CES 2026: Part Eight (Friday)

Alzo Media.

And Bam, thank you, ma'am, im ed zechron and this is Better Offlines coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show twenty twenty six. We are now as we have been all week here in the Palazzo Hotel and beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, bringing you yet another episode covering c YES with a crazy assortment of guests from the tech industry. We've got an open bar, we've got tacos, a place to sit down for members of the media and friends, whether they

Oh hello, I wasn't sure if I was meant to speak at this point.

Hi, natural, Natural, And of course returning champion listener favorite Sherlan lower vengall.

Listen her favorite, that's a strong introduction. I'm not sure I deserve it.

It's completely actually. Another listener favorite, Michael Fisher, the YouTuber and CEO of Clicks. Now, that's ceo, co found co founded, my bad buddy, A doesn't matter titles that we don't do, we don't just fine.

You're a helocracy like Tony Vegas favorite fe Admiral Admiral rear, admiral well well.

Court martialed, but the Clicks So all right, I've had a lot of people in myil in So just to be clear, Michael's my friend. He's been on the show a lot, had him on in his capacity's journalist still here as well for that. But you are you are the co founder of clicks, and you've got a little device with you. I do, indeed, I have actually several devices. Yes we add that thing. Thanks man. I was so worried because I was like, I'm a Canadian, so blackberries are in my soul.

Right.

This is a physical keyboard for the iPhone and for Android phones.

Which were two years ago.

I have it on a motoroal eraser now, which is fun. Flips, but the I love the flipp I know you and I agree on the fold. I just want, and I'm like, I message on them, I don't.

Care it's coming. I know it must be coming.

Give me a foldable I phone.

Everyone's saying the iphon phone, give me.

My foldable slot. No, I'm so you've got this thing that connects to the Mac. Say for the what have you charge of the thing is?

We we made custom molded cases with the keyboard attached for several iPhones several andro and everyone was like, this is great, but I don't carry that phone. And we were like, yeah, this is great, but it costs a lot of money to mold a custom case with a keyboard for every phone. So we broke out the keyboard into a little custom puck called power keys that.

Everyone's grabbing out their iPhones now removing.

Try just slap it right on the back there and it bonds via Bluetooth and gives you that.

So if you my region is not there's your target zone there. Wait is this are you giving me your phone? You do not have someone hand me a device for this audio podcast, So go ahead, but you also have the Android device that's where the actual clicks device it does work. So uh, we're just gonna which can move on from that so but you've done like a dedicated Android direct thing. Yes, it's called the Clicks Communicator.

It is actually a phone that Yes, it is a four inch screen with a big, full, quirdy keyboard underneath it.

People are calling it the new BlackBerry, but that is not, of course. Jim Jim, who was the Yeah, yeah, no, I was just talking to me yesterday. Yes, were you really?

Yes?

Yeah?

Yeah, literally we had a phone call this episode, all right.

So they it's it's optimized for communication. It's optimized for people who carry two phones already and want one of them to be.

More focused on communication than content. So you got a nice big screen, just describing it for the less, this nice big screen, it's decent, way a lot. You've got this raised bit of the bit at the back. It's quite nice.

Little little little stippled the backplate here. And I will say two which is which is what we like?

Yeah, I will also say the keyboard feels better than the original Clicks.

We've increased the key size by thirty percent. If you can believe that you're ready for the spectrum.

And I will say this, like I don't use the original Clicks because like, weirdly like the case didn't feel right. It's just a personal thing. And I have like weird little thumbs, like they're not long enough for most gloves. Because I'm a monster, I understand, But these this thing. I like this. In Caleb from Kill the Computer, who is specifically asked about this, I like it.

I think it's cool. So who's aimed at people who carry two phones? So you ever see people walking around, like make captive two phones, right, but you see people walking around with the picks on an iPhone or two iPhones, and neither one is optimized for the actual task that it's trying to do. So we're not trying to compete with the phone with a great camera and a big

You ever use that one? Can you say it? And I want to want to play around? I cannot.

That's a touch and feel sample. That's how early this thing is. We don't launch it till later in the year. But like Niagara has this beautiful aesthetic list and it's not a it's on Nicon based os.

It is a distraction scroll, isn't it like that? Because that's the thing I would I'm a little I'm a little hog with my devices. I love my keyboards and my dad's and the like. Yes, And also there are times when I will use like a like I have like old laptops that I'll use if I just want

Kind of a luxury thing though it's not for everyone. No, absolutely not, And neither was the first click Like that's the same. We've always made products for a small segment of the market, but as long as one in one thousands exactly.

Yeah.

But I'm pretty excited for Communicator because I was terrified of it. You know, you work on something for so long and you're not sure if it's good anymore. What's out it is out later in the year. It's going to be second half, but late second half.

My wife gave me an Olivetti Valentine. What is that manual typewriter nineteen sixty seven in MoMA Bright Cherry Red has an integrated case that it slides out of. There's you know photos of like Twiggy carrying it through the Panams terminal at JFK and idle wild beautiful machine. And I've been rehearsing my manual typewriter performance.

Can I ask you a really stupid question? Yeah, what happens to you typo on a typewriter?

You type an X.

I had the typewriters that's right in the in the type and it has the most beautiful when you reach the end of the line.

Oh, I never had the thing one.

It's got a red ribbon and a black ribbon, so it's got like a two side ribbon.

And you go up and love for it, and.

Then you have to you have to get the key with a snap. It's not how hard you hit it, it's how it risk comes back you hit it and then then you get a nice clean impression with the So that is a genuinely single purpose device I'm really enjoying that.

And it's and it's meant.

To be a luggable. You can just slap it around.

And Michael, I need to ask the doesn't there a device called the Peak once? Yes, the Peak?

Right, it was an email only like BlackBerry esque device. Sorry, I could also use it for Twitter. No, no, no, no, I actually have one Ivy Green but green Guard let me borrow his. I have to cover it on mister mobile and my wind phones were fine.

And here it is. It's it. Yeah, it's like a little little screen and I like this. I like this because like, look, you're not trying to pretend this is for for one, you're not trying at all.

And yeah, no you're not going to replace your pixel or iPhone with it. You're going to carry it alongside it, or you're going to carry it instead of it on the weekends or the weekdays as the case. Maybe someone uses as that daily driver. Always kind of limited. No, it absolutely, it runs hundred sixteen, it's five G. It has it even has Mike or SD and a headphone jack for all the people. And yeah, you want to

Like you can, I think it's lovely. I think it's lovely. That not because you've you are you and I have had some of the deepest like I love the technology stuff. It's cool. I love the phone. Oh I love tablets and all this shit. And you actually made something that you wanted to use.

Yeah, well, and it's actually got It's got two cameras so you can scan a QR code.

Absolutely, that's the thing. You can take a picture and say this feel the way you want too?

Yes?

Yeah?

Am I allowed to throw this away? Are these left?

Is this good? Is this the final final.

Way of it? It's close to final, probably within about ten grams.

Only criticism I have is what about the battery? What happens? Like what kind of warranty? What kind of batteries? So the battery is four thousand MILLI empowers. I did push for silicon carbon. This is the last time I get super nerdy about this because I wanted more get that.

This is my sha and I was like, no way we can get it. But it turns out we could afford it.

It was great. The in terms of the support. I mean, it's not. It's the only thing we couldn't do is a removal battery, because that was kind of why I was going at. What does it look like for a service depot to swap it? Yeah, yeah, that's a really good question. I take it to my guy on the corner. Probably not.

I mean I'm sure that the actually, you know what, just because of what I just said, that's probably not the case because silicon carbon is is rare these days, like i'd say, it's so new, so I don't actually know. That's one of the fifty million questions. I should have been prepared for.

This clicks button. So that's a shortcut key.

So on all of our products, you hit the clicks button and you hit a letter, and you can do you can call a friend, you can so much.

I'm serious that this has so much more. I'm not just saying this because you want to make because you know me well enough, i'd be lock it. I do. It's got the weight you've given. It actually gives the buttons the hef that the clicks case, I.

Think you mean gravitas.

No, not the gravitas, I mean like the physical because the other one i'd feel it bend back with my kind sure fingers.

Well, when you design the entire thing yourself and you don't have to accommodate for a phone in a case or another product, you can kind of control that fund.

Also, you'll you'll like this.

I think the keyboard is capacitive, so when you swipe your thumb over it, that you can like.

Some of your cases, so you can do the swipe stuff over the physical case. Correct, fuck me that that's actually.

Very BlackBerry key one.

Yes, that is right. Really, I'm actually going to send this to Gyms right now. I believe.

I believe we've talked to him about it because a lot of our alumni or a lot of our employees are blacker alumni.

Are they Canadians though, yes, don't trust Canadians speak, don't trust Canadians.

But all are so nice. Now it's just an act. It's like the South here, that's right.

A question as a as a long time friend of Michael Fisher as well, So how rich are you now?

Well? I stayed at Planet Hollywood if that tells you.

That does tell me a lot. I stayed at the residence.

Michael professional question, are you here in capacity as the Clicks co founder or are you covering for mister Mobi.

Yes, yes, is the answer both. Yeah, I have to split the time evenly. That's what the quiffer is for. It's for a second hat.

Absolutely. Yeah.

One here was for being beautiful. You have to apply so much hairspray because you're gonna put it. Actually, that's true. I was doing a John Deere spot because they're my sponsor on this one, and I had to put on.

A John dear head.

You've got to be on the big tract, and I was. In fact, I went to visit the combine. Yes, drive it away, but it's good. It satisfies my need for novelty. I think you can really.

Yeah, you got some stuff to do. One thing for ten minutes. It's too long. I gotta go, I gotta go do something else. You know. The only thing I can do consistently is podcast for two hours. That's the only thing. Anything else that I'm just like lost.

You just just give him throat like you're a man who turns throat lozenges into podcast.

Yeah, yeah, exactly what the skeleton meme the skeleton squat meme. But how have you felt about the show Michael, what have you seen anything else other than your own thing that you like?

I have to tell you so I cannot stand everything about the Las Vegas Strip and ce S is a very training show as well.

Know.

However, this particular one was so worth coming to based on the stuff that was shown.

For me.

I got a new foldable phone out of Motorola that was InCred you know when you say.

You know they made it specifically for me, mister Fisher edition. Yes, exactly. There was the new pebble or the you know the pebble That's what I.

Was going to talk about after this, Oh my god.

Yes.

And then as I was wandering between those two things, I found, you know, there's something called a fidget gadget.

Have you all seen this.

It's a little metal cube with like six buttons on it and smart watch display fidget it's and it's a little fidget toy and you can run.

You know.

It's like Arcanoid is like developer tools. It's open source. You can.

All mechanicals.

So this is this is new. This is by one guy making them in his garage and Ipsilante. It's like exactly why I used to love coming to CES. You know it's this little stuff.

I know that. I hear that. I'm like, I wish i'd have seen that because that would have made my day. Yes, so it's just for dicking around with exactly you know what toys. If it's a toy, it's a toy.

And that's it, right, you see the guy's not saying it's like, well, this is gonna be the I hope to usher in a new era for you know, intentional It's like, no, I made a toy.

It feels good. It's fun to click and I don't know what you can do with it but find out. Yeah, you could do all sorts of stuff. That's fun. It's awesome. So you have a good showing as well. You have a good history with ces as well, Like you've been here a lot. Yeah, this this one feels weird to me. It's felt like a very peculiar show to me, Like it feels like it's missing something.

What do you think is missing?

I don't know. That's why I'm ask like, it's like it feels like like bits have been hollowed out. I think there's a reason for that.

I feel like if people were planning for their cees in the first half of the year they were probably gonna lean on AI all over again, and I feel like there's been a very visible retraction from that, especially other than the people who are here well right, no, I know, but even though like yes, branding, Yeah, it's not themed.

So your thesis is that there would have been twice as much dumb AI shit, Yes, if it wasn't for the backlash that it's just the people who are just so like balls out, clanker slopper Yep, then.

I have a different theory as to why something feels missing. I mean, I think there's a lot missing. I think one thing that's really missing is the car side of things. We had the FELA, but then the the you know, the expiry or the doing away with the federal text credit really dampen a lot of the mood around EV's this past years of twenty twenty five, and so Hondo was like, we're not coming to see yes this year, and I think that's kind of set the tone leading

That's so strange it is, do we think that there's exhibitors who are like, I don't want to get kidnapped ice.

Yeah, I have to wonder if they were a terrif l well terrafi late. It is kind of a common but like immigration.

Lots of events that I'm involved with are saying our numbers are way down, and that's at ten D numbers right right, and they're just people don't want to come any more. Events are now saying, like, you know, a lot of New York City events are like, should we move to Toronto? New Yorkers won't find it that hard to get there?

And then yeah, quite.

Like as a Torontonian New York run by the Swiss.

It's also it's also doesn't help that there's like a lot going on outside of CS.

Yeah.

At the same time, so like anyone who had those fears were not wrong to be a little bit concerned. And as someone who's like herself an immigrant, like with very good legal visas, that is in sight with you, Yeah exactly. I I was so afraid to travel even domestically for a while there and now it's like I've I've done a few international trips. I'm na as concerned.

Oh I went through I had to go to Toronto last GM, and I was like, straight up the whole scared, right, So every moment in the airport, and then I remembered you cleared immigration in Toronto, which is right.

Yes, exactly. I flew through Dublin.

It's like yeah, oh yeah, it's it's grim and it's also like that the stuff that has made it it feels and I say, this is a CS veteran, and someone's gonna say the stolen ballot. But even by CS standards, this feels like a bullshit year. It feels like worse than the twenty fourteen twenty fifteen Indie Go Go Kickstarter boom, where it was like it's a three D printed kitchen, you just click the button and a burger come out.

It's funny because I've seen more gizmos and dude AADs here this year. Tell me if that I'm seriously Besides fidget Gadget and Pebble, which we've talked about Pebble okay, okay, besides those, we have this sort of evolved version of fidget Gadget which I checked out on a whim. Someone said to me while I was demoing clicks to them, have you seen have you seen Lego?

Have you seen smart? They must go. I just I feel that.

I feel like that's just going to be mountains of e waste. And also, isn't the whole.

Point thank you, thank you toy that you just oh wow, wait to make you need a Lego.

Room? I have a machine that does the rooming for me.

Yes, okay.

And if I had not sat through the entire hour long demo, I would have felt exactly the same way I went in. I'm like, listen, this will be filler for my video. I'll just get some footage. It'll be fun, it'll be a break between phones. It'll be great. And then they demonstrated literally every use case I've ever seen a person think about in terms of like, how do children play?

How did I used to play?

I used to remove the machines like this, and then then it reacts and then you touch the break to the other thing, and it knows what the color is, and it's like it's it's not only smart, but it's like smart in a way that a kid will instantly understand and instantly appreciate.

The e waste thing is the only thing that I was like, Wow, man, that's gonna be an. But in terms of evolving the play experience, I actually go to push back. Please, I don't think Lego needs to evolve the play experience. I think the whole point of Lego is imagination, and I think playing with it and going now from from and building deranged things and having things in your head. But I understand, to be clear, understand what they're doing. I'm surprised they haven't done it quick.

I was like, guys, how long have you been involving this? Like eight years? From certain the niama shows. It shows in the product I'm telling, and technologically, I think it is very interesting to have location of where blocks.

So Bruce Sterling wrote an incredible novel called Distraction that everyone should read because it's about fucked up computer mediated elections nice and it is one of the most prescient books you will read. And in it there are these avant garde architects who put a slap bracelet around a brick and it starts saying, I am a cornerstone. Take me one step to the left, put me down. I'm one degree off level. I am now level. Please add mortar and a bunch of skilled people can put up

I want to inhabit like.

As a as a child playing imaginatively with construction toys. I I don't think my play experience would have been enhanced by having some of the things that happen in my imagination happened with electronics. I will rather get that person an Arduino.

So the waste. I think it's a good There is actually a solution which is The good news is that the chip fits inside a regular like it is still a regular Lego brick, so you're still able to use it like a Lego brick.

But is it?

But is the like?

So when you throw this away, is it going to be a mortal e waste or just a mortal plastic waste?

That's the thing I actually truly is it.

Going to be leaching you know, heavy metals into the water table or just turning into microplas? I mean, do people throw away Legos? You know that's kind of a past that might throw away broken robotic Lego.

But the thing is, but even then, yeah, but you're cele brick right, You're right, though I don't know.

My take on the Lego thing is. I used to be on the Ed's side of it, and I then read a lot of our coverage and was like, oh, okay, that makes way more sense. So I came closer to the Fisher side of it, and I'm just like, look, if you don't like it, you can still not buy it, sure, and you can still have the same Lego experience you were having before.

Sure.

Sure for the people who I will, I will also give Legos some real credit in the despite the fact that the entire Lego economy has been inflated by adult babies. You like children's toys. I'm not talking about, by the way, like the toach Mahole. Those are obviously for adults. I'm talking about, like I don't know, as a father, the Spider Man sets that are now inflated by thirty percent because you fucking loses can't leave them alone for actual

Set of them, use them, and then judge them, because that is I was in the again. I was in the exact same boat as you guys. And then then I saw the demo and I was like, God, this every part of this as well.

I want to pop the stack one layer up because there was a thing I wanted to say about the fidget toys. Okay, so the fidget toy sounds amazing if that is your thing, if you're excited by this. There's a sculptor called Chris Bathgate who's a machinist who makes beautiful kinetic fidget toys that fit in your pocket really uh, and they are. They come in runs of like one hundred to two hundred. He hand machines each one of them.

So Chris, Chris Bathgate, I'm going And he's written, you had an a ring to take a note with me if only I could press a button.

So just a book about them.

I just send a message to Corey to make sure that's in the episode nuts. And I'm about to send a text to Michael right now. While you're doing that, I'm going to fidget with my let me fidget. I'm saying he's a wonderful broadcast and I hope to have him on again, as well as sending me a link to that. This is a this is an emotion the only show. But you see anything? Do you see anything else? Fun?

I don't like doing this because it is I don't like to cross the streams between sponsored content and not. But I will say that something was genuinely cool, that is in a sea of technology that is conceptual or maybe never become to a marketer has no value. One of the John Deer things I was paid to promote was an automated road paver. I'm just like I learned about paving for like for like a half hour, and I will this makes it possible for people, for fewer

This is why I got into it. Some stuff good. Yeah, I mean I took to a microphone. So I see a job like that, I'm like, never take that job from those people.

Well, I agree, but I mean that's the thing. There's not enough of those people. That's the that's the the thing. Train them.

But no, I get your point. And also be clear, Michael Fisher is one of the one of the fewer people who's more anxious than I am about any kind of thing like this. So Michael is like squirming here when it comes to like mentioning a sponsor. Do not think that he's doing this with joy. He actually even notice that. Yeah, you're right.

I mean my concern with John Deere, and I don't want to blow up your try. Concern with John Deere is there. Yeah, they're they're a rapacious monopolist and they have led the war against repair and they use the

No, no, it's my fault. You know. Here's the thing.

This entire debate played out in my comments every single time I covered John Dee organically, and I got so fucking tired of it that I was like, I will never cover this brand again because I'm tired of getting in the middle of them, tired of having this conversation and like be the mediator between them and things was well now and I don't cover them marganically.

Now they're my sponsor. I am gonna I'm going to aggressively segue away from this because I don't want a good idea. Yeah, but I want to get to the final thing, which.

Is and I no, please, because I want to build on one thing you said, that place I find fascinating, the Roman foundation, That like the thing that's been unchanged forever. As we talk about yet another show where people are like, what's the next smartphone, what's the replacement for the smartphone?

All this stuff. I had a wonderful moment at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. Have you been here?

It has a lovely, you know, maritime history museum and you can wander and you can see all kinds of things in and there's a pocket watch case, because of course there is. And I saw one that was really beautiful, and I asked the curator. I'm like, how what is this front? Perhaps nineteen nineteen oh five, and he's like seventeen eighty nine, and I said, wait what? And then I kind of looked at the history and like, this form factor did not change meaningfully for two hundred years.

Right.

That is how I feel about the smartphone these days, and like, look, there will be augmented things in the personal area network, there will be more accessories for them, but we are still going to carry these bucks.

This is the principal struggle of CES right now. Though. It's all people trying to be like, what if you had a smart glasses and it could do this? And then you're like, well, as a human being, this is not how I experienced life, And they're like, shit, you're right, nobody actually uses. But what if you've changed your entire existence so you had a weird, grainy green thing that

You know what I would love would be this huge design trend from now on, we're putting black text on white backgrounds, or sometimes white text on black backgrounds. And we fired all the twenty two year old designers who put ten percent gray on white backgrounds, and we have we've sent them north for re education where they are forced to endure, you know, long struggle sessions about the things they've done to people with poor low contrast vision. Yeah.

I just think liquid glass is one of the where my brain was liquids liquid ass is truly and I am like an Apple pay pig at this point. I have tolerated many an insult from this company, including the vision pro, and I gotta be honest. There is one thing that bothers me the most about this and it's for some reason. On one of the windows there's just like a blob in like one of the things. There's just like a reflective thing looks like it's hard to see, but it looks like an error in the LED panel

They do talk about it as part of the UI. That's sort of the way you move your phone and then how it reflects light. It's supposed to be that.

I don't want that on my phone, Liquid glass not all. I would love to. I would love to go back to the iOS eight or something like just give me the phone normal.

I want that. I want the phone UI that actually like puts fake scratches on your screen or like fake.

No, I will say, and we could wrap this in a boat. It's why I kind of like the clicks communicator because it's just a thing that nice, flawless no, And I say, this is someone who like. If you don't like it, I don't give a ship if you buy it or not. Sorry, it's just that's that's not my job. But I like it because it's like, what do I want from a device that takes people fingy to use message at to a place, look at website, fingy.

You do the thing on a handful of very important features, but just a handful of them. I didn't think that i'd ever got on board the and this is a web browser on it. Oh yeah, I mean it's Android sixteen. You can run whatever you want on it. But it's a matter of intention. But what we're saying, I never thought i'd get on board the digital detox train or

And you were a real one because when you did the light phone thing, you actually fucking did it. You turn off everything amazing.

And I wish I could have survived in that world, because it turned out in order to live that way doing what we what a lot of us do. I had to carry an iPad for the sessions that invariably required me to be online for a secondary or laptop, and then I was like, damn it, I can't live this life. But what stuck with me were two or three lessons that lived past July, and I was like, every time I pull out my phone, now I'm like, am I doing this for a purpose or am I

All the shitty notifications that you get all the time?

Can you leave notifications on?

No?

I turn them off and then I miss my door dash deliveries. This horrible seeside, Why aggressively?

Please do this? But Michael, it's so good having you as we wrap up this off for an hour. Thanks, I just want to say the listeners want you back, and I will have you back. But also, you have maybe looked at phones differently, and I put aside the clicks communicator. I think you have the right way of looking at it, where it's like, why am I using this device? Thank you? And why am I doing this? What is this for? Now? I am built different in the sense that I am really like I was mentioning. Yes,

Score well no, I mean I didn't even ask any questions. The guy walked up and said, Hi, I'm the product manager for this, do you have any questions. I wasn't gonna, you know, bollock them out of the blue. I didn't go in there looking for, you know, a victim, you will not that type. But I was like, since you ask, and I was like, well, so I know that there was that the original ring.

Camera, the doorbell camera.

You guys took the posture that that footage was only available to the police in the event that the owner authorized the transfer to the police, and but there had been this persistent rumor that there was warrantless access to this footage, even against the wishes of the of the ring owner, which you initially denied, and later I had to walk back. I know this because I got into a big fight with Amazon PR when I published the story and then they said it's not true, and then

Yeah, there were the video behind it was, of course two guys breaking in him. Would you be surprised to hear they were Hispanic? Yeah?

And then the white guys in there, and AI caption was like two men removing things from trunk of red car. So so I said, you know, so can the cops access this footage, you know, without the owner? And he was like, well, I'm not sure. And I'm like, okay, fine, fine, who can access this footage? Is this footage intend encrypted? Does Is it sitting as an encrypted blob that no one at Amazon can access on your servers? So only

Yeah.

So and he's like, well, I'm not allowed to decrypt. I'm the project manager and a product manager. I can't decrypt it. I'm like, well that's good. You have some access controls, but you're still asked growing the keys. And then I'm like, well, is it all controlled by an app or is there a desktop interface? And if so, can I download my footage? And he's like no, it's desktop,

I download it?

Or can I not do it? And then he eventually says, well, you're asking all these technical questions. I just don't know the answer. And I'm like, well, I was just standing here minding my own business when you came up and introduced yourself to me as the product manager for this product. Like, is the product manager capable of answering what seems to me to be some pretty basic.

Does a website do something? Yeah?

Like, like can I does? Is the footage available to third parties?

Is?

I mean, because you know, just from a straight up security perspective, Amazon's not immune to insider threats if you've got you know, three sixty longitudinal video footage.

And that's what this thing is. It can it has a tube that goes into the sky with a bunch of cameras. Yeah, and it was advertised as they had this video behind with a picture of neighborhoods with all these blue blobs where these things would pay. So good.

I'm so happy you guys got to see one of the new soon towers.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, here's here's our palent here exactly.

Maybe they'll give you a little ring that could be tied to you.

It's got this like telescoping mask. But you could imagine, right, if you've got this is quite a honeypot. Right, If you've got the internals of a whole bunch of job sites with a bunch of easily stolen things, and there's

Did they ever figured out how many people?

No?

No, no, there's no census of how many copies, like multiple copies, because they've got aws right, right, So copying the entire database of every skew and every purchase on Amazon is like tractable within Amazon's own infrastructure. And so you know, their ceso's first advice was always like, don't

I will also say, if you were a listener who works at Amazon Web Services and you're able to click on that thing that says anthropic, why don't you sell me? Send me more of them numbers? I want to see I want to see them numbers. My favorite part of this conversation, though, was right towards the end when he went, yeah, you could buy one for your backyard. You think he would and just you were like so much nicer than I.

Well, I had to be fair to him. I said, like, is this all being sold to business customers or are there people with McMansions who want it? And he said, do you want it for your mansion? And I was like, do you have a mansion? And I was like, I don't have a mansion.

So he was kind of I think you miss that after ten minutes of speedbacking, though I would have just I would have been like, I this guy did not know what to say. I'm dying. I need to leave, but we won't. We had a good, good toll around today. You got to see some CEO.

We went to the Crap Gadget Room with all the international pavilions and there was some good stuff. I'm trying to pull up my favorite. So from one of the universities around Tokyo, there was the you know, they have these tech transfer offices where they're trying to like productize

Which when you say badship, what do you mean specific.

So, like you know, all all hardware is is software in etched in silicon, right, So any program, any malware you can imagine, you could hide.

And so when you when you use the chip in a piece of hardway, it's doing.

Something bad when it's back.

Also when he says he's convinced that people are hiding bad shit in hardware, is his belief that there's nothing stopping along the point of production.

The supply. Yeah, you can supply chain.

So the thing to understand is that an SC wafer is just a it's a risk like reduced instructions a computing chip wafer, and the typical SC is using like twenty five thirty percent of it. So most of that chip is dark matter. And when you're taping out the die and getting ready to nanolithograph the chip, you could

I could, I could, I could read more and look more at his stuff. This is yeah, my my, I'm pluralistic. Yesterday I wrote a blog.

I'll check that out.

Because it calls it piggyback it.

This makes me.

Curious about you know, in video name their newest generation of chips with the CPU and the GPU collaboration the ver Rubin, And at first I thought it was just like a very vague gesture on a few superficial levels to ver Rubin, who uh discovered that we probably have some either we have dark matter or we have some fundamental failure in our explanatory model for the universe. But also I'm curious, like, you know, is it just like a tongue in cheek also joke or reference to the fact that we.

Have Yeah, I don't, I don't know know they know exactly what's in the chip and it's getting more expensive. That's well, oh god, are they doing like a deal with I hate to do this, but Shelin just aggressive segue. What have you seen it on the show?

Just just just to put a button on it. One last thing I want to say, no, please, four nanometers. That was that. That was the thing that just fucking blew myself. And that's four nanometer imaging in commodity hardware.

Holy shit, this is amazing and I'm pretty sure that's like full nanimeters what they built the latest in video black belt GPUs on I'd have to check. They couldn't get they couldn't get down to three animeter and that was a whole thing with the process. But shelin, what have you seen on the food? Because you're you're only with us for this group, so I want to him, what have you seen this year that you liked?

I mean, hearing all of you talk is just reminds me like how diverse this show is. It's a huge show, covers such a broad scope. I mean, and I got lost in what you were talking about because it's fascinating, but it also makes me question the c and ces consumers. That's what is for the consumer? If it's all robots and AI, I.

Mean, it's downstream, it's like eventually, but it's like, this is so much of it as that consumer.

Where are the consumers?

Where are they are? Where's the thought for the consumer?

Have you seen that in the show? Do you feel like the overall show has been less consumer?

I think to the point we were making at the start of this episode, it's the physical manifestation of AI slop and and a lot of the ones that were here this year, the ones that braved the immigration risk to come here and share their wares there. That just means that their motivation was what to find partners, to

B was the one wearable that Victoria Victoria's song in the world, Victoria's song Champion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and and and I was I was talking to the founder of B at the CES as well. And you know, I'm not gonna dwell too much on that just because I could be lucked out in getting a home quickly.

Look can get that paper, especially from Amazon.

So go get that. But then the rest of them that are here, what is what is the end game? What is the goal? And to your point about e waste, that's going to be e waste the ones that they make, the ones that they sell, and limited quantities, but still massive quantities.

Only smart watches that run on like a WS servers that will get taken down the moment the company stops paying for them, which will be quite quickly.

Yeah, So I think it's it was just like a lot of wading through this like existential dread of all of this is going to end up in len fills, all of these robots, all of these AI wearables, all of these AI native devices. So we we tried very hard to see things that we were interested in. And I don't know if you've talked about this yet, but we made a video of this device that has taken off on at least by our standards, It's got like millions of views at this point. It's called the wheel Move.

It's in a sissific.

It's an assistive device that you attached to the front of your wheelchair and it provides sort of a motorized rugged wheel that props up the front of your wheelchair and helps you over like rugged terrain, uneven surfaces, and then extra boost. Yet and that is just so smart because it's simple, right, It's not a whole over engineered wheelchair. It's just an attachment to the front. And I was talking to someone about it this morning who reminded me

Just showing everyone what it looks like. It's like a wheel on the front of it. Fun and you know what it's like. We've seen a lot of exa skeletons. While we were on the floor, we saw like a like a kind of a skateboard.

Yeah, so this is I brought the brochure back. So we saw this thing called the stern board, which is the same thing, but it doesn't clip onto a wheelchair. It clips onto a motorized skateboard and turns it into an all terrain motorized skateboard. It was this French dude stern board str board.

Cool as shit. Like, I love the mobility stuff because if you think about why technology exists is to make humans better and able to do more and what limitations we have can be surmounted with technology. The AI slop doesn't seem to be that.

I mean, I can understand some of them, what they're saying and what they're trying to sell, but I sometimes you can see right through some of them and I get there. There's a lot of cute robots, and cute is fine, but what is the frickin' point?

Well, have you seen anything you liked? And I don't mean this.

Scast wheel move I I.

If the point is you haven't, that's totally no.

No, I I did see something interesting, and last year I came on this better offline of the CS edition as well. I'm talking about an LED mask. Yes, year I got another LED.

That's fine, like a beauty mask, man, Yeah.

One of those like that puts red light on your face. Looreal came through.

With like.

The LED masks that are flexible, so like there's skin light in terms of texture instead of the rigid hardshells that you've seen their body on the Luxx or Doctor Devis girls make so it wraps on your face much better and it is transparent soft. Yeah, it's supposed to be more comfortable. Looreal wasn't letting people put the full face version on their own faces for various like sanitary and FDA related reasons. I saw the person put them on.

You've been to a lot of CSS and it feels like this is one of the more vapor wary ones. I'm really like, I don't want it to be. I really don't.

I know. I well, there's also like a lot of things that will come out. I mean, so this year and Gadget took our risk. We went, let's look at all our best of CS winners from last year and check out where they are now. Surprisingly, pretty much like all of them are like either on track or have already put their devices on sale, or are like, oh, we will be at CS twenty twenty six to show you the updates. One of them we did manage to locate,

Shady, right we look they were shady, or that they were out competed by worst.

They could exactly, you know, they could still be the best one to a.

Help they Also it's something that just ends up not working.

You know.

One thing that the last two years I've been really interested in is technology that allows people who are deaf or who are no sign language to communicate. My brother, my older brother's death. One of my greatest anxieties and fears is that he refuses to wear yeah, hearing aids

I will also say with like checking back up your old humans, yea, like you can go here and this is the consumer electronics fraud show, Like I think it's all about there are people who come here with the intention of deceiving, and I don't think there's anything wrong with being like, yeah, we.

Thought this was right, and that's where I was like, and.

I think about I'm going to say push back if you want to having read d gadget since like the early like the mid two thousands, what haven't it's what an gadget is now is really good. There's the reason they have a lot of engadget people on is because it's just people who like tech and they go and look at stuff and they like it or they dislike it,

But I did. I mean I I loved some well.

I think part of it was the Cees more than others. I was kind of chained to my laptop running things rather than like going out there and seeing things. So I okay, I saw something that I loved to hate on. If that helps.

Yeah, have you heard about the Lollipop Star?

Oh?

Yeah, so we gave it a worst in show I like to show. I love to hate on Consumer Union and the Repair Coalition.

Tell me why you gave it worse than show what it is? It's exactly eWays and then so we lollipop Tell.

Me more about this because I did not see this.

I have no idea what this is. Uncompletely go ahead quest.

I mean, it's just it's a sound chip and a you know, sc in a lollipop handle and you put a lollipop on top and through bone conduction you hear a song while you eat a lollipop.

It's just a lithium battery that goes in a landfill. You're a psycho.

Yeah, because you can't reuse it.

You can't like and the battery is not like rechargeable, which I guess makes sense, but it's it's kind of ridiculous.

I saw this offered out a white Elephant that I was at two weeks before I came here. Wow, just like I and I was wondering. Everyone was like, this seems like a horribike.

Was it? What favorite flavor? Did you get acorn?

Or what idea it was?

I did not get it. I tried. I was really hard. I was honing in on the lottery tickets. There's a stack of fifty lotto scratch offs and I really ride them and every guest so I got.

I got a books. I got a bunch of books.

Singing lollipop is so. My last time at CS was twenty years ago, more than twenty years ago, two thousand and three, and before that, I came a few times in the nineties were wired and I have seen singing.

Lollipops at sea yes, exactly, they're not news.

I also speaking of which though on the floor today me and Ad saw a smell of Vision and.

Way way, that's what.

We're saying this year on my team is that it's kind of the comeback. So yes, the comeback of all these older technologies that we've seen with like pebbles coming back clicks with a communicator lego. It was not really a comeback, but sure, Mike.

I saw something that said, skateboard Penguin, I'm your little sidekick company.

I saw that.

Skateboard Penguin.

A lot of ridiculous and pop let's pop the stack just briefly, but also to get cryptached.

No, also to get back to the thing you're talking about there. The reason I was looking was because they had the tagline welcome to the era of pseudo Reality.

Oh yeah, that was the smell of vision. Yeah, yes, they had smell vision and then they had like an essential oil mister with that made smoke seem But on cryptech, if anyone wants to follow a very good cryptech influencer, Liz Henry used to be a build manager from Mozilla, now is just doing cryptech. I think full time bookmaniac dot org at, I'll send you the link.

Thank you.

And she is in command of a small fund that she disperses in thousand dollars in below grants to people doing cool cryptech adaptation. So that is cryptech though for those accessibility technology, so we.

Check crypto tech.

Yeah, it was like security, no, no cryptech.

So yeah.

Use we saw an amazing four line braille reader on the floor.

That was that was It was like a braille keyboard. Yeah, and it was standards defined. It plugged into your usbc as and showed up as a standard display.

It just just and you know what I noticed about I wish I remember the company name because they had she deserve it. The guy was just like every like people people really try and do like a micro jobs being like meg a world, and this guy was just like, yeah, it connects regularly like a keyboard. You can see it here. That's not a software. That's that He was.

Very all standards to find and he was very.

Clear to be like, this is not our software. This just plugs into anything.

That's awesome.

The people who need.

Brain don't need friction, right, Like that guy.

Deserves the huge boots. That's every single blind person probably could I'm not blind sweater. I truly don't. Sorry visually impaired, So I don't know, wow what the experience is, but I don't know. Seems like it fucking worked, and the guy was not trying to like hawk anything.

It was well built, it was standard fine, it was chunky and rugged, and and it was it will outlive changes to the OS because it's built around open standards.

It was just the USB connected thing. Yeah.

I think when you said kryptach, I was reminded of something that we didn't see in person, but we hurt or read about. There's a water heater for your home that will crypto mind while you shout.

Oh, I've heard about these, I think I wanted to put that together. There's a room heater as well that does this is like a gimmick, right, it can also.

Does There's a bathhouse in Williamsburg that does something that is the most.

Yes, I know, is that the same one district? No, it's not the same one where they legion is.

Listen.

I got.

Like, yeah, you know, you know, I was landing them. Then their name it's it's nothing to bathhouse.

You know, Yeah, that's the legion is. Yeah.

Yeah, So the guy who runs it, he loves crypto and so you can paying crypto. And he initially tried to market it as like, you know, like some of the heat generation is going to go is coming from crypto. But then he removed that silently. And I don't know if you removed it because it was like it's not actually or because he doesn't want people to.

Just nocause it doesn't work. Just mining difficulty has reached a point where all of these little.

Just doesn't work. Scuba diving on Roatan, which is the island where prosper the crypto city is and the future beautiful little like dirt road island africabbing on and the food's amazing, the diving is amazing. It's it's just a lovely place. And then the former dictator of Honduras, who was just pardoned by Trump, who was an ARCO trafficker, sold them the sovereign rights to a chunk of this island. And you walk down the dirt road in the dive town and every shop has got a sign in the

You don't. I don't have fifteen minutes to wait for this.

And these reactionaries they know how to pick a spot, you know. Yeah, If I were going to make a future network, Stay is one of the placeings I would do it.

They don't have the actual stones to find a real place where there's truly no laws, right well yeah, it also all of the actual pirates and real criminals would kill them.

I mean this media thing with the Pirate Enlightenment book of David Gray. You give you give fascists a lawless zone, and you let other people come into the lawas zone, and everyone else will go, why are there fascists here?

Yeah?

Well do you know?

Do you know a libertarian walks into a bear? The story about that libertarian exit town in New Hampshire where they all moved in and then they ran for city council and then they abolished the school district and they did and they abolished all the rules. And then this one lady kept feeding bears and they're like, please stop feeding bears.

She was like, I thought there were no rules. They were all being mauled by bears.

But Thiston wrong. This Marxist gun nut weed grower moves in and he's like, I'm gonna grow weed and collect guns and wait for the Marxist revolution. And they're like, but we're a libertarian town.

He's like, well, what are you gonna do? Actually, actually, libertarian means you own nothing. Yeah. No, it's my favorite. One of my favorite old school Internet videos is the Libertarian Conference where it's like, well, I think the driver's licenses should exist, and I think there should be some competency in the driving. No allow us to die and call crashes. We're approaching the break right now. But I

One plus I would say for the CS is it is actually a really great spot for you to come through and think about the way in which technological products are offered, as in the role they play in your life. You know, like, are you satisfied with tech products that are solely around convenience or solely around you know, assistive tech are solely around health or you know, like, what is it that you want and do you think that the industry and the sectors are interested in developing.

Yeah, I think this is what are they interested in building, rather than what I think.

I think it's a very good place for coming and talking to people and getting sense of whether or not other people share those priorities with you.

Yeah.

You and I saw something that we went away and bought, which was that were Coco espresso maker. That's hot water pump it up. Yeah, it gets a nine atmospheres, It ejects a shot of espresso. It has no battery.

It's like yeah. Another thing is like, do you like coffee? Right? Imagine if you could have coffee on the go and it worked the coffee I was.

As a guy who flies around with an aero press, but whose wife prefers espresso to coffee concentrate. I'm I just like literally walked off the trade floor and bought one because now I can it's small enough. I could put both of them in my bag, and my wife can have an espresso and I can have a coffee concentrate.

If only old products are that good. Now, the upcoming advertisement, I assume will be for a product that's even better than that and even more useful. If it's a podcast. You need to listen with complete detention. Put down your phone or else. And we're back to the Bedro offline CS experience. And we've got author, activist and journalist Cory Doctor Hello and get you. It's Sherlyn Low and Garrison Davis of it could happen here. How are you doing? Garrison?

Oh, it's another beautiful Cees morning.

In beautiful Las Vegas. About it? What have you seen today today?

If I finally did hold, I've been I've been neglecting Holid.

What did you see? Yes?

That is fine?

I guess I also also also had fun in the Amazon booth. Uh.

Yeah, we've been we've been punishing them.

Yeah, I assumed. I assumed you've been punishing.

We went in there to punish them. Yeah.

No, it's if you lose your dog, you get you can use all the all the ring cameras in your neighborhood to find your pet.

I have a five thousand dollars surveillance tower from a trailer that now will tell me if anyone walks near my house in any way, so I can donline one one and claim there's a prowler.

But will it measure their skull with cal Excuse me, will it measure their skull with calipers to tell you whether they are likely criminals.

Only on Ring plus with their new lightar system. Nice?

Maybe No. There's also this like ring like mesh mesh network. I'm not sure if you if you saw that.

Oh, they're doing this Nest bullshit.

Ring sidewalk I think is what it's called. If there's a Wi Fi outage, they will they will act as a mesh to to still be able to notify you if there's like movement around your house. There's no live video because of because of how we boun so it uses it uses like point like one like one percent of like of the of like a homes like like Wi Fi system to communicate peer to peer.

Experience of those is they don't work very well, like the Nest one. If you ever try and install the Nest product and it tries to connect to a Nest another Nest product, it will break in my experience.

But but the thing that I found interesting about the the pet Finder is that it's it's basically making a consumer product based on the capacity that police have been using Ring for already, right, being able to like find five people and have and have immediate nearly immediate access to footage, and now they're just turning that into a consumer a consumer side product.

How does it work?

You request that you're you, You send a message rightly to like to some like Amazon app about your pet being missing, and then it searches through all the ring cameras in the neighborhood to see if you can find the pet.

I think that is completely and notly evil. I don't think.

Can you access people's footage?

No, because they have it, they immediately have it.

Right, So they're talking about how how this footage is like secured and encrypted and no one can see it.

Meanwhile, they're offering products.

Based on based on everybody having ring And that's the other interesting thing is how all the new features are like useless if you only have one ring camera. The features are built or based on total societal acceptance that everyone already has these things, and the fact that everyone has these things enables all these extra features to work. So the actual individual products of these things not very useful.

The Surveillance Society told lap arrist with university.

And it's sacrificing privacy for for a convenience. Just thinking the entire gamble with with the with this style of product.

The last scene of the conversation just like ripping up the sideboards and everyone's houses to try and find the ring cameras. Very horrible. So wait, but you were in hol D what'd you see in the hold again?

More more more LLLM wrapper robots, A lot of smaller, smaller like robots, not not like the big the big one of the robots doing we I looked at a few robots for like you know, like learning robots for kids. For it's like kind of a toy, and it's also like supposed to be some kind of learning assistance.

You can see through that so quickly, I must be clear when they.

Get tired of it in like two minutes.

Yeah, No, it definitely looks the ones the ones that I saw, including from this This company called their their product was called a Yambo yonbo x one, which they they.

Thought as of the tongue.

I mean, it's it's it's a it's a it's Chinese. It's Chinese for it sounds similar to the word for hug.

But this is the well yeah, okay.

I don't speak any of the language, like.

This is for natural language prompting. This is to help, allegedly, according to them, we'll he will help kids learn another language. The U S side product justice Chat GIPT. So if you're if you're if you're wanting to learn learn another language through chat GPT, this is what it'll do. It was the Wi Fi and holdy is kind of off.

Show?

I was gonna say. Kind of off was the understatement of the Wi Fi situation that the Venetian this year, it.

Was freaking terrible.

It's not all, it's all.

It's worse this year because even the Wi Fi was down, it was always the signal. It is always bad. By the time you approached the Venetian, you have no more five z R. But like in the Expo, then their hone in house WiFi. Was that the irony of that was.

Because everyone has these GPT Yes, yeah, it's because everyone's just pummeling a ws worse than ever yet beating.

But yeah, we we tried to, you know, they try to give a demonstration where we'd teach us like a Chinese word, and so like, yeah, if you can learn a word.

Speak a little Chinese, but you can't.

You can't actually you can't like learn grammar, and they can't like correct a child to actually improve language, and you can't actually you actually learn to speak a language. You can learn individual words, but that's not that's not language learning, right, you can do that. You can do that like do a lingo, and that's not teaching you a.

Lingal if you were just looking for a word and do a lingo is already something that people who teach languages are like, this is it's not all the all the features that make do a lingos cut against the pedagogical value of it as a language training tool.

So there's a lot of stuff like that.

I I did ask them about like what their plans are if if the PI for chattypt it gets more expensive. They said they do not expect that in the near future. They have like five other lms that they're that they work with. Specifically, their product is mostly in China right now, and they they have they can they can swap, they can talk to Lum whenever they.

Want to, which, like is doesn't that kind of impact the quality?

Yes, because each because each of them is prompted differently. Yes, I love that though it's like, what if something bad happens, what if it doesn't?

But if it doesn't, and even if it does, we'll just use something good or whatever.

I have a slightly different gloss on this though, because we were saying before that, well, all these products seem un differentiated. And if they're all undifferentiated because they're just a wrapper on top of chat Gypt and their vulnerable to changes, that's one thing, and it maybe speaks well for chat GPT and that they'll have whatever companies among these are successful, it'll have them over a barrel and a can jack at the price on thread of bricking

Company charge you two dollars. Bryan Ches give Airbnb. Even there's like a disgusting booster who was specifically involved in making sure Clammy Samuelman managed to become CEO again. He literally has said I'll use Chinese lms every day, which is really funny. So really it's one of the two. It's going to be either. But I also don't think because they're API sales are like a small part of their revenue. It's just actually, here's a question, general question.

I've not heard mentioned Yeah, yeah, but I.

Mean specifically on the floor as powering.

Yeah, someone, do you know what ob Pebble uses?

Qual really interesting?

But to just do the for the ring they said that was on device. There is no on device version of Claude Oh Peurble. I was so nice about you. Now I have to go and look into your in its.

I can go, we should go.

No, I'm genuinely curious about that because there is no on device version of GPT or anything.

Now you're making me question if I should like double chat. I think what I'm talking.

About, I think that that's worthwhile, not not because, but the thing is, I'm a I'm a horrible freak that looks at this stuff constantly. So my natural thought was like, what do you mean? And I will admit the seventy five dollars pebble ring I supposely on device as well, that did seem a little rich to Meah, what do you mean by rich as in like an on device model and a tiny ring.

It's not on the ring, it's on the phone.

Yes, but they're saying it's if it needs to go through Claude. That's not I don't know. There's there's something weird there, and again that's something that will increase in price.

Another on water you go there. Alleged on device product is the Lunar Pendant, which is real time a GI emotion tracking.

Okay, oh, well, because it's not doing anything real you could put a random number.

Well it's not, actually it is.

It is listening to every single thing you say and building emotional assessments based on what you say as well as you know, whatever kind of biometrics it can connect from a pendant resting on your like.

They mention what the customer might be. No, not, because this always immediately goes to people with autism. We already ran into someone with a dog a dog toy today. It was like it could help autistic children.

This was not this was this was not marketed to that. This is what is this? Foreman, this is this is for I wouldn't say women.

That was the classic.

Doesn't understand women love to be told what are Yeah?

Yeah, exactly. We finally found a device to be sexist without the need of all of all.

Of the was was was pretty yes, and it measures like six or seven.

That was a mistake.

I'm sorry that it does. It does like six or seven different emotions most but it's mostly done just through listening on on device though they do not upload to the They do not upload the audio to the cloud. Nice, okay, it is on device.

But so no biometric data, just listening.

That's unclear. Uncle, It was mostly listening because again, I'm it's some look sometimes I honestly language barriers when trying to talk with some of these boots here.

I would respect them so much. It was for guys. If it was just like you guys.

Yea a sound Harry very ability, breathing and movement, that's what it was.

It's it's resting on your chest so you can have some some heart, some breathing, but most mostly it's just through listening to everything.

The reason I asked this, that's the only thing that differentiates it from like the Halo Tone wearable from you just go buy Amazon that's already doing the same thing. I'm very like I have a good memory for all the devices that try to tell me what I'm feeling and tell me to chill out, come down, so like this, this is a sort of device that remembers. And there's another product that was at CES that was like, clearly

One of less classic situations, I did you talk to a woman? Off? Do you make?

Or anything else?

Right?

Like, if you're designing a product for someone in a wheelchair, have you worked with someone who's actually using a wheelchair?

Well, the saying is nothing about us with that, which I discovered goes back to the Polish equivalent of the Magna kurta and this sixteenth century, and it was what the barons made the king agree was that nothing about them would be done without them. It didn't didn't rhyme in Polish.

Yeah, and that's also definitely not how c S works. Is like without you, we will sell to you.

Yeah, it's tanry Ford. Right. If I ask people what they wanted, they'd say faster horse, right, And so we're here to tell you what you want.

Yeah. Yeah, but these people would sell you like horseshoes to make the horses faster, rather than it's like these people don't get to anything. I'm still sitting there trying to work out what that pendant is for. I'm gonna be honest, like what alien.

Well, sometimes you're suppled to know if you if you're calm or if you're angry. Oh I know what I'm met.

Yeah, I'm breathing.

I recently started somadic therapy, and so I think I can understand the idea of the benefits of knowing when you're feeling something, identifying it and kind of like staying with it. But I don't think a pendant is going to tell me in real time. It's not built for that exactly.

Well with any of that, I mean, what are you supposed to be doing, like looking down and going, oh.

No, I'm angry and why and then breathe?

It does? It does?

It does connect to an app where like christ it has it has an analysis of how you're feeling, how you're feeling, you know, heart rate.

This reminds me of Victoria's song posting the Aura Ring. Think it's like stressed straight, like collective bar running seven hours stressed right? Oh God? So what you got a lot of paper that.

I I just I just like collecting these.

That's fine paper. Anything else you you regarded, Oh.

I guess I'll talk about the the one that I feel the weirdest about awesome. This is another CES Innovation Award winner.

Okay, this is from South Korea.

This is the Self Insight Therapy Resolved x R oh.

Okay, well I've got most of This.

Is a VR experience to give you a final goodbye to a deceased fred So the episode. So, we have seen stuffing this before. We have we have seen these kind of like VR experiences that are either fully scripted or done with like an AI And I thought that's what this that this was. I thought this was just another one of those, and I was surprised why it won an Innovation award because we've seen this stuff years ago. This the reason why it's different is that this is

Is what this was.

And they they talked about a few instances of like this really bad plane crash uh last year, and that that's that was like the main main use case that that is seen. It's right now just available in Korea. They're trying to expand to Japan and the United States where they would need to partner with with therapists in those countries. So yes, I feel really odd about about these types of products obviously specifically like the digital avatar

Puppeting it, who will who will do text to speech?

So they will will will we'll we'll we'll text to speech, uh the like, you know, whatever, the whatever the person will like.

It takes the speech as well. So no, it is texting that That's what it is.

It is text to speech. The therapist that's puppeting it. The words coming out of the avatar are from a therapist who's typing out who's typing out the words as a part of this this therapeutic exercise. But then then will be that will come out, is in a cloned voice of the deceased?

Are they're also controlling like the gestures when you see puppetting.

Yes, there is a pre pre recorded set of set of movements that they can that they can initiate.

This sounds traumatizing.

They said that the people have used it have liked it, and there's a video of of course they're gonna say that obviously, yeah, people, but that's you know, and I saw I saw a footage of of of someone using it. I think it is It is good that this isn't just an a I L L M who's just talking as your as you'r.

As and it's not pretending to be that.

It is a therapeutic experience and it is an exercise similar similar, similar, well the pretty you know you're you're wearing the r gogs, like you see the avatar in like a setting and you like say goodbye and get some kind of closure as a part of a therapeutic experience. And like there's versions that we already just do this in therapy, like you already sort of exercises with therapy. This is putting in kind of in avatar over it.

I give them. I give him some credit. If that's the If that's their reaction to it, yeah, I'm less. I'm like, I'm not mad at it because if they're very much like this is very specific, Yeah, I'm alright with it.

This is my experience at the booth because I went in very skept hostile, hostile, because I was very hostile, and they didn't necessarily win me over, but I understood why the product exists over time more and I was like, yeah, I feel very odd, not odd. I think digital. I think digital necromancy is bad. Yeah, I've every every CS I've been to. There's I've done some report on digital necromancy. The fact that it's cloning the voice I don't love.

I'm just into a therapist. I'm not a therapist, but my view on that is like there are certain things where it's leading you to get to conclusions and I feel like adding a disembodied digital levatar controlled by a keyboard, I'm like, if this helps someone, brilliant, but it's also just like that's just it's adding a layer of something that probably will get in the way of feeling better because it's like like change comes from within, like.

This is this is this is the gestalt to empty chair technique. That's that's therapy Techniquely.

I want to raise another point. So hagen Blix was on this machine kills talking about chat or chat therapists, and how the temptation on the firms that are delivering therapy over chat is to pile more chat windows on a single therapist and to get them to multitask and then multi multitask. And so I'm not saying this firm is doing it. I'm saying that this is a mode of therapy that is uniquely amenable to speed ups that are anti patient and anti therapists.

I have also a thought, right, which is when I was mostly furious about this until you mentioned this was for extreme scenario, extreme cases of grief, And I was like, Okay, can imagine if someone is so deep in their grief that they wouldn't respond to anything, but you need anything,

Yes, just trap this brick to your face for five seconds and strap this brick trap yourself.

That's I mean, yeah, this is something that you're gonna I don't think they're getting convinced into doing this. I think it's that they will, you know, this is an option that they can choose from. And I think it's also specifically this is not like an extended things. This isn't something you like go to talk to your friend. It's it's it is a It is to give you like a yeah one one time like good like like closure exercise is I'm also just like that you also have it for a pet.

They also have a powkay. Because now it's like closure isn't always clean. That's absolutely life is message, but also you don't get closure on that. Therapy is about finding finding a way through when you.

The gift you give yourself is not a thing you get from someone else.

That's the more like larger like essential resistance that I have to.

This is hearing the pet thing really fills people angry by yeah, yeah, yeah, yam yamyamao, yamyam maamyamao. No, it's just also like you lost your pet. What the fuck is seeing like a three D cat or dog? Like?

What of Canada's most beloved prime ministers, John Diefenbaker, used to go get advice for running the country from his dog's ghost.

What that was?

Dead air there?

It's true Cleveland Brown's dropped. Did Johnny mansiel based on a homeless person's idea? I love this tell me everything. That's all I know.

We learned it in history. I was fourteen years old, That's all I remember. It's literally the only thing I know about chan T dog's ghosts. There's a lot of buildings named after him as well. But he did Did you learn this? What did you grow up in Canada?

I did grow up in Canada.

Did you learn this in ninth grade?

Know? By then I was already in the States. Okay, so you.

Didn't get our full year about just the Canadian Pacific Railroad, World War One and John diefen Baker's dead.

We got a little bit of the railroad, but that's it. Yeah, you missed the year of Canadian education around dog ghosts. I did miss that one.

We're gonna put them on the new fifty.

The dog ghost that's good, had a lot of them. Yeah, the Supreme Leader Curry, We'll get right on that.

I just see this stuff and hearing the pet thing, I'm like, because my thought process with this was like, okay, extreme situations. But then I'm like, the pet thing, I don't yet. No, I hear pet and I'm like, so it's not extreme situation. You will because my thought was, okay, if this is very specific, like deep in the box of tools, we've tried everything. Yeah, fuck yeah, we'll help you with your other thing.

And also if your favorite flavor of ice cream is sold out at basketball yeah, yea, yeah, we've got.

A model for that. It's also preparing you. I don't know. Some of the most difficult things in therapy for me have been accepting there is no such thing as closure. In some cases, you will never have that.

The other thing I don't think about the pet thing is that it is that that is a reoccurring feature. You can visit the Yeah, it's like you create a space more than once which okay.

I will say now that I'm reading the brochure, it is not just about the grief. I think there's parts of this that sound like that makes sense, or the resolve extra part of it that's talking about the gestalte

The like, you are completely correct, I sound like another lum. But these are the soft edges where these people work their ways in right. It's like, well, there could be a situation where it makes sense. They're not preparing for a situation if they have, I can revisit my dead dog. They're just like, fuck it. Can I say enough of this?

It's a structural problem with small backs products. Also, you just want to expand the market.

I'll also point out that on the brochure this you should have said it here, But they are calling the grief part of it good mourning with a U.

And I'm just like, no, I love having good morning.

That's that's very good.

That's that that tells me this is a state hairdresser.

Hairdressers uh business name grade pun curl up and die good morning.

A bike called bike curious like Jesus fucking That's that's the thing is. I'm really trying and hear, folks, I'm trying to find some stuff. I'm trying to look not cynically about it.

Well, there's a bajillion AI cooking products.

I did see what I did see. We saw one which was just a giant box.

No, they're all boxes and things you have. You still do all the prepper work yourself. You still have to assemble the ingredients. In most cases. It's it's it's it's an oven, like it's a it's a quote unquote smart oven.

Right.

That's all these A products that like that like take the effort out of cooking. You're like, well, yeah, that's just putting something in the oven, like right, and still have to do a lot of work.

You kind of have hoses that are just full of congealed schmuds.

Oh yeah, yeah. At some point, like three days in it's going to just be congealed.

Cleaning it's going to be a nightmare. It's it's easier just to cook.

Like it's like it reminds me of those videos where like the influencers going these are my simple meals, no cook simple meals. Step one caught some garlic and it's just like no, no, no, you're cooking.

Yeah no, Like this is like you put put a piece of cardboard in the microwave, Like that's that's gonna be more efficient if you really want to live a lifestyle where you don't cook.

Enough about British cooking.

I just I just learned about from from Garbage Ryan about uh kitchen cells, which is the Reddit forum for in cells who cook elaborate meals and then feel bad about themselves.

That's fun, Yeah, good for them at least better good morning someone else. So that was that was a bitch, you think to say, But no, I wait, so these people are like in cells who would just so the two varieties are very elaborate meal I cooked with a caption that is just like I want to die, or like someone who's literally microwaved a piece of cardboard and it's the caption is I'm a piece of ship. That's

This was the thing garbage Ryan said is he wasn't sure to what extended was a bit think for some of them it's a bit. It's it's like, yeah, like.

I love those where it's just like a TV, a like a high sensed TV on top of the box that the hesned TV came in, and like an Apple TV and a PlayStation five with like bent cables because like like straight out the box plugs. I love that.

My favorite one was the guy who bought a church and he had a he had a bed and a little table and in a church, and his his uh caption was any suggestions for what else to do with this?

Do an exorcism?

I mean the thing you're going to do in six months involving a news Sorry, but it's like, why did you buy a church? There is this guy.

Scarsing about a church. They're cheap. Religion is failing in America.

I don't know if that's good or bad. Now, I did see this guy on Instagram that I've been following for like a while where he bought like a house in an Eastern European country for five thousand euro and he has put so much money into it just making it and he's actually got like walls. Now he's like day five thousand to buy my five thousand euro house. My friend Kujuk came down and it's just like this Eastern European guy who you could shoot with a gun and it would just bounce the fuck off this.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's all of these guys who are just like actual work and stiffs who are like this is gonna get me promo because they all make money off of it, which is cool. Actually actually in a weird way, likely helps the local economy. But it is funny watching just the American guys being like fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck infrastructure doesn't work someplaces. Yeah. Well, as we wrap up this half an hour section, I'm gonna advertise something now.

If it could happen here, there's been a white van outside this hotel the entire time.

Yeah, and they're only looking for me, Sheldon lower n Gadget and we're going to actually start with some Engadget things. What I engadget It's best to see, yes, like what was the stuff that Engadget actually liked.

I don't know if you'll hate us for this, because we talked earlier in the episode this we we as a team awarded the Lego Smartplay smartbreak system totally fort and show. It was a show off hands type of votement by the time we had gotten around to the last one, and like we were doing ranked tories voting too, so like we had to go around with everyone.

Well, we were ready to stay.

I know, thank you.

We were.

We've been progressive for a very long time.

We uh, we were dedicated.

We're like, however long this takes to find the best and show, we're going to stay all through the night. And then we got through the first few candidates and then we got to Lego and then like more than half way, more than half hands went up and we're like, oh, well, good thing. We don't need to say the rest of the night. Then it's quite obvious. Yeah, some quick math

Look at this thrown toilet mount health.

That's not an at war to be clear, that's the weirdestkedget.

That's all the coolest text.

W A And I'm like, is it a Shuri?

I love that. I love that you got confused because that's very good feedback for the team that I've been trying to fight with about the headlines.

Yeah, that completely confused me because the measure, Yeah put it. I'm just going to show only be drinking diet cokes for seven years.

That will tell you we did not give that.

Okay, So your best of CS, I will stop trying to anticipate your dynamoon.

Okay, I mean I can I do that too. Our best of CS includes like the l G wall paper TV that was shown. This's your very classic CS type of price we got, that's it. Yeah, it's very thin, very impressive. It just lost that sound bar base that used to be what it came out of. And then there's no cables like stuff for the power court because it's got the wireless control center that always that the brick that is kind of the little Yeah, you could tuck it away low latency.

Yeah, exactly saw that, and I was kind of like, I love that. It's like way, it's like super expensive, out of the range of most people, but it's cool to And also so wait does the thing go on it plugs in the walls.

Still there's still a power court for the TV itself.

HD mind such comes up the community? Did you get the price on the wallpaper one? Or if they not said it yet.

I have had so many numbers, it's hard.

And do they do the surveillance that is endemic to smart TVs or is it like a dumb TV when it comes to sending information about what you're watching?

Yeah, I don't know that either. I had our TV experts cover it.

I just know that.

I mean Consumer Union every time they look at TV's are like very good one for us to look into.

The stuff like the wallpaper TV and the transparent TV aren't even really marketed towards most like nos like they're they're kind of for like hotel lobbies or for like like the paper.

TV feels more business could be. It feels like more like something eventually a person might buy, rather than the transparent one, which you know what keeps fucking that chicken Like, yeah, bring that weird ship with you.

I love that.

I love it.

Speaking of weird Ship, Lenovo this year we're like, we really like this thing. We want to give it an a war. Let's think about like how which the Lenovo Legion Pro seven eye rollable concept?

Is that the one that kind of rolls.

Yeah, it's a gaming laptop, but it's screen can expand by rolling out into like twenty three point eight inches of space, and so you can stop in between twenty one point five inches or so, so you get like different aspect ratios when you're gaming and you just want to like drill in or you want to have discord show up on the ride or whatever.

It knows what ext you've unrolled it, and that it's always been the.

Trick, right, not understanding how to place these items on the screen. But it's gotten there.

It's very interesting and that's just the concept though.

It's just a concept.

But they last year they had a concept with the swivel which ended up being real.

Actually the auto twist they're calling it this year.

Yeah, but it's a laptop.

Yeah, it's a gaming labe.

So this is like Butterfly keyboard, but Butterfly screen. But it like slowly rolls. It rolls. It's not like a fold out press a button.

And yeah, yeah, oh my god, need to show you a video. You don't unroll it, like no, not by hand.

Yeah, yeah, it's I like that. I also think that we're approaching the point where we're limited by form factors, so that is cool. Yes, I hope they're able to do it in anything approaching affordability, right, I know that's not the same time. For like a decade we've talked about like rollable screens, screens. It's nice to see that in a consumer tech housing and not yanky and not janky. It had a little wobble, like just mentioned, it has a little bubble. But I'm kind of like, it's a concept.

I want to shout out the I x I autofocus slash adaptive iewere Okay, so they're not officially as as I think the parachute they dropped in. They were like, let's take some meetings. These are you know how multifocal slash bifocal classes right now are very clum.

Now I don't know that.

I don't know that, so some people might know, but they get very clunky and very chunky because you have like just the technology isn't there yet.

I have a stupid question by folk, what is like so the top half.

So some people have both near sighted and far sighted as you age, so you one prescription doesn't cut it. You need one like and sometimes they cut your lens so that the top half is for your alongside it and the bottom half is where you.

Right, That's what I have in this lens, okay. And it's minus progressive, so it's not a sharp line. That's more magnified the further down it goes.

Okay, so those are like multifocal. So so I XI has technology. I'm very curious what you think about this corey where it's using a mix of like LEDs around the lens to detect your gaze and where you're looking, and then a liquid crystal lens layer that changes the prescription of the lens so you're whenever you're wherever you're looking at something. It's just detecting the right prescription and just working the way it should. See a demo. R Matt Smith took a demo and he was impressed. We've

So what I would want to know is like, so this sounds amazing. I had cataract surgery last year, okay, and I got what's called oh god, I can't monofocus. So this eye is focused at monovision. Rather, this eye is focused at twenty three inches. This eye is focused at twenty five feet. My brain switches between them depending on what I'm looking at. And then this is the

Well, I don't know yet. I think it has to depend on who they team up with on the like frames as well, and how they build these into like retail ready products. I don't have all the details yet because it was a late entrance to our lac as a Wars discussions.

It's an amazing idea, but also and the fact that they made it work is incredibly and.

Is there anything more consumer tech than that?

Right?

Right glasses.

And also one more thing, spectacle technology. I glasses technology hasn't changed. It's been stagnant since the nineteen fifties, So for something like this to happen, it'd be cool. And also imagine getting like one pair of lenses that you theoretically, hypothetically don't need to keep changing as your eye as your worsen or changes that could be sustainable, could be just for your cost, for your budget. That would be great too. So I just think there's so much potential.

Multiple people could wear the glasses, I guess could be.

I can't say because I think for them they can't say things they love.

I'd love to know, like, can you put it in I'm painting D and D mini's mode and have it ratchet.

Hypothetically? Why not?

You know, my grandfather was a watchmaker and he wore a jeweler's loop. Yes, professional life and you know Popeye squint right, Like if you could just be like, no, I'm on the job now, I'm fixing a watch movement and it just suddenly zooms up.

You know, yeah, going to be pretty so cool.

That's just really cool technologies.

So we were very glad we were able to see it here and then we you know, we talked about the wheel Move earlier in the episode, gave the wheel Move an award. We just didn't see enough sustainable slash transport related technologies to have something for those categories. Literally just there were there were things. They just weren't good.

No, no, I mean you didn't have anything you could give an award to.

I mean all those personal helicopters I think could serve a great public service helicopters.

Oh yeah, you can see.

Yeah, so Richer is from last year.

I talked.

I talked with Richer last year. There was there was I saw two personal helicopters this year.

One of them was Richter. Yeah.

I think I think we should be giving giving those out to me. No, not to you, you're not You're not rich enough. I think we should be giving the personal helicopters to like maybe the top like point five people.

Everyone should happen with whirling blades on the sale free. No, I think everye they should all.

We should all as a as a victory trilphy for you won, you won, you won, society piece. Right here, We're going to give you this personal helicopter. It's gonna work great, it'll be fine. It's just as much as you want.

That pairs very nicely with this thing we saw. Oh god, so we saw a personal airbag for old people worried about breaking their hips.

And it sounds that you fall Yeah, it sounds like a good idea until you learn the details.

Well, the business model, yes, So the business model is so if you fall over, they call, they call the emergency services.

Yeah, that's a forty dollars a month subscription, which is nice. And I said to the guy, like, is Twilio that expensive, because like that's you're paying like like tiny amounts of money for one take. There's so many fall detection Yeah, like it's like there's no fucking way in hell. And you can't repack the airbag after you use it.

So it's it's use.

You get four eight hundred dollars for two airbags what and forty bucks a month? Otherwise, all it does is the airbag thing. It doesn't. It doesn't. They're trying to scam.

Let's scam people trying to scam it from medica. They were, well, yeah, they were trying to get medicare proof. Man, who's also had a hip replacement, but two hip replacements. Uh, and was the youngest person on the ward when I had it done that, Like, you know, forty month subscription from an eighty year old does not generate that much revenue over.

Months. Forty bucks. Fuck you man, it's a Twilio thing. It's well, you're just paying Twilio.

So then wouldn't you want to like make sure the airbag is repackable because then you.

Have m you don't know if it's going to work. If the old person with the arthritis repacks it, then we're worried that break a hip.

But then then they stop paying the forty dollars a month Onnesday is But.

Another argument is if you get saved from breaking a hip twice in a row, you'll happily buy another set of airbags.

That that may be true. Yeah, it's just I'm like, the more I think about it's like, oh yeah, it's forty bucks months for the text, which costs like a tenth of a cent, which will also only have happened ideally twice twice in the life of the product, right like ideally never, but if you use them, this will cost them feat So if you own it for ten years, right, and what a you're actually paying for it.

You have paid several thousand night what was up costs again?

Eight hundred bucks for eight hundred and then forty a month. That's right, that's right. And he was like, we're working there's no Medicare code for this, yet, we're working on it. Well, I'm sure, I'm sure that's all they're working on.

I could see the Medicare case for it, right, if you're starting to get inner ear problems, or if you're old, brittle or.

Whatever you balance, I can see the point. I could see why Medicare would buy you a set of airbag, just not the fucking subscription. Fuck you like, make the subscription five bucks a month like that. Even then you're like, you're still making insane magin my.

Guess these things they're manufacturing in the small runs, it's costing them more than eight hundred bucks. That they're losing money on the eight hundred bucks. And they're like, this is how we will make a profit is we'll sell a loss leader and.

Will sounds like a bad business to me.

It does well, it sounds like a case for like public investment in medical technology.

Well, oh, what a lady, we need more knife drones.

We need is that what we're calling the person a helicopter?

Now? No ideal in a perfect world. No, the personal helicopters are very safe and you're very rich, and you need one, yes, trying them out. You don't need training, there's an no. You're smart, you're rich.

G I run it.

Yeah.

Yeah, We've built an obstacle course for it. You can fly over like lava and acid and broken glass.

And you'll be you have the lathe of Heaven. You'll be the mandate of Heaven. Even sorry, late of Heaven. My brain just like, what words do you need? I don't fucking know.

You've just lath that into consistence. That's leg the l of Heaven.

There, Yes, thank you. Look for too much farming in earth to see. Yeah, it's I'm actually a little sad you don't have more. I'm not saying this is.

A criticism, it's like, but it's like, even right, even.

Last year, it felt like there was more. Yucks, it was more.

Definitely exactly more square footage is taken up by the l M rappers and by just and by robotics and sometimes combined. Sometimes it's a robot both not both rapper.

Did you see the Project Ava thing by.

Yeah, we've talked about the wife and I haven't what's the I when you see the project everything, I have not seen it yet.

It's this tube.

And you talk to the Hends like it's like Oscar and there or something.

I don't know the name of the Kira.

I guess it's the name project It's Project Kira is apparently some anime thing. And then you can have a guy with tattoos, you can have a woman in a business suit. It's like yeah, and it's just like I feel like if you try and not that they're selling its concept, you try and buy one that should put you on a list. So I did.

I did walk by that that really grows sex robot and.

Tell me everything.

I had a hard time looking at it, like I like walked up to this side and I looking at it hands and it just looked like a corpse.

It's so simple, what is this? This is a robot that looks kind of like a woman and you aumence, so we're talking real doll style, yes, okay.

And allegedly this is something that you can have intercourse with. And I walked up to the side and it has a very realistic looking skin texture, but its head moves like a like a like like an old Disney animatronic and it has like an LLLM that's trying to talk and move its mouth. And I stood there for about ten seconds and I had to leave. I walked around the corner and they had the little AI avatar section

Jack you off.

That is a hell of a good cave accessory. Yeah.

Well, and it also the jack Off robot.

This company's been around to the twenty fourteen the jet well, no, this is this is this is still the Love Sense Love Both booth and they've been run for a while. Did it did not look that good? But yes, but it connects to games as well, connect online gaming.

Wow, So so it really is you want to Tetris? Well, you know, if they can connect.

That trying to find a way into making the Tetris movie for years, you were going to be like They've been trying to fu Tetris for years.

We never will.

This is the plot of the Tetris.

Mean, finally, if they can connect it to like Final Fantasy Vin remake and have and and have Cloud, then maybe they could have a real product on their hands.

Well maybe they should do that because Cloud has a wonderful cross dressing section and also Cloud completely autistic and no, not horny at all. No, I think that whole game is trying to avoid having sex. I think I think you.

I think you would would be a great addition. This is so like but like I'm not going to judge them for the sex, but whatever. But it's also just like the idea that you looked at it and immediately faced revulsion. It made me feel and not in like a not just like a Christian moral in a judgment, more mostly well a little bit, but most mostly in like an uncanny valley way, like if if if I was engaged in this thing, it would it would feel kind of like necrophilia.

Oh god, and realistic skin is not a phrase that I like saying sex have been a thing for a while, But yes, it's just the.

Which but for me that increases if it's just a limp object. Then it is a necrophilia thing, but it's simple.

Yeah.

Just the fact that it's trying to kind of behave human I think makes it makes more makes that reaction, that makes that negative Uncanny Valley reaction a bit stronger, very strange.

And also they put them in odd places. It sounds like they don't have a Do they have a sex pavilion here? No? Not, it's in like the health tech section. Notoriously right, there was a best in show that was rescinded for us, Yeah, bustin show.

Yeah, for a woman sex toy that.

Was like, not Lioness, it was Laura de Carlo, that's it.

Yeah, And so they've had this love hate relationship. I mean when I was sex timing twenty some years ago, this was oh my Bob was always a thing. Well, and it was being held at the same time as the adult show well yeah, and so people would there would be this kind of crossover, and you could go to the party sometimes at AVN and stuff.

You had to see it.

I had to walk past some of the AVI and like expo ares and the booze to get to a Lenovo briefing. One time. Wow rules it was fun.

Other times I'm so sad. I'm so sad I missed it.

I like the idea that they all these staid kind of like tech executives seven to walk past the ass plus the five thousand have you it was with their bums is fine. No, it's just very strange to have it like sticking in the middle of like the various health tracking l MS powered.

There was a party.

Absolutely it was AI or l l M powered because it's an l I mean, it's the at least like the anime one was more interactable. Even so the Project Dave it was, Yeah, I meant the sex Box. No, I'm talking about that. Yeah, because it has it has it has it has the AI avatar hooked up to the jacking off the machine and yeah, it is.

It is.

So this is like in the N E S where you had the robot that would pick up the spinning top and it would match the action on the screen. So you had a physical robot, you had a virtual robot.

It's just like the original N E S.

Yeah, basically with fucking cuck Hunt and it's like it's like it's like right next to like three like smart Watch.

That was the thing I was saying, that's exactly it's like you've got.

For the smart watch, booth and show boss.

I'm really sorry, just stare at you need you need to find us. Yeah, we're right by the Bonamax.

The CMO really wants pictures of the booth frontage before we tear down. Can you make sure you get a picture of this? Try not to get the fuck bought the shot.

That's but to your point, Corey, the ct A has struggled with what it wants to do with this sex technology because we know that with everything sex cells R and sex tech well like advance faster than any other kinds of tech. Forget about people with accessibility needs right, and so the CTA knows it needs to cover up some space, but it won't give you a dedicated because it somehow wants to be family friendly.

Yeah, it's so ridiculous.

All of the kids.

Now we've turned into basically the like games Fares or the toy fest. That's true in New.

York because of all I wish, No I will push back. I agree with you, that's not enough.

If you want to make this a need more fun.

The goofy dipshit show.

It should be.

I would love to. I would love to see some useless crap that's just kind of funny.

But that's the International Pavilions because they are like the Country of Turkey sponsors twenty entrepreneurs to show up. They're each weirder than the last. A lot of them are really delightful to give them credit. Were not toys.

They were like, we made a photonic cell, we made a solar panel thing, we made specific software for this, that and the other, which is awesome. And those people rock. Not fun to talk about a podcast, but very funny to look at and be like, oh cool, someone's useful hair. And then there is just stuff. It is the listeners already like, oh it's I was just saying, there's nothing here. You fucking come to this and you do a podcast, asshole.

I did avoid him for a year after trying the first click s keyboard.

Oh oh yeah, clicks clicks was that shit? Yaers again this year?

Yeah, we just had Michael on and we liked the clicks thing personally the case not for me, but nevertheless, it's like, at least you fucking tried. And the other thing that pisses me off is clicks proves that other people could just because Android can fit into all sorts of things, you could be trying all sorts of weird fucking smartphone shit. You could have weird like a tube smartphone kinds of tubes that this one when we have

I mean, there was a time where you go to like Guanhou and you go to the big mall and there'd be the phone that.

Was shaped like a Marlboro Hell yeah yeah, and that ship rocks. We should have more of that. But no, it's like it's it feels like the most nihilistic cis ever.

It's just people being like I feel it gets worse from here. I feel it's just the beginning.

So my theory is that actually gets better from here, but it gets the apocalypse is so much worse because if you look at this and you realize how much LM crap there is, yes, then.

They realize, I think this is a I think this is a dip year.

Yeah, like this will be because Corey, to your point, Oh, the commodity of LMS just because the Chinese models are cheap, but doesn't mean that their margin positive. That's also true, zupe zgine. I forget which one went went public and they like lost. They spent three hundred million dollars in or two hundred and something million dollars in six months and made twenty seven million dollars in revenue. Not great?

Well, look, if you have three million dollars and you're expecting a twenty some million dollar return, I'll tell you what. I'll give you a twenty eight million dollar return.

Nice, how would you do it?

I will just keep all but twenty eight million, right right?

Okay, it's no, it's like investing in like vineyards, like yeah, no, it's and it's like all of these companies that rely on LM's going away because they're going to get more expensive and it's going to be apocalyptic. I think twenty twenty seven could be like a really fucked up youf many reasons, but CEUs twenty twenty seven would be really fun, might.

Be really but usually remind me what I wanted to talk about, which is Pete Wharton. We were talking about him yesterday. So Pete Warton is an old school hardware hacker specializing in machine learning and finding cool like one of the people who was like figuring out that you could use GPUs to do machine learning a million years ago. And he just demoed on his blog a local AI voice agent running on a system on a chip that costs less than ten dollars. So he's got an SoC.

You can put it in on EVA.

You.

The demo he built was a button you that on your dishwasher and you smack the button and you say, my filter is clogged, and it goes through the manual and it finds the relatives just on the chip. And it's all on chip, and we are again total cost of goods under ten dollars.

He built a whole model for this is his own model. Yeah, and it all it does is reference and manual.

All that is the kind that is the scale of task it can do. So he can. That's why it's like they could do other kinds of tasks.

But he's like, I can build you an eight dollar SoC with a model running on it that will help you build your ikea furniture, whatever. All this kind of there's a lot of room at the bottom. Here is what I'm saying. And he has this other post. When I was looking for the post, I found another one, which the title says it all. I know we're in

Profitable, because it's very cheap to make, they'll be like, well, there's no upside. I'm just really worried because even in the Indiego go years, Indiegogo was not everything. This is like AI has taken everything in people Anyone listening to this being like AI is this or that and the other like AI is taking over.

No. The thing I can remember that most closely mirrors. This year was the year that was about the Internet of things.

Everything so get annoying.

I was so annoyed. I was just stop saying fucking internet of things.

Oh, what's the term internet of shit? Now? The beacons I I beacons one million times. It's like, we will put an eye beacon that you're I want to device, like fucking Howard will put an ibacon hair Like it's fucking ridiculous.

Where has it gone?

Nowhere? No, it was just like mad lips like five G autonomous IoT.

But but IoT is is similar in the sense that like it's also rappers for things. It's also like small little gadgets that don't do much and they're all e ways. Now it doesn't cost as much because of the like none of.

The l because there's not a GPU service running in the fucking cloud for it. It's just very unfortunate. I think next ces could be kind of barren because of this, because it's very like, if there were other options, they'd be buying boots and I don't think that are.

Or maybe they were like priced out because there was so much AI.

That's very possible, But the thing is it didn't. It looked kind of sparse too, like there was a lot more walking room than ever I feel like.

And three after the dotcom crash was pretty good. This is actually how was it. It was full of people doing weird and interesting things, none of which made a mark, I think, but it was it was a time in which if you came to see us, it was because you had done something very improbable in a time in which there was no tech money.

That might be twenty twenty seven for real though, because even like LG with this kloid robot, it's like, hey, check this out, we're doing this thing. Well, we're not doing this thing, and you may be wondering if it does the thing we're talking about. It doesn't, but it's very slow at it and why do you want this? Well, you can't have it.

I have a question for you. When you say it's bars, do you mean specifically some wholesome booth orp of.

The Expost Center was fucking empty? And I don't just mean like it's the last day's I mean like there were just less things. There was less density. The usual dildo battery security camera area was really not present in the main hall in the same way. In fact, I found way more of those top side in a way that like I wouldn't usually. It's just very strange and I think there's a strain on venture capital money and money. Well south by Southwest last year the trade floor was

That small worrying teapot, Yeah, ropes around it and they're like vacuuming.

I wondered.

The usually I ask you is the reason I asked you is because the West Hall and the LVCC Central Hall that this whole facelift. I don't know, if you see the Central Hall right this year, does it look different? I didd so different from last year. It is still

It's nice.

It's nice, but then also makes you feel like you can see daylight, and therefore it doesn't feel as packed and crowded and like that.

And on top of the fact that a lot of the things are just like gone.

The ELG wall display.

Was so muted this I know, usually there's like this, like last year we have that giant transparent motherfucker, and I like the year with the big like curved spectacle. Unless you're a tractor, there's none. It's just I feel like I feel like we're years into just the Hubris Fest where it's just like, what if we didn't provide anything useful and jump to the latest trend. It's a shame. And as we come to the end of this first two hour block, I will just say I want to

Huh Yeah, I thought I had something to say and it's odd on my brain now, so I think I've run out of a RAM which everyone was in.

Sorrying, well, everyone's running out of the Divendra was just on talking about the RAM crisis. But thank you for joining us, Thank you for having so many Engadget people, and we've had we had Christo and oh it's fucking great to like actually talk about consumer electronics. And we've of course had Garrison Davis and Mick could happen here. Thank you Garrison of course, and Corey Doctor will be joining us for the next episode as well.

Excellent.

Looking forward to it and I am at Zetron. You can please subscribe to my newsletter. Good Lord, I'm not doing a premium this week, so I need the money. But more important than that, of course, our dealy departed. Sean Paul Adams, who's a friend of the sweet friend of the show, passed last year. We're honoring him by getting you to donate to the Pediatric Epilepsy Research Consortium. His son is epleptic and his family would deeply appreciate

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