Speaker 1: As media.
Speaker 2: Sponsored by Alaska Airlines. It's not sponsored by that. Betrofline
Speaker 2: is not sponsored by Alaska Airlines. You just want to
Speaker 2: be abundantly clear. However, my name is ed Zeitron. That
Speaker 2: is not made up. It's on my passport and my
Speaker 2: birth certificate. Welcome to bet Rofline with Day four and
Speaker 2: our part two episode. And we're joined now by Sean
Speaker 2: o'cane of tech Crunch, the Transportation Senior Transportation Report, I believe, Yeah,
Speaker 2: among other things, wonderful, Curissa Belle of n Gadget. How
Speaker 2: are you doing, Carissa, I'm doing great. Hell yeah. And
Speaker 2: of course David J. Roth Hi, which is what you
Speaker 2: have to type in to find you on Blue Sky.
Speaker 2: Can't just type roth.
Speaker 1: No, there's another guy. There's a more famous guy with
Speaker 1: my name.
Speaker 2: No, there's just a bunch of other guys with Okay,
Speaker 2: you'll roth maybe, No.
Speaker 1: The Van Hilling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's not on Blue Sky.
Speaker 1: You don't know that.
Speaker 3: He's probably just I've looked he's on an old Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's Adrian Ditman.
Speaker 2: Oh god, that's like a hours of kind of okay. Anyway,
Speaker 2: so Surean, what have you seen that the show that.
Speaker 3: Mattss well, it's a weird show for me because on
Speaker 3: the transportation side of things, for years, this was like
Speaker 3: everybody was, see he as is a car show, See
Speaker 3: he has a car show. All the people who ran
Speaker 3: Detroit Autric the other American auto shows felt very fearful
Speaker 3: that this was what was drawing all the attention right that.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know if it's a commodation of
Speaker 3: the pandemic or the US automakers not caring as much
Speaker 3: about trying to show off that they're innovative. That's just
Speaker 3: not there's nothing here on that side of things, on
Speaker 3: the automotive side of things, so it's been a lot
Speaker 3: of trying to find anything else within our sort of
Speaker 3: scope of that kind of broad transportation stuff.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, it's been weird.
Speaker 3: Like the biggest thing that we've had keynote wise, there's
Speaker 3: been two. There was BMW, which was just showing off.
Speaker 3: It was the most like I always separate them into
Speaker 3: sort of like there's just the straightforward press conference keynote thing.
Speaker 3: There's the mid tier one, which was BMW was definitely
Speaker 3: that it was like Tim Meadows sadly making jokes about
Speaker 3: like his dick because the whole Conceit was like we
Speaker 3: were being shrunk to fit inside of a BMW be.
Speaker 2: Most the woman allowed into that really didn't like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah it was yeah, I mean it was.
Speaker 3: It was not explicit, but it was a year is
Speaker 3: this well and he was joined by Ken Jong, so
Speaker 3: you know at least twenty seventeen. But that was all
Speaker 3: just about like, you know, a user interface that's years
Speaker 3: away from being here. It wasn't even about like a
Speaker 3: new vehicle or anything nice. But then there's like the
Speaker 3: top tier like go all out and that this year
Speaker 3: that was Delta, which ed Bastian the CEO of that.
Speaker 3: They they did it in the sphere. They filled the
Speaker 3: room with what seems like many Delta employees. Nice so
Speaker 3: people were like going crazy and they brought out the
Speaker 3: whole thing started was this with Lenny Kravitz. Yes, it
Speaker 3: ended with Ley Lenny Kravitz. It started with Viola David,
Speaker 3: who is that uh famous that yeah, what did she?
Speaker 4: I know?
Speaker 1: Lenny Kravitz played a song where her rhymes fly with fly,
Speaker 1: what if what if my old Davis dude like just
Speaker 1: come out there and have gravitas And yes.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I mean you could.
Speaker 3: That is that it is probably that is definitely what
Speaker 3: they wrote on the invoice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she rocks. I'm sure that nobody does it better.
Speaker 1: There's just kind of.
Speaker 3: Like somebody in our somebody in our on our team
Speaker 3: that's been helping cover this. Made the joke that it
Speaker 3: was like the biggest gap between talent and substance as
Speaker 3: far as these like celebrity presentations of this week, and
Speaker 3: it was definitely true.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was wors and Wells Paul mess on
Speaker 1: wine commercial. Yeah, yeah, and Wilson Wells would really fucking
Speaker 1: hate apps anyway.
Speaker 3: He would be here at ce S though, taking a
Speaker 3: check Samsung Bali. But it started with her.
Speaker 2: It started with her.
Speaker 3: Had you know it was It was very weird because
Speaker 3: Ed Bashion was It felt like he was trying to
Speaker 3: like justify being in the sphere and being at CEES
Speaker 3: by talking about we're going to talk tonight about the
Speaker 3: next one hundred years of aviation And I was like,
Speaker 3: that's weird.
Speaker 2: That wasn't in the embargo press materials. But he never did.
Speaker 2: That's not what it was.
Speaker 3: It was like them spending They had these like little
Speaker 3: vignettes about how generative AI is. Gonna tell you not
Speaker 3: to take the car through traffic and instead you'll take
Speaker 3: a electric vertical takeoff and the landing thing to the airport.
Speaker 2: It was just it was all you think. It was
Speaker 2: the very real vetoles that definitely exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It was like, here are all the ways we're going
Speaker 3: to treat the richest passengers on Delta like babies, because
Speaker 3: that's what they want. And uh and then Tom Brady
Speaker 3: came out and really, yeah, this is why I'm surprised
Speaker 3: you didn't know about. Tom Brady came out and two incredible.
Speaker 2: Gifts that he gave the world.
Speaker 3: One, they're launching an exclusive travel show hosted by him
Speaker 3: that will only be available on Delta flights. It's incredible
Speaker 3: and and we're a threat and in lieu you know.
Speaker 3: In addition to that, he wanted to offer the second gift,
Speaker 3: which was his top three travel.
Speaker 2: Hacks be Richt Yeah and see one and two.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what the hacks were going?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, actually genuinely wondering.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you're really you're awfully close, sir. The
Speaker 3: first one was drink water.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the second one don't eat night shades is the
Speaker 1: third one some dietary ship. That's even crazier than that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you guys, I mean I was imagining
Speaker 3: that you would be pretty close to the heart heat
Speaker 3: on this one.
Speaker 2: So many ideas other than water, Yeah, that's what he
Speaker 2: started with.
Speaker 3: Number two was make sure you're healthy, make sure you're
Speaker 3: maintaining your health.
Speaker 2: Okay uh.
Speaker 3: And then number three so no, uh, number three, get
Speaker 3: work done on the airplane. Use that time to be productive.
Speaker 1: Thoughts of dog. That's really great.
Speaker 2: So Carissa, how's your show?
Speaker 1: Beam?
Speaker 2: What have you been on? Anything good?
Speaker 5: So I've been on the robot beat.
Speaker 2: Cool. That sounds like a real thing, like, yes, don't
Speaker 2: break his heart.
Speaker 5: Mostly the best ones I've seen so far are been
Speaker 5: cute robots that don't really do anything but make you
Speaker 5: kind of happy.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. I saw one that I found heart rending.
Speaker 1: We went down Edward hungayso and I went down to
Speaker 1: the like the Eureka Room, which is basically like like
Speaker 1: Gollum lives there most of the city, and they had
Speaker 1: it was a very cute robot dog. But it was
Speaker 1: for people that have like dementia or that like couldn't
Speaker 1: really have a pet, but that the experience of having
Speaker 1: a pet would work for them. You know that would
Speaker 1: be beneficial. And I mean that part was nice and
Speaker 1: heart rending to me for reasons I don't need to,
Speaker 1: you know, put on this podcast because they're trying to
Speaker 1: keep the light. But mostly I was just like, damn,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a cute robot dog that you've made.
Speaker 5: They're a surprising number of emotional support robots here at CES.
Speaker 1: Interesting is that like a long standing thing.
Speaker 2: This is my first few years ago, Like they've had
Speaker 2: them before, They're.
Speaker 5: Not necessarily new there. A lot of them are from
Speaker 5: Japanese companies, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 2: Is there a reason behind that or I mean, I.
Speaker 5: Don't know if there's like an official reason other than
Speaker 5: I think they have, like they like weird.
Speaker 2: Stuff there, Like, I don't know, that's cool.
Speaker 5: Our favorite one, which we actually ate, won and Gadget
Speaker 5: Award for Best of CS, was this cute little furry
Speaker 5: robot that can sit on your arm or on a
Speaker 5: purse or something. It all does a stare at you.
Speaker 2: Okay, they mentioned this earlier and it chilled me to
Speaker 2: the bone. I'm just thinking of the morrowind MPC like
Speaker 2: just snapping on you, like criminal. Put that down.
Speaker 5: No, it's so cute and it's like soft, and it's
Speaker 5: not what I like about it. It's not supposed to
Speaker 5: do anything other than just like make you happy when
Speaker 5: you look at it, and it doesn't.
Speaker 1: So does it need to be a robot? Yeah, because
Speaker 1: like what you're describing could work as a stuffed animal
Speaker 1: to me and less like what's the robot stuff that
Speaker 1: it does? Oh, the eyes follow you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the eyes look at you a little bit. I
Speaker 5: mean that's pretty much it. You know, it's more of
Speaker 5: a like souped up Ferbie.
Speaker 1: Actually I saw a bunch of stuff that to me,
Speaker 1: like in you know, again just as more or less
Speaker 1: being ignorant with it. Just I was like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a Furby of some kind. Like I'm going to come
Speaker 1: back to that. But yeah, they're still like refining the
Speaker 1: Ferby experience for different you know, market sectors and needs.
Speaker 1: It seems like, which I guess is cool. I mean
Speaker 1: that Ferby is probably was here.
Speaker 2: It was Ferbie actually here, I don't think so, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't think. So that's a disappointment.
Speaker 3: I can't stop thinking about iterating on the Ferbie to
Speaker 3: return more shareholders.
Speaker 1: Val Right innovated.
Speaker 2: As far as the Furby goes in non cut gems.
Speaker 1: Banging on a table in like on a zoom call,
Speaker 1: but like three.
Speaker 2: People check this out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he loves to say it.
Speaker 2: This is how I lose. So did you see any
Speaker 2: weird robots though? Other than the emotional support ones? Did
Speaker 2: you see anything bizarre? Yes?
Speaker 5: So I was attacked by one.
Speaker 2: Perfect is how.
Speaker 1: Was that.
Speaker 5: Slightly terrifying? So there's this Chinese company called, I think
Speaker 5: it's pronounced Unitary that they have a like the like
Speaker 5: knock off Boston Dynamics robots. So their new one is
Speaker 5: like a like a quadruped that's like spot you know,
Speaker 5: it's like, yeah, those creepy dog ones that runs around
Speaker 5: and they bounce around.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And then they have a humanoid one, oh no, that
Speaker 5: I think it's called the g One. And so we're
Speaker 5: at the booth and we're taking photos of it, and
Speaker 5: I'm standing right in front of it, and there's a
Speaker 5: guy controlling it and he puts the controller under his
Speaker 5: arm and mashes the joystick forward, so it runs at
Speaker 5: me full speed. Oh my god, I got sixty pound
Speaker 5: Jesus probably four foot doll robot and just and he
Speaker 5: didn't really realize what was happening at first, So there
Speaker 5: was probably about four seconds where it.
Speaker 1: Was just like, fully, yes, God, what the hell?
Speaker 5: I know? But I can't even blame the robot because
Speaker 5: it was user error from this guy. But the funniest
Speaker 5: part was was that the conversation that happened immediately after
Speaker 5: this implied that this was not the first time that
Speaker 5: it happened.
Speaker 1: Come on, man, that feels like a skill issue visa
Speaker 1: Vie the joystick though, Like you just need to stow
Speaker 1: that shit in a different way.
Speaker 2: Well maybe you're trying, but all right, things are.
Speaker 1: Feel like in the four seconds when the robot was yeah, like.
Speaker 5: Like a sixty pound piece of metal knee capping you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like does that hit you?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Oh no, it made full contact with me. I thought
Speaker 1: it was like chasing you, and you were kind of like,
Speaker 1: turn this off.
Speaker 2: Vegas is a personal liability haven. There are like lawyers everywhere.
Speaker 2: You can call one. Now that company is dust.
Speaker 5: I know, we're just we're really disappointed that we somehow
Speaker 5: failed to get to somebody. I was actually taking photos
Speaker 5: at the time, but I was so shocked by what
Speaker 5: happened I did not take photos of it.
Speaker 1: Actually, I mean, you were being assaulted by a robot.
Speaker 1: That is crazy and happened multiple times. Any good ones
Speaker 1: like positives we're really trying the little steering guy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the steering one.
Speaker 2: That's yeah, it.
Speaker 1: Would never hurt you like that robot couldn't even chase
Speaker 1: you probably, No, just look could you?
Speaker 5: It just looks at you and is you know, gives
Speaker 5: you a little shot of serotonin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't get that. I don't have that in me.
Speaker 2: So anything else, like is it just robotics for you've
Speaker 2: been covering on this trip? No.
Speaker 5: I also I went to Linda Akarino's keynote.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, yeah, so I hey, the power is crazy.
Speaker 1: She I have to like watch that tape just as
Speaker 1: a it's a longtime fan of her work. Was she electric?
Speaker 1: Was the vibe in the room electric? Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen her speak up a little bit? And it looks well,
Speaker 1: I mean whatever, strangely rendered like it just doesn't it's
Speaker 1: life like, So credit where it's due.
Speaker 5: But we were talking about this, you know, for somebody
Speaker 5: who was a media executive for a long time, she's
Speaker 5: very at least I mean, and I never saw her
Speaker 5: speak in her prior role, but you know, when she's
Speaker 5: speaking her capacity as x CEO, she just you know,
Speaker 5: it kind of sounds like she's speaking in sort of
Speaker 5: like soundbites, but they don't make sense together. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 5: like she's memorized like these three word things that she's
Speaker 5: supposed to say.
Speaker 1: But someone tucked a joystick under their arm does have
Speaker 1: a like the bit that I always have as my
Speaker 1: comparison is like those like soundboards that they used to
Speaker 1: have online where it would just be like different, like
Speaker 1: Arnold Schwarzenegger saying different lines from Kindergarten Cop and you
Speaker 1: push a button then he goes no. When you push
Speaker 1: another one and he goes, how are you? And like,
Speaker 1: but that's like sort of she just feels like she's
Speaker 1: got the presets and then someone's just back there going
Speaker 1: to town and whatever.
Speaker 2: I can actually expect running a pe off them. I
Speaker 2: can tell you she is perfectly media trained. The problem
Speaker 2: is that media training is very rarely prepared for a
Speaker 2: person who has nothing else. You usually, I ideally your
Speaker 2: training so.
Speaker 1: They can use that magic inside them, they can bring
Speaker 1: out the personality.
Speaker 2: The problem is I don't know whether Linda has one,
Speaker 2: and she does. She does everything. She even does the
Speaker 2: accordion the you meant to gesture and bring them in
Speaker 2: and then gesture, which is meant to not be literally
Speaker 2: doing these movements of your hands like out and then
Speaker 2: in instead the whole fucking time. And also she sounds
Speaker 2: like she's prepared the sound exactly. But you're meant to
Speaker 2: fill those in, Linda, you meant to have other thoughts
Speaker 2: that connect these thoughts together, not just be like exes
Speaker 2: where it happens and that's what's online.
Speaker 1: So that's what you're saying, then, is it was sort
Speaker 1: of like similar to the experience of her feed, Yes,
Speaker 1: which sounds like it would be incredibly jarring to witness life.
Speaker 5: I mean it was lots of you know, uh, the
Speaker 5: legacy media is basically fan fiction for something like I was.
Speaker 5: Even even just trying to get like a usable quote
Speaker 5: is very difficult because it just when you look at
Speaker 5: it and in front of you, like the words together
Speaker 5: don't make sense.
Speaker 3: It's fantastic spinning a big wheel the legacy media.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, uh, oh, this was adjective, this could
Speaker 1: be anything.
Speaker 2: Well, no, you say that, but she talked about like
Speaker 2: the grooming gangs in the UK, So it kind of
Speaker 2: was that. It kind of actually she did.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I kind of tuned out that part.
Speaker 2: I would have too.
Speaker 5: At that end, but I think she just uses like
Speaker 5: whatever Elon Musk is tweeting about that day as kind
Speaker 5: of like inspiration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, X has been grateful the fourteen were Oh maybe
Speaker 2: not if No, she she has managed to stay, like
Speaker 2: for now, somewhat pure. But it is interesting that the
Speaker 2: CS thing she started to just crack and she's letting
Speaker 2: the Elon Musk bits through. And I think by this,
Speaker 2: like this time next year, she'll either have left or
Speaker 2: been fired and blamed for everything as the money runs
Speaker 2: out of the X.
Speaker 5: The funny thing was that this keynote room was at
Speaker 5: best half full, and like half of the people were asleep,
Speaker 5: but then the other.
Speaker 1: Time to find a seat here, so the other half were.
Speaker 5: Really into it. People were when she started talking about
Speaker 5: the grooming gangs, people were cheering, Yeah, like wow.
Speaker 1: So what were how many people should there have been
Speaker 1: in that room? I don't know the space.
Speaker 5: It was one of those larger ballrooms in the Venetians,
Speaker 5: so it's definitely not you know, one of like the
Speaker 5: mega kenote size rooms. I really couldn't fine, but there's
Speaker 5: are of like two sections, like the front half was
Speaker 5: pretty full, but like there's an entire back half that
Speaker 5: was completely empty.
Speaker 1: It's the idea of her getting up there and like
Speaker 1: free associating about grooming gangs in the UK to sixty
Speaker 1: people feel like this has been the whole, This is
Speaker 1: the actual I mean, like you know, cards on the table.
Speaker 1: I don't really like Linda Ya Karino's work that much.
Speaker 1: I was just I was doing a bit. But I
Speaker 1: do think that there's something about her as like as
Speaker 1: a character and as a performance that I found really fascinating,
Speaker 1: just because she has to get up there and like
Speaker 1: abase herself on Elon's behalf and in Elon's words, that
Speaker 1: like that's the actual gig, you know, and so the
Speaker 1: idea of seeing that happening to it, it's like it's
Speaker 1: weird enough, you know, to every now and then. I
Speaker 1: don't really look at Twitter much anymore, but people will
Speaker 1: sometimes send me when she says like a weird reply,
Speaker 1: like the one where she just said hot dog, you know,
Speaker 1: like I got that a bunch of times. I'm really
Speaker 1: glad that I did. It's cool that that's my brand
Speaker 1: that people are like, you'd probably like this bit of
Speaker 1: check out this, But the idea of there being like
Speaker 1: a real person doing that in a room feels like
Speaker 1: I would have felt I would have had a hard
Speaker 1: time I think watching it, like, I feel like I
Speaker 1: would have felt embarrassed for her.
Speaker 2: I've been sharing the whole time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, was there a point because she was being interviewed, right,
Speaker 3: It wasn't just was there like a point to the interview?
Speaker 2: Like what were they trying to achieve? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So much.
Speaker 2: It's a good question.
Speaker 5: So they started off, you know, talking about Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 5: and him saying that he wants to you know, do
Speaker 5: community notes on Facebook, and of course she was, you know,
Speaker 5: a very big fan of that. She had like this
Speaker 5: one very obviously cand line that was, you know, Mark Metow,
Speaker 5: welcome to the party.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's good though, you got to have a couple
Speaker 1: of but some real bangers written ahead of time that,
Speaker 1: you know, I imagine I got a huge pop.
Speaker 6: In the room.
Speaker 1: Everybody was like, yes, go off, queen. I was silent, Yeah, weird.
Speaker 2: I'd love to be the guys that Yeah, yeah, welcome
Speaker 2: to the party.
Speaker 3: Pal.
Speaker 2: I paid two hundred bucks a month for groc Yeah,
Speaker 2: anyone check out the logo of Grok by the way,
Speaker 2: I feel like someone brought this up before, but the
Speaker 2: logo of Grok is insane. I looked I need to
Speaker 2: I now realize how impractical it's going to be to
Speaker 2: show every visual medium. I'm just going to show this
Speaker 2: to David because I'll describe it. It's like an x I.
Speaker 3: Like, Oh, it's it's the x AI logo, isn't it
Speaker 3: right that? Yeah, it's the logo for his artificial intelligence company.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks like a generative AI defect.
Speaker 1: It's like you're talking about the one with the cat.
Speaker 2: No, no, I'm saying that it's just the fucking that's
Speaker 2: my phone background, David.
Speaker 1: Right, Sorry, it's my beautiful boy pingus like that's a
Speaker 1: cat rock fingus.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: So mad feeling all our best ideas.
Speaker 2: I'm not an uncle with three horrible sons that each
Speaker 2: have a full dealership. Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: So I haven't seen as much about like who's speaking here?
Speaker 1: I know? Yeah, that like Yakaren, who I was aware
Speaker 1: of because again, like people in my life like to
Speaker 1: tell me when she does things. But the other stuff
Speaker 1: is that like again as a you know, nube to
Speaker 1: the cees, experience, it doesn't seem like people are here
Speaker 1: to well, they're here to like do deals and like
Speaker 1: have or be pursued by robots. Then there's not like
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel like there's a thing where people are
Speaker 1: here to like watch people talk. Is that a part
Speaker 1: of the culture that, like his speech is usually a
Speaker 1: big deal here?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, yeah, okay, historically, I mean there's a
Speaker 3: really good one. I mean, if I could genuinely recommend one,
Speaker 3: there's one from two thousand and nine that you should
Speaker 3: watch where Tom Hanks came out to do some presentation
Speaker 3: on behalf of Sony because this is when he was
Speaker 3: doing the Angels and Demons Da Vinci Code fr Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: So it was basically like written into his contract like
Speaker 3: come to CDs and cs and like talk about these
Speaker 3: new ar glasses that clearly materialized in the last decade.
Speaker 1: That was the first time anybody saw them before they
Speaker 1: became ubiquitous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's just the best example of like someone
Speaker 3: who was really willing to take the piss out of
Speaker 3: the whole experience and not like Tim Meadows, like the
Speaker 3: other day at the BMW thing was like sort of
Speaker 3: doing it, but in like the lightest touchway like making
Speaker 3: fun of like all these German automotive executives around him,
Speaker 3: but like you know, within generous reason.
Speaker 2: Tom Hanks is.
Speaker 3: Like like you could feel them sort of like slipping
Speaker 3: the hook around his neck to get him.
Speaker 2: Off the stage. Nice. So it's it's definitely part of it.
Speaker 1: I haven't witnessed any of the famous person part of
Speaker 1: it because I know that's apparently there's like a Williams here.
Speaker 3: William william I wouldn't be surprised. He's here like pretty
Speaker 3: much every year, Yeah, with some new bad products, some
Speaker 3: new scam. Yeah, there's the first few nights. There's always
Speaker 3: some big event. It's you know, somebody. Different companies get
Speaker 3: to get it every year. The last time I was
Speaker 3: here twenty twenty, one of the big ones was Mercedes
Speaker 3: Benz did a big one of the big keynotes and
Speaker 3: they rolled out some concept car that was sort of
Speaker 3: based on Avatar, and so the concept car had these
Speaker 3: like scales that rose up and stuff, and then James
Speaker 3: Cameron came out and was like, here's a still from
Speaker 3: Avatar too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm still making it.
Speaker 3: It's coming, and like you know, it was whatever that
Speaker 3: was when people were still kind of unsure about that happening,
Speaker 3: but so yeah, it's it's a part of the culture, Okay.
Speaker 3: It's a thing for people to do after they've been
Speaker 3: like suffering on the show floor all day, is like
Speaker 3: go sit in an arena and watch Michael Bay talk
Speaker 3: about Samsung display.
Speaker 1: He was gonna say, like I would have by the
Speaker 1: end of today, Like I would sit pretty much anywhere
Speaker 1: and watch pretty much anyone to.
Speaker 2: Talk about take too much any of the not off
Speaker 2: in the back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure that. Yeah, Like if I
Speaker 1: could get in there and like charge my phone, I'd
Speaker 1: be like, just not the grooming gang stuff. It's bringing
Speaker 1: the mood down in the room, but the rest of it.
Speaker 1: I got ten minutes before this thing's full. I just
Speaker 1: let me sit. Did you like anything at the show, Caissa,
Speaker 1: Anything good?
Speaker 2: Anything like truly joyous, like anything, put a big smile
Speaker 2: on your face. Anything. I'm really trying with everyone.
Speaker 5: So we saw a cane for people who are blind
Speaker 5: that has AI in it, and it was actually like
Speaker 5: an We thought it was an interesting use of AI
Speaker 5: and chatchupt.
Speaker 2: How did it use it?
Speaker 5: So it has a camera on it and a little speaker,
Speaker 5: so as you're walking around, it can tell you like
Speaker 5: when it sees an obstacle like help you, like like oh,
Speaker 5: there's a stare ahead of you, or there's, you know,
Speaker 5: a lamp post.
Speaker 2: This sounds really good into the hallucinations.
Speaker 5: But what we liked about it was that it's still cane,
Speaker 5: so like, even if the AI stuff doesn't work, it's
Speaker 5: not like, you know, the person is stranded and has
Speaker 5: no way to sure. But if you're around nation.
Speaker 2: I know, it sounds like it'd actually be useful, especially
Speaker 2: because I assume that no one would trust it fully.
Speaker 5: I mean the person who made it, who runs the
Speaker 5: company is has been blind.
Speaker 2: Since that's essentially a genuinely like sorry, that's not a
Speaker 2: good thing, just to be clear, but it's they have
Speaker 2: the experience to make a product that would be good.
Speaker 2: They would go for awless.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the accessibility tech was the stuff today that it
Speaker 1: was like the first thing that I saw that. Like, again,
Speaker 1: I'm a soft touch, so I'm like impressed by like
Speaker 1: a cool TV. There's a part of me that's like, damn,
Speaker 1: you got a lot of colors on that thing.
Speaker 2: Nice nailed it.
Speaker 1: But the yeah, there was some of the I think
Speaker 1: if it's the thing that I'm talking about. There's like
Speaker 1: two of them right next to each other on the
Speaker 1: Eureka floor, the smart can or maybe there's more of
Speaker 1: them here, but I did see there was one that
Speaker 1: did have like the AI bells and whistles, and then
Speaker 1: there was one of them which I remember Edward and
Speaker 1: I both being struck by that was like, you don't
Speaker 1: have to have the Internet to use this, Like it
Speaker 1: was like clearly designed for like people that were like
Speaker 1: older and wanted a simpler experience of it without any
Speaker 1: of that stuff. But in both of those cases, there's
Speaker 1: you know, so much of For me walking around on
Speaker 1: the floor was like seeing these technologies that could potentially
Speaker 1: deliver solutions applied weirdly to non problems in really overdetermined ways.
Speaker 1: And in this case, it's sort of like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this would actually help somebody have a better life. That's
Speaker 1: kind of a cool thing to do with technology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But also, how does it connect to the Internet.
Speaker 2: I'm now chat GPT requires an Internet connection? Do you
Speaker 2: have to have Wi Fi for it? Does it connect
Speaker 2: to your phone?
Speaker 5: That is a good question. I didn't write her a
Speaker 5: piece about it.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I don't know not your problem. I would be
Speaker 2: looking at the piece later. But also that's the thing.
Speaker 2: Every time you hear as a listener, if you hear
Speaker 2: chat GPT, remember this thing needs the internet. These do
Speaker 2: not have on device models, which means that your cane
Speaker 2: is just like not telling you where things are. Every
Speaker 2: time I try and avoid the diplope be open.
Speaker 5: So this is going to probably piss you off. But
Speaker 5: they have two different kind of models. So one is
Speaker 5: that you it's a subscription for the chat GPT functionality.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's the good stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah that's or you can buy the more expensive one
Speaker 5: which comes with.
Speaker 2: It for the lifetime subscription. See I think is that
Speaker 2: stuff does actually cost money, so they do have to
Speaker 2: do something. But it's also like, oh man, granddad, sorry,
Speaker 2: life's being rough right now. Can't afford the cane. You're
Speaker 2: just gonna have to work out for yourself. You're gonna
Speaker 2: have to turn the subscription off. Yes, sorry, grand dad.
Speaker 2: We don't have the pro subscription. It's only going to
Speaker 2: tell you some objects, although again it does have we
Speaker 2: don't wave for the car out on.
Speaker 1: If you turn the subscription off, it's like, well, your
Speaker 1: cane's going to be a lot quieter this month. It's
Speaker 1: not like it's going to turn into like an oblong
Speaker 1: cylinder of plastic, which it was before, and now it's
Speaker 1: just not going to talk to you.
Speaker 2: Give them a year that make the subscription. They make it,
Speaker 2: they might get load bearing, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the subscription stuff is really sinister to me.
Speaker 2: It's everything now. So Sean, you, how do you feel
Speaker 2: about Delta though? What ad Dela do differently what it
Speaker 2: was the Delta thing? We're talking about useful companies. I
Speaker 2: assume Delta wouldn't buy the sphere out to just shovel
Speaker 2: a bunch of operating system stuff, right, No, it's pretty
Speaker 2: much a lot of that. Oh it really.
Speaker 3: I mean, like I said, it was the the build
Speaker 3: up that Ed Bashian did at the beginning of like
Speaker 3: this is the next one hundred years, and it was
Speaker 3: it almost made.
Speaker 2: Me want there to be more bullshit, like insane stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's weird because, like I haven't been here
Speaker 3: since twenty twenty and they were a big part of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty show. I feel like I saw more from
Speaker 3: them then because at that point they were still working on,
Speaker 3: you know, adding a bunch more features to the screen.
Speaker 3: Experience in like you know, in the seatback experience, they
Speaker 3: were working on this thing, you know, sort of a
Speaker 3: privacy nightmare kind of thing, but an idea at least
Speaker 3: that was interesting to think about of like a screen
Speaker 3: when you go into the terminal that it has. There
Speaker 3: have been these kind of TVs at ces in the
Speaker 3: past where you'll have sort of a screen display that
Speaker 3: can split what it's showing you depending on where you're
Speaker 3: looking at it from, so theoretically multiple people could see
Speaker 3: multiple different things on the same screen.
Speaker 2: They pair that with facial recognition.
Speaker 3: You would theoretically walk into the terminal, You and I
Speaker 3: could stand next to each other, we could each get
Speaker 3: personal information about our flights and where we're going and
Speaker 3: all that kind of stuff. At least that was like
Speaker 3: we're working on this tech and seeing this year it
Speaker 3: was it was very like, you know, it's all of
Speaker 3: course about generative AI, and it really was just a
Speaker 3: really weak showing of what they think that can do
Speaker 3: because the experience they showed off and yet it's it's like.
Speaker 2: It's some of that same stuff.
Speaker 3: It's really the best way I can desgard, But is
Speaker 3: it's treating these people who like a baby it's like,
Speaker 3: assuming you are like a high class Delta sky Miles
Speaker 3: person and you can't be bothered to get to the
Speaker 3: airport on time, you can't be bothered to you can't
Speaker 3: be bothered to. It was like it'll tell you which
Speaker 3: gate is, which gate your flight is at, and where
Speaker 3: that is, as if you can't look at the gate
Speaker 3: number and like count down, you know, like when you
Speaker 3: the airports are built pretty.
Speaker 2: Well, find out where my flight is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like I know, I make gate seventeen. I see
Speaker 3: gate three. Oh, look the numbers go to seventeen. That way,
Speaker 3: I really do not need Generative AI to tell me that.
Speaker 3: And it was just, you know, the other weird thing
Speaker 3: about it was they're clearly trying to, like so many
Speaker 3: tech companies, subsume all of your experience into Delta, So
Speaker 3: it's like you'll be flying there and then you'll be
Speaker 3: able to plan out your trip while you're in mid
Speaker 3: air on your screen and Delta will help you book
Speaker 3: your reservations at all of these places. And it's just
Speaker 3: like there's no room in the vision that they're painting
Speaker 3: for you to have any part of your experience outside
Speaker 3: of the Delta.
Speaker 2: So none of this seems to make the flight beta no,
Speaker 2: and that's I mean, that's the thing that really bums
Speaker 2: me out.
Speaker 3: Has bummed me out a lot about CES this year,
Speaker 3: not just a delta, but for so much of it,
Speaker 3: Like nothing is about making a lot of the little
Speaker 3: stuff better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even the convention itself.
Speaker 3: Like it's just there's so much about being here, like
Speaker 3: the Vegas is built up all of this extra stuff
Speaker 3: to makes it, yes, even bigger. There's this whole new
Speaker 3: hall that wasn't here when I was here five years ago,
Speaker 3: and it's still not enough to like contain the people.
Speaker 3: Like I went to get lunch today at like a
Speaker 3: relatively off peak lunch time. Yeah, there's not enough seats
Speaker 3: for people Like I'm going to sit at this one
Speaker 3: counter that I see available, and then I'm told that
Speaker 3: it's part of some sort of display that I can't
Speaker 3: sit at because I don't belong to those people. So
Speaker 3: it's like it's like, Okay, I'm gonna go sit on
Speaker 3: the floor, which like I've done plenty of times in
Speaker 3: the many years I've come here, and like eat my lunch.
Speaker 3: But it's just like no one's working on any solution
Speaker 3: for the dumb stuff like that or even the weird
Speaker 3: thing is like not even using that as an opportunity
Speaker 3: to present some of the technologies that are being promised,
Speaker 3: is like, oh, wouldn't it be. It's just like it's
Speaker 3: the most pedestrian mall ass experience like here, and it's
Speaker 3: just you know, you can just feel how no one's heart,
Speaker 3: isn't it.
Speaker 1: That's what I was thinking about when you were talking
Speaker 1: about the idea of like the full you know, stem
Speaker 1: to stern delta travel experience, is that like I flew
Speaker 1: Delta out here. I had a perfectly fine flight, but
Speaker 1: like you're still going through an airport, Like it's still
Speaker 1: the sort of thing where it's like I was at
Speaker 1: JFK on a security line that took forty five minutes
Speaker 1: to get me through, and so there's, you know, some
Speaker 1: of that's my faults. I don't I'm pre or whatever,
Speaker 1: I'm not rich enough to have whatever the I mean,
Speaker 1: like Tom Brady does not have to go through security
Speaker 1: at least flying private, or if he just you know,
Speaker 1: signs the football for somebody and like gets sent through.
Speaker 1: But in all those instances, it's like these sort of
Speaker 1: weird pie in the sky solutions to things that do
Speaker 1: not necessarily scan to me as problems, like things that
Speaker 1: are basically like minor activations of agency, like looking up
Speaker 1: at the board and like finding the number of my
Speaker 1: flight and then being like what gait is it? Like
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily need that solved. If you could find
Speaker 1: a way to make it less unpleasant to get to
Speaker 1: or go through JFK, like that would be sick and
Speaker 1: yet like that's harder. This is the thing we keep
Speaker 1: coming back to in these conversations, is that like that's
Speaker 1: a systemic, like structural that would require like state level action,
Speaker 1: whereas here they're sort of like, with the power of
Speaker 1: generative AI, you are going to be able to read
Speaker 1: words on a screen. I'll fly through their leave you
Speaker 1: the gentleman.
Speaker 2: Enough about mister Kravitz. We have to finish up the episode, Sean,
Speaker 2: where can people find you? Well, this block of the episode,
Speaker 2: I mean where can people find you? I'm on blue
Speaker 2: Sky that's the best place. Okay. Do you want to
Speaker 2: say where Sean o'can do? BEISKI? How do you say that?
Speaker 2: I don't know, Nan, and you'll find me. Okay, where
Speaker 2: do you work? I work at Techne for a year
Speaker 2: it's amazing, lovely Chrissa. Where can people find you?
Speaker 5: They can find me on Blue Sky, still on threads
Speaker 5: for now, Carissa b on both of them, and and
Speaker 5: Gatget wonderful.
Speaker 1: David Defector dot com is the website and the distractions
Speaker 1: the podcast.
Speaker 2: I do for them. You can find me off to
Speaker 2: the ad break listen download by it. It's been like
Speaker 2: hours of this stuff. Now I'm not giving you anything special,
Speaker 2: and we're back. We've got Sean Okine, of course from
Speaker 2: tech Crunch. We've got Carrissa Bell from Engadget, and David J.
Speaker 2: Roth of Defacta and we're CHRISA said something very important
Speaker 2: just before we broke, and that is that Faraday Future here,
Speaker 2: my favorite not quite car company. They love to be
Speaker 2: on fire, don't they, folks. So what did you hear?
Speaker 2: Faraday Future? I must hear.
Speaker 5: So they were here pitching their their latest kind of
Speaker 5: pivot strategy shift whatever you want to call it, okay,
Speaker 5: which is fx A new a new subsidiary of Faraday
Speaker 5: Future that will sell cheap evs and their plan is
Speaker 5: to source parts from China, bring them here, make them
Speaker 5: look nice on the inside, and sell them for probably
Speaker 5: like between twenty to fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: So perhaps you can give some history about how well
Speaker 2: Faraday Future is done selling cars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all of you guys are making faces that I'm
Speaker 1: hearing that.
Speaker 2: Illuminate how great they are.
Speaker 5: They have to date have sold fifteen or sixteen f
Speaker 5: F nine one, which I believe thou fifteen or six
Speaker 5: Now fifteen or sixteen six that's more manageable. So good
Speaker 5: of the only car that they've ever managed to actually sell,
Speaker 5: that f F nine one. Yeah, they're making about one
Speaker 5: a month, is what?
Speaker 2: And if I sell, you mean.
Speaker 3: Essentially leased to these people and in some in some
Speaker 3: cases actually strike contracts with them that basically reaburse them
Speaker 3: for the cost of the sale.
Speaker 2: Of the car. How long has this company been around
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen? That's so good. You're eleven years old.
Speaker 1: Do they advertise themselves as a small batch automotive?
Speaker 2: No, they should asset light. Yeah. So the new plan
Speaker 2: is to sell a cheapest, shitty a.
Speaker 5: Car, a cheaper minivan specifically.
Speaker 2: Right, so a smaller total addressable market this company.
Speaker 3: Listen, I actually don't they. We were just talking about Mike.
Speaker 3: They refused to let me come see it because they
Speaker 3: didn't answer.
Speaker 2: Me a manu forrid like seven different very aggressive stories
Speaker 2: about them.
Speaker 3: I don't know what they well, yeah, we don't have
Speaker 3: time for all that. But my assumption is this van
Speaker 3: is a thing that when they did still have some money,
Speaker 3: because they don't really have a lot of money right now,
Speaker 3: but when they did have some money, they're one of
Speaker 3: their plans was to make this type of vehicle in China.
Speaker 3: So my assumption would be that this is one of
Speaker 3: the prototypes that they developed back then that's just been
Speaker 3: sitting in China collecting dust, and now they've been able
Speaker 3: to put some new veneer on it. The problem with
Speaker 3: this company is they well, a problem with this company
Speaker 3: is that they need money because they've run out of
Speaker 3: the money from the founder. The founder basically created what
Speaker 3: was at one point sort of like a combination of
Speaker 3: Netflix and Apple and China. It had grown to like
Speaker 3: ten billion or more invaluation, and then it ultimately crashed
Speaker 3: because he just over leveraged everything. I believe the term
Speaker 3: that the New York Times used at one point was
Speaker 3: debt bombs, and those debt bombs started going off, and
Speaker 3: he exiled himself to the US in twenty seventeen and
Speaker 3: has been here ever since, running the company. But the
Speaker 3: point is they don't have any money left, and they've
Speaker 3: been trying to raise it from people related to him
Speaker 3: and close to his orbit, and so the idea of
Speaker 3: selling a two hundred thousand dollars car to people that
Speaker 3: clearly don't really necessarily want to buy it.
Speaker 2: At scale is unpalatable.
Speaker 3: So they are going after this idea of making a
Speaker 3: low cost card because they think it's a more investable business.
Speaker 2: Carrissa, when we say lower cost, I didn't realize it
Speaker 2: was two hundred thousand dollars fed.
Speaker 3: That's the regular is. I mean, I think it's a
Speaker 3: sliding scale. To be fair to them, exist and you
Speaker 3: won't never existing.
Speaker 2: I won't hear me say this often. To be fair
Speaker 2: to them.
Speaker 3: The goal with that one was to always compete with
Speaker 3: like the Maybacks and Bugattis of the world.
Speaker 2: So it's not like extremely well engineered caused the well
Speaker 2: known for the design and their execution on set design.
Speaker 2: Eventually yeah, well, eventually it's kind of the whole Faraday
Speaker 2: Future yeah thing. Yeah. So how much is the vent,
Speaker 2: like the cheap van that they're.
Speaker 5: Doing unclear, Probably around fifty thousand dollars based on what
Speaker 5: they said. I'll just see the prototypes we saw. You
Speaker 5: said that maybe these have been sitting around for them.
Speaker 5: Maybe that's true that these were rough.
Speaker 2: I mean I believe that to define.
Speaker 5: So there was two different ones. One had sort of
Speaker 5: the morphinished interior where they were trying to show off,
Speaker 5: you know how they were kind of going to make
Speaker 5: a minivan but you know for grown ups and fancy. Right,
Speaker 5: had no door handles. Okay, Our friend John said, of course,
Speaker 5: of course it will have door handles the real one,
Speaker 5: which is always great when they have to tell you.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: So I had some you know, white leather captain seats
Speaker 5: that had you know, massage functions, and you know it
Speaker 5: was it was okay, no door handles, no door handles,
Speaker 5: completely like wrapped in that.
Speaker 2: Did they have to like airlift you into from the
Speaker 2: top or how did you get in?
Speaker 5: I mean the doors opened, they just didn't have they
Speaker 5: don't clear how. Yeah, and then there was the one
Speaker 5: that we could actually ride in, which was just covered
Speaker 5: in fabric that was held together by binder clips, like
Speaker 5: the entire interior literally binder clips. Show They said it
Speaker 5: was a plug in hybrid I got to drive it
Speaker 5: around it. Honestly, it could have been a toyo to
Speaker 5: Sienna covered in fabric for all.
Speaker 2: I know, Like it did it feel like an electric vehicle?
Speaker 5: Like I mean it felt like yeah kind of.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I just loved the idea that they would this
Speaker 2: company sounds like they would actually do the toyo to
Speaker 2: see anything.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I mean, I don't know, I'm not embarrassing,
Speaker 5: but it could have though been for like especially I'm
Speaker 5: not an automotive journal so it was very funny to
Speaker 5: me that they invited me to do this. Max did
Speaker 5: tell me I was the first lady to drive that
Speaker 5: particular vehicle, so.
Speaker 1: That's an amazing honor. Yeah, thanks for knowing that, like
Speaker 1: really doing the like not having door handles thing is incredible.
Speaker 1: Like again, from being completely outside of this story, like
Speaker 1: this company rocks to me, like everything that you've described
Speaker 1: where they're just sort of like and this one it's
Speaker 1: like got a tarp on the inside of it, like
Speaker 1: you're just getting into whatever Kurt Russell's car from Death
Speaker 1: Proof to be like just take it for a spin,
Speaker 1: take it around a lot, like temp wild thing. Why
Speaker 1: would you want somebody to drive a car that looks
Speaker 1: that messed up on the inside.
Speaker 5: I mean, maybe Sean can speak to this, like you
Speaker 5: don't expect a prototype vehicle to necessarly be finished and
Speaker 5: have held together.
Speaker 2: Find Eclipse.
Speaker 5: But what was also telling to me was that the
Speaker 5: one press image they gave us was so low rests
Speaker 5: and it showed them it was like these two vans
Speaker 5: like in a field, like at a great distance.
Speaker 3: And also the vans are covered in like camouflage like wrap,
Speaker 3: but which is you know that's a traditional automotive thing,
Speaker 3: but set.
Speaker 2: In this field.
Speaker 3: Because I saw this image earlier today, it just looks
Speaker 3: like cow cars because it's like, you know, blocky black
Speaker 3: and white, but in the field, in this weird setting
Speaker 3: that you don't normally see like a prototype car.
Speaker 2: And it was like my brain just like cows just.
Speaker 1: Love the idea of being just like a deep fried
Speaker 1: jpeg like five K sending that up to the depressed
Speaker 1: mean like, so don't you could use this as like
Speaker 1: your avatar on social media. Do not put it on
Speaker 1: your website.
Speaker 2: This will not render on blue.
Speaker 1: It's got to be pointless.
Speaker 3: Tell you like again, to be fair to them, they
Speaker 3: do not have many employees left it's basically most of
Speaker 3: the people who are here on different types of work,
Speaker 3: vices that staff the company.
Speaker 2: Everybody purloughed or laid off pretty much.
Speaker 1: Is there like an end gameless? The idea there that
Speaker 1: like whatever technology they have would be purchased by some
Speaker 1: other company. Is there like or what happens?
Speaker 3: I think the founder is singular in his vision of
Speaker 3: wanting to say that. I mean, from what I've heard,
Speaker 3: from the conversations I've had with people who have worked
Speaker 3: at this company over many years, this this man is
Speaker 3: I'll say two things and then I'll try not to
Speaker 3: go too long on it. One is that he since
Speaker 3: he self exiled himself from China to hear, the thinking is,
Speaker 3: he wants to build up a successful business that would
Speaker 3: let him go back into China without just being snatched
Speaker 3: and thrown into avoid upon landing because that's like he
Speaker 3: was put on a debtor blacklist. He is is kind
Speaker 3: of I mean, he he left the company with like
Speaker 3: billions of dollars owed by himself.
Speaker 2: One of the consequences of a debt to blacklist you
Speaker 2: could just probably be disappeared by the state. So can
Speaker 2: you not leave China? Is that one of it on paper.
Speaker 3: The limitations are like you can't buy train tickets, or
Speaker 3: you can't you know, like you have like actual economic
Speaker 3: restrictions placed some of your assets or frozen and things
Speaker 3: like that. But like the realistic thing, given the scale
Speaker 3: of the collapse of his business there is that he
Speaker 3: would probably be you know, hidden in.
Speaker 2: A corner somewhere, right, Yeah, in a place. But having
Speaker 2: lots of money would allow him to avoid that. I think.
Speaker 3: I think in his mind he thinks that if I mean,
Speaker 3: he's he's it's too much to get into. But he
Speaker 3: is a very specific person when it comes to believing
Speaker 3: in the value of you know, sort of billionaire entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2: So I think he thinks that that has enough cachet
Speaker 2: that it will other than the having the billion, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that seems to be the problem. Yeah, so I will
Speaker 2: I will say this. I if I see a car,
Speaker 2: I expect the bits to be on like the like
Speaker 2: the like. I think I think that like that feels
Speaker 2: like a reasonable thing. Did they react to the falling
Speaker 2: apart this of this vehicle that allegedly would buy no,
Speaker 2: I mean sick so good.
Speaker 3: It's a fairly common thing to show up with a
Speaker 3: prototype that's like seats half baked. It's ces We've seen
Speaker 3: some weird stuff over the years, especially from these startups.
Speaker 3: I think there's gradations of how complete it is or
Speaker 3: how much polish you want to put on it. I
Speaker 3: will say I think that this company's probably coming from
Speaker 3: the experiences they've had with the more expensive car, which
Speaker 3: is actually quite technologically accomplished four seven years ago when
Speaker 3: they developed it, and they got away with a lot
Speaker 3: of bad finish, you know, sort of rough edge demos
Speaker 3: at cees in years prior, because people would forget about
Speaker 3: that because they jam on the pedal on this thing
Speaker 3: and it would I mean, it's fast as hell. Like
Speaker 3: the more expensive car that they've built is like incredible
Speaker 3: because or incredibly capable because they hired when he started
Speaker 3: this company, they had all this money that he had
Speaker 3: and they just overspent so much. I mean, so they
Speaker 3: they went from being founded in twenty fourteen to fifteen
Speaker 3: hundred people by twenty sixteen, and they did that by
Speaker 3: basically paying fifty to one hundred percent more than the
Speaker 3: going right for like every position inside the company. And
Speaker 3: so they attracted all this talent from Tesla, Apple, all
Speaker 3: these other companies but they were very secretive about what
Speaker 3: they were doing because they're kind of trying to hide
Speaker 3: who was backing it. And this combination of like secrecy
Speaker 3: and obvious signs of money at one point had people
Speaker 3: believing that this was a front for Apple's secretive project,
Speaker 3: the car project. Yeah, and so like that's how like
Speaker 3: crazy the mania was getting around, Like what that's scam.
Speaker 3: But so the point of the reason I say that
Speaker 3: is like when the people who developed to the car
Speaker 3: included like the team that made the GM EV one,
Speaker 3: which is like thought of as like the first real
Speaker 3: mass market EV in the US, so like they had
Speaker 3: like real engineering behind it. And when they were demoing
Speaker 3: that car years ago here, people were like kind of
Speaker 3: falling in love it because they were like, yeah, this
Speaker 3: company is kind of crazy and like it doesn't really
Speaker 3: look like they're anywhere near ready to build these things.
Speaker 3: But these things are fast as hell and fun and
Speaker 3: it's a fun experience and for a CEES experience like
Speaker 3: that just doesn't involve getting attacked by robots in the
Speaker 3: mood like, oh yeah, that was one of my better experiences.
Speaker 3: You know, when I went zero to sixty in like
Speaker 3: one second.
Speaker 2: Do you not think that some of this is a
Speaker 2: reflection of how the tech presses looked tech though, because sure,
Speaker 2: because I feel like thanks to the way you law
Speaker 2: musk was covered, there were a lot of companies that
Speaker 2: kind of get away with this shit.
Speaker 3: Well they've gotten away with it in the sense that
Speaker 3: they were one of the companies that did one of
Speaker 3: these spack mergers and raised another billion dollars. So just
Speaker 3: define a s back merger for the listeners, a special
Speaker 3: purpose acquisition company. There's kind of a long history of
Speaker 3: reverse mergers like this on the public markets. But essentially,
Speaker 3: if you are an investor or some sort of business type,
Speaker 3: you could theoretically create a company that's just basically a
Speaker 3: holding sell for cash that's publicly traded, and you can
Speaker 3: basically like vaguely state your intentions for we want to
Speaker 3: invest in this market or that market, and here's our
Speaker 3: pot of money. We're going to go look for a
Speaker 3: company in that space to acquire and take them public, Okay,
Speaker 3: And so that you know, maybe there's merit to that
Speaker 3: approach to things. But that whole process got really perverted
Speaker 3: in like twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, where a
Speaker 3: lot of different kinds of companies, but especially electric vehicle companies,
Speaker 3: were getting taken public left and right, well before they
Speaker 3: were ready to be a public company.
Speaker 2: And Faraday Future doesn't sound like it should have ever
Speaker 2: been taken out of the box. Well, I'll put it
Speaker 2: this way.
Speaker 3: They went public in twenty twenty one, and within four
Speaker 3: to six months, their board of directors decided to launch
Speaker 3: an internal investigation into the founder and the people around
Speaker 3: him for basically more or less allegedly lying in the
Speaker 3: paperwork that they filed to go public. And then eventually
Speaker 3: the internal investigator investigation led to him being removed from
Speaker 3: a particular role at the company, having people around him
Speaker 3: pushed out of the company, and they referred it to
Speaker 3: the SEC, which is still actually actively investigating the company.
Speaker 1: So rough few years for this guys.
Speaker 3: I mean, listen, he's here and not insl in China.
Speaker 3: So he lives in a mansion, you know, in Rancho
Speaker 3: Palas Verdes and in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: So he's done well for himself. Yeah, we're four days
Speaker 2: in and I keep trying to find I bring in
Speaker 2: new people.
Speaker 1: I love the voices we get, and I keep being like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe this will be the person who found a real company.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm sorry I've mentioned this before. I got to
Speaker 3: drive an electric boat this morning. Okay, that was fun.
Speaker 3: They're a company called Arc Boats and they're based out
Speaker 3: of Los Angeles, and it's a bunch of former SpaceX engineers.
Speaker 3: That kind of stuff gets thrown around a lot with
Speaker 3: like Tesla and SpaceX, especially where it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: this company's founded by SpaceX engineers. It's like these guys
Speaker 3: are actually genuinely smart at coming up with interesting ideas
Speaker 3: and trying to apply them to products and their whole thing.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a lot of different electric boat companies
Speaker 3: that are trying to find find a way to replace
Speaker 3: gas boats, whether that's in water taxis or more traditional
Speaker 3: sort of just like fishing boats. These guys are really
Speaker 3: going after a market that I think makes sense, just
Speaker 3: like boats for rich people, you know, Like originally they
Speaker 3: had one that it was just really kind of like
Speaker 3: a fast fun boat on the water. This one's more
Speaker 3: specifically like almost like a wakeboard boat, like wakesports. It's
Speaker 3: like tailor made for that, and it costs a lot
Speaker 3: of money. I think it's in the high one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars marks. But it's the kind of boat that
Speaker 3: you're already talking about spending almost that much with a
Speaker 3: regular gas version, and I am, yeah, of course. So
Speaker 3: they've been around for a couple of years. I think
Speaker 3: they got founded in twenty twenty one. But they're actually
Speaker 3: delivering these They started delivering this boat. They handbuild them
Speaker 3: or mostly handbuild them in Los Angeles. They started delivering
Speaker 3: them a couple months ago to the first owners, so
Speaker 3: they're actually generating revenue. They have a bunch of investment.
Speaker 3: They have some celebrity investors. I can't remember who they
Speaker 3: are off the top of my head. That always makes
Speaker 3: me wary. But they're also though, yeah, so I have
Speaker 3: to drive it this mort yea Lake Mead. That's the
Speaker 3: only the only bummer of the experience was it was
Speaker 3: at leak Mead, which.
Speaker 2: Is like it's like it's fair.
Speaker 3: So it's like you know, the you know, if I
Speaker 3: if I removed myself from the experience, it was kind
Speaker 3: of depressing because you're like, oh, this isn't it fun
Speaker 3: to tool around in this electric boat in the lake
Speaker 3: that exists.
Speaker 1: The time for the end of the inland freshwater experience
Speaker 1: here in the United States.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know, if I was able to set
Speaker 3: that aside for a moment, it was a pretty fun experience.
Speaker 2: Other than just the terrible threat to humanity. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, like, I think it's pretty clear
Speaker 2: there's somehow putting on the boat company. I apologize, no.
Speaker 3: But I you know, I think it's interesting that some
Speaker 3: of these products, these these vehicles, you know, for a
Speaker 3: long time especially it shows like, see, yes, we're sold
Speaker 3: as solutions to that larger problem of what we're doing
Speaker 3: to the planet.
Speaker 2: As opposed to the fact that corporations are causing it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and now that's just you know, that doesn't that
Speaker 3: doesn't really get put front and center anymore because I
Speaker 3: think people a they don't want to have to like
Speaker 3: live up to that, yeah, right and be like because
Speaker 3: it doesn't seem like that's actually going to help us.
Speaker 3: So like, you know, I don't begrudge them for not
Speaker 3: trying to like put that front and center. But it
Speaker 3: was it was hard to separate it from the experience.
Speaker 3: But you know, it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was something I was sort of struck by.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess just in general, I think that
Speaker 1: assessment is correct in terms of how people are thinking
Speaker 1: about like, you know, not individually, but I think that
Speaker 1: like broadly speaking, that there's like a turn in the
Speaker 1: culture towards like, well, we're not going to win this one,
Speaker 1: and so either people are being hedonistic and you know,
Speaker 1: like sort of being like, oh whatever, let's see what
Speaker 1: happens if you put literally the worst guy of his
Speaker 1: generation in charge of the country again and see where
Speaker 1: that goes.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 1: But in this instance, it's like I haven't seen as much,
Speaker 1: like very few of the even in the like big
Speaker 1: tech spaces that I saw this morning at the convention center,
Speaker 1: like people don't like energy efficiency kind of seems like
Speaker 1: I expected to see more of it, like even just
Speaker 1: in terms of people wanting to save money on bills
Speaker 1: or whatever, and I didn't see a lot of that.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know if it's just like if it's
Speaker 1: considered to be like you know, off the vibe of
Speaker 1: like people showing up and wanting to get excited about
Speaker 1: stuff and about having new.
Speaker 3: Things, or yeah, I mean I think a place like
Speaker 3: this sort of incentivizes the people who are coming up
Speaker 3: with the weirder, dumber, more boisterous displays anyways, and it's
Speaker 3: kind of hard to like, you know, I think that's
Speaker 3: where there actually is some value in these like weird
Speaker 3: shows they do the first few evenings, like Cees Unveiled
Speaker 3: or Pepcom, where it's basically just like a gauntlet of
Speaker 3: like two hundred startups in a room that don't seem
Speaker 3: very properly vetted. But like that's where you're going to
Speaker 3: find like the place that you know, the company of
Speaker 3: like three people that's like we can actually use AI
Speaker 3: to like save you nine bucks a month on your
Speaker 3: energy bill or something like that, because like they're not
Speaker 3: going to be able to afford a show floor booth.
Speaker 2: I also need to be the pepcom is an enemy
Speaker 2: of Better Offline. There an enemy of Better Offline. Fully
Speaker 2: because we applied and they said I've run a po off.
Speaker 2: I can't be allowed and enemy everything at pepcom diseased.
Speaker 2: I stand shoulders shoulder with you, thank you.
Speaker 5: Than they have standards I was too.
Speaker 2: That's what was so offensive. Yeah, like do you know
Speaker 2: how bad it is? Like I already get looked on
Speaker 2: down on quite a lot for many reasons, many listeners
Speaker 2: know for your dangerous views, my dangerous views, my political
Speaker 2: opinions of I don't know anything, but also just like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I'm not going to spend money on
Speaker 2: a pep compot. No one should have to pay to
Speaker 2: go there. The booth people, sure, but not me. Why
Speaker 2: would you do that to me? And that is why
Speaker 2: they're an enemy at the show. Now, nobody has to
Speaker 2: agree with this. Everyone's looking at me like very worried.
Speaker 2: Don't worry. This is my opinion, not anyone else's. Not
Speaker 2: to be like self promotional.
Speaker 3: But it was one of the things that I really
Speaker 3: enjoyed about going to our conference, TechCrunch Disrupt a couple
Speaker 3: months ago for the time because I had never gone
Speaker 3: to it before until I worked here, and I was
Speaker 3: so almost like low level nervous walking in for the
Speaker 3: first time because it looks a lot like pepcom and
Speaker 3: CS unveiled. It's like people at like these little like
Speaker 3: cocktail tables with like a sign behind them as the company. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's two hundred that were there, And I'm just so
Speaker 3: attuned to like the like hawker vibe of these events
Speaker 3: here where it's like guys just popping out at you
Speaker 3: like they recognize your name or you're out and they're like, hey,
Speaker 3: can I tell you about the new robot vacuum like
Speaker 3: or whatever, and uh, and it was such a different
Speaker 3: experience because at least there we were trying to like
Speaker 3: find companies these events. It's like they're paying to be here,
Speaker 3: and there's really not like a vetting process. There's like
Speaker 3: some sorting you know that like each day it's going
Speaker 3: to get a little bit worse, but other than that,
Speaker 3: there's really not much of a bar for most of it.
Speaker 3: So it was it was I didn't realize how much
Speaker 3: like the pepcom's in the Cees Unveiled had ruined me
Speaker 3: for like that experience until we.
Speaker 2: Went to the same we have like an assault style Yeah,
Speaker 2: and Carissa gets attacked by humans and roybooks.
Speaker 1: Apparently literal assaults.
Speaker 2: Do they do you feel that they treat you differently
Speaker 2: as a woman robots? Well, I mean I don't know
Speaker 2: a guy who got attacked by one, so yes, but no,
Speaker 2: do you get different.
Speaker 1: First woman to get attacked by that, they didn't specify
Speaker 1: that man, But no, they do you get treated differently,
Speaker 1: you know, I.
Speaker 5: Think, I mean I don't think that I do most
Speaker 5: of the time, but then you have those moments where
Speaker 5: somebody makes that comment like Oh, you're the first lady
Speaker 5: to drive.
Speaker 1: And you're like why Chris, what Yeah?
Speaker 5: Second of all, like why would you feel need to
Speaker 5: just say that out loud? So, you know, I think
Speaker 5: there's always those little moments, especially when you come to
Speaker 5: see us and you know, you end up interacting with
Speaker 5: a lot of people who are maybe either like not
Speaker 5: used to interacting with so many people all the time,
Speaker 5: or are just so exhausted from having to give their
Speaker 5: same speech over and over again that people say weird things.
Speaker 5: I try not to.
Speaker 1: That's very generous of you. Edward had a similar statement
Speaker 1: when you had some weird stuff happen when we were
Speaker 1: down on the floor earlier. And I think it's like
Speaker 1: the I guess you just have to assume that, like
Speaker 1: at baseline, these are it's like the least socially adept
Speaker 1: salespeople that you're likely to encounter.
Speaker 5: It's also just such an unnatural environment because you have
Speaker 5: so many people from all over squeezed into you know,
Speaker 5: these really small spaces and you're just trying to survive
Speaker 5: at least.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, you know, that's how I feel that they
Speaker 1: never get to go outside. It seems really brutal, you know,
Speaker 1: what it reminds me of. Actually, this is like that
Speaker 1: kind of puts a finger on something that I've been
Speaker 1: like kind of trying to figure out. I covered the
Speaker 1: dog show the Westminster Kennel Club show many years ago
Speaker 1: so jealous, and it was amazing. I would do it
Speaker 1: again for no money. It was the best experience ever. Basically.
Speaker 1: I mean, whatever it's like isn't sports writing. You know,
Speaker 1: like I was able to sort of fake it at
Speaker 1: the time and have it pretend to be you know enough.
Speaker 1: But the people that so part of that is like
Speaker 1: a trade show. You know that, like the dogs competing,
Speaker 1: you can go up on the floor. It's like literally
Speaker 1: the floor of the garden where like the nixt play
Speaker 1: and watch like some corgis running a circle. And I
Speaker 1: obviously had a great time doing that. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: better than anything that happened at the garden, like until
Speaker 1: like Jalen Brunson came to town. But everything that happens
Speaker 1: below that is breeders trying to like basically get you
Speaker 1: to buy either their dog's seed or to like promote
Speaker 1: their their breed. You know that they're like because it
Speaker 1: is like there's a eugenics yes, light aspect to it
Speaker 1: where you're kind of just like my Like I'm a
Speaker 1: Belgian Malinois guy, Like that's everything about Belgian mallawaws is
Speaker 1: more important to me than anything else about anything.
Speaker 2: Else in my life.
Speaker 1: And yet those people, so that's a level again, like
Speaker 1: a baseline level of weirdness, like somebody that's just like
Speaker 1: such a terrier pervert that they can't be normal about
Speaker 1: other stuff. And yet like there is something kind of
Speaker 1: like a wholesome ish about it too, because like they're
Speaker 1: they're under this incredible duress they're in like the room
Speaker 1: under the room under the locker rooms at Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 1: It's like the room smells like dogs and people intensely.
Speaker 2: We're talking about the dog show still.
Speaker 1: The dog Show, still, yes, and it gets it gets
Speaker 1: worse and worse. And yet like they wouldn't be doing
Speaker 1: it if there wasn't some part of them that was
Speaker 1: like strange in the way that made that seem like
Speaker 1: a good idea to them at some point, right, And
Speaker 1: I guess that's probably true to us. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know that that's every differ, but.
Speaker 2: Most people are not like that. Hit Everyone is like
Speaker 2: just like I gotta come here for the I gotta
Speaker 2: stand there and be like, yeah, this dishwasher can wash
Speaker 2: in five seconds. Please don't count how many seconds. It's eight?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I guess. It's also there's like a
Speaker 1: level of uncanniness. It's more fun when it's dogs.
Speaker 2: But also with a dog, I feel like there's a
Speaker 2: there's not that much abstraction. You know, you're getting like
Speaker 2: a fine ars terrier. Yeap, Like this Pekinese is really
Speaker 2: gonna do it for you, you know what comes out theoretically.
Speaker 2: But with this it's like you've got pr people, you've
Speaker 2: got like sales development people, you've got random people who
Speaker 2: are just like I kind of know the product and
Speaker 2: it's theoretical anyway. So it's like, can't take that next step.
Speaker 2: If you need depth, I don't have it. Man, And
Speaker 2: the guy who pays me will be very angry if
Speaker 2: he has to answer a question for reasons that I've
Speaker 2: chosen to ignore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. The dog version of that was basically
Speaker 1: like guys being like, oh, yeah, he loves ice cream.
Speaker 1: You know that's fine. You know, like that was actually
Speaker 1: the most intense question that I had about this dog.
Speaker 5: The best is the look of panic that comes over
Speaker 5: you know, someone in the booth's face when you ask
Speaker 5: what you think is a relatively simple, straightforward question, Yeah,
Speaker 5: and they just get this logo sheer panic and they're like,
Speaker 5: well I can find someone.
Speaker 1: We had my one when I was walking on with Edward,
Speaker 1: who actually is a tech journalist, there was a moment
Speaker 1: where like there was one guy that was talking to us,
Speaker 1: he's sort of doing his sales thing, and then like
Speaker 1: every started asking like the good follow ups that a
Speaker 1: tech journalist woul ask, like in terms of like DM
Speaker 1: a prototype is it like? And it was exactly that,
Speaker 1: Like this guy who kind of reminded me a little
Speaker 1: bit of like Mark McKinney from Kids in the Hall,
Speaker 1: like just kind of like a big goofy Canadian guy
Speaker 1: being like, well, that's a great question, I think. But
Speaker 1: there was a moment where he clearly was like there
Speaker 1: were reach and grasp issues that were not going to
Speaker 1: be reconcilable, and he tapped himself out. He was like,
Speaker 1: there's our product, guys eating pizza back there. Can you
Speaker 1: wait like thirty seconds because like I'm not gonna like
Speaker 1: lie to you and I can't tell you the truth.
Speaker 1: I don't know it, which you know I found honorable roast.
Speaker 2: Honest guy at see.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I woked up to the post night and told the
Speaker 2: story in the show already and I was like, it
Speaker 2: was a thing claiming to be a new hope for
Speaker 2: autism and dyslexia. Yeah, shocker, it wasn't. And I walked
Speaker 2: up and said, if you talk to the FDA about this,
Speaker 2: and they just went what's that, which is what we
Speaker 2: call a good start. And I had to walk away
Speaker 2: because it was too pissed off. But that happens a
Speaker 2: lot to me with almost everything. It's just so weird
Speaker 2: having a show with so many I keep coming back
Speaker 2: to this point. I've said it. I think every episode
Speaker 2: where it's like, it's so weird, how much of this
Speaker 2: is fake? Just completely made up? Even the expensive ones. Yeah,
Speaker 2: what the I Even with cars, I didn't think you
Speaker 2: could fake that one. They got fucking wheels like go
Speaker 2: forward and backwards inside the side tesla sometimes a little
Speaker 2: too much, but it's like, you can't fake you can
Speaker 2: fake cars hundreds of millions of dollars. It sounds like, yeah,
Speaker 2: and across multiple companies. I'm going insane by the end
Speaker 2: of this trip. I'm gonna I think it's nice. And
Speaker 2: I guess they're doing this so they can get more
Speaker 2: investment capital. They just like keep doing the con the
Speaker 2: car company in particular, Yeah, yeah, Faraday. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 2: they're trying to raise money from the Middle East now again. Yeah,
Speaker 2: from the UE.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I got a lot of money over there.
Speaker 2: I just I keep bringing people in and hoping they'll
Speaker 2: help and help redeem this show, but they can't throw it.
Speaker 1: I keep coming back. Well, the dog door, there's a
Speaker 1: really good dog door.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. I talked to the cat door company just
Speaker 2: to be clear, and I said, what was the training
Speaker 2: data you use for the company, and they said, oh
Speaker 2: my cat. And he was British, so I gave them
Speaker 2: a little easier time. They're simple people, but I wanted
Speaker 2: to be like, you've never seen those different shapes of
Speaker 2: cats alone. And it just had this video of this
Speaker 2: cat with a bird in its mouth, just shoving its
Speaker 2: face again and again, and I just stood looking at it,
Speaker 2: and I think the guy worked out that I was
Speaker 2: already coming up with an annoying question and just turned
Speaker 2: his back to me. So honestly, a pro move. No, no,
Speaker 2: that is expert offensive line work. But before we go, Chris,
Speaker 2: how many CS is this view?
Speaker 5: I think this is number seven?
Speaker 2: Nice? Sure, I think around the same. Yeah, yeah, Is
Speaker 2: this better or worse? Would you say?
Speaker 5: Worse in the sense that I see less fewer things
Speaker 5: that are really cool and interesting and excite me. And
Speaker 5: that might also just be because I'm more jaded now
Speaker 5: from having done this seven times.
Speaker 2: It's ydrop to impress you, but.
Speaker 5: Better because I also get a lot less stressed out
Speaker 5: when I first started coming to see Yes, you know
Speaker 5: used I used to show up and be so stressed
Speaker 5: out and make too many appointments and spend the whole
Speaker 5: week running around and forgetting to eat. And you know,
Speaker 5: now I feel like I can maybe not relax is
Speaker 5: not the right word, but I can, you know, have
Speaker 5: a I don't get too worried about it anymore.
Speaker 3: Sure, I think that's a really really repeatable experience for
Speaker 3: the people who do it a lot, where you start
Speaker 3: to realize, you realize you can let go of what
Speaker 3: seems important. But I do think it tracks with there
Speaker 3: being maybe less interesting stuff because we're also just in
Speaker 3: this weird It's like a moment where so many people
Speaker 3: have started over the line with the AI stuff and
Speaker 3: like people feel like, oh, I had better do it too,
Speaker 3: regardless of the product. So I don't know in that sense,
Speaker 3: I feel like it's worse, but I better in that
Speaker 3: I know how to like hack the experience more because
Speaker 3: I I got well, Like I came here with goals
Speaker 3: and I like accomplished some of those goals. But those
Speaker 3: goals are not about like finding a lot of new technology.
Speaker 3: It's like, I know people are going to be here
Speaker 3: who I need to get information out of or or
Speaker 3: build a relationship with, And it's like that's more of
Speaker 3: what I'm after. Although you have you can't separate yourself
Speaker 3: from all the other stuff, so so I will now.
Speaker 2: Get information from you. Where can people find you?
Speaker 3: Shown I'm a I'm at tech Crunch. Go to tech
Speaker 3: runch dot com. It's a great website. I'm on blue
Speaker 3: Sky Sean Kaine, Carissa.
Speaker 5: I'm at Engadget and social media blue Sky threads. Still
Speaker 5: technically have an.
Speaker 2: Account on x the Everything app.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, if you just google my name you'll find Okay.
Speaker 1: And David right for Defector dot com of the podcast
Speaker 1: There is the Distraction. I have a podcast about Hallmark
Speaker 1: movies called It's Christmas Town. It did the alternating thing
Speaker 1: like we discussed earlier.
Speaker 2: I'm still putting it in.
Speaker 1: Uh and yeah. David j Roth at b sky or
Speaker 1: dot bsguide, dot social.
Speaker 2: My name is Adam, thirty eight years old, and I
Speaker 2: just started a podcast called Better Offline. It's paid for
Speaker 2: by the blood the ads that follow this, So can
Speaker 2: you please click from this time? I'm going to lose
Speaker 2: the podcast if I'm not careful, so please look at
Speaker 2: the ads. I need this. Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2: It's me ed zitch On you link to Better Offline.
Speaker 2: You're still within the same episode. Why am I reintroducing you?
Speaker 2: You don't need this? But more importantly, I'm joined by
Speaker 2: Rob peg Gerarro. Well they're low old school dogs have
Speaker 2: free lance tech gym. That's I'm feeling very old after
Speaker 2: five days here for cees. Yeah, this place age, it's
Speaker 2: the beach that makes you old of tech? So what
Speaker 2: are you writing? Full right now?
Speaker 7: PC mag Fast Company, Wirecutter, various other publications as they
Speaker 7: come up.
Speaker 2: How many cs is this is the twenty seventh for me? No,
Speaker 2: that's not hell?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: How many? Say ninety eight onwards? So the only one
Speaker 1: I did not attend in person.
Speaker 7: Didn't happen in person twenty twenty one, And at the
Speaker 7: start of that I realized, Yeah, my kid has never
Speaker 7: seen me that week of January either as my wife.
Speaker 1: We started dating in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2: So was it always called CES?
Speaker 5: So it was.
Speaker 7: Originally the Consumer Electronics Show, and then it was the International.
Speaker 1: Cskay, it's just CES. It's like AIRP. It doesn't stand
Speaker 1: for anything anymore. Right, Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, we have
Speaker 1: the debate day or two ago. Honestly, at this point
Speaker 1: I have no idea what day it is. Let's be honest,
Speaker 1: Fellas day, but no one really Definitely a weekday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that seems clear.
Speaker 2: Now we're at the point in the week and you
Speaker 2: will know this from your ment's experience. The CS begins
Speaker 2: to just crackle like I have one. Everyone left over
Speaker 2: it on the Thursday is just like I just want
Speaker 2: to I just want to see my family again.
Speaker 7: Yes, yes, but also traffic starts getting a little bit better.
Speaker 7: The line to get lunch or a cup.
Speaker 1: Of coffee or a beer whatever is not as bad
Speaker 1: as it was two days ago.
Speaker 2: Well, have you had a good show? Yes, I have
Speaker 2: very fired enjoyable. Yeah.
Speaker 7: You know, to me, the most interesting transformation of CS
Speaker 7: I've seen over the years. How first it started becoming
Speaker 7: a car show to the extent that basically killed off
Speaker 7: the the January Chicago North American International Auto Show, although
Speaker 7: Chicago weather in January may have had some factor, and
Speaker 7: that's it, right, But then it's become all these other
Speaker 7: aspects of it. So now you have the West Hall
Speaker 7: of the Las Vegas Convention Center where you have like
Speaker 7: giant earth moving machinery from Caterpillar. John Deere is going
Speaker 7: to line up of agricultural and construction machinery. You have
Speaker 7: boat makers, You've got Oshkosh showing off a battery electric
Speaker 7: garbage truck, and the cute little duck build truck they're
Speaker 7: building for the US Postal Service.
Speaker 1: Right, Oh they have that here? Oh yeah, yeah, Well
Speaker 1: it's like my dream to see that truck because I
Speaker 1: feel like they're going to spike the project.
Speaker 7: I'm a little worried about. Yes, my my new neighbor
Speaker 7: coming to Washington, DC. They're super behind on it, right,
Speaker 7: or there was another company that was screwed up worse. No,
Speaker 7: it's the New York Times that the Wall Street journals said, Yeah,
Speaker 7: they've shipped wayfier than they should have. It's like they say,
Speaker 7: they're delving in volume now, and I'd like to see
Speaker 7: them because, yeah, the letter carriers of my neighborhood are
Speaker 7: using these Carter Administration vintage. Yeah, and I'm like, every
Speaker 7: time I see what, I'm like, is the word going
Speaker 7: to fall off while I'm looking at it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's miraculous that they're still upread. It's like the
Speaker 1: trying pictures you see from Havana kept the STUDI Baker
Speaker 1: going for. We're actually going to sell them to the
Speaker 1: Cubans next.
Speaker 2: I'm surprised we haven't threatened to take over there at
Speaker 2: this point, but I have anybody, I think they've already
Speaker 2: had it.
Speaker 1: We're going to do a great deal. It doesn't even
Speaker 1: forget it. Yeah, we hate doing it. I hate doing
Speaker 1: the voice now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the voice is less enjoyable due to the consequences.
Speaker 2: But have you enjoyed any Is there something you've seen
Speaker 2: that actually like felt good? I'm really desperate at this point.
Speaker 2: I'm like, everyone I talked to is just like, well,
Speaker 2: I saw something that worked. Well.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So there's a lot of junk. There's a lot
Speaker 7: of AI slop out there. Like, so I stop by
Speaker 7: Amazon's booth. They have this feature where you can have
Speaker 7: your fire TV show art on the wall.
Speaker 1: Samsung did that with the frame.
Speaker 2: I've always wanted to put stuff on my wall that
Speaker 2: looked good.
Speaker 1: That's a good idea.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Here you can go to stores that sell exactly that stuff.
Speaker 1: That sounds implossible anyway, So you can ask the fire
Speaker 1: TV to do some art via generative AI.
Speaker 7: Oh and so that well, okay, I'm going to be
Speaker 7: a nerd about this. I said, uh, draw a new
Speaker 7: Glen rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. And
Speaker 7: the first time I'd heard nuclear rocket. And then it
Speaker 7: threw this generic rocket Like, okay, at least just not
Speaker 7: a rocket with a reactor cooling tower attached or whatever.
Speaker 7: Then I said, it's slower, and that's still through generic rocket.
Speaker 7: I thought, shouldn't Amazon's AI know about its founder's space company.
Speaker 2: These things don't know anything.
Speaker 7: Yeah, people are throwing AI into anything and everything. So
Speaker 7: see now I'm just complaining about it. Yeah, I'm just
Speaker 7: gonna stick with that for a little while.
Speaker 2: That's fine.
Speaker 7: Delta had this keynote, So this is a mix of
Speaker 7: a good beat. The production values were nuts. I've never
Speaker 7: been to this fhere before, right, And so they had
Speaker 7: this thing at the start where it's the screen that
Speaker 7: enveloped you goes all around and above and around you.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 7: It's a sort of cockpit perspective of taking off down
Speaker 7: the runway and seeing its speed at you. The subworb
Speaker 7: in the seats rumble as if you know you're like
Speaker 7: and they've got these fans blowing wind faster and faster.
Speaker 2: Exactly like Shrek forty yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and so the and they had the whole smell
Speaker 7: of vision feature which I didn't actually know about.
Speaker 1: G Yeah, that they the guy next to you on
Speaker 1: the plane, you can smell the awful lasagna that they're serving,
Speaker 1: even even that's good comfort, plain food.
Speaker 7: The uber CEO showed up because they're doing a partnership
Speaker 7: and he had a sort of joke delivery of two
Speaker 7: hazel net lattes and so that they had the smell
Speaker 7: of it actually smelled like a good hazel and out
Speaker 7: caramel latte.
Speaker 1: And that guy got paid three dollars probably, yes, And
Speaker 1: the last part was maybe they wouldn't do this now.
Speaker 7: It was fireworks bursting over downtown l A and the
Speaker 7: airfield with the sort of smell of gunpowder like you
Speaker 7: would have actual fireworks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they might.
Speaker 2: One of those poorly timed ones by acts. It didn't
Speaker 2: seem like a great idea two weeks ago. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: great stagecraft.
Speaker 1: It was really neat.
Speaker 7: But then the announcement they had this Delta concierge, which
Speaker 7: will be this gen AI assistant in the fly Delta.
Speaker 1: I held a little bit about this, but I love specifics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm an alf geek.
Speaker 7: I fly a lot, although usually United being based in DC,
Speaker 7: and they're talking about things like it will suggest alternate ways.
Speaker 2: To get to the airport, your past, best path to
Speaker 2: it through it.
Speaker 1: I thought, is that really Ai?
Speaker 7: Because like United zapp will say, you know, you can
Speaker 7: use DSA pre don't take it, the night club is here.
Speaker 7: I was doing things like it will book an uber
Speaker 7: for you when you land, which in the example was
Speaker 7: a woman taking a business class flight to Tokyo, like
Speaker 7: take the train, man, it's Japan, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: Take the butt like, but also you can also just
Speaker 2: do this by using your finger.
Speaker 7: Right, Yeah, And it's all these contribed examples, and of
Speaker 7: course obviously you can't talk about a on airlines without
Speaker 7: air Canada had a chatbot which made up a customer
Speaker 7: service which.
Speaker 1: Wasn't even GPT by the way, it wasn't even who
Speaker 1: I've been over this one because people really want to
Speaker 1: make this one.
Speaker 2: No, it's gonna be shit in the future, not in
Speaker 2: the past.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and so I'm like, there's lots of ways this
Speaker 7: could go bad, and the actual example seem kind of
Speaker 7: you know, are you sure this isn't just software but.
Speaker 2: Also not that exciting or useful.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, I'm like, I'm thinking areas where I
Speaker 7: could use help. AI would be useful if when, like
Speaker 7: your flight gets canceled, or if you were trying to
Speaker 7: fly here on Monday when there was a snowstorm in DC,
Speaker 7: evaluate my options, what's the best chances of me getting here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like Flighty, which is one of the best apps
Speaker 2: of all time. Flighty is just what if an air
Speaker 2: a flight tracking piece of software worked, it will tell you.
Speaker 2: It will tell you, usually more reliably, whether your flight
Speaker 2: is being moved or canceled. But Delta appears to have
Speaker 2: come up with a new idea which is less you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, they're they're talking about they're going to
Speaker 7: have YouTube clips curated in the Seatbeck Entertainment.
Speaker 2: That's fine. I never know one what's on YouTube?
Speaker 7: You know, the the Uber partnership, a lot of it
Speaker 7: was just a whole lot of stagecraft and apparently didn't
Speaker 7: go overwhell on the YouTube stream. In the audience it
Speaker 7: was it was a lot of Delta employees, so it
Speaker 7: was a big love fest for all the Delta employees.
Speaker 7: So I guess really do like their CEO, which you
Speaker 7: cannot count on in the airline industry.
Speaker 2: Right, well, they were probably worried to not like miss me.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't spend enough time on the airline.
Speaker 1: Was he a real showman?
Speaker 2: You guys at Bastion and he's not enough, He's not
Speaker 2: like a natural at it.
Speaker 7: But he didn't seem like overwhelmed or you know, like
Speaker 7: I've seen a lot of musket of keynotes not what
Speaker 7: you want.
Speaker 1: No, well even less these days. Yeah, well that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just form and content being separated in this right, Yes,
Speaker 1: form content, substance, style, et cetera.
Speaker 2: What was Lenny Kravitz like?
Speaker 1: He was good?
Speaker 2: Like I not seen him play before he plays circus him? Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: It started out with.
Speaker 1: Are you Gonna Go My Way? And of course the
Speaker 1: closing song was fly away.
Speaker 2: Gotta do That.
Speaker 1: How many songs did he play? Was it like forty
Speaker 1: five minutes? It was like, you know, that's actually a
Speaker 1: decent set, you got, like a festival set. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was glad it was that short because they did
Speaker 1: have to go on to the next and you're in
Speaker 1: the pit.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: Now, the press seeds were in like the two hundred level.
Speaker 1: Those are actually really good. I watched the NHL with
Speaker 1: draw off there and it was really cool. Like the
Speaker 1: sphere is objectively cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So my the parts of CS have enjoyed the most
Speaker 7: are the unusual experiences the sphere.
Speaker 1: Uh. Sunday afternoon, I had a ride in a Zeke's ROBOTAXI.
Speaker 2: How was that pretty cool?
Speaker 1: Very smooth.
Speaker 7: In general, it gets a little skittish around traffic hones.
Speaker 7: And we had this part at the end which there
Speaker 7: were a lot because you all apparently never stop repaving
Speaker 7: or rebuilding the streets.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but Constance Day of Chaos. Yeah.
Speaker 7: And so this one road there was a lane row
Speaker 7: of traffic cones, a lane another row of traffic cones,
Speaker 7: car drives between the two of them and stops as
Speaker 7: if it's just been like, uh.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, this seems like you got the actual robotaxi experience.
Speaker 7: And so then apparently there's some sort of overseer who
Speaker 7: could say you can back up. And so for people
Speaker 7: who haven't seen this, this is a pure robotaxi.
Speaker 2: It's not a.
Speaker 7: Converted car or anything. I was like a Jaguar with
Speaker 7: its two seats on each side facing each other. There's
Speaker 7: no front or back end. There's an engine over that's
Speaker 7: kind of over both sets of yeah, and so it
Speaker 7: can reverse front end becomes the back end.
Speaker 2: Whatever.
Speaker 7: We backed up, went into an little lane. It was fine,
Speaker 7: and we had a couple of moments where people looked
Speaker 7: at it. You know, if you're in a robo taxi,
Speaker 7: there are these rockstar moments where people have like, is
Speaker 7: that what I think it is? So this kind of
Speaker 7: tesla starts doing video of us how to stop mind
Speaker 7: you not driving? This couple in a jeep were like
Speaker 7: waving high. They were rolling down in the window. But
Speaker 7: you can't up in the window on a zooke.
Speaker 2: On the how big get held up a side actually.
Speaker 1: Just like thumbs up. Can't get out.
Speaker 2: Yes, uh.
Speaker 7: And Monday afternoon I took a little field trip to
Speaker 7: Lake Mead Rhyme this company called ARC the.
Speaker 2: Electric boat show.
Speaker 7: Yes, tell us about battery electric Yeah, and that thing
Speaker 7: halls ass that's cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And apparently I I'm not a boat guy like
Speaker 1: I like other people's boats, right, I had not looked
Speaker 1: up winterization checklists for boats. You don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: It's a whole lot of work if you have a
Speaker 1: gas engine.
Speaker 2: And this is why I don't have a boat. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Well, also, this thing is like it will cost two
Speaker 7: hundred and fifty eight thousand dollars, I think, Yeah, I
Speaker 7: don't know.
Speaker 2: What boats cost my regular series of boats.
Speaker 1: I prefer boat as a service where somebody else.
Speaker 2: You know, that was quite literally a twenty thirteen aristotical
Speaker 2: boat bound, I believe. Sure, why not sounds it actually existed.
Speaker 2: Pray for the end anyway, but it sounds like the
Speaker 2: fast electric boat was fun at least.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and you know the whole way, we're finding ways
Speaker 7: to electrify all these different modes of transit.
Speaker 2: That's good. Yeah, that's good and useful stuff. How do
Speaker 2: you charge that thing? Though?
Speaker 1: Same?
Speaker 7: It's actually the same kind of plug on most non
Speaker 7: Tesla evs, the J seventeen seventy two slow charging.
Speaker 2: How does that do with water?
Speaker 1: It's all sealed, so the whole thing, Yeah, the batteries
Speaker 1: in a silk compartment. The plug itself is at.
Speaker 7: Like the top of the hole you step over at boarding, right,
Speaker 7: And the whole model is this is something built to
Speaker 7: toe like water skiers. People like surfing on the wake.
Speaker 7: So you don't spend overnight with it. You do like
Speaker 7: four to six hours. Everyone is tired, needs a nap
Speaker 7: dock it, plug it in and slow charging is overtime.
Speaker 7: It's fine, right, but it worked though, yes, actual and
Speaker 7: also like just pulling out in the no wake zone
Speaker 7: on the lake really quiet and there's no smell of
Speaker 7: gasoline like regular boats there there make a certain amount
Speaker 7: of noise efficient engine stretch.
Speaker 2: So Ed David, you went to the Venetian expoe and
Speaker 2: you went down to the Eureka zone. Yes, real toilet.
Speaker 1: I was there earlier today.
Speaker 2: What did you fellas see? What wonders did you?
Speaker 1: I thought it would be weirder than it was. It
Speaker 1: really is disappointed. I've seen weirder stuff there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was prepared to go down there, and it was
Speaker 1: just going to be like a hair dryer that's been
Speaker 1: trained to scream at you. You know, it's just like
Speaker 1: the nonsense tech sold to you by media. Let me
Speaker 1: look at your my nose to see if anything sort
Speaker 1: of jumped out. But we had I think the biggest
Speaker 1: challenge for us, and this is maybe it's my sense
Speaker 1: of direction issue, is just finding stuff that like there's
Speaker 1: multiple food courts and then there's a lot of like
Speaker 1: country type zones. Yes, the French tech one is the
Speaker 1: single biggest occupent of space. Yeah, yeah, it was. I mean,
Speaker 1: like some of the stuff I saw I was like
Speaker 1: boring but useful.
Speaker 7: There was some French startup They make a little pogystick
Speaker 7: on the floor of a garage to tell you is
Speaker 7: this an ice car or an EV? Has the EV
Speaker 7: been there too long? And ice means in term of question, yeah,
Speaker 7: which you know, boring but useful. Yeah, probably need that, Yeah,
Speaker 7: but nothing really weird and fun.
Speaker 1: It was weird I saw I had I don't try
Speaker 1: to gas you up here on the podcast as an
Speaker 1: actual journalist watching you ask good questions of people that
Speaker 1: were we were sort of wandering around the like accessibility
Speaker 1: tech h area, and that stuff is like kind of
Speaker 1: hard to parse in some ways because it's like it
Speaker 1: seems useful to me. I don't have limited mobility, right,
Speaker 1: and it does have that sort of veneer of it,
Speaker 1: and yet you were able to and I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't want to make you like break down your own
Speaker 1: tape here like it's John Gruden's Quarterback Club.
Speaker 2: But well, I think that's one major reason why that would.
Speaker 1: Well, right, But in this case, it's like you asked
Speaker 1: a series of questions about that the like bluetooth earpiece
Speaker 1: thing that I found like really illuminating in terms of
Speaker 1: like all stuff gets sold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: So we there's a section of the area that was
Speaker 6: for digital health, and some of it was for people
Speaker 6: who are unable to use their arms, and so you
Speaker 6: want to give them some tech that they can put
Speaker 6: in their ear or somewhere close enough to the jaw
Speaker 6: so that when they clenched that can be assistive and
Speaker 6: be used in place of their arms. When we first
Speaker 6: approached one of the boots, the guy was pitching it
Speaker 6: as something that would be useful immediately in retail. Let's
Speaker 6: say you're at like a fast food restaurant or at
Speaker 6: some sort of store and you are unable to use
Speaker 6: your hands because you're doing another task. You can you know,
Speaker 6: clench your jaw or use it in a certain way.
Speaker 6: And he was talking about how you know, these firms
Speaker 6: love their product because they are able to have the workers.
Speaker 2: You know, do multiple task at once perfect.
Speaker 6: And then we talked to the product guy and it
Speaker 6: there's actually there's nothing. There's no real product. It's in development,
Speaker 6: and the core concerned is accessibility, which makes sense, like
Speaker 6: it is people who are not able bodied, and that
Speaker 6: all this other stuff.
Speaker 2: Is uh proposed.
Speaker 6: It feels as if a way to attract investments so
Speaker 6: that they can do the core thing that they actually
Speaker 6: would do, which is one would hope, yeah, you know,
Speaker 6: I would hope so or it could be reversed, which
Speaker 6: is that you are developing something that is clear, concrete
Speaker 6: and and has a definite use case, but then pitching
Speaker 6: investors the much more speculative and spurious thing so that
Speaker 6: you can scale up and build and never really eventually
Speaker 6: land there, but keep you know, pulling in funds.
Speaker 1: Interesting also, it was interesting to me about that, like
Speaker 1: tonally and we were talking about this the difference in
Speaker 1: the approach between like the marketing guy who like kind
Speaker 1: of knew some stuff but was mostly just like a
Speaker 1: goofball Canadian dude, yeah, and then the product guy, who
Speaker 1: was more or less able to be like not only
Speaker 1: in the sense that one guy's like, we've already got
Speaker 1: a prominent fast food place that's like ready to place
Speaker 1: in order, so like act now, and then the other
Speaker 1: dude was just sort of once you got into the
Speaker 1: like as you were saying, like for the accessibility stuff,
Speaker 1: like it more or less makes sense, Like there's the
Speaker 1: things that you'd be doing with it, are you know,
Speaker 1: which is basically it's like a very small facial gesture.
Speaker 2: What they can do things actually do, Like what are
Speaker 2: the commands.
Speaker 6: So in conjunction with moving your hand or maybe tilting
Speaker 6: to get it with some sort of micro expressions or
Speaker 6: small gestures, with clenching your joy be able to move cursors, click,
Speaker 6: you know, very simple commands. But the way that the
Speaker 6: marketing guy was talking about it was as if you
Speaker 6: would be able to immediately as someone's making order, parsed
Speaker 6: through a menu or a screen faster than you could
Speaker 6: tactile and.
Speaker 1: Then like make change. Yeah, right, and so the product
Speaker 1: guy was basically like the way that he explained it,
Speaker 1: which I thought was like pretty honest, was like, you know,
Speaker 1: so it's like building like a sort of a user interface,
Speaker 1: and like theoretically you could get really complex with it.
Speaker 1: You know that it could all of these could be
Speaker 1: different applications. But at some point you're making a lot
Speaker 1: of expressions and you're like moving your nose very slightly
Speaker 1: because you're basically like scrolling through this long series of
Speaker 1: options so that you can select that this person is
Speaker 1: trying to get like a four piece box, right, you know,
Speaker 1: and like he you know, obviously he was like professional,
Speaker 1: He wasn't like that's a stupid use for this technology.
Speaker 1: But it was the sort of thing where you could
Speaker 1: see how like that is not just like sort of
Speaker 1: harder and like further down the line, it's also like
Speaker 1: it's hard to make something that is designed to be
Speaker 1: one thing do something else, Like theoretically it could happen.
Speaker 2: It sounds like it sounds like it isn't designed for
Speaker 2: anything because it doesn't exist. Yeah, that's the other It
Speaker 2: doesn't sound like they've tried it, Like they didn't even
Speaker 2: have a protest when we talked about it.
Speaker 6: They said they were in late stage prototype development with partners,
Speaker 6: and tried to press them on what them doesn't seem.
Speaker 1: Like cover of Multitude, Yeah, exactly is there like yeah
Speaker 1: the PR guy Yeah no, no, So speaking to that,
Speaker 1: I can actually speak to this. Nothing exists.
Speaker 2: In my opinion. This is my professional opinion, not having
Speaker 2: seen it, but anytime, and I don't work, never work
Speaker 2: with clients like this. I think the time I stop
Speaker 2: was in like twenty fourteen when I had my first
Speaker 2: client that just had something completely fucking made up and
Speaker 2: like the fit. They had a thing like a nutrition thing.
Speaker 2: I'm being as vague as possible, and it's set on
Speaker 2: fire during a demo, which is traditionally not a great
Speaker 2: nutrition thing. I guess if you're eating something. Nevertheless, that
Speaker 2: was them like, I need up the quality control because
Speaker 2: if they're saying yet late stage prototype development. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: phrase has been through a few people, none of them lawyers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because the lawyer would be like, don't say, don't say.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a lot of words. It is taken
Speaker 1: a long time for you to say that you don't
Speaker 1: have a thing, yeah, like there's nothing to use. And
Speaker 1: if they're saying if they had the way around.
Speaker 2: That professionally is you actually have a video of someone
Speaker 2: using it and you they go, well, we'll do rendering
Speaker 2: you like no, no, yeah, no, no, no, there's none
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 6: All that was was it felt like there was an
Speaker 6: earpiece that someone had, but there were no efforts or
Speaker 6: you know, attempt to demonstrate it and purely uh sort
Speaker 6: of like the X ray blue outline of a body
Speaker 6: illustrations illuminating what muscle groups would be used when clenching
Speaker 6: your jaw, which is.
Speaker 2: These also feel like very different use cases because the
Speaker 2: experience of I imagine not having arms, like not not
Speaker 2: actually being able to move one's body and the things
Speaker 2: you would need to do as a result a vastly
Speaker 2: different to someone who doesn't have the hands free. On
Speaker 2: top of that, people have different sized faces. That's yeah.
Speaker 6: We talked about this a bit where it's like, you
Speaker 6: know what you would need to do to be able
Speaker 6: to with micro expressions muscles whatever outpace tactile manipulation or
Speaker 6: do it fast enough where you could do it and
Speaker 6: have it as a secondary task.
Speaker 2: I mean we're getting.
Speaker 6: Into like sci fi territory at that point, because you
Speaker 6: need to be able to create some sort of design
Speaker 6: that you know, it would distinguish between all these gestures,
Speaker 6: be able to immediately and reliably one hundred percent of
Speaker 6: the time get them to get to there, and be
Speaker 6: able to internally manipulate them with thought because this is
Speaker 6: also a non invasive alternative to brain implants, So it
Speaker 6: has to somehow create a mental schema that's one to
Speaker 6: one matching with gestures movements. You know, we're getting into
Speaker 6: territory where each step is less and less peasible.
Speaker 2: Even say how they would receive the signals? Would it
Speaker 2: be uh? What did they say?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 1: E M it was e emg's which was I don't
Speaker 1: remember that sounded for Honestly, it seemed legit enough to me,
Speaker 1: again as a simpleton, I also invested three hundred million dollars.
Speaker 2: I mean, we all will.
Speaker 1: But the there it was like one of those things
Speaker 1: where like more or less the technology seemed to make sense,
Speaker 1: the usage didn't seem to make sense. Like I believe
Speaker 1: that there is probably like high level engineering that could
Speaker 1: make something like this work. I don't think that there's
Speaker 1: anything that's like gonna make it work for Wendy's.
Speaker 7: But that was also one example, I think of what
Speaker 7: there I've seen I think two different companies doing some
Speaker 7: some kind of powered exoskeleton, and it is it will
Speaker 7: help you hike.
Speaker 2: Oh I will. I want the rubboat sit like one.
Speaker 1: My thought is if you can do that and so
Speaker 1: it works naturally with you, not like against you. You know,
Speaker 1: older people who might have be a.
Speaker 7: Risk falling, which one thing I've learned from having you know,
Speaker 7: ask anyone who's got a little relatives. Gravity can kind
Speaker 7: of be terrible for older people. And yeah, that's why
Speaker 7: that's what We're going to retire to a space station
Speaker 7: if I can afford them.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's It's interesting also how you'd market it,
Speaker 1: because I did see those that was yesterday. I saw
Speaker 1: that and it was definitely sort of like a lifestyle enhancer.
Speaker 1: Like the way that they were pitching it was being like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're gonna be able to hike like you
Speaker 1: never hiked before.
Speaker 7: I'm not actually get the tech bro who wants to
Speaker 7: be like iron Man, right, I'm trying to bet money
Speaker 7: and use it to then you productize it for a
Speaker 7: larger market.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in this case, it was like the the idea
Speaker 1: that you had to imagine the larger market because I
Speaker 1: guess of like how comparatively unglamorous to investors the actual
Speaker 1: market would be.
Speaker 2: Pivot. Yeah, So Rob, would you say this is a
Speaker 2: more bullshit or less bullshit? Yeah?
Speaker 7: Hm hm, I might say slightly less, like one thing
Speaker 7: and this is a piece I still needed to do
Speaker 7: for PC mag AK television. You go back like four
Speaker 7: years ago or six years everyone was like, well, it's
Speaker 7: going to be the next four K. I'm like, actually,
Speaker 7: it's the next three D and full K is yet
Speaker 7: to be the next four K. It's it's become a
Speaker 7: sort of pyrrhic victory for the industry. They got it adopted.
Speaker 7: It's in any set you'd buy bigger than like forty
Speaker 7: two inches. But because everybody's doing it, there's no profit
Speaker 7: margin left, which was the problem it was supposed to solve, right,
Speaker 7: But yeah, Ak Samsung is still trying to make it happen.
Speaker 7: No one else is, right, and I'm like, that's great.
Speaker 7: The industry realized no one actually wants to buy this,
Speaker 7: so they found a new thing that no one wanted
Speaker 7: to buy out. You know, yeah, like just just at
Speaker 7: AI as a label. You like what Delta is doing
Speaker 7: with the concierge that maybe just software. I just you
Speaker 7: know your aktvs now have AI upscaling instead of just upscaling.
Speaker 2: No, they were doing that last year. Probably, they absolutely
Speaker 2: were doing that. If they try to say again, is there.
Speaker 1: A distinction between those two things.
Speaker 2: Well, eight K is actually eight K resolution versus upscaling,
Speaker 2: which is effectively filling in the front.
Speaker 1: It's on which you need because there's nothing to watch.
Speaker 2: In a K. Well, you can't even watch terrestrial television
Speaker 2: and four K, so in theory you can't.
Speaker 7: You can your next gen, but that's not going to
Speaker 7: be doable until stations take that note. My first CEES
Speaker 7: was the introduction of digital TV in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: Jeez, that's y'all. Can't see the gray hairs on my head,
Speaker 1: most of which your CES is fault.
Speaker 2: Why would you watch something in four K?
Speaker 7: I would watch it if it's a big enough if
Speaker 7: it's a big enough screen, you appreciated, like I was
Speaker 7: a skeptic for a long time. The monitor on my
Speaker 7: Mac at home is a four K screen, and yeah,
Speaker 7: for all mankind is pretty great at that.
Speaker 2: Lee Well, sport like baseball, especially with very precise placement
Speaker 2: but past that point really.
Speaker 7: Yeah, now there's no reason for AK And you know,
Speaker 7: maybe I guess the sphere I guess has sixteen case
Speaker 7: screens on the wall.
Speaker 1: But that's the definition of an edge case.
Speaker 7: Yeah, if your your ease case is a two billion
Speaker 7: dollar building in Vegas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, is not as well.
Speaker 1: Also to your point on the watching things and four
Speaker 1: K things, like I think so we're also uh current
Speaker 1: on for all mankind la postorous. But it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's guy's a strong seats. I've noticed that. And this
Speaker 1: is the case with a lot of the Netflix stuff,
Speaker 1: which they make them shoot on four K cameras, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's like, yeah, it's it's a really goofee show.
Speaker 1: It's like a space soap opera. But the but a
Speaker 1: lot of the issues I like it too, And but
Speaker 1: so the effects look incredible. The scenes of people talking
Speaker 1: in rooms often look like a telenovella to me, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's like an issue with a lot of Netflix
Speaker 1: stuff too, because they shoot in four K and then
Speaker 1: they have to mush it down to get it through
Speaker 1: your pipes and then it expands again on your TV.
Speaker 1: And that's why everything on Netflix kind of looks like
Speaker 1: you're watching it on your phone even though you're watching
Speaker 1: it on your TV. I think this is like my
Speaker 1: understanding of it. But I do think that there's like
Speaker 1: as much as it would be cool to like watch
Speaker 1: sports like that, and I do think it's true, like I,
Speaker 1: you know, have my mind blown by like how good
Speaker 1: a lot of the TV displays were in the big
Speaker 1: you know, TV manufactured things that I looked at this morning.
Speaker 1: And yet it's like you do kind of at some
Speaker 1: point like bump up against the like necessity question on
Speaker 1: any of this stuff, Like.
Speaker 7: We like the whole Apple definition of a retina display,
Speaker 7: like can you no longer see the constituent pixels? Which
Speaker 7: is absolutely a thing in TVs, And so yeah, you
Speaker 7: need such a huge screen for AK to be discernibly better,
Speaker 7: and so yes, content for it, Like now there's nothing
Speaker 7: the odd time that EFA in Berlin, I want to say,
Speaker 7: like two years ago, and that's what is EFA just
Speaker 7: for the it's the basically the European version of CS.
Speaker 7: It originally stood for German for international radio show. I
Speaker 7: don't speak German to tongue. International now focus along. Now
Speaker 7: they say it's innovation for all I do.
Speaker 2: And that was really okay, I dun'k it, And that EFA.
Speaker 1: Has gone on from like twenty twenty three up for
Speaker 1: a few years in the forties. I don't like to
Speaker 1: talk about.
Speaker 7: And so Samsung had commissioned an AK version of the
Speaker 7: series Dust Boots. Okay, and that's like literally the only
Speaker 7: time I've seen a TV vendor get you something to
Speaker 7: watch in AK.
Speaker 2: The movies like four and a half, isn't that very
Speaker 2: I didn't.
Speaker 1: Even know they'd min a series out of the movie
Speaker 1: the series.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the movies very long.
Speaker 7: I have watched the movie and it was in an
Speaker 7: old school theater in DC and Connecticut Avenue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the movies from like nineteen eighty five too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like watching that in a K would feel
Speaker 1: like you were on LSD overprocessed. Yeah, just like you're
Speaker 1: so much closer to Jurgen Prunk now than you really
Speaker 1: need to be.
Speaker 2: Hug and Krunk.
Speaker 1: We love Yurgen pro is a good actor.
Speaker 2: So let's bring this to an end. Rob. Where can
Speaker 2: people find you?
Speaker 7: You can find me at pc mag dot com, mass
Speaker 7: coompany dot com. My website is Rob Pacerrero dot com.
Speaker 7: I am on bluesky at the exact same handle was
Speaker 7: on blue Sky. Everyone has a website, mister.
Speaker 6: Guisa newsletter, the Bubble dot Substack dot com podcast, this
Speaker 6: Machine Kills and on actually everything site in blue Sky,
Speaker 6: Big Black Jacobin.
Speaker 1: I'm ready for Defector dot com the podcast I do
Speaker 1: there is the Distraction and I am David Jroth dot
Speaker 1: bsky DoD social on Bluescape.
Speaker 2: So you're at the end of day four of the
Speaker 2: CS coverage. We are absolutely high energy. All of us
Speaker 2: are and are more peaking out, more awake than we've
Speaker 2: ever been able to take these boys out for bergers
Speaker 2: after this, thank you so much for listening. Everyone. Two
Speaker 2: more days. You've got another double tomorrow, another two pairs,
Speaker 2: another two pairs. Jesus Christ ninety minutes each, two episodes
Speaker 2: hard and then a finale on Saturday. Jesus Christ, It's
Speaker 2: not that bad. I have not been this tired.
Speaker 6: God knows how.
Speaker 2: I'm brimming with life and I'm like a decade older
Speaker 2: than you, full of full of the spirit of csh
Speaker 2: of John CS, the founder, the Christian cult leader, give
Speaker 2: us so much at the first CS who did a
Speaker 2: sacrifice and that's why the show is still around. Yep,
Speaker 2: that's facts. Anyway, I'm at Zitchron. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 2: You've really indulged me this week. More to come tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to Better Offline.
Speaker 4: The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song
Speaker 4: is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music
Speaker 4: and audio projects at Mattasowski dot com, m.
Speaker 2: A T T O S O W s ki dot com.
Speaker 4: You can email me at easy at Better Offline dot
Speaker 4: com or visit Better Offline dot com to find more
Speaker 4: podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really
Speaker 4: recommend you go to chat dot Where's youreed dot at
Speaker 4: to visit the discord, and go to our slash Better
Speaker 4: Offline to check out our reddit.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 5: Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media from
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