Speaker 1: Ah, welcome back to it could happen me all that's horrible.
Speaker 1: You didn't like that, Garrison, Well, they can all be winners. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is part I Guess three of our coverage of
Speaker 1: the Consumer Electronics Show and what the tech industry has
Speaker 1: in store for all of us in the future. Um.
Speaker 1: Last episode we talked about the stuff we saw at
Speaker 1: CS that was both cool and optimistic and spoke to
Speaker 1: some some potentially positive trends in tech. And today we're
Speaker 1: going to get back to what we do best, which
Speaker 1: is making you feel bad. But first I want to
Speaker 1: open this up a little bit with Garrison. You're a Canadian,
Speaker 1: You're you're you're You're a very young Canadian twenty years old,
Speaker 1: grew up in a cult and now you have just
Speaker 1: seen Las Vegas, Nevada for the first time. Did it
Speaker 1: change your life? UM? I mean I guess so, I
Speaker 1: I guess I guess it did change my life in
Speaker 1: in my perception of what Las Vegas is and my
Speaker 1: desire to never return of But yeah, I mean, we
Speaker 1: we've been able to spend probably around half our time
Speaker 1: at CES, the other half just so soaking in the
Speaker 1: impeccable vibes of Las Vegas, Nevada. Yeah, I've been. I've
Speaker 1: been tour guiding you around, uh soberly and safely. We
Speaker 1: went to the Venetian and the Palazzo. We took a
Speaker 1: very expensive gondola, right, that was an expensive gondola. Right,
Speaker 1: got to see the beautiful blue skies of Venice and
Speaker 1: all their four corners. Your reaction to seeing inside the
Speaker 1: Vendea if you've never been the Venetian, the interior of it,
Speaker 1: it's this massive casino, as they all are. They're all
Speaker 1: like small towns inside buildings massive, and the Venetian is
Speaker 1: like a replica of the city of Venice with a
Speaker 1: fake sky. And that is one giant mall. I believe
Speaker 1: it's the second largest hotel in the world. It is
Speaker 1: unbelievably large, uh, incredibly expensive. And the fidelity of like
Speaker 1: the fakeness of all of these things that are based
Speaker 1: on real stuff is is quite high to it's it's
Speaker 1: a whole thing. Yeah, it's It's really interesting because some
Speaker 1: of the most impactful stuff is all of like the
Speaker 1: fake storefronts inside because in many ways they're kind of
Speaker 1: just all glorified malls, um and glorified arcades, all slot machines,
Speaker 1: And it's funny because, like you know, they make all
Speaker 1: of these facades on the inside, they have they have
Speaker 1: the ceiling painted to look like the sky, but it's
Speaker 1: it's it's just it's so dark in there, like it's
Speaker 1: so like it's you see blue skies above you, but
Speaker 1: there's like no light anywhere, no light anywhere. There's no
Speaker 1: claws in the rooms. No, you never know what time
Speaker 1: it is. You never see the outdoors. You're all isolated
Speaker 1: in these little corridors leading from one shop to another
Speaker 1: with slot machines all along the way. You're flying back soon,
Speaker 1: are you looking forward to not being in a maze
Speaker 1: of lights designed to bewilder and slowly damage you enough
Speaker 1: that you sit down at a craps table and very
Speaker 1: excited to see a real tree that's not a palm tree.
Speaker 1: It's very excited to like touch grass, because there's no
Speaker 1: grass in Las Vegas. No, it's actually I think illegal
Speaker 1: in a lot of parts of the city to have
Speaker 1: like a grass lawn, which is so one of the
Speaker 1: things so obviously Vegas is in an objective sense, incredibly wasteful.
Speaker 1: A huge amount of resources get poured into what is
Speaker 1: effectively just for gaming. But UM. The other thing, like
Speaker 1: another thing that you have to hold in your mind
Speaker 1: when you recognize that, is that of all of the
Speaker 1: states in the Southwest utilizing the very limited water resources there.
Speaker 1: If I'm not mistaken, because it was just reading an
Speaker 1: article about this, Nevada is the one state that has
Speaker 1: reduced its water usage while it's grown by like three
Speaker 1: quarters of a million people. UM, So it contains multitudes.
Speaker 1: And also Nevada, like Vegas, is where the I'm spacing
Speaker 1: on the name right now. But basically you have all
Speaker 1: of these different states in the Southwest that are all
Speaker 1: kind of coming together to try to figure out how
Speaker 1: to deal with the fact that uh Lake Meat water
Speaker 1: levels are getting lower in the Colorado River is disappearing
Speaker 1: in some areas, and it is the only thing that
Speaker 1: makes life out here possible on the scale that it
Speaker 1: currently exists on. UM. And a couple of months before
Speaker 1: c e S they had their big meeting in Las
Speaker 1: Vegas in order to talk about how to try and
Speaker 1: deal with the calamitous water situation. So it is very
Speaker 1: much this city that is like filled with simulacra of
Speaker 1: the past, um which it uses to try to hack
Speaker 1: your brain to get you to stay up for four
Speaker 1: days in a row, gambling and spending tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars. And it also because it's the best place
Speaker 1: to hold a convention, and in a very technical sense,
Speaker 1: like it is the most prepared for a large convention.
Speaker 1: They this city can handle a hundred and fifty two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people coming in overnight and needing places to
Speaker 1: stay and needing infrastructure in order. So it's also where
Speaker 1: a lot of things about the future get decided, which
Speaker 1: is when you spend enough time walking kind of horrifying.
Speaker 1: It's kind of horrified the fact that important decisions get
Speaker 1: made in this in this realm of in this place
Speaker 1: that's designed to be mind altering. Yeah, it is, it is.
Speaker 1: It is crafted. We're not like joking about this. There
Speaker 1: are no clocks in the hotel rooms, like the casinos
Speaker 1: are crafted to damage your perception of time. Um, so
Speaker 1: I don't know that somebody should maybe look into that.
Speaker 1: It's I do like when you're talking about like me.
Speaker 1: It's a great example of the overall vibes of Las
Speaker 1: Vegas is as as like meat is drying up. We
Speaker 1: keep finding bodies inside the lake like bodies that have
Speaker 1: been there a long time, bodies of people who had
Speaker 1: alternate ideas about how Vegas should look. I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of them were probably yeah, yeah, well walk walk
Speaker 1: to the Venetian, walked through Caesar's Palace. Uh, they had
Speaker 1: they had some nice vapor wave elieds displays outside. Briefly
Speaker 1: went into the Paris one, which was honestly, I think
Speaker 1: they Paris handled this, handled the fake sky the worst
Speaker 1: because not only was this the sky painted ceiling so low,
Speaker 1: the the bottom part of the Eiffel Tower just stops
Speaker 1: where the ceiling stops. That they didn't even try. They
Speaker 1: don't even try to continue the illusion. It's just just
Speaker 1: as is a hard stop. Um. We wrote a roller coaster.
Speaker 1: We we went to New York. We we went to
Speaker 1: the Little Blurry for me because you were so drunk.
Speaker 1: But I just bought them. I dumped the the attempt
Speaker 1: at like buying drinks from places and just got a
Speaker 1: handle of Woodford Reserve, which allegedly you can mix into
Speaker 1: one of the th HC Pina coladas that they have
Speaker 1: and allegedly it's pretty good time. We we went to
Speaker 1: Rainforest Cafe. I unfortunately bought you got sicker than I
Speaker 1: did eating Rainforest Cafe I I bought. I bought this
Speaker 1: volcano cake and it was quite regrettable. Um. And then
Speaker 1: we walked over to the New York themed casino inside
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. So if you want a city themed casino
Speaker 1: inside the city that you're in, you can go there.
Speaker 1: Just pretty different city creating microcostums within microcostums. You're just
Speaker 1: like the nesting, nesting all the way down. And I,
Speaker 1: in an effort to make both me and Robert vomit,
Speaker 1: we went on a roller coaster we've barely survived. That
Speaker 1: did feel like a very dangerous roller that was we
Speaker 1: were so close to vomiting everywhere. Just yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a good time. That was pretty fun. I felt great
Speaker 1: so that I just felt people would enjoy your your
Speaker 1: your first Vegas experience. And of course you stayed at
Speaker 1: Circus Circus, which we just walked through earlier today, one
Speaker 1: last time, one final, one final debut to see a
Speaker 1: family of four with thirty eight thousand dollars imagined losing that.
Speaker 1: Circus Circus unbelieveabout the worst casino in the world. I think,
Speaker 1: in order to segue into our next topic, it's Pretti.
Speaker 1: I think Las Vegas is probably one of the most
Speaker 1: heavily surveilled cities in the United States. It would be
Speaker 1: hard to find one with more, especially when you're on
Speaker 1: the Strip. Obviously there's a lot of lots of it.
Speaker 1: I have family who live here and they can go
Speaker 1: years without visiting the fucking strip because it's terrible. Um.
Speaker 1: But another another, and and so kind of in a
Speaker 1: similar sense. At CES, there was a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: about surveillance, a lot of stuff about, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: collect different new innovative ways to collect data on you
Speaker 1: and your and your appliances and what's in your home. Um,
Speaker 1: do we want to stalk start by talking about the
Speaker 1: the almdipure of of surveillance tech. Yeah, there was actually
Speaker 1: just an article in the Washington Post about this about
Speaker 1: how unsafe quite a bit of it is. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that you may have caught in some
Speaker 1: of your news because this was probably one of the
Speaker 1: more viral stories, is that there was a lot of
Speaker 1: piss based technology, a lot of p analyzation. Vivu had
Speaker 1: a thing there was there was at least three different
Speaker 1: p test kits that were on the show floor. I
Speaker 1: think some of them wont some some of the CS
Speaker 1: Innovation Awards where basically you can analyze what's in your urine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and these are always framed as like it can let
Speaker 1: you give you confirmation if you have a U t I,
Speaker 1: it can help people who have all these different illnesses.
Speaker 1: It can help diabetics. UM. And I'm sure there's a
Speaker 1: degree to which that's true, But I asked the Vivu
Speaker 1: lady and I didn't speak with the There was another
Speaker 1: called UM you scan by with things and and you
Speaker 1: you scans urine sensor analyzes hormone levels in urine. That's interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is is why it won some awards, and also
Speaker 1: why a bunch of folks, including Consumer Reports UM, put
Speaker 1: out like a warning about it, saying like we shouldn't
Speaker 1: be celebrating this. This is an incredibly dangerous product because
Speaker 1: it all is going to your phone, the data is
Speaker 1: being collected digitally, and if, for example, you are in
Speaker 1: a state that heavily restricts women's access to reproductive healthcare, uh,
Speaker 1: there is literally nothing stopping the law enforcement or the
Speaker 1: government of those states from demanding all of that data
Speaker 1: be handed over, potentially even in real time. There's absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing stopping that. And the company has already said they'll
Speaker 1: comply with law enforcement with government requests. Um. And there's
Speaker 1: they don't have any kind of plan for the fact
Speaker 1: that they are creating a way to surveile people's bodies,
Speaker 1: um for the government. Um. And when I talked to
Speaker 1: the one of the representatives of Vivu, which is another
Speaker 1: one of these urine companies that I don't believe detect
Speaker 1: your hormone levels but but does is generating a lot
Speaker 1: of data about your body, a lot of biometric data.
Speaker 1: And the most she would give me is that the
Speaker 1: data is encrypted. Which great, that that that's a fancy
Speaker 1: word for saying, yeah, we have it. We are. We
Speaker 1: are sitting here right after one of the most damaging
Speaker 1: data hacks of all time, which has it was last
Speaker 1: pass It was one of the massive password collecting apps
Speaker 1: where you basically like centralize all your passwords behind one
Speaker 1: and remember and like it's a lot of people are
Speaker 1: exposed as a result of that. And um, I just
Speaker 1: think that like the this show, such a massive part
Speaker 1: of it was we have we are debuting devices that
Speaker 1: will allow you to monitor different parts of your body
Speaker 1: at all times and get real time, biometric data your
Speaker 1: body and your house and centralizing all this data about you.
Speaker 1: Talk about ring in one place, because that's the same
Speaker 1: thing with like smart homes and smart appliances were very popular.
Speaker 1: Smart cars were a very big thing. Um we're talking about,
Speaker 1: like smart cities were another big thing for just other
Speaker 1: ways to centralize all of the data about what you own,
Speaker 1: where it is um and how to effectively provide advertising
Speaker 1: to get you to buy more. There's an attempt being
Speaker 1: made by Republicans in Oklahoma right now to make it
Speaker 1: criminal two do gender transition if you are under twenty
Speaker 1: six years of age. There's no reason why a product
Speaker 1: like this couldn't be used to determine whether or not
Speaker 1: somebody is illegally taking hormones in a state where they
Speaker 1: are attempting to restrict trans people like it's this is
Speaker 1: all We're not just being like fuddy duddies. These are
Speaker 1: all very serious implications, and there's zero thought, zero evidence
Speaker 1: of thought being given to it with any of the
Speaker 1: biometric companies. Now, one of the reasons we talked about
Speaker 1: that those smart glasses UM that are for people who
Speaker 1: are hearing impaired, that caption conversations live around them. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons I was impressed by that is that
Speaker 1: it's all a closed loop. None of it goes to
Speaker 1: your smartphone, none of it's broadcast wirely wirelessly. Um, it
Speaker 1: is all on device and none of it is stored anywhere.
Speaker 1: And when they said that, that was part of what
Speaker 1: convinced me these people understand the responsibility the d they
Speaker 1: have delivering a healthcare product. We should move on to
Speaker 1: the other part of the Panopticon that we saw and
Speaker 1: talk about Ring. Yeah, the Ring booth was one of
Speaker 1: the more terrifyingly dystopian bits. And it's you know, and
Speaker 1: it's describe it for our listeners. Well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: they basically made like a white Pickett house. Um. And
Speaker 1: you know again ces these are massive, massive buildings, and
Speaker 1: so they do people can construct a full house in
Speaker 1: there and did so, like you know, there's fake fake
Speaker 1: green grass, a nice little fence, this perfect little ideal
Speaker 1: at home. And the massive massive sign above was like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, ring keeping, like keeping keeping your neighborhood and
Speaker 1: say if you know like all of all of all
Speaker 1: of that that type of messaging. Um. The in the
Speaker 1: model home they had there was like a dozen cameras
Speaker 1: on every all all around the sides approach, multiple cameras
Speaker 1: on the doors. There's a doorbell camera, peephole camera camera
Speaker 1: on the fence at one door with three cameras on
Speaker 1: the door itself. And I mean ring zoned by Amazon.
Speaker 1: There was you know, Alexa Alexa assisted Ring cameras um
Speaker 1: all of the day that gets gets used by law enforcement.
Speaker 1: A Ring partners like directly with law enforcement to make
Speaker 1: data like immediately available and make feeds immediately available. And
Speaker 1: the probably the still least thing we saw at the
Speaker 1: Ring booth was this home security tiny little drone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so basically they've built and it's weird because the so
Speaker 1: the box it comes in looks like a fucking um
Speaker 1: de humidifier that I used to have or humidifier that
Speaker 1: I used to have in my house. It's almost identical.
Speaker 1: Um but it's like this little plastic box and a
Speaker 1: drone can take off and fly out of it. Uh,
Speaker 1: And the drone trains itself on your house, so it
Speaker 1: knows how to get around and if somebody it thinks
Speaker 1: somebody's breaking in. A person who is effectively like works
Speaker 1: for Ring, like an actual human being sitting in a
Speaker 1: call center somewhere takes control of the drone and can
Speaker 1: confront someone in your house, which I guess there's a
Speaker 1: potential security benefit there, But also, you are signing up
Speaker 1: to allow Amazon to have a random person travel around
Speaker 1: your home at any hour of the night, in a
Speaker 1: in a thing they control, in a little flying machine
Speaker 1: that they control, and that I cannot put myself in.
Speaker 1: That I get, obviously, I get wanting to have cameras.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's unreasonable to have security cameras on
Speaker 1: your home. I even understand how some people who are
Speaker 1: not as privacy conscious as I am could be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't care if it's connected to the internet. Um,
Speaker 1: even though that's not a thing I like, I can't
Speaker 1: put myself in the head of somebody who would want
Speaker 1: that thing in their house. Yeah, it's bizarre because obviously
Speaker 1: there's needs. Again, they're like health related. Maybe if you've
Speaker 1: got like an illness or something, you might want something
Speaker 1: like that. Like, I can understand how very specific purpose
Speaker 1: driven needs, but like, as a normal person wanting an
Speaker 1: Amazon employee to be able to wander around your home,
Speaker 1: it seems weird to me. I mean, that's obviously can
Speaker 1: also all that data getting used. Amazon can scan your
Speaker 1: entire house fiera, what what products you buy, you know,
Speaker 1: what what non Amazon things are inside your home, what
Speaker 1: types of trends that you're using, and all that kind
Speaker 1: of get used to help get you to buy more things.
Speaker 1: That the the one of the morn cities parts of
Speaker 1: like all of the marketing and some of like the
Speaker 1: some of like the video commercials for Ring that we saw,
Speaker 1: you know, playing on these giant, giant screens inside is
Speaker 1: they're they're really trying to also push that. They're trying
Speaker 1: to push in a normalize using ring as a part
Speaker 1: of your everyday life, but for non security means like
Speaker 1: you know, when you're leaving your grandma's house, you say
Speaker 1: goodbye to her in her little ring camera. You know
Speaker 1: when you when you're getting to your friend's house you
Speaker 1: do a little funny pranks in front of their ring camera.
Speaker 1: It's like it's all these different ways to make rings
Speaker 1: seem like this fun and normal thing to like play
Speaker 1: with your friends and your family social, when in reality,
Speaker 1: look again, security cameras are inherently anti social. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that there aren't good reasons to have one. And
Speaker 1: as someone who's been burglarized. I do understand that, Um,
Speaker 1: it's not bad, but it's anti social because you are
Speaker 1: surveilling people because you're worried about what they might do.
Speaker 1: That is that is a fundamentally anti social thing. And
Speaker 1: so the attempt to like turn that, the attempt to
Speaker 1: kind of like merge that into normal family life and
Speaker 1: to make it like friendly is really bad. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that we briefly stopped by the A d T
Speaker 1: Booth And this is kind of this This is kind
Speaker 1: of similar to the little drone that we just talked about,
Speaker 1: but a little bit more ridiculous. Um, they have at
Speaker 1: the A d T Booth this home security robot, like
Speaker 1: six six ft tall robot with uh with like a
Speaker 1: like like an like a lc D little face with
Speaker 1: this big smile on it, and and it's powered or
Speaker 1: not powered. It is controlled by you, the owner, by
Speaker 1: wearing an Oculus headset, and it has it has rolling
Speaker 1: feet so it can move around by rolling. But it's
Speaker 1: like six ft tall. It has two arms, massive smiling
Speaker 1: face and if if you have you know, your headset
Speaker 1: with you, and you think someone's breaking into your home,
Speaker 1: you can put this on and control this robot to
Speaker 1: like chase them out. And I was overhearing that a
Speaker 1: d T guys talking about it, and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is even. This is even just like a great deterrence.
Speaker 1: Like imagine you're if someone's breaking into your home and
Speaker 1: then they see a massive, smiling robot rolling towards you.
Speaker 1: I would run away very quickly, like had like like
Speaker 1: what this this thing has to cost like tens of
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of dollars and like this is what
Speaker 1: you're doing too, feel like you're really just spend that
Speaker 1: much money to to create this sense of safety. Really really,
Speaker 1: this is this is what you're doing. You're you're you're
Speaker 1: getting a robot that gets powered by a Facebook headset
Speaker 1: so you can walk around your house in a rolling
Speaker 1: robot to make sure no one's gonna come, you know,
Speaker 1: take random shipped from your house. Yeah. When like number one, Um,
Speaker 1: anyone who would do that is the kind of person
Speaker 1: that needs to be have things taken from them. Um.
Speaker 1: But number two like if you're actually concerned for your
Speaker 1: actual safety, and again I think that's perfectly valid. Um,
Speaker 1: none of these drones, this robot of security theater, it's
Speaker 1: not it's theater. It's easy to to like damage, it's easy.
Speaker 1: You can knock it's it's all three wheels. You knock
Speaker 1: it over. It can't get up. Put on block so
Speaker 1: that you're completely covered, knock it over, and then proceed
Speaker 1: to rob the house. It's not useful, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a purity alarm at that point. It's it's it's wild
Speaker 1: and like and people will find ways to hack them
Speaker 1: and stuff. You know, you can't hack a well trained
Speaker 1: guard dog, which also will cost you tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars less. And we'll love you like a Doberman
Speaker 1: pincher will kill your enemies if they break into your home,
Speaker 1: and loves you like the same way. You know, there
Speaker 1: was people getting into Alexa machines a few years ago.
Speaker 1: There was Alexa Alexa machines listening and sending info when
Speaker 1: they weren't supposed to do. There was a mass there
Speaker 1: was a pretty big incident actually in Portland a few
Speaker 1: years ago, of of Alexa listening in too when it
Speaker 1: was wasn't supposed to do, and and and like listening
Speaker 1: to different conversations and trying trying to finish conversational cues.
Speaker 1: Um you know, it's only a matter of time before
Speaker 1: someone figures out how to control, how to remotely control
Speaker 1: one of these A d T robots and you have
Speaker 1: some something like rolling around in your house that you
Speaker 1: don't control anymore. Like it's yeah, there are um, it's
Speaker 1: there are always vulnerabilities in these things and they always
Speaker 1: get hacked. Um. And more to the point, like well,
Speaker 1: if you have some sort of security drone like your
Speaker 1: ring drone, there's no way like again, Amazon would comply
Speaker 1: with law enforcement requests. There's nothing that says law enforcement,
Speaker 1: if it was part of an investigation, could not use
Speaker 1: this technology to surveil you in real time. UM. So
Speaker 1: I don't like that. UM, not my favorite. And while
Speaker 1: we're when we're talking about surveillance, uh, we can't ignore
Speaker 1: our good friends at palent here now if you haven't
Speaker 1: been paying attention to the surveillance industry, palent Heer is
Speaker 1: a company that exists to collect data and build machine
Speaker 1: solutions and machine learning solutions UM to surveil people and
Speaker 1: to help equipment like drones, targeting and whatnot work better.
Speaker 1: They're an intelligence company. There's like lots of systems they
Speaker 1: do systems. It's not like they make a single product.
Speaker 1: They help build systems to collect data and enable governments
Speaker 1: and militaries to make decisions off of that data. That
Speaker 1: is like the thing that they do primarily systems analysts tracking.
Speaker 1: I mean, like what one of the one of the
Speaker 1: things we saw was them you know, analyzing homes to
Speaker 1: data around like water conservation. Right there, they're trying to
Speaker 1: put a variety of their usage not just kill brown people,
Speaker 1: but but they do a lot of the primary the
Speaker 1: center of their booth was this massive military truck with
Speaker 1: a huge armored box on the back that was filled
Speaker 1: with computers specifically to collect data and to um like
Speaker 1: do command and control for drone fleets in theater. Um.
Speaker 1: And one of the things you know when you see
Speaker 1: a vehicle of that size and it was very massive,
Speaker 1: is that well, this is not this is intended either
Speaker 1: to be very far back from the front, which which
Speaker 1: mitigates some of the uses of it, or it is
Speaker 1: intended to be used in an area in which the
Speaker 1: enemy does not have air power. Um. But so again
Speaker 1: the kind of places where you're just bombing them, right
Speaker 1: like theaters like Yemen where the rebels have minimum ability
Speaker 1: to do something like bomb a gigantic truck. That's a target. Um,
Speaker 1: but you have kind of unrestricted ability to do stuff
Speaker 1: like drone strike school buses, which has happened repeatedly there. Um.
Speaker 1: We had a couple of conversations with the good people
Speaker 1: at Palenteer. Uh they were I don't I think we
Speaker 1: kind of figured out they were primarily they're looking for
Speaker 1: talent because they were looking for people to recruit, looking
Speaker 1: for different things to integrate into their systems. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: would not show much of what they had. Everything inside
Speaker 1: the van itself was uh classified. Here would you hit
Speaker 1: me my phone find that person's name? But everything in
Speaker 1: there was was classified whenever we started talking, especially the
Speaker 1: first time we were there, because I started asking some
Speaker 1: pretty specific questions about what was actually in that and
Speaker 1: how it worked and how it was different from current
Speaker 1: drone command and control solutions. And there was a very
Speaker 1: specific woman with Palenteer who, no matter who I was
Speaker 1: talking to, would come up behind me and kind of
Speaker 1: direct conversation. And I think also was there to listen
Speaker 1: to the answers that were being provided to me and
Speaker 1: stop people from saying things on her team if they
Speaker 1: weren't supposed to say them. Um, there were a couple
Speaker 1: of occasions in which I asked, Hey, can we check
Speaker 1: this thing out on the inside, and we were told no,
Speaker 1: it was classified. No one else could get in. You
Speaker 1: have to you have to gain permission from the army. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I definitely saw some individuals exited, but they were Palenteer people.
Speaker 1: But then the next day we came back, um and
Speaker 1: I watched a woman exit the vehicle UM and a
Speaker 1: man from Palenteer with her, But the woman was not
Speaker 1: from Palenteer. Now, people wear badges at c e s,
Speaker 1: so their names are on display and what they do
Speaker 1: is on display. Although it's easy to look this person up,
Speaker 1: and I saw she had a badge as a speaker.
Speaker 1: Her name was Mary or sorry, her name was Melody
Speaker 1: Hildebrand UM. So I I googled Melody Hildebrand uh because
Speaker 1: I wanted to know she does not work for Palenteer.
Speaker 1: What is she doing inside Palentteer's giant class classified robot
Speaker 1: murder box? Uh. Melody is the president of Blockchain Creative
Speaker 1: Labs and the chief Information Security officer for the Fox
Speaker 1: Company for the you know that Fox Corporation. So it
Speaker 1: looked like by the way her her Twitter says uh C,
Speaker 1: I s O Fox Web three engineering cybersecurity, former war gamer,
Speaker 1: lover of farm animals, so that's cool. Um and yeah,
Speaker 1: over here we've got her retweeting a post about and Rill,
Speaker 1: which is UM. One of the Peter Teel companies like
Speaker 1: Palenteer is raising one point four eight billion in their
Speaker 1: Series E funding. UM. This new funding will enable us
Speaker 1: to accelerate R and DED and bring new cutting edge
Speaker 1: automous defense capabilities to market. Now, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: wonder what they mean by the word defense. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's also pro n f T so that's good. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna tweet to her in a little bit. UM.
Speaker 1: But no, it was it was very clear that there
Speaker 1: was you know, there was pr people on the ground
Speaker 1: to make sure that the line of questioning if they
Speaker 1: were too if people were asking questions about their surveillance tech,
Speaker 1: about this big titan truck which is what it's called Titan,
Speaker 1: um that there's only very very specific answers. And like
Speaker 1: they were not there to talk to journalists. They were
Speaker 1: not there to talk to media. They were there to
Speaker 1: recruit people to you know, become more capable at their
Speaker 1: surveillance tech. That's that was very clear. Uh. They were
Speaker 1: also right across the street, right across the hall from
Speaker 1: the Fantastic Robos and Transformers robots. So on the on
Speaker 1: one side you have a fun optimist prim robot that transforms.
Speaker 1: The other side you have the rolling metal deathcage. So
Speaker 1: that was that was that was most of palat here.
Speaker 1: They had this um sky box, which was this box
Speaker 1: that had like encrypted communications technology, drones and drone drone
Speaker 1: piloting technology and like, um, you know, a military computer
Speaker 1: that all in this little tiny box that they can
Speaker 1: drop into people who are you know, basically drop into
Speaker 1: people who are in trouble. Yeah, they were, they were.
Speaker 1: They were building it as basically number one. It would
Speaker 1: be for it could be for special forces teams. It
Speaker 1: has like a laptop in there. It has potentially several
Speaker 1: drones in there. UM and it has like a bunch
Speaker 1: of specially modified field cameras so you could set up
Speaker 1: surveillance on an area UM and and those cameras kind
Speaker 1: of work with a machine learning algorithm to do stuff
Speaker 1: like try and identify where landmines are. And again like
Speaker 1: these are the stuff that's problematic primarily about Palatiners it's
Speaker 1: it's data collecting, its surveillance, and the fact that we
Speaker 1: know that drone warfare is generally pretty fucked up and
Speaker 1: has an extremely high civilian casualty rate and is used
Speaker 1: in a lot of theaters obviously, not in a lot
Speaker 1: of theaters where they are primarily just massacring people either
Speaker 1: fighting where their freedom are trying to survive. This is
Speaker 1: the problem with it. Obviously, all of this tech will
Speaker 1: also be used in generally positive things like, for example,
Speaker 1: dropping a box like this into the hands of some
Speaker 1: Ukrainian special Forces guys to to integrate them into a
Speaker 1: more advanced command and control network so they have better
Speaker 1: access to tactical data like is not a thing. I
Speaker 1: don't specifically have a problem with that application. The problem
Speaker 1: is more broadly palenteer um do you want to do?
Speaker 1: Do you want to briefly explain in case people are
Speaker 1: not Lord of the Rings fans. So again, these are
Speaker 1: all companies owned by Peter Teal, who is a self
Speaker 1: described fascist, believes in ending democracy. Believes that democracy and
Speaker 1: freedom are not compatible because freedom he defines specifically as
Speaker 1: the ability of people with lots of money to not
Speaker 1: have any kind of restrictions on their behavior or what
Speaker 1: they can compel other people to do. Peter Teal owns
Speaker 1: Palenteer and Andy rill Um the Palanteer Palenteer. Both of
Speaker 1: those are names from Lord of the Rings, and in
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings, the Palenteer was an orb given
Speaker 1: by the big bad Guy Sawon to one of his lackeys,
Speaker 1: a wizard named Saramon, so that he could surveil any
Speaker 1: part of Middle Earth he wanted in order to send
Speaker 1: his armies to crush the free peoples of the world.
Speaker 1: Like that is that is literally what this company is
Speaker 1: named after. It is the bad guy surveillance tech to
Speaker 1: use the Oro Kai against the free people of Middle Earth.
Speaker 1: It is it is specifically something that only evil people use. Um.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty cool that the whole company is named after.
Speaker 1: And there were all these very nice, polite people in
Speaker 1: uh Patagonia style vests with Palenteer logos stitched on them
Speaker 1: standing around. UM happy to answer any of your questions.
Speaker 1: Uh anyway, I'm I'm curious as to why Melody Hildebrandt
Speaker 1: was inside there. What the chief information security officer of
Speaker 1: Fox would want to do with one of those vans.
Speaker 1: That is curious that is curious, she's on Twitter. I
Speaker 1: did reach out to her, but we that We also
Speaker 1: saw a few of the robot dogs. We saw the
Speaker 1: Boston to the Dynamics one, which was very impressive and
Speaker 1: how it moves. Um. Then we saw one much more
Speaker 1: cheaper um uh model of of a robot dog that
Speaker 1: had not as great mobility, but it seemed to be
Speaker 1: more more suited towards the types of the types of
Speaker 1: style of dogs that were that we've seen law enforcements
Speaker 1: start to buy. Um. The cheaper ones with less flexibility,
Speaker 1: more mounts to attach you know, things to the top
Speaker 1: of the robot which you don't really see you with
Speaker 1: the Boston Dynamics ones. They do not like mounting extra
Speaker 1: things on. But the the other robot dog we saw
Speaker 1: had this little arm that it was that it was
Speaker 1: that that had attached to the top that was in
Speaker 1: the robotics section, pretty close to Palatiner. That one was
Speaker 1: much less impressive than Because we saw both robot dogs
Speaker 1: and these are if you see video of a robot
Speaker 1: dog that people are freaking about out about online, these
Speaker 1: are those robot dogs. UM. The one we saw with
Speaker 1: the arm on, it did not move. It was number
Speaker 1: one controlled directly by a guy with a controller. It
Speaker 1: was not autonomous and it didn't move very smoothly. The
Speaker 1: sitting in front of the Boston Dynamic Spot spot and
Speaker 1: watching it move was really Surrey. It was number one.
Speaker 1: We both talked about this garrison. It's like watching c
Speaker 1: g I in real life because it's it's so fine tuned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it moves like a living thing, but clearly is not
Speaker 1: um and it moves like a living thing enough that
Speaker 1: it is not it's not an uncanny valley. That's not
Speaker 1: the right way to describe it now, because the movements
Speaker 1: are kind of perfect. It's just not it's alive. It's
Speaker 1: almost it's it's it's not uncanny valley. It's almost like instead,
Speaker 1: it's like too perfect. Yeah, it's it's just so fine tuned.
Speaker 1: It's it was pretty It was pretty impressive to watch.
Speaker 1: It was very impressive and it it's become obvious to
Speaker 1: me that like one of the things that absolutely is
Speaker 1: going on at Boston Dynamics is that they feel there
Speaker 1: is there is an it is important to them as
Speaker 1: a business. Some of this may just be that they
Speaker 1: this is a personal challenge for a lot of these
Speaker 1: engineering guys, but I suspect they also see this as
Speaker 1: valuable to their business to replicate physical emotionality. And when
Speaker 1: I talk about that, when you like, watch a dog, right,
Speaker 1: you can tell a dog's emotions from the way that
Speaker 1: the dog moves, because that's how dogs work. Um, the
Speaker 1: robot dog expresses physical emotion and obviously it doesn't feel emotion,
Speaker 1: but it physically expresses emotion in a similar way to
Speaker 1: a dog like curiosity. They're very good at mimicking a
Speaker 1: curious dog in the way it's body language works, which
Speaker 1: is really wild. Yeah, that would be one of the
Speaker 1: things I did not like. Um, I mean, it's impressive.
Speaker 1: A lot of this stuff is a objectively impressive. Most
Speaker 1: of the other robotics we saw there was not that impressive.
Speaker 1: Like I saw this this robot bartender that was making boba,
Speaker 1: but it but it didn't know, it didn't know how,
Speaker 1: or it wasn't able to actually deliver the boba onto
Speaker 1: the secondary robot that delivers the boba. So this this
Speaker 1: this one robot with arms made made the drink, a
Speaker 1: human picked it up, inspected it, then put it on
Speaker 1: a secondary robot which then delivered the drink. And I
Speaker 1: and this technology. I mean I I was eating at
Speaker 1: a at a at a Burmese place in Portland a
Speaker 1: few months ago where they were using this same food
Speaker 1: delivery robot system. It's not it's not brand new, it's
Speaker 1: just becoming cheaper and more people are trying to like
Speaker 1: make it a thing. And there was so there was
Speaker 1: a lot of those types of things, a lot of
Speaker 1: like R two D two on Jabba's sale barge, like
Speaker 1: delivering drinks style style robots that are autonomous, like they
Speaker 1: do move themselves around. They don't need a remote controller,
Speaker 1: but they're not that impressive. But that that that was
Speaker 1: like the majority of stuff in the robotics section was
Speaker 1: that there was a few other kind of smaller rolling
Speaker 1: robots that were there was just like elderly people like
Speaker 1: if if someone falls down, this robot kind of goes
Speaker 1: around and will help you. And yeah, I don't feel
Speaker 1: well that specific stuff I don't feel like well suited
Speaker 1: to describe, like to guess as to how well it
Speaker 1: would work. UM. But I think more broadly talking about
Speaker 1: autonomous tech because that was one of the biggest product
Speaker 1: categories at Sea as it was all over the place. Um,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of cars, and a lot of
Speaker 1: companies doing autonomous software and light our solutions for cars.
Speaker 1: I consider that all to be vaporware. There's a great
Speaker 1: deal of evidence here, but fully autonomous vehicles, UM, in
Speaker 1: the way that some of these companies are advertising is
Speaker 1: simply not. They simply do do not exist, and not
Speaker 1: exist and will not exist. And we did talk to
Speaker 1: a couple of people, so again for the stuff that's
Speaker 1: very real about autonomous tech, there's things like driver assistance,
Speaker 1: so for like truck drivers, to allow them to strain
Speaker 1: and stress themselves less while driving and to help um
Speaker 1: make certain things like backing up and parking that can
Speaker 1: be very difficult in certain environments safer by having more
Speaker 1: cameras and machine assistance. That makes sense. And one of
Speaker 1: the people who worked at one of those companies said
Speaker 1: to us, Um, yeah, there's no such thing as autonomous
Speaker 1: trucks or cars, like they don't exist outside of very
Speaker 1: tightly controlled conditions. All we are trying to do is
Speaker 1: make truck driving safer and less stressful on the driver,
Speaker 1: which sounds great. UM. I mean, obviously it there's problems
Speaker 1: with the way the trucking industry exists outside of that,
Speaker 1: but that sounds again like one of those products meant
Speaker 1: to actually mitigate worker fatigue and discomfort and potentially makes
Speaker 1: it safer. So I'm on board with that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But um other like an autonomous and smart tech that
Speaker 1: we like, like like smart cars, um e V like
Speaker 1: electronic vehicles and autonomous stuff. There was some stuff at
Speaker 1: the John Deer Booth which it was pushing towards automation,
Speaker 1: like we talked about in the last episode. And then
Speaker 1: also they're they're evy tractor just launched, which so John
Speaker 1: Dear if you're not aware, has had a series of
Speaker 1: long running legal battles, particularly with farmers in Ukraine, over
Speaker 1: the fact that they do not want it to be
Speaker 1: possible or legal for you to repair your tractor if
Speaker 1: you're a farmer. Farmers have previously in history often repaired
Speaker 1: and fixed and modified their vehicles. Um this is both
Speaker 1: necessary if a thing breaks you can't always get it
Speaker 1: back to a manufacturing facility in time. And a lot
Speaker 1: of farms in the middle of nowhere. A lot of
Speaker 1: farms are in the middle of nowhere, which is where
Speaker 1: food comes from. And you also like you can't wait,
Speaker 1: you can't just be like, well, let's just put harvesting
Speaker 1: off for a week or two. That that is a problem. Um.
Speaker 1: John Deere sees that as a severe threat to their profits,
Speaker 1: and they have fought viciously in courts UH to make it,
Speaker 1: to try to make it illegal to repair your own devices. Um.
Speaker 1: They have lost a lot of those fights in the
Speaker 1: United States, and to its credit, the Biden administration has
Speaker 1: taken a strong stance in favor of the right to repair.
Speaker 1: And what we saw from John Deere at this ce
Speaker 1: S was a bunch of very impressive autonomous products that
Speaker 1: just coincidentally will also make it completely impossible to repair
Speaker 1: your tractors. It's like, specifically with the new ev tractor
Speaker 1: that launched, so much of it is a computer that
Speaker 1: it is impossible to repair unless you work for John Deer.
Speaker 1: Like we when we asked them, like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: if if this thing breaks down, how how would a
Speaker 1: farmer go about trying to fix this? Since it is
Speaker 1: a lot of it is like not it's it's it's
Speaker 1: not like motors and stuff from like a classic car.
Speaker 1: It is it is like it is computer driven. Um.
Speaker 1: And they're like they just can't. It's just it's just
Speaker 1: so complicated that an average person cannot repair this like
Speaker 1: at all. It's just it just it's impossible. So that's
Speaker 1: the way they are gonna try to get around this, uh,
Speaker 1: this right to repair a shoe. Yeah, we will just
Speaker 1: and the and it's being done under the guys of
Speaker 1: well you you know, by having this much more advanced,
Speaker 1: we can use a lot less pesticide, which is better
Speaker 1: for the soil, better for everything, um, less carbon and
Speaker 1: less carbon. The farmer will have more time because the
Speaker 1: vehicle can handle this autonomously. So that's eight hours the
Speaker 1: farmer you know, gets to to spend doing something else
Speaker 1: and um, all of this stuff that's kind of meant
Speaker 1: to distract from like, well, I guess yeah, maybe he'll
Speaker 1: have more time, but also substantially less autonomy and be
Speaker 1: completely dependent upon the John Deer Corporation in order to
Speaker 1: produce the food that human beings need to survive. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm also gonna point it out there and say I
Speaker 1: started this by saying that, like, one of the major
Speaker 1: lawsuits was between John Deer and a lot of a
Speaker 1: group of Ukrainian farmers, um, the same farmers presumably who
Speaker 1: were towing a lot of Russian ordinance away with the
Speaker 1: John Deer tractors. Um, I don't know that it's that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And one of the things that I
Speaker 1: think looking at a lot of this autonomous tech, some
Speaker 1: of it's great, some of it could save lives. Some
Speaker 1: of it. Rather than like reducing the need for humans
Speaker 1: to do work that it would be good if they
Speaker 1: didn't have to do, we'll do just what you recognize,
Speaker 1: create an even less human job for a human, like
Speaker 1: taking drinks from a robot that makes drinks to a
Speaker 1: robot that carries them to people. Because we we just
Speaker 1: couldn't figure out that interstitial step. So your job as
Speaker 1: a human being, as a as a member of of
Speaker 1: of a species that spent millions of years evolving to
Speaker 1: be capable of creating nearly anything, your job will be
Speaker 1: to take a drink from one robot and set it
Speaker 1: down at another. I mean we we we. The thing
Speaker 1: is like that we already had that same idea in factories,
Speaker 1: Like as as factories have gone towards being more made
Speaker 1: by machines, they're still as factory works who need to
Speaker 1: do all this little in between steps. So we're taking
Speaker 1: this factory model and now just applying it to customer
Speaker 1: service doing the same thing, trying to automize it as
Speaker 1: much as possible, and then only rely on humans for
Speaker 1: all of these little in between ups that for some reason,
Speaker 1: the robots in all of the autonomous texts isn't very
Speaker 1: good at yet or you know, isn't really focused on completing.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the main thing that that humans are
Speaker 1: going to be are going to be doing in the
Speaker 1: in the autonomous Boba store that's gonna come to your
Speaker 1: neighborhood in like ten years. Speaking of bad things about
Speaker 1: the future or at least the present, let's talk about
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's celebrity death tunnel. So, if you're not aware Elon,
Speaker 1: one of the companies, actually the company he started that
Speaker 1: is based on his own legitimate ideas is the boring
Speaker 1: company UM, which makes big tubes underground uh so that
Speaker 1: people can drive their individual cars through them and avoid traffic. Now,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is a man who takes his private jet
Speaker 1: between airports in the same city in order to avoid traffic.
Speaker 1: There is nothing he hates more than the idea of
Speaker 1: being a normal person or being at all connected to
Speaker 1: the lives of regular people, which is why you get
Speaker 1: a private jet, um when you could just like fly
Speaker 1: first class or something, because even if you're flying for
Speaker 1: first class, you're still going to an airport and through
Speaker 1: security around like the poor the poors. Um Ellen has
Speaker 1: been vociferous about his hatred of of traffic um transit,
Speaker 1: but also he hates public transit because you might sit
Speaker 1: next to a serial killer. UM. So his solution is
Speaker 1: dig holes underground and let people drive there. And Uh.
Speaker 1: Most of the cities that have attempted to have bording
Speaker 1: tunnels completed have been ghosted by the company. It is
Speaker 1: kind of a con um. But they did build one
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas and Garrison and I used it, uh,
Speaker 1: and it took us from one side of the convention
Speaker 1: center to the other. Um. We potentially, if we had
Speaker 1: made the most use of this service, we we might
Speaker 1: have gotten a five to seven minutes that we didn't
Speaker 1: have to walk, just just you and me alone inside
Speaker 1: the tesla, not having to be around other people in
Speaker 1: the in the RGB tunnel if you're in. One of
Speaker 1: the things Lama has literally said is like, well, if
Speaker 1: you take public transit, you might sit next to some
Speaker 1: serial killer. The way this tunnel thing works is you
Speaker 1: tell them whether you're going east or west, and they
Speaker 1: put you in a tesla that some dude is driving
Speaker 1: that you don't know, and then they fill the tesla
Speaker 1: with other other people that you also don't know. You're
Speaker 1: still sitting next to stranger and you're in this this
Speaker 1: tube that is lit up the same way a pair
Speaker 1: of like Razor gaming headphones are lit up um and
Speaker 1: you just slowly stuck in this tunnel with two random
Speaker 1: people who you don't know. I horrible, like one thing
Speaker 1: I feel like obviously if you're in like New York
Speaker 1: or something or Berlin. I've been in a lot of
Speaker 1: cities where I've traveled on the underground, and I don't
Speaker 1: feel scared traveling in the underground because those have existed
Speaker 1: for a very long time, and so we know what
Speaker 1: happens when there's floods and when there's fires, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of systems built, which is why you don't
Speaker 1: generally hear about a shipload of people dying in subway.
Speaker 1: It's an extremely safe way to travel this time. Unnol
Speaker 1: is filled with vehicles that take we know about fifty
Speaker 1: five gallons of water to put out a fire when
Speaker 1: the battery catches fire, and the batteries on Tesla's we
Speaker 1: also know, catch fire with some regularity, and you are
Speaker 1: trapped in a tunnel. Uh, there is sometimes traffic. Near
Speaker 1: the end of our ride, we wound up in a
Speaker 1: line of like twenty Tesla's and that did not feel
Speaker 1: good because you just you can see nothing but Tesla's
Speaker 1: ahead of you and behind you, and you're surrounded entirely
Speaker 1: by this tight claustrophobic wall with absolutely no emergency exit's visible.
Speaker 1: So in fire suppression systems visible, I don't know what
Speaker 1: they have installed, but you can't see anything. You cannot
Speaker 1: see a thing. All you see is the Razor r
Speaker 1: GB gaming mouse. And then as as so, as soon
Speaker 1: as we got off this this thing that was supposed
Speaker 1: to take us to like the central area, it just
Speaker 1: took us to the other side of the convention center.
Speaker 1: In order to actually gets where we needed to go,
Speaker 1: we just use the monorail, the thing that's been there
Speaker 1: for a long time and looks fine. And mono rails
Speaker 1: are also not great ideas for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 1: But it got us right to the other end of
Speaker 1: the strip very quickly, conveniently, cleanly. It took cost five dollars. UM.
Speaker 1: So good work, Ellen. I love the tunnel. I hope
Speaker 1: you're proud, ringing, ringing indoors. I can't wait for there
Speaker 1: to be tunnels like that in every city. Don't worry,
Speaker 1: they want the boring company is not a real company.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, anything else care? I mean we already talked
Speaker 1: about the digital health stuff, which was a very big
Speaker 1: part of CEES. UM. Yeah, that's I think that's most
Speaker 1: of what we want to touch on for now. Okay,
Speaker 1: well that's gonna just about do it for all of
Speaker 1: us here at whatever show this is. UM, we will
Speaker 1: at some point have some stuff based on Oh yeah, actually,
Speaker 1: let's let's in by I went in by talking about UM,
Speaker 1: I guess another good thing, but it's a good thing
Speaker 1: that relates to the bad things. Um. We ran across
Speaker 1: a booth on our way out that on the first
Speaker 1: day I had seen and I had thought was just
Speaker 1: um like a I had assumed it was like a
Speaker 1: GPS solution or something because the company was called off
Speaker 1: grid UM, and it's the off grid phone. We talked
Speaker 1: to the founder of the company, Ben Wilson, who was
Speaker 1: just a guy who, as he put it, does not
Speaker 1: like that uh, we consistently seated more and more control
Speaker 1: over our data and over our communications to large companies
Speaker 1: and governments and whoever the funk else gets access to
Speaker 1: these massive and or massive not anonymous data sets, and
Speaker 1: wanted to build a thing for himself that could eventually
Speaker 1: replace his smartphone. UM. So he and the company he
Speaker 1: started have produced these their dumb phones at this moment
Speaker 1: that context and can call and do encrypted end to
Speaker 1: end communication. They also, if you are off grid, like
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere, and you and your friends
Speaker 1: had of these, you can communicate through text thro through
Speaker 1: phone to each other even if there is no network. Right.
Speaker 1: The phones themselves do like make a network. They communicate
Speaker 1: just just to each other, just to each other. They
Speaker 1: do not connect to the why their internet. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is really cool and potentially extremely useful. This is this
Speaker 1: is um There's a number of applications that this could have. Garrison,
Speaker 1: you mentioned that the Atlanta Forest Defense people could benefit
Speaker 1: from something like this because it will effectively they're about
Speaker 1: two hundred bucks apiece. Anyone who can afford a few
Speaker 1: of these, you can set up your own secure comm's
Speaker 1: network for wherever you are and whatever you're doing and
Speaker 1: and the other. The other feature of this is that
Speaker 1: you can set it onto something called sheep mode, where basically,
Speaker 1: if if if you suspect that that someone who you
Speaker 1: don't want to look at your phone, whether that's law enforcement,
Speaker 1: whether that's other random random other people, you can set
Speaker 1: it to this mode that when they when they either
Speaker 1: sees or gain gain possession of this device, all of
Speaker 1: the the the data is immediately wiped before they can
Speaker 1: actually open up the phone UM. And they will open
Speaker 1: it up, they will see this fake profile that called
Speaker 1: the called not not fake profile, but like this this
Speaker 1: alternate profile called it called the sheep profile, which shows
Speaker 1: not not the stuff that not the stuff that you
Speaker 1: were using the food for. You can then just be
Speaker 1: blank or you could like stick other numbers in there.
Speaker 1: You could have like a series of fake text. But
Speaker 1: and then and but if you ever regain possession of
Speaker 1: the phone, you're able to put in UM a special
Speaker 1: a special password that will it will send the data.
Speaker 1: It'll it'll it'll send the data through encryption back onto
Speaker 1: this device, so you still have the things that you
Speaker 1: would have lost. And obviously there's a degree of like
Speaker 1: you would have to have some trust for the company, yes,
Speaker 1: which is says like and Ben says, like, we are
Speaker 1: attempting to do this. He was very open about the
Speaker 1: fact that that they have the phones. We saw them,
Speaker 1: like some of this stuff is still getting built out.
Speaker 1: It is it is is still in development. They're still
Speaker 1: figuring out in different ways to keep the server secure,
Speaker 1: to protect the servers from subpoenas from the American government
Speaker 1: and from other from other governments. Like there's this this
Speaker 1: is still something that is being worked on. Uh. It
Speaker 1: was just one of the you know, we we see
Speaker 1: a lot of like like a lot of lofty promises
Speaker 1: and very very little thing to show for this. This
Speaker 1: is one of the things that had actually, you know,
Speaker 1: just this one guy that had you know, some pretty
Speaker 1: some pretty relatable promises UM and and it's very open
Speaker 1: about what they have done and what they haven't done
Speaker 1: and what they're trying to do now. He he he was,
Speaker 1: he was he was not bullshitting. He wasn't trying to
Speaker 1: over emphasize what it can do um or what it
Speaker 1: can do at the moment, like it's it's still being
Speaker 1: worked on. But this is one of one of the
Speaker 1: one of the few, one of the future things that
Speaker 1: we will be that we will want to follow up on,
Speaker 1: and I think we're going to try to have been
Speaker 1: on the show in the near future because they're going
Speaker 1: to be doing a kickstarter to fund one of the
Speaker 1: next phases of production of this um. But you can
Speaker 1: you can look them up yourself. You can buy the
Speaker 1: version one of their product, which is on sale and
Speaker 1: functional now at off grid phone dot com. Spelled the
Speaker 1: way you would expect UM. So yeah, check out off
Speaker 1: grid phone dot com. We found it interesting, will be
Speaker 1: following up on that. Um. Ben gave me very strong
Speaker 1: the good kind of libertarian vibes. Reminded me of a
Speaker 1: couple of people I've I used to hang out with
Speaker 1: in my youth, and it's very much is that kind
Speaker 1: of like product of just a cranky guy who knows
Speaker 1: tech and is angry at all of the data being
Speaker 1: sucked up and all of the data that we just
Speaker 1: kind of agree together, we're going to give away two
Speaker 1: unsavory characters because life in the modern world is kind
Speaker 1: of impossible if you don't do that. No, And like
Speaker 1: one of one of the things on his signs was
Speaker 1: something along the lines of don't let the pope po
Speaker 1: look at your phone, so like it's yeah, it is
Speaker 1: somebody who gets it. Yeah, yeah, we liked we liked
Speaker 1: ben Um so yeah, that is that is the dark
Speaker 1: side of the future of tech, as this year's ce
Speaker 1: S has unveiled it to us. Um. You know, this
Speaker 1: is the also the conclud usition of our reporting directly
Speaker 1: on the convention itself. We will have some reporting in
Speaker 1: the future that will be influenced by things we found
Speaker 1: here that we're going to continue to look up. But
Speaker 1: um and and we should have we should have some
Speaker 1: of the audio that we pulled from inside the convection
Speaker 1: center that should be edited together sometime in the future.
Speaker 1: Talk to Paler. That'll be fine, yes, as as a
Speaker 1: little kind of documentary, little daily diary of of of
Speaker 1: what we were actually doing on the ground. So that's
Speaker 1: being worked on. But this is this is as we're
Speaker 1: recording right now. This is the final day of CES.
Speaker 1: We are almost done. We have we are both very sore.
Speaker 1: Is surprisingly hard on your body. We have to enter
Speaker 1: Eureka Park one more time, but then we will be finished,
Speaker 1: and then we'll have to upload this and and edited
Speaker 1: the rest of the stuff we've made into into a
Speaker 1: little piece for you. So that is that that is
Speaker 1: still coming. You say we, which was very generous. You're
Speaker 1: going to be doing that. Me and daniels I will
Speaker 1: not be editing anything. UM. I don't know how to anyway,
Speaker 1: go to Hell. I love you. It could Happen here
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Speaker 1: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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Speaker 1: for listening.