs under two point two pounds, and I hold this thing in.

That it's a real computer.

That's a real computer.

It's less than a hardback book where we go.

Half a pound less than a MacBook Air. And I'm like, ass, how did you do this? Because ASS is normally the company that's out there copying Apple basically, and I think they've gotten to the point where they've innovated. They do stuff like dual screen computers. I don't think those are as useful. This is just a simple, really really like computer has an old ed screen. Macbok Air doesn't have old it has ports. It has all got dam ports. You want USB, a USB, C HDMI in a thing

What was the keyboard on it?

It's not bad, It's not bad. Aces makes okay keyboards. That TAD is pretty good. Subscription model. Uh yeah, I think it's gonna be like twelve hundred like they don't it's Aces. They don't go too hard. But this is a snap Dragon CPU, so it has that thing where.

It's what's the limitation.

It's going to be emulating some older Windows apps we last year from what we saw on the surfaces, like, it's actually gotten better than it has been years. I think for most people it'd be fine. But man, a two point two pound computer just like a little laptop that is like basically feels like a tablet and can.

Do everything you would. Did you write this up. I wrote it up. It's up there right. Actually it's one of our Best of CS Awards. Oh yeah, okay, wellcome people find you to Vendra.

Yeah, I'm at Devendra on you know, Blue Sky and all the fun places at the Filmcast at the filmcast dot com or a podcast about movies and TV and Gadget and the Gadget Podcast.

Check me out there, lovely. David.

Defector dot Com is the website. The Distraction is the Defector podcast. There's a Hallmark movie podcast. I'm mentioning it every other time. So this is called It's Christmas Town. Thank you. And uh yeah, I'm David j Roth on.

This Machine Kills is my podcast.

The tech Bubble dot Substack dot com is my newsletter, Big black Jack to beIN on x the Everything site, and Blue Sky is where I live online.

You can find me on Google type in what happened to Google search? Or who is Prabagar Ragavan? And I should pop up now after I stopped speaking, you must start purchasing. You are a consumer, As Ed said, follow this by consuming what's next, don't think, especially if it's one of the ones that embarrasses me. And we're back and now we are joined by mister Phillip Broughton, the health physicists that we know and love that has been giving us drinks all the time.

Hating film.

I think it's funny though, that story about Pandora and this recommendation system that used to work but doesn't yet the company seems to still. It feels symbolic of everything. It feels like everything's just kind of slowed down, and even CS doesn't even seem that willing to convinces anymore that based on everything you guys at David have seen, it feels like there's a lot of just this is what you want, rather than hey, we're fucking selling you something, right.

Yeah, it's interesting, right? Does that sound about right to you?

Yeah?

You know I and if I'm wrong, please correct me.

And I also think i've you know, today, I tried to shift gears and instead be like, okay, let's pretend the things I'm coming into.

Are like for a real person.

Right sent and kind of falling into like a drain around the smart home stuff and being like I'm not and most human beings are not the target audience for this in a way that feels like a like a snake eating its own tail. I mean, like, you know, I went to a lot of the uh there's a section that's pretty much just like how to build your own power grid, you know, for your own home or if you're going camping and you can't be offline.

Oh yeah, the anchor is yes, anchor slow to me, but yeah, going on.

No, I mean it's like it's like it is fascinating that you're able to literally power the equivalent of like

Of a house.

Yeah, and there's some of these people who just to be clear, there are plenty of people who go camping and do that, and it's like, I want to power a grill. I want to I want to power this, but it's not like you don't need six watts.

Yeah, reactor, that's what I'm surprised no one's trying to sell.

That was the thought that I had looking into that stuff too, because there's a part of me that's like, oh, that's cool. You couldn't do that, you know, like whatever, five ten years ago, and then to see like, I guess this is the sort of thing where it's like you find this solution to I mean, it's not a super pressing problem, but it's a it's a solution, like you went from a thing that didn't work to a thing that does work. But then all you can do

I have an anchor charger on. Make sure because like all of the dense charges are really cool. Because the gallium nitrate stuff, which Phil I will have you explain in the moment.

I know you want what that means. Either it batteries, it has a battery at.

You, I will explain Gallium nitre is a thing where I don't know the science stuff, and I assume the flipping science guy might.

Now I'm f it's really more of a mortimer. If you think about it.

You should. You should riff tell us what you think.

I can actually tell you what it does more than what I'm doing with the subject of this podcast. No, it's it basically allows them to make more powerful charges in the much smaller form, which has led to battery charges that can charge more powerfully and that much smaller, And it's really cool. But then you get to this stuff where it's like what if you had six hundred thousand m a h and you could power a house, and you could power your friend's house, you could live.

Certain point you don't you just don't need more. Yeah, that's the base thing. To Edward's point, I thought was really this was the thing that was very much on my mind looking at a lot of the smart home stuff was like, I think a lot of people. Let me not to say that this is like, you know, it's obviously it's elite stuff. This is like concept car shit. I don't think that. I don't know how many LG smart homes exist in the wild, but is it like

But oh no, I was just gonna say, we live in New York.

You know.

It's like in New York, you know, we've had all these private public partnerships to expand connectivity, and have they done jack shit? I mean to the extent that, like you, you know, you to not until something else happens you realize how bad you have it and how much at the mercy of the firms you are to get any sort of fix going on.

Right.

So, the thing that comes to mind immediately as you're telling me about these ridiculous generators battery packs, there's generators substitutes is the experience of the most recent fires that happened in Santa Cruz. Now, since Los Angeles is in mind, has left PG and E service in the Santa Cruz Mountains deeply fractured and fragile. Right, So they offered to do power walls for a whole bunch of people because

Yeah, I understand. I wonder next to because it's like a bummer to think about that.

Yeah, this is CEO, but they're also selling it to an audience that is.

Thinking about it.

Sure, but I'm saying, though we're one year away.

From Prepper has also come to mind. Yes, for off grid living.

But I think there's gonna this is my one CES prediction for twenty twenty six Preppers. I think there's going to be more Prepper sales. The idea of being able to live off of grid, the idea of being able to not rely on the power grid, which.

Some of the some of the marketing felt like a probe. There it was like explicitly on grid but also off grid. Yeah, and not just like RV living, but just if you for some reason happened to have a home that was off the grid needed to be powered, like it was a four bedroom apartment in the city, you know then.

But that's definitely that is interesting too, because I could definitely see that sort of because I got that sense of it that there was this sort of like it's a non political version of the idea of being like fully self reliant, you know, like you could do whatever you want to do. You'll never be inconvenience because of

Like classic in voter activity.

Yeah, loud speakers will continue to warm them.

Yes, get off your property, you are trespassing. I am a sovereign citizen. My name is LG. Sovereign citizen.

But also it's gonna bronche off from that, I think in a year and be like disaster relief. It's going to be like, hey, when shit starts breaking. And this is both the political and andym like, this is something the American power grid, the AI think has been pushing, the AI Generative AI and the data centers associated have been pushing the grid to its spring right, it was already old as shit, and so we're in this weird

Like the it appears that every single one of the modular nuclear power startups that have cut popped up in the last decade, and you just fucking modular nuclear startups or care for that at all?

Pocket sized reactors in.

A seriousness, please spell out what those mean though.

Okay, people are looking for sub gigawatt reactors that they can treat effectively as nuclear batteries. This is for to what end, so that you can go ahead and power just a neighborhood with your private nuclear reactor. Oh good, that belongs to you and the co op and you have nuclear power as a service. So nas where they will regularly come in and swap fuel out for you to keep your enclave perfectly powered, not on clay from fallout. That's a totally different thing.

And I'm going to talk about something more evil hoas.

That actually is the overwriting people who would be paying for it and administering it. So somehow with a license with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in less and this hasn't happened yet, the Nuclear Regulator Commission wanted to generally license one of these pocket nuclear reactors, except all of them have pivoted off this idea to We're going to make the power that supplies to make crypto happen, or make your AI happen because the grid is not stable enough.

All these react is real? Are there any of these actually out in or is this just marketing marketing?

They do exist.

We have built them before at experimental levels at the national labs and have never licensed them to be real.

Can you imagine these dipships?

You would actually buy one for an no enclave actually having a nuclear that that's actually in real districtive.

Microsoft nuclearner is sending me so fucking just an unbelievably reverse concept.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about No. Sorry, it is a perverse concept, you speacause I'm talking about like an HOA having one of these, and like judging by every hay I've ever seen, they would blow this thing up immediate.

This is one of the hopes to get them to generally license so you can't touch it. It goes in the ground. Your nice service people from Microsoft Nuclear will show up and that that is a subscription I told you as that's that's how you get them find they will go ahead and do the spot for it. All you can do as part of your neighborhood is just hook into your local grid and that's.

All you should do as a consumer. That is correct.

Honestly, that's still like that again, hate it, want to be clear getting it on the record, don't approve that as a business. That said, it's still better than giving it to like the single most disagreeable and ambitious person in your neighborhood. Like just the idea of like whoever your h o A president is like I trust Microsoft Nuclear over like Stacey.

Oh, you just made my asshole clench, But I don't like aout. The idea of being a health physicist, beholden to the head of the h oh.

Yeah, yeah, just getting some super officious email and that's why.

It sounds like fallout DLC.

Yeah, this sounds like, yeah, this could be a really banging movie.

But those are like isn't that like Mission Impossible three? Like suitcase nuke like that?

Thinking just like a like a country wide blackout or something just to you like do a day.

Uh uh, pitch the family that runs the Bond thing because they don't want to touch it with Amazon.

This James Bond idiots. You ever had a James Bond occasionally smokes weed? Yeah, I'm kind.

Of lazy because Bond. What if?

What if? James Bond smoked weed is probably the first real podcast idea show.

Just like I need.

Another good Indiegogo project.

You're back two of the movie Candy Flips and it's to his detriment.

They use it to kidnap his love and money.

Patty, this is a sativa.

Anyway.

Please let's talk about tech again.

That is weed is.

Not tech, but.

Together that's innovative.

Yeah, there is the weed innovation here. If you hear about this email me at easy at that offline dot com. I want to hear about that experience today.

I know you all talked about it yesterday, But when I was getting off the bus from the convention center, I discovered a whole other floor under the floor at the Venetian that the people the Eureka Zone whatever yesterday, which is basically just somebody.

Where you want tech tech.

Yeah, but it's also apparently that is the one where it's just like if you can fit in the room, they'll let you hang out. Yeah. I guess it's like whatever, So I'm gonna go down there and check that shit out either tomorrow.

I expect there will be a laser bong for you to see.

Yes, that's where the like the weed tech is being you know.

The funny thing is is with weed tech, not saying I smoke it or not, but like they have not really fixed grinders yet. Like that is just a weird industry where's like one that only kind of works. It's very strange, but I guess and like some of them not saying from personal experience, when you put the cone on, it's actually quite fiddly, and when you're using not quoting my specific experience or anything, because I'm being very clear about who uses this, not how the fuck the stoners

If you, if you did smoke weed, would you be a roller? Would you pearl your joints?

In this hypothetical scenario. I found one where you can just put the cone and then the grinder is on top of it. It's like fifty bucks. It changed my theoretical life.

Yeah, it would have.

It would have in this fan fiction.

In this fan fiction, we're talking in this simulation. I think I've even said it in another episode.

I don't know what I'm doing.

Two.

Yeah, this is Earth to Ed, But is it?

You would think that there would be more of that though, there would be more like maybe you'll see it when you go and look. Maybe I would love to hear the weed stuff for someone else. But also that's also one that feels solved as well, like at some point to.

A certain extent. Though again it's like that's the type of ship that I liked that I saw here, especially in the Venetian Yesterday is the attempt where it's just like it's inventor stuff. It's like taking a practical problem and then like working out some way to you know, fix it or make it. You know, it's not always affordable or whatever. But if the practical problem in question is like no soft serve in my house, yeah, like

I went to a coffee station and they were like, oh, it's AI powered.

And so I went.

So I got the coffee and I'm like, how's it AI powered? They're like, oh, well, this is a generator. I was like what, Yeah, what do you mean this is a generator? And so then I'm actually gave the coffee station a real look and I was like, oh, okay, you have the coffee thing here that's very small, and then right next to it is a massive generator you've stacked on here that kind of looks like it's the coffee machine, but it isn't.

What is it's It's called Ecoflow.

You know.

It's one of the ones I was talking to you about, which is like for your home thousands and thousands and thousands of watts. But they were they were just using it as an example to be like, oh, you like the coffee, Well, the coffee is plugged into a system that would be able to figure out whether it should draw from the grid.

Hey, which are the solar collar?

Is it waste heat from AI explation to make coffee?

No, the AI has nothing to do with coffee, but they say it has to do with coffee all. What it has to do is it's supposed to plug into your home to figure out energy efficiency, and if you got one of their coffee things, you'd happen to be able to take advantage of that so that you wouldn't be using.

More expensive qu on another subscription surface.

Yeah good, Yeah, once again one of those things that like everything that you describe there sounds okay enough to me. I just don't know why you have to say AI.

When you see yeah all the rest in me either.

Yeah, it's just confusing.

It's actually fun because I he's he had. I asked him a bunch about the AI. I couldn't really find it. Then we spent like ten fifteen minutes talking about my locks because he was like, oh, my god, What are are these these dreadlocks? How do you grow them? I heard that they're so com person's just he had so many questions.

It was fun.

It was actually white guy.

No, he's from China. Yeah, okay, that's so good.

I was not a great question, but you know I was.

I was being empathetic because I'm like, these are probably great first ones.

I've seen six other black people on the floor off the four days. You know, have you learned other names already? We not do each other every time we see each other.

How was the coffee?

It was?

It was regular, regular black coffee.

Okay, so it's so funny.

We've had better. Yeah, yeah, coffee, I've made better. And I don't drink coffee like that. By the way, I'm still mad just sitting here.

I thought of a better use case for AI to actually heat water to make coffee within their actual problems.

It went on the business of fixing problems.

Ship that's what I did.

Yeah, that's not why we come here. A consumer.

You must consume now if I can help, May I offer you something you can go troll people with if you happen to find the laser bone.

I don't like to do that kind of thing.

This family, so you can go ahead and ask them, So when you're you using the laser on the weed, does it how's it burning?

Does it burn it enough? How? Because uh, that's a problem.

I feel like there would be people. That's one of those spaces where sometimes you'll go someplace and the person that's selling it is just like they're doing their best.

Yeah, not that they're not like in love with it.

That just I'm just fucking him.

It is kind of amazing.

Though I've seen less weed tech than crypto, Like I've seen crypto three or four times now, but we zero.

Yeah, because I feel like if you had to pick one of those things to still exist in five years, yeah, I mean they probably both going.

To exist from previous Yes there was weed.

Tech, Yeah, maybe it's dying where maybe they forgot crypt So one was this this healthcare management devices on the blockchain, and the other was an AI trader that would make that was not financial advice, but it would make decisions.

For you every time there's any financial thing doing financial advice.

But I love the AI trade one because back to a conversation with my make Casey, It's like if the AI trade it was so good, why would you fucking sell it?

Yeah, I wouldn't to be so good.

You just turn this ship on and off you you're on your yaw Yeah, got me that. Fuck.

It also feels like again one of those things where it's like, for all the promise of of AI ostensibly, you know, all the promise of it, like everybody that uses it knows it doesn't work very well. And so the idea of being like, well, I'm not gonna like as part of my participation in the work of building an AI that works, I'm going to let it control my money while I do this is the all the others. This goes back to like some of the stuff about

When you bathe too.

Yeah, I appreciate that, but that is a good point, right, Like all of these a lot of AI is structured to be anti bureaucratic, cutting through the supposed layers of filth that prevent you.

From living your life.

Yep, right, But then when you get down to it, what's left a more space for them to commodify.

Well, now you don't have to write or create anything.

Yeah, you can affect it part of that filth.

But that's like there's this observation. I don't remember who who said it. There was basically like the idea that like because of it, maybe because of the people that invented it, or just maybe this is what it is most practically applied to that It's like it's doing all of the stuff that like is your life to give you more time to work.

When I think.

Realistic, like most people would be if you ask them, they'd be like, well, can it do my work for me? Like I want to learn how to paint or whatever you know, and that you don't have to pain.

Yeah, you can just ask for it to do.

This'll draw you whatever I want to do that you can't.

You can't imitate the cause, so why would you want to? Like you, but it can make it the best stick butts.

Yeah, I like when people tell me I will write my blogs for me. I don't know what I'm writing when I sit down, too, that's the muse. I don't know. I let the power of Christ consume me, and I write five and a half thousand words in two hours, and I research awhile as I go. I send it to my editor all caps.

Is this good?

And Matt Hughes then doesn't respond immediately because it's two in the morning there, and then I send him three more messages saying I changed a bit, I changed a bit, it's not I don't love it. And he has to explain to me why it's good.

That is the create What if an algorithm did that for you and you sat perfectly still for those three hours having no thoughts of any kind would.

Be nice having ADHD and tonightus That sounds great. Yeah, just And that's the thing. None of these things seem to take away suffering.

Well no, like it doesn't seem like they're reducing, like like they.

Get a little bit of what it means to be a person, but not the whole.

Yeah, I'm so I've been saying this again. It's only suggests like that the people involved that like these things that are like minor inconveniences for most people, Like, are you know the idea of like having to do the dishes, Like that's the worst thing in the life the person trying to sell you this.

No, no, no, those people don't do the dishes.

What they've done is they've gone ship. What do people do? Yeah?

Fuck?

What what are regular people?

Food? They eat?

They love that stuff.

They can't they can't dress themselves.

They're idiots. They can't date. And what they do dish dishes? My cleaner does those?

They charge their devices? Yeah, they need to.

Love their device most definitely.

They don't have time to spend with their stupid little kids, their wife.

And their stupid child, the moron child. But oh they haven't even got one of those because they're inferior.

Don't worry.

L G will get you there and you will now meet a woman thanks to Lucky gold Star Corporation. That's what the few And I keep going back to this point, it's like, what are the problems you sol stands for a Yeah, yes it does.

Wow, cool, I didn't I learned something? Yeah, they have it on the side blue garret life and life's good. And I was like you again, that's one of those things where it like, I don't think that's the real name of that. Lucky gold Star makes more sense because that has a certain where it just feels like they used to be like a ready mixed concrete company or like an international shipping line, you know, and then at some point they've like discovered I actually think they might

And steal where we learned. We learned a lot today. No, it's it's just frustrating because I'm not asking. I just want to be clear for the listeners. I'm not asking, did you see anything good? To be facetious, I genuinely like, I was so happy that Theveingra had founded laptop.

He liked it sounded cool.

I'm so excited about that.

And the skin products that Victoria is talking about the fact that you can actually make these, and that's what Teke should do. It should like be like, hey, here's an actual friction point. You spend hundreds of dollars on skincare. Now you don't have to do that because you can spend theoretically hundreds on the stuff that actually works so

Do people do jobs?

Yeah? What do people do doing during the job that they do? They wash dishes and they on set emails and they read them.

Yeah, that I don't like a little bit of disconnection to me seems like I see it's like at the root of like so much of what is like not working about a lot of this that there's because the ones that it seems to me and maybe this is just my own bias for like small or large or whatever. You know, I'm like gonna own my my preferences here.

I need you just to stop saying that.

Well it's regulars whole term that I like to use to describe myself, but the like so that but anyway, but I get it in that way, whereas the idea of like a thing that fixes or improves everything or that is like that like sort of global idea of it. I understand why these companies which are you know, their job is to grow into like sort.

Of a bigger thing that will then grow right.

And yet like not only does it become like sort of hard to see like what the actual vision is, it gets not just like more abstracted, but it like it gets weirder. This is the thing that we keep sort of coming back to that like you're not fixing the problem like by like devising a house that does all my decisions for me. It does not in any way diminish the fact that I'm still paying too much money for skincare products.

Right, you know.

And I guess like this is something that uh, your Mia was saying last night about the idea of like all of these sort of like individual solutions to broader structural problems, and that like the idea of just like continuing to throw the idea of being like, well, this is like a better way of getting around, and it's like it might even be a better way of getting around. And yet like when the systems themselves are sort of

It kind of reminds me of what I was saying about fintech and removing friction. Oh, you'll be able to trade better and do this. The real structural problem there is it's very, very hard to accumulate wealth as a regular person. The actual that is more of a symptom of a problem than it is.

And also as I understand that all of these things, like the one there's one that was either entry centered teel or one of the fucking super friends, but a thing that was like basically like not FDIC backed, like that was the whole They were like finally like you can bank without big government being involved. And then it's like and it collapsed right away.

Goodness, there's no insurance to Yeah, but.

That's like one of those things where like understanding the idea that like this is a part of a bigger system is like it's just not something that computes for them, and so what you wind up with instead is like the worst invention of halt time, Yes, like a bank that ruins you.

Yeah, something that might have been invented by like a rich diletunt in the eighteen thirties.

Yes, like at a time when there wasn't really a system, and so they're sort of yeah, like just the rude golder.

I guess there's so many of the crypto things that do feel like an insane thing that a guy would do in a cult. Yeah. Yeah, it's a coin about this woman who talked about what she used to do with a Willie mm hmm. And you should invest in the hawk to a coin who has a podcast for some reason, this is your god. Now.

I have a few friends who have made a lot of any friend crypto, and they're the way that they approach it is like they're like, I am deeply cynical about it, but everyone here is an idiot. And if you make enough money to begin with, then you get plugged into the networks of people who are actively manipulating people.

So what you mean is that they believe they believe it's it's every every grift ever, which is I'm being scammed. But what they don't know is I'm scamming them better.

Well, yes, that's the bit that I always am curious about with like because this is I think it's been like demonstrated that like absent any other of the like sort of many factors that could make somebody become like that that like made people vote for Trump, or that like push people to the right, that like crypto is the single most powerful indicator there that it is like the thing that like owning crypto is associated with voting like often to the very hard to the right in

Yeah, if it's fast, you know whatever the fuck right, Yeah.

It's like all of these things that basically are like the most obvious like do not buy this. This is a gag sort of thing. And yet like I think everybody that is involved with that at every level, right down to like just some like manosphere shut in nineteen year old on a gaming computer right doing all the stuff. All of those guys somehow still believe that. They're like, yeah, I know it's bullshit, but like, I'll know when it's time to get out.

But now it's the ultimate con which is to pretend to give people industry, to give people hope, to give people more a feeling of more control while controlling them and probably being controlled by someone out it's yeah, deeply.

So I've tried to talk with them about this because I'm like, I really do think for y'all, it comes down to luck. You know, it's like like you said, it's literally everyone believes that, and everyone believes.

That in so many industries, right.

The difference between you and some other bloke is like maybe you heard about it an hour earlier, or you just like there's like something that you got for no other reason other than.

It's important to note that we're saying this inside of a casino.

Yeah yeah, right now, And honest, every.

Everyone thinks they have a system to play, and the true beauty of sitting casino is sit there cross your arms, watch and try to figure out what system they think they're using and watch it fail.

So we gamble in tonight, right boys.

Yeah, not for me.

I'm trying to lose five hundred dollars in twenty minutes.

So we're wrapping this episode up, but I will say the Friday episode. The show floor closes today, by the way, guys, So there's nothing tomorrow, No just podcasting. Oh owly zool.

So we're gonna wrap this one up, but tomorrow we can talk about get into the Eureka Vault. You're going to the Eureka Volte immediately following this will that's the one you'll save art.

I am sending you to the rat nest.

Oh my god.

We'll talk gambling tomorrow though, of course, how dare you how dare you ever think to compare the dishonest crooks of cryptocurrency.

I'm sorry, let's do very sorry, the Las Vegas said, sorry, the Nevada Gaming Commission.

I'm very sorry for anything.

I have swindlers in the sports book, but you know that we love our odds there. But you know the truth is our beautiful slot machines and our honest tables that have the odds on the table. How dare you comp its cryptocurrency? But we have to wrap up. I apologize, No six waists.

You make big money.

Table.

Phil. Where can people find you? Sorry?

Phil Brighton?

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

Com, David Defector dot com. UH is the website, Distraction is the pot cast, and it's Christmas Down is the Hallmark podcast. You messed up.

You said you can do it every other time, so you have to do it every time.

Corblamo and ED Newsletter, the Tech Bubble dot subsac dot com, UH podcast, this Machine Kills UH and UH ext to everything site in Blue Sky, Big Black Jacobin.

You can find me on the new social network hawk to a Social and everywhere else THEA. And you're gonna complain after this, you can say, Ed, it's the thing that you were meant to rerecord. And Mattasowski told you a month ago and then actually two months and Ian Johnson also told you. And you need to be sorry for those people anyway, And I'm gonna re record the bit at the end. You've got one more episode today and then tomorrow another two episodes, and then Saturday there's

Is this where I get to be mad about regulators?

I'm gonna make you mad somehow, I believe in it.

I'm gonna be I'm just going to be googling annoying things, not even about the show.

You don't need to google, you just do it.

Yeah, it's a natural thing. I'm generative. Anyway, Thanks for listening to this episode. More to come from the Consumer Electronics Show. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T T O. S O w Ski dot com. You can email me at easy at Better Offline dot com, or visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast links and of course,

Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

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