CES 2018 Roundup

annual ce S event in Las Vegas. I had been every single year since two thousand and eight, and two thousand eighteen was the first time that I did not go. So for those who do not follow tech news and may not know what c e S is, it's a big trade show and it used to be known as the Consumer Electronics Show, but the organizers have slowly kind of moved away from that name. They felt that it

might be a little restrictive. It doesn't really encompass everything that goes on at the show, but it is an enormous trade show that takes over not only the Las Vegas Convention Centers three point two million square feet of space, but also other places like the Sands Expo Center or numerous suites and various hotels up and down the Las Vegas Strip, as well as several tents and temporary buildings on the outskirts of these locations. So at this show,

companies display products. Some of them are already available in stores, so you might see things that you are already familiar with. Some of them are things that are scheduled to debut in the near future, so it might be the newest television that's gonna hit store shelves in the spring of

that year. Some of them are prototypes or concepts that don't represent a specific future product, as in, you're never gonna see that specific thing on say I, but rather they have potential future implementations for certain types of technology incorporated into them. So in other words, you might see a concept car and you're never going to see a car that looks like that on a lot of a of a dealership, but you might see elements that are incorporated into the car worked into various car lines in

the future. It's like that, but with all different types of technology, not just vehicles. Typically there are a lot of cool things you can see on the showroom floor, but there are also tons of more mundane products, So you might see some really cool robots or three D printers or things like that, but you're also going to see a lot of stuff that you know it has a place, but it's just not as sexy or exciting,

like cell phone cases or television wall mounting frames. The purpose of the trade show primarily is to connect manufacturers or companies with retailers, and then to a less or extent, connecting the press to this big event. But primarily it's about the people who make stuff and the people who sell stuff getting together and saying, yes, that stuff you make, I want to sell it in my store. That's the

main purpose of it. And when I say that, that's a very simplistic way of of talking about deals that are enormous. We're talking about enormous chains that are have global presence, talking to big manufacturers that also have a global presence. So we're talking big, big business, and a very tiny bit of that happens to be the press

who are there to cover everything. I say this because as a member of the press, I am aware that we are pretty prone to forgetting that we're a small part of this equation, and we often start to think of c e S as our own playground, or that it's meant for the press to get the word out. In a reality, that's just one tiny element of it. That's more of just a gentle prodding at some of my peers in the tech space who get a little huffy about the UH the way that press can be

treated at these events. Though to be fair, sometimes the press can be treated pretty badly. It all just depends upon the situation at the time. Now, the way ce S tends to work is that there are a couple of days reserved for press events and news conferences, and

these days happen early on. On those days, the show floor remains closed except for special events, so you can't go in and look at all the different booths at that time because those teams are all out at various press conferences to give announcements of what they're going to be showing that week. The press also tend to be at those announcements, looking at the different UH products that will be on display and kind of planning out where

they're going to go. While the show floor is actually open, the focus will shift to numerous conference rooms in ballrooms, in various Las Vegas conference centers, like the one in Mandalaid Bay. Mandalaid Bay, as I recall, is the current location for all the press events. In previous years, it's been at the Venetian and other places, but right now it's at Mandalais Bay. Now, these events give companies the chance to address large groups of tech press before the

madness of the show itself begins. And there are also a few smaller preview events. Uh there's one called c e S Unveiled, and there are others as well. These little events give the press a chance to see some of the products that will be on display, but in

a smaller setting than the showroom floor. So that gives the press the chance to see some of these products before things just get super chaotic, and it might mean that you see something that you would otherwise overlook because it would just get lost in a sea of technology and people. Now, for most people going to see e S, the event doesn't really begin until the showroom floor itself opens, which is typically a day or two after the first

press events. This year, the showroom floor opened on Tuesday,

January nine. Now, as I said, I did not go to the show this year, but there has been a ton of coverage about things that were on display, so I thought today we'd go over some of the trends, the products, and weirdness that was because trust me, every single year, weird stuff happens at that show, and I thought started off with something that was from that third category, the weird category, We're gonna talk about rain and electricity.

So on that first day, Tuesday the ninth, Las Vegas was the site of a rainstorm, which doesn't sound like a big deal except it had not rained in Las Vegas for one hundred sixteen days up to that point, and the rains caused a flash flood in the city, and there were reported leaks in the convention center, which you do not want if you happen to have millions

of dollars worth of electronics stored in there. There was a pavilion that Google had set up outside that had to be closed down early due to the weather, and from what I understand, getting around Las Vegas was even more of a headache during that rain storm than it is during a normal c S, which trust me, is pretty darn bad. It is not easy to get from one spot to another in Las Vegas during c e s.

All the different arteries are clogged with traffic. The rain messed stuff up a bit on that first day, but the show must go on, and so everything continued, though I'm sure more than a few booths were struggling to have everything in place in time for the first visitors walking through the convention center, just because it took longer to get to the Convention Center than it normally would. Then, on Wednesday, January, the show hit a more frustrating snag.

For a couple of hours, the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center lost power. The Central Hall also lost power, but for a shorter amount of time, and this is where a little geografi lesson comes in handy. The Las Vegas Convention Center has three main halls. There's

a North Hall, a Central Hall, and then the South Halls. Technically, because it's two floors, the North Hall is where you're gonna find most of the automotive tech on display, and there's some related technologies like vehicle sound systems and other aftermarket products and a few other things, but that's typically what you find in the North Hall. The Central Hall is where most of the big, big brand names have their booths. This includes companies like Sony, Panasonic, Intel, and LG.

Some of those booths are truly gigantic, taking up as much space as a dozen or so smaller booths would. The South Hall, like I said, has two floors, so it's a bottom floor and the top floor, and has more big names in it, as well as some medium and smaller sized companies, and depending upon the year, the South Hall can also host some of the zones at c E s now zones represent general categories of technology.

In recent years, cs has moved some of those zones to a different convention center called the Sands Expo Center, but the South Hall is still packed with tons of booths. So when the Central and South Hall's lost power, that was a really big deal. Now, many of these booths have monitors, computers, televisions, and other gear plugged into the building's electrical system, and there are tens of thousands of people in the Las Vegas Convention Center. I didn't given

time during the open showroom floor hours. The power shut off at approximately eleven fifteen am local time, just as the show was supposed to be getting going. Like it was it was, the show floor had opened, things were starting to move. There was some hustle and bustle, and then the power goes out. The Convention Center was able to restore power to the South Hall after a few minutes, but the Central Hall presented more of a challenge, and

the power outage lasted a couple of hours. So I think actually misspoke earlier where I said the South Hall came back or after a couple of hours in the Central Hall and after a couple of minutes. It's really the other way around. Uh, this is what happens when I don't go to c e S. I mix up the halls. But the Central Hall out of power, and that was a big deal. Now, a lot of those booths also had their own generators, so they were able to have like little islands of light in a sea

of darkness. But you might wonder what was the cause of the power alleges in the first place. Why did the power go out? What was all that darn rain from the day before. According to an official statement, the rain caused condensation to form on a transformer for the convention Center, eventually causing what is called a flashover. Flashover is also known as an arc flash, and this gives us the opportunity to learn about arc flashes before we jump into news about robots and TVs and stuff. So

what is an arc flash? Well, first, an electrical arc is the phenomenon of a luminous bridge of electricity formed between two electrodes, and arc flash happens when a fault or short circuit passes through the arc gap, or to put it another way, and arc flash is when an electric current diverts from its intended path to leap from one conductor to another, or it can also happen from a conductor to the ground and it goes through the

air in a really powerful electrical discharge. The term short circuit refers to a case where there's an unwanted connection between a circuit or within a circuit rather that allows current to pass through that unwanted connection. It's kind of like, well, it's like a short cut. That's why it's called a short circuit. You're having a pathway that you didn't intend electrons to pass through, and suddenly the electrons can and

will go through it. Generally speaking, electronics work by directing electricity through specific pathways and that provides power to various elements.

And that's how the electronics work, so if you create conductive connections between those pathways, suddenly electricity can travel a different way than what you had intended, and typically short circuits can damage circuits, They can lead to overheating, they can get hot enough to start a fire, or even with a powerful enough electric discharge, they can cause an explosion. Arc flashes can often be on the serious side of

that spectrum. Typically it only happens if the voltage is above volts, and during an arc flash, an intense amount of energy can be released, and arc flash can produce heat of up to thirty five thousand degrees fahrenheit and produce a concussive force called an arc blast that, depending on the situation, can be strong enough to rupture your ear drums or even cause your lung to collapse. So

it's an incredibly dangerous situation. So this arc flash shorted out part of the electrical system to the convention center, and that necessitated a repair job. To the credit of everyone involved, the system was back online within a couple of hours, but two hours lost during a massive trade

show is no small problem. Companies spend a significant amount of money to secure show flow or space for c e s every hour representatives are trying to make connections with potential customers, and with the press going offline for two hours just at the start of things, wasn't a great way to begin the show. Now, that's not to say c E S was a show of doom and gloom.

There there were some setbacks, but most of the reports I read seemed to suggest people took it in stride for the most part, and once the power came back on, everyone was back in business, or at least they were once they could get their tech up and running again after the unplanned power cycle. A few trends became evident during this year's c e S, and one of those was incorporating fingerprint scanners into technology. Several products at the

show sported fingerprint scanners. One of them was a smartphone from Vivo, which actually went a step further. It's fingerprint scanner is built into the screen of the phone itself, so there's not a dedicated sensor area that's either on the front or the back of the phone or anything like that. You just put your finger on the proper spot on the screen, and assuming your fingerprint matches the one in the phone's memory, you access the device. So

how does that work? How can you access just through a screen? Well, there's a sensor underneath the screen and it was created by a company called Synaptics. It's just below the display itself. So if you think of the phone as a stack, with the screen, the glass on the front on the top being the very top layer. Below that you have the display. Below that, you would have the sensor from Synaptics, and it could actually scan a fingerprint through the gaps presented between the O LED dots.

Those are the elements that actually generate the pixels on a screen. So the spots between the little elements that would generate the light that creates the image on your phone, that was the scanner, the sensor, and it can scan

your fingerprint. And according to a report from The Verge, the sensor may find its way into several smartphones throughout the course of and beyond, giving designers the opportunity to make owns and not have to set aside space for a dedicated fingerprint scanner on the front or back of the handset. So it freeze up design a little bit. Now, when I went to c S in Seen, I couldn't help but notice that Alexa was everywhere, and I apologize if I'm setting off your Alexa. I won't give it

really bad commands. Don't worry, But lots of companies were incorporating Amazon's Assistant into their products. In this year, the story was more about Google and the Google Assistant. Google typically doesn't have a booth at c e S. Instead, people from Google will attend the show in order to network with various executives from other companies or to appear side by side with other companies that have a joint

project with Google. And this year Google sponsored that large outdoor pavilion, the one I talked about earlier that had to be shut down early during the rain. Well, that pavilion's focus was all on the Google Assistant feature that's found in Android phones and Google Home devices. It also looked like it was a lot of fun. It had a big twist t slide on it, and so I'm kind of sad I missed it. Both Alexa and Google

Assistant can be found in numerous devices. Sometimes both of them can be found in the same devices, including television's speakers, headphones, and light switches. So if you can't control your favorite gadgets with a vocal command, yet that could change in a couple of iterations of those products. There were a lot of other trends at ce SEN, ranging from another fleet of smart cars, some of which are autonomous two robots designed to do everything from guard your house to

comforting a sick child. We'll look at some of those specific items in this episode, but before we dive into more detail on what went down at c E S, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. And we're back. And now I'm joined by a good friend of the show, Shannon Morrise of Hack five fame, who, unlike yours truly actually went to c E S tween. Shannon, Welcome back to tech Stuff, Hi, Jonathan, thank you for

having me on. Yeah, thank you for joining. Even though, just in full disclosure, Shannon might sound a teeny bit congested because she's fighting off the last remaining remnants of what we call con crude. Yeah, just that basic respiratory cold that people tend to come down with when you have I don't know, like a hundred thousand people in an enclosed space for several days at the time it happens. Yeah,

it was. It was a hundred and seventy five thousand people at least that's the estimate I was told while I was at the convention. But yes, I came down on the very last day with the concrud, woke up the day after and I was just like, Oh, I am not going into work today, that's definitely not happening. Yeah, And you know, you're based out of the Bay Area over in California, so so there's a bit of a travel you know, travel time for you as well between Vegas and there, and then of course you also had

the additional issues that happened this year. Were you there when the great deluge the rain storm was coming down, Yeah, I was. It was crazy. Um, nobody knew how to drive in the rain, even though it was only like one or two inches of rain. No one knew really knew how to drive in it in Vegas because they

never get rain. And one of the roads turned into a river, and the Las Vegas Convention Center started leaking, so they had to close some of the walkways inside the convention center so that people wouldn't walk around in like slushy carpet. It was terrible. And then the next

day the lights went out. Yeah. Well I talked about that earlier in the episode about how it appears that a uh some condensation formed on the inside of a transformer at the Las Vegas Convention Center and caused and what is called a flash out where you haven't essentially a short circuit in an arc. Yeah, really ended up being a physics lesson for all of my listeners because I was like, well, I can't talk about CES because it wasn't there, but I can talk about what happened

at the made the lights go out. So I was in the middle of the convention center. Ironically, I was in a meeting with Panasonic about their low light camera when the power went out, so I was able to test the camera in the low light setting since no lights were on, and it worked quite well. That's a heck of a demo right there. You know, I know everyone who cares if it tends to you know, put everyone else out. I mean, come on, this is you know,

we're talking about important products here. Crazily enough, one of the people I overheard while I was listening to my b role much later on, I was just walking around the convention hall in one of the vendors was talking to one of his co workers and said that they lost out on about a million dollars of revenue, one million dollars for just the two hours that the power was out. So that gives you an estimation of how much the big boost cost. I you know that some

of the smaller boosts costs eighty thou dollars. So the it's crazy how much these people pay to have a booth on the show floor and to have the power out for two hours. Yeah, that's definitely going to be a deterrence for the revenue that you're bringing in just

from all the free advertisement that you're getting. Well. Yeah, and then I mentioned earlier in the episode about how the whole purpose really I mean, we we, you and I Shannon, we often think of it as well, here's my job as media as to go in, find the cool stuff, bring it forward, talk about it, analyze it, give my take, that kind of thing. But really, when you get down to it, the real purpose of the show is essentially connecting the companies what makes stuff with

the companies what sells stuff. And when you when you can't connect with anybody for a couple of hours and you've spent that much money to have a presence there, that is not a good thing to have on your little Excel spreadsheet at the end of the year, where you're saying, yeah, so here's how much we spent, and uh, that two hours of downtime cost us this x amount effectively because we weren't able to have those sort of meetings and those sort of conversations that we normally would

have had during that time. Right. Yeah, it's not great, I mean, but but I want to concentrate on things that actually did happen as opposed to all the meetings that could not happen during those two hours. So first thing I'm gonna ask you is did you see anything at c S I. I typically will notice some themes popping up year over year, whether it's a type of technology that's starting to get some traction, like you know, smart TVs, that and three D TVs those were big

themes for many years ago. Now, uh, was there anything like that this year, Whether it was a specific kind of technology or some sort of implementation that you noticed while you were there, All right, yes, there absolutely was. This year. We saw a um, mind boggling amount of people promoting items that had voice assistance technology built in,

whether you needed it or not. So so I'm sure there were some incidents where you're thinking, okay, that makes sense, but where there were there anywhere you're just thinking this is clearly a gimmick. It just doesn't. I mean, there's no demonstrable value added to the product by having voice activation in here, right exactly. UM. So, for example, Anchor came out with this really cool little car plug. It plugs into the little cigarette lighter in your car and

it offers you ALEXA implementation through your car speakers. And I thought that was really cool because it gives you that ability uh in your car, even if you have a very old car that still doesn't have like Bluetooth built in or something like that. Plus you get ALEXA so you can just ask at things like hey, calm

or whatever, um, which I thought was really nice. And then you have on the other side of the spectrum, things like LGS refrigerator, which has built in voice assistance, so you can stand in front of your fridge and ask it, am I out of milk, and it'll tell you whether or not you have milk in your fridge. And to me, that seems so pointless because you if you're already standing in front of your fridge you could open your fridge and find out if you have milk inside.

Not to mention, the screen on the front of the l G refrigerator is transparent, so you can make it go transparent and you can actually look inside without even opening the fridge. So what's the point of having the voice technology? Like, why why can't you just look in the fridge without having to ask it to look in the fridge for you? I think the only the only use case I can come up with off the top

of my head is if it's an accessibility issues. So for example, if I are visually impaired, then maybe then I could argue that, oh, it saves me the trouble. But then you're talking about something that pertains to a very narrow slice of the overall market. You're talking about a market for people who are in the market for a refrigerator. They want to buy the best of the best that's out now, and they have have some sort

of uh impairment from with their vision. And then you're thinking, well, if you start adding all those up, obviously that doesn't make sense from a business standpoint to incorporate the the voice activation into your product. So I agree with you, Yes, it seems like an additional expense that most people will probably just think of, like, oh, well, I have to pay for this if I want this other cool feature that will actually use. Like that's what happened to me

when I bought my last car. I didn't want the leather seats, but I got them because I wanted the car to park itself. I mean, that's that's what ended up happening to me. Is that, to me, is the argument about three D television's right? Like, there were so many people who said, I don't want three D three D television, I'm never going to use that, But this television has the resolution I want, or the you know, the refresh rate I want, whatever it might be, and

it's at the price that I need. Uh. You know, now we're not seeing three D TV pushed nearly as hard as we were five six years ago. But I had heard that voice activation was a big deal, and it's good to hear confirmation that that wasn't just some sort of, you know, one person's experience at ce S. It sounds like it was pretty much everywhere. I did hear that Google had its own pavilion set up and that they did there heavily promoting Google Assistant. Yes they were.

I I got very very short, limited time over there where I was able to walk through the Voice Assistance room, and they had a whole bunch of different devices set up and modeled just to show like all the different types of devices that you can currently get voice assistance technology in. They included a fridge out there, They included a bunch of different speakers, some things with screens built in.

Lenovo built a thing that has a screen built into it, which is interesting, but I have no use for lots of phones, lots of different technology like that, which was very cool. You can tell that Google is really really trying to catch up with Amazon right now. But and you would think just from all the advertisement from CS this year that Google took over everything, But when you step inside the Las Vegas Convention Center or the Sands

Venetian Convention Center, everything still has Alexa belt in. So I think Google, even though they spent all this money on this awesome pavilion and they do have a lot of really cool technologies being implemented in a bunch of different devices, they still have a ways to go to catch up with Amazon, which is interesting because Google takes over pretty much everything in the world other than this

voice assistance technology, so they're still catching up. Yeah, and I've noticed that Google, They're implementations of certain technologies tend to really follow that kind of engineering mindset. So people who kind of have that that way of thinking, it clicks with them and it really resonates with them. But for anyone else it can seem daunting or it can

seem unnecessarily complicated. Because I look at I look at some of the products that Google's come out with over the years that didn't go very far, Like Google Glass ultimately didn't go very far, excepted now it's being incorporated into uh the industrial world and it's like like in manufacturing and stuff like that, and there it's doing quite well.

But as a as a consumer product that never quite caught on, or things like Google Wave, which I still miss even though I was maybe one of three people who found a way to use it, Uh, you know that kind of stuff. I look at that and I think they come up with great ideas. Uh, they have this, they have this habit of coming up with great ideas that other companies are able to capitalize on. Right, So,

but there's still a huge powerhouse. There's still incredibly influential and UH, and I do think the Google Assistant obviously is going to find its way into more stuff, and it may very well be one of those things where it finds itself side by side with Alexa. I heard that there were a lot more products out there that

had both, like, had interoperability with both. Uh. Panasonic is a great example again during their res conference, they were talking about adding not just Google Assistance technology, but Amazon's Echo technology as well, both voice assistants through car manufacturers. So Panasonic is working with both of them to bring that ability to all sorts of different manufacturers at the same time. So we're not really while they are competition with each other, we're not seeing a lot of other

brands associating with just one or the other. Well that's nice. I like that we're not seeing sort of an exclusivity kind of thing, because then the more times times you see that exclusivity issue, the more you get channeled into this idea that you have to buy into a specific infrastructure, and the thus all of your buying decisions get based upon whatever it was you bought into first, right, like, which is exactly in my household. That's how me and

my wife are. Becca. She uses an iPhone, So Apple is makes way more sense for because everything works properly with it. I am an Android user, and so I avoid all the Apple stuff because it just doesn't play well very well my my things, and it's it's not like one. I don't think one is inherently better or

worse than the other. But once you buy in, it's really hard to convince yourself to go somewhere else because it's just so much work to get everything to to work together properly, like whether you're pouring information over or you just have to learn a new way of interacting with your technology. Uh, that can actually be a pretty high barrier to entry. So seeing companies say, you know what, we're gonna We're not gonna worry about that mess, We're

not gonna worry about these exclusivity issues. We're going to incorporate both and then whichever platform ends up winning out in the long run. We were okay because we supported both of them. We're not gonna go obsolete because we backed the wrong horse. We don't want to see an HD DVD versus Blu Ray kind of situation, you know, Um, before I move off of Google Assistant, I do have one other question for you that is extremely relevant for this. Okay,

did you did you go down the slide? No? I didn't, you know, I think I didn't see anybody else going down it when I was in that area, So I'm wondering if it was only open to like invitees or something like that, because none of the attendees I saw, including myself, were going down it. Yeah. The picture picture I saw it look like it was the one way to get down from the top platform. But I didn't see any ways of getting up the top platform, so you may well there was another way. There were stairs

on the back of it. That's good because otherwise you have to be extremely determined to make your way up to the top, a lot of a lot of positioning and wedging yourself and chimneying up. Yeah. So yeah, for those who don't know, you should definitely go and do an image search for the Google pavilion. At c E S they had a big, like a twisty slide that went from the top of their pavilion down to the bottom. It looked like it was about maybe two and a

half three stories to its pretty big. Just about Yeah, it was pretty big. So was there anything there that you saw at c E S that got you really excited? Uh, this is a tough question to ask people who cover c e S as media because we can quickly become jaded because we see so much of the same stuff and we often see things at c e S that are never going to happen, Like you see prototypes that are just like, oh, look what we can do, but we're never going to do this because we won't get

funding to do it. So it's always tough to say like, oh, this is the thing I'm really excited about. But one thing I actually saw that is coming to market I believe in February, but don't quote me on that is um the HTC Vive Pro. And it's like my number one device from the show because I've been really getting into virtual reality lately and I've been able to test a whole bunch of different headsets, so the Vibe Pro is like my number one at the moment for video gaming.

I got to play role data on it and the resolution truly truly is like seventy percent better than the old one, as they quote, and it was so so pretty Wow. Yeah, I've had only a little bit of experience, you know, working experience with VR, because it requires a pretty hefty investment on the part of the consumer and that you need to have a decent computer and a obviously you need to have a space set aside for it.

But the experiences and the equipment that have been coming out of the past maybe eighteen months or so has been really really impressive, and to know that they're continuing to invest in that and improve on the experience is encouraging. I often ask myself the question at the beginning of every year. Now it's kind of my standard question. They're they're too really. The first question is is this the mic or break year for VR slash a R right.

Is this the year where where we finally say yes, this is a consumer technology or no, this is just going to be an experiential thing that you go somewhere and then you get to put on the headset and everything and you play, but then you leave. Or the question number two is is Moore's Law finally ending this year? Those are the two that asking myself every year, and so, uh, it's good to hear that this was a positive experience. Now, is this a tethered headset or is this one untethered?

So this one is tethered as well. But they also introduced a wireless adapter, an accessory that you can use with both the old HTC Vibe as well as the new Vibe Pro. So if you plug that in, you can go untethered and you don't have to worry about a cable hanging down your back and accidentally getting stepped on or anything like that. Now, I didn't get to

test the wireless adapter. They didn't have that plugged in when I got to play with it, but I did just get to play with the y the Vive Pro while it was tethered to a computer, And of course the computer that I was playing on had like the best GPU on the market, so it looked beautiful and it was really smooth and buttery and everything like that.

But it also sounded good and the gameplay was easy, especially when you have that nice resolution, so it makes it look more realistic to you and you're not paying as much attention to the pixels, which you can still see they're still there right in front of your face. But since it is more comfortable, since it was more engaging experience, because of that higher resolution, you don't pay

attention to it as much. And um VIA or HTC is doing something really good here, like they're making a really nice, noticeable increase in performance from the old one, and I think they were listening to a lot of the complaints from previous users. I just hope that this new one doesn't cost a lot, and that's that's something I'm concerned about, because they haven't announced the price at all, and the old one, I believe, with all the components,

was like six hundred bucks. The new one could be eight hundred dollars just the headset alone because of all the upgrades. So hopefully it's not that expensive. Is nobody's going to buy it just by itself. I hope it would be something like five or less so that it would be easy to upgrade sell the old five headset if you have an old one, and then you could

just keep all of your old components. Yeah, yeah, that is to me, that's probably the the largest barrier to entry is that price point, because again, when you combine combine it with the computer that you need to to run it, assuming you don't already have one, if you've already got a really good gaming rig then you're set. You know you're gonna you've got If you've got a VR ready PC, then that part is you've already made

that investment. For someone who's just getting into it from scratch, you're talking about almost two thousand dollars in order to have both. That's a lot to ask, but it sounds like the experience was really compelling. So if the if, if more people can get a chance to try it out, they might be able to make that argument for themselves that it's it's worth that kind of cost to get into the world of VR. It's also I mean, this is a really tricky thing. It's again going back to

three D television's until you experience it. It's how do you sell it right? Because you can't just show video to people because the whole, the whole uh appealed to this is the actual experience of being inside a virtual environment and getting to do stuff, and we're all used to watching video. I mean, that's not to us, that's not that special. So it's it's it's a tough sell, like you really have to get people out there and trying it and have that little lightbulb click on like,

oh this is why it's a big deal. Uh yeah, I agree with you. That's tough, but it sounds like it's I like that you're optimistic about it, though, because I want to CVR succeed. I've wanted to CEVR succeed since the nineties when it had its initial crash. Oh yeah, no, it still hurts. It still hurts. I I tell this story all the time on tech stuff. But there used

to be a little kind of like an arcade. It was a game experience thing at a local mall here in the Atlanta area, and my family would go down to this mall and I would just take like ten bucks and go to this place, and it was a VR gaming center and you would go and stand in line, and then you would get on this little pedestal thing.

They would lower an incredibly bulky helmet suspended by cables from the ceiling because it was too heavy to just put on your teeth, and then you would play the Dactyl Nightmare game, which was about as primitive as you can get with graphics and still and still have like

solid polygons. It wasn't like just empty vector graphics or something, but just that experience, even though as primitive as it was, it was so cool and to finally see a world where we can maybe get like really compelling gaming experiences and our homes not even have to go out for it is really encouraging to me. So did you get a chance to see the augmented reality stuff while you were there? I didn't not this year. There was some a r there, but I didn't get to attest any

of it myself. Unfortunately. One of the fun parts of going to see SUH just on your own, like tag teaming it as a podcaster, is having to do all the b roll, all the stand up shots, all the hosting and editing and writing all yourself, and then trying to find a place to upload everything from the show floor.

So it's very tough to see everything. Um Plus, this year, I believe not only did it encompass like the forty football fields that is the Las Vegas Convention Center, but they also had these stands of Venetian Convention Center area as well, and they had a bunch of suites that were at other hotels, And it takes like an hour to get to anything at c e S. So while there was a lot that I did get to see, if I made sure to put in a interview request and scheduled a meeting with a company that was a

lot that I did not get to see just because I was so busy. Yeah, No, doing doing CS with a small crew is incredibly challenging. It's it's it's almost to the point where there's so much to cover. If you haven't done your homework beforehand and hasn't planned out

your attack beforehand, you could be paralyzed by choice. As soon as you're like looking at your immediately in view or twenty booths and you know there are a hundred and twenty more booths directly behind the twenty you can see, and they all have stuff beeping and worrying and making noise and moving and flashing, and sometimes there are people who are also beeping and moving and if you're not lucky, flashing in the area, and you just it's it becomes

incredibly difficult to figure out where to go first. Um, And as you were saying, like uploading, uploading material at CES is no easy task either. Just on its own, finding a signal strong enough for you to be able to get anything out can be a bit of a cha leunge, just because everything is so connected. Now everything's got a connection to the Internet, either through some dedicated WiFi hotspot or through the cellular networks, and so everything

gets overloaded very very quickly. Yeah, that's true. Now, the VR sounds like it was pretty awesome. That was there anything else that that particularly struck you while you were walking around c S anything else that was really interesting to you. There were lots of robots. That's that's cool. I mean, we're well, let me ask you this were they Were they interesting robots or because I've seen both, I've seen robots, they were interesting. Um. I saw one robot.

It was a piece of luggage that could follow you around an airport. The unfortunate part, though, was that it doesn't work on carpet, and it would disconnect from its users bracelet. You connect to a via a bracelet that you wear, and that's how it knows where you are and who it needs to follow through an airport, and a lot of times it would just disconnect and then it would lose track of where you are, and then when it reconnects, it tries to hurry up and get

to you, and then it runs into your legs. So it didn't work so well. But I think that things like that, if they figure out those connectability issues, then it could be an awesome product. But unfortunately with a lot of robots, even LG l G had an issue during their press event where their robot its name is Chloe. It's also a voice assistance technology to uh that one just did not answer the CEO when he was asking

it a question on stage. So there were there were a lot of those little issues at c e S, which most likely had to do with the fact that it's such a such a huge area with a lot of Wi Fi technology happening at the same time, so it's inundated by a lot of frequencies happening at the same time. But hopefully it's not a problem when it gets to consumers well. And we also have to be aware that technology, I mean, we know it because we

deal with it all the time. Technology sometimes doesn't work properly. It sometimes just fails because of whatever reason, you know, and maybe something very minor that is easy to fix. And the frustrating thing is that can happen when all eyes are on you at c e S because you're

you're there on the stage. Cameras literally cameras from all over the world are on you at that moment, and you just have to hope that your technology works that one time, even if it's something where you're like, yeah, the time, it works every now and then there's a little bit of a bug that we haven't quite worked out. But uh, that one percent can still happen while you're on stage, and that it doesn't. It doesn't have to be anything other than just bad luck, bad timing, and

it's unfortunate because it can. It can then be the dominant part of any conversation moving forward for that particular technology, even though it's not really representative of how it works. And of course you you probably also I don't know if you were at CS that year. Were you there the year the infamous year where I wasn't at Gizmoto where the people had had the universal remotes to turn off televisions during someone's ce s. That's a terrible thing

to do. I mean, yeah, I just I well, I put myself in the place of the presenters, right, I think, what if I were up on stage and I'm just about to unveil this thing that teams have been working on for for countless hours to get it ready. In time from my presentation, and this is my part where I gotta be up there for forty minutes and really sell this amazing technology, and then it's just not working.

And I don't know that it's not working because someone is actively sabotaging me, and I'm like that, what a horrible thing. To this day, I get mad about it. But but I think I have empathy for presenters, so I would never do that to somebody. I just think it's cruel. Yeah, I think if you were, if you're

doing it too. I don't know that there's any justifiable time to do it unless you're like at a buddy's house and you're really just messing with them, and afterwards you're like, you know what, you were a good sport. I'm buying you pizza and beer. Then that's okay because you're you're making restitution for your horrible prank. But when you're out in the public, well not even a public venue because it's not really public venue, but a publicly

viewable conference, that's just wrong. I mean, it's it's like bringing rotten tomatoes and cabbage is to like an Apple event. You really just shouldn't do that. It's there's a time and a place. Um, So, do you any other robots you wanted to talk about? I've seen lots of different ones, ranging from the really complicated looking ones too very simple ones that obviously are more like toys. Did you happen to see the Afflac one the duck? Yes? I did.

I did see the a flack one. So they were promoting a really cute little duck that you that they can bring to hospitals and the like to help, um, help kids deal with emotional troubles and and the problems that go along with health issues, and it's supposed to be something that helps calm them. And it was really cute. It would respond to your touch, so like if you pet it or something like that, and it was fluffy so that you can like squish it or hug it

or whatever you want. It would respond to that and it would move its neck and things like that, and it was really really sweet. Um. I also so saw Sony's I want to call it the eyebow. Yeah. So they had a new dog and this one has brand new eyes. I believe they were led or o l e ed eyeballs and they would blink and they would look at you and it would respond to your touch as well, and it would walk around. It was so cute. So there was some really really cute robotic technologies at

work at the convention center as well. I love seeing those. I mean, I've been covering that kind of stuff, like some of the some of the companion robots that are meant to help either children or sometimes it's the elderly be able to deal with emotional issues psychological issues, uh, and create some companionship, create an outlet for emotional expression. I love that aspect because it's something that I don't frequently think about when I think of the term robot.

You know, I'm often thinking one of two eventualities. I'm either thinking the practical application of robots and automation, which ultimately results in human beings being displaced from certain types of jobs, or I'm thinking terminator. Those are usually the two. But thinking about nice robots that are there that that help people deal with really tough situations, it's it's quite inspiring. I agree. Well, let me ask you. You mentioned the the odd, the somewhat odd uh incre ration of voice

activation in certain products. Did you see anything else that was just weird or or you thought unnecessary or you know, just one of those things where you look at and you think you think they're trying way too hard. Um, there was there was some interesting technology coming out of France. There were a lot of French prototypes that were brought in for some of the press events that weren't necessarily on the shelf floor that, but they did show up at these press events that the press of media can

go to h during the nighttime, during the evening. One of them was this it was a wine fridge or a wine cabinet, and it's it's a smart connected wine cabinet that can alert you whenever your wine cabinet is empty, or you can scan wine bottles that are in your wine cabinet so you can find out other similar wines that you might be interested in. It was very like naw esque, like you have to be somebody who has like forty different bottles of wine in this wine cabinet

to really appreciate how useful it is. And I was just like, I'm not that rich, you know, I can't. I have like one bottle of wine from Trader Joe's in my kitchen right now, and I think it was a two dollar one two buck Chuck, I believe it is. So I'm pretty sure this wine cabinet is not something that I would ever buy. And it was a little bit ridiculous at the same time, but I was like, maybe maybe somebody out there once it connected wine cabinet

for some reason. Well, did you happen to see? And if not, I'll be sure to explain to the audience what exactly I'm talking about. The weird booth that Netflix had set up that was a viral marketing booth for altered carbon what's no, Oh my gosh, so on the show floor and I don't have the information we're in front of me, so I can't tell you which haul

it was in. They created a booth that was from a supposed biotech company that was working on human cloning, and they had these giant tubes set up with with essentially mannequins but designed to look very very realistic at least from a distance of people floating in these tubes. Uh. And it was supposed to all be about transmitting your consciousness into another form, and they even had representatives doing

sort of a technobabble speech about the technology around. It turns out it was all a marketing ploy for a series. It's based off a cyberpunk novel called Altered Carbon. It's coming out on Netflix. And so when I was looking for weird things that were happening at C E S, this popped up and I thought, what the heck is going on here? Like this is the strangest thing I've ever seen, and um, particularly for C E S because that's just not it's not it's a train show, it's

not a it's not a fan show. It's not a genre convention. Right, It's not like a comic con or a dragon con or anything like that. So to see some company come out with promoting a a series, a web series or a you know, a television series at C E S is is pretty unusual. You don't typically see that there. I'm sad, I'm said, you didn't get to see it. But The Verge has a great rundown

on it. So you'll have to go to the Virgin and check it out, because once you see what it looks like, you're gonna think, man, I wish I had known that was there while I was there. I hate to give you that after you've come back, but it's definitely something you should check out. Everyone listening to this should look at it because it is. It's a head scratcher for me, because yeah, it's just one of those things where you see it and you think, this is this is clearly not the purpose of what c E S.

You know what CS is all about. It's you know, it's it's so weird to see a promotion for a fictional work at a trade show. It just is not the It doesn't it's a square peg in a round hole. It's so weird. But was there anything that you noticed missing? As in other words, were there any technologies that had in previous years had a lot of representation at C E S. Maybe you just didn't really see as much of this year. Um. There were two that stood out to me. One was three D t v s, which

I saw none of. They were nowhere to be found at all. Everyone's given up on three D televisions, which is fine by me. And uh. I also noticed that there wasn't that much as far as security and privacy, um, And what I mean by that is there were still companies that were promoting these like little boxes that you can plug into your router and they're supposed to be a physical firewall for your entire house. There's there's still things like that, but there were still a lot of

companies that just don't care about security or privacy. Like I would go up to a booth and be like, cool, this looks neat. What kind of encryption protocols are you are you using? And they would not be able to answer me at all. And then I'd be like, okay, well is your CTO here? And they'd be like, oh, well no, And I'd just be like, well, you need to learn these questions because I'm going to ask him every single year and eventually y'all need to answer. I

won't promote your your technology. I won't even want to touch it unless it's secures my devices. Um, there was a little bit of and of course it's Las Vegas, so you're going to see a little bit of it. There were some adult toys that were connected at the convention center as well, and those basically, unless it's listed on Internet of Dogs dot com, which is a definite thing. My my friend runs that website. He's an information security professional and he runs this website for for adult toys.

Unless it's listed on that site as being secure, I wouldn't even consider something like that, because those those divices need to be secure because they run such a huge risk of being intercepted and being used for something that you definitely don't want them to be used for. So there's there's still a lot of concern when it comes to security and privacy from technology, especially emerging technology and

emerging companies. And I'm still not getting the answers that I want as somebody who is such a proponent for security and privacy myself that I would need for me to actually start reviewing these products on my show. Well, and we were talking earlier about voice activation. Clearly there's been ongoing conversations literally about security with voice any sort of voice activation, particularly ones that become active very very quickly. You know, there's no physical pushing a button to activate

the device. You just use a call phrase, which tells you, well, there's clearly an active microphone. Otherwise there's no a way for it to react when you say the call phrase. And then that brings up the questions of all, right, well, what's happening passively in the background, when I'm not actively calling out and giving a command. What is happening How much of my conversation is getting picked up, Is any of that going anywhere? Is it being analyzed? If so,

for what purpose? Uh? Is that laid out in the terms of service that no one reads and everyone agrees to and then they just it happens and then the excuse the company has, Well, it's in the terms of service and you agreed to it. So it's tough. Uh. And I mean to me like that, I knew that that was gonna be something you would look into because that's that's your focus, and you are really passionate about

information security, and I agree with you. Like when I've gone year over year over year, Uh, the emphasis always is on we found out this cool way where we can do X, and it's usually three years later like, oh, we found a secure way where we can you X. But we've totally not been secure for the last three years that we've been doing it. So Uh, yeah, that

that is something. And and considering the high profile nature of various information security breaches that we've seen over the last couple of years, you would think that there'd be more of a focus on that. Even even when you think it, you know, the life cycle of developing a

product can be a year or longer. You would expect to at least start seeing that stuff get rolled out from the get go, and yet we're still seeing companies really dragging their feet on it, possibly because maybe the maybe the the attitude is until something catastrophic happens, it's

not our problem, right exactly. And unfortunately, a lot of the companies that I would speak to, not all of them, but a lot of them, uh, they would get somewhat defensive when I would ask them about if they do third party auditing, or if they have an info sec uh genre like for their for their company, if they have something that you know, somebody that checks their their privacy every single day, or checks their network to make

sure there's no vulnerabilities in it every day, something like that. Uh. And unfortunately, when a company gets defensive about those kind of questions, which they should be very open about, they should be very transparent about their security and privacy protocols behind the scenes, then I just don't I don't trust them. So it's it's unfortunate that this is still an issue, and I wish that it wasn't, but it still is.

And that kind of leads me into one final thing I wanted to talk about this is not a fun thing to talk about, but I think it's an important one, and that is uh so over the last couple of years in particular, but definitely it's been an ongoing issue.

We've seen a lot more discussion about things like a code of conduct at various gatherings conventions, More and more of them are incorporating codes of con duct to explain exactly what sorts of behavior will absolutely not be tolerated by the entity throwing that convention or event, uh and saying, you know, we expect if you're attending that you are going to behave according to this code of conduct, and if you don't, then you're going to be kicked out.

It's just the way it works, because we want this to be a safe environment. Uh. Leading into c e S. One of the notable stories, unfortunately, was that the the c e A, the group that puts it on, still not formed any kind of code of conduct. That there was nothing from an organizational standpoint to support that kind of thing, which seems particularly negligent in an era where this sort of conversation is taking more and more of

the spotlight. It does. It's it was very concerning because I saw some articles being posted after I had gotten to Vegas that were like, hey, there's still no code of conduct at c S whatsoever. And there is also there were no female keynote speakers whatsoever either for any of the main stages. There were female speakers for some of the smaller stages, some of the niche audiences, but

there weren't any for their main stages. And that's a huge drawback when it comes to such a huge convention, especially since we've been working so hard it's myself included in the past year for more gender equality. Um. Women have never had such a huge foothold in technology as

men have, and it's unfortunate, you know. Ever since I was a little kid, UM, when I went to Defcon this year, that same week, I decided to post a YouTube video on my personal channel that was talking about how I was groped at a hacker convention three years ago. And it took me three years to finally go public about it and be like, hey, this is what happened. And the convention it happened at did not have a

code of conduct in place. So when I went to that convention about this information, which I wasn't going to report it in the first place, because I was so shocked at it happening, because the person that did it was an acquaintance. Um. The only reason I did is because my one of my lady friends was like, yeah, you should report that because that's messed up, and I

was like, okay, I'll talk to somebody about it. So I reported it, but they didn't know what to do, so the guy didn't get banned until the next year, and the only reason he got banned so he he ended up coming back, which made me extremely uncomfortable, especially since the company I was working with was giving them

money as a sponsorship, which was really messed up. But since he was allowed back, it made me feel so much more uncomfortable to go back there because I felt vulnerable and I did not like being made to feel vulnerable in in a place that is not my normal place. You know, it wasn't my house, it once in my off the space. It was a hotel in Vegas where most of the attendees are males and are not people

that I know personally. So having eventually, that convention did place a code of conduct in place for their convention, and the person who did this was banned along for a number of other reasons. So now I feel safe going back there because I know that I have a way to report things, and I know if I do report them, they'll actually be taken care of. And that's the reason why when I went to c e S and I saw they didn't have a code of conduct,

I felt so taken aback. It's such a huge convention, it's such a huge association with so much money behind them, so many attendees going, and having so many attendees go that are mostly male. It's a male dominated industry. Obviously, Uh, we need to have some kind of foothold in the industry for for women and minorities so that we do

feel safe. Now. While I understand code of conducts are not going to keep people from doing things, it does allow us as people who might end up being victimized in some way, even though we don't want to be victims. It gives us a way to report things. It allows us to understand exactly what we can do and know that if we say something that then something will be acted upon, Like something will actually get done if we

say something. It sends the message that you matter, right, I mean, like like without it, it seems you know, without it. To me, it seems like it's almost sending the message that they're complicit in any behavior that would otherwise violate such a code of conduct, because there it's it's almost a look the other way kind of of mentality, which is incredibly dangerous for anyone who's attending such an event.

I it gets me really upset because I have seen incidents at various types of different UH conventions and events and parties that kind of thing that absolutely should not have happened, and once they did happen, should absolutely be handled swiftly and UH decisively, And to see CEES kind of dragging its feet on this issue is more than

a little problematic. I remember years ago, when I first started going UH, some of the the some of my peers over at c NET, some of the women working for s net were chatting and they were saying, Uh, you know, one of the few benefits of being at c E S and being a woman was that she never had to worry about a line in the restroom. And she was being very sardonic about it because she was like this, this is literally the one good thing. And whereas as as a man UH and I convention

center filled with literally a hundred thousand other men. Uh, the same cannot be said of the men's room. But at the same time, I'm also not in a group that tends to be singled out for victimization. I mean, it's just it's it's a very frustrating thing to see. I keep hoping that they will address this and and make it clear that it's supposed to be a safe

place and that they've got your back if something does happen. Um. You know, CS is also one of those places where it kind of fostered that male dominant mentality for a really long time. I don't know how it was this past year, but I remember when I started going, the whole booth babe. Uh situation was really kind of out of control while I was there, and that booth babes.

By this, I mean that different groups had gone out and ordered or had gone out and hired people women to dress and scanty outfits and then um try and entice people into the booths. And it wasn't it was done in such a way as to sexualized products that were not overtly meant for that purpose. And uh, it created kind of a CD atmosphere. I would say in certain areas of the floor, I've seen less of that

the last few times I've gone. Occasionally you'll find a booth or whatever that's still kind of engages in this, but for the most part, it's it's definitely toned down some which I think is a good a good trend, But it does seem like CES is one of those places where that that uh more primitive idea of this is technology, this is this falls within the realm, and masculinity still seems to have a few anchor points and that's, uh, that's problematic. But yeah, it's it's definitely still a thing.

Like I saw some of the quote unquote booth babe attire happening the year as well. I even saw it at one of the press events I went to, which somebody else wrote about, Uh, the fact that there were some women who were hired to simply be there and hand out tote bags and they were dressed as cheerleaders. So they had is because it's every year. Yep, it's

the same exact one every single year. The only year I went and I really enjoyed it was when they did the Wizard of Oz theme and then they had people dressed up like there was a guy dressed up as the tin Man, and there was a girl dressed up as the Wicked Witch. And then it was like it was like being in a cosplay experience, which is very different from dressing up strictly women in cheerleader uniforms, because you're doing a football thing, which is for men.

Now I do like football, but why aren't why there were no men? They're dressed up as quarterbacks? Like what I'm missing out? I mean, I'm on your side on this one, Shannon, totally. I agree. I remember to the Wizard of Oz event. I also remember they did a weird zoo one one year where people were dressed up like animals, but that might have been a different I want to say it was the same one we're talking about one. Yeah, i'll send you I'll send your links.

But it was another weird one. But the Wizard of Oz I remember because I got a tin of mints for my friend Mandy because she's that's her favorite film of all time. Well, I mean, here's hoping that we can see c e S catch up and and create a formal code of conduct. I hope that the pressure will continue to be on the organization to do so so that they can send out that message that this is in fact a space where we wanted to be

safe for everybody. It's it's a a very business oriented trade event, and therefore there's no place for this kind, you know, any kind of of harassment or policy where we look the other way. Shannon, thank you so much for joining the Please tell everyone where they can find all your wonderful work. Thank you. I really appreciate um you inviting me on to be on your show. To Jonathan, it was awesome. It's always awesome to talk to you, especially since we're on other coasts. You can find all

of my infro over on Twitter. I'm at snubs S and u b S. Or you can follow all of my tech stuff that I am doing over on tech thing. It's t e K thing dot com. Shannon, thanks again, and you take care of yourself. Get better, Okay, thank you. I want to thank Shannon for coming on the show. She's always a joy to talk to and I really appreciate her input on what she saw at c E S. Obviously, there's a ton of other things that were on display at the show. Lots of technology from automotive technology to

audio to virtual and augmented reality too. Things that are pretty mundane, you know, light switches, things like that, but still important. And while I didn't go this past year, it's okay, I'm not sweating it, but I do hope I can go back sometime in the future see what else is coming out. It's always an interesting energy that's at the show, and I'm sure that as unfolds, I'll cover more of the technologies that were on display at

CESEN in greater detail. For example, there was this amazing modular Samsung television called the Wall apparently, and that sounds crazy to me, so I should look into that. But if you guys have any suggestions for things I should cover in future episodes, maybe it's technology that was on display at ce S, or maybe it's something totally unrelated, but still, you know, in the world of tech, let's not go crazy. Send me a message let me know

what I should talk about. Or if there's someone you want me to interview or a guest host you would like to have on the show, let me know about that as well. My email address for the show is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can draw me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle at both of those is tech Stuff hs W. You can also check us out on Instagram. Our our our marketing and social guru, Crystal is killing it over there. She's doing a great job, So go check out our

Instagram account. And remember, you can listen to me record these episodes live, and you can watch me, and you can you can insult me. Please don't insult me, but you can participate in the chat room live with me every Wednesday and Friday. Just go to twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff. You'll see the schedule there. And uh, I love chatting with you guys. I hope more of you show up in the future and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and

bathands of other topics. Because it has staff works dot com