CES 2020 Recap: Robots, Gadgets and Cool Finds

No initiating rich on Tech. What's going on? Rich Demiro here?

Rich on Tech coming to you from the CS convention show floor. This is the podcast where we talk about the tech stuff I think you should know about and we answer your tech questions.

Producer Megan is with me.

Hello.

We let me just paint the scene for you. Right now.

We are in the back of a minivan, a Chrysler pacifica totally souped up like this is the best minivan I've ever been in, literally on the CES show floor here in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, Earth Eric Galaxy one.

I don't know.

I'm just bringing it out in case you listen in different worlds, you know, But I'm telling you CES twenty twenty here in Las Vegas is quite the show. We have been here since Sunday CS. Let me just let

Second time, Yeah, my second time.

How does it differ from your first time?

I think the.

First time, I had just started this job, but it was just like a complete like a shock, like to the system.

Yeah.

But we also went to see US Asia this year, and I remember in see us Asia, I felt like like I kind of understood how to walk around the floor and like I had a better understanding. And this time, I think it's just like every time you start to get it right right.

Yeah, Like when I first went to CS, it'd be like Vegas. Oh my gosh, party, party, party, work, work, work, no sleep, no sleep.

And I realized by the end of the time, I'm just kidding.

You're no, you're for someone your age. You're very You're you've been very tame. Believe me, because ten years ago at CS for me way wild. I mean it was just insane. I mean I remember going out like nine o'clock at night to parties and just you know, getting up at two am for my stuff on KTLA. And I don't really do that anymore because I probably can't. I can't do you know, yeah, my body can't do that.

Anymore.

I'm a grandma, so I can't even do that.

Megan producer, Grandma Meghan.

Yeah.

So we saw so many things this week. I saw so many things. My camera roll is just overflowed with stuff. I saw everything from the latest automated cars. I took us a drive and a self driving car from Qualcom. We saw so many robots, We saw little gadgets, we saw big gadgets.

I saw adult gadgets.

That was the first year that they had this at the show floor, and that was very interesting because it's all just kind of mixed in to the stuff here.

What else I mean.

I just walked around this morning for about three hours over at what's called this This is like another convention center. It's CS is so big that it can't fit under one roof and it takes over the entire town. And I walked over there and they had an entire area of like all the international companies and all these little tiny startups from France and Taiwan.

And I got ramen out of a ramen vending machine, which was so amazing.

And here's what I will tell you, and I probably talk about this on this podcast a lot, but I love being media at events like this, and the reason why I love being media at events like this and someone's opening the door to our minivan here, yeah, is that they they love to take care of you. And I walked right up to the vending machine. I was like, you know, they're not really doing samples. I'm like, would

It was so delicious.

So I went up to this coke vending machine where they have this new thing called Coke Energy, and I'm like, hey, you know, mind if I get a you know, this huge line, and then you know, if you go up to a booth, they're always maybe locked the door. Actually, you go up to a booth and you know they want to accommodate you.

Immediately give you a demo and.

They roll out the red carpet for you because they know that you can amplify the message of what they're trying to show. And I love my favorite thing about cs just finding little, cool, awesome things. And so I'm going to go through a whole bunch of gadgets that I saw, you know, and look, if you want me to talk about what you know Samsung did or what Sony did. You're probably not going to hear too much about that at this podcast because I more want to

Yah, and this was actually Megan's find.

But we went to this company called Picnic and they make a robot that makes pizzas really fast, and it got a lot of play on Twitter because one of the presidential candidates retweeted my tweet about it, and when that happened, people it just went crazy.

It exploded.

Yeah, and so this little.

Robot was really tough to get because it's making pizzas for the people at the convention center. And everyone was debating on Twitter, like I said, it had AI and people are like, oh, there's no AI. That's just an assembly robot. It's just a basic automation robot. But that's not true. What we showed was it making pizza. But what it can do is. It can make tacos, it can assemble salads, It can assemble anything that has ingredients and some sort of whatever you put them on a

Yeah?

No, I mean, like I compared it to you know, manufacturing cars, you know, back fifty years ago or whenever they switched from humans to robots, Like of course people were upset, and now it's just the way it is. And cars are made by robots. Food, I mean, made by robots sounds kind of crazy, but at the same time, it's like it's safer, it's not you know, there's a lot of good to it as.

Well, and there's also like, i mean, it's little things like if you're running a business. And let's say that you have humans doing this. Out of every five pizzas or I don't know what the number is, the human probably makes a mistake that's big enough to ruin that pizza.

Or when they put.

The cheese on, they're putting on ten percent more than they should, or they're putting on olives and five olives every hour fall off.

Onto the floor. Yeah, well, the robot.

And this is where these business minds come in. They say, look, we're going to cut costs by ten percent and boom, Now you've just increased productivity. Now I get it, that person that was previously making that pizza is now displaced, but there are people that need to program these devices, and the people that were making the pizzas are now

People always find a way.

And look, if humans are going to put humans out of business when it comes to jobs, we're all going to have to figure that out. And with some of these things, they just it just happens at the ground up and we just have to all deal with it.

Anyway.

Check out the pizza robot video and oh sorry, wrong one. There we go, and we're still going to do some of your questions as well.

Yeah.

So actually this is a follow up email from this guy named Alan. He had emailed you about when you were on Leo's show and you mentioned the ESM called aaro Loow. Well he went on.

To actually try it, so he said that it look it's too good to be true. And then basically you had.

Told him that you were going to try it, and then he said he was going to try it, and then the update is it looks as if it works very well. I tried out the five dollars one gigabyte seven days and later have got gone up to the twenty eight dollars ten gigabytes thirty days and it works very nicely.

Wow.

So what is this eSIM called Arrolow?

I don't okay, so air a l o aer arrol Errolow. And so I saw this website.

It was a brand new website and eSIMs, if you're not familiar with the concept, A lot of the new smartphones, especially the iPhones, and some of the other devices out there, like the Pixel.

They have what's called.

An eSIM, which means have you ever seen that little card that's inside your phone, the simcard. Well, now they're doing away with that, and that little number on that card is actually built into your phone sort of, and so you can have what's a virtual SIM card, so you could activate your phone on Verizon without popping a SIM card in because Verizon just says, hey, give us those numbers on your phone and we'll just connect it all and make it work, which makes things really convenient.

They it's specifically called a indoor gardening appliance.

I think it's called the Vegetable Cultivator. But this was another one that kind of went viral.

Because it just looks so cool.

It's a column fridge that you install in your kitchen and it grows little, tiny leafy plants in the fridge. And yes, it's basil, it's tiny, you know, maybe bib lettuce or butter lettuce or whatever. But obviously your mind goes to what is the other leafy thing that people grow at home?

Was kidding? Marijuana?

You can't see so, and we're in California, where you know, depending on I mean, I think you have. I'm not an expert on this by anyway, but I'm pretty sure that like there's something where you can have like three little plants or something.

Now I'm not an expert, so if.

You can't do, not say that rich, But the reality is, I imagine that people would probably try this, and that's kind of why it went viral because because we said it was a refriger that lets you grow your own herbs, and I guess herb is probably.

Slang for you know, marijuana. So no matter what, this fridge is pretty cool.

There are some caveats to it, so it controls the air, the humidity or I should say the temperature, the humidity, and the water. And it's not just like you can plant anything in there, although I'm sure people will try, but it's much more high tech than that. They come in little pods that LG cells, and so I think you put these pods in there, Yeah, like a little seed pod. I doubt I doubt they're gonna have a weed pod anytime.

Going to you never know, So that's really fun.

But I just thought thought that was really cool.

And again, you know something's really expensive when they can't tell you how much it costs. We did not get a price on the veggie fridge, but I imagine it's for rich people because it's one of those fridges that kind of looks like one of those what's that big brand, like the Viking or the you know the really.

Nice I think.

Viking, Yeah, like the really nice fridge sub zero, you know those kind of Really the fridge is that when your fridge blends in with your cabinets.

Yeah, you are rich.

It's like it's well, you know what I'm saying, Like it looks like it just your cabinet is the same exact facade as the fridge.

It's literally literally customed.

Yes, you're doing okay goals. Yeah, that's that's the LG Veggi fridge.

But this does have a clear glass fridge in front or a glass window in front of it.

All right, Megan, you're up.

Okay.

So this next question is from Maria. She's asking about sharing large videos on an Android. I was wondering if you could help me. My daughter's on a drill team. I take a lot of videos of her. And many of the moms have iPhones and can air drop videos to each other, but I have an Android. Do you have any tips on the best way to share large videos to other Android users and iPhone users also from an iPhone to an Android.

Oh of course.

Okay, So the main thing with uh this has been a problem because Android and if your iPhone to iPhone, it's all good. Yeah, because you have air drop, you have iCloud. People will send you an I Cloud link.

It's all good.

You can literally you have I Message, you can share a big video through message, whatever you want. It's iPhone to iPhone has never been a problem. It's just the simplest thing, which is why iPhone users are very hesitant when it comes to sharing with Android users because it never looks good the video. If you send it by text, it's gonna look like garbage. And you're like, well, how else would I send it? Like, I don't know how

Number one.

I would say probably the easiest is Dropbox. So just get just get a Dropbox account, get a free one. I'm not sure what the Dropbox gives you for free these days.

It used to be like to like a gig or something. I don't even know how much it is.

Dropbox they don't even I mean, it's like Dropbox business is like so they're not even targeting like regular people anymore.

But it seems like you could probably get a dropbox. I don't know.

I'm guessing you can get a personal d drop box at this point. Maybe you can't anyway, so dropbox will probably be the easiest. If you can still get a dropbox, Google Drive she mentioned that will work. The problem is it's really like people don't want to sit there and get a link and then download the video from the link because it's kind of a pain.

Right, isn't that drop Box too?

They're both, Yeah, it's just Dropbox a little bit easier because it's more like a you understand the concept.

It's a folder that you drop something into.

You go into that folder and you pull it out, right, so it's Google Drive. It gets a little crazier because you're like, what is this? Is this a drive? My soniim those are my first two choices. Then I would say Google Photos is really good.

So if you have.

Google Photos on your phone, which if you're Android you probably do, just click the little share and it says share link. You can just share a link and they'll be able to download that photo as well or that video file. You can do a shared album, which this

So that's really easy. Right.

Then the other thing, and this is my new favorite, and you've been using this, Megan as well. Telegram is my new absolute favorite chat tool. And it's so great because it's kind of like I Message but on steroids, because it's got every feature imaginable, including you can share large files and you can even share large files with yourself. So if you send a video to yourself, you can download the app on your computer and then download that. They have a thing called saved Messages where you can

I like it, right, yeah, I mean it's pretty easy, and I do like that you can see when your message has been read, but I know on I Message, it's like a whole thing.

Like oh yeah, like you have your read receipts on.

But like it helps especially for work, yeah, to know like if I send a message, I know it's been read and like you don't have to respond, but I know, like, oh.

He's sadly And that's that was actually one of the things with us with with I Message.

Either you don't have a turn on or I don't. I forget, I don't even know.

If I have read, receive, I have read receipts.

Most people turn it off because they don't like that privacy.

You know, they want their privacy. So that's the problem. But with Telegram, it's on. You see a little check mark, yeah, and it okay, so there's one check mark which means it's been delivered and I think too when it's been read.

Yeah.

And then the other thing, I mean, there's so I don't want to go through all the features of telegram, but it's amazing.

It's it's a lot like BBM.

It's a lot like BBM. And the other thing is you can share. You can have it on multiple devices, so you don't you're not just limited to like iPhone Android. You can put on your desktop everywhere. Yeah, I have, I have it on everywhere. You can drag and drop things, you can what's the other things you can do that. You can find people by username, So mine is rich on Tech if you want to text me there now I just gave it out, so good luck with that.

So does that mean you'll like lose like if you get a bunch of messages? Yeah, well you're like ktl like tech like message.

Oh that's I think disappear.

You can pin it to the top, so I have I have, like my wife pinned to the top, so I see her messages way at the top. I have our little KTLA tech pin to the top, so it's always right at the top.

Good okay, So then you can get all your other and.

Then the other.

I've had a bunch of people text me through it from CS and it's fine. I mean, it's like it's very personal because it is like a text, but it's also I know it's they don't know my number, so it's fine.

Yeah. But anyway, so those are the things I would recommend and check them out. All right.

Another product I saw which I you know, I know, there's a lot of Arlow fans out there. Arlow is this wireless security camera company and people love them because the security cams are wireless, they last for anywhere between four and six months, and they're super easy to install

You just put it up and now you.

Have a flood light, which is good for security, and you also have a camera and you're also illuminated at night.

So a lot of these floodcam are these.

A lot of these cameras at night use IR which doesn't look very good, and it's been black and white. But this is full color even at night, which is really cool. So I don't know, it's it's kind of cool. I don't have the price on it, but I don't know if they told me the price on it, I can't remember. But anyway, I know there's a lot of rlow fans out there, and this will expand your reach.

So awesome. Cool. It's getting hotter and hotter, right I know.

I was like, the van must have gone off. We killed the battery.

We killed the battery because the van is off and.

We are sweating.

Yeah, all right, question producer.

Mean this next question comes from Joe. I watch you on Fox eight News in Cleveland at twelve PM, and I enjoy your segment very much. I'm in the market for a smart watch with ECG capabilities. I have a a fib and I want to keep track of it. I understand that Apple is and the leader is the leader in this area. However, I'm not ready to give up my Android phone yet. Is there another brand out there for Android right now?

Okay, we're recording this in January twenty twenty. If you talk to me in one year, it's gonna be a whole different story. There's probably gonna be fifteen of these things I could recommend right now. Apple Watch, EKG ECG whatever they call it is kind of like the gold standard. It's there right now. It monitors your heart. It monitors what's going on with your heart. You can take an ECG whenever you want. It'll tell you when your heart rate is elevated, when it's too low, when you fall.

Google bought Fitbit.

You can be believe that they are going to add these features into the future fitbits for sure.

They have to.

Uh.

The other one that will have it is the Galaxy Watch Active. I think it's called. But the Galaxy Watch they announced this last year at their event they said we're gonna we built in the tools to do an EKG on this watch, but they did not activate them. So that's what we're waiting for. And it's the.

Galaxy Watch Active too, I guess it's called.

And they we have an event with Samsung on February eleventh.

I believe hopefully we'll get an update.

Maybe they'll introduce this on stage and say, hey, it's active, but you're talking it's been a while. I mean I think it was like back in the summer that we had the event where they unveil this, and anyone who bought that that wanted that feature.

Has been waiting now six months. It's too long.

So that is the watch that I would recommend, and hopefully they will have that very soon. They need it, because I'm not like I used the EKG feature a lot. But if you, like you said, he has a fib he needs that and you know you want to be able to have that. All right, let's see and you can pick the next one. Which one do you want me to talk about. I'll give you some choices. You've got the fingerprint door opener, you've got the self driving car.

You want to do the self driving car?

Okay, So we both took a ride in the self driving car from Qualcomm, and Qualcomm does not make cars, but they make the technology that lets cars self drive, and kind of like Renouvo. Well, it sounds like Renovo is doing more of the car we're in, is the Renovo car. Sounds like they're doing more of the data that helps all this stuff along.

True, and these are just companies, Honestly, I know nothing about well, neither.

Did I until you know, until we'll call Calm. I knew about but Renovo I had not until we shot our podcast in here. But it's you know again, the data that these cars have is just crazy. And so the Qualcom we get in and we you know, we do these things blind. We like get in, We're like, we'd have no idea what this car sign a waiver and next thing you know, we're on the freeway at seventy miles an hour in a car that's driving itself. And what was was that the first time you were

So yeah, I felt like it reminded Well, first of all, I was like filming it, filming in the back, so I was looking through a screen filming it the entire time.

But I kind of to like k not it too freaked out about it.

I just told myself kind of like, oh, it's like a ride at Disneyland, like don't worry, and like it's really safe.

But I was kind of freaked out.

I was like after, I was like whoa, Like that car was actually going like seventy miles per hour on the freeway and you know, like, yeah, it was crazy and anything can happen.

Cool.

I mean the concern to me exactly is Okay, you've seen you've been in a car where someone jerks the wheel to the left or right and like.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, what was that?

They're like, oh, I had to avoid something Like imagine a computer doing that and like next thing, you know, you're flipping or you're rolling. I mean that's really scary. And I think to me, it's like and we did it and it was fine. It was only a couple of minutes. It was you know, ten fifteen minutes, and you know, this thing is accelerating, it's changing lanes. It wasn't passing cars like it wasn't like going in front of a car that was like slow.

It wasn't aggressive that right.

It's not a New Yorker, Yeah, but it's a New Yorker, I should say Jersey.

I don't know whatever. I mean, I grew up on these space Yeah, but it was really interesting. I think they did a good job.

And what Qualcomm is saying is they're selling this platform to automakers so that automakers, you know, can integrate this into their cars. And the idea being is that pretty much every car is going to have some level of autonomy in the next three or five years. I mean, Qualcom was targeting three years for this technology to make it into a car on the road, So we're ways off, but again, that's pretty big autonomy that this car got.

It was like a it's like a back and forth.

I'm taking over.

Yeah, And so the car takes over and it's merges onto the freeway. It goes on the freeway, it changed lanes a bunch of times, and then exited the freeway and then finally said okay, time for you to take over. But imagine that you just drive to Vegas where you just say.

Like, I'm going to Vegas and it goes on I'm taking over, and then suddenly you're like it was pretty cool.

Yeah, I liked it.

I love those things. And it reminded me of how far we've come from the first time I ever got into a self driving car was in Japan at c Tech and I got into a little Nissan and all this thing did was do one tiny loop. I'm talking maybe a five hundred foot loop inside a place, and all I can think of is, oh, my gosh, what if this car just accelerates right into the.

Brick wall in front of me and I'm dead? And it didn't. But again, these are you scared? Yeah?

I was apprehensive. I was like, I don't know what this car is going to do. And it was the car that we drove I was less apprehensive. They had a fail switch, like a big it's actually a big red button that's like boom, you press that.

It's like an emergency stop switch. They had that.

They had this little dashboard light which was red and green. If it's red, it's like, get the get out of take the wheel because robot has gone back. Yeah, the robot has has rebelled and go.

Anyway.

It was fun, It was really cool. Okay, this next question comes from Jesse. I just read an article about juice hacking. What devices do you recommend to avoid juice avoid hacking danger?

What is juice hacking?

Oh gosh, so I'm curious. I think it's juice jacking. Actually, juice hacking. Juice jacking. So juice jacking is when, yeah, juice hacking.

Yeah, well she's she saw an article. It's it's really juice jacking. It's hacking, whatever you want to call it, but juice jacking. So juice jacking is when you plug your phone into you know, you're at the airport and there's this nice little USB charger right there on the side of your chair, and you plug your phone in and next thing you know, all the data and pictures

Oh wait I have that? Yeah, oh wait, that was on my Instagram stories. So yeah, does this really happen.

Probably yes, somewhere in the world someone's phone has been juice jacked. The reality is at an airport, though, probably. Oh wow, is it gonna happen to you? I would say your chances of juice jacking happening to you are ninety nine point nine percent.

Not gonna happen now. That does leave point one percent.

And if you're going to a country like China or a country uh in you know, like near Russia, I would be more concerned. And I'm not singling those countries out, but there. You know, there are opportunities for this to happen now at lax and you know whatever. It's also the phones are made these days, especially if you keep your software up to date, the phones are made to avoid these sorts of things. Have you ever plugged an iPhone into a new computer and it says, yeah, trust

Right.

Yeah, Well after someone got juice jacked and hacked. Now, Apple said, oh, you know what, we should probably have a little prompt that says, hey, we just noticed that you plugged your computer and this computer is asking for some data. You have to press something on your screen, and if you have a passcode on your phone, you have to type in your passcode to approve that computer. So number one, that's probably gonna protect you if this happens on Android, they have very similar things as well.

Phone in here, yeah, data in here.

But like if you're just like in the media room at CS and like, you know, you plug your phone. Now, some people might argue that the media room at CS would be the most ripe for hacking because think about all the international journalists in there and the information.

So you do have to be on guard. But I think it just it's common sense prevails.

But if you have a passcode, be smart.

But also a lot of these little attacks require you to put in that pass code, do all this stuff. Then they have to download little tiny piece of software to your phone. Then your phone is communicating, so a lot of little steps. It's not like you imagine that they do it on TV shows where you plug your phone in and it's charging, and while it's charging, it's like five four that big status bar off like we're getting all.

Of Megan's data in three two fun with that.

It's really not that great data.

So I again, be aware of this, and it's good to even know what this is all about, but just be aware. It's kind of like the skimmers at the gas station. It's not because we know that people skim credit cards that you don't fill up on gas. It's just you kind of are aware if you see some weird wires hang out of the gas pump and when you're putting your credit card in and you're like, oh, go away, maybe I shouldn't use that.

So what if you really need gas, then just do.

It and let your credit card company deal with it. Use your credit card at the pump for now. Don't use your credit card. We talked about that in the last podcast, didn't we All right, so let's see what else do we want to talk about the let's see, we got this Coldgate toothbrush.

We talk about this. This is kind of interesting.

Colgate has a new toothbrush called the Plaquelists, and it's very simple. It's a it's a smart toothbrush. Smart everything smart nowadays everything is smart. Toothbrushes are smart everything every ya when I say everything, Yes, I've been to the adult toy section.

It's all smart.

It's kind of crazy like that was actually one of the craziest things of going to the show is having these people demo products for you that they're just like throwing out terms that like you don't normally hear on a daily basis.

What are we talking about?

Oh, this this stuff.

Yeah, they're just like explaining how things work, and you're just like, ah, you're hearing stuff that like you don't normally hear and from like an average person on the street that's like talking to you and like holding this thing in their hand and demoing this targets.

This, this, this TAP's that this does. That is but boat boom boom, and.

You're like they're like so comfortable talking about it, and you're.

Like I was like okay, And it's really funny because I'll be honest, there's a lot of people at these booths and there's a lot of normal people. I mean normal people, just like regular like you know, Bob the businessman from South Dakota.

It's like, I didn't realize that last year there was some invention and that that had won an award at CES and then they and then CS took the award away.

Well, yeah, they weren't ready for it. Last year they weren't.

CS was not as an organization, was not ready for the revolution. Yeah, and now they are, and now it's this year.

Yeah, it's been kind of totally normal.

It wasn't like like I predicted, it might take over the show, take over the headlines. It definitely did grab a lot of headlines and it still continues to. I noticed the top three trending search with CS was CS sextech on Google. So it's not like people ignored it. It's just the mainstream media is not necessarily going to show what I saw on the Today Show, which just not gonna happen, or you're not going to see it

So back to Coldgate.

So Coldgate placklist pro wait, start talking about electric toothbrush, and it's really interesting it The bottom line with this toothbrush, it has indicator lights on it and it also has sensors on the toothbrush that looked for plaque on your teeth, and when you pull the toothbrush out of your mouth, if there's still plaqu present on your teeth, the lights are like, hey, you.

Still need to keep going. Oh, and so it uses it.

Let's see the users using a light ring around the toothbrush. The user sees a blue light when build up has been found, the white light appears to let you know you can move on. So you brush the quadrants of your mouth and you kind of pull this thing out and you're like, oh, cool, that quadrant's clean because the light is white.

I like that, right, that would really make me brush my teeth.

I think, wouldn't it be really like evil and sinister by Colgate if they were just like, ah, let's just make people brush their teeth a lot more than they have to, and they just like like some engineer like revs up.

That's long. Oh gosh.

Anyway, So that's that's another product that I thought was pretty cool. I mean, like I said, everything is getting connected. It kind of gets a little tiring to see, like, oh, your pillow is now smart and it's telling you how

Well compared to the we saw another toothbrush or they're calling it a y brush. Yeah, and it can brush your teeth in ten seconds.

I mean I did want to try it out.

Yeah, Like, I'm curious, does that brush your teeth well?

So that one looks like well, I'm sure they did the research and figured it out. I mean, but that's again another dream to me. So if I can put this toothbrush, which kind of looks like a whitening tray with bristles, so it looks like a whitening tray with bristles, you put it on your bottom teeth, you press a button, it vibrates for five seconds. You flip it over, you put it on your top teeth, vibrates for five seconds. They say it's gonna give you a full clean.

I guess that makes sense because you're supposed to brush like each tooth.

For five seconds.

Oh interesting, Okay, So I mean I did not get to try that one. I actually had an appointment, but it was something got mixed up. I did want to try that, and I'll probably get them to send me one if I can, because I I'd love to, and the brush that I'm using, I don't want to. I feel bad, but someone yeah, sorry, yeah, no whatever, it's fine. But someone, a dentist emailed me on DM and said,

You're just a lazy parent.

Like before you have these quick knee jerk reactions to new technology. Yeah, just imagine there are a lot of people, right, Maybe not everyone is able to check their baby's diaper or whatever every five minutes. Maybe there's people that work from home, yeah whatever it is. And also or maybe your baby has a really sensitive bottom and it can't go five minutes, you know, with that wet diaper, and or they get it a rash, or they have a rash and you want to know immediately when they wet.

But what I think is also cool is the idea that like, okay for that, you know with the baby diaper.

Thing, in ten years, like that's going to be everywhere.

And it'll be built into every diper.

It'll be like inexpensive.

And so like when people like I was watching the hit this morning on Katla and watching the anchors reaction to the story, and like they were like, oh, you know this is they were just kind of saying, like this is ridiculous. But I mean in ten years when I if I have kids, like this is gonna be normal, and like.

They're gonna have it at CDs probably, and that.

Every diaper will have it built in.

It'll help, you know.

And that's that's the point again. And everything starts out expensive. Yeah you see the price? What would I see today? This digital sign that is for like restaurants, it's like this giant like you know how signs have like a big billboard inside which like tells you like a special or something, you know, like they're advertising something.

Well, this one's digital, so they can change it. It looks really cool.

They can roll it around whatever, and it's ten thousand bucks today. In the future, it's gonna be three hundred bucks, and every mom and pop, you know, restaurant can have it and have these really cool signs that get your attention.

They have like steaming soup on it, and you're.

Like, oh, I want that soup because it's like a picture of someone's slurping soup and you know.

So it's just it's just.

This is what I love about shows like this is that you get a glimpse of the future. Yes, am I buying all this stuff today?

No?

Yeah, of course I am.

I would love to, but I'm not getting it all today.

But I love seeing It's like it opens up these little pathways in your brain, going.

Oh that's interesting. Okay, I can rely see why people like that stuff. All right, I'll do one more question from you, one more gadget, and then we're gonna have an interview. One more question with our host here.

Okay, this next question is from Bob.

How do these big companies like rise In sell these expensive iPhones and charge high monthly fees and give the most incredibly terrible service The people are great. However, the resolution to the problem can take hours, you know. Basically, he goes on to say that he was on.

Hold for three hours the other day.

After talking with someone. After one and a half hours, what happened? Okay, so you get the point.

So he's frustrated.

Yeah, he's frustrated because he's paying a monthly fee. Did he mention a company specifically, yeah, okay, So, which that's actually kind of funny because I feel like Verizon has such good customer service, Like every time I've ever called them, like I've had Verizon and AT and T, and I feel like the difference is pretty is pretty intense. Like Verizon, I feel like my problems are solved with the first person they stay on the line with you.

So I mean, but again, there'd be like.

A little like thing next to your name that.

Says like, no, are you kidding? They have no idea, No, oh, this is oh my gosh. Rich is one of a billion journalists in the world that covered TECHNOLOGYE me, nobody cares.

Now nobody when I call any company, they don't care.

They don't know who I am from anyone else. But I will say, I just feel like Verizon's really good. But I understand his frustration in general. And what he's trying to say is we pay good money to these companies and you feel like sometimes they just take it for granted. And I'll give you an example, Simply Safe, which I have. They it took I called them one time for help, and it was like I was on hold for it, said.

Hold will be a half an hour, half an hour.

I pay you guys twenty five bucks a month, what And so I'm sitting there And so I actually did not get this problem solved with them for six months because I just didn't feel like waiting on hold for half an hour. And so finally once I did, the guy was super friendly.

That was on, you know, that came on.

Solve my problem in about three minutes, and so I was very happy. And I'm like, and it's kind of like it resets the clock. It resets like my little anger clock, you know. I'm like, Okay, well I'm good with Simply Safe again. But the thing is these companies just it's like sometimes it does depend on the person you get. Sometimes it just kind of goes with the company. They're just kind of weird. And that's the day.

He did say the people are great.

Oh okay, so it's just companies.

So he's just angry about the companies, angry about the amount of time.

Yeah, I'm I don't have a solution. Get human.

You can check out a lot of these companies are doing the thing where they call you back when they have a customer service person available.

You can try that, but otherwise you just got to roll with it all. Right. Final gadget we'll talk about is the Halo Touch.

This is from Quickset, and this is a smart lock for your house that uses your fingerprint, and I see the pro and con. The pro is that's probably more secure than using a digit, you know, like the four digit code or six digit code, because you can't really recreate a fingerprint. The downside is you have to have everyone that comes to your house that wants to open

They'd be like no, or you think that's weird to ask?

Yeah, I think so.

Really I would not want to be like, oh, Grandma, Nana, can you scan your fingerprint?

Maybe?

But like we had that at my sorority.

Also fingerprint scanner, yeah to get in real nice.

Yeah, oh interesting, that was like five years ago.

Wow, okay, well that was a corporate that that was probably a commercial solution. But this is for your house now, which is again we always see these things come through the commercial sector, first business to business and now it's trickled down two hundred and fifty bucks. They'll be available in twenty twenty, in a couple months. I think Halo Touch Wi Fi smart lock, I think it's pretty cool. Yeah, you can register up to fifty different people or one hundred fingerprints.

I think that's funny.

Yeah, you have fifty people.

I have a bunch of people on mine though, Like I have an electronic door lock, and I have a bunch of people on mind.

Can you put them in certain like time?

Oh?

Absolutely, Yet in a like one in the morning, No, yeah.

No, you have I definitely don't have the house person that comes to clean uh coming in at They do.

Not have access.

It's not that she or he would want to, but you never know.

What if someone goes rogue on you and then they're like, oh, I have the key code to you know, Rich's house.

Ye, So yeah, all right.

Coming up next, we are going to talk to our lovely hosts here in the minivan. We've got Chris Heiser, Renouvo CEO, to tell us what this minivan is all about.

You were listening to rich one.

All right, we got Renovo CEO Chris Heiser joining us in the minivan. Chris, thanks so much for letting us use the minivan.

Hey, thank you rich for having us. This is the coolest minivan in all all of ces. It's down here on the floor in the north hall and excited to be here with you.

Tell me about Renovo and this minivan. What do you guys do.

So, Renovo's a software company, and what we do is we help automotive companies develop the core software inside of the cars that you're sitting in now. And cars are basically big computers.

Now.

Where people see vehicles, we see computing, sensors, data, and so everything that goes into this vehicle requires hundreds or thousands of software developers all over the world working in tandem to produce something like this. And what Raalvo does is we help them evaluate the data that comes from these vehicles so they can learn faster, they can build better software.

What type of data is the typical vehicle today collecting on the driver and the vehicle.

Yeah, So what's amazing is vehicles you can buy today might have as many as a dozen cameras, They have radar sensors, they have light our sensors, and they have hundreds of embedded sensors detecting temperature, pressure, or anything that you can think of.

So this is one of the.

Most sensitive and powerful sensing devices in the world. And so this thing is continuously recording data and it can use it to operate itself. But more importantly, you can use that data to improve how it works. You can see how people interact with it, you can see how it interacts with the world, and if you can get that data to the developers, you can improve the software in real time and ultimately build better, safer, and.

More fun vehicles. Well, tell me about this car. What's going on in this minivan?

So the Chrysler PACIFICA that we're in today, we use as a way to communicate with people about how much data is actually created. And so you look at something like this, which has the hundreds of sensors that it is mentioned that's generating usually around four to five terabytes of data for every hour that it runs on the road. Wow,

Now, does that mean my car has a hard drive that's some of this data is being stored off? You've got it.

I mean I think look at your car like a laptop or a PC. Now, it's exactly the same type of computing devices that are in these vehicles. They have high performance computers that are connected to the sensors in real time, and they're jetterating and storing a lot of data.

Yet when my wife's check engine light comes on, she still has to go to the dealership and figure out why that's coming on.

Yeah.

Well, I think what you're going to see over the next few years is those check engine lights now are going to be really communication with servers in real time, and in many cases those things can be diagnosed and even fixed out in the field with ever having to take the car to a dealership for service. And I think we've gotten used to that being how our laptops or our mobile phones work. Automotive is sort of the last great frontier and making software work the way that

So whenever I talk about technology and cars, and especially futuristic cars, we always imagine about software crashes. We're not talking about physical crashes, but people wonder if the software crashes, does my car stop working?

Is that the case?

Yeah, So one of the biggest challenges you have when designing these is to deal with these unexpected circumstances and make sure that if there is an error, it doesn't lead to something that is safety critical. So Renault's actually here partnering with BlackBerry Acunics. They do a real time operating system that has a lot of safety features built

Now, when we talk about data and especially the car, what about privacy? Because all this data that's being collected, it tells you how fast I drive, It tells you if I take corners at a high rate of speed, if I'm an aggressive driver. A lot of people would like to have access to that information. The insurance companies, cities, states, government, whatever, how concerned we need to be about privacy when it comes to our cars.

I think it's a really important discussion to have, and it's something that we need as an industry to take head on. Renovo operates on a global basis. We have customers in Europe. They are very very strong privacy laws GDPR in Europe that cover what you can and cannot do with data and what type of consent you need to get from the people that generate that data. Those laws aren't quite strong in the United States, although in California CCPA came into effect in January of this year.

All right, give me a little glimpse into the future of automotive. I mean, we know that cars are eventually going to drive themselves. How far are we from that? And just give me what your idea of the future of cars is.

Sure, so automation is definitely on the rise, you'll start to see it in low speed, relatively sedate conditions in good weather. Leaders like Way already starting to do fully autonomous rides down in Arizona, and you'll see more and more people doing this. But I think the bigger story is that this vehicle that you're sitting in, in other cars, they're going to become more connected to our digital lifestyles.

Chris Heiser, Ronovo CEO, thanks so much for lending us this car today.

We appreciate it. Thanks for your vision of the future and do good stuff with our data. Please, Rich Thanks.

Well, now we know what this minivan is all about. My personal favorite part is the discolight.

Yeah, it's a party in here.

It's a party.

You're Vegas, baby, So it's been a blast here at ce S twenty twenty.

I love discovering this stuff.

I love sharing it with you, So be sure to check out my Instagram at rich on Tech for all the videos and go to my Facebook pages.

While Facebook dot.

Com slash rich on Tech producer Megan, how can people submit questions to the website?

Uh, check out.

Rich on Tech dot tv and there is a contact page and you just go there, fill out your question and.

Rich gets back to you pretty pretty fast.

And if people want to see you on Twitter, how can they find.

You Twitter dot com slash producer Megan.

You can follow all of her antics and again, go to rate this podcast dot com slash rich on Tech. Rate this podcast dot com slash rich on Tech. The only way we're gonna grow our audience. I know you want to keep this a secret and keep it to yourself, but I would love if you shared the rich on Tech podcast with your friends. So to do that, just send them a message with a link to the podcast and say I think this is something that you would

That website will help you do it.

That's gonna do it for us from here at CES twenty twenty in Las Vegas.

Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you real soon. Thanks for listening.

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